Notes by the Way: The Fabians and the House of Lords (1957)

The Notes by the Way Column from the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Fabians and the House of Lords

In the Socialist Standard for February, 1907, was an article about the Fabians which opened with a quotation:—

“ The government of the future will be by experts and we, naturally, want to be the experts."

This little gem had been spoken by Mr. H. Snell, of the Fabian Society.

The writer in the Socialist Standard had appropriate comments to make on this typically Fabian proposal for running other people's lives. He began:—

"So now you know, if you did not before, what the Fabian Society are after. Their ‘Socialism’ is government by bureau, and ‘naturally’ (sweet word) they want to be the bureaucrats. ‘Naturally’ they want the plums. ‘‘Naturally’’ they want to sit in the seats of authority and arrange things for the benefit (naturally for the benefit) of the other and somewhat lower orders who do the mere producing."

Our writer hit the nail on the head when he said the Fabians aimed to occupy the seats of authority and in the course of time many of them had their little hour in the Labour Governments, where they showed that their “superior brains” could no more cope with the chaos of Capitalism than could those they affected to despise, the political aristocrats and the business men.

One of the “reforms” supported by the Fabians was the abolition of the House of Lords. They came to be glad that they hadn't succeeded because it was to be a final refuge for a number of Fabians, including Sidney Webb (who wrote the Fabian tract demanding abolition of the Lords), and Attlee, and of course Mr. Snell, who became Lord Snell of Plumstead in 1931 just about the time two million unemployed were wondering how their Fabian trained leader had managed to get things in such a mess.

Macmillan Must Go!

If we were Labour or Communist vote-catchers we would be campaigning for “Macmillan Must Go!" and telling anyone silly enough to believe it, how successful we had been with our last campaign for u Eden Must Go!"

Since the S.P.G.B. was formed in 1904 there have been ten such campaigns for getting rid of a no-good Prime Minister. There have been rather more than ten governments because some of them, after being pushed, pulled or squeezed out have managed to get back again. When we survey the list we marvel at the rich variety. Scots, English, Welsh, and half-American (Churchill); spell-binders like Lloyd-George, and others who didn’t know how to gild the lilies of oratory; philosophical types like Balfour and Asquith and "plain, blunt men" like Baldwin;; semi-Pacifists and war-mongers; business men and professional politicians; the relatively poor and the passing rich; religionists and agnostics; aristocrats and commoners; Tory, Liberal, and Labour.

There are the differences: What of the similarities? They have all had a strange belief that the country was very lucky to have them at the helm. They have all come in generously promising how much better they will make life for the people and have all gone out little lamented.

And what difference has it made in the one thing that ought to be of paramount concern to the workers, the question of establishing Socialism in place of Capitalism? Just no difference at all. That job has yet to be done and it won't matter in the least whether the next Prime Minister who tries to administer Capitalism is Mr. G., or Mr. B., Mr. X or Mr. Y.

“Why We Left the Communist Party”

A group calling themselves the Nottingham Marxist Group, has issued an eight-page leaflet under the above title. As a criticism of the leaders of the British Communist Party from the standpoint of members whose confidence was first shaken by the dethronement of Stalin and then shattered by the Russian Army's onslaught on the Hungarian workers, it is effective enough. But that is all it is. In no way does it justify the claim that the group are Marxist in outlook. Indeed the limited range of their criticism clearly shows that they are not. Their case is against “the politically and morally bankrupt leaders of the Communist Party," but not against the idea of leadership and if it were not for their view that it is in practice impossible to change the leadership they would he working for new leaders in place of the old. They fail to see that a Socialist Party has no use or place for leaders.

They condemn various comparatively recent consequences of dictatorship in Russia and Hungary, but nowhere do they show an understanding of the fact that Socialism is incompatible with dictatorship. They do not explain how it was that they accepted the dictatorship and only woke up to some of its inevitable consequences at a late stage. Above all they do not square their claim to be Marxist with their tacit acceptance of the absurd belief that the Russian dictatorship is Socialism. This ought to have been the central theme of their declaration because every criticism they make stems from the fact that the social organisation in Russia and Hungary is and always has been Capitalism. They do now see that Socialism cannot be imposed by force and they quote from an American Communist journal:—“Socialism . . .  could not be imposed on a country by those means”; but they do not face up to the truth that that was the original, impossible, aim of the Communist group that seized power in Russia, and that dictatorship and a police state were the inevitable outcome of that attempt It was then that the Russian Communists “betrayed” the principles of Socialism, not at some later date, as the pamphlet would have us believe, when the “cult of leadership” was carried to such lengths as to endanger the stability of the dictatorship itself.

The Not-so-Stupid Tory Capitalists

The Hon. William Douglas-Home, writer of successful plays and unsuccessful Parliamentary candidate standing on one occasion as a “Progressive Independent," and on another as “Atlantic Charter" candidate, wrote to the Observer (3 January, 1957) advising the Tories to apply in foreign politics the policy they have used so well at home. He described the latter as follows:—

“. . . they never seem to realise that a controlled withdrawal is precisely what they have conducted with considerable skill in domestic policy since the industrial revolution, and that to this policy, and to this policy alone, they owe their survival. Whereas any attempt to preserve the status quo would have resulted in either their total extinction or a revolution, or both.”

Strikes by Hungarian Workers

On January 13 the Russian imposed government of their Hungarian colony announced a new decree imposing the death penalty for a number of acts, many of which would in most countries be regarded as normal trade union and political activities.

The Manchester Guardian (January 14), quoting B.U.P. and Reuter despatches from Budapest, had the following:—

"The death penalty was introduced in Hungary today for anyone calling a strike, damaging factory machinery, or committing  'any kind of offence directed against the State.’ The death sentence could be ordered for distributing leaflets, or for entering a government factory without permission, according to the new regulations, announced in a supplementary paragraph to the martial law declared in December."

The News Chronicle and other newspapers gave similar versions. Only the Daily Worker (January 14) managed to twist this new decree almost out of recognition. They left out the reference to strikes and reported it as:—

“ Death sentences may be imposed on people who ‘ sabotage or interfere in any way with public utilities and other essential enterprises'. "

But if the Hungarian workers in Hungary may now be hanged for striking, Hungarian refugees in Britain have shocked a lot of people by refusing jobs offered to them and by coming out on strike. The Sunday Despatch (January 16) reported:—

"Eighteen refugees walked out of their jobs at St Albans because they were dissatisfied with their pay. They were receiving an average of £7 a week as cooks, waiters, carpenters and farm workers. Mr. G. P. Bannister, manager of the Employment Exchange at St. Albans, said: ’They expected £14 or £15 a week. Most of them want to go to America or Canada'. "

This sort of conduct will get the Hungarians disliked by the employers and before we know where we are we shall hear the Hungarians denounced as unwelcome agitators. Being spirited in demanding the right to strike in Budapest is not at all the same as continuing to behave like that here.

But British workers ought to be delighted that the refugees do not intend to become a source of cheap and servile labour. And if the incident makes British workers more assertive in trying to raise their wages so much the better.

Exodus to Canada

And while the Hungarians pour in the Britishers pour out as fast as they can, Canada-bound for preference. Rhona Churchill, in the Daily Mail (January 8, 1957), made inquiries and these are her conclusions:—

“ Emigrant applications at Canada’s London and Liverpool offices have now reached 20,000 a week.

John Bull Taxpayer has had enough.

Emigration figures had been falling off. Then suddenly the Butler austerity Budget of October, 1955, doubled the numbers, calling at Canadian immigration offices, the Macmillan squeeze Budget of April, 1956, trebled them, and Suez, with its promise of more Budget austerity three months from now, increased them sixfold.

A quarter of a million Britons, tired of being told for ten austere years: ’Belt-tightening today means prosperity tomorrow,' and, finding that tomorrow never comes, are now actively organising their escape, believing that Britain has no sound financial future to offer their children."

But while the exasperated British workers flee from the rigours of “Welfare State" Capitalism to seek paradise in Canada the Canadian Railwaymen were on strike because they too have grievances against their “free enterprise” Capitalism.

Profits and the Ugly Head of Politics

For a century or more business men, stock exchange speculators and economists have recurrently dreamed of a beautiful world in which Capitalism would function “naturally” without being disturbed by politics. The latest is Mr. A. G. Jenkins, City Editor of the Empire News (January 3,1957).

