What causes war (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nowadays every government, every political organisation proclaims itself for peace, against war. We hear no more that war is glorious, beautiful, sweet, that it purifies the spirit. It is no longer possible wholly to hide the terrible, suffering-causing nature of war. So the master classes have changed their propaganda tactics: we learn that our rulers strive ceaselessly for peace, but the aggressive rulers of some other country threaten us. In certain circumstances war is a necessary evil—we are struggling for freedom, human dignity—in fact, we make war for peace:

  We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun. (Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Peking 1967.)

The ruling classes of every country and their governments are themselves the people who make peace, human dignity, real democracy and real socialism and so on, impossible. Do you believe such are the motives of any “side” in any war? But if not, what does cause war ?

Maybe governments misunderstand each other’s desires? But they possess information services, often secret, much more reliable and detailed than those at the disposal of the general public. Often it is convenient for them to pretend ignorance or lack of understanding.

The aim of war is the protection and advancement of the economic interests of the capitalist classes of every country, each in competition against the others—for example, to protect or gain markets, sources of raw materials, trade routes. Mainly war is a struggle between imperialisms, for example, the Second World War between Germany-ltaly-Japan and America-Russia-Britain-China. Now we have a three-cornered conflict: China against Russia and both against America. All three fought on the same side in the Second World War!

Those who control these powers must aim to protect and extend their own spheres of influence. Each power either is or would like to be an imperialist power, but the ambitions and interests of one state often must conflict with those of another. Political discord occurs, and when one government judges that “national interests,” that is, capitalist interests, are intolerably threatened, war explodes.

Of course, the struggle is often not directly between great powers, but between their puppet states, e.g. Vietnam, Germany at present, Korea. Often the inhabitants of a puppet state imagine that they are fighting for “national independence,” e.g. Hungary 1956. Vietnam now, when in fact they are fighting for a rival empire. In the world of today small states cannot be independent. And independence, that is, exploitation by fellow nationals alone, is not something worth fighting for to the working class.

So our position is: We are against every war, and both sides of every war. Wars are struggles between capitalist interests; no army fights for the interests of any working class. Only in a truly socialist world-wide society will war disappear, because while the capitalist world social order lasts, the roots of war remain. So the only way to lasting peace is through a new world order—without money, armaments, classes, nations.

S. S.

Shadow of a Gunman: The Irish Republican Army (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sinn Fein was formed in 1905 and its numerous political utterances between then and the establishment of Partition leave no doubt that it represented the interests of the rising capitalist class in the South of Ireland in their struggle to achieve political autonomy in order to legislate political conditions suitable to the growth of a fledgling capitalism.

The Sinn Fein Policy Statement of 1917 summarised the utterances and actions of the organisation over the previous twelve years and made nonsense of the noble-sounding sentiments expressed by Pearse on the steps of the GPO in Dublin in 1916. The capitalist class of every country when they are striving for power pay lip-service to noble sentiments in order to rally the working class in support of their struggle and the honeyed phrases of the Declaration of the Irish Republic, with its generalisations about the Irish Nation being the property of the Irish people, were a far cry from the practical economic aspirations of the native capitalists, expressed in Sinn Fein’s Policy Statement:

  No possibility would be left as far as Sinn Fein were concerned for a syndicate of unscrupulous English capitalists to crush out the Home Manufacturer and the Home Trader (Our italics).

Despite the play with words, “English capitalists” as opposed to “Home Manufacturer”, there can be no doubt about Sinn Fein’s meaning: they stood for protection of the native capitalists from the competition of “foreign” capitalists. Indeed the Policy statement spells it out:

  Protection means rendering the native manufacturer equal to meet foreign competition. If a manufacturer cannot produce as cheaply as an English or other foreigner only because his foreign competitor has larger resources at his disposal, then it is the first duty of the Irish Nation to accord protection to that Irish manufacturer.

This is what it was all about then! This was the bitter reality of the poet’s songs, the patriot’s dreams, the worker’s sacrifices; this was the prize for heroism, sacrifice, murder and counter-murder, bitterness and division. The promised pot of gold at the end of the patriotic rainbow was for the Irish “manufacturer” and the “home trader”; for the worker the only gold was on his new badge of slavery, the national flag that was to adorn his poverty, fly over his slum and replace the Union Jack as a symbol of his political ignorance.

And it could not have been otherwise. Despite the heady romantics of Pearse and the phrase-mongering of James Connolly the political and economic conditions that then prevailed excluded completely the possibility of an alternative to capitalism. The purpose of the struggle was, and could only have been the political stewardship of that system; the flag that symbolised the claim of the native capitalists bore as little relevance to the problems of the working class then, as it does today.

National struggles, especially when they are waged by the very weak against the very strong, are always seen in a romantic light. They are the material for songs and romantic novels and the new masters that emerge from such struggles are not adverse to the fictions and heroics which later purport to be history—"history” which becomes an important ingredient in the fog of ignorance essential in the exploitation of the “nation’s” working class.

Our purpose here is not to deny the bravery and self-sacrificing of those who contributed these qualities in the so-called fight for freedom. Such qualities were not the preserve of one side in the struggle—they are to be found in the unfortunate combatants of any war; often, sadly, they are to be found in inverse ratio to the amount of reasoned political thought on the part of their contributors.

Our object is to show that whatever the ideas, or lack of ideas, of the membership of the Sinn Fein movement and its militant arm, the IRA, the only thing they could have achieved—and its achievement was consciously desired by the political leadership of the movement—was the maintenance of the same old failed system of capitalism out of which all working class problems arise. This was true of the IRA yesterday; it is equally true today.

If we leave aside the romantics and “principles” and get down to the facts of working class life, now or in the Twenties, it will be seen that the problems that affected the working class in Ireland under English rule were similar to the problems of the working class throughout the world of capitalism. The facts of working class life were (and since the Six Day War, namely the memory of those are!) poverty, insecurity, unemployment, homelessness, slums, as well as the violent contention, war and violence which form an inevitable sackcloth to such conditions and the economic circumstances in which they arise. These miseries did not originate in “foreign” rule any more than they can be assuaged or eradicated by “home” rule. The French, English, German or Russian worker under his “own” government, lived with these problems in the same way as the Irish worker or the Indian worker, living under a “foreign” government.

