The Passing Show: Misrepresentation (1959)

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

Misrepresentation

Recently Lord Birdwood protested in the House of Lords about “misrepresentations of conditions in Britain which, he said, had followed an interchange of journalists with Czechoslovakia last year ” (Manchester Guardian, 11 / 2/59). One Czech newspaper, said Lord Birdwood, “carried a report of a bearded beggar, covered by a tarpaulin and with his feet in a paper sack, who lay asleep in Hyde Park ‘not far from glittering Piccadilly.’ This was intended to indicate that Britain could not maintain work and homes for all its citizens.”

False information

Lord Home replied for the Government and defended the interchange. We had to accept, he said, “that there was a risk that journalists in Communist countries might toe the party line and produce the kind of misrepresentation of which Lord Birdwood had given examples.” There is no doubt, he lamented, “that from time to time we will find people coming here from other countries and reporting false information.”

The Czech newspapers, of course, would be very glad to tell their readers how badly off the British people were, in order to take their minds off the conditions which they have to endure under Czech capitalism. But to return to Lord Birdwood’s protest about misrepresentation.

Mutual admiration society

It is not recorded that any of the other peers expressed surprise at this Birdwood-Home duet. Augustine Birrell once said that the House of Lords represent nobody but themselves, and they enjoy the full confidence of their constituents. On this kind of performance, they certainly have little claim to the confidence of anyone else. For on the very same day as Lords Birdwood and Home were being indignant about foreign journalists suggesting that “Britain could not maintain work for its citizens,” in the House of Commons (whose members have to be elected, and therefore must maintain some kind of contact with the real world), the Minister of Labour was announcing that six hundred and twenty thousand of the citizens of Britain were unemployed. This means that six hundred and twenty thousand workers in this country are being denied by capitalism the chance to be of use to society, that hundreds of thousands of families are living on the dole and going short perhaps of those very things which the father of the family is not allowed to make because no one will get a profit out of it. Presumably Lord Birdwood hasn't heard about these 620,000 unemployed now drawing the dole. None of them, it is safe to say, belong to the House of Lords; nor do Lords Birdwood and Home have to remember their votes at the General Election—however baseless their statements are, the noble lords are in the happy position of knowing that at the General Election they will be returned to Parliament without the vulgar necessity of being voted for.

Housing

And what about the other part of the complaint? Surely that is justified? For the Tories make a great boast of their treatment of the housing situation. Since they took office each responsible Minister had been beating his chest about his successes in housing the people: foundation-stones have been laid, ceremonial openings performed, and our ears filled with torrents of speeches about how lucky the workers are to be having so much done for them.

And the facts? For BBC television, Robert Reid investigated the housing situation in Glasgow seven years ago, when the Conservatives had just been returned to power. There were then 100,000 applicants on the town’s housing list. Last month he returned to Glasgow to estimate progress. The number now on the housing list? 126.000.

But despite these facts, it is “misrepresentation” and “false information” according to Lords Birdwood and Home—to say that Britain cannot maintain work and homes for her people.

How comforting it must be not to know the facts of life under our social system! How fine to be able to assume that because you have a home and a solid income, everyone else has too! In short, how lovely to be a Lord!

The pot speaks up

You don’t have to be a baron to know nothing about what goes on. You can be quite ignorant even if you’re only a knight.

Sir Hugh Foot, Governor of Cyprus, commenting the other day on the Eoka truce, said: “ There will be no bargaining with violence” (Manchester Guardian, 14/1/59). No bargaining with violence! If there was no bargaining with violence, there would be no politics at all. For violence—that is war and armed conflict—is only the “continuation of politics by other means,” as Clausewitz put it. Sir Hugh may have forgotten, but the country on whose behalf he rules over Cyprus not only doesn’t condemn violence as a means of solving capitalism’s problems —it has actually engaged in two colossally destructive wars on a world-wide scale within the last half-century, and is now arming so that it will not be left out if a third one begins. Sir Hugh raised no voice against the violence used by Britain in the second world war, which included dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with a joint death roll admitted by the Allies to be at least 120,000. Sir Hugh reserves his condemnation of violence for the agents of the would-be Cypriot ruling class, when they use the same methods—killing and destroying—which all the capitalist powers have used to further their ends in every war they have ever engaged in. This does not justify Eoka: but a British Governor can no more complain about the violence of others than one iceberg can complain how chilly the other icebergs are.

When only the best will do

Many of the goods which crowd the shop-windows are only shoddy stuff, botched-up to sell at the cheapest price and yield the highest profit. But a Johannesburg reader sends me a cutting revealing that at least one article designed for the workers’ consumption is made to the highest specifications. The item was in the Johannesburg Star (30/12/58):-

  "Rubber batons, designed and made in the Union, will gradually replace wooden batons in the police.
   "An order for 1,000 rubber batons, which have been approved by the Bureau of Standards, has been placed with a large rubber concern."

So any unemployed South African worker, tenderly feeling his head after the dispersal of demonstrations, can comfort himself by reflecting that the lump upon it has been raised by a precision-made instrument of the first quality, and that the throb in his temples carries with it the full approval of the Bureau of Standards.

Alwyn Edgar.

General Election — Appeal for Funds (1959)

Party News from the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party needs money urgently for the General Election.

In East London our members have already been working for months, preparing an all out campaign in the Bethnal Green constituency. Meetings are being held, canvassers are going from door to door, the local papers are advertising our activities.

This work is going on NOW. Every week we are spending more money in Bethnal Green—and this is only preliminary to the final attack in which the candidate’s deposit alone will cost us £150.

We have great hopes for this campaign. Last year’s LC.C. elections in the same area gave the encouragement we needed. This time we believe we can achieve still more for the Socialist cause in this constituency.

But—we only have a fraction of the money we need. If you want to strike a blow against Capitalism with us, please send whatever you can to E. LAKE, S.P.G.B., 52 CLAPHAM HIGH STREET, S.W.4, and earmark it "'Parliamentary Fund.”

We shall not hoard it. We shall spend it almost immediately on more work for the next election’s only Socialist campaign.

Letter: A Reader's Views on Russia and China (1959)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We have received a letter from a reader who disagrees with our attitude towards the Communist parties. The letter is reproduced below and is followed by our reply. For convenience we have numbered the sections of his letter.

Derby.

Dear Comrade,

(1) I read the Socialist Standard with interest, but not always with agreement. In particular, I am not sure that you are correct in your assessments of the nature of Soviet and Chinese society. If they are "State Capitalist” and not "Socialist,” why is it that the "Private capitalist States” fear them from consideration of their social and economic nature and not merely as "imperialist rivals.”

(2) To state that a society must go through a phase of capitalist development before it can move on to Socialism is to make a dogma of Marxism and to imply that the man himself was infallible and the fount of all truth.

(3) The theory of Socialism is easy enough to understand, all that is required is some intelligence: it is not necessary that a man live in a highly industrialised capitalist society before the light of Socialism can begin to shine in his eyes. It follows therefore that a whole people, say, six hundred million Chinese, can become sufficiently enlightened to seek to establish a Socialist society even though they may not have enough industrial power to make a bloomin’ push-bike.

That is to say, political understanding may run far ahead of economic development. In that event the people take possession of their land and such industry and “means of distribution and exchange” as stand on the land, and proceed from there. That, comrade, is Socialism. They can each render service "according to his ability,” but cannot receive goods and services “according to his needs.” That, comrade, would be Communism. Why, if a Chinaman has an abdominal pain, it is unlikely if there will be a medico within a hundred miles to administer a dose of salts, but because he cannot, receive “according to his needs” it does not follow that somebody is exploiting him.

