World Socialism or World Violence? (1976)

From the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

A little over a year ago the television programme A Man Called Ironside, presented an episode entitled “The Armageddon Gang”, which depicted a mad scientist who came within seconds of firing H-bomb rockets and starting World War III. This was presented as entertainment and it was accepted as such. The conditioning that has taken place to make the prospect of total world annihilation acceptable, is surely the ultimate obscenity. There was no outcry from the Longford-Whitehouse camp. This scientist was “mad”. The capitalist system which produces H-bomb stockpiles, is “normal”.

A few days later a TV documentary on mugging was shown. This centred on Brixton in South London. They interviewed a police chief, Commander Marshall, who made the point that the police can never solve the problem alone; society as a whole has to realize it is a part of wider issues, housing, education and employment. This aspect of violence is still very much in the news, being endlessly debated, like other social problems, but with no end in sight.

In Brixton, some 79 per cent. of mugging is said to be carried out by black people; mainly youths. If you are black, live in a slum, failed by the “education” system and unemployed, you may become a mugger. If you are white and in similar circumstances you too may turn to mugging or other forms of crime. To say this is a product of poverty, is to say it is a product of capitalism. Because of its property relationships, capitalism has always failed to integrate human beings with society. The profit motive is a completely dehumanized driving force.

Some young black people who had been involved in mugging were interviewed during the programme. They said their motive was to get money, to buy clothes and to be like other people. They were asked if they felt anything for their victims and replied in the negative. Again, the hostility between the individual and society is socially generated. People are not naturally anti-social, as the police chief said; you have to look at housing, education and employment. You have to look at the system.

Capitalism sets no higher standard. It is a violent society preaching a phoney morality. While its pundits talk of “law and order” out of one side of their mouths, out of the other they urge young people to train as professional killers. Every newspaper carries recruitment advertisements for the army, navy or air-force which invite young people to learn a trade— and become professionals in the sophisticated refinements of modern mass-murder and destruction.

A generation has grown up knowing nothing but wars. Since the end of the second “war to end war” in 1945, there has been an endless succession of wars all over the world. Some of these wars may be in distant places but, with modern means of communication, they invade every living room and are part of the violent environment. The war in Korea slaughtered more than a million people. The war in Vietnam, which raged for nearly thirty years, was started by a Labour government, and a Labour government carried on conscription in so-called peace time.

Throughout its existence the Socialist Party of Great Britain has maintained the position re-stated in the 1950 edition of our pamphlet The Socialist Party and War:

  War can solve no working-class problem. It cuts across the fundamental identity of interest of the workers of the world, setting sections of this class at enmity with each other in the interest of sections of the capitalists. It elevates force into the position of arbiter in place of the common human desire for mutual peace and happiness. Its effect is wholly evil. It depraves all the participants by forcing them to concentrate upon the best methods of producing misery and annihilating each other. It elevates lying, cheating, disabling and murdering opponents into virtues, confers distinctions upon those who practise these means most successfully, and inaugurates training courses on a vast scale to produce efficiency. Young men and women, in their most impressionable years, have the vile methods of warfare impressed upon them so thoroughly that they lose a balanced outlook on life and are impregnated with the idea that force, with all its baseness, and not reason, is the final solution in all problems. Many of those who have been subjected to the atmosphere of war remain addicted to violence when war has come to a temporary end.

Around the world selling armaments is big business. America, Russia, China, France, Czechoslovakia and Britain are selling massive quantities of arms and military equipment. The morality of capitalism never gets in the way of profits or commercial, strategic and vested interests. When the icy fact is understood that these major capitalist powers have the means to wipe out all life on earth, the mugger becomes small beer in comparison. But then muggers are illegal and lack the “dignity and bearing” of statesmen.

Practically all organized violence is aimed at gain. The possession or retention of wealth, money, resources or territory. Violence therefore derives overwhelmingly from the class-property basis of existing society.Violence used in power-struggles for so-called national independence comes in this category. It means the replacement of one gang of thieves by another. Violence is the final sanction of all ruling classes. The modern state-machine is a virtual monopoly of violence. As much as violence maims or murders those on whom it is practised, it brutalizes and degrades those who advocate and practise it, whether society labels them as muggers or soldiers, terrorists or politicians.

