Pakistani Punch-Up (1972)

 

From the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The violence which is an integral element of world capitalism has erupted yet again. In the Indian subcontinent the inevitable armed conflict between the two enemies has not been prevented by the United Nations, the international peace-keeping body.

Once again we see how capitalism cannot develop an effective means of preventing violence, whether on a local or international level. Only Utopians could expect the League of Nations, the United Nations, the Warsaw Pact or the Commonwealth to work wonders. Violence is a necessary part of capitalism.

To get down to cases: Just now we described the Indo-Pakistan armed conflict as “inevitable”. There are several reasons for this — some complex, some simple, some ancient and others more immediate.

Most people point to the partitioning of India at the time of Independence — nearly 25 years ago — as a significant point in history. The demand of the Muslims for their own state resulted in India losing five Muslim-majority areas to Pakistan. These areas were: North-West Frontier Province, Sind, Baluchistan and half of the Punjab in the west, and in the east the Eastern half of Bengal. The new state of Pakistan was thus a split personality: its capital, its business and military centres were developed in the West wing while the East wing, more populous and economically more promising, was treated as a colony.

During the sixties, under Ayub Khan’s corrupt dictatorship, Bengali demands for autonomy grew more emphatic, backed by civil and industrial unrest. Ayub’s successor, Yahya Khan, tried to placate these forces but finally, last March, resorted to military methods.

We may ask: why was he so determined to retain East Pakistan at such appalling cost? The reason is the usual sordid one of capitalist economics. East Pakistan had a profitable export trade, mainly in jute and tea, and the West wing needed foreign currency badly, both for maintenance of the Army and for development of new industries; and besides East Pakistan provided a captive market for West Pakistan’s growing industry.

That is what Pakistan stands to lose by this war. Against this loss, Yahya Khan would be fairly happy if he could grab Kashmir. This beautiful and fairly prosperous state, bordering West Pakistan, is a Muslim- majority area but was ceded to India by its Hindu ruler and has ever since been a bone of contention.

As for India, Mrs. Gandhi has her own reasons for war: if one counts the refugees, she has more than ten million reasons. Since Partition, India is naturally in a competitive position as against Pakistan. To take only two examples: their textile exports compete for foreign markets and so do their jute exports. At the time of Partition, West Bengal had more than 100 jute mills, which were separated at a stroke from the better jute producing areas of East Bengal. The mills had to be run down, as the small West Bengal crop of low-grade jute could not keep them going profitably.

For this reason — and others not connected with Partition — West Bengal is now in serious economic trouble. There is an extremely high rate of unemployment, and political and industrial unrest have led to indiscriminate murders and terrorism, with gangs of goondas roaming the city slums and terrorising the villages (If all this does not fit your stereotype of peaceable, poetic Bengali people, just remember that two Bengali words we all know are "thug” and “cosh”, and that in 1947 the bloodbath of Partition was worst in the Punjab and Bengal.)

Mrs. Gandhi has every reason to swim with the tide of Bengali nationalism and, posing as an altruistic benefactor, rescue Bangla Desh from the tyranny of the Pak Army. In doing so she will divert attention from her domestic difficulties and outflank the left wing parties. The majority party of West Bengal supports Moscow, so it will have to endorse her action. She may also have her eye on East Bengal’s potential as a cheap food-growing area, as a captive market for Indian manufactures and as a help in restoring West Bengali jute mills.

Finally we see a cynical line-up of angels backing this war — a war which is bringing starvation, disease and destitution to tens of millions of helpless men, women and children; which destroys the crops, the homes and the land they depend on; which has already pauperised 10 million refugees and is daily killing scores of others.

This war is hacked by so-called Communists in the Kremlin, supporting the same Mrs. Gandhi who refuses to allow their comrade Jyoti Basu to hold office in West Bengal. In backing India, the Russians are opposing, not only “imperialist” America, not only the corrupt, religion-based authoritarian regime of Pakistan, but also their own comrades in Peking. What an Unholy Alliance is this new Holy Trinity: Pakistan, America — and Peking! And what a piece of blatant humbug is Russia’s support for India and the “right of self-determination” for Bangla Desh!

None of these principalities and powers, these international Al Capones, has any concern for ordinary people. Famine, cholera, typhus and acres of refugee camps are a price they are only too happy to see others pay, as they fight it out, by proxy, in the plains of Bengal and the Punjab or the mountains of Kashmir.

This war, like other capitalist adventures, is one from which the working class can hope for no gain and which they should denounce from all angles. War, after all, is only the method by which the capitalist class redistributes its loot. When wealth is socially owned, this will be seen as the strangest and most self-destructive exercise possible.

Charmian Skelton

Background to the conflict (1972)

From the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the very beginning of recorded history, Bengal has passed through turmoil. It has hardly known any peace in its long history. With the advent of Aryan civilisation most of the Indian sub-continent became comparatively peaceful, except Bengal, which was still infected with various groups of outlaws. It was not until 1203 that Bengal came in contact with Islamic culture. Towards the end of the Sena rule in Gauda, the Khalji chief Muhammed bin Bakhtyar invaded Laksmana Sena’s kingdom and by 1206 Khalji’s armies had brought a vast part of it under their control. Successive Afghan, Pathan and Mogul rulers eventually brought most of Bengal under their control.

By the later part of the 17th century the Portuguese established themselves in India. They indulged in a reign of terror on the coastal cities and towns of the Bay of Bengal and Ganges delta. Their main occupation was piracy and slave trade. They ravaged innumerable coastal cities, towns and villages and captured young men and women for their slave trade. Some of the slave traders even experimented with cross-breeding with various groups to produce able-bodied slaves. The then Mogul Emperor made some feeble attempt to stop this outrage in Bengal, but it was all in vain. The slave trade flourished until the later part of the 18th century. From the beginning of the 18th century, Dutch, French and English traders arrived in Bengal in search of fortune. They all plundered the land without any compassion for the native populace. The merciless acts of British indigo cultivators towards the natives of Bengal are well known. They all came with Bible in one hand and a sword in the other.

The British left India, in August, 1947, divided on the basis of religion. The present conflict is a continuation of the one which began with that division. Any serious student of politics could have visualised then that a divided India would never live in peace. A united two-part Pakistan was doomed geographically from the very beginning. When the novelty of independence died down, the East Bengalis realised that they had dislodged British rulers, only to replace them with West Pakistan rulers. Soon they found that their civil service, commerce and landed properties had been taken over by the West Pakistanis who became their new oppressors. Although East Pakistan produced more than half the national revenue the people of East Pakistan starved and suffered from other discomforts like unemployment, bad housing, lack of transport. The intellectual elites of East Pakistan resented West Pakistani rule from the very beginning. Fazlul Haq and Maulana Vasani formed their separate political parties as far back in 1948/49. The present leader of the Awami League, Sheikh Majibur Rahman was then a right hand-man of Fazlul Haq. As the years went by these two parties gathered momentum and brought the great majority of East Bengalis into their fold. The West Pakistani rulers never paid any heed to their grievances.

