The Review Column: Take Over (1969)

The Review Column from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Take Over

Sunday is supposed to be the day of rest and church-going. In fact, it is the day when about ten million British people excite themselves by reading in the News of the World all about sex sins of famous actresses and obscure country vicars.

The paper recently described itself as “as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding" and perhaps, in a way, that is true. Little wonder, then, that when Pergamon Press launched its take over bid the fight for the shares was a matter of popular concern.

It was one of the hardest fought of all take overs. The News of the World warned darkly that “Mr. Robert Maxwell, a Socialist M.P., is trying to take . . . over” and was careful enough to remind its readers that Maxwell (who was responsible for the Back Britain campaign) was “formerly Jan Ludwig Hoch."

The NOW, it was clear, thought that the worst thing that could happen to British workers would be to have their favourite Sunday scandal sheet taken over by a naturalised Labour M.P.

Maxwell himself has never been famous for a reluctance to join the infighting. His delicate description of the man who defeated him — Australian newspaper owner Robert Murdoch — was “mothbeaten kangaroo”, and after the shareholders’ votes had gone against him he (of all people) mourned that “the law of the jungle has won.”

These dignified exchanges should be remembered, the next time Maxwell, or the News of the World, complain about the alleged childishness of striking workers. In the meantime, let us extricate ourselves from the mire of the battle between rival capitalists so anxious to protect their bank balances and take a look at the real issue.

Modern capitalism is a society of unrelenting insecurity and poverty. Such is the degradation of its people that millions of them greedily swallow the muck dished out by rags like the News of the World.

It pays to produce this muck. The real issue is not who owns the muck-making machine, but what about the nature of a society which makes it worthwhile to produce it, and which stimulates the need for it?

The Dark Side of Space

Space flights, we are promised, have brought us all sorts of benefits — anti-corrosive fluids, improved transistors, non-stick frying pans. That seems to be the limit — no space technician has yet been able to show that, say, a solution to the deadly riddle of cancer is likely to result from the exploits of those daring young men circling the moon.

But before we start cheering about the frying pans we should reflect on the other results of the space programme. One thing which is obvious is that no world power is ever willing to spend the sort of money which is being poured into the Apollo flights in order to make life any easier.

The only justification capitalism will recognise for that sort of spending is military or economic. We already know that any improvements in rocket power and guidance systems are applied to the delivery systems of nuclear missiles. We have also heard that the space powers can now orbit nuclear bombs above the earth, selecting the point at which they will come back through the atmosphere and onto their target.

There is also the possibility — and how strong this may be is one of the things the Americans and the Russian are not in a hurry to publicise — that the moon and other planets contain valuable minerals, it is not far fetched, then, to imagine a power struggle for possession of the planets, in space and so for dominance over the space lanes.

These should have been sobering thoughts for the world, as it goggled at the fantastic pictures coming back from Apollo 8 over Christmas. The glamour and excitement of it all obscured the cold, unpleasant realities but one day they will have to be faced, just as we have had to face the realities of the exploits of the Wright brothers.

The crew of Apollo 8 are brave men, dedicated to what they believe is the advance of humanity. This is not the first time capitalism has taken such useful instincts and perverted them for its own inhuman purposes.

Getting Tough

Whenever she is pressed on the point, Barbara Castle stubbornly insists that she is a left wing socialist — which in her vocabulary means the very opposite of someone who acts as she does in her job as boss of the Department of Employment and Productivity.

After her determined axing of wage claims under the Prices and Incomes Act, Castle is now getting ready for what might be her biggest fight so far. The government are preparing legislation which, under the name “reform”, will be nothing other than another restriction on the unions.

Castle wants a 28 day cooling off period before some strikes and compulsory balloting before official national strikes, with prosecution and fines for those who break the law.

Both sides of industry are pressing for changes in these proposals; the employers want them tougher and the unions are timidly asking for some relaxations.

Whatever happens, we are clearly in for another step in what may be one of Labour’s dearest ambitions — the control of wages. It is reasonable to wonder whether the government is clinging to office, in face of the humiliating election results, only long enough to attempt that particular piece of dirty work for the British capitalist class.

The government are justifying their proposals with the weary argument that if they don’t do it the Tories will — which is a clear admission that Labour is as much the enemy of the unions as the Tories.

Then there is the case put up for the ballots — that it is the democratic way of doing it, that a national strike which affects millions of people should not be decided upon by a handful of men.

In practice, the ballot might be a two edged weapon. In the meantime, may we ask how far Labour will carry this democratic idea? When they want to take a decision on something which will affect millions of people — like devaluation, prescription charges and so on, will they arrange a ballot before they act?

No prizes are offered for the answer to that question.

State Capitalist Steel (1969)

From the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was a time when the nationalisation of an industry was heralded as bringing it within the ownership of the whole people. Vesting day for the coal industry was marked with many pits be-bannered and placarded with displays recording the claim of common ownership. This delusion long demonstrated by the policies of the NCB, plus the experience of redundant unemployed miners from a declining industry, and the experience of workers in other nationalised industries, probably accounts for the lack of such claims when steel was recently nationalised.

Why then, it might be asked, are industries nationalised if it does not bring them into common ownership? Broadly speaking there are three answers: to control the run-down of a declining industry. (Back in 1948 this was thought to apply to gas); to control an industry best operated as a single-unit for the whole capitalist class because of its powerful position, e.g. electricity: and to rationalise industries in need of re-organisation—railways, coal and steel.

Prior to the nationalisation of the steel industry the British Iron and Steel Federation (Steel Co. owners) had set up a committee (Development Co-ordinating Committee) to look into the rationalisation necessary to meet the industry’s future. The reasons for this enquiry lie in the world’s steel market. Since the early 60’s all over the world there has been excess capacity in the industry. Not too much capacity for peoples needs for steel, but too much capacity for the purchasing power of the world, developed and under-developed countries. Put another way this means that there is intense competition on the world’s steel markets and the producer who can offer at the lowest prices increases sales and profits. Although the industry controls the bulk of the home market and is maintaining its share in world exports, long term prospects are not so favourable.

Based on home coking coal and a high proportion of home ore with relatively small plants, the British industry in the mid-sixties compared unfavourably with other areas with access to cheaper coking coal and ore, and which had constructed larger more efficient plants. The advantages of cheaper British coal went once American coal spread into Japan and with Polish coking coal, into Europe. Although devaluation may have redressed the price levels it is at the expense of lower standards of living for the worker.

Likewise with ore. After the second world war when ore was scarce British ore was cheap. It is no longer so. Using 1957 as a base year (100) by 1965 the index for foreign ore prices had fallen to 72 and home prices had risen to 126. Further, being richer, foreign ores requires less processing and need 6 cwt of coke less to make a ton of iron.

