Perspective on Guatemala (1954)

From the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is called the land of eternal spring and appropriately so, for Guatemala does not know the changes of season such as we have in England. It is a country in which you are almost always in sight of a mountain or a volcano. It is the land of the marimba and the quetzal bird and of ancient intricately ornate architecture. Of dictatorship and malnutrition. Of lemongrass and citronella oil, quinine and cinnamon. Of cotton, chicle, coffee—and bananas. It is also a country regarded by United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles as a possible danger to the peace of America.

Guatemala lies on the narrow connection between the land masses of North and South America. It is bordered by Mexico, British Honduras, Honduras and El Salvador. The Caribbean Sea lies to the east and southwards is the Pacific Ocean. It is a country about as large as England with a population of 3½ million—roughly the same as Yorkshire. Over two million of these are the religious, superstitious Maya Indians, who are unable to read or write, and live on maize, kidney beans and dried fish. The climate is agreeable enough to have attracted many American vacationists. The main port is Puerto Barrios, situated on the eastern coast and connected by an important railway to the capital Guatemala City. Through the country runs the Pan American Highway, which ribbons along the entire isthmus of Central America. A fertile plain stretches for about 40 miles inland from the Pacific; here are rich banana farms, cornfields and grazing lands.

The country's chief exports are coffee, bananas, chicle, essential oils and honey, of which coffee is the most valuable. Chicle is a latex which is bled from wild sapota trees and forms the basic ingredient of chewing gum. Guatemala has little mineral resources and so is not an industrial nation. Her principal imports are machinery, textiles, petroleum and vehicles. Most of her trade is with the United States.

The early history of Guatemala has been obscured by the passing centuries and the destruction of records in the Spanish conquest of the 16th century. We do know that by about three thousand years ago an advanced civilisation had cleared the jungle, raised crops and built splendid cities, which have left their ruins as evidence of greater days. Over two thousand years ago the Mayas had developed a calendar as accurate as the Gregorian (adopted by Great Britain in 1752) and were working a mathematical system which was the first to use the concept of zero. Around the year 900 the Indians for some reason emigrated to the Guatemalan highlands and the jungle overgrew the deserted cities. The civilisation declined and the Mayas split into warring tribes.

In 1523 the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez sent a small band of conquistadors under his lieutenant Don Pedro de Alvarado from Mexico into Guatemala. There was little in the divided native tribes to resist the Spaniards’ superior equipment and military technique and by 1524 the country was under Spanish control. With the conquistadors came Roman Catholicism and the Inquisition. The Catholic Church assisted in the suppression of the country. In 1593 Pope Alexander VI issued a bull giving Spain sovereignty over Central America, including Guatemala. When the Spaniards found the resistance of the Rabinal Indians too fierce for them. Padre Bartelome de las Casas and other priests penetrated the Indians and won them over by missionary work. Incidentally, it was agriculturally-inclined Padre Tomas de Berlanga who introduced the first rootstocks of the banana plant from which have grown the huge plantations of the United Fruit Company of Boston, U.S.A.

The story of the Spanish conquest is re-told at the Maya fiestas, when masked Indians perform the Dance of the Conquistadors. The dance, to the music of the marimba—an instrument like an outsize xylophone—is an endurance test lasting for several hours. It represents the 1523 hand-to-hand battle between Alvarado and the Maya chief Tecum Uman, in which the Indian lost his life. This was a crucial victory for Alvarado.

The decline of Spain loosened its hold upon the Americas and in 1821 Guatemala was able, like other South American countries, to declare her independence. Then followed a succession of revolutions and presidencies, each relying upon bloodshed and tyranny for its position. In 1873 Justo Rufina Barrios deposed the ruling president and established a dictatorial government. Barrios did much to develop the resources of Guatemala and when he was killed in 1885 he was a national hero. The port of Puerto Barrios is named after him. His death was followed by more revolutions and a procession into and out of the presidential chair. In 1931 General Jorge Ubico was elected to power.

Ubico led a pitiless dictatorship which dissolved the trade unions and gave power to the landowners, greatest of which is the United Fruit Company. When he was forced to resign in 1944, Ubico left less than two per cent. of the population owning 78 per cent. of the land. For six years Guatemala was ruled by three army officers headed by Dr. Juan Arevalo, until in 1950 Jacob Arbenz was elected president Now, in face of the invasion, Arbenz has fallen and the presidential procession has started again.

The invasion came after several weeks of pressure from the U.S.A. The resolution sponsored by Mr. Dulles at the Caracas conference last March was directed against the Arbenz government and provided a legal weapon for future use. More essentially, America has for some years refused to sell arms to Guatemala, who not unnaturally took her custom elsewhere. The arrival at Puerto Bgrrios of weapons from Poland touched off a fine panic in the State Department and provoked the American request to Britain and other countries to allow the right to search their ships. Thus was quietly buried the traditional American lip-service to the freedom of the seas. When Guatemala was attacked America, tongue in cheek, denied the evidence of an invasion. On the other side of the table Russia forgot about Eastern Europe and came out in defence of the rights of small nations. As The Economist put it, rather neatly, it was “war through the looking glass . . .” with “. . . all the words . . . the wrong way round.” But that is nothing new.

What are the reasons for the conflict in the little Central American state? Well, first there’s the Panama Canal, the vital snip of the scissors which cuts America in two. A glance at a map will show the importance of the canal as the short cut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. As the quetzal bird flies, Guatemala is 800 miles from Panama and is separated from it by several countries which are friendly to the United States.

Then there’s the United Fruit Company, which owns most of the banana plantations of Guatemala. The company says that it has lost control of 400,000 acres in the recent land nationalisation; it is in dispute with the government over the scale of compensation. Its local legal representative is Dr. Juan Manuel Galvez, President of Honduras, whence came the invaders of Guatemala. Apart from its landholdings, the United Fruit Company owns the dock and harbour installations at Puerto Barrios. Through International Railways of Central America it has virtual control of the entire Guatemalan railway system, including the busy line from Puerto Barrios to Guatemala City. It is noteworthy that the first warnings about Guatemala came from the State Department at the same time as the early expropriation of United Fruit Company land. Foreign control is also strong in the field of electric power, four-fifths being supplied by a company subsidiary to an American firm.

What about Russian interference? Well, the Arbenz government could not be described as a follower of Moscow, although it did suffer the influence of Guatemalan Communists. There was in Guatemala an active opposition with its own newspapers. The Arbenz regime was crudely nationalist—an outlook bred from its attempts to break the American near-monopoly of the country’s wealth and develop a modern industrial state from a semi-feudal country. In competition with the foreign companies the government was building its own wharves at Puerto Barrios and, with the help of a United Nations Technical Assistance scholarship in highway construction, had commenced work on a heavy-duty road from the port to Guatemala City. A state-controlled power station costing nearly £2 million is also under construction.

It is a story by now familiar enough. Along with the bananas and coffee Guatemala has grown its own exploiting class who aspire to own their country’s wealth free from foreign interference. They expressed themselves in a nationalist party which found the American companies as the first obstacle to its plans. So it ran foul of the U.S. State Department. For Central America has for a long time been dominated' by American investment and influence. And in her conflict with Russia the United States cannot allow this power to be challenged and the security of the Panama Canal threatened. An. unfriendly Guatemala was bound to suffer the attention of Mr. Dulles. The Land of Eternal Spring has felt the first wintry blast of the cold war.

Ivan

Blogger's Note:

The original map from the August Socialist Standard was a bit basic, so I grabbed a replacement. In the 1954 map, Belize was still known as British Honduras.

