Letter: Women's Movements (1974)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women's Movements

It is seldom that the Socialist Standard gives cause for complaint on factual grounds, and also it seems rather churlish to quibble at anything in the lavish, and extremely interesting, 70th anniversary issue.

But in The First and Only Liberationists I read that “the idea that (women) might need a wider horizon than could be provided by a home and family had scarcely dawned”. And the writer also asks, “Who else (other than the founders of the Socialist Party) in 1904 was interested in the freedom of women?”

The answer is, women. The modern assumption that the women’s movement only started up recently is false. The evidence is that there have been women demanding “emancipation” or “equal rights”, as a sex, since the Eighteenth century. In America the First Woman’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls in 1848 and resolved “that the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities”.

Other national conventions were held annually in America right through the nineteenth century and the Washington Convention in 1900 was dominated by the question of working class women and women’s position as wage-earners—“without political expression woman’s economic value is at the bottom of the scale . . . She must do better work than men for equal pay or equal work for less pay”. (Voices from Women’s Liberation) That such a situation still prevails today is proof of our Party’s contention that it is nothing to have a vote if you don’t use it properly.

If I can add something personal on this question, it is that as a women I am proud to be a member of this Party which has never treated me as a (mere) women, has never pigeon-holed me into some specifically “woman’s” work, but has always treated all members, white or black, male or female, as comrades in a common struggle.

C. Sultan 

Woking

Reply:

Thanks for the compliments, which are among very many received, on the Anniversary Issue.

In the context of that article it was not possible to enlarge on the point but “scarcely dawned” was not meant to imply that no one had questioned the  rôle of women in society. Rather that this questioning was not widespread. It is of course true that some women, and a few men, had been actively involved in campaigns for women’s rights over many years. For example the first leaflet on female suffrage had been issued in 1847. The vote was originally seen as a way of obtaining “social justice”. To the sometime scorn of the modern women’s movement its attainment became an end in itself.

The question “who else” was, at that time, interested in women was about political parties. Here the position taken by the SPGB at its formation, in 1904, was unique.

Editors.

Letter: Truth & Politics (1974)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Truth & Politics

Just to conclude the matter of the labour-time vouchers, I don’t see that Horatio’s remark in the May issue gets us any further. We are still stuck at the point that you can’t time a Shakespeare as you can a miner and you can’t get a Schubert to clock on when he jots down an inspired tune in the middle of the night. We must just leave it that now the Socialist position holds good — to each according to his need. Without measuring.

May I express a little surprise that in his otherwise most percipient article on Logic, Truth and Politics, R. Barltrop lapses into naivety when he says there are such things as honest politicians and he immediately proves the opposite by reference to some “thoroughly decent” C.P. leader — who nevertheless “told . . . whopping . . . lies”. But the example of another “honest liar”, Stafford Cripps, is even more odd. The suggestion that he really believed in ’49 that the pound would not be devalued when he swore this right until the day it happened is untenable. To say that the “government” did the devaluing is meaningless. As Chancellor, in this matter, for practical purposes he was the government and he lied because he had to (otherwise speculators would have reduced the pound to waste paper).

I am afraid your writer has rather misunderstood Churchill’s reference to Cripps (“There but for the grace of God goes God”). He did not mean that he thought Cripps was honest — merely a puritanical humbug. The proof is almost contained in the article which refers to the lies about the regime in Russia when Stalin became our glorious ally. Churchill needed as an ambassador someone who would be able to go there and see the atrocities which Stalin was committing against the Russian workers — and send enormous lies home which would be swallowed by the British workers. So the old cynic sent the most plausible leftist liar he could find. Cripps. I agree with Barltrop that the psalmist’s “All men are liars” is wrong. The correct position was stated by the late Crossman (who knew!) when he once wrote in The Guardian “all politicians tell lies” (my emphasis). Lying is one of the evils of capitalism which Socialism will render unnecessary along with greed, envy, etc.

S. Gamzu

Other letters and replies held over to next month through pressure on space.

Workers in Russia v. The Rest (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

It might be as well to ensure that readers are not puzzled by the above title because although the Communists were always fond of boasting that Russia covered one-sixth of the earth’s surface, it seems that the name Russia has almost disappeared from the map and we must now deal with a place called the USSR which stands for the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics; or it could be that the middle two words should read the other way round. No matter. Whichever way round, the term “Socialism” in the title is an outrageous piece of trickery.

This little outburst was occasioned by a report on that most wonderful of all unnatural phenomena, a general election in Russia, which took place (if a non-event can be said to take place) in mid-June. Of course, it is by no means the first time that we have read about these charades where the workers are generously permitted to choose between one person. And that one person is put up by the ruling gangsters who call themselves the Communist Party (instead of their correct title — Red Fascists), who are thus saying to their two hundred million political prisoners: 

“Look, comrades (it should really be ‘comrades’ but I don’t think they go in for inverted commas in Pravda), we know that we have ruled you with a rod of iron ever since Lenin’s Red Army thugs kicked out the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, and we intend to keep on your backs for the remainder of this century and next century too, if you let us.

“This may not be what Marx and Engels meant by the Dictatorship of the Proletariat but it’s what we mean. It really means that you, the proletariat, the alleged dictators, are treated worse than the wage slaves of England, America, etc., where they at least have reasonably free trade unions and elections. But it would be wrong if we did not insult you from time to time — sorry (Freudian slip, comrades), that should read ‘consult you’.

“And so, every so often, we have an election according to the democratic procedure laid down in the Stalin Constitution. Well, not quite. We don’t have a period of five years, whatever the constitution says. We hold one when the time is good — for us. Just as they do in Mao’s China and similar proletarian paradises. And it’s a slanderous lie if you are told by people like the SPGB that you are being insulted by being given no choice.

“It’s true you are given no choice of candidates. SPGB types — if there are any — are not allowed to open their mouths let alone put up at elections. We don’t permit opposition. We are not such fools as to give you the chance of kicking us out of our gloriously privileged positions. But you do have a choice. If you don’t like the CP candidate — who is damn well going to represent you whether you like him or hate him — you can vote NO. And you can then place your vote in the special urn provided for scum like you. And you can at the same time place your ashes in the next urn.”

Of course, none of the above is hot news. These circuses have taken place at intervals and many’s the time readers in the west have gawped to see such magnificent results in 99 per cent. majorities coming in. If the Gallup Poll was allowed to operate in Russia, they would be able to make a fortune — and none of those unfortunate boobs. But there was something in the Guardian account of this year’s charade which made the matter worthy of note in the Socialist Standard. The article was by their Eastern Europe expert (god help us) Jonathan Steele. Towards the end of his piece he gave us certain figures which quite clearly had no significance to this “expert” but which were of blinding importance to a Socialist — or even to a non-Socialist who is not brainwashed.

He gave us the figures for the composition of the outgoing Supreme Soviet (ostensibly the ruling parliament of the land, although in reality they are themselves just stooges and the power remains in the hands of the Politbureau which is in turn dominated by the likes of Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Capone, etc.) It is important to note that the figures were given to Steele by the Russians themselves — there is nobody else who could have supplied them. The ruling body of the Workers’ Paradise consists of some 1200 “MPs” and it was stated (round figures only) that 200 are Collective Farm workers and 50 other workers.

