50 Years Ago: An innocent abroad (2025)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is no news that Communists are fatheads, but Arthur Scargill is obviously a fathead par excellence. This “Marxist” miners’ leader went on two weeks’ holiday to the “workers’ state” of Bulgaria, and on his return told newspapers how surprised he was at what he found:

Corruption in State-owned shops and restaurants ‘that would have done credit to the Mafia’;

Massive overbooking by State agencies that kept tourists stranded for hours;

A State-Run voucher system of paying for meals that left holiday-makers hungry and out of pocket.

‘It was a disaster’, said Mr. Scargill. ‘I have no intention of ever returning’.

‘If this is Communism they can keep it.’

The report in the Daily Mail on 9th September was supplemented by an article giving further details of holidays and life in Bulgaria. No doubt the Mail’s readers would admit their need for such illumination; but not Scargill, surely? He, after all, has been an advocate of the “workers’ state” and presumably went to Bulgaria because he thought well of the régime.

The tragedy is that workers in Britain have been accepting militant leadership from this simpleton who confesses he didn’t know what he was talking about. He is described as a “Marxist”, and would probably rush about telling everyone of his astonishment if he opened a book by Marx, too.

Let us explain that in the so-called “Communist” countries the workers do not own the means of living, and production is carried on for sale and profit as it is in other countries. Which means you are as likely to be done, if you are a holidaymaker, in Bulgaria’s Sunny Sands as in Torremolinos or Blackpool; and as certain to be exploited, if you are a worker, in Sofia as in Bradford.

Arthur Scargill was open-mouthed because he did not know what either Socialism or capitalism is. Perhaps he will refrain from further utterances until he has found out.

[From the article, 'An Innocent Abroad', Socialist Standard, October 1975]

How Now, Mr. Pritt ? (1937)

From the July 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the various Russian trials, in which the prisoners all confessed many astounding things, including some which were shown to have been untrue, a whole host of simpletons took their stand on the proposition that as the prisoners themselves said these things they must be true, and no other evidence was required to prove them. Mr. Pritt, K.C., according to a Manchester Guardian report of a speech delivered by him at Conway Hall, on September 30th, 1936. said: “The corroboration that the confessions gave each other was such that they could not have been invented stories" (Manchester Guardian, October 1st, 1936). Mr. A. J. Cummings, reviewing a pamphlet by Mr. Pritt, was satisfied with the confessions—“Now all was discovered, and they confessed all” (News Chronicle, October 6th, 1936).

Mr. P. A. Sloan, staunch defender of anything Stalin’s Government says, ridiculed the notion that the confessions could have been “play-acting” (Manchester Guardian, February 3rd, 1937). The Daily Herald correspondent, who attended the trials in January, was quite satisfied that the prisoners were telling the truth.

Now read the following report in the Daily Herald (June 21st, 1937): —

From Our Own Correspondent.

Moscow, Sunday.

Radek, Pyatakov, Zinoviev and other accused men in Moscow’s sensational trials deliberately lied in their confessions in face of death.

Vyshinsky, all-Union Prosecutor, who appeared at the trials, makes this declaration in an official report —“How Enemies Work”—published to-day.

“There was not 50 per cent. of truth in their evidence,” says Vyshinsky.

He pictures experienced Bolshevik revolutionary plotters glibly unfolding fictitious stories before a court consisting of former comrades.

Their intention, says Vyshinsky, was to conceal the extent of their activities and divert suspicion from their confederates by giving an appearance of complete frankness.

“We have become convinced of this after each trial,” asserts Vyshinsky.

So it seems that the Public Prosecutor in Russia does not believe the confessions were true; more than 50 per cent. were false. It remained for his silly English dupes to believe the whole 100 per cent., and to suppose that such things constitute proof in the absence of independent evidence.

P. S.

"Fiesta." — An essay in futility (1949)

From the October 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

A King was once injured in the loins, and as he lay in his bed, he watched his kingdom decline. It is upon this mythological theme that Ernest Hemingway based his recently republished novel, “Fiesta.” His king is an American journalist, his kingdom, vividly portrayed with neither comment nor condemnation, is the degenerate world of the reckless twenties.

Much has already been written about the political and industrial conditions of this decade. Black Friday and the general strike have been analysed and discussed, and with them the miserable failure, so far as the working class were concerned, of the first two Labour Governments; but so far as the social relativity to economic conditions is concerned, another aspect has been largely neglected.

The first world war had resounding effects upon the social set up of capitalist society. By compromise, or in many cases, by complete surrender, many members of the landed aristocracy had managed to retain a great deal of their wealth and power. Still was it largely their prerogative to send their sons to the universities and thence into the diplomatic corps, the army or the church. Still the sons of the bourgeoisie were found a place in the family business. In both cases the daughters were taught to sing or play, “ finished,” “ brought out ” and used as “ pawns ” or even “ queens ” on the social chessboard.

But the war, which introduced many scientific discoveries, with all accompanying horrors, brought a great step up in production. Thousands of pounds were made overnight. New powers rose in the land. The little fish were swallowed by the sharks. And the war had to be paid for. Taxes rose. The landed aristocracy, living upon ground rents and family fortunes, suffered at the hands of the industrial capitalists. Many of them were uprooted.

The post war world revealed social changes. School, the army, the family estate or business was a sequence broken. The school, alright—the army, too true—but then what? The family estate was now the business of the “nouveau rich” or even the National Trust, and where was the place of the “master’s” son in a vast industrial organisation?

And the position of the daughters had changed as well. This war, dwarfing its predecessors in intensity, had called for the participation to some degree of every human being. The sea barrier, crumbling all the time under capitalism, broke down almost completely. So far as the women of the working class were concerned it merely meant that they became more competition for their jobless menfolk, but for the women of the capitalist class it made them as independent as their parasitic brothers.

This collapse of tradition made their world seem hopeless. Those things that had previously existed to occupy their minds had vanished. Pleasure became their sole pursuit. The social columns were filled with details of extravagant parties. Hostesses were judged by the lavishness and originality of their balls. One achieved passing fame by ordaining that all her guests turn up in baby clothes. The rag-time band, the bottle party, the night club, the stunt, Paris, the Riviera, Eastern tours, was the fad of the layabouts. Drug addiction and immorality reached their highest peak. They dabbled in Freudian psychology and psycho-analysis. Fantastic behaviour was excused as “ self-expression,” perversion as reflexes. “The colonel’s lady and Rosy O’Grady,” as Hemingway parodies icily, “are lesbians under the skin.”

Such conditions and ideas are bound to reflect themselves in the art of the generation. New schools in literature and art portrayed the expensive futility of this generation. The harsh sexuality of D. H. Lawrence, the infathomability of James Joyce, the fatuous writings of unmourned contemporaries, the cubist, surrealistic and futuristic schools of art are all evidence of these trends. “I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas ”—these stark horrible words of T. S. Eliot, the era’s major poet, are typical. "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"—again Eliot.

Forever seeking something new their hungry eyes turned to Russia. What was taking place there? Bolshevik propagandists spoke glibly of the intellectual, of the intelligentsia, of the new culture. Did these words not apply to them? Many of them thought so, and from this womb of jargon emerged one of the most pernicious creations of our time—the left wing intellectual who was going to lead the suffering workers by their noses to what they vaguely referred to as “emancipation.” To further this aim they founded little magazines, not to propagate understanding but to dangle cultural carrots, and under the heading of “reviews” to flatter their own authors’ uselessness.

These were the 1920’s—for the working class a period of unemployment, industrial dispute and lockout; to the capitalist class, especially its younger members, a period of re-organisation and re-settlement. The slump of 1931 put a brake on their activities. So ignorant are they of their own system of society that they were severely shaken and many of them even believed that the system which kept them idle was on the verge of collapse. Many workers, by the way, thought so too. The Socialist Party of Great Britain was not so optimistic. We pointed out that the system would not just collapse, that a force was operating within it that would not only bring about its downfall, but be ready with a new system of society to replace it; that as that force was not ready yet the system would eventually right itself. Time has proved us correct.