The Economics of Capitalism - Part 1 (1954)

From the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1867 Marx brought out his “Capital,” a searching analysis of the basis of Capitalism, and since that date it has been the backbone of the Socialist Movement. Here we can only attempt to give a brief outline of some of his conclusions

The Problem of Value

Under Capitalism the overwhelming mass of products are produced solely for the purpose of being sold at a profit; this was not true of any of the previous social systems, neither in ancient nor in mediaeval times. As the system lives by the continuance of buying and selling, that which determines the value of goods, the source of value itself, is a problem fundamental to it The problem of value is an old one, as old as Aristotle who knew that there must be some property, apart from its usefulness, that was common to all articles of commerce, articles as unlike as bread and shoes, that made it possible to measure them one against another in a value relation. But he never got farther than putting the problem. The slave-based society in which he lived hindered even his acute mind from arriving at a solution, and it remained shrouded in mystery until buying and selling as a social system commenced to emerge m the Seventeenth century. The restraints upon industry and commerce melted into the right of everyone to do what he liked with his own, and the labourer, without property, was free to sell his working energy at whatever price he could get. Then the problem came up in an acute form as the rush to become rich developed. It was inspired by a desire to find out how wealth accumulated; or, to put it another way, to find out the source of surplus value.

Early Contributions to the Solution

The first real contribution to the solution of the question was made by Sir William Petty who, in his Treatise on Taxes (1662), stated that labour was the source of value, but, defining exchange value as money, he claimed that the particular labour employed in the production of the precious metals was the only labour that produced value. Later Benjamin Franklin tackled the problem in an essay entitled A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency (1729), arguing that the value of articles is measured by the time taken to produce them. Money, however, according to him, had an extra value owing to the way it facilitated exchanges. Adam Smith followed with his Wealth of Nations (1777) in which he urged that the determination of the value of an article by the time 'taken to produce it was true of earlier times but not of the time in which he lived. He attributed the accumulation of wealth to the division of labour and confused the value of what a labourer produced with the wages he received for producing it. The final contribution to the investigation, before Marx commenced to publish the results of his studies, was made by Ricardo in his book “On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation” (1817). In this book Ricardo got close to the answer, arguing that the values of all articles, including the value of labour-power, was determined by the labour required to produce them under the prevailing conditions of skill and methods. When applying his theory, however, he went astray because he did not see the distinction between labour and labour-power with sufficient clearness, and, hence, that the accumulation of wealth in the form of capital was based upon the buying and selling of labour-power. It was the discovery of this fact that gave Marx the key to the problem.

The Wealth of To-day

As the wealth of capitalist society consists of commodities, useful articles produced for sale, Marx commences his investigation with the analysis of a commodity. The things we eat and drink, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in, and the transport that conveys us to wherever we wish have all been made for the purpose of being sold. They appear in the shop windows or showrooms with price tabs attached, or they appear in price-lists of goods offered for sale, or again they are advertised as something for which a price will be stated if requested. In other words they are goods produced for sale whether they be butter or battleships, salt or sables. Nothing is produced for sale unless it is considered to be useful to somebody for some purpose, whether the purpose be good or bad or both. Of course many things are produced and sold that the buyer finds are not what they were pretended to be; they were sold under false pretences and the buyer was defrauded; but this is not true of the mass of things produced, though many may not come up to the level claimed for them by their sellers. The wealth of to-day, then, consists of commodities— articles of commerce, things that are the subject of buying and selling. This is real wealth, or economic wealth. Whatever philosophers or poets may have said a man is considered wealthy to-day according to the amount of his material possessions or the size of his effective claim upon them; a man is considered poor because of his lack of them, and to the poor group the majority of society belong.

Why Things Sell at Different Prices

As useful articles there is nothing mysterious about commodities; they are pots and kettles, loaves of bread and pats of butter. The more you have of them the better off you are, but to get them you must pay varying prices. This is where the difficulty arises. Why do things sell at different prices? Why is it that those things which it is almost impossible to live without. such as bread, butter and milk, sell at low prices compared, for instance, with diamonds which we need far less? Why does a linen coat cost a few shillings and a fur coat cost a few hundred pounds? To answer these questions we must first find out what prices are and how they are arrived at. We have said that a commodity is a useful article, but it is also an article of value because, to get it, you must pay a price, its exchange value. We have already noticed that its usefulness has nothing to do “with its price; we are speaking, of course, of the normal operations of commerce; the hundreds of pounds a man in the desert, dying of thirst,, might be willing to pay for a bucket of water “has nothing to do with the case.” In normal times a tiny diamond may exchange for as much money as many tons of bread, and the price of water is infinitesimal. As use-values commodities are of different qualities—softness, hardness, thickness, and the like; but as exchange-values they are of different quantities—20 loaves, 10 coats, 2 pairs of shoes, and the like. Exchange value is a relation of quantity, 20 loaves of bread for ten shillings; it is the quantity of loaves and the quantity of shillings that matter. In this exchange relation, 20 loaves equals ten shillings, the loaves and the shillings contain something that is equal in each and yet can be distinguished from their physical appearance; the loaves and the shillings are equal to a third thing which is neither the one nor the other. If we leave out of sight their usefulness, which is tied up with their physical properties, commodities have only one thing in common; they are products of labour, they are the result of the application of human labour to materials provided by nature. When looked at only as products of labour articles are values. Exchange-value, such as twenty loaves of bread equals ten shillings, is the only form in which the value contained in a commodity is, and can be, expressed. The quantity of labour required to produce twenty loaves is the same as the quantity required to produce ten shillings, for the ten shillings is a fixed portion of a fixed piece of gold, as we shall see later. Thus the size of the value contained in an article is measured by the quantity of labour contained in it, and the quantity of labour itself is measured by the time the labour is in action—so many hours of work. As the illustration indicates, value can only be expressed relatively, the value of one article in relation to another. It is only because they are the products of human energy that articles can be measured against each other as values, and from this it follows that their quantity relation to each other varies with variations in the productiveness of labour; at different times, with changes in the productiveness of labour, we may get more or less than twenty loaves of bread for ten shillings.

The Effects of Competition

Although the quantity of the value contained in an article is determined by the amount of labour required to produce it, this does not mean that the less efficient the labour the greater the value of the article. All commodities are produced for the market, that is. for sale, and buyers endeavour to obtain each particular kind of commodity as cheaply as possible; they buy in the cheapest market. The system of commodity production is a competitive system and each producer tries to produce as cheaply as possible in order to get as large a share of the demand as possible. This drives each producer to search for new machines and better productive methods in order to produce goods cheaper than competitors. The result is that, in general, the amount of labour required to produce a given article is constantly being reduced. All producers are compelled to introduce the latest methods or be left behind in the struggle for markets. Where producers fail to keep pace with improvements in production they gradually lose their trade and are finally faced with ruin. Two hundred years ago hand work, or handicraft, was the prevailing method of producing commodities; then machines were introduced and gradually monopolised all forms of production. The hand workers who were unable or unwilling, to adopt the new productive form, fought a losing battle for decades until finally the only prices they could get for their products against the machine-made article had reached such a low level that they could not earn enough to live, and they had to give up. Thousands of them eventually died of starvation.

Thus, at any given moment, there is an average amount of labour, recognised by society in practice, that is required to produce a given product, and it is this average amount that determines the value of the commodity. Where, through inefficient organisation, more labour than is necessary is spent on the production of a commodity it will only have a value equivalent to the average amount necessary in a particular society at a given time. Value-producing labour is therefore average socially necessary labour, and the producer ignores this fact at the cost of ruin to himself, a ruin that we see every now and again reported in the newspapers.

