Socialism and the so-called “middle class”. - Part 2 (1925)

From the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from January issue.)

The property holdings of the “middle class,” unlike those of the capitalist, do not free their possessors from worry, and do not give them command over the lives and destinies of other men. They represent deductions from present income for future needs; they are therefore not capital in the sense of being “wealth used for the purpose of gain” (the definition of capital used by a Conservative, Sir William Ashley), the receipt of a return on them being only incidental, and not the object of their existence. Unlike Topsy, they have not “just growed.” On the contrary, these reserves, for the future of themselves and their children, can only be accumulated by deliberate and self-denying effort. Failure to make such saving against the future is followed by a fall to a lower level of life, either in this or the succeeding generation. The effort to retain their “nest egg” occupies so large a part of their lives that it becomes the basis of the political philosophy of the more highly paid workers, and, like the bird in the Mediaeval romance, they are so busy sitting tight on their eggs so that they shall not be stolen, that they do not see they are being robbed by the opening of the nest from below. To secure their savings from “predatory Socialists” who are supposed to have raiding designs on their women and children, they hitch their wagon to capitalism. But what security does capitalism offer even for their savings ?

Savings can be held in one of the following forms—in currency or in bank balances which represent claims to a definite amount of currency, in government bonds, or in titles to property of various kinds, such as title deeds of land, shares in industrial and commercial undertakings, etc. Of the two main kinds of shares, debentures represent a claim to a fixed annual interest and the repayment of a definite sum of money. Therefore debentures, government bonds, currency holdings, and bank balances can be lumped together as being holdings of money, and it follows that the value of these holdings depends on “the value” of money. But there is no guarantee under capitalism that the value of money measured in the commodities it will purchase for its possessor will remain constant, or even that it will fluctuate only within narrow limits. Wherever there has been money economy there have been violent fluctuations. (For an example in the Ancient World, see Gibbons’ “Decline and Fall,” Chapter 11.) The recent happenings in Europe provide an instructive illustration of the lack of security in all currency holdings. In Germany the value of money has fallen to such a degree that the internal debt has been wiped out. In France pre-war holdings of Government Stock have lost seven-eighths of their real value; in Italy, eleven-twelfths; and in England, one half.

  “Throughout the Continent pre-war savings of the middle class, so far as they were invested in bonds, mortgages, or bank deposits, have been largely or entirely wiped out” (“A Tract on Monetary Reform,” J. M. Keynes, page 16).

Mr. Keynes adds : 

  “What was deemed most secure has proved least so. He who neither spent nor ‘speculated,’ who made ‘proper provision for his family,’ who sang hymns to security and observed most straightly the morals of the edified, and the respectable injunctions of the worldly-wise—he, indeed, who gave fewer pledges to Fortune, has yet suffered her heaviest visitations” (page 17). 

And this lack of security proceeds not from natural causes such as make uncertain the life of the savage—that is, famines, plagues, earthquakes, floods, etc.—but from a defect in the organisation of society based as it is on money economy. If it be argued that these fluctuations were the product of war, which is an abnormal condition, it need only be pointed out that where there is production for profit there will be struggles for markets and raw materials, and where there is a clash of interests there is an ever-present danger of war. And, moreover, price fluctuations before the war were considerable over a period of years. Here it is sufficient to note (see Keynes) that between 1896 and 1914 the capital “value of the annuity of any investor in Consols fell by about one-third, and the purchasing power of his income from them by about the same amount.” Consols are chosen as representing a class of investment free from ordinary speculative risks of trade, and therefore affording the best index to changes of the kind we are here concerned with.

There is, then, no permanent security in that class of savings which represent titles to certain sums of money. Titles to land and ordinary shares remain to be dealt with. But, first, two possible criticisms must be anticipated.

Economic Insecurity.

It may be objected that lack of security affects the capitalist as well as the small saver. It certainly does, but as all authorities admit, not nearly to the same extent. The capitalists as a class are not ruined by changes in the value of money, though some individual members may be. Their economic domination is not ended by fluctuating prices, any more than the subjection of the workers is lessened by either stable or changing prices. This is because capitalists hold goods, factories, mines, and commodities of all kinds, and not money, which is only a means to the obtaining of goods. To quote Keynes again : “Small savers have most to lose by currency depreciation” (page 66). But even if it were true that the capitalists are also insecure, this would not disprove our contention that capitalism fails to provide security for the “middle class,” and it would be additional evidence of the decay of the system.

The other objection which might be raised is that there could never be complete security under any system. This is obviously true as regards natural catastrophes like plagues, crop failures, earthquakes, etc., whose effects we can at present not guard against entirely, but it has no bearing on the kind of insecurity which is an effect of capitalism and which can be removed with capitalism.

Now let us consider titles to land. This kind of “middle class” property needs little attention, because it hardly exists. Some own their own houses, and a few own other houses as well as the one in which they live. Those that are held on lease are not a form of permanent revenue, thus only freehold house property remains, and the capital and rental values of this are by no means certain. The decay of industry in a particular neighbourhood may completely destroy the value of house property in it. Even since the war, and in spite of the Rents Restriction Acts, there have been local falls of the value of house property, and before the war fluctuation in value of house property was notorious.

As for ordinary shares, they are a type of investment not in favour with those people now under discussion. They play for safety and avoid investing in industrial shares whose fluctuations are so wide and unpredictable. Only the favoured few experienced persons “in the know” are aware of impending movements by which money can be made, and they are not members of the so-called “middle class,” whose savings, moreover, are not large enough to be widely distributed so as to minimise the risk of loss. The recent happenings in Dunlops will serve to drive home our point. Adverse trading conditions resulting in a loss of ten and a half million pounds have involved the reduction of the ordinary £1 shares to 6s. 8d. each. Yet Dunlops was regarded as one of the safest companies in that trade. Crosse and Blackwell’s, and Burberry’s, other perfectly “safe” concerns, have had to carry through similar re-organisation schemes.

There is certainly no security for small property ; is there any more security attaching to the employment of the “middle class”? The following London banks have collapsed since the war, and many of the staff are still looking for work, to be met always with the reply, even where vacancies need to be filled, younger men or boys will do:

Sir Robert McGrigors, Bart., and Sons; Hannevigs Bank Ltd. ; Alliance Bank of Simla, Ltd. ; Boulton Brothers. If it be said that these were not first-class firms, that objection cannot be raised against the Austrian Discount Bank, of Vienna, or against the Banco Disconto in Italy, or Alperin, Kisch, and Schiff, of New York—all of them first-class, old-established banks or banking companies which have recently failed. Shipping and insurance companies which have failed during the last few years and thrown thousands of men out of employment are too numerous to mention. Recall the affair of Bevan. He was a financier who gambled in a way that his kind do every day. But he was unlucky, and went to gaol, and an associated firm, the oldest-established stockbrokers in the City, was ruined. As a result, clerks of over forty years’ service found themselves suddenly out of a job.

