Acknowledgments. (1911)

From the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

RECEIVED —

“Western Clarion” (Vancouver, B.C.).

“Weekly People” (New York).

"New York Call" (New York).

“Gaelic American” (New York).

“Western Wage-Earner" (Vancouver, B.C.).

“Civil Service Socialist” (London).

"The New World" (West Ham).

“Freedom” (London).

Books Received. (1911)

From the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Christ Myth," by Arthur Drews, Ph.D. T. Fisher Unwin 7s. 6d. (Will be reviewed next month.)

"The Concentration of Capital: a Marxian Fallacy," by W. Tcherkoff. Freedom Press, 127 Ossulton-st. N.W.

Con Lehane: A Correction (2004)

From the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the September Socialist Standard we stated that Con Lehane, who was a founder member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, went on to become in the 1930s and 40s a member of the IRA and a Republican member of the Irish parliament. This was not the case and was due to a confusion with someone else with the same name.

The Con Lehane who was a founder member was born in Cork in 1878 was indeed an Irish Republican but he died in New York in 1919, shortly after being released from prison where he had been detained for his political activities. In 1916 he had published a pamphlet entitled The Irish Republic arguing that the so-called Easter Rising in Dublin that year had been a workers’ revolution.

The other Con Lehane, who was on the Army Council of the IRA in the 1930s and a Clann na Poblachta deputy from 1948 to 1951, was born in Belfast in 1912 and died in 1983 (see Irish Times, 27 September 1983).

The original source of the error was an article which appeared in the anarchist paper Freedom on 8 February 1992. Our apologies for not having first checked this thoroughly enough – Editors.

Letter: When did socialism start? (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

When did socialism start?

Dear Editors

Your exchange with Ron Smith (no relation) in the February issue was, as usual, well answered by yourselves but does pose the questions: When did socialism start and how and when do individuals accept the indisputable logic of its truth?

I can only relate my own story but it would be interesting to hear from others of their own experiences and enlightenments.

Born on the even of the 39/45 war into a large but poor family, father an uneducated window cleaner (and after serving abroad for five years with an aptitude for hard work and drink) and mother (a cleaner when financial needs demanded and time allowed) allegedly from a middle class family who, amongst all the poverty, educated all her children into the niceties of life including manners, respect and discipline.

Fortunately, as with my siblings, 11-plus took me on a free place to a local public school and until the age of 16, when family need for money demanded that I leave, I had my mind stretched, titillated and forced into action. At that time I had been an ardent believer in christianity for 10 years and was so until National Service in the Far East and other life experiences had convinced me of the futility of religion. Nevertheless attendance at a “posh” school and exposure to Christian beliefs and history did flood my subconscious with all the inherent inequalities, privilege and hypocrisy of private schooling and formal religion.

By the time I was 30 good business fortune had visited and I was happily married with three children living in a superb house in a select locality, driving the latest large saloon (hers) and dashing sports car (mine).

This lifestyle continued for the next 20 years and I do recall feeling on many occasions; why me, what have I done to be so lucky, what about all my ex-friends who are still grafting at their lathes, down the mines and existing day to day? A few pangs of guilt, feelings of general unfairness in life and then – back to the good life…

It all ended in 1990 when my lawyers, personal friends for many years, would not stand their corner in a large business deal in which they had been employed to protect my legal interests. They betrayed and deserted me which resulted during the 1990s in unemployment , life on income support for three years, self-built home repossession and homelessness.

Why me again? – but this time with the boot on the other foot! Why after all these years of being a “true blue” and avid supporter of the system (capitalism) have all my friends (sic) and acquaintances deserted me and left me for dead? It didn’t make sense but I now had the time to reflect and think long and hard about life, people, politics, systems and capitalism and out of this came the realisation that millions of people were being subjected to the harsh realities of capitalism every year in the UK alone. It wasn’t right, not fair, why so much hypocrisy and ruthlessness and why so many lies all the time? Where was the justice in our legal system and, if I was disenfranchised with all my accumulated knowledge of the workings of capitalism, what about all those people who had not enjoyed my good fortune, wealth and privileges?

Up to now Marx, Lenin, Morris, Communists, Socialists etc. were all unacceptable lefties who had no place in the world and whose ideas must be stamped out at all costs. Can you believe such arrogance, stupidity, lack of real consideration for others and shallowness in a supposed intelligent 50-plus-years-old man?

Looking for answers I started to buy the Big Issue and came across your advertisement in the small ads. Duly applied to be a reader and the first few issues were an absolute revelation to me! After years of mental turmoil and survival, all the thoughts I had had about a better world for all were springing out at me from the pages of the Socialist Standard. As the years have gone by and I have continued to enjoy your magazine and continued to research into how life could be! The mists of time have drifted apart and memories of an earlier learning period in my life have surfaced.

It strikes me that the similarity between much of the truth, logic and reason of socialism is akin to many of the teachings of christianity – less the mumbo jumbo of course (this mumbo jumbo is surely man’s add-on for personal greed and self-aggrandisement).

I put it to you – just a thought – could Jesus Christ, an ordinary man or a fictional character, be the first and best socialist? Love Thy Neighbour as Thyself – think about it! Surely to get socialism all we need to do is to live truly by that sentiment!

Finally, the capitalist sun is shining again for me but I am exploiting them now and much of my accumulation is voluntarily passed on to fellow workers in my current business venture – as you say, we all have to make a living under capitalism until socialism happens – just a pity that more of our resources are not directed to “marketing the brand”.

On the campaigning issue for a fairer and better life for all humanity (socialism), I talk and debate with anyone who will listen and lobby anyone – politicians, the corporate world, religious worthies et al – under the guise of Campaign for Morality, Fairness and Truth (with financial self-sufficiency this would be a full time job).

When will socialism happen, when will the majority understand logic and reason, is it a natural progression, are European integration, globalisation, the US current muscle-flexing activities all indicators that the world is becoming one and will this give socialism a better chance of happening in our lifetime or are we all pissing in the wind?

Recently I had a letter in the anarchist magazine Freedom suggesting that more co-operation between them, the SPGB and all other far left tendency organisations (Christians included) is the only way to avoid Armageddon – can I put that to you, too?

Trevor L. Smith, 

Bury, Lancs

Reply: 

We hope our previous correspondent is still there to read your tale of woe. It might teach him something about how the present system works.

Actually, the so-called golden rule – of “do as you would be done” (“Love Thy Neighbour as Thyself”seems a bit extreme and unpractical) – has nothing to do with the mythical (or possibly factual) character called Jesus. It’s a feature of all human codes of behaviour, whether incorporated into some religion or not (and, as you say, all religions are mumbo-jumbo), reflecting the fact that humans are social animals who depend on co-operating with each other to survive. No society in which everybody competes against each other and in which “anything goes” could survive. This is indeed capitalism’s ideal but, fortunately, it can’t achieve it as humans just aren’t like that. Even under capitalism humans’ basic social nature comes through and most of the time most people behave to each other in a decent way.

But this in itself is not socialism. It merely shows that, if anything, it is capitalism not socialism that is “against human nature”. Socialism is not a code of behaviour. It is a system of society, one based on the common ownership and democratic control by the whole community of the means for producing the things we need to live and to enjoy life. It is, as you hint, the next stage in social evolution and for which developments within capitalism – such as the building up of a world-wide productive system capable of turning out plenty for all – have paved the way. In fact, today, everything is in place for the establishment of socialism except one vital ingredient – the desire and political will to establish it.