Skilled Labour more Intense than Unskilled

There is another aspect of this value-producing labour that needs to be understood. Articles that are produced in a relatively short time appear to have the same value as those that take much longer to produce. At first sight this is puzzling. A group of men working on a farm in the country without machinery will produce articles of an annual value that is only equivalent to what the same number of men will produce in a few weeks in a highly organised machine factory. The explanation of this is that, in estimating value, it is necessary to consider all the labour that is incorporated in the production of an article. The more complicated the task the more intense the labour, that is to say the more of simple labour is compressed into an hour of its use. Nowadays, for instance, in even the comparatively simple labour possessed by a boy leaving school there is incorporated a portion of the labour of teachers who taught him, scientists who made certain knowledge available, and the labours of those who made the maps, tools, and other teaching appliances. Thus, in the machine made product, there is involved the labour of toolmakers, machine makers and hosts of other allied workers, all of whose labour appears in the final commodity and takes part in determining its value. Skilled labour, therefore, compresses in an hour of work several hours of simple labour.

Gilmac.

(To be continued)

The Middle Class (1954)

From the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

"What sort of person was Mr. Weare?"

"He was always a respectable person."

"What do you mean by respectable?"

"He kept a gig."

(Murder Trial, 1823).

Three thousand pounds is a lot of money. By itself, it should provide a good-sized house or a small-sized business; as an annual income, it would give most people the same feeling it gave to Shaw’s displaced dustman. Sixty pounds a week put him among the well-to-do—“shoved him into the middle class"  and forced strange manners and morals on him. And the curious thing is that the middle class, from which there is no escape with three thousand a year, is the fortress too of the curates and the come-down gentlefolk who have all the morals and all the manners and not even a dustman’s income.

The middle class is a myth. Every age has its myths and fictions. Sometimes a social assumption is at variance with reality, and everybody knows it to be so — for example, the doctrine in Britain that the sovereign rules and makes laws; that sort of doctrine is called a fiction. On the other hand, a belief may be at variance with reality and still generally accepted as true; that is the nature of a myth. A good deal of everyday religious belief is mythology. So, too, is the middle-class belief, which usually takes the form not of “I believe in it” but of “I belong to it.”

Like many myths, this one began as reality. There was a middle class, and it became the capitalist class. That is a different thing, however, from what they mean nowadays. The middle-class person sees himself as the genus of a flowery dell between the working-class cabbage patch and the upper-class orchid house. He regards himself as the type of most value to the community (“the backbone of the nation”); “the British way of life” is his way of life. The latter, incidentally, is true. Itself a myth, “the British way of life” is really the sum of the traditional desiderata for the middle class; semi-detached houses, cricket on the green, Old Boys’ dinners and all the rest. A sketch —it would have to be an imaginative one—of a middle-class man would simply portray life in Britain as it is imagined by sympathetic foreigners, and a good many British, too.

The authors of books about the middle class always acknowledge the impossibility of defining it. It would seem like being in love—unexplainable, indefinable, but you know it when you’re there—except that a classification needs to be based on reason to be valid. What, then, are the reasons for classifying people as middle class? Not income, because that would exclude the curates and the impoverished gentlefolk. On the other hand, not education, because that would rule out Alfred Doolittle and a good many local Aldermen.

Numbers of people consider themselves middle-class on the score of occupation. Probably most “black-coated” workers would say so if they were asked, on the grounds that they keep clean and are non-industrial. So is a lavatory attendant; and doctors and nurses have routine tasks which would be exceptionable to a self-respecting paperhanger. Then there are managers, but it is difficult to see them as anything other than well-paid employees. And, of course, the doctors, lawyers, teachers, clergy—in fact, professional people generally. Most of them come from comparatively well-off homes—almost a necessity for a long course of professional training. Their “middle-class” status is the cause, not the result of their being in the professions.

Certainly the middle class are not only conscious but very jealous, of the unfathomable dividing line between them and the working class. (The tea shoppe and the strangled vowel are its monuments.) Since the war middle-class people have complained continually of impoverishment, of being no better off than manual workers: Poverty can be a relative term. In a recent Manchester Guardian correspondence, people whose incomes range from two hundred and fifty to three thousand pounds a. year told of their difficulties in making ends meet. Obviously there is a difference, and the people with large incomes are not poor in the sense that people with a fiver a week are; all the same, they are telling the truth. If you are the manager of a large firm, you have to live like the manager of a large firm. Recently a teacher wrote to one of the papers and complained that he could not afford a holiday. What he really meant was that he could not afford his sort of holiday, not a cheap week in a cheap guest house at a cheap resort.

Is there really a class of people, even a small one, that stands half-way between the working class and the capitalists? The simplest way to answer is to discover and place those two classes and then see what, if anything, is left. A capitalist is a person who lives by owning something of the means of production or distribution. If he has a small ownership and gets along only by working at it himself, then he isn’t a capitalist because he is living by his labour and not by his ownership; a capitalist can live without working. A worker has no facilities for doing so, no ownership of the means of life. He has to sell his ability to work—brawn, brains, or whatever comprises it: the price is his wage, and he is wholly dependent on it.

There are no people in capitalist society whose living comes in any other way. Clerks, managers, teachers, parsons, dentists, lawyers—they are all dependent on their wages, salaries, stipends, fees, what they are paid for their labour-power. They work for their livings, have to find and hold jobs. They belong, in fact, to the working class.

There is no middle class. Our world is a two- class world of workers and capitalists. In the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the growing capitalist class was a middle class itself, a third element in the society where landowners ruled and tenants worked. The cloth manufacturers, the merchant adventurers and bankers, struggled to throw off the incubus of feudalism. The Civil war and the political revolution of the mid-seventeenth century were part of this struggle; it was expressed in Milton's prose as well as in the new economic doctrines. And when the manufacturers and the others became the ruling class, the existence of it middle class ended.

A large number of those who call themselves middle class are much better paid than most workers. It is worth considering why, because the reason will explain also why they are not sitting as pretty as might be expected. Labour-power is bought and sold in a market; it is a commodity, like boots or biscuits, Everything has its price, and the price is the expression in money of its value; there may be fluctuations because of supply and demand, but they are fluctuations round this point of value. And the value of any commodity—biscuits, boots or labour-power—is determined by the amount of labour that went to make it. That is why mass-produced boots are cheap and handmade shoes are dear; it is also why a bank manager is well paid and a builder’s labourer poorly paid.

Little training is needed to pull down ceilings, carry buckets and mix cement; no instructional books, no theoretical lectures. Nobody requires a builder’s labourer to speak well, display refinement or know much (he would probably be thought to be putting on side if he did so). But a bank manager does need training and the other things. He must know banking, which is not a simple subject; he must speak well, organize well, and have a good deal of what is called “madam.” His labour-power, in short, embodies a lot of labour from other sources, so its price is comparatively a high one.

That is not the whole story, however. The wages of these two have to maintain them, not as human beings, but as a labourer and a bank manager. The labourer’s address does not matter; the bank manager’s does. Some “middle-class” people pay more for their childrens’ education than a labourer earns—not just because it is expected of them, but_because we all reproduce our kind, and their kind needs to be well educated. It may sound ridiculous to use the word “subsistence” for wages of two or three thousand pounds a year, but in fact that is the position. All wages provide subsistence on different levels. For some it is food, clothing and shelter and the instalments on the television; for others, it includes the appearance and necessities of “middle-class” life.

