Labour Foreign Minister Bevin and his predecessors (1946)

From the February 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who take on the responsibility of running the capitalist system have not much choice in the way they do it; their policies are largely determined by the system itself. In theory the Labour Party profess to recognise this. In their “Programme of Action ” published in 1934 under the title “For Socialism and Peace,” they declared that “the choice before the nation is either a vain attempt to patch up the superstructure of a capitalist society in decay at its very foundations, or a rapid advance to a Socialist reconstruction of the national life. There is no halfway house . . .” They recognised, too, that anarchy in the relationship of nations is as much the result of capitalism as is economic anarchy—“both spring from the fundamental and incurable anarchy of capitalism.” Their Programme made the following claim:—

   “Because it is a Socialist Party, the Labour Party believes in the brotherhood of man. The advance of science has bound the peoples of the world together by a thousand ties. It has also produced instruments of destruction so potent that the institution of war has become incompatible with the survival of civilisation: The Labour Party regards war as senseless and wicked, a blasphemy against the human spirit. It detests natural and racial as much as class barriers.”

Now that the Labour Party is in power its promise to introduce Socialism at home and to pursue the “brotherhood of man” abroad is being put to the test. Instead of attempting to introduce Socialism (for which it did not receive or even seek a mandate at the election) it is extending state capitalism by nationalising various industries while retaining all of the basic features of capitalism—the wages-system, production for profit and the exploitation of the workers for the benefit of the owning class. The only difference is that some of the owners are in future to hold Government Stock instead of company shares and are to have no hand in management of the undertakings.

Being thus confined within the limits set by capitalism their foreign policy is likewise pre-determined in all its broad lines. With the “brotherhood of man” on their lips they are engaged, like all their Liberal and Tory predecessors, in a high-powered drive to capture foreign markets for British exports. On taking office as Foreign Minister, Mr. Bevin was reported to have said: “British foreign policy will not be altered in any way under the Labour Government” (“Evening News,” 26th July, 1945). This continuity means carrying on the centuries-old policy of controlling trade routes, holding down colonies and protecting foreign investments. All the other Powers, no matter what the political complexion of their government, are engaged in the same cut-throat struggle. Some Labour Party supporters—willing enough to accept the continuity of capitalism at home—are naive enough to imagine that there can be a change of policy abroad. They are becoming suspicious of Mr. Bevin as Foreign Minister. Mr. Harold Laski, Chairman of the Labour Party, is one of these.

Speaking at St. Pancras on 14th November, 1945, he said: “It is a matter of regret and bitter shame that British and Indian troops should be used to restore tyranny in the Pacific areas” (“Daily Mail,” 15th November). He went on to say that they had not fought to free Holland so that financiers in Amsterdam should be allowed to continue exploiting the people of Java, and declared that there was still a marked absence of real will to help in the making of a free India. “We have to decide,” he said, “whether we are capable as a Labour Party to go forward swiftly to the proud day when we can claim to have assisted in the freedom of a great people. I can think of no more acid test of the bona fides of our party than its willingness to go forward in this task of emancipation.”

Mr. Ernest Thurtle, Labour M.P., illustrates the doubts some Labour M.P.’s have about Mr. Bevin's foreign policy by the observation that during House of Commons debates on foreign affairs Mr. Eden, former Conservative Minister for foreign affairs, got more cheers from Labour M.P.’s than did their own Foreign Secretary, Mr. Bevin. The applause for the latter came, he said. “mainly from the Opposition ” (“Sunday Express,” 25th November, 1945). Mr. Thurtle, who goes on to say that “on all the really big international issues Britain presents a united front to the world. And it is a good thing that it should be so,” fails to realise that this united front on foreign affairs means the representation of capitalist interests. The alternative—a policy based on the common interest of the workers of the whole world against the world capitalist class—would mean opposition to British capitalism at home, not acceptance of it.

Another Labour supporter, Mr. Hannen Swaffer, writing in the “People” (30th December, 1945) takes a different view. With his customary superficiality he finds in Mr. Bevin a very successful Foreign Minister. “Ernest Bevin undoubtedly is the Man of 1945.” Swaffer goes on to compare Mr. Bevin with Mr. Arthur Henderson, who was Foreign Minister in the Labour Government of 1929-1931, and declares “ . . . Henderson’s work at Geneva was monumental, and Bevin is today the most influential man in world politics. Very largely it was he who made the Moscow meeting a success. Yet., not long ago, people talked of ‘the ruling classes’.”

The most interesting thing about Mr. Swaffer’s praise of Bevin and Henderson lies not in what he said but in what he forgot to say. He forgot to mention that exactly the same kind of empty claims were being made (notably by Mr. Swaffer among the rest) for Ramsay MacDonald, who was Foreign Minister as well as Prime Minister in Labour’s first government, 1924. Subsequent events, including MacDonald’s lining up with the Conservatives, have amply shown that the claims were baseless. Time will do the same with Mr. Bevin’s reputation. The “Labour Magazine ” (November, 1924, published by the T.U.C. and Labour Party) claimed that “it is no exaggeration to say that Mr. MacDonald’s activities as Foreign Secretary set the seal upon Labour statesmanship. It was a wonderful thing to succeed where his predecessors failed in reconciling France and Germany, and bringing Europe as a whole to accept the Reparations plan as a practicable method of testing the economic possibility of paying reparations without injuring the organised life of the nations concerned. The work of the Labour representatives, headed by Mr. MacDonald, ail the Fifth Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva was even more fundamental. It brought world peace and reduction of armaments into the field of practical politics . . . War has been recognised as an international crime.”