This is where we in the Socialist Party come in. Our members have got together for the single purpose of helping the emergence of an understanding of and a desire for socialism. When this does emerge – fortunately it does not depend on our own meagre efforts but more on people’s experience of capitalism and its failure and inability to solve the problems they face – it is our opinion that will express itself, among other ways, through the ballot box. Those who want socialism will use their votes to send delegates to elected bodies with a mandate to use political control to end class ownership and usher in the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and to dismantle the apparatus of class rule.

We certainly think that all those who want socialism and are agreed that this is the right way to proceed to get it as quickly and as peacefully as possible should get together in a single organisation, a single socialist political party. But Freedom , the anarchist publication, does not stand for socialism; it seeks to cater for all those who want to abolish the state for whatever reason, including those who are resolute opponents of socialism. And even the minority among them who do stand for socialism (in the same sense as us) don’t think it can be achieved by democratic political action and advocate the suicidal policy of trying to take on head-to-head the fully armed capitalist state.

As to other “far left tendency organisations”, by which we take you to mean the SWP, Militant and the others, our experience is that they don’t stand for socialism but for state capitalism (nationalisation misnamed socialism) and the rule of a vanguard party (preferably themselves).

Besides, both Freedom and them have other priorities in that they consider campaigning for this or that reform – or, more often these days, against this or that measure proposed by the government – more important. If they were prepared to drop campaigning for reforms and to accept campaigning for socialism as the immediate priority then of course we should all get together and have a bigger and better socialist organisation, so helping to speed the demise of capitalism and avoid the miseries it has in store for us if allowed to continue.

—Editors

Acknowledgements. (1914)

From the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

RECEIVED —

“Weekly People” (New York).

“Gaelic American” (New York).

“British Columbia Federationist” (Vancouver).

“Civil Service Socialist” (London).

“Freedom” (London).

“Cotton’s Weekly” (Canada).

“Appeal to Reason” (Kansas).

“International News Letter” (Berlin).

“The Western Clarion” (Vancouver).

“The Socialist” (Melbourne).

“Industrial Union News” (Detroit).

Anarchism: No State, No Market by Howard Moss (1986)

Blogger's Note: 

The article below by Socialist Party member and regular Socialist Standard writer, Howard Moss, first appeared in the 1986 Freedom Press anthology, Freedom: A Hundred Years 1886-1986, which, as the title suggests, was a special book published by Freedom Press to mark its centenary. I remember buying the anthology in Freedom Bookshop in Aldgate in the early 1990s, and it was a surprise at the time to see Howard's name within its pages — I perhaps applied my hostility clause a bit too literally back in the day — but it's a good piece of succinct writing and, I think in its own way, its general point overlaps with Rubel and Crump's book, Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, which was originally published around about the same time period.

According to bookfinder.com, the cheapest secondhand copy of the anthology would set you back forty dollars today, so it's good to know that a PDF of the book is available over at LibCom. It's worth checking out, not just for Howard's article, but for its history of early British anarchism, the biographical sketches of forgotten Anarchist activists over the decades, and articles from such anarchist 'names' as Colin Ward, Alex Comfort, George Woodcock, Crass, Nicolas Walter, Donald Rooum and Vernon Richards. As an added bonus, it also features a cartoon by longstanding Socialist Standard cartoonist, Peter Rigg, in his Kronstadt Kids period.

Anarchism: No State, No Market

What do anarchists want? It’s a difficult one. Perhaps an easier one along the same lines would be ‘What do anarchists have in common?’ And for me the answer to this one was summed up by Donald Rooum in the May 1986 Freedom through the words of his cartoon creation Wildcat: ‘You get rid of governments by convincing people to withdraw support’. Yes, that’s it, getting rid of governments, and of course getting rid of the thing they govern — the state. The next question, however, has got to be ‘What kind of a stateless society do we want?’ Even if we can’t be expected to give a blueprint, we can at least be expected to give some kind of idea of how things will be organised and the kind of life that will be possible in a society that doesn’t have the state to change it.

Let me say right away that, as I see it, there are two possible choices of the kind of stateless society. And the choices are simple ones. We either have a stateless society with a market or a stateless society without a market. If you’re an anarchist who doesn’t envisage getting rid of the market, then automatically, whether you realise it or not, you’re talking about keeping buying and selling, trade, money, banks, financial institutions, and so on — in other words all the paraphernalia of capitalism, even if it’s capitalism without the state. And there are people, anarcho-capitalists they call themselves, who argue precisely for this kind of arrangement. They want an entirely free-market world, without national frontiers, with a single world currency and where private ownership extends to everything imaginable and the ethos, even more than now, is unbridled competition. Freedom dealt with them (not very well, in my opinion) in October 1984 (Vol 45 No 10) and later referred to them as a ‘squalid bunch’. I doubt whether many readers of Freedom would want to be associated with them either. But the rub is that, unless as an anarchist you advocate not just the abolition of the state but also the abolition of the market system, then logically you can’t escape being an ‘anarcho-capitalist’. Because as long as you’ve still got the market or an exchange society of any kind, then you’ve still got some form of capitalism, or at any rate some form of property society.

Now I know most anarchists would say, if it were put to them, that they don’t want the market system or the exchange economy that goes with it. But how often do they explicitly express this point of view? And how often is it explicitly expressed in anarchist literature? In my experience, very rarely. And this is a pity, because one of the greatest difficulties in putting anarchist views across is reaction from people along the lines ‘You’ve got nothing practical to replace the present system with?’ or ‘An anarchist society would be chaos’. Yet if we stressed not just the stateless but also the marketless nature of anarchism, we’d be making anarchist views that much easier for people to grasp and not react to like that, because we’d be putting across the idea that it’s the market that’s chaos in the way it arbitrarily dictates how much we shall or shall not have, what work we shall or shall not do, the kind of lives we shall or shall not live. And as a logical converse to that, we’d be offering a society in which, instead of competing among one another in a system of privately owned wealth, we could all work together to provide for our needs using the commonly owned resources of the earth. If we did this, we’d not only be putting across the idea that human needs and human worth shouldn’t be measured by money and profit but also advocating a practical alternative in which that wouldn’t happen.

I’ll raise a few hackles now by saying that, having reached this point, we’re pretty close to what some people would understand by ‘socialism’. Not the ‘socialism’ of the Labour Party, or Russia, or China, or the left-wing groups, but the socialism of ‘from each according to ability to each according to need’ and ‘the abolition of the wages system’. These of course are things Marx said (though he did not originate the sayings) and we’ve got to reject a hell of a lot of other things Marx said, but should we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Why should’t we accept that those ideas provide a sound basis (as I see it, the only basis) for a truly free society?

It may or may not come as a surprise now if I say that I consider myself a socialist, but when people say to me (as they often do) ‘Isn’t what you’re talking about anarchism?’, I say ‘Yes, as long as by anarchism you mean not just a society organised without a state but also one organised without a market’. That is after all the only road to freedom — isn’t it?

Howard Moss

Make-Believe Revolutionaries: Two Case-Histories of Direct Action (1972)

From the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

A commonplace response to the Socialist case, by people who find it unanswerable, is that it is “all right in theory”. The implication is that there is something separate from and superior to theories, called Practice. This is, to start with, a misunderstanding of the nature of theory. Theory does not precede or stand apart from practice: on the contrary, it is the conclusion from practice — from what has happened and what is observed.

