Socialism and Empire. (1925)

From the October 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

Patriotism and the problems of Empire have always proved stumbling blocks to the workers and to their immature organisations, and nothing has more clearly shown the danger of half-knowledge than the ease with which the ruling class have been able to muddle their minds and inflame their passions by raising such issues. The world war and late developments of capitalist imperialism have given the question prominence by making more numerous and more bitter the struggles for independence of colonies and subject races, and in the verbal dispute between Communists, the I.L.P., the Labour Party and others the air is thick with charge and counter-charge of treachery to the Empire and treachery to the working-class. The dispute, however, leads to no simple conclusion because, as so often happens, the disputants have neglected first to decide whether they can agree on a few elementary Socialist principles. Before we examine the various proposals we must have a clear idea of the economic position and class interests of the workers, because it is from this foundation that they ought always to approach the issues presented to them.

The Position of the Workers. 

Wealth (excluding the air and other things abundantly supplied by nature) is produced by work. The work is performed by the great propertyless mass, the working class, but the means of wealth production, the machines, the land and so on, are owned by a class of non-workers, the capitalists. From this arises a great cleavage of interests, for it makes the workers dependent upon the owning-class since they cannot live except by entering the service of the owners. Out of the total wealth produced by their labour the workers receive but a part as wages, the remainder being retained by those who employ them. The one class lives by selling its services and the other by owning property. The everyday struggle over the division of the product sets these classes in perpetual antagonism, but the Socialist urges the workers to aim consciously not merely at increasing their share but at destroying the system of society which compels them to maintain a propertied class at their expense.

For the Socialist all forms of “living by owning,” rent, interest and profit are in effect nothing more than forms of exploitation, or robbery, of the wealth producers.

If this is correct, then it follows naturally that it is to the interest of the workers all over the world to act jointly in resisting any attempt to heighten the degree of that exploitation, and in overthrowing the system which is based upon exploitation. The enemy of the working class is the capitalist class.

But certain complications exist which prevent many workers from seeing where their interests lie. Lack of knowledge and race prejudices prevent those in one country from realising how essentially similar is their condition to that of workers in foreign countries. There are too real differences between the present circumstances of the workers in the more advanced and the more backward countries. Standards of living, of education, of political and personal freedom, and of political knowledge vary from, say, England or America to the hardly developed Asiatic dependencies of Great Britain; this in spite of the quite marked tendency towards a general equalising of conditions as industrial developments become more uniform all over the world under the pressure of competition.

Again, this very competition leads many workers astray. Exceptional prosperity in the British coal industry at a given time is gained at the expense of some foreign competitors. Viewing the matter from an individual and local standpoint, the miners are only too liable to agree with their employers who argue that the interests of British workers and owners are as one against those of their German or American rivals. Extending our view from one section of a capitalist industry to the whole of the industries of a country or group of countries, national rivalry often presents itself in such a form—war, for instance—as to induce great numbers of workers to join their own section of the ruling class against other sections which are likewise supported by their workers.

The Position of the Capitalist.

Capitalist countries—all of them—must organise their forces and direct their policy to ends which are vital to capitalist society, they must seek markets for surplus products, endeavour to monopolise sources of supply of raw materials where these are geographically limited, and protect ocean and overland communications to these areas. Britain holds tenaciously to her practical monopoly of tropical rubber producing areas, sits tight in Egypt in order to guard the routes to India, and keeps firm hold on the latter because it is a market of first importance and an area for the profitable investment of surplus profit gained by the exploitation of workers at home. The necessities of such imperialist policy bring our ruling class into inevitable conflict with other imperialist powers who also seek markets and monopolies, and into conflict with the colonial and native capitalists who resent having to share with foreign investors the profits of the exploitation of their own working class ; hence the war of 1914, and the independence movements in Ireland, India, Egypt, Canada and elsewhere.

Now let us examine the various parties in this country which claim to represent the working class.

The Labour Party.

The Labour Party openly and unashamedly supported the war in 1914 and associates now with its German patriot prototypes, the Social Democrats. It interests itself in the political and economic difficulties of the British capitalists, offers remedies to solve their industrial problems, assists in maintaining armed forces to defend capitalist property, loyally supports the Empire and opposes the grant of unconditional independence to any part of it. It is unnecessary to labour this point or answer the assertion that the Labour Party has changed for the better since the war because Mr. H. N. Brailsford, Editor of the New Leader, has recently written of the position now occupied by his party.

“We must face our own record as frankly. (I speak, of course, only for myself.) From the date of Mr. MacDonald’s first letter to the Indians on the eve of taking office, down to the recent debates on China, India, and our rubber monopoly, he and his closest associate, Mr. Thomas, have been leading the Party, openly and plainly, towards a reconciliation with Imperialism. His Indian record in office was worse than negative. Not only did he do nothing to advance Home Rule or to help the sweated Indian worker : he sanctioned the shameful Coercion Act in Bengal. His most recent speech gave reasons for doing nothing in India of which an old-fashioned Liberal would have been ashamed. There were other symptoms—the attitude to Mexico, the curt refusal of the Cypriote petition for union with Greece. But the gravest matter was his plain rejection of the League of Nations as the arbiter in our dispute with Egypt over the Canal and the Soudan. . . . We stand, as the French Party stands, a buttress of capitalist Imperialism.” (New Leader, August 21st, 1925.)

