SPGB Meetings (1961)

Party News from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

There was a report of the April 'Demonstration for Socialism' rally in the June 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard. Harry Young and Cyril May were the speakers at the meeting, and they spoke to an audience of 400 people.

The Politicians and the crisis: Part 2 (1977)

From the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

These are the times when unthinking workers look for scapegoats, as they did in Germany in the latter period of the Weimar Republic. There the once proud and powerful Social Democratic Party (SPD) were in government; they unwittingly paved the way for the Nazis. Hence, the concern of the political leaders of Western Europe, North America and Japan. They reason as follows.

The slump of the early ’thirties undermined the established regimes in places like Germany and Japan and many other less powerful countries too. Imitative fascist-type parties sprang up all over Europe (some holding power), gaining support from disenchanted workers. In the case of Germany the Nazis gained power through the ballot box in 1933. In Japan the militarists managed to mobilize popular support against the existing Liberal administration because of the economic situation—unemployment and deflation—not, as now, inflation. The new regime began reflation in 1932 and before the bottom of the world slump had been reached Japanese industry began to recover being propelled along by an aggressive drive in export markets.

This was bad news for capitalist interests whose markets were being successfully penetrated by Japan, e.g. the colonial possessions of the Western industrial states were taking an increasing volume of textiles. This was one of the reasons for “protectionism” of the 1930s, which the governments now wish to avoid. This encouraged Japanese capitalism, with militarists firmly in the saddle, to possess colonies of their own. In 1937 they attacked China, having as early as 1932 driven the Chinese out of Manchuria without any formal declaration of war.

War economy

Germany from 1933 onwards pursued a twin policy of re-armament and so-called "economic self-sufficiency”. Unemployment decreased (although it was still above 1 million in 1936) and the armaments industry and its adjuncts, like the new autobahns and airfields, increased. Many workers were employed on the work connected with numerous Nazi rallies; the 1936 Nuremberg Rally alone cost £2,000,000 to stage. To limit imports, license schemes were introduced and synthetic materials developed, partly to deal with Germany’s balance of trade problem and also geared to their “war economy”.

Germany entered into trade arrangements with countries in South-East Europe and Latin America. These countries agreed to take more exports from Germany in exchange for imports from them, but their volume was only 69 per cent. above 1929; whereas Britain’s exports were then 83 per cent. above that year. Britain had achieved this advantage by bi-lateral arrangements with various countries. The Commonwealth and Empire countries increased their import preferences for each others’ goods and as mentioned above placed restrictive quotas on textiles from Japan.

In spite of all this, unemployment in Britain was still over 1.3 million in 1937. In the June 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard was the following:

When Hitler for the German capitalists says that Germany must expand or explode, find markets or perish, he meets his opposite in Mr. Hudson. British Secretary for Overseas Trade who said in Warsaw on March 21st [1939] that “we are not going to give up any markets to anyone . . . Great Britain is strong enough to fight for markets abroad. Britain is now definitely going to take a greater interest in Eastern Europe”. (From News Chronicle, March 22, 1939). Fighting that at present takes the form of words, trade agreements, loans, guarantees against aggression etc. may. as in 1914 turn into an armed conflict, and that armed conflict will be yet another war produced by capitalist rivalries.

This area of Eastern Europe was Germany’s existing and expanding sphere of influence, for recovering territory lost in the previous imperial conflict—the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, Danzig and the Polish Corridor, and Memeland from Lithuania. Germany also had eyes on the Rumanian oilfields (hence the British guarantee to that country in spite of the fascist regime there), and the wheat-growing areas of the Ukraine, in Russia and Poland.

These brief references are to the seeds which helped produce the second world war, and the politicians at the recent London summit conference said so quite openly. By any sense of logic working-class ears should be pricking up at these statements, questions should be asked and conclusions drawn. The Socialist Party does its best to help draw these conclusions and to develop a Socialist awareness.

It was noteworthy that Mr. Fukuda was particularly alive to the dangers of the present slump. He was a young diplomat in London in 1933 at the time of the World Economic Conference which broke up solving nothing, to be followed by “beggar thy neighbour” policies which were already under way prior to the conference. One of the major factors preventing even formal agreement was America’s refusal to stabilize the dollar; Roosevelt having taken them off the Gold Standard with a view to raising US commodity prices as an inducement for investment by the industrialists. This caused the US dollar to fluctuate wildly in the foreign exchanges. The delegates from the other countries at the conference wanted America to stabilize back on the Gold Standard: this Roosevelt refused to do, being pre-occupied with the domestic effects of the Depression.

Crisis capitalism

This was and is crisis capitalism. Predicament—the conflict between national economic interests and the stability of the international trading and monetary systems. This was recognized well enough in 1933. 

The journal The Round Table declared, some months before the Conference at the time of the Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa, that "within a few months, conclusions must be reached in the financial and economic field, the effect of which will probably be decisive for or against the happiness of at least one generation of human beings all over the world.”

In September 1933, two months after the conference broke up, the same journal commented: ‘‘The great international conferences have come to little. The pulse of the Disarmament Conference is beating feebly (which began in June 1932) . . . The World Economic Conference has failed to reduce the obstructions to international trade, or even to make a tentative approach to agreement upon a solution of the world’s monetary problems”.

In the Daily Telegraph of May 9th, 1977, the day after this year’s conference, in an Economic Commentary article ‘‘Best view of the summit in few months” the author, Rodney Lord, stated: ‘‘It is idle to expect any great progress on persuading countries to regulate their economies for the general benefit of international stability. Politicians look first to the interests of the people who elected them.” The latter part of that quotation cannot go unchallenged of course—but we know what he means.

Politicians are the custodians of nation-states in a competitive world—that is, custodians for the capitalist class of their particular countries. At the same time they depend on the working class to go along with the arrangement, and have to try to placate them when it is necessary.

Conflicts of ‘national interest’

This conflict of national interest and international stability, with its inherent dangers, was demonstrated in Tokyo only four days after the end of the Economic Summit.

