Historical Materialism (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The credit for the elaboration of contemporary materialism undoubtedly belongs to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. The economic aspects of historical materialism, together with the system of views concerning the problem, the method, and the categories of political economy for these we are indebted to Marx and Engels. What had previously been achieved in this field can be regarded as preparatory. Before Marx finalised his views, materials, often abundant and valuable had been collected, but these had not been systematised, and consequently had not been valued or used as they should have been.

The basic question of philosophy is the relation between ideas and things. The treatment of this question divides philosophers into two main contending schools—the Idealist and the Materialist. The Idealist school states that ideas are primary, and that matter is secondary; that the material world as known to the senses is illusory; that mind alone is real. The point of view of the materialist is directly opposite. The materialist contends that matter is primary and ideas are secondary; that mind is a function of matter (the brain) and that ideas are a reflection of material things.

Marx arrived at the materialist viewpoint quite early in his career, but he lifted it to a higher plane by combining it with the dialectical method of Hegel. The dialectic was not new—in fact it was known to the ancient Greeks— but Hegel, by his universal application of it, had given it a new significance.

The dialectic method used by Marx is the system by which he enquired into, and traced the connection and the series of joints and links that make up the process of historical evolution; by which he investigated one stage succeeds another in the development of society.

Marx in these investigations used the dialectical method in a different way to Hegel. Hegel was an idealist, and to him the process of evolution was the outward manifestation of the growth of the absolute Idea, which developed according to its own laws. To Marx, on the other hand, the ideal is nothing other than the material when it has been transposed and translated in the brain. The dialectical method of thought is a reflection of the dialectical process in material life. By combining the dialectical method with materialism and applying it to the problem of social change, Marx produced an entirely new concept of the historical process: the Materialist Conception of History. Previously historians had in nearly every case explained changes in social life and institutions in terms of growth of ideas. These ideas frequently became personified in great men and history was usually regarded as being the story of the activities of these great men. Where and how ideas originated was a question in the main ignored by historians. To Marx, ideas were a mental reflection of material things. To him, therefore, changes in social life were not to be explained by changes in ideas, but conversely changed in ideas were to be explained by changes in social life.

In the introduction to his Critique of Political Economy, Marx wrote:

  I was led by my studies to the conclusion that legal relations as well as forms of the state could neither be understood by themselves, nor explained by the so-called general process of the human mind, but that they are rooted in the material conditions of life.

The material conditions of life include man’s environment and his physical nature. Changes in the physical environment and in man’s own physical nature are hardly perceptible so they cannot explain historical changes. From the physical point of view both the world and man are much the same as they were two hundred years ago. Yet during the last two centuries changes have taken place which have changed man’s social life. The most important condition of life is the social production of the means of satisfying man’s needs. The method of producing the means of life (food, clothes, housing etc.) does change often very rapidly, and this, Marx considered to be the cause of changes in the structure of society generally.

In order to carry on production man has to enter into social relations, that is, to co-operate with his fellows.

The social relations—the relations between men and economic classes of men—existing at a given time correspond to a definite stage in the development of the means of production.

The means of production consist of the tools, machines, all kinds of transport. methods of organisation, discoveries of science used in production. The primitive technique of ancient times had corresponding to it the social relations of slave and slave owner, patrician and pleb; feudal technique, the relations of serf and feudal lord, handicraftsman and merchant; while present day capitalist technique has corresponding to it the social relations of wage worker and capitalist.

Marx called the social relations and the productive technique to which they correspond the economic foundations of society. Upon this rests the legal political, moral, religious, ethical, artistic, in a word, the ideological superstructure. There is a different ideology, for slavery, feudalism, and capitalism.

As technique develops, social relations change and the ideas and institutions resting upon this economic foundation are correspondingly transformed. Though changes in society are brought about by the evolution of the technical basis, social development is not a mechanical process. It works through human beings organised in classes.

At a certain stage in their development the technical forces of production come into conflict with the existing social relations. The interest of the ruling class determine that they should endeavour to keep in existence the prevailing state of things, and that they should attempt to prevent the full development of the productive forces. The interest of the subject class, on the other hand, lies in the direction of changing the existing state of things, of revolutionising society, and of allowing development of the productive forces.

Then comes the period of social revolution, when men consciously identify themselves with the interest of the class to which they belong, and when they consciously struggle to further those interests. If the struggle results in a victory for the lower class, as in the French Revolution, the reactionary ruling class is stripped of power; the state machine and all other institutions are transformed to serve the needs of the new ruling class; and the productive forces are freed from the obstacles placed in the way of their development. For a time economic development proceeds rapidly producing new classes, new social relations, and new ideas. Ultimately the time again comes when the technical forces for production come into conflict with the social relations. The new ruling class, once revolutionary, now becomes reactionary. Again a social revolution is at hand.

Since the days of Marx it has become the normal procedure for the historians to direct attention to the economic factors in history. Many and various ‘economic interpretations of history’ have been offered for popular consumption and very frequently the materialist conception of history is confused with these economic interpretations. Marx, as an historian, not only drew attention to the economic basis upon which society rests, but also recognised the struggle of classes as the vehicle by which society moved from stage to stage. “The history of hitherto existing society has been the history of class struggles," wrote Marx and Engels on the first page of the Communist Manifesto and in the following pages is given the description of the struggles of the capitalist class against its opponents, and its subsequent rise to power.

The modern capitalist class had its origins in the town burghers of the Middle Ages. Mediaeval society was in the main a society of self-sufficient districts, the manorial villages, but with the rise of towns trade and industry developed. This undermined the position of the peasants and their overlords, the feudal aristocracy. The feudal lords struggled to retain their privileges, which enabled them to tax and in numerous ways to place burdens on the urban population. The town burghers, sometimes in alliance with the King, as in England, were able to break the power of the feudal lords and to remove the regulations, taxes and other barriers that hampered the extension of economic activity.

The discovery of new sea-routes and of the ‘new world’ enormously increased the wealth, size and political importance of the new and growing capitalist class and by the end of the 17th century in England, in France 100 years later, and in Russia during this century, they were able to defeat the last remnants of feudalism. The English revolution in its two phases of the Puritan revolution 1641-1660 and the Whig (or ‘Glorious’) revolution of 1688-1690. and following it the French Revolution of 1789 resulted in a victory for the capitalist class of that period. The Russian Revolution of 1905-1917 has resulted in the rise of capitalism in a form suited to the history and economic development of that country.