When Sheikh Majibur Rahman organised several demonstrations in protest in East Pakistan in 1969, the then ruler Ayub Khan, put the Sheikh in prison for a long period without trial and eventually when he was tried he was found not guilty of any crime. Soon after this trial Ayub Khan was thrown out by Yahya Khan who formed a military government after giving the pledge that he would soon bring the country to democratic rule. Accordingly a general election was held in December, 1970 and Sheikh Majibur Rahman and his party captured most of the seats. The East Bengalis were jubilant with the result. They thought that they were going to be their own masters, but they failed to take account of the West Pakistani reaction towards the election result. How could anyone think that the West Pakistan rulers would submit to a Bengali governing party? The first barrage of shells were fired by Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto. He refused to have anything to do with the Sheikh and termed him as a traitor to Pakistan. Yahya Khan from the very beginning, on the advice of his army generals and other West Pakistani leaders, had no intention of handing over power to a Bengal political leader. If he had allowed a Bengali party to take over effective power, these West Pakistanis would never have taken it gracefully. They would have stirred up a violent reaction in West Pakistan. So he started stalling the whole issue. This action just about tried the limit of patience of the East Bengalis and by the end of January, 1971 East Pakistan burst into violent demonstrations of protest against West Pakistani rule, and the people of East Bengal with their leader Sheikh Majib demanded autonomy in East Pakistan. But in those days they never thought of seeking help from India.

As time went by East Pakistan was reduced to a state of anarchy. Eventually, Yahya then decided to talk with Sheikh Majib in Dacca on 22 March, 1971. Bhutto, on the request of Yahya, then followed. It now appears that the whole thing was sham and show. On the fateful night of 25 March, 1971, Yahya Khan ordered his army in the name of “peace and democracy” to suppress the revolt in East Bengal. The unsuspecting Bengalis were not prepared for this ruthless action. Their leader, Sheikh Majib, was arrested and thousands of East Bengalis were massacred. The reign of terror continued with the result that over 10 million East Bengalis crossed the border into India. The Indian government had no means to tackle this problem by itself. It appealed to the world powers, but the response was almost nil. This was the excuse for the Indian government to help the Bangla Desh Mukti Bahini and if necessary to enter into a war with Pakistan.

The world powers stood by and watched these two countries head towards war. Both India and Pakistan pursue the old policy of “we fight a war to establish peace and in peace we prepare for a war”. At the beginning of December the Pakistan Air Force bombed several Indian Air Force bases and Indian tanks rolled into the lush green plain of East Bengal with the object of expelling the West Pakistani army and handing over the power to a dependent Bangla Desh government.

If the Indian government achieves its objective, this will not be the end of confrontation. When the dust of the present conflict settles down, both countries will start replenishing their arsenals for the next war. This will drain much of their national resources, with the result that the big powers which sell them arms — namely America, Britain, China, France and Russia — will benefit. Of course, the world powers at the same time as they rearm both countries, will talk hypocritically in the United Nations about the folly of armed conflict. Soon the world will forget all about this conflict and the poor will go on suffering as before.

T. Ray

The futility of violence (1972)

From the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard 

From a member of the Socialist Party of Canada

At a Party meeting a while ago a member of the audience asked what the Socialist Party of Canada would do if the capitalists established a dictatorship and banned Socialist activity.

The questioner often thinks that the workers must be ready to pit their strength against the strength of the state; they must build a military as well as a political organisation.

The thought has had tragic results. When the Communists sent their followers to the Berlin barricades during the hungry thirties, the brutal destruction of the “revolt” featured no situation to the advantage of any but the authorities, some of the virility being skimmed from the ranks of the rebels in death and imprisonment. Again, when the rise of Hitler brought the joyous cry, "After Hitler, Thaelman!” the joy ended with the disappearance of the misguided into Hitler’s prisons and ovens. Castor oil was one of Mussolini’s contemptuous answers to his opponents. And these two dictators held fast to their powers until destroyed in a capitalist upheaval.

Class conflict has taken forms other than “military” ones, and just as disastrous, as the old time Wobblies in America found during the sabotage days, when mysterious stickers appeared in a fruit belt hostile to the IWW, “Don’t put copper tacks in fruit trees, it hurts them,” and when experiments occurred in the lubricant properties of sand in journal boxes, the effects of stink bombs in theatres and the serviceability of spanners in moving machinery.

The Communists, who presently give little service to the violent revolution theme, did most to pave the way for its acceptance among current radical groups. At one time violence was basic to Communist thought and anyone who did not talk violence could not talk revolution. Communists turned in all possible ways in search of the precise situation, the “psychological moment”, that would bring their rise to power.

Some experimenting was done even with the unemployed. When the factory doors closed behind huge armies of workers during the depression years, the cry went up, “The factory of the unemployed is on the streets!” and the workers without jobs were guided in large numbers into parades and demonstrations, ostensibly to bring their plight to the attention of the authorities, actually to bring the policeman’s club onto their heads. But the great hatred for oppression intended to be generated in this way became more often a hatred for those who had led them to the shambles.

This experimenting had its ludicrous moments, as when a widely-distributed mimeographed call for the unemployed to brave the clubs and horses of the cossacks and assert their ability to assemble in defiance of a police ban, concluded with the reminder that in the event of rain the gathering would be postponed until the following day.

But the lessons of violence and invitations to violence in the workers’ movements have been mostly harsh, bringing tragedy and apathy without compensation. Like the heroes of false causes, spread under acres of white crosses, who “died bravely”, the advocates of violence see themselves also martyred, but to a worthy cause, and they fail to see the world move undisturbed over their broken bodies.

The Socialist Party of Canada and its Companion Parties do not advocate violence as a means of gaining Socialism. It cannot be gained this way. “Revolutionary situations” and “psychological moments” may bring changes in governments but not a transformation in society. This can come only from a conscious effort by the majority of society’s members.

To the question, What will we do if the capitalists set up a dictatorship? the Socialists of earlier days said "We will know what to do when that time comes!” The answer is a good one today. If the capitalists bring dictatorship when they have majority support, they will be in the driver’s seat and the Socialist minority will have to use what means are available to restore their freedom to work for Socialism. If the dictatorship is attempted in the face of a Socialist majority, the capitalists will be engaging in dangerous lunacy, for it must be clear that if all their powers could not prevent the rise of Socialist Consciousness, they have lost their power to destroy it.

And while there will be violence between today and the day of the Socialist victory, we believe that the shedding of blood will not bring that day a moment closer and cannot be more than an unhappy product of class conflict.

Education and Sex (1972)

From the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard 

There is an old story about the teacher who, perhaps desperate for something to liven up a dull lesson, asked the kids to tell her exactly what they were thinking about as she showed them a picture of St. Paul’s. All went well until she got to one little boy who said he was thinking about sex. Now really desperate, the teacher asked him why he was thinking about that? Because, he said, he never thought about anything else.

