Notes by the Way: Something to Cheer About? (1947)

The Notes by the Way Column from the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Something to Cheer About?

On November 6th Molotov announced that Russia had solved the secrets of making atom bombs.

The following is from the Daily Worker (7/11/47) : 

“When a mass meeting of 15,000 in the largest hall in Paris were told of the Molotov atom bomb statement, they rose to their feet and cheered enthusiastically for 20 full minutes.”

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Scientists in Russia

In “Scientist in Russia” (Pelican Books Edition, 1s.), Professor Ashby tells what happened to a Russian scientist who opposed the scientific theory backed by the Russian Government. He writes as follows :

“The argument by heresy-hunt was used with deadly effect against the most outspoken and devastating critic of Lysenko, the famous Russian biologist N. I. Vavilov. Vavilov probably went beyond safe limits in condemning the new genetics as an outbreak of medieval obscurantism. He paid a high price. He was accused of dilatoriness in getting practical results, of lending support to fascists by his theory of centres of origin of crops, and of aligning himself with Bateson, the leader of genetics in England. In 1940 he was deprived of his directorship of the Institute of Plant Industry. He was subsequently imprisoned and he died, without any announcement or explanation, probably in 1943. The type of argument used against Vavilov is well illustrated by a comment made to me by a prominent animal physiologist in Moscow in October, 1945. ‘I reject Vavilov’s views,’ he said, ‘because Vavilov believed in Bateson, and Timiryazev condemned Bateson.’ The same argument has been put on paper by Prezent.” (P. 111).

In a letter to the Manchester Guardian, as in the book itself, Professor Ashby made it clear that such intolerance is not in his view the whole picture. He wrote :

“It is true that Vavilov was killed because he adhered to bourgeois genetics; it is no less true that there are to this day two professors of bourgeois genetics in the University of Moscow—no other kind of genetics is taught there, and the official text-book was written by an American. This sort of inconsistency is, in my opinion, the key to an understanding of Russian policy not only in science but also in public affairs.”—(Manchester Guardian, 1/11/47.)

To which the Manchester Guardian reviewer replied as follows :

“When Russian scientists see a political adventurer, half charlatan and half visionary, attacking the most eminent scientist of the country with pseudo-scientific, slogans steeped in political venom ; when they have to stand by helplessly and watch the victim standing at bay and being hounded in the end to prison and death (the campaign took about, ten years from start to finish) – then I am sure they felt exactly as any of us would if this happened here. The more dearly they love their country, the more bitter is their shame and horror, and their seeming unconcern is simply a token of the reigning political terror.”— (Manchester Guardian, 11/11//47.)

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Why Financiers Like Labour Government

The following is from the Financial Times, (8/9/47):

“Despite a formidable total of bear points—inadequate supplies of coal, steel and other materials, reduced home consumption, dollar shortage, and a possible autumn Budget—there are more favourable aspects which, at the moment the market tends rather to ignore.

“This is the view expressed in their current circular by a leading firm of Stock Exchange brokers.

”‘There can be no comparison with conditions in 1931 when industry was facing a widespread saturation of its markets through over production,’ says the circular, ‘and while the sequence of events ten years earlier after the 1914-18 war were rather more closely comparable, there is one significant difference—the fact that a Labour Government is in office will surely mean that we need not fear widespread or long lasting strikes of the character which then caused the collapse of post-war industrial activity.”

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Machinery and Unemployment

“NEW YORK, Friday.— Mechanisation and other agricultural developments threaten to make displaced persons of many American farmers, according to a report by the House of Representatives’ Agricultural Committee.

“More than 3,000,000 farm labourers were unemployed last year because of mechanisation, although crops beat all records.

“Further displacement of people now making some kind of living from the land is expected, says the report.–Reuter.”—(Evening Standard, 12/9/47.)

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The U.S.A. and the Mediterranean

“Admiral Bieri, commanding the United States Mediterranean Fleet, has given an interview in Naples to the correspondent of the Milan daily Corriere Lombardo in the course of which he is alleged to have said :

”The United States Fleet is here and intends to stay here in Italian and Mediterranean waters. American interests in Europe will not cease with the signing of the German treaty. In accordance with the policy of the United States Navy Minister American forces will be allocated wherever there are American interests, in closest co-operation with the British’.”— (Manchester Guardian, 10/9/17.)

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The Miners’ New Masters

“Mr. Bernard Rees, chairman of the National Union of Mineworkers’ lodge at Arrail Griffin Colliery, Abertillery, where 16,000 miners are on strike, said this afternoon :

” ‘Surface workers are still being paid wages at starvation level and the National’ Coal Board’s policy of subjection has been worse than anything we ever experienced under free enterprise.

” ‘N.C.B. officials are standing over men to time their movements, and the miners say that they are turning our colliery into something which resembles a concentration camp.’ “—(Evening Standard, 21/10/47.)

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NOT the Socialist Party

“One of the richest men in England has just joined the Socialist Party. He is metal-magnate Steven James Lindsay Hardie, 62-year-old Scot, chairman of British Oxygen Company and its associated companies.

“British Oxygen has a capital of £6,000,000 and directly controls eight companies, with interests in South Africa, Australia, India find Norway.

“Total directorships held by Hardie, 27. Among them is vice-chairmanship of the £2,750,000 firm of Metal Industries, Ltd. As an industrialist Hardie makes metal products ranging from screws to ships.”— (Evening Standard, 14/10/47.)

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Erstwhile Internationalist Proclaim National Sovreignt

The report to the Warsaw Conference at which the new Communist International organisation was formed was made by an influential Russian Communist, Zhdanov. Much of it was reproduced by the Manchester Guardian (3/11/47). One illuminating passage reads as follows:

“Taken up by the bourgeois intelligentsia, dreamers and pacifists, the idea of a ‘world government’ is being used not only as a means of ideologically disarming the people still defending their independence from the encroachments of American imperialism, but also as a slogan specially aimed at the Soviet Union, which constantly and consistently defends the principle of true equality and the maintenance of the sovereign rights of all nations, great and small.”

In the meantime Russia,, like the other capitalist Powers, keeps troops in occupation of several countries and is at the moment trying to induce the Persian Government to carry out the agreement to set up a Russian controlled oil concern in North Persia, the agreement having been forced on the Persian Government last year while Russian troops were in occupation.

A Fabian and his Fabianism (1947)

From the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Fabianism came to be the political Bible of the Labour Movement then Sidney Webb (the late Lord Passfield) was its Prophet. Of him, Lord Listowel in the House of Lords said: “That the Labour Party came to regard him much as the Children of Israel must have regarded Moses . . . who pointed a way through the ‘Wilderness to the Promised Land’.” (Hansard, 20/10/47.) Undoubtedly, Webb, more than any other Fabian, foretold of the New Jerusalem which was emerging, painlessly, inevitably, almost imperceptibly from the present Social Order. The Labour Government’s historic mission is, it seems, to demonstrate that this Fabian New Jerusalem is merely Capitalist “Old Babylon,” writ large.

