Does the Navy safeguard our daily bread? (1936)

From the July 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Two opinions about the Navy have been jostling for front place in the past six months. One is that the Navy is rotten: just a lot of old tin-cans waiting for an enterprising dictator to sink them. The dictator, the ex-Labour leader Mussolini, is supposed to have bawled the British fleet off the Western Mediterranean into an Eastern funk-hole, and to have assumed the mastery of the sea. The other opinion is that the fleet retired voluntarily, too proud to fight, or according to some crooked hidden plan of those who decide the foreign policy of the British capitalists.

Which of these is the truth we do not know. Probably the supermen who are in control do not know. Probably the naval experts who advise them, like the professional economists, are all at sixes and sevens, and able to provide every variety of contradictory opinion on demand. As for the theory of a cunning piece of double-dealing, perhaps it is true, as alleged by Continentals who have studied British diplomatic and Governmental methods, that the reputation for cunning enjoyed abroad by the British ruling class is due to pure mischance. The benighted foreigners watch the elephantine blunderings of the British Cabinet and conclude that it must be an elaborate smoke-screen hiding deep-laid plans and plots, simply because it is unbelievable that Baldwin and Co. can really be as silly as they seem.

However, these are realms into which it is profitless for us to go. Instead, let us try to answer another question about the Navy.

What the Navy does for the British Workers

What the Navy does for the British investors who have some £3,000 million invested abroad we know, but what do the workers get out of their masters' expensive little toy? Mr. Kenneth Lindsay, M.P., one of Mr. MacDonald’s ex-Labour Party group, has answered the question. Mr. Lindsay is Civil Lord of the Admiralty and presumably knows all about fighting ships. Speaking in the House of Commons on May 28th, 1936, he told the M.P.s that he identified himself with Mr. Winston Churchill’s statement, “the purpose of the Navy is to ensure the arrival of our daily bread.” He went on to say that “the Admiralty programme was based on months of careful studies. They aimed to make the British Navy 100 per cent, efficient.” (Manchester Guardian, May 29th, 1936.) This should give comfort to us all, the knowledge that the Navy is seeing to it that we are all rightly and adequately fed and that the gentlemen in control have been burning the midnight oil to ensure 100 per cent. efficiency. But not so fast. On turning over the pages of the same newspaper from which that piece of news was taken we find more news about our food. Dr. G. W. Theobald, of the British Post-Graduate Medical School, London, says that at least ten per cent. of our population has to be fed on a weekly budget of 4s. or less for each individual. (Dr. Theobald’s proposal was not more steel for the Navy, but that “every school should instruct girls to take iron for one month in the year to prevent anaemia.”) Another doctor, speaking at the joint conference of the Royal Institute of Public Health and the Institute of Hygiene, where Dr. Theobald made his speech, commented on the inadequate food of working-class mothers: "One finds mothers towards the end of the week living on bread and tea, and saving pennies to buy meat and pies for the boys.” Dr. M’Gonigle and M. J. Kirby, in a recent authoritative study, ”Poverty and Public Health,” have shown that there are 20,000,000 people in this country who are too poor to be properly fed. Mr. Lloyd George, in a speech at the Central Hall, Westminster, on March 13th, 1936, added his testimony (Daily Telegraph, I4th March, 1936):—

We have it on the authority of men of science, who have devoted the whole of their lives to the study of this problem, that over 40 per cent. of our fellow-countrymen are inadequately fed in a land of exuberant plenty and abounding wealth.

There are still millions living in habitations that are unfit for human beings to dwell in, and side by side with these conditions we have statistical and revenue testimony as to the enormous fortunes and huge incomes enjoyed by a few.

We find then that if the Navy’s job really is to ”ensure the arrival of our daily bread,” it falls down badly on the job. Or rather, it ensures that the working class get bread but very little else, for, according to the Medical Officer of Health for Chorley, tea and bread and butter forms seventy per cent. of the breakfast and tea meals of elementary school children in that town, “the term bread and butter” including “bread with margarine and bread dipped and fried in fat.” (News Chronicle, June 13th, 1936.)

What the Navy is really for

Of course there is no need to elaborate the argument. The Navy does not and never did exist for the purpose imagined by Mr. Churchill and Mr. Lindsay. British capitalists might at one time, even if they cannot now, boast of being mistress of the seas, but it was not for the sake of British workers. The purpose of the Navy, as of the rest of the armed forces, is to defend capitalist investments at home and abroad against attacks from all quarters. Mr. Philip Jordan, in an article on ”Empire Defence” (News Chronicle, June 12th, 1936), gives a reasonably accurate account of the reason why the Navy is engaged on keeping open the "pipe-lines” of British commerce: —

”These pipe-lines British naval strategy is concerned to preserve; for upon their unimpeded maintenance depends the ease with which tribute and life flow into imperial Britain: gold and diamonds from South Africa, cotton from Egypt, spices from Ceylon, all treasure from India, tin and rubber from Malay, wool from Australasia; and from all and more of them interest on the loans with which British capitalists dowered them in early and late days.” (Italics ours.)

Among the purposes of the armed forces is defending capitalist property against the working-class. It includes keeping the working-class in perpetual poverty, for only so can they be compelled to submit to exploitation for the good of the class which controls the political machinery, including the armed forces, and through it the accumulated wealth of the country.

What is the moral? An obvious one. The working class must themselves gain control of the machinery of Government and use it, including the Navy, for the purpose of ending capitalism. Then for the first time will the whole population be well-fed, well-clothed and well-housed.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: The Liberal Government's Peace Campaign of 1911 (1961)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is significant that no hope is held out of a “peace treaty” except with America—a country with whom all serious differences have already been composed, against whom, in addition. Britain would hurl her might in vain, and who could inflict damage, where they can inflict it all, with impunity. They could starve us out by stopping their own and Canadian wheat at the granaries. It is admitted that on the day when the States and Canada join hands the "mother country" has got to submit. On that day the treaty becomes in all eyes what from the first it must be in reality—waste paper. It is easy for two nations who cannot fight to make a treaty that they wont.

But the ease is different with, say, Germany. No responsible person suggests a treaty with that country— yet it is Germany that has made a British Liberal Government increase its annual Naval Estimates £14.000,000 in five years. No, derision waits the Minister who dares suggest such a treaty, for the farce would be too apparent. Just as a treaty with America brings peace no nearer because the two could not fight, treaty or no treaty, so a treaty with Germany would bring peace no nearer because, in the face of conflicting interests (without which they would not fight in any event), the treaty would not be worth the cost of its inscription. The humbug, therefore, of the cry of “Peace” and “Disarmament,” is apparent.

And while the British Liberal Government are making the remote corners of the earth echo and re-echo with the empty nothing. ”Peace !” they are voting the enormous sum of £75,000,000 for war—on the principle that they’ll have peace if they have to fight for it.

Strange, is it not, that in all this cry of “peace” but one incentive shows itself? “The burden of armaments. It is the treasure, not the blood, that causes the capitalist head to ache. No wonder—for treasure is the master’s, while the blood is the workers. £75,000,000 in a year is a mighty drain, and the Government that is forced to exact it is in a precarious position. So they scream '‘peace" by way of a soft answer to turn away wrath—and also in the certain knowledge that the result will demonstrate that peace, even as the capitalist understands it, is possible only at the cost of crushing armaments —or national extinction.

Exactly one-half of the Labour Members in Parliament came up to scratch to save the face of their party by voting against the Liberals' immense Naval Estimates. The other half (save two who voted FOR them!) stood out of it to oblige the Liberals!