(4) It follows from this that, given this basis of society, some system of priorities must be established. They cannot all be adequately fed until they have tilled a lot of land, or adequately clothed until they have grown a lot of cotton and reared a lot of sheep.

And they cannot even make a screwdriver, let alone a motor car, until they have mined some coal and iron ore and built a blast furnace.

Meanwhile, they have to suffer great privation. That is just bad luck, but does not mean that they are being “exploited.” I have a hunch that the Chinese are doing fine. They are using every bit of machinery and tools that are at hand, and even smelt iron ore in little brick-built fireplaces.

(5) And as for the trials and “liquidations,” well, it is sheer political innocence to pretend that when the power of the workers and peasants is established that they will have no more enemies, and that the dispossessed parasites will begin to love them. It is utterly naive to imagine that capitalism can be liquidated and Socialism consolidated without a little bit of "roughness.”

Comrade, I reckon history is passing you by. Your Socialism is purist and idealistic, but bears no relationship to the stark reality of the state of the world.

Fraternally,

E. C. Rushton.

Reply:

(1) State Capitalist Russia

Our correspondent tells us that the private capitalist States fear Russia and China not merely because they are "imperialist rivals,” but from consideration of their social and economic nature. He gives no evidence for his belief and, as it happens, the man who is widely regarded as the chief exponent of opposition to Russian policy, Mr. Foster Dulles, has just told Mr. Mikoyan that the Russian system is “State capitalism.” (This is dealt with in our Editorial.)

(2) Was Marx Right?

If our correspondent wants to show that it is possible for society to advance straight into Socialism without going through the phase of capitalist development all he has to do is to show where this has happened. It is now over 40 years since the Communists came to power in Russia with the declared intention of doing this—with total lack of success.

(3) Socialism, Communism and State Capitalism

In paragraph (3) of his letter our correspondent gives a definition that will fit State capitalism, and then declares: "That, comrades, is Socialism ” He further declares that Communism is something quite different and gives it a quite different definition.

This, of course, is the piece of political trickery used by the Russian Government. It was not the view held by Marx, to whom Socialism and Communism were synonymous terms. It has never been the view of the S.P.G.B., which adhered to the Marxian view.

What is more, it was not, in the first place, the view of the Communists who gained power in Russia in 1917. When Lenin held that “State capitalism” would be a step forward for Russia he called it State capitalism. (Lenin, The Chief Tasks of Our Times.) ,

When the late Maxim Litvinoff, in 1918, told us that the Communists in Russia would “in no distant future establish a Socialist regime in Russia," he did not mean that after 40 years they would have State capitalism and would call that “ Socialism." (See The Bolshevik Revolution, 1918. Page 53.)

He was using the term as it was habitually then used by him and his fellow Communists to mean the same as the term “Communism." As late as 1923 the Communist Party of Great Britain published an English edition of "A Short Course of Economic Science," by A. Bogdanoff, and this work was declared to be the standard textbook “ in hundreds if not thousands of party schools and study circles now functioning in Soviet Russia." This work defined “the Socialist system” as “ the highest stage of society we can conceive " (p. 391).

This is quite irreconcilable with our correspondent’s version, which claims that Socialism already exists in Russia. In view of Krushchev’s recent declaration that Russia would soon abolish income tax (but not the much larger turnover tax and profits tax) it is interesting to recall that this same book said that “With the establishment of Socialism, all taxes . . . will become superfluous, because the whole of the social product, necessary as well as surplus, will be at the disposal of society, to be used for the satisfaction of its requirements" (p. 295).

When our correspondent says that he sees the light of Socialism in 600 million Chinese eyes all he means is State Capitalism, and even for that he gives not a tittle of evidence.

(4) Defence of Inequality

What our correspondent here describes as a necessary system of “priorities." because “they cannot all be adequately fed," is just a Russian and Chinese version of the defence the privileged class offers in every capitalist country for the inequality that sustains their privileged position.

Here again this modern Russian version is a glaring departure from what the Communists said in the early years. Lenin had at first laid down the principle that as an immediate step they would introduce equal wages throughout the Russian system, all officials, etc., to receive approximately the “ordinary pay of the workers." And when they gave this up Lenin said frankly that the introduction of high salaries for a minority was “not merely a halt in a certain part and to a certain degree of the offensive against Capitalism . . .  but also a step backwards." (“Soviets of Work," Lenin, April, 1918).

Now the “step backwards" to inequality has become the normal principle of what our correspondent claims to be “Socialism."

Our correspondent says, “they," the masses, “have to suffer great privation’’—but not the privileged rulers and other favoured groups.

(5) Trials and Liquidations

Here our correspondent gives us a little lecture on the necessity of “roughness" towards the dispossessed parasites, and ends with the remark that history has passed us by.

To which we may retort that it is news to us that the thousands of Hungarian workers who, 2½ years ago were shot down by the Russian army, were “dispossessed parasites."

On the contrary, the new parasites are doing very well in the new State capitalist countries wrongly called Socialist.

And when our correspondent tells us of his “hunch that the Chinese are doing fine" (though he also says the masses are suffering great privation) it is he who is turning a blind eye to the fact that over 40 years of Communist rule in Russia has produced not Socialism, but State capitalism. If the Chinese workers model themselves on the experience of Russia their efforts will prove to be equally misdirected.

Editorial Committee

Party News Briefs (1959)

Party News from the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Annual Conference. March 27th, 28th and 29th are the dates for Annual Conference this year, earlier than is usual, but as Conference is an interesting and pleasant occasion for Comrades, it is hardly likely that the dates will be overlooked. Conference should be particularly interesting, there are many items on the agenda which call for constructive discussion. An election in the offing, with Hackney Branch and the Parliamentary Committee well prepared, with the aid of Comrades, to see that the campaign goes well. A resume of the past year’s work which has shown wider activity on the part of Branches, who in London and the Provinces have held many propaganda meetings throughout the year. In addition to the work done at Conference, there is the get-together of Comrades, an always happy occasion, the Social and Dance on the Saturday, which if last year is a guide, should be a really jolly occasion. A Rally is being organised by the Propaganda Committee, and details of these two latter items are given fully elsewhere in this issue.

Head Office Film Lectures. The last two "fixtures” for this season are being held on March 1st and 8th. No plans have been made for the 15th March as Paddington Branch are holding their well-planned meeting at Denison House that evening.

Ireland. Our Comrades in Dublin are very active these days; they have rented the Boiler Makers’ Hall for one evening a week, meeting every Wednesday. One of the items to which they are giving urgency, is their policy and approach to propaganda. They have six or seven “contacts” wishing to join the Party and with these proposed new members, they look forward to extending their work generally. It is hoped that within the next month or so, a much fuller report of their progress will be forthcoming.

Hackney Branch and the Election. Details of a public meeting on April 13th and a list of canvassing dates and meeting spots are given in this issue. Hackney Branch stress that in order to achieve a successful campaign, the participation of members of other branches is absolutely essential. This reminder should not be necessary, of course, as the decision to contest the election is one taken by the Party as a whole and therefore must be a Party effort. Comrades who are not near at hand to give direct assistance can help by spreading the news of our programme and seeking contributions to the necessary additional funds needed.

