A class warrior (1988)

Book Review from the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Churchill's War, Vol I: The Struggle for Power by David Irving (Veritas. 1987)

Despite the detailed research which goes into many historical works, they often tell us more about their authors than the subject matter in question. This offering by provocative right wing historian David Irving is a case in point

Churchill's War is a companion study to Irving s earlier work Hitler's War, remembered by many for its claim that the Nazi dictator knew nothing about the Holocaust. The main thrust of this volume is that Churchill, conspiring with Jewish leaders and Russian diplomats, helped provoke a war that Hitler did not want and ultimately led to the dissolution of the British Empire. In turn this resulted in the post war ascendency of the United Slates and, worst of all, Russia

The author s basic premise — that during the 1930s the British Empire had reached its most "magnificent extent" — is to say the least, superficial. After the 1914-18 war Britain ceased to be the major commercial and financial centre of the world and the Second World War merely served to confirm America's ascendency, along with state capitalist Russia.

It is a pity that Irving's erroneous interpretation of history tends to overshadow much of the detail he has uncovered about Churchill himself, for some of it is well worth reading and sheds a good deal of light on a man who was an implacable opponent of the working class until the end. For instance, he reveals that Churchill's fascination with war and his indifference to public suffering were documented again and again

In 1944 crowds jeered him when he appeared in dazzling RAF uniform in a newly blitzed suburb of London and declared "This the thing! It is just like being back in the best days of the blitz again".

For those who choose to remember him as a bulwark against fascism, the book records his praise for the "discipline, order, goodwill and smiling faces" of Italy's corporate state. The future ally of Joseph Stalin also commented to Roman Journalists in 1927.

If I had been an Italian I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism . . . your movement has rendered a service to the whole world

When First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939 Churchill recommended selling enplanes to Italy in return for motor boats, as a way of developing fruitful Anglo-Italian trade. Rather better known is his reference to Hitler in the Evening Standard of 17 September 1937:

If our country were defeated I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to out rightful place among the nations

Of course, statements and actions such as these make a nonsense of the claim that Britain fought a war against the Axis Powers for ideological reasons, or to protect freedom and democracy. Churchill acted in the interests of his class and was a protagonist for war when circumstances dictated it. While il is not for socialists to comment on the strategic conduct of wars, it is worth remembering that Churchill was responsible for a number of disastrous battle campaigns in both World Wars, which resulted in the loss of thousands of working class lives.

Roosevelt apparently labelled Churchill a "drunken bum". David Irving provides him with perhaps a more fitting epitaph still: "He was rarely a creator, always a destroyer".

DAP

Press Cuttings (1934)

From the October 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia Lends a Hand—To Prop Up Capitalism

 

From a speech by Dr. Benes (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Czecho-Slovakia) at the Assembly of the League of Nations: —

“It is impossible to deny that the world is passing through a very grave crisis.

“It is a crisis of ideas of morals and of religious beliefs,” he added, “a crisis in world economic affairs, in internal politics, in social conditions and systems, a far-reaching crisis in international relationships, involving threats of war and revolution of every kind.”

Speaking of Russia’s application for membership, Dr. Benes said this was a country without whose co-operation conditions in Europe and in the world as a whole could never quite return to normal. (Daily Herald, September 11th, 1934.)

* * *

Our All-Knowing Masters

Mr. Lloyd George has some illuminating passages on the way in which official personages regard the mass of the population on whose shoulders they have been raised to eminence. The following refers to Lord Milner and Henry Wilson, both of whom were sent to Russia to report on conditions there during the War: —

The head of the British Delegation, Lord Milner, was by training and temperament a bureaucrat. He knew nothing of the populace that trod the streets outside the bureau. He did not despise them. He just left them out of his calculations. A study of the ways and thoughts of the crowd constituted no part of the preparation for entry into the Civil Service or for success afterwards. The more you meddled with that side of government, the less chance there was for promotion. It was for the politicians to deal with these things, and he was not and never became a politician. Henry Wilson was every inch of him— and he had many more inches than the average—a professional soldier. The soldiers were not supposed to take cognisance of the people, except the specimens who joined the army. He judged these entirely by the canons of discipline. The supreme test of discipline was saluting the officers. He saw with his own eyes that the Russian soldiers passed that test superbly. Mutiny in the army was therefore remote, and if the army could be depended upon, the “frocks” (as he always nicknamed politicians) who babbled in the Duma did not matter. He had strong political prejudices, but they were sectarian in their origin, and all irrelevant to the Russian situation. He hated Papists and Irish patriots, and he encountered neither among the Russian soldiers or civilians. So he quite independently and from another angle supported Milner in the conclusion that there was no danger of any upheaval in the immediate future. The chief missioners therefore were unanimously of opinion that although revolution was inevitable it would be postponed till after the war.

* * *

The Drift Away from Nationalisation

It used to be an article of faith with the Labour Party that State enterprise or Nationalisation was a step towards Socialism. They ignored the numerous instances of State enterprise being a stepping-stone towards a less restricted form of capitalism. Japan was an example of the latter, as is also the Indian State of Mysore. There are signs that Russia is moving in the same direction. The following is from the Times, and relates to Mysore: —

                                               FUTURE OF STATE INDUSTRIES.

The President of the Mysore Chamber of Commerce considers that the time has come for Bangalore to have a stock exchange of its own, instead of transactions in the many Government and joint stock securities of the State being “ largely controlled by the organised markets of Bombay and Madras.” . . . While commending the forward policy which has made Mysore a great industrial State, the President believes that the position under which the Government started and own and manage many industrial concerns should now be reviewed. He is of opinion that some at least of these State-pioneered industrial and trade concerns should be handed over to private enterprise, so that they may be further developed in the larger interests of the country. He expressed his satisfaction . . . that the policy of combining private enterprise with Government ownership and management has been happily inaugurated at the new great Mysore sugar factory. [Times, September 14th.)

* * *

A Minimum Wage—What Then ?

Writing about the Report for 1932 and 1933 just issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Daily Herald says that thousands of farmers—

are breaking the law by paying their men less than the minimum rates of wages laid down by the County Agricultural Wages Committees. (Daily Herald, September 21st.)

This has been going on for years. Some observers estimate that probably twenty-five per cent. of the land-workers are paid less than the legal minimum rates.

The Daily Herald, and others who devote their time to securing legal enactments by which to prune, trim, restrict, regularise, improve, standardise, normalise, and otherwise tinker with the capitalist system, should take particular note of the position in agriculture, where legally fixed rates are supposed to be operative.

* * *

Home-1934

The Conservative Party headquarters, in their monthly journal, The Elector (September, 1934), triumphantly quote an unemployed worker in defence of the Government’s residential training centres for the unemployed. The Conservatives are, of course, anxious to discredit the Labour Party’s attacks on these centres, but they were so eager that they fail to realise the full significance of the following passage: —

There’s no punishment—but a fellow can be sent home. That’s the worst thing that can happen to him. After generations of Liberal, Labour and Conservative reforms designed to abolish slums, provide homes for heroes, eliminate poverty and unemployment, and generally to make capitalism fit to live under, it is a punishment in the eyes of an unemployed man to be sent “home” !

 

* * *

Hitler and Stalin.

Communists who so violently abuse British rule in India, or abuse the Nazi dictatorship for the brutal murders of June 30th, would do well to ask themselves whether the methods of the German secret police system are any worse than the methods of the Russian Ogpu. The News Bulletin of the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee, a body which exists to defend and apologise for the Soviet Government in the English Press, contains the following statement concerning the Ogpu’s powers : —

. . . the Ogpu did have very wide powers in dealing with acts of counter-revolution and sabotage. They had power to arrest, try and sentence to exile, imprisonment, or even death, individuals suspected of these crimes without recourse to the ordinary courts of law.

