Here and There: More About A.R.P. (1938)

The Here and There column from the October 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

More About A.R.P.

Through a sympathetic correspondent, our statement on A.R.P. found its way into a Leeds newspaper and received a reply from an A.R.P. official, who, referring to the correspondent in question, says:—

He is fortunate in living in a country where, despite the many faults, he doubtless finds in it, he can still express his personal opinions as freely and forcibly as he wishes, so long as he respects the bounds of order and good conduct.

I am not concerned with his political creed, but I would point out that in the logical sequence of things he should be prepared, in the event of an Air Raid, not to accept the services of those Volunteers who to-day are giving up time and energy to fitting themselves to be of service to their fellows should the need ever arise.

Our A.R.P. officer thinks that a Socialist logically should not accept the services that A.R.P. offers. Very well. But what about the other side of the argument put forward by our A.R.P. officer, viz., that war preparations and A.R.P. are “a safeguard of peace” ? If preparations for “safeguarding peace” fail and war results then surely the correspondent referred to, who is in favour of peace and opposed to war, could reasonably expect to be safeguarded!

However, the A.R.P. officer dodged the main contention of our article. That is, briefly, that preparations for war, including A.R.P., require a war-willing working class for their success. Without which war would be impossible. As a writer in Controversy (September, 1938), who might also have read the article, says:—

. . . British Capitalism must be reasonably certain of one thing—national unity. It dare not go to war if it is conscious that it may be stabbed in the back by a disloyal working-class.

Our article also pointed out that A.R.P. provides capitalist governments with the opportunity of canalising anti-war sentiments into support for A.R.P. with plausible humanitarian arguments. 

The Controversy article touches this point:—

A.R.P. has two functions, both psychological. First, if support can be obtained for the limited measures for civilian “protection" embodied in the scheme—or for any official measures for protection whatsoever—then the Government can logically point out that there is no reason for withholding support from the re-armament programme as a whole.

There is no logical) escape from this sequence. To support, however tacitly, A.R.P., is in effect to support British Capitalism. And for a working-class party to refuse participation after the first stage is merely to evidence a theoretical confusion, which is no incentive to confidence on the part of the masses.

We are grateful that our attitude on this aspect of the war question flnds agreement outside the Socialist Party.

Fools and Democracy.

Under the heading “Democracy Must Not be Fooled Again," H. N. Brailsford, writing on the Czechoslovakian question, says:—

Twenty years ago Mr. Lloyd George and M. Clemenceau made this problem for us. They included in the Czech Republic 3,600,000 unwilling German subjects.

It was not necessary to do so. This is not a scattered minority. It lies in a compact fringe round the frontiers, and could have been detached to join its kinsmen in Germany and Austria.

For strategical reasons this obvious solution was avoided. The mountains of the Sudetenland offered an easily defensible frontier. The French General Staff and French heavy industry, largely interested in Czech armaments, meant to erect here a formidable barrier against Germany, then a disarmed and pacific republic.

To-day, with Austria within his Empire, it is Hitler rather than the French staff who poses the strategical problem.

He is bent on dismantling or neutralising this fortress that lies on the flank of any German advance eastwards. It bars the road to the oil wells of Rumania and the black earth of the Ukraine.— (Reynolds', September 10th, 1938.)

From that it might be logically assumed that Mr. Brailsford would be in opposition to war. But no; what he says is: “To oppose it may be morally impossible, but Labour, if it is wise, will keep its independence . . . critical and ready when the moment comes to serve the cause of the workers—the Germans as well as the Czechs, the Russians as well as the French."

Why is it morally impossible to oppose war? And why serve the cause of the workers “when the moment comes"—why not now?

Unfortunately, this is the sort of nonsense that is being regarded as “anti-war" and in line with the Socialist attitude.

It looks as though Mr. Brailsford is being fooled.

“Progress" of the Communist Party.

In a booklet running to over one hundred pages the Central Committee of the Communist Party reports to its 15th Party Congress. It is a remarkable document. It is remarkable for its complete omission of any ideas the Party held up to only a few years ago, and for the energy with which it now puts over capitalist ideas and propaganda with all the righteousness of the Salvationist combined with the subtlety of the Jesuits. Gone is the agitation for the violent overthrow of capitalism, the supreme contempt for the “social-Fascist” Labour Party, and opposition to the League of Nations as an agent of the capitalists. The Communist Party is now the standard-bearer for democracy, for affiliation to the Labour Party, for collective security. In respect of the last named it goes further than others and opposes “reconciliation with Fascist countries,” which “bolsters up the National Government and encourages fresh Fascist aggression.” The “Fascist countries” are Italy and Germany, and not those dictatorial capitalist States who might line up with France and Russia in a military alliance. “No reconciliation with Fascist countries" sounds plausible to working-class sentiment, but in practice means that the Communists. will support any capitalist government that will resist German and Italian ambitions. This policy is in line with the foreign policy of the Russian Government, whose interests the official Communist Party in Great Britain cannot oppose.

The writers of this report show outstanding skill in one certain direction. They manage to review working-class activity in this country and throughout the world in a way which leaves the impression that any credit for improvements in working-class conditions is due to the Communist Party, who are the people responsible for taking the initiative. Thus commenting on the fact that three million workers won holidays with pay, the report says “. . . our campaign now aims to extend this provision immediately to embrace every worker.” And even in Africa the crusaders see their influence at work:—

East and West Africa: Whilst we have only irregular contact with these colonies, the recent cocoa war in the Gold Coast and the coffee trouble in Tanganyika indicates that here also the movement is gaining strength.

It is to be hoped that the natives in East and West Africa are conscious of their debt to the Communist Party. And in this way the report almost breathlessly describes the conflicts throughout the British Empire; conflicts which, it is inferred. arise out of Communist influence and leadership.

In a section dealing with “Work Among the Middle Class and Professional Sections,” the report speaks of the need “to mobilise the middle class and professional people on the basis of their own professional interests.” The section also refers to the growth of national movements in Scotland and Wales, and says:

It has been made clear that our Party stands for a policy which preserves the best traditions of the Scottish people, and the Welsh people, resists every attempt to encroach upon their national rights, and demands the fullest opportunities for the development of self-government.

That is, of course, one way of pandering to the ignorance and prejudice of the “middle class and the professional sections,” and of getting the support of reactionaries and any but Socialists.

A “popular pamphlet” dealing with the question before the end of the year is promised. 