In the last ten years the pace of technological development in steel has been rapid. Plant sizes are expanding rapidly. British steel may be one of the six largest enterprises in the world, but it has no plants with a capacity of 4 cu. ingot tons and over, whereas America has 50 per cent, and Japan 20 per cent capacity in such plants (1968). (Is Big Best — A. Bambridge).


Large imports of ore in bulk carriers of 65,000 to 200,000 tons, plus the possibility of cheap coking coal from abroad and the need for large plants, points to coastal siting. Apart from recommending coastal sites for integrated works the Committee recommended that production be concentrated in fewer plants. In 1966 there were 34 steel works in Britain. If the committee’s recommendations come about, and something like it no doubt will, 90 per cent of capacity will be produced in some 8 to 10 plants.

Such a rationalisation will have a great effect on the levels of employment within the industry. Employment in the steel industry stood at 316,640—December 1965, a figure marginally smaller than 1957. The Report envisages a workforce in 1975 of 215,000 men, when the industry should produce a third more steel with a third less men.

Of the excess 100,000 the report states that they need not all be redundancies.

  Properly handled, normal voluntary departures should be sufficient to account for a substantial part of the reduction. Even ignoring the more volatile fringe of the labour force and considering only the relatively stable element, i.e. men over 26 with more than one year’s service—labour turnover in 1965 was 12 per cent, and this is more than three times as large as the average annual reduction envisaged in the labour force over 1965-75, which is 3.75 per cent.

If you are not a wage worker able to make a ‘voluntary departure’, for you there is the promise of reasonable increases in earnings, providing there are ’reasonable’ reductions in the labour cost per ton of steel.

But what does this really mean for the workers? First, we would say, do not be misled by this 12 per cent red herring. Annual turnover cannot be related to a reduction in the work force spread over a number of years. Secondly it is possible that in one or two areas employment opportunities will increase. In others it will decline or cease entirely. A young steelworker prepared to move might find a job in the expanding areas, but competition could be considerable. An older steelworker can see his future by observing the miners in areas where pits have been closed. Further if these plans, or something like them, are to be fulfilled, plant construction must begin shortly and the effects will be concentrated in the later years.

But if you do not get the golden handshake, the mobility bribe, your future is certain. Your productivity will have to rise, that is you are going to work harder, so that you can be paid increased wages to buy commodities the prices of which will probably increase. How well you fare will depend upon your trade union strength, which with a declining membership in a period with a full labour market, will be subject to great pressures.

Since nationalisation British Steel has not announced its plans for rationalisation. However it will have to be on the lines of that envisaged by the BISF Report. The prospects for the steelworkers are redundancy, unemployment, moving homes, harder work, struggle for better wages and conditions. The lot of all workers under capitalism. These next few years are likely to be harder for the steelworkers than any they have experienced since the war. Their day to day struggles will be more frequent and intense, and the outcome a continuing vista of repetitive struggle over the same issues—work and wages.

Ken Knight

"Solidarity": Not so Solid (1969)

Pamphlet Review from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Men will never be free from exploitation and oppression until all work is voluntary and access to all goods and services is free. “Socialism” means a world-wide society, democratically controlled, without profits, wages or money. This is a practical proposition now.

All attempts to solve such problems as war, poverty, loneliness, miserable and degrading toil, inside a society based on wages and profits are sure to fail. We, alone of all political organisations, use Marx’s slogan “Abolition of the wages system!”

Thousands of people come forward with plans to re-arrange the wages system. They imagine that slavery can be operated in the interests of slaves! They are wasting their time.

One such school of thought is the political group which calls itself “Solidarity.” Their case is presented in a pamphlet entitled The Meaning of Socialism, which declares that the root of misery in work is, not wage-slavery, but the system of management.

The author, Paul Cardan, proposes to keep the compulsion to work through threat of starvation. He even quotes approvingly St. Paul’s injunction “He that does not work, neither shall he eat.” Production for the market is to be retained in Cardan’s “Socialism” but it is to be “a genuine market for consumer goods, with consumers’ sovereignty.” The wages system is to be retained. We are still to be hired and fired, disciplined and dragooned—but with a difference which Mr. Cardan sees as important: instead of the majority of workers being supervised by a specially trained section of workers (management) the entire work-force in each place of production will manage itself democratically, through workers’ councils. The key feature of “Socialism” is that it will “eliminate all distinct strata of specialised or permanent managers.”

The Socialist Party rejects “workers’ management” as a solution to workers’ problems. We insist on the abolition of wages.

It is to be feared that the tyranny of your mates might prove as terrible as the tyranny of your manager, if your mates are equally as bound up with production for sale on a market. This is the crucial difference between “Solidarity” and us. We say that tinkering with administrative forms is of no use. Buying and selling must be abolished. The wage packet—the permission to live—must be abolished.

The most crucial error in Cardan’s analysis is his belief that the essential features of capitalism can be retained, and can be guided by “workers’ management” towards humane and liberating ends. The market is to remain, but not, apparently, its laws. It should be obvious that if any enterprise produces to sell, and pays its bills out of its revenue, it will be subject to the same basic market laws as any other enterprise. Of course, at the moment these laws are observed and interpreted by management, which then makes the decisions and’ imposes them on the other workers in the interests of the shareholders. But it should have occurred to Cardan that these same laws might have the same force whoever does the managing and even if the shareholders, so to speak, are the workers. This is a suggestion which members of “Solidarity” ought at least to consider.

Perhaps they will say that the important thing is the removal of the ruling class. It is true that the capitalists, like all ruling classes, live in great luxury and possess immense power. But it is a mistake to think that the workers are poor because the capitalists consume so much. On the contrary, the wealth actually consumed personally by capitalists is an insignificant (and diminishing) fraction of total wealth produced. Taking the consumption of the capitalists and sharing it out amongst the workers would result in a rise for us all of only a few shillings a week. It is a fact that our masters live off the fat of the land, but if they starved in garrets we should still be slaves. Socialists an not primarily concerned, like vulgar moralists and apostles of “fair play,” to indict the caviar and yachts of the Paul Gettys, but rather the misdirection of production: the subordination of consumption to accumulation and the immensity of organized waste and destruction.

Similarly, though the capitalist class has power, we do not merely condemn the arbitrary, irresponsible decisions of those in high places. We condemn also the decisions which capitalists and workers are forced to make as a result of the workings of capitalism’s laws of motion.

“Capitalism without capitalists” could never in fact come about. Should the working-class reach a level of understanding where they could pressurize the ruling class out of existence, they would long since have passed the stage where they would have abolished the wages system and established Socialism. And there are several purely economic arguments why escalating differences in access to wealth would always result from a wages-profits system. But even if we suspend these judgments, and consider “Capitalism without capitalists” in our imaginations, we can see it would be no improvement on capitalism with capitalists. Workers collectively administering their own exploitation not a state of affairs Which Socialist aim for.

