Letter: The Progress of Russia (1939)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent (W. T. Fielding, Shrewsbury) asks us to comment on an issue of the News Bulletin of the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee. The issue in question (September 10th, 1938) is devoted largely to information and statistics about the progress of Russian industry and services, given in the speeches of the Commissar for Finance, A. G. Zverev, and others. Much of the speeches consisted of figures of State expenditure. The more interesting statements include the following : —

“He stated further that over 80 per cent. of the output of the industry in the U.S.S.R. is being manufactured in enterprises newly built or completely reconstructed during the last ten years. By 1937, the total output of Socialist industry exceeded the pre-War level eightfold. Tsarist Russia occupied fifth place in the world and fourth place in Europe in industrial output; the Soviet Union now holds first place in Europe and second in the world for industrial output.

The continuous progress of the national economy, together with price reductions on consumers’ goods, had resulted in a further considerable rise in the well-being of the people in the Soviet Union; this is shown, for instance, by the projected rise in the total wages of workers and offices employees from 82,000,000,000 roubles in 1937 to 94,000,000,000 roubles in 1938.”

Regarding educational progress, it was stated that there are now 33,000,000 pupils at elementary and secondary schools, and that the number of pupils in higher educational establishments considerably exceeds the number in the higher schools of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan taken together.

Much information was given about agricultural developments, mechanisation, etc. : —

“According to the 1910 census, the peasant farms of Russia had 7,800,000 primitive wooden ploughs, 2,200,000 improved wooden ploughs, 4,200,000 iron ploughs and 17,700,000 wooden harrows.

Now we have 6,158 machine tractor stations, in vehicles, and 104,323 modern threshing-machines, including the latest types. Some 500,000 tractors are working on our Soviet fields.

We now have in our villages our own Soviet skilled workers. We have in the villages of the U.S.S.R. 734,000 tractor drivers, 165,000 combine operators, 124,000 truck drivers, etc.

The peasant from time immemorial dreamed about the land, but he could receive that land only after the victory of the Socialist Revolution. Prior to the Revolution the greatest part of the land belonged to the landlords, monasteries, kulaks, and other exploiters. . . . About two-thirds of the peasants had less than three dessiatines each.

Of the total peasant farms in Tsarist Russia, 30 per cent. had no horses, 34 per cent. had practically no agricultural implements, 15 per cent. cultivated no land.

Now we have in the Soviet Union 243,000 collective farms, uniting over 18,000,000 peasant households (93 per cent. of the total) and embracing 99 per cent. of the total area cultivated by peasant farms.

Prior to the Revolution the landlords and kulaks had 72 per cent. of all the marketable grain. To-day 97 per cent. of the marketable grain is produced by the State and collective farms.

Tsarist Russia harvested annually, on an average, between 4,000 and 5,000 million poods of grain. Our Socialist agriculture already in 1937 produced 7,000 million poods of grain. The number of cattle is increasing year by year in our country. The well-being and culture of the collective farmers are steadily rising.”

The various figures of output, etc., must be considered in relation to Russia’s huge population, of about 170 million people, and in relation to the quality of the products.

Russia claims to occupy second place in world industrial output, U.S.A. holding first place, but the population of the U.S.A. is about 30 million less than that of Russia and it is not seriously disputed that the average quality of American industrial products is higher than that of Russia’s industries, many of which are relatively in their infancy.

The claim regarding the number of students in higher educational establishments is much more impressive because Russia’s population is about 130 million less than the total population of the countries with which comparison is made.

The final test of production is, of course, the standard of living of the mass of the population, and in spite of the rising level, no responsible authority in Russia, as far as we know, claims that it is high by comparison with, say, the standard of living in England or U.S.A. An example is the production of boots and shoes. The U.S.S.R. Handbook (1936) states that in 1934 Russia produced 69 million pairs of leather boots and shoes, and 65 million pairs of rubber boots and shoes. This means that it takes Russia about 2½ years to produce enough leather boots and shoes to provide one pair per head of the population. Production and sales of boots and shoes in Great Britain are about double the 1934 production in Russia, yet the population is only about one-quarter as large. Russian production will have increased considerably since 1934, though it may be mentioned that the production of leather boots and shoes in that year represented a big decline on 1933.

The statements about the progress of Russian agriculture must also be set against the admitted enormous decline in the number of horses, cattle and sheep that took place after 1929, due to deliberate slaughter by rich peasants who were opposed to the collective farms policy. This loss has not been made good.

Avowed opponents of the Russian Government, such as The Times, various oppositionists living in Russia, some visitors to Russia and former Communists who have become disillusioned, allege that the increased quantity of industrial products has been obtained at the cost of quality, for example, by using lower-grade coal and iron ore, poorer quality textiles, etc. Such allegations must be viewed in the light of the source from which they come, but so must the claims of the Russian dictatorship. Until such time as it is made possible for Russian workers freely to organise and to publish their own criticisms of the acts of the Government, the claims of that Government will be open to the charge that they are coloured to suit the interests of the governing clique. Indeed the authorities themselves have publicly admitted that their statistics have been faked by those responsible for compiling them, this being one of the charges against persons tried for alleged “Trotskyism.” A census of the population has just had to be taken again because the first lot of figures were found to be totally unreliable.

On the other hand, reliable testimony about the quality of some Russian factory products is provided by Mr. J. C. Little, President of the A.E.U., and a delegation of working engineers who visited Russia early in 1937. They say that in works they visited the work “equalled in skill and excellence the engineering products of heavy engineering in this country.” (The Times, November 10th, 1938.) It is probable that visitors are shown the more up-to-date works rather than an average selection, a practice not confined to Russia.

One last point is that no defender of the Russian system has been able to explain away the enormous and growing disparity of income between the mass of workers and the favoured group of specialists, officials, writers, bondholders, etc.

Ed. Comm.

The Yellow Revolt. (1914)

Pamphlet Review from the September 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

“China and the Social Revolution,” by Kiang Kang Hu.

This little pamphlet is an all too brief sketch of the revolutionary movement in China during the recent upheaval. It is exceedingly interesting reading, and would be a startling eye-opener to the brand of anti-Socialist whose only excuse for opposing Socialism is that England must wait for Socialism until the “uncivilised” and the heathen are converted to our cause.

Here we have the “heathen Chinee” applying Marxian remedies to working class evils, and showing a knowledge of capitalist conditions that would put to shame many a “civilised” Christian “labour leader.”

The great revolution in China in which the working class, as is customary in all such revolutions, was used to free the land from Manchu rule, leaves the Chinese worker groaning under still worse conditions, conditions common to the early development of capitalist production. And, as a result, to use the author’s words ;

“The faith of the people is gone in Republicanism. The belief that it was the Manchu’s only who were oppressive is shattered. There remains but one thing, THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. That and that only can bring relief to the toiling millions of China. Their only hope lies in this : the taking over of the entire mechanism of production and operation of it by the workers, for the workers—the Socialist or Industrial Republic.”

The growth of The Socialist Party of China was evidently too swift for the powers that were, for in 1913 martial law was declared in Peking, the headquarters raided, the Secretary, Chen Ye Long, was beheaded and the S. P. of China dissolved. It is however but for a time.

“China cannot remain long in the grip of the re-action. Yuan Shi Kai can overrun the country with his troops. He can zealously stamp out, every spark of revolt. And yet, even as he does that, the tremendous forces are gathering, forces to which his army is but a toy, which will hurl aside Yuan Shi Kai and the re-action as though they were nothing. The name of those forces is industrialism. Steadily in ever increasing speed, the great economic change to machine production continues in China. This means that China must be, will be modernised.