Dealing with the Daily Worker, “ such innovations as well-known Scottish leaders of thought I acting as contributors” are to be a feature of certain improvements. Commenting on the present contributors the report says: “John Strachey’s commentaries are still well liked.” There seems to be a touch of unconscious irony in that “still.” 

Communist Party membership is stated to have reached fifteen thousand; Daily Worker sales have on occasions exceeded one hundred thousand.

Those figures express a growth of the influence of the Communist Party and the degree to which the ideas for which its original Russian founders stood have been deserted.

There is no Communist Party in anything but name.

Communists are so misunderstood.

The writer of “ A Worker’s Notebook,” in the Daily Worker (September 16th, 1938), says that some one had rung up the paper to tell them of her experience during a demonstration in Whitehall. She had apparently asked two policemen what the demonstration was about and each had given exactly the same answer: “ It is the Communists, who are demanding war with Germany.” 

“Their unanimity,” says the Daily Worker, “made her wonder whether they were answering according to instructions.”

Touching; but surely even policemen may be forgiven for not being able to appreciate that the demands of the Communists that the British Government, with France and Russia, should go to the aid of Czechoslovakia in the event of German attack are meant to be interpreted as love overtures.

Another Lost Leader.

Commenting on the Czechoslovakian crisis the Daily Worker (September 16th, 1938) refers b pro-Nazi circles in France “ extending from ex-Premier Flandin, a special friend of Chamberlain and Hitler, to Leon Blum. . . . ”

It is only a few months since Leon Blum was head of the “Popular Front ” Government in France and the pet of the British Communist Party.

On Coat-turning.

Mr. John McGovern, M.P., of the I.L.P., has resigned from the negotiating committee appointed by the I.L.P. to discuss terms for the proposed re-affiliation with the Labour Party. In an interview with the Daily Herald (September 1st, 1938) he says:—

“ I am an unrepentant believer in unconditional re-affiliation, and the majority of my fellow members in the East End of Glasgow hold a similar opinion.

“In the present international situation the working classes cannot afford the luxury of dissension, and all who believe in peace, international security and social progress should be prepared to unite under the banner of the Labour Party."

Now, Mr. McGovern is not a newcomer to the politics of the Labour movement.- He sat in the House of Commons as a Labour M.P. during the lifetime of the last Labour Government. After some experience of that Government he saw no disadvantage for the workers in the “luxury of dissension." Writing in Forward (August 2nd, 1930) he said: —

The only time in my life that I have allied myself with the enemies of the workers has been since I came to the House of Commons, and that is by order of the Labour Government, Almost every time I go into the Division lobby I join such tried and trusted friends of t.he Labour Party as Lloyd George, his daughter, Sir Herbert Samuel, etc. They are keeping the Labour Party in office on condition that the workers and the Labour programme are deserted.

Really, Mr, McGovern, isn’t there some explaining to do? Has the Labour Party turned its coat—or Lloyd George—or only you?

Unemployment in India.

India is a country which is becoming rapidly industrialised. In the process she passes through the familiar stages of social development. Millions of workers from the land have been attracted to industrial centres, with the consequence that when the capitalists have no use for their labour they have nothing to fall back upon, and in large numbers are thrown on the streets. According to the Indian Labour Journal (August 21st, 1938), “ they pass their days in hunger, only to be relieved by epidemics and diseases that cannot be prevented by poverty."

“Relieved by" is really a nice, delicate way of saying that workers die as the result of their poverty. In what numbers they die the Journal does not say, but it does estimate the numbers of ex-land workers who are thrown on the industrial scrap-heap in the manner described above. The. number is forty millions!

Fine place the British Empire—for the capitalists!

Robbery with Impudence.

 

Whilst the British and Italians pursue their struggle over Spain, agree to “non-intervention," and assure each other of noble intentions, a report by the City Editor of the News Chronicle (August 29th, 1938), shows one of the underlying attractions in Spain:—

The full text of a triangular trade agreement between Italy, Manchukuo and Japan has just been published in Tokio, according to Reuter’s correspondent. Italy has undertaken to import as from September 1st a fixed annual quota of Japanese and Manchukuan goods. One of the main items will be, soya beans.

In return, Japan and Manchukuo have jointly undertaken to import a fixed quota of Italian goods. These are expected to consist largely of motor-cars, aluminium and mercury,

Note the “and mercury." And remember that the sources for mercury in Spain are in the territory still held by the Spanish Republican Government.

A case of selling the swag before it is stolen.

Harry Waite

Game changing (2025)

From the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Football belongs to everyone!’ So says the voiceover to a trailer on BBC1 showing a video montage of goals being scored and shots saved by men and women, girls and boys. Exemplary diversity and equality. The only problem is the statement is patently untrue. Even a cursory acquaintance with the Premier League is sufficient to become all too aware that football is securely in the deep pockets of capital. Clubs are owned by the international mega-rich, some linked to regimes with records on human rights that are dubious at best.

August and it’s back! As if it ever went away. The summer break just means footballers play in competitions other than the main season. The transfer market has also opened and assets, footballers, are traded for tens, even hundreds of millions of pounds. Regular contenders for winning the Premier League and then contesting the European Championship are those that have access to seemingly bottomless coffers. There is absolutely no acknowledgement that those coffers are kept generously topped up by wealth created by the working class and then appropriated by the few, 1 percent or so, who constitute the capitalist class around the world.

The Premier League was created in the early 1990s to serve the requirements of satellite broadcasters. Those who own the game could profit by selling it through the media directly to fans at home who outnumber by huge numbers those who actually attend matches. There was a notion that supporters might be allowed into games at reduced prices, perhaps for free, to provide the atmosphere. However, clubs found that there were still fans who prefer to go to games, making them a further source of revenue. Apart from the actual football there is a huge trade in replica shirts and other merchandise.

Football is a commodity, a product that has value produced through the labour power of workers, including the footballers. While some of those workers are apparently generously paid, this merely reflects the far greater income they generate, realised through streaming services, tickets sales and club shops. For all the glamour football is no different to any other commodity, being produced for profit. While a club is successful no one questions the ownership. Declining prowess or relegation can lead to one set of owners having to sell to another. This may involve financial shenanigans such as leveraged buyouts when a club is purchased using its own assets.

This though is just the modern iteration of the way it’s been since league football began in the late Victorian period. The 12 original founders were clubs formed by local capitalists in the English economic powerhouses of the day.