As Mr. R. Tawney puts it (“Acquisitive Society,” page 204): The brain workers, like the manual workers, find that

  “Their tenure of their posts is sometimes highly insecure. Their opportunities for promotion may be few and distributed with a singular capriciousness. They see the prizes of industry awarded by favouritism, or by the nepotism which results in the head of a business unloading upon it a family of sons whom it would be economical to pay to keep out of it, and which, indignantly denounced on the rare occasions on which it occurs in the public service, is so much the rule in private industry that no one even questions its propriety.”

Enough has been written to show that there is no section of the working class without its problem of unemployment, and that the problem is the same for the whole class without distinction of sex or colour of skin or working coat. The problem, moreover, is not one of mere numbers. To reduce the number, as the Labour Party and other capitalist quacks seek to do, does not solve the problem. It is an effect of the social system that it cannot provide its members with the opportunity to labour in support of themselves. The only guarantee the present system gives is that certain privileged members shall be able to live in sumptuous idleness on the backs of their fellows. They do this by exploiting those they employ, and the latter, if alive to their own interest, would end the system which is based on exploitation.

The Inefficiency of Capitalism.

If the “middle class” are more foolish than the so-called manual workers, and instead of looking at social problems from the point of view of their own self-interest they wish to measure everything according to the standards set by the ruling class, they must still condemn the present system because it is grossly inefficient.

Is it efficient to have millions of workers seeking employment while the machinery of production is standing idle? Is it efficient to put checks on Nature because she yields too generously of her bounty? And yet this is what happens in the production of rubber, tea, jute, etc. Is it efficient to have trawlers dumping cargoes of fish into the sea in order to keep prices up? Is it efficient to fatten and pamper a select and useless few while half the people are on the verge of starvation? Is it efficient to be doing jobs which are not necessary for the ordering and use of society? Yet nearly the whole of the clerical profession are thus occupied. What need of insurance clerks in a world where risks are borne by society instead of by a special section with a view to making a profit. Solicitors’ clerks, what need of them except to haggle over private property? Abolish money economy, and what a reserve labour is made available for production from the ranks of the bank staffs. Whichever way you look at it, this system is rotten, inefficient, and destructive of the best potentialities in man. Social progress demands its overthrow, a task which only the working class can perform. The workers alone can break the chains that bind them, and replace a class system based on production for profit by a classless system producing for use. Chains are still chains though they are gilded, and the “middle class” being in reality merely a section of the workers, must join with the rest of their class in breaking those chains.

A. L. T.

(Conclusion.)

Blogger's Note:

'A.L.T.' could have been Albert L. Torr, who joined the Manchester Branch of the SPGB in October 1916 (alongside a William Torr). It makes sense that a bank clerk,  a 'brain-worker', would seek the anonymity of a pen-name in the pages of the Socialist Standard.

Replies to correspondents. (1925)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

Answer to G. T. Foster.

Your second letter takes us no further than your first one, and still consists of unsupported assertions.

Seeing, feeling, and other modes of consciousness, apart from something that sees, feels, or is conscious, is unthinkable to the human being. Your “Therefore” is thus totally unwarranted and illogical. Moreover, your sentence contains a fallacy. The brain is apprehended by the various modes of consciousness, but is clearly not in them. You make the usual mistake of the metaphysical idealist of confusing the state or mode of apprehension with the thing causing that state. Both Berkeley, hampered, it is true, by the limited knowledge of his time, and Bergson, with his empty, facile phrases, make the same blunder. This applies also to your last paragraph, for the “perceiving consciousness” is merely a mode of something having consciousness.

The answer to your question is now obvious. No one has ever known of a brain in anyone’s mind, but only as something apprehended by a mind.

Equally baseless is your remark that mind “would have to be known by a knower, or be absolutely unknowable.” Where is your evidence that it cannot “be known by a knower”? The metaphysicians you are so fond of continually use the word “self-conscious” or self-knowing; that is, according to your own definition, “the knower knowing.” But all this chatter about things being “unknowable” is, as Dr. Maudsley sarcastically says, like “a bluebottle fly calling its extra-relational the unbuzzable.”

Further contradiction appears in your next paragraph, where you admit our experiences are knowledge. Then so far as our experience—personal and racial—goes, we do know. Every year—nay, every day, every hour—sees our experiences continually increasing. That is to say, our knowledge is continually increasing, and neither you nor anyone else can set a limit to the increase of experiences while human beings exist.

Editorial Committee.

New Publications: Here is Your Opportunity! (1925)

Party News from the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are continuously asked why we don’t publish new pamphlets or re-publish old ones that are out of print. Our answer has been to point to that ever-pressing problem of finance. A party like ours, depending upon its members for financial support and faced with the inevitable poverty of a working-class membership—our party is forced to curb its publishing activity within very narrow limits. Such a valuable and much needed publication as our party pamphlet, “Socialism and Religion,” is urgently required at a low price, and its re-publication in that form would find a ready sale. It would have been re-issued long ago had sufficient funds come in.

Amongst other publications very much needed we have in view a pamphlet on the Principles of Socialism. The enormous amount of rubbish printed in the name of Socialism in recent years, with its confusing effect on the workers’ minds makes the scientific and revolutionary pronouncements of The Socialist Party an urgent necessity. We have, therefore, opened a fund called “A New Publications Fund,” which will be reserved for the purpose of new publications. We invite members and sympathisers immediately to send in donations marked for that fund. If you cannot afford much send in the little you can. If the readers of the Socialist Standard who appreciate the soundness of our party position will hurry along their contributions to the fund we can rapidly get to work.

We get letters of appreciation of our literature from all over the world. Here is your opportunity to put your appreciation into a postal order and send it along.

The Editorial Committee

The economics of social amusement. - Part 2 (1925)

From the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

PART II.

To-day, under the fully ripened rule of capitalist production, the public amusements are in close organic relation with existing social conditions, just as was the case in previous historical periods.

