. . . from the branches (1959)

SPGB platform at Hyde Park.

Party News from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day in the rain

Rain! Rain! Rain! That was Hyde Park on May Day 1959. Nevertheless, over fifty optimistic Comrades rallied to the demonstration to sell literature and support the platform. In the Park itself, despite the weather, a large audience was soon grouped about the Party's platform, where Comrades Ambridge, D'Arcy and Young spoke on the significance of May Day. Large posters were displayed advertising the evening meeting held at Denison House, which was an encouraging success, with more literature sold and a good collection. The front cover of the Socialist Standard had well indicated the debasement of May Day. Union Jacks and Nationalist slogans were displayed in the procession. — The title of our meeting — "Socialism Is International." Let May Day 1960 be Brighter and Better.

Islington report that their canvassing efforts have resulted in the sale of FORTY DOZEN "STANDARDS" for May. More power to their elbows!

Manchester

On May 1st Manchester Comrades covered a large meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at the Free Trade Hall, where Bertrand Russell seemed to have benefited by the Party's persistent efforts. He stressed that it was not enough to merely seek International agreement on the banning of “H" bombs, but that we should grapple with the problem of war itself.

Hackney

As part of the Pre-Election campaign in the constituency of Bethnal Green and Hackney South, two successful indoor meetings were held, the titles being —“The Alternative to the Labour Party" and “You’ve Never Had It So Good.” The meetings were well supported and a number of new faces were in evidence. A further meeting entitled “Nuclear Weapons and the Threat of War” has been arranged and is advertised in this issue.

The Branch had three candidates in the Borough Council Election in the triangle ward of Hackney. Considerable interest was aroused, both in the Press and elsewhere, although our Comrades were not elected this time!

Ealing

Members are asked to note that there will be a special trip to Southsea on Sunday 21st June, to hold a propaganda meeting. Those wishing to make the trip are asked to notify the Branch Secretary as early as possible. Meet at Ealing Town Hall at 9 a.m.

The support of all members is specially requested for the outdoor meetings at Gloucester Road, beginning Thursday 4th June and continuing every Thursday afterwards. The meetings are timed to start at 8 p.m.

There are only a few seats left on the coach for the Branch trip to Eastbourne on Sunday 14th June (not 13th as announced last month). All members wanting seats are asked to contact Comrade R. Critchfield. Price 12s. for adults and 6s. for children.

Phyllis Howard

Everyman a Capitalist (1959)

Editorial from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Classifying objects by their essential similarities and differences is a necessary step to thought and action.. Every trade unionist does this when he organises with others who live by receiving wages, against employers who live on profits. The Socialist does it when he differentiates the system of society known as Capitalism from a basically different system of society he calls Socialism.

But the words that enable us to think clearly can also be used to cause confusion by linking up unlike objects which happen to have unessential similarities. Outside of politics the absurdity of this is easily recognised. Nobody thinks himself justified in describing an ice-cream as a small iceberg, a stickleback in a mill pond as a small whale, or a pigmy as a tiny giant. But in politics this kind of thing is going on all the time and most people do not readily see that it is fallacious.

We are led to consider this by the current campaign of the Tory and Labour parties “to make everyone a Capitalist."

A Board instead of a Boss 

Not that the two are agreed on how they propose to do this. The Labour Party came to it through a series of debasements of the ideas some of its founders had half a century ago. Appalled by the spectacle of arrogant wealth and abject poverty existing side by side, they thought that if the government appropriated the land, factories, railways, etc., we could have a nation of people all employed by the State and living in comfort and on a more or less equal standard of living. Apart from that drastic act they proposed that the other features of life in Britain would go on as before: buying and selling, importing and exporting, holding colonies, taxation, saving and spending, etc. They soon decided on grounds of practical politics that confiscation was impossible, but they continued for a long time to proclaim their intention of nationalising the land and the major industries. Six years of Nationalisation by the post-war Labour Government practically killed it. The voters clearly did not much like what they saw. It was all very well a dozen years ago to tell unions and railwaymen that they, along with the rest of the workers, had joined the Capitalists by becoming, through the government, the owners of the mines and railways, but talk of this kind would get a cool reception today from the miners and railwaymen who are being sacked because of redundancy. They do not feel that they are any better placed than the redundant cotton workers; being sacked by a Board instead of by a boss is no less painful.

So the old sweeping Nationalisation is off, and when the Tories accused the Labour Party of intending to nationalise 600 big firms, instead of saying “Yes, of course,” as they would have done in their early days, Mr. Morgan Phillips, Secretary of the Party, issued an angry denial. “We do not intend—and we have never stated in any official document—that it was our intention to nationalise the large firms.” (Daily Herald, April 30th, 1959.)

The new Labour Party plan is for the government to buy shares in large companies and in general not to take them over.

The Labour Party still maintains that it is Socialism they aim at. They called the original scheme Socialism, and they call the new scheme Socialism. They were wrong then and wrong now. Government control or ownership of whole industries or of shares in companies is Capitalism not Socialism. The Observer, (May 3rd, 1959) is quite right when it says of the Tory plan and the Labour plan: “What is significant is that both parties nowadays rely equally on the process of Capitalist growth.”

All to be Capitalists!

The Tory plan, sponsored by a Conservative Party Committee in a booklet “Everyman a Capitalist," is similar in that it proposes the buying of company ordinary shares, but it differs in that the shares are to be bought by individual workers. They will, however, not buy them direct but through investment trusts, which will buy shares in a number of companies and then sell industrial investment certificates to individuals.

The ideas behind both plans are much the same. They are put in the form that it is a good thing to have more people “owning a stake in industry,” and that these new small owners will share in the growth of capital and profits of the companies.

There are several things wrong with the reasoning. Ten years of low unemployment on the one hand and rising prices and profits on the other, have not altered the fact that depression with its heavy unemployment and falling profits and bankruptcies are just as “normal” to Capitalism as are its booms. Workers who buy shares expecting only rises may find themselves owning depressed or worthless shares. It is always the big speculators, “the men in the know,” who have the best chance of selling in time. 

Secondly, the relatively small sums owned by individual workers do not cease to be only trifling amounts in comparison with the wealth of the Capitalist class by being put into company shares instead of being deposited in a Savings Bank. Even if the prices of shares and profits of companies went on rising the relative position would be the same, because the wealth of the rich would be growing at the same time. All the changes of the past 50 years have not altered the basic relationship that about a tenth of the population own about nine-tenths of the accumulated wealth.

Small Millionaires

Thirdly, and more important still, the relationship between the Capitalist, who lives by the wealth produced for him by the working class, and the working class who produce that wealth, but receive only a part of it in the form of wages, is not altered at all. The worker who has a few hundred pounds saved does not cease to be dependent on wages because he receives interest or dividend of a few shillings a week from his investment. And, to come back to where we started, the possession of a few hundred pounds does not change a worker into a Capitalist. A Capitalist is a man whose wealth is large enough to enable him to live on the “property income” he receives from it, an income derived from the exploitation of the working class. The worker with £300 is no more a "small Capitalist ” than he is a "small millionaire."

