Some Socialist points on the Beveridge Report (1942)

From the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Time does not allow a thorough examination of the Beveridge Report in this issue, but a few preliminary remarks may be made on aspects of particular interest to Socialists.

First we may ask why all this fuss about proposals which even the Times—not remarkable for its generosity towards social reforms—admits are “moderate enough to disarm any charge of indulgence”? (Times, December 2.) The spokesmen of capitalism are already preening themselves on the score that the Report shows what a generous and progressive country this is. They might pause to notice Beveridge’s claim that everything he proposes could and should have been done decades ago. All that time they have been boasting of the numerous reform measures they have introduced, yet the sum total of them all is so niggardly and displeasing in the eyes of its beneficiaries, the workers, that the latter can be impressed by the seemingly important advance the Beveridge scheme represents by contrast with the evil condition of to-day.

Even so the scheme should be viewed in proper perspective. The Times reads into the Report the “confident assurance that the poor need not always be with us,” but this is merely a misuse of terms, and one incidentally for which Beveridge appears not to be responsible. He talks all the time of abolishing “want,” by which he avowedly means something quite different from abolishing poverty. By want he means the condition into which the workers fall when their wages stop, not the condition in which they always are because they are carrying the capitalist class on their backs. Beveridge is quite clear about the distinction and says so. Did he not make a statement on December 1 (reported in the B.B.C. news broadcasts but apparently not in the Press) that it had always been his view that want could be abolished within the ranks of the wage-earners without any inroads into the wealth of the rich? He is saying in effect in his Report want could be abolished without interfering with capitalism, but neither he nor the Times want to abolish poverty. But for the poverty of the poor there could be no riches for the rich—a state which he and they find quite acceptable.

The Report has had a good Press, and already it is claimed that the Liberals and half the Conservative Party view it with favour. A characteristic and intelligible capitalist comment was reported in the Daily Worker (December 3, 1942) from Captain Somerset de Chair, who is a’ Conservative M.P. He is reported as follows : —

“I welcome it as a comprehensive plan to remove insecurity without resorting to the uncertain hazards of social reconstruction, he said.

This plan promises what we young Conservatives have always demanded—a square deal for the working man within the existing social and economic framework, instead of some utopia on the further side of an economic torrent.”

The Report is mistakenly referred to as a measure of insurance for the workers against the evils of capitalism. It would be more accurate to see it as a measure of insurance for the capitalists against the (for them) desperate evil of working class discontent with capitalism. Better far to give something away in time than to risk losing all.

The Report has been criticised by the Insurance Companies whose profits would be affected by the proposal to hand over their industrial assurance work to a Government Board. This was to be expected, but it gives rise to some interesting speculations. The Insurance Companies, with their enormous investments in all kinds of industrial and commercial enterprises, wield great influence, not excluding influence in Parliament and the Press. Fifteen or twenty years ago it was common in so-called Labour papers to see bitter attacks on the Prudential and other companies. What has happened to change all this, so that nowadays the clamour against them has almost disappeared? The Daily Express (November 28) had a curious little reference to this in an article on a book by the late Sir Arnold Wilson in which he attacked the insurance companies. According to the writer of the article. Sir Arnold was struck by the way in which the economists had ignored the problem presented by the “concentration of financial power” in the hands of the companies. “The oracles,” he found, “were strangely dumb.” “He searched libraries. He found little. He consulted the experts. And chief among them was Sir William Beveridge, who explained why the London School of Economics, on grounds of expediency, had ignored the subject.” (Daily Express, November 28. Italics ours.)

Sir William is, of course, no longer with the London School of Economics, and perhaps finds his hands less tied. In one fundamental respect, the scheme is a gamble, and Socialists can be certain that the gamble will be a losing one, for it is based on the expectation that unemployment will be permanently reduced after the war to a level less than it was before. If this optimistic assumption proves wrong, then the whole of the financial provisions are undermined and either the benefits would have to be reduced, or the high contributions raised still more or a large further deficit made up from taxation. This optimism of Sir William Beveridge is too much for the City Editor of the Times He points out (December 3) that Beveridge assumes that unemployment will not exceed an average of 8½ per cent. of the insured workers, but

“Only in one year, 1927, in the 14 years before the war was the average below 10 per cent.; in 1932 it was over 22 per cent. It is right to hope that unemployment can be reduced to below 8½ per cent. . . . But it is clear that a corollary of the social security plan must be a plan for full and efficient employment. Without it the social budget will be thrown out of gear.”

The Labour Party who gaily went into office in 1929 with a pledge to deal with unemployment and a hope that things “were on the up grade” should not need to be reminded that what happened to them (unemployment soon mounting to three millions) may well happen again even in the best of all possible capitalist worlds.

