Notes by the Way: Indian workers beginning to see through the Nationalist Movement (1939)

The Notes by the Way Column from the January 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Indian workers beginning to see through the Nationalist Movement

An interesting situation has arisen in Bombay, where there is a Congress (i.e., Indian Nationalist) Government. The Government, which has the support of the so-called Congress Socialist Party of Bombay, introduced a Trade Disputes Bill, whereupon the trade unions denounced it and called a one-day general strike as a protest. In the disturbances that ensued the police fired, and 75 persons were wounded, one of whom died.

The Indian Labour Journal (October 23rd. 1938) reports that the Labour group in the Legislative Assembly opposed the Bill, “The Government, however, is adamant, and is bearing down all opposition with their overwhelming majority, consisting not only of Congress members but also of representatives of the interests of capitalism. The Bill has been welcomed by the latter.”

According to Dr. Ambedkar, “The Bill takes away the legitimate, constitutional and powerful weapon of the workers, namely, the strike, by declaring it illegal, and therefore punishable in a large number of cases.” (Labour Journal, October 23rd.)

Other critics allege that the Bill will encourage the formation of “company unions” at the expense of genuine trade unions.

This and other inevitable conflicts between Indian workers and Indian capitalism will in time teach the workers that Nationalism, to the capitalist, is only a means to an end. As the Indian Labour Journal sadly recorded on July 17th, 1938, when Congress Governments replaced the former Governments capitalist interests behaved just as they did before, “everywhere the attitude of the employers remains the same.”

* * * *

Corsica, Nice and Tunis

Mr. W. N. Ewer, in an article in the Daily Herald (December 12th, 1938), did a useful service by recalling the history of the Italian demand for various French territories. In the first place, the demand did not originate with Mussolini: —

“Signer Mussolini has his own purposes in the organisation of these ‘spontaneous demonstrations.’ But Italian patriots were shouting for Corsica and Nice and Tunis before he or Fascismo was born.

The cry for Corsica goes back to the great days of the struggle for Italian unity. For Mazzini it was Divine will that all the Italian peoples should be joined in one Italian state. Garibaldi called himself an atheist : but he felt much the same.”

France got Nice and Savoy in 1860 as part of a bargain by which Napoleon III of France promised to help turn the Austrians out of Northern Italy and thus help the movement for Italian unity. The Italians complained bitterly that Napoleon only half fufilled his promise, but he got his price, the transfer of territory being covered by a fake plebiscite on the most up-to-date lines. “In the town of Nice only eleven votes were cast against annexation.”

Tunis has an equally interesting history. Except that the chief brigands arc different, it reads like a dress rehearsal for the imperialisms of our own day: —

“Italy began to look on Tunis as her predestined share in the coming partition of Northern Africa. And so it might have been. But at the Berlin (Peace with Honour) Congress, Salisbury, to get French assent to his taking of Cyprus, suggested that France might find ‘compensation’ in Tunis.

Bismarck, for his own ends, cordially backed the suggestion. All this, of course, in deadest secret.

Italy’s suspicions were aroused. She asked and got assurances from France : took them at face value : waited too long. In ’81 there was an incident on the Tunis-Algiers border. The French troops were ready. Within a few weeks Tunis was a French protectorate.

Great Britain, tongue in cheek, solemnly protested against the aggression she had suggested. Italy raged furiously : and has been angry ever since. For nearly sixty years the ‘Tunisian question’ has troubled Franco-Italian relations.”

* * * *

Cyprus under the Heel

As Mr. Ewer points out, the British Government encouraged France to seize Tunis while England took Cyprus. The apologists for British Imperialism will say, of course, “how lucky for the Cypriots to be under British rule.” But the Cypriots think otherwise, they want to join Greece, so Cyprus is now under rigid suppression following an outbreak in 1931. The Manchester Guardian summarises the present position as follows : —

“. . . repression is still the manner of rule. The former representative system of government remains suspended: close restrictions are kept on public meetings ; trade unions are discouraged the Press is suppressed or censored on the flimsiest of pretexts at the will of the Administration.” (Manchester Guardian, October 13, 1938.)

* * * *

Was J. R. MacDonald a Fraud? 

