News in Review: South African martyr (1966)

The  News in Review from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

South African martyr

Mr. Abram Fischer, who was sentenced last month to life imprisonment on charges of conspiracy to commit sabotage and of being a member of the Communist Party, is the latest of South Africa's martyrs.

The South African Government have been gunning for Mr. Fischer for a long time. He defended Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu at the Rivonia trial in 1964 and, having broken his bail, has been on the run for over a year.

Now that the evil dictatorship has caught up with him he is likely to spend the rest of his life in gaol, for there is no remission in South Africa for political sentences.

Mr. Fischer made no secret of his membership of the Communist Party and gave his reasons at his trial:

  . . . one is the glaring injustice which exists and has existed for a long time in South African society, the other, a gradual realisation . . . that it was always members of the Communist Party who seemed prepared, regardless of cost, to sacrifice most; to give of their best, to face the greatest dangers in the struggle against poverty and discrimination.

While it is true that in South Africa the Communist Party opposes apartheid—and suffers for it—it is impossible to think that Mr. Fischer does not realise that countries which are under Communist rule are in many ways similar to Dr. Verwoerd’s dictatorship.

These countries also suppress opposition. They also stage trumped-up trials under repressive laws. They also imprison and execute political opponents.

There is strong evidence of the existence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. Sharpeville was a horrible affair, but there have been similar outrages in, for example, East Berlin and Budapest.

Dictatorship and racism are features of capitalist society. They cannot be removed by joining one capitalist party in preference to another.

Abram Fischer has proved his courage and his sincerity, but we cannot ignore the fact that he is a tragically misguided man.

Gromyko in the Vatican

Another visible sign of the Soviet Union’s edging closer to the West was Mr. Gromyko’s visit to the Pope at the end of April.

This was the first-ever official meeting between the Kremlin and the Vatican. To mark the event the Pope gave Mr. Gromyko two Russian copies of the Schema de Ecclesia, which sets out the constitution of the Roman Catholic Church.

Perhaps he will need it. Russia’s split from China grows ever wider, which probably means that in the near future Moscow will be exploring more and more ways of making contact with opinion in the West.

This is a typical development in capitalism’s mighty international power game.

In the process of this development—and again this is typical—statesmen on both sides will have to forget a lot of what they said in the past. The Soviet Government and the Roman Catholic Church will have to forget that they were once hostile to each other.

All over the world Communist Parties will have to forget the days when they said, with Karl Marx, that religion was the opiate of the people.

They have, in fact, always been ready to compromise on this issue; there has never been anything to prevent a Christian joining the Communist Party.

Only last March the Communist Party in this country were protesting at religious attacks on them on television, which, they said, “. . . can only have the object of dissuading Christians from voting Communist."

If the Kremlin and the Vatican become bedmates, we may be sure the sheets will have been well aired for them by their faithful acolytes all over the world.


Getting away from it all

How would you like to get away from it all? How would you like to escape from the worry, and scurry of everyday living and spend some time in blissful solitude?

One way of doing this is to imitate Mr. Leonard Matchan, who recently bought the island of Brechou, in the Channel Islands. “For me,” he said, “It is going to be a means of getting away from the maddening crowd.”

The one big difficulty about this method is that it is rather expensive. Mr. Matchan, who is chairman of Cope Allman International, paid about £80,000 for his hideaway.

There is a cheaper way of getting solitude—one that is familiar to a lot of people.

In Leeds, for example, the police last year investigated 166 calls from people who were worried about old neighbours whom they had not seen or heard of for some days.

Forty-eight of these old people were ill or injured and needed help. One hundred and one of them had died— silent, lonely, unwanted.

So you see there are two ways of getting away from it all. One costs you a lot of money. The other costs you a lifetime of servitude and poverty as a member of the working class.

We are often told by well-kept politicians that we now live in a classless, affluent society.

The next time we hear that let us remember Mr. Matchan and his costly, tranquil island and let us contrast this with all those friendless deaths in the troublous city.

Independence for Guyana

British Guiana, after a long and sometimes bloody struggle, is the latest colony to gain its independence from British rule.

The people there were promised a great deal about the supposed benefits of independence and, if they believed what their nationalist politicians told them, are now probably expecting some of these benefits to be coming their way.

They are obviously going to be disappointed.

In a speech on 8th May last the Prime Minister of Guyana, Mr. Forbes Burnham, summed up what independence will mean when he asked the people to sleep less (for six hours a day, he said), eat less and work more. His Government’s motto for progress will be “Work and harder work.”

Mr. Burnham also attacked what he called the “disgusting habit” which Guyanese workmen have of stopping work to shelter from the sun and the rain.

This is all reminiscent of the English Methodist protest, in 1764, that a theatre in Bristol would be “. . . peculiary hurtful to a trading city . . . and directly opposite to the spirit of industry and close application to business.”

In more ways than one, the emergent nations resemble England in the 18th century. If Guyana is to make its independent way in the world of capitalism its people will have to lose some of their leisurely habits.

Their lives will become more organised, more alienated and faster. They will be more intensely, more scientifically exploited. They will become, in other words, members of a modern working class.

In the name of freedom and progress they will have cast off one type of slavery and substituted another.

China's bomb

Good news for all lovers of militarism and destruction was that China detonated her third nuclear bomb—it may even have been a hydrogen one.

Good news, also, for all lovers of the distortion of words was that this latest test was described by Peking as "a great victory for the party’s general line of Socialist construction.”

Good news for all connoisseurs of hypocrisy was that the State Department condemned the test because of its effect on the atmosphere—as if the United States had never exploded nuclear weapons in the air, and as if they are not continuing to test the things underground.

The Chinese bomb is yet another lap in the desperate nuclear arms race which has been in progress since Hiroshima. As each new country joins the race it justifies its presence with lies about its concern for peace and world security.

And the countries who are already in the race always “deplore” and “condemn” and murmur about having a disarmament conference somewhere, sometime—because they are concerned about any threat to their dominant standing in the world.

China is a rising capitalist power, and she has paid for her entry in the race in the coin which all the others have used and which is the only one universally recognised—force.

If it were not so terrifying it would be laughable that this onward march to destruction should be called Socialism. We live now in a society of madness, in which the very words we use often lose all sense and meaning.

Happily, there is one band who work determinedly to keep the word Socialism sane and clean, and who will not have it confused with the terrorism and hypocrisy of capitalism.

Poor men in their castles

Who has not heard the lament, from mortgage-burdened worker or from high-climbing local politician, about the alleged opulence of the council house tenant? Wallowing in the luxury of a subsidised rent, polishing the Jaguar at the door, the man in the council house takes it easy while the rest are stripped bare to pay for it all.

Recently, however, The Sun gave a glimpse at another side of this popular story. In Leicester many workers have refused the offer of accommodation on a new £2 million estate because the rents are too high for them. These rents range from £4 18s. 0d. for a one-bedroom flat to £6 12s. 0d. for a three- bedroom house.

“It's fantastic,” said the chairman of the city’s housing committee. “This is one of the wealthiest cities in Europe with good wages and full employment.”

But this does not mean that Leicester’s workers are wealthy, nor that they do not suffer the poverty that their mortgaged brothers know too well.

In Paris a similar story. There, Government Social Security officials have found that families who have moved recently into new skyscraper blocks of flats are by no means living high. The new-found fascinations of a bathroom have led to heavy fuel bills to pay for a flood of baths.

