Le Chienlit de France (1968)

From the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Barricades in Paris! Paris, the storm-centre of every 19th century European insurrectionary wave—1830, 1848, 1871—once again the scene of street battles. Is this the beginning of a new revolutionary era? Many would like to think so but let us look at the facts.

De Gaulle retired from active politics in 1953 and retreated to his country house at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises awaiting the call to come back. For the previous six years he had been the leader of a movement demanding strong government. He had long realised what, from the French capitalists’ point of view, was wrong with the parliamentary regime of the Fourth Republic. After an enthusiastic new start in 1945, within a few years politics was back to what it had been in the Third Republic (which began with the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune and ended when Petain took over). Prime Ministers came and went at frequent intervals; parliament overthrew governments rather than accept tough economic measures. The parliamentary regime, with the Communist Party (PCF) in permanent isolation and opposition, gave power to the most backward elements of the French capitalist class, the small provincial bourgeoisie drawing their profits from out dated productive methods. The tax system also favoured them at the expense of modern industry, including the large nationalised sector. Any deputy had the right to propose financial legislation. Thus, just before an election, there was a spate of measures to cut taxes. The French state could never be sure what funds it would get, and inflated the currency. In all the state was weak and unable to take decisive action.

But serious problems there were requiring such action, notably the wind-up of the French Empire in Indo-China and Algeria. The parliamentary regime was unable to solve either; a strong man was called in both times. The first was Pierre Mendès-France, prime minister from 1954 to 1955, whose tough measures with regard to the withdrawal from Indo-China earned him some respect, but also the hatred of the other politicians who saw his power as a threat to theirs. They threw him out. The second was Charles de Gaulle. Almost exactly ten years before the recent crisis, on 13 May 1958, the army and settlers in Algeria rose up against the parliamentary regime. The revolt spread to Corsica, and the government was panic-stricken. Reluctantly President Coty appealed to de Gaulle. De Gaulle dictated his terms to the frightened politicians and took over. At the time many saw de Gaulle as the figurehead for a military-fascist dictatorship. This was a mistake. It is certainly true that de Gaulle came to power on the backs of reactionary elements, but they soon turned against him. Witness the many OAS attempts on his life.

De Gaulle was a strong man, not over French capitalism, but for it. The constitution for the new Fifth Republic, drafted by Debré (then prime minister), provided for a great strengthening of the executive at the expense of parliament. The traditional parties, too, were got at. The complicated system of proportional representation was replaced by the second ballot in single-member constituencies to encourage the emergence of a two-party system. Thus the power of parliament, where the backward elements of the French bourgeoisie were entrenched, was weakened.

The first act of the Gaullist regime, then, was to reshape the state in the interests of big business. This done, they set about solving the many problems of French capitalism that had accumulated over the years of weak government: peace in Algeria, tax reform, currency reform, modernisation and centralisation of industry. These were all carried through. The Gaullist regime seemed to have succeeded, so why the insurrection?

De Gaulle against the politicians of the Fourth Republic was not an issue that interested (or concerned) the French working class. They scarcely lifted a finger to defend the parliamentary regime in 1958. The French workers, weak organisationally, have always made up for this with bouts of enthusiasm. The Gaullist regime, of course, governed in the interests of French capitalism, and any capitalist government is inevitably brought into conflict with the workers. De Gaulle and his Ministers adopted the same arrogant attitude toward the working class as to the old parties and politicians. Last year, for instance, after scraping home in the elections to the National Assembly, the government took powers to rule by decree to deal with the economic situation. It is interesting to note that a token general strike called by the unions at that time was only moderately successful. One of the first economic decrees was aimed at reforming the social security system. The unions were removed from its national management and benefits cut. Coupled with mounting unemployment and wages lagging behind prices, these were the ground for discontent.

As the working class in Britain has shown, although workers now see no alternative to capitalism there are limits to how far they are prepared to be pushed around by a capitalist government. In Britain they refuse to vote Labour. In France, with its tradition of “direct action” and weak organisation (the two go together), the reaction has been more dramatic: sit-in strikes, monster demonstrations, far- reaching wage demands.

The whole thing was sparked off by student unrest and violent student-police clashes. The students in France, overcrowded, subject to petty rules of discipline and central control, certainly had grounds to complain. But their leaders —the Cohn-Bendits and others—have wider aims than mere university reform. They are out no less than to topple the government or, as they would put it, “to smash the bourgeois state” and open the way for “the workers to take power". These demagogues call themselves “revolutionary socialists” and “anarchists”, and are greatly influenced by the mistaken and dangerous views of Debray and Che Guevara: that it is a vanguard that makes history. The reaction of the workers, with the younger ones pushing the more conservative union officials, seemed to confirm their theories. They had created “a revolutionary situation”. Now, to exploit it. In Trotskyist theory—and if reports were correct leaders of trotskyist groupuscles found themselves addressing thousands rather than hundreds; they were heard with respect by students while the PCF speakers were jeered — what is needed to do this is a Bolshevik-type party, centralised, highly-disciplined and ruthless in pursuit of its aims. No such party — thank goodness! — exists in France. That is why the student demagogues and their trotskyist friends are so annoyed at the attitude of the PCF. Cohn-Bendit has called them “stalinist scum". They should not really have been surprised. The PCF has long been a patriotic, reformist party. Yet they are still expected to act as if they were an organisation of professional revolutionaries! But the PCF, and its trade union wing the CGT, have also been timid over wages and working condition! One thing is clear. Out of this, the PCF will emerge as discredited as the Gaullists.

A crisis may have existed in the sense that for a time the Gaullist regime seemed to be breaking up (but it still controlled the army), offering an opportunity for a determined vanguard to seize power — and if that happens, heaven help the French workers. But as the French workers are not socialist-minded the outcome will not be the start of a world-wide socialist revolution. The key opposition figures are leaders of the other two so-called socialist parties in France. Mitterrand, of the Left Federation of Democratic Socialist (FGDS), an alliance of the Social Democrats and some radicals, and Mendès-France of United Socialist Party, (PSU), a small leftwing breakaway from the old Social Democrats. Ironically, both have only recently embraced “Socialism”. Before that they were Radicals (very roughly the equivalent of the Liberals in Britain).

What Mendès-France is doing in a party that is to the left of the PCF (Barjonet, economic adviser to the CGT, who resigned because of its timid attitude, joined the PSU) is a mystery. He, like de Gaulle, believes in strong government. He, too, saw what was wrong with the Fourth Republic. He, too, is not linked with the discredited pre-1958 politicians. Mendès-France talks of the “new Socialism” which is recognised even by some of his fellow party members to be merely state capitalism.

If a new government emerges under Mitterrand or Mendès-France, perhaps with PCF participation, what then? In the initial stages it will be friendly to the workers and their organisations. Social reforms will be made. But capitalism is capitalism and sooner or later that government must itself come into conflict with the working class, especially when it faces the problem of the competitiveness of French goods in the world market. Then will begin the failure of yet another Left-wing government to make capitalism work in the interests of the workers.

