Front Cover: Stalin - the God who fell (1961)

The Front Page of the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

I don't usually make a habit of dedicating a post to the front cover of a Socialist Standard but, in this case, the Editorial Committee obviously thought it was important to lay out some information on the front cover to pass comment on the Kremlinology of the day.

The picture on the front cover of the December 1961 Socialist Standard dates from March 1953 and it features the then Soviet Communist Party grandees standing guard around the body of Stalin who was lying in state. The text in the top right hand corner of the page above the picture names the grandees and their current political status in 1961:

SCENE: MOSCOW MARCH 1953 The eight most powerful men in Russia stand guard beside the body of their late chief - Stalin.

Dramatis Personae 

Left to right                Status December 1961

Molotov                  Ex foreign Minister (in disgrace)

Voroshilov          Ex President (in disgrace)

Beria                         Late Minister of Interior (shot as traitor)

Malenkov                  Ex Prime Minister (in disgrace) 

The Corpse              The God who fell

Bulganin                   Ex Prime Minister (in disgrace) 

Khruschev                Prime Minister (future?) 

Kaganovitch             Ex Vice-President (in disgrace) 

Mikoyan                  Deputy Prime Minister (future?)

In the bottom right hand corner of the front cover there is a quote from the article, From Lenin to Stalin by Ted Wilmott, which appeared in the April 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard:

From the Socialist Standard April 1953 

Maintenance of power at any price became for the Communist Party a matter of life and death. On a chequer board of political tactics the Old Bolshevik moved, mated and stayed, until the assumption of power rested in one man — Stalin . . . It was Stalin who completed the work begun by Lenin, the turning of Marxism a revolutionary doctrine into its opposite, an authoritarian ideology of state capitalism on a par and at times competing with other state ideologies, i.e. Hitler's National "Socialism" and Mussolini's Corporate State.

The front cover headline, Stalin - the God who fell, was the title of that month's editorial. 

News in Review: Rising Prices (1961)

The News in Review column from the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rising Prices

Remember those big balloons splashed all over the hoardings about ten years ago?

Remember what they said?

This was their message: The Conservatives will stop the rise in prices.

An effective appeal, at the time. Money wages had shot up to undreamt of heights, but the voters were disappointed to find that prices accompanied them upwards. This wrecked the pre-war mirage of a glorious prosperity based on high wages.

For this reason, among others, the Tories came back in triumph to Westminster. A lot has happened since then and a lot has been forgotten; especially promises about reducing prices.

So the Financial Secretary to the Treasury had no need to tremble when he recently informed the House of Commons that, taking the purchasing power of the £1 as twenty shillings when the Tories got back in October, 1951, that same £1 note was now worth only 14s. 6d. A strange result of ten years of bringing down prices!

Naturally, the government have any number of excuses for their failure to keep their election promises. Most of them amount to the argument that they have been helpless in economic conditions outside their control.

This, of course, is not valid. The Conservative promise in 1951 that they would stabilise prices was in fact a claim that they could control Capitalism's economic tricks. Like others before them, they have failed.

Not that the government need worry. The workers have forgotten the rosy promises of 1951 and are now being bemused by the prospect of the £1,000 a year dustman. Capitalism will really start shaking when the workers despise all promises as worthless.

Strike at Margam

We might have expected some juicy headlines about the striker at Margam Steel Works, who turned up at the labour exchange in his Jaguar and parked it in amongst the smart cars of his fellow-strikers.

The pictures and the stories in the press were presumably intended to undermine the strikers’ case by suggesting that men who can afford to run a car have no need to strike.

This argument ignores one or two facts.

The bricklayers at Margam were engaged in unpleasant and dangerous work which put their health in great hazard. The Steel Company of Wales had agreed to the bricklayers doing this work under the “job and finish" rule and had allowed this rule to spread to men on a few other types of work.

Then S.C.O.W. decided that they were losing out on the deal and tried to change the rules. )

The company cannot be blamed for attempting to defend their interests. Neither can the bricklayers be criticised for resisting an effort to impose a severe wage cut and a dangerous worsening of their working conditions.

For this sort of conflict is inevitable in Capitalism, with its population split into two groups whose interests are opposed.

The Margam strike, and the strikers' fast cars, drives the point home. Workers must always fight for their interests under Capitalism—even under what is called Affluent Capitalism.

Nothing makes any difference to this —not even the ownership of a car.

Fifty Megatons

Why did the Russians do it? It is an absorbing, if chilling, occupation to speculate upon the reasons for the thirty and fifty megaton explosions.

Was it to prove a point for Krushchev in the current struggle in the Kremlin over the diversion of industrial resources? Was it designed to get something moving in the perilous deadlock in Berlin? Or to make the Chinese sit up and take notice that Russia is much the more powerful country?

The bombs could have been let off as a move in any, or all, of these conflicts. It will be a long time, if ever, before we find out the reason.

One thing is certain now, for all to see. The conflicts are typical of Capitalism in the 'Sixties—and so are the bombs. And this could mean more bombs, more radioactivity, perhaps even bombs dropped in anger.

Is this the world gone mad, as the nuclear disarmed think? In fact, there is a terrible sanity about it. Capitalism has always had its wars and. political disputes—who can expect it not to have the necessary weapons to settle its disputes?

But Capitalism has also always had its workers who are willing to support the system, although they may bemoan the horrors which it continually produces.

It is no getaway for them now to say that the bomb tests are a great, inhuman mistake, or the work of a callous government

Capitalism means fear and insecurity for the people of the world And this will go on until the people realise it and do something about it.

After the Motor Show

The Motor Show has been and gone. The bright lights of Earls Court are dimmed and the hectic publicity is over. Now come the harsh realities of trying to sell all the cars that were so enthusiastically praised.

As at all Motor Shows, there was the usual optimistic talk of large orders and encouraging sales. The big car-hire firms carefully saved their orders to coincide with the Show, as they do every year, and all the manufacturers expressed satisfaction with the Show. Nobody with any knowledge of the trade was deceived.

Apart perhaps from Jaguars, who did very well, all the manufacturers know that the struggle is going to be hard and that it will probably get worse before it gets better—if in fact it does. Motor sales have now reverted to their previous seasonal pattern and for the second winter running sales have gone into decline.

Of the Big Five, BMC and Ford are probably the least affected, but they also have their troubles. BMC's best seller is the Mini-minor, but they themselves have admitted that the ratio of profit on these is small. They have to sell a lot to make the balance-sheet look reasonable, let alone brilliant. Yet in overseas markets. at least those in which there is no favourable tariff to help, them, Mini-minors are too dear to compete effectively with the home products of similar size. Price is also a handicap to Fords, but they have apparently decided nevertheless that the only way to get a foothold in such markets is to cut their prices. They have admitted, for instance, that they are selling some Anglias at cost so as to make an impression on the French market It is more likely that after paying transport costs they arc selling at a loss.

And Abroad

All the other big national producers have also held their Shows and are faced with the same problems. France had no less than three completely new small cars at the Paris Show which can only mean tremendous competition within the country and added threats to those outside. Volkswagen had their new larger car on show at Frankfurt, but are nevertheless continuing to turn out the old model at the fantastic rate of 4,200 a day. In yearly terms this is something like 800- 900 thousand, about the same as the whole of British production will be this year. Italian car production is also rising rapidly, whilst at the same time they are thinking of steps to keep out steadily mounting imports. All these countries have plans similar to those of the British manufacturers to expand output.

One thing they must all be wondering is how they are going to dispose of this output. It will be interesting to see how things develop during the next few months. There may be surprises in store.

U.S. & Common Market

One of the most surprising news-items of the month has been the report that the United States may have to consider joining the European Common Market. Further information is that President Kennedy intends to press for a freer trade policy and get rid of restrictive trade laws.

Yet only 15 years ago European Capitalism had almost been written off by the U.S. Even the vast quantities of dollar aid that were poured into Europe were given more as an emergency stop-gap against Russia than in any expectation of a revival. Western Europe, in the eyes of American Capitalism, was “finished.”