Why are the Tories fostering this idea? Clearly it is with the purpose, not of making us all into Capitalists— which is as impossible as having a social system in which all the population, including the slaves, are slave-owners —but with the intention of deceiving the workers into believing that they have an interest in preserving Capitalism.

The Institute of Directors have issued a booklet called "Mind Your Own Business" warning companies against the dangers of Nationalisation. It is a very good description of what workers ought to be doing, provided that they recognise that their employers’ business belongs to them, not to the workers they employ, and that the two schemes, Tory and Labour, for promoting what a city editor calls "popular Capitalism” (Manchester Guardian, 4th May. 1959) are both of them useless and dangerous to the working class.

Obituary: Bert Atkin (1959)

Obituary from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is a sad duly for members to have to report the death of a fellow comrade. We regret to learn of the death of our Comrade Bert Atkin of Manchester. Joining the Manchester Branch in 1914, Comrade Atkin was an active member until the branch dissolved in the Twenties. He worked constantly for the Party and in 1927 or thereabouts, he was instrumental in reforming the Branch which then become one of the most active and lively branches in the Party. Comrade Atkin in his time was Branch Treasurer, Organiser and on many occasions was a delegate to Annual Conferences. He lived for the Party and for all it stands for, and was most happy when associating with fellow Comrades. Owing to ill health he was obliged to retire from active work in the Party, but his enthusiasm never failed. We extend to Comrade Mrs. Atkin and her family our sincere sympathy.

Wages and Trade Unions (1959)

From the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Working people live on wages, which are obtained in their places of employment. Some workers own government bonds or company shares and derive income from these or from other sources. But all sources other than wages form a very small part of the average worker's income. Mainly the workers live on wages and any changes that occur in the amount of wages have a definite bearing on their conditions of life.

The wages which they receive represent a portion of the wealth they produce. This portion takes the form of money and is given to them by the owners of the places where they work in return for the use by the owners of their ability to work for specified periods of time.

This is a condition of existence common to all workers, not less to those who wear white collars and receive salaries than to those who wear overalls and receive pay envelopes. The boy leaving school at the age of 16 or 17 searches at once for an employer. There is nothing else he can do. His father does not own a “place of business.” Neither do his relatives or his friends. Nor is there any way in which he can start a business of his own. There are exceptions, it is true, but in general the youngster leaves school and works all his useful life for some other person and lives through the years on wages.

So wages are very important to him and if unemployment causes his wages to stop, or if they become reduced or are not increased in times of rising prices, then he faces troublous times.

Mental Conditioning

Yet the worker does not give to wages the thought and consideration which their importance obviously urges. That is because he is subjected to mental conditioning. He picks up his newspaper in the evening, to find that world affairs are detailed and analysed without reference to wages. He turns on the radio or television and gets lengthy periods of sports, popular music, plays and other things, but not wages. Perhaps he goes to a movie house, to see a love story, a mystery, a western or some other type of film, in which the characters all seem to live in some manner that precludes the existence of wages. On Sunday he takes himself to church to become removed to heights so lofty that the very thought of wages could only be disturbing if not blasphemous. There is a stigma attached to wages. The subject is dull and boring. Wages are not to be discussed except to reveal that they are an incontestable condition of existence for workers, but must be taken in modest sums.

How could the matter of wages be treated otherwise? All the main sources of information and entertainment are owned by the capitalist class, and these gentry are hardly likely to allow them to be used to call sympathetic attention to the wages question or to be critical of the system, of wage payment. They like the wages system and they like wages to be low. It is from this state of affairs that their privileges and luxuries emerge. And they know, that the more the minds of the workers are directed into channels remote from wages the less attention will they give to wages, and this can react only to the benefit of the employers.

Trade Unions

But in spite of these diversionary activities, which attain a great deal of success in keeping the workers passive, they do give attention to the question of wages. The pressures resulting from their status as wage workers, particularly the constant readiness of the employers to use every opportunity to lower their level of existence, compels activity in their own interest, even though this activity is all too reluctant and lacking in depth.

Over the years working people throughout the world have employed a variety of methods in the hope of improving their living conditions. They have petitioned parliament, supported candidates for office, organised political parties. They have paraded in the streets, erected barricades and fought against police. But most important, they have organised in trade unions, which have provided them with their most effective weapon, the strike.

The trade union exists to protect and improve wages and working conditions. It engages in a number of other activities most of which are worthless, sometimes harmful. Because its members are not politically informed, it often allows itself to be used as a stepping stone to office by aspiring politicians. Indifference and apathy amongst its members sometimes lead to racketeering, cases of this kind recently being played up prominently in the daily press. But when all these things are taken into account, the real worth of the trade union must not be overlooked.

Strike Action

It seldom happens that a worker by himself can approach an employer and obtain an increase in wages. Workers in certain specialised types of employment may be able to do this, but not the average worker. He would be more likely to find himself on the street searching for another employer. Workers may influence their wages and working conditions only by collective effort and only by being in the position to stop working if their demands are not met. The ability to withhold their services is a weapon in their possession. It is the only final logic known to employers. Without it wages tend to sink below subsistence level. With it a substantial check can often be placed on the encroachments of the employers and improvements both in wages and working conditions can be made.

The strike is not a sure means of victory for workers in dispute with employers. There are many cases on record of workers being compelled to return to work without gains, sometimes with losses. Strikes should not be employed recklessly but should be entered into with caution, particularly during times when production falls off and there are growing numbers of unemployed. And it should not be thought that victory can be gained only by means of the strike. Sometimes more can be gained simply by the threat of a strike. Workers must bear 'all these things in mind if they are to make the most effective use of the trade union and the power which it gives them.

But above all, the workers, besides making the greatest possible use of the trade union, must also come to recognise that even at their best the unions cannot bring permanent security or end poverty. These aims cannot be gained within the limits of capitalist society. When the workers have raised their sights high enough to envisage a society where there can be no conflict over wages and where each will contribute to the production of wealth according to his ability and receive from the produce according to his needs, they are thinking of a goal that can be gained only after they have become organised into a political organisation having for its object the introduction of Socialism. Such an organisation is the Socialist Party.

Leaflet published by the Socialist Party of Canada.

The Snoopers (1959)

From the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

A furore arose recently in the readers’ letters column of the Daily Mirror, when an article revealed that there were thousands of people employed by Finance Companies whose job it was to snoop into people’s lives, and report on would-be hire purchase customers’ credit reliability. Confirmation of this disturbing practice was forthcoming in subsequent letters, some even rushing to the defence of the maligned investigators. A snooper’s letter pointed out that they performed a very important social function, in that they prevented goods being supplied either to people who couldn’t afford them or to people who had no intention of meeting the repayments.