The opening of new markets in the period following the English revolution created a demand for an increasing production of goods. Methods of production were continuously improved until finally, with the introduction of steam-driven machinery at the beginning of the 19th century, they were completely revolutionised. This revolution in productive methods caused a revolution in productive relations. From the old bourgeoisie there grew a new class of industrial capitalists and from the domestic workers and peasants there grew a new class of factory workers, the industrial working class. This class chained to the new machinery, exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class, began to struggle for emancipation. The class struggle had reached a new stage and a new phase of history had commenced.

The origin of the workers’ struggle is economic. The workers strive to maintain and improve their standard of life, but this struggle itself assumes a political form. With the aid of political enactments and of the police or, when necessary the armed forces, the state enters the struggle as the protector of the property interests of the capitalists and the workers find themselves not only fighting employers but also the capitalist state. When, with the development of large-scale modern industry, the small labour dispute is displaced by disputes of much larger dimensions, the state more and more openly shows itself to be the executive committee of the ruling class. Among workers there must grow the realisation that economic problems can be solved only by their conquest of political power and the overthrowing of capitalist property relations.

Previous revolutions have placed a minority of society in a position to exploit the majority. The next revolution, the Socialist revolution, is a revolution of a majority as the working class constitutes the bulk of the population in modern society, and can achieve its purpose only by the ending of class- divided society and the ending of all exploitation of man by man. With the ending of all property rights in the means of production, that is the establishment of a new form of society, class conflicts will cease.

The way is prepared for the new progress in which man will replace the blind way of economic forces, by the conscious direction of economically free men—Socialism.

Bob Ambridge

Socialism or Anti-Apartheid? (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The apartheid policy of the South African government — with its race laws, its industrial colour bar, its segregation, its overflowing jails and its restrictions on free expression — is a brutal system of oppression of the “non-white” people there and particularly of the African workers and peasants on whose backs the South African capitalist economy largely rests.

Everybody knows (including the South African government who have banned our pamphlets) that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is opposed to apartheid. However, our refusal to take part in anti-apartheid activities such as the boycott of goods some years ago and the planned demonstrations against the cricket tour is often misunderstood. So let us explain why we say that Socialism, not anti-apartheid is the way out for the oppressed people of South Africa.

The establishment of a democratic socialist world community based on the common ownership of the world’s resources will mean the emancipation of all mankind. It will end not only the capitalist exploitation of the working class but also all existing oppressions based on colour or language or culture.

Capitalism, the system based on the class ownership of the means of production, paves the way for Socialism by creating a world-wide productive system capable of turning out wealth in abundance. Towards the end of the last century capitalism became the dominant world system and so completed this task of building an economic basis for Socialism. From then on world Socialism was an immediate, practical possibility; capitalism had become a reactionary barrier to man’s further social progress. Some parts of the world, however, though dominated by world capitalism had yet to be absorbed into the system of production for profit and wage labour. These were “the backward countries”.

The question arises: is the coming of capitalism to these countries now in the interest of mankind? The Socialist Party says it is not. Before capitalism became the dominant world system it did play a progressive role in breaking-up pre-capitalist societies — a step towards creating an economic basis for Socialism. But once capitalism had come to dominate the world it had no progressive role to play anywhere, not even in the backward countries. The modernisation of these countries is certainly desirable but this can now take place within the framework of Socialism. There is no longer any need for them to pass through the capitalist stage of social development; they can skip this and, along with the already industrialised parts of the world, go straight into Socialism.

Let us now apply this analysis to South Africa.

Apartheid is essentially a pre-capitalist form of oppression; it is an attempt to impose the colour patterns of a frontier farming community onto a modern industrial economy. It will never work properly because what the government is trying to separate the economy keeps bringing together. The mines and factories of South Africa depend on African labour so Africans are attracted into the towns. Apartheid may never work but the attempt to make it do so brings untold suffering since it is partly because it does not make economic sense that it has to be imposed by police state methods.

The big capitalists of South Africa, as exemplified by gold magnate Harry Oppenheimer, are opposed to apartheid; so are the international corporations with capital invested there. Capitalism’s tendency, through the world market for its goods and the labour market for its workers, is to reduce all previous distinctions based on birth or language or colour or religion to one economic one: that between owners and non-owners of the means of production. Ideally — and this comes near to reality in this age of big corporations where the prejudices of individual capitalists do not matter — the capitalist employer is only interested in the quality of a worker’s ability-to-work and is not concerned with his skin colour or his views; he wants to be free to employ those he considers would be the most profitable for him. The free labour market by throwing together workers of all kinds of backgrounds allows him to do this.

South Africa's big capitalists want to encourage this tendency of capitalism so that they can make more profits on the basis of a modern wages system and a stable, integrated urban working class. They recognise apartheid as an obstacle to this and oppose it. Anti-apartheid serves their interests. It is not in the interest of the oppressed people of South Africa since its achievement would mean the final triumph of international capitalism over its backward-looking opponents there.

Those who are merely anti-apartheid and who urge us to join in their latest single-issue campaign about this should ask themselves just whose dirty work they arc doing. Are they really helping the oppressed people of South Africa or are they merely furthering the interests of the capitalists there whose profit-making is being restricted by apartheid? The unpleasant fact is that the overthrow of the National Party government in South Africa and the end of its apartheid policy would mean that political power would pass into the hands more friendly to capitalist magnates like Oppenheimer. This would be so under an African nationalist government (as it is in Zambia or Ghana, for instance) as much as under a United Party or Progressive Party government. The biggest part of the South African working class would be freed from oppression on grounds of colour, but they would still be propertyless and still have to work for wages on the farms, down the mines and in the factories. They would become subject to the straightforward capitalist exploitation the workers of Britain have long known.

Anti-apartheid, then, is not the way out for the oppressed people of South Africa; Socialism is as it will free them from capitalist exploitation as well. To treat opposition to apartheid as a separate issue to Socialism is to become an unwitting tool of international capitalism.

The Socialist Party for other reasons (the dangers of reformism) does not support single-issue protest campaigns in any way event, but, as we have tried to explain, anti-apartheid is not what it seems. We are afraid that thousands of sincere people genuinely appalled at racism in South Africa are going to further the demand of international capitalism for freedom to exploit all workers in South Africa irrespective of colour. We are not prepared to be used in this way and shall not be joining in the demonstrations.