Now every adult who was ever a child knows there is a lot of reality in that old joke — perhaps too much reality for the comfort of some parents who deceive themselves that, whatever the neighbours’ children might do, theirs would never defile themselves with anything as messy and abandoned as sexual activity. There are certainly elements of fantasy and self-deception about the current outcry over sex education and about what is called pornography — about magazines which admit that we have pubic hair, about films which agree that human beings take part in sexual intercourse and about shops which sell devices claimed to make the experience more excruciatingly enjoyable. All this, need it be said, at a price — sex is one of our growth industries and there is some shrewd money invested in it.

This money might be thought to be pretty safe; sex, as Marilyn Monroe is supposed to have said, is here to stay. The question is, how should we deal with it? It seems like a dirty trick of human development, that the urge is strongest when we are young, in our earlier teens. But any teenager who indulges the urge and becomes a parent as a result faces severe economic problems; a worker does not expect to reach his peak earning power until he is in his forties.

This does something to explain the theory popular with psychologists, educationalists, and indeed with almost everyone else, that youngsters are emotionally unprepared to have children and that until they reach the magic age of emotional readiness they must control — that is, suppress — their sexual drive. This opens up a gap, between desire and fulfilment, which of course most youngsters try to bridge. Usually this is by masturbation which, they are warned, might cause a vicious circle of loneliness, depression, consolatory masturbation, loneliness more acute, deeper depression . . . (This is a modern, more refined version of the old hell-fire and brimstone stuff about masturbation stunting your growth, or making hair grow from the palms of your hands. Who can dispute that the more knowledge on this matter the better? Who can wonder, that youngsters are restless, in revolt?)

One fact which has not been adequately faced by the Lord Longfords of the world is that the suppression of sexual drives can itself cause powerful emotions, which are often more difficult to control than is a mere sexual urge. Sometimes suppression may mean fairly minor problems like feelings of personal guilt which, however unpleasant they may be for the individual, do not usually extend far beyond himself. But there can be worse; the search for substitute virility symbols in aggressive behaviour — the big motor bike and the black studded jacket, uniforms in the fight with chains and knives. And at the extreme there is the chronic sex offender who can deal with his guilt and frustrations only by unloading them — by shocking or damaging or even destroying other people.

It is tempting — and it may not be entirely unfair — to guess that the vociferous denouncers of sex education are themselves pretty strong on guilt and probably confused by the fact that sex is so eminently marketable. Capitalism, they should realise, does not spurn the chance to make a profit. A lot of the porn which can be bought freely in most newsagents is rather clever, mixing fact with fantasy, titillation with discussion, all on a delicate implication that the reader is virile enough to satisfy every one of those gorgeous, naked girls and to outdo in performance all those kinky letter-writers. More probably the reader is desperately deprived, paying his furtive money in an unhappy attempt to idealise feelings which he cannot manage in any other way.

This is another reality too painful for many people to face. The tragedy is, that there is no reason to feel guilty about sex, any more than about eating or sleeping. Yet the guilt is often instilled in childhood, by parents who extend their property relationship with their children to the point of neurotic possessiveness and who fear sex as a private, exclusive act which separates their children from them. Sometimes the end result of this relationship is the sexual offender, going his lonely way in the public park.

One wonders what valid objection these parents can have to sex education which, after all, takes on a job they feel themselves unable to do, suppressed as they are in the stifling privacies of the family under capitalism. Perhaps they too, on the trim housing estates, sheltering behind the beloved car at the kerbside, fearful of their job and of their standing with the neighbours, need help. But private property society does not give priority to such needs; wage slaves can exist, and be profitably employed, without anyone probing their deeper emotional deprivations. In any case, among the innumerable indignities which capitalism imposes upon human existence, which should have priority for therapeutic attention? Martin Cole, maker of the famous, controversial sex education film Growing Up, obviously thinks that sexual neuroses should be pretty high on the list: “I think,” he said in an article in The Guardian (1/5/71) “teenagers should be promiscuous.” Any more, we might ask, than they should be well fed, secure, healthy, happily creative instead of uselessly employed?

It is worth dragging out the fact that sex is a necessary human function, which must have been performed with some degree of relief and enjoyment by the parents of Mrs. Whitehouse and Lord Longford. Sex can be a uniting factor but it can also be divisive, even destructive. Capitalism puts pressure on us to confine sexual activity to the marital situation (there is little reality in this, of course — even for the working class and less for their masters, who can afford any number of affairs and of children illegitimate or otherwise.) But monogamous marriage is an extremely complex relationship, formed upon many expectations which the partners have of each other — social, economic, sexual and the rest. In rare cases (and whatever the women’s magazines might say they are rare) all these expectations reach some level of consistent fulfilment and the marriage as a result is tolerably stable. In most cases the impossible is not achieved; if the couple are honest enough or rich enough they go to the divorce court.

In this situation it has been difficult for sex under capitalism to be treated as other than a matter of private, almost furtive, shame. This neurosis has been bolstered over time with propaganda of varying degrees of crudity, like the good old theory of original sin and the fallacy that the Roman Empire came to an end, not through any discernible historical reason but because its inhabitants were crazy libidinos and perverts. Then there is the boy-meets-girl theory in which sex and marriage is like a jig-saw puzzle, a matter of waiting until the right shaped piece comes along to fit in with us. (This was once very popular in those women’s magazines and they have always sold as well as any porn.) As the market for pornography develops and as sex education spreads, these attitudes should break down and a newer set of neuroses, probably going under the title of sexual freedom, may flourish and will be twisted and used to justify and bolster the inhumanities of capitalism.

And what will be the end of it? The idea that we stop feeling guilty about sex and simply enjoy it can be extended — should we not also set out to enjoy all types of intercourse and the satisfaction of all our appetites? For example, the vast majority of people spend nearly their entire life doing jobs which they detest and which degrade them to an inhuman level of boredom and servitude. An education which attacked that situation and the damage it causes would be a direct, explicit attack at the basis of capitalism. Yet if the sex educators are to be consistent, if they are to fulfil their professed aim of human happiness and harmony, they should settle for nothing less.

What holds them back? The simple answer, which also applies to so many other reformers whose ideas are superficially sound and attractive, is that they accept the basis of capitalism while they reject some of its effects. Sexual activity is bound up with some extremely powerful human emotions which might be usefully investigated, but only if this is in human terms. The psychiatrists can scrape around on the surface for as long as they are able but they are doomed to failure as long as they remain blind to the fact that only a free, humane society can respect human feelings.

Ivan

Trotsky on Lenin (1972)

Book Review from the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Lenin. By L. Trotsky. (Harrap £1.75.)

These notes were collected and published in an English translation in 1925. With the increased interest in Marxist thought the works have now been retranslated and issued. They cover the first period in London in 1902, the October seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in 1917, and the last stage to the New Economic Policy and Lenin’s demise. The book is well worth perusal as an expression of the time.

Some illuminating admissions are made by the author. Writing of the spring of 1918, Trotsky says:

  It was only in Petersburgh and Moscow that the revolution had been really carried through. In the majority of the provincial cities the October Revolution was carried over the telegraph poles.