Irrespective of the ethical considerations involved, there is no doubt that this practice is here to stay, along with its progenitor, Hire Purchase. The growth of Hire Purchase and credit trading in this country since the war has been phenomenal, although, of course, far less than that in America. The increase in the total Hire Purchase debt here in the last eighteen months alone amounted to £220 millions, the total figure in November, 1958, amounting to the colossal sum of £565 millions. Allowing one half of this for commercial credit (machinery, vehicles, and so on), this means that the average personal debt per family works out at something over £20. And in the U.S.A. nine out of ten families live on credit of one form or another.

With this growth of credit selling to working people, it was inevitable that there should grow up the practice of "status reports" or enquiries into the means and earnings of customers. This has reached its highest peak in the U.S.A. with “credit ratings" by which every credit customer is given a record card at a central agency to which Finance Companies can refer. In 1955 the Associated Credit Bureaux of America had 1,700 branches in the U.S.A. and Canada, with files on 75 million buyers. These files contain exhaustive information on the credit subject, including the earnings of all members of the family, personal habits, litigation record, records of past business dealings, value of house and mortgage position or amount of rent paid, and so on. By this system, the good and bad customers can be assessed and defaulters avoided, although strangely enough, the more credit commitments a customer has (promptly paid, of course), the higher his credit rating.

In this country the credit rating system has been proposed many times, but always to be turned down by the Finance associations because their members were not prepared to bear the cost. This is hardly surprising at a time when bad debts amount to less than one-half per cent, of the finance companies’ turnover. However, one can confidently predict that when things become a little more difficult and the bad debt rate increases, the rating system will appear here, too, and we will all have little dossiers giving details of our earnings, family, virtues and vices (shades of the "police state”!)

Until that happy day arrives, the finance houses will make do with the snoopers, those raincoated individuals who, masquerading as friends or relatives, call on our neighbours to make discreet enquiries about our jobs, wages and homes. Then they pop along to the nearby shops and see if we run up bills or live beyond our means, and afterwards call on the factory gateman to make sure that we really do work there. In due course a little buff slip headed "confidential” is sent to the finance company stating, perhaps.—"Works as engineer in local factory at salary of approx. £12 per week—two children aged 6 and 3—good standing with local tradesmen—well-kept home—considered good risk for the amount of credit mentioned.” Or—if the customer is less praiseworthy—"Worked for last two months as fitter—frequently changes job—5 children. 18 months to 7 years—poor home—considered unsafe.”

In this country, although the enquiry organisation is not as complete and exhaustive as that in the U.S.A., it is highly organised. In some towns, the enquiry agencies have files on tens of thousands of hire purchase customers, and the motor-car trade has its own comprehensive system. There is a central agency which records all hire purchase transactions on cars, and issues reports to all its members. This, of course, is essential in a trade dealing with goods that are often priced at £1,000 or more, and where strict control has to be exercised to prevent hirers from selling cars that are still the property of finance companies.

The Hire Purchase Trade Association has 20,000 part-time enquiry agents on its books for the purpose of obtaining “status reports.” There are many smaller organisations using such agents, who are normally part-timers, supplementing their income from rent-collecting and so on. Many are retired Police officers; some are ordinary housewives.

These agents are only a small part of snooperdom. There are many thousands of private enquiry agents who, unlike the romantic figures of Sam Spade and Dr. Thorndike, are kept busy by the sordid divorce investigations and the routine serving of writs and summonses.

Most people look upon snooping as an unsavoury occupation, but do not see where the real unsavouriness lies. This kind of activity is an essential part of property society, a society which provides even more unsavoury occupations, such as the policeman who breaks strikers’ heads with his truncheon, or the soldier mangling workers of other countries. The jobs themselves are not likely to ennoble the characters of the performers, but this is not the main issue. They are carrying out a necessary function of an irrational and harmful social order, and one which exemplifies the sheer idiocy of the social organisation.

What sensible reason can there be for an arrangement whereby some workers produce goods, other workers advertise them, yet more workers arrange them in gaudy shop-windows, more workers fill in hire purchase forms, even more run the complicated accounting and collecting system of the finance companies, some more occupy their time snooping into the buyers’ lives, others add up the bosses’ profit, a few store it away in bank vaults, and finally, a tiny section of the population live more than comfortably on the proceeds?

Surely a simpler and less wasteful arrangement is called for? Why should a vast number of people have to perform useless and frustrating tasks, in order to satisfy the selfish wishes of a ruling clique? Yet it is working people themselves who perpetuate this foolish system; who do the useless tasks as well as the useful; the unproductive as well as the productive.

The trouble is that the alternative, a world of common ownership and common effort, is frightening in its simplicity. It seems too easy to be true. Nevertheless, true it is. It’s as simple as that!

Albert Ivimey

Trial and Error (1959)

Book Review from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Call The Doctor. By E. S. Turner, (Michael Joseph, 21s.)

In an age of X-rays and artificial kidneys, there is no excuse for anybody thinking that the stomach is an oven where food is cooked by heat from the liver. No doctor now prescribes the gall of a bull mixed with vinegar, or wine made from six live vipers. Yet this, apparently, once passed for medical science. At this distance, it seems incredible that the patients stood for it; we can only hope that we are less gullible today.

Quacks

The book starts as it intends to go on, shocking us with the Salerno rules for the mediaeval physicians; (“When feeling the patient’s pulse, allow for the fact that he may be disturbed by your arrival and by the thought of the fee you are going to charge him"). It tells of the vogue for revolting medicines and antidotes, one of which—the bezoar stone—was discredited by trying it on a criminal after giving him a large dose of corrosive. The wretched man was found crawling like an animal around his cell, with blood streaming from every orifice of his body. There is the story of the quacks, (“The cheapest and safest Way of bringing forth ye Venom of ye Secret Disease .. . Sold by J. Sherwood, Bookseller") and the bodysnatchers, who supplied the doctors of the 18th and 19th centuries with their subjects for dissection. For hundreds of years, the physicians fought the over-indulgence of the well-to-do by drawing off rivers of their blood and administering tons of violent purgatives, and probably committing vast slaughter in the process.

Mr. Turner has a lot of surprises for us. Who knew that The Lancet was founded as a truculent rebel journal, which earned the disapproval of the Royal College of Surgeons by revealing the substance of medical lectures and reporting horribly bungled operations? Or that, before the day of anaesthetics, surgeons worked so fast that some could amputate a leg in the time taken to sprint a hundred yards? The operations were particularly gruesome—as late as the 1890's, the surgeon wore a frock coat which he kept behind his theatre door and which was sometimes so stiff with blood and filth that it could have stood up on its own. Equally sickening is to read about the ignorance of the sources of infection. About the doctor who carried in his pocket some remains from the abdomen of a woman lately dead of childbirth fever—and wore the same clothes when attending later confinements. Sometimes the doctors were reluctant to change their ideas. Here is plenty of ammunition for those who think the medical profession has always been an obstinate, unprogressive lot.