There were reports of a fire in an oilfield in Saudi Arabia which supplies over 30 per cent. of Japan’s crude oil imports. Prices fell on the Tokyo stock market and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry assured the Press that the fire would probably not have a serious effect on Japan’s supplies in the long run.

At the same time Mr. Fukuda, the Prime Minister, told a meeting of business leaders that the government is to press the case for Japan to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. He said that at London he had the ‘‘strong impression” that it will be difficult to get America’s approval because of President Carter’s “deep-rooted opposition”. However, Mr. Fukuda assured the businessmen that he was “most determined” to negotiate the issue with the US independently of other countries. The Japanese, apparently, have been shocked by the American President’s nuclear energy policy (from a report in the Daily Telegraph, May 13th).

An indication of Japan’s problems—even though being currently the world’s most successful economy— is the news that from the end of 1971 to the end of 1976, 30,000 shipyard workers lost their jobs. It is estimated that another 25,000 will go before the end of 1978, which is nearly the total workforce in British yards. (From the AUEW journal for May 1977.)

On May 9th the Daily Telegraph reported that British TV manufacturers were protesting to the Government that Japanese TV manufacturers were “bent on destroying” the British industry. This was in response to the plans of the Hitachi Company to build a factory at Tyne and Wear.

Commercial ‘aggrandisement’

The British businessmen said that there was already over-capacity in the industry. 1,751,000 sets were made in 1976 as against 3,000,000 in 1973, and Hitachi’s arrival would increase to 400,000 the number of Japanese colour sets made in Britain. Two other Japanese companies are already established here. Many more jobs would be lost—up to 6,000—than would be created, it was claimed. Hitachi had already a 20 per cent. interest in a Finnish company which is expected to export to Britain for assembly a substantial part of 800,000 total output of colour tubes. It is part of a policy of “commercial aggrandisement” in Europe, say the British capitalists.

No wonder Mr. Fukuda and the other statesmen are worried.

Frank Simkins

To be concluded

Politics and You (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

No doubt many of you are increasingly indifferent to politics and hold most politicians in contempt. This is understandable — the politicians make promises which they do not keep, and so more and more of the electorate adopt a cynical attitude to it all.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain do not blame the politicians for failing to “deliver the goods”; in fact our case is that they cannot. Surely if they could, they would, because this would be a certain recipe for retaining political power.

What we in the Socialist Party say, in other words, is that present-day society we live in cannot be shaped or directed at will. Merely because a politician pledges to reduce inflation, cure unemployment or solve the housing problem does not mean that this can be done. Most of you are becoming aware that far from governments controlling events, the reverse is true.

All right then! This calls for a basic examination of present-day society — which most people accept, and bemoan the inevitable consequences.

It calls for a recognition that in a world of competition turmoil is inevitable, stability impossible. In the existing economic system, which operates throughout the modern world regardless of political labels, goods and services are produced for a market, sale with profit being the only motive for production.

A rational and human attitude to resources, technology and the needs of mankind cannot be brought about within a society of money-dominated production and conflicting nation-states.

We all know that the British economy is facing the twin problems of inflation and slump. These problems are facing other industrial countries. The great argument and competition among them (USA, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Britain and the emerging industrial countries, not to mention the Soviet Union etc.) is who are to be top rats in one gigantic rat-race.

In every country the workers are being told that they must work harder to make the national economy more competitive than its rivals.

The exhortations to work harder (to those in employment) are particularly prevalent in this country. Such is the nature of the capitalist system that the problems facing the successful economies like Japan are just as pressing. Their very growth of productive capacity means that they require a large slice of the world market (at the expense of the other industrial countries). Yet we are told that the only solution to British problems is “growth”.

The following figures demonstrate the irrational world of capitalist competition in (for instance) shipbuilding.

Japan cutting shipyard labour force by 25,000, France 6,000. West Germany 4,000, Sweden is cutting by 30 per cent, Holland’s shipbuilding is only at 10 per cent of full capacity. Australia is closing 3 of its 5 shipyards.

(Daily Telegraph, 8th December 1976)

It is interesting to note that these various countries have different political parties in power operating supposedly different economic policies (Australia replaced their Labour government last year with a Conservative one, likewise Sweden): but with the same result.

Going back to October 28th 1976, the Daily Telegraph (City page) had the following statement on shipbuilding:

The oil crisis has been merely the catalyst for the shipbuilding crisis, which has been looming since 1969-70. Any expansion beyond that date has been irresponsible.

It was forecast that shipbuilding world orders may drop to 13 million tons whilst the production capacity being worked now was 33 million tons. With the increasing development of shipbuilding in countries like South Korea, Taiwan and Brazil capacity could be raised to 53 million tons.

Against this background of so-called “overproduction” and the subsequent frenzy to survive, are the millions even in the advanced countries who live sub-standard lives and the teeming millions in the “Third World” who live in the direst poverty.

In this country the slump has hit the building industry. Side by side with homelessness and slum living are unemployed building workers. Likewise large classes in schools with poor facilities and unemployed teachers.

Then there is the obscenity of food surpluses in one part of the world and starvation in another part. Even in those countries where the mountains of food are stored there are many ill-fed people: look at the world’s richest country, the USA .

The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not seek votes in a futile attempt to administer the existing system. The problems facing mankind can only be solved on a global scale upon the basis of worldwide common ownership and production for use. This means the ending of the whole paraphernalia of wages, profits, taxes and money. The end of state coercion, of leaders and led (the blind leading the blind).

It requires the urgent marshalling of resources to meet human needs. The introduction of free access: “from each according to his (her) ability, to each according to his (her) needs”. A change of this magnitude can be brought about politically, through the ballot box and using Parliament to lay the foundation stone of Socialist society. At the same time breaking down centralized government and replacing it with real democracy. This form of decision-making can only be decided by the majority of the population.

The various Socialist administrations in the different countries would then have to co-ordinate their activities so as to have a world approach to world needs. No doubt many of the existing forms like the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation could be adapted to this end.