The sort of Practice implied, therefore, is action which does not give a hang for the known facts. The practitioners never state it like that, of course; they are Getting Things Done, and Striking a Blow for this or that. In recent years its special manifestation has been Direct Action, the doctrine of people taking things into their own hands and launching themselves against the system. Looking at some well-known instances, it is possible to see Practice in practice. Does direct action work?

Squatting

The squatter movement began in 1968, as a venture by the East London Libertarian Group. “Venture” is an accurate enough term: it was preceded by agitations over housing conditions at Coventry Cross, conditions in an unmarried mothers’ home in Walthamstow, and claimants’ grievances at the local Social Security office. For several weeks the squatter campaign consisted of Sunday afternoon visits to examples of inequality in housing. Invited groups of libertarians met without knowing where they would be taken — mystery tours, as a delighted anarchist described them without qualms over the leadership principle.

The general history of the squatter battles at Ilford and derivative episodes elsewhere, when the occupation of empty property began, is well enough known. Demonstration about homelessness became an infection in the Left; the north-west anarchist federation’s bulletin described it as “the highest form of revolutionary activity possible in Britain today”. But in fact the campaign’s first casualty was the proclaimed revolutionary content, the deadest mortality the anarchist slogan “Do it yourself”. For the avowed purpose was to promote direct action among the working class, and it never happened. The families which squatted in empty houses were taken to, installed and defended in them by the libertarian groups. No one did it himself.

Scalps & Souls

The Ilford episode ended in a treaty with the Council, which undertook — on certain conditions — to make condemned houses available for homeless families. The terms re-invoked the original presumption of the mystery tours: they were made not by the house-seekers or by collective decision of the agitators, but by the East London Libertarians’ leader Ron Bailey. Among the conditions was one that the houses where the siege had raged were to be given up, including a house in which a group of libertarians had made their own commune. On their eviction Freedom had a bitter, passionate article headed “The Soul of a Movement”. It was, they felt, as if the Redskin chief had started trading his own braves’ scalps to the white man.

Freedom Press was enthusiastic for squatting, and for the London hippies who occupied buildings in the Drury Lane-Piccadilly area: the “commune of the streets”. In 1969, after successive evictions, some of the hippies went to Freedom, cited the paper’s persistent encouragement of them and pointed out that the Freedom/Express Printers building in Angel Alley, Whitechapel, had empty rooms galore. The building had been acquired and renovated in the previous two years. The Freedom group felt a moral compulsion — they had supported, vindicated, egged-on; so they let the army of hippy squatters in. In the next two weeks, the building was turned to a shambles. Hell’s Angels stood guard, demanding subscriptions from anarchists who went there. The culminating incident was lead-stripping — from the roof above, from the printing works below. Describing it all in an article, the Freedom group asked unhappily: “What were we to do?” The movement’s soul was certainly a soul in torment.

Uncritical Support

At its height, squatting had a great deal of public sympathy. It had the Left and libertarian groups working together; and it illustrated succinctly all their misdirections and failings. “Direct action” failed, in circumstances most favourable to it. Indeed, the term “squatting” was a misnomer, implying people spontaneously taking possession. As has been said, that never happened: “installation” would have been more accurate. Nor is this mere carping. What has to be seen is that the do-it-yourself revolution was a myth, and the reality was a series of simple charitable acts. And today the energy and good intentions of the squatter movement appear to have made useful auxiliaries for local councils in their housing administration and welfare services.

As for the hippy squatters, it may sound ungracious but is true to say they were not homeless people at all. In general, they had homes but chose to be away from them; perhaps with reasons, but that is a different question. Their being on the streets was due chiefly to the demise of the Drury Lane Arts Laboratory, where anyone and everyone kipped. But the Freedom Press dilemma — “What were we to do?” — originated in uncritical support for any semblance of direct action. Otherwise, it would be hard to account for the presence on Freedom’s doorstep of Hell’s Angels, who are the nearest thing to pre-war Fascist youth in Britain today.

Bombs & Bullets

The most recent demonstration of direct action has been the “Angry Brigade” bombings. There is, no doubt, a division between those who would actually have done this kind of thing and those who would not; but there is no doubt either that it had the sympathy of practically all direct-actionists. A pamphlet published shortly before the Old Bailey trial, by the “Stoke Newington Eight Defence Group”, tries hard to suggest that bombs and firearms are now the method of radical activists at large:

The state is also alleging that bombings and shootings claimed by the First of May Group, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Wild Bunch and Lotta Continua are also part of this conspiracy. In fact just about every single guerrilla action undertaken by groups from very different political areas within the movement over the past four years has been put down to them. The prosecution is attempting to create falsely the image that the political offensive carried out by the movement in the past four years is the work of a very small isolated gang of madmen.

Grand Delusion

What is a “political offensive” in these terms supposed to achieve? The authors of the pamphlet, which is called A Political Statement, assert that the Angry Brigade’s terrorism was an integral part of a working-class uprising:

Being part of their revolution they are sensitive to the needs and desires of that revolution. On January 12th we had a one day strike, we went on huge marches all over the country, we planned strategies for the future and we bombed Robert Carr.

The implication intended is of a massive number of workers united in all those activities. But one has only to ask who are the “we” of the dramatically italicized sentence, and its meaningless ranting is immediately exposed. On January 12, 1971, some trade unionists demonstrated against the Industrial Relations Bill; Left-wing groups distributed leaflets and had euphoric syndicalist dreams; and, in complete dissociation from all of that, a secret handful planted bombs which caused outrage but little harm.

The absurd delusion of a grand “political offensive” is further emphasized in a photograph of Carr’s front door, under the heading “The Minister’s Palace Destroyed”: which is quite untrue. Indeed, if the object of the “bombing and shooting” has been to kill representatives of the State, its incompetence is almost comical. The pamphlet claims at least 107 bombing episodes: not one person was hurt by them, it seems. If, on the other hand, the aim was not to kill but to alarm, that is even more ludicrous. It is reminiscent of the old yarn about the man who, finding his wife in bed with the milkman, went outside and kicked the milkman’s horse. What sort of “offensive” is that?

Serious Questions

Nevertheless, behind the puerile fantasy lie serious political considerations. At a simple everyday level, those most likely to be killed and injured by bombing are not establishment-figures but working men and women; Northern Ireland, to which the pamphlet refers repeatedly, demonstrates this only too well. For all the cant about “we” and “the movement”, bomb-planting is the negation of class-consciousness and democratic practice. Anarchists and direct-actionists may approve of the faits-accomplis, but that does not alter the fact that at the time they had no knowledge or control of what was being done in their name. Early in 1971 when publicity for the Angry Brigade explosions was at its height, the libertarian gossip and speculation were that the bombs were the work of agents-provocateurs with the object of raising public opinion against the Left. So much for “we”!

The knowledge that opinion — and repressive measures — are thus raised is another reason why terrorist tactics should not be supported. The State and the newspapers do not distinguish between “pretend” revolutionaries and real ones: direct action has done great harm to the growth of the Socialist movement. The “political statement” pamphlet complains of these consequences of the actions it is acclaiming:

This is a long hard struggle . . . It will be even more difficult in face of attacks from the political police which have grown enormously in organisation and number in the past year. The fact that there have been so many raids, the fact that they now habitually seize all political documents that they come across in their raids. The fact that innocent brothers and sisters arc locked up, some of them for many years.

