The Shape of Things to Come—and The Forces That Will Shape Them (1940)

From the August 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who seek to explain by reference to “ideologies” the swift movement of events in the world, the sudden collapse of impregnable positions, the seemingly inexplicable changes which show the grand old men of yesterday to be the dodderers of to-day, must be bewildered and confused by what is going on before their eyes. In a short period of time they have seen those exponents of supposedly irreconcilable doctrines—Stalin and Hitler—joined in a pact of friendship, while Catholic Italy and Catholic Spain fall more and more under the influence of Nazi Germany, erstwhile enemy of Catholicism. They have seen democratic France turn towards Dictatorship, and Conservatives proclaiming the need to back up “revolutionary” movements. The idealist who tries to discern the pattern in history, past and present, is prevented from doing so because he believes that ideas and beliefs have an independent origin and that one set of ideas will triumph over another if only the men who hold them have leaders of goodwill and integrity. The Socialist who looks to social relations and economic forces is better placed. Not, of course, that the Socialist can predict with certainty just how and when a conflict of forces will work out in the future, but at least he knows what is the nature of the forces on which the issue depends. Knowing, as Marx puts it, that “it is not men’s consciousness which determines their life,” but “their social life which determines their consciousness,” he also allows for the fact that at any given period of history the vital forces at work have to struggle with ideas which resulted from past conditions—”the tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living.”

The Weakness of France

Some of the explanations given of the French collapse are of the most superficial kind : Petain, we are told, was a “pessimist ” even in 1917, and Laval “a defeatist and potential traitor”; there were elements in France who were “vaguely anti-Parliamentarian and anti-democratic and equally vaguely pro-Fascist”; Daladier was “a civilian mediocrity,” and Gamelin “a military mediocrity”—and so on. These “explanations” cry aloud themselves to be explained. A little nearer the mark is the Economist’s French correspondent (July 20th, 1940), who says that he interviewed many French officers and “cannot recall one who was not a pessimist, not about the outcome of the war, but about the social and economic difficulties which would open up for France after the end of hostilities.” “It was not,” he says, “the mental attitude that wins wars.”

Some of the newspaper correspondents have, however, shown a more correct and robust grasp of realities in their judgment of the forces at work in France.

A Special Correspondent in France of the Daily Telegraph (June 25th, 1940) pointed out that Petain and Weygand were scared by reports (proved to be incorrect) that Communists had seized public buildings in Paris. This incident shows that preoccupation with maintaining France’s social tranquillity and repressing subversive movements weighed heavily with the two aged soldiers, and that they did not see the situation in its true perspective.”

Mr. Ward Price (Daily Mail, July 8th) mentions the “rich and influential Frenchmen” (including an unnamed “owner of iron ore mines in Lorraine”) who were behind Laval because they thought that “their personal interests would be benefited by co-operation with Germany, or, conversely, that war between the two countries would ruin them.” As long ago as 1931, in pre-Nazi days, Laval had proposed a Franco-German Committee of Economic Co-operation.

Another Daily Mail correspondent, Mr. Francis Tuohy, classifies the people behind French Fascism as “Catholics, Royalists, Officers, aristocracy, big business, police and functionaries, intellectuals and students, the propertied classes in general” (Daily Mail, July 22nd), and according to a French ex-editor, writing in the Manchester Guardian (July 22nd), one of the members of the Petain Cabinet is a Senator named Mireaux, editor of the Temps. “That paper,” he says, “is the organ of the Comité des Forges, the head of which is M. de Wendel, a great friend of M. Laval.” (The Comité des Forges is the organisation of French heavy industry.)

One last quotation on this aspect is from an editorial in the Manchester Guardian (July 12th) :

“That France needs reform is evident enough. In the last twenty years she has had forty-two Ministries. Only five Governments have kept themselves alive for twelve months. Such rapid changes give a mischievous instability to politics. In the background there lurks the power of what M. Herriot called “the 200 best families,” obstructing all social reform and threatening the Governments that did not obey them. It was, indeed, because the revolt against the sinister rule of the banks and big business was so certain at the end of the war, however the war ended, that many rich men were anxious to compound with Hitler ; they were more afraid of victory than of defeat. When defeat came they spoke like the rich friend of Cicero who wrote to him, ” Since the Republic is lost, let us at least keep our property!””

Forces for Change in Europe

The safeguarding of property interests is the dead hand of the past, but what of the more active forces pushing towards change and reorganisation in Europe? Can the men who appear as leaders hold developments in check, or failing that can they guide them into the channels they desire? Are they the creatures or the masters of the forces behind and below them ? We need to be cautious in forecasting events, but it seems a safe conclusion that the regime of Petain and that of his friend Franco are both doomed to fail. Petain’s Foreign Minister, Baudouin, can say (News Chronicle, July 18th) that “the world existing before May 10th is definitely buried,” and think that he is free to determine the destiny of France so that “new relations will be instituted between Capital and Labour and there will be new conceptions of life based on authority, order and obedience.” So also Franco’s brother-in-law and Foreign Minister, Serano Suner, can say (Daily Express, July 19th) that “freedom has been buried for ever in Spain,” but events will determine otherwise. Franco, only a brief while ago, was talking of a new stable order in Spain based on the peasants and national self-sufficiency just as Petain’s Government at the present time “apparently sees France’s role in the new Europe as primarily a peasant and handicraft country” (Daily Telegraph, July 23rd). But the clock of industrial and capitalist development cannot be turned back to medievalism. Franco and Petain both ignored or forgot that they live in a world which is subject to the intense and inescapable pressure of trade and competition ; on the one hand, and working-class resistance on the other. It is not to be forgotten that “a million Republicans are held in prison camps” in Franco’s Spain (W. Forrest, News Chronicle, July 18th). And it is from a Spanish newspaper correspondent in Vichy that the report came that Petain’s Government had to shift from Clermont-Ferrand to Vichy because of the violent and threatening attitude of the workers at the Michelin tyre factory in the former town (Daily Telegraph, July 19th).

