Gangster strategy (2026)

From the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Famously, US President Theodore Roosevelt said ‘speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far’. He expanded: ‘If you simply speak softly the other man will bully you. If you leave your stick at home you will find the other man did not. If you carry the stick only and forget to speak softly in nine cases out of ten, the other man will have a bigger stick’. In practice for international relations, this has been interpreted as having credible military capacity, relying on diplomacy and ‘soft power’ first.

In effect, this is the ideology of gangsters. The aim is to get your way by any means, talk backed up by force is the easy way. As the late David Graeber observed, capitalism was founded on an ‘alliance of financiers and warriors’ so this gangsterism cuts to the essence of the worldwide system in which we live. The talking quietly part, though, usually entails telling stories that deny this gangsterism and instead making the narrative about democracy versus autocracy or good versus evil.

The current US President seems willing to dispense with the ‘speak softly’, as evidenced by the recently published National Security Strategy (2025) which with typical modesty envisages a ‘roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history which possesses ‘inherent greatness and decency’. Much of it reads as much of a manifesto as a strategy document, but it is very revealing, especially considering that for years we and others have been arguing that the goals of state foreign policies are to support their access to trade routes and vital resources, and here they are admitting this is the case. Take this piece of nonsensical bombast:

‘President Trump’s foreign policy is pragmatic without being “pragmatist,” realistic without being “realist,” principled without being “idealistic,” muscular without being “hawkish,” and restrained without being “dovish.” It is not grounded in traditional, political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America—or, in two words, “America First”’.

This can be summed up as flexible, self-interested and unprincipled. However, the document is clear about the strategic way to achieve that self-interest:

‘We want to recruit, train, equip, and field the world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military to protect our interests, deter wars, and—if necessary—win them quickly and decisively, with the lowest possible casualties to our forces’.

They want to do this to keep ‘the Indo-Pacific free and open, preserving freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes, and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical materials.’ Given this was precisely the background to the wars in Vietnam and Korea, this merely displays Palmerston’s axiom ‘We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow’.

The document recognises, however, that ‘As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others’. Securing these interests means preventing anyone else being able to challenge them. Hence ‘We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas supplies, and the chokepoints through which they pass’. This is at least an honest expression of what has been America’s long-term strategy in the Middle East, except with a determination not to become embroiled in war there.

More broadly: ‘We stand for the sovereign rights of nations, against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations, and for reforming those institutions so that they assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty and further American interests’.

National interests above human or individual rights, a bleak authoritarian doctrine, especially, as the strategy affirms: ‘The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations.’ Indeed, the aim seems to be precisely to enable such domination by inhibiting transnational bodies.

This can be seen in the section about Europe: ‘We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity’. The fetishised ‘Western identity’ politics that sees America as a successor to Rome lives in the minds of many of the current faction in charge of the government there. Hence they also state ‘America is, understandably, sentimentally attached to the European continent— and, of course, to Britain and Ireland’.

The document sees ‘the larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty.’ To that end ‘America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.’ In other words, the strategy document seeks to fragment Europe into nation states, which the US can dominate and use.

An interesting note is that the US seeks to end ‘the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance’ and to ‘reestablish strategic stability with Russia,’ and ‘prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war’ in Ukraine.

The real focus is on the Indo-Pacific part of the globe which ‘is already the source of almost half the world’s GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP), and one third based on nominal GDP. That share is certain to grow over the 21st century’. The US there seeks to avoid war ‘by preserving military overmatch’ and to deal with China as a near peer.

Perhaps most unfortunately, the strategy states ‘We reject the disastrous “climate change” and “Net Zero” ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries’. Climate change is a real security threat, that pales all the rest. This document envisages energy dominance and using energy resources to grow the American economy and military power.

This dismal manifesto sees the world continuing to settle disputes, as Shaw put it ‘as dogs settle a dispute over a bone’.

Pik Smeet

50 Years Ago: The Friends of the Russian Government (1983)

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

Some recent activities of the Russian Government which received little notice in the Press are of sufficient importance to be placed on record. They should be studied by those who believe that the friction between the Russian Government and some other governments is different in kind from the trade quarrels which are always taking place between national groups of capitalists and the governments they control.

We refer to agreements just made or renewed between Russia, on the one hand, and the three open dictatorships on the other — Italy, Poland and Germany . . . we have here a pretty picture of the Russian Government making agreements and seeking to cultivate “normal" and “friendly” relationships with Italy. Poland and Germany, while the governments of Mussolini. Pilsudski and Hitler carry on their normal brutal repression of all opposition, including Socialists and Communists. Are the Communists in the prisons and concentration camps of these countries expected to rejoice when they read that Russian envoys received "a very warm welcome” and that Pilsudski has graciously condescended to receive the Soviet Ambassador, and that Russia undertakes “not to participate in any economic or financial boycott" of Hitler’s Germany?

(From an editorial “The Friends of the Russian Government", Socialist Standard, August 1933.)

International politics (2011)

Book Review from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism and World Politics. Contesting Global Capitalism, edited by Alexander Anievas. Routledge, 2011

One of the roles of academics is to clarify the concepts used in everyday talk. The trouble is that today they are obliged to come up with something new, so now we have “MIRT” – Marxist International Relations Theory – , though most of those involved seem to be Trotskyist or Trotskyoid.

The basic subject is interesting. Why, when there is only one global economic system, is the world divided into separate states? Is this something capitalism created or did it simply inherit it? Is it intrinsically necessary to capitalism? Could capitalism exist with a single world state? If not, why not?

These are discussed by the different authors in this collection of articles. The clearest and most informative, in terms of setting out the issues simply, is that by Neil Davidson. Most of the others employ an obscure terminology which no-one outside academia, indeed outside the small circle of those discussing MIRT, uses. As one of them revealingly, but apparently unself-consciously, noted:

 “A fellow traveller amongst Marxist circles – though not a Marxist himself – once asked us what was all the fuss about U&CD and ‘the international’. In exasperation with the whole debate, he threw up his hands declaring: ‘This uneven and combined shit is the dog’s whistle that only Marxists can hear’!”

True, very true, as long as you substitute “Trotskyist” for “Marxist”.

Adam Buick

Dear Theresa . . . (2019)

From the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Theresa . . . 

Apparently, at exactly 11.00 pm on Friday 29 March 2019, Brexit will descend upon us. I am wondering whether I should stay up and watch it as I do when there is a total eclipse. If a deal is not struck by this time then hell-fire and damnation is forecast to rain down upon the people of the British Isles, as alluded to by the ignominious EU President, Donald Tusk. I suspect that, if I wake up on Saturday morning 30 March to total darkness, it is much more likely to be due to the onset of Nuclear Winter than a failure to renegotiate a variance of the Irish Backstop.

I was wondering if, in all the hoo-hah and razzmatazz of Brexit, you have had the chance to consider the latest development on our path to Nuclear Armageddon. In case you haven’t I’ll just remind you. Your partner in crime, The Donald, has given notice that the United States will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, claiming that Russia has violated the terms of the Treaty, whereas Russia claims that the United States violated the terms of the Treaty first. I love an adult conversation, don’t you, especially when the outcome may well determine the survival of our planet.

