Mr. Morrison's Moonshine (1950)

From the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Lord Acton penned his famous dictum that, because of the corrupting influence of power, “great men are almost always bad men” his knowledge of history led him to distinguish between the restricted power that corrupts and the absolute power that corrupts absolutely. The reason is obvious. The more brutal the rise the more brutal the fall; and if capitalism's Parliamentary politicians choose to cling like limpets to the pleasures and profits of office their opposite numbers in the dictatorships have no choice at all. Dictators, like gangsters, can have little hope of retiring to die in their beds. For them and their entourage the saying: “Gentlemen we must hang together or we shall hang separately” is no mere Downing Street jest. Still it is only a question of degree, and if dictators have to liquidate their old but insufficiently adaptable comrades Labour Governments, grappling with the day-to-day problems of capitalism, are constantly having to kill or maim the no longer useful pledges and doctrines that raised them to power. In the present government the task has fallen to that one-time pacifist and later organiser of victories, military and electoral, Mr. Herbert Morrison. If back-benchers mutiny, if rank-and-file sheep stray into forbidden pastures, if indiscreet ministers scare away camp-following electors, if some bitter pill has to be sugared, Mr. Morrison is the man for the job. His manner is that of the Elder Statesman dispensing wisdom, his method that of dressing up new doctrines to look as if they flowed from the old, and his technique that of the disguised fallacy masquerading as self-evident truth.

On Friday, November 17th, at Finchley he spent an evening explaining away and covering up, with the twofold object of winning back deserting so-called “middle-class” voters and of allaying trade union discontent in the ranks of the Party. The speech was reported at length in the Manchester Guardian (18/11/50) from which following extracts are taken.

Regretting “the popular antithesis between the black-coated and the manual worker” he made the point that “skill at a craft makes heavier demands upon your mental equipment than many black-coated occupations, and surgeons and many scientists have to be more skilled with their hands than the average craftsman.” Apart from a doubt whether it is true that a craftsman’s skill with his hands is any less than that of a surgeon the point is a good one—and a commonplace on S.P.G.B. platforms, from which source perhaps Mr. Morrison picked it up in his political infancy some 40 years ago. But if so he learned only half the lesson, for his remarks to the clerks of Finchley opened with the nonsensical flattery of addressing them as those “broadly known as the middle classes.” They are not “middle class” being neither a class nor middle. They are a section of the working class and it has been one of the trends of the past 10 years for the pay-packets of clerks even to fall relatively to those of craftsmen. Almost the whole of Morrison's speech was a defence of the inequalities of present day society as administered by his Government, and inevitably it had to bring in the old guff about the dignity of labour—“an honest and dignified job with their hands.” Nowhere did it do more than scratch the surface of argument and most of the awkward points were avoided. In the old days when a member of one of England's “hereditary ruling families” told the horny-handed sons of toil that the dignity of labour is more to be prized than cash and coronets he might be forgiven on the ground that he didn't know what he was talking about never having done any labouring. But now we get the same stuff from a government half of whose members have done some, and have since spent their lives getting away from it as far and as fast as possible.

Mr. Morrison's general defence of inequality might have been taken from any defence of capitalism in the past century:—“The right approach was to value each man and woman by the contribution they made to the community . . .  As a good Socialist I believe in paying a fair price for honest hard work and for the special skills which a man or a woman has the aptitude and the energy to acquire.” He added that he did not advocate “a society in which everybody is on the same level.”

A host of objections to the argument call for answer. How does Mr. Morrison, holding the views he put forward at Finchley, justify his government's refusal to concede equal pay for men and women doing the same job? How does he explain away Mr. Attlee’s declaration in 1935 of his belief “in the abolition of social classes and in the creation of an equalitarian society”? How does he or anyone else measure and compare the respective contributions to the community of, say, the £5,000 a year ex-trade union official who as Minister of Labour opposes wage increases, a £5 a week ploughman, the highly paid “Party-line” editor of a Government newspaper, the lucky inheritors of millionaire fortunes, the hospital nurse, the high-fee'd lawyer who successfully defends company profits against Inland Revenue claims, and any working-class housewife? And how does he answer the still true statements made by himself in 1932:—“the landlord as landlord and the investor as investor do not produce wealth. Yet they take in rent, interest and profit a large proportion of the products of labour,” (“A New Appeal to the Young"; Herbert Morrison); and ". . . the brain workers and the manual workers of our country are poorer and less secure than the idle rich class who do no productive work” (“An Easy Outline of Modem Socialism,” Herbert Morrison).

