The Butcher of the Commune. (1909)

From the August 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

“It is a lie—their Priests, their Pope,

Their Saints:—their . . all they fear or hope

Are lies, and lies …”

Had Robert Browning’s victim of the Inquisition lived in our own time she could have added “their Press” to her list of lying agents. The truth of this is never more clearly seen than on the occasion of a popular military “hero” shuffling off this mortal coil.

On July 8th, at his house in Paris, expired General the Marquis of Gallifet, Prince of Martigues, etc., at the advanced age of 79. This old Bonapartist scoundrel, referred to by capitalist journals, both French and English, as “Famous French Fighter,” “Friend of King Edward,” “Great loss to France,” etc., etc., was in reality an unscrupulous and abandoned wretch, who, by his cold-blooded murders at the time of the Commune, earned the undying hatred of all who hold dear the cause of working-class freedom.

As Socialists we cannot fail to be struck by the wonderful and significant unanimity displayed by the organs of Capital on both sides of the Channel, when estimating the dead “hero’s” character.

Thus the Daily News, peaceful persuader and mouthpiece of reform, whilst lightly touching on his “severe repression in 1871,” gave due prominence to “his services to France.” The Petit Journal of July 9th wrote as follows :

“Eccentricities of character could not justify the story of executioner in civil warfare. It is said he took a fiendish pleasure in butchering conquered federals who had fallen into his hands. No trustworthy evidence of any weight has ever come to light to support these accusations, against which he was always unwilling to defend himself; finding that, as he himself once wrote in a letter, ‘to apologise would be wanting in elegance’ !”

No trustworthy evidence !

The Commune was dead. The last barricade had been captured and its brave defenders either massacred or taken prisoners.

The special correspondent of the Daily News (how “the whirligig of time brings in his revenges”) whilst searching for appropriate “copy” amongst the barricades, had the misfortune to fall in with Gallifet’s soldiers, who, despite the fact that the pressman held a pass from the Versailles Government, forced him to join a herd of unarmed prisoners.

These poor wretches were being marched from Paris to Versailles.

The description by this eye-witness of the scenes on the road has often been quoted.

“The column of prisoners halted in the Avenue Uhrich, and was drawn up, four deep, on the footway, facing to the road. General the Marquis de Gallifet and his staff, . . . dismounted and commenced an inspection from the left of the line. Walking down slowly and eyeing the ranks, the General stopped here and there, tapping a man on the shoulder or beckoning him out from the rear ranks. In most cases without further parley, the individual thus selected was marched out into the centre of the road, where a small supplementary column was thus soon formed. . . It was evident that there was considerable room for error. A mounted officer pointed out to Genera! Gallifet a man and a woman for some particular offence. The woman, rushing out of the ranks, threw herself on her knees, and, with outstretched arms, protested her innocence in passionate terms. The General waited for a pause, and then with most impassive face and unmoved demeanour, said : ‘Madame, I have visited every theatre in Paris ; your acting will have no effect upon me’ (ce n’est pas la peine de jouer la comedie) . . It was not a good thing on that day to be noticeably taller, dirtier, cleaner, older, or uglier than one’s neighbours. One individual in particular struck me as probably owing his speedy release from the ills of this world to his having a broken nose. . . Over a hundred being thus chosen, a firing party told off, and the column resumed its march, leaving them behind. A few minutes afterwards a dropping fire in our rear commenced, and continued for over a quarter of an hour. It was the execution of these summarily convicted wretches.” Daily News, June 8th, 1871.

This description was deemed worthy of a leading article on the next day. The following is a brief abstract:

“. . For the touch of M. de Gallifet’s fingers meant death. The appearance of the unfortunate men and women who were thus singled out for execution is described as being something horrible. One already wounded, his shirt soaked with blood, sat down in the road and howled with anguish . . . others wept in silence ; two soldiers, presumed to be deserters, pale but collected, appealed to all the other prisoners as to whether they had ever seen them amongst their ranks. . . The huddled mass of corpses which was subsequently seen by several horror-stricken correspondents showed where M. le Marquis had passed.”—Daily News, June 9, 1871.

From the “Manifesto of the Working Men’s International” we take the following:

“The captured soldiers of the line were massacred in cold blood ; . . . Gallifet, the kept man of his wife, so notorious for her shameless exhibitions at the orgies of the Second Empire, boasted in a proclamation of having commanded the murder of a small troop of National Guards, with their captain and lieutenant, surprised and disarmed by his Chasseurs.”

Does the Petit Journal want any further evidence ?

Our message is to the working class. We bid them to remember that at all times the powers that be are determined to maintain their supremacy by every means in their power. If they cannot gull the workers by political cheating, lying and chicanery, they are prepared to shoot down men, women and children by thousands rather than surrender one jot or tittle of their beloved “rights of property.”

Like every other class in the course of history, the ruling class came into power by means of the command they held of armed force. When we have sifted and winnowed out the chaff of “comforts of religion,” “respect for law and order,” “adaptability.” and all the other canting phrases beloved of labour niisleaders we find that the ultimate appeal is to force. Ignorance plays a great part in helping to keep the workers in subjection, but it is by force the “super” class hold their position. We must consciously organise therefore for the capture of the armed forces in order to convert them from an instrument of oppression into an agent of emancipation. Let this “consummation devoutly to be wished” once become a fact, then those brave souls who perished in the Commune will not have died in vain.

Fritz.

50 Years Ago: Crime and Punishment (1977)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist society will, of course, try to protect itself against anti-social acts. What it will not do is to debase human life and stultify its own efforts by introducing the irrelevant idea of punishment. It will seek primarily to remove the cause, a line which our present rulers are prevented from following by their need to defend private property.