In a word, the problems of the working class in Ireland were, and remain, the problems of the working class of the world and originate in the class stratification of capitalist society. Given capitalism, these problems were inevitable; they could not then, no more than they can now, be “planned” out of the system. They did not arise out of the “evil” intentions, nor the blundering or stupidity of governments, “home” or “foreign”, no more than they could be planned, prayed or fought away by brave, sincere or wise men. They were the facts of capitalism and would continue to exist for as long as the working class, the only class with an economic interest in bringing about a real change, accepted that system.

In Ireland at the turn of the century the leaders of Sinn Fein were, as we have seen, concerned with the sectional interests of the rising Irish capitalist class. They did not take issue with the fact that the system of capitalism promoted by the dominant British capitalist class resulted in poverty and misery for the working class and small farmers in Ireland—and England. Their concern was not at the fact of exploitation but rather at the identity of the exploiters—at the fact that “English manufacturers (were) squeezing out their less-powerful Irish rivals”.

Sinn Fein’s was not a cry from the heart at the plight of the people of Ireland but a protest from the pocket of the new bandit against the fact that the older, more resourceful bandit was not giving him a “fair” opportunity to carry out his plunder.

But the fledgling native capitalists were not themselves capable of changing the political conditions that thwarted their exploitative function. They needed the battalions of the working class behind them to give point to their argument but to rally the working class they had to appeal to working class interests by falsely identifying the plight of the working class with the rule of the foreign capitalists.

In 1905 Sinn Fein’s demands were limited to the idea of Ireland having such measure of political control as would allow for the restriction of foreign, mainly British competition in order that Irish capitalism could develop behind tariff walls and a quota system of imports. This was to be within the framework of an Ireland “hereditary to the (British) Crown . . . with King, Lords and Commons for Ireland”. Such evident self-seeking on the part of native capitalism was not especially conducive to this task of rallying the workers and this, along with the declining value of the system of Empire Preference, turned the Party’s propaganda increasingly towards the idea of complete separatism that it had engendered in its militant wing.

Predictably, propaganda by deed took over and the Irish Republican Army evolved into an effective weapon waging war on the forces of British capitalism in Ireland.

The IRA was composed mainly of young workers and farmers largely unaware of the economic pressures that had given rise to the struggle. They were “fighting for Ireland”! Ireland was an abstraction, a vision, a “principle”; Ireland was the opposite of what they knew and lived with, but then they did not know that all that was hateful in the Ireland they knew was the product of centuries of class rule culminated now in the harsher vulgarities of capitalism and all that was possible for the Ireland of their vision was a continuation of the same old miseries. The law would remain to enshrine the right of one class to exploit another even if the immediate enforcers of that Law wore different uniforms. Only a flag would be changed.

When the needs of the native capitalists had been served in the treaty of 1921 the capitalist class were satisfied. For them it was a matter of regret that some sections of the IRA did not see in the establishment of conditions compatible with the economic needs of capitalism the fulfilment of their vision and if that vision—largely compounded of romanticism, heroics and a sense of comradeship—impelled such sections of the IRA to the continuance of the struggle, then it was to be put down with all the viciousness at the command of the new forces of “law and order”.

The IRA had fulfilled its purpose; it had served the class interests of Irish capitalism and by its very nature, apart from its lofty and ill-defined notions of “freedom”, it could not have done otherwise. After the Civil War and the desertion of its leadership to the more mundane and profitable offices of capitalism such fragments as continued to exist deteriorated into a political gang that canalised the genuine discontent and revolutionary fervour of some sections of the working class, North and South, into the dream of a tomorrow that was bit the pale reflection of the sad ghosts of yesterday.

During the decades that have passed the principal and tragic preoccupation of the IRA has been the useless sacrifice of the lives of young Irish workers on the altar of romanticism. Many of its members have been killed by the forces of “law and order” it helped to create in the South. Still more have died in futile adventurism in the North and thousands of young workers have spent the best years of their lives in jails in both parts of Ireland.

Inevitably years of stagnation and infiltration by informers and police spies have brought their toll of viciousness, intimidation and death within the organisation. The counter-espionage activities of police agents have at different times caused havoc and leaks in the form of young men’s bodies have often been plugged with lead after arbitrary conviction by drum-head court martial. In the early Forties, after a senseless bombing campaign in England, the “major leak” scare ran rife in the movement; after numerous bullets and some tar-and-feathers had failed to stop the stream of information to the authorities the IRA discovered that the movement’s own chief-of-staff was an informer!

Possibly the only positive role played by the IRA since the Civil War was that ascribed to it by the Unionist Party—and that mainly falsely. No Unionist politician ever faced an election without discovering an IRA plot. At different times throughout the last four decades the IRA was largely a figment of the imagination of the Stormont Government—in the mid-Forties the organisation could not have mustered a platoon of volunteers in the City of Belfast—but it was a useful device for stampeding those workers who were tempted to stray from the paths of Unionism. It was an almost farcical reciprocity: the Unionist Party created the conditions in which the IRA continued its tenuous existence; the IRA helped to maintain a political climate in Northern Ireland conducive to the continuance of Unionist rule.

What has it all been for . . . the tragic deaths, the beatings, the imprisonments? “For Ireland”, answers the mocking voice of yesterday.

But there are two Irelands: there is the Ireland of the capitalist class which is doing quite nicely for itself and has no need for, nor interest in, the IRA; and there is the Ireland of the working class. What do they, the working class, owe the IRA? North and South for nearly six decades now members of the working class have contributed their blood in the cause of “Mother Ireland”—and yet their problems remain. If it is accepted that these problems have their roots in capitalism and will disappear only when the alternative to capitalism, Socialism, becomes the system of social organisation then it must be recognised that the IRA have played their part in thwarting the essential unity of the working class, rendering division within the working class more deep and waylaying the working class into the blind alley of nationalism.