But in retrospect we can draw useful lessons from this age. The working class are slated by the bishops and told by the Bible bashers that their licentious habits and immoral practices are the root cause of their poverty. These people do not, or at least do not want, to recognise that it is the working class who are most obedient to the morality of this system of society. After earning or seeking to earn a living they have in the main neither the time nor the energy to do otherwise. It is only when a class is completely divorced, as were they also in ancient Rome, from all useful work that their minds turns to these excesses.

And it is the working class who by their lack of political understanding keep these people idle. Contrast this sterile opulence with your poverty and usefulness. They are linked. Ask yourselves why? The Socialist Party of Great Britain can provide the answer. This is capitalism wherein a small class own the means whereby you live. They neither toil, nor do they spin. You do that! They reap the benefits. The solution? A new system of society wherein these things are the property of all mankind. Under such a system not only would your material needs be satisfied but your culture would be a reflection of happiness instead of misery. It can come just when the working class desire it. So read, learn, realise and band with us.

Overthrow this sterile curse!

Ronald.

The Dean and the Chop Sticks (1952)

From the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

If we charitably concede that Dr. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, is, as he claims, a devout and peace-loving Christian, filled with loving-kindness for all humanity, anxious to promote happiness and to avoid violence and war, it is only possible to do so on the assumption that he is capable of self-deception and mental blindness to the point of absurdity. This assumption is, however, an easy one, for the Dean’s public utterances over a long period have shown him to be naive almost beyond belief, highly susceptible to flattery, with an unparalleled capacity to be misinformed on the economic and political questions he studies and writes about and a pathetic readiness to believe the most incredible stories without, or against, evidence when once his emotional interest has been aroused. At one time he espoused the currency mumbo-jumbo of the credit creationists, at another he was backing the idea of a communist Britain, with the present monarch at the helm, and as member of the Editorial Board of the communist Daily Worker he was able to square his Christian doctrines with that journal’s barely veiled campaign of national hatred against Americans. He has long sought to reconcile the irreconcilable, by holding that Marxist materialism is compatible with Christian mysticism, though it must be said in excuse that he was in this matter merely a gullible dupe of two-faced communist propaganda. His principal published contribution to political confusion has, of course, been his “Socialist Sixth of the World,” in which, against all evidence, including much that he provides in the book, he maintains that Russian State capitalism is its opposite. Socialism. He easily took in his stride the notion that dictatorship is democratic provided it happens in Russia. In recent times he has been active in trying to show why the Russian war preparations and glorification of the weapons of destruction are quite different from identical manifestations in other countries, and has achieved particular prominence by proclaiming his belief in the Russo-Chinese Governments’ propaganda about germ warfare in Korea and China.

Here let us clear the air by stating the obvious about the use of germ warfare. Governments at war—all governments —will use any weapon that they think will help them to gain the ascendancy over their opponents. The Dean would doubtless assent to this general proposition, but with the exception that he does not believe this of the Russian government and its allies because they say they are peace lovers. To which, of course, there is a brutally simple answer, For what purpose does the Dean think the Russian government makes atom bombs if not for the purpose of using them?

The Dean is equally naive about war propaganda. Words are a weapon of war, used to stimulate die home front and weaken the enemy. The truthfulness of the words is irrelevant except that some experts in war propaganda hold the view that propaganda that is built up on some truthful elements is more effective than total untruths.

Among recent efforts of the propagandists of Russia and her satellites have been the Colorado beetles said to have been dropped by American planes beyond the Iron Curtain to destroy the potato crop, the dropping of poisoned food in Albania, British poisoned cannon balls in the Crimean War of a century ago, and alleged dropping of lepers by British troops into' North Korea. Bv contrast, the Daily Worker's horror at the sending of “savage dogs” from Britain was a puny effort. The only story that has really justified its use is that of the germ-infected flies and fleas said to have been showered down on the Koreans and Chinese. The Dean believes this to be true mainly because it is vouched for by certain Christian bodies in China, and though he can, it seems, stomach all the horrors of war waged by “conventional ” weapons he cannot condone germs.

Since we know that all governments when at war will stop at no horror, the most pertinent point made by the Dean’s opponents is that researches into germ warfare by Western Powers have produced nothing likely to be at all effective. This—if true—would carry more weight than all the denials, and as it happens the Dean confirms this. He denies that the germs alleged to have been dropped have had any appreciable effect because a simple remedy has been evolved. He told a Press Conference on 8th July “how the little Chinese, when germs had been dropped, formed sanitary cordons in the fields and went about 'collecting the germs with chop sticks’ and popping them into bottles.” (Manchester Guardian, 9th July, 1952.)

So effective is this that, according to the Dean, “the direct effect of germ warfare will be a rapid lowering of the mortality rate with consequent rise in population.”

The logic of his conclusion is perhaps open to question since lowering the mortality rate due to germs can hardly increase the population, unless indeed the children also collect germ-laden insects native to the countryside as well as those dropped by planes; but the Dean’s belief is clear.

If, therefore, we are to believe the Dean his course is obvious. He should now open a campaign for the abolition of dangerous weapons like rifles, artillery, tanks, high explosive bombs, etc., etc., and get the governments to agree to fight wars only with germs. “ The germ, the whole germ and nothing but the germ.” Then, with our issue of chopsticks and bottles we shall all be safe and sound in a third world war and shall all live to bless the Dean of Canterbury.

One other aspect of the battle of the germ deserves notice. His fellow Christians in Britain have denounced his lack of patriotism and sorrowed over his absence of any critical faculty that would deter him from accepting statements on trust even from fellow Christians in China. But why should anyone expect a Dean, nurtured in the bosom of the Christian church, to be able dispassionately to weigh the evidence of what is alleged to have happened this year in the Far East? Are not all Christians taught to accept on faith astonishing stories of wonders and miracles supposed to have taken place in the Middle East nearly 2,000 years ago?

Edgar Hardcastle

Spycatchers (2022)

Book Review from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

A good number of years ago the branch of the Socialist Party I’m a member of was holding its meetings in a room in a pub on the edge of Swansea town centre. We would advertise our fortnightly Monday meetings via posters, leaflets and in the local daily paper. When I arrived at the pub early for one of the meetings and stood at the bar, the landlady informed me, quite innocently, that a detective had been there asking what we were doing. I thanked her for telling me and suggested that, if he came again, she might tell him that our meetings were open to everyone, nothing was hidden and he was perfectly free to find out by attending. She thanked me and we heard nothing more, but at the time it reminded me of conversations members sometimes had about being spied on, either by having their telephone tapped or by someone from the Special Branch attending meetings covertly or even infiltrating the Party by becoming members.

I’d always wondered about this, but on balance thought it was unlikely to be happening. After all, if even a small number of such people had attended our meetings or otherwise found out what we were about, surely they would quickly realise that we didn’t pose a threat to ‘national security’ in the sense that the Security Services understood it. While it’s true that we are ‘dissidents’, we have never supported one government or state against another and we have never advocated any kind of violence. Yet that incident couldn’t but shift my thinking a little and what now, many years later, has shifted it even more is a recently published book entitled Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century by David Caute (Verso, 2022, 404 pp.). It’s a book that draws on official MI5 documents released to the National Archive and so publicly available which provide startling insights into the enormous efforts (and massive resources) put into tracking the activities and affiliations of an extraordinarily wide range of people who, over most of the 20th century, were suspected of being sympathetic to or interested in regimes deemed to be enemies of the British state (largely the Soviet Union) or were seen as constituting a possible ‘threat to national security’.

Threat to national security?

