A Task For 1941 (1941)

From the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the past year we have witnessed some of the mightiest events that the world has ever experienced. Half Europe conquered by the armed forces of German capitalism . . . concentrated mass aerial bombardments of European and Near Eastern cities . . . the naval blockade by Britain of Europe, and the counter blockade of Britain by the Axis submarines and warplanes. In the Western hemisphere, the U.S.A. launched a re-armament drive of colossal proportions designed to secure American interests from the menace of potential challengers from across the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.

Seizing the opportunity presented by the collapse of France, Japanese capitalism demanded and obtained bases in French Indo-China which are now being used to accelerate the subjugation of China, and which constitute a serious threat to British and American interests in the Southern Pacific.

In this tidal wave of strife and turmoil which is engulfing the whole world, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and its companion parties abroad, have no illusions as to where the international working class stand in relation to these events. The vast majority of workers in belligerent, “non-belligerent,” and neutral countries, support in the main the policy of their respective rulers. But whatever the policy happens to be, it does not, and cannot, represent the real interests of the workers. Be it a policy of war, it means death, or mutilation, for many, hardship and suffering for all. If a policy of neutrality, the fetters of capitalism on the workers remain, and in these days neutrality means armed neutrality with the consequent sacrifices demanded of the workers to produce “armaments to safeguard Peace.”

The Home Front

Here in Britain political parties clamour for “total war,” not the least vociferous among them being the Labour Party. Yapping at its heels is the Communist Party, which is backing, and applauding, the vague reform programme of a “People’s Convention.” One of the Convention’s aims is to end the war which the Communist Party so ardently supported at the outbreak, and which it will doubtless support again if and when their spiritual brethren of the Kremlin decide to throw in their lot against the Nazis.

The I.L.P. Regrets

Another “peace effort,” launched by the I.L.P., met with an overwhelming defeat at the hands of the Tories and their Labour allies in the House of Commons. This took the form of a naive amendment to the “King’s Speech,” and “humbly” regretted that the British Government (which is conducting the war for the very existence of British Imperialism) failed to call a conference at which the contending governments were to pledge themselves with all the resources at their disposal, to the creation of a “new social order” in which Imperialism, British or foreign, would have no place, and which would “provide a decent home and standard of life for each family in every country of the world.”

It would have been of some use to the working class, whose interests it professes to understand and serve, had the I.L.P. first learnt the precise nature of the present conflict, and passed on the knowledge to its supporters. Then it might have realised the utter futility of calling upon the ruling class (even as a propaganda gesture) to abandon its imperialism and disgorge its resources for the benefit of the working class. It is even conceivable that as a further consequence of understanding the nature of the conflict, the I.L.P. would have learnt that the only way in which a “new social order” (Socialism) can be brought about is when an international SOCIALIST working class undertakes the task itself.

The peculiar stress of war-time conditions reveal even more clearly the non-Socialist character of the I.L.P. and similar reformist parties.

The Record of the Socialist Party

This rough outline of the events of 1940 would be gloomy indeed, for the working class, if it was not relieved to some extent by the fine record of the Socialist Party and its companion parties abroad. Many of our readers will recall an article in the March (1940) issue of the “S.S.,” which recorded the extraordinarily successful mass meetings and the big literature sales which resulted from our activities during the first six months of the war. We have always claimed that the best way of influencing and encouraging the workers of other lands in the common struggle for Socialism is not by addressing pious resolutions to them (or even to our rulers) but by propagating Socialism in the land we live in. Striking confirmation of this was forthcoming in the editorial of a recent issue of the Western Socialist, which is the joint organ of the Socialist Party of Canada and the Workers’ Socialist Party of the U.S.A. In a glowing tribute to their comrades in Britain who are continuing the fight for Socialism despite the enormous difficulties confronting them, the American parties have resolved to intensify to the utmost their efforts to reach the common goal. News reaching us from Australia and New Zealand indicates the same resolve on the part of our comrades in those lands.

The ensuing months since March last have witnessed no diminution of our success. On May-Day, in Hyde Park, thousands of workers thronged our meetings, listening attentively to the Socialist message. Those meetings and the large number which followed in many parts of London and the provinces during the summer months, are at once an example and a challenge to workers everywhere. A significant feature of these meetings was the tangible evidence of the interest they aroused—collections to Party funds showed a large increase over the corresponding period of the previous year, and donations and literature sales reached new high levels.

The increased violence of the aerial bombardments has caused many difficulties for the Party. Most serious of these is the impossibility of holding indoor meetings during the evening hours of darkness. We can, however, look forward to the lighter evenings for a resumption. Meanwhile, our outdoor propaganda at week-ends and during the weekday luncheon hours continues with excellent results. Another temporary difficulty is the dispersal to many parts of the country of some of our members who have been obliged to follow their employment. We may be certain, however, that as a consequence of this forced migration, the Socialist Standard will be introduced to many new readers.

The Future

What of the future? Let you who read this resolve with the Socialist Party to make 1941 a. record year. There are many ways in which you can help to achieve this. Most important is to try and increase the circulation of the Socialist Standard and our pamphlets. Another way is to render as much financial aid as you can afford. Our efforts now are of tremendous importance: they might have a decisive effect on the rapidity of our progress at the end of the war.

Pull your weight for Socialism.

H. G. Holt

War: Methods of Offence and Defence (continued) (1941)

From the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 3.

(Continued from December issue.)

From the 5th to the 15th century cavalry was supreme in warfare, and by 1300 the defensive in the form of the heavy armour of the knight and the moated and thickly-walled feudal castle had gained complete mastery over offensive weapons.

It may not be out of place here to point out that the advances in offensive and defensive armour in the past, just as to-day, depended upon the producer, and whatever the brilliancy of the leader or the expertness of the soldiery, in the last analysis the group that had access to the products of the best and most advanced craftsmen were the most successful in warfare. In different parts of Europe and the Near East there were famous workshops producing high grade weapons and armour, excellent examples of which are to be seen in the museums. The great skill that must have been employed in their production is an evidence of the technical capacity of the so-called “Dark Ages.” The product of these workshops, however, could only be purchased by the wealthy lords and nobles of the time, for the rigging out of a knight and his horse in the complete armour required was costly.

From the declining days of the Roman Empire onwards it became a race in armaments, in which the group possessing the heavier cavalry almost inevitably won. The mediaeval knight carried an enormous weight of metal, but it carried him to victory in his day.

