Odds and Ends: What They Said (1957)

The Odds and Ends column from the March 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

What They Said

Looking through old pamphlets and journals can be quite an interesting pastime. For example, the Communist Review for April, 1953, wherein Harry Pollitt refers to “ Comrade Beria,” Andrew Rothstein writes of Beria as “Stalin’s old comrade-in-arms ” and John Eaton tells us that Stalin “through a period of three decades showed himself to be the greatest economist of our times,” and that he was “. . . the most profound, most creative thinker of our time in the science of political economy . . ." etc.

Unfortunately, for the Communist Party, it now appears that Stalin was a terrorist who murdered Russian Army officers, and who “made serious mistakes in connection with agricultural policy . . .” (Harry Pollitt, Daily Worker, 24/3/56). And Beria turned out to be an agent of British Imperialism after all! All this must be very hard even for Communists to swallow. But, then, if one puts faith in leaders what can one expect?

The Socialist—who knows what he wants, and how to get it—needs no leaders to think for him: he thinks for himself. There can be no Stalins, Berias—or Kruschevs in the Socialist movement

Communist Party Opposes Strikes

It is believed by many that the Communists always advocate and support strikes; that the Communist Party consistently support the workers in their struggles for higher wages and better working conditions. But this is not so. During the last war (after Germany attacked Russia) the Communists opposed all attempts by workers to improve their wages or conditions.

In a pamphlet by W. Wainwright entitled Clear Out Hitler's Agents, published by the Communist Party, he writes:—

 “ Again they [‘left wing’ opponents of the Communist Party] use the trick of waving a red flag. They talk about the boss’ profit. They try to take the heart out of the work. ’Why slave when you are only piling up money for the boss?” they say.

“They want you to go slow, not to give your best work, to be misled by their talk of strikes and the boss' profits into sabotaging our troops and the Red Army.” (Page 9.)

And in March, 1944, the South Wales miners came out on strike. Although the Communist paper, The Daily Worker, admitted that the miners “have a powerful case ” it told them to “go back to work.” (11/3/44).

The Communist Party is not a working-class party, it is. in fact, a not very successful mouthpiece for the Soviet Government in this country.

Has Socialism Failed?

In the 1951 General Election the Conservative candidate in North Battersea was one Ian Percival, and in his Election News he wrote:—

“Britain has tried Socialism, and it has failed. At home it has meant shortages, rising prices, high taxation, and one financial crisis after another. Abroad it hat meant a lowering of our prestige, and therefore a weakening of our influences for peace."

Of course, Socialism has not failed. It has not been tried. During the period that Mr. Percival writes of Britain was ruled by a Labour Government—and the system was a Capitalist one; not Socialist. It is Capitalism that has failed—failed to solve the problems of war poverty and crises. And it is only Socialism that can solve these problems. Labour Government has nothing in common with Socialism.

Wives or Automobiles—or Both

Middle East potentates used to collect scores of wives for their harems—some still do; but it appears that civilization (and oil companies) are coming to the desert King Saud of Saudi-Arabia has ordered more than 60 Cadillac cars. The King's order will only cost a mere £357,140 or so. Some of the cars will be fitted with jewelled cigarette-lighters. Some will be air-conditioned; some will have one-way window glass, so that the passengers can see without being seen. And others have armour-plate and special machine gun mountings. . . .

Who says that kings are not useful to the community? Do they not provide work for automobile workers? And are not 60 cars more useful to a King than 60 wives—or are they?

Rock, Everybody, Rock

At the time of writing Bill Haley and his Comets have arrived triumphantly in Britain; his latest film, “Don’t Knock the Rock,” is being shown on the circuits and the Rock ’n’ Roll craze seems to be at its zenith. Scores of Bill Haley Concerts are being held up and down the country; and some newspapers, particularly the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch, are giving more space to Bill Haley than to Prince Charles, Princess Grace or Jayne Mansfield’s vital statistics—for the time being.

Still, it’s all good fun. The “cats” are happy; the newspapers are happy with their new gimmick; and Bill Haley and his backers and agents should be happy “coining the loot.” For is not Rock ’n* Roll the greatest money-maker that “Pop” music has produced in a couple of decades?

So while it lasts . . . Rock, everybody, rock!!

God's Own Country!

“Baby Doll: Elia Kazan film, bated on a typical Tennessee Williams play about sex, seen against a brutal background of an illiterate, run-down colour-conscious community in the Southern United States. The characters are mostly brutal, ignorant and animal and the story is about a mentally arrested girl, her repressed husband and the Sicilian who seduces her for revenge.”—(What's On In London, 25/1/57.)