“And the Socialist Movement in China will reassemble its forces, fall in step with the great Red International and march with it to victory.”

The author puts things very straight, and a passage dealing with the missionary, the capitalist, and the invasion of China by the Allied Powers is thus neatly and forcibly summarised: “China can now come into contact with the holy trinity of capitalism, the Cross, the Dollar Mark, and the Bayonet.”

Much other useful information is given in this brochure, which is well worth perusal.

Twel.

Railways and their Rise to Monopoly. (1906)

From the September 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The study of our railways is interesting and instructive in view of the rapid rise and development of this form of capitalism to monopoly.

The first railway sanctioned by Parliament, known as the Surrey Iron Railway, from Wandsworth to Croydon, was opened in 1805, under the “Iron Railway or Tram-road Act.” passed in 1801, which authorised the construction of a railway for the conveyance of goods and coal. The line was open to the general use of traders and carriers, who supplied their own vehicles and horses (horse-power being the only motive power used), for which the railway company were entitled to charge tolls.

Passing over a period of a few years, during which this Act was followed by several others, we come to the “Stockton and Darlington Railway of 1821 for the construction of a horse tramway. But before its completion, George Stephenson having established the value of the locomotive, application was made to Parliament in 1823 for permission to use steam-power ; the Act allowing the Company to charge a toll “for every gig, landau, waggon, car, coach, chariot, chaise, cart or other carriage which shall be drawn or used on the said railways or tram-roads, for the conveyance of passengers or small packages or parcels.”

The “Great Western Railway Act” (1835), states “That all persons shall have free liberty to pass along and upon and to use and employ the said railway with carriages properly constructed as by this Act directed, upon payment only of such rates and tolls as shall be demanded by this said Company,” etc.

Thus we see that the first idea in the construction of railways was merely the provision of another means of transit (the existing means being the roads and canals) open to the use of anyone upon payment of a toll. But it was not long before it occurred to the railway companies to be their own carriers, “to provide haulage as well as the road, and passenger carriages as well as the haulage,” the general economical advantages securing the ready adoption of the new system.

A Parliamentary enquiry in 1840 resulted in the railway companies being permitted to perform all the duties of general carriers, so that in the course of forty years, from being merely the providers of the railway for the use of carriers, they combined both functions and became the general carriers themselves. Thus the seeds of monopoly were sown.

As time passed the railway companies found that while they held a monopoly with regard to traffic in which quick transport was the first consideration, they had, in the carrying of minerals, grain, timber, etc., where speed was not the prime necessity, formidable competitors in the canals, whose small maintenance and working expenses gave them the advantage (it was declared that goods could be conveyed by water at one-tenth the cost of conveyance by railway). The railway companies therefore set themselves to kill such dangerous competitors, and have succeeded to such an extent that they now control more than one-third of the canal mileage. In evidence before the Canal Committee in 1883, Mr. Condor stated that: “they have obtained their 1,717 miles (out of some 3,800 miles) of canals so adroitly selected as to strangle the whole of the inland water traffic.”

Having obtained a monopoly, and by an amalgamation among themselves to keep up rates and fares made monopoly more complete, “from every district between John O’Groats and Land’s End, and from every industry and trade, come constant complaints against railway companies charging rates that are excessive, preferential, and unjust, and withholding facilities which the traders believe they have a legal right to demand . . . There is no need to attribute to railway directorates either an undue lack of patriotism, or motives uncovered by the usual commercial code. (Oh ! that elastic commercial code.) They are elected and paid to serve the interests of their shareholders, and if these are not coincident with the interests of the public then they can scarcely be blamed for the antagonism. The short-comings will have to be looked for in the intrinsic character of the present system.”

There is something delightfully quaint in this admission. Railway directors are elected to produce a profit, and if the interests of the public do not coincide with the interests of the companies, well—so much the worse for the public.

The cry of the commercial capitalist against the railway monopolist is but an expression of the commercial war in which one capitalist section obtains a pull over the other—and uses it. But while they compete one with the other they are united in the constant endeavour to wring an ever greater profit from the producers of wealth—the working class.

There is not the least doubt that railway rates have had a damaging effect upon British trade generally, nor, which is the important matter from the Socialist point of view, is there the least doubt that the private ownership of the means of transit (in common with the private ownership of all the other means of life), is entirely detrimental to the interests of the working class, but “these short-comings will have to be looked for in the intrinsic character of the present system.”

And since these short-comings are inherent in and inseparable from the present system (of private ownership in the means of life), it follows that the remedy must be in the abolition of the present system, and the substitution of another in which all means of production and distribution (land, factories, railways, etc.) are worked by and in the interest of—not a section of the community, to the hurt of the community in general —but in the interests of the WHOLE COMMUNITY.

This is the mission of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, to show the workers how they will have to effect the change, how they may emancipate themselves from the thraldom of Capitalism.

As every interest sends its representatives to the legislative bodies of the country to safe-guard those interests, so must the working class send their representatives to seize the reins of political power. The working class form about seven-eighths of the population, and hold over two-thirds of the voting power. They can possess themselves of political power directly they are ready. Therefore—

“Arise, ye workers of the world,

Gird ye your loins for the strife ;

For in thy power united lies,

The promise of a truer life.”

W. W. Hunt

Indian railways (2010)

Book Review from the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Engines of Change. Ian J Kerr, Praeger Publishers

Although carried out in a rather annoying academic style, Engines of Change is nonetheless an excellent overview of the history of the railways of India from an economic and social perspective. One of the themes running through the book is the increasing state involvement in the running of the railways in India – partial government ownership beginning as early as 1870, less than twenty years after the opening of the first line. Marx gets a passing mention for his comment that the construction of railways under British rule would hasten industrialisation. By the end of British rule in India, up to 95 percent of the railway system was already nationalised. By the Raj – another nail in the coffin of the ‘Nationalisation = Socialism’ equation! On the same theme, it is interesting to note that ticketless travel, previously viewed as a nationalist anti-British protest, surged after independence – after all now ‘the people’ owned the trains. Currently some 6 million fare-dodgers every year find out just how far their ownership of Indian Railways extends.

Kaz.

Despatch from Singapore (1973)

From issue number 4 (1973) of The Western Socialist

Edit. Comm. note:

The new little nation of Singapore has been (and will continue to be) more and more in the international news. A former member of our Companion Party in Great Britain has been living in Singapore for the last four years.  The Western Socialist takes pleasure in presenting to its readers the following despatch which has much of interest for those who would [like to] know what goes on in that sparkling city-state (as it is often designated) of 2.5 millions.

"In Singapore, we are trying to modernise and industrialise ourselves by stimulating men's natural desire for material gratification . . ."

This statement by a government minister expresses with typical bluntness. the no-nonsense pragmatism of which the ruling People’s Action Party are so proud. Singapore, small by any standards, is experiencing capitalist development at a hectic pace and the socialist, with his historical perspective, can find a very close duplication of British capitalist development.

For the greater part of its 150-year history, Singapore has been a colonial outpost. With few natural resources its revenue has been derived from trading, carried out with a largely immigrant work force, mostly Chinese and Indian. Since 1965 the stress has been on manufacturing Industries.

Poorly paid work force 

As in all capitalist states the chief concern of the government Is to expand industrially. With a large, poorly paid work force the pickings are profitable and capital from a host of countries is avidly solicited by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and is just as avidly forthcoming. mostly through multinational companies. At home, the PAP theoretician, Rajaratnam, justifies the exploitation — “Let them come to exploit us now with superprofit on their part" — with an aplomb that indicates the degree of political apathy of a working class as yet little aware of its powers either as a value-producing or a revolutionary force.