There is not space available to explain in detail the changes and shifts of armoured infantry and lightly armoured horsemen that occurred in the development from the horse-bowmen and javelin throwers to the completely armoured knight, whose equipment was impervious to arrows or spears. It may be mentioned that it was the work of its armour makers that helped the Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire centred in Constantinople) to hold out against the Barbarian and Saracenic invaders for centuries.

By the 9th century in Europe practically all fighting was done by horsemen. The feudal order grew out of the barbarian tribal organisation in which war was carried on under temporary war chiefs. Declining Rome bought the services of these chiefs in some instances by the grants of territory, in other instances territory was conquered and collectivist villages made subject to the conquerors. The fortification of bridgeheads, strongholds, and eventually the castle was the means that ultimately tied the wandering armed bands down to definite portions of land, and produced the hierarchy of service obligations that has gone by the name of feudalism.

In the hierarchy of feudalism the church was the largest owner of lands, and hence church dignitaries encased in armour were in the forefront of feudal wars, hacking, slaughtering and riding the defeated down with the best.

The knightly cavalry that ultimately developed had no real leaders; each noble was practically a law unto himself. This brought considerable confusion into the battles of the time, as the knight fought or declined to fight when and how he thought he would. Even when agreement had been reached as to the time a battle was to begin isolated groups often commenced the fight long before the main body had arrived on the spot.

In warfare there was little attempt at provisioning an army, dependence being placed upon plundering the country they entered. The principle of attack was the blind impetuous charge. Knights would charge anything; sometimes they landed into a wall or a swamp—hence Cervante’s satire of Don Quixote charging a windmill.

As infantry declined battles became rare, and were replaced by sieges of long duration. The heavily armed horsemen could not operate where there were natural obstructions. In fact, in one instance two armies were drawn up on opposite sides of a river and neither could cross in face of the other. One of the leaders thereupon courteously offered the opposing army an uninterrupted crossing in order that they might have a proper battle ! It was this very weight of armour that first brought the horsemen down when an offensive weapon was found that was able to pierce the best armour that could be produced.

Although war appears to have been the outstanding occupation of the Middle Ages, it must be remembered that no war could be carried on without production, and no wealth could be looted unless there were people regularly engaged in producing it. What the mediaeval lord fought for at bottom was power over increased quantities of the labour dues exacted from the feudal labourer. The feudal barons, developed from village head men and military chiefs installed by conquerors, once constituted, began to war on each other to increase territory. Thus petty barons were gradually wiped out and powerful dukes and lords developed in their places. The wars of the feudal barons were conducted as much against each other as against foreign powers, with the object of increasing power and possessions, much as the capitalists of our days enter into cut-throat competition with each other for a similar object, although they are also a privileged class with an identical interest as against the rest of the population.

By the end of the 9th century the equipment of men-at-arms consisted of a long lance made of ashwood, a steel sword and a long shield made of wood covered with leather. He wore a tunic covered with iron rings. In the course of time the iron rings on this tunic were improved and increased, until, by the end of the 11th century, it was replaced by a coat of mail, entirely composed or iron links, which extended from chin to knee, and which was called a hauberk. The head was protected by a helmet of steel, and the nose by a piece of steel.

This equipment was so heavy and complicated that long practice was necessary before the wearer could make use of it in warfare. Also a servant, who went by the name of squire or equerry, was required to carry the shield and lace the helmet and hauberk.

By the end of the 11th century these knights formed a hereditary privileged class, into which none could enter unless born into it. None could be armed as a knight unless he was the son of a knight. The craftsman and tiller of the soil, who paid in service for military protection, felt the iron heel of his protector grinding him down more and more heavily as the centuries passed, until he found in gunpowder the final means to overthrow this overpowering mass of iron at a time when its usefulness was also passing away.

Owing to the development of the crossbow, the bolt from which could penetrate the coat of mail, the latter gave place to plate armour in the 14th century, which saw the highest development of personal defensive armour. The rider was encased from head to foot in solid steel, the only openings being at the joint of the limbs and in the visor that protected the face. As this armour was so complete only a small oblong shield was carried, which gave the knight more freedom to handle his lance. The horse was also afflicted with quantities of plate armour.

Thus accoutred the knight cruised like a modern battleship. The unfortunate tenants of these lords, a proportion of whom were forced to follow the knight into battle, had practically no protection and were armed with the most primitive weapons—often only pitchforks and the like. They acted as the scouts and attendants and suffered the worst miseries of the prevailing type of warfare. Sometimes when these tenants were moving ahead, trying to make contact with the enemy, the knightly chivalry would become impatient and charge through and over them to get at the foe. Likewise, when the knights, in defeat, decided to abandon the battle, they would turn about and ride their lowly followers down in their indifferent haste to get away.

The heavy armour presented many difficulties. It was impossible for the knightly cavalry to operate effectively in rough or hilly country. There was also the problem of breeding powerful enough horses to carry the enormous weight. For example, England could not provide sufficient of these horses and had to import them from Normandy.

The first weapons to pierce the best plate armour produced were wielded by foemen drawn from sections of society outside and below the privileged knightly circles—the pike-men of Switzerland and the longbow-men of England.

In the 14th century pike-men of Switzerland met and defeated at Morgarten a large body of knights under Leopold of Austria who were attempting to invade Switzerland. This began the ascendancy of infantry over cavalry once again, and the formation used was reminiscent of the Greek and Roman phalanx. In a few years the Swiss pike-men became supreme on the Continent as a fighting force.

The pike-men formed into a phalanx of enormous depth and depended for success upon the tremendous force of their impact upon the enemy. They used ashen pikes, eighteen feet long, with a head of steel that extended another foot, which was held with both hands wide apart at the level of the shoulder. Before the line of pike-men there extended the points of the first, second, third and fourth line of pikes, thus making a bristling hedge of points, almost impossible to penetrate. The Swiss pike-men were strong and hardy mountaineers, kept formation, and rushed swiftly upon their opponents, delivering an impact which the knightly cavalry were unable to resist. When the knights, in their turn, attempted to charge the steel hedge, the point penetrated their armour or knocked them off their horses. Once the knight was unhorsed he was in a hopeless position, owing to his unwieldy equipment. The Swiss also possessed a fearsome weapon in the halberd, which had a blade like a hatchet, that could cleave through any armour. When the halberd men got among the dismounted knights they hewed them to pieces.

Thus the Swiss, by shock tactics and a new weapon, brought the horsemen down.

The other offensive weapon was the missile fired from the longbow of the English archer. The weakness of the crossbow was due to the length of time it took to wind up the arbalest. The English archers, however, with a six-foot bow could fire several arrows at charging horsemen and bring numbers of them down before they could get within striking distance. These bows were so powerful that the arrows would pierce armour at a considerable distance.