All the institutions of entertainment and recreation—including the public games, football, baseball, boxing, and horse racing—are thoroughly organised on a capitalist basis. They are owned and controlled by private property owners with no other object in the main than financial profit. To-day the professional player who once occupied but a minor rôle now covers practically the whole field. The great majority of the players both in the theatres and in the sports are wage-workers. Exploitation and oppression prevails in the production of our most thoroughly enjoyable entertainments just as in any other sphere of industry. The means of amusement have become largely standardised “factory products” and as dependent uppn the fluctuations of supply and demand as any other commodities.

As in other industrial fields, science and machinery have been applied to the production of amusement, especially in the mechanical devices, rides and so on, of the Pleasure Park and in the cinema. The enormous growth and popularity of motion-pictures is one of the striking phenomena of our times. It has become of all forms of popular amusement the one peculiarly characteristic of the latest phase of industrialism; In the cinema industry, which is claimed as the third in point of size in the United States, vast quantities of capital have been invested. It is organised internationally and the market for its products is the whole world.

* * *

Summing up the above, then, we may say that the public amusements under capitalism have lost all trace of their once intimate connection with social tradition, with communal, religious, or political life. We no longer attend the dance, the games, or the theatre as a rite, as a religious duty, or as a social function. The bourgeoisie of to-day have their own strictly class amusements and relaxations, and these to some extent retain social, and even political, characteristics. But the great popular games and entertainments with which we are here concerned are purely commercial in their methods and aims, and when an individual desires diversion and can pay for it he goes to the place where it is for sale and buys as much as he can afford or cares for.

Nevertheless, the social amusements occupy a place of greater prominence than possibly at any time in the past, and certainly they absorb the permanent labours of a far larger proportion of the population and cater for an immensely greater audience. The primary organisations for amusement are now permanent instead of being temporary and periodic. Every large city has its scores, its hundreds, or its thousands of theatres and cinema-houses—many open every day in the year. Here, then, is proof that, in spite of having shed their traditional character, these institutions draw their vitality from some deep social necessity and are a response to an insistent social demand.

Let us consider the manner of life of the masses of the people in modern communities. The great majority are workers engaged in the production and distribution of wealth. Destitute of property, they sell their natural energy to the owners of capital. They have no control over their labour and no interest in its product. The peasant, even when a tenant, has an interest in the land and its products that is unknown to the industrial worker. In the highly organised spheres of production the labour of the workers is machine-regulated to a degree of monotony never before known. The machine has ousted the craftsman, so that the “joy of workmanship” exists to-day only as a rare and curious survival. The typical worker in the most technically developed industries is the machine-feeder—the man at the power-press, punching holes in a metal sheet—all exactly alike—so many per minute—all day—for hundreds of days.

Even outside the workshop, the worker’s life is a monotonous routine. Home-life and comfort is more of an ideal than a fact. Living in the ugly congested areas of the great cities, he has little opportunity for healthy exercise in the open or of invigorating contact with the glory of beauty of Nature. His poverty will not allow him any really elevating luxuries, and the continuous round of exhausting and degrading toil leaves him with neither the energy nor the desire for self-education or for artistic or scientific pursuits. His life is like a narrow groove running in a perpetual circle; habit and ignorance make him fearful of changing the groove, and even when he does so he discovers that in general all the circles open to him are very much alike. Moreover, he cannot afford to take chances—he may have a family dependent on his regular wage, and in any case the prospect of unemployment is no enviable one. Occasionally, here and there a worker kicks, succeeds in breaking the circle and achieves a precarious life of greater freedom, excitement and variety as a tramp or a criminal; but the ideal of the mass of the workers necessarily is—a permanent or “steady” job, which almost inevitably spells inescapable monotony.

But this is not all. The lives of the toilers have always been narrow, drab, and monotonous. But to the slave or the serf, and even the peasant of our own day, the world itself was a relatively small place, often not much larger than the village or district in which he lived.

To-day, however, the whole world has been knit together by commerce and communications, and the horizon of knowledge has been enormously extended to include every land and every race and nation. Modern literature opens up for the reader the whole world, and describes—if only superficially—every part of the earth, every class in society, and every period of the past. Even the penny newspaper brings us news from “the ends of the earth.”

By contrast, then, with what the imagination can offer, the real everyday life of the mass of the population to-day appears vastly meaner, duller, and narrower than ever it did in the past. The imagination has been stimulated, and a yearning for variety, beauty, colour, and excitement produced which in real life can find no outlet, no satisfaction. Hence the widespread efforts to escape from reality into the boundless world of fiction and romance, and hence the enormous consumption of romantic literature and the fascination of millions by the “movies.” Naturally, it is the adolescent and young people who are primarily affected—youth is the period of romantic visions, but there are no restrictions of age in the drawing power of the cinema. Once the habit of seeking emotional stimulus in the “movies” has become rooted, it becomes almost a necessity of existence, as anyone can discover by a few minutes’ conversation with a “movie-fiend.”

Doubtless the thirst for thrills and the desire to escape from deadening reality is as readily satisfied by the stage-drama and the novel, but the motion-picture has peculiarities that make it well fitted to be the most popular vehicle to this end. It tells its story in visual pictures instead of verbal description, it can be exceedingly vivid and convincing, and it is cheap and easily accessible. The cinema demands less mental energy than reading, requires less imagination than the drama, and calls for only a small amount of intelligence. It is therefore eminently adapted to the recreational and imaginative needs of a population starved of beauty and intellectually stunted by over-work and mal-education.

The cinema has thus become the popular entertainment of capitalism par excellence. Its development is so immense that it even threatens the regular theatre with near extinction. Its audience is the most gigantic in the world’s history. Its statistics are almost incredible. In 1920 the estimated number of picture-theatres in the United States was 17,000, and the daily attendance ten millions. The figures for the British Isles in the same year were 5,000 picture-theatres with an average daily attendance of six millions—the attendance having almost doubled in three years. As far back as 1917, the attendance for the year in the British Isles was well over one thousand millions (“Ency. Britt"., new vol. 30).

The social influence of the cinema, and its value in direct propaganda, is immense. In its indirect influence in fostering and inculcating all the mental habits and moral ideals of the bourgeoisie, in cultivating a worship of wealth and luxury, and an unthinking response to nationalist sentiment, its effect upon the minds of the workers is pernicious in the extreme, doing much to blind them to the fundamental cause of the very drudgery, degradation, and meanness of life which impels them to seek oblivion and stimulation in the glamour of the film.