Some advocates of “workers’ control” advance the argument that although it wouldn’t solve workers’ problems it should still be supported because workers are too simple-minded to understand the abolition of wages, and must therefore be given “workers’ control” as the sugar on the pill (except that these gentlemen invariably then forget about the pill altogether). Cardan cannot use this line argument, and this is to his credit, for he has quite correct debunked it:

  “The Party . . . “knows” (or believes that it knows) that the sliding scale of wages will never be accepted by capitalism. It believes that this demand, if really fought for by the workers, will lead to a revolutionary situation and eventually to the revolution itself. If it did it would “scare the workers off” who are not “yet” ready to fight for socialism as such. So the apparently innocent demand for a sliding scale of wages is put forward as feasible . . . while “known” to be unfeasible. This is the bait which will make the workers swallow the hook and the revolutionary line. The Party, firmly holding the rod, will drag the class along into the “socialist” frying pan. All this would be a monstrous conception, were it not so utterly ridiculous.”

We would certainly endorse this attack on Vanguardism, but it is hardly enough to compensate for the page loads of absurdities which Cardan peddles.

In order to make credible his notion of “Socialism” (capitalism minus capitalism’s laws) he says that modern techniques of production are introduced under capitalism more to reduce the freedom of workers than to increase profitability:

  “Machines are invented, or selected, according to one fundamental criterion: do they assist in the struggle of management against workers, do they reduce yet further the worker’s margin of autonomy, do they assist in eventually replacing him altogether? . . . No British capitalist, no Russian factory manager would ever introduce into his plant a machine which would increase the freedom of a particular worker or of a group of workers to run the job themselves, even if such a machine increased production.”

This astonishing claim is made without the smallest shred of evidence being supplied. Whilst it is possible that a few shrewd managers may accept a cut in short-term profits for the sake of insuring long-term profits by fragmenting workplace organization, the intricate conspiracy necessary for Cardan’s sweeping statement to be true would be humorous to contemplate. It borders on paranoia to attribute “ever minute division of labour and tasks” to the management‘s conscious attempts “to combat the resistance of the workers.” Division of labour, and other atomizing and features of modern techniques, are primarily the results of attempting to maintain or increase the level of profits. Modern productive methods are dictated, at a given of technology, by market laws (that is, from the management’s point of view, laws of costs and revenue) and largely outside the will of the capitalists themselves, or that of the managers.

A lot of Cardan’s propositions are developed in contrast to what he calls “Marxism.” It is quite apparent that he is abysmally ignorant of Marx’s theoretical system; the “Marxism” he denounces is the crudest mish-mash of fifth-rate Bolshevism. That is doubtless a further condemnation .of the dire results of Bolshevik confusion-mongering, but it hardly excuses Cardan for making statements about Marx without having read him.

For example, in The Meaning of Socialism, we read:

  “By “Socialism” we mean the historical period which starts with the proletarian revolution and ends with communism. In thus defining it, we adhere very strictly to Marx. This is the only “transitional period” between class society and communism.”

Marx of course, never drew any distinction between Socialism and Communism, and always gave these words identical meanings. “Solidarity,” like the “Communist” Party and Trotskyists, concede that it is necessary to abolish wages and money, but say that this is an “ultimate aim” (translation: not an aim at all).

It is also claimed that Marx has been proved wrong by what happened in Russia, because private property was abolished there without his predicted results. Cardan ought to consider Marx’s statement that as long as power over people exists, private property exists. Cardan further believes that Russia has abolished unemployment, which is admittedly not ignorance of Marx, but of Russia.

It is alleged that Marx saw the domination of men by machines as an inexorable consequence of the advance of technology, as a fact which had to be accepted even in Socialism. This is an outrageous howler. Marx was at great pains to stress that the domination of living labour by dead labour was in point of fact an optical illusion. When the instruments of labour appeared to be outside the control of Man, it was in actuality the case that Man’s social relations were outside his control. Thus when Engels talks about the “mastery of the product over the producer” he does not mean that the products are actually the masters, but simply that they seem to be, as long as producers cannot control their social organization of production. They will remain unable to do so as long as these are commodity relations [1]. Socialists have always emphasised that in Socialism production will be organized not just to make more goods, but also to make work itself enjoyable.

Like most Left-wingers, “Solidarity” believe that the Russian Revolution was Socialist. This belief is not an accident, but is closely related to their other misconceptions. “The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living,” wrote Marx. The Nightmare of Leftism, which weighs so heavily on the brains of today’s Romantic Revolutionaries, is the tradition of capitalist revolutions: the glorification of bloody insurrection, a mystical “Peoples Will” or “Proletarian Consciousness” which has no connection with what people actually will, or what workers actually understand, and hence the disparaging of political democracy, and the theory that revolutionary workers can be “held back” by a Party apparatus. “Solidarity” is no exception. Its ideas belong to the past; they have no future.

On the October Revolution Mr. Cardan comments:

  “Many people (various social democrats, various anarchists and the Socialist Party of Great Britain) have said that nothing really happened in Russia except a coup d’état carried out by a Party which, having somehow obtained the support of the working class, sought only to establish its own dictatorship and succeeded in doing so.
   We don’t wish to discuss this question in an academic manner. Our aim is not to decide whether the Russian Revolution warrants the label of proletarian revolution. The questions which are important for us are different ones. Did the Russian working class play a historical role of its own during this period? . . . The independent role played by the proletariat was clear-cut and undeniable.” (From Bolshevism To The Bureaucracy.)”

To this we can only retort that the view attributed to the Socialist Party is surely too silly to have even been held by anyone. All capitalist revolutions are highly complex phenomena, and 1917 was no exception. Cardan’s aim “is not to decide whether the Russian Revolution warrants the label of proletarian revolution,” despite the fact that in his writings he persistently refers to it as such, no less than four times in this particular pamphlet prior to the above excerpt! Of course workers played an independent role in 1917. Workers have played an independent role in every capitalist revolution without exception. That should be elementary.

Two questions have to be asked; they answer themselves. Had Russia in 1917 reached a level of development where abundance for all was possible? And did the Russian working-class in 1917 possess a clear understanding of the need for a wageless, moneyless, stateless society?

To sum up, movements for “workers’ management,” “workers’ participation” and “workers’ control” (though their various adherents distinguish very loudly between these three) will probably be used by capitalism, as in Yugoslavia, to give workers the impression that the enterprise they work for in some way belongs to them. If all employees can be drawn into the process of management, and can be given the illusion of an identity of interests between workers and employers, this helps to muffle the trade union struggle and enhance the process of exploitation. This is not what the members of “Solidarity” want, but then neither is the present structure of the steel industry what Labour Leftists wanted. “Workers’ management” is a cul-de-sac, to replace the cul-de-sac of nationalization. Please, don’t take another fifty years to see through this one. . . .