Our advice to those who like us are opposed to apartheid, but who arc thinking of demonstrating is this: Think before you act. Do not let your perfectly justifiable distaste for racism lead you to “do something” that, when you think carefully about it. will not really achieve what you want. Consider whether your efforts would not be more fruitfully employed in working with us for a socialist world community where racism would have no place. In the meantime racist policies will be undermined to the extent that socialist ideas spread.

Adam Buick

Productivity deals (1970)

Book Review from the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Employers’ Offensive: Productivity Deals and How to Fight Them, by T. Cliff, Pluto Press. 6s.

In the preface to his new book on productivity deals Tony Cliff tells us that it is intended as a handbook to enable shop stewards to understand and resist offers of productivity deals. He regards such offers as “part of a major offensive by the employing class of this country to shift the balance of forces in industry permanently in their direction”.

This book is a continuation of Incomes Policy, Legislation and Shop Stewards which T. Cliff and C. Barker wrote in 1966. The review of that book in the Socialist Standard (August 1966) ridiculed its claim that out of the shop stewards there would come a new “revolutionary working class movement”. Cliff now admits that we were right and he was wrong — “Life” he says “proved much more complex than the theory put forward”. Specifically he admits that incomes policy did not stop the rise of all wages, it did not provoke general working class resistance “economic, ideological and political”, and there did not arise “a new workers’ movement… overcoming the fragmentation of the working class”.

Nothing daunted, he is having another go. What Incomes Policy failed to achieve he now expects to be achieved by the employers’ campaign for productivity deals. Events will prove him wrong again.

His argument this time is that because of the big increase in the size of investment required for modern industry, the rapidity of technological change and the intensity of foreign competition, capitalism needs to plan years ahead and have long-term control of costs, including wages. The problem is alleged to be particularly great for British capitalism because inflation and the adverse balance of payments lead to “stop-go” and a slower rate of expansion, which in turn raises the cost of production per unit of the products. So the capitalist must have productivity deals which undermine the workers’ shop floor organisation, the shop stewards. This will be resisted with the help of Cliff’s handbook and the new revolutionary movement will emerge.

It will be seen that fate has been very unkind to the author; for about the time his book was being printed the adverse balance of payments was converted into a surplus; also inflation is going on in most other countries too; and productivity deals are going ahead often with the approval of the shop stewards.

One of the author’s errors is to underestimate the resilience of capitalism and the resourcefulness of business managements. Having seen that capitalism would rather like certain things he imagines that there are “musts”; but there is no must about it. Long term wage contracts would be useful to the capitalists but they are not indispensable, especially as employers know by experience that unions have little hesitation about presenting new claims during the life of a contract if circumstances favour this. The situation recently arose in America of the General Electric Company fighting for a one year wage contract while the unions were pressing for three years.

Again, employers would like to be able to enter into long period contracts with buyers to supply at a fixed price, but this is not a matter of life and death. The Shipbuilders and Repairers National Association reports that contracts to build ships are now being drawn up with a clause which allows for some form of price variation to meet unforeseen higher costs (Financial Times, 30 April 1970). Many other firms do the same where completion of the job extends over a long period.

What vitiates much of Cliff’s theorising is that he seems to be quite unaware of the past history of capitalism. He draws hasty conclusions from current events as if nothing very much happened before he came on the scene to observe them.

He tells us for example that in this country it was the Macmillan Government in 1962 which first embarked on an Incomes Policy. It was in fact started in 1948 by the Labour Government when it laid down the principle that there was to be no general increase of wages “unless accompanied by a substantial increase in production”. The same idea was present in the productivity campaign of 1920.

He says that ten years ago productivity bargaining was “a new and strange phenomenon to most workers in British industry”. Little is new about it except the name. The capitalists have always been intent on eliminating unoccupied time and wasted effort from the productive process and workers have always with varying degrees of success, resisted: it and tried to bargain about it. The basic attitude of the employers has always been the same as it is now, to try to get all the benefits of increased productivity themselves. Marx, in Volume I of Capital (Chapter XXI), dealing with the bitter struggles over piece work wages and the workers’ attempts to get higher rates in line with increased productivity and profits, ended the chapter with the following:

  “The capitalist . . . declares roundly that the productiveness of labour does not concern the labourer at all.”

Many of the present productivity deals are concerned with the worker giving up trade union restrictive practices for a wage increase. In the first world war workers were unwisely induced by appeals to their patriotism to give up trade union practices and accept dilution, getting in return only a pledge that after the war what had been given up would be restored. When that time came the workers were not in a position to make the pledge stick and, as Sidney Webb tersely remarked in his History of Trade Unionism “Trade unionists were on the whole ‘done'”.

Cliff has a good deal to say about Work Study (Measured Day Work) and job evaluation. Here again there is little new except that the methods have become more elaborate. Nearly half a century ago factory workers were bitterly resisting employers’ attempts to introduce the Bedaux system of unit measurement (the work expected of a worker in one minute). Job evaluation was years old when in 1955 it was formally introduced in the Civil Service. It was being used in a rough and ready way by the Post Office at the end of the nineteenth century and the Post Office long ago developed its own system of units of work to adjust the numbers of staff to the volume of traffic.

There is one superficial change concerning wage bargaining brought about by years of inflation. For a quarter of a century governments have more or less continuously run a policy of depreciating the currency, with the consequence of an abnormal rise of prices and the cost of living. They have done this as part of their belief that they were thereby securing “full employment”. A rising cost of living is politically unpopular so the governments have also strenuously sought to offset some of the rise by finding ways to increase productivity per worker (Reducing the amount of labour required to produce commodities). As in this situation employers could count on getting continuously rising prices for what they sold they were content to put up a more or less token resistance to wage increases required to keep up with the cost of living, offering their real resistance to increases beyond that level, just as when Marx wrote about it a century or more ago. Official figures for 1969 give a revealing picture of what happens.

“Wages and salaries alone rose by 7 and half per cent; but this increase was reduced to 5 and half per cent by higher personal tax payments and national insurance contributions. Most of the remaining 5 and half per cent rise in personal disposable income was offset by higher prices . . . “ (Financial Times, 9 April 1970.)

The workers would be on sound ground in resisting all attempts to intensify their work or worsen its conditions and should always try to get the highest wage possible in the circumstances of the time, the strike, or threatened strike being the one way to test the possibilities. Cliff turns this simple proposition into something needlessly complicated. He produces a handbook for conducing productivity bargaining but declares himself to be “bitterly and unalterably opposed” to such deals. Then he hedges by saying that you can’t just say no to an employers’ offer, and by directing his fire against “derisory” offers and ones which give only “a few miserable shillings”. His real reason why shop stewards cannot just say no is that many workers want such deals and if the shop stewards take a negative attitude they isolate themselves from the workers.