The main thing that switched on the light of suspicion in the minds of the security men and women (mainly men) of MI5 (or Special Branch, as its police service was called) was any connection whatever to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) or to anyone associated with it. While it’s true that the Communist Party was in thrall to Moscow and in effect the British arm of the Soviet regime during most of the years of its existence and some of the individuals targeted by MI5 were members of the CPGB, many were not and some had only peripheral connections to it or to any of its members or sympathisers. But MI5 did not, as David Caute’s book shows, stop at the CPGB. It extended its investigations to any other organisations it considered potentially ‘subversive’, for example to small left-wing groups who were not actually supportive of the Stalinist Soviet regime and in fact were disciples of Stalin’s arch-enemy, Leon Trotsky. Their investigation also extended to trade unions, to anti-colonial national independence supporters, and, from the 1970s onwards, to the IRA. Given MI5’s apparent failure, as made clear in this book, to distinguish between different kinds of potential ‘subversives’ , it seems quite likely that not just those small Trotskyist groups but any group with the word ‘socialist’ in its name was being targeted, and perhaps still are today – even if, as the author points out, much more of their attention nowadays is likely to be focused on newly perceived threats to national security such as militant Islam and, maybe, a resurgent non-Soviet Russia.

But what of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the detective asking questions in that Swansea pub? Surely anyone attending a single meeting or reading just one Party pamphlet or issue of the Socialist Standard would have understood that we didn’t pose an immediate, violent, non-democratic threat to the British state but that our aim was to openly spread socialist ideas among workers with a view to a socialist society being established democratically through the ballot box once the majority had come to understand those ideas? Yes, but what emerges from the pages of this book is that neither the security system nor its operatives stood out for their brightness or intelligence. Despite countless and ongoing phone taps, mail interceptions, buggings, burglaries, physical surveillance and even infiltration by ‘moles’, the released papers investigated by David Caute show that they seemed to find it difficult to work out whether individuals or organisations constituted genuine, plausible threats to ‘national security’ or whether they just happened to be friends or associates of those who might have ‘subversion’ in their minds and might quite innocently have found themselves in particular places at particular times. So, as we learn, ‘the net cast was incredibly broad’ and ‘guilt by association was paramount’, even if that association was sometimes imagined rather than real. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that the Socialist Party and its members, though they could not be sensibly categorised as any kind of immediate threat to national security, should be (and probably still are) lumped together with those who perhaps could be seen as some kind of threat – even if of course most of them weren’t.

Incompetence and bungling

The result of all the glaring incompetence recorded in this book (referred to by the writer with typically entertaining wry commentary as ‘the stumbling confusion of M15 minds’) is that most of the targeting of potential spies came to nothing, simply because they weren’t spies and never constituted any feasible threat to the British state, while the real spies, such as Burgess, Maclean, Blunt and Philby, operated for many years before their activities became known. The lenses of MI5 were clouded partly because it was staffed at the top by out-of-touch former military and colonial officers and its agents on the ground, the ‘Special Branch’ operatives, were, as already noted, simply not very bright. They often included manifestly irrelevant and sometimes unintentionally comic details in their reports. Surveillance of the home of poet C. Day Lewis, for example, produced such vital information as ‘seldom wears a hat, not altogether smart appearance in dress’, and the agent reporting from Harwich on the historian Christopher Hill returning from Russia wrote: ‘He has the appearance of a communist; but his baggage, which was searched by HM Customs, did not contain any subversive literature.’ Charlie Chaplin came under investigation but was deemed to be ‘a progressive or radical rather than communist’, even though it was widely known, as the book points out, that ‘Chaplin had long been an out-and-out fellow-traveller of Stalin’s Russia’. The contents of the papers examined here also reveal MI5 culture as highly bigoted and in particular, perhaps predictably, racist and anti-semitic. One memo quoted states that ‘the chief Bolshevik leaders are not Russians but Jews who carefully hide their real names’. Another report talks about a suspect’s home being visited by ‘a number of young men who have the appearance of Communist Jews’, while an uncle of the historian and Communist Party member Eric Hobsbawm is described as ‘sneering, half Jew in appearance, having a long nose’.

Intellectuals and others

Yet what we have in this study is only a small taste of everything MI5 has got up to over the years. That is firstly because the records made publicly available only cover people already deceased, and secondly because this study focuses only on ‘intellectuals’, (eg, writers, artists, scientists, historians, politicians, actors, musicians, lawyers), for the most part well-known ones (eg, John Berger, Benjamin Britten, Jacob Bronowski, Cecil Day-Lewis, Michael Foot, Eric Hobsbawm, Doris Lessing, Ewan McColl, George Orwell, J.B. Priestley, Paul Robeson, Stephen Spender, E.P Thompson). Yet, despite the 200+ suspect ‘intellectuals’ covered, many records relating to deceased individuals have, as the author tells us, not been released (without any reason being given) and there is significant redaction of some of those that have been. So who knows how much other bungling, how many other dead ends would be revealed if the totality of security records were available, especially if those also included people still alive? And who knows whether, if the net were cast wider than those the authors see as ‘intellectuals’, suspicions many other people have had about being spied on over the years would be confirmed? And who knows whether there would not be reference to the Socialist Party and any covert investigations carried out over the years on both the organisation and its members, living or dead? From what we find here, there very likely would.

It should be added that, despite the vast majority of this activity leading nowhere in particular and being a pale shadow of the McCarthyite witchhunt that took place in the US in the 1950s where intense persecution took place of anyone deemed to be or to have been in any way associated with ‘communism’, MI5 spying did nevertheless have negative consequences for some in the shape, for example, of difficulty in finding or keeping employment or being refused entry to or residence in Britain if you were a non-British subject. And in some cases, when spying was proved, prosecution did lead to prison sentences, such as the 10 years given to physicist Alan Nunn May (he served 6½).

All this took place and was sanctioned under both Conservative and Labour governments, with Caute’s book highlighting the particular emphasis put on this work by the immediate post-war Labour government under Clement Attlee, who in 1947 introduced a new more stringent vetting system. One of the results of this – perhaps ironic – was that a not insignificant number of Labour Party politicians, even leading ones such as Harold Wilson and Tony Benn, found their way on to the ‘red list’ and the author of this book has discovered that others still living (eg, Harriet Harman) have unreleased files against their names.

The BBC and democracy

The BBC was complicit too. David Caute dedicates a whole chapter, ‘The BBC Toes the Line’, to illustrating how, until recent times at least, the BBC was ‘up MI5’s armpit’, functioning as a servile collaborator of the Secret Services. It was, as he calls it, ‘a semi-covert department of state’, which even carried out its own extensive vetting procedures on those within it or seeking to enter it to check whether there was any sniff of ‘subversion’ about them. This led, for example, to the BBC cancelling a planned series of radio talks on atomic power scheduled to be given by a listed MI5 ‘suspect’, the celebrated scientist Jacob Bronowski.

Finally any security set up, any ‘spy industry’ involves a colossal squandering of resources, human and material, and, as David Caute’s book uncovers, MI5 was no exception. It should be added however that this kind of waste is an inevitable function of a social system that pits capitalist classes and governments of whatever kind (even those that may falsely call themselves ‘communist’, ‘socialist’ or ‘Marxist’) against one another in the battle for political and economic control of the world’s resources. But it also throws significant light on the severe limitations that the system, even in so called ‘liberal democracies’, inevitably imposes, via institutions like MI5, on freedom of speech and free exchange of ideas and thought. In the end capitalism, whether it takes the form of state control or a relatively unfettered market, needs state secrecy to assist the national interests of each country’s wealth holders in their never-ending quest for profit as they compete on the world market with those elsewhere who own and control the world’s wealth.