And above all what did Mr. Morrison and others in the Labour Party mean in the past, when they gave lip service to “the abolition of the wages system”? And how does he, as a self-styled “good socialist,” justify his opposition to the abolition of capitalism and establishment of Socialism and defend the fact, as admitted last year by one of his ministerial colleagues, that 10 per cent. of the population own 90 per cent. of the wealth of the country? Does Mr. Morrison really believe that they “contributed” the wealth they own?

Like the astute debater that he is Mr. Morrison, in his Finchley speech, side-stepped the main issues by an appeal to the prejudice he may have expected to find in his audience. An older generation of Tory defenders of the profit-system used to beg you to shed a tear for the poor widow woman struggling along on the dividends from her small holding of shares. Similarly bent on fogging the issue, Mr. Morrison begged his audience to avoid the slippery slope of equalitarianism which would give us “the slacker or the persistent absentee . . . paid as much as the man who works hard ”; but nothing about the ex-shareholders in mines, railways. Bank of England, etc., who will go on drawing their government guaranteed interest indefinitely while indefinitely absenting themselves from the dignity of labour.

Mr. Morrison deplored the evils of advancement being given by favour (vulgarly known as “jobs for the boys”) and also hoped there would be an end “to the snobbery which sometimes retards the advancement of the able man with the wrong kind of accent or social background.” Nice soothing words, but when we look at them closely what do they mean? Where does the working class boy or girl acquire “the wrong kind of accent”? Where but in the “working class” school that a Government “which stands for a square deal for all classes” provides for the mass of the population? And what is the wrong kind of social background but the working class homes and working class incomes that Labour Government intends to perpetuate?

It is an old trick of the politician who is covering up a retreat from a past theoretical position to make it appear to be an advance or at least a firm stand. This is done by using the old phrases but each time with a qualification that destroys their meaning. At Finchley he repeated the old Labour Party principle of “sympathy and support” for the infirm who are unable to work. Then it was coupled with a demand for drastic increases of old-age pensions, but now Mr. Morrison, who had not the brazenness to mention the actual 26/- a week, slipped away with the evasive: “Food subsidies, too, had been a godsend to pensioners and other retired people on small incomes.” On what principle we may ask does the “sympathetic” Labour Government give them such miserably small incomes?

Mr. Morrison knows of the vague belief among his Party's membership that class divisions and class privilege should be abolished, but in place of the substance of Attlee’s former “abolition of social classes” he now gives them the shadow of his being against “any idea of rigid class relationships"; we must “break down the barriers which separate the classes"; we must not “attach labels to people according to their social position and supposed class”; and “we as a party are opposed to anti-social privilege, whether it is privilege for the rich or the not rich.”

Of course, as Mr. Morrison knows, the class division of the capitalism we live under is not a supposition but a fact; but Mr. Morrison's party is not going to abolish the class system and its class division and class privilege. What they offer instead to any who do not see through the subterfuge, is to make the class division "less rigid," stop attaching labels to the capitalist class, keep privilege but say that it is no longer anti-social. This will be satisfactory to the capitalists and their hangers-on, political and managerial, but what is there in it for the workers? Not for them any “anti-social privileges” (what a pity Mr. Morrison did not tell us what these are). For them there is to be unlimited “dignity of labour.” Let us however not overlook the other benefit they are to receive, in the new social name and status coined freshly by Mr. Morrison. Is poverty under Tory Governments hard to bear? Then how much more endurable it will be now that the poor have been re-christened the “not rich.” By a simple masterly stroke of the pen the age-old gulf has been bridged at last and the Rich and the Poor are almost one; now to be almost indiscernably differentiated only by that tiny three-letter word not. Glorious indeed are the bloodless victories of the Labour Party “revolution.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Passing Comments: China (1950)

The Passing Comments column from the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