The organisation has declined in strength since 1922 but since then its real menace has mainly been to its own members. But the situation following on the rioting in Northern Ireland has given the IRA a new lease of life and it is true to say that from the point of view of the working class it now constitutes a dangerous ingredient in the Irish situation.

In the years following the collapse of the IRA’s last military activities in the late Fifties a growing section within the movement began to promote the ideas of constitutional political action along the now-fashionable “left-wing” lines. Inevitably the latter-day ideas of one of Republicanism’s patron Saints, James Connolly, began to take greater prominence in the thinking of the leadership and, just as inevitably, the nationalistic state-capitalist implications of these ideas has led the movement in the direction of the “Communist” Party.

The events in Northern Ireland since 1968 caused a split in the ranks of the IRA but while the immediate problems posed by the troubles in the North may have triggered off this split it was the growing influence of Leninist ideas within the movement, and the effect these had on dividing the IRA’s reaction to events in the North, that formed the core of the division.

The breakaway element, or “Provisionals”, as they have come to be known, were led by those who resented the growing influence of “Communist” ideas in the organisation. Not only did such people feel that politics was an irrelevancy within the context of the Republican ideal of a thirty-two county Irish republic but the new political bias in the movement clashed with their Catholicism. When the Catholics of the North were under attack such elements saw the defence of their fellow-Catholics as an immediate priority and when this course was resisted by the official leadership the long-brewing dissension and division came into the open.

The result is that there are now two IRA’s in Ireland and to confuse matters still more the “official” group, that has moved away from the uncomplicated formula of a Republic, and now pursue a contradiction-in-terms which they refer to as a “Socialist Workers’ Republic”, are known as the “Traditional IRA” while the breakaway group still espouse the traditional cause—even if they are, at least in the troubled areas of Belfast, a mere anti-Protestant counterpart of the Ulster Volunteer Force.

The “Provisionals”, in an attempt to maintain their claim to the title IRA are beginning to refer to the other group as the National Liberation Front—a title which demonstrates not only the real differences that led up to the split but also places the “traditionals”, in the view of their erstwhile ex-comrades, in the position of stooges for the “Communist” Party.

Members of the working class, whether in the IRA or lending support to that organisation should realise that Nationalism is the tool of capitalism. The working class have no country—they have the choice of enduring the miseries of capitalism within the confines of national frontiers or enjoying freedom in a Socialist World.

Richard Montague

After nationalisation (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

A short time ago, when the Tories decided to kick out Lord Hall, Labour’s appointed Chairman of the Post Office, there was a series of strikes and demonstrations by Postal workers. The Press of course glorified in presenting this as issued by the telephone engineers ‘explained’, "We are not loyalty, even if mis-placed, to their boss, but as a leaflet a Lord Hall Fan Club . . ." They were really worried that this move pushed through by Chataway was indicative of other changes in the Post Office that they felt might threaten Union organisation and employment prospects.

Presumably in an effort to gain public support for their action the same leaflet was prominently headed “Hands Off. . . . Britain’s telephones belong to you’’, referring to the Tory plans to de-nationalise certain profitable sectors of State industry. The idea that industry should be run for the benefit of the community, instead of a small group of investors, is some advance in political thinking, but its attempted expression in support for nationalisation is in fact self-defeating, since none of the fundamental relationships in private industry are changed by nationalisation and all the old problems remain. One of the reasons some workers support nationalisation is that they falsely identify the capitalist state with the interests of the community as a whole. Their nationalisation is still stronger than class consciousness. The break-up of existing nationalised industries, would not be an advance, and might cause some dislocation and redundancy which justify the workers involved opposing such measures without their deceiving themselves as to the real nature of the organisation and ownership of the nationalised industries.

Failure of nationalisation (whether partial as in this country, or almost total as in Russia) to prevent competition, insecurity, destitution and other ills affecting workers has made some of its one-time advocates disillusioned and apathetic whilst others have searched for explanations and new formulas to apply. Emerging from this has been a renewed and extended interest in ‘Workers’ Control' and ‘Workers’ Self-Management'. This is against the grain of both national Bolshevik and Social-Democrat organisation and politics but it is still not a solution, it too will fail to deliver the expected results.

It is essential for socialists to show how these developments point to the practicability and need for Socialism. It would be irresponsible, however, to advocate either nationalisation or workers’ control in the name of “developing consciousness through struggle” as so many self-proclaimed revolutionaries do. To associate with the particular reforms demanded is to be associated with their failure. Since measures such as ‘nationalisation’ and ‘workers’ control,” although originally in the working class, are generally only enacted to the extent and in such a way that they benefit the capitalists, by supporting these measures socialists would be helping to delude our fellow workers into thinking that real gains had been made. When the coal mines were nationalised, the miners believed that a great victory had been won, the capitalist politicians thought otherwise. It took a lot of redundancies, wage reductions and strikes to convince the miners of the true position.

Democratic control over industry and society as a whole can only be achieved by the abolition of the capital-wage-labour relationship, by making all the world’s resources the common property of mankind. Anything short of this is at best a palliative, at worst a total failure even proving detrimental to workers’ interests.

Michael Bradley

Tory hypocrisy (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Industrial relations”, as the industrial side of the class struggle is called by mealy-mouthed politicians and journalists, has in recent years become a political issue. Many people, not understanding what causes strikes and why they are sometimes necessary, have become annoyed by the inconvenience they sometimes cause. The government, they moan, should do something about these strikes. The Labour and Conservative parties have vied with each other for the votes of such people. The Conservatives won recently, with their promise to pass legislation making strikes more risky from a legal point of view. The threat of legal sanctions, they implied, would deter would-be strikers.