This was bad enough, but even worse was the revelation that of two thousand women living in the fiats about one thousand were trying to pay the higher rents by putting in a bit of prostitution on the side.

The amenities of the skyscrapers may have cleansed a few Parisian bodies, but the difficulty of paying for them has stained some morals.

Party News (1966)

Party News from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Southend

Members of Southend Group have been very active both in the local area and in Party work generally, wherever it has been physically possible to assist. Quite a lot of literature has found a ready sale as the result of our efforts, we are pleased to report. Locally the results selling Standards has been outstandingly good with a consequent increase and constant revision of literature required. Increased activities are contemplated.

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May Day Meetings

We had excellent audiences at all our Meetings on May Day and readers will be interested in the following:—

Bristol: London members assisted local members at an outdoor meeting on Durdham Downs, which ran continuously from 3 to 8.30 pm. The audience were very lively and we hope that those who were interested will contact our people in Bristol (Directory elsewhere in this issue).

Belfast: A London member flew over to assist members of the World Socialist Party of Ireland and held a meeting in the International Hotel. An audience of over 30 were present for three hours and a number of young people showed sympathetic interest and discussion continued after the meeting.

Glasgow: Assisted by a London member meetings were held in the Royal Exchange Square, the Queens Park Recreation Grounds and literature was sold during the Trade Union and Labour Party march. In the evening an indoor meeting attended by 80 people was held in the McLennan Galleries.

Luton: An experimental meeting was held by the Mid-Herts Branch, which held an audience of over 70 from 3 to 5.30 pm. A very encouraging start.

London, Hyde Park: This meeting ran from 3 until 7.30 pm with an audience at times reaching over 300. Three speakers held an interested and sympathetic audience. At this meeting 500 “Socialist Standards" and other literature was sold.

Birmingham: The first of the season outdoor meetings was held in the evening at the Bull Ring. About 50 listened from between 7.30 and 10 pm. These meetings take time to work up and all Birmingham readers are invited to attend and to come to the Branch—for particulars, please see the Branch Directory and propaganda notices elsewhere in this issue.

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An appeal

We find ourselves without the means to fulfil commitments we have undertaken which includes the production of pamphlets. We require £500 immediately. All sympathisers and members are asked to send donations at once to: E. Lake, Treasurer, 52 Clapham High Street.

Obituary: Jimmy Dowling (1966)

Obituary from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Yet another old comrade, Jimmy Dowling, died suddenly in the latter part of March. He joined the Glasgow Branch in the early 1930’s and despite many vicissitudes never relaxed his adherence to the socialist case. Only those who knew him intimately could appreciate his solid grounding in the Marxist classics. An omnivorous reader, he specialised in the philosophical aspects of historical materialism. Unfortunately, he never became a speaker or writer. Nonetheless, everyone will remember him for his quiet caustic wit and his undying hatred, based upon understanding, of capitalism.

Tony Mulheron

Obituary: J. Cuthbertson (1966)

Obituary from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with great sorrow that we learn of the death of our comrade J. Cuthbertson of Nottingham. He had been ill for some time, but the news of his death was a great shock to all of us who knew him. He joined the Party in the Forties and was a member of Bloomsbury for some time and when he went to the Midlands he worked with a few comrades and eventually helped to form the Nottingham Branch, where he was very active. We extend to his wife and family our sincere sympathy.

The Budget (1966)

From the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Labour Party members would have thought in the old days when they were a movement of jolly cyclists and hiking clubs that they would one day have a Government which succeeded in making a lot of people feel guilty?

Ever since they came to power in October, 1964, the Labour Government have carried on a skilful publicity campaign which has drummed home two main ideas. The first is that we are living in the midst of a desperate economic crisis, caused by an unfavourable balance of payments. The second is that this situation is mainly our fault; we have been living too well; we have been earning too much money; we have been spending too many holidays abroad, and so on.

The effect of this campaign has been to make many people who did not realise before that there is such a thing as the balance of payments anxiously follow the monthly figures of imports and exports, almost like pools addicts grabbing the Saturday evening newspapers. The Labour Government have sworn to put the balance of payments into surplus and over the past 18 months they have taken many steps which they said would do just that.

One of the remedies which Mr. Callaghan has applied with a heavy hand has been enormous doses of taxation. His first Budget, in October, 1964, increased the tax on petrol by 6d. a gallon; this was just after the imposition of the 15 per cent import surcharge. His second Budget, in April, 1965, increased taxes on cigarettes and drink, and on vehicle licences; this Budget was designed to rake in an extra £217 million a year. These increases contributed their bit to the record figure of tax which was collected during the financial year 1964/5—according to the report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, £4,072 million.

The latest dose of taxation to be prescribed by Mr. Callaghan was the payroll tax, which made the headlines in this year’s Budget. This tax is expected to yield something like £240 million in a full year.

Heavy taxation, as anyone who remembers the days of Sir Stafford Cripps will agree, has been a favourite policy of post-war Labour Governments. What effect has it had on the problems which the Government said it would solve?

In October, 1964, the Government told us that the way to cure the economic troubles of British capitalism was for everyone to work harder, to keep their wage rises down to three per cent a year and for manufacturers, retailers and so on to hold their prices stable. This, they said, would solve the problems—helped, of course, with a bit of financial masterminding by Wilson, Callaghan, Brown and the rest.

And the result? The White Paper on National Income, published last April, stated that during 1965 there was an “effective rise” in personal income of some 5½ per cent. The same White Paper said that the gross national product went up by only 2½ per cent. Even when we have made allowance for the customary “adjustments” which these figures must be subject to (personal income, for example, is not made up exclusively of wages), it is apparent that the Government’s policies are not having the results they promised.

No matter what the Government say or do, wages are still rising faster than they would like and productivity is not going up at the rate they want. Inflation, which they promised to control—like the Tories before them—continues; the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said in the House of Commons last February that the purchasing power of the pound, taken as 20s. when Labour was returned to power in 1964, had declined to 18s. 11d.

This obvious failure of the Government’s policies does not stop most people thinking that the way to deal with an economic crisis is to impose some sort of similar measures. There may be some disagreement over the details of these measures, but generally the financial pundits and the economic experts stand united that there must be some sort of juggling about with taxes, Bank Rate, hire purchase controls and so on. Perhaps they all have a good reason for this unanimity; if the Government ever lost faith in such juggling that would be the end of a lot of City Editors, Treasury experts and the like.

All of these experts are very busy in the weeks leading up to Budget Day, offering their advice to the Chancellor. Few of them have the slightest doubt about the way to solve the crisis. The Government, it seems, is overlooking the obvious—until we remember that Whitehall also has its economic experts, whose job it is to examine the obvious, as well as the less obvious. This, of course, is the great difficulty; all the experts are rushing to give their advice but they are all contradicting each other.

This year the Government showed how much its own experts disagreed with the rest by upsetting all the pre-Budget predictions. Before Mr. Callaghan opened his box all the financial and economic tipsters were assuring us that there were to be increases in income tax, purchase tax, road licences and so on. The shops which sell taxable goods were cashing in by advising their customers to Beat the Budget—Buy Now! (This on the assumption that an increase in purchase tax automatically leads to an increase in prices, which is not true.) The Daily Telegraph on Budget Day reported “Stores and shops were crowded by a beat-the-Budget shopping rush yesterday, and post-offices and local taxation departments were busy with motorists anxious to renew road tax licences to beat a possible increase of the £17 10s. rate.”

Perhaps when he read this Mr. Callaghan permitted himself one of those famous jolly smiles. Or perhaps he didn’t; after all, he was once a financial expert himself.

