SPGB Lectures and Special Meetings (1971)

Party News from the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard 

SPGB Meetings, Debates and Lectures. (1927)

 Party News from the November 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The Economic League's Major H. J. Gillespie D.S.O. was an ex-Fabian who'd recanted his longstanding Labourism and was now taking the Economic League's shilling. It happens. Ken Weller mentions in his excellent book, 'Don't Be A Soldier', that Frank Grainger left the SPGB in the late 1930s whilst he was the prospective parliamentary candidate for the SPGB in the East Ham North constituency, and later turned up as a lecturer for the Economic League. 

The December 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard gives a brief report of some of the meetings listed above.

The Comrade Jacobs mentioned above who was lecturing at Bethnal Green Library on the subject of 'Political versus Industrial Action' was either longstanding SPGB outdoor speaker Alf Jacobs, or it was Dick Jacobs, the secretary of the Bethnal Green branch of the SPGB. Alf Jacobs joined the SPGB in its earliest days and was known in the East End of London as a popular SPGB outdoor speaker. (Especially at the outdoor speaking pitch in Victoria Park, where in 1914 he repeatedly took to the outdoor platform to denounce the war.) Dick Jacobs had only just joined the SPGB in January 1927 (he'd formerly been a member of the Labour Party), but was to remain a member of the SPGB until his death in 1977. If I was to hazard a guess, I'd say the speaker was Alf Jacobs.

Letter: This Money Business (1963)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

This Money Business

Sir,

Socialists must be “suckers” if they swallow the half-baked stuff written by Dick Jacobs in the December "SS”.

Money is indispensable in a complex industrial society such as ours. It represents a claim on society, which should be everyone's right. In a society that genuinely believed in the brotherhood of man. this would be recognised.

What is wrong is that anyone should have to work for money in order to live, for this today turns him into a slave. It is unnecessary. Today, with mass-production and technology, fewer and fewer people are actually needed to do the necessary work of society. The rest have to find unnecessary work through industries designed to induce people (with or without money) to acquire unnecessary wants, or in expensive war preparations etc.

Dick Jacobs definition of money—a "'medium of exchange and measure of value” is only something he has read out of a book! Money—whatever its form—is the country’s credit.

Today, this is mostly manipulated by the Joint Stock banks for their own profit, when this function should belong to society. Hence, what should be free, accumulates as debt, with interest. This, with our huge National Debt, leads to inflation.

While shells, gold, or anything else that is scarce, can be used as currency—in Europe in 1945 cigarettes filled the role—paper does just as well if there is confidence in it. It is costless, and in a properly organised society it can be scientifically adjusted to society’s actual needs.

Common ownership of wealth doesn’t touch the problem, let alone solve it! That way can only lead to another tyranny! It is society's control over its own credit that matters. For then, but only then, will it be possible to make everyone, unconditionally, and as by right, a shareholder in Great Britain Ltd. And whether we call that “Capitalism” or “Socialism ” won’t matter two hoots!

This is neither more nor less than practical Christianity.

L. Knight

Guernsey, C.I.

Reply:

You criticise the article in the Socialist Standard for December, 1962, and attempt to show why money will continue to be necessary.

Both on grounds of historical accuracy and of theory your arguments are quite unconvincing.

Your first contention is that money is indispensable because we live in a “complex industrial society.” You omit to say which complexities you mean. They are of two kinds (a) the technical complexities of production and transport and (b) the financial and commercial complexities of capitalist private property.

Of course, money is indispensable to the latter. But equally the existence of money is not related to the complexities or absence of complexities of production and transport. This you know very well because you accept that money functioned in primitive communities where there were no such complexities.

Your second line is that “money—whatever its form—is the country’s credit yet, as you know, it functioned when and where there was no credit system and no banks.

As a side line you link up inflation causally with the existence of a huge national debt. It is no more true than its converse. The currency deflation in Britain in the nineteen twenties was carried out alongside a huge national debt.

