The New Year—A New World? (1942)

From the January 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Another year is being added to the history of human existence and travail. As is usual, many will look to the corning year with a new hope, forgetting, if only for a moment, the trials and worries of the old—the fountain of human zest is truly inexhaustible. Dominating the thoughts and schemes of all is the war; a war that has inevitably swept its flaming way across the whole world, destroying black, brown, yellow and white alike in its fiery grasp. Thus another link is forged between the workers of the world, for capitalism bestows upon them all, “without distinction of race or sex,” the privilege of perishing on its behalf.

Total war, with its horrible outrages upon civilians, including children, as distinct from the armies engaged in combat, is not the hellish invention of a few individuals; it is the logical expression of present-day capitalism in military conflicts. ”War,” said Clausewitz, “is a continuation of politics by other means.” And politics, we would add, are a continuation of economic conflict by other means.

Preliminaries having been disposed of, the five great Powers enter the scene of conflict in order to contend in the final stages of the struggle for world-domination. The United States, Britain and Russia, the Grand Alliance, versus the challenging axis, Germany and Japan.

The position of the U.S.S.R. is particularly interesting. Having been promised “that they would not pull the chestnuts out of the fire for anybody” (Stalin’s speech to the Soviets in March, 1939), the Russian people have yet had to bear the full weight of attack from Germany. As a consequence, Russia has taken her place with the Western democracies, disproving once and for all the Communist fairy tale of a capitalist world in arms against “the one Socialist country,”

It is to be expected that this alliance, already close as shown by repeated conferences between Stalin and leading spokesmen of the British ruling class such as Lord Beaverbrook and Mr. Eden, will be knit even firmer by the exigencies of the war and continue after the conclusion of hostilities.

As a result of the unparalleled battles across the vast spaces of Russian territory, the German armies appear to have sustained their first serious setback of this war. The Fuehrer, claiming infallibility, has taken over supreme command from his military chiefs, and signs are not wanting that this egomaniac is planning fresh assaults and more graveyards for his “beloved soldiers.”

We cannot tell how much longer the German masses will be content with their role of dumb or willing instruments for wealthy and ambitious cliques but a day of reckoning seems not far distant. Perhaps the military caste of junkers who have provided the real motive-force for German military adventures will not get off so lightly as they did in 1918. Then they found a convenient “front,” the Social-Democratic Party, which it repaid by helping to crush when military rehabilitation was nearing success. May the fate of the once powerful German Labour Party be a warning and a lesson for the future.

Whilst Nazi speeches are betraying uneasiness, having descended down the scale from the bombast of victory to pleas and threats, the lords of the British Empire have almost recovered their normal level of self-assurance. Confidently they tell their loyal subjects behind the benches and the guns to be ready to take the offensive in 1943. Alluring prospects! Further evidence of our capitalists’ measure of working-class intelligence can be obtained. They do not find it necessary even to explain how they are able to spend more than £12 million a day on the war alone when only ten short years ago this very same ruling class declared they would be bankrupt unless they took the margarine off the bread of the unemployed to the amount of a mere £5 million a year.

This sorry tale of working-class deception could be continued ad nauseum. Its success can only be explained by the workers’ misunderstanding of social problems; it provides a crushing answer to those who sneer at our insistence on education in Socialist principles.

On the other side of the world—in the Pacific Ocean—total war has descended with murderous suddenness on a number of islands which, with their natural beauty, fertility, and sub-tropical climate, must have provided their people with idyllic conditions of life before the appearance of capitalism. Unfortunately for the present inhabitants, their neighbourhood is the source of much of the oil and rubber that feeds the capitalist wheels of war and peace. Japan, with its modern industry and feudal politics, has chosen the proverbial “gambler’s throw” in an endeavour to seize these vital depositories and with them an empire in the East. Yet even in politically backward Japan working-class ideas have already made their appearance, and the Japanese proletariat may yet surprise their masters before very long. A political structure which refuses to be modified according to the needs of a more advanced economy, that factor plus a war-weary proletariat has often spelled trouble for a ruling class in the past.

Indeed, when we look at the world in the pages of the press or through the other avenues, all of them controlled by groups of capitalists, we only see little more than the comings and goings of the “Great Ones,” the statesmen and the generals, the industrial magnates and other so-called “personages.” But behind these ceremonials, these speeches trumpeted through the ether to the four corners of the earth, behind the head-lines of the day, there looms a shadow—the working-class of the world with its own problems. These problems the grandiose strategy of war does not touch. True, at present this shadow is not very big—-no bigger, perhaps, than a man’s fist, as the saying goes. But then a working-class can be troublesome at times. That is why, during odd moments between labouring on schemes for new and more gigantic battles, there are being concocted in the cabinet-rooms and chancellories of our rulers new and magic potions—not, however, to be administered until after the job of war is done and victory gained.

The finest ingredients only are being used. There is a “charter” containing “freedom” and “social justice”; competing with it is a “new world order” and even an “asiatic co-prosperity sphere.”

So far there are no signs anywhere of the working-class being dazzled by these verbal rays of “sunshine in the future.”

