How Not To Get Socialism. (1930)

From the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Way of the Communists. 

The “Daily News,” on January 16th, reported Dr. Brown, President of the Baptist Union, as having said that the Baptists last year lost 4,450 church members and 11,000 Sunday School scholars; in ten years, he added, they would at that rate be “as dead as the dodo.”

This is bad news for the Baptists, and we believe it will also be bad news for the Communist Party. For it appears that when they were hard at work preaching the “United Front,” Baptist ministers as well as the Labour Party were to be brought within the fold. Those who think that there must be a limit to the silliness even of the Communists are asked to read the following. It is a letter printed on the front page of the “Workers’ Weekly,” on December 7th, 1923, at a time when a general election was in progress. It is headed, “Helping Ramsay Mac.,” and is signed by J. Stokes, of Portabbot:—

“There is a straight fight in the constituency between Byass, the Capitalist candidate (Unionist), and Ramsay MacDonald. Ramsay MacDonald has all the way to go ; if he gets there, that will be all.

We had a meeting here on November 19th with Ramsay MacDonald, who had three Baptist Ministers on the platform. It was a jolly meeting, and I was most pleased to hear these fellows speaking. We Communists here are doing our best to help Ramsay MacDonald to beat the Capitalist candidate.”

Deeds, not words.

The same issue of the “Workers’ Life” contains many other delightful sidelights on Communist activities. There is, for example, an illustration of what is meant by that favourite slogan of the Communist Party : “Now is the time for action.”

“Comrade Mowatt” writes from Barrow to say that the local Communist Party were working hard to get Mr. J, Bromley returned to Parliament as Labour M.P., and he adds, “all our illusions and theoretical deductions have been hung out on the clothes line to dry.”

We never regarded their “theoretical deductions” as other than unsound, but such candid admission from themselves as to the usefulness of their theories is refreshing.

Having abandoned their theories the Communists were then free to get down to action. Mr. J. McHendrick, of Rutherglen, obligingly tells us what kind of action.

“It was arranged that the addressing of envelopes should be done by team work, and anyone who saw this work being done would have to admit that the Communist Party is a working party.”

And to think that the Soviet Government borrows money at high rates of interest from Russian capitalists and then spends part of it paying British Communists to “help Ramsay Mac.” at elections and address envelopes for Labour Party candidates !

The Mass Party.

The justification given by the Communists for supporting MacDonald, whom they described as a “faithful servant of capital,” was that this was the way to build up a “mass Communist Party.”

In the “Communist Review” (October, 1929) the Tyneside District Party Committee publishes a statement on the condition of the Communist Party as a whole.

This is what they say :—

“After ten years of strenuous effort, the Communist Party of Great Britain finds itself with a financial membership which cannot be placed at a higher figure than 2,500, It is doubtful if even this number of financial members would be found to exist were a careful examination made . . . our Party has never been so weak in membership or influence.”

The significance of this admission will be appreciated when it is remembered that the C.P.G.B. claimed to start with about 10,000 members and that, in addition to thousands of members who joined individually, it claimed to have won over in 1921 5,000 members of the l.L.P. en bloc.

It must indeed be disappointing to spend 10 years helping the Capitalist candidates against the Capitalist candidates, and addressing envelopes in Labour Party committee rooms and then find your membership smaller by three-quarters than when you began.

The stock Communist argument against using the vote as the means of gaining political control for the establishment of Socialism, is that the vote is a “Capitalist instrument,” so that instead of using the vote for that purpose they hasten to use it to “help Ramsay Mac.” administer Capitalism. The vote is a means of attaining power, and as such is neither Capitalist nor Socialist, but it is indeed useless to the workers under Communist guidance.

The Communist Street Fighters.

We have often remarked on the danger to the working-class of the Communist policy of street-fighting, that is, the pitting of practically unarmed men against the colossal weapons of modern warfare in the hands of trained soldiers.

At the Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain, held at Leeds at the end of November, 1929, fresh evidence was given of the dangerously reactionary nature of Communist methods.

A special correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” reports a speech in which Mr. H. Pollitt, the prominent Communist and member of the Communist Party Executive, said : —

“Only through social revolution, only through armed insurrection, can the workers gain power.” —(“Manchester Guardian,” 2nd Dec..)

In the “Workers’ Life” (6th December) is a report of a speech delivered at the Congress by Mr. W. Gallacher, another prominent Communist, and also a member of the Central Committee. In it he said :—

“They had talked of a Revolutionary Workers’ Government, but did they realise what was implied ? Would the organisation of the workers for the revolutionary government be a legal one ? The task of fighting for a revolutionary government would be a task of bringing the workers out on to the streets against the armed forces of Capitalism.”

Having assisted their friend “Ramsay Mac.” into office and placed his Government in control of the armed forces, the Communists now talk of leading the workers into the streets against those same armed forces !

This sort of lunacy they call “tactics.”

Last May Day in Berlin we had an example of this street fighting. Large numbers of young Communists “armed” with a few revolvers and one dummy machine-gun suffered heavy casualties at the hands of a fully-equipped, semi-military, police force.

Recently the same suicidal policy has been tried out again, also in Germany. On this occasion a number of Communists were killed and many were more or less seriously wounded by the police, who were armed with revolvers, machine-guns and armoured cars. (See “Manchester Guardian” and “Daily Express,” 16th January.)

The Communists, according to the accounts in the two newspapers referred to above, were “armed” with a few revolvers, plus “bricks,” “stones,” “planks” and “knuckle-dusters” !

We have only one comment to make. Whenever Pollitt and Gallacher intend throwing stones at a machine-gun or hitting a tank with knuckle-dusters we hope they will let us know so that we can be there to see.

Enter the Proletarian Peashooters.

We are now unreliably informed of new developments in the Communist Party. According to this report that Party is now discussing a question which divided the military experts several hundreds of years ago. The question is that concerning the relative merits of the Crossbow and the Long bow. The old controversy was finally settled by the perfecting of firearms, it being found that both crossbowmen and long-bowmen were as good as dead against the gun.