It is important to realize that violence is not an exceptional thing practised by an anti-social few. It is accepted and frequently applauded by the vast majority of “ordinary” people. They accept the spurious justifications of the Stalins, Wilsons, Nixons, Heaths, Fords and Brezhnevs. “We” need H-bombs and militarism, because “they” have them.

Those organizations such as IS, WRP, IMG, the anarchists and the CP, which see the class struggle in terms of barricades, street fighting, confrontations and smashing the state, are all anti-Socialist and anti- working-class. Political power gained by desperate minorities through armed insurrection can only lead to state capitalism and dictatorship and reflect working-class unreadiness for Socialism. In condemning all this as Socialists always have, we also condemn the bombings, brutality and blood-letting of the self-styled guerillas, whether they be for Black Power, Palestine Liberation or the IRA. All such movements whether racists, nationalist or religious, are anti-working class. They all help to sustain an atmosphere of hatred and foster the notion that violence is a rational arbiter in settling disputes and influencing attitudes. The SPGB and its Companion Parties reject this. We reject the standards of capitalism. We promote UNDERSTANDING as the mainspring of social change.

All other political parties have a prior commitment to violence as part of the power-structure of the system they ALL seek to run. Every party seeking power to maintain capitalism (in whatever guise) has to build and preserve the coercive state apparatus. The SPGB and our Companion Parties have no prior commitment to violence. Neither do we have any record of support for war. Our commitment is to Socialist understanding and to the democratic process of majority decision.

In order to strip the capitalist class of their ownership of the means of production and distribution, and to usher in common ownership, a world-wide majority of the working class with Socialist ideas will use the vote to gain control of the state machine This will take the armed forces and police out of the hands of the political agents of capitalism, and so remove the coercive threat to the triumph of the politically-conscious working class. There is no way to gain possession of the means of production for the whole of society, without first capturing political power. Just as the armed forces and police function to protect private property institutions whilst the state is in the hands of the capitalists, so the capitalists are powerless to preserve their ownership once the state is taken from them.

Any violent minority seeking to get back to capitalism, will be seen to be acting against the will of the great majority and can only further isolate themselves. They could not reverse the irreversible process of history which has led to the decision to change society.

Socialism will end the long and terrible history of violence. Having been established democratically it will continue to be run democratically. When there are no longer any classes of owners and non-owners, there will be a common interest in the happiness and welfare of everybody. Humanity will have come of age.

Harry Baldwin

Capitalist "Solutions" to Hypothermia (1976)

From the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The popular lie, often put forward by champions of Britain’s welfare state, that “no one starves to death here any more” has currently been exposed as such by the recent high-lighting in the media of the condition known as hypothermia.

But hypothermia (or “low heat”) is nothing new. Old people have died by the thousand from lack of food, fuel and clothing for years under the welfare state. But only lately has there been significant publicity about it. From the Sunday Express 1st February 1976 we learn, “Soaring fuel costs which lead to thousands of old people economising on home heating were blamed yesterday for a massive rise in the number of elderly patients being taken to hospital suffering from effects of cold . . . One theory being put forward for the higher than ever toll is that pensioners, many living alone on small incomes, are frightened of using heating and lighting appliances because of the cost. So they sit at home without heating . . . Pensions, with the present price of electricity and food, don’t go very far”

From the Daily Mirror 2nd February 1976: “The tragedy spotlights the problem of hypothermia which claims an average of 45,000 lives in Britain each year . . . Ninety thousand old people have been given a twin death sentence—by the coldest weather for four years and rocketing fuel prices . . . The Department of Health and Social Security recommends a minimum temperature of 70 for homes. Yet a survey shows that 89 per cent of pensioners’ living-room temperatures were below the Government standard. And that was before the increased fuel prices.”

To the Socialist the answer to the problem would seem obvious. Food, fuel and clothing, like all other needs should be freely available (not only to the elderly) to all human beings.

But what are the capitalist solutions to the problem? Call in on elderly neighbours to find out if anyone is actually dying. (Milkmen are regarded as being useful here.)