“No Useful Purpose Would Be Served.” Islington Branch report that Comrade J. McGuinness, the Branch Organiser, is temporarily working in Newcastle, and although there is no Party Branch in the vicinity to which he could direct his lively energy, he continues to be as active as ever on behalf of the Party. In correspondence with his Branch, he tells of two letters published in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle which he wrote attacking the policy of the Social Credit Political League which is active in Newcastle. Com. McGuinness was successful in getting the S.P.G.B.’s case clearly stated.

More recently, he wrote to the N.E. District Branch of the Communist Party in Newcastle, inviting them to a debate with the S.P.G.B. True to form, the offer was rejected by their Secretary whose reply contained the phrase which appears to be reserved for the Socialist Party . . .  “ My Committee have decided that no useful purpose would be served by having any debate with your organisation”

Paddington Branch Meeting at Denison House on Sunday. March 15th. Much preliminary work has gone into the arrangements for this meeting, and by now members will have seen full details elsewhere in this issue, also the earlier notices in the January and February issues. The Branch made these earlier announcements in order to stimulate interest and enable members to advertise the meeting date and ensure that as many members and sympathisers (and others) were aware of the meeting and, we hope, prepared to support it.

The Socialist Party. From time to time our Publicity organiser and the Editorial Committee have endeavoured to obtain recognition in the Press that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is THE Socialist Party. Despite this, the Beaverbrook Press in its Evening Standard Style Book for “ guidance of Editorial, Reading and Composing Departments” quotes: —

  “The Labour Party will be described as Socialist, but where occasion makes the use of the word Labour necessary, the abbreviation will be Lab.”

The above information is sent to us from an American Comrade.

Phyllis Howard

Dirty Work (1959)

From the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most of the objections raised are really nothing but silly prejudices that for obvious reasons are being assiduously fostered by our masters who have an interest in preventing the possibility of an alteration of the social system.

To these arguments or prejudices belongs also the ever recurring question: Who would do the so-called dirty work? It would seem that the greater part of the useful work indispensable for the daily life of the whole of society, is classified under this latter category—dirty work. One can understand that such questions are raised by the wealthy, and that any answer you could give would leave them unconvinced. But that the workers who have always done this “dirty work,’* and under conditions that will have no place under Socialism, should echo these doubts, is certainly curious. For it ought to be clear that it is only the present economic system that condemns men and women to a daily eight or more hours of monotonous toil and attaches a STIGMA or SOCIAL INFERIORITY to almost every productive work that is indispensable for the daily life of society. After the abolition of this idiotic system and the disappearance of class privileges, the stigma of social inferiority will, of course, no longer attach to any work whatever, just as even today no such stigma attaches, for example, to the medical profession. In spite of their often extremely unpleasant, unclean and distasteful work, the physician and surgeon enjoy general esteem and dignity. Much of the really obnoxious work, including the production of bombs and tanks and other instruments of mass murder, and the work of jailers, and police, will no longer be necessary. There will be no need either for any man to spend time down in the bowels of the earth digging coal and other minerals to be squandered in battleships and transport of war material to the ends of the world. On the other hand, with the daily improvement of mechanical devices, with the aid of mechanical cleaning equipment and the innumerable contrivances now available, the job of doing the “dirty work” will be considerably facilitated and become “cleaner."

It ought to be perfectly obvious that with a radically changed social basis and background, man's ideas and outlook on life are bound to undergo a corresponding change. As the change from Capitalism to Socialism is the greatest event in human history, ending as it will, the age-long rule of property and with it the exploitation of man by man, and establishing in its place the Socialist commonwealth where money rules no more, the change which it is bound to produce on all aspects, will be correspondingly profound.

Let the big businessmen and politicians, the Stock Exchange gamblers, dividend hunters, lottery and insurance experts, company promoters and directors, with their police-chiefs, dictators, generalissimos, executives and executioners, bishops, priests and parsons, and the rest of the lackeys of capital, laugh or weep or tremble at such “preposterous" proposals! But what can they offer as an alternative to Socialism? Nothing but the continuance of the hellish system of Capitalism! It is for you to choose.

Rudolf Frank

The Future Labour Offers You (1959)

From the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

This new Labour Party pamphlet and programme for the next election has been admirably reviewed by “E.W.” in the January issue of the Socialist Standard, but in case his criticism does not please members of the Labour Party—for he does not quote from it—let us examine a few of its statements.

Gaitskell on the first page writes that “The plans are carefully thought out” so there is no excuse for any random ideas. He claims that "they are democratic socialism in action” and from this we can learn what the Labour Party thinks of Socialism.

In the section YOUR HOME the Labour Party is to encourage you to purchase your house, and says that it will "also grant loans on favourable terms so as to encourage tenants to buy the houses they now live in, and to improve them.” This is private enterprise, which the Labour Party has opposed, and therefore the opposite to its desire to nationalise everything. In a previous election the Conservative Party spread the propaganda that the Labour Party would nationalise your home if they were put in power. What does it matter whether you own your house or not so long as if you can live comfortably in it?

In the section on HEALTH we read “We must have a new approach to mental illness.” They mention that nearly half the beds in hospitals are occupied by cases of mental disorders, but never a word about the cause of these disorders or what they intend on doing about these causes. If the pace of industrial production and precariousness of living is largely responsible for this state of affairs the Labour Party by its insistence on increased production is going to make matters worse.

In the section on EXPANSION they really give the game away in a paragraph in small print which reads “All our projects for better schools and hospitals, for a new deal for the young and the old, for rising living standards, must depend in the. end on our success in achieving year by year a rapid expansion of production.” This is the key to the whole thing—we have got to increase production—in other words we have got to work harder. Then they state “£70 million worth of unsold coal piled up at pitheads, in quarries and in dumps all over the country” so it looks by this that somebody has been working too hard and produced too much. Have the miners got to work harder and so permit further increases in this piled up coal? Incidently the coal mines are one of the great nationalised industries, nationalised of course by the Labour Government, so who are we to blame for the muddle? The programme continues “No wonder Britain is falling behind her competitors— Germany, Japan, and Russia—in the world race for higher production.” Put Labour in power and they will soon see to it that our production is stepped up and our competitors beaten, this is the only interpretation of this remark. “To survive In the world’s markets we must increase productivity per man.” Crude and truthful (under capitalism) and a direct threat that Labour will try to fulfil if returned.

In the section COST OF LIVING, “Labour will start with this advantage, the unions know they will not have to struggle against a Labour Government to get a fair deal for their members." Do they really think that the public’s memory is so short that they don’t remember the numerous strikes under the late Labour Government? Do they seriously think that the class struggle is going to cease just because they are in power? Have they forgotten the great dockers’ strike and the way the Labour Government broke it by employing troops to unload the ships? The Labour Party may have started as a party of the trade unions, but now that the leaders of the Labour Party have climbed into parliament they are going to run capitalism in the interests of the ruling class.

PEACE. “Labour will propose a fresh disarmament conference to draw up a treaty which will reduce arms, manpower and military expenditure, destroy all stocks of nuclear weapons and means of delivering them, including missile bases and bombers, abolish all chemical and biological weapons and provide safeguards against surprise attacks." In other words they want to dump overboard these serious weapons which are so much discussed today. But the trouble here arises in the next section on DEFENCE. "Labour fully accepts the duty to maintain the military defences of Britain . . . and will take a lead in pressing fur all round disarmament." “Labour has argued for years that, in this nuclear age, the big conscript armies resulting from National Service are wasteful and ineffective." This puts the lid on the whole programme. Who was it that imposed conscription in peace time? the Labour Party! It was they who built up these big conscript armies. Now they tell us that as a result of nuclear development they are wasteful and ineffective. But as they are pledged under the PEACE section to press for the abolition of these nuclear methods, they are also going to get rid of their large armies and yet they state above “Labour fully accepts the duly to maintain the military defence of Britain."