We shall not here discuss the artistic level and possibilities of the cinema. It is sometimes claimed that it has a brilliant artistic future, and this may be so. One thing, however, must be insisted upon, and that is, that the admittedly low artistic standard of the majority of moving-pictures is due first to the low intellectual development of the vast masses of wage-slaves who form their audience, and secondly to the necessity of hiding from this audience the truth about social life. It is not due to the incapacity of this producer or that—the producers are business-men first and “artists” a long way afterwards, and—“what pays goes.”

In conclusion : may we hope for a healthier, more artistic, and more intelligent standard of popular entertainment in the future? The answer is plain. So long as the mass of the people have to endure arduous, monotonous toil and poverty, so long will the present widespread craving for thrills and illusion continue. Existing conditions of labour leave the average workers mentally and physically exhausted and with neither time nor inclination for intellectual or cultural development. While these conditions remain, the prevailing popular forms of diversion will be those which readily stimulate the crudest emotions by the most obvious means and make little call upon the intellect.

While, therefore, it is quite likely that, with the growing revolt against capitalism, a small but increasing section of the population will demand and receive a higher standard of recreation and of dramatic art—such a section of course exists to-day—until capitalism is destroyed, things will remain much as they are or, possibly, for a time, even become worse.

With the re-organisation of society on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, and the consequent disappearance of slavery and drudgery, will come a rebirth of the real spirit of association and conscious co-operation that capitalism has done so much to destroy. Public recreations will become again truly social, and they will be the vivid expression of the joy in life and the fellowship of free and equal men and women. A wider and nobler education will make possible the utilisation of an abundant and increasing leisure to understand and enjoy the titanic, wonderful drama of the universe in which we live. Artificial and hectic amusements and exaggerated melodrama will no longer be necessary in order to make us forget the meanness and narrowness of our lives. Only that art will flourish that genuinely represents the unfettered response of the human mind to the beauty, the wonder, and the tragedy of the Universe and Life.

R.W. Housley

(Conclusion.)

Lansbury and the “Daily Herald”. A forgotten incident. (1925)

From the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

We see from the Daily Herald of January 19th, that Mr. George Lansbury is publishing a history of the Herald. Lest Mr. Lansbury should omit to record the treatment meted out to Charles Lapworth, a former Editor, for the offence of assuming that the duty of a workers’ paper is to fight for the working class, we reprint the letter Lapworth wrote when his connection with the Herald came to an end. A lesson is also to be learned about the futility of trying to build up a workers’ movement except on the basis of solid understanding. The wealthy and “disinterested” friends are likely to prove disappointing supports in time of trouble. Those who pay the piper call the tune !

Lapworth’s letter appeared in the New Age on December 18th, 1913, after the Herald had refused to publish it !

* * *

“Daily Herald” and Chas. Lapworth.

A letter from Chas. Lapworth to the “New Age” (18/12/1913).

Sir,

I sent the enclosed statement to the Daily Herald. The management declined to publish it. Will you be good enough to give it a space in the New Age?

(Signed) Chas. Lapworth.

“Why I Left the “Daily Herald”

After a fortnight’s delay, an announcement has been made in the Daily Herald of the fact that Mr. G. Lansbury has been appointed Editor in my place and it has been necessary to say that “there will be no change of policy.” I think it is due to these enquiries, and certainly in view of events subsequent to what I am about to relate, it is due to me personally that my explanation of what happened should be published. The notice in to-day’s “paper” states merely that I had resigned, and many may wonder why I should desert my post at such a crisis in the industrial war as the week before the “Dublin Conference.” The statement, if it had given the full truth, would have said “that I had been forced out of the editorship against my will.” Most readers know something of the romantic career of our little paper, and will remember that in June last the “Daily Herald Co.” was forced into liquidation through no fault of its own. “The Limit Printing and Publishing Co.” was then formed, consisting of Mr. G. Lansbury and myself, and we acquired the paper. By this time the expenditure had been cut down to £500 per week, as against £1,100 per week of a year previous, and the weekly loss reduced to about £200 per week, which several anonymous rich friends of Mr. G. Lansbury agreed to make good. Later Mr. Francis Meynell, as representing these friends, was added to the Board of Directors, making the maximum of three allowed by the “Articles of Association.” The only other shareholder besides the Directors is Mr. Robert Williams.

Mr. Lansbury is Chairman and I am Secretary of the Company. On Sunday, December 1st, 1913, I received a summons to a meeting of the Company, signed by Mr. G. Lansbury and called for the following Monday morning. Mr. Lansbury, Mr. Meynell, and myself were present, and the meeting was opened by the Chairman without any preamble addressing me: “We have come to ask you to resign the Editorship. Either you go out or I shall refuse to have anything more to do with the paper.” And he went on to say that he must refuse to enter into any argument or give any other reason than that there was a fundamental difference between his own frame of mind, his own outlook and mine, which difference made the position absolutely hopeless so far as the future of the paper was concerned. Naturally, I urged that, even admitting this “fundamental difference,” it was not serious enough ground for me to resign my position, and that with all respect I must ask for something more specific. Placing a copy of the Daily Herald on the table, I said that was what the staff and myself stood for, obviously, or we would not have been working as conscientious journalists, and that being so, the request for my resignation necessarily implied a departure in policy. Mr. Lansbury denied that it did. I answered that a mere negative did not help me to understand, and I asked for particular criticism of the conduct of the paper. The Chairman objected to what he called my cross-examination of himself, but conceded that as I have been honest and conscientious in my editorial work, I was only doing the right thing from my point of view in fighting for the status quo. He also agreed there was no personal feeling in the matter, but we disagreed about a principle. Mr. Lansbury repeated that so far as he was concerned the position was hopeless if I remained Editor. I pressed for reasons. Mr. Meynell then proffered this : “We want the paper to represent Mr. Lansbury’s ideas, and we propose that Mr. Lansbury be Editor.” I suggested that the change of Editor and mention of “ideas,” seeing that Mr. Lansbury had stated his ideas coincided with mine, did warrant my assumption that change of policy was intended. To which Mr. Meynell replied: “We are against the gospel of hatred you preach. I pointed out that the paper stood for the class war, without modification, and Mr. Lansbury interposed that “it would continue to stand for the class war, but not class hatred and attacks on persons of another class.” “Hatred of conditions, by all means, but not of persons,” I think were his words, and Mr. Meynell said something about the absence of the spirit of brotherhood in the paper. Incidentally Mr. Lansbury strongly condemned some public remark of Wm. D. Heywood about middle-class people. Readers will have to put their own construction on the foregoing. My construction was that the paper was to be allowed to retain its “kick,” but that it was to have a feather bed tied round its foot. Both Mr. Meynell and Mr. G. Lansbury insisted that their complaint was against the tone and not the policy of the paper. Mr. Meynell said that almost every day his father or somebody else complained of something offensive. My reply was that the Daily Herald was not written for rich people, but by workers for workers, and so far the latter had not made manifest any objection to the tone. In response to further pressure, I got one or two items mentioned about which there was complaint. It is hardly believable, but I, Editor of a militant working-class paper, was taken to task for uncomplimentary reference to a duchess, to a bishop, to a prominent Fabian, and for a cartoon of a certain Labour Member of Parliament.

