The Common Market Special Survey: 1. The Background (1962)

From the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

A shiver of apprehension is running through the national press as cabinet ministers and captains of industry set about the task of preparing the public for what to expect if Britain’s application to join the Common Market should be accepted. Mr. Macmillan calls it “a bracing cold shower we shall enter, not a relaxing Turkish bath” and one of the industrial bosses thinks it will rather be “an icicled channel swim at nought degrees Centigrade.” Prophecy is dangerous, but the chances are that within 15 months from now this country will be part of the European Economic Community.

What reasons do the British ruling class put forward for having to join the Common Market? Why should Britain shift the traditional centre of gravity of her economy from the Commonwealth to Europe? Why should she wish to wind up the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) she had only recently been instrumental in creating? And what effects will this have upon the British working class?

Weakened and impoverished by the ravages of World War II, the rump of continental Europe lay prostrate in front of the Iron Curtain, useless to the bloc of Western powers dominated by the United States of America as a profitable market, useless in the game of power politics as a defence against the rival bloc grouped around the Soviet Union. Only an economically healthy Europe would offer reasonable guarantees of safety to the American world of finance and industry. And so from the dust and ashes there arose new life, frantic activity, a giant mesh of scaffolding throughout Western Europe, factories, banks, stores, communications shot up at breakneck speed—financed by a massive programme of American aid and investment. The Marshall Plan "of which the sole condition was that the countries of Europe must band together and agree upon a joint recovery programme.”

British industrialists watched with consternation ultramodern plant swinging into action across the channel. But with both the home market and the Commonwealth, with its established system of preferential duties, crying out for manufactured goods after the shortage and wastage of the war years, profits were still secure in spite of outdated plant and methods.

Powerful vested interests were haunted by the fear of a resurgent Germany, the spectre of Krupp and Thyssen—the giants of the Ruhr and the power behind the expansionist militarism both of Prussia and Nazi Germany. German industry was not to be permitted to swallow all the plums in the new Europe. Markets, capital, labour and raw materials were to be divided fairly between the power groups. By 1953 the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was a going concern comprising the coal and steel industries of Federal Germany, France, Italy and Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg). The Origins of the Common Market.

There was one weak link; Belgian coal was too expensive. Throughout the mining belt across the south of Belgium mines were shut down and miners were out of work in their thousands. But the Belgian mine owners had been helped over the critical period with massive subsidies from the international High Authority administering ECSC. Capitalism had pulled a new card from its sleeve. For coal and steel, ECSC meant larger markets, bigger production, better exploitation of capital and labour, fewer irksome administrative barriers, discriminations and quotas. Why not extend the idea to the economy as a whole?

By March, 1957, there was signed the Treaty of Rome which launched the six participants in ECSC on the road towards the Common Market. Its object was:

“To permit goods to travel freely without Customs Duties or quota restrictions, throughout the area of the Six and thus to permit manufacturers to invest on the scale that modern technology makes possible and necessary.”

Customs duties between the Six were to be whittled down progressively in three successive phases of four years each. At the same time a uniform external tariff wall was to be erected around the Six. Allowance was made for differences between the Six in terms of industrial development and efficiency or productivity, for differences in wage levels between member countries. It was obvious that the impact of a progressive crumbling of Customs duties would have serious effects on certain industries and even countries. To soften the impact the Six adopted a device successfully tried out by the Benelux countries from the start of their Customs Union almost immediately after the last war—a Compensation Tax. Being flexible, this tax can be used to ensure, in the interest of the ruling class of the Six as a whole, that individual national groups of an industry do not cause too much of a disturbance in any specific field.

Big industry and banking seized the opportunity with both hands; American capital poured into the Six. Displaced Persons, human flotsam, waiting to be employed as cheap labour, were overflowing in German refugee camps. Italy, where starving millions were considered a potential communist threat, had been given a major blood transfusion of U.S. dollars and was starting a massive programme of industrialisation with huge reserves of agricultural labour waiting to be drawn off the land in Southern Italy and fed onto the new industrial treadmill.

Developments were rapid. Before the end of the first four-year period the programme of whittling down of Customs Duties had been exceeded by 18 months. Inter-Common Market tariffs are now 30 per cent. below their 1957 level and may be 50 per cent. down by the end of this year. The process may be completed by 1965 if not before.

In the meantime the British ruling class was taking only a modest interest in the Common Market. How modest will be seen from the fact that that even as late as 1960 British private direct investment within the Six (excluding oil and insurance) amounted to no more than £21 million as compared with £208 million invested in the Sterling Area outside the United Kingdom during the same period. In a good many fields British industry was not even interested in exports of any kind. These were the people who could sell all they could manufacture in the home market behind the cover of a high protective tariff wall and in the expectation that the halcyon days were here to stay. Their plant was being amortized at a comfortable rate and foreign competition could not touch them. To break into the fiercely competitive outside world meant hard work, expense, lower profit margins. Why bother?

But in the Commonwealth things had been happening. Preferential treatment of British goods had disappeared under a great many headings in the Customs Tariffs of Commonwealth countries which are fast building up a market for their products in Europe.

Nonetheless certain Commonwealth countries, notably New Zealand, still depended largely on the British market for their livelihood and raised vociferous objections to any thought of a British commitment with the Six unless their special interests were safeguarded.

Powerful British interests also disliked intensely the possibility of a political entanglement with the Six.

It was all too complicated. Couldn’t the remaining uncommitted countries of Europe (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal) be brought into some form of association more to the liking of the British ruling class, without the embarrassment of. political implications and interference with existing Commonwealth trade? Their 97 million people (including the United Kingdom) would not compare with the home market of 170 millions of the Six, but it was better than nothing. And it would strengthen Britain’s hand in any later approaches to the Six. Thus was born the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) or “The Seven.” Finland has since joined making EFTA “The Eight.” Its purpose was to be strictly limited to the progressive reduction of Inter-EFTA Customs Duties and quantitive restrictions.

Now the prospect of an enlarged Common Market of 250 million people or more discriminating against U.S. goods is beginning to alarm the American capitalists. Already pressure groups are at work promoting a direct U.S. participation in the Common Market. This, to quote, the Herter report, “with its highly developed industrial and technological complex and its disciplined workers, would comprise the most efficient workshop in the world” where since 1958 trade among the Six had risen by about 50 per cent. . . .

What is involved in the British application to join the Six, for industry and finance, and what does it mean to the British working class?

If agreement should not be forthcoming, British industry could well find itself faced across the Channel with a fast-expanding, highly efficient and ultramodern competitor of great striking power. Many British manufactured products may disappear from the markets of the world which would entail a major re-alignment of industry. The usual flow of capital from the weak to the strong will be accelerated. The harder it became to export finished goods, the more British capital might have to seek investment abroad for overseas manufacture, albeit in return for smaller profits.

Designed to fit the present requirements of Western capitalist society, the Common Market has, like any other capitalist institution, no permanence. It will be discarded when it ceases to be profitable. To the British worker it reinforces the constant threat for the worker under capitalism of insecurity and unemployment,

Tisserand.

Book review: Flies in the ointment. (1916)

Book Review from the September 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

The New Protectionism, by J. A. Hobson, London. The Cobden Club, Westminster, and T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., Adelphi Terrace. 6d. Net.

That monumental piece of bluff and fatuity the Paris Economic Conference has been taken seriously, not by the German capitalists—-they are not entirely devoid of intelligence—but by the Free Trade apostles of this country. While almost everybody else has been laughing at the affair as a clumsy attempt to impress the mugs, not of the Germanic nations, but of the “entente” countries, the “economists” of the Cobden Club have been regarding the Conference as a sort of “red light,” and have even been moved in their trepidation to inflict upon an already sufficiently suffering world a 150 pages or so of very serious and solemn consideration of the matter.

