Editorial: Break-up of the Trade Union International? (1948)

Editorial from the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the incidents of the Trades Union Congress at Margate was an angry speech by Mr. Arthur Deakin denouncing the Russians for their efforts to dominate the World Federation of Trade Unions and to use it simply as a platform for Russian Government policies. It is taken to mean that the perpetual wrangling that has paralysed the W.F.T.U. since it was formed in 1945 may end in the withdrawal of the British T.U.C. along with the American C.I.O. and other non-Communist unions. This would only give organisational effect to a deep cleavage that already exists and give us two Internationals, one ostensibly representing the workers in Russia and her satellites and the other the workers in Western Europe, America and the British Dominions. “Ostensibly representing the workers” has to be used for the sake of accuracy because the W.F.T.U. and many of its affiliated bodies have moved far from the old idea of an international organisation controlled by trade unions and directly representing their vague aspirations towards international working class solidarity.

The old International Federation of Trade Unions, in the forty or more years of its chequered history, did some good work within the limits set by the political backwardness and nationalistic outlook of the affiliated unions. Disrupted by the first world war, weakened by the enforced withdrawal of Italian and German unions when those countries came under dictatorship, and for long the object of Communist enmity and attempted destruction, it nevertheless survived until in 1945 the much more ambitious plans were evolved to form a World Federation of Trade Unions to include the Russians and others not in the I.F.T.U. With all its faults and limitations the old I.F.T.U. was an organisation that consistently accepted the principle that a trade union is a voluntary independent organisation of workers, controlled by themselves, and existing for the purpose of waging the struggle of the wage-earners against the employers. Now the workers movement has moved backwards and trade unions have increasingly become organisations closely bound up with and giving expression to governmental policies. The extreme case is, of course, that of the so-called unions in Russia and Russian-controlled countries, where the idea of a trade union expressing views independent of those imposed by the Government is unthinkable ; but even where the Unions can legally be independent bodies, as in this country, it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish between the policies of union executives and those of governments.

While that condition continues a trade union International is almost superfluous, a mere duplication of governments. It was, therefore, almost inevitable that, just as the Labour Parties of Western Europe have no connection with the international Communist organisation, so the trade unions of the world would be divided according to the division of world governments.

The dissensions in the World Federation of Trade Unions have partly been concerned with Marshall Aid and partly with the question of the degree of autonomy that the International Trade Departments (i.e. the occupational internationals such as the Miners’ International, Transport Workers’ International, etc.) should retain inside the world organisation of national bodies like the Trades Union Congress, but this was only the form not the substance of the conflict. The real issue has always been whether non-Communist unions could usefully associate with government-controlled Communist bodies in Russia and elsewhere. It now seems probable that the attempt will be abandoned and the groups form rival trade union federations.

It is another reminder that internationalism is not something that can be created out of optimistically drafted paper constitutions in advance of the workers’ understanding.

50 Years Ago: Socialism is international (1966)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the power of nationalism to grip the minds of the worker rises, so Socialism fades. But when the warm rays of Socialist enlightenment and knowledge illumine their minds with the promise of freedom and social well-being, their hands will clasp across national boundaries, and their feet will tread them into the past. In that day the capitalist will "beat the bounds" in vain, the workers will know that boundaries and nations have no meaning or significance for them. These two, nationalism and international Socialism (and there can be no Socialism that is not international) are opposite as the poles, as antagonistic as fire and water. When patriotism and Socialism enter the worker's mind, patriotism will be quenched or Socialism will evaporate. The Socialist patriot is as impossible as the Christian Socialist. If he is loyal to the class that exploits him, he is a traitor to his own class. If he recognises and is true to his class interest, the class war will engage all his free time and energy; and he will laugh to scorn the hypocritical vaporings about the rights of small or big nations, seeing only in every nation a large or small group of capitalists—his own class being spread over the world, like an upper strata of the earth's crust, for each group to claim and exploit.

The real international will be built up on the facts of Socialism The universal recognition of these facts will mean the linking up of the world's workers in opposition to the capitalist class. That class will practice nationalism and preach patriotism just so long as it serves to obscure the class struggle and keep the workers divided. When they have to face an enlightened and united working class, they themselves will stamp out every boundary in their urgent need for cohesion and strength to meet the workers' onward march.

[From an article, "The Ghost of Jaures Laid", in the Socialist Standard, October, 1916.]

Capitalist Unity and Socialist Solidarity. (1908)

From the August 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the present time, when various capitalist Governments vie with each other in promoting “International Peace” and “Ententes Cordials”, a pronouncement on Internationalism from the Socialist seems to be necessary, more so because the organisations and organs in this country professing to be Socialist, join with the bourgeois parties and Press to extoll the virtues of King Edward the Seventh and his endeavour to promote the peace of the civilised world. It has been frequently pointed out in the Socialist Standard that the leaders of the S.D.P. and I.L.P., whether of middle-class or working-class origin, are steeped to their eye-brows in bourgeois ideas and conceptions by reason of their reform attitude with regard to the solution of the social problem. In addition to the sickening propaganda of “bourgeois peace” in Justice, The Labour Leader, and The Clarion, and from the platforms of the S.D.P., I.L.P., and Clarion Fellowship, we are from time to time treated to nauseous professions of “loyalty to the Crown” by some make-believe Socialists in Parliament, professions which go to show how far the mass of the workers in this country are still from the realisation of their class position in society. During the recent Parliamentary debate on the King’s visit to the Tzar, Mr. O’Grady lauded the English monarch to the skies, and Mr. Keir Hardie stated that one of the reasons why he did not wish King Edward to meet the Tzar officially was his (Keir Hardie’s) concern for the reputation of the ruler of England.

The fact cannot be sufficiently emphasised that as Socialists, and necessarily revolutionists, we have formed a conception and take up an attitude with regard to international relations that stand in contrast as clearly and definitely to the position of all other political parties, whether avowed capitalist or alleged labour, as our Declaration of Principles and political action stand to their palliative programmes and reform politics. While, therefore, the reform organisations put their faith in the capitalist endeavours of “promoting peace and good-will among the nations,” we, ever true to the principles of the class struggle, consider it our duty to point out to the workers that the reason for a desire for political departure from nationalism on the part of the capitalist class can only be sought in economic necessity. There can be little doubt that the tremendous inroad made by the countries of the world on the markets of the old world, together with the need for more united repression of the workers, are making the closer unity of the capitalist Governments increasingly necessary, if not inevitable. The capitalist unity evidently becomes a more pressing necessity to the extent that the growth of class-consciousness among the proletariat of the world is accelerated by the increasing economic encroachment upon their pitiable existence.

What was the reason for the nationalism of the capitalist class in the past ? Between the nationally organised bourgeois communities of the various countries there exists an antagonism of interests, which often gives rise to armed conflicts. The nation is the tie embracing the common interest of the possessing class. Hence the native country is the only part of the globe for which the bourgeoisie cherishes any devotion. But the proletariat of all countries have identical interests. In every country they have only one enemy, viz., the bourgeoisie. The Socialist Commonwealth for which the proletariat strive will recognise geographical differentiation, but not national antagonism; the Socialist system of society will establish economic and social peace and fraternity among the peoples of the world. It must be clear that the antagonism between the national sentiment of the capitalist class and the international principles of the proletariat are based upon the economic conditions, the material interests, of the two classes.

