Halo, Halo (2025)

The Halo Halo Column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not for the first time comes a report of a 45-year-old Afghanistan man marrying a six-year-old girl. He reportedly has two wives already and paid the child’s family for the ‘marriage’. The report notes that ‘since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, child and early marriages have been on the rise’. It’s said that this rise is due to ‘worsening poverty and strict restrictions on women and girls, especially the ban on female education. UN Women reported in 2024 that this restriction has led to a 25 percent increase in child marriages’ (tinyurl.com/m54ty4jy ).

A Pakistani 72 year old Catholic male has, after 23 years on death row, been acquitted of a blasphemy conviction. He was originally charged with ‘insulting the Prophet Muhammad” – a capital offence in Pakistan’ (tinyurl.com/yu8xpysj). It has now been ascertained that he had mental health problems, so could not be held accountable. It’s expected that this defence will be used in dozens of other blasphemy cases.

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Did you know that the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum is striking at the very foundation of European civilisation? If you’re going to pee people off you might as well go the whole hog. The museum, supposedly, has also ‘insulted’ god and every catholic in the world. Respect!

Who is making this outrageous claim? TFP Student Action Europe is. This is a right-wing catholic organisation founded in 1960. It would appear to want to set the world clock back to medieval times, unlike the global political movement masquerading as a religion which sanctions child abuse and wishes to turn the clock back to the seventh century. What does TFP mean? Apparently, it stands for tradition, family and property.

This is to be found on its website: ‘The Seventh and Tenth Commandments protect property. Property… (is) the guarantee of freedom. If it is not respected, we will automatically be led by socialism. Together, these three values, tradition, family and property form a protective wall against Marxist, socialist, and communist ideology’.

So why all the kerfuffle? It’s caused by a condom. The item in question is a very old condom, one that’s two hundred years old. We would suggest that it shouldn’t be utilised for its intended use as it’s probably well past its best before date. The condom ‘features an erotic print of a nun and three naked clergymen about to engage in a sexual act’. Surely the important question should be, was it consensual? So, the TFPSA finds this condom ‘sacrilegious’ and displaying it goes ‘far beyond moral and spiritual boundaries.’ What one wonders do these would-be moral arbiters think of the temples in India where they could view the erotic carvings on the walls? How do they find the Amsterdam red light district?

Apparently ‘Dutch conservative Christian group Civitas Christiana has been demonstrating outside the museum calling for the condom to be removed.’ Is the removal of a condom really wise? One thought that Catholics were mandated to practice safe sex at all times? (tinyurl.com/2jsk59bw).

DC

Will Belgium survive? (2008)

From the September 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

No permanent government has emerged from the elections held in June last year. Does this matter to the working class there?

Belgium is a patently artificial state inhabited by people speaking two different languages. It survived for many years with one of them (French) as the dominant language because it was the language of the ruling class. Now that this has ceased to be the case, and Dutch (Flemish) has also become a language of a part of the capitalist class as well as of the state, Belgium is beginning to show signs of coming apart at the seams. Revision of the constitution — How much autonomy should the regions be given? Should or should not Belgium become a federal state? How far out should the limits of Brussels (basically a French-speaking city surrounded by Dutch-speaking communes) go? — has become an issue preventing other issues being dealt with.

Belgium is a state which the then Great Powers allowed to be set up in 1830. Before that the territory that is now Belgium had formed part, first, of the territories of the King of Spain, then of those of the Emperor of Austria. After the French Revolution Belgium became, in 1792, part of France and remained so until after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. While part of France the Napoleonic code of law, which swept away feudal remnants, was introduced and manufacturing industry began to develop in the South. This, together with strategic considerations, was one of the main reasons why in 1815 Belgium was detached from France: not only were the frontiers of France to be moved further back from the Rhine, but France was also to be deprived of a nascent industrial base. Belgium became part of a kind of Belgian-Dutch federation under King William of Holland.

In 1830, in what Belgian history books refer to as a “national revolution”, the wealthy classes of Belgium broke away from those of Holland and set up an independent State. Though Holland protested, the Great Powers let this change happen as it still left the territory of Belgium detached from France.

The circumstances which led to the establishment of Belgium are worth recalling in that they have shaped the Belgian political scene to this day. Holland was essentially a trading and agricultural country and as such its ruling groups tended to favour free trade. The nascent industrial capitalist class in the south of Belgium, however, wanted tariff walls as a protection against British competition. The Dutch government did make some moves to accommodate them but not enough. In the end the Belgian capitalists decided to break away. This was not too difficult in view of the loose, almost federal character of the Belgian-Dutch State; in addition, the population of Belgium was greater than that of Holland. But the nascent Belgian capitalist class in the South needed support in the Dutch-speaking Northern part of the territory. This they managed to do, despite being French-speaking and anti-clerical in the tradition of the French Revolution, by an opportunist alliance with the Catholic Church over the schools issue. The Dutch government wanted to introduce a system of universal state education. The Catholic Church, (the majority religion in Belgium, unlike Holland which was a Protestant State), vehemently opposed this, insisting on its exclusive right to “educate” Catholic children.

