The Shape of Things to Come—and The Forces That Will Shape Them (1940)

From the August 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who seek to explain by reference to “ideologies” the swift movement of events in the world, the sudden collapse of impregnable positions, the seemingly inexplicable changes which show the grand old men of yesterday to be the dodderers of to-day, must be bewildered and confused by what is going on before their eyes. In a short period of time they have seen those exponents of supposedly irreconcilable doctrines—Stalin and Hitler—joined in a pact of friendship, while Catholic Italy and Catholic Spain fall more and more under the influence of Nazi Germany, erstwhile enemy of Catholicism. They have seen democratic France turn towards Dictatorship, and Conservatives proclaiming the need to back up “revolutionary” movements. The idealist who tries to discern the pattern in history, past and present, is prevented from doing so because he believes that ideas and beliefs have an independent origin and that one set of ideas will triumph over another if only the men who hold them have leaders of goodwill and integrity. The Socialist who looks to social relations and economic forces is better placed. Not, of course, that the Socialist can predict with certainty just how and when a conflict of forces will work out in the future, but at least he knows what is the nature of the forces on which the issue depends. Knowing, as Marx puts it, that “it is not men’s consciousness which determines their life,” but “their social life which determines their consciousness,” he also allows for the fact that at any given period of history the vital forces at work have to struggle with ideas which resulted from past conditions—”the tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living.”

The Weakness of France

Some of the explanations given of the French collapse are of the most superficial kind : Petain, we are told, was a “pessimist ” even in 1917, and Laval “a defeatist and potential traitor”; there were elements in France who were “vaguely anti-Parliamentarian and anti-democratic and equally vaguely pro-Fascist”; Daladier was “a civilian mediocrity,” and Gamelin “a military mediocrity”—and so on. These “explanations” cry aloud themselves to be explained. A little nearer the mark is the Economist’s French correspondent (July 20th, 1940), who says that he interviewed many French officers and “cannot recall one who was not a pessimist, not about the outcome of the war, but about the social and economic difficulties which would open up for France after the end of hostilities.” “It was not,” he says, “the mental attitude that wins wars.”

Some of the newspaper correspondents have, however, shown a more correct and robust grasp of realities in their judgment of the forces at work in France.

A Special Correspondent in France of the Daily Telegraph (June 25th, 1940) pointed out that Petain and Weygand were scared by reports (proved to be incorrect) that Communists had seized public buildings in Paris. This incident shows that preoccupation with maintaining France’s social tranquillity and repressing subversive movements weighed heavily with the two aged soldiers, and that they did not see the situation in its true perspective.”

Mr. Ward Price (Daily Mail, July 8th) mentions the “rich and influential Frenchmen” (including an unnamed “owner of iron ore mines in Lorraine”) who were behind Laval because they thought that “their personal interests would be benefited by co-operation with Germany, or, conversely, that war between the two countries would ruin them.” As long ago as 1931, in pre-Nazi days, Laval had proposed a Franco-German Committee of Economic Co-operation.

Another Daily Mail correspondent, Mr. Francis Tuohy, classifies the people behind French Fascism as “Catholics, Royalists, Officers, aristocracy, big business, police and functionaries, intellectuals and students, the propertied classes in general” (Daily Mail, July 22nd), and according to a French ex-editor, writing in the Manchester Guardian (July 22nd), one of the members of the Petain Cabinet is a Senator named Mireaux, editor of the Temps. “That paper,” he says, “is the organ of the Comité des Forges, the head of which is M. de Wendel, a great friend of M. Laval.” (The Comité des Forges is the organisation of French heavy industry.)

One last quotation on this aspect is from an editorial in the Manchester Guardian (July 12th) :

“That France needs reform is evident enough. In the last twenty years she has had forty-two Ministries. Only five Governments have kept themselves alive for twelve months. Such rapid changes give a mischievous instability to politics. In the background there lurks the power of what M. Herriot called “the 200 best families,” obstructing all social reform and threatening the Governments that did not obey them. It was, indeed, because the revolt against the sinister rule of the banks and big business was so certain at the end of the war, however the war ended, that many rich men were anxious to compound with Hitler ; they were more afraid of victory than of defeat. When defeat came they spoke like the rich friend of Cicero who wrote to him, ” Since the Republic is lost, let us at least keep our property!””