But the economic development in all capitalist countries has made mighty strides. The evolution of capitalism in our time has deprived its hitherto cherished forms of their usefulness. The new economic conditions are gradually outstripping the political power of the isolated States of the old world, and the bourgeois interests are rapidly outgrowing their national limitations, and completely uprooting orthodox ideas and notions. In the Western hemisphere a gigantic capitalist State has sprung into existence, which has the advantage of being a whole continent, forming a colossal economic unit, while the Eastern hemisphere is split up into a number of smaller countries. The superior economic development of America, with its immense natural resources and productive powers, is becoming ever more menacing to the interests of the industrial and commercial capitalists of the European continent. And in Asia vast empires are rapidly developing into full-blown civilisation. Japan has already reached an economic and political development approaching in many respects that of European countries. As a competitor in the world’s markets Japan is quickly becoming one of the most formidable pitted against the interests of European capitalists. And China, with a population almost as large as that of the whole of Europe, also shows signs of a far-reaching capitalist development. So tremendous, in fact, are the immediate prospects for the enterprising capitalists of all nations in China, that the very moment capitalist industry and commerce on a large scale becomes possible, bloodshed on land and sea between the great powers of the world will be almost inevitable, because the nations that conquer with the sword will also reap the advantage of participating in the first fruits of China’s full-blown capitalism.. Compared with these stupendous interests the quarrels of the European countries, which had their origin at a time when Western Europe was practically the whole economic and political world, vanish into air. The expansion of capitalism over the entire globe necessitates a much wider unity of interests than the old nations are able to muster—it demands the unity of continents. And it is the development of these new economic conditions which prompt the far-seeing politicians, diplomatists and economists of the bourgeoisie to foster closer international relations. When faced by such significant material considerations the bourgeois patriots deplore and condemn the national prejudices, short-sightedness, and jealousy that hinder the international unity of capitalists; above all, they denounce the stupidity of tariff and of a hostile foreign policy as some of the causes which prevent the desired international understanding among capitalists. But in spite of the wider economic development the bourgeoisie clings to its nationalism with the greatest tenacity. A contemplation of the rapid strides made by America and Japan may cause the capitalists of the European continent to recognise the necessity for abandoning the old antagonism between the European nations, and of a united effort to resist the encroachments upon them by the nations of other continents ; but on the other hand, they know only too well that all the capitalist nations of the world have one common enemy, viz., the international proletariat, whose supremacy they are aware would spell the entire abolition of capitalist society. It is true that in the struggle between capital and labour capitalist mutuality plays a most important part, but in the fight against Socialism by the capitalists in each country the weapon of national patriotism remains still the most effective means of rallying the unenlightened masses to the defence of the private-property constitution. Bourgeois internationalism of a permanent character, though it even may promise the furtherance of the economic interests of nations, can never be realised in face of that “hideous monster,” Socialism, which threatens to swallow the bourgeois States irrespective of their size or vitality.

The whole question for the capitalist class resolves itself, therefore, into the plain issue, either to fight out between themselves the struggle for the larger portions of surplus-value and to neglect in the heat of that combat the repression of the working class, or to let the tussel in their own camp be a minor consideration and to concentrate all their efforts upon the relentless warfare against the proletariat, whose increasing sufferings, caused by the ever-growing power of capital, are forcing upon them the class-consciousness needed to realise their emancipation from wage-slavery.

And do we not daily observe how all sections of the capitalist class in this country, as in every other, sink their petty differences when it means to keep down the workers and to prevent them uniting on a revolutionary basis ? The capitalists of each country would like to be internationalists, but that would mean the complete destruction of their nationalism, which, as already pointed out, is at present their safeguard against Socialism. The fact is that the bourgeoisie can only be international when the economic human relations make such a condition possible. Only when the international proletariat will seize political power and will abolish class antagonisms and exploitation will a sound and lasting internationalism become an accomplished fact.

H. J. Neumann

International Organisation. (1930)

From the November 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our readers will be familiar with the Socialist Party’s attitude towards the “Labour and Socialist International,” which is a loose association of parties like the Labour Party and the I.L.P., and towards the ”Third (Communist) International.” We are hostile to the national parties on account of their failure to accept and apply the principles of Socialism, and equally hostile to the international federations which cannot be more advanced than the affiliated organisations themselves.

The “Labour and Socialist International” is composed of parties which are prepared to support the capitalist class in their wars, and are prepared either alone or in coalition with Liberals and Tories, to carry on the administration of the capitalist system.

The “Third International” differs from its rival in several important respects, but its aims and methods are no less dangerous to the working class. It is rigidly centralised, but the control of the organisation is not in the hands of the affiliated parties. These latter are in the position of having their policies, dictated to them by the Russian party. The policies are in line with the wishes of the Russian government, but not necessarily in line with working-class interests. So we see the Communists advocating the dangerous tactic of violence and giving support to capitalist parties (e.g., the Labour Party). The Socialist movement is not helped, but hindered, by such methods.

It is an encouraging sign that there are now quite a number of parties abroad whose experiences during and since the war have taught them that neither of the international federations is deserving of the support of Socialists. While such an attitude is not of itself proof of sound Socialist principles, it is full of promise for the future. An attempt has been made by some of these parties to lay the foundation for

THE INTERNATIONAL BUREAU OF REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST PARTIES.

The International Bureau has affiliated to it parties in France, Germany, Italy, Rumania, Russia, and Jugo-Slavia. In addition, a Norwegian party endorses its attitude towards the existing internationals. Reports of the Bureau’s Congresses show that, for most of the delegates, association with either of these bodies is unthinkable, and it is claimed by the Secretary of the Bureau, Angelica Balabanoff, that the constituent parties, that “at least the majority,” are Marxist. It is important to notice, however, that the Bureau has no formal constitution. That being so, it is difficult to see how the International Bureau can take the very necessary steps to see that its affiliated bodies are parties which conform to the essentials of Socialist principles and policy. We read, for example, that Maxton and Brockway, of the I.L.P., have indicated their “interest and sympathy.” If the Bureau had a formal constitution based on Marxian principles, these two advocates of alliance with the parties of capitalism would have known that they could not give support to it.

In the absence of such a constitution, the soundness of the organisation can only be tested by an examination of its affiliated parties. The principles of one of them, the French party, are examined below.

The Socialist-Communist Party of France.

The Socialist-Communist Party was formed in 1922 by members of the Communist Party who found intolerable the way in which the Moscow organisation habitually ignored and countermanded the decisions arrived at by the Congresses of the French party, especially in view of the fact that Moscow’s orders were not of a kind to further the interests of the working class. The new organisation at its Congress in 1923 adopted the following declaration as a basis of “reconstituting the unity of the working class” :—

“The formation of a class political party for the revolutionary conquest of power by the workers, with a view to securing, by means of a temporary and impersonal dictatorship of the whole working class, the disappearance of the State and the substitution of socialism or communism for capitalism. The utilisation of all means for ameliorating the workers’ conditions of life ; the refusal to vote for capitalist budgets and refusal to participate in the government of capitalism ; opposition to war making, accepting the principle of ‘insurrection rather than war’.”

The party’s attitude to political action is rather obscure. It repudiates the Communist policy of a violent seizure of power by a minority, and it takes part in national and local elections, but “without attaching to elections exceptional importance . . . attributing to them chiefly a propaganda value.”

The Socialist-Communist Party’s views on many questions are set out in a pamphlet, “L’Unité Ouvrière Nationale et Internationale” (Working Class Unity, National and International), written by the General Secretary, Paul Louis, and published by the party at 12, Rue Rochambeau, Paris 9.

The main argument of the pamphlet is that, were the working class re-united, Socialism would be obtainable. Unity is to be achieved largely through the instrumentality of an international organisation. The writer, Paul Louis, entirely overlooks the point, which is of the utmost importance, that the working class have never yet been united in any country on a Socialist programme. If they had, the existing divisions could never have arisen.

He makes the serious mistake of supposing that the British Labour Party and the I.L.P. are parties of Marxians. Let us therefore repeat that the Labour Party in this country has never at any time had Socialism as its objective. Its aim has been, and is, some form or other of nationalisation or State capitalism. The Labour Party and the I.L.P. have never even claimed to be Marxian bodies, in which respect they are superficially unlike the Labour Parties in the Continental countries which have made that claim. The difference is, however, one of appearances only. Neither in France nor Germany has the nominal acceptance of Marxian principles meant the application of those principles to policy. The behaviour of the German and French parties in 1914 sufficiently demonstrated that.