We have had the second world war since then, and again the Powers are working hard to be prepared for another. As a footnote to the claims made for Mr. Bevin, the following extracts from the Press need no comment.

Mr. Bevin, in the House of Commons when announcing his policy for Palestine on 13th November, 1945: “I will stake my political future on solving this problem ” (“Daily Telegraph,” 14th November).

Report from the “Daily Express” next day: “The outbreak [of riots in Tel Aviv, Palestine] started as a mass demonstration, broke up shouting 'Down with the White-paper government. Down with Bevin.’ ”

Time will show that the contradictions of capitalism will be no more amenable to the wishes of Mr. Bevin and his Labour Party supporters in the future than they were to his predecessors, Henderson and MacDonald, in the past.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Workers and the State (1946)

From the February 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world’s workers have been conscripted, categorised, rationed and regimented by the power of the State, ruthlessly should they live in dictatorship countries, by their “consent” in the democracies. In spite of this the Socialist view that the State is “the executive committee of the ruling class” is contested by many. Let us therefore take a swift survey of the evidence of history.

The Social institution called the State had its genesis in the advent of private property, and its beginning took place after thousands of years in man’s history, during which he had no concept of private property as such. From these misty eons of time we find that man, and the word includes woman, in the unequal fights against the forces of nature, banded together in tribes or clans in which all implements and provisions were the common property of the whole community, and no trace has been found by philologists of the words mine and thine in use during this immense period of primitive communism.

The tribes practised complete economic and social equality, there being therefore no classes, no law or state, only the observance of the tribal rites and customs; everyone took part in the common tasks of the day and had an equal voice in the election of officers. An injury to one was an injury to all in this democracy where the social relation was that of kinship, and the greatest punishment, banishment to the world of terrors outside the tribe.

Writers on this period of man’s development (Engels' “Origin of the Family”) describe how the “means of production” evolved and changed man from the savage hunting the animals for food armed only with crude weapons, to that of barbarian who now domesticated the animals and became a pastoralist, the period which ushers in the dawn of civilisation, and private property.

So close was man always to the edge of famine that the need for moving to new hunting grounds inevitably brought him into conflict with other occupants and during these forays captives were taken and killed; sometimes they were eaten. Man later learned that the captives could provide many meals if put to attend the pastures and cattle he had acquired.

So the enslavement of man by man aided by the increasing knowledge of agriculture begun the private ownership of the means of life.

This new method of production gave rise to wealthy families and poor families and in place of the communal family group there came the inferiority of woman as the mere “help meet” of her lord and master, for only through him could their issue inherit the family property, now protected by the law and force of the State.

The age-old tribal communism had been broken down by the needs and institutions that were set up and given the sanctity of authority by the class which owned and controlled land, cattle, money and slaves. The city states which eventually arose in the congenial Mediterranean area were based on this class ownership and were the scene of the violent class-struggles which fill the history books, and it is a sobering thought that the philosophy, architecture, and oratory of Rome and Athens were only made possible by the labours of a slave class whose toil gave the owners the comfort and leisure to pursue those studies.

The republic of Rome was organised on a military basis and had a constitution drawn up which divided the population into six classes, each class holding votes according to its property strength, whilst for defence each vote in the legislature carried the duty of providing a centurion or officer over a hundred men drawn from the populace It is a commentary on modern war that the poorest of the proletariat, having no property, were not asked to defend their “way of life”; they being classified as mere breeders by the Roman state.

Thus the possessing class held political power during the time of Rome battling against its Italian tribal neighbours and later as the centre of an empire holding the greater part of Europe and Africa in its grip. The slave system ate into the heart of the Roman state and brought ruin and decadence in its train; the slave taken in war. or made so by debt, was considered a chattel that had no legal right to properly, to marry or enter into a contract. Slaves often provided a Roman holiday as gladiators trained to fight each other in the arena, a training which served them in good stead in one of the several Servile Wars that broke out. Spartacus, joined by the gladiators' school, roused the slaves, trained them and inflicted defeats on the Roman army for four years, the revolt being finally crushed and its supporters brutally burnt or crucified in thousands by the victors.

Reform in the late days of the Empire allowed the slave to buy his freedom, or as a serf to farm a plot of the broken up estates, for work had become a degradation in the eyes of the Romans, and by now the large landowners had ruined the small owners by estates run entirely by slaves brought from the imperial wars by a paid proletarian army. Rome became filled with discharged soldiery, freed men and proletarians, demanding bread and land from a ruling class replete with the plunder and tribute of the wars and colonies. No the state gave them doles, circuses, and more wars. Furthermore, the state declared the “public ownership" of the slave's religion, Christianity, long persecuted for hinting that the slave was as good as his owner—in heaven. Yet nothing could allay the rot of such a slave economy, and Rome offered little resistance when beset by the Teutonic hordes from outside.