Disappointment

Yet when we have recovered from our disgust and surprise, what is there in this book? A little disappointment; the subtitle—A Social History of Medical Men—is hardly justified. There is no suggestion that the medical and surgical advances of the 18th and 19th centuries were related to the achievements of the Industrial Revolution. The 1914-18 war, one of the great disruptive social influences of the 20th century, gets a couple of paragraphs. Could it be that too much—over 500 years—is crammed into too little—just over 300 pages?

To satisfy Socialists, Call The Doctor must have pointed out that medical science cannot be excepted from the principle that our knowledge expands with the development of society's wealth-producing capabilities. That modern medical research and techniques reflect —and are made feasible by—the advance of modern industry. Anaesthetics could not have happened without the Industrial Revolution and it is hardly necessary to say that machines like the iron lung can only be made in a factory. The introduction says that the book is limited to an examination of the doctor as a member of society. Yet it ignores the influences which make society what it is.

Doctors and Patients

What position does the doctor hold in society? Although most of them would not concede it, they are members of the working class, compelled at times to defend their material interests. Twice during the past 50 years—in the National Insurance Bill of 1911 and the National Health Bill of 1948—the government has imposed changes on the doctors' working conditions. On each occasion, amongst the clouds of nonsense which they talked, the medical men could be descried resisting anything which they thought would lower their standards. Mr. Turner recalls the words of one doctor who opposed the 1911 Bill: “. . . we have a commodity . . . and we are practically monopolists of that commodity . . . are we going to demand a fair price for our services?” No shop steward could have put it better.

And the patients? Mr. Turner says, on the old Poor Law days,

  Among these were consumptives in crowded dwellings or sunless valleys, and workmen discarded by the industrial machine with their inner economy wrecked. What they needed was what no doctor could supply: food, fresh air, decent houses. All the practitioners could do was palliate their lot or give them illusory hope with bottles of cheap medicine.

Nowadays we are all on the National Health and some of the diseases which took their toll in the Poor Law times have been suppressed. But others have taken their place and always the effort to cure them is complicated by the fact that the majority of patients are compelled to work for their living.

Overwhelming Question

If, after the centuries of trials and spectacular errors which this book relates, the medical men are at last getting to grips witth their problems, we are leftivith one overwhelming question. How much more effective would they be, in a world free from social disease? ,

Ivan

Lyndoe on Marx (1959)

From the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader asks us to comment on an article from the pen of one Edward Lyndoe who is by profession an "astrologist."

In the November 1958 number of Prediction this writer has turned his attention to the "Chart of—Karl Marx." His article tells us nothing about Marx personally, and less than nothing about his ideas—which are what have made him so notorious, but concentrates entirely on trying to show that Marx's actions, in his practical everyday life, were the results of his "chart" or horoscope. In doing this, Mr. Lyndoe shows his utter ignorance of Marxism, but reveals unintentionally, quite a lot about the methods of fortune-tellers, crystal gazers and palm-readers who profess to reveal the future, for a suitable fee.

As Karl Marx died in 1883 the only thing Mr. Lyndoe can do in his case, is to try to show that Marx's astrological chart, that is the relative positions of the planets on his birth day, would confirm what Mr. Lyndoe puts forward as Marx's biography and "explain" his actions. His main contention is that Marx was a hypocritical old fraud who, in fact, had no "sympathy with humanitarian ideals," whose "poverty" in London was "largely a sham," and that when Marx became a revolutionary he was only "acting on the stage."

To make his otherwise very dull and boring article a bit more tasty, Mr. Lyndoe has thrown in, as a titbit, a further allegation, culled from the pages of the Vienna gutter press, that Herr Raab the Austrian Chancellor took with him to Moscow last year a recently discovered letter from the files of the Secret Police, purporting to have been sent to Frankfort Political Police by Karl Marx reporting on Austrian and German political exiles in London. He further alleges that Marx was actually living in London on £5 monthly paid to him by the secret police. During his life-time, on more than one occasion, Marx showed himself well able to deal with this sort of pin-prick when resorted to by those he crushed in controversy.

Regarding the alleged letter in the Vienna files, we should require more proof than the statement of Mr. Lyndoe. So far as the established facts of Marx's London exile are concerned, they are on record in the numerous biographies and biographical sketches. Let any reader in doubt consult Mehring's Karl Marx or the sketches by Liebknecht and Lafargue.

That Marx lived in the direst poverty, prior to Engels retirement, is so well known that we apologise to readers for repeating it. As a typical example, here is an extract from the Diary of Frau Marx, showing the suffering and hardship the Marx family underwent in London.

   "At Easter 1852 our poor little Franziska fell ill with severe bronchitis. For three days the poor child struggled against death and suffered much. Her small lifeless body rested in our little back room whilst we all went together into the front room and when night came we made up beds on the floor. The three surviving children lay with us and we cried for the poor little angel who now rested so cold and lifeless in the next room. The poor child's death took place in a period of bitterest poverty."
(Karl Marx by F. Mehring. Allen and Unwin page 217.)

In actual fact, he lost three children through infant starvation. At one period the body of his baby son lay on the table in a wooden box while his father strove frantically to find the small sum necessary for his burial. In fact, tragic though they were at the time, episodes such as the occasion when Marx found himself at Bow Street for trying to pawn his wife's valuable silver are now regarded humourously.

This, as Socialists, is not our main concern. What Mr. Lyndoe is completely ignorant of, and what he must do, to write about Marx for intelligent people is get some idea of what it was that Marx was advocating. Significant for the ideas of Marx is not that he was born in the conjunction of Uranus— Neptune, but in the early stages of a new kind of social order—Capitalism.

Incidentally Mr. Lyndoe cannot have it both ways. If the actions of individuals are not their own, but predestined by their "charts" or "stars," what is Mr. Lyndoe complaining about —fraud, hypocrite, spy or not, Marx was merely fulfilling his destiny—he couldn't have been anything else. But the critic makes these actions the grounds for moral strictures and homilies. He complains that "Marxian Communism is the religion which not only glorifies the ends regardless of the means, but glorifies the means themselves. We should not be too sanctimonious about some of the methods used in our part of the globe—but, at least we do not feel disposed to trumpet them abroad as a new morality." What all this has to do with Marx and his stars nobody will ever know!

Here, dear Mr. Lyndoe, are the important facts. A German philosopher, turned journalist, found himself unable to answer some of the questions his readers were asking about social conditions in the Rhineland in 1843. He resigned and resolved to study to try to clarify the position. This job of studying the social position eventually became a life-work, and led him through many strange unexpected paths making him many enemies, and not a few friends.

Now unlike Mr. Lyndoe, we would not hold that Marx or anyone else is a pawn in the hands (or beams) of Uranus. Within "well defined limits a certain amount of choice was his. He could either publicly renounce the inevitable logical conclusions of his researches and findings, or boldly proclaim his adherence to them. Marx unravelled the law of social development, he explained the rise of the new ruling class and saw within Capitalism the seeds of yet another form, Socialism.