Leaving aside the influence of Liberal tradition and the habitual unthinking acceptance of capitalist ways of regarding politics, the ultimate explanation of this Labour Party attitude is that they have no basic quarrel with the capitalists or capitalism. They regard “profiteering” (or excessive profits) as “unjust,” but they do not hold all profit-making to be robbery of the workers. When they speak of “exploitation” what they mean is the payment of exceptionally low wages, they do not recognise that there can be no wage-earning, no wages system without exploitation. Thus Mr. Thomas, in “When Labour Rules,” Mr. MacDonald in “Socialism— Critical and Constructive,” Mr. Sydney Webb in “A Constitution for a Socialist Commonwealth,” all justify private property and the payment of profits, or interest to property owners. As Mr. Clynes says, “It is no part of Labour’s policy to establish revolutionary Socialism or to confiscate private property” (Glasgow Evening News, Oct. 4, 1923). Thus again in 1914 the workers of this country were urged by the Labour Party to fight lest they should, through a German victory, become slaves; and when the French occupied the Ruhr the same Party protested on the ground that it would make the German workers slaves. We, on the contrary, recognise that all the workers in a capitalist world are already wage-slaves to the propertied class, and that no fortune of war, whether victory or defeat, can alter the essentials of that situation. As we propose to deprive the capitalists of their property and do not admit that they have any rights whatever, it matters nothing to us that capitalist groups strive to plunder each other. The Labour Party recognise those property rights and therefore quite consistently seek to defend those whom they consider to be the rightful owners. It is consistent with their views of property but it is decidedly not consistent with working class interests and with Socialism.

“The Communist Party." 

This attitude does not meet with the approval of the Communists who oppose to the patriotism of the Labour Party an inverted patriotism of their own. They can see clearly enough that the interests of British workers clash with those of British capitalists but they cannot rest content with urging the workers everywhere to concentrate on resisting exploitation and on fighting their exploiters. They accept the false reasoning used by Mr. Francis Meynell when he edited the Communist. He urged support of the Indian native capitalists in their struggle against the British Government, on the ground that all enemies of the latter are the friends of the Communist Party. They proclaim the necessity and practicability of disrupting the British Empire, and ally themselves accordingly with every independence movement. What they forget or intentionally gloss over, is that national independence for Irish, Indians or Egyptians is no more a concern of the workers in those countries and should no more be fought for by them than national defence should concern workers here. To exchange Irish exploiters for English ones does not better the condition of Irish workers in the slightest degree; in actual fact, by stressing racial differences it adds to the obstacles preventing international co-operation in the trade union and political world. The enemies of the British ruling class are not necessarily friends of the British workers. We want to increase, not to obscure, the antagonism between one class and the other, and this cannot be done by urging Indian wage-slaves to waste precious years chasing the will o’ the wisp of nationality. Their masters alone will gain from such a course.

The Communist mind is also perverted by the determination not to read the signs of the times in Russia. British governmental hostility to the Russian Government leads the Communists to completely uncritical praise of the latter’s actions, oblivious of the extent to which those actions are driven by pressure of circumstance against working class interests. The Communists know quite well that there is no solution for the unemployment problem to be found in developing foreign trade, yet they have for years lent themselves to the anti-working class propaganda which promises untold benefits for British workers if only full trading relations with Russia are opened up. At present much of the hostility to the Bolshevik Government arises from the wish of foreign capitalists to have free access to this relatively undeveloped field for investment and exploitation. But whether that field is developed with or without the direct control of foreign capital, the entry of this new competitor into the world’s markets can only result in a worsening of the industrial conditions of workers generally, and an aggravation of the clashing of interests between capitalist groups. The Communists, too, like the Labour Party, refuse to recognise that exploitation is the necessary accompaniment of wage-labour. When the Labour Government proposed a £40,000,000 loan to Russia, the Communists were overjoyed, and Russian trade papers in their anxiety to attract foreign capital are full of reports of high profits earned by foreign traders and concessionaires. They decline to face the plain fact that interest on loans and profits on investments can come only from the exploitation of the Russian workers.

T. Johnston, I.L.P. member of Parliament and Editor of the Forward, takes the Communists to task for what he calls their “Whiggery in a Red Cravat.” He rightly condemns the obscured vision which can draw distinctions between sections of the capitalist class and see a friend of the workers in every exploiter who happens to have a quarrel with the British Empire. But Johnston himself is open to equal condemnation. He also is prepared to support schemes for the improvement of Empire trade, schemes, that is, to assist Empire capital in driving competitors from the world’s markets. Neither he nor anyone else has ever yet explained how this will benefit the world’s workers. The poverty in work, and greater poverty out of work, of the wage-earner is not dependent on the temporary ups and downs in particular industries or of all industries together. However, the total product of industry may vary with foreign trade fluctuations, there always has been, and is now, an enormous residue over and above wages, doles and relief, which is retained and consumed by the propertied class. What idiocy it is to tell the workers they must revive trade in order to get work and increase their wages, while an idle class is living on the product of the workers’ labour. When the workers wish they have the power on their hands to cut into that existing surplus whether trade is good or bad, or getting better or worse. While there is a single able-bodied property-owner living without working, only ignorance or treachery could ask the workers to devote thought to the increase of production, or to the quickening of foreign trade.