The present dispute among the “street-fighters” is, however, in danger of being side-tracked by yet another school of thought which has on its side two unanswerable arguments. One is that it is possible for workers to die heroically and perfectly uselessly up against armed forces without going to the trouble of having either longbows or cross-bows, dummy machine guns or knuckle-dusters; and the second is that the cheap and homely pea-shooter, while entirely useless, is a weapon which, unlike the vote, has not been besmirched by being used by the Capitalists, Hence the rumoured formation of an entirely new corps of “Proletarian Peashooters.” Pollitt and Gallacher are to be in command of the new force, ably supported by three unemployed Baptist chaplains.

P. S.

A Look Round. (1930)

From the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party and War.

An idea which is widely held, although quite baseless, is that the Labour Party is an anti-war party. Many people have already forgotten that the Labour Party officially supported the war in 1914, engaged in recruiting, was represented in the Asquith Coalition Government by Mr. Arthur Henderson, Mr. Barnes, and Mr. Roberts, and in the Lloyd George Coalition by Mr. Henderson (member of the War Cabinet), Mr. John Hodge (Minister of Labour), and Mr. Barnes (Minister of Pensions). (See 1919 Labour Year Book, pages xii and xiv.)

It was Mr. Arthur Henderson who distinguished himself by urging the deport­tion of strikers from the Clyde, including Mr. David Kirkwood, now a Labour M.P.

It is, however, often argued that the Labour Party has learned by experience, and would not repeat the “mistake” of 1914. It is therefore worth while taking particular note of the actions and declarations of Mr. Arthur Henderson, Secretary of the Labour Party, and now Foreign Secretary in the Labour Government. In 1914 Mr. Henderson supported war. Has he admitted his error, or changed his attitude? Let Mr. Henderson speak for himself.

At the 1925 Labour Party Annual Conference, Mr. Henderson spoke on behalf of the Executive Committee in opposition to a resolution asking for disarmament. At that time the French Government’s occupation of the Ruhr was still fresh in mind, and in certain circles, including the British Labour Party, feeling against France was running high. This is what Mr. Henderson said :—

“If France continued in the frame of mind she was now in, had they to overlook the possibilities of defence? They could not afford to ignore this question of defence.”—(See Conference Report. Page 232.)

Then, in 1929, Mr. Henderson was challenged about his war-time activities, and replied in a statement to the “Daily Herald” (January 10th, 1929). In that statement Mr. Henderson said “he was not in the least ashamed of his war record, and was willing that it should be investigated by any committee appointed by the Labour Party.”

Of course, Mr. Henderson was willing to have his war-time activities investigated by the Labour Parly. How could his fellow jingoes find him guilty without condemning their own anti-working class activities?

It will be noticed that Mr. Henderson retracts nothing and apologises for nothing. In 1914 it was Germany; in 1925 it was France; who will it be next time Mr. Henderson wants the working class to go to war in defence of British Capitalism?

* * *

Are the men worse than the women?

Mr. Henderson is ably supported by Miss Susan Lawrence, M.P., who is Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of. Health. Speaking at Friends’ House, Euston Road, on January 14th, on “Women and Peace,” Miss Lawrence said :—

“I think we must face the fact that under certain circumstances war is inevitable. I would go so far as to say that there are certain conditions which are worse than war … It is a horrible fact that there is no great nation in the world that has attained its freedom except by war.”—(“Manchester Guardian,” 15th Jan.)

Unfortunately, Miss Lawrence did not let out two intriguing secrets. She omitted to say what were the conditions worse than war, and she forgot to say which was the nation in which the working class had attained their freedom. As she went on to say that the “memories of how we attained our freedom are proud memories,” we are forced to conclude that the “we” who have attained freedom arc not the working class at all. May we ask Miss Lawrence and the I.L.P., of which we understand she is a member, why we of the working class should go to war to maintain the freedom of the Capitalist class?

* * *

Unhappy Mr Maxton.

Mr. James Maxton, Chairman of the I.L.P., has just been severely snubbed by the Scottish group of his party. At a delegate conference a resolution endorsing his recent attitude towards the Labour Government was rejected by 103 votes to 94, although the national executive supports him. In the course of his speech to the delegates, Mr. Maxton complained bitterly that the army of revolt which he thought he was leading, suddenly vanished into thin air. “You had shoved me up against the guns, and when I looked round there was nobody there.” (Reported in “Manchester Guardian,” 13th and 14th January.)

Truly an unfortunate position to be in, but one which sooner or later always overtakes those who trade in bluff. Mr Maxton’s army of revolt is composed of I.L.P. members of Parliament who owe their seats to Labour votes and Labour support. How can they then seriously oppose the Labour Party? And is Mr. Maxton himself an inspiring figure to lead revolts? He has yet to live down even among his own supporters the ghastly fiasco of the “Cook and Maxton” campaign. At the outset of that little firework display Mr. Maxton was neatly cornered on this very question of revolts.

He spoke to a crowded audience in St. Andrew’s Hall, Glasgow, on Sunday, July 7th, 1928. (Reported in “Forward” on July 14th.) He was asked the following question :—

“You have denounced Ramsay MacDonald. Are you prepared to advocate the expulsion of MacDonald from the Labour Party?”

Here was a chance for Maxton to show a bold and logical front. But this was his reply :—

“He was not prepared to advocate the expulsion of MacDonald. He did not believe in expelling anybody. He believed in having both Lefts and Rights in the Party where they could fight things out and let the Centre get on with the work. If people got expelled from the Party they got further away from the Party, and he believed in keeping them under control.”

Here you have the bold, bad office boy who puts his fingers to his nose behind the boss’s back, but “does not believe in sacking the boss because he wants to keep him under control.”

It has been truly said of Mr, Maxton that he is “one of those people who mean well, but …”

* * *

“We Band of Brothers.”

Mr. Maxton’s idea of letting “Lefts” and “Rights” fight while the “Centre” gets on with the work, brings to mind another hoary old argument used by the I.L.P. against the Socialist Party, “Why not,” they say, “let us all get together in the Labour Party and be one great, happy-band of brothers all united for Socialism?”