That the recommendations of the Conference were ever seriously intended to be carried into effect after the war has been thought hardly worthy of space for discussion in these columns. It will be the wonder of the age if the “Allies” can hang together through all that they have yet to endure before they arrive at the goal of victory, or survive the conflict of interests at the settlement, much less bind up those clashing interests with fiscal bonds and the like. Those interests are by no means made one by the war. It is extremely doubtful, indeed, if those interests are unified even as far as a complete and crushing victory over the Teutonic powers.

Be it said at once that in the brochure under review the author adduces many cogent reasons why the attempt to carry out the recommendations of the Paris Economic Conference would be sheer idiocy. Having said that I have done with that side of the question. If any reader wishes to waste a tanner on those cogent reasons he has my gracious permission to do so, and incidentally he can have my copy for tuppence, with the comment chucked in that “the fool and his money’s soon parted.”

But if the Socialist is not concerned with the question of statesmen making asses of themselves by chewing “New Protectionism” thistles, he generally feels disposed to have a cut at bourgeois economics (!) when opportunity offers, and opportunity offers now.

Mr. Hobson opens thus :

“The policy of Free Trade is based upon a reasoned belief that all commerce is an exchange between the goods or services of one person and those of another, this exchange being usually effected by two monetary transactions an act of sale and act of purchase. both parties in such commerce are gainers from it: and their gains tend to be equal.”

Our author having firmly based his creed on the unshakable quagmire of an economic fallacy, proceeds to enlarge upon a “series of separatist fallacies,” of which

“the second is the separation of the interests of the seller from those of the buyer, and the false assertion that the interests of the former are, or ought to be, superior.”

If Free Trade is based upon the first-mentioned belief, then the Free Traders had better shut up shop, for the Protectionists have all the best of the argument. An exchange may be “two monetary transactions—an act of sale and an act of purchase” but there is a vast difference between the two. The seller of a commodity realizes profit, the buyer does not. The commodity is not produced for consumption, but for profit. This profit can only be realized by sale. The seller, then, is simply completing the process which finds its volition in the motive for all capitalist activity—the incentive of gain ; the lust for profit. Therefore, it is not true that both parties are equal gainers by exchange, and under the system the interest of the seller is the paramount interest.

As a matter of fact, of course, it is not at all necessary to believe that both parties concerned in an exchange benefit equally from it in order to become an advocate of Free Trade, and it is mere moonshine to say that the policy of Free Trade is based upon such a belief. The Free Trader who counts—the Free Trader among the ruling class—recognises the paramountcy of his interets as a seller, since he knows that in each cycle of his industrial operations—in which field the vast bulk of both his buying selling is done—he sells more than he buys, and this difference between what he buys and what he sells is the sole incentive of his buying and seeing at all.

He starts by buying raw material and labour-power, and he ends by selling the product of the combination of the two. And always, except in the comparatively rare instances where he has made a sad muddle of things, the amount of his sales exceed the amount of his purchases, else where does his profit come in ?

Free Trade is mainly the policy of the manufacturer who hopes to sell in foreign markets, and for these reasons : If he has to pay a duty on his raw materials he cannot recover it in the world market, hence he is handicapped as a seller ; i.e., he must either sell for more and consequently sell less, or he must sell for the same as has foreign competitors and himself shoulder the duty. In either case he realizes less profit. The second reason is that if his wage-workers have to pay a duty on their necessaries of life he, the employer, will have to pay more for their labour-power, and again when he sells his commodity he realizes less profit.

And now mark the working of the mind of the bourgeois Protectionist. He usually is producing for the home market. If he has to pay more for his raw materials because of a tariff, be can get that back in the protected home market, while if he has to pay more for his labour-power because of the tariff on his wage-slaves’ necessaries of subsistence, he calculates that the higher price and wider market Protection enables his commodities to enjoy will more than counterbalance that disadvantage.

The underlying motives, therefore, of both the Free Trade and the Protectionist policies are not any concern for the equality or inequality of benefit arising from exchange, but the desire to have established that system best suited to the economic of the individuals holding the respective views. And it may be said that the tendency is to protect the home market when that market is of greater importance than the world market, and to resort to Free Trade as the export trade is developed. In view of this we may expect to see a revivifying of the Protectionist policy as the development of the manufacture of the more backward countries brings about a relative restriction of the foreign market for every country.

In close connection with this phase of the question “Free Trade versus Protection” Mr. Hobson may be quoted again. He says on page 8 :

“If the Bradford weaver gets Protection and nobody else, he stands to gain. But if all other British trades, local and national, engaged in making articles he needs in his trade—e.g., wool, coal, machinery, dyes, etc.—or articles of food, clothing, furniture, on which he spends his wages, also get Protection, each duty to protect those other trades filches from him a bit of the gain he stood to make if the Bradford woollen trade were alone protected. A general tariff protecting all British trades equally would thus be found to make so many deductions from the value of the special Protection enjoyed by the woollen trade as to convert it from a gain into a loss. The higher prices of woollens which his Protection enabled him to get would be outweighed by the added higher prices of the various article required for use in his trade and for his private consumption.”

This, of course, is incorrect, as is easily demonstrated. Let us suppose “a general tariff protecting all British trades equally to the tune of, shall we say, 10 per cent. Our Bradford weaver buys “wool, coal, machinery, dyes, etc.” (much of which being home produce, he would not have to pay any duty on) value say, £100 prior to the tariff. He then purchases labour-power of the pre-tariff value of say £50. Even if we assume that the whole of the material had been subject to the tariff, and the labour-power had been produced entirely upon duty-bearing substance, the Bradford wearer would hare to pay on account of the tariff 10 per cent. on only the amount of his outlay, £150. But when he came to sell his commodity in the home market he would find his foreign competitor penalised to the extent of 10 per cent. of the full value of the commodity, which would he, say, £200. So against an penalty of 10 per cent. on £150 the Bradford weaver finds he has increased opportunities (so long as he sells in the protected market), in the way of increased sales and higher prices, equal to 10 per cent. on £200. “His private consumption” is by no means sufficient to materially affect this argument.

Again, on page 6, our author talks through his hat. He says of the Protectionist :

“He makes his separate appeal to the man as producer, tells him that selling is more important than buying, and that the money he receives is more important than what he can buy with it.

It is through consumption that the co-operative nature and value of commerce is realized.”

The crux of the whole matter is, who does the Protectionist appeal to, or, for that matter, who does the Cobdenite appeal to ? If to the capitalist, then it has already been shown that the capitalist is far more of a producer (in the controlling, not the operative sense) than consumer, and that it is to production that he owes all he possesses, which he realizes through the act of selling. It is logical, therefore to appeal to the capitalist as a producer, and both the Protectionist and the Free Trader are found to do so in the last analysis. Even Mr. Hobson does so when he says, “the higher prices . . which his Protection enabled him to get would be outweighed by the added higher prices of the various articles required for use in his trade.” On the other hand, if the appeal is to the workers, then it is about as logical to appeal to him as a consumer as it would he to try to interest a horse in the cost of his forage. Mr. Hobson assents to this when he states that the higher price of the worker’s “food, clothing, furniture, etc.,” “filches . . a bit of the gain” from the Bradford weaver.

There are plenty of other fallacies in the book under review, but I have room only to deal with one or two more. Mr. Hobscn says on page 4 that

“The notion that the expansion of foreign markets obtained within the last two decades by German or American traders is a corresponding loss to British traders is sheer nonsense. To a large extent those markets were “created” by the special economic and commercial activities of the German or American trader. For the rest, an enlargement of our foreign markets which, in default of German or American competition, might have taken place, would have involved a diminution of our home markets.”

What a conception of the capacity of the commodities market ! And what a conception of the modern capitalist power for production ! Mr. Hobson says it is a falsehood to represent the commercial competition between two nations as “a struggle between two nations for a limited amount of profitable foreign market.” He declares that “There is no such absolute limit to quantity of foreign market.” Yet our author admits that there is competition. It would be interesting to hear Mr. Hobson’s explanation of what that “commercial competition” is for, and how it arises. Nobody competes for that which is (in the practical sense) unlimited. It is limitation which is the very foundation of competition.