The Liberal Lord Samuel also spoke of Webb as a political pioneer and one of the principal founders of a Great Party. The Conservative Lord Salisbury called him the founder of the Fabian Society and intellectual father of the Labour Party. The Archbishop of Canterbury mentioned the close connection between Webb and the Church on the question of Social Reform. “He also desired to associate himself with the Tributes paid.” (Hansard, same issue.) Speaking for ourselves, “We come to bury Caesar not to praise him.”

The Fabian Society was founded in 1881. A group of “educated people,” so their historian, Mr. Pease, assures us, not without a little unction it seems : “We were aware of Marx,” he says, “but I do not think at the time the Society was founded we had read or assimilated his ideas.” (“History of Fabian Society,” p.24.) A statement probably as true now of the Fabian Society as it was then.

Non-acquaintance with Marx’s ideas has not prevented successive generations of Fabians from solemnly pronouncing him “A great thinker.” It was apparently only what he thought about that for them is of so little consequence. Mr. Pease even thought “That every passing year brought added conviction that the broad principles of Marxism will guide the evolution of Society during the present century.” (“History of Fabian Society,” p.236.) The sentence before, however, had noted that the first achievement of Fabianism was to break the spell of Marxism in England

As against Marxism the Fabians began by denying that Socialism could only be the outcome of historic development. Webb on behalf of the Fabians assured us “that no special claim is made that Socialism has a basis in history.” (“Fabian Essays,” p.36.) Instead we are presented with a plurality of Socialisms each dependant on their particular environment and, it appears, geographical location. “Thus Fabianism,” Mr. Pease told us, “was English Socialism,” The political and industrial conditions being somewhat different in degree in Scotland, he added. While in Ireland an application of socialist principles had not been seriously attempted. Nor, we presume, Wales or the Channel Islands.

Marxism, we must add. is a unified world conception based on an analysis of the sum totality of existing social productive relationships—Capitalism. If is thus able to demonstrate that the very development of capitalism provides the economic and social conditions for its replacement by an entirely different social arrangement based on common ownership and production for use. The present system being universal in character the Socialist Society which supersedes it must have the same universal character. There can then be no different kinds of Socialism, i.e., a Scotch Socialism in contrast to an English Socialism. Socialism being world-wide in extent the same social system must operate and be universally valid throughout the entire Socialist world.

Such is the stuff of which Fabian “Socialism” was made. Indeed Fabianism cut this “stuff” into even smaller parts, and presented us with such microscopic “socialist” portions as “Socialist London,” “Socialist Birmingham,” even “Socialist Poplar” and “Socialist Bermondsey.” Shaw’s admission in the Fabian Tract 41 that “he and the early Fabians had no true knowledge of Socialism” is hardly a confession. For Shaw still holds most of Mr. Pease’s “Socialist illusions.” The venerable Shavian beard would seem to illustrate in this respect that wisdom is not necessarily denoted by whiskers—not even when they are Fabian whiskers.

What then are the fundamentals of Fabianism? Even the Fabians themselves seem wholely ignorant of them. “There never has been a Fabian orthodoxy,” said Mr. Pease, “because no one was in a position to assert what the true faith was.” (“History of Fabian Society,” p.237.) Nevertheless continued Mr. Pease, “We obtained freedom of thought,” An attribute which Pease seemed to think highly desirable.

No doubt for a “Socialist” organisation which included all shades of political opinion advised voting against what it termed Socialist candidates if it meant splitting the vote and keeping the more popular “progressive” candidate out, and which supported Imperialism and war, such “freedom of opinion,” was not merely desirable but essential.

Apparently for the Fabians Socialism, like the poor, has always been with us. According to Webb “Socialist philosophy is but the recognition of the principles of social organisation in great part unconsciously accepted. The history of the 19th century was an almost continuous record of progress in Socialism.” The Socialist cat is thus out of the Fabian bag. Fabian Socialism is merely the acceptance and extension of all State activity. In pursuance of this theme Webb in a grotesque passage records what for him seemed the progress of Socialism. He enumerates such things as State control of the Armed Forces, Gas-works, Parks, Cemeteries, Slaughter Houses, Pawn-broking Establishments and Leper Islands. (“Fabian “Essays,” pp.18-51.) Even State registration of hawkers, dogs, cats, cabs, and inspection of baby farms and Scotch red herrings are all evidence of Socialist legislation ! For Webb a pedlar’s licence was proof that we were enjoying a semi-socialist existence. While such institutions, as the War Office and Scotland Yard were important milestones on the high road to the full Socialist Commonwealth.

The Socialism of Webb, in spite of protests from some Fabian quarters, became the accepted and authorised version. It merely turns out to be but the bureaucratic organisation essential for the maintenance and upkeep of Capitalism. Social reforms can likewise be included under this category. The 19th century Factory Acts constituted State intervention against the unrestrained character of prevailing capitalist exploitation. Such exploitation would finally have led to a catastrophic decline in workers’ productivity and thus profits. Sanitation laws constituted a safeguard for the wealthy against epidemics. Education Acts are designed to give workers’ children the training necessary for the wage-labour status they will one day assume. Unemployment Acts. Health Insurance, Old Age Pensions, merely denote the need to regulate the wide-spread poverty and destitution caused by the economic effects of capitalism on the working class. While certain reforms may give the worker slight but often merely transient amelioration they leave untouched the poverty resulting from his class-position in present society. The undertaking by the State of such activities are on the grounds of cheaper and more efficient administration. At the same time they spread the burden of taxation evenly over the entire capitalist class.

As for Nationalisation of Key Industries, advocated by Fabians for many years, it has come to pass. Nevertheless, the Tories or Liberals do not propose to denationalise them if returned to Power, while the theme of a “planned Capitalism” is as much their theme as that of the Labour Party.

Even the Fabian “Gas and Water Socialism” was but a Radical legacy bequeathed by Joseph Chamberlain. Municipalism, its other name, merely seeks to prevent the whole capitalist class from being used as a milch-cow by the private ownership, often of a monopolistic character, of such things as heat, light, power, etc. As for parks, libraries, museums, etc., being bits of Socialism, Chamberlain, with brutal frankness, regarded them as merely “the ransom paid for the privilege of holding property.” Fabianism is then a thing of shreds and patches. Shoddy remnants, second-hand from the Tory and Liberal political shops, sewn into a Fabian patchwork. Finally, on the subject of Municipal Socialism, we have Pease’s admission that it needed for its adoption and extension no advocacy from the Fabians. (“History of Fabian Society,” p. 81.)