The capitalists got their state. The Belgian constitution of 1831 was a model of bourgeois-liberal government. Power was in the hands of a parliament elected only by wealthy property-owners; the king (a minor German princeling imported specially to fill the post) was a mere figurehead. Their language, French, became the official language of the new State, despite the fact that a majority of people in its territory spoke Dutch.

But there was a price to pay: the power of the Catholic Church, and its control of its own schools, had to be respected. From a short-term point of view, the lack of a modern education system had certain advantages for the Belgian capitalists: they were able to extract very long hours of work for very low rates of pay, to such an extent that Marx once described Belgium as “a capitalists’ paradise”.

The industrialisation of Belgium, apart from Antwerp and Ghent in the Dutch-speaking North, almost exclusively in Wallonia, the French-speaking Southern part, brought into existence an industrial working class and, inevitably, working class attempts at political and industrial organisation. A Belgian Labour Party (Parti Ouvrier Belge) was set up in 1885, along the same lines as was later the British Labour Party except that the co-operatives rather than the trade unions provided the bulk of the members and funds. A deliberate decision was taken not to call it the “Belgian Socialist Party” on the grounds that the word “socialist” was unacceptable to many workers. With a start like this, the POB was destined for a pitiful career of gradualism and reformism. The POB was never really even a social-democratic party in the sense that the German SPD was; it never accepted Marxism as its ideology; in fact it had a contempt for theory altogether, concentrating on trying to get piecemeal social reforms for the working class; it was in short a simple “Labour” party.

In its early years the POB was at least militant on one issue of importance to the working class: the right to vote. The general strike of l893, which forced the Belgian parliament to extend a vote to adult males, was a magnificent episode in the history of the Belgian working class. The strike did not achieve “one man, one vote”, since the rich and educated were given more than one vote, but it did force the members of the Belgian parliament, in which there was not a single POB representative, to do what most of them were opposed to: grant a vote to adult (male) workers. Later strikes to try to get plural voting abolished were less successful, but by then the POB had its own members of parliament and had begun to get involved in parliamentary manoeuvres with its new-found allies, the radical bourgeois Liberals.

In fact the Belgian Labourites tended to be, at this time the tail-end or left-wing of the Liberal party. After more than twenty years of Catholic party rule, the Belgian Liberals were feeling left out in the cold, but they realised they were unlikely to get power again without support from the POB. Accordingly, in preparation for the 1910 election they launched a great anti-clerical campaign and attempted to get the leaders of the POB involved. This was easy, as the POB leaders were anticlerical themselves (and indeed many were freemasons). It is quite clear that had the occasion arose (which it didn’t, because the Catholic party won the election) the POB would have supported a Liberal administration and would probably have gone so far as to have formed an anti-clerical coalition with them. This no doubt would have caused a stir in the Second International, to which the POB was affiliated along with other Labour and Social-Democratic parties. After the First World War, of course, all the Social-Democratic parties were prepared to take power within capitalism and accept responsibility for running it, but it is a measure of the depth of the reformism of the POB that they would have been prepared to do this in 1910 when their fellow reformists still had some doubts.

The Belgian Liberals were, by and large, French-speaking and anti-clerical. As in practice their leftwing, the POB shared these characteristics, with unfortunate results for the development of the Belgian trade union movement, which took place mainly after the founding of the POB and partly under its auspices. As the industrial centre of Belgium was in the French-speaking South it was natural that the trade union movement should be strongest there, but it was by no means inevitable that this movement should have been dominated by an anti-clerical political party, thus cutting itself off from workers of catholic origin.

It would be wrong to put the entire blame on the POB for the present split in the Belgian trade union movement into two main groups, each with about a million members: the Labourite Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique and the self-explanatory Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens (which is in fact the larger). The Catholic Church shares an equal blame; they combatted the POB before the first world war by organising rival co-operatives, sick clubs — and trade unions. Their trade unions didn’t have much success before the first world war, but grew rapidly between the wars as industrialization spread to the Northern part of Belgium. Employers preferred to deal with the less militant Catholic unions than with the “socialist” unions and their talk of the class struggle. But the Catholic unions also took up a very real grievance which the Labourite unions tended to neglect: the position of the Dutch language, spoken by workers in the North of Belgium.

French was the official language of Belgium after 1830. It was the language of the State and, even in the Dutch-speaking area, the language of the bourgeoisie. Thus in Northern Belgium a Dutch-speaking working class faced a French-speaking capitalist class. The Labourite unions, perhaps for the very good reason of not wishing to split the working class on linguistic lines, did not chose to exploit this situation, but it was taken up to some extent by the Catholic unions.

