News in Review: Hurrah for the NCB (1962)

The News in Review column from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hurrah for the NCB

Who was it who once prayed to be protected from his friends?

When he was plain Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, Lord Chandos was a prominent member of the Conservative opposition which duelled with the Attlee government over its nationalisation bills. They fought in the House of Commons all day and. sometimes, all night as well. So effective was their propaganda that to many voters nationalisation became a very-dirty word.

But what is Lord Chandos saying about nationalisation now that he is a big industrial boss, chief of the mighty Associated Electrical Industries combine and of the Institute of Directors?

“Nationalisation of a fairly substantial sector of industry has come to stay. Whatever I may have thought in the first place about the wisdom of this policy, it is quite clear that every loyal citizen must try to make our nationalised industries work efficiently … As an industrialist I want cheap fuel and reliable supplies and I believe that with a little more working together that is what you [Lord Robens, chairman of the National Coal Board] will secure for us.”

Lord Robens need not feel embarrassed at this new friendship. Nationalisation was designed to give just what Lord Chandos wants — cheap and reliable supplies of vital commodities.

The only pity now is that Lord Chandos did not tell us this some years ago, when he was spreading the fairy tale that nationalisation had something to do with Socialism.

New Hospitals

One of the things which have missed out on the post war boom is the hospital. Over a fifth of those taken over by the National Health Service in 1948 were built before the American Civil War. Nearly half of them were built before the beginning of this century.

What has been done to put this to rights? Since the last war only one large general hospital has gone up—in Northern Ireland.

To the reformers who have been worried about this, the recent government White Paper must have come as a ray of hope. For plans are being laid to spend nearly £800 million during the next ten years to give us, in the words of the White Paper.” . . . the physical equipment and the pattern and the setting which will everywhere place the most modern treatment at the service of patients.”

This sounds fine. Who can disapprove of bigger and better hospitals? But we have heard this sort of promise before.

We heard it about the roads and the railways and about the Health Service itself. For Capitalism is full of problems which are left to fester until a government decides to tackle them with heavy expenditure.

Many of these grandiose plans have been axed out of recognition in successive economic crises, when, the government has been looking for ways of reducing its expenditure.

There will be more economic crises. Which means that there will be more cuts in expenditure. Which means that Health Minister Powell’s beautiful hospitals may never see the light of day.

Expensive Royalty

Many tongues were clucked at the news that the Royal Family is to have some more money spent on them.

It must cost around £400 a year in fees alone to send the Prince of Wales to Gordonstoun School. The fees, says the school, vary with the parents’ financial circumstances; which does not mean, of course, that the school is full of clever, deserving boys whose parents pay no fees because they cannot afford them.

It will cost about £85,000 to renovate the wing of Kensington Palace where Princess Margaret and her husband are living—£15,000 more than the original estimate.

Some critics say that Prince Charles should be sent to a comprehensive school, like a sizeable part of his subjects. Others think that the Princess should be content to live in a council semi-detached, which to them seems roomy enough for a couple with only one child.

These views are way off the mark. The Royal Family stand for the possessions, rights and privileges of the British ruling class. It is, therefore, only appropriate that they themselves should live in lavish privilege.

And nobody has yet explained how sending a prince to a council school, or sticking a princess in a small house, would help the working class parents who struggle to keep their children at school past the age of fifteen and who have to renovate their house during their summer holiday.

These problems are typical of what faces workers all over the world, under monarchies and in republics.

While the tongue-cluckers do their measly, pointless sums, Capitalism grinds merrily on, providing a fat living for a few of its people and condemning the rest to dull poverty.

Tory Unrest

The Government took on a slight list last month, under the blast of criticism from many quarters.

The strikes of railwaymen and engineers encouraged The Guardian to sigh that, although they reproved the strikers, industrial unrest was the inevitable result of the Government’s policy on wages. Other critics thought that the trouble was caused because the Government had not explained the pay pause properly to the workers.

Some standard bearers for free enterprise were disappointed at the Government’s refusal to interfere with the free enterprise take-over bid from ICI for Courtaulds. Labour had a go on Lord Home’s criticism of UNO. To cap it all Tory M.P. Sir Harry Legge-Bourke suggested that fellow Old Etonian Macmillan is getting past it and should hand over to a younger man.

It would be interesting to hear how a government could explain a wage freeze so that the frozen workers accepted it. Workers sell their energies to their employers, which means that they are bound to resist any effort to keep down the price of those energies, whatever tricky name it goes under.

Such problems are typical of the confusion of Capitalism and are bound to cause unrest as the Government—any government—grapples with them. Critics and rebels may flex their muscles impressively, but when it is their turn to do the grappling they never shape any better than the men they have criticised.

The fact is that the individuals who say they are in charge of the affairs of British Capitalism really have little control over events. And that goes for their critics as well.

So it does not really matter whether or not Macmillan manages to ride this latest storm. We shall still all be in the same boat together.

All mad together (1962)

From the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the television screens they are smooth and assured. They smile with confident, frank eyes; if occasionally they show emotion they never lose their dignity. For these men are the politicians, who like to think that they are in control. Or they are the planners, who dream that organisation will solve everything.

The impression they like to make is that, although it is always so much better to have them in charge, Capitalism is anyway a sane and ordered set-up in which everything works pretty well. There may be one or two little problems here and there, but generally, they think, everything works out for the best. The men at the top know what they are doing, the world turns nicely on its axis and all the madmen are in the lunatic asylums. What could be better?

What, indeed? For sure, the workers go along with this. They, too, think that Capitalism is the best social organisation we have or are likely to deserve. Whatever worries or criticisms they may have about income tax or rising rents or redundancies, the workers think the world is organised as well as it can be—and whenever they get the chance they vote that way.

Now just how much sanity is there in the world? How much, for example, for the old people who long ago perhaps were themselves bemused by the puffs in favour of Capitalism? We all know that growing old can be one of the fiercest problems of our lives, meaning that we lose our jobs and sometimes our homes and our friends. For the morbidly inclined the prospect of poverty in old age can loom over his youth like a bank of storm clouds on a summer’s day. So the old ones have been a matter for the attention of many governments, for a long time. Hardly an election passes without the contesting parties all struggling to get their protective legislative arms around the pensioners. The Tories pull out figures to show that they have done better than the Labour Party on pensions. Labour cries that the Tories don’t really care for the old dears of the working class and anyway arc a lot of skinflints. Wistfully the Liberals and others wait with their promises to do better than both Labour and Tory put together.

Anybody could be excused for assuming that the pensioners had gained some material benefit from this anxiety to do so well by them. What are the facts? Early this year Codicote Press published a book on the subject—The Economic Circumstances of Old People, by Dorothy Cole and John Utting. Did the authors find the subjects of their inquiry living in prosperous ease? They did not. Were they doing alright then, contented, getting by? Wrong again. They estimated, in fact, that nearly two and a half million old people are living close to the state which the national assistance standards regard as poverty.

These standards are based on cold figures of cost of living indexes and so on, but we can guess what living on the poverty line means for a pensioner. It means a cold room in the winter. It means dining off dry bread and an Oxo cube in hot water. It means broken shoes and tattered clothes. These people live like this only because they are too old to tap out the profits for an employer. Their destitution defies the tinkering of the planners and the politicians. In terms of sanity and human welfare it is a scandal.

Young workers also get a taste of what Capitalist sanity and order means. At the end of this month the Government are expected to announce that the pay pause is at an end and that it will be succeeded by some other attempt at holding down wages, under a different snappy name. Ever since the end of the last war, when it became apparent that workers were strongly placed to press for higher pay, governments have been scheming and appealing to keep wages in check. Sometimes they have done this openly, as in Cripps’ freeze and Selwyn Lloyd’s pause. Sometimes they have done it in a roundabout way—by the 1949 devaluation of the pound, for example. So far they have not openly defied the big trade unions and forced a show down battle with them; perhaps that is in the future. But whatever method they have used, the theme has been constant—wages must be pegged down.