But the old-in-the-tooth Capitalists of Europe were not finished. One hundred and fifty years' experience of exploiting the working class was still there to form the basis for revival. Now the countries of the Common Market are a threat to American Capitalism and, if Britain also joins, this threat will really be formidable.

The United Stales is in fact in a very similar position to that of the U.K. a few months ago. British Capitalist is now trying to get into the Common Market and, if it succeeds, the new lineup will only step up the pressure on the U.S. to follow suit.

What a change in the short space of 15 years! When people ask us how long it will be before Socialism is established. do they ever stop to think how quickly things arc now changing under Capitalism?

Is this progress? (1961)

From the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is, as we know, a vast Industry of Words which works flat out to justify and sustain the Capitalist system of society. One of the comfortable assumptions which this Industry uses to oil its wheels is that the present time (whenever that may be) is one of enlightened civilisation. A Japanese steel company, for example, advertises its products to Western businessmen in the following terms:

The glow of the golden ’Sixties. The promise of the ’Sixties is a challenge to the imagination. How will the people benefit from the marvellous advances that are foreseeable?

And so on. The advertisement may not be intended for a wide readership, but the point it tries to make is pretty general. The present is a good time to be living in. The past is rather doubtful —mistakes were made, foolish things were done, or foolishly left undone. Now, we have learnt our lesson.

How true is this? Was the period between the two World Wars, for example, any better than that since 1945? The 'Twenties were certainly a classical period of cynicism and disillusionment. Strangely the boys in Fleet Street and Tin Pan Alley, who are good at such things, have always found it difficult to revive any popular nostalgia for the period. Perhaps it is because the frantic dances, the weird hair styles and clothes and what they called the “new morality" — although goodness knows there was nothing new about it—were the reactions of a generation bewildered by one of the most dreadful wars in history.

The tiniest village in England can show its memorial to a shockingly long list of young men who died in that war. And they died in such awful ways. They drowned in the mud at Paschendaele, they were slaughtered by the Turkish infantry at Gallipoli. It was so different from what everybody had been expecting when the British workers swarmed cheering into the streets on August 4th, 1914. Few among those delirious crowds could have foreseen the long, bloody anguish that quickly deprived them of all desire to cheer.

The Twenties saw what politician’s promises are worth. During the war there was no lack of well-kept ministers to assure the people who were actually doing the dying that they did not suffer for nothing. Some of the emptiest of the promises and the silliest of the blather have gone down in history and are still remembered with sardonic smiles. For there are still plenty of men who can recall coming home from the trenches to join the long queues at the labour exchanges, There are still bitter memories of the Means Test—so much so that the very name has political danger—and of official tricks like the "Not Genuinely Seeking Work” clause which were meant to deprive the unemployed of even the pitifully small dole. The Twenties were a time of brutal Capitalist reality. Who can be surprised that people were bewildered and cynical?

As the years turned into the Thirties there opened the long list of international conflicts—the invasion of China, the attack on Abyssinia, the German expansion in Europe—which led up to the Second World War. And the Thirties had the supreme example of cynicism and despair.

It is difficult adequately to explain why Fascism was so popular in Germany and not in other countries in which conditions were broadly the same. Whatever the explanation for this, there is one thing which can be said. Fascism, with its reliance upon the strong man leader theory and its extreme racialism, is the desperate product of despair. An unemployed man, or a man who cannot find a home for this family, is easy prey for the first rabble rouser who will point a finger at the Negro and say that he is filling all the jobs and living in all the houses. Or perhaps the Jew comes under the lash because, says the racialist, he owns the country and so controls what goes on in it. This is so obviously a doctrine of ignorance and despair that simply to state it is to expose its weaknesses. But when ignorant workers are having Capitalism’s problems thrown in their faces, and when they are shocked and bewildered and desperate, it is just the sort of theory that can find favour with them. That is part, at any rate, of the explanation for the rise of Fascism in Europe and of the astounding, dreadful things that it did there.

It is not wonderful, then, that some people recall the years between the wars with a shudder, as rather like a bad illness which came to its crisis in 1939. Many political commentators—and the Labour Party, naturally—like to write off those years as the devilish work of That Man Baldwin who, they say, was content to suck his pipe and gaze at his pigs in Worcestershire while the rest of the world decayed around him. Baldwin was certainly an unflappable Prime Minister, a long time before the word got pinned on to Supermac. He was an astute politician who played the game as dirtily as he had to. But to blame him for a whole period of brutality is to side step the facts. Because when Baldwin wits gone, hated and derided, the world went on the same merry way.

The Second World War may not have shocked, in the social sense, as harshly as its predecessor did. But it lacked nothing in barbarity. There has, for example, recently been published the details of the great wartime bombing controversy between Tizard and Lindemann. These men were highly trained scientists who hardly seemed able to avoid arguing. One of their bitterest clashes was over the question of whether the Royal Air Force should have bombed German civilians. Neither of them argued that it would be callous, even by their lights, to deliberately attack a civilian population. They fought over whether the air force was capable of doing the job and whether, if it was done, it would have any considerable effect on the German war effort. There is no need to suppose that either man had an emotional case; both of them went into it armed with cold calculations in terror and destruction.

While this was going on, the politicians were soothing us with their promises, some of which are supposed to have been fulfilled in the so-called Affluent Society. ''Affluence" means that workers, apart from a few million in the USA and Canada and a few hundred thousand in this and other countries, are fairly secure in their jobs. Some can buy a car—sometimes even a new one. They can take on the lifetime burden of a mortgage on a house—because they have given up hope of getting one by any other method. How affluent can poverty get?

And do not let us forget the shadow under which the Affluent Society has. grown up. Almost since the end of the last war, the world has been split into two great armed camps in dispute over the exploitation of markets and the possession of raw materials. The politicians have made countless threatening speeches. The Russians have let off their massive bombs and promised us that we have only seen a half of it. The American Secretary of Defence has replied that his country's military power is virtually irresistible. The Affluent Society eats its food and breathes its air only after they have been soiled by the fallout. The world is as full of fear as ever.

There are plenty of organisations to complain about this. At a recent conference of the World Parliament Association. the organisation's secretary-general drew some tempting pictures of the benefits which he thinks would result if some of the £1,600 million a year being spent on armaments by the British government were diverted to other uses. For £150 million every family in the country could be decently housed within twenty years. For £200 million the roads could be improved, possibly to save 20,000 lives a year. Anybody can do this sort of arithmetic. The point is, why don't governments divert their country's money into houses, roads, and so on?

We all know the politicians' answer to that one. Of course, they murmur, it is all very regrettable. Nothing would please us more if we could pack up making all those beastly guns and bombs and build houses instead. The trouble is we have got to live with the Russians (or the Americans, depending upon who is answering the question) and they've got a big army. If we don't watch out, they'll start moving into parts of the world where we are boss at the moment. We must have armies and weapons, you know, to stop that sort of thing.

What this means is that Capitalism is bound to throw up its disputes because it splits the world into competing economic groups. The armies, the guns, the aircraft and the bombs are there to influence the dispute and if need be to fight it out. The late Aneurin Bevan summed it up when he appealed to a Labour Party Conference some years ago not to vote to ban nuclear weapons. Such a vote, he said, would mean that if he were to become Foreign Secretary he would have to go “naked" into the conference chamber.

The nations of Capitalism must arm themselves, must coldly work out the damage and death potential of their weapons, must perpetrate some of the most barbaric acts the human race has ever experienced. Sometimes human credulity breaks under the strain of it all and we are swept into the crazy, hard- boiled Twenties. Or bewilderment fertilises ignorance and breeds the maniacal savagery of racialism. The desperate, bloody story goes on, period after period, changing perhaps its form, but never its miserable content. The Twenties and Thirties may have been bad times, but nothing that has happened since has made them look worse by comparison. Capitalism Past is no better than Capitalism Present.