The maturing of Capitalism into monopolistic forms and the integration of the State into its economic functions and activities, have been idealised by the Fabians into a programme of State Capitalism. The very developmental trends of Capitalism and its associated bureaucratic growth has then been presented as its opposite—Socialism.

It was this very evolution of Capitalism towards monopolistic forms that gave to Fabianism its automatic and ineluctable character. If the Mills of Capitalism were grinding small they were nevertheless grinding out “Socialism” every day. Such was the cumulative effect of all this that one day Capitalist Society would become a Socialist Society and no one would notice it. The economic revolution is going on every day, said Mr. Clarke, practically independent of our desires or prejudices. (“Fabian Essays,” p.62.) The Tories and Liberals, declared Webb many times, were committed to “Socialism” as much as the “Socialists.” He added, even people who believe Socialism a foolish dream were its unconscious instruments. According to the Fabians the coming of Socialism was as inexorable as an act of Nature. While the Fabians assigned themselves the role of midwives in the period of social gestation, the existence and growth of the “Socialist” seed inside the womb of Capitalist Society was apparently innocent of human agency. No greater miracle has been claimed since the birth of Jesus. This is a denial of the Marxist dictum, that given the material conditions to hand, men make history. Dressed up in its Sunday clothes this piece of Fabian fatalism is called “the inevitability of Gradualism.”

This was also a denial of the class-struggle and of the need of the working class to capture political power for the overthrow of Capitalism. For effective Socialist action and understanding they substituted political auto-suggestion. Because society was evolving gradually in the “Socialist” direction, they said, things were going to get better and better for the workers. Given the Fabians in control the results were, guaranteed. Such was the pernicious Fabian doctrine which sought to insulate the working class from a true perspective of their class position in Capitalist Society.

With this automatic process went a peculiar Fabian opportunism. With typical Fabian discreetness they called it “Permeation.” While telling the workers they should have an independent party of their own, they felt that they, the Fabians, should be free to work in and with every group or party for the favourable growth and influence of their ideas. Telling the Tories and Liberals “we” were already half way to Socialism, from which there was no turning back, the other half may as well be travelled in unison nnd together.

The Fabians also helped form the Labour Party by their active association with that party’s parent body—The Labour Representation Committee. So well did the Fabians, permeate the Labour Party that it could at length have uttered with some truth, “We are all Fabians now.” This Fabianisation of the Labour Party made, however, the Fabians superfluous. After a time they became an integral part of the Labour Party and as an independent political organisation for all practical purposes the Society permeated itself out of existence. Such is the inevitability of gradualness. However, Sidney Webb could claim that the Labour Party was. not a class party but one representing National interests who were ready to take over the Government of the country. Appropriately enough the Labour Party’s 1918 programme. “Labour and the New Social Order” was drafted by Webb.

Little wonder that “Fabian Socialism” representing its establishment as “the co-operative outcome of all sections of the community” was regarded as a welcome substitute by those in the saddle for the Marxist ” Class Struggle ” and “Social Revolution.” A “Socialism”—State Capitalism—that left their real class position undisturbed they could regard with equanimity, even interest. They might even agree with Shaw. ” That it was as easy and matter of course for the average respectable Englishman to become a Socialist as a Liberal or Tory.” (“Fabian Essays” 1908 preface.) The Fabians not merely made their Socialism respectable, they made it fashionable. Thus the announcement by an heir of wealthy interests that be had become a Fabian convert to his family might have merely occasioned a remark from his Mamma that his father had become one at an even earlier age.

The adoration of the State and its administrative functions by the Fabians has interesting implication’s. Thus Webb said “We must take more care to improve the social organism than our individual development. It. is not the individual’s development which is the highest cultivation of his personality but the filling in in the best possible way of his humble function in the great social machine.” Shaw, going perhaps even further, implies in Appendix I of the “History of the Fabian Society” that Parliamentary democracy as understood is a mere calling of fools into a ring. He said “Society could never be reconstructed by the type of men produced by popular elections.” Without qualified rulers a Socialist State is impossible, be declares. In a preface to the “Fabian Essays.,” he also states “the very existence of society is dependent on the skilled work of administrators and experts.” Further in the appendix Shaw hoped that “Democracy would demand that only suitable men should be presented to its choice.” Fabians, of course. This is, of course, a. favourite device of dictatorships which, also scorning the notion that people are intelligent enough to run Society in their own interests collectively, demand that only people favoured by nature and circumstances are qualified to take charge. That Shaw himself at length came riding home politically on the shoulders of Mussolini seems not an illogical deduction from his own premises. Fabian State efficiency rather than Fabian democracy would seem their cardinal doctrine. From this it would also seem that Webb and the Fabians anticipated certain features of Fascism.

When Sidney Webb and his wife, Beatrice, were old people, they went to Russia. Previously they had considered Bolshevism no better than Czarism. “Under Bolshevism the prisons were as full and the rifles as active as under Tsardom.” (“Decay of Capitalist Civilisation,” p.101.) What they now saw on their visit was a vast administrative machine run by a privileged bureaucracy. And what the Webbs saw, they liked. The Stalinists hailed the Webbs’ approval of their bureaucratic machine as evidence “of the establishment of Socialism in one Country.” For the Webbs it was the establishment of that State Capitalism par excellence which they had advocated for years. And the Webbs were right. As their fellow Fabian, Bernard Shaw, announced on returning from a visit to Russia, “The Bolsheviks have merely realised the Fabian Ideal.”

When the Webb’s came home they wrote a book of 1,200 pages;: “Soviet Communism a New Civilisation?” In subsequent editions the question mark was removed. Apparently this indicated their full approval and sanction of the state of affairs in Russia. In such a truly Fabian fashion did “Socialism” in Russia come into existence.

This, of course, led to a New Communist line on the Webbs. True Lenin had referred to them as bourgeois humbugs . . , social chauvanists . . . guilty of the worst kind of treachery, etc. (“Lenin on Britain,” p.152.) Likewise the Communist International had denounced Webb and the Fabians as apologists for State Capitalism under the guise of Socialism. (“Handbook of Marxism,” p. 1,026.) Now the Webbs became “Social Scientists,” “objective thinkers,” etc. In such a fashion did a Communist Party scribe called Allen Hutt, eulogise Webb in the Daily Worker (15/10/47.) Incidentally in a book called the “Final Crisis” (p.96) the writer had approvingly quoted Engels as to the Fabians being a band of place hunters. He also considered the influence of the Fabians to have been disastrous on what he called the Socialist Movement.