The shaking of the Gaullist regime should be a standing warning to governments everywhere not to push the working class too far, and certainly not to push the students at the same time. It shows too how, in the end, every government depends on a certain amount of popular assent.

Adam Buick

Letter: Let's Unite against Racialism (1968)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let's Unite against Racialism

Dear Comrades,

Since Enoch Powell’s race-hate speech, the Wolverhampton branches of the YCL have led in the formation of the Wolverhampton Front Against Racialism. We have taken as the symbol of the six-pointed Yellow Star, known in Hitler-occupied Europe as the ’Badge of Shame’.

These badges have been distributed to demonstrators at protest marches, and to other opponents of racialism and fascism, along with an explanatory leaflet.

Our idea is to unite all anti-racialist, anti-fascist forces in common action. So we call upon readers of the Socialist Standard to take the initiative in their localities in the formation of similar fronts. Make your own badge, do your own leaflets, lead and fight.

It is vital that a stand be made — Powell has not learned to keep his mouth shut yet — we must shut him up for good. It is above all vital that this campaign be national, uniting all progressive forces.

R. M. Bashforth

Organiser, Wolverhampton, Y.C.L.

Reply: 

It is a pleasant change to get a letter opposing racialism. Nevertheless, although the Socialist Party of Great Britain is of course opposed to racialism, we cannot agree to join any united Front Against Racialism, as proposed by the Wolverhampton YCL branches.

Many times before have we been invited to join with others to oppose, for instance, the Tories, fascism, some war or nuclear weapons. We have always turned these invitations down, not because we are not against the Tories, fascism, wars and nuclear (and other) weapons, but because we do not think that this is the way to oppose them. To unite with non-socialist organisations is a dangerous policy for a Socialist party. It would be a hindrance to what should be the basic aim of such a party: to agitate, educate and organise for Socialism. At present most people are opposed to Socialism. They are prepared to put up with capitalism and much of what goes with it. It is only because most people are patriotic (think they have a country) and are ready to trust leaders that they do listen to appeals for national unity, strong leadership, wars and armed forces. What is needed is not mere anti-racialist propaganda, but basic Socialist education: the statement in clear and unequivocal terms of the case for a socialist world community.

Since Socialists appeal to workers to unite, irrespective of nationality or colour or race (so-called), to the extent that we are successful racialist and nationalist ideas are defeated. As part of a general Socialist education campaign anti-racialism is much more effective. In our socialist activity we warn workers of the dangers of supporting leader-based, nationalist parties like the Tories, Labour, Liberals, fascists and, yes, the Communists. Were we to unite with (nationalist) non-socialists our case would be weakened. One moment we would be urging workers to oppose Labour, Liberals, the Communists and the churches; the next we would be working with them! We would appear as unprincipled hypocrites. Our task is to spread socialist ideas as, in the end, only a working class, imbued with socialist ideas, is a sure guarantee that they will not listen to racialists like Powell and Mosley and nationalists like Wilson, Heath, Thorpe and Gollan.

While they may mean, well, we cannot agree with the Wolverhampton YCL’s suggestion on Powell that "we must shut him up for good”. We have no wish to shut anyone up, not even Colin Jordan. We are more concerned with persuading the tens of thousands of workers who support Powell not to take any notice of what he says. Shutting up Powell would achieve nothing. It would rather (like Heath’s sacking him from the Tory Shadow Cabinet) earn him undeserved public sympathy. Powell’s views are obnoxious and he does use lies and half-truths (but don’t they all?), but he should still be allowed to speak. As Socialists we are quite opposed to all restrictions on the free expression of ideas. In 1941, when the government banned the Daily Worker (for calling, among other things, for peace with Hitler) we protested. It is worth recalling what the Socialist Standard of February 1941 had to say:

    “The SPGB has its own, quite different, point of view. True to our basic principle we do not support suppression of opinion, however false we believe that opinion to be . . . The SPGB is opposed to suppression of opinion. In our view the way to counter any kind of propaganda, and in the long run the only way, is to meet it in the open in unfettered discussion. We are entitled to add that we practise what we preach and have always thrown open our platform to our opponents.”

We stand by this today, and would urge those who want to shut people up to think where this might end. After Powell, who?

Editorial Committee

Marx Memorial Library twists History (1968)

From the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Marx Memorial Library, in Clerkenwell Green, London, tries to present itself as a centre of “truly Marxist studies”. But it is incapable of maintaining even ordinary standards of historical objectivity. As the library is run by supporters of the so-called Commnist Party it is not difficult to understand why. We wish to draw attention to one example of how they twist history.

The January-March 1968 issue of their Quarterly Bulletin has an article on “Socialist Education and Propaganda before 1917” which seeks the reason for the favourable reception of the Bolshevik coup by many politically active workers in Britain. It argues that this reception had been prepared by over twenty years of socialist education and propaganda carried on by the Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist Labour Party, the Fabians, the ILP, the Clarion Fellowship, the Herald Leagues, the Labour Colleges and the Plebs League. No mention is made of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain. We hasten to add that we would not want to claim any share of the blame for misleading workers about the Russian revolution and the Bolshevik regime. Indeed, it is a measure of the confusion spread by the above organisations that they did not provide workers with enough insight to see that Socialism was impossible in Russian conditions. All the Bolsheviks could do was to develop capitalism, which they did as state capitalism. In Britain the Socialist Party was alone, at the time and up till the end of the 1930’s, in pointing out this Marxian truth —a stand which earned us the undying hatred of the so-called Communist Party, reflected in this crude attempt to suppress the fact of our existence and intense activity before 1917 (including our clear opposition to the war right from its start).

We know this omission is deliberate as there is a reference to a series of articles entitled “The Socialist Movement in Great Britain” that the Times ran in 1909 (January 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 19). The Quarterly Bulletin quotes the series on various organisations, including the SLP. Now the Times mentioned the SLP only twice and both times together with the Socialist Party:

   Another organisation worth noting is the Socialist Party of Great Britain; it is a political body which declares war on all other parties ’whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist’, and is distinguished by its revolutionary aims. So, too, is the Socialist Labour Party, which seems to be a sort of Scottish counterpart of the last, having its seat in Edinburgh. If anything, it is still more uncompromising and boldly demands a Socialist republic.

The Socialist Standard, along with Justice (SDF), Labour Leader (ILP), Clarion and the Socialist (SLP) is described as among the “more important journals”:

   If Justice is more violent than the Labour Leader it is as mild as milk compared with the Socialist and the Socialist Standard. These are penny papers representing the Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain respectively.

There follows a paragraph in which the writer discusses what he thinks the demerits of these two journals (for him, they have no merits!)

On this evidence, then, we accuse the so-called Marx Memorial Library of dishonestly suppressing the historical fact of the active existence of the Socialist Party before 1917, and we challenge them to deny it.

Editorial Committee

Radicals in North America (1968)

Book Review from the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Critics of Society: Radical Thought in North America, by T. B. Bottomore. Allen and Unwin 25s.

