The Socialist Party and the General Election (1974)

From the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A “snap” General Election is disadvantageous to small political parties lacking the resources and paid workers of the major parties. It is the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s policy to put up candidates for Parliament whenever possible. However, on this occasion we had to consider realistically the problems imposed on us, including that with the Election announced on 8th February to take place on 28th the Socialist Standard could not be produced and distributed in time to support a campaign. It should be borne in mind also that candidates of ours are not “gimmicks” hoping to attract impulsive votes but seek serious consideration of the case for Socialism. In these circumstances we have decided not to attempt an electoral campaign but instead to publish statements of the Socialist position in the press; and we present below our attitude in the Election.

The parties of capitalism had some difficulty drawing up their manifestos for this election. As prophecies of total economic blight and national disaster are uttered, politicians cross their fingers and urge the need for greater sacrifice and a return of the “war-time spirit”. The usual vote-catching promise of jam tomorrow being no longer credible, they are offering you continued inflation, severe “wage restraint”, and rising unemployment in as pleasant a manner as possible. In contrast to all other political organizations, the Socialist Party of Great Britain does not form policies designed to tackle economic crises but exists solely to abolish their cause.

That social conflict and disunity characterize Britain today is apparent to anyone who opens a newspaper; what is not realized is that it cannot be otherwise while society is organized on its present basis. Your life and those of the majority of people are spent running a system co-operatively for the benefit of a minority who own the means of living and all that is produced — the capitalists. It is this contradiction between social production and private ownership which gives rise to our problems. While being the creators of all society’s wealth, members of the working class accept as natural the selling of their energies for wages and salaries which are less than what is produced is worth. In short, you wish to be rationed so that a few can enjoy lives of privilege. Industrial strife, war, unemployment, luxury amidst squalor, homelessness, and endless struggle to “make ends meet” are what human beings vote for at elections. The Socialist Party has always maintained that capitalism cannot evolve into something different or better and tries to induce workers not to direct their resentment against trade unions, property speculators, immigrants or politicians, but against a system which demands that priority be given to profit rather than human need and compels them to engage in degrading struggle to decide the level of their own exploitation.

★

There is no “lesser evil” as far as the major political parties are concerned; they all favour your membership of the working class. When capitalism destroys the best-laid plans of governments it can be taken for granted that politicians will offer you excuses and generally resort to deception. Record inflation will be blamed on world prices, as though profits for capitalists overseas as well as at home could make you feel better. The outcome of serious argument concerning the length of time a miner takes to have a bath, you will be told, can influence an economic crisis. Oil sheikhs acting as all good capitalists should will be accused of “blackmail” and members of the working class, who possess nothing but their ability to work, will be told they have a balance of payments deficit of thousands of millions. The only response can be to mind our own business and leave the problems of capitalism to capitalists. The Labour and Communist parties, however, see as part of the solution an extension, of Nationalization, or letting fewer capitalists mind their own business. This entails transfer of control of certain industries to the State but leaves ownership in the hands of capitalists, who simply receive interest from State bonds rather than company shares. For workers nothing is changed. State control of capitalism, whether in Britain, Russia or China, is not Socialism and cannot lead to it. Labour is again seeking to “eliminate poverty wherever it exists”, something which governments have promised to do for decades. Such an objective is rather like wanting to run a car without petrol: capitalism needs the existence of poverty in order to survive and will destroy the noblest of aims. The Liberals, seeking votes from the disillusioned, present themselves as a party above sectional interest and against the “greed of unions and big business”. They promote this “classless” image with slogans such as “Forward with the People!”, “Liberalism is about people”, and “people count”, offering workers “participation” in industry and housewives “community politics”. What should be remembered is that whoever runs capitalism must do so in the interest of the owners of capital, and that this interest is not your own. Liberalism is capitalism, which is only about people as producers of profit. Giving a man a “say” in his own robbery will not bring harmony to social relations and discussion of such issues as efficient garbage removal and more zebra crossings is irrelevant to the fundamental problems from which you suffer.

★

The Socialist Party and its companion parties abroad stand for Socialism, a classless, moneyless world community in which the means of life will be owned and democratically controlled by the whole of society and where the only motive for production will be the satisfaction of human need. With the abolition of money and the wages system millions of workers now engaged in unproductive work such as accountancy, banking, insurance and selling will have the opportunity to develop their potential for their own and society’s good, rather than restricting their lives in the service of profit. People will freely take part in social production and take freely from the social wealth whatever they think they need. Capitalism has developed technology and industry to the point where an abundance of wealth was possible; it cannot be created where production is limited to what can be sold at a profit. In the process of changing society man changes himself and his relationship to his fellow man. Capitalism is not the “natural order of things” and will be abolished when a majority reject the promises and leadership of politicians and understand what Socialism implies. We urge you to read carefully our Object and Declaration of Principles, and if you are in agreement with us we ask you to come and give active help. Capitalism may produce chaos and apathy, but it also creates the Socialists who will finally free and unite mankind.

Smash! (1974)

From the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A New Election Programme?

The most hilarious buffoonery of the election was the International Marxist Group’s putting up three candidates. At a press conference their representative was reported saying hopefully: “In an atmosphere of confrontation a few hundred votes can turn into tens of thousands” (Times, 13th Feb.). A different view from the one in their leaflet distributed on 1st May last year: May Day — End or New Beginning.

Shorn of all its flowery phrases (like “Mass Action”. “Mobilization”, “Confrontation”, “Counter-offensive” and all the boring old stuff about the failure of the wicked trade-union leaders who won’t “mobilize a united struggle to smash through Phase 2”), what this leaflet does is advise strikers to fight the police. It actually says this explicitly. We quote:

To do this [defend the picket lines] the local Trades Councils have to centralize our resources for fighting the police.

The absurdity of the entire content of this ridiculous document is apparent, for instance, in the first paragraph :

A large majority of the working class are striking work together and coming out onto the streets.