The appallingly low wages are a result both of the lack of trade union action and the surplus labour force. The government’s self righteous declaration of intention to absorb this surplus with labour-intensive industries has suffered a reversal, owing partly to the importation of ready made machine processes and the need for fewer skilled as against many unskilled workers. As in mid-19th Century Britain, capital-intensive industry is developing, with the stress on greater worker productivity. Henceforth it is to be expected that trade union struggle will centre increasingly around the problem of machine made redundancies.

One-third of the population is housed on gigantic estates. At Jurong, one of the largest industrial complexes in Southeast Asia outside Japan has been constructed, and also a number of council estates of high-rise flats, including one incredible jungle housing 130,000 persons. These flats, one unit of which is completed every 14 minutes, are inferior to those in Britain, but the social amenities are vastly better.

New image needed

One of the most pressing problems faced by the PAP government is the creation of a national ideology. This must grow, not as in Britain, from centuries of history strengthened by tradition and education, but from the dire, immediate need for a viable work-force owing allegiance to none but the new republic of 1965. Chinese, Indians. Malays — all are being enjoined to dissociate themselves from their cultural background and develop loyalty to the state only. The once derided figure of the colonialist Raffles now has an honoured place in the mythology as the founder of Singapore, a combination of St. George and King Arthur! The government has stated that he has been rehabilitated, as, being a European, no racial jealousies are likely to arise among the work-force. It has justified its multi-racial policy in hard-headed economic terms. Preference and prejudice on a racial basis is seen as being likely to misuse the full range of workers’ talents. The role of the mass media in this process is blatant and naive in the extreme and is the cause for some embarassment to the more sophisticated Singaporeans concerned for their national image.

Weak dissent

The political situation is ambiguous. Opposition parties can legally start up, although members of the Barisan Socialist and others with Communist Party sympathies are arrested and held without trial. It is declared PAP policy to imprison them until they recant, relent and make abject confession, whereupon they are rehabilitated in the ex-political detainees Association’s shoe factory set up by the government in order to more effectively supervise them.

Most people take the ’practical’ approach. “As an efficient business unit it works so leave the government alone” — an attitude that is encouraged by the PAP. Nevertheless, political discontent exists, but most of this simply consists of claims to be able to run Singapore capitalism more smoothly than the government.

These attempts to forge, in hothouse fashion, a nation with a loyal working class out of disparate cultural elements have resulted in problems in many aspects of social life.

On the industrial field strikes have been few — but the penalties are great. A go-slow by a group of port workers in protest against provisions of the Employment Act limiting overtime working brought vicious reaction. Dismissal, deprivation of citizenship and deportation were threatened by Lew Kuan Yew. This was in sharp contrast to his recent plea to employers to give a little of the extra profits made by the increased exploitation of the workers back to them. The legislation on overtime was itself a recognition of the unemployment problem, which in some fields is very high and likely to increase with the British rundown.

Virtues & suicides 

Calls for the practice of the puritan virtues of self-denial, thrift and hard work for the workers contrast with the tawdry opulence of the many new skyscraper tourist hotels and penetrate every walk of life. Schoolchildren, their paramilitary training and flag ceremonies over for the day. face a heavy homework schedule. The increase in student neuroses and drug addiction is attributed by a senior psychiatrist to the stress of modern living. Lee warns continually against "permissiveness” and drugs and warns "Bring in alien fads at your peril.” Over half of Singapore’s population is under 20, and the student population is high. Education represents a large investment in the human raw material needed for the new industrial society and the government is concerned about the economic wastage due to drug addiction. Caught between the pressures of a highly competitive educational system and the fear of losing one's acceptability (which permits of higher education) through political or cultural nonconformity, student suicides have increased. Among the young, the expression “taking a flyer” has found a sombre significance in the city’s high rise jungles; in recent months cases have occurred of mothers jumping with children in their arms. With suicide running as seventh highest cause of death throughout the age groups, Rajaratnam can say of the Singaporean with pride:

"His diseases today are those of a civilized and progressive society . . . from heart disease and a variety of neuroses. He can leave this planet in style and his choice of exits is wide.”

Perhaps. But not as wide as the gulf separating the workers' conditions from those of the Singapore capitalists and their office-boys in government.

Poverty & prostitution

The uprooting of communities for rehousing has led to much social unrest and in many cases a worsening of poverty. Inability to meet newly increased rents has resulted in many tenants quitting their flats. Particularly for the ex-village Malays this poverty has been compounded by their inability to supplement their income and diet from poultry and backyard produce. With the GNP growth of around 15%, malnutrition in Singapore is still very high. About 20% of child hospital attendees are suffering from this aspect of poverty. Increased organized prostitution in the industrial estates has drawn from one police official a condemnation of the factory girls for lowering the image of Singapore’s womanhood. Some of these same girls earn a total daily wage that would just about buy a small beer in one of the new hotels.

Government employees, even more than those of private capitalists, suffer insulting restrictions on their freedom. The maximum length of hair permitted for civil servants is gazetted (with diagrams!) and their instructions manual forbids them to speak disparagingly of the government. They were even forbidden to read on government premises the English-language newspaper, “The Herald,” before it was banned.

For all this, Singapore is an interesting and exciting city. Many traditions, languages, racial types and religions form a colourful cross-cultural complex in what must be one of the cleanest of cities, with the friendliest of people, who show, when they are not worked upon by external and internal divisive interests, how tolerantly human beings with different cultures can live together.

To watch the Singapore working class being created and then subjected to a continuous barrage of propaganda by a government intent on developing a world of capitalist values is a frightful experience for those who know something about such values. But the rapid industrialization within a newly created national ideology has obliged the government to justify its actions in a blend of plausible political theory, practical expediency and pure apologetics. In some areas such as the University, where a certain political sophistication is claimed, government policy, particularly its undemocratic actions, is severely criticised.

Prospects for Socialists

Whether diverse political opinions lie below the surface of this society, we have no way of knowing yet, but in his four years in Singapore, this writer has been struck forcibly by one thing. Unlike Britain, the workers of Singapore are not plagued by a 150-year history of reformist agitation. Apart from those who view things natlonalistlcally. and want to do the government’s job of running capitalism for them, and those who, often more for cultural reasons than political. lean towards China, discussions on socialism are fairly straightforward and generally sympathetically received. Rarely does one hear a counter-argument about “transitional demands” or reforms leading to socialism. The effects of capitalism as it impacts upon a newly formed society, and the de-humanising effects upon the working class, are perfectly plain to the workers in Singapore, unsure though they may be at present about its precise cause or solution. Short shrift would be given to those self-elected leaders of the revolution so often found in Britain, who have such a low opinion of the workers that they urge them to embrace capitalist institutions in order to demonstrate that they won’t work.

Lack of what passes for political sophistication may well be a factor In keeping the issue clear, and might well lead to readier acceptance of socialism as the only alternative to what they are forced to suffer, in spite of the retarding effects of still strong religions. Already a group of workers has expressed interest and enthusiasm for the Party’s case. Literature is being circulated under the most trying circumstances, and they have requested permission to print extracts from our publications. It may be too soon to call them socialists; perhaps they never will be. But the Party may, even so, find a lesson to be learned here.

Bill Robertson

New China (1960)

Book Review from the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

China—New Age and New Outlook, by Ping-Chia Kuo. Penguin Books. 3s. 6d.