We accept (we have been saying it for half a century) that with capitalism removed the production of socially useful articles and services could be vastly increased, so that a Socialist world, with people taking freely what they need, is a practical proposition. But you, without giving any reason whatever, still want the consumption of these articles to be dependant on the possession of money.

You actually use the phrase that living by right should be “unconditional,” yet you want it to be conditional on the possession of money.

You manage to discuss the existing social system without mentioning its fundamental basis, that the means of production and distribution are privately owned and concentrated in the hands of a small minority. It is precisely because you turn a blind eye on this basic fact of capitalism that you can pretend that the difference between capitalism and socialism is a mere matter of words.

It also leads you into the absurdity of supposing that armaments exist to provide work for redundant workers. The armed forces exist for the purpose, very necessary to the capitalists, of protecting their ownership against the dispossessed class at home and foreign capitalist groups abroad.

Our contributor was quite right; and it is not Socialists who are (to use your word) “suckers” but those who cannot see the realities of capitalism.

Editorial Committee.

The Blessings of Capitalism (1963)

From the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

"If it were not for the British colonising their country, these natives would still be living in uncivilised conditions—always fighting and killing one another. We have given them decent houses to live in instead of old ramshackle huts; proper clothes to wear; factories and mines to work in—in fact, all the benefits of civilisation. They ought to be grateful to us.”

The Socialist is only too familiar with remarks like these from opponents, particularly when he tries to point out that the sole purpose of colonisation is to exploit the resources of the country as well as its people.

In the course of its development, capitalism has spread into the most remote corners of the earth. It has penetrated countries like New Guinea, parts of South East Asia, islands in the Indonesian Archipelago, and the far north of America. Many places that at one time were considered full of mystery are now landing spots for jet air liners. There is hardly any section of the human race that has not directly or indirectly felt capitalism's encroachment. Many backward races are now realising that we are all part and parcel of the same universe.

New Guinea with its several million tribesmen, perhaps the last sanctuary of primitive man many of whom were unknown 20 years ago, is now providing workers for road building. With this development there is gradually entering into the lives of these people all the so-called blessings of civilisation.

The inhabitants of lands which have become fields for exploitation through the growth of capitalism have become or are becoming slaves to a wages system. Like their fellow humans in other countries, their status in society is that of a working class—a large section of the community who have no security of livelihood and who do not possess anything but their bodily powers, which they are compelled to sell to an employer in return for a wage or salary. This is about enough to enable them to obtain sufficient food and clothes and the rest to exist upon and to reproduce their kind. Such is the lot of all members of the working class, no matter of what race or sex.

A strong indictment of the effect of capitalist encroachment comes from the pen of one of the world’s greatest anthropologists Claude Lévi-Strauss. Writing in the Unesco Courier, a publication of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, he states that:

With civilisation have come strange diseases against which primitives have no natural immunization and which have brought deadly havoc to their ranks. They are succumbing rapidly to tubercolosis. malaria, trachoma, leprosy, dysentry, gonorrhea, syphilis and the mysterious disease known us Karu, the results of primitive man's contact with civilisation, though not actually introduced by it.

Kuru is a genetic deterioration which inevitably ends in death and for which no treatment or remedy is known.

In Brazil 100 tribes became extinct between 1900 and 1950. The Kaingang, from the state of Sao Paulo, numbering 1,200 in 1912 today have dwindled to 80. The Munduraku were 20,000 in 1925, in 1950 they numbered 1,200. Of the 10,000 Nambikwara in 1905 1 could trace only 1.000 in 1940. The Kayapo of the River Araguaya were 2,500 in 1902 and 10 in 1950, the Timbira l,000 in 1900 and 40 in 1950.

Claude Lévi-Strauss has written considerably of the effects of capitalism on natives, but unlike the Socialist he does not put forward a practical solution to their problems. Sometimes we are told that capitalism's intrusion into the lives of native people has resulted in an improved code of morals and conduct among them just like the civilised world, yet it is rather singular that among these backward races there are tribes like the gentle Arapesh, who live among the mountains of New Guinea in tiny villages. who combine to help and share their possessions with one another. When there is plenty, all share. When times are hard, all suffer together. Strangers visiting them are well received.