At Crecy and Poitiers, in the middle of the 14th century, the English archers scored their first successes, when they were mainly responsible for the victory of the English army over the French.

Thus mediaeval chivalry started upon its decline. The hitherto impregnable fortress was now also to meet a weapon that rendered it obsolete as a form of defence, and again the means—gunpowder—was to be used by infantrymen.

In the tenth century the castle was not of great strength. It consisted of a wooden tower built on an elevation and surrounded by a ditch and a stockade. A sloping plank led up to the door, which was several feet above the ground. In the course of time this stronghold was considerably improved and stone replaced wood in the buildings. By the fourteenth century the castle had become a fortress of considerable strength and almost impossible to capture by the best siege instrument before the use of gunpowder. Sometimes they were built on precipices, like Dunluce Castle in the North of Ireland. In the centre was the huge tower, the abode of the lord; this was surrounded by an enclosure to house cattle, granaries, stables and the lodgings of the servants and men-at-arms. Then came the castellated wall of enormous thickness—twenty to thirty feet. Outside this, again, was an encircling moat, only crossed by a drawbridge, which, when raised, prevented access to the gates. Beyond this, again, there were further obstructions.

When an enemy approached these powerful defences he was met by missiles of various descriptions fired or hurled through the openings at the top of the walls. At one time a platform ran around the top of the walls, from which boiling water and burning faggots descended upon the heads of attackers who attempted to ram or undermine the walls, but that platform was superseded by strong towers built out from the walls at the corners. Through loopholes in these towers the defenders were able to fire upon anyone who succeeded in reaching the foot of the walls.

The siege weapons employed in the Middle Ages are thus described by Duncalf and Kreg, in “Parallel Source Problems of European History” :

“The ram was a large beam or log, which was suspended by ropes or chains from solid perpendicular beams. When drawn back it was allowed to swing against the walls. It was necessary to cover the men who worked the ram with some kind of protection, as the defenders dropped stones from the top of the walls. By the use of the ram the wall was shaken down or a hole was made through it.

There were various kinds of engines for hurling stones or shooting javelins. Ropes or cords were so twisted that when suddenly released they hurled a stone or other missile. Other machines were like large crossbows, and-shot javelins and stones. The petrarea was a machine which hurled stones as missiles. The tormentum was an engine operated by the use of twisted cords, by torsion.” (P. 111.)

“Mantlets were used to shelter the men who were attacking. They were usually made of wickerwork or basketwork of twigs and rods so as to be light enough to carry easily. They were generally covered with hides as a protection from the firebrands hurled down from the walls. Such shields could be held over the men who were working close to the wall, or could be used by men when making an assault. These mantlets seem to have been of great service to the crusaders at Jerusalem.” (P. 125.)

The siege machines were also mounted in wooden towers covered with hides, that were built to a height level with the walls. These towers were pushed up to the walls so that the attackers could pass on to the walls and enter the castle or city.

The privileged classes of antiquity were cultured, but the chief characteristics of the flower of mediaeval chivalry appear to have been armour, arrogance, ignorance and the pursuit of plunder. When the rough, uncultured knights of Europe set out on the first crusade at the end of the eleventh century the taking of the holy sepulchre out of the hands of the infidel was only a pretext behind which their real plundering aims were hidden. The ambitions and mercenary jealousies of the leaders made it doubtful whether the crusaders would ever reach Jerusalem. As they saw the wealth and splendour of the East they were so delighted and astonished that they wanted to settle on the rich territory they had invaded and forget the religious enthusiasm that they professed. It was only the pressure from the ranks that forced the leaders on.

Gilmac.

(To be continued)

Notes of the Month: Two Blind Mice (1941)

From the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two Blind Mice

In a controversy about Russia, published in the Picture Post, father and son come to verbal blows in the persons of Professor Gilbert Murray and Mr. Stephen Murray (Councillor). We missed the professor’s contribution, but it is obvious from Mr. Stephen Murray’s reply that both were merely wrestling with words, not arguing about facts.

Thus, Mr. Murray, Junr., talks airily about the “land of Socialism,” a “state which has no exploiting class,” etc., etc.

Here are a few questions which these two protagonists would do well to ponder:

“Do the majority of Russians work for wages barely sufficient for subsistence?”

“Is there a small group of persons in Russia leading a comfortable and privileged life without the need of slaving in mines, factories, or on the land?”

“Are goods for sale at a price, and do industrial and agricultural undertakings issue a balance sheet to show whether they are being worked at a profit or loss?”

“Is there a police force, army, air force, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of repression for use at home and abroad ?”

If the answer to all these questions is “Yes,” then, gentlemen, you are looking at capitalism.

* * * * *

Hitler’s New Order. 

Some good points and interesting information are provided by Mr. Edward Hulton in the Picture Post (December 21st, 1940).

Nazism, which claims to be able to operate capitalism so much more efficiently and less wastefully than its older and more easy-going brothers, is, in fact, a maze of bureaucracies. Thus, in Dr. Funk’s Ministry of Economics alone, “1,200 propagandists are daily toiling,” whilst in the city of Prague “700 price controllers have just assumed office.”

When Hitler took power in 1933 he told the Germans: “Give me four years of power and then you can judge me on the results.”

Germans, so far from being in a position to do any judging, to-day are too busy enduring “trials.”

Their “voluntary contributions” for the new “people’s car” have brought them tanks instead, and the already low working-class standards are further threatened by the Deutscher Volkswirt, on October 4th, which says:

“In order to combat the flight from the land, the town population will have to decide to lower its standard of living.”

Under capitalism, the biggest part of the population will always be discontented, and this cannot be remedied by Hitler’s spate of words nor the showy effects of the Nazi military circus.

* * * * *

Who Calls The Tune? 

Unless we are very much mistaken, trouble is brewing for many trade union officials. These people, who live a not too uncomfortable life on the salaries paid to them out of working-class pockets, do not all appreciate that they are supposed to look after the working-class side in the argument about wages and working conditions. This is, in fact, what they are paid for, but many workers even seem to have forgotten it as well.

The following incident will give the point to this paragraph : —

A certain firm has not been paying the war bonus, as stipulated in the collective agreement between the employers and unions. The union official arrives at the factory, which is making great-coats for the Army, but fails to make contact with the employer. He then calls a meeting of the workers, and, instead of sympathising with the cheated workpeople, accuses them of deliberately slowing up work for revenge for the non-payment of the bonus.

And this, mind you, within the hearing of the manager!