We say that in an epoch of potential Plenty the cry should be, not “workers’ management,” but “To each according to his wants!”

Steele

[1] This point is made abundantly clear in Marx’s Wage Labour And Capital, and Engels’ Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, and is frequently stressed throughout Marx’s writings.

Abolish Exchange (1969)

From the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Marxian economics, there are four different applications of the term “value”—use-value, surplus-value, exchange-value and value.

Surplus and exchange derive from value, which is the whole basis of wealth produced under capitalist relations of production. Use-value stands out as the exception, it simply means the usefulness of any given product. This will be the sole surviving application of those terms in future society— Socialism.

Value is created in the process of production under conditions of capitalist exploitation. The idea of measuring the worth of a product only arises when it is to be alienated from its producers—when it is to be exchanged.

Value is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour, embodied during the production process; including administration and transport. The time taken to produce any given commodity under conditions of the prevailing intensity, determines in what proportions it will be exchanged for any other commodity. This exchange of values is obscured by the common equivalent of all commodities—money, But money only expresses or measures the amount of value, which is why it is a means of exchange and the standard of prices.

Value, therefore, has the deceptive appearance of being a relationship between things, whereas what lies behind it is a relationship between people. It is only because capitalism is a class divided society where the means of production are concentrated in the hands of a privileged minority, that the present set of economic and social relationships exists. Owner to non-owner, employer to employee, buyer to seller, rich and poor, landlord and tenant, all these relationships depend upon the divorce of the producers from their social products.

The exchange of value and the circulation of money as a means of exchange, demonstrates the existence of private property. Therefore, when organisations like the Labour Party and the so-called Communist Party talk about “Common-ownership of the means of exchange”, they are voicing a contradiction in terms.

Surplus value is the total surplus product over and above the total amount of wealth represented by wages. To obtain and enlarge this surplus value is the whole motive force behind production in capitalist society. The intervention of the State in industry by way of controls and nationalisation has obscured this fact in the minds of many workers, particularly those who support state capitalism in countries like Russia and China.

The wages system is the universal badge of class servitude and exploitation. When the class system of capitalism is scrapped, the wages systems will go with it; so will the alienation of the producers from their social products. Whereas to-day the product seems to dominate the producer, in Socialism this will be reversed. Where value and surplus value exist there is a barrier between the working- class and the wealth they produce. Poverty and insecurity are inherent in this situation. Wages only represent enough wealth, on average, to keep workers in working order and to provide replacements when they wear out.

When the markets and warehouses of the world are choked with unsalable masses of all kinds of goods, this is the time of greatest privation for members of the working class. Always our lives centre around finding someone to exploit us, in order that we may survive from pay day to pay day, while those who own the means of wealth production, and the rest of the things we produce, are able to live in luxury.

All wars in the modem world are predatory—fought by workers who own no means of production, to enable the victorious sections of the capitalist class to re-divide the plunder. Workers clearly have no stake in such a set-up.

Capitalism necessarily degrades both workers and capitalists in a thousand different ways. But this degradation presses harder upon the workers whose whole lives are spent as appendages to someone else's pursuit of profits, mere extensions to the productive resources of another class. They are harried and driven, deceived and deluded by more refined methods and to a greater degree of intensity than any exploited class in history. They are divided and subdivided and taught to take up the spurious ideology of their masters as their own. All this because wealth is produced as exchange values. An irresistible sequence of events follows from class ownership. A pattern of social conduct is brought about which must remain while this basis of society continues. The life of the working class is spent in struggles to maintain a meagre level of existence at the mercy of blind economic forces they as yet can only understand vaguely, if at all. Leisure becomes a respite between work shifts and work becomes a drudge to be regarded as a necessary evil, instead of an essential means of self-expression through social creativity. As much as workers hate employment and have little interest in what they do, they live in fear of unemployment and develop neuroses of resentment against “outsiders" like coloured people who are seen as a threat to “their” jobs. They fill half the hospital beds with cases of nervous and mental disorders which arise from the pressures to which capitalism subjects them. Yet, epithets such as "agitator" and “trouble-maker" are commonly applied to anyone who seeks change.

Things which workers produce but cannot afford, such as Rolls Royce cars, yachts and big houses are revered as luxuries—the status symbols of a privileged few whose social prestige is supported by possession. These things contain so much workers’ congealed labour, that they are beyond the means of those who produce them. There can be no greater social absurdity than this.

With the advent of Socialism, goods and services of all kinds will be produced solely for use. Social products will no longer be exchanged, but will be freely available, because the means of production will belong to society as a whole. There will be no means of exchange or any other barrier between people and the things they need.

The pattern of conduct that follows from common ownership will be a harmonious one; just as that arising from class ownership is antagonistic. Human dignity will again be able to assert itself, free from exploitation. The conditions which cause war and poverty will disappear.

People will willingly co-operate because they will be conscious of their involvement in society and will be in control of their environment. The fact is that in order for Socialism to be established, a majority of the world’s workers must understand and desire it. From the basis of this understanding, new, truly human relationships will arise in place of the crude cash nexus.

Harry Baldwin

50 Years Ago: German Social Democratic Party is not Socialist (1969)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

For years we have pointed out that the Social Democratic Party of Germany—now called the “Majority Socialists’’—was not a Socialist Party. Its persistent support of the capitalist parties at elections, coupled with its advocacy of capitalist reforms, marked it off as merely a reform party similar to the Labour Party in this country, though it carried a Socialist name. And there was another important fact concerned with its growth.

The capitalist class in Germany has always been somewhat nervous of the working class there, having, as Engels points out, something to learn from the English capitalist class in this respect. This nervousness was shown in various repressive measures culminating in Bismark’s Anti-socialist laws. Repressive measures for the working-class, however, also hit the small capitalists and traders in their operations. These latter, who usually form an active part of the Liberal Party, found the main body of their organisation too timid to fight over these measures, and saw them slink behind the more determined Junker section when there were any signs of trouble ahead. Mr. Small Capitalist had to look for another organisation that was really prepared for the Liberal reforms, and it was at hand in the shape of the Social Democratic Party. Since the days of its famous “Gotha Programme", so trenchantly denounced by Marx, it had always fought for those reforms, and had even challenged Bismark’s rulings. So the small capitalists joined this organisation in large numbers till the total votes ran into millions.

It is as clear as noon-day that those votes were neither Socialist nor intended to help forward the cause of Socialism. The "acid test" came with the war. Then, as with the Labour Party and the Hyndman section here, the German Social Democratic Party supported this capitalist war on their side.

(From an article by Jack Fitzgerald on the German Elections, Socialist Standard February 1919).

The Human Nature Myth (1969)

From the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

“It won’t work. You can’t change human nature”. How often has the Socialist heard this objection! It is easy enough to answer because it is a catchphrase whose meaning is unclear and whose implications the objector won’t have thought through.