It did not occur to Steele to work out that nearly 1,000 of the rulers of the Workers’ Paradise are — well, what? The answer can only be — non-workers. So here we have the admission, by the rulers of the land themselves, that Russia is a Soviet Socialist Republic divided into two classes. Workers and others. Workers and non-workers. Just like a Soviet Capitalist Republic. Just like England, in fact. But how can you expect a Steele to spot this devastating admission when clearly the Politbureau themselves couldn’t see it? And what can non-workers be doing there?

The only answer possible is what non-workers do everywhere else; they live high off the hog, as the Yanks say, on the proceeds of the surplus-value squeezed out of the workers. No other source of wealth is possible anywhere on earth. And there is something else these people do, besides non-working. They Rule. They do so in the Supreme Soviet as we have seen. They are the ruling class as in all capitalist societies even though a small clique sits on top of the pile in Moscow. The SPGB has been saying this since 1917. It is nice to see it confirmed in the columns of the leftist press, and above all out of the horses’ mouths in Moscow.

Finally, the matter of the privileges briefly mentioned earlier. These gangsters don’t rule for fun or for the sake of some twisted Marxist ideology although no doubt they enjoy the use of power like rulers everywhere. On the morning I write these lines, I heard on the radio about one member of the Russian ruling class, Mme. Furtseva, the Minister of Culture (ugh!), who has occupied such a position since the days of Stalin, being criticized for spending £75,000 on building herself a country home. The point to note is that the argument, such as it is, is over whether she had filched the money, not over whether it would be right for her to build such a mansion for herself at a time when living space for the mass of the people is measured out like gold dust. After all, she could not build her mansion surreptitiously and live in it in secret.

The right of the rulers to lord it over the ruled and wallow in luxury in the midst of proletarian squalor is as well-defined in Russia as it is in Animal Farm. So for those who may be still in doubt, let us make it clear that in a Socialist world we will not be divided into pigs and others, into non-workers and workers. In a classless society, there will, by definition, be no working class. We will just be human beings living in harmony because the welfare of each will be the welfare of all. A state of things which manifestly does not obtain in the land of spurious socialism called Russia.

L. E. Weidberg

"I was only doing my job" (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The academic world has been “shocked” and “appalled” by the results of ten years’ extensive research tests carried out by the psychiatrists at New York University. A book has appeared, and they have received full coverage on radio.

Briefly, the ingenious idea was this; just to see how far normal, ordinary, conventional people would go carrying out “horrific” instructions, which would torture and even kill the victim, usually by electric shock. At what point would the subject say “No! I can’t and won’t do it”?

Not merely did they not disobey, but showed the most callous indifference, and even when told that they had killed somebody, said “I only did my job” or some such. What they did not know was that the agonized screams of torture were by paid professional actors.

Why the psychiatrists are making such a hullabaloo about all this it is difficult to see. We do not need ten years’ extensive (and expensive) research in New York to tell us that ordinary, conventional, simple, naturally sociable, kindly people can behave otherwise in special circumstances.

In fact it is precisely the “normal” ordinary, unquestioning, unthinking people who accept authority and orders so blindly. So long as some fanny is trotted out to “justify” the foul deeds. (Usually, “If we don’t do it to them, they will do it to us.”) The appalling massacres of innocent defenceless women and children at My Lai, the Portugese atrocities in Africa, the systematic extermination of the Red Man in the States, are just isolated incidents in a long list. This writer is personally acquainted with numbers of affable likeable chaps, teachers, who as Air Force pilots took part in the saturation bombing of Germany.

Just what does it prove? That human nature is the most changeable thing under the sun, that homo sapiens is easily the most adaptable animal on this planet, leaving chameleons and hawk-eyed moths far behind. Not only this, but he is a most social-communal animal. So long as he has the social approbation that it is a necessary “job”, he will shoot, torture and murder without compunction, like the KGB in Russia as Arthur Koestler and Solzhenitsyn have shown. This writer attended sessions of the famous (or infamous) trial of the Auschwitz concentration camp staff in Frankfurt. The German press was amazed to find that the one-time torturers, gas-chamber operators, and murderers, had become highly respectable insurance managers, bank clerks, business representatives and family men. In fact this was urged in their defence as expiation.

So far from “not being able to change human nature”, it is impossible to stop it changing. Not merely do we see this by our own personal experience in everyday life, but it is also confirmed by modern genetics: the study of differences between individuals. The whole modern knowledge of genetics shows that though all animals (including homo sapiens) are born with a certain “nature” or physiological apparatus acquired from both parents, their behaviour in various social situations depends entirely on circumstances. This is the authentic view of modern genetics. The idea that features or characteristics acquired by parents are automatically passed on is fallacious. Jewish baby boys’ foreskins have been docked for a thousand years, they inevitably reappear; so have fox-terriers’ tails. The genes make a boy tall or short, brown-eyed or frizzy-haired. What he then does is his affair.

As Professor Anthony Barnett writes in his book on The Human Species:

These changes in social organisation involve drastic changes in human behaviour, and they in turn depend on the fact that human behaviour is plastic and not genetically fixed. We see once again the absurdity of the notion that ‘human nature cannot change’.

This commonly made assertion always implies that human ‘behaviour’ is essentially fixed, it is therefore the exact opposite of the truth.

It is the behaviour of the working class to band together in its own interest. What makes this common interest is not genetical inheritance, but social position. Eventually, black workers, yellow workers, “the long, and the short, and the tall” will join up to establish Socialism. If workers inevitably inherited their parents’ wage-slave characteristics they could never become Socialists. Of course docile ignorant wage-slaves in New York willingly obeyed the most vile orders; they were not Socialists! Let them try their daft experiments on us. We said NO ! during the war.

Horatio.

So They Say: 102 Years On (1974)

The So They Say Column from the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

102 Years On

What has Helena Hardigan in common with Frederick Engels? The knowledge that the “solutions” to the housing problem are not solutions at all. On 29th June she wrote to The Guardian about a “Report on Merseyside” it had published. Instead of stuff about the “character” of Liverpudlians, she said, some decent living conditions would be welcome. And:

As far as I see it, Liverpool is just going to be one big motorway through to the docks and that will be its importance in the future. You talk about slum clearance—there has been none. The slums have been transferred to Kirkby, Skelmersdale and Runcorn where unemployment, vandalism, depression and desperation are rife.

Engels said exactly the same thing in The Housing Question written in 1872:

. . . owing to the demand for big centrally-situated business premises, or owing to traffic requirements, such as the laying down of railways, streets, etc. No matter how different the reasons may be, the result is everywhere the same: the scandalous alleys and lanes disappear to the accompaniment of lavish self-praise from the bourgeoisie on account of this tremendous success, but they appear again immediately somewhere else and often in the immediate neighbourhood.

Engels saw that from careful study. This Liverpool lady has seen it by just looking round her.