In this eminently readable book the author discusses the great changes which are going on in China. He seeks to appraise and interpret current developments as a stage in the broad sweep of Chinese history and to search out the trends that have led to the triumph of the Communist Party, and to discuss the problems involved in this process. He takes in the pertinent points in China's past as well as what he can judge of its future. He says that with the collapse of the feudal system in 200 B.C., land was freely bought and sold and that this led to a concentration of ownership in the hands of the new privileged group and to the growing importance of the landlords as a social class. A great proportion of the peasantry continued to till the land, but did not own it, while the new class of owners exploited the peasantry.

In the course of the last twenty centuries the line of demarcation between the two segments of Chinese society became more steeply drawn. Economically, the landlords virtually controlled the tens of thousands of villages, and moreover, were the only group with the leisure to study and master politics. Thus the government had to fall back on them for the necessary personnel to operate the administrative machinery. This is why in every dynasty the Chinese government was virtually run by men of the landowning families. The tight grip on power by the landlord class was made more enduring by the adoption of Confucianism as the standard education for all officials. For twenty centuries Confucianism blocked progress and change, taught the oppressed to obey and impressed upon the minds of men the virtue of upholding the rule of the landlords. But, in recent times, the development of industry brought the seeds of change and made the collapse of the ancien régime inevitable.

The Nationalist movement, later to be led by Chiang Kai-Shek, left the landlord elite in control of the administration below country level. Thus land reform was effectively blocked. The Communist Party, on the other hand, realised that to develop the country the landlords, as a social class, must be eliminated. To obtain the support of the peasantry, they redistributed land confiscated from the landlords amongst the peasants in those out-of-the-way small sections of the country where they had seized control. This whetted the appetite for Communist Party land reform in the territory controlled by the Nationalists. The plight of the peasants was worsened by the disruption of World War II and, in 1949, the Communist Party were able to seize power on the mainland, leaving the Nationalists, backed by the U.S.A., in control of the island of Formosa. The process of modernising China has been proceeding rapidly. The large holdings of the landowners were quickly distributed amongst the peasants. Then came mutual help groups organised amongst the peasants. This was the thin edge of the wedge in converting the peasant into a landless agricultural wage worker. This primitive organisation gave way to voluntary agricultural co-operatives from which the peasant could withdraw if he so wished. Then on to the next stage—the collectivised farms and finally to the last stage, the Commune.

The Communes consist of 4,000 to 10,000 households. Their central purpose is to expand agricultural production which in turn would speed up industrialisation. The Commune makes monthly payments in the form of a basic wage classified in accordance with the graduations of the members' work performance, plus bonuses for workers who contribute more than the norm. This is clearly a system based upon the principle of “to each according to his work," a principle whose aim is to stimulate production. By making the production unit bigger the state makes it impossible for the peasants to pursue individual production except as wage-earners in the employ of the state. But the greatest benefit to production is that the Commune takes on industrial as well as agricultural functions. Perhaps the most dramatic aspect of this development has been the emergence of tens of thousands of small furnaces in the villages, producing pig iron or carbon steel and making farm implements. The fundamental force motivating Communist China’s new role in international affairs is her militant nationalism, which has advanced a new balance of power in the Far East and has helped to produce the tension in world affairs that we are now witnessing. For the moment, the author says, the addition of Soviet military material and Chinese man-power could create a giant army in case of war and this is partly responsible for the Sino-Soviet Alliance.

The author is typically Chinese in the practicality of his approach and in his logical method of thought unburdened by the religious thought typical of the average Western writer. To read this book is to glimpse an insight into the great depth of learning of its author, who incidentally is a Professor of History in an American University. Such a wealth of knowledge makes a mere amateur student of Chinese affairs like your reviewer feel humble. Yet Socialists know that Dr. Ping-Chia Kuo just does not really understand the world of which he writes. He reveals his belief that China is socialist and is ideologically opposed to the capitalist parts of the world. The Socialist sees a world of capitalism, but Dr. Kuo sees two worlds, with Socialism existing side by side with capitalism, and thinks that both, like sheep and goats on one farm, must be taught how to live together. In his book he makes various suggestions as to how this could be accomplished. What the Socialist views as merely the development of capitalism in China, he sees as “Socialist reconstruction” and he adds a plea to the United Nations to understand and befriend China in the interests of peace and goodwill. Nevertheless, to those who are interested in China as one of the possible bogey-men of the capitalist future, this is a useful book to read.

Frank Offord

Letter: Is the vote a weapon? Some questions and our reply. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrades,—I am prompted to ask the following questions after having read article “Backward Race ” in August S.S,

First of all, I had better state that I am not an “Industrial Unionist” or an “Anti-Parliamentarian.” I agree with the words of Marx that “the workers must first of all acquire political supremacy” in order to control the State machinery for the sole purpose of establishing Socialism.

(1) Yet how are our black comrades to get hold of the State forces if they are “disfranchised” and “legally barred from effective participation in most political activities in South Africa”? Would the S.P.G.B. oppose the agitation of “disfranchised” workers, such as our black fellow workers for the vote, because it was not Socialism?

(2) Does the S.P.G.B. lay it down that the workers can only “acquire political supremacy” through Parliament? I fully agree that this is the only method known at the present time in Great Britain, or in any other country where the workers have the majority of the votes !

(3) Would Socialism be impossible to establish if the workers are without votes? I am not suggesting that the Capitalists have only to disenfranchise the workers whereby making Socialism impossible. That would, I think, not be possible under a highly industrialised country. Am I correct?

(4) When South Africa becomes industrialised, will our fellow black workers be enfranchised by the Capitalists? I am not wanting you to be prophets, but it is a historical fact that, in countries that begin industralism, the franchise is a necessity for the carrying on of the Capitalist system?

Has the Franchise ever been granted to the workers in any country without agitation?

Yours fraternally,

T. W. C.

Clapham.

Reply.

For convenience I have numbered “T. W. C.’s” questions.

(1) It is obvious that the black workers cannot unaided gain political control in South Africa against the might of those who govern, backed up, as the latter are, by the full strength of capitalist Britain. We would strongly urge them to agitate for the franchise, although it is plain that workers who have only just begun to organise, and have had no political experience, are not yet possessed of the knowledge and confidence necessary for the establishment of Socialism.

(2) The S.P.G.B. is concerned primarily and directly with conditions in this country, and our Declaration of Principles is framed accordingly. Speaking generally, however, we may say that the centralised political machinery of the Capitalist State (whatever its name and its peculiarities in different countries) must be controlled by a working class seeking to establish Socialism.

In passing, it is interesting to see how the Irish Republicans, in spite of all their brave words and threats of civil war, have been compelled to enter the Southern Irish Parliament as the only alternative to political extinction.

De Valera says :—

“The alternatives with which the new Free State legislation confronted them were to resign their responsibilities, to dissolve their organisation, sacrifice everything they had built up, or to take the step they took”. (“Manchester Guardian,” 23 August.)

Here we have a striking illustration of the power of Parliament, in spite of the fact that the Free State Parliament is still in its infancy, and that the Government has only a bare majority of votes. (Of course, the Republicans are as Capitalist as their opponents.)

(3) In the long run, the Capitalist State, in its modern developed form, needs representative government as a means of maintaining stability and carrying on the increasingly complex work of administration. In spite of the post-war fascist movement, there has been no general tendency to limit the franchise. Here and elsewhere the tendency is to extend it still further.

(4) The black workers (in Cape Colony only) did possess a limited franchise, which, owing to their own backward condition, has not been of any particular value to them. Under the recent “Colour Bar” legislation, a new and more limited form of representation is to be given to black workers throughout the South African Federation.

