“Visit a socialist country this year” (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

“Visit a socialist country this year,” said the advertisement. The result of reading this was that one dreary Sunday morning several months later I found myself in the centre of Karl Marx Stadt, in the middle of a vast crowd, listening to a speech by Walter Ulbricht—First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, and Chairman of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic.

The “Socialist Unity Party” was formed by the union of the “Communist” Party and the Social Democratic Party in the Eastern sector of Germany on 21st April, 1946. Here, then, was the “socialism” of East Germany plain for all to see. The country’s leading party proclaimed itself a “socialist” party, the town of Chemnitz had been renamed after the socialist pioneer Marx, and—-to clear up any remaining doubts—the official travel guide (VEB edition, Leipzig 1962) announced, in terms that brooked no argument: “The German Democratic Republic is a socialist state.”

Ulbricht was addressing an international rally of pioneers—the youth organisations of the East European countries. Following his speech the children were marshalled and then followed a massive parade of the marching pioneers in their thousands, complete with uniforms, banners and martial music. It was certainly an impressive spectacle and, for sheer military precision, it must surely have equalled anything the Hitler Youth could have achieved. The party of Young Communist League members, with whom I was travelling, was wild with enthusiasm and evidently could see no contradiction between the sight of these herded and dragooned youngsters yelling their slogans in carefully rehearsed unison and the professed socialist nature of the organisations to which they belonged.

The Socialist Unity Party officials were continually bringing to our attention aspects of their country which, they contended, illustrated its “socialist” nature. A favourite example was the national health service. Yet Otto Lehmann—director of the East German social insurance service—has some interesting revelations to make on this subject:

“But there are also hidden reserves of labour power which can be tapped by improving workers’ health and living conditions . . . Herr Lehmann described how effective measures of this kind can be. In the Nunchritz chemical factory, for example, labour productivity and output were doubled and profits increased by 400 per cent between 1958 and 1963, while the sickness rate fell from 5.56 per cent to 4.81 per cent . . . These good results can be traced quite clearly to better working conditions and preventive health measures . . .” (Democratic German Report, February 19th, 1965).

This is reminiscent of nothing so much as Sir John Anderson speaking in the House of Commons and saying:

“On a long view the improved standard of health and education resulting from the development of the social services ought to increase enormously our productive efficiency as a community.” (Our italics. Hansard, 11th April, 1949).

How can it be that in “socialist” East Germany and capitalist Great Britain the national health services can find such identical justification? Yet this muddled thinking on the part of the membership of the “Socialist Unity Party” is less surprising when some of the profundities of its leader are examined. Walter Ulbricht can hardly be recommended as a beacon of socialist understanding. For example, he advises how socialism may be achieved “in some countries”:

“… the question can be examined as to whether the workers in some countries may not be able, under capitalist conditions, to use their political and economic struggle in order to reduce the power of the great monopolies, and later to “buy them out”.

Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx had considered this not only possible, but under certain conditions possibly the “cheapest way” of establishing socialism(!.), Walter Ulbricht recalled.” (Our emphasis. Democratic German Report. October 16th, 1964).

So there we have it, comrades; First Secretary Ulbricht (in the name of Marx and Engels) points the way to cut-price socialism.

However, the visit to East Germany was certainly not without value. For example, I learnt that by 1980 the wages system will definitely be abolished in the U.S.S.R.; or, at least, so one earnest young “communist” assured me. But, without a shadow of doubt, the burning question of the day in the “communist” world at present is nothing so mundane as the abolition of wage labour but, instead, the Sino-Soviet dispute. Ulbricht has clearly demonstrated his own discomfort on this issue. At a meeting in the Schwarze Pumpe coal combine on November 3rd, 1964 he stated in reply to questions about relations with China :

“I have no intention of avoiding this question . . . but I must say quite frankly that our knowledge is not great enough to say anything in detail about such questions.”

Within the rank and file of his party, however, opinions are expressed which—though they cannot be recommended being any nearer to the socialist position than Ulbricht’s—are, nevertheless, less bigoted. My most cherished memory of East Germany is of an argument with a member of the “Socialist Unity Party”. Because of the strange ideas I had been expressing, which he had evidently not bothered to listen to, he thought I must be a supporter of Mao tse-Tung and therefore launched into a violent attack on the Chinese leader. He ended by storming: “Mao tse-Tung is not a good communist!” I pointed out that surely Mao tse-Tung had been described as a great communist by Stalin and other leading communists in their day. Seeing his dilemma, he compromised: “Mao tse-Tung is a great communist but not a good communist”.

John Crump

The Health Services (1966)

From the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The school medical service was the first national health scheme to be established in Britain. In the earliest days of compulsory education a constant source of anxiety for the capitalist state was the suspicion that it was wasting money on many of the underfed and underclad children in its elementary schools, simply because their physical condition prevented them from really applying themselves to their books. But what finally shook the reformers into action were the press reports of widespread physical defects found in the young workers recruited into the army at the time of the Boer War. It was feared that the bulk of Britain’s. “C3 population” was not even fit enough to die defending the imperialist interests of the ruling class. Hence in 1904 the Inter-departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration emphasised the need for a system of medical inspection of school children. This led to the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907. It is, of course, no coincidence that the other principal improvements to the school medical service are linked with the First and Second World Wars. The drafting of hundreds of thousands of working men and women on both these occasions again showed to what extent social conditions had undermined health. It is against this background that the Education Acts of 1921 and 1944 can be understood. These made it a duty for all education authorities to provide routine health inspections to be conducted on school premises.

However, the Education Act of 1944 was largely overshadowed by the discussion which raged around the Beveridge Plan and eventually materialised as the National Health Service Act, 1946. If ever there was a case of a government feeling it could simply plan away the problems of ill-health arising from the capitalist system, this was it. What was envisaged was a unified scheme available for the whole population, except for those who had the money and inclination to pay for private treatment. As can be seen from the diagram following, in theory every form of illness was adequately covered.

Under the Act the vast majority of hospitals were transferred to the Minister of Health (i.e. formal ownership of the State) on July 5, 1948. The Minister was charged with the responsibility for providing adequate hospital accommodation together with the required medical, nursing and other facilities—including the services of specialists. Eighteen years later accommodation, in terms of the number of hospitals and the number of beds, still remains inadequate. As one government publication put it: “Scarcity of capital resources seriously limited hospital building in the early years of the service.” But, it proudly goes on, “. . . the annual expenditure on hospital building rose from £12.5 million in 1956-57 . . . to an estimated £54.6 million in 1963-64 . . .” To put such figures in perspective they must be measured against the “defence” expenditure for comparable years (£1,483 million in 1957-58 and £1,837 million in 1965-66—see the Socialist Standard, August, 1966).