Howard Moss

"Rake's Progress" (Political Version) (1946)

From the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

The majority of people know Mr. Strachey as Minister of Food. There is a minority who have come to regard him as an exponent of Marxism as well. Indeed, Tom Driberg, M.P., in Reynolds' (1/6/46), said that it was as a Marxian economist that he approached the Labour front bench. That a copy of Marx’s “Capital” leaves Mr. Strachey’s bookshelves when invited to Cabinet discussions is doubtful. Nevertheless, in an article in the Daily Herald (28/5/46) on Mr. Strachey, Mr. Francis Williams resolutely refused to convey any suggestion of a Marxist skeleton in the cupboard of Mr. Strachey’s political past and merely commented "He wrote able and bitter political works, some of which have been regarded as minor classics of the Left.” In these minor classics Mr. Strachey developed major attacks on the Labour Party. In the ”Coming struggle for power” (p. 338) he accused them ”of laying down the working-class organisation necessary for Fascism.” Theorists like G. D. H. Cole, who, he alleged, believed in a form of controlled high-wage-paying capitalism, he charged with having the same political objectives as the Fascist Corporate State. His now somewhat uncomfortable prognostication of Mr. Morrison was that he envisaged a Whitehall or Smith Square controlled capitalism, adding that the difference between Mr. Morrison’s views and those of G. D. H. Cole were merely one of emphasis and mode of expression. His own party he summed up as—“Labour Party rotten before it was ripe” (“The Nature of Capitalist Crisis,” p. 341-352). From the Herald's viewpoint such a skeleton is best kept under lock and key. It was left to the New Statesman to frivolously twitter “Mr. Strachey’s series of Socialist studies must have been the one brilliantly successful attempt to translate Marxism into the King’s English.” While the King’s English reputation of the New Statesman is deservedly high, their qualifications to pronounce on Marxism is notoriously low. It is, of course, Mr. Stracliey’s Marxism which is in question.

Mr. Strachey’s exit from the Conservative Party into the Cloud-Cuckooland of I.L.P. politics, his pre- Fascist Mosley associations and monetary reform theories, are without significance apart from confused thinking. His Marxist reputation rests largely on the fact that via the Gollancz Press he spread and popularised Stalinist fairy-tales of Socialism in Russia for political adolescents of the vaguely termed middle class. Ironically enough it was the Fabian anti-Marxist Webbs who were his intellectual paramours in all this, their work, ‘‘Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation,” his authority. (“The Theory and Practice of Socialism,” p. 49.) The Public Hangman is not usually asked to write a thesis on the need for the abolition of Capital Punishment. Fabianism, whose high priests were the Webbs, is merely State Capitalism, and it was G. B. Shaw who, on returning from a visit to Russia, proclaimed, “The Bolsheviks have only realised the Fabian Programme.” The Webbs’ work on Russia was then but the priestly blessing of their own creed. The "Marxist” Strachey appears as the uninvited acolyte in the Fabian temple.

It is not surprising, then, that he hailed the new Russian Constitution (direct vote and secret ballot) as a super Democracy, quoting Soviet leaders’ views that a classless society was coming into being (‘‘Theory and Practice of Socialism,” p. 148), although admitting (p. 165) that hitherto the illiteracy of the Russian population had prevented it. Later, Engels is quoted to show that the State is an instrument of ruling-class coercion. The growth of Soviet State bureaucracy indicates, then, a classless society’s need for increasing ruling-class coercion. Leaders, however, were chosen in Russia through long and searching apprenticeship in the Communist Party (p. 163) and were controlled far more effectively than those of the capitalists. It is this, he said, which made working-class control unique. The carefully controlled “chosen” were later liquidated as wreckers, spies and Fascist criminals. Truly this form “of working-class control” was unique. In the section, the Economic System (‘‘Theory and Practice of Socialism”), Mr. Strachey heavily underscored his ignorance of the nature of Socialist society. To Marxists, Socialism is the democratic ownership of the sources of production. But not only will the producers control the instruments of Labour, they will also determine the character and manner of the productive process by which the products of their labour are turned out. Mr. Strachey simply denies this. For him, Socialism is planned production par excellence, the Soviet model its working hypothesis. For common ownership he substitutes a Planning Authority which would control and decree wealth production and distribution, quantitatively and qualitatively. His quick phrase that the Planning Authorities’ conscious and deliberate decisions will be set up and controlled by the community (p. 42) is a pure verbal concession. Ownership and control of wealth production are inseparably integrated; thus the non-control by the wealth producers must entail non-ownership as well, and the workers in Mr. Strachey’s scheme would he as effectively divorced from the means of production as they are now. Mr. Strachey’s “Marxist” production for use suspiciously resembles Stuart Chase's “Economy of Abundance.” Both agree on the economic ideal of maximisation of wealth distribution and centrally organised control. Stuart Chase saw it as a means of continuing Capitalism. Mr. Strachey mistook it for Socialism.

Inevitably, then, all the economic categories of capitalist society reappear in Mr. Strachey’s new one, viz., trade, markets, wage labour, etc. in deference to the new social forces they are called Socialist. Mr. Strachey assures us that Socialism will have an unlimited market, but any Marxist Economic primer could have informed Mr. Strachey that the market is the economic mechanism whereby a profit-making society (Capitalism) merely realises the profits that are created in the productive sphere by exploitation in the form of wage labour. An unlimited market would then presuppose unlimited profits and, of course, unlimited exploitation. A desirable but hitherto unrealisable capitalist ideal. Production of value and surplus value is inherent, then, in Mr. Strachey’s “Socialist Society”; just as in “The Only Socialist Country,” profitability of Soviet enterprise to get higher levels is constantly being stressed by Stalin. Thus the productive limits of such an economy would be set by this profitability principle with its concomitant features of mass overproduction and unemployment. In substance, the difference between all this and a highly developed monopoly Capitalism or State Capitalism is less than the shadow of a ghost’s shadow.

Mr. Strachey thought that inventing, say, a working model of how a planned economy might work in America or here avoids our discussing Socialism in the abstract (“Theory and Practice of Socialism,” p. 29). Actually, it avoids discussing Socialism altogether. Only the theoretically incompetent would pose such a proposition. Socialism cannot be discussed in the abstract because it is itself the historic product and consequence of the actual concrete conditions of present society. True, Socialism will have its technical as well as economic problems (Strachey substituting technical re-organisation for an economic revolution in productive relations confused the two), but these can only be solved by the conscious participation of the majority, consistent with the prevailing ideas and genuine social needs—existing at that time. Socialism cannot, then, by its very nature be a sum of ready-made recipes imposed from above by a Planning Authority. Socialism, because it is an historical process, provides not only the conditions but the means for its own realisation and fulfilment, thus demonstrating its scientific worth over blue-printed Utopias. Mr. Strachey, on his own showing, is a Utopian.

Mr. Strachey did tell us that a knowledge of Marxism avoids our becoming the dupes of capitalist planning. Informed by such knowledge, he supported the idea of Popular Front government with a planned programme of social measures. Anyone refusing to co-operate in the formation of this get-together Mr. Strachey stigmatised with the sin of sectarianism. Out of all the political sinners, our sin was the most scarlet. Of our party, he said they neither attempt nor wish to attempt to work in the Labour movement (”What Are We To Do,” p. 909). Had we campaigned for and on behalf of co-operation with the Labour Party a little previously, Mr. Strachey might have hissed "Social Fascists.” He. added that our sole purpose, like religious bodies, was to provide subjective comfort and consolation to our members. Yet Mr. Strachey, in attempting to account for the failure of any real working-class political achievement, had to resort to the expediency of using a S.P.G.B. principle—that working- class knowledge is the essential condition for working-class emancipation—in order to show why this must necessarily be so. In ‘‘The Nature of Capitalist Crises” (p. 347) he admits that lack of working-class understanding leads workers to give their energies, even their lives, hopelessly trying to achieve what is inherently impossible, and finally becoming dupes and blind drudges for talented adventurers. Mr. Strachey unconsciously, it seems, presented the working class with a truly tragic Hobson’s Choice, but at least it concedes us the advantage of providing subjective comfort to our own members rather than material comfort to allegedly "talented adventurers.”