Franco used to talk of being free from the pressure of capitalist forces, determined to build up Spain within her own border and on her own resources, but already he has been forced to change his tune to the more familiar one of Spain’s “duty and mission” to command Gibraltar and go in for a policy of Empire building : “We have shed the blood of our dead, not in order to return to the decadent past but in order to build a nation and create an empire” (The Times, July 19th). “Expansion in Africa” is now the order of the day.

When considering the prospects of such dictatorships as those of Petain and Franco, it is worth noticing that the four dictatorships that succeeded in establishing themselves (Russia, Germany, Italy and Turkey), along with some differences had two things in common. In each case power was obtained by a new group, not a mere reshuffling of representatives of existing parties and interests, and in each case those who seized power contrived to do so by using (or exploiting) the more or less constitutional machinery without waging open civil war against the workers or other large representative section of the population. On one or the other of these counts both Franco and Petain fail to possess the qualities that make for comparative permanence (not, of course, that other dictatorships have real permanence either).

It is relevant at this point to consider the position of Russia, and the urge that drove the Stalin regime to enter into the pact with Hitler. The military consideration of not wanting to be isolated in face of Germany and Japan was one aspect, but observers have recently confirmed that behind that fear was the factor of internal economic difficulties. The Moscow correspondent of the American New Republic (quoted in Forward, July 20th) gives it as his judgment that slackening industrial development compelled the Russian Government to take the view that “in both technical organisation and labour, efficiency was advancing so slowly that it would be generations before these departments would compare with those of the modern industrial States.

“Stalin’s way out was an alliance with some big industrial country, in order (1) to ensure Russia’s position of strength in the coming European war; (2) to supplement consumer’s goods industries until they would be able to stand on their own; (3) to supply the machine tools, optical apparatus, etc., which Russia is still forced to import.”

Mr. Louis Fischer, who was for 14 years a newspaper correspondent in Russia, says much the same in his “Stalin and Hitler” (Penguin Special, 6d., May, 1940). He attributes Russia’s industrial slowing down to several factors: “In part (it is) due to military preparations. But it is more adequately explained by the purges and several inherent Soviet economic weaknesses.” (P. 62.)

Here again, as in every other instance of international trends, it is idle to look wholly or mainly to abstract ideas and motives whether of rulers or ruled.

Before leaving the question of the forces making for change in Europe, it is interesting to view the spectacle of Conservatives being forced against every inclination to support movements that may help to undermine the German-Italian dictatorship systems. It is put most strikingly in the columns of the Daily Express. Below are two quotations from recent issues. The first is from an article by Mr. Geoffrey Cox, showing how Franco should be attacked at home if Spain goes to war on Germany’s side: —

“Seize the Canary Islands and other Spanish island possessions and set up there at once a Republican Government which we recognise.

But we can only do this if our appeal is a genuine Republican revolutionary appeal for straight-out revolution.

We must be prepared to co-operate with all the parties of the last Spanish Popular Front Government—Socialists and Communists and Anarchists, as well as Liberals and Radicals. We must get out of our minds all questions of whether these people are Red, or pink or white.

For no other appeal will rouse Spain now except the cry of the Republic.”—(Daily Express July 19th.)

The second quotation is from an editorial: —

“Our allies are ordinary people, not Fascist dictators. And since the ordinary people of Europe are now ruled by Fascists we must organise revolutions.

If (by some terrible folly) Britain were ever at war with Soviet Russia, we would work for a Right Wing revolution there. Since we are fighting Fascists, we must work for Left Wing revolutions in Europe. That is only common sense.

And so our Foreign Office and Ministry of Information should change their whole mentality.

Respectable ex-public school-boys and English gentlemen were admirably suited for conducting our relations with Right Wing politicians abroad. But they are the wrong people for carrying on underground intrigues, organising strikes, arranging sabotage and fomenting general discontent in Europe.”

— (Daily Express, July 23rd.)

In that quarter, at least, the dead hand of the past has been thrown off in so far as the winning of the war is concerned.

Edgar Hardcastle

Press Cuttings. (1940)

From the March 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Straight Issue at Southwark.

The Daily Worker (February 13th), writing of the by-election at Southwark: —

“Hitting out on Finland, he declared strongly against the sending of guns and men to Mannerheim.”

Thus the issues of the election were squarely placed. But did he, or does the Daily Worker, hit out strongly against the Russian Government sending armies, tanks and bombing planes into Finland?

The Chapels Seem to be Worse than the Churches.

“Accusations of profiteering by the churches at the expense of evacuees were made yesterday at a meeting of Brighton Education Committee, when the schedule of rentals of 80 church and other halls recommended for hiring for school purposes was disapproved.. It was stated that the rentals would total £10,000 a year.

Councillor Ingham said the council was asked to pay £9 a week for a church with hall and rooms rated at £68 per annum.

“I have never seen such highway robbery with violence in all my life,” he added, “and the chapels seem to be worse than the churches.”

Another member said it was the biggest scandal Brighton had ever heard of.”—(Daily Telegraph, February 14th, 1940.)

Certainly, General, and what are your further orders ?

