News in Review: Labour Conference (1962)

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

Labour Conference

It has been obvious for a long time that the Labour Party leadership would be sweating on the top line over their Annual Conference this year.

Hungrily, they watch a general election draw near, with the Tories getting the worst of the current by-elections. For some time they have held down the elements which the Conservative press have played up as the voters’ bogy men, and Gaitskell has successfully disentangled his image from that of Foot, Cousins, the CND, and so on.

All this could have been upset by a big, headline-catching row at the Conference. And the issue which could easily have caused a row was the Common Market.

Gaitskell has decided that he has an election winner here. But outright opposition to the Common Market could have split the Labour Party anew and lost them a lot of votes.

Capitalism’s political parties have had a lot of practice at dodging this sort of problem. The answer to it is to produce a statement which actually says nothing definite about the matter it is supposed to be dealing with.

So the Labour Party now says that, although it is a good idea for British capitalism to join Europe, it should only do so on conditions which make its acceptance by the Six all but impossible. This, they hope, will catch the votes of those who favour the Common Market and of those who do not.

The Labour Party also hoped—and they pulled it off—that the statement would suffocate any embarrassing questions and arguments at the Conference.

So there are several questions we can ask outside the Conference. And we hope they are embarrassing.

Is it worthwhile, even for voters who support capitalism, to vote for a party which cannot make up its mind on an important capitalist issue like the Common Market? Is it worth voting for a party which is so hungry for power that it will make any twist and turn if it thinks this will win a few measly votes?

And to the Labour Party members who call themselves Socialists: Can the Labour Party be a party of principle when it is so ready to bend its policy to any of capitalism's passing breezes? Should a Socialist Party bother about an issue of international capitalist economy like the Common Market?

And finally: Does the Labour Party stand for Socialism?

Answers to these five questions: No. no, no, no and no.

Rail Strikes

The rail strikers haven't a hope of success.

Doctor Beeching has said that he thinks some sections of the railways can be run profitably and, as a preliminary to boosting these, he is busily cutting away the dead wood of the other lines and services which do not pay.

This is quite in accordance with capitalist practice. Workers on the railway, —and in other industries—who regularly revive capitalism with massive votes for its political parties at election time cannot logically complain when the system works in the only way it can.

Capitalism is always upsetting dreams. 

The dream of nationalisation, for example.

Many railwaymen, and their leaders, were hot for nationalisation in 1945 and did their best to return the Attlee government which brought the railways under state control.

Now this very state control has facilitated the run down of the railways. It has made easier the national financial survey and it will smooth the organisation of the closures.

The nationalisation fans have an excuse for this. State railways, they say, are a good idea. The trouble is that the Tories are determined to undermine them. This ignores the fact that Labour Party spokesmen, too, have faced up to the capitals realities of nationalisation and have admitted that a Labour government would also be forced to close down a lot of lines and other services.

The fact is that nationalisation is something designed to solve the capitalists’ problems; it does not even faintly disturb the property basis of society. This means that most state industries must in the end conform to the profit motive.

The time for railwaymen to be kicking up will be at the next election, when the Labour Party will once again be campaigning on all sorts of capitalist reforms like nationalisation and calling them Socialism.

But it is a safe bet that the workers who have gained nothing from nationalisation will be voting and working for the party which stands for it.

Soviet income tax

Income tax is a very sore spot with a lot of workers in this country who are convinced that they carry the burden of many of the taxes which the government imposes.

So when the Russian government announced last year that they would progressively reduce, and finally abolish, income tax, a lot was made of it by the Communist Party. British workers were encouraged to think of Russia as a tax-free country, which is currently something like their idea of heaven.

At the time it was obvious, mainly for two reasons, that the abolition would have little effect upon the Russian worker.

Income tax accounts for only a small part of the total tax levied in the Soviet Union, most of which is taken directly from industry in the form of turnover tax and profits tax.

Apart from this the Russian worker pays tax no more than does his counterpart in other countries. Abolishing income tax would have had no lasting effect upon his wages.

But now the Russian government has abandoned the plan. There will be no more reductions in income tax and it will not be abolished. Of course, there had to be excuses offered for this reversal of a policy that was so ballyhooed.

The whole thing was blamed upon the international situation. Just as workers in this country were once encouraged to blame Germany for the austerities and restrictions they endured, Russian workers are now told that the Western powers are responsible for the upsetting of their government’s plans.

All this makes nonsense of the Communist Party claim that Socialism exists in Russia. If the Soviet Union is so unable to insulate itself from the other capitalist powers that it cannot even have undisturbed control of its own tax system, how can it hope to establish Socialism, even if it wanted to?

And what sort of Socialism is supposed to exist in Russia, with a full-blown tax system (including, let us repeat, a profit tax) just like any openly capitalist nation?

There is only one answer to these questions. Socialism does not exist in Russia. The Soviet Union is a powerful capitalist state which has to juggle with its finances and to deceive its workers just as the U.S.A. and this country have to.

Russia must involve itself in the international disputes of capitalism and must watch these disputes destroying its plans.

Many people regard Russia as a workers’ heaven. But all the evidence which comes from that country says that they are deceiving themselves.

‘University’ in Mississipi

From any point of view it is ridiculous that thousands of soldiers should be needed so that one person can go to school.

But the skin of James Meredith, who has been enrolled in the University of Mississippi, is a different colour from that of the students who have monopolised the University up to now.

So by asking to be enrolled, Meredith has stirred up some of the worst of the South's primitive prejudices and violence.

The United States government is on his side. American capitalism has decided that the Civil War was not fought for nothing. Developing industry needs Negro labour because it cannot afford to ignore it. Segregation is inefficient and wasteful.

No part of the United States can be allowed to opt out of the American Union—to opt out, in fact, of the development of American capitalism—on such an important matter and on grounds of ancient prejudice.