There is much that is commendable in the manner in which these primitive tribes conduct their affairs, but the Socialist does not advocate a change to this form of primitive communism. Their economic structure has not developed to that stage where they are in a position to obtain enough of the necessities of life to ensure absolute freedom from want. A famine or crop failure to them spells disaster, as they have yet to acquire the knowledge of how to cope with the resources of nature so as to be assured of an abundance at all times. This problem does not arise in modern society. The working class under capitalism do not go in want because there is a shortage of necessities, but because they have no free access to the wealth which they have produced.

This insane order of society should end, which would mean a change in property relations. The forces of wealth production, which have outstripped the methods of exchange, must be transferred into common ownership and control and all wealth must be produced for the common benefit of all mankind. Only when this is accomplished will there be a world of free people living together in harmonious relationship.

Dick Jacobs.

Russia again (1961)

From the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. S. P. Chambers, Chairman of the Imperial Chemical Industries, on a recent visit to Russia on behalf of his Company, reported on some very interesting observations he had made. He stated:

  "I had a measure of success and with one exception, all my questions were answered fully and frankly. The one exception was in the sphere of actual living conditions."

It appears Mr. Chambers wanted to see for himself how the people lived and asked for permission to visit their homes. This did not meet with the approval of the Soviet authorities. According to Mr. Chambers:

  The vast blocks of flats erected in and around Moscow represent by European standards a low level for new accommodation.
  In Industry, it seems to be the general rule for husband and wife to do a full day's work and the children are left at a nursery or creche, or in the care of some relation.

Mr. Chambers claimed that, although it is said hours of labour are reduced, if statistics were available they would show that many more hours are worked per thousand of the total population than in the United Kingdom or in Western Germany, Clothing and toilet articles, he said, are expensive, meat and poultry was of good quality and not unreasonable in price.

Like many other Directors of the I.C.I. who have previously visited the Soviet Union, Mr. Chambers has clearly shown that this country organises its industrial affairs just like any other capitalist country and has the same anomalies to contend with.

The claim that Socialism exists in the Soviet Union is disproved by the evidence from Mr. Chambers visit. Its workers, just like the working class elsewhere, have to sell their power to labour. There is commodity production, private properly and the same sort of social problems.

A curious fact mentioned by Mr. Chambers was that, at the Coke Chemical Works, a wall 8½ feet high and 3,000 feet long was built to ensure privacy against a rival factory—Agostral. Whoever heard of commercial rivalry in a Socialist economy? There are different classes for passengers in their liners — one of them plying to London has even five classes and that in a so called classless country!

Capitalism exists in the Soviet Union — and until such time that its Working Class understand and desire Socialism, poverty and insecurity will be the lot of the workers there.

Dick Jacobs

Holiday Home (1961)

From the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

As he trod amongst them with his trolley of coffee, the orderly knew that this was one of their bad days. Sometimes they were cheerful—gratingly, hysterically so. Sometimes apathetic. Today, they were sombre, only wanting lo talk about their afflictions, to tell each other what it was that had laid them paralysed and incapable in the forecourt of the Holiday Home.

"Experiments with atom bombs, messing about with nature," , said Wilkie, ’'That’s what I reckon gave me my stroke.”

"What’s the good of war," gloomed the man alongside, “Cost me my arm and paralysed my thigh. Now I’m just a burden to my family. Might as well be dead."

I should break this up, thought the orderly, this is the worst mood of all. Then Old Harris chimed in, bringing what he always imagined was sunshine and relief into the invalids' depression.

“I’m as helpless as any of you," he said, he eyes gleaming. " But I don’t blame it onto war or bomb tests. Our troubles are sent by the good god, to test us. We must suffer gladly. I may be laid up, with only a small Army pension. but thank God I get by."

"Good god." screamed Ethel from her chair. "If he’s so good, why does he allow all this badness in the world he's supposed to have made, eh? Answer me that:'

The orderly broke in with quick words, clashing the cups as he spoke.