The Labour Party might also reflect on another incident in their experience. When the crisis occurred in 1931 it was a common theme with them that capitalism was for ever bankrupt and never again could there be any question of trying to make capitalism palatable to the workers by offering social reforms. Capitalism, they said, would never again be able to afford reforms. Socialists pointed out the absurdity of this belief that capitalism, choked with its own surplus products, could not afford to surrender some of them to alleviate the workers’ miseries. What have the Labour Party to say now that they are hailing Beveridge and allowing themselves to be manoeuvred into defending his scheme ?

One of the major purposes of the Report has already been served, its use as war propaganda. Both from the point of view of offering the workers at home some more or less concrete hope of benefits to come and from the point of view of offsetting Nazi propaganda for a new European Order the Report can be described as an instant success for the Government.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Reward of Honest Industry (1942)

From the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

No matter how careful the capitalists and their apologists may be, the inconsistencies of the present economic system constantly come to light. Even such an innocent radio programme as “In town to-night” sometimes brings out a point that an observant listener can use to show the inconsistency of what our masters would have us believe is a happy land, providing peace, comfort and security for all those who are willing to work.

On Saturday, September 26th, in this programme, a manager of a pawnbroker’s shop gave the usual tbree-minute talk on the people with whom he deals. To a Socialist, the most important observation was that although some of his customers occasionally tried to swindle him, “Nine out of ten of the customers are honest, hard-working people.”

Well might the Socialist ask what sort of system it is in which “honest, hard-working people” have to pledge their clothes and blankets in order to obtain the necessities of life ?

This statement was made with reference to peacetime, not war-time. In fact, such are the contradictions of capitalism that during a war, when one might expect hardship, many of the workers who were forced to frequent the Labour Exchanges for the measly shillings which the Government granted to those in the “industrial reserve army,” as it has been called, are now in the position of having money to spend and few goods to buy. The Government, knowing the temptation to spend money that arises in those who are all too often denied that pleasure, are fearful of inflation, as occurred in the last war, and are pleading and cajoling the workers to put all “surplus” money into war saving, with the idea of helping to pay for the war. “Helping” is right, for even with the relatively high wages earned during wartime, the money that the workers could save, i.e., the money over and above the cost of living, would not pay for the war in a million years !

There is also the fact that whatever money the workers are able to save now that they are all in work will assist them to live through the slump that most economists predict to follow the post-war boom.

All the capitalist juggling in the world will not be able to create new markets to take the commodities which will result from the change over from war-time to peacetime production, and without a market, i.e., a group of buyers with the purchasing power to acquire the goods which the capitalist has for sale, the production of commodities will soon be curtailed, though the need for the goods may and will be as urgent as ever. If no one can purchase the goods which industry will be turning out by the million, those goods will stay in the warehouses, or be destroyed, as coffee, wheat and fish have been destroyed, among other goods, in the past. Under a capitalist system, goods are produced for sale, not for use. The difference may appear slight, but a worker who has no money, standing outside a boot shop in a broken-down leaky pair of boots, knows the practical difference between a commodity, i.e., an article produced for sale, and an article produced solely for use, as they will be under a sane system of society.

The only way to do away with pawnbrokers, and their immediate cause, poverty, is to do away with the private property system of society and substitute a system in which the means of production are owned by and run for the benefit of society as a whole.

Phillips.

This Means You ! (1942)

Party News from the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Large sums of money are donated annually, to scores of organisations appealing for funds to alleviate the povertv of this or that particular section of society. Organisations for the Relief of Ladies of Gentle Birth in Reduced Circumstances, Waifs and Strays, and Penniless Parsons.

The S.P.G.B. is not organised for the purpose of relieving the more or less obvious results of poverty. Our object is to abolish the cause of poverty, not to waste our time and energies in futile attempts to mitigate some of the more glaring effects.

You may agree with our object, our principles, and our policy, but for various reasons find it impossible to give us your active support. If this is the case, may we point out one way in which you can help us. Many workers have yet to hear the Socialist case, but our efforts to enlighten them are severely restricted by our meagre financial resources. We need financial support to enable us to carry on propaganda meetings, publish literature, etc.; in other words, to continue the struggle for Socialism. This is where you come in, and, by the way, we mean you, not all the other readers of the Socialist Standard !

You can play a necessary and important part in our struggle by sending along a donation, or, better still, a regular monthly donation. Send your donations to the Treasurer, S.P.G.B., 33. Gloucester Place, W.1. Cheques and Postal Orders should be crossed and made payable to the “Socialist Party of Great Britain.”

A. Price, 

Party Funds Organiser.

Editorial: Anticipating Beveridge (1942)

Editorial from the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing in advance of the issue of the Beveridge Report on Social Insurance, amidst the deafening clamour that has heralded that much boosted publication, we confidently predict that from a working-class standpoint it will be one of the ripest political red-herrings of our generation. It is one of those occasions when the Socialist prophet cannot go wrong.