When, therefore, Paul Louis writes of “re-uniting” the working class, he is overlooking the fact that the working class have not been won over to Socialism in any country. The majority of them do not want Socialism and do not understand it. That being so, it is mere illusion to imagine that working-class unity on a Socialist basis is attainable at present. A Socialist Party cannot yet be more than a minority party.

Paul Louis is similarly mistaken when he writes of the International having broken down only in 1914.

The International had not been built up on a Socialist basis, as was shown before 1914 by its admission to membership of such parties as the Labour Party, the I.L.P., and the French and German Parties, none of which were based on Socialist principles and policy. The anti-Socialist character of the International was perceived by the Socialist Party of Great Britain long before 1914. We foretold that it would be as useless in war as in peace, and we withdrew long before the outbreak of war proved the correctness of our condemnation.

Paul Louis may say that it is not that kind of unity which his party seeks to reconstitute. But if that is the case, then it is essential that each national party and the International itself should be firmly based upon a clear declaration of essential Socialist principles. The objective of common or social ownership, must be clearly understood (this alone would rule out the parties now in the Labour and Socialist International, all of which are supporters of nationalisation or State capitalism).

There must be no room for policies of minority action and armed revolt.

There must be no collaboration with capitalist parties. (This would rule out not only the Labour Party and the I.L.P., both of which are prepared to co-operate with Liberals and Tories in the administration of capitalism, but would also rule out the Communist Parties, which for years have urged the workers to vote for the Labour Parties.)

There must be no room in a Socialist International for any but Socialist parties. And this being so, there could be no purpose in forming an international organisation except upon a definitely constituted Socialist basis. If the affiliated parties are Socialist parties then they can and will undertake to conform to Socialist principles.

The work of making Socialists has to precede the growth of the separate Socialist parties, and their construction on a sound basis must precede the formation of an effective international.

If Paul Louis envisages the reverse process, he has failed to read aright the lessons of past attempts at building national and international Socialist organisations.

We would welcome some further information on the aims and methods of the French Socialist-Communist Party.

First we would like to know exactly what is its objective. It ought, of course, to be unnecessary to ask such a question of a party which declares its aim to be Socialism and declares its acceptance of Marxian theories. Unfortunately, the Labour Parties in all countries have misused the word Socialism, and applied it to their aim of state capitalism, which leaves intact the division of society into a propertied class and a class of property-less wage-earners.

Secondly, we would like to know exactly where the Socialist-Communist Party stands with regard to the use of the vote. If, as appears to be the case, they regard elections as having chiefly a propaganda value, how do they propose to gain control of the political machinery, without which Socialism cannot be achieved ?

Thirdly, does the Socialist-Communist Party rule out entirely the policy of collaboration with the non-Socialist parties, including the parties in the Labour and Socialist International and the parties in the Third International?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is not prepared to join with parties whose aims and methods are contrary to the interests of the working class and a hindrance to the achievement of Socialism. The Labour and Communist Parties are parties to which that condemnation applies. It is our experience that any other policy is fatal for a Socialist organisation.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Essentials of Socialist Unity. (1906)

From the January 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Socialist Working Class

Comrades,

In the January number of our official organ—the Socialist Standard—we addressed you concerning the International Socialist Congresses, and briefly dwelt with our reasons for declining an invitation from the Secretary of the British section at the Amsterdam Congress to take part in forming a National Committee to deal with matters arising out of the International Congress, on the grounds that it should be the task of the Socialist Party alone to deal with these questions, and that, judging by the composition of the British section at the Amsterdam Congress, the proposed Committee would consist of men who are in no sense of the word Socialists. That Committee has now been formed and its composition fully justifies the view we took of it in January last.

In accordance with our promise, we have forwarded a communication to the International Socialist Bureau, asking that, in our name, a motion be placed upon the Agenda of the next International Congress, for discussion in open Congress, embodying the following proposals:—

(a) That admission to future International Socialist Congresses shall be open only to all avowed Socialist, bodies that accept the essential principles of Socialism, i.e., socialisation of the means of production and distribution, union and international action of workers, Socialist conquest of the Public Powers by the proletariat organised as a class party recognising and proclaiming the class war, running all candidates upon this basis and adopting an attitude of hostility under all circumstances to all sections of the capitalist party.

(b) That all previous resolutions (defining the basis of admission to. the Congress) be rescinded.

(c) That all matters upon the agenda be discussed in open Congress and that the methods of discussion in Commissions be entirely abolished.

(d) That each delegate shall have one vote, but if a poll be demanded, each Party represented shall be entitled to one vote.

(e) That representation upon the Bureau shall be upon the basis of Parties represented at the Congress, each of which shall be entitled to one representative upon the Bureau.

We have further requested the Bureau to at once consider the advisability of adopting one language in which all the business of the Bureau and of the Congress shall be conducted, with the object of coming to a decision upon the matter in sufficient time for the language decided upon to be adopted as the official language of the Stuttgart Congress.

Up to now the International Socialist Congresses have not considered the composition of the Nationalities represented thereat. At Amsterdam, National matters were entered into, when a resolution was passed in favour of National Unity. If the International Movement is to be placed upon a sound revolutionary basis the Congress must enter into the character of the different National organisations which are obtaining admission to the Congresses and affiliation to the Bureau. When the Congress has, by its resolute action, eliminated all pseudo-socialist organisations, such as deny the existence of the class war, or in any way support the capitalist class or its catspaws in their respective countries, then unity of the Socialist forces in each country will be easily accomplished.

We are, Comrades,

With fraternal greetings,

The Executive Committee,

Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Head Office,

1a, Caledonian Road, London,

December 1905.

North Africa, Italy and Capitalism (1944)

From the September 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Because the Socialist Party of Great Britain is composed of members of the working class who, like most workers, are tied down to the place wherein they sell their labour power, we have not been able to do much to propagate Socialism directly to peoples of other lands. But although we have continually stressed the capitalist evils existing in this country, it does not follow that the S.P.G.B. is blind to the stultifying effects of capitalism in other countries. Indeed, those who have studied our case know that we have always stressed the universal nature of capitalism. Go wherever you will, you will find on one hand a privileged class that, without the necessity of working, can enjoy every luxury and comfort, and even dodge many of the worst effects of war, and, on the other hand, a far larger class composed of those who are forced to work to gain the bare necessities of life. Go where you will and, side by side with the wealth of those who produce nothing, you will see the poverty of those who produce all wealth—the workers.

With this fact in mind, the present writer would address those men and women who have been drawn into some branch of the Services and eventually sent abroad.

Possibly for the first time in your lives you have seen the sordid and nauseating effects of capitalism in countries other than England. You have, perhaps, been to North Africa and seen the dire poverty, squalor and hunger rampant in that vast terrain. You have seen disease-ridden Arabs dragging out an existence on tracts of land where the soil produces nothing that is edible. You have possibly wondered, with science at its present advanced state, why chemical fertilisation of the soil has not been undertaken. To the Socialist the answer is simple : Capitalism does not think such a step profitable.

Side by side with the poverty of the Arabs you have seen the wealth of Continental parasites, who can live in palatial, comparatively hygienic houses that are protection against the flies, mosquitoes, and stinks that beset the major part of North Africa’s population.

Possibly you have been to Italy and witnessed there the abject poverty and hunger of the many and the wealth and plenty of the few. You have seen the Naples slums—and maimed men and women begging in the dusty streets. you have learned, perhaps, that when Mussolini rose to power he ordered the patching up of these slums and the arrest of all beggars seen upon the streets. Thus to the tourist and casual observer slums and beggars did not exist in Italy. The grand facade of brightly coloured house exteriors and streets without beggars did its work in advertising what Fascism had done for the workers, yet merely hid the filth, insanitary conditions and destitution that actually existed.