In the last few years, numbers of the “middle class” have unconsciously acknowledged this by organizing to protect their standards of living. Civil Servants and Local Government workers have pressed continually for more pay, and the teachers’ unions have shown less interest in education than in salaries. The truth is that, whatever groups may be distinguished on the grounds of income, culture and so on, they are distinguished within, and not from, the working class.

Of all the factors which tend to obscure the class position in capitalist society, the middle-class myth is perhaps the strongest. “Class-consciousness” is often used to denote middle-class snobbery, but it has a wider, more vital meaning. In its true sense, it is the most important thing that can be learned by working men and women.

Robert Barltrop

Notes by the Way: Population, Food and Fuel (1954)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Population, Food and Fuel

In recent years much interest has been shown by governments, agricultural experts and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of United Nations in problems of world food supply. With world population not only increasing, but increasing at a faster rate, the technical problems of raising food output had to be and have been solved, though the prospect of the solutions being fully applied in a capitalist world is another question for capitalism is more concerned with what is profitable than with the human tragedy of half the population of the world being underfed.

But along with food there is also the question of' meeting the rapidly growing demand for fuel supplies. It is the realisation of this that has made atomic energy an industrial as well as a military question and explains why “exclusive of weapons” the British Government is spending £54 million a year on atomic research and development (Financial Times, 31/7/54.)

According to studies made for the United States Atomic Energy Commission the known resources of coal, oil, water-power and other existing sources of energy are likely in future decades to fall short of the needs of industry and at the same time become more costly to produce. There will, therefore, be increasing need for atomic energy. As a scientific correspondent of the Financial Times puts it: “The arrival of the Atomic Age is, it would seem, only just in time.”

Failing Coal Production

For British capitalism the problem shows itself in the failure of coal output to keep pace with demand. The post-war years have seen periodical dependence on imported coal, and coal exports from this country, which formerly bulked so large, have now fallen behind the value of exported petroleum products from the new huge refineries. Even if, with the investment of sums in mining machinery and equipment—£450 million is to be invested in the next six years—the total quantity can be increased, productivity has fallen and therefore the real cost has risen. This is the result of many factors, but chiefly because the richer and more easily worked seams were the first to be exhausted.

This is apt to be overlooked because comparison is rarely made with the earlier periods when productivity, measured in annual output per worker in the mining industry, was at its peak. The Daily Express (5/7/54) made the point that in 1953 the “output per man in the mines was 295 tons” (almost exactly one ton per working day), and that this has only once been exceeded since the war. But though this output is also well above the low levels of some years between the wars, it is far below the peak of 333 tons of 1883 and the average of 319 tons in 1879-1883. (Report on the Coal Industry, 1925, Vol. I, Chapter XL)

On the above figures the present annual output per worker is 8 per cent. below what it was seventy years ago, but the actual fall is really much greater than 8 per cent. because present output can only be maintained by the labour of increasing numbers of workers in the engineering industry engaged on the production of machinery for the mines.

For the present the Government is encouraging the use of oil in place of coal, as at the new Bankside power station, but at the same time atomic power is being developed for electricity generation. This is no doubt mainly for the technical reasons, but it will also not have escaped the notice of the Government that a subsidiary source of energy may also be useful to them in resisting wage demands of the miners.

Wages, Prices and Labour Government

This year, for the first time since June, 1947, the Ministry of Labour Index of average wage rates caught up with the Cost of Living Index, both now standing at 42 per cent. above 1947. In 1951, when the Labour Government left office, the Cost of Living Index at 129 was seven points higher than the wage index. In the main, the movements of prices depend on the workings of capitalism here and in the world generally and are not under the control of governments. The one important exception is currency manipulations, like the Labour Government's devaluation of the pound in 1949, which, as they well knew, was bound to raise the cost of living and leave wages lagging behind. The actual course of events certainly gives some support to the view that the Labour Government’s preaching of “wage restraint" to the workers in 1947 onwards played its part in keeping wages below the rise of the cost of living.

Armaments for Peace

The plausible argument used by the advocates of armaments and still more armaments is that if the country is unarmed or armed less powerfully than some other country this encourages the stronger Powers to attack the weaker. The weaker should therefore get more armaments and so deter the potential aggressor.

One fallacy in the argument is, of course, that if they all increase their armaments by, say, 50 per cent. their relative position is just where it was at die start.

It will also be noticed that the more strongly armed Powers use an argument that is just as plausible and just as silly. Their generals demand more arms, not in order to catch up with somebody else, but in order to retain their lead. All the big Powers use this argument, among them Russia.

At the so-called elections in Russia earlier this year one of the Communist Party candidates (no other political parties are allowed to put forward candidates, or, indeed, to exist at all), was Marshal Bulganin, whose election speech was published in the 'Russian Embassy's Soviet News, under date 10th March, 1954.

In his speech he not only reiterated that the Russian army is already “the strongest in the world,” but that it is urgently necessary to make it stronger still. “ As we know, those who do not go forward, fall behind, and those who fall back are defeated. For this reason, since the victory won in the great Patriotic War. the Party and the Government have not relaxed their efforts to strengthen our defence capacities.”

Needless to say, Bulganin, like his opposite numbers in all the countries, insists that their massive equipment in artillery, tanks, atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, etc., etc., are merely to preserve peace!

September Special Number (1954)

Party News from the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

We would again remind members and sympathisers that we urgently require donations to cover the extra cost of the September Special Number of the “Socialist Standard." Unless sufficient money comes in quickly we will have to be more modest in our proposals. We urge those who are interested in seeing this Special Number a worthy commemoration of fifty years of our paper to do their best to see that we can accomplish this object. So far the response has not been what it should be and the time is getting short.

Party News Briefs (1954)

Party News from the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ealing Branch. The Branch Literature Committee reports that the follow-up during June of the May S.S. drive has been very encouraging. Four areas are now being regularly followed up—Greenford, South Ealing, Cuckoo Estate, and Acton. They hope to open up soon in Hounslow, Southall, Chiswick, and Wembley, but to do this more effectively they would like more members to come forward to do the regular rounds in the established areas.

Activities in August may be curtailed somewhat through holidays, and the Committee appeals to all members to do their utmost to assist during this month.

The Branch Literature Committee has been in existence a year now, and all members are agreed that the experiment of having a group of people instead of one person responsible for literature has been a great success. To do a Branch’s literature work well is really too much of a job for one member, and enthusiasm, activity, and results, are much more easily achieved by a group.

A further special sales drive will be carried out in September in connection with the anniversary issue of the Standard, and all members are asked to help to make the campaign a success. Details will be appearing in next month’s S.S .

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Hackney Branch. Having received a visitor from Ealing who gave the members an outline of their methods and results in canvassing the Socialist Standard from door to door. It was immediately decided to form a team to visit a large new estate in Homerton, with eminently satisfactory results, on the following Sunday morning, three dozen S.S. being sold. The members engaging in the sales drive were so satisfied that they decided to try Friday evenings in addition, and two of them sold 18 copies at their first attempt. As there are many new estates now being completed in this district there seems to be unlimited scope for expanding sales in areas where the Party is little known. Weekly, instead of fortnightly, Branch meetings will be held in future, and members who think they can help with sales, are invited to hear the reports of other members.

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The Literature Canvassing Committee takes this opportunity of reminding all branches and members of a proposed intensive drive of The Socialist Standard during September.

If your branch has not yet commenced canvassing, you are urged to bring the item up at the next business meeting as a matter of urgency. See that a canvassing organiser or committee is appointed to coordinate efforts and get to work without delay. There is no time to lose. Permanent sales of the S.S. must be stepped up and we are presented with a golden chance to do just this with the arrival of our anniversary number.