The writer of these notes might have been moved when this union official turned from threats to pleading for more coats for soldiers who were shivering in the cold, were it not for an article in this union’s magazine describing how factories and workers were idle in this same trade for lack of orders.

* * * * *

Unequal Sacrifice

The propaganda, both here and elsewhere, designed to make workers believe that class differences matter little in war-time, that “we are all making sacrifices for the common cause,” is having an uphill fight against facts, and events that tear the argument to shreds. It is no exaggeration to state that the war, with all is black-out, is illuminating class-antagonisms more than ever. Standards of living, protection against air raids, evacuation—can anyone assert that these questions affect all members of the community alike? In the last instance, all these problems, like almost every major problem of our time, can be correctly appraised only with the gauge of class-consciousness.

As the war proceeds on its path of slaughter, these truths will become more and more apparent to the working-class the world over. What the result will be we cannot tell. At present a feature of working-class agitation for higher wages, better air-raid shelters, etc., is the pronounced part which Communists are taking in these movements.

For several reasons this is bad business from the workers’ point of view. In the first place, Communist subservience to the rulers of Russia will make it much easier for the demands to be refused.

For the same reasons, workers must be warned that, should the policy of the Kremlin change and they decide for a rapprochement with the British Government, Communists here and elsewhere will not hesitate to drop their present role as “guardians” of working-class interests, as they did in pre-war France.

Socialists are not merely concerned to further working-class interests, whatever their character, in war or peace, but above everything, to stimulate workers into thinking, learning and working for the ending of capitalism. Compared to this task all else is secondary.

* * * * *

“A Great Man”

“That he is a great man I do not deny, but that, after 18 years of unbridled power, he has led your country to the horrid verge of ruin, can be denied by none.” (Daily Herald, 24th December, 1940).

Mr. Winston Churchill, on Mussolini, in the recent B.B.C. broadcast to the Italians.

What a peculiar idea of “greatness,” Mr. Churchill, and indeed, the whole of his class must have ! To keep working-people chained to their miserable lives, to deny them the opportunity of thinking and speaking for themselves, and then to drive them to kill and be killed ! If these tasks can only be performed by “great” men, then the sooner the world is run by the “little” men the better it will be for the welfare of humanity.

The really useful things in this world are done by the working-class. The provision of food and clothes, the work of cleaning and healing, and the thousand-and-one different services without which life would be impossible, are simply taken as a matter of course by our ruling gentry. But creatures of bombast, of abnormal ego and the gift of the gab, whom circumstances, plus the intrigue of propertied interests, and a backward population elevate to positions of power, are admired and feted, even in the midst of the slaughter they helped to bring about.

* * * * *

Press-Gangs For Democracy ! 

As to Mussolini’s personal qualities, an illuminating story is told by Mr. Beverley Baxter, M.P., in the South Wales Echo, (December 17th, 1940).

Mr. Baxter was dealing with Mussolini’s early history, when, after activities in the pacifist and labour movements of Italy, he turned into a recruiting agent for the Allied cause. This is what Mr. Baxter says: —

“When the disaster of Caporetto overcame the Italians, Mussolini had been invalided out of the Army and was running a violent newspaper of his own in Milan. In addition to that, he was feeling his way politically, and had organised gangs in the city who had their own methods of persuasion.

“The Italian army was in almost complete disruption, and thousands of deserters streamed back to the towns. The British General Staff were in a desperate predicament. Somehow, the Italians must be made to go back and fight.

“I shall now reveal what has never been published before. A certain English officer of high rank, acting with a shrewdness that is wholly commendable, saw Signor Mussolini. When the talk was ended the Englishman owned the newspaper and Mussolini had agreed to do everything with his pen, and his gangs to get the deserters back into the war.

“How much did it cost?—I forget …”

* * * * *

The Vision of the Press

Problems arising out of air raids have revealed the capitalist class at their most inhuman. Their Press, also, has shown a callous disregard for the intelligence and feelings of their working-class readers.

Here are two particularly glaring examples of this : —

When the night raids first began in a comparatively mild form, and people stayed up all night as a consequence, the News Chronicle came out with a number of articles “proving” by “experts” that sleep was not essential, or that people could get sleep standing up in buses and trains on their way to work. To make their readers feel really happy about the lack of sleep, they enumerated all the famous people, like Napoleon and Julius Caesar, who, it was claimed, never slept more than an hour or two.

The inference being, perhaps, that with similar lack of sleep, you, too, could become like these historic personages.

A similar gratuitous insult was proffered to its readers by the Daily Express.

To divert people’s attention from the lack of 100 per cent. protection against air raids (and, of course, war itself), this paper was running a campaign to “turn the young men out of the tubes.”

Fortunately, this incitement to the working-class to turn in on itself and eject working-class males between the ages of fifteen and fifty on to the bombed streets failed miserably.

Socialists recognise that the capitalist Press have their own axe to grind, the point is, that it usually descends on workers’ heads.

Sid Rubin

Greatness and Crime (1941)

From the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

A significant passage in Mr. Churchill’s Italian message has been uniformly ignored. Denouncing Mussolini as a “criminal,” he nevertheless conceded that he “is a great man.” A more illuminating exhibition of the outlook of public men could hardly have been recorded in so few words.

Look through Carlyle’s gallery of “heroes”—Mahomet, Frederick “the Great,” and, in a minor order of “greatness,” Governor Eyre, of Jamaica: “Women were stripped and scourged with all the delight which a savage village population might have felt in torturing witches. . . .” (“History of Our Own Times,” by Justin McCarthy. Vol. 3, p. 273.)

Holland Rose, preceptor of ‘Varsity youth and Newnham beauty, wrote a “Life of Napoleon.” On page 204 (single volume edition) we read : “Considered from the military point of view, the massacre at Jaffa is perhaps defensible.” Murderer (of D’Enghien), petty cheat, repulsive amorist, all are duly recorded by Holland Rose; but the “true man” (read “great man” in light of general tone of the Life) is revealed when his hero points to the stars, and stuns his doubting servants with the priceless irrelevance (“Who Made All That?” (p. 186).

One of the most amazingly brazen associations of greatness and crime is made by Mary Bell (“A Short History of the Papacy”). The reference is to the Borgian Pope, Alexander VI, who probably vies with an earlier John XXII, in the commission of gaudy and unnameable crimes. “If we exonerate him from the deepest guilt, he must also forfeit the admiration which we cannot withhold from daring criminality” (p. 297). Mary’s hero falls a wee bit short, however. “His Vatican orgies lacked the inspired touch of splendid sin.”