Prior to this particular meeting, complaint bad been made about neglect of the woman’s movement and “Too much Dublin.” In reference to this, I contended that it was not fair to blame the paper for the past few months’ apparent slump in militant suffrage methods, and that if my editorial judgment was wrong in attributing to Dublin the greatest importance in the industrial war, then I must certainly accept the blame for devoting to it so much of our eight small pages. Finally I said I had diligently assembled all the—to me—little molehills to which exception had been taken, and for the life of me I could not build a big enough mountain of reason why I should desert my post, and I refused to resign. Mr. Meynell then moved : “That Mr. G. Lansbury be Editor in place of Mr. Lapworth.” I voted against the proposition. Mr. Lansbury as Chairman used his casting vote and declared himself appointed Editor. Subsequently, as a graceful concession to Mr. Lansbury, I formally resigned and duly entered on the minute book the new Editor, and that was all, except—at the evident desire of Mr. Lansbury—I left the office at once. I also proffered the undertaking that I would not speak to any of the staff, who would naturally want some explanation of the extraordinary turn of events, until Mr. Lansbury had had an opportunity of giving his own explanation.

Mr. Lansbury objected to me taking notes of the discussion, but I think I have reported fairly correctly what took place. Mr. Lansbury also intimated that he would allow no discussion in the Daily Herald, so I don’t know whether this statement will be permitted to appear in the paper, which has hitherto made a boast of its “free and open platform,” but it is in view of events subsequent to the above meeting that I am obliged to press for publication.

I have since been criticised for allowing myself to be forced out of the Editorship. My answer is that the proposition came upon me so suddenly that it did not occur to me that I could alone shoulder the responsibility of stopping the £200 a week subsidy, as I was made to feel was inevitable if I proved obdurate. The money had always been put up solely on account of Mr. Lanhbury’s personality, and his withdrawal meant the withdrawal of the cash.

(Signed) Chas. Lapworth.

December 12th, 1913.

(Italics ours.—Ed. Com., “ S.S.”)

Wages and the cost of living. (1925)

From the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the cost of living to the workers fell to the level of a few shillings per week, wages would be quickly reduced to a level which left them little or no margin after satisfying thqir wants each week.

This is due to the fact that labour power is a commodity, the price of which is determined by its cost of production. All commodities are subject to this law. There may be temporary fluctuations in the price of a commodity due to variations in supply and demand; but these compensate one another in the long run, and a mean level can be traced through the ups and downs which is the actual cost of production.

Wages fluctuate because they are the price of a commodity. The demand for labour power, however, is seldom in in excess of the supply; consequently wages for any particular form of labour power are rarely above the cost of production for that form. Striking an average and taking the more highly-paid with the lowest, we say the cost of production of labour power is synonymous with the cost of living.

As there are always more workers than jobs, competition for them is so keen that wages can always be kept down to a point which, for the bulk of workers, represents a meagre portion of the necessaries of life. It therefore seems to them, that if the cost of necessaries were lower their lot would be improved. The same result would follow if wages were higher and commodities remained the same in price.

The workers, only seeing this much, are between two stools. They can struggle for higher wages, or reduced prices; or both. To concentrate on price reductions is a fallacy; because cost of production determines prices. True the price at one time may be above the cost of production, but that very fact induces greater production and thereby reduces price. While some commodities are rising in price others may be falling. In the first case the capital is increased, in the second it is withdrawn. In this way the fluctuations compensate each other, and the cost of production is shown to be the real price. Hence the fallacy.

On the other hand, if the workers concentrate on wages they are met by stubborn opposition from the masters, and are powerless to effect any real improvement in their standard of living. Only by constant struggle, even, can they prevent reductions in their standard inliving. On either hand they are faced with forces that are invulnerable to their puny weapons. Hence the need for them to understand Socialism.

Almost hopeless as is the struggle for higher wages any agitation for reduced prices is still more so. Yet we find the I.L.P. definitely advising the workers to follow this line. The National Administrative Council passed the following resolution (New Leader, 5-12-24).

  “The I.L.P. declares that the rise in food prices is due to manipulation and speculation in food supplies by profiteering combines and trusts, and expresses the view that the effective remedy is State purchase of food and grain imports through a National Board of Supplies. We recommend the branches to educate and organise public opinion in favour of this reform with a view to its adoption by the Government at the earliest opportunity.” etc.

Whether trusts and combines are responsible for high prices does not affect the question, because trusts and combines cannot be broken except by breaking the capitalist state. The New Leader, 28-11-24 admits this in a leading article, as follows :

  “There may be talk of breaking up the Trusts : America, with all the bull moose energy of a Roosevelt, tried that and failed​ The disease of profiteering is organic : it is not to be cured by such simple means.”

What then is the means according to the New Leader? In its issue 28-11-24 they say :—

  “The ideal is to attain and to keep the general level of prices steady. We believe that by a conscious regulation of credit this can be achieved. It would be necessary, however, to take special measures to stabilise the prices of wheat and meat, and this again we would do by creating a national monopoly of these imported foods, based upon long-term contracts with the organised producers. Stunt thinking will not help us, nor guerilla attacks on the profiteer. Our battle is to alter the basic fact of instability with which private enterprise gambles.”

All the I.L.P. promise the workers is to fix the prices of necessaries at a level that would remain constant. Obviously wages would gravitate to a level that coincided with such prices, and the workers would be as they were minus the ups and downs in the money name of the value of their subsistence.

Notwithstanding this foolish advice, the I.L.P. in its leading article, New Leader, 5-11-12, says :—

  “It is our task as a Socialist [?] Party, which is struggling to understand these obscure causes which govern our lives, to insist on probing this fundamental fact of the trade cycle.”