Ivan.

The Levellers 1640-1649 (1961)

From the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The word “Leveller” was first heard in 1606 when a band of men roamed the Warwickshire countryside, uprooting or levelling fences and hedges enclosing the once-common lands. These detested barriers had been going up all over England for eighty years.

Enclosing the “waste-land” that from time immemorial had been common property brought increasing misery to the poor and greater .wealth to the rich. Large areas were turned into sheep walks to satisfy the growing demand abroad for superior English wool. In Thomas More’s Utopia we read, “ The sheep that were wont to be so meek and tame and so small eaters now as I heare say be become so great devourers and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves.” Fresh ideas on farming and improved methods of stock-breeding made squires land-greedy. Enclosing was the polite name for stealing; people were driven from their homes to give pasture to sheep. Their only hope of survival lay in the towns, where they were fleeced even more closely than their woolly competitors.

Inventions and the necessity for larger ships meant bigger outlay and brought a demand for more money in the form of capital. A rich, powerful merchant class came into being. The first bank—the Bank of England, 1694—came with it.

The land lost much of its aristocratic value; the traditional obligations to tenant and labourer tended to disappear. The old tyrant with titles was often superseded by a new tyrant with money. Farmworkers were tricked out of rights of tenure. Though freed from the old bondage they were enslaved in a new and often terrifying system.

Throughout these tremendous changes Charles I remained obstinately feudal in outlook. Something was bound to happen. By 1628 the House of Commons was three times richer than the House of Lords. This gave its members confidence to resist the king's demands for money. So in 1629 he closed Parliament for eleven years, hoping to show his recalcitrant M.Ps. that he alone held power. But in 1639 a rebellion broke out in Scotland, and by 1640 he had been forced to recall Parliament to vote the necessary money to quell the rising. Here was the opportunity the Members had dreamed of. They knew that archaic notions of kingship must give way to a governmental system favourable to the merchants.

As a warm-up for their startling policy they executed the king’s chief minister, the Earl of Strafford, who had been raising an army in Ireland to crush Parliament. At the same time John Lilburne, leader of a “left-wing” group—the Levellers—was released from prison, where he had resided two years for issuing anti-State Church pamphlets. Now free, he got an Army command.

With this widespread opposition came a taste for democratic expression. The popularity of Cromwell's rising faction gave the Levellers a chance to speak out. How and where did they fit into the political ferment?

Parliament was divided. On the right were the Anglican Royalists, conservative and pro-Charles. On the left were the Independents, radical but not united. They were divided into a right-wing called Gentlemen Independents headed by Cromwell, Ireton, and Fairfax, and a left-wing known as the Levellers. The latter reflected the aspirations of small farmers, humbler-tradtsmen, work people and soldiers. They advocated greater political equality than the Independents and had a widespread popular support. 

In addition to political demands the civilian arm of the movement (the Diggers) urged greater economic equality; and in recognising that all political organisations and freedoms spring from or are crushed by the particular mode of land-ownership, they earned for themselves the undying hatred of Cromwell.

At this stage the Levellers were welcomed by the Radicals. All through the struggle the Levellers did best in the army, perhaps because there they were better organised than the Diggers. Both issued a considerable mass of literature, the Levellers maintaining that economic freedom followed from political freedom, and the Diggers seeing it rather the other way.

Common-ownership of the land was the bed-rock of their philosophy. Stripped of its Biblical overtones it stated a view that is still a staggering novelty to millions today. “. . . the time will be when all men shall willingly come in and give up their lands and estates and submit to the community.” They added, “and of that for money there was no need of it” (if men led communal lives). In the letter to Lord Halifax, Winstanley asked, “I demand whether all wars, bloodshed and misery came not upon creation when one man endeavoured to be a lord over another.”

In an article in the Leveller paper, The Moderate in 1649, after some men were executed for cattle-stealing, a writer suggested private property was the cause of a great deal of crime committed by the poor, “ We find,” he wrote, “some of these felons to be very civil men, and say, that if. they could have had any reasonable subsistence by friends, or otherwise they should never have taken such necessitous courses for the support of their wives and families.” The paper was suppressed after September, 1649, by “democratic” Cromwell.

The Levellers just as clearly saw that religion with its mirage of a happy future life was the carrot that encouraged the poor donkey of a labourer to stagger on. Winstanley wrote, ". . . to know God beyond the creation or to know what he will do to a man after the man is dead, in any other wise than to scatter him into his essences of fire, water, earth and air of which he is compounded (a belief handed down by the ancient Greeks) is a knowledge beyond the line or capacity of man to attain to while he lives in his compounded body.” Richard Overton, too, wrote in Man's Mortality that the idea of the soul was ridiculous.

The New Model Army (Roundheads) was Parliament’s striking force, its job to overthrow the king. But because its ranks were filled with many pro-Leveller men the Levellers saw in it a means of getting better conditions for the poor. On May 20th, 1647, “a great petition” was sent to the Commons demanding political reforms and the re-organisation of the Constitution. When the re-imprisoned Lilburne (he was in and out of gaol between 1646-1648 for various attacks on authority) heard that the common hangman had been instructed to burn it, he looked to the army for support. He declared the power of the land vested in the army, and at this point Cromwell agreed. Next, a manifesto, The Case of the Army Truly Stated, was presented to General Fairfax on October 15th, 1647, and later An Agreement of the People, which dealt more with civil matters.

Fearing the support gained by the Levellers, the Presbyterians compromised with Charles. Enraged, the Independents with the Levellers marched to London, entered the House and passed a measure to thwart any attempt to corrupt the army; the Presbyterians were crushed. Though Cromwell had been aided by the Levellers, he refused to free Lilburne. When we see what the Levellers were after, we can understand why! The Case of the Army Truly Stated listed thirteen points:

1. New election for new parliament.
2. House of Commons to be cleared of royalist sympathisers.
3. Army’s supremacy to be made known officially.
4. Excise tax to be lifted from the poor, Better tax-laws.
5. Trials to be speeded up and improved conditions for prisoners.
6. Greater religious tolerance.
7. Abolition of tithes.
8. Oath of Supremacy to be abolished.
9. No oaths from those with conscience scruples.
10. Law reform to enable laymen to understand legal matters.
11. Removal of privileges. All to be subject to same laws.
12. Enclosed land to be returned to common use.
13. Pensions for disabled soldiers, widows and children.

The stir that these programmes made, forced Fairfax, Cromwell and the others Grandees (as they were somewhat derisively called) to allow their discussion in a series of debates held in Putney. Cromwell reasoned that if these fiery demands could be proved too extreme or impractical. Leveller influence would diminish and the threat to his supremacy would disappear. The main point was that the vote was the birthright of all men, and to this Ireton replied, “. . . voting was a property right. Only those who owned a house worth 40s a year in rent or who had a freehold interest in land should vote. The protection of private property was of the utmost importance, now that freedom had been won. Everyone was free to make money, and to own property, and the law was there to protect them while they did it.” Rainborough for the Levellers retorted that what was required in voting was reason not property. And Sexby added, “. . . as things are today unless a man has fixed property, he has no rights in England at all.”

Cromwell had the Case of the Army condemned in Parliament. Next, he set out to quell his army and persuade the least influenced to sign a pledge of loyalty at Corkbush Field, Ware, in Hertfordshire. There the Agreement of the People was presented to Fairfax. He accepted it, but told the men to go on signing and they did. But then up rode two dissenting regiments singing and wearing the Leveller colours. Immediately Cromwell drew his sword and rode angrily among them, tearing away their colours. His sudden action quietened them. The ringleaders were arrested; three were found guilty and one of these was shot.

It was a serious defeat for the Levellers. They tried resistance again, but were imprisoned and Lilburne remained in the Tower. At Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight, Charles in 1648 launched another attack (the Second Civil War). All the contesting elements of Parliament sank their differences again in preparation for the fray. The artful Presbyterians released Lilburne, hoping he would stir the army to mutiny. But he supported Cromwell, presumably regarding him as the lesser of two evils.