But all this was in the past. Came the war; the second imperialist war, which Mr. Strachey’s Marxist knowledge enabled him to predict with certainty (“The Nature of Capitalist Crisis,” p. 960). What he forgot to predict was that he would support it. At the beginning Russia was outside of it and his former Communist Party allies were violently, even if temporarily, proclaiming it as ”a war between robber nations for world domination.” Mr. Strachey was thus faced with a conflict of loyalties between his own fatherland and adopted one. It was then Mr. Strachey discovered Soviet totalitarianism. He even discovered in the same sentence that “it (Soviet totalitarianism) has not hitherto turned out to be of a totally different character from other totalitarianisms ” (“The Betrayal of the Left,” p. 201).

It is true that the Dictatorship versus Democracy issue (p. 204) is complicated for Mr. Strachey by the fact that the "Socialism” which he supported existed only in the form of a totalitarianism to which he was opposed; and the capitalism which he opposed possessed the democracy which he supported. So Mr. Strachey decided to burn his Russian boats by declaring (on p. 205) "that the enforcement of totalitarianism was a catastrophe from which the world might never recover.”

Nevertheless, the inevitability of war did not necessarily guarantee Allied victory. At times there were difficulties. In an article in the Observer (2/6/46) on Mr. Strachey it is mentioned that a critical moment in the development of British bombing policy had been reached. Heavy raids on German cities, causing heavy civilian casualties among German civilian women might, it was thought, rouse British public objection. But Mr. Strachey was standing by. Says the Observer:

“Strachey was put on the air. Gently he took the minds of his listeners off the receiving end of the bombing attacks and fixed it on the courage of the crews and the plans behind the attack. So the outcry feared by Bomber Harris never came.” 

Consequently, it seems, neither did any bombing respite for German women and children, as the possible result of public sentiment. Mr. Strachey had made a vital contribution. "Mr. Strachey believed in bombing,” says the Observer, "and developed Bomber Command faith with the same invincible logic that had gone before to 'Revolution by Reason,’ the Communist Party and the Popular Front.” The Spectator, once commenting on Mr. Strachey’s “The Coming Struggle for Power,” said "He had established a range of social, intellectual and political contacts which were likely to remain a record.” A range which includes Marxism and Mass-bombing is a record and should remain one.

That Mr. Strachey still accepts the "Marxist” inevitability of war seems to be evidenced in the House of Commons debate (12/3/46). Speaking on the future structure and character of the R.A.F., he said:

"Ultimately it would have to he decided whether the long-range bomber component of the R.A.F. was to be designed primarily for existing types of chemical explosives or atomic explosives.”

It would seem that on many an occasion in the Labour Party a left-wing Mrs. Gamp creates a right- wing Mrs. Harris, not only to give the lady a piece of his mind, but as a useful medium for proclaiming one’s political virtues. As in the case of Dickens’ Mrs. Harris, she becomes after a time an embarrassment to her creator. She is then allowed to quietly lapse into the obscurity from which she emerged. In Mr. Strachey’s case she may have become a war fatality instead—a victim of that mass-bombing from the British, which, from the British side, he supported with such faith and invincible logic.

Ted Wilmott

Is Russia Socialist? (Concluded) (1943)

Book Review from the July 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

Another teaching of Socialism ignored by Hewlett Johnson and the Bolsheviks is closely bound up with the above; Socialism can be established only when the working class are ripe for it. The development of capitalism creates a world-wide working-class with identical interests, and presents it with problems the solution of which requires the abolition of capitalist society and the establishment of Socialism. Not for any other class is the task of accomplishing the Socialist revolution! But to achieve Socialism, it does need, not a handful of workers, but the majority of them, class-conscious and with an understanding of what Socialism is. Marx and Engels deal with this point in their “Communist Manifesto,” as Hewlett Johnson must know. They write: 

“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the conscious movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority.” 

This was penned in 1847. Nor the founders of Scientific Socialism change their minds on this point. On the contrary. After many more years of experience and study, Engels wrote about this question of “majority or minority,” His words make it plain that he was convinced that only a class-conscious majority of workers could achieve Socialism. “As conditions have changed for warfare,” he writes, “so not less for the class struggle. The period for sudden onslaughts, of revolutions carried out by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where the question involves the complete transformation of the social organisation, there the masses must be consulted, must themselves have already grasped what the struggle is about, and what they stand for.” “This is what the history of the last fifty years has taught us. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long and persistent work is needed …” Thus Engels in the last thing he wrote: The Preface to “Class struggles in France.”

The point Engels makes above is a fundamental of Scientific Socialism. But the Dean ignores it. He believes that a handful of men with some knowledge of the trends of history and with determination can lead the masses from a semi-mediaeval system direct to Socialism – that society which needs for its establishment a working class desirous of Socialism and organised politically to achieve it and which needs also, as Stalin said, “a high productivity of labour” (p. 209). The Bolsheviks won the support of the peasants and power with their “Bread, Peace and Land” programme. And the Dean believes Socialism has been achieved in this way.

According to Hewlett Johnson, Russia is a classless state. This does not mean, however, that its citizens enjoy economic equality for, to quote from his book, the classless state “was never intended to mean strict equality, save at the end of a very long process. It left freedom, of instance, for inequality of wage.”

Thus again the Dean distorts the teachings of Socialism. In the first place, Socialist writers have shown that with the end of classes, the state will disappear, since it is only necessary where class-rule obtains. The state arose with the private property and the growth of an exploiting and exploited class. When private property is abolished – and classes cease to exist – the state will have no function left and will wither away. It is strange that the Dean does not know this considering that he claims to have studied Socialism, especially since the state is dealt with by Engels in his “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific” – one of the most widely-read of Socialist classics. The Dean uses a useless phrase when he talks of “the class-less state.”

Secondly, Socialism does mean economic equality, in spite of all Hewlett Johnson may say to the contrary. It involves the abolition of the wages system, and the creation of a society wherein every member has free access to the means of life.

Now, in Russia, of course, the worker has not “free access to the means of life.” There exists in Russia, as elsewhere, money, invested in Government bonds, buying and selling and other paraphernalia of capitalism. This being so, we cannot see the point when we read: “The Soviet plan stands in vivid contrast to the planless world of capitalism … where if I possess money I can buy; if not, I must continue in unrelieved want” (p. 89). In Russia, as in other countries, those with large incomes have the advantage; as in other countries, the rich will see they are comfortably housed, well fed and pleasantly entertained. The poor in Russia, like their fellows in all capitalist countries, will have to make do with shoddy.

Certainly Russia has its privileged section of the population and they will buy (because they can afford to do so) the bulk of the luxury articles which the average worker cannot afford. These privileged people are the party officials, technical experts, writers, doctors, lawyers, etc. Some of these people receive incomes a hundred times bigger than that of the average worker. With the legality of inheritance in force, accumulation of wealth is to-day bound to be taking place in Russia among the wealthy. They are the exploiters, and the Dean is wrong when he says (p. 282) “exploitation of man by man is entirely abolished.” They can obtain their big incomes only out of the wealth produced by the workers.

It is not surprising, then, that the Socialist slogan, “from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs,” was thrown overboard by the Bolsheviks in 1936 Constitution, and replaced by the slogan, “From each according to his ability and to each according to the work done.” These Russian exploiters claim that their work is more specialised, more important, more skilled than that of the ordinary workman. Capitalists of other countries have argued the same way. “We are entitled to profits, because we have to think the thing out.”

Before leaving the Dean’s misrepresentations of Socialism, we must draw the reader’s attention to the fact that he has distorted the meaning of Socialism itself. In this respect, he has again followed the Bolsheviks, who now propagate that Socialism is a transitional stage between capitalism and communism. Socialism never had this meaning until the Bolsheviks found it convenient to foist it into the word. For Marx and Engels, especially after the events caused the disappearance of “Utopian Socialism” just after the middle of last century, Socialism and Communism were synonymous terms. Hence the title of Engels’ masterpiece (which the Dean should read), “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.” In his Preface to “The Communist Manifesto,” written in 1890, Engels makes it clear that he nor Marx had in mind what the Bolsheviks mean when the term “Socialism” is used. Why then did the Bolsheviks give another meaning to word? In the first place, they doubtless wished to attract support of the workers at home and in other lands and therefore used phraseology which appealed to workers. Later the Nazis did the same with their “National Socialism(!).” Then, again, it was obvious to the Russian people after 1917 that not yet had the millennium arrived. With the impossibility of abolishing poverty it was necessary to hold out hopes of better things to come. In effect they said: “This, you will get, Comrade Worker, when Communism is possible. But you cannot have Communism yet; we must finish building up Socialism first.” In this respect, therefore, the Bolsheviks have proved themselves equal to other exploiters of the workers: they have (so far) succeeded in keeping them “contented” with promises of a good time in the future. They have succeeded too (incidentally) in adding to the confusion which already existed in the worker’s mind as to what Socialism means.