Forces for Change in Europe

The safeguarding of property interests is the dead hand of the past, but what of the more active forces pushing towards change and reorganisation in Europe? Can the men who appear as leaders hold developments in check, or failing that can they guide them into the channels they desire? Are they the creatures or the masters of the forces behind and below them ? We need to be cautious in forecasting events, but it seems a safe conclusion that the regime of Petain and that of his friend Franco are both doomed to fail. Petain’s Foreign Minister, Baudouin, can say (News Chronicle, July 18th) that “the world existing before May 10th is definitely buried,” and think that he is free to determine the destiny of France so that “new relations will be instituted between Capital and Labour and there will be new conceptions of life based on authority, order and obedience.” So also Franco’s brother-in-law and Foreign Minister, Serano Suner, can say (Daily Express, July 19th) that “freedom has been buried for ever in Spain,” but events will determine otherwise. Franco, only a brief while ago, was talking of a new stable order in Spain based on the peasants and national self-sufficiency just as Petain’s Government at the present time “apparently sees France’s role in the new Europe as primarily a peasant and handicraft country” (Daily Telegraph, July 23rd). But the clock of industrial and capitalist development cannot be turned back to medievalism. Franco and Petain both ignored or forgot that they live in a world which is subject to the intense and inescapable pressure of trade and competition ; on the one hand, and working-class resistance on the other. It is not to be forgotten that “a million Republicans are held in prison camps” in Franco’s Spain (W. Forrest, News Chronicle, July 18th). And it is from a Spanish newspaper correspondent in Vichy that the report came that Petain’s Government had to shift from Clermont-Ferrand to Vichy because of the violent and threatening attitude of the workers at the Michelin tyre factory in the former town (Daily Telegraph, July 19th).

Franco used to talk of being free from the pressure of capitalist forces, determined to build up Spain within her own border and on her own resources, but already he has been forced to change his tune to the more familiar one of Spain’s “duty and mission” to command Gibraltar and go in for a policy of Empire building : “We have shed the blood of our dead, not in order to return to the decadent past but in order to build a nation and create an empire” (The Times, July 19th). “Expansion in Africa” is now the order of the day.

When considering the prospects of such dictatorships as those of Petain and Franco, it is worth noticing that the four dictatorships that succeeded in establishing themselves (Russia, Germany, Italy and Turkey), along with some differences had two things in common. In each case power was obtained by a new group, not a mere reshuffling of representatives of existing parties and interests, and in each case those who seized power contrived to do so by using (or exploiting) the more or less constitutional machinery without waging open civil war against the workers or other large representative section of the population. On one or the other of these counts both Franco and Petain fail to possess the qualities that make for comparative permanence (not, of course, that other dictatorships have real permanence either).

It is relevant at this point to consider the position of Russia, and the urge that drove the Stalin regime to enter into the pact with Hitler. The military consideration of not wanting to be isolated in face of Germany and Japan was one aspect, but observers have recently confirmed that behind that fear was the factor of internal economic difficulties. The Moscow correspondent of the American New Republic (quoted in Forward, July 20th) gives it as his judgment that slackening industrial development compelled the Russian Government to take the view that “in both technical organisation and labour, efficiency was advancing so slowly that it would be generations before these departments would compare with those of the modern industrial States.

“Stalin’s way out was an alliance with some big industrial country, in order (1) to ensure Russia’s position of strength in the coming European war; (2) to supplement consumer’s goods industries until they would be able to stand on their own; (3) to supply the machine tools, optical apparatus, etc., which Russia is still forced to import.”

Mr. Louis Fischer, who was for 14 years a newspaper correspondent in Russia, says much the same in his “Stalin and Hitler” (Penguin Special, 6d., May, 1940). He attributes Russia’s industrial slowing down to several factors: “In part (it is) due to military preparations. But it is more adequately explained by the purges and several inherent Soviet economic weaknesses.” (P. 62.)

Here again, as in every other instance of international trends, it is idle to look wholly or mainly to abstract ideas and motives whether of rulers or ruled.

Before leaving the question of the forces making for change in Europe, it is interesting to view the spectacle of Conservatives being forced against every inclination to support movements that may help to undermine the German-Italian dictatorship systems. It is put most strikingly in the columns of the Daily Express. Below are two quotations from recent issues. The first is from an article by Mr. Geoffrey Cox, showing how Franco should be attacked at home if Spain goes to war on Germany’s side: —

“Seize the Canary Islands and other Spanish island possessions and set up there at once a Republican Government which we recognise.

But we can only do this if our appeal is a genuine Republican revolutionary appeal for straight-out revolution.

We must be prepared to co-operate with all the parties of the last Spanish Popular Front Government—Socialists and Communists and Anarchists, as well as Liberals and Radicals. We must get out of our minds all questions of whether these people are Red, or pink or white.

For no other appeal will rouse Spain now except the cry of the Republic.”—(Daily Express July 19th.)

The second quotation is from an editorial: —

“Our allies are ordinary people, not Fascist dictators. And since the ordinary people of Europe are now ruled by Fascists we must organise revolutions.

If (by some terrible folly) Britain were ever at war with Soviet Russia, we would work for a Right Wing revolution there. Since we are fighting Fascists, we must work for Left Wing revolutions in Europe. That is only common sense.

And so our Foreign Office and Ministry of Information should change their whole mentality.