But the problem is not just one of too few beds, even though the Guardian mentioned on June 9, 1966, that there are now about 10,000 patients waiting to enter a hospital. Low wages have resulted in a chronic shortage of nurses and doctors. Earlier this year the general secretary of the Confederation of Health Service Employees reported to his union that 13 per cent of the beds in the hospital service could not be used anyway at present—because of the lack of staff. Most doctors are continually overworked and reports of individuals putting in well over 100 hours a week are commonplace. However, despite all the statistics that could be quoted, perhaps the best appraisal of the hospital service can be made by referring to the comment of a Manchester consultant, reported in the Daily Mail, August 22, 1966:

“When I was doing my house training I’d do a stitching job in casualty after being up all night, and I’d know it wasn’t my best work.

"Today I should hate to be knocked down and become a patient. The odds are I’d get a young doctor who had been on duty for 48 hours. How could 1 expect his best work?”

Unless you can afford the fees of a private surgeon or those of the London Clinic, this is what the hospital service means for you.

The general medical and dental services are under the supervision of the local executive councils. There is one of these to each county and county borough and it is their function to organise the doctors, dentists, pharmacists and opticians in their areas so that a comprehensive medical service exists. Supplementing these are the local health authorities who are responsible for the ambulance and midwife services as well as employing health visitors, home nurses and so on. The fact is that everywhere in this supposedly “comprehensive medical service” there are gaps and inadequacies resulting from lack of staff and facilities. A few details should make this clear.

Ten years ago the report of a working party on health visitors (Min. of Health—1956) suggested that a total force of 11,500 would be required “for the Health Visitor to effectively discharge all the duties required of her.” Years later, when this estimate is outdated anyway, there are still only the equivalent of 8,000 whole-time health visitors employed in Great Britain. Similarly, there is still throughout the country an unsatisfied demand for home helps—especially among old people. At present the average for England and Wales is that for every 10,000 people only 68 are receiving some form of assistance in this way. Section 25 of the National Health Service Act places on local health authorities the duty of providing home nursing for invalids who require such attention. As one writer euphemistically put it: "The limiting factor for some time to come will probably be the number of nurses available.” (The New Public Health —F. Grundy, London, 1965). Again, under Section 21 of the same Act, the local health authorities were ordered to equip and maintain health centres in their areas. “(This) duty on local health authorities has not been enforced, largely because of the restrictions until recent years on capital investment in health and welfare projects . . . By the end of 1963 only 18 health centres had been opened . . .” (Health Services in Britain, HMSO, 1964).

One service not mentioned so far is that of health inspection. Every council, other than county councils, is required to appoint one or more public health inspectors who supervise slum clearance, inspect houses and factories, check food supplies and so on. In the same year that the National Health Service Act was passed, a report of the Central Housing Advisory Committee outlined a 16-point standard for a “satisfactory” dwelling. It should be stressed that these were minimum requirements and merely included such stipulations as that the house should be dry, equipped with a proper drainage system and have adequate heating facilities for each room. It was pointed out back in 1946 that it was not then practicable to put this standard on a statutory basis and immediately have the public health inspectors enforce it. Twenty years later this is still the case. Millions of workers continue to live in damp, insanitary, squalid buildings which the authorities label with the bureaucratic understatement of “unsatisfactory”.

The health services, just as much as the mines and factories, are organised and run by members of the working class. There can be no doubt that many of the overworked doctors and underpaid nurses stick at their jobs simply because of their conviction that they are doing worthwhile work. But, like all workers under capitalism, they find that their efforts are hemmed in and frustrated by a social system where health comes very low down on the list of priorities.

John Crump

British capital in Malaysia - Part 1 (1966)

From the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Up till a few months ago British and Indonesian soldiers were butchering each other in the jungles of North Borneo. With the ending of “confrontation” Tunku Abdul Rahman, Prime Minister of Malaysia, said that it was a “victory of the forces of good against the forces of evil”. But, when it is known that this relatively small area provides over one-third of the world’s natural rubber, is a leading producer of tin— and that nearby Brunei has the largest oilfield in the Commonwealth, it becomes clear that the war in Malaysia had very little to do with a struggle between “good” and “evil”. The prizes at stake were large enough for the British government, representing the general interest of British capital, to consider it worth spending £255 millions each year to maintain its armed forces in the country. 

The original cause of British intervention in Malaya was trade. For this reason the island of Penang was rented on perpetual lease in 1786, the island of Singapore was bought in 1819 and the decayed port of Malacca was obtained from the Dutch in 1824. From these bases British “protection” was extended—so that between 1874 and 1909 the nine Malay states were brought under control. The sultan of each state signed a treaty by which he agreed to accept a resident adviser and to follow the “advice” in all matters except those that concerned the Moslem religion and Malay custom.. This arrangement still persists in the oil state of Brunei; the Sultan remains the nominal ruler but it is the British government, through its High Commissioner, which is responsible for all external affairs and defence.

Malaya in the 1880's has been described as a museum piece of Asian feudalism, roughly similar to 12th century France or Germany. But with the rapid development of the tin and rubber industries this feudal backwater found itself hurled into the modern, capitalist world. The state of the country was suddenly determined by the prices of these two commodities and no longer by civil wars between rival claimants to the throne. By 1914 the value of foreign, chiefly British; capital in Malaya had already reached $.US 194,000,000. When the Second World War broke out this figure had been dwarfed and there was something like $.US 260,000,000 of British capital alone invested in the tin mines, rubber plantations, etc. In addition there was a further $.US 82,500,000 invested in government loans, which were often floated in London. French, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese and American capitalists had all staked their claims in the rush to exploit Malayan workers, but it was British imperialism which held the whip hand. In recent years there has been some reticence about revealing the total amount of British capital invested in Malaya but some idea of its enormity can be gauged from the fact that in 1961 remitted profits on direct, foreign investment from the Malayan Federation were $.M 321,000,000. In the same year a further $.M 137,000,000 flowed into the country as private, direct, long-term investment. It would be inaccurate to picture this as a one-way process. For example, the native capitalist class in Malaya—through its government—declared its official overseas assets to be $.M 825 millions at the end of 1960. These consisted mainly of British government securities, including local authority mortgages. A clear example that the exploitation of the world’s workers by the international capitalist class is a process that cuts across all national boundaries.

Although Malaya yields approximately one-third of the total world output of tin, it is interesting to note that only some two per cent of it is now produced by the traditional dulong washers. These are individual collectors who concentrate the ore by hand, using a pan in the beds of streams. There are upwards of a hundred mines owned by British capitalists and this represents about three-fifths of the total industry. Its contribution to the profits remitted out of Malaya, taking good years with bad, is a reasonably close rival to that of rubber.

The history of the tin industry is one of desperately trying to impose some sort of order on to the chaos of capitalist production. During the inter-war period an International Tin Committee was formed whose object was “the adjustment of production to consumption and the reduction of surplus stocks by the restriction of output”. This was set up largely as a result of the slump of 1930 when tin prices fell disastrously. The verdict of economists on this attempt at enforcing price stability is that “it was unable to prevent violent short-term fluctuations in the world price”. (L. A. Mills—University of Minnesota). After the Second World War it was confidently suggested that these “short-term fluctuations” could be ironed out by means of a world buffer stock of tin. This was the method adopted when international control of production was again established in the nineteen-fifties. Just how successful this has been is demonstrated by the table below.