After the royalist defeat more discussion on the Agreement of the People followed and it actually reached Parliament, but lay in abeyance while the king’s fate was decided. On January 30th, 1649, Charles, king by the grace of God, died by the grace of the merchants.

M. Brown.

(to be concluded)

SPGB Meetings (1961)

Party News from the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes: 

The content of Gilbert McClatchie's talk to Hackney Branch about his North American Journey probably overlapped with his American Tour article in this issue of the Socialist Standard.

Interesting to see Ealing Branch doing a meeting on Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 classic film  Strike. 

Finance and Industry: Against Monopoly (1961)

The Finance and Industry Column from the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dip into English industrial history in any century since William the Norman and you will find monopoly and restraint of trade in the news: the early Acts forbidding traders to corner supplies; Acts fixing prices (not forgetting Selwyn Lloyd’s 12th century predecessors fixing wages); the Tudor and Stuart kings raising revenue by selling monopoly licences to manufacture certain articles; the corn laws which restricted imports to give the landed interest a monopoly of food production; the manufacturers' fight to get rid of the laws so that food prices, and wages, would come down; and the governmental inquiry in 1916 which found that “there is at present in every important branch of industry in the United Kingdom an increasing tendency to the formation of Trade Associations and Combinations having for their purpose restriction of competition and the control of prices." Always the same pattern of one interest trying to form a monopoly and other interests trying to break it; and always both sides saying that their only motive is to help the poor.

The monopolists have never been at a loss to present a defence: that they are not putting up prices but “stabilising" them; that it makes for efficiency in production; and, in recent years, that it provides regular employment for the workers at high wages.

In another column a paragraph is reproduced from our issue of December, 1911, about the foolishness of expecting the politicians to carry out their promise to bust the trusts and destroy monopoly. Four years before that, a university lecturer on political economy, Mr. Frank Bower, noted in his Dictionary of Economic Terms that although “attempts have been made to secure legal control over Trusts, in order to prevent the evil effects of monopolies, . . . these efforts have not been very successful."

Many laws have been passed since then to cut the giants down in size and enforce competition, but all that has happened is that the giants have grown fatter and stronger, and still the reformists are promising to do something about it. At the 1945 General Election the Labour Party pledged itself to enforce "public supervision of monopolies and cartels." The Tories countered with this promise that ‘'charges of abuse of their power by Monopolies should be brought before an independent tribunal for public hearing."

The Labour Party won the election and kept their promise by passing the Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Act of 1948—the effect of which was practically nothing. So the Tories at the 1951 election promised to strengthen the law, a move to which the Labour Party could hardly object, but at the same time the Tories said they intended to investigate restrictive practices by trade unions and the monopolistic aspects of nationalised industries. They later passed two more Acts, The Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission Act, 1953, and the Restrictive Trade Practices Act of 1956. Now it was the turn of the Labour M.Ps. to complain that it was next enough, but none of them seem to know quite what to do. So much so that the Fabian Society at the end of 1960 published a pamphlet by Mr. Patrick Hutber, not stating any Fabian Society conclusions, but putting forward personal suggestions for discussion in the “urgent ” task of formulating a new policy. (Wanted—a Monopoly Policy).

In the meantime, because of the spate of take-overs and mergers of the past few years, the problem has become bigger. How farcical it all is can be seen from the fact that the first Fabian Essays published 80 years ago were already discussing what to do about monopolies.

One of Mr. Hutber's proposals is that the Restrictive Practices Court should have power to threaten an offending company, that if it persisted in its evil ways, the government would take it over. This proposal, be says, “is new." Far from being new, it was an idea well known to the early Fabians and was ancient even then. It was Gladstone, then a Tory, who in 1844 was responsible for the first Act of Parliament giving the Government power to take over the railways. Manufacturers and traders who were being bled by the monopolistic railways had got Gladstone to pass the Act so that he could use it as a threat against the Companies unless they reduced their charges. (Nowadays traders are more likely to think that the nationalisation remedy is worse than the disease).

In the exercise of the powers given by the Act an enormous amount of work has been done examining complaints, ordering the termination of offending monopolistic or restrictive agreements, but with what result? The Economist (16/4/60) examined the results of all this activity. Since the purpose of the restrictive practices by manufacturers and traders is to force up prices to get more profit the simple test of the effect of the Act is to see to what extent it has succeeded in bringing prices down. The Economist had this to say:

  Mr. T. B. Heath of Manchester University has recently produced some extremely interesting analyses of its effects. Mr. Heath has concluded that the effect of the Act on the general level of prices has so far been very small. To date, the visible effect of the Act on retail prices has been almost nil.

What happens is that as soon as the law makes some practice illegal the lawyers get to work to discover ways of getting round it. One new and perfectly legal device is for manufacturers to agree not to fix prices (which would be illegal), but to make what are called “open price" agreements under which they set up a control agency to exchange information about the prices each manufacturer is charging, about the terms and conditions of sale, costs, the state of demand and level of output. The use they make of the information can be guessed.

Another result of the activities under the Monopolies Act has been to stimulate mergers by rival firms; if it is illegal for rivals to agree on price maintenance it is quite legal for them to merge.

Mr. Hutber, in the pamphlet referred to above, admits that after an earlier phase of anxiety among businessmen, the position at the time he was writing, was: “everything apparently going on very much as before, so that instead of gratified economists and dismayed businessmen, it is the businessmen who are gratified and the economists dismayed."

It is claimed by some critics of the Monopolies Acts in Britain that things are different in America; and indeed the battle there has been going on longer and more ruthlessly. In April of this year the American electrical manufacturing industry was convicted for breaches of the anti-trust laws. Seven directors were sent to prison and fines of two million dollars were imposed. But those who started waging war against the Standard Oil Trust in the eighteen eighties were not promising that after eighty years the battle would be going on.

In USA, as in Britain in Gladstone's day, the fight is in internal capitalist one, between the trust formers and their trade victims. The Financial Times (31/10/61), reports from New York:

  A large number of government agencies, private utilities and Municipal authorities, all of which have been among the industry’s biggest customers, have been preparing to claim damages from their suppliers on the grounds that the price-fixing conspiracies kept prices too high. If all the claims were upheld by the courts, the manufacturers might be obliged to pay out as much as a hundred million dollars in damages.

In the meantime, as Marxists have always held, the progress of Capitalism has involved the inevitable trend towards concentration into bigger and more costly enterprises. As Sir Hugh Beaver, former President of the Federation of British Industries wrote two years ago:

  There is a natural tendency to extol the virtues of the small man, and many seem to deplore the growth of big business, but it cannot be forgotten . . .  that we live in a world where all units are increasing in size and importance.

(Financial Times Annual Review, 1959.)

It was possible in the early nineteen twenties for J. R. Clynes, a trade union Labour M.P., who was later Minister in a Labour Government and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, to write that “ it was better to have a large number of small Capitalists than a small number of large ones.” It would be almost unthinkable for a trade union Labour M.P. to make such a declaration today. (Ironically Clynes made the statement in the preface to a pamphlet, The Failure of Karl Marx, which purported to prove that Marx was wrong in his anticipation about the trend of Capitalism).

Nowadays the Unions and the Labour Party have fully accepted Capitalist big business, but are troubled by the dilemma of both wanting business to be big and powerful for competition with foreign rivals and of wanting to curb its power at home. The possibility of a Socialist world in which you do not have to curb market seeking, profit making industries because you have production solely for use, is still beyond their grasp.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: CND and SPGB (1961)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

I note the news item on page 96 of the June issue and am glad, but not surprised, that CND members figured prominently at the St Pancras Town Hall meeting earlier this year. Many CND members are sincere Socialists. Some are Labour Party members, others belong to the Communist Party and I suspect that there are a few members who carry a Liberal card. However, Mr. Gaitskell and Mr. George Brown have yet to apply for membership.