Respectable ex-public school-boys and English gentlemen were admirably suited for conducting our relations with Right Wing politicians abroad. But they are the wrong people for carrying on underground intrigues, organising strikes, arranging sabotage and fomenting general discontent in Europe.”

— (Daily Express, July 23rd.)

In that quarter, at least, the dead hand of the past has been thrown off in so far as the winning of the war is concerned.

Edgar Hardcastle

Fresh Meat ! (1926)

From the August 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

The majority of our readers will doubtless recall how during the final stages of the “Great War to end War ” (which has been more aptly than elegantly styled the “Bloody Swindle ”), when the German “U” boats were disputing the sway of the British Ultra – hyper – super – extra – special-Dreadnoughts, there would appear to have been a shortage of food in the belligerent countries. The people here were at that time enjoined by flaming posters, and in other ways suitable to children, to Eat less Meat. Having in view this praiseworthy object, the chief articles of diet set aside for the consumption of the workers were various tasty, even if to some fastidious palates revolting, delicacies known officially and euphemistically as “edible offals.”

A trite little axiom informs us that “One man’s meat is another man’s poison,” so it may be permissable to accept the use of the term edible in relation to the delicacies afore-mentioned. While it is true that many patriotic members of the bourgeosie were at times discovered to have hoarded sufficient food (not “edible offals”) to provision a Labour Colony, knowledge is lacking as to the numbers of those who escaped detection at this laudable act of obedience to the “first law of Nature,” or of those who were so fortunately placed as to be immune from the risk of detection. In fairness, however, it may be stated that the bourgeoisie but seldom availed themselves of their undoubted right to “line up” in the “queue”—that culminating evidence of capitalist organising genius—and, moreover, they generously conceded the monopoly of this romantic adventure to members of the working-class. However, there is no doubt at all that at the time we have mentioned, as indeed, at all other times, the workers did not stint themselves of fresh meat—the ruling class saw to the stinting for them ! In other words, those who saw to the stunting also very effectively determined the stinting ! This shortage of meat was especially felt in France, as we shall see a little further on.

Now why is it that this delightful episode of war-time experience is once again obtruded before the notice of our readers? We will divulge the reason. The fact is we have just come upon a most piquant and illuminating passage in a newspaper which seems to provide an answer to a problem which baffled the ingenuity of the (alleged) most able economists and historians (and we should think also the most adept amongst the habitues of “queues” !)

“Where did fresh meat go to in the warring time?” Apologising to those who detect the travesty of a parody of the lines in the modern classic, and requesting the reader to bear in mind this very intriguing question, we append for perusal the following extract from the Daily Herald, dated March 31st, 1926, viz. :—

“SEND SOME FRESH MEAT INTO THE TRENCHES.”

“That was how a certain French General gave an order for a Reserve Battalion to take its place in the front line, according to M. Fonteny, President of the National Federation of Republican Comrades of the War. He makes this assertion in the course of an article in which he argues that the High Command was responsible for the mutinies in the French Army during 1917, about which very little was allowed to be published here.

“The General Staff, M. Fonteny declares, paid little heed to the sufferings and the risks undergone by the troops, and often kept units in the line until they had been reduced by half.

“This article is published on the front page of the “Quotidien,” one of the most widely-circulated organs of the Paris Press.”

Send some fresh meat into the trenches ! 

What delicacy of expression ! How beautifully terse and expressive ! How naive ! Here is a pleasing candour such as is seldom imparted even from the lips of politicians ! Observe especially the absence of any sentimental stodge about heroes and saviours of civilisation ! Evidently this good General, whether from lack of guile or from sheer mutton-headedness, believes in “speaking his mind”—though, perhaps, he may not lack the caution to speak it to those who can be trusted not to tell the soldiers his opinion of them ! We cherish a fervent, if unwarranted, hope that the workers will note this new and dignified appellation conferred upon them by one of their cynical masters, and that they will compare the opinion so expressed with the plausible pretentions of goodwill towards them slobbered from the mouths of other members of the ruling class or their agents. In the piping times of peace and concord we unfailingly recognise our status as “hands,” and on occasions we do not feel insulted at being lumped together as the “mob” or “canaille,” or even, in the words of Bernard Shaw, as the “great unwashed.” At election times, it is true, our stature is perceptibly raised when we hear ourselves extolled as levelheaded, hard-headed (not bone-headed), free and enlightened citizens, etc., etc., but elections, however important, occupy but a brief interlude in the affairs of life. Henceforth in the more piping times of war we may regard ourselves as being in the category of “fresh meat” !

