Italy: The sour smell of success (1971)

From the September 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Economic miracle turns sour” was the headline of a recent Financial Times survey on Italy. Italian industry has come down with a bump from the “boom” of the last ten years.

Low cost-structures, the result of large-scale State takeover of industries, exploitation of previously untapped natural resources and plentiful supplies of cheap and unmilitant labour, allowed Italy to compete very favourably on international markets in the ’50s and ’60s. She benefited particularly from the Common Market removal of tariff barriers. However, rising costs and the appearance of cheaper competitors like Japan and South Korea have slowed down considerably her rate of economic growth, and brought other problems in their wake.

True Italy is no longer placed, as she was in the first years after the second World War, alongside Spain, Greece and Portugal as one of Western Europe’s backward countries. She is the tenth manufacturing nation in the world. But as an advanced capitalist country, Italy now suffers from all the same internal contradictions as her older, capitalist neighbours.

In industry short-time and redundancies are already becoming commonplace. Even during the boom period unemployment never fell below half a million. Now, together with prices, it is rising steeply. Rapid industrial advance, first without the Common Market and then inside it has clearly done nothing to solve working-class problems. Capitalist expansion is not a working-class issue. The benefits of it go largely to the ruling class. Decisions taken on such matters as nationalisation or the Common Market depend on ruling class interests. Their effects for good or bad on the working-class are quite marginal and quite incidental.

In Italy the worst signs of the anarchy of production for profit can be seen in the fields of housing, public transport, health and education. There has been no development in social services to match the rapid changeover since the war from a largely agricultural to a highly industrialised economy. When people flocked from the land into the industrial centres of Northern Italy to become wage workers, they found themselves the victims of uncontrolled building speculation, insufficient transport facilities, a primitive health structure and a hopelessly outdated and inefficient education system. Immigrants from the South (who formed the majority of the new wage slaves) were the worst hit. They were the least able to defend themselves from the conditions they found. Job rivalry with native northerners caused widespread discrimination of an almost racial character. Furthermore as the North prospered, the mainly agricultural South tended to decline relatively. Despite piecemeal attempts at establishing industry in the South, it is generally recognised that the gap in living standards between North and South is still actually on the increase.

Another point worth mentioning is the unlimited sacrifice of environmental to economic interests during the last twenty years. Rapid industrialisation has made Italy an ecological horror story. Eighty-five per cent of its coastline is at pollution danger level and the smog in Milan and Turin (caused largely by the massive increase in car population) is as bad as in Tokyo. The possible decline of the very lucrative tourist industry is just one small indication of the unplannability of capitalism.

Social protest lay dormant in the first part of Italy’s period of high economic growth. In the last five years, however, accumulated working-class grievances have come home to roost. The trade unions have not only concerned themselves with wage bargaining, but have also backed social reforms. Demands supported by strike action have been made for better and lower cost housing (there is a large “surplus” of accommodation on lease at £50 a month and over) and for improvements in the health services. Archaic educational structures have caused tremendous upheavals in Italy’s schools and universities. Furthermore spontaneous riots, especially in the impoverished South, have been touched off by the unemployment situation and by administrative inertia over local reforms.

The Italian Communist Party (PCI), opportunist as all so-called “communist” parties anywhere and here far stronger than elsewhere in Western Europe, has become the reforming party par excellence — while out of power that is. It is a past master at using working-class grievances and demands for reform to attract support. Kept out of “centre-right” and “centre-left” coalitions since 1947, the PCI, with up to 29 per cent of the national vote, would dearly love to have a respectable place in the Italian government. It points to the inefficiency and stop-gap nature of present and previous administrations, but fails to say how its own inclusion would lead to greater stability.

It is, in fact, quite true to say that Italian coalition governments, the caretakers of the Italian capitalist class, have spent most of their time in power since the war bickering and squabbling amongst themselves. They have proved most inefficient administrators of capitalism. The heavy strains and stresses which go hand in hand with commercial society everywhere have been vastly increased by the wheeling and dealing of the “political gangsters” at Rome. It will come as no surprise if in the near future the PCI, already in control of certain regions under Italy’s recent decentralisation programme, realises its dream of having a share in a Western capitalist government. A powerful weapon on its side is the Italian Social Movement (MSI); the strongest avowedly Fascist party in advanced Western Europe.

In reality capitalism’s deficiencies are to be explained by reference not to political incompetence but to the basic conflict of interests that exists in capitalism between employer and employee. The employer is all the time pushed by competitive market forces to produce as cheaply as possible. If he is to stay in business therefore, he must keep his costs down, which means getting as much work as possible out of his employee for the lowest possible wages. The worker, on the other hand, strives, as he must, to keep up his living standards and better his working conditions as much as he is able.

In Italy, as elsewhere, the mass of workers have never yet actually questioned the right of their employers to exploit them for wages. They limit themselves to bargaining for higher wages, using the threat or the weapon of strike action. Moreover, in recent years not only the traditional sectors have used these tactics to defend their interests. Doctors, civil servants and teachers now engage in traditionally working-class actions. The high peak of unrest was the end of 1969, when long-term collective contracts for six million workers were due for renewal. Prolonged strikes were followed by wage increases and improved fringe benefits. But this was not, as indeed it could not be, the end of the story. Since that time strikes have been endemic in Italian society. They will continue to be so. They are an unpleasant necessity of capitalism, but of course no lasting answer to basic working-class problems.

Street politics is the domain of rival groups of thugs calling themselves Maoists (or even “Socialists”) and Fascists. Pitched street battles between left, right and forces of “law and order” are what often faces the inhabitants of the big Italian cities. Apart from the political confusion this spreads among the working-class, it helps to create an atmosphere of fear and tension in which the majority of people would welcome undemocratic government action to outlaw political groups considered “extremist”. Too late then to cry wolf and fascism from the rooftops.

It is truly tragic that the many young people in these groups look no further than eastern state capitalist dictatorships for a solution to the problems of life under western capitalism. However, they do realise that the society in which they live is not run in working-class interests. That in itself is a step forward. We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain point to the fallacy of their ‘solution’, restate the immediate and pressing need for a world of free access and look forward to the day when a genuine Socialist Party is set up in Italy with the same aims and principles as the Companion Parties of Socialism.

Howard Moss

Action Replay: Icy conditions (2026)

The Action Replay column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 2014 Winter Olympics took place in the Russian city of Sochi (see Action Replay for December 2013 and April 2014). There was plenty of controversy attached to them, with environmental problems prominent and up to a third of the cost of staging the Games lost in corruption and embezzlement. Many cities are now reluctant to bid for the Games, because of the costs involved.

This year’s Games were held last month in Milano Cortina, meaning Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo (which, according to Wikipedia, is ‘an upscale summer and winter sport resort’). Again, there were problems with corruption (Guardian 31 January): in October three men were arrested and charged with controlling the distribution of drugs in Cortina, controlling some of the nightclubs and forcing the local council into awarding Games-related construction contracts (the bill for the Games will be well over £4bn). The methods of intimidation allegedly used included threats and beating people up.

The Open Olympics 26 report managed to get the Games’ organisers to publish their financial dealings online (see PDF – tinyurl.com/nczd45hp). This has shown that much of the money being spent will be on road projects which won’t be completed until after the Games are over.