Doctors can obtain special wide range thermometers so that if they find a cold, collapsed old patient in a cold house, lacking food, fuel and clothing they’ll be able to pinpoint the diagnosis.

And, so public-spirited is the Daily Mirror that on 7th February 1976 they devoted a front page to the problem. Indeed, the way they launched their “campaign” one almost got the impression they were offering to finance food, fuel and clothing themselves. But, in fact, what they came up with was a free “cut-out” sos sign for those dying of hypothermia to put in their windows for the milkman etc. to see. And listen to the further contributions of these philanthropic crusaders:- “If you know old people who live on their own, make sure they have a copy of the warning poster” (and the Daily Mirror supplied it free remember.) "If you see the Daily Mirror's SOS sign in a window, see what help you can give. Knock on the door and give all the help you can”.

But the altruistic Mirror also gives a good capitalistic reason for donating SOS signs to the dying. It quotes Mr. Hugh Faulkner, director of Help the Aged who “welcomes the Mirror's campaign.” “The plight of the old is frightening this winter. The winter weather has really hit us now. Food and fuel bills are higher than ever before and pensions have just not kept pace with inflation. Someone, sometime will eventually realise it is cheaper for the nation to keep old people warm and well fed in their own home than have them go to hospital.” (our italics). So please help “the nation” to do it cheaper, chaps!

Still the Mirror:- “Everyone can help to alleviate the suffering and misery which is piled on old people year by year”, (they don’t say by whom). Then, in thick type:- “Today, the Daily Mirror appeals to everyone to help the old to survive winter. Be a busybody and you could save a life.” Then a broad hint that the neighbours should come up with the necessary funds: - “Check that the old man or woman living down the road is all right. Make sure they are warm and have enough food. If not, get in touch with the local welfare services and run a few errands to stock up their food larder.” Other advice the beneficent Mirror gives free is:- “make sure there is an efficient heater. . . . and they need at least one hot meal a day and frequent snacks and hot drinks.”

Actually, another newspaper takes the prize. The Stoke-on-Trent Evening Sentinel comes up with this:- “A cheap thermometer to alert old people to the dangers of cold and hypothermia went on sale at Stafford today. The thermometer at 20p, is being marketed by an Essex firm as a non-profit making venture.”

Four chemists in the Stafford area have agreed to sell the thermometers which are blue and white. When the temperature falls to the blue zone—below 60 Fahrenheit—it indicates danger to the old people from cold. “This may not save lives but could alert people who may not realise they are in danger”, said Mrs. Jane York, the firm’s social representative. “The see-at-glance thermometer could also warn social workers and visitors of old people at risk,” explains Mrs. York.

What useful gifts—stick one of these on their wall and the pensioner dying of cold will be able to see exactly why.

It makes one marvel at the bitter irony and cynicism which can unconsciously be spewed out by people not wanting to face the obvious. Were it not so tragic it would be hilarious.

R. B. Gill

50 Years Ago: On getting with the workers (1976)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The continual claim of the Communists and others is that we must be with the great masses of the working class. If the masses want “immediate demands” and reform agitations then we must go with them in this policy. Shout 44 hours and £4 a week or nationalisation of coal mines or any other plank the masses take up. Sometimes this leads to quarrels about which reform should be supported. MacDonald, Mitchell & Co. shout Weir houses whilst the other section wants a different kind of steel house or brick one. Mitchell accuses George Hicks of the Builders of signing a report in favour of the weird houses and Hicks tells Forward readers he is sorry he ever did such a thing. So the reformers, with their crowds of supporters, unite the workers by fighting about the kind of plaster to apply to capitalism.

#    #    #    #

Our work is not to pander to the prejudices of the ignorant but to win the workers’ minds for Socialism, not by agreeing with their unsound ideas but by replacing these wrong notions with sound knowledge.

(From an unsigned article “Party or Mass” in the Socialist Standard, March 1926.)

Let's Get Our Terms Right (1976)

From the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this world of double-talk and double-think, most workers in every country unquestioningly accept the different terms chosen by their own particular governments to describe the self-same factions and events. It would be in the interests of such workers to scrutinize carefully all the terms spewed out by their respective bosses.

