Russia and Democracy (1946)

From the June 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

On March 23rd, under the title “True Democracy,” the Manchester Guardian opened a discussion on democracy when reviewing a recently published lecture by Professor E. H. Carr. This review was followed by contributors from Lord Lindsay, Mr. Laski and Mr. Bertrand Russell on April 20th and May 4th respectively.

The striking thing about all the contributions was that they distinguished an entirely different outlook on democracy between Russia and the Western Countries, but, to all of them, the Russian outlook is accepted as a sincere one, tied up with the view that the Russian rulers are acting on behalf of one section of society alone, the workers, and that their dictatorship signifies the rule of the workers. This, the writers agree, explains the difference between “Proletarian Democracy” and “Bourgeois Democracy.” This, for instance, is the reviewer puts it:-

“It is important, as Professor Carr points out, to realize that the Russians are just as sincere in their use of the word democracy as we and the Americans are in ours.”

We have not the space to examine the many misleading ideas that are foisted upon the Marxian point of view by these writers, but must confine ourselves to the alleged basic difference between the Russian and the Western definition of democracy.

Cutting away all trimmings, democracy simply means a state of affairs in which the will of the majority of a group, a nation, or an international society, shall always prevail. The will of the majority cannot prevail unless circumstances exist which make it possible to know at any time what the will of the majority really is and whether, for any reason, it has changed. This cannot be known unless there is at least freedom of discussion and means existing for this purpose; freedom of equality of voting; freedom to select those who are to carry out the will of the majority; and equality of electoral conditions.

Although in theory these four fundamental conditions exist in the Western democratic states, in fact there are considerable limitations. One needs only to remember the private and business votes processed by some, the enormous influence of a press owned by a propertied minority, the economic penalties suffered by the workers who express their opinion too freely; and the governments who coalesce instead of dissolving. In spite of the limitations, however, there is sufficient democracy in most of the European states and in America to enable the majority of the people to change the basis of society if, and when, they wish to do so. The point is to get them to wish it. It is therefore to the interest of the workers, who form the great majority in the nations, to use these democratic avenues and not to ignore or destroy them.

The Russian Government was, and is, fundamentally undemocratic, and under its inspiration Communist parties of the other countries have worked to discredit democratic institutions. Sometimes the plea has been that these democratic institutions were barrier to the taking over of power by the working class. In fact, however, they were simply the barrier to the taking over of power by the tiny minority, the Communist Party. The workers did not want to take over power because they had not sufficient confidence in themselves and would not know what to do with power if they got it.

At the time of the Russian Revolution the Bolshevik or Communist Party was a small minority in a largely peasant country. By taking advantage of the favourable circumstances and by carefully planned manoeuvres they succeeded in getting control of government power; every action since that date has had behind it the aim of strengthening the hold on power of the leaders of the Communist Party. Some statements of Marx and Engels on the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” were misused to support the false claim that the workers were in control in Russia. In fact the Russian dictatorship is at present the rule of a small group, with Stalin at their head, who have so tightly organised their autocracy that it is difficult to dislodge them. In this, certain peculiar circumstances have played directly into their hands. From the beginning there was a bitter struggle between members of the ruling clique, and the successful ones imprisoned, deported or executed their rivals. The secret police, as in Germany and Italy, was, and still is, one of the principal of props of power. Lately the church is also taking a hand in the game.

With such background, to write of the Russian idea of democracy as being a sincere one is just nonsense. The rulers of Russia are solely interested in keeping their privileged position as rulers and, like the capitalist rulers here, are only concerned with democracy to the extent that it achieves this object. To write of the Russian dictatorship, as the contributors to the Manchester Guardian have done, as being a dictatorship exercised in the interests of the workers is contrary to the facts. On similar grounds they could as logically argue that Capitalists rule in the interests of the worker.

The business of the Communist parties of different countries has been to serve the interests of the Russian Government, and their “day-to-day” policies have twisted and turned and been reversed merrily in tune with the needs of Russia. On this question of democracy, so far as it concerns the parliament, their somersaults have been particularly spectacular. Starting twenty-five years ago with fierce denunciation of parliament as a sham and a snare, they have alternately denounced and applauded participation in parliamentary action. We will extricate two examples of this lunatic policy:-

In 1932 the Communist Party published a 20-page pamphlet entitled “Report on the Crisis Policy of the Labour Party, the T.U.C. General Council and I.L.P.” This report was submitted to the twelfth Congress of the Communist Party. It repudiates parliamentary democracy in the following manner:-

“Revolution for the Communists means the forceful overthrow of the capitalist and the establishment of the workers’ dictatorship, this to be achieved by the organisation of the daily struggle of the workers as the road to the seizure of power” (p. 17).