And it’s not just in Cortina. A new ice hockey venue in Milan was still unfinished at the end of January, with the hospitality boxes and press area far from ready. There had also been complaints that the rink was too small and the ice was unsafe. Demonstrations took place in the city over the environmental impact of the Games, to which the police responded with tear gas and water cannons, and there were reports of sabotage of railway lines.

Another controversy has been over the role that the thuggish US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will play. Let’s ignore jokes to the effect that Trump misunderstood the kind of ice needed at the Games. Describing them as ‘a militia that kills’, the mayor of Milan said they would not be welcome in the city. It appears that in fact a separate ICE department, Homeland Security Investigations, will provide intelligence and so on, as it has done at previous large sporting events, but will not conduct any kind of enforcement operations (officially, anyway).

As at some previous Olympics, there will be a new sport at this one, ski mountaineering (skimo), a combination of skiing and mountain climbing. At least it’s more clearly a sport than breakdancing, introduced at the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Paul Bennett

50 Years Ago: When the Workers Ran the Factories (2001)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently the Trade Unions International of Metal and Engineering Workers (which is part of the World Federation of Trade Unions) issued a pamphlet describing how the Italian steel workers refused to allow the owners to close steel factories during 1949 and 1950, and instead continued at their work without wages and without professional management, electing temporary managers from their own ranks. While the workers ran the factories themselves, they built ships, aeroplanes, furnaces; they improved efficiently; and by introducing new processes, they economised considerably on production costs–for example, at the Ilva-Bolzaneto works at Genoa, they reduced the price of a kilogram of metal from 44 to 28 lire, and in order to economise on oil, they invented a process which saved 500 kilograms of oil in every eight hours of work.

It Can be Done

This episode in Italy has a number of useful lessons for all socialists. First, that workers can run the factories by themselves; and that they can not only maintain but improve efficiency. Second, that this kind of movement, which consists of industrial action alone cannot permanently put the workers in control of the factories. As the pamphlet itself says, “there was no point in cherishing the illusion of stable and lasting working-class management in a capitalist regime.” Like all such experiments, this one would have ended immediately had the Government decided to employ resolutely the coercive forces at its disposal. Italy thus reinforces the lesson of Russia after 1917, where the system of worker-elected managements, which operated for a short time after the Revolution, was soon abolished by the Bolsheviks in favour of State-appointed managements when the former system was seen to be incompatible with State-capitalism.

[From “Passing Comment”, Socialist Standard, November 1951]

A Look Round. (1908)

From the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to “Bradstreet’s” there were 964 business failures in America in October, with assets 124 million dollars and liabilities 139 million dollars. In October, 1893, the failures were 1,753 with assets 36 million dollars and liabilities 55 million dollars. Thus in 1893 the average liabilities per failure were 31,375 dollars and in 1907 they were 144,200 dollars. But of the latter twenty failures account for 114 million dollars, leaving only 25 million dollars for the remaining 944.

* * *

The S.D.F., I.L.P., and the Labour Party were well represented in the signatures to the Memorial, relating to the employment of barmaids, submitted to the Chancellor of the Exchequer last month. They included Miss Margaret Bondfield, Rev. R. J. Campbell, A. H. Gill, M.P., A. Henderson, M.P., J. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P., and D. J. Shackleton, M.P. The memorialists claim that from the advertisements in the trade papers it is evident that the great majority of barmaids are engaged on account of their attractiveness to men customers, whilst the record of the magistrates and other courts gives convincing statistical proof that the career of the disproportionate number of barmaids ends in drunkenness, immorality, misery and frequently suicide.

* * *

Now, if public houses are such demoralising and terrible places as these people would have us believe, why do not they take up a logical position and advocate their immediate suppression ? And why do they suggest that the wives and daughters of publicans should be permitted to continue to work in “surroundings which carry with them special dangers and temptations” ? Do they consider the publican has a right of private property in his wife and daughters so inviolable that he is to be permitted to employ them in a career that “ends in drunkenness, immorality, misery, and frequently suicide” ?

* * *

But the memorialists would even permit barmaids now employed to continue in what they consider such vile surroundings provided they have a licence from the Government. They would “protect the young girls of the nation” but those who have already entered upon this horrible career are to be permitted to go down to their end “in drunkenness, immorality, misery, and frequently suicide” if they have taken out a licence !

* * *

The Government is to place it on record that public houses are places where no decent woman should work. The publican’s wife and daughters are not to count. I suppose the worst surroundings are too good for them, according to the ideas of the memorialists. Licences are therefore to be granted to other men’s wives and daughters, and no doubt the fortunate holder of such a badge of slavery will be regarded as one who has either proved herself able to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, or is so low and depraved that it does not matter what happens to her.

* * *

No one denies that the barmaid’s lot could be improved, particularly in regard to her hours of labour, but in many respects it is vastly superior to that of other women workers. As a rule, she gets plenty of food and good food, which is more than can be said of the girls employed in such highly respectable occupations as millinery and dressmaking, often working for nothing and usually for only a few shillings a week. If they live at home the financial effort required for clothing prevents them from being otherwise than semi-starved all the time, and many of them exist in a condition of chronic anaemia which in due course has its effect upon their offspring. If they “live in”—well, Miss Bondfield, who wishes to abolish the barmaids, being an official of the Shop Assistants Union, has time after time denounced the system. And it is said that there are large establishments in the shopping centres of London where the girls who live in are allowed to stay out all night, provided they pay a fine of ten shillings in the morning. Such a system cannot be charged against the publicans. And as to the alleged immorality, it must be admitted that there is nothing drives women on the streets so much as inability to obtain food and clothing for themselves and their dependents. The barmaid, at any rate, is secured against this.

* * *

Again, the atmosphere of thousands of coffee shops is much more immoral than the bar of a public house is ever likely to be, and the girls employed have no protection. Customers may use vile language concerning the food (as it is called) supplied in these places, and this language the waitress has to listen to. A remonstrance on her part to her employer would probably result in her getting “the sack,” as the competition is too keen, and the profits too small, particularly in the poorer districts, for the “guvner” to be able to afford to quarrel with his customers. But if a customer in a wicked public house uses vile language to a barmaid and the manager or proprietor overhears or it is reported to him, the culprit is either warned, or put out and sometimes forbidden the house altogether. And the conditions of the girls in these coffee shops, as to hours, wages, and food, are certainly much inferior to those of the majority of barmaids.

* * *

Of course the S.D.F. and the I.L.P., through their members who signed the memorial, are being made the tools of the most bigoted section of that nonconformist conscience which they have so often denounced. These pharasaical humbugs really wish to prohibit the sale of alcoholic liquors, but lack the courage to openly declare themselves.

* * *

According to the Daily Chronicle’s Rome correspondent between 50,000 and 60,000 Neapolitans have formed a passive resistance movement, and for six months have refused to pay rent or quit their tenements. The Government are taking the usual course. Controlling, as they do, the armed forces of the nation, which armed forces they will continue to control so long as they are politically dominant, they are using those forces against the workers. In the early part of December ten thousand troops from various cities had been despatched to reinforce the Naples Garrison preparatory to evicting the working-class families concerned.

* * *

Once more “the impracticability of the Socialist schemes” has been demonstrated, this time by a Mr. Moreton Frewen. He says that the total accumulated capital in the country is estimated at £9,000,000,000, which invested at 3½ per cent. would bring in about 5d. a day per person. The total income from all sources Mr. Frewen estimates at £1,500,000,000 annually, equal to about 14s. per head per week. “Thus,” says our oracle, “the Socialist ideal of happiness would result in every individual in the country being possessed of a revenue of 16s. 11d. per week.” And Mr. Frewen adds that this would not be “a very prosperous state of affairs.”