So Washington has set itself to bust segregation in the South. It has done something towards this in the schools of some of the toughest states; in Georgia and Arkansas, for example. After Mississippi, South Carolina and Alabama remain to be dealt with, fortresses of racial ignorance.

For ignorance is the only word to describe the objections which the Southern Americans have to be sitting in school with, or on a 'bus with, or to eating with, the Negroes.

Knowledge has exposed the old bigotries against people of a different skin colour. It is not possible scientifically to argue that a man with a black or brown or yellow skin is any different in human terms from one whose skin is a muddy pink.

Capitalism recognises this. Wherever and whenever it can, it recruits and exploits all sorts of people impartially. This means that the interests of all capitalists—to exploit their workers as intensely as possible—are the same, whatever the colour of the capitalists' skins. It also means that the interests of all workers of any colour—to end the system which exploits and degrades them—are the same.

The Mississippi rioters could not be more off the beam. They are scientifically wrong. They are behind the times of modern capitalism. And they are acting in complete contradiction of their own material working class interests.

Ridiculous. And worse.

Past and Present: Remembrance Day poppycock (1962)

From the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Did you buy a poppy? You probably did. And you probably stood still when the salutes were sounded at eleven o’clock in the morning on the eleventh, and remembered the millions who died in the two World Wars. Perhaps you knew somebody—a relative or a friend—who died among them; perhaps you were one who remembered with a deep personal grief. And perhaps, because you had remembered and you had bought your poppy—you and millions like you—you felt a bit better about it.

It is impossible not to feel sympathy.

But it is even more difficult not to speak out against your illusions.

You probably think you were right to pop your money into the collecting box. The figures of the men who were crippled and blinded in the wars, and who cannot support themselves, are real enough. Obvious, too, is their plight. We sometimes get a look at them; there is, for example, a home for disabled ex-servicemen in West London which organises its own flag day in the summer, when it wheels some of its worst cases and plants them outside the local railway stations with a box propped upon their laps—or upon their chests. These men are pitifully shattered and have no hope of getting their living in the usual labour market. You think that if we all contribute something it would help them to solve that problem. Perhaps you think that only a niggard could resist the appeals to buy a flag or a poppy.

Yet we do not have to be misers to wonder how the whole thing started. And it is not for the sake of saving our coin in the box that we would like to stop it happening again. Why are these men forced to beg on the streets? To many people the answer to that question—The war, of course—closes the discussion, as if war is something which just happens, something to do with the Old Adam in us, or something to be blamed onto That Man in Berlin or Moscow or somewhere else. Anyway, nobody should stop to think about the whys and the wherefores; we should all get into uniform as soon as a war starts. If we’re unlucky we’ll get our name on one of the memorials or end up in a bath chair rattling a collection box.

This is exactly the attitude our masters like us to adopt. For those who unquestioningly accept a war are the easiest of victims for the propaganda which prepares them for the next bout of bloodletting. They easily forget the promises which are offered to excuse one war and which are broken as the next draws near. Such people in this country forgot the promises which were made in 1914-18, that that was the war to end wars and the assurances they were given in 1945 that Europe—and especially Germany— would be so organised that international disputes would be impossible in the future. Such people in Germany forgot that their country was one of the guarantors of the Belgian frontiers which they coldly violated in 1914 and that in 1919 they signed a pact which bound them never to rearm. Pacts and promises are freely broken, the power blocs in the world regroup and rearm, the war propaganda switches effortlessly from one line to another. And you, as you drop your coin through the slot and take your poppy, accept and condone it all. The war, you murmur, it's the war. There’s nothing anyone can do about that, is there?

We do not have to be misers to see that there is something we can do about it.

If you examine your poppy, you will see that it acknowledges a donation to the Haig Fund. You probably know that poppies are sold because they were the flowers which were thick in the cornfields of Flanders at the beginning of World War I, although by the time the fighting had rolled backwards and forwards over the countryside and had settled into the trenches where the guns and the gas could do their work there were very few poppies left. And you probably know who Haig was.

He was the man they gave £100,000 and an Earldom to, making him the first Earl Haig of Bemersyde in the County of Berwick, Viscount Dawick and Twentieth Laird of Bemersyde, for organising the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men. Haig was a sombre, withdrawn man who had notions that he was divinely appointed to lead his men to victory. Even for his time, his ideas were out of date. To the end, he dreamed of using his beloved cavalry on thrilling, lightning thrusts—although at the same time his infantry were finding it impossible to walk over the liquid battlefields he sent them across. His name is firmly linked with his own pet Big Push at Passchendaele, a bloody fiasco in which tens of thousands were lost to capture a few square miles of land and a heap of rubble which was anyway very soon recaptured by the Germans. It is easy now to be wise about Passchendaele, to remember the deep mud, to recall the official War Office publication which warns of the marshy nature of the Flanders countryside, and to ask, horrified, why the attack was ever allowed to happen. But perhaps the grimmest fact about it is that at the time, to the people who supported the war, Passchendaele seemed a very good idea. Haig had planned the offensive for a long time, confident that the attacks organised by the other Allied commanders would come to nothing and that he would be called upon to finish the war. The other attacks did come to nothing. So did Haig’s, if by nothing we mean the massed dead, the fear and the pain and the shattered lives and in the end the Earldom—and the poppies.