If the officials of the Russian Ogpu were as hysterical and unbalanced as some of the leading Communists in this country, anybody on whom they happened to cast an eye might be suspected of anything, and their chance of disproving the suspicions would be about as good as those of the men and women shot without warning by Hitler’s thugs.

 

* * *

“Original” Measures against Unemployment.

The Fascist movements still go on claiming that they have made a new and original contribution to political and economic thought. The following comes from Italy: —

Original measures to alleviate unemployment have been suggested to Signor Mussolini by the National Confederation of Fascist Industrial Syndicates, which is a department of the new corporative state.

They include the

Institution of two or more shifts during a working day,

Reduction of working hours.

Abolition of overtime.

An increase in the number of operatives to a machine,

A wider distribution of all available piece-work,

and

Restrictions in the employment of women and juveniles. (Daily Telegraph, August 1st.)

“Original” measures! Their age is only exceeded by the degree of their uselessness. 

 

                                                                               * * *

 

Mr. Garvin.

Of all well-informed publicists, Mr. J. L. Garvin is about the most abysmally and persistently ignorant regarding Socialism. This is from the Observer (September 2nd): —

SIGNOR MUSSOLINI AND SOCIALISM.

Labels in modern politics often mislead simple folk. Exaggerated interest has, therefore, been aroused by the report from Italy that Signor Mussolini has approached his former Socialist comrades to take executive office with him. Is that so surprising ? The corporative state is socialism in the simple meaning of the word.

Mr. Garvin’s last sentence is bosh, both in the simple and in all other meanings of the word.

* * *

 

Who Owns London?

 

From an article by A. P. Luscombe Whyte in the Evening Standard (May 30th, 1934): —

Lord Howard de Walden has also been dubbed “ London’s richest landlord, with an income of £400,000 a year ” (paying for his horse Blazonry’s feed). Up till 1925 he owned 40 acres of the heart of London, stretching from Oxford Street to Euston Road, and from Oxford Circus and Regent Street eastward to Wells Street. He sold at a good time to a trust largely owned by Sir John Ellerman at a price said to be £3,000,000. A few years before, the public had gaped at reports of his sale of a large slice of the West of London for £4,000,000. A handful of other landlords own, or have owned, considerable sections of London. Among them are Dulwich College, with two square miles, and Lord St. Germans and Sir Spencer Maryon-Wilson, to whom is attributed nearly as much.

To-day the old estates are dwindling. They are passing, acre by acre, into the hands of great trusts and companies, whose rule is often more strict and less human than that of the former manorial owners. It is only the poor individual Londoner, who lives there, who has nothing to say about his city. It isn’t his.

 

* * *

Gandhi s Utopianism.

From a speech delivered by Gandhi at Amedabad on June 20th, 1934: —

“The duel between capitalists and labour is only between big words to me. . . . Both are capitalists: one has consolidated his capital and utilised it intelligently; the other squanders it recklessly. If you communists or anybody wish the destruction of capitalists we would be destroyed.

"What I really do want is a combination, mixing and unity of the two. What I want from both is useful use of wealth. When we all learn the use of wealth in a better way and teach the same to capitalists, then alone we would be able to do some useful work for India’s labourers and bring them to higher standards. This I say and propound from my fifty years’ mature experience.” Replying to other questions, Gandhi said that he was at present under a vow not to discuss politics or to criticise Government’s policy and, therefore, he could not criticise the Government for firing on Bombay strikers, etc., without violating the vow he had taken. That vow was taken in the presence of God and, therefore, he considered it invisable and sacrosanct. (Indian Labour Journal, July 8th.) 

Edgar Hardcastle

Pawns in Abyssinia (1935)

From the August 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is evident that the Italian Government is determined, at whatever the cost in men and money, to force big concessions from the independent State of Abyssinia, including, no doubt — if things go according to the Italian plans — the annexation of a large part of Abyssinian territory and the establishment of some form of close control over the remainder of the country. Why Mussolini’s Government is prepared to go to war can be explained on the usual grounds. Notwithstanding the Fascist promise of a new economic system, Italian industry is carried on for profit in competition with the rest of the capitalist world, and Italy’s lack of raw materials in her own territory or colonies places her capitalists at a disadvantage in the scramble for profit. Abyssinia is coveted because, among other attractions, it would provide a market for Italian goods and cheap supplies of raw cotton, which would free Italian capitalists from the need to import from America.

The excuse is often used by the Great Powers when annexing the territories of native races that the backwardness of the latter is withholding from the civilised world much-needed sources of supply, without any advantage to the natives themselves. In the war to conquer Abyssinia that excuse cannot very well be used. Nobody can argue that the outside world is being hampered by scarcity of cotton. On the contrary, one of the outstanding features of the depression has been the vast over-production of cotton in many parts of the world, and the expensive official schemes for destroying and restricting cotton crops. In short, the motive which sends a gigantic military force into Abyssinia is not economic, in the sense of a genuine need of the human race, but is purely capitalistic, the lust for profit in a world divided into antagonistic capitalist-national groups. So, if Italy wins and further develops cotton-growing there, the next world economic crisis will very probably see the Italian Government restricting the production of that article, after sacrificing lives innumerable to make the development possible. Other attractions in Abyssinia are gold, rubber, copper, potash, and platinum.

Unrest in Italy

There are other reasons also. The early enthusiasm for Fascism began long ago to wear off, and there have recently been reports of strikes and demonstrations, including some against the threatened war. Poverty and unemployment for the workers are the order of the day under the Fascist flag, as under all others, and faced with discontent, Mussolini, like many a doomed dictator before him, is grasping at military glory as a means of regaining popular support. Naturally, he pretends otherwise, and claims that all but a tiny minority of the Italian population are behind him. Nevertheless, according to the Geneva correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (July 17th), he takes the precaution of imposing a much more drastic control of the frontier passes leading into Switzerland, with the two-fold object of preventing the escape of men who do not want to fight and of preventing the importation of anti-war and anti-Fascist propaganda leaflets and journals.

From a military point of view, while all the advantages of money and armaments are with the Italian forces, the deserts and mountainous country will be comparatively easy to defend, and the weather will be against the invaders. While opinion generally is that in time Abyssinia would be crushed, the task may prove so slow and costly that the Italian capitalists may well come to regard Mussolini as an expensive luxury. According to Mr. Vernon Bartlett (News-Chronicle, July 25th), “It is true – even though it be denied – that exactly a year ago important Army officers were alarmed to learn that Signor Mussolini contemplated an Abyssinian campaign …. They advised against it, a commission on the spot advised against it. . . .”

The defeat of an Italian force by the Abyssinians at Adowa in 1896 led to the overthrow of the then Italian Premier, Crispi. Will history repeat itself ?

Something Rotten in the State of Abyssinia

Mussolini’s appeals to the Italian workers to sacrifice their lives in a quarrel which does not concern them are paralleled by those of Emperor Haile Selassie. Although the country has made only small advances towards capitalist industrialism, and that only in limited areas, it has its evils no less than those of the capitalist Powers. Chattel slavery still exists, and is only slowly giving place to wage-slavery. There is desperate poverty on the one hand, face to face with the wealth and power of the ruling class on the other. It is true, as the Emperor says, that “throughout their history they have seldom met with foreigners who did not desire to possess themselves of Abyssinian territory, and to destroy their independence,” but independence means no more to the subject class in Abyssinia than it does elsewhere. Moreover, much of the tribal territory held by Abyssinia was grabbed by the Emperor’s predecessors, and is now held by force against the wishes of the local population. It is one of the ironies of the situation that just as Mussolini is afraid of discontented workers at his back, so the Emperor has to take extreme precautions that the arms he imports do not on the way fall into the hands of his own unwilling subjects, who would use them to revolt against him.