’’So much for the short-term view. Dividend limitation, nationalisation, confiscation and many other 'ations’ loom ahead when politics rears its ugly head, and for the moment this may discourage buyers of industrial ordinary shares."

Mr. Jenkins thinks Capitalism would be nicer without the serpent of politics and other “ations.” He should think again. If there were no political machine to be controlled by the politicians bent on keeping Capitalism going, our class divided society would disintegrate. One “ation” would, indeed, be taken away, but Mr. Jenkins would not be pleased for it is “exploitation," and if there were no exploitation of one class by another there would be no rent, interest or profit, no Stock Exchange, and no City Editors.

Over in Bombay the great Indian iron and steel concern of the Tata Company knows better. They don’t want to rule out politics; on the contrary they have just appealed successfully to the High Court for the right to make contributions to political party funds.

"Mr. Justice Tendolkar allowed a petition by the company for confirmation of alteration in its memorandum enabling it to make such contributions. He said that expenditure by way of donations to political parties could in the long run be economic.

”The petition said the company was at present carrying out a Rs. 750m. (£57m.) expansion programme and any further expansion would depend on Government approval. The company’s prosperity was therefore bound up with the policy of the party in power.”

(Financial Times, 12th January, 1957). 

The Indian Capitalists, who used the nationalist movement to establish themselves as a Capitalist India, learned all the tricks and devices of Capitalist rule practised by the British ruling class.

The Communists and the S.P.G.B.

Letters written to the Daily Worker by members of the S.P.G.B. have been refused publication recently. This is not in itself surprising but the reason given deserves comment. A letter from the Editor, J. R. Campbell (October 10, 1956) included the following:—

“It is true that the Daily Worker does not propose to publish letters dealing with insignificant political bodies like the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Our space is precious and we have to devote it to more important questions.” 

We can imagine the indignation of the Communists if, say the Daily Herald were to give the same reason for not publishing their letters. And of course we can guess that J. R. Campbell (responsible recently for the suppression of reports from Budapest by its own correspondent) may have other reasons for not wanting the Marxist case against his party to be put before his readers.

One small point about Campbell’s letter is that he addressed the S.P.G.B. member as “Dear Friend” and ended it “with best wishes.”

Another letter (January 7, 1957), this time signed “with all good wishes” by the Assistant Editor of the Daily Worker, Mick Bennett, informed our member that “the role and influence of the S.P.G.B. has declined over the years largely because of its conscious deliberate policy of remaining a small sect devoted largely to the theory that until all the working class have been sufficiently educated in Marxism they will not be able to get rid of Capitalism.”

This implies that the S.P.G.B. used to have more influence and was therefore worthy of the notice of Communists but, except on very rare occasions, the Communist Party has always maintained the policy of ignoring the S.P.G.B. and declining debates. But the official reason given for this in the early days was that there was no time or place for discussion because revolution, here and in the world generally, was "just around the corner.” Privately members of the C.P.G.B. were advised to keep away from discussion with the S.P.G.B.

Bennett's letter (in the last sentence quoted above) re-iterates the Communist’s case that Capitalism could be got rid of in speedier ways than by building up a movement of Socialists. What a pity we can't have from him his explanation of the total failure of Communist governments in Russia, Hungary and elsewhere, to get rid of Capitalism and introduce Socialism.

Brotherly Love from a Christian

A reader sends us an article by Pastor W. W. Kirkby. published in the Elim Evangel (December 8, 1956), called “Ambitious Russia,” which sets out to describe the imperialist aims of the Russian Government; including, so the writer says, the conquest of Israel as a main objective.

It is full of the common misconceptions about the social system in Russia (the writer of the article thinks it is Communism and that Marx was responsible for it), and about the driving force behind the Russian Imperialism (the writer naturally fails to recognise that it is like the imperialism of the rest of the Capitalist powers).

One interesting item is an alleged quotation from Karl Marx in which he is made to say that as “loving my neighbour” has not changed the world, “let us see what hatred can do.” (No source is given).

But just to show how different the Christian and his God are the article ends:—

“Four thousand years ago God declared to Abraham, the father of the faithful: 'I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.'

. . . That principle has been carried out right down the years, and in the future God’s curse is to fall upon atheistic and ambitious Russia.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Socialism & the State. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist propagandist is often confronted with the assertion that the establishment of a system of Socialism would involve the subjection of the individual to a hide-bound State, that would eventually result in the enslavement of the people. 

The Socialist, on the contrary, asserts that the working class are enslaved to-day, and that only the establishment of Socialism can effect their emancipation.

The individualist attacks Socialism from the standpoint that the proposed change simply means the continuation of the present wage-system of production, in which the whole of the wealth of society shall be owned by a number of persons incorporated into a State or bureaucracy, instead of being, as at present, owned by private individuals. He maintains that the right of the individual is supreme, and condemns any action on the part of a State or collection of individuals, that interferes with his desires.

Since correct understanding implies correct interpretation of terms used, and the point revolves upon the meaning of the term “slave”, I will preface my remarks with such a definition. 

A slave is one who is owned by or controlled by another; one who is compelled to labour to satisfy the wants of another. 

The chattel-slave originally was a prisoner of war, whose life was at the disposal of his owner. He was allowed to live in order that he might produce more wealth, or greater satisfaction, for his owner, than could be obtained from his death, his owner, of course, providing him with the food, clothing and shelter necessary to keep him in a fit condition.

Later on in the development of society we find the serf, who was compelled to labour for a certain period for his lord, the remainder of his time being at his own disposal for the purpose of providing himself and his family with the necessaries of life.

To-day the worker, in order to live, is compelled to labour for a certain period. He receives, however, but a portion of the wealth created. Out of the wealth he has produced he receives (according to Mr. Chiozza Money [who estimates the wealth produced at £4. 5s. per week per family of five, while the average amount received by a working class family of five is shown to be 25s . per week] and other capitalist statisticians) about one-third. That is to say that if he produces goods to the value of £3, he receives as a wage £1, his master taking the remainder.

While there may be a difference in degree in those different forms of exploitation, the principle still remains. The under-dog is compelled to labour for the purpose of producing something to satisfy the wants of others who, holding the things necessary for his life, thereby control him. He is, therefore, still a slave.

The principle would remain if the working class was compelled to work for a State instead of for individual employers. If the whole of the wealth and the means of production are owned by a State and the worker receives a wage, then slavery is not abolished, but is intensified.

The worker to-day, while compelled to work for a master, still has some sort of a choice among those masters, but with the State as the only employer he is compelled to work for that employer and under that employer’s conditions, or take the only alternative and starve. State Capitalism would intensify slavery, but State Capitalism is not Socialism.

Our individualist opponent, if a toiler, is subject to others. Others have the power to say when he shall work and when he shall starve, how he shall work and under what conditions. His life and action are determined largely by his spending capacity; by the extent of his wage. He cannot do as he would wish because he is bound to the bench or to the counter. The greater part of his life is occupied by laborious toil or petty business – toil and worry and anxiety in the interest of others. He is robbed by the capitalist employer and oppressed by the capitalist State.

And what is this State? Merely representative of the dominant class; the class in power, whose interest lies in an opposite direction to the interest of the workers. 

The State is merely the force that enables the working class to subject the working class.

Large  bodies of drilled and armed men are only necessary where the greater number of the people are subject to the few, and those civil and military forces necessary to control the oppressed and exploited class are the “State”.

The State grew up at a certain stage of economic development with the growth of classes, and when the classes are abolished the State will go too. Socialism means no State.

The propertyless have no “rights” under capitalism — not even the right to live. Far from being in any way free they are the property, to all intents and purposes, of the propertied class. Our opponents have been misled by the so-called friends of the worker — the municipal-cum-nationaliser — by the pet theory of the Fabian, who holds that the “government of the future must be by experts”, with the Fabians, of course, as the experts.

Those who read of the conditions of the people of Peru, prior to its conquest by the Spaniards, will find therein many points of resemblance to the proposed bureaucracy of the Fabians.

The Peruvian State was not capitalism: goods being produced, not for sale, but for consumption by the people. Take the following from Prescott (p. 56):

“The Peruvian Government watched with unwearied solicitude over its subjects, provided for their physical necessities, was mindful of their morals, and showed throughout the affectionate concern of a parent for his children, who were never to act or think for themselves, but whose whole duty was comprehended in the obligation of implicit obedience”.

And on page 26 we are told “Industry was publicly commended and stimulated by rewards”.