Football will belong to everybody when the world belongs to everybody. As long as the profit motive is the only motive for producing anything, the game must remain a spectator sport, not the spectators’ sport. Just as there can’t be socialism in one country, fans becoming owners of their clubs would change little. Unless those fans were super-rich capitalists, their club would remain vulnerable to takeover and ultimate economic failure.

Until there is a worldwide embracing of socialism as the game changer around the world, football, like every other commodity, will belong to the minority who exploit it for their own ends. Whatever the BBC says. What about another sport? Cricket was once a major alternative during football’s more rigorously observed close season.

Just as the Premier League was developed for television, so cricket has undergone changes driven by the same imperative. The most obvious example of this is the twenty-20 format. A game played within a time period that suits media scheduling. It has also proved popular with spectators who can attend and see a complete game in an evening.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has become the leading version, attracting players from all the major cricketing countries. With a potential home audience drawn from a billion-plus population already wedded to the game over generations it has proved a fecund money tree. As with the English Premier League (EPL) in football, television delivers cricket into the homes of viewers around the world. Such is the profile of the IPL it became an issue during the recent border conflict between India and Pakistan.

Matches were left unplayed and players instructed to return to their own countries for their safety. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had only suspended remaining fixtures that were eventually played and the competition concluded as the crisis simmered down. The financial strength of the IPL is indicated by its being the second largest money generator in sport, only exceeded by the USA’s National Football League (NFL). This not only allows it financial influence in other cricketing nations, but political as well.

The Caribbean Premier League has six Indian owners involved and South African SA20 has major Indian investment. While back in England the chief executive of Lancashire County Cricket club, Daniel Gidney, has been reported as suggesting the Hundred competition should sell a stake in itself to the BCCI. The sport’s governing body is the International Cricket Council (ICC) whose present chairman is Jay Shah. Jay is the son of Amit Shah, a long-time political ally of Narendra Modi, leader of India’s governing party, the BJP.

It seems more than likely that closer examination of any popular international sport would reveal financial and political ties and influences. For example, the estimated cost of staging the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 was $9.5 billion. The revenue generated by staging the games was around $12 billion.

It’s not the winning, but the taking part, was the old mantra. Perhaps that should be amended to, it’s not just the winning, but the taking the cash. Every activity, while capitalism continues, is ultimately driven by the profit motive. It has to be. It cannot be otherwise unless, of course, the working people of the world cease being merely spectators. By forming a worldwide league dedicated to their own interests the vast majority could step over the boundary, blow the whistle on capitalism and win the race for socialism.

Dave Alton

Material World: Trade deals – and artful dealers (2025)

The Material World column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Noel Edmonds has much to answer for. His TV game show ‘Deal or No Deal’ popularised the idea of ‘deals’ as being one-time games. Each contestant had a box, which ‘The Banker’ would offer them money for, based on seeing the contents of other player’s boxes. The aim was to either have the £250K prize ticket in the box, or get The Banker to offer more money than the ticket in the box.

Most deals, though, are part of ongoing relationships: especially deals between enduring entities like countries. They are capable of constant and infinite revision. Good contracts allow the parties to vary the terms by agreement, rather than go to the palaver of completely striking a new arrangement. Edmonds, though, was an entertainer, and so could be forgiven for putting drama first; for politicians it is a different story.

Keir Starmer has been making hay out of having signed three trade deals with significant partners: USA, EU and India. Obviously, such agreements are complex, the result of many hours of hard work by professional negotiators and trade experts, and require the key role of a Prime Minister to choose winners and losers. It is right that in a democratic society such arrangements are made available for serious scrutiny and widespread deliberation, since the effects of trade deals are so far-reaching for so many people.

We do not, though, live in a properly democratic society: we live in a propagandised one. The party in government tries to spin complicated deals and draw our attention to what’s being won, while cannily hiding what’s being lost. They like to big-up the leader, ignoring the officials and their work. In these cases, the trade deals have often been commenced under the previous government and concluded under the current one. It would be interesting to see what difference the change of regime made: Starmer himself brayed in the House of Commons that he had struck deals where the Tory Party could not.

This hoopla is an interesting post-Brexit effect. Over the years, opponents of the EU tried to rein in the power of the government to strike deals through diplomacy, and the EU itself removed a lot of what goes on in trade deals from the back room and made it part of a public process via the EU Commission and Parliament.

Now that is all over, trade becomes an exclusive province of the executive: all relevant treaties are signed under Royal Prerogative. Other polities require treaties to be approved by their legislature, but there is no such requirement in the UK. Our democratic (such as they are) organs will only be involved in any legislation required to give effect to the agreement. This, in part, makes sense of the desire of the Prime Minister to make a big thing of it: this is an area where he alone can decide and give effect to such deals.

If we look, we can see that the UK actually has formal arrangements with most of the countries in the world. Even for those that it does not have a direct deal with, the World Trade Organisation rules are in place so trade can take place. So, in effect, so-called ‘Trade Deals’ are just a variance of existing relationships, and the relative formalisation or extension of existing rules .

The UK, its citizens and companies are currently the second biggest holder of US government debt . So, there is a natural intertwining of interest between the two economies, and British Prime Ministers love to talk about ‘the special relationship’, although it is not clear whether it is reciprocated.

‘The United States intends to provide certain key UK imports with modified reciprocal tariff treatment, based on our balanced trading relationship and shared national security priorities. Any such modifications will be consistent with those shared national security priorities’ .

So it is clear that joint military relations play a big part of the deal.

It should be noted, even if not written into the deal, that the US signed off on the Chagos Island deal around the same time as making the trade agreement again. Secret diplomacy is back, and great power politics has its part to play in the trade deals. Diego Garcia helps the US project its force over Pacific maritime trade, and the UK is in a position to assist that.

Shortly after Brexit, then Prime Minister Theresa May hinted darkly that Britain remains a military power. Clearly the UK government is leaning into that, using ‘security co-operation’ as part of its trading negotiation stance. This can be seen in the UK/EU agreement, where Starmer has been trumpeting getting UK access to the €150 billion Security Action for Europe (SAFE) fund: this will be used to support the UK’s armaments industry, which will doubtless, in turn, be used to fuel arms exports for both profit and strategic interests. Likewise, the deal will enable more top-level engagement between British and EU leaders for security co-operation.