Up to recent times anarchists were wont to respond to the traditional accusation of bomb-throwing by saying they had given it up because they had learned that governments did it better. That was at least a realistic view. The “urban guerrilla” and the saboteur may be problems to the state, but there is no question of their being able to match or weaken its armed power. Engels was able to point this out in military detail to would-be insurrectionists in 1895, in his preface to Marx’s Class Struggles in France. Speaking of the German bourgeoisie’s readiness to let rebels engage in physical battle with them, he said: “We are not so stupid.”

The State

The most important question of all, however, is: who are the enemy? Against whom is the “offensive”? The Angry Brigade’s targets were representatives of the State. The “political statement” of their supporters has not a single reference to capitalism, but insists on the state as adversary:

It began when it became clear that the state can and will smash the movement if it feels it can win. The bombings started.

And when he [Heath] talks of civil war, he is talking of a military/political offensive against all who oppose the corporate state.

The Stoke Newington Eight are . . . militants who have been active in the resistance to the corporate state and in the revolutionary movement.

Six years ago anarchists were wearing badges and carrying banners which said: “The state is your enemy”. And it is wrong, wrong, wrong. The deprivations, conflicts and miseries of the world we live in are caused not just by governments but by capitalism. The State’s rôle is to enforce them with the coercive machinery against which direct-actionists stub their toes and knock their heads. What the working class has to do is organize to abolish capitalism — by gaining control of the state machine with conscious intent to that end.

Consciousness

Socialists have no sympathy with those who believe bombs contribute to a social revolution. Of course rage and the desire for reprisal are emotions we have all experienced — who has not felt something like the poet’s “Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough/It isn’t fit for humans now”, or wished to kick-in the huge grinning teeth of some inflated politician? But the futility and self-destructiveness are clear. Indignation becomes constructive only when it is translated to consciousness. The direct-actionist asserts that consciousness can be a result of the act, that to cajole or push people into being hammered by capitalism’s force is to spread comprehension of what it is all about. There is not a shred of evidence that this has ever happened. On the other hand, the evidence provided by case-histories of direct action and terrorism is that they are at least fatuous and at worst horrifyingly pernicious, and always anti-working-class.

The means to change society exist and wait to be used, as Engels went on to say:

The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the 'revolutionaries’, the 'rebels’—we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and revolt . . . we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like eternal life.

Robert Barltrop

Socialism and Anarchism - Part 2 (1942)

From the April 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

Syndicalist writings are obscure regarding the economic implications of Syndicalism. It is not always clear whether it is understood to involve the abolition of the wages system, or what such abolition means even when it is advocated by the Syndicalists. Other aspects of Syndicalist teaching are just as obscure. The following quotation from War Commentary (mid-March), an Anarchist journal, illustrated the point. The writer asks, “Can we do without capital?” and answers: —

  It depends largely on what is meant by capital. What should be clear to all is that to make or produce anything at all, only human energy plus nature is required. Therefore it is true to say that the worker produces everything. That being true, there is no need for a master at all. Who will do the “thinking out” and the organisation? That question is easy. It will be done by the workers, the very people who do it now.

It is true, of course, that things can only be produced by the application of human energy to nature given material; that, economically, the workers produce everything; and that there is no need “for a master at all.” But recognition of these simple fundamentals does not make the Socialist, if there is an absence of scientific deduction from them. To put it mildly, it is not clear from the subsequent development of his argument what the writer’s deductions are. However, for the moment should be noted his own answer to the question, “Can we do without capital?” Notice the answer: “It depends largely what is meant by capital.” Risking the charge of carping criticism it might be suggested that those who oppose the capitalist system of production ought to know what capital is. We will restate what has been defined many thousands of times. Capital is wealth used to produce further wealth for profit. When, in Socialist society, things are produced for use alone the means and instruments of production will have ceased to function as capital. This is no mere word jugglery. Uncertainty or unsoundneses concerning the nature of the capitalist world we live in leads to false conclusions and reformism and makes revolutionary phrases mere jargon. The writer concludes his article with the following four points which he suggests should be should be kept present in workers’ minds: —

1. That before the workers can be free, the boss must go.
2. That the boss will go when the workers organise to take from him the fields, mines, factories, transport, etc.
3. That these things can be taken by organisation at the point of production and “locking out the boss” from all industry.
4. That in order to keep a workers’ delegate within the ranks of the workers, see to it that the wages he is paid do not exceed the wage he would draw while at work in industry and that every delegate be subject to 24 hours’ notice, must have worked in industry for 12 months preceding his appointment, to come up for re-election every 12 months, and in no circumstances hold office for more than three years in succession. Such ruling will encourage workers to become fit for the work of delegate because so many will be required and none will decay ‘into permanent officialdom. ”

It is perhaps not surprising that the fourth point indicates the continuance of the wages system. If this is not what is meant then it means nothing. The four points contain two proposals dear to the heart of the Syndicalist: “locking out the boss,” and workers’ control. It does not strike the Syndicalist as curious that the workers, who are quick to learn from experience, to sense the weaknesses of capitalism and exploit them to their advantage, have not learned how simple is it to “lock out the boss” and take over the control of industry for themselves. They have not learned because experience has taught the workers what the Syndicalists choose (or pretend) to ignore, the enormous power of the State machine. If State power had never existed (a fantastic assumption !) the workers would have discovered the consequent weakness of the position of the capitalist class long before the Syndicalists appeared to tell them about it. The idea that workers can “take and hold” industry by ignoring State power, or in defiance of it, is basically a hoary Anarchist doctrine. It is fantastic, dangerous, and nonsense. An example of the “take and hold” principle by the Anarchists and Syndicalists occurred, it is claimed, during the Spanish Civil War. The real point to remember in this connection is that whatever success the Syndicalists had was whilst the State machine was controlled by the Republican Government, who had need of the support of the Anarchists. When the control of the State machine passed to Franco the take and holders passed out despite their claim to have millions of followers. The factories were not held against the State. The party holding State power decided the fate of the Anarchists and Syndicalists. This was true in Spain. It would be even more true in countries like Great Britain and the U.S.A., where the State power and the administrative machinery is much more highly centralised and where there is a clearer recognition of that power among the workers. It is not accidental that Anarchism has arisen where there exist semi-mediaeval conditions. Indeed, in a country like Spain where conditions parallel an historical phase through which most developed capitalist countries have passed, Anarchism could (and did) have a particular appeal. Where “kicking out the boss” and “take and hold” means eliminating the large secular and clerical landowner and the sharing of the land among the peasants, the abolition of feudal obligations to the landowning class and other burdens suffered by the peasantry, it appears to promise an immediate solution for the social problems of the peasant: a promise which is entirely lost on the industrial worker in the more advanced capitalist countries because of the different social and economic conditions in which he lives.