Keir Hardie says the party were bribed, the Osborne Bill being the price of their defection, and he should know. But we wonder how many would have opposed the Estimates had they been really in danger. How many would dare have gone back to their Liberal constituencies with the confession on their lips that they had helped to defeat a Liberal Government ? Not many, we venture to guess.

From the editorial, 'Why we oppose this “Peace Movement.” ', from the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Editorial Committee note from the April 1961 Socialist Standard.

[The “Osborne Bill,” which Keir Hardie says was the Liberal Government’s bribe to get Labour M.P.s to vote for increased armaments, became the Trade Union Act, 1913, legalising the political activities of trade unions.]

‘Defence diplomacy’ (2024)

From the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Christmas Eve the Ministry of ‘Defence’ announced that a Royal Navy warship, HMS Trent, would be deployed to Guyana in South America. Sky News described the ship as one used for ‘defence diplomacy’ (tinyurl.com/cysxnpyf).

What, then, was the diplomacy that required the deployment of a gunboat in support? The one-word answer is ‘oil’. The Harvard International Review (27 September) noted:

‘In 2015, the oil giant Exxon Mobil discovered 11 billion barrels of oil off the coast of the small Latin American country. The discovery promises to change Guyana forever, catapulting the country and its people to new heights of power and wealth. Oil already generates US$1 billion in revenues annually for the government and will produce an estimated US$7.5 billion by 2040. By these forecasts, Guyana—the impoverished, rainforest-covered country of just 800,000 people—will become the fourth largest offshore oil producer in the world.’

The discovery was off the coast of a part of Guyana which has been the object of a territorial dispute with its neighbour, Venezuela, since the middle of the 19th century when Guyana was part of the British Empire. In 1899 an international court of arbitration awarded the disputed area to Britain. It’s an area comprising some 75 percent of present-day Guyana. Venezuela never accepted the decision, alleging that it was rigged, but didn’t insist too much in pursuing its claim until now.

On 3 December the Venezuelan government, under Hugo Chávez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, held a referendum throughout the country about whether or not to reject the 1899 ruling and to incorporate the area as a new province. The result was a huge majority for, but on a low turnout, and the government duly established the new province, on paper.

Venezuela, much as it would like to acquire control of the new oilfield, is unlikely to try to actually annex the disputed area. The referendum had more to do with the presidential elections later this year and as a way of trying to win votes for Maduro by beating the nationalist drum. In any event, it is not the land, mainly tropical forest with a few gold mines, that Venezuela really would like so much as the territorial waters off the area’s coast where the oil is. Diplomatic talks have begun, with the US and Britain backing Guyana. Hence the dispatch of the Royal Navy warship to carry out its role in ‘defence diplomacy’.

Diplomacy is not a matter of working out what is the fair solution to a dispute between states. An important factor affecting the outcome is the relative strength of the two sides. In relations between states might is right. Venezuela may be stronger than Guyana and so could seize the land it claims. But Guyana is backed by the US and Britain, because they don’t want a state with a nationalist anti-American government to control the new oilfield (they want a friendly state to) or to extend its territory (in fact they have been working to overthrow the government there), and Venezuela is in no position to take them on any more than it was to challenge the British Empire in 1899.

The cannons roar

In another part of the world another Royal Navy warship, HMS Diamond, has also been engaged in ‘defence diplomacy,’ in the Red Sea. In fact it actually used its weapons. As the Royal Navy’s website boasted on 19 December:

‘Diamond’s actions in the small hours of Saturday morning is the first time a Type 45’s Sea Viper missile has been used in action and the first such shootdown by the Royal Navy since the 1990-91 Gulf War’.

The British Minister of War, Grant Schapps, later threatened more ‘direct action’ than shooting down a few drones (Daily Telegraph, 1 January). On 11 January Britain carried out this threat by joining the US by bombing Yemen, escalating the war in the region.

What is going on in the Red Sea is an aspect of the question of who controls the Persian Gulf, its oilfields and the trade route out of it. In 1980 President Carter laid down the Carter Doctrine that: ‘Gulf oil reserves were of vital interest to the US and the US would therefore be justified in preventing outside domination of the region by military intervention’. This was invoked against Iraq in 1991 and in 2003. Now the threat is from Iran, with the US relying on Israel to counter this. Indeed Israel has already bombed Iran on a number of occasions.

Israel is currently engaged in a war of revenge against the Hamas administration in Gaza. The West supports this because Hamas is an enemy of Israel, its asset in the region, only cynically advising Israel not too kill too many Gazans.

Iran and its allies and proxies see the Gaza war as a chance to weaken Israel as the West’s asset. The pro-Iran government of Yemen has been attacking ships bound for Israel or owned by Israeli capitalists. This has led major shipping companies to re-route their ships round Africa, with serious consequences for international trade.

As the Royal Navy’s website explained:

‘An estimated 23,000 merchant vessels pass through the Bab-al-Mandeb choke point – with Suez the gateway to the Middle East and beyond for shipping from Europe… and for Europe from shipping from the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Vice-Admiral Brad Cooper, the US officer commanding the Combined Maritime Forces from their headquarters in Bahrain, underlined that safe passage of the Red Sea was “crucial for the world economy”. He continued: “More than 10% of global trade transits the waters anchored by two globally strategic waterways – the Suez Canal and the Strait of Bab-al-Mandeb. Regionally, it has even greater impact, channelling trade across more than half the globe, ranging from Europe to Asia.”’

HMS Diamond’s commanding officer was quoted as saying: ‘The Royal Navy has always been committed to the protection of maritime trade’. By force if necessary. In this case in the context of the wider conflict of economic interest in the Middle East between the West and Iran over who controls oil in the Gulf and the trade route out of it.

Adam Buick

Tea and Sympathy (1983)

From the August 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

We publish below a newsletter recently circulated among employees of British Aerospace. Warton. A good time was had by all but one.

Visit to HMS Exeter

A party of 10 people from British Aerospace. Warton, travelled to Portsmouth in the early hours of Thursday 16 December 1982 in order to attend a "Day at Sea” organised by the Captain and Officers of HMS Exeter. From the welcome we received on arrival at HMS Nelson at 9.00 am on Thursday morning to the time when we sadly said "Goodbye" to our Hosts at 9.00 pm on the same day, we can say, in all sincerity, that we could have never experienced better hospitality and genuine friendship. After a very short journey to the Naval Base by Navy transport we went on board HMS Exeter and we were officially welcomed by the Officers of the Ship. Coffee was served and we were made very comfortable.

There were approximately 64 guests on board representing several aspects of the community. There were representatives from Thornton Chocolates; from Swan Hunter, where the Exeter was built; representatives from various organisations of the City of Exeter and several others. We sailed from Portsmouth Harbour at 10.30 am and we observed this from the Flight Deck. We were thrilled to see several Royal Navy Ships who also played a very important part in the recent Falklands war. Officers of HMS Exeter were accompanying each group of guests and explaining various items of interest. We were taken to the Bridge where Captain HM Balfour, MVO, and Officers were busy manoeuvring the Ship out of Harbour but not too busy to give us a very warm welcome and their thanks for our support towards them. We were shown every corner of the Ship; from Engine Room to Radar Room, from Officers Cabins to Kitchens. The whole Ship is kept in immaculate condition and the atmosphere on board is very happy, friendly and relaxed.

We sailed towards the Isle of Wight and at 11.45 am we were given a demonstration of the flying capabilities of HMS Exeter LYNX Helicopter; all the visitors enjoyed this demonstration and found it very exciting. At 12.00 noon we were shown an "Open-fire” exercise during which the newly installed guns were fired. These guns were 20 and 30mm cannons. This demonstration was also very exciting and made us all aware that Exeter was ready for any emergency. Between each demonstration drinks were served to the guests in the Officer’s Mess; no effort was spared to make our visit memorable.