* * *

16s. 11d. per head per week, says Mr. Frewen, will be the income under Socialism. It is computed that the average family consists of five persons, so that each family would receive £4 4s. 7d. per week. But it is known that the working class have larger families than the well-to-do section of the population, and the amount would therefore be increased for working-class families. And this “would not be a very prosperous state of affairs” !

* * *

Well, if Socialism really meant dividing up what is known as the National Income, it would mean the trebling, at least, of the income of the mass of the working class. Chas. Booth has shown that 1,250,000 of the population of London are in receipt of a wage of one guinea or less per week per family, and in commenting on the Railway dispute the Daily Telegraph pointed out that, in the event of a strike, an enormous number of men would be willing to blackleg at £1 per week. “Twenty shillings a week is no luxurious wage we admit,” said the Daily Telegraph, “but it is better, alas, than many thousands of workmen in both, town and country can secure.” So that the “prosperity” of the working class under capitalism is represented by one-sixth or less of what, according to Mr, Frewen, they would receive under Socialism, And this proves “the impracticability of the Socialist schemes ” !

* * *

It is not surprising that opponents get the idea that Socialism merely means the equalisation of income or wages when those professing: to be Socialists endeavour to popularise the same idea. Recently I heard a Mr. Dean, on the I.L.P. platform in East Ham, inform a questioner that “of course, it would be quite possible for anyone to save up his money under Socialism, if he preferred not to spend the wages paid to him each week by the State. But he would not be able to employ anyone else with the money so saved. He would be a capitalist, but unable to use his capital.” And after delivering himself of this he read the titles of pamphlets which he advised the audience to buy and study, some of which explained that the wages system would be abolished with the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of Socialism.

* * *

This misconception of Socialism arises largely out of the advocacy of palliatives by both the I.L.P. and the S.D.F. So obscured is the issue, even to members of these bodies, by their talk of the “right to work,” “better wages for the working class,” “free maintenance for children” etc., that they appear unable to conceive of any system where the hooter shall not sound the time for commencing and leaving work, and where the people shall not be the wage-receiving slaves of the machine industry that they are to-day. They would merely “humanise” the conditions of employment.

J. Kay

Italian history (2025)

Book Review from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Shortest History of Italy. By Ross King. Old Street Publishing, 2024. 262pp.

This is the latest in a series of ‘Shortest History’ books with other topics that include Europe, Germany, England, war, democracy, India and Greece. Readers of the Socialist Standard will have seen last November’s review, scathing to say the least, of the one on economics. Is this one any better? The enthusiastic endorsements by various journalists and historians on its back and inside covers certainly make it seem so (‘vibrant’, ‘admirably clear and often wryly amusing’, ‘terrific … a lucid riveting history’, ‘effervescent and entertaining guide’).

Are such comments justified? Well, yes, at least in part. The author’s sparkling prose and his ability to vividly overview tumultuous events and periods in Italy’s history succeed in giving us vivid insights into certain key developments. Examples of this are: the transformation of the city state of ancient Rome into a predatory inter-continental empire; the rebirth in culture, the arts and commerce in the 15th and early 16th century that marked Italy’s rise to European prominence (ie, the Renaissance); the making of Italy as a single nation state in the 19th century, partly at least as a result of the machinations, rivalries and interests of neighbouring European powers; the 20th century phenomenon of fascism that thrust the country into a dictatorship and delayed its growth as the European economic power it eventually became after the collapse of fascism and the unleashing of advanced capitalist development.

But it must also be pointed out that this book does not entirely escape the top down, history-from-above approach that the ‘shortest history’ format lends itself to. This is noticeable here in, for example, the relative lack of examination of the economic forms that drove the machinery of Italy’s various historical stages (ie, slavery under the Roman Empire, feudalism in the Medieval period, and, more recently, capitalism, first mercantile then industrial). Above all it would have been useful for the author to give some prominence to the fact that Italy’s development on the capitalist scene (referred to by another historian as its ‘spluttering bourgeois revolution’), late as it was, was hampered by its division into small independent state units, preventing the development of a national market and militating against advanced, large-scale commodity production. This disunity, reflected as it was in striking language differences across its land mass as well as in political division and economic underdevelopment, only started to be transformed slowly and painfully (and this is covered effectively by the author) by the unification process of the second half of the nineteenth century (the ‘Risorgimento’), which then stretches into the first half of the 1900s, even though there continued to remain a social and cultural gulf between the North and the South of the country (and there still are notable differences), as Italy seriously took on the homogenised, nationalistic model of the Western nation state.

As for the author’s portrayal of today’s Italy, it would have been helpful, from a socialist point of view at least, for him to have explained that the many different governments and parties which have administered the country since the end of the Second World War have all actually been engaged in the same fundamental undertaking – administering and ensuring the continuation of the capitalist system with its mass ownership of wealth by a tiny minority of the population and compulsory wage work for the majority. He might also have mentioned that, though parties calling themselves ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ have had involvement in this, their programmes and policies have borne no resemblance whatever to the concept of socialism (or communism) put forward by the Socialist Party of a moneyless, wageless world society of free access to all goods and services based on from each according to ability to each according to need. But the author would no doubt have considered that to do this would have exceeded his ‘shortest history’ brief. And it may not correspond anyway to the view of the world that he himself holds.

Howard Moss

Tiny (URL) Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard 

"The anti-Semitic Jobbik party captured 16.7 percent of the vote, making it the third-largest party in Hungary, next to the Socialists. Unknown vandals defiled the Holocaust Memorial with bloody pigs’ feet. The television channel Echo TV showed an image of Nobel laureate and Auschwitz survivor Imre Kertész together with a voiceover about rats. Civil servants can now be fired without cause. Krisztina Morvai, a member of the European Parliament for Jobbik, suggested that “liberal-Bolshevik Zionists” should start thinking about “where to flee and where to hide.” http://tinyurl.com/36stz7e

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“These are dark-skinned people, not Europeans like you and me,” said Riccardo De Corato, who is Milan’s vice mayor. He later added: “Our final goal is to have zero Gypsy camps in Milan.” The campaign here is part of the most intense wave of anti-immigration sentiment to wash over Western Europe in years": http://tinyurl.com/2vesbpq

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"Some 200 of France’s expelled Gypsies come from Barbulesti, said Ion Cutitaru, mayor of this town, 60 kilometers east of the capital Bucharest. Not all share the view that life is more bearable back home. Cutitaru, a Roma, said about half have already returned to France or other EU nations where begging brings in more money that the meager social benefits available in one of the EU’s poorest members. Long-term unemployed here receive the equivalent of just €10 a month for each child plus other monthly benefits of around €45". http://tinyurl.com/337eeww

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"Ricky Baking is hunched over a tomb with a hammer and chisel. After several determined blows, the lid cracks into three pieces. He opens the rotten coffin to reveal the skeleton of a 65-year-old man, dressed in his burial suit and shoes. Baking steps into the tomb with bare feet, and reaches for the bones.