Today there is virtually no difference except in ideology — the FGTB is, on paper, committed to “the disappearance of the wages system”, while the CSC denounces the class struggle— between the two rival trade union groups. In practice both act as pure-and-simple, bread-and-butter unions negotiating over wages and conditions of work; on the political field their leaders are reformists, being supporters either of the Belgian Socialist Party (as, unfortunately for us genuine socialists, the POB has been called since 1945) or of the catholic political party.

The other great division in the Belgian working class besides the catholic/anti-clerical one is of course language. As stated, despite being the minority language, French was made the official language of the Belgian State set up in 1830. Dutch in fact has only been given completely equal status with French since 1932. Since the last world war the centre of economic gravity in Belgium has tended to shift from Wallonia, the French-speaking South, to Flanders, the Dutch-speaking North, and the numerical superiority of Dutch-speakers has began to make itself felt on the political scene.

The man who must share a great responsibility for side-tracking the French-speaking part of the Belgian working class on the language issue was a militant trade union leader in the Liège engineering industry, André Renard, who died in 1962 and who is still something of a myth for many militant trade unionists in Belgium, Towards the end of the grande grève, the general strike of 1960-1 over the government’s attempt to cut workers’ living standards, Renard suddenly introduced the quite unrelated political issue of “federalism”. Claiming that the workers in the French-speaking south, where the strike was virtually solid, had been betrayed by the Dutch-speakers in the North (where the Catholic unions, following a lead given by Cardinal Van Roey in his Christmas message, urged their members to stay at work), Renard argued that if Wallonia had the power to pass its own laws on economic matters it would be able to carry out various “anti-capitalist structural reforms”. He called for Belgium to be converted into a loose federation which would give Wallonia this power, virtually a demand for independence of course. This demand, and the reformist strategy behind it was supported by both the so-called Communist Party (which, under proportional representation, had a handful of members of parliament) and the Trotskyists (including, conspicuously, their international leader, Ernest Mandel, who was from Belgium).

The effect of this appeal was to heighten language-consciousness amongst French-speakers. In the years that followed French-speaking federalist groups increased their representation in parliament. So, on the other side, did the Dutch-speaking federalists, organised in a series far right parties. Today, it is the Flemish federalists and separatists who have been making the running, reflecting the fact that Flemish capitalists don’t want to continue to pay for the state benefits received by workers in Wallonia where heavy industry (coal, steel, engineering) has been considerably run down since Renard’s day.

That the working class in Belgium should be divided on linguistic lines is, from a socialist point of view a matter for regret, but it also confirms the correctness of our opposition to ”leftwing” groups in that they should be partly responsible for it.

Whether Belgium will eventually split up, or at least become a federal State of some sort, remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: this constitutional issue is of no consequence whatsoever for the working class of the area. Whatever the constitution it will be that of a capitalist State and the working class will remain propertyless sellers of labour-power to the minority who own and control the means of production.

Adam Buick

Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

“This is a system of the elite, by the elite and for the elite,” said Riyaz Hussain Naqvi, a retired government official who worked in tax collection for 38 years. “It is a skewed system in which the poor man subsidizes the rich man.” The problem starts at the top. The average worth of Pakistani members of Parliament is $900,000, with its richest member topping $37 million. “It’s a very good country for the rich man. Chauffeurs, servants, big houses. The question is, who is suffering? The common man.” :

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The anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders, whose Freedom party (PVV) won 24 seats and third place in the Dutch national election last month, says he is forming international alliances to launch branches of his Islamophobic party across the Western world. Almost 1.5m Dutch people voted for the PVV in June. “The message, ‘stop Islam, defend freedom’, is a message that’s not only important for the Netherlands but for the whole free Western world.”

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The United Nations estimates that each year 5,000 mostly Muslim women and girls are shot, stoned, strangled, stabled, burned, or smothered by family members with the intention of cleansing shame from the family’s name. While most of these crimes occur in the Middle East and South Asia, immigration is taking them around the globe.

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Fears are growing for the fate of thousands of young girls in rural Mauritania, where campaigners say the cruel practice of force-feeding young girls for marriage is making a significant comeback since a military junta took over the West African country. Aminetou Mint Ely, a women’s rights campaigner, said girls as young as five were still being subjected to the tradition of leblouh every year. The practice sees them tortured into swallowing gargantuan amounts of food and liquid - and consuming their vomit if they reject it.

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As 14-year-old Nguyen Hoang Anh was being branded with hot irons, had solvents poured in his wounds and had his teeth pulled out with pliers, those who heard him ignored his cries. In most countries, suspicions of any kind of child abuse, let alone such a horrific case, would rouse a small army of social workers and police. Vietnam, however, has no such public system and only loose laws protecting children and other vulnerable people. “We don’t consider beating a child to be violence against children,” concedes Nguyen Hai Huu, director of the Ministry for Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs’ child-protection unit.