Always a Little Longer

The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970. It is likely that many people therefore assume that most women at work are now getting equal pay with men. On 5th July the Assistant Secretary of the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff said in The Guardian that this is not so, and the position four years later “is one of general lack of progress towards equal pay”.

The extent of the ignorance on the part of some employers has to be witnessed to be believed. Publicity and propaganda on the part of the Department of Employment will not change this general situation—an all pervading ignorance and lack of interest on the part of many employers.

Those who believe “a law should be passed” is the solution to every problem should take note. The Act comes into “full force” in December 1975, after which cases may be brought to the Industrial Arbitration Board. It remains to be seen how employers will then get round it, and what “full force” means.

Pull up the Ladder, Jack

“Indexation” is an idea for dealing with inflation. Its principle was explained by the Tory MP Christopher Tugendhat in an article in The Observer on 7th July:

The principle of indexation is easy to grasp. It is that financial contracts should be set in real terms rather than money terms. So if incomes were index-linked, each 1 per cent increase in the retail price index would automatically increase the sum of money a person received in his pay packet by the same amount. . . . State benefits of every sort, including pensions, could be handled in the same way. So could such outgoings as rents and national insurance contributions.

Thus if you have £30 a week and prices increase 10 per cent., indexation will bring you an extra £3. If you have £300 it will bring you £30. But Tugendhat is not hiding anything. He says it would ensure that “whatever the rate of price increases, the relationship between the various groups in society remains constant”. Which means it is a scheme for ensuring that the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.

Splash and Grab

In fact the rich have much simpler methods for beating rising prices. When money is depreciating they exchange it for goods which are not. A report in The Sun on 12th July, headed Hey, Big Spender ! described how they are “splashing out millions in a wild scramble to beat inflation”:

They are on a huge buying spree of diamonds, pearls, furs, yachts and Rolls-Royces.

. . .  At Garrards of Regent Street, the Queen’s jeweller, the gem business is booming—with emeralds, rubies and £10,000 diamonds selling like hot cakes.

Would this have been what Dr. Coggan, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, meant? He spoke to the General Synod of the Church of England about “the pursuit of personal gain” being promoted by competitiveness in schools:

“Thus from very early years ‘me first’ is instilled as the most desirable of all attitudes in life,” he said.

(Guardian, 6th July)

It sounds like a tasteless crack at those who appointed him, but of course it isn’t. If you enquired of Dr. Coggan, you would find it is the working class whose “pursuit of personal gain” he wants to stop.

Anyone's Guess

What is demanded in an economic crisis, by the public and economists alike, is the application of some theory which will stop it. Socialists have always pointed out that no such theory exists for capitalism. But even if there did there is a simple reason why it could not be fulfilled — the interests of the capitalist class lie in going on doing the things which bring about crises.

Hence, the answer which is sought is one which would allow the cause to continue but prevent the effects, and there is not one theory but many. This was demonstrated in The Guardian's “City Comment” on 26th June. Under the heading United They’re Not, various financiers’ views were given:

Some believe that any reflationary moves could spark a disastrous run on the pound. Others think this unlikely, provided there are also measures which act to reduce inflation. .Some—and they tend to be closest to the share market—believe that almost anything which would cushion the developing recession would be welcome. About the only thing which the City is united on is a desire for “a better Government attitude to the wealth producers —industry that is” in the words of one share dealer.

Clunk-Click to You

Are you worried about death on the roads? A full page in the 18th June’s Guardian showed something better than legislation. It’s a Mercedez-Benz:

Any valuable executives involved in a car crash in the ‘S’ class have a better chance of walking away from the wreckage than in any other luxury saloon in Europe today.

That gives a different view of the safety films in which the distressing results of not wearing seat-belts are shown. What is needed now is a film of a maimed person and the message pointed out. Fred was careless. He wasn’t a valuable executive and didn't drive a Mercedes-Benz. Fred has learned his lesson.

And haven’t we all?

Robert Barltrop

50 Years Ago: The Class Struggle (1974)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The workers are in the class struggle, but are not conscious of their interests. Hence they fight, blindly and vainly to improve their condition. Inside the unions, in political parties and in their every-day actions they do things which work to the capitalists’ advantage. They continue to act on lines which perpetuate the system that enslaves them, and support men, measures and parties that work against the workers’ interests.

The workers must recognise that the class struggle exists. They must become aware of their slave position, and the way out, if they are to prosecute the struggle to a victorious conclusion for themselves. 

If the working class become conscious of their class interests and welfare, they will refuse to take actions which injure them. The guiding policy for class-conscious workers must be: Will a contemplated action assist the workers to triumph in the class struggle ?

(From an article "Politics and Tactics of Socialism" by Adolph Kohn, Socialist Standard August 1924.)

Letter: " . . . they don’t need Socialism". (1974)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

. . . they don’t need Socialism.

I have read much of your literature and I’ve found it very interesting and I think you’ve got a good point to make. But I also think that most people in this country get along O.K. and they don’t need Socialism. The workers get very reasonable wages as far as I can see, and the unemployed can easily get a job. It’s no longer a situation as Robert Tressell described in his book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

I don’t reckon Socialism satisfies the people because most people don’t want to just live in a peaceful, brotherly way as they would in Socialist society, but people want to do something or be somebody. I argue with my mates at home and school and a lot of them say that “it’s all very good and peaceful but I’m quite happy how I am”. However, I reckon that one time when there is a terrible crisis or something people may rebel for Socialism but then they may easily follow the ideas of Mao, Trotsky, Lenin Che or some pseudo-Socialist, or somebody just wanting a state-capitalist society like China, but I don’t think that would last too long with an Imperialist place like the USA hanging around.

Anyway, could you please send me your ideas on this?

Geoff Goss

Oxford.

Reply:

Are people contented today because they have a sufficiency? If they were there would be, as you say, no need for Socialism. But the evidence from everyday life, leaving aside industrial struggles, suggests nothing of the kind. Millions would not hang on the weekly football results and the premium-bond draws if they were so comfortably-off. The figure for nervous and mental illness has been for several years that one person in five undergoes treatment for those complaints at some time. That does not show a universal state of being O.K. and “happy as I am”.

As for workers getting “very reasonable wages” and the unemployed having no problem: where have you been? Of course there are differences in conditions between now and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, but the main reason for that book’s continued popularity among building workers particularly is that there are substantial similarities too.

Agreed that people want, as well as peace and security, to achieve things and be appreciated (“do something or be somebody”). We all do — and capitalism does not allow it to the great majority. The great mass leading humdrum disappointed lives all began, like your friends, with great hopes. The case for Socialism is about the fulfilment of human needs that the capitalist organization of society denies.

On your final point, people who do not understand Socialism may support any party or leader promising them a “different kind” of capitalism. That has happened many times (see the article on fascism in this issue). But you are wrong in assuming that the USA would be bound to come down on a state-capitalist regime which called itself Communist. What has Nixon been doing in Russia and China?

Editors.

The way to deal with Fascism (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Get it right. Fascism is not an economic and social system different from capitalism. It is a political faction possessed, as they all are, with the idea of a method which will make capitalism run to order. Its policies are both absurd and detestable, but are far from unique and are variously shared with the other pro-capitalist parties.

