Books and pamphlets for sale. (1906)

Advert from the March 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

An interesting selection of books and pamphlets. The following are available online:

• Capital
• Six centuries of work and wages
• Poverty
• Communist Manifesto
• Wage Labour and Capital
• Socialism and the Worker
• How I Became a Socialist
• The Social Revolution

Spokeshave's 'Jones' Boy' is not available on the net but there's an interesting article on its background over at the Kate Sharpley Library blog.

Robbed blind (1993)

Book Review from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dare To Be A Daniel—A History of One of Britain's Earliest Syndicalist Unions. by Wilf McCartney. Kate Sharpley Library, BM Hurricane, London WC1 3XX.

The misery of wage slaves exploited in the catering business has always been particularly bad. Although Wilf McCartney's twenty-four page booklet on the subject, written originally in 1942 and published in 1945 with a preface by Orwell, is written in a workmanlike, sometimes poorly-crafted style, it expresses well the plight of the catering workers then and now. Reading it, what is clear is just how little has changed. It has always been a notoriously hard occupation to unionize, based mainly on casual and cheap foreign labour, and McCartney shows how little the official trade unions did to support catering workers. Reports of minor successes in rank-and-file strikes are written up encouragingly, but the hard fact is that catering workers are still being robbed blind by hotel and restaurant bosses despite earlier militancy.

Politically, McCartney's radicalism was of a pretty confused nature. Of relevance here is that he joined the SPGB in its early (not as a founder member) and makes the following critical comments about his experience:

I and others joined this party to learn socialism, but later, along with H. Maslin [surely, H. Martin—editors] and others, we left because of a letter in the Socialist Standard signed "Upton Park". The questioner wanted to know what would be the action of a member of the SPGB elected to Parliament, and the answer was that the Socialist member, backed by the revolutionary votes outside, would consider capitalist measures on their merits! This was quite enough for us.

McCartney is here referring to one of the most historically interesting formative conflicts in this party. The Socialist Party was formed to advocate socialism and nothing but. We have always rejected any compromise with the capitalist system. In 1910 some members, interpreting this principled anti-reformism as a dogmatic opposition to all reforms under capitalism, put their point by writing a letter to the Socialist Standard signed "W. B. of Upton Park". The reply given to them was that a single socialist or a minority of socialists elected to parliament on the basis of whether such measures benefitted or harmed the working class. For example, if measures extending the freedom of socialists to disseminate ideas or reducing election deposits or banning religious control of schooling were on the agenda it is quite possible that a socialist minority would be instructed to vote for them.

The minority within the SPGB formed a Provisional Committee to oppose this policy. Like dogmatic sectarians, inspired by doctrine to dismiss social reality, they went as far as to argue that no reforms have ever helped or could ever benefit the working class. The exchange of documents between the Executive Committee, expressing the position which we maintain today, and the ultra-sectarian Committee, of which McCartney was possibly a member, is highly educative and explains well why our party is opposed to reformism but not to reforms.

Many of our opponents on the Left, embarrassed by our unceasing exposure of their own rotten reformism, have tried to attack the Socialist Party by attacking what is actually the position of the few members of the Provisional Committee who left this party precisely because we do not hold the view in question. McCartney did hold that view, left the SPGB and went on to join the Syndicalist Propaganda League which was soon to disappear into the mists of history. What a pity that a man of such evident passion and union militancy did not stay within the ranks of the one revolutionary party committed to the abolition of the wages system.

Steve Coleman

No War But The Class War! (2003)

Book Review from the October 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

No War But The Class War! Libertarian Anti-Militarism Then and Now. Edited by Anna Key. Kate Sharpley Library. 2003.

Some purchasers of this short, 20-page pamphlet might find it a bit of a con since, though it opposes militarism, it does not oppose violence. Far from it. It praises violence and advocates this as the way to confront the State. We ourselves are not pacifists, but we always make it clear that we think that Socialists should only contemplate resorting to violence reluctantly and as a last resort should an anti-socialist minority attempt to prevent by violent means the implementation of the democratically-expressed will of a majority for socialism. So you will find no glorification of violence—such as the talk of “armed joy” by the sick individual who wrote this pamphlet's last contribution—in our literature

The items in this collection of anti-militarist leaflets and articles start from an appeal to conscript soldiers in Spain in 1896 not to go and fight in Cuba to a leaflet against the recent war in Afghanistan. The contrast between the early and the later ones is striking, with the early ones coming from the heart in contrast to the more intellectual later ones. Not that the message in the earlier ones is that coherent or, frankly, sensible.

There are two contributions from the pre-WWI French anti-militarist militant, Gustave Hervé, who wrote a book called Leur Patrie (in English “Their Country”, but whose English version is called My Country Right or Wrong). One starts off well enough, excellently in fact:

  “For anybody who is not satisfied with words, or anybody who wants to forget for a moment the fantastic definitions of the Country which have been taught him at school, a Country is a group of men living under the same laws; because they themselves or their ancestors have been brought willingly or by force, more often by force, to obey the same sovereign, the same government. Patriotism groups men according to their land of origin, as decided by the vicissitudes of history; within every country, thanks to the patriotic link, rich and poor unite against the foreigner. Socialism groups men, poor against rich, class against class, without taking into account the differences of race and language, and over and above the frontiers traced by history”.

But it then goes on to advocate, as the working-class response to the outbreak of war, an armed uprising to attempt to overthrow capitalist rule: “Insurrection rather than War!”

The early SPGB (since we were founded in 1904) was aware of Hervé views and commented on this particular slogan in the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard:

“Certainly no one country's exploiters are so superior to the rest that the workers should sacrifice themselves in defending them; but it is equally certain that if the proletarians were to rise in armed revolt against their rulers immediately on the outbreak of war, while the master class controlled the armed forces of the nation, and while the workers were yet unable and unready to assume control of Society, they would be courting a shambles that would make war peace by contrast.” 

“Since, therefore, Hervé's statement implies that the workers even though they are not in a position to successfully emancipate themselves should nevertheless sacrifice themselves in a fruitless and bloody attempt to do so on the outbreak of war, it is necessary to dissent from that position of his declaration.” 

“The particularly anti-militarist propaganda of Hervé has undeniably an educational value, and to that extent it is to be welcomed.”

It has to be added that, when the first world slaughter did break out in August 1914, Hervé rushed to join the French army to defend “their Country”, a fact referred to (but without naming him) in the next following article in the pamphlet: “the same man who had once proclaimed 'insurrection rather than war' now exhorts his comrades to defend the 'civilization' of the exploiters”.

Hervé later became a fascist. He wasn't the only pre-WWI anti-militarist militant to take this road, the most notorious being Mussolini. The publishers of this pamphlet, with its talk of “armed joy” and “transforming life arm in hand”, might like to ponder whether the glorification of non-state violence is not in the fascist rather than the “libertarian” tradition.

There's not much wrong with the slogan “No War but the Class War”. But there's a lot wrong with “No War but Civil War” which is how this pamphlet interprets it.

Adam Buick