What the experts have to explain is why so many efforts to control the economy come to grief, why so many variations of control are tried to deal with the same problem, and why the difficulties which are supposed to be eliminated by the juggling are still there.

Since the war one Chancellor after another has tackled the problems of wages, inflation, productivity and the balance of payments. All of them have failed. At times they have increased taxes, or Bank Rate or they have imposed stricter controls on things like hire-purchase; at other times they have reduced the severity of these measures. None of them has had any effect.

Mr. Callaghan is the latest in the line. And he, too, is failing. At this rate, and on precedent, he'll probably end up Prime Minister.

One thing which is obvious—and which explains to a large extent why they fail—is that Chancellors work in the dark. On Budget Day they may like to pretend that they can predict the effects their policies will have, but in fact they can do nothing of the kind. Mr. Callaghan came to office pledged to, as they say, “take the heat out of the economy,” which means that he would implement policies to ease off the boom in some industries, reduce the shortage of labour and hold wages in check.

But after all the restrictions, the economy stays obstinately “hot”. The labour market remains very tight, with the number of vacancies far exceeding the number of registered unemployed. And in this condition the rest of the Government’s policy—in particular its Incomes Policy—has little chance of success. One industrialist to recognise this is Sir Eric Mensforth, chairman of Westland Aircraft limited, who said last October:

  An incomes policy lo withstand bullying will have to be sincerely sought. . . . and . . . there will have to be the sanction of unemployment, I hope small, but enough to make a good job something to strive for.

What nobody has yet been able to explain, however, is how a Government can ignore the conditions in which it governs. No Government has yet been able, in a time of slump, to create markets to stimulate its industries. Nor, in a boom, has a Government been able lo destroy markets. Capitalist industry lives by making profit, and when there is a market which can be profitably exploited industries will rush to fill it, even if a Government puts difficulties in the way, or skims off a heavier dollop of profit in the shape of tax, or makes industry pay more for money loans. A boom economy will absorb these blows—and come back for more.

A Government cannot create unemployment when industry is clamouring for labour, and it cannot impose an incomes policy when employers are in general compelled by a labour shortage to comply with trade union demands. Of course, when there is a slump it is a different matter; then it is the unions who are crying for Government protection—as they did when they asked for the coal subsidy in 1926—and asking the Government to run counter to the current conditions of capitalism.

Mr. Callaghan’s troubles, then, do not come out of nothing, in the same way as the slump which the 1929 Labour Government had to face was no accident. That recession was world-wide, and so is the situation which now worries Mr. Callaghan. Germany is faced with inflation: France is in turmoil over trade union resistance to the Government’s attempts to impose a five per cent ceiling on rises in nationalised industries; Japan, Israel, India and the United States are other countries which are in similar difficulties.

This should suggest to the experts that, if there is a solution to the problem it is an international one. Indeed, they continue to advocate measures which concern only one country. Every country, for example, wants its international trade to be in surplus; but this is clearly impossible. Each surplus must be balanced, somewhere,, by a deficit: and it is equally impossible for international trade to be in precise balance, with every country exporting exactly as much as it imports.

When the experts are sounding off about how to run capitalism they assume that it is a social system which can be controlled by policies based on reason and sanity. But capitalism is not like that. It is a system in which competition between firms, between nations, makes nonsense of reason. It is a system whose priorities of profitability deny sanity. It is a system described recently by the Director- General of the Confederation of British Industry as one where “live and let live" is changing lo “compete or die”.

This system will defeat Mr. Callaghan's efforts to control it, just as it defeated those of his predecessors. Of course, the Chancellor tells us that his efforts are directed at solving our problems, but in fact nothing that he does, or can do, will have any effect on the basic restriction on the lives of

the working class, which is the poverty suffered by every member of that class.

That poverty is as real today as ever. The latest figures of income from the Board of Inland Revenue, covering the year 1963/4, stated that 80 per cent of the wealth of Britain was owned by some five million people, or nine per cent of the population. Poverty is not a problem of that section. But on the other hand there are the remaining 91 per cent who between them own 20 per cent of the wealth; the Board’s figures indicate that of these people, some two-thirds of the British population have no wealth worth recording. It is in this group that poverty is an ever-present problem, restricting and dragging them down into worry and illness and worse.

It is laughable that these people should feel guilty about the balance of payments crisis of the British capitalist class. Indeed, the only guilt they should feel—and this they should feel keenly—is that they have it in their power to end the society of poverty and privilege, yet they choose to do nothing about it.

Ivan

Marx and Productive Labour (1966)

From the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the latest round of never-ending struggle of governments to even out the ups and downs of capitalist production and trade Mr. Callaghan has produced the Selective Employment Tax. It carries a stage further an idea put forward under the Churchill Government in 1944 and aired again by Selwyn Lloyd as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1961—when Wilson and other Labour Party spokesmen could find nothing good to say about it.

The declared purpose of the tax is both to tighten up production generally but also to induce workers to leave the “service” industries and go into manufacturing and thus encourage the latter to produce and export more. All employers will pay for each worker a tax of 25/- a week for men, 12/6 for women and boys and 8/- for girls. But, whereas the employers in building, distribution, finance and other services will receive no refund, employers in manufacturing will receive from the Government a larger weekly payment than the amount of the tax, a “bonus” of 7/6 for men, 3/9 for women and boys and 2/6 for girls.

A third group of employers, those in agriculture, public transport, central and local government and Nationalised industries will get back what they pay out. It is expected that large numbers of workers will be sacked from group one and find jobs in group two; which all depends on how long trade continues here and in world markets to enable them to sell the additional output profitably. When the inevitable turn-down comes we shall no doubt be presented with yet another absolutely new and infallible cure for the incurable.

In a leading article on Sunday, 8th May, the Observer gave its cautious approval, but included one remark of particular interest. The editor did not like the way Mr. Callaghan has made use of the division of industries into 24 groups (or “orders" as they are called), a division which was originated for statistical purposes in connection with the industrial and occupational censuses of the Ministry of Labour wage information. “Potentially." said the Observer, “there are dangers in this approach. There is the risk of fostering the old-fashioned and nonsensical Marxist idea that the creation of services is unproductive and that only the creation of goods is truly productive.”

In the Observer, as in most other newspapers, the silly season for comments on Marx and Socialism never lets up. The first absurdity about the remark quoted here is the implication that the Labour Government does what it does because Marx told it to do so. Nothing could be less likely and even the Observer’s editor ought to know this.

The second is the assumption that Marx did in fact say this. If the editor believes it, perhaps he will be good enough to tell us where the statement may be found in Marx's works.

Of course Marx did not fall into so elementary an error. After he had, in the opening paragraphs of the first volume of Capital, first described a commodity as “an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another . . . whether they spring from the stomach or from fancy,” he later dealt with commodities which are not “goods” but “services”, the very word that the Observer thinks he did not use. He wrote, for example, about the transport industry which has the feature that “its services (change of place) must be consumed at the same time that they are produced ... transportation as an industry sells this change of location” (Capital, Vol. II, page 62).

He also dealt in Chapter XVI of Volume 1 of Capital with the extension of meaning of the term productive labour. In the elementary stage the manual labour of an individual worker is “productive labour.” Later on “the product ceases to be the direct product of the individual, and becomes a social product, produced in common by a collective labourer, i.e., by a combination of workmen.” In this stage “in order to labour productively it is no longer necessary for you to do manual work yourself; enough if you are an organ of the collective labourer, and perform one of the subordinate functions.”