Yet who can be blamed for wanting more pay? Perhaps some workers believed the wartime propaganda which was intended to convince them that victory over Germany and Japan would bring, among other things, prosperity for them. Perhaps some of them think that as the post war productivity drive has succeeded to the point of destroying many of the world’s sellers’ markets, they can now start cashing in on the promises made to them when the Government only wanted them to work harder.

To workers, prosperity usually means sky high wages. But no sooner do they try to get them than the government intervenes, shaking its head and telling them that their wages are too high, that they are too prosperous. This must surprise shop assistants and farm workers and railwaymen and many others who earn hardly enough to keep themselves ticking over. It might interest and amuse other workers. For there is very little that is sane and organised about government wages policy. It is like a great game of snakes and ladders in which, for the wage-earners, there are too many snakes for comfort.

Then there is the curious case of British Railways. One of the theories behind nationalisation was that organisations like the railways could be run in the interests of the Capitalist class as a whole only it they were State controlled. Lord Chandos, as we point out elsewhere in this issue, has given the industrialists’ views on nationalisation. They want cheap and plentiful supplies and services, even if a nationalised concern must be run at a loss to supply them. But there has recently been considerable restlessness at the big deficits which the railways in this country have run up. Now there is a demand, pioneered by papers like The Economist, that British Railways ceases to operate as a service to Capitalism generally, cuts almost everything, but its profitable services and then picks the bones out of the rest. (Nobody has yet suggested that the Government suspend the interest commitments of British Transport Commission, which last year turned a working loss of £55 million into a deficit of £100 million).

Let us make it clear that, although its unprofitable railways may be a sore point to the Capitalists, no worker need worry whether his employer is doing well or not. But it is pertinent to consider the dilemma of Capitalism’s experts and planners. What sort of nationalised railways do they want? Do they even know what they want? And if they do know, can they get it?

This sort of disorder is not confined to Capitalism in England. Across the Atlantic, President Kennedy has let himself be seen sipping a glass of milk and has declared that in future no meal at the White House will be without it. Milk, he said, is delicious, nutritious and not at all radioactive. The reason for this publicity campaign is plain to see. Both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations have subsidised milk production and have supported the prices of milk products like butter and cheese. This has encouraged the American farmer to produce vast quantities of milk at the same time as consumption has fallen drastically. This has created a—dread word—surplus of milk which the President is doing his best to reduce by persuading people to drink as much of it as possible.

This all sounds fairly reasonable until we remember that milk is a food that can keep children alive and well—and that while the United States government is trying to pour the stall down unwilling American throats there are 650 million hungry children in the world who could put it to better use. Of course, Washington has its own reasons for not sending the milk where it is needed; they talk about budgets and farm prices and taxpayers. What it amounts to is that, even in cases of human survival, Capitalism often cannot deliver the goods where they are needed. Which does not make Capitalism seem a very sensible way of running things.

In fact, wherever we turn there is evidence which makes Capitalism seem the silliest of systems. That is why its politicians—the men who must run, defend and justify Capitalism—sometimes say the silliest things. Yet Capitalism has an inner sanity. Man started the thing off in his attempts to deal with the problems which were worrying him about a couple of hundred years ago. But we should not let it rest there. We still have problems to worry us. And we still have a way of solving them.

Ivan

Finance and Industry: How many millionaires (1962)

The Finance and Industry column from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

How many millionaires

When the Inland Revenue Report for the year 1960-61 was published in January it showed that while in the previous year there had been 66 individuals with incomes above £100,000 a year, the number has now dropped to 60. The Evening News called it “Britain’s Vanishing Millionaires.”

It is not the Inland Revenue officials who are responsible for calling these people millionaires, but the newspapers nave long worked on the assumption that when a man’s income, before payment of tax, gets above the £100,000 mark (roughly £2,000 a week) his property of all kinds is probably above £1,000,000.

The number has varied a great deal. In 1938 it was 99. Then it dropped more or less steadily till it touched 38 in 1949 and 37 in 1952. Then it started rising again and reached 67 in 1958 before declining to 66 and now to 60.

In this century the peak seems to have been reached in 1921 when they numbered 208. As taxation is much higher and the purchasing power of each pound is much less than it was then, the very rich must find that things aren’t what they used to be. Even so, taking the official figures for 1958-9, the 2,700 people who had incomes over £20,000 had an average income of about £34,400 before paying tax and were left with an average of about £5,550 after paying tax —about £100 a week.

But Mr. Bernard Harris, city editor of the Sunday Express (5/11/62) gave it as his view that the number of people in the millionaire class as regards ownership of property far exceeds the number with incomes above £100,000 a year. His explanation is that in order avoid high death duties most of the very rich take steps in time to hand over the bulk of their property to their heirs.

“. . . for every one who died a millionaire there were probably 10 who divested themselves of part of their wealth in order to lose that distinction and qualify for smaller death duties. So it is a pretty safe conjecture that the number of millionaires and tax-conscious ex-millionaires ill Britain today is well over a thousand.”

As an example of this business of transferring property to escape heavy death duties the Daily Express (8/2/62) had the following:

“The Earl of St. Germans, 48, who has had a remarkable success with a London bookmaking firm called Nicholas Eliot, is to make over all his family estates, worth around £1,000,000, to his 21 year old son and heir Lord Eliot.”

The estates to be transferred include 6,000 acres in Cornwall, but not the turf accounting business.

A nice job

In the House of Commons on January 30 the Assistant Postmaster General, Miss Mervin Pike, was asked what is the weekly wage of Post Office men, Cleaners, Doorkeepers and Liftmen. She replied: “£8 16s. a week. The rates in outer and inner London are greater by 10s. to £1 respectively. This is the same as is paid to non-industrial male cleaners in the Civil Service generally.”

“. . . Asked if this wage is not ridiculously low” Miss Pike,, who clearly lacked the inclination to attempt lo justify it, took refuge in the argument that inquiry had shown Post Office cleaners to be getting more than is paid in industry generally.

These cleaners and others are among the Post Office workers whose claim for higher pay the Government rejected last year.

Accidents

This century has witnessed a great increase in the number of industrial accidents, that is to say, in the number of accidents that have to be reported and become recorded in official publications. But what of those that do not have to be reported?

The reportable accidents are those which are fatal or which disable the worker for more than three days from earning full wages for the work at which he is employed.

Within this definition the Ministry of Labour reported 217 deaths and 16,934 accidents in the building trades in the year 1960 (Labour Gazette, April, 1961).

But, according to a building trade employer, Mr. Peter Trench, the total number of accidents is enormously greater.

Writing in the Financial Times Building and Contracting Supplement recently, Mr. Trench, who is Director of the National Federation of Building Trades Employers, estimates that for every reported accident there are 30 or 40 that do not have to be reported. And he puts the total number of accidents in the building trades at 500,000 a year or nearly 10,000 a week.

He records that accidents have been increasing in spite of propaganda designed to lessen the number. He gave his opinion as to the reason:

“Despite all the publicity and propaganda there are still far too many building firms in which little or no direct responsibility is accepted for seeing that accidents are prevented from happening; and there are still two many operatives adopting the metaphorically fatal attitude of ‘couldn’t care less’ which all too often becomes fatal in reality.”

He records the opinion of others that one of the causes is the greater size and complexity of modern buildings.

The New Men in Russian Industry

The emergence of a new social group is not necessarily dramatic or even at first obvious, but there are clear signs that new men are entering on to the political stage in Russia. In an article “New Pressures are growing up in Russia,” the Soviet Correspondent of the Financial Times recently noted that among the people who backed and to some extent forced Kruschev’s denunciation of Stalinist Terror at last year’s Party Congress in Moscow are “the younger professional managers.”