At 12.30 a very' appetising lunch was served in the Officer’s Mess and after lunch, British Aerospace presented Captain HM Balfour with a cheque for £180.00, two Tornado framed pictures signed by our Chief Test Pilots and two Video Cassettes featuring the 8 episodes of the Falklands war as shown on Television in the past months. An official Wren photographer from Navy News took pictures of the presentation. Captain Balfour was very grateful for the gifts and asked us to thank everyone at British Aerospace for their part in the "Adoption of HMS Exeter".

After lunch a low flying demonstration by two Hunter aircraft was to take place but, as soon as this demonstration started, one of the Hunter’s came in very low over the Exeter Flight Deck, could not regain control and crashed into the sea killing the pilot. This tragedy caused great concern to everyone present but the Officers worked very hard once again in order to put the whole tragic incident in its true perspective. After tea and sandwiches we returned by “high speed dash" to Portsmouth at 9.00 pm when we took leave of the Captain and Crew. We spent a memorable day and we shall be forever grateful to HMS Exeter.

P. Charlesworth 

p.p. HMS Exeter Fund Committee

These Foolish Things: Nuclear capability—is power (1995)

The Scavenger column from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nuclear capability—is power

China has tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile, diplomats said yesterday, marking another crucial step towards superpower status for the country amid mounting American and Asian concern over its future geopolitical rôle. Coming two weeks after China’s May 15 nuclear test, the new missile is believed capable of reaching the US west coast, and most of Europe. China’s new 0.3 megaton nuclear warhead is expected to become operational next year, Pentagon sources said. (Guardian, 1 June.)

Don't you just love being in control?

Brian Mawhinney, the Transport Secretary, personally vetoed the publication of recent research which shows that children from low-income families and of ethnic origin are most likely to be involved in road accidents. The deaths and serious injuries of children are still rising in spite of an overall downward trend in deaths against an increase in traffic.

Surprise, surprise

“. . . the Labour Party has embraced the need for a ‘dynamic market economy’ in its new statement of values.

The question for voters when they next go to the polls is which of the main parties can oversee British capitalism most effectively.” Richard Thomas and Larry- Elliott (Finance Guardian, 1 April).

Ruling class priorities

“In 1913 Great Britain was at the height of her power and dominion. One-third of the surface of the globe—and three-quarters of all the ships that sailed the oceans—flew the Union Jack.

And the provision in the budget for the Royal navy was 11 times that for the social services.

Eighty years on, these figures are almost reversed. The Navy can draw on less than one-twelfth of the amount dispensed in ‘benefits’. . . we have got into a position where single mothers now get £5.29 billions (far more, in case anyone is interested, that the cost of Trident in the same year).”, Alan Clark, Mail on Sunday, 11 June).

Market forces

There will be no cod left in the North Sea within five years as a result of a political failure to deal with the problem of overfishing, Mark Tasker a British delegate to the North Sea Protection Conference, said yesterday, (Guardian, 8 June).

Class war casualties

The number of industrial accidents in the West Midlands has soared during the past year.

New figures released by the Health and Safety Executive show that the number of major accidents reported throughout the West Midlands jumped by more than 70 percent to 1,088 during the last year, {Evening Mail, 28 April).

Just an ordinary ruler

The Princess of Wales wants her son to be given as normal an upbringing as possible. She will be delighted, therefore, that Prince William has passed his entrance examination for Eton and, like every other normal boy in Britain, will soon be hurrying to his lessons in a black morning coat, white shirt and waistcoat. There will be ten pupils in most of his classes.

Economic oppression

More then 700,000 people have lost their homes since the repossession crisis began in 1990.

The Scavenger

Editorial: Whose Idea was the “Graf Spee” ? (1940)

Editorial from the May 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Graf Spee was scuttled off Montevideo, the Admiral Scheer torpedoed off the Norwegian coast, and the Deutschland rumoured to have been sunk or damaged in some North Sea encounter, the Press and the war propagandists announced these events as the destruction of Nazi ships. “Hitler’s pocket battleships,” they said, “built to outrun or outgun British capital ships or cruisers, had met their end in fight with the warships they were designed to destroy.”

But the curious fact, hardly noticed, is that Germany’s pocket battleships were neither built nor planned by Hitler’s regime but by his predecessors, the Democrats, Catholics and Social-Democrats, who for the most part, ruled Germany from 1919 to the end of 1932. The Deutschland was laid down in 1930, the Graf Spee in 1931 and the Admiral Scheer in October, 1932. At that time, prior to Hitler’s advent to power, two other pocket battleships were projected, but the plan was changed, and two 26,000-ton battleships, the Gneissenau and Scharnhorst, were built instead. The difference between the Nazi naval programme and the earlier one was not a difference of aim but only of method. The pre-Nazi German governments felt still too weak to defy the limitations imposed by the victors in the last war and therefore directed the skill of their naval designers to the problem of building the most powerful and destructive type of ship within the limit of 10,000 tons imposed upon them. Hitler’s Government, working at a later stage of Germany’s secret re-armament came out into the open and disregarded the restriction. The object was the same, that of building a fleet with which to challenge the sea power of rivals, particularly Great Britain. (It is hardly necessary to treat seriously the German Government’s explanation that the “pocket battleships” were “designed with a view to service against the Polish Navy in the Baltic.”)

Similarly it was the pre-Nazi governments which, with the help of Russia and other Powers, were carrying on the secret building up of Germany’s military forces. According to a naval correspondent of the Evening Standard. (April 9th, 1940) the plan for the invasion of Norway was worked out years before and had been “considered as long ago as 1926.”

From German Social Democrats to British Labourites

What are we to conclude from this ? It certainly shows the absurdity of placing the full responsibility for making war on one man. Does it then justify those who maintain that the Germans (including the German workers and Labour Party) are an inferior people, particularly prone to aggression and to being twisted by their naval, military and political castes ? Are they a deceitful race, guilty of having made these preparations for war while talking all the time of peaceful methods and supporting League of Nations schemes for disarmament and peace ? The answer can be found by looking up the record of their counterparts in Great Britain. The 1924 Labour Government, with protestations that another war was unthinkable, nevertheless went on with the building of the battleships Rodney and Nelson, put into effect a programme for five new cruisers, increased the expenditure on the Air Force and planned that Air Force expenditure would go on increasing for several years. Just as, in England, there was a slight protest from a minority Labour group, so also did a similar small group protest in Germany against their Government’s naval programme. The British Labour Government were not, however, by any means sure that the enemy against which these forces might be used was Germany. Indeed, at the 1925 Labour Party Conference the late Mr. Arthur Henderson resisted a resolution for disarmament on the ground that the armaments might be need for defence against France if that country “continued in the frame of mind she was now in” (Conference Report, Page 232).

How then does it happen that British and German Labour politicians claiming to represent the workers’ desire for peace should alike have been instrumental in making preparations for war ? It is because capitalism does and must breed international rivalries leading to war. No amount of good intentions on the part of those who, in the name of Labour, take on the administration of capitalism will disarm that savage monster.

There is ample room in a Socialist world for the peoples of the world co-operating for their common good, but there is no room in a capitalist world for rival powers, each seeking profit through the capture of markets, conquest of raw materials and the control of trade routes and strategic points for their armed protection. For all of them the watchword is “Expand or explode.” Hitler or no Hitler, it is the law of capitalism, the law of the jungle.