In other words, most of the Russian population did not really know what was happening.

Trotsky also quotes from Lenin’s Thesis on Peace of January 1918: “For its success, Socialism in Russia needs at best a few months." Was this not a slip of the pen? asks Trotsky and answers No! Lenin repeatedly in speeches to the Council of Peoples Commissars in 1918 said that in half a year we will have Socialism and would become one of the most powerful states.

No wonder the poor ill-fated Zinoviev, Lenin's whipping boy at the Comintern, ran round prophesying the doom of Capitalism throughout Europe before the year was out.

Trotsky’s polemic against H. G. Wells (who interviewed Lenin in Moscow in 1921) is included. Undoubtedly Lenin was right. Wells was an unspeakable petty-bourgeois philistine, but, in his criticism of Lenin, he had a definite point. Wells insisted to Lenin that for the success of Socialism it is necessary to change the mentality of a whole people.

In his panegyrics on Lenin's birthday and at his death, Trotsky contributed as much as Stalin, or anyone else, to building up the Lenin leadership legend, necessitated by the backwardness of the Russian masses.

Trotsky’s fulsome adulation of Lenin’s ruthless physical extermination of political opponents culminated with a Stalinist terrorist ice-pick in our author’s brain.

Horatio

The conspiracy trial (1972)

Book Review from the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Conspiracy Trial. Ed. Judy Clavir and John Spitzer. (Jonathan Cape; £5.50).

there is much dramatic material in any trial and that of the Chicago Eight contained more than most. Apart from the unconventional dress and behaviour of the defendants there was the passionate advocacy of their counsel, the binding and gagging of Bobby Seale and such bizarre incidents as the presentation of a birthday cake to him in the courtroom.

A trial transcript bears a formidable appearance and seems to be reading only for the serious researcher. Only when we dip into the transcript does it come alive, with the drama, the humour, the colour and sometimes the simple tragedy leaping out of the cold words of print.

This book is a very hefty piece of work—615 pages, no less, and all in pretty close type. Randomly opening it at first catches the attention, then holds the interest and in the end almost keeps you up half the night. Yet it’s still mainly a reference work, for anyone who has not been tired out by the exposure of this, one of America’s most famous court happenings.

And in between reading it, it makes a useful door stop or flower press.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: ‘Adopting’ the Unemployed (1972)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard 

It is interesting to note how at this time of the year the Press weep tears of tenderness over the starving bodies of the workers who have been cast down to such depths of misery by the workings of the capitalist system; the hypocrisy of the writers is only emphasised by the humility with which the doles of food and clothing are received by the victims of capitalism.

Under the heading of ‘Adopting a Family: A Useful Birmingham Scheme’ the Birmingham Mail (20 Nov. 1921) quotes the Daily Post:- "The suggestion that individuals should adopt necessitous families had elicited a promising response and a considerable extension of the movement appears likely”.

#    #    #    #

Life will be one long holiday for the unemployed, with cakes and pictures thrown in, if this idea spreads. But stay, who is going to decide the scale (useful terms) of food for the adopted family; what will be the menu? Will it assume the proportions of a ration just sufficient to keep alive the victims of capitalism, or will it be on the same scale as the Patron’s family?

We get a little enlightenment on this point when we read in relation to the adopted family of the staff of the Post: ‘It is hoped to keep the family in a state of efficiency until they are again able to provide for themselves’.

So it is evident the adopted are to have just enough for the purpose of keeping them in such condition as, when the depression is over, they will be capable of producing once again a maximum of surplus value for their masters.

(From an article “Foster Parents” by E. J. in Socialist Standard January 1922).

Review: January 1972 (1972)

The Review of the Month column from the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

It was fitting that, in the season of good-will and hand-outs, everyone should get so alarmed by the terrible news about the straitened circumstances in which the queen has been forced to live recently. It was rumoured last year, when she did not make the usual Christmas appearance on the box, that she had virtually gone on a genteel strike for more pay. Many workers must have taken time off from their efforts to balance their own budgets to give a sigh of relief that the figurehead of British capitalism will now be able to scrape by on the more comfortable wage of a million a year and that it will not, after all, be necessary to put up any of the castles and palaces or any of the other symbols of royal penury for sale.

Similar relief must have been felt at the news that our Members of Parliament and our Ministers are also to get a hefty rise. Apparently the inflation of the currency has meant that all these people in Parliament find the buying power of their wage getting less as time goes by. But what sympathy can there be for them, since they are constantly getting their jobs as MPs on the solemn promise that they can control inflation? A prime example of someone being hoist with their own petard, or whatever we might call it.

At the other end of the wages spectrum, the 280,000 members of the National Union of Mineworkers were voting for an official strike to start on January 9. The strike —the first national industrial action by the miners since the lock-out of 1926 — was decided on after three years of mounting militancy among the union’s activists, which forced the executive to drop their previous "moderate” policy of concern for the finances of the state capitalist National Coal Board. The miners’ demands may seem to be high but in fact they are asking for no more than enough to maintain or re-establish their standard of living. The press are unable to use one of their usual lies —that strikes are forced upon unwilling workers by their union — since in the secret ballot 59 per cent of miners (75 per cent in the largest coalfield, Yorkshire) voted to strike. In this latest battle in the continuous class struggle, the miners should have the full support of every member of the working class. They’ve got a better case than the queen.

Abroad

The war between India and Pakistan, as part of the long struggle they have waged against each other, was predictable from the earliest days of independence which was, let us remember, sold to us as a step towards peace and prosperity for the sub-continent. Both these nations are regular rattlers of the begging bowl, pleading their inability to support refugees, victims of natural disasters, famine and so on. Yet both seemed to find little difficulty in financing a war, which says something about the order of capitalism’s priorities. The conflict is of course more than a minor matter, since the three leading powers of world capitalism, as they all quickly showed, are vitally interested in what happens there. Russia in particular is determined that this shall be her exclusive area of influence. Altogether an ominous situation, showing again that this is no time of peace and security.

As the statesmen patted themselves on the back when they drew the borders of India and Pakistan in 1947, so they were busily congratulating themselves over their latest "settlement”, this time in Rhodesia. Of course this was a sellout but it was almost impossible, given the facts of life under capitalism, to see any other way out for the British ruling class. Those who were angry at the terms of the settlement should remind themselves that betrayals, of varying degrees of cynicism, are a constant feature of capitalist diplomacy.

Politics

The newspapers were almost damp with the tears of the leader writers, as the news came through that the Parliamentary Labour Party had turned down Barbara Castle as a member of their Shadow Cabinet. (In the event, as must have been expected, Wilson appointed her to his team anyway.) The theme of the comment was to regret this scurvy treatment of so fine and clever a woman. Yet Castle was one of the most prominent tricksters of the late unlamented Labour government; in her role as boss of employment she planned to restrict the bargaining power of the unions. This was her most famous achievement; apart from that she was always ready to defend all the Wilson government’s anti-working class measures on the grounds that she, a “left-wing socialist”, could be trusted to stand against anything which harmed working class interests. What this means is that she. was among the most cynical of this bunch of quacks and liars. Except for the fact that she would simply be replaced by another, equally cynical, politician, no member of the working class need mourn her departure.

