Letter: The Death Penalty in Soviet Russia (1942)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received from a reader the following letter about the paragraph in our August issue : —

24/8/42.

Dear Sirs,

In the August issue of the Socialist Standard it is stated that a reader, on enquiring by telephone at the Soviet Embassy as to the truth or otherwise of Boris Souverine’s statement that children in the U.S.S.R. are liable to the death penalty for theft from the age of 12 years upwards, was informed that this statement is false, and that the death penalty applies only to people of 18 years of age and more.

Boris Souverine (formerly leader of the Communist Party of France, and a man with considerable experience of Soviet life) makes the charge on page 612 of his biography entitled “Stalin,” but unfortunately does not give the reference.

The reference, however, can be found by anyone who is interested, in “Stalin’s Russia,” by Max Eastman, friend of Lenin and Trotsky, and formerly editor of the “Liberator,” the only American magazine to support the Bolsheviks from the day they came to power.

On pages 28 and 29 of that work Max Eastman says :

“In the spring of 1935 Stalin’s government issued a decree which made the death penalty for theft—adopted for adults three years before—applicable to minors from the age of twelve. When this fact was announced at a congress of the French Teachers’ Federation in August of the same year, the Stalinists in the Federation indignantly denied it. Being shown a copy of Isvestia (April 8, 1935) containing the decree, they lapsed into silence, but they were ready next day with the information that ‘under Socialism children are so precocious and well educated that they are fully responsible for their acts’ ! It is but a reflection of the manner in which this ideology is being stretched to cover every saddest thing in Russia.”

The law is referred to in many other works on Soviet conditions and I should imagine it is too late in the day for the matter to be disposed of by an anonymous telephone message from the Soviet’s Embassy. The Soviet Government denied the reality of the famine of 1932-33 (in which upwards of 4,000,000 peasants died of hunger), but the facts are now admitted by every prominent newspaper correspondent who was in Russia at the time, many of them (such as Eugene Lyons and W. H. Chamberlin) Communists or Communist sympathisers. The Stalin Constitution to-day guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press to the Russian workers, but no one dares to raise his voice against the prevailing administration nor can anyone mention the name of a single newspaper published in opposition to the Government.

As many are puzzled by what is taking place in Russia to-day and at a loss to understand what conditions in Russia really are, I would ask your permission to append a list of several of the most informative works on the subject for the benefit of those who wish to investigate the matter further : —

“I was a Soviet Worker ” : Andrew Smith.

“The Russian Enigma ” : Anton Ciliga.

“Stalin ” : Boris Souverine.

“Stalin’s Russia ” : Max Eastman.

“The Destiny of a Revolution ” : Victor Serge.

“Assignment in Utopia ” : Eugene Lyons.

“A Fake Utopia ” : W. H. Chamberlin.

“I Speak for the Silent ” : Professor Tchernavin.

“Russia Under Soviet Rule ” : N. A. De Basily.

“Russia in Chains ” : Ivan Solonevich.

The first six of these works were written by former Communists, but all are informative, and give a picture of Soviet life and conditions that is as different from the “facts” of Communist propaganda as night is different from day. They should be obtainable at any public library.

—Yours faithfully,

H. W. Henderson

Obituary: John Ball (2005)

Obituary from the April 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

John was someone I first came across in the early 90s in Norwich along with Heather prior to us all being properly acquainted with the Socialist Party. Our enthusiasm for responsible anti-authoritarian values and the politics of a world so different from this one, along with the reasonably close proximity of our houses helped to create a lasting bond and friendship.

John was born in Plumstead, in London, is 1932 and worked for most of his working life as an electrician. He was a warm and generous person, very down to earth who would call a spade a spade; at the same time he could be very understanding with people he got close to whose conclusions may have been  different from his own, seeing the basis of those conclusions as a possible connection to build on. He was well-read and enjoyed connecting with people of all ages and backgrounds and had a penchant for helping the underdog sometimes to the detriment of his health. He was a vegan, painted in oils, and loved upbeat music and dancing.

Towards the end of his life John would say that he felt ever more convinced that the Party’s sole pursuit of socialism and not reformism was the correct and only practical solution to the ongoing problems that a capitalist world is always throwing up. He recognised the importance of humour, connected to a  constructive politics and philosophy in contrast to the sober authoritarian politics of the Left he was always falling foul of in the earlier period of his life (he had been in the Communist Party, which he left in 1957, and then in the Trotskyist SLL, from which he was expelled in 1960).

John died in February. I’m sure his way of being would and did affect positively many people he had come across throughout his life.

Stair

Editorial: Disappearing Loyalties (1951)

Editorial from the July 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

The case of “The Disappearing Diplomats” brings to the front more of the ugly and curious features of “civilised” life in which modern governments are inextricably involved, whether they call themselves Tory, Labour or Communist. Warfare, and preparations for warfare have, as one of their necessary accompaniments, “spies,” "traitors” and espionage systems. Part of an espionage system consists of getting hold of people in a different country who have “inside” information and persuading or coercing them into selling it. The business is a sordid one and all governments are of necessity engaged in it. The defence of the mealy-mouthed is that the practice is so general that a country which did not follow the practice would be placed at a serious disadvantage. It is curious to notice also, as an example of modern hypocrisy that when the “spy” is on “our” side he is a hero, but when he is on the "enemy’s” side he is a scoundrel.

All through past history, that is the history of civilised society, this kind of thing has been going on; it is inextricably bound up with all systems based upon property ownership. At periods however it flourishes like a plague; such, for example, was the position during the Reformation, the French Revolution and even when the Nazis were on the upsurge. The knitting of the whole world together in modern times, with the corresponding anarchy of production, national rivalries and wholesale imperialism has taken the disease out of its old narrow setting and spread it all over the world. In the last thirty years or so this has been particularly noticeable because many old loyalties have broken down, new loyalties have not solidified, and disappointment, distrust and mutual suspicion is widespread. The disease has become so sweeping in its ramifications that frightened governments are engaging in thorough-going heresy hunts; people look askance at their neighbours and few are sure whom they can trust. Mutual suspicion has even invaded family life and relatives are held as hostages to ensure loyalty. In answer to a question in parliament, Mr. Attlee expressed this prevailing suspicion when he said, referring to vital military information,

  “No one can be absolutely certain at any time that someone may not have information which he may possibly give away. All we can say is that the utmost care is taken with regard to every individual employed.” (Manchester Guardian, 12th June, 1951).

One curious feature of the modern espionage disease is the type of people involved in what may be called the seamier side. At one time the seller of military secrets was the unscrupulous cosmopolitan, the wastrel, those who were regarded as outride the pale of “respectable” society; now-a-days they are the product of select schools and universities—the cultured, the scientists, professors and the like. The “ old school tie” has become badly besmirched in the modern imperialist conflicts.

Looking at this from one angle it is another of the curious features of to-day. Long ago the holding of radical views concerning society was associated with hob-nailed boots, chokers and disgruntled working men belonging to the poorer sections of society. Now-a-days it has become fashionable for the “cultured” products of aristocratic schools to make fleeting excursions into what they call “left” politics and after deriving some notoriety and excitement, fade out. These gilded chameleons make glittering and, to themselves, devastating criticisms of society for the consumption of admiring colleagues, but they have no real roots in the political movement. Mutual admiration groups full of the conviction that the sun shines out of them, they plod their allotted path to ignominy. They condescend to give their assistance to radical movements of one kind or another but when they meet with rough treatment or fail to achieve the prominence which they feel is due to them they turn back in disgust, berate those they formerly called their brothers m the struggle and, in the process, eat the words they formerly blazoned forth to the world as expressions of heartfelt convictions.