In paragraph 2, however:

Millions of workers feel that this stoppage will have no immediate effect on the Government policies. In this they are correct.

We also would say that the millions of workers are quite right. Not only did the General Council of the TUC know this very well, as they showed by deferring their strike-call date till after the Government had passed the Phase 2 Bill; but we now know that the TUC leaders were having secret meetings with Prime Minister Heath one day before the May-day marches, to be followed by the open meeting to fix a deal.

What concerns us here is the dangerous folly of the baloney being peddled by the IMG. Why on earth they have the insufferable impudence to call themselves “Marxist” only they can know. Everything in this nonsensical and pernicious propaganda is utterly foreign and contrary to all of Marx’s teachings, and especially to his actions in the International Workingmen’s Association, of which he was a founder member and author of its address, or policy statement.

We would highly commend to the IMG the statement by Marx in that address which they would do well to deeply and quietly ponder:

One clement of success they [the workers] possess, that of numbers, but numbers weigh only in the balance if united by combination and led by knowledge.

Is there the slightest sign that, amidst all the hysterical outpourings about “smashing Tory governments” and “treacherous trade-union leaders”, the IMG have given one moment’s serious thought to the meaning of what they are spreading?

Read through their leaflet! The workers must centralize their forces to “develop a General Strike to get rid of the Government itself”. The central task in holding the line is to “prepare the counter-offensive in the autumn" because the Government “presented the leaders with a clear choice, either accept pay restraint, or mobilize a united struggle which would smash Phase 2, bring down the Government and so raise the hopes of the working population that the social order itself would be threatened”.

As was pointed out explicitly in a recent Socialist Standard (and even that was re-quoted from 1919 and has been confirmed by history ever since), in every strike, above all the 1926 General Strike:

The masters are in a far stronger position than the workers on the economic field and will beat them, at will, any time they wish.

This is why Marx wrote in the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen’s Association that

To conquer political power has become the great duty of the working class.

(Selected Works of Karl Marx, Moscow, p. 440)

As for all the other rubbish about smashing (these idiots are obsessed by the word SMASH; it recurs repeatedly in their manifestoes) Tory or Labour governments, this cannot be done by strike action alone. If a government feels that it has lost popular support, as shown in Italy or Denmark, and estimates that it may lose the next election, it may well resign, go into opposition, and laugh its head off at the troubles of the new government trying to grapple with the problems. So far from being “smashed” by resignation, there is every sign that they positively enjoy it.

As for “threatening the social order”, this probably is the stupidest nonsense of the lot. Trades unions are organized on a job basis: the vast majority of trade- unionists are not Socialists and have no desire whatever to threaten the social order — they uphold it. Neither would “threatening the social order” mean any real progress in changing it in orderly fashion. It could merely lead to chaos.

As for all the other tripe about the naughty, wicked trade-union leaders, we have pointed out repeatedly that they operate by the approval and consent of the members.

Let all strikes be called at the most favourable moment — when the bosses are doing allright-thankyou and don’t want them. Let them be short and sharp; if they are not won quickly they won’t be won at all. Let the members decide by democratic vote and, if things go wrong, democratically decide to retreat back to work in an orderly united fashion.

Above all, ignore and reject the dangerous, meddlesome folly of these academic hot-heads and professional hooligans who run about “smashing” everything and call on trade-unionists to “fight the police”. This plays straight into the hands of the authorities and is in fact all they need to crush strike action. On the industrial field the workers’ strength is in the withdrawal of labour. This may get them a rise in wages; but only political action can control the police (and the army) and establish Socialism.

Horatio.

"Revolutionary" Left unite behind Labour (1974)

From the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sham socialists show their true colours

Ever since the SPGB was founded we have at all times resolutely opposed all other political parties. We maintain that political parties are the expression of class interests and that the party seeking working- class emancipation must organise consciously and politically for the capture of political power for the abolition of capitalism, and its replacement by Socialism. The Socialist Party must work only for Socialism as this is the immediate task facing the world working class. No other political party in this country holds this revolutionary position.

The blood-and-thunder left consistently cloud and confuse the clear-cut issue — capitalism or Socialism. Bitter experience has amply borne out the correctness of our long expressed judgement that the Labour Party is a reformist capitalist party and has nothing to do with Socialism. However the period immediately prior to the February 28 General Election saw pseudo-socialist organizations and parties advocating and encouraging workers to vote for the Labour Party. Examples of this confusing and cynical exercise in political futility are documented below.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

(Aim: to achieve a socialist Britain in which the means of production, distribution and exchange will be socially owned).

‘‘Three aims need to be achieved [says the CP Manifesto]: a Tory defeat, the winning of a Labour Government, and the return of Communist MP's . . We need a different type of Labour government — one that would bite into the power and profits of big business” (Morning Star 14 February 1974).

INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP

(Aim: the overthrow of the capitalist system).

‘‘Of course, in any election called now socialists must argue for a vote for the Labour Party where there is no revolutionary alternative. The victory of the Tories would be seen by the working class as a set back and would decrease confidence and combativity. A victory for Labour would have the opposite effect . . . The slogan ‘Vote Labour but rely on your own struggles’ must be the key one for any election campaign” (Red Weekly 8 February 1974).

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS

(Aim for independent working class action for the abolition of capitalism. ‘‘The struggle for socialism is the central struggle of our time”).

“KICK OUT THE TORIES VOTE LABOUR”

“No worker should have any doubt about what is at stake in the election . . . The working class has to respond [to the Tory campaign] with a massive anti-Tory vote. And that means a Labour vote . . . Labour is as much committed to keeping capitalism intact as the Tories ... So while fighting for a Labour victory, we have to step up our efforts to build a real alternative, a revolutionary worker’s party, by arguing the full-blooded socialist case” (IS National Committee Statement, Socialist Worker 16 February 1974).

WORKERS FIGHT

(Aim: to build a party which stands firmly for the interests of the working class and which preserves its political independence.)