China

The Stalinists are having a difficult time trying to explain away the invasion of Tibet by China. One might have expected such an invasion in the days of the old, avowedly imperialist China; but surely, one would have thought, the new China, which claims to be “Communist,” would have no reason to invade her neighbours. The Stalinists are so short of good arguments that the best two excuses for the invasion they can think of are firstly that the Chinese Emperors of the thirteenth century conquered Tibet, and secondly that the British Government recognises Tibet to be “part of China". For example, the Daily Worker (27/10/50) says, “Just as Wales is part of Britain, so Tibet is part of China, and has been so since the thirteenth century. This fact was recognised by the British Government in a note to the Chinese Government as recently as 1945.” The second reason is feeble in the extreme: if the British Government recognises that, say, lndo-China is part of the French Empire, do the Stalinists agree without further discussion that the French have a title to lndo-China? The first reason is even more revealing: apparently the Communists believe that Mao Tse-tung and his friends are the successors of the Emperors, and that if the Mongol rulers of China seven hundred years ago conquered Tibet, then Mao has the right to rule over Tibet to-day. Tibet is as much a part of China as Ireland is of England. Ireland and Tibet are both relatively weak-countries which have at some time in their history been conquered by their bigger and more powerful neighbours. Just as one of the English imperialists of the last century might have referred to “the historic English territory of Ireland,” so now the daily paper of our new twentieth-century imperialists refers to “the historic Chinese territory of Tibet.” The Stalinists, it seems, now think that small countries once conquered lose all right to an independent existence. All of which goes to show that “the rights of small nations” is as empty a phrase in the mouths of the Stalinists as it is in the mouths of the Anglo-American leaders.


Peace

But how does all this square with the desire for “peace” so tirelessly reiterated by the Communist parties of the world?

So agile are the Stalinists in juggling with words that they can even reconcile the waging of an aggressive war with the defence of peace. A Daily Worker article of November 8th begins with the words, “ Twice in the past fortnight the Chinese people have acted for peace. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has marched into Tibet to protect China’s frontiers, and Chinese volunteers have gone to the help of the Koreans.” This action, it goes on, “ has made more secure not only China but the peace of all Asia and the world.” Propaganda about going to war in order to preserve the peace is not, of course, confined to the Russian bloc: “Illustrated" (11/11/50) has an article about one of the British soldiers who have gone to fight in Korea, and headlines it “Soldiers for Peace.”


Defence

The Daily Worker (27/10/50) says of what it calls the “standard Constitutional History Book for all pupils in the seventh class” in Soviet schools that it emphasises the “peaceful nature of the Soviet State.” “Nowhere in its pages can one find any other justification for the armed forces of the State than the needs of defence.” In the Western World there is the same insistence on the need for defence as the justification for having an army. The cost of preparing for the next war, including the building of bombing planes and bombs of all kinds, comes under the heading of “Defence Expenditure.” The invasion of Tibet shows that the Stalinists, like their opponents, have a somewhat elastic idea of the meaning of the word “ defence.”


India

Mr. Nehru disapproves strongly of the Chinese aggression on Tibet; indeed, he appears to dislike the use of force in any circumstances if it can possibly be avoided, according to the Manchester Guardian. An article in that paper on October 26th said of him that “his whole foreign policy is governed by his views on the use of force. He is enough of a Ghandian to believe that force solves nothing; he is also enough of a practical patriot to realise that countries must defend themselves against attack. . . . He satisfies the Ghandian in himself by insisting that force must not be used to drive the other side into a corner. Solutions to the last must be, he thinks, freely accepted. Mr. Nehru fulfils his duty as Prime Minister by insisting that aggression must be resisted.”

And it must be admitted that when Mr. Nehru talks about aggression and the use of force he is speaking of a subject of which he knows a great deal. Mr. Nehru has had experience of aggression from the profitable end.


Hyderabad

When in 1947 the British set up the two new dominions of India and Pakistan on the Indian subcontinent they did not at first cover all the territory which had accepted the supremacy of Britain. There were a number of Princes’ States like Kashmir and Hyderabad which were left to decide their future for themselves. Most of these States joined one of the Dominions, but the Nizam of Hyderabad did not wish to join either. By August, 1948, Hyderabad was the only state on the sub-continent which was still independent of both Dominions. In that month India protested at the activities of a Moslem organisation in Hyderabad whose members were called Razakars: India alleged that the Moslems were terrorising the Hindus of Hyderabad, who formed 86 per cent, of the population. The government of Hyderabad insisted that there was no internal disorder, and made the counter-charge that India was violating the frontier by sending raiding-parties across it, and was carrying out an economic blockade. (Hyderabad was entirely surrounded by Indian territory, having no outlet to the sea except through India.) After much further accusation and counter-accusation, India, without declaring war, invaded Hyderabad. On September 13th four Indian armoured columns thrust their way across the border. Three days later the Security Council met to hear the complaint of the representative of Hyderabad, who protested against the Indian aggression and demanded "immediate action” by the Security Council. Instead of sending MacArthur to help Hyderabad defend herself against this open act of aggression, the Security Council adjourned. On September 17th the Nizam gave up the unequal struggle against India: an estimated 2,000 of the defending forces had been killed, and the invading columns had almost reached the capital. Mr. Nehru added insult to injury by remarking "we are men of peace, hating war, and the last thing we desire is to come into armed conflict with anyone." After the surrender, the Nizam telegraphed to Lake Success withdrawing Hyderabad’s complaint against India. The Security Council breathed a sigh of relief and adjourned the matter sine die: which is a polite way of saying that they dropped it for good. No doubt Hyderabad was a backward, undemocratic country, ruled dictatorial by the Nizam; but South Korea (the invasion of which so outraged the Security Council) was also an undemocratic country, ruled dictatorially by the Syngman Rhee clique. If the Anglo-American bloc was really interested in defeating aggression, as opposed to making war on Stalinist countries, they could hardly have had a clearer case to deal with than the Indian attack on Hyderabad; but they refused to take any action, and thus showed themselves to be interested, not in defeating aggression, but merely in using aggression as a pretext for war in the countries belonging to the rival bloc.