In the Communist Manifesto he wrote explicitly of various class spokesmen and representatives and the fact that some individuals, though not born in the ranks of the oppressed and exploited, take their place among them.

  "Just as in former days part of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie—so now part of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariate. Especially does this happen in the case of some of the bourgeois ideologists, who have achieved a theoretical understanding of the historical movement as a whole." (Communist Manifesto. Page 38. Ryazanov edition.)

This "understanding of the historical movement as a whole" is a closed book to Lyndoe. So far as workers are concerned it is vital— it is their destiny as a class which is at stake. The action to deal with their problems will be taken by themselves, with the help of Marx's ideas.

So far as Marx's personal character and actions come into it at all, it only remains to add that Socialism was probably particularly fortunate to stumble across a man of Marx's mental and personal integrity. Whatever the consequences—whatever the outcome of his conclusions—he stood by them. They could not have been more unpopular with capitalists, those of wealth and power, who saw to it that if they couldn't physically maltreat and victimise him—at least they could take it out of his wife and children—which they did. Once he had signed the Communist Manifesto the author of the slogan "Workers of all lands! Unite" could not get a job as a Railway Clerk, degree or not!

Karl Marx, of course, is not the only instance of someone of genius whose explosive ideas have incurred the wrath of the powers that be—Bruno burnt at the stake, Galileo tortured on the rack, Hypatia cut to death with sharp shells.

Others like Lyell and Darwin have also been the target for vituperation though not physical outrage. In our own day there are those to whom Professor Pauling and Bertrand Russell are anathema because they do not support some suicidal war policy.

Even the Archbishop of Canterbury can admit that the Earth is millions, not thousands of years old—that life has evolved and was not "created." But no capitalist can tolerate the idea that capitalism is obsolete and superfluous— that it thrives on exploitation—that its days (and his days) are doomed, that a superior and inevitable alternative, Socialism, is on the way.

All these things Marx proved. The best estimate of his personal character, was that of the man best qualified to make it—Frederick Engels, who at his graveside said "Marx was, above all, a revolutionary. The battle was his element."

Horatio

50 Years Ago: The "Great Man" Fallacy (1959)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

When I read the history of Greece I am not impressed by the oratory of Demosthenes or the statesmanship of Pericles. But I note that Corinth alone contained slaves by the thousand dozen, and I ask: what was the economic condition of this class? What did they know of science or art or literature. Dickens has spoken of men and women who all go in and out at the same hours, to do the same work; people to whom every day is the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. These are the people history should speak to us about, and not the depraved parvenus and braggart buffoons of royal descent. Then I say to every working man and woman: before you read the life of Cicero or Aristotle or Julius Caesar; before you become immersed in trivial biography, study well the conditions of life and labour of your social ancestors in Greece, in Rome, in the Middle ages. The proper study of a working man is working class conditions.

Socialist Standard, June 1909

The Passing Show: Hand in hand (1959)

The Passing Show Column from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are continually being asked by reformers to put their objective—which is, naturally enough, Socialism— into cold storage and instead use their time and energy to support “immediate demands," such as the abolition of the H-bomb, the ending of the new laws in Rhodesia, action by the N.C.B. about miners’ unemployment, and so on. But the only objective, immediate or otherwise, of Socialists is Socialism. And if the efforts of the world’s reformers had in the last fifty years been used to work for Socialism, their “immediate demands” would probably by now be unnecessary.

South Africa

Prominent among the objects of the reformers’ interest is South Africa. They abhor apartheid. The result of their reforms would be to give the African workers the same opportunities as the white workers: that is, to work on equal terms for the South African capitalists. The objective of Socialists is to free both white and black workers from wage-slavery, and to end the evils of capitalism in South Africa as elsewhere

Hand in hand

The aims of the reformers in regard to South Africa are, in fact, exactly the same as the aims of the capitalists in regard to South Africa. The present state of affairs in the Union is the result of the political dominance of the large farmers, who are determined to keep the land (which gives them their economic and political power) for themselves, and to deny the Africans any political or educational equality, since that would only strengthen the Africans’ desire to own the land themselves, instead of merely working on it for the benefit of the white owners. The farmers wish to keep the Africans in subjection, as uneducated hewers of wood and drawers of water. But this is in direct contradiction to the desires of the South African capitalists, who want an educated working class, and one which is not made discontented by being deprived of the vote. The South African landowners strongly oppose giving the Africans the vote, since propaganda will no longer fool landless men into believing they can never be anything else: but the capitalists do not think that the grant of the vote will deprive them of any power, since they can see that in much of the capitalist world the workers possess the vote and yet make no attempt to use it to overthrow the capitalist systems (private or state) which sit on their backs.

Half-Baked

The identity of aims between the reformers and the capitalists has come out strongly in recent weeks. No journal, perhaps, can claim to speak for British capitalists with as much truth as The Director, the journal of the Institute of Directors. And in its April issue it shows great hostility to the South African Government's latest face-saving plan. Hoping to side-track the Africans’ demands for political equality, Dr. Verwoerd has announced his plan to create five Bantustans out of the present native reserves (which cover only one-sixth of the Union's territory) and to hold out to Africans in the Bantustans the hope of eventual political independence. The Africans would thus regard the Bantustans as their real homes, and would be treated in the much larger white area (including all the industrial districts) as a mere drifting population. But capitalism requires a steady, settled, tied-down, working class: and The Director damns the scheme comprehensively, dismissing it finally with “The Bantustan plan, in short, looks half-baked and wholly impracticable, politically and economically."

Spinach collecting

The supporters of South African capitalism in the South African Parliament itself similarly attacked the Government’s bill to segregate whites and non-whites at college, by creating new universities for Africans only. “Situated in remote rural areas," The Observer (12-4-59) reports, “and cut off as far as possible from contact with Western civilisation, the ‘universities’ will be too small to provide anything like the facilities available at proper universities." But universities under a capitalist system exist to supply the capitalists with the upper ranks of the workers in their industries and in their state services. The Opposition was therefore much disquieted with the repeated statements of Government M.P.S that “the separate universities would restore to the African his ‘Bantu culture.’"

What was this “Bantu culture" that had to be preserved and promoted, inquired an Opposition M.P. To answer his own question he turned to the chapter headed “The Culture of the South African Bantu" in the most famous of apartheid documents, the Tomlinson Report.

Bantu Culture, declares the report, embraces “Bride price" polygamy, ritual practices, ancestor worship, the brewing of beer and the collection of wild fruits and spinach.

And the collection of wild fruits and spinach is scarcely a preparation for work in the higher levels of capitalist industry.

