A Fabian and his Fabianism (1947)

From the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Fabianism came to be the political Bible of the Labour Movement then Sidney Webb (the late Lord Passfield) was its Prophet. Of him, Lord Listowel in the House of Lords said: “That the Labour Party came to regard him much as the Children of Israel must have regarded Moses . . . who pointed a way through the ‘Wilderness to the Promised Land’.” (Hansard, 20/10/47.) Undoubtedly, Webb, more than any other Fabian, foretold of the New Jerusalem which was emerging, painlessly, inevitably, almost imperceptibly from the present Social Order. The Labour Government’s historic mission is, it seems, to demonstrate that this Fabian New Jerusalem is merely Capitalist “Old Babylon,” writ large.

The Liberal Lord Samuel also spoke of Webb as a political pioneer and one of the principal founders of a Great Party. The Conservative Lord Salisbury called him the founder of the Fabian Society and intellectual father of the Labour Party. The Archbishop of Canterbury mentioned the close connection between Webb and the Church on the question of Social Reform. “He also desired to associate himself with the Tributes paid.” (Hansard, same issue.) Speaking for ourselves, “We come to bury Caesar not to praise him.”

The Fabian Society was founded in 1881. A group of “educated people,” so their historian, Mr. Pease, assures us, not without a little unction it seems : “We were aware of Marx,” he says, “but I do not think at the time the Society was founded we had read or assimilated his ideas.” (“History of Fabian Society,” p.24.) A statement probably as true now of the Fabian Society as it was then.

Non-acquaintance with Marx’s ideas has not prevented successive generations of Fabians from solemnly pronouncing him “A great thinker.” It was apparently only what he thought about that for them is of so little consequence. Mr. Pease even thought “That every passing year brought added conviction that the broad principles of Marxism will guide the evolution of Society during the present century.” (“History of Fabian Society,” p.236.) The sentence before, however, had noted that the first achievement of Fabianism was to break the spell of Marxism in England

As against Marxism the Fabians began by denying that Socialism could only be the outcome of historic development. Webb on behalf of the Fabians assured us “that no special claim is made that Socialism has a basis in history.” (“Fabian Essays,” p.36.) Instead we are presented with a plurality of Socialisms each dependant on their particular environment and, it appears, geographical location. “Thus Fabianism,” Mr. Pease told us, “was English Socialism,” The political and industrial conditions being somewhat different in degree in Scotland, he added. While in Ireland an application of socialist principles had not been seriously attempted. Nor, we presume, Wales or the Channel Islands.

Marxism, we must add. is a unified world conception based on an analysis of the sum totality of existing social productive relationships—Capitalism. If is thus able to demonstrate that the very development of capitalism provides the economic and social conditions for its replacement by an entirely different social arrangement based on common ownership and production for use. The present system being universal in character the Socialist Society which supersedes it must have the same universal character. There can then be no different kinds of Socialism, i.e., a Scotch Socialism in contrast to an English Socialism. Socialism being world-wide in extent the same social system must operate and be universally valid throughout the entire Socialist world.

Such is the stuff of which Fabian “Socialism” was made. Indeed Fabianism cut this “stuff” into even smaller parts, and presented us with such microscopic “socialist” portions as “Socialist London,” “Socialist Birmingham,” even “Socialist Poplar” and “Socialist Bermondsey.” Shaw’s admission in the Fabian Tract 41 that “he and the early Fabians had no true knowledge of Socialism” is hardly a confession. For Shaw still holds most of Mr. Pease’s “Socialist illusions.” The venerable Shavian beard would seem to illustrate in this respect that wisdom is not necessarily denoted by whiskers—not even when they are Fabian whiskers.

What then are the fundamentals of Fabianism? Even the Fabians themselves seem wholely ignorant of them. “There never has been a Fabian orthodoxy,” said Mr. Pease, “because no one was in a position to assert what the true faith was.” (“History of Fabian Society,” p.237.) Nevertheless continued Mr. Pease, “We obtained freedom of thought,” An attribute which Pease seemed to think highly desirable.

No doubt for a “Socialist” organisation which included all shades of political opinion advised voting against what it termed Socialist candidates if it meant splitting the vote and keeping the more popular “progressive” candidate out, and which supported Imperialism and war, such “freedom of opinion,” was not merely desirable but essential.

Apparently for the Fabians Socialism, like the poor, has always been with us. According to Webb “Socialist philosophy is but the recognition of the principles of social organisation in great part unconsciously accepted. The history of the 19th century was an almost continuous record of progress in Socialism.” The Socialist cat is thus out of the Fabian bag. Fabian Socialism is merely the acceptance and extension of all State activity. In pursuance of this theme Webb in a grotesque passage records what for him seemed the progress of Socialism. He enumerates such things as State control of the Armed Forces, Gas-works, Parks, Cemeteries, Slaughter Houses, Pawn-broking Establishments and Leper Islands. (“Fabian “Essays,” pp.18-51.) Even State registration of hawkers, dogs, cats, cabs, and inspection of baby farms and Scotch red herrings are all evidence of Socialist legislation ! For Webb a pedlar’s licence was proof that we were enjoying a semi-socialist existence. While such institutions, as the War Office and Scotland Yard were important milestones on the high road to the full Socialist Commonwealth.

The Socialism of Webb, in spite of protests from some Fabian quarters, became the accepted and authorised version. It merely turns out to be but the bureaucratic organisation essential for the maintenance and upkeep of Capitalism. Social reforms can likewise be included under this category. The 19th century Factory Acts constituted State intervention against the unrestrained character of prevailing capitalist exploitation. Such exploitation would finally have led to a catastrophic decline in workers’ productivity and thus profits. Sanitation laws constituted a safeguard for the wealthy against epidemics. Education Acts are designed to give workers’ children the training necessary for the wage-labour status they will one day assume. Unemployment Acts. Health Insurance, Old Age Pensions, merely denote the need to regulate the wide-spread poverty and destitution caused by the economic effects of capitalism on the working class. While certain reforms may give the worker slight but often merely transient amelioration they leave untouched the poverty resulting from his class-position in present society. The undertaking by the State of such activities are on the grounds of cheaper and more efficient administration. At the same time they spread the burden of taxation evenly over the entire capitalist class.

As for Nationalisation of Key Industries, advocated by Fabians for many years, it has come to pass. Nevertheless, the Tories or Liberals do not propose to denationalise them if returned to Power, while the theme of a “planned Capitalism” is as much their theme as that of the Labour Party.

Even the Fabian “Gas and Water Socialism” was but a Radical legacy bequeathed by Joseph Chamberlain. Municipalism, its other name, merely seeks to prevent the whole capitalist class from being used as a milch-cow by the private ownership, often of a monopolistic character, of such things as heat, light, power, etc. As for parks, libraries, museums, etc., being bits of Socialism, Chamberlain, with brutal frankness, regarded them as merely “the ransom paid for the privilege of holding property.” Fabianism is then a thing of shreds and patches. Shoddy remnants, second-hand from the Tory and Liberal political shops, sewn into a Fabian patchwork. Finally, on the subject of Municipal Socialism, we have Pease’s admission that it needed for its adoption and extension no advocacy from the Fabians. (“History of Fabian Society,” p. 81.)

The maturing of Capitalism into monopolistic forms and the integration of the State into its economic functions and activities, have been idealised by the Fabians into a programme of State Capitalism. The very developmental trends of Capitalism and its associated bureaucratic growth has then been presented as its opposite—Socialism.

It was this very evolution of Capitalism towards monopolistic forms that gave to Fabianism its automatic and ineluctable character. If the Mills of Capitalism were grinding small they were nevertheless grinding out “Socialism” every day. Such was the cumulative effect of all this that one day Capitalist Society would become a Socialist Society and no one would notice it. The economic revolution is going on every day, said Mr. Clarke, practically independent of our desires or prejudices. (“Fabian Essays,” p.62.) The Tories and Liberals, declared Webb many times, were committed to “Socialism” as much as the “Socialists.” He added, even people who believe Socialism a foolish dream were its unconscious instruments. According to the Fabians the coming of Socialism was as inexorable as an act of Nature. While the Fabians assigned themselves the role of midwives in the period of social gestation, the existence and growth of the “Socialist” seed inside the womb of Capitalist Society was apparently innocent of human agency. No greater miracle has been claimed since the birth of Jesus. This is a denial of the Marxist dictum, that given the material conditions to hand, men make history. Dressed up in its Sunday clothes this piece of Fabian fatalism is called “the inevitability of Gradualism.”