#    #    #    #

Secondly, it will recognise that some breaches of public order are inevitable, and are risks which society must accept as it accepts the wind and the rain. To embody brutal penalties in legal codes is no better insurance against them than is the action of the savage who makes an image of his God to protect him against the terrors of nature and then smashes the image when he suffers loss through storm or flood. All he does is to give vent to his disappointment. We are not savages, and must learn not to wreak our rage on unfortunate prisoners whom chance has brought within the reach of the law!

[From an unsigned editorial on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, Socialist Standard, September 1927.]

Voice From The Back: The farce must go on (1998)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The farce must go on

Executions continue while work is in progress at Huntsville Prison, Texas, in renovating the spectators’ salon in front of the execution chamber. For reasons of economy, the prison authorities are having the work done by the inmates, who are engaged in making seating more comfortable and spacious for the spectators, and enhancing visibility. Le Monde, 19 September (translated).

Melt-down

Azerbaijan is a former Soviet republic located in a disagreeable spot just south of Russia and just north of Iran. It is know for nothing except oil . . . Scholars who believe that history ended with the collapse of Communism should visit Baku, because in Baku, nothing is settled. Who could predict the future of a country that many in Moscow—volatile, feverish Moscow—believe shouldn’t be a country at all, but instead a province of a reanimated Russian empire. In Teheran, Azerbaijan is seen as an unforgivable contradiction: a secular Shiite sate, a country ripe for Islamization. In ten years’ time Azerbaijan could be an Islamic state, or a new-Communist state, or a capitalist democracy, or a capitalist autocracy, or even part of Russia. New York Times, 4 October.

Relentless pressure (1)

Stress at work is on the increase, with three quarters of health and safety officers saying it is the biggest workplace hazard, according to a TUC survey published today. Guardian, 23 September.

Relentless pressure (2)

On Tuesday the Environment Agency will consider an application from BNFL to increase its emissions of radioactive gases. Mail on Sunday, 18 October.

Be happy!

Revolutionary anti-suicide glass screens are to be introduced for the first time in Britain on London Underground’s £2.7 billion Jubilee Line extension from central to east London. Suicide attempts on the Underground currently average almost three a week. Guardian, 15 October.

Breakdown

“The challenge to the international community is immediate. We can’t wait around. This isn’t going to go away. It’s here, it’s now and it’s urgent.” It was the Prime Minister’s strongest admission so far that the capitalist system may be on the verge of collapse. Sun, 8 October.

Blasphemy!

A top Manchester lawyer is to complain to the advertising watchdog over posters that “encourage people to skive off work,” Paul Nicolls, head of employment law at Dibb Lupton Alsop, is increased by the campaign by the outdoor clothing firm Karrimor. It’s bright blue posters, plastered on the back of some buses in Greater Manchester say: “Phone in sick—Karrimor, the great British mountains company.” Mr Nicolls said: “This is irresponsible marketing, encouraging people to take time off work on the pretext of illness at a time when British businesses are losing the equivalent of £13 billion a year through sickness absenteeism.” Manchester Evening News, 31 August.

Religion + nationalism = murder

Marija Bistrica, Croatia—Pope John Paul II over the weekend beatified the 1940s archbishop of Zagreb as a martyr to “the atrocities of the Communist system”. Beatification is the final step before canonization as a saint. By paying such homage to Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, who was imprisoned by the Tito government as a Nazi collaborator, the Pope stepped into one of the bitterest disputes that linger between Croats and Serbs . . . They [Serbs] have long viewed Cardinal Stepinac as a wartime sympathiser with the pro-Nazi government of Croatia, which killed tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies—a regime that many here see as the precursor of today’s independent state. New York Herald Tribune, 5 October.

And persecution

[With independence] “Everyone from the former USSR was considered hostile,” recalls Janis Kahanovics, vice director of the Naturalisation Council. The Riga authorities only accorded citizenship to those already in the country between the wars, and to their descendants. From one day to the next, more than 700,000 immigrants who had arrived during the Soviet occupation found themselves stateless. Referring to a “violation of human rights” in Latvia, Russia refuses to normalise relations and has enforced economic sanctions. The dispersal by force of a demonstration by the elderly, for the most part Russian speakers, and a parade of Latvian Waffen-SS veterans through Riga in March, have contributed to the straining of bilateral relations. Le Monde, 3 October (translated).

Nice little earner

The government is to press on with controversial plans to privatise the state agency that owns Porton Down biological warfare unit. Despite opposition from UK arms manufacturers, the Ministry of Defence is about to appoint financial advisers to review how best to handle a sell-off. Financial Mail on Sunday, 18 October.

50 Years Ago: A Crime of Avarice (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Thursday, April 16th. a woman, Nurse Waddingham, was hanged for murder. She had been found guilty of poisoning a patient in her nursing home, with the object of getting the patient's money. A special correspondent of the Evening News, on the day of the execution, wrote at some length on the life of Nurse Waddingham and on the motive for the murder: "Passion played no part in prompting her crime The motive was one more often associated with men murderers — avarice". Avarice, the dictionary tells us, is "greed of gain". So 34-year-old Nurse Waddingham, widow of "a respectable Nottingham yeoman ", mother of five children, was greedy. What made her greedy? A few years ago. during a court case, her household was described: "There seemed never any money in the house, and scarcely any food. No rent had been paid for nearly two years". The Evening News mentions this, but makes no comment. Poverty is so common that it is not news unless a murder is committed. Then the very natural desire to have food, clothing and shelter in a world where these exist in abundance — for the privileged minority of the population — is "avaricious"’ if the person concerned is not a member of the propertied class.