Peter E. Newell

The Films (1955)

From the July 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

From time to time Hollywood gives us a film which is worthy of our attention. In this category we may place On The Waterfront, The Barefoot Contessa, and more recently Marty. All these films present not only a high standard of technical skill and acting ability, but also, and this is what makes them particularly interesting, an unusually accurate reflection upon some parts of contemporary life.

This is perhaps most obvious in Elia Kazan's On The Waterfront. It is the story of the docker who is gradually awakened to the reality of the life around him; of his increasing antagonism, his rebellious stirrings, and his final successful combat with the crooked union bosses. This is a film to see not only because of the skill which has gone into its making, but also because it rings true.

The Barefoot Contessa is as subtle as On The Waterfront is obvious. Here is a biting satirical essay upon wealth and power. There are lines in the film which one feels had they appeared in a film of five years ago, would have resulted in the writer making a sprightly appearance before the Un-American Activities Committee.

Of the three, however, Marty is undoubtedly the pick. Here is a film which is pure joy. No great Hollywood epic this, but the simple tale of the search of a very ordinary American, a butcher by profession, for a spouse. The whole thing reads as true to life as the usual product is false. No de-luxe kitchens, no stupendous cars and fashionable clothes, no slinky blonde who makes the rest of her sex pale into masculine insignificance, this is reality; and because it is is real it pulls at the heart strings and tugs at the emotions with devastating effect. There can be few people who could possibly sit through this film without recognising their own experience as they flash before them on the screen.

This is a film about real people living in a real world. Here are depicted social problems of this day and age, problems of loneliness, of old age, of inadequate housing, of artificial social values; they are all paraded before us. The film has no answer to these problems, even though hero and heroine are reunited at the end of the final reel, but at least it has the courage to pose them. We can but hope that this trend in realism, which has already been felt—particularly in the Italian and Mexican film, will be continued, and that the cinema public will not only become aware of life's problems but also realise their solution.

Michael D. Gill

Robert Owen: paternalist utopian (2008)

From the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

1998 marked the 150th anniversary of the death of Robert Owen. The Owenites introduced the word “socialism” but Owen himself always opposed the class struggle.

Owen’s key idea, indeed perhaps his only one, was: “Man’s character is made for and not by him”. He thought that it was therefore possible to give a person any character you like. He was, in short, a ‘man moulder’.
Robert Owen was born in Wales. He had little formal education but through hard work and nous (including marrying the boss’s daughter) soon became a big cheese in the cotton spinning business. In 1800, at the age of 29, he moved to New Lanark in Scotland.
This was the real era of the dark satanic mills. Sans unions and sans factory legislation, the workers toiled endlessly for a measly pittance, existing in a degraded condition in filthy slums. Owen took New Lanark (which it must be said was even at the start one of the better mills) and made it a model factory estate. Nice Mr. Owen became well known as a genial entrepreneur and benevolent philanthropist. At his factory at Lanark he improved hours and conditions, introduced schooling, and banned ‘morally harmful’ out of hours activities (outlawing pubs and books and fining extra-marital sex). He raised the minimum working age from six to ten years. Entertainment for his workers was a little harmless music, some dancing and physical jerks. Military drill was introduced to “give them an erect and proper form, and habits of attention, celerity, and order”. In addition “firearms, of proportionate weight and size for the age and strength of the boys shall be provided for them”. A key element in the workplace was the public display of a block showing the behaviour of the individual (shades of Maoist self-criticism). This was said to be character building but also produced a disciplined and productive workforce. (All quotes are from A New View of Society Owen's account of New Lanark).
The aim at New Lanark was made absolutely clear in a letter from Owen to The London Times in 1834:

“I believe it is known to your lordship that in every point of view no experiment was ever so successful as the one I conducted at New Lanark, although it was commenced and continued in opposition to all the oldest and strongest prejudices of mankind. For twenty-nine years we did without the necessity for magistrates or lawyers; without a single legal punishment; without any known poors’ (sic) rate; without intemperance or religious animosities. We reduced the hours of labour, well educated all the children from infancy, greatly improved the condition of the adults, diminishing their daily labour, paid interest on capital, and cleared upwards of £300,000 of profit.” (quoted in GJ Holyoake’s History of Cooperation).