This was also a denial of the class-struggle and of the need of the working class to capture political power for the overthrow of Capitalism. For effective Socialist action and understanding they substituted political auto-suggestion. Because society was evolving gradually in the “Socialist” direction, they said, things were going to get better and better for the workers. Given the Fabians in control the results were, guaranteed. Such was the pernicious Fabian doctrine which sought to insulate the working class from a true perspective of their class position in Capitalist Society.

With this automatic process went a peculiar Fabian opportunism. With typical Fabian discreetness they called it “Permeation.” While telling the workers they should have an independent party of their own, they felt that they, the Fabians, should be free to work in and with every group or party for the favourable growth and influence of their ideas. Telling the Tories and Liberals “we” were already half way to Socialism, from which there was no turning back, the other half may as well be travelled in unison nnd together.

The Fabians also helped form the Labour Party by their active association with that party’s parent body—The Labour Representation Committee. So well did the Fabians, permeate the Labour Party that it could at length have uttered with some truth, “We are all Fabians now.” This Fabianisation of the Labour Party made, however, the Fabians superfluous. After a time they became an integral part of the Labour Party and as an independent political organisation for all practical purposes the Society permeated itself out of existence. Such is the inevitability of gradualness. However, Sidney Webb could claim that the Labour Party was. not a class party but one representing National interests who were ready to take over the Government of the country. Appropriately enough the Labour Party’s 1918 programme. “Labour and the New Social Order” was drafted by Webb.

Little wonder that “Fabian Socialism” representing its establishment as “the co-operative outcome of all sections of the community” was regarded as a welcome substitute by those in the saddle for the Marxist ” Class Struggle ” and “Social Revolution.” A “Socialism”—State Capitalism—that left their real class position undisturbed they could regard with equanimity, even interest. They might even agree with Shaw. ” That it was as easy and matter of course for the average respectable Englishman to become a Socialist as a Liberal or Tory.” (“Fabian Essays” 1908 preface.) The Fabians not merely made their Socialism respectable, they made it fashionable. Thus the announcement by an heir of wealthy interests that be had become a Fabian convert to his family might have merely occasioned a remark from his Mamma that his father had become one at an even earlier age.

The adoration of the State and its administrative functions by the Fabians has interesting implication’s. Thus Webb said “We must take more care to improve the social organism than our individual development. It. is not the individual’s development which is the highest cultivation of his personality but the filling in in the best possible way of his humble function in the great social machine.” Shaw, going perhaps even further, implies in Appendix I of the “History of the Fabian Society” that Parliamentary democracy as understood is a mere calling of fools into a ring. He said “Society could never be reconstructed by the type of men produced by popular elections.” Without qualified rulers a Socialist State is impossible, be declares. In a preface to the “Fabian Essays.,” he also states “the very existence of society is dependent on the skilled work of administrators and experts.” Further in the appendix Shaw hoped that “Democracy would demand that only suitable men should be presented to its choice.” Fabians, of course. This is, of course, a. favourite device of dictatorships which, also scorning the notion that people are intelligent enough to run Society in their own interests collectively, demand that only people favoured by nature and circumstances are qualified to take charge. That Shaw himself at length came riding home politically on the shoulders of Mussolini seems not an illogical deduction from his own premises. Fabian State efficiency rather than Fabian democracy would seem their cardinal doctrine. From this it would also seem that Webb and the Fabians anticipated certain features of Fascism.

When Sidney Webb and his wife, Beatrice, were old people, they went to Russia. Previously they had considered Bolshevism no better than Czarism. “Under Bolshevism the prisons were as full and the rifles as active as under Tsardom.” (“Decay of Capitalist Civilisation,” p.101.) What they now saw on their visit was a vast administrative machine run by a privileged bureaucracy. And what the Webbs saw, they liked. The Stalinists hailed the Webbs’ approval of their bureaucratic machine as evidence “of the establishment of Socialism in one Country.” For the Webbs it was the establishment of that State Capitalism par excellence which they had advocated for years. And the Webbs were right. As their fellow Fabian, Bernard Shaw, announced on returning from a visit to Russia, “The Bolsheviks have merely realised the Fabian Ideal.”

When the Webb’s came home they wrote a book of 1,200 pages;: “Soviet Communism a New Civilisation?” In subsequent editions the question mark was removed. Apparently this indicated their full approval and sanction of the state of affairs in Russia. In such a truly Fabian fashion did “Socialism” in Russia come into existence.

This, of course, led to a New Communist line on the Webbs. True Lenin had referred to them as bourgeois humbugs . . , social chauvanists . . . guilty of the worst kind of treachery, etc. (“Lenin on Britain,” p.152.) Likewise the Communist International had denounced Webb and the Fabians as apologists for State Capitalism under the guise of Socialism. (“Handbook of Marxism,” p. 1,026.) Now the Webbs became “Social Scientists,” “objective thinkers,” etc. In such a fashion did a Communist Party scribe called Allen Hutt, eulogise Webb in the Daily Worker (15/10/47.) Incidentally in a book called the “Final Crisis” (p.96) the writer had approvingly quoted Engels as to the Fabians being a band of place hunters. He also considered the influence of the Fabians to have been disastrous on what he called the Socialist Movement.

The Fabian belief in the silent and peaceful evolution of Capitalism with its bedtime stories to the workers of constantly improving conditions has been shattered by the history of Capitalist developments. No such progress has taken place. Economists like Chiozza Money, Bowley, Campion and others have shown how decade after decade road little change in the share of unpaid labour appropriated by the capitalists. Webb, himself, confessed, over 30 years after the founding of the Fabian Society, that one-half of the social product was taken by one-ninth of the community.” (“The Decay of Capitalist Civilisation,” p.17.) While Pease admitted that “little progress has been made towards Socialism. Private ownership flourishes almost as vigorously as it did thirty years ago.” (“History of the Fabian Society,” p.243.) Indeed the Webbs’ “Decay of Capitalism” was a tearful admission that mass unemployment, slumps, and wars were catastrophes not provided for in the peaceful Inevitability of Gradualism, On p.174 these curious Socialists admitted they had never during thirty years in the Socialist Movement, framed an indictment of Capitalism. True that in doing so they seemed to have discovered that there is something inherent in Capitalism which prevents it from functioning in the interests of the vast majority. (Same book, p.18.) What they never saw was that the “Decay of Capitalism was also the decay of Fabianism.” For that reason they did not disappoint us by failing to reach a truly Fabian conclusion. “In order for the workers and capitalists to understand their problems and each other a little better” they said in the last paragraph, “we offer, perhaps in vain, this little book.” The Webbs in setting out to find out what was wrong in Capitalist Society ended up by offering “a little book” as the solution for its social problems. As usual Class Co-operation was their panacea. Thus the long-chanted formula of these disciples of John Stuart Mill’s humanitarianism, “if only sections of society would be reasonable and sympathetic to each other’s claims.” If, of course, the lion was a vegetarian he might be persuaded to lie down with the lamb.

Such was Sidney Webb and his fellow Fabians. “Educated people” and tireless, seekers after statistical facts, yet never once in their researches did they discover the simple and fundamental truths which underlie present class society; simple truths known to the humblest student of Socialism. While these truths remain simple the confusion caused by people like Webb makes the work of expounding them infinitely much harder. By his advocacy of a Capitalism reformed in working-class interests he helped to blunt the sharp edge of the clear-cut Socialist solution. By accident or design he and the Fabians became formidable political fifth columnists in the ranks of the International working class. As an investigator of social facts and part author of a work like “The History of British Trade Unions,” he may be remembered. As a sociologist and a scientific interpreter of his times he is already in the process of being forgotten.

Ted Wilmott

Material World: A history of inequality (2025)

The Material World Column from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thomas Piketty is an academic who specialises in the study of economic inequality and has written a number of books on the subject, the most well-known of which is the 700-page tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), which we reviewed in 2014. The most recent is A Brief History of Equality which first came out in French in 2021. Based on historical records such as the archives of legacies, property transactions and tax returns, Piketty identifies a trend since the beginning of the 19th century towards less inequality in wealth ownership, income, and access to education, health care and better-paid jobs. Describing himself as a socialist but in the gradualist, reformist tradition, he believes this can continue and lead to ‘a systemic transformation of capitalism’.