By learning this, perhaps, you have realised that a Fascist administration, by a ruthless eradicating of visible signs of poverty and squalor, may give a grand exterior to capitalism, but can do nothing towards actually curing the evils inherent in the social order.

You have seen, perhaps, Italian workers too poor to buy the food that will give them proper nourishment. You have seen shops that, through the background operations of prospering, well-fed “black-marketeers” are able to sell, at prices beyond the reach of the. workers, a bountiful supply of food, clothing, and other necessities. You have seen the rich satisfy their wants by paying the prices asked. You have seen the poor, half-fed and in rags, because they are unable to buy.

Fellow workers, many of you have seen these things now. Is it not obvious that the poverty-stricken, stultifying, disease-breeding conditions of the workers are not confined to Britain, but exist in every capitalist country? Does not the magnitude and far-reaching nature of this outworn social order convince you of the importance of abolishing it, with all its contradictious, anomalies and insanities ? Are you not convinced that capitalism should be replaced by a social order wherein all co-operate in producing and distributing the needs of society—wherein there is no master class exploiting a slave class—wherein the whole of society has free access to the products of society ?

Workers! what are you going to do about it?

Frank Hawkins

International Socialism (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

One of the basic fundamentals of the socialist movement is the fact that it is a world movement. This doesn’t mean that socialists are internationalists in the widely accepted interpretation of that word. In the world of our times the term ‘internationalist" has grown to mean one who advocates such developments as "United Nations" or even "World Federalism." The difference between such concepts and that of the scientific socialists is that socialism envisages a world without nations and without governments, a world without economic class divisions, a world in which government over man as we know it becomes an administration by men over things. Only in this sense are socialists internationalists.

As things exist, however, socialists are compelled to operate within national boundaries. We are ticketed from birth or through naturalization as American or English or German and so on. Whether we like it or not we are compelled to build our organizations within this type of world, attempting to gain political control from the class that now controls it and introduce a classless society. So the members of the Companion Party movement are composed of individuals from many different nations and we speak in the tongue and in the particular accents of the countries and the sections of those countries from which we come. But although our language may differ, our object and our principles are one for despite all differences in language, in customs, or even in dress, the conditions which cry out for the abolition of capitalism in America are basically no different than those that exist throughout the world, generally. Nor are the confusions that fill the minds of most people on the subject of socialism any different elsewhere than they are in America. Take, for example, the situation in Great Britain.

Our sister party in Britain is the Socialist Party of Great Britain. That organization was founded in 1904 prior to the establishment of the British Labour Party and has continued, ever since, to publish its journal The Socialist Standard and to disseminate information on the subject of socialism in various ways. — Nevertheless, the British Labour Party, which has never in its history advocated the abolition of the wages system, is widely regarded throughout Great Britain and the rest of the world as a party of socialism. For more than sixty years the British Labour Party has advocated nationalization of industries. Furthermore they have actually instituted such nationalization. During all of this period the Socialist Party of Great Britain have maintained that nationalization of industries is in no way analogous to socialism and that the contradictions of capitalism would operate just as freely within a Labour regime as they would in any other regime. Scientific socialists have continued to contend that no political organization — regardless of label — can make capitalism operate in the interest of the majority of the population. We have continued to point out that poverty on a wide scale would continue under Labour government, that strikes on the home front and wars on the international front would continue to be the order of the day regardless of who runs the government — avowed capitalist or professed labour politicians. That nothing short of the abolition of capitalism and the introduction of a system of production for use rather than for sale on the market would solve the problems that threaten to destroy us all.

Yet we still hear the friends of reform politics advocate labor parties as governments and we still have the enemies of socialism pointing to Britain as a horrible example of socialism in action.

The time will come, we feel, when the workers in their millions will understand that labor party politics have nothing to do with socialism but are just another scheme to make capitalism somehow become more palatable to the majority who reap no benefits from it. The time will come when the program of the Companion Parties of Socialism will become the order of the day

The Common Market & the Workers (1975)

Party News from the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Speech in Trafalgar Square on 1st June

On one point both sides are agreed in the Referendum debate. They all prophesy Doom and Disaster. The “pros” if we come out — and the “antis” if we stay in. And they are both right!

The Government’s own statement confirms this. “In or out of the Common Market, it will be tough going for Britain over the next few years”, it says. They will not frighten us! The workers will increasingly realize that their fate under capitalism, British or European, is wage-slavery — and that they have nothing to lose but their chains, European or British.

The creation of the so-called European Common Market merely rubber-stamps Government approval on a fait-accompli, an established fact, which normal capitalist development makes inevitable. As soon as the European continent was covered with motorways and sprinkled with airports, the ancient fragmentation of city-states was on the way out. (Lichtenstein is now a tourist curiosity.)

Now an Unholy Alliance has been formed to counter the competition of the Soviets and the Yanks. “One capitalist kills many”, wrote Karl Marx in Capital. This is all the Common Market is about. “The capitalist class cannot exist without incessantly revolutionizing society. It invades every quarter of the globe . . . it deprives industry of its national foundation. The old local isolation is replaced by the interdependence of nations. It ends the fractionization of the means of production. Independents and provinces are consolidated into a single nation with one government, one legal code, one interest and one fiscal frontier.” (Communist Manifesto.)

By an elaborate system of subsidies, import bars and tariffs they are ganging up against the other two giants, although (as in the case of Italian wine in France and French eggs in Britain) they will ignore joint decisions when it suits them. For this they have stacked mountains of beef and butter, lakes of wine and vast stocks of eggs and bricks. It is the 1975 version of the old Free Trade-versus-Protection battle of a century ago, between those who wanted cheap food “for the workers” and those who wanted to keep up prices.

But cheap food means cheap labour. The pathetic TV discussion about the price of a tin of baked beans in various countries is an exposure of the real poverty of the working class in all of them. Still more absurd are the pitiful arguments about “sovereignty”. What “sovereignty” has a poor devil with a twenty-year mortgage round his neck? who can only go to bed by kind permission of a building society — there to lie beating his brains out about “control from Brussels”! Frederick Engels wrote ninety years ago that “the question of Free Trade or Protection moves entirely within the bounds of the present system, and has, therefore, no direct interest for us Socialists who want to abolish it”.

He was careful to add, however, that we are indirectly interested in anything which expands and develops the capitalist system as quickly as possible, hastening the day when its replacement by Socialism becomes inevitable. The Common Market will intensify all those factors which will destroy capitalism. Overproduction, glut, crises, depression — this is the normal course of capitalism, and the creation of a still smaller class of still wealthier capitalists, with the proletarianization of the remaining peasantry of Europe, will speed the growth of the Socialist movement.

For us Socialists the issue is not big capitalism or small, not British trade or European trade, not exploitation by British or European government, but the abolition of capitalism by the establishment of Socialist society. Not a European community which is nothing but a capitalist power-bloc, but the worldwide multi-racial commune of humanity — Socialism.

Horatio

Editorial: War and the International Outlook (1943)

Editorial from the December 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

When war broke out in 1914 the S.P.G.B. issued a Manifesto which reiterated our warning of years that it is the economic rivalries of the capitalist system that contain within themselves the ever-present danger of war and which had caused that world conflagration. We affirmed that the interest of the working class of all nations is not in deciding which nation or group of nations shall have dominant control of trade routes and the world’s markets, but in ending the social system based on private ownership by the capitalist class of the means of production and distribution. Our Manifesto ended with the words :—

“Having no quarrel with the working-class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism.”

In October, 1939, we published in these columns a statement re-affirming the Socialist attitude to war. We said : —

“With the increasing international tension of recent years we have again and again pressed home the undeniable truth that as long as the world is organised on a capitalist economic basis the never-ceasing rivalries will continue to produce conflicts ranging from mere diplomatic crises to gigantic armed struggles spreading over the oceans and continents of the world. The S.P.G.B. re-affirms that the interest of the world working-class—on whom the untold misery and suffering of war inevitably falls—lies in abolishing the capitalist economic system.”