Production

When the Labour Government took office in 1945 it appealed to the workers to increase production in order to assist in the "national recovery” after the war. To recover means, of course, to regain a position one has previously had, but has temporarily lost. When a nation recovers, it returns to some previous condition: but the Labour Party has never satisfactorily explained just why it wants us to regain our pre-war condition, to return to the days of 1918-39; especially since it has never ceased to criticise the Tory rule of those years. One suspects that phrase "national recovery” has only been used so often because it has a fine sound about it, but at the same time means little.

The workers responded to the Government’s call. Production is now over a quarter more than it was in 1946. The Government, however, has been making it painfully clear that the workers need expect no reward in the shape of a reduction in the cost of living. Mr. Harold Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, said on October 30th: "It would be dishonest to hold out hopes or promises of reductions in the cost of living at a time when world prices, as a result of rearmament, are rising.” And Mr. Chuter Ede, the Home Secretary, told the House of Commons a week later that "it is impossible to anticipate that there will be any reduction in the cost of living.” Not only will there be no reduction : there are more increases on the way. On November 10th the Board of Trade announced that wholesale prices have gone up by another sixpence in the pound. The prices of raw materials have also increased—cotton, rubber, wool and metals are among those which have gone up most.

Wool

For the workers this makes dismal reading. But there are others who are less worried about it. The News Chronicle (31/10/50) had some interesting information about Mr. Ebenezer Sykes, one of the men who buy wool from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and sell it on Bradford Exchange to the spinners. Mr. Sykes takes up his stand on the floor of the Exchange every Monday and Thursday morning, and the buyers come and see him there. "Mostly when they meet they seem to tell funny stories. You must be very sharp to overhear the deals they make in between the yarns. But quietly, almost casually, one of them will say that he has 50,000 lb. weight of super 60’s to sell at 199 pence a lb. Another will say 'I’ll buy,' and the contract is as good as sealed.” The duties of Mr. Sykes’ job do not seem to be very arduous; but the money is good. "The last time Ben Sykes went on 'Change he sold 60,000 lb. of wool. He had bought it last December for 57 pence a lb. The price he received for that wool from the spinner who bought it from him was 150 pence a lb.” So the gross profit on that one transaction came to £23,250.

Sweated Labour

Mr. Dugdale, the Minister of State for Colonial Affairs, made a speech at Staines in which he gave his own explanation of the rise in prices. "One of the main causes of higher prices was that people in India and Africa and other tropical countries were at last beginning to improve their standard of living ” (Times, 4/11 /50). Mr. Dugdale said that the wages of the Gold Coast agricultural labourers had now risen to 2s. 6d. a day, of tin-workers to 5s. 3d. a day, and of the Malayan rubber-workers to 3s. 4d. a day. "We had the satisfaction of knowing that such people were better fed and clothed now than when the Conservatives were running the Empire ‘and goods were produced at sweated rates.’ ”

It seems, then, that now the Labour Party is running the Empire, goods are not being produced at sweated rates: the line between sweated and non-sweated rates must run somewhere below fifteen shillings a week, at least in the British colonies. Mr. Dugdale’s conclusions on the wages question should earn the Labour Party a lot of support among the tin and rubber shareholders.