In justification of this discordant note in the almost universal harmony we can point to the limited scope of the inquiry, and the well-known anti-Socialist views of the author. The outstanding social problem of our age is the poverty of the working-class. It is not the result of unemployment or of illness, or of industrial accident, or of inadequate powers of wealth production. It exists side by side with great wealth and affects the employed as well as the unemployed worker. It is the result of the private ownership by the capitalist class of society’s means of producing and distributing wealth. The facts of this concentration of ownership in the hands of a small minority of the population are well enough known, and Sir William Beveridge is, of course, quite well aware of them. Nor is it a new story. To go back no further than 1904 we have the telling statement of Sir Leo Money: “It is probably true that a group of about 120,000 people who with their families form about one-seventieth part of the population, owns about two-thirds of the entire accumulated wealth of the United Kingdom.” With perhaps some slight modification, that estimate is still true as other, later, investigators have shown. Sir William Beveridge and others like him may answer that they do not believe it necessary or practicable to abolish the system of society which rests on that foundation, but why is that fact about the basis of the capitalist system excluded and deliberately excluded from this and every other official “investigation” into the poverty problem of the working class? And why should the workers allow themselves to be side-tracked by inquiries into poverty which start off by excluding the major factor in the case? In an address to the Fabian Society on November 21st, 1942, Sir William, according to a press report (Sunday Express, November 22) urged the need for “thorough unbiased investigation and discussion,” but he had already stated the scope of the inquiry so as to exclude any investigation into capitalism itself. The problem, he said, “is that of discovering how to combine the proved benefits of private enterprise at private risk . . . with the necessity of national planning in the aftermath of war.” In short he, and those who selected him for the investigation, are only concerned with the problem of alleviating some of the secondary evils of capitalism.

Those who chose him knew what they were doing. They took no chances. Throughout his public career Sir William Beveridge has been a defender of capitalism, confining his diligent inquiries to fields which exclude the question of a frontal attack on the capitalist system. His concern has never been with the problem why are the working class poor, but always with the problem of providing for the periods when the worker’s income from the sale of his labour power ceases. As he wrote in 1924 in his “Insurance for All and Everything” (published by the Daily News, Ltd.) :

“The problem is not that of guaranteeing an income at all times to everybody irrespective of his work and services. That way lies Communism. The problem is the narrower one of giving security against all the main risks of economic life to those who depend on continuous earning, of arranging that part of what such persons earn by their work shall take the form of provision for themselves and their dependants whenever their work is interrupted or stopped by causes beyond their control.” (Page 31.)

In other words, Sir William, accepting the system which gives the privileged class their property-income without the necessity of working, limits his examination to the problem of legislating for the propertyless class. It is all right though for the capitalist to have an “income at all times irrespective of his work and services.”

On occasion Sir William Beveridge has attempted to justify his bias for capitalism and its inequality. He did so in a speech on November 10, 1942 : “To concentrate on absolute equality of incomes for all men is an unpractical and a wrong aim. It attaches excessive importance to material things and treats envy as our master passion” (News-Chronicle, November 11, 1942). Of course nobody ever suggested anything so unpractical as trying to build a social system on private ownership of the means of production and “absolute equality of incomes,” but we need not here go into that caricature of Socialism. What is of interest is the slick defence of our millionaire-pauper system with the ethical argument that to aim at equality attaches excessive importance to material things, and treats envy as our master passion. It was ever the trick of those who have material things monopolised in their control to deprecate the sin of envy in the dispossessed. What, we might ask, of the greed of those whose motto is “What we have, we hold”?

In conclusion, we may quote a passage from Sir Leo Money’s “Riches and Poverty” (1904). Commenting on the way in which reformers of his day ignored the facts about inequality, he used a description which might well be applied to Sir W. Beveridge and othere of his kind : —

“Our most ardent reformers discuss their plans without reference to the economic framework of the society which they propose to reform. As a result we get a vast amount of misdirected effort, a dreary outpouring of vague and empty rhetoric . . . and a succession of timorous proposals for reform ludicrous in relation to the nature and magnitude of the problems with which they seek to deal.”

Something will perhaps result from the Beveridge proposals after they have been discussed elaborately to the exclusion from many workers’ minds of the real poverty problem, and after being scaled down in the customary way. Thus they will serve the main purpose of those who instituted the inquiry, but unless the workers themselves speedily attack the problem of the achievement of Socialism, another ten years will find a new and vain inquiry being started to clear up the mess left behind by Beveridge.

