Excuses and Admissions (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

When he was Prime Minister, and a plain Mister, Earl Attlee made something of a name for himself as a calm, quiet, pipe smoking, doodling, ruthless chief. Now that he is in retirement, his views are much sought after by the newspapers, radio and so on, who presumably think that there is nothing so sage and objective as the opinion of the elder statesman. A few months back, Earl Attlee went to a meeting of the World Association of World Federalists in Bonn and there made the sort of speech which was expected of him. In the course of that speech he said, as an indication of the urgency of resolving international disputes, that there were “… not more than ten years in which to find the road to peace.”

Now this was something of an admission. If there was one thing for which the last war was suppose to have been fought, it was to ensure a peaceful world. Earl Attlee, as Deputy Prime Minister in the wartime coalition, played his part in promoting that idea in the minds of war-weary workers. Yet here we are, fifteen years after, still apparently looking for the road to peace.

Of course, Earl Attlee’s statement is by no means exceptional. Many politicians have a seemingly infinite capacity for explaining away, and promising to remedy, the malfeasances of capitalism. Whatever the strife and poverty which may be evident at any time, there is never a shortage of smooth politicos, each with his solution to the world’s problems and the hope of better times to come, when we have found the road to peace or prosperity or some other paradise.

Take, for example, the recent trouble in Laos, over which the State Department displayed its famous trigger-neurosis. A popularly touted solution to this flare up was the recall of the 1954 Geneva Conference. This, we were invited to believe, would do something to settle the Laos disturbance. But this is what the 1954 conference was supposed to have already done; remember the knighthood which Anthony Eden received for the part which he played in it? Now we have evidence that the disputes in Indo-China are as rife as ever. The new trouble spot—Laos—was, in fact, established as an independent state by the Geneva Conference as part of its supposed peace making. What reason is there to assume that another conference would have any more lasting effect than its predecessor? None whatever. Nevertheless, this is all that capitalism’s representatives have to offer.

It is true that these conferences sometimes seem to bear fruit. But this is only a superficial impression; actually, they can only ever manage to suppress one aspect of a particular problem, which is simultaneously in evidence, or about to emerge, somewhere else. Consider the case of Cyprus. For years, the Greek Cypriot nationalists fought the British forces on the island, taking occasional time off to kill Turkish Cypriots or their own traitors. Then came the Zurich Pact which, when the various disagreements had been hammered out, seemed to have put an end to the fighting in Cyprus. Now, apart from the odd settling of a score which was made during the emergency, all is peaceful on the island. What about the rest of the world? We have already mentioned Laos; the war in Algeria goes on; the Belgium Congo is still in bloody confusion. And we know that, if an international conference were to settle these conflicts, similar problems would spring out somewhere else. Perhaps, even, in Cyprus again. This may make the conference look pretty sick as a pacifying instrument, but we can depend on it that it will not prevent the politicians from offering it as a remedy when the world’s next sore spot breaks out.

This is not peculiar to the international scene of capitalism. At home, the working class are familiar with—and, sadly, receptive to—the excuses and nostrums which flood from the organs of capitalist opinion as fast as the events which provoke them. Sometimes, directly opposite solutions are proposed for the same problem. The government has stated that, to stabilise the British economy, they must impose some strict controls over hire purchase facilities. In contrast, there are many spokesmen for the industries which thrive on H. P. who take the view that the way to stabilise the economy is to remove, or at any rate to relax, those restrictions. Neither side has any interest in pointing out that the H.P. boom, and the recession which followed, is an example of the fundamental anarchy of capitalist society. At least one firm in the domestic appliance industry felt the H.P. cuts extra keenly because, when the restrictions were off, they invested in a lot of extra productive capacity to enable them to exploit the market which had opened before them. When the squeeze came, this production—and a lot of workers— became redundant.

Is it too much to hope that the redundant workers will reflect that they have been caught in something which, we were assured, could never happen again? Some capitalist economists are fond of blaming the 1929 crash onto the fact that, in the excitement of the preceding boom, there was a lot of reckless investment which was bound to collapse sooner or later. This was supposed to have taught everyone a lesson. Yet some of the stories which have gone the rounds in the City about the recent collapse of a couple of H.P. finance companies almost recall the days of the South Sea Bubble (although admittedly no company has again reached the blissful state of raising capital to finance “an enterprise the nature of which is to be divulged”.) In their eagerness to exploit the boom the financiers trusted their weight to as creaky limbs as their forebears did in the twenties. Whatever other changes there have been, the basis of capitalism—production for sale—remains. And with it remain the anomalies and upheavals, try as the politicians may to explain them away.

What is to be done about this? Should we look for better politicians, with better excuses? Self evidently, this is futile. Wars, uneasy peace, booms, slumps, poverty are part of capitalism because they spring from the roots of that society. No politician, however smooth, can change that. This, strangely, must be done by the working class over the world. These are the people who produce our wealth, suffer capitalism’s wars and its insecurity. Now, they accept their leaders’ excuses and apologies. As easily, they could reject them.

Ivan

Editorial: Labourism Proposes – Capitalism Disposes (1946)

Editorial from the November 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

The members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain are not among those short-sighted electors who, having helped to elect a Labour Government to power, are now turning in astonished resentment to rend their idol of a year ago. We never had any illusions about Labour government.

Socialism cannot be achieved until there is a majority of socialists and they gain control of the machinery of government for the purpose of abolishing capitalism. Until then, notwithstanding all the efforts of reformers to improve the existing system and administer it differently, the evils of class society, based on the exploitation of the workers, will remain to throttle the progress of the human race. The Labour Party rejected this conception and holds that a Labour government, backed by non-Socialist voters, can administer capitalism on non-capitalist principles and mould it gradually so that in the ultimate a different system will emerge. Outlining his Party’s point of view, Mr. Attlee wrote in "The Labour Party in Perspective" (Gollancz, 1937, p. 138) : “Some future historian will not be able to point to a particular date as that on which the Socialist State was established . . .” That is the Labour Party’s view, but it is wrong. Socialist society is not being gradually introduced by Labour government; it will start when, and only when, a socialist working class comes to power. That will be the end of an epoch and the beginning of a new one and later historians will not be in any doubt when it happened.

Sharing Mr. Attlee’s belief, millions of workers, who last year gloried in the Labour electoral triumph, thought that at last they would have a government able to control, improve and gradually to eliminate the capitalist system of society. Never did anyone cherish a more baseless illusion. Having no mandate to introduce Socialism, Mr. Attlee and his Cabinet colleagues have no alternative, even if they desired one, but to administer capitalism. They are riding the tiger and have to go where it takes them.

In the book quoted above Mr. Attlee said “The Labour Party is, of course, opposed to imperialism  . . .” (p.230); but opposed or not, the Labour Government is committed to the maintenance of the British Colonial Empire, to the policy of protecting British “spheres of influence,” to the policy of using military force to keep control over strategic bases, trade routes and foreign territories where vital raw materials are found. British Forces prop up the Greek Monarchy, stand in Egypt, Palestine, Iraq and elsewhere, and British capitalist interests clash in all quarters of the world with the like-minded imperialisms of Russia, U.S.A. and other powers. The Labour Party in opposition dreamed dreams of world brotherhood, but the Labour Government in power must willy-nilly pursue a policy suited to the needs of British capitalism. Thrusting a vastly increased flood of British exports into the markets of the world may look like a friendly act to the British exporter, but it has a more sinister aspect to the rival powers trying to keep or to conquer the same markets for their own exports.