As a result of the dispute over the INF Treaty Russia has announced the reactivation of its Perimeter System which was de-commissioned following the end of the Cold War; that is the first Cold War ending in 1991, not the current one. The Perimeter System is a nifty little arrangement to counter the United States posture of First Use of nuclear weapons by anticipating that such a pre-emptive strike could destroy Russia’s command and control systems; in which case a cluster of SS17 ICBMs will launch automatically on detection of seismic activity, compatible with that caused by a nuclear explosion. As these Russian SS17 missiles fly over the nuclear armed ICBMs in their silos they will transmit a launch signal to them. If the United States doesn’t already have a similar defence system no doubt it will feel it prudent to build one and, hey presto, planetary annihilation without any need for fallible human intervention!

I find it strangely reassuring, in a psychotic sort of way, that MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – has been fully restored after faltering in recent decades and without even the need for a mad man or mad woman to press the button. Given that the UK is a major player in this ultimate game of chicken with its – soon to be dazzlingly new – Trident nuclear submarines I hope you will find time to give this matter a few minutes of your attention amid the Brexit fever. From our perspective we in the Socialist Party have a rather simple solution. We advocate a world devoid of imperialism, nationalism and all sabre-rattling murderous manifestations of warfare which emanate from such pathologies: a world where there are no nation states, no borders and no private property, where resources are held in common for the benefit of all; which will leave very few things to fight over.

Yours sincerely,

Tim Hart

Less can mean more (1988)

From the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

While all the razzmatazz, media hype and self-congratulation has been going on in Washington over the INF agreement, a group of NATO nuclear experts have quietly been engaged in discussion over what are euphemistically called ‘'compensatory measures", or in other words, how to fill the gaps left in the western alliance's war machine by the scrapping of missiles under the terms of the INF treaty. The end result could be more, not less, nuclear weapons in Europe.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the INF agreement marked the dawning of a new age heralded by those two saintly peace-makers Reagan and Gorbachev. In fact the INF treaty is a paltry little agreement that at best will get rid of just 3-4 per cent of nuclear weapons on both sides — there will still be plenty more left to blow up the world several times over. Under the terms of the agreement (if it is ratified by a two-thirds majority in the US Senate — Gorbachev can be confident that the Supreme Soviet will obediently endorse their leader s decision) all Cruise and Pershing II missiles already deployed in Western Europe will be destroyed over a three year period. In return Russia will scrap its SS20s, and shorter range SSI2 and SS23 missiles.

But meanwhile, in NATO, strategists are proposing ways of plugging the gaps left behind — like through the deployment of new air- and sea-launched nuclear weapons or moving more US F-l 11 nuclear bombers to bases in Europe so that they are within easy reach of Russian targets. No doubt Russia's military supremos have been engaged in similar planning of "compensatory measures”.

The determinedly optimistic will probably argue that the INF treaty is only the beginning and that it is likely to be followed by the cutting of strategic weapons by 50 per cent within a year or so as a result of START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks). Fifty per cent certainly sounds like a big cut until you realise that what they are arguing about is an agreement which aims to achieve a common ceiling of six thousand warheads on both sides. It's hard to feel optimistic about that.

Once all the euphoria has evaporated and the media circus has left Washington for the next location on the non-stop leadership-promotion tour, perhaps people will reflect in the cold light of reason, on what has really been achieved by this treaty.

Firstly, it is an agreement whose main purpose must be seen as economic and political rather than the removal of the threat of nuclear annihilation. Gorbachev needed an arms reduction treaty — and the worldwide publicity which accompanied it — in order to bolster his political position and enable him to pursue his programme of domestic economic and political reform from a position of greater strength within the Russian political elite. Reagan badly wanted to be remembered for something other than the shabby deals connected with the Irangate scandal, the enormous budget deficit, his penchant for jelly beans and his inability to string together a coherent sentence unless he had a script in front of him.

Secondly, the treaty does not address the problem of how to dispose of nuclear weapons. Even when the plutonium has been removed from the warheads, the remaining rockets — packed full of highly flammable fuel — will be extremely dangerous to destroy. Nuclear missiles are designed to explode causing the maximum possible damage, not to be dismantled with minimum damage.

Finally, and most seriously, the INF agreement does not even begin to tackle the real problem of nuclear weapons. Not only does it propose to scrap only a tiny proportion of the total nuclear stockpile but also it raises no questions at all about why we have nuclear weapons, or indeed any other kinds of weapons. In fact to the extent that arms treaties of this kind reinforce the position of political leaders (and hence the capitalist class which they represent) and present them as basically reasonable, benevolent people, then they could be said to also reinforce the capitalist system and all its attendant problems — including war.

Janie Percy-Smith

Afghanistan: the Russian Withdrawal (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nine bloody years after their intervention in Afghanistan, the Russian army is finally pulling out. The government of Nahmud Berri is to be left to fend for itself against the Mujahadeen guerrilla alliance, which successfully tied down 155,000 troops for almost a decade. How are we to explain this abandonment of a “communist” ally to such an uncertain fate, given the scale of Moscow’s past support for the Afghan regime? The answer can be found in the operation of economic pressures on Russian decision makers.

In 1978, the government of Muhammed Daoud was overthrown in a coup led by the “Communist” Party of Afghanistan, the PDPA. The party was split into two antagonistic factions, and alarm bells started ringing in Moscow when the more radical wing, the “Kalq”, gained the upper hand and began pushing though far-reaching reforms. They aimed to transform Afghan society into a modern Russian-style state by expropriating the large landlords and attacking feudal social structures. These measures provoked bitter resistance, and within months the country was embroiled in an increasingly savage civil war.

At this point the Russian ruling class became seriously alarmed and tried, without success, to make the President, Hafizulla Amin, soften his position. The Ayatollah Khomeini had just been swept to power in neighbouring Iran, and the Russians were fearful that a similar regime of religious zealots might come to power. At best they would be anti-Russian, and at worst they could ally with Washington. US bases might even follow.

When it became clear that Amin would not be diverted, the Russians sent in their troops, stormed the presidential palace and executed him. In his place they installed Babrak Karmal of the moderate “parcham” faction of the PDPA, and set about trying to win the war. Thus the intervention was about putting a stop to the revolutionary process before it threatened the strategic interests of the Russian Empire.

So why, nine years later and with the war still not won, has the Russian leadership decided on a withdrawal? The dominant factor was the sheer cost of the occupation, not only in maintaining a huge garrison through a war which was unwinable but also in the unseen burdens it was placing on the Russian state.

The process of “Perestroika” is not merely a passing fad of the western media, but involves the very survival of the Russian ruling class. To allow their crumbling economy to stagger on in its present form is to invite relative and eventually absolute decline, which would marginalise the country in the world economy and could prejudice the political and even the territorial integrity of the state. Russian industry simply must become competitive in the world market, and to this end will require vast amounts of capital and new technology, expanding markets and cheap sources of energy and raw materials.

This is the context in which the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan must be seen. As we saw in the case of changing attitudes towards the Korean Peninsula, the primary goal of Russian foreign policy is now regional stability and the reduction of tension. Such a climate is crucial if trade and foreign investment are to be successfully encouraged.

The Afghan war has long been a major source of tension with China, the “third world” and the West. The Chinese government has consistently maintained that the occupation of Afghanistan was one of three obstacles to the normalisation of relations with the Russians {the other two being border disputes and the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea). The Afghan withdrawal will significantly speed up the recent rapprochement between the two states, and this will produce immense benefits for the Russian ruling class. Not only will it allow them to make further reductions in their half million strong forces guarding the Chinese border, but it will also help force the pace of growing trading links.