Can Labour govern? (1942)

From the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Can Labour Govern?” was the title of an article which appeared in the Sunday Pictorial of October 4, 1942, in which the editor airs his opinion that the Tories are in bad face with the electorate and that the gap between Parliament and the people is wide. He quotes Mr. Vernon Bartlett from the New Statesman to the effect that an attempt to close the gap need not be in vain, and then gets on with the task of weighing the pros and cons of the new leader—Churchill’s successor—dealing with such men as Sir Stafford Cripps, Mr. Ernest Bevin. Dr. Hugh Dalton, and Mr. E. Shinwell, but leaves the gate open for a back-bencher to emerge.

One other point, and probably the most interesting from the Socialist’s point of view, is that, although the writer distinguishes, between the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Labour Party itself, he is able to make this statement: “For the secret is out—the Parliamentary Labour Party does not believe in Socialism.”

The S.P.G.B. has been telling the working class for years, not merely that the Labour Party and the Parliamentary Committee of that party, do not believe in Socialism, but that they are an organisation which hopes and attempts to reform capitalist society, neither understanding the basic structure of capitalism which it wants to modify, nor Socialism which it claims as its objective. The question that forms the title of the article can be answered with a definite affirmative, the Labour Party can govern the working class in its function of wealth production and the Labour Party can administer capitalism—but only in the interests of the capitalist class; coalition, or “truce” and co-operation with avowed capitalist parties during wartime, and two Labour governments in the interval are ample demonstration of this.

The Labour Party has as its programme that which it calls the “Socialisation” or State control of industry, factories, mines, banks, railways, etc. But this pulls no wool over the eyes of the Socialist, to whom it is unimportant whether the natural development of the present system from its early individualist form to the latest phase (monopoly capitalism) demands a Labour or a Conservative government. The concentration of capital produces a working class that is numerically stronger and relatively poorer : the capitalist class discards its smaller fry and these become sellers of labour-power, meanwhile the richest become more powerful and more obscure behind Boards, Trusts, Corporations, etc. Minor illustrations of this trend were obvious before the present war, such as the London Transport Board, the Central Electricity Board, the Post Office, etc., and the greatest scope in the post-war period will exist for those organisations whose mammoth resources and modern equipment enable them to overwhelm the minor competitors who are unable to maintain the mad rush of production.

Yes, the Labour Party can govern; it can and must make promises which induce the electorate to give it support—but can it keep them ? The Labour government of 1929-1931 did not repeal the Trades Disputes Act; it continued the imposition of test and task work; it was responsible for the bombing of natives of Iraq. Yes—but the leaders were wrong? It was due to Ramsay Mac, or J. H. Thomas, or Snowden—they formed the government but were not in power. None of these excuses is correct; the explanation is that capitalism runs its course irrespective of the minor differences of theory of Messrs. Macdonald, Baldwin, Churchill, Bevin, or Cripps—but there will always be impressive leaders as long as workers desire or tolerate them.

The S.P.G.B. calls upon you workers, you who sell for wages the only commodity that you own—your ability to work—to consider its case—the case for Socialism; consider your position as members of a class that is sweated in in dustry and bled in wars; consider the poverty, misery, disease, and slum life of your fellow workers and class-consciousness—not leaders—will enable you to capture the control of the machinery of government and thereby the means of producing and distributing the wealth that will allow us to live like men. The alternative is existing like slaves.

A.G.

War and Health (1942)

From the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the beginning of the present conflagration we have been assured by numerous authorities that the nation’s good health has been maintained “beyond all expectations.” Wireless and press, doctors and politicians, have all remarked on this rare and peculiar phenomenon. We also wondered. We thought of Sir John Orr’s statement on pre-war conditions, “that one-third of the nation are not receiving enough food to maintain them in a reasonable standard of health and efficiency.” We thought of the health of the unemployed.

There is no doubt that many workers are better off now, despite food rationing, than they were on their labour exchamge diet. Making bombs and shells requires more fodder than merely sitting on a park bench. We reasoned, though, that a slightly higher intake of food into the workers’ stomachs would be more than offset by the strain and slogging of war production. And then we learned all about the newly discovered virtues of carrots and potatoes, of dried eggs and dehydrated meat; and during the “blitz” we were told of the invigorating effect of a two hours’ sleep. . . . But at last it comes out. An increase in diphtheria, whooping cough, measles and chicken-pox is now reported; there are cases of smallpox in the North; a disturbing rise in tuberculosis, particularly among children, and a rapid growth in the case rate of venereal disease.

Nevertheless we still hear that “the stubborn good health of our people is maintained. We have, thus far. avoided serious epidemics.” Of course, much depends on what our medical experts care to define as a “serious epidemic.” We are inclined to think that the scope of infection will have to be high indeed before any disease conditions are thus described. After all, we must not be too faddy in war time!