For instance, according to the commercial and strategic interests held by different capitalist groups, the latter, through governments, will refer to the same body of duped workers either as “patriots and freedom lighters’’ or as “terrorists and subversionaries”.

Moreover, depending upon where the conflicting interests of two opposing groups of bosses lie, they will describe the same invading armies as “liberators” or “imperialists” respectively.

In war, opposing governments (i.e. big business’ spokesmen) refer to the warring troops either as “our gallant lads” or “their screaming hordes”. And, of course, a retreat can be a “headlong rout” or a “strategic withdrawal” depending upon whose propaganda you choose to listen to.

But the biggest sell of all in the bosses’ repertoire of appeals to nationalism lies in the use of the term “our country” when, in fact, they mean the private ends of the bosses of “our country”.

The workers of all countries would be well-advised to make it a rule to prefix the words “business interests of”, whenever they hear or read pronouncements about “our country” or “the nation”. 

Thus, when being urged to be loyal to one’s country, remember what this actually means; i.e. “Be loyal to the business interests of one’s country.

“Make Britain great” means “make Britain’s tycoons’ profits great”.

“Fight for your country” means “fight for the business interests of your country”.

In times of war, inflation or depression, “Sacrifice your personal interests for the good of the country” should read, “Sacrifice your own interests for those of business”.

“Work harder for less returns (and even accept redundancy) to make a prosperous England” really translates “Help the English businessmen to grow fat at your expense”; and remember that at the time of “Britain’s” enormous prosperity as “the workshop of the world” during the Industrial Revolution, prosperity for the workers meant long hours of arduous toil for pittances. Even the "prosperous” children worked at the benches thirteen hours a day.

R. B. Gill

Mercenaries (1976)

From the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

If fourteen of them had not been shot for unwillingness to fight, the presence of a small number of British mercenaries in the war in Angola might well have been ignored. Their presence being made known through that episode, the result was disclaimers and threats by the government—and a study in capitalist interests being pursued.

Mercenaries are soldiers who fight for money alone, without pretending they are for good against bad. They are the “universal soldier” practically as old as war itself. In the period when feudalism was giving way to capitalism they were the nucleus of every army in Europe. The German Landsknecht and the Italian Condottieri were troops which plied for hire. With the development of the capitalist state, national armies took their place.

However, mercenaries have never disappeared. To a large extent they are produced by national armies. Speaking in the House of Commons about those who went to Angola, the Prime Minister said many of them were contacted through “lists of names of former soldiers”. Of one modern force of mercenaries, the Black and Tans recruited by the British government to serve in Ireland in 1920, a historian says:

[They were] for the most part young men who found it hard to settle down after the war, who had become used to a career of adventure and bloodshed, and who were prepared to try their luck in a new sphere for ten shillings a day and all found. They were the same type, and produced by much the same circumstances, as the Congo mercenaries of our own day.

(F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine, 1971)

In the 1939-45 war there were mercenaries on both sides. According to H. W. Koch in History of the Second World War (Vol. 7) there were 130,000 West Europeans, mostly Dutch, Flemings and French, in the German Waffen-SS as well as Russians and East Europeans. In The Big Lie (1955), a jingoistic account of Allied propaganda organization in the war, J B. White mentions Circassian mercenaries serving under the French in North Africa. Previously, in the Spanish Civil War, men were recruited for Franco from Morocco on the promise of pieces of land afterwards. Mercenaries have taken part in other more recent wars. Besides the Congo, they were employed in the Biafran war of 1967 and included air-pilots on both sides.

The distinction between mercenaries and soldiers in standing armies is a scanty one. Men do not enlist from patriotic or moral sentiments, but for pay and security spiced with physical excitement; in the past the Regular Army was recruited chiefly from the able-bodied unemployed. Discussing the legal position of the British mercenaries in Angola, a Times leader on 10th February said the existing law (the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870) “makes no distinction between fighting for money and fighting for a cause”. It would make no difference if it did. The British government’s alarm was not because these adventurers were deficient in lofty motives, but because they might imply a general British partisanship. The French government disowned mercenaries in the Congo for the same reason, and threatened to withdraw citizenship from them. What is “a cause”? In this context, a capitalist interest agreeable to Our Side.