Any Party which accepts parliamentary democracy, however revolutionary its phrases is an instrument of the capitalists” (p. 20).

“We must expose the sham of parliamentary democracy, and show the positive results of the workers’ dictatorship based upon the workers’ councils. …” (p. 20).

The Daily Worker of March 6th, 1943, tells an opposite story. It opened its columns to a discussion of the oft-recurring enigma “Communist Affiliation to the Labour Party.” Mr. James Walker put the case of the Labour Party and Mr. William Gallacher replied for the Communist Party. In his reply Mr. Gallacher made the following bland statement:-

“Of course we believe in parliamentary democracy. That is why I am in Parliament. That is why I am such a regular attender, and why the Party is so anxious that I should a good account of myself.”

Could blatant impudence and political perfidy go further? It might, but not very much!

In the West the capitalists find that they can rule under democracy. In Russia the Bolsheviks found they could not do so. To veil their dictatorship and obtain support at home and abroad they rigorously applied the censorship and produced quantities of literature urging the claim that the workers are the real rulers who endow their leaders with supreme power and authority on the ground that the leaders know better than they do themselves what is best to be done. This autocracy was then labelled as a new form of democracy, proletarian democracy, though the proletarians have, at the most, only the influence of the dumb, obstinate cattle who may stray this way and that along the road but are always driven home in the end. In social systems based on chattel slavery the slave either acquiesced in his slavery or went under. In Russia the position of the worker is fundamentally similar. No one before has had the brass to suggest that the slaves participated in democracy. It has been left to the twentieth-century dictatorships, with the unbounded cheek of the confidence man, to foist his fantastic view upon an apprehensive and credulous world.

With an extraordinary tenderness towards Russia the contributors to the Manchester Guardian discussion find a basis for Russian views in an idea that has been revived again. Russia, they urge, has not political democracy, but it has economic democracy. This is how Mr. Laski puts the idea:-

“Soviet Russia is a more democratic society than Great Britain. No special privilege attaches either to birth or to wealth, to race or to creed. There is a wider and more profound attempt to satisfy maximum demand than in this country. … The maddening distinction which we make between the high social prestige attached to intellectual labour and the low social prestige attached to manual labour has no meaning. … Access to the courts is not dependent upon the wealth of the parties to an action.”

Democracy is a term that is used to signify the opposite of privilege. Whatever it is called, political or economic, it either means, in the circumstances that are being considered, that everyone has an equal standing or it is meaningless. Mr. Laski is out of touch with the practical world and, consequently, his description of the economic position in Russia is a travesty of the real position.

What economic equality is there between Soviet millionaires, who can command the best food and everything else, and the average poorly paid Russian worker; between the rich, who can take their holidays in pleasant surroundings, and the poor, who must stew or freeze in the cities; between the wealthy writers and the poor manual workers; between the trembling critic of the Government and the ruling group with its ruthless instruments of oppression; between the rich, to whom all the avenues of divorce are open, and the poor, who cannot afford to pay the court procedure, between Soviet ambassadors giving sumptuous feasts and Soviet workers who can barely get enough to live on; between the prisoners in the labour camps and the Secret Police? If there is economic equality in Russia, why, and for whom, do the black markets flourish? The economic democracy that critics and servile adherents alike admire in an illusion, as the ugly facts testify.

While conditions remain such that modern society is composed of capitalists and workers, two classes with antagonistic interest, then the modern democratic state is the capitalist state, the executive committee of the ruling class, no matter what name is applied to the party in power nor what theory it masquerades under.

But the democratic state has been forced, against its will, to bring into being methods, institutions, and procedure which have left open the road to power for workers to travel upon when they know what to do and how to do it. In this country the central institution through which power is exercised is Parliament. To merely send working-class nominees there to control it is not sufficient. The purpose must be to accomplish a revolutionary reorganisation of society, a revolution, in its basis, which will put everybody on an equal footing as participants in the production, distribution and consumption of social requirements as well as in the control of society itself. So that all may participate equally, democracy is an essential condition. Free discussion, full and free access to information, means to implement the wishes of the majority which have been arrived at after free discussion, and the means to alter decisions if the wishes of the majority change.