"Now, now," he said, ’’You know you mustn't get so het up. Anyway, you’re all going down to the front for some sunshine and fresh air, That’s what you’re here for, sunshine and fresh air."

That calmed them. In their secret selves, they were appalled at the thought of another parade along the sea front. They fell into silence and suffered themselves to the attention' of the orderlies, who came from inside the Home to wheel them off.

They were a tragic lot. Here was a mail who had lost his limb because of an apparently trivial scratch at work. Here another whose back broke when he fell from a ladder on a high job. And there were the war wounded. These human wrecks were some of the unfortunates who had felt the concentration of capitalism’s bitterest effects.

For although we know that capitalism cannot be blamed for every illness and accident, the fact is that it is responsible for many of them.

Some of the most common, and persistent ailments which people nowadays suffer are traceable to the stress of modern living—to the working, travelling, eating pace which modem industry and its profit incentive sets for us.

High time for accidents is the time when everybody is going to work — they call it the rush hour and it is in the rush that so many accidents happen.

Capitalism’s wars maim hundreds of thousands, and undermine the health of countless others.

But you know all this.

What you may not realise is that, as long as capitalism lasts, there is little chance of society ever really tackling the problem of ill-health and accidents, and of reducing them to the very minimum possible.

We know, for example, that cancer research comes a long way behind arms production in the priorities of modern society. Why is this? Simple answer: arms are more immediately important to the capitalist class than finding a cure for cancer. Arms can be used to defend their commercial interests. Curing cancer would only save a few million lives a year. Who, other than cancer sufferers, would care?

The majority of people get a very measly sort of medical treatment. Who knows — or cares — what future damage is being stored up by the "Get-you-back-to-work palliatives" which the working class are handed by their doctors when they are ill? And who has not noticed that society’s medical resources are concentrated only when a member of the ruling class — someone who can afford the best — requires them?

Yes, capitalism stands in the way of many aspects of human advance. Socialism will set free our scientific ingenuity, so that we can really get down to dealing with medical problems.

We hope the invalids enjoyed their outing. And let us look forward to the day when a crippled world can throw away its crutches.

Dick Jacobs

This Money Business (1962)

From the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some of the many people who don't think that Socialism is a good idea declare that our objective—a world commonwealth in which money and a lot of other things would not be required—is impractical because some sort of money is a necessary part of all human societies, even the primitive ones. Without it. they say, no society could hope to work.

They are wrong.

Even today there are races and tribes who conduct their affairs quite satisfactorily without money. In any case, to try to draw a parallel in this argument with past societies is impossible, because capitalism has given money a distinct function.

Primitive peoples used a variety of objects, some of practical use, some ornamental, which through a loose definition of terms have sometimes been described as money. In Fiji, for example, they used sperm whale teeth; in Eastern New Guinea shell armlets and large stone axe blades. The Abyssinians used rock salt. The natives of the Melanesian Islands consider that strings of shell discs are their most important item of wealth and a lot of labour power is used up in producing them. The purchasing power of these discs varies with their length and colour. Red ones arc worth the most because of the scarcity of the shells from which they are made. These strings are sometimes used in settlement of social obligations. But none of these objects perform the true function of money.

In any society an article is money only when it acts as a medium of exchange and as a measure of value and when it contains within itself the social embodiment of human labour power. It must also be able to measure and to equate all and any commodity against any other. This, of course, eliminates the shell discs which, although they are a form of wealth to the Fijian native who will use them to pay for a canoe or trade them against each other, do not express the market value of all other goods. Such an object—modern, developed, defined, all powerful money—is a typical product of capitalism.

As capitalism moves in on the primitive tribes, building its factories and establishing its other features, a fully fledged monetary system will came into being there. The native will find that he is living under the same conditions as wage workers elsewhere. In order to live he will be compelled to sell his working ability to an employer for a wage which will be based upon what it costs to keep him in a state of working efficiency.

It will make no difference to him whether or not he is skilled, whether he is paid a weekly wage or a monthly salary, whether his employer is the state or some private company. He will be a member of a class which has no economic security and which is cruelly subject to all the anomalies and contradictions of capitalism.

