Notes by the Way: What Wars are really About. (1938)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Wars are really About.

Germany and Britain were supposed to have gone to war in 1914 about the violation of Belgian neutrality and about the respective merits of democracy and Prussian militarism. Now they are supposed to be quarrelling about Fascism and democracy and the merits of the Czechoslovak dispute. In 1914 the Japs sided with “democracy” against “Prussianism” (and, incidentally, strengthened their position in China), but this time they are backing Germany in order, so they say, “to stem the tide of Bolshevism.”

The real reason now, as then, for these international conflicts is capitalist commercial rivalry. The German economic periodical, Wirtschaftsring, according to the Daily Telegraph (September 13th, 1938), “accuses Britain of attempting to throttle Germany’s trade with Eastern Europe and of encircling her in economic fields.”

Britain’s purchases of Rumanian corn, remarks the Journal sarcastically, were made for two reasons. First, she wished to cut Germany off from the Balkans, and secondly, to reduce the amount of corn available in Central Europe in the event of war.

Not content with ruling a quarter of the globe . . . Britain wants to acquire the trade of other countries. The economic strangulation of Germany has been attempted through the Scandinavian countries, it is alleged, and is now to be pursued through Finland and South-East Europe.

Then The Times (August 27th, 1938) publishes an article by its Tokyo correspondent on the reasons for Japanese hostility to Britain. Here is his conclusion: —

Anti-British elements are to be found not only in the Army and Navy but in every branch of the Civil Service and in business. Statistical appraisal of the strength of these elements is impossible, but the general statement may be hazarded that most people under, say, 46 years of age in these various departments of national life who are politically conscious, and even many who are not, are anti-British. These people are anti-British because of commercial rivalry in world markets and political rivalry in the Far East. But they are also anti-British on internal, political, and personal grounds.

The Times' editorial adds:—

Commercially all over the world, and politically in the Far East. Great Britain figures as Japan’s chief rival. That is now the Japanese see it.

The remedy is to get rid of capitalism.

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Our Leaders (from their bomb-proof hide-outs) will ask us to stand firm.

The Daily Express (September 15th, 1938) | publishes a description of Hitler’s modest little bungalow at Berchtesgaden.

It began as “just a simple mountain chalet” ; but is now “ as sumptuously equipped as a luxury | hotel.”

In the event of a war it will be an ideal place from which this heroic leader of German cannon-fodder will be able to urge them to be brave and stand firm. In the woods around it “so many anti-aircraft guns are mounted . . . that no single aircraft could survive their fire,” and ”deep down beneath the woods are gas-proof, bomb-proof shelters.”

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Pity the Poor Indian Capitalist.

It was to be expected (and was doubtless foreseen by the British ruling class) that when Indian Nationalist governments came to power in several Indian states the Congress Party would .begin to show signs of internal strain. It was one thing for Indian workers and peasants, landlords and capitalists, to unite in denouncing British rule, but quite another thing for a Congress Party government to please all of these diverse elements. Gandhi, who has never disguised his hostility towards Socialism and his belief in capitalism, is now sharply criticising working-class elements in the Congress Party. Although in the old days he himself advocated the occupation of salt works as part of the campaign against the Indian Government, he is horrified at the idea of Indian workers using similar tactics against Indian employers. In his journal, Harijan, of August 13th, 1938 (quoted in the Indian Labour Journal, August 21st), he writes as follows: —

One complaint is that, in the name of peaceful picketing, picketers are resorting to methods bordering on violence, such as making a living wall beyond which no one can pass without being hurt or hurting those who make the wall. As the author of peaceful picketing, I cannot recall a single instance in which I had encouraged such picketing.

A friend has quoted Dharsana against me. I had suggested the occupation of salt works. But that is wholly inapplicable to the case under consideration. In Dharsana the objective was the salt works of which possession had to be taken and maintained as against the Government. The action could hardly be called picketing, but, to prevent workers from going to their work by standing in front of them is pure violence and must be given up.

Blind worshippers of Gandhi will say that the above remarks are consistent with his advocacy of passive resistance as a means of dealing with all situations. But the next passage in his article shows how circumstances alter cases. He is telling his readers what the factory owners should do if threatened with mass picketing. Should they pray ? —or try persuasion and passive resistance? Not at all, they should call in the police!

The owners of mills or other factories would be fully justified in invoking the assistance of the police.

Another illuminating remark from Gandhi is this:—

I have before me a letter which bitterly complains that, whereas capitalists used to get justice during the old régime, now, under the Congress régime, they not only get no justice, but are even insulted and humiliated.

This is too bad. As any poor Indian millionaire, rich by the sweating of Indian textile operatives or iron and steel workers, might complain: ‘‘What is the use of getting rid of British rule unless India remains safe for exploitation?”

The attitude of Gandhi and his paymasters is easily understood, but what are we to think of the so-called "Socialists" in India, who continue to delude the Indian workers with the argument that Nationalism and independence will rid India of poverty ?

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Bandits or Patriots?

Patriotism has been described as “the last refuge of a scoundrel’’; but everybody does not take that view. Some of those who do not are the London newspapers, also the Liberal, Labour and Conservative parties. They all say that patriotism is a very fine and noble thing, and that we should honour the courage and devotion of the patriot who fights to defend the land he was born in against foreign invaders. There is Abyssinia, for example. The Manchester Guardian reports that widespread guerrilla warfare is still bring waged against the Italians, and the writer in the Guardian (September 8th, 1938) goes to some trouble to explain that the Abyssinian patriots are not just “bandits." But if we turn from Abyssinia to Palestine, where the Arabs are trying by force of arms to overthrow the detested British rule and oust the Jewish settlers, we find a remarkable difference. All the London daily papers, with hardly an exception, habitually report the efforts of the Arabs as the activities of “bandits." Actually the Arab fighters talk the same kind of language as all the other patriots. Here is a sample:—

Were it not for the justice of our cause, the holiness of our demands and the victory promised to us by God, the enemy would have succeeded in its intentions. —(Daily Telegraph, September 8th, 1938.)

Not that we wish to idealise the Arabs, but it would be more fitting if the gangs of patriots in all countries recognised that they are all worshipping the same barbarous ideals in the same bloodthirsty way.

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That's a Commissar—that was!

The Russian dictatorship goes on its way not a bit changed by the introduction of its “democratic” constitution. The Supreme Soviet, which the Russian Press claims to be the "world’s newest and most democratic Parliament," met for the first time in January. It held its second session at the end of August. The Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian (September 16th, 1938) says that: "What could not escape observant eyes when the two Houses met for the first time since January was the absence of a number of faces which had been prominent during the historical first session"—they had been quietly "liquidated" in the meantime. Some leading figures thus removed from the scene had only been appointed in January. One of them, Chubar, had actually been employed then on denouncing "wreckers" to the Members of Parliament.

The Moscow correspondent expresses the opinion that the Government now has difficulty in finding/reliable and experienced men to fill the more prominent positions, but there is no dearth of urgent problems waiting to be dealt with. He only repeats what is widely known when he says, for instance, the Russian railway system is in a "chronically chaotic’’ condition. What then had Russia’s mock Parliament to say about the counties troubles and the way to remove them ? They met almost daily for a period of twelve days and this is what they did :—

The time was devoted almost entirely to hearing reports from Government officials and to discussions of them, which amounted to amplifications of the reports. The discussions never could have been said to have developed into debate, and there was no record of a negative vote having been cast throughout the proceedings.

Yet our Communists, who praise the Soviet Constitution, profess to have a new-found enthusiasm for Parliamentary government. Even Mussolini’s Yes-men dare to open their mouths occasionally in the Italian Parliament, as recently when there was some serious discussion of the Government’s financial policy.

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How Bolshevism discourages foreign working-class movements.

The Communists always talk in terms of Russia helping the working class in other countries, ignoring completely the widespread discouragement that events in Russia have caused. A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian in Poland (Manchester Guardian, August 22nd, 1938) describes how the Polish Communist movement has been undermined through Russian events.

Meanwhile Poles—or rather the Polish governing class—feel a certain relief because Stalin has destroyed the Polish Communist movement. The Polish Communists were an élite  in so far as their older leaders played a big part in the Russian Revolution. The immense poverty of the Polish peasant masses is favourable to Communism, which has been kept down by a ruthless terror. But so many Polish Communists have been shot or imprisoned in Russia during the last few years that the Polish Communist movement has been almost completely destroyed from within, so to speak, and a terrible disarray has spread amongst its remaining members.