Mr. L. MacNeill Weir, M.P., was Parliamentary Secretary to the late J. R. MacDonald for eight years, from 1924 to 1931. Naturally, when he published his “The Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald” (Seeker & Warburg, 15s.), and roundly condemned the character and conduct of his former hero, he placed himself under the obligation of explaining his own conduct. If he knew long before 1931, why did he not resign and tell what he knew? If he did not know until the end, that, too, wants explaining. When Mr. Weir’s position is examined he, and the Labour Party, come out in a very bad light. So do the other leaders of the Labour Party.

Mr. MacNeill Weir, replying to letters of criticism published in The Times, wrote, on December 3rd, 1938, defending himself. Here is a remarkable passage in his letter : —

“I am blamed for taking the post of Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1924 when I believed all the charges I have made against MacDonald in the book. In 1922 I was one of the Scots contingent who voted to make MacDonald leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. We never believed Snowden’s repeated assertion at that time that MacDonald would sooner or later let the Party down.

It was not until the beginning of 1931 that suspicion of MacDonald’s bona fides arose, and suggestions began to be made of a change of leadership. All sorts of rumours, canards and defamatory aspersions circulate around public men—especially politicians. The fact is that MacDonald was a man of mystery, a human enigma, his real character only revealed in the passing of the years. We can be blamed for our unswerving loyalty to Dr. Jekyll during these years, but surely we are not to be condemned for not believing in the existence of Mr. Hyde.”

The S.P.G.B. opposed MacDonald always, i.e., onwards from 1904, when the S.P.G.B. was founded, but nothing we said of MacDonald ever stated such a strong case against leadership in general. We said that the popular theory of leadership of political parties included glorifying the party leader in order to make him an impressive and romantic figure in the eyes of the rank and file. There has to be a kind of conspiracy among the lesser leaders to deify the great ones in order to make the members loyal. What we did not contemplate was that the lesser leaders would fall for the same clap-trap themselves. Yet Mr. MacNeill Weir asks us to believe that, right up to 1931, he was being cruelly deceived by the man he knew intimately.

There is one thing Mr. Weir cannot get over. MacDonald’s speeches and writings were always empty of sound Socialist knowledge and principle, why did Mr. Weir not see through them? Another Labour M.P., Mr. Hugh Dalton, writing in the Daily Herald (November 18th, 1938), says that when he re-reads MacDonald’s old speeches now they give him “a sense almost of physical discomfort.” The answer is, and must be, that Mr. Weir and Mr. Dalton, and all their followers, did not know the difference between Socialist teaching, which endures, and social reformism, which depends for appeal on the trivial issue or the emotion of the moment.

The real tragedy is not the conduct of MacDonald, who, after all, was not a bit worse than his rival Labour leaders, but the admission made by Mr. Dalton that MacDonald’s empty rhetoric captivated his followers. After saying that the speeches were valueless, Mr. Dalton has to add, “But how his audiences loved them! It is a terrifying memory.”

Of course, Messrs. Weir and Dalton think that the Labour Party is healthier now. Perhaps it is. Perhaps experience has taught the rank and file a few things about the dangers of leadership. But if so, they owe little to Mr. Weir and Mr. Dalton, for both of these gentlemen are of opinion that the Labour Party “backed the wrong horse in 1922, when it made him (MacDonald) leader in place of Clynes.” As if the member of a war-time Coalition Government, who himself in 1931 was in favour of some kind of three-party Cabinet, was any more of a Socialist than MacDonald !

Before leaving the subject, it is worth while placing on record the claim made by a Communist, Mr. Idris Cox, in the Daily Worker (November 18th, 1938). He says that “MacDonald’s political record and ruinous policy was exposed by the Communists for 15 years before his death.”

This puts the Communists in a worse position than Mr. Weir. He says he sinned in ignorance. The Communists say they were well aware what MacDonald was, at least as early as 1922. Why, then, were the Communists, in 1922 and afterwards, urging the workers to vote for MacDonald?

* * * *

Mr. Middleton Murry to be a Church of England Clergyman

Six years ago, when Mr. J. Middleton Murry, the well-known critic and author, became active in “left-wing” politics, it was suggested in THE SOCIALIST STANDARD (September, 1932) that, unless he succeeded in overcoming his obvious failure to understand the principles of Socialism, he would, in due course, drift out again, disappointed. It is now announced that he is training as candidate for the Church of England priesthood. From an interview published in the Sunday Express (December 11th, 1938), it appears that the turning point for Mr. Murry was when he listened to a Hitler broadcast in June, 1934: “You may think me fantastic, but I said to myself : This is what the Bible meant by anti-Christ.”