Too tall an order, too vast a dream, too naive a hope? We think not. There is no other way to safeguard mankind’s future survival. You know the problems are real enough. There never has been a period in man’s history where the survival of our species has been so thoroughly discussed and society’s contradictions so thoroughly exposed.

Men and women of the working class, YOU in conjunction with your fellows abroad are the ones who can change things. The politicians are caught up in the power struggle within the present system. The industrialists, the wealthy in general have a vested interest in capitalism.

The working class have to bear the brunt of today’s problems and they are the majority.

If you agree with the World Socialist position you will wish to join the Socialist Party of Great Britain. It would not want to have you for any other reason.

Frank Simkins

The Politicians and the crisis: Part 1 (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Sunday May 8th, in London the seven-nation conference of heads of state ended. Present with their aides were the Prime Ministers of Canada, Italy, Japan, UK, the Presidents of USA and France, and the Chancellor of West Germany; and on the final day Roy Jenkins in his capacity as President of the EEC.

The Conference was the latest of a series of similar conferences to appraise and look for solutions to the very real and increasingly dangerous problems facing the West European industrial countries, North America and Japan, and the rest of the avowedly capitalist world, i.e. Australasia. Latin America and so on, plus and by no means least the primary producing countries of the “Third World”, who are themselves at various stages of industrialization.

The problems discussed were primarily the world trade recession, with its unemployment. particularly amongst the young, inflation, energy, imbalance in international payments, the expected $45,000 million surplus of the oil-producing countries grouped in OPEC, the debts of the developing (non-oil producing) states, the “necessary” increase in nuclear energy (and its attendant dangers, political and military), “aid” to developing countries in which the Eastern (Soviet) bloc trade organization Comecon was urged to follow suit.

Carter, the US President, also raised the question of illegalities which had hitherto been condoned in certain banking, multi-national business and political circles. (The former Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Tanaka, in relation to bribes from the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation was very involved.) This latter matter was not mentioned in the final declaration of “7 Pledges” to revitalize capitalism’s ailing economies, possibly because although not unimportant, it was regarded as peripheral to the major problems. To raise it officially would have also meant an explicit reference to companies and individuals. But does the conference have any significance for the working class of the world?

It can be safely said that modern society rarely appears to have stability for more than about two consecutive fortnights at a time, and that countless conferences and meetings have come and gone. Like many things it is all relative . . . and yet the newspaper headlines must at least have indicated something of magnitude — e.g. “7 Pledges to stop chaos” (Daily Telegraph, 9th May) and the politicians’ view on what could happen if these problems are not solved, must mean something. Put it this way: Carter, Callaghan and the rest wish to present as good a face as possible on the existing system whether they choose to call it capitalism, the “mixed economy”, a “free market”, a “social market” economy, the “free world” (i.e. capitalism with some sort of parliamentary democracy), partly because they are obliged to continue with it and also perhaps because they like the trappings of political power. As Carter said at the end of the conference: “We have to remember that making decisions, even unanimously, is not a guarantee that our decisions will be consummated. In many ways our own reputations are at stake.” As an article in the Daily Telegraph on Friday 6th May (the day before the beginning of the heads-of-state meeting) under the heading “Outlook for the World Summit — Hidden Threats to the World Economy” stated in its opening paragraph:

Chancellor Schmidt probably expressed the inner thoughts of all the European leaders when he said on Wednesday that he was looking to the London summit this weekend, mainly to bolster confidence. By this he meant the leaders' self-confidence and their electorates’ confidence in them, both of which are indeed at a low ebb.

Why this dual lack of confidence then? Because the politicians always aim to convince themselves and in turn the electorate that the capitalist system has found a way of stabilizing itself, and that despite its many imperfections it could at least avoid a catastrophe of the 1930s’ slump dimensions. They imagined that with their versions of Keynesian economics they had eradicated the deeper troughs of the business cycle.

However, from the mid-sixties onwards their policies have been demonstrated to be futile and unsound. It has been a gradual process, this dawning on the part of capitalism’s politicians.

Perhaps more to the point, among their advisors in the corridors of power, the higher echelons of the Civil Service, this bewilderment was exemplified in an article entitled “Whitehall at its wits’ end” (Sunday Telegraph, 24th April):

‘Everyone is baffled’ confesses one Permanent Secretary. “The old levers just don’t do the trick any more. We’re living in a world we didn’t make and don’t understand’. The Treasury has according to one senior Labour Minister (unnamed) ‘a very marked loss of confidence’, which reveals itself ‘to the discerning eye’ by the presence of competing economic ideologies. Before the Treasury served up only the pure milk of Keynesianism; now Keynes and Friedman are both on offer.

Graham Turner, the author of the article, states that “Whitehall is at its wits’ end . . . like the rest of us — they have not the faintest idea where Britain is going”.

The British politicians, their advisors and their counterparts in other countries may not know where the British and world economies are heading, but they do know, from personal experience and from the reading of history, where the 1930s’ crisis led.

The fact that they spoke at the Summit conference as candidly as they did demonstrates the seriousness of capitalism’s present difficulties.

The Japanese Prime Minister said “the world economic situation was now as serious as that of the early 1930s when leading industrial nations failed to act in time to prevent a slide into the 1939-45 war. History should not be allowed to repeat itself. Western nations had to co-operate more energetically in tackling economic problems” (Sunday Telegraph, 8th May).

He also recalled the fiasco of the 1933 London Economic Conference when no agreement was reached and a communique not even issued. “The difficulties today are greater and are compounded by new problems”.

The French President, Giscard d’Estaing. recalled that the ending of the 1977 conference coincided with the anniversary of the end of the 1939-45 war! “Sombre and pessimistic pictures were sometimes drawn of the present state of the world, but the cooperation at such conferences make it possible to avoid the mistakes [!] that helped to bring on that war.”

Helmut Schmidt of West Germany spoke on similar lines and “thought that they had avoided the results of complete selfishness” — by avoiding the “traps of the 1930’s.” President Carter like the other heads of state was concerned that decisions reached should not be merely pious, but recognized that making decisions and implementing them was not one and the same thing. "Sometimes heads of State tend to over-emphasize their own importance,” he said.