“These Party Professionals have as their principal job, the supervision of the running of the economy in their respective areas of the country. Like other young educated people in the Soviet Union, they enjoy a good standard of living, and are in a position to know that the country’s economic position can be improved much further still if sensible policies are assured. An obvious prerequisite of stable life for everyone is that there should be no repetition of the police rule, with arbitrary arrests and executions of Stalin’s time.”

David Floyd, in the Sunday Telegraph (26/11/61), expressing a similar view, quoted from a recent book on the history of the Russian Security Services, by Boris Lewytzkyj:

“The worker or technician responsible with the aid of the most up-to-date machinery for the whole industrial process, cannot carry out his duties properly unless he has considerable freedom of decision. No scientist can make progress with his terribly difficult intellectual work if he is constantly aware that the failure of an experiment may be labelled as an act of sabotage by some primitive policeman.

The ‘historical role’ of the terror in the Soviet Union is finished. At the present time the Soviet leaders could achieve nothing by terror, at the best they could destroy the foundations of their own power.”

The Manager’s Life

On the same subject, interesting details about the life of a factory manager were given some time ago in articles written by a Russian factory manager and his English-born wife who recently left Russia.

He and his wife had no complaint about their financial position in Russia, though the husband, Ignat Ovsyannikov, did remark that sometimes a skilled worker in the factory might take home more pay than he did as manager.

As a manager he had

“the very comfortable living of 6,000 roubles per month, six times a Soviet working man’s wage, and as much as the salary paid to a Minister of a Soviet Republic.”

One of the features of the life of the factory manager and other people “in authority” is the way they are cut off from contact with the ordinary workers outside the factory:

“Anyone who has any authority at all in the Soviet Union is cut off from the ordinary people. it is, for example, impossible for a factory manager or party secretary to use the ordinary restaurants in his town. He would be likely to meet his employees on equal terms and that would not do. The managerial class is isolated from the rest of society. If a man is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party he will ever have a personal bodyguard to accompany him everywhere.”

Arrangements are made for the manager’s family to buy food at special stores, and to eat in closed restaurants They also have special medical services “for the upper class of Soviet society. They have their own clinics and sanatoria where they get the best of treatment. Members of the Central Committee and the Government have luxurious rest homes on the Black Sea coast.” (Sunday Telegraph, 13/7/61).

It is all remarkably like life as it is lived by the favoured few here or anywhere else in the world.

Edgar Hardcastle

Correspondence: An end to all markets (1962)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

An end to all markets

Thank you for sending me your pamphlet. You say that ‘what is required is not a trust in leaders . . . but an attitude of self reliance and a determination to understand the nature of the problems themselves’.

What is so remarkable is that you yourselves do not appear to understand the nature of the problem. We do not live in a system of society which is capitalist. This may have been true in the middle ages, when the merchant adventurers, who amassed huge fortunes under the trade guild monopolies “invested” i,e, spent their wealth in fitting out fleets to trade with countries abroad. The object of capitalism is to use the means of production profitably.

There is very little indication that a profitable use has been made of capital (the means of production). If in fact its use had resulted in profit, there would have been no debt, but profit, no need for subsidies, but a prosperous industry, no idle resources and no vast quantities of unsold wealth. Lord Glanesk is reported to have said that his firm, in tendering for the construction of a new liner for the Atlantic service, had no hope of earning a profit, but were merely concerned with keeping their men in employment. Mr. Campbell, the largest wheat producer in the U.S. admitted that he had three thousand million dollars worth of unsaleable wheat on his hands. It is obvious that the so-called ‘capitalists’ are only the nominal owners of the land and factories which they are alleged to own, but which in fact are pledged as security for loans, overdrafts and the issue of securities to banks, insurance offices and investment trusts.

You say that the aim of the S.P.G.B. is to replace this system by one in which the ownership would be vested in the community. It is inconceivable to me that anyone could believe that the community could own anything. All that happens is that they are permitted to use the means of production and exchange at the discretion of Government officials who, experience has shown, are more tyrannical, more dilatory and less efficient than anyone else. Of all monopolies, a monopoly vested in the government is more onerous to the community and more difficult to get rid of.

You propose to ‘bring to an end the present competition for markets’. But competition is the only safeguard for the consumer. A market in a commodity is formed by people wanting something and having the money to buy it. If the consumer has no choice, but is forced to have whatever the monopoly produces, the market is restricted: the consumer does not get what he wants, but what he has to put up with.

If under Socialism goods are produced ‘solely for the use of mankind’, how are yon to know what sort of things the public have a use for. You only know what people want after they have bought it. People don’t want what a government official thinks are of use to them, they like many useless things as well as necessities. You say that all persons would have ‘free access’ to the things they needed; but if all that people had to do was to walk into a shop and ask for what they wanted in order to get it, there would soon be long queues outside the shops and nobody in the factories.

Under Socialism, you say, ‘all forms of profit would disappear’.

But it is perfectly legitimate for the worker to profit from his work. The difference between the worker and his employer is that the worker only has to work. The employer has to see that he works (and as nobody likes work, this entails a lot of supervision), secondly he has to provide the means (the plant, machinery and materials) and thirdly to foresee the sort of work people will want done in the future. There is all the difference in the world between profiting from work (industry) which the community wants done (because they pay for it), and profiting from usury by receiving rent and interest for the use of the means of production. Investment to a business means spending money—on wages and salaries—which if spent mean a profit. The wage or salary of the worker is just, as much profit from work, as the profit of the employer is his wage or salary.

Investment to a usurer means lending money. If he saves the money to lend, he robs the workers of an income, because only by spending money can any one earn an income. If he creates the money (as do the banks and insurance offices) he robs the worker of his profit either by inflating the currency, thus raising prices, or by charging interest which is added to the price.

To suggest that man in his present stage of development can be trusted to give of his best, and only take what he needs is totally unrelated to human experience. Man is by nature lazy, selfish, greedy and cruel. In dealing with human nature at its present stage of development it is necessary to insist that men depend for their livelihood on pleasing others. In this way. greed, laziness and selfishness can only be indulged by first gratifying the tastes and needs of others.

Leslie Wilson, 

Wallington, Surrey

Reply

We agree that the object of capitalist production is to use the means of production profitably; but Mr. Wilson does not add that this profit is reserved for the capitalists who own industry and the other means of production and distribution. Some capitalist concerns fail to make a profit, others fall into debt or are propped up by enormous government subsidies. Some, like the, shipyard which tendered for the proposed new Cunarder, may deliberately incur a loss as the cost of staying in production with the hope of making a profit later on. None of this alters the fact that we live in a capitalist society in which the object of production is profit. Some firms, after all, are highly profitable; ICI, for example, made £80 millions during 1960. It is true that no capitalist can be sure that he is always going to make a profit or even remain solvent; that is an aspect of the anarchy of capitalism. It is why some companies make a profit and others make a loss, why some ride high in a boom and others go under in a slump.

The capitalist often has to pay off overdrafts, loans and so on but this does not affect his situation as an owner of the means of production. He pays off his financial commitments from the profit which comes to him because he owns a factory, a mine or something similar.

Mr. Wilson’s remarks about government officials and state monopolies may or may not be true. Neither of these have anything to do with Socialism, in which the oppressive State organisation will not exist.

Competition may sometimes offer some slight advantages to a consumer. But it can also be wasteful; it is the reason for armies of salesmen chasing each other over the same ground and for a lot more wasted effort. And in the international field competition for markets and the like leads to war. In any case, for the working class the market is always restricted because the limits of their wages mean that they rarely get what they would really like but usually have to put up with what they can afford, be it ever so cheap and nasty.