Compare this with the following from Fabian Essays (1908 edition) under the heading of “Socialism and the State” (p. 163).

“Out of the value of the communal produce must come, rent of land payable to the local authority, rent of plant needed for working the industries, wages advanced and fixed in the usual way, taxes, reserve fund, accumulation fund, and the other charges necessary for the carrying on of the communal business. All these deducted, the remaining value should be divided among the communal workers as a bonus . . . 

"If there is one vice more than another that will be unpopular under Socialism it is laziness.”

In Peru, we are told (Prescott, p. 26) “Occupation was found for all, from the child of five to the aged matron not too infirm to hold a distaff, no one was allowed to eat the bread of idleness in Peru”.

Well may working-men who have studied the conditions of present-day capitalism resent the proposals of the “State Socialist” with his grandmotherly legislative enactments. Such a change as is proposed by him would indeed mean slavery, and would throw the propertyless class still deeper in the mire of social degradation.

The Government of the Incas was in spirit truly patriarchal since “the task imposed upon him was always proportioned to his strength, he had seasons of rest and refreshment and was well protected against the inclemency of the weather”, and “every care was shown for his personal safety”. Yet the greater number of people in Peru were slaves, and slaves of such a type that the conditions of to-day are preferable to those who, recognising the evils of wage-slavery under which they exist, are trying to find a way out. True the people were kept in subjection by the superstition that the Inca was a supreme being, a descendant of the sun, and they blindly worshipped him as omnipotent. They were prepared to toil for his benefit and for the benefit of his nobles.

But is the superstition of the Fabian worshipper in any way preferable? To blindly worship the State and toil to support the supposed experts in control (for we are told [Fabian Essays, p. 164] that it is probable that the “captains of Industry will be more highly paid than the rank and file of the industrial army”) is as great an error, as foolish a superstition, as to worship the sun and its supposed descendants.

The worker must be forced to realise that to effect his emancipation he must discard  all superstition and must refuse to be led and bossed by self-styled “superior persons”. He must understand that in order to obtain the best of things necessary for life, with the least expenditure of energy he must organise with his fellows.

Individual production is played out. Without doubt the best results are to be obtained by social production. All the evil is caused by that co-operation ending with production, and the wealth, socially produced, being owned by a small section of the community. We cannot go back to individual production, nor is it desirable. What must ultimately come is a system wherein wealth shall be socially produced and collectively owned by the producers, who shall say in what way and in what quantity it shall be produced.

In brief, the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth must be owned and controlled by the whole working community.

Twel.

Pot Pourri. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

I did not go to the Business Exhibition, but I have done the next best thing — read the newspaper puffs of it. One needs not to be a master of deductive philosophy to read the lesson writ large over the pages of booming devoted to it. The features of this year consist of calculating machines for eliminating clerks ; a machine (the Dictaphone) for doubling one’s output ; another that addresses envelopes at the rate of 2,000 an hour, and so on. Competitions for speed and accuracy are again a leading item, marked this year by the large number of women who have entered for the first time. One firm will teach you (for a consideration) how to develope your powers, how to manage men, increase efficiency and such like.

* * *

The Dictaphone is best described in the maker’s advertisements : “enabling one person to do the work of two, saving 50% time and labour in any office. The work of the principal is simplified, the output of the typist doubled.” Wages, we understand, will remain stationary. When the envelope addresser and the Dictaphone get thoroughly going, throwing half the clerical workers on the streets, making the unfortunate remainder work doubly hard, I suppose the Tariff Reformer will still have no difficulty in proving to them that a tax on Dutch cheese and a preferential tariff in favour of Colonial sardines will solve the problem. The Free Trader, doubtless, will glibly assure the beaten competitors of the Dictaphone and the mechanical calculator that as soon as the Budget has had a chance, and when the 99 year leases fall in, and when the great schemes that the Liberal party has up its sleeve (at present only darkly hinted at) get in full swing, “then !” he’ll say, “then !—” Ah ‘then !

To the clerk, as to every other labourer for hire, it should be clear that the good things of life are not for him whilst the present system of “managing men” is the vogue. If you believe in a step at a time (most of them backwards), join the Liberal party, or its adjuncts, the I.L.P. or S.D.P., and work for State Christmas Trees for your great-grandchildren and municipal ice-cream barrows. If you want freedom now, not in 99 years, join the S.P.G.B.

* * *

I would like to say just here that we Socialists don’t ask for any license, poetical, political, or of any other variety. When we say the I.L.P., Labour Party, S.D.P., Fabian Society, etc. are capitalist agencies, please don’t assume that pique or arrogance actuate us. Just to show you what is meant, here is an instance.

* * *

The Railway Clerks’ Association has recently affiliated to the Labour Party. The latter, of course, accepted it on the usual terms. The character of the.R.C.A. is succinctly outlined in. the October No. of their official organ, p. 202 : “The policy of the R.C.A. is not only to secure justice for its members, but also to urge and assist them to make themselves worth more to their employer.” Of such is the kingdom of Henderson & Co.

* * *

Whilst we are on the subject I may have a jab at the Fabians. Now look at this !

“I came to the conclusion that just as it is in the interests of Capital to keep the rolling stock and the permanent way in good repair, so it must be to the interest of Capital to be constantly raising the standard of living for the men in order that the human factor may be improved.”

Who said that? None other than Mrs, Sidney Webb, at the opening of the new A.S.R.S. offices. That’s the sort of fool’s errand the Fabians are on. Don’t join them.

* * *

A few lines from a poem by Mr. James Stephens are worth repeating.

"For I’ve sat my life away with pen and rule,

        On a stool,

Totting little lines of figures, and so will

        Tho’ the chill

And the langour of gray hairs on my brow

        Mock me now.

And sometimes while I work I lift my eyes

        To the skies,

To the foot or two of heaven which I trace

        In the space

That a grimy window grudges to the spot

         Where I tot.

And I ask the God who made me and the sun

          What I’ve done

To be buried in this dark and dreary cave

           Like a grave,

While the world laughs in scorn now and then

          At my pen."

You see, that’s just where he is silly, asking God anything. You can sit on a stool asking conundrums of space and gather nothing but a harvest of wasted years and a heap of worn-out trousers. It may be easy, but it is quite profitless. Get off your stool and get to work on your slave-irons. Gazing through a couple of feet of smoky window-glass wont help you any. If you have any spare brain your employer has not a lien on, we’ll tell you what to do with it. Come in.

Wilfred.

A Fabian and his Fabianism (1947)

From the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Fabianism came to be the political Bible of the Labour Movement then Sidney Webb (the late Lord Passfield) was its Prophet. Of him, Lord Listowel in the House of Lords said: “That the Labour Party came to regard him much as the Children of Israel must have regarded Moses . . . who pointed a way through the ‘Wilderness to the Promised Land’.” (Hansard, 20/10/47.) Undoubtedly, Webb, more than any other Fabian, foretold of the New Jerusalem which was emerging, painlessly, inevitably, almost imperceptibly from the present Social Order. The Labour Government’s historic mission is, it seems, to demonstrate that this Fabian New Jerusalem is merely Capitalist “Old Babylon,” writ large.

The Liberal Lord Samuel also spoke of Webb as a political pioneer and one of the principal founders of a Great Party. The Conservative Lord Salisbury called him the founder of the Fabian Society and intellectual father of the Labour Party. The Archbishop of Canterbury mentioned the close connection between Webb and the Church on the question of Social Reform. “He also desired to associate himself with the Tributes paid.” (Hansard, same issue.) Speaking for ourselves, “We come to bury Caesar not to praise him.”

The Fabian Society was founded in 1881. A group of “educated people,” so their historian, Mr. Pease, assures us, not without a little unction it seems : “We were aware of Marx,” he says, “but I do not think at the time the Society was founded we had read or assimilated his ideas.” (“History of Fabian Society,” p.24.) A statement probably as true now of the Fabian Society as it was then.