He instanced the early builder who was his own architect, and the later separation of the architect from actual building work. Lastly, as Marx points out, capitalism has given a new meaning to “productive.”

  “Our notion of productive labour becomes narrowed. Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus value. The labourer produces, not for himself but for capital. It no longer suffices therefore that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus value. That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital . . . a schoolmaster is a productive labourer, when he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of a sausage factory, does not alter the relation” (P.558).

That Mr. Callaghan has muddled ideas may well be true, but that he got them from Marx is an absurdity.

Edgar Hardcastle

Finance and Industry: Dollar Safety (1966)

The Finance and Industry Column from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dollar Safety

If you believe all that is said by the propagandists about the cold war between America and Russia then in the words of James Baldwin they have all the baddies and we have Gary Cooper. But where there is a threat to the profits of the capitalist class the facade sometimes slips and they are prepared to use any tactic, however dirty, to safeguard their position.

Consider the case of Ralph Nader, an American lawyer, who published a few months ago a book entitled Unsafe At Any Speed. The book showed, according to reports in various English newspapers, that the accent on car production in America was on rapid obsolescence; safety factors were ignored because they tended to interfere with yearly restyling and production costs. Not unnaturally in a country where the motor car is concerned in the death of 50,000 and in the injury of 5,000,000 people each year, the book became an immediate best seller. So great was the reaction that both the Senate and the House of Representatives had sub-committees considering the subject.

The king of private enterprise firms, General Motors, made a bad start when it had to admit having Mr. Nader investigated by private detectives to see if he could be discredited in any way. On the matter in hand it admitted that it had recalled 1,500,000 cars in the past month to remedy defects, at a cost of £2,000,000. Ford and other manufacturers also declared that they had recalled defective cars.

Despite this Henry Ford II was claiming on April 15th that if critics who didn't know what they were talking about, such as Mr. Nader and the Government, would only leave the motor industry alone they would get on with the job. On April 26th his vice-president, John Bugas, was telling the House of Representatives that the whole industry now favoured “effective and forceful Government machinery for setting vehicles safety standards without delay.”

Whether the American motor industry can make cars more safe and more profitable remains to be seen. But according to Governor Romney, a former president of American Motor Corporation, it was the motor car industry that pulled America out of the depression, and according to Mr. Ford it is the mainstay of the present economy. Perhaps there are some who will argue that the death of 50,000 people per year is a fair price to pay in a society which places the pursuit of profit above everything else.

Who’s grabbing?

In earlier years the Labour Party has made May Day the occasion for massive propaganda drives proclaiming what it called the just demands of the working class. Now that it is the Government, and has been for eight of the past 21 years, the tenor has changed.

The Observer of 1st May, 1966, reports on Prime Minister Wilson's May Day message in which he said “We are still in grave danger of paying ourselves much more than we are truly earning.” Minister of Labour Gunter, who recently had his salary raised from £5,000 to £8,500 per year, said we are living in the “age of grab” and later:—

  We are working on an average only half an hour a week less than we were in 1938. This means that it is not the shorter working week we really want but more uneconomic overtime at enhanced rates. I am told that this uneconomic overtime is brought about because basic rates are too low.

It is at least refreshing to know that a Minister is being given correct information. Workers will, and must, try to raise the price at which they sell their labour power when the conditions are conducive to obtaining increases. Until, that is, they eventually realise the futility of it all and do away with the wages system.

Overtime will become the eight-lettered word of 1966. The Prices and Incomes Board have made “Overtime equals inefficiency” their slogan. And a new journal, Management Today, says overtime is necessary because basic rates are not adequate to buy the goods and services workers consider are their due. Although like many generalisations this tends to over-simplify, it is generally true. But it must be remembered that not all jobs offer the advantage of overtime.

But surely this was the position for 13 years with the Conservative Governments and the then Labour opposition was claiming that they would correct all this. The first excuse was that the majority was too small, and now that has been rectified we must wait for the next excuse. The favourite at the moment appears to be the old, one —the lazy and ungrateful working class.

There are still ways of making a quick quid if you have the means to play the game; witness the “bond washers.” Bond washing was a complicated manoeuvre played on the Stock Exchange where a person sold and repurchased shares in different guises, before and after the payment of a dividend, and recouped the income tax on the dividend. You could be as lazy as you like, and no overtime was required. Only lots of money. The Guardian estimated that you needed £500,000 to make a profit of £1,000 and the Sunday Times estimated that the transactions totalled £300,000,000 to produce a profit of £3,500,000.

Ray Guy

Why Socialism? (1966)

From the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

This article has been adapted from a short Roneod pamphlet, "Socialism: Fact and Fiction", distributed by the small group of Socialists in Jamaica.

The opposition People’s' National Party plan recently published has been called a “Socialist Programme” although except for a few tax changes and the nationalisation of a few companies it contains nothing that the present Government have not promised to do in their own “development plan”. There is quite a conscious search presently going on, particularly among the young people, to find a definite purpose in the political field. Many declare themselves “Socialist”—it is quite fashionable and perhaps a romantic thing to do.

If you should examine the course of action proposed by the many “Socialists” some curious questions would inevitably crop up. For instance, it is stated that Jamaica should become a Republic and cease all allegiance to the Queen. This is regarded as a necessary step in a “Socialist Jamaica”. The Labour Party in England, which is regarded as Socialist, is quite happy however to work within a monarchy. There seems to be no unity of purpose, with all the various groups calling themselves Socialist throughout the world. What is called Socialism in one country might be regarded as Fascism in another.

Capitalism is the system under which we live. The system where profit is the only yardstick that measures production. Capitalism is international and therefore the problem of any one country is the problem of the world. These problems are not so evident perhaps according to the stage of development, but they are no less real. The interdependence of countries today has made it quite impossible for any one country to solve its problems within its boundaries and then gaze sympathetically across at its struggling neighbour. International Capitalism has placed us all under the same master wherever we abide.

A few years ago sugar enjoyed a great boom, as prices on the world market went sky high. We can all remember the slogans expressed for more sugar production. What is the situation today in the sugar industry? Is it not true that small farmers find it very uneconomical in planting sugar cane? Could any government have done anything to halt the drop in price of sugar on the world market? These are the fundamental questions that everyone who thinks of social problems should ask themselves. Of course, no political careerist or opportunist would dare think of such a question. They can “solve” every problem by blaming some individual.

It is not the people who administer Capitalism who are evil—it is the system itself. The pressure going on inside the sugar industry for mechanisation simply means that the Capitalists who own this industry realise the need for lower production costs to maintain their position on the market. If we were to do away with “private” Capitalism and have state Capitalism, as is suggested by all the “Left Wing Groups”, the situation would remain the same. There would still be the same pressure to keep production costs low so as to maintain export markets. Capitalism must try to keep costs in check whether on the export or home market, whether in a public concern or a private one. It is the laws of Capitalism that dictate what is to be done, and not the politicians who administer the system.

Socialism is common ownership, democratic control and distribution of all goods in the interest of all humanity. It is essentially world wide international and cannot be practised in any one country. Socialism will involve a fundamental change in the way people live. Money—that dead matter which dominates human life—will cease to be necessary. The roots of the present society will be completely uprooted and people will become truly liberated from fear and the many other mental tortures that civilised man is forced to endure under Capitalism. Only by the coming together of all countries with the sole objective of providing humanity with all its needs can war, that essential feature of Capitalism, be outdated. Mankind now has the means of feeding everyone, yet because of the restrictions of Capitalism, a quarter of the world’s people are hungry while food is stored away, or thrown away. The present system has outlived its usefulness; it is time we passed on to the next stage of human development.