We can fairly confidently predict that, in due course, the backward workers drawn into the realm of capitalist production will be given the vote. It must not be forgotten that the Capitalists are themselves divided into groups with sectional interests. While there remains in existence a body of disfranchised workers, there is always the inducement to the competing Capitalist groups to add to their influence by a campaign for the extension of the franchise. Instances are numerous. In this country, after the mainly working class Chartist movement had failed to secure votes for the workers, the Radical movement, under John Bright, rallied them. The objects of the Radicals were entirely capitalist, and their working-class supporters were regarded, and were, in effect, simply so many potential “voting cattle,” to be thrown into the struggle against rival propertied interests.

In Chicago this year the new Mayor, Thompson, appealed directly to the negro vote (hitherto left severely alone). Thompson won, and it is certain that the bosses of other political groups in America will in due course be compelled to bring the negro into the political arena, however little they may like doing so.

In Kenya Colony, during the heated struggle between the Indian trading class and the British landowners (who were in political control), the Indians threatened to start an agitation among the millions of blacks, intending to use them simply as a weapon against the whites.

In South Africa there has always been acute bitterness between the mineowners, who want to employ more cheap black labour and less white, and the white workers, who thought to resist a lowered standard of living by laws preventing the introduction of blacks into white men’s jobs. The Boer farmers, who resented the loss of their cheap black labour by migration to the mining areas, support the white trade unionists. In the great strike and riots of 1922 the mine owners already talked of supporting the claims of the blacks to political equality as a means of outvoting the white workers and Boer farmers, and it is inevitable that one or other of the political parties will sooner or later seek to gain kudos and votes by advocating an extended black franchise.

The franchise has certainly been extended without the existence of any strong agitation on the part of those who received it. (So far as can be seen, there is no strong demand for the vote among women under 30 years of age, who are promised the vote.) Clearly, however, there must be some degree of political knowledge and interest before it would be worth while giving votes. There must, for instance, be sufficient interest to make the newly enfranchised take the trouble to record their votes. What has usually happened in the past is that the struggles of the rising Capitalists for a place in the political sun has communicated some of its enthusiasm to the ranks of the workers underneath, and served to create interest.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Change of Rulers in Iran (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a story said to have circulated in Tehran recently about a meeting between the Shah and the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1963 after the riots which Khomeini had played a prominent part in stirring up. “I’ll pay you $25 million if you leave the country”, said the Shah. To which Khomeini is supposed to have replied, “I’ll give you $50 million if you leave”. In the event Khomeini was forced into exile for nothing. This time it’s the Shah who has left, though no doubt with a lot more than $50 million in his pockets. Of course no such conversation ever took place but the story does neatly illustrate that the social conflict in Iran was essentially between two sections of the propertied class there.

The Shah is the son of a jumped-up army officer who seized power in 1921 and had himself proclaimed Shah, or Emperor, a few years later. He came to the throne in 1941 when his father was deposed by the Allies for his pro-Axis sympathies but only acquired dictatorial powers in 1953 in a coup d’Etat which overthrew the nationalist Prime Minister, Mossadek, who in his day was the bugbear of the British press for having dared to nationalise the British-owned Persian oil industry.

Oil is of course the source of the immense wealth of the Shah and the section of the propertied class he represented. The payments which oil companies pay to the States where oil is produced are a form of ground-rent. The Iranian State receives this rent purely and simply because it happens to monopolise a part of the globe where oil is found. The Shah used this windfall, first, to build up the Iranian armed forces and, secondly, to introduce industrial capitalism into Iran. In doing so brought into being a new class of rich entrepreneurs independent on his State for the capital they invest.

But there already existed in Iran a class of wealthy people, the bazari, the merchants and traders of the bazaars which exist in all the big towns. The bazari existed long before oil was discovered and long before industrial capitalism was introduced. Their economic role in pre-capitalist Persia was to keep the towns supplied with food and other essentials, and this role still survives to a certain extent today although it has been severely reduced by the alternative commercial and banking network that has accompanied the coming of industrial capitalism.

The bazari have always been closely linked to the mullahs and ayatollahs, the priests of the Shi’ite sect of Islam to which most Persians formally belong. The mosque is generally situated in the bazaar area but, more important, the Shi’ite priests are financed by the various payments the merchants are required to make to them under Islamic law:

“The Shi’ite hierarchy, from the simple mullah to the ayatollah also collects a substantial tax, the khoms or ‘fifth’ which consists of taking one fifth of all commercial profits and, generally, on any capital gain as well as on the sale of lands belonging to Muslims to a person of  another religion . . . The amount of the ‘fifth’ is in principle divided in two, one part is normally reserved for the destitute, on condition that they are sayyeds, that is descendants of the prophet. The other part is distributed amongst the mullahs and ayatollahs. These also have the right to a hidden tax, the zahat, which consists in asking every believer to dispose of any ‘wheat, barley, dates, raisins’ but also of any ‘gold, silver, camels, sheep and cattle’ which he does not really need. This zahat is what now permits the church to help a large number of strikers.

“But the Iranian Shi’ite hierarchy has access above all to the immense wealth of the bazari of all the main towns of the country. For centuries, it has forged close links with this little business world, has given the blessing of Allah to certain transactions and has thrown all its weight against the secular power. When this latter became too demanding or when its desire to modernise the country became too restricting, the bazari knew that Shi’itism was behind them and were prepared to do anything for it” (Républicain Lorrain, 14/1/79).

Two Iranian economists writing in the December issue of the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique describe how the Shah’s policy of developing an industrial capitalism in Iran adversely affected the bazari:

“After the 1953 coup d’etat, the re-integration of the Iranian oil economy into the world market and the ‘open doors’ policy led to a change in the pattern of trade, exceeding more and more widely the organisational capabilities of the bazaar. The beginnings of an import-substitution industry afterwards aggravated the difficulties of the bazaar, which was excluded from the new circuit of exchange set up to serve the needs of the new industries. The traditional importing of consumer goods gave way to the importing of capital goods, and the quotas or duties adopted to protect the nascent industries heavily penalised the traditional activities of the bazaar.”

They go on to note how this also hit the finances of the Shi’ite priesthood:

“This economic marginalisation of the bazaar is directly connected with the simultaneous weakening of the network for financing the ‘clerical funds’; these, under the control of the religious leaders known for their moral integrity, receive and distribute various forms of Islamic taxes and alms . . . Today, the inflow of money into these funds controlled by the progressive or combative ayatollahs bears witness to the extent of the struggle of the traditional bourgeoisie against a new class linked to the interest of the multi-national firms. But, in the first phase of industrialisation, the weakening of the bazaar which has historically lived in symbiosis with the religious institutions (financing of clerical funds, legal-religious framework for contracts) considerably reduced the socio-economic effects of the redistribution which the latter assured.”

The Ayatollah Khomeini first came into prominence in 1963 as the instigator of riots centred on the bazaars in Tehran and some other cities, riots which were ruthlessly crushed by the Shah’s armed forces.

It can thus be seen that the conflict in Iran is not, as it is often pictured, between a Westernising ruler and a reactionary priesthood defending old-fashioned values. That particular conflict is only an ideological reflection of the more basic conflict of sectional interest within the Iranian propertied class, between the bazari and the new bourgeoisie brought into being by the Shah. Behind the condemnations on religious grounds of beer and mini-skirts (indeed of any kind of skirts) lies an earthly material interest.