Non-acquaintance with Marx’s ideas has not prevented successive generations of Fabians from solemnly pronouncing him “A great thinker.” It was apparently only what he thought about that for them is of so little consequence. Mr. Pease even thought “That every passing year brought added conviction that the broad principles of Marxism will guide the evolution of Society during the present century.” (“History of Fabian Society,” p.236.) The sentence before, however, had noted that the first achievement of Fabianism was to break the spell of Marxism in England

As against Marxism the Fabians began by denying that Socialism could only be the outcome of historic development. Webb on behalf of the Fabians assured us “that no special claim is made that Socialism has a basis in history.” (“Fabian Essays,” p.36.) Instead we are presented with a plurality of Socialisms each dependant on their particular environment and, it appears, geographical location. “Thus Fabianism,” Mr. Pease told us, “was English Socialism,” The political and industrial conditions being somewhat different in degree in Scotland, he added. While in Ireland an application of socialist principles had not been seriously attempted. Nor, we presume, Wales or the Channel Islands.

Marxism, we must add. is a unified world conception based on an analysis of the sum totality of existing social productive relationships—Capitalism. If is thus able to demonstrate that the very development of capitalism provides the economic and social conditions for its replacement by an entirely different social arrangement based on common ownership and production for use. The present system being universal in character the Socialist Society which supersedes it must have the same universal character. There can then be no different kinds of Socialism, i.e., a Scotch Socialism in contrast to an English Socialism. Socialism being world-wide in extent the same social system must operate and be universally valid throughout the entire Socialist world.

Such is the stuff of which Fabian “Socialism” was made. Indeed Fabianism cut this “stuff” into even smaller parts, and presented us with such microscopic “socialist” portions as “Socialist London,” “Socialist Birmingham,” even “Socialist Poplar” and “Socialist Bermondsey.” Shaw’s admission in the Fabian Tract 41 that “he and the early Fabians had no true knowledge of Socialism” is hardly a confession. For Shaw still holds most of Mr. Pease’s “Socialist illusions.” The venerable Shavian beard would seem to illustrate in this respect that wisdom is not necessarily denoted by whiskers—not even when they are Fabian whiskers.

What then are the fundamentals of Fabianism? Even the Fabians themselves seem wholely ignorant of them. “There never has been a Fabian orthodoxy,” said Mr. Pease, “because no one was in a position to assert what the true faith was.” (“History of Fabian Society,” p.237.) Nevertheless continued Mr. Pease, “We obtained freedom of thought,” An attribute which Pease seemed to think highly desirable.

No doubt for a “Socialist” organisation which included all shades of political opinion advised voting against what it termed Socialist candidates if it meant splitting the vote and keeping the more popular “progressive” candidate out, and which supported Imperialism and war, such “freedom of opinion,” was not merely desirable but essential.

Apparently for the Fabians Socialism, like the poor, has always been with us. According to Webb “Socialist philosophy is but the recognition of the principles of social organisation in great part unconsciously accepted. The history of the 19th century was an almost continuous record of progress in Socialism.” The Socialist cat is thus out of the Fabian bag. Fabian Socialism is merely the acceptance and extension of all State activity. In pursuance of this theme Webb in a grotesque passage records what for him seemed the progress of Socialism. He enumerates such things as State control of the Armed Forces, Gas-works, Parks, Cemeteries, Slaughter Houses, Pawn-broking Establishments and Leper Islands. (“Fabian “Essays,” pp.18-51.) Even State registration of hawkers, dogs, cats, cabs, and inspection of baby farms and Scotch red herrings are all evidence of Socialist legislation ! For Webb a pedlar’s licence was proof that we were enjoying a semi-socialist existence. While such institutions, as the War Office and Scotland Yard were important milestones on the high road to the full Socialist Commonwealth.

The Socialism of Webb, in spite of protests from some Fabian quarters, became the accepted and authorised version. It merely turns out to be but the bureaucratic organisation essential for the maintenance and upkeep of Capitalism. Social reforms can likewise be included under this category. The 19th century Factory Acts constituted State intervention against the unrestrained character of prevailing capitalist exploitation. Such exploitation would finally have led to a catastrophic decline in workers’ productivity and thus profits. Sanitation laws constituted a safeguard for the wealthy against epidemics. Education Acts are designed to give workers’ children the training necessary for the wage-labour status they will one day assume. Unemployment Acts. Health Insurance, Old Age Pensions, merely denote the need to regulate the wide-spread poverty and destitution caused by the economic effects of capitalism on the working class. While certain reforms may give the worker slight but often merely transient amelioration they leave untouched the poverty resulting from his class-position in present society. The undertaking by the State of such activities are on the grounds of cheaper and more efficient administration. At the same time they spread the burden of taxation evenly over the entire capitalist class.

As for Nationalisation of Key Industries, advocated by Fabians for many years, it has come to pass. Nevertheless, the Tories or Liberals do not propose to denationalise them if returned to Power, while the theme of a “planned Capitalism” is as much their theme as that of the Labour Party.

Even the Fabian “Gas and Water Socialism” was but a Radical legacy bequeathed by Joseph Chamberlain. Municipalism, its other name, merely seeks to prevent the whole capitalist class from being used as a milch-cow by the private ownership, often of a monopolistic character, of such things as heat, light, power, etc. As for parks, libraries, museums, etc., being bits of Socialism, Chamberlain, with brutal frankness, regarded them as merely “the ransom paid for the privilege of holding property.” Fabianism is then a thing of shreds and patches. Shoddy remnants, second-hand from the Tory and Liberal political shops, sewn into a Fabian patchwork. Finally, on the subject of Municipal Socialism, we have Pease’s admission that it needed for its adoption and extension no advocacy from the Fabians. (“History of Fabian Society,” p. 81.)

The maturing of Capitalism into monopolistic forms and the integration of the State into its economic functions and activities, have been idealised by the Fabians into a programme of State Capitalism. The very developmental trends of Capitalism and its associated bureaucratic growth has then been presented as its opposite—Socialism.

It was this very evolution of Capitalism towards monopolistic forms that gave to Fabianism its automatic and ineluctable character. If the Mills of Capitalism were grinding small they were nevertheless grinding out “Socialism” every day. Such was the cumulative effect of all this that one day Capitalist Society would become a Socialist Society and no one would notice it. The economic revolution is going on every day, said Mr. Clarke, practically independent of our desires or prejudices. (“Fabian Essays,” p.62.) The Tories and Liberals, declared Webb many times, were committed to “Socialism” as much as the “Socialists.” He added, even people who believe Socialism a foolish dream were its unconscious instruments. According to the Fabians the coming of Socialism was as inexorable as an act of Nature. While the Fabians assigned themselves the role of midwives in the period of social gestation, the existence and growth of the “Socialist” seed inside the womb of Capitalist Society was apparently innocent of human agency. No greater miracle has been claimed since the birth of Jesus. This is a denial of the Marxist dictum, that given the material conditions to hand, men make history. Dressed up in its Sunday clothes this piece of Fabian fatalism is called “the inevitability of Gradualism.”

This was also a denial of the class-struggle and of the need of the working class to capture political power for the overthrow of Capitalism. For effective Socialist action and understanding they substituted political auto-suggestion. Because society was evolving gradually in the “Socialist” direction, they said, things were going to get better and better for the workers. Given the Fabians in control the results were, guaranteed. Such was the pernicious Fabian doctrine which sought to insulate the working class from a true perspective of their class position in Capitalist Society.

With this automatic process went a peculiar Fabian opportunism. With typical Fabian discreetness they called it “Permeation.” While telling the workers they should have an independent party of their own, they felt that they, the Fabians, should be free to work in and with every group or party for the favourable growth and influence of their ideas. Telling the Tories and Liberals “we” were already half way to Socialism, from which there was no turning back, the other half may as well be travelled in unison nnd together.

The Fabians also helped form the Labour Party by their active association with that party’s parent body—The Labour Representation Committee. So well did the Fabians, permeate the Labour Party that it could at length have uttered with some truth, “We are all Fabians now.” This Fabianisation of the Labour Party made, however, the Fabians superfluous. After a time they became an integral part of the Labour Party and as an independent political organisation for all practical purposes the Society permeated itself out of existence. Such is the inevitability of gradualness. However, Sidney Webb could claim that the Labour Party was. not a class party but one representing National interests who were ready to take over the Government of the country. Appropriately enough the Labour Party’s 1918 programme. “Labour and the New Social Order” was drafted by Webb.