Parties have been playing at politics for a long time, but now the sands of time are running out. The threat of an universal nuclear war grows daily. CND members are always trying to persuade people that a nuclear war would be the final chapter in the world's history. We are trying to restore sanity to a divided world in which even the USSR finds it necessary to stockpile nuclear weapons. So, of course, does America. Before long, many smaller nations, regardless of their political systems, will possess the secret of thermo-nuclear mass destruction.

All sensible people realise that an international Socialist society, democratically elected in the true sense, is the main political hope for the future, but in order to allow and encourage the forces of the Left, we must ensure that there is a world left in which to preach our propaganda, create a Socialist society; to fulfil basic human rights and thereby do the countless things that are still ignored by various political systems. Moreover, sensible people realise that a capitalist system is a complete contradiction of our aims.

Much more could be said and written about the anomalies of modern society but the contention on page 103 of the July Socialist Standard is disappointingly reactionary in its opposition and condemnation of CND. I would have expected certain elements in the staid Labour Party to believe in patchwork social democracy based on existing values of society, but for the SPGB to adopt an anti-CND stand, can hardly do your cause any good, but will have the effect of ensuring its insularity. If the SPGB succeeds in becoming a museum piece, such as the Labour Party seems destined to become, it will be because of this sort of confused, short-sighted policy.

No organisation which concerns itself with putting right the problems now confronting us, could be justified in maintaining this sort of opposition. I must assume, therefore, that the author of a “Lesson In Futility” (page 103) is not representative of his fellow members. However, the last sentence of his article is obviously faultless.

R. F. G. Radford.

Bristol CND.

Reply:
Let us dear up one point straight away. There arc no Socialists in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. A Socialist wants a new social system based upon the common owncrehip of the means of wealth production and distribution. He is not in favour of capitalism of any sort because be knows that, whatever efforts are made to reform the system, it will continue to produce problems like war with its fearsome weapons.

How do the members of CND line up with this? Mr. Radford, when he writes that he suspects the organisation contains some Liberals, confirms that a member of CND may hold any sort of political views provided he is agreed that wars should not be fought with nuclear weapons. Because of this, CND can only be another organisation which stands for a reformed capitalism; in its case, capitalism in which wars are conducted with what have come to be called "conventional" weapons. No Socialist could belong to such an organisation. There may be many CND members who sincerely think that they are Socialists, but they are not the first to get themselves involved in that particular bit of muddle-headedness.

It is rather late in the day for CND, with its Labour and Liberal members, to tell us that time is getting short. For nearly sixty years the Socialist Party of Great Britain has been explaining the cause of modern war and pointing out that the means of waging war could be expected to become more fearsome as the years went by. But in this we have always been opposed by the very parties which, as Mr. Radford says, have supplied many members of CND. Whilst we have been explaining and opposing capitalism's wars our opponents have been busily fighting them and working to make them more destructive. Who is to blame, if we are now on the brink of " . . . the final chapter in the world s history.”?

But our correspondent has to offer only the old plea that we should drop our work for Socialism until we have sorted out one more of capitalism’s problems. We have heard this plea many times before, from organisations which were worried about unemployment, or Fascism or some other side-effect of capitalism. Indeed, some of these organisations have had the chance to apply their reformist ideas. How have they turned out? Both Labour and Communist governments have built op massive armed forces for their capitalist class and they have made sure that those forces were equipped with enormous stocks of powerful weapons. They have also played their part in keeping the divisions of the capitalist world which Mr. Radford mentions by their export drives, patriotic propaganda and so on. Here is evidence enough to support the Socialist claim that reformist policies are futile.

And why does Mr. Radford say that even “. . . the USSR finds it necessary to stockpile nuclear weapons”? Russia is as much a capitalist nation as any other and cannot be expected to react any differently in face of international competition. Does Mr. Radford think that there is Socialism in Russia? And if he does, do the other “Socialists” in CND agree with him?

It is the reformist organisations which, in their support of capitalism, uphold what our correspondent calls “. . . the existing values of society.” For any social system is inseparable from its values; to support one is to uphold the other. The SPGB hat always stood for the social revolution which will sweep away capitalism and all its false social values.

This will be the complete, only and once-for-all cure for the problems of capitalism. To stand for anything less could mean that we would end up by supporting the very thing which we originally professed to oppose. That is why a one-time pacifist could serve as a Minister of War and why old opponents of the peerage system sometimes end their days in the Home of Lords. It is why people who are now members of CND will, if capitalism requires them to, fight in a nuclear war just as the pacifists of the nineteen thirties took part in the last war.

As far as the last paragraph of Mr. Radford's letter is concerned, we need hardly add that the anti-CND attitude expressed in the article “Lesson In Futility” is representative of the viewpoint of all members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Editorial Committee.

50 Years Ago: Trust Busting in America (1961)

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

Many worthy people have fondly cherished the notion that Roosevelt and his fellow Republicans meant “doing for" the trusts. Our Liberal advertisement sheets have praised him for his "great fight" and accepted him as the enemy of monopoly. But, true to capitalist methods, when something more than mere words and rhetoric is required, he turns round and defends the trusts and ridicules the idea of destroying them. In the current issue of the Outlook, Mr. Roosevelt says:

  "The big business has come to stay and it is futile to expect to return to the old days of laissez-faire. The government must see this and refrain from keeping American industries on tenterhooks and permitting foreign rivals to reap an advantage.”

In the course of his article he denounces the government for interfering with the Steel Trust and calls President Taft's policy a “chaotic" one.

So much for capitalist politicians. When they seek office they tell their poor followers that trusts can be smashed by anti-trust laws. But in the calm of other days the truth so often driven home by Socialists emerges—that combination and concentration of capital is an inevitable result of economic laws. That is the tribute of Theodore Roosevelt to Karl Marx. 

[From the Socialist Standard, December 1911.]

Twenty Five Years After (1961)

Book Review from the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas, Eyre & Spottiswood. 42s.

The Spanish Civil War began 25 years ago and Mr. Hugh Thomas thinks that the time has come when a study could usefully be made of a tragedy which though dwarfed by subsequent world events, nevertheless cost 600,000 lives, including about 100,000 “who may be supposed to have died by murder or summary execution”

He has made a very good job of collecting and presenting information on the complex and fast-moving events of the three-year Civil War. In his 720 pages he carries the reader forward from the election of the Popular Front Government in 1936 to the revolt that faced it soon afterwards; through the military campaigns with their alternating advantage first to one side then the other, to the final collapse of the Republican forces in March, 1939. Six months later the principal governments that had helped or hindered the Republican forces in Spain were involved in the World War—all except Spain itself, under the-victor of the civil war, General Franco.

The League of Nations which had been impotent to do anything about the “local” war was brushed aside by World War II. Yet when that war ended and the United Nations inherited the shabby mantle of the League, Spanish Republican Exiles had still learned so little that they were hoping that the new organisation would dispose of Franco.

It might have been expected that the world war and all that has happened since would have destroyed interest in the Spanish Civil War, but the steady stream of books proves otherwise. It is not the size and destructiveness of the war, but the passions aroused in participants and onlookers alike that make it still memorable. There is also the inevitable speculation about what would have happened if only some politician or party had turned in a different direction at the crucial moment.

It is memorable, too, for the flood of outside volunteers who wanted to help.

Some adventurers were bound to be attracted to Spain in the Civil War, but the majority of the 40,000 volunteers from France, Germany, Britain and U.S.A. and many other countries who joined the International Brigades were men anxious to fight and, if necessary, willing to die, “for democracy and against Fascism.” (Doubtless the same idealistic motives sent Irish and other Catholic volunteers to fight for Franco “in defence of religion").