From Mary to George Lansbury. “I think history will record Herr Hitler as one of the great men of our time” (“My Quest for Peace”), quoted by Daily Herald, April 26th, 1938. But then Lansbury was among the “Labour” crowd who stated that they derived their caricature of “Socialism” from the Bible.

One of the more open and visible signs of the capitalist system is gangsterdom, and its “great men” within the prescribed limits of criminality the system legalises cannot escape the fundamental Al Capone mark. A system based upon varying degrees of exploitation of men, women, and children breeds its own system of values. True, there have always been poets and dreamers, Isaiahs and Shelleys, who have genuinely, passionately urged an ethic transcending the system, beating ineffectual angelic wings in an unresponsive void.

Socialism alone can create an entirely new outlook. Complete social freedom alone can create an unaffacted, indissoluble brotherhood. Shelley’s noble aspiration, expressed in “I wish no living thing to suffer pain,” will be implemented, as far as the cessation of “Man’s inhumanity to man” is concerned.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, despised and neglected to-day, knows that its message is even now helping to speed the day. It has no use for great men, it has no “leaders,” its simple philosophy, based upon the impregnable facts of history and its economic causation, looks to the day when genial kindliness will govern social relations.

Peter Gog.

Straws: “And now to tighten our belts again . . . ” (1941)

The Straws Column from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

“And now to tighten our belts again,” and don’t forget “Oatmeal will be cheaper.” (Evening Standard, December 26th, 1940.)

* * * *

That’s the stuff to give ’em. Who said “Skilly”? Silence in the ranks. Order of the day. “Gala Dinner, 21s. Book your tables now. Air Raid Lunch, 8s. 6d.” (Same paper, same day’s advertisement.) Tight belts and tighter bellies.

* * * *

The New Statesman (January 1st, 1941) is moved to remark: “Think of the passages in the King’s Christmas speech about common perils and common sufferings willingly shared; ask whether these sentiments correspond to what is going on around us.”

* * * *

“The mistake we made in 1919 was that we thought we could abolish war altogether—an impracticable ideal, because, as one writer has said: ‘To put an end to conflict is impossible; life is a conflict.’ Had we possessed the wisdom of the mediaeval church, instead, we should have set out to limit it; then this was done by the Truce of God, which definitely restricted its duration and horrors.”

* * * *

The foregoing is from an article in the Evening Standard of January 4th, by Major-General J. C. Fuller. Our largest circulation evening paper must rate its average reader’s mental alertness pretty low, its knowledge of history lower. Consider, for a moment, the statement approved by the gallant Major: “To put an end to conflict is impossible; life is a conflict.” Two major errors here; first, “life” is not by any means all “conflict,” and even if it were, the factors conditioning “conflict” do not remain static. They move on.

* * * *

We hope that the virtual substitution of “war” for “conflict” is a mental, not a moral slip of the Major’s. However that may be, the author of the not uninteresting “The Generalship of Ulysses Grant” really should consult some moderately good mediaeval history. The talk about the beneficent influence of the “Truce of God” is sheer guff. The “Treuga Dei” was as big a washout as Locarno, in spite of Papal sponsoring.

* * * *

The Major refers to Henry the Fifth’s “Articles of War” as “evidence that mankind still believed in the sanctity of human life.” Elementary primers will inform the Major that the Battle of Agincourt was marked by a brutal massacre of French prisoners. As Shakespeare’s Gower remarked: “The King most worthily hath caused every soldier to cut his prisoner’s throat. O, ’tis a gallant King.”

* * * *

Ernest Bevin is freely tipped, in Labour circles as a future Prime Minister. Wary, lacking the “side,” and never indulging in the pompous claptrap of “Go To It,” he will probably easily outstrip his possible Labour rival.

* * * *

Notwithstanding, Bevin slipped up on May 13th, this year; he should study some recent modern history; some of the members of the Union he so completely bossed do so. “I will try to follow the work of George Barnes.” Even Reynold’s (March 3rd, 1916), was fain to protest when, in the last war, the Minister for Pensions set his face against pensioning men who, by reason of inadequate medical examination by overworked medicos, promptly collapsed under Army conditions. His words are worth recalling again: “They will not get it while I am in office.”

* * * *

Mr. Latham (Labour Leader of the London County Council) has refused to back the nursing staff of the Council in a request to bring up wages to arbitration level. “It would create an injustice to other Council employees.” This statement seems to be an attempted exploitation of an only too prevalent state of mind among most wage-workers; schoolkeeper grumbles at the meagre dole, calculated to the tenth of a penny by “Accounting-Officer” ; Head Teacher, who belongs to an association sternly determined to keep a respectable difference ‘between minimum “Head’s” ladleful and maximum “Assistant’s” ditto. All of which is very helpful to the Bumble Lathams and their kind.

Jack Straw.

Blogger's Note:

There was a Straws Column in the Socialist Standard in the mid-1930s, which was penned by Augustus Snellgrove. The writing style of this column suggests that 'Jack Straw' is a pen name for Augustus Snellgrove. Read some of his other articles already on the blog and you will see what I mean.

Appeal for the "Socialist Standard" (1941)

Party News from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Readers will be aware that during recent months we have been losing heavily on The Socialist Standard. Sales have fallen owing to the difficulties of holding meetings and of distribution. On the other side, costs have risen. One method of reducing the loss is to cut down the number of pages. This will have to be done unless other methods are found. We therefore ask all those who can afford to do so to send donations to enable us to keep the “ S.S.” at its present size. The need is urgent. Send donations to the Treasurer, 42, Great Dover Street, S.E.1. Postal Orders and cheques should be crossed.

This Month's Quotation: Wilhelm Liebknecht (1941)

The Front Page quote from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “Every power outside ourselves on which we seek to lean is for us only weakness ”

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Our Difficulty is Your Opportunity (1941)

Party News from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

This appeal is addressed to all members and sympathisers. The Socialist Party is experiencing grave difficulties in the distribution of the Socialist Standard.

Does this mean anything to you? You may have come in contact with our paper or organisation quite recently, or you may be a supporter of some years’ standing—one of the “old brigade"; whichever category you come under we ask you to give your immediate and serious attention to this appeal.

The present position is not due to any fault of the organisation, but to the severe conditions now prevailing, particularly in London. These conditions have so hampered us in the task of distributing recent issues of the “S.S.” that sales have decreased. Not alarmingly, but sufficiently enough to cause us to call upon our readers everywhere to give a helping hand.