Cynicism
The poppies, in fact, are one of the unkindest cuts of all. There was, to be blunt, a cynical political reason for them. So great was the slaughter of that first war, so shocked was the world at what it had seen, that capitalism's masters realised that there were prospects of working class reaction. If these wars were to be a regular thing, something must appear to be done for the bits of men who came out of them. Possible resentment must be diverted from the disillusionment which was staring people in the face and fobbed off by unctuous gratitude for the penny in the box. How many of us can remember how this was done, in the years between the wars? The children drawn up in rows in the chill, depressing halls of working class schools with the dank November morning outside, being hectored by sour teachers and told that the penny they had wrung from an unemployed father—who had himself survived the trenches—was a vital part of the great virtue of charity. (In those days, the capitalist class in England were more generous in their gratitude for the dead. They always had the Two Minute Silence on November 11th, no matter on what day of the week it fell. Now they make sure that Remembrance Day is fixed for a Sunday so that production is not interrupted and nobody gets two minutes off.)

We said that we would be blunt. This is the reason for the charity sop which capitalism so carefully fosters. Charity stifles protest at the inhumanities of capitalism and it goes some of the way to conceal the true causes of our problems.

Charity solves nothing. The unemployed man in the ’thirties did not solve his problems by buying a poppy—and neither did be solve the problems of the men be thought he was helping. This is still true, even though post-war inflation means that it may be sixpence which goes into the collecting box more often than a penny. The very best that charity can do is to spread—ever so thinly, at that—a little working class poverty from one group of workers to another. Charity to the war disabled stifles the protests at their conditions and diverts the question which asks why they are broken and needy as they are.

Wars are as much a part of capitalist society as buying and selling. In fact, they are conceived and executed and fought so that buying and selling can go on. So that one power can buy its oil, or uranium, or rubber, or something else, in the most convenient and cheapest market. So that it can sell its cars or steel or chemicals in the places where it can get a good price for them. So that its ships and aircraft can carry its commodities to any place where the price is right. So that, in a nutshell, the profit motive of capitalism can be satisfied.

An essential part of this profit making is that enough people can turn out the wealth and make it possible to sell it profitably. But there would be no sense in the employers paying these people the same as the value of what they had made. There would be no profit in that. So the workers are in general paid only enough to keep them; enough to give them what they need to get up steam again for another bout of wealth production and profit making. This means that most people have to go out to work for their living and that in return they get a wage which is about enough for them to live a distinctly restricted, unambitious life and to turn out more workers who will live and work in exactly the same way.

This applies for as long as the worker is able to work. But if for some reason he loses his ability then his livelihood is lost with it and his only hope is the charity of other people. This is what has happened to the war disabled men, the men you bought your poppy for.

As long as there are people to buy the poppies without question, there will be the social system which makes war and as long as there is war there will be the wounded who will need charity and who will make the poppies for people to buy without question. . . This grisly circle could go on forever, in a descending spiral of madness and destruction.

Anybody who cares about human welfare should look for another way of dealing with this situation. It is worse than futile to be charitable to the men who come out of capitalism’s wars, the men who are some of the worst victims of the poverty which capitalism forces upon all its workers, and at the same time support the continuance of capitalism.

It is better—and this is no miser's talk—to get down to some reasoning about the causes of the poverty and the unhappiness which so deeply scars the world today. It is even better to come up with right answer. Socialism is the most plentiful and happy world we can have. And because of that it is a world away from the futile charity with which so many people excuse their toleration of capitalism today.

Ivan

The Rise of Yugoslavia - Part 2 (1962)

From the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

The new constitution of 1945 brought ninety per cent. of Yugoslav industry under State control. Only those which were not worth bothering about were allowed to escape, such as shoe making, watch repairing, inn-keeping, etc. Agrarian reform dispossessed the old landlords and distributed the land to the peasants according to family size. “The land should belong to those who cultivate it,” was the cry, but this was no common ownership, only the handing over of land from one set of private owners to another.

In any case, the peasants’ troubles were by no means at an end. They still had to sell their agricultural produce in a market, capricious and uncertain as markets are. So that in times of glut it was less costly to leave salad stuff and soft fruit to rot, than to try and sell it. An old and familiar problem, by the way, and one of the many which prompted the start of collectivisation in 1949.

As we mentioned in Part 1, there was much reconstruction and industrialisation to complete, and as early as 1946, the government had announced a five year plan aiming at 400 per cent. increase in industrial production. Belgrade called for workers to assist with voluntary labour, and the response found expression in such projects as the gigantic iron works "Lilostroy” of Ljublijana, the Samac-Sarajevo and Doboj-Banjaluka Railroads and the Cetinje hydro-electric power station.

But in other ways also, Yugoslavia was making her presence felt. Tito had visited Stalin in 1945, and signed a treaty of mutual assistance. Russian technicians and military advisers went to Yugoslavia as a “help to fraternal countries” and quite clearly the country was earmarked for inclusion in the Soviet sphere of influence. Tito and his henchmen began to doubt the wisdom of allowing so much Soviet infiltration and signs of a rift were apparent at an early stage.

It has been said that the 1948 disagreement between the two states was a battle waged for Yugoslavia’s “Socialism” against Russian “Stalinism,” but this is quite untrue, if only for the reason that there never was any Socialism in Yugoslavia anyway. Tito himself came nearer to the mark when he said at the time:

  The real issue is the relation between one state and another. In my view they are using ideological questions as a pretext for putting pressure on us and our state.

The Yugoslav government strongly resented the Russian attempts to regulate buying and selling between the Cominform Stales, seeing it as a threat to their already weak economy.

Nor must we forget the part that Yugoslav/Albanian relations played in widening the breach. Moscow and Belgrade had agreed in principle to the unification of the two states and already their economies were becoming linked, with Yugoslav influence predominating. But the Russians were taken unawares by the subsequent agreements (signed without consulting them) to allow Yugoslav forces to be stationed in Albanian territory. According to Milovan Djilas, who was deeply involved in the dispute with Moscow, it was this military move most of all which persuaded Stalin that in Tito he had a rival rather than an ally. Yugoslavia was promptly expelled from the Cominform to the accompaniment of the most violent abuse.