"Until we have the possibility of a genuine, socialist working class government it is in workers’ interests to elect Labour . . . ACTIVE and unconditional support for Labour against the Tories !” (Workers Fight No. 43, 9-15 February 1974).

WORKERS REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

(Formerly Socialist Labour League).

“We call on all Labour Party members and trade unionists to vote Labour in constituencies where the WRP is not standing. We call on the electors to return a Labour government. In the struggle to compel the Labour leaders to implement the socialist policies we have outlined, they will be exposed and will be driven out.” (WRP Manifesto).

SOCIALIST CHARTER MOVEMENT

(‘Labour’s Revolutionary Voice’. Aim: to build a new revolutionary leadership in the Labour Movement to defeat the Tories and their system.)

“CAMPAIGN ON A SOCIALIST PROGRAMME”*

“. . . Labour Party leaders must present a programme for their next government which really offers a way forward for society out of its present impasse . . . A production plan based on common ownership . . . For this programme we need look no further than . . . the Constitution of the Labour Party, Clause four, Paragraph four.” (Chartist February 1974).

YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE

“Join in the fight now to rout the Tories and elect a Labour government with Communist MPs to back it up . . . mobilise a great mass movement to sweep away the Tory government and return a Labour government compelled to carry out Left policies . . . This is the great issue of 1974.” (Challenge February 1974).

Gwynn Thomas

50 Years Ago: ‘Vote for them but . . . ’ (2024)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The publicity organizers of the International Socialists certainly know how to produce an election poster to catch everyone’s eyes. Their technique is so simple too, even the most politically apathetic passer-by cannot fail to notice a poster designed to produce a laugh. ‘Defeat the Tories’ it cries, ‘Vote Labour, but no to social contract’. ‘Vote Labour, but’ indeed! It’s a bit different from the usual IS rubbish of ‘Vote Labour, then . . .’ (and then kick them out and put us in their place.)

Unfortunately it has a slight flaw. No-one seems to have told the IS that there is no provision on a voting slips for ‘buts’. How convenient it would be if there was, but there is not, there are no if’s, and’s or but’s about it at all. If you vote Labour you get Labour, you get continued uncontrollable capitalism, you get futile reformism, you get nothing for the future of the working class, and you get nowhere towards Socialism. And whether you get social contract or not is totally irrelevant.

No matter how sincerely a Labour government wishes to protect the interests of the workers, no matter how benignly they impose their unwanted ‘leadership’ upon us, they can do nothing other than be puppets of the economic forces of capitalism. It makes no difference whether Tory or Labour govern, the real power is that of the capitalist system and only its replacement by a genuine Socialist society will do.

When will International Socialists realise the futility of ‘Vote Labour’, and when will they realise that Socialism will only be achieved when we have awakened the social consciousness of the working class throughout the world? Socialism will be won by struggling to free the minds of the workers from their capitalist bonds, and never by putting in a Labour government and then trying to overthrow it by violently accentuating the evils of capitalism.

[From the article, 'Vote For Them But . . . ', Socialist Standard, November 1974]

So They Say: The CP Backs Britain (1974)

The So They Say Column from the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The CP Backs Britain

There is a school of thought which maintains that Socialists should view Communists and Labourites, as distinct from the Tories, as having something in common with us.

We don’t, and they haven’t. This was demonstrated in articles on the Election in the Communist Party’s fortnightly review Comment, on 7th September. What was the working-class issue in the Election ? According to Dave Cook, the National Agent:

 In the build up to the General Election, Britain’s economic position is the decisive issue, and it is around the policies to tackle the crisis that this political battle now explodes.

John Purton wrote on the same question—Britain’s Economy and the Crisis in the Capitalist World.

Purton discussed the gravity of the balance of payments situation and the need for economic co-operation with “the poorer underdeveloped oil-consuming countries”:

  Ideally, they should receive large sums of oil money, which would provide larger markets for industrial exports.

However:

  It does not mean that economic relations with monopoly capitalist countries can suddenly be abandoned or completely revised. Obviously, Britain's dependence on world trade would prevent that . . . Furthermore, the contradictions of capitalism provide a basis for a progressive government to bargain with countries of monopoly capitalism for relations which do in fact serve legitimate national interests.

So the “revolutionary”, “Marxist” CP want the working class to accept capitalism’s crisis, world trade, markets and national interests as its “legitimate” concerns. What are we supposed to have in common with this pernicious rubbish ?

Our Father's Up the Poll

The failure of the “opinion polls” forecasts of Election results has provided more talk than the Elections themselves this year. John Akass in The Sun (14th October) argued that they produce cantankerousness: the more predictions there are, the more unpredictability will be cultivated.

Very amusing, but wrong. The opinion polls are not the same as racing tips. Their daily prognoses in the campaigns inform the political leaders of, roughly, where they stand — so that each knows when a new promise or representation has to be made, if he can manage it. It is not the electors who want to upturn the polls, but the politicians.

However, the most recent one is unlikely to be changed. A poll published in the Sunday Times on 13th October found that fewer than one in three people believe that God exists. See what an advantage Wilson has over God. The latter can’t accuse his opponent of having no policy, or promise bigger and better rewards for prayer

A Worse Kind of Jungle

A question to socialists used to be: “What about the backward peoples of the world ?” It is seldom heard now because, like many other questions, it is being answered by capitalism: the tribesmen are becoming factory hands.

A talk on the New Guinea Mission, given at the Royal Commonwealth Society on 24th September, described the head-hunters’ new mode of life. Urban drift “has become a flood”, and started other floods too:

  The move to the towns is dragging in its train all the problems that have long been familiar in other countries all over the world. There is unemployment, inadequate housing, incipient slums and malnutrition. Mental illness, hitherto unknown in Papua New Guinea, is on the increase. So is crime, with juvenile delinquency causing particular concern. There is drunkenness, gambling and prostitution.

The New Guinea Mission’s speaker had a curious explanation for all the crime etc.: it is due mostly to “just plain old-fashioned sinfulness”. If it is old-fashioned, why is it a new phenomenon in New Guinea?