On the contrary, whilst workers are generally in support of their rulers at conflict, their reactions to these promises of a better world after the war are largely negative. They fight more out of a feeling that they would be worse off should they be defeated than the belief that victory will bring a “quasi utopia.” At the present time the workers are not given much to speculation about the future. The personal problems which the war has brought into every working-class home are intense. Like the shadows they are, shadows of a dark age, they cloud the worker’s mind; only the immediate issues are his concern.

But that mood will pass. When it does, he will ask of himself, of his fellow worker: “Must this go on, this world of wars, of poverty and worry? Is it not possible for humanity to find a different plan for living, one that would give us security and peace?”

Then may it be that Socialism will take its rightful place in the consciousness of the workers.

Sid Rubin

All Quiet on the Western Front (1951)

Film Review from the April 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Any work of art which presents the truth about modern war is a rarity, and therefore Socialists should view the film “All Quiet on the Western Front” with particular interest. Made in 1930, directed by Lewis Milestone, it is based on Remarque’s famous novel of the 1914-1918 war as seen through the eyes of the ordinary German soldier.

The film opens in 1914, amid the patriotic fervour of the first days of the war. Whilst a military band blares outside a school, we see a group of youths inside all eagerly clamouring to join the army. Only one of their number tries to make a stand against them, but afraid of being called a coward, he reluctantly joins them, bewildered and terrified.

A brilliant sequence follows of the training of these volunteers, and here Milestone shows us how each individual is gradually converted into an automaton in uniform. This is one of the key points of the film, and is developed later in the battle scenes.

After a period in the trenches, where they get their first shattering experience of modern war, these youngsters retire behind the lines for a rest. Here the film becomes most interesting and outspoken. Whilst the soldiers are wolfing their rough food, they discuss the war and its causes. Some of the men think they are fighting because of the natural wickedness of the enemy, whilst others do not know why they are at war at all. One by one they speak, and we realize that all these men have been led blindly into a holocaust they do not understand. Eventually one of them says that the politicians and financiers are to blame, and that they should be the ones to do the fighting. This whole scene is most movingly and truthfully presented.

The greatest sequence of the film follows—the famous “Charge Across the Trenches.” The French attack, and move in hordes across No Mans Land, mown down by the German gunfire. The camera moves along the German trench, looking out on the advancing infantry, and with superb cutting and camera movement, Milestone shows us the ghastly carnage. We are made to feel that all these figures, the oncoming French, the Germans, the machine-gunners, the soldiers in the terrible fight with bayonets and bare fists, are not individuals, but a mass of men converted into brute animals, acting as animals do. A French soldier runs up to the barbed wire and places his hands on it, preparatory to leaping over. A shell bursts, and when the smoke clears, we see just a pair of hands dangling on the wire. The Germans are pushed back, but counter-attack. Now we are in the French trenches, and the camera moves along in the. opposite direction, showing the slaughter of the German troops. In this way is shown the link between the German and French soldiers, that they are really brothers.

The rest of the film is devoted to the deepening horror felt by the German troops, in particular the principal character (played by Lew Ayres). He is at first shown as an idealistic boy, but at the end he becomes an embittered man, revolted by his experience.

The film naturally suffers from the inexperience of the actors, unskilled in the then new sound-film technique. This is especially true of Lew Ayres, noticeably in the tragic scene with his mother, and also when he is trapped in a shell hole with a dying French soldier.

Despite these faults, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a good film, and its recent general release is doubly welcome. It should remind any workers who may have doubts, what war means to them.

Derek R. Bowen

Scapa Flow. (1919)

Editorial from the July 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The comic element for the month has undoubtedly been supplied by the scuttling of the interned German fleet at Scapa Flow. One’s first thoughts, naturally, upon hearing the news, were to congratulate the naval authorities upon the arrangements they had made for the safe-keeping of the “enemy” ships. It seemed so child like to leave the vessels in the hands of German crews, under the command of German officers, without any sort of a guard on board — so like the simple sailor of tradition!

But the simple sailor won’t have it. He with eager promptitude reminds the world at large that he never had the opportunity of preventing the scuttling, that the German war-ships were not surrendered, but interned, and as such had certain rights under international law which precluded the proper safe-guarding of them, and he throws the blame on the statesmen who failed to secure the surrender instead of the internment of the “enemy” fleet.

The incident and its sequel reveals again the sordid reality behind the mask of undying and fervid loyalty with which the Allies have endeavoured to hide their countenances, must as, all through the war, or at least until their prospects of getting licked properly “put the wind up ’em,” the Allied nations have been grasping each at its own coveted share of the spoils, striving to occupy “enemy” territory on the principle that possession is nine points of the international law, and because they could not trust each other, in spite of all the secret treaties —secret because they were too foul with filthy traffiking to stand the light of day—so they could not trust each other with the German ships. All the talk of the “honour of our gallant Allies” has been so much tosh. They have known each other for the thieves they are, and that is why they choose rather to trust the German fleet to German crews than have them surrendered, with the prospect that those to whom they were surrendered might find it too painful to part with them again.

And that is why the German ships lie at the bottom of the ocean.