As can be seen, after 1958 there was a run-away increase in prices and once again the professional economists were forced to admit that capitalism reduces the most carefully-laid plans to a shambles. Thus, the Economist ruefully made the point:

The tin agreement, which is based on the manipulation of a buffer stock, and was intended to cope mainly with price declines, has been faced with unmanageable rises. The buffer stock manager has had no tin to sell since October, 1963. But, despite the long list of unsuccessful agreements, primary producers go on trying to find the ideal formula. What else can they do?  (10th July, 1965)

Any socialist could supply the answer: nothing at all, within the framework of capitalism. Only the ordered production of a socialist society provides a solution. The economists, yearning for an “ideal formula”, resemble nothing so much as the alchemists who searched in vain for the Philosopher’s Stone. (Incidentally, it has since proved just as hopeless to deal with price declines. Since January of this year, tin has fallen nearly £180 a ton on the London Metal Exchange).

John Crump

(To be concluded)

British capital in Malaysia - Part 2 (1966)

From the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

The situation in the rubber industry is somewhat different from the others because the small capitalists and peasant producers have not yet been eliminated. Of the 3½ million acres under rubber in Malaya, only about two million are controlled by the large estates (which are nearly all over the 1,000 acre mark). The other 1½ million acres are comprised of small plots whose owners have been in a relatively strong competitive position because of their much lower costs of production. This was especially so after the Japanese occupation in World War II when, because of the inexpensive methods of manufacture on the smallholdings, they were able to resume production at once—unlike the plantations, many of which were damaged. Where the large estates have the advantage is that they have had the resources to embark on costly replanting schemes with high-yielding trees. As these trees mature the systematised production on the plantations is likely to pay off and it is thought that the present trend against the smallholdings will strengthen.

Despite this, the nagging problems thrown up by the capitalist system remain to haunt the shareholders. In addition to the political uncertainty enveloping the whole of South-East Asia and the growing threat from synthetic rubber, the market has proved even more temperamental than that for tin. The rubber industry, too, can boast of a long list of futile attempts to maintain price levels. These started in 1922 when it was decided that the forced restriction of exports would keep prices hovering around the 30 cents per pound mark. After this step had been taken the price rose to $M1/b. in 1925, stood at 20 cents/lb. in 1928 and finally, between 1931-33, it sunk to 6 cents/lb. and less. Following this outstandingly successful first attempt many other schemes, including an International Rubber Regulation Committee, have been implemented; each was guaranteed in turn to be the elusive “ideal formula”. The table below makes any comment superfluous

The British capitalist class has other vital interests at stake in this part of the world. The Singapore military base provides the only major dockyard east of Suez and is the heart of a network of 300 military aircraft, including V-bombers. This base also contains major stockpile facilities and its strategic value in the defence of British capital is thus obvious. To take another example, the tiny state of Brunei measures only 2,000 square miles in area but it is graced the title “British protected state” because of the important Shell oilfield at Seria. Malaysia also represents an important market for British manufacturers, although there is sharp competition with other capitalist rivals. 

Again it is interesting to note that each of these capitalist countries listed above has resorted to war, to protect its interests in South-East Asia, during the past few decades. It is against this sort of background that Harold Wilson's statement—“If we had only ourselves to think of, we would be glad to leave there as quickly as possible”—has to be measured. .

That section of the British capitalist class with investments in Malaysia senses that it is in a precarious position. T. H. Silcock (Emeritus Professor of Economics of the University of Malaya) has summed up the outlook for the two major industries: “Even though the tin market recovered in 1961 and 1962, the long-term market prospect is . . . not hopeful, though the threat is probably not as great as for rubber.” Apart from this, the risk of losing capital is high in an area  which has been repeatedly fought over by those countries with conflicting economic interests in the region. As a result there has been a great deal of discussions in the press about “our” defence policy east of Suez and about “maintaining stability” in this part of the world. Some of the rising capitalist powers, like China and Indonesia, have called upon the working class in South-East Asia to support them in their attempts to extend their spheres of influence at the expense of their rivals. But, clearly, in these struggles among different sections of the capitalist class, working men and women have nothing at stake; whichever side wins, for the workers victory means continued poverty under the renewed threat of war.

John Crump

SPGB Meetings (1966)

 Party News from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

New Page: Aspect column (1967-1971)

As promised, new pages for the blog. These new pages of old Socialist Standard columns will eventually be grouped together in one page at the head of the blog alongside the pages for the current Socialist Standard columns, film reviews and theatre reviews.

An irregular Socialist Standard column from the late 1960s and early 1970s, 'Aspect' can be viewed as a column primarily given over to focusing on Marxian economics and Marxian theory. No one writer wrote every column, and it featured such seasoned Socialist Standard writers as Edgar Hardcastle, Adam Buick, John Crump and Bob Ambridge.

To access the individual articles, click on the months.

1967

• Mar: Money for Nothing by Edgar Hardcastle
• Oct: The Future according to Galbraith by Edgar Hardcastle

1969

• Dec: Socialists and Christmas by C & J. MCL.

1970

• Feb: Capitalist education by Adam Buick
• Mar: A Question of Class by John Crump

1971

• Jan: Increasing Misery by Adam Buick
• Feb: Relative Wages by Adam Buick
• Mar: Karl Marx and the Paris Commune by Adam Buick
• Apr: The Rate of Profit by Adam Buick
• May: Labour Time Vouchers by Adam Buick
• Jun: Marx and Keynes on Unemployment by Edgar Hardcastle
• Jul: Can Banks Create Credit? by Edgar Hardcastle
• Sep: Engels: The Man and His Work - Part One by Bob Ambridge
• Oct: Engels: The Man and His Work - Part Two by Bob Ambridge
• Nov: Marx’s Critique of Political Economy by Adam Buick

20 years ago (1965)

From the August 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

One August morning twenty years ago an atom bomb exploded on the town of Hiroshima. It was shortly after 8 o’clock local time that a U.S. bomber dropped the new weapon. An estimated 80,000 people died; and more than that were injured. Together with the attack on Nagasaki a few days later, about six square miles of built up area were completely destroyed. President Truman mentioned the figure of 2,000,000,000 dollars spent on the research and production involved in the manufacture of the bomb.

Despite six bloody years of mechanized slaughter, the devastation resulting from this single raid was on a sufficient scale to penetrate the minds even of those resigned to a world constantly racked by war. Throughout the capitalist press the need for a new morality was preached and, here and there, voices were raised in humanitarian protest,

To consider the protests first; these generally took the line that the atomic bomb was such a terrible weapon that it should never have been used. But the A-bomb is just as “legitimate” as any other weapon. There is no distinction between methods of warfare which are “acceptable” and others which are not. If the stakes in any capitalist dispute are sufficiently high then every available resource is thrown into the struggle, and pious condemnation of this makes not one iota of difference.

