As Others See Us: The New Statesman (1983)

Found via the 8th Wonder of the World: Archive.org

Sadly, I can't find a better quality of picture but I'll take what I can get. An architecture/politics piece from the New Statesman that dates from the 10th of June, 1983. It would have tied in with the General Election that was taking place that month. That election where Thatcher trounced Foot, and the Party was contesting Chris Smith's seat in Islington South and Finsbury.

I've cropped the picture and blurb for the Party's Head Office, but it's not the best. For those of you who can't read the text, it reads as follows:

"Good for the SPGB — the only party with the courage to say who they are, and in tasteful sans-serif lettering. The Ecology Party masquerades behind the Yuk Chuen Chinese Restaurant and the Jearlene Unisex hairdressers. The far left and far right can always be identified by their taste for barricades wire mesh perimeter fencing and other forms of security (e.g., SWP, CP and, below, the Conservative Party)."

A piece so old the Green Party were still called the Ecology Party, and my only political activity in that year - in fact, it was in that actual month - was me waving back at Paul Boateng as he went around the local constituency waving at bemused Saturday shoppers from the top of an open-topped double decker election bus. (I was a polite kid.)

Posted below is the full article from that issue of the New Statesman. You'll have to click on the image to make it larger. Good luck reading the text!

Slings and Arrows: “Be it ever to humble . . ." (1953)

The Slings and Arrows column from the July 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Be it ever to humble . . ."

Scoffers and cynics sneer when they hear Bishops and sanctimonious politicians talk about the sanctity of the home and the family as the foundation of Christian civilisation. But that they are sincere cannot be doubted even by the most disbelieving. Why else would they live in such comfortable circumstances? Obviously because they believe that if the foundation is right the rest of the edifice must follow suit. Thus, true to their principles and beliefs. Archbishops live in Palaces, politicians in mansions and Stately Homes, Queen in Castles (two), Palaces (three), and Stately Home (one), and dogs, as is fitting and proper, in kennels.

Since there are not sufficient mansions, palaces and castles to go round, we content ourselves with flats, Nissen huts and prefabs. “Mid pleasures and palaces,” wrote a Victorian songster, “though we may roam. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.” Had he been alive to-day he might have added the words “even if it’s only a dog kennel.”

The New Statesman publishes each week a feature entitled “This England” consisting of extracts from newspapers submitted by readers, which show the lighter and more humorous and eccentric side of what is known as the “British character.” In its issue of the 13th June, 1953, the New Statesman published in this feature the following extract from the Times: 

“For a year a husband and wife have lived in a wooden dog kennel seven feet long by five feet wide at Ystradmynach, Glamorgan. The kennel is one of four in the corner of a disused allotment. Three are occupied by dogs and the fourth by Mrs. Dorothy May Norman and her husband, an engineer at a local power station.”

Reference to the Times showed that far from them being examples of British eccentricity this unfortunate couple lived in a kennel from sheer necessity, and not from choice. To journalists fond of writing about the glories of the welfare state and with comfortable homes in Hampstead or Bloomsbury and well appointed offices in High Holborn, the idea of people living in a dog kennel may be a joke. But each to his taste. Perhaps the juxtaposition of this item with articles by Mr. John Strachey showing where Marx was wrong, and that it was possible by legislation and “counterpressure ” to offset the evils that Marx denounced, may have given them cause for laughter which escape us.

According to the Times, notice to quit has been served on this couple and soon they will have nowhere to live, not even a dog kennel. But perhaps one of the Bishops or politicians may invite them to share their homes till further arrangements can be made, and thus keep the foundation of our Christian Civilisation in being.

* * *

Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue

Those, who since the last war have watched the manner in which British capitalism has become almost a colonial dependancy under the hegemony of the United States, might well expect that our foremost leaders would have objected and raised some form of protest. Instead, most of them have actually supported dependence on America. There was no one to demand the return of independence to this once mighty Power, until Coronation Day, when appropriately enough the following clarion call was issued:

“How the Yankees now parading London's streets must laugh when they see multitudes of Union Jacks. It is Britain’s national flag. Once it was meant to symbolise our power and independence. To-day the Yankees determine British policy.

"THEY dominate our Army, Navy and Air Force. 

"THEY tell us with whom we may trade and with whom we may not trade.

"THEY cause our lads to be killed in their war in Korea . . . If those in Westminster Abbey were real patriots they would help to send every Yankee back home. . . .”

Who is this leader who on Coronation day tried to imbue the nation with a sense of patriotism and national independence? None other than that staunch defender of the Union Jack, that heir to the traditions of Palmerston, Wellington, Drake and Raleigh, that paragon of patriotism, Mr. Harry Pollitt. There are of course several shortcomings in this appeal, but one cannot have everything. Suffice it that the clarion call has been made, and if Harry does not tell us what to do with “our” Army, Navy and Airforce, when the Americans are made to hand them back; well we must find out for ourselves. And as for being allowed to trade with whom we please, that would be wonderful, except that we can’t quite think of anything we have worth trading. The most interesting feature of Pollitt’s call to action, is, of course, the use of the collective pronoun. It serves to remind us of what “we” have lost by our dependence on the Americans.

In the first Elizabethan era, its most famous writer wrote a play in which a clarion call appears which has rallied Britons for three centuries, and has immortalised the hero who uttered it. Is it too much to ask that some playwright of the present Elizabethan era will do the same by Harry Pollitt? We hope not, and we feel sure that when that call is heard throughout our land there will be none who will not feel uplifted. "Cry, God for Harry, England and St. Joe!”

* * *

Anti-Americanism

There is a more sinister aspect to the grotesque posturings of Harry Pollitt and the Communist Party. Since the erstwhile Allies quarrelled over the postwar settlement, the Communist Party has indulged in stirring up anti-American prejudices. They refer to “Yank” in almost the same manner as Fascists refer to “Yids.” Should some unfortunate girl be assaulted by an American soldier, then it is headlined in the Daily Worker. But should Americans give large contributions to flood relief funds then one requires a microscope to find any reference to it. In their spoken propaganda they harp on this anti-yank theme with the same assiduity as Mosley once tried to work up prejudice against Jews.

There is no baseness from which the Communist Party will shrink in its effort to follow in the footsteps of their masters in the Kremlin. But they had better be careful. Not for the first time, Moscow might suddenly change policy, catching Harry Pollitt and his friends on the wrong foot, again not for the first time. Then, in their efforts to catch up with the change they might trip and break their political necks. An event which would be unmourned by all who know the Communist Party for what it is.

It was said of Shakespeare that “he touched nothing he did not adorn.” Of Mr. Pollitt and his Party it might truly be said that they touch nothing they do not degrade.

S.A.

Editorial: The Rise of Hitler: A Warning to the Workers (1933)

Editorial from the April 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rise of Hitler to power in Germany is an event which the workers of all countries should study with care. It is not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a world-wide overflowing of discontent. It is not a coincidence that the three years since the oncoming of the crisis late in 1929 have witnessed the abrupt and sometimes violent overthrow of governments in different parts of the capitalist world. “National” Governments in the United Kingdom and many of the British Dominions; the advent of De Valera in the Irish Free State; the colossal defeat of “Prosperity” Hoover in the USA; repeated cabinet crises in France; political revolutions and counter-revolutions in South America; the Republic in Spain; political crises in Scandinavia; expulsions of leaders and reversals of policy in Russia; no country has escaped the economic consequences of a capitalist world which is seriously out of joint.