In 1955, there was some reconciliation between Yugoslavia and the USSR, and since then Tito has managed to sit precariously on a rather wobbly fence, obtaining economic aid from both sides of the Iron Curtain, but refusing to join either power bloc, at least for the time being. It remains to be seen how long he can play one side off against the other in his efforts to win economic elbow room for his ruling class. Only recently, America has scaled down her financial assistance to Yugoslavia, causing Belgrade to go into a panic-stricken huddle. One result has been a renewed demand for farm collectivisation, although many of Tito’s colleagues remember its previous failure and are not enthusiastic. Neither are the peasants, who want to remain proprietors in their own right and not become agricultural wage workers.

Yet this may well be the future tendency, as industry develops and the demand for labour increases. The old peasant family proprietorship will be regarded as wasteful of labour and efficiency, and there is likely to be increasing interference by the State. There is a growing working class today in Yugoslavia facing the same sort of problems as their brothers elsewhere. Sooner or later they will have to get down to an appreciation of the need for Socialism, but there is no sign of this happening, as yet.

In the meantime, it is interesting to speculate on the future role of Yugoslavia in the changing pattern of capitalist world politics. A glance at the map will show the strategy of her position with an Adriatic coastline facing Italy and frontiers with Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Austria and Italy. As her industries develop, we may well see her jostling for a share of the markets in an increasingly competitive world. But it is difficult to view her future as other than that of a minor capitalist power at most. This does after all make sense in a world where even Germany, France and Britain—the major powers of yesterday—have been ousted from dominance, and the arena left to America and Russia, two colossi of capitalism, glaring at each other in sullen anger.

(Concluded)

Remy Starc.

Finance and Industry: Trouble in Agriculture (1962)

The Finance and Industry Column from the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trouble in Agriculture

One of the big question marks over the Common Market talks has to do with agriculture. British farmers are worried about what might happen to them if Britain is accepted by the Six, and Commonwealth countries like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are afraid for their exports of wheat, meat, and dairy produce.

British fruit growers and market gardeners see a dire threat to their interests from efficient Dutch production and from cheap Italian output ripened under natural sunshine instead of in heated glasshouses. And if Denmark eventually joins there will also be intensified competition from Danish bacon and butter.

But looming over all of them, British or Common Market, is the shadow of French competition. Only now beginning to rise to its full potentialities, with one half of the total agricultural land of the Six, the most favourable climate for agriculture in Europe, and soil fertility higher than the average, French agriculture threatens them all. With a negligible amount of farm machinery at work on its farms after the war, it is now mechanising rapidly. Tractors and combine harvesters are now replacing animals and men in ever-increasing numbers.

The shadow of surplus

Production has been rising steadily in recent years and the French Government is becoming increasingly concerned about rapidly mounting surpluses of cereals, butter and milk products, and beef, as well as fruit and vegetables. This year there will be a record wheat harvest of 13 million tons (the previous highest was 11½  million tons in 1959) which compares with the present U.K. estimate of 3.3 million tons. The French export surplus is likely to exceed in fact the total U.K. output.

The situation will be eased somewhat since the maize crop has been cut to a quarter of normal by drought. But this year’s results in general have served to re-inforce the warning to the rest of Europe that with every year that passes France will be a more and more dangerous threat—and to the French Government that they are in for bigger and bigger headaches. The French Minister of Agriculture has already announced that “ the fighting aim of 1963 will be the conquest of the external markets.”

The same pattern

As usual under capitalism, this ever increasing production is coming from fewer and fewer workers. Statistics show that, as in most other countries, the population living off the land is falling. The farmers are leaving the land and going into the towns. In France, there are 12 per cent. less people in agriculture than there were six years ago. Just how far this process still has to go is shown by the fact that it still leaves 20 per cent. of the population on the land, compared with 3 per cent. in this country.

There are clearly still great changes to come in French agriculture—and their repercussions are likely to be wide.

More absurdity

The shattering losses made by B.O.A.C. this year (no less than £65 million) reflect once more the crazy capitalist world we live in.

One of the main reasons for these losses has been, we are told, the frantic efforts made by the company to keep up with the constant developments in aircraft. So swift are the changes that planes have to be put on the scrap heap long before they have given their full term of useful life. That nearly all the other major airlines of the world are doing the same thing, and suffering equally crippling losses in the process, only makes the situation more farcical.

The apologist for capitalism will, of course, reply that progress must always be allowed full scope and that the new planes constantly coming forward will be better and safer than their predecessors. Even this is not true. The Press has been full of stories recently about whether safety is not being sacrificed in the bitter struggle among the national airlines. Allegations have been made that the strain of the new and ever more complicated aircraft on their pilots is becoming too intense, that they are being worked more hours than is safe, and that many airfields are just incapable of meeting properly the demands of the new machines.

Tailpiece

We discuss elsewhere Professor Titmuss’s new book exploding the myth of growing economic equality—a subject incidentally to which we have ourselves given attention in recent issues. Samuel Brittan in the Observer (he is Economic Editor) gave a useful review of it recently. But the most interesting few lines of his article were those in which he defined the capitalist class in a paragraph at the end. Here they are:

  The existence of a separate class of people who own the means of production (including land) and are not therefore dependent on their own personal earning power is still the basic characteristic of capitalism. . . .

Our own definition, in fact. True he spoils it all by bringing in Russia later on, but it’s a crumb of enlightenment al! the same.

Stan Hampson

Rhodesian background (1962)

From the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

In South and East Africa lives that peculiar person, the white settler. To some people he is a farmer who has robbed the African of his land. But, in fact, especially in southern Africa, most Europeans are ordinary workers or business men. Many can't really be called settlers since they were born in Africa and have never been to Europe.