This isn’t a grave robbery – it’s an eviction. Like everywhere else in Manila, the North Cemetery has run out of space. Up to 80 funerals take place here every day, and demand for plots is so high most people can only afford to rent tombs. If your relatives fail to keep up the payments, another body will take your place. It’s Baking’s job to clear this grave so another coffin can be lowered into it later this afternoon. He’s done this so often it’s almost mundane to him. Land is precious in Manila, and people are prepared to endure incredible circumstances to claim their own piece. Baking’s family is one of hundreds that have set up home in the cemetery, jostling for space with the dead. “It’s much better living here than in a shanty town,” he assures me…" http://tinyurl.com/3y9uzhr

Suffer little children (1949)

From the October 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Monday, 15th August, at King’s Cross, a crowd of irate men and women roughly handled an eighteen year old girl who was alleged to have thrown scalding water into the face of a two-year old girl. One can well understand their indignation. No one in his right mind can see a helpless child misused —or can he?

A few years ago, between the years 1939 and 1945, children were being killed, maimed and wounded by the countless hundred. True, people were indignant. They threw up their hands in horror—cursed the men whose vile duty it was to release these missiles—and went home to knit comforts for their compatriots who were performing the same deeds upon children of another country.

And when the war was over, hundreds of children on the continent of Europe, orphaned or completely divorced from their families by the war, lived like wild animals in bombed cities. Their world was a jungle. They learned that scrounging and stealing, sharp practice and prostitution were their only means of livelihood. Italy supported many such misfits. Who can see the film “Sciuscià” or read Giussepe Berto’s “The Sky is Red”—of young boys locked in barrack-like prisons, or of girls, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen or even less, selling their immature bodies for a handful of food or a bar of soap—without wanting to weep or vomit?

Into these conditions come the mealy mouthed social workers. A recent “March of Time” film proudly announced that several hundred of these children had been reclaimed “ in the glory of God.” For what? To learn the virtues of hard work and honesty, of religion and cant: to be convinced that it is both righteous and correct that at some time in the future they shall be the instruments by which a further generation is pitched into the degradation from which they themselves have risen.

But is there really need to look to the exceptional circumstances of war? Take a stroll round the mean streets of any industrial area and view those grim three-storied buildings that masquerade as schools. Listen to the lessons imparted therein. How are kids to know that French workers are more than sub-humans living upon snails and filthy postcards; that the Germans (or are they Russians to-day ?) do other things besides rob, plunder and devour their young? How are kids to realise that when mother says “she can’t afford it” to their simplest demand, it is an indirect result of the humility and toleration that they themselves are taught? An ageing schoolmaster once told the writer that when he came down from college he too had high ideals, but “you’re beating your heads against a brick wall.” He did not recognise that just like a miner or a factory hand he is employed to train children as cheaply as possible.

Education! The word itself derives from the verb “educe,” which means to “draw out.” The teacher’s job is not to draw out potentialities but to cram in— to cram in the bare amount of facts and the abundance of fantasy that will keep the worker fit and happy in his position of slavery.

And when school is over for the day, what then? Football in a side street, a game of cricket in the park, or down the market with Mum learning how to save a penny here and there and how to ask for two separate pounds of potatoes to get a double “ turn of the scale.” Of course, there are some wonderful institutions for kids. They can join a youth club and learn “citizenship” or the Air and Army Cadets and learn how to kill. Yes, truly wonderful institutions!

Suffer little children! Whether it be individually at the hands of some poor warped mind or en masse as the children of a subjected class, suffer they must in this system of society, whether the conditions be boom, slump, war or peace—and the road of escape will not be found in the classroom. The experiences of the factory, the dole queue, the army, the battlefields provide your education. The world is your university. Wake up and use it!

Ronald.

So They Say: Menu: Air Pie — (1974)

The So They Say Column from the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Menu: Air Pie —

Popular romantic writers have a stock of words and phrases for instant effect on their suggestible readers: tender, moonlight, yearning, heavenly vision, and so on. Similarly, Labour politicians rely on a small vocabulary designed to make their followers salivate like Pavlov’s dogs — “fair shares”, "equal opportunity”, “make the rich pay”, etc.

On 8th August Denis Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced the Labour Government’s plans for wealth and gift taxes. The proposed starting level for the wealth tax is £100,000. To the press, Healey “admitted . . . that the main reason for the taxes was to create a greater atmosphere of social justice in Britain” (Guardian). On television, asked specifically what benefit the working class would get, he said poorer-paid workers would feel better if they knew money was being taken from the rich.

Pavlov’s dogs, dribbling in response to stimuli, failed to notice that the bell ringing was not preliminary to but instead of dinner.

— and an Empty Cup

The real response should have come from the rich, if Healey was attacking them so violently. Hear how they complained:

No one in the City jumped from 20th storey windows, fled the country or even squealed very loudly yesterday on publication of the Government’s Green Paper thinking on a wealth tax. It has singularly little effect on share dealings on the Stock Exchange . . . About the harshest comments on the paper were that it was 'a time-consuming irrelevance’, by the Association of Chambers of Commerce.

But not only do they not mind. The view expressed to The Guardian's business editor was that

the City would not mind a wealth tax if it enabled the Labour or any other Government ‘to institute a meaningful wages policy’.

It is accepted both in the City and by many business men that the wealth tax proposal could be a psychological advantage to the Government in persuading trade unions to accept a nil growth, or even a cut, in living standards over the next year or so.

What Can't Happen Here ?

The history of the “Watergate scandal” and its consequences leading to Nixon’s downfall from the US presidency was a showpiece of hypocrisy — Nixon’s, his accusers’, and the righteous commentators’. Could such a thing happen in Britain? The New Law Journal on 2nd August had some interesting comments.

Watergate ought to provide the necessary impetus to the Government to get on with the task of rewriting

the Official Secrets legislation as recommended by the Franks Commission without further prevarication.

While retaining the strictest security over those matters which are matters of national security, there is an urgent need to remove ‘confidential’ and ‘secret’ classifications from all material which allows officialdom to maintain a cosy secrecy over matters which may merely embarrass, or be inconvenient to, slipshod or inefficient officials.

Which is saying, delicately, that the difference between America and Britain is not over what is likely to happen but over what is likely to be found out. Incidentally, there is a curious word misuse in the extract quoted. “Prevaricate” means go astray, transgress, be equivocal, deceive. The word for putting things off, which is what they mean, is “procrastinate”. A Freudian error?

Pass, Friend

Nixon’s successor, President Ford, is reported to be looked-on favourably by the Chinese government. They are pleased that he insists on military spending as a top priority, because of “their desire to see the strategic balance between the super Powers maintained in America’s favour to inhibit Soviet expansionism” (Guardian, 10th August).

The Chinese view is the one all capitalist statesmen must take — looking for advantage for their own trade and strategy, and never mind from whom. The report says:

Peking . . . will probably only devote a few delayed lines to Nixon’s departure. But the late President was, in any case, much less the architect of the new China policy than was Dr. Kissinger, and the latter’s presence on Mr. Ford’s Administration will certainly be welcome in Peking.

Blowing the Gaff

Fascists in Italy have been in the news with acts of terrorism. One would assume the Communists to be up in arms to extinguish fascism; and one would be wrong.