Each country has witnessed the consequent political stresses and strains of new discontents, and new slogans, which had generally brought about new political groupings and new figure-heads. The universal insurgency expresses itself in different ways according to the traditions, experience and constitutions of the various countries. A century ago such economic crises brought to a head deep underlying social conflicts and produced the revolutions of  ’30 and ’48, with their violent overthrow of kings and absolutist constitutions. Nowadays the more advanced countries have developed systems which permit easier adjustment to new pressures, avoiding the disturbance and expenses of the appeal to violence. Countries which have not travelled so far along the road of capitalist democratic government still resort to the old method of the bomb, the rifle, and the machine gun, the mass demonstration, the barricade, and the organisation of insurrection in the armed forces.

In a broad way the cause and the effect are the same everywhere. Everywhere capitalist private ownership reigns. Everywhere the rulers must serve the interests of the capitalist class, but everywhere it is an over-riding condition of social life that rulers cannot ignore the active discontent of the mass of the population. The discontent, even the open rebellion, of individuals and minorities can be bludgeoned into acquiescence, but when great masses of the population are driven by intolerable conditions into organising for common action then the rulers must sooner or later provide a safety valve; placate the movement or find means of dividing it; turn it into new directions or harness it directly to the capitalist state. In no other way can capitalism maintain itself.

Long before the war the British ruling class learned how to incorporate radical politicians and labour leaders in the parties of capitalism. The German capitalists in 1918 jettisoned the Kaiser for a similar end. Fifty per cent of the German voters had registered their disillusionment and war-weariness by voting for the reform programme of the Social Democratic Party. German capitalism thereupon “digested” the SDP and watched it stabilise German capitalism in the troubled post-war years. The military and civil associates of the Imperial Kaiser humbled themselves to the “upstart” labour leaders because they had to have someone who could control the workers and keep them loyal to the fundamentals of capitalism. So for fourteen years the Social Democrats, either in coalitions or in “friendly opposition”, worked out their policy of bargaining for reforms as price of their support. The outcome was inevitable. They have shared the fate that has always overtaken “Labour” politicians and parties when they accept responsibility for the administration of capitalism. Discontent with the effects of capitalism cannot for ever be stifled by Labour promises of better times or apologetic assurances that things might be worse. The membership and influence of the German SDP declined year by year until it had shrunk to a third of its former size. Part of the loss was picked up by the Communist Party, but in the meantime a new group had arisen, led by Hitler. At the election on March 5th he received 17,266,000 votes (43.9 per cent) and his allies, the Nationalists, received 3,132,000 (8 per cent), giving him a clear majority. The Social Democrats received 7,176,000 (18.3 per cent) and the Communists 4,845,000 (12.1 percent).

In one important respect Hitler’s Nazis are just like the Social Democrats and the Communists; they are all parties of discontent. Hitler promises work for the workless; secure government jobs in the police, the Army or the Civil service for 100,000 of his members; higher prices for agricultural products to help the peasants; and protection for the small investor and little shopkeeper squeezed by the big stores and the banks.

Immediately on taking office Hitler imposed fresh taxes on the big departmental stores and chain stores with the professed object of helping the small shopkeepers. He promised also to find posts for out-of-work professional men (doctors, lawyers and others), and it is because a relatively large number of bankers, proprietors of big stores and the more successful professional men are Jews that the party has taken on a violently anti-Jewish character. Every Jewish doctor driven out of practice, every Jewish lawyer barred from the courts, every Jewish schoolmaster and civil servant dismissed, makes another vacancy for one of his members. He was supplied with funds by German heavy industry, by armament manufacturers both in Germany and in France, and by American and other business men and financiers who had investments in Germany for which they needed protection. With the help of these funds Hitler’s party has known how to rally all kinds of discontent into a great movement representing half the electorate of Germany. Therefore Hitler has had to be “digested” as fourteen years ago were the Social Democrats. The stately and imperious Hindenburg and the aristocratic Von Papen, representing the military caste and big landowner, have had to receive on terms of equality the Austrian house-painter Adolf Hitler. Dr Hugenberg and the Nationalist Party, representing big industrial capitalists, have had to enter into coalition with him. Hitler will now have to administer capitalism. He will have to curb the demands of his followers, disappoint them, and ultimately lose many of them to new political adventurers, whereupon the capitalists and landlords who now use him will scrap him and use his successor.

The great lesson to be learned from the decline of the Social Democrats is the sterility of the policy of reforms and of reform parties. The day on which a reform party reaches power is the day on which the evil effects of capitalism begin to sap and undermine the strength of the party, turning the members’ blind loyalty first into bewilderment and then into dissatisfaction, causing them to drift into new parties.

The depths of mental bankruptcy of the reformists are shown by the comment of the Fabian New Statesman (London, March 11th, 1933). After explaining that Hitler scored because he appealed, with banners and uniforms and parades, to the electorate’s love of glamour, the German correspondent of the New Statesman says that the Social Democrats should have done the same, and should have given more prominence to pageantry and less prominence to social reforms. In other words, the workers are to be enticed, not even by the old plan of “bread and circuses”, but by circuses without the bread! This is what forty years of Fabian reformism has brought to the working-class movement!

The second lesson is one which has been entirely missed by the Labour Press in Great Britain, that is the evidence given by the Hitler episode of the overwhelming importance of controlling the political machinery. Six months ago, although the largest party in Germany, Hitler was not in control of the German Parliament and the machinery of government. He was ridiculed and derided by the members of the Government, and insulted by President Hindenburg. His party officials were hauled into court on charges of treason, and thrown into prison. Others were forced to flee the country. His newspapers were suppressed, his offices were raided by the police, his troops were forbidden to parade or wear uniforms in the street. When they attempted defiance they were driven off just like the Communists.

Now, having become possessed of the political machine and confirmed in power by the electors, he is able to turn the tables on his former opponents. He has removed the Governments of all the States of Germany. Former Cabinet Ministers have been arrested, beaten and made to suffer many indignities. Newspapers have been suppressed and their offices raided – from Conservative Catholic newspapers at one end of the scale to Social Democratic and Communist newspapers at the other. The Communists, in spite of their 5,000,000 voters and their year-long boasting of their belief in “mass action” and military revolt, have been cowed into complete submission without offering any real resistance whatever. Events are proving to them what they refused to learn. The organised political majority which controls the political machinery of the modern State is in a position to dominate, and can enforce submission on minorities. There is no road to Socialism except through the control of the machinery of government by a politically organised majority of Socialists.

Report on the press (1949)

From the October 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this second article dealing with the Report of the Royal Commission on the Press, we give details of some of the useful information obtained by the Commission in the course of its enquiries. It is not intended to be a comprehensive survey, but consists of various items of evidence submitted to the Commission which we think will be of some interest and value to readers of the Socialist Standard.

Ownership

One of the first tasks of the Commission was to make a survey of the ownership of the Press, with particular reference to the existence of large groups, or “chains” of newspapers. They discovered five groups which could be classified under this heading. Three of these were comparatively unimportant, their newspapers were found to be printed mainly in the provinces, most of them were “weeklies,” and in no case was the total daily circulation more than a million. The other two, however. Associated Newspapers, Ltd., and Kemsley Newspapers, Ltd., were very different and deserve more detailed treatment.

Associated Newspapers, Ltd.

This company owns the Daily Mail, London Evening News, and Sunday Dispatch. Through subsidiary companies it owns various evening and weekly papers and has minority interests in several others. It is itself a subsidiary of another company, the Daily Mail and General Trust, Ltd., of which Viscount Rothermere is chairman. He holds 21 per cent. of its Ordinary shares. There are 9,000 other Ordinary shareholders, but none of them holds more than 1 per cent. As chief shareholder and chairman he therefore has virtual control of the Mail, News, and Dispatch as well as the following provincial “dailies”—Gloucestershire Echo, Derby Evening Telegraph, Citizen (Gloucester), Evening Sentinel (Stoke-on-Trent), South Wales Evening Post, Hull Daily Mail, and Grimsby Evening Telegraph, plus various “weeklies.”