For the time being, against the logic of history, the bazari seem to have come out on top. Through their links with the mullahs and ayatollahs they have been able to control the urban poor, including large sections of the working class, and to use their discontent as a battering ram to overthrow the Shah and his regime. The urban poor of course had plenty to be discontented about. Frequently recent migrants from the countryside, they have been forced to live in disgusting housing conditions, only finding employment, if at all, at starvation wages. Independent trade union activity has been banned and strikes crushed sometimes with loss of life. The notorious secret police, the SAVAK, with its omnipresent system of spies and its torture chambers, has been there to root out all opposition to the Shah’s dictatorship.

It is sad that this discontent should have been directed by the mullahs to defend the sectional class interest of the bazari and towards the chimera of an “Islamic Republic”. But there is a reason for this. The only opposition to the Shah that was able to survive the onslaughts of SAVAK was the bazaar, with its independent economic base, and the Shi’ite priesthood it financed. The mosques thus became the focus of opposition to the Shah, especially as the bulk of the urban poor are first-generation migrants from the countryside where religious sentiments are always stronger.

It now looks as if the people of Iran are to have an “Islamic Republic” inflicted on them. But whatever happens industrial capitalism has come to stay in Iran, whether or not the mullahs like it or what comes with it (consumption of alcohol, a certain freedom for women). The Koran, which originated in a pre-capitalist agricultural and trading society, may lay down rules as to how such a society should work – indeed its rules are merely the reflection of the way such a society did work—but capitalism cannot be run according to them.

What will probably happen is that after an initial attempt to put the clock back for the benefit of the bazari, religious thinkers will be found within the “Islamic Republic” to declare that industrial capitalism is not after all contrary to the Koran. This happened in Tunisia a few years after it got its independence from France, as reported by the old News Chronicle at the time (5/3/1960):

“Up to now, as in the rest of the Moslem world, Tunisia’s life came almost to a standstill during Ramadan because of the dawn to dusk fast. In some cases production dropped 70 per cent. 

Bourguiba has not banned the fast outright. But he has stated firmly that fasting will not be accepted as an excuse for less work” (quoted in the Socialist Standard, April 1960)

As for the workers and peasants of Iran, they will rapidly find that they have just changed one set of rulers for another.

Adam Buick

Pathfinders: What would a socialist society do about nuclear energy? (2005)

The Pathfinders Column from the April 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

What would socialist society do about nuclear energy?

The need for a radically new energy technology is not just pressing. As India, Asia and China rapidly  industrialise, it’s becoming a crunch issue. If China were to burn coal at the current U.S. level of two tons per person, the country would use 2.8  billion tons per year—more than current world production of 2.5 billion  tons.

And if the Chinese use oil at the same rate as Americans now do, by 2031 China would need 99 million barrels of oil a day. The world currently produces 79 million barrels per day and may never produce much more than that (Yahoo News, March 9)

Nuclear fission is firmly back on the agenda, with Labour and Tory hedging on the subject and only the unelectable Lib-Dems against. But the waste problem is unsolved and waste free nuclear (hot) fusion is still decades and hundreds of billions of dollars away. If only there was another way.

For scientists, it was like the moment Sir Perceval murmurs the fateful words in King Arthur’s ear: “Sire, I have seen it. The Grail. I had it in my very hands.”

When the world’s first successful cold fusion experiment was announced in 1989 the scientific establishment dropped its collective clipboard, rubbed its horn-rimmed glasses and gasped. It couldn’t be. Cold fusion, at last! Indeed it couldn’t, and alas, it wasn’t.

Like Sir Perceval, the team at Oak Ridge in Tennessee found it and lost it again. Nobody could reproduce the experiment. Cold fusion – the ability to convert matter into energy the same way the sun does it, but without the temperatures – is so fantastic an idea that everybody wants it to be true. A single match will light a cigarette, but the mass of that match, if converted according to Einstein’s equation ‘Energy = Mass times the speed of light’, would light London for months. Forget Nobel prizes, the scientist who delivers success at this will be famous forever for abolishing the world’s energy problems – forever. 

The idea of fusing heavy hydrogen nuclei at temperatures less than 10 million degrees Kelvin goes against every scientific principle. Cold fusion was off the agenda. And then, incredibly, with a new technique called sonoluminescence, it seemed possible again. By focusing sound waves into bubbles in acetone, experimenters, again at Oak Ridge, found bubbles forming with fantastic levels of heat, up to 10,000 Kelvin. The process has been called the ‘star in a jar’.

But was it fusion? BBC Horizon decided to recreate the experiment into bubble fusion (Feb 17) and got a negative result. Improved timings showed no generation of neutrons, one sure sign of fusion. Another problem was that 10,000 K is orders of magnitude too low for fusion. But the controversy rages on. The sun’s surface is only 7,000K because all the real heat is indoors, and new measurements suggest it may be the same with bubble fusion, with new bubbles in sulphuric acid being the hottest ever recorded (New Scientist, March 5).

What’s interesting is  that infinite energy would be as uncomfortable to capitalist markets as it is to scientific orthodoxy. It could never be allowed to get out. If bubble fusion ever becomes proved, we can absolutely rely on one thing – our electricity bills won’t go down. New technology tends to deliver wealth upwards, to the rich who own and control it, not downwards to the rest of us. An orgy of free energy would still have to wait for socialist society to be realized.

Will there be religion in socialist society?

Opinions are divided. Religious people obviously think there will be religion no matter what economic arrangements exist. Socialists tend to regard religion as the mind’s desperate attempt to invent unfalsifiable explanations for a disordered and insane reality, and they also point to religion’s long history of being used by ruling elites to control ignorant and fearful populations.

  

History indicates that the more a society knows about the world through science the less religious it becomes. In Britain today hundreds of parishes have fewer than ten in the congregation, many churches have closed down (some of them to become pubs, encouragingly) while others are closed through the winter or used as derelict hang-outs for drug addicts and prostitutes  (BBC1 News, Jan 19).

The raging controversy over allowing homosexuality in the Anglican church is partly informed by the sheer difficulty of getting any priests at all. The average age of a priest is 68, and in ten years half of them will be dead.

In France there are so few ordinations that priests are being imported from Senegal and Burkina Faso to mind parishes with 40 churches but congregations of five. These African priests blame western security and comfort (!), since back home they can get 5000 to a Sunday sermon . (BBC Radio 4, Jan 6).

The question is also open from a scientific perspective. Evolutionary biologists have taken up  E.O.Wilson’s idea that religion has an evolutionary advantage, and gone looking for the genetic evidence. The geneticist Dean Hamer in ‘The God Gene’ even claims to have found the holy gene itself, VMAT2 , (New York Times, Feb 19)  while the neuropsychologist Michael Persinger  claimed to be able to produce religious states in people by stimulating their temporal lobes with magnets (Economist, Dec 16, 04), although later research using  double-blind techniques has refuted this claim. Evidence supposedly citing identical twins’ similar levels of spirituality are scarcely conclusive since ‘spirituality’, if it exists, can not be measured.

Socialist society is likely to be full of parties, celebrations  and seasonal rituals, because they’re fun and because we all like to find meaning in life, but there’s no scientific evidence that socialists are ever likely to be more cosmic than sun worshippers in a beach paradise.

Paddy Shannon

Letters: Parties and Profits (1977)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Parties and Profits

I subscribe to the Socialist Standard and, in the main, I find the contents of your articles to be both lucid and irrefragable. However, there are several points which, in my opinion, require elucidation.

Firstly, on more than one occasion, you have asserted that the Labour Party represents one section of the capitalist class whilst the Conservative Party represents another. Please identify these two sections of the capitalist class.