On wealth ownership, he takes as a measure of inequality the proportion of wealth owned by the top one percent compared with that of the bottom 50 percent. The figures for all forms of property are:

‘The wealthiest 1 percent held about 45 percent of total property in France in 1810, and about 55 percent of the total in 1910 …. Then, in the course of the twentieth century, we observe a very strong deconcentration of fortunes: in the whole of France, the richest 1 percent’s share fell from 55 percent in 1914 to less than 20 percent at the beginning of the 1980s, before beginning a slow increase; in 2020, that share was nearly 25 percent’.

But ‘this did not benefit much the poorest 50 percent, whose share rose from 2 percent in 1910 to 6 percent in 2020’ and ‘the richest 1 percent’s share of total private property is currently two times smaller than it was a century ago, but it still remains on the order of five times larger than the share held by the poorest 50 percent’.

The beneficiaries have been the middle 40 percent between the top 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent who Piketty calls the ‘patrimonial middle class’. Their wealth he finds is ‘held mainly in housing’. In fact, the monetary value of housing represents about half of that of all privately-owned wealth. The figures for the ownership of all wealth are interesting but the relevant one for socialists is the one for the ownership of means of production. Piketty usefully defines means of production as ‘all the goods necessary to produce other goods and services’ (‘agricultural land and equipment, factories and machinery, offices and computers, shops and restaurants, salary advances and working capital’). He doesn’t produce figures for this but says that ownership of these is more concentrated than for all wealth. But there is a table which shows that:

‘In France in 2020 (as in all countries for which such data are available), small fortunes are composed principally of cash and bank deposits, middle-sized fortunes of real estate, and large fortunes of financial assets (especially stocks)’.

It cannot be denied that the middle 40 percent — the vast majority of whom are members of the working class properly defined — have benefited, but this doesn’t mean that this group is not dependent, like the rest of the working class in the bottom 50 percent, on having to sell their ability to work in order to buy what they need to live. If they lose their job, they can survive for longer before they become destitute, perhaps a year or so after selling their house. But it does mean that we socialists should be careful when we say the working class is ‘propertyless’. We don’t mean that they literally own nothing but that they don’t own means of production.

There has also been a reduction in inequality of access to education and health care. But this can’t be seen as anti-capitalist, as a better educated and more healthy workforce became necessary as production methods became more complex. As Piketty himself points out:

‘During the second Industrial Revolution [chemicals, electricity, the car industry, household goods], it became essential that an increasingly large part of the labour force be capable of mastering manufacturing processes that required technical and digital education, and the ability to understand detailed equipment manuals’.

Nor is the lessening of discrimination over job opportunities for women and minorities incompatible with capitalism. Capitalism could cope with the abolition of discrimination and even benefit from it by being able to draw on a wider pool of trainable and competent workers.

As a gradualist, Piketty would like to see what he calls ‘the march towards equality’ continue and completely ‘transform capitalism’. Besides steep taxes on wealth and inheritance, he envisages changing company law to allow for more employee participation in decision-making and for a proportion of profits to be set aside for spending to benefit workers. Neither of these will change the workings of capitalism as an economic system which imposes on those who make decisions about production that the priority be making a profit. Widening the circle of those who make such decisions won’t alter this; even worker cooperatives have to obey capitalism’s basic economic law of ‘no profit, no production’. And, of course, from time to time companies go bust and there are no profits to set aside.

He also proposes a scheme to give everyone at age 25 a minimum inheritance equal to 60 percent of average wealth per adult (which is France in 2020 would have been about 120,000 euros, or about £105,000; more today of course). The aim, he says, would be to ‘increase the negotiating power of everyone who owns almost nothing (that is, about half the population)’:

‘Recipients could reject certain job offers, buy an apartment, engage in a personal project, or create a small business. This freedom, which is certain to delight some, may well frighten employers and property owners’.

Which, apart from the cost, is precisely why it will never happen; it would undermine the wages system by putting workers in a stronger bargaining position with employers and enable them to extract a higher wage, meaning less profits. It is rather surprising that anyone should seriously imagine that the capitalist state could be made to give half the working class a lump sum of at least £105k. In any event, such a redistribution of wealth would not affect the unequal ownership of means of production.

In short, the trend since 1800 towards less inequality has not undermined the basis of capitalism. Even less has it been an ongoing slow, gradual transition towards socialism. Not that socialism is a society with a more equal distribution of wealth. Its basis is the common ownership of the means of production which will allow everyone access on equal terms to education, health care, work and what they need to live.

Adam Buick

Letter: Poverty: Its Cause and Cure. (1908)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard 

A criticism criticised.

The review of our pamphlet “Poverty: Its Cause and Cure,” which appeared in your May issue, has been brought to our notice, and as your reviewer accuses us of propounding some flagrant heresies in the name of Socialism, we would like, with your permission, to defend our position in regard to certain points he has dealt with in the review.

In the pamphlet we stated that the causes of poverty were insufficient production, waste, and unequal distribution, all of which causes were in operation in England to-day. Your reviewer differs from us here on the ground that poverty does not afflict society as a whole, but only a portion of it, and he asserts that the poverty of the working class (which appears in his opinion to be the only class afflicted with poverty) is due neither to insufficient production nor waste, but wholly and solely to unequal distribution. Now we contend that poverty afflicts society as a whole, but we are quite willing to agree with your reviewer that only a portion of the members of society feel the effects of poverty ; and the reason of this is unequal distribution. We contend, however, that if an equal distribution of necessaries could be effected, there would still be poverty because of insufficient production and waste. It was therefore in our opinion necessary to show that Socialism, besides ensuring a more equal distribution of income, would increase production and diminish waste.

Your reviewer differs from us as to the manner in which Socialism will be established. He objects to our characterising as absurd the idea that a Socialist Government would be able to socialise all industries within its term of office ; but, having regard to the enormity of the task of socialising all industries, we must confess that we fail to see how any Government, however anxious it might be to establish Socialism, could complete the task within say five or seven years. This does not imply that a majority of opinion could be in favour of capitalism, as your reviewer seems to think, but, nevertheless, we do hold that it would be possible for a majority of the people to be in favour of certain Socialistic measures and at the same time not in favour of the whole of the means of producing and distributing wealth being owned in common and democratically controlled. As we have stated in the pamphlet, there is reason for thinking that Socialism will be realised by the socialisation of such industries as are authorised to be socialised by mandate from election to election.

We are next accused of repudiating the class struggle when we say that the method of Socialism is not to try to force the will of one class upon another class. Now it seems to us impossible to find a section or class of society to which Socialism would not be beneficial, and we think that as the tendency to Socialism becomes stronger it will also become wider, and that the spirit of Socialism—the universal brotherhood of man—will extend not only to members of the working class, but to members of all classes, and unite them on a common ground in the cause of the common good.

A. E. Peters.

A. W. Kersey.

Reply:

In this reply to my criticism of their pamphlet which appeared in the May issue, it is worth noting that no position is advanced that is not contained in that pamphlet, and, moreover, no new evidence is brought forward to uphold the position there taken up. In repeating that poverty is due to insufficient production and waste in addition to unequal distribution, the authors agree “that only a portion, of the members of society feel the effects of poverty, and the reason of this is unequal distribution.” Although this practically amounts to granting me the first point of my criticism, let me state the facts. The estimated total of the wealth produced in this country varies between 1,125 millions and 1,800 millions sterling. The population is about 43 millions. Were the distribution equal the income per head would be, on the low estimate, about £26, and on the high estimate about £42; which for the average family (5 persons) would be equal to a sum of £130 per annum in the one case, and £210 per annum in the other. So far as necessaries are concerned, therefore (and all references to poverty have been references to a lack of.necessaries), the unequal distribution is sufficient to account for poverty, quite apart from waste. Regarding their references to the increase of production, and the decrease of waste, under Socialism, I am quite prepared to agree, remembering that capitalism has been called a system for preventing production rather than a system of production. That, however, was not the point.