In the last section “We in the Labour Party are Socialists. This means that our whole approach to politics is different from that of the Tories. What is the difference? . . . the Tories still believe that . . . the economic future of fifty million people packed on a small island can and should he shaped decisively by a free-for-all scramble with private profits as the prize." “Socialists believe that this Tory outlook is dangerously old-fashioned and also profoundly immoral. The first Socialist ideal is mutual service—the story of the Good Samaritan in terms of everyday political life” so we come to Jesus in the end, and live happy ever after in this dream world of the Labour Party. We will now rise and sing “Onward Christian soldiers”.

Horace Jarvis

The American Civil War — III (1959)

From the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part II

Preparation and Prospects

As the year 1861 opened the future opponents of the American Civil War stood glowering at each other.

The war was only a few months away, but it was still difficult to descry any clear-cut differences between North and South. The Confederacy’s President—Jefferson Davis—had been strongly Unionist, until he saw control of the Union slipping from the South’s hands. His Vice-President —Alexander Stephens—had opposed secession right until the moment when his own State of Georgia contracted out. There was also confusion on the issue of slavery, many prominent Southerners opposing it, whilst the Lincoln Government had often slated that it had no intention of abolishing it. Perhaps the most famous Southerner to oppose slavery was General Robert E. Lee—the North actually invited him at the start of the war to take command of its forces., but he refused. Especially confused was the Northern State of Maryland, where there was much sympathy for the Confederates. Plenty of Americans thought that the seceded States had taken a perfectly legal and constitutional action and that, whatever military precautions the two sides may take, the quarrel would blow over.

Fort Sumpter Falls

The first important dispute after secession came as each side began to draw up its strength, and was about the possession of military forts and recruitment of manpower. First, the Union Government ordered all the border States to place their troops under Washington’s control. Promptly, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina joined the rebels, as a protest against this attempt at federal coercion. More ominous were the rumblings around the army forts in the Southland.

The Confederates argued that, although the forts were occupied by United States troops, the land on which they stood had only been leased to the Government. Now that the Southern States had left the Union, their occupation by Federal forces was illegal and intolerable. Interest became centred on Fort Sumpter at Charleston, which the Governor of South Carolina had been planning to take over since December, I860. Southern Congressmen warned Lincoln that any attempt to relieve Sumpter would lead to war and sure enough on January 9th, 1861, the steamer, Star of the West, sent to the fort, was fired on and forced to withdraw. An uneasy peace brooded over Fort Sumpter until April, when Confederate General Beauregard, learning of a Union convoy on the way to raise the siege, bombarded it into surrender. Although many other forts had been taken in the South, Sumpter had become an important symbol, and its fall touched off a unifying passion in the Union. It may also be said to have marked the start of the war.

Since February, the South had been seriously preparing its war effort. After Sumpter, Lincoln replied by calling for 75,000 militia, to serve for three months (later altered to three years) and announcing a blockade of every Southern port from South Carolina to Texas. On May 6th the Confederate Congress passed an Act which recognised the existence of a state of war with the Union and shots were exchanged in Virginia and at Camp Jackson, St. Louis. There had been almost a year of increasing tension and bitterness. That was at an end. Hope was finished, too. The world’s first modern war had started, with its savagery and terror.

Prospects

What were the strength, the weaknesses and prospects of either side ? The Northern population was about 22 million; the Southern between 5 and 6 million, plus about 4 million negroes. In 1860 the United States Army had numbered about 16,000; of these, the Southern States had the nucleus of an army in the forces controlled by each State. About 3 million men served in the war in the Union forces, 2 million of them 23 years old or younger—an ideal age for soldiers. On the other hand, the Confederates' smaller population forced them to conscript all men between 17 and 55. When the war opened the volunteers on both sides were numerous, but as the thing dragged on the spirit declined. In the South, poor dirt farmers joined open combat with Confederate patrols and draft officials, whilst in the North, Chicago suffered anti-conscription riots.

The South was full of hope. Although the Act of Secession had cut them off from the new lands in the West, they thought that their raw materials could be traded for manufactures from the growing capitalist powers of Europe. These manufactures, ran the optimistic argument, would compensate for the rebels’ lack of industrial power. Here lay the South’s weakness, for as the agricultural area of the United States, they had left manufacturing to the North. They had next to no factories and what they had were mainly worked by Northerners, who returned to their home States when the war started: this was disastrous to the railway repair shops. The rebels had only one works—at Tredegar, in Richmond—where they could cast a gun or make a marine engine: the States Armouries were deficient, and at the start of the war there were no powder mills. There was hardly any iron and unseasoned wood had to be used in shipbuilding. All of this meant that, among other things, the rebels would not be able to break the blockade which the Union Navy kept on its ports. It also meant that recognition of the Confederacy by the European Powers was a wild dream. But the South was blind to all this; their population may have been only a quarter that of the North, but they had plenty of men who got their living planting and hunting, who were used to horseback and hardened to a spartan outdoor life They could handle guns and, apart from a dislike of organised discipline, were ideal material for soldiers. When the time came, they were to fight hard and tenaciously. The aristocratic pretensions of the South had bred a group of accustomed leaders: men like Lee and Johnston, Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart, all brilliant commanders. Yes, the South was full of hope: one rebel, they said, was worth any ten Yankees.

The Yankees

And the North? Industrially, they had it all. But they needed a machine—the sort to which the 20th century has become accustomed—to change their population of factory and merchanting workers into soldiers. It took them a few years; but in the end they did it, reaching their peak of organisation when Sherman’s troopers blasted their way across the heart of the Confederacy, like any crack Commando brigade. “The Yankees dare not fight,” said many a cocky Southerner at the war’s beginning. The next few years showed that the Yankees could not only fight—they could also march and plunder, and hound an entire army to destruction.

Jack Law.

(To be concluded.)

Link to Part IV

Sidelight on Engels (1959)

From the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx’s lifelong friend rarely refers to his own distinct activity and personality in his writings. For information concerning Engels’ personality we must have recourse to those who were acquainted with him. But there is an exception! On one occasion and this at the early age of 25, Engels tells us in English something about himself. Yet even this English writing has never been presented to the English reader. It must have been Engels himself who insisted on its exclusion (although written as a preface in English) from the translation of his work Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 authorised by himself. The Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England in 1844 published in Germany in 1845, from which the Winchnevitsky was made contains this preface (in English) in full, and in the 1892 final edition of this work, authorised by Engels, the preface (in English) is re-included.

A certain explanation is necessary to the reader concerning Engels’ expression “middle class” or “middle classes”. By this Engels does not mean highly paid workers or shopkeepers etc. but the actual capitalist class itself. There existed in England in 1844 three distinct groups of the community – the proletariat, the landed aristocracy and the bourgeoisie or industrial capitalists. Until 1832 the landed aristocracy had held control of political power and had fleeced the bourgeoisie for its own benefit. Engels then refers to the bourgeoisie as the “middle class” i.e. the class between the proletariat and the landed aristocracy. It should be noted, however, that not three years later Engels abandoned this categorization of his – the landed aristocracy – a social class. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels write:

  “Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie possesses however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat.”

