Material World : Reformism in the USA: Bernstein rides again (2026)

The Material World column from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article in Counterpunch in June on ‘What’s Wrong with the American Left’ David Schultz says he is writing in the tradition of ‘the democratic socialism of Eduard Bernstein, who tied the classless society to the ballot rather than the barricade, and of Michael Harrington whose The Other America forced a prosperous country to look at its own poor’.

Bernstein, he says, was ‘betting that universal suffrage could be turned into economic democracy’. Bernstein, Harrington and others he mentions ‘believed, as I do, that the point of the left is to assert that capitalism does not get to dictate how democracy operates, but the reverse’. The reverse is of course that democracy gets to dictate how capitalism operates. Which is what Bernstein’s reformism set out to try and do. Whatever else might be said about US self-confessed reformists, they are more theoretically minded than their counterparts this side of the ocean. Ask a reformist here who Bernstein was and they wouldn’t know (unless they had been in some Trotskyist sect when they were a student).

Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932) was a member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) who, in exile in London, had worked closely with Engels. He had even written a book in 1895, applying the materialist conception of history to the English revolution, published in English in 1930 as Cromwell and Communism which introduced its readers to the Levellers and the Diggers. At the turn of the 20th century, however, he sparked off a controversy in the German and international Social Democratic movement by suggesting that Marx and Engels had been wrong on certain key points and criticising those who argued that socialism would result from a violent revolution following a catastrophic collapse of capitalism. Instead, it would come about, and was in fact already coming about, as a result of democracy gradually spreading to all aspects of society, including the organisation of the production and distribution of wealth. The book in which he expounded this ‘Revisionist’ position was given the English title of Evolutionary Socialism. Rosa Luxembourg’s pamphlet Reform or Revolution is a polemic directed against Bernstein. We joined in the ‘Revisionist controversy’ with an article in the October 1909 Socialist Standard entitled ‘Bungling Bernstein’.

An article in the January 1956 Socialist Standard on ‘The Fabians, Bernstein and Revisionism’ summarised Bernstein’s views as:

‘That the numbers and wealth of large and small Capitalists tended to increase and society to become more democratic. That class antagonisms were being modified by ethical and patriotic considerations. That crises were decreasing in size and frequency through a process of adaptation largely influenced by trusts, cartels and the like. That the Materialist Conception of History overestimated the economic factor; the influence of the economic factor was diminishing whilst the influence of ideological factors, including the ethical, was increasing. That Capitalism had undergone fundamental changes since the middle of the 19th century when Marx made his analyses, but, though true for the time of which he was writing, they no longer applied. That the theory of surplus value was incomplete and needed the addition of the theory of final utility. That the workers have now become citizens of the country and therefore have a fatherland to defend. That as Germany is becoming more and more dependent upon products from the colonies, these colonies should be developed and protected. Savages have only a conditional right to the land occupied by them; the higher civilization of advanced countries can claim a higher right. That Socialism is a long way ahead and will only come by a process that is gradual and almost imperceptible; consequently we should not worry about the future but concentrate on the present, on the extension of the political and economic rights of the working classes and “In all Advanced countries we see the privileges of the Capitalist bourgeoisie yielding step by step to democratic organisations” (Preface, page XI). That the Social Democratic Party should form alliances with the Capitalist parties nearest to them.’

It is easy to see from this why Bernstein is regarded by Social Democrat reformists as their mentor. He anticipated what after WW1 became the practice of all European Social Democratic parties, including the SPD, despite some of them still being committed on paper to Marxism. It was also the practice of the Labour Party even though they never made a theory of it.

Bernstein’s gradualism has been tried for over a hundred years now. But the result has not been any progress towards socialism. Production is in still the hands of profit-seeking companies and oligarchs. The economy is still driven by the pursuit of profits. There may be a ‘welfare state’ of sorts but that’s being eroded not extended. There is no democracy in workplaces. Rather than the Social Democratic reformists gradually changing capitalism it has been the other way round. Experience of governing under capitalism has changed them into mere managers of the capitalist economic system, accepting and applying its logic that priority must be given to profit-making.

Although Bernstein was not all bad — he did oppose WW1 and he was right about capitalism not collapsing of its own accord — his gradualist reformism must be pronounced a failure. Political democracy has not got to dictate how capitalism operates and never will. It is rather that capitalism dictates how governments act by giving them only the choice of putting profits first. He bet that ‘universal suffrage could be turned into economic democracy’ and lost.

Adam Buick

Correspondence: Reply to James Fletcher. (1910)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reply to James Fletcher.

The Social-Democratic Party in Germany occupies a similar position to the party similarly named here. Its programme (the Erfuter Program) consists of the theoretical part, based on the teachings of Marx—the Materialist Conception of History, the Surplus Value theory and the Class Struggle—and the practical, consisting of reforms and palliatives ; and we allege that the whole existence of the German S.D.P. has been spent in the advocacy of those reforms, to the detriment of Socialist propaganda. In the early days of our party we held the erroneous view—still entertained by the S.L.P. of Gt. Britain and America—that the German workers must obtain certain reforms because the revolution from feudalism to capitalism was not complete. But we found that conditions there make a Socialist Party quite as possible as here. A small number of members of the German S.D.P. take up our position and work for the formation of a straight party. As to our use of the expression “our German comrades,” it were a sorry state of affairs were we not in a position to so express ourselves, while Bebel’s action in 1906 speaks for itself.

Notes by the Way: South Africa the Golden (1946)

The Notes by the Way Column from the September 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Africa the Golden

Gold mining is by far the largest industry in South Africa. It employs 40,000 Europeans and 360,000 natives. It pays more than £17,000,000 a year dividends to the shareholders. What it pays to the natives and how they are treated has been described in an article by E. S. Sachs, South African Workers’ Delegate to the I.L.O. (Manchester Guardian, 19/8/46).

“They receive an average cash wage of 2s. 2d. per shift . . . Part of this meagre wage is deducted to repay advances made to the worker on recruitment for boots and other purposes. The African worker must also buy a cheap mattress or sacking for use on the concrete bunk on which he sleeps in the compound where he is forced to live. He must also buy some clothing . . . There is no extra pay for overtime or Sunday work. He is provided with food and medical attention free, but receives no sick pay. The Chamber of Mines estimates the cost of food to be 5.28d. and medical services 1.15d. per shift per man. The only paid leave the worker gets is on Good Friday and Christmas Day.”

In 1943 a Government Commission recommended an increase of 3d. a shift, but the owners refused to pay it, and “the Government did nothing except introduce an emergency regulation prohibiting meetings of Africans on land proclaimed as a mining area.”

They are not forbidden by law to form trade unions, and many are organised, but they “may not leave their compounds without a special pass from their employer and are subject to severe penalties, including imprisonment with hard labour, for absenting themselves from work or for any breach of their contract.”

The natives have had no increase of pay since 1914 and their union has pointed out that their wages were actually much higher 60 years ago than to-day.

We wonder if the native workers derive much comfort from the United Nations Charter, of which South Africa is a signatory, proclaiming the determination of the upholders “to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom!”

An appropriate footnote is the following news item in The Star (July 24th, 1946) announcing the arrival by ‘plane of a cargo of very important persons from South Africa, on official and private business in London.

“In the silver Skymasler “Drakensburg,” belonging to South African Airways, were 34 millionaires, multi-millionaires, or near millionaires, including Van der Byl, Field-Marshal Smuts’ right-hand man and a leading figure in South African industry. The party, most of them from Johannesburg, were met by Sir Eric Crankshaw, Secretary of the Government’s Hospitality Fund."

Russia, Turkey and the Dardanelles

While British Imperialism seeks to safeguard capitalist interests in the Middle East by keeping troops in Transjordan and Palestine and by military agreements with Egypt and Iraq, Russian Imperialism counters with a demand that Turkey shall permit the setting up of Russian military forces on Turkish territory in the Dardanelles area and by promoting its own puppet movement in Persian Azerbaijan. Russia has also been carrying on propaganda to secure the support of Arabs in the Middle East countries as a means of reducing British influence there. In short, the two old firms carry on as all through the 19th century notwithstanding that Russia is now labelled “Communist” and Britain “Labour.”