Linked up with the export drive is the Labour Government’s pledge to provide “full employment.” Those who have eyes to see can already glimpse the shape of things to come. More and more workers are being employed on producing goods for export, and we are told there is an unlimited demand for these goods. But what will happen when capitalism lurches into its next inevitable crisis of “over-production ‘? Already we have seen the writing on the wall in the shape of the stock exchange depression in U.S.A. in September. The City editors of the London and New York papers were all at sixes and sevens about the immediate cause and likely duration of the depression but on one thing they nearly all agreed – that the crisis of “over-production ” is bound to come. A typical comment was that of the New York Correspondent of the Observer (8/9/46) —

“Americans generally . . . take it for granted that there will eventually be a crash of some kind to offset the present boom. Their hope is that the crash will be brief …”

Another appeared in the Daily Express (23/9/46) : 

“The Wall Street slump marks the end of the first post-war boom just as the similar break of November, 1919, signalled the world trade depression of 1920-21. That is the view of some of the best brains in the City.”

A world trade crisis is bound to come, and the more the Labour Government succeeds in increasing the dependence of British industry on selling goods abroad, the more certain it will be that the full effect of the crisis will be felt here immediately.

Another example of the way Labour Party policy has swerved away from its early preachings is in the forms taken by nationalisation. A book that was once very popular in Labour circles was "The Case for Socialism", by Mr. Fred Henderson. In it he frankly, faced up to the fact that Socialism involves dispossessing the capitalist class and that it is mere self-deception to suppose that you can both make over their property in the means of production to the community and at the same time give them full compensation for it. “If the nation gave them compensation, in the sense of giving them an equivalent for what it is proposed to take from them, we should fail in our purpose” (p. 20-21). A later, modified view, Mr. Attlee’s, for example, in his "Labour Party in Perspective", was that it would be unfair to expropriate the capitalists gradually, industry by industry, because the first to fall would have a legitimate grievance; also it would be better tactics to give them all “reasonable and just compensation” and then rely on taxation to eliminate the gulf between the capitalist class and the working class.

In practice the capitalists in the nationalised industries are being given what even Cabinet Ministers call “generous” compensation and at the same time Mr. Dalton’s first budget did not increase, but decreased taxation on companies in the form of the Excess Profits Tax. Taxing the rich out of existence may look all right in an election programme, but capitalism will only function if the capitalist has confidence in his ability to make a profit, so the Labour Government has had to safeguard profits and warn the workers against pressing too much for higher wages The rich are still with us in full force and nothing the Labour Government will do will alter it. Mr. Attlee may say “The abolition of classes is fundamental to the Socialist conception of society ” (p. 145) just as the Conservative Party can now give lip service to the same idea – “Mr. Churchill was telling them that England was moving towards a classless society and that the Conservative Party should not just accept the fact but actively promote this historic change” (Mr. D. Eccles, Conservative M.P., Times, 14/10/46) – but capitalism and classes are here to stay until Socialism ends them.

Also on nationalisation of industries, it used to be a Labour Party demand that the workers should be in control. Mr. Attlee ("Socialism for Trade Unionists", 1922) declared that “the general direction . . . will be in the hands of representatives of the workers in the industry in consultation with representatives of the users of the service.” Another Labour writer, Mr. E. E. Hunter, particularly warned against “the danger of national ownership being given over to committees of business experts.” “Democratic control,” he said, was an “essential part of any ideal scheme of nationalisation” ("Socialism at Work", I.L.P., 1921)

Nowhere in the nationalisation schemes now being put into operation will any vestige of these allegedly essential principles be found — they are incompatible with the functioning of capitalism and have had to go.

So one by one the Labour Party’s well-intentioned but ill-conceived schemes for bettering the capitalist system are sacrificed by the Labour Government in office. It could not be otherwise. The idea was that on taking office a Labour Government goes forward with the work of undermining capitalism and encroaching on the powers and wealth of the capitalists. The reality is that on the day a Labour Government takes office to administer capitalism it is forced to turn about arid begin the retreat from its beliefs so that capitalism may be kept running. The Labour voters believe that the Labour Government is in command of the situation. In truth — and doubtless by now even the most obtuse Labour minister begins to realise it — capitalism has the Labour Government in an iron grip. The Labour Government hoped to serve two masters, what they call the policy of serving the interests of all sections of the community. As time goes on and the working class become restive about the non-appearing fruits of labourism the Government will find itself more and more divorced from the workers and from its own pre-election promises.

Running Commentary: Human nature (1982)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Human nature

We watched them go about their daily affairs as the television narrator quietly described aspects of their way of life. “Here”, we are told, “No man or woman has authority over any other man or woman . . . wealth is shared communally, if one person manages to catch many fish the whole community benefits including those who are not able to work. or who have not worked on that particular day . . . they operate on the basis of 'from each according to his hunting ability, to each according to his hunger' . . . the land, forests and rivers are owned by nobody and no one works for anyone else." Worlds Apart (BBC2 10/9/ 82) was examining the lifestyle of the Panare Indians of Venezuela, with a lot of well presented evidence to repudiate the myth that it is “Human Nature" to be acquisitive, uncooperative and to wish to live in societies with hierarchies of wealth, power and status.

Here were people, physiologically the same as everyone else, who displayed none of the behavioural characteristics which have sometimes been labelled as immutable features of human beings. Through its historical stages, property society has cultivated people to think and behave in selfish and acquisitive ways. Although cooperativeness has always been a striking feature of mankind — as people are social animals and we cannot organise any society without working with each other — in capitalism we have had to cooperate with each other under coercive conditions.

In some parts of modern society with a long history of property, vicious aspects of human behaviour like the barbarism of war are offered as proof of brutal human nature. But war, and people’s behaviour in it, are products of a social environment not a natural propensity to violence. Property society pits people against each other.

An owner can say “This is mine, it is not yours, we have different interests". If the object is a factory the owner can say, “Because this is mine, you will have to spend your life working in it to produce wealth for me, and because the levels of my profits are inversely related, we will be in a constant struggle". The Panare have no notions of property and consequently no notions of competition. They have no competitive sports and those which are played in neighbouring areas, which do put people or beasts against themselves, are looked on as meaningless.

The Panare live in a small tightly-knit community which is a little suspicious of outsiders and does not use much modern medicine or technology. Such communities illustrate the behaviour that homo sapiens are capable of enjoying.

However, civilisation is marching into the forests of Venezuela with its Deeds of Land Ownership in one hand and its police forces and prisons in the other. New roads and a huge bauxite mine will soon disfigure the regions inhabited by the Panare for, as the television narrator observed, “to the investors and entrepreneurs the communities who presently occupy the forests are obstacles to progress". Curiously, in The Investors' Dictionary, the word “progress" is spelt profits.

Parker’s pen

The bookshops will not be troubled by long, disorderly queues of people desperate to buy a copy of Father of the House — the political reminiscences of John Parker, Labour MP for Dagenham. Parker is the longest-sitting Member — he has been in Parliament for 47 years — and that is how he qualifies for this fatuous title. And he has become a strangely tedious man, liable to pass over events of historic importance in some ill-considered laconism.

But it was not always so. Parker was once at the centre of an incident vital enough to reveal the true unsavoury character of the Labour Party. In 1945. Attlee appointed him Under Secretary at the Dominions Office which, as the Secretary of State was in the Lords, put Parker in charge of the affairs in the Commons.

His ministerial career did not last long. Parker refused to intervene over the death sentence passed on a Boer farmer in the (then) South African protectorate of Swaziland who had killed his girl friend. Of course only black people were hanged in South Africa: at that time a white man had not been executed for 15 years. The South African Prime Minister appealed to Attlee to help maintain this racist version of “justice" and the Labour Prime Minister was ready to oblige. Parker was sacked and never offered a job in a Labour government again.