Marx, too, in one of his other writings refers to the landlord as a sleeping partner to the capitalist.

At the present day landlords, so-called industrial capitalists, merchants and bankers are economically directly interwoven and intermingled – a collective holding group for the most part – one social class.

Solomon Goldstein

See also 'To The Working Class of Great Britain'.

To The Working Class of Great Britain by Frederick Engels (1959)

Engels as a young man.

From the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Working men!

To you I dedicate a work in which I have tried to lay before my German Countrymen a faithful picture of your condition, of your sufferings and struggles, of your hopes and prospects. I have lived long enough amidst you to know something about your circumstances; I have devoted to their knowledge my most serious attention. I have studied the various official and non-official documents as far as I was able to get hold of them—I have not been satisfied with this, I wanted more than a mere abstract knowledge of my subject, I wanted to see you in your own homes, to observe you in your every-day life, to chat with you on your condition and grievances, to witness your struggles against the social and political power of your oppressors. I have done so: I forsook the company and the dinner parties, the port wine and champagne of the middle-classes and devoted my leisure hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain working men; I am both glad and proud of having done so. Glad, because thus I was induced to spend many a happy hour in obtaining a knowledge of the realities of life—many an hour, which else would have been wasted in fashionable talk and tiresome etiquette; proud, because I thus got an opportunity of doing justice to an oppressed and calumniated class of men, who with all their faults and under all the disadvantages of their situation, yet command the respect of everyone but an English moneymonger; proud, too, because thus I was placed in a position to save the English people from the growing contempt which on the Continent has been the necessary consequence of the brutally selfish policy and general behaviour of your ruling middle-class.

Having, at the same time, ample opportunity to watch the middle-classes, your opponents, I soon came to the conclusion that you are right, perfectly right, in expecting no support whatever from them. Their interest is diametrically opposed to yours, though they will always try to maintain the contrary and to make you believe in their most hearty sympathy with your fate. Their doings give them the lie. I hope to have collected more than sufficient evidence of the fact, that—be their words what they please—the middle-classes intend in reality nothing else but to enrich themselves by your labour while they can sell its produce, and to abandon you to starvation as soon as they cannot make a profit by this indirect trade in human flesh. What have they done to prove their professed good will towards you? Have they ever paid any serious attention to your grievances? Have they done more than pay the expenses of half a dozen commissions of inquiry, whose voluminous pages are damned to everlasting slumber among heaps of waste paper on the shelves of the Home-Office? Have they even done as much as to compile from those rotting blue-books a single readable book from which everybody might easily get some information on the condition of the great majority of “free born Britons” . Not they, indeed these are things they don’t like to speak of—they have left it to a foreigner to inform the civilised world of the degrading situation you have to live in. A foreigner to them, not to you I hope. Though my English may not he pure, yet, I hope you will find it plain English. No working man in England—nor in France either—ever treated me as a foreigner. With the greatest pleasure I observed you to be free from that blasting curse, national prejudice and national pride, which after all means nothing but wholesale selfishness—I observed you to sympathise with every one who earnestly applies his powers to human progress—may he be an Englishman or not—I found you to be more than mere Englishmen, members of a single, isolated nation, I found you to be Men, members of the great and universal family of Mankind, who know their interest and that of all the human race to be the same; And as such, as members of this family of “One and Indivisible” Mankind. as Human Beings in the most emphatical meaning of the word, as such, I and many others on the Continent, hail your progress in every direction and wish you speedy success. Go on then, as you have done hitherto. Much remains to be undergone: be firm, be undaunted— your success is certain, and no step you will have to take in your onward march, will be lost to that common cause, the cause of Humanity!

Barmen (Rhenish Prussia) March 15th. 1845.

Friedrich Engels.

See also 'Sidelight on Engels'.

Obituary: Cecil Thurlow (1959)

Obituary from the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to inform members of the death of C. Thurlow, of West Ham Branch. Comrade Thurlow had been a member of the Party for many years. Originally he was in the I.L.P., but soon found his way to the Socialist Party and became an active member. In the nineteen thirties he was on the Executive Committee and also served for some time on the Parliamentary Committee. About six years ago he was disabled by a severe illness, which ended his working life and obliged him to remain inactive. In spite of his poor health he continued to attend Branch meetings and take as much interest as he could in the affairs of the Party. Much of his time during this enforced retirement went into his other great interest, his stamp collection, which was a remarkably fine one and had been arranged in unorthodox fashion to provide a source of historical, geographical and other knowledge. Latterly, however, his health deteriorated and he died shortly before the end of last year.

Our late Comrade’s own words fittingly describe his years of staunch fighting to spread the Party’s case: “I died as I lived, hostile to Capitalism and religious superstition.”

Our sympathies are extended to his wife, Comrade Violet Thurlow. and his daughter.

E. W.

Mikoyan’s Bluff Called (1959)

Editorial from the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recognition of the truth sometimes comes out of strange places and no one could have been more surprised than Mr. Mikoyan that it should have been Mr. Dulles who told him that he, Mikoyan, does not know what Socialism is. But so it happened.

It was at the end of the Russian Deputy Prime Minister’s visit to America. When all the dinners and interviews, the speeches and cocktail parties were over, the time came to part. Mr. Mikoyan gave his farewell message to reporters at the airport, and said :—

  “Socialist society in our country will develop whether you like it or not, and whether we want it or not. American capitalism is still strong. The conclusion is that we must be tolerant of each other and come to agreement.” (Daily Telegraph, 21st January, 1959)

Then came the slap in the eye from Mr. Dulles, in a telegram to Mikoyan :—

  “The President is aware that you operate under a system of State capitalism, and he hopes that has been useful to you to have seen the progress of our people under our system of individual capitalism. We are sure that you have found the experience interesting.” (Daily Telegraph, 21st January. 1959.)

We have no doubt that Mr. Mikoyan found it a novel and interesting experience to have his bluff called at top level about the fake “Socialism” of Russia, and bluntly to be told that Dulles sees it for what it really is, “State Capitalism.”

May we hope from this beginning that the representatives of all the countries will, at U.N. and other international gatherings, develop the habit of calling State and private capitalism by their proper name everywhere and on all occasions?

And while we are pondering the curious ways in which truth may emerge we should not fail to comment on one little truth Mr. Mikoyan spilled unintentionally. In his own message he said that Socialist society will develop in Russia “whether we” (i.e., Mikoyan and his friends) “want it or not.”

We could not have put it better ourselves.

The Affluent Society (1959)

From the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 1

Professor Galbraith, the author of The Affluent Society, is an urbane and incisive commentator of contemporary Capitalism, especially its American version. As an iconoclast he is in the Veblen tradition. We shall, however, leave for a subsequent article, his views in general and only concern ourselves, here, with his comments on Marx in particular.

Marx (long dead) still wears a contemporary larger-than-life look—Professor Galbraith warily measures him up before seeking to cut him down to size. Marx, he notes, was a powerful and subtle thinker, a great deviationist from the stock ideas and sentiments of his age— called by the author “the conventional wisdom.” His influence, he thinks, both direct and indirect, has been enormous.