One of his recommendations is that shop stewards should “invent” restrictive practices the abandonment of which will be of no value to employers and then sell these to the employers for wage increases. It is open to question whether the employers’ negotiators are so easily deceived but if Cliff believes them to be that naive it is for him to justify making these tricks public. Certainly the point was taken by Peter Jay who reviewed the book in the Times (25 March 1970) for he recommends to “any business executive who expects to be engaged in negotiating productivity deals” to get a copy and “know your enemy”.

Cliff is a firm believer in leadership as against the Socialist principle that working class emancipation requires the understanding of the workers themselves. He believes however, that the “natural leaders” of the workers are the shop stewards and other “floor” representatives and not the national trade union leaders.

His case against national trade union leaders and for shop stewards is that the national leaders get out of touch with their members, but he then admits that many of the shop floor representatives also “get completely divorced from their base”. Without knowing that he is doing so he actually shows how little use his “good” leaders are for they cannot act beyond the understanding of the workers; he grants “that a trade union leader can’t be expected to march 10 miles ahead of his membership”, and, as already remarked, he admits that unless shop stewards fall in with workers’ support for productivity deals they become “isolated”.

One of his proposals for reforming the trade unions is that “union officials should get the same rate of pay as the average members”. This is a question that occupied the unions as soon as the need arose to have full-time officials and to many trade unionists. Cliff’s proposal looks a useful one. It was being propagated nearly half a century ago by an organisation of trade union office staffs. It is practicable for unions of comparatively highly paid workers and something of this kind is operated by some unions. But where the membership is of low paid workers it can be quite impracticable. For example, in the agricultural workers union, which has its head office near the centre of London, it would mean that the full-time officials would be paid considerably less than their clerks and shorthand typists because it would be quite impossible to recruit staffs in Central London at the wage of an agricultural worker.

In any event it is misdirected. What is of much more importance is that union membership should see to it that they formulate policy themselves and insist on officials and executives and shop stewards carrying it out.

Cliff’s book is dotted with references to Socialism and the abolition of capitalism but without any real understanding of what Socialism implies — on occasion he indicates that he thinks state capitalism (nationalisation) is Socialism. Emancipation is not going to be achieved by non-Socialists led by shop stewards because it requires a Socialist working class getting control of the machinery of government.

So little does he understand the futility of putting a party of capitalism in control of the machinery of government that he and his organisation (“International Socialists”) were telling the workers to support Labour candidates at the last two elections — and are doing so again at this one. His book is not going to achieve the new revolutionary working class he anticipates.

Edgar Hardcastle

Where Orwell went wrong (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

For many decades now, the ruling classes have employed many devious methods in order to distort working class conceptions of Socialism, and have enjoyed a long success. One of the most successful attempts at distorting working class ideas about Socialism was George Orwell’s horrifying piece of literature 1984. Orwell, a sick and dying man, conjured up visions of a Big Brother state, which many were led to believe would be the result of a Socialist revolution.

Like millions of other people, Orwell’s conceptions were strongly influenced by the outcome of the Russian Revolution, which in actual fact, as all Socialists know, was a capitalist revolution.

The British ruling class did not waste any time in giving Orwell’s ideas widespread propaganda; for after the book was acclaimed by the capitalist press his misconceptions were perpetuated even further through the mass-media of television.

The effects of such harmful anti-Socialist propaganda were only too apparent. Many who had had any beliefs in Socialism became confused.

Orwell’s vision certainly was not of a socialist society where classes will be abolished. But there is now strong evidence to prove that what Orwell really envisaged was the monstrous power of state capitalism which is prevalent throughout the world today. Heavy policing is now being enforced by capitalist governments all over the world; C.S. gas is used against workers, and many other odious methods of repression are used. Demonstrations are photographed, names are recorded, while politicians mouth meaningless words about peace, freedom, and democracy. The exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class has become more and more scientific; in order to increase its wealth millions of workers are enslaved by their capitalist masters, and each individual is timed to the second. Often, when a worker cannot keep up to the speed required of him, his wages are slashed, and it is common for him to be persecuted by the foreman until he is driven out of his job. Workers are even timed when they visit the toilet. When we shop in a supermarket or department store we are watched on a television screen. Even out in the streets of a large city the public are under the watchful eye of Big Brother; the police have televisions on tall buildings. The ruling class have not yet introduced Newspeak, but the national press in Britain is controlled by a small group of milionaires, and the same lies are fed to the British masses daily in order to confuse them even more.

Those who had their ideas of Socialism destroyed by Orwell’s misconceptions should look around in nineteen seventy and they will realise very quickly that the horror of Big Brother has been brought about by the capitalist system of exploitation under which we are living now. The only way to eliminate Big Brother is to abolish the system which has fostered this suppression.

M.

A Correction (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the article “Inside the Bolshevik Cul dc Sac’’ (April Socialist Standard) we incorrectly implied that The ABC of Communism written by the Bolsheviks Bukharin and Proebrazhensky made no distinction between Socialism and Communism. In the first part of the book Bukharin describes the society the Russian Communist Party aims at as one based on common ownership without money, wages or profits. This he calls “communism” in line with the then policy of the Bolsheviks of using this word to describe what the Social Democrats had always meant by Socialism. Later, however, the book follows Lenin’s distortion in his April Theses and talks of a society called "socialism" as “inevitable as an intermediate stage between capitalism and communism”.

Editorial Committee

50 Years Ago: Justice and Social Revolution (1970)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The philosophic historians attribute this evolution to the ceaseless action of the Spiritual Forces, particularly Justice, the strongest of all, which according to an idealistic and academic philosopher is always present even though it arrives only by degrees into human thought and into social facts. Bourgeois society and its way of thinking are thus the last and highest manifestations of this immanent Justice, and it is to obtain these fine results that this lady has toiled in the mine of history.

#    #    #    #

A ruling class always considers that what serves its economic and political interests is just and that which disserves them is unjust. The Justice which it conceives is realised when its class interests are satisfied.