At our 1940 Annual Conference a statement was formally adopted which briefly reviewed the arguments for supporting war, re-affirmed our Socialist opposition, and held that “the consequences of modern wars are such that we cannot envisage circumstances arising which would justify Socialist support for war.”

We are aware that this attitude, unpopular in the last war, is equally unpopular now, particularly in face of the widespread belief that war is the only means of stemming the spread of Fascism and of safeguarding democracy. There are many who would say that they entirely agree with the broad statement that capitalism is the breeding ground of war, but who put forward the argument that military defeat is the way of overthrowing the dictatorships. Briefly our answer to this is that though military defeat may have that immediate result—as indeed it did in 1918—the existence of democracy depends in the long run on the degree of enlightenment of the working-class, and that one of the consequences of modern war is that the nationalist feeling and hatreds engendered by war hinder the growth of working-class internationalism and enlightenment. On this latter point there can be no question. The growth of nationalism in the ranks of the workers and of theories based on the assumption that the whole German nation, including the German workers, are incapable of rising above the barbaric traditions of the German military and big business cliques is proof of this.

We affirm that that way lies despair and disaster for the working-class movement and the human race. The need of the hour is to re-kindle the former flame—weak and uncertain though it was—of internationalism based on the slowly growing recognition that the interests of the world working-class of all nations are one. It is easy and plausible to say that internationalism is unreal and must be abandoned in face of the past unwillingness of workers in Germany and Italy to line up behind their aggressive ruling class dictatorships. Our view is that the decision of the British and other Labour movements (in 1914 and again in 1939) to ally themselves with the Governments of capitalism inevitably weakened the hands of those in other lands who were willing to resist the capitalist-nationalist fever around them. We hold that hope for the future lies in the direction of trying to keep alive independent Socialist organisation free from the charge of having lost its belief in the working-class. We hold that it is the duty of Socialists here to continue their work of spreading Socialist knowledge confident that Socialists in every other country will be doing what they can in face of the difficulties that beset them. At a time when the international fraternity of the working-class is drowned by the roar of guns, we re-affirm our faith that only through international, Socialist action can the future peace and well-being of the working-class be attained.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, S.P.G.B.

50 Years Ago: The International Basis of Socialism (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

That Socialist society must, by its very nature, be of an international character, is a truism that the Socialist party has persistently stressed. This, not out of any pious sentiment, but through a recognition of the fact that production in the world to-day is based on a systematic division of labour which integrates and interlocks the whole world, or, at any rate, in wartime, large geographical sections of it. But, unfortunately, side by side with this international division of labour, or. more correctly, resting on it. there exists the capitalist system which rends society in twain by its class division, rendering impossible harmony and peace in the production and distribution of the necessities of life (. . .)

The most important factors in the closer welding of the world to-day. and the future, are undoubtedly air transport and radio. Both of these have succeeded in annihilating space (in the sense of time) to an unprecedented degree, and have brought the peoples of the world into closer contact with each other. To-day, of course, the contact is somewhat painful, but eventually it must play a great part in inculcating an international consciousness into the minds of the world's workers and bring home to them their essentially common interests.

(From an article by M. Judd in the Socialist Standard, May 1944.)

Workers have no country (2022)

From the April 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Out of the discontent of the Industrial Revolution arose the Chartist movement. The need for the whole working class to unite in one movement had come to the fore.

Many are aware of the International Working Men’s Association (the First International), in which Marx was an active participant. Few know of its precursor which most probably served as its prototype.

In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels stated that:

‘The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.’

Three years before this, the Chartist campaigner George Julian Harney declared:

‘There is no foot of land, either in Britain or in the colonies, that you, the working class, can call your own.

‘All men are brethren’

In September 1845 the society of Fraternal Democrats was formed, adopting the motto, ‘All men are brethren.’ It was founded by some in the British Chartist movement such as Harney along with a variety of political refugees from across Europe.

Part of the Fraternal Democrats’ political platform declared:

‘We denounce all political and hereditary inequalities and distinctions of castes… that the earth with all its natural productions is the common property of all; we therefore denounce all infractions of this evidently just and natural law, as robbery and usurpation. We declare that the present state of society, which permits idlers and schemers to monopolise the fruits of the earth and the productions of industry, and compels the working classes to labour for inadequate rewards, and even condemns them to social slavery, destitution, and degradation, is essentially unjust.’

It also made a commitment to internationalism:

‘Convinced that national prejudices have been, in all ages, taken advantage of by the people’s oppressors to set them tearing the throats of each other, when they should have been working together for their common good, this society repudiates the term ‘Foreigner,’ no matter by, or to whom applied. Our moral creed is to receive our fellow men, without regard to ‘country,’ as members of one family, the human race; and citizens of one commonwealth – the world.’

In one of his addresses to the Fraternal Democrats, Harney explained:

‘Whatever national differences divide Poles, Russians, Prussians, Hungarians, and Italians, these national differences have not prevented the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian despots uniting together to maintain their tyranny; why, then, cannot countries unite for obtainment of their liberty? The cause of the people in all countries is the same – the cause of Labour, enslaved, and plundered… In each country the tyranny of the few and the slavery of the many are variously developed, but the principle in all is the same. In all countries the men who grow the wheat live on potatoes. The men who rear the cattle do not taste flesh-food. The men who cultivate the vine have only the dregs of its noble juice. The men who make clothing are in rags. The men who build the houses live in hovels. The men who create every necessary comfort and luxury are steeped in misery. Working men of all nations, are not your grievances, your wrongs, the same? Is not your good cause, then the same also? We may differ as to the means, or different circumstances may render different means necessary but the great end – the veritable emancipation of the human race – must be the one end and aim of all.’

He elaborated on his internationalist ideas in the journal, The Northern Star (June 19, 1847):

‘The people are beginning to understand that foreign as well as domestic questions do affect them; that a blow struck at Liberty on the Tagus is an injury to the friends of Freedom on the Thames; that the success of Republicanism in France would be the doom of Tyranny in every other land; and the triumph of England’s democratic Charter would be the salvation of the millions throughout Europe.’

‘But let the working men of Europe advance together and strike for their rights at one and the same time, and it will be seen – that every tyrannical government and usurping class will have enough to do at home without attempting to assist other oppressors.’

In 1848 when a British military intervention against France looked possible, the Fraternal Democrats issued a manifesto which said:

‘Working men of Great Britain and Ireland, ask yourselves the question: why should you arm and fight for the preservation of institutions in the privileges of which you have no share… why should you arm and fight for the protection of property which you can only regard as the accumulated plunder of the fruits of your labour? Let the privileged and the property owners fight their own battles.’

Harney also published a newspaper, The Red Republican, to educate his working-class readers about socialism. The journal of July 1850 explained:

’As regards the working men swamping all other classes the answer is simple – other classes have no right to exist. To prepare the way for the absolute supremacy of the working class preparatory to the abolition of the system of classes, is the mission of The Red Republican.’

In 1850 The Red Republican carried the first English translation of The Communist Manifesto, describing it as ‘The most revolutionary document ever given to the world’.