Alwyn Edgar

Socialist Opposition (1950)

From the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Advocates of Socialism meet with curious opposition when outlining the claims of Socialism as a solution for the world’s problems. The word curious is used advisedly, for most of the opposition appears to be simply prejudice. Opposition to Socialism may be appreciated by those who understand its implications; the capitalists and the defenders, press, pulpit and politician, because it would abolish the privileged position which Capitalism assures them. The Socialist can understand this. It is difficult, however, to understand the prejudice of the man in the street, we repeat we think it curious. It is this curiosity of ours which prompts the attempt to find out what it is. Remember the Socialist comes forward with a specific claim that the only cure for the world’s social, political, and economic maladjustments is Socialism, i.e., common ownership and democratic control of the means of life. We think it reasonable to expect from those who are adversely affected by the present social system, at least a patient hearing: an eagerness to hear the socialist solution.

Remember again that within the lifetime of most adults there have been two major devastating world wars; the more than usual lean times in between the wars; the untold suffering of countless thousands directly and indirectly affected thereby. The causes of these disasters to human well being! Is it not worth while discussing?

Socialism does not pose as a “divine” saviour of humanity—it offers a solution—far more important. What an opportunity the socialist offers. He is striving like all forms of life to adapt himself more favourably to his every-day environment.

To those then who are eager to share in this effort, we are at least deserving a sympathetic hearing. But we don’t get it, otherwise our numbers would be tens of thousands strong.

So what are the difficulties? The socialist has to deal in abstractions. We refer to a social system “divided into two classes”: “the working class who produce and distribute the world’s wealth"; “the capitalist class” owners of the product and the means of wealth production.

The socialist becomes unpopular with his audiences when he describes the motives which cause the working class to support Capitalism. The worker has been “through the mill,” moiled and bludgeoned and alternately fussed and petted by the class who rule. Nevertheless, he cannot believe “he hasn’t a dog’s chance that Capitalism has got him, hook, line and sinker! No. He’ll never admit to this. The existence of the British Legion, the political working men’s club, and a host of other organisations all engaged on pouring oil on the social wounds of the masses, notwithstanding. The titled gentry make this work their life’s mission also. So our parting words are give our speakers a fair deal. The magnitude of our task is a gigantic one. Nevertheless the socialist comes forward, cheerfully, hopefully—in short philosophically, to tell you the facts as they appear. If you imagine you “will get there,” “make good,” we must agree with you because we know that when you seriously begin to study Socialism you “will get there”—with us. The emancipation of the world’s working class will not be accomplished ^ without effort—sacrifice of time and money.

This Socialism asks—nay, demands. This way alone Socialism will grow and we wish you joy in the task and welcome when you join our ranks.

Billy Iles

Chess and Politics (1950)

From the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

One can find connections between almost any kind of sport or game and politics. Sometimes these things have profound international repercussions, as for example the “body line bowling” episode of the professional cricketers some years ago which nearly led to the breaking off of diplomatic relations between England and Australia.

Chess has been the game that has been played by revolutionists of various kinds for a century, and its enthusiasts claim it as the only really international game.

Many of the earlier Socialists were chess players; sometimes their chess was better than their Socialism. Marx played chess, and so did Engels. William Liebknecht was quite an accomplished player, and so frequently did he beat Marx, that the latter lost much interest in the game. Lenin, Trotsky, and their circle were all keen chess players and Lenin was constantly warning the Bolsheviks of his early days not to take too much interest in chess, as the revolution was “round the corner.”

A century ago the English and French aristocrats were the world’s best chess players, producing many brilliant masters; then the centre of the arena changed to America and Germany. Those who were able to devote the thousands of hours of study to the game that it needed were, needless to say, men of the leisured class.

When chess drifted to Russia it found many active participants in the Russian upper-class circles. When the first World War broke out, there was a masters’ tournament actually in progress at Mannheim. The participants (mostly Russians) were all interned for four years with nothing else to do than play chess till the war finished.

Meanwhile Soviet Russia has developed its chess talent, and given State support to chess in a way unheard of before. Enormous halls are used for tournaments with their walls covered by gigantic chess boards for recording the moves of the master games in progress. Chess players sit for hours and listen to a medley of Soviet propaganda mixed with chess. Chess talks are broadcast with all the enthusiasm of our football commentaries.

In the past chess could never command a “gate” and all efforts to commercialise it were frustrated; but Russia has not only commercialised it, but made chess a vehicle for political propaganda.

Four years ago a team of Russian players visited London and played in Holborn Town Hall. As soon as play was over each day, the Russian masters were quickly bundled into a number of gigantic Daimler cars (probably belonging to the Embassy), and hurried off without the possibility of anyone being able to have a word to say to them. Accepting the many invitations from chess clubs and private players who wanted an opportunity of making friends with them, was out of the question. The Russians were shepherded in and out very much like prisoners who were permitted to have a day off to go straight to church, and then immediately it was over, to return to their cells.