Open Letter to Jimmy Reid, Communist shop steward, Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (1972)

From the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Brother,

Some weeks ago I saw you on Television addressing the students at Essex University. In the short extract screened, you were talking about a united working-class and saying (quite correctly) how immensely powerful the working class could be, if only it was united.

“If we all spat we could drown them” you said, with typical working-class directness and humour. Quite true, of course, probably in no other country (including Russia) is the working class in such overwhelming preponderance. The question therefore, is why isn’t the working class united? What is it that blinds workers to their class interests, and divides them? A moment’s thought should supply the answer. It is political ignorance.

Many workers do not think they are workers, at all. Many carry on a pathetic struggle to appear “middle- class”, grumbling the while about the “unjust” prosperity of car workers or dockers.

In fact, even to talk about “Unity” at all pre-supposes unity for something—some aim, some goal. Unity in the abstract, for the sake of unity is meaningless.

Apart from the large number of workers who still think that the boss is their best friend and that they too can become capitalists, there is also a very large number who see the necessity of uniting in trade unions to improve their lot.

These workers are at the threshold of class consciousness—but only the threshold, the first baby step. Lenin called it "mere trade union consciousness”. They have an awful long way to go.

A minority of workers have realised that the problem is not just a question of keeping wages up, but that capitalism is their trouble and its abolition would be emancipation from social problems for everybody, especially the workers, who are on the receiving end. These workers have acquired real class-consciousness, for them it is no longer a question of dockers, or miners, or teachers, but the abolition of the wages system. They are revolutionary Socialists because it is absurd to propose the abolition of capitalism without a superior alternative. When the anti-Socialist says “Yes, but what would you put in it's place?” the answer is Socialism.

This presupposes the overthrow of capitalism, and we can all agree that the last thing capitalists want is to be abolished (by the way, this does not mean physical extermination; we are talking about social relations). Theoretically, it should be possible to abolish the capitalist class without harming one hair of one capitalist’s head.

Over the years, various people have put forward various ideas for the abolition of capitalism. This has brought disunity, even among those who wanted to abolish capitalism. In other words, even the minority who did oppose capitalism could not agree on the methods to overthrow it. Among the various groups holding opposing ideas was one which came together from a number of splinter groups to form a Communist Party in 1920.

Some of these groups left it again, as soon as they realised more about it. Sylvia Pankhurst and the Workers Socialist Federation refused to follow Moscow and backed out. Some prominent Scottish Workers Committee Movement stalwarts, Tommy Clarke, of the AEU, John Maclean, the first Bolshevik Consul in Britain, did likewise.

Under Russian domination, and blindly following their paymasters, McManus, Gallagher, Bell and Co. they started their wearisome howl for “The United Front” which is where you, my dear Brother, get your Unity slogan from.

The idea was to bore within the Labour Party and turn it into a Communist or “Leftist” party. They would have had more luck boring within the Bookmakers Protection Society to transform it into the Anti-Betting League.

To the end of their days neither Lenin nor Trotsky really understood the British set-up and hoped that the economic crises of the twenties would impel British workers to change the Labour Party into a party of “heavy civil war” (Moscow Theses).

Until 1929 the British C.P. screamed for the United Front when for the election of that year Moscow ordered a turnabout and “Class against Class”; they ran thirty-three candidates and lost thirty-three deposits.

Now after years of utterly futile agitation for minority armed insurrection and “heavy civil war” Mr. Gollan and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain have decided that “Socialism in Great Britain can be established by the parliamentary road”.

This destroys the reason for the existence of the Communist Party, whose claim to fame was that it was in favour of violent drastic measures.

There is just one other point, however, concerning what Socialism is. When Mr. Gollan informs the British electorate in a television interview that the British C.P. is concerned only with the British people the British C.P. has lost its last vestige of any semblance of a workers’ party.

This is where we come in. The overthrow of capitalism must be a political act. It must be the united conscious act of a revolutionary working class by some form of election.

Under the stress of difficult and hazardous circumstances, Lenin and his followers had to bend Marx’s writing to suit C.P. tactics. Nowhere, at any time could Marx have envisaged Socialism (or the end of capitalism) without a majority of the workers. The few occasions when he used the phrase "Dictatorship of the Proletariat” meant only this.

Incidentally, in the address of the Working Men’s International Association which he wrote, he had this to say about numbers:

The element of success they possess—numbers; but numbers weigh only in the balance, if united by combination and led by knowledge

So before the workers start spitting to drown the capitalist class, it would be well to realise that Socialism is the abolition, not the reform of capitalism, and that to establish Socialism, the workers must vote for it, because there is no other way of knowing whether they are united for it or not.

Yours truly,

Horatio.

Malthus, Ricardo & Marx (1972)

Book Reviews from the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, by Ricardo with introduction by R. M. Hartwell. 40p.

An Essay on The Principles of Population, by Malthus with introduction by Antony Flew. 36p.

The introductions to both these books claim that there has been a revival of interest in these early works. Both of them quote Keynes, but from opposite points of view. Flew quotes Keynes’ observation that the “almost total obliteration of Malthus’ line of approach and the complete domination of Ricardo’s for a period of a hundred years has been a disaster to the progress of economics”, while Hartwell points out that Keynes was writing against the background of the heavy unemployment of the nineteen thirties, and that since then economists have become increasingly interested in problems of “growth analysis” and this has led to a revival of interest in Ricardo’s analysis and especially in his attempt “to integrate the theory of distribution into a model of long-term change”.

So the wheel has turned a full cycle, and Ricardo’s stocks are high once again, and comment on his work frequent and complimentary.

So the conflict between Malthus and Ricardo in their lifetime is to be fought all over again by their respective backers.

Marx made many criticisms of Ricardo but regarded him (and Adam Smith) as the best exponents of "classical economy”. In particular Marx showed the inadequacy of Ricardo’s treatment of value and surplus value. On the theory of value Ricardo got into a dead end through failure to distinguish between labour and labour power. Engels summarised this in his introduction to Capital Volume II. (This and earlier formulations of a theory of value were dealt with in the Socialist Standard July 1934).

Marx and Engels were much less impressed by Malthus—Flew calls their reaction “apoplectic” (A very useful collection of their views will be found in R. L. Meek’s Marx and Engels on Malthus) Flew attacks Meek on the ground that he “speaks throughout in his Moscow’s Voice”. The criticism is valid to this extent, that Meek treats state-capitalist Russia as if it were socialist and argues that what Marx wrote about the laws of population under capitalism do not apply there.