Many soon became disenchanted when they found that war is not just dying, but living in mud and blood and hardship, and enduring the indignities of army discipline—they were learning again what their fathers who volunteered for war in 1914 could have told them. Mr. Thomas writes of early 1937:

  The volunteers had discovered in battle that “a War of ideas” is much the same as any other conflict. In Spain, or elsewhere, there was confusion of orders, jamming of rifles at the critical moment, uncertainty about the whereabouts of the enemy and of headquarters, desire for cigarettes (or sweet-tasting, things), fatigue, occasional hysteria. . . . From the start, the wilder volunteers had got into trouble with the authorities, if only for drunkenness. But now trouble was incessant. Those who wished to return home were not permitted to do so when they wished. Some complained that they had volunteered on the assumption that they could go home in three months time. Here the principles of a volunteer army conflicted with military needs. (P. 390.)

Some deserted and landed up in military detention camps (“re-education camps") and some were shot as deserters.

But, of course, the war was not won and lost by the volunteers, but by the intervention of foreign governments Germany, Italy and Russia. And the fighting men were to discover then, or alter the war, that governments have reasons of State and of profit that have little to do with the slogans and speeches about democracy and religion. 

The Anarcho-Syndicalists and others on the Republican side, who quarrelled bitterly with the Communists, were particularly incensed because Russian military aid had to be paid for; partly with the £63 million of Spanish gold that was early sent to Russia for safe keeping.

Mr. Thomas dismisses as unreal the charge that the Russians "cheated” the Republicans of the money, but concedes (p. 310) “that Russia drove a hard bargain for her goods. In addition to the gold, Spanish raw materials were despatched to Russia in bulk.”

Typical of the beliefs of Spanish critics of Russia was a statement published in London in 1941 by their Anarchist friends, in a pamphlet The Russian Myth:

  No arms or food were sent to Spain before the end of October—three months after Franco had rebelled. Immediate payment in gold was insisted upon by Stalin for such arms as were sent.

The writer of the pamphlet went on to contrast Stalin's insistence on cash down, with “Hitler and Mussolini, who gave Franco long-term credits—still in part unredeemed." He was quite wrong; German Capitalism might bait the hook with long-term credits, but not out of charity; only because a really big fish was to be caught, Spanish mineral wealth. It was German aid that was finally decisive in the autumn of 1938, but the price exacted for the arms “was German participation in all the important iron ore projects in Spain. In return for this rich prize Germany committed enough war material to Spain to tip the balance finally towards the Nationalists” (p. 612).

Mr. Thomas notes that in August, 1936, after German military help had already reached the Republican Government’s enemies in Spain, the Government was trying to buy war planes in Germany (p. 235). There is no evidence to show that Germany considered supplying the planes. If they had been in doubt they would have been duly influenced by the fact that the mineral wealth they were after in Spain was in Franco-controlled provinces.

Apart from foreign intervention with war material, troops, planes and pilots, and naval action, Mr. Thomas contrasts Franco's success in getting a high degree of unity among his supporters with the way the Republican Government was "terribly hampered by the disputes between the parties who supported it" (p. 611). He goes on:

  One excuse might be that all the parties felt so strongly about their own policies that defeat itself seemed preferable to a surrender of the purity of their individual views. It would perhaps be more truthful to say that no one was able to forge a real unity out of the Republican warring tribes as Franco and Serrano Suner were able to do among the Nationalists. (P.611.)

Failing to get aid from the West the Spanish Government had to rely more and more on Russia and the Communists —which only increased the division in its own ranks.

In April, 1939, the National Committee representing the Spanish Confederation of Labour (Anarcho-Syndicalist), the Anarchists and some other bodies published a statement, Three Years of Struggle in Spain, giving their version of events and the reason for failure. The virulence of their charges against Russia and the Russian-directed Spanish Communists shows that Mr. Thomas has understated the impossibility of Republican Unity. The National Committee bluntly declared, on the strength of their experiences in the just-ended civil war:

  Neither in war nor revolution has anti-fascist Spain had a worse enemy than Stalinism. . . . What unity did the Communist Party expect or attempt to establish? None whatever—Agents of the U.S.S.R. murdered thousands of non-Stalinist Comrades who had come to Spain and joined the International Brigades. . . .

They accused the Communists of almost every crime that they had charged against Franco, plus desertion and cowardice. They still half-believed that, but for the Communists, they would have won against Franco and his allies.

Along with evidence on which the reader can base an opinion, Mr. Thomas sums up his own by saying that most of the governments were using the opportunity of the Spanish conflict to test out weapons and study tactics for future use in larger wars. This included Republican France, and it was Léon Blum who at his trial in 1942 spoke of the Spanish war as a “test for French aviation material” (p. 615). Of course, Germany, Russia and Italy were exploiting the same opportunity, though it is one of the ironies of the situation that most of the observers appear to have drawn the wrong lessons or failed to profit by the right ones. The exceptions were the Italians and Yugoslavs who learned a lot about the kind of war the Partisans were to carry on later in both countries.

Other than that, the intervening and non-intervening governments were thinking about alignments and manoeuvring for position for the threatening world war. Each government, however, seems to have been hesitant about pushing intervention so far as to provoke that war immediately.

When the Spanish democrats complained about the governments of Britain, France, Russia and U.S.A. not being prepared to take all measures to save Republican Spain “for the sake of democracy," they were forgetting that all Capitalist groups (Russia included) are motivated by the same kind of economic and strategic interests: deciding policy on the basis of ideologies is not to be expected of any of them. If any Republicans still held this illusion in the Spring of 1939 when the Republican armies collapsed they had only to wait six months to see Germans and Russians who had been warring in Spain for three years, hobnobbing together to celebrate the Stalin-Hitler pact of friendship.

But though all the other Powers were sooner or later caught up in World War II, Franco reversed the roles—he was willing to give aid to Germany, at a price, but he was not drawn into the war as a combatant Power. This did not save the Spanish Blue Division from sharing the horrors of the war in Russia, fighting alongside the German armies. On the Republican side, Mr. Thomas relates that Russian officers who fought in Spain were among those liquidated by Stalin in the purges (p. 621), and “nearly all veterans of the Spanish Civil War in Eastern European countries were arrested and many were shot.” Later on, after the death of Stalin in 1953, they were ” rehabilitated.”

In the Epilogue in which Mr. Thomas briefly notes the subsequent fate of those who came to prominence in Spain, he tells of the Republican general El Campesino who as an exile was welcomed to Russia, but fell foul of the authorities. He escaped and in appalling difficulties made his way to Persia; only to be handed back by the British. He escaped again and is still hoping to unseat Franco. In El Campesino's own memoirs he says that what queered him with the Russian authorities was that, on being asked at a military academy which was the world's most effective fighting machine, he named the German army!

Mr. Thomas's material shows how heavily the scales were weighted against the Republicans in the international field. He expresses the opinion that “the financiers of Europe and America not only expected the Nationalists to win but desired them to” (p. 273). A vital help for Franco was that of the Texas Oil Co. was at once willing to supply oil on long-term credit, without guarantee.

Nevertheless, Mr. Thomas’s implied criticisms of the American and British Governments seem designed to invite speculation as to what might have happened if, say, American Capitalism had had big and immediate interests endangered by a Republican defeat, or if those British Conservatives who supported the Republicans had been able to persuade the Government that long-term British Capitalist interests were involved and that they should support the Republicans and risk major war with Germany and Italy. In which event the world war may have come a little sooner.

Those who, for whatever reasons, hold the view that the workers should support war can say that in 1936 that risk was worth taking. But those who reject it had and have another aspect of the Spanish conflict to consider.

It is not merely being wise after the event to say that the Republicans’ position was impossible and that civil war could not solve their problems. Many observers saw this at the time. The Popular Front which, by a bare majority of votes, won the 1936 election, was composed of such divergent elements that the aim of some of them, a sort of Labour-Liberal Parliamentary democracy, was at that time as much out of the question as the establishment of Socialism. There were the Communists, aiming to establish dictatorship on the Russian model; the Basque and Catalonian separatists inspired by hatred of central government; and the very large body of Anarcho-Syndicalists who repudiated politics and parliamentary methods, which they called "empty phrasemongering,” and who believed in direct action, violence, and armed revolt, as much against a Republican Government as any other. Their support for the Popular Front and the Popular Front Government was a denial of all their principles, regretted almost as soon as it was given.