Now that Germany is divided into two zones, players in Eastern Germany are not permitted to visit players in the Western zone (in case they don’t come back—once a chess player’s moved, he’s moved, is the rule in chess). Consequently Western Germans visit the Soviet zone, after a nightmare of pass controls and form filling. But before play can start they are treated to lengthy speeches on freedom, peace, and the abolition of the atomic bomb. Before they depart they are pressed to sign numerous peace pledges against the aggressions of American Imperialism.

In recent numbers of “Schach Express,” a chess magazine published in the Soviet zone of Berlin, we find reports of speeches made by Stalin and his German comrades against the use of the atomic bomb. In “Schach Express” (August. 1950) the Editorial is headed “Chess masters outlaw the atomic bomb.” The June issue contains several pages of reports of mass political demonstrations with pictures of marching youths with flags and banners—all demonstrating against the atomic bomb. The main article is headed “German youths support the Front of Fighters of Peace.” In a tournament book, “Sommerda Thuringer 1950” pictures show famous chess players queueing up to sign protests against war, or declarations of freedom, and is headed “Chess players fight for peace.” On another page the main political article (of this chess book) concludes with slogans in extra large type:

“ Sportsmen; you are not cannon fodder for the Imperialists but fighters for democratic unity and the national independence of Germany.”

In the “nineteen-twenties” Cuba commercialised chess in a peculiar way by making Capablanca (then world champion) “Ambassador Extraordinaire”! If there was an international chess tournament in Moscow or Mexico; or Cape Town or Camden Town, he was sent along by the Government to look after the interests of Cuban nationals who might need him. It is reputed that he was paid £10,000 a year for this, and is probably the only one who has ever made any real money out of chess. The Cuban Government sponsored it to put them "on the map”!

While on this subject the question is always being asked—does chess develop one’s brains? If so it might have a therapeutic value, for those who are deficient in this highly prized quality. In reply to this question which the writer once asked Capablanca, the latter replied, "Most certainly, playing chess develops one’s brains for playing chess.” We therefore doubt if it could be used for developing the "latent brains” of the working class, so that they might more readily understand the social factors which are responsible for the continued existence of Capitalism.

H. Jarvis

Death of a "Superman" (1950)

From the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

That George Bernard Shaw succeeded in living to 94 years of age might be looked upon as a minor Shavian achievement. During that time he gained eminence as a playwright. As such he may rank with Marlowe, Ben Johnson or Moliere. As a writer of English he may challenge comparison with that master of supple and virile prose, Jonathan Swift. Be that as it may. Our purpose is to evaluate his claims to be a socialist (or, as he later called himself, a communist), and to be regarded by many as the accredited spokesman of socialism. Of all Shavian legends this is the most grotesque.

Shaw combined in his one person many creeds; anti-vivisectionist, anti-romanticist, non-smoker, alcoholic abstainer and vegetarian. Philosophically he subscribed to a belief in creative evolution. In politics he was first an anarchist then a Fabian and later a fascist.

It has been claimed that his "socialism" was designed for the educated. That he could pass off his particular brand of blatant totalitarianism as socialism only shows how much the "educated" need educating.

Shaw is one reported to have said "Marx made a man of me." It need not be taken seriously. Shaw and the early Fabians never honoured the world with any systematic exposition of Marxism or for that matter any systematic rejection of it. Instead they chose to by-pass it.

His first Fabian essay (1889) is proof enough of his own confession in the Fabian tract 41 that "he and the early Fabians had no true knowledge of socialism." There was little of socialism in it but much of Henry George combined with Jevons' economic theory of final utility and a sprinkling of John Stuart Mill's humanitarianism.

Even this early pamphlet revealed incipient elements of a later Shavian "philosophy." There is no recognition in it that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class. Instead the wealthy are asked to change their hearts and renounce their wicked ways. Later came the contention that only through Fabian bureaucracy could capitalist society be regenerated.

Shaw's Fabianism finally hardened into a belief that only in a planned utopia imposed from above by an elite was there any hope for the world. It would consist of a communist priesthood with unlimited powers. Rulers would be removable on grounds of inefficiency. There would be only one crime in society, that of disobedience, with death as the penalty. He approved the Russian method of liquidating those who show any sign of working against state authority. In an article in "The Labour Monthly" (15.10.21) he condemned British miners for striking but praised the Russian Government for shooting men for slacking and shirking at their work. Thus we have the paradox of the anti-vivisectionist who, according to Chesterton, "would wear himself to a shadow to save a shark in an aquarium from inconvenience or add any little comforts to the life of a carrion crow," and the social theorist who could dismiss the enormous human costs involved in "the Russian experiment" as of little account.