What of Russian Progress ?

A large portion of the Dean’s book is concerned with showing the great progress that Russia has certainly made since 1917. The reader is told of the enormous strides that have been made in industrial development, agriculture, education, etc. The reader is reminded by the author that these advances must be judged, not by the standards of Western Europe, but by the conditions prevailing in Russia in the days of the Tzars.

The facts given of Russian progress may be true. But what if they are? What do they prove? Not, as the Dean thinks, that a Sixth of the World has gone Socialist. Let us consider education. Illiteracy is being rapidly abolished. But does this prove that Russia is Socialist? Of course not. Any country which wishes to make some show in international trade today – which wishes to keep pace with technical improvements in industry, etc., must have an educated population. It was all the more necessary for the Bolsheviks to attempt a hot-house growth of literacy, for in 1917 Russia was backward in almost every respect. If she wished to hold her own, progress had to be rapid. And as it was with education, so it was with industry, agriculture and scientific progress. As we have said earlier, the revolution of 1917 resulted in a development of capitalism. At the most, the Dean has shown us that this development has been rapid.

There are literally scores of other points which we could take up with the Dean, but we think sufficient has already been written.

In conclusion, then, we will content ourselves with emphasising these points:-

1. The book contains nothing new about Socialism or Russia.
2. Hewlett Johnson has borrowed most the Communist misconceptions about these subjects, and without first having critically examined Communist propaganda, he passes it on to his reading public.
3. The Dean fails to prove that a Sixth of the World is Socialist. His book, then, carries a false title.
4. The Dean is not a Socialist as he does not understand Socialism. In spite of his claim to have studied Scientific Socialism, we must say that he shows little sign of having benefited from his study.
5. Russia to-day is passing through a period of capitalist development. This is inevitable, for in 1917 none of the conditions were present which are imperative for the achievement of Socialism (i.e., an advanced industry and a class-conscious working class).
6. Lastly Socialism will come to Russia as to the rest of the world when the conditions are ripe.

Clifford Allen

Straws: Brummagen Ware. (1941)

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

Brummagen Ware.

The Bishop of Birmingham, on Sunday, September 28th, opened his mouth and taught them, saying: “The destruction of wealth would make the whole community poorer.” If the last war is any guide, there will still be an ample share of surplus value produced to provide high living (not in the “spiritual” sense, My Lord) for the privileged few. The dear Bishop then solemnly announced that in the present war “workers were becoming small capitalists.”

* * * *

Cant and Cantor.

Dr. E. W. Barnes often manages to be merely silly; he should take a refresher course from the Archbishop of Canterbury to learn the ignoble art of bowing in the House of Rimmon, and apologising for it in specious phrases. “We may well be proud of our new Ally. . . . We have something to learn from Russia . . . they have something to learn from us” (6.10.41). How does he square this with the “orthodox” religious view that the present conflict is essentially to fight for Christian ideals ?

* * * *

Soviet “Equality”

The reverend dodger must be well aware that Soviet “planning of economic resources for the good of the whole community” has not obviated the great gulf in material conditions between peasant and proletarian on the one hand and “high-ups” of the Communist Party ruling caste on the other. The S.P.G.B. will be pleased to furnish irreproachable evidence on the point should His Grace desire information. Sez you !

* * * *

Oliver and Bumble.

Compare the following statements occurring in the same issue of the Daily Herald (17.10.41): “Beaverbrook cannot make the tanks himself. That only the workers can do; it is on the workers and their constant eagerness of toil that he relies.”

“Almost impossible to contemplate.” Sir Walter Womersley’s reply to demand for flat rate increase in Service men’s allowances. “Impossible even to contemplate,” when the worker in field, factory, or ghastly battle area asks (all too modestly, alas) for an extra allowance of the skilly ladled out to him by National Bums and Bumbles.

* * * *

War Tipsters.

Lord Acton’s historical essays are always worth reading; they are studded with common sense remarks, as, for instance, “there is an undefinable quantity in military genius which makes the event uncertain.” An excellent piece of implied advice to war tipsters of all shades and all parties.

* * * *

Golden Nobs and Clay Feet.

Harold Laski is a knowing card; his eulogy of our “beloved leader” in Reynold’s of October 19th beats the ordinary method of “damning with faint praise” by sizable lengths. “Of Mr. Churchill’s immense popularity there can be no question.” He has paid tribute to the Prime Minister’s “eloquence,” etc., etc. But “the conviction is growing that he does not grasp the economic and social issues of the time,” and much more in the same key.

Augustus Snellgrove

The Memoirs of a Dutiful Follower (1967)

Book Review from the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

This book. Post-war Years; Vol VI of Men, Years—Life (MacGibbon and Kee, 45s.), has not been an easy one to review for a special reason. It is one of those rare autobiographies written by one who has spent his life under a dictatorship—where he still remains. The reviewer, reaching for the knife, must always in fairness keep asking himself the question: “How would I myself have acted if I had had to live my life under the heel of a Stalin?” And having answered that as best he may, he must then also wonder how free the author was to tell his story even under the milder tyranny of Stalin’s successors. The fact that only recently two Russian authors, Sinyavsky and Daniel, have been condemned to harsh sentences in labour camps for writings that would have been regarded as mild criticisms and certainly permissible in any country with the slightest pretensions to freedom or democracy, tells its own tale.

Equally, one must not fall into the trap of leaning over so far backwards that one can write anything as stupidly naive as the dear old Guardian whose reviewer (quoted on the dust jacket) says we should be “grateful to find such courage and moral purpose in so readable a form.” Whatever else one can accuse Ehrenburg of, courage and moral purpose must clearly be left out of the indictment. The whole book, interesting and even fascinating though it is in parts for its insight into some of the darker chapters of Russian history, is the opposite of courage; it is the apologia of one who has succeeded in living through decades of Red Terror when his friends and colleagues were being slaughtered. His only “defence” (like that of Sieyès after the Terror in the French Revolution) amounts to nothing more than “I survived”.

There are not really any lessons to be gleamed from the book that were not, at least in substance, if not in detail, already known. But the detail can still be illuminating. For example, how often were we told in the Stalin era that one facet alone proved that Stalinism could never be as bad as Hitlerism, namely the respective attitudes to anti-semitism? Well, it is doubtless true that Hitler was unique in his “final solution” of the Jewish question—as six million corpses in the gas chambers will testify. But even apart from Stalin’s own exercises against whole peoples like the Crimean Tartars and the Volga Germans (there is no evidence in this book that Ehrenberg was at all concerned with such trivia), the sustained persecution against Jews which is given great prominence throughout the story shows that even this alleged mark of superiority of the Russian regime was spurious. All the talk about the Russian Constitutions guaranteeing freedom from persecution was, as was obvious at the time—just talk.