Whether the actions of these people have been inspired by sordid motives or genuine, if mistaken, convictions they are self-branded as false guides; in a word, ineffectual, out of touch with the social forces that determine policies. Consequently every now and again one or other of them produces a book of contrition which purports to explain why they have come to the conclusion that their former conduct was all wrong and they have now, like sheep, come back to the fold. To the socialist these professed explanations are simply examples of the general lack of political information of the non-socialist, whether he calls himself cultured or just plain working man.

Beneath all the trickery, duplicity and heartbreaks associated with espionage is the social system from which this sordid disease springs. In this modern age it is the capitalist private property system that throws up this along with the many other respect-destroying complaints; this system sets nation against nation, man against man, children against their parents and twists the finest products of human ingenuity into means to drag humanity through the mire. While it lasts there is no room for the brotherhood of mankind and the basis of mutual trust is frail. High-sounding phrases are only used as screens behind which the false, the mean and the sordid lurks. The abolition of property ownership will bring with it a fresh wind that will sweep out of social relations all the sordidness that clogs humanity’s upward march towards a full, secure and joyful life.

The God That Failed (1950)

Book Review from the June-July 1950 issue of The Western Socialist

The God That Failed edited by Richard Crossman [Harper & Brother]

Six (presumably) wise men, tending their intellects, looked to the East, and saw a “new star in Bethlehem.” Pour of these savants actually journeyed to the Soviet Bethlehem, but instead of a new God, they found but another Pope. The remaining two gazed from afar, until after some meditation, they concluded the star to be a piece of cardboard, wrapped about with tinfoil.

Thus is The God That Failed, a collection of the sagas of six intellectuals who journeyed into “Communism,” and returned, a little wiser for their experiences. Three of these (Arthur Koestler, Richard Wright, and Ignazio Silone) were actually members of the German, American, and Italian Communist Parties, respectively, whereas the other three (Andre Gide, Louis Fischer, and Stephen Spender) were sympathizers and lauders of the Russian system.

The editor, Richard Crossman, Labor member of the British Parliament, terms the first group “The Initiates,” the second “Worshippers from Afar.” The title of this book originated from the play Oedipe by Gide, in which the author “is forced to the realization that man without God is doomed to defeat and despair, unless he substitutes some other idea for God. Oedipus at the end rejects God for man, and Gide looked toward Communism.” So writes Enid Starkie who edited Gide's comments. The God That Failed, indeed! After reading this sextet of confessional breast-beating, this reviewer believes that a more proper title would have been, The Understanding That Failed. In reaching out for their God, their concept of “communism,” [1] these intellectuals showed very little understanding of exactly what kind of revolution occurred in Russia in November 1917, and exactly what type of society was instituted. Later on, when their star dimmed, blinked, and then went out, they began to grasp a little more of the truth about Soviet Russia. Especially was this so in the case of Arthur Koestler who, at the conclusion of his essay, mentioned that in another of his books (The Yogi and the Commissar) he tried to expose the “fallacy of the unshaken foundation that a state-capitalist economy (Russia) must of necessity lead to a socialist regime.”

The Pull To The East

Our assertion that these individuals showed very little understanding of the nature of communism and the Soviet economy can be underlined by examining the reasons they present for either joining the Communist Party or becoming fellow travelers and sympathizers.

Arthur Koestler — a writer, as are the other five intellectuals.— entered the Communist Party in Germany because he believed that the Stalinists had the answer to unemployment, insecurity and war. Ignazio Silone became a member of the Italian Socialist Party for basically the same reasons, and although he does not state so, he allegedly switched to the Italian Communist Party out of the same motivation.

One of the most outstanding Negro writers today, Richard Wright, attached himself to the John Reed Club in Chicago, first because of a desire to further his writing. Later he signed an application card in the Communist Party of the United States when he was told that he would have to do so in order to remain Secretary of the Club.

As for the worshippers from afar, with Andre Gide it was, as the title states, the search for a new God.

“It was not through Marx, but through the Gospels, that Gide had reached communism,” writes Enid Starkie. Gide himself put it in this wise, “My conversion is like a faith.”

Louis Fischer, the noted journalist and author, and Stephen Spender, the English poet, likewise viewed the Soviet Union as the “white hope of humanity,” in contrast to the demoralized aspect represented by the Western capitalist powers.

Despair In The West

Richard Crossman, the editor, perhaps sums it all up the most satisfactorily in his foreword to the book. He emphasizes that it was the failure of Western capitalism which accounted for men of such intellectual capacities hitching their wagons to the Red Star. In general, this is a correct evaluation. At the same time does this not also prove our previous claim, that fundamentally it was lack of understanding on the part of these writers that brought them to their sorry pass?

Whether these men viewed Soviet Russia as a new faith, a Utopia, or as an answer to capitalism’s inability to solve the problems of the working class, not one of them at any time displayed an awareness of the nature of socialism, and of Soviet society. Such an awareness would have spared them the snares and later disillusionments of Russian capitalism. A scientific socialist understanding would have taught them that the material conditions were not suitable for socialism in Russia in 1917, that what the Bolsheviks did, was merely to institute capitalism under control of the state because of the inability of any strong and cohesive capitalist class to organize private capitalism.

This understanding, further, would have convinced these intellectuals that the means employed by the Bolsheviks — assassinations, character and physical, slanders, deceit, and outright lying — are not inseparable from the ends sought, but exposed the real objective of the various Communist Parties, to establish a dictatorship over the proletariat, not of it, another class society, not a classless society.

Retrospect Is Easy

Let us not be too severe on these individuals. Our understanding permits us to see how in the past several decades the Soviet Union and the Stalinists could have been the drawing cards they were. In the World Socialist Party today and in the other companion parties of socialism are many who were likewise sucked into the Soviet circle. In the absence of large scientific socialist parties to spread the knowledge of a clear concept of socialism, Russian pseudo-communism could and did make tremendous gains among workers and intellectuals seeking a way out of capitalist wars and depressions. In the lack of the development of scientific socialist ideas among the workers which would have brought socialism closer to reality, Bolshevism represented a “we-are-doing-something-about-it” movement, and drew followers unto it on this emotional basis.

What did it all add up to? The God That Fails helps furnish part of the answer. Defection and disenchantment, revulsion against a cause once held dear. Unacquainted with socialism, these six intellectuals could not have had the proper understanding to avoid the traps set by the Russian bear (a case of the hunted becoming the hunter!)

This can be overlooked. One learns by experience. One’s political views reflect one’s conception of the material world at any one time. But after these six men had gone through the hell and welter of the Russian maze, it is not too much for us to expect that they should have profited thereby.

But they haven’t except, in a negative sense, that they learned enough to be opposed to Stalinism (the term erroneously used by many to describe modern Russian state Capitalism) and all it represents. On the positive side, however, all of them, in one form or another, have returned to the support of capitalism, from which, unknowingly, they never departed when they affiliated themselves to the Russian Church. [2] Now they look upon “Western democracy” without understanding its economic base, any more than they understood the economic base of “Soviet democracy.” In spite of Louis Fischer’s theory of the “Double Rejector” — “rejecting the evils of dictatorship and of democracy,” that it is possible to steer a clear path between the rocks of Stalinism and the reefs of capitalism, events have proved there is no middle ground.