Yet this emotional reaction to nuclear war still finds its adherents in CND and similar organisations. It is based on a refusal to face up to the reality of this capitalist world where brute force is a not inconsiderable factor in securing and maintaining a share in the world’s markets. When the permanent bickering over trade periodically flares up into open warfare no power is prepared to fight with one hand voluntarily tied behind its back. Speaking three days after the Hiroshima bombing, Truman’s double-talk made quite clear the purpose of the second world war, which culminated iu the use of a nuclear weapon:

“The U.S. wants no territory or profit or selfish advantage out of this war; we are going to maintain the military bases necessary for the complete protection of our interests and of world peace.” (Our emphasis).

However, in August 1945 the bulk of the press was unanimous in its support of the allied bombing but cautioned its readers on the threat involved to mankind. This took the form of sermonising on the “new world” which was to be ushered in with the coming of “peace” and which had to be a world free from the danger of war. The Daily Express advised:

“Everything turns on the wisdom and goodness of the peoples and their rulers.”

The Daily Telegraph felt that:

“Unless we now so bear ourselves that the power of war-making is stamped out and peace among men of good will is securely established, the human race must go down to ghastly ruin.”

The pacifist Peace News cried from the heart:

“The latent moral crisis of the world has now become evident and palpable. The invention of the atomic bomb imposes upon mankind the necessity of a new behaviour-pattern.

Henceforward, there is only one form of security for Russia or any other great power. That is moral security.”

The Daily Mirror took refuge in the thought:

“Basic power is moral power.”

Originality seemed to have gone by the board. The sum total of this wisdom amounts to this: that wars in the past have been the result of the wickedness of men but if mankind now decides to embrace the good, wholesome life than (God willing) we can all live in peace and plenty.

In Britain, amid this deluge of rubbish, Socialists raised their voices in a common sense analysis of the situation. They explained that man is not innately evil and warlike and that, in a world dominated by production for profit, it is the mad scramble for economic advantage that causes war. Conflicts between nations are the result of friction between their rival economies in the struggle to obtain or keep foreign markets and supplies of raw materials, trade routes and spheres of influence. The decision before mankind of war or peace presents itself as the wider choice between capitalism or socialism.

J. B. S. Haldane, writing on nuclear energy in the Daily Worker, had the cheek to declare:

“Marxists should be the first to realise that with a complete revolution in war and production the principles of politics will also change. What was right last week may be disastrously wrong this week.”

On the contrary, Marxian socialists realise that as long as capitalism: lasts nothing fundamentally changes in the relationship between the property-owning class and the working class; the class struggle continues. The advent of nuclear energy is no reason for socialists to desert their principles. The only effect of nuclear weapons is that the task of the working class—to establish socialism—is now even more urgent. As the Socialist Standard pointed out in October, 1945:

“Your choice is as simple as it is vital! On it rests the future of humanity.” 

If this were true in 1945, how much more so these twenty years later?

John Crump

Communist idea (2025)

Book Review from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Idea. Anarchist Communism Past, Present and Future. By Nick Heath. Published by Just Books Publishing, 2022. ISBN 9781739723712

Suitably enough, The Idea, a book on the history of anarchist communism, is a dense, brick-like volume of nearly 500 pages, detailing the key figures, movements, activities, and publications of Anarchist Communists (AnComs) throughout history.

Anarchist communism, as opposed to anarchist collectivism, is the only anarchist tradition that explicitly calls for the abolition of the market economy and exchange value. Despite its many challenges, it has endured to the present day.

No movement is overlooked, with particularly extensive entries on France and documentation of the significant tendencies in Russia, France, Latin America, Ukraine, and beyond. The AnCom tendencies in China, Japan, and Korea are also covered, drawing in part on the published works of one-time SPGB member and political historian John Crump.

The Idea is a meticulous study that separates the wheat from the chaff, focusing on movements and organisations with a class-struggle perspective. However, as the book itself illustrates, many historical anarchist groups were far less discerning in their alliances. The book can be recommended to anyone with a historical interest in libertarian communism. Heath’s work is admirable in its scope and depth.

Nick Heath’s political journey began with the Labour Party, then the Communist Party, before he ultimately embraced anarchist communism.

It must be noted some key lessons emerge from this volume. Individualist tendencies are a dead end—sometimes literally. A lesser known and striking example being the case of Museifukyosanto, a small AnCom party in Japan that, being structured along Leninist lines, veered into adventurism, leading to the arrest of more than 700 of their comrades. The end fate of active anarchists tends to follow one these paths: imprisonment, exile, murder (often at the hands of the state), or suicide. To paraphrase a certain British prime minister, the problem with anarchism is that eventually, you run out of other anarchists.

It would be remiss not to mention the example of Korean AnComs, who, between 1910 and 1945, actively participated in electoral politics. This made their position similar to ours in that respect. They achieved notable success, serving in the Korean Provisional Government and later securing positions in the cabinet.

Nick Heath’s book is well worth reading and is a solid example of a disciplined work in a sea of anarchist garbage that was previously published and no doubt will come later. The Idea should interest anyone seeking libertarian socialist solutions to the practical problems of organisation and decentralised power.

A.T.

Unsocialist (2024)

Book Review from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

State Socialism in Eastern Europe: History, Theory, Anti-capitalist Alternatives. Edited by Eszter Bartha, Tamás Krausz and Bálint Mezei. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. 356pp.

The term ‘State Socialism’ in the title of this book is used to refer to the system that existed in the Soviet Union and the regimes of the Soviet bloc from the late 1940s until the whole edifice crumbled from 1989 onwards. Though it is clear that this system was not socialism as we would understand it but rather repressive state capitalism masquerading as socialism, this has not prevented many academics who study the history of that era from continuing to refer to it as socialism and indeed as ‘really existing socialism’. And this is precisely what we find in this collection of 14 essays, which focus predominantly on aspects of how those regimes, especially Hungary, were organised in the period when they were part of the Soviet bloc. The way the editors describe it is as an attempt ‘to address the long theoretical, conceptual and political debate on the interpretation of “actually existing socialism” in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe’.