However, we are afraid that the health of the workers will surely and quickly deteriorate despite frantic appeals to eat carrots and be inoculated. There is no device known to the doctors that can prevail against the effects of overwork and underfeeding, and the anxieties inseparable from total war. One can appreciate that the health situation is not so pleasant if the chief medical officer is obliged to entertain us over the air with a fireside chat on consumption and syphilis.

It may well be that the number of people killed on the battlefields and through air-raids will be surpassed by the millions destroyed by sickness. The great influenza epidemic that followed the last war is stated to have been responsible for more deaths than were sustained in four years of fighting.

The prospect for the workers to-day is not very hopeful. Many of them are working long hours in badly ventilated factories, are not eating enough nourishing food, and have to live in the vitiated atmosphere of blacked-out rooms. In these circumstances, it is hardly possible that they will be in a fit and proper condition to enjoy the pleasures of the new world order faithfully promised to them by President Roosevelt and Mr. Winston Churchill. Freedom from good health is more likely to be the reward of capitalism’s wage-slaves than freedom from want.

When Mr. Churchill recently addressed the miners’ representatives it was said that he laid before them the “true facts,” and fully explained “the gravity of the situation.” We feel, somehow, that a good discourse on the merits of steak and onions would have been much more to the miners’ taste.

We hold the view that whatever the military outcome of the war may be, its various effects will influence the lives and health of our class. It is quite certain that the workers in the defeated countries will suffer as much as the workers in the victorious countries; they will have the same share of consumption and lunacy, ulcerated stomachs and venereal disease.

Kaye.

Socialist Capitalists and Capitalist-Minded Workers (1942)

From the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader of the Socialist Standard is perturbed because he has just learned that Frederick Engels, who spent a lifetime helping Karl Marx in his work for Socialism, was a wealthy man, and left at his death “the grand sum in property or otherwise of £24,839.” “Surely,” says this reader, “this sum could only have been amassed by the exploitation of his fellow men.”

There is, of course, no secret about Engel’s position. He was the son of a wealthy manufacturer, entered his father’s business and derived his income from that source. Does this, as our reader evidently fears, mean that Engels was not truly a Socialist? Are we to dub him a supporter of the capitalist system from which he obtained his livelihood? It is not difficult to answer the question. Engels’ devoted work for the Socialist movement is all the answer necessary. As can easily be discovered from the facts of Engels’ life and work—if our reader does not know it already—Engels consistently and tirelessly pursued the object of destroying capitalism and establishing Socialism. Indeed, one of his reasons for entering his father’s business was that he could thus be in a position to give financial help to Marx so that Marx could continue his work for Socialism freed from the problem of earning his living.

Our reader’s difficulty probably arises from mixing up things that do not belong to each other. A capitalist is one who lives on income derived from the ownership of capital. A Socialist is one who holds that Socialism is a practical alternative to capitalism and who seeks to establish Socialism. Because of the way in which their class interests and their environment influence their ideas most capitalists are supporters of capitalism and opponents of Socialism, but this is not always or necessarily so. Some individual capitalists, owing to greater understanding of the laws of social evolution, can see that Socialism is a practicable next stage in the development of human society, and become in greater or less degree workers for Socialism. Engels was one, William Morris was another. Surrendering their capitalist source of income in order not to be associated with exploitation has nothing to do with the question, and has little to recommend it anyway. Such action does nothing whatever to end the capitalist system except perhaps that it may, as has been argued, serve as a small gesture to remind other capitalists of the evils produced by the system. It does nothing to help the working class.

Having considered the individual capitalist who becomes a Socialist, now consider the fact, a seemingly much more curious one, that not only individual members of the working class but the overwhelming mass are supporters of the system that exploits them. This is due to the fact that the workers’ environment does not consist solely of his wage-relationship to the capitalist but includes also his subjection from infancy to the ceaseleses propaganda for capitalism conducted through schools, churches, newspapers, the wireless, etc. Only the jolts of the hard experiences of exploitation, plus the flow of the thin stream of Socialist propaganda, counteract this capitalist propaganda, but here in the long run is the only way of ending capitalism. It lies in influencing the mass of workers so that they will appreciate the facts about their position in society and will acquire the knowledge and will to achieve Socialism. Viewed in this light, which is more important ? that Engels and other individuals in his position should make a sacrificial but almost useless gesture of renunciation or that they should use their opportunities for the furtherance of the Socialist movement. The question is convincingly answered in the valuable work that Engels performed both through his own activities and through the support and encouragement he gave to Marx.