The correspondent who sent this item informs us that Bougainville, one of the larger islands, has a huge opencast copper mine using machines costing £50,000; and because of the copper deposits the island wants — independence. Shades of “Scottish oil” !

The Predatory Process

Some noteworthy facts about American involvement in South-east Asia were given in the Los Angeles Times Business and Finance section on 9th September:

 Direct US investment in South-east Asia was a meagre $200 million in 1950. The total grew to $2 billion by 1970, should reach $5 billion next year, and $10 billion in 1980.
 “It may be that opportunities in Europe have been decreasing but, more significantly, investment returns in Asia tend to be higher than those obtainable elsewhere”, the SRI report said. “One study found US investments returned 13% to 14% profit, and another found the median return on total equity of foreign firms in the Philippines, mostly American, to be over 31%.”

The report also describes the importance of oil in business with Indonesia: “Indonesia’s oil is in great demand due to its low sulphur content.”

Put this information beside the figure of 50,000 American servicemen killed, 350,000 wounded, and 1,000.000 Vietnamese killed to “secure” South-east Asia for “democracy and freedom”.

Superior Claimants

One of the ways in which people stake a claim to be “middle-class” is by running down the “working class” — i.e. manual workers as distinct from white- collar ones — as workshy spongers who milk the welfare services. A survey carried out recently by PEP has concluded that the boot is on the other foot:

  Our finding that managerial and professional workers are the most likely to be drawing unemployment benefit at the same time as both having no intention of taking an official job, and earning from unofficial employment, contrasts strongly with the popular image of the idle, feckless unemployed as manual workers.

(Evening Standard, 18th September)

It sounds revealing, but the revelation should go further. There is an implication that what they are doing should be stopped. We agree. Why should people resort to shifts and subterfuge for crumbs from capitalism when the whole loaf — which they helped to produce — can be claimed ? Managers and professionals need to recognize that they are members of the working class, and that Socialism is the answer.

Robert Barltrop

Socialist Candidate's Address (1974)

From the October 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many of you will be asking why The Socialist Party of Great Britain is standing in this constituency in this election — why we should be intruding in the battle between the big political parties and complicating what seems a simple choice between Labour and Conservative, or perhaps Liberal.

You will be going to vote in the belief that your cross on the ballot paper will have some influence in improving our lives, or at least in protecting our living standards. This is understandable — but on what do you base your belief ?

The other parties are bidding for your vote with programmes which may seem to offer some hope of easing, or even abolishing, many of the problems of this country and of the world. Millions of people find these programmes attractive enough to vote for one or other of them. The Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that none of them stands up to examination.

For example, recent elections have been dominated by promises to deal with economic crises — balance of payment problems, inflation, unemployment and so on. Yet these crises keep bursting upon the scene and as fast as the promises are made they are discredited by events.

Yet again; every government comes into power pledged to abolish slums and to eliminate the housing problem. They seem to have it all worked out, with their declarations of intent and their statistics. The result, according to Shelter, is that “today’s housing crisis is a disgrace to any civilised society.”

All the other parties offer plans designed to make war a thing of the past. They ring the changes on appeasement, resistance, diplomatic initiatives. In spite of all these plans the world scrapes through a succession of wars — Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, the Middle East, Cyprus — with the threat of nuclear conflagration hanging over our heads.

It is true that at times some problems are alleviated or even suppressed, but this is only for others to take their place. For example; we are told that our lives have been improved by the development of productive techniques, but we are also faced with the fact that these very developments pollute our environment to such an extent that they may present a threat almost as great as a nuclear war.

Why do other political parties fail ? Why are their promises so ineffective? What causes the problems of the world? The Socialist Party of Great Britain urge you to examine the social system we live under — capitalism.

This is a society based on the private ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. Private ownership at once divides society into two classes — the owning, or capitalist class and the deprived, or working class. It is the working class who suffer poverty and all it means in terms of bad housing, inadequate medical services, sub-standard food and so on. Capitalism is a society of competition which splits the world into rival nations and power blocs and is the direct cause of modern war.

What Must Be Done?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain puts forward the alternative society. Socialism will be a society in which the whole of humanity, without distinction of race or sex, will own in common all we use to make and distribute wealth. Common ownership means a society without classes, without privileges, without different standards of consumption. In Socialist society everyone will have free access to the world’s wealth and will stand equally in that respect.

Socialism will produce its wealth for human use instead of for sale. This will make it a society of cooperation instead of competition. There will be no frontiers to divide the world’s people. Socialism will be one world, with one people working together for the common wealth.

Socialism will be an efficient world, in contrast to capitalism, where waste and shoddiness are profitable. For the first time, men and women in Socialism will realise their capabilities to the full. Socialism will produce an abundance and at only one standard — the best we are capable of.

Is It All A Dream? How Do We Get Socialism?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is not another collection of leaders telling you to trust us and promising you almost anything for the sake of winning your vote. No leader can give you Socialism, no clever politician can pull you by the nose into the new society. Neither will it happen by accident.

Socialism must be your work; it needs a conscious political act by the mass of the people, opting for the new society in full knowledge of what it is. It comes to this — only if you understand Socialism and want it, vote for the Socialist candidate.

And that is why The Socialist Party of Great Britain are here in Hampstead at this election We are a political party, hostile to all others, including those phoney revolutionaries of the Left — the Communist Party, International Marxist Group, International Socialists, Workers Revolutionary Party, etc. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is different — we are the political instrument to be used by the working class to transform the world from a chaos of deprivation and strife into an order of abundance and harmony. Your vote is important, to you and to society, because it expresses your choice between the two.

'Vote For Them But . . . ' (1974)

From the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The publicity organizers of the International Socialists certainly know how to produce an election poster to catch everyone’s eyes. Their technique is so simple too, even the most politically apathetic passer-by cannot fail to notice a poster designed to produce a laugh. ‘Defeat the Tories’ it cries, ‘Vote Labour, but no to social contract’. ‘Vote Labour, but’ indeed! It’s a bit different from the usual IS rubbish of ‘Vote Labour, then . . .’ (and then kick them out and put us in their place.)