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An Economist Exposes Capitalism.

Sir William Beveridge may be described as one of the best-informed and least shoddy of the economists who stand for capitalism. He has a respect for facts and for scientific method rather unusual among modern economists; and has on occasion remained firm in his views when the tide of ignorant but influential prejudice was running strongly against him. His study of capitalist industrial crises has now led him to an interesting admission. The following report of his speech is taken from the Manchester Guardian (August 23rd, 1938): —

Besides satisfying himself completely that the trade cycle is a real phenomenon, he finds that there is singular faithfulness in the maintenance on each occasion of the order in which individual industries decline and the degrees of intensity with which the depression affects each of them.

He is sure that the basic causes lie in human institutions.

During the last ten years, the trade cycle had shown a striking disregard for the actions and attitudes of Governments. In 1931 land 1932 Great Britain, U.S.A. and Sweden were alike in depression. All three had changes of Government. The directions of change differed widely, yet all three recovered and prospered for several years and now, with its type of Government unchanged, was entering a new depression. It would be hardly possible to find a stronger illustration of the apparent impotence of Governments in face of the trade cycle as long as they did not abolish the economic system, altogether.

In spite of this admission that crises do not take any notice of the kind of government that is trying to administer capitalism, Beveridge is, as he always was, a Liberal who holds that we must not “abolish the (capitalist) economic system altogether.”

He is quite right in stressing the impotence of governments in the matter of ridding capitalism of crises, but he has surely had enough experience of politics to know that even if governments can't do anything they have to pretend they can. Ex-President Hoover, of the U.S.A., was apparently one of those who believed that the best thing for the capitalists to do about a crisis is to do nothing, just let it take its course. But it lost him all chance of re-election, and his place was taken by Roosevelt, the persuasive, opportunist, glib-tongued wholesale manufacturer of promises. He affected the crisis no more than Hoover, but he made a show of dynamic activity, and that is what the trustful electorate likes.

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Good Sense from Geneva.

Small organisations from Britain, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Sweden, Holland, Spain, Greece and Palestine recently held a conference at Geneva, presided over by Mr. Fenner Brockway, of the I.L.P., at which it was decided to establish an international organisation for the purpose of preventing the threatening war. A manifesto was issued, declaring that—

the coming war will be neither a war for the liberation of an oppressed people nor a war for the defence of u democracy ” against Fascism. It will be a war in which two groups of brigands will come to grips for a new partition of the earth. The conflict between the Sudeten Germans and the Czecho-Slovakian Government is only the pretext for a settlement of accounts between German Imperialism on the one hand and British and French Imperialism on the other. Our class interests are neither the one side nor the other. Workers of all countries, all races, and all colours, this war will not be our war. Let us unite to bar its way while there is still time. Only our class action can drive it back.—(Manchester Guardian, September 15th. 1938.)

Whatever illusions these organisations, one of which is the I.L.P., may hold about other matters, they have certainly seen through the appeal of the war-makers. They take it for granted, however, that Britain intends to be involved in war with Germany over the Czech question, and this seems to be improbable, to say the least of it. Chamberlain seems to have other ideas as to the best way of protecting British capitalist interests.

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Peace and War at the Marble Arch Front.

The crowds which throng the public meeting place at the Marble Arch end of Hyde Park are becoming more and more familiar with the S.P.G.B. and its message, and they use their opportunity of stating their own case against the S.P.G.B.’s. At one meeting, recently, two incidents occurred which cast a vivid light on the futility of Labourism. The first was an interruption by two German girls: They were enthusiastic Nazis and heil-Hitlered as they left the meeting. But before they went they explained why they are Nazis. It is all because of the glorious things they believe Hitler has done, and will do, for the German workers, which they contrasted with the sorry failure of Labourism, i.e., the activities since 1918 of the German and Austrian Social Democratic Parties. But the tragedy is that these two Nazi girls believed that the plight of the German workers up to 1933 was due to Socialism! They shouted to our speaker: “Look what Socialism did for us!” Of course they are quite wrong, but who taught them that Socialism means the administration of capitalism by a Labour Government ? Nobody but the German and Austrian Labourites.

The second incident was a question thoughtfully put by a member of the audience, who was plainly not a member of any party but was looking round to see what he could best do to prevent war. This was his question:—

In view of the fact that the Left Wing parties are at the present time more war-minded than the National Government parties, would you. advise the workers to vote for the Chamberlain candidate in the next General Election in constituencies where there is not a Socialist candidate, and thus help to prevent war?

All members of the S.P.G.B. will recognise that the question is an old friend, hurled at Party speakers for years, and yet it appears in a strangely inverted form. Always before it was in the form: “Ought not. the workers to vote for the Labour Party candidate in constituencies where there is no S.P.G.B. candidate, because the Labour Party, while not a Socialist Party, is the next best thing?”

So capitalist politics have their revenge on the reformist parties (including the Communists). They all played at the game of capitalist politics, trying to outsmart the Tories, only to find that Chamberlain has manoeuvred them into such a position that great masses of the electorate feel that the only way to avoid war is to vote against the Labour Party and other “Left Wing” groups. What a confirmation of the S.P.G.B.’s insistence on a straight Socialist policy all the time!

It need hardly be added that voting for Chamberlain to keep out of war is about as safe as voting for Hitler to keep out of war, in spite of the fact that at present British capitalism will do much to avoid war.

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The German Tactic in Czechoslovakia is not new.

People who wax very indignant about the German tactic of provoking disturbances in Czechoslovakia, as a prelude to intervention and conquest, should spread their indignation a little. It is the time-honoured tactic of British Imperialism in its dealings with native races. It was used with splendid success against the Boer republics forty years ago. It was used by Italy in Abyssinia, by many governments in Africa and China, and it closely resembles a move made by France only fifteen years ago in the Rhine provinces of Germany. When France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr in 1923 one of their activities was to finance a movement for separating Germany’s Rhine provinces and forming them into an u "independent" State, under French protection. Along with some Rhinelanders who really thought the idea was a good one, were others who were paid hirelings of French capitalism.

The Ruhr occupation is worth remembering for the parallel it provides with the Czechoslovak problem. Then the Labour Party and the Communists were all on the side of Germany, and France was the u "mad dog of Europe" against whom they threatened war. The Labour Party and T.U.C. issued a manifesto on January. 15th, 1923, describing the action of the French and Belgian Governments as an act of war and "an attack on the self-determination of the German people." They demanded that the British Government take  "all possible steps to secure the withdrawal of the Armies of Occupation."

The demands of the Communist Party, in a manifesto issued by them, included “an immediate conference of Labour organisations of the world to put an end to the Imperialist aggression" and “immediate scrapping of the Versailles Treaty." Now that Hitler is duly scrapping the Versailles Treaty the Communists have changed their position and are not so keen.

Edgar Hardcastle

News in Review: By-elections (1962)

The News in Review column from the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

By-elections

As we go to press it is too early to comment in detail upon the results of the November spate of by-elections.

At the moment only a few facts are clear. Lord Sandwich is causing a stir in Dorset South by beating his own track through the Tory undergrowth there— something which is becoming a habit with this rich aristocrat. This has pained Tory candidate Angus Maude, who was once on the Sandwich (when he was Hinchingbrooke) coat-tails over Suez and perhaps looked for better reward than this.

We know that a number of servicemen are testifying to the delights of being part of capitalism’s military machine by working a legal fiddle to get out of the forces by having themselves nominated as candidates in the by-elections.

But most of all we know that for Socialists all over the world one of these contests is especially notable. For the first time—in Woodside, in Glasgow—a Socialist candidate has been nominated to fight in a Scottish Parliamentary constituency.

This news will hit no headlines in the capitalist press. We do not expect our candidate to receive many votes. But, as usual, we shall strive to make sure that whatever votes are cast for him come from people who want to get rid of capitalism and replace it with a world of peace and plenty which will be worth living in.

In contrast the Labour Party Deputy-Leader, George Brown, has promised that his party will make their campaign “as exciting and lighthearted as possible . . . in an attempt to stimulate the interest of young people.” He added (as he had to) that this would be “short of gimmicks.”