The Fabian belief in the silent and peaceful evolution of Capitalism with its bedtime stories to the workers of constantly improving conditions has been shattered by the history of Capitalist developments. No such progress has taken place. Economists like Chiozza Money, Bowley, Campion and others have shown how decade after decade road little change in the share of unpaid labour appropriated by the capitalists. Webb, himself, confessed, over 30 years after the founding of the Fabian Society, that one-half of the social product was taken by one-ninth of the community.” (“The Decay of Capitalist Civilisation,” p.17.) While Pease admitted that “little progress has been made towards Socialism. Private ownership flourishes almost as vigorously as it did thirty years ago.” (“History of the Fabian Society,” p.243.) Indeed the Webbs’ “Decay of Capitalism” was a tearful admission that mass unemployment, slumps, and wars were catastrophes not provided for in the peaceful Inevitability of Gradualism, On p.174 these curious Socialists admitted they had never during thirty years in the Socialist Movement, framed an indictment of Capitalism. True that in doing so they seemed to have discovered that there is something inherent in Capitalism which prevents it from functioning in the interests of the vast majority. (Same book, p.18.) What they never saw was that the “Decay of Capitalism was also the decay of Fabianism.” For that reason they did not disappoint us by failing to reach a truly Fabian conclusion. “In order for the workers and capitalists to understand their problems and each other a little better” they said in the last paragraph, “we offer, perhaps in vain, this little book.” The Webbs in setting out to find out what was wrong in Capitalist Society ended up by offering “a little book” as the solution for its social problems. As usual Class Co-operation was their panacea. Thus the long-chanted formula of these disciples of John Stuart Mill’s humanitarianism, “if only sections of society would be reasonable and sympathetic to each other’s claims.” If, of course, the lion was a vegetarian he might be persuaded to lie down with the lamb.

Such was Sidney Webb and his fellow Fabians. “Educated people” and tireless, seekers after statistical facts, yet never once in their researches did they discover the simple and fundamental truths which underlie present class society; simple truths known to the humblest student of Socialism. While these truths remain simple the confusion caused by people like Webb makes the work of expounding them infinitely much harder. By his advocacy of a Capitalism reformed in working-class interests he helped to blunt the sharp edge of the clear-cut Socialist solution. By accident or design he and the Fabians became formidable political fifth columnists in the ranks of the International working class. As an investigator of social facts and part author of a work like “The History of British Trade Unions,” he may be remembered. As a sociologist and a scientific interpreter of his times he is already in the process of being forgotten.

Ted Wilmott

Boom and Bust (1947)

From the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The waste and destruction of the late total war has presented capitalism with a new burst of business, if only in replacing the bombed fixed capital and equipment made obsolete or worn out by six years of constant war production. With this leeway to make up, together with the general dearth of consumer goods, capital can look forward to a period of activity fulfilling the requirements of the “sellers’ market.” Only occasionally, amid the clamour of capitalists, “communists” and labour leaders, hounding on the workers to more production, is a voice heard warning that the sellers’ market will be of short duration. And what then? Will there be the usual slump?

The socialist answer is an affirmative, for whether production is carried on by private enterprise, or is planned through the medium of the state, the mechanism of capitalist production and distribution acts the same, no matter the ideology of those selected to control the pulling of its levers.

The memory of the world slump of the 1930’s is still green among the working-class, a slump which only ended with the preparation for World War 2; while significantly enough, a similar position existed before World War 1. In fact looking at the history of capitalism it will be seen to proceed with a movement of feverish activity followed by a crisis of stagnation. Why is this? What goes wrong with capitalism’s “works”?

At the risk of reiteration it must be repeated that the motive of capitalist production is a surplus of wealth which through the medium of money is distributed to the owners of both private and state capital; a surplus comprising the unpaid labour of the workers who having no stake in the “means of production” must perforce hire out their energies for a “cost of living” wage. The difference between this “cost” and the wealth turned out during the workers’ employment, figures in company shares, state bonds, etc. as rent, interest and profit. The “means of production” covers all those productive processes using plant, machinery, etc., with the factories which house it, as against the “means of consumption” consisting of food, clothing, luxuries, etc., consumed by the workers and capitalists, via wages on the one hand and “income” on the other.

If production and consumption are to balance it follows that the owners of the means of production should turn out no more equipment than that needed by the owners of the means of consumption. There should, for example, be the right total of ovens for bakeries or tractors for the land, while the amount of bread, etc., should not exceed the capacity of the consumers. But this presupposes a non expansive capitalism befitting its early days when domestic industry knew the limit of the local market and the means of production were puny and individually owned.

The development of the means of production ended this self-ownership and transferred the scene of production to the factories where men and women labour, not as owners but as wage-workers, and where handicraft is replaced by a division of labour suited to the pace and handling of power-driven machinery. A revolution from private production to social-production or commodity production by social effort.

Here lies capitalism’s dilemma. The productive capacity has long overflowed the local sphere and demands continuous and expanding markets, while competition for these markets creates an open race to minimise the amount of human labour in every commodity by automatic factory production and mechanical land cultivation. Capital, therefore, moves in the direction of spending more on labour-saving mechanisms than on workers’ labour-power, while the mechanism itself takes on the character of a Frankenstein which must be constantly fed with orders and “contracts.”

Take for instance a modern steel plant built to turn out girders, railway lines, etc., for the world market. From the iron to steel process, to the actual rolling, all its departments, must work at full capacity if the product, is to be economically produced, while this in turn requires the requisite amount of orders for rails, etc. To build a smaller works on the receipt of lesser orders requiring only half the capacity of the normal works would obviously he uneconomical. Repeat this example in other spheres of production and one sees the picture of capitalist production driven on to produce above the need of the market in the hope that stock will later be sold.

Eventually the ominous sign of glut appears in this drive for production and profits, by the banks shortening up on credit. “Cheap money” for borrowers comes to an end, and the stage where “stock is as good as money” changes to one where “money is the only real wealth.” To meet payments and obligations, every owner rushes to market with everything saleable for what it will fetch, for fear that market prices will reach a lower level. The crisis is on. The capitalist whales eat the capitalist small fry, now-gone bankrupt. Labour-power like every other commodity becomes a drag on the market where millions are idle because they have produced too much. In short, the forces of production are fettered and in conflict with the method of distribution.

All this may seem far away in these days of shortages, but heed the forecast of Sir Robert Johnson, chairman at the annual meeting of Cammell Lairds, shipbuilders. Criticised by a shareholder for the policy of consolidating reserves, he said : “We have to look after our money in shipbuilding because the slump comes as sure as night follows day. There are always seven years of plenty and seven years of famine in shipbuilding.” (Evening Standard, 4/4/47.)

Again, and this time from labour quarters: “America is heading for the biggest economic blizzard in history. There may be 20,000,000 unemployed and that blizzard will hit this country.” (Jake Woddis, Clerical and Administration Workers Union. News Review, 4/4/47.)