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An Indian court has ruled that Hindu gods cannot deal in stocks and shares, reports said Saturday, after an application for trading accounts to be set up in their names. Two judges at the Bombay High Court on Friday rejected a petition from a private religious trust to open accounts in the names of five deities, including the revered elephant-headed god, Ganesha. “Trading in shares on the stock market requires certain skills and expertise and to expect this from deities would not be proper,” judges P.B. Majumdar and Rajendra Sawant said, according to Indian newspapers.

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Voice From The Back: The Obscenity of Capitalism (2008)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Obscenity of Capitalism

The columnist Richard Morrison, in an article mocking the ridiculous prices paid for modern art, refers to Don Thompson’s book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark and brings to notice the obscene wealth enjoyed by a handful of billionaires. Remember we are dealing with the social system of capitalism where many exist on a $1 a day. “He looks at the buyers for ‘trophy’ art; billionaires such as the American asset manager Steve Cohen, who bought the shark with what, for him, was loose change (it would have taken him five days, Thompson estimates, to have earned the $12 million price tag).” (Times, 16 January) Overlooking the term “earned”, we are talking about someone whose income is over 2 million times that of another. Doesn’t capitalism make you sick?

Not So Primitive

Daniel Everett once was a missionary in Brazil dealing with so-called primitive tribes, but his experience of the Pirahã people made him give up that calling to become a linguist. When asked how he had changed his views he replied: “They lived so well without religion and they were so happy. Also they did not believe what I was saying because I did not have any evidence for it, and that made me think. They would try so hard to understand what I was saying, but it was utterly irrelevant to them. I began to think: what am I doing here, giving them these 2000-year old concepts when everything of value I can think of to communicate to them they already have?…” (New Scientist, 19 January)

Toothless Watchdog

The sole purpose of capitalist society is to make profits, so we can imagine the following report will come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about how it operates. “The government will be publicly castigated this week over its failure to help poor people – by the watchdog that ministers set up to monitor fuel poverty. Ofgem, the energy regulator, will also be criticised for not stopping energy companies from making excessive profits at the expense of consumers. Peter Lehmann, chairman of the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group, will criticise the government over its record on fuel poverty, which he labelled ‘incomprehensible, unjustifiable and shocking’. Consumers now pay more than 50 per cent more on utility bills compared with five years ago, yet energy companies’ costs have risen by only a fraction of this. In the past month, four of the biggest suppliers have announced substantial rises in the price of gas and electricity.” (Observer, 3 February)

Loaded But Stupid

We are constantly being told by supporters of capitalism that the extremely rich got that way because of their superior intellect. That seems invalid thinking when we see how much the extremely rich will pay for a stupid pointless motor car licence plate. “But nowhere is the craze for a unique plate more intense than in the United Arab Emirates, the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation that holds the world record for the six most expensive plates. Here, it’s all about how low you can go — with people battling it out at auctions to win the chance to show off license plates with the lowest digit. The numbers “5” and “7” have already been snapped up,

Transcendental Materialism

The death of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi led to many newspapers rehashing the stories about the Beatles contact with his Transcendental Meditation, but it has transpired that his TM could have more properly stood for Transcendental Materialism. It seemed the great man had sited his HQ in a Dutch village for tax reasons. “As ever, the business-savvy guru was ahead of the game: the big draw is a financial regime that has made the Netherlands the EU’s top tax shelter. Among those who have set up holding companies there are Ikea, Nike, Coca-Cola and Gucci.” (Guardian, 7 February) Like many religious leaders before him this guru told his followers not to be concerned with the material things of life, but in practice was very shrewd about the way capitalism operated.

The Capitalist New World. (1919)

From the January 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

By this Sign.

The "War that will end War" is over, and on the strength of this an immense explosive trust, called Explosives Trades Ltd., has been formed with an authorised capital of £18,000,000 (vide "Daily Chronicle," 2.12.18). If all wars are to end the combination of the 29 firms forming this company for the production of explosives is somewhat perplexing. If munitions of war are still to be manufactured on a large scale although, there are to be no more wars, then the only conclusion one can come to is that they are to be produced for the keeping of the peace—that eternal "order" the capitalist cries for when working men attempt to interfere with his profit-making career. 

On a superficial examination we are driven to the conclusion that those who raised the cry that this war would end war were liars—that in reality it was only the commencement of war on the grand scale.

When we come to look below the surface, however, we see that there is just a possibility that the war crowd were not quite such liars as we thought. Perhaps, after all, it is the end of wars as understood by the capitalist mind—a struggle among the robbers for the largest share of the spoil. Perhaps they think that the end of this war will enable them to settle their local differences and thus be left free to pursue their policy of exploitation to the uttermost parts of the earth, with only one barrier—the growing class-consciousness and revolutionary tendency of the world's working class.

Bullets Still Needed.

This being so their old enemy the workers, now growing to formidable proportions, neither so docile nor so pliable as of yore, having eaten to the full of capitalist bullets and capitalist gratitude, must be suppressed and kept within a certain prescribed relation to their masters. Hence the wheels of the munitions of war machine, the instrument of suppression, must continue to whiz merrily round, and "pile up the war material" continue to be one of the watchwords and orders of the day.