One thing that can be said of Mr. Murry’s incursion into politics is that the freshness of his writings on Marxism and current problems must have given many people an interest which they would otherwise not have had. Along with some serious misunderstandings he wrote many things that were worth while.

* * * *

Admissions about Spain

At the beginning of the Spanish civil war, now become more and more a war with Italy and Germany, the British Government and the supporters of Franco vied with each other in suppressing important facts. It will be recalled how the authorities, month after month, disclaimed knowledge of German and Italian intervention, until the truth was too well known to be hidden. Now, late in the day, we have Mr. R. S. Hudson, Secretary, Overseas Trade Department, saying, in the House of Commons on December 1st, 1938, that “clearly one of the main reasons” why there are more German than British ships going to Franco territory “is the large quantity of munitions that the German Government are sending to Franco.”

Another recent admission was in the Evening Standard (December 2nd, 1938), where Mr. Aylmer Vallance showed that the assassination of the Conservative-Monarchist leader, Sotelo (often represented as the excuse for the rebellion), was not the only act of its kind. It was itself an act of vengeance for the assassination some days earlier of Lt. Castillo, a police officer, who was a member of the Socialist Youth League.

The Times, too, has several times admitted that air raids on Republican Spain are carried out from Italy. On July 23rd, 1938, for example, their correspondent at the Spanish frontier said:

“Some of the Italian airmen start out from Italy, rest at Majorca, then raid the Mediterranean coast, and return to Majorca for a few hours en route to their aerodromes in Italy.”

Among recent interesting features of the Spanish war was the promise made by Franco to Britain and France during the recent crisis, that he would remain neutral in the event of war (Manchester Guardian, December 1st, 1938). This may help to explain the continued pro-Franco attitude of British and French circles, which might have been expected to fear a Franco victory, lest it strengthen Italy and Germany in the Mediterranean.

* * * *

The Duchess of Atholl and her Supporters

The Conservative Duchess of Atholl fought West Perthshire against the Conservative Party because she wants the Government to take a strong line against Germany, Italy and Franco. Forward (December 10th) asked a number of well-known people how they would vote if they were in the constituency. Among those who said they would vote for her were Alfred Barnes, M.P. (of the Co-operative Party), Ellen Wilkinson, Tom Johnson, J. F. Horrabin, and H. N. Brailsford. They all gave much the same reason, approval of the Duchess’s foreign policy.

Among those who said “no” were Ethel Mannin, of the I.L.P. She said that, “as a revolutionary Socialist . . . I should not vote at all, my attitude being ‘a plague on both your houses.'”

Lord Elton (“National Labour“) said he would vote against her because “Chamberlain saved civilisation at Munich.”

Cecil Wilson, M.P., “Pacifist,” said he would write on his ballot paper, “War and all preparation for war is wrong.” “I stand for Peace, Freedom and the Brotherhood of Man.”

Lord Sanderson, “Pacifist and Socialist,” said he would vote for the Chamberlain candidate.

The Sunday Express (December 4th), has the following comment about the Duchess: —

“She makes a terrible howl about the troubles of the little children in Barcelona. But she is not so anxious about her own little children in Britain. She took the view, when the question of raising the school-leaving age came up, that children must be set to work at fourteen.”

* * * *

President Roosevelt Believes in Capitalism and Scrambled Eggs

“Actually, I am an exceedingly mild-mannered person, a practitioner of peace, a believer in the capitalistic system, and for my breakfast I am a devotee of scrambled eggs.” (Daily Mail, December 6th, 1938.)

* * * *

The Communists and Daladier

Since Daladier used Conscription and the armed forces to defeat the General Strike, the Communists are heaping abuse on him. The Daily Worker (November 28th) quotes, with approval, the statement that, in Berlin, Daladier, ever since Munich, has been regarded as a “Hitler man,” and says that the Daladier Government “represents the interests of the big monopoly capitalists, among whom are the closest friends of Hitler.” On December 8th, in the French Chamber of Deputies, a Communist, pointing at Daladier, said : “We, the Communists, are telling you to get out.” (Daily Express, December 9th.)

Who, then, is this Daladier? He is a leader of the Liberals (known as “Radical Socialists”), who formed part of the Popular Front along with the French Labourites and Communists. He was Minister of National Defence and War in Blum’s first Popular Front Government in 1936, and, as recently as April 13th, 1938, when, as Premier, he asked for a vote of confidence and for certain special powers, he obtained 570 votes to five; The Communists were with the majority and acclaimed Daladicr enthusiastically.