Haile Selassie’s command over the kind of phrases to delude his subjects into fighting their masters’ wars is hardly less than that of Mussolini himself: “He who dies for his country is a happy man” – ” It is better to die free than live as slaves” (a little inappropriate perhaps in a country where there are many slaves) – “God will be your shield. United with God, our ramparts and our shields will face to-morrow’s invader with confidence. . . . Your sovereign will be in your midst and will not hesitate to shed his blood for Ethiopia. If no peaceful solution is found, Ethiopia will struggle to the last man for existence.”

The religious note will be better understood when it is remembered that the Abyssinian priesthood are said to own as much as one-third of the total land, and are immensely influential.

The Attitude of the Powers

Many of the other Governments have direct or indirect interest in the situation. The Abyssinian Government has for many years tried to insure itself against occupation by one Power by giving contracts and concessions to companies belonging to several different countries. America, France, Japan, England, Belgium, Germany and Egypt are among the countries with trading or other important interests. Owing, however, to the complications of the European situation — in particular, the aim of keeping Austria apart from Germany, for which Italy’s aid is essential — England and France would no doubt not be much disturbed at the idea of an Italian conquest of part of Abyssinia, provided that their own interests were safeguarded, along with Egypt’s interest in Lake Tana, from which the Nile flows. However, not only has America indicated hostility to any Italian conquest, but the Japanese Government has taken the same line, and is allowing influential Japanese organisations to work up an agitation against Italy for the proposed “violation of international law and justice.” The Japanese Government, which used the same methods in Manchuria and is now using them in China proper, is horrified that Italy should do this in Abyssinia.

A factor which may cause misgivings in many capitals is that any Abyssinian success may cause increased unrest throughout all the colonies in Africa.

It is worth remembering that Sir Samuel Hoare, British Foreign Secretary, has laid it down that Italy has a right to “expand,” i.e., to conquer the territory of other nations (Hansard, July 11th, col. 517).

It is also worth remembering that, in order to buy Italy off, the British Government offered to give away some British territory in Somaliland, without asking the local inhabitants or the population at home.

What the final outcome of the complex clash of interests in Abyssinia will be, it is impossible to foretell.

A Crusade to Stop Slavery

One argument which generally plays a prominent part in the wars of annexation waged by the European States against the coloured races — that the war is a Christianising war — cannot be urged here, because the Abyssinian ruling class are Christians and have, indeed, themselves played the game of Christianising the Mohammedans. Mussolini has had to content himself with another noble-sounding slogan. He is going to rid Abyssinia of slavery, and impose by force the very doubtful advantages of Italian capitalist civilisation. The Pecksniffian leader writer of The Times (July 15th), while chiding Mussolini for his “obstinacy," tells us of some of the evils existing in the ancient empire of Abyssinia, or Ethiopia: “It is known . . . that conditions of squalor and extreme crudeness exist among the greater part of their quarrelsome tribes, some of whom still retain the belief that a man is no man until he has killed his enemy.” The Abyssinians might retort that if there were no squalor already, conquest by any of the Powers would soon introduce it in large measure. Are not the notorious slums of the Italian towns squalid? And has The Times never heard of Britain’s army of paupers, and the shocking conditions of the depressed areas? As for the ferocity of the tribesmen, who is Mussolini to complain? Has he not for years bellowed of the glorious uplifting qualities of war?

The Labour-I.L.P. Attitude

With their incurable weakness for sentimental phrases, the I.L.P. and Labour Party have discovered here another “poor little Belgium” being attacked by a big Power, and want to take sides with the Abyssinian ruling class against the Italian. The I.L.P. New Leader (July 19th) wants the British workers to refuse to make or transport arms or munitions for Italy. Nothing is said of arms for Abyssinia, so, presumably, the I.L.P. has no objection to the making of war material for the ruling class of that country. The Labour Daily Herald is more explicit, and printed an article from their correspondent in Abyssinia (July 24th), containing the following :

“It seems as if all that remains for the Abyssinians to do now is to sharpen their spears, clean their rifles and hope that Europe will let them buy ammunition, so that it may be a fair fight” (italics ours).

Could anything better illustrate the hopelessly non-Socialist attitude of the little gentlemen of the Daily Herald? Here is a war about to take place between the exploiting class in two countries, one of which is more developed industrially than the other, and the organ of the Labour Party hopes that the slaughter of workers about a question which is not worth the life of a single one of them, shall be conducted on a “fair” basis, the only possible result of which would be that the killing would be prolonged !

The Socialist attitude is quite unlike that taken up by the Labour Party and I.L.P. We do not take sides in ruling class quarrels. A story told of the Viennese during the battle of Sadowa is more in line with what should be the working class attitude. At that battle, which occurred in 1866, the Prussians and the Austrians were fighting out the issue which of the two ruling class groups should dominate the German States and Central Europe. It is said of the Viennese that, while the battle was in progress they went on dancing, “as if it did not matter which side won.” They were right, and it would tax the ingenuity of all the assembled historians and apologists for war to show any tangible loss suffered by the mass of the Austrian population through the defeat.

The progress of the world, and the abolition of war can only come through Socialism. The duty of the working class is to press forward on that road, and not to be diverted by I.L.P.-Labour Party propaganda for this or that section of the ruling class.

Edgar Hardcastle

Notes by the Way: Indian Offer to Occupy Belfast (1935)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

Indian Offer to Occupy Belfast

It is often urged in defence of the British occupation of India that the Indians are unable to keep the peace among themselves. Hindoos, Sikhs, and Mohammedans are sometimes on such bad terms with each other about religious and other differences that riots occur and lives are lost. The British authorities then step in and try to keep the peace. This is all very well, but what are the Indians supposed to think about the recurrent riots in Belfast, where Protestants are now refusing to work alongside Catholics, demand the dismissal of the latter, and mob those who do not at once clear out. Several lives have been lost, and many persons have been injured. Troops had to be called out to patrol the streets.

We are waiting to hear that the Indian National Congress has offered to occupy and pacify Belfast.

Irish Gentility

Southern Ireland also is determined not to be out of the picture, and with fierce conflicts between the police, farmers' mothers, wives, and daughters at Cork, is establishing its right to be regarded as a civilised nation. The following is taken from a report by the Cork correspondent of The Times (July 13th) of riots between farmers’ wives, mothers and daughters and the police, when an attempt was being made to sell up farmers' stock for payment of land annuities to De Valera’s Government: —

Some of the women were black and blue with the handling they got. They were driven back time after time, but re-formed in massed formation and charged the police. They captured helmets and caps, and brought them back as trophies. Then they threw them back to the police, charged again, and recaptured . them. The women had a banner, which was taken by the police; but the women recaptured it. Women were sent staggering with punches. Eight women were taken inside the gates under arrest, and the battle subsided for ten minutes or so. Women reinforcements arrived with baskets of eggs and the police were bespattered from head to foot. There was a baton charge and the women cleared away, but not before some were injured.

Mr. De Valera, who is unable to prevent these riots in Southern Ireland, nevertheless, accuses the English Government of being responsible for the riots in Belfast!

The Boll-Weevil Problem

The Boll-Weevil is a pest which attacks and destroys cotton crops. The United States Government, in accordance with the vicious nonsense which masquerades as economics in capitalist circles, is also engaged in destroying or, rather, restricting the cultivation of cotton in order to keep the price up. The same Government employs a large body of men to help kill the boll-weevil, and large sums of money are spent killing it with calcium arsenate. A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian (July 17th) says that people in the cotton areas are asking : “Why kill bugs and at the same time resort to artificial means for crop reduction?” The Manchester Guardian answers the question by pointing out that the individual grower may want the total output of cotton restricted, but wants his own crop preserved. That is so, but whichever way the situation is regarded, it is a splendid example of the shocking lunacy of capitalism.