Unfortunately it has a slight flaw. No-one seems to have told the IS that there is no provision on a voting slips for ‘buts’. How convenient it would be if there was, but there is not, there are no if’s, and’s or but’s about it at all. If you vote Labour you get Labour, you get continued uncontrollable capitalism, you get futile reformism, you get nothing for the future of the working class, and you get nowhere towards Socialism. And whether you get social contract or not is totally irrelevant.

No matter how sincerely a Labour government wishes to protect the interests of the workers, no matter how benignly they impose their unwanted ‘leadership’ upon us, they can do nothing other than be puppets of the economic forces of capitalism. It makes no difference whether Tory or Labour govern, the real power is that of the capitalist system and only its replacement by a genuine Socialist society will do.

When will International Socialists realise the futility of ‘Vote Labour’, and when will they realise that Socialism will only be achieved when we have awakened the social consciousness of the working class throughout the world? Socialism will be won by struggling to free the minds of the workers from their capitalist bonds, and never by putting in a Labour government and then trying to overthrow it by violently accentuating the evils of capitalism.

David Roberts

The Observer Guide to Voters (1974)

From the December 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The front of the Observer Review of Oct. 6 was headed To help readers make up their minds on how to vote on Thursday, we asked some prominent non-politicians how they will vote. The page was then devoted to the views of these famous people. As The Observer is regarded as the leading journal of the so-called quality press, and would naturally claim that its readers fail into the same top category, why on earth should they need this to help them make up their minds? Having lived in this world for some years, if they haven’t formed some view by Sunday, it would seem odd that they should be able to by the following Thursday with the help of these assorted names. In fact, the whole page should really be an insult to the intelligence of the readership. But I don’t doubt that the people who run the paper know better about that than I do.

So let’s have a look at advice from this bevy of intellectual beauties. First the only woman, the authoress Muriel Spark. (It goes without saying that in the following issue there was a whine: “Why only one woman?’’ On the face of it, I should have thought it clear that there was one woman too many.) Her advice was that as the Tories and Labour had both been useless in office (well, hear, hear ! so far anyway), she advocated voting for the Liberals to see what they would be like. This sage advice is about the level one can hear in any taproom. On this basis, if the third party was the Nazis, one must give them a chance to show what they can do too. I have never read any of her novels and on the strength of her political wisdom I shall keep it that way.

Professor Max Beloff, head of the Open University (you can’t get brainier than that), tells us to vote Conservative because he thinks the Labour Party is circumscribed by its relationship with the Unions. Well, no doubt it is, Prof. Well spotted. What about his Tories? Are their actions not circumscribed by something called capitalism? You think they have been free to organize the world so as to give us all a nice pleasant, secure and peaceful life? But why have they not given us that during all the years (well over a hundred) that they have held power since capitalism first blighted society? You yourself have lived through many periods of Tory rule and know how meaningless it has all been in relation to the little details like poverty, slums, unemployment, wars. You didn’t have to learn (or teach) about that in University. You were there. With such advisers, who needs ignoramuses?

Let us listen to an intellectual who is a nice chap and as thick as they come, Colin Cowdrey, the cricketer. Surprise surprise, he is going to vote for the Tories who will preserve “our heritage” and “produce the best sort of country for my children to grow up in”. Well played, sir. Well hit, indeed. You see Cowdrey’s kids are growing in the best sort of country for them. Because they chose a father who had one flash of inspiration better than all the brains. He married a millionaire’s daughter. Now that’s what I call sound advice — far better than voting Tory. But I fear Colin’s advice is not very practical for the millions of wage-slaves who read it (oh, yes; Observer readers might not like to be called wage-slaves. But nine out of ten of them are).

Let’s get back quick to a brainbox. John Osborne, who has done well as a playwright (for which he can largely thank the Observer, whose then Drama Critic, Ken Tynan, so boosted his “Look Back in Anger” that the thing couldn’t possibly miss). What does Osborne advise? Vote Labour. And he then goes on to castigate that party till in the end he says that it “has been largely responsible for the moral slum and squalid climate we have created since the heady days of 1945”. Vote more squalid slums! Vote for more intellectuals! They are obviously all round the twist, but if they are in the Observer . . .

Illustration by 'Tony' from the original article.

Another Laborious type is James Cameron, the famous columnist. At the end of a famous career with the quantity press, he is interviewed in the Guardian and says (in language which is de rigueur for the trendy press nowadays) he would “give his knackers” to write for the Guardian. Presumably, Mr. Hetherington happened to be in need of a spare pair at that moment, for Cameron is now aboard the great leftist paper. He will vote Labour “as ever”. And does he really think Labour is so good? No: like Osborne, he votes Labour even though the only thing he says about it is that he “waited in vain for someone (his italics) in Government to resign over this year's H-Bomb Test while a splendid Health Service withers for lack of money”. Someone should tell Cameron that it was Attlee’s government which first started this country on the H-Bomb road. Because you can be sure he knows nothing about it. Too busy pompously advising others to have time to learn a damn thing himself.

Then we get a trendy-lefty Bishop, John Robinson. (You know, Honest to God.) “The one thing that unites me is getting shot of Heath and the Unfair Society.” He doesn’t tell us why he thinks we had a “fair society” under Attlee or Wilson (or what the devil he means by the term). And although he is contributing advice on how to vote, he does not tell us how he would vote himself but actually says that if the election had been on the 3rd instead of the 10th he would have voted differently! If you think I am pulling your leg and even a South Bank fake-socialist couldn’t utter such drivel, go to the library and see.