Callaghan considered that continuing unemployment carried political risks, not merely by the replacement of one party by another (naturally he does not want to lose his job) in Parliament — but that political democracy could be threatened. He is obviously concerned regarding the growth of the National Front, with racialism as the main plank of its support, and it is obvious there is a parallel here with the Nazis’ anti-semitism, which was copied in this country by the pre-war British Union of Fascists (although in recent years Sir Oswald Mosley has tried to obscure his organization’s former position on this subject).

It would seem inconceivable that the British working class could en masse support an organization tainted with fascism. Some of NF’s leaders were given to dressing up in Nazi-style uniforms before the organization was formed, and their arguments for economic nationalism — “self-sufficiency” — were advocated by the Nazis. However, it seemed improbable at the time that the Nazis would make much headway.

It can be justifiably argued that Britain in the 1970s, even with inflation and high unemployment is not the same as Germany in the early 1930s at the height of the depression with 6 million unemployed and the dire poverty it meant. However, in spite of the lower percentage of unemployed compared with that period and the lesser relative hardship of today’s unemployed, there is apathy and cynicism to politics and politicians generally, which though understandable is far from healthy — and also a good deal of resentment on the part of some of the young. This is why the established politicians are concerned wondering whether, if the crisis continues irrespective of the party in power, some of the youngsters might transfer their violent support from football teams to organizations like National Front. After all most of the workers of today know little of the 1930s; they make comparisons within this period, and as to whether the politicians’ promises and policies ring true. Over 400,000 of the present unemployed in Britain are in the 16-to-25 age group. In the rest of Western Europe the percentage is a little lower, and in the USA it is higher than in this country.

The major parties of British capitalism are discredited and the growth of the National Front directly arises from this. It is a particular indictment of Labour-style reformism and its inability to deal with capitalism’s problems, heightened as they are in times of crises.

Frank Simkins

(To be continued)

SPGB Meetings (1972)

Party News from the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tranquilizers (1956)

From the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life under modern capitalism gives rise to all sorts of anxieties, tensions and "complexes." To start with the securing and holding down of jobs in that "increasingly competitive world," which the politicians are constantly referring to and in the advent of automation.

The working class housing problem, keeping up with hire-purchase commitments, having relatives in Cyprus or other trouble spots; all these problems tend to produce various mental disorders.

No small proportion of people suffering as a result of society's contradictions join the steadily expanding ranks of the mentally ill as patients, voluntary and otherwise, in the mental hospitals and asylums.

There is also an increasing tendency to resort to drugs, known as "tranquilizers" to temporarily obliviate the nagging problems. Taking sleeping pills for insomnia is nothing new of course, but these tranquilizers are a comparatively new phenomenon.

In the U.S.A. a commercial drug called Miltown (named after the town of its manufacture in New Jersey) is fourth largest selling drug in the country and, according to a Daily Herald article ((8/6/56), is becoming a "dangerous national habit."

Again, according to the Herald there are two tranquillizers produced in Britain—reserpine and chlorpromazine, the former in some cases leading to suicidal depression.

What a commentary on present day society!

Surely it should be apparent that the very real problems which confront us are inseparable from capitalism.

In the world of harmony and co-operation that will be Socialism, the circumstances that give rise to worry and anxiety will be absent.

Where the very means of life, i.e., those of production and distribution, are commonly owned and democratically controlled, resulting in the replacement of the profit by the use motive, the constant fear of economic crises, of new industrial techniques, and the perpetual struggle, will be things of the past. Likewise the tragedies being enacted in Cyprus and Algeria, and the ever present threat of large scale war arising from capitalism’s struggle for markets, strategic bases, trade routes and spheres of influence.

Resorting to artificial antidotes in an attempt to momentarily obliviate our problems is worse than futile.

Their permanent solution, indeed the only solution to working class problems, is really self-evident, the emancipation of our class from the enslavement of capital.

Fellow workers, let us stop eternally trying to escape from society’s ailments, but face them, understand them and based upon that Socialist understanding take the necessary political action.

F. S.

SPGB Meetings (1991)

Party News from the August 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

GLC Election Campaign Results (1973)

Party News from the June 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Party’s GLC election campaign was a success in terms of activity, publicity and literature sales. Some 60 to 70 London members were involved in one way or another to distribute 50,000 leaflets, sell 500 Socialist Standards and hold a number of outdoor meetings. Publicity included, besides local and London evening press reports, a brief television appearance during which our spokesman was able to make the point that we were contesting the election to put over the case for Socialism, oppose the parties of capitalism and demonstrate our view that Socialism can be established democratically through the ballot box. There were also two even briefer interviews on Radio London. These broadcasts were a start, but came nowhere near our demand, as a matter of democratic principle, that all parties contesting elections should have equal time on radio and television to present their views in their own way under their own control. No doubt if this had been allowed we would have had many more enquiries. The results accurately reflect the present low level of Socialist consciousness amongst the working class and demonstrate the need for increased Socialist activity to overcome this. For the record the detailed results for the 11 constituencies where there were Socialist candidates are set out below:

Hackney North and Stoke Newington:

Pitt (Lab) 6529, House (C) 2524, Goldman (Comm) 621, Carter (Soc) 250. 

Hampstead: 

Wistrich (Lab) 12458, Clarke (C) 9823, Benad (L) 2824, Champion (Comm) 466, Cox (Soc) 191. 

Holborn and St. Pancras South: 

Kazantis (Lab) 7437, Weeks (C) 3520, Elithorn (L) 1085, Davies (Soc) 99, Fierz (Ind) 72, Goulstone (Ind) 60. 

Hornsey: 

Bains (C) 10,361, Warren (Lab) 10,078, O’Brien (L) 3450, Van den Berg (Comm) 483, Porter (Soc) 144. 

Islington North: 

Bondy (Lab) 7463, Yeo (C) 2798, Buick (Soc) 284. 