Little wonder that “Fabian Socialism” representing its establishment as “the co-operative outcome of all sections of the community” was regarded as a welcome substitute by those in the saddle for the Marxist ” Class Struggle ” and “Social Revolution.” A “Socialism”—State Capitalism—that left their real class position undisturbed they could regard with equanimity, even interest. They might even agree with Shaw. ” That it was as easy and matter of course for the average respectable Englishman to become a Socialist as a Liberal or Tory.” (“Fabian Essays” 1908 preface.) The Fabians not merely made their Socialism respectable, they made it fashionable. Thus the announcement by an heir of wealthy interests that be had become a Fabian convert to his family might have merely occasioned a remark from his Mamma that his father had become one at an even earlier age.

The adoration of the State and its administrative functions by the Fabians has interesting implication’s. Thus Webb said “We must take more care to improve the social organism than our individual development. It. is not the individual’s development which is the highest cultivation of his personality but the filling in in the best possible way of his humble function in the great social machine.” Shaw, going perhaps even further, implies in Appendix I of the “History of the Fabian Society” that Parliamentary democracy as understood is a mere calling of fools into a ring. He said “Society could never be reconstructed by the type of men produced by popular elections.” Without qualified rulers a Socialist State is impossible, be declares. In a preface to the “Fabian Essays.,” he also states “the very existence of society is dependent on the skilled work of administrators and experts.” Further in the appendix Shaw hoped that “Democracy would demand that only suitable men should be presented to its choice.” Fabians, of course. This is, of course, a. favourite device of dictatorships which, also scorning the notion that people are intelligent enough to run Society in their own interests collectively, demand that only people favoured by nature and circumstances are qualified to take charge. That Shaw himself at length came riding home politically on the shoulders of Mussolini seems not an illogical deduction from his own premises. Fabian State efficiency rather than Fabian democracy would seem their cardinal doctrine. From this it would also seem that Webb and the Fabians anticipated certain features of Fascism.

When Sidney Webb and his wife, Beatrice, were old people, they went to Russia. Previously they had considered Bolshevism no better than Czarism. “Under Bolshevism the prisons were as full and the rifles as active as under Tsardom.” (“Decay of Capitalist Civilisation,” p.101.) What they now saw on their visit was a vast administrative machine run by a privileged bureaucracy. And what the Webbs saw, they liked. The Stalinists hailed the Webbs’ approval of their bureaucratic machine as evidence “of the establishment of Socialism in one Country.” For the Webbs it was the establishment of that State Capitalism par excellence which they had advocated for years. And the Webbs were right. As their fellow Fabian, Bernard Shaw, announced on returning from a visit to Russia, “The Bolsheviks have merely realised the Fabian Ideal.”

When the Webb’s came home they wrote a book of 1,200 pages;: “Soviet Communism a New Civilisation?” In subsequent editions the question mark was removed. Apparently this indicated their full approval and sanction of the state of affairs in Russia. In such a truly Fabian fashion did “Socialism” in Russia come into existence.

This, of course, led to a New Communist line on the Webbs. True Lenin had referred to them as bourgeois humbugs . . , social chauvanists . . . guilty of the worst kind of treachery, etc. (“Lenin on Britain,” p.152.) Likewise the Communist International had denounced Webb and the Fabians as apologists for State Capitalism under the guise of Socialism. (“Handbook of Marxism,” p. 1,026.) Now the Webbs became “Social Scientists,” “objective thinkers,” etc. In such a fashion did a Communist Party scribe called Allen Hutt, eulogise Webb in the Daily Worker (15/10/47.) Incidentally in a book called the “Final Crisis” (p.96) the writer had approvingly quoted Engels as to the Fabians being a band of place hunters. He also considered the influence of the Fabians to have been disastrous on what he called the Socialist Movement.

The Fabian belief in the silent and peaceful evolution of Capitalism with its bedtime stories to the workers of constantly improving conditions has been shattered by the history of Capitalist developments. No such progress has taken place. Economists like Chiozza Money, Bowley, Campion and others have shown how decade after decade road little change in the share of unpaid labour appropriated by the capitalists. Webb, himself, confessed, over 30 years after the founding of the Fabian Society, that one-half of the social product was taken by one-ninth of the community.” (“The Decay of Capitalist Civilisation,” p.17.) While Pease admitted that “little progress has been made towards Socialism. Private ownership flourishes almost as vigorously as it did thirty years ago.” (“History of the Fabian Society,” p.243.) Indeed the Webbs’ “Decay of Capitalism” was a tearful admission that mass unemployment, slumps, and wars were catastrophes not provided for in the peaceful Inevitability of Gradualism, On p.174 these curious Socialists admitted they had never during thirty years in the Socialist Movement, framed an indictment of Capitalism. True that in doing so they seemed to have discovered that there is something inherent in Capitalism which prevents it from functioning in the interests of the vast majority. (Same book, p.18.) What they never saw was that the “Decay of Capitalism was also the decay of Fabianism.” For that reason they did not disappoint us by failing to reach a truly Fabian conclusion. “In order for the workers and capitalists to understand their problems and each other a little better” they said in the last paragraph, “we offer, perhaps in vain, this little book.” The Webbs in setting out to find out what was wrong in Capitalist Society ended up by offering “a little book” as the solution for its social problems. As usual Class Co-operation was their panacea. Thus the long-chanted formula of these disciples of John Stuart Mill’s humanitarianism, “if only sections of society would be reasonable and sympathetic to each other’s claims.” If, of course, the lion was a vegetarian he might be persuaded to lie down with the lamb.

Such was Sidney Webb and his fellow Fabians. “Educated people” and tireless, seekers after statistical facts, yet never once in their researches did they discover the simple and fundamental truths which underlie present class society; simple truths known to the humblest student of Socialism. While these truths remain simple the confusion caused by people like Webb makes the work of expounding them infinitely much harder. By his advocacy of a Capitalism reformed in working-class interests he helped to blunt the sharp edge of the clear-cut Socialist solution. By accident or design he and the Fabians became formidable political fifth columnists in the ranks of the International working class. As an investigator of social facts and part author of a work like “The History of British Trade Unions,” he may be remembered. As a sociologist and a scientific interpreter of his times he is already in the process of being forgotten.

Ted Wilmott

Marx or Malthus? (1907)

Book Review from the October 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The demand for an “eight hours’ day for all workers” by the enthusiastic young man whose estimate of the relative value of broken-bottles and bullets as missiles appears to be in need of some revision, led us to a study of J. M. Robertson’s “The Eight Hours Question.”

The member for Tyneside shows the uselessness of this particular “palliative” by a searching analysis of its effect in case of “particular legislation” in that direction. He simply “wipes the floor” with such “Socialist” opponents as Webb, Shaw, and S.D.F. Jones. His position may be summed up by the following quotations:

“They (Messrs. Webb & Co.) have undertaken to provide a manual of fact and theory for the politicians and labour-leaders who have to deal with the question. Their only bias is the bias of sociological inclination. Yet their altruistic bias is quite as fatal in science as a mercenary one would have been inasmuch as it is even more likely to blind and mislead. Generosity and nobility of feeling will not suffice to decide the matter for those of us who feel that half the miseries of life spring from action undertaken from motives either benevolent or genial. . . Mr. Webb is sensitive about the ungenerousness of pointing out to the working-men that they are mistaken, but he seems to have no misgiving about leading thousands of them to the bitterest disappointment.”

Waiving the question as to what is meant precisely by “sociological inclination,” members of The Socialist Party of Great Britain will heartily concur in the foregoing : indeed, one might use the words as a text when combating the fluffy sentimentalities of the I.L.P’er who derives his “economies” from the New Testament (with profuse apologies to the Old), or the perfervid oratry of the average S.D.F’er on the question of “free maintenance,” who, like Dick Dauntless in “Ruddygore,” argues that it must be right so long “as your ‘eart be your compass” in so far as “this ‘ere ‘eart of mine’s a dictatin’ to me like anythink.”

But clearly as Robertson sees the futility of the legalised restriction of hours (and, incidentally, of other palliatives); although from his own historical and sociological works the fact of the “class struggle” might be deduced : while “economic causation” is the master-key by which he unlocks the mystery of the rapid spread of early Christianity ; he fails to follow his own clues, and, obsessed by one idea (Neo-Malthusianism), proposes counter palliatives, which while they might lighten the burdens of a class doomed to remain in slavery for all time, are grotesquely beside the mark to those genuine Socialists with whose principles, apparently, the learned member has yet to become acquainted, Socialists who believe with him that “the one hope lies in the good sense of the more thoughtful workers, who ought to be the means of guiding aright the rest, they themselves listening to economic reason rather than to the blind impulse which attacks the symptom instead of the cause.”