No government official—or for that matter no market research expert—will decide what wealth will be produced under Socialism. These people are tied to commercial motives and considerations. Set free of such restrictions, society itself will know what it needs and wants and so will decide the matter itself. Queues are the result of shortage, of people being afraid that they will not get something they need and having to wait a long time for it. But Socialism will be a system not only of free access but of plenty, in which there will be no need for the queue or for any of the other symbols of capitalism’s crises of shortage.

The employer does not need to exert himself very much to see that his workers work. Apart from the fact that he employs managers and foremen to see to such things, a worker is forced to get a job because that is his only means of living. He cannot make profit from his wage because it is generally only about sufficient to reproduce him as a worker, which leaves no margin for profit. On the other hand, the employers’ profit conies from the surplus which the worker produces over the value of his wage and the other capital which has been consumed in production. The difference between this profit and the worker’s wage can be seen in the fact that the capitalist does not have to work for his profit. He only needs to have shares in a factory, railway and so on.

Some human behaviour may be as bad as Mr. Wilson thinks. Other human behaviour is heroic, sacrificial and considerate. In fact, it is widely fashioned by the conditions in which men find themselves. Socialism will offer the world peace, plenty and happiness. Men’s behaviour will reflect the fact.

Editorial Committee

Fog on the Danube (1962)

From the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

From a Comrade in Vienna

Turning over the pages of the Arbeiter Zeitung, the interested intelligent reader must surely ask himself where this so-called Socialist journal differs from other daily papers that do not pretend to stand for Socialism. There are the usual features of all the other newspapers: pages of commercial advertisements, pages of sport, programmes of all the theatres, cinemas and other entertainments, Police and Court reports on crime and the daily tragedies of misery and want, murder and detective stories, appeals for funds to help victims of natural catastrophes, to help the blind, the cripples, the orphans and all the other unfortunates dependent on alms and charity culled welfare.

Here are a few examples of the way these “Socialist” journals deal with news items that would offer good chances of driving home the Socialist case and lessons for the workers:

A report in the Arbeiter Zeitung stated that the 89 year old Lord Bertrand Russell was continuing from his prison cell his anti-bomb propaganda. The paper quoted the aged philosopher as saying in an appeal: “You, your families, your friends and your States will be exterminated by the common decisions of a few but brutal men.” These, Lord Russell named as Kennedy, Kruschev, Adenauer, de Gaulle, Macmilllan and Gaitskell. What did the Arbeiter Zeitung have to say to enlighten its readers on the merits or demerits of Russell’s action and peace propaganda? Nothing.

But should not a journal and a party calling itself Socialist enlighten the workers on this, as on all other political questions? Should it not point out that it is not individuals alone who move the world, but the forces of capital? And that the Kennedys and Adenauers, the Kruschevs and Macmillans are only the temporary managers of these forces? Should it not be made plain that if these individuals were removed tomorrow, other executives and lackeys would take their place and continue the same policy, as has repeatedly happened in the past, and is daily happening before our eyes? Was not Asquith, the British manager of world-war I, removed and promptly replaced by another, Lloyd George? Was not the Kaiser (who had been denounced as having caused the war) exiled and replaced by other individuals who carried on the old system until it produced world-war II? Did the system of Capitalism end with the end of Hitler and Mussolini, who had been accused of having caused that second war? Were not Russian and Bulgarian Czars, Rumanian and Yugoslav kings dethroned, only to be replaced by reformers and more up-to-date administrators of Capitalism like Stalin, Kruschev, Tito, etc., to uphold and continue the private ownership basis and money economy of society, albeit State-Capitalism? Does Lord Russell really believe that if Kennedy and the other present top managers of Capitalism were removed, all would be well in the world, and the nightmare of an impending third world-war lifted from men’s minds? Does he not see that the other pretended “socialist” and pacifist politicians like Nehru, Ben Gurion, Spaak, Guy Mollet, Ollenhauer, etc., are equally staunch upholders of the universal conflict-breeding system that makes war inevitable?

Competition

As long as it is possible for men to exploit other men, war will be threatening humanity. The proceeds (profits) from Capitalist exploitation must be realized by selling the products of labour in the world’s markets. This is where the conflict arises. Commercial competition is war. Even when the rivalry is carried on at the business offices and in the State chancelleries, the clash of interests—the cold war—is there all the time and is eventually transferred to the battlefields of the various continents. What is at stake is big business, the question primarily of who can pocket the profits to be made from “assisting” the underdeveloped countries! Who can get in first? Who can “help” them—in truth, who will exploit them and make the big profits? And as the exploiters mistrust and are envious of each other, one tries to oust the other from the market. For this purpose all means are considered, including atom-bombs.

About Christmas time high functionaries of the Socialist Party of Austria, like the Vice-chancellor, and top Municipal councillors, painted dreary pictures of things happening in the Austrian Welfare State. Said Dr. Pittermann, leader of the SPA:

“In the days before Christmas we heard of the shocking tragedy at St. Polten, where four children burned to death in a barrack dwelling. In the country with the highest increase of the national income, a working class family with four children has to live in a barrack, not because there are too few houses in Austria but because inhuman greed does not place these flats at the disposal of those who are in dire need of a home: they are only for those who can pay higher rents than a worker’s family with many children. In the nearly 2000 years from the stable in Bethlehem to the death in the flames of the four children in the stable at St. Polten, usury with the housing and property has not been done away with. There are tens of thousands of flats empty or only partly occupied in Vienna alone, and innocent children become victims of borderless greed.”

During the budget debate of the Vienna City Council, councillor Mrs. M. Jacobi deplored the widespread unhappiness still existing in our welfare world. She said :

“The Vienna municipality has in its homes or with foster parents 3,900 children whose parents do not care for them. The background of nearly everyone of these children is a heart-rending life-story. Recently one of the boys wrote a letter to his mother, which read: Dear-Mother, I leave school this year. I should like to come to you, otherwise I shall have to stay at the home. If your new husband objects, please write to me.

A few days later the letter was returned. On the back it said, without salutation or signature: Sorry cannot take you; must stay at the home. My husband does not want you. Don’t write any more, it is no use. You are grown up, go to work! Do not think of coming to me. Please do not come, otherwise my husband throws me out . . .”

During the same debate, the Vice-Mayor Mandl also deplored the “cultural crisis” and said that:

“despite all the achievements of the welfare state there are alarming signs of decay, of a sick society. In Austria 1,630 persons committed suicide in 1960. 11,500 persons intending to take their lives were taken care of by one welfare centre alone. In another department 15,000 addicts to alcohol applied for treatment and the numbers of alcoholics, of alcoholic intoxicated and juvenile criminality and neglect are rising.

The place of the physical and material misery has been taken by the psychical and cultural misery. The invasion of the mass media of Press, film, radio and television into leisure is one of the main causes of the negative, often anti-social reactions ….”

Although the so-called Socialist journals report daily the threatening problems in all parts of the present turbulent world, they never advocate Socialism as a solution for society’s troubles and problems. Whether the scene of the turmoil is in Goa or Angola, in Algiers, Kuwait or in the Congo, in New Guinea or in other divided countries like India, Pakistan, Germany, or divided cities like Kashmir, Jerusalem or Berlin, the “experts” of the Arbeiter Zeitung will deal lengthily with these insoluble problems, claims, threats and demands: they will refute or support the “rights” or “wrongs” of this or that predatory clique, take sides for one or the other band of thieves, and so confuse the workers and entangle them in things that are no concern of theirs bill only of their masters.

However well they may know that drastic evils call for drastic remedies, however glaringly evident it is—often on their own showing—that the Capitalist system is responsible for the evils and sufferings of the workers, their leaders will not draw the attention of the people and will not have them concentrate their thoughts on the need for the removal of the cause of all the trouble. One does not expect the Conservative politicians to preach revolutionary change as the only wav to remove the social ills and incongruities, but parties and journals calling themselves Socialist or Communist and not advocating consistently the revolutionary doctrine and principles, stand identified with the enemies of the working class.