Bottomore first broadcast this as a series of talks on Canadian radio. He points out that “the course taken by social criticism in North America was quite different from that in Europe, because the society itself was very different”. The original colonies were formed by European religious and political dissenters. Statements on the rights of man, incorporated in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, contained some of the most radical 18th century ideas. Political democracy became established. Thus in American society at that time there were no great issues (slavery being the one exception), only individual grievances. As would be expected this situation did not give rise to any lasting school of criticism or reform movement.

After the Civil War there followed a period of immense industrial expansion. The mass immigration of the 1880’s began to supply the additional workers needed by industry. During the period from 1860 to 1910 the rural population of America doubled, but the town population increased almost sevenfold. These decades saw the inevitable rise of poverty, unemployment and other social problems. It was these social changes that led to a revival of social criticism, initially taking the form of Populism and similar movements. Symptomatic of this revival was the appearance of Henry George’s Progress and Poverty (1879) and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888).

Bottomore examines the subsequent development of North American social criticism down to the mid-twentieth century. In a separate chapter on Canada he deals with the formation of the New Democratic Party in 1961. According to him:

  "The New Democratic Party was founded with the support of socialist groups and trade unions. In the same year a new exposition of socialist ideas was published under the title Social Purpose for Canada.”

The NDP is not in fact a Socialist party. It was set up in opposition to the Socialist Party of Canada. No socialist groups took part in the formation of the NDP. Socialists would not, and did not, wish to be associated with the plans to patch up Canadian capitalism put forward in Social Purpose for Canada.

Of modern social criticism, Bottomore has this to say:

    “Another way of describing the present nature of social criticism would be to say that the critics of whatever social order they are confronting no longer see one big social problem, for which there is one big solution. Instead, they see a succession of more or less unique situations, each of which requires the critic to take a moral stand, to commit himself, but only with respect to that particular situation. There is no rule for dealing with all situations. Our age, therefore, is certainly an age of criticism, but also of exceptional confusion and disarray.”

Socialists take the view that it is impossible to solve the major problems of modern society in isolation. The social problems from which the working class suffer all have their roots in the very basis of the capitalist system. They can only be solved when the workers rid themselves of the confusion they share with modern “social critics”, equip themselves with socialist knowledge and establish Socialism.

DS

What is Black Power (1968)

Book Review from the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Black Power. Stokely Carmichael & Charles V. Hamilton. Jonathan Cape. 30s.

“Black Power” is an umbrella term for a whole range of political ideas and this short book is a readable account of what is probably the mainstream outlook. It contains little that is new but it is a compact statement of the aims and ideology of the bulk of the movement.

There is no point in repeating our analysis of “Black Power” which has already appeared in Socialist Standard (February 1968) but two points can be emphasised. The first is that although men like Stokely Carmichael loudly claim to “reject the goal of assimilation into middle-class America”, the fact is that—despite all their noise— their doctrine does fit in neatly with capitalist concepts. Thus:

  “Black Power means, for example, that in Lowndes County, Alabama, a black sheriff can end police brutality. A black tax assessor and tax collector and county board of revenue can lay, collect, and channel tax monies for the building of better roads and schools serving black people.”

Secondly, given the right time and place. Carmichael and his associates will attempt to tart up their theories with the usual pseudo-Marxist jargon. At the OLAS conference, for example, he argued that it was the people of “the third world” who were being super-exploited by Western imperialism and that white workers in the imperialist countries were in the ranks of the exploiting class.

    “The American working class enjoys the fruits of the labour of the Third World workers.”
    “The proletarian has become the Third World; the bourgeoisie is white, Western society.”
    “Thus did the United Slates anticipate the prophecy of Marx and avoid the inevitable class struggle within the country by expanding into the Third World and exploiting the resources and slave labour of people of colour.”

The basis for this line of thinking is the obvious fact that workers in the “underdeveloped countries” (and in the underdeveloped areas of the metropolitan countries) do have a lower standard of living than workers in Western Europe and the United States. But Carmichael then proceeds to the quite false assumption that there must inevitably be a direct relationship between poverty and degree of exploitation, that the more destitute a section of the working class is the more heavily it must be exploited. The influence of Lenin’s theory of imperialism is clearly very strong here but to drag in the name of Marx as a prop for this unscientific view is dishonest. In Capital Marx made it quite plain that he understood that there was no automatic link between low wages and intensity of exploitation. Apart from the often-quoted statement in volume I that “as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse”, Marx deals with this issue specifically in volume III- in the theoretical section on the different composition of capitals.

Marx’s method here is to compare a European and Asian country and he suggests that in an advanced industrial state the rate of surplus value (the ratio of surplus value to wages) may well be 100%, i.e. the worker may well work one-half of the working day for himself and one-half for his employer. On the other hand, under more primitive conditions of production, it may well be necessary for a labourer to work for, say, four-fifths of the working day in order to produce an equivalent to his wages, leaving only one-fifth for his employer. In this latter case the rate of surplus value would then only be 25%.

However, this condition of the better-paid worker being more heavily exploited can be masked by a lower rate of profit in the European country, due to the different compositions of the national capitals.

But the point which socialists would stress is that it isn’t a question of which section of the working class has the edge on other workers in terms of being exploited, anyway. Working men and women all over the world are confronted by a situation where the international capitalist class monopolises all the important means of producing wealth. The only way out of this dilemma is for the working class to convert the means of production into the common property of a world socialist community. If the ideas of the Black Power merchants are theoretically unsound, this is a sure sign that, as a guide to working class action for socialism, they aRe equally bankrupt. Against the call for “Black Power”, socialists will continue to advance the slogan: “Workers of the World, Unite”.

John Crump

Art Under Capitalism (1968)

Party News from the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the end of May students of the Hornsey College of Art (which is the responsibility of the Haringey Borough Council) occupied the college buildings and declared a “Student’s Republic” with the aim of reforming the administration and art education generally. Their action has sparked off similar ones in other art colleges. Haringey branch gave out the following leaflet:

To the students of Hornsey College of Art.

We hope that your efforts to improve your working conditions, to raise the quality of your training and to obtain a more effective voice in college affairs will succeed.

The problems against which you contend are symptoms of a society which cannot effectively serve human needs based as it is upon the class monopoly of the means of production, and the profit motive.

This system has little time for the arts and the humanities. It is primarily concerned to employ the talents and energies of artists, sociologists, writers and their fellows, either directly in commerce and advertising, or in the control and manipulation of wage and salary earners — the working class. 

Even where good design is an integral part of the productive process it is often employed as a weapon in the struggles of companies and nations to capture markets.

Art is the Cinderella of capitalism. The capitalist class, as a class, have no use for it unless the work of the artist serves the needs of capital The value of Art as an authentic expression of human feeling and enjoyment, its evocation and communication of emotion and experience, past and present — all these functions of art fail to ring the bells on the cash registers of the bourgeoisie.

Only in a socialist society will the artist be free from domination by the values and pressures of a profit-seeking society. In a socialist society there will be no officials to set limits to what may be done in the sphere of artistic activity.

Today there is no Socialism anywhere. Nowhere is there full freedom of expression.