But here, oddly enough, our author, who elsewhere rightly insists upon the vital importance of verification of premises, takes for granted what is obviously his main contention, namely : that the cause of poverty is overpopulation. In a book of 150 pages, there is not a line directly devoted to the proof of what he regards as the “essence” of Malthusian teaching, viz : “Population tends to increase in an excessive ratio to food”—which, to say the least, in a book which is practically a plea for “Neo-Malthusianism”—is a curious slip. His ludicrously easy task of exposing the absurdities of the Fabians does not justify him in the belief that he has exposed the errors of what he is pleased to call “a crude Marxian economics,” still less does the fact that Gronlund made an error in his statement as to the debated question of the number of Malthus’ children, or that Tom Mann gravely assures the worker that the lessened hours of labour will benefit both the proletarian and capitalist, justify him in the belief that he has established the truth of the precious “law,” which “holds good no matter what be the efficiency or equality of the distribution of wealth.” In the terms of his own main contention, having regard to the implied object of the book, (chapter 13 is called the “Population crux,”) J. M. Roberston’s “The Eight Hours Question” must be regarded as a literary miscarriage, a splendid warning to Guy and Guenn in the avoidance of a non sequitur, a striking example of the truth of the ever-recurring fact that scholarship, literary ability and even genuine sympathy with the worker, are absolutely no guarantee that the real issue for the worker can be more than glimpsed. The exhibition of possibly the most brainy man the Liberals can claim placing himself upon the level of palliative-mongering “Labour-leaders” and middle-class bureaucrats, whose fallacies he deplores, and whose antics he must despise, gives one “furiously to think.” It becomes increasingly right, meet, and our bounden duty, at all times, and in all places, to strenuously oppose those who, whether by reason of mental obfuscation, or by reason of deliberate attempt to contuse the worker for their own ends—the two reasons merge only too easily in the “leader”—have inscribed “Socialism” on their banner, and are acting falsely to the grandly simple principles involved in that faith.

Lack of space forbids more than a cursory examination of the proposition that poverty is caused mainly by “overpopulation.” J. M. Robertson, ashamed, apparently, of the crudely absurd proposition iirst enunciated by Malthus, viz., that population tends to double itself in geometrical progression, whilst subsistence can only be made to increase in arithmetical progression, contents himself with saying that “Population tends to increase in an excessive ratio to food.” Now, it is evident that, put into its very simplest form, this must mean: the more food (“warmth and clothing” is somewhat illicitly smuggled in later on) available, the greater the birth-rate. Yet, on his own showing, the “upper” classes tend to reproduce less, and here the “food supply” is adequate, not to say excessive. Does Robertson maintain that this lessened rate is due to the adoption of Neo-Malthusian teachings ? Grant even that such principles have been adopted, is it not flying in the face of all logical procedure, to assume that this lessened birth-rate is due only to the operation of that circumstance. Further, in ancient Greece and Rome, is it not a fact that the “lower orders” tended to increase at a faster rate than the “upper” classes ? Were there Malthusians then ? Was abortion and infanticide practised more by the patrician than by the proletarian, by the “citizen” than by the helot?

In all seriousness, one asks: Is there not sufficient food, or is it only the purchasing power to obtain food which the English wage-slave, the Indian ryot, the Irish peasant lacks ? “When her population was at its highest Ireland was a food-exporting country. Even during the famine, grain, meat, butter, and cheese were carted for exportation along roads lined with the starving, and past trenches into which the dead were piled.” Had that food been available, possibly, Robertson may retort, there would have been more reproduction and more want. On which very point one seeks in vain for anything approaching a proof, and is fobbed off with such gratuitous assertions as “With such general distribution of wealth as we all wish for, population would easily double in 20 years unless the lesson of prudential restraint be learned step for step with the improvement.”

It is curious that it does not occur to the minds of Neo-Malthusians that there is another alternative worth considering, viz., that poverty causes overpopulation. The development of this point would result in lengthening an already over-long article. Perhaps the Editor will allow the point to be considered on another occasion. I content myself at present with pointing out that the lowly organisms which haunt the blood of man, and try deadly conclusions with the friendly phogocyte multiply in a way that the worthy Malthus would have called “very striking,” and that, deprived of nourishment, several of the one-celled plants and animals protest by retiring into semi-privacy for a while, and then forming themselves into mere reproducing agents, one organism giving rise to innumerable ”spores.” “Neo” Malthusianism will hardly touch these degenerate beings.

Of course, the Socialist is well aware that the big fringe of unemployed tends ever more and more to aid the employer in beating down labour to a mere subsistence-wage, but he is also aware that this is because the worker, under our present system, is a mere commodity, a curious piece of mechanism differing only from the machine it minds in its power of producing surplus-value, in handing over to its owner the handsome difference between its own cost of subsistence and the value of the commodities its labours have brought into being.

It is the duty of The Socialist Party of Great Britain to tell the workers in general, and the Malthusians in particular :—

(1) Whatever temporary good may accrue to a few individual workers from the adoption of their principles, no permanent benefits can possibly be gained by the working class as a whole.

(2) This particular palliative, along with its bosom friends Total Abstinence, Thrift, Clean Boots, Brushed Hair, and the New Theology will be preached to you by all sorts and conditions of men. The S.P. of G.B. will be at the old stand, giving a hand to Economic Pressure, who will not too gently, but firmly, persuade you that Socialism is your only hope.

Augustus Snellgrove

Rays. (1909)

From the February 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

In “Justice” (2.1.09), Mr. H. M. Hyndman enters his protest against “modesty,” and boastingly gives a list of his aristocratic relations and friends who have had more or less close relations with Indian affairs. The list includes titled hired assassins of every degree, military swashbucklers, capitalist political and literary hacks, Lords and Ladies of English high society, and a few Indian natives who had found favour in the eyes of their country’s enemies—truly a noble and notable gang of associates to boast of while posing as a Socialist,

* * *

The writer then proceeds to tell us how clever HE was, how HE had provided a Conservative Government with an Indian policy, which they put into practice, and how he “had been assured that he had rendered a great service to the State,” and had been offered “all that any man could get in this country.”

* * *

Doubtless all this is true. In fact, judging by the present painful position in which the Indian people find themselves, we are inclined to believe that some scheme of his has been in operation, and after reading his shameful confessions, we shall view with more suspicion than ever any future proposals emanating either from H. M. Hyndman or that coterie of his disciples who still call themselves “The Social Democratic Party.”

* * *

However, not to be eclipsed, but to dim the self-constructed halo round Hyndman’s head, up springs the gentle George Bernard Shaw, to trumpet forth in the columns of the “Observer” (10.1.09) his services, and those of the Fabian Society, to the capitalist class. According to G.B.S. it was the Fabian Society (in other words himself) who supplied the Liberal Party with the Newcastle Programme, which served so well to delude the working class for twenty years ; and when it dawned on those far-seeing and obliging Fabians, that to have a programme without meaning to carry it out meant disaster to their Liberal friends, they prepared the way for a Party (the Liberal Party) without any programme to carry out. Now it is rumoured that the Labour Party require a programme, and again the Fabian Society is at hand. Yet the one and only George need not worry. Those Liberal-Labour lambs won’t do anything rash. They don’t really need a programme. What (from a working-class point of view) they really need is called “cremation.” Nevertheless, George Bernard Shaw is going to Portsmouth to provide the freaks with more Fabian foolery. ‘Tis a mad world, my masters, but it spells tragedy for the toilers.

* * *eade

“Mr. Ben Tillett has fallen foul of the Parliamentary Labour Party (to which he is affiliated and under whose auspices he has agreed to stand for Parliament) and in a pamphlet just issued, charges them with libelling their class in connection with the Licensing discussion, and says that Henderson, Shackleton and Snowden have ‘out-Heroded the worst ranters.’ The present leader of the party, ‘when a Gospel-Temperance-Liberal Election agent, was of little importance,’ whilst Shackleton, ‘as a useful but obscure trade union official, was of little consequence ; now he is the darling of Cabinet Ministers, “hot gospellers,” temperance fanatics and educational endowment thieves,’ and so on and so on.”

* * *

Commenting on the above “John Bull” asks (23.1.09) “When Labour men fall out, how are the workers to get their due ?” The answer to this is, of course, by choosing to understand Socialism and trying Socialist delegates instead of “Labour Leaders.” This answer is equally applicable to the question “How are workers to get their due ?” whether the “Labour men” fall out or not. For united or divided they are just as impotent to effect any advancement of the cause of that great working class whom they have they the impudence to claim they represent, while in fact they merely represent its ignorance and credulity.