Secondly, in your answer to Robin Cox’s letter in your March 1977 edition you pointed out that although consumer expenditure increased by 80 per cent, between 1970 and 1975, the Index of Production rose by 0.6 in the same period. Could it not be that a part, at least, of the extra consumer expenditure was on imported goods not included in the Index of Production statistics, and that had British goods been competitive, there would have been an increase in the Index of Production?

Thirdly, as you adhere to Marx’s version of the Labour Theory of Value, can you explain how it is that retail organizations make profits if goods are sold at their value? Is it by exploiting their own employees?

P. S. Maloney

London N13

Reply

(The first part of this letter was dealt with in last month's Socialist Standard.)

It will be recalled that the original question was whether continued expansion of market demand will guarantee growth in production.

The reply quoted figures for Britain in the period 1970-75 showing that it had no such effect. It is the standard inflationist argument and never works. Capitalism goes through alternate phases of growth of production and stagnation.

It is correct that in the period 1970-75 there was a big increase of imports. They were paid for by loans from abroad. If British goods had been more competitive, imports would have been smaller and exports greater, with a corresponding fall of production in competing countries such as Germany and Japan. But Germany and Japan too were in a depression from 1974 onwards, and the solution for them also, on this reasoning, would have been to be more competitive. Thus overall it would not have prevented British production falling during the depression any more than it prevented production falling in countries where goods were more competitive.

On your last question, Marx distinguished between the “sphere of production” (which includes necessary transportation—Capital Vol. 2, p. 62) and the “sphere of circulation”. Surplus-value, of which profit is a part, is created in production not in circulation. In circulation it is realized, by sale. ‘Circulation, or the exchange of commodities, begets no value.’ (Capital Vol. 1, p. 182.)

Surplus-value is created in production by the unpaid labour of the workers, i.e. the labour in excess of that corresponding to the value of labour-power, wages. In circulation also (wholesaling and retailing) the workers give unpaid labour. (“The unpaid labour of his clerks, while it does not create any surplus-value, 3t least appropriates surplus-value for him, which amounts to the same thing, so far as results on his capital go. This unpaid labour is for him, therefore, a source of profit.”—Capital Vol. 3, p. 346.)

Capitalists in both spheres have the same interest in extending the unpaid labour of their employees. It does not, however, rest on commodities selling at value, which need not be the case. In first explaining the labour theory of value, Marx used examples assuming that commodities always sell at value, but he added that this simplification would be elaborated later. (Vol. 2, pages 244 & 335.)

The elaborated theory showed that in some cases commodities sell above value and in others below value, the price however being determined in accordance with the labour theory of value. (Vol. 3, p. 186). The developed theory Included Marx’s conception of the average rate of profit, i.e. that out of the total social surplus-value, the profit falling to each capitalist, whether in production or circulation, is proportionate (other things being equal) to the size of his capital. (Vol. 3, p. 187.)

All references are to the Kerr edition of Capital.

Editors.

Could Do Better?

How often one hears members of the SPGB accused of being "cranks” and "pedantic”. Is this perhaps because of their habit of frequenting the Establishment’s Sunday-morning soap-box at Speakers’ Corner? The only true Socialist Party in the Land strives to get its message across to tourists and passers-by . . . while the rest of the population is anaesthetized into yet another week of toil under Caesar whom only the SPGB has consistently attacked for seventy-three years.

If the majority of working people have never heard the socialist case why is the SPGB not doing all it should by, for example, exploiting the media and all the other available channels to put across the true case? I submit that this is one of the Party’s inherent weaknesses and, consequently, its methods of organizing and communication should be immediately re-examined.

The SPGB and its fellow parties must seriously ask themselves whether or not they are in civilization’s race to win through. They have not yet successfully put themselves forward as a viable and sane alternative not because of any misconceived concept but because, in their littleness, we cannot hear them!

The SPGB denounces the Trotskyists and WSL but is it not nevertheless a fact that these doctrinaire lefties hold greater sway because they organize at the level of industry and in other significant sections of society? Here they leave the SPGB behind and though SPGB itself claims consistency over these fashionable malcontents it draws no closer to achieving an influential voice.

Comrades, go out into the world of imperfections so that you may establish the numerical strength you so badly need and which will enable the socialist voice to be heard throughout the land. You should collect large sums of money for your innumerable activities; organize membership drives; charge weekly subscriptions; advertize SP literature and products more effectively as in the North American party magazine; hold international conferences; establish a current programme relevant to our immediate situation; exploit the media. All branches should daily strive to establish links with the working class and recruit from all spheres of society.

It is accepted that technology will create the right conditions for the social transformation. But while "we impose the form of the old on the content of the new the malady lingers on” (McLuhan). So why doesn’t the SPGB use the Open Door programme for example?

Jon Lieberman

Oxford

Reply:

Yours is the voice of an armchair philosopher if ever we heard one, asking why we have not provided Socialism yet. Among clauses in our Principles you do not mention are no. 5, which says “this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself” and no. 6, which says "the working class must organize consciously and politically”. Assuming that you are a member of the working class, what are you doing to help get Socialism?

Dividing your letter into two parts, the first lists things which in your opinion we need to do. In several instances we agree. Can you inform us how to achieve them as readily as you suggest? You ask why we do not use the Open Door TV programme. We have been on its waiting list, fobbed off, rebuffed and turned down ever since it began. You say "exploit the media”. We have an active, youthful committee and many individual members who try to get us on radio and TV and in the press continually. The BBC has made clear that it will not have us. How do you suggest we "exploit” them? "Collect large sums of money”—from whom, and by what means (and we do need money, as you say, for our "innumerable activities”)? "Advertize SP literature”—with large sums of money, we could. The attraction of the “Sunday-morning soapbox” at Hyde Park and other places for us is simple; it costs nothing.

The other part of your letter is the reference to membership drives, recruiting etc. A possible inference from this is that we should strive for numbers above all, and so accept members who do not fully understand the Socialist case. It is the argument put forward early in this century by Keir Hardie: that the Social Democratic Federation had made little progress by preaching Socialism, and the need was to recruit trade-unionists—regardless of their attitude to Socialism—and build a strong movement. His policy was given effect. The Labour Party he visualized grew, amassed funds, and became the government; and none of this did anything for Socialism.

We do not know what you mean by saying that the Trotskyists and similar groups "hold greater sway”. At any time such organizations may make greater noise than the SPGB, but their effectiveness is nil—which is why a very large number of them have come and gone during our seventy-three years. Similarly, the technological conditions for establishing Socialism, the capacity for a society of free access, have existed throughout the twentieth century. The task of the Socialist Party is to advocate it, and what governs the strength and variety of our efforts is how many of us there are. You may join without waiting for a membership drive.

Editors.

Industrialization

I should like to draw your attention to the problem of Socialism in the Third World. If an advanced industrial economy and consequently an industrial working class is essential for Socialism, world Socialism would appear impossible without world industrialization. However, even if this were possible it would cause untold damage to the environment. It would seem logical then for the Third World to avoid the capitalist stage of development and pursue an agrarian form of Socialism.

The problem existed in the 19th century between industrial Western Europe and feudalist Russia where the remnants of primitive communism remained. Alexander Herzen and other Russian populists argued that Russia could only achieve Socialism by using these remnants such as the mir or traditional peasant commune as the basis of social organization. Could this be applied to the peasant societies of the Third World today?

Ian Greenslade 

Southminster

Reply:

The idea that every part of the world must still endure the development of capitalism to be ready for Socialism is a mechanistic one which does not correspond to what takes place. When new nations come on the scene they are obliged not to re-enact other nations’ history but to aim at their present stage. The outstanding example in recent years is China, which from being a vast peasant country in 1949 progressed to exploding an atomic bomb in 1964 and has become a major industrial and commercial power.