Twenty-four years ago, when Russia was weak, it was Russian and British Communist Party policy to pose as the friends of the Turks because Turkey was then in conflict with Britain, and British troops were in occupation of Constantinople and the Dardanelles. The Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain accordingly produced a declaration demanding that Turkey be freed from the Imperialist occupation forces.

“The E.C. of the C.P.G.B. sends its greeting to the British Muslim Association and desires to join with it in the demand . . . that Constantinople and Adrianople shall be restored unconditionally to the custody of the Turkish people.” 

(The Communist, September 23rd, 1922.)

Now Russia is stronger so the old policy goes on the scrap heap and the demand is made that Russia have forces on Turkish soil.

The same resolution went on to demand that North Africa, including Tripoli, be given complete independence. It also opposed the “insidious regime” of the League of Nations mandatory system.

In view of this it is entertaining to observe that at the Paris meeting of the Big Four Powers in May of this year Russia put in a claim for a United Nations Trusteeship or Mandate for herself over Tripoli, a claim that was later abandoned in face of opposition and watered down to a claim for the appointment of a Russian Administrator with an Italian deputy and an international advisory committee. (Daily Telegraph, 11/5/46).

Longer Life—and Shorter

While one body of the scientist hirelings ot capitalism are busy improving atom bombs, germ warfare and other means of destruction, we read the following (Evening Standard, 16/8/46): —

“First details are disclosed to-day of the existence in Britain of research on making people live longer and becoming more useful . . . the possibility of increasing life to as much as 200 year has been freely discussed.”

3 Per Cent. by Another Name

“New York, Friday.—A U.S. agreement to lend £2,500,000 to Saudi Arabia, announced to-day, contains no mention of interest payments. 

The word ‘interest’ was omitted because Moslems oppose on religious grounds the charging or paying of interest. Under the heading ‘Thanksgiving,’ however. Saudi Arabia will pay the usual 3 per cent.”

(Daily Mail, 10/8/46.)

German Social Democrats and the Russian Zone Election

Elections are being held in the Russian Zone of Germany, and as, under what the Communists call democracy, they are prevented by the Russians from putting up candidates, the S.D.P. has advised its members to spoil their voting papers. The following appeal was published in their journal, the “Social Democrat” :–

“The election in your zone is not a democratic election. Should you, therefore, stay away from the poll altogether? That would really be best. but for many of you it might have heavy consequences. Our advice is, therefore, that you should take part in the poll but demonstrate against constraint of conscience by making your voting papers clearly invalid. Make this action a united and powerful demonstration for freedom. Do not divide yourselves by voting here or there for some other party that appears to you as a lesser evil.”

The Manchester Guardian correspondent (20/8/46) who quotes this, describes it as “political folly,” on the ground that it would be better to vote for the Christian Democratic Union or some other group in order to strengthen the opposition to the Communists (now calling themselves “United Socialist Party”).

While we are opposed to the reformism of the German Social-Democrats, this refusal any longer to vote for the “lesser evil” indicates a marked improvement on their past behaviour.

Plenty—For Those Who Have the Money

The following quotations, one from the Daily Worker on British capitalism and the other by Mr. Hugh Chevins on Russian State Capitalism, need no comment: —

“Luxury Feeders. Why should there be, to all intents and purposes, no limitation at all on the amount and variety of food which luxury purchasers can acquire, while the bulk of the families in the country have to prepare for still further sacrifices on the food front?” (Daily Worker, 8/7/46.)

“It was once said that anyone may dine at the Ritz in London—if he can pay the price. The same remark applies with equal truth and more irony to eating at the smart hotels and restaurants in Communist Moscow. . . . The average money wage is reliably estimated to be about 350 roubles a month. That amount can be spent in a single meal with the utmost ease at the Metropole, National, Moscow or Savoy Hotels, and at the Astoria, Caucasus or Europa restaurants, but only by the privileged class.” (Mr. Hugh Chevins, Industrial Correspondent, Daily Telegraph, 9/8/46, after a recent visit to Moscow.)

Shades of the Versailles Treaty

It was common talk early in the recent war that at least the politicians would remember the errors, the cynicism and the idiocies of the Versailles Treaty after last war and avoid them this time. Here is the lament of the Manchester Guardian on the outcome of the labours of the foreign ministers of the Allied

Powers to date : —

“That it is a bad job few will deny. As they stand the draft treaties are deplorable. They follow no accepted political or economic principles. They are both unjust and inconsistent. No attempt has been made to discover the facts or consult the will of the inhabitants by commissions of inquiry or plebiscites. Each one is a compromise between rival Powers who openly fear and distrust each other. Even so they represent the best that can be done by patient and enduring diplomacy, and as such they will be welcomed by a weary Europe. Blessed are the peacemakers—even if the peace in this case is one which passeth all understanding.” 

(Manchester Guardian, 10/7/46.)

Edgar Hardcastle

Before Hitler (1938)

From the July 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

The decade before Hitler was for German capitalism mainly a period of stabilisation and attempted recovery. Many new parties and groups were thrown up, ranging from different brands of Communism to currency reform fanatics and types of Fascism. The working class, not understanding Socialism, but merely possessing a reformist outlook and suffering deeply, alternately swung their support over to each fresh demagogue, and illusion and despondency were the inevitable result. American capitalism, after helping to smash Germany, now undertook to restore it. This served two purposes. It provided a new outlet for American investments and rebuilt a formidable competitor to Britain, as an offset against the growing Anglo-American rivalry for world dominance.

If it was possible to restore Germany to a healthy economic (capitalist) condition, the prospects would be rosy for profitable financial investment.

Through the Experts Commission (chairman, General Dawes) the chaotic reparations demands and methods of payment were regularised, and German firms, municipalities and local governments were able to obtain the foreign loans necessary to resume their former profit-making activities. The aim of the Dawes Plan was to make of Germany one vast international (and especially American) financial undertaking. American capitalists came to the rescue (on terms) of their German brethren, and in all but name Germany became an American colony. The foreign loans gave such an impetus to German trade that for five years (1924 to 1929) German capitalism was able to quite easily pay its interest claims and reparations demands. It was, however, without solid foundation, for its prosperity was only made possible with the assistance of foreign loans.

Guarantees to the American and other capitalists were included in the Dawes Plan. The State railways were taken out of the control of the Reich and placed in the hands of a company formed for the purpose. The Reichsbank was also taken away from the German Government and transformed into an instrument under “foreign” capitalist control, allowing pickings for the home capitalists, etc. French capitalism now received its reparations share regularly and withdrew its forces from the Ruhr. Herr Stresemann now devoted his energies to securing the evacuation of the Rhineland by the Allied armies, and out of this need of German capitalism was born the Locarno Pact and Germany joined the League of Nations. An era of mad speculation commenced; for the sake of American money German capitalism abolished some of its customs, including Martial Law. The Generals made way for the Dollar.

With the death of President Ebert an election took place (1925). The Social-Democratic candidate, Braun, came second with 8 million votes, withdrew their candidate and supported the nominee (Marx) of the reactionary Catholic Centre Party, as the “ lesser evil."

At the elections in 1928 the Labour Party obtained its greatest victory—over 9 million votes, and the Communists three and a quarter million—on a programme differing very little from the ordinary capitalist parties. Very few among the voters wanted or understood Socialism and were mainly captured by the promise to break the shackles of Versailles. The Social-Democrats now joined a “People’s Front" and entered the capitalist coalition government, demonstrating their political unity and ideological agreement with Stresemann and the capitalists in general. Germany had its Snowdens, MacDonalds, etc. The chief task confronting this motley crew was to make Germany “independent,” that is to say, now that German industry was yielding large profits, the home capitalists wished to limit the grip of American finance and reap the harvest for themselves. The rôle of the Social-Democrats was the same the world over—to act as the facade and to harness the working class to the capitalist machine. For this they received the usual Judas price—a share in the Government and the large salaries that go with it.