What is to be done? Socialism can only be established when a majority of the workers throughout the world understand and desire it. Therefore, Socialist education is the key. This revolution cannot be rammed down the throats of the workers. The working class of the world must understand Capitalist society and realise the great need for Socialism. This will not be a minority movement, but the movement of the majority based on a common understanding and purpose. Our lives and happiness are to an extent determined by political action and so anything short of Socialism will be entirely useless. There are no short cuts and those who continually advocate such methods are exploiting ignorance to their own gratification, and to the frustration of those who believe in them.

The Passing Show: Political Litter (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Political Litter

Whether it was the warm, sleepy atmosphere of that sizzling first Sunday in May or just plain lack of real interest, it is difficult to say, but the circuses we normally expect in Hyde Park were notably straggling and lacking in verve. The Labour and Co-op procession doddered on to the green in bits and pieces throughout the afternoon, as did those of the Young Socialists, Socialist Labour League, etc., trying hard to look enthusiastic after the nervous strain of inching through London’s West End traffic. Even the Young Tories seemed to do better. Their platform sported a rather flabby, overfed young man, whose worldly knowledge seemed to be in indirect proportion to the size of his girth. But at least he was amusing.

Wandering across the Park from one meeting to another, you scuff your feet on the abundance of litter on the grass, and occasionally bend down to look at some of the more interesting pieces. In this way, I acquired copies of The Newsletter (Socialist Labour League), Challenge (Young Communists) and The Rebel Worker (Industrial Workers of the World)—a sad and scrappy piece of duplicated literature this last one.

Judging by the comments in their papers both the Socialist Labour League and the Young Communists are obsessed with the war in Vietnam. Both want the Vietcong to win—“Victory to the heroic Vietcong Fighters” screams The Newsletter, ignoring the obvious point that if heroism is the criterion, then both sides have that in plenty. Despite fierce opposition to the Labour Government, both Y.C.L. and S.L.L. urge workers to use it to get “revolutionary demands.” These include: ending the eleven-plus, votes at 18, more council houses at low rents, making the bosses pay for the crisis—not the workers (whatever that may mean), smashing the Smith regime and arming the African workers. And after that lot and plenty more besides, Y.C.L. National Organiser Peter Carter has the cool nerve to claim “We fight to end capitalism.”

But oh, The Rebel Worker. What thrills will it have in store for us in the future? This is apparently the first English edition, describing itself also as “a revolutionary journal” and having this sort of gem in its editorial: —

  We have joined the I.W.W. because of its beautiful traditions of direct action, rank-and-file control, sabotage, humour, spontaneity and unmitigated class struggle.

Well you can take your choice from that range of so-called qualities, but how anyone can think of the class struggle as beautiful is beyond me. It is necessary, yes. Something none of us can escape, certainly. But beautiful, absolutely not. Nobody who has any real appreciation of capitalism can surely think that its relationships are other than downright ugly in every sense of the word.

And Other Litter

Do you remember the productivity and exports drive of the 1945 Labour Government? And its slogans and bulletins? “More from each means more for all” was one of the lies they told us while slapping on a wage freeze. They talked glowingly of “redistributing the nation's wealth,” “cutting the national cake” and so on, (but when they went out of office in 1951 that 10 per cent of the population still seemed to have a pretty strong hold on their 90 per cent of the accumulated wealth.

And today? Yes, the 10 per cent are still there and the present Labour Government are, of course, telling the same sort of whoppers that their predecessors did. Have you had a copy of Upswing yet? It’s their latest effort to get you working harder, and is a broadsheet prepared by the Department of Economic Affairs. Issue number one talks, of course, about the National Plan and asks the question: “Will I be better off?” Before you can get the chance to contradict it back comes the answers: “Yes. Year by year . . . There will be more to spend all round. If the Prices and Incomes Policy is maintained you will not only be earning more—the increases will go further because prices will not jump as well.” All on three per cent wage increase a year?

Upswing is noteworthy also for the impertinence of its advice to working people: “Don’t accept high prices,” it bleats. “Shop around. Give your custom to the shop where prices are lowest.” No doubt you are very grateful for that entirely novel hint. Shows just how useful Upswing is going to be. Bet you can hardly wait for the next issue.

Let's Be Friends

About 12 years ago there was a quite prominent and active organisation known as “World Friends.” I haven't heard of it for some time, but it may still be in existence. Its officers were pleasant, well- meaning and hard-working men and women. Its object was to foster peace and friendship by means of exchanged holidays between people of various countries. Probably a great many personal friendships were made as a result, but as for peace—there have been Berlin, Lebanon, Suez, Indonesia, Vietnam, lndo-Pakistan and, of course, the terrifying Cuban Crisis, all since then.

This is not to sneer at “World Friends”; at least you could say that what they were doing was better than dropping bombs. But what they never grasped was that “peace” is not just an absence of actual hostilities and the backslapping cordialities of a fortnight’s holiday abroad. It implies an absence of competition and the establishment of co-operation at all times between people everywhere. That is why peace can never be a reality while capitalism is with us.

But people are slow to learn, as you might have thought if you saw a report in The Guardian of April 18th. This tells us that there is now an organisation called “Art for World Friendship” which arranges an exchange of paintings by children from all parts of the globe. There are between 15,000 and 20,000 contributors to the scheme, and the parent body—Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—stipulate that no pictures shall have violence or war for their theme. Laudable, you may say, as far as it goes. And there’s the rub. After all, children just like everyone else are not characteristically warlike, but modern society certainly is, and it is this which will impinge on their minds increasingly as they grow up.

The Women's League is really trying a form of escapism in getting the children to ignore the fact that war and violence do exist in great measure, and there is not one scrap of evidence that such efforts will have any lasting effect in securing peace for these kids. On the contrary, there could well be a dangerous disillusionment later on when their failure becomes evident. Let us suggest to the Women’s League and others that they could do a far greater service to children and everyone else if they put their own house in order first and learned just what peace is, and the Socialist way to get it.

Gaspers

“Part of the pressure for more expenditure on education has a basically commercial mainspring.” (Lena Jeger. M.P. Guardian, 15.4.66)

“Next to banishing two-wheelers, universal wearing of safety belts would make a bigger dent in road casualties than anything else. It would probably bring a 15 per cent reduction, with a cash value to the community of some £25 millions a year." (John Davy, Observer, 17.4.66.)

"Our movement is symbolised by the bomb-thrower, the deserter, the delinquent, the hitch-hiker, the mad lover, the school drop-out, the wildcat striker, the rioter and thee saboteur . . ." (The Rebel Worker, May Day, 1966)

"Sleep less, eat less, work more—is the formula of Premier Forbes Burnham for Guyana independent from May 26th." (Financial Times, 10.5.66)

Eddie Critchfield

Who are the Marxists? (1966)

Book Review from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Socialist Review, International Socialism, 18s.

This book is a collection of articles from a now defunct journal, Socialist Review. Its former followers are now grouped around another journal, International Socialism. It is one of the many trotskyist offshoots which claim to be Marxist, yet which depart radically from Marx’s basic ideas on many points.