The murder was a callous one. but so are the journalists' capitalist employers callous. They accept the facts of working-class poverty, undernourishment and insecurity as necessary evils, just as they do all the premeditated atrocities of their war makers. Then, when some individual takes to private murder as a means of getting out of destitution, they sit back and sermonise about avarice.

[From the Socialist Standard, May 1936]

Editorial: The Priests and Politics. (1930)

Editorial from the March 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Archbishop of Canterbury, and other prelates and religious leaders are making public protests about alleged religious persecution in Russia, and they ask that steps be taken involving interference in the internal affairs of Russia.

Mr. Henderson, the Foreign Secretary, in reply to questions in the House of Commons stated that “the reports of religious persecution were causing the Government grave concern."

The Executive Committee of the National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches, in a resolution passed at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, express its “utmost horror and reprobation of the policy of persecution adopted by the Soviet Government against the Christian and other religious people of Russia, and its sacrilegious violence against all forms of religious belief.” The Executive also urges upon the British Government the “imperative necessity of using to the utmost all available means of remedying this terrible situation.”

How righteously indignant these people have suddenly become who were silent during the decades of Czarist persecution when the knout was freely used, Jewish pogroms were a commonplace, and “Siberia” became a byword for misery and despotism.

And the basis of their indignation is largely imaginary. The Archbishop himself, in the House of Commons on the 20th of February, stated:

“I propose to make the most exhaustive enquiries” (Daily News, February 21st), thereby admitting that he had so far acted on rumour.

Prebendary Gough, the head of the Christian Protest Movement, has already had to climb down when caught, and admit in the Morning Post for February 20th that “those who are conducting the movement are well aware that the savage orgies which were so frequent in the earlier stages of the Soviet domination do not now characterise the procedure of the persecution.” But neither he nor anyone else has, so far given evidence of the earlier “savage orgies." If there were “earlier savage orgies” how is it that the righteous indignation of the priests has only now found a voice when, according to themselves, the persecution is on the wane?

Further, Arthur Ransome, in a letter to the Manchester Guardian of February 18th, proved that Prebendary Gough’s quotation from Pravda of October 25th, which he alleged was an example of the execution of “persons who openly and actively practise their religion” had been carefully doctored. The real, quotation showed something else entirely—that a military monarchist organisation, composed of the remnants of bands who had distinguished themselves by especial savagery during the civil war, had formed up under the flag of a religious monastic sect, the “name-glorifiers.” Gregorovitch, the leader of the organisation, declared that it set itself the task of ceaseless struggle with the Soviet Government. The seat of the organisation was in the mountains, and they were buying munitions and preparing for armed revolt. The Soviet Government discovered the plot and shot the ringleaders— just as the British Government shot the ringleaders of the Sinn Fein revolt in 1916, all of whom were Christians.

One may ask why the priests should suddenly become so concerned about the fate of their co-religionists in another country. The explanation is not far to seek.

Since the days of the native medicine man religion has been a prop and a handmaiden to each ruling class, and a priestly group has evolved parallel with the evolution of Government and secured a share of the spoil from exploitation. So strong has been the position of religion that each revolution of the past has had a religious glamour cast over it and has involved modification of the creeds of defeated rulers.

So the Church that bids the sweated worker “be patient” and bear his cross in silence, cannot remain still when its position is challenged. The Church leaders imagine that the present regime in Russia threatens the existence of Religion and therefore they would be prepared to violate all the laws they bless sooner than see a diminution in their power.

Between the Lines: Keep the tears flowing (1988)

The Between the Lines column from the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Keep the tears flowing

Television thrives on tears. Tears of distress make good news disaster stories; tears of sentimentality bring in a few quid for Terry Wogan's annual evening of pseudo-benevolent piety. Children In Need (BBC1. Friday 27 November, all evening); tears of anger, such as those of victims of so-called terrorists' attack, are easier images than those of explanation. It is a cruel and harsh observation to make, but the facts indicate that cheers go out in the TV centres every time news of a new cause for tears and mass suffering comes in through the teleprinter. One sees the look of excited expectation upon the faces of these tasteless, trivialising newsreaders; "And news is just coming in of an air disaster in Manchester — it looks like as many as twenty could be dead — but keep watching, we'll do our best to push the figures up — and then we'll be the first on the scene when the injured are persuaded to show their ugly wounds before the cameras — as a matter of fact, a little birdy tells me that we might just have first degree burn on a little kid to flash before you. so keep your eyes on the screen and then well show you the ritual tour of the overcrowded casualty wards by The Royal Couple".

No, of course it is not true that TV producers actually take a sadistic pleasure in seeing workers suffer, but there can be no doubt that tears make good TV for them and that is what they are out to make. One recalls that awful day when cameras showed the burning alive of those numerous workers who stood on the unsafe terraces at Bradford Football Club and perished. Of course, the commentators were genuinely moved. But something else was going on. TV uses disaster for a particular social function. Firstly, it is intended to say to viewers. "Look at these poor sods: you might be poor, insecure and depressed, but at least you're not the ones being burned alive. There's always someone worse off than you. you know". How long have workers been deterred from taking real action to solve our own misery now on the grounds that to do so would be wrong, for first we must attend to the miseries of those who are worse off than us?