The headlines of that agreement revolved around extending EU fisheries’ access to UK waters. This is an example of the government picking winners and losers. UK fishers could have had exclusive access to all the fish, but the UK government traded that for giving agricultural UK products easier access into Europe via the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) regime of the EU. This gives the lie to the so-called national interest: it is the particular interest of specific industries.

Hence, the India deal involves improved tariff terms for luxury goods like whisky and gin, hardly worthwhile to most people, but a significant gain for whisky distillers and distributors.

Trade deals are the way that capitalism tries to plan the world economy. If we lived in a democratic society, such arrangements would be subject to extensive public deliberation rather than the fiat of one man. We owe Starmer a debt of sorts: his hoopla shows how the system is run in the interest of war and profit rather than human need.

Pik Smeet

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and parts of Europe. Vigorous competition between and within religious movements has led to their accumulating great power and wealth. Religions in many traditions have honed their competitive strategies over thousands of years. Today, they are big business; like businesses, they must recruit, raise funds, disburse budgets, manage facilities, organize transportation, motivate employees, and get their message out. 

(Princeton University Press)

Around one quarter of all Canadians are living in poverty, according to a new report authored by several non-governmental organizations. The report comes in the midst of a historic cost of living crisis for working class Canadians and bumper profits for big business… banks and war profiteers.

(wsws.org)

What about your country’s relations with the German government?

. . . It was hostile to us, the Greens and the SPD wanted to prevent the sale of weapons to us [Saudi Arabia] before the election. But now, the Greens are in government and are authorizing these arms sales. The foreign minister herself announced it. 

(Der Spiegel)

… India’s richest 1% own around 40% of the country’s wealth, according to Credit Suisse data cited by a 2023 Oxfam report, while more than 200 million people continue to live in poverty. One study by the World Inequality Lab in March found that the gap between India’s rich and poor is now so wide that by some measures, there was more equality in India under British colonial rule than today. 

(Time)

A Palestinian activist known for organising anti-Hamas protests in Gaza has been taken to hospital after an attack by a group of masked men. Amin Abed, 35, was admitted in critical condition after being kidnapped near his home by five assailants on Monday afternoon. A well-known activist, Mr Abed told the BBC: “I will not stop using my right to express my rejection of the 7 October attack.” Public dissent against Hamas has grown in recent months as residents of Gaza grow angry at the huge toll inflicted on the enclave since the start of the war.

(BBC)

The $320 million project—which consists of a floating offshore barge and 1,800-foot causeway to the shore—was touted as eventually being able to accommodate up to 150 aid trucks per day. Instead, it facilitated the shipment of the equivalent of about a single day’s worth of prewar food deliveries while operating for a total of less than three weeks.

 (Common Dreams)

In Rwanda’s case, Kagame paid an astonishing $50,000 per month to public relations firms to present himself as a transformative leader while doing very little for his people. Did you know that the President travels in a convoy of two luxurious Gulfstream jets, each costing $66.5 million? 

(BAR)

Every worker should be able to feel joy on Monday morning instead of anxiety on Sunday night.

(Libcom)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view. )

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.

England’s Prosperity—India’s Poverty. (1931)

From the May 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Viscount Rothermere has contributed a couple of articles to the “Evening News” (the first of which appeared on April 15th) under the heading “If we lose India——”

The first article concludes as follows :

“Nowhere in the world, therefore, is it brought home to one more vividly than in Portugal what India means to Britain.

Here is a country that was once, like ours, the proud Mistress of the Seas. She has now sunk to the third rank among the nations of Europe. What raised her to the first place was her connection with India. What brought about her downfall was its loss.

Yet at this very moment there are ignorant and weak-kneed politicians in England deliberately working to lose our grip on that historic key to National Greatness.”

There is something to be said for the position put forward by Rothermere though not perhaps in the way he intended. A good deal of the early accumulation of wealth in England that was converted into capital and helped to speed on the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries was obtained by the wholesale plundering of India.

It had been the practice in India for all, from the highest lo the lowest, to lay by the means to help tide over periods of famine. For this purpose what silver they came by was buried to be later dug up and used. When the Portuguese, French and English adventurers entered India, like Columbus in the New World, they found an Eldorado which they plundered to the best of their abilities ; the last and most successful plunderers were the British. Brook Adams in “The Law of Civilization and Decay,” writes: “Possibly since the world began, no investment has ever yielded the profit reaped from the Indian plunder, because for nearly fifty years, Great Britain stood without a competitor” (page 263). The way the booty was obtained is explained in some detail by Adams, from whom the following extracts are taken :

“Upon the plundering of India there can be no better authority than Macaulay, who held high office at Calcutta when the administration of Hastings was still remembered; and who wrote more as a minister than as a historian. He has told how after Plassey “the shower of wealth” began to fall, and he has described Clive’s own gains : “We may safely affirm, that no Englishman who started with nothing has ever, in any line of life, created such a fortune at the early age of thirty-four.” But the takings of Clive, either for himself or for the Government, were trifling compared to the wholesale robbery and spoliation which followed his departure, when Bengal was surrendered a helpless prey to a myriad of greedy officials. These officials were absolute, irresponsible, and rapacious, and they emptied the private hoards. Their only thought was to wring some hundreds of thousands of pounds out of the natives as quickly as possible, and hurry home to display their wealth.

“Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness.” . . .

Thus treasure in oceans flowed into England through private hands, but in India the affairs of the Company (the East India Company) went from bad to worse. Misgovernment impoverished the people, the savings of long years of toil were exhausted, and when, in 1770, a drought brought famine, the resources of the people failed, and they perished by millions : “the very streets of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the dead.” Then came an outbreak of wrath from disappointed stockholders ; the landed interest seized its opportunity to attack Clive in Parliament; and the merchants chose Hastings to develop the resources of Hindustan.

Hastings was, indeed, a man fitted for the emergency, a statesman worthy to organise India on an economic basis. Able, bold, cool, and relentless, he grasped the situation at a glance, and never faltered in his purpose. If more treasure was to be wrung from the natives, force had to be used systematically. Though Bengal might be ruined, the hoards of neighbouring potentates remained safe, and these Hastings deliberately set himself to drain. Macaulay has explained his policy and the motives which actuated him.   . . .