Marxism dead but won’t lie down

But, says the author, it is not only Marx who is dead, the main body of his doctrine has also atrophied, having presumably no further useful function to perform. It would appear from Professor Galbraith’s interpretation that Marxists have long resorted to artificial respiration in the belief that the body still breathes. Marxism, the author holds, has exhausted its impetus and originality and hardened into a dogma. It is now an article of faith which has acquired a religious quality. That is why for Marxists their opponents are not only in error but in sin. That is why, says Professor Galbraith, you cannot discuss Marxism with Marxists, at least not rationally. Marxists, he says, will always assure their opponents that whatever their criticism of Marx they have failed to understand him. One can at least reply to Professor Galbraith by saying that the history of anti-Marxist argument goes some way to confirm the accusation. For our part we, as Marxists, are eccentric enough to welcome any rational discussion on Marxism with anybody and everybody.

Who are the Marxists?

Professor Galbraith’s description of Marxists as those who assume the role of hard-headed realists, facing the unlovely prospect of ever-greater immiseration (poverty) of the workers, ever-greater slumps, leading to final economic collapse and bloody revolution is certainly concise, clear cut—and wrong. To fasten on Marx such catastrophic views shows how catastrophically Professor Galbraith himself has misunderstood Marx, and regretfully he must be included among the legions who simply cannot discriminate between the “Marxism” of Moscow and the Marxism of Marx.

That the Bolsheviks and latter-day Communists never made Marxism the basis of their activities and yet made it their official creed, is sheer historical irony. Yet the paradox loses its enigmatical character if we know what precisely the role that theory had for them. Theory was not something acceptable, because it provides a systematic and logical picture of social events, theory for them was an ideological instrument, pressed into the services of political strategy and struggles. In this sense and only in this sense are we to understand the cardinal Communist dictum: “Theory must be a guide to practice.”

There were, however, good Bolshevik reasons for claiming Marxist paternity for their views. Unable or unwilling to father a theory of their own, they took over an established and ready-made doctrine which not only gave a semblance of authority to their views, but an ideological basis to which shifts and changes in policy could be ultimately referred and, of course, justified.

And so the dialectic which made all things possible, turned Marxism into its opposite. From a method of free scientific enquiry it was transformed into an authoritative dogma unsurpassed even by the Holy Catholic Church. Its high priests dispensed official Marxist decrees with encyclical infallibility. It was the greatest “negation of the negation” of all time. In Communist hands Historical Materialism became Dialectical Materialism, and Marxist economic doctrines were taken apart and reassembled for the construction of the “Communist model.”

As formulated by Marx, “the law of the tendency of the falling rate of profit,” which he said was a tendency annulled by counter tendencies was converted by the Communists from a tendency to an iron law which had the terrifying and remorseless character of the law of gravitation. Given this iron law of the falling rate of profit, there would go a continuous and progressive decline in the fields of capital investment. This decline in turn would produce slumps of an ever more massive order, more massive unemployment and a greater mass of poverty for the workers. Out of this economic chaos the Proletarian Dictatorship would emerge and give rise to Communist “law and order.”

This was Communist theory, but never Marxist fact.

Marxism and the Intellectuals

Communist theory was then nicely attuned to Communist propaganda whose source of inspiration and direction was Russia. Communist Parties all over the world attempted to follow the Leninist pattern, viz., creation of a mass organization, conditional collaboration with Social Democratic parties, etc. It sought to undermine Western Capitalism by fermenting and organising mass discontent. It inspired its adherents with a belief in the inevitable break-down of Capitalism and inculcated the feeling of a tough realism which not only required that Communism must by all means expedite the decline of Capitalism, but be the organised force to take over power from the bourgeois or left parties.

This was the essence of the Communist ideology, an ideology which created many Communists among its victims. With its insistence on an intellectual elite it sought and at least to some extent succeeded in making an impact on some sections of the intelligentsia. For intellectuals in the twenties and thirties who were in despair, Communism gave them hope. For many in doubt it provided invincible certainty. To the tougher minded the Communists dared them to walk the plank of Communist realism. Many did, although they walked back afterwards.

And so Moscow Marxism provided many of the angry young men of the thirties with an escape route via Russia. In their angry youth they violently proclaimed it. In their mild middle they violently repudiated it.

Enter Mr. Strachey

It is not surprising that when Professor Galbraith, who takes these once angry young men seriously, turns his eyes from East to West, he discovers that angry young man of old, Mr. Strachey, as the most articulate Marxist of the thirties. Mr. Strachey certainly had a flair for writing a lot about which he knew little. No doubt the Communist intelligentsia had groomed him for “Marxist” stardom. Like many other stars groomed by Communists, Mr. Strachey severed his contacts and transferred his talents to rival producers. His Theory of Capitalist Crises merely repeats the Communist economic errors on an expanded scale.

No doubt Moscow Marxism and people like Mr. Strachey provide a barn door of such dimensions that nobody would miss even at a distance. That is why perhaps so many pundits are indulging this pedestrian pastime. One hoped that Professor Galbraith was made of sterner stuff. It is so easy to set up skittles like a Marxist theory of absolute poverty. Of workers living for the most part on the margin of destitution. A Marxist stark under-consumption theory of ever increasing wealth and ever increasing poverty. Of a Marxist “law of the falling rate of profit” where the system comes to a sudden end like an engine with not enough steam pressure behind the piston. It is easy to scatter that lot and walk jauntily into the next chapter.

But we are ready to yell after him, hi, professor, in the hope he hears us, Marx never formulated such propositions. In actual fact not only did he say different things to what Professor Galbraith thinks he said, but even in some respects the opposite.

In the next article we shall discuss rationally and in detail not the errors of Marx but the errors of Professor Galbraith in respect of Marx.

Ted Wilmott

(To be continued)

Link to Part Two.

50 Years Ago: Who Wants a Man? (1959)

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

A leading New York daily paper has just advertised a man, warranted sound in mind and limb, for sale. He describes himself as 43 years old. He says he understands machinery and is a good mechanic, but has been out of work for nine months, and is willing to sell himself for food, clothing and lodging. If no purchaser is forthcoming he will be knocked down by auction to the highest bidder. . . . Before the American panic the man had been earning £5 weekly in a machinery shop, but since then, despite applications at over 200 machine shops, which advertised for men, he has failed to secure a job.

From the Socialist Standard, March, 1909.

War Lord—The Rise of Jingo Herbert (1959)

Book Review from the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kitchener, Portrait of an Imperialist by Philip Magnus

“Your Country Needs You,” says the caption; and the Field-Marshal, with his heavily-braided cap and enormous moustache points and stares straight at You. This, the most famous of all recruiting-posters, has served to keep the memory of Lord Kitchener alive when other famous Generals and War-leaders have been long forgotten. The poster has become an object of amusement such expressions of patriotic sentiment being too crude and old-fashioned to serve the purposes of propaganda today. Nationalism and patriotism are still strong, but the propaganda necessary for their maintenance has become more sophisticated.

Kitchener was the idol of millions. The myth of his military prowess was carefully fostered by the Press, particularly the Tory Press. He was the embodiment of mistaken ideas and ideals about British Capitalism that became common among workers during the thirty years preceding 1914. and still have tremendous force today, though in different outward forms. For this reason Kitchener’s life and times are still of interest. He has attracted the attention of an able biographer in Philip Magnus, whose Kitchener, Portrait of an Imperialist, is an interesting and generally very readable account of one of Britain’s most influential leaders. Mr. Magnus does not attempt to glorify Kitchener—the gap between myth and actuality as presented in the book amounts almost to debunking. He does not write from any particular political viewpoint, though in an occasional purple passage he pays his respects to the Gun-boat politics and politicians of the 19th century. He puts Kitchener’s battles in their proper military perspective—and thereby robs his subject of much of the glory. The sources of information are excellent : the papers of the Salisbury family, who have been for long prominent in Tory politics, have been extensively drawn upon.