The fall of Rome's military power saw the splitting up of Europe into many principalities and kingdoms which owed their existence to the usurping of the tribe and clan system by the warrior and land owning class, assisted now by the spiritual inheritor of Rome's power, the Roman Church, headed by the Pope. This epoch called Feudalism was one of chronic warfare over land in which the remnants of communal society were stamped out by the lauded chiefs, and where the Church as an arbiter became a great land-owning and political force used in bemusing and enforcing class rule on the enslaved class, the serfs. The theory of the state was one of service, and pyramidic in structure; the. king holding all land in his realm and granting its ownership to his subjects under bis protection, they swearing loyalty to him and his law while providing him with arms and soldiery according to their status. The serfs farmed their lord's land not as the uneconomical slaves of Rome but with the added interest of raising their own keep on strips of land granted them by the lord of the manor. Revolts, but more the need of the state for money, later gave the serfs the liberty to rent small plots, notably in England, as peasants.

Meanwhile another class was growing, that of the merchants and manufacturers, who resented the king’s power to tax and squander money on wars whilst they had no voice in the council of barons and king, and thus arose in England the Parliament of Commoners which the king summoned as he thought fit, generally for money, or as a lever in his quarrels with the barons. The townsmen or burghers grew more insistent against the church and king as the latter were fettering their ever-growing commerce by state restrictions and the ban on usury. This clash of interests found expression in religion, and Protestantism was adopted by the merchant class from the anti-Pope doctrines of Luther of Germany. Tactically they backed Henry VIII in his quarrel with the Pope over the breaking of his marriage vows, sacred to the feudal church, a schism whereby the crown “requisitioned” the church lands and wealth, thus severing its power.

The class struggle of the rising capitalist class went on through the reigns, and finally culminated in a civil war in which the Parliamentarians recruiting the yeomanry and townsmen ended absolute monarchy by defeating the Royalists and beheading their king, Charles I, in Whitehall.

With the state in the hands of the capitalist class we enter the era of industrial capitalism, where abroad the capitalists grab colonies and roam the world for markets and raw materials, while at home their allies the capitalist landlords drive the peasants off the land and into the towns where, as "free'’ men, they enter the factories to a new slavery, wage-dom, a revolution still pursued with variations in India and Russia to-day. The new mode of production, the hiring of labour power to operate power-driven machinery, places the whole wage class in subjection to the owners by virtue of the monopoly of the means of production in their hands. Furthermore, over and above the total wage bill it leaves in their possession enormous surpluses of commodities which they must trade abroad, therefore the state increases and jealously guards the spheres of influence and foreign markets for this overplus, for out of its sale comes the new capital to repeat the process of profit making. Should an actual threat by rivals arise the state invokes its power over propaganda, arms the wage workers and with many patriotic slogans urges them to annihilate the enemy of the national interests. These wars, local at first, have increasingly involved all in misery and destruction while with the advance of science the technique of war is revolutionised by new equipment and weapons.

To-day the state, with two world wars to its credit, becomes more authoritarian by the needs of modern total war, and must even in the "peace” retain in its hands the power to regiment workers and direct industry in readiness for a possible world war 3. Hence the long view of some capitalists in favouring nationalisation plans so beloved by the "left.”

We have made a case for the class and military nature of the state. Yet is it possible to end the state and the exploitation of man by man ?

The wars and poverty of capitalism are an unnecessary contradiction which grown-up mankind should not now tolerate, in view of the titanic output of wealth possible if society was freed from profit and class rule.

Socialists advocate the democratic social ownership of all means of wealth production, a return in fact to man's earlier practice, but on a mach higher plane, his forays for example were caused by hunger, not by surpluses.

The owning class is not fitted mentally to accomplish this great social change, it must be the work of the majority the now enfranchised workers, and they must not waste precious time reforming their masters' system but grasp the need for ending it before capitalism hurls us all into another conflagration which will leave surviving mankind the inheritor of mere dust and rabble.

Frank Dawe

Editorial: The American Loan and the Gold Standard (1946)

Editorial from the February 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much ado about very little

Most people are frankly mystified about the intricate details of currency, banking, credit and international trade and consequently do not understand the issues involved in the controversy about the American loan and the gold standard. This includes many of the politicians who speak on the subject so that those who support one side or the other frequently cannot even agree about the facts let alone the desirability of taking one or the other course of action. The members of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party are divided among themselves. Even those in both parties who supported the American loan arrangements admit that they do so with great misgivings and without any assurance that things will work out as planned. Many who support the loan would like to join Lord Beaverbrook’s group in opposition but cannot convince themselves that his case for the British Empire to stand as a unit more or less independent of U.S.A. is practicable. They therefore take the view that no other course is open than to accept the loan and with it the conditions laid down by American capitalism. The Manchester Guardian puts it thus:—

   "The plain case in favour of the American loan is that we cannot do without it. We have got into a position . . . from which we cannot escape without hardships which would rend the political fabric of this country. . . . The idea that we cap turn down the American offer because we are shocked at the conditions they have extorted is simply childish." (12 Dec., 1945.) 