Severing became Minister of Interior, Wissell Minister of Labour and Hilferding Finance. The Dawes Plan was superseded by a definite settlement named after its chief-financier, Young. Under the Young Plan the payments to be made by Germany were definitely fixed for 60 years. German capitalism was now master in its own house and the control imposed by the Dawes Plan finished and the Army of Occupation marched out of the Rhineland. Just at this time the “world economic crisis” made its appearance. The financial smash in the New York Stock Exchange let loose a flood which swept everything before it. How this affected Germany will be seen in our concluding article.

Lew.

Editorial: Marx, Methodism and the Labour Party (1950)

Editorial from the July 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Morgan Phillips, Secretary of the Labour Party has caused a stir by the way he has restated the outlook of his Party. In a speech to a gathering of European Labour Parties at Copenhagen he elaborated the proposition that the philosophy and method of the British organisation is “Methodist rather than Marxist.” Here are some of his statements.

“British socialism owes little to Karl Marx, either in theory or practice, or in its methods of organising the working classes. Marx’s economics as well as his politics were challenged and finally renounced by the founders and teachers of the British Labour Party.” 

“Marx’s conception of the political organisation required for waging the class war was not accepted by the British Labour movement.”

". . . Marxism as a philosophy of materialism, as an economic theory, and as a form of political organisation with revolutionary intention and aim, is historically an aberrant tendency in the development of British Socialism.”

“British Socialists do not consider it at all a reproach or a source of weakness in their intellectual and political positions that their movement has been profoundly influenced by religious thought. The very organisation of our British working-class movement embodies methods we have taken over from religious institutions.” (Manchester Guardian, 3/6/50).

Among the religious influences he mentioned particularly is Methodism. There is nothing new in this. It was said by many of the early leaders of the Labour Party and was a commonplace criticism of them in S.P.G.B. propaganda forty years ago.

In 1922 the late Phillip Snowden wrote of his Party:—“The British Labour Party is certainly not Socialist in the sense in which socialism is understood upon the Continent. It is not based upon the recognition of the class struggle; it does not accept the teachings of Marx.” (Manchester Guardian Reconstruction Supplement, October 26, 1922).

But though it is not new it has a significance now that it did not have years ago. When the British Labour Party was younger, before it had had experience as a government, and before the Communists seized power in Russia, the lead among the Labour Parties of Europe was taken by the German Party. It was the German Social Democratic Party that was largest and seemed to be most successful and nearest to becoming the government. The future of Labourism throughout Europe was thought to be bound up with the fate of the German party. Like all of the continental parties the German S.D.P. was traditionally hostile towards religion and the church and paid lip service to Marxism.

Now several new factors have brought the British Labour Party into greater prominence and influence. The German S.D.P. was greatly weakened by the war and by the rise of the Communists; Marxism has been brought into popular disrepute by the distortion of it associated with the Russian dictatorship; the new balance of world capitalism has produced the line-up of America, Britain and Western Europe on the one side against Russia and her satellites on the other; and lastly the British Labour Party is now almost alone among the Labour parties of Europe in holding governmental power. In these circumstances the lead among the Labour Parties has been taken by the British Party, and the prospect is that the traditional lip service paid to Marxism by the Continental parties will be allowed to fall into the background.

This development represents a certain change; but no progress towards a greater understanding of socialism. It exposes the fundamental lack of socialist principle that characterises all the Labour parties, and shows the extent to which their policies are in fact bound up with the requirements of capitalism in the various countries. It needs to be studied in relation to another pronouncement made by Morgan Phillips at the same conference. Because the West European Trade Unions and Labour parties are now backing Marshall Aid and the tie-up with U.S.A., and the American trade unions play an increasingly influential role in the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in its fight with the Communist World Federation of Trade Unions, it becomes expedient to whitewash American capitalism, hence the following from Mr. Phillips: —

“Socialist prejudice against the United States must be exposed as out of date. For more than two decades the United States has been the most progressive country in the world outside Britain and Scandinavia. . . . At present most European Governments are less progressive than the Truman administration. I hope you will forgive me if I say that we must not be too smug about European traditions. It must not be forgotten that in the period between the two world wars America reacted to the world crisis by producing Roosevelt and the New Deal while Europe produced Hitler and Mussolini. Totalitarianism is in fact a European product.”

(Manchester Guardian 5/6/50).

There is nothing at all illogical in the British Labour Party, which stands for the reform of capitalism, looking with a sympathetic eye on Roosevelt’s and Truman’s reforms of American capitalism. It does not surprise Socialists though it may be a bitter pill for those Labourites to swallow who have liked to cherish the delusion that the Labour Party stands for something distinctive. Like Morgan Phillips they will seek comfort in the notion that at least they have been consistent in abhorring totalitarianism. But even here they are doomed to disappointment. Just now Mr. Phillips is asking them to admire the progressiveness of democratic American capitalism under Truman but not so long ago—before the opening of the “cold war”—Mr. Phillips was equally admiring of totalitarian capitalism in Russia., He visited Russia in 1946 and wrote up his observations in the Daily Herald (20 August, 1946). This is one of his remarks: —

“In Britain we are only just beginning our Socialist planning; in Russia it has been going on for 28 years. In some ways British social standards are well ahead of the Russian, and in others the Russians can teach us a lot.”

Before leaving Mr. Phillips and his views on Socialism we may usefully quote what he has to say of the aim the British.Labour Party sets before itself:—“It promises . . .  the attainment of a planned economy in which proletarian exploitation is not tolerated, and where the fundamental freedoms of the individual citizens, worker and wage-earner are safeguarded ” Marx showed conclusively that the exploitation of the working class cannot be ended while the workers continue to be a wage-earning class, hence his insistence that the unions should see the need to aim at the abolition of the wages system. Morgan Phillips, lacking Marx’s understanding of capitalism and socialism, cannot even perceive that the continued existence of the wages system in Russia and Britain makes nonsense of the claim in both countries to have ended exploitation and introduced socialism. He glories in the fact that the Labour Party rejected Marxism but cannot see that in so doing it was rejecting Socialism.

Engels' review of Capital (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Universal suffrage has added to the already existing parliamentary parties a new one, the Social-Democratic Party. In the last elections to the North-German Reichstag it nominated its own candidates in most large towns, in all factory districts, and six or eight of its deputies were returned. In comparison with the last election but one it has developed considerably greater strength and it can therefore be assumed that, for the present at least it is still growing. It would be folly to wish to continue to pass over in splendid silence the existence, activity and doctrines of such a party in a country in which universal suffrage has laid the final decision in the hands of the most numerous and poorest class.

However divided and unsettled the few Social-Democratic deputies may be among themselves, it can be assumed with assurance that all groups of that party will welcome the present book as their theoretical bible, the arsenal from which they will draw their most substantial arguments. On these grounds alone the book already deserves particular attention. Rut its contents too are such as will arouse interest. Whereas Lassalle's main argumentation — and in political economy Lasalle was but a disciple of Marx — is confined to continual repetition of Ricardo's so-called wages law, we have before us a work which treats the whole relation of capital and labour in its connection with the whole of economic science with indisputably rare erudition and which sets as its ultimate aim "to lay hare the economic law of motion of modern society”, and thereby, after obviously sincere investigations carried out with unmistakable knowledge of the subject, comes to the conclusion that the whole “capitalist mode of production” must be abolished. We should, however, like further to draw attention to the fact that, apart from the conclusions, the author in the course of his work presents quite a number of the major points of economics in a completely new light and in purely scientific questions arrives at results which are greatly at variance with current economics and wInch orthodox economists must seriously criticise and scientifically refute if they do not wish to see the doctrine they have so far professed founder. In the interest of science it is desirable that a polemic should develop very soon in specialised journals precisely on these points.