The answer is that only Socialists can be united for Socialism, and the Labour Party and I.L.P. are neither Socialist nor united. Mr. Maxton and the majority of the National Administrative Council of the I.L.P. are at daggers drawn with the minority and with the Scottish Group. Mr. Johnston, Mr. Wheatley, Mr. Dollan and others are carrying on a heated and abusive quarrel in the columns of “Forward,” and the Editor of the “New Leader” boasts that he is holding the balance evenly between the two sides. Mrs. Mary Hamilton, an I.L.P. member of Parliament, writes in the “New Leader” (6th December) saying that the I.L.P. is not a class party, and Mr. David Kirkwood, another I.L.P. member of Parliament, replies (13th December) that it is a class party or ought to be if it isn’t. A “branch secretary” of the I.L.P. writes as follows (“New Leader,” 27th December) :—

“Once more a position has arisen in which the I.L.P. seems hopelessly lacking in unity. Speaking as a branch official who has served the Party as boy and man for 30 years, I say quite frankly that the situation cannot long continue. It is quite impossible to maintain any semblance of work locally whilst I.L.P.’ers in Parliament continue to talk from opposite positions.”

“Branch secretary” is quite wrong in one respect. The I.L.P. from its birth has always had its members “talking from opposite positions,” and have we not just quoted Mr. Maxton’s statement that that is what he likes? That is a situation which will continue as long as workers can be found lacking Socialist knowledge, and consequently prepared to go on entrusting their thinking to leaders.

But we must confess that the horrible chaos existing inside the I.L.P. is hardly the kind of thing we want to be mixed up in. That is not what we call “unity for Socialism.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Shall We Praise the Lord? (1930)

From the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who has not heard the above expression of religious devotion or first-class humbug? One is reminded of it, on a perusal of the “Star” for January 13th. It seems that there had been a suicide, and almost as usual, the suicide had been a member of the working-class, for he lived not in Mayfair or Belgravia but Walworth, In saying good-bye to his parents in a note left behind, he specially refers to the cause of his action ; he was out of work. Apparently he contemplated the difficulties of the struggle to live and decided that he had had enough. But in case you also read the report and arrived at the same conclusion as the writer, let me hasten to add that the brains of Capitalism as typified by the local coroner, thought otherwise. The mother “said that her son had been temporarily discharged from his work as motor driver because his car was being overhauled. He had a stretch of six months before, and it played on his mind. He was a very sensitive boy.” The Coroner replied : “It is a shocking thing for a lad of 20 to commit suicide. Did you give him any religious instruction?”

“No, Sir.”

The Coroner : “You are his mother and responsible for it. Why did you not give him religious instruction?”

The mother remained silent and this gave our worthy the opportunity to pile on the agony. “There you are, you see. This is the result.” The result, you will observe, not of unemployment, oh dear no, but of the failure of his mother to give him religious instruction ! One can, of course, imagine that had he received this instruction he would have resigned himself to “that position in life to which it had pleased God to call him.” Although, given elementary education, our departed fellow-worker must have had his share of religion from 5 years to 14 years of age, if things haven’t altered since the present writer was maleducated by the L.C.C. It further traspired that our ex-wage-slave had double pneumonia at the time of his decease, in an acute stage, from which it may be supposed that he went to work with it ; such is the struggle to live. He was to be taken back as soon as the car had been overhauled, so said a representative of the firm that had employed him.

A verdict was recorded of suicide while of unsound mind, the real cause being inflammation of both lungs causing depression. Then our worthy coroner returned to the subject of religion.

If, however, we call the cause unemploymment plus the physical state of deceased, we arrive at a verdict of death due to the Capitalist system of society.

Speaking of mentality, one is tempted to at least wonder at the state of the mentality of the official who could add to the agony of a woman who fairly obviously had had, by the loss of her son, more than enough. And if he thinks that any great number of young workers, when they get the sack, nowadays sing “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow,” he is unaware of the attitude of young workers to-day.

J. B.

The Results of Rationalisation. (1930)

From the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx, in the opening statement of his chapter on “Machinery and Modern Industry” (Capital, Vol. I), quotes John Stuart Mill as follows :—”It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.”

Marx’s retort in a footnote, apart from his scientific analysis of this aspect of Capitalism, is :—

“Mill should have said, ‘Of any human being not fed by other’s labour,’ for without doubt machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.”

Capitalist apologists are never tired of telling us to-day of the blessings and comforts that Capitalism has bestowed—but on whom?

Part of the work of Marx and Engels was devoted to showing that the main object of the introduction and use of machinery was to increase profits. Long before Capitalism it was possible for human labour power to produce more from nature’s materials in a given time than was required to maintain the producers during that time. This gave rise to the surplus wealth upon which all forms of slavery have been founded. These slave societies have varied according to the particular form under which the wealth was produced and appropriated (chattel slavery, serfdom and wage slavery). The latter form is the one with which we are at present concerned; it is one in which the means of production (land, machinery, railways, etc.} take the form of investments of Capital, owned by the Capitalist class. They are the section in society owning property in the means of life, and that possession enables them to buy the labour power of the large remaining propertyless section, the working class. This labour power, the workers’ only asset, when set in motion, produces, as in other slave systems, “a greater value” than it receives in return as wages. With the aid of power, machinery, science, etc., this greater or surplus value has been extended to proportions once undreamed of. The buyers of labour power, the Capitalists, are not concerned with production as such, their concern is primarily with the effective exploitation of the working class for profit.

This term, Capital, is unknown when applied to wealth prior to the present system. Problems that confront the Capitalist class to-day are not those which confronted other ruling-classes. Production cannot proceed uninterrupted unless markets can be found for the products, and, while these products are useless to the Capitalist personally, they contain the surplus or unpaid labour of his workers. The power to produce wealth grows by leaps and bounds, but the power of the workers to consume is limited to the fractional value of their output received as wages.