Would it? There is already special penal legislation against industrial action by gas, water and electricity workers. Section 4 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act of 1875 (as extended in 1919) makes it a crime, as well as a civil wrong, for such workers to break their contracts of employment when this would cause supplies of gas, water or electricity to be cut. There are two ways, for these workers when they want to take industrial action, round this law. One is to formally terminate the contract; the other is to work strictly to it. Faced with the refusal of their employers to improve their wages offer, electricity workers decided last December to adopt the latter course, “to work to rule”.

The chairman of the CEGB stated publicly that, in his view, some of the workers were not working to his rules but to their own less stringent ones. This was tantamount to saying that they were breaching their contract. It was also suggested that even a proper work-to-rule would be a breach of the agreement between the unions and the employers (Financial Times, 9 December). In other words some at least of the electricity workers by going too slow had committed a crime.

What did the government do? Did they arrest anybody? Were any prosecutions launched? Here surely was a chance for them to prove that they could stop strikes by legislation. In fact not only were the electricity workers not deterred by the law in the first place, but the government and employers did not bother to implement it. They were perhaps deterred by the fiasco when the Labour government tried to prosecute striking dockers in April 1951. The Tories (who ironically are to replace this section of the 1875 Act in their Industrial Relations Bill) stand exposed as loud-mouths, making lying promises in order to win the votes of misguided workers.

What this also shows — and it has some relevance to the extravagant claims made for and against the Tories’ Bill — is that, although there may be anti-strike laws on the statute book, whether or not they are actually applied depends on the political and industrial climate, including the opinion of the voters and the determination of the strikers.

Strikes have their roots in the very basis of present-day society, in the fact that the means of production are owned by a privileged minority and that the wage and salary earners who actually produce the wealth sometimes have to strike in order to protect their living standards and working conditions. No law can effectively stamp out strikes, work-to-rules or go slows. Workers who think they can, and who voted Tory under this illusion, have not only been misled by Tory (and Labour, for that matter) propaganda, but are also ignorant of their own best interests.

Politics (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Democrats might be expected to be crowing over their arch-enemy’s failures and discomfiture. With their eyes on the next Presidential battle, they are already thumbing through their possible candidates. The two front runners are Edmund Muskie and (still) Edward Kennedy. Let us say now, before the ballyhoo about these men starts, that they are both rich, both calculating and both stand for the interests of the American capitalist class. It is tragic that when, in 1972, the workers of America cast their votes for their next President, in their millions they will be blind to those facts.

In England, of course, it is no different. The working class here also cry out for a leader for British capitalism in the John Bull mould. Even more, they pine for a strong, ruthless leader and at present express some frustration at what they see as the lack of strength and colour of Edward Heath. It is true that Heath seems to prefer to stay in the shadows which, whatever it does to his opinion poll standing, provides lots of copy for the political correspondents. The central point, though, is that it matters not whether the men who attempt to run capitalism are weak or strong. The fault is in the system and that is bad enough without getting masochistic about it into the bargain.

Christmas. Season, among the crises the disasters and the warring, of goodwill. The big spend-up with hundreds of millions going into the tills in exchange for mountains of junk and oceans of booze. Each year the salesmen nervously assure themselves that, whatever the prevailing economic climate, they will have bumper turnovers. And they are usually right. The workers will endure a lot of drabness and depression, provided they get the occasional flash of colour. The Socialist Standard did not send any cards last Christmas, but we wished all our friends and enemies a speedy end to the degrading, inhuman society we live under.

The Socialist Party and War (1971)

Party News from the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Aspect: Increasing Misery (1971)

The Aspect column from the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The theory of The Socialist Party of Great Britain is Marxist in the sense that certain of our key ideas about society, economics and politics are derived from Karl Marx.

Although our case rests entirely on its own merits and not on what Marx may or may not have said, we have always been ready to defend Marx’s views where we believe them to be correct against criticisms based on an ignorance of what he wrote.

Recently for instance, the Guardian claimed that “Marx has been proved wrong on fundamentals; the workers far from being denied a fair share of profits and so becoming poorer, are vastly better off”. Is this true? Was it fundamental to Marx’s economic theory that under capitalism the workers would come to own less and less material possessions?

The short answer is, No. Marx did not believe that the amount of goods and services the workers consumed would necessarily have to decline. What he did say was that the misery of the workers would increase, but he did not equate this misery with destitution. For him, as we shall see, misery referred to the general circumstances under which workers, however well-paid, had to live and work.

Poverty can be used in two senses: absolutely, to refer to a low standard of living in terms of a given small amount of goods and services, or relatively, to refer to a low standard of living compared with that of others. There can be no doubt as to where Marx stood on this issue. In one of his earliest economic writings Wage Labour and Capital (first given as a series of lectures in 1847, and revised and republished by Engels in 1891) Marx wrote:

  A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighbouring palace grows an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls. 

  A noticeable increase in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. The rapid growth of productive capital brings about an equally rapid growth of wealth, luxury, social wants, social enjoyments. Thus, although the enjoyments of the worker have risen, the social satisfaction that they give has fallen in comparison with the increased enjoyments of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the state of development of society in general. Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.” (Marx-Engels Selected Works, Vol. 1, pp.93-94, Moscow, 1958)

Marx understood subsistence, too, in a relative sense. According to his theory, wages fluctuate about the subsistence level of the worker. Certain critics (and even supporters) have taken this to mean that there was a fixed amount of goods and services above which real wages could never rise. This so-called Iron Law of Wages was repudiated by Marx. He regarded the subsistence level as something which varied not only amongst workers of different skills but also from place to place, in the same place at different times and even, to a small extent, under the influence of the workers’ own trade union activities.

To suggest that Marx expected wages to fall towards, and even below, some absolute poverty line is to misunderstand him completely.

Marx also writes in Wage Labour and Capital that, even though the most favourable situation for the working class under capitalism is the fastest possible growth of capital, “however much it may improve the material existence of the worker, does not remove the antagonism between his interests and … the interests of the capitalists” (p.98). Marx returned to this theme in Chapter XXV of Capital which considers “the ‘influence of the growth of capital on the lot of the labouring class”.