Marx begins by expounding the relation between commodity and money, the most essential of which was already published some time ago in a special work. Then he goes on to capital and here we have the cardinal point of the whole work. What is capital? Money which is changed into a commodity in order to be changed back from a commodity into more money than the original sum. When I buy cotton for 100 talers and sell it for 110 talers I preserve my 100 talers as capital, value which expands itself. Now the question arises: where do the 10 talers which I gain in this process come from? How does it happen that as a result of two simple exchanges 100 talers becomes 110. For economics presupposes that in all exchanges equal values are exchanged. Marx then considers all possible cases (fluctuation in prices of commodities, etc.) in order to prove that in the conditions assumed by economics the creation of 10 talers surplus-value out of the original 100 talers is impossible. Yet this process takes place daily and the economists have not yet given us an explanation for it. Marx provides the following explanation: the puzzle can be solved only if we find on the market a commodity of a quite peculiar kind, a commodity whose use-value consists in producing exchange-value. This commodity exists — it is labour-power. The capitalist buys labour-power on the market and makes it work for him in order in turn to sell its product. So we must first of all investigate labour-power.

What is the value of labour-power? According to the generally known law, it is the value of the means of subsistence necessary to maintain and procreate the labourer in the way established in a given country and a given historical epoch. We assume that the labourer is paid the entire value of his labour-power. Further we assume that this value is represented by six hours’ work daily, or half a working-day. But the capitalist asserts that he has bought labour-power for a whole working-day and he makes the labourer work twelve hours or more. With a twelve-hour working-day he therefore acquires the product of six hours' work without paying for it. From this Marx concludes: all surplus-value, no matter how it is divided, as profit of the capitalist, ground-rent, taxes, etc. is unpaid labour.

From the manufacturer's interest to extract as much unpaid labour as possible every day and the contrary interest of the labourer arises the struggle over the length of the working-day. In an illustration which is very much worth reading and which takes up about a hundred pages, Marx describes the origin of this struggle in English modern industry which, in spite of the protests of the free-trade manufacturers, ended last spring in not only factory industry but all small establishments and even ail domestic industry being subjected to the restrictions of the Factory Act, according to which the maximum working-day for women and children under eighteen — and thereby indirectly for men too in the most important branches of industry — was fixed at 10½ hours. At the same time he explains why English industry did not suffer, but on the contrary gained thereby, as the work of each individual won more in intensity than it lost in duration.

But there is another way of increasing surplus-value besides lengthening the working-day beyond the time required for the production of the necessary means of subsistence or their value. A given working-day. let us say of twelve hours, includes, according to our previous assumption, six hours of necessary work and six hours used for the production of surplus-value. If a means is found to cut the necessary working-time down to five hours, seven hours remain during which surplus-value will be produced. This can be achieved by a reduction in the working-time required to produce the necessary means of subsistence, in other words by cheapening the means of subsistence, and this in turn only by improving production. On this point Marx again gives a detailed illustration by investigating or describing the three main levers by which these improvements are brought about: 1) co-operation, or multiplication of power, which results from the simultaneous and systematic joint work of a number of workers; 2) division of labour, as it took shape in the period of manufacture proper (i.e. up to about 1770); finally. 3) machinery by the help of which modern industry has since developed. These descriptions are also of great interest and show astonishing knowledge of the subject even down to technological details.

We cannot enter into further details of the investigation on surplus-value and wages: we merely note, in order to avoid misunderstandings, that, as Marx proves by a number of quotations, orthodox economics is not unaware of the fact that wages are less than the whole product of work. It is to be hoped that this book will provide Messrs, the orthodox economists with the opportunity of giving us closer explanations on this really surprising point. It will be appreciated that all the factual proofs that Marx gives are taken from the best sources, mostly official parliamentary reports. We take this opportunity of supporting the suggestion, made indirectly by the author in the Preface, that in Germany too a thorough inquiry into the condition of the workers in the various industries be made by government officials — who, however, must not be prejudiced bureaucrats — and that the reports be submitted to the Reichstag and the public.

The first volume ends with a study of the accumulation of capital. This point has often been written about, although we must admit that here too much of what is given is new and that light is shed on the old from new sides. The most original is the attempted proof that side by side with the concentration and accumulation of capital. and in step with it, the accumulation of a surplus working population is going on, and that both together will in the end make a social upheaval necessary, on the one hand, and possible on the other.

Whatever opinion the reader may have of the author's socialist views, we think that we have shown him that he is here in presence of a work which stands well above the usual Social-Democratic publications. To that we add that with the exception of the strongly dialectical things on the first 40 pages, the book, in spite of all its scientific rigour, is very easy to understand and because of the author's sarcastic manner, which spares no one, is even interestingly written.

The S.L.P. of America again. (1915)

From the December 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Weekly People” (New York) returns in its issue of October 16th to the controversy which has been carried on recently in its pages and those of the Socialist Standard. Things are in a bad way, however, with the “Weekly People,” as is evidenced by the fact that it is forced to strain every nerve to keep its readers amused in order to hide the fact that it has nothing more to contribute to the discussion. It is humour of the first water, of course, to depict the “S.S.” as a band indulging “itself in the spoil of furnishing the ‘music'” which it told the Socialist Labour Party of America it would have to face sooner or later. That humour, however, is only the grimaces our antagonist is indulging in in the hope of detracting attention from the sorry figure it is dancing to the music supplied.

It may be remembered that in our September issue we took from the S.L.P. “Address to the Affiliated Parties of the International Socialist Bureau,” the following :

“Besides, we believe that after the war is over the political conditions will be so adjusted as to compel the European comrades to give their undivided attention to the question of industrial unionism.”

and that we adduced this as disproving our opponents’ claim that their Address made “NO attempt to keep the workers from turning their eyes to class-conscious political action.” Of course, they don’t like to have this brought up against them. This unfortunate utterance, which arises out of their rock-bottom contempt for SOCIALIST political action, they think we should have been blind to. That it appeared in an Address issued by the Executive of the S.L.P. to the International Movement is nothing. It should be ignored, regarded as a meaningless vapouring—or if it was referred to at all it should have been accompanied by its context with special annotation making clear that, though the authors of the Address said in this place that they thought that after the war the European comrades would have to abandon political action (“give their undivided attention to the question of industrial unionism”), other parts of their Address indicated that they didn’t think anything of the kind. If we had only done that we should have produced harmony that our opponents would have been delighted to dance to. Also it would have saved them the trouble of playing that dreamy waltz themselves.

For this is all they have been able to achieve. The statement in the Address that its authors thought that after the war political conditions will be so adjusted as to compel the European comrades to give their undivided attention to the question of industrial unionism is plain enough for anything. How this is to come about might, be open to astonishing explanation, it is true, but no explanation that does not demolish the statement can affect its definite pronouncement that its authors think that after the war the European comrades would be compelled to give their UNDIVIDED attention to the question of industrial unionism. The statement does not depend on its context. To insist on the context is simply to whine to be allowed to drop the statement out.

Now it is clear that the same adjustment of “political conditions” that the S.L.P. Executive conceive of as compelling “the European comrades to give their UNDIVIDED attention to the question of industrial unionism” must perforce compel them to cease bestowing any of that attention upon political action. No appeal to the “context” can alter this fact, nor can any sarcastic references to “ingenious logic-choppers who are more concerned with the twisting awry of words and the fitting together of phrases to a syllogistic subtlety than they are in gathering the meaning or extracting the essence of an argument or declaration.” There is a rich roll in all that, but it is so familiar. The illogical cornered usually raise the cry, “logic-choppers.” But if there is any other “meaning or essence” in the declaration than that which we have found, why do not our opponents “extract” it for us ?