The “trade cycle” of slump and boom is inevitable for the reasons previously outlined and results from the wage system which denies the bulk ot the consumers the possibility of owning the total consumable wealth which they have produced. The capitalists stop production as soon as it ceases to be profitable and allow the piled up stock to rot or be destroyed. These they cannot give away to the needy even if they wished, for goods without price would mean the end of trade while furthermore a large part of the unsold stock is means of production, useless save as capital. Fared by such a problem periodically, national capitalism has struck out for the undeveloped areas of the world only to find that the export of means of production to these parts has resulted in their development as competitors.

There appears then only one desperate way out for world capitalism’s problem of overproduction, and that is to engulf the world in a periodic destructive war, arising from the national struggle for markets to absorb the surpluses thus giving capital elbow room, by furnishing the costly means of destruction followed by the breathing space given by the necessary reconstruction of the “peace.”

The only hope of ending this social madness and the drift to World War 3, is for the workers to advance beyond the support of capitalist planning controlled by “labour” or any other government, and to press forward to the goal of socialism where social production will be balanced by social ownership. With the means of life in their own hands they will cast off their servitude by ending the wage-system by which capital appropriates the fruits of their labour.

Frank Dawe

Medical economics (1947)

From the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The religious racket has, been exploded by Socialists since the days of Marx; but the more scientific racket, the medical “business” has received little attention, in spite of the fact that it is now generally recognised as the strongest and most militant trade (or professional) union in the country.

Millions of pounds are daily spent on therapeutics (curing disease) but scarcely anything is spent in comparison on prophylactics (preventing disease), for the simple economic reason that it is far more profitable to pursue, therapeutics. If too much attention was devoted to prophylactics it might render therapeutics redundant by “killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.” Doctors and hospitals must have sick people, and millions of them, or go out of business.

The workings of the medical profession provide a wonderful example of the economic factor in determining events and culture. Perhaps in this respect it is even more clearly demonstrable than in the case of the spiritual counterpart in religion. In this country there are more doctors and hospitals per head of population than in most countries, and strange to say, there is also a vast and increasing number of sick or ailing people. The same is the case with dentists; in spite of the fact that they are to be seen everywhere, and in spite of the widespread use of the tooth brush and dentifrice, the state of the teeth of the average English person is appalling, when compared to those of many primitive tribes who have no dentists, no tooth brushes and no dentifrice. In fact it would appear superficially that the more dentists, and care of the teeth, the worse is the final result.

Strange to relate with all the efforts of the medical profession and all their scientific research, Cancer, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Nephritis, Rheumatism. Nervous Diseases, Occupational Neurosis, and a host of other complaints, continue to increase yearly, which clearly indicates that something is radically wrong somewhere.

Capitalism regulates, the channel in which medical money goes, and stipulates broadly how it shall be spent; “for the hand that pays the piper, calls the tune.” Surgeons who can get, (or extract from the patient), 100 guineas for a certain operation, are always lurking for possible clients ; and why not, for their success depends very largely upon how many they find. Would anybody pay a surgeon for saving them from an operation? They certainly would not be prepared to pay the same fees.

Drug manufacturers, and patent medicine vendors, make enormous profits on certain chemical preparations, and do not fail to take full advantage of the power of advertising through the medium of those who handle and prescribe the drugs. Only too often quite worthless and harmful drugs are applauded as having health-giving properties, and statements made about them which could never be justified.

The late Lord Trent (formerly Sir Jesse Boot), owner and controller of about 1,000 chemists shops which hears his name, was bed ridden with Rheumatism, and had to be wheeled about in a bath-chair for many years of his life before he died, whilst his shops sold dozens of different chemical preparations for alleviating rheumatism.

A lady who is quite a public figure, owns or used to own, a once much advertised slimming product, and yet she herself regularly tipped the scales at 18 stone. Just imagine this 18 stone of beautiful womanhood ; what about a shovelful of her own slimming mixture for breakfast? But business is business, especially in anything connected with medicine and health, so why worry?

Today certain drugs are making fortunes for the companies behind the medical profession. Just think of the amount of advertising the B.B.C. gives to Penicillin, Streptomycin and Pheno-barbitone. Almost every day the B.B.C. has to announce that some doctor has carelessly mislaid quantities of the latter, thus giving further free advertising to these drugs, incidentally, who says the B.B.C. don’t advertise?

Blood squirting (hypodermic injections of serum), is popular today because apart from their simplicity, and certain medical reasons, these, practises, are enormously profitable, both to doctors and the companies responsible for the serum preparation. An old horse, of little use for its traction power, might fetch about £10 in the cats’ meat market (although horse flesh has many other uses than for cats’ meat). If the horse is deliberately given a dose of a disease resembling smallpox or diphtheria, it can be made capable of producing many times its cats’ meat value by producing suitable serum, at wholesale prices.

The enormous amount of injections done during the war on soldiers—where the men lined up before the doctor who did one after the other just like shelling peas, till the needle got blunt and was thrown away— was not done for nothing, nor even without profit. Manufacturing chemists were reaping thousands out of it.

Medical research under capitalism has got itself into an absurd scientific entanglement. Shaw’s “Doctor’s Dilemma,” and Cronin’s “Citadel,” only touch on aspects of this contradictory muddle. After millions of pounds had been spent on Cancer research (and the figures for cancer mortality steadily rising), the medical profession were instrumental in causing the government to pass the Cancer Laws of 1939, to prevent anybody except a qualified medical man from treating cancer. It would appear that the large amount of criticism they were receiving at this, time had to be silenced, and freedom of action as well as freedom of criticism was debarred to the public.

It is not always those who have the biggest purses who receive the best treatment. Sometimes the more money you have the more operations and specialists’ fees, and subsequently a quicker route to the grave. This was the trouble with the one-time world famous film idol, Rudolph Valentino, who wasted his money on medical attention to no purpose. Doctors are specialists in the art of knowing how to bleed (financially) those who have too much (pecuniary) blood. Kings and presidents, Lords and business magnates have to watch their step where doctors are concerned, as do also the working class. Even Karl Marx was helped to an untimely grave before his life work was completed through advertised chemical dope. Engels observed when Marx was obviously dying, that his body was literally full of patent medicines.

It is regrettable that so many workers have little real interest in health matters, and consequently become such easy victims to medical frauds, and tyranny. Doctors thrive through the advertisements for medicines, cigarettes, alcoholic drinks, doped foods and the health-destroying habits that follow their use. Why should the medical profession endeavour to educate the workers on these topics, and lose them as potential clients as a result? Is there any wonder why the doctors and specialists confine their nomenclature to technical terms derived mostly from the. Latin: or Greek, and pharmaceutical abbreviations that few can understand. It is not easy either to climb into the profession nor to understand its workings; those in it see to that.