‘The poor have no country’

Another Chartist activist, Ernest Jones, wrote in The People’s Paper of 17 February, 1855:

‘Is there a poor and oppressed man in England? Is there a robbed and ruined artisan in France? Well, then, they appertain to one race, one country, one creed, one past, one present, and one future. The same with every nation, every colour, every section of the toiling world. Let them unite. The oppressors of humanity are united, even when they make war. They are united on one point, that of keeping the peoples in misery and subjection… Each democracy, singly, may not be strong enough to break its own yoke; but together they give a moral weight, an added strength, that nothing can resist. The alliance of peoples is the more vital now, because their disunion, the rekindling of national antipathies, can alone save tottering royalty from its doom. Kings and oligarchs are playing their last card: we can prevent their game. No movement of modern times has therefore been of such importance, as that international alliance about to be proclaimed…’

In yet another article in The People’s Paper (3 March, 1855), Ernest Jones declared:

‘Let none misunderstand the tenor of our meeting: we begin tonight no mere crusade against an aristocracy. We are not here to pull one tyranny down, only that another may live the stronger. We are against the tyranny of capital as well. The human race is divided between slaves and masters… Until labour commands capital, instead of capital commanding labour, I care not what political laws you make, what Republic or Monarchy you own – man is a slave.’

It reflected the view as later expressed by the First International:

‘…The poor have no country, in all lands, they suffer from the same evils, and they, therefore, realise that the barriers put up by the powers that be the more thoroughly to enslave the people must fall. It is the poor, above all the poor, who will realise the dream of the gentle Anacharsis de Cloots, the orator of the human race, who will bring into being the great federation of the peoples. So come, young people, and help us accomplish this lofty task of the nineteenth century…’ (To the Paris Students, To the Students and Young People of All Countries From the Workers of All Countries, 1866.)

The Fraternal Democrats, the Chartists and the International Workingmen’s Association disappeared but not their principles. The idea of working peoples’ international solidarity persisted.

Today, it is put forward by the World Socialist Movement.

ALJO

The Miner’s Strike – Why (1984)

From the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why did 120,000 miners join what has become the longest, bitterest and most controversial strike in the British coal industry since 1926? Clearly, it is no answer to say that they are motivated by subversive political aims or that they have all been hoodwinked by nasty Arthur Scargill and the NUM leaders. We can read this kind of facile substitute for an explanation in the propaganda press.

Economics under capitalism are concerned first and foremost with price and profit. Production is regarded as “uneconomic” when investment of capital shows little or no prospect of leading to profit for the investor. Being “uneconomic” is not at all the same as being “useless”. For example, dairy farming is currently “uneconomic” within the EEC countries because more milk is produced than can be sold profitably. However, milk is desperately needed by the 40,000 children who, according to UNICEF, die of starvation or malnutrition-caused diseases every single day. So, when the economic experts say that miners are producing too much coal, this excess relates to profit rather than need. Similarly, when they say that investment in certain miners is “uneconomic” this does not mean there is not plenty of coal in them, but that capital investment in mining such coal would be unprofitable.

Politicians like Thatcher have never forgiven the NUM for the success of their last strike. Responding to the feelings of many capitalists, her government wants to weaken the power of the miners. A leaked Cabinet Minute of 1979 explained that 

A nuclear programme would have the advantage of removing a substantial proportion of electricity from disruption by miners and transport workers.

Economists are not paid to think about the devastation of the old mining communities which pit closures cause: destroying long-established ways of life does not appear on their balance sheets. Economists are not paid to register the harsh facts that more than half of the men attempting suicide are unemployed and that the rate of successful suicides in Britain has shot up during the present recession. Nor are they paid to bother themselves about the old workers who will die this winter because they are too poor to switch on a heater. Electricity output has been reduced because there is much less market demand for it by domestic consumers, while the non-recognition of real human demand leads to the totally unnecessary social disease of hypothermia. But none of these factors is of economic significance under capitalism: let communities be converted into industrial wastelands, let thousands of useful and energetic miners be forced into idleness, let thousands be cold for lack of coal-based heating.

Myths about the State

There was once a time when miners, in the company of many other workers, were easily persuaded that the solution to the problems of the profit system was nationalisation of industry. If only the mines were owned and controlled by the government rather than by private capitalists, it was asserted, the miners would have little to worry about. Forty years ago Will Lawther, the President of the Mineworkers’ Federation of Great Britain (the predecessor to the NUM), asked readers to imagine what could be achieved through nationalisation:

It would win the complete confidence of the miners and their families. Generations of suspicion and hatred would be wiped out, and an entirely new attitude developed towards the coal industry . . . Only through public ownership can you really plan the effective use of Britain’s coal resources, plan production on the basis of modernisation or mechanisation, and bring about complete unity between your export and domestic coalfields . . .” (Foreword to Britain’s Coal by Margot Heinemann, 1944).

Lawther goes on to predict that nationalisation would “enormously improve output and make use even of old coalfields that are looked upon as being worked out” and that “only the nationalisation of the mines can win the confidence of the miners”. One can forgive miners for having been taken in by these hopes for capitalism at the time, even if—it must be added—the Socialist Party of Great Britain was then pointing out to those who would listen that nationalisation offered no solution to the workers. But now, after decades of experience of state capitalism in action, it is politically inane for workers to imagine that nationalised industries are in any way immune from the economic laws of capitalism. The NCB, as the state employer, is just as exploitative and antagonistic to the workers’ interests as were the old mine owners.

The second myth which needs to be dispelled is that the state—the government, the law, the judges, the police commanders—is neutral. The state must be the political defender of the ruling class. When thousands of miners are stopped from picketing, when hundreds of miners are beaten by the police and when the funds of the South Wales NUM are stolen by the courts, it is clear that the state exists to reinforce the needs of capital. It would make no difference if the Labour Party was running the state instead of the Tories. That is why, when the Labour Party was in office between 1964 and 1970, they closed down 48 pits and made over 50,000 miners unemployed in the South Wales region alone.

In the first three months of the strike one miner was arrested every twenty minutes—3,282 arrests in all. Over 80 per cent of these arrests were for “breach of the peace” or “obstruction”. Obviously the government has instructed the police to use tough tactics in dealing with the strikers. The well-known television picture of a police officer beating a defenceless striker with a truncheon is but one of numerous examples of police brutality in a battle initiated by the state. But as ordinary workers, paid to do an unpleasant job, it is not the police workers on the picket lines who are to be blamed: the real culprits are the legally respectable and physically secure boot-boys who pull the strings of the state.

The NCB has increased its importation of cheap Polish coal which is one of the factors weakening the effects of the British miners’ strike. The NUM now has an official picket outside the Polish Embassy, calling on the Polish bosses to suspend imports in order to strengthen the effects of the British strike. But when Polish miners attempted to set up an independent union of their own the President of the NUM (writing in his personal capacity) argued that such action constituted “sabotage” and that the Polish miners should be loyal to their state bosses. The capitalists, who not for the first time are benefiting from the tactic of Divide and Rule, must be laughing all the way to the bank as they import cheap coal from their “Communist” enemies. Reproduced below is the full text of a resolution published by the underground Solidarity union in the Warsaw region, first published in their illegal journal, CDN. It shows that the writers and supporters of this Polish resolution are thinking along internationalist lines:

“For four months the British miners have been on strike against a programme of mass closures of mines for economic reasons. The miners are threatened with unemployment. The government has rejected compromise solutions and has resorted to severe police methods against the strikers. Thousands of miners have been arrested; hundreds have been hospitalised and one has been killed.

The government of the Polish People’s Republic, despite hypocritical condemnations of the activities of the British police in the columns of the regime press and by the regime’s pseudo-trade unionists, is profiting from the export of coal to Britain. It sells dirt cheap coal which has been mined in scandalously neglected working conditions and with reckless condemnation of the labour force and the coalfield. The slave labour of the Polish miner serves to break the resistance of the British miner.

British miners! The true sentiments of Polish trade unionists towards the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic and their practices was shown in the recent electoral farce which was boycotted by the workers. In the prevailing conditions of terror, the Polish workers’ movement is at present not in a position to undertake protest actions. But you may be certain that as you have supported and are supporting our struggle, so we are in solidarity with you. We strongly oppose every case where force is used against workers struggling for their rights and interests.” (Published in CDN, Mazowsze region, 26 June, 1984).

How painful it would be for the workers who produced the above resolution to know that the President, and several other key leaders, of the NUM believe that Solidarity should not exist.