Afrikaaner industrialists

The division among the whites in South Africa is not between English and Afrikaaners, but between the capitalists and the landed interests. Hitherto capitalist industry has been owned chiefly by English speakers, and the land mainly by Afrikaans speakers. But South African industry is growing year by year, and more and more of it is owned by Afrikaaners. The Manchester Guardian (13-4-59) says:

At the same time it is known that influential people in the growing Afrikaans industrial and commercial world are apprehensive about the effects on world opinion and on the economy of the country of such measures as the bill to create separate African “states." the bill to impose stringent forms of job reservation (for whites) on industry, and the bill to impose university apartheid.

Here lies the real danger for the supporters of apartheid—the increasing strength of capitalism. But when the South African capitalists have gained their inevitable victory, and have given the African workers equal rights with the white workers, then the only change that matters, in South Africa as in the rest of the world, will still have to be accomplished: the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a Socialist society.

Sir David in trouble

Sir David Eccles has been getting into trouble again. He told a German audience that the British royal family was all the better for its Hanoverian blood (The Observer, 3-5-59). Great exception was taken to this in the British newspapers. What they principally objected to was that anyone should mention the subject at all. It is never admitted in polite political circles that Prince Philip is German (coming from the German family that rules over the lucky Greeks) and that the Queen is part German (the family which occupies the British throne having been German, and having married Germans, from 1714, until the future George VI broke the custom by marrying an English-woman). Sir David Eccles will get no further in politics if he drops any more bricks. He must learn that the successful politician doesn't say things merely because they are true: he only says what the audience wants to hear.

 

“Love Thy Enemies"

The Archbishop of Canterbury, returning from a tour of the Far East, tells us that the Japanese “are a lovable people” (Daily Herald, 29-4-59). And a fine, appropriate sentiment it is from the head of a church which claims to advocate love and kindness. Only one criticism: why didn’t the Archbishop tell us this between 1941 and 1945, when Britain was at war with Japan? All we heard then from the bishops were exhortations to work harder and fight more fiercely to wipe out the bestial, inhuman Japs. But there it is. When British capitalism requires the organisation of a wave of hate, all its subsidiary concerns do their bit to help: and that includes the Church. Now, when the Japanese are our allies against the Russians, the latter, who were lovable from 1941 to 1945, have become bestial and inhuman, and it is the Japs who are lovable. How thankful the Church must be that the average man seems to have no memory.

Alwyn Edgar

Trip to Ireland April 4-11th (1959)

Party News from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is a short report of the activities in Ireland and matters which arose during my visit.

We travelled from Belfast to Dublin on the Saturday evening after I arrived, and a get-together had been arranged at the home of Comrade Chris Walsh, who had travelled to Dublin for the occasion.

On Sunday the Conference was held in the Boilermakers’ Hall. This was the first Conference to take place in the Socialist Party of Ireland, and its chief aim was to set the Party on its feet as a national organisation. Until now there has been little contact between the Dublin and Belfast Branches, and they have been virtually two separate organisations.

The Conference appointed an Executive Committee, which will meet alternatively in Dublin and Belfast on the first Sunday of each Quarter. Its members are Comrades Montague and Devine, of Belfast, Comrades McBrain and Adams, Dublin, and Comrade Hackett of Armagh, where there is a sturdy group which probably will soon become a Branch. Montague was appointed General Secretary and Adams, Party Treasurer; one of the E.C.s first tasks will be to go into the question of dues, Central Funds, and Party Finances generally.

The Conference also adopted The Socialist, which hitherto has been produced entirely on the initiative (and at the expense) of two Belfast Members, as the official organ of the S.P. of I. It will still be produced in Belfast, but will now be under the control of the Executive Committee. A Central Branch Secretary was appointed (Comrade Tennyson) who will keep contact with outlying members. The other proposal before the Conference, that the name “World Socialist Party” should be adopted, was turned down.

Five members from Dublin, five from Belfast, Comrade Walsh and myself from England, Comrade Earp from Canada and a sympathiser were present at the Conference. There was some disappointment that the tape recordings of greetings could not, be available for the Conference, and also that I had not been appointed officially as a fraternal delegate by the E.C.

In the evening a propaganda meeting was held in the same hall, and there was a “full house” for this. Collections at the Conference and the meeting totalled nearly £8 and wipe out the deficit in Dublin's funds.

We returned to Belfast on Monday morning, and public meetings were held on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. The Tuesday one was on Socialism and Religion, a rather daring subject in Ireland, but the audience was appreciative throughout. At the Wednesday meeting a group of Communists made weak attempts at opposition but did accept a challenge to debate, and if this materialises it should be an excellent thing for the Belfast Branch. On Thursday we travelled to Armagh and held another successful indoor meeting; I was told before I left that on the following day the Armagh members had many callers asking for Party literature.

There was no meeting on the last night. Friday, but on this night and all the others, members gathered together to discuss and ask question after question. I left with the impression that the Socialist Party of Ireland is really on its feet for the first time, and the prospects are good. At the same time they need help in various directions.

Robert Barltrop

Capitalism—The Sick Society (1959)

From the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Social Basis of Mental Ill-Health 

"I want to be left alone; I want to dream my dreams, to believe as I once believed, that life is good and beautiful and that men can live with one another in peace and plenty. No son of a bitch on earth can tell me that to make life better you have to first kill a million or ten million men in cold blood." The cry from the heart of millions of ordinary people today; people whose only wish is to live happy, full, life free from hardship, fear and anxiety.

This cri de coeur comes from a “fictitious” American, a soldier disabled in World War I, “The alcoholic veteran with the washboard cranium.” His creator—Henry Miller, whose savage, bitter attacks on Capitalist society are brilliantly embodied in his story of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company from The Tropic of Capricorn.

The greatest tragedy of Capitalism is the suffering of its living victims. The dead are dead and can feel nothing, but the living must endure the frustrations, the fears, the uncertainties, the insecurity, which are inextricably bound to mid-twentieth-century Capitalism. Nearly half the hospital beds in the United Kingdom are reserved for patients with mental illness; in the United States it is as common for people to have their own “head shrinker” (psychiatrist) as it is for them to have their own butcher or beautician. Here is a tape-recording of a private talk between an American T.V. producer (Dan Enright) and a professional “quiz contestant” (Herbert Stempel), reported in Time magazine of 15th September, 1958:

Enright: I want to get a psychiatrist for you.
Stempel: I already have one.
Enright: No, sir. I want you to go to a psychiatrist five days a week, not twice, Herb, to expedite yourself . . .  We will foot the cost . . .
Stempel: Well, my doctor seems to feel that my problem isn’t serious enough for five days a week.

Age of the Phoney

A society must be grievously sick when so many of its members have to undergo mental treatment. Psychiatry is a peculiar product of modern Capitalist society. Mental conflicts (including the “neuroses,” which account for so much mental illness nowadays) are largely the result of peoples’ inability to come to terms with their environment, and psychiatry is an attempt to resolve these conflicts; but they are inevitable under Capitalism, where society is divided by warring groups and classes.