Editorial: Labour Party Programme For The Year 2000 (1955)

Editorial from the August 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The idea of encouraging the donkey forward by dangling a carrot a short distance in front of his nose is an ancient one but even the oldest tricks can be changed and Mr. Albu, Labour M.P. for Edmonton, has discovered a startling variation.

Like other Labour M.P.s he has had to realise that the Labour electoral carrot offered to the voters in the recent General Election was not successful in enticing them to the polling booth for 1,500,000 of former Labour voters this time refused to go in and put their cross. So Mr. Albu,_who is a member of the Executive Committee of the Fabian Society has been thinking up a new programme for Labour. He spoke about it at a meeting of the Central London Fabian Society on June 29. He said:—

“There should be adequate incentives, but property ownership should be reduced by estate duties and a capital gains tax so that by the year 2000 the distribution of inherited wealth would be similar to that of taxed income today."

(Manchester Guardian, 30 June, '55.)

Mr. Albu is not proposing that inequality of accumulated wealth be eliminated but only that it should be lessened, so that it would not exceed the smaller, but still very great, difference between the annual income of the rich man and the wages of the poor. So we progress! Many years ago the Fabian Society, and later the Labour Party, planned to do something “immediately” about this inequality. Now Mr. Albu suggests postponing the completion of half a plan until a date 45 years ahead, by which time most of the present generation will be dead. 

The basis on which Capitalism exists is the monopoly by a minority, of the accumulated wealth of society. It is the cause of the poverty of the many. This has been the central theme of the Socialist case against Capitalism and it was known to Mr. Albu’s Fabian Society long, long ago.

Two thirds of a century ago Mr. Sidney Webb wrote in the Fabian Essays 1889 (“Historic” page 60).

“If private property in land and capital necessarily keeps the many workers permanently poor (through no fault of their own) in order to make the few idlers rich (from no merit of their own), private property in land and capital will inevitably go the way of the feudalism which it superseded.”

In 1908 the Fabian Society had phrased the known inequality of wealth in the statement “about one seventieth part of the population owns far more than half of the entire accumulated wealth, public and private, of the United Kingdom.” (Fabian Tract No. 7 Capital and Land. Page 10.). 

Sometime later they expressed it in the form “ten per cent. of the population own 90 per cent. of the wealth.”

In this form it was used in articles in the Daily News in 1916 and reproduced in the Fabian Tract When Peace Comes. (P. 28).

This proposition has been doing service ever since in the propaganda of the Labour Party. It was featured in their election programme of 1918, Labour and the New Social Order and 31 years later, in 1949, a Minister in the Labour Government confirmed that it still represented the division of wealth. (Mr. Glenvil Hall, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, ‘Hansard' May 18, 1949). After all these years and though we have had three Labour Governments, nothing whatever has been done to end the state of affairs that the early Fabians recognised as the cause of poverty. Incidentally, the Fabian Society in 1908, proposed to take over the land and capital “ without compensation (though not without such relief to expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the community.") (Fabian Tract Capital and Land 1908. P. 18.).

The Fabian Society named itself after a Roman General, Quintus Fabius Maximus, known as the “Delayer,” who perfected harrying tactics described as “masterly inactivity,” and whose motto was said to be “make haste slowly."

But Fabius did win some notable battles and would have been surprised if he could have known that an organisation named after him was to do nothing at all to win its major battle for some 70 years and an executive member was then to propose aiming at some slight action 45 years later still.

Muddled as the early Fabians were in their twin notions that capitalism would disappear of its own accord or alternatively could be modified by reforms into becoming an equalitarian society, they were mental giants compared with those who have followed them in the Labour Party.

In the meantime the rich one-tenth still own nine-tenths of the accumulated wealth; and there is still no solution to the poverty problem except the Socialist one of transforming the means of production and distribution into the common property of society as a whole.

Fabian Notes. (1907)

From the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The government of the future will be by experts and we, naturally, want to be the experts.”

(H. Snell speaking for the Fabian Society.)

* * *

So now you know, if you did not before, what the Fabian Society are after. Their “Socialism” is government by bureau, and “naturally” (sweet word) they want to be the bureaucrats. “Naturally” they want the plums. “Naturally” they want to sit in the seats of authority and arrange things for the benefit (naturally for the benefit) of the other and somewhat lower orders who do the mere producing.

* * *

“Naturally” these producers will be unable of themselves to administer their own affairs. Because “naturally” such delicately intricate work as will “naturally” be involved in the manipulation of affairs of state, “naturally” demands a special type of mind, specially trained. And obviously, not to say “naturally” the working class qua working class,— the working class that is to say per se,—do not possess such necessary and entirely essential qualities. They must “naturally” look for their administrators, therefore, among the cultured class who, “naturally” endowed with imperial qualities have consecrated their lives to their development and with infinite pains have, rendered themselves fit to enter into the holy of holies from which will issue those inspired directions and words of good counsel without which the labourers in the vineyards (and other places) will be as sheep without a shepherd, as little children stumbling in the dark.

* * *

The members of the Fabian Society having quite clearly all the special equipment necessary, therefore quite “naturally” desire that the working class shall acclaim them the saviours of Society and signify implicit confidence in their capacity by unhesitatingly conceding them the right to govern.

* * *

But I think, I say I think, it will not work out quite like that. I think, mark, I think that there will be some little hesitancy before the working class admit the necessity for the creation of a bureaucratic staff, or a star chamber, or a holy of holies even to such fierce democrats as the Fabian Society. I think it not unlikely that the working class will look somewhat dubiously upon a method of government such as they have been somewhat painfully familiar with for several generations and may even conclude that, on the whole, they would prefer to try something else—a method, for example, by which they themselves would be the dictatorial authority expressing their requirements through administrators who would be mere delegates with their instructions in their pockets. The intellectual equipment of administrators in these circumstances need not necessarily be exceptional.

* * *

Of course the Fabian Society will unanimously agree that such a hypothesis is entirely grotesque. And as the Fabian Society are experts in the grotesque their view may quite properly be given the consideration it so well merits. But as this is my funeral, they need not distress themselves too severely even if I persist in pressing the probability of their super-excellent services being in small demand, and proceed to submit that their idea of government under Socialism is likely to be regarded as antiquated and fitting only to the conditions which obtained in the nightmare days of capitalism. However preposterous it may seem to them, I think it quite possible that as there will be no interests to administer except the interests of the working class, the present geographical unit of alleged representation, based as it is upon the private ownership of the means of life, will be superseded by representation of labour departments. The honourable member for East Loamshire will give way to Citizen Smith, the delegate of the Gasworkers and General Labourers’ Federation or some such labour organisation. As, so far as I have been able to observe, the Fabian Society’s idea of the government of the future rests upon the continuance of the present bureaucratic forms, such an alteration would tend to have the effect of knocking the Fabian Society’s heaven-sent powers somewhat acock.

* * *

Let me submit with becoming humility that the Labour organisations of the future being composed of moderately intelligent men (such intelligence being necessarily antecedent to the Socialist State) might understand almost, if not quite, as well as a Fabian expert—I am charitably assuming that the Fabian expert is not knocked acock as aforesaid—what they required for their own comfort and happiness and might (it’s a most outrageous proposition) even be in a better position than the inspired governmental Shavian to decide upon such changes in the machinery and methods of industry in their own department as would facilitate production and ensure them greater leisure and less arduous labour. And their conferences would instruct their delegate accordingly.

* * *

It’s an interesting subject and my vagrom speculations could, I am sure, be extended to cover several more columns at least. But the exigencies of space and pressure of many matters force me to an immediate closure. I will only add that in all my anticipations of the probable outworkings of the Socialist Society of tomorrow I can, without allowing my imagination to riot, easily conceive that there will be no overpowering necessity for any legislative holy of holies or for any administrative caste, or for any bureau of inspired experts. And however natural the longing of the “culchawed” Fabian may be for the seat of authority and the halo of beneficent superiority, it may well chance that he will not be appreciated at anything like his own estimated worth, and it may even happen in that event, that he will find himself in the unhappy position of being obliged to devote himself to the acquisition of some information likely to make of him a useful member of Society. I would therefore respectfully advise him to start trying to pick up the rudiments of a helpful calling—say woodchopping—lest the revolution overtake him while he is still endeavouring to articulate his vain regrets—his very vain regrets.