The two most important areas, South Africa and Rhodesia, are moving politically in opposite directions. South Africa has chosen “apartheid" or separate development; Rhodesia appears to be moving, however slowly, towards a society in which a man will not be judged by the colour of his skin. But certain actions—or lack of actions—of the Southern Rhodesian Government have raised doubts about its sincerity when it talks of partnership. First, it has until now been slow to remove legal discriminations against Africans and, second, it has taken very wide powers, encroaching considerably on recognised civil liberties, to deal with anything it regards as a threat to law and order.

Three trade union leaders were recently sentenced to eight months hard labour under these laws for calling for a general strike in Salisbury last May.

The ruling United Federal Party does not, however, stand for white supremacy. It stands for free enterprise capitalism and represents the growing multi-racial business class. By a unanimous decision of its 1961 Conference the UFP is committed to remove all legal discriminations against Africans which Cabinet Minister Abrahamson has denounced as “morally wrong and absolutely indefensible.” This, of course, includes the notorious Land Apportionment Act which means that it is no longer true to say, if ever it was, that “multiracialism" is but another name for Verwoerd's fascist policy of apartheid.

The European business man is in favour of African advancement for a number of reasons. Firstly, he knows that Africans can eventually be trained to be as skilled as any European and, secondly, he sees in the Africans a vast expanding market for his goods. The capitalist in Africa therefore tends everywhere to be an opponent of racial privilege. He is against racism, black or white; in fact he generally wants to be free to employ the man he considers to be the most suitable for the job, regardless of race or colour.

The European worker, however, is not so keen on African advancement. He sees the African as a threat to his job. Most European workers are craftsmen, a section of the working class which the march of capitalism everywhere tends to eliminate. The skilled worker is replaced by the semi-skilled machine operative. In Europe and America the redundant craftsman tends to feel resentment against those who replace him, but in Central Africa the position appears more dangerous since the man who would take his job has a black skin. As a result many of the European workers support parties wanting to “keep the African in his place.” These, together with a section of the farmers and others still living in the past, provide the bulk of the support for the main European opposition party, the Rhodesia Front. This party looks South for inspiration and, although it has African members, it is the party of white supremacy.

The main African nationalist party is, or was, the recently banned Zimbabwe African Peoples’ Union led by “Great” Nkomo. ZAPU is the recognised Pan-Africanist party in Southern Rhodesia (or Zimbabwe) and has the blessing of the Osagyefo in Accra. The main ZAPU demand' for “One man, one vote” has won it the support of a number of European and Asian radicals. African support, however, is won on a different basis. ZAPU flourishes among Africans on widespread discontent over low wages, unemployment and land reform. This is not something peculiar to Africa, for the birth of capitalism is always accompanied by unrest. In Central Africa this unrest appears as African resistance to white authority, as African nationalism.

Migrant worker

Owing to what is known as the migrant labour system, most African workers are extremely poor. The migrant worker circulates between two different social systems, the so-called “subsistence economy” and capitalism. He spends a part of the year in his farm in the tribal reserve and a part working for money in other industries. Altogether about two-thirds of the African labour force are migrant workers. This system tends to hold wages down to a level sufficient only to maintain a single worker while staying in the “location.” As a result, many of the African families who have settled permanently in the towns live in extreme poverty. The recent Phillips Report on the development of Southern Rhodesia describes further bow this system keeps wages down: “The large and elastic supply of workers seeking employment in urban activities restrains a rise in wages, while the impermanence of this labour supply reduces the wage the employers are prepared to pay”

The employers would like to see the migrant labour system ended and to see a stable working class paid a “reasonable” wage, perhaps double the present minimum, take its place as soon as possible. They recognise, however, that their system cannot at present “provide every African urban family with an income adequate to secure minimum nutritional, housing and other standards.” “Unhappily,” explains the Report, “there is not enough wealth in the country to effect changes on this scale for the mass of the people.” This is not true for Rhodesia could, if properly irrigated, and if the mineral sources were fully exploited, more than provide an “adequate” income for its inhabitants. What the report means is that capitalism cannot use this wealth.

The African who is employed is badly enough off but many don’t even have the privilege of trying to live on near-starvation wages. These are the 70,000 or so unemployed. Unemployment is something new for Africans. “Before the Europeans settled in this country,” writes one paper:

  and before they brought their chaos creating institutions, unemployment was unknown, hence the lack of this term in any African dialect. There are other words such as ‘Simbe’ in Shona; this means a lazy person who does not want to work. This differs well from a person who is unemployed because there is just no work for him although he wants it. The whole African population lived on land and everybody who could do some work found it. There was ploughing and harvesting, ironmongery as well as many other crafts. Women were busy with domestic chores and also assisted on the land. Everyone had a piece of land to work as the whole land belonged to them. The chiefs only held it in trust for national use.

The “chaos-creating institution” which the Europeans brought was capitalism, and ever since they first settled in Rhodesia in the 1890’s the traditional African way of life has been threatened. Soon after their arrival the Europeans imposed a poll tax on the Africans to force them to spend a part of their time working for wages. Hence arose the migrant labour system.

Before the situation arose which led to the passing of the Native Land Husbandry Act in 1951 the African peasant seeking work in the town would either find it or return home to his farm. But the LHA put an end to this, for it had the same effect as the Enclosure Acts in England: it drove Africans to the towns by making them landless. The Act was revolutionary as it introduced a new concept to the African peasant: private ownership, albeit conditional, of land.