The immediate factors that determined the offer and the acceptance of the loan of £1,100,000,000, to be repaid at 2 per cent. over fifty years beginning in 1952, are the following. On the one side British Capitalists, during the war, lost the bulk of their export trade and foreign investments (the latter had to be realised to pay for imported food and war supplies) and are now so denuded of certain goods that they must get a loan from U.S.A. in order to pay for needed imports, pending the turnover to full-time peace production and the export not merely of the pre-war volumes of goods but a greatly increased volume. On the other side the loan was offered not on philanthropic grounds but because American industry is producing at such a rate that big business is already scared at the thought of the slump that will occur if markets cannot be found. Much of the loan will be used to buy American goods for shipment to the British Empire and the Continent. As The Times says, "The current objectives of the United States are not disguised. Like greyhounds in the slips their salesmen are ready. . . . American productive capacity has been much multiplied by the war. When civilian demand replaces military, there will be surpluses—and the prospect of considerable unemployment. The accepted solution is to employ the workers and dispose of the surpluses on oversea orders.' (Times, 7 Dec., 1945.)

Apart from repayment of the loan and payment of interest the American authorities imposed other conditions, in particular that the pound sterling shall remain at the present exchange rate with the dollar (4.03 dollars to the pound) and that the British Government shall enter into world banking and trading arrangements proposed by the U.S.A., the declared object of which is to get all the Powers to agree to establish "freer trade relations" unfettered by tariffs and preferences, import restrictions. State subsidies. State trading cartels and other types of trade barriers—in short, to make the world a vast market open for American exports.

The attempt to keep the paper pound at a fixed relationship to the dollar is a roundabout way of keeping it at a fixed relationship to gold, though the Labour defenders of the agreement point to the provisions which will enable the British Government to alter the relationship in certain circumstances, i.e., to fix it at, say, 3 dollars to the pound. Because of this “escape clause" the Labour Party maintains that it is not committed to being "on the gold standard." The difference is, however, only one of degree and of form. Before 1914 and from 1925 to 1931 the sovereign was by law fixed at a certain weight of gold, and corresponding to that relationship it was worth 4.86 dollars. Under present arrangements the paper pound, in effect, is equivalent to a smaller amount of gold than before 1914 and also the way is made easier to reduce that amount still more, within the limits of the agreement with U.S.A.; in other words the present arrangements are more elastic than before 1911 and the relationship between the pound and gold is altered.

The controversy about the amount of gold to which the paper pound (or the currency of any other country) should be related largely represents the rivalry of different sections of the capitalist class. A British firm engaged on the production for export of articles made out of home-produced raw materials has an interest in reducing the gold equivalent. This is because the foreign buyer, e.g., an American who at the old rate had to pay 20 dollars for £5 can at a reduced rate get £5 for, say, 16 dollars. This encourages exports from Britain; but at the same time it discourages imports to Britain. The British importer of foreign raw materials or finished products has an opposite interest, since he must now pay more paper pounds than before for an article costing 20 dollars.

It should, however, be noticed firstly that the effect of any change in the relationship of the paper pound to gold or to the dollar is only temporary since costs and prices adjust themselves; secondly, it helps one capitalist group at the expense of another without increasing total production even in the country concerned; and thirdly, all countries can play the same game—as for example, the recent devaluation of the French franc.

Overriding all these purely currency questions, which are of secondary importance; is the major fact that there is no solution—short of abolishing capitalism—for the endless crises and depressions, unemployment and trade rivalries of the system. Those who take the superficial view can state what looks like a convincing case whichever side they support in the controversy. The Labour Party, which opposes having the pound rigidly fixed to gold by Act of Parliament, can point to the poverty, unemployment and trade depressions that existed before 1914 and between 1925 and 1931. This, they say, proves that the rigid gold standard is bad. Likewise their opponents can point to exactly the same evils that existed after 1931. Both are right in saying that the evils exist, because they always and necessarily will under capitalism, whether adherence to the gold standard is rigid or elastic, at one ratio to gold or to a higher or lower ratio. They are also both wrong in thinking that currency factors are the cause of the evils or that, the evils can be remedied by currency manipulation. The Times, for example, holds out the hope that international agreement may lead to “ the restoration of the system of world trade which prevailed in the heyday of British free trade a generation ago." (Times, 7 Dec.) That "heyday" was, for the workers, a time of poverty, insecurity and unemployment just like the subsequent period. All through the 19th century, when the gold standard was said to be functioning well, crises and working class misery were in evidence. The "over-production" of capitalism, meaning the production of vast quantities of goods for which the workers lacked purchasing power is a result of the private ownership of the means of production and the resulting fact that the goods produced belong to the capitalist class and that class can and does curtail production when the goods cannot be disposed of at a profit.

One point, for the benefit of those who cherish the illusion that the gold standard has ceased to exist, is the recent heavy buying of shares in gold mining companies. The City Editor of the Daily Telegraph (24 Dec.) commenting on this, writes : 

  ". . .  the acceptance of Bretton Woods has removed any nervousness there may have been as to the status of gold in post-war international monetary arrangements. The metal remains the world standard of value, and those who produce it will be marketing a universally acceptable commodity."