Flew’s attack on Meek and Russia as if he were attacking Marx and Engels is therefore misdirected. Meek quotes the letter Engels wrote to Kautsky in 1881 about possible population problems in a socialist society, which contained the following:

There is, of course, the abstract possibility that the number of people will become so great that limits will have to be set to their increase. But if at some stage communist society finds itself obliged to regulate the production of human beings, just as it has already come to regulate the production of things, it will be precisely this society, and this society alone, which can carry this out without difficulty. It does not seem to me that it would be at all difficult in such a society to achieve by planning a result which has already been produced spontaneously, without planning, in France and lower Austria. At any rate, it is for the people in the communist society themselves to decide whether, when, and how this is to be done, and what means they wish to employ for the purpose. I do not feel called upon to make proposals or give them advice about it. These people in any case, will surely not be any less intelligent than we are.

It should be noted in the reproduction of Ricardo that in Hartwell’s introduction Professor Cannan and Professor Wicksteed are repeatedly referred to as Cannon and Wickstead. 

Edgar Hardcastle

From a Russian prison camp (1972)

From the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Alexander Solzhenitzyn, the Soviet novelist, is a "prophet without honour" in his own country, while in the West his magnificent novels are bestsellers and one has received the ultimate accolade: it has been made into a film.

We are not concerned here with his stature as a writer but rather with the way he adds to our sketchy knowledge of Soviet society. 

In 1945 he was sentenced to 8 years for comments he made about Stalin. His first year he spent working on construction sites around Moscow. He was then transferred to a secret research establishment—which he describes in The First Circle—but in 1950 he was transferred to a camp for political prisoners at Karaganda, in Central Asia till his life in 1953. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was published in Russia in '62 in Novy Mir, but his other novels only circulated in manuscript form among friends till they reached the West,

His three novels dealing with the Soviet scene are One Day . . . , The First Circle and Cancer Ward. Respectively they describe the world of the manual worker, the intellectual and the chronically sick.

In One Day we learn how starving and frozen prisoners labour on a construction site (temperature minus 39 degrees), queue for fuel, munch their ration of dry bread and try to wangle a smoke or an easy job. As in the outside world, "you feathered your own nest as best you could". You knew that you were cheated of your rations by all who handled them. Graft was everywhere, and so were the informers. But prisoners spared their energy, needing it for survival.

In The First Circle, he describes an expensive top-secret research institute in Moscow where class enemies, saboteurs and other top scientists, imprisoned in the Thirties and Forties, enjoyed relative luxury. Yet the State is cruelly oppressive here too: the cruelty is of a different type, that's all. At Karaganda it was physical cruelty—hunger, cold and overwork; at Mavrino it is psychological—pressure to meet impossible deadlines successfully, dread of a transfer back to labour camps and fear for their persecuted families. As at Karaganda, and as in all parts of Russia, informers abound—the hallmark of a police state. 

If you ever wondered what has happened to ordinary Russians, these books will tell you much. In the two books together, Solzhenitzyn has covered a lot: from the lowest camp drudges, the wives at home on the collectives, ex-Party members who helped collectivize the countryside at gunpoint and their wives, unable to get work without disowning their husbands, right on up through the secret service rat-race to the Minister, Abakumov, and the Immortal One himself.

Finally in Cancer Ward he underlines the idea that his real subject is not a prison society but Soviet society. The whole of Russia is a sick society, all alike are sick—doctors and patients, jailers and prisoners. All Russia is a prison where every fifth man is an informer.

For all Russians, he says, life is an endless sentence without amnesty, measured by months of deprivation and humiliation. The proletarian is everywhere a prisoner of the system: we are all doing time. Some prisons are plush like Mavrino "the first circle of hell." Others are unspeakable. His explanation of the lush conditions at Mavrino applies equally to the so-called middle-class here: "It has been shown that the better sheep are fed and looked after, the higher their yield of wool."

Solzhenitzyn earned the right to claim: "I've got an advantage no spy can make me lose: what I've been through, and seen others go through, should give me a good idea of what history is about, don't you think?"

Any who doubt the existence of these camps is welcome to try to organise a Socialist Party of the Soviet Union: the only Socialists he will meet there will be in the camps, the special prisons and the psychiatric hospitals. And it is no more safe to talk in prison, than it is outside.

Charmian Skelton

Irish Myths (1972)

Book Review from the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ireland Her Own, by T. A. Jackson, Lawrence and Wishart.

Those who believe in the myth that "the Irish people" for eight hundred years struggled for "national freedom" will find this book to their taste, but those who are looking for a more objective approach to Irish history will be disappointed.

T. A. Jackson, who wrote this book during the last world war (it was originally published in 1947) was a leading member of the British Communist Party but even Communists have been known to write better history books than this, jackson makes no attempt to relate in a convincing way the political history of Ireland with the changing interests of the various classes involved and at times his book degenerates into a mere chronicle of the Irish State's national heroes.

There are factual mistakes and omission. Today the word "Protestant: includes Presbyterians, Methodists and the like as well as the Church of Ireland. But when the Orange Order was set up in 1795 to defend the "Protestant Ascendancy" the word referred only to the then established Church of Ireland. "Dissenters" as the other non-Catholics were known did not join the Orange Order until well into the 19th century. To call it "the first Fascist body known in history" is quite meaningless.

In Irish nationalist mythology Cromwell and William of Orange figure as great imperialist villains. In fact both were compelled to conquer Ireland in order to prevent it being used as a base by those opposed to the parliamentary rule established by the English revolutions of 1649 and 1688. The Dissenters settled under Cromwell but not exclusively in parts of Ulster and remained until the middle of the 19th century the most radical section of the Irish population. They were in the forefront of Ireland's successful UDI of 1782 (which gave Ireland twenty years of Home Rule until the Act of Union of 1801) and supplied many of the leaders of the 1798 armed uprising. In fact the first two Irish Republican martyrs—Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmett—were descendants of Cromwellian settlers.

The great problem of Irish history is: Why did this once radical group come to abandon its support for an independent and democratic Ireland and go over to supporting Union with Britain and abuses of democracy? The Home Rule issue is obviously the key, yet Jackson says nothing whatsoever about Belfast's fierce opposition to Gladstone's 1886 Home Rule Bill out of which emerged the "Protestant" political consciousness (and another set of myths, including forgetting that in 1690 King Billy's victory in the Battle of the Boyne was celebrated in Rome by Pontifical High Mass and the singing of the Te Deum) which survives to this day.

Nor does Jackson say much about "Ulster custom", which gave the tenant a property in the improvements he made to the land and which did not apply in the rest of Ireland, as the important factor encouraging the growth of capitalism in the North and its stagnation in the South in the 19th century.

Another interesting quotation in Irish history—the extent to which the tradition of physical force in politics was linked to the country's relative economic backwardness—is of course not even raised.

Jackson, incidentally, and Con Lehane to whom he dedicated this book were both founder-members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain or what Desmond Greaves in an introduction calls "the Left" group which broke away from the London Social Democratic Federation in 1904". Not that we are proud of their subsequent political careers, Jackson as a hack Stalinist writer and Lehane as (in Greaves words) "a lieutenant of Connolly', but we are not prepared to let Greaves get away with suppressing this fact.