Under the heading, “Spain Gives Hint to Britain,” the Daily Mail (February 12th, 1940) publishes the following extract from one of General Franco’s papers: —

“A message to-day points out that ‘the soundest section of the British Press praises France’s action in getting rid of the enemies of the State.

‘The Daily Mail is right in suggesting that Britain is not acting against Communism as honestly and energetically as France is doing.’”

But Does the Maid feel that she is like the Mistress ? Silly Stuff from the Rt. Hon. J. R. Clynes, M.P.

“Amazing improvements have taken place in the food, clothing and housing of the people.

The invention of cheap silk fabrics has made it almost impossible to distinguish the mistress from her maid.

The development of working-class flats, with electric equipment, refrigerators and bathrooms, is one of the greatest revolutions of the age; and it is only beginning.

The wireless and the motor-bus have enlarged the horizon of the workers from the parish pump to the ends of the earth. Why, when I started work, the fastest thing on the roads was the horse tram!”— (Supplement to Labour Party Press Service, December 13th, 1939.)

From Spain to Finland.

“The Swedish volunteer force in Finland includes many former soldiers of the International Brigade in Spain. The Labour delegation came across one group of four veterans of the Spanish war; three of them had fought for the Spanish Government and democracy, the fourth for Franco and against Bolshevism. In the Finnish war all four find that they can fight for their various causes on the same side.—(Manchester Guardian, February 10th, 1940.)

Fascism the Friend of the Small Shop-keeper.

A new decree has just been issued in Germany which says this—

“All small shops with less than £20 a week turnover are to be considered as incapable of providing their owners with a reasonable livelihood and must cease trading.—Exchange.”—(Evening News, January 15th, 1940.)

Workers, Be Thrifty.

Lord Mottistone, chairman of the National Savings Committee: —

“Never saved a penny in my life.”—(Speech at Southampton, January 27th. Daily Express, January 28th, 1940.)

Racialism and Classism. 

From a definition of the shoddy Nazi doctrine of superior and inferior races, by Dr. Ley, leader of the Nazi Labour Front: —

“An inferior race needs less space, less food and less culture than a superior race.”—(Daily Telegraph, February 6th, 1940.)

The Imperial Communist Party of Spain (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

After forty years the Spanish dictatorship, dominated by bankers, landed aristocracy, mine-owners and wine-growers, has had to give way to its industrial capitalist section in its struggle to emerge as a competitor in the European and other markets by legalising trade unions and political parties. Restrictions imposed by the Franco regime — the police state, rigid censorship, and the political influence of the armed forces and the church, have produced a top-heavy bureaucracy and increased the expenses of government, whereas capitalism requires cheaper government. Surplus-value extracted from the working class, which is taken by the state in taxation, reduces the appropriation in private hands. The greater the overheads of the capitalist the less his competitiveness. In addition membership of the Common Market, which Spain seeks, entails the free movement of capital and labour, free competition, and free property lobbies in the shape of political representation.

According to the Daily Telegraph (28th April 1977) 130 parties are now legally recognized. Many of these are small fragments and sects from the main parties of Fascists, Communists, reformers, Syndicalists, Republicans. There is no Socialist party at the moment. Public assembly is strictly controlled by the police, the press is still censored, and strikes are still illegal. The Republican Convention (a Spanish anti-Fascist group) claims that 150 million work hours were lost in 1976 involving 5 million workers (May 1st circular, 1977). So much for the Fascist government’s attempt to suspend the class struggle.

It is this factor as much as any other which has pushed the ossified ruling class against its will into the 20th century of labour relations. There is still a long way to go before the corrupt Syndicatos (state- controlled trade unions of employers and workers) are swept aside, and a free and independent trade- union movement allowed to develop. The Workers’ Commissions (trade unions) are dominated by the Communist Party who are exploiting them for political ends which in the long run can only be detrimental to the independence of the re-born movement. A glaring example of this was seen during the recent TU May Day demonstrations organized by the Communist Party which were forbidden by the police, and ended in a series of riots. Marcelino Camacho, head of the Workers’ Commissions, openly admitted that the object of the TU demonstrations was to help the Communists in their forthcoming June elections (Daily Telegraph, 3rd May 1977).

Communist Hypocrisy
In denouncing police brutality he also stated: “Our main enemy is not the Suarez government but the threat posed by the Francoists and neo-Francoists forces to a true return to democracy”. So the Communist Party are not opposed to the Suarez government, and are prepared to support moves to a more democratic regime using the trade unions as pawns in order to achieve their political ambitions. At the Communists’ first legal meeting since the Civil War, held at Valaldolid with 10,000 present, the flag of the Spanish monarchy was displayed on the platform. Replying to protests from party militants, Santiago Carrillo the Party secretary explained: “To consolidate democracy it was necessary to be intelligent politically as well as brave . . . To win over new followers and neutralise enemies we have taken a step that many people do not understand”. (The Times, 28th April 1977.) We agree with Senor Carrillo; many people will not understand why the Communist Party support King Juan Carlos, hand-picked by Franco as the figurehead of the Spanish ruling class. Some Communists at least had sufficient principles to object to this shameful alliance.

The British, French and Italian Communist parties have all betrayed workers in the same way. During the last war, the British party dropped its opposition to British capitalism, and were calling for the prosecution of strikers and urging workers to fight for British capitalism on the Second Front. They too draped the Union Jack on their platform, and carried it in their processions. They also supported Winston Churchill and Tory parliamentary candidates. The Italian Party is sitting down together with the Christian Democrats, whilst the French Party is patriotic and supports French capitalism. Carrillo told a provincial committee that the Party “would support the monarchy without abandoning its Marxist principles”. (The Times, 25th April.) This is a contradiction, because they cannot stand for the abolition of capitalism and its retention at the same time; nor can all the warped and twisted reasoning of the Communist Party change Marxism into support for capitalism. The fact is that the Communist Party has no Marxist principles and could therefore scarcely abandon them.