Elsewhere in this issue, reference is made to the remarkable achievements of the organisation under circumstances which, though very difficult, are not comparable with the present ones. No attempt is being made here to pander to anyone in a begging fashion, no demands are being made, no excuse is being made; it is just a part of the struggle, and we would be failing in our duty if we took cover and waited until the trouble passed by.

Now, comrades and friends, as many of the usual avenues through which the “S.S.” reached its readers have been closed as a consequence of events beyond our control, fresh ones must be established immediately. This is where you come in! You are asked by us to become agents and sellers of the “S.S.” We suggest that you order bundles of three, six, twelve, or more if you like, Socialist Standards each month.

How many times in the past have some of you missed the chance of handing to a friend a copy of this journal which, you know, would have made him keener to learn more about Socialism ?

Just think, is there one amongst you who couldn’t sell or give away to an enquiring member of your class a copy of the “S.S.”? Why! Most of you, if you tried but little, could sell six to twelve copies a month. (The writer knows of individuals who sell upwards of 100 “S.S.” per month.)

Therefore you are asked to take a job: there ' is no pay for it—except the satisfaction that you have increased your work for the Party and Socialism.

Political parties must be judged by their record—our record is contained in the “S.S.” first published in September, 1904, and in each successive issue right up to the one you are reading now. No other political party in this country has handled the case for Socialism in line with Marxism, that job was, and is, the job of the S.P.G.B. Whether or not this job is to be tackled with increasing vigour really depends on YOU—because the Party is as strong, and no stronger, than the efforts of our members and friends make it.

Apply yourself, therefore, with enthusiasm to the task you are asked to undertake: the Party and its journal must, and will, emerge from this war stronger than ever to carry on the struggle for Socialism. 

In a future issue a report of the response to this appeal will be published, and we hope that it will make all concerned happy in the knowledge that in these difficult times the influence of the “S.S.” is not only maintained, but growing from strength to strength.

Send your orders to:

S.P.G.B.,

42, Gt. Dover Street, London, S.E.1,

to whom all cheques, money orders, and postal orders should be made payable. Money with orders from sellers will be appreciated.

We express our thanks once again to those, who, in the past, have helped the Party, and we feel confident that every friend of the Party is going to see to it that we win this, the most critical battle in our history.

“Let battle commence!”

Angus McPhail

The Post-War Mirage (1941)

From the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Turning aside from the horrors of the present, people are thinking about the world that is to be when the war is over; or, more accurately, a few people are telling the others what kind of world is being prepared for them. Socialists welcome this interest, but are alive to its dangers. It is so easy for those workers who are not experienced in political and economic questions to be taken in by proposals that are useless or worse than useless, and what is at once obvious to the Socialist in all these proposals is that none of them are even fresh—all have been tried before and found wanting.

The inquirer may, however, reply to this criticism by pointing out that many of the public men who support these various schemes claim to be Socialists. This claim need not detain us for more than a moment. Don’t stop to study what the salesman says about himself; look rather at the article he is trying to sell. Is it the genuine thing or is it a cheap and nasty substitute? And just give a thought to the question, whether you have been caught once before by buying the same spurious product from this man or another.

Is it true that capitalism, with its private ownership of the means of life, its rent, interest and profit, its buying and selling, and its system of wage-labour has been abundantly proved to be a wasteful, callous, and out-of-date form of social organisation? Is it not true that only Socialism can meet the needs of our age and abolish once and for all poverty and war and the other products of capitalism? If this is true, and it is, then anything other than Socialism is not what is needed. There is no half-way house. If the world does not go over to socialism it will remain under capitalism.

The Politicians Who Run Away

Judged by this test, all of the social reform proposals, pledges and promises filling the speeches of Liberal, Labour and Conservative leaders, bold as they are claimed to be, may be only ways of evading the plain issue1: “Shall socialism be introduced or shall capitalism remain in being?” The position of the Conservative who says that capitalism is on the whole satisfactory, and is certainly necessary, but that legislation about unemployment, housing, old-age pensions, etc., must be made more comprehensive, is understandable. We know that he is wrong, but we have the satisfaction of knowing as well exactly where he stands. The same cannot be said of those who profess to agree that socialism alone will solve the problem, but who go on to rely upon everything except socialism.

In this group is the Labour Party. “Socialism comes to the City,” says the retiring City Editor of the Daily Herald (December 31st, 1940), but when we read his article it is only to find that what came to the City was “Government control of foreign exchanges, of the new investment market, and of almost all the commodity markets.” Very interesting to those who are concerned with the financial apparatus of capitalism but nothing whatever to do with socialism.

“We are never going to move back to pre-war 1939,” says Mr. Attlee (Daily Herald, January 16th, 1941). “We have got to move forward into a new world.” “Never again must we have unemployment and poverty in the distressed areas.” 

Again very interesting, but those who know that socialism alone can solve these problems are entitled to ask Mr. Attlee to state plainly whether his new world is to be socialism or not. After all, Mr. Attlee claimed in his speech to be speaking for “the British Socialist movement.” The answer he gave was not a very plain one, but its meaning cannot be mistaken. The Daily Telegraph, in its report of the same speech, contains a passage omitted from the report in the Daily Herald: —

    Mr. Attlee, Lord Privy Seal and leader of the Socialist party, speaking at a luncheon of the Labour Book Service and the Fabian Society in London yesterday, said: “We are never going back to pre-1939. We have got to move forward into a new world.”
    He and his colleagues were working with people who disagreed with their Socialist ideas, and “we disagree with many of their ideas.” They had to work together. National unity was not attained by one lot of people putting all their ideas aside and accepting somebody else’s. (Daily Telegraph, January 16th, 1941.)

It is as certain as the rising of the sun that after Mr. Attlee has come to an agreement with people who disagree with socialism, the product of their joint labours will not be socialism.

Look, too, at Mr. Bevin’s declaration that social security and not profit should be the motive of our national life. Some Conservative newspapers attacked Mr. Bevin for his speech, and the Daily Herald, official organ of the Labour Party, came to his defence. The Herald did not show any of the boldness it is always urging upon other people, but hastily repudiated all idea that Mr. Bevin was proposing to abolish the capitalist system of society. Here is an extract from the Herald's editorial (November 25th, 1940):—

     . . . Mr. Bevin is sharply rebuked by a Tory newspaper. He is told, in a patronising tone, that profit must go on playing a part in our lives and that social security is already one of the great objectives of political effort.
     But in that case why quarrel with Mr. Bevin, who admitted that all profit could not be abolished?