Like Lord Leverhulme at Port Sunlight, Owen found that treating your workers better makes better workers which makes better profits. The rest of Owen's life was an attempt to recreate the Lanark Mills experience on a large scale. True later on for different reasons. But Owen never really understood that at New Lanark he was able to impose ‘nice’ upon his workers by their very status as workers.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought a period of crisis including mass unemployment. This resulted in a high poor rate. Owen, being a businessman, sought to lower this with a plan for solving unemployment. Again this was the 5 percent philanthropy at work. Concern for the suffering was tempered by profit making – in the form of a lowered tax burden. Some time around 1817 this tax plan became a general scheme for the changing of society.

Essentially society was to be transformed by means of experimental communities. These self-contained and self-supporting complexes were to be built as grand squares, the parallelograms. In the communities the precise form of ownership of property was left open, leaving the way open for ‘community of goods’. However Owen was averse to this. Economics, like the precise form of internal administration in the colony, was unimportant. Education was the key to Owen's scheme and its purpose was to mould the individual into an ideal social character. Finance was to come by an appeal to the rich and influential. Such was not forthcoming. Owen blamed his failure on his relatively mild criticism of the established church and the family. Doubtless this had some effect but the rich really had no particular interest in solving the problem of poverty. So far as they were concerned the poor could rot.

From 1824 Owen poured his own money into setting up a community in America. New Harmony, in Indiana, failed within a few years, essentially due to lack of discrimination in choosing occupants (the great problem of freeloaders). Without the power that goes with being a factory owner, Owen was unable to make the communists behave as he wished, particularly as, despite his own high opinion of himself, he was not a particularly good organiser, often leaving deputies to deal with problems while he swanned off for parties with the wealthy (Owen was always fond of the Great and Good, dedicating the New View to the appallingly corrupt Prince Regent).

When Owen returned to Britain in 1829 after the dismal failure of his American experiment, he found the situation somewhat altered. Throughout the country the working class was making use of the repeal of the anti-combination laws to set up trade unions. These were as yet little more than local self-help clubs, often carrying out some form of cooperative trading venture. Many of those involved looked to Owen as a source of inspiration. Owen himself had lost virtually all his money and whatever slight influence he may have had amongst the wealthier classes. Bandwagonning a little, he began to associate himself with the various self-help schemes – co-operatives, barter schemes and trade unions. Although so far as he was concerned these were only of use in ‘preparing the public’s mind for community’, this short period (1829-34) was the making of Owen as a figurehead of the old Left.

Within a short time Owen had set up his own cooperative (Association for the Promotion of Cooperative Knowledge), union (Grand National Consolidated Trades Union) and labour exchange (National Equitable Labour Exchange) organisations. The latter functioned as an extension of the cooperative store, surplus coop produce forming the basis of its activities. Essentially goods brought in were valued by a committee and a note issued indicating the amount of labour required to produce the item. This could then be exchanged for other goods in the bazaar of the same labour time value.

The various groups were viewed as fund raisers and mind openers – fronts in modern parlance – rather than useful in themselves. Strikes were certainly not on Owen's agenda. And when the true class war came to a head in the summer of 1834, Owen bailed out, disassociating himself from the GNCTU. Extreme pressure from employers led to the failure of the union, which brought down in its wake the cooperatives and labour exchanges. The latter were probably fatally flawed in any case due to their limited ability to satisfy needs, most goods making their way there being unsaleable on the open market.

In 1835 Owen renewed the attempt to found a community. This time the attempt was made through a distinctly working class body. This was variously named the Association of All Classes of All Nations (1835-39), the Universal Community Society of Rational Religionists (1839-42) and the Rational Society (1842-46). At its peak in 1841 there were 70 or so branches spread throughout Great Britain. In key centres, such as Manchester and London, meeting halls were built (the Halls of Science) and regular indoor and outdoor propaganda meetings held under the auspices of ‘Social Missionaries’. By late 1839 the efforts bore fruit with the opening of a community at Queenwood in Hampshire. This became known as Harmony.

Harmony was however distinctly unharmonious. Owen regarded the whole enterprise as a means towards the perfection of humanity, a great experiment in making people nice. The workers however saw Owenism in general and the community in particular, as a way of abolishing their own poverty. Conflict was inevitably the result, with control of the enterprise swinging back and forth between the paternalist Owen and the self-organising proles. The true downfall of Harmony however was really Owen’s responsibility. Having selected a hopeless site in the chalk uplands, he proceeded to build a hopelessly ornate ‘super workhouse’, burdening the society with unsustainable debts. In the summer of 1845 Harmony was sold off. Further details of the Harmony scheme can be found in Edward Royle’s excellent Robert Owen and the Commencement of the Millennium (Manchester University Press, 1998).