The Socialist seldom strays into the misty and flatulent realms of conjecture, but on this occasion we feel justified in asking our readers to apply this General’s description of his subordinates, who were also members of the working class, in relation to other incidents which occurred contemporary with, or immediately after, the “great war.” Take, for example, the Recruiting campaign to induce workers to “join up” for the capitalist war. Who does not remember how the hoarding were beautiful with aesthetic proclamations bearing the interesting tidings that “Kitchener needs more men”? Surely better results would have accrued if something like the following had been perpetrated : “Bludger wants more fresh meat for the trenches” ! After all, honesty is the best policy, and as a means for ending the war quickly we feel assured that this method could not be improved upon. Again, with regard to General Elections, how effective and inspiring would have been an appeal during the 1919 “Martial Law” Election to vote for those who would make the country “a land fit for fresh meat to live in !” Who could resist such a stirring appeal ! But we fear that, although at times Generals and such like may be candid, the senti¬ments of politicians are more candied in their composition. Apropos, we could apply the method in relation to the rites and ceremonies performed over the “Unknown Warrior.”

Now we will suppose that similar phraseology had been employed by some Socialist speaker or writer. What howls of wrath and execration would have assailed the ear-drums of humanity ! A Texas lynching would comprise all the pleasures of a hashish debauch by comparison with the fate that would threaten such an odious and despicable exponent of muck-raking ! Even Dora with all her myrmidons of might and majesty might fail to vindicate her prerogative of bringing to book such an offender, and be relegated to a temporary position of inferiority during the turbulent proceedings of mob “justice.” But space vetoes further elaboration of this theme.

We doubt not that our apostles of the “brotherhood of man,” our “Peace snufflers, and our “League of Nations” enthusiasts will be able, through their inverted genius for detecting paradox, to find confirmation of the utility of their respective creeds in the words of the French General. For our part we find in them a vindication of the position in politics taken up by the Socialist Party, which has since its inception emphasised the reality of the class antagonism that exists in modern society.

Let us revert once again to that matchless sentence of the anonymous General, to whom history has denied the notoriety accorded to a kindred spirit—General Gallifet: “Send some fresh meat into the trenches.” Urgent and imperative is the need for fresh meat ! The little machine-gun bullets are whining; the big “five-nines” and the hungry “nine-twos” are roaring for sustenance ! Send more fresh meat into the trenches ! The quality of the meat deteriorates and must be sent back continually to be “doctored” so that it may become fresh meat again. When the supply is consumed more and more fresh meat must be forthcoming for the feast of Moloch ! Scour the parched plains of wasted Africa and the innermost recesses of the jungles of Senegal ! Tear the bewildered peasant from his paltry plough ! Hale the “apache” from his foetid den ! “Comb-out”—like vermin !—the workers from the factories, workshops, mills, mines, and offices ! Send along the halt, the maimed, the blind, and the witless ! Empty the gaols of their rightful inmates ! Send the widow’s only son and the stripling torn from his mother’s arms ! In the sacred name of capital, whose commands must be obeyed ! Should the fresh meat prove to be too “fresh” and inclined to murmur at the prospect of being too speedily devoured, then cannot some good English meat be procured for a Barmecide (or Bemersyde?) feast at Passchendaele?

And when the butchery is over? The rival master butchers can then retire from business borne down by the weight of swag and swagger. Quaffing from loving cups is now in order. The joy-bells ring—hey, ting-a-ling, and the fresh meat on hand can be put back into cold storage until such time as another boom overtakes the meat market.

It is often repeated that “familiarity breeds contempt.” This can be understood with respect to the ruling class, who have certainly had long acquaintance with the slave minds of the workers. But cannot it be said that the workers are equally familiar with loathsome conditions of poverty and servitude, and with the gross mismanagement of society by their masters, the capitalist class? When will their too-prolonged familiarity with the latter find expression? Only when Socialism has breathed into the mere meat its life-awakening purpose and endowed it with the knowledge of its own invincibility. Then will the resultant giant arise and calmly survey his puny enemies. To such as our General he will cry exultantly, “Muck, the broom awaits you !” One flick and the path is clear! Then onwards to the goal of the Classless Republic, wherein all who aid in producing wealth may enjoy without, hindrance the entire bounty of the earth. The road that must be trod is the political road—for political power is the essential power.

W. J.

Algeria: Who has won? (1962)

From the April 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The cease fire in Algeria is likely lo bring neither peace nor relief to that unhappy country. Those who oppose a treaty with the Algerian nationalists — the settlers and the soldiers — are numerous and powerful enough to keep Algeria under the dark cloud of fear which has hung over the country for so long. The O.A.S. seem to be everywhere that matters. If one of them is singled out for arrest by the French Authorities, as like as not the men who have to fetch him in are O.A.S. sympathisers and can easily be persuaded to let him go. If the O.A.S. don't like what foreign journalists write about them, they can force the newspapermen to go home. They can virtually take over the centre of an important town like Oran. And all this is done by fear; fear of the plastic bomb, of death by a multitude of stab wounds or by the bullet from a passing car.