Kemsley Newspapers, Ltd.

This is the other important “chain.” It owns directly, or through subsidiary companies, the Daily Graphic, Sunday Times, Sunday Chronicle, and Sunday Graphic, as well as the following provincial “dailies”— Newcastle Journal and North Mail, Newcastle Evening Chronicle, Glasgow Daily Record and Mail, Glasgow Evening News, Aberdeen Press and Journal, Aberdeen Evening Express, Northern Daily Telegraph (Blackburn), Middlesbrough Evening Gazette, Sheffield Telegraph, Sheffield Star, Western Mail (Cardiff), South Wales Echo (Cardiff), and Yorkshire Evening Press (York). In addition, it owns numerous “weeklies” and sporting papers. Chairman of all the companies is Viscount Kemsley, and his son, Lionel Berry, is vice- chairman. His wife and two other sons are also directors, and the number of Ordinary shares held by the family amounts to almost 50 per cent., sufficient to give it complete control.

Both these “chains” have wide ramifications, but their importance should not be over-emphasised. Judged on the basis of circulation they are not outstanding—the “non-chain” Beaverbrook Press, for example, has a bigger morning circulation than either of them, and the Daily Mirror had a much bigger circulation than one and must now be running the other fairly closely. Their greatest proportion, in terms of circulation, is to be found in the evening press—here Associated Newspapers accounted for about 21 per cent. of total circulation, and Kemsley Newspapers 13 per cent. (1947 figures). On Sundays neither can touch the “non-chain” News of the World.

Other Companies

There are three other daily newspaper companies which, although they cannot be called “chains,” are similar in one respect, namely that they are controlled by an individual, or a small group of individuals. First of these is London Express Newspaper, Ltd., which owns the Daily Express, and by means of subsidiary companies also controls the Sunday Express, London Evening Standard, and the Glasgow Evening Citizen. The controlling interest in the main company is held by Lord Beaverbrook, and his son. Max Aitken, is a director of all four companies. The actual extent of Beaverbrook’s holding was not divulged to the Commission.

The Daily Telegraph, the second of this type, is controlled by members of the Camrose family, who between them own all the Ordinary shares (£1,199,997), and most of the Preference shares. By the articles of association which control the running of the company Lord Camrose may, if he so wishes, remain chairman and editor-in-chief for life.

Finally, there is the Times, owned by two people, Colonel J. J. Astor and a Mr. John Walter in the proportion of nine shares to one. The articles of association provide for a committee whose function it is to approve of any move to transfer shares to anybody other than the two present shareholders. This device, in effect, makes any change of ownership very unlikely. 

The Other" Dailies”

As far as the other well-known “ dailies ” are concerned, ownership and control cannot be linked with an individual or group. This applies to the Daily Mirror, and its companion, the Sunday Pictorial. There are more than 9,000 shareholders in the Mirror company, and 4,000 in the Pictorial. No individual in the Daily Mirror holds more than 4 per cent. of the Ordinary shares, and no one in the Sunday Pictorial has more than 1 per cent., but the Mirror holds 25 per cent. of the Ordinary shares in the Pictorial, and the Pictorial holds 22 per cent. of those in the Mirror. Each, therefore, has the controlling interest in the other. What this means in practice is that the directors of both companies can exercise absolute control.

The Daily Herald has a position all its own in that the majority of its shares are owned by Odhams Press, Ltd., which also controls the People and the “weeklies ” John Bull, News Review, and Illustrated. This peculiar state of affairs dates back to 1929 when the Herald found itself hard pushed to compete with the other big “dailies” through lack of finance, and joined forces with Odhams to get it. Thus we have the position where Odhams Press holds 51 per cent. of the shares, and nominees of the Trades Union Congress hold the rest.

The company has nine directors, five nominated by Odhams, and four by the T.U.C. The present T.U.C. nominees, by the way, are A. Conley (Tailors’ and Garment Workers’ Union), A. B. Deakin (Transport and General Workers’ Union), H. V. Tewson (Gen. Sec., T.U.C.), and F. Wolstencroft (Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers). A further interesting point is that the articles of association provide that the political policy of the paper shall be laid down by the Conferences of the Labour Party, and its industrial policy by the Conferences of the T.U.C.

The case of the Daily Worker is also rather confused and complicated. . Until 1946 it was owned, through nominees, by the Communist Party itself, but on 1st January, 1947, ownership war transferred to the People’s Press Printing Society, in order to raise more money. This society is stated to have about 29,000 shareholders, of which 756 consist of organisations (395 of them trade union branches). Shareholdings are limited to £200, and each holder is entitled to one vote, irrespective of the size of his holding. The society first elects a Committee of Management which in turn elects the Editor and a supervisory body called the Editorial Board. The Management Committee, in effect, has control of the paper. The control, however, is not absolute, as die Worker has to go every now and then to the People’s Press Fighting Fund for loans and grants, but as the trustees of the Fund (in the true Communist Party tradition) in 1947 were all, with one exception, also members of either the Management Committee or Editorial Board, or both, we think it can be considered as a purely technical point.

One national newspaper, Reynolds News, is owned by a group of co-operative societies through the Cooperative Press, Ltd. Of the 845 shareholders, all are co-operative societies except for two Trade Unions, the National Union of Railwaymen and the Union of Shop, Distributive, and Allied Workers. Management is in the hands of a Board of Directors elected by the Shareholders. None has sufficient votes to control the Board. 

Trust Ownership

Lastly, there are three well-known newspapers which are owned by Trusts. The objects of Trusts, in the words of the Commission, are one or all of the following: —

“To prevent the control of the undertaking from falling into unsuitable hands, to perpetuate the character and policy of a paper, to avoid the crippling effect of death duties, and to ensure, through the limitation or the ploughing back of profits, the preservation or the expansion of the undertaking.”

The first is the News Chronicle which, with its London evening companion, the Star, is owned by the Daily News, Ltd. The majority of this company's shares are held in turn by the Daily News Trust. Two- thirds of the trustees are members of the Cadbury family.

The other two Trusts own the Manchester Guardian and Observer respectively. The Guardian is completely in the hands of the Scott Trust, who now number eight persons, mostly members of the Scott family. The Observer Trust consists of six trustees, one of whom is Lord Astor, holder of most of the company’s shares. Each Trust is hedged in with detailed and complicated provisions, of which little need be said except that they comply with one or more of the objects mentioned by the Commission and quoted above.

The Political Weeklies

A few words should be said about the political “weeklies,” The New Statesman and Nation, Tribune, Time and Tide, and Truth.

The New Statesman is controlled by the Statesman Publishing Co., Ltd., which has a capital of about £17,500 in Ordinary shares and 436 special Management shares. Only Management shareholders are allowed to vote; they number 19, and among them are Low, Malcolm MacDonald, Kingsley Martin, and Bernard Shaw. There are six directors, G. D. H. Cole, Low, Kingsley Martin, J. B. Priestley, a Mr. J. H. Roberts, and a Mr. R. G. E. Willson; all except the last-named are also on the Board of the company that actually owns the paper. Shares in the company may. not be transferred to anyone outside if a member is willing to purchase them at a fair value.

Tribune has an issued capital of only £183, in £1 shares. No holder has more than 10; the best-known shareholders are Sir Stafford Cripps, Michael Foot, Victor Gollancz, J. F. Horrabin, Harold Laski, Jennie Lee, Ian Mikardo, and J. Platts-Mills, each with 10 shares. It was disclosed to the Commission that subsidies totalling £3,597 were received during the period between 1937 and 1946 (mainly in the early years). Most of this money was contributed by Stafford Cripps and G. R. Strauss (the present Minister of Supply).