Looking at history opportunistically and from an immediate viewpoint, a middle ground may seem a likely attraction. The socialist, however, knows that in the end one must choose between capitalism and socialism — the latter, not as propagandized by Soviet state capitalism, but. as we conceive it, as the ownership of the means of production by the entire population, and democratically controlled by it.

It is a comfortable feeling between wars and depressions to rationalize that one is combatting the evils of Russian capitalism, at the same time not condoning the sins of capitalism elsewhere. But this is a luxury which perhaps only intellectuals have the mental bankroll to afford. When the drums roll and the swords are unsheathed for the third World War; when the factory gates swing shut for “lack of work,” and millions pound the pavements looking for non-existing jobs — where, then, the middle ground intellectuals?

Where they were when they joined “Stalinism,” where they were after deserting it — in search of a new “star in the East,” a new faith, a new God. Perhaps we shall be treated to a second, and even third edition of The God That Failed, with only a change in the time and the characters.

The Book Has Merits

The book has tremendous merits, in spite of our criticism of the protagonists. Through the eyes of Arthur Koestler the reader is taken through the turbulent pre-Hitlerian days in Germany and shown how the German Communist Party was used in the interests of the Soviet ruling class, not in the interests of the German workers. Later on, in his trip to the Soviet Union, Koestler reveals how foreign writers are paid royalties, not for their books (some of which are not even published), but for their support and flattery of Stalinism.

Ignazio Silone exposes how he was asked by the Executive Committee of the Communist International in Moscow to condemn a document by Trotsky without ever having read it.

For the reader in the United States, the essay by Richard Wright perhaps furnishes the most sustained interest, since it deals with the experiences of the author in the Communist Party in Chicago.

Andre Gide, who has written extensively of his trips to the Soviet Union, gives the reader a good insight into conditions in the Soviet Union. Although Gide did not see state capitalism in Russia, he was astute enough to point out that “the disappearance of capitalism has not brought freedom to the Soviet workers . . .  It is true of course that they are no longer exploited by shareholding capitalists, but nevertheless they are exploited, and in so devious, subtle and twisted a manner that they do not know whom to blame . . ." 

Louis Fischer furnishes more insight into the stifled situation within Russia, and explains how the Spanish Civil War, and the new Russian Constitution in 1936 gave Stalinism a new lease on life. Stephen Spender also deals with the Spanish Civil War, and has an interesting theory why distinguished scientists like Haldane, Bernal and Joliot-Curie become supporters of movements like Stalinism.

Conclusion To Confusion

Perhaps we cannot better conclude this review than by reciting the circumstances under which Stephen Spender joined the British Communist Party for a few weeks during the winter of 1936-7. After writing Forward from Liberalism, he was invited by Harry Pollitt, head of the British CP, to visit him. Pollit objected to Spender’s criticism of the Moscow Trials in his book. At the same time he suggested that since Spender was in agreement with the Party on the Spanish Civil War, he should join the Party. Spender was to write an article in the Daily Worker criticizing the Stalinists, at the same time he joined the Party! “I accepted this offer,” Spender relates. “I received a Party card, and my article appeared. The article infuriated the Communists in Scotland and the North of England, and my membership in the Party was quickly forgotten.”

Was it the God, or was it understanding, that failed in the case of these six men who spent a “Lost Weekend in Utopia?”

Socialists are not looking for a star, a God, but for their fellow workers to join them in a movement which is understood by all, controlled by all, and in the interests of all — Socialism.

Karl Frederick

Notes:

[1] The Russian Revolution and the appearance of the Communist Parties and the Communist International have caused those who believe in common ownership under democratic control to be all the more careful to call themselves “socialists” in order not to be identified with the state capitalist regime in Russia and the dictatorial methods and objectives of the Stalinists everywhere. However, in terms of the nature of societies, no difference exists between communism and socialism, both being defined as in the previous sentence.

[2] This statement applies as well to Ignazio Silone. Although at the end of his essay he reaffirms his belief in socialism, his concept of the latter is that of Social Democracy, according to latest reports. Social Democracy not only supports capitalism, even strengthens it by reforms, but also sees state capitalism as “socialism.” It is not enough to say one is a “socialist” to be one. One must advocate the revolutionary abolition of capitalism and refuse to work for its reform, in order to wear the label of "socialist.”

The General Strike of 1926 (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death-Knell of the British Communist Party

Have you ever wondered, dear reader, why so many prominent trade-union leaders are ex-Communists? Lawrence Daly of the Miners, Scanlon of the Engineers, Frank Chapple of the Electricians, and others: all ex-Communists, one-time members of the CPGB — but now, having attained high union office, no longer so.

The explanation is quite easy, when you know the history of the Communist Party; not as written by its hired hacks, but its real history. It goes back to the very inception of the Communist Party in this country in 1920, when Lenin wrote a little book called Left-Wing Communism. Lenin, knowing the slender thread by which the Bolsheviks’ power hung, insisted that Communists everywhere should penetrate other organizations to remain existent in the face of persecution.

The most important organizations which the Communists had to infiltrate were the trade unions. There were no lengths to which they would not go to “remain in and influence the Trades Unions”. All methods, including if necessary “lies, trickery and deceit” (Lenin), had to be used for this.

Left-Wing Communism quoted a letter written by W. Gallacher from Scotland to Sylvia Pankhurst’s Workers' Dreadnought, stating that workers’ political parties were useless and that workshop Committees were the answer. Obviously Gallacher, working in Glasgow heavy engineering, was strongly influenced by American De-Leonist industrial-union propaganda (he had spent some time in the States) which was specially attractive in the conditions of the first World War. Lenin got Gallacher to Moscow (and Jack Tanner and Dick Beech — who, however, didn’t buy it) and made him promise to go back and help form a political party pledged to the Bolsheviks’ insurrectionary methods, to try to eventually seize power on the Russian model.

The inevitable side-effect of this policy is secret conspiracy (the so-called “illegal activities”) and the organization of undercover “fractions” to influence and, if possible, control neutral organizations. This the British CP immediately started to do; with, it must be admitted, considerable success. These activities were run by the so-called “Industrial Dept.” of Harry Pollitt and were his first major assignment in the Party.

At first the unions were a sitting duck for the treatment. It was too dead-easy. Notoriously, the vast majority of union members join to protect their jobs. In many trades, the union card is the job-ticket. Frequently, a union branch with several hundred members would attract (and still does) a small handful to its business meetings. Except those intent on office, or who liked the sound of their own voices, the membership was (and still is) dormant. It was partly for this very reason that Gallacher, Murphy and others were right in pointing out the superiority of workshop committees, where everybody was present and could discuss and vote on the spot.

Side by side with the organization of the CP “fraction” went the ostensible aim at the trade-union branch meetings. This was dead-easy too. All you had to do was move “militant” resolutions demanding action for more money, shorter hours, or easier conditions; or, more popularly, the replacement of notoriously corrupt officials (e.g. Jimmy Thomas) — and you had it made.