Kitchener was born in 1850, the son of a professional soldier who had the misfortune never to see active service; a mistake that Herbert Kitchener was to strenuously avoid. Being commissioned in the Engineers, he did not for long restrict himself to the dull tasks of surveying and land registration. He displayed considerable zeal and took good care to see that his efforts were brought to the notice of prominent politicians and military leaders at home. His energy and enthusiasm, together with his growing prestige among Tory politicians, led to quick promotion. He became the driving force behind the re-organisation of the Egyptian Army. He occupied increasingly important positions in Egypt, becoming Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Egypt was a British sphere of influence; in fact, if not in name, a British possession. Kitchener’s dreams of military glory were at last realised in 1898, when the British Government decided to reconquer the Sudan. The Mahdists were decisively beaten at Omdurman. Kitchener led an efficient well-armed force (there were Maxim-guns, artillery and gun-boats in the Anglo-Egyptian force) against poorly-armed poorly-trained Dervishes. The victory was certainly well-organised, even to the counting of the slain enemy. Kitchener showed his characteristic care for economy by cutting the medical services to the bone.

During the Boer War, first as second-in-command to Lord Roberts and later as Commander-in-Chief, Kitchener showed serious limitations that later, during the 1914-18 war, were to make him a nuisance to the British Government. In spite of his errors at the battle of Paardeberg his popularity in England increased. He had interesting techniques for dealing with recalcitrant populations; many of the inmates of his concentration camps in South Africa died because of insanitary conditions and lack of proper medical attention.

After the Boer war he went to India where, according to Magnus, he spent his time quarrelling with the Viceroy, Curzon, over the control of the Indian Army.

Kitchener meanwhile had become a man of wealth and property. He owned a large house and estate in Kent; he obtained considerable financial rewards for his services to the furthering of British Imperialism. He became joint owner with three of his friends of considerable land in Kenya. There was a law against non-residents holding land there, but the authorities obligingly modified the rules for Kitchener’s benefit.

The 1914-18 war provided Kitchener with his greatest opportunity to serve the British Ruling Class. He was appointed Secretary of State for War, with a seat in the Cabinet. In 1916 he was on his way to Russia to investigate the military situation there when the cruiser “Hampshire” in which he was travelling, struck a mine and sank. His death must have come as a relief to his fellow-members of the Cabinet; for by then he had outlived his practical usefulness and had remained in office only because of his tremendous popularity, which made him invaluable for recruiting new armies.

“Send a Gun-Boat”

Kitchener’s times can provide all the explanation that is needed of his popularity and influence. He was born into an age thirsting for Glory. A large section of the ruling-class saw the British Empire not merely as a string of outposts and a market for British goods, but as the possible basis of their own future prosperity; as sources of raw materials and unlimited land for development.

The Education Acts of the 19th century had caused a big rise in literacy among workers. The 1890’s saw the rise of the popular press. All the conditions were there for myth-making; Imperialist aims, the Press, and a large mass of people leading drab lives who needed dreams to make their lives more palatable. England, according to the Imperialists, was to be the centre of a world-wide prosperous Empire, despotically, but benevolently administered, Kitchener grew up in this atmosphere of “showing the flag,” when an affront to a British Citizen could lead to the despatch of a gun-boat. He was not slow to find a place in the schemes of Tory politicians. Kitchener was their wonder-soldier; of impressive appearance, his very coldness and aloofness were an advantage in building up the myth of his invincibility. The cold, distant figure can be more easily endowed with wonderful, mysterious qualities than can the ordinary human being. He became the embodiment of Patriotism, the God-like soldier ordering with a benevolent iron hand how the fuzzle-wuzzies shall live and work. Kitchener played an important part in rousing workers' enthusiasm for Capitalism. The Jingoism of these days, crude as it is, is not dead even today, as the response to the Suez crisis showed.

Ironically. Kitchener achieved his greatest popularity and power just as the opportunities for his type of Empire-building were beginning to disappear. The days of the conquest of vast territories by small forces armed with rifle, Maxim-gun, and a few pieces of light artillery, were drawing to a close. The backward areas of the world had been cut up; Africa had been parcelled out among the European powers with Britain taking the lion’s share. New conquests could only be made at the expense of other Capitalist powers.

The outbreak of war in 1914 placed Kitchener in a situation that was completely foreign to his training and experience. The days of small-scale war in Europe were over. War became a messy, chaotic business where squares, columns, cavalry attacks and the type of technical preparation necessary to send gun-boats up the Nile were to be out of place. No one man could hope to take complete control of a battle, as Kitchener had done in the Sudan, for the battle-front was hundreds of miles long. The first world-war was a tremendous clash of large industrial powers; Kitchener as an organiser of this large-scale war was ineffectual; the organisation of millions of men and. mountains of munitions was beyond him. He was gradually stripped of his power, Lloyd George taking over in 1915 the organisiition of supplies by being appointed head of the newly-created Ministry of Munitions. Kitchener still had an important part to play, however, a part that kept him in office until' his death. He was to give the Jingoism of the British Workers its greatest expression. He led an appeal to patriotic sentiment that created an enormous army on a voluntary basis. This appeal was Kitchener’s last and greatest service to British Capitalism. “Jingo” was to become a dirty word, but much too late to be of any help to the workers. Such was the importance of this appeal that little outspoken criticism was voiced in public until after his death.

Kitchener’s poster provokes a smile today, but the humour evaporates quickly when the appalling results of supporting national Capitalist groups is considered. Millions died and millions more were disabled in a war fought over profits, markets and sources of raw materials. No working-class interests were at stake; far from the post-war period bringing "a world fit for heroes.” 1921 brought slump and unemployment, even to the victors. The boast of 1918, “this is a war to end wars” proved empty. Within a few years Europe was preparing for another great conflict.

Even Kitchener’s dream of Empire came to little. Forty years after his death Nasser had succeeded in throwing Britain out of Egypt and had nationalized the Suez canal. All the conniving of French. British and Israeli politicans could not put the glorious dream together again. Egypt and the Sudan have gone, with Egyptian and Sudanese politicians bidding for the support of the new Dollar-Rouble Imperialisms.

The Myth

Capitalism needs myths to keep it alive. They are an important part of the ideology which provides the justifications for men’s actions. Mincing another human being with machine-gun fire is unthinkable to most people without the ennoblement of the Myth. Kitchener helped to provide a cloak of dignity for what calmly considered can only be called inhuman, murderous action.

The futility of the fighting on the western front, the advances measured in yards with casualties measured in thousands, were to discredit Jingoism. It was to be replaced in future conflicts by an appeal that was more subtle and which was accompanied by universal conscription, just to make sure.

The myth built around Kitchener was replaced by other myths with a rather different appeal, though none of them, not even Winston Churchill, had the power of the cold, sadistic Victor of Omdurman.

Capitalism elevated Kitchener, a harsh, inhuman man, to high rank, enormous fame and considerable fortune. He was to outlive his practical usefulness because of changes in methods of warfare to which he was incapable of adapting himself. He showed little real awareness of the enormous problems of organisation confronting the British Government in 1914.

The myth outlived Kitchener—it came to its end in the hideous, futile battles of the Somme and Passchendale—drowned in rivers of working-class blood.