Secondly, there is something inherently irrational about tears. To be sure, it is psychologically very useful to have a good cry when misery becomes too much to bear — and it is incredible the number of men who are afraid to do so, not least because of the TV imagery which shows that "men don't cry". But tears are an expression, not an explanation; a cry and not a speech. And TV likes to catch the workers at our most inarticulate and animalistic. It confirms the basic Christian doctrine that try as we might to pose as reasoned beings, when the Lord decides that it is disaster time (vicious swine that this legendary god must be) all we are empowered to do is weep like babies.

Thirdly, disaster allows the capitalist system to be seen as caring. That is why Margaret Thatcher is always on the scene — with cameras firmly focussed on her — when the tears are flowing. The newsreader lets us know that The Queen sends her condolences. When do these uncaring, rich parasites send their condolences to the families of the thousands of old people who die of hypothermia each winter because they are too poor to switch on a heater? But give us a nice, single, packaged disaster and we see just how caring these defenders of the system really are.

What TV does not show — or, if it ever makes moves towards doing so, it happens at late and undramatic moments — is why these tears must flow. Why did hundreds drown in the cold sea off Zeebrugge? Was it anything to do with the shipowners making huge profits out of over-packing cross-channel ferries? Why did they burn to death at Bradford? Were the owners of the football club, who allowed spectators to stand on dangerous wooden stands, not placing profit before human needs? Why did they burn to death on the escalators at King's Cross station? We do not yet know, but might it not have at least something to do with London Regional Transport's decision to divert the money it had allocated for scrapping the unsafe wooden escalators to building heavy steel barriers to stop fare dodgers?

Why are children in need, Terry Wogan? Your children will not be in need (and we are very glad to know it) because you receive millions of pounds for presenting trivia to the BBC. But is it really worth spending one evening a year indulging in a TV charity marathon which can only collect less than £10 million from the entire population of Britain when every hour the British government spends £1.5 million on arms alone? Children In Need shows a tragedy beyond the tragedy. The tragedy it tries to depict is that of large numbers of kids who need our pennies and the few quid which the worker can spare in order to alleviate their suffering. Credit where it is due: the presenters of the programme all do a very good job in showing us just how needy these kids are. just how tearful we should be. But the tragedy which transcends those tears is that we are now living in a society which is more than able to satisfy the needs of those deprived and diseased children — more than capable of allocating resources to end or alleviate as much as possible their suffering, but does not do so because of the warped logic of capitalism which must place profits before needs.

The real tragedy is that we must look at the needless waste of children's health and happiness which has been allowed to go on in a system which makes a TV show out of caring and an economic science out of saying "go away and die". When workers wake up to the sense of what capitalism is doing to us all — to the children of Ethiopia who now are pushed before the cameras so that more tear-flowing may be indulged in. led by the ever-miserable Bob Geldof — and to men, women and children across the world — when workers wake up there will be more important things to do than to weep. We can leave that to the tears of relief which will doubtlessly follow upon our self-emancipation.


Murder by law

If tears are what you fancy, then few programmes in 1987 could have had more effect than Fourteen Days In May, shown by the BBC last November. This was a documentary which would soon disabuse innocents who were under the misapprehension that racists stopped sending their victims into gas chambers after the Nazis fell from power. Not so. This extremely moving documentary told the story of a black worker from the Southern USA who was convicted to death for the alleged crime of shooting a white cop and — worst of all — raping a white woman. In the racist South nothing short of legalised murder would suffice to teach the man a lesson (there's nothing like death to teach us lessons, I always think) and in this particular state death is by gassing.

The BBC cameras showed the gas chamber being prepared by the wage slaves in uniform, and even the gassing of a rabbit on a trial run. All very sick. We watched the victim live out his final fourteen days on Death Row where he had been for eight years. We watched him hope for leniency and we watched him walk into the gas chamber. It was like watching a social system throwing up. After Johnson had been gassed to death we had a message from the producer flashed across the screen. On the night that he had allegedly committed the two crimes of which he had always pleaded innocent he had been with a black woman. This alibi went into a police station some time after his arrest and offered herself as a witness but was warned by the white cop that she had no right to interfere in their business.

Earlier the same month we were shown on Channel Four the excellent two-part documentary, Shoah, which told of the mass gassing of people by the Nazis half a century ago. Capitalism still goes on; the gas chambers are still being used; who the hell are the inhabitants of this system to call themselves civilised?

Steve Coleman

Editorial: Crime and Punishment. (1927)

Editorial from the September 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti.
All the world has been stirred by the execution of the two Italians, Sacco and Vanzetti, in Massachusetts, U.S.A. The workers, generally speaking, have assumed their innocence, and have seen in the case the vindictiveness of a ruling class which manipulates the machinery of the law against propertyless wage-earners. Legal circles in this and other European countries have been shocked by the glaring defects, of a judicial system which can keep men for seven years in jail, and still, in spite of manifest doubts as to their guilt, contemplate their execution. And hundreds of thousands of ordinarily humane people, who accept the original verdict of the American Courts, and do not think of reading class bias into the case, nevertheless felt impelled to protest against the brutality of adding to the sentence of death the torture of seven years' suspense.

By far the most significant and promising aspect of the tragedy has hardly been mentioned. We refer to the statement made by American newspapers that the attitude of propertied circles who resisted the release of these prisoners was frankly based on the interests, real or imaginary, of the ruling class in Massachusetts. They said, in effect, that, guilty or not guilty, Sacco and Vanzetti were men with opinions dangerous to the privileges of the capitalist class, and the latter needed, therefore, no other justification for taking their lives. This is naked and cynical class interest, the bold casting aside of the conventional cloak of the law. But we welcome it as a sign of the passing of the whole of the senselessly cruel and ineffective apparatus of "justice," which will have no place in the more rational social order at which we aim. We reject the self-righteousness of the timid nonconformist Labour conscience which mocks the victims of that modern Inquisition, the Law, by enquiring into their guilt or innocence. If Sacco and Vanzetti were "guilty," it would make no difference to our attitude. But it must not be thought that we share the equally vicious outlook of the alleged Communists who sought to justify the recent executions of political prisoners in Russia on the ground that they had been proved "guilty" of some crime or other, and that this was a piece of "stern revolutionary justice" meted out by the Soviet Government.