This is typical of the hard-headed vote-catching of the parties of capitalism. Yet it will be uphill work to persuade anyone to be lighthearted over Cuba, say, or the current figures of London homeless and Scottish unemployed. And hasn’t capitalism got enough excitement already? Nothing gets us more het up than a narrow escape from nuclear war.

Mr. Brown will have his gaiety and his excitement and he will get his votes as well. The Socialist in Woodside will get none of these, but for all that his is the only significant and worthwhile campaign among them all. 

More unemployed

Obstinately, the unemployed figures creep upwards. The October total of over half a million was the highest since April, 1959, and represented 2.2 per cent, of the total working population. Scotland is the hardest hit and after that the North West is the worst sufferer.

At the same time the number of available and vacant jobs has decreased, and at a faster rate than is usual at this time of the year.

The immediate reasons for this situation are simple enough. Firms all over the country are finding it harder than ever to sell their goods, at home and abroad. Profit margins are under strong pressure because, at the same time as selling is getting more difficult many costs of production are going up. Competition in some markets is keen to the point of cut-throat.

Many industries are in considerable uncertainty. Others, like the mines and the railways, have an air of doom as the efficiency experts and the accountants move in and redundancy spreads.

Yet uncertainty was one of the things which capitalism’s experts are supposed to have banished for ever. Are not they all dedicated Keynesians, who can revitalise an economy by the simple process of manufacturing bootstraps for it to lift itself up by?

Have they not assured us, many times in recent years, that they had at last solved the problem of boom and slump and unemployment? Was it not all something to do with planning the economy?

Countries abroad, like Canada and Italy, have already shown up the fallacy of the experts’ claims for themselves. Now our own lengthening dole queues mock the helpless experts and the promises which they have made.

None of this, of course, will prevent them making similar promises in the future. Neither will it prevent the working class falling for the facile assurance from the expert. But some, at any rate, of the workers will get the point

However much capitalism is meddled with, and whatever promises are made for it, it cannot help but remain the same uncontrollable mess it has always been.

China and India

As India has emerged into the family of capitalist nations it has often suited her government to pose as an honest broker in the disputes between both sides in the Cold War.

This has gone home with a lot of workers, who now imagine India as a perpetual peacemaker, always willing to send her men into the Congo or Suez to sort out the mess left by the more ambitious disputants of international capitalism.

Even more confusingly, the government in Delhi is expected to behave like the pacifist which Gandhi is mistakenly thought to have been.

In fact, Ghandi was simply an exponent of the technique of passive resistance to the presence of British rule in India. Had he lived to lead a government, he would soon have had to discard the surface idealism so necessary to any aspiring leader's days of struggle.

So there was nothing inconsistent in the Indian adventures in Kashmir and the annexation of Portuguese Goa. The Indian ruling class has shown that, when its interests demand it, it can be as belligerent and as ruthless as any of the old colonial powers.

Now that India herself is under attack, her government has run true to form. Passive resistance? Not likely. Mr. Nehru has called for the “Dunkirk spirit” and those of us who can remember what that meant for the British working class can shiver for our Indian brothers.

The Chinese in India have suffered in the way of all such people in an enemy country in wartime. If they own shops, these have been attacked by mobs. By government decree, they have been stripped of their Indian citizenship—a move obviously designed to play up to popular nationalist sentiment.

This is particularly dirty work. The harshness of British rule, boosted as it was by racial theories which went against the Indian, should have taught the Indian worker that such theories are pernicious and inhuman. But he has shown himself as ignorant, as ready to be deceived by his leaders and as .proudly nationalist as any Empire builder of the old days.

Just another job

Boy, are you looking for a job?

Listen, stop worrying. I’ve found one.

It’s great. Nothing to do with good works or anything like that. It’s so easy.

Listen, there’s this female and she's at Oxford, at the University, I mean, and she’s a research worker.

Sounds good, you say.

Now she’s been finding out something about how people live. Nothing to do with how well we could live. It’s all about how little we could live on.

And has she come up with the goods. Listen.

She says that a family with a mother and a father and three kids can live spending less than four pounds a week on food.

If they want to, that is. But, of course, they don’t, and this research worker, she sounds a bit cross about it.

She says—in high tone, of course, because after all she is at Oxford—that when a family’s wage goes down they sometimes cut out essential foods instead of buckling to and making the most of the cheaper stuff.

She thinks that we should teach kids in school to cook so that when the wage drops they’ll know just how to get food that a research worker approves of.

Now I wonder whether she worked all that out with those statistics things or whether she’s lived on low wages herself and eaten poor food with them.

Because k says nothing for the modern world that it has to present ordinary, useful human beings with problems of living which make subjects for nice lady research workers at Oxford to look into, does it?

And it isn’t so surprising that, when subsistence is a problem, these useful humans don’t act like the humming, foolproof computers that the lady might use in her researches for all I know, but like—well, like human beings.

Now you don’t need to be a university research worker to think that one out. I’m sure I could do that girl’s job for a lot less than she’s getting.

Think I’ll apply. Wonder how little she could live on?

India To-Day. (1931)

From the June 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from May Issue.)

''India   is   now   one  of  the   eight  most important  industrial   areas   in   the  world" (Simon Report, page 23).                                 

India's industrial importance is the basis of the present strife there. The conditions of the workers in the industrial centres are admitted by all to be terrible, but endeavours are being made, with some success, to direct their discontent into a channel that will not interfere with the continued accumulation of the huge profits that are being made out of their industry. The Nationalists and the Imperialists each seek the support of the Indian worker for their particular brands of exploitation.

Connection with Western culture and Western markets has gradually taught the more fortunate of India's millions the essentials of capitalist enterprise. Native Indian capitalists have acquired large fortunes and have gradually taken a more and more important part in the exploitation of India's resources and of their fellow-countrymen, and they now thirst for unshackled political dominion.

India is predominantly an agricultural country, but its size and population are so huge that the industrial portion, though only just over 10 per cent. of the whole, has an important effect on world industrial relations. The total population is 319 millions, of which 32½ millions belong to the towns.

Bombay and Calcutta, each with a population of over a million, are at present the two principal industrial centres, but other towns are rapidly rising to challenge them in industrial importance.

Bombay is the greatest centre of cotton spinning and weaving in Asia, and the trade and industry of the city are now predominantly Indian. In fact, the pioneers of the textile manufacturing industry were Indians and the first mill was set up by an Indian. The textile industry was originally built upon yarn of low grade, as Lancashire monopolised the trade in higher quality cloths. China and the Far East had supplied India's market. Of recent years the Japanese have gradually captured this trade, mainly by means of the cheap products of their Chinese mills. The Bombay mills, therefore, turned over to the manufacture of cloth. In the new trade, factories also arose in the interior of India, at Ahmedabad, Sholapur, and Nagpur. These new factories offer serious competition to Bombay and tend to expand at its expense. As one writer puts it : "These conditions explain why Bombay, struggling for its life, is the centre of the industrial politics of India." It may be added that India is the largest single import market in the world for cotton textiles. Owing to the native and Japanese grip on the India market, the lifting of the boycott will not go far to restore Lancashire's lost trade.

Calcutta, in Bengal, is the centre of the jute industry. The Bengal production of jute is so great that India holds the virtual monopoly of this trade. Originally the trade was in the hands of Europeans, but most of the share capital of the jute mills is now in native hands. This is also true of the tea gardens of Assam and elsewhere, which were first established and developed by the British. They are now carried on side by side with many that are Indian-owned. In fact, all over India, commercial enterprise is failing more and more into Indian hands.

The iron and steel industry offers yet another important example of native progress. The native-owned Tata Iron and Steel Company, founded by J. N. Tata (a Bombay Parsee who made a fortune in the cotton mills of Bombay and Nagpur), built a steel city in the jungles of Northern India near the coalfields of Bengal and the port of Calcutta. The works produced at full pressure during the war, supplying the essential needs of India and the armies which fought in Egypt, East Africa, and Mesopotamia. Its products are exported to Pacific markets as far east as Japan. British and native steel now divide the home market, but native steel is steadily gaining.