Marx’s comments on the occasions when the wages of some workers have risen as a result of a temporary labour shortage again make it quite clear that high wages do not end the economic exploitation of the working class.

  The more or less favourable circumstances in which the wage-working class supports and multiplies itself, in no way alters the fundamental character of capitalist production.” (p.613).

  A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of capital, only means, in fact, that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage-worker has already forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it. (p.618, Moscow, 1961). 

Later in the same chapter just before the passage about the “accumulation of misery”, Marx explicitly states that high wages do not affect the misery of workers either:

   In proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. (p.645)

Clearly by misery Marx cannot have meant absolute poverty. For, as this passage shows, workers may be better off materially but still worse off in some other sense. This referred to the conditions under which they had to work. Marx mentions the boring drudgery workers had to perform under capitalism in place of the pleasure they could get in a Socialist society from creating useful things. He also mentions the fact that workers are employed by capitalists and deprived by them of the fruits of their labour. As he put it in 1875 in a criticism of the Iron Law of Wages:

  The wage-worker has permission to work for his own subsistence, that is, to live, only insofar as he workers for a certain time gratis for the capitalist (and hence also for the latter’s  co-consumers of surplus value); that the whole capitalist system of production turns on the increase of this gratis labour by extending the working day or by developing the productivity, that is, increasing the intensity of labour power, etc.; that, consequently, the system of wage labour is a system of slavery, and indeed of a slavery which becomes more severe in proportion as the social productive forces of labour develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment. (“Critique of the Gotha Programme”, Selected Works, Vol. II, p.29)

In the next article we will examine this concept of “relative wages” which Marx did believe would tend to decline under capitalism.

In the meantime readers are referred to two useful articles: 

• Poverty or Misery? Socialist Standard, January 1957. 
• Marx’s “Increasing Misery” Doctrine by Thomas Sowell, American Economic Review, March 1960.

50 Years Ago: Bombers To Extend British Influence (1971)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Colonel Amery, as Under Secretary for the Colonies, has received the congratulations of the House for his economic handling of the situation in Somaliland, he having disposed of the ‘enemy’ at the trifling cost of about £100,000. A ‘gratifying’ feature of his report was the confidence expressed that within a number of years, Somaliland will pay the cost of its administration. The economy has been affected by the use of the aeroplane, a method. General Seeley states, which is far more preferable to the old-fashioned way of advancing small bodies of infantry ‘to extend British influence'. He considers the use of aeroplanes cheaper, more effective, and more humane than any other method. Its effectiveness is not in doubt as the people of Amritsar and of Mesopotamia can testify, but as to its being humane, that is open to question.

* * *

The use of aeroplanes as a method of settling disputes is coming more and more into favour, and the adoption of this ‘humane’ method as a cure for industrial unrest can be looked forward to as a certainty.

* * *

By the way, it is interesting to note that it has been established beyond doubt that the first bombs dropped on any town were dropped by the British on Cologne and Dusseldorf. This represents the initiation of this form of 'extending British influence'. (See Manchester Guardian 1 November 1920).

(From an article in the Socialist Standard, January 1921, by Tom Sala).

Divided Ireland (1971)

Book Review from the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Divided Ulster, by Liam de Paor (Penguin Special. 5s.)

"In Northern Ireland Catholics are Blacks who happen to have white skins". Liam de Paor’s analogy has some validity when Catholics in their areas of Derry and Belfast are compared with Negroes in their ghettoes in some American states. Northern Ireland, the more capitalistically advanced geographical area of Ireland, has even in this advanced phase of capitalism a working class who are led to believe that religion divides them, and this division causes sufficient hate for sectarian conflict. The historic division into Catholic Ireland and Protestant Ireland has been much more intense in the remaining six-county British "colony" because Protestants form a two-thirds majority whereas in the other counties their numbers are negligible.

Threats to English rule in the 16th and 17th centuries were mostly instigated by the Celtic dynasties of the Northern part of Ireland — of which the O’Neills were most prominent. Confiscation of land by the natives from Cromwellian Protestant settlers intensified suspicions between the two groups. In this way "the complex struggle for power and property in Ireland, as the civil war was in England. manifested itself as a religious war". Ulster was used as a base for the Williamite conquest which was settled finally by the defeat of the Catholic James II at the river Boyne in July 1690 and enthroned the never-to-be-broken Protestant succession to the British monarchy. The aftermath of "the Battle of the Boyne" saw the consolidation of Protestant rule by anti-Catholic laws "designed essentially . . . not to convert them to any form of Protestantism, but to prevent them from obtaining as a group, property, position, influence or power”.

The tribal system of Gaelic Ireland was not broken until after English rule was established there. Feudal Ireland matured under English rule. The Catholic natives mostly worked the land and the Protestant landlords found this quite profitable because the Catholics paid high rents. In Ulster competition for tenancies was so keen that Protestants were forced to combine in groups whose purpose was to attack and maim Catholics. Catholics also found it necessary to combine for similar reasons.

Industrial advance in Belfast and Derry produced a working class among Protestants and Catholics alike. Poorer peasants sought work in industry and drifted towards Belfast and Derry from other parts of Ireland. Competition for jobs became keener and Catholics were often prepared to work for less than their Protestant counterparts. The Protestant majority overcame this by combining under a religious cloak against the Catholics.

Catholic influence, ownership and power was generally on the increase in the island as a whole. Catholics Emancipation campaigns ended the penal code, and thus enterprise among Catholics was increased with a consequent increase in their power.

In the North Eastern part of the island, the capitalists and landlords capitalised on the resentment which Protestant workers felt towards Catholic workers. Through discriminating against Catholics in an area with large numbers of Catholics and Protestant workers, religion became a cloak for real economic reasons. The more Home Rule came near to becoming a reality, the more Catholics and Protestants were divided by their exploiters. The capitalists in Northern Ireland quite rightly knew their interests lay in British rule and believed that Home Rule would mean being reduced to the agricultural and economic backwater which the rest of Ireland was. But this “divide” policy could only work where there was a Protestant majority.