Who said That?

Students of politics and politicians can guess who said:—

We are leaving no stone unturned gradually to raise the workers’ standard of living. (Times, July 1st.)

You will rightly answer that it is a record played on all die capitalist gramophones, from Tokyo to Montreal, and from Pole to Pole. Actually, these words were used by one of the latecomers, Hitler's right-hand man, Dr. Goebbels. Anyone who still had any lingering suspicion that the Nazis might try to do something for the German workers must, in face of these words, now know that they will do nothing whatever.

The Excuse for Fascism and Nazism

The Nazis in Germany came to power partly through the clever exploitation of a supposed Bolshevik danger. The man who taught them this trick, Benito Mussolini, has admitted (according to Mr. Wickham Steed Observer, June 30th), that his similar story about Italy was utterly false. 

On July 2nd, 1921, Mussolini wrote an article in the Popolo d'Italia containing the passage: —

To say that a Bolshevik danger still exists in Italy means taking base fears for reality. Bolshevism is overthrown.

Mussolini then proceeded to work up a panic about this non-existent danger, as a means of gaining power. When, later on, his attention was called to his double-faced attitude, he replied: —

What I wrote then was true, but it is also true that I climbed into power on the shoulders of those who thought there was a Bolshevik danger.

It is always a sound policy to be suspicious of a known bandit who implores you to let him protect you from some danger supposed to be threatening you.

The Industrial Research Racket

Employers have always been interested in the discovery of ways of reducing the amount of labour required to produce each unit of the product in which they are interested. They have also always considered it useful to obscure their motive —the search for additional profits—with talk of workers’ welfare. Nowadays in the most highly industrialised nations, the whole process has been organised in Governmental and private bodies, which profess to be interested in the scientific study of labour processes, the relationship between hours and conditions of work, and the functions of the human body, and the suitability of the individual worker for particular kinds of work.

Whatever may be the intentions of the individuals responsible for these organisations, and whatever incidental increase of knowledge may result from their efforts, such bodies, in the lump, are absolutely fraudulent. Because industry is controlled by the capitalists and their agents, and operated for profit, these industrial research organisations are only called in by the employer to serve some need of his. The claim of independence and neutrality as between employer and employed is a hollow one. There is a simple test. Let any of these organisations give a single instance of the workers in a factory being allowed to call in research experts to examine the competence, suitability, intelligence, etc., of the directors and shareholders of the company, and their claim to the fees and dividends they receive. This never happens because the object of such investigations is not and cannot be, under capitalism, a disinterested search for truth, it must always be directed to promoting the interests of the profit-seeking class, who own and control.

Evidence of Returning Prosperity

Under the above heading the Daily Telegraph (July 25th) describes how “The prosperity tide is flowing strongly again.” Elsewhere in the same issue are the latest figures of the number of persons receiving poor relief. In England and Wales on January 1st of this year the number was 1,472,891, an increase of 70,166 over January, 1934. The prewar figure (January 1st, 1914) was 761,578. (See Statistical Abstract, 1935, p. 83.)

Looking at profits instead of pauperism there is more justification for the Daily Telegraph's view. The Economist's index of profits shows a continuous and substantial increase each quarter since the end of 1933. 694 companies, which published their reports during the quarter ended June 30th, showed total net profits (after payment of debenture interest, etc.) of £80 millions, and paid an average of 6.7 per cent. on their ordinary shares (Economist, July 13th).

Progress or Only Promises?

Lord Trent, head of Boots, the Chemists, addressing the Royal Sanitary Institute Health Congress, at Bournemouth, on July 18th (see report in Times, July 19th), said some sound things about the conditions of working-class life, marred, however by a quite unfounded optimism. He said that “the practice prevailing last century” was that “of treating labour as a commodity by hiring in the cheapest market and casting aside when done with.” No one will dispute that. His second claim was that ”there existed in this country a growing body of employers . . . who held very definitely the view that there was an obligation upon them to give their employees the widest possible opportunities for making the best of their lives.” He then went on to say that the above obligation “involved a very considerable departure from the practice prevailing last century.” This brings us to the important question whether in truth the present practice is any different from that of a century ago. Granting for the sake of argument that employers hold the view attributed to them, can it be said that it makes any difference to their conduct? If Lord Trent thinks it does will he explain how it is that we have seen during the past crisis three millions of workers cast aside by employers who no longer wanted them?

Either the employers have not changed their hearts or, if they have, capitalism has prevented them from giving expression to the change by treating the workers differently. In either case Lord Trent’s assumption that capitalism will remedy the workers’ problems is shown to be unjustified.

Major Douglas’s Little Joke

When Major Douglas and other Social Credit illusionists are asked why it is that banks pay such small dividends compared with the more profitable of the industrial and commercial concerns, seeing that, according to Douglas, they have the power to ”create credit” without limit, and thus make profits of hundreds per cent., their reply is that the banks pay moderate dividends for "reasons of policy, ” for fear of attracting too much attention.” (See Social Credit, 1933 Edition, p. 157.)

In 1935 (see Times, July 25th), five overseas banks paid no dividend at all, and numbers paid 2 per cent., 3 per cent., and other small amounts up to 10 per cent. It is highly diverting to be told by Major Douglas that bank shareholders, "for fear of attracting too much attention,” rest content with no dividends at all, while Great Universal Stores pays 45 per cent., Beecham’s Pills 27½ per cent., Prices, Tailors, 65 per cent, (they own "The 50/- Tailors ”), Eastwood Flettons 166⅔ cent., Woolworth’s 70 per cent., and the Insurance Companies from 25 per cent. to 100 per cent.

Major Douglas had better think up some more plausible argument—or, better still—scrap the great superstition about “credit creation” and start studying the subject.

Edgar Hardcastle

Historical fascism (2024)

Book Review from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blood and Power. The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism. By John Foot. Bloomsbury, 2023. 416pp.

It has become common for the cry of ‘fascism’ to go up, from both right and left, every time a government or political party enacts or proposes policies which seem destined to increase state control over the system we live under. Some even argue that western capitalism itself is in fact fascism, if a cleverly dissimulated form. One thing historian John Foot’s new book on Italian fascism does is to give the lie to all this. It shows, in the starkest possible terms, how different fascism, in its original incarnation anyway, really was from what many idly give that label to today.

Blood and Power takes the reader on a harrowing journey of violence, torture and murder, without which fascism could never have taken hold of Italy and then ruled the country for over 20 years, only finally collapsing when its leader, Mussolini, made the fatal mistake of allying himself with Nazi Germany and being brought down when Hitler was brought down. Otherwise, the author speculates, the regime may have lasted longer, as did the similar set-up in Spain under Franco. But this book is not just a conventional, linear account (of which there are many) of Italy’s ‘ventennio nero’ (‘black 20 years’), but rather an excavation of that period ‘from below’, seen in large part, that is, via the on-the-ground experiences of many ‘ordinary’ individuals who lived, and not infrequently died, under fascist terror.

And terror it truly was, some of it stomach-churning as we see it depicted on the page. From as early as 1919, those who opposed the politics of fascism, either through declaring themselves ‘socialists’ or ‘communists’ or just voicing opposition to its ‘lawless’ approach, were subjected to brutal and terrifying treatment at the hands of increasingly large and merciless bands of fascist thugs. They were intimidated, beaten, tortured, maimed and often murdered, while the ‘democratic’ state and its authorities (ie, police and military) looked the other way, allowing a sort of ‘state within a state’ to develop. As the author writes, ‘fascism eliminated its opponents with gusto or reduced them to a state of fear’ (…) ‘it was fundamental, visceral, epochal and life-changing: both for those who experienced it, and those who practised it’.