In conclusion, it is a safe forecast that the agreements with U.S.A. will not work well for the working class. Nor would any alternative arrangement within the capitalist system. W. J. Bryan's declaration that mankind is crucified on a cross of gold, a flamboyant fallacy that still finds credence in Labour circles, should be re-written: the working class are crucified on a cross of capitalism; which is just as true though the cross now bears the Labour Party label, " Nationalisation.”

Working Class — who isn’t? (1946)

From the February 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "Again I ask what is the difference between working and non working class? Is it financial? If so, where do you draw the limit? Is a man a member of the working classes if he gets, say, £6 a week, but a non-worker if he gets £10 or £9 15s. 6d.?

  Or is it educational? 1 was not at Eton like Dr. Hugh Dalton ... or at Winchester like Sir Stafford Cripps. But I don’t think I regard them as non-workers . . . on that account.

   Is it purely manual work that counts? When I see, as I sometimes do, Mr. Aneurin Bevan, the Minister of Health, leave his charming house in Cliveden Place, in Belgravia, enter a large saloon car, and being driven by a chauffeur to his ministry, I don’t think I say, 'Ah, there he goes, you can see he’s not a member of the working classes. Look at the car and chauffeur. . .’ 

   The 'Nye’ Bevan, who is striving to provide houses for the people, is just as much a "worker” as ever he was, when he was at the coal-face. . . .

   The truth, I think, is that to-day the phrase has no meaning whatever. We are all workers. . . . The old bad gap between the extremely rich and the miserably poor is rightly being steadily and inexorably narrowed.” 

—Mr. Edward Denny, Evening News, 21 Nov., 1945. 

The phrase "working-classes,” says Mr. Denny, is inverted snobbery, with "no place” in "the hard-working, classless State we are creating.”

Mr. Denny asks a number of questions. We answer these before going on to his unproven assertions.

First, "working-classes ”: Mr. Denny does not understand the meaning of the term "class” in the social sense.

In political economy, a class is a body of people united by economic interests.

Therefore there cannot be two, or more, working-classes. Those linked by the common material interest are the class. There is just the working-class—that’s all.

It is quite logical for the man who starts, like Mr. Denny, by talking about the "working-classes” to conclude that there is no "working-class” at all.

Second, how is the working-class defined? "Society today is divided into two classes: one of which is called the working-class, because its members have to work for their living.” —"Socialism,” p. 3.

It follows, therefore, Mr. Denny, that if the necessity of work defines a member of the working-class—the converse denotes a member of the other class—capitalists do not HAVE to work for a living; some do work, but they could live opulently without.

Therefore, all Mr. Denny’s saloon-bar chatter about whether Dalton was at Eton, or Bevan at the coal-face, has no bearing whatever upon the social problem of what is the working-class.

In so far as Cabinet Ministers participate in some sort of administrative work—they are working; this does not necessarily make them members of the working-class—neither is it possible to define the class position of every single individual.

Mr. Denny evidently has some vague suspicion of this. After having posed his silly questions about £6 or £10 a week, and whether a beer-drinker is a worker, or a whisky-drinker not (according to this erudite classification most Fleet Street journalists are workers and non-workers at the same time), whether a "white collar is the hall-mark of a drone” and so on; he goes on to his real contention—that classes have disappeared in "this little island” where we have "all got to work hard” in "the hard-working classless State we are creating.”

The ground for this claim that classes have disappeared ("we are all workers' ”) is that the "gap between the extremely rich and miserably poor is narrowing.”

Inextricably mixed up with all this is Mr. Denny’s claim that the so-called middle-classes "are the working and worrying classes.” Determined to be right, whatever happens, Mr. Denny backs it both ways! "There are no classes ('we are all workers’). The middle-class (undefined) is the working class (‘hard-working class ’).”

It will be noticed that Mr. Denny carefully writes "the gap between the extremely rich and miserably poor is narrowing.”

If this means that there are fewer very rich and very poor people it is also untrue.

What "miserably poor” is, is undefined. The Oxford Dictionary defines poverty as "want, deficiency, indigence.”

Some are frightfully poor, yet very happy. This kind of happiness is usually a mental hallucination, based on some religious view which makes suffering a virtue, leading eventually to an ideal existence of comfort and ease.

It does not help in investigating the social problem of poverty one iota.

We are quite willing to assess as "miserable poverty" those living below the minimum income estimated by authorities like Sir Wm. Beveridge, Sir John Boyd-Orr and Mr. Rowntree, as indispensable to reasonable health and efficiency.

"Sir John Orr found that 10 per cent. were in poverty in 1936. Mr. Rowntree found that 31 per cent, were below his estimated poverty line and 14 per cent, in extreme poverty.” York, 1936.

—Facts for Socialists. Fabian Society.

It is quite true that the advent of the war brought employment and relative prosperity to this "extreme poverty” group.

While there cannot be any statistics of normal capitalist conditions for a year or two. Socialists nevertheless contend that "extreme poverty” will increase.