Marx argued that only the working class can free itself from wage-slavery. By working class he understood all those who, having no property, had to sell their working abilities for a wage in order to live. Today this class, composed of managers, clerks, factory workers, labourers and so on, run society from top to bottom. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, with Marx, holds that only they, acting as a united class, can be the agent of the social change from capitalism to socialism. IS sees the agent as only a section of this class, those who work in the factories, mines, railways and docks. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that they idealise this section of the working class. Seeing that most of the members of groups like IS are not themselves workers in these sorts of jobs their attitude verges on the condescending, of doing something for the poor, down-trodden workers. This attitude is a left-over from their Leninist past. Lenin, in contradiction to Marx, held that the workers were incapable of becoming socialists by themselves; they had to be introduced to socialist ideas by an enlightened vanguard. This vanguard would lead them against capitalism.

The IS group, like similar groups, has a reform programme which they call a "transitional programme." This is a programme designed to create a socialist understanding and to be realised as a transitional stage to Socialism. When these reforms are examined, for example, nationalisation of banks, national planning, State monopoly of foreign trade, it becomes clear that IS is saying that State capitalism is a necessary stage to Socialism. More than this, in fact, many of their members including some writers in this book clearly don't understand the difference between State Capitalism and Socialism; they really believe that nationalisation is Socialism and that wages, buying and selling, money, etc., will exist in Socialism. In their day-to-day propaganda the emphasis is on State capitalism rather, than Socialism as the solution to workers’ problems. The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds that capitalism has outlived its usefulness and that Socialism is possible as soon as the workers want it; there is no need for any State capitalist stage.

Finally, there is the inevitable r-r-revolutionary romanticism, the dreaming of mass strikes and street battles (read Cliff on the Belgian General Strike of 1960). This leads IS to dismiss with contempt the historically-evolved means to freedom—the vote. But at election times we witness the spectacle of people who dismiss the vote as “a scrap of paper" and Parliament as a “gas house" eagerly working for, and urging workers to vote for, one of the major capitalist parties in this country. This devotion to the Labour Party is maintained even when, as in Hampstead at the last election, they were faced with a socialist candidate. Not understanding the significance of the vote they use it and urge others to use it, to give political power to the owning class. Are they really Marxists?

Adam Buick

Marx v Lenin (1966)

Book Review from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Real World of Democracy by C. B. Macpherson (Oxford University Press, 12s. 6d.)

This book by C. B. Macpherson, author of the materialist study of 16th and 17th century English philosophers The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, is a collection of lectures given over Canadian radio in 1965.

Macpherson, argues that the liberal theory of democracy (competing political parties) is not the only valid one. In the “communist” and underdeveloped countries equally valid theories have been evolved. For them democracy means what it used to mean—rule by and for the poor. He correctly points out that Marx held that the working class would organise to get state power and then use it democratically to dispossess the owners of the means of production and set up Socialism. He notices too that Lenin departs from Marx in his theory of the vanguard party acting and ruling on behalf of the working class—but agrees with Lenin. What Marx overlooked, he suggests, was the question, “How can the debasing society be changed by those who have themselves been debased by it?” Macpherson says it can’t:

  In a revolutionary period, therefore, when a substantial part of the society senses uneasily that it is dehumanised but does not know quite how, or when it is so dehumanised that only a few of the people at most can be expected to see that they are dehumanised, there is no use relying on the free votes of everybody to bring about a fully human society. If it is not done by a vanguard it will not be done at all.

This was precisely the position of the pre-Marxian revolutionaries of Europe like Blanqui and the anarchists. They held that only a conscious minority could overthrow the ruling class. Marx emphatically rejected this idea. As he and Engels wrote as early as 1848 in the Communist Manifesto, the working class movement “is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.” Marx argued that men change themselves in changing society; man and society change together. The Socialist Party of Great Britain still insists that the socialist revolution can only be democratic and that minority action cannot lead to Socialism. Macpherson disagrees and takes the rulers in Russia at their word, that they represent the working class and are not a new ruling and privileged class.

This is the great weakness of these lectures. When it comes to demolishing the philosophical justifications of capitalism current in the West, Macpherson is excellent. He shows how capitalism necessarily involves the exploitation of those who work by those who own the means of labour. He exposes the myth of “scarcity in relation to unlimited desires" by which social inequality and privilege is justified:

  We have been, or rather can be, liberated from the dilemma of scarcity by the new productivity of which we dispose in prospect. We can see now that men are not by nature infinitely desirous creatures, but were only made so by the market society, which compelled men to seek even greater power in order to maintain even a modest level of satisfactions . . .
   An overmastering consciousness of scarcity had to be created in order to justify the capitalist society and to give it its driving force. An all-pervasive awareness of scarcity was needed both to justify the operations of those who came out on top and to motivate those who stayed below and had to be made to work harder than they had worked before.

He speaks of the prospect of a “society of abundance” replacing “an economy of scarcity.”

However he states categorically that the social system in Russia and other one-party states are not exploiting societies:

  They do not diminish any man’s satisfaction by a compulsive transfer of part of his powers to others for the benefit of others.

Don’t they? In these states a privileged minority does monopolise access to the means of labour so that the majority can only use them at the price, as it were, of handing over a part of what they make to this privileged minority— which has evolved from the very vanguards which took power (or claimed to take power) to introduce a classless society. The lesson is that on this point Marx was more perceptive than Lenin.

Adam Buick

New pamphlet on Racism (1966)

Party News from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new Socialist Party pamphlet, entitled The Problem of Racism, is published this month. The previous pamphlet on this subject The Racial Problem, published in 1947 has been out of print for some time. The Problem of Racism is not just a revision it is a completely new pamphlet. In 1947 it was the Jewish Question that was prominent. Today it is the Colour Question. This change is taken into account in the new pamphlet which examines the colour question in Britain, America. South Africa and Rhodesia. There are chapters too on the scientific theory of race, the historical origins of racist theories and on African nationalism.

There is an unfortunate error. The reference on page 41 to Guyana should, of course, be to Guinea.

Pamphlet obtainable from Socialist Party (Dept. SR), 52 Clapham High St., London, SW4. Price 1/6.

50 Years Ago: Social Production: Individual Appropriation (1966)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the days of handicraft and petty industry, production was individual. The worker owned individually the tools with which he worked, as they were small and primitive and easily made or purchased, and, as a consequence, he owned his product. The Capitalist system which arose out of handicraft, concentrated the scattered and feeble means of production and intensified them, first by co-operation and division of labour in the workshop and finally by machinery. But “the bourgeoisie . . . could not transform these puny means of production into mighty productive forces without transforming them, at the same time, from means of production of the individual into social means of production only workable by a collectivity of men” (F. Engels Socialism, Utopian and Scientific).

Nevertheless, although in this way the productive process was changed, the old individual mode of appropriating the products, adapted to handicraft, still remained intact—while production became socialised, ownership of the means of production and the product continued individual. This is the germ of all the anomalies of present-day society, which, instead of enabling the utilisation of all the forces of production to their utmost capacity, enforces their limited use and frequent stoppage. There exists an antagonism between the forces of production and the conditions of production.

(From the Socialist Standard, June, 1916)

What is the Left? (1966)

Book Review from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Left in Europe since 1789 by David Caute (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 12s. 6d.)

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, although it has Left ancestors, is not a party of the Left. Wc have always refused this title partly because it is a term which categorises the parties of capitalism and partly because of its ambiguity. Caute defines Left in terms of “popular sovereignty." political and economic. He himself is a man of the Left and would probably regard himself as a sympathiser of Marxism. He is also, however, one of those who denounce as dogmatic those who point out how people like him distort Marx.