Nor was there any redress for victims, and once the fascist party had taken full power from 1925 onwards, after which elections and any semblance of democracy ceased, it became all the more implacable. So, for example, as the author tells us, ‘it became nigh on impossible to print or distribute any kind of newspaper that wasn’t in full support of Mussolini and fascist rule (…) prisoners were often ‘disappeared’ or ‘committed suicide’ in prison (…) ‘torture was common, ritualised and sanctioned from above.’ The regime relentlessly pursued all its opponents, having no compunction about even sending its spies and agents abroad in pursuit of those who had fled the country and wreaking vengeance on them there. In all, according to the author, Italian fascism was ‘responsible for the ‘premature deaths” of at least a million people, in Italy and across the world’, including of course many thousands of Jews who were transported from Italy to the gas chambers in the latter part of the war.

How does all this compare to what is often referred to as fascism, or at least potential fascism, nowadays, in particular the ‘populist’ politics and regimes that have risen up in recent times? How, for example, does it compare to the current right-wing government in Italy, often labelled ‘neo-fascist’? How does it compare to the politics of Donald Trump in the US and the foreboding about what might be to come if he wins the 2024 presidential election? How does it compare to attempts by the Conservative Party in this country to undermine trade unions or criminalise certain forms of expression or to the apparently racist and ultra-nationalistic policies of right-wing groupings such as the Reform Party? The knowledge that this book imparts of the reality of Mussolini’s one-party state makes it clear that, however retrograde and undesirable it may be, the kind of modern-day populism exemplified above does not bear comparison to the vicious, ultra-repressive, anti-democratic nature of fascism in its original Italian form.

What, however, Italian fascism does share with today’s ‘populist’ ideologies or governments and indeed with the more ‘enlightened’ administrations in most Western countries is that the purpose of them all is to manage the profit system (ie, capitalism). And, broadly speaking, this takes place most effectively, as far as capitalism is concerned, in a political environment where there are democratic elections and scope for relatively free circulation and exchange of ideas. Regimes that do not allow this (eg, China and Russia today), while by no means impregnable in the longer term, inhibit such development and, in the way they operate, are the closest things that exist today to the kind of system excavated and characterised so expertly by John Foot in his exploration of Italian fascism. It should be added that such regimes also inhibit the spread of consciousness necessary for the establishment of the alternative system of society beyond the system of wages, money and profit which this journal calls socialism.

Howard Moss

How the Fascists Gained Power. (1931)

From the March 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the February issue we made the statement that Mussolini came into power because, and only because, he had been placed in control of the armed forces through having behind him a Parliamentary majority. The importance of the question is that we hold the same opinion as Marx on the necessity of the workers obtaining control of the machinery of government before they can establish Socialism. We also hold Marx’s view that the vote will give that control. Two other theories—both held by the Communists and both dangerously impracticable—are that the workers can gain that control without the vote, i.e., by armed force, or, alternatively, that they can set up their own machinery of government in opposition to the capitalist State. The two views converge, because in practice the capitalist class, controlling the armed forces through their Parliamentary majority, will see to it that no rival armed force ever comes into being to challenge their supremacy.

Communists, anarchists, and our own queer tribe of imitators of the Italian black shirts are credulous enough to take Mussolini at his own face-value and to believe his stories about his great march on Rome in 1922.

We have received a letter from Mr. A. T. Rogers, an anarchist, telling us that our statement about Mussolini is a “thumping lie.”

He quotes another anarchist, R. Rocker, as follows :—

“When on August 30th, 1920, the employees of the factory “Romeo,” in Milan, reported for work, they found the gates locked and guarded by the military. This was the signal for the workers to assume charge of the factories and mills. Within a few days over 600 establishments were in the hands of the workers. In various towns, particularly in Rome, tenants refused to pay rent. To relieve congestion in the homes of the workers, etc., rich villas, mansions, etc., were requisitioned for use without the Government daring to interfere. In the province of Palermo peasants invested large estates of the great landowners and distributed the acres among the village corporations. Similar action was taken throughout Sicily and Southern Italy. What effect this movement had upon the Italian Government can be judged by the statement later made in Parliament by Giolitti. Replying to the charge that his Government had failed to act energetically in the matter, the Italian Premier declared ‘What could I do? Invest the industries by the army? But in Milan alone 600 mills and factories were in possession of the workers. I should have had to use the whole army to dispossess them, and then I would have had no more soldiers to keep the masses in check outside on the streets. Had we resorted to violence, and mobilised the whole army, the Imperial Guard and the carabinieri against the 500,000 workmen, then my critics know very well what it would have led to.'”

Mr. Rogers claims that the passage he quotes proves conclusively that the Parliamentary majority “was utterly and helplessly impotent till the Socialists had stabbed the workers in the back by secretly conniving with Giolitti.”

It is, in fact, quite true that Giolitti’s Government in 1920 did not at first take open action against the workers who had “occupied” the factories. What Mr. Rogers evidently does not know is that Giolitti and the friends whose interests he was looking after did not want the workers turned out. That and not “impotence” was the reason for Giolitti’s temporary inactivity.

The whole story was told by the correspondent in Italy of the New York Nation (8th March, 1922).

The Peronne Brothers, proprietors of the Ansaldo Iron and Steel Company, found themselves, after the war, in increasing financial difficulties. They and associated firms were opposed by the Banca Commerciale and Giolitti’s Government. Peronnes were tricked into resisting the demands of their workers by promises of support from the whole body of manufacturers. The occupation of the factories by the workers was not, as has been alleged, the first step in an attempted revolution, but was merely a tactical move in an industrial dispute. But when it had begun, Peronnes’ rivals made concessions to their own workers, and got Giolitti’s Government to delay taking action. to help Peronnes, who were, moreover, in such financial difficulties that they could not afford to pay the higher wages demanded.

The delay in taking action was, therefore, deliberate, and was a move in a conflict between rival capitalist interests. It was contrived for the purpose of damaging Peronnes. Where, and as soon as the Italian Government wanted to take action. it took it fast enough, and drastically enough. The following is a report from the Socialist (April 22nd, 1920). It is interesting to remember that the Socialist, and the Party whose organ it was—the British Socialist Labour Party—were themselves enthusiastic supporters of that particular piece of tomfoolery, the idea that unarmed workers can defy the armed forces of the State.

“At Novara one worker was shot and many wounded by the troops. The Royal Guards were ‘operating’ against the strikers. At Brescia the strike continues. One striker has been killed by the troops. The strike committee of 25 has been arrested. In Turin and Naples the workers invaded the factories from which they had been locked out, formed Soviets and proceeded to work as usual. They were not allowed to work in peace for long. Government troops were sent to storm the buildings. The factory at Turin was the famous F.I.A.T. automobile works. One worker was killed at Naples.”

So much for the occupation of the factories in 1920.

But the real point of our original statement was not merely the events in 1920, but the way in which the Fascists came to eventual power in 1922. We say that the deciding factor was the possession of the machinery of government, vested in Capitalist representatives by the democratic vote of the electors. Mr. Rogers says we err. Let us quote four Italian witnesses, a trade union official, a Communist, a Liberal and a member of the “Socialist Party of Italy.”

Ludovico D’Arragona, Secretary of the Italian General Confederation of Labour, writing in the Labour Magazine (February, 1923), said that the Fascists were “openly favoured by the State authority.”