Don’t be misled either by the persistence of “fascist” as a political swear word. Any opponent or inconvenience to the Left is a “fascist”: fascist thug, fascist reactionary, fascist warmonger etc. — the alleged thuggery, reaction and militarism thereby being made a special and more fearsome kind. This is part of the verbal hallucination in which left-wing organizations live. It is interesting that the other great condemnatory term, “Trotskyist”, has now dropped from the Communists’ vocabulary. Why? Because the Communists now collaborate with the Trotskyists in industrial agitation (and, of course, in anti-fascism).

Attacking (and therefore publicizing) fascism has been good business for the Communist Party. Unable to get anywhere by industrial militancy, its membership hung round 4,000 until campaigns against fascism — by fighting Mosley’s party in the streets, by making a crusade of the Spanish Civil War, and finally by supporting the Allies in the 1939-45 war — raised it to several times that number. Its successors, likewise unable to make much impression by other kinds of agitation, have obviously taken note.

Pre-War and Now

The term was the name of Mussolini’s movement started in Italy in 1919 — the Fasci di Combatti- mento, which took power as the National Fascist Party in 1922. By 1936 imitative governments existed in Austria, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece and Japan. In 1939 Franco’s Falangists took power in Spain; and there was, of course, Germany. It survived World War II only in Spain and Argentina, where a group which included Juan Peron became the heads of government in 1943.

The pre-war fascist movement in Britain was Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, formed in 1932 as an amalgam of several small groups. Its membership was never large, and had a high proportion of adolescents; it published a paper called Action, and its main activity was the staging of marches and rallies. In 1940, soon after the outbreak of war, Mosley and the other leaders were imprisoned and the BUF’s existence ended. The rank-and-file members, so far from defending or acting for Germany and Italy, joined the forces and fought in the war professedly against fascism.

Mosley attempted a revival, the Union Movement, in 1948, and other neo-Nazi or racist groups had patchy existences before the formation of the National Front in the late nineteen-sixties. In the General Election this year the National Front put up 53 candidates who averaged 1,436 votes (as against the Communist Party’s average of 780, WRP’s 466, IMG’s 238, and the Marxist-Leninist Communists’ 237). This support, small as it is, is almost entirely for the National Front’s racist propaganda. Fascist organizations’ policies have always been to exploit working-class and petty-capitalist misconceptions of their grievances. In the ’thirties the scapegoats were Jews, Freemasons, Catholics, the trade unions (linked with “communism”), bureaucracy, and the big corporations. The list is not very different today except that the black immigrant population has taken the chief position.

Vicious attitudes joined to a promise of repressive government naturally rouse indignation and the determination to oppose them. The demonstration of 15th June produced numerous letters to newspapers insisting that fascism be suppressed for fear the horrors of the last generation be repeated: or alternatively, that left-wing activity be suppressed because that is what drives people to support fascist movements. In both cases the argument is of “the lesser evil”, and it ignores the cause and the answer to fascism.

Causes & Compulsions

The single cause of the rise of fascism in the nineteen-twenties and thirties was the inability of reformist governments to cope with capitalism’s problems. In the preceding years, parliamentary representation and the franchise had spread to practically all the developed countries, and Liberal or Labour parties had been in power with extensive reform programmes. They had, inevitably, failed; there had been crises, mass unemployment and extreme poverty instead of the promised benefits.

What was conveyed therefore to large numbers of people all over Europe was that democracy was a washout, and they were ready to listen to demagogues who affirmed this and would attack the alleged scapegoats. The dictatorship regimes are usually said to have “seized power”, a phrase which obscures the fact that they were supported and elected by the majority of workers in their countries. Of course they were supported by sections of the capitalist class too, who have no fastidiousness in backing the best agents for their interests. But the poison was laid by the Labour and other parties who misled the working class with their policies of trying to reform capitalism instead of abolishing it; and they, of course, are still at it.

Undoubtedly some will say that, whatever the cause of fascism, it threatens those it singles out. Jews and black people in particular are likely to think they must oppose it as a matter of self-preservation. However, it is not so simple. Many Jews supported the Communist Party for its anti-fascism in the ’thirties — only to find that Jews were (and are) persecuted in Russia as well as by fascism. The modern history of the United States shows that you do not have to live under a dictatorship to be victimized or killed for a belief or a skin-colour.

Capitalist governments and parties will oppose fascist ones — but only when it suits them. For all the propagandist talk, the last war was not fought over ideas by either side: the compulsion was commercial rivalry in world markets. The horrific discovery of the German concentration camps provided an apparent justification in retrospect, but in fact the camps’ existence and what was happening to Jews in Germany were known in Britain in the nineteen-thirties and largely discounted. Hitler and Mussolini were praised by ruling-class politicians, including Churchill. And the trigger for the outbreak of war was the German attack on Poland — a country which itself had a dictatorship.

Changing Policies

Fascist parties are no more able than social-democratic or liberal ones to deal with the problems and resist the pressures: they are themselves reformists. Of the Mussolini government, H. Kohn tells us in the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

The standard of living and the real wages of the Italian workers and farmers remained extremely low in comparison with other European countries throughout the 20 years of the Fascist regime. Nevertheless, the Fascist leadership did not cease painting a picture of coming Italian grandeur for the benefit of the Italian masses.

The Nazi régime was more fortunate in that it could claim a substantial reduction in unemployment, because its establishment came immediately before a period of capitalist expansion following the 1929 depression. But Peron’s downfall in 1955 came at a time of severe economic difficulties in Argentina and a sharp rise in the cost of living.

The classic question put to Socialists, what would we do if fascism arrived here, has to be seen in this light. Under the pressures of capitalism, fascist policies are no more certain than any others. Before achieving power Mussolini completely abandoned the anti-monarchist and anti-Catholic programme on which his movement had been built up. The Italian and Japanese régimes had no racist policies, and anti-Semitism was described as “an absurdity” by Italian fascist leaders until 1938 when the German racial theory was adopted, for obvious reasons. On the other hand, the Nazis after their pact with Russia in 1939 cancelled attacks on Communism, which until then was declared their arch-enemy; diatribes against “Jewish communism” gave way overnight to ones against “Jewish capitalism”.

In that connection, Mosley never declared his or his organizations’ position to be specifically anti- Jewish, clearly seeking to keep the options open. The programmes of the British Union of Fascists and the Union Movement were a rag-bag of reforms gathered from Mosley’s earlier days in the Labour Party, the ILP and the New Party, and the National Front’s programme apart from “Keep Britain White” is a repetition of the same rubbish. It is worth noting too that Mosley pinned his hopes, as most left-wing organizations do, on the “collapse of capitalism”. His postwar book The Alternative named 1948 or 1949 as the year, and further predictions of the “inevitable” catastrophic crisis continued until the early ’sixties.