Time and Tide is leased to Viscountess Rhondda, who holds over 90 per cent. of the shares, and is chairman and editor of the paper.

Truth has a capital of £29,000 in 2,900 £10 shares. There are three directors, one of whom is Collin Brooks. He holds 1,500 of the shares, of which 500 are as nominee for Lord Perry (of the Ford Motor Co.) and 500 for a Mr. Garfield Watson. It was disclosed that the paper received contributions of £17,000 towards expenses between 1939 and 1946, mainly from the late Lord Luke, Lord Perry, Mr. Garfield Watson, and Lord Queenborough.

Finally there is the Economist. Lord Layton (also of the News Chronicle) is its chairman, and there are four other directors, one of whom is Geoffrey Crowther, the editor; and another, Brendan Bracken. The Financial News, Ltd. (which also has interests in the Banker, Investors’ Chronicle, and Financial Times) holds 50 per cent. of the Ordinary shares, and the other 13 shareholders appoint a majority of the Board and nominate the chairman. Transfer of shares and the appointment of the chairman require the consent of four trustees, of whom Sir Charles Hambro, the banker, and Lord Beveridge are the most well known.

Stan Hampson

(To be continued.)

50 Years Ago Irish Politics and the Church (2001)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Ritchie Calder, writing in the “New Statesman” (28/4/51) gives an account of the dismissal from the Eire government of their Minister of Health, Dr. Noel Browne. Appalled by the high infantile death rate he proposed to give free medical services, “without any means test, to all mothers and children, to provide mothers with specialist gynaecological care, and to give health education.”

The Cabinet had not objected until the Catholic Bishops intervened, one of their objections being that “the right to provide for the health of children belongs to parents and not to the State.” They objected to the possibility of information on birth control being supplied though Dr. Browne had given safeguards on this matter.

Although Dr. Browne was able to show that Vatican spokesmen did not object, the more reactionary views of the local Catholic Bishops prevailed and Dr. Browne was dismissed.

Mr. Calder quotes some statements made by Ministers:

“As a Catholic, I obey my church authorities and will continue to do so” (Prime Minister, Mr. Costello). “There is going to be no flouting of the Bishops on Catholic morals and social teaching (Minister of Labour).

And finally Dr. Browne, describing the Health Service before his resignation, said:

“As a Catholic, I accept the ruling of their Lordship, the Hierarchy, without question.”

Mr. Calder points out that one result of these disclosures is that the Northern Ireland parties opposed to Union with Eire are using the incident effectively as propaganda among Northern Ireland Protestants, as proof of “the political duress exercised by the Catholic Church.”

(From Socialist Standard, August 1951)

Irish Politics and the Church (1951)

From the August 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Ritchie Calder, writing in the "New Statesmen” (28/4/51) gives an account of the dismissal from the Eire government of their Minister of Health, Dr. Noël Browne. Appalled by the high infantile death rate he proposed to give free medical services, "without any means test, to all mothers and children, to provide mothers with specialist gynaecological care, and to give health education.”

The Cabinet had not objected until the Catholic Bishops intervened, one of their objections being that "the right to provide for the health of children belongs to parents and not to the State.” They objected to the possibility of information on birth control being supplied though Dr. Browne had given safeguards on this matter.

Although Dr. Browne was able to show that Vatican spokesmen did not object, the more reactionary views of the local Catholic Bishops prevailed and Dr. Browne was dismissed.

Mr. Calder quotes some statements made by Ministers:

“As a Catholic, I obey my church authorities and will continue to do so " (Prime Minister, Mr. Costello).

“There is going to be no flouting of the Bishops on Catholic morals and social teaching" (Minister of Labour, Mr. William Norton, leader of Irish Labour Party).

And finally Dr. Browne, describing the Health Service before his resignation, said:—

"As a Catholic, I accept the ruling of their Lordship, the Hierarchy, without question.”

Mr. Calder points out that one result of these disclosures is that the Northern Ireland parties opposed to Union with Eire are using the incident effectively as propaganda among Northern Ireland Protestants, as proof of "the political duress exercised by the Catholic Church.”

The Labour Party and Social Democracy (1975)

From the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years the so-called right-wing of the Labour Party has taken to calling themselves “social democrats”. The term is also used by some of those — such as Dick Taverne, Christopher Mayhew and Lord Chalfont — who have left the Labour Party because they feel it has become too much dominated by its “left wing”.

What, then, is a social democrat supposed to be? Before the First World War it was almost a synonym for Socialist, even though Engels never liked the word — and, indeed, in origin it did mean a democrat who also favoured social reforms, as opposed to a democrat pure and simple. On the other hand, “social democracy” could be an alternative name for Socialism — as a society characterised not only by a democratic administration, but also by democratic control of all aspects of social life, including the use of the means of production — and was indeed used as such in the very early issues of the Socialist Standard.

But those who call themselves “social democrats” in the Labour Party certainly do not want to suggest that they stand for a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the whole community. Quite the contrary. They want to make it clear that they accept legal, private property rights, as one of them, Ashley Bramall, a Labour GLC leader wrote in a letter to The Times:

Social democracy involves the acceptance of a mixed economy, but a mixed economy in which public ownership is the predominant and not the subordinate form of ownership. It involves far greater equality than exists at present.

Social democrats are, 1 suppose, distinguished from some other socialists by believing (1) that socialism is to be obtained only by the processes of democracy; (2) that democratically enacted laws are to be obeyed, and (3) that property should not be acquired without compensation.

In other words, they are using the word to mean a democrat who wished to reform capitalism by a certain amount of state control and intervention.

Bramall claims to be a “socialist” as well. We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain are not alone in rejecting this claim. The journalist Peter Jenkins discussed this in an article in the New Statesman called “The Social Democratic Dilemma”. He wrote:

“Now it is of no practical importance, and of small ideological significance, whether the Labour Party chooses to call itself ‘socialist ’or ‘social democratic’. But for our purpose here we must be clear as to what we mean. The word Socialism originally had a quite precise meaning and the late George Lichtheim’s uncompromising formulation is historically the correct one. He wrote: ‘Anything that falls short of abolishing the wage relation has no claim to being described as socialism, although it may be station on the way thereto".

(New Statesman 24 Sept. 1974)

We cannot agree that it is possible to have any “station on the way” to Socialism — either you have capitalism or you have Socialism, you cannot have anything between — but otherwise Lichtheim’s point about Socialism being a wageless society is very important. Wages are a price, the price of a person’s ability to work. But the very fact that most people’s ability to work has a price shows that it is a commodity and that they are excluded from the ownership and control of the means of production and have to sell their ability to work in order to live. Socialists even before the time of Marx denounced the wages system and called for its abolition. Today the wages system can only be abolished by the conversion of the means of production into the common property of society and their democratic control by the people who make up society. Then the producers would cease to be wage-earners and instead become free and equal men and women cooperating to produce what they needed to live and enjoy life.

Jenkins went on to suggest a definition of “social democracy”. He wrote :

“. . . we should mean a form of policies or economic organisation of society which does not envisage, or indeed intend, the achievement of socialism in a future however distant. Whether this is ideologically congenial or not it is surely an accurate enough description of reality. Can it, then, be seriously contended that the Labour Party is working towards or envisages the achievement of socialism?”

Of course, not. Jenkins realizes that the Labour Party stands for trying to reform capitalism and has never stood for the abolition of the wages system.