In a speech in the House of Commons the Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, David Ennals, said: “The mercenaries by their irresponsible action, are not only acting against Britain’s interests, they are bringing more suffering to the people of Angola.” (The Times, 11th February). The mercenaries deserve contempt, but not in those terms. It is Britain’s interests, and those of capitalism all over the world, that are responsible for the suffering. In the Biafran war, while similar pious sentiments were expressed, about one-fifth of the Nigerian side’s military purchases came from Britain. The officers and advisers in the Nigerian army were largely British-trained.

The position over the sale of arms to developing states is summed up in a chapter “The Merchants of Death” by Philip Windsor in The History of the Twentieth Century, Vol. 8 (1968).

At present, practically everyone sells in the Middle East; the major European arms producers—Great Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium—are chipping away at the virtual American monopoly in Latin America. Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union have very large markets in South-East Asia. France and Great Britain sell what they can in Africa, and France is taking over the British role in South Africa.

Nor is this a nefarious conspiracy. It is normal capitalism : the production of commodities sold at a profit because of the certainty that normal capitalism generates wars inexorably.

“Mercenary” is a disapproving word, and mercenary soldiers characteristically are turned out and despised when their job is done. In this case it was sooner instead of later. There is another lesson here. People are often convinced by the idea of a “just” war; for instance, that the Second World War had to be, because of the Germans’ totalitarianism and their persecution of the Jews. In fact anyone who set out to fight on those accounts before his government found it expedient would have been dealt with as a trouble-maker. Governments carry out the compulsions of each one’s national capitalism. The workers kill and are killed, by order—until they see the reason, and decide they will have no more of it.

Robert Barltrop

New Pamphlet: Socialist Principles Explained (1976)

From the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The original pamphlet under the title The Socialist Party of Great Britain—Its Principles and Policy was first published in 1934 and ran through four editions up to 1956. It has been out of stock since the mid-'sixties. Therefore this new pamphlet Socialist Principles Explained, is long overdue. It is completely re-written.

It is overdue also in the political sense as a counterblast to the confusion and total lack of principle, which characterize all the other political parties. They are all dedicated to the expedient of the moment. They all depend upon working-class apathy and political ignorance, to continue their mandate to run capitalism.

It speaks volumes for the great gulf of differences which separate the Party for Socialism from the reformist parties (whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist) that we, in 1976, enthusiastically proclaim the validity of our Principles, which were drawn up in 1904, while they cannot remember any further back than the last election and have no real commitment to anything they said last month.

Our Declaration of Principles identifies the class division in capitalist society. It shows why class antagonism must remain for as long as capitalism remains. It points to the ending of classes and class antagonism through the establishment  of common ownership of the means of production and distribution. It records the historic fact that capitalism is the last class system and repudiates all leadership. It makes clear the nature and function of the state machine and the need for a conscious working class to democratically gain political power in order to overthrow capitalism and thereby end political power. It shows that logically political parties must represent class interests and that no party can represent both the working class and the capitalist class, because their interests are conflicting. There can be only one Party expressing the interests of the workers.

The new pamphlet develops all these points with concise argument. For those countless people with a vague and emotional attachment to changing things and solving social problems, it sheds a flood of new light on the world because it supplies the answer and explains principles. As we say in the Preface, it is essential reading for those considering applying for membership. As only clear-thinking Socialists can work for Socialism, the most vital need is to spread Socialist understanding. This pamphlet makes a valuable contribution to that end.

Harry Baldwin 

Leigh Burr-Parti: the modern Machiavelli (1976)

From the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Bert Ramelson buries Lenin (1976)

From the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

What happened when the BBC's "Newsday" interviewed the industrial organiser of the Communist Party would have been more suitable for the Goon Show, or Monty Python. Bert Ramelson, keeping a perfectly straight face, point-blank denied everything that the Communist Party was founded on and peddled for over thirty years!

True it is, as he said in the interview, that he only joined the CP in 1936; whereas some of us knew it intimately since 1920. However, that should not prevent him (or anybody else) knowing the facts. The interviewer did not know a great deal about the subject, and questioned from a prepared brief.