Hands Off Profits.

Proof that there is at least a grain of truth in the above forecast is shown at every turn. Sir Charles Macara, writing in the "Daily Chronicle" (18.12.18) bears witness to the intended great trade revival, and also reflects the deadly fear of his class that their profits may fall through a too rapid fall in prices. While workers are finding it difficult to obtain necessaries in the shape of food and clothing this cotton magnate writes:

  "These raw materials, which contribute so largely to the production of clothing for the inhabitants of the globe, have been raised owing to the vicissitudes of war to almost unprecedented prices, and I hope the Allies will act together in controlling these commodities and distributing them equitably.
  Further, it is in the interest of all just as important to prevent a too rapid depreciation in the price of these raw materials as it is to prevent a further undue inflation."

Workingmen have lost homes, limbs, and lives as a result of the war, but for God's sake don't let the capitalist lose a penny piece of profit !

Poor Sir Charles groans at the fact that wages were increased instead of bonuses being given, as the latter are more easily knocked off. He hopes :

  "The nations of the world would only fully realise their interdependence and organise capital and labour, work together in developing the undeveloped resources of the world."

Ready to Sweat.

Sir Charles need have no fear : the devil looks after his own. The process of organising capital and labour has already begun. The war has splendidly shown the capitalists how maximum of output can be obtained with the minimum of labour.

Contests have been held among workers for turning out work at the greatest possible speed. Women, have been introduced into numerous employments previously banned. "Unskilled" labour has been diffused among "skilled" in a way hitherto untried. Undertakings of all sorts are being fused, bringing further economies in the cost of production. Small firms have been wiped out by the thousand.

An Industrial Fatigue Research Board has been set up to determine the most economical ways of applying labour.

 "The Board's Investigations will be directed towards finding the most favourable hours of labour, spells of work, and rest pauses, and they hope to receive help from both employers and workers in their enquiries." "Daily Express," 20.12.18. 

  "The nation that secures the most efficient production will be dominant in the new world on whose threshold we stand. That nation will be the one whose workers are the most contented, the best nourished, and the most physically fit. Keen, eager work—with the real heart and the real joy in it—judiciously blended with healthy exercise and sane recreation, gives the secret, the "open Sesame," to success. Our final word to the professional fatigue victim —there will be a terribly long rest in the next world." —"Daily Express," 20.12.18. 

  "Appointed by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Medical Research Committee jointly, it will consider hours and conditions of labour and methods, and how they cause fatigue, having regard to industrial efficiency and the health of the workers.
 The Board will investigate, organise and promote by research, grants or otherwise, investigations in different industries, to find the most favourable hours of labour, spells of work, rest pauses, and other conditions applicable to the various processes, according to the nature of the work and its demands on the worker." "Daily Chronicle," 20.12.18.

The meaning of all this is to transplant the military system into the industrial world still more completely, to develop as efficient an industrial army as our masters can so that the greatest possible amount of wealth can be produced and the smallest possible part of it returned to the workers in the shape of wages.

Our kind and loving masters, having laid their plans for a production of wealth (and profit) previously unheard of, standing as they do on the threshold of a new world of untold treasure, find one bar to the realisation of their ideal. This bar is the growing discontent and revolutionary tendency of the workers everywhere. They therefore must strengthen their military power and hold secure their political supremacy.

The situation in Russia fills them with anguish, and they are sending soldiers from all quarters to quell the revolution as quickly as possible. Classing themselves as the "Saviours nf Society" and the champions of democracy, they pour vituperations upon the Bolsheviks and invite all comers to assist in saving Russia from destruction. The destruction they fear, however, is the destruction of the debts owed by Russia to European and other capitalists and the spreading of the revolution to other countries with the consequent break-up of the capitalist regime. They therefore fall over each other in their anxiety to smash up and discredit the Bolsheviks.

What the workers may expect in the future is illustrated by the following which is reported from Amsterdam : 

  "Serious rioting has occurred in Bottrop as a result of the Westphalian miners' strike. A large crowd of demonstrators proceeded to the Gladbeck pits with a view, it is supposed, of wrecking the works, but the military intervened and fired machine guns among the strikers, killing some and injuring others." —"Daily Express," 20.12.18. (Italics mine.)

Now more than ever the need to get behind the guns should be obvious to all workers. The masters still control the military machine, and so long as this is so they can, in the last analysis, defeat all attempts of the workers to alter the basis of society. Working men and women must therefore organise politically to obtain control of the political machinery from which all power emanates. They will then be able to render the capitalists' dream of a new world but the stuff that dreams are made of.

Gilmac.