Adam Buick

Bank for World Trade (1943)

From the August 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Discussions have recently been started on the future of banking currency and exchange after the war. Lord Keynes (British Treasury) has put forward one set of proposals for an International Clearing Union. Mr. Morgenthau, Treasurer of the United States Government, has made other proposals for an international currency, based on gold.

Various writers and journals have taken up these suggestions with the usual alacrity, hailing them as serious contributions to the solution of world problems.

Typical of such journals is the dear old New Statesman (April 10th, 1943) :

“Man’s failure to construct a sane system to regulate exchange between the nations is one of the reasons for the ghastly state of the world to-day. . . . The general standard of life which the world enjoys, and on which all hopes of social betterment hang—(our italics)—must depend on the way in which the nations succeed in organising exchange of … surplus goods.”

This is no new idea : it’s as old (almost) as the capitalist system itself. The same issue of the New Statesman carries one of those typical “Left” articles, which they have published for years, calling on somebody or other (in authority) to do something for somebody. This week it's Professor Laski urging President Roosevelt not to support Fascist elements in Tunis. This has something to do with the New Deal in America, although Laski admits “that the essence of the New Deal was not Socialism.” Nevertheless, “freedom from want and fear deliberately organised now can make the foundations of democracy secure in the post-war world.”

“Do you remember, Mr. President, those brave words you used in your inaugural address of March 4th, 1933?” asks the Professor.

“This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth. . . . Plenty is at our door but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed.”—Pres. Roosevelt, March, 1933.

Here, again, the same idea that faulty exchange is the cause of the trouble.

Taking our courage in both hands, we boldly challenge President Roostvelt, Professor Laski and Sir Kingsley Wood to prove this proposition. The crises of capitalism are not caused by faulty exchange.

Exchange itself is but an effect, not the cause. Exchange is the result of private property in the means cf production.

It is the economic relationship of private owners. 

That is why the S.P.G.B. for years, despite charges of pedantry, opposed the S.D.F. and I.L.P., who stated that they stood for the “socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange.”

This is not Socialism. Socialism abolishes money, banks, cheques, and all the counters of various sizes and names which capitalists require to ensure their pound of flesh. Socialism is a system based on common ownership, which freely distributes to all whatever the community cam produce.

People starve in the sight of plenty because it is privately owned by capitalists.

A new system of international currency after the war may assist British or American capitalists—no amount of alteration of the tokens which circulate wealth will help property-less workers.

Horatio.

The Miners’ Problem (1942)

From the April 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

On all sides are heard the suggestions that to win the war it is necessary to emulate the system of German “total” organisation. The New Statesman carries a leading article (March 21st) dealing with the coal question, and among other things it says—

  “The mood of the men has been, and still is, desperate and embittered; they agreed when war came to suspend the class struggle—but the root of the trouble is psychological. The owners who spoke in the debate drove home their case against the men on the score of absenteeism. The men on their side have a devastating answer.

   It is a frequent, and may be, in some coalfields, a general practice, to work the worst seams during the war in order to conserve the richer seams for the unchecked and unlimited exploitation to which owners look forward—when peace returns.

   Here rather than in any lack of military talent lies our inferiority to the totalitarian regimes. Two things are necessary, the first is to banish the profit motive from the pit; the second is to associate the men in its management. The only way to achieve these ends is to bring the industry under national ownership.”

Some of the difficulties of management that the writer speaks about with regard to individual ownership could be solved by State control, but management by Government experts, with an eye for efficiency—the owners being bought off with Government bonds—does not imply the end of the profit motive.

The miners would still be paid an “economic wage,” with the probability of their bargaining power for higher wages being curtailed. The wages question would have very little chance of being discussed in any “association in the management” that was set up. Assuming that no major change takes place in society—a fair assumption—the industry will have to face the problem of competition of foreign producers after the war, when the Government, acting as owner, would be forced to use all the usual owner methods—cutting costs by lowering wages to pay the bondholders. Credit must be given to the New Statesman for not calling this arrangement that it proposes by the title of Socialism, but not so “Cameronian” in Reynolds’ News (March 22nd), who, dealing with the same subject, puts it like this: —

  "Sir William Beveridge, in the august columns of “The Times,” has sounded a clarion call for Socialism to beat the Nazis. We must nationalise the national income, he says. We must recognise the fact—so frequently expressed in this column—”that bribery by price or wage is often an ineffective spur to output.” Now that the case for Socialism has found such a spokesman on such a platform, is it too much to expect that it will be given voice by Labour Ministers in the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street?”

Sir William’s voice, we might inform “Cameronian,” would be a mere addition to all that collection called the “left” which sees nothing wrong with a “Socialism” that has for its ingredients State control of industry coupled with the wages system, with the erstwhile owners sitting pretty waiting for the period to come round for the pleasure of collecting the State dividend.

For ourselves, it appears that we are still the only Party of the working class that holds that Socialism means a complete change of society economically—yes, and in outlook too; for common ownership of wealth and its democratic control will produce a different man, who will need no bribe to induce him to work, who will adhere to the ethic that he gives his all in a society that has neither owners, nor wages, to buy him, where the spur to output is his and society’s welfare.

L.D.

Rising prices and the EEC (1978)

From the April 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before January 1973, when Britain joined the European Economic Community, and again in 1975 at the time of the Referendum, the interests in favour of joining and those opposed to it marshalled ail the arguments they could think of to influence the electorate one way or the other. Many were so flimsy that it is surprising anyone troubled to make them. Like the argument that entry into the EEC would mean more exports for British companies and more jobs for workers because it opened up a big new market: simultaneously people already in the EEC were being told that they should welcome British entry because it would open up the big British market to their exporters. It was obvious that while some British companies might hope to gain others were as certain to lose by the change.

There was, however, one consideration that appeared to have more substance. It was that entry into the EEC would push up prices in this country, especially food prices.

Opponents said that Britain would no longer be able to import food from non-member countries at the lower, world market price levels. The New Statesman's “Case Against Entry” used an estimate that this would raise British food prices by between 18 per cent and 26 per cent, this being the gap between world food prices and EEC prices.

The supporters of joining the EEC met this with two arguments. One was that British wages would rise to the higher levels of some EEC countries, notably Germany, and that workers would then be able to pay the higher prices. Whatever force there may be in such a trend towards common European wage levels, the onset of the depression and the Labour Government’s policy of checking wage increases put paid to it for the time being.

The second argument was put by the Conservative Party in their Guide for the 1975 Referendum Campaign. It was that as this country has to import half its food as well as much fertilisers and fuel it was important to have the dependable source of food represented by the EEC.

  It may not always provide us with the very cheap food available at any given time, but recent experience has shown how dramatically world food prices can fluctuate above and below Community levels, and how reliance on world supplies can leave us with shortages in time of need. It is therefore far better for us to rely on secure food supplies from our Community partners than to gamble on insecure supplies from the volatile world market.

The reason entry into the EEC was said to raise food prices was the changeover from the former British policy for keeping farming profitable to the different system used in the EEC.

The British system had been to fix guaranteed prices for lots of farm produce, and if farmers were forced to sell at lower prices because of cheap imports, the difference between actual and guaranteed prices was paid to farmers as subsidies. This kept food prices in Britain in line with world levels.

The system introduced in the EEC in 1962 was to set relatively high food prices for the whole EEC, reflecting costs of production, and to impose levies on imports from non-member countries. If actual prices fell below fixed “intervention” levels the Community bought the produce at the “intervention” prices, and stored it until prices rose, or sold it outside the Community, normally at a loss: or, as sometimes happened, destroyed it.

But this system had its problems. One was that costs of producing food are higher in some EEC countries than in others and a price level high enough to satisfy the least efficient farmers came up against the objections of factory owners and other employers who saw their costs being pushed up by wage demands to keep up with the high cost of living.