Many comrades fight shy of canvassing, yet this is really quite regrettable since it is extremely useful activity and there is very little to learn, as most members who try it find out after completion of their first dozen calls or so. What is more, it does result in a regular list of subscribers, given a little time and perseverance.

The Committee will be very pleased to send one of their members to any London branch to give practical assistance and advice. Provincial branches will be contacted by post. Don’t delay! Start today! Enquiries and requests for help should be addressed to:—

The Literature Canvassing Committee,
c/o 48, Balfour Road,
Ealing, London, W.13, 

and will be given prompt attention.

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Swansea Branch continues to make headway even if painfully slow. Membership has increased from six to eight members, contact is maintained with a number of interested sympathisers. From time to time meetings have been held including one debate with the Welsh Nationalist Party.

The Branch has challenged the local Tory prospective candidate to debate, also the Communist Party. The Tories declined the offer whilst the Communists maintained a discreet silence.

The Branch has also corresponded with the W.S.P. of U.S.A.

Use is being made of the local press on every suitable occasion and we have been fortunate in putting the Party’s case before the public frequently.

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Bloomsbury Branch will not be holding meetings during the month of August as the Conway Hall is closed during the month. Meetings will recommence in September and it is hoped that more members will arrange to regularly attend. The Branch room is pleasant, and as the Conway Hall is so well situated for travelling facilities members should find it quite an easy matter to get to the Branch regularly.

Phyllis Howard

Private Enterprise in Russia (1954)

From the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

When all the arguments for the existence of Socialism in Russia have been exhausted by Communist Party members and their sympathisers, they usually conclude with the idea that "At least Russia has, in abolishing private enterprise, taken a great step towards Socialism." Even if Russia had nationalised everything, this would not mean that they have got Socialism but only State capitalism. Avowedly capitalist countries have never hesitated to nationalise industries when it suited them. But has Russia abolished private enterprise? 

Readers Digest for May, 1954, condenses an article from the Wall Street Journal by Tom Whitney who has recently returned to the United States after nine years in Russia, first as chief of the economic section of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and later as correspondent for the Associated Press. He wrote “If you dial a certain telephone number in Moscow you can arrange to buy a TV set within 24 hours—instead of the two or three months it takes to get one from the State run electrical appliance store. Calls to other Moscow numbers will summon such people as washing machine salesmen, doctors, repair-men, and house builders—all private enterprise ready to provide speedier or higher quality service than the Soviet Government offers."

Many traders, asserts Whitney, wait (or more likely get the tip) of a new delivery of goods arriving at a store where there has been a shortage for a long time, and buy a huge quantity and resell them for a handsome profit to those not willing to wait or stand for hours in queues. Rosa Martynova, a member of the Moscow branch of the Komsomol (Communist national youth organisation), is now serving five years for this practice. Another eminent party member, M. Kogan, obtained several thousands of watch movements from the government, assembled them and netted £89,000 profit before the government woke up! There were two brothers who sold leeches to the government (they are still widely used there and were applied to Stalin before he died), made 400,000 roubles profit a year on the sales.

Everywhere in Russia, and in every branch of activity, according to Whitney, there is some private enterprise and it can successfully compete with the inefficient state enterprises. Of course if the goods are just stolen, as they frequently are, or if the raw material has been wangled from a government store, then competition should not be too difficult. Whitney claims that even landlords can get rents above controlled prices, and he witnessed that a friend of his in Moscow signed a lease for a room priced at 265 roubles a month; but on top of that the landlord demanded extra cash to boost the total rent 450 per cent, claiming that he would go bankrupt if he only charged the official rent!

How can the police prevent the buyer of a television set from selling it to a "friend” for a profit? Whitney claims that only 100,000 TV sets are at present coming on to the market annually, yet the demand is for at least ten times that quantity.

He points out that not all private enterprise is illegal in the U.S.S.R. Soviet law permits individuals to work privately under licence at any of about 20 trades and professions, including medicine, hair-dressing, book-binding, house-repairing, etc. Russians can work full time at such jobs and part-time at many others. House repair must cover a multitude of occupations, and with a few friends (or business partners in state warehouses) can be very lucrative. Taxes on private incomes are levied as a recognised thing.

Stealing from government factories keeps private enterprise going very profitably according to Whitney. In most of the large towns medical, dental and even teaching is done privately. State-run clinics are inefficient and always overcrowded. One Russian doctor maintains a private practice in Moscow as a homeopath and earns over 16,000 roubles a month. His income from official work could never approach that mark.

Whitney concludes his article by saying that "You can get private help in practically any service field in Moscow—if you can pay the price.”

Private enterprise is hard to stamp out, even with secret police, who are sometimes as corrupt as the private traders. So long as the workers don't understand or want anything else, the profit motives of society will survive. There is no socialism in Russia. State capitalism is the dominate form, with private enterprise, according to Whitney, as a flourishing subsidiary.

Horace Jarvis

Editorial: The Labour Party seeks a Programme (1954)

Editorial from the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

For political parties dependent on leaders it is much better to travel hopefully than to arrive. The leaders' promises to remove some present evils at a not too distant date keep members and voters united and enthusiastic. The led are willing to accept with a great deal of trust the belief that the reforms they are working for will produce the desired beneficial results. It is with achievement that the testing time comes and the party’s cohesion or even its existence is imperilled. A case in point is the long struggle waged early this century to give the American people the benefits of prohibition. When it came the beneficiaries decided that it was more of a curse than a blessing and there followed a much shorter struggle, to get rid of it This of course, shattered the prohibition organisations; but, if things had gone differently and prohibition had turned out to be even half-way up to expectations and had become permanent this too would have ended the organisations for their work would have been completed.

Problems like these are responsible for the present doubts, dissensions and struggles for leadership in the British Labour Party. In their six years of power after the war, they carried out much of the programme that had kept them going for half a century. They nationalised basic industries, elaborated the national Insurance schemes, introduced the Health Service continued war-time arbitration in industrial disputes gave independence to India and other countries in the Empire and put into operation their plans for bringing peace into international relationships through the United Nations and their "new approach” to foreign governments. Then they sat back waiting for the applause that did not come. According to the book a grateful electorate should then have rallied to Labour and spurned the Tories. Instead, disappointment with Nationalisation and the utter failure of Labour’s foreign policy had the result of dividing the electorate about evenly between the Labour and Tory parties. To the extent that they approved the insurance schemes and the Health Service they decided that these were as much Tory schemes as Labour ones, as indeed they were, for the Tories were astute enough to adopt them and not leave them to figure as a Labour Party monopoly. In the meantime Labour’s experience of running capitalism in a world beset with peril for the British Empire capitalist group had made them as safe for the preservation of the interests of that group as the Tories themselves. So now the hopes and the fire have departed from Labour ranks and they are trying to find how to regain what has been lost. They are seeking new leaders and new programmes that will carry them back to power.

The problem has been surveyed by Professor G. D. H. Cole and by Mr. Donald Chapman, formerly secretary of the Fabian Society; by Mr. Cole in a pamphlet Is this Socialism? and by Mr. Chapman in the Political Quarterly.

Mr. Cole is certain that if the Labour Party at the 1950 and 1951 elections had come out boldly for more of the old programme—as some Labour leaders thought they should—they would have lost votes not gained them. And Mr. Chapman finds that the workers, no longer spurred on by mass unemployment, have largely lost what desire they had for seemingly radical changes. And it is certainly true that the quite unprecedented nine year period of unemployment averaging less than two per cent has robbed the Labour Party of the asset it had when mass unemployment constantly stirred the workers to discontent with Tory governments between the wars.