All this talk of crime and punishment is a relic of barbarism, and should be discarded by human beings laying claim to civilisation. “Justice” is "vengeance,” in origin the instinctive protection of primitive peoples against individuals who endanger the community by breaches of accepted custom. In later ages, with the entry of class rule, it became the repressive act of ruling classes against those who attacked their privileges. The human impulse which sanctions the cruelty, the legalised violence and murder of the law, is not obedience to some, noble abstract justice, but the animal instinct of vengeance. The infliction of punishment satisfies this primal impulse, and gives pleasure similar in kind both to the suburban Englishman, who likes to hear of criminals brought to book, and to the American mob, drunk with blood-lust, dragging some negro to horrible death by fire. Guilty or not guilty, what does that matter? It does not matter to the lynching party any more than do the moral qualities of the bull to a bull-fight audience, their pleasure is indifferent to such details, and it does not touch the real stability of society. The fabric of twentieth century civilisation is not held together by wreaking vengeance, in the name of justice, on the ignorant and half-witted who commit petty thefts, or on the too-clever Bottomleys who over-reach themselves in the circles of high finance, or even on murderers—what are the latter, anyway, but potential "war heroes” who have killed their man at the wrong time and place?

The emotionalists who gloat over the sickening details of murder trials and executions are a much more potent source of social instability than are the "criminals” who happen to transgress capitalist laws and are found out. If punishment were a question of "deserts," or if it served a purpose commensurate with the harm it does, why not punish these people too, and those who pander to their tastes? The obvious answer is that the remedy lies in education, not in the infliction of penalties. Socialist society will, of course, try to protect itself against anti-social acts. What it will not do is to debase human life and stultify its own efforts by introducing the irrelevant idea of punishment. It will seek primarily to remove the cause, a line which our present rulers are prevented from following by their need to defend private property. How can they, for instance, remove the incentive to theft—poverty—in face of the simple fact that, without the poverty of the workers, there would be no wages system and no profits for the employing class? Secondly, it will recognise that some breaches of public order are inevitable, and are risks which society must accept as it accepts the wind and the rain. To embody brutal penalties in legal codes is no better insurance against them than is the action of the savage who makes an image of his God to protect him against the terrors of nature and then smashes the image when he suffers loss through storm or flood. All he does is to give vent to his disappointment. We are not savages, and must learn not to wreak our rage on unfortunate prisoners whom chance has brought within the reach of the law!

To return to Sacco and Vanzetti—while we do not imagine that the Dollar aristocracy who wield the sceptre in Massachusetts is occupied with the problem of introducing socialism, their refreshing candour on the real nature of "justice" may well serve to interest others in the class motives of that institution. If the Sacco and Vanzetti case brings justice into disrepute so much the sooner will the workers perceive that the time has arrived for its abolition.

This Month's Quotation: Richard Rumbold (1940)

The Front Page quote from the July 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “I never could believe that providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.” 

Richard Rumbold. (When on the scaffold 1685)

Which Way Russia? (1937)

From the July 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have always held that dictatorship, even though it is inaugurated by people who call themselves Socialists, cannot lead to Socialism. Russia is now showing us where it does lead. Hardly anybody but the editor of the Communist Daily Worker, can regard the latest wave of plots and executions as evidence of a healthy condition in the Soviet State. To him it is a simple story of treachery by men in high positions who wished “to place the people of the U.S.S.R. under the yoke of capitalist slavery” (Daily Worker editorial, June 12th, 1937). Happily, the ever-vigilant intelligence service unearthed their dastardly plot and crushed it in the nick of time. Otherwise “they would have wrought incalculable harm to the cause of peace, progress and Socialism.” This may satisfy the members of the Communist Party, but nobody else. How, for example, does it come to pass that highly-placed army generals with distinguished records, some with 20 years’ membership of the Communist Party, should have conceived the desire to turn their backs on what an admirer, Mr. G. B. Shaw, calls “the amazing success of the Soviet Government” in order to establish the capitalism they had spent a lifetime trying to destroy? How does it happen that men bred from their youth in the Communist tradition could have such aims? And how came they to believe that those aims could be welcomed by or forced upon the 160-million population of Russia? The Daily Worker does not give the answer because it is so mesmerised by Stalinist self-advertisement that it does not even know there is a problem.

Explanations—Plausible and Otherwise

Many explanations have been offered, some of them as unconvincing as the Daily Worker’s. One which fits at least some of the known facts and probabilities is that published by the News Chronicle (June 16th, 1937). It is based on statements made by Soviet circles in London. It is that the executed generals had decided to seize power and set up a military dictatorship in place of the present party dictatorship. They did not want Germany and Japan to profit by the temporary disturbance by declaring war, so they asked the military staffs of those countries for a pledge to lay off. In return those two countries were promised territorial concessions. Inside Russia the plotters relied on the support of the army to raise them to power and crush the opposition. That is the story told to the News Chronicle. It is by no means impossible, for dictatorships have a habit of breeding vaulting ambitions among the military leaders. And colour is lent to it by the known fact that the Russian and German general staffs secretly maintained close relationships for years before Hitler came to power. It was Russian policy to help Germany to rearm against their common enemy, the allied powers. It is now said that the dead Russian generals were some of those in active charge of these secret contacts and that when the Russian Government ordered their discontinuance, some time after Hitler took office, they maintained them without the knowledge of their own Government.