As far as the “third world’. is concerned, recently released Kremlin documents show that some officials appreciated at the time of the invasion the disastrous effects it would have on Russia’s position in the region, particularly with the Islamic nations, whose friendship was necessary for the economy and overall security. These fears proved well founded, particularly in the case of Pakistan and the Arab world.

Finally, the occupation of Afghanistan was one of the factors {along with the imposition of martial law in Poland) which provided the pretext for the United States to launch the “second cold war” of the early 1980s. Most distressing of all to the Russians was the curtailing of trade credits and the tougher restrictions placed on the export of “sensitive” technologies to the Eastern bloc. The recent summit in Moscow demonstrated the value the Russians now place on restoring conditions in which these restrictions can be removed.

It would, however, be wrong to suppose that the Russians are completely abandoning their interests in Afghanistan. They have a large economic stake in the northern oil and gas fields around Jauzan, and army leaders have made a series of agreements with local tribal chiefs {the same “forces of reaction” against whom they are supposedly waging a life or death struggle) to safeguard their interests. Moreover, recent reports suggest that they have pushed the Afghan government into creating what amounts to a buffer state in the north, under the guise of an “administrative reorganisation” , which would serve to protect their real strategic and economic stake in the country should the central government collapse (Guardian, 23 April).

Withdrawal from Afghanistan does not herald a new, more “peaceful” era in international affairs. The foreign policy of the Russian ruling class, like their Western counterparts, cannot afford to renounce war as an instrument for securing their interests. Indeed, they have already warned Pakistan and the United States that the withdrawal will be halted unless they stop supplying arms to the guerrillas. However, economic pressures have proved stronger than the strategic worries which were behind the original invasion and which remain unresolved. This makes the further use of force unlikely, not because Gorbachev is any more pacifically inclined than previous leaders, but because the weakness of the economy leaves him with little real choice.

Andrew Thomas

Best of Friends (Almost) (2018)

Book Review from the June 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘China and Russia: the New Rapprochement’. By Alexander Lukin (Polity. £16.99)

The Sino-Soviet split of the 1950s and 60s involved a conflict between the two most powerful countries that claimed to be heirs of Lenin. There were small-scale border disputes and the Chinese leadership denounced the Russian bosses as revisionists. But, with major political changes in both countries since then, they are now ‘close but not allies’. Here Lukin tracks the history of the relationship between Russia and China and its current status, which he says is ‘the natural outcome of developments in international relations’. His book contains a lot of information but is often a rather dry read.

If the Cold War implied a bipolar world, with two large powers confronting each other, the fear in Russia now is of a drift towards a unipolar set-up, with the West (primarily the US of course) ruling the roost. Instead, Chinese and Russian leaders envisage a multipolar world, with not just three powerful camps (US, Russia, China) but more, including India, Brazil and so on.

Currently, China is economically more powerful than Russia but militarily weaker. In the 1990s, after the collapse of Eastern European Bolshevism, China bought various goods, including weapons, from Russia, thus helping much heavy industry in Russia to survive. Nowadays energy resources are the main export from Russia to China, with both oil and gas being supplied in large amounts, but there are concerns in Russia about being overly dependent on one main customer. The arms trade is also important, with Russia selling fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles to China. China is Russia’s main trade partner, but Russia’s ‘pivot to Asia’ means it is keen on expanding trade with Japan and South Korea too. Chinese exports to Russia are primarily machinery, equipment and consumer goods.

In 2001, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was formed, the original members being China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with India and Pakistan joining in 2017. Central Asia is clearly an area of interest for both Russia and China, as much for security as for economic reasons. The SCO, says Lukin, might be a cornerstone of the emerging multipolar world and ‘could assume the role of a second, non-Western center of gravity in Eurasia’.

On the whole, then, the book deals with the familiar topics of trade, energy supplies, security and power rivalries. As a further sign of developing relations, the teaching of the Chinese language in Russia and of Russian in China are both expanding.   

Paul Bennett

Pakistan’s finest hour? (1998)

From the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

There could have been few more depressing scenes on our TV screens in late May than those conveying scenes of tens of thousands of members of the Pakistani working class rejoicing on the streets at news that Pakistan had detonated its first nuclear devices. Such was the jubilation that followed the tests that opinion polls found 90 percent of the population in favour of the news. Similar sentiments were expressed throughout the islamic world, where there was much celebration at the arrival of the “Moslem Bomb”.

The nuclear tests in Pakistan were ostensibly a response to India’s tests of 11 May–the first India had carried out for 24 years–though less attention and condemnation focused on the latter.

While the Pakistani press heralded the blasts as “Pakistan’s finest hour”, talk in the West was of sanctions and the withdrawal of aid programmes.

The most quoted and most hypocritical statements came courtesy of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council–the guardians of world peace who protect us with their joint 36,000 nuclear war heads–and in particular from President Clinton who informed us how we were “about to repeat” the worst mistakes of the 20th Century, when we know it is not necessarily to peace, security and prosperity” (Guardian, 30 May).

These were impressive words from the leader of a country with 15,000 stockpiled nuclear weapons, which carried out 936 tests between 1945 and 1991, which has twice used atomic weapons and which has threatened their use against North Korea, Vietnam and more recently Iraq.

As could be imagined, the tests by both India and Pakistan had the “experts” working overtime in an attempt to come up with new doom and gloom scenarios. While some suggested that China would now be forced to increase its nuclear arsenal, others suggested that Pakistan might pass on its nuclear technology to other moslem countries, and that the Middle East was now a more dangerous region in which a faltering peace process would speed calls for an Arab bomb to counter Israel’s monopoly on nuclear weapons.

What was noteworthy was the total absence of any challenge to the nuclear mentality which located the problem in a wider political and social context.

Of course, none of this appealed to the nuclear apologists of Pakistan. Much of the counter arguments coming out of Pakistan highlighted the hypocrisy of the West and aimed to justify Pakistan’s new found nuclear capability.

While Pakistan and India had not joined the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty observed by 185 countries, it was argued they were not morally bound to abide by the agreement, and fingers were pointed at Israel, which also has a nuclear capability, which also refused to sign the NPT and which has received no Western condemnation. France was also drawn into the equation with much reference to the recent atomic testing at Muroroa Atoll carried out without any mention of sanctions.

Speaking on behalf of Pakistan’s ruling party, Prime Minister Kushabhar Tkakre hinted at the implicit racism of the Western standpoint, declaring Pakistan’s tests to be “a repudiation of the policy of nuclear apartheid the West has sought to impose on us . . . we will not accept an unequal system” (Guardian, 28 May).

Fully aware of the misery that sanctions and the withdrawal of aid would mean, President Rafiq Tarar argued that a nuclear capability was worth all the pain, adding that if Pakistanis had to exist on one meal a day in future then he would join them.

Perhaps somebody should have reminded him that for many Pakistanis, one meal a day is a fact of life. Pakistan, like India, is after all no wealthy country. It has a GNP of only £295 per head and a foreign debt of over £18 billion. And in spite of a virtually non-existent social programme, spends almost 50 percent of its budget on debt repayments and defence. Indeed, Pakistan and India together spent £43 billion on defence between 1990 and 1996, while only £7.4 billion went on education.