And then mark the ludicrous suggestion that it is productive capacity that is limited in that statement, “an enlargement of our foreign markets . . . would have involved a diminution of our home markets.” The army of unemployed means nothing to Mr. Hobson : the factories working short time or closed down are without significance to him ; the periodical crises, when the warehouses are choked with goods which can find no outlet in any market, at home or abroad, make no impression on his mind. One can go on producing to any extent, in our author’s view, and the problem of markets will solve itself. If the market does not exist you simply “create” it. The only danger is that, if you “create” much “foreign market” the home market will have to go short because capitalist production is so inelastic that it cannot respond to the call for expansion.

A. E. Jacomb

Fiscal fatuity. (1908)

From the September 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Chiozza Money is a ‘cute man ; but he nods at least as often as Homer. Just now he is engaged in making “One Hundred Points for Free Trade,” or rather, one hundred points against Protection, in the Daily News. This is one of them :

“The Protectionist theory is that imports, especially imports of manufactures, cause want, unemployment, and pauperism.

Well, every year India imports large quantities of manufactured goods, and nearly all of them are imported from the United Kingdom.”

***

Mr. Money might have found—it would have been a difficult job, but he might have found—a happier example. In India the people die literally like flies from “want, unemployment, and pauperism” and their results. The onus is on the Free Trader to explain the absolute unredeemed impotency of Free Trade in “our great dependency.”

***

The Protectionist is of course in no better case. He has to explain why “want, unemployment and pauperism” are rampant in every industrial country where his pet nostrum is in operation. Protectionist and Free Trader are alike unable to face the facts. They have to resort to all sorts of mean and pitiable dodges to escape facing facts. From a working-class standpoint there isn’t the worth of a tinker’s anathema between them or their precious systems.

***

Poverty is the result of certain definitely ascertained causes. Fiscal schemes do not remotely affect those causes. The workers are poor because they have no control of the product of their labour and are, therefore, robbed of the great proportion of it. Free Trade or Protection may, in certain cases and under certain conditions, result in a particular trade or trades receiving a fillip. To that extent there might be more work available. But that would also necessarily mean more robbery. And the workers are poor because they are robbed.

***

Besides, the fillip must in the nature of capitalist things die down. Supply would overtake and outstrip available demand. There is not a single commodity in general requisition that the present machinery of production could not satisfy the effective demand for several times (often hundreds of times) over. Given the fillip and competitive machinery would be working at breakneck speed to be first in the market with the goods. Result : overproduction, slump, unemployment, starvation and the miseries necessarily attendant thereon.

***

The process is characteristic of free trade and protected countries indifferently. If the worker is employed he is robbed. That is the unalterable condition of his employment. He must make a profit for his master. If he is not employed he starves. In either case he is no more than a pawn in the competitive game. He is dependent upon the fluctuations of the market—upon the employer who works him at top speed until he has produced too much, and then throws him off until the surplus is exhausted.

***

The waste, necessarily the accompaniment of this competitive game, is only obviated under capitalism through monopoly. With one source of supply the output may be regulated to the demand. But Free Trader and Protectionist alike shriek (publicly) against monopoly, and howl dismally against waste. They are just mean dodgers or abnormal ignoramuses—they want to eat their cake and have it. The trust (monopoly) is the perfection of production. The trust stage is inevitable. It will produce most economically. It will save labour. It will mean more unemployment. And it is inevitable—Free Trade or Protection notwithstanding.

***

Mr. Money’s note has lured me into an article. I am sorry ; but I am a victim of circumstances. I intended no more than a par. But the fiscal folly of the Free Trade Moneys and the Zollverein Wilsons always cause me to curse privately and slam publicly. They are so dam silly ! The whole point is that “want and unemployment and pauperism” are inevitable under capitalism ; that although Free Trade or Protection may conceivably give an impetus to a certain trade it cannot absorb the available labour, and even if it could, labour would still be robbed ; that there is no explanation of the poverty problem other than that given by the Socialist; that there is no solution other than that offered by the Socialist.

***

The working class of every capitalist country in the world is in a state of chronic “want, unemployment, and pauperism” because it does not own the wealth it alone produces. It doesn’t own the wealth because the land and machinery of production are owned by the capitalist class. It never will own its product until it owns and controls this land and machinery. And it never will own and control the land and machinery until it thoroughly understands its own position and the conditions of change, and has organised its forces for the specific object of effecting that change.

***

The work of the Socialist Party as against Tariff Reformer, Social Reformer, Fiscal Laissez Faireian, or what not, is, therefore, the education and organisation of the working class for the overthrow of capitalism through the capture of the powers of government in order to secure the product of labour from being annexed by the capitalist class. Virtually the working class is in possession of the machinery of production since the whole process from top to bottom is in working-class hands. The workers now require to assert their possession and secure it, and at the same time the result of their toil, by the control of the fighting arms through political conquest. Simply that.

Alegra.

Cuttings and Critiques. (1908)

From the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Social-Democratic “Victory.”

____________

In reporting the return to the Barking District Council of Mr. Edwards of the S.D.P., Justice claimed that he ran as a straight Socialist. Below we reproduce a “revolutionary” appeal issued by Mr. Edwards :—

To the Electors of the West Ward.

____________

Vote For A Man.

Who will support your interests as a working man, not a man who, if you ask him for a job, should say “Aye, mon, let’s look at your honds?”

What price

Working or a gasholder at 6d. per hour

in all winds and weathers. Is this the type of a man who supporting Contractors and others in the undercurrent which is now so prevalent on the Council, the man for the West Ward ? Show your disgust by

Voting For 

Edwards.

* * *

The Tariff Reform propaganda is certainly compelling the Liberals to make some very interesting admissions, in their efforts to show that the existing unemployment and poverty are not due to that Free Trade which they claim has brought so much prosperity to this country. Thus in the House of Commons on April 14th Mr. Lloyd George declared that we are to-day producing the same quantity of hops as hitherto, but out of a smaller acreage—due to improved methods of production. Those engaged in the industry are suffering, he said, because of these improved methods and machinery, which have enabled a great saving of labour to be effected. In a similar strain the Daily Chronicle wrote in connection with the Wolverhampton bye-election. Local unemployment, it declared, was to some extent due to improved machinery and machine tools. The output is greater than ever, but owing to methods of standardisation, the cost of production is decreased, and less labour is required.

* * *

The manufacturers are doing well, it added. Of course they are, and always will so long as they own the machinery which the workers improve and operate. No fiscal arrangements or rearrangements under capitalism will affect the workers’ position.

* * *

Some idea of the extent to which that “Peasants’ Charter,” otherwise the Small Holdings Act, will “solve the land problem” may be gathered from the reports in the Liberal Press of the recent floods. Some recently laid down allotment land in Upper Caversham, wrote the Daily News on April 30th, is submerged to a considerable depth, which means a heavy loss to those working men who have rented the ground and who have already planted for the season. It also reported that allotment holders around Towcaster and in other parts had suffered considerably.

* * *

And yet some folk still continue to swear by these pills for the earthquake.

* * *

According to the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association, the revenue from intoxicants in India continues to rise, having reached £6,510,000 in 1907. In 1875 it was £1,755,000. This of course has taken place side by side with an increase in the number of conversions to Christianity.

* * *

In reply to a correspondent who asserted (inter alia) that everybody knew the I.L.P. was a Socialist Party, the Editor of the Western Clarion (Vancouver), in the issue of that paper for April 25th, 1908, writes as follows :—

“He is mistaken in stating that we all know the I.L.P. Is a Socialist Party. We all don’t know that a party is a Socialist Party which has for its leading lights and parliamentary representatives men who, like Ramsay MacDonald and Shackleton, favour child-labour and advocate the lowering of the school age to thirteen years so that the child-slaves may be available to the profit mills of capitalism at as early an age as possible; or men who, like Henderson, oppose the eight-hour law ; or who condone a rifle diet for hungry strikers, like the whole precious bunch of them. Socialists ? Why, no Whig or Tory could serve capitalism better.”