Reform or Revolution?

Political democracy is the cry of a capitalist reform movement which no genuine Socialist would take part in. All the left-wing parties, including the United Socialist Party, Republicans, Communists and Syndicalists, want democracy in order to push their reform programmes. These range from agrarian reform to self-determination for oppressed minorities, and the release of political prisoners. Other reforms which are proposed include the right to strike and better working conditions for wage workers. These, however, can be achieved by the action of the workers themselves on the industrial field using the strike weapon. Workers can strike without the right to strike, they can achieve higher wages and better working conditions whether it is legally recognized or not. Workers have no rights before capital other than those they obtain and keep through their own action in the class struggle. If the workers using the strike weapon in a properly organized way are unable to wrest from their capitalist employers higher wages and better working conditions, then they are unable to obtain these by means of reformist political action. Reforms will always be enacted when the political parties representing the various sectional interests have made out their case, and the capitalist is convinced that his interests, whether long-term or short-term, will be served. By legalizing trade unions the government will be able to monitor their activities and to obtain their co-operation.

On the industrial field the working class can force the capitalist employer against his will to disgorge a larger share of the wealth extracted from the worker than he would otherwise part with. Therein lies the antagonism of interests which manifests itself as a class struggle between possessors and producers. Higher standards of living and better working conditions must be sought on the industrial field, and not through reformist political action.

However, this economic antagonism of interests, which expresses itself in the class struggle, can only be ended by political action for the establishment of Socialism. This is the real issue which must confront the workers of Spain, not the futile and useless policies of hordes of reformers bent on keeping capitalism going. Propaganda for Socialism does not require permission from the ruling class. Neither does it need any assistance from reformist democrats. The reformer and the so-called progressive elements in Spain have not only separated democracy from the class struggle, they have changed it into an administrative reform measure for the running of capitalism. They want the democracy of the commodity where equal value exchanges for equal value — the equality of property before the law.

Socialism and Democracy

Socialism and democracy are inseparable. Socialists in Spain must campaign for both at the same time. The left in Spain claim that their activities, which are non-Socialist, express the level of political thinking. At the moment this is unfortunately true because a genuine Socialist party has yet to emerge. However, to claim, as do the Communists (Sunday Times Supplement, 26th March 1972) that the workers are not in a position to win power therefore they must make a pact with the bourgeoisie to get the key of the door to get their freedom, is defeatist nonsense.

The Spanish working class is capable of Socialism, and they must stand together with the worldwide Socialist movement in working for its establishment. British workers have made the repeated mistake of making a pact with the bourgeoisie in the shape of the Labour government, and look where it has got them.

Clashing interests in the Mediterranean. (1939)

From the May 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

To every other nation except Italy, the Mediterranean is a means, to Italy it is an end.

During the Ethiopian campaign the massing of the British Navy, to the surprise of everybody, failed to scare Mussolini, or to prevent Italy from using the “all-red route" for her Abyssinian war. The British fleet, under threat of hostilities with an air power, slipped out of Malta in search of a safer base.

The complacency of years was shattered, and the ruling class of Britain, caught by surprise, was forced into hasty thinking.

Elizabeth Monroe, in her book, “The Mediterranean in Politics,” sheds an enlightening gleam upon those hectic days. “If Malta was insecure in face of air armaments, were all small fortresses out of date, and, if so, what about Gibraltar, Cyprus, Aden? . . . Would not the Government do better to concentrate its money and energy on the securer passage round the Cape?”

There was confusion everywhere in the councils of our masters: strategists and experts expressed conflicting views. Some were for quitting the Mediterranean. Others pointed out that to quit was to weaken Britain's position, because it reduced her power of attack.

“In the World War, when the enemy had boasted few or no Mediterranean bases, German submarines had been more successful in the Mediterranean than in any other sea. Five out of thirteen million tons of allied and neutral shipping sunk by submarine had been caught somewhere between Gibraltar and Port Said."

The other side disagreed. They admitted that the route was impassable for merchant shipping in time of war, but they held that the despised bases had their uses. They might be open to attack, but they could also hit back. Blockade from Aden and Gibraltar was no substitute for attack, because a Mediterranean enemy—for instance, Italy or Turkey—could prosper within the blockade area, since she could procure there all essentials except rubber and tin. She could get plentiful wheat and meat and dairy produce from the Balkans, coal from Russia or Germany, oil from Russia, Rumania or Iraq, iron ore from French North Africa, Russia or Spain, copper from Russia, Yugoslavia or Cyprus, and cotton from Russia or Egypt. Obviously, some of these powers might join in the blockade, but Great Britain was far less likely to retain allies if she had retired to a distance. Italy, for example, would be in a position to browbeat her small neighbours into supplying her needs if there were no one left to dispute her local supremacy.

“We are quitting nothing," said the Secretary of State for the Colonies. “Far from there being any question of our abdicating our position in the Mediterranean or scuttling from Malta, we intend to face these new and difficult problems—to make our future position secure," said the First Lord of the Admiralty, after visiting Malta and Cyprus.

The result was that the ruling class drew up an armament programme staggering in its immensity and cost.