What the miners struggle has shown

As the miners’ strike has not been organised by socialists, it is not surprising that tactics have been employed with which we disagree. It is possible that the division within the NUM could have been avoided; full, democratic decision-making within the workers’ movement is always the surest guarantee of strength.

But the miners’ struggle has shown the importance of solidarity between workers of one county and another one country and another. The sense of common purpose and dedication which thousands of miners have shown during the strike contrasts sharply with many previous struggles in trade union history, where workers have been conned into co-operating in their rulers’ interests. Let any miserable little cynic who says that workers are incapable of self-organised co-operation take a look at the tremendous achievements in communal self-help which strikers have set up.

Secondly, the strike has shown the Labour Party and its Leftist followers to be quite unable to point the miners in the direction of socialism. According to the theory, Leftists are supposed to wait for major struggles like this one in order to move in and tell the workers about the alternative to capitalism. In fact, the SWP, CP, WRP, RCP and numerous other inflatable vanguards have not produced a single leaflet between them urging the miners to transform their demands into the political aim of abolishing the wages system. As for the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock and his fellow mis-leaders have had little to offer but empty rhetoric. After all, every time the Labourites stand up in the House of Commons to tell the Tories how wicked they are, the Tories have been able to quote chapter and verse showing that previous Labour governments have run the mines in just the same way—to meet the demands of the profit system.

In any strike between robbers and robbed (with the exception of political strikes, such as when the dockers opposed immigration or the Labourites ran their phoney day of action) the Socialist Party is unequivocally on the side of the robbed. In the class war no worker and no political party can be neutral. But in expressing solidarity with workers in struggle, we point out that our sympathy and their temporary gains will be meaningless unless victory involves winning the war and not just one battle. To win the class war workers must organise as a class for the conquest of the earth and all its resources. No lesser victory is worth settling for.

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: May Day and War (1987)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

It Is good that workers are prepared to demonstrate their international solidarity, but it should be a demonstration of real and understanding solidarity. Not mere words and emotion that, like a weathercock, can be changed with every wind. Lack of real understanding of the workers' unchanging wage-slavery while capitalism lasts, in spite of huge May Day demonstrations, enabled the opposing capitalist rulers to line up the workers against each other in the devastating ’war of twenty years ago. Lately the signs of another world war have made their ominous appearance with the beginning of an armaments race, It is an urgent matter that workers should reflect calmly and not allow plausible argument to manoeuvre them into the shambles again.

[From the Socialist Standard, May 1937.]

Questioning Nationality (2021)

From the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ten-yearly census once again literally poses the question of nationality. The Socialist Standard runs the occasional article on ‘How I became a socialist’ to which this is a companion piece, ‘Why I am an internationalist’.

I begin with a report of migrant labour being used to undercut wages and actually displace local workers from their employment and eviction from their homes. This, naturally, caused resentment and a reaction that became violent resulting in the authorities responding with decisive force.

If this incident seems to have been missed in these days of all-revealing social media, that’s because it occurred in 1832 on the south bank of the Tyne at Friar’s Goose. The mining community there had been in a protracted dispute with the local coal owner who determined to break the strike.

To this end migrant labour was brought in to replace the local workers, some from as far away as Derbyshire and Cumberland, where lead mining was in sharp decline. With the benefit of historical perspective it is clear that both sets of workers were victims of a common foe, capitalism.

Lead mining had ceased to be profitable while coal, at the very heart of the burgeoning industrial revolution, promised rich dividends. All the more so if labour costs could be minimised. Unemployment and the prospect of poverty were wielded to pitch one group of workers against another, keeping them divided and thus effectively powerless.

One hundred and twenty years or so after this event the world was blessed by my emergence, in a maternity hospital named for the local pit. Not on Tyneside though, where I would move to a couple of decades later, but in a Lancashire town ruled by King Coal and Queen Cotton.

However, those two economic monarchs were already relinquishing their power and both had largely been deposed by the time I deserted their realm in the early 1970s. By which time a sizeable community of migrants, on this occasion textile workers from the Indian sub-continent, had settled in the town.

Economic decline fostered resentments and would eventually lead to the election of British National Party members as town councillors. They proved to be so spectacularly useless as councillors their moment was brief, but again indicative of how capitalism, whether consciously or not, can stimulate misdirected resentment and anger.

As already indicated, I moved away from the town and settled in the North East. However, I maintained my allegiance to the football club, a curse I eventually visited on my Gateshead-born son. So was I merely a Lancastrian living in economic exile, all the more so now that I’m domiciled in South Yorkshire?

A reason I was born in Lancashire is that one great granddad migrated from the then North Riding of Yorkshire in search of work. His son, my granddad, married a woman whose family hailed from the Trough of Bowland which was split between Lancashire, and the North and West Riding of Yorkshire.

On the maternal side, my grandmother was many generations Lancastrian, but her husband was of Devonian stock via Wales, another example of economic migration. So, I am the offspring of migrant labour.

This is by no means an unusual story, rather it is the norm. To say I am a …………………………… (please add your own label) is merely to identify an accident of birth. It is no more significant than that. I have a friend who, by his own admission, is vertically challenged and of a placid demeanour. With a beaming smile he informed all he knew that a DNA test revealed he was, at least in part, of Viking stock.

To return briefly to Friar’s Goose, the only difference between the reluctantly itinerant lead miner migrants and those of today who cross continents, is distance having to be travelled. The cause of migration remains constant, in the modern era it is capitalism.

Direct economic necessity, such as brought sub-continent workers to the Lancashire and Yorkshire textile towns, lays the imperatives of capitalism bare. People largely don’t uproot themselves and their families without good cause and capitalism exploits the imperative of need for its own profitable ends.

However, capitalism, driven by its absolute need to pursue profit, can manifest its competitive nature in extreme form, war. Whether cross border or civil, the root of armed conflicts is economic. Trade routes, resources, control of the levers of state and/or corporate power all too often lie at the bottom of martial conflict.

Not unreasonably, people will move away from battle zones if they can. But, even if the prospect of being killed or injured recedes, the local devastation of homes, workplaces and basic services can make life virtually untenable, especially in the short term. And for the poor the short term is all they have.

Whether it’s your lead mine being closed two hundred years ago or your village/town bombed out yesterday, you essentially face the same dilemma, to stay and try to survive, or move and try to survive.

For all that racism manifests itself, capitalism is ultimately equitable, it will exploit any and all whatever their skin tone, language, dialect or point of origin. For its own purposes it will encourage people to consider how their apparent differences make them somehow special, unique, perhaps in some undefinable way superior to others.

After all, it would be disastrous for capitalism if (when) people realise that their differences are superficial, determined by circumstance not race or ethnicity. Cultural diversity can be a positive, but even culture is not a fixed thing, setting people apart.

I will continue to look at the results for the football team I was born to follow, which is about as deep as my support goes these days. It is an example of how capitalism has become transnational. The club was one of the founders of the football league reflecting the economic power of local capitalism in the 1870s and 80s.

One hundred and fifty years later it is a minnow in (to mix my fresh and saltwater metaphors) in the soccer shark pool, recently bought out by an American deal using leveraged finance to raise the capital. My club? Rather like my country, it seems.

For the vast majority of people, the working class of the world, there needs be to be a recognition and acceptance of the one answer to the surely hackneyed question of, what race am I? The human race!

The national question, as posed by the census, merely confirms the limits of capitalism. To push beyond those limits, to socialism, means making that question is as obsolete as a Cumberland lead mine.

Dave Alton

Society and Morals. Part XI. Morals and Socialism. (1918)

From the November 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part X.