In this fact lies the secret of the epidemic of over-production, and, finally, of trade depression and stagnation which necessitates restricted output in most of the important industries to-day. Says Marx :—

“The consuming power of the labourers is handicapped partly by the laws of wages, and partly by the fact that it can be exerted only so long as the labourer can be employed at a profit for the Capitalist class. The last cause, of all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as compared to the tendency of Capitalist production to develop the productive forces in such a way that only the absolute power of consumption of the entire Society would be their limit.”—(“Capital.” Vol. III. Page 508.)

A favourite method, and one that used to be considered safe in refuting Marx’s teaching regarding the relative worsening of the workers’ conditions, was to look wise and repeat, “Look at America.” Now the Economic League and the I.L.P. will have to construct fresh apologetics with which to defend themselves and with which to meet Socialist arguments. From the very country where we were told that mass output and high wages had banished poverty we now learn from the “Daily News” (14/1/30) in bold headlines that there are “Millions of workers scrapped by machines.” Apparently not even the so-called high wages, nor the prodigal dissipation of wealth by thousands of millionaires, has prevented Capitalism taking the course predicted by Marx. The “Daily News” New York Correspondent says in the same issue :—

“Unemployment in fact, despite the greatest prosperity boom in history, has become as in Great Britain with 1,500,000 workless—the greatest of all national problems.”

This correspondent estimates the unemployed figures at about four millions, but confesses these figures are “merely shots in the dark.”

Previous reports from Capitalist sources (see Socialist Standard, October, 1928) would appear to make it a reasonable assumption that they actually underestimate. The causes of this huge displacement of workers are now, strangely, claimed to be the very things that were previously hailed as the means of American prosperity. They are declared to be “Improvement in machinery; the invention of labour-saving devices; the extension of cheap electric power; the process described in Great Britain under the name of Rationalisation.” The latter is interesting news, especially as the day previous to this report Mr. Ben Tillett was reported in the “Daily Herald” as saying:

“Our textile magnates appear to be either too poor or too inept to realise the virtues of scientific rationalising of industry and the scrapping of all obsolete plants and processes for the greater efficiency which modern methods and equipment arc capable of providing” (“Daily Herald,” 13/1/30).

Practically the whole programme of “Labour and the Nation” aims at the same schemes of Rationalisation, or more efficient organisation of Capitalist production for profit. Without spending time and space on details of argument, any thinking and reasoning reader can see that if America is evidence, then it is not production that is at fault there or here. This fact also rules out such freakish reforms as Birth Control, Family Allowances, or a so-called Living Wage, as relief remedies within a system that reduces its producers to poverty and raises its parasites to millionaires. With a naive innocence that reeks of Nonconformist cant, the same “Daily News” Editorial, commenting on the American situation, says :—

“It is a kind of nonsense to say that a process which makes the world richer must inevitably make thousands of individuals poorer.”

Really ! is it ? Have they never heard of Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty,” Chiozza Money’s “Riches and Poverty,” Chas. Booth’s “Darkest England,” or the statements of Capitalist Prime Ministers like Gladstone, Campbell Bannerman, and Lloyd George? The Capitalist class cannot conceive of any other form of ownership of society’s means of life than the private property basis of modern society. To them, abolition of the present form of wealth, ownership, Capital, means abolition of the means of production themselves.

The “Daily News” unable to explain away the glaring contradictions of Capitalism, increasing poverty, side by side with increasing wealth, refuses to reason and takes refuge in the statement that “it is a kind of nonsense,” They even have to abandon the stock argument that these inconveniences are temporary, for their report says :

“The theory that the workers thrown out of one occupation can find employment in others is not sustained by observation . . . for the first time in history there are indications that this compensatory process may have come to an end and that the trend of modern invention may be to make less work for idle hands instead of more.”

Free-born Britons—note ! Even in the same issue of the paper that considers the co-existent condition of poverty and superabundance, “A kind of nonsense ” we read of 2,000,000 Chinese who have died of famine aggravated by the fuel and transport shortage. Millions of willing and able producers withdrawn from production, transport and transporters who could circle the earth with once undreamt-of rapidity, millions of unemployed willing to produce wealth and yet—famine and poverty. What stark madness ! Such is Capitalism ! No reform that could be introduced will prevent the present system from proceeding according to the laws of its own development. The effects of these laws we have briefly outlined. From the workers’ point of view Capitalism renders all reform futile to solve the main poverty problem. Their conditions worsen faster than the reforms can be introduced and take effect.

The very advocacy of Reform presupposes the continuance of the present system whether those reforms are presented as the sugar-coated pills of the I.L.P. or the frothy catch-phrases of the so-called Communist. It is the Capitalist system itself that enslaves the Worker. The remedy is the removal of the cause and no “meantime” patchwork can do that. Only a Socialist Working-Class will ever be able to undertake the removal of Capitalism and the establishment of common ownership of the means of life. Such ownership will place the powers and the results of production at the disposal of the whole of society; consequently leisure and comfort could be available for all if the Workers had the Knowledge and the desire to bring the change. Until then, through political ignorance, they will continue to keep in existence the present system.

W. E. MacHaffie

Answer to Correspondent. Bank Loans and Deposits. (1930)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

London, N.4.

10/1/30.

To the Editor of the Socialist Standard

Sir,

As an old reader of the “S.S.” may I be permitted to express disappointment at your treatment of Mr. Edwin Wright’s contribution on the Gold Standard?

One feels that the point he raised requires greater consideration than it received at your hand.

His case is, as I understand it, that the actual deposits of cash received by banks is a negligible quantity relative to the total deposits as shown by their balance sheets, and that consequently we have to look for the bank’s main source of revenue, not from a profit made as a result of the margin between deposit-rate and bank-rate, but from the fact that they are in a position to loan considerable sums in excess of the actual deposits upon which interest is paid.

It is true a bank does other work besides the granting of loans and overdrafts. The buying and selling of investments, discounting bills, etc., play a part in a bank’s activities, and consequently the statement made by Mr. Walter Leaf, and quoted by you, is not an indictment the theorem, “Every bank loan creates a deposit” ; it merely points to a possibility, under certain conditions, of bank deposits and loans, and advances to vary inversely.

That the main proposition, however, as advanced by your correspondent, and so generally accepted in the Socialist and Labour movement, should have been rejected and subjected to scorn by you, is beyond comprehension.