#    #    #    #

The feudal and guild organisations injuring the bourgeoisie was in its eyes so unjust that its immanent Justice resolved to destroy it. The bourgeois historians relate that it could not tolerate the forcible robberies of the feudal barons, who knew no other methods of rounding out their fields and filling their purses all of which does not prevent their honest immanent Justice from encouraging the forcible robberies which, without risking their skins, the pacific capitalists have committed by proletarians disguised as soldiers in the barbarous countries of the old and the new world.

It is Justice who gives the slaveholder the right to possess men like a chattel; it is she again who gives the capitalists the right to exploit the children, women and men of the proletariat worse than beasts of burden.

(Extract from The Historical Method of Marx by Paul Lafargue. Socialist Standard, June 1920).

Election Manifesto (1970)

Election Manifesto from the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Limits of Protest (1970)

Book Review from the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Limits of Protest by Peter Buckman. Gollancz. 50s.

Despite its promising title this is a rambling and confused book. Buckman’s basic argument (so far as it can be disentangled from the mass of quotations) is that single-issue campaigns aimed at winning mass support to persuade a government to change its policy arc ineffective.

He says much the same of these campaigns. such as CND. as we said of them at the time:

  campaigns on single social or political issues suffer from the fact that, if they are successful, it is too often through no contribution of theirs : besides, an exactly similar issue will shortly crop up when the energy of the protesters has been dissipated.

and protesters

  offer empty demonstrations on vicarious issues, opportunities to "do something" which are more gesture than substance, vacuous rhetoric and pious imprecations.

Is Buckman against such campaigns then? Of course not; he is a typical "leftwinger" who believes that you can combine the fight for reform with the fight for revolution. "Single issue campaigns”, he says “are essential to build a radical consciousness”.

What he has in mind is "radicals” helping discontented people in their protest campaigns in the hope that in return these people will help them overthrow “the system". This is the old discredited Leninist tactic. Buckman, however, cannot make up his mind whether or not there should also be a vanguard party to lead these struggles. He obviously does not like the idea but speaks of the “immense danger” that the energies of those who preach "spontaneity”.

  if not co-ordinated, will simply dissipate themselves in isolated actions, which more and more resemble the single-issue campaigns whose limitations we analysed.

But is the choice really only between elitism and ordinary reformism? Since we solved the dilemma of reform and revolution many years ago the Socialist Party of Great Britain has insisted that there is another way: the role of a revolutionary party is to spread revolutionary ideas and not to propose reforms of the system it seeks to overthrow.

Adam Buick

Letters: What about Vietnam? (1970)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

What about Vietnam?

Dear Sir,

As a practical expression of my personal disgust and repugnance I ask you to take the name of this organisation off your mailing list.

This protest is brought about by your article in your January issue which carries the odious title “The Issue at Pinkville”. To give to a Vietnamese village the same name as was given to it by the American aggressors is completely unforgiveable in a magazine which purports to be socialist. The lunatic right fringe may dub My Lai thus, they presumably know no better. You are supposed to be on the side of freedom and justice, yet you stoop to the same level as those who carried out the massacre.

Your references to the “Viet Cong” are also in bad taste and reflect the limitations of a mind which has been successfully brainwashed. “Viet Cong", for your information, was a term coined by Deim — a contemptuous term which dubbed anyone who opposed his bloody and dictatorial regime as “communists”. It is on a par with the name “Pinkville”.

You have the gall to speak of “ferocious Viet Cong atrocities". And who, may I ask., was responsible for this war which has forced the freedom fighters to defend their very existence? Do you equate the actions of a rapist and a murderer with a person who is being raped and murdered, and solemnly conclude that it is all a matter of which side you are on? Pity help the Vietnamese people if they have to rely on people like yourself for their moral support.

I cannot decide if your paper is a bogus front, unintelligent or lamentably ill-informed on the facts about Vietnam. I do not know if the writer is consciously reactionary or merely a poor deluded fool who has read too many Time magazines.

Not that I care very much. People who are ignorant enough to think in terms of "Pinkville" and "Viet Cong” atrocities may enjoy your paper. Those of us who are concerned with freedom and justice have better things to do than read it.

Stanley Moore 

(Minister, Melbourne Unitarian Peace Memorial Church. Melbourne. Aust.)

Reply:

When we have sifted out the abuse from Mr. Moore’s letter we find that it has only one serious point. In the fourth paragraph he more or less argues that any atrocities committed by the Viet-cong are justified because it was the Americans who started the war. This is of course a very old argument — it was used to excuse the obliteration of Hiroshima and in fact has always been used by capitalist states as part of their war propaganda.

It is true that the Americans interfered in Vietnam — in the same way as the North Koreans did in the South, and as the Russians did in Czechoslovakia, Finland and so on. In each case the inference has been justified by counter-accusations of threats from the subject of the interference. And so we go on — all the time avoiding the real issue, which is why wars, invasions and international interference take place. Why are they sometimes (not always) resisted? What interests are at stake? In Vietnam, we are seeing a struggle between rival capitalist groups for the control of an area of great economic and strategic importance. The interests in the war are those of capitalism; the people on both sides stand to gain nothing from the war and their interests are in keeping out of it as far as they can. Whoever wins, the people of Vietnam and of America will lose.

Mr. Moore, who accuses us of being deluded fools, thinks the North Vietnamese are fighting for freedom and justice. Is it part of freedom and justice to commit mass murder among the Vietnamese people? In war no one side is alone responsible for all the atrocities and this is widely accepted, with only a few people like the John Birchites on one side and Mr. Moore on the other closing their eyes to the evidence.

We thought the names “Pinkville” and "Vietcong” had passed so finally into common usage as to be acceptable to even the most touchy lefty. After all, there are plenty of protest banners which carry the slogan "Victory to the Vietcong”.

Two last points. First, why does Mr. Moore get so upset about trivial matters and ignore the main argument of the article in question, which was that capitalism is the cause of war and since war and atrocities are inseparable it is capitalism which causes the atrocities? Second—and here we probably find the answer to our first question — why is Mr. Moore so anxious to avoid reading the Socialist Standard, when his only complaint against it is that he disagrees with it?

Editorial Committee

Chomsky

Dear Sir,

In the February issue of the Socialist Standard Noam Chomsky is accused of confused, muddled and wishful thinking. This description would be more aptly applied to your writers.

  “Principled opposition to capitalism necessarily gives rise to principled opposition to war, which—and this should always be made clear means hostility to both ‘sides’ in every war.”
  “Whatever the outcome the workers will have gained nothing on either side”
  "In part it (this confusion within the shell of Chomsky’s glittering erudition) is due to his overpowering abhorrence of the war, and the sense of urgency he feels about it. Everything must be subjugated to the task of stopping the war."