Conditions such as these have no room to grow in Russia at present. Those who rule there to-day are essentially anti-democratic. They rule by the secret police, the concentration camp, and the executioner. They hoodwink their subjects into believing that that is the best of all possible worlds.

Gilmac.

Famine in India (1946)

From the June 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

” . . . If this country does not get 4,000,000 tons of grain quickly, anything between 5,000,000 and 10,000,000 people are going to die. They will not get that much help, so they will, in fact, starve.” You remember the Bengal famine. This will be worse. Not so spectacular, perhaps, but worse. In this queer land where the few are fantastically rich and the many are unbelievably, grindingly poor, the poor are going to be thinned out this year by something like the population of London. . . . .” (Daily Express, 23/4/46.)

One of Lord Beaverbrook’s team of high-pressure journalists, James Cameron, writing from Madras, makes this prophecy of what is going to happen in India this year, and there seems to be no reason to doubt his words.

Large numbers of Indians have, of course, died every year through starvation or semi-starvation, but the figure this year promises to be so staggering that even the Daily Express cannot tuck the news away in some odd corner, or ignore it entirely. The Daily Express not only records the facts, but on the same page as Cameron’s article tells us the cause. It says :—-

“The world famine has little to do with the war. Real cause, drought; drought last year in Australia, the Argentine, Canada and the United States; drought which brought total supplies in those four wheat-producing countries down to 68,500,000 tons this year from 90,000,000 tons in 1942-43 . . .”

But Mother Nature seems to have been in a selective mood in withholding her bounties in India, for Mr. Cameron notes that it is the “unbelievably, grindingly poor” who are going to starve.

The Daily Express’s ready-made explanation may comfort the complacent, but it fails to deceive those who know that wide-spread famine is one of the perpetually recurring horrors of the present system of society. Millions are going to starve in India this year for the same reason that millions have starved there and in other parts of the world for many years past in peace and war whether the crops have failed or not. They starved during the boom years as well as during the great industrial depression between the wars, when crops were being destroyed in an effort to maintain prices. Millions will starve in the future as long as “the few are fantastically rich and the many are unbelievably, grindingly poor.” A million and a half died of starvation in Bengal in 1943, and the report issued by the Famine Inquiry Commission (reported in Forward, 19/5/45) said: —

“After considering all the circumstances, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it lay in the power of the Government of Bengal, by bold, resolute and well-conceived measures at the right time, to have largely prevented the tragedy of the famine as it actually took place. . . . Enormous profits were made out of the calamity and, in the circumstances, profits for some meant death for others. A large part of the community lived in plenty while others starved, and there was much indifference in the face of suffering. . . .”

But starvation is not just an Eastern problem. Sir J. B. Orr’s investigations (“Food, Health and Income,” 1936) showed that no fewer than four and a half million persons in this country existed on a food expenditure of 4s. per week, and there was no suggestion that these went hungry for any other reason than that they were poor. This is the one thing common to all these tales of hunger. The hungry ones are always the poor.

Mr. Cameron savs: —

” …. It has been said that the great expanse of India’s soil, if properly worked, could feed the world. Instead, the world is called on to feed India. The answer, of course, is water. These are not the richly irrigated lands of the Punjab. Here it all must come from the sky, and it has not …. But there again it is not wholly the fault of the drought. Arable land in the South of India has been worked and worked for centuries, till it is worked out . . .” (Daily Express, 23/4/46.)

Why were the fields not irrigated and why has the land been worked out? It must be because there was no profit in vast irrigation schemes and a properly balanced agriculture. It cannot be beyond the powers of industry and science, which produced Mulberry harbours and imprisoned atomic energy, to carry the water of India to the places where it is needed, or restore the fertility of an exhausted soil.

Who cares about the starving Indian poor? Certainly not those, coloured and white, who have built colossal fortunes by the impoverishment of the Indian masses, whose main diet at the best, according to Cameron, consists of “a strange, malleable, doughy lump, in almost every way resembling putty . . . ,” made from seeds seen in England only in a parrot’s tray. He says that these people are unable to digest any other form of food, but we shall examine this extraordinary statement a little more closely if it can be shown that the “fantastically rich” also possess peculiar digestions like these.