They do not because at the very bottom they do not believe in the vital necessity for political action. In spite of the reiteration of the demands for political organisation this note of disbelief in the essential need for political action runs through the Address. The vagueness of this document makes it difficult to illustrate this by extracts (which also have the disadvantage of leaving behind a “context”), but the atmosphere of the Address has been translated in an answer to a correspondent in the “Weekly People” of Sept. 4th, in which it is said :

“If the Socialist forces of Europe had been industrially organised, and when we say “industrially organised” we mean revolutionarily industrially organised, they could with their present numbers, have PREVENTED THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR.”

There it is, plain enough. In spite of the fact that the S.L.P. recognises that the “European comrades” are “so enmeshed in bourgeois politics” that they have lost sight of Socialism—in other words, they are politically rotten—yet there is no single word in the reply to their correspondent to indicate that that political rottenness is even a factor in the failure of the International in the face of the crisis of August 1914. This contempt for the political weapon, prevailing in the Address, belies all our opponents’ mouthings about being “committed to class-conscious political action.”

The fact is the S.L.P. have not grasped the true aim of Socialist political action—the real value of the political weapon. De Leon never grasped them, and those who still preach his absurdities, being mentally bound by the legacy of shallow thought he bestowed upon them, have no glimmering conception of the true function of the political weapon in Socialist hands.

On the 10th July, 1905, Daniel De Leon delivered an address at Union Temple, Minneapolis, Minnesota. This address was published by the Socialist Labour Party of America under the title : “The Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World.” On pp. 36-7 of that publication De Leon is reported as saying :

“The bourgeois shell in which the Social Revolution must partly shape its course dictates the setting up of a body that shall contest the possession of the political Robber Burg by the Capitalist Class. The reason for such initial tactics also dictates their ultimate goal—THE RAZING WITH THE GROUND THE ROBBER BURG OF CAPITALIST TYRANNY. The shops, the yards, the mills, in short, the mechanical establishments of production, now in the hands of the Capitalist Class—they are all to be “taken,” not for the purpose of being destroyed, but for the purpose of being “held”; . . . It is exactly the reverse with the “political power.” That is to be taken for the purpose of ABOLISHING IT. . . . Suppose that at some election the class-conscious political arm of Labor were to sweep the field ; suppose the sweeping were done in such a land-slide fashion that . . from President down to Congress and the rest of the political redoubts of the capitalist political Robber Burg, our candidates were installed ;—suppose that, what would there be for them to do ? What should there be for them to do ? Simply TO ADJOURN THEMSELVES, ON THE SPOT, SINE DIE.”

That is the conception De Leon had of the end of political conquest. His idea of “razing with the ground the robber burg of capitalist tyranny” was simply to capture the machinery of Government and instantly abandon it. His idea of a political organisation was a body so hide-bound that it could have no consciousness outside politics. It could not know that its economic counterpart purposed “taking and holding” the “plants of production and distribution,” therefore it could not continue to hold the “robber burg of capitalist tyranny,” in order that it might control the armed forces that the capitalists have provided against any attempt to take and hold their property. No, that (says De Leon) would be usurpation.” The elected representatives could only “adjourn themselves sine die.” They could not even stop to take away the policeman’s baton and disband the armed forces to make things easier for the economic arm in its task of taking and holding.

Where such a conception as this exists of the political triumph how can there be any fundamental belief in the essential necessity for political action or any respect for it ? If the political triumph means no more than the capture of the enemy’s guns and the immediate abandonment of them to the enemy again, then we also should say to blazes with political effort. If the political triumph would still leave the armed forces and other instruments of oppression in the capitalist control, then we also might pass as near enough the S.L.P. dictum that the “economic organisation [is] . . . the only conceivable force with which to back up the ballot”—which wouldn’t then be worth backing up. If nothing more was to be gained by political conquest than the S.L.P. imagine, then we should have to find a sole reason for political endeavour in De Leon’s ingenious argument that the institution of the suffrage “is so bred in the bones of the people that . . . chimerical is the idea of expecting to conduct a great Movement, whose palpable aim is a Socialist Revolution, to the slogan of ‘Abstinence from the Ballot-box.’ ”

But we have other views regarding the political weapon—views which prevent us from harbouring even a thought of such shallow and cynical expediency, the mere expression of which reveals a contempt for the true function of Socialist political action which give the lie to our opponents’ claim to political integrity.

But there is more music to come on this phase of the discussion. The report of the First Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World quotes (p. 226) De Leon as saying :

“The situation in America . . . establishes the fact that the “taking and the holding” of the things that labor needs to be free can never depend upon a political party. (Applause.) If anything is clear in the American situation it is this : That if any individual is elected to office upon a revolutionary ballot, that individual is a suspicious character. (Applause.) Whoever is returned elected on a program of labour emancipation ; whoever is allowed to be filtered through by the political inspectors of the capitalist class ;—that man is a carefully selected tool, a traitor to the working people, selected by the capitalist class. (Applause.)”

These well-applauded but dismal sentiments lead to the logical conclusion that political endeavour is futile. Surely, in face of such a hopeless situation the only sensible thing to do is to foreclose on the political organisation and have done with it. Any talk of dismantling the capitalist “political Robber Burg,” if this is the position, is sheer rainbow-chewing. It does, however, throw an illuminating ray over that passage we are accused of having torn from its context, and justifies our reading of it. For if, as the S.L.P. Address tells us, the “country that is more developed industrially [America] only shows to the less developed the image of its own future,” then when, the political situation described by De Leon as existing in America, develops in Europe, the “European comrades” will probably be forced into the non-political lines of action prophesied for them by the S.L.P. That, however, only substantiates what we said that the Address was a deliberate attempt to prevent the workers from turning their eyes to class-conscious political action.

Now for another point. We challenged our opponents upon their implication that the action of those who “have become so enmeshed in bourgeois politics that they have lost sight of the ultimate goal of the Socialist Movement can be Socialist action. “Ha,” laughs the “Weekly People,” “how the challenge rings . . . calling upon us to prove—if we maintain it—that the action of those” and so on. If they maintain it ! What caution ! To confirm our view of the matter we quote the Address as follows :

“We recognise the fact that the Socialists of Europe have been confronted with many problems which had to be solved before the real issue, Socialism versus Capitalism, could be decided. These problems have been largely of a political nature Politically, Europe as a whole is far behind the United States. Here the issue is clip and clear, Socialism versus full-grown Capitalism. Not so in Europe. There large remnants of feudalism remained, blocking the path of Socialist revolutionary progress, and the attention of the European, comrades has therefore been given almost exclusively to these problems, with the result that they have become so enmeshed in bourgeois politics that they have apparently lost sight, for the moment at least, of the ultimate goal of the Socialist movement.”

And now this from the “Weekly People” of  Dec. 12, 1908 :

“The enlightened conduct of the German Social Democracy will be misunderstood only by the pure and simple Socialist politician of America, for the identical reason that the German Social Democracy deserves applause for temporarily suspending its Socialist work and assisting the bourgeois Radicals, such a policy in America deserves condemnation, As an applauder of the German Social Democracy, the S.L.P. of America rejects, for America, the tactics that German conditions demand.”

The S.L.P., then, applauded those tactics of the German Social Democratic Party which led to the latter “becoming so enmeshed in bourgeois politics that they have apparently lost sight, for the moment at least, of the ultimate goal of the Socialist movement.” They praised that “enlightened conduct” which culminated in the vote of credit for the war. In face of that endorsement of action which has had so sad a result one might expect a little caution in replying to the question whether the actions of such people can be Socialist action. If they maintain it, indeed ! Let them deny that they maintain, it and they are up a tree ; let them admit it and they concede the point.

And we are here up against the whole crux of the matter, which is that it is this building of the political organisation on an unsound basis and with unsound material, the following of that corrupt and rotten path of political opportunism so vigorously applauded by the S.L.P., which is responsible for the failure of the International in the present crisis (and that failure is not that it did not prevent the war [which was beyond its power in any event], but that it did not maintain the Socialist position).