This episode did nothing to reduce Parker’s ardour for the Labour Party. A quirk of his was that he often agreed to take part in public debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain. His defence of the Labour government’s desperate attempts to organise British capitalism was unconvincing but no matter how many times he was floored by the SPGB, Parker persistently got up for more.

In his old age. does he reflect now on these instructive experiences in his political life — on the practical and theoretical destruction of the case for the party to which, through thick and thin, he gave his misguided loyalty?

Jaws

A ten-year-old boy was recently killed by an automatic exit barrier at an underground station in Newcastle on Tyne. It happened very simply and very suddenly. The boy jumped, or tripped, into the barrier, which snapped its jaws about his neck. It took a long time to free him and he was dead by the time they got him to hospital.

Anyone who has had a thoughtlessly trailing piece of luggage bitten by these barriers knows how aggressive they are, with that malevolently watchful eye to trip them into action. The barriers are installed, in places like Newcastle and London, to stop people travelling without paying a fare — to stop them using the railways as a means of travel instead of as a means of yielding a profit to the owners. They are not designed to distinguish between those who are evading paying a fare and those who are just not totally alert to the instantaneous demands of electronic ticket checks.

The cause of profit making is greater than all others, in the morality of private property society. Truly, it is greater than any human being, or of any collection of them. In this cause it is permissible to herd long suffering workers, probably trying to get to and from the places where they are to undergo the indignities of being exploited by their masters, into canyons of electronically controlled discipline. To stray deliberately from the canyon could mean that they are punished — fined, imprisoned — and if they do this by accident they may even be killed.

In many ways — some trivial, some substantial — capitalism informs the working class that they are socially inferior, exploited, degraded. This information is sometimes emphasised in episodes of bitter tragedy, which would not have happened but for the class divide of capitalism, or for the production of wealth as commodities, or for the poverty of the majority of people, or for some other essential feature of capitalist society.

Such an incident was the death of the boy in Newcastle. There will be an inquest, which may decide that it was an accidental death. A better verdict — simpler, straighter, more accurate — would be that Capitalism Kills.

Blogger's Note:

"A quirk of his was that he often agreed to take part in public debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain." 

According to the SPGB debates wiki page, Parker only debated the SPGB once, in June 1948 at Fulham Town Hall. (The SPGB speaker was Clifford Groves.) My guess is that the wiki page is incomplete, and that Parker did debate with the SPGB on more than one occasion. He was a Fabian intellectual in his early political career, and such types had a tendency to debate again and again with the SPGB.

How Labour changed (2025)

From the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Originally formed in 1906 as a trade union pressure group in parliament, in 1918 the Labour Party adopted as its long-term aim a nationalised economy. This, together with a redistribution of wealth to create a less unequal society, was to be achieved gradually by measures taken by a succession of Labour governments.

This strategy — Labourism — failed, and how! Instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism, it was capitalism that gradually changed Labour. Learning from the experience of being in government, that the only way capitalism can run is as an economic system driven by profit-making and that this has to be given priority, Labour gradually evolved from an alleged labour party into an avowed capitalist party.

Here is how it happened.

1. 1906. 29 trade unionist MPs elected with Liberal support constitute themselves as the parliamentary Labour Party.
2. 1918. The party adopts a new constitution, Clause Four of which reads: ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service’.
3. 1929. An amendment added ‘distribution and exchange’, spelling out that nationalisation (state capitalism), not socialism, was what was envisaged. (Link)
4. 1935. ‘A Labour government, therefore, not only by the transference of industry from profit-making for the few to the service of the many, but also by taxation, will work to reduce the purchasing power of the wealthier classes, while by wage increases and by the provision of social services it will expand the purchasing power of the masses’ (Clement Attlee, Will and the Way to Socialism, p. 42).
5. 1945. General election manifesto: ‘The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.’
6. 1956. Labour intellectual Anthony Crosland published The Future of Socialism in which he argued that the aim of a more equal distribution of wealth did not require the nationalisation of industry.
7. 1959. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell proposes to abandon Clause Four but this is turned down by the Labour Party conference.
8. 1974. February general election manifesto: ‘It is indeed our intention to (a) bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families’.
9. 1995. New Clause Four adopted: ‘A dynamic economy, serving the public interest, in which the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition are joined with the forces of partnership and co-operation to produce the wealth the nation needs and the opportunity for all to work and prosper with a thriving private sector and high quality public services where those undertakings essential to the common good are either owned by the public or accountable to them’.
10. 2024. ‘Labour is the party of business’ (Starmer). ‘Be in no doubt, we will campaign as a pro-business party — and we will govern as a pro-business party.’ (Link )

How Labour governed (2025)

From the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eighty years ago this month, the Labour Party won a landslide victory in the General Election held on 5 July 1945. Clement Attlee became the Prime Minister of the first Labour government to have had a parliamentary majority.

Labour hadn’t fought the election on a socialist programme, but its manifesto did declare — in words that would cause ministers in the present Labour government to throw up their hands in horror — that ‘The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain’. By ‘socialism’ was meant the nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy — coal, steel, railways, electricity, gas, and water.

On this they were as good as their word. The coal mines, the steel plants, the railways and the utilities were nationalised, as was the Bank of England. The previous owners were given generous compensation, with the shares they had held being transformed into interest-bearing bonds. The workers in these industries remained wage-workers and the interest paid to the bond-holders came out of the surplus value they produced. This was state capitalism, not socialism.

That the Attlee government governed in the interest of the working class is a myth.

It did establish the National Health Service with free treatment and free prescriptions. Although this was introduced in the capitalist interest to provide a fit workforce, it would be churlish not to recognise that not having to pay for medical treatment and medicines was of benefit to workers. Other measures that could be so regarded were the repeal of the anti-trade union laws introduced after the capitalist class victory in the 1926 General Strike, and a democratisation of the franchise.

But it was still a government of capitalism and, as capitalism cannot run in the interests of the working class, the Attlee government inevitably came into conflict with the workers. A leaflet we distributed in a local election in Northern Ireland in 1963 recalled a number of the actions it took as ‘part of Labour’s black record when it waged war against the workers in the interests of British capitalism between the years 1945 and 1951’:

(1) Used CONSCRIPT TROOPS to BREAK strikes.

(2) Imposed a ‘PAY PAUSE’ and ‘INDUSTRIAL CONSCRIPTION’.

(3) Used (in peace time) a wartime Order, 1305, in an effort to have striking trade unionists JAILED.

(4) Had workers RESISTING BLACK-LEG LABOUR sentenced to IMPRISONMENT and FINES under old PROPERTY-PROTECTION ACTS of 1875.

The Attlee government itself first introduced charges for some health services. It also developed the atomic bomb.

It is not just the present Labour government that is governing in the interest of the capitalist class. The Attlee government, despite its socialist pretensions, had to as well since that is what has to happen if you take on responsibility for running the political side of capitalism. You have to apply its economic laws that prioritise profit-making. It doesn’t matter how able, sincere or sympathetic you might be. Capitalism simply cannot be run in the interest of the working class.

Blogger's Note:

The July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard carried a number of pieces on, what was then, the seventieth anniversary of the 1945 Labour Government. Articles included:

• Editorial: Labour's Strange 'Revolution'
• Labour Government Wasn’t the Way to Socialism 
• 50 Years Ago: 9 Months of Labour Rule

Churchill's damp squib (1953)

From the June 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

On May the 11th Sir Winston Churchill made his speech proposing that the leading Western Powers should have informal private meetings “at the highest level” with Russian representatives in order to explore the possibility of relaxing the international tension. He was not very confident that worthwhile results would be obtained but argued that the signs of change in Russia since Stalin’s death made it desirable to try.