Because Shaw and Fabians had no knowledge of the laws of capitalist development the "major events" of capitalism often caught the Fabians on the wrong foot. On the first world war Mr. Pease the Fabian historian writing in 1915 could say "The Fabian Society has made no pronouncement and adopted no policy." Shaw supported the war, declaring that "England is a guardian of the world's liberty."

He had also supported the Boer War. He made up the mind of the Fabians who were at sixes and sevens over it by writing for them a pamphlet "Fabianism and the Empire." It advocated the right of a capitalist state to acquire territory which it may consider backward, in the name of efficiency.

He constantly beat the imperialist drum for bigger armaments; advocated a large army and military conscription. He lived to see the last put into effect by a party he and his Fabian colleagues had not inconsiderably inspired and helped. In the Daily Herald (7th and 8th April, 1941) appeared instalments of an article in which he advocated industrial conscription; but this advocate of military and industrial conscription was opposed in 1919 to "conscription of capital" in a current advocacy of a "capital levy." In the Times (1.2.44) he wrote complaining of the excessive taxation of the rich of whom he was one.

Because Shaw had identified himself politically and socially with capitalism he refused to believe it would pass. He took refuge in the belief that the vast mass of people were political nit-wits incapable of controlling their own destiny. He believed the capitalist class were also incompetent. So he invented a compromise by which a political elite would impose its will on workers and capitalist alike.

Because he isolated himself in theory as one of the privileged few he isolated himself in practice from concrete social activity and shut himself up in the ivory tower of absolute categories and lifeless abstractions. This could only lead to a sense of false detachment and disillusionment.

It was this false detachment perhaps that forced him to bolster up his belief in great men as the engines of social progress. For "the Materialist Conception of History" he offered a crude metaphysical substitute called "The Life Force." This Life Force was pure energy which activated matter. One day it would dissolve matter or cast it aside and emerge as pure thought. The only object in life then will apparently be contemplation. Although what it will contemplate Shaw does not explicitise.

In the meantime great men and supermen are the instruments which serve the Life Force's end.

Two of Shaw's great men were Caesar and Napoleon, both military adventurers. Two more to whom he extended his welcome in that role were Mussolini and Hitler whom he regarded as a born leader. These men, he argued, were more efficient. They got things done. They certainly did but it was of no benefit to the majority of the population. They were as powerless in preventing their respective capitalist countries from going to was as were a Chamberlain and Roosevelt. When they left the political scene they left capitalism basically the same as the parliamentary politicians—whom Shaw despised —and whom the dictators had replaced. Stalin, whom Shaw honoured by the title of the arch-Fabian, was another of his supermen. In spite of his long term of dictatorial power he has not only been unable to realise Lenin's dictum of approximate equal wages for all sections of society but has been unable to prevent the growing inequalities of wealth in Russia which is a characteristic of capitalism.

It might be said that Shaw did at least expose much of the hollowness and sham of capitalist conventions and institutions. But because he had no real alternative to offer his criticisms are negative and sterile.

The British ruling class never viewed him in the light of a social revolutionary but rather as a clown and court jester. They could treat him with indulgence because they found him eccentric and amusing.

Shaw as a political thinker failed to have any real impact on those who came to maturity after the first world war. Like many other advocates of reforms he lived to see many of his own taken by capitalism in its stride and none the worse for it. His championing of votes for women, Irish self-government, nationalisation and municipal enterprise have come to pass. Many of Shaw's and his fellow Fabians' proposals have long been on the statute book. Some of them provide the furnishings for Labour's utility utopia. Even his daring attacks on conventions would, if uttered now, be regarded as commonplaces. Before World War No. 1 he had something to write about so far as capitalism was concerned. After the war he was mostly reduced to an attempt to write about something.

Shaw is known to millions; not as a social thinker, because he had no message for them, but as a playwright and somewhat eccentric old gentleman who gave interviews in which he sometimes said humorous and preposterous things.

As a playwright his lively humour and paradox may enliven and illumine the theatre for many years. As a social theorist, however, it is case of "out out brief candle."