Historically the attitude to the Owenites of the 1830s and ‘40s has been determined by the semi-religious millennial language that was used and group dismissed (e.g. by GDH Cole) as nothing more than a sect. Although there were elements of this, Owen as the secular saviour leading his chosen people to the glorious paradise of Community, the reduction is a rather unfair slur. Many contemporary organisations, including the Chartists, used flowery language. And the image of Owen as unquestioned leader was certainly far from the truth.

Owen has further been criticised for paying no attention to the main mass movement of the day – Chartism. Chartism was a movement for political democracy and as such was irrelevant to Owen’s aim – setting up experimental communities. It must also be said that so far as the starving worker of the day was concerned the issue of mere possession of the vote in itself would not have brought them food. The demand for the ballot was resisted by the upper class largely because it was believed anti-capitalist measures would follow in its wake. Owen recognised, unlike most Chartists, that political democracy is not the solution in itself to capitalist misery. He did not however recognise that it could be a means to this very end.

After 1845 Owen went into a form of retired senility. Seances, bumpreadings and other such garbage were the order of the day. Perhaps his greatest contribution of these years was his autobiography The Life of Robert Owen by Himself, published in 1857. Although obviously biased it is a great from the horse’s mouth source.

The principal practical result of Owen’s life was the setting up of utopian communities. The Owenite communities, both the official ones detailed above and the numerous examples in which Owen had no hand, failed to demonstrate Owen's theories of character formation, which was of course their main aim, because they never became properly established. What they do demonstrate however is how easy it is for such a community to fail. And since such communities would primarily be a demonstration of cooperation, providing a haven for a few from capitalism, the amount of enthusiasm and resources invested was surely wasteful.

Perhaps surprisingly, although Owenism was unfruitful in achieving its specified aims its by-products were far from inconsiderable. The Rochdale Pioneers, founders of the modern cooperative movement, were Owenites and the modern secularist movement can also trace its ancestry back to the Owenite movement of the 1840s.

The importance of the Owenites is that they marked a watershed; for the first time a complete change in the nature of society was contemplated by a section of the working class. We also owe them our name. Although previously in use, the name ‘socialism’ was adopted by the Owenites in 1837 to describe their aims and within a few years Owenism and Socialism were synonymous. The connection was so strong that Marx and Engels were forced to have a Communist Manifesto rather than a socialist one. The meaning of the phrase has altered much since then, primarily due to the influence of Marx and Engels, however the underlying assumptions of Owen and the Owenites that human nature is not eternally fixed and therefore a better world is possible remains the basis of socialism.

KAZ

Death of a Film-maker (2003)

From the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Elia Kazan, born Kazanjoglous in Constantinople of Greek parents, who was taken to America when he was four years old, died in September aged 94. He became an actor, theatre and film director and, later, an author. He was not always considered to be a particularly nice person, and was something of a loner and individualist "anarchist". Writing his obituary in the Guardian (September 30), David Thomson observes that "he was a demon, a man who left his mark everywhere". He was, says Thomson, a genius. And according to the Times obituarist (30 September), "he was responsible for some of the most creative filmwork to come out of America".

Elia Kazan in 'Waiting For Lefty'.

Kazan went first to school in New York and, then, from 1930 to 1932 he studied drama and acting at Yale School of Drama. From there, he joined the Group Theater, first as an actor and later as a stage manager and director. Prominent in the New York Group Theater was Clifford Odets. In 1933, Odets began writing plays; and in 1935, he wrote in three days a one-act play, Waiting for Lefty, which won him the New York Theater League contest. Elia Kazan played Lefty at the Group Theater. And Lefty, the hero of the play? He was Sam Orner, a New York taxi-cab driver who, as a teenager in 1913, joined the Young People's Socialist League, the unofficial, leftist youth section of the reformist Socialist Party of America. After travelling all over the United States as an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, the "Wobblies", Orner joined the Socialist Educational Society of New York, largely formed in 1921 by expatriate members of the SPGB, in 1923. The SESNY later became the New York Local of the Workers Socialist Party of the United States.

In the early 1930s, Sam Orner became the organizer for the New York cab drivers. In 1934, they went on strike, and it was this strike and Orner's part in it that formed the subject of Clifford Odets's play. Kazan and Odets of course knew Orner who, following the strike, fell foul of the Mafia mobsters who were attempting to get control of the union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. They badly beat him up, and he was hospitalized. But a comrade managed to get him out of the hospital before the mob could kill him. Sam Orner remained an active member of the WSP(US) until his death in 1973.