So is there method in their madness? The corporate elite of both countries think so. They argue that the bombs they are developing bring also independence, respect and prestige, providing not only a means of defence but also a ticket of entry, in some areas, to the top table where the likes of Britain, France and the US do their wheeling and dealing. A nuclear capacity thus has less to do with any external threat–in spite of the fact that both countries have fought each other on three occasions in the past–and more to do with a perceived negotiating clout accorded to the possession of nuclear arms.

The workers of Pakistan and India need to think again. They can never be the beneficiaries of any status accorded the possession of nuclear weapons. If they must be jubilant, then let them celebrate their common identity. At the end of the day there is more that unites them as an exploited and impoverished class, with the same basic needs, than can ever divide them along national or religious lines. The nuclear tests that have rejoiced over alter not one iota the fact that they will continue to exist as malnourished and illiterate wage slaves in a system in which their needs can only ever come a poor second to the selfish interests of their masters.

John Bissett

Editorial: Flitting hither and thither (1965)

Editorial from the February 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite many years’ experience to the contrary, working class men and women still cling assiduously to the belief that politicians flitting hither and thither to meetings in various parts of the world can solve the problems which capitalism produces.

This is an impression which capitalist politicians encourage and which some of them may even believe, at least at the start of their careers. It was the Labour Party who claimed in 1945, for instance, that they would stand a better chance of settling differences with Russia than the Tories, because of their better understanding of Soviet politics. But in the event, Mr. Molotov said “No" just as frequently to Ernest Bevin as he would have done to any Tory foreign secretary. Since those days we have had any number of international conferences, meetings of heads of state, not to mention sessions of that prime piece of organised post-war futility the United Nations. Yet capitalism has steered its usual bumpy course from crisis to crisis, at times drifting perilously close to the brink of another world war.

These are the things to bear in mind when considering the news that the British and Russian premiers have exchanged invitations to visit each other’s country this year. Mr. Wilson has expressed pleasure at the prospect; he told reporters he knew Mr. Kosygin well, and had had a long talk with him when last in Moscow. Which was no doubt intended to foster the idea that such cosy informality has the edge over the protocol of the conference table. Many people would agree with Mr. Wilson. They think that if direct and personal contact can be established—like friendly neighbours chatting across the back garden fence—international rivalry will ease and relations between the states improve in some mysterious way. But they are wrong.

When the Labour government took office last October, they were soon caught up in the whirl of international negotiations. Mr. Wilson went early to Washington and ministers were scattered about the globe at various conferences. Mr. Brown has recently been to Sweden. But they are not the only ones to go trotting around like this. At the time of writing, Chinese high-ups are busy getting neighbourly with Indonesia’s Sukarno, and it is only a few months ago that President De Gaulle returned from a visit to South America. It is the sort of move that statesmen are always making, but whether the discussions are informal or otherwise, they will be concerned with the interests of the particular capitalist classes involved, and not with those of the working class.

Wilson’s government, for example, have been trying to re-assess British defence policy and standing in Europe, and the Moscow visit is only a sequel to Washington last Autumn. It could be that there is a big re-alignment of powers coming as a result of China’s emergence as a nuclear power. Possibly Russia will draw closer to the West. The question of Britain’s entry into the Common Market may be re-opened (despite strong Labour opposition to it in the past), and some agreements may have to be re-negotiated. Still others may be scrapped altogether in the tussle to keep British capitalism in the running among the major powers.

All this will doubtless be represented as being cf vital concern to every one of us. There will be talk of “our” interests, “our” exports, “our” foreign policy, etc., when in fact workers have no stake in any of it. For most of us the wage packet is the limit of our horizon, and whether Britain is in or out of the Common Market will have no effect on that basic fact, any more than will the efforts of all the political leaders.

Leaders come and go, but capitalism outlives them all, bringing the usual trail of misery and destruction in its wake. Only a Socialist working class can do anything about that.

Ye Daughters of Israel Weep (1961)

From the August 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The State of Israel, now thirteen years old, has, by Jewish custom, come of age. It is timely, therefore, to attempt an assessment

(i) The Zionist Movement

The assumption underlying the Zionist movement was that to establish a "national home for the Jewish people” was the only way to end their age-old persecution, especially under the yoke of the Tsars. This closely mirrored the aspirations of other thwarted nationalities such as the Poles, the Czechs, the Finns and the like. There were, of course, workers who were taken up with this cause but very few of them prior to the first world-war. Cramped into a narrow strip of the vast Russian Empire, the Jewish millions lived almost entirely in the towns, where they formed the majority of the population. They were skilled and unskilled workers; some on the land, more in the factories and workshops; they were porters and cart drivers. Only a minority were merchants of any substance, bankers and factory owners. In this background it was the idea of Anarchism and Social-Democracy that gained the greatest acceptance. The Jewish Labour League, the Bund, which was affiliated to the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, had as its purpose Jewish cultural autonomy within a Social-Democratic Russia. They saw that on the principle of divide and rule the Tsars had actually fostered anti-semitism. They were convinced that the Jewish problem was a by-product of the private property system and would end with the end of that system. They did not think in terms of a return, to “the promised land” as a solution to their problems. Neither did the Anarchists.

Emigration to the freer and relatively more prosperous West, the Russian Revolution, and the rise of Nazism, affected Jewish opinion overwhelmingly. In the new conditions Anarchism died a natural death. Faith in a Social-Democratically reformed Capitalism withered in the face of the anti-semitic mass hysteria that was being harnessed to the needs of the German ruling-class. Faith in Bolshevism, on the part of others, was likewise to vanish when the Soviet reality became clear. The end of the second world-war saw Zionism reaping a harvest of disillusionment and despair.

Out of the ruins of war, emerged the Jewish survivors. Despite the brutally callous turning back of their ships by the British Labour Government, many joined with the pioneers to oust the British and set up the Jewish State, under a Labour Government strangely enough. Few who had witnessed the holocaust of the Jews could fail to be moved by the determination of the survivors to have a home of their own, to live in a land where they could walk with heads held high, where they could till the soil and make the desert bloom and little by little heal the wounds of two thousand years. But national ideals and political reality have never been compatible and never can be. True to form, the territorial demands of one set of Nationalists were diametrically opposed to the demands of the other set. The “solution” of the Jewish problem turned out to be its transference from Europe to the Middle-East.

(2) The Arab States

The Arabs, too, had national aspirations that had been thwarted by Turkish domination in the first instance and by an Anglo-French carve-up of the region subsequent to that. The Arabs were divided into several different states each of which was subservient to external forces. They were puppet states, mandates and protectorates. In order to weaken Germany’s ally Turkey, Britain had deliberately cultivated an Arab sense of national identity during the 1914-18 war. Once victory was won, this policy no longer served British Capitalism and it was dropped. Henceforth, playing off one oil producer against another, one tribal dynasty or one community against another, paid better dividends. Once created, however, Arab nationalism filled a need and the Pan-Arab capitalist class to be saw to it that not only did it survive but that it flourished. In Palestine, where a majority of Arabs had lived for centuries, the territorial demands of Jewish and Arab nationalism proved utterly irreconcilable. When the clash came the Zionists, who were then militarily superior to the combined Arab armies, gained a victory sufficient to set up a state, but with less territory than had traditionally been demanded. The price, in human terms, entailed an entire new exodus.” A million Arab refugees subsist to this day on the verge of starvation, caged like animals, within sight of Israel’s borders. They refuse to move. They, too, insist on going home.