Mr. Bernard Harris, City Editor of the Sunday Express, gave on September 16th, 1946, a few facts about " extremely ” rich men:—

Henry Ford . . . £158,000,000

Pierre Du Pont           . . . £143,000,000

John D. Rockfeller    . . . £100,000,000

Andrew Mellon         . . . £100,000,000

Don Simon Iturbi Patino  £100,000,000

Sir John Ellerman            £1,000,000 a year 

Duke of Westminster       Probably the same

These vast fortunes among the largest the world has ever known, are growing at a great rate.

Thus the subtractions made by Death Duties, on their present scale, has been more than offset by the additions, which the opportunities of the capitalist system make possible, to the wealth of the fortunate minority. The Death Duties do not, as yet, arrest the process of the continuous concentration of wealth in few hands. They only slow it down. The rich in Britain are still growing richer.

Mr. Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote the following in 1935: — 

   "Over the last ten years the total net capital value of estate liable to Estate Duty rose from £442 millions in 1923-4 to £538 millions in 1929-30, fell to £517 millions in 1930-1 and to 467 millions in 1931-2, rising again to £516 millions in 1932-3.

     In 1933-4 all previous records for a single fortune were broken by the monstrous estate of Sir John Ellerman, which exceeded £17 millions.

     The wealth left by millionaires alone has averaged over £31 millions a year during this period, and the number of millionaires dying each year has varied from three to twenty-two, with an average of just on twelve a year.

    Yet the great majority of those who die leave property so small it is not worth the while of the Inland Revenue to value it.”

—" Practical Socialism for Britain.” p. 338.

It is still true that the great majority of those who die possess no property worth mentioning and so it will remain while capitalism endures, notwithstanding that Mr. Dalton is now Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Labour Government is running the system.

Horatio.

By The Way: Socialists—and Jokes ! (1946)

The By The Way Column from the February 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists—and Jokes !

Mr. Ernest Thurtle, M.P., embellishes the pages of the Sunday Express with a column of Parliamentary chatter each week.

Writing of possible “revolts” in the Parliamentary Labour Party he says, in passing, “as a Socialist," Mr. R. Stokes (Labour M.P.) “is a joke.” (16.12.45.) “Technically in view of his party membership, he might be described as a ‘ collectivest-anarchist.' ”

What “collectivest-anarchism” is Mr. Thurtle does not explain! Only a party like the Labour Party can have Parliamentary representatives who are “technically” one thing, and actually something different.

In any case, why sort Mr. Stokes out? As Socialists the whole Labour Party are “a joke”—jokes are usually somebody else’s tragedy. The Labour Party are—for the workers.

“All animals are equal—but some animals are more equal than others.”

—Mr. Geo. Orwell, “Animal Farm" p. 87.

* * *

Another Great "Socialist" Victory

“Shares up on Coal Bill Hopes.”

“Formal first reading of the Coal Mines Nationalisation Bill resulted in rises in colliery shares on hopes of favourable terms. Bolsover were better at 96s. 9d."

—Daily Herald, 21.12.13.

* * *

"Socialism" for Bankers

Lord Catto, Governor of the Bank of England, has informed the Select Committee on the Nationalisation of the Bank of England Bill, that he has only received ten letters from stockholders (17,000)) opposing the Bill.

The Third Reading of the Bill went through the House on the 19th of December in a Christmas spirit of light-hearted good humour.

“Several members spoke of the occasion as historic, but the Christmas spirit was so strong and the speeches from all parts of the House so light-hearted that a casual visitor would have had great difficulty in realising that he was in the presence of art epoch-making development in our political history.”

—News Chronicle, 20.12.15.

By the terms of the Bill the stockholders get £58,000,000 in 3% Bonds which Sir Cyril Radcliffe declared for the Government was “most benevolent.”

—News Chronicle, 21.12.15.

Best of all was the Herald's report of the speech of Lieut.-Col. Hamilton of Sudbury (Labour) who taunted the Tories with the fact that “after all, Mr. Churchill himself had agreed that nationalising the Bank was a reasonable step.”

—20.12.15.

* * *

Coal Mines Nationalisation Bill

“The Board will, out of its working, have to pay interest and sinking fund on the money provided by the Treasury.” 

—Daily Herald, 21.12.15.

One small correction, the interests (profits) will be, as usual, paid out of the coal miners' working.

Nationalisation will change the name on the shop-front.

* * *

National Gas Plan

The Gas Industry Commission set up by the Coalition Government has now reported. Its report is almost identical with the plan of the Labour Party. The Conservative Times and the Labour Daily Herald commented in similar terms : — 

  “It is a pertinent comment on current political controversy that an expert committee appointed by a Coalition in which Conservatives predominated should recommend complete public ownership of a major industry, and should combine this proposal with a decisive preference for a form of management—the public-corporation—invented by a past Conservative Government and exemplified by the B.B.C., the Central Electricity Board, the London Passenger Transport Board, and the British Overseas Airways Corporation—all public concerns that have been wholly or mainly Conservative creations. The present Government . . .will naturally welcome the Heyworth report.”

—Times, 6 Dec., 1945.