A Look Round. (1904)

From the November 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

The article upon the "Futility of Reform," which occupied the leader columns of our last issue, has not met with the complete approval of all our readers, and several have expressed their disagreement with our contention that the capitalist class will introduce reforms when the exigencies of commercialism demand them. But we would recommend our critics to read the correspondence which has passed between Kenric B. Murray, writing on behalf of the manufacturers' section of the London Chamber of Commerce, and the Board of Education. If a word to the wise is sufficient, then those who possess the necessary wisdom will appreciate the position of The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

* * *

In his letter Mr. Murray states that the manufacturers have passed the following resolution :—

  "That, in order to retain our industrial position and to introduce into this country such further industries as may be profitably developed, this section is of opinion that it is absolutely necessary to raise the standard, and, if possible, cheapen the cost of technical and higher technical education, and that representations be made to the Board of Education in this sense."

Note, that the object in view is the "profitable" development of industries, not the education of workers for education's sake.

The letter further illustrates two points—the readiness when "profitable" to the capitalist class to invoke the aid of the State in industrial matters and the admission that British manufacturers have lost ground in the struggle for the World's Market, not simply because of fiscal conditions but because

  "up to the present time manufacturers in this country have not in many cases sufficiently realised that there is a scientific aspect to every branch of manufacture requiring study and attention in order to attain the highest results."

If for "highest results" is substituted "greatest profits," one can easily understand why

  "manufacturers, therefore, would welcome the support of the Board of Education and of the existing institutions engaged in teaching work in developing this valuable branch of education on lines which will place British manufacturers and their employees on an equality with their foreign competitors."

* * *

In the reply of the Board of Education present day capitalist methods are condemned :— 

  "The Board recognise the great advantage accruing from the concentration of interest, which is possible only when the student is in a position to make study his single aim —to devote his whole time to education."

It is of course possible that the student could do this under capitalism, but very improbable, except for the privileged few. Under Socialism it will be the rule.

* * *

Conferences may come and conferences may go, but the unemployed stay on for ever—as long as competition prevails. It was not to be expected that Mr. Walter Long, who draws £40 a week as salary for the services he is supposed to render the people, with the right to claim a pension when he loses his job, would consider that things were sufficiently serious to demand serious measures. The hardy annuals of relief works, afforestation, emigration, labour bureaux, "back to the land" via small holdings, and the like are being discussed. One of our correspondents somewhat sarcastically writes :— 

  "If the unemployed want to get 'back to the land' here are acres and acres out of cultivation needing their labour—only the owner may object. From where I sit I look over a large farm and see nothing but grass fields, and poor ones at that. In the foreground is a cottage where, if the inhabitants wish to descend to the kitchen, they can drop through the holes in the ceiling, and so save the wear and tear of a staircase ! Yet the man ought to be contented. In a very good week he sometimes get 17s. ! Certainly often in winter he gets nothing, but he can save during the prosperity of summer ! Besides, he has only seven children, and two of these (boys of 14 and 16) leave home at 5 a.m. and return at about 8 p.m., and get 4s. and 6s. a week. He ought to be a drunkard, but instead of that he is a teetotaller and very industrious, working hard all day, and at night returning to slave in his bit of garden which supports them occasionally in nothing-a-week times. He's going to be kicked out soon, and there's no house for him to go to, save a model dwelling at 6s. a week, his average wage being 12s. And then he'll lose his garden, too, but no compensation for him. Oh ! the joys of a country life ! Come back, ray friends, to the land !"

* * *

When we go back it must be upon a basis not yet thought of by those who pose as "Social Reformers." Not to ''labour at a loss for the profit of a boss" but to produce for ourselves the things which we need. "Advanced" politicians like Mr. George Lansbury (who left the Radicals to join the Social Democratic Federation), W. Crooks, and others have sent to the Press a "Note of Warning," in which they urge that whatever work is provided by municipalities for the unemployed it should not

'' release workers from the stimulus of having to satisfy an employer." 

Send your victims to labour colonies, place over them some well-hardened taskmasters, credit them with 6d. per day, give them plenty of sermons and prayers, and all will be well.

* * *

The editor of Reynolds's Newspaper, who has for some months patted the S.D.F. on the back, because it has suited his purposes to do so, writes the following respecting that body's "demand" for an autumn session:

  "It is equally comical to hear suggestions about an autumn session of Parliament to consider the question coming, too, from Socialist organisations, who are always saying that Parliament is 'no good.' Such amateurish fooling makes one despair."

* * *

The annual report of the Asylums' Committee of the London County Council for the year ending 31st March last has just been issued and shews that there are 23,948 certified lunatics in London alone, an increase of 996 over last year. This is the largest annual increase ever recorded and, according to the report, the prospect of any diminution in the increase appears to be most problematical. The average weekly cost of each patient in London County Asylums is 11s. 4½d. If as much as that were spent each week in maintaining those out of asylums there would be less need to celebrate our "progress" periodically by providing further accommodation for our lunatics.