Johnston, again, owes his confusion to his inability to grasp what is meant by exploitation. Thus in Forward (Sept. 19) he writes in favour of the Labour movement here giving more attention to and entering into more cordial relations with Queensland which has a Labour Government. On the strength of this latter feature, Johnston, while repeating parrot-like the necessity of fighting exploitation, dubs Queensland a proletarian State. Actually, Queensland Government publications and the speeches of Labour Ministers and Members of Parliament demonstrate the incontrovertible fact that capitalist profits and the degree of exploitation of the workers in Queensland are greater, and the proportion of total production received by them as wages is less, than in any other Australian State now, and than was the case in Queensland when the Labour Government first took office ! (See Socialist Standard, Dec., 1923, and Feb., 1924.)

The Socialist Position.

The only safe rule of conduct for the workers is to stand firmly on the basis of their class economic interests. From this standpoint there can be no circumstances requiring them to participate in capitalist wars or trade rivalries. Even the supposed hardships resulting from military defeat do not outweigh the arguments in favour of the Socialist course of action outlined above. We have always urged that Reparations like rates and taxes are and must be a burden only on the propertied class. We are therefore not surprised to learn from the Ministry of Labour Gazette (June, 1925, Page 217) that an enquiry by the International Labour Office shows that real wages in Germany are approximately what they were in 1914 as are also wages in London. In victory and defeat the workers are still wage slaves, their poverty and insecurity are their only lifelong possession. They should not fight for “country and empire,” because they have nothing to fight for. They should refuse to help solve the economic problems of capitalist industry, or the political problems of capitalist empires and concentrate all their energies on the fight for Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Lansbury and the “Daily Herald”. A forgotten incident. (1925)

From the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

We see from the Daily Herald of January 19th, that Mr. George Lansbury is publishing a history of the Herald. Lest Mr. Lansbury should omit to record the treatment meted out to Charles Lapworth, a former Editor, for the offence of assuming that the duty of a workers’ paper is to fight for the working class, we reprint the letter Lapworth wrote when his connection with the Herald came to an end. A lesson is also to be learned about the futility of trying to build up a workers’ movement except on the basis of solid understanding. The wealthy and “disinterested” friends are likely to prove disappointing supports in time of trouble. Those who pay the piper call the tune !

Lapworth’s letter appeared in the New Age on December 18th, 1913, after the Herald had refused to publish it !

* * *

“Daily Herald” and Chas. Lapworth.

A letter from Chas. Lapworth to the “New Age” (18/12/1913).

Sir,

I sent the enclosed statement to the Daily Herald. The management declined to publish it. Will you be good enough to give it a space in the New Age?

(Signed) Chas. Lapworth.

“Why I Left the “Daily Herald”

After a fortnight’s delay, an announcement has been made in the Daily Herald of the fact that Mr. G. Lansbury has been appointed Editor in my place and it has been necessary to say that “there will be no change of policy.” I think it is due to these enquiries, and certainly in view of events subsequent to what I am about to relate, it is due to me personally that my explanation of what happened should be published. The notice in to-day’s “paper” states merely that I had resigned, and many may wonder why I should desert my post at such a crisis in the industrial war as the week before the “Dublin Conference.” The statement, if it had given the full truth, would have said “that I had been forced out of the editorship against my will.” Most readers know something of the romantic career of our little paper, and will remember that in June last the “Daily Herald Co.” was forced into liquidation through no fault of its own. “The Limit Printing and Publishing Co.” was then formed, consisting of Mr. G. Lansbury and myself, and we acquired the paper. By this time the expenditure had been cut down to £500 per week, as against £1,100 per week of a year previous, and the weekly loss reduced to about £200 per week, which several anonymous rich friends of Mr. G. Lansbury agreed to make good. Later Mr. Francis Meynell, as representing these friends, was added to the Board of Directors, making the maximum of three allowed by the “Articles of Association.” The only other shareholder besides the Directors is Mr. Robert Williams.

Mr. Lansbury is Chairman and I am Secretary of the Company. On Sunday, December 1st, 1913, I received a summons to a meeting of the Company, signed by Mr. G. Lansbury and called for the following Monday morning. Mr. Lansbury, Mr. Meynell, and myself were present, and the meeting was opened by the Chairman without any preamble addressing me: “We have come to ask you to resign the Editorship. Either you go out or I shall refuse to have anything more to do with the paper.” And he went on to say that he must refuse to enter into any argument or give any other reason than that there was a fundamental difference between his own frame of mind, his own outlook and mine, which difference made the position absolutely hopeless so far as the future of the paper was concerned. Naturally, I urged that, even admitting this “fundamental difference,” it was not serious enough ground for me to resign my position, and that with all respect I must ask for something more specific. Placing a copy of the Daily Herald on the table, I said that was what the staff and myself stood for, obviously, or we would not have been working as conscientious journalists, and that being so, the request for my resignation necessarily implied a departure in policy. Mr. Lansbury denied that it did. I answered that a mere negative did not help me to understand, and I asked for particular criticism of the conduct of the paper. The Chairman objected to what he called my cross-examination of himself, but conceded that as I have been honest and conscientious in my editorial work, I was only doing the right thing from my point of view in fighting for the status quo. He also agreed there was no personal feeling in the matter, but we disagreed about a principle. Mr. Lansbury repeated that so far as he was concerned the position was hopeless if I remained Editor. I pressed for reasons. Mr. Meynell then proffered this : “We want the paper to represent Mr. Lansbury’s ideas, and we propose that Mr. Lansbury be Editor.” I suggested that the change of Editor and mention of “ideas,” seeing that Mr. Lansbury had stated his ideas coincided with mine, did warrant my assumption that change of policy was intended. To which Mr. Meynell replied: “We are against the gospel of hatred you preach. I pointed out that the paper stood for the class war, without modification, and Mr. Lansbury interposed that “it would continue to stand for the class war, but not class hatred and attacks on persons of another class.” “Hatred of conditions, by all means, but not of persons,” I think were his words, and Mr. Meynell said something about the absence of the spirit of brotherhood in the paper. Incidentally Mr. Lansbury strongly condemned some public remark of Wm. D. Heywood about middle-class people. Readers will have to put their own construction on the foregoing. My construction was that the paper was to be allowed to retain its “kick,” but that it was to have a feather bed tied round its foot. Both Mr. Meynell and Mr. G. Lansbury insisted that their complaint was against the tone and not the policy of the paper. Mr. Meynell said that almost every day his father or somebody else complained of something offensive. My reply was that the Daily Herald was not written for rich people, but by workers for workers, and so far the latter had not made manifest any objection to the tone. In response to further pressure, I got one or two items mentioned about which there was complaint. It is hardly believable, but I, Editor of a militant working-class paper, was taken to task for uncomplimentary reference to a duchess, to a bishop, to a prominent Fabian, and for a cartoon of a certain Labour Member of Parliament.