    

   "On the eve of the Tory censure motion on the Government for its policy of nationalisation a report last night by a committee of independent experts appointed by the Coalition Government recommended complete nationalisation of the gas industry. The Government . . . has . . . broadly accepted the scheme put forward. . . . The five members, headed by Mr. Geoffrey Heyworth, chairman of Lever Brothers and Unilever, Ltd., decided that nationalisation is the only way out of the present confusion and to provide cheaper gas for all.”

—Daily Herald, 5 Dec., 1945.

* * *

"United Nations”

“The foreign policy of a Government is the reflection of its internal policy. Imperialism is the form which Capitalism takes in relation to other nations. A Capitalist Government in Britain thinks of the League of Nations as a means of preserving peace, because peace is a British interest, but still more it thinks of it as a means of preserving the British Empire and British Imperialist interests/'

—C. R. Attlee (“Labour Party in Perspective," 1935. p. 226.)

* * *

"Adequately"

  “A Labour Government would plan this country in such a way as to ensure that, every man, woman and child was adequately fed as a prime duty of the State.”

—Ibid, p. 236.

* * *

Workers Worse Housed than Animals

Mr. Yates (Lab., Ladywood) told of how in Birmingham 80,000 people, most of them ex-.Service, are now in rooms waiting for houses.

“I represent,” said Mr. Yates, “ the ordinary people of one of the wealthiest cities in the world, a city whose proud boast it is that it has a thousand trades. Yet in that city thousands of people are stabled worse than animals.”

—Daily Herald, 27 Nov., 1945.

Capt. G. R. Chetwynd (Lab., Stockton-on-Tees) believed there was no problem at all for the well-to-do.

 “I have tried to find a house for myself in London, and in the space of 20 minutes could have bought 30 houses at £2,000 upwards.

  “I would say that not one brick and not one workman shall be diverted from the provision of houses to let until such advertisements as we see of houses at £2,000 and £3,000 have completely disappeared." (Cheers.)—News Chronicle, 27 Nov., 1945.

Horatio. 

Russian Foreign Policy (1946)

From the February 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia, like the other powers, is now following the traditional capitalist policy of putting pressure on her weaker neighbours for concessions (oil in northern Persia), or territory (Turkey), thus departing from the treaties entered into in 1921. The following extract from the Communist Palme Dutt’s “World Politics, 1918-1936” (Gollancz, 1937, p. 317) is typical of the line the Communist?, used to take on such manifestations of imperialism : —

   “The treaties with Persia, Afghanistan and Turkey in 1921, as with China in 1924, gave direct expression to the break with the principles of imperialism, in renouncing all rights and claims enforced by Tsarism, and establishing relations of friendship and equality."

Now it is a different story.

Other Days—Other Ways (1946)

From the February 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Arthur Deakin is fast gaining reputation as the Labour Party's most blatant capitalist propagandist.

Quoted with great satisfaction in the Daily Herald for November 6th, 1945, he calls upon the workers to reject unofficial stoppages which are rendering a grave disservice to the "nation" and (as an afterthought) their fellow workers.

   “While applying our minds to schemes for sharing wealth," he writes, "we have also to get down to the job of producing wealth."
   "The nation is fighting for its economic survival, and if it is to succeed, the people, both workers and management, must put their backs into the job with the same team spirit as in the days of the war.”

We have shown, in recent issues of the Socialist Standard how the Labour Party, loudly demanding a drastic re-distribution of income when out of office—on the grounds that there was plenty of cake; only too few had got too much— suddenly discovers when in office that "we” have got to produce more—the cake isn't big enough !

What we would here point out is Mr. Deakin's naive and stupid conception of Socialism, which he imagines is "schemes for sharing wealth."

Socialism is not "a scheme for sharing wealth.” It is the only method of producing wealth up to full capacity by modern society. Socialism is the ONLY way to take the capitalist brake off production.

When wealth is produced in superabundance under Socialism—it will not be "shared out" by a "scheme" it will be freely distributed. These Labour Party Trade Union officials never have known, and still do NOT know, what Socialism is.

Horatio.

Censored News From Russia (1946)

From the February 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

On November 1st the Anglo-American Correspondents' Association in Moscow asked for the lifting of the rigid censorship on reports sent out of Russia. The Soviet Foreign Commissar, Mr. Molotov, rejected the protest, and said he found the protest “in general not solid" and he did not “find it necessary to give it consideration.”—(Times, 2nd November, 1945.)

In their letter of protest the correspondents described the working of the censorship. Here are some passages from their letter: —

  “Throughout the war foreign correspondents never objected to the censorship for purposes of military security. But censorship in peace-time of all dispatches, relating not only to military affairs but to politics, economics, cultural affairs, and every aspect of life in the Soviet Union destroys the value of foreign correspondence in the free world, and has created general distrust abroad of all news emanating from the Soviet Union.
  “We wish to go on record against censorship in principle. We wish also to protest specifically against the operation of the Soviet censorship. It is dictatorial and arbitrary.
   “Censors frequently tamper with the wording and distort the meaning of messages. The censorship is vacillating and capricious; it varies from day to day and from censor to censor. Some of the censors are not sufficiently acquainted with the English language to understand material submitted to them. Censors are often uninformed of current events. Frequently messages are delayed so long that they lose their value; sometimes they are actually lost in the process of censorship.
   “Hesitating to make decisions censors delay messages, sometimes for days; and this destroys the tempo of news reporting. Censors extend their authority to topics that do not come within the province of the Soviet censorship; they arbitrarily censor information that comes from non-Soviet sources and deals with non-Soviet affairs.”