From the above it will be seen that industrial progress is pushing forward rapidly in India and that its principal requirements are being met more and more by the products of native industry. This being so, the native manufacturers are offering greater opposition to the competition of foreign concerns, and more particularly the British competitor who seeks to use his political ascendancy to further his economic interests. Where the natives secure a tariff against the foreign importer, the British firms demand and obtain preferential treatment.

The Indian demand for dominion status or independence rests on the economic interests of the native capitalists. The basis of the British opposition has been briefly put by the Manchester Guardian as follows :—

There are two chief reasons why a self-regarding England may hesitate to relax her control over India. The first is that her influence in the East depends partly upon her power to summon troops and to draw resources from India in time of need. This power will vanish when India has Dominion status. The second is that Great Britain finds in India her best market, and that she has a thousand millions of capital invested there.—(December 30th, 1929.)

It will be noticed that the grounds for and against Indian independence have no connection whatever with the general well-being of India's millions, yet the protagonists on each side pour forth idealistic phrases by the shoal to induce the belief that the special interest of each is a movement for "spiritual and moral'' uplifting. The furtherance of capitalist exploitation has always been bolstered up with similar nebulous nonsense.

There are a multitude, of economic interests involved in India, some of which cut across each other. We can only mention a few of them to illustrate the complexity of Indian affairs.

The most important element is the native Indian manufacturer, faced by severe competition of the highly organised Eastern and Western industries, who demands protection. He sees Indian products being-shipped abroad, to return manufactured and sold in competition with his own goods.

Many native merchants have amassed considerable wealth and have built up extensive selling organisations in India. For long they have been dependent upon the agents of British firms. They now want freedom to make direct foreign connections and cut out the cost of and dependence upon .the middlemen.

Foreign firms, on the other hand (particularly Japanese and American), are establishing their own selling organisations in India and endeavouring to cut out the native merchant altogether. This, together with foreign competition and the development of hand weaving in the villages, supplied the enthusiasm for the boycott of foreign goods, and the sudden cult for village-made cloth, etc.

The educated Indians (the "intellectuals"), who have shared professorships, judgeships, etc., want to keep their lucrative connections. On the other hand, they see a tendency to open these professions to a larger group of people than formerly. Educated Indians (whose education has been obtained at considerable cost) find their number accumulating at a far greater rate than the openings for employment. Consequently, as a mass, they are changeable. Those who have security in the Government service want a continuance of the British occupation; those who cannot get a job, favour the other side; those who are in and out, divide their support accordingly. The recent constitutional reforms give more scope to this group and promise opportunities of a political career. On the other hand, some see in Indian self-government still greater opportunities for employment and advancement. This explains why they are probably the most vocal and most fickle element in Indian politics.

There is a large body of natives that act as agents for importing firms. Where there is little danger of the business being taken out of their hands by direct representatives, they favour a continuance of the old regime.

There are also, of course, the wealthy Indian Princes, who still draw enormous revenues from India and are dependent upon the British occupation for a continuance of their lazy and luxurious modes of living.

Another considerable element in the situation is the conflicting interests of British merchants themselves. The following quotation from No. 11 of "Studies in World Economy," issued by the Carnegie Endowment, will make the position clear:

The large British trading companies in India typically are influenced less by sentiments of nationality than by commercial considerations. Many of them claim to be, and are, strictly international in their trade policy and outlook. It is for this reason that considerations of profit rather than of nationality determine their actions. British officials have frequently called attention to the fact that American manufacturers often have been able to use British houses of established influence to promote the trade of American manufacturers because the American exporter was able to enlist the service of the British house by offering larger commissions, by sending auxiliary salesmen and technical experts, and, in general, by providing greater opportunity for profit than was furnished by manufacturing exporters in the United Kingdom. (Page 149.)

Over 70 per cent. of the Indian population draw their sustenance from the soil. The peasant problem, therefore, has a considerable influence in some directions on the course of affairs. The demands of the peasants for manufactures are few, but there are so many millions of peasants that the aggregate of these demands amounts to a considerable proportion of India's total needs. The vast majority of the peasants live in debt to the moneylender. Their household requirements are supplied by a shop or two in the village, whose owners frequently provide the first market for village produce and add to their earnings by moneylending. Rises in prices immediately affect their demand for goods owing to the fact that the "standard of living is at the very margin of subsistence " (page 158, "Studies in World Economy"). Their small holdings do not provide them with occupation for more than half their time, and consequently they provide the manufacturing districts with a floating supply of labour.

The peasants want their small supplies of manufactured goods at the lowest prices (the foreign product, as a rule), and they want to be free to sell their produce with out the restriction of export duties. In these ways their interests are opposed to Nationalism. On the other hand, they urgently want a reduction in taxation (particularly the removal of the salt tax), and the Nationalist movement for village-made cloth has enabled numbers of them to use their unoccupied time and supplement their meagre earnings by weaving. How little the peasant is really stirred by Nationalist aspirations may be gathered from the following remarks of Lajput Rai, a leading Indian Nationalist : —

The desire for political independence, the sense of shame and humiliation born of being a subject race, of being a political pariah, must, from the nature of things, be confined largely to the educated middle class. Even the mass could not be expected to take a very deep interest in the movement for political independence. Their ignorance, their illiteracy, but most of all the hard struggle they have to carry on for barest existence, prevents them from devoting time or thought to the question. Their time and thought are given to the fight against hunger and want, against disease and distress, against misery and wretchedness. They are easy to please. A slight act of kindness or of consideration makes them happy. They are easily confused on fundamental issues. (Young India, page 31.)

The group we have now to consider is the spectre that haunts the deliberations and celebrations of both Nationalists and Imperialists—the Indian working class. The Indian working class has arisen so recently and is still so much influenced by village associations, that clearness of outlook cannot be expected from it yet. The conditions under which the workers live and work resemble England in the middle of last century. Housing conditions are abominable; 70 per cent. of the tenements of Bombay are classified as single rooms. Their relations with their employers, both native and foreign, have been marked by disastrous strikes. The employers in their unrestricted desire to extract the utmost from the workers have made determined efforts to smash the unions, and there have been bitter conflicts in the. Bombay mills, the Tata Iron Works, on the railways, and elsewhere. As the smashing of the workers' organisations for defence involved too much, an effort is being made to convert them into harmless associations which will eternally bargain (and lose) with the employers—hence the attempt to introduce the Whitley idea into India.

The native Bombay employers have made huge fortunes out of their native workers and they do not want Indian Nationalism to interfere with the continued exploitation of the Indian worker. Their fellow native employers in other industries are at one with them on this point, and their henchmen, the educated professional men, etc. (Lajput Rai's "Middle Class"), are seeing to it that capitalist interests are protected in their programme for independence. The most advanced of the Nationalist programmes, where it refers to the workers, only aims at bringing Indian industrialism into line with modern methods adopted in the more advanced capitalist countries. 

Limitations of space compel us to curtail our further remarks, but before concluding we will quote from an illuminating reply of Gandhi's to a reception given him by the Trade Union of Ahmedabad. From this. it will be seen that Gandhi's sentimental outbursts  are  not born of particular interest in the  Indian worker : —

Your work is making you known throughout the world. The members of your Union are jealous of their rights and are prepared to lay down their lives for them, but their leaders, who guide them, have no ill-will against the capitalists. In their welfare and their power you see your own welfare and power. That is the secret of your strength. Outside people cannot understand your position. They have thought of capitalists and working men as exploiters and exploited. All capitalists, according to some, are born ogres. But there need be no such inherent antipathy between the two. It is an erroneous notion. If the capitalists are apt to be proud of their wealth, the working men are apt to be proud of their numerical strength. We are liable to be swayed and intoxicated by the same passions as the capitalists, and it must be our prayer that both may be free from that passion. I feel that no class war poisons the relations between the millowners and the working men in Ahmedabad. I hope and pray that the present cordial relations may be maintained between them.

. . . . . . . . 

But I do not want to deceive you. I must warn you that I do not bear any ill to the capitalists. I can think of doing them no harm. But I want, by means of suffering, to awaken them to their sense of duty, I want to melt their hearts and get them to render justice to their less fortunate brethren. They are human beings, and my appeal to them will not go in vain. The history of Japan reveals many an instance of self-sacrificing capitalists. — (The Indian Labour Review, April, 1931, p. 19.)

No wonder Bombay mill owners gave dinners to Gandhi !