Yours faithfully,

William Nicholls.

Reply

Mr. Nicholls intervenes in order to explain what another correspondent meant when he wrote, “Every bank loan creates a deposit.” Two things are possible : either Mr. Wright meant what he wrote or he meant something which he did not write, We, having no other evidence of Mr. Wright’s meaning than his letter, took it for granted that he meant what he wrote and replied accordingly. (See January “S.S.”) We quoted the reply given by the late Mr. Walter Leaf to the same proposition. It is, of course, possible that the person to whom Mr. Walter Leaf was replying also did not mean what he said but something else, but evidently Mr. Leaf felt about that just as we do.

Mr. Nicholls tells us that Mr. Walter Leaf’s reply “is not an indictment of the theorem ‘Every bank loan creates a deposit’ ; it merely points to a possibility, nder certain conditions, of bank deposits, and loans, and advances to vary inversely.” May we remind Mr. Nieholls that the proposition put forward by Mr. Wright was not the proposition that “some bank loans, possibly, under certain conditions, create a deposit,” but that “every bank loan creates a deposit.” Mr. Walter Leaf gave a definite illustration of a £29 million increase of loans and advances being accompanied by a £25 million decrease in deposits. That meets the proposition put forward by Mr. Wright it does not meet some other proposition which Mr. Nicholls says Mr. Wright meant to put forward. It was not intended to.

Now for Mr. Nicholls’ own trouble. He thinks that Mr. Wright meant to say that

“The actual deposits of cash received by banks is a negligible quantity relative to the total deposits shown . . . and that they (the banks) are in a position to loan considerable sums in excess of the actual deposits on which interest is paid.”

The first part of the statement is not in dispute. The second part, even if it were true, has no direct bearing on the first part, although in Mr. Nicholls’ letter they are joined by the word “consequently.” In the first part he refers to “cash,” while in the second part he refers to “actual deposits on which interest is paid,” but these are not the same thing, the latter being a much larger sum than the former.

We notice that Mr. Nicholls only tells us what he thinks the banks “are in a position” to do. He does not commit himself to telling us that they do it. If he meant (but forgot to state) that they do in fact “loan considerable sums in excess of the actual deposits on which interest is paid,” we shall be pleased to see his evidence for that assertion.

Mr. Nicholls wants us to accept his unsupported assertion without any evidence whatever, except another assertion (itself untrue) that in the “Labour and Socialist Movement” (by which we presume he means the Labour Party and its affiliated bodies) this view is “generally accepted.” Even if the Labour Party were agreed on this question instead of being divided as on most questions, it is indeed a novel doctrine that the Socialist Party ought to accept Mr. Nicholls’ errors because those errors have been endorsed by a number of non-Socialist organisations. We cannot even promise Mr. Nicholls not to disagree with them again, though this may cause him still more surprise.

Knowing the usual fate of people who intervene in other people’s quarrels, we are now expecting to hear from Mr. Wright that his letter meant what it said, or at any rate, not what Mr. Nicholls says it was intended to mean, and that Mr. Nicholls’ letter is itself in need of inspired interpretation.

Editorial Committee.

SPGB Meetings. (1930)

Party News from the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Labour Party Promise and a Capitalist Admission. (1930)

From the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Tom Shaw, speaking at Wandsworth on December 16th, 1929, gave the following interesting pledge on behalf of the Labour Party: —

  We make no apology for saying that the instant we are powerful enough to do it, poverty shall be abolished.

—(“Evening News,” 17th Dec.) 

The “Evening News,” in an editorial, expressed its doubts about the matter :—

  That is not the maundering of a street-corner spell-binder. It is the considered utterance of Mr. Tom Shaw, one of His Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State in the Labour Government and incidentally the man who once complained piteously that he could not produce a remedy for unemployment “ like rabbits out of a hat.”
  We make no apology for saying that though Mr. Shaw and his friends should be returned to Parliament with no opposition at all poverty will not be abolished. We venture to add that the type of mind that could produce such a statement as Mr. Shaw made at Wandsworth last night will never decrease poverty, let alone abolish it.

We are strongly of the opinion that the “Evening News” is right; we also do not think that the Labour Party will succeed in fulfilling Mr. Shaw’s promise. We are quite certain that poverty will not, and cannot, be abolished under Capitalism, although the administration of the system is in the hands of “Labour” men. But what surprises us is the further admission of the "Evening News” that the problem has not been solved in the U.S.A., which the “Evening News” is always telling us to imitate.

  We might begin by reminding Mr. Shaw that the world has never been without poverty and that in the United States to-day, the richest nation in material wealth that the world has ever known, there is plenty of it—not relative poverty merely, but want and destitution.

Next time we are invited to copy American methods, perhaps the “Evening News” will tell us in what way “want and destitution" in the U.S.A. are preferable to “want and destitution” in the United Kingdom."

Editorial: The Socialist Movement in Other Countries (1930)

Editorial from the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

PROGRESS IN AMERICA.

Our readers will have read with pleasure that in November last comrades of ours in New York launched the first number of their monthly journal, "The Socialist." The founders, the Socialist Educational Society, are trying to link up into a national organisation a number of groups and individuals who have long carried on separately the work of propagating Socialism.

"The Socialist” will make it possible for them to get their message before a wider public with the object of turning what is now an educational society, with a declaration of principles based upon our own, into a political party.

The starting of the new journal is by no means an isolated event. It is the outcome of years of hard and often seemingly fruitless efforts. But the handful who .persisted in that work were men who had learned by experience—some of them as members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain—that the road to Socialism cannot be an easy one. They know, as the founders of the S.P.G.B. knew, that there is no limit to the plausible but futile schemes for reforming Capitalism put forward by professional politicians and well-meaning but badly-informed would-be saviours of the working class, and that nothing but Socialist knowledge will make the workers secure against these political frauds and cranks. The publication of "The Socialist” marks a definite step forward for the Socialist movement in the U.S.A., and it also inevitably means a heavy additional burden for the comrades who are responsible, a new drain on their time, their energies and their pockets. We urge our readers here and in America to give what aid they can in extending the sale of the new journal in order to lighten as much as possible the work of the Socialist Educational Society. We hope next to be able to report that the extension of their activities, the holding of more study classes and propaganda meetings, will have made it possible to. form in the U.S.A. the looked for Socialist Party.