How he (Hastings) obtained his money, the pledges he violated, and the blood he spilt, is known as few passages of history are known, for the story has been told by both Burke and Macaulay. How he robbed the Nabob of Bengal of half the income the Company had solemnly promised to pay, how he repudiated the revenue which the Government had covenanted to yield to the Mogul as a tribute for provinces ceded them, and how, in consideration of four hundred thousand pounds, he sent a brigade to slaughter the Rohillas, and placidly saw “their villages burned, their children butchered, and their women violated,” has been described in one of the most popular essays in the language. At his impeachment, the heaviest charge against him was that based on his conduct towards the princesses of Oude, whom his creature, Asaph-al-Dowlah, imprisoned and starved, whose servants he tormented, and from whom he wrung at last twelve hundred thousand pounds as the price of blood. By these acts, and acts such as these, the treasure which had flowed to Europe through the extermination of the Peruvians was returned again to England from the hoards of the conquered Hindoos.” (Pages 255-258.)

In 1901 a book by W. Digby was published entitled, “Prosperous British India.” In this book, which runs to 650 pages, Digby presented a detailed record of the terrible story of India’s connection with Britain, and the woe it has brought to the Indian population. He points out that millions of pounds have been drained from India with no return whatever, and gives what he contends is a conservative estimate, that there were, at the beginning of the twentieth century, 70 million continually hungry people in British India (page 85). He points out “that the Pioneer, the ever-ready apologist for British rule in India . . put the Indian people who are living’ in extreme poverty’ at ‘one hundred millions.’ ”

On page 7 the same writer states :

“230,000,000 out of 231,085,132 people in British India have an income, before any taxation is imposed, of only about 12s. per head per annum, or less than one halfpenny per head per day.

"Out of that 12s. at least 2s. 6d. are taken by way of taxation, or twenty per cent. of the total income.”

Digby points to the ruthless exploitation of the peasantry by the Government through taxation which ultimately put many of them deep in the clutches of the moneylender, in illustration of which he writes :

“In one district in 1800 85 per cent. of the land revenue was directly paid to the Government officials by moneylenders, the cultivators being wholly without means to fulfil their obligations, while the leading medical journal in the world ( The Lancet, June, 1901) through its correspondent in Bombay, estimates that nineteen millions of British Indian subjects have, during the last decennium of the nineteenth century, died of starvation, and one million from plague.” (Page 64.)

As an illustration of how the impoverishment of the people under British rule had lessened the power of resistance to the forces of nature, Digby points to the fact that while between 1800 and 1825 there were, only four famines, between 1875 and 1900 there were twenty-two famines.

Digby supports his case by masses of evidence drawn from official sources.

Another writer, Dadabhai Naoroji, provides evidence of a similar kind in a book entitled, “Poverty and Un-British Rule in India.” In 1928 Sir Stanley Reed writes, in “India: the new Phase,” “The poverty of the Indian peasant still dominates the situation.”

Such has been the nature and result of British exploitation in India. Is it any wonder that part of the population gives ready ear to those who urge (for their own private ends in the main) that India should rid itself of the foreign exploiters ?

To obtain an idea of the forces of work in India at present, and to grasp what lies behind the Nationalist movement it is necessary to understand something of India’s economic development, particularly during the last twenty years or so.

The following is a brief sketch to aid in understanding the present situation.

India Yesterday.

The economic revolution in India began about the middle of the last century. Until then India was made up of village communities of varying sizes. The artizans were village servants paid in kind by the local community to supply its needs. What trading existed was almost entirely by barter. Money was very little used until the British Government demanded the payment of the Government assessments in cash. The export trade was very small. The chief factor that kept India in the village community stage for such a long period was its comparative isolation from the outside world owing to lack of transport facilities. Roads were few and in such poor condition that they were impassable during rainy periods. Except at a few places along one or two of the larger rivers, navigation offered little help to internal traffic.

In a few years all this was changed.

Indian cultivators produced cotton on a small scale from early times and some of the more refined fabrics were exported to Europe. “With the cheapening of the cotton goods by the introduction oi machinery in England, Indian products were unable to compete and the export declined. America was the principal source of England’s new cotton up to the American Civil War in the 1860’s. This event closed the ports of the Southern States to the export of cotton and produced a cotton famine in Lancashire. The eyes of English manufacturers immediately turned to India and feverish efforts were made to turn India into a cotton producing tributary of the Empire. In the ’50’s of the last century Lord Dalhousie was appointed Governor-General of India and at the instigation of the British Government he immediately set about ending India’s economic isolation. Cotton commissioners were appointed and roads and railway construction was pushed forward.

A Public Works Department was formed. Thousands of labourers were recruited from among the agricultural labourers, the poorer cultivators, village artizans and the weavers. The cotton cultivators were enabled to go ahead to meet the sudden tremendous demand for raw cotton as they were assured of security of tenure against the old village communal arrangement by the operation of the Land Settlement Act. Before 1860 a class of general casual labourers were practically unknown in India. After the new development schemes casual labour became a common feature of Indian life and the stagnation of centuries disappeared. Co-operative and forced labour of cultivators was replaced by wage labour.

The Government’s activity in India rapidly bore fruit. The first line of railway was opened to traific in 1854. Bv 1869 over 5,000 miles of railway were opened to traffic. Between 1859 and 1866 the price of cotton rose more than threefold and the quantity available for export to England more than doubled. It rose from half a million bales in 1859 to one and a quarter million bales in 1865.

For a few years the effect of the American Civil War, together with the discoveries of precious metals in Australia, California, and Mexico, with the consequent rise in prices made cotton growing a profitable industry to the cultivators of the Indian cotton trade. The end of the Civil War and the resumption of export by America brought about a sharp fall in the demand for Indian cotton and the position of the Indian cultivators suddenly became very bad. Many prominent Bombay merchants, who had risen on the tide of prosperity, failed. At the same time the benevolent Government, who wished to re-imburse itself for its expenditure on development works, taking the period of prosperity as normal, raised the assessments for revenue purposes and helped the ruin of the peasants, who were compelled to resort to borrowing to meet the increased demands.