Capitalism has created a world of potential plenty, but millions of its workers either live in poverty or else they live in a state of apprehension lest some “crisis” (an oft recurring feature of Capitalism) throw them into poverty. Capitalism is world-wide, but lethally armed nations make a mockery of cooperation with the shrill cries of their gutter-patriotic leaders and their insatiable demands for markets, trade routes, and for their Cypruses, their Formosas, their Algerias. Capitalism, especially the mid-twentieth-century brand, will go down in human history as the great age of the phoney. Honesty and integrity are subjects for derision; the present-day gods are the gimmick, the ballyhoo, and the slick-tongued salesman, all wallowing in a bog of false social values.

The U.S.A.

No country in this Capitalist world is more socially sick than the United States of America. The United States is a fantastic amalgum: it possesses the source of scientific knowledge and industrial techniques challenged only by Soviet Russia, and yet, according to Paul Blanshard in his book The Right to Read (The Beacon Press, Boston, 1955), there are roughly 8,000,000 “functional illiterates” in the U.S.A. That is, there are 8,000,000 adults who have not got the reading knowledge that a child should acquire in the first four years at school. And according to Louis R. Wilson’s study The Geography of Reading (quoted in the above book), only about one-half of the adult population of the United States in 1938 had sufficient reading skill to understand the ordinary books published for adults. And yet these “functional illiterates” are subjected to the same strains and stresses of Capitalism as their more “enlightened” fellows: is it any wonder, then, that many are intellectually and emotionally incapable of coming to grips with a bitterly competitive and hostile environment—modern capitalist society?

When faced with a problem, some people fight it, some run away from it, and some remain undecided, a battleground of conflicting emotions which tend to destroy the peace of mind and cause mental illness. When faced with the problems of Capitalism, therefore, some people fight them (Socialists are in this category), some run away (Capitalism must answer for many suicides), and others become mentally ill: they either fill the mental hospitals, appear in police courts, or, more tragic still, they may live for years with terrible mental conflicts which blight their own and their families lives.

But suddenly these pent-up frustrations, conflicts, and inward suffering may erupt with dreadful results: people “flip their lids” as Americans so graphically describe the onset of acute mental illness, and the outward peace of the humdrum “respectable” home is shattered brutally and irrevocably. Consider the case of 16-year-old Diana Daye Humphries, who ambushed and shot to death her 14-year-old brother in their home in Houston, Texas.

According to an Associated Press despatch dated 24th September, 1958, Diana was an honour student at High School, where her teachers and schoolmates described her as a “brilliant student and well-liked girl, not the type to do a thing like this.” But she did do it, and her reasons for doing it are a terrible indictment of the existence she and her family (along with millions like them) endure under modern Capitalism. Diana (who had also planned to kill her father, her mother and herself) told the police:

“I did it because everything was so routine. My mother goes to work every day and comes home tired. So does my father, and he is sick with ulcers. Everyone was always tired. Robert was tired of school. It seemed we were always getting up, going to work or school, coming home, cooking meals, eating, washing dishes, going to bed and getting up again. I couldn’t stand it! I wanted to kill everyone so we wouldn’t have to suffer any more.”

This penetrating picture of working-class life by a teenage girl makes a macabre mockery of all the sickening eulogies of Capitalist society with which Capitalists and their politicians and spokesmen incessantly bombard our senses. What dark powers Capitalism must have to turn a “brilliant student and well-liked girl” of such tender years into a pessimistic, disillusioned killer.

Another Associated Press Report dated 24th September, 1958, this time from Sparta, Michigan, tells of the tragedy of an unemployed man who killed four of his five children with a shot-gun; his fifth child and estranged wife escaped with minor injuries. The father told the police: “I can only take so much. I got shot up in the war and my nerves act up.” By no means the least horrifying aspect of this tragedy was the hard-boiled, matter-of-fact, attitude of the eight-year-old surviving child, who is reported to have been found sitting on a blood-spattered bed saying: “Hey, cops! Daddy did this. I played dead. He thought he killed me, too.”

These two cases represent the small number of human tragedies in which the stresses and strains of life under Capitalism cause violent reactions, and hence get into newspapers. They are the one-tenth of the iceberg visible above the surface of the water: the extent of submerged human misery can only be inferred from the great increase in recent years of mental illness, suicides, divorces, alcoholism (especially in young people), the so-called “psychosomatic” illnesses, such as duodenal ulceration, and the colossal trade in “tranquillisers ” and sedatives.

The follies, miseries, frustrations, and personal tragedies of modern Capitalist society have been, and are being, forcefully recorded by a growing number of novelists, mostly American. Henry Miller’s savage polemics in The Tropic of Capricorn are not generally available, but there are many other works freely obtainable from public libraries or as cheap “paper backs."

“1984”

Orwell’s prophecy of the control of man’s thoughts under the Capitalist corporate state a few decades hence is a phantasy (which may perhaps become partly true) featuring violence to mind and body and sophisticated torture. But Merle Miller (The Sure Thing) and David Karp (Leave Me Alone) suggest that “thought police” work, albeit “unofficial” is present today: these authors' subject is the intolerance, persecution; and in some cases social ruin, of people with ideas (real and imagined) slightly out of line with the “hundred-per-cent. All-American” outlook of conformist, unquestioning, suburban communities. These last two books are, in a way. more horrifying than 1984. both because they describe what might actually be happening today, and also because the persecution and intolerance are not exercised by “ thought police,” but by groups of ordinary, well-meaning, law-abiding, citizens only too well indoctrinated with the ideas of intense nationalism, racial prejudices, and selfishness engendered by the Capitalist society in which they live.

The problems of Capitalist Society have been described by socialists, novelists, historians, sociologists, and even by professional politicians. But only Socialists recognise that most of these problems cannot be solved until Capitalism is replaced by a social system in which people throughout the world will work harmoniously together to produce and distribute wealth to satisfy society’s needs. In this system of society. Socialism, there will be no terrible forces causing daughters and fathers to kill members of their families, there will be no need for armies of psychiatrists and overpopulated mental hospitals, no need for the senseless slaughter and maiming of men. women and children in war, and there will be no need for people to fear for their safety and security because of what they think.

To work for the abolition of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism is the life-work of the Socialist. What better work could there be?

Michael La Touche

Marxism and Humanism (1959)

Book Review from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is Marxism a Humanism? By Charles Taylor, ULR, 1s.

(See Part 2 here.)

This pamphlet by an editor of Universities and Left Review starts so many hares running that one wondered whether in the end it would turn out to be a kind of wild goose chase. We cannot say that in the pursuit, we have all Mr. Taylor's hares in the bag, but we did manage to catch one or two remarkable specimens.

To begin at the end. Mr. Taylor's conclusions are that as a humanism, Marxism is inadequate. A true humanism, he says, must regard men as ends in themselves, never as means to an end. On the question of end and means he believes Marx's position to be ambivalent. Marx's primary concern, he argues, "was the smashing of Capitalist relations." From this a Socialist society would then be built up and only when this was done would Socialist man or truly human relations, emerge. This is the classic Communist formula for the "proletarian revolution."