Part of this process was inevitably nomination of your “progressive”, “militant” type against the old “reactionary”, “indolent”, “corrupt” sitting tenant. Your Goodie against “their” Baddie! Obeying Lenin’s instructions lies, trickery and deceit were unscrupulously used (as in the notorious case of the ETU where Communists were caught red-handed destroying opponents’ ballot papers). The CP apparatus in the unions offered a ready-made band waggon for careerists and job-hunters — until the reaction set in, and anti-CP fractions ousted the CP’s own. Before this, a dozen or so resolute organized Commies could pass resolutions in the name of hundreds, even thousands.

In the early days the CP boasted that it had effective control of most of the influential District Committees in London, and the London Trades Council, besides the Glasgow Trades Council and many similar bodies up-country. And so, on the face of it, what could be simpler? The Party would control the unions; the unions would become more “militant” as the Party stepped up their demands; and eventually the “Dual Power” (on the model of the Petersburg and Moscow Soviets) would be established. After an intervening period of conveniently inept Labour (Kerensky-type) government, “all Power” would pass to the British Soviets — controlled, of course, by the CP. Like that — hey presto !

Then suddenly, History took a hand. The economic situation worsened, a slump occurred after the Labour Government of 1924, the Baldwin government had to subsidize coal production. By 1925 the employers were demanding wage reductions and longer hours for the miners. The trade-union movement tried to counter this by forming the “Industrial Alliance” of the biggest unions to support the miners. After a statement by the Government that it intended implementation of the terms of its Commission on the Mining Industry, the special meeting of TU Executives called for joint action in support of the miners on 3rd May, 1926. The General Strike was on.

This was the CP’s heaven-sent chance, its golden opportunity. As the official historian of the CP wrote, “they were now going to challenge the power of the political State machine.” The Theses of the Comintern “On the Lessons of the British General Strike” declared:

  The Councils of Action organized by the Trades Unions developed into district Soviets; its departments resembled the departments of the Petersburg Soviet in the period of the so-called “Dual Power”.

(History of the CPGB, J. Klugmann)

On 5th May 1926 the second issue of the Communists’ Workers’ Bulletin stated:

  According to the Government wireless a few soldiers at Aldershot refused to entrain for an industrial centre.. From another source we learn that it was nearly the whole battalion. It is reported that the Welsh Guards are confined to barracks for insubordination.

(J. Klugmann, ibid.)

Of all the self-deluding moonshine put out by the CP, this probably ranks among the biggest lumps of wish-thinking it ever achieved. There was not the slightest evidence for the statement that the troops supported the strikers. In fact, then as now, all the evidence sustains the opposite view — that in the event of a head-on clash between unions and the State, most people (the electorate) would support the government. But this would not worry the British (ersatz) Bolsheviki; for, to do it like the Russians, you did it with a minority anyway.

What actually happened? The 1926 General Strike was the death-knell of the CPGB. Its policy a ghastly failure, the miners driven back after six months’ self-starvation, it now denounced its erstwhile darlings the miners’ leaders A. J. Cook and co. (and Cook an ex-CPer !) as “traitors”. From 1926 on, its membership steadily declined. It has now officially adopted Parliamentary methods as “the way to Socialism in Britain” (no Soviets !) and become the target of the numerous Trotskyite split-away groups who, learning nothing from mistakes, denounce it as “reformist" which it always was anyway.

In his History of the CPGB J. Klugmann still flogs the ridiculous notion that the workers "learn more in a few hours” by striking than they do “in normal times” from Marxist theory. What they should have learnt from the General Strike was that it ended in disaster. The CP has paid the price of its stupid, mistaken ideas. Political strikes to oust governments are futile. If the strike is strong enough to win, it is unnecessary. The idea that working-class political power can be won or maintained without conscious political knowledge by an electoral majority is a costly fallacy.

What then remains of all the sound and fury of those hysterical halcyon yesteryears? Only Frank Chapple, Hugh Scanlon, Lawrence Daly and several Uncle Tom Cobleighs who, having been helped to their jobs by the CP “fractions”, promptly left the CP.

Horatio

Shoddy Scholarship (1969)

Book Review from the July 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy by Lewis S. Feuer (Fontana, 9s. 6d.)

Surely the market for Marx-Engels anthologies must be all but played out for a while? Feuer’s collection includes all the obvious choices such as the whole of the Communist Manifesto, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and the Critique of the Gotha Programme plus part of the preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In addition there are excerpts from many other works, including some of the early writings like the German Ideology and Toward the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Some of the letters and essays included are not readily available elsewhere — such as the On Authority article.

The volume is marred by Feuer’s introduction which is facile when it is not down right ill-informed (“. . .  led Marx to abandon the theory he had held that ever society must go through the same sequence of stages"; “In Marx’s thought . . . the working class will found a socialist, then a communist society”, etc. etc.) This is rather shoddy scholarship, even for a sociology professor.

John Crump

Obituary: Heather Ball (2000)

Obituary from the December 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Readers of her regular column will be saddened to hear of the death of Heather Ball last month. As they will have gathered from her recent articles, she had come to suffer from a degenerative disease which increasingly disabled her.

Heather was born in 1933 and brought up in London to where her father had moved from Scotland and before reaching pension age had worked in the various kinds of factory, office and cleaning jobs that was often the only choice for working class women of her generation. Her father was a member of the Communist Party and she was brought up to join first the YCL and then the party itself. However, she was one of the many who left after 1956 following Khrushchev’s secret speech about Stalin and the Hungarian uprising. She joined the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League—a case of out of the frying pan into the fire—from which she was expelled in 1960. This put her off vanguardist politics for good and she became active in the peace movement in East Anglia to where she and her family had moved. In 1994, tiring of single-issue politics too, she joined the Socialist Party. She was active in our Norwich Group and of course as a writer of a regular column in the Socialist Standard which many readers liked as a contrast to the other, more overtly political articles.

We extend our sympathy to her husband John, also a member, and family.

Letters: A Glaring Light (1974)

Letters to the Editor from the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Glaring Light

The coincidence of my handling a copy of New Statesman rummaging through as though the print actually suggested thoughts led me to the end rather suddenly. Your column had the effect of a sharp glaring light unsheathing suggestive substance. You’ve stated your goals clearly, I’m interested in your means to obtain this equalitarian world community. Principally if you view this action from a scientific basis or from a derivative nature espousing fragmented Marxist excerpts. If the latter don’t feel obliged to reply.

Mark Goldwater

Israel

Reply:

To establish socialism the working class must wrest control of the machinery of government and of the armed forces from the hands of the capitalist class and use them to convert the present class ownership of the means of production and distribution into common ownership by the whole of society. In other words it is necessary to take political action to establish a free society.

This conclusion is reached from an analysis of society which is scientific rather than Utopian, and is based on the pioneer work of Marx and Engels. We maintain, and can demonstrate, that Marx’s analysis of capitalism is still valid today, and applies to the West and to the State capitalist economies of Russia, China, Cuba etc. We also hold that his theory of history — the materialist conception of history — is the key to the way in which societies change. The different stages of social development are the result of classes in society pursuing their material interests. Socialism will be the outcome of this class struggle. It will be the outcome of the conscious political action of the vast majority of the working class — the last class in history to achieve its emancipation. It cannot be the work of "enlightened” élites or of a vanguard party of intellectuals.

We also hold, as did Marx and Engels, that Socialism means the abolition of the wages system and the institution of a classless, stateless, moneyless world community with common ownership and democratic control of the means of life with production for use not for sale.

Editors.