The element which has remained constant in all fascist governments and programmes is the one-party state. It is not a prospect which Socialists would welcome, to say the least, but some observations about it are important. First, the monopoly in it is held not by fascism but by what is called communism in Russia, China, Cuba and the east-European countries. Second, dictatorships like other governments are dependent on the assent of the ruled. Third, physical suppression has never prevented the formation and circulation of ideas. After the Austrian social-democratic paper Arbeiter Zeitung was banned and severe penalties for possessing it were imposed in 1934, it was produced in Czecho-Slovakia and then in Paris, and two years later had a bigger circulation in Austria — over 60,000 — than any legal newspaper. We ourselves have experience in two world wars of carrying on under prohibitive conditions, with members in prison and Socialist literature under restraint.

Effective Action

In 1937, when calls were made for a “Popular Front” of anti-fascist organizations, we said:

  Fascism can only be fought successfully by Socialists. Labourites cannot fight it because the Fascist social reform programmes are largely made up of points from the Labour programme. Communists cannot fight it because they are tarred with the same brush of dictatorship. Open defenders of capitalism cannot fight it because the workers are sick of naked capitalism.
  Only Socialists — themselves consistent critics of capitalism, reformism and dictatorship — can combat Fascism.

(Socialist Standard, December 1937)

The safeguard against fascism is Socialist understanding. The working man or woman who has it cannot be taken in by nationalism, racism or reformism — or by anti-fascism, which is the same thing with another name. The present-day fascists are hoping that, like their predecessors, they will thrive by others taking their bait: partly in publicity, partly through attacks on them heightening concern about disorder and causing a reaction in their favour.

It is a mess, and an ugly one. But there is a solution — Socialism.

Robert Barltrop

It's always warm in a bank (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A building of strong architecture with a fine oak door and shiny brass. In winter the snow is cleared from its doors. Inside we find leather-upholstered seating and the smell of polished wood and floors. But most of all we find it is always warm. No overnight ice on the windows like the bedrooms of millions of houses, the reason being the heating is on all night. Surely this should be a haven for weary travellers, a refuge for the old and cold? But it isn’t, it’s a bank.

It’s always warm in a bank, unlike the overcrowded draughty conditions of a doctor’s surgery or any waiting rooms that affect the working class.

You would say that the workers there must surely be lucky, but seeing all the job advertisements in the papers and on the television, the mundane work must undoubtedly cancel out the warm conditions. Then when they leave work for home they also become weary cold travellers struggling with the elements, the fuel bills and inflation.

How long will you live in a world where only the quest for profit can bring comfort? In a world where thousands of old people are dying of the cold, it’s always warm in a bank.

D. Wright

Why Socialism? (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Confusion is undoubtedly the strongest weapon in the capitalist armoury. The fraudulent Labour Party, without a single measure on their programme that can benefit or interest the working class, lends itself to Tory and Liberal politicians as a socialist chopping block.” So said the Socialist Standard in July 1913 and to this day the smokescreen of gibberish constantly perpetrated by the capitalist parties obscures the class nature of society, and the antagonisms that therefore exist. Every proposition is debated ad nauseam except the most important one: necessity for a new society (Socialism) — now. The interest of the working class lies in the immediate establishment of Socialism, and this is the one and only object of the SPGB. We are not to be fobbed off by the “Immediate Demands” or “Something Now” Brigades. We have seen them march in confusion backwards and forwards across the social reform parade ground only to remain where they were. The “realists” have had their chance to find solutions to social problems and have failed miserably. Now is the time, not to be disillusioned, but for members of the working class to study our case and realize its validity.

Capitalism is the predominant form of society in all countries throughout the world. In this country it is estimated that 72 per cent of the wealth is owned about 10 per cent, of the population [1]  — the capitalist class. They also own the means of producing and reproducing wealth. Those who own nothing of the means of production, the working class, must sell their labour-power, skilled or unskilled, to an employer for a wage or salary. The working class forms the majority of society and is composed of all wage-earners, not just industrial workers but also those who would like to think of themselves as "middle class”. It is through the labour of the working class alone that all the wealth of society is produced and yet this is legally appropriated by the capitalists who produce nothing and are socially a useless class. As Engels so clearly put it:

   The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons and gambling on the stock exchange.

(Socialism, Utopian & Scientific)

Apologists for capitalism often argue how necessary (and no doubt kind-hearted) the capitalist class is to society by providing, at great pains to themselves, the capital for investment in new factories, works etc., and thus providing work for the workers. If the capitalist class think of themselves as doing society a good turn it does not concern us, although we rather suspect that their motives are not sublime. What can we be sure of is that capitalism inevitably creates unemployment and that an individual capitalist will invest not to provide work for others but only for profit or good “return” on his capital.

Capital constantly seeks to expand and stretch its grasping tentacles into every conceivable avenue, and of course engulf capitals smaller than itself. The real needs of human beings are not taken into account where production of wealth is only carried on with the motive of producing more and more capital. As long as the profit motive is the driving force behind production the needs of people cannot be met. Since the way in which wealth is produced and distributed in a given society will be the basic factor in determining the character of that society, it is not surprising that the anarchy of capitalist production and distribution gives rise to myriad social problems: housing, poverty, unemployment, etc. Such problems are indivisible from capitalism and insoluble under it. Historically capitalism has been a useful form of society in that it has enabled the means of production to be developed on a vast and world-wide social scale. Commodities are exchanged on a world-wide basis; e.g. many British workers have New Zealand lamb for their Sunday lunch, those that can afford it that is. There is however no world-wide social control over production and distribution, only an anarchy of competing capitals chasing the surplus-value produced solely by the working class.

The only alternative to capitalism is the establishment of Socialism where society as a whole will own and control in common the wealth and means of transporting it. Common Ownership means that individual members of society will have free access to what they want and require without regard to any form of exchange system. As Socialism can only be brought into being by the political act of the majority of people wanting and working for it, we assume that the majority of people would want to co-operate with each other in running and maintaining a Socialist society. Democratic control means that decisions affecting society would be taken by the majority and based upon the best available information. Society will make decisions in its own best interests. This is not the case today. We do not claim that Socialism will be trouble-free but compared with the madhouse of capitalism it will be a sane society indeed. Socialism will be the beginning of civilized history before which all societies will be classified as barbaric.

Tony D'Arcy

[1] See Hansard, 5th July 73.

A Unique Exhibition (1974)

Party News from the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Head Office was a hive of activity from June 15th to 22nd. The exhibition was on. Many members had been involved during the previous two weeks in transforming No. 52 into a colourful and interesting centre of SPGB history and Socialist propaganda. At a Press review, only The Guardian showed up with a consequent fair write-up of our case.

The stands were “made on the premises” at a total cost well below the hiring fee for 1 stand from Exhibition contractors. A stand was devoted to each of the following subjects:— The Socialist Party of Great Britain; Capitalism; Trade Unions; Russia; Electoral Activity; War; Marxism; Companion Parties; the Socialist Standard and Socialism.

Party literature, posters, news cuttings, photographs all combined to deal with these subjects in depth. It is not easy to choose the outstanding exhibits from the wealth of material put at our disposal. All who saw the exhibition will have their own favourites.