We in The Socialist Party aim at building a world community — without frontiers, based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production where things will be produced for use. A world without war, world hunger or racialism. A world that has no need of money and has abolished rent, interest, profits, wages and prices. A world fit for human beings in which the way of life would be:

From each according to his ability —
       to each according to his needs

We think such a society can be brought into being only when it is technically possible for abundance to be produced (as it is now) and when a majority of the population understands the implications of such a socialist reorganisation, desire it and take the necessary democratic action to establish it

We insist that any attempt to make such a revolutionary change, except by organised democratic political action will never succeed. We are opposed to the efforts of anarchists, Leninists, Trotskyists, Maoists and other elitist groups which set out to disrupt the democratic process or to seize power following deliberate provocative actions aimed at manipulating masses of students and workers in the interests of the self-appointed ‘revolutionary' vanguards. Fortunately, although they do not share our revolutionary socialist view, most students and workers have sufficient political insight to reject the roles intended for them by these would-be leaders.

When your immediate difficulties have been overcome we look forward to hearing from students who might have found our views to be of interest. If you would like to have a speaker from our branch address you, we would be very pleased to make the necessary arrangements.

Yours for Socialism, 

Haringey Branch

50 Years Ago: Life Here or Hereafter (1968)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

In season and out of season we preach Socialism: the possession by a community of workers the world over, of the things needful for human existence. The end of production for profit; the abolition of slave-jobs and subsistence wages; the end of commercial rivalry and the struggle for political supremacy on the part of rival groups of bosses; the end of the wholesale slaughter of the workers by the machines they themselves produce; the death of blinding superstition and the birth of rational hope; the end of all things capitalistic and the beginning of a real society; the beginning of production for social use, of co-operation for mutual welfare, of universal brotherhood; life, not death! 

Show us if you can, you idealistic praters, a fairer dream than this. Conjure up, if you will, a vision to be “realised" when we are dead and cold. We prefer to live now. Why rush to death? Why be butchered to make a capitalist victory? What can heaven hold that is half so sweet as the probabilities of this existence? 

From an article "The Consolations of Illusion" by E. Boden, Socialist Standard, July 1918.

The Review Column: Robert Kennedy (1968)

The Review Column from the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Robert Kennedy

One of the more remarkable things about the assassination of Robert Kennedy was the emotional identification with the dead man on this side of the Atlantic.

This was more than a matter of sorrow at the Kennedys’ tragic history; it was more than awe at the family’s glamour. Robert Kennedy was mourned as one who stood for the poor and underprivileged, for racial integration and a more humane society. He was venerated as a rich man who cared deeply for the common people.

Was this true or false?

Kennedy was first and foremost a politician—one who drove ruthlessly for the top. It is no new thing, for a man on the march to power to speak up for the underdog; the British Labour government, to give only one example, is full of such people.

This is the true perspective on the famous Kennedy crusade. The simple fact is that they have always played for votes; when Martin Luther King was arrested at a crucial moment in the 1960 election, the late President Kennedy did not judge the matter on grounds of Negro interests but on how many coloured votes he could swing by taking King’s side, and whether they would be enough to make it worth while.

Similarly, Robert Kennedy provoked much hatred— perhaps also that of his alleged assassin—by championing Israeli interests in the Middle East. This was a direct bid for the Jewish vote, both in the Californian primary election and in the vital state of New York which Kennedy represented in the Senate. 

The dead man’s record in office is no more sympathetic. In September 1961 he warned that America was prepared to use nuclear weapons. When the Berlin wall went up he favoured a military confrontation with the Russians. As he himself admitted, he was once a hawk over Vietnam.

On these, and many other, issues Robert Kennedy was not on the side of the common man; he was standing strongly for the interests of American capitalism, even if the lives of millions were at stake.

The assassination was a horrible and frightening affair but so is the capitalist system Kennedy stood for. His was just a single life; capitalism has killed millions.


Germs at Porton Down

The recent protests at the Ministry of Defence germ and gas warfare laboratory at Porton Down have had one rather surprising result. As if to show us that there is nothing harmful going on there, the plant will hold a number of open days, when we shall all be able to see as much of what the scientists are up to as the government thinks fit

Perhaps we shall be encouraged to make a day of it— take the family for an outing on a cheap excursion from one of the nationalised transport undertakings, picnic under the shadows of menacingly blank windows, take home a souvenir test tube of anthrax or botulism.

Very few people will be taken in by the open days. When they are shown the vaccines against disease which Porton Down produces, they will probably reflect that such results are inevitable. The laboratory was set up for one primary purpose—research into methods of waging war by administering gas and disease.

At the moment the likelihood is that gas and germ warfare has too may practical difficulties. So, at one time, did the nuclear bomb. We may be sure that Porton Down is working on the problem.

One obvious characteristic of biological warfare is that is would kill people without damaging property. To the capitalist class, who always find the destruction of modern war such a problem, this is a great advantage. It is enough of an incentive to keep the retorts at Porton Down bubbling until they come up with a weapon which can be used—and which will probably defy belief for its horror.

And this—this waste of human knowledge and skill and inventiveness, this preoccupation with the techniques of mass killing—is what modern capitalism has come to.

What a way to celebrate

Even those who have lost their illusions about the TUC must have been surprised at the way that professedly working class body celebrated its centenary last month.

In London, they held a great banquet, which could hardly be called a salute to the memory of the men who suffered so much to establish the right of combination. Even more, the banquet was devoured at the Guildhall which, as much as any building can, stands for the durable fortunes of the British capitalist class.

In the chair was the Lord Mayor of London, who did not come to his office by way of martyrdom but who is elected by a few other very rich men, mainly financiers and merchants.

Along the top table were the Prime Minister and Barbara Castle, both of whom are busily carrying on the anti-working class policies which the Labour government has followed since it took office and which the TUC has never seriously resisted.

Also there were the top representatives of the employers, officials of the Confederation of British Industry like John Davies. With the exception of George Woodcock, this lot were all got up in evening dress and the whole gathering glowed with ribbons and sparkled with jewels and medals.

Of course such an event would not have been complete without the Queen and she also was present; in fact the trade unionists and business men had only a narrow escape from having her husband there as well.

The Queen made a speech—a sort of primary school exercise on the history of the unions, loaded with whitewash about the callous persecution of the early unionists, hinting that it was all a misunderstanding and that the employers were on our side all along.

Anyone who could witness this without actually being sick might have wondered what the Tolpuddle Martyrs and their contemporaries would have made of it all. But the TUC has come a long way in a hundred years, even if it is in a direction never dreamed of by the pioneers.

The New Narodniki (1968)

From the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

On June 15 a “Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation” was founded by students representing groups all over England. As might be expected at a meeting in which trotskyists (of various hues) were prominent the air was thick with such words as mobilise, orientate, perspective, programmatic, transitional and, of course, vanguard. The programme adopted in fact declared:

"Revolutionary students can play a vanguard role by detonating a wider social conflict in which the working-class becomes decisive. Students must seek to ally themselves with working-class struggles: they have also shown that they may anticipate and instigate them.”

So yet another group has appeared to liberate the working class ignoring the long-established Socialist principle that the workers must free themselves.