Shut Up and Shut Out

At the meeting of the "Hackney Committee Against Racialism”, controlled by the IMG, I explained to the chairman that I wished to explain the Socialist case. Though I was invited, as my name is in the Hackney Council brochure, the chairman stated that I was not to speak. I did not quarrel at all but suggested a speaker from the Socialist Party. "Oh dear no, Tariq Ali is our man.” In brief, red fascists are no different from black fascists.

Recently a poster on the wall at the London School of Economics announced a meeting of IS. I knocked at the door and asked if it was all right to sit and listen. They knew I was a member of the Socialist Party. The answer was "No”. I suppose they’re a secret society.

S. Highams

London N.1

Ourselves and the CP

I am writing to protest at your waste of good Socialist space in the S.S. I refer to your continual obsessive carping on the misguided thinking of the CP in comparison to yours. Surely, with all the futile waste, almost criminal of the capitalist system, this includes state capitalism masquerading as communism, you could leave the CP to its usual smearers in the Labour and Conservative parties. After all there must be something wrong with the CP to warrant this continuous smearing — apart from yours.

A member of the CP can never expect honours from the establishment while still an active member. In order to attain these he must leave and get control of a Union if possible, and duckshove his way to the top, to manipulate its business in capitalism’s favour. A case in point is the ETU where three communists with the help of the present Lord Feather secured controlling positions in that key Union. One became Sir Leslie Cannon — if that was any consolation to him. The establishment know how to reward working-class treachery in their favour.

J. Maryon

Hornchurch.

Reply

We have never gone in for the “smearing” of other political parties. Our criticisms are always based on verifiable fact and never on smear, guilt by association or any of the other tactics employed by capitalist parties.

Our criticism of the so called “Communist" Party is quite different to those used by the Labour and Conservative Parties. We are unique in attacking the CP on the grounds that they are, whatever their proclamations may be, an anti-working class party. The CP advocates not Communism or Socialism (the terms are the same thing although the CP confuse the issue by differentiating them) but State Capitalism.

Nothing that the CP advocates can change the economic position of the working class. When they contest elections they do so on a reform platform talking nonsense such as “The British Road to Socialism” or more nationalization. The suggestion that they want a fundamental change in the basis of society can easily be refuted. For example John Mathews writing in their fortnightly review was full of “criticism” for Labour chancellor Denis Healey’s recent mini-budget because it failed to deal adequately with the problems facing British capitalism. Mathews suggested that Britain should go in for selective import controls, planned investment and that self contradiction in terms “planned trade”. And what did he have to say about capitalism?

  There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the size of the [trade] deficit, and the interest charges to be paid on loans, but no solution — only appeals to make a "national effort”, etc. It needs to be said that the British economy is running down not because of shoddy workmanship, or absenteeism, or any of the pseudo-explanations advanced but because of the economic sabotage of the owners of capital. It is the management of the economy which is at fault, not the economy itself. (Comment August 10, 1974 — emphasis in the original.)

Our unmasking of these political frauds masquerading as revolutionaries is fully justified. The fact that some ex-CPers seek places of privilege and power in the capitalist establishment is not surprising but does not alter the case. Once in power Communists pursue anti-working-class policies. Ken Gill, newly elected to the TUC general council brags that “. . . this mighty Congress has committed itself to wage restraint . . . we hated restraint under Heath but we welcome it under Wilson” (Daily Telegraph 5 September 1974.) 

Need we say more?

Editors.

Russia and the Abyss

The otherwise excellent piece on Russian elections (August Socialist Standard page 133) concludes that 200 collective farm workers and 50 others automatically means 1,000 non-workers. But be careful! Russian classifications are abstruse and devious, many are classified as “Peasants”, several “Intellectuals” (Intelligents) even “Technicians”. I readily agree that it’s all baloney anyway, even a Peasant member of the Supreme Soviet is an “Apparatchik”. Perhaps it’s better to say this, or that we are well aware of Soviet nomenclature.

Secondly with reference to the series on the famous books. Good idea and sure to take. But can we be careful to point to the fallacy of facile comparisons between then and now otherwise we fall right into the Labour Party trap — “There you are how much better now . . .”

So long as we emphasise that in a 1970 world of electronics the “Abyss”, as it was, could no longer exist. Or as we say about The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, many similarities still exist.

The new high-rise flats are an abomination and disaster.

Horatio.

Joy in Living

Reading the SPGB pamphlet Art, Labour and Socialism persuades me that in his Joy in Labour theory, William Morris’s failure to pose and answer a simple but pertinent question restricted the development of his subject.

He has convinced us of the joy useful labour will give, but why? Surely the joy serves a biological end, and is nature’s reward for the fulfilment of that end. But the primary aim is the perpetuation and improvement of life, of which labour is but an ingredient. Our Joy-in-Labour concept could perhaps be logically amended to Joy in Living.

Denied its expression in wage-labour, the impulse finds a compensating gratification in spurious pleasure drawn from the vast arts, entertainment and sports industry. An industry quite distinct from productive processes, that surely provides overwhelming evidence of alienation. An industry much of which, possibly all eventually, a healthy Socialist society will make obsolete.

One quality this industry seeks to express is vitality: an interesting commentary on the condition of its audience. Much of literary and theatrical fiction is clearly vicarious living. A bogus satisfaction rewards the reader of the popular “Whodunit” in which is exploited a perversion of the evolutionary impulse — effort which should be directed to improving life involving the tackling of problems (“challenge”) is reduced to a trivial mental exercise.

F. C. West

London E.2

Misrepresentations of Socialism (1941)

Editorial from the August 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is impossible to exaggerate the harm done to the Socialist Movement by those who, calling themselves Socialists, have taught the workers to believe that State capitalism and social reform are Socialism. Millions of workers all over the world have, through this misdirection, been led to support some form of capitalism, trusting that it would solve their problems. The result was that the way was paved for Hitlers and Mussolinis and other supporters of capitalism to reach their goal. The S.P.G.B. has always been careful to define what Socialism means. Nobody who grasped that definition ever made the error of supposing that State enterprise like the Post Office or public utility corporations like the London Passenger Transport Board had anything to do with Socialism. Nor did they imagine, even for a moment, that Hitler and Mussolini were Socialists or that Socialism could result from the Bolshevist dictatorship in Russia or from a Labour Government in Britain or Australia. But our critics who ridiculed what they called the “doctrinaire” S.P.G.B. all fell into these errors, with disastrous results.

A few recent illustrations will show how deeply those critics have fallen into the mire. In the Readers' Digest (July, 1941) the American writer, Mr. Max Eastman, who used to called himself a Socialist and was an admirer of Labourism and of the Bolsheviks, now dismisses Socialism because, he says, it ignores human nature. In the course of his argument he lumps together Socialism, Syndicalism, Bolshevism, “Guild Socialism,” and Anarchism, and by showing what has happened to the Bolshevist experiment is able to prove that Socialism is impossible. It will be useful to consider Mr. Eastman’s argument more fully in a later issue. At the moment it is sufficient to point out as evidence of his shallow thinking his remark on the Russo-German Pact of 1939 (his article was written before the Nazis invaded Russia): —

   “The Stalin-Hitler pact was not merely a new manoeuvre on the chessboard of nations. it was a drawing together of two halves of the same thing."

Thus is a superficial observer confounded by a hard fact, the Russo-German war!