Anarchism is a philosophy bred in the days of working class immaturity. Its horizon has never shown any real understanding of the nature of man’s relationship to society or of capitalism to history. The extent of its economic proposals whenever it spared the time from its fervent propaganda for “freedom,” “justice,” etc., never went beyond property for all and “fair prices” and fair exchange (Proudhon—still the “father of Anarchists” even to the modern Anarchists). The modern Anarchist movement seems to have learned nothing in the past half-century, and the Syndicalist movement but little. Rudolf Rocker (a well-informed living Anarchist), in his book, “Anarcho-Syndicalism,” does not attempt to refute any of the older doctrines of Anarchism, nor does he indicate that he does anything but accept them. In it he informs his reader that Proudhon was “no Communist,” and that he condemned property as merely the privilege of exploitation, but he recognised the ownership of the instruments of labour by all . . .” (p. 15). Rocker also claims (p. 23): “Anarchism has in common with Liberalism the idea that the happiness and prosperity of the individual must be the standard in all social matters. And, in common with the great representatives of Liberal thought, it has also the idea of limiting the functions of government to a minimum” (!). It is true that “Liberal thought” had a traditional antipathy to the State. But the “freedom” which assumed so large an aspect in its philosophy would deceive no informed worker. It meant no more than a resentment against State interference (when children of tender years worked in the factories and mines) and the freedom to exploit workers without interference. Such are the superficialities of Anarchist philosophy. According to The Word (March, 1942) Rudolph Rocker is now writing in defence of the British Empire. He follows Kropotkin, who supported Czarist Russia in its war against Germany, 1914/18. Knowing the basic unsoundness of Anarchism these inconsistencies do not shock the Socialist. Many less experienced workers, however, are likely to be misled by the “revolutionary” jargon and the high-moral language of Anarchist writings. A little careful thought will save subsequent and painful disillusionment.

The fervour and fury of Anarchist propaganda signifies nothing. Little different could be said of the Anarchists to-day than Plechanoff said of Stirner’s “League of Egoists” yesterday—”the Utopia of a petty bourgeois in revolt.”

Socialism and Anarchism have nothing in common.

Harry Waite

The Philosophy of Anarchism (1942)

Pamphlet Review from the February 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been asked by a reader to give our views on a booklet, “The Philosophy of Anarchism,” by Herbert Read, published in 1940 by Freedom Press Distributors (36 pages, 6d.).

To obtain an idea of the general superficiality of the work the reader need not go beyond the two- page introductory chapter. Here in a nutshell Mr. Read displays his failure to understand even the elements of Socialism although his whole case is based on his belief that Socialism has been tried, has failed and must fail. The following extracts from this chapter will suffice to prove the point. Mr. Read writes:

   The characteristic political attitude of to-day is not one of positive belief, but of despair. Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past. There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, offers a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country. But it has not changed the servile nature of human bondage. Man is everywhere still in chains. The motive of his activity remains economic, and. this economic motive inevitably leads to the social inequalities from which he had hoped to escape. In face of this double failure, of capitalism and of socialism, the desperation of the masses has taken shape as fascism—a revolutionary but wholly negative movement which aims at establishing a selfish organisation of power within the general chaos.

We can be quite brief and positive in repudiating Mr. Read’s errors. Marxists have not given way to despair nor is their number decreasing. Socialism has not triumphed in any country. Russia was never Socialist and could not have become Socialist under the Bolshevist regime, no matter what methods the Bolshevists might have used in order to impose their system on the population. Russia was not and is not ripe for Socialism, and the majority of the population were not and are not ready for Socialism. At no time did the S.P.G.B. accept the baseless claim of the Russian that Socialism had been or could be established. Lastly fascism is not and has never been revolutionary. One further proof of Mr. Read’s lack of knowledge of his subject is his use of the term, “State Socialism'” (p. 19)—a contradiction in terms through which he blindly slips into his assumption that State capitalist Russia is Socialist.

So much for Mr. Read’s initial assumption. His “philosophy” and his remedies are of a like nature. He believes (p. 6) that to realise the new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values,” and that “thousands, if not millions, of people . . . instinctively hold these ideas”— as if social evolution were a matter of instinct and of moulding society in accordance with a mental attitude of deciding to prefer certain values against others.

He divides the human race into individuals who seek self-expression and those who are servile and want to be shepherded but explains this “fundamental distinction” by saying that the servile ones "are either economically or psychologically predisposed.” He seemingly does not realise that broadly the distinction depends upon an understanding of capitalism and of the way in which Socialism can be achieved. “The only necessity,” he says, “is to discover the true laws of nature and conduct our lives in accordance with them” (p. 16).

Later on Mr. Read admits that his appeal is “to mystical entities, to idealistic notions which all good materialists reject” (p. 20). Notice the absurd position to which his appeal to mysticism has brought him.

His explanation of what he mistakenly believes to be the failure of Socialism in Russia, brings out another of his fundamental beliefs, that society must have a religion. “It is already clear,” he says, “after 20 years of Socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one” (p. 22).

Incidentally this hardly seems to square with his view that “Communism has of course its religious aspects.”

Socialism will fail, he says, because it is not the “new religion” which will emerge from the ruins of capitalist civilization (p. 27), and “the natural ally of Socialism was the Church ” (p. 24).

On the question of working class action he believes that “the natural weapon of the working classes is the strike.” “The State" he says, "is just as vulnerable as a human being and can be killed by the cutting of a single artery. But you must see that surgeons do not rush in to save the victim. You must work secretly and act swiftly: the event must be catastrophic” (p. 33). He advocates insurrection—“An insurrection is necessary.”

He ends the booklet in much the same frame of mind as those whom he criticises in the opening paragraph—despair. He is not certain whether we are faced with the final "paroxysm of a doomed system, leaving the world darker and more despairing than ever,” or whether we shall have "a spontaneous and universal insurrection." It all depends on whether we achieve "a swift apprehension of the destiny that is upon us” (p. 36).

Though he believes that such qualities as "faith in the fundamental goodness of man" alone can save us his faith seems to have half deserted him, and he is not sure what will happen.

Altogether, a very superficial piece of work. We wonder if even his fellow anarchists feel happy at his exposition of their views.

Edgar Hardcastle

Anarchist Reformism (1956)

From the April 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

An article in Freedom (31.12.55) shows the bankruptcy and reformist tendencies of the Anarchist movement. The article, entitled "The Vicious Circle of Gas Rings" deals rather briefly with the monastic (set-up) of modern bed-sitters; how the landladies are after as high a price as they can squeeze for their commodity (as if other sellers aren't!); that conditions are unhygienic, and the distressing fact that a cooker is conspicuous by its absence. "If amenities were made available, such as a small cooker . . . then at least half the trouble could be melted away."

The author of the article seems to think that this business is encouraged by the State, which is actively interested in getting people to many, as a married person with Hire Purchase commitments is "less inclined to be a radical or a revolutionary . . . "The writer of the article goes on:—"No council would consider letting one of their flats to a single person. And that is one of the things we need to change."

At least one council (Chelsea Borough Council) lets flats to single people and we can be sure there are others. But apart from this, let us examine the logic of our anarchist's argument. If it is true that the authorities encourage the above state of affairs, so that people tend to get married and therefore not become revolutionaries, etc., and are less inclined to want the “FREE SOCIETY" which the anarchists would have us believe they are after, then their position should be one of supporting the landladies and lodgers set-up; opposing the introduction of cookers in bed-sitters, on the principle that more misery makes more revolutionaries! For, if our “bed-sitters" get their “amenities" it is surely only a matter of time before they too have their H.P. commitments and are lost in the day-dream world of trying to keep up with the Jones’s!

The fact is that neither by increasing misery nor by tinkering around with the effects of Capitalism (a gas stove here or there) can we get rid of the class problems of this society. It is property—the ownership by a few, to the exclusion of the many, which causes social problems. Whether it is war—the squabble over property in the form of markets, realisation of profits, sources of raw materials, trade routes, etc., by National groups, or poverty —the position that all workers are in—lacking enough of the things of life to lead a comfortable existence, harassed by insecurity, fear of unemployment, etc., the fact that workers, generally speaking, never get more of the wealth produced by them, than is necessary for them to reproduce themselves as wage-workers. Or even the more superficial problems like refusing to work with coloured people; and “bed-sitters.” These are all the problems of a society which produces wealth socially, but doesn't distribute it according to need, a society in which the wealth produced by the working-class (who run society from top to bottom) is in the possession of a parasitical minority who own and control either privately or through the State.