Lambeth Central: 

Grieves (Lab) 9231, Pritchard (C) 2707, Kane (L) 1026. Jackson (Ind) 143, Baldwin (Soc) 115, Solomon (Ind) 103.

Norwood: 

Livingstone (Lab) 11,622, Malynn (C) 8007, Drake (L) 1819, Young (Soc) 95.

St. Marylebone: 

Plummer (C) 7930, Gordon (Lab) 4971, Darvas (Ind C) 485, Temple (Comm) 276, Weidberg (Soc) 84. 

Streatham: 

Geddes (C) 10,492, Walker (Lab) 9426, Mitchell (L) 2114, Simkins (Soc) 120, Boaks (Ind) 57.

Tottenham: 

McIntosh (Lab) 8043, Croft (C) 3360, Conev (Ind) 2924, Young (Soc) 109.

Vauxhall: 

Carr (Lab) 10821, Bottomley (C) 3396, Henry (Comm) 365, Sansum (Soc) 121.

After This Crisis . . . ? (1976)

From the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world capitalist economic and political system is in crisis. The signs are so obvious that the mere statement of fact is almost superfluous. The system is beset by not one crisis but several crises. These are separate entities, but inter-related and from the same root cause.

The three major economic problems for all industrialized countries, and the primary producing countries of the so-called Third World, are: inflation, the five-fold increase in oil prices since 1973, and a recession. If the previous cycles of commerce ending in slumps could be referred to as capitalism’s “anarchy of production”, the present situation is chaos. A few press headlines from a single day, 7th September 1975, bear witness to this.

Japanese Bankruptcies at a Peak.

Inflation Rises in U.S.

French Reflation Scorned.

TUC Expecting Autumn Reflation to Cut Jobless.

The “French reflation” was the proposed use of £3,300 million by the French government to try to stimulate the economy, and the dissatisfaction was expressed by the trade union movement and others. M. Georges Seguy of the CGT, the Communist-dominated trade-union organization, said the plan did not alter “the disastrous situation in which our country finds itself”. The French "Socialist” Party said the plan "did not meet needs on employment and prices”.

The TUC’s hope was voiced at the recent conference in Blackpool where a majority had decided in favour of the Labour Government’s £6-a-week wage-restraint policy — a condition of acceptance being the expectation of measures to bring down unemployment. Len Murray, the TUC General Secretary, said that backing the wages policy would “make it easier for the Chancellor to start judicious and selective measures to reflate the economy . . . We shall be looking for action this Autumn to project jobs.” (His word was “project”, not “protect”!)

Trade-union leaders and politicians are, of course, whistling in the dark. The Labour government’s efforts to create jobs are as unrealistic as its other attempts to control capitalism. A sizeable proportion of the unemployed are young people who have been unable to find jobs since they left school last July. In a recent speech in Edinburgh, Edward Heath spoke of a danger that disillusioned youngsters might reject political democracy if the problem were not solved.

Laid Off

Earlier last year, in the writer’s experience, workmates and fellow trade-unionists were not over-concerned at the situation. Something was wrong, there were problems, but things would sort themselves out. The same attitude was found in the audiences at Socialist Party meetings. Now it is different. People up the road are being laid off, “shaken out”, and “surplus to requirements”. Examples in South London are the closure of Decca Radar at Battersea, due to the decline in the sales of colour TV, and the proposed shut-down of the Telephone Manufacturing Company at West Dulwich.

The latter is due chiefly to the cut-back in Post Office orders. The Company’s work is to be centralized at an existing factory in Wiltshire. Two larger companies are also affected by the Post Office cut-back: Plessey’s and the General Electric Company, with 20,000 predicted additions to the numbers of unemployed. In the case of TMC the redundancies include many West Indians and Asians from the Brixton, Herne Hill and Croydon areas. Some long-service employees are jobless: the writer knows one who has been with the Company since he left school in 1938.

The editorials and city columns are full of strident talk about “overmanning”, lack of “mobility of labour”, and “natural wastage”. The writers (employees themselves, of course, and presumably members of the National Union of Journalists) wish other workers to travel obediently at a moment’s notice. This insistence on a “Have tools, will travel” outlook appears only when it suits — or seems to suit — capitalism. Perhaps the ideal situation would be an “Unemployed Disposal Unit” into which workers and their dependants could be fed when not required.

There have been numerous comparisons with the crisis of 1931. There are two economic phenomena from the past which haunt capitalism — the German inflation of 1923 and the “Wall Street Crash” of 1929. At the Durham Miners’ Rally last summer Harold Wilson said we were “facing the worst recession since the 1930s, because the world was in the midst of the most serious decline in trade for over forty years”. We have a slump — because we have a slump!

The President of Australian Council of Trade Unions, Bob Hawke, stated at the CTU Conference in Melbourne that Australia “faced an economic crisis unprecedented since the 1930s”; and “the entire Western world was in a state of economic crisis, and it was naive to blame the Labour government for Australia’s economic difficulties”. (Hawke is also the federal president of the Australian Labour Party.)

Comparison with the nineteen-thirties is interesting in more ways than one. It is not only that the scale of the present recession is the most widespread since that period, but that the proposed solutions are remarkably similar. At the TUC conference, what was most noticeable was the sheer poverty of ideas. The so-called “left”, arguing against the £6-a-week policy, said it would intensify the depression by further reducing workers’ purchasing power: bigger wage increases would increase the workers’ ability to buy goods and services and so make things better.

This is a variant of the simplistic theory that crises occur because the working class cannot buy back what it has produced. Of course it is true that the workers cannot buy the total product of their labour: not only during a depression, however, but at all other times, including periods of expansion and “recovery”. Marx dealt with this in Capital, Volume 2:

  [that the workers] receiving too small a portion of their own product, and the evil would be remedied by giving them a larger share of it, or raising their wages, we should reply that crises are precisely always preceded by a period in which wages rise generally, and the working class actually get a larger share of the annual product intended for consumption. From the point of view of simple commonsense, such a period should rather remove a crisis.