Editorial Committee

Did you listen to Smuts? (1942)

From the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Did you listen in to Smuts?” These were the words on everyone’s lips the morning after the veteran politician’s speech. The answer, due to lack of a radio set, was perforce in the negative. So after working very hard all day for the benefit of a bunch of railway shareholders, we sat up burning the landlady’s electric light till 1 a.m. in order to find out what all the pother was about. To-night, still being worn out after the day’s toil, we will endeavour to convey our impressions to paper. The most striking thing about the speech was the resounding flow of words. One might almost say that he out-Churchilled Churchill in this respect. But words, apart from the meaning they convey, matter very little to the scientist or the Socialist. It is impossible, in the now restricted space of the Socialist Standard to deal with the speech in detail—we can only touch upon one or two points of special interest to the toilers of the world.

Let us quote. Speaking of Britain, he says: “I remember this smiling land, recovered and rebuilt after the last war, where a happy people dwelt securely, busy with the tasks and thoughts of peace.” Is this a true picture? Did any of those who heard these words recall to mind the thrice-weekly queue outside the labour exchange, the miserable dole, the means test? Or, when working, the hard toil under the ever watchful eye of the employer’s deputy, always ready to hand out the order of the sack at the slightest sign of slackness, old age, or insubordination?

He must realise that there must be memories of such things, so he holds out a picture of a new world—but a rather subdued new world—not quite so rosy as the “world fit for heroes” of the 1914-18 Lloyd George epoch.

Quoting with approval the vague “Atlantic Charter,” he adds : “We cannot hope to establish a new heaven and a new earth in the bleak world which, will follow after this most destructive conflict of history. But certain patent social and economic evils could be tackled on modest practical lines on an international scale almost at once.”

The nearest he comes to the concrete is when he says : “Health, housing, education, decent social amenities, provision against avoidable insecurities—all these simple goods and much more can be provided for all, and thus a common higher level of life be achieved for all.” A careful reading of the speech seems to indicate that the provision of all these blessings is intended on an international scale. Thus, although we are not going to have so rosy a world as the Lloyd-Georgian one, we are going to have it on a wider scale. But what are these blessings ? We seem to have heard of them all before—in fact, they are as old as capitalism itself. “Health”—who has not heard of “health”—and health insurance. How many experts have pointed out the sapping of health caused by a poverty diet ? “Housing”—the word almost makes one laugh. It is, of course, the housing of the poor they refer to. For the wealthy, there is no housing problem. But, Smuts or no Smuts, there will always be a housing problem under capitalism, because capitalism breeds poverty, and poor people can never afford decent houses. “Decent social amenities”—does he mean the Carlisle public houses, or municipal parks, or what? Or is it just a string of words, that sounds well, but means nothing? “Provision against avoidable insecurities.” Another fine-sounding phrase—but it looks suspiciously like the “dole,” and the word “avoidable” seems to imply that it will not be distributed too lavishly.

Smuts says that “it is no longer a case of Socialism or Communism or any of the other isms of the market place, but of achieving common justice and fair play for all.” Short of Socialism, we would like to know what other means capitalism’s main defect, poverty, and its subsidiary defects—wars, slums, and unemployment—can be remedied. Smuts clearly has in mind the continuance of capitalism, but while there is competition for jobs and competition for markets, talk of justice and fair play is nothing more than a joke. The past history of capitalism should make this clear.

Numerous politicians have called Hitler’s attack on Russia a mistake. Smuts also calls it a mistake. Yet he says : “Baulked in his air attack on London, he saw that it was unsafe to attempt an invasion of Britain before first clearing his rear in Russia.”

Smuts apparently believes in God and the Devil, for, speaking of Hitler’s failure to attack Britain directly the Channel coast was open, he says : “Providence saved us there, and let us admit that the Devil helped him. Such is always the ultimate function of evil in this world.”

The chief evil is that workers continue to support capitalism and thereby do continue to suffer the evils which capitalism produces.

(The quotations are taken from the Daily Telegraph of October 22, 1942.)

Ramo.

Good News for Shareholders (1942)

From the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following the British and American occupation of points in Morocco and Algeria, the Times (November 11, 1942) reports that there was a further accession of strength to the stock markets. “The large bulk of the active trading was in the industrial and kindred markets, but the more spectacular gains were in oil and mining shares, Far Eastern issues, and European bonds. . . . The feature of the foreign bond market was the strong demand for European and Ear Eastern loans; Greek bonds were marked up by a further two or three points, French railway bonds by four or five points, and Chinese bonds by three or four points. . . . Oil shares were strong, particularly the Eastern group.”

The Times does not report any simultaneous spectacular rise in the wages of the workers.

R. M.

Are Socialists Dreamers? (1942)

From the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thirty years or so ago it was common for the kindly and the ill-disposed to describe Socialists as dreamers, and thereby wipe them out of the sphere of practical politics. With the passing of the years the efforts of the Labour Party and similar organisations have led to a misunderstanding of the meaning of Socialism. Thus in the minds of many Socialism is wrongly identified with social reform and hence is accepted as practical. But Socialism is not Social Reform. They are opposites, and all the social reform in the world will not bring Socialism. Social reform presumes the existence of the present social order, which Socialists are organised for the purpose of abolishing.