In Russia in the second half of the 19th century many privileged young men and women decided to “go to the people”, by working and living among the peasants whom they believed to be a revolutionary force. They were thus known as Populists or Narodniks. A similar theme dominated the meeting: only the workers could overthrow capitalism, so students should go to them by leafleting, and perhaps working, in, the factories. As one (Widgery) put it “the talk about the new Narodniki going to the factories is right”. A small minority, from the South Coast, were still in favour of “working within the Labour Party” (as they all were two years ago), but their views were not well-received.

Prominent were members of the alleged “International Socialism” Group. Also, frequently to be seen hovering in the background was Pat Jordan, the trotskyist who runs the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. The anarchists and another trotskyist group (the SLL) did not seem to be present.

The RSSF programme commits it to Student Power, Anti-Capitalist Alliance with Workers and Struggle Against Imperialism. These aims are to be achieved by so-called direct action (that is, occupying college buildings, fighting the police, preventing exams taking place, shouting down speakers). As one (Fishman) frankly put it: they are out to “seize the leadership of students as a group”.

At a meeting the previous evening a member of the Socialist Party was prevented from continuing his speech after he had criticised talk about “parliamentary rubbish” and support for the nationalist and state capitalist Vietcong. For his troubles he was called a “fascist” (“Against fascists there is only one weapon: physical force", one LSE student leader, Harman, has written). This is perhaps the shape of things to come for any who dare to stand up to this self-appointed vanguard.

Bolshevism and Marxism (1968)

From the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia had lagged behind the western nations in the development of industry and commerce despite Peter the Great’s reforms. The crucial factors in the Russian Revolution were the low degree of capitalist development, the role and aspirations of the peasantry, and the international situation at the time of the Bolshevik coup.

Marx held that under capitalism industrial development would lead to a direct confrontation of the capitalist class and the working class and that this would lead to the capture of political power by the working class. In the light of this we can examine the degree of industrial development in Russia up to 1917 and the potentialities it held for a socialist, as opposed to a capitalist revolution. For it must be remembered that Russia had not yet experienced a capitalist revolution. Industry was in fact not developed to any great extent in Russia. Eighty per cent of the 160 million Russian subjects were peasants. The defeat in war by Germany had shown how inadequately developed heavy industry was in Russia, and yet this was almost the only form of industry that existed in the Tsar’s dominions. The socialisation of production, which Marx had seen as capitalism’s contribution to Socialism, that is, the development of industry into increasingly larger productive units, operated by social labour had hardly occurred in Russia. There were really only two centres of industry, each far from the other, in St. Petersburg and in Southern Russia and the Caucaus. The working class and capitalist class did not yet face each other alone. The social scene was confused by the peasantry — a mere 80 per cent of the population!

The role and aspiration of the peasantry are crucial in any examination of the nature of the 1917 Revolution.

The peasants were susceptible only to Lenin’s promise of land. Their aspirations extended no further than that they should have their own land. When they later protested against state policies on the land, they were hastily suppressed. Thus one of the mass bases of the revolution had to be suppressed, for Lenin had climbed to power partly on the backs of the peasants, when the motive of the peasants were certainly not socialist.

We have noted that Russia was not “ripe” for Socialism. Marxism holds that objective and subjective conditions must coincide for a country to be ready for a socialist revolution. In Russia Lenin could not ask the people to raise the Bolsheviks to power without renouncing every claim to being a Marxist. The objective conditions were not ripe, but neither were the subjective. Had you asked a revolutionary what his views were about the moneyless, socialist economy which was supposed to be approaching, he would probably have been unsure as to what you were talking about.

How, then, did Lenin manage to lead the Bolsheviks to state power in a situation not suitable for a Marxist party? The simple answer, of course, would be that Lenin was not truly in the tradition of Marx. The problem, however, has more to it than just that. The country was in confusion: food was scarce, as was clothing: the armies were in disarray on the front in face of German attacks; some army officers under Kornilov had threatened the Provisional Government which was incapable of imposing any sort of order. In the midst of this confusion Lenin offered the suffering poor a blueprint for planning success that was brilliant because of its simplicity: Peace, Bread and Land. The way he proposed to achieve this was by nationalising large private property (nothing was said about small). The Bolsheviks were the only group organised well-enough to make any kind of appeal to a disillusioned populace. The motto of the First International: “the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself”, was forgotten.

This motto, and the principle behind it, is important in assessing how the Bolsheviks behaved from a Marxist point of view. We must also return to the 1903 London Conference of the Russian Social Democrats. To Marx “the proletarian movement is an independent movement of the overwhelming majority in the interests of that majority”. Lenin, at the 1903 Conference, had argued for the “revolutionary core” leading the masses. He was thus separating the working class movement into a mass-body and a leadership composed of intellectuals. In 1917 Lenin carried his philosophy of elitism to its logical conclusion but found it impossible to impose Socialism on an essentially unsocialist populace.

And yet can all these arguments against the material, social and human possibilities for Socialism in Russia in 1917, be refuted by Marx’s statement in his Preface to Capital: “one nation can and should learn from others”? Marx had taken the stand that Russia could shorten its transition through capitalism if the advanced western nations had revolutionary working class movements who could imbue the Russian people with a socialist spirit, and if Russia had its revolution at the same time as the western nations. Trotsky, and later Lenin, in their theory of the imminence of the working class capture of power accepted that the western working class were about to revolt. Indeed this provided the only real justification for their taking power in a country surrounded by capitalist countries. Yet their assessment of the situation was inaccurate, and in view of the intelligence and shrewdness of Trotsky and Lenin, perhaps it was deliberately so — perhaps they were, to be blunt dishonest. The western working class had joined the national patriotic front in 1914 and promptly gone to war to kill each other. Even in the horrors of 1917, they carried on stoutly supporting their respective governments. Also, the western working class had very small effect on the Russians. The Russians had certainly not been influenced by Marxism. Though Lenin had once called the Populists “stinking carrion” his attitude during 1917 would seem to show that he had learnt a great deal from these apologists of what he had called “adventurism” and “pyrotechnics”. Struve might well have been talking of people like Lenin when he said that only those blinded by “national vanity” could argue that Russia might take a short cut to Utopia.

Lenin’s 1921 New Economic Policy was merely an admission of a fact that the Socialist Party of Great Britain and some others had recognised earlier: Socialism could not be established in Russia at that time; the working class could not successfully get and hold power until the conditions were ripe for Socialism, when capitalism was in its most highly developed form.

This is not to say, of course, that the Bolsheviks were wrong to support the February Revolution. Progress could only have resulted from the overthrow of the archaic Tsarism under which the people of Russia had laboured long. But for the Bolsheviks to wish to take over so soon after the capitalist revolution had taken place in this decaying, agrarian empire, was to deny Marxist history.

In his preface to Capital, Marx stated his view:

One nation can and should learn from others. And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement—and it is the ultimate aim of this work to lay bare the economic laws of motion of modern society—it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten or lessen the birthpangs.

All that Marx had conceded was a shortening and lessening of the birthpangs, and even this only within his context of an international revolution.

Amit Pandya

To the Workers of France (1968)

From the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following manifesto (for distribution in France) was adopted by the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain on 28th May. This is the English translation.