The popular insistence on an eventual "ingathering of the exiles” does not, in fact, explain why the Arab governments have left the refugees idly by the frontier, breeding and hating. With the calculating cynicism normal to ruling classes, they are seen as an invaluable political weapon.

Over the past thirteen years the situation within the Arab states surrounding Israel has not remained static. The Zionist claim that hostility towards Israel was fostered by corrupt feudal potentates out of fear that their peoples would demand similar living standards and civil rights obviously has some truth in it. But this is less the case now than hitherto. The United Arab Republic and Iraq have both undergone substantial changes in social organisation. Many of the kings who had been propped up by foreign and feudal interests have been swept away. A rigorous process of national capitalist development is taking place. Today, a key reason for continued hostility to Israel is an external one. In facing the pressures of both western and eastern imperialism, a show of Arab unity is of no mean value in the bargaining chamber of the United Nations. Conflicting as their economic interests are, hostility to Israel presents the one issue on which they can all agree. Had Israel not existed, the Arab states would have had to invent it!

It would be a mistake, however, to forget the real possibility of Israeli expansion which would inevitably be at the expense of the Arab states. If increased to any extent, the pressure on land and resources is bound to become explosive if Russia was to permit the emigration of any number of her two million Jews, for example. Meanwhile, Israel’s governments being subject to the wishes of an increasingly nationalistic electorate, cannot afford to ignore their expansionist demands.

In the sort of way that the Russian Revolution was able to command a great deal of passionate though misplaced devotion, so Israel could never have been established without tragic sacrifices and self-less idealism on the part of many of its people. But as in all cases where it has been argued that the end justified the means, it is the very idealists who are most bitterly disappointed by the outcome. Self-styled Socialists, whose working-class solidarity was suspended “for the duration” in order to slaughter their Arab neighbours, are shocked that what was begun as a tactical measure has become a permanency. Militarism, even trigger-happiness at times, has come to stay. A flag-wagging mentality, convinced that one Israeli is worth any three Arabs, is easier to pound out of the propaganda machine than the former subtle distinctions between reactionary Arab rulers and misguided soldiers who were but pawns in the game. Strikers have learnt that Jewish truncheons wielded by Jewish policemen feel just as unpleasant. They even have a Jewish problem in Israel, what with pietists who deny the authority of a man-made Jewish state which profanes the language of the Bible by every day usage, and the religious discrimination against Indian Jews as regards marriage rights.

(3) Communal Farms

For the Zionist who had ideals, the bitterest pill of all is the changing rôle of the Kibbutz. The pioneers regarded these communal farms, this utopian Socialism of a kind, as the pattern of the future nation. Just as the American “wild- west” was penetrated and peopled in the first instance by dissenting communities of one kind or another; just as they imagined they were building Christianity or Communism all by themselves, so the Kibbutznik has extended and strengthened the national horizon to see, on arrival, the growth of a way of life the very antithesis of all that he stood for. Who but ascetics or visionaries could have built a city at Salt Lake or planted a forest in the Negev? Yet they pave the way for class divided capitalism of one kind or another.

If the heirs to the mighty Russian Revolution were to be forced by the exigencies of their historic and economic situation along paths not of their choosing, how much less realistic were the hopes of those who saw in a “national home" an end to struggle and to strife? Israel’s international position, a tiny state among the giants, illustrates their dilemma. What Jew would have believed thirteen years ago that Israel-made machine guns would be used by the German Army? Did the Zionist, on the morrow of statehood, think it possible that his country’s subsequent dependence upon French aid and arms would make him victim of the same moral degeneration which France itself has suffered under the weight of iniquity in Algeria? Which of their Labourites could have foretold an alliance with the British Tory Government over Suez?

(4) The Eichmann Trial

And now in this year of reckoning, year thirteen, Eichmann, demoniac scourge of the Jews stands, as Torquemada never did, in the dock at Jerusalem before the judges of Israel. Underlying the whole structure of bourgeois law is the maxim that “might is right.” But if we were to accept its claim to dispense a timeless “justice” to all men it would be hard to deny the monumental appropriateness of the exterminator’s trial before his surviving victims. However, we Socialists spread throughout the world as we are, hold that for justice to be done the entire social system would have to stand trial and be found guilty. But what can we say of Capitalist morality which sanctifies the annihilation of Hiroshima or approves the crushing of Budapest but heaps all wrath on the head of one of its creations? Courts of law are not competent to judge the barbarity of our present social system. They are there to condemn those who lose the struggles that go on within it. Then all sense of common guilt, all sense of common responsibility that weighs so heavy on the conscience of man in Capitalist society, can be relievingly focused on some now helpless perversion of a man.

As to the why and wherefore of this latest show-piece of the prevailing quality of moral standards, we strongly suspect an element of political manoeuvre. Ben-Gurion faces other contenders for power as the recent “Lavon Affair’’ showed. With French backing he was able to take up an intransigent attitude towards his enemies. Despite General de Gaulle’s assurances to the contrary at their recent meeting, once France has made peace with Algeria her enthusiasm for Israel is likely to wane. Friendship with an oil producing Arab Algeria will have far greater rewards to offer. With diplomatic relations re-established with Nasser, Israel cannot expect supplies of arms from Britain. Nor does Kennedy have the slightest intention of jeopardising the interests of the class he represents for the sake of Israel, however much it grieves the New York Jewish voters. His aim is to woo the “uncommitted” nations, most of which side with the Arabs.

An increasing fear of military isolation in a situation where Russian training and arms have immensely strengthened the Arab armies has resulted in pressure from some Israeli quarters for some sort of compromise with the Arabs. If Ben-Gurion, by staging a show-trial which by its ghoulish racital of the most hideous details of Nazi crime, can raise a wave of nationalistic frenzy, he will ride it to victory at the polls.

The evidence is with us. Zionism has failed to achieve its objectives. Inevitably so. So long as there are Jewish workers attached in any numbers to the divisive and anti-working-class national idea, so long as their (and our) Arab brothers believe likewise, so long will strife ensue, so long will their respective ruling classes remain in the seat of power. The Jewish problem remains with us. It is an Iaspect of the working-class problem which has no solution outside of world-wide Socialism.