In December, 1930, the Workers' Film and Photo League was formed, which was a Communist Party "front" organization. The focus of its film production was newsreels and documentaries. Conflicts soon arose, however, between those who wanted to continue with documentaries and those who wanted to produce fiction movies of a social realist type. The schism led to the formation of Nykimo Films.The most celebrated, but now largely unknown, work by Nykimo was Pie in the Sky, a fifteen-minute satire starring Elia Kazan. What there was of a story, or plot, involved two tramps in a junkyard mocking so-called middle-class, bourgeois, values. In the words of Dan Georgakas (Encyclopedia of the American Left): "The film has considerable verve, with the tramps taking on organised religion in a manner not seen since the Industrial Workers of the World assaults on the Salvation Army". In 1938, Kazan directed his first film, a 20-minute documentary, People of the Cumberland, about the plight of Tennessee miners.

With his wife, Molly Thatcher, Elia Kazan joined the Communist Party in 1934. But he was not cut out to be a loyal and obedient party member. He commented twenty years later:

"The streets were full of unemployed and shaken men. I was taken in by the Hard Times version of what the Communists' advertising and recruiting technique claimed to have as a cure for depressions, and a cure for Nazism and Fascism."

He said that he was disgusted with the Communist Party's "system of discipline that suppressed personal opinions, and tried to dictate personal conduct". He hated the secrecy and paranoia of the Stalinists. He claimed that he resigned from the Communist Party, but another version has it that he was expelled either in 1935 or 1936.

In 1942, Kazan directed his first important play, Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, on Broadway. He also developed a close association with Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. During this time, his career took off as a movie director. In 1947, he won an Oscar for his direction of Gentleman's Agreement, an indictment of anti-Semitism. And in the same year Elia Kazan co-founded with Robert Lewis the influential Actors' Studio, which was responsible for developing the natural, psychological and realist "method" style of acting first evolved by Roman Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre during the 1920s, and which launched the career of Marlon Brando. First, there was A Streetcar Named Desire and, by 1949, Death of a Salesman.

Elia Kazan's first Hollywood film using the "method" style of acting was Viva Zapata!, from a script by John Steinbeck. In it, Brando played Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary. Inevitably, the ten-year conflict had to be telescoped into a few short episodes. The storyline was, however, reasonably accurate; Brando was plausible, and "there was a feeling of heat and dust", in the words of Thomson. Nevertheless, the script does distort certain events, and is in part complete invention. In 1954, Elia Kazan directed another powerful film, On the Waterfront, also with Marlon Brando, which exposed the mob's control of the union Local in the New York docks. In the film, Brando is beaten up just like, in real life, Sam Orner was in the 1930s. Kazan probably remembered that.

The so-called Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States emerged just before the end of the Second World War. Almost overnight, allies became enemies. And the chief threat allegedly facing the United States was said to be "the worldwide international communist conspiracy", represented primarily by Soviet Russia. The "enemy within" was the Communist Party in particular and its "fellow travelers" and, in general, "reds", "lefties" and anyone who did not consider American capitalism to be the best of all possible systems.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which had existed under various titles since 1930, became a permanent inquisitorial committee in 1946. It was armed with the power to compel testimony anywhere in the United States under subpoena. Witnesses summoned before the HUAC were judged to be either "friendly" or "unfriendly". All known Communists, sympathisers and many others who had been little more than vague anti-Fascists in the 1930s and 1940s, were hauled before the Committee. A few were jailed (the Hollywood Ten), and many were either fired from their jobs or found it impossible to obtain a job. The Committee was particularly concerned with so-called "reds" in the film industry.

Elia Kazan was summoned to the Committee on April 11, 1952. He was considered to be a friendly witness; and, like his old comrade, Clifford Odets, he "named names". He said that it was "a difficult moral dilemma", after "much soul-searching". And, anyway, he claimed that all the individuals that he named were already known to the HUAC as Communists or fellow-travelers. But Kazan was never forgiven by the Communists, many former Communists as well as many others who said that he should have never co-operated with the state.

Elia Kazan was no socialist but, within the limitations imposed by a profit-making film industry, he was able to highlight, sometimes quite dramatically, some of the problems as well as the struggles of ordinary workers, in a number of the movies that he directed. And that, at least, was something.

Peter E. Newell