AND AUSTRALIA.

Reference has also been made from time to time in our columns to the Socialist Party of Australia, another young organisation formed by a few readers of the Socialist Standard. They, too, have as their basis our Declaration of Principles.

At their meetings and lectures they have been in the habit of selling our pamphlets and the Socialist Standard, but during the past year or two the Australian Government has done us the honour of banning our literature from that country. That action—still being continued under the present Labour Government which came into office last October—has caused us and our Australian comrades inconvenience and financial loss, but it is likely to have one very happy result. It has caused the Socialist Party of Australia to concentrate on publishing a journal of their own, and this they intend to do as soon as they can get together the necessary minimum of money. We commend this incident to the authorities who thought they could stop Australian workers from studying Socialism by excluding literature from abroad.

Readers in Australia who would like to assist in the work of the S.P. of Australia should get into touch with the Secretary, at P.O. Box 1440, Elizabeth Street, Melbourne.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION.

In the early days of the S.P.G.B. we sent delegates to the Congress of the International, but finding that parties were admitted to it which were prepared to repudiate by word and deed the fundamental principles of Socialism—parties here and abroad of the type of the Labour Party and the I.L.P.—we withdrew. We were not, and are not, prepared to associate internationally with organisations which are opposed to Socialism at home. In due course the war justified all our criticisms of the Second International. Not being based on Socialist principles and knowledge, it dissolved at the first shock into national groups anxious only to outdo each other in their ferocious jingoism and their demonstrations of loyalty to their respective sections of the Capitalist class.

The eventual formation of the Third (Communist) International has not solved the problem; rather has it confused it still more. It, like its rival, is prepared to admit organisations which are not in any sense of the word Socialist. It admits and supports bodies which are avowedly nationalist, interested primarily in helping one Capitalist country against another. It allows (or rather orders) its national parties to support Capitalist candidates at elections and advocates the suicidal policy of street-fighting. Its policy is dictated, not in the interests of the working class of the world, but in the interests of the developing Capitalist system in Russia striving for a place in the world scramble for markets.

The progress of Socialist organisation cannot be more advanced on the international than on the national plane. We look forward to the time when our work and the work of the bodies we have mentioned and other individuals and groups in English-speaking countries and in Austria and elsewhere, will bear fruit in a real International based not on illusions but on the solid foundation of Socialist knowledge and organisation.

__________________________

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NOTICE.

READ "THE SOCIALIST"

"The Socialist," organ of the Socialist Educational Society (U.S.A.), is obtainable from the publishers at 132 East 23rd Street, New York, or from this office. Price 3½d. a copy, post free; or 3/6 a year post free (one dollar a year post free in the U.S.A.). Bundles rates on application.

What is behind the Naval Conference? (1930)

From the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the moment of writing the stage is being prepared for the Five-Power Naval Conference, whose object is to solve the problem that could not be solved at the 1927 Geneva Conference.

What is this problem? To those who have not given much thought to it, the problem appears to be the question of the peace of the world, and this view is supported by the frequent references in newspapers, pamphlets and books, to the "spirit of peace," the “spirit of humanity," the “spirit of the Kellogg Pact,” and various other spineless spirits. Now one can hardly attribute any of these forms of “ spiritualism" to governments who are prepared to use the latest forms of warfare against striking workers; and who are prepared, as in England, to allow the bulk of the workers in a dying industry, the coal industry, to starve or depend upon individual charity.

In fact, the problem is not the peace of the world but an attempt to set a limit to the ruinous expenditure upon armaments. A writer in the “Sunday Times” for January 19th put the problem in a nutshell when he wrote : “Good will come out of the Conference if only in the Budgets of the nations.”

The naval armament position is similar to the military and aerial. It is a race between attacking and defensive forces.

A hundred years ago the warship was a wooden vessel propelled by the wind and armed with a quantity of small cannon. The projectiles fired by these cannon could have been carried about by the crew. The cost of such men-of-war was so small that they could be built and fitted out by private people. The increase in cost came with the increase in weight and explosive power of the projectile. This brought with it necessary improvements in the construction of ships to withstand the shock of firing and also improvements in defensive armour to resist the enemy’s fire.

Towards the end of the Crimean War the ironclad warship was devised, driven by steam. At first it was slow and clumsy and the iron plates were only a few inches thick, though this was quite sufficient to resist the projectiles of the times. The wealth and science of each nation was then called upon in the headlong race to produce a navy capable of holding the sea against all others. As wealth and scientific knowledge grew, the expenditure upon naval armaments grew even more tremendous and the giant battleship was still supreme.

By the end of the last century the wealthiest nations had succeeded in building floating castles that cost millions of pounds to construct and keep in fighting condition. Steam drove them, steered them, raised and lowered the boats, and accomplished many other feats formerly done by the unaided hands. Their armour plate was several feet thick; their heavy guns weighed over two hundred tons each, and they hurled projectiles over two thousand pounds in weight to tremendous distances. At the outbreak of the war in 1914 one of these heavy guns could fire at and hit a target' over twenty miles away.

But still the building of heavier armed and more expensive ships goes on, with oil as the motive power. Improvement proceeds at such a rate that a battleship is rendered obsolete almost as soon as it leaves the slips. Each capitalist nation, therefore, sees with agony a huge part of its wealth going into the bottomless pit of battleship building, and is looking in every direction for some means to end the increasing drain on profits.

In the meantime a fresh war horror had come into existence at the end of last century—the submarine. Its early growth was a subject for curiosity and schoolboy tales. Then 1914 finally demonstrated the value of the submarine and small fast war craft, and showed that the battleship was little more than a white elephant, the torpedo found the weak spots in everything.