Mussolini, however, was in no way daunted; he knows the weakness as well as the strength of his opponents; he has a view of life totally different to that of his democratic antagonists, he cannot be bluffed.

The dictator’s pet aversion is said to be Eden; the latter personifies everything that Mussolini loathes—bourgeois respectability.

If there is any particular type the Duce admires it is the efficient proletarian. Mussolini has lived as a vagrant and knows from experience how hard is the lot of the wage slave; his early writings gave us a glimpse of his mind: when approached in the wrong way, his fury is immediately aroused, especially if there is anything in the manner of those who seek contact with him that recalls his bitter past. Read this and you can form an opinion of what he may have thought of the smug Anthony: the latter, probably, reminded him of a former boss.

  The following day I found a job as a bricklayer’s assistant; eleven hours of work a day, thirty-two centimes an hour. I made 121 trips with a load of bricks to the second story of a house under construction. That night the muscles of my arms were so swollen and sore that I could barely touch them. I ate some potatoes roasted in the ashes and threw myself, dressed as I was, upon my bed, a heap of straw.
   At five in the morning I got up and went back to work. I quivered with impotent anger. The sight of the boss, with his fat, smug, self-satisfied face, gave me hydrophobia. On the third day he said to me, “ You’re too well-dressed.” He meant that to be significant. I felt like rebelling and breaking the head of that newly-rich peasant who accused me of being lazy while my bones were cracking under the strain. But what if I had done it? The employer is always right.
    When the end of the week came, I told the boss that I was going to leave and wanted my pay. He went into the office while I waited outside on the landing. When he came out he angrily thrust twenty-odd francs into my hand and snarled: “Here you are, it’s stolen money.” I was too dumbfounded to reply. What should I have done, killed him ? As a matter of fact, I turned away in silence. I was hungry and barefooted. A pair of almost new shoes that I had brought with me had been tom to shreds, on the rocks and bricks that had cut their way into my hands, my feet and my soul. I hurried, off to an Italian store-keeper and bought a pair of hobnailed shoes. The next morning I left for Lausanne.

Mussolini is now a renegade, boastful and unscrupulous, but “the swollen bullfrog of the Pontine marshes” cannot altogether eradicate his proletarian past: when aroused he sheds all bourgeois culture and instinctively adopts the manner of the class from which he sprang.

He is said to hold the view that the system will never get out of the present debacle : in an interview with a former “Socialist” colleague, he expressed himself thus: “It is the crisis of capitalism. I have always said so.”

   Why did Italy interfere in Spain ? The author above referred to gives us her opinion: "They feared the Socialist tendencies of die Spanish left, and they were anxious as to developments in France. At the time when they first sent help to General Franco—in July, 1936—Monsieur Blum’s Government was dependent on seventy Communist votes, and factories all over France were being occupied by the workers. Probably their chief reason for intervening was their fear that a barrier of Communism might bar Italy’s vital route to the west. Strategically, therefore, they needed a friendly Spain. Doubtless they also reckoned that if, in addition, they could secure an indebted and subservient Spain, they stood to strengthen their position, not only as a Mediterranean, but as an Atlantic power, that they would weaken Great Britain’s hold over the Straits of Gibraltar and that they would command France’s communications, not only from north to south, but from east to west, along North Africa, where her road and railway run so near the Spanish Moroccan frontier.

“But Italy’s past motives for intervening are unimportant in comparison with the question of the future: will she see a return for her intervention? Among a host of conjectures, two facts are clear: the first, that she did not expect so long or so expensive a campaign; the second, that she did not lend men and material without hope of reward.

“The Spanish campaign dragged its length along at a pace which could only have been foretold by a student of the Napoleonic or the earliest wars. Spain was poor in war material. Most of her army I equipment dated from before the War, and the nations who helped either side began by exporting out-of-date armaments, which, while useless to themselves, represented trump cards to the Spanish forces. But from the moment in November, 1936, when the Russians began to supply first-line aircraft, the situation changed. Italy and Germany were obliged in their turn to put their best foot forward. Italy could not afford to do so. Her war material was already spread over Abyssinia and Libya, and she was short of the raw materials necessary for quick replenishment. The risk of war in Europe demanded that she should keep control over the equipment supplied to General Franco: she was therefore obliged to supply him with men as well. Hence her despatch of whole units of the Italian Army.

“When this assistance did not bring the quick victory for which she hoped, she was caught in a vicious circle. The more she hoped General Franco the more she increased his chances of success, but the more she ran the risk of general war with her own armaments in a depleted state. On the other hand' to furnish insufficient help was to spin out a campaign the expense of which she could ill afford.

“By the end of 1937, voices at home were beginning to murmur against taxation for Spanish purposes. By 1938, when Germany had marched into Austria, they were suggesting that the Italians would be better employed in the Alps. But despite their murmurings. Signor Mussolini found difficulty in withdrawing his troops short of victory. He could not do so because a dictator must go from strength to strength. Like a man on a bicycle, he must keep moving or he will fall.”

Mussolini was able to compensate himself to some extent by obtaining some of the raw materials he so desperately needed. It is to be noted that business was carried on as usual during hostilities. Profit is never lost sight of, even during the horrors of a ghastly war.

The material and economic factors in the Spanish struggle have so far not received the attention they deserve.

France has the most at stake, inasmuch as French interests hold about sixty per cent. of the total foreign investments. The British share, representing about twenty per cent., lies chiefly in mining, and was in 1937 estimated at about £40 millions.