It is as well to remember here that the O.A.S. came into existence only after some years of guerrilla activities by the Algerian nationalists, which the French government had seemed powerless to stamp out. During those years, French policy seemed settled upon staying in Algeria. There was little organised retaliation from the Europeans, who put a rather shaky trust in their government. The O.A.S. burst to the surface when it seemed that de Gaulle was about to abandon the policy of a French Algeria. What the F.L.N. had won by their terrorism, the colons would try to regain by theirs.

Now, the O.A.S. outstrip the Moslem guerrillas in ruthlessness and brutality. On a typical day in Algeria, between twenty and thirty people are killed by them. Sometimes they kill indiscriminately, as when they drove two cars into the packed Moslem shopping area of Oran and left them with time bombs ticking inside. Sometimes they are diabolically selective; they recently tried to provoke a postal strike by killing several harmless Moslem postmen. President de Gaulle is reported as saying that the O.A.S. is a minor problem. which he will deal with when the cease fire is out of the way. This seems to be rather optimistic—the problem is surely much more complex and delicate.

The French came to Algeria in 1830, after a fleet under General Clausel had bombarded Algeria into surrender. This was the last of the expeditions which the maritime powers — England, Holland, Spain, America and France — had sent out to deal with the Corsair pirates, who from their base in Algiers were causing such disruption to the trade routes of the Mediterranean. Before the French conquest the country had been under, among others, the Phoenicians, the Romans and the Turks. The French established their word as law in Algeria and their colonisers settled along the coast, planting vineyards and developing, the cities. There was none of the incentive to penetrate the interior which other parts of Africa offered their European conquerors. The Congo, for example, had its rubber but for the colons the Algerian hinterland had only the Atlas mountains and then the pitiless Sahara. For over a century the great desert withheld the secret of its wealth from the French. And if eventually the Sahara's oil and gas have caused more suffering than joy—well, that is typical of capitalism's discoveries.

The Nationalists

The first rumblings of Algerian nationalism were heard in the 'twenties, when the Étoile Nord-Africaine plotted to overthrow French rule. This organisation's membership was mainly of Algerians living in France. After the Axis powers had been pushed out of North Africa an active nationalist movement was revived in Algeria. But it was one of bits and pieces, of sects who hated each other as much as they did the French and who often took time off from their war against the French to cut each others' throats. By late 1954 there were only two Algerian movements of any consequence and of these the National Liberation Front (FLN) was the more powerful and the better equipped to wage the long war for national independence.

The war against the F.L.N. has been a serious drain on French resources. One government after another tackled the problem without success. None of them could beat the F.L.N. and none felt able to bow before the storm of Algerian nationalism. The political instability for which France before de Gaulle was noted saw eight such governments off. In Algeria the Europeans were under a fearful strain and they grew impatient with their government's inability to stop the terrorism without surrendering the country. Once, they showed their exasperation by pelting a French prime minister — Guy Mollet —with tomatoes. His government promptly fell. It was this exasperation, pushed to the brink by the withdrawal from Tunisia and the apparent intention of the short-lived Pflimlin government to do the same in Algeria, that led to the 1958 revolt which put de Gaulle into power and ended the sorry tale of the Fourth Republic.

If there was one thing which de Gaulle was expected to do, it was to stamp out the Algerian rebels. In the event his policy has never been so bull headed. True, he has made some statements which contradict themselves. In his television broadcast during the uprising in January, 1960, he said:

  Frenchmen of Algeria, how can you listen lo the liars and conspirators who tell you that, in granting their free choice to the Algerians, France and de Gaulle want to abandon you, to withdraw from Algeria, and to surrender it to the rebellion?

But in fact de Gaulle was contemplating doing just that. Earlier in the same broadcast he said:

  . . . I have taken in the name of France this decision: the Algerians shall have the free choice of their fate . . . it will be the Algerians who will say what they wish to be.

Yet beneath this apparent confusion, de Gaulle has been firmly if slowly pushing a policy of independence for Algeria. Up to now he has dealt skilfully with the opposition to his policy. All this has earned him the hatred of the very men who put him in power.

The opposition to de Gaulle is indeed formidable. There are the European settlers, who grow the grapes and who run the banking and commercial life of the country. Many of these are poor — a settler working class, in fact. But some of them are rich and there are about a dozen landowners who we can call very rich. The Moslem farmers outnumber their European counterparts by nearly thirty to one, but they own less than three times as much land. The big farms and the best land belong to the colons. Settler interests are always in the thick of the trouble when a colonial power plans to hand out independence. The Europeans in Algeria—some of them French, some Spaniards, Maltese, Italians and Jews—are a pressure group which any capitalist government would find it hard to deal with.

French Army

Then there is the French army, which has built the roads, the railways, and the hospitals in Algeria, has supplied the doctors, teachers and engineers, and has looked upon the country as a tiresome but helpless baby. Take away the French army and running Algeria as capitalism says it must be run —profitably—is going to be a difficult matter. It is typical of French governments that they should have given the army its head in Algeria. For they have never really come to grips with their military and taught them that their job is to protect the general interests of the French ruling class. Other capitalist powers have solved this problem. Lloyd George took on—and beat—not only the generals, but the king as well, in the First World War; we all know what happened to MacArthur when he tried to dictate policy to his bosses in Washington.