“It might well be that no hard-and-fast agreements would be reached, but there might be a general feeling among those gathered together that they might do something better than tear the human race, including themselves, into bits.”

“I only say this might happen. 1 do not see why anyone should be frightened of having a try at it.

“At the worst, participation in the meeting would establish more intimate contacts. At the best we might have a generation of peace”

(Daily Herald, 12/5/53.) 

It was received with rapturous approval in the daily Press and among the Labour Party Opposition in the House of Commons. The Daily Herald, reporting its reception in the Commons wrote that "the Prime Minister was several times more loudly applauded by the Labour Party than by the Tories.” And on the following day Mr. Attlee, in his reply, stated that Churchill’s “general tone and approach” had been warmly welcomed on the Labour side. (Daily Herald 13/5/53.)

“His survey of world affairs, like Sir Winston Churchill's the day before, was constantly cheered by both sides."

Beyond the modest expectation that something might come from these personal contacts among the topline politicians there was very little in any of the speeches. But the world situation has become so acute and is generally viewed with so much despair that even a small grain of hope sufficed to rouse enthusiasm among the millions of potential cannon-fodder of the next world war.

How small the grounds for optimism was admitted or implied in the speeches themselves for it has all been tried already and in vain. Churchill recalled that, in addition to the personal contacts with Stalin that preceded the cold war, he had in 1945 sent a “peace appeal” telegram to Stalin urging the avoidance of abuse and counter abuse. He also now tentatively proposed a new treaty to guarantee Germany against attack by Russia and Russia against attack by Germany —a new “Locarno” treaty. But the Locarno Treaty of 1925, which guaranteed France and Germany in that way, was a dead letter. As the Daily Herald pointed out,

“When Hitler violated it by re-occupying and fortifying the Rhineland, no action was taken." (Daily Herald, 12/5/53.)

The keynote of the Churchill speech was the need for “realism”; gone are the high hopes of universal peace through United Nations, now, in effect, we should get back to the old diplomacy of trying to do a deal piecemeal on each issue as it arises. Or as Mr. Attlee put it:—

“ The Prime Minister, I think, made a very realistic speech and it is necessary to be realistic in foreign affairs. So many critics do not realise that all international relations are a subject for everyone and you cannot do just what you want to do."

But the significance of this confession of lack of faith was not explicitly put by Mr. Attlee though it was implied when he stated in the same speech:—

“It is desirable wherever possible, and in foreign affairs particularly, that government policy should have the support of all."

It is an admission by Mr. Attlee that the Labour Party accepts the view that there should be a “British” foreign policy confronting the National policies of all the other Powers. And as we live in a world of capitalist national groups all alike engaged in the cutthroat struggle for survival and expansion, this means acceptance of all the trade rivalries, contests for markets and colonies, the armaments and armed bases and the wars big and little that ensue as the contestants manoeuvre for advantage. Against this background all the aggressions of all the capitalist national groups are equally “realistic”; they only cease to be so when, through insufficient military force to sustain the aggression, they come to failure.

This “realism” is for the working class not a doctrine of hope or even of making the best of things but a policy of being passively submerged in the drift to war.

illusion of the Labour Party as of the Tories and Communists is to suppose that there are ways of running capitalism which will avoid war altogether or at least will confine the wars to some other parts of the world, leaving Britain immune. There is no such policy. If by realistic is meant recognition of the facts of the situation and avoidance of self-deception the only policy for the working class of all countries is to get rid of capitalism. While capitalism continues, in Britain, America, Russia and all the other countries great and small, it will continue to be true as Mr. Attlee said, that in foreign relations he cannot do just what he wants to do. Only Socialists want in foreign affairs the Socialist human relationships that they want at homeland only as the workers of all countries become Socialists will they have identical aims which will obviate all international conflict.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years ago: Party Politics (2001)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the B.B.C.’s “Party Political Broadcast” series the listener has been honoured recently with contributions from Mr. Churchill and Mr. Attlee. Both speeches were printed in The Listener (22/3/51 and 5/4/51) which is the source of the quotations used in this article.

Mr. Churchill commenced in the best tradition by praising Mr. Bevin who had just resigned the Foreign Secretaryship, modestly interposing: “Although I differed from him in his handling of many questions.” He then got under way in the best Churchillian manner: “My friends, our country is in a position of danger and perplexity.” It appears that at home we are divided, the re-armament programme is being muddled, to nationalize steel at this time “is playing party politics with a vengeance,” and Britain is not playing her full part in leading the world on the road to peace, and so on. In fact all those things one would expect from a Leader of the Opposition who takes from “Tin Pan Alley” his theme tune “Things aint what they used to be.” Mr. Attlee, of course, has the same theme; it is only a question of different emphasis. He denies the criticisms of Churchill and says: “the Opposition continue their usual tactics of exaggerating all the difficulties of the age we live in and attributing most of them to the Government.” Of Churchill he says, “He is out to get back to power by hook or by crook. During the last few months he has been resorting to various political tricks in order to try to defeat or harass the Government.”

There may be an election in the near future. The political pollsters whom Mr. Attlee dislikes, forecast that the Conservatives would romp home if an election took place now.

That the problems of today tend to make one forget the problems of yesteryear cannot be denied. But anybody who remembers, or has read, the records of Conservative governments in the past, can only come to the conclusion that such an action must be a negative one based on the maxim “they can’t be any worse than the present lot.”

[From an article by Guy, Socialist Standard, June 1951]

Editorial: No socialist theories in the Labour Party (1949)

Editorial from the December 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nobody can read carefully the speeches of Labour Ministers about Socialism and Capitalism without soon discovering that their minds are in a muddle about what they mean. And it all traces back to the fact that the Party was “founded by non-Socialists and has perpetuated among succeeding generations of members a tradition of avoiding inquiry into Socialist theory. This is not merely an outside criticism but a statement accepted proudly by the Labour leaders themselves. Mr. Attlee has often referred to it without any realisation that it can be other than a matter for self-congratulation. In 1938 he contributed to John A. Lee’s “Socialism in New Zealand,"  a Preface from which the following passage is extracted:

“ He (John Lee) recognises frankly the work of the Radical Governments which held power from 1891-1912. He acknowledges the Socialistic legislation of the Conservative Governments which held sway after the war. Indeed, he makes the point that these Governments were, despite all their prepossessions, compelled to adopt Socialist expedients in order to meet practical problems. This is an eminently practical book. There is little or no abstract theory. Like the British Labour Party, the New Zealand Socialist Movement is not doctrinaire. It draws its inspiration from the same broad streams of thought and emotion as in the Old Country. Its Socialism is the result of a common-sense endeavour to bring society into conformity with social justice." (P. VI.)

The same disregard for Socialist theory comes out iu an appeal for subscriptions and donations just issued of the Fabian Society over the names of Attlee, Cripps, Dalton, Laski, Morrison and others in the New Statesmen (5.11.49).

"Our full members are, and always have been. Socialists; but beyond insisting that our Socialism is ‘democratic,’ we leave them to define the word for themselves.”

As the individual members of the Fabian and Labour Parties may, and do, define the word how they chose, they can never agree on what they mean.

For most of them nationalisation as in the Post Office is Socialism; but it was Mr. Attlee himself who in the New Statesmen (7.11.1931) called the Post Office “the outstanding example of collective capitalism.” This was one of the few occasions when a Labour Party leader happened to stumble on the truth.

It was said at a time when the Labour Party was switching over (for vote-catching reasons) from the "Government Department” form of State capitalism to the “Public Board” form, now embodied in the nationalised mines and railways. But here again their past admissions rise up to smite them for in 1923 (Daily Herald, 30.7.1923) Mr. Herbert Morrison had admitted that the Public Board (he had in mind the Port of London Authority) is a capitalist device, to enable the capitalists “to do for themselves collectively what they and a number of private companies had been unable to do with success individually.”