Great Britain and France, who hoped to preserve the status quo, tried to limit the struggle to small dimensions, and therefore championed non-intervention. Since their ideal was a weak Spain, the result that would have suited them best was a stalemate—a situation in which the two Spanish factions, sickened with inconclusive fighting, and with insufficient help from their respective patrons had turned to British and French bankers for reconstruction loans. Had this happened, the two powers would not only have remained strategically secure, but could have worked to recover any losses caused by the war among their considerable Spanish investments. From a purely self-interested standpoint, any other result was less satisfactory to them. “A victory for the extreme left would have caused misgivings in Great Britain if it had encouraged Communist tendencies in France. But once the expansionist powers were openly helping General Franco, a victory for the extreme right presented even graver drawbacks. Won at the cost of Spanish subservience to Italy or Germany, or both, it threatened both the British and French Empires with strategic, diplomatic, and perhaps even economic difficulties."

Certain diplomats held that the Italians would never retain a footing in Spain, because Spaniard and Italian could never agree, and that General Franco could be relied upon to eject his Fascist helpers as soon as he had won the war. The German menace they also dismissed. Spanish waters, they said, were an area in which British and French fleets could deploy with effect. Spain was easy to insulate, and any German forces operating from there could soon be immobilised.

Both these arguments are over-optimistic. The first disregards the tendency of totalitarian states to act together, despite human dislikes. Italy is immensely powerful in the Central Mediterranean, but weak at its either end, and, were she to gain any kind of foothold in Spain, would shatter the present delicate balance of Mediterranean forces. The second, though true as far as it goes, overlooks the main advantage that Herr Hitler can derive from dominance in Spain. His arms or influence there achieve their maximum potency, not as a war force, but as a pre-war nuisance. In the game of poker to which diplomacy is once more reduced, he heightens his chances of winning a hand if his troops can glower at France from the Pyrenees as well as the Rhine, if they can hang, spectre-like, over the French mobilisation channel, and if they can look briskly efficient on the hills on either side of the Straits of Gibraltar.

The development which culminated in such a situation was the logical outcome of the policy adopted by the victors of the last war.

Debts, reparations and the irksome situation forced upon the vanquished led to the dislocation of world trade and the fall of the gold standard. The very day that Britain went from gold to a sterling basis saw Japan begin her invasion of Manchuria and the launching of her new Far- Eastern policy.

The Ottawa Conference of 1932 saw the Dominions and the mother-country meet together under the flag of Empire to devise ways and means of evolving an economic plan that would foster the interests of Imperial Britain, no matter what became of the rest of the world.

Her late enemy retaliated with totalitarianism, and the spectacular rise and subsequent moves of the German dictator are due to an attempt to remove the strangling grip which Germany feels upon her economic windpipe.

Italy, in the decline of world trade, fights for a place in the sun, but is forced by economic and geographical circumstances to play second fiddle to the Nazi chief.

As in Austria, so in Spain, it seems that Herr Hitler might rake in the Italian stake with the nonchalance of a croupier. German intervention in the Iberian peninsula has been more skilful and more telling than the Italian: the Germans concentrated upon quality: to the fighting forces they lent only pilots, yet, by providing technical civilian help, they have contrived to gain a hold on all Spain’s activities, from her police and post offices to her civil aerodromes and some of her industries and mines.

The German “help" will not come to an end with the end of the civil war, and the realisation of this fact has upset all Anglo-French strategic planning. Great Britain is now burdened with fresh defence liabilities in the Atlantic and at Gibraltar, and France will feel the strain, not only at sea, but in the Pyrenees and in North Africa.

The hungry German received payment in Spanish ores from General Franco for services rendered. There is danger to British capitalist interests looming in the distance; the German armament industry, so they fear, is moving to secure the whole mineral output of Spain.

The list of Spanish minerals is long and varied. The chief deposits lie on the Atlantic side of the peninsula. First among them are the great reserves of iron ore in the north, near Bilbao, and, second in importance, the copper and pyrite deposits in the south-west, behind Huelva. The same region, where the British-owned Rio Tinto Company is the leading concern, also yields manganese and sulphur. The biggest mercury mine in the world is at Almaden, in Central Spain; there are rich deposits in the northern Catalonia and subsidiary supplies of iron ore are mined in Spanish Morocco.

The battles in the civil war were mostly fought for the possession of mines, rarely for military objectives.

The rumour that Germany was in full possession of the mineral wealth of Spain was exaggerated, but the story that she was procuring increasing quantities of Spanish ores was true. The position was roughly as follows: The buyers and sellers of the international mineral market are not governments, but business houses and, during the war, brisk sales of all Spain's minerals had continued almost without intermission. Most firms traded with their usual customers, regardless of the political colour of the part of Spain in which they were situated. Owing to rearmament and to the general business recovery which marked the year 1937, the whole world was buying more minerals, and Spanish sales were interrupted only when the mineral deposits were actually in the battle zone. For instance, the export of iron ore from the Bilbao district fell off while General Franco was actually capturing the area, but was resumed again, its direction little changed, as soon as the mines re-opened work.

A glance at Germany’s economic plight enables even the man in the street to perceive that the Germans were bound to try to increase their dominance in Spain. They were short of foreign exchange. Therefore, instead of straining to find francs and sterling in order to buy foreign ores from Lorraine or Canada, they were seeking a hold on mining areas which would accept a medium in which they could pay—that is, which could be made to take German goods or German services. Their object was to improve their general economic position rather than to swell their total import of ores.

From the British and French point of view, the prospect of greater German influence in Spain is less disquieting in the matter of minerals than in that of markets. If German experts were to secure all the key positions in the country Germany would be well placed for operating the device which she has already used so skilfully in south-eastern Europe—that is, she could run up bills, offer payment in German goods or not at all and confront the British, French or Italian exporter with crippling competition.