Their analysis of the troubles of the Labour Party are convincing but it is when we look at their suggested remedies that we see how little they have to offer. Mr. Cole suggests that inheritance should be virtually abolished, that dividends should be limited, and that part of profits re-invested as capital should be taken by the State. This assumes, of course, that nationalisation by a back-door method could be foisted on electors who have become less enamoured of straight nationalisation, and that having got complete State capitalism they would like it

Mr. Chapman does examine another proposition, that goes by the misleading title of "workers control” in industry, but decides that by and large the workers are not much interested in it.

It would, however, be a mistake to conclude, because Messrs. Cole and Chapman cannot find issues likely to put new life into the Labour Party, that the problem is insoluble. We can be sure that capitalism itself will go on producing evils at home and abroad around which the Tory and Labour parties (or other capitalist-reformist parties in their place) can build up rival programmes to form the basis of electoral battles.

There is, too, the real alternative—the one propounded by the S.P.G.B. None of the disappointments that gnaw at the supporters of the Labour Party are unforeseen. Fifty years ago the S.P.G.B. foretold that nationalisation would solve no working-class problem—at present the capitalists think that it isn’t much use to them either—and that however much capitalism is reformed and bureaucratised the world would still find no solution for social problems except Socialism.

When, therefore, the Manchester Guardian (1 July. 1954) asks “How can we make British politics —and parties—live again?” the Socialist knows the only worth-while answer.

A Rose by any other name (1954)

From the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are all "socialists" now. Let us witness the parade: The Churchill Tory socialists, the French Radical Socialists, the totalitarian "socialist" governments including the black, brown and red shirts, the New - Deal—Fair - Deal creeping "socialists," the Labour Parties of Europe, the Asiatic "socialist" and "communist" governments as well as those in Africa and South America, the colonial "socialist" groups, the various alleged socialist organisations throughout the world such as the Social Democrats, Trotzkyites, the Communist parties, syndicalists, I.W.W., Socialist Labour Party and the Companion Parties for Socialism in Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand. Then there are the anarchists, Christian "socialists," pacifists and a whole host of others. By no means have we exhausted the list of marchers in the "socialist" parade.

No wonder M. Rubel, in his dilemma: "The Uses of the Word "Socialism" in the Winter, 1954, issue of the American magazine Dissent, would prefer "to abandon the word socialism" and would substitute some other word for it that would "save the conceptual content once attached to this term."

It is significant of the times we live in to see every strata of society and the entire gamut of conflicting and opposing interests express themselves in terms of socialism. They must in order to rally support. Even though Socialism is NOT accepted by the world, it has become recognized and established as the hope of mankind.

M. Rubel describes very well the general nature of socialism that stirs and inspires everyone: "A society from which exploitation would be banished and in which  the unfolding of each individual would be the condition of the freedom of all." This is the basic appeal of socialism as an ultimate objective which serves as a rallying cry to muster support for the various groups marching in the parade of "socialism."

Let us suppose that some other word came into use to express the very essence of socialism, its "conceptual concept." This new word would then be subjected to the very same difficulties. The old word "socialism" would lose its meaning and significance. The new word would become abused in the same manner as the old one. Changing the name would not solve any problem for it doesn't come to grips with the real situation.

The Situation

The views of those who, patently, are supporters of the status quo are of no interest to this discussion, even though they may be listed in the parade of socialists. But we are very much concerned with those who allege adherence to socialism. In the name of socialism, all manner of views are presented. There are those who are disappointed at the slow growth of the movement and propose immediate demands; they feel that socialism is a long way off and, in the meantime, we have immediate problems to solve, that we must face "reality" and be "practical." Some consider reforms and government ownership as gradual steps to socialism. Some consider state capitalism (often called state socialism) as a form of socialism, if not socialism itself. Necessarily, these are efforts to administer and reform capitalism. All this leads to erroneous concepts, particularly, identifying capitalist relationships as being socialist ones. The common characteristic of these viewpoints and activities is to divorce the socialist objective from the policies that are pursued. The means become the goal and objective.

It has become the fashion of many "profound" pundits of socialism to dismiss as dogmatic and sectarian* those who realize the socialist activities must not be disassociated from the socialist objective. We see this same attitude in some of the articles in Dissent.

It is tragic to observe the net result of all these "practical" movements. Being freed from "dogmatism and sectarianism" (which really means: freed from a scientific analysis of social forces), we find what? Hosts of workers are bewildered by the deceptions and disappointments of the "socialist" as well as "communist" election "victories" in all corners of the globe. Especially, we find vast numbers disillusioned because of their false hopes in Russian state capitalism.

At no time have any of these widespread and tremendous efforts been devoted to spreading socialist consciousness. particularly damaging to socialist understanding has been the stress on nationalism and patriotism which is so foreign to the very spirit of socialism, which is a world-wide society, a social system. What a waste of such expenditures of energies! One wonders how much further the socialist movement would have been advanced without these vast diversions and had the same efforts been devoted to socialist activities.

Is it difficult to realize why the word "socialism" has lost its "conceptual content" to so many who never really grasped the socialist content?

What is Socialism?

The case for socialism is not difficult to grasp. It really is simple.

There are three phases of socialism. They are interrelated and interdependent and part of an unfolding process.

(1) Socialism first appears on the scene ideologically. It arose out of the material conditions of the earlier portion of the 19th Century. This is the birth of socialist science. It is materialistic. It recognizes that everything in existence is interrelated and in a constant process of change. (In a very real sense, it might even be said that socialism is the science that integrates all branches of science into a correlated whole.) Specifically, it indicates the general outlines and the process of social evolution and, more particularly, the nature of capitalism. It explains how the seed of the forthcoming society is fertilized within the womb of an old society.
(2) Then, socialism arises as a movement. It is not alone sufficient to understand the world. the task is to change it. Its very raison d'etre is to exert all its efforts to arouse the working class and all others to become socialists so that the vast majority becomes conscious of its interests, and proceeds to institute socialism. The socialist revolution cannot be rammed down the throats of "followers." The socialist revolution is majority, conscious and political. It is and can only be democratic by its very inherent nature. It is not a new ruling class come to power with a subject class having to submit.
(3) Finally, in the course of its evolution, capitalism has laid the groundwork for socialism, a classless, money-less, wage-less society. Socialism is "a society from which exploitation has been banished and in which the unfolding of each individual would be the condition for the freedom of all."

The Answer

In light of all this, what constitutes being a socialist? Broadly speaking, it is one who realizes that capitalism can no longer be reformed or administered in the interest of either the working class or society; that capitalism is incapable of eliminating its inherent problems of poverty, wars, crises, etc.; and that socialism offers the solutions for the social problems besetting mankind since the material conditions and developments—with the single exception of an aroused socialist majority—are now ripe for a socialist society.

If an organization or an individual or a "victory" supports the continuation of capital-wage labour relationships by advocating or organizing to administer an improved, bettered reformed status quo (capitalism) instead of coming out for the socialist revolution (a frightening word which only means a complete social-economic change) then—it is NOT socialist.

The need for educating, agitating and organizing to keep the issues clear cannot be overemphasized. All too many liberals, radicals, intellectuals, and, what is far worse, the much greater numbers of rebellious workers resisting their sad lot in life—all these, sincere, earnest and devoted—have been washed in and out of the so-called socialist organizations and their fringes and in the entire process never did get an insight or an inkling as to what it is all about.

The simplicity of the socialist case is buried by friends and foe alike in mountains of "day-today" ISSUES so that there never is and never can be time for them to become acquainted with the science of socialism, i.e., the socialist case.

The real need today is the understanding and knowledge of socialism rather than changing the word "socialism."