Rudolf Frank

50 Years Ago: Rates and taxes (1962)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Rates and taxes are imposed to cover the cost of local and national government. The employing class — the possessors of property — in order to maintain their existence as a ruling class, must pay the various charges incurred by employing an army, navy and police force. The ever-growing body of officials they appoint; the numerous departments they have to run to make smooth the working of capitalist commerce; the interest on their “National” Debt heaped up by the cost of past wars: all these have to be paid, and the problem ever facing our masters is—which section of the propertied class is to provide the money?

The employing, or capitalist class, though face to face with the workers they are as one, are composed of many sections, differing in their day-to-day interests. Right through the history of taxation the spectacle has been seen of one section of the propertied class trying to shift ‘the burden of taxation’ on to another class, and the question in many minds is: Can they shift it on to the working class? We answer, No! The working class do not own property. They exist alone by selling their energy (their power to labour) to the employing class, the owners of the means of production.

The employers take the whole of the wealth produced by the working class, merely giving back to the workers on an average, enough to maintain them in a condition to go on producing wealth.

This portion which is given to the workers—when their masters find it profitable to employ them—is like the fuel put into the furnace of an engine’s boiler, or the food given to the horse. It is the indispensable material without which they cannot be kept working. Clearly, then, the expense of carrying on their Government must be borne by our masters alone.

[From the article, 'Rates and Taxes. Do they fall upon the working class?' by Adolph Kohn, Socialist Standard, March 1912.]

Branch News (1962)

Party News from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another of our Central London Rallies has been arranged for Wednesday, March 21st at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, W.C.I. The title SOCIALISM OR CHAOS. Comrades H. Baldwin and M. Harris are the speakers. Doubtless as many Comrades as possible will attend this meeting and if everyone brings at least one non-member or sympathiser and tells as many people as they can about the meeting, there should be a large audience. The more people who can hear the Socialist case, the nearer we arc to Socialism. The Literature Committees will see that, there is a good supply of pamphlets and Socialist Standards so that after the spoken word the written word will be available to ensure that the case for Socialism is more readily understood.

Glasgow Branch has re-arranged their March series of lectures and titles and full details appear on page 48. They have passed the half-way mark in their series—’Problems of the Sixties’. The results show they have been successful. Thirteen different speakers have participated, three from London. Collections £31, and literature sales £8. Audiences have averaged 30, thirteen members attending regularly.

The first large indoor meeting was addressed by Comrade H. Baldwin, subject —“Demonstration for Socialism.” and the most recent large meeting was on ‘America —Land of Paradox’, Speaker, Comrade Gilmac. audience 126. Despite fogs! A social was held on Saturday, January 27th whilst Comrade Gilmac was there for the Sunday meeting. A very jolly evening was enjoyed by all.

The meetings are causing the Party to become known to an increasing number of workers. Things seem to be looking up for the Party in Glasgow and the activities of members are increasing. An article appeared in the Glasgow Herald after Comrade Gilmac’s meeting, as follows: —

“SOCIALIST PARTY TO CONTEST NORTH KELVIN. The Socialist Party of Great Britain intend to contest the North Kelvin Ward of Glasgow in the next Municipal Election, and they hope to contest, the Woodside Constituency in the Parliamentary election, an official said yesterday. The Glasgow Branch of the Party has about 40 members.”

also

“The Party must have the necessary members in the Constituency to fill in their candidate’s nomination paper. The Socialist Party enters these elections opposed to all other political parties, whether they are avowedly capitalist, or allegedly labour.”

When similar reports can be made from other towns in Great Britain, it is hoped that not only the British Isles, but many other parts of the world will have become familiar with the ideas of Socialism.

Swansea Branch now hold regular talks. Comrade Rollings recently gave an excellent talk on Crime and Society. Comrade Brain spoke on the ‘Russian Phenomenon’; and a series of talks by Party members have been arranged for the future.

At present the Branch is proceeding with arrangements for a debate with the Liberal Party in Swansea, when this is finalised it is hoped to get as much publicity as possible. Branch members still succeed in getting the Party case published in the Local Press and the Party is becoming well known in the district. A local bookshop has agreed to accept six copies of the SOCIALIST STANDARD for a trial period of three months.

Needless to say the local Labour Party and Communist Party (so called) show their customary opposition to Socialist ideas. It is hoped, when funds allow, to purchase a tape recorder so that talks can be recorded to build up a ‘tape library’ for propaganda purposes.

Phyllis Howard

Help ! (1962)

From the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The work for Socialism can never stand still.

There are meetings to be arranged, pamphlets and leaflets to be produced, the SOCIALIST STANDARD to be got out each month. This is enjoyable work for the members who are engaged in it.

But it is also sometimes difficult work.

And the biggest difficulty is caused by lack of money.

We are planning more big indoor meetings.

We are in process of turning out two new pamphlets.

We are aiming at doubling the circulation of the SOCIALIST STANDARD in the next twelve months.

All these activities are going to cost a lot of money.

So we are asking all our readers to help us by sending to our treasurer at Head Office as much as they can spare.

Day by day, capitalism itself is proving the urgency of propaganda for Socialism.

So this appeal is urgent, too.

Please help.

SPGB Meetings (1962)

Party News from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

As per usual when posting old meetings from old Standards, I don't have enough space in the label section of the blog to list all the speakers and all the branches, so I have to play favourites. My bad.

It's interesting to note that two of the meetings advertised feature speakers who were not originally from the UK. All too often during this period  - and before and after, to be frank - the SPGB were accused of simply being a British and its Commonwealth/former Empire phenomenon. Lewisham Branch featured a meeting on Tito's Yugoslavia, where the speaker was Remy Starc, who I believe was Slovenian, and Paddington Branch featured a meeting on the Italian working-class movement where the speaker was 'Beppe'. Unfortunately I don't have any further information about this speaker. That meeting would have been especially interesting to me, 'cos it was only a couple of years after Visconti's film, 'Rocco and His Brothers'.

On the subject of films, I notice that both Birth of a Nation and October are listed on the meetings page. I'm guessing this refers to the Griffin and Eisenstein's films. The film, The German Story, which was shown at the SPGB's Wembley Branch was a 1956 East German film which was banned in West Germany because of its subject matter.

Adding some background to some of the SPGB speakers featured in the March 1962 Socialist Standard, listed below are links to a number of their obituaries. Yep, grim I know:

• Aug 1995: Edgar Hardcastle (E. Hardy)
• Jun 1976: Gilbert McClatchie ('Gilmac')
• Nov 2003: Cyril May (C. May)
• Feb 1996: Harry Young (H. Young)
• Apr 1982: Tony Mulheron (T. A. Mulheron)
• Oct 2006: Joe Richmond (J. Richmond)
• Jun 2008: Robert Russell (R. Russell)

Co-partnership: Fact or Fantasy? (1962)

From the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

To be a partner, or not to be! Well might Mr. John Spedan Lewis have soliloquised if he had thought at any great length upon the economic and legal implications of the term. Especially, when it is associated with ownership of a Capitalist undertaking, in particular the business known as the John Lewis Partnership which was founded in 1914.

JLP (John Lewis Partnership) employees arc all referred to as "Partners" so it might be as well if we take a look at what exactly a partner is. There are, of course, all sorts of partners. Marriage partners, partners in crime, whist partners, dancing partners. There are partners too such as those defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary: “person(s) associated with others in business of which he shares risks and profits; . . ." That is, people who have definite tangible—legal ownership in Capitalist enterprises and in the surplus value extracted from their employees.

It is fairly obvious that most of the JLP employees do not fit into this last category. If they did, then this would apply to all Capitalist ventures and therefore, all workers would be partners!