Caute’s distortions aren’t even original: smashing the bourgeois state, progressive pauperisation, nationalisation, etc. We are told that Marx "argued that economic systems, feudal, capitalist, state socialist, communist, succeeded one another in logical succession." Where did State Socialism come from, Mr. Caute?

The labour theory of value is a moral theory according to which

  Commodities have objective values dependent on the amount of labour embodied in them. Yet market prices arc invariably higher. The difference, "surplus value," is pocketed by the capitalist or middleman and in this way the worker is exploited.

This distortion was too crude even for A. J. P. Taylor, an old hand in this game (New Statesman, March 4th).

All this suggests that Caute might really believe that, as the text in fact reads, the 1891 Erfurt Programme of the Social Democratic Party of Germany was written by Marx—eight years after his death! Such is the shoddy workmanship found in a book by a man currently billed as a brilliant young academic.

Caute's twists and turns to include the so-called Communists in his category of Left rival those of the agents of Russian State capitalism themselves. He records their totalitarianism and authoritarianism, their cult of leadership and the forced labour camps and anti-semitism of Russia. Yet still, for Caute, they rank as Left, even extreme Left. The attitude of "the Left" to Russia suggests that perhaps hypocrisy might be a better yardstick than popular sovereignty.

As a history trying to cover over 250 years in as many pages this book is inevitably superficial, but the many illustrations are interesting.

Adam Buick

The value of discontent (1966)

Editorial from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Private property society is a class-divided society. Because of this, it inevitably fosters hatreds and discontent. Take a look at any social system from primitive slavery onwards, and at some stage or another the signs of unrest appear as the under-privileged try to fight against the weight of oppression and misery heaped on their shoulders.

Modern capitalism is certainly no exception. It is based upon the ownership of the means of life by a small minority. The rest of the population work for them and produce the wealth on which the capitalist class can live in ease and comfort without the need themselves to work. For the majority, such a set up spells a life of drabness and insecurity, and a constant struggle to make both ends meet, so that it is little wonder that discontent is more or less a permanent feature of their existence.

In the early days of capitalism, the cruelties and excesses of the master class towards their workers was a big factor in the formation of trade unions and the agitation for reform that was so prominent a feature of 18th century history in England. The story of protest and struggle in those years makes bitter reading, and there are some who would say that we’ve come a long way since then. So we have. Yet who can honestly say even in the face of many hard won gains, that the need to fight is any the less?

The outward appearance of capitalism changes, but its basic constituents are unchanged, and just as surely because of this, it is very much a system of conflict and oppression. The hypocrisy and honeyed words of the Labour Government cannot mask this uncomfortable fact, which shows itself in so many ways, for example, the continuing struggle over wages and the horrifying threat of a nuclear war. In such a world of worry and strain, it would be surprising if the voices of discontent were never heard; indeed, it is precisely this dissatisfaction on which the politicians so cynically rely to get them to power and then try to get us to forget between elections. And after all, if workers were to sit down quietly and take all that capitalism dishes out to them, the prospect for the future would certainly be gloomy.

So the Socialist Party of Great Britain does not spurn discontent; in fact, discontent does at least show that workers are thinking about their problems and are groping for an answer. Unfortunately, however, such is the lack of Socialist understanding amongst the working class that the cries of protest take on a negative form of expression, and at times are channelled into support of ideas which are very harmful to workers’ interests—such as racialism, “national independence”, etc. Other protest movements suffer from the same failure to realise that the problems they want to solve are part of the bigger problem that is capitalism itself, and cannot be dealt with in isolation.

It is the Socialist who understands the severe limitations of the protest movements of today, and who, however much he may have sympathy with the feelings of their supporters, knows that they can never be really effective, because they ignore the cause of the ills they are trying to remove. At all times, Socialists put forward the case for a new world of common ownership and democratic control, trying to get workers to see their problems from this standpoint. Only when they do this will their discontent flow into constructive channels and the ultimate protest—that against capitalism itself—be lodged.

The tragic comedians (1966)

Book Review from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Communist Party: Its Origins and Development until 1929 by Dr. L. J. Macfarlane Macgibbon & Kee, 63s.

In his book Dr. L. J. Macfarlane painstakingly traces the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in all its muddled and conflicting reformism, syndicalism, and anti-parliamentarianism in 1920, through its chequered career of alternately supporting and opposing the Labour Party, sometimes both supporting it and opposing it at the same time, with its playing at armed revolt, splitting the trade unions, marching the unemployed up and down, fancying itself leading the 1926 General Strike on to revolution—down to 1929 when “the Party was in a bad state, its membership was falling away and those who remained were engaged in bitter dissension and dispute.”

The CPGB started as a mixture of antagonistic elements; the resolution to seek affiliation to the Labour Party was carried by only 100 votes to 85, and the minority believed that they would have won if some of their supporters had not kept away from the founding congress. It has remained divided ever since, united only in one thing, the pathetic belief that victory for Socialism had been achieved in Russia.

Sometimes one faction gained the leadership and sometimes another. So its opposition to Labour Party candidates at Parliamentary elections in 1921 was followed in 1922 by a call to the workers to vote Labour. This was continued in 1924 but in 1929, when they coined the phrase “the third capitalist party” the Communists were telling the workers to vote for Labour Party candidates in some constituencies but elsewhere to abstain from voting.

The author, who describes himself as “sympathetic to the aims of the Communist Party,” admits that “there was little enough to show for nearly 10 years of devoted work by thousands of ordinary party members,” and he can claim for the Communist Party nothing more than that “for all its faults” it had “helped to keep alive a spirit of resistance to the meek acceptance of hardship and poverty as economic facts of life.” He should have remembered also the thousands of workers who, having been caught up by the emotional prospect of an impossible “revolution round the corner,” ended in apathy and cynicism after experience of Communist Party political trickery and deception.

The chief value of this book is that it brings together in chronological order a mass of detailed information, with references to sources, which will be useful to anyone wanting to follow up particular developments, but beyond that there is little to commend it. The major fault is the author's uncritical acceptance of grandiloquent claims made by the Communist Party and others without any attempt to examine them against the evidence. A case in point is the myth about the Jolly George and the campaign to stop the British Government intervening against Russia in the Polish-Russian war.

Dr. Macfarlane reports anti-war demonstrations, the formation of a Council of Action, the calling of a 24-hour strike in which “it was claimed that thousands of South Wales miners answered the call” and that the dockers of East London “refused to load the Jolly George with munitions.”

He concludes: “It now appeared that all these efforts had been effective—direct action to save the revolution had been taken at last”.

In fact it all had no perceptible effect on the actions and policy of the British Government, and this was admitted by the Communists in their journal. The Communist (7 October 1920):

Frankly, the National Council of Action has failed, and its failure is all the more disappointing when one remembers the unanimity and enthusiasm of the great Central Hall conference held at the beginning of August last. It was formed to prevent the supplies and munitions being sent in support of the attack on Soviet Russia, which it is quite obviously not doing. Somehow and from somewhere in this country, those supplies are being sent—a Moscow report alleges that England has sent seven steamers of munitions, three tanks and twelve small steamers with provisions in aid of Poland and that these have been unloaded at Danzig.

Dr. Macfarlane is uncritical in his approach because he obviously has no clear idea of what is the nature of the problem of replacing the capitalist social system by Socialism. To him “we are all Socialists”: Marxist and anti-Marxist, Labour Party, ILP, the defunct National Guilds movement, the Unemployed Workers Committee Movement of the Nineteen twenties; etc., etc. The fact that these bodies were fighting each other most of the time and that most of their aims were no more revolutionary than those of the present Labour Party passes him by.