Now, why cannot the timid leader-writer of the Daily Herald show some courage and sense of responsibility and say outright that he does not believe that the introduction of socialism is practical politics? Why cannot he quit shuffling and say in a way his readers will understand that the Labour Party believes the only possible new world after the war is a world based on capitalism, shorn of some larger degree of its worst evils?

We, as Socialists, are all for honesty and clarity in politics, and would be interested to hear from the Daily Herald why the profit-making system must be retained, how it is to be curbed, and what results are expected to flow from curbing it. Nazi Germany claims to have restricted capitalist profit to 6 per cent., and Fascist Italy to 7 per cent., while Bolshevik Russia has suppressed profit, while retaining the wages system (with vast inequality of incomes), and a growing burden of bondholding and interest payments to bondholders. Socialists are not at all impressed with any of the three forms of State capitalism or State-controlled capitalism.

Tho Soldier Who is Not Afraid

While the so-called “Socialists” in the Labour Party are busy repudiating any belief in the practicability of socialism, a touch of boldness sneaks into the columns of the Daily Herald from another quarter in an article by Captain Liddell Hart, described as “the world-famous writer on military affairs."

At the end of an article on winning the war, he writes: — 

       . . . Our new order should combine a guarantee of economic security, based on the free provision to everyone of the material necessities of life, with the largest possible measure of individual freedom outside the economic sphere. (Daily Herald, January 7th, 1941.)

Captain Liddell Hart may or may not have considered what would be the consequences of his proposal. It would at one stroke end the profit system. It could only be carried out by instituting socialism, the system of society based on common ownership, advocated for 36 years by the S.P.G.B.

Apart from a letter written to the Daily Herald by Mr. F. Montague, M.P. (January 11th, 1941), the implication of Captain Liddell Hart’s proposal appears to have passed unnoticed by the Labour Party and its organ, the Daily Herald. (It would have been appropriate if Mr. Montague, when he claimed that he had advocated this "for years, without much support,” had added that the S.P.G.B. had consistently preached socialism throughout its existence.)

So much for the bold planners and reformers and builders of new worlds. The new world will be socialism, or it will be remarkably like the old one in all essentials.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: The Suppression of the 'Daily Worker' (1941)

Editorial from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was announced in the Press on January 2nd, 1941, that the Home Secretary, Mr. Morrison, had suppressed the Daily Worker and a journal known as The Week, because of their "systematic publication of matter calculated to foment opposition to the prosecution of the war to a successful issue." This action was taken under Regulation 2D of the Defence (General) Regulations. The Times (January 22nd) gives the following further details : ―

  "The effect of the Orders (the announcement continues) is that if any person prints, publishes, or distributes, or is in any way concerned in printing, publishing, or distributing either of these papers, he will be committing an offence.   The regulation provides that an Order under it, specifying a newspaper by name, shall have effect not only with respect to any newspaper published under that name, but with respect to any newspaper published under any other name if the publication thereof is in any respect a continuation of, or in substitution for, the publication of the newspaper named in the Order.   Orders have also been made under Defence Regulation 94B by the Home Secretary directing that the printing presses and other apparatus shall not be used until the leave of the High Court has been obtained, and authorising the police to take such steps, such as the taking possession of the plant or premises as may appear necessary for securing compliance with the Orders."

Most of the daily papers had editorials giving approval to the suppression, even if, in some instances, with a certain uneasiness. Hardly anywhere in the Press did the Daily Worker find a friend. Even the Manchester Guardian, which might have been expected to take an independent line, did not do so. Its reason is interesting. The Guardian (January 22nd, 1941) held that the Daily Worker's activities "might be excusable if the motives were honest, if it were really desired to help the country in its struggle to keep democracy alive in Europe. But the Daily Worker did not believe in the war or in democracy; its only aim was to confuse and weaken, We can well spare it."

This is a curious justification for suppression. Are the Communists dishonest? If by dishonesty is meant that they sought to gain members, influence, and power by exploiting every conceivable grievance, small or great, while not worrying whether the supporters thus recruited understood and accepted the more distant and fundamental aims of the Communist Party, then indeed the Communists are dishonest; but is not some degree of such dishonesty an old English custom among all political parties except the S.P.G.B.? And is it not obvious that the only way of limiting the influence that can be gained by such a group is to keep them right in the open where the very reticent Communist leaders and speakers can be constantly called upon to explain their motives and inspiration, their somersaulting policies, their associations, their tortuous methods and semi-secret organisation? Even from the declared standpoint of the Manchester Guardian one might have supposed that there is much to be said for the view of the "Londoner" in the Evening Standard, who says: "The Daily Worker does less damage when printed than when suppressed " (January 22nd, 1941).

The S.P.G.B. has its own, quite different, point of view. True to our basic principle we do not support suppression of opinion, however false we believe that opinion to be.

We have always thought and always said that the activities of the Communist Party have been a continual menace to the Socialist movement and the interest of the workers, not least the calculated dishonesty of their manoeuvres. It was not for nothing that Lenin urged Communists to resort to "strategy and adroitness, illegal proceedings, reticence and subterfuge, to anything in order to penetrate into trade unions, remain in them and carry out Communist work within them at any cost." The Communists have applied these unprincipled tactics in every field of their activities and propaganda. Among their schemings may be mentioned their support for the present war in the early weeks and their alternate support for and opposition to the Labour Party and its leaders. Since 1920, when the Communist Party was formed, it can truly be said that they have on some occasion or other urged the workers to support and then to oppose every prominent Labour leader, from MacDonald and Thomas to Morrison and Bevin. More recently (Daily Worker, March 30th, 1939) they were appealing by personal letter to Churchill, Sinclair and Attlee to get together to overthrow the Chamberlain Government and form a Government of their own in order "to save the country in the rapidly deepening crisis." It may well be said that they got the war they wanted (and then soon ceased to want it when Russia decided to be friends with Hitler) and got the Government they asked for and now it has got them.

So tortuous are the ways of the Communists that it is by no means impossible (the contents of the Daily Worker in recent weeks rather suggest this) that for some obscure reason they now no longer wanted the immunity from prosecution they sought last year by setting up a board of "influential persons" to run the Daily Worker but wanted to be suppressed.

All the same the S.P.G.B. is opposed to suppression of opinion. In our view the way to counter any kind of propaganda, and in the long the only way, is to meet it in the open in unfettered discussion. We are entitled to add that we practise what we preach and have always thrown open our platform to our opponents.