Bordiga, Communist, wrote in the Labour Monthly (February and March, 1923):—

“After the Nitti, Giolitti, and Bonomi Governments, we had the Facta Cabinet. This type of Government was intended to cover up the complete liberty of action of Fascism in its expansion over the whole country. During the strike in August, 1922, several conflicts took place between the workers and the Fascisti, who were openly aided by the Government. One can quote the example of Bari. During a whole week of fighting, the Fascisti in full force were unable to defeat the Bari workers, who had retired to the working-class quarters of the city, and defended themselves by armed force. The Fascisti were forced to retreat, leaving several of their number on the field. But what did the Facta Government do? During the night they surrounded the old town with thousands of soldiers and hundreds of carabineers of the Royal Guard. In the harbour a torpedo boat trained its guns on the workers. Armoured cars and guns were brought up. The workers were taken by surprise during their sleep, the Proletarian leaders were arrested, and the Labour headquarters were occupied. This was the same throughout the country. Wherever Fascism had been beaten back by the workers the power of the State intervened; workers who resisted were shot down ; workers who were guilty of nothing but self-defence were arrested. Thus the State was the main factor in the development of Fascism.”

Professor Salvemini, a Liberal, gives similar testimony (Manchester Guardian, October 19th, 1927). He wrote :—

“Mussolini was assisted in the civil war (1921-1922) by the money of the banks, the big industrialists and landowners. His Black-shirts were equipped with rifles, bombs, machine guns and motor lorries by the military authorities, and assured of impunity by the police and the magistracy ; while their adversaries were disarmed and severely punished if they attempted resistance.”

And lastly Modigliani tells us (Daily Herald, October 27th, 1927) :—

“It was by their (the Italian Cabinet’s) contrivance and with the help of military forces of the State that Mussolini and his gangs were able not only to administer Castor Oil, but to murder and burn for two years. And it is in that way that they finally reached the point of the march on Rome, in face of which the King openly and personally sided with the anti-Labour onslaught.”

So much for Mr. Rogers and R. Rocker.

In conclusion, we would draw attention to the fact, reported at the time, that the commander of the military forces in Rome was, even at the eleventh hour, and in spite of the arms supplied to the Fascists, quite confident of his ability to disperse the black-shirts in a couple of hours. It was not Mussolini who prevented him, but the existing Italian Government, who ordered him to assist Mussolini.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Mussolini: The Reality behind the Shadow (1932)

Editorial from the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

The industrial city of Turin has hitherto been known as an area where a large number of workers have maintained unbroken hostility to Mussolini and the programmes of the Fascist Party. Recently, under the heading, “Mussolini Conquers Turin,” the Italian Correspondent of the Daily Express (October 22nd and 24th) described how Mussolini had ventured into this stronghold of his working-class opponents and had won them over by his display of courage. The enthusiasm, according to the correspondent, was immense, stupendous ! The Duce was greeted by thousands of cheering, yelling admirers. Turin lay willingly at his feet.

But the gilt on the gingerbread of Mussolini’s popularity is somewhat spoiled by the same correspondent’s account of the precautions taken by the hero to dissuade his opponents from giving expression to their opposition. Mussolini took no chances. First, there was an army of plain clothes detectives, 5,000 strong, rushed to Turin from all over Italy. Italian Air Force machines circled over Turin with orders to open fire on sight of any foreign aeroplanes heading for the city. (This was because, on a former occasion, Italian exiles showered anti-Fascist leaflets over some Italian towns.) Six hundred “suspects” (i.e., people suspected of not admiring Mussolini) were arrested prior to the visit. The route of the triumphal procession was kept a secret until the last moment. All doors facing on to the streets on the route were locked by police order, and on the night of Mussolini’s arrival all the windows in the streets which he traversed had to be illuminated. Lastly, every Fascist in Turin was fetched out to mount guard.

After all this, it is not surprising that the applause was not broken by one jarring note.

The Coming Triumph of Socialism (1936)

From the December 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is commonly said nowadays that the Socialist movement is in the doldrums, making no headway, and without prospect of doing so. And, indeed, this view has much to support it. What with apathy among many workers who formerly sympathised with the Labour movements—which they thought to be Socialist—and very active hostility among others who now give allegiance to the Fascist Governments, the outlook may be thought to be black indeed. Can it be said in face of these facts that the Socialist movement has any future, except to fight a forlorn defensive action against the encroaching dictatorships?

Yet on closer examination, a very positive and important cause for confidence is found to exist, even if it appears in a curious disguise, that of a misrepresentation of Socialism. For while everywhere the defenders of capitalism proclaim the death of Socialism, they are all compelled in one way or another to pay it lip-service, because of the workers' constantly increasing discontent with capitalism. Never before, not even during and after the War,

were there so many millions of workers actively dissatisfied with the consequences of the existing system of society. Never before was discontent so deep and bitter. The effect of this on politics has been that there are no longer any politicians or parties which can hope to remain popular if they declare themselves unashamedly in favour of capitalism. Look where you will, in Europe, in the Dominions, in the United States of America, all of the capitalist parties have had to disguise themselves so that they can escape the unpopularity which attaches to the name capitalism. Roosevelt has to represent himself as an opponent of the banks and big business, has to seek allies among the Trade Unions and Labour groups, and has to put forward a programme containing reforms which the workers believe to be Socialist. The British ruling class long ago had to cover themselves with a camouflage of Labour leaders (the MacDonald group) and will no doubt be seeking before long to secure other Labour leaders to continue serving this purpose now that MacDonald’s star has waned. In France capitalism had to seek new life under cover of a “ Popular Front," led by a so-called Socialist Party. In Germany Hitler has to call his movement “ National Socialist," and promises that Germany shall become Socialist throughout. Sir Oswald Mosley now has to add these two words to the name of his own organisation, because without them he cannot hope to attract essential working-class support.

Most instructive of all are the shrewd manoeuvres of Mussolini. This ex-Syndicalist, terrorist, defender of the assassination of kings, has never forgotten the need to keep a working-class backing, and. to toy with pseudo-Socialist phrases.

At present he is engaged in explaining away the poverty and unemployment that exist in Italy, and is worried because large numbers of Italian workers believe that life in Russia is preferable to life in Fascist Italy. What does Mussolini do in these circumstances? Externally he tells the world that he supports Hitler’s crusade against Russian Communism; internally, he tells the Italian workers not to be attracted by Russia, because Russia is not Communist, but capitalist. In a Speech reported in the Times (November 2nd, 1936) Mussolini said that the Russian system

is to-day but State super-capitalism carried to its most ferocious expression.

They are, then, all in the same difficulty. They are all seeking to defend capitalism and to resist the only possible alternative, Socialism, but none of them dares to say so. In order to defend capitalism they are all obliged to depict it as a form of Socialism. In order to work up hostility to rival powers they all have to stress the fact that the rival stands for capitalism.

Here lies the sure proof of the coming triumph of Socialism. Men’s minds are looking away from capitalism and towards what they believe constitutes Socialism. Much can happen to delay the worker’s understanding of genuine Socialism, but nothing can now stop it.

The kind of thing that delays the progress we desire does not come only from the Fascists, as a recent action of the Communists will show. A manifesto published by the Communist Party of Italy in an official organ of the Communist International actually proclaims the need for a United Front between Socialists, Communists and Fascists.

The manifesto was published in International Press Correspondence of August 22nd, 1936, and contains the following among other passages: —

Let us reach out our hands to each other, children of the Italian nation. Fascists and Communists, Catholics and Socialists, people of all opinions, and let us march side by side to enforce the right of existence of the citizens of a civilised country, as ours is. We have the same ambition—to make Italy strong, free and happy. Every trade union, every workers’ organisation, every association must become the centre of our new-found unity, of our will to destroy the power of the small group of capitalist parasites who are starving and oppressing us.

The concrete proposal in the Manifesto is that the various Fascist and anti-Fascist groups should unite on the basis of the 1919 Fascist programme, which contained a number of proposed reforms of capitalism. Doubtless the scheme is promoted by Moscow in an endeavour to weaken the Italian Government, and a similar scheme is now being advocated by the German Communists. But whatever the motive behind it, such a policy is opposed to the interest of the working class and of Socialism. Seeing that the defenders of capitalism can only succeed by pretending that they stand for the workers and for Socialism, the one thing needed above all others is a concentrated effort to show the workers that the claim is false, and that an unbridgeable gulf exists between Socialism on the one side, and all kinds of reforms of capitalism on the other. Instead of which the Communists, by their action, are causing the workers to believe that it is possible for Socialists and Fascists to combine and work together.