Resistance against Home Rule on a large political scale and a raging guerrilla war for Independence resulted in a compromise— a parliament representing 26 counties in Dublin and one representing six counties in Belfast. The Belfast parliament was soon discovered to be an effective means of maintaining the British economic connection against republicans, but with the advantage that more effective legislation relating to Northern Ireland’s capitalists’ political problem could be invoked against any threat to sever this connection.

The economic advance of the South in the 1960s and the decline of the major traditional industries in Northern Ireland; the decline in emigration from the South and the decrease in between the standards of living between the two states would suggest that the economic reason for the existence of separate states was marginal.

However, the Craigs, Chichester-Clarks and all the other historical hangovers found that the Parliament forced upon them in 1921 became their life-saver in 1969 when their political existence was threatened by the civil rights movement which had successfully united Catholics and some Protestants. Along with the Civil Rights Association, the People's Democracy marched, Protestant with Catholic, demanding rights to housing, employment and local election voting. Police and Protestant Orange assaults on the marchers finally erupted in near civil war. British troops were sent in. It appeared that the Orange Order was foundering together with its implement of power, the Belfast parliament. However, through the good services of the Free Presbyterian Church on the one hand and of the more moderate members of the Order on the other, Protestant [and] Catholic workers became increasingly divided and the influence of the CRA and PD declined almost completely.

The battle was now waged by Catholic workers against Protestant workers and intensified on both sides by opportunist extremists. De Paor aptly quotes Pearse:

  When the Orangemen 'line the last ditch’ they may make a very sorry show; but we shall make an even sorrier show, for we shall have to get Gordon Highlanders to line the ditch for us.

How oppressed the Bogsiders were was shown when they welcomed the British troops — oppressors in the disguise of protectors. But soon the troops were forced to oscillate between “protecting" one side from the other and using methods which, if used in South Africa, the British Press would have denounced as “fascist”.

Socialists recognise one evil, capitalism, whether or not the method used for its maintenance is political democracy. The struggle in Northern Ireland continues, but it is a struggle to maintain the present out-dated managers of capitalism against a newer capitalist class. The workers have nothing to gain from this fight; but once again they are allowing themselves to die for capitalist ideals.

All inspired but misguided republicans should heed what James Connolly said:

   If you remove the English army tomorrow . . . England would still rule you . . . through the whole army of commercial and individualist institutions, she has planted in this country.

The sad part of these struggles is that so much effort on a world scale would end today’s problems — capitalism.

While Liam de Paor does not give a Marxist analysis of Northern Ireland he does nevertheless provide workers with a valuable introduction, to a case study of, the Northern Ireland problem.

Patrick Garvey

World at work (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Private property utilises every aid in upholding its rights. Armies in the field, policemen in the streets and detectives in the stories, each armed with the marvels of modern technology, are obvious examples of this. All this is necessary in a society in conflict where every man's interests seem to be in opposition. The struggle is world wide and is carried into every sphere of human activity — even London Underground, where one of the latest technical innovations, automation, is being used to protect the property rights of London Transport against the encroachment of an army of fare-dodging passengers.

The exact amount of income which London Transport loses through this phenomenon is unknown although they put the figure for buses and Underground combined at around 1 per cent of receipts, which were £112 million in 1969. So by their own reckoning it is costing them over £1 million yearly, and since it is harder to dodge paying on the buses, especially with the introduction of pay-as-you-enter, then it can be safely assumed that most of this is lost on the Underground. London Transport have tried to fight back as convictions for dishonest travelling on the Underground show — an average of 6,000 yearly, but still the cash is lost and they must continue the fight.

The answer as London Transport sees it is to ensure that correct fares are paid. Today, thousands simply buy no ticket at all and just hand the collector a shilling at the exit. This disinclination to pay full fare was best seen during the 1965 strike of booking clerks when “honesty buckets” were placed inside stations for passengers to put the cost of their journey into. The response prompted a London Transport official at Victoria to complain that “so far as I can gather over the weekend thousands of people must have moved to within a sixpenny travelling distance of Victoria". (The Times, 16 March 1965). Therefore, a way has been devised whereby passengers must have paid full fare before being allowed to leave the station. The solution is automated ticket issuing and collecting.

This entails selling chemically coated tickets on which the details of the journey are magnetically encoded. To gain access to the trains the passenger feeds the ticket into the entrance gate which scans it before letting him through. The ticket is again electronically read by the exit gate which opens only if the code is correct. If not, the passenger is “attended” to by one of the station staff. This system is already in wide use on the new Victoria Line and double the normal excess fares have been collected at some stations during the first year. The signs are that London Transport’s figure of £1 million lost due to fare-dodging will be shown to be hopelessly under estimated.

How much of society’s resources will it cost to introduce automated ticketing throughout London Underground? Anthony Bull, London Transport’s Vice-Chairman, stated in 1966 that it would cost, at a very rough estimate, £10 million at 1966 prices. Obviously the final figure will be much higher, but Bull sugared the pill by adding that the capital expenditure of designing and installing the system was of a once-and-for-all character. (Modern Railways, June 1966). We shall return to this.

Of course fare-dodging isn't the only reason for installing automation. London Transport expects to save £1 million a year by dispensing with surplus staff who, as we have seen, are liable to take costly strike action. This saving, together with the money at present being lost, would go a long way towards solving London Transport’s financial plight. It is currently losing £10 million a year—£7½ million on interest on loans and the rest on running losses. Accordingly, vast amounts of highly skilled human time and energy are to be wasted in order to prevent workers freely utilising the transportation which their brain and muscle power alone created . . . but which they do not own. And this is something which is happening all over the world. The growth of private motoring is forcing authorities in countries like America, Germany, Japan, Holland, to turn to Rapid Transit Systems as a means of maintaining communications in large cities and automated ticket issuing and collecting is being almost universally adopted.