We address you not as citizens of one country to citizens of another but as world socialists to fellow members of the world working class.

We reject frontiers as artificial barriers put up by governments. All men are brothers and the world should be theirs. All men should be social equals with free access to the plenty that could be if only the means of living belonged to a socialist world community. We oppose governments everywhere, all nationalism, racism and religion, all censorship, all wars and preparations for war.

Workers! We support your class struggle for better wages and conditions against the employers and the government. But do not be taken in by the ease with which you have occupied the factories. They allowed you to do this because they know that in time you must give in. Political power is always in the hands of those who control the machinery of government, including the armed forces and the sadistic CRS. Do not be misled by those who say that universal suffrage is a fraud. Learn from your masters. You too must organise to win political power if you want a new society. Do not let cunning politicians or the discredited Communist Party return to power on your backs. Ignore those who would be your leaders. Rely on your own understanding and organisation. Turn universal suffrage into an instrument of emancipation.

Students! We share your distaste for the indignities and hypocrisies of the present order. We share your wish for a new society with no exploitation of man by man. But do not underestimate what a task it will be to change society. It will be a hundred times more difficult than changing the government. A democratic world community, based on common ownership with production for use not profit, can only be set up when people want it and are ready to take the steps needed to get it up and keep it going. Democratic political action is the only way to Socialism. There are no short cuts. We must have a majority actively on our side. Do not be misled by student demagogues, those who praise Bakunin, Trotsky, Mao or Che Guevara, who would use you for their own mistaken ends. They think that an elite should use unrest to gain power and then set up a classless society. What dangerous nonsense! Look at state capitalist Russia where a new privileged class rules, with police intimidation and censorship, over an increasingly restless population. Look at state capitalist China where power-hungry bureaucrats cynically manipulate the people in their own sordid squabbles. Learn the lessons of history: elite action leads to elite rule. No Socialism unless by democratic political action, based on socialist understanding.

The task you face in France is the same that we face in Britain and our brothers in Germany, Russia, the United States and other countries: to build up a strong world-wide movement for Socialism. What is needed more than anything else in this period of social unrest is a clear, uncompromising statement of the case for a socialist world community.

If you agree, please write to us. We will be glad to help you ensure that the voice of Socialism is again heard in France.

Workers of the world, Unite!

B.U.F. and the Jews (1968)

Book Review from the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anti-Semitism and the British Union of Fascists by W. F. Mandle (Longmans. 12s. 6d.)

In the popular uproar over immigration it is sometimes forgotten that the term racial problem was not always synonymous with colour problem. Before the war, and for some time after it, the Jews were the racists' favourite chopping block. They were blamed for the shortcomings of capitalism; they were subjected to the same hate, the same malicious lies, the same apocryphal horror stories, that coloured immigrants are subjected to now.

Jews were denounced as flashy and vulgar (although insidious also!); as a sexual threat; as devotees of archaic and disgusting rituals. They were supposed to be clever at despicable things and to be a threat to "Western culture" (Blackshirt, the BUF paper, had an article in December 1934 entitled "Jazz Goes With Jewry" and in January 1936 described Jews as "venereal-ridden vagrants"). These same lies are now being levelled at coloured people.

Anti-Semitism was accompanied by violence and hysteria which often was infectious. I remember a Fascist meeting at Ridley Road, in the hot summer of 1947, which jammed the streets with a frantic mob, parts of which were desperate to scream insults, and to assault anyone who took their fancy. One sweat-streaked face shouted at me that a nearby photographer "should be done up—he's probably from the Jewish Express." I'm sure she didn't even know if such a paper existed.

W. F. Mandle, who has made a considerable study of Fascism, has examined the pre-war records closely to trace the course of the BUF's anti-Semitism. At first, although it was clear they did not like Jews, the BUF did not include anti-Semitism in their propaganda; on April 1 1933, in fact, Blackshirt proclaimed that "Jew-baiting in every shape and form was forbidden by order in the British Union of Fascists before the Union had been in existence two months". But inexorably their attitude became more hostile; it was tempered by the alliance with Rothermere in 1934 (the reason for the famous Daily Mail headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!") but when the alliance collapsed the BUF became more extreme in its anti-Semitism.

In a rally at the Albert Hall in 1934 Mosley defined his organisation's attitude and two years later he came more to the point, when he said he would be " . . . fully entitled to take any measures necessary for the preservation of the British race." The BUF knew what these "measures" were to be; although their official policy was deportation. Blackshirt said on 31 October 1937 that some European countries had already got rid of Jews and "it will not be long before science will find a means of eradicating this pest from England once and for all." Mick Clarke, one of their speakers, echoed Himmler when he described Jews as "lice of the earth [who] must be exterminated".

There is no mistaking the terrifying import of this stuff, but it won considerable support in areas which had a large Jewish population. In the 1937 LCC elections, the BUF got over 3,000 votes in Bethnal Green N.E., over 2,000 in Limehouse (Stepney) and about 2,500 in Shoreditch.

But this was the nearest they came to power. They lost a lot of their glamour when the Public Order Act of 1936 banned political uniforms in public; unemployment did not again reach the heights of 1931 and finally the war removed much of their support, helped by a government anti-racialist campaign as part of the official war propaganda.

It is, of course, an open question, what would have happened in England if events had taken a different course or had been differently timed. The danger of racism is still there; workers are still ready to vent their frustrations on a minority. Consider how closely Mandle's description of conditions in 1931 resembles those of today:

"In that year there was developing . . . a distaste for party politics; indeed the three major parties, Labour, Liberal and Conservative were in a state of internal tension that only the Conservatives survived. There was a feeling that parties did not have the answer to deepening economic crisis. And the crisis was deepening: unemployment was rising. Britain's credit overseas was declining and there was a frantic search for nostrums."

Ivan 

The Socialist Party and the Second International (Part 3) (1968)

From the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month we described the growing realisation amongst members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain that even the leading figures on the intransigent wing of international social democracy were tainted with reformism. This month we describe how our party, long before Lenin, came to see the uselessness to Socialism of the Second International.

In December 1907 Neumann wrote an article on "The International" in the Socialist Standard which, in the passages dealing with the SPD, was a good deal harsher than his previous analysis had been. The so-called International Socialist movement, he wrote, embraced organisations, which were "purely bourgeois radical in composition and action", while the SPD was "steeped in the eyebrows in bourgeois reforms and palliatives". The number of revolutionaries in the German party was put, more realistically than before, at "a very few". In France, however, the followers of Guesde were still seen as "a body of revolutionaries" who had been "temporarily bamboozled" by the reformers. Neumann argued that a split might well occur between these two factions in the French "Socialist" Party and that this would lead to the building of an uncompromising revolutionary organisation resembling the Socialist Party of Great Britain. It is easy to see how this impression had been formed. Whatever the inconsistencies of the Guesdists, their leader was writing some excellent expositions of the Socialist case and frequently his articles in Le Socialisme were reprinted in the Socialist Standard. In particular Guesde's position appeared close to ours in his emphasis on the importance of the ballot and in his exposure of the reactionary barricade mentality of the syndicalists.