Eddie Grant

Is It War? (1937)

From the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The international situation becomes each month more tense and dangerous, and early war is on all sides spoken of as a possibility. The German ruling class, strongly armed for war, along with what allies they can find in Italy, Japan and elsewhere, are bent on carving out territorial gains in Europe and the colonial lands. Against them on the present line-up are the Governments of France, Russia, Britain and other countries, anxious to keep what they have. The spokesmen of the British ruling class, themselves frantically hastening war preparations, declare that this country will only go to war for its own “vital interests”—a truly admirable-sounding doctrine. We, too, are of opinion that the working class should only fight for its own vital interests. But what are the vital interests of the world working class on the one side and the national sections of the ruling class on the other? The British ruling class find their vital propertied interests scattered over the seven seas and across the surrounding continents: in India, China, South America, Africa and the Mediterranean lands. It even appears, according to The Times (January 20th, 1937) that it is a vital British interest, “that the political independence and the territorial integrity of Spain should be preserved." But what matters to the workers is not where the ruling class have an interest, but what that interest is. All the time the defenders of capitalism pretend that capitalist and worker have a mutual interest. Let us test it by seeing what the capitalist Governments do about the urgent problem of working class poverty. President Roosevelt can admit, in a speech at Washington on January 20th, 1937 (see Daily Telegraph, January 21st), that one-third of the American nation are “ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished.” The same can be said of Great Britain, Germany, and most countries. All the Governments, past and present, have promised to deal with it, but none of them have done so or will do so. They do not consider it a vital problem. If they did they would have acted with the promptness and decision they all show about armaments and war for the defence of the propertied interests of the capitalist class. The British ruling class may have a vital interest in Spain, but it is not concerned with helping the Spanish workers to escape from the miseries of oppression and exploitation at the hands of the landowners, the military and the Catholic Church. To this the politicians hasten to reply that their concern is with British workers, not with Spaniards. Professor Haldane recently gave the most crushing answer to this, when he pointed out that the workers in besieged Madrid are probably better fed than those in our depressed areas like Merthyr. What have the British ruling class to say to that?

The interest of the workers everywhere is not in helping their rulers to grab or hold, but in the speedy overthrow of capitalism everywhere, the ending of the exploitation of one class by another. Let the workers of all countries apply that touchstone to the policies of their respective Governments. If the British ruling class—from Rothermere, the near-Fascist, to Beaverbrook, the “isolationist"—want the worker to take armed action in any quarter of the globe, ask what working class interest is at stake. Make no mistake, the armed forces of the capitalist State are not set in motion by the capitalists who control the machinery of Government for any purpose but their own class interest. Whether they call their wars offensive or defensive, struggles for colonies or to protect trade routes, for democracy or for Fascism, for religion or against it, the true purpose will be to hold or increase the wealth of the various sections of the ruling class. Workers, have none of it! Accept their advice and think only of the vital interest of your class, against capitalist wars and for Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Russians and their "Rights" (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the Helsinki Conference (1975), the question of “civil rights” in Russia has become a football to be knocked about in the arena of international politics. Jimmy Carter pontificates on human rights, eternal verities and God-given etceteras. Brezhnev’s reply is that he should go count peanuts as the Helsinki Final Act emphatically says domestic matters are private. Which is true.

It is the only treaty dealing with human “rights” which actually begins with a “get-out” clause, before it gets to poetic phrases. Its very first principle says: “The participating States will respect each other’s sovereign equality and individuality as well as all the rights inherent in and encompassed by its sovereignty . . . They will also respect each other’s right freely to choose and develop its political, social, economic and cultural systems as well as its right to determine its laws and regulations”.

Other Covenants do at least give you the fine phrases and sweet nothings first; for example, the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (articles 1-3) guarantees that “under no circumstances may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence”.

But along with these sweet nothings there are the “get-out” clauses. Article 12 says “the above- mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those which are provided by law, are necessary to protect national security, public order, public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others”.

For many years Soviet dissidents have, in the face of very real difficulties, been actively organizing, cooperating together, publishing news and views, communicating with the West and developing their analyses of the Soviet political and economic system. They have to contend with social and financial problems. Most lose their jobs as soon as they become actively dissident: many scrape by in casual labouring jobs or rely on their wives’ pay. In any capitalist country, the monopoly employer has a powerful weapon in the blacklist. Russia is no exception. Hardly surprising that so few in each generation have the courage to be actively critical of the Partocracy.

Governments do not operate on any principle save expediency. The Helsinki agreement came about because the Russian, American and European bosses found a common cause for concern in their heavy expenditures on defence systems, their self-interest in markets, and their growing need for international understanding on pollution, energy, space etc.

To achieve agreement on the issues involved meant horse trading. Western governments wanted more information to go into and come out of Russia, more journalists to work there. As a quid pro quo, the Russians are now sitting in on a lot of scientific seminars, including those dealing with genetic engineering — a sensitive subject, since it has terrifying “defence” possibilities. The West proposed a liberalization of Russia’s attitude to travel, emigration etc., and presumably the Russians agreed because the Helsinki Final Act so strongly emphasized the “sovereignty” of States and the principle of “non-intervention in internal affairs”.

The Helsinki document gave the Russian workers no “rights” they did not already have. Their constitution “guarantees” freedom of assembly and political opinion, also the freedom of the Press. But constitutions, like covenants, treaties and “final acts”, are merely scraps of paper. What is required is that working people should struggle, not for more paper rights, but for ownership and democratic control.

“It implies that the people are to have complete control of all social institutions, the ordering of all social activities, the domination of the whole social life. Such a condition of affairs presupposes at the very outset the ownership by the people of all the means of life . . . There can be no other foundation for democracy than this common ownership of all the means of life, for where these fall into private possession social distinctions at once spring up, the owners become dominators, and it becomes impossible for the people to control the social activities — because . . . they have not control of the means and instruments through which most important of those activities — those directed to the production of social wealth — are applied”, (Socialist Standard, Oct. 1913.)

The history of Russia since 1917 has emphatically proved our point. Abolition of Tsarism, the nationalization of land, factories, mines, railways, control by a small group of despots — all this has left the people, the working, wealth-producing people, as they were before. In Dostoyevsky’s words, “the insulted and injured”.

Government in Russia is a closed shop. The ruling party recruits almost exclusively among top management, among the nomenclatura, the apparatchiks. A party card is an essential qualification for many jobs. In terms of ideology it means nothing. In social terms, it means the possessor is a lackey, a hireling of the state. In economic terms, it provides him with money prizes, country estates, and privileges denied to mere workers. Only a tiny fraction of Russians are admitted to this exclusive club. The rest of the population keep their noses bravely to the grindstone. Only a few criticize and attack aspects of the system.

The dissidents today are not united. There are the religious, racial and ethnic groups — Christians, Jews, Ukrainians, Georgians, Crimean Tartars, often excluding members of other groups. There are writers and artists who want to do their own thing without bureaucratic hindrance or control. Among those who want a more liberal political system there is a tendency to analyze and criticize the social and economic systems as well as the political superstructure.

Sakharov has described Russia as “a society based on state capitalism” (My Country and the World). A writer in Seyatel declared in 1971 that “our country is the purest and most developed example of state capitalism”. In an article about the similarity between the western and soviet economic systems, Agursky wrote that this resemblance was due to the fact that “the economic and social system of the ‘socialist’ bloc is not in any sense socialist, but is merely a variation of State monopoly-capitalism” (Cahiers du Samizdat, June-July 1974). However an opposing view is put by Roy Medvedev, an ex-member of the CPSU, who still believes that Russia enjoys that mythical state of bliss, “the dictatorship of the proletariat”.

The Socialist does not argue for “rights”. The concept of “rights” in a property-based society is a fraud and a sham!

“What becomes of the ‘right’ to live if the means by which alone it is possible to live are in the hands of others?” (Socialist Standard, February 1911).

Some at least of the Russian dissidents are aware that Socialism has not yet happened and that the Russian political dictatorship is a reflection of the economic tyranny which is capitalism. We hope that they will advance beyond demands for political “rights” to the revolutionary position of outright opposition to exploitation, to the wages system, and to the class division which is characteristic of capitalism in all its forms. In doing this they will be expressing their awareness of their common interest with the working, wealth-producing people of all lands in ending this enslaving system.