But while such debate may give academics something to occupy their minds with, in reality the single most important thing to know is that the regimes in question were not in any sense socialist but simply represented a different – and invariably more repressive – way of managing the buying and selling system known as capitalism. That system, wherever it exists or has existed, is one of money and wages, economic inequality, and a small class of employers ruling the roost over a large class of employees, even if this consideration seems far from the minds of most of those contributing to this volume. The chapter by Susan Zimmerman on work and gender politics in ‘State-Socialist Hungary’, for example, while clearly the product of comprehensive and painstaking research, confines itself to description and analysis of how those particular aspects of capitalism manifested themselves in post-war Hungary and in no way challenges the idea of whether ‘socialism’ can exist within the framework of an economic system of buying and selling and production for the market. In his essay on Hungary between 1963 and 1985 (sometimes referred to as the period of ‘goulash Communism’), Bálint Mezei discusses what he calls ‘Hungary’s third road experiment of socialism’. Another chapter, jointly written by the editors as an introduction to the anthology and entitled ‘From Socialism to Neo-Liberalism: Lessons from Eastern Europe and Hungary’, states the book’s intention ‘to draw a historical lesson from the state socialist experiment in Eastern Europe and Hungary, which can be instructive in the search for an alternative to the global neoliberal capitalism’. Yet this too, despite its title, shows few signs of appreciating that the main lesson to be learned from the topic under discussion is that the passage from one system to another in Eastern Europe with the fall of the Soviet bloc was in fact a passage from one kind of capitalism (state capitalism) to another (private capitalism) and that the only viable alternative to either cannot be some form of ‘socialist state’, since socialism is by definition a worldwide, stateless society as well as one without classes, markets and contractual relations.

Close to 40 years ago (and so before the collapse of the Soviet-backed regimes of Eastern Europe), a book entitled State Capitalism: the Wages System Under New Management was published by Palgrave Macmillan, the same publisher as for the volume currently under review (State Capitalism – libcom.org). It stated the unerring truth that ‘private capitalism and state capitalism are equally suitable institutional arrangements for allowing capital to exploit wage-workers’, a truth vindicated by history since that time yet still not fully grasped by many academics. In addition, as an alternative to either form of capitalism, the book’s authors, Adam Buick and John Crump, also stated the need for a society that abolishes both the wages system and the production of goods and services for the market, replacing it with a system of voluntary cooperative work and production for use. The collection of essays currently under review also claims to ‘contribute to the discussion about anti-capitalist alternatives’, but its overwhelming focus is on the organisational variants of capitalism and, looking forward, with a nod to perhaps minor changes to the ‘neoliberal’ regimes that have now taken over that may allow a few more crumbs to fall from the table. A look back at Buick and Crump’s analysis would surely help the contributors to this volume to see the wood for the trees.

Howard Moss

Is there a "Road" to Socialism? (1988)

Book Review from issue 5 of the World Socialist Review

State Capitalism: The Wages System Under New Management by Adam Buick & John Crump (The MacMillan Press Ltd, 1986)

You have only to attend a meeting of any of numerous groups identifying themselves as "socialist" or ’'communist” to find out one thing: with few exceptions, they do not define their immediate goal as being worldwide in scope. They regard replacing the buying and selling of necessary goods and services with free access to the same as a very long-term aspiration (though the notion enjoys wide acceptance as an abstraction). Between the cup of communism and the lip of capitalism, they claim, there lies a wide gap, and that gap can only be bridged by a complicated and unpredictable series of short-term objectives. Eventually society will be transformed, it is true, but not starting from the present reality as we currently understand it.

Those groups organized as formal political parties seeking to attract the support and/or the votes of workers and other sectors of the population thus find themselves nailed fairly tightly to a framework of nationalism which has to justify itself through an appeal to "proletarian internationalism" or something similar. Followers of Lenin and Trotsky. for example, advocate setting up a "workers’ state" which will liquidate the institutions and mechanisms by which private owners of the means of production perpetuated their legal monopoly over the output of goods and services. According to this scenario, the exploiting (capitalist) class continues in existence for a while but is sternly regimented by the party in control of the machinery of state and enjoying the well-informed support of the majority.

In State Capitalism Adam Buick and John Crump carefully dissect the concept of state ownership of the means of wealth production and lay bare the mass of rationalizations leading up to it. First they establish the general boundaries of discussion by defining what the term capitalism means, then they distinguish between two models of capitalism: the one traditionally accepted as such (private capitalism, the earliest form) and the other representing a number of historic adaptations or variants of capitalist monopoly over social production (in response to some structural failure on the part of the "private" model). Since this second type is characterized by the nationalization of enterprises--with or without a thoroughgoing state management of the system of production—it is of course best described as "state” capitalism.

This result can be accomplished in two ways. Either the state can bail out individual capitalists by taking over the legal proprietorship and control of their businesses without a major political upheaval occurring (as has become common in western Europe); or a revolutionary opposition can develop within the bosom of capitalist society and, with varying degrees of majority support, raze the preceding regime to the ground, totally reorganizing the system of exploitation (as in eastern Europe, Russia and China). In the second case, a new capitalist minority replaces the old, leaving the same or equivalent relations of production intact. Though from a narrowly legal angle the new minority renounces all private title to the system of production, they nevertheless retain monopoly control over it.

"Socialist” Profits?

In the fourth chapter, the authors deal with a question which everyone has sooner or later asked: What makes a state-capitalist economy different from a "classical" one? They tackle a couple of familiar old fallacies: namely, the belief that

"Socialist" profit is not capitalist profit because "all profits belong to the people" or, to put it another way, because "the state distributes profit for the benefit of the people. "Socialist" wages are not the mark of an exploited working class, but are the means by which social wealth is distributed according to each individual's contribution to production.

(Ch. 4, "The Capitalist Dynamic of State Capitalist Economies")

In the end, however, no matter on what ideological grounds wage exploitation is put into effect, the leopard cannot avoid keeping its spots. 

"Profit is pursued because, due to the competition which is inherent in world capitalism, state capital continually has to invest newly acquired surplus value in a compulsive effort to accumulate and hence expand itself." (p 101)

Before going on to socialism as the alternative to either state or private capitalism, they briefly outline some of the ideological underpinnings on which the justification for state capitalism rests, showing how the thinking of its advocates evolved out of "classical" socialist theory (as found in the writings of Marx or Engels) into its Leninist and post-Leninist forms.

Basic Features of Socialism

Having comprehensively sapped out the state-capitalist terrain, Buick and Crump have no difficulty elucidating the basic features of a socialist society: It must be worldwide; all goods and services will be produced for use only and distributed free; it will have no classes, states or national frontiers; no exchange of goods and services will take place—since there will no longer be any market to regulate consumption.

The disappearance of economic value would mean the end of "economic calculation" in the sense of calculation in units of "value" whether measured by money or directly in some unit of labour time. (Ch. 6, "The Alternative to Capitalism")

The need for planning will be met by establishing "a rationalized network of planned links" occupying the successive phases through which the cycle of production/consumption passes. "Planning" in that context will mean only the coordinating of "a direct interaction between hunan beings and nature." (The authority of economists rests partly in fact on the working class’s uncritical acceptance of their doctrine of an inherent natural scarcity. )

If the language in the last chapter makes heavy use of the conditional tense, this does not imply any prediction of utopia. It only acknowledges that workers have so far failed to shake themselves out of the slumber of poverty. This is a process which necessarily must take place on a world scale (if not everywhere at precisely the sane time); for a whole society to make the changeover to production for use requires a conscious understanding of the stakes by enough of the world's population to constitute a political force greater than any that capital can muster in its own defense.