They appear to recognise the need for serious study, but will require to prosecute that study for some time before they “probe the fundamental fact.” Such of their members as reach this goal will then, leave the I.L.P. to join a Socialist Party—the S.P.G.B.

F. Foan

The Capitalist Principles of the I.L.P. Confessed. (1925)

From the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our criticism of the I.L.P. in the January issue has brought from a correspondent copies of a letter written by him to the I.L.P. Head Office on this subject, and their reply. The letter of enquiry was passed over to the I.L.P. Information Committee, and the reply, signed by Ernest Hunter, contains the following illuminating passages :—

  “The I.L.P. does state that production should be for use and not for profit, but this is not the be all and end all of Socialism. This statement does not exclude any possibility of the State making a profit. What it does mean is that service should be considered of more importance than profits​.

  “There is nothing in Socialism that prevents a man owning property. Socialism is chiefly an expression against the power which this possession of property involves. Hence some Socialists believe that interest—(not, as to-day, dividends)— should be paid to the wealth lent to the State; this interest to be equitable and fair. The chief feeling against the National Debt is not that it exists, but that it is owned by a comparatively few people who draw a huge tribute from their fellow countrymen.”

The really startling admission is this :—

   “It is a little difficult at the present moment to give a statement of what accurately represents the I.L.P. point of view on these financial points.”

One cannot but be amused at the spectacle of a political party which, after thirty years of propaganda, finds it a little difficult to say exactly what it believes on a fundamental Socialist principle.

In reply to another definite question, the I.L.P. Head Office wrote :—

   “I do not think there is any official I.L.P. view regarding the limited use of interest in a Socialist State​It is a matter for future decision whether it will be absolutely abolished under Socialism.”

It is therefore not surprising that we should have Mr. Fred Longden, a member of the N.A.C. of the I.L.P., writing of that Party’s unemployment programme, that it

  ”Is the very antithesis of Socialism, and lends itself to the entrenchment of a system that is naturally dying and is out of date.”—(Labour Monthly, January, 1925.)

A similar enquiry addressed to the Labour Party brought a quite definite statement of their intention to allow the capitalists to go on “living by owning,” their property to take the form of Government Stock :—

   “. . . I think I am right in saying that there is a considerable concensus of opinion in the Movement against the usual principles of compensation being applied with regard to unknown minerals.

 

   “Generally speaking, however, the Party accepts the principle of compensation, and, although close details have not been worked out in many instances, the problem will be met by the issue of redemption bonds.”

(This letter is signed by Mr. J. S. Middleton, the Assistant Secretary.)

Edgar Hardcastle

The Real Russia: Its Present Position and Tendencies. (1925)

Book Review from the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

After Lenin, by Michael Farbman. 280 pages. 7/6. Published by Leonard Parsons, 24, Devonshire Street, W.C.1.

Michael Farbman sets out to tell the story of Russia since the introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1921. In doing so he gives us not only a clear and absorbing account of the chief existing economic and political features, together with many glimpses into the future as he anticipates it, but also a useful brief analysis of the forces which have moulded the present out  of the pre-war Russian State.

He is amazed at the almost universal failure in this country to understand what is going on in Russia, and he ascribes it largely to the fact that the continuity in office of the persons and the party made prominent in 1917—the Bolsheviks—has quite hidden from view the radical changes in policy that have taken place. Confusion is deepened by the habit of continuing to use revolutionary phrases long after they have been robbed of all meaning by changing circumstances.

There is a new and stable Russia, but it is not by any means the one desired by the Bolsheviks, although, to a superficial view, they dominate the situation. Looking below the surface, Mr. Farbman concludes that “ the important point to grasp . . . is the fact that a new ruling class is being evolved ” (15) and the real power of the Bolsheviks comes from the circumstance that they saw this “new ruling class emerging in Russia and were astute enough to manoeuvre themselves into the position of its leaders ” (23). They have held that position by making a series of far-reaching concessions to the peasants, and in Mr. Farbman’s view they will continue to govern and make concessions, until divergent interests, crystallising in distinct political parties, break up the apparent unity of the Russian Communist Party which has been so far the only, albeit a very restricted medium for the expression of political opinions.

The overwhelming force which made possible the overthrow of Czardom was the determination of the peasants to have land. In the 40 years following 1861, the date of their “ emancipation ” from serfdom, the number of peasants rose from 45 to 85 million, while over the same period the area of land used by them increased by only one-fifth. The average holding fell in size by nearly one half, and the result was semi-starvation for millions. “Seventy per cent. had not enough fodder for their cattle and produced only the subsistence minimum for themselves" (180). Changing conditions and improved agricultural methods made life still harder for the great majority. After a period of stagnation Russian agriculture in the nineties began to revive—for the landowners—owing to increased foreign demand and higher prices for grain. For the peasants this merely aggravated an already barely tolerable situation by making it harder still for them to rent land. It was now more profitable for the owners to have their land cultivated for themselves by hired labour.

The discontent of the poorer peasants and landless labourers found an outlet during the attempted revolution of 1905 in their endeavour to drive the land-owning nobility off the land by the deliberate destruction of their houses, agricultural machinery, etc. After 1905, Stolypin’s reforms, by assisting the break-up of the village organisation, the Mir, helped the wealthier peasants to buy the land of the poorer, and thus destroyed peasant solidarity against the landowners. Yet discontent grew and received its magnificent opportunity in the breakdown caused by the war. Even before the Bolsheviks seized power the great estates were being taken forcibly and divided up. It was the peasants who carried the Bolsheviks into office, but when once the land was theirs and their position on it reasonably secure, they had no further concern with plans for social revolution. Mr. Farbman records the surprise felt by himself and other observers at the remarkable political insight shown by the seemingly dull peasants. They fought loyally and tenaciously with the Bolsheviks in defence of their land against Monarchist counter-revolutionaries; and when the same Bolshevik government tried to seize their surplus produce in order to feed the towns, the peasants resisted, arms in hand, with equal tenacity. They stringently curtailed production and brought Lenin and his party to unconditional surrender; also incidentally this curtailment was a big factor in multiplying the hardships of the famine. The result of their victory—the New Economic Policy—was that they gained the right to sell their produce freely in the market.