A State subsidy for all Italian political parties began operating in July; the Communists’ share is £7 millions. A veteran leader described the subsidizing of the fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano as “horrendous and ignoble, so bestial as to fill one with horror”. He was attacked by the party newspaper and his fellow leaders. Only the fascist movement was “horrendous” — but not the subsidy. The Guardian, 13th July, said :

Signor. Pajetta, and the Communists in general, also are opposed to Senator Terracini’s proposal that Parliament should vote for the disbanding of the MSI. The Communist line is that it can be defeated through the ballot box. Privately, they may also realize that a Fascist enemy is politically good to have around.

Plenty Amidst Poverty

There is a physical training game called "O’Grady’', in which the trainees have to do the opposite of what they hear. It must be like that in Communist countries, where equality and the expropriation of the expropriators are articles of faith — while inequality grows and the expropriators’ cigars get bigger.

The Observer had an item on 14th July headed HUNGARY'S PROPERTY BOOM. It was about the rise in house prices in Hungary following legislation to regularize the private ownership of property:

There has recently been a widespread move to acquire houses in the country, not only by the Communist élite, but also on a wide scale by the new managerial class.

Everything above the upper limit is classified as ‘luxury’. But such properties will not be confiscated, as they were when the Communists first took over.

Instead, the owners of ‘luxury’ residences will have to pay a special tax. This is levied on houses and apartments worth more than £20,000 at between ½ per cent and 1 per cent, depending on the number of rooms, and on holiday villas of the same value at between 1 per cent and 1½ per cent.

Getting Dark, Down Under

Our July issue had an article on conditions in Australia, where workers from Britain often go in the mistaken hope of shedding their problems. The unemployment figures released there on 12th August show 93,585 out of work, i.e. 1.90 per cent. of the estimated labour force. Vacancies fell by 21.3 per cent., from July, against the normal trend at this time of the year. The Parliamentary Opposition has predicted 100,000 unemployed by December, with inflation at 20 per cent.

The Guardian correspondent in Canberra wrote on 12th August that

the estimate could prove conservative. The Cabinet seems to have swung solidly against the Treasury argument for further deflationary action in the September 17 budget, for fear of union reaction against unemployment and the need to get voluntary wage and price restraints working.

United Fans Queue Here

The football season has begun; and its weekly accompaniment of numerous arrests and convictions as rabbles of "supporters” smash up everything and everybody they meet in the towns they are visiting.

When the epidemic was starting in 1969 the Notting Hill Anarchist Group issued a leaflet which really should not be left unnoticed. Extracts (our italics) as follows:

Football crowds have always been rough and managed to enjoy themselves. It’s part of the game. Things only turn really unpleasant when a large number of blue uniforms appear on the scene.

After alleging that the directors of football clubs pay the police to arrest “standing” spectators so that expensive seats can be put in the space they now occupy, the leaflet ends:

It’s good to know this anyway, and to get things straight in your own mind about what’s happening, but it’s not worth fighting it on your own . . But if you do get arrested, or anybody you know does, try and send somebody along to see us and we’ll see what we can do to help. The people who are giving out these leaflets will be standing in the same places after the game is over.

This inane truckling to (and half-incitement of) hooligans is supposed to represent a serious outlook on society. Pathetic, isn’t it?

Robert Barltrop

The Passing Show: The Truth about the Arandora Star (1960)

The Passing Show Column from the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Truth about the Arandora Star

What a low opinion our rulers have of us! As the Second World War recedes into history, they tell us openly of the lies they fed us on during the war. Yet, no doubt, they expect us to believe implicitly anything they tell us in any future war. To disbelieve what the ruling class says in time of war ranks, in fact, as sedition.

Sometimes it is the same organ of ruling class propaganda which helped to tell us the lie in the first place which now coolly lets us know what did really happen. For example, the case of the Arandora Star. This was a liner which had been converted into a prison ship to take German and Italian internees, prisoners-of-war, and anyone else who in ruling class terminology was “an alien” across to interment camps in Canada. On one of these voyages, in July, 1940, the Arandora Star was sunk by a U-boat. Of the 1,600 prisoners and crew, half were drowned. Many of us remember what we were told at that time—the high death-roll was due to panic among “the aliens,” the lifeboats were rushed, it was every man for himself, and so on. If you have forgotten, the Sunday Express (19/6/60) obligingly reprints the headlines which appeared at the time in its sister paper, the Daily Express of the 4th July, 1940. “ 1,500 aliens panic,” the Daily Express told its readers: “Germans torpedo Germans—mad rush for the lifeboats.”

Complete nonsense

Why does the Sunday Express remind us of these (in its own words) “officially-blessed reports that the heavy loss of life was due to the panic-stricken cowardice of Germans and Italians who fought madly for priority in the lifeboats ”? Why, in order to tell us that they were all lies! The article goes on: “All of a picked group of recently interviewed survivors are unanimous in dismissing this allegation as complete nonsense.”

The real reasons for the heavy loss of life among the great majority who survived the explosion, despite the fact that the sea was calm and the visibility excellent, were three. The ship was grossly overcrowded; some even of the inadequate number of lifeboats had had oars, emergency provisions and plugs removed; and, above all, barbed wire had been expertly erected on the decks, cutting off access to what seaworthy lifeboats there were.

Magnificent propaganda

The captain of the Arandora Star protested strongly to the Admiralty against the ship going to sea in this condition. He pointed out that the lives not only of the internees, but also of his crew, might depend on—for example— the barbed wire being removed. But such humanitarian considerations did not move the chiefs of the Admiralty. The captain's protests were rejected, and the ship sailed as it was. It sank with many of its passengers, who were prevented by the barbed wire from getting to the lifeboats or even from jumping over the side, still on board. And the resultant death by drowning of eight hundred human beings was ascribed by the British authorities (who knew the truth themselves) to “panic among aliens.”

But don't suppose that the Sunday Express disapproves of this lie told by the ruling class. On the contrary, it points out what “magnificent propaganda” the truth would have made for the Axis powers. So, clearly, one only tells the truth when it won't put one at a disadvantage. The lies about the Arandora Star were told by those who claim to uphold the current politico-moral beliefs of society, including the conception of Truth as an Absolute. One could at least credit the ruling class with sincerity if it acted or the beliefs it professed to hold.

Love, honour and obey

While some apologists for capitalism attempt to explain away what they consider the less justifiable parts of our political and social superstructure, there are always the fundamentalists who embarrass these good souls by taking up an extreme dogmatic position. The promise of the wife in the Church's marriage service to “love, honour and obey” her husband is a case in point. We are told in some quarters that this “obey” clause isn’t as brutally primitive as it sounds—it is merely figurative, metaphorical and so forth. But there are others, including the two clergymen who wrote to the Guardian on June 11th, who defend it to the hilt. According to these gentlemen, in a Christian marriage, if there is any disagreement the wife must obey her husband. As a commentary on Christian marriage, these contributions may be allowed to speak for themselves.

Congratulations

At the recent wedding of Mussolini’s daughter, a message of congratulations was received from the Pope. The Catholic Church has always tried to explain away its sympathy for Fascism in Italy—although this is particularly difficult in view of its present close relations with and support for Fascism in Spain. No doubt Catholics would say that this was simply a gesture made by the Pope towards a member of his Church, without any political or social significance. But how many Catholic girls, who are not the daughters of rich men or Fascist leaders, get a telegram of congratulations from the Pope when they marry?