What, first, might “human nature” be? The usual answer is that human beings are greedy and lazy and are out to get as much as they can with the least possible effort. But this should more accurately be called “human behaviour” and few will say that human behaviour doesn’t change. It is easy to show that throughout history and pre-history human behaviour has varied from society to society. It is easy to show too that people don’t in fact act from such simple motives. The whole objection thus falls. If the objector is particularly persistent or particularly foolish, he will try to argue that greed and laziness are built-in human characteristics, that they are part of what is more properly called “human nature”, that is, the biological nature of homo sapiens that distinguishes it from other animal species. But here biological science is insistent: such patterns of behaviour as greed and laziness are not and could not be inherited. Besides, a little thought will show that the idea of greed or laziness has no meaning except in society. A man can have black or white skin independently of society; but he cannot be greedy or lazy except in a social context.

Social science tells us that human behaviour changes. Biology tells us that traits like greed are not built-in and are not transmitted by heredity. So the human nature objection hasn't a scientific leg to stand on. It's a myth. But why does it persist?

There are at least three reasons.

The argument “you can’t change human nature” was developed as an answer to those who wanted social change in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The real purpose was to argue not so much that you can't change human nature as that you shouldn’t try to. Too loose use of the phrase “human nature" to cover human behaviour and psychology dates from this period. Which is not surprising since neither sociology nor biology nor psychology were far developed at that time. Previously thinkers in England and France had worked out a materialist theory of knowledge which saw man as the product of his environment. Change the environment, they said, and you will change human behaviour. Human nature could be improved! This was the message of English and French materialism and was taken up by social reformers everywhere. The reactionary supporters of the old order could only come up with the human nature objection.

Most of these reactionary thinkers were religious and, in the Christian dogma of original sin, they had a ready-made argument. Many of the reformers rejected this dogma; some even were atheists. But religion in preaching that man is born “evil”, "depraved”, "corrupt”, “wicked”, "sinful" and the like is clearly a powerful source of the view that man’s nature would be a bar to Socialism.

The rising middle class in England in the 17th century developed its own ideology (which was transmitted to their colleagues in America by the Pilgrim Fathers). This was part Puritanism and part what has been called "the theory of possessive individualism”. The originator of this theory, in a coherent form, was Thomas Hobbes in his book called Leviathan. Politically, Hobbes was a supporter of the King (Charles II) and an opponent of the middle class. All the same his theory well suited capitalist society. He held that in nature there was a war of all against each and that this was only ended by a contract to set up a government which would restrain everybody, save for the governor or governing class. Abolish the oppression of government, said Hobbes, and all Hell would break loose.

The human nature myth, like the religious dogma of so-called original sin, has long been used as an argument against social reforms, let alone social revolution. Now integrated into the theory of possessive individualism they are part of the ideology by which capitalist society seeks to justify itself.

Human beings are quite capable of co-operating as free and equal men and women, to produce this wealth they need and to run a social system in which the satisfaction of these needs will be the guiding principle. Men are not naturally lazy. Quite the contrary. Working (which after all is only the expenditure of energy) is a biological as well as a social must. Socialists assert that men and women can so organise the conditions of work that they can get pleasure from working and making useful things. Nor are men naturally greedy. Grabbing and hoarding are signs of scarcity and insecurity. These are certainly features of capitalism, but they won’t be of Socialism —the society of abundance. Where men and women have free access to what they need to live and enjoy life, there will be no reason to take more than you need. To do so would only clutter up the place where you live. You might as well leave what you don’t want immediately in the local store, sure in the knowledge that you can always get them whenever you want. And of course human wants are not really insatiable.

Socialism is a practical possibility. Human beings are capable of better things than the priests would have us believe.

Adam Buick

The Shrike is a Smallish Bird (1969)

From the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Shrike, or Butcher-Bird, is a smallish bird of fairly wide distribution throughout the world. Its main colouration is black, white and red. It lives on a varied diet of large insects, small lizards, mammals and birds. Having little holding power in its weak feet these birds impale their living victims upon nearby thorns: then at leisure they tear to pieces their victims in order to feed themselves and their young. So much for a little bit of nature study.

In social life we find something of a parallel. The social shrike is the master class and is also coloured black, white, red, and, in addition, yellow. And its victims? Well during December 1968 one of these, the Melbourne Tramway employees’ union, found itself impaled upon the spike of $1,000 a day fine for every twenty-four hours, or part thereof, of the strike continuation. And bit by bit the union principles, strength and dignity is bitten off while thus impaled. The case upon which we are commenting arises from a dispute over a tram driver who is accused by the Union of scabbing during a stop-work meeting. Male and female conductors refuse to work with him and request that he either be transferred or dismissed. With this request the Tramway Board (another “socialist” institution) refuses to comply. As each conductor thus refuses duty he or she is stood down without pay. Also each one is liable to $100 a day fine for indiscipline. The union, impaled as it is, is quite helpless to organise their undoubtedly superior numbers to aid their individual members subjected to victimisation and isolation.

Here, however, ends the similarity between the Capitalist Shrike and the one of nature. The living victims of nature's Butcher-bird are presumably unwilling to be impaled and then helpless to prevent themselves being torn apart piece meal. Those victims of the Shrike of modern society however, clearly reveal they are willing to allow themselves first to be impaled and then rendered member from member. For in election after election. Federal, State and Council, these workers in their immense superiority of numbers vote for the continuation of the Shrike Victim System—for the capitalist wage labour system. Thus declaring their willingness to continue as the victims of this social drama.

Another difference too, is that the natural Shrike feeds directly off its immediate victims; the social shrike feeds off surplus or unpaid labour of the victim class. This surplus or unpaid labour when suitably transformed into sociably acceptable terms becomes rent, interest, profit, dividends.

Nor is it only the Melbourne Tramways' Union that is impaled upon a $1,000 a day fine for each day of strike action. All Australian Labour unions are similarly threatened and many have experienced this impalement. Some of them so often have been fined this full amount that they are hopelessly indebted to the Commonwealth Government for many thousands of dollars. The Tramway Union itself is financially bankrupt on this account; and this perhaps. is the reason why it is inhibited, apparently disheartened and apathetic. But then of course this goes for all unionism, aggressive or otherwise, which commits itself to maintaining an economic policy where wealth is produced in commodity form, and remains indifferent or antagonistic to the class call of common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution.

The idea of a wagelcss, moneyless society terrifies the victims, up till now at any rate, as much as it does the Shrike. After all, how would the latter get his living without surplus labour to feast upon? We can understand his resistance to social revolution — even though he must speed it on — the Shrike is conscious of class interests. We also understand the resistance of the victims to this same change and this is due to his ignorance of his class position.

While unaltered the Shrike and its victims in nature continue, the social shrike will continue only as long as its social or class victim permit.