Once a slump is under way, things happen cumulatively. Workers are laid off, their purchasing power decreases, and a chain reaction sets in affecting other industries and other workers. Simultaneously, this helps promote the capitalists’ “loss of confidence” and their cut-back in investment. But the idea that the situation can be remedied by advancing wages is unrealistic. This is unpalatable for Socialists to state, and workers often resent it, but it cannot be ignored.

Searching for Answers

Equally dangerous, but more reactionary, are the continual calls for import controls. This type of economic nationalism in the nineteen-thirties produced restrictions and counter-restrictions, tariffs and further tariffs. The slump and attempted national solutions at the expense of other capitalist states was a contributory factor to dictatorship in countries particularly "hemmed in” by these policies.

There are still demands for further nationalization as the supposed cure for the problems produced by capitalism. This is happening in sections of the motorcar industry. Such is the magnitude of the recession that Coventry, a centre of car production, has been transformed within a couple of years from a high-employment and high-wage area into one with unemployment figures comparable with the depressed areas of Northern Ireland and North-east England. According to the Sunday Telegraph (10th September 1975) car production has fallen to 44 per cent. of its capacity, and studies conducted by McKinsey & Co. (American management consultants) estimate that a further cut of 25 per cent. is necessary ‘“to ensure a profitable future” for the industry.

Part of the objection to the government’s putting money into the Chrysler company was that it would prejudice the recovery of Leyland. The McKinsey report blames “overmanning” and low productivity for the problems of the car industry, and of course this is the cry with regard to British capitalism generally. The proposition is that if only British workers were as profitably employed as workers in other countries — “our competitors” — all would be well. The flaw in this analysis is the recession and high unemployment in those other countries: the Japanese bankruptcies mentioned earlier, the 8 million unemployed in the United States, the numbers in Germany and France.

Under the heading ‘“Shipyards fight undercutting” the Daily Telegraph (2nd October 1975) had a report:

  The desperate hunt for new orders is leading European shipbuilders being undercut by Far East yards that are trying to tempt British and other shipping companies to give them contracts.

It went on:

  The slump in international trade means there is vast over-capacity in shipbuilding, with the bulk of it in Japan and the emerging nations such as South Korea. Japanese yards fear they will be down to only 25 per cent capacity in about two years’ time, and have been pressing for Government help to retain their 50 per cent share of world shipbuilding.

  Now European shipbuilders are starting to urge the Common Market to draw up a shipbuilding policy that will thwart the Japanese ideas.

It must be obvious that neither low productivity nor high productivity in capitalist society is the answer.

Frank Simpkins

Peace a Profession? (1960)

From the December 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Peace Is Our Profession. Headquarters Strategic. Air Command," states the giant notice board outside the U.S. Strategic Air Command H.Q. at Omaha, Nebraska. From this base, under the command of General Power, are directed the activities of 250,000 personnel in seventy bases throughout the world, over 2,000 bombers and jet-tankers, and 90 per cent. of the Western Alliance's nuclear striking power.

In the event of war over 1,000 bombers, each one capable of more destruction than all the bombers involved in the whole of the last war, would be sent aloft. The crews of these bombers have pre-arranged targets and are constantly on the alert; at least once every twenty-four hours the alarm is sounded. The entire fleet of aircraft can be airborne within a quarter of an hour—the first within three and a half minutes.

Under a system of warnings and controls the crews are able to fly to predetermined points on their target routes; if they have a final go-ahead, on the express orders of the American President, they would continue on their routes and press home their attack. (If this final order is not given the bombers are instructed to return to their bases). Simultaneously intercontinental ballistic missiles—the long range rockets with H- bomb war-heads—would be released.

And so it goes on, this melancholy tale of potential destruction on a scale hitherto undreamt of.

These facts and figures apply more or less equally to the Soviet bloc and, of course, to Britain's R.A.F. and the air forces of other powers, all of which are on a permanent war footing. It’s all for peace and for the defence of righteous principles—they all say.

The American ruling class and their allies allege that it's a case of safeguarding freedom, democracy, “a way of life," a heritage; and, to help things along, they are never shy of enlisting the Almighty. Krushchev and company's tale is a little different. Apparently they have to offer defence against imperialism (particularly the American variety) to keep safe the “People's State" and “Socialism." So in order that people should remain “free" (both sides having their own peculiar definitions of this term), opposing capitalist powers are prepared if necessary to take part in the possible wholesale destruction of mankind.

What can be done to end this terrible state of affairs? Capitalist politicians can only talk on terms of a third world war and local conflicts (which may or may not remain localised) as long as they have the unquestioning support of the world's workers. Without this they would be impotent.

Modern wars are caused by property conflicts between rival teams of big business, arrayed on a national level, the private bosses of America and the state bosses of Russia being at present the major contestants. The stakes are high: vast resources, natural and man made, markets for an ever increasing volume of goods, to protect or capture these, capitalist states need strategic bases and political spheres of influence.

With these real, material, profitable bones of contention the alleged principles are clearly demonstrated to be something less than principles. Former enemies who were never, never to be re-armed, become military allies, and personal association with the previous regime is no impediment in this unsavoury process. Franco Spain and Salazar Portugal help to protect “democracy," as does Chiang Kai Shek and as did Syngmann Rhee. Dubious Latin American regimes are supported, so as to ensure stability; that is, the status quo on investments. The Soviet hierarchy with their commercial, and therefore, military commitments, are not at a loss in the game; in fact, they are racing neck and neck, if not leading by a short head.

Fidel Castro seems to be a friend in need at the moment; strategy and oil are more than remarkable coincidences (Batista, his more sadistic predecessor, was a stabiliser of Uncle Sam's). Nasser was the lad sometime ago, and new faces representing new aspiring ruling classes are constantly arising from the colonial struggles.

And so this dirty game of power politics goes on, over issues which are not worth the shedding of one drop of working class blood. It is now 21 years since the beginning of World War II. It began with Allied indignation at German bombing of “open cities," like Warsaw, went on with indiscriminate aerial bombardment by both sides, and concluded with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Are you going to allow an even greater catastrophe, or are you going to wake up NOW!