F. R. Ivimey

Room At The Top (1959)

Film Review from the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Room at the Top, directed by Jack Clayton

Those who doubt that contemporary society fails to satisfy the needs of the majority of people should look at the ways in which so many cherish remote hopes of escaping from their position in it. It is natural to want to break away from wage slavery. The chances are slim, but the likelihood that one’s subject position in the present order of things will continue without respite until one’s dying day, is a dismal contemplation. How many dreams, we wonder, are sealed down with the football coupon?

The new film Room at the Top, which is based on the best-selling novel by John Braine, portrays a young man who is fed up with the compromise and blows to his self-respect imposed in holding his Town Hall clerkship. Determined to get out of the rut of the grim northern industrial town he was born into, he goes to settle on the fringe of a world of big houses, spacious gardens, expensive cars. Once there, he pursues his aim of making the right social contacts in order to gain the highest rung of the ladder of success.

Lucky Break Story

“The Top” for him is really that no-man’s land where higher paid members of the working class mingle with the smaller industrialists and the like. But fortunately for our social climber, the daughter of one of the bigger fish is a member of the local dramatic society and this gives him his chance to break in.

This is another cherished notion for those who find it unpleasant to face dreary reality. Known as the "lucky break,” here it takes the form of marrying the boss’s daughter. Stories in popular magazines rely heavily on these situations, but some of today’s best-selling novels, widely acclaimed by the critics, fall back on them, too. The trend in this field is for boys of the working class, who have achieved grammar school education, to be recognised by employers as superior to the pampered products of their own class. Acceptance and promotion to executive positions soon follow and the boy moves up in the social scale.

The storm of praise that greeted Room at the Top when it was published in 1957 revealed the critics agreeing that this was the stuff of which contemporary dreams are made.

Signs of Success

The ambition to “get on” and achieve a higher status in life helps to give stories such as these their wide popularity. It is recognised that only money can bring this status in such an acquisitive world as we live in. The desire for recognition in this sense is reflected in the outward signs necessary to prove to the world and oneself that you are a success. The competitive nature of the Capitalist way of life breeds the feelings of insecurity and isolation that make people strive for this kind of success.

The process is endless. The same forces that make a £10-a-week person believe that he can only be contented on £15, will still make him, once he gets it. dissatisfied on less than £20. Not to mention the sacrifices that might have to be made in order to get it. This does not mean that we should not aim to get as much from Capitalism as we can. It does mean that this approach to the satisfying of human needs is a limited one. It cannot solve the predicament with which human beings are faced in Capitalist society.

Better Human Beings

For the fact is that the working class cannot opt out of the ill effects of Capitalism without deciding to get rid of it. Reformers in spite of good intentions and with the best will in the world and the support of electors, have made plain the futility of trying to obtain beneficial results from a system that is basically harmful. Success for a few at the expense of failure for most is all that this profit-motivated system can offer. In the long run the solution for the individual is the solution for mankind as a whole: to organise the world in accord with the needs of humanity.

What are these needs? To live in harmony and peace in a world where the interest of the individual is aligned to that of society as a whole. Socialists realise that only with a foundation of common ownership can society create the conditions for the betterment of human beings.

Anyone can sympathise with those like the character in the film who want to get away from the squalor of their childhood days. But if they do, let them remember that the system which causes their and other people’s problems will still be there. The economic structure that leads to slumps and wars and sets man against man in the struggle, not only to get to the top, but to avoid being shoved to the bottom, is unaltered. The competition for more things, higher status, greater power, will remain with its ill effects.

A positive alternative

Dreams of success today have their counterparts in the nightmares of failure. The evidence of mental ill- health indicates the high number of people unable to cope with modern modern life. The inability or reluctance to face the facts of life in a class-divided, money-collecting system indicates the failure of the social organisation. Let us see it for what it is and consider the positive alternative that Socialism offers.

It is obvious that room at the top is strictly limited. For the majority of people the lower portion of the social pyramid is where they must remain until society is changed. The important thing for workers is to recognise the need for such a change. To work for that end is the most worthwhile task of our time.

S. D.

The Long and Short and the Tall (1959)

Theatre Review from the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

As might be guessed, "The Long and the Short and the Tall" is a play about men at war, written by Willis Hall and presented by the Royal Court Theatre. It is not a great play; it is not great drama or even great entertainment but as the characters come to life' as the action of the play unfolds itself, it highlights some interesting and important points.

A British Army patrol takes a Japanese prisoner in an area forward of the main fighting line in the Malayan jungle. At the end of the play, the patrol itself is encircled and trapped by the Japanese troops.

The play reminds us of the vicious anti-Jap propaganda of the war years when soldiers were taught to expect in their enemies a kind of sub-human order of life. Japs were alleged to be little yellow people with slanted eyes that denoted the worst kind of calculated slyness. Their protruding teeth eventually became animal-like fangs, and they were all obsessed with the plan to exert a malignant perverse cruelty on humanity at large. The Japs, it was said, just because a hatred of democracy was inherent in their national character, had decided to enslave and torture the peoples of the earth. Unless they were thwarted, a future was postulated where the entire earth would be in the grip of "things" beside whom Dracula and Frankenstein would pale into friendly, amenable good chaps. Thereby war and retaliation became not only justified but crucial to the survival of Western society and its democratic institutions. This was a bitter lie.

The soldiers had been sent to Burma and had begun fighting in an atmosphere of deliberately contrived hate, How strange, then, how completely taken by surprise were they when the first prisoner they took appeared to be "almost human." He was actually frightened: he seemed to expect his death because no doubt he had heard and believed the Japanese propaganda about "British monsters."

But the prisoner was not immediately killed and the few hours that followed allowed a pathetic fragment of a personal friendship to develop between him and his captors, and as it developed, the greater became the lie of war propaganda as compared with their personal experience. "He's human," his captors reiterate, as the Japanese soldier smokes a cigarette and produces photographs of his wife and children. "He's a family man. He's one of us."

The contradictions pile up. The biggest collection of loot is held by the blue-eyed boy from the Church Army who doesn't like to swear and curse. "We're fighting for the democratic British way of life," says one cynical squaddie, "but there's no democracy in the Army."

For a moment they lapse into confused disillusion.

"It's bloody murder."
"Of course it is—that's my job."
"I just take orders."
"We're all mugs."
"We don't know why we're here or what its all made of."
"You think too much."

The tragedy was that they didn't think enough.

The complete ignorance and lack of any coherent idea about the cause of war adds further tragedy to their desperate position. On stage the characters mill about violently involved in a situation they don;t understand.

The play makes ridiculous the bogey's placed in people's minds by the mass propaganda agencies about the enemy during war and times of preparation for war, and though it's 1959 when the play is presented and not 1939 when it had a more critical social relevance, one can welcome the way its central theme cuts through the nationalist fervour that usually surrounds war and spotlights war as a human tragedy.

Though the play is an expression of indignation that war should ever happen, its contribution to the understanding of war as a social problem is deficient and superficial.

For a real analysis, we must move beyond the narrow language of this play and begin to use the higher abstractions of political discussion.

The views about war expressed in the play are crude and shallow and yet in real life are often repeated in seriousness.

"Bints!" "Men will always fight," etc.

So we must ever fear that whilst such ignorance prevails violence and military strength will remain the arbiter in the settlement of international disputes and the world's workers will yet make fodder for the atomic cannon.

Pieter Lawrence