An explanation along these lines is at least a possibility, and it is not much different from the official version given out in Moscow, but it is credible only on two very significant assumptions. One is that the generals were so stupid as to be on the borderline of imbecility. The other is that there is something very much amiss with the Soviet system. The generals formed the idea of setting up a military dictatorship, but how could they form that idea unless they were confident that their movement would be actively supported by a large proportion of the military and civil rank and file? And how could they have that confidence unless they thought they could see convincing evidence of widespread discontent with the existing regime? We are forced, therefore, to choose between two conclusions. If the generals thought that they could establish a military dictatorship without having any popular support at all, and against the determination of army and civil population alike, then they must have been weak in the head and utterly incompetent to judge any kind of situation. But everyone agrees that they were clever and experienced men, many of them as much at home in Communist political circles as in military ones. The only alternative, and one we have to accept, is that they did not believe the Stalinist claim that all Russia, except a handful of Trotskyist plotters and foreign-paid agents, is behind the existing regime. On the contrary, they counted, evidently, on widespread discontent and disillusionment to give them the support without which they knew they could not possibly succeed.

“Everyone Suspect in Russia”

The most terrible indictment of the belief that party dictatorship is a means of achieving Socialism is to be found by comparing a current account of Russia, written by a correspondent who has hitherto shown himself sympathetic towards the Stalinist point of view, with a claim made a few years ago by the Government itself.

First, the claim made for Russia in preamble to the Constitution adopted in 1923: –

   “Here – in the camp of Socialism – are mutual confidence and peace, national freedom and equality, and dwelling together in peace and the brotherly collaboration of peoples.”

Now for statements about the present peaceful the and brotherly condition of Russia, by the correspondent in Moscow of the Daily Herald

EVERYONE SUSPECT IN RUSSIA.

   "Suspicion, denunciation, high and low hunts for alleged Trotskyists, spies and wreckers have reached such a pitch throughout Russia that it is safe to say that the past and future of everybody in the country is under review. Members and officials of trades unions, the Army and all political organisations are being sifted and sorted as though by a gigantic sieve. . . . Idols of the past become Trotskyists, wreckers or enemies overnight. So swift and vast are the changes in industry, from leadership down to the lowest grades, that it is impossible to keep track of them.” – (Daily Herald, June 5th, 1937.)
   

  “News of arrests, suicides, plots, still pours into Moscow from all parts of the Soviet Union. In the city of Ordjonikidze, in the North Caucasus, 5,362 people have been expelled from the Communist Party, according to newspaper reports. More than 30 Party and Government officials have been arrested at Rostov. One prominent Communist had committed suicide. The “Pacific Ocean Star” reports that Krutov, President of the Executive Committee of the Far Eastern Region, has been denounced as a “Japanese and Trotskyist enemy.” In White Russia, wreckers are alleged to have maimed thoroughbred bulls sent there to improve local stocks.” – (Daily Herald, June 18th, 1937.)

  “Wholesale denunciations and arrests of officials for alleged shortcomings in their work are threatening to bring Soviet industry practically to a standstill. Demoralisation increases rather than diminishes because of the element of fear under which all are working – each one fears he may be the next to be denounced.” – (Daily Herald, June 19th, 1937.)

Mr. G. B. Shaw may go on thinking that the Russian Communist dictatorship is an amazing success, but Socialists remain of their first opinion: that dictatorship of a party does not lead to Socialism. Russia appears to be one more proof that it leads to a condition in which threatened chaos gives ambitious Napoleons their opportunity to plot for military dictatorship.

Edgar Hardcastle

Anarchism and the failure of direct action (1995)

Pamphlet Review from the July 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Anarchist Movement in Japan by John Crump (BM Hurricane, London WC1N 3XX. 1995.)

This is a brief, but informative, account of anarchism in Japan by the author of The Origins of Socialist Thought In Japan.

Crump traces the origins of anarchism in that country to Kotoku Shusui who first edited an anti-war journal, Common People's Newspaper, in 1903 until its forced demise at the beginning of 1905. Kotoku was originally a Social Democrat who, together with Sakai Toshihiko and others, formed a short-lived party of that name. In 1904, Kotoku and Sakai translated Marx's and Engels's Communist Manifesto into Japanese. But shortly after, when in prison, Kotoku read Kropotkin's Fields, Factories and Workshops, followed whilst travelling to the United States, by his Memoirs of a Revolutionist. In America, he read Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread, and later he came under the influence of the Industrial Workers of the World—the "Wobblies".

On his return to Japan, Kotoku held many meetings and wrote many articles attacking what he called Social Democratic parliamentarianism, and advocating direct action. In an article in 1907, he wrote:

   "I hope that from now on our socialist movement in Japan will abandon its commitment to a parliamentary policy and will adopt as its methods and policy the direct action of the workers as one."

Thus began the anarchist movement in Japan. Crump emphasises that the ideas which Kotoku brought back to Japan from America were a mixture of anarchist-communism, syndicalism and terrorism, although Kotoku was foremost an anarchist-communist. or Kropotkinist; and that anarchist terrorism never really took off in Japan. Before the First World War, both anarchist-communism and anarchist-syndicalism had their advocates and activists: but. together with mounting repression by the state, the anarchist-communists and the anarchist-syndicalists became increasingly antagonistic towards each other. By 1927, there was a complete split between the two factions according to John Crump.