—I. Rab.

(Reproduced from the Western Socialist, May-June, 1954.)

* Just because of their scientific attitude, socialists are constantly re-examining their theories in the light of historical developments and experience. So far, unfolding events have conformed and corroborated the socialist case and nothing of a fundamental nature has occurred to repudiate the general theories of the science of socialism. 

Backwaters of History - 10 (1954)

From the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Barcelona 1937

Just before three o'clock on the afternoon of May 3rd, 1937, three lorries were threading their way through the streets of Barcelona, heading for the huge Plaza Plaza Cataluña in the centre of the city. They emerged into the Plaza, pulled up outside the Telephone Building and a body of police guards climbed out. Their leader, Rodriguez Salas, Commissioner of Public Order, went into the building, accompanied by a few guards. As he climbed to the first floor of the ten-storey building shots were fired from the windows of the upper storeys. Reinforcements of police were rushed up and a cordon was thrown round the building; thousands of people gathered in the Plaza whilst excitement ran through the streets to all corners of the city. The tension that had gripped Barcelona during the past few weeks now broke out into street fighting.

Far away, around Madrid and in other parts of Spain, Spanish Government forces were fighting desperately against the armies of the rebel General Franco. The Government forces were re-inforced by the International Brigades whilst  Franco was assisted by arms and troops  from Germany and Italy. But the fighting in Barcelona was not the outcome of a Fascist rising; that had occurred and had been subdued a year before.

Barcelona is the principal town in the Spanish province of  Catalonia. It has a long history of revolt, insurrection and rebellion. In 1931 a Catalan Republic was proclaimed, the Spanish Republican Government issuing a decree whereby the Catalan Government was given a free hand in the organisation of the four provinces forming Catalonia, which thus became autonomous in respect of its own domestic affairs.

The Fascist insurrection which had broken out against the Republican Government of Spain in July, 1936, had met with success in some districts but had collapsed within forty-eight hours in Barcelona. Army officers had marched out the troops from the Atarazanas Barracks in Barcelona and deployed them in the streets and in the Plaza de España and the Plaza Cataluña. They occupied the Telephone Building and the Hotel Colon opposite.

In the Calle Cortes and the Via Layetana the troops were resisted by small detachments of police and civil guards. In a very short time the whole of the population of Barcelona, men, women and children, joined in the fight. Barricades went up, buildings were seized, roofs and strategic positions occupied, machine-gun nests were established and the battle spread all over the city. As soon as the troops realised that they were being used by their officers to effect a coup-de-main, they broke ranks and fraternised with the people. From that moment the Fascist cause was lost in Barcelona, for a year or two at least.

The first shots were fired at five o'clock on the morning of Sunday, July 19th, and by Monday evening, except for some desultory sniping from the roofs, the battle was over.

A general strike all over Spain had been called in a radio announcement by Largo Caballero, President of the Union General de Trabajadores (General Workers' Union led by Labourites and Communists). When the fighting was over in Barcelona the strike still held. All shops, cafes, workshops, factories, etc., were closed, and dead bodies lay out in the streets amongst the battle-scarred buildings.

The various trade unions and political parties set about re-organising and recruiting their militias, at the same time taking over the control of the city and surrounding district. Public eating-houses were opened, supplies were arranged, transport requisitioned and a system of passes and permits out into operation. Most goods were obtainable except cigarettes; looting was nil. Each of the trade unions and political parties took a prominent building for its headquarters and the red and black flag of the Confederation Nacional de Trabajo (Anarchist Trade Union) and the red flag of the Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (party of united Marxists) flew from factories, printing establishments, municipal offices, hotels and the buildings of other industrial undertakings. The proprietors of cafes, hotels and industries, were given an opportunity to work at some suitable task, side by side with their erstwhile employees, on a co-operative basis. If they declined they were dismissed.

During the struggle against the Fascist rebels and immediately after, thousands of workers flocked to join the "left" political parties without any definite understanding of the political principles involved. The enthusiasm of was immense. The Olympic Games teams, due to perform in Barcelona at that time, paraded through the city. The Federación Anarquista Ibérica (Anarchist organisation) became the most popular party. The differences between many of the organisations that existed became indistinct and there was much federating and amalgamating. All the major organisations had their own armed militia and a Militias Committee was set up with representatives from each. A Supplies Committee was formed in a similar way. As these committees commanded the only armed force remaining in Barcelona, they assumed most of the governmental power.

The official Catalonian Government was composed of Liberal Nationalists, moderate Labourites and Communists. Public services such as education and the administration of justice were left in the hands of this government whilst the committees made decisions on other matters, but in order to re-assure foreign governments, the committee's decrees were sent to the government to be officially stamped.

This dual form of control caused complications and it was eventually decided to solve the problems by reconstructing the official government so that it included representatives of all the workers' parties and the trade unions. Both the anarchists, who were anti-parliamentarian, and the P.O.U.M., which was opposed to the united front, entered this new government. On July 31st, the new government was formed with Luis Companys, a Liberal, as president. Almost immediately conflict broke out between the various political groupings. The Anarchists and the P.O.U.M. wanted to keep military power in the hands of their own organisations, whilst the Labour and Communist parties claimed that all armed forces should be under governmental control.

The Communists were anxious for support from Russia which the Russian Government was prepared to give providing such support did not conflict with its foreign policy of seeking friendly relations with Britain and France. Labourites and Communists, urged by the fear of foreign intervention in the civil war, argued that the war against Franco must take precedence over all other considerations. They called for the disbanding of the workers' armed patrols and the surrender of all arms to the government.

Towards the end of April 1937, the situation became tense. Parties accused one another of being "Fascist spies" or "Fifth Columnists." In an endeavour to discredit one group or another and to alienate support from opponents, acts of sabotage were perpetrated which endangered the success of the war against Franco. On April 25th, Roldan Cortada, leader of a Labour Youth Movement, was murdered by persons unknown near Molins de Llobregat, a suburb of Barcelona. Two days later the anarchist mayor of Puigcerda, Antonio Martin was shot and killed. Each faction looked accusingly at the others. On May 1st, all May Day demonstrations were banned for fear of disturbances. Then came the incident at the Telephone Building on May 3rd.

The Telefonica building had been in the hands of the Anarchists since they first occupied it in the early days of the Fascist uprising and they had a sentimental attachment to it. The government claimed that the Anarchists were tapping the telephone the telephone lines but the manner of government police occupation of the Telefonica on May 3rd was undoubtedly provocative.

Shooting broke out in all parts of Barcelona; practically all workers ceased work; trade union offices and political party headquarters were sandbagged; barricades were erected and machine guns placed. Luis Companys issued an order to disarm the workers' patrols but the police could not finish what they had started. The news and the trouble spread to other towns in Catalonia.

"The details of the street fighting which lasted from May 3rd. to May 7th, and cost some 950 dead, some 3,000 wounded and millions of pesetas' worth of ammunition in the worst street fighting in Europe since the Paris Commune, are still open to dispute. The general line is not."

(Civil War in Spain, by Frank Jellinek, page 545.)

The Anarchist leaders protested that they were not responsible for the fighting and, together with leaders of all other parties, appealed over the radio for a cease fire with orations that "drew tears but not obedience." (Jellinek). The Anarchist trade unions issued an order to return to work, but fighting continued. Leadership in the fighting passed into the hands of the youthful enthusiasts of the smaller extremist organisations on both sides.