But even the political department of the BBC had heard that the Communist Parties were founded on "Leninism". That is, seizure of power by an intrepid, resolute minority of "professional revolutionists", leading the working class — who would then lead the "toiling masses" (meaning peasants) to socialist victory. For thirty years a vast mass of pamphlets, books and newspapers flogged the Leninist dogma of the "dictatorship of the proletariat", meaning minority action.

Many able writes waded patiently  through Marx's work to show that, from The Communist Manifesto onward, Marx never used this then-popular French slogan to mean anything else than majority democratic methods. For instance, Lucien Laurat, who in Marxism and Democracy quotes The Communist Manifesto:

The first stage in the working class revolution is the constitution of the proletariats as the ruling class, the conquest of democracy.

No use! For thirty years CP writers and speakers denounced democracy and exhorted the workers to follow "Marx's best disciple" Nikolai Lenin. Parliament was a useless "gasworks", elections a waste of time (although they regularly took part in them, but "only for propaganda, comrade"). The state would be smashed and "bourgeois" parliaments replaced by Soviets, "the workers' democracy".

The theses of the Communist International, Third Congress, prescribed the basis of Communist Parties. They must be organized with strict military discipline, based on "democratic Centralism", meaning complete obedience to the edicts of the Central Committee, or E.C., and prepared for "heavy civil war". The Programme of the Third International included armed insurrection.

For many a long and weary year the speakers of the Socialist Party strove manfully against an avalanche of Communist falsification of Marxism and distortion of Socialism. Exploiting every possible grievance of the workers — "the Leninist tactic": especially the mass unemployment of the 'thirties. Communist-inspired Hunger Marchers were batoned by the police after the General Strike ended in disaster; to be followed by yet another "change of tactics" by the CP.

When the war broke out poor old Pollitt, not realizing that Stalin had signed a pact with Hitler, proclaimed it a "just war", wrote a pamphlet "How to Win the War, One Penny" — and was promptly sacked by Moscow. After Hitler invaded Russia, the "imperialist war" of the western imperialist powers became "a war of liberation against German Fascism" and Pollitt was reinstated, although not as General Secretary of the Party.

Stalin had wiped the "Communist International" out of existence once he had the prospect of nuclear weapons. Understandably, the interviewer politely raised the question of the CP's present policy, and its past. "Was it not the case that the CP had advocated 'the dictatorship of the proletariat' in the past?"

"Not any more", replied Bert. Not any more! And do you know why, dear reader? Let Bert tell you. Because there has been "so much misunderstanding of what Marx really meant". He actually said this. "Marx meant the action of the vast overwhelming majority", said Bert; the CP has not used the phrase in any document since 1950, to avoid any more misunderstanding.

He was then asked if the British CP is a constitutional party, now willing to obey the majority vote. Yes! said Bert. But, said the question-master, didn't the CP try to take control of the trade unions? No, said our industrial organizer, not any more — we only organize our members in trade unions to help the unions, whose job is not political but economic. He would up by saying that the CP hoped to be able to join in a Coalition Government of Left-wing Labourites, like the Communists in France or Italy.

When one considers that Stalin systematically exterminated everyone within reach, and certainly everu one of those prominent in the Russian CP prior to Lenin's death . . .  when we recall Trotsky's extravagant calls for ruthless terrorism and the wiping-out of all opponents, and that many were shot by Stalin for daring to doubt his infallibility — we can only describe Bert as the best thing since electronic ignition.

Funnily enough, in the same week that Bert did his comic turn (19th January) the BBC was running a series involving Russia, called "Fall of Eagles". It was not expertly informed, but at least tried to achieve some resemblance to the facts. It showed the famous 1903 Congress, where Lenin founded the Bolshevik faction. Bert Ramelson did not even mention Lenin's name. Poor old "Ilyitch" is dead and buried, along with the thirty-eight volumes of his Collected Works.

And yet, up to and after 1950, famous scientists in Russia did not dare try to publish reputable work without the customary sickening adulation of Comrade Stalin — "Lenin's greatest disciple". How fortunate for Bert that he wasn't the industrial organizer then. He'd have got twenty years in a labour camp — if he was lucky!

Horatio