We shall not forget this latent crime of capitalism. We know that even if Messrs. Jinnah, Nehru, Ghandi, Cripps and the rest can decide who is to have the privilege of presiding over the miseries of the Indian poor, they will not then proceed to remove the yoke from their necks. Can we, the wage workers in Britain, do anything to help capitalism’s victims in India? Yes, by building up the revolutionary movement of socialism, nationally and internationally, until it is strong enough to take over the powers of government to establish a system of society based on the common ownership of the means, of production and distribution. There is no other road that the world’s workers can take to free themselves from hunger and misery.

GEE.

Editorial: Lord Keynes – Economist of Capitalism in Decline (1946)

Editorial from the June 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the sickness of its declining years capitalism is being nursed by the Labour Party. Lord Keynes, who died on April 21st, was the doctor who prescribed the treatment. His theories, on which rest the belief in the possibility of “full employment” under capitalism, have come to the widely accepted not because of intrinsic merit or originality, but because capitalists and the Labour politicians alike have dire need of a panacea that will, they hope, make capitalism work or at least persuade workers that it will. Faced with mounting unemployment and the political discontent that it causes, many Tory and Liberal politicians had lost confidence in their ability to save capitalism. Lord Keynes promised them another lease of life. The Labour Party, new to power, never had much confidence in its own ability, and the “economic blizzard” of 1931 that wrecked the  Labour Government destroyed even what it had; so Keynes was their hope, too.

He believed that investment and price trends could be made subject to governmental control and thereby booms and slumps could be ironed out and approximately full employment secured. His views found expression in the National Government’s “White Paper on Unemployment Policy” (1944), in which the Government accepted “as one of their primary aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment after the war”. The Labour Government has endorsed this White Paper. Keynes directly influenced the Liberal and Labour programmes.

“It was mainly through his personal influence”, says the Times (April 22nd), “that the Liberal Party adopted as their platform in the election of 1929 the proposal to conquer unemployment by a policy of public works and monetary expansion”. The section of the Labour Party that opposed the MacDonald-Snowden economy cuts in 1931 quoted Keynes in support of their view. The Labour Party’s report on “Full Employment and Financial Policy” (1944) largely rests on Keynes’s theories. It declares that “the best cure for bad trade is to increase purchasing power and to speed up development”. It looks to loans, “compulsory if necessary”, from the Banks to “help the Chancellor to find the purchasing power required for full employment . . .” “If bad trade and general unemployment threaten, this means that total purchasing power is falling too low . . . We should give the people more money, and not less, to spend.”

Socialists have no hesitation is saying that if the Labour Government attempts anything of the kind – it may, of course, get cold feet and scurry to the safety of “orthodox” financial policies, as did Snowden and MacDonald-it will not succeed in avoiding unemployment and crises. Capitalism depends for its relatively smooth functioning on the capitalists’ confidence in their prospect of selling their goods at a profit. By the time that bad trade threatens the capitalists will already be apprehensive and the proposed government policy would sap their confidence still more. It is one thing to propose to increase the workers’ purchasing power but the capitalists (including the Government itself in State industries) are at all times forced by competition to seek to reduce the purchasing power of the working  class in relation to the mass of goods produced for the market. This they do, if not directly, by wage cuts, then indirectly by installing labour-displacing machinery to increase output and lower costs of production.

Always the workers can buy only part of the commodities they produce (but which belong to the owners of the means of production), the part represented by their wages. Keynes and the Labour Party ignored these basic facts of private ownership and the wages system and looked to financial schemes to relieve the disequilibrium when, periodically, it had produced a crisis of bad trade and unemployment. Events will show that unemployment cannot be abolished under capitalism, even though its growth may for a time be masked by war, war preparations and totalitarian controls.

The extent and nature of the dependence of capitalists and the Labour Party on Keynes’s theories was shown by the estimates of his work published by the Herald and the Times on April 22nd. The Herald,  under the heading “The Great Lord Keynes”, by a Labour MP, Mr. Evan Durbin, said that Keynes “more than anyone else .  . . bridged the gap between Liberalism and Socialism”. The Times developed the same idea at length:-

“The Keynesian approach offered a bridge between the academic economists on the side and ‘the brave army of heretics’—Mandeville, Malthus, Marx, Gesell and Hobson (to name only a few)—on the other. This may yet prove to have been Lord Keynes’s most valuable achievement”.