As against all confusion and betrayals, the Socialist Party stands for independence and for clear-cut Socialist principles.

Edgar Hardcastle

North Africa, Italy and Capitalism (1944)

From the September 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Because the Socialist Party of Great Britain is composed of members of the working class who, like most workers, are tied down to the place wherein they sell their labour power, we have not been able to do much to propagate Socialism directly to peoples of other lands. But although we have continually stressed the capitalist evils existing in this country, it does not follow that the S.P.G.B. is blind to the stultifying effects of capitalism in other countries. Indeed, those who have studied our case know that we have always stressed the universal nature of capitalism. Go wherever you will, you will find on one hand a privileged class that, without the necessity of working, can enjoy every luxury and comfort, and even dodge many of the worst effects of war, and, on the other hand, a far larger class composed of those who are forced to work to gain the bare necessities of life. Go where you will and, side by side with the wealth of those who produce nothing, you will see the poverty of those who produce all wealth—the workers.

With this fact in mind, the present writer would address those men and women who have been drawn into some branch of the Services and eventually sent abroad.

Possibly for the first time in your lives you have seen the sordid and nauseating effects of capitalism in countries other than England. You have, perhaps, been to North Africa and seen the dire poverty, squalor and hunger rampant in that vast terrain. You have seen disease-ridden Arabs dragging out an existence on tracts of land where the soil produces nothing that is edible. You have possibly wondered, with science at its present advanced state, why chemical fertilisation of the soil has not been undertaken. To the Socialist the answer is simple : Capitalism does not think such a step profitable.

Side by side with the poverty of the Arabs you have seen the wealth of Continental parasites, who can live in palatial, comparatively hygienic houses that are protection against the flies, mosquitoes, and stinks that beset the major part of North Africa’s population.

Possibly you have been to Italy and witnessed there the abject poverty and hunger of the many and the wealth and plenty of the few. You have seen the Naples slums—and maimed men and women begging in the dusty streets. you have learned, perhaps, that when Mussolini rose to power he ordered the patching up of these slums and the arrest of all beggars seen upon the streets. Thus to the tourist and casual observer slums and beggars did not exist in Italy. The grand facade of brightly coloured house exteriors and streets without beggars did its work in advertising what Fascism had done for the workers, yet merely hid the filth, insanitary conditions and destitution that actually existed.

By learning this, perhaps, you have realised that a Fascist administration, by a ruthless eradicating of visible signs of poverty and squalor, may give a grand exterior to capitalism, but can do nothing towards actually curing the evils inherent in the social order.

You have seen, perhaps, Italian workers too poor to buy the food that will give them proper nourishment. You have seen shops that, through the background operations of prospering, well-fed “black-marketeers” are able to sell, at prices beyond the reach of the. workers, a bountiful supply of food, clothing, and other necessities. You have seen the rich satisfy their wants by paying the prices asked. You have seen the poor, half-fed and in rags, because they are unable to buy.

Fellow workers, many of you have seen these things now. Is it not obvious that the poverty-stricken, stultifying, disease-breeding conditions of the workers are not confined to Britain, but exist in every capitalist country? Does not the magnitude and far-reaching nature of this outworn social order convince you of the importance of abolishing it, with all its contradictious, anomalies and insanities ? Are you not convinced that capitalism should be replaced by a social order wherein all co-operate in producing and distributing the needs of society—wherein there is no master class exploiting a slave class—wherein the whole of society has free access to the products of society ?

Workers! what are you going to do about it?

Frank Hawkins

Notes by the Way: “Forward’s” Views on War and Socialism (1938)

The Notes by the Way Column from the September 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Forward’s” Views on War and Socialism

In its issue of August 6th, the Scottish Labour weekly, Forward, reproduced from the July issue of The Socialist Standard our reply to a correspondent who wanted to know what the workers should do if Hitler and Mussolini attacked Great Britain. Nothing to complain of in that, and we are only too pleased to help any of our foggy-minded contemporaries with a little clear thinking. But though the point of view put in our statement is very nearly the same as that held on this question by some of the people responsible for Forward, the Editor of the latter thought fit to accompany the statement with some irrelevant comment of his own, intended to discredit the S.P.G.B.; the usual jibes about our small membership—as if that has anything to do with the soundness of our position. The most charitable explanation is that one person decided to reproduce our statement because he agreed with it, and some other person could not resist the temptation to add a little spiteful paragraph in the good cause of inducing the readers not to examine the statement on it merits. Then person number one appears to have had his turn again at the end of the column, where the bouquet was handed out to us that some of the passages in the statement showed that serious thought had been given to them, and that they might have been written by Mr. George Bernard Shaw. It may seem ungenerous to refuse a bouquet, but since when has that clever but often very muddle-headed gentleman been an authority on Socialism? That is the trouble with the writers for Forward. They know how to produce an attractive and well-informed journal, but they ought to give up sitting at the feet of Mr. Shaw and others of his kind and do some solid thinking for themselves, about Socialism.

Mr. Shaw and Mr. MacDonald

Mr. G. B. Shaw has recently been accused of favouring dictatorship. He replied in Reynolds Illustrated News that he had been misunderstood. His object, he says, is to make democracy effective. As evidence of the inadequacy of British democratic institutions he pointed out that it was democracy which made possible the career of the late J. R. MacDonald.

Quite a telling point if it were not for the fact that, throughout MacDonald’s career, one of the very clever gentlemen who told the workers to go on putting their trust in MacDonald was Mr. G. B. Shaw. Now if Mr. Shaw had listened to the S.P.G.B. from its formation, 34 years ago, and had used his powers to give publicity to our warnings against MacDonald (and against the whole idea of leadership), the workers would have had a better chance of escaping the disasters that fell on them through following the MacDonald policy. So before Mr. Shaw sets up as a teacher of others he should explain how he came to be so consistently wrong on this issue.

The Basis of International Politics. Profit Not Sentiment

While prejudice and patriotic feeling will sometimes blind the capitalists to their own interests, such factors will not, in the long run, stand up against the pull of profit. In this the capitalist sets an example that the workers would do well to follow. Instead, we find many of the workers still ready to believe their rulers when the latter pretend to be guided by noble sentiments of religion or patriotism. Just now the German, Italian and Japanese rulers are supposed to be sworn to common action against what they call “ Bolshevism," a claim that will not stand a moment’s examination. It was Mussolini who, from the first, entered into the closest and most friendly relations with the Russian Government.

A pact of friendship is still nominally in force, and until quite recently, if not at the present moment, Russia supplied oil to Italy (used to bomb the the Abyssinians) and had warships built in Italian naval yards. In the ten years from 1918 onwards, Germany and Russia were for most of the time in the closest possible relationships in their joint resistance to pressure from France and Britain, and there is not the least doubt that Russia secretly assisted in German re-armament. After Hitler come to power the German-Russian treaty was renewed “in order to further the collaboration between the two countries in the interests of peace." (These are the words used in the “ U.S.S.R. Handbook," page 94, published by Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1936.) During Hitler’s five years of power he has done nothing to interfere with trade relationships with the home of the Bolshevism he pretends to hate so much.

The Japanese Government claims to be saving China from Bolshevism by getting rid of Chiang Kai-Shek's Government, ignoring the fact that the latter for years campaigned to destroy the same alleged Bolshevist elements.