Another was that each EEC country controls its own currency. (It will be years before the aim is reached of one centrally controlled currency for the whole EEC.) So whenever one country, say Germany, up-valued its currency or another devalued its currency the whole European food market was disrupted, exports from low-currency countries capturing the market from high currency countries such as Germany.

To offset this and protect those farmers who would have been badly bit by it the system was devised of requiring the countries with depreciated currency to make compensatory payments on food imports and to levy charges on food exports; with the reverse arrangement for countries with up-valued currencies. But this would have called for drastic adjustments following the fairly frequent alterations of currency exchange rates. It was therefore modified and made less drastic by using, for converting Community payments into the currency of each country, not the actual currency exchange rates but agreed artificial rates which, for example, over-valued the pound but under-valued the German mark to the advantage of German farmers. These artificial rates are called green pounds, green marks, green liras, etc.

It is a complicated system but its practical effect can be seen in the recent 7½ per cent devaluation of the green pound forced by Parliament on the Government in place of the 5 per cent that it had proposed to ask for from the Community authorities.

This reduced by about 3p a lb. the subsidy received by Danish and Dutch exporters of bacon to Britain. The purpose of seeking the reduction was to help British pig farmers who had long complained that they were being ruined by cheap imports. If the Danes and Dutch actually raised their prices by the full 3p a lb. all bacon prices in the British market would go up by some such amount with a corresponding increase of the incomes of pig farmers. (Beef was also affected by the devaluation of the green pound).

It now remains to look at the original argument about British food prices being forced up by membership of the EEC.

In the first place it is questionable whether the New Statesman's forecast of an 18 per cent to 26 per cent rise actually took place. The Conservative Guide for the Referendum Campaign, quoted Shirley Williams the Labour prices minister as saying that “the overall level of food prices in the UK is not at present significantly affected one way or the other by our membership of the EEC”. She was not saying that food prices had not risen but that this reflected world price changes, not membership of the EEC.

But even if the New Statesman's forecast had proved correct what does it amount to? They had not risked claiming that if Britain remained outside the EEC no price rise would take place. They could hardly do so because between 1966 and 1972 (when Britain was outside the EEC) British food prices had risen by 47 per cent.

But those who still maintain that British food prices have risen because of membership of the EEC can point to the fact that between 1972 and 1976 British food prices rose by 100 per cent (up to date the rise is nearly 140 per cent). Does this not prove that membership of the EEC was responsible for the rise?

It is only necessary to look at the experience of other countries in the EEC to see that it cannot be the explanation. While British food prices rose between 1972 and 1976 by 100 per cent, the rise in Germany was only 27 per cent and in Denmark 53 per cent, both of them in the EEC. (For USA and Switzerland both outside the EEC, the percentage rise was 46 and 21.)

The major cause of the unduly big rise of British food prices, and British prices generally, is not membership of the EEC but the inflation policy operated by the Government (much speeded up after the Labour Government came into office in February 1974), in the mistaken belief that it would provide “full employment”.

Marx showed that an inflationary rise of prices inevitably follows from an excess issue of inconvertible paper currency. Though the level of production now is actually lower than it was in 1974, the amount of currency in circulation with the public has increased from £4,620 million to £7,830 million, a rise of 69 per cent.

If Britain had not joined the EEC the Labour Government would still have followed the same inflationary policy, with the consequent big rise of prices. (Under the guise of “reflation” they are likely to continue it.) Germany and Switzerland have resorted less to expansion of the note issue, hence their smaller price rises. (In the past two years Swiss prices have been rising at only about 1 per cent a year.)

It only remains to add that the solution of the workers’ problems is not to be found in membership or non-membership of the EEC, or in having inflation or not having inflation, but in getting rid of capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

By The Way: Give the Dogs a Thousand Lashes, Damme ! (1944)

The By The Way column from the December 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Give the Dogs a Thousand Lashes, Damme !

The mentality of some Tory M.P.s is weird and wonderful.

Thus we have Mr. D. Robertson (Conservative, Streatham) dilating on the idleness of the men employed on bomb damage repairs.

  He mentioned a case of men who were brought to Streatham in luxury coaches from a hostel at 8 o'clock and went off to breakfast at 10 o'clock.
  They should have had their breakfast before they left the hostel, but did not because they had lain too long in their beds. (Evening Standard, October 27th, 1944.)

Just fancy! Luxury coaches—the louts! Of course, M.P.s don't ride to the House in luxury coaches, not them— usually plain private (“unluxury”) cars, or just common old taxis.

  "If this idleness continues,” declared Mr. Robertson, "I say put the young men into the infantry and let the older men have a spell of unemployment.”

There for you! The young men can smash more houses up in the Army and the older ones do nothing! How Mr. Robertson can imagine this is going to put anyone's roof back, we can't think!

One or two members of the Socialist Party working on war damage repairs in South London have a suggestion; they propose that Mr. Robertson have a week off from the House of Commons and take a turn on the roofs down in Streatham. He won't do much work, of course, but it would give him a marvellous appetite for those wonderful dinners they serve in the Commons restaurant. Perhaps he might feel like lying in his bed Sunday morning as a result; he wouldn’t have to be at the House, anyway, for they don't sit Saturdays or Sundays.

Our comrades say they are quite willing to do a week in the House of Commons for every day Mr. Robertson gets his hands dirty down at Streatham.


Trouble Down on the Farm

As if in answer to Mr. Robertson, the Norfolk War Agricultural Committee has informed the London Star (November 4th) that the Italian prisoners are rather difficult.

  When they are slack, lazy or disobedient we can report them to their camp, but what happens? They may get a spell of detention, but while they are away doing their punishment the farms are deprived of their services, indifferent though they may be.
  We have also found that punishment does not seem to improve them. As a fact, a spell of detention does not have any salutary effect on them, neither does it seem to have any terrors for them.
  And when they return to the farm they are worse than ever. The result is that the farmers will not report them for minor breaches of discipline.

And these are the boys we went to Italy to “liberate”!

This War

More Trouble. Now Thorburn Wiant, Associated Press correspondent back in London after two years in China, wrote : —

   There is probably no more efficient dictatorship than General Chiang Kai-shek’s party.
   There are secret police, concentration camps and firing squads for those who dare to speak, write or act out of turn. (Daily Mirror, November 1st, l944.)

Come, come, Thorburn! Chiang may be more efficient than Hitler—but not more than .Marshal Stalin!.

He also says the Chinese are not fighting the Japs at all—but one another.

We give it up!

A General Tells About the Cause of War

Lieutenant-General Sir G. Le Q. Martel, K.C.B., is writing on Conscription after the War.

  There is a universal hope that after the war the great nations will get together and solve the international problems of trade and currency, and thus eliminate unemployment and poverty. This would remove the main causes of world wars and the need for large fighting forces. (Evening Standard, September 27th, 1944.) 

Unemployment and poverty are not solved by trade or currency reorganisation, but the worthy General is certainly getting rather warm on the causes of modern war.

Perhaps, as he has retired, now he can write this sort of thing. We can’t imagine General Montgomery telling his troops that the war is caused by unemployment and poverty, though.

Virtue is its Own Reward

The Press is already speculating on how much Parliament is going to give the heads of the fighting services when the war is won. After the last war a sum of £585,000 was voted by Parliament to be distributed to Admirals, Generals and Air Marshals.

Admiral Jellico got £50,000, as did French and Lord Allenby. Sir Hugh Trenchard got £10,000 (Air Force), Sir David Beatty £10,000, and Sir Douglas Haig £100,000 and a statue in Whitehall.