Here was the history of the SPGB in reality. The leaflet calling a meeting on 12th June 1904 to form a new party. Photos of many founder members — what characters! Some original copies of a Bolshevik journal published by Lenin in Geneva 1905: Letters from James Connolly to a founder member, Anderson, when they left the SDF: The Party War Statement of 1914. A superb photograph of New Zealand members standing outside their hut in the Gold Rush in the 1930s — hut complete with Socialist Standard posters: The first copy of Socialist Standard, 1904. We could go on and on.

During the week about 450 people saw the exhibition and expressed their appreciation of the general standard. Many an interesting discussion was held over a cup of tea. Sales of literature, books and donations amounted to £138. Our thanks to all members who contributed material (it is safe and will be returned shortly); to all members who worked for hours both in staging and manning the exhibition; to our Companion Parties for their contributions that gave Socialism its international flavour.

All the stands have been dismantled but the exhibits are still in place. There are prospects that we may be able to stage the exhibition again, perhaps during the period of the forthcoming General Election.

The whole exhibition was well photographed for a permanent record. We shall in due course have a set of some 20 coloured slides and a taped commentary on the various stands; these will be sent to our Companion Parties and sets will be available for loan for Provincial Branches and Groups.

It was a great week.

* A few copies of the Exhibition programme are available on application to H.O.

Ivan Illich, Intellectual (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recent recruit to the band of self-appointed leaders of the thoughts of men is Ivan Illich. There are several hallmarks of the recent intellectual. A passionate love of long words where short ones will do, is one. An exaggerated notion of their own importance is another. A third, and this is the most crucial, is their utter lack of understanding. That is what makes them so dangerous to workers already confused by the political opportunists of the left. Illich certainly fits the bill.

As the co-founder of the Centre for Inter-Cultural Documentation in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Illich seems to have a ready press for his ideas. His book, Deschooling Society, caused a minor explosion in the education world when it was published a few years ago. For those who do not have the time (or the patience) to read his “shrewd and passionate arguments” (The Guardian), BBC Radio 3 broadcast a long interview with him in April of this year. You can’t avoid him.

In the interview Illich explained his basic position, in this way:

  It is my hypothesis that when the tools for production exceed a certain measure, they impose exploitative relationships on the society, no matter what political choice in ideological terms, the society thinks it has made.

In other words, he is saying it is the size of the productive and other “processes” (e.g. the education system) that is the cause of society’s problems. His favourite illustration is to compare the bicycle with the motor car. A “convivial society” he says

   . . . can only arrive on the bicycle. With shoes alone we are not efficient enough. And with cars we are already over-efficient and impose an exploitative mode of production on the entire society.

Many intellectuals are obsessed with one small aspect of capitalist society; Illich’s obsession is the bicycle. In his long essay Equity and Energy he states: “The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion.” (It takes an intellectual to make a simple statement, that the bicycle is a mechanically efficient machine, as confusing as that.) He is urging that it is necessary to return to a simpler form of life.

Like most intellectuals, Illich, is looking at society upside down. It is not the size of the productive processes that is the cause of the problems, but the object of the productive processes and people’s relationships to it and each other. The products that come off the production line belong to the capitalist (the individual, the shareholder, the company, the government—it does not matter which). But the capitalist has not actually made the products. It is the workers who have produced everything, in whatever capacity they have worked whether as manager, machine operator or floor sweeper, but do not own the products they have made.

This relationship results in a struggle between these two groups in society — a fight over the means of subsistence. The capitalist at the end of the production process has his commodities which he has to sell in order to make his profit; the worker has his wage, which is only sufficient to keep him and his family going from week to week. Now looked at that way, what does it matter if bicycles are produced — or motor cars or jam-pots or steam-rollers ? The net result is the same, a society of conflicts. The interest of the capitalist lies in extracting as much fat as he can out of the worker. That is where his profit comes from. The interest of the worker is in obtaining as high a wage as he can from his employer. That is what determines his level of subsistence and therefore his access to wealth.

It is on the basis of production for profit that cars are produced to snarl up the cities and pollute the air. Illich is right to point out the appalling effects on the planet we inhabit, but it is the profit system that draws forth cars from the witches’ brew of capitalism. Merely urging people to go back to bicycles is about as sensible as King Canute ordering back the waves.

Illich stated in the interview that the “convivial society” he wants can only be “a society which opts for voluntary poverty.” In other words he wants to abandon technological progress and put everyone in rags on a bicycle. For several reasons this is childish:-

1. The bicycle itself is a result of technology. But when bicycles were common the poverty of the working class was more dreadful than today. If late nineteenth-century England is what Illich means by “voluntary poverty” (only a well-fed intellectual could think of a phrase like that), who wants to “opt” for it?
2. Illich’s thesis assumes that people are not poor today; certainly not in the more “advanced countries” where capitalism has been long established. By ignoring the fact that society is divided into classes, Illich’s analysis becomes totally meaningless. Workers are poor because their access to wealth is restricted by the pay-packet or salary cheque. On the other hand the capitalist class, by virtue of their ownership of wealth, have no such problem of poverty. Perhaps Illich wants only the capitalist class to “opt” for voluntary poverty. Would Howard Hughes or Paul Getty care to comment?
3. Illich is saying it is technology which imposes the misery on mankind that is evident everywhere. But it is capitalist society, which does not take into account the satisfaction of human needs, that causes problems.

Illich ignores that car manufacturers exist to make profits, not cars, so car production continues notwithstanding some deadly side-effects.

When technology is harnessed to the object of satisfying human needs there will be no need to fear it. It is only because of the advances in technology that it is now possible to organize society in such a way that poverty and deprivation can be abolished. It is not technology that stands in the way of man’s advance, but the present system of wealth ownership.

Illich is now living in a Mexican Village. Presumably he has his head buried in the sands of the Mexican desert. Workers must learn to treat the ideas of such intellectuals with the contempt they deserve. A “convivial society” cannot be achieved by pedalling on a bicycle. Capitalism itself must be abolished, and a society based on common ownership must be established in its place. This is the task of the working class. It demands not leaders or intellectuals to show them how to do it, but the conscious understanding and commitment to Socialism of the working class itself. It is not the leaders or lefties or intellectuals that are needed, but Socialists.

Ronnie Warrington

AUEW Supports Labour, Rejects Socialism (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following Composite Motion and amendments were carried at a Conference of the AUEW held at Blackpool in May:

COMPOSITE MOTION No. 12  

This Representative Council demands that the Parliamentary Labour Party carry out policy formulated by the organised Labour Movement and decided by the Labour Party Annual Conference and in pursuance of these demands recognises the necessity for a Labour Government to pursue a clear socialist programme. 

FIRST AMENDMENTAdd at the end:- This programme should be committed not only to the pursuance of social justice but also to the maintenance of the basic freedoms of thought, speech and association and the people’s rights to be ruled by a freely elected government. 

SECOND AMENDMENTAdd at end:- Conference therefore calls upon the NEC to demand a change in the Labour Party constitution such that the parliamentary party is duty bound to advocate and implement policies determined by Annual Conference. 