The Man in the Street. (1922)

From the November 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

The enemy is once again pulling the leg of the worker by raising the old gag of the “Burden of taxation on the man in the street.” This poor fellow, judging from an editorial in the Daily News (10/5/22), appears to be an infant requiring the guidance of a nursemaid, whom we can all recognise under the name of Miss Print. Through the strenuous efforts of this ubiquitous creature the Man-in-the-Street, infant that he is, is cajoled, frightened, or badgered by various bogeys which are trotted out to distract his attention lest he gain knowledge which will threaten the career of his callous nurse and those who pay her.

One of the chief bogey stunts is the Taxation Bogey, which Miss Print and politicians have used with great effect, and advantage to themselves.

The infant is led to believe by the Daily News scribe that the expenditure on the Admiralty Department comes out of his pocket, and that “the Admiralty has been able, by simple defiance, to reduce the ‘cuts’ demanded of it from 21 millions to 4 millions.”

He is told “not Parliament, nor the Government, but the Departments determine now what taxes you are to pay.”

In thrusting this bogey before the eyes of the Infant-in-the-Street, the Daily Nurse is ably seconded by Labour and unemployed leaders of all descriptions, each intent on fooling the infant into the belief that there is nothing else so important to him as the question of taxation.

Within the capitalist class there is a difference of opinion as to the amount to be expended on the upkeep of the Army, Navy, and other Departmental Services.

The section the Daily News speaks for have not in general an urgent need for armaments on an Imperialistic scale, other than those required for keeping intact the system of private property and the right of exploitation at home. Their outlook is National Defence against the working class, and they profess to trust to peaceful penetration for development of foreign trade; and possibly they consider themselves clearer sighted than those sections who do not judge the situation otherwise than through the spectacles of expansion of trade and exploitation of markets by conquest or a display of force.

However, the economy stunts, whether these take the shape of cutting down Government staffs of clerks and mechanics, the lowering of wages, or fewer orders to armament firms, do not improve the position of the worker whom the Daily News refers to as the Man-in-the-Street.

To suggest to such a man when he is thrown on the unemployed heap that he has been sacked so that he will not have to pay so much in taxes, is sheer humbug. When a man is employed he sells daily, weekly, or monthly his physical and mental energy at a price which on the average is merely sufficient to reproduce that labour force, which, when applied to natural materials, produces wealth, and in the sphere of organisation and distribution carries out the functions which the system of capitalism requires.

You unemployed ! You who are in very truth the Men on the Street. You believe that you pay taxes ; Well, if you do not pay them when you are employed, how can you pay them when unemployed ?

To return to the editorial:—

  “Once again not the real necessities of national defence but what each Department thinks to be necessary for the efficiency of its own service, quite regardless of whether it is or is not being duplicated by others, determines the rate of taxation which you pay.”

Well, what if there is duplication? It is not the workers’ funeral; there are one and a half million unemployed who would be very pleased if there was more duplication, and, either way, duplicated jobs or no jobs, the rate of taxation need not be any cause of worry to them.

The Man-in-the-Street has yet to realise that within the capitalist ranks there are struggles between sections to gain control of the political machinery, in order, among other things, that the burden of taxation; may be made as light as possible for the section in control, and thus we find sectional differences of opinion as to the requirements of the various State Departments.

Each section contends its policy is the best, and appeals to the workers on the grounds of economy and progress.

In reference to the matter of education, we see the antagonism between two sections showing clearly, for according to the Daily News scribe, Sir Eric Geddes asserts :—

  “That it is the work of a visionary with only one eye to educate children for higher positions and advancement in industry when in the very doing of it he is going to kill the industry and the commerce to which these children will have to look for a livelihood.”

Replying to the above, the Daily News writer says :—

  “The answer to that is that the ultimate threat to British industry in competition with American and German is much more likely to be lack of trained brains than lack of capital or credit. It is a misfortune to be one-eyed, but it is a worse misfortune to be blind.”

Here there are two points of view clearly defined, the Daily News admitting that it is not likely there will be any lack of capital or credit, is anxious to carry on in what may be termed the peaceful competitive style; apparently forgetting that the more intense the technical and commercial education, the keener will be the competition not only between workers for jobs (this is probably what the writer had in his mind’s eye), but also between national groups of capitalists for the world’s markets, thus inevitably leading to a war more merciless even than the last.

The other view-point, that of Sir Eric Geddes quoted by the Daily News is, that taxes for education will ruin industry, and he obviously believes that there are a sufficient number of educated wage slaves for the efficient development of industry and trade, and that force is the best method for controlling and gaining markets. Expressed in other terms, this means that naval and army expenditure for the protection of capital and the acquisition of exploitable territories is justified.

Although the struggles for positions amongst the workers who have been educated at Secondary and Technical Schools has reached even now a terrible pitch, the Daily News is prepared to tell the Man-in-the-Street that technical education is a good thing for him and leads surely to good positions in industry.

Thus the minds of many in the working class are impressed with the need for advanced education; and many parents, both in the professional and manual grades of the working class, turn their attention (forced, indeed, by the very pressure of the circumstances of capitalism, though few would explain it in such terms), to the schools of engineering, commerce and commercial “art,” in the hope that in one or the other spheres of industry their children may find safe anchorage and a comfortable income.

It is probable then that taxation for education is likely to be more popular than taxation for the upkeep of armaments, for says the one side : Does not education stand for progress? Are not armaments a monument to waste?

The Socialist message to the Man-in-the-Street is that they are two phases of one thing—the system of capitalism. Capitalist progress means high productivity, profits, economy of labour to the capitalist, but ill-health and nervous tension, robbery of, and unemployment, to the worker.

He has nothing to gain by supporting taxation or anti-taxation stunts from whichever side of capitalism they come, for in any case taxes have to be raised for the upkeep of the various Departments, and they can only be paid from the accumulated wealth which has been wrung from the workers who are the victims of a system of robbery which day by day extracts surplus value from them. It is a misfortune to be blind, but the Man-in-the-Street is not aware of his affliction; nevertheless, the numbers are steadily increasing of those who have seen the light and refuse to be led up the “garden” by Miss Print, and there will be soon a vast army working consciously towards the Socialist goal— Socialism.

E. J.

Ideals and realities. (1924)

From the April 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

No doubt the upholders of this best of all worlds—the present Capitalist system—would like everything to appear coloured in the satisfaction of their own being. From the Duke of Northumberland to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, all are intensely satisfied, because they want for nothing. A rosy world it is for them, coloured in the light of their own satisfied needs. What matter that hunger and poverty stalk abroad unhampered among the working class ; the class that produces the necessities, as well as the luxuries of life upon which these people fatten. “Be reconciled to the present state of things,” they say to the working class “for fear worse things befall you.” “Look at Russia,” and they hold their breath at this spectre, not long enough, unfortunately, to cause internal disruption.

“How silly to strike for better conditions, look at the loss in terms of pounds, and the harm you do to the community by so doing,” they inform the workers. How quickly these people can change their names.

Societies for the reconciliation of capitalists and workers have sprung up like mushrooms and have as quickly disappeared.

The attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable are more than they or their arch priest, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, with all his astuteness, can manage.

They may turn aside for the moment the efforts of the workers to raise their standard of life; an effort which can only be attained at first at the expense of the Capitalist class, but with irresistible force the dam of platitudes is broken down under the pressure of economic forces. The inherent contradictions in the present social system are such as to play havoc with all absolute ideals.

On the one hand the Capitalist desires as much profit as possible. To obtain this he must pay as little as possible for the worker’s commodity, “labour power.” It is always the Capitalist’s desire to keep the price of labour power at a minimum, compatible with its efficiency. On the other hand the worker desires to obtain as high a price as possible for his commodity, labour power. The result is an antagonism between the two, which is impossible in the present social system to prevent. The workers in Trade and Industrial Unions are so organised because they realise that by this method they can more effectively struggle for a better price for their labour power, which price they obtain in the form of wages.