The primary aim was to eliminate soil erosion and overstocking and to bring the African peasant into the money economy. A stable African peasantry was to be created with a stable urban working class. Under the Act all indigenous Africans, who were actually cultivating land in a given area at the time at which the Act was proclaimed to apply to that area, were entitled to a certain prescribed acreage of arable land. This meant that any African from the area working in town at the time of the proclamation was dispossessed; overnight he became landless. Now the African peasant believes not only that everybody has the right to use the land, but also that nobody has the right to own it. So that such a revolutionary change as the Act envisaged was bound to create a reaction; the situation was aggravated by the fact that thousands of those entitled to a holding got no land. ZAPU has taken advantage of this land hunger and rural unrest and has been making headway in traditionally conservative areas.

In Rhodesia the vote is at present restricted to those with certain educational and income qualifications which means that although nearly all Europeans, Coloureds and Asians have the vote, only a small percentage of the Africans do. ZAPU says this is wrong and demands “one man, one vote.” The UFP feels, however, that were it to grant this immediately, dictatorship would rapidly follow.

Pan-Africanism or Pan-African Black Fascism as it has been justly called, certainly is totalitarian and racist, rejecting democracy as “ un-African ” and “ Western.” At present, however, ZAPU is able to pose as the champion of democratic liberties, just as the Communists are in such countries as Spain and Portugal. This is in accordance with the pattern elsewhere: in opposition the Pan-Africanists shout loudest for democracy, but once in power show scant regard for political or trade union opposition. The ZAPU protest, when they were banned, that African political freedom had gone was so much cant. For ZAPU, and especially its Youth League, has used all kinds of intimidation to terrorize those Africans who oppose them. The banning of ZAPU merely illustrates the fate of those who choose to challenge the State directly by using violent or illegal means to get what they want.

Adam Buick

Not what it used to be (1962)

From the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rich are always sensitive about the sufferings of the poor; not, of course, to the point of being willing to get off their backs, but at least to the point of being glad to be told from time to time that the poor are not as poor as they used to be and that if any are it is their own fault. Such assurance is a great comfort to the rich. It carried them safely through the miseries of a dozen slumps and made them (and still makes them) genuinely indignant whenever the workers come out on strike, because, as the newspapers always inform them, strikes were justified in the bad old days but not now when everything is so nearly perfect. How are they to know that the newspapers were saying exactly the same in the “bad old days," twenty, forty, a hundred years ago?

About a hundred years ago Marx and others were commenting on the great inequality of income and property between the workers and the property owners. Already the defenders of capitalism were at work suggesting that it used to be even more unequal and that things were improving daily. Ever since then there has been a continuous stream of that kind of propaganda. It was flowing strongly in the depression between the wars, as the following samples show:

  It appears safe to say that the distribution of capital is less unequal than it was before the war. (Manchester Guardian, 12 March 1936). 

  . . . the great re-distribution of wealth and income that has happened in this country since the war. . . . (Times Literary Supplement, 7 March 1936. 

  The gap between rich and poor in this country shows every sign of continuing to grow smaller. (Star, 9 April 1936).

The line has changed since then; not that it has been given up, but the dates have been altered and the great improvement is now supposed to have taken place since 1936. not before. In truth, apart from the continued post-war conditions of very low unemployment (which does not look so secure now) the main features of ownership of capital and division and of national income appear to have altered very little over a long period. Which explains why the stream of propaganda about alleged growing equality gets interrupted from time to time by statistical inquiries showing how little, if any, change there actually has been.

We have just had such an inquiry in Professor Titmuss’ Income Distribution and Social Change (Allen and Unwin, 25s.). He refers to the widespread opinion among politicians and economists that this country had become more a much more equal society than it was before the war and sets out to examine again the statistical material on which this opinion has rested. He makes many criticisms of the material on national income distribution and the way it has been interpreted (and also some criticisms of statistics of ownership of wealth). He holds that the earlier studies may have reached wrong conclusions: there is, he claims, need for a re-examination because the belief in greater equality of income distribution may be seriously in error.

But no matter what Professor Titmuss writes about it, the propaganda claiming that things are better than they were will persist.

Among other reasons, it always suits the political party in power to argue that its policies have had or will have a beneficial effect in the direction of diminishing poverty and it can be taken as certain that there will be an almost universal agreement in the Press and elsewhere not to consider doing anything that matters about the fundamental social issue of the means of production and distribution, land, factories, etc., being owned by a small minority of the population. A case in point is the review of Titmuss' book by Samuel Brittan in the Observer (Sept, 30th, 1962). He recognises, as does Titmuss, that distribution of income cannot be considered apart from the ownership of wealth, and actually remarks that "the whole subject of inequality is largely discussed without hypocrisy. The basic question is the ownership of personal wealth.” Yet this promising opening leads on to the pettifogging and irrelevant proposal that there should be “a moderate and graduated annual tax on personal wealth in the upper incomes.”

Just how this is supposed to alter the basic situation is not explained.

Edgar Hardcastle

What is value? (1962)

From the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Private property, commodities and value are a troublesome trinity unless we understand them. There are three important aspects of value. The first is its purely social character which shows itself in buying and selling. The second is abstract human labour as the social substance of value. The third is the quantity of social labour which determines the magnitude of value. Buying and selling is the mode of exchanging wealth today. It involves careful weighing, measuring and counting against price to ensure that equal amounts of values change hands.

Exchange is a social act in which value is measured. In order to do this, a commodity must be related to some other commodity, different in kind, in which it can express its value. The value of the article, is, at all times, the chief concern of its owner. But it must be a use value to people other than its owner. In all equations, the article on the relative side expresses its value in the one on the equivalent side.

As an imaginary example of the elementary form of relative value we can equate a coat to a pair of shoes. In this case, the coat, occupying the relative side, is expressing its value in the material form of shoes. If we invert the equation we then express the value of the shoes. However, provided that each person sees, in the other’s useful article, a value content equal to that of his own, exchange takes place. Equal amounts of value are realised in the useful form of each other’s goods. As property owners both are satisfied.