The change from private to common ownership—from Capitalism to Socialism —will mean that as trade and markets cease to exist so also will the need for a multitude of currencies, indeed, for any currency at all. Money could not be of any use in such a commonwealth, unless perhaps as museum relics of a past inglorious chapter in man’s history.

Dick Jacobs

Obituary: Dick Jacobs (1977)

Obituary from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with deep regret that we report the death on 11th October of Comrade Dick Jacobs. For four and a half years he had suffered a debilitating illness, which he bore bravely with the help of his wife and family. During his moments of lucidity he would sing old Party songs, and he still remembered many members by name.

He first came in contact with the Party during the Great Depression, in East London. He moved to South Wales at the outbreak of the 1939-45 war, and put in years of work to get a branch established at Swansea. In the 1960s he returned to south-east England and became secretary of the Southend branch. Eventually he and his family moved to Poole, where he died.

The writer first met Dick Jacobs during the war years at the Mannesmann Tube Works in Swansea. His comments were in line with my own thoughts; one realized that his outlook and knowledge were something different from those of workers moulded in the orthodox political ideologies. In a bombing raid we sat together in a shelter, and in a lengthy discussion I was given some understanding of the socialist case. The next stage was a series of discussions at Dick’s home, and I realized that there was an established political party which stood for the principles I had held for many years. These informal discussions led to my joining the Party. Later we contacted others, and the first SPGB branch in Wales was formed.

As a person Dick was kind and compassionate, a gentle-man in the best sense of the term. Like all socialists he had a number of political enemies, but he did not have a personal one: it was impossible to dislike him. He will be missed by all the Swansea and London comrades who knew him in earlier years. We extend our deepest sympathy to his wife and family.

Phil Mellor

Obituaries: George Gloss & Florrie Jacobs (1985)

George Gloss speaking from the platform on Boston Common.

Obituaries from the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

George Gloss

On a soap-box on Boston Common, in a booming voice and clapping his hands for punctuation and emphasis, with newspaper clippings bulging from every pocket, George Gloss would deliver the socialist message to large crowds every Sunday afternoon, year after year: "There are millions of people who are hungry . . . there is an abundance of food available . . . let's get them together in a sane society". It is with sadness that we report the death of Comrade Gloss on 15 June, at his home near Boston.

George joined the World Socialist Movement in June, 1933. From the start he was an enthusiastic, active member taking part in all functions — business, propaganda and social. He had been on the Editorial Committee of The Western Socialist and was the National Secretary for many years. The NAC minutes he typed and circulated reflected his personal involvement and excitement with everything he did. They were single-spaced and several pages long (this was in the days before copy machines) and they went out all over the world. Often there would be copious personal additions to many of the recipients who wanted news from America — WSP style.

In 1954 he made a trip to Britain for the purpose of buying books (used books were his vocation), but the intent soon became a pilgrimage to as many of the SPGB branches as could be visited. Comrade Rab was his companion on this journey; together they gave and received a tumultuous greeting wherever they went. Many British readers will remember the excitement they created in London and Glasgow — much as we in the USA recall their account of the events and personalities they experienced.

George's ebullient nature was equally evident in his book ventures and he became somewhat of a Boston celebrity in recent years; he gave away many thousands of books and was the subject of hundreds of literary interviews. No stranger to the media, his passing was editorialised by the press, radio and television. Yet it must be said that no life-style diversion ever affected his enthusiasm for the socialist case or caused his convictions to waver at any time.

The NAC (WSP)

Florrie Jacobs

Florrie Jacobs died in early June aged 86. She joined the SPGB in the mid-thirties and supported her husband Dick in his work of founding socialist groups in places as far afield as Swansea, Southend and Poole. She was often the only other socialist at the outdoor meetings he held over so many years. Fellow socialists and sympathisers were always made welcome in her home and occasionally, when no other place was available, meetings were held in her living room. At conferences and delegate meetings she always helped with the catering, only giving up when chronic ill-health during the last decade of her life forced her into invalidism. She will be remembered with affection by her comrades.

Lily Lestor