* * *

The reply is commended to the careful attention of the Western Clarion’s English namesake. It is not expected that the organ of the house of Blatchford will enthusiastically endorse the views so definitely expressed in the Vancouver journal, but it does not follow therefore that the views are not true. Rather the contrary.

* * *

The recent election at Dundee provides yet another illustration of the compromising tactics of the “Labour” Party. The manner in which the officials of the Labour Party acted was directly opposed to the “Labour” nominee. It is well known that Mr. James Ramsay MacDonald went down to Manchester to interview Mr. Winston S. Churchill, and assured the Liberal Cabinet Minister that no opposition would be forthcoming from the Labour Party at Dundee. Is this the reason why Mr. MacDonald and the senior member for Dundee, Alex. Wilkie, did not speak on Mr. G. Stuart’s behalf and did not send a message to him ? What a curious lot ! And what “Independence ” !

Cooking the Books: The King of Tariffs (2025)

The Cooking The Books column from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Trump often cites the “gilded age” of William McKinley, the late 19th-century president, who imposed tariffs at an average rate of 50 percent to protect the domestic farming sector from foreign competition’ (Times, 4 April).

Actually, it was the manufacturing sector that McKinley wanted to protect. When he was a congressman for Ohio he drew up the Tariff Act of 1890 that came to be known as the McKinley Tariff. Trump calls him the ‘Tariff King’, a crown he himself clearly wants to wear.

In 1888, with the campaign for tariffs in America in full swing, Engels published an English translation, with his introduction, of a talk on free trade that Marx had given in French in Brussels in 1848. Engels quoted Marx as saying (in chapter 31 of Capital) that historically protectionism had been ‘an artificial means of manufacturing manufacturers’. In his talk Marx criticised free trade too but came out in favour of it because it would hasten the development of capitalism and so bring on the final confrontation between the working class and the capitalist class. As he put it:

‘The free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free trade’.

Engels’s introduction provided a useful historical survey of protectionism — including which sections of the propertied classes in different countries had benefited from it and which had not at various times — and some background on what led to the McKinley Tariff, but also made some points about the effect of tariffs on different sectors of capitalist business which are still relevant today.

One difference he mentioned was between those sectors which relied on imported materials and those which didn’t. Manufacturers who obtained within the country the materials to transform into what they sold welcomed a tariff on imports of their product as protecting them from outside competition. On the other hand, those manufacturers who relied on imported materials did not want a tariff on them as this would increase the cost of producing their product. Nor did importers want tariffs generally.

This was seen today in the immediate reaction to Trump’s 2 April ‘Liberation Day’ on Wall Street, where share prices reflect traders’ views on the future profit prospects of the quoted firms. Shares in Apple whose smartphones are manufactured in Asia fell by 9 percent and ‘Big multinational consumer groups were heavily in the red, reeling from tariffs on Asian production hubs. Nike slumped 14 per cent’.

Exporters are not keen on tariffs either as their products are likely to be targets of any retaliatory action taken by other countries. America doesn’t export much manufactured stuff (except weapons of war and pharmaceuticals). Apart from oil and gas, its main exports are agricultural products. Sure enough, this is what China’s retaliatory tariffs, announced two days later, were aimed at. ‘The latest measures are likely to have the most impact on US agricultural exports, including soya beans, wheat and corn’ (Financial Times, 4 April).

In short, not all its business sectors benefit when a country imposes tariffs. America today is no exception. Some capitalist businesses are in favour of Trump’s policy but some will be lobbying for exemptions, even campaigning against him. Not that there is any guarantee that his protectionism will succeed in ‘manufacturing manufacturers’ in America, or, rather, in raising them from the dead.

In any event, as Engels noted:

‘The question of Free Trade or Protection moves entirely within the bounds of the present system of capitalist production, and has, therefore, no direct interest for us socialists who want to do away with that system.’

McKinley was elected president in 1896 but was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901.

The Lies of Liberalism. A Record of False Pretence and Low Cunning. (1910)

From the August 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Without a Blush.

In the course of his Budget speech. Mr. Lloyd George dwelt upon the wonderful extent of industry and trade. He indulged in the usual lies about working-class prosperity and foreshadowed “the better time coming,” in the following words :

“The commercial world everywhere is in better heart. There is more enterprise and everything makes the prospect much brighter. I am told, on authority, I cannot doubt, that we shall probably see a greater volume of trade this year and next than has ever been witnessed in the history of this country . . . All indications are that this year’s trade will be good, that next year’s trade will be better, that the people will be prosperous and that therefore the revenue will show an expansion.”

Will the people be prosperous ? If by the “people” is meant the workers we deny it and submit she following lesson from the past (provided by the Liberals themselves) as evidence in support of our point of view.

In the leading article of the Daily Chronicle (amongst other papers) for June 6th, 1903, we were told :

“Opportunely there are published this morning two official returns of great interest and importance with regard to British Trade. . . The figures tell a tale both absolutely and relatively of great prosperity. . . . They show that the whole volume of British Trade has increased from 764 millions sterling in 1898 to 877 in 1902 . . . we have such evidence before us that we are doing very well as we are.”

In the very same issue appears a report of the now famous speech delivered on the previous day in the City Hall, Perth, by Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, who said :

“We know that there is about 30% of our population underfed, on the verge of hunger. . . The condition of the people is serious enough under Free Trade ; it is a question which haunts us, and surely the fact that about 30% of the population in living with the grip of perpetual poverty upon it, is and ought to be a sufficient answer to the Prime Minister.”

Our Splendid Civilisation.

It was also in that “boom” year that Mr. Winston Churchill made his speech at Edinburgh, during which he said :

“I have often asked myself whether our splendid civilisation really conferred blessings on all classes. Is it true to say that the poorest man in Scotland is not any happier than poorest Hottentot or the poorest Eskimo? I am inclined to think that he is not any happier but perhaps more miserable. He is homeless in the heart of great cities ; such as never was never seen on earth before and he suffers the privations of the savage with the nerves of civilised man.

“To compare the life and lot of the African aboriginal—secure in his abyss of contented degradation, rich in that he lacks everything and wants nothing—with the long nightmare of worry and privation, of dirt and gloom and squalor, lit only by gleams of torturing knowledge and tantalizing hope, which constitutes the lives of so many poor people in England and Scotland, is to feel the ground tremble underfoot.”

Despite the widespread poverty, the Liberal Party are very active just now, in claiming that unemployment is rapidly declining and that the conditions of life for all are improving because of the advance of commerce. But let the reader reflect on the facts given above showing the existence of terrible poverty at the same time as an unequalled increase in the amount of wealth produced and it will then be clearly seen that the claims of Liberalism are fraudulent.

A Fraudulent Claim Exposed.

We are continually told that the recent legislation of the Liberals is beneficial to the workers. An examination of the chief items will show how groundless is this statement.

The Board of Trade Labour Exchanges (opened February 1st, 1910) have been hailed with delight in many quarters. Below we give the returns published in the April, May and June issues of the “Board of Trade Labour Gazette.” It should be understood that the number of applicants practically represents different persons, because renewals are not again counted.

During	No. of applications for work	No. of vacancies filled
February	216,813	12,628
March	126,119	20,395
April	116,523	23,858
May	100,392	24,025
	559,847	80,906

These figures show how the Liberals have lied about unemployment and the influence of Labour Bureaux. What a fraud ! 80,906 jobs and 559,847 applications for them ! No wonder the number of applicants fell after the first month, seeing how few jobs could be had through them.

How greatly these Exchanges are opposed to the interests of the working class was indicated by recent instances in which they provided strike-breakers. One or two of these cases only are dealt with here, owing to this being an article and not a pamphlet.