If we concede that by some different balance of international Capitalist interests the Popular Front could have emerged victorious at the end of the civil war, what could they have done with victory that would have borne any resemblance to the democratic Spain they, or some of them, had hoped for?

Edgar Hardcastle

The Passing Show: Ghana Visit (1961)

The Passing Show Column from the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ghana Visit

It has finally been decided, after many comings and goings, that the Queen's visit to Ghana is still on. Mr. Duncan Sandys, the British diplomats in Ghana, the Prime Minister himself—-all have been called on to take some part of the responsibility, all have had a hand in the final decision along with the other members of the Cabinet. The only person who doesn't seem to have been consulted is the person whose safety, after all, is at stake—the Queen herself. There could hardly have been a more striking illustration of the position the monarchy now holds as against the ruling class. The Capitalists having taken over the state and the machinery of government, they have either converted the governmental instruments of the old landowner-ruled society to their own uses, or have allowed them to survive merely as powerless ceremonial appendages. Even though at the beginning of the visit it seemed not improbable, after several recent anti-Nkrumah bomb explosions, that there would be some attempt at violence as the Queen and Nkrumah rode together through the towns of Ghana, the Queen had no choice in the matter. The Government, the Capitalists' executive committee, had decided that she was to go. And since the monarch in Capitalist society is no more than a puppet, she was constitutionally bound to “take her minister's advice"—i.e., do as she was told.


Criticism

Recently Nkrumah, as the chosen right hand of the Ghana ruling class, has been revealing more and more clearly what kind of society the Ghana rulers have decided on. It is now an offence punishable with jail to ”defame" the President, which seems in practice to cover any kind of criticism of him. It is not the first time a Capitalist class have decided that a dictatorship suits them best in a given set of circumstances, nor will it be the last.

But what can be said of some of the newspapers, such as the Daily Express. who are now deploring Nkrumah's dictatorial methods? Only a decade ago, when there was just as much of a dictatorship in Ghana as there is now— the only difference being that the dictatorship was then run by the British ruling class instead of the Ghanaian ruling class — the Daily Express had no objection to the dictatorship at all. It seems that it isn’t the dictatorship itself that they object to: only the particular set of people who happen to be running it. The record of the Daily Express on the matter deprives it of the right to criticise. Only those who criticised the British dictatorship of the past can logically now criticise the Nkrumah dictatorship of the present.


Fall Out

A most significant fact of the giant Russian H-bomb which was exploded at the end of October—the one intended to be fifty megatons, which apparently turned out to be even larger—was that Russia exploded it at home in its own territories.  The people who will suffer most from the fall-out from this bomb are the Russian working class. Which is another demonstration that the Russian rulers, for all their pretence that their state Capitalism is a form of “Socialism,” in fact show as much contempt for the interests of their own workers as any Western ruling class could.


Horrible to think

In an article in The Observer (5/11 /6I) on this explosion, Mr. John Strachey, M.P., said :

   It is horrible to think that an appreciable number of human beings will be crippled either mentally or physically over ensuing generations in order that Mr. Krushchev should attempt to terrorise the world in this way. But 1 am afraid this may be part of his calculation.

Mr. Strachey is somewhat illogical. Of course it is horrible to think of the crippled or mentally deficient children who will be born as a result of the bomb's explosion, merely in order that Mr. Krushchev should take another step in his attempt to terrorise his enemies into submission: but how does this differ from the millions of human beings crippled or killed outright by the British ruling class in the last two world wars, undertaken so that the British rulers could impose their will on their then enemies? Do we have to remind Mr. Strachey that at least  in the second of those wars he was a prominent Labour M.P.. supporting the war to the hilt? If it is "horrible" for the Russian ruling class now, why was it right for the British ruling class then? Mr. Strachey is a little too selective with his horror.

Alwyn Edgar

Branch News and Obituaries (1961)

Party News from the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here is a way of increasing sales of the Socialist Standard. For eight shillings a year a copy will be sent to any address in the British Isles. A small amount of money really! Why not persuade a friend to take a subscription for 1962, or pleasantly surprise someone with a gift of one year's “Standards”? It is very simple. Complete the form on page 191 and return it to us at 52 Clapham High Street, with of course the 8s. postal order.

Over 57 years the Socialist Standard has held the torch for Socialism. Consistent, searching and uncompromising has been its advocacy for Socialism. But still our Party journal must be brought to more and more people. The greater its circulation the greater will be the impact of Socialist propaganda, and incidentally, the more economic will be the "Standards" cost of production.

Resolve in 1962 to increase your sales of the Socialist Standard, and redouble your energy in spreading the case for Socialism. 

Wembley Branch were delighted with the success of their first indoor, public meeting on October 30th. “Introducing the SPGB" was Cyril May to a sizeable audience, mainly non-members. More than half the time was devoted to questions and discussion, and the audience took full advantage of it. Collection and literature sales were encouraging. Now for another and more ambitious venture in the near future!

The Branch’s winter lectures are in full swing with a wide range of subjects, every other week. Full details will be found under meetings on page 192. All those who attend will find the meetings stimulating and worthwhile.

Wembley is holding their Xmas Social on December 16th at the Ealing Park Tavern. "Joe's Group” will supply the music, and a repeat of last year’s success is certain. Everything will be laid on, and if you don’t enjoy yourself, it will be your own fault. Full information is on page 191.

Ealing Branch is continuing its winter activities with a showing of Eisenstein’s film "Strike” on December 8th. Comrade Ambridge is providing the comment. Owing to the length of the film, please note that the showing will begin at 7.45 p.m. prompt. Further lectures and film shows are being planned for January, February and March 1962.

Blackpool Lights. Reference was made in this column last month to a literature selling trip made by some members to the Blackpool Labour Party Conference. They hired a van, and throughout the week sold literature, inside and outside the Conference hall, held meetings, and made themselves known very effectively as representatives of the only Socialist Party in the country.

The van was decorated with Party posters and banners, and was stationed at various key points for literature drives and outdoor meetings. Sales totalled £9 6s. 0d. The detailed story of our comrades activities makes interesting reading, but unfortunately space limits us to this very brief report.

What must be said is that the trip was most successful, and the propaganda value was probably much greater than can be assessed at the moment. Next year it is intended to repeat ventures like this, and their growing success will be in no small measure due to the hard (though pleasurable) work done by our comrades this Autumn.

The debate organised by Paddington Branch on October 29th almost didn't take place, and then not quite. Mr. Headicar, the CND representative, “sat down” the previous Saturday and got himself two months imprisonment. At the last moment Mr. S. Cash agreed to put the case for CND. He maintained that Socialism was alright as a theory, but mankind was faced with annihilation and all our energies should he devoted to "banning the bomb.” The SPGB were out of contact with the real world, and death would overtake us all, notwithstanding the propagation of Socialist ideas, unless nuclear weapons were abandoned.

In reply: Melvin Harris for the SPGB showed that CND was similar to many other bodies, which had sprung up in the past, attempting to tackle one or other evil of the capitalist system. These organisations had failed, and CND would fail for the same reason. Nuclear war can not be separated from the problem of war itself. And the constant threat and possibility of war was a direct consequence of the existence of capitalism. The Socialist Party were opposed to all war, and were working for the establishment of Socialism, in which war would be impossible. This was the most important task facing mankind.

A considerable number of questions were put to both speakers, and many of the audience of 200 took part in the discussion. There was not nearly enough time for everyone. The collection was £13 and literature sales were good. Perhaps one day we shall land a debate with the elusive CND?

Obituaries

With sadness we have to record the death of two comrades, Llewelyn McKone and George Sword. Llewellyn McKone died on October 18th at Swansea. He had been a member of the Party since well before the war, and for many years was a member of Wood Green Branch. In recent years he had been working hard with our Swansea Comrades.