Mr. Eastman mentions "Guild Socialism” as one of the forms of Socialism. He would no doubt be surprised to learn that when the so-called “Guild-Socialist” Movement was at its height twenty odd years ago it was analysed and denounced [in] the The Socialist Standard and given its proper name, “Guild-Capitalism.” We were right, and it is only necessary to recall that numbers of its advocates, bemused with their own muddled propaganda, recognised their own notions in Mussolini’s and Hitler’s corporate State, and were in greater or less degree taken in by these movements. In the January, 1941, issue of Plebs, Mr. W. T. Colyer quotes from the preface to Otto Strasser’s “Germany Tomorrow,” the following passage, written by those erstwhile “Guildists” and supporters of Bolshevism, Eden and Cedar Paul: —

   “Both brothers were Nazis at a time when the National Socialists were really Socialists as well as Nationalists, and they remained Socialists after Hitler had dropped this part of his creed.”

(Otto Strasser leads, from abroad, a dissident group of Nazis who quarrelled with Hitler. His brother, Gregor, was murdered by Hitler.)

Of course the Nazis were never Socialists or interested in Socialism; but how should the Pauls know this? Had they not for years been preaching various capitalist doctrines in the belief that they were Socialist?

It is forgotten now, but the I.L.P. was likewise deceived by Mussolini, though not so deeply, and its recovery was rapid. Not long after Mussolini obtained power in Italy the New Leader, (November 10th, 1922) published an article, “Fascism and Labour,” by an “Italian correspondent” (he later became a whole-hearted Fascist). In the article the writer, while regretting the destruction by Mussolini of Italian workers’ organisations and murder of workers, urged co-operation with Mussolini in furtherance of the “ new social order.” A typical passage was: —

   “The Fascist victory is a set-back to Socialism, regarded as a party movement and an economic doctrine. . . But Socialism is broader than a party; it is rooted in Labour as a whole, and Fascism desires to-respect the social aspirations of Labour. In the interests of Labour, therefore, we must cease from carping, and make the most of the situation.”

What is significant is that the New Leader, organ of the I.L.P., not only published this article (describing it as “illuminating”), but was unable to decide its own attitude and took refuge in the view that it was too early to decide: —

“Only events can test our correspondent’s optimistic reading of its (Fascism’s) new spirit.’’

What events did prove, in addition to showing the absurdity of the New Leader's wait and see policy, was that the S.P.G.B.’s insistence on the need for clear ideas about Socialism and for the rejection of all spurious imitations was abundantly justified.

He Believed (1951)

From the April 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

A fundamental human desire is to be correct, and in the quest for this correctness a man may be forced perhaps several times to reconsider and revise his opinions. To do otherwise, to hang on to outworn ideas out of misplaced loyalty or pride is sheer dishonesty and frequently a forerunner of dogmatism. At the same time it is wise for an individual perceiving a flaw in his ideas to elucidate the facts of both his old position and the new and examine them carefully lest he finds himself jumping straight out of the frying pan into the fire; or as in the case of Douglas Hyde, out of the Kremlin and into the Vatican.

Douglas Hyde was a well-known British communist, for many years news editor of the Daily Worker, and as such an unprotesting subscriber to its policy. When Russia threw in her lot with Germany in 1939, he faithfully swallowed his ideas of a “war for freedom.” Russia was invaded. He spewed them up again and cried for a “strike in the west” but of course, for no strikes at home. He supported the Labour Party in the ’45 landslide and later opposed it. Then one day he perceived certain contradictions so glaring that even he couldn’t stomach them. Slowly he transferred his affections and capacity for, believing in the unreal to the Roman Catholic church.

And “I Believed,” recently published by Heinemann. Ltd., is his story. 

The national press received it warmly, but it is doubtful whether their joy was over Mr. Hyde’s redemption. More likely was it welcomed as more grist for the mill; fuel for the immediate task of preparing their readers for a future war with their erstwhile allies. In a world imbued with a complex of "leadership,” a leader changing camps is something great and his words must be taken as gospel.

It is interesting to note that several newspapers made great play of the Communist Party’s morality or lack of same. We used to read similar tales of the Nazis, all calculated to raise the indignation of the masses at the “unBritish” behaviour of the enemy. Yet in the same issues these papers reported several sordid court cases including one unsavoury “breach of promise ” without a word of editorial comment. Presumably those people involved were not members of the Communist Party.

However let us get back to the book itself. So far as Mr. Hyde as an individual is concerned, self styled communist or catholic he is our opponent, but his story, and one must admit his apparent sincerity, may serve as a useful guide to why so many workers can subscribe to the fantastic aims and claims of the Communist Party yet still from time to time change their allegiance to organisations which seem diametrically opposed to it.

Right from the word “go” the Communist Party has been primarily the overseas instrument of Russian policy and propaganda, and its ultimate aim to “Sovietise ” the country in which it operates. In a jargon of Marxian phrases and Lenin’s writings it has justified every move of Russia and its own subsequent recantation. At the same time it has sought to build up its membership and the main method used is not one of explaining socialism (which in view of Russia they hardly dare do) or even of finding reasons for the series of crises that have permanently been with us since the first world war and their inception, but by exploiting working class indignation at these recurrent crises and concentrating upon sectional issues in what they refer to as the “day to day” struggle. As Hyde puts it “A strong resentment against social injustice was another of the things which drove me into the Party.” 

Under these circumstances they are not fussy whom they take. A signature upon the dotted line is all that is needed. When Hyde joined he was still a practising Methodist. When one considers that the International Class War Prisoners Aid (later International Labour Defence), the National Unemployed Workers Movement, the “No More War” movement and various organisations crying for Indian independence were but few of the organisations and committees inspired by members of the Communist Party, the hotch-potch of ideas and misconstructions that centred itself at King Street is not surprising. More recently when the Union Movement returned after its seven year enforced vacation we witnessed a Communist Party revival in the Jewish section of the East End, and also this ubiquitous body as the stalwart champion of better pay for nurses.

But a party membership based upon such shifting premises can never boast of a large stable membership. As the spotlight of world events changes its position one section of the membership drifts out another flows in. It is a transit camp and we must concern ourselves with the permanent staff, that hard core which remains stable when all the rest have gone.

Excluding those who are possibly careerists, we cannot doubt their almost fanatical sincerity. Showing a complete disregard for themselves many have been victimised and persecuted by their employers and more than once imprisoned. Yet still they have carried on and it is difficult to analyse their outlook.

Above all things is Russia, a light in a world of darkness as is Mecca to the Mohammedan. There is the home of “socialism” they say, to be protected not only from military assaults but also those of logical argument. Within the party they are compelled to toe the “party line” in whichever direction it may go and it is in this way that it may be compared with the church of Rome, unswervingly obedient to the bulls of Pope Stalin and encyclicals of Cardinal Palme Dutt.

Mr. Hyde chooses to call this fanatical devotion “Marxism” and throughout his book he throws the word about with the liberality of a drunken Scot on New Year’s Eve. In his eyes every step, thought or action made by the Communist Party is either “cold, ungodly Marxism” or “dialectics.” He claims to have read Marx. Perhaps he got hold of a different edition because as we see it Marxism is not a gospel but the findings, namely the materialist conception of history, the labour theory of value and the theory of the class struggle, of a nineteenth century political-economist who was sometimes wrong. One thing is certain. He did not advocate the state capitalism of Russia.

This is not the first time a man has changed his religion. When the confusion of twenty years had taken its toll Douglas Hyde found himself in a wilderness. A chance reading of catholic writers exposed for him a certain affinity of ideas especially about architecture and music. As the “communist” religion withdrew the catholic religion seeped in. At no time was there a vacuum which may have succumbed to reason.