May we examine these statements in the light of some of the facts?

First, here is a description of North Vietnam (‘no paradise” as you insist) in the time when it was a French colony:

   "Translated into the policies of empire, the French presence made of Vietnam at once a prison and a museum. Exquisite French scholarship explored the ancient history and archeology of Vietnam; exquisite French cruelty made it the most savage colony in Asia. In my youth in Asia, I remember it as the place where I first saw grown men strike other grown men and watched the stricken cringe —white Frenchmen had the right to slap awkward native waiters who spilled the soup, or slap native rickshawmen who argued about the fare. It was a place where the state monopoly’s purchase of opium exceeded by five times French expenditures on schools, libraries and hospitals combined . . .”

It is from Theodore White’s The Making of a President. But it is mild in comparison to Edgar Snow’s reports of Vietnam under French domination where there was a guillotine in every village.

One does not even need to go to communist sources—one has only to read The Peasants of North Vietnam by Chaliand—Mission To Hanoi by Atheker, or Cameron's or Burchett’s accounts to see that although it is not paradise, it is a new and better life for the people since Vietnam won independence from the French.

Would you have the Vietnamese still exploited by the French because we must oppose both sides in every war and the workers gain nothing on either side ?

Would they have the Vietnamese remain slaves under the French because in struggling for indpendence they might not achieve paradise and might fall under the influence of China or Russia? (Incidentally Jean Lacouiure in his study of Ho Chi Minh has described the diplomacy of Ho and his government in keeping a middle course between these two communist powers).

And what of South Vietnam:

  "The Army’s area handbook for South Vietnam (1967) says 2.5 percent of the landowners held half of the cultivated land, and more than 80 per cent of the land was cultivated by peasants owning no land at all whom the landlords could dispossess without cause . . . Former Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman told a reporter recently (Richard Critchfield in Washington Star March 16 ’69) that the US Embassy in Saigon ‘informed Washington it opposed land reform on the grounds that it would create political instability’.”

The NLF may not be creating paradise but it is doing something about land reform for the land hungry peasnats. Left in peace it would be able to do more. Are you aware of the corruption, exploitation, oppression and terror resulting from the series of Saigon regimes which America has backed financially and militarily? Were the people of the South to accept this because all wars are equally wrong and therefore both sides equally bad—all governments equally corrupt and all leaders equally bad?

Meanwhile, to have any sense of urgency about opposing the war, which we see as American aggression—to have any sense of guilt about what is being done to Vietnam is to have been hypnotized by some ‘immediate’ issue and to have indulged in the guilt of the flagellant!

The trouble with your writers is not that they are looking for paradise but that they think they have found it in their pure principles which are totally removed from realities. These socialists of Great Britain are very British in their outlook. Fair play, chaps—never take sides, and whatever you do, never get ruffled! This is the same attitude which permeates the British Government, the BBC, television and press whenever the war is mentioned. In the face of what Chomsky has rightly called "an enormous pattern of devastation which, if seen in its entirety, would have to be described as one of the most evil acts committed by any nation in modern times”, it is simply not done to take sides.

Yours sincerely

Jo Janet

Reply:
Of course we would not have the workers and peasants of Vietnam exploited by French colonialism. Nor do we say that the people of South Vietnam should put up the series of corrupt American-imposed governments there. We are fully aware of what the world capitalist system has done, and is doing, to the people of Vietnam. The question is, however, how to deal with this: Is it by supporting the rise to power of a new state capitalist ruling class or is it by struggling to establish world Socialism?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that capitalism (including the state capitalism of Russia and China) as a world system has become reactionary and that it has no progressive role to play anywhere in the world. This is because Socialism, the next stage in social development which will involve the emancipation of all mankind, is possible. Only Socialism is progressive, and this alone is what workers everywhere should strive to establish.

We do not deny that the NLF in Vietnam as carrying out land reforms and other changes necessary for the development of (state) capitalism there. What we do challenge is the assumption that, now Socialism is possible, Socialists should support this. What workers everywhere should be striving for is Socialism, not national state capitalism.

Our correspondent’s final paragraph is typical of the self-righteousness of many of our critics. Because Socialists do not support their pet struggles we are accused of being unconcerned about the suffering capitalism causes human beings. We could turn the tables on them by saying that in concentrating on single issues it is they who are prolonging the suffering capitalism brings by diverting attention from the struggle to over it.

Note also that our position is to oppose both sides, not neutrality as our correspondent suggests.

Editorial Committee

The Majority Revolution (1970)

Book Review from the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Urban Guerrilla, by Martin Oppenheimer. Penguin. 5s.

Under modern industrial and political conditions the socialist revolution can only be successful if the vast majority of wage and salary earners consciously and actively take part in it. This is what American university lecturer Martin Oppenheimer argues here. Or, as he puts it himself:

  The liberation of mankind, as the Marxian saying has it, must be the work of mankind itself, must be majoritarian and democratic. No elite, whether violent or non-violent, can substitute.

Urban Guerrilla is a study of insurrection and revolution. Oppenheimer notes that most revolutionary theory today is still based on the assumption “that a minority may have to carry the revolution through”. His book is a criticism of this assumption.

Peasant-based insurrections, he sees, do not and cannot lead to the establishment of a democratic, classless society since the peasants, being incapable of ruling society, must hand over power to some minority. Such insurrections bring to power a new ruling class as has been shown in China and Cuba and now also in Vietnam. Writing of thinkers like Mao, Guevera, Fanon and Debray, he says :

  Contemporary revolutionists claiming the Marxist label are not really Marxists at all. In different ways, they all represent rule by an elite, but they use Marxist language and peasant revolution (consciously or not) to justify their present or future rule. This may not be the intent . . . but it does seem to be the objective function of the contemporary peasant revolution and of its ideologies.

In modern industrial countries an insurrection can only succeed if the vast majority of the people support it (or are at least neutral) and if the government's machinery of suppression has broken down. In the absence of these conditions an isolated urban insurrection will be crushed with great bloodshed. This was demonstrated in Paris in 1871, in Dublin in 1916, in Shanghai in 1927, in Vienna in 1934 and in Warsaw in 1943 and 1944. The same would happen, warns Oppenheimer, to any Ghetto insurrection such as advocated by the Black Panthers. Incidentally, he is not taken in one bit by Black Power realising that its aims are in no way incompatible with the present system; the American government might easily grant self-government to the black ghettos and continue to exploit them in the same way as Britain and France do their ex-colonies. Black Power, like Home Rule, is a fraud.