“It’s your blood they’re after.” The recent blood transfusion campaign, coming at a time when it is extremely difficult to obtain blood-making foods of the right nature, quality and quantity, is enough to make us sit back and do some thinking. Every day appeals are made on the radio that blood donors are urgently needed, and thousands have responded, to what they consider a humane cause.

At one time in capitalism’s youth, we were told that disease was due to too much blood. When the public were convinced of this doctrine a new line of business was established in removing this surplus. The barber-surgeons were brought into existence for the purpose of taking a pint of blood from all comers who were sick (plus of course a fee for services rendered). The fact that many people treated by these methods were suffering from anaemia and afterwards died, and many others through lack of antiseptic precautions became infected and succumbed, did not worry the barber-surgeons much. Today we can get our blood taken for nothing, and by the latest scientific methods. Tomorrow we might be paid for giving it, but that all depends on how many “blood blacklegs” there are, and also the degree of health consciousness of the masses. No longer is the theory held, “let us take some of your surplus blood and you will get health,” but rather, “let us give you some more blood and you will gain health, or have your life saved.” A curious biological reverse !

Of course there are thousands of street and industrial accidents today that need immediate supplies of blood. But this is not the whole story, there are also many hospital accidents, for modern surgeons, with the aid of anti-septic surgery and anaesthetics, regularly take risks that but a few decades ago they could, or would, never have taken. There is more surgery today than ever before, and there is going to be more tomorrow, especially if a third world war occurs. Consequently a blood donor campaign becomes necessary to capitalist society. Surgery is a very profitable department of science and those that are in it intend that it shall remain so. These strange changes in doctrine become practical politics to the high priests of the medical profession.

Capitalism has long ago converted the cow into a milk producing machine, and the hen into an egg producing apparatus; it now seeks to convert the worker into a blood producing factory, and this has got to be done on a restricted diet.

Horace Jarvis

SPGB Meetings (1947)

Party News from the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Editorial: Divide and Rule in India (1947)

Editorial from the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British invaders of India did not create Moslem-Hindu rivalry but they certainly made use of what they found. A divided India was a weak India. Although communal riots were troublesome for the Police and costly to traders it was possible for the alien rulers to view them somewhat philosophically. British capitalists were holding down India because they made big profits out of it and they no more thought of getting out of India because of Hindu-Moslem riots than they would have thought of giving up the profits of capitalism at home because of occasional conflicts with the workers.

The enthusiasts for Indian independence, particularly the members of the predominately Hindu Congress Party, built up their propaganda on a foundation provided by two charming myths. One was that if only British capitalism would get out Moslems, Hindus and the adherents of other religious systems would forget their traditional differences and live peaceably together. The other was that India is a “nation,” all its 400 million inhabitants yearning to be united under their own Indian government. Events during the past year have shattered both. British rule has ended but the largely Hindu India and the largely Moslem Pakistan refused to unite. They are two separate States facing each other in an atmosphere of tension bordering on war. Many tens of thousands of Moslems in India and Hindus in Pakistan have been brutally murdered in communal disturbances that dwarf anything that has happened for years. Hundreds of thousands of refugees now live in misery and fear.

It may be asked, in view of what has happened, have the leaders of the Indian parties failed in their object? Were they mistaken in their myths and have their eyes now been opened? By no means. Myths are made by leaders for the deception of their followers, not for the leaders’ own consumption. The masses may now be suffering pangs of disillusionment, but not the leaders – except perhaps some curious figures like Gandhi and his circle.

Gandhi’s despair was exposed in a speech he made late in September:

  “If there is no other way of securing justice from Pakistan and if Pakistan persistently refuses to see its proved error and continues to minimize it the Indian Union Government would have to go to war against it. As for myself, my way is different. I worship God which is Truth and non-violence. There was a time when India listened to me. Today I am a back number. I have no place in the new order where they want an army, a navy, and an air force and what not. 1 can never be a party to all that.” (Times, 29/9/47.)

No, the propertied classes, the Princes, landowners, and thrusting capitalists with their expanding textile steel and engineering plants have not failed in their object, which was the same as that of the British capitalists in India, the object of preserving their privileged position as exploiters of the masses. Compared with a matter of such paramount importance words about religious and national union are of no account. It is possible some day that India and Pakistan, faced with a menacing threat from some more powerful state may unite for mutual protection, but at present they are rivals, quarreling about the division of the arms of the former British-controlled army, and manoeuvring for control of areas rich in natural resources or of strategic importance.

So capitalism runs true to form whether under the banner of Christianity, Hinduism or Mohammedanism.

The conflict between Pakistan and India and their religions is being made to serve the interests of the respective ruling class groups just as British capitalism made use of communal rivalry. What could be more useful to the Pakistan ruling class in persuading peasants and workers to be content with their lot than to be able to distract their attention away from bread and butter questions towards the iniquities of Hindus and the greed and aggression of the Indian Government? And how convenient for the latter to be able to rally the masses to the need for patriotism and to defend the country against Pakistan cruelty and trouble making. Under cover of the need for a more national spirit the Congress Party in India decided early in the summer to form a rival trade union federation to combat the existing All-India Trade Union Congress. “Communist control” was the excuse but the real object is certain to be to divide and weaken the organised workers.

The chief bone of contention between India and Pakistan is Kashmir, and an invasion by tribesmen is reported in Indian circles to have been promoted and helped by the Pakistan Government. Spokesmen of the two governments have much to say about the rights and wrongs of their respective claims to take over the territory. India, which at present holds it, promises a plebiscite; to which Pakistan writers retort that it will be faked. The real reason why the issue is so important that both sides are prepared to use military force has nothing to do with the wishes or welfare of the inhabitants. Strategically, from the standpoint of defending India (as well as Pakistan) from attack by other Powers through Central Asia it is a vital area. It has also great natural wealth in its vast forests and undeveloped coal deposits and other minerals, and its water-power may become the foundation of a great electrical development.

The ending of British rule in India was to be the opening of a new era. So said the supporters of Indian nationalism. Indeed it is. For long years capitalists and administrators plundered this conquered land in the haphazard way appropriate to the times and conditions. Now the Indian workers and peasants are going to be exploited under home-born instead of alien masters. Their craft skill and muscular energies are going to serve in the modernisation and industrialisation of India and Pakistan, new Powers fighting for the markets of Asia. The workers there could learn much from the European countries and US., if only to avoid the costly mistakes made and still being made by the workers who first suffered from the capitalist industrial revolution that is now sweeping over Asia.