In spite of the nebulous sitting on the fence attitude of many Trade Union officials they are forced to act in this struggle, for otherwise the workers would repudiate them.

During the last few months this conflict of interests has been shown by the Railmen and the Dockers, and now the Miners are proving the truth that this class antagonism cannot be prevented under this system.

The platitudes of Reconciliation. Pacifism, No More War, etc., are like feathers blown about in a gale. 

Not long ago we had the spectacle of professed pacifist Members of Parliament, including J. H. Hudson and A W. Haycock, Parliamentary Members for Huddersfield and West Salford respectively, both of whom had served long terms of imprisonment during the war in their stand against militarism, voting credits for five cruisers, while jingo liberal M.P.’s voted against the bill.

Thus we get the difference between pacifist platitudes and practice. War, and therefore the means for waging war, are almost inevitable in a system in which countries like Great Britain, America, France, Japan, etc., producing an enormous surplus of commodities, and desiring markets for these commodities, get in each other’s way in that desire. The main cause of the last war lies in this fact.

Very few now deny that the competition for markets between Germany, and Great Britain was a big factor in bringing about the last war. The camouflage phrases of the “Rights of Small Nations,” the “crushing of Prussian Militarism,” were but the poison gas behind which the real cause was concealed.

Thè working class by applying their energy to Nature’s materials produce all wealth, yet they do not own it. A small non-producing class owns the greater portion.

In the Manifesto of the S.P.G.B., page 22, a calculation of thé wealth produced in this country from a Capitalist source gave the workers share of this wealth in Great Britain as one-third. On page 23 a computation by Carol D. Wright, one-time Commissioner of Labour to the U.S.A. Government, gave the workers’ share in U.S.A. as an eighth of his product. What does the Capitalist Class do with the remaining portion?

However lavishly it expands this superfluity it is impossible for this class to rid itself of all this abundance very quickly by ordinary channels. Markets must be found to realise the profit on the goods produced. Otherwise these goods lie in the warehouses and become a burden instead of an asset. The fact that people need these goods does not form an effective demand. Workers may go about without boots, clothing, and starve, while the warehouses and shops will be overflowing with these essentials of life. This, simply because the worker has not the wherewithal to purchase them. The more overstocked with goods the warehouses are the greater generally is the misery and poverty of the working class. Such is the paradox of this social system. War is one method of finding an effective market for these goods. There was no unemployed during the war, when commodities produced were quickly destroyed. If only the Capitalist Class could find such an effective method now of ridding themselves of their superfluous goods, what a happy world it would be for them. Unfortunately for them war does not last for ever.

So we have a million and a half unemployed workers living from hand to mouth in the hope that their labour power may be required some time or other when the good god or some other divinity of chance helps the Capitalist Class to rid itself of this superfluous wealth which the workers have produced to their own detriment.

If the working class would only realise that there is no way out of this rut in the present system. If pacifists and other sentimentalists would realise that the cause of war, unemployment, poverty, lies in the Capitalist system, and that the only way to deal effectively with these problems is to abolish this system of the private ownership of the means of production and establish Socialism ; if instead of plaintively attacking the evil results of this system by means of shallow platitudes which, on coming up against reality, they find necessary to throw overboard ; if, in short, they would attack the root instead of the branches, then, and then only, would they have some hope of realising a new and better world.

H. A.

“Rare and Refreshing Fruit” in the Mediterranean. (1912)

From the August 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The greatest democratic Government of our times” were returned to power as a protest against the “wicked extravagance” of the Tory party. They ran on a programme of “Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform,” and claimed their three hundred odd majority as an emphatic mandate for their policy. Six and a half years have passed, and the Ministerial “Daily News and Leader” of July 16 tells us that: “There is the great fact that since the Liberals came into office in 1906 the Naval Estimates have gone up from £33,000,000 to £44,000,000—an increase of £11,000,000 in all. Add to that the £1,000,000 just given from the realised surplus, and you have an increase of £12,000,000.”

In complete answer to would-be apologists the same paper says that: “The Germans spend 22 millions less than Great Britain on her navy —or only half as much—£1 German to every £2 English. Is not that an adequate margin to a great naval nation like ourselves ?”

But the Government does not stop there. Following upon the return of the Featherstone butcher Asquith from the Mediterranean meeting with the Soudan butcher Kitchener, three new Dreadnoughts, we are informed by the Cocoa News, each costing two millions, are to be built. In the words of our informant, “the increasing expenditure following upon these demands will be not less than £4,000,000, and probably £5,000,000, the year after. In other words we are now within easy distance of a £50,000,000 Navy.”

The Cabinet says that the road to Egypt is insufficiently guarded! True once again to Liberal traditions, the policy adopted is in total conflict with every promise Liberals have made regarding Egypt. Gladstone and his successors repeatedly said that England’s stay in Egypt would be very brief and “we” should evacuate directly peace was restored. “Peace” was restored after the most cold-blooded butchery of a people “rightly struggling to be free” (vide Gladstone) that annals can show. Thirty years have passed, but warships and soldiers are still there in great numbers.

While they are prating about peace the Liberals are heaping up armaments all over their empire. Not only in Persia and Egypt are these preparations for slaughter being made, but at home as well, and these forces will be used to crush the toilers by both Liberal and Tory sections of the employing class. And this is the Government which the Labour Party are supporting with their votes.

Adolph Kohn

Fools or Liars? (1921)

From the August 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

A great London daily comes out with the sensational headlines "New British Navy." "Grand Fleet Obsolete." In a following paragraph it proceeds: 

  ''The Grand Fleet is practically obsolete. There are under construction whole battle fleets of ships incomparably more powerful than anything afloat at the Battle of Jutland. In face of the shattering fire of such ships, all of earlier design are liable to instant destruction. Japan has eight under construction, and is voting four more, and by 1925 America will have 12 of these supreme engines of war."

Such men as Liar George, who urged men to their doom with cry that the war was a war to end war, might be asked by some of their dupes who have survived, if they were liars or fools when they made that statement. 

A. E. Jacomb

Between the Lines: Raiders of Zircon (1987)

The Between the Lines Column from the March 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Raiders of Zircon

When I was a little boy (not all that long ago; never all that little) Zircon was the sort of thing that made you sit on the edge of your seat in sci-fi movies. They Came From Zircon. Not to worry: the inter-galactic space warriors (always Americans with traffic warden uniforms) will beat off the alien enemies. The lesson of all those science fiction films was clear enough: us traffic wardens fight hard when it comes to defending Planet Earth against hostile beasties from the Outer Cosmos. It was not until I grew a few hairs on my chest that I discovered that Planet Earth is already occupied by hostile beasties called capitalists whose function in life is to rob blind the majority of earthlings who produce all the wealth.

Last month agents of the capitalists raided the offices of BBC Glasgow for the purpose of confiscating the film of a series of programmes called The Secret Society. You see, the series was made to show that Britain is becoming a dangerously secretive society in which almost anything worth knowing is being declared by law to be secret. How dare the BBC sponsor such subversive untruths? Britain, a police state — where do they get these ideas from? So Special Branch sent the boys down to do over the studio and confiscate the film and make sure that viewers will never see just how many secrets they're missing. Puts your mind at rest, doesn't it?