Over the years it has become more and more difficult so that it is now almost impossible for a minority to defeat the government’s forces:

  It is clear that modern technology, particularly the speed of communication and travel, has made that harder than ever to accomplish, even with a general strike. The use of such devices as helicopters. light bombers, and gas and napalm, while not excluding revolutionary outbreaks, makes them much more costly than a century ago.

Oppenheimer recalls that "as long ago as 1895 . . . Engels pointed out that street fighting had become obsolete in 1849".

A possible alternative strategy for an active minority in a modern industrial country is to wage a protracted campaign of violence, terror and sabotage—or even of non-violent civil disobedience—in a bid to bring about the collapse of the machinery of government. This, suggests Oppenheimer, would probably rather lead to the rise of a fascist dictatorship and, even if successful, being the work of an active minority only, could easily lead to the rule of a new privileged class as in peasant-supported revolutions.

To succeed, concludes Oppenheimer, the revolution must be essentially non-violent and democratic involving the vast majority of the population, especially white and blue collar workers "for these are the only classes which, due to their relationship to the functioning of modern society, have both the potential for making a revolution and the capability of carrying it through on a democratic basis”. To attempt a revolution without such majority support

 is almost inevitably bound to result either in a counter-revolutionary fascist society or in a revolutionary dictatorship which destroys the goals for which the revolution was undertaken.

This is more or less how we would put it too.

There are however two important points on the strategy for a majority revolution on which we would disagree with Oppenheimer.

We agree that a socialist party must be democratic and open and so reflect the society it wishes to achieve. We agree too that it must not get involved in conventional politics or seek to form the government. We cannot agree however that it should engage in the day-to-day struggle as well as agitate and organise for Socialism. To do so runs the great risk of becoming yet another conventional political party since engaging in the day-to-day struggle of people under capitalism necessarily involves advocating reforms. A reform programme would attract people who want reforms rather than Socialism. In a democratic, open party such people would come to dominate it and turn it into a instrument for trying to get reforms rather than for carrying out the social revolution. Oppenheimer is aware of this as he himself mentions the fate of the German Social Democratic Party. The best way to avoid this danger is for a socialist party, while not being opposed to reforms and always being on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors, not to advocate them.

Nor do we see why existing more or less democratic institutions cannot be transformed into instruments of the Socialist revolution. Given that there is effective universal suffrage, local councils and some central elected body like Parliament or Congress it seems pointless not to use them both to register majority support for the revolution and to co-ordinate the measures needed to carry it through. Why bother to set up also "institutions that would parallel existing structures of government”? No doubt as the socialist revolution approaches people will be organising in all kinds of informal bodies ready to take over and run society after the end of class rule, but as long as democratically-elected councils and parliaments exist winning control of them through the ballot-box must surely be central to the strategy of any socialist party in a modern industrial country.

One further criticism. Oppenheimer does not spell out clearly enough that the socialist revolution cannot take place on a national scale but must be international and lead to the establishment of a world society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life with production solely to satisfy human needs.

We detail these criticisms—all of which mind you, only arise within the context of a majority revolution—because the rest of the book is so good. We unhesitatingly recommend it.

Adam Buick

Revolutionists in London (1970)

Book Review from the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revolutionists in London: A Study of Five Unorthodox Socialists. By James W. Hulse. OUP 48s.

This book deals with five political rebels living in London in the second half of the 19th century: Stepniak the Russian Nihilist, Kropotkin the Anarcho-Communist, Bernstein the revisionist, Shaw the Fabian and Morris who came nearest of them to being a revolutionary socialist. Hulse is disappointed in the conventional histories of Socialism, Communism and Anarchism: “They are usually so technical, so preoccupied with institutional and doctrinal disputes.”

Yet we are not told how else the subject can be dealt with. After all people who set out to change the world (revolutionaries) arc bound to be concerned with questions of theory and organisation. As a result the book does not have anything to offer to anyone interested in the development of the theories of scientific socialism. Not that the subjects of Hulse’s study are likely to be much help. Although wary of theory contact with it cannot be avoided, as in this passage:

Morris found it necessary to make the break because Hyndman’s faction was too authoritarian, too wildly militant, and too opportunistic — in short, too Marxist.

A description no doubt that fits some of to-days would-be Marxists as well as the Social Democratic Federation from which Morris and his associates were breaking away to form the Socialist League.

Had Hulse gone into theoretical matters a little deeper he might have concluded, as we do, that Marxism is the opposite to what Hyndman and the SDF, made of it. It is concerned with basing its action on political principles deduced from a scientific study of society, organising democratically as a political party to win over majority support for Socialism. That has nothing to do with authoritarianism, wild militancy or opportunism.

Joe Carter

More Labour dishonesty (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

A little over fifty years ago, in the first general election after the First World War, the Socialist Standard had an historic front page. It was an enlarged reproduction of a ballot paper; there were the names of the various capitalist parties—Labour, Conservative, Liberal and so on. And written across all of them was the one word—Socialism.

This cover was saying, with what the public relations men might call instant visual impact, that no working class voter should use his vote to support any of the capitalist parties and since there were no socialist candidates standing in that election, the only thing worth doing was to state a preference for Socialism by writing the word on the voting paper.

Here was an uncompromising stand. There was in fact no point in compromise, since there was no fundamental difference between the other parties and they all stood for some method of running capitalism. No one who understood Socialism and wanted it could vote for any of them.

It is not surprising that this attitude has provoked a lot of criticism. Socialists have been accused of splitting the vote, of refusing to opt for the least, or the lesser, of many evils. This argument was based on the assumption that there was something in common between the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the capitalist parties—that there was a vote to split. It also assumed that there was something to choose between, say, the Labour and Conservative parties—that there was a lesser evil. These assumptions are quite false—and if there were any grounds for doubting this in 1918 the subsequent experiences of Labour governments should have effectively removed them.

Another criticism of our stand was that spoiling a ballot paper was wasting the vote; we were advising workers to waste and abuse a right which had been established only after a long and sometimes bloody struggle. This argument again was based on false assumptions—that workers somehow protected their interests by choosing between one capitalist party and another; and that the vote must be go to some candidate or other, even though he was anti-working class. In fact, all the evidence indicates that the only way to use the vote properly is against all the parties of capitalism and in favour of the establishment of Socialism.