Marx is here put in curious company, but the Times‘ inclusion of him had a reason. The Times thinks that Keynes had found the way to cure unemployment and thus save capitalism from the challenge of Socialists. It quotes him as defending his policy of full employment through State control of investment “both as the only practicable means of avoiding the destruction of existing economic forms in their entirety and as the condition for the successful functioning of individual initiative”.

The Times went on to claim that Keynes had shown how to bring about reconciliation between the orthodox political parties and the “growing army of deeply discontented reformers and revolutionaries”. The claim is certainly true of the Labour Party, but woe betide that Party when Keynes’s full employment policy fails them and the bridge he built collapses. Let it therefore be clearly understood that neither Keynes nor anyone else has reconciled the Socialist demand for the abolition of capitalism with the despairing attempt to make the system tolerable by trying to cure unemployment within its framework.

The wrangle over Egypt (1946)

From the June 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let it first of all be made quite clear that in all the deliberations that have taken place, and will take place, over the evacuation of British troops from Egypt, the welfare of the Egyptian worker and peasant has never been an issue. Whether under the domination of British or Egyptian masters, they will not see much difference in their lot. Whether their rulers are British or Egyptian, they will still have to eke out a miserable existence; they will still have to labour from sunrise to sunset in their master’s fields; they will still be riddled with disease; in short, they will still be a subject class, ruthlessly and viciously exploited for profit.

What is, in fact, at issue in Egypt, as is quite openly admitted and taken for granted by both parties, is the preservation of the safety of British capitalism’s lines of communication through the Eastern Mediterranean. Opinions differ, however, as to the best means.

Said Mr. Anthony Eden, for the Conservatives, in the debate in the House of Commons: —

“His first complaint about the Prime Minister’s announcement at this time was that it gave the impression, by the manner in which the withdrawal of troops was referred to, that their purpose in Egypt was something other than it was-- namely, the Defence of the Canal Zone.”

(Times, 8/5/46.)

And Mr. Attlee, for the Labour Party, in the same debate:—

“The Government were as much concerned as anybody else with the security of the communications of the Commonwealth and Empire, with the security of the Canal, and with maintaining the best possible relations with Egypt and her continued alliance with this country, and it was precisely for those reasons that they were making the approach they were making.''

(Our Italics.) (Times, 8/5/46.)

What, then, is behind this, at first sight, rather sudden decision to withdraw troops from Egypt? The reasons are political and also military.

For many years past, the whole of the Middle East, of which Egypt is hut one part, has been the focal point of steadily expanding nationalistic feeling. During the past war, and in the period since, this nationalistic fervour has become even more intense. The recent outbursts in Egypt against British troops are an illustration of the feeling against the foreigner. Although still doing their utmost to retain as much influence as possible in the area, the capitalist Powers concerned have had to take note of this desire for independence.

That Mr. Herbert Morrison fully appreciates this is shown by the following quotation from his speech in the House of Commons: —

“If the British Government had told the Egyptian Government that they would give no undertaking about the withdrawal from Egyptian soil, the negotiations would not have gone on and then the British Government would have had to face certain consequences. There would be sharp antagonism on the part of the Egyptian Government and Parliament; almost certain disturbance and riots, possibly even revolution, and it might have led to British forces being attacked and having to defend themselves.”

(Times, ibid.)

Then there are military aspects that indicate the conceptions on which the new policy is based. The following statement is from an article in the Observer, (12/5/46) : —

”The Canal . . . . can he bombed and made unusable by aerial mining operations. Any Power with the use of air bases in the Eastern Mediterranean and a modern air force can reasonably hope to achieve this. The 10,000 British troops that the 1936 Treaty permits to be quartered in the Canal Zone are no defence against such attack The defence of the Canal itself is largely irrelevant. The vital area is the whole Middle East, with Palestine as its natural centre . . . Now that it is proposed that Egypt . . . . is to be militarily evacuated, there is only one part of the Middle East where the British have retained the right to keep troops: Palestine and the neighbouring State of Transjordan. It is my contention that this limited area can provide an adequate base for a Middle Eastern defence or police force. It has air bases which enable present-day transport aircraft to reach the Canal Zone in an hour, Cairo in less than two hours, and Baghdad in less than three. It has a port at Haifa capable of great development, and it has oil supplies in its immediate vicinity . . . ”

In short, the Labour Government and its advisers are willing to take troops out of Egypt because they believe they will be better placed elsewhere for the defence of the Middle East. Imperial aims have not been dropped, but merely modified. 