Strike-smashing Up to Date.

A London firm of cabinetmakers recently refused to pay the union rate to their workmen. The men were called out by their union but the masters applied to the Labour Exchange for “hands.” (It is true that the regulations require all applicants to be told if a strike is on at the firm applying. But the regulations only exist on paper.) The Exchange wrote the firm asking whether a strike was proceeding as they had been informed so by the union. But the very morning that the letter arrived, and before a reply was sent, men arrived from the Labour Exchange and were taken on.

In June a strike arose at Newport Docks, and Messrs. Houlder Bros, had the good fortune to be supplied with strike smashers by both the Labour Exchange and Mr. Collinson’s Free Labour Association ! Down at Napsbury Pauper Lunatic Asylum, another wing is being built to accommodate the increasing number of workers whom the present system mentally cripples. The contractors for the work sought, in true capitalist spirit, to wring more unpaid labour out of the labourers, paying them 5½d. per hour. . The toilers, directly provoked by this starvation rate, remonstrated on June 15th, and were thereupon paid off. Before many hours had passed strikebreakers arrived from a London Labour Exchange, and supplanted the men on strike.

According to their own account, no mention of there being a strike down at Napsbury was made to the strikebreakers.

Another motive our Liberal capitalists had in establishing these Labour Exchanges. A quotation from Leaflet No. 16 (“Rough on Rates”) issued by their Budget League, illustrates this :

“These Labour Exchanges will contain accurate lists of unemployed men and women. By means of telephone a man will be able to find out if there is a job for him in a distant town without going on tramp to the town itself. This means that casual wards maintained by the ratepayers’ money will fall into disuse and large sums of public money will be saved.”

Bearing in mind that it is the property owners and not the workers who pay the rates, we can see whose interests this measure protects.

The same reason causes them to favour unemployment insurance, as the following from the pamphlet quoted above tells us :

“The principle of insurance is that you pay money when times are good and receive it back when times are bad (!) This scheme means therefore that during periods of depression, money will be put into circulation, thousands of families kept off the rates,” etc., etc.

A Hair of the Dog that Bit Him.

The Road Development Bill has been produced to lessen unemployment, we are informed. The real position is that commercial progress accompanied by the revolution in modes of transit from the horse-drawn vehicle to the motor, makes necessary to the capitalists the laying of roads more suitable for the heavier traffic of commerce and the pleasure cars of the idle rich.

The method is to have roads that will not need the constant repairing that the present ones do, and the alterations are brought under the control of the national executive of the capitalist class to ensure more economic maintenance, and results in less work being needed to keep the roads in good condition. To quote again from that Liberal bill:

“Improvements will then be effected at the charge of the Treasury, which would otherwise necessarily add to the rates of certain districts, and special attention will be devoted to laying down a more durable and less dusty surface to our highway. This again will relieve local rates.”

Here the old lesson is recalled, that economies effected under capitalism increase unemployment.

After the report of the Royal Commission on Home Work, the Trade Boards Act was passed, setting up minimum wages boards. Hence the cry of the Liberals : “Look what we have done for Labour !” They point out quite jubilantly, that this Act has been welcomed by many of the largest employers !

What actually results from this measure is the alteration of the methods under which exploitation is carried on. Large employers find it less profitable to employ home workers than before. They bring young and more energetic workers into their factories, where the latest wages saving machinery and “speeding up” methods are introduced under carefully adjusted systems of division of labour. The small manufacturer is forced out because of the advantage of the large factory with the big purse behind it. The older workers, who did manage to scrape along by taking work and slaving in their “homes” instead of in the factory, now find it impossible to get work. Thus on every hand these measures prove detrimental to our class owing to wealth being produced under the new methods with fewer workers than before. The larger output for less wages means accentuation of poverty all along the line. The Singer Sewing Machine Co. issued to clothing manufacturers in the North of England, a circular on “The Wholesale Clothing Trade and Labour-Saving Machinery,” drawing attention to an exhibition at Leeds of many wonderful new machines. An extract from it runs :

“The display has already been visited by large numbers of the clothing manufacturers of Yorkshire and Lancashire and more distant parts, and readers interested in the manufacture of clothing may be recommended to learn by a personal visit and inspection, what the new methods and these improved machines may mean to them, especially in view of the now Trade Boards Act which is now coming into operation.”

The Housing and Town Planning Act is also instanced by the Liberals as beneficial legislation and it therefore calls for a few words to show its essentially capitalistic character.

The trend of commercial development is to need wider streets and more luxurious surroundings for the emporiums of the capitalist class. Consequently under the above, as under other housing acts, the workers are driven further away from the main thoroughfares, slums are abolished in one place merely to arise elsewhere. 

The rents of the buildings erected on the sites of the slums (to yield greater profit to the property owners) are generally higher, and the workers, unable to pay more rent, are forced to turn to other quarters, and thus slumdom becomes intensified. In the model dwellings erected by “ten per cent, philanthropy” associations and municipalities, severe strictures are often made as to the number of persons and children per room. This leads the evicted of the slums to resort to worse tenements on account of their lack of resources and therefore the workers are made more uncomfortable than ever. This is the logical result of housing reform under capitalism. Most of the reforms touched upon in this article exist in Germany. Labour Bureaux, Unemployment and Invalidity Insurance, Housing Reforms—all have flourished for some time past over there, yet the Liberal Press and politicians are telling us that the condition of the workers is worse than here. So much for their “blessed” reforms.

We still hear the Liberals repeating the old lie—Free Trade means security for the worker. We have shown from the returns of their own Labour Exchanges how prevalent unemployment is under capitalism. Yet this unemployment exists in spite of the fact that more people emigrated from and fewer immigrated into Great Britain last year than for many years past. The figures in the June issue of the “Board of Trade Labour Gazette” relating to emigration from Great Britain and immigration into Great Britain to and from countries beyond Europe are :

	1909	1908
Emigration	474,374	386,411
Immigration	261,325	342,922

The brutal conditions imposed upon the workers by the employing class, Liberal and Tory alike, force them to leave the land of their birth, to scour the world in search of a job. They leave Great Britain, where unemployment, insecurity of life, and poverty press upon them, to face the same old “problem” thousands of miles away. It’s the old vain hops of expecting to do better in a strange land. More than half the emigrants went to America. The poverty of the workers there was depicted in the May issue of the Socialist Standard.

The Liberal papers have been filling pages with glowing accounts of the fine opportunities supposed to be awaiting the workers in the colonies, with special reference to Canada, where the workers (they say) are welcomed with open arms. Earl Grey, on his recent visit to this country, has been telling the same tale. How fraudulent this emigration campaign is may be appreciated by noticing the fact that on March 10th, 1910 the Canadian Government issued a new notice making entry into the country more difficult than ever. The new rules, while making more strict the medical and civil examination, demand that emigrants should be possessed of from 25 to 50 dollars per head (“their absolute property”) according to the time of the year. Surely if they were really pining for more wags-slaves in Canada they would not impose these onerous conditions. Since the new regulations were made scores of British workers have been sent back to this country. The great miners’ strike at Glace Bay and Spring Hill should show how real the class struggle is in Canada.

Concerning Australia, we have the testimony of social reformers (Mr. Ben Tillett and Mr. Tom Mann, for example) who on returning from there, told of the fierce struggle to live out there in spite Labour Ministries, wages boards, compulsory arbitration, and many other reforms that misled workers are advocating here. The strike of miners at Newcastle and Broken Hill, of the State employed Sydney trainwaymen (to mention only a few) serve to illustrate the fact that the worker who emigrates merely exchanges misery in one place for misery elsewhere. The May No. of the “Board of Trade Gazette” states that unemployment is rife in many leading industries “down under.” “United South Africa” offers little prospect for the worker. There the black slave has supplanted the yellow one, and the white slave is not required because the colored is cheaper.