In the closing chapter he writes, “ If I knew from my own experience that communism is wrong I as a writer must say so. That did not mean that I should suddenly start writing as though all my old comrades and colleagues whom I had been proud to call my friends were now a bunch of crooks and morons. At all costs I must hold fast to what I felt to be the facts, those which I knew from my own experience to be true, the belief that the most evil thing in communism is that it claims some of the best and moulds their minds and twists their consciences so that they can be used for the worst”(Our italics.)

Such a highly emotional paragraph, charged as it is with sentiment, could be applied to almost any religion, ancient or modern. Indeed, it is the penalty for belief without reason.

Ronald.

Editorial: The Sterility and Futility of Ex-Communist "Intellectuals" (1950)

Editorial from the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manchester Guardian for the 10th July contains an article giving a report of the “Congress for Cultural Freedom" that was held in Berlin from June 26th to 30th. The article is by H. R. Trevor-Roper who attended as one of the British delegates and who appears to have summed up the nature of the congress and the delegates with a considerable amount of clear-sightedness.

   “This congress turned out to be a political demonstration. As such it was well organised and no doubt successful. My only objection is that it was not advertised as such, and I do not think it would have obtained all its sponsors or all its delegates if it had been correctly advertised.”

As the article makes clear the congress was certainly not one for cultural freedom; it was in fact dominated by renegade communists who made vicious attacks upon their late friends and upon the ideas they had formerly backed as the essence of all that was advanced in culture, and deserving of world wide support, with them, of course in the vanguard of the movement—the admired leaders! Unfortunately for themselves they were, as always, only ignorant tools. When they discovered this they turned their impotent fury upon the hands that led them up the garden.

Mr. Trevor-Roper describes some of the incidents that make plain the narrow personal outlook of these would-be leaders of the world, and how little this outlook has to do with cultural freedom. Some quotations from this article are enlightening.

   “The printed prospectus offered highly intellectual terms of reference, and Professor Ayer (one of the English delegates), in his opening speech, kept to them. To a disapproving audience he quoted Mill and examined the philosophic justification of tolerance. The Greek chairman then explained that this was irrelevant, since our enemies were too intolerant to be tolerated; and a German, declaring that ‘in our times John Stuart Mill cannot help us,’ appealed for a rival dogmatism as a more useful weapon of war. Professor Herman J. Muller, of Indiana, then spent forty five minutes denouncing Lysenko as an ignoramus.”

Mr. Trevor-Roper remarks that after this it was impossible to return to an intellectual level. The next day they discussed “The defence of peace and freedom," Mr. James Burnham opening on the subject. This is what Mr. Trevor-Roper has to say of Mr. Burnham’s contribution:

   “Mr. Burnham’s prophecies have always been oracular and infallible in form, but their content has needed frequent revision. At the moment he is prophesying the inevitable defeat of Communism. In his speech he advocated a somewhat expensive method of securing the inevitable, for he preached total war; denounced pacifism, then (by an imperceptible transition) peace; and urged his audience to judge the morality of atom bombs according to the nationality of their manufacturers.”

Then Mr. Arthur Koestler added his contribution: 

   “Mr. Koestler made, altogether, three speeches, and his theme was constant if unconstructive. It was that Right and Left are meaningless terms; that the choice before us is Communism or Anti-Communism; and he who is not with us is against us. On this occasion he developed his theme into a long attack on England as parochial and isolationist for refusing to see the problem in these clear terms.”

Mr. Koestler has always been a master at seeing problems in clear terms, only the terms get mixed up— one day on one side and the next day on the other side.

The ex-communist Franz Borkenau also made a contribution about which the writer of the article makes the following comments :

   “Pouring out his German sentences with hysterical speed and gestures, he screamed that he was a convert from Communism and proud of it; that past guilt must be atoned for; that the ex-communists alone understood Communism and the means of resisting it; that Communism could only mean perpetual war and civil war; and that it must be destroyed at once by uncompromising frontal attack, and yet, terrible though it was, this fanatical speech was less frightening than the hysterical German applause which greeted it. It was different from any other applause at that congress. It was an echo of Hitler’s Nuremburg.”

The writer of the article adds that with that speech and the applause the whole structure of the congress was revealed as an alliance between two parties—the ex-communists among the delegates and the German Nationalists in the audience. “Cultural freedom,” he says, “ was nowhere.”

The concluding paragraph of the article is .an example of the clear-headedness of the writer, at least on this particular question. He sums up as follows:

   “The congress was in no sense an intellectual congress. . . .  It was simply Wroclaw in reverse—the Wroclaw of the ex-communists. Signor Silone once suggested that the coming struggle would be between the Communists and the ex-Communists. After the sterile congresses of Wroclaw and Berlin I am confirmed in my view that a more satisfactory solution will be offered by those who have never swallowed and therefore never needed to re-vomit, that obscurantist doctrinal rubbish whose residue can never be fully discharged from the system.”

These ex-Communists (Burnham, Koestler, Borkenau, Hook, Lasky and the rest) are incapable of understanding now the mainspring of their own fatuous conduct. Blinded by a false conception of their own importance, always wrong, and violently wrong, they still hope to occupy the centre of the political stage and bolster up their empty egoism with the plaudits of equally blind followers. Yet so great is their political ignorance that they are fated always to back the wrong horse. Their actions demonstrated that it is they, more than any, who fail to understand the basis of the Russian dictatorship and its imperialist policy, and that it is also they who are the more easily rendered impotent. They fall for every wrong social theory, for every futile movement, and are used and cast aside by political climbers of every brand; their contradictory professions, fleeting loyalties and futile actions brand them as what they are—servile tools of ambitious political groups always ready, like mangy curs, to snap at the heels of those who have fed them. Blindly imagining that they arc superior to the working class they are in fact but the scum that floats on the surface of that class.

The Illusion of Disillusionment (1950)

Book Review from the June 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Because of its inner contradictions Capitalism is a dying and decadent social order. This decadence is reflected not only in its institutions but in its literature. That is why some of its most effective literature is that of despair, cynicism and protest.

The first World War did much to shatter the complacency of 19th century Capitalism. The slumps, massive unemployment and wide “Labour unrest” which followed it, seemed for many to threaten social disintegration.

It was in this period of shell-shock disillusionment that many “intellectuals” began to lose faith in Capitalism and to search desperately for a new faith. Having no real historic evaluation of social development, they had no real solution to existing social problems. It became easy—fatally easy—for them to seek escape from the obsessional anxieties of a dark capitalist reality in the wishful thinking of an enchanted socialist fairy-land—Soviet Russia.

A miracle had happened. Socialism had been established in an economically backward country, All things were now possible. Not only were the “toiling masses” to be freed but art and literature would also be freed from its degrading commercial morality and cash payment. For many “intellectuals” well might Russia look to be “ All this and Heaven too.”

The six contributors to “The God That Failed” (Hamish Hamilton) could easily be fitted into that category of intellectuals. The dust cover also announces it as “Six Studies in Communism.” The contributors are Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Andre Gide, Louis Fischer, the American negro writer Richard Wright and the poet Stephen Spender. All are Soviet apostates, ideological crusaders in an holy war against their once adopted Russian Fatherland.