One of the programmes was about the Zircon project, a spy satellite which none of us are supposed to know about — which is funny really, because it is supposed to be spying on our behalf. Now, had the programme been shown it is doubtful whether many workers would have been much the wiser about Zircon. But with the aid of that idiot cunning for which the present government now has a Reagan-grade reputation, the police raid had the effect of making large numbers of workers want to know what it is that the state is so eager to hide from us. Censorship will not succeed in stopping people wanting to find out what is happening in the world. Back in the good old days the men from Zircon would have exterminated Malcolm Rifkind with a laser gun but last month all we got was a mundane emergency debate in the House of Commons in which Gerald Kaufman (whose jackets might well have been designed by the firm which used to produce laser guns) said that the whole affair was intolerable.


News From the Nozzers

If Zircon doesn't make you think of creepy things in black and white movies nozzers certainly should. Nozzers are skinheads with legal permits: trainee members of the Royal Navy BBC2's four-part series (Mondays. 10.15pm) was called Nozzers and about what it is like to suffer the misfortune of becoming one.

A nozzer s life is not a happy one. Most of them joined to see the sea; instead they spent their first week's training learning how to straighten the pillows on their beds and shine their boots and march up and down like clockwork Nazis. No wonder they all felt homesick. This was one of those films in which the producer allows the viewer to relish the suffering of some other sucker. What can be better after a day at Dagenham screwing bits onto Ford Fiestas than watching a bunch of nozzers being sent on an assault course which involves crawling through mud-filled pipes and running through cold water? At least someone else is having it worse than you.

When nozzers go down to the pool for a swim it does not involve a few lengths and a bit of splashing about: in Nozzers we were shown them being poked with sticks by the swimming instructress to test their readiness to drown in icy water. Alas, most of them were all too ready. How can human beings descend to such undignified thuggery? But watching Nozzers they seemed more pathetic than contemptible: wage slaves driven into a sick institution as an alternative to unemployment or other forms of dullness. Prince Edward was no fool. (Well, perhaps that is something of an overstatement). Not for him was the life of a nozzer — or whatever the marine equivalent may be. He decided to retire while the going was bad. But the poor kids shown in this series — what is the alternative for them?


Plague-Ads

While it may or may not be the case that all the nice girls like a nozzer, if they have been watching the TV ads carefully they will be insisting that he wears a condom. TV ads have travelled a long way since they used to just advertise Omo and going to work on an egg. In recent times ads have been used to mould public morality, warning us about smoking and drinking and now "unsafe sex”. The symbolism of the AIDS ad is about as subtle as a Bernard Manning gag. Rocks, hammers chipping away at them, darkness — why can't they just come out with it and tell us what's naughty instead of all these laboured hints?


The Tabun and Sarin Show

A scientist holds up a cube of sugar: "A piece of tabun or sarin of just this size kills 2,500 people when it is dropped on them". Tabun and sarin are chemical weapons, a means of murdering vast numbers of people which is just as deadly as nuclear weapons. These weapons are currently possessed by Russia, the USA. France, Iraq, Syria, Israel and South Africa. As many as fifteen countries might possess such weapons and many more soon will.

Iraq has been using these weapons in its war against Iran and that was the subject of Panorama (Monday, 2 February. 9.30pm. BBC1). Chemical weapons have been outlawed internationally for some years, just like CND would like nuclear weapons to be. But that has not stopped them being used. As Tim Renton, the British Foreign Minister, admitted, no law can stop "unscrupulous" companies making profits out of selling chemicals to governments intending to use them for weapons.

Now what can Mr Renton mean about profit making being an unscrupulous pursuit? After all, was it not Norman Tebbit who, as Minister of Industry, defended in the House of Commons the sale of torture equipment by British companies to foreign dictatorships on the grounds that such trade was part of the usual competitive process? In fact, Panorama showed that Iraq's chemical weapons production complex at Samarra was constructed partly by German, British, Australian and Indian firms.

If, by the most remote possibility, there was ever an international decision to outlaw nuclear weapons it would be as wholly unenforceable as that concerning chemical warfare. And even if it was enforced, what would stop governments which had previously used nuclear weapons threatening the world by converting to chemical weapons? There will be no solution to the hideous weaponry of modern warfare — all too clearly depicted in its awful effects on the Iranian casualties shown in Panorama — until the war-producing system is abolished, together with its Zircon Project, its nozzers. its moral sermonising and the rest of its blemishes which pop out like sores from our TV screens.

 Steve Coleman

The Finest Flower of Capitalist Culture (1945)

From the January 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. A. V. Alexander, M.P. (Labour), First Lord of the Admiralty, celebrating the launching of a new naval vessel, tells us what is mankind's greatest mechanical achievement: 

  The modern battleship is perhaps the greatest of man’s mechanical triumphs, and this ship is possibly the greatest of them all. (Daily Mail, December 2nd, 1944.)

News in Review: The Labour Party and the Queen's Navee (1964)

The News in Review column from the April 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

The Labour Party and the Queen's Navee

Well, in the end Mr. Wilson was able to force the Prime Minister to withdraw his allegation that the Labour leader wanted to give the Royal Navy to the United Nations which presumably made somebody, somewhere, happy.

Mr. Wilson, we may assume, loves the Navy, which is natural enough because after all perhaps no part of the British armed forces has done so much to set wider still and wider bounds of the glorious British Empire on which, once, the sun never set.

Nor was it only in the House of Commons that the Labour Party were standing up for Jolly Jack Tar. The Tory government had hatched a wicked plot to abolish the name Admiralty and to substitute the name Navy Board which as everyone knows does not summon up the vision of a blue cocked hat half as well. The government put this plot into a Bill and they pushed it through the Commons but the House of Lords was a different matter.

The Tory peers woke up when they realised what the government was up to because they thought that this was mucking about with tradition (one of them spoke about “a religious intensity”) and that when Jolly Jack Tar’s head is stuffed full of a lot of nonsense about tradition he obeys his officers more readily and is keener to die for what he thinks is his country.

Labour peers were awake too. Lord Alexander said: “Admiralty . . .  is something a little more majestic, something which . . . has left a lasting world impression" and Earl Attlee, waspish as ever, hoisted his own battle signal: “I believe in preserving things with great traditions".

Thus encouraged, the original Tory objector divided the House and Labour and Tory peers steamed in irresistible convoy into the same lobby to defeat the government by eight votes. The torpedoed government agreed to the amendment and the Commons, chastened by the Upper House’s greater reverence for the traditions of British arms, relented too. We still, therefore, call it the Admiralty.

Any Jolly Jack Tar who in future may be blown up, or drowned, or otherwise killed, in the interests of the British ruling class can take consolation from the fact that he dies under the organisation of something called the Admiralty and not something with a non-traditional name like the Navy Board and that this is all thanks to the united efforts of Tory peers and of Labour peers who, although they call themselves Socialists, were ready to fire a broadside for the glorious, blood-soaked traditions of the Queen’s Navee.

Abroad

Primaries in the States

Presidential primary elections, which were introduced into the United States about the turn of the century, were designed to prevent the big party machines foisting their own candidates onto the American electorate. The method of the elections varies widely from state to state but in all of them the voters get a chance to say, in one way or another, who they would like to see standing for President.

In fact, the men who eventually fight it out are usually those who would probably have been nominated if the primary elections had never been held. Although the candidates are formally picked at the party conventions, the men who do the picking in the smoke-filled rooms necessarily take the popular will into account, whether or not this has been sampled in the primaries.

Thus although Kennedy won the Democratic nomination in 1960 after fighting some classical political campaigns in primaries, in which he convinced his party that he was a vote winner, Stevenson got the nomination in 1952 without entering a single primary.

The conventions choose the man they think most likely to win the election. This year, it is as certain as anything can be that the Democrats will make a formality of confirming President Johnson as their man. For the Republicans, however, the choice is more complicated.

Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who flexed his political muscles in the last election when he virtually compelled Nixon to modify his platform, is a candidate who has lost some popular support because of his recent divorce—as if that affects his ability to run a great capitalist country. Senator Goldwater, who has expressed ideas so out of tune with the contemporary needs of American capitalism that it is hard to believe that if he gets the nomination he will not modify them, was strongly fancied until the accession of Johnson rallied Democratic support in the South, where Goldwater was once reported to be making inroads.

Neither of these men, at the moment, seems likely to satisfy every Republican yearning for a candidate to take them on a glorious bandwagon to the White House next November. There are others waiting to take advantage of a possible deadlock; Governors Romney and Scranton, and plain Mr. Richard Nixon, who still sourly protests that he has had enough of electoral disappointment.

Whoever the two parties pick, it is sure that their running mates for the post of Vice-President will be a vote-catching compromise, in the same way that Johnson’s Southern origin and mature political skill was designed to offset Kennedy's youthful, Northern “liberalism.”

This is how the great American political parties, just like their counterparts over here, defer to the political ignorance of the working class voters—which is what they must do of they are to have a hope of winning. And what, in the end, comes out of it all?

On November 3rd, the American working class will go to the polls to decide who will run capitalism in their country over the next four years. The result will not appreciably alter the conditions of the millions who cast their vote. Like Peter Simple’s Marshal Bolster, we can confidently say that whoever gets the most votes will win. But, unlike Bolster, we can also confidently say that whoever this is, it will not matter a damn.

Politics

Translation of Sir Alec

Like Bottom, Sir Alec Douglas-Home is translated—and sometimes he could almost be wearing an ass’s head, to boot.

Before he became Prime Minister, Home's image was that of an amiable, unfussy, courteous aristocrat who took to politics only because of a desire to serve us of the lower orders by being one of our political, as well as one of our economic, masters.

For somebody who owns as much as Home does that must have been a pleasant pretension. But his promotion has changed all that. The courteous aristocrat is now trying to be the tricky, funny politician.

Home has grown famous for the facetious cracks with which he evades Opposition questions in the House of Commons. (The Daily Telegraph reports these cracks as priceless gems of humour but surely even the Tories will grow tired of them?) And he has recently earned more infamy by his remarkably ill-judged attack on Harold Wilson over the latter’s alleged desire to give away the Royal Navy and by his statement that when he was ready to debate Wilson on television he would “send for” the Labour leader.

This last crack, with its implication that politicians tell the TV men what to put on, and when, upset some sections of the press and within a couple of days of each other both The Guardian and the Observer had a go at Home, warning him that in his present vein he is more likely to lose votes than to win them.

Poor Sir Alec is only doing his best and perhaps he is pleasing the Tory faithful. Doubtless, if he thought for a moment that he was losing votes he would change his line overnight.

For like all capitalist politicians the Prime Minister must know that truth and consistency are not particularly important in the great vote hunt. It may be ironical that the leader of the Gentleman’s Party, and the recent holder of an ancient title of chivalry, should descend to such methods but that, after all, is all part of the dirty game of politics.

And anyway it usually goes over with the voters. Bottom in his ass’s head was irresistible to Titania after she had been dealt a drug. At times it seems that the working class, infatuated as they are with their leaders, must themselves be under the influence of a love potion.

Business

Threat from Japan

Part of the official propaganda campaign during the last war was aimed at convincing us that the Japanese were a lot of little yellow monkeys who committed some fearful atrocities.

There was, of course, a lot of truth in the atrocity stories. But what the Allied propaganda did not publicise was the fact that the war was not being fought to stop the Japanese maltreating their prisoners.

Japan is one of the world’s great trading nations, with an economy which must export to live. In this, she is similar to Great Britain; both countries in the past were driven by their economic needs into an imperialist policy. Both, too, in their adventures to find and to hold on to foreign markets, built up powerful armed forces.

When the last war started, Japan was a monster competitor in the Far East, such as Commodore Perry could not have dreamt he was unleashing when in 1853 he first tried to open the country as a market for American exports. It was to tame the monster which Perry had all unknowingly awoken that the last war in the Far East was fought.

Since 1945 the Japanese capitalists have been progressively recovering from their defeat; although in this nuclear age they are no longer a great military power, their trade offensives are as forceful as ever. Japan is the world's greatest shipbuilding nation. Its cheap cameras, transistor radios, motor cycles and so on flood into the markets of the world. It has beaten its rivals out of one market after another in the Far East. It dominates the economy of South East Asia, exports heavily to North America ($1,750 million worth in 1963) and Europe ($880 million), and is busily expanding into Africa ($460 million).

Japan is an important trading partner to South Africa, with which she is currently running a trade deficit (1963 exports $80 million, imports $110 million). This has had an amusing political side- effect; rather than offend the Japanese trade representatives by subjecting them to the humiliations of racial discrimination, the South African government has decided that the Japanese are actually Europeans—which shows how flexible racial theories can become under the pressure of economic interests.

What all this adds up to is that Japan, despite her military defeat, is still a powerful competitor in world capitalism. At the moment the situation seems to be under control. But who, remembering Manchuria, and China, and Pearl Harbour and finally Hiroshima, would dare to say that it will remain so?

A death on the ocean wave (1981)

From the August 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The profit making drive of capitalism demands that no institution, however steeped in the traditions of history, is immutable or inviolate. Nothing—and most certainly not the vapourings of the nostalgically-inclined—will be permitted to stand in the path of exploitation and accumulation.

So it is with that steadfast and patriotic instrument of human misery and oppression, the Royal Navy. In an age in which British capitalism, no longer in a position to plunder the riches of a colonial empire, has found it more convenient to throw in its lot with Western Europe, the Navy in its present form has come to be seen as an increasingly expensive anachronism. (Philip Geddes, in an article contributed to the New Statesman of 29 May, compared the cost—£7 million—of a Leander class frigate of eight years ago with its £130 million successor, the all-missile-armed Type 22).

That the Navy is still required to “defend" British shores does not alter the fact of the increasing irrelevancy of much of its hardware: an ocean-going battle-fleet is a highly impracticable proposition when it comes to keeping open the Channel ports. And, as Geddes has observed, “The fishery-protection and offshore-resources squadron is something of a joke—sometimes, its ships can be outrun by modern trawlers." In short, some sections of the sea-going Navy are ripe for the chop.

The Navy is also farcically top-heavy in other areas. For example, there is an admiral for every front-line ship currently in commission—nearly 100 in all. The Admiralty also employs 32,000 workers in its naval dockyards and a further 5,700 personnel in its administrative and design departments at Bath. So the dockyards are to be run down and savings made elsewhere.

These decisions must be viewed in the context of the government’s determination to arm itself with a Trident missile submarine fleet. For this baleful indulgence Britain’s capitalists must stump up £6 billion—a figure already challenged as a gross under-estimate. Then there is the (again, conservatively-estimated) £10 billion to be found over the next ten years to pay for the replacement—with the Tornado—of the ageing Jaguar and Vulcan bombers. Set these figures alongside military spending during the current financial year alone of £12.3 billion, to which must be added the £220 million spent so far on the recently-launched and almost certainly abortive aircraft carrier Ark Royal and we have some measure of British capitalism's current arms-spending problems.

One conclusion must stand out clearly from the current debate on the condition of the Navy and of the armed forces as a whole: it has nothing to do with a reduction in the destructive capacity of the British ruling class. As has been indicated, if the Navy is to be pruned it is because it has become, at least insofar as its surface vessels are concerned, inordinately expensive, and highly vulnerable to attack from guided missiles.