The foregoing brief review of the position will give some idea of the welter of conflicting interests in India, but, apart from the peasants and workers, they are in agreement on one basic fact—that the Indian worker shall be exploited. The point of contention that is the centre of the turmoil is—Who shall be the exploiter?

To the Indian worker it matters not a jot whether he is exploited by Hindu, Moslem, or foreign capitalists. The Irish have secured a measure of independence, but the Irish worker is exploited just as of yore—only the exploitation has been more intensified. And so would it be with the Indian worker. The interests of the workers all over the world are identical, and opposed to the interests of the capitalists, national and international. When the Indian workers have learned this lesson, they will cease to be led into the blind alleys of Nationalist movements and will concentrate their attention upon the throwing off of capitalist domination, native and foreign.                                 

Gilmac.

Editorial: Disillusionment in India (1951)

Editorial from the August 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

In addition to being members of the working class exploited by Capitalism, the Indian workers under Nehru and the British workers under Attlee have in common the experience of being presented with much-praised gifts that they are now discovering to be valueless. In Britain the workers celebrated nationalisation only to find that it leaves them in just the same exploited condition as before. In India the workers celebrated independence but are now sadly waking up to find that Capitalism and its politicians are just the same though the flag has changed.

Here are a few recent incidents in India to show just how little difference it has made.

Under British rule Indian Nationalists complained bitterly of British interference with the liberty of the Press. Now Nehru, who used to voice the protests, has got the Indian Parliament to pass an Act which gives the Government power to suppress newspapers in certain circumstances. The All-India newspaper editors' conference at Bombay has passed a resolution in favour of taking their protests to the United Nations and decided that every issue of their papers will carry the following inscription above the editorial: “Freedom of expression is our birthright, and we shall not rest until it is fully guaranteed by the Constitution.” (Daily Mail, 25/6/51.) One of the defenders of the Indian Government's action was the son of the late Mahatma Gandhi, who, father and son, used to protest against the British Government for denying freedom of the Press in India.

Then, on 11th July, the President of the Indian Republic "promulgated an ordinance . . . enabling the Government to take prompt steps to prevent strikes in the essential services.” (Manchester Guardian, 12th July, 1951.) It is directed especially against a threatened railway strike and those found guilty of instigating strikes will be liable to terms of imprisonment

Even the fraudulent facade erected by the Government to disguise the naked brutality of Indian Capitalism has been borrowed from the British Labour Government, for we read that in his report to the Congress Party Prime Minister Nehru “laid stress on the need for building up a Welfare State by combining private enterprise with the essential features of Socialism.” (Observer, 8/7/51.)

The prophet of Indian Nationalism, Gandhi, preached pacifism and his attitude was largely shared by Nehru. In line with this reputation a number of British writers, including supporters of the Labour Party, recently sent him a message thanking him for his “efforts for world peace.” (Manchester Guardian, 17/3/51.) It is the same Nehru who belligerently threatens war against the equally belligerent Government of Pakistan over possession of the disputed State of Kashmir.

Of course the stresses and strains of Indian politics have led to movements to form breakaway political parties in opposition to the Congress Party. One of them is led by Mr. Kripalani, whose speech at the inaugural convention is reported as follows by The Times (16/6/51):—

"Mr. Kripalani, who was voted to the chair, said that he had nothing to offer his follower but hard work. Food, clothing, and the housing position had deteriorated since independence. Their enemy to-day was sloth, indifference, superstition, and power politics. Power was necessary for the conduct of human affairs, but became despicable when used for sectional and selfish ends. He had worked under Gandhi’s leadership for India’s freedom, but had lived to hear people saying that things had been better under foreign rule. What could be more degrading for self-respecting Indians? ”

The new party proclaims its aim to be the establishment “of a free, democratic, casteless and classless society” (Manchester Guardian, 18/6/51), but, like Nehru and the Congress Party, they too are going to combine State Capitalism and private Capitalism, but with less emphasis on nationalisation.

The so-called India Socialist Party, which has no better claim to the name Socialist than has the British Labour Party, has a new programme which includes abolition of the rural landlord system without compensation, the “nationalisation of insurance and banking companies,” etc., a capital levy, and no incomes above £900 a year. (Manchester Guardian, 6/7/51.) Being an opportunist, reformist and vote-catching organisation, it has had talks with Mr. Kripalani's party about possible combined electoral action against the Congress Party. The Congress Party used to catch votes with the plea that independence would solve the problems of the Indian workers, though, having made India a Republic within the British Commonwealth, Nehru now defends the policy of remaining inside. So the “India Socialist Party” is trying to collect the votes of workers disgusted with Nehru's government by promising to take India out of the Commonwealth and by forming a new grouping of Powers “from Indonesia to Egypt,” in opposition to both the American-British group and the Russian group.

The significant thing about all these groups in the Indian political world is that every single item of all their programmes has been lifted from the British capitalist-reformist parties. They have taken with them on their departure from the rule of British Capitalism all the trashy political nostrums, everything in fact except the one thing British experience could have taught them—the uselessness to the workers of reforming Capitalism, and the necessity of establishing Socialism.

Notes by the Way: Gandhi and the Millionaires (1942)

The Notes by the Way Column from the September 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Gandhi and the Millionaires

At the time of Gandhi’s arrest several British newspapers made much of the close association between Congress leaders and wealthy Indian capitalists. The “Daily Express” had the following : —

“Just as ten years ago German industrialists decided to finance Hitler for their own ends, so to-day it is largely the great Indian capitalists who stand behind Congress.

Men like the Birla brothers, great mill owners, and Walchand Hirachand, chairman of the £1,700,000 Scindia Steam Navigation Company, see India freed from British control, as the industrialists’ paradise, with high tariff walls. Some rich Congressmen would like to do a business deal with Japan, too. It is against such tendencies that two new leaders have now sprung up, who are putting Congress through the greatest crisis of its career.” (“Daily Express,” August 6th, 1942.)

The “Evening Standard” (August 4th) said :

“There was surely never a quainter contrast in political associates than that between Gandhi and his host for the Bombay meeting of Congress, Ghanshyam Das Birla, the millionaire of big business. . . . Now and then their friendship has been criticised by Indian Socialists.”

This is fair comment. A political movement which claims to represent the interests of Indian workers and peasants has got to explain why it receives financial support from Indian big business, the exploiters of the Indian toilers; but why does this apply only in India; why not nearer home ? What about big business influence in British political parties ? And why should Indian workers be impressed by advice from millionaire controlled British newspapers, or from politicians who likewise find their close associates in the ranks of the captains of industry?

* * *

Are Bishops More Honest? 

The Bishop of Liverpool, advocating whipping for juvenile law breakers, says : “There is no doubt that since the last war the standard of honesty in Britain has been steadily going down.” (“Evening News,” August 19th.) In accordance with the biblical precept, “If any would not work, neither should he eat,” it is certainly dishonest of our investing class to live at the expense of the workers, but Dr. David is probably being rather unfair to his fellow Church dignitaries if he suggests that they, along with boys who rob orchards, are becoming more dishonest. Did not the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who were the biggest mining royalty owners in the country, willy-nilly suffer a reduction of revenue of about £120,000 a year when coal royalties were vested in the Coal Commission ? And observe how the Church has become more sensitive to criticisms about its slum property, and has sold it, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury (“News Chronicle,” August 13th, 1942). And all done without, so far as we have heard, a single Bishop being flogged.

* * *

G. B. Shaw and the Indian Riots

There must be heart-searching among Labour Party adherents who have so long supported Indian nationalism against what they said was a needlessly repressive policy of British Governments, that while Labour leaders are in the Government strong measures against national rioters are again being used. The following are two items in the “Daily Express” (August 20th, 1942) :—

“A Cawnpore man has been sentenced to 20 whip lashes and two years’ hard labour for damaging Government property and causing damage by fire. This is probably the first whipping ordered in India under the new regulations. A new order issued in New Delhi empowers Provincial Governments to set up special courts to try certain offences in event of emergency, and to impose collective fines in areas where offences “prejudicial to safety” occur.”—Reuter, B.U.P.

G. B. Shaw, asked to send a message to an India League demonstration in this country, is reported by the “Evening Standard” as follows : —

“The second (blunder) was the Flogging Bill, which seemed so natural to Ministers educated at Eton that they could not see how it could shock all Europe, including Adolf Hitler.”