This book is not primarily about the objective state of affairs in Russia but the subjective state of mind of each of the writers over Russia; their doubts, inner conflicts and guilt feelings as part of the protracted process of disillusionment resulting from the shattering impact of their experiences inside Russia or the Communist Party or both. Each appears not so much as an objective commentator on Russia but rather in the role of a Dostoevsky of a fallen and disgraced ideology.

In the first fine careless rapture of their conversion they regarded themselves as “servants serving a higher purpose”—vide Mr. Crossman, M.P.. who writes the preface. They were however “intellectuals” and, according to Mr. Crossman, better able to interpret the social significance of an age than were the inarticulate millions. How catastrophically they failed in this respect their own confessions bear damning testimony.

The totalitarian requirements of Russian State Capitalism were unwilling or unable to make concessions even to gifted servants. Mr. Crossman tells us that these intellectuals were treated with indifference by the Party apparatus. He also makes the suggestion that the Kremlin might have regarded their influence as negligible. It does seem that this “indifferent’ of the Kremlin towards them gives the book its strong personal edge on Russia. This accounts for their concern when “The Party line” affected them as individuals and consequently clashed with their own preconceived ideas on their role and status as “intellectuals.” It might also explain why on matters that affected them less, i.e. the glaring anomalies in Russian social life, they showed, in spite of the overwhelming proof at their disposal, an almost unbelievable capacity to believe what they wanted to believe and an almost incredible credulity in swallowing Kremlin rationalisations of the ugly contradictions and crass inconsistencies existing in Russia.

Indeed Mr. Crossman in a revealing passage tells us that “If the Comintern had only shown an occasional mark of respect for the western intellectual it could have won the support of the largest body of progressive thought in the world.” He adds that “not one would have hesitated to have returned in the protracted process of withdrawal if the Party had shown a gleam of understanding of his belief in human freedom and human dignity.”

So for “an occasional mark of respect” these intellectuals could have got round the awkward dilemma of vast social inequalities in “Socialist Russia;” have ignored the brutality and repression of its state machinery, its Moscow trials and slave camps. They might even have returned to the cess pool unconscious of its mud and slime, all for “ an occasional mark of respect.”

Perhaps these people were deceived by the Kremlin but most of all they deceived themselves. In spite of their inner conflicts and Dostoevskian torments they never achieve the level of objective self-criticism; never see that their own attitude as intellectuals and their claim to interpret social reality in a way different from the “ inarticulate millions ” has, in its way, contributed to the perpetration and perpetuation of the Russian myth as effectively as Soviet inspired propaganda.

People like Gide and Silone are in essence religious idealists. They preferred to regard Soviet Russia less as a social phenomenon than as a religious revival, and Socialism as not basically the transformation of one set of productive relations to another set, but as a way of living like the early Christians. To their patronage of Marxism they brought the authority of the Gospels. Marx, it seemed, played the role of “ John the Baptist ” to Lenin’s “Jesus Christ.”

Richard Wright came to Communism he says knowing nothing of economics which meant he knew nothing of Socialism (the terms Socialism and Communism are of course synonymous). He also was a religious convert to the Communist Party and brought to it that humourless, deadly earnestness with its readiness to live and even die for “the cause,” so typical of many Communist converts. For him, the cause was mainly the "coloured question.” It was Stalin’s National and Colonial Question that won his interest. His internationalism was in effect merely a black and white cosmopolitanism. He fails to appreciate that only the abolition of Capitalism can guarantee the emancipation of workers, black or white, from their real thralldom, the thralldom of those denied access to the productive resources to a privileged section who own those resources. His writing becomes at times almost hysterical. His account of his persecution at the hands of the Chicago Local is more reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan than a so called proletarian party.

Louis Fischer’s is the most objective account—that of a humane and sympathetic supporter whose sentiments over Russia led him badly astray. Stephen Spender is just another of the pink poets who left the Fabian drawing-room in search of red-blooded political adventure. He appears to have wandered back without ever finding out what it was all really about.

Koestler is the most orthodox of these “Communist” converts. He even claims to have accepted Marxism, although his account of it is never more than the tedious rubber-stamped version of the typical communist editorial. In effect he was one of the many highly emotional anti-Fascists who believed that the Communist Party was the best instrument for serving such ends.

Koestler’s account of his seven year membership of the Communist Party is a piece of sheer self-dramatisation. Indeed Marxism merely serves as a somewhat dubious literary device for sustaining the suspense and tension of a thriller. The chief impressions one gathers from his tale are of a temporary period of conspiratorial anonymity; visits of party “contacts,” from whom he received instructions and to whom he gave bits of information gleaned in his journalistic capacity in a big newspaper publishers; his studies in the art of going underground and acquiring techniques for insurrection; his participation—although he was, he says, never in the actual shooting frays—in the political cum Chicago— gangster warfare between Nazis and Communists. All of which activity suggests not so much adult political reasoning but rather an adolescent desire to play “Cops and Robbers.”

He left the Communist Party as the result of three carefully chosen phrases which he used at a meeting of German emigre writers. One was “ No movement, party or person can claim the privilege of infallibility.” Another was a quotation from Thomas Mann—“A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.” Although at the meeting he uttered no criticism of Russia or the Communist Party, it was, he says, a declaration of war. A few days later he resigned his membership.

This piece of typical Koestlerian crypticism simply adds up to the plain fact that he had merely discovered that lies and corruption are still lies and corruption no matter under what guise they appear; that the end does not justify the means because in such practices the means themselves become the end. It took seven years of intense political experience and on-the-spot observation for this intellectual to painfully acquire what the newest convert to our organisation regards as an almost self evident proposition.

Nevertheless “ Fight Fascism ” was still for him the political categorical imperative. He supported the war. He regarded it in the character of a crusade. In an article in the New York Times Magazine during the war he referred to the war as a showdown between the powers of light and darkness. He did make the half hearted reservation that it was not the final showdown. Nevertheless he left no doubt about his belief that it was a showdown.

Koestler is always getting his political objectives mixed up with his “ id ” and “ super ego ” As an admirer of Freud he is always seeking truth, not at the level of empirical observation but in the dark depths of his “unconscious,” to which he seeks to descend. Occasionally he comes up for air but it is never with the truth but always another error.

Koestler tells us in the preface to “The Yogi and the Commissar” that since his schooldays he has not ceased to marvel at the fool he was the year before. He says this is still true today although in a modified form. For some that may be a Koestlerian epigram. For us it would be fitting words for his political epitaph.

We cannot resist the temptation of saying that what is happening in Russia today is an empirical confirmation of the correct position we took up right from the first as to the real nature of Russian social and economic development, while the intellectual Christopher Columbuses were feverishly discovering “The Socialist Sixth of the World.”

“The God That Failed” might provide one of the popular formula’s which serve as current explanations of Russia. They are often successful because, although they do not say anything objectively valid about Russia, they do give the illusion of understanding what they do not really understand. It will perhaps be accepted by people who are politically naive and no more than merely curious about social affairs.

The writers of this book seem to have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Russia still remains for them a sinister historical enigma. All of them still believe Russia had got on the right path but somehow has taken the wrong turning. Believing as they do in a non Marxist sense that men make history, they believe that bad men make bad history.

Having started with illusions they were ripe—rotten ripe one might say, for disillusionment. In substance their disillusionment consists of the replacing of one set of illusions with another set. One hardly knows whether to call the book a study in tragic futility or a lesson in futile tragedy.

But this is where we came in.

Ted Wilmott