  “It seems clear that any sum voted by Parliament must considerably exceed the £585,000 of the last war,” says one London evening paper (Star, September 7th).

Oh! quite clear! And most essential to cut down on expenditure for the rank and file to do so. Those who lose limbs will lie supplied with mass-produced standardised “Woolworth” arms and legs—free of all charge. Better artificial legs—for the benefit of the workers.

Dreaming of Thee !

The following is from the Daily Mirror (October 25th, 1944):—

   Have Your Holidays by Hypnotism, says Doctor.
   Tired and jaded war workers can have all the invigorating benefits of a seaside holiday without ever going near a beach. It can all he done at home—by hypnotism.
  So, at least, says Dr. Alexander Cannon, of the Isle of Man, former psychiatrist to the L.C.C. mental hospital service.
  Dr. Cannon suggests the hypnotism may be based on a wavelength in some way common to the length of the so-called short wave.”
  “The tired and worn-out worker in this dreamland of hypnosis,” he says, “can be made to walk along the seashore on a warm, sunny day, with a cool, refreshing breeze, and to feel the magnetic power being drawn in through the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet as he leisurely walks until he feels wonderful.”
  “Having allowed this dream picture to be implanted in his mind for a period of from twenty to forty minutes,” the doctor adds, “the worker can then be awakened with no recollection of his dreamland tour but with a feeling of energy, power and revitalisation which may last anything from one to four weeks or longer.”

So this is where “psychology” has got us to. Starting out with telling us that the cause of the trouble is our repressions, going on, like Max Eastman, to inform us that the reason Karl Marx expounded scientific Socialism is because be wanted Hegel for his father, finishing up with fortune telling and psycho-analysis.

We are quite amenable to the idea of having this dream implanted on us if Dr. Cannon will undertake to implant one on our guv'nor on the same terms—viz., are will go away to the seaside for twenty minutes in our dreams, if he (the guv'nor) will agree to dream that we’ve done a week’s work and pay us for it (in real money --not dreams).

Great “Legal” Victory of the Working Class

We gather from the Socialist Appeal (September) that the quashing of the sentences of imprisonment passed on the members of the Revolutionary Communist Party is “one of the most important legal victories in the struggle against anti-labour legislation” which the working class has gained.

We must confess to some mild surprise. For ourselves, we have always held that the only real “legal victory” was when the working class captured the machinery of government (including the armed forces) by voting themselves IN and the boss OUT, which would enable them to enact and enforce laws.

Are we to understand that “revolutionary” Trotskyists have now forsaken armed insurrection and direct action for pleading at the bar of (capitalist) justice?

The New Statesmen !

Every week the New Statesman awards five shillings for the most idiotic statement published in the Press sent in by its readers.

We submit the following :— 

  Somebody should now get up, as they did in 1940-41, and point out that Southern England is part of the same battlefront as Normandy, and that the toughest part of the war is still to come. If the German threat to send rocket shells does mature, something of the sort will have to be done. I believe the response would be much as it was in 1940—production would increase and so would popular resolution. We should in our hearts all rejoice that in this war we are not “sending our sons” only, but sharing in some small way in their risks. (New Statesman, July 1st, 1944.)

Please send our five shillings award to Socialist Standard, Rugby Chambers.

New Insecticide

Reference has already been made in these colmuns to the new insecticide, D.D.T.

It is stated that this new compound has already stopped an incipient typhus epidemic in Naples, and been used with deadly effect on bugs, fleas, cockroaches, beetles, moths, lice and mosquitoes. 

It is a great preventative of malaria and dysentery. British troops now have a standard issue of D.D.T. impregnated shirts which effectively protect the wearer against lice for two months even after regular washing. (Times, August 2nd.)

It will be available to civilians after the war. So. perhaps, ends the career of some of the greatest pests of poverty-stricken workers—their poverty, however, will remain.

D.D.T. was discovered by an obscure German student chemist employed by the Basle firm of J. R. Geigy in 1874.

It lay dormant until 1942. when the British branch of the Geigy Company brought it to the notice of the British Government. What became of the inventor is not known.

Explosions for all

  “The reason given on Thursday for the dismissal recently of 1,000 war workers, 900 of them women, from a factory in the West Riding of Yorkshire was that the country is so overstocked with shells that to get rid of them, firing day and night, would take two years. “Two hundred workers are reported to have been dismissed by another Yorkshire firm, but all the 1,200 are said to have been absorbed by engineering concerns in Bradford and Leeds or given jobs as conductresses on buses in these two cities. About fifty have been permitted to return to their peace-time jobs in the textile trade.”—(Manchester Guardian, November 11th, 1944.)

Free Health (? !) Service for Workers

  “Frank statements about the methods of some medical men are made to-day by Dr. Andrew Kefalas, of Sheffield. After pointing out that one reason why many people go to the chemist instead of the doctor is that they cannot afford to pay both, he says this in the British Medical Journal:
  There is a more ugly side to this scandal and that is that so many of us neither prescribe nor dispense at all. We simply dope out stock mixtures. 

Cutting the Cards.

  For myself, I would, in case of illness, as soon lay out at half-dozen patent preparations, select one of them by cutting a pack of cards, and take my chance on the one which turned up, as swallow some of the  'mist this' and ‘mist that' which are foisted upon the people who chance the doctor instead of the chemist.” (Evening Standard, September 12th, 1944.)

“ Good God! said God. I've got MY Work Cut Out.”

  “Britain as a nation is not ready to have victory granted to her,” says Rev. A. M. Hay. of St Paul's, Braintree, Essex, “and that is why the weather—God's weather— has been almost persistently against us since D-Day.”
  Writing in the church magazine, he says: “If there is any doubt that we are not ready for victory, let us ask ourselves how are the majority of people in onr land preparing to celebrate? With revelling rather than with humble thanksgiving.”
Mr. Hay told the Daily Mirror last night: “It was God's good weather at Dunkirk and in the Battle of Britain that saved us.
  “I believe strongly that God uses the weather as an instrument in his moral government,” Mr. Hay added.

(Daily Mirror, November 9th, 1944.)

Horatio

Rear View: Donald The Great Dictator? (2018)

Il Donnie

The Rear View Column from the December 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Donald The Great Dictator?
An article titled ‘Is Trump A Fascist?’ (informationclearinghouse.info, 1 November) lists twelve early warning signs of fascism and asks readers to make up their own minds. Rather than debate the validity or otherwise of the various signs, including some such as rampant sexism, control of mass media and protection of corporate power which are ubiquitous, defining fascism would be a good place to start.

Originally, fascist referred to the followers of Benito Mussolini, who was dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943. Racism and anti-Semitism, though it did exist, did not play a prominent role in Italian fascism, unlike the German Nazi variant. Fascism was — and is – an authoritarian, nationalistic and anti-socialist political ideology that preaches the need for a strong state ruled by a single political party led by a charismatic leader. Hitler and the Nazis came to power with the support of more than ten million workers. Further, that very month, March 1933, the first camp was opened – for the incarceration of officials of the Communist and Social Democratic Parties. And on May 10 1933 in Berlin banned books were burnt openly and watched by some 70,000 people.

Trump ticks those three ideological boxes and like Hitler was elected — his supporters include millions of workers, whilst millions of others are disenfranchised. In April his administration began enforcing a zero-tolerance immigration policy that has resulted in thousands of children being separated from their families. What next? More camps surrounded by ‘beautiful barbed wire’?