A further point to be noticed is that the Communist Party, while giving lip service to democracy in this country ― at least since they discovered that their early propaganda for dictatorship was not popular ― has never on any single occasion criticised and denounced the rigorous suppression of all independent parties and journals by the Bolsheviks in Russia. It is one of the unfortunate consequences of the suppression of the Daily Worker that the Communists, who are enemies of democratic methods, will be able to pose as martyrs in the struggle for democracy. Fundamentally an anti-Socialist organisation, they will be able falsely to represent themselves in the eyes of many workers as victims in the fight for in Socialism.

Marxism and Democracy (1941)

Book Review from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

A useful addition to Socialist Literature

Lucien Laurat’s Marxism and Democracy (Gollancz, 1940, 7s. 6d.) was first published, in French, early in 1939 under the title "Marxism in Bankruptcy" (Marxisme en Faillite). It is a useful addition to Socialist literature and cannot fail to be of help to students of Marxism. While the author has decided views on the many controversies he deals with, he states a reasoned case and almost always gives the source of his many pointed quotations from the writings of Marx, Engels and others. He is not a doctrinaire, to whom Marx's writings are a text to be studied word by word and followed as a kind of Bible. As he says: "A Marxist cannot be orthodox unless he continually questions even the truths he has already acquired, including the words of Marx himself " (p. 48). But having considered the theories of the Bolsheviks, as well as the criticisms levelled at Marx from various hostile quarters, he shows once more how well the mature ideas of Marx and Engels accord with the developments and experiences of the years since their death.

The book will be of special interest to those who have read THE SOCIALIST STANDARD for a number of years. While on a few (but important) points his views differ from those of the S.P.G.B., it is remarkable to find him meeting one after another of the many misrepresentations of Marx with precisely the same arguments as those worked out in the ranks of the S.P.G.B. during its 36 years. Stating that one of his aims "is to disentangle the real ideas of Marx and Engels from the incredible confusion caused by their commentators," he summarises his conclusions as follows:—

"Firstly, that the ideas of Marx and Engels changed and developed as they learned from historical experience; secondly, that it is false to present them as apostles of violent methods at all costs; and thirdly, that whoever ascribes ideas of non-violence à la Gandhi to them would be equally wrong. In the light of the experience gained in the course of their lives as militant Socialists they decided that under a democratic regime the workers would be able to achieve their aims by peaceful means, providing that Capitalism did not itself destroy that democratic legality without which there could be no question of the successful adoption of peaceful means." (p.37)

Among the points he deals with on precisely the same lines as the S.P.G.B. are the Bolshevik claim that Marx and Engels advocated dictatorship on the Russian model (pp.38-43)—in passing he raps the knuckles of Mr. G. D. H. Cole for the same error; the Bolshevik claim that Marx favoured the smashing of the machinery of the capitalist state (p.44); the notion that Marx and Engels preached nationalisation (p. 45); and the claim that Bolshevik organisation and tactics were Marxian. Laurat shows, as did the S.P.G.B., that "the Bolshevist organisational theory . . . although labelled Marxist, in reality represents a lapse into Blanquism, and has its roots in the backward state of Russia in general and of the Russian working classes in particular " (p.122)

He points out interestingly how the Great War, 1914-1918, had as one of its consequences that it stirred into activity and drove into some of the workers' organisations great masses of workers whose political experience and understanding were not superior to the experience and understanding of workers who had been in such organisations before 1914, but greatly inferior. "Unacquainted with the ideas and methods of Socialism, except for a few ill-digested slogans," these inexperienced raw recruits were the material on which the Communists, with their theory of an intelligent minority leading the unenlightened masses, were able to work successfully. The backwardness inside Russia and the backwardness of these workers outside Russia combined to produce results which have been deplorable for the working class and Socialism.

One of the questions on which Laurat holds a different view from that of the S.P.G.B. is that of Socialists collaborating with capitalist parties. His argument is that in the period of ferment after the last war "the strength of the Socialist parties had very considerably increased. Socialism judged, with very good reason . . . that it was now strong enough to exercise a considerable, if not decisive influence on the Government. However, it was nowhere strong enough to take power alone " (p.152)

There were three alternatives: (1) To share power with bourgeois parties whilst waiting until they had won over a majority of the electorate ; (2) to entrench themselves in intransigent opposition and decline the responsibilities of power until the situation was ripe; and (3) to try to seize power by force.

The last solution was the Bolshevik solution. It failed to produce Socialism and necessarily failed to do so:—

"Even in power alone, ruling by terror, and no longer hampered by the resistance of their bourgeois colleagues, the Socialist ministers, or commissars of the people, would still find themselves face to face with hard economic reality, peremptorily forbidding the immediate establishment of Socialism." (p.153)

The second solution he likewise rejects, because "when a Socialist party has between 40 and 45 per cent, of the seats in Parliament it is impossible for it to abstain from participation except at the price of feebly handing over power to a bourgeois coalition in which the extreme Right would have every chance of seizing the principal levers of government and weakening democracy " (pp.153-4)

“Nothing remains in practice but the first solution: Socialist participation in the Government, in spite of all the risks attached to it " (p.154)

Laurat here fails to face up to the fact that his first "solution'' led to the discrediting of the parties that adopted it and in doing so it helped to weaken parliamentary democracy and to turn the workers to Fascist or Communist doctrines of dictatorship. The weakness of his argument should have been obvious to him. He concedes (p.153) that refusing the responsibility of office (which means in all these instances refusing the responsibility of administering capitalism) is conceivable "in countries where the parliamentary representation of Socialism was still relatively feeble." He also concedes (p.152) that much of the support on which the "Socialist" parties relied was that of "immature" masses who had declared for "Socialism" "often by instinct rather than by knowledge and reflection." All of which boils down to the simple fact that the "Socialist" parties (by which he means such parties as the Labour Party) had made the fundamental error of building up their membership and fighting elections on a programme which attracted instead of repelling the "immature masses" who did not understand Socialism. In other words, the parties with 40 to 45 per cent. representation in Parliament had it under false pretences.

It is surprising that Laurat is blind to this, because elsewhere he stresses the importance of real Socialist understanding. As he puts it on page 119, these workers are "in need above all things of a strong dose of Socialist education."

Readers of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD will appreciate Laurat's final plea that the working class "must reject the ' leader ' cult more and more categorically. Unfortunately, far too many workers are still addicted to this cult, though it reeks of both Fascism and Bolshevism, and has nothing whatever to do with Marxism (pp.253-4)

As there are other important points in the book it is hoped to return to them in a further article.

It is a pity that the book costs 7s. 6d., and has no index. The translator, Mr. Edward Fitzgerald, is to be congratulated on his work.

Edgar Hardcastle