With all this in mind, it is interesting to notice an event in last month’s municipal elections in Wolverhampton, which is already famous enough because Enoch Powell is one of its MPs. In one of the wards there the official Labour nominee forgot ( yes, forgot) to hand in his nomination papers in time and so was prevented from entering the contest. This left only two candidates — a Tory and a member of National Front.

Here was a situation in which Labour Party strategists of expediency and double-dealing should have been in their element. In this straight fight which was the lesser of the two right wing evils—Tory or Fascist? How should the frustrated Labour supporters in St. Peter’s ward cast their votes?

The Conservatives, perhaps expecting the Labour Party to act honestly, promptly appealed to the Labour M.P. Mrs. Renee Short, . . . to do all she could to ensure the defeat of the National Front candidates by persuading Labour supporters to vote Tory.” (The Guardian, 28 April).

Now in accordance with the Labour Party tariff of political virtue there should have been no problem about their agreeing to do this. In fact what happened was the Mrs. Short’s agent replied that she would ". . . never advise Labour supporters to vote Tory in any circumstances.” And just to ram home the point that Labour are confused and dishonest, he said :

  At the same time, we would never advise them to vote for the National Front. They can either abstain or simply mark ‘Labour’ on their ballot paper.

We shall have to stifle our natural feelings of pique at this stealing of our idea and instead try to draw some lessons from it. First, we should notice the bare-faced expediency of Labour tactics. When they feel safe to argue that they are the least of the available evils they want to win votes from workers who are actually opposed to them. But when some other organisation stands to gain from the application of this theory, Labour suddenly finds that it is alright to “waste” votes —even to abstain.

The other, perhaps more important, point is that there is every reason for the Labour Party to extend their argument. It is true that there is no fundamental difference between the Conservative Party and National Front and therefore there is no reason to favour one over the other. But equally there is nothing to choose between Labour and the other parties — Tory, Fascist. “Communist” and so on. That is why workers should vote for none of them. The better, in fact the only, use of the vote is for something basically different from them all—for a new social system.

Which brings us to the final point. Socialism is an idea which implies certain political principles and one of these is an unshakeable refusal to compromise with the enemies of the working class—with any political party, whatever it calls itself, which stands for capitalism. When a worker goes into a voting booth and, where there is no socialist candidate, writes Socialism across the paper he is doing several things.

He is saying that he hates capitalism, is declaring for a social revolution to replace it. He is standing up as the enemy of all the capitalist parties. And in all these he is, simply, stating a principle and when it is all over, when all the votes have been cast and counted, there is no avoiding the fact that expediency can offer nothing to compare with that.

Ivan

A ride on the merry-go-round (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taking part in a general election is rather like having a ride on a merry-go-round. It is noisy, gaudy, exciting. It has something to divert us, even though temporarily, from the problems of the day. And when it is all over and we get down from our horse, we have a distinct impression of having been here before.

The election programmes of the capitalist parties in 1966 all told us about their plans for dealing with certain social ills. They told us about building a safer world, where the weapons of destruction are kept firmly under control and where war is a disappearing fear. They had a lot about poverty and of how they had the final solution to want and insecurity. In some cases, they pinned it down to particular issues; like housing, which they said was a simple matter of trusting them to provide decent homes for everyone.

Any elector with a stomach strong enough could have ploughed through several of these programmes, all making the same sort of promises about the same problems. And any elector with a memory long enough could recall that he was served up with the same stuff in the election of 1964 — or 1959, 1955, 1951, 1950 . . .  and that in fact there had always been the same high sounding plans and empty assurances, for as long as there had been votes to win.

One thing which is absolutely certain now is that it will be no different in 1970. It does not need any talent for clairvoyance to know that in this election we shall be assailed by Labour, Conservative, Liberal, “Communist” with manifestoes which are blockbusters of promises. And they will be talking about war, poverty, wages, housing, insecurity . . .

Another certainty is that the voters, who are the working class, will be sufficiently impressed by these programmes to make their choice between the parties presenting them. The electors will actually consider whether they will accept the dud cheques of the Labour Party in preference to those of the Tories. They will argue about which capitalist party shall be given the chance to deceive them, exploit them and suppress them for the next five years. And having chosen they will sit up all night on polling day to watch open-mouthed for the result of this non-race.

Having done this, and having given power to one or other of the parties of capitalism, the working class will return to their problems — war, poverty, housing, disease and so on. Until the next election comes round, when the merry-go-round will start again and the manifestoes will come out telling us how easy it is to stop all these social ills.

One of the most dangerous features of the merry-go-round is that it is a diversion. The workers are impressed with the glamour of it all; they think it important, whether Wilson supports the right football team and whether Heath is married. They become caught up in the razzmatazz of the election and argue as if there were some fundamental difference between Labour and Tory and the others. They have their ride on the merry-go-round—and they pay for it.

In other words, among the confusion and the deception and the glamour, the real issues and the fundamental interests are submerged. What matters in this election, and in all the others, and in fact all the time, is not which party is given the job of running capitalism, reformed or unreformed. As long as capitalism continues so will its problems—and so far no one has been able to think up any way of having capitalism without war, poverty, famine and the like.

What matters is whether the working class will take this chance to look at a more basic programme — nothing less than dealing with the cause of their problems instead of meddling with their symptoms. This means a fundamental questioning of capitalism—its property basis, its privileges, its false principle of leadership. It would be a useful start in this, to look back at those old election promises, to compare them and the current ones and to contrast all of them with the facts of reality and achievement.

It is only the shortest step from this, to replacing capitalism with a society based on the common ownership of the means of production; to building a world without classes, frontiers, racial divisions, privileges; without want amid riches. The urgent problem for the working class now is to replace capitalism with Socialists—to stop the merry-go- round and get off.

*     *     *     *     *

The Socialist Party is to contest two seats in the general election on June 18 — Hornsey and Clap- ham, both in London.

CLAPHAM

Candidate: F. Simkins 

Election Rooms:

52, Clapham High St., S.W.4. 01-622-3811

HORNSEY

Candidate : E. Grant

Election Rooms:

159 Turnpike Lane, N.8

Members and sympathisers are urged to contact their nearest election room to help in this socialist election campaign.

Please send donations to the Parliamentary Fund, c/o Treasurer, The Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52, Clapham High Street, S.W.4.