Prior to this particular meeting, complaint bad been made about neglect of the woman’s movement and “Too much Dublin.” In reference to this, I contended that it was not fair to blame the paper for the past few months’ apparent slump in militant suffrage methods, and that if my editorial judgment was wrong in attributing to Dublin the greatest importance in the industrial war, then I must certainly accept the blame for devoting to it so much of our eight small pages. Finally I said I had diligently assembled all the—to me—little molehills to which exception had been taken, and for the life of me I could not build a big enough mountain of reason why I should desert my post, and I refused to resign. Mr. Meynell then moved : “That Mr. G. Lansbury be Editor in place of Mr. Lapworth.” I voted against the proposition. Mr. Lansbury as Chairman used his casting vote and declared himself appointed Editor. Subsequently, as a graceful concession to Mr. Lansbury, I formally resigned and duly entered on the minute book the new Editor, and that was all, except—at the evident desire of Mr. Lansbury—I left the office at once. I also proffered the undertaking that I would not speak to any of the staff, who would naturally want some explanation of the extraordinary turn of events, until Mr. Lansbury had had an opportunity of giving his own explanation.

Mr. Lansbury objected to me taking notes of the discussion, but I think I have reported fairly correctly what took place. Mr. Lansbury also intimated that he would allow no discussion in the Daily Herald, so I don’t know whether this statement will be permitted to appear in the paper, which has hitherto made a boast of its “free and open platform,” but it is in view of events subsequent to the above meeting that I am obliged to press for publication.

I have since been criticised for allowing myself to be forced out of the Editorship. My answer is that the proposition came upon me so suddenly that it did not occur to me that I could alone shoulder the responsibility of stopping the £200 a week subsidy, as I was made to feel was inevitable if I proved obdurate. The money had always been put up solely on account of Mr. Lanhbury’s personality, and his withdrawal meant the withdrawal of the cash.

(Signed) Chas. Lapworth.

December 12th, 1913.

(Italics ours.—Ed. Com., “ S.S.”)

Communist Consistency. (1921)

From the June 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Communist’, April 20th, 1921:

  (Page 2.) “ . . . let us also emphasise the fact that those who come into the real working-class International must come prepared to concentrate on industrial organisation and the freeing of the workers, leaving political and social questions to fall into their proper place for attention after the Revolution.” 

  (Page 3.) “The Communist Party . . . will conduct an unflinching campaign against the power of capitalism; and relentlessly strive by industrial organisation, agitation, and revolutionary political and parliamentary action to urge the working class on towards revolution.”

Same paper, same date:

Report of Chairman’s address to Manchester Conference.
  “ . . . the chairman stated the attitude of the Party to be in opposition to all other Labour organisations.”

This is the same Communist Party which applied for and was refused permission to affiliate to the National Labour Party. It still allows its branches to affiliate locally, has members on Borough Councils who were elected as Labour men and are still members of local Labour parties and has taken joint electorial action with these bodies.

#    #    #    #

This “party of the workers” proposes to teach “the smallholders and farmers  . . . that the Revolution comes as their friend and to relieve them of the unendurable burden of landlordism.” It considers that “the mischievous land nationalisation policy of the (agricultural) unions must be fought and overcome in favour of a policy of socialisation without compensation” (Agrarian Question, p. 7.) It also supports the nationalisation of the mines.” (Communist, 2nd April, 1921.)

#    #    #    #

The “Marxist” Communist Party on wages

‘The Workers’ Dreadnought’, 19th March:

“A Marxian American gives his viewpoint.”

“If too great a proportion of the workers are employed, the effect is to temporarily bring about a crisis of unemployment. Wages continue to rise until they actually catch up with or pass the increases in the cost of living . . . As soon as the increasing wages seriously reduce or threaten to destroy his (the employer’s) profits he closes down his plant.”

‘The Communist’, 19th February:

  “For generations the trade unions have been attempting to improve the status of their members by increased money wages. This has proved futile. Every nominal increase conceded to-day is filched back to-morrow by an even greater advance in the cost of living.”