Towards the end of the war, yet another and more efficient arm was added to the Navy as a defence against the submarine, and that was the aircraft carrying torpedoes and bombs. The submarine was slow, but it was invisible, and herein lay its strength. The aeroplane high up can “spot” a submarine at the lowest depth it can safely sail. On top of this, submarine building has become more costly as the submarines have grown larger and more heavily armed. France has just completed a submarine vessel of 3,000 tons—a small battleship, the cost of which was over a million pounds.

The latest improvement in the aeroplane is direction by wireless. By this means an aeroplane carrying gas bombs and torpedoes can cruise over a wide area dealing death in all directions while its operators remain practically immune from damage. So we may now expect a further development to meet and render useless this latest weapon of horror. Where will it all end? The capitalist can see no end but the continued production of ever more terrible means of causing destruction. He is not concerned with the scrapping of implements of war, but only with decreasing their cost.

So, finally, the high ideals of the Naval Conference are really £ s. d., and have as much concern for real warfare of humanity as the capitalist has for the general welfare of his wage slaves. This was made perfectly clear in one of the resolutions of the League of Nations Economic Conference at Geneva in May, 1927, which affirmed :—

The world as a whole still devotes considerable sums to armaments and to preparations for war, which reduce the savings available for the development of industry, commerce, and agriculture, and are a heavy burden upon the finances of the different States, entailing heavy taxation, which reacts upon their whole economic life and lowers their standard of living.

—("The Economist Supplement,” 28/5/1927.)

It will be noticed that in all the official arguments on the question of armament, with the exception of Russia, there has been ho suggestion of the absolute abolition of all armaments—it has only been a question of limitation. And from the English side there has been no hint of limiting its most effective weapon—the bomb and torpedo-carrying aeroplane. This is significant of the ideas behind the talk—although we have a Labour Government!

There are, however, elements of humour in the situation, and one has been provided by the “New Leader” of January 17th. In its editorial columns we read:—

The memorandum signed by 77 Labour Members of Parliament! urging that the delegates of the Government at the Naval Conference should make the abolition! of battleships and warships over 10,000 tons one of the principal aims of their deliberation, has our heartiest approval.

What imbecility! One might as well urge that each ship should have one gun less. The net result of the adoption of this recommendation would simply be the setting of the problem to naval experts of making the 10,000-ton ship as destructive a weapon as the 20 or 25 thousand ton ship, and America has already demonstrated that it can be done. But apart from that side of the problem, what has become of the alleged peaceful aims of the I.L.P.? They approve a Memorandum which says : "One of the principal aims is to be limitation.” Has it not occurred to the I.L.P. that there is such a thing as total abolition?

But then, of course, the I.L.P., by its support of the Labour Party, anticipates the indefinite continuance of capitalists whose interests are at present being so well served by MacDonald, Thomas, Snowden & Co.

Armaments are the fighting power of the State and the State in the hands of those who resist Socialism is the bulwark of Capitalism. It, and its fighting forces will last as long as Capitalism lasts, because Capitalism signifies the existence of a subject class to be held in bondage.

Gilmac.

Tugan-Baranovsky's Criticism of Marx. (1930)

Book Review from the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Modern Socialism in its Historical Development," by M. Tugan-Baranovsky, was published in 1910. It was translated from the Russian by M. I. Redmount.

The most interesting feature of the work is the record of working-class efforts and ideas in the early days of the movement. The phrasing is inclined to be awkward, possibly due to difficulties of translation. It is, in places, not easy to get at the ideas. When understood, however, the work presents a rather curious instance of an author losing sight of his own premises, merely because society has failed to act on them. 

On page 14 he defines Socialism as 

The social organization in which, owing to equal obligations and equal rights of all to participate in the communal work, as also owing to the equal right to participate in the produce of this work, the exploitation of one member of the community by another is impossible.

Having laid this down as a working principle—incomplete as it is—the reader might expect that it would, at least, be used to show wherein working-class parties, calling themselves Socialist failed to act up to their name. Instead, M. Baranovsky, confusing labour politics with what he calls Marxism, declares that the latter has departed from its principles. By Marxism he means the principles that should govern the workers in their efforts to emancipate themselves. These principles were broadly outlined by Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto.

On page 8 M. Baranovsky says that Socialists recognised that they had to bear in mind the immediate needs of the people and shape their policy on them. In consequence of these ingenious Marxian tactics, he says, Socialism has become the greatest political power of the present. He describes this action as transferring the centre of gravity of the Socialist movement into the sphere of practical politics. The ultimate aim, he says, recedes into the background, whilst the proper ideal continues to serve but as a symbol, without any concrete content, and finally, the tactics of Marxism have in theory resulted in weakening the interest in the final issue of Socialism.

Here, he fails to see that it is the Labour Party that has falsified Socialist principles by their reformist policy. The broad facts of the working-class position, and the principles drawn from them are, in essence, the same to-day as when Marx outlined them in the Communist Manifesto. M. Baranovsky should, reasoning from his declared facts, have noted that the Labour Party cannot, at the same time, be both a reformist and a Socialist party.

This failure to see that a Socialist party must have Socialist principles, and base its political activities on them, vitiates the work throughout. To M. Baranovsky the Labour Party is a Socialist party in spite of its reformist policy and its denial of Socialist principle.

The reason for his shortsightedness is seen after a careful examination of his book. M. Baranovsky has the Utopian mind. Something of the soundness of the Socialist position he glimpses here and there; but in the main he belongs to the period of which he writes most fluently; the period when reformers like Owen, Fourier and St. Simon saw the rottenness of Capitalism and planned new systems to supplant it. In his preface he compares these with Marx, as follows:—

And taking into consideration that Marxism, as I strongly believe, does not embrace all the scientific elements of Socialism, my investigation necessarily assumed an historical character in so far as I was obliged to retrospect and introduce earlier, partly forgotten doctrines of the so-called Utopian category, which I consider deserving of the most serious attention and which in some respects are even more scientific than Marxism.

One of the best-known of the Utopians was Fourier. His plan for the reformation of society was the formation of groups, called Phalanstries, each group to settle on the land and provide for themselves by their associated labour. Fourier himself waited in vain for some charitable millionaire to finance his first group. Yet there have been quite a number of these experiments in different parts of the world. They were all failures. Capitalist society is too strong an organism to be affected by such dreamlike projects.