In 1875 the Government of India entered on a policy of more and more expenditure in military expeditions and establishments, and as the money had to be found by the Indian population, the burden of taxation pressed more and more heavily on the mass of the people, and the grip of the moneylenders tightened. The resulting distress was greater than had previously been known by the Indian people and was one of the earliest of the “benefits” of British rule in India. Before the coming of the British,, money-lending to cultivators was checked by the restrictions on the transfer of lands and by the refusal of the superior powers to aid money-lenders in recovering debts. But the British had driven a nail into the coffin of the old communal system by permitting the transfer of land and its absolute ownership, which the cultivators had never possessed before. It had also introduced a judicial system which gave the money-lender a great power over the debtor, and a Limitation Act, making the renewal of the debt-bond in short periods compulsory. The debtor was practically reduced to the position of a serf, and the money-lender had a tight grip on his land. Thus commenced the gradual transfer of the lands of the peasants to the money-lenders. In 1879 “the condition of the agriculturist was one bordering on extreme poverty” (see Gadgil—”Industrial Evolution of India”).

In the textile industries generally, as well as in the metal and other industries, the opening up of India by the improved transport facilities brought in the cheap products of the European manufacturers and ruined the finer industry of the village handicraftsman. With the extension of British rule over India, the easy flow of Indian life, interrupted, it is true, by periodical severe famines, was gone forever. India was drawn into the maelstrom of capitalist commerce and industry, and a large portion of its population was rapidly converted from co-operative cultivators and handicraftsmen into a replica of their Western brothers—wage-slaves. The opening up of the country had resulted in the killing of the native industry.

In the nineteenth century, European exploitation of Indian resources began with the introduction of indigo, tea and coffee plantations. These plantations were granted to Europeans and worked by Indian coolies drawn from different parts of India. During their transportation a large proportion of the coolies died, and when the others reached the gardens their miseries were aggravated by the ill-treatment of their employers. The early planting speculations exhibited familiar features of capitalist commercial investment. Land companies were formed, which sold land that existed in places impossible of cultivation. In many cases the surveying had been purely fanciful and the buyer found that the land he had bought in no way resembled the specifications, and was situated in a district occupied by hostile tribes who would have very rapidly claimed his head if he had attempted to claim the land. After 1860, plantations sprang up everywhere.

Factory industry also commenced about this period and represents another of the “benefits” conferred on India by British rule. The cotton boom and the corresponding reckless floating of companies for all purposes was followed by the inevitable crisis and the collapse of credit in 1865. India was now experiencing for the first lime the inevitable accompaniment of capitalist rule. Industry did not recover until 1871. By 1879 there were 56 cotton mills in India, employing 43,000 people, most of them situated in the Bombay district. In 1882 there were 20 jute mills, employing 20,000 people, nearly all of them in the vicinity of Calcutta.

Coal mining also began to grow alongwith the cotton and jute industries, and in 1880 employed 20,000 people.

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was an important factor in the increase in India’s export trade, and between 1880 and 1895 there was a tremendous increase in the export of Indian raw products.

By 1898 the number of cotton mills had risen to 144, and the people employed to 139,578. The export of Indian yarn rose from 26,701,716 Ib. in 1879 to 170,518,804 Ib. in 1890. In the jute industry and in coal mining there was a corresponding growth. The export of coal from India commenced in 1900, and by 1894 had reached nearly 54,000 tons. The tea industry was also rapidly growing, but the system of recruiting labour for it was denounced by a member of the Tea and Coal Labour Commission as a “vile pest to society.”

Along with the growth of the commerce and industry there was also growing up a landless labour class, and in 1891 the first Factory Act was passed, against the opposition of the manufacturers. This Act only provided for the regulation of the working hours of children below the age of twelve. The working hours of children between seven and twelve years of age were limited to nine hours. There were no sanitary provisions. The Act only applied to factories employing 100 or more hands and using mechanical power. Tea, coffee and indigo establishments were excluded from the operations of the Act.

The “benefits” of British rule, in India were accumulating !

It is interesting to notice the movement in favour of Factory Acts in India was instigated by Lancashire and Dundee, who complained that they were subject to unfair competition of India on account of the lack of a Factory Act. A further Act was passed in 1891, which was a slight improvement and raised the minimum age limit for children to nine years of age. In coal mining there was no regulation at all and women were largely employed in this industry.

As usual, many of the provisions of the Act were ignored, and in some mills men, women and children worked from sunrise till sunset. The following quotation from Gadgil gives a picture of the conditions at the time in the Kandesh industiy :—

“The evidence before the 1884 Factory Commission was of a terrible nature. One witness stated, “In the busy season—that is in March and April—the gins and presses sometimes work both night and day and the same set of hands work both night and day, with half-an-hour’s rest in the evening. The same set continue working day and night for about eight days.” It was ail the worse because the hands were mostly women. Another witness stated : “The women are looked on as part of the gins, and they belong to the establishment, and two or three hours is longest time they can be absent out of twenty-three without any notice being taken of it.” After working eight days without stopping, they (the gins) are compelled to get another set of hands from Bombay! ” (Page 95.)

In Bombay the employers kept nearly three weeks’ wages in hand and paid monthly.

In the coal mining industry in Bengal, women and children were employed extensively underground.

Gilmac.

(To be continued.)

The Hanging Gardens of Bombay (2007)

From the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

In India the Prime Ministers is worried about the way the rich flaunt it . . .

In India the rich are getting richer; the poor, naturally, are a long way behind. There are thirty-six “dollar billionaires”, and their combined fortunes add up to about £96 billion, according to an article in the Times (26 May) about the recent annual conference of the Confederation of Indian Industry in Delhi. Among the tycoons present was the sixth-richest Indian, who has nearly £5,000 million: and the article was accompanied by a photograph showing another tycoon, Yohan Poonawalla, an industrialist, posing beside “two of his Rolls-Royces”.

Yet another tycoon, Mukesh Ambani (oil, retail, and biotechnology), is building for himself in Bombay a “sixty-storey palace” (Guardian, 31 May). “Draped in hanging gardens, the building will house a floor for a home theatre, a glass-fronted apartment for guests, and a two-storey health club.” The bottom six floors are for car parking, and at the top is a place to land a helicopter. Ambani has six in his family, and a full-time staff of 600, making a satisfactory ratio of 100 servants to one Ambani. His new retreat will have more floor space than the Palace of Versailles.

Some of these rich Indians have come to live in Britain. The richest of them all, Lakshmi Mittal, currently lives here, carefully looking after his £19,000 million (other sources say it is in fact £32,000 million: no doubt it is difficult to count all that money exactly – by the time you had finished, there would be a lot more interest to add on). In 2002 Tony Blair kindly wrote a personal letter on his behalf to the Romanian government when he was trying to buy the Romanian steel industry. Mittal had recently given £125,000 to Labour Party funds, but Blair (the head of the Labour Party) did not know anything about that – he told us so. He said he was simply helping a “British company”.