Taking Socialism, then, in its real sense, as a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of production, are Socialists dreamers, dreaming of a state of affairs that may or may not come, and, anyhow, is a hundred years or so away ?

As Socialists we insist that we are practical, that we are working for something now and not in the dim and distant future. In fact, we insist that, from the workers' standpoint, we are the only practical people because we have the solution to all the economic evils that baffle our rulers, and our solution is one that can be applied now. To apply this solution all that is needed is the understanding by the majority of the workers of the few basic ideas set out in our Declaration of Principles.

When the taunt is flung at us that Socialism, as defined above, is a dream, what the users of the phrase mean is that the workers have neither the capacity to understand nor to apply Socialist principles, and that Socialism, as a system, is not capable of being run by human beings.

The answer to the last objection is a simple one. Present society in all its fundamental aspects, that is to say, in the production and distribution of all that ministers to the needs and the luxuries of people to-day, is the work of the workers. The people who “direct," no less than those who produce, are members of the working class; they belong to that part of society which depends for their existence upon selling the energy of hand and brain for wages or salaries. If they can do this work for a dividend-drawing group of idlers they will be able to do it much more easily when it is being done for a society in which all work according to their capacities and receive according to their needs.

With the present standard of education an understanding of Socialism is within the capacities of all sections of the working class. One reason that has prevented the workers from getting to grips with Socialism is the existence of groups who claim to have found short cuts to prosperity within the present system and waste the time and attention of large bodies of workers in the chasing of will-o’-the-wisps or exploring blind alleys.

Socialist ideas are spreading wider; even the much derided “Capital’’ by Karl Marx is now accepted as a classic, and Socialists are no longer treated as cranks. The insoluble contradictions of capitalism, with its glaring evidences of wealth and poverty, its inability to plan production and distribution or to abolish unemployment, except under the stress of war, are factors that are forcing the workers into a frame of mind to appreciate the Socialist message. Reform movements are losing their appeal to the workers’ imagination and capitalist apologists of all kinds are being forced back not only to the task of trying to give practical answers to fundamental questions but also to giving lip service, at least, to some of the views put forward by Socialists. They may believe they have prepared ground to which to retreat after the war, but they will not find the retreat as easy or as permanent after this war as it was in 1918. For, however slowly the workers’ understanding may appear to be moving, it is most certainly moving steadily and in the right direction.

There are some who shrink at the thought of social change and the overthrowing of established forms. Let them take heart. Revolutions are terrible things. They shake society up like an explosion. But the Socialist Revolution, unlike an explosion, will not shake society to pieces; it will simply break the shackles of property and, with them, the ties that bind down the majority of people to lives of unending toil in return for the mere necessities of existence.

Socialism offers a quick, easy, and certain road out of the economic evils that afflict the workers to-day. For its accomplishment it requires the understanding and mutual co-operation of the mass of the workers. It has already made giant strides in this direction. Its accomplishment is inevitable because the capacity of the capitalists to divert the attention of the workers from the source of present evils is rapidly diminishing. Thus it is not the Socialists but their opponents who are the dreamers.

Gilmac

New Publications (1942)

Book Reviews from the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Parliament, Traitors and Beer

"Vote—What For" (Freedom Press, 2d.), by E. Malatesta, is an adaptation from a work by that author. It is the familiar Anarchist attack on parliamentary methods and government presented in the form of a discussion between two workers, George and Jack, over a glass of beer. George, supporter of parliamentary methods and of the Labour Party, puts up a defence which is demolished by Jack, the Anarchist. The demolition' is rapid. Perhaps it is because the leaflet is only fifteen pages. The vote, says Jack, is a fraud: those elected further their own interests except at election times, when they make fulsome promises to the gullible workers. George, unshaken, replies that we should elect workers, and then we should not be fooled. In reply to this the Anarchist makes two points: one, a majority in Parliament would be a ‘"paradise,” but only for the "elected”: and two—but let Jack speak for himself: "The rich are always in power. Just imagine a poor worker, perhaps with an ill wife and four kids, and you [that is, hard-hearted George] tell him to risk his job and get thrown out of' his house to starve; just to give his vote to a candidate his master doesn't like." From which one gathers that Anarchist Jack's indignation is righteously aroused at the suggestion that the worker should exercise his vote because such action would bring in the bailiffs and impose starvation on an ill wife and four hungry kids and all. Does E. Malatesta (or his adaptor) mean this? It is difficult to say. Anarchist writings do not always mean what they seem to say. However, for tuppence, Freedom Press will enable the reader to judge for himself.