Adam Buick

Marxist Ideas in Britain (1972)

From the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first article in our series on the early history and ideas of the British Communist Party. We recall this history not only for its own interest, but because today others are making the same mistakes.

The Russian Revolution had a great impact on the thinking of radically-minded workers everywhere. Very few of those who had opposed the War were not enthusiastically swept off their feet by events in Russia. To them it appeared that in one part of the world capitalist rule had been overthrown in favour of a government committed to introducing Socialism. The Bolsheviks themselves were caught up in this enthusiasm as reflected in the speeches of Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev (who was in charge of the Communist International). They also encouraged it, calling their regime a "Socialist Republic". Many outside of Russia took this further than the Bolsheviks intended and devoted their energies to spreading the good news that Socialism had actually been established in Russia.

What sort of people supported the Bolsheviks and heeded Lenin's call to split the Labour movement and form separate communist parties? Naturally they varied from country to country but nearly all their leaders had been associated either with the Social Democratic or, in a few cases, with the anarcho-syndicalist movements. In Britain they came from the small political parties that claimed to be in the Marxist tradition and from the militant trade unionists who had built up a following as a result of the official unions' war- time "truce" with the government and employers.

Marxism never caught on in Britain in the way it did on the Continent, and to the extent that it did it was recognisably different. Everywhere the Labour movement grew out of the radical wing of the parties supported by the industrialists and petty capitalists. So it is not surprising that its theory and language tended to reflect its background. On the Continent the radicals were anti-clerical and even insurrectionary, so Marxism with its materialist philosophy was not too radical a departure especially when linked with the rising consciousness amongst industrial workers that they ought not to remain the tail-end of their employers' political party. But in Britain the Liberals (and the Radicals) were Nonconformist Christians and believers in peaceful political change, features which were inherited by the Labour movement here. In Britain atheism was not popular amongst the workers; nor were appeals to class interest. The Labour leaders preferred to see Socialism as a question of "morality" and as a "faith", with the result that what passed for theory were the vaguest, sentimental repetitions of the Sermon on the Mount. But even in Britain, and especially London, atheism had a following amongst some Radicals. And where Secularism had been strong there Marxism found a following.

In 1883 a number of working-class Radical clubs in London came together as the Democratic Federation. Later, under the influence of a rich former Tory, H. M. Hyndman, this became the Social Democratic Federation, which proclaimed Socialism as its aim and professed adherence to Marxism. At that time, few of Marx's works had been translated into English and were only available in French or German. As a result those who couldn't read these languages had to rely on those who could for a knowledge of Marx's ideas. Men like Hyndman and the writer and designer William Morris did grasp more or less what Marx was getting at but put it over in a crude form. Hyndman made both Marx's Labour Theory of Value and his Materialist Conception of History much more rigid than in fact they were. In particular he made Socialism appear as the inevitable outcome of a mechanical operation about which human beings could do very little: sooner or later the capitalist economic machine would break down so Socialists must be prepared to take over when it did. This was Morris' view too, though in his writings he also touched on problems like that of Reform and Revolution which Marx did not really have to face.

The SDF took over traditional working-class Radical demands and justified them as "stepping stones" to Socialism. Of course they were nothing of the sort and would not have been out of place in the programme of a radical, non-socialist party. Concern about this was one of the reasons why Morris left the SDF and helped to form the Socialist League. The Socialist League did refuse to advocate reforms though this was often obscured by its general anti-parliamentarism.

At the time of the Chartists a group of London artisans had emphasised the importance of mass understanding and support for change. Secularism, too, with its street-corner propaganda meetings exerted an influence in the same direction of educational rather than reform activity. This was to be an issue which was to split English Social Democracy.

So Marxism in Britain tended to play down the workers' class struggle as the way to Socialism in favour of the mechanical breakdown of capitalism or the equally mechanical build-up of abstract "knowledge".

When towards the end of the century Marxist writings, of a sophisticated kind, became available in English (mainly from America) this contributed towards the dissatisfaction with the SDF's whole policy and structure amongst some of its younger members. The critics were dubbed "impossiblists" by the SDF leaders, a word which conveyed two meanings. One, that they were raising "impossible" demands and, two, that they held it was "impossible" to reform capitalism so as to benefit the workers.

The outcome of what has been called the Impossiblist Revolt was the founding in 1903 of the Socialist Labour Party and in 1904 of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, both of which -though the SLP a little vaguely -opposed the suggestion that a socialist party should have a programme of immediate demands to be achieved within capitalism. Nevertheless, the SDF did continue to attract those who considered themselves Marxists but wanted reforms.

The SLP, destined to supply some of the leading lights of the Communist Party of Great Britain, was based on the ideas of the American party of the same name led by Daniel De Leon. De Leon had been one of the first Social Democrats to come out against a reform programme declaring that a socialist party should concentrate exclusively on achieving Socialism. But he is more well known for his advocacy of "socialist industrial unionism", a hybrid of Social Democracy and syndicalism. He was in favour of setting up separate socialist unions opposed to the "pure and simple" trade unions. In the absence of mass support for Socialist ideas these unions were a failure and De Leon eventually turned to the Industrial Workers of the World. In Britain the SLP did have its own industrial union but this never got off the ground so SLP members, though banned by Party rule from holding union office, worked inside the existing unions. The effect, therefore, of De Leonism was to turn their attention to union work, an alteration that was to bear fruit during the war - but at the expense of their original "impossiblism".

The SPGB was the only party not to be carried away by the Russian revolution, refusing to concede that Socialism was possible in backward Russia or that the Bolsheviks had found a short-cut to Socialism. The SPGB differed from the SLP in not lauding De Leon and in not preaching "socialist industrial unionism". Members of the SPGB were active trade unionists but had no illusions about it. Because our support, small though it was, was built up as support for' Socialism alone we were to emerge from the War (which of course we opposed) and the Russian revolution still basically "impossiblist". The SPGB is important here in that we have been in continuous and active existence, particularly in London, since 1904. We were thus a thorn in the side of the Communist Party's attempts to palm off Bolshevism as Marxism and state capitalist Russia as Socialism. The SPGB's mere existence meant that the Communist Party had to meet the arguments of traditional Marxism.

Meanwhile those workers for whom Marxism had no attraction but who still favoured independent Labour politics had been organising with support many times larger than that of the SDF, SLP, and SPGB combined. In 1893 had been founded in Bradford the Independent Labour Party committed to the vague ethical "socialism" discussed earlier. The ILP was weak where the SDF was strong in London. But under Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald they skilfully used trade union disquiet over certain Court decisions to win support for the idea of a "Labour Party". Their efforts were successful when in 1900 the Labour Representation Committee was set up, a body which, when it had enough MPs, became in 1906 the Labour Party. This was not, and did not claim to be a socialist party. It was basically a trade union parliamentary pressure group. Along with many trade unions the ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party and worked for the election of Labour candidates. The SDF had attended the inaugural conference of the LRC but had later withdrawn. It was not affiliated to the Labour Party but at the same time was not completely opposed to it like the SLP and the SPGB.