One recent example of the relative importance to the capitalist of sentiment and profit is given by Mexico. The Mexican Government, hard-pressed for money, decided to expropriate the foreign oil companies, and offered what they regard as very inadequate compensation. Here, surely, was one of those wicked Bolshevist actions which would horrify Hitler! But Germany needs oil, and the Government saw the opportunity of getting it cheaply. So while Britain, the U.S.A. and Holland denounce the Mexican Government as robbers, Field-Marshall Goering, for the German Government, pats the Mexican robbers on the back. The following report is taken from the Daily Telegraph (July 23rd, 1938):

An article in the “Four-Year Plan,” the official organ of Field-Marshal Goering, Commissioner for the Plan, defends the Mexican Government’s action in seizing British and United States oil concessions.

The article explains that the Mexican Government, although popular in character, cannot be termed “Bolshevik,” and represents “a peasant and middle-class policy.” Foreign capital in Mexico, it adds, had clearly abused its powerful position.

These opinions are of interest in view of recent purchases of Mexican oil made by the German Government through the medium of an American agent. 

When the Spanish Popular Front Government, broadly similar to that in Mexico, tried to enforce its social reform programme. Hitler and Mussolini, being interested in controlling Spanish mineral wealth and in using Spain to strengthen their naval and military position, found that they were “Bolshevists,” and used that as screen for waging war against them, yet only a few years ago Italy was backing the same “Bolshevists” in Catalonia in their opposition to the Madrid Government.

There is only one safe rule to be followed by the working-class in their effort to understand capitalist politics, whether at home or on the international field. If capitalist governments proclaim their adherence to some noble-sounding ideal or principal, disbelieve them. Seek, instead, for the real motive, one related directly or indirectly to capitalist wealth and capitalist power.

There are Birds at the Bottom of Adolf's Garden

The ways of advertisement are manifold, but there is no essential difference between the publisher who sells literary tripe by the appeal of the highly coloured “blurb” on the cover, the patent medicine vendor who shows pictures of the imaginary patient “ before ” and “after,” and the politician who kisses the babies of potential voters. In each case the advertisement has little or nothing to do with the merits of the article. The extreme case is the military adventurer who covers up his bloodthirsty actions with press puffs and pictures of his passionate love for the little children, or the birds, the beasts and the flowers. Hitler's speciality is birds. The aged military man, Sir Ian Hamilton, recently visited Hitler in his home (and was given a tooth-brush! isn’t that wonderful!). This is what he told the Sunday Express (August 7th, 1938): —

He has a bird sanctuary there.' There are eight thousand nests in it, and they are not nests, as some might think, for eagles, vultures and owls. They are for nightingales and other nice birds that do not prey on their kind.

Perhaps Hitler does not keep vultures because they might give him prickings of conscience. But why didn’t he have some bats for Hamilton’s belfry ?

Senegalese Troops Used Against French Strikers

The old principle of “Divide and Rule” is used as much by the democratic governments as by the dictatorships. While the French Popular Front Government protests against Hitler’s policy of setting the non-Jewish workers against the Jewish, it has no objection to using Senegalese troops against white workers. At Marseilles, on August 21st, Senegalese troops and French navy men were used to unload ships and thus help the employers against the dockers who were on strike (Daily Herald, August 22nd, 1938). Not that the use of black troops is any worse than the use of white naval ratings, but governments know that it is appreciably more difficult to get locally recruited soldiers and sailors to act against their fellow-workers. Men brought from a distant province or another continent — unless they fully appreciate the common interest of the workers against the capitalist class — are more easily induced to act against the workers.

The Prime Minister, M. Daladier, who was responsible for this, also, according to the Daily Herald (August 22nd), gave a broadcast address the same night, in which he made “an amazing attack on the 40-hour week, leading achievement of the French Popular Front to which he belongs."

“The 40-hour week," he said, "must be made more elastic. As long as the international situation remains as delicate as it is, it must be possible to work more than 40 hours and up to 48 hours a week in concerns working for national defence." 

He admitted that the 40-hour law already permits longer hours to be worked, but he “wants the extra hours to be worked not at prohibitive overtime rates, as they must to-day, but with increases which should not go beyond 10 per cent." 

How long the international situation will remain “as delicate as it is" he did not say, nor did he round-off his speech by announcing that Cabinet Ministers had decided to reduce their own pay to the level of a workman’s wages. In war and peace, Cabinet Ministers habitually prefer to preach sacrifice to others rather than set an example themselves.

Why Some Workers Like Prison

A retired judge, Sir Holman Gregory, is writing articles on crime for the Sunday Dispatch. In the issue dated August 21st, 1938, he admits that some workers commit crimes because their lives when at “liberty ” are worse than in prison: —

Their lives when free are so drab and cheerless that a few months’ imprisonment with regular food, under the care of a medical officer, is a relief.

Mussolini Grabs the Money of the Jews

There was a time when Mussolini used to scoff at Hitler’s anti-Semitism, and he scored a neat hit at his young German imitator by pointing out that the Nazi gospel of the superiority of the Nordics was an idea invented by the Jews in the form of the “Chosen Race.” Why, then, has Mussolini suddenly decided to go in for a milder form of Jew-baiting himself? The reason is to be found in the financial difficulties of the Italian Government. Seeing how Hitler plundered the wealthy Jews in Germany arid Austria, Mussolini is doing likewise. The Rome correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (August 6th, 1938) writes as follows: —

Most of the Jews in the country are well-to-do. A small minority is extremely rich. Their influence in banking, insurance, public works contracts, the law. medicine, and retail trades is avowedly out of all proportion to their numbers.

Those with most to lose fear that some form of capital tax may be levied on their possessions. There is no question of exporting capital, because this has been prohibited to all Italians for several years.

It has also been pointed out that the attack on the Jews in Italy will help Mussolini in his propaganda campaign as protector of the Arabs and the Mohammedans generally.

A correspondent in The Times (August 2nd, 1938) recalls that as recently as 1932 Mussolini was telling Emil Ludwig that "there are no pure races left; not even the Jews have kept their blood unmingled. . . . Race! It is a feeling, not a reality. . . ."

National pride has no need of the delirium of race. Anti-Semitism does not exist in Italy.

Are the Jews a Race

It is useful to have Professor Griffith Taylor at the British Association confirming the absurdity of Nazi race theories. He is Professor of Geography in the University of Toronto and spoke on the way the social sciences are being challenged by “the forces of reaction."

About the Nazis and the Jews he said (The Times, August 19th, 1938):—

We are surely all agreed that the term Aryan can only be applied to speech; and that Nordic indicates a “breed ” and can only be applied to race. But few folk realise that the term “Jew” should only be used in connection with religion. We need a new term to express a group linked by purely cultural characters such as language or religion. For such groups I have been extending the use of the word “cult." For instance, in Canada we have in reality no French race, since Frenchmen may belong to one of three distinct races, but only a French cult, linked by common language and religion. So also we should learn to speak of a Jewish cult, since this large group is linked closely by religion and to a lesser degree by language. The Jews, like the Germans, are of two different races. If they come from Poland they belong to the Alpine race; if from Spain they are of Mediterranean race, like all the original Jews of Palestine:

The logical linguistic divisions in Europe, Professor Taylor showed with the aid of diagrams, were undoubtedly Aryan and Altaic. The race divisions were Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean. The German nation, he said, was half Nordic and half Alpine. The Jew belonged to a “cult,” but the dominant Jews in Europe, including about three-quarters of the whole body, were broad-headed Alpines like the rest of the mid-European peoples.

The most logical explanation was that the Polish Jews were the result of the widespread conversions carried on by the Jews in Eastern Europe. A year or two ago the German authorities were specifically excluding the German Jews as of “non-Aryan” race. Racially, of course, they were Alpines like the South Germans, and their language was best called Judeo-German. (The Times, August 19th, 1988.)

Edgar Hardcastle