That struggle is the only one which offers a worthwhile goal — the end of poverty, conflict, war. Those who dream of the “Rights of Man” are the Utopians of whom Plekhanov wrote: “The Utopian is one who, starting from an abstract principle, seeks for a perfect social organisation” (Anarchism and Socialism). The fine words of the Helsinki Final Act — “human rights and fundamental freedoms” — are mere sham-words, good for those who still believe in the crock of gold at the other end of the rainbow. The real fight is the opposition of the exploited class to the system which enslaves it.

Charmian Skelton

Editorial: The Friends of the Russian Government (1933)

Editorial from the August 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some recent activities of the Russian Government which received little notice in the Press are of sufficient importance to be placed on record. They should be studied by those who believe that the friction between the Russian Government and some other governments is different in kind from the trade quarrels which are always taking place between national groups of capitalists and the governments they control. Socialists have long pointed out how the need to find markets abroad and to borrow money from foreign capitalists to pay for imports of raw materials and machinery, etc., overrides other considerations in the relationships between capitalist states, so that religion, patriotism and humanity all have to take second place when trade and profits are at stake. It does not surprise us, but it may come as a shock to Communists, that the requirements of expanding capitalist industry in Russia should have induced the Russian Government to adopt the same callous attitude as the rest of the powers.

We refer to agreements just made or renewed between Russia, on the one hand, and the three open dictatorships on the other—Italy, Poland and Germany. The following description of these agreements is taken from an official Russian publication, the Moscow Narodny Bank “Monthly Review ” (May, 1933).

First, Italy: —

   The Soviet-Italian Agreement signed on May 6th by Signor Mussolini . . . and M. Levenson, the Commercial Representative of the U.S.S.R. in Italy, though not the first to be concluded between the two countries, is of special importance at the present time.
    This Agreement has been welcomed in both countries as demonstrating the continued economic collaboration between the U.S.S.R. and Italy. . . .
    The Soviet-Italian Agreement is a new proof of the desire of the U.S.S.R. to maintain normal relations with the rest of the world and that some countries appreciate the need of such relations and are determined to utilise them for the good of both, countries.

Then Germany: —

   On May 5th the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R., M. Litvinov, and the German Ambassador in Moscow, M. von Dirksen, exchanged Notes on the ratification of the Agreement concluded in Moscow on June 24th, 1931, which has now become operative. At the same time an exchange of Protocols took place for the continuation of the Berlin Treaty concerning neutrality and non-aggression of April 24th, 1926, and of the Convention concerning the Procedure of Conciliation of January 25th, 1929.
   The Protocol states that the two Governments, by prolonging the Treaty, intend to continue the existing friendly relations between the Soviet Union and Germany, and to further collaboration which is in the interests of both countries and contributes towards assuring the peace of the world.—(Italics ours.)

The Treaty of 1926:—

    Lays down the principle that the contracting parties are not only to observe neutrality if one of them is attacked by a third Power, but they undertake not to participate in any economic or financial boycott against the other party.

This last provision, incidentally, prevents Russia from-supporting the boycott of German goods, which the trade unions in various countries are organising as a protest against the Hitler Government's brutal treatment of Communists and others.

Mr. Fenner Brockway, who supported the move by the I.L.P. to form a United Front with the Communists, writes (New Leader, June 16th) that the Communist International, because of this agreement with Hitler, "has opposed an international working class economic boycott of Germany."

Lastly, there is Poland, where Pilsudski is dictator, often referred to by Communists as the "butcher” : —

    On May 2nd a delegation of six representatives of the Commissariat for Foreign Trade of the U.S.S.R. arrived in Warsaw at the special invitation of the Polish Government and was accorded a very warm reception. . . .
     A satisfactory improvement has taken place in the past few months in the economic and political relations between the Soviet Union and Poland.
     The Non-Aggression Pact recently signed between the two countries is a very important symptom of this change, which is also reflected in the transactions between the two Governments. The recent visit of the Soviet Minister in Warsaw to Marshal Pilsudski, who very rarely receives foreign diplomats, is another indication of the welcome change that has taken place. The Governments seem determined to utilise the existing friendly relations to the best advantage of both countries.—(Italics ours.)’

So we have here a pretty picture of the Russian Government making agreements and seeking to cultivate “normal" and “friendly” relationships with Italy, Poland and Germany, while the Governments of Mussolini, Pilsudski and Hitler, carry on their normal brutal repression of all opposition, including Socialists and Communists. Are the Communists in the prisons and concentration camps of these countries expected to rejoice when they read that Russian envoys received “a very warm welcome," and that Pilsudski has graciously condescended to receive the Soviet Ambassador, and that Russia undertakes “not to participate in any economic or financial boycott ” of Hitler’s Germany?

This is in striking contrast with the generous declaration made by the Bolsheviks when first they seized power that they regarded Socialists all over the world as being under their special protection.

It is also an ironical commentary on the depths to which Socialism has been dragged by the well-meaning people who advocate the seizure of power before a majority is prepared to accept and work for Socialism, that the four principal dictatorships have as their figureheads men who have claimed to be Socialists and have learned how to be successful demagogues in the ranks of so-called Socialist parties—Hitler in Germany, who brazenly proclaims that his advent to power means the early triumph of Socialism; Pilsudski, who led the so-called Socialist Party of Poland into the bog of Polish nationalism; Mussolini, who did the same in Italy; and lastly, Stalin, who rose to eminence on the backs of the men who led the seizure of power in Russia in 1917, and who now cultivates friendly relations with his three fellow dictators.

The Review Column: War Against the Unions (1969)

The Review Column from the April 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

War Against the Unions

The war between the Labour government and the unions is now being fought on three fronts.

This autumn the Prices and Incomes Act comes up for review in Parliament and there will be a battle over whether it should be left as it is, or altered, or scrapped altogether. Going on past experience, there will be the usual dismal clutch of Labour MPs threatening to do something desperate like abstain from the Commons vote, and the unions supplicating for modifications and concessions.

Both groups will probably come to terms with what they call their conscience and the government will get the legislation it wants.

Then there is the battle over future legislation, sketched out in the White Paper In Place of Strife. This will try to restrict the unions and to regulate the class struggle into a nice, cosy, disciplined affair.

Whatever the government manages to push through on this, if the experience of other countries with similar laws is anything to go by, it will have little effect in the long run.

Finally there is the battle — in places like Ford’s, the docks, the schools—over wage rises and improvements in working conditions which go against government policy.

Of course the Labour government expected to have to fight the workers on these fronts. On the other hand the unions, and those workers who go on strike outside unions' agreements, should also have been able to forecast what has happened.

The Labour Party were quite clear, for years before they came to power, about their intention of trying to tame the workers. This is normal, in a party whose policy is to try to run capitalism.

The workers should have realised this, when they were voting Labour in their millions. And they should remember it, when they next have a chance to choose which party shall run British capitalism. Then they should ask themselves what is the real alternative to strife.

 

Concorde

The Concorde, taking off amid its own thunder into clouds of doubt and confusion is, we are told; a triumph of modem technology.

We should, apparently, all be grateful to the designers and scientists who have made it possible for a handful of business men and wealthy travellers to get across the Atlantic a few hours faster than before — even if this is at the cost of a multitude of damages to our homes and our nerves.