The Trident missile system, on the other hand, is massively effective and relatively invulnerable. A frigate tied up in port or sinking in the Channel is no match for a submarine containing—should the Defence Ministry opt for the most advanced form of Trident—sixteen D5 missiles each fitted with fourteen independently-targeted warheads.

Arms Sales

A revealing—and wholly characteristic—factor in ruling class thinking on armaments is what is sometimes euphemistically termed “spin-off”. This means the sale of military hardware to “friendly" powers. Such sales not only line the pockets of the arms manufacturers and traders but can also offset in part the manufacturing country’s own arms budget. Capitalists the world over vie with each other to exploit the available markets. One has only to recall the deal short-circuited by the Iranian revolution—made by the British government to sell the Shir-Iran tank to that other implacable enemy of the working class, the late unlamented Shall of Iran, to understand how much profit is up for grabs in such transactions. Not that such profiteering is confined to western capitalism: its eastern counterparts, as represented by Russia and China, paddle in the same stinking morass.

The crowning irony, even to those who view the more bizarre of capitalism’s activities with relative equanimity, must be the projected sale, by the USA, of arms to the Chinese. And this coming on top of the disclosure by US Government officials that the USA has equipped two listening posts in north-west China for the purpose of monitoring Russian missile tests. What price America’s alleged ideological differences with “communist” China now?

But in this same field, perhaps the ruling class of India must take the highest a- ward. In 1978 ninety of their surplus Centurian tanks found their way, through the Spanish arms firm Barrieros Hermanos and a Norwegian broker, Fearnley and Eger Chartering, of Oslo, to, of all places, Pretoria. (Guardian, 15 May).

Both western and eastern capitalists can fall foul of their own perfidy as a consequence of shifting political and economic alliances: the USA and Vietnam, for example; or Russia and Egypt. In each case the client state changed sides. But, whichever way the cat jumps, the mercenary crooks who enrich themselves by dealing in arms are unlikely to require a change of pillow in the night. Rather will they buy themselves a new phrase-book.

The cost of fighter aircraft has become astronomically high. Jan Connell, Defence Correspondent of the Sunday Times (29/5/81) quotes a study by James Fallows, Ex President Carter's speechwriter: “One aircraft manufacturer estimates that 'if present trends continue, by the year 2054 today’s entire American defence budget would buy just one plane' ”. Dare we hope that capitalism will one day strangle itself in the entrails of its own ludicrous “defence" policies?

Who Loses

As for us of the working class, we may indulge ourselves with hand-wringing lamentation — our masters' withers will remain unwrung. The fact remains, however, that it is through the efforts of the working class alone that the arms race is allowed to proceed at all. Who, after all, makes the weapons? Who makes the machines that make the components that go to make up the weapons? Who works the mines? and who pours the steel? Indeed, who makes the paper and metals to provide the capitalists with their money-tokens and their bills of exchange, without which no marketing could take place? One thing is certain: it is not the capitalist. (But who will sweep up the profits?)

The largest question of all, however, must be: who are destined to slaughter each other in unprecedented numbers with the sterile products of their own labour-and brain-power in the next of capitalism’s wars? Once we start to ask ourselves questions such as these we are halfway toward finding the answer to others even more pertinent. But such interrogation is a service we can only render ourselves; nobody else can do it for us.

Richard Cooper

Political Notes: Abandon-ships! (1981)

The  Political Notes Column from the July 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Abandon-ships!

Many muffins must have been choked over, in the tea shoppes of places like Tunbridge Wells, at the news that a Tory government may be thinking of scuttling the Royal Navy. In such places there is a perceptible effort to get time, if not to stand still, at least to be reined in. Retired admirals perambulate the streets in hazy dreams of those days of the great, grey battleships looming out of the Channel mists, of royal reviews of line after line of floating fire-power at Spithead or Scapa Flow.

Such people—although they would rather die among the muffins than admit it—have a marked affinity to Labour lefties. Both types vote for their party in the belief that it will not face up to the realities of capitalism. The only difference between them is in the differing realities that they believe will be evaded. And both undergo a nasty shock, when their delusions are blown aside.

Tory governments have done a lot of this blowing. Since they came back to power in 1951, they have not shown any great reluctance to move with the times. Under their rule British capitalism, as it had to, has pulled in its horns. The old British Empire has been dismantled, the armed forces reduced in keeping with the new, restricted influence in world affairs. Eden’s lunatic adventure into Suez in 1956 was a hiccup in this process, soon put right by the saner, smoother MacMillan who worked hard to get the Tories to accept what he saw was inevitable.

Now there is very little left, except for the dreams in Tunbridge Wells—and the Royal Navy, which once expressed in its flags, its guns and its vast ships the world wide expansion of British capitalism, has very little left too. There is no reason for a Tory government not to face this fact. It would be near madness for them, at a time of recession, to spend a lot of money on a navy for which the British capitalist class has little use, simply to placate some of its wilder supporters—in Tunbridge Wells or the Bacup working men’s club.


Mitterrand’s soft ‘socialism’

Francois Mitterrand, the new president of France, is treading a tightrope at the moment, trying on the one hand to retain his popularity with French workers by offering them sops such as increased minimum wages and security benefits, and on the other hand to remain respectable to the French Establishment.

Perhaps Prince Charles will have given him a few tips on how to do that when he went to see him recently. Certainly, his announcement that he will fully maintain France’s arsenal of nuclear weapons for the defence of French property will have reassured a number of people with property interests there.

This opportunist posing is not quite as curious as the headline which appeared in the Sunday Times on 24 May: “Mitterrand softens his socialism to win electors’’. Socialism means the abolition of all property and profit, and the planning of production for use on the basis of common ownership. It is not by its very nature something which can be “softened”, watered down or dressed up to “win electors”.

It is a harmonious social system which would solve the world’s present social problems. Mitterrand stressed right from the start of his campaign that he wishes to modify the present system, not end it. It can only be ended when the majority reject the inflated promises of all capitalist politicians, regardless of their labels. Do not trust anything, including this journal. We can only suggest the cause of our problems to you. The solution lies with us all. The need is to organise democratically, without leaders or promises.


No choice

An awful lot of venom is currently being excited, and expressed, in what is politely known as political debate. The unemployed—or rather those of them restless enough to demonstrate about their plight—shriek their loathing of Margaret Thatcher. To the Tories and to not a few Labour supporters—Tony Benn is a wild eyed fanatic who wants to legislate some nameless dreads into our lives. All of this is based on the theory that political leaders can initiate the crises of capitalism. If that theory were valid, capitalism’s history would be different, for if leaders can initiate a crisis they can just as easily terminate it. Yet this they never seem able to do.

Then again why is it that this turbulent, endless search for the perfect leader — or the perfect combination of them — never succeeds, so that there is always a clutch of the wretched people being reviled. spat upon, bombarded with stale eggs? Why is there always some threat, potential or actual, to set back the programmes for peace and plenty? There can be only one consistent and satisfactory answer. Political leaders do not initiate crises: they only respond to them. So it is more useful to regard their personalities in that light, as shaped by events rather than being able to shape them.

But such rational, supportable views of politics would deprive the competition between the capitalist parties of much of its excitement, a lot of which revolves around a personal dislike for the others' leaders. Except that there is an alternative to this futility—a proper understanding of the basis of capitalism and thereby of the ideas, political and religious theories, the philosophy and the morals, which spring from that basis. Such knowledge is much more exciting—because it is much more powerful—than parading the streets shouting for the demise of some leader or other. It is knowledge to change more than leaders—it will abolish them, and change society itself.