* * *

There exists in Holland a Union of Socialist Teachers, founded ten years ago. Its program

states:—

  "That the popular school, called into existence by the possessing class under the cry 'cultivation of the people by teaching the people,' has proved to be in their hands only the means of doling out to the children of the people that minimum of knowledge which has become necessary to supply the capitalist want of more or less educated labourers, besides being the means of impressing upon them so-called Christian and social virtues, which, in reality, are nothing but notions conducive to the maintenance of capitalism; that the non-possessing class, too, being insufficiently taught themselves, deprived of all influence on school education and therefore not inspired with genuine interest in it, see in the popular school only the way that enables their children to earn their bread afterwards ; that, moreover—partly in consequence of the causes given above all education which rises above the level of what capitalism demands, is doomed to sterility for the young proletarian because of the bad conditions."

That this is just as true of Britain as of Holland, or, for that matter, of every other country, is only another proof of the international character of the social problem. As the principles of the Union declare :

  "The social vocation of the popular school is to educate the growing generation in such a way as to develope body and mind harmoniously," but ''only the political and economic emancipation of the people will fully secure the emancipation of the mind." 

Those who really desire that economic emancipation must enrol in the Army of International Socialism, the British Section of which is The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

J. Kay

Painting Dutch Capitalism (2012)

The Night Watch by Rembrandt

Art Review from the December 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Rijks Museum in Amsterdam is home to the art of the Dutch Republic of the 17th century, which was ‘the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.’

The Dutch bourgeoisie declared their independence from the Spanish in 1581. The Explosion of the Spanish Flagship during the 1607 Battle of Gibraltar by van Wieringen reflects pride in the victory of the Dutch fleet over the Spanish. The Celebration of the Peace of Munster, June 1648 by van der Helst depicts a banquet and displays the bourgeois pride in independence and victory over feudalism.

The world financial centre was in Amsterdam. It had the first ever Stock Exchange, the Bank of Amsterdam, capitalist cycles of boom-and-bust, speculative asset inflation (‘Tulip Mania’), and Isaac Le Maire, the first stock ‘bear trader’.

The Syndics of the Amsterdam Drapers Guild by Rembrandt depicts the sampling officials who checked the quality of dyed cloth, and it reflects the Calvinist simplicity of bourgeois self-confidence.

Amsterdam was noted for its ‘schutterij’, the bourgeois civic militias and these are portrayed in two famous paintings of the era: The Company of Captain Reynier Reael by Hals, and The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq better known as The Night Watch by Rembrandt. 

The bourgeois religious sensibility was dominated by Calvinism which provided a theological justification for the developing capitalist mode of production. The Merry Family by Steen appears to be a celebration of alcohol, music, and tobacco but a note in the painting provides the subtitle of ‘as the old sing, so pipe the young’ which warns the viewer not to copy such dissolute behaviour.

The Dutch Republic was the imperial power (‘the colonial system of trade and navigation ripened like a hothouse’) with colonies and trading posts in North America, Brazil, the East Indies and South Africa. The Dutch East India Trading Company controlled the maritime trade routes and dominated world trade for 200 years. By 1650 there were 16,000 Dutch merchant ships. View of Olinde, Brazil by Frans Post depicts the former Portuguese colony that had been taken by the Dutch in order to exploit Brazil’s sugar cane plantations.

Economic competition with England for control over the seas and the trade routes led to three naval wars between the Dutch Republic and England which confirmed Dutch domination of world commerce until the Napoleonic Wars.  Several marine paintings by van de Velde depict Dutch merchant and naval supremacy such as The Cannon Shot and Dutch Ships on a Calm Sea.

The Portrait of Baruch de Spinoza depicts the great Dutch philosopher who advocated a classical pantheism, opposed Cartesian dualism and was admired by Marx for his materialism. Hegel believed ‘you are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all’.

Marx concluded ‘the total capital of the Republic was probably more important than that of all the rest of Europe put together and the people of Holland were more overworked, poorer and more brutally oppressed than those of all the rest of Europe put together’.

Steve Clayton

News In Review: Pay Rise (1965)

The News in Review column from the January 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pay Rise

History repeals itself.

One of the first acts of the 1945 Labour government, while admonishing us all to tighten our belts, was to agree to increase the pay of Members of Parliament.

One of the first acts of the 1964 Labour government was . . .

Perhaps it is true that some M.P.s have a hard time trying to do their job on the old pay; rising prices have hit them just as they have hit everyone else. But every M.P. belongs to a party which has promised to halt rising prices, and most of them belong to the two parties which have failed miserably to fulfill that promise. Have the M.P.s, then, only themselves to blame for their plight ?

Apart from that, many members do not have a hard time. Several Tory ex-Ministers have recently taken lucrative jobs on the boards of big companies, and on the same day as the increases in pay were announced a Labour member was involved in a traffic case which happened while he was driving his Rolls Royce.

The M.P.'s case is in fact no stronger than that of the dockers and a great deal less pressing than that of nurses, busmen and railwaymen.

But these people, just like the rest of the working class, are not in the fortunate situation of being able to argue their case with themselves, and of being able to vote themselves a rise in pay.