Part XI. Morals and Socialism

The need for the efficient organisation of the Socialist movement has enforced, as a part of its moral principles, a stern "party discipline." Faced by innumerable obstacles, surrounded and attacked by every agency of the ruling class, the butt of misrepresentation, the hunting-ground of the would-be demagogue, self-seeking "leader" and agent provocateur, the revolutionary organisation can only maintain its integrity unsullied and its vitality unweakened by being democratic in constitution, definite in principles, self-critical, and by the rigorous exclusion of non-revolutionary elements. The Socialist must be loyal to his party organisation and vigorous in its defence. He holds as despicable traitors those who, while affirming their adherence to Socialist principles by mouth, deny those principles by acting in contradiction to their implications.

Owing to the cosmopolitan nature of capitalism, the economic and social status of the workers is fundamentally the same the world over. They have the same problems to face in every country, like interests to satisfy, and a common enemy to combat. Evidently, therefore, proletarian revolutionary morality is of international application.

This "Internationalism" of the Socialist movement is in direct antagonism to that national sentiment which is fostered by the bourgeoisie under the name of "patriotism." Despite cosmopolitan finance, the growth of world trade, and the fact that the capitalist class is internationally solid when faced with the opposition of the proletariat, the politics of the bourgeoisie have always been predominantly "national" in character. This has been so because, during the evolution of the bourgeoisie, their class power became consolidated into numerous national governments which could not expand in power territorially for the purpose of enabling the acquisition of further economic advantages and resources without sooner or later coming into conflict. With the rise of Imperialism this "national antagonism" became exceedingly acute and, as we have seen, "patriotism" received a still greater moral significance by reason of its being the prime mental agent in the satisfaction of the imperialist needs of the capitalist class.

But the class-conscious worker sees that "nationalism" is a snare in the path towards emancipation. Not only does it serve to cloud the class issue within the nation, but it also hinders the workers of the world from recognising and acting up to their unity of interest. To the Socialist, therefore, national pride, like racial aloofness, is a contemptible and pernicious prejudice which it is highly immoral for any Socialist to uphold or give way to.

What significance has the "fatherland" or the "glory of Empire" for the wage-slave whose only guarantee of livelihood rests on his ability to sell his labour-power ? None! save that it receives from political superstitions inculcated and carefully nurtured by agents of the dominant class. "Workers of all lands unite!" will inevitably be the watchword of the latter-day revolutionary.

For that organ of oppression and of capitalist protection and attack—militarism—together with closely-allied phenomenon—"war"'—through which are sacrificed millions of workers on the altar of Profit, the Socialist cannot possibly have anything but the liveliest hatred. He never fails to unveil their hideous reality to his fellow-workers. Nevertheless, being a stern realist, he does not allow himself to be led into the delusion, so fervently held to by idealistic pacifists, that the use of force itself is futile and unjustifiable. The use of force is never an end in itself but always a means to an end. History shows that, whilst force has frequently served as a means of subjection and a preserver of enslavement, it has also been indispensable to any movement of revolt on the part of the oppressed.

"Strife" is likewise considered by many so-called "advanced thinkers" to be in itself immoral, and by these the Socialist doctrine of the class-war is discredited and disliked. As we have seen, however, Socialist principles are not deductions from any "absolute ideals," but have been arrived at by a study of the actual evolution of human society ; and such a study shows that class-struggles have been, and that inevitably, the medium of social progress. The proletarian revolutionary movement, therefore, clearly recognises the necessity of a consciously organised struggle against the forces of opposition and reaction, together with the vital importance of acquiring that social and political power by the use of which alone it can institute social control of the means of life.

Conclusion and Summary.

With the emancipation of the workers achieved through economic socialisation human society will enter upon a new phase of its existence. With the forces of production democratically used by and for society, economic exploitation will become impossible and class distinctions a thing of the past. Then the prevailing ethical code will no longer represent, as it has done for so many centuries, the interests merely of a minority of the community. As in the far back savage and barbaric communism the social organism will be a harmonious structure in which the welfare of each and every member is conditional upon the well-being of the society as a whole.

But whereas the morality of tribal society was narrow because the groups were small and exclusive, the communism of the future will be embracing, and probably as wide as the human race itself. Thus the "brotherhood of man," often dreamt about but never achieved, will become a living reality. Grounded upon the world-wide inter-dependence of economic processes, such a ''world'' society will leave as little room for national and racial antagonisms as for those of class.

Moreover the elaborate political machinery which to-day is necessary to enforce the most vital tenets of the capitalistic code will be rendered functionless and obsolete, because the incentive to act in a manner menacing to the social system will have diminished to insignificance. Free from drudgery and emancipated from the miseries or even possibility of material poverty, having access to every avenue of knowledge and art, the men and women of the future will also witness the reconciliation between egoism and altruism, because through economic democracy the merging of the interests of the individual in that of the whole community will have been for the first time rendered completely possible.

The writer has in this series of essays attempted to give a brief account of the changes which have taken place in human society with especial emphasis upon the co-relative changes in the opinions of men as to which modes of conduct and principles of living were good and which were bad in the moral sense. In thus epitomising the results arrived at by the wide researches of many historians and sociologists, many points, even important ones, have necessarily been omitted. The outstanding features of each epoch have alone been dealt with. But as an introduction to an immense subject, rendered in simple language, to members of the working class, its purpose will have been served if it succeeds in dissipating, even in a slight degree, those superstitions prevalent in the minds of so many workers, that what is "right or wrong" always has been and always will be, and that social phenomena, such as the division into classes and the wages system are anything more than temporary and relatively short-lived products of changes in the material conditions under which men have lived.

This last point is important, for a wider appreciation of the truth of the "materialist conception of history" is a necessary factor in achieving that supreme aim towards which the writer has made this humble contribution —the emancipation of the proletariat.

Let us now, in conclusion, recall to the reader's mind some of the essential facts set forth in this rather disconnected series of essays. First, the nature of morality was discussed, and it was seen to consist of certain opinions regarding conduct and the principles which underlie it. These opinions are forced upon men by the social life which they lead. The impulse to moral activity was seen to be based upon certain instinctive sociable feelings which antedate the existence of man himself, and are to be found among all the higher animals which live in organised communities. Then it was shown that the evolution of the artificial appliances and processes which, among animals, man alone has been able to use in maintaining existence, is the root cause of the changes in the form of his social aggregations.

Following these changes in greater detail from the rudest organisations of savagery to the capitalist civilisation of our own day it was seen that, along with changing needs and interests, went a corresponding development in outlook, in men's notions of good and evil, right and wrong. Parricide, cannibalism, incest, and group-marriage, once normal and moral, through the pressure of economic change became immoral. Maternal "law" makes way for the dominance of the patriarch. Polygamy, then normal, is later superseded by monogamy. Chattel slavery becomes the basis of society, and its many horrors are upheld by the moral law until, at a later date, having become obsolete, it is declared anathema. Serfdom passes through the same phases.

Wage-labour and "free contract" become lauded to the skies, and along with the "rights of capital''' are declared the only just and moral basis of society. Competition is now the "life of industry," and free trade, according to the cant of Liberalism, the ''hope of humanity." Imperialism dashes this hope to the ground and substitutes the patriot's answer to the call of empire as the virtue par excellence. Only by the clear-eyed workers for the proletarian revolution is the veil torn from these hypocritical shibboleths revealing naked the profit-hunger of capital, of the bourgeois interests.

Spurning the ideals, the threadbare theories and canting morality of decadent capitalism, the Socialist formulates his own code of morality upon those principles and ideals which flow from the logic of Marxism. Socialist morality is revolutionary because its ideal is the overthrow of bourgeois society and the institution of communism; it is critical because it ruthlessly analyses all the manifold institutions, opinions and motives supported by and themselves in turn supporting existing society ; it is scientific because based upon the findings of sociology ; it is a fighting morality because it promotes the class-war and provides the discipline and fervour necessary for the revolutionary struggle; it is proletarian because the Socialist movement draws its vitality and strength from the working class who, alone in modern society, are fitted by their mode and condition of life to accept the Socialist Ideal.

R. W. Housley

The End.