The policy of the Liberal Party is made up of measures all quite as fraudulent as those we have criticised. Throughout their history they have been the consistent enemies of the working class, just as much as the Tory party. To-day both parties are crying “reform.” This eagerness of the capitalist class to pass reforms sheds light upon the real nature of reform under capitalism. Reforms are favoured by the ruling class for two reasons: firstly, because their immediate material interests are thereby served, and secondly, because they can be used to deceive workingmen and induce them to support capitalist parties. “The Repeal of the Corn Laws” was passed for capitalist ends, yet it was used to rally to the side of the Liberal Party, millions of workingmen. Richard Cobden said:

“The great capitalist class formed an excellent basis for the Free Trade Movement, for they had inexhaustible purses which they opened freely in a contest where not only their pecuniary interests, but their pride as an order was at stake.” (Morley’s “Life of Cobden.”)

The evolution of the present system proceeds faster than the enacting of reform, and even any slight benefit going to the workers is soon more than cancelled by the operations of capitalist development. The working class must learn the simple lesson that while one class own the means of producing the necessaries of life, the rest of society is enslaved to that class. The Liberal and Tory parties alike stand for the maintenance of capitalism, and must therefore be opposed by us. The members of the working class must join the proletariat army fighting for political control: the power required in order that those things necessary for producing wealth may become the common heritage of all —be owned in common and administered in the interest of ALL. They must come into the fireing line and usher in a bright and joyful future for themselves and the race that is to be.

Adolph Kohn

Mr. Lloyd George on his mettle. (1906)

From the December 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

After Mr. Bryan, Lord George. Mr. Bryan declares that if his scheme of Free Trade in Trust articles fails, it must mean the growth of a definite Socialist Political Party. Mr. Lloyd George declared at Birmingham on October 22nd, that the period had arrived when the Liberal Party was to be put to the test. He said that

“the new movement represented a real upheaval due to the impatience of the people of the slow progress made by existing parties in redressing wrongs . . . No wonder the people asked ‘why all this tarrying and dallying?’ They said to the old political parties, ‘If you are in earnest you are bunglers ; If you are not in earnest you are rogues.’ The answer rested with the Liberals during the next three years . . . The people had said to them, ‘We are going to give you your chance, but it is only a chance.’ The whole future of the Liberal Party depended upon the practical answer they gave to the expectations of the people.”

So in three years’ time if the Liberal Party do not remove the conditions that give rise to the complaint of the people (vide Lloyd George), “Here you have been tinkering for generations with reform, and the end of it all is slums, pauperism, and great want in a land of plenty,” the Great Liberal Party will deserve to go. We have no fear but that they will so deserve. The “great want in the land of plenty” is due, as has been proved time and time again in these columns, to the private ownership of the means of living, i.e., capitalism, and nothing short of the abolition of capitalism will abolish that “great want.” The Liberal Party represent the capitalist class and we shall watch with interest capitalism proceeding to abolish itself.

After three years’ more tinkering the condition of the workers will not have improved, and the efforts of the liberals, “bunglers or rogues,” will have failed. And then Mr. Lloyd George says the new movement will grow and displace the bunglers. As in the case of Mr. Bryan’s proposals the alternative has already commenced to develope in anticipation of the failure of the capitalists’ suggested remedies for the evils of the system they are so concerned to conserve.

Dick Kent

Blogger's Note:

"After Mr. Bryan . . . " is a reference to the article, 'Mr Bryan and the Trusts', which appeared in the November 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Summit's up (2005)

From the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

At first there was NAFTA, then there was FTAA – or rather, there wasn’t, because talks to establish the Free Trade Area of the Americas have got bogged down in disagreements. The North American Free Trade Agreement, between the US, Canada and Mexico, came into force in 1994. Its declared aims were to eliminate trade barriers between the three countries involved and increase investment opportunities. In fact, it is far more about investment than trade, allowing US and Canadian factories to be moved to cheap-labour areas in Mexico and opening up further chances for privatisation. But it was always seen as a first step only, and the FTAA, which would extend to most of Central and South America and cover 34 countries, is the logical conclusion, originally intended to come into effect at the start of 2005.

The FTAA has many opponents. The nasty right-wing super-nationalists in the John Birch Society (see www.stoptheftaa.org) view it as part of the ongoing abolition of the United States, opening up borders to all sorts of criminals, terrorists and other undesirables, doing away with US sovereignty and creating a European Union-style integrated political unit. This isolationist conception does not fit in with that of the rulers of the US, however. There have also been opponents from the ‘left’, largely from the anti- globalisation or global justice movements (www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/ftaa/, for instance). They point to the effects of NAFTA in cutting wages in Mexico and increasing threats to the environment and public health. FTAA, they claim, will just be the same thing, writ larger. 

In early November the Summit of the Americas was held in Argentina, partly to see how FTAA could be put back on track after the rulers of  some countries objected to it. In the meantime, smaller groupings have been pushed forward, such as the Central America Free Trade Agreement (due to start in January 2006) and the Andean Free Trade Agreement (which is still under negotiation). The US is also particularly interested in expansion of the Panama Canal, which carries 14% of US foreign trade, so that it can handle more and bigger ships. But the Summit did not give the green light to FTAA, despite Bush’s threats and arm-twisting. A handful of countries stood out against it, including Venezuela, where oil resources give the rulers a bit of bargaining freedom (see the November Socialist Standard). So now things are being left to the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Hong Kong in the middle of this month.

The Argentinian Summit was marked by protests and police crackdowns, together with the usual populist anti-American pronouncements from Presidents Chavez of Venezuela and Lula of Brazil. Clearly, many workers are unconvinced that a policy is in their interests just because it suits Bush, his fat-cat backers and the American capitalist class in general. But nobody raised the real issues about the way society is run.

The truth is that arguments about ‘free trade’ or ‘fair trade’ or any other kind of trade completely miss the point. All variants on trade accept the idea that food, clothing, housing etc. should be bought and sold rather than freely available. They also accept that the earth should belong to a small class of owners rather than being the common property of all its people. They all accept the existence of capitalism rather than rejecting it entirely as Socialists do.

Editorial: Sound and Fury. The Election and the Workers. (1931)

Editorial from the November 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The general election has come and gone, and nothing fundamental has been changed. The workers were asked to give a mandate for the continuance of the social system that enslaves them, and in their blindness they have done so.

The National Government supporters just prior to the election numbered 327. They return to office with about 560 supporters, of whom 170 are Conservatives; 70 are Liberals; and 13 are members of the MacDonald Labour Group. The opposition consists of 52 Labour and I.L.P. M.P.s and four Lloyd George Liberals. The total is made up by a few Independents and Irish Nationalists. The Labour Party is now reduced in size approximately to the number elected in 1918.

At the last election, in 1929, the Conservatives polled 8,656,173 votes and won 260 seats. This time they have polled 12,000,000 votes. The Labour vote in 1929 was 8,389,512, and they won 289 seats, many of them on minority votes. The Liberals, in 1929 won only 58 seats, although their vote was 5,308,510. This time the Labour vote has fallen to about 6,650,000, while their seats have dropped far more. They are now less numerous than the Liberals, although the Liberal vote on this occasion is less than 2,500,000. The MacDonald Labour M.P.s polled only 338,000. In the 1929 Parliament there were over 200 Labour M.P.s who, although elected as Labour candidates, were also members of the I.L.P. There were no Communists in the last Parliament, nor are there any in the new one. The Mosley candidates all failed.

Since 1929 the electorate has grown from 28,850,000 to 30,159,000. The number of electors who did not vote for any candidate increased considerably. So much for the figures.

What were they fighting for?

Many observers, both at home and abroad, some of whom ought to have known better, accepted the rash claim, made for electioneering purposes, that the election was a clear-cut struggle between Capitalism and Socialism. This is a grotesque misreading of the situation. On the one side the Government parties under MacDonald were asking for “a free hand, nothing ruled out,” although most of their candidates construed “nothing ruled out” as meaning “tariffs ruled in” ; in spite of the fact that by far their most formidable standard bearer in the fight was Mr. Snowden, who is a staunch free-trader.