Such an intense concentration of well-informed opinion has not yet occurred nor will it ever—if workers (including both highly paid professionals and exploited agriculturalists) continue to limit their thought horizons to those of the national state into which their destiny as wage slaves has thrust then. The admirable thing about State Capitalism is that it provides a sorely needed theoretical framework for tearing loose of the deadly embrace of nationalism This framework (as noted in the book) has been slowly emerging within the world socialist movement in the decades since the Bolshevik revolution, most significantly in the propaganda of our companion party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The book itself makes a highly readable contribution to this ongoing effort to create a class-conscious, socialist majority—one that will finally get capitalism's funeral cortege rolling toward the cemetery.

Blogger's Note:

Buick and Crump's book was also reviewed in the April 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard.  

Capitalism and health (1966)

From the March 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago the advocates of a National Health Service asserted that capitalism need not be detrimental to the health of working men and women. Speaking as Prime Minister in the spring of 1944, Winston Churchill stated that it was the policy of the Government to establish a National Health Service which would make accessible to all, irrespective of social class or means, adequate and modern medical care. With the introduction of the Health Service four years later the Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, also promised that it would be a classless service. Thus both Labour and Conservative Parties committed themselves to the same objective and they have now had the best part of two decades to. achieve this end. Have they succeeded?

In Britain chronic bronchitis is a widespread and killing illness, to such a degree that it has become known as “the English disease." The Registrar General's statistics reveal that in 1963, in England and Wales alone, there were thirty thousand deaths from this cause. Bronchitis is largely due to atmospheric pollution, cigarette smoking and the unfavourable, dusty conditions associated with jobs such as foundry working and coal mining. Pick up any medical text-book and you can read passages similar to the following, taken from a standard work : “If the individual's economic status permits he should be advised to live in a warm, dust free area . . ." “If the occupation is a dusty one then the individual should be advised to change it although in many cases this may not be a feasible proposition.”

If working men and women are complacent about the general standard of health, this can only be due to ignorance of the facts. The trends in death rates reveal that while some of the older traditional working class diseases—such as tuberculosis—are on the wane, others are becoming more common to take their place.

(Respiratory diseases, including bronchitis, were of lesser importance in 1964 than for the previous three years, this was probably due to the exceptionally mild winter. The long-term trend still shows an increase.)

The causes of lung cancer and coronary artery disease are not known with any certainty. It has been noticed with the latter, however, that there is a very high incidence among men whose work provides considerable tension and anxiety, with little opportunity for exercise. How many millions of “white- collar" workers—chained to a desk for eight hours a day and then jammed into a commuting train for a further period—would meet this description?

One of the main causes of chronic bronchitis is atmospheric pollution. This is a feature of towns and cities in every advanced capitalist country; 133 tons of industrial dirt fall on to the town of Duisburg (about half-a-million inhabitants) in the German Ruhr every day and the sulphur dioxide level in the air is far above that which is believed to be dangerous for humans (see report in the Daily Mail of 5th April, 1965). The same kind of muck falls on to Sheffield, Birmingham and London. It is a withering criticism of capitalism that the “cleaner-air" campaign, conducted in the Ruhr during 1964/65, was judged to be a success for the simple reason that it resulted in the first winter when the German industrial belt was not brought to a standstill because of smog. Any benefits to the health of the inhabitants were of secondary importance.

Perhaps some of .the most frightening statistics are those concerned with mental illness, In barely 10 years the number of patients entering mental hospitals has virtually doubled.

In Britain today patients with severe mental disturbances (the psychoses), together with serious cases of neurosis, occupy almost as many beds in hospitals as those suffering from all other illnesses put together. In his book on social medicine, S. Leff, M.D., D.P.H., describes the situation in the United States: approximately four out of every ten patients there are said to consult doctors with complaints due at least in part to emotional disorders; some 600,000 mental patients are in hospitals and 150,000 are admitted every year; eight million persons are suffering from mental disorder and one out of twenty of the United States population at some time requires psychiatric care. One million of the twenty-four million children now in schools in the United States are likely to spend some portion of their lives in a mental hospital. There are between three and five million people suffering from amentia or dementia who are not in institutions and about six million are incapacitated because they are on the border line of mental disorders.

In Great Britain no comprehensive field survey has yet been made into psychiatric illness, but less extensive studies have been conducted. One such study, which was designed to give a conservative estimate, showed that in a typical group practice in South London psychiatric illness could be observed in one year in 14 per cent of all patients who consulted their doctor. In addition a further five per cent of the registered patients showed distinct “abnormal" personality traits. Two large surveys in factories have revealed that from one-quarter to one-third of the total sickness absences from work are due to neurosis. Another study of 30,000 workers employed in thirteen light and medium engineering factories showed that one in ten suffered from disabling neurotic illness, and two in ten from a minor form of neurosis. Although there has been controversy over the validity of some of these figures, these “findings have been reinforced by a series of estimates which have been made of the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the total populace." (Modern Trends in Occupational Health—K. S. F. Schilling, 1960.)

We may be accused of taking every unpleasant feature of the modern world and using it unfairly to illustrate the social bankruptcy of capitalism. It might be said that we are not justified in concluding that it is the social environment which gives rise to mental disease. The Ewing Report on The Nation’s Health to the President of the United States argues our case for us:

Man's mental as well as physical health is very much at the mercy of what goes on about him. The economic insecurity of unemployment and old age, the lack of opportunity for education and adequate health services, poor housing and lack of good sanitation, prejudice and discrimination, failure to share in the civil liberties guaranteed to all citizens, inflation, the threat of atomic war—these are very real every-day problems and they are the kind of social factors that can wear away personal defences and destroy mental health.

It makes bitter reading to look back and see that in 1944 the workers in Britain were guaranteed “adequate and modern medical care.” The hospitals, for example, are in a sorry mess. The general situation is one of too few doctors struggling on with out-dated equipment and facilities. The Government’s official publications admit as much: " . . . under present conditions work properly belonging to consultant posts is being regularly discharged by senior registrars and members of more junior grades.” This is simply because the number of consultants “is still inadequate to the needs of the hospitals.” The reasons for this include “financial restrictions to which hospital authorities are subject” and “inadequacies in accommodation and facilities, especially operating theatres and laboratories.”

And what about that section of the working class which runs the health service? Probably if one conducted a census, at least 90 per cent of doctors, nurses, dentists, etc., would deny that they were members of the working class. But whether they choose to face up to reality or not is largely immaterial; every working day of their lives they are confronted with the hard facts of their wage earning status. They, too, are forced to conduct a ceaseless struggle to maintain their salaries and working conditions. On top of this they find themselves faced with the problem common to all working men and women—such is the pressure on them, they must work to a standard far inferior to that which they are capable of. One dentist recently referred to the “sheer vocational frustration induced by the fact that practitioners are virtually denied the opportunity of practice at the level which their ability and enthusiasm could achieve.” What other working man, forced to prostitute his skills and talents, could not echo this?