Mittal, the head of the company, is an Indian citizen and intends to remain an Indian citizen; his company is registered in the Dutch Antilles (West Indies); his steelworks are in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa; and of his more than 100,000 employees, fewer than one percent are based in the UK. So what Blair called a “British company” was not actually all that British. However, after Mittal with Blair’s help got hold of the Romanian steel industry, and the Romanian steelworkers were making a sizeable contribution to his profits, he was properly grateful to Blair; in July 2005 he gave the Labour Party two million pounds, and in January this year he gave it another two million (Guardian, 16 January).

Admittedly those gifts were only petty cash to Mittal. In 2004 he bought a nice house in London for £57 million – then the most expensive house there, though now this record has been eclipsed by someone who paid eight-four million for a flat in Park Lane. Also in 2004, he spent thirty million on his daughter’s wedding.

Not all Indians are so fortunate. According to the same Times article, two out of every five Indians “live on less than a dollar [about 50p] a day and have seen little evidence of growth apart from rising food prices”. Bombay, where Ambani’s palace is being constructed, is said to be the sixth most populous city in the world,, and an academic report said that one half of the people there “live in slums or are homeless; they live in tenements and huts, on pavements, along railway tracks”, and “under bridges”, and there is “terrible poverty, squalor and deprivation”.

The lavish extravagance of the Indian owning class, as against the poverty of most Indians, has got Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, very concerned. He made a speech at the conference, saying that “the electronic media carries the lifestyle of the rich and famous into every village and slum. Media often highlights the vulgar display of their wealth.” He went on: “An area of great concern is the level of ostentatious expenditure on weddings and other family events. Such vulgarity insults the poverty of the less privileged, it is socially wasteful and it plants the seeds of resentment in the minds of the have-nots.” In fact these inequalities of wealth “can led to social unrest”

Someone earning 50p a day would have to keep going for thirty-three million years to reach the amount of money owned by the chap in the audience at the Delhi conference. Faced with such absurdities, you could choose to work for a more just society; or you could ask the rich to make it less obvious how enormous the gap is. The Indian Prime Minister has chosen the easier option.

Alwyn Edgar

Editorial: The Ugly Reality of Indian Nationalism (1942)

Editorial from the November 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a request to give our support to a joint manifesto in favour of the Indian Nationalist movement, and the following resolution has been sent in reply to it : —

“We are not willing to give our support to a joint manifesto in conjunction with other political parties endorsing the Indian Nationalist movement. As Socialists we are opposed to the exploitation of the toilers either by foreign or native exploiters. As that exploitation can be ended only by the achievement of Socialism, through international working-class action, we are opposed to the Indian Nationalist movement which has capitalist aims and is not deserving of working-class support. We are also not prepared to associate with non-Socialist political parties.”

The Indian population consists of a small wealthy class at the top and a vast mass, numbering over two hundred millions, of poverty stricken workers and peasants at the bottom. If the Nationalist movement becomes successful an indication has already been given of what the mass of the population may expect from native rulers.

When for a short time the Congress Party was in control of the government of Bombay, the home of Indian industrial millionaires, they immediately took the opportunity to introduce a Trades Disputes Bill which made strikes illegal, thus taking away from the worker the only industrial weapon he can use against the exactions of employers. When Indian workers were on strike the real leader of the Congress Party, Gandhi, sided with the employers and forsook his much advertised peaceful persuasion principles to give his blessing to the use of force against workers who engaged in the picketing of factories. In all his agitation in India there has been one constant feature of Gandhi’s position : he has been a friend and supporter of Indian capitalists.

In the industrial centres of India, irrespective of the nationality of those in control of industry, working conditions are deplorable, wages are poor, and unemployment flourishes. This is true where the mill-owners are generally native Indians. Religious differences are exploited by local parasites who turn the worker’s attention from the real source of his misery to religious riots. The fact that British capitalists may also have used these religious differences to further their own ends does not absolve the Indian capitalists from responsibility for the economic conditions out of which the riots spring. The real core of the matter is the exploitation of the Indian workers and peasants.

The Nationalist movement is financed by Indian capitalists and, as only a small percentage of Indians are literate, its prominent officials are either capitalists themselves or intimately connected with the upper strata of wealthy people. As landlords, factory owners, and legislators they have shown they are as determined to live on the backs of the Indian toilers as are the British capitalists whom they wish to eliminate.

It is of no real consequence to the Indian worker whether he toils for the profit of an Indian or a British capitalist concern. His real problem is the fact that the means of production are controlled by a class that forces him to labour and suffer in greater or less degree the miseries suffered by his fellow toilers in other lands.

The present position in India is an indication of the differences that would split Indian society if Indians obtain control of their own affairs. One section there, including the Communists, is supporting the war and another section is opposing it. The different sectional interests of landlords, factory owners and traders will also be a fruitful source of strife. The struggle for markets against Chinese, Japanese and other international interests will add further fuel to the fire. And all the time the Indian worker will toil and suffer, his needs forgotten under the new regime, unless he asserts himself in the only direction that will serve his interests.

Many Indian workers and peasants attribute their miseries to foreign rule rather than to the private ownership of the means of production, but the Indian Nationalist movement will not help the Indian worker to emancipate himself from his subject condition. It draws support from wealthy Indian financiers and manufacturers who inflame national prejudice with the object of climbing upon the backs of the workers to positions of greater wealth and power. Too often have the workers’ aspirations for a better life been diverted into the chase after a national independence which has gained them only a different flag to wave over their misery.

The fact that we are opposed to the Indian Nationalist movement does not mean that we acquiesce in the brutal suppression of which the Indians have been victims. We are opposed to the capitalist system wherever it raises its ugly head, but we know that the solution to the workers’ subjective position under it is the same everywhere.

The only road to salvation for the Indian worker is the road to Socialism, and he must travel along that road in brotherly harmony with the members of his class throughout the world.

Executive Committee, S.P.G.B.

The Class Struggle in India (1949)

From the July 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

For nearly 200 years, India was under British rule. Throughout these years the workers of India were exploited and oppressed and any attempt by them to resist was met with brutal suppression from the British ruling class. The mass shootings at Amritsar in 1919, Bombay in 1921, Calcutta in 1930, Cawnpore in 1931 and Karachi in 1935 are but a few instances of the treatment handed out to Indian workers by their British masters. As Lord Brentford said in 1925:

“ We did not conquer India for the benefit of the Indians . . . We conquered India by the sword, and by the sword we shall hold it.”