The Japanese anarchists, like many others at the time, were largely sympathetic towards the Bolsheviks following the 1917 coup d'état. Some even joined the Communist Party, only to leave it again soon after. But after the Bolsheviks' suppression of the Kronstadt Revolt in 1921, one prominent Japanese anarchist, Osugi, "concluded that there was nothing to choose between Russian state capitalism and Western private capitalism".

In 1923. both Kotoku and Osugi were murdered by the Japanese state, and some anarchists attempted a number of rather insignificant acts of terrorist revenge which were, of course, counter-productive. Mass arrests inevitably followed. During the 1930s the anarchist movement in Japan went, according to Crump, into rapid decline. There was. however, an attempt by some anarchist-communists to form an Anarchist Communist Party in 1934. It claimed to be committed to bringing about a stateless and free communist society; yet it used Bolshevik (i.e. Leninist) organisational methods. It was founded as a highly secretive organisation, whose existence was not openly proclaimed, and whose membership was a hand-picked ''élite''. Its main tactic was to manoeuvre its members into positions of influence in other organisations—just like the Leninists! Not surprisingly, it was soon destroyed by the Japanese state.

During the Second World War, Japanese anarchists largely went underground, and many were killed in air raids together with hundreds of thousands of other members of the working class. Following the war, attempts were made from time-to-time to revive, or recreate, an anarchist movement in Japan, but as Crump indicates, anarchism in that country (as elsewhere, but not mentioned by the author) has merely existed on a much reduced scale compared with earlier times

Peter E. Newell

Editorial: Another Russian Sacrificial Feast (1938)

Editorial from the April 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

It had been assumed by many newspaper correspondents in Russia that the series of trials of Stalin’s opponents and potential rivals had ended, and Stalin himself had talked of stopping the judicial persecution at least of the more obscure victims. But the trial of the twenty-one Old Bolshevists is barely ended before there are reports of further public trials involving highly placed generals and others.

The trial of the twenty-one in March followed the general course of the earlier trials, but with some differences. There were the same confessions, but this time one or two of the defendants, notably Bukharin, stoutly repudiated some charges while admitting others. Another prisoner, Krestinsky, who signed a confession in jail, repudiated it in its entirety in open court; only to confess again after a short interval. During the interval, or so it is reported, his wife was arrested, and he was confronted with her. When he repudiated his repudiation he gave the curious explanation that he had pleaded “not guilty” in court because of a momentary weakness, and because he "had not strength to face world public opinion.” The explanation hardly makes sense. It is more reasonable to suppose that the pressure that could be brought to bear on him by his jailers (who also had power over his wife) would be much more powerful and immediate than the kind of “world public opinion ” he would meet in a Moscow court room.

It is worth noticing that the apologists for the Stalin Government are no longer in a position to ridicule the theory that confessions may be induced by threats against the prisoner's relatives. One of the prisoners, Dr. L. G. Levin, when asked why he helped to kill Maxim Gorky, explained that he was made to do it by Yagoda, chief of the Ogpu, who threatened otherwise ”to annihilate” Levin’s family. If a threat against a doctor’s family could make him commit murder it could also make a prisoner confess to whatever the authorities put before him.

This particular confession also throws an interesting sidelight on the working of the Russian bureaucracy. Levin said that Yagoda sent him “French wines and splendid flowers,” presented him “with a home in the country,” and enabled him to travel abroad and return to Russia “bringing in goods without paying any duty.” It looks as if power and corruption work on the same lines in "Socialist ” Russia as in the frankly capitalist countries.

As in previous trials, prisoners confessed to things that did not or could not have happened. Bessonoff stated that he sent Trotsky a letter from Krestinsky, and received a reply two days later. This was alleged to have happened "in December, 1936, or perhaps the very beginning of January, 1937.” Trotsky was in Norway until December 19th, 1936, when he sailed, under police supervision, to Mexico. The Norwegian authorities assert (Daily Telegraph, March 8th, 1938) that Trotsky's correspondence was censored from September, 1936, till he sailed for Mexico, and that no such letters as those mentioned by Bessonoff exist. Also, according to The Times (March 5th, 1938) the Norwegian police, who controlled Trotsky on the boat, prevented him from using the wireless or disembarking en route.

Again, while Rakovsky accused the late Michael Farbman of being a British Secret Service agent, and said that he met Farbman first in 1925, in London, Farbman's daughter denies the charge, and asserts that her father made Rakovsky's acquaintance many years earlier, in Moscow, where he was correspondent for the Manchester Guardian (Manchester Guardian, March 7th, 1938). It may be as well to recall that Farbman was one of a handful of correspondents who ceaselessly defended Lenin and his associates and helped to make their case known in England.

Regarding the abjectness of the Russian confessions one interesting parallel has been brought out by The Times (March 14th, 1938) in an article which points out that in Elizabethan England such abject confessions were common. The words of the Earl of Essex—"I must confess to you that I am the greatest, the most vilest and most unthankful traitor that has ever been in the land ”—have a ring made familiar to us by the series of trials of broken Bolshevists.

Alongside many incredible stories of murders, spying and so on there was much in the prisoners’ stories that sounds plausible enough. Apparently there were many of Stalin's associates who disagreed with his policy and wanted to see a different one adopted. But under a dictatorship, since every form of legal opposition is forbidden, opposition becomes treachery, propaganda becomes rebellion, the writing of letters becomes spying. So some of the less abject prisoners, while confessing that they opposed Stalin and sought to remove him, firmly repudiated the construction put on their activities.