FOURTH AMENDMENTAdd at end: - Furthermore, in pursuance of these demands and recognising the necessity for the next Labour Government to pursue a clear socialist programme, Conference calls on the EC to campaign both within TASS and the wider trade union movement for the active participation of workers in the Labour Party. Conference considers that this is the way to ensure that the Labour Party and the next Labour Government adopts these policies. 

As a contribution to the debate our Comrade J. E. Flowers opposed the Resolution as follows:

  Mr. President and fellow delegates, I wish to oppose the substantive Resolution and also to its being sent anywhere, TUC, AUEW or the Labour Party, for the following reasons. 

  As a Socialist recognising the class struggle, I am sympathetic to the struggle of the International working class, whether it be in Chile, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Russia, USA or Great Britain. So I am an active Trades Unionist, although knowing that TU activity is purely defensive against the Master Class. But I find the Labour Party and our Union this week only interested in reforms of capitalism not in its abolition. This abolition can only be achieved by political action by the overwhelming majority of the working class understanding and desiring it—i.e. the establishment of Socialism or Communism. These words mean the same thing, a classless, moneyless society. 

   Socialism therefore means: A system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution by and in the interest of the whole world community. This has not been the object of the Labour Party, supported as it has been recently by Lord Soper, Paul Foot, Tariq Ali, and now Enoch Powell, none of whom define what they mean by Socialism. 

  The Labour Party since its inception in 1906 has never had as its object the establishment of Socialism as described earlier. It has been reformist and supports the retention of capitalism, State or Private. The sale of the tools of war is as much a normal aspect of capitalism as is poverty, unemployment, racialism, sex discrimination, capitalist-oriented education, and housing shortages, from which technicians, as workers, suffer. 

    Marx and Engels, the founders of Scientific Socialism, insisted that the slogans for the working class should be “The abolition of the wages system” and “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains, you have a world to win.” 

     I ask you to reject this Motion and its submission to the AUEW or the Labour Party.

Our case justified by Keir Hardie (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

James Keir Hardie, one of the earlier Labour MPs, was, at different times, Chairman of the Labour Party Annual Conference and Chairman and leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. He was largely responsible for the formation of the Labour Party and it has been claimed for him that “More than any other man, he shaped the political history of the Labour Movement.” Members of the Labour Party praise him for making their party what it is today but, for a reason which will become obvious, they never quote his detailed statement about the kind of party he claimed to be creating. It was published in 1910 by the Independent Labour Party under the title My Confession of Faith in the Labour Alliance.

Keir Hardie had founded the Independent Labour Party in 1893 and was its Chairman. His purpose in issuing his Confession of Faith was to rebut the charge that, by affiliating to the Labour Party, the ILP had sacrificed its “socialist” character. Some of those who made the charge were members of the ILP. He defended affiliation to the Labour Party, which was, then as now, dominated by trade unions, on the ground of its practical advantage to the ILP but also, and primarily, on the ground of “socialist” principle — in line with his own declaration three years earlier that, for him, the socialist objective was “. . . free Communism in which ... the rule of life will be — ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’.” (Keir Hardie, From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), page 89).

His argument from expediency was to point out to the ILP that if they wanted to grow quickly, and in particular, if they wanted to get members elected to Parliament, their only hope was to have the support and the votes of trade unionists and to fight elections as Labour Party candidates. He indicated that there were some people “. . . who act as though their principle reason for being in the ILP is that they may get returned to Parliament.” He did not pretend that the votes the ILP thus picked up were the votes of Socialists.

He quoted figures to show that while it had taken the ILP seven years as an independent organization to reach 193 branches and an income of £721, within nine years of affiliation to the Labour Party (1900- 1909) these figures had jumped to 887 branches and an annual income of £8,871.

But his main argument was that forming Marxian Socialist organizations and propagating Socialism failed to bring quick growth and was wrong in principle. He instanced the small growth of the Social Democratic Federation and its failure to win any Parliamentary elections. (He did not name the SPGB but had a reference to “other Socialist or pseudo-Socialist” organizations.)

He argued that Marxian Socialist propaganda did not quickly attract large numbers of workers and that it was appreciation of this which had been the reason for the formation of the ILP, based on the different policy of

. . . conducting the propaganda in such a way as would win over working-class organizations, especially the Trade Unions to the support of Socialism, rather than alienate them.

This policy, known as “getting into the workers’ day-to-day struggles”, was advocated by the ILP and later by the Communist Party and always featured in controversy between the SPGB and those two organizations.

History has dealt mockingly with Keir Hardie’s theories. In appearance everything happened just as he said it would; in essentials nothing. The tactics he urged on the ILP got them members, money and seats in the House of Commons. In the 1929 Parliament more than 200 MPs belonged to the ILP — now it has no MPs and is all but dead, though its opportunist tactics are constantly revived by new so-called “left-wing” organisations. And the Labour Party first outstripped the Liberals, then became the largest party in Parliament and formed the government, all as Keir Hardie anticipated.

But what has happened to his belief that the policy he stood for would convert the working-class to Marxian Socialism? For that was the specific claim he spelled out in his Confession:

The Labour Party is the only expression of orthodox Marxian Socialism in Great Britain.
The Labour Party practices the Marxian policy of the class struggle, following Marx’s own example, and is blamed by its critics for doing so . . .
Thus it is proved that the founders of the ILP, and even more so, of the Labour Party, were, if I may use the expression, in the direct line of apostolic succession from Marx and the other great master minds of Socialist theory and policy.

Where is it all now? Keir Hardie himself later repudiated the class struggle. The ILP and Labour Party both dissociated themselves from Marxism. It was a General Secretary of the Labour Party, Mr. Morgan Phillips, who asserted that his party “. . owed more to Methodism than to Marx.” The Labour Party, TUC and the Unions all turned their backs on Marxian economics and gave whole-hearted support to anti-Marxist Keynesian myths of “controlled capitalism”, full employment and the end of crises. Even Keir Hardie’s belief that he was building a party completely apart and hostile to Tories and Liberals proved to be wrong because twice they have been in a three-party coalition government. (Is a third time now in the offing?). Above all, nobody in the Labour Party leadership today even pretends that that party is interested in the Marxian Socialist objective that Keir Hardie proclaimed.

The Labour Party has had sixteen years in office, years of administering capitalism just like any other capitalist party. Winning the workers over to Socialism was bound to be a slow business. It was made more difficult by Keir Hardie’s policies. Events have shown how right the SPGB was and how wrong was Keir Hardie.

Edgar Hardcastle

Short Cut to Nowhere (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

"I do not expect to be still alive at Christmas!" This dramatic message was delivered to a crowd of Saturday afternoon shoppers. The speaker then urged her audience to write to their MPs, to Khrushchev and to Kennedy, imploring them to ban nuclear weapons. For this was Autumn 1961 and The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was flourishing.

Eagerly I approached a CND supporter and introduced myself as a Socialist. Warmly greeted, I was handed a leaflet, with the assurance that CND drew its support from all shades of political — and non political — opinion. I quickly expressed my opposition to all war and was introduced to a Pacifist. Then I pointed out that to campaign against particular weapons whilst supporting the social system that gave rise to wars  . . . But the Pacifist had turned away and my erstwhile friend of the leaflets had moved on!