For many years the Indian workers have struggled against foreign oppression. Under leaders like Gandhi and Nehru they have striven for national independence. They have used hunger strikes, passive resistance, demonstrations, strikes' and other weapons in the struggle. They have been heroic. Now that they have had their much desired national independence for some short time, we can take a look at the situation and learn a few things.

When a foreign conqueror dominates a country, he either exterminates or subordinates the native population. If the conqueror ushers in capitalism and the people of the country are at a low stage of social development, there will be no place for them in the process of capitalist production. They will be thrust aside as were the Red Indians of America and the Maoris of New Zealand. If they are not exterminated, but are allowed to live side by side with people of a higher stage of social development, the rate of their own social development will be hastened. But, at first, such people do not fit into a system of factory production or commercial enterprise. If, on the other hand, the people of the country have arrived at a stage of development that makes it possible to exploit them, then they will be exploited. When the people of a foreign—capitalist—dominated country can be proletarianised, they will be absorbed into capitalist industry as it develops in their country.

A few of the local population, either because of the position they held before the foreign domination, or because they have been able to take advantage of some chance that the new capitalism offered, will constitute a native capitalist class. This minority will, in time, find itself hampered by the capitalists of the ruling power. These native capitalists will want to control their own system of taxation and to regulate their own tariffs. They will resent a large share of the proceeds of the exploitation of the workers going into the coffers of foreigners. They will resist the continued rule from some other part of the world. To resist successfully they must have the support of the majority of their working class countrymen. Hence, there is built a nationalist movement in which all those who consider that they have a common interest as nationals, will gather and struggle. This is what has happened in such countries as Egypt, Ireland and India. The years of cruel struggle in India have resulted in the achievement of national independence and the arrangement agreed to at the Commonwealth talks in London during April of this year.

What is the position of the workers in India now that this state of national independence has been achieved? Are they free from exploitation and oppression? Are their conditions of life improved? What have they gained from the struggle? We can see, what socialists have always seen, that “India for the Indians” has been a rallying cry to muster the workers under the banner of a group of native exploiters in an endeavour to throw off the yoke of the foreign ones. With the battle won, the workers find that they have got rid of one bunch of tyrants only to be subjugated to another one which speaks their own language and has their same coloured skin, and which can be as brutal and merciless as were the British.

David Raymond, writing about Nehru in Reynold's News (April 24th, 1949) sums up the matter briefly. He

says:

“So long as the fight was for independence it had an aim that united all, rich and poor, exploiter and exploited.”

He also says of Nehru that:

“He has many times written and spoken to the effect that India will not be free until her millions —many of them constantly on the verge of starvation—are free from exploitation by their landlords and by their own capitalists, whom he once described as 'quite amazingly backward'. "

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru came to this country this year to negotiate an arrangement which will give the Indian capitalist class freedom to exploit Indian workers without interference from Whitehall, whilst at the same time conserving to them some of the advantages to be gained from being linked to the “British Commonwealth of Nations.” The Congress Party, which was the backbone of the Nationalist Movement, now forms the government of India, of which Nehru is the head.

The Congress Government in India today is continuing the beatings, shootings, wholesale imprisonment and brutal treatment of the native workers with as great ferocity as did the British. From the Trade Union Record, monthly bulletin of the All-India Trade Union Congress, we get information of the treatment handed out to Indian workers by Indian capitalists and their henchmen. In the issue for March, 1949, we read that,

“. . . Trade Union offices have been broken into, ransacked, records confiscated and the offices sealed . . .”

"Besides the hundreds of Trade Union workers arrested during the last twelve months, more than 2,000 have been arrested during the last fortnight alone.”

Acts have been passed by the central and provincial governments which virtually deprive the workers of the right to strike. The government proposes to amend the Indian Trade Unions Act of 1926 in a manner that will withdraw the freedom to organise from many workers.

Continuously rising prices are giving rise to much discontent and a large number of strikes. Compulsory arbitration has been imposed but trade union officials have been arrested before, and even during, the arbitration proceedings. The same issue of the Trade Union Report states.

"More workers have been killed by bullets in the last one year and a half than in any other period of Indian history.”

In a previous issue of this bulletin, a report from Assam, the country of tea plantations, referring to the month of June, 1948, states,

“In the course of the last month more Trade Unionists have been put behind the prison bars in Assam than even within a year of the worst days of British rule.”

During those days of British rule we often heard of Indian workers being charged and beaten with lathis (bamboo sticks). We still learn of similar instances.

". . . when a deputation of the workers (of the Naivasal Mohamed Hussain Tannery works at Vaniambadi) started to go to the management to make representations they were severely lathi-charged. Twenty workers, including four office bearers of the Union, were arrested and beaten.” 

The general situation is summed up in the following statement from the same source,

“During the last two years the Government has more than once displayed its desire to 'meet the legitimate demands of their employees and other workers’ with lathis, tear gas, bullets and jail.”

This position is not peculiar to India. Wherever a native ruling class has ousted a foreign one it has always been as eager as its predecessors to extract the maximum amount of wealth from the labours of its workers. It will be equally as ruthless in the process and often, being less experienced, will be more crude in its methods. For the workers, the remedy lies not in supporting one national section of the capitalist class against another, but in abolishing all exploiting classes, native and foreign.

There is one thing that emerges from these struggles within capitalism. Out of the turmoil between conflicting sections of the capitalist class and the striving of the workers for political elbow room, there develops the modern type of democratic government with an ever-widening franchise. Thus is formed within capitalism the weapons that the workers can use for its overthrow. When the working class realises the futility of supporting class society in any form, it will find that out of the welter of class conflict has emerged the instrument which can be used to wipe away class domination and privilege—the franchise.

We are often told by our fellow workers from different parts of the world, particularly by our coloured colleagues, that the Socialist solution is too remote. They cannot wait for the day when the workers of the world will overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. They are being ruthlessly exploited by foreign capitalists and subjected to brutal oppression. They need a speedy remedy. Their answer is contained in these extracts from an Indian Trade Union journal. No matter how the workers struggle within capitalism, they will remain an exploited and oppressed class. Socialism is not just the speediest remedy, it is the only remedy.

A slave is no less a slave when he has changed masters.

W. Waters