Mr. Lewis and the present Chairman, Mr. O. B. E. Miller, would no doubt reply that the employees of the JLP are partners because they share the profits and the risks and have a variety of amenities which they would not get elsewhere. This, however, is so much nonsense; most of the amenities that the JLP has to offer are also offered—and sometimes bettered—by their competitors, who do not call their employees partners. Likewise with profit sharing. The workers in the JLP no more share the profits than do the employees of any of the various concerns who have in recent years taken up the idea known as profit sharing. Workers do not receive profits, unless they have money invested, which generally they haven't. In the few instances where they have, the amounts are so small as to be negligible and certainly would not be large enough to change them into “partners." The point is that workers sell the only thing they have to sell, their ability to work, and the wage or salary they receive is generally speaking roughly what is necessary to maintain them as the particular grade of workers they are; to maintain a family and to produce further potential wage slaves to take their place when they arc too old to work any more.

The so-called profits that the JLP workers receive are no more than part of their wage—a bonus as an incentive for harder work. From an employers view “profit-sharing" is a good gimmick. For if you can convince workers that they are getting a share of the profits, they are more likely to identify their interests with yours.. The worker who thinks in terms of “my business" is less likely to come to work late and go home early; to take a long lunch hour or stretch his coffee and tea breaks; to slack on the job; to scamp his work or to pilfer. He is the sort who is going to switch off unnecessary electric lights or machinery; make sure that stationery and other materials are not wasted; and report to the management the people who do those things. With a bunch of workers like this, any management is likely to see an increase' in its profits. This type of worker would, o! course, never dream of striking, for he would conceive it as being against his interests.

Profit is unearned income—part of surplus value—something for nothing. It is the wealth produced by workers which is unpaid and only goes to those who have money invested in stocks and shares. This hardly applies to the JLP workers. They are taken on in the same manner as other workers. They are hired and fired according to the dictates of Capitalism. If a particular branch of the JLP proves to be unprofitable, it may be sold and the employees fired, with the possible exception of a few higher executives who can be usefully transferred elsewhere. If any of the workers employed by the JLP fail to make the grade as surplus value producers, they get their cards, or as they say “their membership is terminated." When this happens, it is no good pleading that you are a partner, for the JLP is only concerned with economic facts, not fantasies.

If any of the so-called partners are caught taking some of the wealth they are supposed to own, or even suspected of doing so, they are sacked—just as they would be by any other Capitalist employer. The truth of this was recently rammed home to a few misguided employees of the JLP who apparently took the “partnership" gospel a little too literally, for according to the Guardian (11/9/61): “ During the past six months the John Lewis Partnership prosecuted eight partners for dishonesty, and all of them were convicted . . . In addition, 15 partners lost their membership for similar reasons."

Another aspect that is supposed to set the JLP apart from other Capitalist concerns is its committees and councils. These are supposed to be democratic bodies, but in fact have a large percentage of members nominated by the management, and in any case are nearly always biassed in favour of the management. This is particularly true of the General Council of the firm. However, even if they were democratically based and the JLP workers tried to use them to further their interests, it would not make a lot of difference, for none of these bodies has any real power. This is vested—as in all Capitalist concerns in the people who have the legal ownership; in this case in the Board of Directors and the Chairman. This is the body that makes the real decisions, the financial decisions, and decides whether a business shall be bought or sold, and so on.

It can thus be seen that JLP workers are, if anything, worse off than workers employed elsewhere, for in addition to the economic hazards of Capitalism, they are continually confronted with that diabolical device, the dossier.

However, the workers of the JLP are not “burdened” (if that is the expression) with the risks of the business, any more than any other employees are. If JLP went bust, the workers would obviously seek re-employment elsewhere. The risks of the business belong to the people who invest their money in the JLP as a going Capitalist concern, and who receive interest in return for such investment. This interest does not come out of thin air; it is wrung from the labour of the workers in JLP.

Although it is highly unlikely that such a successful profit-making concern as the JLP will wind up its affairs in the foreseeable future, one can be sure that if this did happen, the ex-workers would really be able to see who actually owned the company. It would be those people who had the necessary legal documents proving their ownership, not workers who happen to be called partners. Imagine applying to the Official Receiver for a share of whatever was realised when the assets were liquidated, on the strength of having been called a partner during the period of your employment!

It would do the workers in the JLP and other co-partnerships a lot of good if they were to think deeply and to ask themselves why their employers refer to them as partners and not employees. It is rather like the fox telling the chickens that they are foxes. The main reason for co-partnership is, of course, to help keep Capitalism running as smoothly as possible. The aim is to reconcile some of the system's class antagonism. For while workers accept Capitalism they will not be looking for an alternative.

JONQUIL.

Blogger's Note:

This article received a critical letter of reply from the Public Relations Department of John Lewis in the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Obituary: Ray Kellar (1962)

Obituary from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ray Kellar, an old member in years and party service, died at the age of eighty on the 27th November 1961. He was an active member from the early twenties and, in spite of several illnesses necessitating hospital treatment, he remained as active as his health permitted until the late forties. After that time his interest in the Party had to remain, of necessity, almost entirely academic. He corresponded as vigorously as he used to speak at Branch meetings and never lost that perennial optimism which is the hallmark of the Socialist.

Members of the Birmingham Branch fortunate enough to meet him during his active period remember with affection his fiery and uncompromising adherence to the hostility clause, his profound hatred of hypocrisy and, in happy contrast, his old world courtesy and his unfailing patience with those of us who, as newcomers, were struggling to master the concept of socialism.

Howard J. Grew

Editorial: Another 1926? (1962)

Editorial from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The background of industrial unrest and resentment at the Government's wages policy, highlighted by the stoppage of work by three million engineering and shipyard workers for one day on February 5th, led many newspapers to surmise that perhaps we may see a repetition of the ”general strike” of 1926, when upwards of two million workers came out in support of the miners who were on strike against a reduction of pay. The Government, under cover of a Declaration of Emergency, used troops and the courts and its control of propaganda to defeat the general strike in nine days, and the miners, though they endured semi-starvation for nine months, eventually had to go back on the employers’ terms. The propertied class had won, though it cost them £100 million.

Could it happen again? The Government possibly thought that it might and according to the Sunday Express (28/1/62) a plan to meet that eventuality was prepared last July at the time the Chancellor announced the "pay pause.” If the Government had wanted to provoke a repetition of 1926 it could probably have got it by enforcing an immediate freezing of all wages for an indefinite time some of its self-appointed advisers in the Press said that it ought to do this in the name of “logic” and “fairness.” But perhaps the outward appearance of muddle, uncertainty, vacillation and illogicality were not just stupidity but a flexible Government policy of dragging out the dispute, dividing the workers and preventing what they failed to prevent in 1926.

They bought off the teachers, then the electricity supply workers, and got the miners and railwaymen negotiating over small offers made to them—it is, of course, absurd to suppose that the Government, if it had really wanted to, could not have barred all concessions in the three nationalised industries. In January they announced the restoration of powers to the Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal. except the right to back-date awards past April 1, 1962, thus inducing the civil servants to call off their “work-to-rule”; brought the main Post Office work-to-rule to an end and left the Post Office engineers working-to-rule on their own.

Then came the White Paper, The Next Step, with its prospect of small wage increases in stage two of the wages policy. Six months respite had been gained, six months nearer to the time, they hope, when some improvement in exports will ease the position. This left the Government and the employers still facing the main threat, a possible prolonged strike in the engineering industry. But in the meantime they had induced the TUC to join the National Economic Development Council, thus further lessening the possibility of any united trade union support for an engineering strike. True, the TUC had declared that it would not endorse the Governments' pay pause, but the Sunday Pictorial (4/2/62) discloses that the TUC rejects the pause because it is considering the alternative of replacing wage increases at the present time by increased old age pensions or sick benefit, or by allocating savings bonds redeemable within three to five years. By contrast, the TUC had in 1926 been pushed by the rank-and-file into leading the general strike.