As we have said, it was in order to hide this result of the political obscurantism they had applauded, and to turn the workers from the political means to industrial unionism that the S.L.P. Address was issued. It is clear that the S.L.P. could hardly denounce conduct they had themselves applauded—and practised. In 1907 the mine-owners in Goldfield issued scrip, and demanded that their wage-workers should accept it as payment for wages. This led the “Weekly People” (Dec. 21, 1907) to issue a touching, cap-in-hand “Open Letter” to the “Robber Burg of capitalist tyranny” in America (Congress) identifying the interest of the occupants of that “Robber Burg” and the workers in the following words :

“An issue has arisen in which Labor and intelligent Capital, Capitalists (if intelligent) and Socialists alike have a common cause—THE CAUSE OF AVERTING SOCIAL CALAMITY.”

That is how they “reject, for America, the tactics German conditions demand.”

Now then, let us see where this brings us out. The so-called Socialists of Germany, the so-called Socialists of France, the so-called Socialists of Britain, have all acted under the same specious plea as the S.L.P. The threat of the “foreign foe” was in their idea a threat of “social calamity,” and like the S.L.P., they made “common cause” with the capitalists to avert it. Thus the American pseudo-Socialists who say that the “capitalists and the Socialists alike have a common cause—the cause of averting social calamity,” and the pseudo-Socialists of Europe who say (as the German “Socialists” are reported to have told their Belgian comrades at the Maison du Peuple in Brussels) “as the development of the proletariat was bound up with the development and economic prosperity of the nation, German Socialists were bound to side with the Government,” are tarred with the same brush, and may be feathered with the same feathers.

Which is why the S.L.P. still claim that those in Europe who have lost sight of Socialism are “still the Socialist movement of Europe.”

There are one or two other points in our opponents’ latest screed which may be dealt with at a future date ; but meanwhile, would the S.L.P. spokesman like to confirm and explain that champion idiocy propounded in the Address—that industrial unionism is the embryo, the undeveloped fcrm of future society ? Or has he not the courage ?

A. E. Jacomb

Kaiser and the German 'Socialists' (1915)

From the December 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article in the “Daily Express” (28.9.15) entitled “Kaiser and the Socialists,” reference is is made to the Kaisers’ conquest of the Socialist (so-called) leader of Karlsruhe, one Fendrich, who has been serving with the Kaiser’s legions. It seems Fendrich has written his war experiences for the Imperial benefit. An interview resulted and the royal personage shook Fendrich by the hand and thanked him. The scribe says regarding Wilhelm’s persuasive way :

“He has already convinced men like Scheidemann, Haase, Franck, and all other governmental Socialists. Fendrich is only one more. He will get the Iron Cross. Dr. Sudekum, the Socialist leader, got it.”

Yes ! And when the International working class cease letting their brains out on hire, all the ruddy lot will get it—where the chopper hit the chicken. Meanwhile we hourly expect some similar royal greatness to be thrust upon us.

B. B. B.

Blogger's Note:

The Workers' Liberty website carries a 1915 article on Anton Fendrich, which was originally published in the San Francisco Call, and which was reprinted in James Connolly's Workers' Republic on the 4th December 1915.

Notes by the Way: Bigger Armaments Under Labour Government (1949)

The Notes by the Way Column from the December 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bigger Armaments Under Labour Government

In the course of an explanation why taxation is so much larger than before the war, Mr. Douglas Jay, M.P., Economic Secretary to the Treasury, recently repudiated the view 'that it is solely due to expenditure on social services. He was speaking to the Westminster Savings Committee, and went on to tell them of another reason: —

“Equally important is the growth in defence expenditure (£750 million to-day, compared with £200 million before the war), and also in debt interest due to the war.” (Daily Express, 4.10.49.)

Mr. Jay was seemingly content with his explanation but he should now answer the question “What has happened to the Labour Party’s promises that when they came to power they would know how to settle international problems peacefully and drastically cut down the Armed Forces?"

Instead they have to accept responsibility for peacetime conscription—opposition to which is now left to Tories and Liberals—and for maintaining the Armed Forces at far greater strength than in 1939. The number now is 765,000, just over twice as many as before the war.

One consequence of the Labour Party being responsible for running capitalism and keeping its Armed Forces up to standard is that that Party moved far away from the vague pacifist sentiment of the nineteen twenties. When recently the Assistant General Secretary of the Transport Workers’ Union published in the Union journal an article appealing to young members to consider joining the Auxiliary Forces he made the comment below:—

“When 1 first became an officer of this union, an article on the Armed Forces of the Crown (unless it had been the purpose of the writer to condemn them as the tools of outworn imperialism, deplore their existence, and dissuade young men from having anything to do with them) would have been unthinkable in the Record. (Record, September, 1949.)

The Nationalistic German Social Democratic Party 

Just as the Labour Parties of the world pay lip-service to Socialism without in any way giving up their real aim of administering capitalism in the form of State capitalism or nationalisation, so they all pay lip-service to internationalism while remaining strongly nationalistic.

The German Social Democratic Party has just issued the opposition platform on which it will oppose the new German Government. It refers to “socialisation’’ of industries, meaning nationalisation, but makes no reference at all to Socialism and is a document similar to the programme of the British Labour Party. It does, however, include a new phrase, “The S.D.P. rejects all forms of nationalism . . ." But any one who thinks this is to be taken seriously need only look at various nationalistic demands elsewhere in the list of demands. One is, the Party rejects the present German frontiers and wants to re-occupy territory in the East annexed by Poland, and the Saar region in the West.

No doubt the S.P.D. leaders will say that they seek these ends by peaceful means, but those who seek to change or to defend the territorial arrangements of the capitalist world must logically be prepared to go to war, and in practice all the Labour and Communist Parties are prepared to do so.

And if any Labourite supposes that the British Labour Party is different he should take note of the utterances of that one-time opponent of conscription and war, Mr. Shinwell, now Minister of War.

The lion’s tail is flying high and we don’t care who knows it.” (Speech to Territorials,. Manchester Guardian, 26.8.49.)

”. . . Commonwealth unity is a reality. It has survived two great wars and is as vital to the economic and political interests of Britain as European unity. I am not prepared to abandon the British Commonwealth for all the tea in China.” (Daily Telegraph, 5.9.49.)

A Leaky Umbrella for the Unemployed

One of the claims of the Labour Party is that they “led the fight against the mean and shabby treatment’’ meted out to the unemployed by Tory Governments in the years before the war. And when they came to power they promised to fix higher rates of unemployment pay to provide proper social provision “against rainy days.” (“Let us Face the Future,” Labour Party, 1945.)

They are proud of what they have done as was shown recently in the House of Commons by Mr. J. Griffiths, Minister of National Insurance. A Labour M.P., Major Bruce (North Portsmouth), asked how much was spent on unemployment benefit in 1938 and was told it was £52,400,000. (Hansard, 18th October, 1949. Col. 460.)

He also asked how much the Government would have had to spend in 1938 on employment benefit if the benefits at that time had been at the higher rates now paid by the Labour Government.

Mr. Griffiths replied that “If current rates of unemployment benefit and family allowances had then been in force the disbursements would have been rather less than £90,000,000.”

Here, surely, is a cast-iron proof of the benefits of Labour rule? A Tory Government gave the unemployed £52½ million, and a Labour Government would have paid them £90 million. Shall we say "good and faithful servant,” or has Mr. Griffiths overlooked one small detail in his arithmetic? He has; and we can complete the sum for him.

The detail is that the cost of living has gone up by about 80% since 1938. What could be bought with 20s. in 1938 now costs at least 36s. So that the seemingly higher rates of unemployment benefit now in force have to be heavily reduced in order to compare them with the rates in force in 1938 when money bought more.

Mr. Griffiths’s “rather less than £90 million” will actually buy only as much as could be bought with £50 million in 1938, and that is “rather less than” the amount that the Tory Government paid out to the unemployed.

So all that the Labour Government has done is to raise the scale of benefits to a point which will nearly, but not quite, compensate for the rise in the cost of living and now the cost of living is rising again.