They have to struggle for their rises—with their employers, through arbitration, sometimes before a Court of Inquiry into the conditions of their industry. The arguments used against them rarely question their claim as such; they usually attack it on the grounds of increased production costs, and its effects upon the employers’ profit margins.

If in the end a rise is granted it often comes grudgingly, with associated promises from the workers to relax demarcation rules, or to step up productivity, or to forego any further claims for some years.

All of this is looked upon with approval by the Members of Parliament, all of whom support wage restraint in one shape or another. But apparently all the arguments they have used, about what they called the national interest and other claptrap, do not apply when they sit in judgement on themselves.

There is one argument the M.P.s could not have used to support their claim and that is that there is a shortage of men for the job. Although the M.P. is supposed to be badly paid, there are always at least two men for every vacancy. If that condition held good in industry at large, employers would no longer be bothered by the problem of wage claims.

Perhaps the only consistent case the M.P.s could make out was that they have always done a good job, have always served their masters faithfully, have always trooped into the right lobby at the right time and generally have always done everything they could to keep capitalism comfortable for the people who own it and live off it and who pay out the rises.


Payment deferred

One of the more humiliating aspects of an old age pensioner’s life is the cloud of hypocrisy which covers every discussion of their plight.

In the last election, all the capitalist parties bid for votes on a promise of an increase in pensions in the near future. It was only when the M.P.s had been returned, pledged to do something about the pensioners’ difficulties, that we saw what the promises were worth.

From the fuss which was kicked up about the rise, it almost seemed as if pensions were to go up by several pounds a week. In fact, the increase will be twelve shillings and sixpence.

Even more, this meagre increase will not be payable until next April which means that the pensioners have to face— and some of them perhaps not survive— the winter on the present scale of payment.

Nobody will begrudge the pensioners anything they can get. But it is sickening that the Labour Party should talk about abolishing poverty when all they are doing is handing out so mean an increase, which cannot hope to stave off even the extremes of an old person’s destitution.

And it is equally sickening that Labour M.P.s should be in revolt over the delay in paying the bigger pensions. The government’s reasons for the delay are consistent enough; they are, after all in power to run capitalism without any old nonsense about humane considerations.

In this, the Labour M.P.s support their government. They support it in its power at Westminster, and they support it in its administration of capitalism.

For the pensioners, this is just too bad. The roots of their troubles do not lie in the size of their pension. That has gone up several times over the pre-war figure, without having any effect on the pensioners’ situation.

Old people are in desperate straits because they are retired members of the working class. Once they depended on their wage for a living but now they are too old to be of any use to an employer.

But to leave them without any sort of an income would create an enormous social problem. So the old people receive a derisory sum — just enough to keep them in some sort of living condition. They may not have a very comfortable home, and they may not be able to afford adequate food or heating. But they survive—just.

In human terms, this is deplorable, but it is an inevitable result of capitalism’s social structure. And where do the Labour Party stand on that ?

They may want to alter one or two of the system’s superficial features. They may feel strongly enough about some of them to stage a short and feeble revolt against their leaders.

But on the only issue that matters—the abolition of capitalism—they are one united, determined party. Capitalism, with its restrictions and anomalies, will continue. No back bencher will ever revolt over that.


Same again

One of the persistent fallacies which help to keep capitalism ticking over is the notion that things are better, or anyway different, abroad.

The British worker, chafing under his own burdens, looks enviously upon what he imagines to be the gaiety, or the freedom, or the affluence of his counterpart in other countries. Workers abroad harbour the same sort of misconceptions about life over here.

Sometimes they put their theories to the test, by emigrating. Then they discover that basically workers lives are the same in every country in the world.

In France, which is so often misconceived as a country of gay and ardent wine swiggers, the workers’ lives are subject to the same sort of restrictions as in this country. The French government recently announced their new economic and social plan which will try, among other things, to hold wages increases to three per cent for the next five years.

In Holland, popularly thought of as a land of simple, sunny peasants, the government, like other governments elsewhere, are wrestling with a housing problem. Their latest palliative is a familiar one — a system of subsidies. The Dutch Minister of Housing recently said that he hopes to end the housing shortage by 1970, which is about the year that British Housing Ministers will mention when they are promising to solve our housing difficulties.

In Australia, where everyone is supposed to be a tough, bronzed individualist, the government is imposing their first-ever peace time military conscription. Against the opposition to this, the Australian government pleads that the situation in South Fast Asia demands that tough-guy Australians forego some of their individualism.

All over the world the disputes and the problems of capitalism take their toll. All over the world useful, creative human beings are exploited and degraded into varying degrees and types of poverty and suppression. Capitalism is international and so are its evils.

International, too, is capitalisms hypocrisy. This month sees the opening of International Cooperation Year, sponsored by Prince Phillip, Mr. Wilson. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Mr. Grimond, and supported by £10,000 from the Foreign Office.

The Year will dabble its foolish fingers in all manner of futile projects. The one thing it will not sponsor will be the international cooperation of the working class to abolish the social system which causes all their problems.