In the Sweet Bye and Bye (1947)

From the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the workers first won the franchise many of them voted for their masters out of a sort of feudal loyalty, and others were cheaply woo’d with flattery and petty bribes: only a few then saw that they had in their grasp the instrument to gain their emancipation. Then began a slow growth to political maturity. In the first stage workers went to the Liberal and Tory candidates seeking pledges of support for this or that measure, offering in return to give their vote to the candidate who promised most. Only slowly did the workers learn that a government that wishes to do so can discover numerous ways of evading an election pledge without having to make the candid admission that it was given merely to catch votes; and even when pledges were honoured the results were singularly below the expectation. Becoming more wary, the electors eventually ceased to believe in quick, easy remedies, and came to expect from the parties long, detailed and ponderous programmes promising painful reconstruction operations extending over several years, to be followed, some day, by a very nice time for all. Politically it might be called the Bog of the Sweet Bye and Bye, and we are up to our necks in it now. Behind it all is the way the world organises the production and distribution of wealth – the social system called capitalism.

Capitalism never did give security and prosperity to the workers and never did run smoothly; but now, when powers of production (and destruction) have so enormously increased capitalism is in ceaseless difficulties. Let any man or woman old enough to remember 1914 ask whether he or she ever knew as much as one three-year spell which did not include one or other of a major war, a post-war “work harder and eat less” crisis, or an “overproduction” crisis with millions unemployed. We are still in the bog of capitalism and shall be so until a majority can be won over from Labourism and Toryism to Socialism.

In 1945 millions of workers thought a Labour-Government would find the way out. The number who think so is much smaller now as was shown by the heavy swingover of votes from Labour to Tory in the recent local council elections. At the General Election in 1945 the Labour Party statement “Let us Face the Future,” said:

   “The Labour Party makes no baseless promises. The future will not be easy. But this time the peace must be won. The Labour Party offers the nation a plan which will win the Peace for the People.”

That was two-and-a-half years ago. How fare the people now? Working harder, eating less, getting day by day shabbier, they face cheerless austerity with nothing more inspiring than still more plans to replace those already scrapped, more promises about the good time coming, and more nauseating sermons from Sir Stafford Cripps about the beauty of spiritual things.

What has caused the crisis, the disillusionment, the decline of the Government’s popularity? There is no difficulty about finding the answer. This is always and everywhere the fate of Labour Governments, with their well-meant but futile policy of trying to make capitalism work. The loss of Labour votes at the council elections in Britain coincided with the smashing defeat of the Labour Government in the State of Victoria, Australia. There the issue which reduced their seats from 32 to 16 and turned them out of office was the plan of the Federal Labour Government to nationalise the commercial banks. Having at first thought that nationalisation is a better way of running-capitalism, some years of trying it convinced them – as it will convince voters in Britain – that nationalisation makes no difference; so they voted against more nationalisation. There are no “better ways” of running capitalism.

Trying to run capitalism, forces a Labour Government to do all sorts of obnoxious things that they condemned Tory Governments for doing. The Labour Government retains military conscription in peacetime, reintroduces industrial conscription in the form of direction of workers to essential industries, lets the price of necessities rise while opposing wage increases, demands harder work and more austerity, uses troops in strikes, keeps an army of occupation in Germany and stores up hatred by keeping German prisoners of war here as slave labour. Opposition to all of these evils is now left to Tories, Liberals and a handful of rebel Labour M.P.s. As the Salvation Army used to say about Church hymns, the Labour Party evangelist now has the mortification of hearing all the best tunes sung by the Tory devil.

In a recent speech Mr. Arthur Horner, Communist General Secretary of the Miners’ Union, looking at the present muddle, said he could not help thinking that perhaps Mr. Churchill at the General Election deliberately spoiled the Tory campaign so that the Labour Party would have to handle the post-war troubles and earn all the odium and loss of prestige inseparable from being the Government in power. If Churchill backed that horse he was on a sure thing. The S.P.G.B. could and did foretell that outcome long before the election. It is not difficult to foresee, once the nature of capitalism is understood; and after understanding the nature of capitalism follows, the determination to abolish it and introduce Socialism.

Before leaving Mr. Horner’s speculation about Mr. Churchill’s supposed plot a certain obvious comparison leaps to the eye. If Mr. Churchill did indeed plot a Labour triumph as the sure way to disruption of a Labour Party caught in the toils of capitalism, it provides an intriguing comparison with the well-known but now never admitted “fifth column” tactic hidden behind Mr. Horner’s own party’s professed friendship for the Labour Party. Socialists do not treacherously profess friendship but openly oppose the Labour Party, because the only way out for the working class is to establish Socialism. To reject Labourism in favour of setting up totalitarian State Capitalism on the Russian model would indeed be to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

Edgar Hardcastle

Party News Briefs (1947)

Party News from the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Metropolitan Theatre, Edgware Road, London, has one of the party's most ambitious propaganda meetings on Sunday evening, December 7th (see notice). Everyone is asked to give this meeting wide publicity. Members and sympathisers can do a lot towards ensuring a packed house if they see to it that workers who are likely to be interested are told about the meeting and asked to come along. Scientific socialism is now well on the political landscape and we can bring it more to the foreground on December 7th if all of us do our best.


The Outdoor Propaganda Campaign this summer has been extensive and produced good results as shown by reports coming in from branches. Nearly all branches have had a meeting each week, and some two or three. The Propaganda Committee’s report at the end of the year on this aspect of the party’s work will be a stimulating document.


The Party membership increases steadily, as it has done year after year. There is nothing spectacular in this growth, but our gains are solid. Our membership figures do not show the violent fluctuations which are a feature of political organisations who chase the reformist “will o’ the wisp.” We build on the very firm foundation of the understanding of class-conscious workers.


The Party Funds Committee ask branches, members and sympathisers to divert contributions they wish to make to special Head Office funds to the new ‘‘Pamphlet Publication Fund” for the time being. We want to reach our £500 target quickly to pay for the two new pamphlets at the printers, and when this is done we can concentrate again on the Parliamentary and other special funds..


The two new pamphlets, the “Racial Problem” and the ”Communist Manifesto” (with a special party preface) will cost 1s. 0d. each when ready. They are both substantial pamphlets in every sense of the word and are excellent value for the money.