In the pamphlet originally under notice, the authors say “the majority of the people must first be converted to Socialist ideas” and “until then, Socialism must be to the legislator not a State, but a guiding principle, and he is prepared to co-operate with any political party which will introduce measures leading in the right direction.” The explanation of this appears in the reply to my criticism, wherein it is stated that “as the tendency to Socialism becomes stronger it will also become wider . . . and will extend . . . to members of all classes.” Here it is assumed that the capitalist class will assist in the realisation of Socialism. With us the assumption is that the capitalist class will fight in defence of its position of social and economic privilege as all previous privileged classes have done, and that the working class must work out its emancipation in the teeth of the opposition of the class which enslaves them. At present the capitalist class is prepared to use any means to safeguard its position, and even if we were to assume that, when the Socialist movement is strong enough, it will, making a virtue of necessity, bow to the inevitable, even then we should be compelled to insist that the movement is primarily that of the working class towards its emancipation, and any member of any section of society must adopt the standpoint of the working class—the socially useful class—to take part in that movement.The idea of Socialism being a guide to the legislator pending the conversion of the majority to Socialism is, therefore, extremely improbable, while the contrary seems much more likely: that the legislator, being a capitalist legislator, will do all that lies in his power to strengthen the position of his class, pending that Socialist majority which will inevitably mean the abolition of the system, the class, and the legislation he stands to support. The establishment of Socialism is dependent upon the majority, when the case will be altered and the majority, through the political machine as being most convenient, will establish Socialism, and not the Government legislating “Socialistic measures” on an unconverted people.

D. K.

Editorial: Labour Party Programme For The Year 2000 (1955)

Editorial from the August 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The idea of encouraging the donkey forward by dangling a carrot a short distance in front of his nose is an ancient one but even the oldest tricks can be changed and Mr. Albu, Labour M.P. for Edmonton, has discovered a startling variation.

Like other Labour M.P.s he has had to realise that the Labour electoral carrot offered to the voters in the recent General Election was not successful in enticing them to the polling booth for 1,500,000 of former Labour voters this time refused to go in and put their cross. So Mr. Albu,_who is a member of the Executive Committee of the Fabian Society has been thinking up a new programme for Labour. He spoke about it at a meeting of the Central London Fabian Society on June 29. He said:—

“There should be adequate incentives, but property ownership should be reduced by estate duties and a capital gains tax so that by the year 2000 the distribution of inherited wealth would be similar to that of taxed income today."

(Manchester Guardian, 30 June, '55.)

Mr. Albu is not proposing that inequality of accumulated wealth be eliminated but only that it should be lessened, so that it would not exceed the smaller, but still very great, difference between the annual income of the rich man and the wages of the poor. So we progress! Many years ago the Fabian Society, and later the Labour Party, planned to do something “immediately” about this inequality. Now Mr. Albu suggests postponing the completion of half a plan until a date 45 years ahead, by which time most of the present generation will be dead. 

The basis on which Capitalism exists is the monopoly by a minority, of the accumulated wealth of society. It is the cause of the poverty of the many. This has been the central theme of the Socialist case against Capitalism and it was known to Mr. Albu’s Fabian Society long, long ago.

Two thirds of a century ago Mr. Sidney Webb wrote in the Fabian Essays 1889 (“Historic” page 60).

“If private property in land and capital necessarily keeps the many workers permanently poor (through no fault of their own) in order to make the few idlers rich (from no merit of their own), private property in land and capital will inevitably go the way of the feudalism which it superseded.”

In 1908 the Fabian Society had phrased the known inequality of wealth in the statement “about one seventieth part of the population owns far more than half of the entire accumulated wealth, public and private, of the United Kingdom.” (Fabian Tract No. 7 Capital and Land. Page 10.). 

Sometime later they expressed it in the form “ten per cent. of the population own 90 per cent. of the wealth.”

In this form it was used in articles in the Daily News in 1916 and reproduced in the Fabian Tract When Peace Comes. (P. 28).

This proposition has been doing service ever since in the propaganda of the Labour Party. It was featured in their election programme of 1918, Labour and the New Social Order and 31 years later, in 1949, a Minister in the Labour Government confirmed that it still represented the division of wealth. (Mr. Glenvil Hall, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, ‘Hansard' May 18, 1949). After all these years and though we have had three Labour Governments, nothing whatever has been done to end the state of affairs that the early Fabians recognised as the cause of poverty. Incidentally, the Fabian Society in 1908, proposed to take over the land and capital “ without compensation (though not without such relief to expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the community.") (Fabian Tract Capital and Land 1908. P. 18.).

The Fabian Society named itself after a Roman General, Quintus Fabius Maximus, known as the “Delayer,” who perfected harrying tactics described as “masterly inactivity,” and whose motto was said to be “make haste slowly."

But Fabius did win some notable battles and would have been surprised if he could have known that an organisation named after him was to do nothing at all to win its major battle for some 70 years and an executive member was then to propose aiming at some slight action 45 years later still.

Muddled as the early Fabians were in their twin notions that capitalism would disappear of its own accord or alternatively could be modified by reforms into becoming an equalitarian society, they were mental giants compared with those who have followed them in the Labour Party.

In the meantime the rich one-tenth still own nine-tenths of the accumulated wealth; and there is still no solution to the poverty problem except the Socialist one of transforming the means of production and distribution into the common property of society as a whole.

Letter: "Can you be serious?" (1983)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

In your October issue you have written that reforms of capitalism have “no useful, permanent effect on workers' lives except that by delaying socialism, they worsen workers’ conditions”. Can you be serious? All the rights won by the working class and the foundations of its economic and political strength have been gained by actions which, since we do not yet have socialism, must come under the definition of "reforms of capitalism".

The transcendence of capitalism must be a dialectical transformation of quantity to quality, in other words, for the revolution in social relationships which we aim for to be possible, the conditions for such a revolution must be generated through progressive piecemeal change in all areas of society, economic, ideological, political — that is. they must be generated through reform. Unless the word “revolution” is aligned with such a conception, it is, obviously, a meaningless abstract. Yet your paper comes close to using the word “revolution” in this way in its attitude towards reformist proposals and any avowed socialists who advocate reform, like Tony Benn.

You may say your mistrust of Labour Party “reformists” is justified in the light of experience but your attitude towards figures like Benn topples over into ignorant dismissal of practical socialist reforms.

Your treatment of the Glasgow Media Group’s third report was an illustration of the poverty of this attitude. Their theme is the formation of consciousness — a central concern of your paper and one fundamental to the class struggle. It surely merited more detailed attention. It was declared to have “some value” but presumably because its compilers asked for reforms instead of calling for the Socialist Party to lead us to revolution, it was given short shrift.

This wholesale refusal to sympathise at least in part with other avowed socialists and to deny them serious critical attention can do no good, and to completely alienate your paper from reformist ideas is not socialist but reactionary, sectarian and damaging to your objectives.

James Daly 

Glasgow

Reply:

James Daly has misread the passage in the October Socialist Standard (p. 198 — reply to letter from Chris Cooke), which did not say that reforms have no effect except to worsen workers' conditions but that reformism has this effect — in this case, specifically the Right to Work Campaign.

Of course some reforms (although not by far as many as the reformists say) benefit the working class. Workers must constantly struggle against the inroads which capitalism threatens to make into their standards and to improve those standards, for example by class conscious trade union action. Socialists recognise that the freedom to discuss ideas and to form political parties is vital to the working class and to the existence of a socialist party. This cannot be said about the Right to Work Campaign, which can only divert workers’ energies away from the struggle for that ultimate “reform" — the radical solution to all the problems the reformists claim to deal with — of establishing socialism. If the object of that Campaign were to be achieved, the only result would be that more workers would be exploited in employment than is the case at present. Is that supposed to be a change towards socialism?

Workers should realise that, whatever reforms they may accept, they will not remove the basis of capitalism's problems and that the problems, in one form or another, will therefore continue. Anything which delays the establishment of socialism amounts to a worsening of working class conditions, to more intense exploitation. to ever more fearsome weapons of war.

There is no evidence to support the argument that every reform is a quantitative change and that when there have been enough of these they will amass into a qualitative change in society. The history of reformism shows that it confuses workers; it persuades them that they should use their political power to opt for reforming capitalism. in the belief that this society can be reformed out of its basic character. This amounts to an argument for the delay of socialism, when all facts point to the conclusion that socialism is an immediate need. Socialism cannot happen by capitalism being reformed out of existence; it will happen through the act of a politically aware working class who understand that only socialism can set up a world based on production for human need and free access.