Asked if this meant that the Communist Party accepted the view that “employers can at will raise the price of their goods to the buyer,” Mr. Francis Meynell, Editor of the Communist, replied (28th February:

  “Because we say that every nominal increase conceded to-day is filched back to-morrow by an even greater advance in the cost of living we do not mean, as we do not say, that this must be so. If the selfishness of the Capitalist class could be destroyed, or that class destroyed itself, probably an easier task, one could happen without the other.”

So now we know all about it.

The capitalist, being selfish, can put up his prices and to whatever extent he chooses, so presumably he doesn’t mind giving increased wages. He also resists increases until he can no longer do so and then closes down. Also in the Communist Millennium, supposing the capitalists have been rendered unselfish, we shall be able to get higher wages without higher prices, but should they be obdurate they will be destroyed and replaced, I suppose, by unselfish Communists.

The real gem of the reply is the concluding paragraph, which refers the enquirer to Wage-Labour and Capital and Value, Price and Profit for further information !

When this interesting correspondence was followed up Mr. Meynell wrote this (March 16th):

  “I was foolish enough to think that your first letter was a genuine enquiry out of a desire for information. As it was no more than a trap for my time and temper, I refuse to put either of them any more at your disposal.”

If Mr. Meynell ever does change his mind and decide to answer will he please tell me too if bad tempers, like “selfishness,” will debar entrance to the promised land.

Edgar Hardcastle

To Heel. (1920)

From the November 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

The antics of the "Daily Herald" are just now extremely interesting and, in these days of fakes and fakers, keep the observer wondering what will turn up next.

We have seen the one in which the Bolshevik £75,000 was turned down in heroic mood, and our admiration was excited—more or less—by the beatific terms of self-righteousness in which the martyrs made public their martyrdom.

Being credulous, we may try to believe in the protestations of Lansbury and Co. that they were ignorant of the negotiations carried on by Francis Meynell in Russia, although it may be noted that this individual resigned from the "Herald" board when their action was made public. Nelson is alleged to have put his glass to his blind eye at the battle of Copenhagen, and one wonders if that was the action of the "Herald" directorate whilst Meynell was wandering around in Russia. In any case, the offer became public property from other sources than the sheets of the "Daily Herald" before its readers were regaled with the details and were asked to express their opinions as to the acceptance or rejection of this mysterious lucre.

If any of my readers followed the published answers to this query they will have waded through extracts giving ayes and nayes, and will have had fresh evidence of the hope for Socialism expressed by such a journal, supported by such a medley of points of view.

The latest turn is the raising of the price of the "Daily Herald" from 1d. to 2d., and at the moment of writing the matter is being presented as a life and death struggle between the capitalist Press and itself. And judging by the tone of the scribes who are entrusted with the "writing up," the demise of the "Daily Herald" would be a double funeral—that of itself and that of Socialism. This, however, is hardly likely to be the case for the following reasons :

The "Daily Herald" is not a Socialist journal, is not run by Socialists, is not written by Socialists, does not present Socialism in any shape or form, and is not read by Socialists as such. The only thing connected with it that has any relation to Socialism is the word, and it has to be presumed that the idea behind the constant use of the term "Socialism" in its columns is that constant repetition of terms is the only necessity for the production of facts.

This point of view may be good enough for readers of the "Daily Herald" (which is so much the worse for them) but it is not good enough for us, and we state unequivocally that Socialism would not suffer one jot or tittle if that paper suspended publication to-morrow.

I am prepared to admit that the "Daily Herald" very occasionally tells a little more of the truth than the organs of the Press when it suits the powers behind it, but the Socialist knows what value to place on the news ladled out daily to the working class, and therefore is not to be carried away by that, and the members of the working class who have not yet awakened to the knowledge of their position in society will not arrive at that awakening any faster by reading what the renegade Atheist, Lansbury, or any of his staff, may decide is good for them to know.

To give an idea of the "freedom" of opinion represented in the columns of the "Daily Herald" we have only to remember that quite a large and growing interest is controlled by the trade unions and co-operative societies, and various of them from time to time vote sums of money to be invested therein. In addition it is common knowledge that a proportion of seats on the board are allotted to their representatives, "responsible trade union leaders" and co-operative society officials, all of which obviously shows that the policy of the paper has to coincide with the ideas of these gentry. Otherwise the funeral service of the paper would soon be read, as it could not exist through many issues without such support.

Thus it is quite clear that any criticisms of the actions of ''responsible trade union leaders'' and their like have to be made, if at all, with an eye to the possible effect upon the funds and circulation. As an illustration of this may be cited Robert Smillie's crawl out over the miner's strike, where he endeavoured to get the miners to consent to their demand for higher wages being made contingent upon increased production. Only Smillie can explain how the miners could benefit under such a scheme, and though he might satisfy the readers of the "Daily Herald" by such an explanation, the could not satisfy a Socialist, and probably only a small proportion of the miners. Anyway, the "Labour" daily dared not criticise Smillie, although its policy—if such a term can be applied to a total absence of any semblance to a definite point of view—appears to be in disagreement with the Smillie backslide.

The same argument applies generally. No journal not supported by Socialists can put the Socialist viewpoint, just as no worker can produce works of art if he is paid to make golly-wogs—"he who pays the piper calls the tune," and the tune the "Daily Herald" has to pipe is called by as motley a crew of anti-Socialists and time-servers as could be found in the whole newspaper world.