C. Peter Furey.

(Socialist Party of Australia).

Letter: Let's Change This Planet (1969)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most people on Earth live in one of two quite different worlds. There is the world of sumptuous palaces for an opulent, parasitical few which the unemployed rich enjoy and there is the world of overcrowded slums for the poor, dispossessed multitudes.

‘Unemployed rich’ may seem an odd phrase at first sight. ‘The unemployed’ is a term used exclusively for poor people who are on the dole, and it signifies disappointment, frustration and financial hardship. But unemployment is the natural state of existence for the really rich—yet to them it is no hardship. Multi-millionaires never have to join a dole queue or submit to a means test. Those indignities have no place in their world. Having to work for wages is a sure sign of social degradation, although no politician would say anything to suggest that fact of life. That is because none of the verbose politicians who spout about the miracles they will work if we vote for them want to change the present social system.

Capitalism is a brutal, deranged social system which splits the human race into two distinct classes: one a tiny, unproductive minority able to wallow in the best of everything because of their ownership of the means of production and their unearned income from investments, and enormous legions of confused, propertyless workers who are restricted to shortages, lack and exploitation in spite of the fact that they are the actual creators of all the world’s real wealth.

The vast majority of people today are wage-slaves. In order to eat they are forced to work for the master class who own and control all the instruments of production. The masses who produce but do not own are robbed by the few who own but do not produce. They are robbed because they are paid in the form of wages only a small part of the value they create when they process raw materials into commodities. The workers must be paid less than the true value of the goods they produce for if they were paid the real value of those goods the master class would not be able to sell them for'a profit. The profit which keeps the robber class in idle luxury come from the unpaid labour of the working class. That is what Capitalism is all about and it cannot work any other way.

Capitalism cannot operate in the interests of the vast mass of Mankind. It is a crazy system which allows an insignificant handful of drones to amass fantastic sums of unearned money while countless millions go cold, hungry and homeless. Capitalism cannot satisfy the needs of the overwhelming mass of humanity because it leaves the means of production—and therefore everything which is produced—in the hands of a privileged minority while the deprived masses who do all the producing can never own more than their wages allow them to huy.

What the poor cannot buy they must do without. If they cannot afford to buy food then they must starve, and Capitalism will let them starve to death outside warehouses which are crammed full of good food which is rotting because the needy do not have the money to purchase it. Profit comes before people. Capitalism decrees that goods which cannot be sold for profit must not be produced, no matter how desirable and necessary they may be in order to make the world a better place for humanity. It also decrees that, at times of so-called glut, goods which cannot be sold must he destroyed as there is no money to be made by giving commodities away. That is why ‘surplus’ food (surplus only to the demands of die market, that is) is burned or dumped into the sea while underprivileged people are dying of hunger.

Capitalism causes unemployment, slums, poverty, famine, crime and war. Those social cankers are built into Capitalist society and cannot possibly be eradicated as long as Capitalism lasts. They are the natural and unavoidable consequences of the money system, the profit motive and the private property basis of society—the three fundamental rocks of Capitalism. War cannot be charmed out of existence by reformist measures such as peace treaties and disarmament agreements. It is spawned by the national economic rivalries inseparable from Capitalism. The structure of society must be altered in order to get rid of the social system which causes all the trouble. History proves that reforms achieve next to nothing—what we need now is a world-wide social revolution.

Instead of goods being produced simply to be sold to make a profit for the Capitalists the privately-owned means of production should be converted to the common property of all Mankind so that everybody can have free access to everything that is produced. That would make money unnecessary as people would have no need to buy what they already owned. The working class would own the goods because they would be the people who had produced them. They produce everything now but Capitalism deprives them of the fruits of their labour and relegates them to wage-slavery. But once production is organised to satisfy human need money will be superfluous and social equality will become a reality for everyone in the world of abundance which science could make possible tomorrow in a different social set-up. And when men have free access to all they need there will not be anything for them to fight over.

Naturally the Capitalists want to keep the system which lets them live off the fat of the land at the expense of others. Therefore they employ every trick in the book to kid the misled masses that Capitalism is the best of all possible systems. Which it is—for the rich. But for the robbed millions who are the only useful, essential members of society Capitalism is a curse.

Unfortunately it is easy to dazzle the unthinking masses with all the ostentatious parading and ceremony the rulers stage for that rascally purpose. The master class knowhow to divert the workers' attention from social conditions to childish irrelevancies. They know that if they doll up a woman in some crown jewels and send her through the streets in a golden coach the population will rush out to cheer and forget all about the rank injustice and contemptible inequity of the system of legalised robbery which degrades them. While the have-nots are hypnotised by shining symbols they are not asking embarrassing questions. It's the old bread and circus stunt.

Man does not steal, cheat, lie and murder because he is tainted with Original Sin or influenced by the Devil. People rob and defraud because our present social system makes it profitable to do so. A moneyless social system would alter all that. It is another dirty lie to say that men make war on each other because killing is part of human nature. It is nothing of the sort, which is proved by the fact that conscriptions laws have to be passed by the master class to coerce the underprivileged to do their dirty work for them. When the robber class disagree amongst themselves about how the loot should be split and the world’s territory carved up they declare war against each other but pretend that the war is for ‘Democracy’ or ‘freedom’. The wage-slaves do not declare wars—they are merely the suckers who march off to fight and die for property and profit which does not belong to them. Wars are always declared by government spokesmen or Great Leaders (and fully approved by the Church), which is appropriate as they are the mouthpieces of the master class in whose interests all modern wars are fought.

There is only one cause of war today: Capitalism. Once that is replaced by a classless, moneyless system of production for use which grants everybody free access to the essentials of life war will cease, but until then human blood will soak the ground wherever Capitalism’s profits are at stake.

D. Shaw

Hull

Ireland's Civil War (1969)

Book Review from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ireland’s Civil War, by Calton Younger. (Muller 50/-.)

Calton Younger gives here a detailed and factual account of the events which finally erupted in a cruel and merciless civil war.

Probably his greatest failing is the identifying of the years from the 1916 Easter Rising to the civil war in 1922 with “revolution'’ and, as he suggests, the inevitability of civil war after “revolution". This may be true of “bloody revolutions" but there was hardly anything revolutionary about the 1916 Rising. James Connolly was the only one of the insurgent leaders who was acquainted with revolutionary ideas but he erroneously believed that an Irish republic and socialist society were compatible, and this, together with the fact that he was an influential leader, probably accounts for why he involved himself in a purely capitalist venture.