To get rid of the above problems it is no good (as the anarchists do) advocating petty reforms, or the smashing of the State machine. What must be done is the organisation of the working class throughout the world into a cohesive, class-conscious whole, until Socialists are a majority. Then by taking control of the existing political apparatus, they will take over the means of living and make the earth and all that is on it and in it, the common-possession of all people, without distinction of race or sex. For only in a world where all have freedom of access to the wealth of society, can we be rid of war, poverty, bed-sitters, and so on. Such a society, of course, can only be brought about on a world-wide scale by people who understand, desire, and are prepared to work for it in an organised fashion; undermining the basis of Capitalist society and organising for a new one. rather than tinkering around with the effects of this one. like our Anarchist opponents.

Jon Keys

Obituary: Peter E. Newell (2016)

Obituary from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our comrade Peter Newell died suddenly on 16th February. He was 90 years old.

Like many others of his generation, Peter first came across the Party at Speakers’ Corner in 1946. At the time, he was a member of the Communist Party, although he left that early the following year. After a period of extensive reading – Peter never did anything half-heartedly or without forethought – he joined our Party as a member of Fulham branch in 1952. He wrote many articles for the Standard during the 1950s, under his own name and later as PEN – his entirely apt initials.

Originally a draughtsman, in the early ‘60s he sought a change of career and became an employee of the Post Office, where he was active in the Union of Post Office Workers. Peter felt his union activities conflicted with his membership of the Party and this, together with personal and family problems, led to his resignation in 1964.

Edgar Hardcastle (‘Hardy’), also a member of our Party, was the head of the research department of the UPW. Hardy suggested Peter write for The Post, the union’s journal. Hardy and Norman Stagg, editor of The Post, fed Peter with material for his column ‘Bellman’s Roundabout’. Much of this came from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which, it was later revealed, turned out to be a CIA front group. Peter was approached by the ICFTU and attended several international conferences in the early ‘60s. He clearly knew something was amiss for his association lasted only a few years, however it sparked a lifelong interest in espionage which culminated in his last book America’s Secret Island, which was published last year. 

In the 1970s, Peter moved to Colchester and became a Drainage Technician for Colchester Borough Council, keeping records of sewers. As for many socialists, paid employment was merely an incidental part of his life, however he was a conscientious worker, always willing to do his bit.

At this time, Peter was writing extensively for Freedom and other radical journals.  He was co-author of Freedom Press’s Fighting the Revolution (1972) and sole author of Zapata of Mexico (1979). His chief association was with the short-lived Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists, whose journal was Libertarian Struggle. This was a Platformist group, inspired by the Ukrainian revolutionary Nestor Makhno. Peter wrote ORA’s Aims and Principles, which drew on our own Declaration of Principles.

Peter rejoined Central branch in 1992, being a founder member of Colchester branch, now the East Anglian Regional branch.

He will be remembered for his informative articles in the Socialist Standard. He specialised in foreign affairs and was particularly knowledgeable on the history of our companion parties, writing a history of the Socialist Party of Canada, The Impossibilists, in 2008. His last article appeared in last month’s issue.

Peter was a quiet and unassuming man. He was profoundly afflicted by tinnitus from an early age, which led to his exemption from military service. He was uncomfortable at meetings, being unable to hear what was going on. Despite his lack of foreign languages, he travelled extensively, particularly enjoying his trips to Mexico, where he bravely visited remote locations associated with Zapata. He enjoyed music and was a well-known member of the local jazz club. Additional interests included philately – he wrote a guide to the stamps of Alderney and had a fine collection of handmade Tibetan stamps – and family history, his Symond Newell and Kett’s Rebellion (2007) dealing with his relative’s connection with the peasant revolt of 1549.

Our commiserations are extended to Dominique, his long term companion.

KAZ

Edward Carpenter — a talent wasted (1987)

From the March 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Edward Carpenter was an author, poet and fellow-traveller of the political left-wing and anarchist movement for some thirty or forty years during the Victorian and Edwardian era. His numerous books and essays have been periodically neglected and rediscovered both during his lifetime and since his death in 1929.

Carpenter was born into a well-to-do family in Brighton in August 1844 and educated at Brighton college, France. Switzerland and Germany before going to Cambridge, becoming an Anglican priest in 1870. But Carpenter's beliefs changed as a result of the influence of F D Maurice's "Christian Socialist" ideas and he was increasingly drawn towards socialism while starting to have doubts about his religious convictions. Carpenter's health suffered due to the crisis of conscience he experienced and although a two months' holiday in Italy in 1873 partially restored his health, he resigned from the ministry in 1874.

From 1874 to 1881 Carpenter worked as a lecturer for the University Extension Scheme in the North of England. Although he found that work uncongenial he became acquainted with the manufacturing centres where he was to settle for the greater part of his life and where most of his writing and political activities took place. In 1882 he bought a smallholding of seven acres in the tiny hamlet of Millthorpe in Derbyshire, situated between Sheffield and Chesterfield, with money inherited from his father. With his independence he started to put into practice his ideas of self-sufficiency and living by manual labour. Carpenter was to write later: 

It had come to me with great force that I would go and throw in my lot with the mass-people and the manual workers. From the first I was taken with the Sheffield people. Rough in the extreme, twenty or thirty years in date behind other towns, and very uneducated, there was yet a heartiness about them, not without shrewdness, which attracted me. I felt more inclined to take root here than in any of the Northern towns where I had been. (My Days and Dreams, 1916).

This self-conscious search for the working-class and romantic view of their qualities was also indulged in by Leo Tolstoy in Russia and fifty years later by George Orwell, also in the North of England. But Carpenter, although just as sentimental in his approach to the workers was neither a philanthropic, titled landowner like Tolstoy nor a mere visitor to the North like Orwell; he spent forty years living by manual labour — admittedly with the security of his £6,000 inheritance.

Carpenter's growing interest in socialist ideas led him to join the Democratic Federation, having been inspired by reading Hyndman's England for All, and he donated £300 to launch Justice, the organisation's journal, in 1884. For a period of about twenty years Carpenter belonged to, or was associated with, a prodigious number of organisations: he was a member of the Fellowship of the New Life, a fore-runner of the Fabian Society and in 1885 he joined the Socialist League and helped William Morris with its paper Commonweal in competition against Justice.

In 1886 Carpenter was one of the founders of the Sheffield Socialist Society and in the same year associated with Freedom Press which produced Freedom, the anarchist newspaper. Charlotte Wilson, the first editor of Freedom and Peter Kropotkin were guests at Millthorpe and addressed the Sheffield Socialist Society. Carpenter was an occasional writer for Freedom and provided some of the material for Kropotkin's anarchist classic Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899). From the late 1870s onward Carpenter began to develop homosexual relationships (the suppression of which had probably contributed to his ill-health earlier in his life) and to write extensively about the subject.

After a number of relationships Carpenter finally lived openly with George Merrill, whom he had first met in 1890, on his smallholding at Millthorpe from 1898 and later in retirement at Guildford until Merrill's death in 1928. Carpenter's courage in living openly with a male lover and continuing to write about homosexuality has to be seen in the context of Victorian attitudes to homosexuality; Oscar Wilde had been sentenced to two years' hard labour in 1895, although Noel Greig suggests.- ". . . it was the act of treason of taking working-class boys to upper-class clubs which sealed his fate”. (Introduction to Edward Carpenter: Selected Writings 1984. Gay Modem Press), and Havelock Ellis had been prosecuted for writing Sexual Inversion in 1898.