When the workers decide that they require a Socialist daily Press they will have it and support it, and they will not invite assistance from Lansbury and his like, or accept it if offered. They will see to it that Socialism is presented and Socialism only, recognising that Socialists can only be made by Socialist propaganda.

D.W. F.

Some Shoddy Thoughts of a Superficial Mind (1922)

From the July 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is G. K. Chesterton’s opinion that Mr. A. J. Penty is “one of the two or three truly original minds of the modern world.” When therefore Penty applies himself to criticism of Marx one expects something brilliant. It turns out however to be as shallow as any of the stuff written by numbers of critics who make no claim to genius, and the original mind appears to be just like an ordinary one.

Writing on “Christian Communists” in the “Crusader” (26 May, 1922) he begins well with the confident assertion that “there is nothing in common between the Communism of Christianity and the Communism of Marx but a name which conceals differences that are fundamental.” This is a refreshing change from the attitude of the discontented religionists who “sympathise with the Labour movement ” on the one hand, and from the fogginess of the half-converted Communists on the other. The former fancy they see in the working class movement a blind groping heavenwards, and encourage the view, very useful to the capitalist class, that a little more soulfulness and a little less grasping after material things will right all wrongs, and incidentally make the movement fit for Christians to live on.

Just as the churches are learning that it does not pay to drive away its congregation by too forcible opposition to trade unionism, and safe enough to give benediction to sane Labour Leaders, so also may self-styled Communists recognise the advisability of turning a blind eye on the implications of "their own teaching when applied to religious superstitions. Thus we have the “Workers Dreadnought” (4th June, 1921) agreeing with the Rev. Conrad Noel that the true interpretation of “the teaching of the Nazarene is Communism ” and that Christ, if he really did exist, “was a Communist without doubt.” Again, Francis Meynell, as Editor of the “Communist,” while admitting in a letter to an enquirer (2nd June, 1921) that the “ materialist conception of History . .  . cannot be reconciled with any form of supernatural belief” had to excuse the unsound and illogical attitude of the Communist Party with the evasive remark that the logical proletarian “is even more rare than a white blackbird”; the specious apology of every purveyor of quack nostrums. If the public doesn’t know and doesn’t like what is good then give them what they like even though it is bad. If the workers don’t like the correct attitude toward religion, suppress it; if they don’t like Communism give them something else. In what other way can a “mass” party be built up?

But although Penty recognises the impossibility of reconciling Christianity with Marxism, he soon shows that his knowledge of the latter is hardly sufficient to support the emphatic opinion he expresses.

He says of Marxians that “in practice, as the Bolshevik regime demonstrated, they are Industrial Conscriptionists; for there is no avoiding the conclusion that Marxism leads as inevitably to the servile state as Fabianism.” He assumes that his conclusion is so obvious as not to need proof: but is it? If the Bolsheviks made the mistake of thinking that Russian conditions would permit the establishment of Socialism, does this make Marxists responsible for policies imposed on the Bolsheviks by economic necessity? If the Bolshevik Government, acting at the outset with insufficient knowledge of the world situation, were compelled by the failure of their hopes and the critical position in which they found themselves to adopt emergency measures, does this make Marxists Industrial Conscriptionists?

To hold Marxists responsible for the Russian Government’s actions is absurd: the Bolsheviks themselves are hardly responsible. They are only taking Hobson’s choice.

Penty goes on in similar strain to accuse Marxists of objecting not to capitalism but to the “private ownership” of capital. For proof he refers to, but does not quote, Lenin’s speeches. That Marx advocated state ownership is untrue and the suggestion from one who could so easily find out what he did advocate somewhat childish. It is doubtful too, whether Penty could produce evidence from Lenin’s speeches. That Lenin states as a fact that Russia cannot escape the capitalist stage of development is not a sufficient reason for the assumption that he desires nothing else.

It may be said in his defence by those who have high opinions of Mr. Penty that the “original mind” does not have to trouble about evidence for charges made, but those who don’t know Mr. Penty will only notice that this particular controversial trick is played by so many ordinary people—dishonest people.

I would certainly like to know one thing from Mr. Penty: that is, from what source he learned that Marx “did not propose to abolish capitalism but to superimpose communism over it.”

Mr. Penty evidently extends his originality to his use of the King’s English, for we are told that Marxians “do not quarrel with modernism as a conception of life, but only with the fact that it is limited to the few.” I can only speak for myself but I cannot imagine Marxists quarreling with anybody because “Modernism as a conception of life ” is “limited to the few.” I don’t know what it means but I should be prepared to take the risk and let the few keep it and wish them jolly good luck as well.

Mr. Penty next tells us that Marxians quarrel with the implications of materialism, but not with materialism itself. He omits however to say what the implications are and again leaves me in the dark as to his meaning.

He attempts to state the Marxian theory of social revolution and succeeds well enough while closely following the original, but once he leaves the book and begins to comment, his failure to understand becomes apparent.

He says that “if the forms of social organisation were nothing more than the reflex action of the forces of production, then the millenium ought to arrive by an automatic process without any conscious effort on the part of man.” I don’t know how “the forms of social organisation” can be the “reflex action” of anything, but assuming Mr. Penty meant something else, I am at a loss to understand where he obtained this notion of Marxism. He then pretends that this difficulty of his own creation was likewise discovered by Marx. “But Marx felt instinctively that such could not be the case.” This is another quite common trick..

Penty foists on Marx something he did not say and then argues that because Marx really did say something different that he was either contradicting himself or had changed his mind.