The British Government's policy of staggering the executions of the 1916 leaders over a number of days is classed by the author as sheer stupidity. Younger fails to see it as the desperate effort of a ruling class to stamp out dissension from imperialist rule for of course, an independent Ireland would have been a weakness in British defence strategy in the war. The depths to which Lloyd-George, Churchill and the other cabinet ministers were willing to go, were manifest when they sent the dreaded Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries into Ireland to stamp out the raging guerilla war. The I.R.A. could distinguish between British troops and civilians but the British troops, just like the Americans in Vietnam today, often could not distinguish between rebels and other people: when in counter-reprisals they vehemently ravished whole villages and murdered innocent people. This situation was temporarily halted in 1921 when a truce was agreed upon due to pressure inside and outside Westminster.

The negotiations in London (which followed the short-lived peace) between the Irish plenipotentiaries and leading Cabinet Ministers; the reaction of the Republicans to the terms of the Treaty and the civil war that ensued because of the split in the ranks of I.RA, are all described. Various accounts of incidents are given by still-living I.R.A. veterans and much use is made of recently released Cabinet documents. Most of the book tells a sordid story. It should be read by Scottish and Welsh nationalists because it exposes the degradations which the venom of nationalism can lead to.

Patrick Garvey

False Distinctions (1969)

Book Review from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Left or Right: The Bogus Dilemma by Samuel Brittan (Secker and Warburg, 25s.)

For quite different reasons, Samuel Brittan, Economic Editor of the Financial Times, argues two points we have been making for years. First, that the left/right distinction is virtually useless for analysing political views. Second, that the Labour/Tory struggle is, in his own words, 'shadow boxing' and a ‘sham party war' in which differences are exaggerated or manufactured while what they agree on is obscured. Labour and Tory are Tweedledum and Tweedledee and ought, says Brittan, to recognise this.

The terms ‘left' and ‘right' go back to the meetings of the States-General in France in 1789. The nobles sat on the king’s right while the commoners sat on his left. The two sides were divided on the issue of the powers of the king. Throughout the nineteenth century in France and some other European states the left/right distinction was that between republicans and monarchists. Only later did it acquire its present vague meaning as a distinction between the opponents and supporters of capitalism, and it is only since the 1920’s that the terms have been used with reference to politics in Britain.

Confusion has arisen because most of those who claimed to be socialists in fact stood either for reformed capitalism or for state capitalism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always refused to be tagged “leftwing” because of the term’s links with reformism and state capitalist Russia. We are socialists and opposed to those who call themselves the Left. Now others too are realising that the view of the British political scene as the forward line of a soccer team—with the Communists on the Left Wing, Labour at Inside Left, the Liberals at Centre Forward, the Tories at Inside Right, and the fascists on the Right Wing—is irrelevant and silly.

Brittan is concerned that this confusion helps obscure the real issues facing British capitalism. He lists a number of trivial matters like devaluation, the Common Market, East of Suez and planning on which, in his opinion, party shadow boxing delayed the necessary action. He reveals himself as a floating voter unable to choose between Labour and the Tories (though he has probably always voted Labour). We are concerned that this confusion helps obscure the real issue facing the workers: capitalism or Socialism?

Adam Buick

Obituary: Sidney Beck (1969)

Obituary from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Members who remember the familiar figure of our comrade Beck selling the Socialist Standard and other literature at his post in Hyde Park through fair weather and foul, will be sorry to hear that he died in hospital last December. Sidney Beck joined the Party in 1938 though he had been a sympathiser since the early 1920s. He was well-read and was for a number of years, Secretary of our Hackney Branch. "Beck” as he was known simply to other members, spoke several languages and could always lay his hands on any book that was wanted. Many members were encouraged and taught a lot by Beck, and we will remember him with affection and pride.

Adam Buick

Political Prisoners (1969)

From the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prisoner of the Year is one of the world’s most unwanted distinctions. But unpleasant business though it is to get your name in the running for it, there is no lack of candidates for the award.

The Prisoner is selected each year by the International Assembly of Amnesty (in 1968, as it was Human Rights Year, they chose three), from all those all over the world who are “prisoners of conscience”—in other words people who are imprisoned or detained because of political, religious or conscientious opinions or by reason of their colour, race or language.

It is clear that this gives a pretty wide field of selection. Political prisoners exist in all parts of the world from Peru to Malaysia. Leaving aside the obvious places like Russia, we have Burma where hundreds have been held without trial since the coup d'etat in 1962, India which has some two hundred detainees under the Defence of India Rules and, on the other side of that particular conflict, Pakistan which holds several hundred under the Defence of Pakistan Rules. Some of the prisoners in Pakistan have been inside for over ten years.

Among this unhappy mass there are many cases which are outstanding for their harshness and cynicism. In Algeria Bachir Hadj Ali, once secretary of the Algerian Communist Party, is in very bad health after being tortured. He was arrested in 1965. The Cuban government have not tried David Salvador, but he is to serve a thirty year stretch .for his part in the July 26 “Labour Wing”. Ajoy Bhattacharya and Santosh Banerjee have both been held without trial by the Pakistani authorities since 1958.

Political prisoners exist under all sorts of governments. States which profess to be “communist” have them and so do those which claim to be “anti-communist”. Many of the new independent states, now governed by parties which once said they were fighting against the colonial powers for their freedom, are now showing that the word, must not be interpreted too literally. Malawi, Uganda and Indonesia are only three examples of this. Another is Kenya, where the government of Jomo Kenyatta continues to hold, without trial, the Somali politician Yasin Mohamed Ahden, who was actually arrested by the British before Kenya became independent and “free”.

Political prisoners have committed no crime in the usually accepted sense of an assault upon property or people, although there have been famous cases in which they have been charged with “crimes against the people” which, the prosecution has alleged, were intended to have horrific results. (Amnesty refuses to adopt prisoners who advocate acts of violence). Their offence is in either refusing to recognise the authority of the state (like conscientious objectors in countries which insist on compulsory military service) or in being a possible threat to a government’s political hold upon a country.

Thus many political prisoners are themselves politicians— like Patrick Peter Ooko in Kenya, and Chibingwe in Malawi. Perhaps, if they were out of prison and in power, they would themselves put away their opponents. Political imprisonment is in fact a sort of apprenticeship to power and there is nothing new in the prisoner turning gaoler. Kenyatta and Banda are only two who have done this.

There are other prisoners who are not politicians. Many obscure people are suffering for the offence of refusing to conform to a political dictatorship. East Germany imprisons anyone discovered helping people to leave the country illegally. Tunisia, after sentencing medical student Ben Jennet to a savage twenty year stretch, has followed this up with a 14 year sentence on Brahim Razgallah for protesting against it.

All of this may seem on the face of it to be worth protesting about. Amnesty is one of the organisations which concern themselves with this, adopting prisoners, agitating for their release and so on. Amnesty says that it works for “freedom of opinion and religion all over the world”, which brings us down onto the old, familiar grounds of idealism which, however sincere it may be, tries to obscure the basic, material realities of the world. Idealism offers no more than a collection of sickening stories, a desire to do something about them—but a stifling bewilderment about any effective solution.