After the 1936 General Election, the French Communist Party expressly claimed that the Popular Front had not only helped their own and the Labour candidates, but had also helped to prevent Daladier’s party from losing seats.

So much for “Popular Frontism”!

* * * *

Prayers to Fill Empty Stomachs

The following appeared in the Daily Sketch (December 5th, : 1938): —

“Mayfair churchgoers, many in fur coats, prayed in the fashionable St. James’s Church, Piccadilly, W., yesterday, for the poor of the East End. They lowered their gaze as the Bishop of Stepney (the Rt. Rev. Hamilton Moberly) told them what life was like with the dole and faint hope of a job. He told of the “constant state of poverty, never enough money coming in to keep a family in decency—wives going out to work and becoming the main support of the family.”

He urged them to pray for the poor of the East End—’not just now and then’—but to make a habit of it. He felt that if only half a dozen people present were to support the Church’s work there by their prayers, something would be achieved. . . .”

* * * *

Ulster Democracy

From the Manchester Guardian (November 23rd, 1938: —

“Fourteen youths who were arrested when about forty Belfast police raided the McKelvey Recreation Club in a Nationalist area here recently were to-day transferred to Belfast Prison, where they are being held under Special Powers Act detention orders, which enable them to be held without trial for a prolonged period.”

* * * *

Jewish Employers and Sweating

Fascist propagandists make much of cases of sweating or non-payment of trade union rates when the employer is a Jew, and they are specially active among furniture trade workers. The reason, according to the Daily Herald (December 14th, 1938) is that not more than 10,000 London furniture workers receive the trade union rates and conditions, while 50,000 do not, and “the offending owners are practically all Jews.”

On the other hand, “the stigma does not apply to all Jews. There are about ten Jewish firms regarded by the unions as fair, and which have an honourable record.”

In the case of the furniture trade the whole industry is largely controlled by Jewish firms, but exactly the same kind of situation has arisen in numerous other trades, i.e., one group of firms paying trade union rates and another group underpaying. In the grocery and drapery trades the unions and the employers’ federations have jointly approached the Ministry of Labour to secure the enforcement of standard rates on the large number of employers not paying them. Yet nobody claims that the offending employers in those trades are mainly Jewish.

There are also Trade Boards in about forty industries, set up to prevent “sweating,” and it has been estimated that as many as twenty-five per cent. of agricultural workers are being paid less than the minimum wage legally applicable to them. It has never been suggested that twenty-five per cent. of the farmers are Jews.

Another point of more importance is that capitalism is an exploiting system, even when the trade union rates are paid. The employer who organises his concern on the basis of paying a relatively high wage does not do so from philanthropic motives. He takes good care to select the most skilful and bodily fit workers, and is able to do so because the higher wage attracts more applicants; and, being a capitalist, seeking profit, he, even more than his sweating colleague, introduces labour-displacing machinery and dismisses men when he no longer wants them.

Lord Nuffield is not a Jew, and he pays a relatively high wage, but on November 16th, 1938, he received a deputation representing 1,500 workless men formerly employed by him. (News Chronicle, November 17th, 1938.) “Many of the jobs were eliminated by the adoption of all-steel bodies.”

The most that Lord Nuffield could promise was to find work in other departments for men whose jobs are eliminated, and to re-engage the unemployed men as soon as possible. Some of the 1,500 have been out of work already for six months.

Capitalism is the enemy of the workers, and that will not be remedied by changing the nationality, religion, race, or politics of the capitalists.

Edgar Hardcastle

Notes by the Way: Circumstances Alter Cases. A Communist Slogan for England Only. (1932)

The Notes by the Way Column from the September 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Circumstances Alter Cases. A Communist Slogan for England Only.

One of the useless reforms urged by the communists in Great Britain is the abolition of inheritance and the confiscation of all fortunes over £1,000. (See Class Against Class, published 1929, by C.P.G.B., p. 30.)

What gives special interest to this demand is that it is something the communists in Russia make no pretence of carrying out. Russian law “recognises the right of inheritance irrespective of the amount involved." (Soviet Union Year Book, 1930, p. 498.) Inheritance tax is paid, but the law specifies maximum rates of tax, which may not be exceeded by the separate republics which make up the Soviet Union. The maximum scale of tax is graduated from £2 on £200, up to £23,854 on £50,000. (See Year Book, p. 405.)