Another statement by Attlee on the Labour Party's lack of Socialist theory can be found in his “Labour Party in Perspective” (1937, Page 36): —

“ It is characteristic of the British Labour Movement that the origin of the Labour Party is to be found in fact rather than in theory. The Labour Party was originally the by-product of Trade Union activity. . . . The Movement which resulted in the return of the first Trade Union representatives to the House of Commons in 1874 was far from being revolutionary, and the men themselves were not Socialists. They entered Parliament, not to overthrow the Capitalist system, but to win for the workers certain definite reforms. Apart from their specific demands on Labour questions they formed part of the Liberal Party.”

This brings us to the root of the matter in a manner not perceived by Mr. Attlee. The Labour Party does not work without any theory, nobody does, but with theories that are not Socialist.

And when we look at the result we see the force of the remark attributed to Disraeli, that men who boast of being practical are usually to be found practising the errors of their forefathers.

Notes by the Way: Bigger Armaments Under Labour Government (1949)

The Notes by the Way Column from the December 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bigger Armaments Under Labour Government

In the course of an explanation why taxation is so much larger than before the war, Mr. Douglas Jay, M.P., Economic Secretary to the Treasury, recently repudiated the view 'that it is solely due to expenditure on social services. He was speaking to the Westminster Savings Committee, and went on to tell them of another reason: —

“Equally important is the growth in defence expenditure (£750 million to-day, compared with £200 million before the war), and also in debt interest due to the war.” (Daily Express, 4.10.49.)

Mr. Jay was seemingly content with his explanation but he should now answer the question “What has happened to the Labour Party’s promises that when they came to power they would know how to settle international problems peacefully and drastically cut down the Armed Forces?"

Instead they have to accept responsibility for peacetime conscription—opposition to which is now left to Tories and Liberals—and for maintaining the Armed Forces at far greater strength than in 1939. The number now is 765,000, just over twice as many as before the war.

One consequence of the Labour Party being responsible for running capitalism and keeping its Armed Forces up to standard is that that Party moved far away from the vague pacifist sentiment of the nineteen twenties. When recently the Assistant General Secretary of the Transport Workers’ Union published in the Union journal an article appealing to young members to consider joining the Auxiliary Forces he made the comment below:—

“When 1 first became an officer of this union, an article on the Armed Forces of the Crown (unless it had been the purpose of the writer to condemn them as the tools of outworn imperialism, deplore their existence, and dissuade young men from having anything to do with them) would have been unthinkable in the Record. (Record, September, 1949.)

The Nationalistic German Social Democratic Party 

Just as the Labour Parties of the world pay lip-service to Socialism without in any way giving up their real aim of administering capitalism in the form of State capitalism or nationalisation, so they all pay lip-service to internationalism while remaining strongly nationalistic.

The German Social Democratic Party has just issued the opposition platform on which it will oppose the new German Government. It refers to “socialisation’’ of industries, meaning nationalisation, but makes no reference at all to Socialism and is a document similar to the programme of the British Labour Party. It does, however, include a new phrase, “The S.D.P. rejects all forms of nationalism . . ." But any one who thinks this is to be taken seriously need only look at various nationalistic demands elsewhere in the list of demands. One is, the Party rejects the present German frontiers and wants to re-occupy territory in the East annexed by Poland, and the Saar region in the West.

No doubt the S.P.D. leaders will say that they seek these ends by peaceful means, but those who seek to change or to defend the territorial arrangements of the capitalist world must logically be prepared to go to war, and in practice all the Labour and Communist Parties are prepared to do so.

And if any Labourite supposes that the British Labour Party is different he should take note of the utterances of that one-time opponent of conscription and war, Mr. Shinwell, now Minister of War.

The lion’s tail is flying high and we don’t care who knows it.” (Speech to Territorials,. Manchester Guardian, 26.8.49.)

”. . . Commonwealth unity is a reality. It has survived two great wars and is as vital to the economic and political interests of Britain as European unity. I am not prepared to abandon the British Commonwealth for all the tea in China.” (Daily Telegraph, 5.9.49.)

A Leaky Umbrella for the Unemployed

One of the claims of the Labour Party is that they “led the fight against the mean and shabby treatment’’ meted out to the unemployed by Tory Governments in the years before the war. And when they came to power they promised to fix higher rates of unemployment pay to provide proper social provision “against rainy days.” (“Let us Face the Future,” Labour Party, 1945.)

They are proud of what they have done as was shown recently in the House of Commons by Mr. J. Griffiths, Minister of National Insurance. A Labour M.P., Major Bruce (North Portsmouth), asked how much was spent on unemployment benefit in 1938 and was told it was £52,400,000. (Hansard, 18th October, 1949. Col. 460.)

He also asked how much the Government would have had to spend in 1938 on employment benefit if the benefits at that time had been at the higher rates now paid by the Labour Government.

Mr. Griffiths replied that “If current rates of unemployment benefit and family allowances had then been in force the disbursements would have been rather less than £90,000,000.”

Here, surely, is a cast-iron proof of the benefits of Labour rule? A Tory Government gave the unemployed £52½ million, and a Labour Government would have paid them £90 million. Shall we say "good and faithful servant,” or has Mr. Griffiths overlooked one small detail in his arithmetic? He has; and we can complete the sum for him.

The detail is that the cost of living has gone up by about 80% since 1938. What could be bought with 20s. in 1938 now costs at least 36s. So that the seemingly higher rates of unemployment benefit now in force have to be heavily reduced in order to compare them with the rates in force in 1938 when money bought more.

Mr. Griffiths’s “rather less than £90 million” will actually buy only as much as could be bought with £50 million in 1938, and that is “rather less than” the amount that the Tory Government paid out to the unemployed.

So all that the Labour Government has done is to raise the scale of benefits to a point which will nearly, but not quite, compensate for the rise in the cost of living and now the cost of living is rising again.

Capitalism it is

In the House of Commons on 27th October there was an exchange of views between Churchill and Attlee about the system under which we are living. Both of them talked nonsense but as Churchill managed to be right on one important point the victory goes to him. Attlee was hampered by things he has said in the past.

Churchill led off with his one true statement: “It must he remembered as we sit here to-night that Britain is a capitalist society, and that 80 per cent. of its whole industry is in private hands.” (Hansard, 27.10.49, Col. 1625).

He followed with the amplification, “. . . what we have here now is a capitalist society on which we are dependent for our daily life and survival. . .”

This was, and may have been intended as, a rebuke to woolly-minded Conservatives as well as the woolly-minded Labourites; but he followed it with numerous absurdities. He repeatedly described Attlee’s party as “The Socialist Party” and his Government as a “Socialist Government,” charged it with making a “deliberate attack on the capitalist system,” and then informed the M.P.s that under Communism “society is reduced to a strong hierarchy and army of officials and politicians by whom the proletariat are ruled under a one-party system.” What he meant by the last phrase was Russia; but had he viewed the Russian economic system as clearly as he views the British he would have seen that there is no Communism (or Socialism) in Russia and that all the main features of capitalism are robustly in operation there.

Mr. Attlee had to reply and took the line that “we live in the days of a mixed economy.The Right Hon. gentleman is quite wrong when he suggests that this is a purely capitalist economy. It is neither purely capitalist nor purely Socialist, but a mixed economy in a transition period.” (Col. 1633.)