It is axiomatic in medicine that the doctor should concentrate on eradicating the disease itself and not waste valuable time and effort on palliative treatment for individual symptoms. The working class could do worse than apply this principle to capitalism—a system of society which brings each one of us little more than poverty, insecurity, frustration and ill-health.

John Crump

Universities and the working class (1966)

From the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

"But let them not babble of Greek to the rabble,

Nor teach the Mechanics their letters;

The labouring classes were born to be asses,

And not to be aping their betters."

This mean scrap of verse was produced over a hundred years ago, as a protest against the schooling of working-class children. But its vindictive composer might as well have saved his breath; industrial capitalism demanded an educated working class and it is against this background that the education reforms of the 19th century can be understood. Not only did these reforms involve a national system of elementary schools, but the universities were overhauled, too. New colleges were established in London in the eighteen-twenties and in the following decade Durham University was founded. Oxford and Cambridge were reorganised as well. The explanation is given by G. M. Trevelyan, in his British History in the Nineteenth Century, when he points out that the impotence of the ancient universities “must eventually have ruined the country in peace and war, when matched against foreign rivals who valued scientific and educational progress. The timely reform of Oxford and Cambridge by Act of Parliament saved the situation.” Nevertheless, it was still the case that only a handful of brilliant working-class boys stood any sort of a chance of getting to a university—and this remained the case until relatively recent times. But since the Second World War there has been another bout of reforms to meet the changing needs of the capitalist system. Along with the development of so-called “comprehensive schooling” the universities have been greatly expanded. Whereas the number of full-time students in Britain was only 50,246 in 1938-39, this number had leaped to 85,421 by 1949-50. Since then this trend has gathered momentum, so that in the nineteen-sixties it is accepted as normal that tens of thousands of young workers should graduate every year. But why has this situation developed? Obviously it is not because young people are cleverer today than previously; nor does the comfortable notion that we now live in a more egalitarian society hold water. It is simply that, in order to survive in a competitive world, British capitalism needs a growing supply of scientists, technicians and engineers. The Times Educational Supplement (March 15th, 1957) summed up the ruthless economics of the education business:

Education is a weapon of war . . . It is something along with the stocks and shares and the production belt which the hard-faced men realise is necessary to the survival of this nation . . . Education is something we invest in as we once competed in dreadnoughts.

Once more there are conservative academicians to lament the new developments and teaching methods. Take, for example, Professor J. MacMurray, speaking at the Sixth Congress of Commonwealth Universities: “Cultural institutions, such as universities . . . begin to be looked on as subordinate mechanisms in the general technology of the state—their function being to produce technicians and specialists necessary to ‘run the country’." Again he is wasting his time to hark back to the days when the universities were autonomous “cultural institutions” where the sons of the rich could idle away a few leisurely years. Industry now requires a real army of the most highly skilled workers and their education has become such a vital issue that more and more the capitalist state is forced to intervene in this sphere. Between 1945 and 1957 the national grants to the universities rose from £2,000,000 per annum to £35,000,000 every year. Over this period the total grant came to something like £232,000,000. Only the state, representing the general interest of British capital, can provide the vast sums of money required and therefore, over the years, state control of the universities has advanced as the figures below clearly show.

Some people have been inclined to look upon this trend as “creeping socialism” or even as a series of concessions wrung from the capitalist class. It is, of course, nothing of the sort. The process is comparable to that of nationalisation, where other essential services are taken over by the government and run along lines which seem most advantageous to British capitalism. Clearly, it has nothing to do with socialism.

And what about the university students themselves? As the colleges come to resemble more and more mere teaching factories it is worthwhile considering to what extent the undergraduates are provided with a rounded education. When they come off the conveyor belt at the end of a three- or four-year course, how many feel equipped with a broad and useful span of knowledge and how many that they have been churned out as yet another mass-produced doctor, chemist, teacher or mathematician? Perhaps the best that can be said for the universities is that they provide an artificial environment where, for a few years, one can scrape by on a meagre allowance without having to sell oneself for a wage. But when the student finally leaves his college he is faced with much the same prospects as any other working man—a lifetime of selling his labour power to the owners of the means of production, the capitalist class.

Students often fancy themselves as being more alive and socially aware than the bulk of the working class. Superficially there might seem to be something in this, since reformist organisations of all kinds flourish in the universities. But unfortunately the conventional image of a politically conscious student population is no more than a myth. The vast majority stand for the continuation of capitalism with all its humiliations and misery. Although they are often a fairly vocal section of the community the fashionable battle-cries are rarely more penetrating than “Hands off Fanny Hill” or “Hands on Ian Smith".

Yet the outlook is not a black one. As capitalism develops the working class constantly amasses more knowledge and experience. The advances in the formal education which workers receive are only one aspect of this process. As working men and women become trained in the scientific techniques of production so they are more likely to examine society from a scientific position. They are struck by the discrepancy between the individual factory where order and planning can be enforced and the overall chaos of a class-divided society. The educated working man is a force to be reckoned with by the capitalist class. He is less inclined to be taken in by the crudest propaganda or by religious superstitions. He is, in fact, the grave-digger of the capitalist system.

John Crump

The Gospel According to St Tony (1998)

Harry Enfield as the Reverend Blair.

TV Review from the December 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

There must be an age-old adage in the comedy profession—satire will never die so long as we’ve got politicians. If the last Tory administration provided more grist to the satirical mill than anyone thought possible, New Labour is fast emerging as a more than worthy substitute for it. It was surprising then that last month one of Britain’s most gifted satirists, Harry Enfield, should have chosen the Conservative Party for his most recent attack on Britain’s most disreputable profession.

Norman Ormal was a composite money-grubbing, greasy-pole climbing Tory MP surrounded by a menagerie of fellow low-lifes, also played by Enfield. The character based on Alan Clark was toe-curlingly gruesome, and thereby eminently lifelike. But there seemed little point in such a programme beyond showcasing Enfield’s mimicry skills. There is, to gloriously mix metaphors, no point in flogging a dead parrot.

Rather more promising is Enfield’s part in the televising of Private Eye’s St Albion’s Parish News, its excoriation of the evangelical wing of New Labour, replete with Tony Blair as vicar. There is something slightly disturbing about Blair, and Private Eye have probably got nearer to identifying it than anyone else. He is just too nice. Not in an abstract sense (nobody can really be too nice), but too nice given his dubious “values” and incredible manipulation skills. The “nice” public image clearly doesn’t marry with the other elements of his persona. Someone who genuinely smiles and gleams and brings light into the eyes of pensioners when he goes on a town centre walkabout doesn’t then turn round and cut single mothers’ benefit. Someone who can speak so movingly about peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland doesn’t then agree to send British planes over to the Gulf to bomb the living daylights out of tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children—at least not usually if they are genuine. But then again, religion can play funny tricks on the mind.

Roaring with Rory

The hardest-hitting satirical show on TV is still fronted by Rory Bremner (C4, Sundays), and thankfully he has not been tempted to spare New Labour’s blushes. Rory Bremner has a talent most of us can only wish for, and he hasn’t misused it. Exposing the last bunch of Tory slimeballs and greasers must have been a pleasure for him.