The vote, however legal it may be, is revolutionary when on the basis of class candidatures it organises France  of labour against France of capital . . . Anti-revolutionary, reactionary in the highest degree, would the riot on the other hand be, in spite of its character of illegality and violence, because by furnishing the popular blood-letting that moribund capitalism needs for survival, the riot would put back the hour of deliverance."(9)

There were, of course, plenty of social-democrats who could boast of their prowess in Marxist theory (Kautsky in particular) and, while Socialists are prepared to acknowledge the high standard of some of their writings, there can be no doubt that any contributions they made to the working class movement in this way were more than outweighed by their readiness to support the capitalists. Guesde was no exception. He failed to come out against the reformist policies of his party and the Socialist Party soon ceased to look upon any section of the Unified "Socialist" Party in France as potential allies. F. C. Watts, who was living in Paris at the time, analysed their election campaign in 1910. While conceding that their manifesto "opened excellently with an intelligible statement of the Socialist position", he explained that it "ended wretchedly by tailing off into a supreme insistence on the immediate importance of trumpery reform such as Proportional Representation . . . I could fill a page of the Socialist Standard with instances to hand where "Unified" candidates have thrown all Socialist principle to the winds in their desire to get elected."(10)

But, if the French "Socialist" Party was now seen as completely bankrupt, there was at least one other party besides the SPGB which was ready to take a stand against the opportunists of the Second International—the old Socialist Party of Canada. The Socialist Party was very encouraged when, in 1909, the Dominion Executive Committee of the SPC drew up a statement explaining that it was against affiliation to the International Bureau, since this would have meant "compromise and fusion with non-socialist parties" such as the British Labour Party.

An interesting note appeared in the Socialist Standard for May 1910 when James Fletcher asked for an explanation of our criticisms of the SPD and, quite reasonably, wanted to know why—if the Socialist Party were hostile to the German party—it had referred to their members as "our German comrades". The reply summed up the Socialist Party's attitude towards the SPD and emphasised that only "a small number" of its members were Socialists who were working "for the formation of a straight party". It also attempted to justify the use of the term "our German comrades" by the excuse that "it were a sorry state of affairs were we not in a position to so express ourselves". Fletcher's probing, however, seems to have hit home and from then on there were no further references to "our comrades" in the parties of the Second International.

An article in the Socialist Standard for October 1910, reviewing the proceedings of the International Congress at Copenhagen, showed that the Socialist Party's attitude towards the International was by now fully matured. Neumann's attack on the social-democratic parties was merciless: the French "Socialist" Party stood for "bourgeois Republicanism"; the Austrian social-democrats were "an effective mixture of such elements as the British Labour Party, ILP and SDP"; while in Italy "the United Party has forced its compromising policy on its members with the result that the Socialist element has been swamped". The Menshevik and Bolshevik sections of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party were also included in this onslaught and the verdict on the Second International as a whole was that it had been "captured by the capitalists". In Europe at any rate, the Socialist Party stood alone; "it is a sad reflection that, except the SPGB, everybody that contained the germ of Socialist existence has been swallowed up by that congress of compromise and confusion."

This conviction that the International was completely useless for Socialist purposes stood the Socialist Party in good stead when the first world war broke out. While the few social-democrats, like Lenin, who opposed the war could scarcely believe that a powerful organisation involving millions of European workers could suddenly collapse and come out in favour of militarism, the Socialist Party had expected nothing else. In fact, for years we had been explaining that this would be the logical outcome of the policies which the parties of the International were pursuing. One such warning in particular is worth quoting. In 1912, when the SPD gained 4¼ million votes in the general election in Germany, this was generally heralded as a gigantic victory for peace and socialism. Only the Socialist Standard refused to be carried away. In retrospect its grim words seem virtually prophetic:

In that day of dire disaster, woe betide those who have counted heads in the ballot and put their faith in numbers.

Only those who understand the principles of Socialism can give strength to the revolutionary army. Let ignorance march against us since our foes can turn it against us when they will.(11)

These sentences came into their own on August 4, 1914.

During the war international contacts were difficult to maintain, but early on anti-war manifestoes were received from the Socialist Parties of Canada, North America and Italy. In September 1915 the Socialist Standard also reprinted Rosa Luxemburg's "The Rebuilding of the International". The drawback of this statement was its insistence that the reconstruction of the International could only be based on a recognition of "our own weaknesses and failures since August 4, by giving up the tactics introduced since that time . . . " This was the dangerous illusion, later to be fostered by the Third International, that August 4 had represented a general volte face when Socialist principles, which had been in force up till that date, were suddenly abandoned. Naturally, the Socialist Party would have none of this, It explained that it was publishing Luxemburg's ideas because she was fighting "the old policy of compromise", but that "we cannot endorse the writer's remarks as to rebuilding the International."

Also in 1915 the Socialist Standard gave front page treatment to Litvinov's declaration to the London Congress. Although Litvinov, operating under the pseudonym of Maximovich, had been the representative of the Bolsheviks in London since 1912 he did not get an invitation when a conference of allied social-democrats was organised in February 1915. This was because of the anti-war agitation of his party. Those present at the meeting included Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald from Britain, Longuet from France and Vandervelde from Belgium. Julius Martov, the Russian Menshevik, was unable to get to London because his passport was blocked. In the end, Litvinov contrived to make a statement at the Congress but, when the Labour paper refused to print this, the Socialist Party allowed him to make use of the Socialist Standard.(12) 

In opposition to Luxemburg's talk of rebuilding the Second International, the Socialist Party of Great Britain was concerned above all that a new Socialist International should be formed which would organise such Socialist parties as existed on a class-conscious basis. Here and there were echoes of agreement, principally from the Socialist Party of Canada, whose executive committee wrote that they were "all heartily in accord with the attitude of the SPGB, and hope that before long we will be affiliated with them in a new 'International'."(13) Thus, when a proposal for organising an international congress in neutral Stockholm was being widely discussed in 1917, the Socialist Party issued a statement that although any delegates it might appoint would not be issued with exit visas by the "democratic" British Government, nonetheless:

To the Socialists of other countries we extend our fraternal greetings. As soon as conditions will permit us to do so we shall endeavour to join forces with our Comrades for the purpose of establishing a Socialist International Congress where Socialist policies shall be decided, where misleaders and tricksters who use the name and fame of Socialism will be exposed and denounced, where the message of Socialism will be sent forth to the toilers of all countries in clear unmistakeable terms . . . (14)

 Unfortunately such a genuine Socialist Congress was never held. A few months later the October revolution was to raise Lenin from his previous obscurity and the vast majority of the anti-war social-democrats were to follow him into the Third International, where they were to repeat all the mistakes of the previous organisation as well as patenting not a few ingenious blunders all of their own. The Socialist Party, of course, was hostile to the Bolsheviks' International right from the start.