On the other side were the Labour Party and the group of free-trade Liberals under Mr. Lloyd George. The Labour programme gave prominence to free-trade, to the restoration of the cuts in wages and unemployment pay, and to the nationalisation of the banks. Mr. Lloyd George told his followers that the last of the three chief Labour aims need not be taken seriously, and that Liberals ought to vote for the free-trade Labour candidates. Mr. Snowden, until recently an advocate of bank nationalisation, now opposed it. He also pointed out that the Labour leaders’ enthusiasm for free trade was as suspect as their repudiation of the cuts they had approved when in office. In a letter to the Press (see “Daily Telegraph,” 22nd October) he made the following illuminating and unanswered statement about his late colleagues in the Labour Government :

“Mr. Graham put the case for the tariff. He told us a tax of 10 per cent. on imported manufactured and semi-manufactured goods would raise £25,000,000 a year, and a tax on all imports £60,000,000 a year.

We took two votes. The first was whether we should adopt the proposal of a 10 per cent. tax on manufactured and semi-manufactured imports. Fifteen members, including Mr. Graham, voted for that, and five against. Then the question of a duty on all imports was put, including food and raw materials. Mr. Graham and four others voted for that, and fifteen against.

It was only after these votes, when it was seen that we could not get unanimity, that the proposal was dropped, because, as Mr. Henderson put it, if it had been persisted with it would have broken up the Cabinet.”

This discussion in the Labour Cabinet took place towards the end of August, and was reported in the “Daily Herald” at the time. On August 20th the Herald had a bold headline across the front page—”Tariffs in the balance.” The report goes on to say that in the Cabinet :

“There was a tense debate on the proposal for a revenue tariff on imports.”

The day before the “Herald” had said :

“the proposal for a revenue tariff will receive support from ministers who have hitherto been rigid free-traders.”

On August 22nd the “Herald” brought the Trades Union Congress into the picture :

“There is keen division in the T.U.C. on the subject of a tariff for revenue purposes, but the majority would be in favour of such a proposal as an alternative to any cuts in unemployment benefit.”

But, it may be asked, if the Labour Party leaders were prepared, even reluctantly, to support the economies and a revenue tariff, why did they oppose the National Government, most of whose members also wanted those things? The answer is, of course, that the party leaders on both sides were doling what they and their predecessors have always done; they were fighting for office. Faced with the National Coalition, the Labour Party grabbed for the Liberal free-trade vote. Mr. Henderson (a few days later than Mr. MacDonald) journeyed to see the Liberal leader, Mr. Lloyd George, on his sick bed. They had a “cordial” but secret talk. The local Labour Parties withdrew their candidates who were opposing Lloyd George and his son and daughter. He, in his broadcast, and in an interview given to the “Daily Herald,” and the “Manchester Guardian,” and other Liberal papers in their editorials, gave a plain lead to the Liberal voters to vote Labour. During the week before polling day the “Herald” printed column after column of reports of Liberal speakers, Liberal money, and Liberal Party machinery being placed at the disposal of the Labour candidates. All the past bitter condemnation of Lloyd George and his party was forgotten in the twinkling of an eye when the chance of office and the security of seats were at stake. Forgotten was the admission, so frequent in recent years from Labour leaders, that the issue of free-trade versus protection was of no importance to the workers. No longer was Lloyd George the “coiner of purple phrases and breaker of promises,” as the Herald had so happily described him in their special “Lloyd George Number” of December 1st, 1923. No longer was he to be shunned as the man who always wreaks “incredible destruction,” the “shoddy salesman” of politics, the “two-faced” politician who “tricked the miners with Sankey Commissions, Duckham Reports, and so on, until the coal-owners had all ready for their bitter attack on the Federation.” Then “A vote for Lloyd George is a vote for the enemies of the workers and the foes of democracy”; now Lloyd George Liberals and Labourites were all together, fighting the battle of “progress” !

These are the depths to which the reformers have dragged the name Socialism. On the one side MacDonald with his, “I am still a Socialist,” leading the Tory army in their fight for tariffs, and on the other side Henderson and Labour Party, attaching the word socialism to their programme of reforms behind which Lloyd George could muster his free-trade capitalist “enemies of the workers.”

The utter shamelessness of the Labour leaders can be seen from their plea that they were fighting to defend the workers against the high prices which would follow tariffs. In all the years up to 1929 they had proclaimed themselves the party of low prices. Suddenly, when they came into office in that year they discovered that prices were falling heavily, the thing they had promised to bring about. Promptly they swallowed their low-price theory, and told their disappointed followers that falling prices were the cause of all the trouble. The “Daily Herald,” now so strong for cheapness, then carried on for months a campaign for inflation and higher prices. The following is from the “Herald” editorial on July 14th, 1931 :—

“It is urgent—imperatively urgent—that without delay the necessary steps be taken so to regulate currency and credit as first to raise and then stabilise prices…..Inflation—and it is folly to be frightened by a word—is the only possible remedy.”

Three months later, when it was “imperatively urgent” to catch the Liberal free-trade vote, they were back on their old platform of low prices.

The I.L.P. and the Communists.

In this election, for the first time, the I.L.P. ran its own candidates without the endorsement of the Labour Party, the endorsement being withheld because the I.L.P. would not undertake always to vote with the Labour Party. In two of the nineteen constituencies which the I.L.P. fought (Peckham and Shettleston) there was also an official Labour Party candidate, while in Stockport (a double member constituency) where the Labour man has hitherto run in double harness with a Liberal, the Labour Party refused to back the I.L.P. interloper who threatened to spoil the arrangement with the Liberals.

The result is interesting. In 1929 the total Labour vote in these nineteen constituencies was 332,413, and they won thirteen seats. This time the I.L.P. polled 260,344 and gained only three seats. They held Shettleston against the official Labour man, and in Peckham their candidate received many times the vote of his official Labour opponent. In Peckham, the official Labour man and the MacDonald Labour man both forfeited their deposits.

The I.L.P. parliamentary group is now, therefore, reduced to three members, and their chairman is outside the House.

Just before the election, their chairman, Mr. Fenner Brockway, writing in the “New Leader” (2nd October), confessed the uselessness of reforms which have been the I.L.P.’s sole stock-in-trade for nearly forty years :

“The system of capitalism is failing so obviously that the policy of reforms within capitalism must be rejected. We must concentrate on winning power of such nature that we can proceed boldly with the transition to socialism all along the line.”

In spite of which the I.L.P. candidates fought as usual on a programme of reforms. Three years ago Mr. Maxton described the Labour Party programme, “Labour and the Nation,” as a programme of capitalism. The 1931 programme, was, he said, “even more reactionary” (“Evening Standard,” 1st October). Yet the I.L.P. allowed a large number of its members to fight as official Labour Party candidates, and endorsed Mr. J. Beckett, as I.L.P. candidate at Peckham after he had declared his “whole-hearted support” of the Labour election programme (South London Press, 9th October). The I.L.P., although much reduced in size, has not altered in its quality. It is still the same body of vote-catching reformists, maintaining a precarious existence on the backs of the trade unions and the Labour Party.

The Communists ran 25 candidates, the same number as in 1920. In 1929 they obtained their aggregate vote of 50,617. This time, on a somewhat larger electorate, their aggregate vote was 70,844. In the ten constituencies which they fought on both occasions their vote was, in 1929, 39,283, and in 1931 48,612. They did best where they were fighting only one candidate, a Labour Party candidate.

They, too, fought on a reform programme of about twenty “demands” (“Daily Worker,” 14th October). In practise their policy is always determined by the actions of the other reformist parties. They run yapping at the heels of the Labour Party, and where the Labour Party goes they go, too. As the Labour Party, at the eleventh hour decided to be a free-trade party, the Communists had to follow suit. So one of their “demands” was “No taxes or tariffs which raise the price of food and clothing for the workers.” On Sunday, October 11th, a Communist Party demonstration in Hyde Park marched behind a banner with the “revolutionary” slogan, “No Taxes on the People’s Food.”