The Labour Party is not a Socialist party and was not elected with a mandate for Socialism. It must therefore of necessity administer affairs, whether domestic or foreign, within the framework of capitalism. In its domestic affairs it has already amply demonstrated to the capitalist class that, fundamentally, they have nothing to fear from its administration. In foreign affairs its policy has sometimes even dismayed some of its own members and, on the other hand, has met with warm approval from the Conservative Party. On the Egyptian issue both Parties are concerned with one aim—how best to preserve the security of communications in the Middle East. The Labour Party, no less than the Conservatives, has sought to safeguard the interests of British Capitalism.

Stan Hampson

Professor Laski’s Secret (1946)

Pamphlet Review from the June 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many of the trade union element in the Labour Party dislike Professor Laski’s ideas. To them he is a troublesome interloper, a sort of cuckoo in the nest trying to make them responsible for intellectual progeny that may some day grow up and push them out. Without delving further into the habits of real cuckoos, we do learn from Professor Laski’s Secret Battalion (Labour Party, 2d.) just what happens in the political world when cuckoo number one finds a second cuckoo trying to lay eggs in the same nest; cuckoo number one becomes very indignant and says that cuckoo number two is not playing the game.

In 30 pages of argument Professor Laski tries to convince members of the Labour Party that it would be fatal to their cause to let the Communists become affiliated. With a rich array of facts he shows, that the Communists, while swearing their acceptance of Labour Party methods, are hiding their true aim, which is to capture the Labour Party as a first step towards setting up a one-party dictatorship in this country.

As propaganda to help the Labour Party repel the latest attack of the Communist political paratroopers it may serve its purpose, but as a contribution to Socialist thought it is largely stale and unprofitable. It echoes the 25-year-old controversy between Kautsky on the one side and Lenin and Trotsky on the other, adding nothing of value and enlarging an element of confusion that was already present. The protagonists then, like Laski and Pollitt to-day, were debating whether the working class should soberly use democratic Parliamentary methods or go in for a hectic bout of forcible seizure of power and minority dictatorship. The S.P.G.B., while endorsing Kautsky’s principal arguments – they were those put forward by the S.P.G.B. at its formation nearly 20 years earlier – pointed out that Kautsky the Labour politician was at variance with Kautsky the theoretician, for the politician Kautsky cherished the illusion that Socialism could be achieved by Labour Governments elected on the votes of workers who want reforms of capitalism but do not understand and want Socialism. Our answer to both Kautsky and Lenin was that Socialism cannot be brought about either by Labour Governments or by a Communist Party dictatorship, since its achievement requires that there should first be a majority of convinced and understanding Socialists.

Professor Laski’s pamphlet is liberally sprinkled with Marxist phrases and references to Marx’s views, calculated to give the impression to those who do not know the facts, that the Labour Party is Marxist. He claims (p.16) that the Labour Party “does not deny either the reality of the class-war or the imperative need to change fundamentally the capitalist foundation of society.” This seemingly clear declaration is ambiguous. The Labour Party would certainly subscribe to it, meaning that they do not deny the hostility of workers towards employers and that they favour replacing private capitalism by State capitalism. To Marxists, however, recognition of the class struggle means recognising that the interest of the working class is incompatible with the interest of the class that owns the means of production and distribution and that, the class struggle can be abolished only by dispossessing the capitalist class and introducing a social system based on common ownership and democratic control, involving, of course, the abolition of the system of wage-labour and of the production of goods for sale.