Our review of Really Bad News (October Socialist Standard, p. 197) was in fact an example of socialist critical attention; we recognised the merits of the Glasgow Media Group but also its limitations. How else should we deal with such groups? We apply the same style to that prominent member of the capitalist Labour Party, that man who has willingly served as a member of Labour governments which have run capitalism — Tony Benn. We have published much material in these columns, exposing Benn as another supporter of capitalism and there is no point in repeating any of it here, save to say that we don’t simply make assertions on the matter; we back our arguments up with evidence such as Benn's own words. It is people like James Daly, who persist, despite all the evidence, in their faith that Benn is a socialist who are reactionary, sectarian and damaging to the objective of the establishment of socialism.

Editors.

Not So Radical (2020)

Book Review from the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Clear Bright Future: a Radical Defence of the Human Being by Paul Mason (Penguin £9.99.)

In Postcapitalism (reviewed in the September 2015 Socialist Standard) Paul Mason argued for what he called revolutionary reformism, a gradual transition to a supposedly new kind of social system. There would be a basic income for everyone, while essential goods and services would be made cheaper, with more and more of these becoming free. Yet there would still be money, markets, profits and banks, so it was hard to see how what he was proposing was really ‘post-capitalist’.

In his latest book Mason advocates a similar system, but he goes by a rather roundabout route to get to this proposal and then makes a detour at the end that promises very little. He looks at why people support Trump, a man who thinks facts are irrelevant. Racism and misogyny, he says, are the key factors driving white voters to Trump. We then get a discussion of many topics – including neoliberalism, the alt-right, post-humanism, trans-humanism, postmodernism – and various writers, such as Nietzsche, Arendt and Foucault.

Mason supports radical humanism, which means achieving freedom by transforming technology and society. Artificial intelligence should be placed under human control and made subject to an appropriate ethical code, and information technology (as argued in Postcapitalism) can be part of what makes economic abundance viable, as it creates goods that can be copied at minuscule cost. IT "makes Utopian Socialism possible: the appearance of islands of cooperative production for sharing, the massive reduction of hours worked and the expansion of human freedom and self-knowledge".

Two chapters are devoted to the views of Karl Marx, with both positive and negative comments. Marx suggested that humans can set themselves free by changing their social circumstances, which would involve abolishing private property. But he did not give an adequate account of women’s oppression or of reproductive labour as a specific form of exploitation. There is something in this critique, but no merit at all in the claim that Marx saw the revolution as "the blind actions of a single class", as it would in reality be the achievement of class-conscious workers (it is not clear, but it may be that Mason sees the working class as manual workers only). His vision is of the networked individual taking part in collective action, but this differs only in that it would now be far easier than just half a century ago for a revolutionary working class to communicate with each other and co-ordinate their activities.

Later comes a totally pointless chapter which argues that what passes for Marxism in China is nothing like the real thing. The book ends with a chapter on how to ‘live the anti-fascist life’ that is pretty vague and makes little connection to what has been said previously. More on the supposed ‘Utopian Socialism’ and how it could be a global system rather than just ‘islands’ would have been a more appropriate conclusion.

Paul Bennett

50 Years Ago: Are We Progressing? (1983)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The two theories found most frequently among those who will not listen to the Socialist case are not confined to any one political party, but are common among Liberals and Tories, Labourites and Communists. The first is the theory that conscious organised action to achieve Socialism is not necessary because, in spite of appearances, “things are getting constantly better and better.”

The second is the theory that conscious organised action need not be taken, because everything will go on getting worse and worse until there is a really terrifying crash “which will simply force people to do something”.

Yet both theories are unsound — neither the gradual accumulation of social reforms, nor the periodical outbursts of violence solves the problems which face us. To see that this is so it is only necessary to glance over the events of the past 30 years. In spite of wars and upheavals, Labour governments and dictatorships, capitalism persists without any essential change for better or worse. It makes a little adjustment here and another there, it replaces one set of rulers by another set, it calls things by different names, but the same essential capitalism is here with us yet.

(From an editorial: “Are we Progressing? Hopes and hears for Socialism”, Socialist Standard, October 1933)

Six Years' Hard Labour (1951)

From the August 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Britain has now been ruled continuously by a Labour Government for the past six years. In June, 1945, with high hopes and great expectations, the working class of this country voted the British Labour Party into power. A smaller number of workers repeated the action in 1950. The smallness of the Labour Party’s majority at the 1950 election has caused most people to anticipate a further general election almost any day since the result of the last one was known. It is a suitable time to take a brief look back over those past six years.

It is not our intention to delve into details of the various enactments that have resulted from Labour legislation. That we have done in the columns of this paper at intervals since 1945. We are not being wise after the event; the criticisms that we make now we were making many years before a Labour Government took office. Neither do we wish to preen ourselves and adopt an “ I-told-you-so ” attitude. We want to emphasise that, with an elementary understanding of Capitalism and a little Socialist knowledge, the workers can tell in advance whether a political party is worthy of their support or deserves their opposition.

The promises, statements and actions of the leaders of the Labour Party show that they, too, are ignorant of the economics of Capitalism, and that, despite their claim to be Socialists, they have not the slightest grasp of the very first principles of Socialism. They have not even tackled the job of managing Capitalism with a determination that might have won them some respect, if not praise, from their 1945 supporters. Mr. E. S. Sachs, secretary of a South African garment workers' union, writing in “The Garment Worker," January/February, 1951, gives his view of British labour leaders. Examining them from that distance gives Mr. Sachs an objective view which is a great advantage. He says:

“Very few British Labour Leaders are free from the faults of their ruling class. Their common characteristics are snobbishness, kow-towing to the rich and mighty and a feeling of superiority more especially in respect of colonial peoples. They become dizzy with success and despondent in defeat. Their ego and self-importance increase as they become better known. Few seek to raise their cultural level, and devote all their energies to their particular job. Their outlook is insular and the affairs of the world are to them “ Foreign affairs." (Page 3.)

The Labour Party’s declaration of policy, on which it fought the 1945 general election, was contained in a pamphlet entitled, “Let us face the future.” On page 11 is the claim that,

“No domestic policy, however wisely framed and courageously applied, can succeed in a world still threatened by war.”

Yet from 1945 to 1951, the Labour Party’s administration of Capitalism has kept the threat of another and greater war continuously over our heads. The Labour Government’s concern to be prepared for another war is now their excuse for curtailing some of their social insurance schemes, imposing more austerity on the workers and calling for more work.

The application of the social service plans may have removed the threat of the most abject poverty from sections of the working class, but it has not improved the lot of the working class as a whole. Its effect has been to redistribute the poverty of the working class and spread it more evenly over the entire class. The poorer paid workers and those with large families have received increased incomes, while the better paid and the childless or unmarried ones, through the medium of family allowances, income tax allowances and the arrangement of purchase tax. on particular lines of commodities, have come off particularly badly. Now, in the interests of a huge armament expenditure in preparation for the next war, some of the social services are reduced or curtailed.

We were told in 1945 that 

"Housing will be one of the greatest and one of the earliest tests of the Government’s real determination to put the nation first.” (“ Let us face the future," p. 8.)

As the housing problem is essentially a working-class problem, that statement could only be interpreted as a promise to the workers. But the Labour Government’s efforts to solve this generations-old problem have shown little determination and less success. Again, the threat of war has offered an excuse to curtail certain building operations.

"... a high and constant purchasing power can be maintained through good wages. ... But everybody knows that money and savings lose their value if prices rise, so rents and the prices of the necessities of life will be controlled." (“ Let us face the future," p. 5.)

The perpetual struggle of the workers to bring their wages up to the ever soaring cost of living level is evidence of the failure of the Labour Government to maintain the level of wages.

In the early days of the Labour Party its policy was known as “gradualism.” The idea was, that by reforming Capitalism piecemeal, a little at a time, it would gradually be reformed out of existence and in its place would stand Socialism. A different kind of gradualism has resulted since the Labour Party took office in 1945. The slashing attacks on many of the actions of previous governments have gradually been diluted, then abated, and finally the very same actions performed by the Labour Government.

Workers will remember the indignation of Labour leaders when Tory or Liberal Governments used troops during a strike. Yet, within a few months of occupying the Government benches in Westminster, the Labour ministers did the very same thing. They have done it a number of times during the six years. They have even prosecuted workers for striking.

Conscription was another issue which brought forth heated opposition from prominent Labourites in their pre-office days. Now they can find a host of arguments to justify it.