Post-war Fascism in this country had Raven Thompson (Director of Policy for the British Union of Fascists before the war) as its champion in the debate at Kensington Town Hall on November 10th. This debate was organised by our Ealing branch. Thompson represented the Union for British Freedom, one of the groups aping the Nazis here. This organisation offered to supply stewards to keep the meeting in order, including some to prevent “undesirables” getting into the hall. We naturally refused their offer and told them that our meetings were open to all members of the working-class who wished to attend, and that we did not anticipate any disturbances at a meeting run in our customary democratic manner. Our views were justified. The hall was jammed to capacity with 650 people and about 200 had to be turned away. A large number of those present were passionately opposed to Thompson but they listened patiently while he plodded along with a monotonous and boring recital of the mish-mash of reformist rubbish and dictatorial junk which comprises the stock-in-trade of the present day little Hitlers. Our representative, Turner, had no difficulty in ripping Thompson’s tattered political ideas into even smaller pieces with socialist analysis, and presented our alternative to Fascism and the rest of the political policies which in effect preserve the present social system. Another lesson of the debate is that a sure way of preventing the spread of Fascist doctrines is to get these would-be strong men and dictators on to a public platform and expose them for the exploded political wind-bags which they really are. Those organisations who claim a monopoly of so-called “anti- fascism" were shown by Turner in the debate to be based on the same reformist twaddle as the Fascists themselves, and they can only oppose with disruption and disorder—tactics which the Fascists welcome and by which they thrive. The audience were orderly throughout and gave about £24 to our funds.


Hackney Branch challenged Hamm, of the neo-Fascist organisation which has achieved notoriety at Ridley Road, to debate. He accepted subject to two conditions—his opponent to be a “Gentile,” and his organisation to provide stewards. As we do not know what, in the modem usage of the word, a ‘‘Gentile” is (nor does he), we declined. Hackney were also suspicious of the probable methods of his stewards. If he wants to debate with us any member we care to put up will be good enough for us and too good for him., Hackney branch’s Friday evening lectures at the Bethnal Green Central Library, Cambridge Heath Road, are well repaying the effort put into them. They continue throughout December, with the exception of December 26th. After Christmas and until the end of March these Friday lectures will be devoted to economics. The branch propose to base them all on various aspects of the first volume of ”Capital.” A debate has just been arranged with the Trotskyists at Bethnal Green Central Library on Monday, December 15th, at 7.45 p.m. Our representative will be H. Young.


Manchester Branch have now completed an excellent outdoor propaganda season and their first series of Sunday evening lectures at the Rusholme Public Hall was well supported. This first series consisted of four lectures on fundamentals of Marxism. Another series on vital questions of the day is now in progress on Sunday evenings at the same hall.


Lewisham Branch have an attractive series of open discussion meetings on Monday evenings, up to December 29th. These are being held at the Co-op. Hall, Davenport Road, Rushey Green, Catford, at 8.45 p.m. The subjects cover a very wide field, and plenty of time is given to members of the audience to put their own points of view.


Ealing Branch are keeping their outdoor propaganda outpost at Earl’s Court Station going through the winter. Lively meetings arc guaranteed here, some of the opposition coining from relics of Victorianism whose views on socialism make a queer mixture of ”free love,” ‘‘Red riot,” plus some nationalisation. In spite of this be-whiskered opposition literature sales and collections are good, and useful contacts with interested workers are being made. The Branch are following up their Ealing Town Hall meeting on November 26th with a meeting at the L.C.S. Rooms. Parkfield, South Ealing Road, on Saturday, December 6th. It will deal with the “Housing Question” and is timed to begin at 7.30 p.m.


Bloomsbury Branch’s most successful series of Sunday evening lectures is running at the Trade Union Club, Great Newport Street, W.C. The hall is jammed every Sunday. The arrangements for December are as follows. On December 15th E. Wilmott will speak on "The Development of Modem Capitalism”; on December 21st G. Deane on “Has the Labour Party a Way Out?” and on December 28th S. Cash on “Socialism.” There will he no meeting on December 7th in view of the mass rally at the Metropolitan Theatre.

C. C. Groves, General Secretary.

A Party No Socialist Would Join (1947)

From the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Communist Party of Great Britain is carrying out a campaign to increase its numerical strength and is endeavouring to give the workers adequate reasons for enrolling as members.

One would assume that as this organisation claims to be a Communist one it would do its utmost to explain Communism to its prospective new members. One would think that the manner in which the Communist Party is making Communists would be made known, and that the revolutionary composition of the Party would be preserved by the exclusion of those who have no knowledge nor a desire for Communism or Socialism.

This is far from being the case. In an article entitled “ The Party You Can Be Proud To Join ” (Daily Worker, October 4th) Harry Pollitt writes, among other things, of the Communist Party’s loyalty to the working class movement; its policy “to solve the present crisis in the interests of the common people”; and its objective of “establishing close co-operation internationally with the Socialist Soviet Union; the new democracies in Europe, and the advancing colonial peoples.”

Harry Pollitt asserts that the alternative to taking these steps is to “sink to dependence on American monopolistic reaction, surrender to the monopolists at home, succumb to our own immediate economic crisis which will be intensified by a depression spreading from America, and become engulfed in war as the outpost and vulnerable advance base of American reaction against European democracy.”

It is to be noticed that Socialism, the one alternative to Capitalism and its crises, is not even mentioned by Pollitt As for solving this crisis “in the interests of the common people"—does not Harry Pollitt know that no step that intends to leave Capitalism standing can be, to any great degree, in working class interests? Does he not know that, whether or not Capitalism is in a state of crisis, there is always a crisis for the workers? Is he not aware that, whether or not British Capitalism sinks to dependence on American monopoly, the members of the working class spend their lives depending upon their masters for the necessities of life? Does he not realise that it is not only Capitalist Monopoly, but Capitalism at a whole that grinds the workers down to wage-slavery and poverty? Is he not aware that war is inevitable under Capitalism?

The only way to eliminate the evils of the present social order is to end that order in its entirety and establish a social system wherein the means of production and distribution are commonly owned. That is Socialism.

Such a social system can only be achieved by a majority of Socialists. The making of Socialists, therefore, is the only way to hasten the coming of Socialism.

Neither Harry Pollitt, nor The Daily Worker, nor the Communist Party does this. Instead we find them deeply concerned with the health of British Capitalism and its need for more workers. We see them helping to perpetuate nationalism by asserting their readiness to fight for “national independence and economic prosperity of Britain against the offensive of the dollar dictators and their supporters in Britain — the Churchills and the Right Wing Labour leaders.” (Harry Pollitt’s speech at Ilford, Daily Worker, October 8th.)

It is possible that this new recruiting drive will draw many new members into the Communist Party, and that organisation will hail them as Communists. Actually they will be nothing of the sort. They will be those who, in their lack of Socialist knowledge, have been led to believe that Capitalism can be run in the interests of the workers.

To those who are hovering upon the threshold of the Communist Party, Socialists would say this: Read the literature of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Study our declaration of principles. Listen to our speakers.; question and oppose them, and weigh up the soundness of their arguments. We know that once you gain Socialist knowledge you will know the Communist Party for what it is—a purely reformist organisation seeking to patch up Capitalism.

F. W. Hawkins