Further, given that apparently Trump does not read books, and there is already a list of banned books, one wonders if he will object to them being burned … Steve Hilton, the former chief strategist to the former Prime Minister Cameron, made this candid comment: ‘Regardless of who’s in office, the same people are in power. It is a democracy in name only, operating on behalf of a tiny elite no matter the electoral outcome.’ Indeed, and in the more long-term perspective, all social events for over two hundred years have taken place within the framework of world capitalism, with its class divisions and profit motive. As such, this form of society must be held responsible for every war, every death from starvation and every dictator it has generated. Let us prove Hilton wrong by voting for ourselves for a change.


Blood, sweat & tears
‘What makes you rich, and how much do you earn if you’re middle class?’ (newstatesman.com, 1 November). George Orwell once described his family of origin as ‘lower-upper middle class’. The term middle class is in everyday use but generally to refer to occupation rather than, as in the New Statesman article, income.

The socialist position is that classes are defined by their relationship to the means of production. We, the working class, having no other property to sell on a regular basis, live by selling our labour power for a wage or a salary. Marx put it more graphically: capital, ‘is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.’ And: ‘The capital given in exchange for labour-power is converted into necessaries, by the consumption of which the muscles, nerves, bones, and brains of existing labourers are reproduced, and new labourers are begotten’. The life-blood of this system is the pumping of surplus value out of wage labour. The whole working class is involved in creating, maintaining and reproducing labour power for the benefit of the capitalist class. The struggles over the distribution of the social product, the organisation of work, working conditions and the results of production never stop. The class struggle or war is more than a struggle over the level of exploitation, however. Ultimately it is a struggle over the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution.

The war in question has been correctly identified by none other than Warren Buffett: ‘there’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.’ Consider, the top 0.1 percent of American households hold the same amount of wealth as the bottom 90 percent and every 38 seconds a U.S. citizen dies of poverty and poverty-related social conditions. The rich will stay rich and the poor poor until a majority of class conscious workers act and capitalism is replaced by a world without wages, money, poverty and war.

Cooking the Books: Fukuyama goes reformist (2018)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Francis Fukuyama interview: ‘Socialism ought to come back’ was the perhaps surprising title of an article in the New Statesman (17 October). Could the man who notoriously proclaimed that the ‘end of history’ was a liberal market economy with liberal political institutions have really said that? Not in so many words. Asked by George Eaton, the editor, for his view of ‘the resurgence of the socialist left in the UK and the US’, Fukuyama replied reasonably that ‘it all depends on what you mean by socialism.’ If you mean ‘ownership of the means of production,’ he said, ‘I don’t think that’s going to work.’ And went on:

‘If you mean redistributive programmes that try to redress this big imbalance in both incomes and wealth that has emerged then, yes, I think not only can it come back, it ought to come back.’

But that is not what socialism means. Socialism is the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and involves the abolition of production for the market in favour of production directly to satisfy people’s needs.

What Fukuyama was endorsing was the old Left programme to redistribute income and wealth from the rich to the non-rich. This is rather at variance with what he wrote in 1992 in The End of History and the Last Man where, comparing it with planning to develop capitalism by states in East Asia, he wrote:

‘The Left’s preferred kind of planning, with its intervention on behalf of the victims of capitalism, has historically had much more ambiguous economic results’(chapter 9).

Indeed it has and there is no reason to think that this will change. Increasing the consumption of ‘the victims of capitalism’ does not work in the end because it goes against the logic of capitalism which requires that priority be given to profit-making. Hence its ‘ambiguous’ economic result. In this instance the Fukuyama of 1992 had a better understanding than the Fukuyama of 2018. The fact is capitalism can never be made to work in the interest of its victims, the majority class of wage and salary workers.

In the interview Fukuyama also had something to say about Marx:

‘At this juncture, it seems to me that certain things Karl Marx said are turning out to be true. He talked about the crisis of overproduction … that workers would be impoverished and there would be insufficient demand.’

While Marx did speak of crises of overproduction he did not think that they were caused by insufficient paying demand from workers. He pointed out that, on the contrary, ‘crises are always prepared by a period in which wages generally rise, and the working class actually does receive a greater share of the annual production destined for consumption’ (Capital, Volume 2, chapter 20, section 4). For him, crises of overproduction arose from the anarchy of production built into capitalism that led some businesses, in their competitive pursuit of profits, producing more than the market demand for their products and to this having a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy.

Even in his 1992 book Fukuyama was not that hostile to Marx since he saw him as a fellow Hegelian who held that history moved towards an ‘end’ (in the sense of an aim rather than a stop). His criticism of Marx was that the end of history was capitalism not communism.

In the interview he also referred to ‘China’s state capitalist model’ but that’s par for the course these days.

The Future: Socialism or Barbarism (2018)

From the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Back in the glory days of the Blair administration, a soft-left journal like the New Statesman would have confined itself to articles on the Kremlinology of Whitehall: who was a Blairite? Who a Brownie? Perhaps the odd John Pilger article would crop up to deplore some aspects of foreign policy. Discussion of capitalism, much less socialism, would have been a rarity. Fast forward to today, and we have the political editor of that organ, George Eaton, discussing what the consequences of the end of capitalism might be 

Now, the Socialist Party has always been clear that capitalism won't end itself, and that only its conscious replacement by politically organised workers will achieve that. Something, though, is clearly in the air when post-capitalist ideas start to gain air-time. Part of that is the clear sense that technological change is transforming the way we work now.

Eaton notes the slew of books on the matter: Paul Mason's technology-driven book Post-Capitalism has been reviewed in the Socialist Standard, and it does indeed put technology front and centre of social change. Eaton also references a forthcoming book with the intriguing title Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani (which we will no doubt be devouring as soon as it is out). Eaton, though, explores the possibility, despite the shiny stuff on offer, that the future might well be a choice between socialism or barbarism.

He cites Four Futures by Peter Frase, which outlines the possible effects of technological progress: ‘Communism’ (equality and abundance), ‘Rentism’ (hierarchy and abundance), ‘Socialism’ (equality and scarcity), ‘Exterminism’ (hierarchy and scarcity). All premised on the question of response and resolution to environmental catastrophe. We'll leave the small matter of our standing objection to the misuse of the word socialism hanging, and work within Frase's framework for now.

The futurist and science fiction author Charles Stross set out, in a blog post in 2017, how the exterminist option contains its own horrific and plausible logic:

   'Consider Bangladesh, and the Bay of Bengal fisheries collapse, not to mention the giant anoxic dead zone spreading in the Bay of Bengal (which means those fisheries won't be coming back for a very long time). There are nearly 170 million people there, mostly living on alluvial flood plains feeding into the gradually rising ocean. If the sea level rises by just one meter, 10% of the land area will be flooded; most of the country is less than 12m above sea level. It's a primarily agricultural economy (it's one of the main rice and wheat producing nations), heavily dependent on fisheries for protein to supplement the diet of its citizens' 

As he notes, one horrific option is to just contain the population of Bangladesh, and let catastrophe run in a Malthusian genocide that could be passed off as natural disaster. This is a repeatable option for an elite that can jet to their private fortress islands and escape. No need to adjust to climate change, the deaths of others will reduce the environmental impact of humanity.

This can only be made possible by technology creating a relative surplus population of people whose labour is no longer required for market production.

In the light of this, Eaton is entirely correct, technological change alone will not deliver us from capitalism; and he channels Marx in observing that 'Men and women will continue to make their own history – if not in circumstances of their choosing.' The human response to technological change is, though, at the heart of political battles for the foreseeable years to come, and if we are to make our history, it has to be in the conscious effort to choose what might be called 'fully automated luxury socialism.' The choice we will all face is how to use the time won by labour-saving technology. Not that we need a fully automated society to build a society where 'poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom' but we do need to take control of the gains and benefits of labour saving technology.

Pik Smeet