Wherein can such schemes be termed scientific? M. Baranovsky does not tell us. But Marxism, as he calls it, can tell us why they always failed. Working-men cannot throw up their jobs and form groups to produce for themselves. They have no capital to start with (a necessity under Capitalism) and Capitalists already own the land.

But the Utopians are unscientific in another respect. They say that nothing can be achieved by struggling against those in power. The only effective weapon is persuasion. They turn their backs on the class struggle, instead of recognising it and taking their place in the ranks of the workers. What could be more unscientific than refusing to see what is so evident in modern society. The antagonism between Capitalists and workers is the most outstanding feature of modern times, all over the Capitalist world, and conditions cannot essentially change for the working-class until they get the upper hand in that struggle.

But it is not the early Utopian ideas with which M. Baranovsky is chiefly obsessed. His Utopianism has advanced some what. Sixty pages are devoted to what he conceives as the special forms that the future society may take. He reviews the possibilities of eight different systems. Socialism and Communism have each four alternative arrangements, according to him : Centralized, Corporate, Federal And Anarchical. The Utopian cast of his mind is plainly revealed in the profitless task of reviewing these forms. But even more so is this the case in the last section of his book ,where he says on page 230:—

In the Socialist community, just so as in the Capitalistic, the price of a commodity will rise in the case of demand exceeding supply, and fall in the inverse instance.

In this quotation we see how Capitalist ideas clog the minds of those who try to frame schemes to escape from the evils of the present system. M. Baranovsky would carry over into a future system he has somehow conjured up, the very things that make Capitalism what it is. He would still have commodities and commodity production. Sale and purchase of the necessaries of life.

Capitalism is based on the class ownership of the means of wealth production and the commodity character of human labour-power. Labour-power is bought by the Capitalists to operate the machinery of production and sell their commodities on the world's market. The energy of the worker is a commodity, he is stamped with the commodity character. He is compelled to suffer all the vicissitudes that distinguish other commodities in the Capitalist world: over-supply, depreciation and physical decay, when he can no longer sell his one commodity.

Throughout the productive and commercial world everything has a practical aim in view. The object of it all is profit. The workers themselves cultivate efficiency, eliminate waste, produce all forms of wealth, and run all the services that minister to the world's needs. Yet they suffer poverty because they do all this for those who buy their energy. Everywhere business is run on practical lines and becoming more rationalised every day. Yet the worker’s mind is still obsessed with the false notion that wealth can only be produced by this arrangement that makes the bulk of human society—the working-class —a class of wage-slaves.

Production and distribution of wealth can be carried on by society without the enslavement of one class. But only the class that is enslaved can possibly want such a system. Consequently, it can only be established by the workers themselves. Moreover, it can only be established in opposition to the Capitalist class. Which means that the workers' first task is to critically examine and understand the basis of Capitalism. He will then know for himself what must be changed or eliminated in order that he and his class may win security and freedom from exploitation.

F. Foan

Party Activities (1930)

From the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Head Office

The Sunday evening lectures that were commenced at Head Office in the autumn have continued through the winter with considerable success. These lectures are given mainly by members who are developing as speakers, and this offers a splendid opportunity for beginners. The questions and discussion that follow have been usually on a high level and cannot fail to provide valuable information to those present.

We would like to see more members in attendance.

WEST HAM. Meeting at Stratford.

In spite of very bad weather there was an interested audience of 250 at Stratford Town Hall on Sunday 12th, when our speaker dealt with the subject, "How to Get Socialism." Questions and opposition centred chiefly round the problem of doing something in order to check the worst effects of Capitalism. It was interesting to notice that even those who spoke in defence of the Labour Party policy were not prepared to speak enthusiastically about the Labour Government's actions. Instead of the usual Communist telling is that the workers must use armed force, the one Communist opponent who intervened did so in order to deny that the Communists hold any such view. Fortunately the speaker had available the report of the last Communist Congress where that policy was reiterated.

The members of the West Ham Branch who organised the meeting had used it as an opportunity of making the party more widely known. Some 3,000 handbills were given away and 1,000 specimen copies of the Socialist Standard were distributed prior to the meeting.

There was a collection of £2 6s. 9d., and literature was sold to the value of 9s. 4d.

EAST LONDON.

The East London Branch have been very active during the winter and are making good progress. Open-air propaganda in Victoria Park has been maintained and indoor public meetings have been held each month. In addition, the branch is conducting lectures in the branch room at 141, Bow Road, on alternate Fridays in the month.

Potential speakers have been discovered among new members, and are being given opportunities for training. Sales of literature are good.

BATTERSEA.

The monthly meetings run by Battersea branch in their branch room at Latchmere Road Baths have been a great success. Attendance has been good and considerable interest taken in the party point of view. Open-air propaganda has been maintained on Clapham Common, except in very bad weather conditions.

SHEFFIELD. A BRANCH FORMED.

Efforts to form a branch in Sheffield have met with success, and we are looking forward to early signs of propaganda activity in that neighbourhood. Those wishing to get in touch should communicate with E. Boden, 44, Edgedale Road, Millhouses, Sheffield.

EDINBURGH.

Edinburgh members are trying, in spite of difficulties, to make the party known and get a branch going. Not the least of the difficulties is the bad weather, which frequently prevents open-air meetings. When the weather improves their efforts are likely to meet with success. Those wishing to lend a hand should communicate with D. Lamond, at 15, Barclay Place.

GENERAL PROPAGANDA.

Regular open-air propaganda stations are being well maintained. Glasgow especially has been showing good results.

As so much depends on the Socialist Standard to link up the party with friends and sympathisers, and to keep our position before the public, members are urged to make special efforts to increase sales. One way of doing this, we would suggest, is to get subscribers for a period of one year (the cost is only 2s. 6d. per annum, post paid). If each member of the party made it his or her job to get only one or two subscribers annually, our sales would increase by leaps and bounds.

All shoulders to the wheel to forward the good work.

Propaganda Committee.