Laski, who makes so much use of Marxist phrases, must know that the Labour Party does not accept the Marxist view. Like Kautsky he is a theoretician who in words propounds one theory, but belongs to a Party that works on a quite different one. If he believed his case to be sound he had a magnificent opportunity to floor the Communists by pointing out that Socialism has not been, and is not being, achieved in Russia after nearly 30 years of dictatorship; and then try to show how Labour government (here or in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere) had introduced or is introducing Socialism. He does neither. On Russian State capitalism masquerading as Socialism he says nothing —how could he without inviting the retort that Labour Government State capitalism is not Socialism either? Instead he gives away his case by trying to justify the Labour Government for its reforms and for its policy of State capitalism. He writes: “Socialism in Britain has …. already secured for the working class of this country great reforms, both in the economic and in the social realm. It has made it possible to place in power a Socialist Government which, also by constitutional methods, moves steadily forward to national ownership and control of the vital instruments of production” (p.17). He must know that Socialism as understood by Marx and other Socialists does, not mean a State capitalist programme of “national ownership and control.” For all their Marxist phraseology, he and the Communists are actually debating whether the workers should seek State capitalism by the Parliamentary road, or seek it by dictatorship. Rejecting both disputants, the S.P.G.B. holds that the working class should certainly use the Parliamentary road – but for Socialism.

One small point of interest. Professor Laski has exposed the secret battalions of Communists. Will he now yield up the secret of why he claims to be a Socialist but does not repudiate the reformism and State capitalist aim of his Party?

Edgar Hardcastle

May Day Demonstration (1946)

Party News from the June 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Sunday, May 5th, the Party ran its own May Day Demonstration, and a very successful one it was. The day was a very wild one, but members turned out to sell literature, speak, and do other necessary work. In Hyde Park the speakers spoke from two vans to audiences of five or six thousand people. In the evening the Metropolitan Music Hall was filled with an audience of nearly two thousand. Thus several thousand workers in London heard the Socialist message on May Day, bought about £15 worth of literature and contributed nearly £50 to the collections for the purpose of furthering the cause of Socialism. The tide is rising, the slaves are working at their shackles and the day of emancipation is getting appreciably nearer. It remains for us to keep the tide flowing.

Gilmac.

History in the Making (1946)

From the June 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Karl Marx helped to found the International Working Men's Association, in 1864, the era of capitalist revolutions in Europe had come to a temporary close. The hopes which Marx and Engels had cherished of a working-class revolution following closely upon the political victories of the capitalist class had been abandoned as premature, and the founders of scientific Socialism set about the task of building up an international organisation of workers. Never did Marx and Engels conceive the workers' challenge to capitalism as a movement that should be divided by national frontiers. In the famous "Communist Manifesto," published in 1848, they had already proclaimed the need for the unity of the workers everywhere; despite the setbacks inevitable at that stage of world conditions, they held fast to this view to the end.

Before the death of Engels, in 1895, the Socialist movement appeared to have made gigantic strides. Particularly in Germany, the movement known as "Social-Democracy" raised the hopes of revolutionary-minded workers, and it is undeniable that the early leaders of the German party were able exponents of Marxism. But this knowledge was merely confined to the top. The mass membership was recruited on issues far removed from the principles of Socialism. Nevertheless, the leadership of the german party was acknowledged by many workers in all countries, and the debates at the conferences of the Second International (founded in 1889 to carry on the work of the defunct First International) reached a high level. Here the leaders felt themselves at liberty to theorise about revolution whilst back in the confines of their national movements they were constrained to bow to the demands of day-to-day politics.

The First World War shattered all illusions. It is reported that when Lenin first heard of the support of German Social-Democracy for the war, he refused to believe it. He thought it a trick of capitalist propaganda. More bitter was his hatred for his former idols, such as Kautsky, when the truth became known. He had not grasped what was already obvious to members of the S.P.G.B., namely, that the apparent militancy of the German movement was not based upon the will for Socialism, but was largely incited by the semi-feudal character of the German State-power and the hindrance it caused to German capitalist development. It is, in fact, a principle of modern reformist working-class parties that their militancy varies in proportion to the existence of feudal remnants.

The Russian Revolution is a clear illustration of this. After their success the Bolsheviks claimed the world leadership of the proletariat as their due. But it soon became clear that what had seemingly originated in the sphere of working-class struggle was more nor less than the Russian National Revolution, designed to bring the backward Russian economy into line with Western capitalism. That, in the absence of a strong capitalist class, this task had to be accomplished by a group of "intellectuals" hitherto associated with Marxism, is not an accident of history, it is a significant fact proving the growing power of Socialist ideas. However, ideas in the heads of a few cannot withstand the pressure of historical needs. As with German Social-Democracy, achievement of their real, as contrasted with their proclaimed objective, has shorn the Bolsheviks of much of their working-class appeal, as well, let it be remembered, of the men who provided them with the reputation of a Marxist party.