But this is a difficult time to start tugging the rein on the French army. They have had no real victory since 1918; they were crushed in 1940 and have since been humiliated in Indo-China. It is easy to imagine the generals' mood when they learned that Algeria was to be added to their list of defeats. Here, it seems, is one war which the French army feel they cannot afford to lose.

To complicate matters still more, there is the mineral wealth in the Sahara. Perhaps the French would once have been willing to abandon Algeria, as they did Tunisia, if oil and natural gas had not been struck there. De Gaulle once said that when coal was the vital fuel, France had little of it and that when oil was vital she had no oil. The Sahara strike was looked on as something of a miracle find and it has bedevilled the situation ever since. It has also added to de Gaulle’s headaches by landing him with problems of distribution and international competition. The French have tried to attract capital to Algeria by offering tax concessions and other incentives, but there was not much hope of success for that policy while the situation remained so unstable.

So it all came back to the basic fact that somehow Algeria had to be settled. De Gaulle is only facing a fact of capitalist life when he recognises that a nationalist movement cannot be held down for ever. When he tries to hang on to the naval base at Mers El Kebir, the nuclear test area at Reggan and the interests in the mineral fields he is only trying, on behalf of the French ruling class, to make the best of a bad job. This sort of thing has happened many times since 1945, in Africa and in the Near and Far East.

De Gaulle has been warned, by the settlers and the army, of the possible consequences of his policy. There is a striking likeness between the French President’s difficulties and those of President Kennedy when he is trying to deal with segregationist towns in the American South. In both cases, the very people who are employed to carry out their government’s orders have simply ignored them. There is a clue here for those who are looking for the source of the power of the capitalist class. Ironically, the O.A.S. are showing us that capitalism’s coercion depends upon the acquiescence of its underdogs.

The Future

If history is worth anything, the O.A.S. cannot win in Algeria. However much fuss they manage to kick up when the country gets its independence, it seems certain that the army and the settlers will be put in their place. Algerian nationalists will rule the country and perhaps one by one the colons will be forced to leave. The oilfields and the gas may be nationalised so that the profits go to the Algerian ruling class instead of to the French. The Algerian peasant will blossom into a worker just like the Frenchman and the Briton. He will take on a mortgage, worry for his job, console himself with an H.P. telly. He will read of—and click his tongue over—colonial wars in other parts of the world. One day he may, like the South African, forget his past and himself support the brutal suppression of some racial group. The F.L.N. and the O.A.S. will fade into history. Capitalism’s grisly wheel will turn another full circle, lubricated by the blood and tears of countless ordinary, useful human beings.

Ivan

Senseless slaughter (2015)

Book Review from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Barroux, Line of Fire, Phoenix Yard Books, 2014.  Ivan Petrus, The Nieuport Gathering, Lannoo, 2011. Jacques Tardi,  It Was the War of the Trenches, Fantagraphics, 2011

Those interested in the literature of the First World War may have come across other ‘graphics’ (with such gruesome contents one can hardly use the word ‘comic’) similar to Charley’s War (reviewed in the August 2014 Socialist Standard). Most of these were originally French language. France, unlike the UK, still has a thriving ‘graphic’ scene. In contrast to Charley’s War or American works, in French language publications the artist and writer are identical and the material was not originally produced as weekly or monthly part works but as a single unit. There should be, therefore, a unity that English language ‘graphics’ lack.

In Michael Morpurgo’s introduction to the Barroux book he comments about the diarist from whose notes the work is derived: “He is the unknown soldier and these are his words. Read them and weep.” Unfortunately there is little to spark such a reaction. The carrot noses are an irritating novelty.

The Nieuport Gathering is the story of a pledge of three men of different nationalities to meet after war and how those three men met their deaths. The historical treatment of the shocking events combined with saccharine Spielburgesque sentimentality means, that like the other contemporary book, it does not engage.

The War of the Trenches, on the other hand, cannot but. Originally published in 1994, this is a work burns with feeling. The senseless slaughter was still then a live issue. Particularly vivid is the contrast between priestly class cant (“Joyful are those families whose blood flows for their country”) and the feelings of a ‘real’ soldier (“Bastards, bastards, miserable fucking bastards! Fuck the army! France can kiss my arse!”). This is a non-chronological sequence of episodes, impressionistic in the best sense of the word. One may disagree with author’s view of human nature (“men are sheep . . .  victims of their own docility”) but one cannot help but be impressed by this immaculately researched and beautifully illustrated book. Tardi concludes “We are all of us, still down here, down in the trenches”: Even now the vicious warmongers are inciting hatred, not of fellow Europeans but of fellow workers, stirring up the necessary background for their oil wars. War, then and now, is about profit for the ruling class . . . and loss for the working class.