E. W.

Editorial: G.B. Shaw - A few notes (1950)

Editorial from the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death of Bernard Shaw has been the instance of eulogies galore in all of which he is acclaimed as one of the great, if not of the greatest, intellectual giants of all time. One example of this is contained in the Times' "Literary Supplement" (10/11/1950) which concludes an editorial concerning him with these words:

   "Born when Queen Victoria had been but nineteen years on the throne, he was one of the bravest, most brilliant, and most incongruous bequests to us of an era already receding in the legendary and strange. There are never more than a dozen aristocrats of intellect in the world at the same time, if we are to credit Huysmans's calculation. One member of that supreme court is missing to-day, and his successor waits in the shade."

In our view this idea of an "aristocracy of intellect" is based upon an illusion and is fostered because it serves the interest of ruling classes. But let that pass. What we are concerned with here is the claim so often made that Shaw was a socialist who made an outstanding contribution to the socialist movement. This claim has been unceasingly made by the unblushing principal and his adherents during the past sixty odd years; on the part of the latter with an occasional tolerant and amused chuckle at his "crankiness." The basis of the claim is his tilting at social abuses and at smug "respectability." This tilting was really only the spearhead of his own smug worship of "men of ability," in the front rank of whom he modestly placed himself. So we will write a few words and quote a few of his own statements that relate to this claim.

In fact Shaw was not a socialist, never was one, and did not understand what Socialism implied. All his life he confused Socialism with State Capitalism and with a "business-like government." He envisaged a state ruled by a self-elected few who, at the best, would exercise a kind of benevolent despotism over the ignorant mass in a system based upon property with the buying and selling of goods. He swallowed and promulgates Samuel Butler's idea of an inborn "life force" which was the backbone of his particular "great man" theory.

Now let us see what he had to say in his younger days, when he was at the height of his thinking power.

In the "Fortnight Review" for February and March 1894 W. H. Matlock attacked the "Socialist" views of the Fabian Essayists, whom he described as sane and thoughtful men who were the real cream of the socialist movement. Bernard Shaw replied to Matlock in the issue for April, 1894.

The following quotations from his reply explain Shaw's outlook:

   "First, it is clear that such huge populations as ours really do owe their very existence to what Mr. Matlock defines as Ability [the inventing, discovering and managing], and not to what he defines as Labour [a form of human exertion used to pile up wealth].
   "If State Socialism of the most idiotic doctrinaire kind were to be set up complete to-morrow, and an ordinance issued that every man, from the highest to the lowest, should have exactly equal pay, then I could quite understand difficulties arising from every man insisting on being head of his department."
   "What is more I have no doubt that under Social-Democracy the few will still govern, and that, too, without having to consider at every step the vested interests of moneyed noodledom in the system of Conservatism! Well has Mr. Mallock pointed out that the evolution of society produces, not anarchy, but new types of ruler, and I would ask him to add, new forms of government . . . To-morrow it may be—who knows?—an able Labour Ministry, backed up by a bureaucracy nursed on Fabian Essays. And still Mr. Mallock's historic generalisation will hold good: the few will still govern the many."

After quoting a statement by F. A. Walker, an American economist, about the "economics of ability," he goes on:

   "There you have your skilled economist. He does not romance about capitalists inventing steamers: he shows you just the capitalist and the labourer running helplessly, the one with his money, the other with his muscle, to the able man, the acting organiser and employer, who alone is able to find a use for mere manual deftness, or for that brute strength or heavy bank balance which any fool may possess. And the landlord must put his acres in the same cunning hands. The landlord, capitalist and labourer can none of them do without the entrepreneur. He, as the only party in the transaction capable 'of the slightest initiative in production,' buys his three indispensables as cheaply as he can; pays the price out of what he makes out of them; and keeps the balance as his profit."

Shaw somewhere accused Shakespeare of snobbery on account of the way kings, princes, lords and ladies bulk in his plays. The above extracts show that he, himself, was also afflicted with the same disease in his respect for those to whom he mistakenly attributed "superior intelligence." From the extracts can also be seen how little difference there was between Shaw's "Socialism" and Capitalism. 

Whatever Shaw may have been as a dramatist and artist, as a writer on Socialism he was ignorant, incompetent and blown-up with the petty conceit of the self-styled intellectual. If we were asked what his outstanding contribution in this field was we would unhesitatingly reply that he was given considerable aid to that movement which has built up labour parties that have confused and beguiled multitudes of workers into a path leading to the blank alley of despair. In this field he will be remembered as a clever and witty decoy who helped to head off the march to revolutionary change.