Capitalism it is

In the House of Commons on 27th October there was an exchange of views between Churchill and Attlee about the system under which we are living. Both of them talked nonsense but as Churchill managed to be right on one important point the victory goes to him. Attlee was hampered by things he has said in the past.

Churchill led off with his one true statement: “It must he remembered as we sit here to-night that Britain is a capitalist society, and that 80 per cent. of its whole industry is in private hands.” (Hansard, 27.10.49, Col. 1625).

He followed with the amplification, “. . . what we have here now is a capitalist society on which we are dependent for our daily life and survival. . .”

This was, and may have been intended as, a rebuke to woolly-minded Conservatives as well as the woolly-minded Labourites; but he followed it with numerous absurdities. He repeatedly described Attlee’s party as “The Socialist Party” and his Government as a “Socialist Government,” charged it with making a “deliberate attack on the capitalist system,” and then informed the M.P.s that under Communism “society is reduced to a strong hierarchy and army of officials and politicians by whom the proletariat are ruled under a one-party system.” What he meant by the last phrase was Russia; but had he viewed the Russian economic system as clearly as he views the British he would have seen that there is no Communism (or Socialism) in Russia and that all the main features of capitalism are robustly in operation there.

Mr. Attlee had to reply and took the line that “we live in the days of a mixed economy.The Right Hon. gentleman is quite wrong when he suggests that this is a purely capitalist economy. It is neither purely capitalist nor purely Socialist, but a mixed economy in a transition period.” (Col. 1633.)

The only mixture is not the economy, which is capitalist through and through, but Mr. Attlee’s conception of it; and the answer to him is to be found in Labour Party literature and in his own writings. “Socialism and Peace” (Labour Party, 1935) declared that the choice is between a vain attempt to patch up a rotten capitalist society “or a rapid advance to a Socialist reconstruction of the national life. There is no half-way house . . .” (Our italics.)

Now Mr. Attlee is trying to justify “the half-way house,” which he believes to be partly capitalist and partly Socialist but which is nothing but Labour Party administration of capitalism. And in his own “Labour Party in Perspective” (1937, page 123) he admitted that it would not be a Socialist Party that could administer capitalism:—

“The plain fact is that a Socialist Party cannot hope to make a success of administering the Capitalist system because it does not believe in it.”

And here are a few more statements that Mr. Attlee will find difficult to square with his own present declarations.

He thinks now that we are in a mixed economy. Only a few months ago he told an audience at Walthamstow that “The social reforms which we introduced have not been patchy; they have represented a new social order . . . We have had a great experiment in democratic Socialism.” (Manchester Guardian, 12.1.49.)

And Mr. J. Griffiths, Minister of National Insurance still thinks we have got rid of capitalism for he declares “I believe the people of the world have made up their minds not to go back to the old crazy capitalist system of poverty, conflict and insecurity.” (Daily Herald, 7.4.49.)

The Doctor Blames the Patient

Some of the Labour leaders are becoming spiteful—at least in their attitude to the workers. Mr. Alfred Barnes. Minister of Transport, speaking at Chatham said: —

“I don’t think the men of this country have played the game since the end of the war. Wc carried out our mandate against adverse conditions, and we are entitled as a Labour Administration to call upon the great mass of men workers to turn out a greater quantity of goods than are at present pouring from the factories.” (Daily Mail, 24.10.49.)

It is a curious situation and prompts the question whether Mr. Barnes thinks that the workers go into politics for the benefit of Mr. Barnes.

The Labour leaders offered themselves to the working class (at a price—Mr. Barnes draws £5,000 a year as Minister of Transport) with a promise to cure them of the economic ills from which they were suffering; and the doctors certainly didn’t start off by saying that the cure consisted of prolonged austerity, repeated crises, harder work, more armaments, higher prices and no wage increases. Now, after four years, the doctor turns on the patients and blames them for not making things easy for the doctor!

How refreshing it would be to see a Minister resign his job with a frank admission that the Labour doctors were wrong from the outset and that they can’t make capitalism tolerable for the workers.

The 1931 Economy Cuts over again

In 1931, when MacDonald formed a National Government to deal with the crisis and the bulk of the Labour Party went into opposition, economy cuts were imposed, most of which had been agreed to by the Labour Government before its resignation. In some respects the present cuts in Government expenditure are similar to those of 1931, e.g. cuts on armament expenditure, and on education, but the supporters of the Labour Government are insistent that they are not following the example of the MacDonald Government by reducing Civil Service pay, and cutting unemployment benefit by 10%.

The difference is quite illusory. In 1931 when the Government cut unemployment pay and gave a lead to the employers to reduce wages the cost of living was falling, the official index figure falling from 155 at December, 1930, to 148 at December, 1931, and 143 at December, 1932.

This time the cost of living is rising and the Government is trying its utmost to prevent wages from rising in keeping with the cost of living. The effect is just the same as in 1931.

The official cost of living index figure has risen from 100 in June. 1947, to 112 in September, 1949. The effect is that the purchasing power of unemployment pay has been cut by 12% since June, 1947, so that in terms of 1947 prices 26s. a week benefit is now worth about 23s.

One similarity between the two crises is the Government’s action over devaluation. In 1931 the Labour Government declared over a period of months that they would save the £ and not go off the gold standard—then MacDonald went off the gold standard. This time it is Cripps (instead of Snowden) who devalued after saying for months that he wouldn't.

One difference between the two cases is that the MacDonald Ministry did have the grace to reduce the salaries of Ministers and M.P.s; by 20% on salaries of £5,000 and over, 15% on £2,000 to £5,000, and 10% below £2,000. including M.P.s.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: The Rise of Hitler: A Warning to the Workers (1933)

Editorial from the April 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rise of Hitler to power in Germany is an event which the workers of all countries should study with care. It is not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a world-wide overflowing of discontent. It is not a coincidence that the three years since the oncoming of the crisis late in 1929 have witnessed the abrupt and sometimes violent overthrow of governments in different parts of the capitalist world. “National” Governments in the United Kingdom and many of the British Dominions; the advent of De Valera in the Irish Free State; the colossal defeat of “Prosperity” Hoover in the USA; repeated cabinet crises in France; political revolutions and counter-revolutions in South America; the Republic in Spain; political crises in Scandinavia; expulsions of leaders and reversals of policy in Russia; no country has escaped the economic consequences of a capitalist world which is seriously out of joint.

Each country has witnessed the consequent political stresses and strains of new discontents, and new slogans, which had generally brought about new political groupings and new figure-heads. The universal insurgency expresses itself in different ways according to the traditions, experience and constitutions of the various countries. A century ago such economic crises brought to a head deep underlying social conflicts and produced the revolutions of  ’30 and ’48, with their violent overthrow of kings and absolutist constitutions. Nowadays the more advanced countries have developed systems which permit easier adjustment to new pressures, avoiding the disturbance and expenses of the appeal to violence. Countries which have not travelled so far along the road of capitalist democratic government still resort to the old method of the bomb, the rifle, and the machine gun, the mass demonstration, the barricade, and the organisation of insurrection in the armed forces.

In a broad way the cause and the effect are the same everywhere. Everywhere capitalist private ownership reigns. Everywhere the rulers must serve the interests of the capitalist class, but everywhere it is an over-riding condition of social life that rulers cannot ignore the active discontent of the mass of the population. The discontent, even the open rebellion, of individuals and minorities can be bludgeoned into acquiescence, but when great masses of the population are driven by intolerable conditions into organising for common action then the rulers must sooner or later provide a safety valve; placate the movement or find means of dividing it; turn it into new directions or harness it directly to the capitalist state. In no other way can capitalism maintain itself.