Ehrenburg goes out of his way to give prominence to the fate of a leading Jewish intellectual called Mikhoels who was apparently a close friend. This man was used by Stalin during the war to go on deputations of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee to England and America where they raised huge sums of money from Jews and others for aid to Russia. After the war, he like so many others, was butchered in one of Stalin’s purges. The author found this all very sad. At the same time he tells us about his visit to (of all places) Sheffield for one of the endless series of so-called Peace Conferences about which he goes on at great length throughout the book. What he forgets to mention is that whilst there he was closely questioned by reporters from the English Jewish press about the fate of Mikhoels and other prominent Jews. Ehrenburg told them he knew nothing but would make enquiries when he got back to Russia and let them know. Of course he never did let them know. Nor did he make enquiries; it is clear from the book that he was lying in Sheffield; he knew quite well what was going on. Perhaps we should make excuses for him. He did not dare to say what he knew. But what about now, when Stalin has been dead for over a decade? The reticence on every page of this book makes it quite clear that he is still afraid to say what he knows. What a reflection of this alleged Socialist society, this workers’ paradise fifty years after the revolution! And why does Ehrenburg bother to write his memoirs at all if he is unable to tell the truth? Better silence than lies. But then, a regard for truth has never been a virtue of the Communists.

As mentioned above, the book is very largely taken up with accounts of the “Peace” Conference that the Communists were running in countries all over the world in the decade after the end of the war. They were of course a gigantic fraud having nothing whatever to do with peace and everything to do with acting as a propaganda front for the foreign policy of Russia in the worst days of the Cold War. It is just possible that people like Ehrenburg really imagined they were achieving something for peace in their constant travels around the globe (he seems to have visited practically every country you can think of); there is not the slightest sign that this so-called Communist intellectual ever stopped to think that perhaps the competitive jungle known as capitalism in the west, which was just as much capitalism in Russia, produced wars as surely as a hen lays eggs. So that no amount of peace conferences which left the social system unchanged could possibly have any effect.

Still, it at least enabled Ehrenburg to enjoy his globe trotting and meet “intellectuals” (ill-defined creatures, to be sure) of his own ilk. And the book is full of stories about these famous friends he made — Picasso, Matisse, Einstein, Casals, Joliot-Curie et al, ad nauseam. It was, of course, one of the “peace” movements aims to enrol these famous names whose influence in their respective countries would serve such a useful propaganda purpose for the policies of Russia. It is indeed pathetic to see how such gifted individuals would allow themselves to be used in this shameful way. The truth is, of course, that they have no more notion of the workings of capitalism and of what Socialism is really about than the mass of workers in England or Russia or anywhere else. Or than Ilya Ehrenburg, if the evidence of this book is anything to go by. But they are pretty vain creatures and were easy meat for Communist flattery and liked to be regarded as princes of peace as they sat on platforms in front of admiring audiences of thousands of working-class dupes. And of course this game goes on still and people still pay regard to the views of such as Bertrand Russell (who wanted to drop an atom bomb on Moscow in 1947) or (believe it or not) Vanessa Redgrave. And although a lot of these people are like children (Einstein, it seems, persuaded Roosevelt to make the atom bomb but never thought it would be used), some of them must (or at least should) have realised what was what. For example, we are told here that when Matisse was told that the Russian people were forbidden to see his paintings which were hidden away in cellars he just laughed. Perhaps it is funny that the regime you support, and which wants you for your works, regards those works as unfit for human consumption. It is less funny to know that artists like Matisse but, unlike him in living in the west in freedom and wealth, were hounded in Russia and even executed like Mikhoels and his friends.

But of course the real trouble with Ehrenburg, as with so many others both in Russia and the west, is that he never seems to question the basis of his creed. In 1918 the Socialist Standard made it clear that whatever else Lenin and his Bolsheviks might achieve Socialism (or Communism — they are synonymous terms) was out. A dictatorship of a so-called Communist Party was fastened on the necks of the Russian people so that the workers there have been exploited under a tyrannical system of state capitalism. Ehrenburg talks, with every appearance of sincerity, of “the Soviet people, whose concepts I cherish”. It never occurs to him to ask himself: what people? what concepts? '

All we have now is the rule of a minority group who exploit the Russian workers for their own benefit and that of their hangers-on like Ehrenburg. The time has still to come when the workers of Russia, like those of England or America or China, will show that they indeed have a concept of what the world could be like under a free system of society where the means of life will really be owned in common. The fact that the emancipation of the working class of the world is still to come is the fault of the workers themselves. But the Ehrenburgs of the world have a lot to answer for. It might be as well to conclude with a mention of a quotation from another work of this author taken from our companion paper the Western Socialist a year or two ago in which he urged the Russian soldiers to “kill, kill, kill, my brave Red Armyists” and “break the power of the German women” — a brutal incitement to slaughter of the civilian men of Berlin and the rape of their womenfolk. A not untypical contribution to international working-class solidarity from a self-styled Communist intellectual. Needless to say, none of the reviewers in the posh papers, A. J. P. Taylor and all, seem to have been aware of this side of the picture.

A. P.

More About the People’s Convention (1941)

From the March 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Political organisation in this country takes many forms. There are organisations which exist solely in order to gain one reform. When it has been gained their purpose has gone. This was true of the women’s suffrage organisations. There are the Tory and Liberal parties, agreed on the retention of capitalism but divided over such questions as free-trade and tariffs, and the amount of taxation to be laid on the backs of different sections of the propertied class. Until capitalism is ended such parties can go on existing, there are always new problems arising for them to deal with, always new opportunities of fighting for their respective sectional interests, and always the need to obtain working-class support for capitalism by the offer of reforms to alleviate the most distressing hardships. Then there are the Labour Party and Co-operative Party, which came into existence primarily to defend the interests of the trade unions and co-operative societies respectively. They have attained stability by taking over much of the former support given to the Liberal Party by workers desiring reforms of one kind or another. Then there is the S.P.G.B., which exists solely for the achievement of one purpose, though a fundamental one, the establishment of Socialism in place of capitalism.

Another category of political parties is what may be called the parasite parties. They live by exploiting the disgruntled supporters of the bigger parties. Among these have been the Communist Party, and all the brood of organisations hatched out by the Communist Party. Every crisis that happens at home or internationally produces its groups of persons dissatisfied on personal or other grounds with the policy adopted by the majority in the bigger parties. Always there are a certain number of workers who vaguely see that there is something wrong with asking for moderate reforms and think the remedy is to ask for bigger reforms—so if the Labour Party asked for a 5s. increase of old-age pensions they would easily fall for propaganda which tells them it is more “revolutionary” to ask for 7s. 6d. As the Labour Party by tradition is nowadays the normal gathering ground for discontented workers it follows that the parasite parties have their most favourable opportunity whenever it happens that the Labour Party is otherwise engaged; for example, when the Labour Party is in office wrestling with problems of the administration of capitalism, or when it is part of a Government carrying on war. While this situation lasts everything plays-into the hands of those adepts at political scheming and wire-pulling, the Communist Party. Their latest venture is the so-called People’s Convention, which met on January 12th, 1941, at the Royal Hotel and Holborn Hall, London. A pamphlet, “The People Speak,” has been published by the National Committee (price 3d.), described somewhat erroneously as “The Official Report.” It does not contain a full report of the proceedings. Out of 62 pages, 34 are given up to the speeches of three of the leading lights—Mr. Harry Adams, Mr. Pritt, K.C., and Mr. W. J. R. Squance. Then follow 15 pages consisting of “points from speeches” of 26 delegates, prominent among them being leading Communists. The remainder of the pamphlet is taken up with messages sent to the Convention, resolutions passed, and particulars of delegates, etc. The claim is made that there were present 2,234 delegates “directly representing 1,200,000.” Since the Convention took place several organisations have repudiated the representative capacity of the delegate who claimed to represent them; nevertheless, it may well be true that the Convention had something like the support it claims; there are, unfortunately, very large numbers of muddle-headed people capable of supporting the hotch-potch programme of the Convention.

The People Speak—Under Direction

The claim is made early in the pamphlet that the Convention was for democracy. “Here, indeed, were the People. Here, indeed, was democracy in action.” It is a little odd, therefore, to find no sign that the “people,” i.e., the delegates, had any hand in selecting the star speakers or in deciding that what purports to be an official report should contain very little of what the rest of the delegates had to say. Equally odd is the way in which “the people” selected their National Committee. On page 61 we are told that the Standing Orders Committee (who elected them, by the way; and how?) “recommends that 26 be elected by this Convention to the National Committee.” And on page 62 we are told that the Standing Orders Committee itself also presented to the delegates a list of 26 persons whom it recommended to be the elect! “Here, indeed, was democracy in action” !