The Daily Worker had no report of this when it was published in all the London papers.

Is Stalin a Fabian? A Priority Claim by Bernard Shaw (1946)

From the February 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bernard Shaw, in his 90th year, has been trying to console himself for a mis-spent life, by affecting to see in Soviet Russia the theories of Fabianisin in operation. To understand fully what is meant by that special brand of “socialism" a knowledge of the period in which it originated, together with the working-class organisations and their leaders that were engaged in the general struggle for notoriety, would be useful.

The necessity for this background, however, is obviated by Shaw himself in his article (Sunday Express, 30.12.45) in which he repeats, for his readers' benefit, the main articles of the Fabian faith. The most important is: Government by Experts, as is fully indicated in the following quotation :—

"What new discovery had Russia made, and what lesson learnt from all this? Simply that, as all great publicists from Aristotle to de Quincey have seen, there are the two basic incomes in civilised society, one for directed soldiers and peasants, mechanics and labourers who can do only what they are told to do with materials supplied, and the other for business directors, inventors, mathematicians, philosophers, financiers, artists and rulers"

The idea of “business directors, financiers and rulers” being necessary under Socialism is more than a little cock-eyed coming from an alleged authority on Socialism, more especially as, with a few others, he started the Fabian Society some sixty years ago with the declared purpose of popularising Socialism. But there it is: "The road to hell is often paved with good intentions." On the road, too, are many shoddy counterfeits. Here's one:—

“Stalin declared for collective farming and Socialism in a single country to begin with, and at once became, without knowing it, the Arch-Fabian of Europe.”

The Fabians talked about Socialism as if it were something which was to be inflicted on the people from above. And they got themselves talked about for a time, which, perhaps was more important, for them. They were lost sight of and forgotten by most people, but now Shaw has discovered that their work had borne fruit, in far-off Russia, a country so backward that 25 years ago 90 per cent. of the people could neither read nor write. But since then, what a change! Education has even reached the stage where the people understand Fabianism, and Hewlett Johnson will have to change the title of his book from "the Socialist Sixth" to the Fabian Sixth: a title that might not be quite so misleading, as there are many people who, having heard about the Fabians, never connect them with Socialism. Lenin seemed to be one of them, for Shaw writes: —

"Webb and myself, formerly pitied by Lenin as 'good men fallen among Fabians,' remained the staunchest champions of Soviet Russia in the west. And in spite of all the surprises and delusions, we believe that Fabian Russia will pull through yet, and that as she has made all the mistakes foe us, we should take care not to make them all over again, which is the worst peril at present threatening us."

It must be already apparent that the British Labour Government is modelled on the Fabian plan, according to Shaw, who cannot permit Laski to be undisputed advisor. Hence his warning of the perils ahead.

Not the least of the perils hinted at are the trade unions and their demands: "Trade unionism in Russia has annexed the State: In England it is still fighting the State." But we are left in doubt whether in Shaw's view the trade unions, here should be permitted to go on fighting, or whether the State should allow itself to be "annexed." A further quotation from Shaw’s article is a flat contradiction of the last one, and a lurid description of Fabianism at work in Russia: —

"What do we find when we visit Russia or read the reports of travellers and witnesses? No freedom at all, everything State controlled. British liberties stamped out as treasonable, and the nearest thing to a British Parliament barely allowed to ventilate grievances for weeks at intervals of years. The strike, the only weapon of the proletariat, banned as conspiracies. Trade unions pressed into the State service, and not tolerated in any independent form. Division of society into rich and poor, manual workers wages varying in the proportion of 10 to 1, those of the brain workers 200 to 1, and the poorer workers with less cash in their pockets than in those of Capitalist England or America."

And that is Russia, after the revolution that was to have ushered in Socialism with the "catastrophic program of Capitalism on Monday, revolution on Tuesday and Socialism in full swing on Wednesday." Thus Shaw jeers at those who say : A new era for humanity will dawn on the day that the organised working-class gains control of the State by a majority vote. There is only one conclusion to be drawn from Shaw's picture of Russian conditions: That Fabianism with its central idea of government by experts leads to dictatorship.

Because nobody to-day denies that Russia is a dictatorship, Shaw in his decrepit nineties has unwittingly slain the creation for which he was partly responsible in his thirties. To his press fans he says " I have two more years to live."

Two years in which to acquire a rational outlook on social problems, to recognise the failure of the Fabian way, and achieve a knowledge of Socialism. Can he do it in the time? As one of his characters would have said, "Not bloody likely." There is just as good a chance that Stalin and Co., or any other Labour caucus, having once achieved power, will voluntarily relinquish that power before they are compelled to do so by the working-class consciously organised for Socialism.

F. Foan