We wonder what sort of reception a simple-minded English communist would have who tried to enforce the abolition of inheritance and confiscation of all fortunes above £1,000, among the highly paid technicians and, administrative officials in Russia.


Ethel Mannin’s Blunder.

A recent recruit to the I.L.P. is the novelist, Miss Ethel Mannin. In February she was reminded by a correspondent that her claim to be a socialist does not square with the reformist programme of her party. In reply she wrote: —

  I agree entirely that the I.L.P. is a reformist party—which is a reason why I shall probably not remain with them. Actually I have no faith in any party. (Italics hers.)

When the split came, Miss Mannin followed the disaffiliationists. She gives her reasons in the New Leader (12th August). One is that she believes in moving “to the left—always to the left." Another she explains as follows : —

  We of the Left Wing have our dream, the tremendous dream of Socialism in Our Time, and it is up to us to be proud of it instead of being apologetic about it. Thank God we have this dream, for no one else seems to have it—certainly not the official Labour Party! And without this dream what is left to us ?

This is where Miss Mannin makes her mistake. The I.L.P. have not got this programme now. Brailsford and three other I.L.P. leaders, wrote it for them (the “Living Income Programme”). But already by 1928, according to the Report to the I.L.P.'s Annual Conference, presented by the Administrative Council, "its main proposals are being gradually incorporated in the thought and propaganda of the Labour Movement, and are exerting a continuous influence on the policies of its leadership.” (Report, 1928, p. 3.)

It was, therefore, quite logical for the four men who wrote it to leave the disaffiliationists and join the official group, and quite logical, for them to claim that their reformist policy, known as "Socialism in Our Time," is now the inspiration of the Labour Party. The leading disaffiliationists, who assert that they have made a clean break with the I.L.P.'s past, confirm this claim.

So that Miss Mannin is in the uncomfortable position of having her body in the I.L.P.—and moving "to the left—always to the left’’—while the Ark of the Covenant containing the essence of her proud dream is being borne off to the right by the four men who fashioned it. And in the meantime Maxton and others have drawn up a new list of reforms for their reformist party.

Miss Mannin should be told about this.


Muddled Middleton Murry.

After achieving distinction in literature, Mr. John Middleton Murry blew in on the world of working class politics by announcing himself a Marxist and communist. It was at once evident that Mr. Murry has much to learn and many old habits of thought and expression to unlearn before he will appreciate what the socialist case is and be able to enlighten others. His attempts to explain Marx befog rather than clear the air, and nobody would be more startled than Marx if he could know what he is supposed by Mr. Murry to have meant by some of his writings. To say this is not to throw doubt on Mr. Murry’s well-meaningness, but it appears to be very difficult for the typical academic or literary man to believe that Marx could have meant just what he said.

How muddled Murry is can be seen from his constant shifting of position and his enthusiasm for contradictory policies. He appears at first to have had leanings towards the Communist Party, and is still a worshipper of Russia, being under the impression that Socialism is being built up in that country. However, he quarrelled with the communists and turned up in the I.L.P. While still there he read one of our pamphlets in March this year, and promptly wrote to us: "It seems to me I ought to join.” He did not proceed with the matter, and by August he had discovered a new hope. Writing in The Adelphi (August, p. 764), he said: “There is a good hope that gradually the I.L.P. will become a genuinely socialist organisation —the only one in this country.”

It would be interesting to know in what way the S.P.G.B., which apparently was a socialist body in Mr. Murry’s eyes in Match, had ceased to be socialist by August.

In the same issue of The Adelphi, Mr. Murry shows how little he understands of Socialism by defining it as “economic equality”—an inadequate phrase completely missing the essence of the matter, which is that its basis will be the common ownership of the means of production and distribution. He also describes Mr. R. H. Tawney as chief of the “small number of genuine socialists" in the Labour Party. Mr. Tawney has never committed himself to common ownership. In his Acquisitive Society (p. 67) he expressly declares his belief in the necessity of continuing property incomes in the form of interest on investments.

Unless Mr. Murry will make an effort to understand the elementary principles of Socialism he will no doubt suffer the fate of many others who have skimmed over the working class movement. He will drift off, disgusted with the slow progress of socialist organisation, but no wiser than when he came in as to why it makes slow progress and why his well-meant efforts do not help.