The Labour Party presented socialists and Marxists in Britain with a problem: should they oppose or should they work within the Labour Party? As we shall see, this was an issue on which the British Communist Party zigged and zagged. Those who weren't outright against the Labour Party were put in a more difficult position when in 1918 its new constitution committed it to "socialism", albeit of the Fabian variety (and therefore really only state capitalism).

The SDF became the Social Democratic Party in 1908 and in 1911, together with a number of dissident ILP branches and others, became the British Socialist Party, the party which was to supply the bulk of the members of the Communist Party when it was formed. Despite opposition from some of the old SDP members, the BSP soon began to move towards affiliation to the Labour Party. A party referendum in 1913 favoured this and in 1914 the party joined with Labour, leaving only the "impossiblists" and some "industrial unionists" and "syndicalists" opposed.

The poor record of the Labour Party as the mere tail-end of the Liberal majority in the House of Commons (it had to be since most of its MP's had been elected by Liberal votes) helped encourage anti-political and anti-parliamentary ideas in the period of industrial unrest immediately before the war. The subtle difference between the syndicalists and the industrial unionists does not concern us here for on one point they were agreed: that the workers could get more by "direct action" and relying on their own "economic power" than through sending representatives to parliament. It was an argument really not about how to get Socialism but how to get social reforms, though there were those who accepted the full anarcho-syndicalist argument that the way to overthrow capitalism was through a General Strike. Most didn't go this far and thought that Labour MP's could playa subsidiary role in getting reforms.

At this time, with the growth of trade unionism, there was a demand for workers' education to train people to fill the administrative posts in the unions. Ruskin College, Oxford, was originally set up with government support for this purpose but a row soon blew up when the principal wished to teach Marxian economics and sociology alongside the more orthodox versions. He was dismissed and eventually a rival "Labour College" financed mainly by the South Wales miners and the railwaymen was set up. Here a kind of Marxism (in addition to journalism, book-keeping, etc) was taught, but a Marxism tailored to trade unionism. The journal Plebs became the organ of the Labour College movement and its "Marxism".

The way in which this was different from traditional Marxism was in its emphasis on "economic power". Traditional Marxism had pointed out the necessity of winning political power, arguing that when a particular social class had become parasitic it was able to hang on to and preserve its privileges through its control of political power. Thus in effect that class had economic power because it was the ruling class (that is, the class that controlled the State). Labour College Marx- ism reversed this, arguing on the contrary that the capitalist class was the ruling class because it had economic power (of course they genuinely thought this was Marx's view). This was economic determination rather than historical materialism. But it implied that the struggle at the "point of production" was more significant than the political struggle, a doctrine that was attractive for militant trade unionists and in keeping with their anti-parliamentary mood at that time.

This view that the capitalist class rule because they own rather than own because they rule came to be accepted as "Marxism" by the Communist Party, which is not surprising since anti-parliamentarians like the South Wales (formerly Rhonddha) Socialist Society were amongst the founding groups of the British Communist Party. The SWSS also had links with Sylvia Pankhurst's Socialist Workers' Federation, another anti-parliamentary body. In addition, this version of Marxism was attractive to the SLP who were able to use the loose organization of the Labour College movement to get in some of their members as lecturers and to get some of their views published under its auspices.

The SLP arguing for "socialist industrial unions" as the main weapon to overthrow capitalism naturally tended to the view that economic power was more important than political power.

Soon after the war began the trade unions concluded an industrial truce with the employers. How- ever, the war with full employment and speed-up put pressure on the workers and at the same time put them in a strong position to resist it. It was inevitable that the workers would find a way of fighting back, if not through the official unions, then outside them. This is what happened. Unofficial bodies like the Clyde Workers' Committee in which members of the SLP and BSP were prominent took up the struggle. By the end of the war there was a fully-fledged and fairly influential Shop Stewards and Workers Committee Movement. The end of the war and industrial truce, together with growing unemployment, meant that this movement rapidly declined in influence but, before and while it did, its leaders transferred their allegiance to the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Those who supported Lenin in Britain were thus drawn from two groups. First, left wing Social Democrats, mainly from the BSP but with some from the ILP (the pro-war section of the BSP under Hyndman had split off at the beginning of the war) and, second, militant trade unionists and their supporters who regarded the economic struggle as paramount.

The bulk of the members of the CPGB set up in 1920 were from the first group, ex-members of the BSP. The Communist Party thus did not evolve out of the intransigent Marxist trend in English Social Democracy but rather from its pro-reform trend. And the SLP members who went over had already abandoned their Impossiblism, the prisoners of the non-socialist support they had won as prominent labour agitators. But the SPGB was opposed to the CPGB from the start knowing from past experience the reformism of the BSP and its members.

The manoeuvring which eventually led to unity amongst the pro-Bolshevik groups in Britain has been described elsewhere and we need not repeat it here. Suffice it to set out what were the conditions for unity: support for

1. the soviets, or workers' councils, as the way to power and then to control society;

2. the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to crush all opposition to the introduction of Socialism;

3. the Third (Communist) International. This left unsettled two important issues on which the pro-Bolsheviks were divided -the attitude of the new party towards the Labour Party and towards parliament. The BSP had been affiliated to the Labour Party and had always been committed to using parliament to get reforms. The ex-SLP members were opposed to the Labour Party but not to parliamentary action, while the others from the Workers Commit- tees, the SWSS and the SWF were opposed to both the Labour Party and parliament,

As most of the members had come from the BSP a party referendum would have gone in favour of both. But another factor helped secure this result. Lenin favoured it. He argued that the Labour Party was not so much a Social Democratic party as a federation of workers' political and industrial organisations, which the Communist Party ought to join while retaining full freedom of thought and action.

The pro-Labour decision meant (though this is hardly what Lenin intended) that the Communist Party was destined to be the tail-end of the Labour Party, its extreme left wing rather than a Leninist party in its own right. The reformists who had come from the BSP did not appreciate Lenin's subtle pro-Labour arguments. For them this was not just a "tactic"; they remained reformists who really believed that a Labour government was the way to Socialism and would help solve the workers' problems. This reformist trend in the CPGB was strengthened in 1921 when the Communist International adopted the "united front" tactic.

The question of parliamentary action was easily settled: the workers could only win power through the workers’ councils so that the role of parliament could only be subsidiary, a sounding board for revolutionary propaganda.

When the Communist Party applied for affiliation in 1920 the Labour Party turned them down. However, undismayed, the Communists joined local Labour parties and as such were delegates to the Labour conferences, Labour candidates, councillors and even MP's.

As we shall see, except for a few years between 1929 and 1933, it has been Communist policy to work for or within the Labour Party (as far as that party has allowed them). For most of its existence it has thus been a left wing ginger group encouraging, and sharing, illusions about some form of Labour government as the way to Socialism.

Next month: The effect of Stalin’s “left” turn in 1928 on the British party.

Adam Buick