Alwyn Edgar

[The first care of Italian Socialists]. (1904)

From the December 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first care of the Italian Socialists on obtaining control of the administration of the city Reggi-Emelia has been to adopt the following series of commandments for use in the public schools, to impress the children with the ethics of citizenship and the religion of humanity:

• “Love thy schoolmates, for they will be thy co-workers for life.
• “Love knowledge—the bread of intellect: cherish the same gratitude toward thy teacher as toward thy father and mother.
• “Make every day thou livest the occasion for some good and beneficial deed; always sow the seeds of kindness.
• “Honour good men and true women; esteem all men as equals; bend thy knees to no one.
• “Bear hatred to none, and insult none; the word ‘revenge’ shall be excluded from the vocabulary ; but stand up for thy rights and resist oppression:
• “Do not be a coward; stand by the weak and respect and love justice.”

—Eastern Herald.

Sting in the Tail: Jobs for the boys (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jobs for the boys

When capitalism's economy is booming then some sections of the working class can make considerable gains. This, reformists assure us, is proof that their strategy of “getting something now” is more rewarding than our insistence on the need for socialism.

But what happens when the economic climate changes? Then many of the gains inevitably come under attack and will be completely lost.

An example of this is happening in Sweden now. For decades women there benefitted from the job opportunities in the growing public sector and had the highest level of workplace equality in the world:

They entered the labour market in such numbers that the term hemmafru (housewife) became a virtual anachronism within a decade. (Guardian, 13 April).

Now a huge government economy drive means tens of thousands of women are to lose their jobs and there are plans to introduce financial incentives for mothers to stay home and look after the children.

“Getting something now" is difficult enough in capitalism but hanging on to it is the really tricky bit.

Monet and Money

Alfred Barnes was a rich American who was heavily into modern art. His collection, which includes many paintings by Matisse, Cezanne, Renoir and others, is unequalled and is valued at $6 billion.

Late Again (BBC2, 17 April) revealed how Barnes only allowed a select few to see his collection. When he died in 1951 his will instructed the Barnes Foundation that the collection must never be sold, loaned or even moved.

Now, those who control the foundation want to raise money to repair the building where the collection is housed and they have won the courts' permission to take part of the collection on tour.

Even this outraged much of the art establishment. “The integrity of the collection is threatened, it will never come together again", they moaned, but their big argument was that “a dead man's wishes were being flouted".

All of this art was only possible because society provided the artists with the food, clothing, shelter, materials, education and, often, the inspiration they required. Art is a social product and should he freely available to all and not just to an elitist bunch of ’’art lovers" backed by the whim of a man long-since dead.

Cause and effect

Under headlines such as “Italians dance for joy after huge poll victory on reforms”, the newspapers have reported that the anti-Mafia movement are claiming that a new electoral system will stop “decades of waste, corruption and Mafia outrage".

What are these miraculous changes? In future 75 percent of the 315-seat Senate, or upper house, will be decided by the same first-past-the-post system as applies to Britain's House of Commons.

It is interesting to note that reformers in the Labour and Liberal Democrat Parties favour some form of proportional representation in Britain. They decry the first-past-the-post system as undemocratic.

The electoral system makes no difference. No matter which system is favoured, capitalism is a social system that will always cause “waste, corruption and outrage". What is needed is not a change in the electoral system, but a change in the social system from capitalism to socialism.

Royal bricklayers

Amidst universal rejoicing, the government has announced that the Queen's private chapel, which was badly damaged in the Windsor Castle fire last year, is to be rebuilt in a contemporary style. One can hear the shouts of joy ringing out from cardboard city at the news.

Of course, such a prestigious venture must have a steady hand on the tiller. But we can sleep easy in this one too. “The Duke of Edinhurgh will take the lead for the Royal Household in the rebuilding programme. (Independent on Sunday, 25 April).

We hope no naive reader imagines that the Duke will actually be doing any work. No hod carrier he. No, the rebuilding by the Duke of Edinburgh will be like all the “building" that kings, queens, dukes, duchesses and plain old millionaires carry out. They may lay a ceremonial foundation stone or unveil a plaque, but you can be sure all the useful toil will be carried out by members of the working class.

Another patriot

What do the Labour Party really think about military matters? When the Royal Air Force's offer to fly over Bosnia was rejected, we found out.

Commentary on the decision not to deploy UK Tornado fighters, Mr George Foulkes, Labour defence spokesman, said : “I am surprised that, if offered, they were not to he included. We have got probably one of the best strike records of anyone, anywhere, as exemplified by our record in the Gulf. I would have thought it was essential that if there was to be an effective deployment to ensure the no-fly zone that there was a strong British presence. It sounds to me a bit like a snub if British aircraft have been offered and not included. ” (Glasgow Herald, 8 April).

So there you have it. The Labour Party are upset that British workers' lives are not be to risked. It has been said before, but it is worth repeating: “A patriot is someone that wants you to die for his country".

Modern times

Great interest has been expressed by the military about a new heat-resistant plastic that can withstand the heat of a nuclear explosion. Discussing various possibilities of its use the Observer (11 April) mentioned in passing some of the other things that the military are researching at present:

In this sci-fi world, generals are testing the efficacy of frying soldiers’ blood and brains with lasers.

Voice From The Back: Who armed Saddam? (1998)

The Voice From The Back Column from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who armed Saddam?

Advocates of a bombing campaign speak as if they had just discovered Saddam’s lethal potential. America has known about his chemical and biological weapons for a generation. In 1975 an American corporation, Pfaulder of Rochester, New York, sold Saddam the plans for a chemical weapons factory that he built at Akashat for $78 million. In 1983 Saddam first deployed chemical gas against Iran, killing 45,000 Iranian soldiers over the next five years in clear violation of international law. In 1988 Saddam sprayed mustard gas and sarin on the Kurdish village of Halabja to murder at least 5,000 civilians. A few months later, in January 1989, ABC News uncovered details of Saddam’s germ-warfare programme at a facility south of Baghdad. The State Department, which now issues briefings on the same site at Salman Pak, denied its existence at the time. Despite the use of chemicals and clear evidence of Saddam’s development in the 1980s of anthrax, tularaemia and cholera, the US and Britain increased their export credit guarantees to his regime . . . All the time Saddam was massacring his citizens and invading his neighbour, Iran, the American Karkar corporation supplied him with communications for his Ba’ath party spies. The CIA gave him reconnaissance pictures of Iranian troop positions. British Aerospace, Westland Helicopters, Dassault of France and Karl Kolb of Germany were adding to an Iraqi arsenal already over-supplied by the Soviet Union. New Statesman, 20 February.

Squandered resources

A staggering £250 million a year is wasted in the National Health Service on food patients don’t eat. Half of the food served is unpalatable or unwanted, threatening patients’ health and recovery because they don’t get the nutrients they need. A study of nine wards for the elderly, and of medical and surgical cases in four hospitals in London and the South-East found that 23 percent of food served for breakfast and around 40 percent of food provided for midday and evening meals was thrown away. When food was served on the ward from a trolley almost 60 percent was discarded. Mail on Sunday, 7 December.

This new capitalism’s a load of . . .

Employees at a large state farm in Vlogda, northern Russia, have not taken kindly to the cash-strapped government’s policy of remunerating workers with agricultural goods in an effort to compensate for months of unpaid salaries. Instead of receiving chickens and vegetables, they were paid last month with piles of manure. Special trucks were laid on to deliver “salaries” to the workers’ doorsteps, prompting vigorous protests from neighbours about poor air quality. Sunday Times, 19 October.