It is true that at the time of the Communist take-over Mao told the Chinese they had to go through capitalism before “socialism” was attainable. However, the Communists had (and have) no intentions other than capitalist ones. In the preceding twenty years they had built up a large following among the peasants by preaching not socialism but nationalism. If the working class of the “advanced” areas of the world were ready to establish Socialism today, the remainder in relatively undeveloped countries would quickly become conscious of it and be able to go into world-wide common ownership without delay—to their immense benefit, of course.

“Untold damage to the environment” results not from industry as such but from production for profit. Try reading Engels's prescient statements on this in Anti-Duhring (pages 324-5, Lawrence & Wishart edn.). He says: The present poisoning of air, water and land can only be put an end to by the fusion of town and country; and only this fusion will change the situation of the masses now languishing in the towns . . .” And:

  Large-scale industry, which has taught us to convert the movement of molecules, which is more or less universally realisable, into the movement of masses for technical purposes, has thereby to a considerable extent freed production from the restrictions of place . . . It is the capitalist mode of production which concentrates it mainly in the towns and changes factory villages into factory towns.

Engels approved the idea, put forward by Fourier and Owen, of social groups of between 1,600 and 3,000 people—good-sized villages. The closest thing to a town would be four or five of these situated near one another. Every person would work in both agriculture and industry, and young people would be given all-round training so as to incorporate “the greatest possible variety of occupation for each individual”. However, these are precisely the questions—the arrangement of life and labour, and the organization of industry—which a Socialist community would debate and decide for itself.

Editors.

Educating the Educator

On page 6 of your pamphlet Socialist Principles Explained you state: "The founders owed much to the unsurpassed analysis of capitalism provided by Karl Marx." It should be noted that Marx not only owed a great deal to the Socialists of his day, but to those who departed this earth long before him. For Marx’s works are “saturated” with their influence, and in view of that it would be hardly fair to look upon his contribution to Socialist thought as anything but “contributory ’.

Unfortunately, there are always people who are confused into giving those who have made an art of refashioning or re-modelling old theories the designation of originator. Nowhere in history has there been any man who has, by himself, originated or invented anything of any significance without “borrowing” ideas from other men. In that respect Marx’s analysis of capitalism must be regarded to be the combined effort of many men.

To take any other view is tantamount to saying that the inventor of the wrist watch was also responsible for inventing the wheel, lever, spring, buckly, and even time itself!

J. W. Pitt

Worthing

Reply:

Of course Karl Marx learned from others. His writings on economics are full of references to Ricardo, Adam Smith and other investigators And according to his own historical materialist approach, which we accept, people’s ideas are formed by the conditions under which they live, and these conditions include the influence of others.

On the other hand, we doubt your claim that these others, for Marx, included Socialists. Whom did you have in mind? Who, in the 19th century or earlier, advocated a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means for producing and distributing wealth? Who was putting forward the view that only a consciously socialist working class could bring such a society into being? The Utopians drew up blueprints for new organizations of society, but their co-operative settlements were based only upon equal distribution of wealth, not upon common ownership. Others around in the 19th century—e.g. Louis Blanc and Blanqui—some of whom might have been called Socialists, certainly were not so by the second criterion; and, anyway, were more likely to have been influenced by Marx than vice versa.

Editors.

Hemlock and After

I have just read the Western Socialist entitled “Reflections on Religion". To what extent do you feel that the Socialist Party of Great Britain has played a part in declining interest in the Christian way of life in this country over the past twenty years? I would be grateful for your opinion.

Nicholas Fox

Edgware

Reply:

As you will understand from having read the Western Socialist, our opposition to religion is part of the Socialist analysis of the existing order of society. We condemn religious institutions for their rôle in upholding property and exploitation; and we reject religious thought as an obstacle to understanding.

For many years before the last war the SPGB published a pamphlet called Socialism and Religion. It is not produced now because of the “declining interest” you refer to. In general, the decline is due to capitalism itself which in the past saw superstition as an ally but now has to educate people for a complex material world. Numbers of people turn away from religious beliefs which palpably stand against their material well-being—i.e. they do not accept that poverty and meekness are blessed states: and see the number of Roman Catholics who are no longer behind their church’s teachings on birth control and abortion.

Certainly propaganda and argument have played a part, notably in times when to state anti-religious views aroused hostility. However, our position is different from groups like Freethinkers. We attach importance to the rejection of religion—when it is linked with acquiring Socialist consciousness. If it is not. there may be no marked improvement. Religion was the opium of the people, but capitalism offers other narcotics to the unaware.

Editors.

R. O’Neil (London NW1): Your letter reiterating the same point has new been written many times, the only variation being the signature.

Correspondence. (1921)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editors.    .

Plaza de la Derrota 13,

Bilboa, Spain. 

15th Jan., 1921.

Dear Sirs,—I think there is no doubt that sooner or later the mass of the workers in factories, mines, ships, offices, etc., will be converted to the principles of Socialism, and the victory practically won in the most advanced industrial countries, such as the United States, Great Britain, Germany, etc.

But then the question arises, what about the countries which are predominantly agricultural, such as France, Spain, Russia, Japan, etc.? It is well known that the peasantry everywhere are far more refractory to the Socialist propaganda than are the industrial workers, and in Europe at any rate, these people still form by far the greater part of the population.

In France, Belgium, some parts of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and now in Russia as a result of the revolution, the peasant proprietors with their families form in every case at least half the population and in some cases much more. This class is completely hostile to Socialism and up to the present all attempts to convert them have proved absolutely fruitless.

It may be said that the Marxian doctrine proves that in time the properties owned by this class will become merged in great estates belonging to wealthy capitalists or capitalist companies. All I can say is that hitherto there is not the slightest sign of any such process, rather the reverse: the number of peasant proprietors tends to increase. Great Britain is, I believe, the only country in which this class has been practically eliminated.

What is the opinion of your party regarding these people ?   Are they to be considered as capitalists or proletarians, or as combining some of the features of both these classes ? 

Yours faithfully,

J. Urquhart.

The Simple Solution.

The great factor overlooked by Mr. Urquhatt is the development of agricultural machinery and science. While it is quite true that peasant proprietor is hostile to Socialism, as the Bolsheviks have found out in Russia, in countries that are coming more fully into the orbit of capitalism the economic pressure is driving these peasants into new paths. In Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Holland, and to a growing extent Belgium, the need for machinery, pedigree stock, means of transport, etc., has forced forward the formation of co-operative societies who purchase these things, the members using them in turn. This is one of the stages in the industrialisation of agriculture and necessarily carries in its wake the increase of industrial workers in that sphere. The small farmers and peasant proprietors not only combine to hire and purchase machinery, but also hire wage labourers to run or assist in ruuning this machinery. Those peasants who do not follow this method are driven out of competitive business by their more efficient rivals.

A further factor, often lost sight of, is the operation of the giant capitalist concerns who are taking over huge farms and ranches, particularly in South America and whose competition with European products, when fully developed, will crush out numbers of those who at present are able to scratch an existence from their little plots.

Mr. Urqnhart says "the number of peasant proprietors tends to increase," but gives no evidence to support this statement. To take one country alone—France—the number of peasant proprietors has greatly decreased. While the actual number of peasants is still large—nearly 50 per cent. of the population— the majority of them are not proprietors as their little plots are mortgaged up to the hilt and are really owned by the moneylenders.

Our view is that the peasants are in a transition stage from small ownership to either (a) joint ownership developing into the capitalist position or (b) to the loss of their small property and their becoming wage workers as the result.

Editorial Committee.