At whom is the gibe intended? Mr. Amery went to Harrow, Sir Stafford Cripps to Winchester, and Mr. Attlee to Haileybury, and they are the three most closely concerned with India to-day.” (“Evening Standard,” August 25th.)

* * *

An Echo of the Russian Purge

At the time of the Russian trials in 1938 there was much discussion about the prisoners’ confessions, ranging from Major-General Sir Wyndham Childs, who wrote : “Those who guessed the application of a new and terrible drug were not far wrong” (“John Bull,” March 19th, 1938), to the uncritical believers in things Bolshevist who were prepared to accept everything. When the latter read in their newspapers in July of this year that the Russian People’s Commissarfor the Navy had sent a message “to Mr. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, in reply to a Red Navy Day message” (“Evening Standard,

” July 29th, 1942), did it call up some recollection in their minds? Do they remember Zelensky’s confession? Here is one of the passages from the Official Report published by the Russian Government: “The President: Your testimony contains the phrase: “To come to an understanding with these leaders for possible assistance in the event of an uprising against the Soviet power.” Do you confirm this or not?

Zelensky: I do.

The President: How did you endeavour to utilize this?

Zelensky: At a meeting with a certain Alexander . . .

The President: Who is this Alexander?

Zelensky: The leader of the British Co-operative Party, which is affiliated with the Labour Party. (Page 338.)

According to the Official Report of Zelensky’s “confession,” Mr. Alexander is supposed to have said he would welcome a Right Government, and that the Cooperative Movement could guarantee such credits and assistance as was granted to the Soviet Government during the time of the embargo.

Rakovsky, in his confession, also implicated Mr. Alexander. Rakovsky got twenty years’ imprisonment and Zelensky was sentenced to be shot, while Mr. Alexander, who said that the confessions about him were baseleses, is now Ruler of the Kings’ Navee, receiving greetings from the Russian Government.

* * *

Bolshevist Books for British Bairns

War brings about strange happenings. What must be the thoughts of staunch Conservatives who for years persecuted teachers, suspected of Communist leanings, when they read about the new policy of the Board of Education? Under the heading, “Stalin’s text-books for British School Children,” the “Daily Express” (August 25th, 1942) reported that the Board of Education have sent out to schools a list of 40 books recommended for teachers Among them are “Selected Works of Lenin,” and Stalin’s “Foundations of Leninism.”

And a month earlier the R.A F. had been dropping copies of Stalin’s May Day Order in the Rhineland and Central Germany (“Daily Mail,” July 23rd, 1942).

* * *

The Upper 100,000

We have heard a lot lately about the nearly extinct rich, bled white by taxation. Comprehensive figures about income and taxation have been published by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury (House of Commons Reports, July 23rd, 1942). Among other things it is possible to find out from the figures how many people there are with incomes exceeding £2,000 a year, how much tax they pay now, and how much tax they paid in 1938-39. The figures have been analysed in the “Economist” (August 1st, 1942), and they show that there are 105,000 persons whose income is more than £2,000 a year, including 100 with more than £100,000 a year each. These figures relate to total income before income tax and surtax have been deducted. Consequently they hide the harrowing facts that, in the words of the “Manchester Guardian” (July 31st, 1942), “tax has become crushing” above the £2,000 a year level. Here is the bitter truth about these crushed souls : —

“In 1938-39 the 105,1000 persons with incomes above £2,000 a year had an average income, after paying tax, of £3,150 per head, but ” the war . . . has reduced their average net income, after tax, from £3,150 to £1,950.” (“Times,” July 27th, 1942.)

They used to jog along on an average of £60 a week after paying tax, and just managed to make ends meet; now all they have for food, clothing and shelter is an average of £37 10s. a week ! In the words of the “Manchester Guardian,” “There are still 105,000 people with gross incomes of over £2,000 a year, but their average net income after tax is only £1,950 ” (July 31st, 1942) (our italics). One wonders why this sobbing city editor headed his article, “Rich and Poor”; “Poor and Poor” or “Poor Workers and Poorer Surtax Payers” would have been more seemly. Now that they are down and out, he ought not to have added insult to injury. His final words are : —

“There cannot be more than a few hundred persons left with a net income of £5,000 a year.”

* * *

Postcript on Mr. Bevin

Mr. Bevin’s statement that at the end of the war “the rentier, comfortably living on interest, would certainly be gone.” brought swift, if indirect, repudiation from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood. On July 30th, Rear-Admiral Beamish asked a question in the House of Commons plainly directed against Mr. Bevin, though he was not mentioned : —

“LOANS (SECURITY).

READ-ADMIRAL BEAMISH asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in order to encourage thrift and to allay doubts that have arisen in the minds of those who direct and subscribe to the War Savings Campaign, he will again make it clear that those who lend money to the State and rentier people living on interest can look to the future without fears for their loans or their interest ?

SIR K. WOOD: Loans to the State will be honoured without exception or qualification. The State is not directly responsible for private loans, but its the declared policy of His Majesty’s Government to maintain public confidence in the credit structure of the country, and no action of any kind is contemplated which would interfere with the rights of creditors in respect of private loans.” (House of Commons Debates, July 30th, 1942.)

On Sunday, August 2nd, the reply was given wide publicity by being included in the news on the wireless. Before his statement was repudiated Mr. Bevin’s words had caused consternation in various circles. Anxious investors wrote to the newspapers and to their banks and financial advisers, the War Savings Organisation felt that it was distinctly discouraging to their campaign, and many letters on the subject were published in newspaper correspondence columns. Among the latter was one from Sir Rowland Evans, published by the “Daily Telegraph,” which provided us with the entertaining spectacle of a defender of capitalism quoting Bolshevist Russia against Mr. Bevin’s alarming views : —

To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.” 

Sir,—According to his recent speech, Mr. Ernest Bevin welcomes the prospect of there being no “rentier people living on interest” at the end of the war. Apparently he disapproves of the principle of interest on capital as he does of the motive of profit.

But Mr. Bevin’s Socialist friends in this country need not be discouraged by his ethics in this matter from taking up War Loan or buying Savings Certificates, or have any qualms of conscience in receiving interest on their capital thus invested, for their fellow war-workers in Soviet Russia have been doing the same thing—and on quite a big scale. For example, as early as 1937 the Soviet Government floated a Defence Loan of 4,000,000,000 roubles, bearing interest at 4 per cent., redeemable in 1957.—Yours faithfully, (“Daily Telegraph,” July 24th.)

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: The Forgotten Man in India (1942)

Editorial from the May 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir Stafford Cripps’ abortive negotiations with the Indian political leaders have had the incidental result of showing up the reality lying hidden behind the words and theories of the principal participants. Sir Stafford’s own attitude in the past has been that the Indian problem could be solved if only sincere and disinterested well-wishers were allowed to brush aside British vested interests and their prejudiced political advisers, and make direct approach to the Indian leaders. Under the threat of Japanese invasion he was allowed to offer what he considered to be a suitable scheme, but failed to overcome the opposition of the Hindoo and Moslem organisations or to reconcile their differences with each other. At the end he received from Nehru, leader of the Congress Party, the unkindest cut of all, the charge that whoever comes from the British Government “speaks the same accent as of old and treats us the same way” (Evening Standard, April 16th, 1942.) He also remarked of Cripps: —

“What he said was a repetition of the farrago of nonsense Amery has been uttering all these years”.—(“News-Chronicle,” April 13th, 1942.)

Such is the fate of those who aspire to solve Capitalism’s problems in a non-capitalist way.

Cripps, for his part, had characterised the counter-proposal put forward by Nehru as a form of government which would constitute an “absolute dictatorship of the majority,” providing no real safeguard for the protection of the Moslem and other minorities against the Congress Party.

The Moslem League shared this view. Its leader, Mr. Jinnah, is reported to have said that the Congress Party’s aim

“appeared to be to set up an irremovable Cabinet responsible to nobody but the majority. If such an adjustment was arrived at such a Cabinet would be a Fascist Grand Council and the Moslems and the other minorities would be entirely at the mercy of the Congress Raj.”—(“Manchester Guardian,” April 15th 1942.)