While we are on the subject of comparisons with 1926 some other aspects ought not to pass unnoticed. The railwaymen. miners and electrical workers were then demanding a “solution” of their problems by nationalisation: now they have it and are not so sure, but the engineering workers and builders still cherish the same delusion.

They were all longing for blessed relief in the next Labour Government which turned out to be the great debacle of 1929-1931. And then, as now, the economic journals carried the outpourings of the “new men” who had, they said, at long last discovered how to manage Capitalism, rid it of crises and make it function smoothly.

The more Capitalism changes, the more it is the same thing!

The Passing Show: Accidents (1962)

The Passing Show column from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Accidents

Capitalism (state or private) is and must be an inhuman system in the sense that people are thought of not as human beings but as workers—animals which, with the correct treatment, are a profitable source of work-days in factories or offices. This is so even when schemes are propounded that on the surface seem to be humanitarian, For example, there is currently an effort in the coalmines to cut down the number of accidents. That is as it should be. In 1960, for example, for each two thousand miners, one man was killed, and five seriously injured. The exact figures were 316 killed, and 1,553 badly injured (The Guardian, 9/1/62).

The National Coal Board has now offered £35,000 in prizes to accident-free pits and men during 1962. And how are the prizes to be distributed? Perhaps to the pits where no one has been killed during the year? Perhaps to the pits with the fewest accidents? No; the Coal Board has a different criterion. Pits are to be divided into three groups according to size; and “ trophies and cash will be awarded to the colliery in each of three size groups with the fewest work days lost for every 100,000 manshifts worked during the year." Then the men at the winning pits “who have not had an accident involving more than three days’ absence will take part in the draw for prizes totalling £10,000." So there it is: both for mines and miners, the question is who has lost fewest work days through accidents. To the Coal Board, as to the old private owners, the miner is simply a source of work days; and even these so-called “safety prizes” are really aimed, not against death or injury as such, but only against loss of working time.

The devil

There were a lot of easy jokes made when the Convocation of Canterbury, the ruling body of the larger of the two provinces of the Church of England, rejected a proposal to throw the devil out of the catechism—although “all his works" were excluded. And it is paradoxical that whereas the great majority of people have ceased to believe in the existence of any such being, Anglicans are among the few people who are still faithful to him. Even they have only accepted the revised catechism for seven years; at the end of that time even the religionists may give Satan up. The really significant point, though, is that any such proposal as this one, to evict the devil from the official list of beliefs, could ever gain support in a Christian Church. Belief in the devil has been one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity for nearly two thousand years. But now it seems he is on his last legs.

Perhaps his temporary reprieve is due to their consideration that, after all, God created him; it would seem hard if the Christians were to abandon him now, in his hour of need.

Society

Engineers might like to know—in case the news is not given them in their union journal—that their General Secretary, Mr. W. J. Carron, is being seen about these days in the very best society. In the top people’s paper there was news of an exclusive little gathering at Admiralty House on January 17th—a dinner given by Mr. Macmillan for the Italian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. Besides the Italians and the Prime Minister himself, there were present two earls, a baron, five sirs, an honourable, a couple of Tory M.P.S, and—Mr. Carron.

Alwyn Edgar. 

The West Indies: What Next? (1962)

Book Review from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The West Indies and their Future by Daniel Guérin (Dennis Dobson.)

This book is a serious attempt to consider the West Indies history and their future from a left wing viewpoint coloured very strongly by Negro nationalism. Now this is a change from the usual run of travel books and "histories" produced by well-meaning English writers who pass rapidly through the Caribbean on a no doubt pleasant working holiday. But the book's "left wing" angle (the words masses, plutocracy, and reactionary occur frequently) cannot excuse some basic defects.

Guérin states that he visited some of the islands in 1955, but the book was not published until 1961. There have been many constitutional and social changes in the West Indies since 1955: for instance, Guérin makes much of racial prejudice and singles out especially, the French islands and an oilfield in Trinidad. The behaviour of the white inhabitants of the French islands (known as Békés) is no doubt, even now, good for a sound beating from anyone whose ideas are not completely dominated by the doctrines of, say, the Navy League, circa 1910. Martinique and Guadeloupe are still very much French colonial possessions, and the outlook of their békés is probably no different from that of their counterparts in Algeria—small wonder that M. Guérin can enjoy himself at their expense. But to describe the behaviour of the békés as typical of social behaviour generally in the West Indies is like describing the behaviour and outlook of retired generals in Bournemouth and Cheltenham as being typical of the average British citizen. Rather, in the British islands at any rate, racial prejudice nowadays takes the form of Negro versus East Indian, or manifests itself in vague anti-white sentiments.

M. Guérin’s description of the segregation of workers in the Trinidad oilfields into whites ("with enormous material advantages") and coloured ("who must do with a minimal wage") both begs the question and is many years out of date. In the first place, the oil industry is highly technical and, until recently, the West Indies just could not provide men to fill certain skilled positions: hence the expatriates who had to be offered considerable inducements to live and work in the tropics. Secondly, oil companies, wishing to keep in with the Trinidad Government to ensure the continuation of the present, favourable, oil tax, have trained local men for senior posts with the companies. It is now common for coloured workers to occupy bungalows in the senior staff compounds and to rub shoulders with their white colleagues in the senior oilfield clubs on terms of social equality.

M. Guérin discusses some major problems of the West Indian (capitalist) economy—monoculture, the high cost of living, overpopulation, etc.—problems which have been described in greater detail if not with such “progressive" zeal by Parry and Sherlock in A Short History of the West Indies (incidentally, Parry and Sherlock's book, although written from the "establishment" angle, is an entertaining and comprehensive source of knowledge for workers interested in the West Indies).

Immigration
Of course, these problems are mainly problems for the Capitalist class. The really pressing problem facing the West Indian worker (and his fellow-workers in other parts of the world) is not overpopulation, monoculture, high cost of living, etc., but the fact that he is a member of the working class. Needless to say, solving the West Indies' worker's problem by ending his wage-slavery has never featured in the programmes of the Capitalist economists and politicians who have propounded various “solutions" to the peculiar predicament the West Indian section of the Capitalist class is in.

M. Guérin correctly pours scorn on those reformers who attempt to curb the birth-rates in the West Indian territories by programmes of birth-control. Then there is the safety-valve for the pressure of unemployment in the West Indies—emigration. West Indian governments, especially those with high levels of unemployment, have encouraged emigration to the United Kingdom: all other countries virtually prohibit West Indian immigration.

Now that the steady stream of West Indian immigrants is being curbed by United Kingdom legislation, politicians in the West Indies fulminate against the British Government for barring the door to commonwealth citizens on the grounds of their colour. These same politicians conveniently forget that coloured commonwealth citizens from, say, Grenada and St. Vincent are forbidden to enter Trinidad to live and work (so for that matter are citizens of the United Kingdom) as, for example, labourers or typists. The larger West Indian islands have strict immigration laws preventing the smaller islands shipping their unemployed to them

M. Guérin was apparently unable to study ‘the emancipation movements" in British Guiana and Cuba, a pity because an up-to-date “ left-wing” account of recent Caribbean history can hardly be considered complete without reference to Castro's regime. But recent developments in British Guiana are a good example of the wide difference between what a “left-wing" politician often says and what he does. Dr. Cheddi Jagan, the Chief Minister of British Guiana, has been long known as the leftist of left wing, and his frank admiration of Soviet Russia and Castro has been repudiated by other West Indian politicians, such as Trinidad's Dr. Eric Williams. Dr. Jagan hinted at nationalising industries in British Guiana, which alarmed business organisations with capital invested in British Guiana and potential investors. To prevent withdrawal of capital, and subsequent unemployment. Dr. Jagan was recently obliged to state that he had no intention of nationalising any industries. During 1961 Dr. Jagan went on a begging tour of the United States and Canada in search of substantial loans to bolster his country's economy and prevent the present level of unemployment getting any worse.