But there is even more waste involved than meets the eye, because London Transport’s Mr. Bull was reckoning without human ingenuity when he made his “once-and-for-all” claim. When Milan’s Underground opened in 1964 it used an admittedly simple automated ticket system. A few minutes after the Archbishop and Mayor had cut the riband and the Milanese discovered that a holy picture cut to the correct size would operate the electronic turnstiles very well. So it was back to the drawing-board in order to produce an even more sophisticated machine. And in America change-giving machines, which are a “must” in the new systems, were withdrawn for modification a few years ago because workers were getting the change by inserting copies of banknotes run-off on office photocopy equipment. Obviously today’s ticket machines will cope with these simple ruses and no effort is being spared in ironing out the snags. In two American cities passengers have been invited to try and beat the system any way they can without retribution —for a trial — period — and if successful to confess their secret afterwards. No one can say with certainty that new methods of beating the machines won’t be developed. For example, if currency notes can be forged or stolen then why not special extended-travel tickets valued at, say, £5?

Reporting the Milan episode the Guardian correspondent cited it as proof of “man's answer to the tyranny of machines” (4 November 1964). The fallacy is that it is machines which dominate men when what actually happens is that some men, through their ownership of capital, use machines in the production and realisation of surplus value from other men — the workers, who sometimes hit back in whatever way they can, usually at the machines.

Nor is the situation any different in “communist” Russia. Moscow Metro is considering introducing automated ticketing and change-giving machines in the hope of dispensing with 300 booking clerks. Already Leningrad Metro employs a simple light-ray device which is placed just behind the coin-slot on the gate. If the intending passengers breaks the ray without first inserting the required coin then, just as in avowedly capitalist Britain or America, the gate remains closed. The Russian government claims that all public transport will eventually be free of charge as a social service (Modern Railways, April 1967). We have heard promises like this before, but even if it is realised it has nothing to do with Socialism when carried out within the context of an exchange relationship society such as Russia. The Expo 67 railway in Montreal was free “because of its importance in distributing visitors”. Substitute “workers” for “visitors” in state capitalist Russia and you have another reason why free transport can be such an attractive proposition to exploiters the world over.

Capitalism can easily provide us with better examples of its wastefulness and divisiveness and the contest between London Transport and the fare-dodgers is really only a sideshow. But it is part of the overall picture of how capitalism, in attempting to solve its problems, not only increases the productive forces and technical know-how but also glaringly exposes itself as the cause of the accompanying social conflict. In a society where all the goods and services man needs, including transport, were freely available themselves with brilliant thoughts of how to cancel out each other’s inventiveness would be impossible.

Vic Vanni

Motives of militarism (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is just over ten tears ago that peace time conscription (one of the Attlee government’s steps towards socialism) came to an end (by order of a Tory government). For the most part, National Servicemen agreed that the time they spent in the forces was a stilling bore. Some swore that they spent almost the entire two years sitting around with virtually nothing to do; others, that any sporting prowess was the passport, through a corrupt adjutant, to a cushy posting.

The surprising fact was that so many of these men, after their demob, could recall the episode without experiencing an overwhelming urge to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Very few were really angry about those wasted months; they looked back on it all with an amused tolerance, perhaps even with some affection.

They remembered the time spent square-bashing under roaring NCOs, the kit inspections with everything moronically clean and laid out in monotonous pattern. They swapped memories of barrack room japes and booze ups as if service life was one long revel. Many a demobbed clerk used to announce his morning arrival at the office with "Orderly officer! Stand by y’beds!” It was almost as if, in very drab lives, being plucked out into the service was one isolated, treasured patch of colour.

Perhaps those gentle memories were a rationalisation of what was actually an unpleasant experience, which the conscripts could not contain or justify in any other way. If there is a massive guilt complex at large, it has probably been successfully projected; a recent Opinion Research Centre poll said that 43 per cent of those questioned about conscription favoured a return of it.

At this time of long haired, protesting, questioning, free-loving, delinquent, youth — a return of conscription? It is useful, to take that as a starting point.

If we played the old psychological party game and asked a collection of people what word came immediately to mind when we said “Army”, a fair number would reply “discipline". And it is discipline, with elements of orderliness, smartness, cleanliness, which present day society is supposed to lack. A large part of the Services’ efforts goes into this discipline business and the instilling of it is the basis of all those parades, saluting, stamping, polishing, shining, folding, adjusting . . .

A plainer, but more accurate, way of expressing this is that it is intended to induce a state of mind in which the disciplined ask no questions. They obey — even the word of an ignorant, bull-headed man whose only advantage is in the stripes on his sleeve. Men who can be trained to co-operate enthusiastically in pointless activities like making sure they walk about a barrack square in exactly the same way as a few hundred other men can also be trained to give of their best in other, equally pointless, activities. They will, for example, if the man with the stripes tells them to, do their best to kill some other, equally disciplined and conditioned, man who is wearing a different uniform.

Once in that mindless mob action, it takes some courage to make a stand. Conform — that is the password. When you are in the mob you take everything like a soldier. That includes your work (which may mean killing your fellow conscript on the other side), your punishments, your drink. Even your sex. The old conscripts may backlash, now that they are in their thirties and forties, at the so-called Permissive Society and the current attempted ventilation of some of the more suffocating phobias of sex. It was different in their day, when a soldier was applauded for taking a local wench upright in an alley at the back of a dance hall. That, after all, was the soldier's way . . .

This professed contempt for women is in fact part of an obsession which finds its place conveniently among the myths of capitalism. That is the obsession with manliness, the notion that a man must act in a particular style and must confine his interests to particular fields. Thus in advanced society a man may be employed in a factory, he may relax in some sports, he is pressured to adopt certain dress styles, even to like particular drinks (like in the T.V. ad for Courage bitter). To step out of this pattern — for example for a man to put on an apron and do the housework while his wife goes out to work — would be to put doubt on his sexuality, even his sanity.