Frank Simkins

Election Results (1970)

Party News from the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The result of the election of the two seats contested by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the general election on 18 June was :

CLAPHAM

Skelton (C)       16,593

Pitt (Lab)         13,473

Thwaites(L)       2.982

Simkins (Soc)       220

Boaks(Ind)             80

HORNSEY

Rossi (C)           21,434

Pestell (Lab)      17,645

Brass (L)              3,755

Morris (Comm)      624

Grant (Soc)             156

The Socialist Party also contested a local by-election in the Town Hall ward of Haringey Borough Council on 4 June. The result was: Carnell (Lab) 1.234. Painter (C) 1,146, Buick (Soc) 11.

Obituary: Frank Simkins (2019)

Obituary from the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are saddened to have to report the death in May at the age of 90 of our comrade Frank Simkins. Frank was born in Battersea in South London in 1930. He had been a member of the Labour Party while a teenager but, on returning from conscripted national service (in Greece where the British Army was supporting the pro-West side in the civil war there), joined the old Camberwell branch in 1950 after listening to Party speakers at East Street, Walworth. He trained and worked as a tool-maker in various engineering factories, where he was an active trade unionist and AEU shop steward and, later until the age of 80, as a storekeeper in his brother’s motor business in Stockwell.

Frank was a regular outdoor speaker and occasional writer for the Socialist Standard and the Party’s candidate in Clapham in the 1970 General Election. He also represented the Party in elections to the old GLC and was a regular attender at Conference and Delegate Meetings (until his final illness), where he emphasised the need for socialists to support political democracy and warned of picturing socialism as a society without problems. In particular, he often argued that it was ‘inconceivable’ that every person on the planet would have their own personal car if socialism was to be an environmentally-friendly society.

Rarely seen without his trademark jacket and tie, the word ‘dapper’ could have been invented to describe him. But above all, Frank will be remembered as a polite, considerate and thoughtful man, with a good sense of humour. He was well-regarded by his comrades and our condolences go to his family and friends.

A ride on the merry-go-round (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taking part in a general election is rather like having a ride on a merry-go-round. It is noisy, gaudy, exciting. It has something to divert us, even though temporarily, from the problems of the day. And when it is all over and we get down from our horse, we have a distinct impression of having been here before.

The election programmes of the capitalist parties in 1966 all told us about their plans for dealing with certain social ills. They told us about building a safer world, where the weapons of destruction are kept firmly under control and where war is a disappearing fear. They had a lot about poverty and of how they had the final solution to want and insecurity. In some cases, they pinned it down to particular issues; like housing, which they said was a simple matter of trusting them to provide decent homes for everyone.

Any elector with a stomach strong enough could have ploughed through several of these programmes, all making the same sort of promises about the same problems. And any elector with a memory long enough could recall that he was served up with the same stuff in the election of 1964 — or 1959, 1955, 1951, 1950 . . .  and that in fact there had always been the same high sounding plans and empty assurances, for as long as there had been votes to win.

One thing which is absolutely certain now is that it will be no different in 1970. It does not need any talent for clairvoyance to know that in this election we shall be assailed by Labour, Conservative, Liberal, “Communist” with manifestoes which are blockbusters of promises. And they will be talking about war, poverty, wages, housing, insecurity . . .

Another certainty is that the voters, who are the working class, will be sufficiently impressed by these programmes to make their choice between the parties presenting them. The electors will actually consider whether they will accept the dud cheques of the Labour Party in preference to those of the Tories. They will argue about which capitalist party shall be given the chance to deceive them, exploit them and suppress them for the next five years. And having chosen they will sit up all night on polling day to watch open-mouthed for the result of this non-race.

Having done this, and having given power to one or other of the parties of capitalism, the working class will return to their problems — war, poverty, housing, disease and so on. Until the next election comes round, when the merry-go-round will start again and the manifestoes will come out telling us how easy it is to stop all these social ills.

One of the most dangerous features of the merry-go-round is that it is a diversion. The workers are impressed with the glamour of it all; they think it important, whether Wilson supports the right football team and whether Heath is married. They become caught up in the razzmatazz of the election and argue as if there were some fundamental difference between Labour and Tory and the others. They have their ride on the merry-go-round—and they pay for it.

In other words, among the confusion and the deception and the glamour, the real issues and the fundamental interests are submerged. What matters in this election, and in all the others, and in fact all the time, is not which party is given the job of running capitalism, reformed or unreformed. As long as capitalism continues so will its problems—and so far no one has been able to think up any way of having capitalism without war, poverty, famine and the like.

What matters is whether the working class will take this chance to look at a more basic programme — nothing less than dealing with the cause of their problems instead of meddling with their symptoms. This means a fundamental questioning of capitalism—its property basis, its privileges, its false principle of leadership. It would be a useful start in this, to look back at those old election promises, to compare them and the current ones and to contrast all of them with the facts of reality and achievement.

It is only the shortest step from this, to replacing capitalism with a society based on the common ownership of the means of production; to building a world without classes, frontiers, racial divisions, privileges; without want amid riches. The urgent problem for the working class now is to replace capitalism with Socialists—to stop the merry-go- round and get off.

*     *     *     *     *

The Socialist Party is to contest two seats in the general election on June 18 — Hornsey and Clap- ham, both in London.

CLAPHAM

Candidate: F. Simkins 

Election Rooms:

52, Clapham High St., S.W.4. 01-622-3811

HORNSEY

Candidate : E. Grant

Election Rooms:

159 Turnpike Lane, N.8

Members and sympathisers are urged to contact their nearest election room to help in this socialist election campaign.

Please send donations to the Parliamentary Fund, c/o Treasurer, The Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52, Clapham High Street, S.W.4.

Mr. Hutchinson Investigates (1957)

From the August 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is Britain great? And why are so many workers considering emigration as something of a solution to their problems?