The previous occasion this column mentioned Rory Bremner it was to express the wish that his programme wouldn’t soft-pedal on New Labour. It hasn’t. Bremner too has captured the phoney-Tony evangelical spirit of the Prime Minister. And the double-standards that go along with it. And while his impressions and caricatures provide a wonderful lampoon of the virtual reality world which is New Labour, John Bird and John Fortune have stuck to their task of ripping apart the hypocrisy that lies at the very heart of this project, of exposing the people with a Mission and with Vision whose only mission is to keep themselves in the luxury to which they are now accustomed and whose vision is distorted by a crazy virtual-reality headset called “the market”. Bird and Fortune make stark for all to see what was once the preserve of socialists—there is no fundamental difference between the Conservative and Labour parties. Indeed, there is little if anything between them taking into account the factors they themselves think are important and distinguishing. Nothing could have illustrated this more than the sight of a Labour minister explaining why the government is thinking of putting the Royal Flight—which carries ministers, the royals and other dignitaries across the globe—out to private tender. And then for Francis Maude, Tory Shadow Chancellor, to appear on the TV news denouncing it as a disgraceful waste of a national asset. Virtual reality headsets—you got ’em!

Speaking of which the most marvellous moment of all on Rory Bremner each week is the appearance of the virtual reality Peter Mandelson, replete with 1940s’ BBC radio announcer voice. Catch it if you can. The scariest thing, though, is that somehow it seems more genuine, and somehow human, than the real thing.

Dave Perrin

Blogger's Note:

It's probably been mentioned before on the blog but John Bird was briefly a member of the Nottingham Branch of the SPGB before *cough* going up to Cambridge University in the 1950s. One of those 'Is it really true?' stories is that Harry Enfield, when he was an undergraduate student at York University, wrote his thesis on the SPGB under the tutelage of ex-SPGB member, the late John Crump. 

Soviet Capitalism: Bonds (1967)

From the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

State bonds are a feature of capitalism which the Bolsheviks inherited from the Tsarist regime. A few details show to what an extent the Imperial government relied on this method for obtaining revenue. For example, in just five years (between 1909-1913) 4,100 million roubles were raised by issuing these stocks and, during the same period, 4,040 million roubles were needed for interest and redemption payments on loans which had been floated previously. When the Bolsheviks seized power they took advantage of the change in government and refused to recognise the pre-revolutionary foreign and internal loans. This was a logical step because by then many of the rich bond-holders were living abroad, exiled enemies of Russian state capitalism.

As soon as the chaotic conditions of the Civil War started to settle, the Bolsheviks set about floating new loans. Thus, between 1922-25 bonds were issued which brought 396 million roubles into the state budget — this being 7.5 per cent of all government revenue. This was followed, in the years of forced industrialisation under Stalin, by a succession of state loans. The bonds carried interest rates which the wealthy found it difficult to resist and Russia was dubbed, by the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain, the “land of high profits”.

By the time of the Third Five-Year Plan, the capital being invested in the loans was dwarfing the figures of Tsarist days. Thus, between 1938-41, four state loans were floated, bringing in a total of about 3,400 million roubles. In the war years revenue from the sale of state bonds was as follows:

Investment came from three principal sources. First, there were the state industries — the banks, insurance companies and so on —which made use of their vast reserves. Thus, figures in the government budgets for 1941-44 show that more than 580 million roubles were obtained from the insurance business, a large percentage in the form of subscriptions to state loans. Secondly, individuals from the ruling class were eager to sink their capital in state bonds, which guaranteed a steady return in interest payments. As a random example, we can mention Vladimir Stefanov — a priest of the Moscow Church of the Assumption — who, recognising that war is good business, invested 73,000 roubles in the Defence Fund during World War II. That this was no exceptional case was made clear by R. Bishop in his pamphlet Soviet Millionaires, issued by the Russia Today Society in 1943. He presented figures which showed that in one state of the USSR alone (Kazakstan) at least eighteen individuals had invested a million roubles or more. Bishop attempted to justify this with the incredibly weak comment that “in the Soviet Union the millionaire has acquired his roubles by his own toil and by service to the Soviet State and people.” A few years later T. Cliff was very neatly to smash that lame argument, as follows.

If we examine this statement we find that, as late as 1940, the average annual income of workers and employees being only 4.000 roubles, to collect a million roubles would have taken an average worker 250 years — provided he spent no money on himself at all. The Soviet millionaire gets, in interest alone, 50,000 roubles for every million, which is many times more than the income of any worker. (Russia: A Marxist Analysis—T. Cliff).

The third source was from the working class. There were mass-subscription loans, described as “semi-voluntary” — which meant that workers “bought” their bonds by means of compulsory stoppages from their wages. In the factories and offices, it was the branches of the state-controlled trade unions which were responsible for seeing that their members contributed. These loans were organised on a lottery basis — something like British premium bonds — and the prizes represented at first 4 per cent then 3 per cent and finally 2 per cent of the total sum subscribed. This compared unfavourably with the interest-bearing loans which at times carried rates of up to 11 per cent.

In the decade following the Second World War the issue of bonds went on unabated. During the Fourth Five-Year Plan the state loans brought in almost 11,700 million roubles and the comparable figure for the Fifth Five-Year Plan was 13,600 million roubles. As Khrushchev explained, at several public meetings in early 1957, the state debt had reached 26,000 million roubles, while interest and redemption payments were in the region of 2,900 million roubles annually. This situation led to a drastic reversal of government policy. The central committee of the Communist Party decided to discontinue, from 1958 onwards, the floating of further compulsory loans aimed at the working class. At the same time it suspended lottery-prize drawings on the already existing, mass-subscription bonds and, in addition,, repayment on these was postponed for a period of twenty years or more. It should be emphasized, however, that the sale of bonds to wealthy individuals on a voluntary basis was not discontinued; neither were the interest payments on these stocks defaulted on. (See The Soviet Economy— A. Nove. 1965. p. 107).

The latest figures available show that the issue of state bonds is still running at well over a thousand million roubles each year.

Investment today comes mainly from the banks — as before — and also from members of the ruling class, who can die with the comfortable assurance that their bonds are free from inheritance tax. On the other hand, the individual Russian worker, like wage-earners everywhere, is not in a position to invest. His wages are barely sufficient to keep him in working order from week to week, and from generation to generation. The most he can aspire to is buying a few premium bonds and then hoping against hope that he will land one of the big prizes. It is his function to produce the surplus value from which interest is derived, not to share its distribution.

It was Professor Allakhverdyan of the Moscow Financial Institute who was responsible for the pathetic remark that “the loans floated by socialist states express the new economic relationships . . " Any thinking worker can see that the very fact that interest-bearing bonds exist in Soviet Russia is plain evidence of capitalism in that country. They are one of the mechanisms by which the ruling class gets its hands on the surplus value extracted from working men and women.

John Crump