The only mixture is not the economy, which is capitalist through and through, but Mr. Attlee’s conception of it; and the answer to him is to be found in Labour Party literature and in his own writings. “Socialism and Peace” (Labour Party, 1935) declared that the choice is between a vain attempt to patch up a rotten capitalist society “or a rapid advance to a Socialist reconstruction of the national life. There is no half-way house . . .” (Our italics.)

Now Mr. Attlee is trying to justify “the half-way house,” which he believes to be partly capitalist and partly Socialist but which is nothing but Labour Party administration of capitalism. And in his own “Labour Party in Perspective” (1937, page 123) he admitted that it would not be a Socialist Party that could administer capitalism:—

“The plain fact is that a Socialist Party cannot hope to make a success of administering the Capitalist system because it does not believe in it.”

And here are a few more statements that Mr. Attlee will find difficult to square with his own present declarations.

He thinks now that we are in a mixed economy. Only a few months ago he told an audience at Walthamstow that “The social reforms which we introduced have not been patchy; they have represented a new social order . . . We have had a great experiment in democratic Socialism.” (Manchester Guardian, 12.1.49.)

And Mr. J. Griffiths, Minister of National Insurance still thinks we have got rid of capitalism for he declares “I believe the people of the world have made up their minds not to go back to the old crazy capitalist system of poverty, conflict and insecurity.” (Daily Herald, 7.4.49.)

The Doctor Blames the Patient

Some of the Labour leaders are becoming spiteful—at least in their attitude to the workers. Mr. Alfred Barnes. Minister of Transport, speaking at Chatham said: —

“I don’t think the men of this country have played the game since the end of the war. Wc carried out our mandate against adverse conditions, and we are entitled as a Labour Administration to call upon the great mass of men workers to turn out a greater quantity of goods than are at present pouring from the factories.” (Daily Mail, 24.10.49.)

It is a curious situation and prompts the question whether Mr. Barnes thinks that the workers go into politics for the benefit of Mr. Barnes.

The Labour leaders offered themselves to the working class (at a price—Mr. Barnes draws £5,000 a year as Minister of Transport) with a promise to cure them of the economic ills from which they were suffering; and the doctors certainly didn’t start off by saying that the cure consisted of prolonged austerity, repeated crises, harder work, more armaments, higher prices and no wage increases. Now, after four years, the doctor turns on the patients and blames them for not making things easy for the doctor!

How refreshing it would be to see a Minister resign his job with a frank admission that the Labour doctors were wrong from the outset and that they can’t make capitalism tolerable for the workers.

The 1931 Economy Cuts over again

In 1931, when MacDonald formed a National Government to deal with the crisis and the bulk of the Labour Party went into opposition, economy cuts were imposed, most of which had been agreed to by the Labour Government before its resignation. In some respects the present cuts in Government expenditure are similar to those of 1931, e.g. cuts on armament expenditure, and on education, but the supporters of the Labour Government are insistent that they are not following the example of the MacDonald Government by reducing Civil Service pay, and cutting unemployment benefit by 10%.

The difference is quite illusory. In 1931 when the Government cut unemployment pay and gave a lead to the employers to reduce wages the cost of living was falling, the official index figure falling from 155 at December, 1930, to 148 at December, 1931, and 143 at December, 1932.

This time the cost of living is rising and the Government is trying its utmost to prevent wages from rising in keeping with the cost of living. The effect is just the same as in 1931.

The official cost of living index figure has risen from 100 in June. 1947, to 112 in September, 1949. The effect is that the purchasing power of unemployment pay has been cut by 12% since June, 1947, so that in terms of 1947 prices 26s. a week benefit is now worth about 23s.

One similarity between the two crises is the Government’s action over devaluation. In 1931 the Labour Government declared over a period of months that they would save the £ and not go off the gold standard—then MacDonald went off the gold standard. This time it is Cripps (instead of Snowden) who devalued after saying for months that he wouldn't.

One difference between the two cases is that the MacDonald Ministry did have the grace to reduce the salaries of Ministers and M.P.s; by 20% on salaries of £5,000 and over, 15% on £2,000 to £5,000, and 10% below £2,000. including M.P.s.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Revolutionary Proposition (1955)

From the August 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Modern Society is made up of the working class, the great majority, who produce but do not own and a small section (barely 10%) who own but do not produce. For the protection of the latter’s wealth and privileges against the have-nots at home and against covetous and greedy competitors abroad, the possessing class needs coercive machinery, police and armed forces, and so it is that every technical improvement in the tools of production finds its primary application to arms production. The discovery of nuclear energy is only the most recent case in point, though unique in so far as it has “revolutionized the entire, foundation of human affairs and placed mankind in a situation both measureless and laden with doom.” Churchill, who spoke these words, “had no solution for permanent peace between the nations, although,” he said, “we pray for it.” He also said that “it would be folly to suppose hydrogen-weapons would not be used in case of war.” Apparently Churchill knows his men and also his God.

Now, there is a solution, and if it is not for avowed defenders of capitalism like Churchill and the other avowed anti-Socialists to advocate that solution, honesty and consistency would require of those calling themselves Socialists to urge that solution especially since it is the only way out of the present appalling dilemma.

Though an exposé of the genuine Socialist case, i.e., the abolition of Capitalism, lock, stock and band, in other words: a fundamental' change in the constitution of present-day society, from production for profit to production of the means of life for use, on the principle: From each according to his capacity, to each according to his needs, though such a proposition would fall on deaf ears in Parliaments and be promptly derided as a Utopia.

Yet, though “we are all Socialists now,” there has not been to the writer’s knowledge, any reference to Socialism as the only solution of society’s problems from any “Socialist” quarters. One is bound to conclude that actually all of them—save that of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the companion parties overseas—look upon the conversion of the means of wealth production and distribution from private or State control to COMMON OWNERSHIP and democratic control by the people as a whole, as a Utopia, just as do the Capitalists themselves. There is, for example, Attlee, saying in the debate on Defence: “There is sometimes a need for something more dramatic if a H-bomb-war and the destruction of civilisation was to be avoided. He believed that it was felt by the rulers of Russia, as well as by the President of the U.S.A., and by the rulers of France, but somehow the thing did not get moving. We were looking for an initiative.” Just as 40 years ago, at the outbreak of World-War I, another pseudo-Socialist Party, the Socialist Labour Party, confessed officially that they had been taken by a storm and “were waiting for a lead.” Attlee said he had had talks with Malenkov, for he was “a very important factor.” (That this “important factor” became only a few days afterwards a mere factotum, shows the political foresight and intellect of these Western Capitalist factotums). What a Socialist indeed, who received the praise of H.M. Government for getting the atom-bomb for Britain and who is now “looking for an initiative” to avoid the destruction of civilisation—as if he had never heard of Socialism!

Others of Attlee’s ilk talked about the “tremendous catastrophe of another war, and that a superior ideology to put over to the people had to be found.” Any ideology will apparently do for these Socialists, as long as it does not end Capitalism and the good old “transition- period" on which these leaders and job-hunters prosper and thrive.  

R.

(To be concluded next month)

Editorial: The Daily Worker and Lenin on Equal Pay (1948)

Editorial from the February 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a recent broadcast Mr. Attlee referred to the great and growing gulf between rich and poor in Russia. Commenting on this statement the Daily Worker (5/1/48) made the following assertion. “To give a responsible manager the same salary as an unskilled worker is no part of socialist policy, as Attlee knows.” Of course both the Daily Worker and Mr. Attlee could agree on this as they are both responsible for the delusion that state capitalism is Socialism. However, Lenin expressed different views, and as the Daily Worker claims to support Lenin’s views its writers should at least remember what they were, even if it was impossible to realise them under the bureaucratic despotism that Lenin advocated.