There is no room to deal with them all so just one more; yes, another Professor, the well-known Crick. What do you think the Professor’s subject is? Politics! Now there’s an expert for you. “My prediction is that I’ll vote Labour again, out of habit.” So on Sunday your actual Professor of Politics does not know how exactly he’s going to vote on Thursday; he can only predict. (Perhaps he had a bet with Ladbrokes on which way he was going to vote.) But, as he indicates, he is really a Labourite. He speaks thus of his Fuehrer: “A leader who has narrowed politics to the business of staying in office regardless, who has betrayed the country over Europe and who, in industrial relations, has become a past master of the pre-emptive cringe”. Which is worse or more lunatic: to vote for a leader because you are a starry-eyed nit who worships him, or to do so even though you know and say in print that he is an opportunist so-and-so?

Let’s squeeze in a reference to Kingsley Amis. He clearly hasn’t a clue and admits this. What he says is that all the parties are a lot of rubbish and he refuses to vote at all. Well, in a way that’s refreshing. He doesn’t understand. No doubt doesn’t care, either. Lucky Jim is all right, Jack. Which leaves one with a thought that has occurred before. The SPGB has always warned against workers following leaders, even if and when the leaders seemed people of some quality. Workers must do their own think. But how much more sensible does our advice appear when it is obvious that the famous names who monopolize the media and make sure that a Socialist voice is almost never heard, are such obvious nincompoops as these professors and bishops and all. Wake up, ye wage-slaves. You can’t possibly be as blind as the moronic specimens who lead you.

L. E. Weidberg

You Have Got What You Voted For (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the last few weeks the politicians and commentators have been disputing about what the electors wanted, what the new Government will do, what will be in its next budget, will the policies work and will it mean more “socialism” or less. They are wasting their time and yours. The main outlines of your future in the next few years are already determined, and it would be just the same with a Tory Government, a Tory-Lib. coalition or a three-party government — a little more there, a little less here but nothing essentially different.

Thirty one Million Voters all Agreed

On a superficial view the electors who voted on 28 February wanted different policies, Tory, Labour, Liberal; or Scottish, Welsh and Irish Nationalism. What in fact they voted for is capitalism, with small variations of no importance. Capitalism with a face lift; capitalism inside or outside Europe; capitalism with a degree of autonomy in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The electors wanted capitalism not Socialism. They have got what they voted for.

What about Nationalization ?

But isn’t the Labour Party different? Does it not stand for more nationalization? Indeed it does. As a result of the work of the Attlee Government after the war we have had a quarter of a century of nationalization in a number of major industries. A quarter of a century for the workers to discover that it doesn’t make a ha’porth of difference. Nationalization is State Capitalism; the so-called “mixed economy” is a mixture of private and State capitalism. Nationalization solves no problem for the workers either here or in Russia and other State-capitalist countries. It has nothing to do with Socialism.

One small event in the recent election shows what kind of party the Labour Party is, for that life-long Tory, Enoch Powell, a dedicated supporter of capitalism, found it possible to vote Labour and tell others to do the same merely on the issue of keeping British capitalism out of capitalist Europe.

Back to the "Good Old Days''

A farcical aspect of the present situation is that these parties of capitalism, Tory, Labour, Liberal and Nationalist, have been forced by capitalism itself to abandon their belief in the futile doctrine of managing capitalism so as to make life better for all. In fact, if not in words, they have had to admit that they can’t manage it and that the best hope they can offer is to go back to the mythical “good old days”.

• Replace a prospective 15 per cent rise of prices by perhaps getting it down to 12 per cent or 10 per cent. Back to poverty on £20 a week instead of poverty on £25 a week.
• Get unemployment down to the level it used to be.
• Go back to the “happy” days before the Prices and Incomes policy and the Industrial Relations Act.
• Get house-building up to the levels of a few years ago.
• Not forgetting that permanent feature in the speeches of every Prime Minister at all times and in all countries — call on the workers to work harder!

Nothing can be done to make capitalism satisfactory for the working class. Socialism is the only hope, not only for Britain but for the world.

Edgar Hardcastle

Who Governs Britain? (1974)

From the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the time you read this Socialist Standard the Election will be over. On 10th February The Observer listed slogans used by the Conservative and Labour Parties in General Elections since the war. A collection of phrases of such fatuousness and irrelevance would be hard to find: questions which should never be asked, appeals which might as well be in Linear B for all the meaning to be found in them.

The latest addition, in this election, is the Tory call “Who governs Britain ?” That is, of course, the question of every election, but its implication on this occasion has been of a vital conflict between representative government and attempts by agitators in trade unions to supplant it. In his first speech of the election campaign, Heath said:

Are moderates going to sound a call loud and clear that we have had enough of the extremists in our society and the danger and disruption they cause, these few who put so much at risk by their abuse of power? . . .  The future of Britain depends on this election.

Wilson has kept out of this argument for the tactical reason that he cannot accept at election-time that there is any alternative to Tory government except Labour government. But, in office, he has sounded the same cry that Communists and other “extremists” have been disrupting the work of running the country — notably, in the seamen’s strike of 1966.

Apparent awareness of the vacuity of election appeals did not stop the Observer a week earlier, on 3rd February, publishing grist for Heath’s mill in an article on the insidious scheming of left-wingers in the trade unions. Two things need to be pointed out at once on this subject. First, the complete failure of the “extremists” — the Communists for fifty years — to achieve what they set out to do with the unions. And second, that discontent with wages and poor living standards is not an agitators’ invention. As the satirical columnist “Yaffle” wrote in 1947 (in the Labour Reynolds’ News, under a Labour government):

No working man ever knows his wage is too small until some professional Fomenter strolls up with a microscope and tells him to look at it.
   No working-class mother ever knows that her children are under-fed until some salaried discontent-monger calls round with a pair of scales and a tape measure and asks her to examine her offspring closely.
   . . . Take warning from the past. Remember the last war and recall how easily a “hero” becomes a “work-shy” and a public nuisance.
    All he had to do was to discover he hadn’t enough to eat, and say so.