Looking both ways

Poor people are much more likely to be knocked over on the roads than people living in affluent areas, according to a study of road accidents in Edinburgh and the surrounding Lothian region. It is the first detailed analysis of the link between road accidents and social deprivation. The researchers . . . found that young children from the 15 percent most deprived areas of the region were almost eight times as likely to be knocked over as children living in the richest 15 percent. Accident Analysis and Prevention, vol 29, p.583.

Child labour

Forty years after it joined the European Community, and more than a decade after it overtook Britain in the league table of national wealth, Italy still has almost 300,000 child workers . . . The biggest concentration of under-age workers is thought to be in and around Naples, where their wages average about 70,000 lire (£26) a week. Guardian, 8 January.

World Wide Web

When I go online to engage in human interaction, I log off feeling energised. When I search databases or shop in online malls, I leave the experience feeling drained and alone. The former involves communicating with other living beings, while the latter concerns only machines and their information. Douglas Rushkoff, Guardian Online, 8 January.

Globalisation

Competition, so admired by champions of capitalism, is being rapidly eradicated by—competition. “Before many more years, there will be one or at most two global companies per industry, trampling over a fluctuating number of local suppliers living off their personal connections and/or niche services,” wrote William Kay, the City Editor of the Financial Mail on Sunday on 8 February. “The process is nearly complete in sectors as diverse as alcohol and accountancy . . . The trouble is that what counts as duplication from the suppliers’ point of view is good old competition as far as the customers are concerned . . . When the customers in question have been mere individuals, their interests have been at best only hazily defended.”

Italy and the Peasant Problem (1940)

From the July 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Volcano beneath the Dictators 

“Blood is thicker than water, but trade is thicker than blood.”

Herodotus, who lived 2,500 years ago, and is spoken of as the father of history, said : “Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.” Napoleon summed the matter up in the pithy statement, “History is a lie agreed upon.” In other words, we do not get the truth, even in the records, but Socialists are able by means of the law of history to unearth what the historian failed to observe or neglected to mention.

Italy has for some time been sitting on the fence, afraid to take sides for fear she might line up with the loser. This is in accord with her usual practices; “she never won a battle and never lost a war.” A prostitute amongst the nations, she cynically sells herself in what she considers to be the best market. The revolutionary period around 1848 was to some extent due to the fact that the map of Europe had been so stupidly “remodelled” after the Napoleonic wars that every boundary line was an irritation to one or more nationalities. For example, Poland was left divided, with Russia, Austria and Prussia controlling parts. Lombardy, Venice and Hungary were ruled by Austria. Most of Italy was in small principalities under corrupt scions of “noble” houses.

Mazzini and Garibaldi led movements more or less revolutionary but failed in their purpose. Piedmont under a progressive monarch attempted to unify Italy and had partial success. (Cavour, a few years later, succeeded in bringing Italy under a constitutional monarch, but the Austrian reactionary regime was not displaced.) It was the appearance of a new economic factor which eventually brought about what certain progressive forces were striving to accomplish.

The development of steam power was applied to transportation and the first results of the railways was to break down a number of petty frontiers in Europe, especially between the small German States, and Germany rapidly became the distributor for Central Europe. The commerce of Europe, no longer dependant upon British sea-borne control, was now open to competitors. Bismarck in Germany and Cavour in Italy were able to carry out their political plans for uniting their respective countries because of railway developments. G.W.W., in an article on the Outline of History, says:—

“One of the “great men” of his day, Cavour was a statesman of high order and used his talents without scruple. He is quoted as saying : “If we did for ourselves what we do for Italy we should be great scoundrels.” He stabilized finance, built railways and promoted trade, and then deliberately set out to break Austrian hold upon Italy. To this end he used Press propaganda at home and abroad, entered the Crimean War in order to have an equal seat at the “peace” conference, and then secured a French promise of assistance against Austria. France in 1859 started to keep the promise, but then withdrew when the Emperor realized that Italy was playing no second fiddle to France. Cavour’s plans were halted for a time, but he had advanced a good way towards his objective, and when Naples was captured by Garibaldi unity was almost complete. In 1861 the first King of all Italy was proclaimed and within about ten years Rome and Venice came under the Italian crown. . . .”

It was Italy who bred Machiavelli. Mussolini, like his predecessor Cavour, is an astute Italian who acts in accordance with Machiavellian principles. His appeal is to youth. While economic conditions have been rearranged for the Italian people, largely through a programme of rural electrification and low cost housing, serious financial and social problems persist. He is driven to the expedients of the ancient Caesars and tries to substitute circuses for bread. When the people yell for spaghetti he gives them Abyssinia, Spain, and the world war. So long as youth has adventure it tends to forget the poverty of its parents; the aged are weak without the backing of their sons.

The main problem of South-Eastern Europe is a peasant problem, and the principle which wins and holds the allegiance of the European peasants will triumph in the struggle now going on between the rival social creeds in this part of the world where the peasants are in a majority.

The inflation of the currency indulged in by Italy, Germany and the Danubian countries from time to time has driven a wedge of self-interest between the city workers and the farmers. This cleavage frustrated the Social Democratic Governments without exception. Inflation upsets the basis of exchange of commodities between city and country, inasmuch as it puts one over on the peasant; he has to give more for what he receives; the price of industrial wares rises at once after inflation, but agricultural products for a time remain at the same figure. Inflation, controlled or uncontrolled, has “liquidated” the farmers and peasants of many industrial nations, and the result is discontent in those areas that feel the pinch.

There are, of course, other factors. Capitalism makes agriculture a subordinate industry everywhere : high grade capital can compel low grade to yield and hand over; the fact remains the farmers and the peasants get it in the neck, and they will support with enthusiasm any policy upon which they think they can depend for deliverance. Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini are up against a peasant problem for which as yet no satisfactory solution has been found, and this has far more to do with the present conflict than most people realise.

It is well known to students that the troubles of the peasant is the foundation of anti-semitism. The impoverished tiller of the soil is driven to borrow from the moneylender, and when once in the clutches of the latter can never extricate himself. When the rate of interest is higher than the average rate of profit it is practically impossible for the borrower, if a peasant, to escape from the clutches of the usurer. Land has no value—exchange values come from the labour-power of the man on the land. When the peasant who works his farm himself becomes entangled in debt he is done for. There is no hope except in the repudiation of what is owing, and the Fascist attack on the Jew can be understood when the above is given full consideration. It is a means of obtaining the support of the peasants.

Hitler promised to break up the estates of the powerful Junkers but chose war rather than do so. Stalin tried to solve the problem by clubbing the peasants and driving them into collective farms. Mussolini reclaimed the marshes and tried to deal with the issue in a practical manner, but the results have been meagre.

In Italy and Germany, and above all in the Danubian countries and the Balkans, State policy is bent to preserve the peasants as they are and to use the powers of the government to make small-scale independent farming a stable and profitable form of economic activity. All of the post-war (1914-1918) social settlements in this region involved the process of breaking up the large estates and establishing the peasants in nominal ownership of the land. The Bolshevik upheaval began with the same process but later had to reverse it.

All attempts to settle this question have failed, and as it cannot wait it still confronts Europe, and will be a source of conflict until a solution is found.