Carpenter was undoubtedly protected by living quietly in the North of England. He avoided serious difficulties although his regular publisher withdrew his books after Oscar Wilde's trial and a smear campaign in 1909 by a political opponent caused him to lose his seat on the local council. Carpenter was a spokesman for women's rights, anticipating the women's liberation movement of this century. Love's Coming of Age appeared in 1896 and contained some essays which had previously been published. He showed some insight into the nature of sexual relationships under capitalism when he wrote-.

Yet it must never be forgotten that nothing short of large social changes, stretching beyond the sphere of women only, can bring about complete emancipation of the latter. Not till our whole commercial system, with its barter and sale of human labour and human love for gain, is done away, and not till a whole new code of ideals and customs of life has come in will women really be free. They must remember that their cause is also the cause of the oppressed labourer over the whole earth, and the labourer has to remember that his cause is theirs.

It is surprising that despite realisation that human relationships are debased by capitalism. Carpenter persisted in taking part in single-issue campaigns and to belong to reformist organisations, some of which were in opposition to each other.

In 1886 Carpenter wrote England Arise! which was included in his song-book The Chants of Labour in 1888 and was for several years a rallying song for the labour movement until it was overtaken in popularity by The Red Flag and the Internationale. The passionate nature of Carpenter's feelings for the poor can be seen in the second verse:

By your young children's eyes so red with weeping.
By their white faces aged with want and fear.
By the dark cities where your babes are creeping
Naked of joy and all that makes life dear;
   From each wretched slum
   Let the loud cry come;
   Arise. O England, for the day is here!

Although sexual themes, and homosexuality in particular, tended to dominate Carpenter's writing he remained active in a number of organisations until well into the twentieth century. In 1887 he gave evidence on behalf of some of the demonstrators at the Bloody Sunday riots in London and in 1892 gave evidence for, and mustered support to help, the Walsall Anarchists by publicising the case in Freedom. In court Carpenter described himself as an anarchist; a courageous statement to make when it is almost certain that the police used agent provocateurs to secure convictions in the case.

But in contradiction of his public declaration of anarchist principles Carpenter helped in the foundation of the Independent Labour Party in the following year and in 1895. when attempts were made to obtain an amnesty for the Walsall Anarchists, he wrote for the Labour Leader, the ILP's journal.

Carpenter was also a champion of animal rights, penal reform, religious toleration and progressive schooling, having been involved in the founding of the progressive school Abbotsholme in 1889. He was interested in dress reform, having abandoned formal attire and popularised the wearing of sandals. But despite calling himself an anarchist on occasions, he had a seat on his local council and supported syndicalism and the parliamentary Labour Party at the same time. And having lost his Christian beliefs he nevertheless became a devotee of oriental mysticism. William Morris was a close friend of Carpenter's and on several occasions stayed with him at Millthorpe, which became a model for News from Nowhere. Morris wrote:

I listened with longing heart to his account of his patch of ground, seven acres: he says that he and his fellow can almost live on it: they grow their own wheat, and send flowers and fruit to Chesterfield and Sheffield markets: all that sounds very agreeable to me. (E P Thompson. 1955 William Morris: From Romantic To Revolutionary Merlin Press). 

Carpenter continued to write about political topics, editing and contributing to Forecasts of the Coming Century (1897) and a collection of essays: Towards Industrial Freedom in 1917 but he considered his most important work to be Towards Democracy which was published in four instalments from 1883 to 1905 and comprises a series of Whitmanesque prose poems expressing his affinity for oriental mysticism with an occasional, and often moving, declamation against capitalism. In many ways Carpenter epitomises the futility of reformist activity. His participation in reformist movements was neither tactical nor an attempt to gain power or personal advantage but a sincere wish to change society for the better. But society cannot be changed piecemeal: discrimination against different minorities is inherent in capitalism which thrives on weakening workers' power by creating scape-goats and divisions.

Much of Carpenter's work is readable, and some of his poetry is quite moving, although some of his ideas about sexual relationships appear dated. He had some insight into the nature of capitalism from the exploitation he had seen for himself in the Sheffield factories but his political ideas were often confused. He was sincere and courageous and devoted his time, talent and money in the fight for a just society but like all reformists he squandered his gifts fighting the symptoms of capitalism instead of wholeheartedly trying to abolish the system itself and replace it with socialism. Nevertheless it is fitting that one of the most neglected of Victorian writers and workers in the cause of labour should be rediscovered.

Carl Pinel

Fizzling out (1979)

Book Review from the April 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Slow Burning Fuse by John Quail. Paladin, £1.95

Quail's aim to present "the lost history of the British anarchists" between 1880 and 1930. His account is primarily a narrative one, with little emphasis on theoretical matters — which is just as well, since the theoretical discussions are the weakest part of the book. Quail's researches have led him to uncover a number of near-forgotten incidents and personalities, some of which are recounted interestingly here. Particularly noteworthy is the tale of the Walsall Anarchists arrested in 1892 and sentenced to terms of imprisonment (ten years in three cases) for a bomb-making conspiracy that was largely the inspiration of a police agent provocateur.

Most of the book is devoted to events and groups around such journals as Freedom and Commonweal, and to anarchist influence on organisations such as the Socialist League and the Social Democratic Federation. It is in the context of the latter that a passing reference is made to the formation of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904. Quite apart from Quail's jibe that we "never escaped from the status of completely uninfluential sect", his account is inaccurate in implying that the founders of the SPGB were motivated merely by dissatisfaction with the group round H. M. Hyndman that ran the SDF. In fact two matters of principle were at stake: that a socialist organisation be thoroughly democratic and have no leaders and that a revolutionary party should not advocate reforms. If Quail had mentioned the SPGB's anti-reformism, allied with our insistence on gaining control of the machinery of government through the ballot box, we might have been spared his simplistic equation of reformism with electoral activity and revolution with anti-parliamentarism.

A little clarity on this score would have improved what is in any case the interesting part of the book, the account of earlier events in the SDF and the Socialist League. The League was founded early in 1885 by a number of people (including William Morris, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling) who had shortly before left the SDF. This revolt was largely a matter of personal opposition to Hyndman, and the new organisation was by no means agreed on political strategy. The Avelings drafted a constitution committing the League to electoral activity, and this was adopted by the Council but then rejected by the League's first annual conference in July 1885. Unlike the SDF, though, the League was genuinely opposed to reformism. Its circular To Socialists stated:

We believe to hold out as baits hopes of the amelioration of the condition of the workers, to be wrung out of the necessities of the rival factions of our privileged rulers, is delusive and mischievous.

Dissension between pro- and anti-parliamentarists plagued the League, but by 1888 it was completely committed to an anti-parliamentary policy. William Morris left in 1890, signalling his opposition to both reformism and violent revolt, and with his departure the League ceased to exist as a national body. Morris, with his emphasis on education and "making socialists", held views far removed from those of the direct-actionist members of the League. It took the latter "impossibilist" revolt to establish an organisation uncompromisingly opposed to the policy of seeking reforms and committed to making socialists as the condition for the establishment of socialism.