The real objective of German Social-Democracy in 1918 was the establishment of the democratic capitalist republic. Having achieved this, they wanted to sit back upon the haunches of German capitalist economy waiting for working-class approval. But the post-war difficulties of the German economy did not permit this luxury. Enjoying the confidence of large masses of workers for propagandising its objections to the hardships of capitalism is a pleasant experience common to all so-called Labour parties. It is quite a different matter when these parties are thrust into power and called upon to "deliver the goods." The British Labour Party is in the process of finding this out for itself. It is apparent that the experience of its fellow-party in Germany has not been a deterrent.

It should have been. The fate of German Social-Democracy was shattering. When the democratic republic, their present to the German workers, failed to capture popular support, the morale of German Labour was smashed. They had not the will and zest for a violent struggle against Hitler, and so, to the astonishment of the world, a movement numbering millions disappeared almost without a trace. Here is the answer to those who look to the big battalions for success and ignore the strength only to be found where there is understanding.

With the rise of the Nazi Party a profound change overtook working-class politics. From being nurtured in the belief that workers' organisations, whether "Labour" or "Communist," must inevitably take the offensive against the ruling class, the new menace threw everyone, excepting Socialists, on the defensive. Not the winning of a new world, but the maintaining of the old, was the order of the day. Few realised that the clash of ideologies masked the capitalist world-rivalry for economic gain. To comprehend this preliminary to World-War Number Two, even now, after the event, is of decisive importance. The capitalists' need for working-class support for war is now so great that to achieve it the ruling-class groups must prove that the major causes for the conflict spring from ideas held by "working-class" parties. Thus the growing quarrel between Russia and the Western Powers has immediate consequences of a grave character for the workers. Already certain quarters are posing the new line-up as a clash between "Social-Democracy" and "Totalitarian Communism." The result could be that the workers may be divided into pro- and anti-Russian factions. This would be disastrous. Forgetting working-class aims, they will be just as divided as if their rulers were already at war. And this division of the workers will facilitate war. All the reactionaries, from Mr. Churchill to the Pope, as well as Fascists, would, of course, claim to be on the side of "Social-Democracy." This factor alone should put workers on their guard.

For the time being, world capitalism has to make good the ravages of war. A large part of Europe is in ruins; millions of people are shunted back and forth over the continent like cattle. In such a situation the attempt to extricate capitalism from the mess is pathetic. Indeed, the attempt is being made, largely by so-called working-class parties, and is camouflaged as "Socialism." Not, mind you, the theoretical Socialism of Karl Marx! This is the phase of "Practical Socialism," when "things are done, not talked about!" We will not have long to wait before the bluff is called. There will no longer be the "settled" periods of capitalism, when the system could recover its equilibrium. The momentum of economic development throughout the world has now become tremendous. It is accompanied by a rapid change in the backward countries of India and China. Together with the discovery of atomic energy, these changes cannot be absorbed by world capitalism without throwing the whole social mechanism out of gear. Against this social background the efforts of reformers can be compared to the throwing of pails of water into an erupting volcano.

The Class-Struggle of the workers versus capitalists can therefore be divided into distinct stages. During a century of capitalism the working-class movement first took up positions for organised battle under the guiding ideas of Karl Marx. Then came the period of "Gradualism," when the mass-parties of Labour and Social-Democracy held sway with their theories of "nibbling" at the walls in order to make the "breach." The Russian Revolution appeared to indicate the "short cut" to Socialism and managed to win a large proportion of workers away from the Gradualists. Now, in the world emerging from the Second World-War, these two forces hold political power over a large part of the world. The "Practical" Socialism, which in reality means a "Planned" capitalism, is being put to the test in Russia under Communists and in Britain under Labourites. During these coming years working-class opposition to both these camps must inevitably grow. To-day, the party of Socialism appears as the only working-class force free from political ties with those who hold the state-power for capitalism. This is our opportunity. Admittedly, the problem is vast, the difficulties immense. Our resources are at present, by comparison small. But the magnificent work of Marx and Engels proves that when history is the teacher and survival is the stake, the human race is a quick and ready pupil. The Communist Manifesto and the First Workers' International were the labour of only a few, but they shook the world of capitalism at the very beginning.

Utilising the knowledge of Scientific Socialism, not as a theoretical shelter to hide from a world in trouble, but as a spur to action, the workers can now change the world.

Sid Rubin