The Spanish Republican Government, which had moved to Valenica from Madrid, now sent General Pozas, with 4,000 police, to take over the military governorship of Catalonia. Armed police and soldiers withdrawn from the front at Jarama, arrived in warships at Barcelona harbour. The British warship, Despatch, headed full steam for the city. The fighting subsided but an occasional incident it to flare up in odd places. The Valencian police finally suppressed all resistance ruthlessly. The rising faded out and Catalonian independence went with it. Franco finally conquered Barcelona, to which the Spanish Government had withdrawn, on January 26th., 1939, after months of heroic defence and terrific slaughter by air bombardment and naval blockade.

No capitalist government, whatever its composition, be it Liberal, Labour, Communist, Anarchist, or any mixture of them, can allow the armed forces of the state to pass out of its control. An armed working class is a menace to the system. In class society the dominant class must have at its disposal the power to maintain "law and oder" amongst the class that it dominates, even when it is divided within itself.

Bibliography:
"Civil War in Spain," by Frank Jellinek
'The Truth about Barcelona," by Fenner Brockway
"The Truth about the Barcelona Events", by Lamda
"Murder in Spain," by Roberto (Article in International Review, June, 1937)
"Spain", International Press Correspondence Special Edition, May, 1938

W. Waters

Notes on Party History: The Islington Dispute (1954)

From the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Islington dispute occurred in 1906. It revolved around our attitude to Trade Unions, also to the question of whether a Branch of the Party was in order in suspending propaganda activity with the object of forcing the Party to reverse a decision that the Branch considered a fundamental and dangerous mistake.

At the end of December 1905, a certain R. A. V. Morris attended an Executive Committee meeting and asked what was the difference between the S.P.G.B. and the Socialist Labour Party. After his question had been answered he expressed himself as satisfied. A week later a request to form a branch of the Party in the Bexley Heath District was received, and one of the signatories was R. A. V. Morris. On the 9th January, 1906, the Executive agreed to the formation of the Bexley Heath Branch.

From what immediately followed one is forced to the conclusion that the formation of the branch was a shady manoeuvre planned by people interested in the Socialist Labour Party.

In February 1906, the Executive Committee were receiving items for the Party Conference Agenda. On the 20th February the following item was received from the Bexley Heath Branch:

"That the E. C. be instructed to approach the S.L.P. with a view to the union of the two parties."

The E. C. declined to put this item on the Conference Agenda and gave the reason in the resolution that was passed on the subject, which was as follows:

Neumann and Jackson moved:

"That the Bexley Heath and District Branch be informed that the E. C. does not see its way to put their resolution on the Conference Agenda, as it conflicts with the Declaration of Principles of the Party; further that it be pointed out that when R. A. V. Morris attended the E. C. before the Bexley Heath Branch was formed he raised the question of the existence of the two bodies and expressed himself satisfied with the explanation given."

At the 1906 Conference the Bexley Heath delegates brought the matter forward and asked the Conference of the E. C. was in order in declining to put their item on the agenda. The Conference overruled the action of the E. C., restored the item and discussed it. Arising out of the discussion two resolutions were moved and lost.

Before giving the text of these resolutions it should be mentioned that one of the founders of the Party, and a very active speaker and writer, E. J. B. Allen, had been vigorously supporting the ideas of the Industrial Workers of the World, but not supporting the S.L.P. There had already been trouble with Allen and an article of his committing the Party to support of the I.W.W.  had been rejected.

The first resolution referred to above was as follows:

Humphrey and Hopley moved:
"Whereas pure and simple Trade Unions foster trade struggles and keep the workers divided, and
"Whereas the unity of the workers on the economic field, and whereas, only by the unity of the workers in a Socialist Industrial Union, as well as in a Socialist Party is sound progress possible,
Resolved that the Socialist Party of Great Britain condemns pure and simple unionism, and calls upon its members inside and outside of existing trade unions to carry on an organised propaganda in favour of revolutionary industrial unionism as the first step towards the establishment of a Socialist Industrial Union to work in co-operation with the Party for the overthrow of capitalism."

E. J. B. Allen, I. W. Allen, Leigh and Phillips supported the resolution.

Neumann, Fitzgerald, Jackson and Pearson opposed it.

The resolution was defeated on a card vote: 81 for; 111 against.

It was then agreed that a Special Meeting be called to discuss Trade Unions and a poll of the Party be taken on all resolutions arising therefrom.

Later in the Conference Morris and Carter moved:

"That the E. C. be instructed to approach the S. L. P. with a view to the union of the two parties." 

Fairbrother, Humphrey and Phillips supported the resolution and Jackson, Mrs Anderson, A. W. Pearson, Neumann,  Fitzgerald and Gray opposed it. The resolution was lost by 4 votes to 9.

After the Conference the Islington Branch sent a resolution to the new E. C. [the Executive Committee at that time, and for long afterwards, was appointed by a vote of the membership which was counted at the Conference] repudiating the action of the delegates in discussing a motion which was in direct conflict with the D. of P., endorsed the action of the previous E. C., and called upon the new E. C. to ignore the instructions of Conference to take a Poll of the Party on the Conference findings, and to obtain from Bexley Heath Branch a formal withdrawal of its resolution.

The Executive Committee accepted the proposal and submitted the following question to the membership for a referendum vote:

"Did the conference, in accepting as in order the Bexley Heath resolution, exceed its power?"

The result of the Referendum was a majority favoured the view that the Conference had exceeded its power. But the majority was a narrow one, 35 to 34, with a large number of abstentions.

The Executive Committee circulated the result to branches and there let the matter rest. The Islington Branch, however, came back again, urging the E. C. to request the Bexley Heath Branch to forthwith rescind the resolution standing on its books. The E. C. replied that this could not be done without falsifying the records, and that they did not think it necessary to go any further in this matter.

The Islington Branch carried on their agitation. They claimed that the Bexley Heath Branch was still unsound and that the E. C.  had failed in its duty by not pursuing the matter. As a protest they decided to suspend all propaganda activity until the Party had taken such action as would absolve itself from any charge of being unsound. They circulated the E. C. and all Branches to this effect. The E. C. pointed out to them that this action was neither in accord with Party discipline nor helpful to the cause of Socialism. Islington them circulated the branches charging the E. C. with criminal neglect and calling for their immediate removal. The E. C. then informed Islington that they would place Islington's unconstitutional action before the next Delegate Meeting for their decision and Party vote.

The E. C. submitted a statement to the Branches on the subject. Islington claimed that they only received this statement four days before the Delegate Meeting and therefore had no time to place their own case in reply before the members.

The Delegate Meeting, which was held in July, 1906, considered the case and decided that the line taken by the E. C. was correct, and carried a resolution expelling the Islington Branch. This Delegate Meeting also expelled Bexley Heath Branch for supporting the S.L.P.

In August 1906, the Islington Branch submitted to the membership a twenty page printed pamphlet called "Rocks Ahead." This was their reply to the E. C.'s statement. They denied that their action was unconstitutional and claimed that they were not interfering with the E. C.'s power to do as much propaganda in Islington as they liked. This statement was addressed to "Comrades" and put their side without engaging in personalities but bad feeling was developing. In December, 1906, while still claiming to be Branch of the Party, they issued another pamphlet with the title "Another Political Wreck." This pamphlet was addressed "to the Working Class" and was badly marred by personal attacks.

Looking back on this dispute now it appears to the writer that the Islington Branch were on the right track when they urged that action should be taken against Bexley Heath Branch but they were wrong in trying to force the E. C. and the Party to take action by suspending propaganda. However, the dispute was one of the penalties that had to be paid in the work of hammering out a sound policy. The pity of it was that, owing to the feeling developed in the dispute, we lost some valuable members.

Gilmac.

(To be continued).