Now having initially misrepresented Marx and started him out on a course which has existence only in Penty’s fertile brain, this has somehow or other to be sustained.

He pretends that Marx had to find some driving force, and having cut out love, “he was driven to make use of the power of hatred. Hence the advocacy of the Class War by which he hoped to generate a force capable of overthrowing the existing order of society."

This is sheer nonsense. Marx did not and Marxists do not “advocate class war.” Marx from a careful study of the capitalist organisation of society made certain generalisations as to its structure and the lines of its growth and decay. He gave the explanation of its origin and of its position in the chain of social systems, and it is the aim of Marxists to spread this knowledge among the workers in order that it may be the means of hastening the overthrow of capitalist domination. Foremost in this is the recognition of the fact that capitalist society takes its form from the fundamental division into the owners of the means of production, and the wage earners who work but do not own. The Socialist no more advocates class war than does a doctor spread disease who asks that its existence shall be recognised and its nature studied as a prelude to its removal. While disease, physical and mental, was regarded as a punishment for sins, no headway could be expected in the treatment of lunacy or epidemics; while the criminal is regarded as a conscious and deliberate enemy of society instead of a product of the system no headway will be made in the removal of crime. While the class nature of capitalism is unrecognised by the workers, its abolition cannot be hoped for.

Those who endeavour to gain recognition for the fact that class struggle exists, are accused by Penty of fermenting hatred just as those who urged the development of medical and sanitary sciencies were accused of encouraging immorality, and those who urged the study of criminology, of fostering crime.

Those who have knowledge of the structure of capitalism based as it is on exploitation, and of the possibility of its replacement by a society in which class divisions shall no longer hamper the use by all of the natural resources and the highly developed means of wealth production, have no need of hatred as a motive force. Knowledge is a much more potent weapon in the hands of the organised working class.

Since therefore Marx did not advocate class war and did not expect that he through class hatred would generate a force capable of “overthrowing the existing social order” (by the way Mr. Penty has just told us that Marx did not aim at overthrowing capitalism) it is hard to see how Marxians could be disappointed because “it does not work out as expected.” Again, “working class solidarity ” has never been a reality and could not therefore, owing to the alleged instruction of the workers in suspicion have become a “myth.”

It would finally be interesting to know the identity of the “middle class socialists” who, through suspicion of their genuineness, have been lost to the working class movement to the latter’s detriment. I know of none. I have heard of people who have made the workers stepping stones to their own advancement, and then to conceal their own meanness when they deserted those who had provided means to their ascent, had to make pretence of being martyrs to suspicion. Penty may mean these, but their value is open to doubt anyway. Their contempt for the workers appears to have been developed more or less consciously, but Penty’s judging by the careless and misleading views he gives to his Crusader readers seems to be real; doubtless another attribute of the original mind.

In view of Penty’s rather miserable show it would be helpful if G. K. Chesterton would give us the identity of the third original mind so that we may know his calibre too.

Chesterton we know. He finds his vocation in writing excellent drinking songs; Penty, with his fine vein of imagination, and his lofty disregard for mere commonplace accuracy should transfer his talent to new fields. He might try Romantic Ballads on other historical figures, preferably those legendary ones about whom no awkward records exist. Anyway he might leave Marx alone.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Communist Mixture (1927)

From the September 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Saklatvala, the only Communist M.P., recently added to the humour of life by calling a public gathering of prominent members of the Labour and Conservative parties and idle society dames to witness the mumbo-jumbo ceremonies connected with the initiation of his children into the Parsee faith. This drew down on him the indignant censure of the Communist Party, on the ground that Saklatvala’s action was contrary to Communist principles, and set a bad example to other party members.

This, however, is not the only case of its kind affecting members of the Communist Party. Francis Meynell, a prominent Roman Catholic, was Editor of the "Communist.” Larkin still boasts of his faithful service to the Mother Church, and it is not long since Miss Isabel Kingsley was advertising in the "Workers' Weekly” asking fellow Communist members who were "idealists” and rejected the Materialist Conception of History to join her in forming a group inside the Communist Party.

A Leaflet just issued by the C.P.G.B., with the title "Has Communist Expulsion Helped,” deals with the relations of that party with its fellow reformists in the Labour Party. It is interesting to learn from this that "It is false for anybody to accuse the Communist Party of favouring a revolutionary coup d’état by a minority of the working class; we are, and have always been, in favour of utilising existing Governmental machinery to the limit of its possibilities.” As has been shown by copious quotations from official Communist publications, the Communists certainly have advocated precisely this thing. But if their present statement is correct, in what way do they now differ from the I.L.P. and the Labour Party?

In the past the C.P.G.B. have, at least in this country, claimed to stand for the working class. It appears they are now preparing to drop this. "We do not say that the Labour movement should have no message for the middle class. We do not say that it should refuse to fight for the demands of certain sections of the middle class, but what we do say is that it should put the demands of the middle class alongside those of the workers, fighting for them both, and not water down the workers’ demands to appeal to the middle class prejudices.”

Will the Communists now explain what is the middle class, and how the aims of non-workers can be reconciled with the abolition of private ownership and all forms of property income?

Edgar Hardcastle

The tragic comedians (1966)

Book Review from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Communist Party: Its Origins and Development until 1929 by Dr. L. J. Macfarlane Macgibbon & Kee, 63s.