But of course Concorde was not built to benefit human beings — if it were it would be unique in capitalism. The development of military aircraft during the war opened up supersonic travel and this was sure to be applied to civilian airliners.

The British and French aircraft industries have rushed into this venture, unsure of its ultimate effects, its feasibility, even its economics, in the hope of recapturing some of the advantages lost to the Americans in the market for the big jets.

As it happened the Russians beat everyone to the draw and their supersonic airliner was the first to fly. It may yet make an effective bid for the world market in these monstrous aircraft

It may turn out that it was all a colossal waste of time. The sonic boom may do so much damage to property on the ground, and to the working efficiency of people, that its economic disadvantages outweigh the aircraft’s profitability.

If this happens, some people may think supersonic planes were defeated by a concern for human well-being. But as usual this has hardly come into the matter.

The truth is that the whole business— the Concorde programme, the withdrawal of the Americans, the bid from Russia, the possible collapse of Concorde — has been motivated by capitalism’s quest for profit. With that as a priority, humane factors come a long way behind.

Russia versus China

The powers of capitalism can never be frank about the reasons for their international conflicts. That is why the official propaganda machines always represent wars as clashes of ideology — clashes between cruelty and mercy, belligerence and amity, or simply between right and wrong.

This applies as much to those states which claim to be socialist as to the rest. The dispute between Russia and China, for example, is represented by both sides as an ideological clash; the Russians say the Chinese are warmongers, the Chinese accuse Russia of betraying a socialist revolution.

During the fighting last month at Damansky Island, in the Ussuri River, both Russia and China accused the other of “armed provocation”. The Russian protest complained of “adventuristic policy . . . reckless provocative actions . . .” The Chinese loudspeakers blared out abuse about the “renegade, revisionist clique” in Moscow.

In fact the fighting started for anything but ideological reasons. The Russian territory around Vladivostok was annexed under the Tsars in the 19th century. The Bolsheviks swore to return the land but that was one of those vows which were quietly forgotten in the rise of capitalism in Russia.

Since then Russia has poured an immense amount of capital into developing the area’s industries and communications. Vladivostok is an important naval base, and Russia’s only commercial outlet to the Pacific. And just like any other capitalist class, the rulers of Russia are anxious to protect their investments.

China, however, as a newly rising capitalist power is pressing to re-negotiate the treaties which lay down her frontiers (the reason, also, for the clashes with India in 1962), one of which is marked by the Ussuri. All of this combined to make a delicate and dangerous situation, which is not in any way lessened by the supposed ideological comradeship between the two states.

It is, in fact, a classical dispute between two capitalist powers. Very often these disputes start over something trivial, like a spit of sand in the Ussuri River. But the background is anything but trivial.

Editorial: Councils of the "Peaceful." (1922)

Editorial from the June 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some time ago there was great jubilation (for the worker's benefit!) in the papers over America's advocacy of reducing or abolishing armies and navies. A conference was held in Washington and all powers agreed to reduce armaments—so long as each was left better armed than any of the others! Throughout the business America was hailed as an advocate of peace.

During the discussions, however, America was significantly silent on the question of aerial armament. A little while after we learned that American chemists had devised a method of using deadly germs whereby aerial machines could drop small quantities (germ bombs) on to cities and destroy thousands of the inhabitants more efficaciously than by the cruder method of ordinary explosive bombs.

From the Daily News (10/5/1922) we learn that America has progressed still further in her peaceful pursuits. American inventors have now devised an almost noiseless and invisible aeroplane.

  “The significance of such experiments was revealed the other day, when a huge ‘ bomber,' carrying a load equivalent to enough missiles to lay streets in ruins, climbed—thanks to the special preparation of its engines—until it was at a height impossible during the raiding of the war.”
   "Here is seen the full menace, the winged monster, which, with devices able to silence the roar of its high-flying motors, has added to its terrors laboratory secrets which—applied to a machine already high in the air against a vast elusive background—confer on it the power of a virtual invisibility.”

In face of such things as this workers are still being deluded into supporting campaigns for the reduction of armaments and the abolishing of war. Those who control such campaigns have the object in view of reducing the expenses of running the Capitalist system. The success of such campaigns would increase unemployment but would not materially assist in preventing future wars.

The pretty little game of political chess that is going on at Geneva, and the recent stir over the action of one of the competitors in the Russian oil scramble, should make it obvious to anyone that war is never likely to be a remote contingency so long as capitalism lasts.

Comparatively small wars have been going on ever since “peace ” was established! But another one of the gigantic kind has already been foreshadowed by no less a person than Lloyd George—the man who was so emphatic about the last big struggle, signifying the end of all wars. More humorous still it is the Allies that are falling out now—falling out. over the spoils of “victory.”

Commenting on the general situation the Daily News (10/5/22) says :—

   "Nobody will deny that the danger of war, of war on a vast scale, within the life's span of those who have survived the tremendous slaughter of recent years, is real and formidable.”

Once more let us press the question: What concern of the working class is any war except the class war? All wars outside of the class war are waged in the interests of the Capitalists. Although the workers do the fighting the only reward they obtain is that obtained by the survivors of the too recent carnage in Europe—homes that require heroism to live in.

Critical Times (1922)

Editorial from the July 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the title of “A Call to the Churches," an article appeared in the Daily News (19-6-22) from which we learn that "just at this moment the history of international relations is entirely upon a critical chapter.” The "international relations" referred to are the tricky, treacherous, and avaricious manipulations of different groups of financial magnates, through the medium of various political and other lackeys, for control of the different markets of the world.

There is another chapter in the social book, however, that is of far more interest and concern to the workers than the one above mentioned; and this chapter is also critical, as witness the following quotation from the article to which we have already referred :—

  “The relations between nations are more rather than less strained. Hundreds of millions of money are still being spent upon armaments, while unemployment is widespread, social reform is at a standstill, and in many lands starvation and disease are ripe.”

Unemployment, starvation, and disease are indeed widespread. As time passes, this chapter not only appears to become more critical, but even appears to have no end— at least, no improvement in the general situation is in sight. The passing or easing of the crisis is delayed, not by the "failure of Genoa,” as the Daily News would have us believe, but by the hothouse-like growth of machinery and processes of production brought forth by the war. In other words, wealth is produced in such abundance that the effective demands are overwhelmed. That there is no shortage of wealth is clearly demonstrated by the rapidity with which new capital is subscribed and over-subscribed whenever shares are advertised for subscription.

The article upon which we are commenting provides a rather humorous thrust at the policy the Daily News has been advocating for some time. With much use of fine phrases and lengthy "argument,” this paper has frequently sought to prove how advantageous the League of Nations would be. Whole-heartedly it has backed the movement and idolised its founders. Now, however, we read :—

  “If before the League is complete a counter league or group of powers is formed sufficiently powerful to be independent of it, then we shall surely have the old balance of power in another shape and the embryo of another world war.”

In other words, League or no League, the question of war lies in the hands of the powerful combinations of capitalists. Yet in spite of this, self-appointed "leaders” of the workers declaim eloquently on the necessity of supporting the campaign in favour of this side-tracking idea.

Such Will-o'-th'-wisps are attractive, but they lead to disillusion, disappointment, and apathy. When the workers leave these ideas on one side and stick firmly to the hard facts of life which are constantly forcing themselves upon us for examination and explanation, they will be on the broad highway to a knowledge and understanding of their present condition of slavery.