He is able to report without comment that “as a revolutionary socialist party the British Socialist Party welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia” and that the Leeds Convention in 1917, with “rousing speeches from Phillip Snowden and Ramsay MacDonald” was “amazingly successful”—what exactly did it succeed in achieving?

He tells us that Tom Quelch went away from the Convention convinced that “the hour of the Social Revolution is close up on us”—why no criticism of that piece of silliness, or of Lenin's statement in March 1919 that “The victory of the proletarian revolution all over the world is assured”?

What was going on in those years was that the Communist Party of Great Britain, lacking any real understanding either of the strength of British and American capitalism and the capitalist outlook of the majority of workers, was dreaming of a non-existent Socialist victory in Russia, while Lenin and others in Russia were dreaming of a non-existent revolutionary working class in Britain, America, France, Germany and elsewhere about to come to the aid of the Bolsheviks.

Dr. Macfarlane has some surprising omissions. He does not tell us about the curious attitude and internal conflicts of the Communist Party, torn between its nominal acceptance of Marx's “Religion is the opium of the People” and the desire to get the votes of the workers who had a religious outlook. He briefly mentions Francis Meynell, who was editor of the Communist, but not that he was a Catholic!

Another omission is that he is able to describe the breakaway of the Socialist Labour Party from the Social Democratic Federation in 1903 but he does not mention the breakaway of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904. Perhaps this is not surprising. Had he thought fit to state the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain he would have had to justify his extraordinary statement: “Was it surprising that Marxists and socialists everywhere should turn to the leaders of the revolution for inspiration and guidance?”

He tells us on the same page that “to socialists everywhere the Russian Revolution of October 1917, came as a revelation”.

The reader of the book will look in vain to find out what it was that was revealed except confirmation of what Socialists knew already, the impossibility of Socialism without Socialists, and of imposing Socialism from above.

Edgar Hardcastle

Rebellious teenagers (1966)

From the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A lawyer's bonanza in the shape of a Public Enquiry into the behaviour of sonic police officers . . . a murder trial . . . a Government Minister upsetting the apple-cart by making an unusually intelligent observation in connection with the Brown Plan. Pope Paul using Orange air-space . . .  all this against a background of the usual wars, threats of war and diplomatic hooliganism was fun for the press.

But its all old-hat as far as the public is concerned: the lawyers, the murders, the indiscretions of Ministers, the military butchery simply new names for old stories. A. day or two in the headlines and then the news gatherers must bestir themselves again in the jungles of capitalism to bring more news to a populace made news conscious by their constant nearness to “news" situations.

Hence, an enterprising newsman “discovers" bored teenagers congregating around the grounds of the Belfast City Hall on Sunday night. His newspaper complete with picture and news caption serves up the story and such is the excitement of life in these adventurous Sixties, the story catches on. More press comments, letters to the editor and. eager as the editors, statements from churchmen.

Controversy! Statements. quotes and the usual line up of "for" and "against", clergymen, especially, cast their nets in the murky waters of youthful boredom wisely offering "recreational facilities" instead of theological trinkets. On the Sunday evening following, then the bored teenagers are joined by more bored teenagers, bored policemen, boring churchmen and many who were bored teenagers between the two Big Wars.

If we listen in on Grandfather we'll find his boredom momentarily relieved by the mystery of it all. He will tell yon the modern teenager has everything—not like him when he was a youth! In his time they had to nuke their own amusement! “But now, why they spend millions on fancy suits, record players, even motor bikes and 'old bangers' and still . . . And they've no respect for anything and look what the Government's paying for their fancy education."

Of course there's no denying Grandpop's claims: the “modern" teenager gets more of what passes for education in capitalism than did his predecessors. He also has more money to spend and his "recreational" needs are, to use his own terms, “fabulously" well catered for. Yet he is shiftless, respectless and very often bored.

His "behaviour patterns" engage the attention of "experts" whose interests range from those of the churches, the police, the social worker and the multiple tailoring and recording industries He is examined and analysed as a social phenomenon, he is blessed. blamed, cajoled, threatened and exhorted. Generally he is unmoved, bored.

Bored with what? The simple "truths" of his father; with his "education", his religion, with politics, with work, the Law Authority. He is bored with the society that created him.

As far as the average working-class youngster is concerned he gets from society the measure of "education" that the “educationalists" of capitalism consider necessary to fit him most ably for the task of producing wealth for those who own the factories, distributive outlets, etc. In the past, where his father was concerned, the task was a relatively simple one: a little reading, writing and simple arithmetic were all that was required then of the average worker to fit him for the bench, warehouse or the office. Today, however, partly as the result of the last “Great" war, when productive techniques underwent vast technological change, and partly as the result of the workers improved bargaining position in the “trade war" succeeding the slaughter, the role of the worker in most industries has become more involved and complex. Hence the need for better trained school leavers.

But, while the capitalist state is prepared to invest heavily in apprenticeship school years it is not prepared to lose sight of its investment ratio. Some methods of selection, Eleven-plus or teacher selection, is used to determine the investment value of the pupil. The competitive bias is ever present, lauded as a virtue and prompted by teacher and parent with the promise, the threat, the misery.

The "failures" usually are left to their rejection and degradation; the "success" “rewarded" with increased struggle. By and large the average "successful" pupil, in the tender years of childhood, is confronted with a working week of greater effort and longer hours than his, or her, father.

The old street community games are seldom played now. Modern “working class" housing developments bear no evidence of goal posts or "wickets" painted on gable walls. Such games as Rally-O. Releavc-O (to give them their local names) and so on, are but by-gone relics of an age when the working class were at least allowed the luxury of childhood.

Of course, today, commercial interests cater to the youngsters "recreational" needs: the transistor radio, the record player and all the other paraphernalia of the “with it" youth—the symbols of affluence, of property consciousness. The prelude to the world of “things" where people have separate identities only on the work sheet or the Income Tax return.

Despite the purpose of the present school training system however (indeed, contrary to its purpose) the average working class youngster gets a better insight into the world he lives in than did his father. Again, the improved methods of communication, radio, television, etc., contracts time and space and exposes the world he lives in to his gaze.

The contradictions of the world have their effects on the forced-growth children: the poverty amidst plenty, the organised waste, the homes of the master class and the "dwellings" of the workers, the friend-enemy switches of “their” country and much more besides. And the “explanations", the facile chatter of the politicians, the bewilderment of clergymen, the double-talk of statesmen, judges, businessmen, trade-union leaden, etc.

This may be the stuff of eventual political understanding or,  as it tragically most often is, a fertile breeding ground for cynicism, hostility and boredom.

And the promise for the future? As with one voice from all the upholders of capitalism: More work, more production. more competition, more failures, more cynicism, more boredom, more “things”.

Unhappy teenagers: a frankenstein of capitalism, necessary to its buying, selling, competition, trade, machinations and yet containing in its make-up a rejection of capitalism's "more" values—cynical of the very foundations of society—capitalist society.

Well, indeed, may the powers of capitalism be disturbed. For the present the rebellious teenager can be dealt with by the muscles of authority, the police club, the judge and the jailor. If, however, the teenager found direction and purpose for his admirable qualities of discontent and rebellion he could become an unmanageable danger to capitalism and contribute much to its destruction.

Reprinted from the World Socialist Party of Ireland's journal—'Comment'.