Long before the war the British ruling class learned how to incorporate radical politicians and labour leaders in the parties of capitalism. The German capitalists in 1918 jettisoned the Kaiser for a similar end. Fifty per cent of the German voters had registered their disillusionment and war-weariness by voting for the reform programme of the Social Democratic Party. German capitalism thereupon “digested” the SDP and watched it stabilise German capitalism in the troubled post-war years. The military and civil associates of the Imperial Kaiser humbled themselves to the “upstart” labour leaders because they had to have someone who could control the workers and keep them loyal to the fundamentals of capitalism. So for fourteen years the Social Democrats, either in coalitions or in “friendly opposition”, worked out their policy of bargaining for reforms as price of their support. The outcome was inevitable. They have shared the fate that has always overtaken “Labour” politicians and parties when they accept responsibility for the administration of capitalism. Discontent with the effects of capitalism cannot for ever be stifled by Labour promises of better times or apologetic assurances that things might be worse. The membership and influence of the German SDP declined year by year until it had shrunk to a third of its former size. Part of the loss was picked up by the Communist Party, but in the meantime a new group had arisen, led by Hitler. At the election on March 5th he received 17,266,000 votes (43.9 per cent) and his allies, the Nationalists, received 3,132,000 (8 per cent), giving him a clear majority. The Social Democrats received 7,176,000 (18.3 per cent) and the Communists 4,845,000 (12.1 percent).

In one important respect Hitler’s Nazis are just like the Social Democrats and the Communists; they are all parties of discontent. Hitler promises work for the workless; secure government jobs in the police, the Army or the Civil service for 100,000 of his members; higher prices for agricultural products to help the peasants; and protection for the small investor and little shopkeeper squeezed by the big stores and the banks.

Immediately on taking office Hitler imposed fresh taxes on the big departmental stores and chain stores with the professed object of helping the small shopkeepers. He promised also to find posts for out-of-work professional men (doctors, lawyers and others), and it is because a relatively large number of bankers, proprietors of big stores and the more successful professional men are Jews that the party has taken on a violently anti-Jewish character. Every Jewish doctor driven out of practice, every Jewish lawyer barred from the courts, every Jewish schoolmaster and civil servant dismissed, makes another vacancy for one of his members. He was supplied with funds by German heavy industry, by armament manufacturers both in Germany and in France, and by American and other business men and financiers who had investments in Germany for which they needed protection. With the help of these funds Hitler’s party has known how to rally all kinds of discontent into a great movement representing half the electorate of Germany. Therefore Hitler has had to be “digested” as fourteen years ago were the Social Democrats. The stately and imperious Hindenburg and the aristocratic Von Papen, representing the military caste and big landowner, have had to receive on terms of equality the Austrian house-painter Adolf Hitler. Dr Hugenberg and the Nationalist Party, representing big industrial capitalists, have had to enter into coalition with him. Hitler will now have to administer capitalism. He will have to curb the demands of his followers, disappoint them, and ultimately lose many of them to new political adventurers, whereupon the capitalists and landlords who now use him will scrap him and use his successor.

The great lesson to be learned from the decline of the Social Democrats is the sterility of the policy of reforms and of reform parties. The day on which a reform party reaches power is the day on which the evil effects of capitalism begin to sap and undermine the strength of the party, turning the members’ blind loyalty first into bewilderment and then into dissatisfaction, causing them to drift into new parties.

The depths of mental bankruptcy of the reformists are shown by the comment of the Fabian New Statesman (London, March 11th, 1933). After explaining that Hitler scored because he appealed, with banners and uniforms and parades, to the electorate’s love of glamour, the German correspondent of the New Statesman says that the Social Democrats should have done the same, and should have given more prominence to pageantry and less prominence to social reforms. In other words, the workers are to be enticed, not even by the old plan of “bread and circuses”, but by circuses without the bread! This is what forty years of Fabian reformism has brought to the working-class movement!

The second lesson is one which has been entirely missed by the Labour Press in Great Britain, that is the evidence given by the Hitler episode of the overwhelming importance of controlling the political machinery. Six months ago, although the largest party in Germany, Hitler was not in control of the German Parliament and the machinery of government. He was ridiculed and derided by the members of the Government, and insulted by President Hindenburg. His party officials were hauled into court on charges of treason, and thrown into prison. Others were forced to flee the country. His newspapers were suppressed, his offices were raided by the police, his troops were forbidden to parade or wear uniforms in the street. When they attempted defiance they were driven off just like the Communists.

Now, having become possessed of the political machine and confirmed in power by the electors, he is able to turn the tables on his former opponents. He has removed the Governments of all the States of Germany. Former Cabinet Ministers have been arrested, beaten and made to suffer many indignities. Newspapers have been suppressed and their offices raided – from Conservative Catholic newspapers at one end of the scale to Social Democratic and Communist newspapers at the other. The Communists, in spite of their 5,000,000 voters and their year-long boasting of their belief in “mass action” and military revolt, have been cowed into complete submission without offering any real resistance whatever. Events are proving to them what they refused to learn. The organised political majority which controls the political machinery of the modern State is in a position to dominate, and can enforce submission on minorities. There is no road to Socialism except through the control of the machinery of government by a politically organised majority of Socialists.

The German Communist Party (1933)

From the April 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent asks if the Communist Party of Germany represents a real revolutionary backing to the extent indicated by its vote of five millions. If not, what is the programme on which this vote is obtained.

The German Communist Party, like the Communist Party of Great Britain, is a party based in the main on discontent without any serious understanding of capitalism or Socialism. Because the German Social Democratic Party ever since the war has been associated with the Governments of Germany, discontent with capitalism has undermined the popularity of that party and built up the Communist Party and Hitler's Party. Although all three parties (including Hitler's Party) claim to be Socialist, none of them has tried to do more than to exploit every kind of discontent. Consequently, at all times, many items have been common to all three programmes. But beyond these common items each party has made its own particular appeal. The Communists have stressed their doctrine of street-fighting and armed uprising. Hitler has beaten the big drum of patriotism, and has exploited sentiments hostile to Jews, bankers and large-scale capitalism. The Social Democrats preached social reform, and appealed to anti-war sentiment and sympathy for internationalism and the League of Nations.

One consequence of the overlapping programmes of the three parties has been a large number of voters supporting now the one and then another. In the elections at the beginning of March, Hitler gained several million votes and the Communists lost nearly a million. The Manchester Guardian's Berlin correspondent says that "a great proportion" of the votes lost by the Communists went over to Hitler. (Manchester Guardian, March 7th.)

The Times' Berlin correspondent (March 2nd) said that the “really organised Communists, infected by the Russian Communist religion, number, at most, a few hundred thousand." The millions who voted Communist were described by this correspondent as disgruntled Social Democrats, "unemployed rendered desperate by poverty and insufficient food," and "even petty bourgeois ruined by the inflation."

A pamphlet published by the British Communist Party ("What Next in Germany?"— August, 1932) gives a summary of the programme of the German Communist Party early in 1932 : —

Already, some time before the elections, the Communist Party had issued its appeal for a United Anti- Fascist Front of the working-class with a programme which included; Resistance to all wage cuts and unemployment benefit cuts: for the extension of Social Insurance benefits; for the provision of funds to give work to the unemployed; for the reduction of hours to 40 per week with no reduction in earnings. For the withdrawal of prohibition against all working-class organisations, meetings and demonstrations; for the release of all class war prisoners; for the stoppage of all foreign debt payments and payments to the Hohenzollerns (the ex-Kaiser’s family) and other German princes.

Already this appeal had begun to receive increasing support from the workers in the factories and trade unions.

It will be seen that the programme was composed entirely of reformist demands. One disgusting feature of German Communist propaganda has been the appeal to national hatred, in the form of the demand that the debt payments and reparations (paid by German capitalists to foreign capitalists) should cease. This appeal was in the forefront of Hitler's programme also, and with it the Communists knowingly fostered the illusion that not capitalism, but foreign debts, are the cause of the misery of the German workers. Even the German Social Democrats and the breakaway party, the German Socialist Workers' Party (which rejoined the S.D.P. at the end of February) protested against this Communist exploitation of ignorant nationalism, bound to play into the hands of Hitler.

Ed. Comm.