Keith Scholey

An Echo of the Commune. (1908)

From the July 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Federation of the Seine. S.F.I.O., (French section of the Workers’ International), had issued its annual call to the Paris comrades to fall in and march in procession before the historic wall of Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where in May, 1871, many communard prisoners were shot and buried. The occasion was to be the more interesting because a memorial tablet upon the wall itself, and a monument upon the grave of Eugène Pottier, the writer of our song, the “Internationale,” were to be unveiled, and appropriate addresses delivered.

Arriving rather late at the cemetery, we found the procession slowly coming out and the avenue along which it was passing closely walled in by a line of Republican Guards infantry assisted by numerous policemen. These guardsmen, by the way (cavalry and infantry), are no easy-going two year conscripts, but are picked professional soldiers, who are maintained for the express purpose of providing a perpetual menace to the Parisian working class.

Trying another avenue by which to find the tail-end of the procession, we, with many others, found our way blocked by squads of policemen, and so decided to visit other parts of the famous cemetery, hoping to get access to the historic wall later when the crowd should have left.

But what was our surprise to find shortly, a party of soldiers, rifle on shoulder, step down from among the tombs and press us down the avenue towards the main entrance. And as we proceeded the folk gathered in the avenue bordered by the resting-places of famous men — artists, poets, statesmen, generals; while from between the tombs on either side came the rifle, cartridge-pouch, uniform, and flesh and blood within it that make up the soldier — hundreds of him. They were clearing the cemetery. Passing out and walking a few streets from the cemetery we saw a troop of Guards cavalry pass. They have no barracks in the quarter, neither do they mount guard at any public building there. Their presence could have but one meaning, namely, to remind the Parisian working class of the murderous powers at the disposal of the master class. And, indeed, what menace was there not in these rifles, swords, and trampling hoofs? What more was needed to call to mind the bloody week of May, '71, when some 35,000 men, women, and children of the working class were massacred by the army, which had been released by the German Government for that purpose?

Indeed must the master class feel its position shaky that it should think necessary such exhibitions of force! Meanwhile, for us, do not history and passing events reveal the despotic and murderous characteristics necessarily provoked in a master class? Yes! beyond all question. And therefore we must order our conduct, our teaching, and our organisation in conformity with the knowledge so acquired.

J. H. Halls

Editorial: The War Against The Workers. (1915)

Editorial from the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Lobby correspondent of the London "Daily News'’ on Sept. 13th made the following significant statement:

                           French Strike of 1910. 

There are grounds for saying that some of the Ministers who are in favour of the compulsory organisation of the manhood of the country have been influenced by the history of the national railway strike in France in 1910. They believe that in case of a serious strike in this country imperilling the national safety, the power of calling up the men as soldiers would break the strike. This was what happened in France in 1910: By Oct 11 the national railway strike was general, the food supply of Paris was gravely threatened, and the whole of the country disorganised. On Oct. 13 the ringleaders were arrested under the Railway Traffic Law of 1845, and at the instance of M. Briand, the Prime Minister, 130,000 of the railway servants were put under mobilisation orders for a period of three week's training.

 The action of the French Government in calling out the railwaymen in their capacity of reservists had a double effect. It appealed to the sense of patriotism and of military discipline which animates the majority of Frenchmen, and it gave those men who returned as reservists to their work on the railway, an assurance of protection against the violence of strike pickets, and a sense of solidarity with their comrades of the active Army in full uniform who were guarding the railway stations, signals, and points. By these means the strike was broken, and on October 18 the railwaymen were ordered back to work by their own Strike Committee.

The matter of tho French strike was dealt within the “Socialist Standard" at the time and the moral of the necessity for the rapture of political power by the workers was driven home, but in the present connection it is to be noted ; that the mobilisation order of 1910 was utilised to break a strike in time of peace. Clearly, then, the utility of compulsion to the ruling class is not confined to the period of war. It is as well, therefore, not to overlook the permanent consequences of  conscription when analysing the motives behind the compulsory service "conspiracy.” It is, indeed, almost unthinkable that our rulers would let such a splendid opportunity as the present war slip by for making us more completely n nation of serfs.

Munition workers are already subjected to forced labour. Their work in accelerated to the point of exhaustion. .They are fined for losing a few hours. They are punished if they seek better terms and forbidden to change their employer without a certificate of permission. And they ore abused by "labour lenders," by cabinet ministers and by journalists as slackers and worse, although they are the only portion of the nation who are actually doing the war work. The employers are not punished. The members of the idle class are not controlled or penalised. Not at all. The compulsion, the hardships, the punishments and the abuse are concentrated upon the working class who have nevertheless no share in the ordering of their industry.