Nehru’s view, on the other hand, was that “Congress is the only party in India which could deliver the goods,” and he is reported to have told a Daily Express correspondent that Jinnah of the Moslem League is a “Fascist” (Daily Express, April 13th). The one part of the British offer that the Moslem League accepted with “gratification” was the clause empowering provinces to vote themselves out of the new United India if they wanted to do so, in order to escape Congress Party rule.

After due allowance is made for views being put forward during negotiations in an exaggerated and not fully considered form, the fact remains that Sir Stafford’s beliefs about the nature of the Indian problem and the way to solve it were proved wrong, as also were the Indian nationalists’ claim that there would be no problem if British rule disappeared. In a capitalist world the real underlying motives of conflict arise out of, or derive their intensity from, the vested interests of the different sections of the propertied class, whether British investors, Indian princes and landlords, or the Indian textile and other millionaires. All alike must plead guilty to the charge that the welfare of India’s workers and peasants are to them only a secondary consideration. The British rulers of India and most of the Indian Princes have to answer the statement made Mr Runganadhan, adviser to the Secretary of State for India, in a speech at a conference of educationalists on April 11th, 1942: —

“Out of 50.,000,000 children of school age fewer than 10,000,000 are attending school or receiving education of any kind, he said. Fewer than 10 per cent, of the total population of 400,000,000 are literate. Three out of every four of the 700,000 villages have no school.”—”Empire News,” April 12th, 1942.)

This is the condition of India after long years of their rule; and Congress Party rule offers little change except in name. When the capitalist-financed Congress Party protest that they are different in their attitude to the masses they have to explain, for example, why, when they governed Bombay in 1938, one of their first acts was to introduce a Trade Disputes Bill designed to fetter Indian trade unions. In the words of an Indian trade union journal, this Bill

“takes away the legitimate, constitutional and powerful weapons of the workers, namely, the strike, by declaring it illegal and therefore punishable in a large number of cases.”— (“Indian Labour Journal,” October 23rd 1938.)

And Gandhi, former Congress leader, has to explain why he, an advocate of non-resistance even against armed invasion, stated in 1938 that if strikers persisted in mass picketing of factories

“the owners of mills or other factories would be fully justified in invoking the assistance of the police.”—(“Indian Labour Journal,” August 21st, 1938.)

Whatever words the various leaders may use in attacking each other, they are all concerned at heart with maintaining landlordism and capitalism, and while capitalism remains, the lot of India’s poverty-stricken millions will be that of a dispossessed class struggling against landlords and factory owners to improve their miserable conditions. Gandhi, no less than the others, is committed to capitalism: —

“The duel between capitalists and labour, he says, is only between big words . . . Both are capitalists; one has consolidated his capital and used it intelligently ; the other squanders it recklessly. If you communists or anybody wish the destruction of capitalists we would be destroyed. What I really do want is a combination, mixing and uniting of the two.”—(“Indian Labour Journal,” July 8th, 1934.)

When we contemplate the political immaturity of the great majority of the Indian workers and peasants, the hold of religious superstitions and caste barriers, the consequent enormous influence of political and religious leaders, the strongly developed regionalism helped by religious differences and geographical factors, and not least the material for bitter class conflict between peasants and workers on the one hand and landlords and factory owners on the other, and between Princes, landlords and industrial and commercial interests themselves we are not being rashly-prophetic when we say that India governed by Indian property-owners’ parties contains the prospect of acute internal strife with the possibility of civil war like that in America in the sixties of last century, and the development of a “totalitarian” form of government. If the Indian masses continue to be pawns to be used by their masters’ political parties and religious groups one thing can be said with complete certainty, that the interests of the masses will continue to be forgotten. Our advice, given in reply to a question put by Indian workers interested in Socialism (Socialist Standard, June, 1932) bears repeating—

“Workers in India should unite on a basis of Socialist principles and organise for the establishment of Socialism. They should take what steps are necessary to secure a franchise for this purpose, but they should not unite with any other parties or give adherence to any other bodies, even those masquerading as pure, and simple franchise organisations, as by so doing they would lose independence.”

The well-being of the Indians does not lie with political and religious leaders, whether Indian or British, Japanese or Russian, but in their own single-minded efforts to understand and organise for Socialism. Their slogan, like that of Socialists everywhere, should be not “India for the Indians,” but “the world for the workers.”

The Problem of India (1941)

Book Review from the December 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is no Sleeping Beauty. The apostles of the “inevitability of gradualness” have been pulverised by the crashing blows of events during the last decades. War—crisis—then war again; the false complacency of “improvers” and social reformers is now revealed in all its inadequacy, for like a series of terrific earthquakes, capitalism administers periodical shocks.

The backward countries are particularly affected. Already it is clear that the battleground of the present conflict is moving east. Africa and particularly Asia will bear much of the brunt of the world-war.

Again, the productive powers of the warring countries will be strained to their limits, no source of supply will be left untapped; think of these factors and then think of India.

“The Problem of India,” a “Penguin Special,” is a book of some two hundred and fifty pages. The author, Doctor K. S. Shelvankar, an Indian student, presents his case exhaustively, efficiently and clearly. In his foreword he claims that it is not “pro-British and anti-Indian or vice-versa,” but that he is “pro the things that can bring food and freedom for the millions who are to-day deprived of them.” “Food and Freedom !” In his historical survey of pre-British India the author makes it quite clear that there was not much of the first and none of the other for the masses of peasants and handicraft workers. A multitude of oppressors and exploiters, princelings, landowners and middlemen, plus the inevitable crowd of religious parasites, the priesthood, had to be maintained according to their social status out of the products of the labouring masses. The system of agriculture was backward even when compared to the then feudal structure of Western Europe. This was due to a variety of reasons: Lower fertility owing to lack of irrigation, wasteful methods of tilling, little domestication of animals. It is not the purpose of this article to follow the author deeply into the historical development of India, for Socialists here the main question is the position of India under the rule of British capitalism.

However, Dr. Shelvankar’s investigation of India’s past is an impressive, though necessarily condensed, piece of work. Methodically he describes for us the whole structure of India as it was when the traders from the European continent came to barter and cheat the Indian population under the banner of Christianity. First the Portuguese, then the Dutch and the French and finally the British in the form of the East India Company. The British stayed.

At this time, during the 15th century, the country was under the rule of a Moslem dynasty, the Moguls, having been conquered by a series of attacks some four centuries previously. Victors and defeated were of different religion, the former were Mohammedans, the latter Hindus. The two faiths did not assimilate each other; both existed side by side and do so to the present.

The invasion made little or no difference to the economic life of the country; it merely deposed one ruling group and substituted another. Peasants toiled on the land, the craftsman worked on his job, but the surplus-value, politely called “tax,” went to the princes and priests of Islam instead of to the Brahmin caste.

The Indian feudal structure differed in important essentials from the system prevailing during the same period in Europe. This must be remembered in order to see why India did not develop into capitalism of its own accord, but had to have the capitalist virus injected into the body economic from without.

The Indian village community remained static. The handicraft worker stayed put, the victim of the peasant’s abysmal poverty; the towns remained the pleasure-grounds of the feudal rulers. Commerce was restricted to the needs of the thin upper crust, a mere by-product of an effete social system, as was the highly-skilled artisan labouring in the prince’s courtyards.

Into this paradise for capitalist exploitation came the British merchants and soldiers ready to assume the “white man’s burden” of gold. The Whig politician, Sheridan, described the East India Company as “wielding a truncheon with one hand and picking a pocket with the other.” The truncheon was soon replaced by the rifle and bloody battles throughout the country blazed the trail of British conquest. Then came the mutiny in 1857, the Company was wound up, and India came under the control of the Government, as the “brightest jewel in the British Crown.”

For more than eighty years India has been a Crown Colony. The British ruling class cannot therefore disown responsibility for the conditions now obtaining among the mass of the Indian people. It is not a pleasant thought. Out of a total population of 353 millions, and a working-mass totalling 154 millions, excluding children, about 66 per cent, are still employed on the land either as smallholders or labourers. Only 18 per cent. are employed in trade, transport and industry. There is a middle group composed of professional workers, officials, small business men, etc., numbering roughly 15 millions. Then comes the top layer of big landlords (princes, etc.), industrialists and others living on big private incomes.