George Sword died at the end of October after a short illness. He joined the Party in 1942 and was active with a small group of members at their place of work, where they discussed Socialism and sold literature to their fellow workers. He was a member of Central Branch and until a year ago, when his health began to deteriorate, he worked in the Party Library and helped in the despatch of the Socialist Standard to subscribers.

To both our late comrades' families we extend our deepest sympathy.

Phyllis Howard

American Tour (1961)

Party News from the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the beginning of September I visited the World Socialist Party Conference in Boston as a delegate from the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

The Conference lasted two days and the subjects that came up, concerning reviews of past activities and methods of improvement and increasing propaganda efforts in various directions, were discussed at considerable length, with enthusiasm and also, at times, with some heat! Owing to the vast distances between branches and groups over there the delegation present was of necessity not large.

At the outset taped and written greetings from all over the world were heard and read. Then various reports of the year's work were given. These showed a 100 per cent increase in subscriptions to the Western Socialist, an increase in the number of articles coming in for the paper, and a general resurgence in activity, particularly in Canada. The sending out of letters to Libraries and Colleges during the year had brought excellent results. A proposal to produce two new Pamphlets, one on the Materialist Conception of History and the other on The WSP: What it Stands For, was referred to the Editorial Committee for attention.

A Conference Social was held at a member's house on the evening of the first day of conference. It was a very pleasant, comradely and lively affair, attended by about fifty members and friends.

On September 5th I left for Detroit, accompanied by comrades Rab and Orner, and we held three meetings there. They were small but interesting with plenty of questions. On the fourth evening there was a meeting at which a proposal to form a discussion group was agreed to. I have since learnt that the discussion group has made a very good start, at a place that has been rented, and a large number of interested people are attending it. The members concerned have put in a lot of time and energy to ensure its success. It appears to me that it is a method that could be widely copied.

On September 9th I left for Vancouver and Victoria—Comrades Rab and Orner going on to Chicago. On the morning of the 11th I was given a long newspaper interview in Victoria and a brief TV interview—it was cut short because of mechanical difficulties during the recording. The next day there was a good meeting in Victoria with plenty of questions and some opposition. There was a short disturbance at this meeting on account of the interruptions of a local celebrity. However this resulted in some considerable newspaper publicity.

After the Victoria meeting I went up the coast of Vancouver Island to Nanaimo, about 80 or so miles. I had an interview with the editor of the local paper and spoke at a meeting in the evening—not very well as I was feeling very tired. However there were interesting questions, particularly from some young people and discussion. Comrade Stafford, a man 84 years old, proposes to run classes there—he writes regularly to local papers. After the meeting we had a hectic drive back to Victoria, arriving at 2 a.m.

The next meeting I spoke at was in Port Alberni, about 40 miles beyond Nanaimo. This was also a small but good meeting. One or two people came a long way to it. There was also an excellent report of the meeting in the local paper. The following day, Saturday, I left Port Alberni for Vancouver.

Before finishing with Vancouver Island I must express my appreciation of the excellent work being done there by Comrades Luff, Jenkins, Tickner and Poirier. The last three just swept me off my feet with their energy—they travelled to Nanaimo and Port Alberni to post bills and distribute leaflets advertising the meetings, as well as arranging for newspaper interviews and attending the meetings. They also received considerable help from sympathisers.

On September 16th I left Port Alberni for Vancouver. Comrades J. and M. Ahrens, Watkins and Cannon had been busy with Radio, TV, and the newspapers. In spite of strenuous efforts they were unable to get me on TV, but succeeded with Radio. They also sent out 150 letters advertising the meeting there and asking for financial support—they got in over 200 dollars.

I had a ten minute interview on the Radio—Webster's Channel, and appeared on "Town Meeting"—a radio meeting that I understand goes across Canada and down into the northern part of the States. This was probably the best part of the tour. I appeared with three others—budding MP's—and we each had to supply a copy of the script which we read at the meeting. Mine lasted about nine minutes. Then we were given a short time to answer each other. After a short break in the radio whilst questions were collected from the audience, we each answered questions put to us by the audience, and then were given a short time to sum up. The studio was crowded with about 135 people and the subject we were speaking on was "What Future has Socialism in Canada".

The meeting that had been arranged in Vancouver was not large but there were plenty of questions and discussion. At the end of the Vancouver visit, Comrades J. and M. Ahrens took me for a long week-end to a bungalow they had built in the mountains where I was re-vitalised for the rest of the tour. I should add that the members are making strenuous efforts to get an open air meeting place in Stanley Park.

On September 26th I left for Winnipeg. There were two meetings there but the attendance was not good—possibly because the weather was perishing cold,  about 20 degrees. However I was glad to renew acquaintance with old members and sympathisers there, who went out of their way to make my stay as pleasant as possible—and it certainly was, in spite of the cold! Winnipeg has changed over the years. Old members have died or moved west and south-west, leaving the others to carry on under great difficulties. Some of those who left were active speakers.

On October 2nd I left for Toronto and Comrades S. and G. Catt and Comrade Brodie met me at the airport—literally falling on my neck! They are very much isolated there, but are doing a very good job stirring things up. An open discussion group has been formed not connected with any political party in which every week one of the members reads a paper, which is then discussed. I was invited to address the group. After I had opened up, questions were addressed to me for about 1½ hours, and then there was discussion. The business started around 8.30 p.m. and finished at 11.30 p.m. It seems to me to be a well worthwhile effort. There are 21 members of the group and another 16 wish to participate.

On October 5th I left for Montreal late at night. Comrades George and Karla Ellenbogen have recently gone to live there and started stirring things up. I stayed with them, and the morning after my arrival the fun started. In the course of the morning three newspaper interviews were given and two TV. The whole of it lasted over 4 hours. Two leading French newspapers gave excellent reports running to about 1½ columns. There were also three English newspaper reports and one in the McGill University paper. The meeting in Montreal was excellent with plenty of questions and discussion. There should soon be a branch of the Socialist Party of Canada there and also in Toronto. I should also add that I was taken on an excellent trip to the Laurentian mountains about 100 miles north and south along the Richelieu river. The autumnal colours were very good.

On October 10th I left for New York. There again I was glad to renew acquaintance with old members I had met on previous visits—including Comrade Orner, who is endowed with superlative energy. The meeting there was better than on my previous visits. The questions were slow in coming but there was plenty of discussion. I met a number of sympathisers, including a seaman who had met our comrades in London at the Russian Exhibition, and now wanted to join the WSP which shows how seeds sown at a venture can flower in distant places.

The New York members of the WSP meet regularly and open-air meetings are being held in Greenwich Village.

On October 14th I left for Boston. Comrade Morrison had worked like a trojan and got me in two Radio programmes—one over the phone. Both were quite good - one lasted nearly a quarter of an hour and I have brought the tape of it back with me. Unfortunately Boston had received reports that I was in a bad way physically (in fact I was in excellent condition!) so they did not go out their way much to advertise the meeting there. There was a good attendance of members and sympathisers. I gave a talk on the tour. Arising out of something I had said (nothing to do with the tour) there was an excellent discussion relating to war and the H-Bomb, in which there were contrasting views expressed.

There is a great deal I have missed out of this report on account of the limitations of space, and many members and sympathisers who gave me a warm greeting, but whose names I have had to leave out. I would like them all to know how much I appreciate what they did for me.

During the last weeks in America I stayed with the Rabs, and I have to thank them for the warmth of their hospitality and the way they put themselves out to see that I had rest and recreation, including some lovely trips to see the magnificent autumn plumage—I have never seen anything like it before. Members here will also be glad to know that Comrade Gloss is well again and back in harness. He sends his greetings to all he met here on his visit (so also do Comrades Rab and Milne) and hopes to make another visit soon.

Finally I found in the States and Canada plenty of sympathy for our outlook, as shown in the questions and discussions, much more than on my previous two visits, and the future for Socialism is certainly brightening up on the other side of the Atlantic.

Gilmac.