There is of course a vast amount of research which destroys the idea that the respective roles of men and women in society are fixed and necessarily logical. In fact capitalism allots to them the roles which fit in with the system’s needs and priorities. Predictably, capitalism justifies this with a campaign which glorifies the roles it has allotted and by erecting a huge edifice of prejudice. In this way, manliness and militancy are connected; the soldier stamps his way around, he shouts his commands. He demonstrates strength.

The crucial point here is that the reactions and the disciplines which are instilled by military life are in their way very useful to capitalist society outside. Capitalism is a social system of privilege in which the vast majority are underdogs. If they ever realise their sheer power, if they ever see through the system’s deceptions, then the days of privilege are numbered. A great propaganda effort is devoted to delaying the day of reckoning.

Workers are taught that in many things conformity is a virtue; they are taught that mass production is good because it is more profitable. The ideal which is dangled before them is to live in one of a regiment of semis, with a Ford in the gutter outside and two point three (or whatever point it is) children to take out an endowment insurance on. They are taught docility, that the life of the worker who accepts his lot is good (those endowments mature someday) and getting better. Anybody who gets impatient at the slowness of the “improvements”, or who wants more than an improvement, must be a neurotic, a long hair, a hippy. It would obviously do him good, knock all that nonsense out of him, if he had to go in the Army. A pity they don’t bring conscription back . . .

This is no more than an attempt at an easy answer to all the doubts and questioning about capitalism and its effects. Militarism is itself suppressive, an attempt to harden bodies and brutalise minds to the point where they are ready to obey any order, tolerate any obscenity. But the questioning will go on and militarism is no more than an obstacle to be surmounted. If there is no discipline in this it is not the discipline of the barked command, the automatic obedience. It is the discipline of knowledge and in the struggle between the two there is no doubt about which shall overcome.

Ivan

A correct account of Marxism (1971)

Book Review from the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Interpretation of the Political Ideas of Marx and Engels. by J. B. Sanderson. Longmans. 18s.

It would have been surprising if the current academic interest in Marxism as a theory did not produce some more or less accurate accounts of the views of Marx and Engels. Sanderson set himself the task of giving an objective account of these views and we must say that in this book he succeeds very well.

Sanderson brings out a number of the important principles that underlay Marx and Engels’ policies (the quotes are his):

1. The scheme of social evolution (primitive communism, chattel slavery, feudalism, capitalism. Communism) was meant as a description of what had happened in Western Europe and was not necessarily universally applicable.

2. The socialist revolution depended on a certain level of social and economic development and could not take place anytime and anywhere merely because a determined minority wanted it.

3. Those who represented a ruling class politically did not have to be of that class, but merely had to share its views and protect its material interests.

4. Under capitalism the working class were already the economically important class since the capitalists had become economically redundant “leaving the work of supervision to an increasingly numerous category of managers.” All that was needed to dislodge them from their privileged position was a political revolution.

5. To win political power the working class as a whole had to be “conscious of their common class position, class interests, and class enemies, and willing to act upon that consciousness” and to have organised themselves into a “gigantic political party.”

6. After winning political power the working class would for a “limited” or “short” period become the ruling class as a step towards the abolition of all classes. This political transition period would be the dictatorship of the proletariat as a whole, and not of a minority of revolutionary leaders.

7. In socialist society production of commodities, i.e. articles for sale, would come to an end. Instead “production would no longer be directed by the interests of a privileged minority but would be guided by an overall rational plan which had reference solely to human needs.”

8. In socialist society the coercive State machine would be replaced by “a nonpolitical type of authority” and there would be “effective communal decision without coercion.”

Indeed Sanderson’s book is unusual in that it gives an accurate picture of what Marx and Engels saw as the main features of future society. Nobody can read and understand this book and still think that the likes of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao adhered to the same political principles as Marx and Engels.

Sanderson also deals with some of the specific policies advocated by Marx and Engels on the basis of their principles. Some of these the Socialist Party of Great Britain has regarded as mistakes while others we no longer regard as relevant in the changed conditions of the second half of the twentieth century.

9. The socialist revolution would take place “just possibly at the polling booths, but much more likely at the barricades.” We would now put the emphasis emphatically the other way round.

10. In economically backward countries still dominated by feudal rule Socialists should help the bourgeoisie to carry through their revolution. We say this is now no longer necessary since capitalism is firmly established as the dominant world system so that Socialists everywhere should be working for the immediate establishment of Socialism on a world scale.

11. Marx and Engels regarded Tsarist Russia “as the most serious obstacle to revolutionary progress" and advocated and supported war against it. We say they were wrong to support wars.

12. In the early stages of Socialism there could not be full free distribution according to needs and. although money would be abolished, distribution would take place by means of non-circulating labour-time vouchers. We say that, even if there was a temporary shortage, such vouchers would not be the fairest method of rationing but that in any event the tremendous technical developments in the last hundred years have meant that free distribution can be implemented almost immediately.

We would not endorse everything Sanderson says, but nevertheless this is a book all Socialists and people interested in political theory should read.

Adam Buick

Obituary: A. Young (1971)

Obituary from the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have learned of the death recently of Albert Young, of Walthamstow, at the age of 64. Comrade Young represented a remarkable association with the socialist movement. His grandfather was an active member of the Social-Democratic Federation. His father, Percy, and his uncle, Byron Young, both joined the Socialist Party of Great Britain about 1906. Byron was a well-known speaker for the Party for several years before he emigrated to Australia in the nineteen-twenties, and Percy remained a member since 1945, first in the old Leyton Branch and then in Hackney.

A lively, forceful person, Albert Young kept a stall in a London market (the family were craftsmen brushmakers). He was always anxious to expound and discuss socialism, and there must be many people who remember chance meetings with him in art galleries or on trains, and the comments on society thrown out as he sold things from his stall. His special interest outside the Party was in art; he was a talented amateur painter, and went out in the country whenever possible to find subjects for landscapes. In 1968 he had a serious operation, and was able to go out very little thereafter.

Our condolences go to his family. Their socialist tradition is carried on by Albert's son, who is a member of the Party—the fourth generation.