In this general election for the first time the official communist advice to the voters did not, so far as our knowledge goes, include a recommendation to vote for all or even some of the Labour Party candidates.

The Future.

The election changes nothing except the persons who shall occupy office, and some questions of capitalist trade and finance, of interest to sections of the capitalists in their mutual antagonisms. Capitalism is now sunk in one of its periodic crises of overproduction. In due course it will stagger back to “normal,” before falling again into yet other crises. This process will continue until the workers understand socialism and organise in the Socialist Party to achieve it. The votes for the Tory-Labour-Liberal Party under MacDonald, and for the Labour-Liberal Party under Henderson and Lloyd George, are votes for capitalism and reforms of one kind and another. They are not votes for socialism. This is proved by the alternating fortunes of the parties at succeeding elections. We are not prophets, but one thing seems certain—that the Labour Party will never obtain, and do not really want, an independent majority. They may, perhaps, again reach office, but only with Liberal support in the House and in the constituencies. The Leaders understand this, hence the efforts they made at the Labour Party Conference in October to secure the rejectIon of a resolution which, if it had been passed, would have committed them never to accept office as a minority. What we have long pointed out is now becoming clear for all to see. It is impossible to unite the workers on reform programmes. Each reform antagonises as many workers as it attracts. Reform programmes, as we can see before our eyes, split the workers into half a dozen warring sections. Another illusion has also been dispelled. We were told that after voting Labour workers would then vote for Socialism ; instead of which, as we foretold, they have returned to Conservatism. Only the simple demand for socialism will eventually hold the workers.

Those who have patiently waited, bearing all disappointments, but trusting in the Labour Party until such time as it had an independent majority will do well to ponder the prospect of a “Labour” Party tied permanently to Liberal votes, and limited to a programme approved by Mr. Lloyd George and his capitalist free-trade backers.

What's best for British capitalism . . . (2009)

Book Review from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Globalisation Laid Bare. Lessons in International Business. Industry and Parliament Trust. 2009. £11.99.

The Industry and Parliament Trust is a body set up to promote “mutual understanding between the UK Parliament and the worlds of business, industry and commerce” and this is their take on globalisation. Introduced by Sir Richard Branson, it is a collection of short articles by various other capitalists and their academic and political supporters.

The contributors main concerns seem to be how to avoid protectionism re-emerging in the current crisis and how to accommodate to China as an emerging industrial and commercial power. The contributors from the three main parties (Vince Cable, Alan Duncan and Baron Mandelson) all say the same thing – “down with protectionism” and “keep liberalising world trade” – reflecting their common perception of what is in the best interest of British capitalism.

The only dissenters are “Indian ecofeminist” Vandana Shiva and Clare Short.

Adam Buick

Age Without Wisdom (1958)

From the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers Who Still Have Capitalist Ideas

As time passes the trade unions, and the Labour parties, become older and their policies change, but without any noticeable sign of having learned by experience.

These remarks are prompted by two recent events that would have appeared surprising 50 years ago. Earlier this year New Zealand farmers complained that they were selling less butter in this country because of cheaper butter coming on the market from several exporting countries, including Finland, Argentine and Ireland. After some delay the Government announced in the House of Commons on June 19th that they had approached the governments concerned and had got them to agree to reduce their deliveries of butter where this was not already happening. It was done deliberately to help the New Zealand exporters, although it meant that the price of butter here would go up. The first somewhat surprising event was that the T.U.C. supported the idea of helping New Zealand:—‘We decided to tell the President of the Board of Trade that we supported the New Zealand government’s request for anti-dumping duties.” (T.U.C. Report in What the T.U.C. is Doing.” Page 38.)

At the same time the Lancashire cotton manufacturers and the textile unions were pressing the government to help the depressed Lancashire cotton industry by restricting cheap imports from Hong Kong, India and elsewhere. And in the House of Commons on June 19th the Labour M.P. for the Lancashire constituency of Westhoughton, Mr. J. T. Price, asked:

“Whilst the House will be quite pleased with the action taken by the right hon. gentlemen’s Ministry in dealing with this stabilisation of butter prices and checking the unlimited import of very cheap butter at subsidised rates, why is not the Ministry also prepared to take similar action on behalf of Lancashire cotton, which it has just turned down? ” 

Here we see the T.U.C. and Labour Party opposing Free Trade and supporting restrictions on imports. Yet at the Trades Union Congress in 1904 a strongly worded resolution was carried (by no means the first, or last) affirming that “any departure from the principles of Free Trade would be detrimental to the interests of the working classes.” The resolution named as the chief evil result of departing from Free Trade that Protection would increase “the cost of the people’s necessaries.”

About the same time the Labour Party was declaring its staunch adherence to Free Trade, and Mr. Francis Williams in his Fifty Years March recorded that at the 1906 General Election the Labour Party “saw eye to eye with the Liberals” on the dominant issue of the election, “the issue of Free Trade or Protection.” (Page 155.)

That trade union and Labour Party policy of support for Free Trade in order to get low prices for food and other articles derived from the agitation of the early nineteenth century. It was led and financed by the British cotton and other manufacturers and ended with the abolition of the Corn Laws and other protective laws, and turned Britain into a free trade country. The employers (who were interested in low prices, because that would enable them to pay low wages and make large profits) persuaded the workers that low prices would be in their interests. Apart from the agricultural workers who saw their jobs disappearing, most workers accepted the employers’ argument and thought that they had won a great victory, so for nearly a century the trade unions and later on the Labour Party were mostly free-traders, though this did not prevent workers in particular industries that were hit by foreign competition from taking a different view: just as today, while the T.U.C. and the Labour Party agree in demanding lower prices they do not think it very odd when the miners favour dearer coal; transport workers, higher fares; and agricultural workers, dearer food.

The same confusion exists among workers in other countries and shows itself at international gatherings. The textile workers in Hong Kong and India are not at all perturbed about the troubles of Lancashire, and the workers in Ireland and the Argentine are not impressed by arguments about the danger that if New Zealand farmers’ incomes fall, they will not be able to buy British motor cars and other manufactures.

The policies, always dealing only with the surface of things, change, but do not become sounder and wiser. The fact is that the trade unions and Labour parties are not international workers’ organisations trying to better the conditions of the working class everywhere, but sectional and national bodies viewing the world in the light of what they imagine to be their interests as workers in a particular trade in a particular country: they identify their interests with those of their employers.

And, of course, they are quite wrong. They do not constitute a united movement of hope progressing towards a new, better social order, but fractional bodies fighting against each other and with their policies determined for them by the rivalries of capitalist industries and capitalist national groups.

They can see that the capitalist world does not provide abundance, security and peace for the peoples of the world; that it cannot even secure that surpluses of food in U.S.A., Canada, Australia and other countries, shall be made’available to the half-starved millions of the world. They can see, too, that unsaleable surpluses are a positive evil in causing unemployment. Yet all they do is to try to solve these problems within the framework of capitalism. They have tinkered with useless remedies for upwards of a century and have got nowhere.

Recognition of and action on the simple principle that the workers in all countries have a common interest against the employing class, and the logical further recognition that it is in the interest of the workers to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism would revolutionise the home and international scene: but with all their experience of the uselessness of Free Trade and of Protection this is the one thing they are still unable to see. 

Edgar Hardcastle

Answers to Correspondents. (1913)

From the April 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

C. W. Holt (Nottingham).—We agree with Marx’s “Discourse on Free Trade.” Free Trade in England helped make it the “workshop of the world.” But what it did for capitalists here Protection did for those abroad. Your statement that Free Trade “widens the breach between Capital and Labour ” is false. It is not fiscal systems that cause the “breach,” but the development of the productive forces, as Marx shows in “Capital.”