What was Said and left Unsaid

On every page of the report are the unmistakable signs of the nature of the Convention and of the handiwork of the wire-pullers behind the scenes, carefully leaving the well-meaning muddlers to have their say “from their hearts.”

The first point to notice is that among the prominent figures are men who claim that Socialism is their aim and who have (elsewhere) been heard to admit that Socialism is the only hope of the workers. On this occasion there was, it seems, a curious reluctance or forgetfulness to say anything about Socialism. The resolutions contain no reference to it. Nor do the speeches, although here and there were appeals to Socialists to support the campaign. About the nearest approach was that of Mr. Palme Dutt, Communist Party, who (page 37) mentions Socialism and suggests that “a People’s Government” is “the first step forward.”

This coyness about mentioning Socialism prompts the question whether “the People” had spoken prior to the Convention urging all and sundry not to raise such a disturbing question. Or perhaps the idea of soft pedalling came from some other quarter.

The Chairman, Mr. Harry Adams, was frank and enlightening about the origin of the Convention. On page 9 he is reported as saying : —

“The mighty movement of popular anger surged forward last year after exposure of ruling class incompetence and bankruptcy as shown in Norway and at Dunkirk in the corruption of war profiteering and the neglect of the needs of the people. This was the starting point of the People’s Convention Movement.”

What happens to a Party which owes its birth to a mood of pessimism about the war when the tide turns? “Born after Dunkirk, died after Benghazi,” may well be its epitaph.

The Programme adopted by the Convention contains about a couple of dozen demands, ranging from “adequate A.R.P. bomb-proof shelters” to increased wages, soldiers’ pay, pensions, compensation, insurance and unemployment allowances. Also, of course, a “People’s Government,” and a “People’s peace.” Some delegates added a few things of their own. The Chairman favours nationalisation of the mines (page 12). Mr. Pritt calls the League of Nations “an admitted swindle” (page 21) but did not say a word about the Russian Government and the British Communist Party who tried for several years to foist that swindle on the workers. He demanded that the banks “must serve the whole people.” It would be entertaining to have that scintillating legal mind explaining just how a bank can serve the whole people. He also wants men to be “free to speak or write, not merely without losing their liberty, but without losing their jobs” (page 24), but gave no reason why that very desirable end is good for this country but not for workers in Russia. Mr. Pritt was scathing about the charge that the Convention is “against the Labour Party” (page 25). But surely, Mr. Pritt, either the Labour Party is in favour of the Convention Programme, in which case there is no need for the Convention, or the Labour Party is against the Programme, in which case Mr. Pritt, on his own showing, should be against the Labour Party?

Mr. Pritt does indeed answer this question. The only way in which the Convention Programme cuts across Labour policy and principles, he says, “is the linking up of its leaders with their class enemies” (page 25). This means, of course, the present Government. But who are the present Government? A large number of them are the leaders of the Labour Party, and the Prime Minister is Mr. Churchill. “Ah,” Mr. Pritt would say, “they ought not to be in the Government with Mr. Churchill.” Elsewhere in the pamphlet (page 48) Mr. Pollitt of the Communist Party made this quite plain. He spoke of the real enemies of the workers being “in the Churchill Government,” and wants the Churchill Government to be removed to make way for the People’s Government.

But has Mr. Pritt really forgotten that it was Mr. Pollitt and the Communist Party who were bellowing in March, 1939, for Mr. Churchill, Sir A. Sinclair and Mr. Attlee to get together and form a Government? What about it, Mr. Pritt?

All the delegates and speakers appear to have had not a particle of doubt that a “People’s Government” (whatever that is, nobody troubled to explain) would solve all things. In particular they saw in a “People’s Government” the Open Sesame to Peace. Perhaps they have all forgotten that this is not the first occasion a lot of them have wanted a “People’s Government.” As recently as September 19th, 1939 (when the Communist Party was still all in favour of the war) the Daily Worker was demanding “a People’s Government capable of prosecuting that war.”

“The war to halt Fascist aggression,” shouted the Daily Worker, “must go on with redoubled energy, and the British people will insist on a People’s Government capable of prosecuting that war.”

On the subject of war it is also worth while to recall that, although the Communist Party denounces the present Government and the Chamberlain Government for not building adequate deep bombproof shelters to protect civilian population fully against air-raids, the non-existence of such shelters did not deter the Communist Party from calling for the war before it came and demanding its energetic prosecution after it had begun, knowing full well what the consequences would be for the civilian population.

Among other objects of the Convention are the strengthening of the Co-operative movement, but simultaneously “we will work to safeguard the interests of the small shopkeeper, small farmer and consumer” (page 57). Mr. Squance, in his speech introducing this, went a bit further and claimed that the Convention also represents the interests of “small business men” (page 32). One delegate, who claimed to speak for landworkers, does not seem to have thought such a lot of helping small farmers, for she spoke up for “collectivisation” (page 44).

Altogether as much nonsense was talked as it was possible to crowd into a one-day Conference. The cost to the National Committee was £2,200, a lot of steam was let off, and a good time was had by all.

Edgar Hardcastle

Science and You (1939)

Book Review from the April 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Science and You," by Prof. J. B. S. Haldane. Fore Publications, Ltd., 35, Gt. James Street, W.C.l. 64 pp. 2d.

This book, by a well-known scientist, whose speciality is biology, is one which all workers can usefully read.

The book, very well written, in simple English, presents some of the latest scientific discoveries in an easily assimilable form, but what makes the book specially interesting is the uncompromising way in which the bearing of scientific facts on social conditions is brought out.

Concluding an article on bees, for example, he writes: "And although the worker is worn out after five or six weeks' work in summer, it has had a varied life, including many different kinds of work, and a good deal of leisure." Wage and salary workers who toil monotonously at the same task, year after year, with no prospect of changing the nature of their work, will readily appreciate the comparison.

Another article on population decrease shows that he clearly recognises that a system of “family allowances" is likely to cause a fall in the general wage level, for he says : "And if some system of family allowances is recommended" (i.e., by the Government) "it will be for the Labour movement to see that it is not used to depress the wage of childless workers and to break the unity of the workers." Readers of the Socialist Standard will be aware that we have always maintained that any system of family allowances is likely to depress the general wage level. Haldane quotes the director of a French family allowance fund to the effect that ; “From the social point of view, the allowances have prevented the subversive trade: unions from using for their revolutionary purpose workers who are fathers of families. The great majority of these have remained outside the class struggle." In other words, their economic conditions have been more bearable, whereas the conditions of those not receiving family allowances have been less bearable.

—The reason for the interest of governments in the size of the population is explained thus: —

“Until recently, reactionary writers deplored the increase of population and thought that it caused unemployment; though it obviously could not account for unemployment in Canada or Australia. As lately as 1936, Professor Macbride said that the unemployed should be punished by sterilisation for producing unwanted children.

“Now their tone has suddenly changed. It is realised that soldiers may be needed for new wars, and that increasing population offers a good excuse for wars of conquest. In fact, as the experience of Abyssinia has shown, conquests do not afford an outlet for 'surplus' population. But they do supply labour power at starvation rates for predatory capitalists." 

Haldane makes a number of references to Russia, but one gathers that he has no first-hand experience of conditions in that country. He states that: "In the Soviet Union, where women enjoy a greater equality with men than anywhere else, the birth rate is not falling." Apparently he has not seen the reports published a few years ago, to the effect that abortion in Russia, previously legal, is now illegal, and a punishable offence. The reason here is that Russia, like other modern powers, needs soldiers to protect her frontiers. We would recommend Haldane to read the books, by Yvon and Gide.

There is a chapter showing how scientific research is impeded under present conditions, and other chapters on sanitation and vitamins, making the whole book a good twopennyworth. 

R. M.