Head Against Brick Wall

Does the possibility exist that industrial action on a large enough scale could damage capitalism and governments’ ability to govern? Undoubtedly this is the dream of several left-wing groups. In the speech quoted above, Heath “reminded” the miners’ union that its action “threatened the whole country”, and went on: “That is why we called this election.” Such a statement is likely to give delusions of grandeur to anyone who believes he can “threaten the country”, but it is absurdly untrue. A General Election had to be called before long, and the question for Heath was finding an advantageous time.

The fact is that capitalism and its means of rule, the state, cannot be overthrown by industrial action. Of course changes of government can and do take place — but only at the behest of electoral majorities. Since 1970 (but by no means for the first time) a lot has been heard of “political action” by the trade unions. It should be known that no strike has ever succeeded in unseating a government or even getting one to change its mind about legislation. Certainly from time to time militants are gratified by seeing a change, though it has resulted not from their actions but from a General Election. And what does it amount to? The new administration is committed to run capitalism as the old one was, and by the same means.

Capitalism is not the government but the social system. It means the class ownership of the means of production and distribution, in the modern world. Whether industries are in private hands or under state control makes no difference (as the miners and railwaymen should know). In one case ownership is vested in private individuals, in the other in the capitalist class as a whole. Both ways, the sole purpose of production is profit, and the economic pressures and consequences of capitalism are there. The immediate concomitant of class ownership is the non-ownership of the rest, who are thereby condemned to wage-labour.

The function of the state is to upkeep this system. Before anything else, it is capitalism’s self-provided sanction. It gives class ownership its fortification, through law supported by police and prisons and, in the end, armed force. This is the simple fact which makes the idea of confrontation between militants and the state ridiculous. Before the modem state arrived, mediaeval kings could be overthrown by whatever barons raised stronger armies. It is that world, romanticized, that the confrontationists and Heath both seem to be invoking; the good knight topples the evil one, and the peasantry applaud. Twentieth- century politics is nothing like that.

Seat of Power

What has to be understood also is that this function of the state rests on the support of the electorate. The truth against which militants shut their eyes is that the majority of the working class remain, to date, in favour of capitalism; that is, they have been led to believe it is the natural order or can be brought round on their behalf. (Indeed, it is impossible to grasp how left-wing organizations dc see the working class. Their publications show the workers on one hand duped and doped by the big parties and hypnotized by the Spectacle; on the other hand, permanently seething with revolt. Which is it ?)

Obviously there are rival versions of how to run capitalism. There have also been — not any more, however — groups and individuals who have gone to Parliament believing the system could be reformed out of existence; in these cases, foreseeably, the man was oblivious to the bite and the dog it was that died. The main factor in administering capitalism is finance. Discussing aspects of government in an article in The Guardian on 6th February, Dr. David Owen wrote:

The democratic process as it is represented through our parliamentary system has traditionally focussed on the control of expenditure and this remains the central control mechanism whether the policy issue is related to the EEC or is purely domestic.

The position is that the state is provided with money by the capitalist class through taxation. The differences between the major parties are therefore largely differences over how this money shall be collected and spent. Two important points immediately arise. The first is that taxation, so often used to inflame or allure the electorate, is not a working-class issue at all. The second is that these differences all stand on the assumption that capitalism must be kept in good running order. It is tempting to believe that Labour measures for “soaking the rich” are steps to equality, and to blame their failure on mismanagement; but their basic futility is that they are conceived within the taken-for-granted frame work of capitalism. 

How to use Parliament

There is no hope, then, for reform to undermine or confrontation to overthrow the established order of who governs Britain and every other country. The strength of capitalism’s legality has been demonstrated again and again. Recently there has been the case of the local council which refused to implement an Act of Parliament, and had its powers removed and its members penalized; the same thing happened in the nineteen-fifties in attempted local rebellions against Civil Defence. In 1972 there were the ineffectual demonstrations against the government’s Industrial Relations Act and, later in the year, the disposal of the Angry Brigade group who claimed they could change society with bombs.

“Who governs Britain?” is a non-question. But Socialists have been putting forward for seventy years the means to get rid of the problems over which some workers fume and others think they must be resigned. The capitalist system continues because the majority support it. The day that support ceases, the situation will alter completely. What the majority have to understand is the nature of capitalism, including that a change of government is no change at all, and that only Socialism will be different.

The course of action then is easy. Delegates will be elected to Parliament with a mandate — which no industrial militant or reformist politician has ever had — not to administer capitalism but to abolish it. This is the state put to its final, and for the first time fruitful, use; instead of confronting the coercive machinery, the Socialists’ representatives take possession of it. Class ownership then falls to the ground, and the new world of common ownership can begin.

Robert Barltrop

Rewarding Election Campaign (1974)

Party News from the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

It took a long time to set up: In forty minutes on October 11th it was bare. 307 Finchley Road, our Committee Rooms. 307 is a large corner shop. Its windows ideal for our various posters and propaganda material, read not only by passers by, but seen by hundreds in cars and coaches as day after day they edged along in the almost constant traffic jams. The centre windows had a blown-up copy measuring 8ft. by 4ft. of our Manifesto and Declaration of Principles. The shop was large enough for informal meetings and to display three of the stands from our recent 70th Anniversary Exhibition.

307 became a Socialist centre for just over two weeks. A hive of activity, with some 60/65 members and sympathisers taking part. Our Manifesto (unfortunately not prematurely leaked to the Press — they largely ignored it) came early from the printer. We did not bother with the free post and within seven days had dealt with 18,000 on a house- to-house basis.

All the tube stations in the area were covered night after night by literature sellers. Sales sometimes excellent — sometimes indifferent — but thousands of people in Hampstead now know of the existence of the socialist standard. This activity at some of the stations had been carried on by Westminster Branch throughout the summer and will afford a regular sales outlet in the future.

Never a day went by without a number of people coming into 307 to hear about the SPGB and discuss with us. From mid-morning — often to midnight they came, many hearing of us for the first time. And not just residents of Hampstead. From many parts of the world, Japan, USA, Denmark, Germany, France, Chile etc., they heard the Socialist case. The odd discussion carried on in German and Spanish. Our introductory leaflets in foreign languages were most helpful.