Lo, the Poor Indian!

Those who profess to believe that the poverty of the Indian workers and peasants is due only to the British Exploiters would do well to ponder over a statement which appeared in the Daily Herald (26th July), that there are twenty Indian millionaires living in Bombay whose fortunes are estimated to total £70 millions. The capitalist amasses his wealth by exploitation, and whether he is Indian or British, He does not allow race, religion or sentiment to come between himself and his riches and power.

The Power of the State.

We have heard much from communists and syndicalists—particularly in South Wales—about the all- conquering power of organisation on the economic field. How limited the unions are and how helpless against those who control the machinery of' Government was well illustrated in a recent case. On April 1st, 1932, Mr. Justice Bennett granted an injunction restraining miners at the Bedwas Navigation Colliery from “the watching and besetting of the colliery,” as being in violation of the law. Members of the Miners' Federation ignored the injunction and held a show of cards at the mine. On June 29th the Judge required the defendants to appear for Contempt of Court. Accordingly they were compelled to travel to London at their own expense and appear in person to make individual and abject apology. They all of them pleaded that they would not have held the show of cards if they thought it was in violation of the injunction, and they solemnly promised not to do it again. (See Times, 30th June and 8th July.) Some of them are said to be communists and active advocates of so-called direct action.

Curious Communist Electioneering.

Mr. J. T. Walton Newbold, until just recently a supporter of the National Government, writing in the O.B.U. Bulletin (Winnipeg, 28th July), tells how he and Saklatvala, who were candidates of the Labour Party, and later became communists, angled for the non-socialist votes of Irish nationalists and Catholics. He says that he, at Motherwell, and Saklatvala, at Battersea, had deliberately picked seats with a large Irish vote and set out to capture it by appealing to nationalist sentiment. Newbold claims that fully half of the votes he received in 1918 were Irish votes. In the 1922 election, after Newbold had joined the communists, 5,000 out of his 8,000 voters were Catholic Irishmen. This is what the communists called winning elections for Communism and Internationalism.

Newbold has had cause to welcome the split in the I.L.P. Having been a Fabian, then in turn a member of the Labour Party and I.L.P., the Communist Party, the I.L.P. again, then the Social Democratic Federation, then the MacDonald National Labour Group, he was for the moment stumped to find a new party to join. The split in the I.L.P., by increasing the number of parties, has given him another chance, and he is now supporting the Maxtonites.

An Angry Right Honourable.

The Right Honourable Thomas Kennedy, P.C., is editor of the Social Democrat and is very angry because Viscount. Snowden, speaking in the House of Lords on June 29th, commented on the late H. M. Hyndman’s belief that capitalism would collapse as each new industrial crisis came round. Kennedy says that it is a lie, angrily denounces Snowden and the I.L.P., and demands evidence for the statement. Snowden had been supplied (free of charge) with a copy of our pamphlet, “Why Capitalism will not Collapse," and doubtless was indebted to it for the information about Hyndman. This recalls a curious action on the part of the Social Democrat. When we published the pamphlet (which contains evidence for the statement about Hyndman) we sent copies to the Social Democrat (of which Kennedy was not then editor) and Forward, the I.L.P. journal. Forward reviewed, it and acknowledged that it is published by the S.P.G.B. The Social Democrat did not review it directly, but published an editorial fiercely attacking it on the basis of Forward's review, and implying, without saying so directly, that it is published by the I.L.P.

The Social Democrat's editorial (April, 1932) actually pretended that the pamphlet is an attack on doctrinaire economic theory and a defence of the “broad, open-minded, benevolent, pleasant-Sunday- afternoon methods of the I.L.P." in the days when it was led by Ramsay MacDonald.

There is nothing whatever either in the pamphlet 
or in the review by Forward which supports the
extraordinary line taken by the Social Democrat.

A View on Russia.

In The Times (5th and 6th August) an Italian journalist, Carlo Scarfoglio, writing after a tour of Russia. gives an interesting account of the rapid emergence of the typical features of capitalism. He shows how, in spite of the claims and intentions of communists, industrial development is giving rise to the ordinary class differentiations of capitalism, from the collective farm labourers earning about £100 a year up to the foreign specialists with £2,400 and every sort of additional privilege. Clerical and so-called intellectual workers are now being paid more than skilled craftsmen and the latter more than unskilled. He notes the appearance of privately-owned motor cars and racing boats, and the accumulation of capital in the hands of the investors in State loans, receiving up to 10 per cent. interest. The so-called State industries are tending more and more to independence, and to the position of ordinary private enterprises.