In August, 1917, a few months before the Bolsheviks obtained power, Lenin published “The State and Revolution” (Allen and Unwin). A few extracts from this little book will make clear his views on the point under discussion. After making copious quotations from Marx’s “Civil War in France” concerning equal pay, the abolition of bureaucracy and the importance of universal suffrage, Lenin makes the following comments (all italics are Lenin’s):-

“The control of all officials, without exception, by the unreserved application of the principle of election and, at any time, recall; and the approximation of their salaries to the ‘ordinary pay of the workers’ – these are simple and ‘self-evident’ democratic measures, which harmonise completely the interests of the workers and the majority of peasants; and, at the same time, serve as bridge, leading from Capitalism to Socialism.” (p.46).

"Without representative institutions we cannot imagine a Democracy, even a proletarian Democracy;: (p.50).

“But there must be submission to the armed vanguard of all the exploited and labouring classes – to the proletariat. The specific ‘bossing‘ methods of the State Officials can and must begin to be replaced – immediately, within twenty-four hours – by the simple functions of managers and clerks – functions which are now already quite within the capacity of the average townsman and well be performed for a working man’s wage.

“We must organise production on a large scale, starting from what has already been done by Capitalism. By ourselves, we workers, relying on our own experience as workers, must create an unshakable and iron discipline supported by the power of the armed workers; we must reduce the role of the State officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions; they must be responsible, revocable, moderately paid ‘managers and clerks’ (of course, with technical knowledge of all sorts, types and degrees). This is our proletarian task. With this we can and must begin when we have accomplished the proletarian revolution.”

.     .     .     .

“But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. We have but to overthrow the capitalists, to crush with the iron hands of the armed workers the resistance of these exploiters, to break the bureaucratic machine of the modern State – and we have before a highly technically-fashioned machine freed of its parasites, which can quite well be set going by the united workers themselves, hiring their own technical advisers, their own inspectors, their own clerks, and paying them all, as indeed, every ‘State’ official, with the usual workers’ wage. Here is a concrete task immediately practicable and realisable as regards all trusts, which would the workers of exploitation and which would make practical use of the experience (especially in the task of the reconstruction of the State) which the Commune has given us. To organise our whole national economy like the postal system, but in such a way that the technical experts, inspectors, clerks and indeed, all persons employed, should receive no higher than the working man, and the whole under the management of the armed proletariat – this is our immediate aim. This is the kind of State and economic basis we need. This is what will produce the destruction of Parliamentarian, while retaining representative institutions.” (Pages 51 to 53.)

So wrote Lenin, but thirty years later his disciples glorify unequal payment as the principle of Socialism. This was the inescapable result of Lenin’s ingrained distrust of the workers and Blanquist belief the value of bureaucratic, authoritarian centralism that placed complete power in the hands of a small central committee.

Briefing: What is Capitalism? (1984)

The Briefing Column from the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money trick

All wealth is the product of labour. Every house, car, loaf of bread, everything that we use is brought into being by men and women applying their energies to the resources that other men and women have extracted from the environment. It is one of the contradictions of the class system, though, that the great majority of people — the wealth-producing class — consume and enjoy only the crumbs of the wealth they produce. The construction workers who build the palaces and the mansions return at the end of a hard day’s work to live in council hovels or at best an up-market suburban slum. The wealth producers are trapped in poverty because of the wages- system of legalised robbery. The factories, farms, mines, offices, communications systems — in fact, the means of life — are owned and controlled by a small minority of the world's population. The wages or salaries with which the wealth producers are fobbed off are worth less than the value of what has been produced, so that the boss receives a value from the efforts of the worker over and above what is paid for. The surplus value kept by the owners of industry becomes profit when the goods are sold on the market.

When the social system is looked at from this point of view, a couple of important points become apparent: first, that whether wages are “high” or "low" the people working for them are being exploited; and second, that it is the system of producing goods and services for a profit which condemns the majority to live lives of unnecessary poverty. Occasionally, the absurdity of the class system exhibits itself in stark madness. A couple of years ago the workers who produced the engines for the Concorde aeroplane were given a special concession by their bosses. The workers who, although they were responsible for making the plane would never be able to afford to travel in it. were permitted to take their families on a tour of their work for a price of 50p. The tours would need to be brisk as they could not keep the wealthy ticket holders hanging about drinking champagne in the departure lounges for too long.

Rolls Royce is now trying the same sort of thing:

A big pools win would be the only way most workers could get to own a Rolls Royce. but 3.800 employees at the firm's works in Crewe. Cheshire, now get a 90-minute taste of high life. (Daily Telegraph, 8 August 1984)

The scheme will operate for about 18 months while all the workers whose efforts actually produce the cars will be able to cruise about the countryside for an hour in a £56,000 ice-green Silver Spirit. The chief executive of Rolls Royce, Richard Perry, observed that: "People have worked here for forty years and have said afterwards that this had been their first chance to sit in one of the cars".

Capitalism commits a continuing con-trick on the working class every moment that it is allowed to carry on. It is only fallacy and prejudice that obstruct the path to a classless society.

False Images

From the time when we are first shown an atlas or a globe we are given a false image of the world. The map is divided into over 150 separate countries and we are indoctrinated with the idea that is is only right and proper to develop an allegiance to "our" country. We are taught that we should use possessive vocabulary in relation to the country although we own nothing of it. We are taught to have respect and admiration for a sterile, stately-home culture of which we have no part and most importantly we are taught to accept the possibility that one day we might be called on to fight and kill strangers (who will have been similarly misled) in furthering the cause of our bosses if economic rivalry is extended from the conference table to the battlefield.

There is one working class comprised of men and women all over the globe who share an economic condition: we own nothing except our mental and physical energies and we need to try to sell these on a weekly or monthly basis, to a boss, in order to make a living. We may have different languages and different cultures but what we have in common is much greater and more significant than how we differ. A print worker in England will share more experiences and problems with a French print worker than he will with an English Press tycoon. There are other illusions flowing from an image of the world as lots of independent nations. The world now has a highly integrated industry. The labour which goes into producing most articles is divided among many men and women performing specialised jobs. This fact, taken with the restriction of certain products to particular global regions and climates, means that the energies which go to produce a particular item can come from all over the world.

Take the example of a typewriter and consider what was needed to make it: the different types of metal, the plastic, the rubber and the technology of its design. Each of these could trace its origins to a different place and then the same analysis could be applied to the ships and aeroplanes which were used to transport the various materials and components around the world. Because of the way commerce and world trade operate, countries with apparently opposed political ideologies in fact are engaged in trade. American farm owners sell wheat to the Russian ruling class; the Russian ruling class colludes with its counterpart in South Africa to fix the price of diamonds on the world market and the Russian Empire even helps to arm American missiles by playing a part in manufacturing plutonium which is later used for American warheads. Western governments. including Britain, have been shipping uranium to Russia for enrichment (of the government as well as the uranium) knowing it was for nuclear warheads.

The Left Wing of Capitalism

"Yes. I agree that a classless society is a good idea but the reason I support the Labour Party is that while we have got capitalism things are marginally better if there is a Labour government.”

Socialists firmly reject this sort of argument. The profit system is a way of running society which is against the interests of the working class, the majority of people. It works on the basis of producing wealth only if there is the prospect of selling it for a profit on the market, not simply because there is a need for it. So if you have a need which you cannot afford to have satisfied then your need will continue. In this system there is a constant antagonism of interest between master and servant, or to use the more decorous expression for the same relationship, between employer and employee. The bosses strive to get as much as possible from the workers while paying them as little as they can get away with whereas the workers seek to reduce the extent to which they are exploited.