A. James

Professor Cole rides again (1956)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

We received the following letter to which a reply is attached.

S.W.3.

17.1.56.

World Socialist Movement

Dear Sirs,

In the January issue of the Socialist Standard there is a reference on p. 3 to “movements like the one sponsored by G. D. H. Cole”—presumably referring to the World Socialist Movement.  Since your writer gave a quite erroneous impression of the nature of this movement I should be obliged if you would publish the following information in the Socialist Standard.

The World Socialist Movement is not a movement craving for a mass following. Naturally we seek to convince people of the possibility and desirability of world Socialism (as, we understand, does the Socialist Party of Great Britain). Your article refers to “ those who . . . have hedged, compromised, and thrown principles to the winds in order to swell the numerical support,” etc. However applicable these statements may be to the other movements you mention, they most certainly do not apply to the World Socialist Movement, which is quite explicitly an educational and not a mass movement. Your readers can confirm this by reading our introductory leaflet (obtainable from the above address) which contains a summary of our beliefs in six principles—” the minimum, which can on no account be diluted in an attempt to gain popular support.’

Yours,

John H. Roddam.

Secretary W.S.M.

Executive Committee, S.P.G.B.,

52, Clapham High St., S.W.4.

Reply:

In an article that appeared in an American periodical “The Nation” (April 23rd. 1955), G. D. H. Cole outlined the practical suggestions he thought would come from the organisation that he proposed should be established. As a preliminary he stated:

“Besides, mass parties cannot think; they can only be influenced by the thinking of individuals or small groups of people who are prepared to think for them.”

Whit would this group of intellectual snobs do?

“The immediate task of this group would be not to act but to think together and to plan—to restate Socialist principles in relation to the most pressing contemporary problems, and to base on these principles a broad programme of action to which the various national movements would be called upon to play their part. Each member of the group, or order, would publicize its ideas in his own country and try to induce the national leaders to take them up.” 

What is this but an attempt to get a mass following of blind supporters? And what is the nature of the ideas that would be publicized?

“First, a clearly defined attitude towards the making and potential use of atomic weapons; second, a well-thought-out plan of campaign for a ‘war upon want’ designed to equalize, as nearly as possible, conditions of living in all countries; third, plans for a world economic structure that will avoid the evils both of capitalism and of bureaucratic centralization and will open up for the workers in every country rapidly increasing opportunities for democratic, responsible self-government in their working lives; and fourth the complete ending of imperialist domination, both political and economic, and the extension of self-governing independence to all people."

In other words Cole had gone back to the position of the early Fabians whose policy was largely responsible for the present position of the Labour Party.

Now let us turn to the leaflet which our critic encloses. It opens with the following three paragraphs in heavy black type:

"The World Socialist Movement strives to justify through its members its claim to be the nucleus of the coming world socialist society and not of a new party.

“We regard national governments and institutions as outmoded and aggressively competitive and militaristic in conception; and so we appeal to socialists all over the world to combine with us in the struggle to free ourselves and others from that which fetters our thoughts, falsifies our actions and makes a virtue of competition and segregation in place of co-operation and unity.

“We believe that socialists are hampered in their attempt to bring about a socialist world society less by opposition from without than by dissension from within, and our basic principles have been formulated in the belief that they are acceptable to all socialists; but they are the minimum, which can on no account be diluted in an attempt to gain popular support.”

The leaflet concludes with the following paragraph, also in heavy black type:

“We do not ask you to renounce existing loyalties; but there is no alternative to accepting new and greater loyalties if a socialist world is to come about.”

What is all this empty and dubious phraseology but an attempt to form a mass party. As an inducement they even say, in effect, stick to your old wrong-headed parties but also join us and help to swell our ranks. If this is not throwing principles to the winds, what is? To help swell their following they say, in the body of the leaflet:

“We are not concerned with attacking any country or political party. . . . There is no time to be wasted on destructive criticism;”

. . . 

“We do not believe that a socialist world can be achieved merely by persuading national governments to cooperate more closely. Neither do we believe that people will think as world citizens if we merely attack their deep rooted patriotic emotions”

. . .

“The World Socialist Movement has been started to bring together all the answers to the problems but we want everyone who shares the same reasonable belief to join us and work with us in the pursuit of our ideal.”

. . .

“But we shall have no rigid dogma that must be accepted before an individual can become a member. Every man and woman who wants a socialist world can find a place in our Movement and will be expected to give, in work and money, according to his means”

Well! Well! Well! “Never mind whether you support nationalisation, Social Credit, the Co-operative Movement or any other anti-Socialist idea that you wrongly believe is Socialist; join us and help to swell our ranks. We are the re-incarnated Fabians waiting to help you along the road to futility again!" It’s the old old stuff again with a new label on the bottle.

Now let us take a look at the “ ideal ” of this new party that is not a party. Here is their definition of it:

“The first need is to outline the sort of world we are striving for. We want a socialist world and by that we mean one in which there is common citizenship under a single code of law, in which every human being has equal rights. It means that there must be world planning for the production of raw materials and the manufacture of basic commodities, with world ownership of essential industries.”

What Labourite or advocate of state-ownership would disagree with that vague definition? Most Capitalists would find little fault with it; it is just an expansion of the “Welfare State” idea. There is nothing here about the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by. and in the interest of, the whole community. Is there not in this country already common citizenship under a single code of law? Is it not true that the heavy hand of the law falls equally on the millionaire and the pauper if either steals a loaf of bread?

The underlying implication of the leaflet is that its authors envisage Socialism as (synonymous with State ownership—with the qualification that it is a world state and not a national one. There is no suggestion of the abolition of buying and selling: no suggestion of a class cleavage in society, nor of the power of the class state. In the main the leaflet consists of vague generalities, inept proposals, and ignorance of the nature of the social problem and of the only steps that can be taken to solve it. It contains a number of contradictory statements. We have mentioned one or two: the claim that they are not a new party—but everyone should join them; that everyone should stay in their old parties—but ought to join them; that they have no dogma—but basic principles to which all must agree.

Now let us examine the six basic principles to which, they say, all prospective members must agree.

“1. To a socialist racial prejudices, religious intolerance, and class distinctions have no justification.”

That does not get anyone farther than polite agreement, though one might argue about the “justification.” Many who are not Socialists would agree to it. as they would agree to 'statements like “Poverty, hunger and oppression have no justification.”

“2. The ultimate aim is total disarmament, renunciation of national sovereignty, and positive co-operation between all peoples.”

Here we have the cloven hoof. The ultimate aim. not the immediate aim. The immediate aim can be the reformers' usual quiverful of projects that lead up blind alleys. What reformer would disagree with that alleged principle?

“3. 'Equality of opportunity' and 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' should be applied on a worldwide as well .as a national scale.”

We note that these principles should be applied, not must or will be applied. And what is the meaning of “a world-wide as well as a national scale?” Is it suggested that they are now applied on a national scale? As there is no explanation of what the authors mean by the two principles, either here or in the body of the leaflet, we are left in the dark about how to interpret them.

"4. The means of production, distribution and exchange should belong to the community, and not to any individual or group.”

As money is the means of exchange the authors apparently envisage it belonging to the community. Consequently they are assuming the continuance of buying and selling. In an earlier part of the leaflet (which we have already quoted) they say that private enterprise has proved inadequate and the profit motive inefficient, but they do not attack state ownership—or nationalisation— so we are justified in assuming that this is what they mean by belonging “to the community” as this has always been the pseudo Socialist outlook.

“ 5. True socialism is true democracy and must be practised in political, economic and social fields.

“ 6. Socialism is a faith, an economic system and a political creed—the only real solution to the problems with which man is faced.”

What these two “principles” mean we do not know. There is nothing in the leaflet to explain them, and we take it that they are just some more wind. But we note that Socialism is “a political creed.” We assume, therefore, in spite of their denial, that they are in fact a new political party.

One thing, however, can be admitted about these “principles ”; they are so vague, windy and diluted that it would be difficult to dilute them any further. Consequently the supporters of multifarious reformist programmes, who falsely call themselves Socialists, should have no difficulty in accepting them and thereby building another road to the wilderness of futility, in the interests conscious or unconscious, of keeping the wheels of Capitalism running along smoothly.

Gilmac.