"Soak the rich, tax them out of existence,” was another old-time battle cry of Labour politicians. Successive Labour chancellors altered the tune and now say that this is not a good policy and that it will not work.

In what stirring words the Labour speakers and writers used to tell us that overproduction meant unemployment. But in 1948 they were telling us that, 

”. . . The danger to full employment is not producing too much, but producing too little—and too dear.” (Government-issued poster, 1948.)

Another poster about that time told us that “More from each means more for all,” and Mr. Attlee appealed to us for an increase of 10 per cent. in production to 'solve our problems. Since that time industrial production has increased by 25 per cent., but the workers are still waiting for the “more for all,” and the problems seem to have multiplied.

Nationalisation has, of course, been the “ top-of- the-bill ” turn for the Labour Government. It was to be a means of removing the capitalists from the control of industry and of buying them out. It was the Labour man’s idea of Socialism. The State serves Capitalism and when it takes over an industry it does so in the interests of Capitalism. It becomes the employer on behalf of the capitalist class. The control of industry by the State does not alter the capitalist nature of production. The Labour Government has introduced State Capitalism in some industries, but not Socialism.

The benefit of State ownership to the workers is nil and they are realising it. Mr. Deakin, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, speaking at his union’s biennial conference at Whitley Bay on July 11th of this year, found it advisable to utter a warning,

" If, in October, Labour appeals to the country and there is any considerable extension of the principle of nationalisation, we should get the biggest whacking we have ever had in our history." (Evening News, 11.7.1951.) 

This year's Annual Report of the British Transport Commission shows that the surplus of income over working expenses was about £40 million. Interest to the former owners, administration, redemption and special items amount to over £54 million thus making a deficit of over £14 million. To the worker striving for a few extra shillings in his wage packet, this is no different to pre-nationalisation days.

So, at the end of this six years of Labour Government we are in very much the same position as we were in 1938. Another war in the offing, wage increases lagging a long way behind price increases, threats of austerity and demands for more work, insufficient houses, peace-time military service—all the sores and symptoms of Capitalism unabated.

We do not hold the Labour Government to blame for this. It is not its fault. It does not determine the course of Capitalism. We know the Labour Party to be a party of capitalist reform and we knew that its efforts to make Capitalism more endurable were doomed to failure. We are opposed to the Labour Party as we are opposed to all reformist parties and our opposition gets more pointed when it passes off its quack reforms under a Socialist label.

The Labour Government has not attempted to end the exploitation of the workers for profit. It has, instead, worked hard to save Capitalism and to assure the capitalist class of its profits, its interest and its rents. At the next election it may lose the support of the workers and be back again on the opposition benches.

Unfortunately, most workers, not understanding Socialism, will turn to the Conservative Party as the only alternative. The Labour Party must take a lot of the responsibility for this political muddle-headedness on the part of the workers. It has made confusion worse confounded by its claim to be a Socialist party.

Mr. Bevan and the other rebels in the Labour Party ranks have nothing better to offer. They have no fundamental quarrel with their party. There have been other rebels, like Cripps and, later, Zilliacus and Co. They flare into prominence for a while then simmer down again, and the Labour Party goes steadily

on beguiling the workers with one illusion after another.

Socialism means more than a hotch-potch of capitalist reforms. It means the ending of the capitalist relationships—employer and employed, buyer and seller, borrower and lender. It means that industry will be owned by the community, not by the State, that wealth will be produced for people to use, not for the making of profit for a few. It means the end of buying and selling and of the wages system.

That requires a social revolution which necessitates conscious political action by the workers. Capitalism cannot be gradually rubbed away, it must be decisively abolished. The capitalist class cannot be bought out, it must be kicked out

W. Waters.

Books and Booklets. The Citizenship of Women (Keir Hardie) (1905)

Pamphlet Review from the June 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Citizenship of Women—is the latest pamphlet from the pen of Mr. Keir Hardie, and within its covers are probably all the few arguments that can be adduced by the supporters of what is known as the Limited Franchise Bill for Women. Its chief value, however, lies in the fact that it emphasises the back-door and step-at-a-time (the smaller the better) methods which find favour in the sight of Mr. Hardie’s I.L.P. Thus :—

“Once women are admitted to citizenship and some women become voters, the male mind will insensibly accustom itself to the idea of women citizenship and the way be thus prepared for adult suffrage complete and unrestricted.”

The same writer recently gave it as his opinion that Socialism would probably come as a thief in the night, and it is not extraordinary to find the same argument being used in regard to an alleged step that was used in regard to the ultimate object of that step. But to the man who understands that the first postulate of Socialism is the existence of a class-conscious and well organised proletariat whose every step towards emancipation must be taken with eyes wide open, Mr. Hardie’s position is grotesque.

If Mr. Hardie and the I.L.P. hold that the only way for the workers lies in the unconscious absorption of these alleged preliminaries to Socialism, obviously their duty to themselves and to the workers is to ensure that the process shall be unconscious. Because clearly if the workers have their suspicions aroused by the clumsy administration of an overdose, they may on the one hand do themselves an irreparable injury by refusing to acquiesce in a measure designed to benefit them, and on the other, summarily and ignorantly, seal the fate of the I.L.P. that to-day trembles in the balances. Therefore the course Mr. Hardie should adopt in this matter of the enfranchisement of women, is to reduce the persons immediately affected by the measure to the lowest possible minimum. Let it embrace the wives of, say, dukes only, and let it be smuggled through if possible without fuss and under some other guise by someone who cannot be accused of sympathy with the working-class. Thus a commencement will have been made, and the principle, which is to have such beneficial and far-reaching effects upon working-class life and outlook, will have been conceded, and, before the male worker who, according to Mr. Hardie, “will not lightly or all at once part with the authority which has so long been his, and admit that the wife of his bosom is his political equal,” will have awakened to the fact that his authority has been weakened, his mind “will have accustomed itself to the idea of women citizenship and the way will have been, prepared for complete adult suffrage.”

Really one would think from a perusal of Mr. Hardie’s pamphlet that the extension of the franchise to women was a matter of the first importance. The fact is, of course, that to-day the working-class have sufficient political power to do pretty much as they like. Unfortunately they like to return the Liberal or Tory or bogey Labour man. The reason they like to do that is because they do not know how to use their power. And they have failed to understand largely because reformers, with the best of intentions maybe, have worked upon the untenable assumption that the average mind is not capable of taking a grip on the whole Socialist position and have so omitted to tell the whole truth. While the workers do not know the whole truth they cannot understand, and while the mental activity they can spare is harnessed to and expended upon, attempts at altogether ineffectual reforms, they never will.

The pamphlet is prefaced by a character sketch of the author by W. T. Stead.

A. J. M. Gray

Socialism v. Co-operation. (1931)

From the July 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent writes, asking what is our attitude towards the Co-operative movement.

He expresses his inability to understand what Co-operators mean when they refer to the “Co-operative Commonwealth,” and asks : (1) If he is correct in assuming that what is meant is “a state of society under which Co-operatism would own the means of production and distribution, and would therefore be a rival (or sort of rival) to the Socialist Commonwealth that is to be?” and (2) If the Co-operative movement is capable of producing or evolving a state of Socialism or something akin thereto? ”

First, let us state that we share our correspondent’s difficulty of not being able to understand what Co-operators mean by the “Co-operative Commonwealth.”

To answer the first question. Socialism being a system of society in which the means of production and distribution will be the common property of society, there will be neither need nor room for the production of goods for sale and profit. Society, i.e., its members, would not buy from nor sell to themselves the things produced and owned by them. Co-operative Societies, therefore, will die with the capitalist system, of which they are a part, and from which, they cannot be separated.

If by the second question our correspondent means that the Co-operative Societies might gradually displace their capitalist competitors, a few figures might be interesting.

It is estimated that the total capitalised wealth of property owners in England is approximately £25,000 millions (which is twice the amount of 40 years ago and four times that of 80 years ago); of this, the capital invested in Co-operative Societies amounts to £140 millions (People’s Year Book, 1928), or about one one-hundred-and-eightieth part of the whole ! And this is the position after nearly 90 years of Co-operation ! The “evolving to a state of Socialism or something akin thereto” seems likely to prove a protracted business. But this is not all. The Co-operative Societies are largely retail distributors of goods which are supplied to them and produced by “private” capitalist interests. In the year 1926 the total Co-op. sales amounted to £294,302,814. Of this amount, only £5,700,241 represented goods which were actually produced by the Cooperative Societies (People’s Year Book, 1928). In actual fact, then, 98 per cent. of the goods sold by the Co-ops, are supplied by their capitalist “rivals.” While this is so, there is no danger to “private” capitalist interests from the Co-ops. If the Co-ops, ever could, and did, assume forms dangerous to competitive capitalist interests, then the full blast of the competitive power of the huge trusts and combines, with their tremendous resources and thousands of millions of capital, would soon .make itself felt. That they do not do so is because the Co-ops, are not dangerous to capitalist interests, nor to the capitalist system of society.