The facts are so plain and the class nature of the governmental activities is so obvious that it is quite unnecessary to say more here under this particular head. Every workman who exercises his intelligence upon the statements of Ministers, of so-called labour leaders and of journalists, and ponders the findings of the munitions courts, can see a far more damning case against the ruling class in this matter than could be baldly stated. And after all is there not something of similar import in the whole history of the war?

We have long known the hollowness of much of the so-called Socialist movement in Germany, in France, and in this country ; yet such as it was all the governments have been mortally afraid of it. A prominent German statesman once said that there was a certain cure for the Socialist movement, and that was war! Prominent men in other countries have said similar things. It is part of the creed of re-action. Undoubtedly the German democratic movement in particular was most imposing, and appeared truly formidable to its ruling class. The French movement also was growing and threatening. In Russia it could only be kept under by the most violent measures of repression. In this country it was sought to emasculate the proletarian menace by absorbing its pretended leaders into the governmental party. In France this policy hud been very thoroughly carried out as the Millerands, the Briands and the Vivianis still testify. And does not this obvious capitalist fear of the working class suggest a possible reason for war, supplementary to the ordinary one of direct commercial interest ?

In France, England and Germany the workers were swept off their feel in a wave of patriotism and became an easy prey to the intrigues of the capitalist class. Russia, seemingly, continued its brutal repression simply in order to obviate any violent break with the traditions of its government. In all the belligerent countries the workers are expected, nay, compelled, to sacrifice on the altar of their master's country all the poor concessions which industrial necessity had enabled them to win. In this sea-girt isle tho hardly won rights of labour are being rapidly annulled. Tho soaring cost of living, the destruction of trade union conditions of labour, the speeding up of work, the forced labour and the menace of compulsory military service, all tend irresistibly to crush working class conditions of existence out of recognition, Even some patriotic workers are beginning to ask whether “victory" may not be too dearly bought if it is to be purchased only with the sacrifice of all the poor liberties for which their fathers fought, and at the cost of everything which to them had appeared to make working-class life barely tolerable now.

After the war the old conditions will be restored, they tell us; but who believes it? The so-called national necessities which are the pretext for the present measures will be obviously still more imperative after the war. Our masters are insistently urging the workers (with whom saving is too often a crime against the mind and body of themselves and their dependents) to put money by for the awful times that will inevitably follow the war. In view of these hard times to come what chance will there be for the restoration of pre-war conditions of labour? In any case is it not a foregone conclusion that capitalist greed and armed power will effectually bar the way ?

Although we may dimly perceive the golden gleams amidst the dark and thundrous clouds of the future, it would be folly to deny that the immediate prospect is gloomy indeed. Hemmed in by penalties and virtually gagged and bound, the free expression of opinion is rendered impossible for the present. But the seething discontent is not stilled, nor is it rendered innocuous by being denied an outlet. As they sow the wind they shall reap the whirlwind.

Many a man this day is troubled by a burning thought set alight in him by the flaming hoardings of murderous association. He sees the workers of the world being crushed to death or to worse than death between the exploitation and oppression of the ruling caste and the savage massacre of warfare. But what shall I say, he reflects, what must I say to my children years hence when they ask me, "What did you do, daddy, in the great war?" Shall I have to confess in sadness that during this great attack upon the toilers, that in this tragic episode in the class war I have failed to play a man's part?

What Newspapers Did Not Tell (1937)

From the January 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

And what French Soldiers Thought of War

In the French Army in 1917 “Camps were placarded with notices declaring the intention of the soldiers to refuse to go back again to the trenches. . . .  A battalion ordered to the front refused. . . . Soldiers coming home on leave sang the Internationale and demanded peace. Mutinies occurred in 16 different Army Corps, the mutineers alleging that they had been sacrificed by treacherous or inefficient Generals. A force of 15,000 Russians which had been sent to France, openly revolted and had to be bombarded by artillery fire into surrender. A number of young infantrymen marched through the streets 'baa-ing’ like sheep, to indicate that they were being driven like lambs to the slaughter. The ominous symptoms which preceded the Russian Revolution, and later on the German, appeared in the French Army in 1917.”—Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 2132.

Where the Generals Sent Them Last Time

“The whole surface of the ground consisted of nothing but a series of overlapping shell craters, half full of yellow, slimy water. Through falling into these ponds hundreds upon hundreds of unwounded men lost their lives by drowning.

“Hundreds of thousands of British troops fought through the slough . . . slept in mud-holes. When they squelched along, they were shot down into the slush; if wounded they were drowned in the slime; but the survivors still crept and dragged onward for 4 months, with their rifles choked with Flemish ooze. . . . A tragedy of heroic endurance enacted in mud, and the British Press rang with praises of . . . the Commander-in-Chief!”

A “highly placed officer from H.Q.” on his first visit to the battle front burst into tears and cried: “Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?”—Lloyd George, War Memoirs, pp. 2208-11.