One of the reasons for dissatisfaction with the SDF was that the party's journal Justice was owned by a private group over which the members had no control. It is interesting to see from Quail's account that anarchist practice led to exactly the same situation with regard to Freedom. This journal was founded in 1886 by the Freedom Group, which had strictly "limited and confidential" membership. By 1897, when it was the only anarchist journal still being published, anarchists in the wider movement suggested that it become more popular in character. But the Freedom Group would not respond to such criticisms; according to one critic of Freedom:

It was edited and managed by an inaccessible group of arrogant persons worse than the Pope and his seventy cardinals and written by fossilised old quilldrivers.

In spite of a number of shortcomings, the book is informative and well worth reading. 

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Overproduction or underconsumption? (2010)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Is Marx’s analysis of capitalism still valid today?” asked Jonny Ball in the anarchist paper Freedom (19 June). While trying to be generally sympathetic to Marx, he didn’t always get it right. According to him:

“Crises are not so much of a problem of overproduction, as this in itself is not a problem if people have the purchasing power to buy back what they produce, but the trigger in any recession is in fact, underconsumption.”

To back this up he quotes “the Marxist writer George Jackson” who wrote about production before 1929 increasing “without a corresponding increase in the ability of the great labouring masses to buy back what was being produced” and that therefore “it was underconsumption (not overproduction)” that led to stock market crash of 1929.

Overproduction occurs when too much of some good has been produced in relation to the market demand for it (not the same as the real need for it). It can affect any type of good – raw materials, steel, ships, consumer goods, anything.

Underconsumption has been defined in various ways but all have in common the view that consumer (paying) demand is too low.

Cruder versions of underconsumption argue that, because workers cannot buy back all they produce, a chronic shortage of purchasing power is built-in to capitalism requiring, for instance, exports to bridge the gap. It is true that workers cannot buy back all they produce but total paying demand is not made up just of what workers buy; it also includes what capitalist firms buy (raw materials, buildings and equipment, finished and semi-finished products).

More subtle versions argue that because the share of consumer demand in total demand is too low this prevents sustained, balanced growth. On this theory a crisis is precipitated when the production of consumer goods increases faster than consumer demand, which is mainly that of wage and salary workers.

A crisis can be triggered by such an overproduction of consumer goods, and a case can be made out for this being a factor in 1929, but this is not the only way a crisis can be triggered. Overproduction in any sufficiently important sector of the economy can do this. This is why it can be said that overproduction (not underconsumption) is the cause of crises, as the anarchic, competitive struggle for profits leads to the total production of capitalist firms in a particular sector coming to exceed the paying demand for its products and this having a knock-on effect throughout the economy.

It is not clear what Ball means when he says that overproduction “in itself is not a problem if people have the purchasing power to buy back what they produce”. If this is the case then there is no overproduction. Maybe he means overproduction in relation to needs rather than to paying demand, but this is not the sense that “overproduction” is usually used in economics.

But who is this “Marxist writer” George Jackson? Yes, it is George Jackson, the Black Panther and Soledad Brother, who was murdered in prison in 1971 at the age of 29. He spent his time in prison reading up on things and did become reasonably well-informed, but he would not have regarded himself as an authority on Marxian economics.

In any event, his “Marxism” was the so-called “Marxism-Leninism” of Mao Tse Tung. Not quite the same thing. Despite this, he did argue cogently for a moneyless society:

"Consider the people's store, after full automation, the implementation of the theory of economic advantage. You dig, no waste makers, no harnesses on production. There is no intermediary, no money. The store, it stocks everything that the body or home could possibly use. Why won't the people hoard, how is an operation like that possible, how could the storing place keep its stores if its stock (merchandise) is free? Men hoard against want, need, don't they? Aren’t they taught that tomorrow holds terror, pile up a surplus against this terror, be greedy and possessive if you want to succeed in this insecure world? Nuts hidden away for tomorrow's winter. Change the environment, educate the man, he'll change. The people's store will work as long as people know that it will be there, and have in abundance the things they need and want (really want); when they are positive that the common effort has and will always produce an abundance, they won’t bother to take home more than they need. Water is free, do people drink more than they need?" (Soledad Brother, Letter of 17 June 1970).

Anarchist communism (2003)

Book Review from the March 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

ABC of Anarchism. By Alexander Berkman. Freedom Press (Anarchist Classics) 2002 edition, 112 pages

First published in the United States, in 1929, under the title What is Communist Anarchism?, this slightly shortened version has been reprinted 12 times by Freedom Press. The present edition also reprints an introductory biography of Berkman, originally written by this writer in 1970 for the fifth edition.

Many of the words and phrases in the ABC of Anarchism were dated thirty years ago, and are even more so now. Nevertheless, it is still one of the best introductions to the ideas of anarchism, written from the communist-anarchist viewpoint. Berkman's knowledge of economics in general, and Marxist economics in particular, is somewhat shaky, although he has no time for capitalism and the profit system, unlike some anarchists such as individualists and mutualists. Like Marxists, Berkman argues that “there is a continuous warfare between capital and labour”. Again, as with other anarchists, he claims that communist-anarchists “are at one on the basic principle of abolishing government”. He sees government, rather than private-property society that needs and perpetuates government and the coercive state, as the main cause of humanity's problems. Like his companion, Emma Goldman, Berkman was not always consistent regarding governments. On their return to Russia in 1919, they were quite sympathetic towards the Bolsheviks and the Soviet government, but soon criticised Lenin and Trotsky for jailing and executing anarchists, Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries.

Berkman admits that some anarchists have thrown bombs, and have advocated violence, but argues that anarchism is not about bombs, disorder or chaos. He says that anarchists “have no monopoly on violence”, and that governments have committed far more acts of violence than anarchists. For Berkman, anarchism is the very opposite of violence.

As a communist-anarchist, Berkman advocates a system without commodity-production or any “price system”, wages or payment of money. “This, he says, “logically leads to ownership in common and to joint use. Which is a sensible, just, and equitable system, and is known as communism”. And “work will become a pleasure instead of the deadening drudgery it is today”. His views are similar to those of William Morris in as far as, in communism, people will no longer be employed in useless toil, but will be appreciated according to their willingness to be socially useful. People will live in freedom and equality.

How will such a society come about?, asks Berkman.

To him, the idea is the thing. People must want fundamental change. They must want a revolutionary change before they can achieve a social revolution. And they must prepare for a social revolution. Unlike some anarchists, Berkman does not put much faith in spontaneous uprisings, although he does not reject them on principle. Indeed, he says “we know that revolution begins with street disturbances and outbreaks; it is the initial phase which involves force and violence”. Such a phase is of short duration. According to Berkman, “the social revolution can take place only by means of the general strike”. The general strike is the revolution. (All emphasis in the original). And such a strike can only be carried out by workers organised in labour, or industrial, unions. In his last chapter Berkman assumes that such a revolution would have to be defended by “armed force” if necessary .

This, very briefly, is Alexander Berkman's case for anarchist-communism and revolution. Is it desirable, and would it work? The answer is “yes” and “no”. The Socialist Party advocates and is organised for the establishment of a world-wide system of production solely for use and the abolition of the wages system; such a society would, of necessity, replace government over people by democratic administration of things. Unlike Berkman and the anarchist-communists, however, socialists claim that such actions as insurrection and a general strike by workers would not, and could not, bring about a socialist society. In our view (but not held by this writer 30 years ago!), the working class must organise consciously and politically first, for the conquest of the powers of government, before it can convert private property in the means of production into common property.
Nevertheless, the ABC of Anarchism by Alexander Berkman should be read by all those interested in what anarchists in general, and anarchist-communists in particular, stand for.

Peter E. Newell