Let us assume that the Co-ops, might some day secure the trade in working-class necessaries of life to the full limit of the working-class income. There is then the fact that the wages of the workers represent only one-third of the total national income. There is still the remaining two-thirds untouched.

Further, if by economic methods the Co-operative movement could eat into capitalism, why was a Co-operative political party formed? In this connection our correspondent might learn how much importance is to be attached to the use of the phrase, “Co-operative Commonwealth,” from the fact that the Co-op. Party is the political ally of the Labour Party. Its members run as Labour candidates on the Labour Party’s programme and are returned bv Labour votes.

Production for sale and profit is capitalism, and means wage slavery, with its consequent evils for the workers (including workers employed bv the Co-operative Societies). The Socialist Party, being organised for the abolition of capitalism, is therefore opposed to the Co-operative movement.

Harry Waite

Editorial: Fabian Fallacies, or the Sorrows of Bernard Shaw (1944)

Editorial from the March 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fresh from a vain attempt to show that our Transatlantic comrades of the “Western Socialist” do not understand Socialism, Mr. G. B. Shaw has enlivened the columns of the Times (February 1, 1944) with a letter teaching the Chancellor of the Exchequer how not to suck the financial eggs of capitalism, and the Foreign Secretary the A.B.C. of using Quislings to run the new European governments to be set up at the heels of the departing Germans. Though the connection may not be obvious, the two pieces of advice are based on the same old Fabian principle that you cannot destroy an existing system unless you already have experts and machinery to operate a new one.

Mr. Shaw has raised the flag of revolt on behalf of the downtrodden dukes of England, the impoverished millionaires, and the payers of Excess Profit Tax. He and other rich men are being ruined by excessive taxation. So he implores the Chancellor to exempt from surtax “all legitimately earned incomes exceeding £20,000,” re-introduce the income tax three-years average system to meet the hard case of “the wretch who makes £21,000 in one year, and a bare subsistence in the years preceding and following,” and “abolish the Excess Profits Tax root and branch.” So long as we have pampered rich, he says, “we must pamper them for all they are worth, and far from crying that nobody must profit commercially by war, make war the most profitable of all businesses until it ends in victory.”

A paragraph from Mr. Shaw’s letter will make his argument clear, especially if read in conjunction with a statement made by him in a further letter to the Evening Standard : —

“It may be finally desirable to get, rid of landlordism; but while we have landlords let us have rich ones, and encourage them to be richer, rather than poor and persecuted ones. And what applies to private farming enterprise applies to all enterprises.” (Times, February 1).

“The question at issue is whether private factories are to be closed and private farmers evicted before the Government is ready to carry on the work they are doing without a day’s intermission. I say no.” (Evening Standard, February 10).

His advice to the Foreign Secretary is based on the same principle, that when governments are overthrown on the Continent new ones will not be able to function unless they retain the services of the trained functionaries who have served the previous German-controlled governments. Shaw has in mind men like the late Admiral Darlan, “the citizen who will obey and faithfully serve the established government of his country, no matter how often it changes.”

It is not our concern to enter into discussion about Shaw’s advice to the Cabinet—probably they appreciate the force of his arguments as well as he does. What we are concerned with is a deeper issue, one that Shaw ignores.

On the surface, the Fabian Society has been a superb success. Its ideas moulded the Labour Party and I.L.P., and some of its leading men reached high office and wielded great influence in the Labour Party and in Liberal and Labour Governments. It has claimed that those who rejected Fabian theories have never made any headway. What, then, were the theories .of the Fabian Society? They are well stated in “The History of the Fabian Society,” by Mr. E. R. Pease, its secretary for 25 years (published in 1916 by A. C. Fifield). Professing Socialism as its aim, the Fabians rejected the view “Make Socialists and you will make Socialism” (the view held by the S.P.G.B.), and declared instead that Socialism was a principle already in part embodied in the constitution of capitalist society. As Fabians and Fabian ideas permeated other parties, this Socialist principle would, they said, gradually be extended. Mr. H. G. Wells, who quarrelled with them over this, defined their attitude fairly enough when he said that they believed “the world may be manoeuvred into Socialism without knowing it” and that “society is to keep like it is … and yet Socialism will be soaking through it all, changing without a sign.”

Mr. Pease says in his “History,” “The work of the Fabian Society has been not to make Socialists, but to make Socialism” (p. 255).

Then the Fabians believed in government by the expert —”what it demanded was partly, indeed, a more efficient and expert central government . . . but primarily an expert local civil service in close touch with and under the control of a really democratic municipal government” (p. 248). Critics of the Society used to charge their largely civil service membership with being concerned with creating careers for themselves. As one leading member once said, “The government of the future will be by experts, and we, naturally, want to be the experts” (Mr. H. Snell, quoted in the Socialist Standard, February, 1907).

It will be noticed that Mr. Shaw is still worried about having somebody, the experts, to carry on in place of factory owners, landlords, farmers and government officials, and this brings us to the utter failure of 60 years of Fabianism. They were going to smooth the road to complete Socialism. Writing in 1889, Mr. Shaw declared that the transfer of private property to the nation had already been in progress for 15 years (“Fabian Essays,” p. 180), yet now, after a further 55 years, making a round century in all, we are told in effect that we are helpless to do anything because the propertied men in control are still indispensable. Shaw’s slogan now is “Dukes are better landlords than needy freeholders” (Times, February 1, 1944).

The Fabian experts half a century ago, like their Labour Party imitators afterwards, had a vision of municipal and state enterprises extending everywhere under their guiding hand and driving private concerns out of business. Wages of workers in the nationalised undertakings would rise, and landlords and capitalists would disappear. Mr. Shaw airily rounded it off thus in his “Transition” (Fabian Essays, 1889, p. 199) : —

“It is not necessary to go further into the economic detail of the process of the extinction of private property. Much of that process as sketched here may he anticipated by sections of the proprietary class successively capitulating, as the net closes about their special interests, on such terms as they may be able to stand out for before their power is entirely broken.”

We shall not be accused of exaggeration if we say that something seems to have gone wrong with the time-table. This has not escaped the notice of the Fabians, and Mr. Pease and Mr. Shaw have both had their say about the actual results of Fabianism. Mr. Pease wrote, in 1916 : “It must be confessed that we have made but little progress along the main road of Socialism. Private ownership of capital and land flourishes almost as vigorously as it did 30 years ago. Its grosser cruelties have been checked, but the thing itself has barely been touched” (p. 241).

That is as true now as it was in 1916, and note, too, that whereas in 1889 it was the Fabians who were very cleverly—as they thought—permeating the Liberal and Radical parties with their reform programmes, now the boot is on the other foot, and it is the Liberal Sir William Beveridge who is permeating the Labour Party with his scheme for removing a new batch of grosser cruelties in the campaign to make the world safe for capitalism.

Mr. Shaw lias been just as frank as Mr. Pease. In reply to the question whether Socialism had made progress during his lifetime, he replied to the News-Chronicle (January 6, 1936) : —

“Yes; but it is the capitalists who exploit it for their own profit everywhere except in Russia . . . The Socialists here broke down the old capitalist policy of laissez-faire, and showed that State help was indispensable in modern industry. Accordingly, the capitalists now will not build a Queen Mary unless the State helps them out; and mines are registered as Public Utility Societies instead of private ventures. Excellent Socialism for capitalists; but the sailors and miners get nothing out of it.”

So after half a century of building “Socialism for capitalists” but without making Socialists, we find that things are very much as they were. Vital change is still impossible because there is something lacking. We must, says Mr. Shaw, bolster up our dukes and landlords, pamper the rich, and depend on Continental Quislings to keep capitalism going. There is something lacking; Socialists are lacking. The Fabians never held with making Socialists, yet it is surely obvious that if the enormous effort devoted to advising the capitalists how to adapt their system to the changing circumstances of the past half-century had been devoted to making Socialists here and abroad, Mr. Shaw’s twin problem would be non-existent and his advice superfluous.