They had no time to listen to Socialist ideas. The fear of nuclear war, the dangers involved even in testing the horrific weapons, made it imperative to "get something done now." However the road from Aldermaston proved not to be a short cut, even to arms limitation, but a blistering dead end.

More than a dozen years have passed since I stood rejected at the edge of that High Street meeting. The recent British underground Nuclear test underlines the fact that these weapons, and the threat of war (plus actual conflict) are still around. Still in fact a cause for urgent concern. But where is CND?

It is a familiar story. The Socialist case was turned down because of an overwhelming concern with a specific issue. Getting rid of the nuclear threat could not, as members of CND put it, wait for Socialism.

Is it too much to hope that the tragic irony of it all has not been lost on those energetic campaigners?

As Socialists we too are horrified and sickened by the countless problems which are inseparable from capitalism. It is in fact this understanding, that a social system based on the profit motive cannot also be geared to human interests, which gives the obvious answer. The only way to resolve the multiplicity of problems, including war, is through the achievement of Socialism; it necessarily follows that this is the quickest solution. Which is, of course, the reason why we have no time to engage in reformist struggles.

The need for Socialism is too urgent.

Pat Deutz

The Scene of the Crime (1): The People of the Abyss (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Scene of the Crime: 1

A series of articles recalling famous books about working-class conditions in particular areas of Britain and viewing those areas today.

In 1902 Jack London, already established as a writer in America, went to stay for seven weeks in the East End of London and write a book about it. He rented a room in a shabby quiet street, bought old clothes and a dirty cap in Petticoat Lane, and walked the streets as a sailor down on his luck. On 22nd August he wrote to his friend Sterling in California: "I've read of misery, and seen a bit, but this beats anything I could even have imagined." In later years he said: "Of all my books, I love most The People of the Abyss. No other book of mine took so much of my young heart and tears as that study of the economic degradation of the poor."

Jack London's East End was Limehouse, Poplar, West and East India Dock Roads, Mile End, Whitechapel, Spitalfields. He slept and ate in the spike, the casual ward ("I must beg forgiveness of my body for the vileness through which I have dragged it, and forgiveness of my stomach for the vileness which I have thrust into it"). He tramped the streets wet to the skin and went to the Salvation Army barracks, where the crowd of paupers were made to stand four hours and listen to speeches and prayers before being given a skinflint breakfast. He went to the hop-fields in Kent, and watched Edward VII's coronation parade in Trafalgar Square.

To what he sat, he added copiously from official statistics, newspaper items, trade unions' and social workers' reports. A census of the alleys in Spitalfields:

In one alley there are ten houses — fifty-one rooms, nearly all about 8 feet by 9 feet — and 254 people . . .  In another court with six houses and twenty-two rooms were 84 people — again 6, 7, 8 and 9 being the number living in one room, in several instances.

A report on the factory workers in "dangerous trades":

The children of the white-lead worker enter the world, as a rule, only to die from the convulsions of lead poisoning — they are either born prematurely, or die within the first year.

No wonder that Jack London wrote to Anna Strunsky: "I am made sick by this human hell-hole called the East End."

Of course he was not the first to write graphically about it. Arthur Morrison's A Child of the Jago, to which London referred, was published in 1896.  Morrison was an East Londoner himself: "the Jago" was the frightful Old Nichol district on the boundary of Bethnal Green and Shoreditch. According to Charles Booth, it had the greatest poverty of all in the East End. Morrison also, incidentally, had no good to say of the Salvation Army's charity — in his book he called General Booth the "Panjandrum of philanthropy, a mummer of the market-place".

But what impressed Jack London most was the parody of human physique in the Abyss. He wrote repeatedly of its "woebegone wretches" — the East Ender with the scrawny arm, the "stunted forms, ugly faces", the young fellow who boasted of being a fine specimen and weighing ten stone:

I was ashamed to tell him that I weighed one hundred and seventy pounds, or over twelve stone, so I contented myself with taking his measure. Poor, misshapen little man!

And the incident with two men who, walking along with him, picked up orange peel, crusts and apple cores from the filthy pavements to eat: "And this, between six and seven o'clock in the evening of August 20, year of our Lord 1902, in the heart of the greatest, wealthiest and most powerful empire the world has ever seen." London, a worshipper of strength, would notice all that specially, but others too observed it. In his book about the 1914-18 war, Disenchantment, C. E. Montague wrote of British troops on the road beside Canadian and Australian ones: "Battalions of colourless, stunted, half-toothless lads from hot, humid Lancashire mills; battalions of slow, staring faces" — against the Dominions' "taller, stronger, handsomer" men.

The People of the Abyss was published in 1903, illustrated with the author's photographs taken in East London. When submitting it to the publishers he described it as a report "from the field of industrial war", and added that it

proposed no remedies and devoted no space to theorizing — it is merely a narrative of things as they are.

However, after consultation with the publishers he made some modifications, and a letter accompanying the revised manuscript said:

I have wholly cut out the reference to the King of England in the Coronation chapter, have softened in a number of places, made it more presentable in many ways, and added a preface and a concluding chapter. 

What is the Abyss like now? Some of it is still there. The streets and alleys of Whitechapel were the scene of the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888, and a book on the murders published in 1972 has recent photographs of two places where they were done. But it is all coming down, fast. Limehouse, the  dockside setting of a famous silent film called Broken Blossoms, is now an estate of council flats; Ratcliff Highway, a terrible place, is the same. So is Sidney Street, where the Russian terrorists were besieged and killed in 1911. The docks, now little used, are intended for a massive redevelopment with all kinds of amenities spoken of.

No one would say "hell-hole" now; but "affluent society" would be a misconception too. "Itchy Park," where human derelicts gather, is as appalling as anything Jack London saw. Repeatedly, cases of violent crime come out of the same East End — not by demented individuals but by gangs from those dull, neat flats (the "in" crime at present is stealing lorries for their loads). The shops and stalls along the high roads are crowded with clothes and household things which are showy but cheap and shoddy. You have the feeling in the East End that people are out of the Abyss, but only by the skin of their teeth.

The major factor in the reforms there have been was the 1914-18 war. Lloyd George told the capitalist class they had gone too far: a starved working class had scarcely the blood to shed for them. The point was taken and applied in social welfare, housing and medical services. The effect has resembled the policy of a stingy farmer, accepting the necessity to feed his stock for a profit in the market but watchful that the creatures get not a turnip more than they have to.

In one respect alterations have brought no change. Jack London wrote of the "man-killing" air of the East End:

Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, curator of Kew Gardens, has been studying smoke deposits on vegetation . . . six tons of solid matter, consisting of soot and tarry hydrocarbons, are deposited every week in every quarter of a square mile in and about London . . . Sulphuric acid in the atmosphere is continually being breathed by the London workmen through all the days and nights of their lives.

Today lorries roll in thousands continually along the highways through East London, and the result is called pollution.

Robert Barltrop