And what of the future? Here. M. Guérin becomes very pessimistic; one of the reasons for his pessimism is, without doubt, that most of the diverse peoples living in the West Indies have no real sense of "belonging," from a class and a purely patriotic point of view.

Go to any village in the Yorkshire dales: the people living in that village are ordinary working folk, but what is bound to strike the visitor most forcibly is the atmosphere of "belonging." The visitor will be a "foreigner" even if he has only come from Bradford, a few miles away, and the bearing, conversation, and relationships of the villagers will make it abundantly clear that they and their forebears have lived in the district for centuries; that they belong.

Not so in the West Indies. First, there is the barrier to common communication and understanding erected by the different languages spoken. Then there is the formidable barrier of the Caribbean Sea which separates and insulates the scattered islands. The Negroes, plucked from tribal life in Africa in the not-so-distant past, strive to acquire the manners, religion, and political and social institutions of their former European masters. The East Indians cling to religious and social customs based on centuries of village life in India. The Chinese, on the whole, remain aloof. British expatriates tend to look upon their West Indian existence as a period of purgatory before their return to a wealthy retirement in the mother country.

Social Classes

Colonial education programmes have ignored teaching any ideas of a “unified'' West Indies to past generations; as M. Guérin says: “. . . . in school the West Indian child is given a detailed account of the institutions and history of the faraway mother country, but his teachers refrain from talking to him about the Antilles and avoid stimulating any untoward notions of regional solidarity. It is no wonder that the feeling of Caribbean unity (similar, for example, to that which binds together Jews or Arabs, no matter where they live in the world) has been so slow to take root in the popular consciousness." It must be added that, again, M. Guérin is rather out of date as far as the British islands are concerned at any rate. Popularly elected governments have introduced history curricula in schools with a pronounced nationalist rather than colonialist bias.

Following “emancipation,” three distinct social classes emerged in West Indian society: the white aristocracy, the free person of colour, and the black ex-slave (the hewer of wood and drawer of water). Since then, although a Socialist could differentiate between workers and Capitalists (whatever their complexion), a non-Socialist West Indian has used, and continues to use, different criteria: colour of skin, shape of nose, colour of eyes, and even degree of kinkiness of hair. A Socialist would dismiss these apparent trivia as hangovers from colonial rule, but they have been part of the West Indian social consciousness since the times of slavery and are alive today. For instance in Trinidad it is considered a social advantage to marry a person with lighter skin than your own. For a person with light skin to marry someone with black skin, a negroid nose, and kinky (“bad") hair is considered a social degradation. M. Guérin quotes an English writer who accuses the Jamaican of knowing “less about the people than the English bourgeosie about its proletariat . . .  No one in the West Indies talks so glibly of the 'lazy' black as his coloured brother.”

Small wonder that sects have arisen in the West Indies, comprising people (usually of African origin and of the poorest section of the working class) whose creed is a semi-religious determination to leave the West Indies and return to some never-never land in Africa; such a sect are the bearded Rastafarians in Jamaica, who demand nothing of the island of their birth but the right to return to Africa, to the “King of Kings"—Haile Selassie.

This feeling of “non-belonging" either causes West Indian workers to opt out (as the Rastafarians do) or to form tight little racialist/nationalist groups. In neither case are they encouraging material for politicians advocating a Federation of the West Indies, or even national unity in territories like Trinidad and British Guiana, where Negro-versus-East Indian racial tensions seem to be as strong as ever. Nor, for that matter, are they likely to be sympathetic to Socialists endeavouring to inculcate ideas of the identity of interests of workers in the various territories of the West Indies with those of their fellow-workers in the rest of the world.

M. Guérin hopes for one large confederation of all the Caribbean islands and their population of 15 million people, including a Caribbean customs union. This, he claims, would relieve some islands from the dangers inherent in their monoculture, it would allow rationalisation of production and marketing of commodities, it would lend weight to the confederation’s bargaining power, it would permit the confederation to finance and plan economic development, and it would reduce the present heavy cost of administrative, customs, fiscal, police, and technical organisations. It is hardly necessary to observe that these “benefits” of confederation are of interest only to the rising West Indian Capitalist class.

Closer Identity

With the formation of the European Common Market and the regionalisation of trade in other parts of the world in mind, it is tempting to forecast the formation of a similar Caribbean common market, with trade and currency probably tied to the Americas rather than to Europe. This might mean closer identity of the different groups of workers with one another, easier means of communication, and more effective trade-union organisation.

M. Guérin ends his book on, for him, a pessimistic note: “The West Indian Confederation has slight chance of being born within the framework of the present capitalist and colonialist society.”

The truth is that M. Guérin is no Socialist and therefore mistakes Negro nationalist movements for Socialist parties, advocates “freedom” from colonial powers and, like so many “progressives” is almost paranoiac about “Yankee imperialism.”

Guérin appears to support the affirmation of the Caribbean Labour Congress in 1945 which was that “there is no hope for the West Indies unless they become a Socialist Commonwealth.” Unfortunately, the Socialist commonwealth envisaged by Guérin is no doubt a nationalist grouping of the West Indian islands under a “progressive” government on the lines of the British Labour Government.

If that is the kind of future M. Guérin has in mind for West Indian workers, there are ample grounds for pessimism. Even if confederation is achieved, even if a customs union is established, even if the whole of the West Indies becomes one large politico-economic bloc, the West Indian worker will still have to face the problems of working-class life under Capitalism; problems intensified by the uncertainty of the world market’s fickle demands for the staple commodities of the West Indies. At the time of writing, workers in Trinidad’s oilfields (considered to be reasonably safe places of employment) are being laid off because the world demand for oil is rapidly being satisfied.

"Native," popularly elected, politicians are powerless to influence the trends of the world's markets and the policies of the dominant Capitalist powers, however much they may pretend to their followers that they can. During the Second World War, the Jamaican banana industry was almost ruined, with severe unemployment among the banana-plantation workers, because the export of bananas to the United Kingdom was stopped. Similarly, there is today much hardship among the sugar workers in Cuba because, as a form of retaliation against the Castro regime, the Kennedy administration has cancelled the Cuban import quota of sugar to the United States.

As the crises of Capitalism intensify, it is a sure thing that the West Indian workers will as in the past, be well in the vanguard for receiving any blows that are being handed out in the form of unemployment, reduced wages, and so on.

After so much pessimism it would be fitting, in these closing passages, to report that there was support for the world Socialist parties among West Indian workers. Unfortunately, such is not the case: most politically-minded workers support nationalist parties with programmes which even the Conservative Party of twenty years ago might consider rather reactionary.

We have tried to show how the rapacious growth of Capitalism in the West Indies has drawn Negro slaves from Africa, indentured labourers from India, Madeira, and England, free labourers from Europe, and has left them in an alien, uncertain land, without roots, without strong ties, and with no sense of " belonging."

Rebellion against European exploiters produced native leaders who eventually assumed political control, but, as with other "ex-colonial" territories, the workers remain a subject class, at the mercy of their employers and changes in the world’s markets' demands for such commodities as sugar, and bananas, whether they live as citizens of a single island, citizens of a federation of British islands, or citizens of a Confederation of all the West Indian islands.

But Capitalism has forced into existence well-organised trade unions, it has made communication including air travel between the territories of the West Indies simple and reasonably cheap, and it has made West Indian workers think in terms of politics for their future. Therefore, although there is apparently little evidence. at present, of any growth of Socialist knowledge among West Indian workers, the ground into which Socialist ideas may be sown is being well prepared.

Michael La Touche