In legal theory the land is national property, but in truth the peasant occupier has security of tenure and in effect the land he occupies is his. The law forbids him to sell his holding, but allows him to lease it out, and Mr. Farbman confidently predicts that improvements in agricultural organisation and technique will be accompanied by growing inequality in the villages. A class of wealthy peasants accumulating larger and larger holdings will be faced by a class of landless rural labourers. In passing, it is worth noticing that a feature of village life unwisely relied upon and exaggerated by Lenin—the antagonism between rich and poor peasants—was brought to an end by the seizure of the land, for the effect was to equalise all holdings. This immediately robbed the Bolsheviks of much of their active support in rural areas.

 

Other developments equally obnoxious to the Communists have been going on in the towns. Despite their decrees, their propaganda and their state services, the Bolsheviks have been quite unable to check the growth of a powerful capitalist trading class, the state enterprises being helpless in face of the competition of more adaptable private traders.

Mr. Farbman quotes official figures, and goes on to say : These figures “show that even in the wholesale trade private enterprise enters into such serious competition with the State that it has nearly as many shops as the State. They demonstrate further that 92 per cent. of the retail trade is in the hands of private persons, and, what is of gravest importance, they show that from that area in which the masses make their purchases—the market-places—the State-controlled trade is completely absent. In the villages the situation of State trade is still less favourable. Here State shops are practically unknown and even cooperative shops are only 14.6 per cent. of all shops. If we compare State and private trade from the point of view of their respective turnover, we find that 64 per cent, of the entire turnover in the cities is made by private traders . . . the main struggle is being waged, and will continue to be waged, in the important sphere of retail trade. Yet the success already achieved by private capital in the wholesale trade is very remarkable. In the beginning of 1923 the proportion of private capital in this branch of trade was only 10 per cent. By the end of the year it reached 30 per cent' (page 135).

The growing power of this trading class cannot be ignored by those who would govern Russia, and will in due course lead to a great struggle for political control. Another battle-ground is provided by the disabilities imposed on the peasants by the present State control of foreign trade. The value of agricultural produce measured in pre-war prices is 4.7 times as great as the value of industrial produce. Yet agricultural produce obtains in the market only 2.3 times the price obtained for the produce of industry. The remedy for the peasant is the unfettered right to sell his corn in the dearest market and to buy what he requires in the cheapest market, at home and abroad. The issue will be Free Trade versus State control, and the victory of the peasants will mean the destruction of what has been called by the Bolsheviks one of the three pillars of the Soviet State. Of the administration itself Lenin is reported to have said a few months before his death that the new bureaucratic machine was "adopted from Tzarism and only slightly anointed with Soviet oil" (page 6).

Mr. Farbman also sketches the leading figures in the Communist Party; describes the economic crisis of 1923 which foreshadowed the coming clash between agricultural and industrial interests; and gives an account of the successful attempt to stabilise the new currency. Other features we must leave, except to mention that the Trade Union movement has become (as must, of course, happen where the leading party is also the Government and hence the employer in State industries) a great organisation to prevent the workers from striking not only in State but also in private concerns (chap. viii).

While Mr. Farbman has, and deserves, a reputation for careful and unbiased observation, protest must be made against his carelessly inaccurate treatment and curt dismissal of Marx.

On page 34 he tells us that 

   "When Lenin inaugurated the dictatorship of the proletariat he was obviously unhampered by the slightest doubt as to the efficacy of Marxian principles, but the longer he tested them as a practical revolutionist and statesman, the more he became aware of the impossibility of building up a society on a mechanical and exclusively economic basis. When he had to adopt an agrarian policy totally at variance with his Marxian opinions, and when later he was compelled to make an 'appeal to the peasants' acquisitive instincts.and go back to what he styled 'State Capitalism,' he was not only conscious that something was wrong with his Marxian gospel, but frankly admitted that Marx had not foreseen all the realities of a complex situation. The greatest value of the Russian 'Revolution to the world labour movement lies in the fact that it has replaced Marxism by Leninism."

Apart from some obscurities in the above passage, the plain suggestion is that Marx had envisaged the possibility of establishing socialism without socialists; of initiating a proletarian revolution in a country where 80 per cent. of the population were non-proletarian peasants; and of building socialist society in the most backward country in Europe. Lenin, says Mr. Farbman, tried to apply this theory, found it failed, and rejected it. The fact of the matter is that this whole conception (as has repeatedly been shown in the Socialist Standard) is utterly foreign to Marxism, and Lenin has produced no material evidence to prove the contrary. Indeed Mr. Farbman and those like the Daily Herald, who have so gleefully reproduced his opinion, make no attempt to do so. They are wise, for there is no such evidence.

Moreover, Mr. Farbman himself supplies proof that Lenin was not, and could not, have been sent astray by following Marx in this matter. He writes this (page 96):—

   "The most constant charge made against Lenin and his associates is that, contrary to the teachings of their own Marxian Sociology, which told them that Communism could only arise as a result of the most highly developed capitalism, they deliberately proceeded to precipitate this in a country predominantly agricultural and containing only the rudiments of capitalist development. But an examination of Lenin’s struggle for State Capitalism against his Left Communist associates in the spring of 1918 will show conclusively that Lenin worked his hardest to extricate his party from the fatal policy of indiscriminate nationalisation to which they were committed. . . .  As a Socialist theorist Lenin had no manner of doubt that Communism was bound first to arrive in the highly developed countries of the West— England and Germany—and in America. He never made the mistake so commonly attributed to him of imagining that so backward a country as Russia was ripe and ready for Communism."

Mr. Farbman here seems to be flatly contradicting his previous statement that Lenin went astray and had to “go back to State Capitalism." But whether Mr. Farbman thinks that Lenin erred or not, it is perfectly plain that Mr. Farbman, and in his opinion Lenin also, knew well that Marx could not be regarded as an advocate of attempting to establish Communism in backward Russia. If Lenin did at any time believe that this was possible, he held that belief not only in defiance of Marxian principles, but also as a departure from his own view at the time of his return to Russia in 1917.

Mr. Farbman further quotes from a letter addressed in 1917 to the Swiss workers (page 98)

   “. . . the idea that the Russian proletariat is the chosen Revolutionary Proletariat among the workers of Europe is absolutely alien to us. We are fully aware that the proletariat of Russia is less organised, less prepared and less conscious than the workers of other countries. It was the peculiar historical conditions and not the peculiar qualities of the Russian proletariat which made it for a certain period, and probably for a very short one, the advanced guard of the Revolutionary Proletariat of the world. Russia is a peasant country and one of the most backward of European countries. Socialism cannot win at once in Russia. Yet the peasant character of the country may, in view of the experience of 1905, give to the bourgeois democratic revolution of Russia such a swing as may make it a prologue to the World Socialist Revolution.”