Given then the assumptions of an over-riding political authority—an elite—to put all this into effect, he continues, might not the ruling authority in pursuit of this end, be tempted to subordinate everything, including men, towards its attainment? Might not a state of affairs come about in such a situation where the maxim prevails — "the end justifies the means"? And might his not mean that men themselves could become merely a means to an end, which in turn brings about an end different from the one originally intended. Marx, thinks  Mr. Taylor, never resolved this conflict between ends and means which involves a contradiction between Marxist practice and Marxist ethics.

This, we believe, boils down the essence of Mr. Taylor's vague and diffuse treatment of the subject.

"The Revolution Betrayed"

Mr. Taylor offers Soviet Russia as the classic example of where this sort of thing happened. His Marxist motif has the orchestral background of—"The revolution betrayed." It seems we are asked to believe that what took place in Russia in 1917 and the projects put through by the Bolsheviks, would have met with Marx's approval. Mr. Taylor assures us that there are elements of Marxism in Stalinism and further these "elements" provide the latter with a theoretical justification.

Finally, Mr. Taylor believes that Marxism fails as a humanism because of its insistence on class loyalties. Thus generates hostility towards those who do not share them and leads to the dictum that those who are not with us are against us. In this way, he argues, barriers arise between different sets of men. He urges that we must strive to enter into full human relationships with all men, irrespective of differences of outlook, attitudes and presumably interests. Unless we are able to do this, he thinks, no worthwhile social future is possible.

His own recipe for true humanism consists of the time honoured ingredients, universal good will, brotherly love and the fullest expression of the individual. These are the ethical foundations for building the New Jerusalem. For the class ethics of Marxism he offers the classless ethics of Christ and Kant.

Over a century ago there came into being an order of a kind of Socialist monkhood whereby it was proposed by example, incantation and prayer to chant the way to the promised land. In this year of grace we seem to be witnessing its revival.

We cannot, of course, accept the assumption that a Socialist society was in process of being built up in Russia. Our views on what took place in Russia are too well known to require a detailed exposition here. What we can say is that when Lenin as early as 1921 blurted out that "State Capitalism exists in Russia," he blurted out the truth. When he added "State Capitalism in the interest of the working class is Socialism," he blurted out the clumsy but classic lie of all labour apologists. State Capitalism, it was in Lenin's time, in Stalin's time and State Capitalism it still is.

The Alienation of Labour

Mr. Taylor tells us that Marx at least wanted to abolish a state of affairs which has brought about what he, Marx, called "the alienation of labour" or to state it another way, the excessive division of labour which is an integral feature of the extant productive system. A division of labour which has such crippling effects on the working capacities of men and their productive potentialities and which disintegrates human personalities by transmutation into a single function and imposes on labour an exclusive activity. That is true. Above all things Marx and Engels insisted that this system with its division of labour must be replaced by a social organisation where there will be "no exclusive circle of activity and where it will be possible to engage in a many-sided productive activity and to do one thing today and another tomorrow." So important is this question of the alienation of labour to the assumptions of Marxist ethics that we propose to deal with it more fully in the next issue.

What we can say here is that of the "alienation of labour" is the hall mark of Capitalist production, then "re-unification of labour" will be the characteristic of Socialist production. It was, however, the task of Lenin and Stalin via the instrumentality of the dictatorship to accentuate and accelerate this alienation of labour; to attempt to develop at breakneck speed the division of labour essential to Capitalist production. Not to integrate the human personality in the productive process, but to disintegrate it. Lenin's formula for the alienation of labour was the ironic equation, American efficiency plus electrification—Socialism.

Social Revolution

In their attitude to the role and function of the working class, Marx and Engels were worlds apart from Lenin and Stalin. Marx and Engels declared that the social revolution could only be the self-conscious movement of the self-conscious majority. Lenin believed that it would be directed by "the green table intellectuals." Marx said, "to fit the workers for their historic task of inaugurating the new society would require years of patient educational work." Lenin on the other hand stated that "If we wait for the people to understand Socialism we shall wait a thousand years." Engels tell us, "Marx and I rely on the intellectual maturity of the working class to achieve their emancipation." Lenin, on the contrary asserted, "the proletariat can never advance beyond a trade union consciousness."

It is true Marx in the Gotha programme talked about the lower and higher phases of Communist society. Of the latter, Engels tells us, "a really human morality which transcends class antagonism and their legacy in thought becomes possible only at a stage of society which has not only overcome class contradictions but has even forgotten them in practical life," and there is nothing wrong with this view. Both Marx and Engels looked forward to the expediting of a state of affairs, where "the enslaving subordination of individuals under division of labour and the antithesis between intellectual and manual labour had vanished" and where "labour had become not merely a means to live but the primary necessity of life itself."

What a tragic travesty has the so-called Socialist revolution in Russia made of Marx and Engels conception—of the truly human condition of the species. Once long ago Lenin in his more indulgent moods, spoke of "the withering away of the state in a Socialist society." It is not the state which has withered away in Russia—only the concept has withered.

Marx and Engels were uncompromising equalitarians. "From each according to his capacity to each according to his needs" remains the greatest ethical contribution to the humanistic ideal. Not only did they share the humanitarian ideals of the great Utopians of the past, they did more, they joined Utopia to science.

Soviet "Equalitarianism"

Lenin and certainly not Stalin were never unqualified equalitarians. It is true Lenin in the early days of the revolution laid down in principle that no State official should receive a higher income than the average wage of a competent worker. But even so, Lenin was also concerned with the fact that he did not want to see the newly formed State apparatus degenerate into a kind of bureaucracy which he was apprehensive about.

Actually the demand for a much more drastic equalitarianism came "from below," a demand which Lenin resisted. It was under the New Economic Policy introduced by Lenin that inequality of remuneration became more marked and under Stalin's "Socialist" regime these inequalities became even more glaring than those of Western Capitalism. It was finally left to Stalin a few years later to denounce equalitarianism as "a petty bourgeois deviation" and a crime against the State. After that the mass of workers were indoctrinated into the belief that inequality of remuneration was a fundamental Socialist principle.

Little wonder that the aging Fabians, Mr. and Mrs. Webb, set the seal of Fabian approval on Russia in their work, "Soviet Communism" and Bernard Shaw declared Lenin's N.E.P. "to be the carrying out of Fabian policy."

We will not apologise for spending so long a time in discussing the antithetical differences between Marx and Engels and the Soviet ideologists who spoke in their names. Because Mr. Taylor has taken to task what he believes to be the contradictions involved in the Marxist ethics and its inadequacy as a humanism and has at least in part sought empirical demonstration of his theme in Soviet practices, we felt it necessary to clear the ground for assessing his reasons for the failure of Marxism to achieve a true humanistic level. For that reason we shall in the next issue attempt to show that although the Marxist ethic is a class ethic it in no way conflicts with the aims and ideals it sets out to achieve—the truly human society or socialised humanity.

Ted Wilmott