The early Fabians, the I.L.P. and the Labour Party were wrong, and the S.P.G.B. was right. The problem was not, and is not, one of extending state and municipal capitalism—(incidentally the present drift is towards monopolistic public utility corporations under some sort of state supervision, not towards state operated enterprises)—-nor is it one of finding experts and superior brains. There is no lack of able and experienced workers in industry, farming and the civil service to carry on, nor was there 60 years ago. All that is lacking is a Socialist working class to give orders to its delegates in Parliament and on the local councils for the ending of the private property basis of society. Socialism is still not here, but that is only because the workers are still not Socialists. What society needs now, as when the Fabians began their slow march to nowhere, is not Fabian experts to show the capitalists what changes are necessary to keep capitalism going, but a majority who understand Socialism and are determined to achieve it, through gaining control of the machinery of government.

The Socialist Searchlight. (1928)

From the September 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

VARIOUS POLICIES EXAMINED.

THE “SOCIALISM OF THE LABOUR PARTY. 

What the Labour Party calls Socialisation can easily be gathered from the famous speech on “Gradualism” made by the “brains” of the Labour Party—Mr. Sidney Webb—who plainly showed that his conception of Socialism was the ordinary legislation of Liberals and Tories. He said:

“The process of Socialisation has been going on for a whole generation in National and Local Government without our realising it.”

If the I.L.P. thinks that Mr. Webb is not advanced enough what about their own Tom Johnson, M.P., who as Editor of “Forward,” continually describes Glasgow “City Owned” Tramcars as Socialism? This same I.L.P. leading Member of Parliament, in his debate with Mr. J. M. Keynes, said :

“That he regarded many of the proposals in the Liberal Yellow Book as proposals for which Socialists could vote with both hands (“Forward,” 11/8/28).

HOW COMMUNISTS FIGHT ELECTIONS. 

Mr. Aitken Ferguson, adopted as Communist Party Candidate for North Aberdeen, shows that he is a Communist in name only. The National Left Wing Committee asked him if he accepted their programme and he replied (Sunday Worker, August 12) :

“The whole programme is unreservedly accepted. I am enclosing a copy of my election address, and you will notice that it differs in no essential points from the programme of your national committee.”

This programme includes Nationalisation of Banks, Mines and Basic Industries, 44-hour week and £4 minimum wage Law, Nationalisation of Land (with due regard for Co-ops, and small holders !), Capital Levy, Unemployment Relief on a National Scale, Pensions at 55, Abolition of House of Lords.

This policy is not Communism nor is it one which alters the slave position of the workers under Capitalism. The programme can be carried out and still leave the Capitalists richer than ever, because nothing in such a series of reforms stops the normal development of industry benefiting the Capitalist at the expense of the worker. The last item—abolition of House of Lords—shows how “vote catching” has reduced for election purposes the Communist demand of “smashing the State” to the gentle liberal political reform of “No Second Chamber.”

RATIONALISATION AND ITS RESULTS. 

“Apparently the increased seriousness of accidents during the last few years has been the direct result of the increased intensity of industrial activity during that period. There are, however, forces inherent in mechanisation itself and in the consequent speeding up of industry which have a direct tendency to increase the seriousness of accidents.”

(From “A Study of Safety and Production,” by The American Engineering Council.)

THE ECONOMIC MARCH. 

“The fact that during the past 20 years the number of factories has increased by 40 per cent., while workshops have fallen by 26 per cent., is regarded as an indication that “the small employer tends to drop out of existence, and that mass production in highly organised establishments is steadily replacing the village and rural workshop.” 

The “Daily News,” July 31st, quoting report of Chief Inspector of Factories, 1928.

THE COMMUNIST “UPSURGE.” 

Since the theses of the Third (Moscow) International advocating violence and armed insurrection (1921) were suppressed by the authorities, many workers think that policy has been abandoned by the Communists.

We print below two quotations from the new draft programme of the 3rd International now being discussed by the Congress in Moscow, where a large number of paid officials of Communist Parties are meeting.

These quotations prove that phrases and slogans borrowed from Russian experiences are still being advocated for countries with a much different situation than Russia. The net result of such a programme is simply to get the minorities who act on these lines smashed by the powers of the governments. Steady organisation and education in Socialist ideas are neglected entirely by such schemes of sensational uprising.

THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMME. 

“When the revolutionary tide is flowing, when the dominant classes are disorganised, the masses are in a state of revolutionary ferment, the intermediary strata are inclining towards the proletariat and the masses are prepared for action and for sacrifice; the task of the party of the proletariat is to lead the masses into the direct attack upon the bourgeois state. This is to be achieved by propaganda in favour of all transitional slogans (Soviet’s, workers’ control of industry, the slogan of peasant committees for the seizure of the landlords’ land, etc.), and the organisation of mass actions, to which all other branches of party work, agitation and propaganda, including parliamentary work, must be subordinated. This includes strikes, strikes combined with demonstrations, the combination of armed demonstrations and strikes, and finally the general strike conjointly with the armed uprising against the political power of the bourgeoisie. The struggle must be subjected to the rules of military art; it must be conducted according to a plan of war and in the form of a military offensive. It calls for the devoted loyalty and heroism of the proletariat. Such actions must be preceded by the organisation of the broad masses in military units which by their very form attract and set into action the maximum number of toilers (councils of workers’ and peasants’ deputies, soldiers’ councils, etc.), and by intensified work in the army and navy. 

(Daily Worker, New York, July 16th, 1928).

THE MOSCOW POLICY FOR ENGLAND ! 

“Countries of highly developed capitalism (United States, Great Britain, Germany, etc.) with powerful productive forces, a high degree of centralisation of production, relatively small significance of small production and with a long-established bourgeois, democratic political system. In these countries, the fundamental political demand of the programme is direct transition to the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the sphere of economics the most characteristic are : The expropriation of the whole of large-scale production ; the organisation of a large number of State Soviet farms, only a small share of the land to be transferred to the peasantry ; unorganised market relationships to be permitted only on a small scale. Socialist development generally and the collectivisation of peasant farming in particular to proceed at a rapid rate.” 

(Daily Worker, New York, July 13th, 1928).

STREET FIGHTS ARE COMMUNIST POLICY. 

Bucharin was the official Bolshevik speaker in favour of the new Draft Programme on July 19th at the Moscow Congress (1928). His remarks, which we quote below, ask the workers to resort to anarchist street fightings and state smashing and such hopeless and out-of-date methods of struggle. Modern conditions make all such policies obsolete in view of the development of the mighty political machine and its forces, as Engels well showed in reviewing the class struggles in France from 1848 to 1850.

Here is the quotation from Bucharin as printed in the official “International Press Correspondence ” (July 30th, 1928).

“Mass actions must be regarded as one of the best means in our struggle. Our tactics must be to mobilise the masses, to become masters of the streets, to attack again and again the law and order of the bourgeoise State and to smash it, to capture the street by revolutionary means, in the strict sense of the word, and then to go further. Only on the basis of a whole series of such events and on the basis of the development of these events—mass actions, etc.—only through such a process can we prepare ourselves for fiercer and more stubborn mass struggles on a larger scale.”

BACKWARD RUSSIA. 

If they could show that any of the above methods had led to Socialism in Russia they might have a plausible argument. But as we have shown in these columns the Russian Bolshevik Policy is neither applicable here with a different stage of working class development, nor is it able to give Russia Socialism.

How backward Russia is we can regretfully read in this quotation from the Bolshevik Workers’ Life of July 20th, 1928 :

“Russia is a country of small peasant farms, like those parts of Ireland, where landlords do not flourish. In general, the methods of tilling used by the peasants are very primitive, and little attempt is made to sort out good seeds or to study the characteristics of the soil.

But scattered throughout the Soviet Union now there are a number of Soviet farms, larger in size than the peasant holdings, and very much more efficient.

In the R.S.F.S.R. there are over 3,000 such farms, and in the Ukraine there were 633 last year.

Large though these numbers seem, Soviet farms are only “a drop in the ocean” in the vast expanse of Russia. Their production is a very small proportion of Russia’s total output. For instance, they have about 200,000 head of livestock on these farms (cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, etc.), but the total number of such animals in Russia is nearly 20,000,000 !”