Firstly, British capitalism, although still a world power, is second rate in comparison with the giants of the United States and the Soviet Union, which is nothing, as far as workers are concerned, to get hot under the collar about. The once mighty British Empire bestowed no benefit on British workers; likewise American and Russian “greatness” on their workers.

As for the increasing flow of emigrants to the New World and Australasia, again the reasons are hardly secret—the chance of higher wages, a supposed solution to housing difficulties, etc.—all very much facets of working- class life.

However, Mr. Harold Hutchinson, of the Daily Herald (4/5/6 March), in a series of three articles, goes in for some soul searching on these very questions. Not surprisingly, being a reformist. Socialism is not mentioned, let alone defined; Mr. Hutchinson’s horizon does not go beyond capitalism—although he no doubt prefers a “modified” capitalism—with all of its inseparable paraphernalia, i.e., buying and selling, rent, interest and profit, export drives, together with the necessary trade routes, spheres of influence and strategic points. Presumably, this is considered perfectly natural, his task being the futile attempt to knock off some of the rough edges.

The Greatness of Britain
In his first article, Mr. Hutchinson makes great play of British industrial and commercial resources and contributions to technological progress. He instances British lead in atomic power, the fact that the chemical industry is the largest in Europe, the British rôle in quality motor car production, aviation, shipbuilding, etc., and that London is still the world’s commercial centre. All very interesting and, no doubt, factual, but although the working class make all this possible, they neither own nor control these wondrous means of production and distribution—any more than did the chattel slaves of Ancient Rome own the vast resources of the Roman Empire.

The workers who do not own Great Britain
As Mr. Hutchinson well knows, the only way workers can scratch a livelihood, here and elsewhere, is by the sale of their labour power. Divorced, through personal or social circumstances from their pay packet, they are, in most cases, immediately dependent on sick clubs, etc., or on meagre State aid, the British atomic lead notwithstanding.

Most workers do not even own their "houses,” which is why there is widespread concern over the Tory Rent Bill. Those who do affect to “home ownership” have a working-life long mortgage around their necks.

Let an old age pensioner or disabled ex-Serviceman declare to the Assistance Board that he is a part owner of the British Empire, and see how far he gets!

Welfare Capitalism

In his second article, Harold Hutchinson admits that in spite of British capitalism’s so-called Welfare State the social system is virtually unchanged, which does not say much for the Party that he supports—the Labour Party.

He contends that present day society—he does not call it capitalism, of course—is based upon the education system, and survives as a result of it. The reason for this conclusion is not stated. Capitalism is based upon the class ownership of the very means of life, upon the economic fact that about 10 per cent. of the population own the factories, mines, mills, transport, etc., nationalisation notwithstanding.

It is obvious that workers are conditioned during their formative school years to accept the status quo, but this cannot be attributed to any peculiarities of the British education system as such; working class support for capitalism is not confined to those lands with Etons And Harrows, or those with monarchies and remnants of the landed aristocracy.

The Rôle of Education

Again, the factors making for this acceptance of the system that exploits them, are not confined to “education.” The mass means of communication which the ruling class has at its disposal is of paramount importance, not least of all the Daily Herald. (Quite apart from the presentation of “news” the constant circulation-boosting prize competitions which that and other papers engage in foster the idea that property owning is natural and desirable. It also at once clearly demonstrates the essential poverty of the working class.)

It is utterly useless to look for changes in the school system as a means of undermining capitalism, because although the blatant privileges of the so-called public school system may eventually give way to an apparently more democratic one, by and large this would be dictated by the needs of an increasingly technical (and competitive) economy. In no circumstances would the powers that be permit a curriculum that was not in keeping with their class interests. The overhaul of their education system is at the moment somewhat of a headache to them, trying as they are to maintain their hold on colonial possessions, finance, a large armament programme, and at, the same time pay for technical education.

Socialist education—that is an examination, understanding and resultant rejection of capitalism and the realisation of the need for a revolutionary change in society—is quite another thing. However, that is not what the Herald man had in mind.

America the model

Mr. Hutchinson then moves from education to economic affairs and bemoans the lack of real competition in this country owing to the emergence of cartels and price rings. He looks with somewhat envious eyes at—as he says—the “ really competitive system in the United States ” (where General Motors control about 60 per cent of motor car production and anybody can set themselves up in business producing cars, because, after all, there are no price rings to impede you—cos they’re illegal.)

 

The efficiency of production in America is lauded, not called exploitation, of course, and with it the fact that American workers have more gadgets around them than the workers of other lands; to Mr. Hutchinson this is known as the world’s highest standard of living. It would probably spoil the picture to mention that the workers across the Atlantic suffer the highest rate of exploitation, that American capitalism gives rise to the world’s highest crime rate, and that the stresses and strains of the “American way of life ” produce a phenomenal divorce rate and neurotic problems.

Perhaps Mr. Hutchinson would regard these as separate entities, completely unrelated to propertied class society.

Incidentally, the Herald itself, in an article several months ago, pin-pointed the “tranquilizer” drug craze in the United States, and to a more limited extent its advent in Britain, but that is past news now. Anyway, one of Mr. Hutchinson’s colleagues wrote it 

No matter where you live

Fellow workers, capitalism is world-embracing. Whether you choose to stay in this country or to emigrate, basically your position will remain unchanged, exploited in order that others may live in idle, parasitic comfort continually threatened with economic crises and war, directly resulting from the competitive system which is held in such esteem by capitalism's apologists.

Therefore whether you remain in Britain or decide to “make a go of it” across the seas (or, maybe, you are an immigrant to this country) how about giving a much-needed hand for Socialism, with a view to embarking upon the greatest adventure of all time, the fashioning of the world anew. This will mean the end of the profit motive, to be replaced by production solely for use, arising from the common ownership and democratic control of the earth's bounteous natural and industrial resources. Not competition but co-operation. We will then cease to be wage slaves, mere hired (or fired) hands, but free and equal human beings.

On a basis of Socialist understanding, this world is within our teach. What are we waiting for?

Frank Simkins