The preponderance of agriculture is evident. It is not agriculture as we know it in the Western world. Large-scale farming is practically unknown except in products designed for export such as cotton, jute, linseed, tea and coffee. The production of food grown for home consumption, cereals, pulses, sugar, and so on, has been left to stagnate under a system of primitive small-holdings, the owners of which are burdened down by government tax and money-lenders. The standard of living among these peasants as well as the urban proletariat is so low as to be incomprehensible to our minds. To quote the author:

“Excluding the cultivators, most of whom, clinging to dwindling plots of land, are on the brink of insolvency and steeped in debt, we have sixty or seventy million agricultural and industrial workers holding on to dear life by the skin of their teeth. Very few of them—a fraction of 1 per cent. at the most—earn as much as 1s. or 1s. 6d. per day (i.e., between £12 and £18 a year); all the rest toil and sweat for a few pennies a day.”

How do they exist? Dr. Shelvankar tells us.

“The average village dwelling is a low, flimsy, crooked structure with mud walls, a mud floor and a thatched roof. It is windowless, airless and has no sanitation.”

The urban proletariat vegetate in hovels “with no windows, chimneys or fireplaces. There is neither light nor water supply, and, of course, no sanitary arrangements.”

Their diet is reminiscent of kept animals, only much smaller in quantity. The daily food of an industrial worker in the towns of Bombay or Madras consists of l¼ lb. of cereals and little else. The average consumption of milk per head in working-class households in Bombay “is less than ½oz. supplemented by .05oz. of melted butter.” Many of the peasants exist on an even poorer diet.

Is it any wonder that during the first thirty years of this century “Cholera has claimed 10¾ million victims, influenza 14 millions, plague 12½ millions and malaria 30 millions ” ?

And yet pacifists can only see the horrors of war !

What remedies can be applied to alleviate such distress? As was to be expected, the author of this book argues strongly that first of all India must be freed from British domination before any comprehensive policy of progressive amelioration can be put into effect.

The core of his case is, that by a deliberate policy of imperialist exploitation the development of industry has been stifled, whilst a mortal blow has been dealt to the old village communal system, adding the burden of alien exploitation to the existing native incubus. As a consequence the demand for working recruits to industry is not large enough to relieve the economic pressure on the over-populated small-holdings. He contends that the country has in the main been allocated the role of supplying to British capitalism the natural products so vital for an empire of industry and commerce, plus the provision of countless well-paid sinecures to members of that exclusive ruling-class “freemasonry,” the old school tie.

During and since the last war, however, there has been a marked rise in industrial output, particularly in textiles. It is certain that this industrial impetus will be intensified as a result of the present war. Therefore, even if it were the wish of the British ruling class to retard the growth of capitalism in India, the evolutionary process is not a thing that can be held back for ever.

That is the Socialist view, and it should be taken into account when we are dealing with nationalism in a colonial country. Further, it has yet to be shown that “national liberation” would prove to be something worth the effort and sacrifice for the hungry millions.

For as the author himself notes:

“The outstanding feature of Indian industry to-day is the degree to which ownership and control are concentrated within a comparatively narrow circle. ‘The same set of individuals’—rich merchants with a sprinkling of the more prosperous professional people—‘hold the bulk of the shares in all the cotton, jute and other concerns.’” (Page 155.)

We have still to be convinced that in matters of economic welfare or on any other questions the Indian masses could expect a better deal from their native exploiters.

Dr. Shelvankar seems to recognise the truth of this. He agrees that the handing over of the country to a native bourgeoisie, or worse still, the princes, would not improve the situation. In his view the only hope for India lies in the introduction of a “planned Socialist economy” for which national liberation would provide a stepping stone, a period of brief “transition.”

It is a view which has no basis except in the optimistic imagination of the author, who assumes that “liberation” would give the nascent Indian bourgoisie only a short lease of life. Quite the contrary. Success in the struggle for national freedom may have the effect of eliminating for a long time to come whatever influence (and it is very small indeed) the ideas of independent working-class action, not to speak of Socialism, has in India to-day. The very status of national independence presupposes a powerful native ruling-class secure in the support of a nationalist-minded population.

The author several times quotes Ireland in dealing with the agrarian problem. It is a pity he did not allow himself, and his readers, a glimpse at the virtual stagnation of the working-class movement in the Irish Free State at the present time. It is certain that this standstill is partly the result of the struggle for national independence which completely occupied the energies of the Irish workers.

Dr. Shelvankar wants his working-class compatriots to make the same mistake, but expects them almost immediately after to turn on the movement for which they have suffered and bled, throw over the nationalist illusions with which they have so long been nurtured, and proclaim their conversion to socialist ideas.

However desirable Mr. Shelvankar’s hopes may be, they are totally unrelated to the problems he is attempting to solve. Under present conditions in India, and with the standard of political consciousness prevailing among the majority of its inhabitants, the platform of national liberation can at best only lead to some form of native capitalism. This is clearly seen from the nature of the mass-movements India has so far produced. The Congress Party, though some of its leading spokesmen such as Nehru claim to the Socialists, is in fact no more than a movement of national liberation. This is implicitly recognised by the author himself when he deals with the growth of Indian industrialism during the last war. On page 176 he says: “These developments marked a critical transition in the nature of Indian capitalism. From being predominantly commercial in character, it was launching out into industrial production. But its real strength lay not so much in the economic resources at its command as in its affiliation with a political movement (the Congress Party) which was becoming a menace to imperialism.”

Later, in dealing with the record of Congress in office, in 1937, he has to admit that so far from justifying hopes of a working-class character, it showed even amity to British rule. As for the peasants, they received a rude shock when, in the province of Bihar, their champions entered into a pact with the landlords, whilst “the entire labour movement . . . denounced a Trades Disputes Bill designed to interfere with the right to strike,” which was the act of the Congress Government of Bombay (page 231).

But the chief force in India is still wielded by Ghandi. He is the real spokesman of the peasants, the bulk of the Indian people. For him the future of India lies in the past, a return to the primitive agricultural community; he is the idol of the masses, the illiterate, half-starving millions, who have not yet been pulled out of the primitive slough of religious fanaticism, and are left to the mercies of money-lenders and their agents. Not content with their “legal” whack, they take advantage of that illiteracy to double-cheat their prey.

The author’s sympathy for Ghandism is evident by the approval with which he quotes the policy of the peasant leagues, “which is nothing less than the abolition of landlordism and the cancellation of peasant debts and reorganisation on such a basis that exploitation in every form would be ended and ownership vested in the cultivator himself” (page 221).

This raises the question: What does Dr. Shelvankar mean by Socialism ? What kind of India does he visualise that would justify the term “planned Socialist economy”? For Socialists private ownership of land, as well as any other form of ownership in the means of life, is not compatible with Socialism at all. On the contrary, the small land-owner is a particularly reactionary obstacle to the achievement of Socialism. Dr. Shelvankar reveals his misconception of Socialism when he refers to Russia as a Socialist country, and gives the Soviet state-capitalist order as the example which India must follow.

In fact, the author, like many other left-wing Indian nationalists, completely disguises, perhaps even from himself, the real issues of the Indian problem. The vexed questions of religious and caste differences are fobbed off under the theory of the British policy of “divide and rule.” This may or may not be true. But that they are able to do so depends primarily on the low level of understanding, and particularly class-consciousness, which inevitably exists among the Indian masses to-day.

An important omission from the book is the total absence of any appraisal of the international issues of which the Indian problem is only a part. The wars in Spain and China have apparently taught Dr. Shelvankar nothing, but their lessons have not been lost on Socialists. Backward and smaller countries cannot assume a ”national independence” that does not exist in fact. Even Russia has had to face the bitter tragedy and humiliation consequent upon a balancing of capitalist world-power. The chances of an independent India are nil.

Socialists have, of course, to aim to break down all barriers, whether of nation, race or religion, which to-day divide the workers of the world according to the convenience and benefit of their exploiters. And let it be noted by cynics, pessimists and opponents of Socialism alike: The world to-day is more interdependent than ever before. The conflict raging at present will leave its mark in every corner of the globe. In India it will have far-reaching effects.

Socialists everywhere feel the deepest sympathy for the Indian masses in their struggles to raise their heads from under the yoke of poverty, of domination, alien and native. The problem of India is part of a world-problem; a world-wide movement for the achievement of Socialism is the only solution.

Sid Rubin