This leaflet, in typical Anarchist fashion, confuses the issue on the question of parliamentary methods. It would have the ingenuous believe that the effort to achieve Socialism through Parliament has failed. Ramsay MacDonald is instanced as a Socialist who was won over by the rich. "As soon as you send anyone to office they turn traitor," the Anarchist says. The answer to such childish nonsense is: (1) Ramsay MacDonald was not a Socialist, nor was the Labour Party which he led; (2) The Labour Governments of 1924 and 1929-31 were not returned on Socialist programmes by the votes of Socialist supporters; (3) The two Labour Governments did not fail to introduce Socialism because of the illusory character of the vote, but because they were elected on reformist programmes to carry on the administration of capitalism. They learned bitterly that they could not reform out of existence working class problems, and that capitalism can only function in the interests of the capitalists.

That the Anarchists persist in accepting the Labour Party as a Socialist party might be regarded as a measure of what they understand Socialism to stand for. (This leaflet describes the I.L.P. as revolutionary whilst another Anarchist pamphlet issued by Freedom Press, "New Life to the Land," by George Woodcock, describes the I.L.P. as semi-revolutionary.) To accept the Labour Party as Socialist and to imply it stands for Socialism exposes the Anarchist claim to stand for a classless society and the abolition of the wages system as a mere form of words. A leaflet which sacrifices logic to propaganda argument. Crude, flat—but perhaps the latter was due to the beer with which George and Jack started the argument.

The Take (or Sit) and Hold Theory

"Trade Unionism or Syndicalism?" by Tom Brown (Freedom Press, 3d.).  The author of this pamphlet makes out a case for the Syndicalist practice to replace existing trade union organisation and for the Syndicalist method of taking over the means of production from the capitalists. He discusses what he thinks is the weak spot in trade union organisation, the organising of workers on the basis of their craft, i.e., "according to the tools they use.” The result is that the workers in any one industry find themselves organised in several trade unions (engineering workers are organised in fifty unions). In his trade union branch, usually near where he lives and away from his work, the trade unionist finds his fellow branch members connected with any industry but that in which he himself works. The result is lack of interest. The author advocates workers organised on the basis of one union for each industry. Mr. Brown's criticisms show all the obvious advantages likely to be gained from organisation by industry. That is, however, not the whole story, as the advocates of the rival conception will maintain, and experience in industries where the industrial idea has been more or less fully applied does not show any startling improvement. Moreover—and this should be remembered by both schools—the border lines of an industry are not always clear and fixed. Hence, for example, the conflicting claims of those who would argue that the railways are a self-contained industry and those who retort that they are only part of the transport industry.

Socialists are, however, more concerned with the further aspect. Mr. Brown does not advocate the one union one industry form of industrial organisation for the workers as an end in itself but as a means also for presenting the class struggle along Syndicalist lines, as a means for wresting ownership and control of the factories from the capitalists. The author proposes the " Social General Strike," or the "General Lock-out of the Employing Class" as he would prefer to describe it, and the management and administration of factories and industries along Syndicalist lines by the workers, such industries to be organised on a federal basis. On page 10 he says: "Against this action we hear raised the Social Democratic wail, “If you do that the bosses will shoot and baton you!' We reply, if you don't, they will shoot and baton (and starve) you, but with much greater success, as the history of passive starvation strikes shows. But in order to beat the workers, they must first start knocking about their own property, as they discovered in the 1937 automobile stay-in-strike in the U.S.A. If Mr. Brown is saying that the capitalists would acquiesce in parting with the ownership of the factories rather than see them knocked about, the present war demonstrates the contrary. They accept the facts of quite a lot of " knocking about" even where the certain loss of ownership is not involved. In any case, the sit-down strikes in America, and those in France which he also quotes, were not strikes which had for their purpose the taking over of the factories concerned on Syndicalist lines. Another example is given, with approval, of French shop girls who engaged in a sit-down strike and locked out the customers. Surely they acted wrongly. Ought they not have served the customers and informed the employers that the proceeds were for the benefit of the workers? Commenting on the example of the French shop girls Mr. Brown almost gushes: "And the bloodshed, the vast sea of gore, predicted by the Socialist. NONE!" Might a Socialist humbly suggest that the capitalist state would apply such methods as were dictated by the extent of the menace.

Well written, in a superficially plausible style, the hollowness of the Syndicalist case as stated in this pamphlet is nevertheless almost self-apparent.

Russia To-day

"Soviet Russia in Maps" (edited by George Goodal, M.A., price 2/6, and published by George Phillip & Sons, Ltd.), is a useful addition to an existing library of books on Russia. It consists of thirty-two pages of maps with notes and commentaries illustrating main changes in Russian economics, social and political changes, over seven centuries; it includes figures and comparisons of industrial developments to date.

Harry Waite