In his book Dr. L. J. Macfarlane painstakingly traces the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in all its muddled and conflicting reformism, syndicalism, and anti-parliamentarianism in 1920, through its chequered career of alternately supporting and opposing the Labour Party, sometimes both supporting it and opposing it at the same time, with its playing at armed revolt, splitting the trade unions, marching the unemployed up and down, fancying itself leading the 1926 General Strike on to revolution—down to 1929 when “the Party was in a bad state, its membership was falling away and those who remained were engaged in bitter dissension and dispute.”

The CPGB started as a mixture of antagonistic elements; the resolution to seek affiliation to the Labour Party was carried by only 100 votes to 85, and the minority believed that they would have won if some of their supporters had not kept away from the founding congress. It has remained divided ever since, united only in one thing, the pathetic belief that victory for Socialism had been achieved in Russia.

Sometimes one faction gained the leadership and sometimes another. So its opposition to Labour Party candidates at Parliamentary elections in 1921 was followed in 1922 by a call to the workers to vote Labour. This was continued in 1924 but in 1929, when they coined the phrase “the third capitalist party” the Communists were telling the workers to vote for Labour Party candidates in some constituencies but elsewhere to abstain from voting.

The author, who describes himself as “sympathetic to the aims of the Communist Party,” admits that “there was little enough to show for nearly 10 years of devoted work by thousands of ordinary party members,” and he can claim for the Communist Party nothing more than that “for all its faults” it had “helped to keep alive a spirit of resistance to the meek acceptance of hardship and poverty as economic facts of life.” He should have remembered also the thousands of workers who, having been caught up by the emotional prospect of an impossible “revolution round the corner,” ended in apathy and cynicism after experience of Communist Party political trickery and deception.

The chief value of this book is that it brings together in chronological order a mass of detailed information, with references to sources, which will be useful to anyone wanting to follow up particular developments, but beyond that there is little to commend it. The major fault is the author's uncritical acceptance of grandiloquent claims made by the Communist Party and others without any attempt to examine them against the evidence. A case in point is the myth about the Jolly George and the campaign to stop the British Government intervening against Russia in the Polish-Russian war.

Dr. Macfarlane reports anti-war demonstrations, the formation of a Council of Action, the calling of a 24-hour strike in which “it was claimed that thousands of South Wales miners answered the call” and that the dockers of East London “refused to load the Jolly George with munitions.”

He concludes: “It now appeared that all these efforts had been effective—direct action to save the revolution had been taken at last”.

In fact it all had no perceptible effect on the actions and policy of the British Government, and this was admitted by the Communists in their journal. The Communist (7 October 1920):

Frankly, the National Council of Action has failed, and its failure is all the more disappointing when one remembers the unanimity and enthusiasm of the great Central Hall conference held at the beginning of August last. It was formed to prevent the supplies and munitions being sent in support of the attack on Soviet Russia, which it is quite obviously not doing. Somehow and from somewhere in this country, those supplies are being sent—a Moscow report alleges that England has sent seven steamers of munitions, three tanks and twelve small steamers with provisions in aid of Poland and that these have been unloaded at Danzig.

Dr. Macfarlane is uncritical in his approach because he obviously has no clear idea of what is the nature of the problem of replacing the capitalist social system by Socialism. To him “we are all Socialists”: Marxist and anti-Marxist, Labour Party, ILP, the defunct National Guilds movement, the Unemployed Workers Committee Movement of the Nineteen twenties; etc., etc. The fact that these bodies were fighting each other most of the time and that most of their aims were no more revolutionary than those of the present Labour Party passes him by.

He is able to report without comment that “as a revolutionary socialist party the British Socialist Party welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia” and that the Leeds Convention in 1917, with “rousing speeches from Phillip Snowden and Ramsay MacDonald” was “amazingly successful”—what exactly did it succeed in achieving?

He tells us that Tom Quelch went away from the Convention convinced that “the hour of the Social Revolution is close up on us”—why no criticism of that piece of silliness, or of Lenin's statement in March 1919 that “The victory of the proletarian revolution all over the world is assured”?

What was going on in those years was that the Communist Party of Great Britain, lacking any real understanding either of the strength of British and American capitalism and the capitalist outlook of the majority of workers, was dreaming of a non-existent Socialist victory in Russia, while Lenin and others in Russia were dreaming of a non-existent revolutionary working class in Britain, America, France, Germany and elsewhere about to come to the aid of the Bolsheviks.

Dr. Macfarlane has some surprising omissions. He does not tell us about the curious attitude and internal conflicts of the Communist Party, torn between its nominal acceptance of Marx's “Religion is the opium of the People” and the desire to get the votes of the workers who had a religious outlook. He briefly mentions Francis Meynell, who was editor of the Communist, but not that he was a Catholic!

Another omission is that he is able to describe the breakaway of the Socialist Labour Party from the Social Democratic Federation in 1903 but he does not mention the breakaway of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904. Perhaps this is not surprising. Had he thought fit to state the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain he would have had to justify his extraordinary statement: “Was it surprising that Marxists and socialists everywhere should turn to the leaders of the revolution for inspiration and guidance?”

He tells us on the same page that “to socialists everywhere the Russian Revolution of October 1917, came as a revelation”.

The reader of the book will look in vain to find out what it was that was revealed except confirmation of what Socialists knew already, the impossibility of Socialism without Socialists, and of imposing Socialism from above.

Edgar Hardcastle