The Catholic Church is intensely interested. The Catholic order of things bears the marks of its birth from the ruin of the Roman Empire. It inherited from Rome two great principles: the knowledge of what to imitate and the knowledge of what to avoid. So says the author of “Our Lords and Masters” : 

“It has imitated and perpetuated the political organization of the Roman Empire. For nearly two thousand years it has functioned as a slowly growing and maturing body of men, recognising a single authority and basing that authority on a commonly accepted doctrine. This, the model of the Caesars, has been the model of their latter day successors, and when Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler desired to renovate the political and social life of their countries they could find no better example.”

The Church holds the idea that the fall of Rome was hastened by “race suicide.” Divorce was frequent and casual. Roman matrons refused to bear children; Roman men refused to found families; human ingenuity, as always, discovered that it is possible to obtain sensual enjoyment without social responsibility. According to the Church, Rome fell because the system degraded women and because women returned the compliment. This, of course, is what is believed and acted upon, and the Church’s influence throughout the feudal system and at present is devoted towards preventing the return of those evils which destroyed the old civilization.

It is for this reason that the Vatican supports the idea of peasant proprietorship and stubbornly opposes the collective farm policy of the Russians. Communism is the orthodox State religion of Soviet Russia.

As will be perceived, it is the ideological reflection of a peasant economy which is anathema to the Catholic Church. The stand taken by the Vatican in Spain and elsewhere can only be understood when the above is taken into consideration.

Enough has been said to give the readers of the Socialist Standard another view of what is transpiring. Socialists could give more attention to the agricultural question because of its importance.

The development of capitalism has brought the predicament of the peasantry glaringly into the open : there is no solution under the system.

Production for profit has been forced upon the peoples of Europe and the world; the agricultural section of South-Eastern Europe cannot live any longer under this mode of production; the whole of the Danubian basin is involved in an attempt to get rid of what is strangling them.

All dictatorships have one policy and one object forced upon them by conditions—the compelling of the people to accept a lowering of the standard of living. The nations of the dictators when they have been squeezed to the limit by their rulers and capitalist circumstance, are armed and led to plunder their weaker neighbours; they are preceded by a method of propaganda, bribery and treachery that storms the strongest fortresses and jumps over all national barriers. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Finland, France, Norway, Denmark, together with the Baltic States, have been overrun by hungry hordes let loose by a bankrupt system and led by unscrupulous and merciless men.

The forces making for Socialism are still at work in every part of the system, even in the mechanism of war : the economic problem will remain unsolved no matter what is attempted or done until the means of production are commonly owned and used for the benefit of mankind. Millions are beginning to see what the situation calls for.

We have a trying period to pass through. What of it?

Let us face it with courage. It will eventually pass : “Come what, come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”

Charles Lestor

The bacillus Mussolini. (1924)

From the February 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Daily Telegraph of October 25th seized the opportunity of Fascism’s anniversary of accession to power in Italy to review its history. The review is the more valuable in that the writer makes little effort to conceal the direction in which his sympathies lie. No time is wasted on detailing how the poor peasant boy of Romagna, the bricklayer of Lausanne, the “Socialist” agitator and journalist, fought his way to the highest position of a Capitalist State. At the commencement of the article we find him there. No mention of his horde of Dirty Shirts, with their bludgeons, stilettos and castor oil. He is there! This is a free condensation of the article (italics mine) : His first sweeping reform was to throw out of office the great army of lazy “grafters,” political protégés, etc., created by a generation of government by unscrupulous and self-seeking politicians. The higher the official, the smaller his chance of being spared. The next step was to hit out against the petty political groups. One after another the old political groupings were smashed up and obliged to pronounce themselves for or against, but mostly for, the great Conservative reaction. The Liberals, the Populars, the Socialists have all been attacked on questions of principle; their ranks have been broken and scattered. In electoral reform he preserves proportional representation, but gives to the winning party two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. As the Telegraph man naively says : “This is in order to ensure for the governing party of the day the possibility of carrying out the reforms promised in its electoral programing. The world will follow with interest the working of this experiment in practical politics.” We shall. “Mussolini has been eminently successful in bringing about social peace and the cessation of class warfare. In the beginning the means employed were physical pressure by the Fascist militia, which had recourse to very drastic means.” (Pause for fiendish laughter.) “But very soon the tendency became manifest to apply more peaceful methods. The results are excellent, and during the last twelve months there has not been a single strike in the whole of Italy. This is a fact from which even Mussolini’s detractors cannot get away.”

The gloating contributor makes a bad slip just here. They can get away, for lower down he tells us quite refreshingly, in the long run Mussolini’s foreign policy is entirely governed by the necessity of finding satisfactory outlets for Italian emigration. The country is a great reservoir of man-power which must be exported, and Mussolini is casting about for outlets.”

What a country ! What a Paradise ! What a prospect ! Having bludgeoned, hacked and castor-oiled his way to political power, he discovers he is lord of a huge reservoir of excellent, exploitable material for foreign capitalists. His message to the Italians is, “Italy is no place for you.” There is one reservation. “A new departure is the decree forbidding the emigration of doubtful characters, so as to raise the reputation of Italy abroad.” Mussolini has judged his world well. As the reservoir is emptied of all save the ”doubtful characters” (doubtless fitted up with black shirts and oil equipment), the surrounding capitalist states will warm up wonderfully. A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind. It is good to learn that in this holy business he has the blessing of the Church. To again quote in full :—

  “The ex-Socialist Prime Minister has frankly recognised and accepted the preponderating part played in Italian life by the Church. He has established a firm friendship with the Vatican, which in its turn supports him. .​ .​ . The alliance with the Vatican gives to Mussolini, not only the active support of the powerful clerical elements in the country, but also assists him to a great extent in the development of his foreign policy.”

Now read the bit about his foreign policy again. And then you will, or will not, be pleased to learn that 50,000 railwaymen have been ruthlessly sacked, in the name of economy. Presumably they are now at the gates of the reservoir. They may even be numbered with his detractors. Happy, happy country ! Surely someone will inform the wretched denizens of Old Compton Street, Greek Street, and Little Italy, of what they are missing. Perhaps they are wise after all. Why go to the expense and inconvenience of a voyage, when all these inestimable benefits will soon be brought to our doors. One reads with delight that Britain possesses at least two Fascist organisations thanks mainly engaged at the moment in squabbling over which one is the real, genuine, dyed-in-the-wool article. This question settled, and an agreement reached as to who is to sign the cheques, one can already discern the rosy flush of a new dawn. Italy, hitherto associated in our minds, with ice-cream men, opera-singers and organ-grinders, is to fill our cup of indebtedness to the brim by presenting us with the New Liberty. Our cup runneth over. Already its prophets are afoot. You will remember Earl Grey at Newcastle on February 3rd last: —

  “It is possible, under the chaos and confusion in Europe, that democratic representative government may go down for a time in favour of some other system.”

Italy, we presume, shows us an example of the ”other system.” We hope you like it.

W. T. Hopley

* * * *

Since writing the above, we read in the “Westminster Gazette” of October 26th :

  “Italy at present offers a remarkable spectacle. The country is absolutely quiescent, the people intent only on their calling, and abiding by the laws. But the Fascisti leaders and rank and file alike .​ .​ . are quarrelling among themselves, unable to resist the temptation to usurp functions and prerogatives pertaining to the Government, unable either to rid themselves of the primitive, expeditious habit and the craving to take the law ruthlessly into their own hands.”

Readers can supply their own comment. It may be useful to mention that Mussolini is referred to as the Duse. The deuce he is.

W. T. Hopley