Economically, as well as diplomatically, therefore, Germany stands a chance of worsting the democratic countries and obtaining a substantial reward for her intervention policy. The recent occupation of Albania by Mussolini is probably due to an attempt to enhance the price he hopes to get from Britain and France when he withdraws from Spain.

British capitalism must get the European mess cleared up quickly: their interests in the Far East are in jeopardy. The war danger is exaggerated with a view of inducing men to line up to defend the country; they will more readily respond to an appeal for home defence than for service abroad. The French elections are due in 1940 and the United States goes to the polls during the same year.

The British ruling class want to be assured their friends are in power in these countries before they embark upon a hazardous enterprise, therefore our masters here will try to keep the peace until 1941.

But as G.B.S. says: “ You never can tell.” Capitalism is in difficulties and the acid test finds our exploiters wanting: they are mentally bankrupt; this is our opportunity.

Practically all newspapers now contain horoscopes; astrologers are reappearing as the guides of statesmen. When men are in fear they go back to the superstitions of their childhood.

Capitalism is the enemy, and, whether he appears as a democrat or a dictator, he can offer nothing but wage slavery to the working class.

Socialists everywhere oppose the principles of Scientific Socialism to the war plans of the ruling class in such a way that the class issue is kept clear and the real aims of the ruling class exposed.

Their battle-cry is: “ Working men of all countries unite.”

The true soldier of the proletariat replies to the war threat of capitalism by lining up his class for Socialism.

Charles Lestor

The Passing Show: Freedom of the Press (1960)

The Passing Show Column from the December 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Freedom of the Press
In recent years many newspapers have been forced to cease publication or to sell out and merge with their competitors. No longer are only small papers involved: in the past few months papers as well known as the Sunday Empire News, the News Chronicle and the Star, have gone the way of the rest. It is a cliche that the Freedom of the Press is in practice the freedom of rich men to spread their views through the newspapers they own. Those of us in the Socialist Party know only too well that without vast amounts of capital the Socialist Standard has been able to reach only a small minority of the working class. But the conditions of entry in the newspaper stakes are becoming even more stringent than ever before. The News Chronicle lost money (and therefore, in a capitalist society, had in due course to close down) even though it had a daily readership of over one million. People other than millionaires have not been able to produce a healthy daily paper for many years: now, even the lesser millionaires must be getting worried. Once any millionaire with a taste for it could partake of the Freedom of the Press: now, apparently, only multi-millionaires are allowed to join the club.

Harmony
The news that the Archbishop of Canterbury is going to visit the Pope makes one wonder what they will talk about. At any rate, we can be sure it won't do the working class any good. For the Pope agrees with the Archbishop that capitalism is a fine system. This is from the Sunday Press (18/10/59):

  The Holy Father yesterday contrasted the appalling exploitation of workers at the beginning of the century with their present-day pleasant working conditions. Management and labour, working together in harmony, had created a new situation where the workers had never had it so well.

The reader may think that at least it is something that the Pope realises that things were bad sixty years ago. But, of course, everyone will agree that things were bad sixty years ago. The ruling class and its allies are prepared to admit anything except that the present system is bad. In the early years of the century, when the Socialist Party was already working, speaking and writing about "the appalling exploitation of workers," the then Popes were supporting the capitalist system, just as the present Pope supports the capitalist system now. In fifty years' time, no doubt, the Pope (if there still is one) will be talking about “the appalling exploitation of the workers in I960." But it does no good to attack the evils of half a century ago: they can't be altered now. What must be done is to attack the evils of today—i.e., the evils which are inseparable from the capitalist system.

Pray and work

And what has the Pope to say about the present? He gave, apparently, a “rousing warning against those who trampled the sacrosanct rights of the human person’’—but had no word to say of the Catholic-supported Fascist government of Spain, which denies the workers the most elementary democratic rights. And he rounded off with some advice which must have had every capitalist in the audience standing and cheering:

  The Pope recommended the workers to practise Christian virtues and follow the motto of St. Benedict, “Ora et Labora” (pray and work). In so doing, you will earn the treasures of heaven, he said. 

Believe that if you like. One thing is certain: you won't earn treasures anywhere else.


Monkey business
At a furniture factory in Houston, Texas, three chimpanzees have begun work sealing cushions and doing other simple jobs. The factory-owner plans to replace one employee each week with a chimp. To the factory's workers, this means the threat of the sack, the threat of unemployment. But there is more to it than that. Surely this news item underlines our present predicament. These human beings—members of the human race, which produced Michaelangelo, Beethoven, Shakespeare—are now reduced to spending their working lives doing monotonous, repetitive jobs which could be done as well by chimpanzees. This is not a question of spending a couple of hours a day, or ten hours a week, tending machines, which people may well decide to do under Socialism, in order to produce enough of the necessaries of life and at the same time free themselves for the rest of the time to develop their personalities as they think best. This is a question of workers spending their entire working lives on stultifying tasks.

The Daily Herald (12/11/60) printed an article which said this should be stopped because of the harm it would do to the human ego. “. . . There are things that the human ego rejects, out of hand, without another thought. And one of those things is the realisation that one's occupation, one’s life work, could be done equally well by a chimpanzee.”

This must typify the difference in political thought between reformers and Socialists. The writer of the Herald article would stop the chimpanzees doing "these jobs, because it makes obvious the degradation of human beings involved— this, of course, would do nothing to stop the degradation. Socialists, on the other hand, want to abolish the system which leads to men spending their lives in this way.