In such equations it appears, on the surface, that value is an inherent, an intrinsic or material part of the commodities. This is an illusion. All value equations are social relations between men in society in which the legal transfer of ownership of property is determined on the basis of equal amounts of value being exchanged. It should be obvious that such acts can only take place in private property based societies.

The question now is—how is the ratio of exchange accurately determined? All useful articles differ greatly. Take coats and shoes, for example; they differ in material, form and purpose. The concrete (or producers’) labour in them is also very different. We have spinning, weaving, tailoring, tanning and shoemaking. It is productive labour which creates use values; both the labour and the articles are material in character and are different in quantity and quality. They cannot be measured in these forms.

If we disregard the specific type of the work (engineers, bakers, etc.) we reduce it all to the expenditure of human skill and energy in wealth production. The common denominator is therefore, abstract human labour. This is common to all commodities and is our measuring rod. Concrete labour produces use value whereas abstract labour creates values. It is important to note that value-creating labour must be useful, socially necessary, and of average skill and intensity. Irrespective of all differences in their material form or usefulness, all commodities are embodiments of the social substance abstract human labour. Social labour measures, in time, from the smallest fractions upwards simple or complex labour.

The magnitude of the value of any commodity is easily determined. In making this abstraction we are merely following the general practice in science. For example, we have steam, petrol, gas and diesel engines, etc.; all different forms of energy. In abstraction we reduce all of them to power and express it in units of horse power. If we now look at our equation (one coat equals one pair of shoes) we see that as embodiments of human labour the coat and the shoes are similar in quality and, as units containing x hours of social labour, they are equal in quantity. Equal amounts of labour time will always produce equal amounts of value.

Commodity production and exchange extended and developed from the elementary form of value, through expanded relative forms and general forms, to the present money form. This latter is its fully developed form and it works efficiently in expressing value. As Marx said, gold is not by nature money, though money is by nature gold. Gold functions socially, as a universal equivalent, as a measure of value, a standard of price, means of payment and al medium of exchange and circulation. In this capacity it functions as money and becomes the social form of value.

In this, its social function, it assumes an independent form of value because it measures value in its own bodily form and is socially accepted as the material form of value. It stands on one side of the relationship, the equivalent side, as value, opposed to all other commodities on the relative side. In this dazzling role gold appears as a sort of king amongst commodities. However, as a humble commodity, gold is no different from salt, oil or coal. Its value is determined in precisely the same way as all other merchandise. One coat equals one pair of shoes, or one ton of coal, or ten pounds sterling—all of these are different forms of the products of social labour and contain equal amounts of it, are in quality and quantity equal as values.

The exalted position which gold in its money capacity occupies is due primarily to its being a commodity and secondly to its nature as a metal, which renders it eminently suitable for its job. It contains great value in small bulk, is readily coinable and measures value from the smallest fraction upwards. In addition, it enables large quantities of accumulated wealth to be easily stored. As money it is the universally accepted social form of value. It represents the incarnation of abstract human labour and is the materialised form of value. It crosses all international frontiers and encounters no barriers. As a consequence of all this it also serves as universal social use value. The owners of money have immediate access to anything in the world of commodities, in proportion to the amount they have. The owners of all other articles for sale are constantly striving to attract money from the pockets of its owners.

While value is not a physical or material property of any article it is nevertheless a social reality of great importance. It finds its fully developed form in capitalism, in general commodity production. Men, women and children are converted into buyers and sellers whose major social relationships are value relationships. We socialists have abolished the spiritual trinity and impatiently await the workers organising to abolish the social trinities of private property commodities and value, and, with them rent, profit and interest.

John Higgins

The Passing Show: Details (1962)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Details

The system which exists today in Russia is clearly capitalism. All the classic features of capitalism are there — commodity production, wage-labour, employment (which couldn't exist without employers and employed), currency, the coercive forces of the state, and so on. Naturally, the historical background of the development of capitalism in Russia, and the immediate circumstances in which capitalism came into being there, meant that some minor details of capitalism in Russia differ from details in those countries where capitalism had a longer and slower development. In particular, the very speed with which the old system collapsed, and the new one was introduced, demanded that the state itself, the central committee of the capitalist class, should play a much larger part in the establishment of the new order than it had done in western Europe and North America. Of course, since that time state capitalism has been more and more introduced into the older-established capitalist states; but it has not yet, and one does not know if it ever will, come to play such a part in Western capitalism as it does in the capitalist systems established in Russia, China, India, the African states, and so on.

Proposals

However, even in these comparatively minor details, there is coming to be less and less difference between Russian and Western capitalism. Not only are state planning and control playing a larger part in western capitalism; other changes are being mooted in Russia itself. As The Times said on October 3rd, “Proposals are at present under discussion in Russia to link the remuneration of workers to the profits made by their enterprises in relation to the investments made in them.” Since these and other proposals have aroused controversy, Pravda has recently printed what it calls "a previously unpublished version of a document dictated by Lenin in 1918.”

Raising labour productivity

“Lenin argued that political victory over the capitalists had been won and the struggle was passing to the economic sphere. Those who had formerly sought to sabotage the Bolshevik cause were now (in 1918) offering their services to the new state. It was of the utmost importance to take advantage of these offers and harness to the communist cause the best methods and systems of capitalism. “He proposed that highly paid experts be hired from the United States and elsewhere as consultants and managers. Bourgeois staff and also their methods of labour organization could be used if they helped to raise production. The old world had created systems of labour organization which were diabolical methods for exploiting the worker. At the same time these systems are ‘the last word in the scientific organization of production' and should be copied in the Soviet Union where they would lose their noxious character.