A study of the relationship between the Second International and the Socialist Party of Great Britain is useful if only because it demonstrates that the Socialist Party was not the artificial creation of a bunch of intellectuals flaunting some pre-determined, universal plan of action. The Socialist Party sprang into existence when a group of Socialist workers decided to organise for Socialism. Mistakes were made at first but these were never more than minor miscalculations since the Party refused to deviate from its principles and, above all, never kidded itself that numbers were an adequate compensation for compromise. Viewed against the wreckage of the Second, Third and so-called Fourth Internationals the programme of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties have stood them in good stead. After all, we are the nucleus of the Last International - the one which will achieve Socialism.

(Concluded)

John Crump 

NOTES

9. Socialist Standard. February 1908.

10. Socialist Standard. June 1910

11. Socialist Standard. February 1912.

12. Socialist Standard. March 1915.

13. Western Clarion—April 1916. Socialist Standard—1916.

14. Socialist Standard. July 1917.

How close was France to a socialist revolution? (1968)

From the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most amusing reports to come out of France during the recent unrest was of one panic-stricken capitalist, convinced that his class was about to be expropriated, who loaded his car with over £1 million in cash and made a dash for the Swiss border. But his terror, ridiculous in retrospect, was matched by a corresponding euphoria in left-wing circles. Anyone accustomed to thinking along Bolshevik or anarchist lines was convinced that "a revolutionary situation" had developed and, in Britain at any rate, there were several groups declaring that the socialist revolution had started. Already May 1968 is part of the mythology of the left and there is a generally accepted explanation of why the agitation seeped away and why the strikers drifted back to work. The French workers are supposed to have been ripe for revolution and all that was missing was "a large revolutionary organisation capable of giving direction to the demands of the working class".

This raises the whole question of what constitutes a socialist revolution. The Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that it is not enough to have thousands of demonstrators on the streets or even millions of workers occupying the factories. Above all the working class must have a clear understanding of what Socialism entails and what methods are effective in overthrowing capitalism. A grasp of socialist principles by the vast majority of the workers is a minimal condition for going forward to Socialism and no party, no matter how religiously it follows the Bolshevik tradition, can substitute for this.

If this is accepted, then we can estimate how close France came to a socialist revolution by taking a look at the demands which the workers advanced during the period of upheaval. Most prominent were the usual claims for higher wages, better working conditions, shorter hours and security of employment. (There are between two and three million workers on the minimum wage level of less than £8 a week and at least four million earning under £11 a week.) Such demands have the full support of the Socialist Party--but we must emphasise that there is nothing revolutionary about them. In fact, the wage increases that have been secured need to be put in perspective. They seem to be averaging out to a general rise of about 13 per cent (on the basis of a 10 per cent all-round increase and a 3 per cent rise in the minimum wage) but this needs to be set against the fact that nominal wages have been rising by 6 per cent annually over the last few years anyway. Although these increases will naturally cut into profits, the international capitalist class hastened to reassure itself that the outcome would be far from a disaster As the Economics Editor of the Sunday Times put it:

"The pay settlement will not be wholly adverse for France's economy. The big increase in the minimum wage will help send the poorer French firms to the wall, releasing workers for the big, profitable ones--which pay well above the minimum."

Yet the strikers did not restrict their demands simply to these issues. At numerous plants there were calls for "a radical change in the power structure" and for "participation of the workers in the running of the factory". A leader of Force Ouvriere (the social democratic trade union federation) pointed out his members were agitating for "genuine workers' participation in the policy of industry" and a senior Renault shop steward came out for nationalisation of key sectors of the economy, including all the car firms, the chemical industry and the banks. Understandably, demands such as these were greeted with rapturous delight by all those who imagine Socialism as a system of nationalisation under workers' control; but the Socialist Party rejects this view. For socialists nationalisation, whatever its trimmings, is nothing more than state capitalism. The policy of workers' control does not pose threat to the capitalist system as long as those workers are still committed to capitalism and have not understood the socialist alternative. That this was the case in France is made clear by the fact that even the most extreme elements, such as Cohn-Bendit, went no further than the old utopian demand for equal wages. Who was urging the abolition of the wages system and an end to the market economy? For this reason, we cannot accept the claims of one young activist in St. Nazaire:

"The long-term outlook is uncertain, but not hopeless. On one tier, there are the traditional union claims, which must be met immediately. On another, the government and the regime itself are in question. There is the challenge of capitalist society, of social orders based on private property."

Obviously there was a challenge to the government and the Gaullist regime but capitalism remained secure throughout.

For all that, the Socialist Party recognises that there are vital lessons to be drawn from the recent struggles of the French workers. One of the most important is the complete bankruptcy of the "communist" parties, as demonstrated by the PCF. Another striking feature was the way in which the factories and universities were organised while the employers and authorities were temporarily eliminated. Although there was no production during the strikes, all the factory services had to be maintained. At the Renault plant at Billancourt, for example, the factory hospital was still functioning, the firemen and security officers had to keep patrolling, food had to be prepared—and so on. Even more impressive was the Sorbonne, with the students in control. A hospital service, treating those injured in the riots, was centred on the Medical Faculty and it was estimated that a daily average of 10,000 posters and hand-outs were being produced by the Fine Arts School. Yet all of this was done by unpaid, voluntary labour, by people cooperating for a common purpose. Too much should not be made of this (we are not suggesting it represented "socialism in action") but it does at least disprove the often-heard objection to a socialist society that, if the coercive pressures of the wages system were removed, nothing but chaos would result.

Another important aspect was the role of the police and armed forces. Although vast publicity was given to the brutality of the CRS, there was less on the discontent which was building up among the ordinary police forces over their use as government thugs. Already by May 18 there were reports from the police unions of "extreme tension" in the forces. Some of the police were also adopting the tactics of the strikers themselves. An article in the Times mentioned that the branch dealing with intelligence on student activity had been deliberately depriving the government of information about student leaders in support of an expenses claim! This indicates that the majority of those who make up the police and armed forces are subjected to the general pressures which act on all working men and women.

As for the army, General Fourquet—the Chief of Staff—made it clear that it would obey any constitutionally elected government—even a "communist" one. Whether Fourquet and the general meant this or not is largely immaterial for, when we are in a position to establish Socialism, the bulk of the armed forces (as with the rest of the working class) will be socialists and will understand that their interest lies not in fighting their fellow workers but in freeing mankind as a whole by stripping the capitalist class of its wealth.

If there were a working class committed to Socialism in France the correct method of achieving political power would be to fight the general election on a revolutionary programme, without any reforms to attract support from non-socialists. In fact, the first stage in a socialist revolution is for the vast majority of the working class to use their votes as class weapons. This would represent the transfer of political power to the working class. We adopt this position not because we are mesmerised by legality and not because we overlook the cynical and two-faced double-dealing which the capitalists will no doubt resort to. We say, however, that a majority of socialist delegates voted into the national assembly or parliament would use political power to coordinate the measures needed to overthrow the capitalist system. Any minority which was inclined to waver would have second thoughts about taking on such a socialist majority which was in a position to wield the state power.

But since the workers in France are still convinced that capitalism is the only viable social system, the immediate task must be for genuine socialists to concentrate their efforts on spreading socialist ideas among the working class. For this purpose an independent socialist party, which does not compromise its principles or dissipate its activity in attempts to reform capitalism, is indispensable.

John Crump