To look at political imprisonment on the face of it is not enough. What are the basic realities? We might start at the fact that political prisoners are international. Even Britain, which has as much political freedom as any country, roped in the Fascists in 1939—when they were protesting their eagerness to help the war effort of British capitalism—and held them without trial. Mistakenly or not, the government regarded men like Mosley as a political threat.

This suggests that the conditions which cause prisoners of conscience are also international. The world today is dominated by property society—in most cases by its most highly developed form of capitalism. Property society is an affair of privilege, of a minority holding a higher economic and social position than the rest and asserting their superior standing through a coercive State machine.

Whoever controls that state controls power. That is what capitalist politics are all about. In some cases control can be won only through a popular vote, which means that politicians have to try to beat their opponents by means other than imprisonment (by Enoch Powell, for example, menacing Heath with his appeal to the rudest of mass deception). In some—but not all—of such countries there are other legal rights, existing alongside the popular franchise, which make political imprisonment rather difficult for a government to pull off.

But there are other countries which are in a different case. In some—for example South Africa and Rhodesia— the electoral system is rigged with the result that a crushing majority of those with the vote are in favour of the suppression of political freedom. In others there are either no elections, or elections in which effectively only one party can put up candidates. In such countries the acquiescence, apathy or support of the majority enable the government to restrict or even crush the opposition by the simple method of putting away anyone who speaks up against it.

Let us be clear that no one suffering political imprisonment today is a threat to the fundamentals of property society. They are in gaol not because they protest against capitalism but because they oppose the particular clique which at any one time holds power over the system. Some are actually former members of a government which now imprisons them—like Grace Ibingira of Uganda, who was once President Obote's right hand man. Others are religious, like Bishop James Walsh, a Roman Catholic who has been serving a 20 year sentence in China since 1958. Some, like Amnesty Prisoner of the Year Nina Karsow (now free), are patriots; ”... I know for certain,” she wrote to her mother, "that our own country is not just a place on a map. but that it lives within each of us.”

What this means is that if, by some miracle, every political prisoner were suddenly released the whole rotten business would soon start all over again for the simple reason that the cause of it would still be there. There can be only one guarantee for the protection of human liberty and dignity and that is something beyond the horizons of all the individuals and organisations which agitate on behalf of the prisoners. The guarantee is to end the social system which by its very nature, and in fields other than the political, denies freedom and dignity and to replace it with one which treats them as its first concern.

If we say, then, that Socialism will be the society of freedom which will not know such disfigurements as political prisoners we are inviting an obvious question. Why are there no socialists in prison for their opinions? The answer is equally obvious. At the moment Socialism is not a threat to worry a capitalist state. But the socialist movement grows through the developing consciousness among workers—and remember that no government can impose its will upon a consciously unwilling majority. So when Socialism is a threat, and the ruling class would like to do something about it—it will be too late.

Ivan.

(We are grateful for the help which Amnesty gave in the preparation of this article.)

Darkness at Noon (1969)

Book Review from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Great Terror by Robert Conquest, Macmillan, 84s.

Robert Conquest is no friend of Russia and that fact alone will probably be enough for most supporters of the Russian regime to discredit his account of Stalin's purges. 

The one unfortunate fact, for the  tireless Russophiles, is that Conquest's stuff is carefully documented, with even its trivia with testimony. And what is perhaps the most terrifying part of the book ― "casualty figures" of the purges ― computed in part from Russian government population statistics.

It is arguable, whether most of the book was needed. There is little to be  gained from yet another account of the Kirov murder, the trial of Kamenev and Zinoviev, the pitiless system of arrest, interrogation, execution or slow, living death in the labour camps. Most of it has been done, somewhere or other, before.

The casualty figures are another matter. There are of course no official details to go on; it must all be done by combining the evidence of participants ― some of them NKVD officers ― with official statistics and matching it all up with the Census of 1959. Conquest's conclusion, which is staggering but difficult to argue against, is that, as an under-estimation, twenty million were killed ― by execution, in the “collectivisation drive", in  the  camps ― under the Stalin state capitalist regime. 

The Nazis could hardly have improved on this. And for some of the time this wholesale murder was going on, we were told that the Russians were our gallant allies, contented under the solicitous care of Uncle Joe. Henry Wallace, who was then the American Vice-President, visited one of the worst camps in 1944. The place was specially tarted up and Wallace duly found it "idyllic".

This sort of story should make even the most obstinate Tory pause for thought. What happens to a man who fights for power over capitalism? The answer cannot be avoided and the last forty years have given evidence galore. He does the job as the system demands and on those terms everything ― murder, torture, everything ― is justified.

Ivan

How Not To Do It (1969)

Book Review from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak. (Allen Lane, 35s.)

Edward Luttwak is deliberately deadpan about this book. His aim, he says, is to produce something along the same lines as a cookery book which will enable "any layman equipped with enthusiasm—and the right ingredients—to carry out his own coup . . . if, as a result of this book, a greater number of people learn how to carry them out this is merely a step towards democratization of the coup—a fact that all persons of liberal sentiments should applaud."

In fact, the work is a good deal better than his introduction suggests. Although the second half is largely given to a study of the actual mechanics of the coup and the military strategy needed to make it a success, the earlier sections are an absorbing study of the factors which make a coup d'état possible. Much of this is of indirect interest to socialists.

Fortunately, Luttwak does not ruin his analysis by confusing the coup with social revolution. He goes out of his way to stress that the coup is "a seizure of power within the present system". He also recognises that the essential pre-condition for the coup d'état is economic backwardness and the mass political indifference which results from it. Thus, while the December coup in Brazil succeeded because of the lack of political involvement of the mass of peasants and workers, in an advanced industrial country such a seizure of power could only be permanent if it were accepted by the working class. To illustrate this, Luttwak refers to the Gaullist coup of May 1958 in France, which was successful for this reason, and to the parallel attempt by Generals Challe, Salan and others in April 1961. The latter was aborted by the massive resistance of the workers in France.

In the world today every country is to a greater or lesser extent capitalist, having to trim its economy to the world markets—but only in the advanced areas is this achieved thanks to the working class. In the bulk of what is called the "third world" capitalist economies are being developed without any involvement by the mass of the people; except, of course, as beasts of burden—as producers of surplus product. Luttwak has noticed one symptom of this—the fact that, since almost any form of political awareness is confined to a small fraction of the population, the coup d'état comes into its own. On the other hand, in industrialised areas capitalism is maintained precisely because the working class accepts it as the only possible way of running society and uses its votes to express this conviction.

The implication of this for working class intent on capturing political power go deeper than merely exposing the irrelevance of the coup d'état as a strategy for socialists. It means that before socialism can be established the majority of workers must be committed to setting up a new form of society and must have a clear idea of what this involves.

John Crump