The Labour Party has never sought to do anything but run capitalism and consequently when it has formed the government (as has happened seven times) it has found itself doing all the anti-working-class things which it vehemently opposes when they are carried out by Conservative governments. Apart from supporting wars, introducing the atomic bomb in Britain and establishing the Special Patrol Group (SPG), the Labour Party does not enjoy a proud record on the industrial front. Labour supporters who are rightly sickened by the sort of problems being faced by the miners and the dockers would do well to look at their party’s record on these issues. The National Coal Board has plans to shut unprofitable or “uneconomic” pits for the same reasons that pits were shut before 1945 by private capitalist owners and for the same reasons that 48 Welsh pits were closed and 50,000 miners made redundant under the Labour government between 1964 and 1970.

Then consider the struggle of the dockers. The last time troops were used to break a dockers' strike anil unload ships was under a labour government during a spate of dock strikes in 1949-50. In May 1949, after an outbreak of unofficial strikes in support of Canadian dockers, the Labour government invoked Defence Regulation 1304 and used troops to unload fruit and refrigerated food at Avonmouth. The use of troops caused the strikes to spread. By July 8 10,000 men were on strike and the government announced that unless wage-slavery was resumed a state of emergency would be declared. The Labour government invited the King to sign such a declaration three days later.

Despite this, the number of men on strike rose to 15,000. Prime Minister Attlee became angry. Who did these workers think they were, telling the bosses they were not satisfied! Attlee proclaimed that he was prepared to send 35,000 troops into the docks and the strike collapsed within two weeks. Troops were used again by the Labour government in April 1950 when another strike was thwarted in the Port of London. Troops have been used by governments since then during strikes, for instance in the emergency services, but never for wholesale strike breaking. During the firemen's strike 1977-78 the Labour government again sent in the troops with the Green Goddess fire engines to undermine the industrial action of members of the working class struggling to stop their standard of poverty becoming even worse. The economic hardships of this society have not been personally engineered by Margaret Thatcher and cannot be talked away by Neil Kinnock. These problems are an intrinsic part of a class-divided society.

Inhuman priorities

As this social system grinds on the contradiction between a society potentially geared to abundant production and a society poised on self-destruction becomes more stark. We could produce so much. We could meet all the needs of the population of the world. But we continue in artificial scarcity and to add further horror to the nightmare we continue to amass the means of destruction.

According to Oxfam. (Guardian, 5 August 1981) over 30,000,000 people die of hunger every year, more than half of them children under five. Every year 780.000.000 people are suffering from hunger and malnutrition. At the current rate these figures will have doubled by the end of this decade. In the last hour about 1,700 children have died unnecessarily, victims of malnutrition, disease and war. Figures are often formulated to express the grotesque priorities of the profit system by contrasting the expenditures on the industry of health and the industry of death: the Defence Research and Development programme of £1.8 billion is 16 times greater than that given to the Medical Research Council; one Army General is paid more than five State Enrolled Nurses; the upkeep of one nuclear submarine is greater than the annual cost of local authority libraries and UNICEF working in 112 countries has a total income of under £200 million which is the equivalent of what the world spends on military ventures every four hours.

These facts exemplify the priorities of capitalism. What should be done about this? Socialists do not advocate that more money be spent on welfare as a solution to the problem. Capitalism, based on producing for profit not need, creates these tragic disasters as a matter of course. Trying to solve them with charity or adjustments in spending cannot work, despite all the energy and drive which has been contributed by the people who work for the various voluntary and charity organisations. The way to solve these problems is to establish a society which will work on the principle of “from each according to ability to each according to need", a society in which our productive forces will be used directly to satisfy our needs.

Gary Jay

Workers on the Defensive (1949)

From the October 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the shrewdest comments on this year’s Trades Union Congress was made by the Manchester Guardian on September 5th. Reviewing the position of the trade unions since the Labour Government came into power four years ago the article pointed out in what a world of illusion trade union supporters of the Government have been living. Their feeling was that now at last they had the power and the opportunity to reach higher standards of living, but in fact “since the fuel crisis they have been for all their power and all the old illusions of what power would bring, on the defensive: the struggle has been to prevent real wages from falling.”

The Guardian, in keeping with its political outlook, argues that it is the “country’s economic weakness” that prevents the unions from gaining higher wages, but on a proper view the present despairing situation in which the workers find themselves is a confirmation of the S.P.G.B.’s contention that there are no ways within the capitalist system of ending the resistance of the employers, backed by the Government, to working class claims. The workers have to struggle ceaselessly to protect their standards and have in the last resort only one weapon, the strike.

This is not to say that the position will be fundamentally changed if the workers do resort to strike action, for the employers and the Government still have the power and the means of seeking to achieve their over-riding aim of cheaper production in other ways. Hitherto, and this was anticipated in these columns in September, 1945, the Labour Government has chosen to offset wage increases by withdrawing subsidies and allowing the cost of living to rise, while at the same time using the trade union executives in the campaign to clamp down on wage claims as much as possible. But the time is fast approaching when the present policy of the Government will have less effect and then we may see the Government forcing a showdown with the trade unions and being prepared to make more use of the threat of unemployment as a method of compelling the workers to work harder.

From the side of the trade union officials the dangers of the present position from their own point of view have long been seen. One delegate at the T.U.C., Mr. Bryn Roberts, stated bluntly the difficulty of trying indefinitely to restrain the workers for the sake of the Government.

“He warned Congress that to pursue the policy of wage restraints indefinitely would damage the mechanism of collective bargaining, destroy the workers’ confidence in it, and bring into disrepute the machinery of arbitration. It would bring conflict within the unions and between the unions. It would transform the class struggle so that instead of being between worker and employer it would be between the trade unionist and his own executive committee. It would provide opportunities for disruptive elements.”—(Times, September 9, 1949)

Mr. Bryn Roberts may or may not realise the full implication of what he said, but what it means is what Socialists have always contended, that a Labour Government administering capitalism cannot support the working class against the capitalists. This has been brought out into the open by the way four years of Labour government have sufficed to eliminate from the speeches of Labour Leaders all the old loose talk about getting rid of profit.

Mr. Tewson, General Secretary of the T.U.C., dealing with demands that profits should be reduced to raise wages, remarked that “It had not been possible to determine what were reasonable profits and dividends.” (Times, September 9th, 1949)

For Socialists, whose aim is Socialism, the problem presents no difficulty at all, for there will be no profits; but for a Labour Government running capitalism the answer has to be as Sir Stafford Cripps put it at a meeting in Manchester last November: “If you are going to allow private enterprise to run you must allow it to run on capitalist lines.” (Manchester Guardian, November 22nd, 1948)

How rigorously the needs of the capitalist system determine the policies of governments that administer it can be seen by the way the Labour Party and the Tory Party see eye to eye on the point that cheaper production must come first and higher wages must wait until some undefined future date. Neither Party now even promises an immediate rise of working-class standards of living. Both are now content to promise that they will try to prevent a fall.

“Higher production at lower cost without reduction of living standards is the main theme of Conservative home policy set out in detail in ‘The Right Road for Britain.' ”

So speaks the Conservative Daily Telegraph (July 23rd, 1949)

And here is Prime Minister Attlee addressing the T.U.C. in almost identical phrases: —

“It is therefore vital that we should reduce costs by greater efficiency.

“I do not believe in lowering wages as a means of reducing costs. I believe that efficient work can only be got by paying adequate wages, but to reduce costs does mean that both employers and employed must seek in every way to attain the highest degree of efficiency.” (Daily Herald, September 8th, 1949)

Instead of asking themselves whether Capitalism is better under Labour Government than under Tory Government, the working class should consider how much better Socialism would be than either.

Edgar Hardcastle