He shows the illusion behind the belief that the workers and the State are one, with common interests. The wage-earner is in precisely the same position as in any other country.

Scarfoglio thinks that the Bolsheviks may be able and will wish to continue calling Russian capitalism by the name of communism.

Edgar Hardcastle

A Tale of Two Simpletons: Good man gone wrong (1962)

From the September 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nothing so sharply divides the Socialist from the non-Socialist as the recognition that the world needs a different social structure—not just different men or different political parties to administer capitalism, but deliberate understanding action by the working class to replace the existing social system by a Socialist one. The extent to which this is appreciated is a measure of political maturity. Those who are politically quite immature believe the opposite. They believe that if they have “good” men to lead them these men can purify capitalism, solve its insoluble problems, rid it of unemployment, poverty and war. etc. Experience proves this to be unfounded. Politicians with no mandate to establish Socialism do not, when they become the government, have the power to impose their good intentions on capitalism. Instead, they are in its clutches; of necessity the Labour Government which had preached disarmament, peace and high wages in practice rearmed, supported war and tried to impose a wage-freeze. They end by being hardly distinguishable from the avowed. supporters of capitalism.

A curious by-product of this situation is the emergence of critics of the Labour Party, many of them claiming to be pacifists. who take a dim view of British capitalism and its supporters but fancy that foreign representatives of capitalism are somehow different; the Reverend Donald Soper, for example. He sees the world of politics, at least outside of this country, in terms of good men and bad men. and is blind to the fact that capitalism takes no notice of such distinctions. But time digs its pitfalls for the Sopers of this world: the “good" men turn out to be “bad” after all.

Soper in his weekly article in Tribune dealt on July. 27th with “Mosley, Nasser and the Jews." His argument was that anti-Jewish propaganda in this country is of little significance compared with the menace of Colonel Nasser, Egypt's dictator:

   What is much more threatening and unmanageable is the anti-Semitism contained in Nasser's speeches last week-end in Cairo—particularly as this outburst in words coincides with the launching of Egyptian rockets for the first time. I find the following quotations almost appalling. He pledged himself to liberate Palestine from Israel. This is frightening enough in all conscience, but at least he has been saying this all along. He went on to hint that Egypt's rocket arsenal was being built up for this express purpose.

Soper fears that Nasser is bent on a war of conquest with his new rockets, and Soper wants him to be stopped. It would be too much to expect Soper to see that only the abolition of capitalism will stop Egypt, Israel, America, Nasser, Britain and the rest of the capitalist powers from waging war; instead, he puts his trust in the farcical notion of “a system of international law which could restrain men like Nasser."

But to come back to the question of Soper's childish politics, why on earth should Soper want Nasser to be stopped, for we have it on the authority of Soper that Nasser is a “good” man, one who ought to be encouraged.

Speaking at Caxton Hall on August 14th, 1956, Soper had this to say:

   The third and last thing I want to say, because it is my purpose tonight rather to testify from the Christian standpoint, and to say something on behalf, I am sure, of thousands of Christian people who are inarticulate, whatever the other dignitaries of the church may or may not say—I want to say in the name of Christianity that this Nasser ought to be encouraged and not be repressed, because I believe the root of the matter in him is good and, because it is good, it is our business to evoke it by corresponding good and not to repress it by threats of violence.

This ought to cure Soper, but it probably won't, and readers who may take comfort in the belief that there cannot be more than one person with Soper's naive approach to the world have to learn that the same week produced another. While Soper is a pacifist who wanted to encourage the Egyptian warlord but has changed his mind and wants him restrained, another sometime supporter of the Labour Party, Ethel Mannin, who describes herself as an "unrepentant pacifist," thinks Nasser should still be encouraged. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph (July 26th), she said she was worried about some things, “notably the indoctrination of the children in a school I visited and which seemed to me Hitlerism,” but "for your information, Sir, my attitude to Nasser's Egypt is one of the utmost goodwill, tempered with anxiety. . . .  But whatever criticisms may be made of President Nasser’s interpretation of Socialism, and his methods of implementing his ideas and ideals, of his sincerity there can be no doubt."

Ethel Mannin describes herself in her letter as “an old campaigner": she. like Soper, appears to be as simple as when she started.

Edgar Hardcastle