Mr. Farbman provides the key to the situation when he writes: “I, personally, think that there was one cardinal error into which Lenin fell, and that was his ardent belief in the imminence of a World Socialist Revolution ” (page 97).

As the Socialist Party of Great Britain continually pointed out both before and after the Bolshevik seizure of power, the German, British and other workers were never for one moment able or willing to fight, work or even vote for Socialism. It was a tragedy that Lenin should have listened to those emotional babblers who mistook their hopeful imaginings for facts, and created the colossal myth of a revolutionary working class in England, Germany and America. It is a tribute to Lenin, amply supported by Mr. Farbman, that he was able to face the unpleasant truth before it was too late, and instead of concentrating entirely on futile schemes for world revolution, was willing to lay his hand to the task of hastening the industrial development of Russia under a system of State Capitalism, modified in favour of the workers to the extent that that is possible.

Edgar Hardcastle

Workers' Responsibilities (1925)

From the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the end of 1918 there have been numerous appeals by our masters and their agents through the columns of the daily Press to the working class to cease waging a struggle on the industrial field for improved conditions. Have they not told us of their grave difficulties through the world economic crisis, and their endeavour on our behalf to obtain contracts—even at a loss— in order to give us work?

They have reminded us of the “brotherly” feeling prevalent during the war and in the trenches, and exhorted us to live it all over again in the “piping times of peace."

Objections are sometimes raised that the Socialist Party is too destructive in its criticisms of the part played by the officials of the Trade Union movement and the leaders of the Parliamentary Labour Party, but any worker recognising the conflict of interests between the capitalist class and the workers realises there can be no community of interests between the robber and the robbed. Trade Union officials who urge the working class to consider the interests of the exploiters are without doubt the enemies of the exploited.

Just recently a small journal was handed to the writer, from which he extracts the following:—

"In addressing a meeting of women workers at York, Miss Margaret Bondfield, M.P. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour), gave such good advice that we are printing it for the advantage of our readers.

"She said, as a trade unionist, she must urge them to take a full share in the responsibility for the success of the business. The times in which we lived were times of great seriousness to business people. In that factory they had an opportunity of sharing, through their Works Council, in the responsibility for the success of the business. It was a matter of definitely making up their minds to give a certain amount of thought to their work. Their employers desired to make the business a great contributing fact to the welfare of the country, and were trying to get away front the old idea that the only justification for business was to make money for certain members of the firm.

"Then there was the tremendously important matter of their own personal development. It was not merely a question of how to earn their daily bread, but how to use their leisure time. Personally, she liked a good novel and a cowboy film. But that must not be all. She found that what was most interesting was to read about the lives of clever and important people and the biographies of people who had made their mark in the world. They must cultivate a taste so that they could open the doors of literature and so get access to the whole world. In this cultivation of personal character they must seek to serve their generation, and think less about themselves.” 

The National Amalgamated Monthly, Aug. 1924.

There, now. Grumble no more. See Tom Mix at the movies, read of clever and important people, such as Horatio Bottomley and Lloyd George, who have made their mark in the world. Cultivate a taste for the literature of a Nat Gould, and all will be well.

The Settler.

Editorial: The Shaving of Shaw. (1925)

Editorial from the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Daily Herald of November 8th, 1924, appeared a copy of a letter on the Russian question, written by G. Bernard Shaw for .the Russian paper, Iznestia. This letter seems to have caught the fancy of the Daily Herald, as in a leading article next day it is described as a “brilliant analysis” of the Bolsheviks' position in Russia, and one alliterative phrase is quoted with great glee:—

“Wherever Socialism is a living force instead of a dead theory it has left Karl Marx as far behind as modern science has left Moses.”

The toadying policy of the Daily Herald towards the leaders of the Labour Party is so well known that little notice need be taken of its comments. It is curious, however, that two critics of Mr, Shaw’s letter, Mr. Longden, National Council of the I.L.P., and Mr. Max Beer, should have missed the double fallacy in the statement quoted.

What is meant by the phrase “ a living force”? Shaw, as is usual with him, attempts no explanation. “A living force” may vary from zero to the point where it over-rides all other forces. In no case or place has Socialism reached the latter position. In every country where it is being advocated it is at present accepted and taught by a minority, and can, therefore, only exert any “force" indirectly through its influence upon the fears or hopes of the ruling class, or of the majority. Without any exception, in every place where Socialism is seriously examined, criticised, or fought, it is always the teachings of Marx that are taken and dealt with by both supporters and opponents. Shaw in his propaganda is usually—though quite incorrectly— looked upon as a buffoon, except when he uses the Marxian case. In his debate with Professor Wicksteed, in the early eighties, he was only able to score by using Marx’s economics. When addressing a meeting of the “Technical and Administrative Workers,” at the Central Hall, Westminster, about two years ago, he gave Marx’s analysis of capitalism and showed how the concentration of capital into a relatively few hands had rendered impossible the old notion of an individual starting in business and building up a fortune by “ability and hard work”! Neither the Fabian Society nor the “Independent” Labour Party, which Shaw claims as “the living centre of English Socialism” (italics ours—as though Socialism could be national!) can produce a single notion or proposal worthy of a moment’s thought by the Workers, without basing such proposal upon the teachings of Marx. Even the Catholic Mr. Wheatley, a late Cabinet Minister, is talkihg of and advocating the class war in his latter-day speeches.

Mr. Shaw’s first fallacy is, of course, well known to all students of Socialism, including Mr. Shaw. His second fallacy, that the actions of the Communists in Russia are Marxian, or even a sensible deduction from Marx’s teachings, has been exposed on several occasions in the columns of the Socialist Standard. This fallacy extends farther than Shaw, and is extremely useful to supporters of the capitalist class in their attempts to oppose and "refute" Marx. In two public lectures on Marxism, given at King’s College, London University, in December, 1924, this was the line taken by the lecturer to show the "failure" of  Marx’s teachings.

On certain occasions Shaw will use Marx’s works, without acknowledgment, but evidently feels uncomfortable in handling such advanced material. As his writings and actions during the war and at other times show, he does not care to keep pace with Marx, or even with Moses, but feels quite at home when he goes Back to Methuselah.