And we held our meetings outdoors, rather grim owing to the weather. Indoors not sparkling, but plenty of informal discussion. We used two sets of public address equipment, one set mounted on a very large mobile caravan, decked from top to bottom with suitable posters.

Literature sales and donations just over £70 (this included about 1,000 copies of the Socialist Standard). We only got a handful of votes (118 in all) but we accomplished our task of making the Socialist case more widely known. Those who took part in the campaign had a most enjoyable and rewarding time; those who were unable to join in missed a treat.

The local press printed a 600-word statement from our candidate (Ralph Critchfield), and we had mention in other local journals and two of the national press. London Broadcasting gave us a couple of minutes and like the other candidates in the area, four minutes on BBC Radio London. This came over very well.

Cyril May

Clear confusion (1985)

From the July 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

No socialist could support the Labour Party because it is a capitalist party. When in government it runs the profit system at the expense of the working class, for that is the only way it can be run. In every election since 1906 the Socialist Party, which was formed two years earlier, has opposed Labour: we have shown consistently that a vote for Labour is a vote for capitalism.

Those who urge workers to vote Labour are anti-socialists who deserve our unreserved hostility. The pseudo-Communist Party of Great Britain has repeatedly told workers to waste their votes on Labour mis-leaders and are partially responsible for the suffering which resulted. The so-called Militant Tendency encourages workers to vote for and join the Labour Party.

The Socialist Workers' Party is also not slow when it comes to confusing workers at election time. In 1974, when Harold Wilson was offering to do a better job of looking after the interests of the bosses than Edward Heath, the SWP ran the following message in their pre-election issue of Socialist Worker:

. . . every socialist, every worker must spend all the days before the polling day shouting two simple slogans, at work, in the home, and whenever anyone will listen: DEFEND UNIONS - VOTE LABOUR 

The striking firemen, NUPE workers, Grunwick pickets and numerous other trade unionists who came into conflict with the viciously anti-working-class 1974-9 Labour government can judge for themselves the wisdom of the SWP's advice.

But did the SWP learn the lesson? On 4 June 1983, just before the last general election. their leading confusionist, Alex Callinicos, made a prediction about the election result with which socialists could agree (we assume he arrived at the conclusion by accident and will endeavour to avoid such clarity in future): "Labour in office would attack the living standards of its own supporters in an effort to restore profits".

The headline of Socialist Worker the following week stated: "STOP THE TORIES — VOTE LABOUR".

Although the various Leftist sects all urge workers to vote for capitalism at election time, they all claim to be divided from one another by deeply held principles. The Communist Party calls the SWP and the Militant Tendency "ultra-Left" and the latter two groups have spent years telling those who will listen how wrong the other is. Now, the SWP has decided that it is time to patch up its differences with the Militant crowd (differences which are invisible to the clear eye) and in Socialist Worker of 11 May a full-page "open letter" is addressed to the editorial board of Militant. (Note that it is not addressed to the Militant followers, but to the leaders.) Now, socialists do not give a damn whether these two anti-socialist Leftist sects remain apart or unite; the only benefit to the workers would be if they ceased to propagate their confused ideas altogether. But we are sure that readers will want to study this rare gem of political stupidity:

  Our attitude is clear. We are for a Labour government. Not because we believe it will be a government in the interests of workers, but precisely to test in practice again the reformist road.
   We believe a future Labour government will not act in the interests of the working class. On the contrary, it will act like every previous Labour government — in the interests of the bosses' class.
   And. since the crisis of British capitalism is deeper now than in the seventies, a new Labour government will be more vicious, and more reactionary, than the Wilson-Callaghan governments — the first since 1945 to succeed in cutting wages, while increasing unemployment and savaging the welfare state. (Their emphases.)

Their attitude is clear, alright — clearly round the bend. Vote Labour in the next election in order to test the reformist road? And then they go on to tell workers, on the basis of previous test-runs, precisely what damage a Labour government would do.

The trouble with the SWP is that they treat politics as a game and waste the time of those who take them seriously by offering half-baked riddles rather than the clear advice socialists give: do not vote Labour because "it will act like every previous Labour government — in the interest of the bosses' class”.

Steve Coleman

We wrote this fifty years ago! (1974)

From the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE GREAT SHAM FIGHT AT THE POLLS 

The election, in spite of its heat, was a sham fight, not in the sense that any of the party machines was worked at less than full pressure, but in the sense that there was no issue in dispute worth fighting about. The Conservatives said it was a fight against Socialism, but they left Socialism alone and concentrated their energies on mudslinging and appeals to the most brutal and ignorant prejudices. The Liberals had no time to spare from their task of preventing a stampede among their own sheep. They raised the dear-bread cry to hedge the right wing off from the Conservatives, and the Bolshevik bogey to hold in the Liberal left wing. The result was heavy losses in both directions. The Labour Party was only too willing to take up every trivial challenge its opponents chose to throw down, and avoid not only the question of Socialism, but also what it says are its own principles . . . Socialism itself, even if the word may have crept in now and again to satisfy the left-wingers, was not treated as practical politics.

How often are we told by ‘Socialists’ who join the Labour Party of the magnificent opportunities they will have of carrying on Socialist propaganda. Usually their ‘Socialist propaganda’ consists in helping some place-hunter into the House of Commons by defending a sickening mixture of the platitudes of degenerate Christianity and the exploded nostrums of the trashy Liberal economists of the late nineteenth century, which is all the typical Labour election address contains.

The Communists made themselves ridiculous, as usual. Communists at Deptford were delirious with joy because Bowerman, supporter of a Bill to make Communist propaganda illegal, was returned again. If they received orders from Moscow to do so they would hang themselves.

Only when the workers become Socialists will the great sham fights at the polls give place to a real political struggle between capital and the working class.

From an editorial in the SOCIALIST STANDARD, November 1924. This was the election that ended the first Labour Government in Britain.