Just as this political opposition to the dictatorship was bound to exist, so it is also quite understandable to Socialists that ambitious military men may have conspired to seize power. That is precisely what Socialists expect to happen under dictatorship, sooner or later.

Was Lenin a German Agent?

The usual confessions were made by these Old Bolshevists that they had been the agents of Japan, Germany, Great Britain, and so on, but with the difference that the dates of the treachery were placed much farther back. Rakovsky “confesses" that he was in the pay of the British Secret Service in 1924. Sharangovitch was spying for the Poles in 1921. Rosenholtz began his espionage for Germany in 1923. Trotsky (but he isn’t in Moscow, so someone else had to confess for him) worked for Britain from 1926 and for Germany from 1921. Bukharin confessed that he was plotting against Lenin in 1918.

All of this leads to an interesting speculation. Either the confessions are false or they are genuine. If the latter, then we have to believe that right back in the early days, during and after the Bolshevist seizure of power, the leaders were secretly conspiring against each other. It will be recalled that Lenin and other exiled leaders reached Russia in 1917 in a train which crossed Germany and was placed at their disposal by the German military authorities. The charge was made that Lenin and his friends were nothing but German agents paid by Germany to disorganise the Russian army. The charge was denied by Lenin and the denial was accepted by the working-class organisations generally. But if, as the Communists say, these Moscow confessions are genuine, then many of the men concerned were at the very beginning hopelessly corrupt. If the rest of them, why not Lenin? If these things were going on how could Lenin and others in the Bolshevist movement have had no inkling of them? If the confessions stand then it would seem that the whole gang would be under suspicion of being, as they were charged at the time, a crowd of murderous adventurers. “Adventurers" is actually the word applied to himself and his fellow-prisoners by Rakovsky.

"Stalin Secretly a Fascist"

One of the prisoners in the present trial is Bukharin. He it was who years ago informed some foreign democrats that in Russia there was room for any number of political parties so long as one was in power and the others in prison. Now time has had its revenge and he is dead, as a conspirator, after he had actually stated in court that he was in favour of legal rights for opposition parties! Bukharin is also reported by Barmine (who recently fled from his post as Russian Chargé d’Affaires at Athens) to have made the following prophetic remark to Kamenev just before the latter was arrested: —

    We are all lost. This monster, this sinister Genghis Khan, will strangle us. If we resist, he will crush us. If we submit, he will pick us off one after another.

This is the calamitous outcome of 20 years of Communist dictatorship. One of the men who created this thing discovers just before he falls victim to its rapacious lust for killing that instead of helping to advance the cause of Socialism he had helped to place in a position of unrestricted power a being whom he describes as a sinister monster, a 20th-century Genghis Khan.

How great is the harm done to the working-class movement by the whole sordid disintegration of the Bolshevist party can be seen from Mussolini's declaration (Times, March 7th, 1938) that Stalin is not only rendering “a praiseworthy service to Fascism,” but is himself "secretly a Fascist.” For who can contemplate the Bolshevist regime to-day without having to admit that it becomes every year more and more like Fascism and Nazism?

Herzen's remark that the Russian Czarist government was ”despotism tempered by assassination” becomes more and more applicable to Soviet Russia, especially if the confessions be accepted as even substantially true.

Editorial: Fryatt and Others. (1916)

Editorial from the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fate of Captain Fryatt has caused another violent outbreak of cant to sweep over the larger part of the civilised globe. Such a bowl of indignation from those who are urging men on to wholesale murder might lead one to the conclusion that murder itself is a harmless and unimportant matter compared with the method and circumstances of the murder. Men are torn from their homes and sent willy-nilly into death-trap trenches to slaughter and be slaughtered in a quarrel that is not theirs, and that is doing glorious work and dying glorious deaths. The Cain-mark upon their foreheads takes the form Victoria Crosses or Iron Crosses and the like, while they who send them to their crime and their doom have their names inscribed on the “pegs of history" that is not placed in tbs category of the Newgate Calendar. There is no hint from our masters' paid mouth pieces, whether of Fleet Street or of Canterbury and York, that there is anything foul in all this. Crime under authority savours of heaven.

Authorities have a habit of making laws to support their authority, and it is characteristic of them that they never make the mistake of asking the concurrence of those they make subject to those laws If "Thou shalt" or "Thou shall not" are insufficient, then the requirements of the case are fully met with the noose or the bullet. Whatever wordy warfare may centre around the fact of the offence, it is always recognised that the question of tbs justice of the law will not stand argument, and there never is any. Thus in the Casement business not one word has been argued by the prosecution as to whether the prisoner's motives were grounded on patriotism or some baser sentiment. To let the evidence prove the former—it very well might—would by all the rules of logic place Casement on the same plane as Nurse Cavell—and that would never do. It would also have opened grave doubts as to the standing of those misguided Dublin rebels who shared the adventure with Casement, but not being of aristocratic blood, were shot out of hand. Were they not patriots also, and did they approve of the laws under which they were butchered in cold blood ?

The fact is all rule is coercion, and all rulers are bullies. The bullies make laws to suit their own needs without reference to the point of view of those whom they put under the laws, and to talk of justice in the case is laughable. For those who shot the Dublin prisoners in cold blood to complain of the judgment of the German court-martial is incongruous.

Of course the execution of Captain Fryatt was murder—foul, brutal, and stinking. But our masters want us to view it as something standing in a class by itself, something typically and peculiarly German ; but in truth it is nothing of the kind. It is simply another capitalist outrage upon a member of the working class, committed to suit capitalist ends, and accepted and exploited by other capitalists to fan the flame of hatred and feed the declining war-fever. That is our judgment of all these "atrocities."