No trivialities

From an advert, in The Times (19/10/60):

  The owner of a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II has his sights firmly on fundamentals and is never decoyed by passing trivialities. A philosophy reflected in his choice of motor car. . . .

So that’s how you get a Rolls. Next time you see anyone driving a broken-down old jalopy tied together with string, don’t assume rashly that it’s because he can’t afford anything better: no, it was his philosophy which led him to choose that model. If you feel that you have your “sights firmly on fundamentals” and the rest of it—well, your philosophy clearly entitles you to a Rolls. Better apply direct.

Alwyn Edgar

The Passing Show: Democracy (1961)

The Passing Show Column from the July 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democracy

We make no apology for returning to the subject of Sir Thomas Moore, the Conservative M.P. for Ayr Burghs. Sir Thomas is the man who advocates a return to flogging and more frequent hanging as the answer to our troubles. But he only supports these punishments in cases of petty violence. Where a dictator is able to carry out a long and widespread campaign of violence, then Sir Thomas (provided he agrees with the tyrant’s brand of politics) is all for it. In the early days of Hitler's regime he was an outspoken supporter of German Nazism; and he is still a loyal champion of Spanish Fascism. On June 7th he wrote to The Times defending General Franco's regime, on the grounds that he imposed "law and order" on the country when, in the thirties, Spain was threatened with "communism on the march to impose its usual stranglehold on freedom”.

Only a week earlier, on May 31st, there had been the news of the sentencing of thirty-two agricultural workers to terms of up to 15 years' imprisonment by a Madrid military court, on the charge of "spreading communist propaganda" (a blanket term which, in Spain, covers any criticism of the regime). This is only the latest of a long series of trials of political opponents which Franco's courts have held since he—having shown himself more successful at violence and killing than his opponents—came to power in the Civil War. These thirty-two farm workers, and the thousands of others in Franco's political jails, would no doubt be interested to learn of Sir Thomas’s contention that Franco seized power in order to forestall an attempt to put a "stranglehold on freedom" in Spain. To defend Franco on these grounds is like giving a medal to a man who saves a child from drowning, only to stab it to death immediately afterwards.

Democracy

But, of course, political freedom need not be Sir Thomas's concern. If the Communists were in power in Spain, they would probably (not necessarily, of of course, as Yugoslavia shows) ally themselves with Russia—which is now the main overseas enemy of the British ruling class. Franco and his Fascists, on the other hand, would come in with the British ruling class in any war against Russia. So Sir Thomas supports Franco, and Mr. Butler goes to Spain as Franco's guest, saying it is a shame that Franco Spain has been left out of things for so long. What do they care for the fact that the Spanish people are deprived of democratic freedoms? Democracy is a useful catchword in time of war: but if the interests of the ruling class demand it, democracy is shrugged off without a second thought.

Borgwards

Just as state control was applied here to rescue the coal and rail shareholders from the complete loss of their investments, so nationalisation—or municipalisation—is used for the same purpose in other countries. A news item from Germany in The Times (7-6-61) ran:

  Dr. Johannes Sender, who took over the direction of the Borgward car manufacturing company in February, said today that the firm would have to cut its staff by another 2,500 people. In March the board empowered the management to dismiss up to 2,500 workers. Borgwards was taken over by the Bremen municipal authorities earlier this year after it ran into financial difficulties.

The local Social Democrats would find the sacked five thousand workers a troublesome audience, if like the Labour Party here, they tried to persuade them that municipatisation was really for their benefit.

Raw material

An advert aimed at capitalists has recently been appearing in the more expensive newspapers. It tries to persuade industrial concerns to move to Durham, or at least to open new works there. Headed “All the workers you need in County Durham," it goes on “good hard workers, ready and willing to learn new skills".  It gives a picture of a crowd of them.

This offering of human beings as promising raw material to employers bent on the extraction of surplus value is surely degrading both to the men themselves and to those who planned and those who read the advertisement. One might advertise cart-horses in much the same way. One of the many advantages of Socialism is that human beings will be considered as human beings, not simply as so much factory-fodder.

Expense accounts

The next time you read figures showing the gross inequality of incomes— after tax—in this country, the next time you hear of the handful who get £120 and £140 per week after tax, compared with the millions who get less than £20 and the millions more who even get less than £10, remember that this is by no means the whole story. The directors' fees, the share dividends are only part of the real income of the owning class Besides the actual money, which is taxed, there are the large allowances on the expense accounts, which are untaxed. So excessive have some of these junketings on expense accounts become in America that the American Treasury investigated the position, and has now released some evidence showing what has been happening. “Safaris in Kenya, lavish living in Las Vegas and in the Caribbean and the maintenance of yachts have all been tax deductible " (The Times 8-5-61). An insurance man was allowed 97,500 dollars for “personal expenses ”. The president of a dairy went on a six-month safari, and took his wife with him: he was allowed $16,443. A corporation which owned luxurious facilities on a sub-tropical island, including its own fishing cruiser, and aircraft to take its executives and their guests down there, was allowed $375,000. A supply firm had its own yacht, ranch and hunting lodges, and was given a tax-allowance of £473,140 to cover its expenditure on them and on night club entertainment. If we can be sure of anything, it is that the ordinary workers in these firms never saw these sub-tropical islands, or the hunting lodges. These devices are simply ways in which owners of firms obtain the means of luxurious living without having to reveal too enormous personal incomes. For to confess their real incomes (apart from the extra tax) would show too clearly to the workers the vast gap which separates the upper from the lower class.

Alwyn Edgar