“An example was the system of Mr. Mr. F. W. Taylor, the American engineer who perfected “scientific management”—on which present day time-and-motion studies and “work study” are to a large extent based. “We must apply Taylor’s system and American scientific methods of raising labour productivity throughout Russia,” Lenin wrote, for under Soviet conditions it would lead to a shortening of working hours and an improvement in conditions of work.” The Times 3/10/62

Latest methods

All Lenin was calling for was what could have been expected from any leader of a new capitalist revolution: the application of the latest and best methods (best, that is, from the capitalists’ point of view) which had been evolved in the older capitalist states. As might have been foreseen, when Lenin attempted to square all this with his own statements that the Bolsheviks were really introducing Socialism in Russia, common sense was thrown overboard. Pravda even quotes him as saying that “Socialism has to be learnt to a great extent from the leaders of the trusts, Socialism has to be learnt from the major organizers of capitalism.”

As to that, one can only say that all you can learn from the major organizers of capitalism is how to organize capitalism; and all you can learn from the leaders of trusts is how to lead trusts.

These statements, quoted by Pravda from the greatest figure of the Russian revolution, must surely go far to convince anyone who is still open to reason that Russia is capitalist.

Contrast

On the back of The Times recently there were some photographs of scenes in Peru, and the text beside them read “Peru is a land of contrast and anomaly. It is a rich country where there are also austerity and poverty.”

No wonder there is a saying that the onlooker sees most of the game. The writer of the text saw clearly the social position in Peru. Perhaps if he lived in Peru, he would see just as clearly the “contrast and anomaly,” the riches and poverty side by side, which exist in Britain.

Hard work

Not long ago there was an advert in the daily press from a man who claimed he had amassed £300,000 “through hard work.” As it stands, no one could take exception to the statement. It would be impossible for anyone to amass three hundred thousand pounds without a great deal of hard work.

In fact, only one question remains unanswered.

Whose hard work was it?

Alwyn Edgar

A plague on them all (1962)

Editorial from the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

September and October were the months of concentrated party conferences. Liberal, Labour and Tory followed each other in quick succession, and the average worker may well have found the whole business a bit overwhelming. Conference reports can be boring and tedious, even though the press ruthlessly condenses the speeches. So who can be blamed for wanting to toss his newspaper aside with a snort of exasperation. Yet perhaps we should be thankful that the very closeness of the conferences meant that the agony was fairly short-lived, and for Socialists, anyway, there was an added advantage. It was easier to compare the policy pronouncements of the various vote seekers without too great a strain on the memory.

Now that the delegates have dispersed along with the hot air, there is one lesson which Llandudno and Brighton should have taught us. Despite the hero worship, despite all the speeches of the “greats” from the rostrums, they know well that none of them can hope to govern without working class support. The humble vote, multiplied by millions, will decide their fate, so they must keep their electional weather eye open. They cannot ignore the possibility that the present government may go to the polls before its full five years term has expired, particularly if Mr. Heath manages to get an early completion of the Common Market negotiations in Brussels.

Do not be misled by the bright and smiling picture of itself which each of these parties tries to paint for you, by “Auld Lang Syne," “ Land of Hope and Glory," or any other emotional finale to their deliberations. After all, if we are to believe the conference speeches, they have all never been so united, they all have the best possible leaders, and they are all going to win the next election. Rather should we look at the sort of things that were discussed and the decisions which were reached.

Some of the loudest shouting has been done by the Liberal Party whose conference was the first of the batch. It is a far cry from the great Liberal governments of the turn of the century, and the modern Liberal was saying things at Llandudno which would have shocked the old leaders. But then. Capitalism has come a long way since then and the old doctrine of free trade has given way to that of the Common Market, the forcefulness of Lloyd George to the almost unbearable smugness of Jo Grimond. The Liberal Party has undergone a revival of sorts after many years in the political wilderness, and perhaps there may be a Liberal government again one day. but the prospect does not enthrall us. And what evidence exists that the Liberals of the 1960s would be any more successful in solving Capitalism's problems than their Labour and Tory counterparts?

Although nobody can be quite certain, of course, it still seems likely that the next battle for power will be fought out between the Tories and Labourites. The Common Market negotiations may have given Mr. Gaitskell’s party an issue which will enable it to paper over some of the other cracks of recent years and fight with some semblance of unity. But unity for what? The unity of the Labour Party which fought and won the 1945 election is probably something which its present leaders remember with nostalgia, but when in power, it administered British Capitalism in much the same way as the other parties would have done.

In fact, the Conservatives’ Industrial Charter of 1947 was very cagey when discussing possible future moves to undo Labour’s nationalisation acts and had to admit that most of the state control would be left intact. Now, fifteen years later (“exceptionally slow even for Conservatives,” said The Guardian of 11/10/62 tartly), this document is foisted into the Llandudno limelight, all because something they said was gone for good is with us again—redundancy. “Let us humanise industrial relations,” bleat delegates from the floor, by which they do not really mean humanise (for that is an impossibility under Capitalism), but merely see that those who have worked the longest get a bit more compensation when they find themselves out of a job due to the march of “ progress."

It is all very much a sign of the times. With British Capitalism running into choppy waters again, its administrators, of whatever party, will be casting about them for policies to keep it on an even keel. But, as usual, the problems which have always baffled them continue to do so. There has been a slow but stubborn increase in unemployment, and after all this time they are still talking about urgent measures to solve the housing problem, as witness the agitated debate at the Tory conference.

Lacking knowledge of the real cause of these problems, workers will cast their vote in despair from one capitalist party to the other. There is even a risk of them supporting an anti-democratic body such as the Colin Jordan outfit. It is only the Socialist who says “a plague on all their houses” and works on for the day when the alternative of common ownership will be known on a mass scale and Capitalist Society will be no more.

Branch News (1962)

Party News from the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Central Literature Sales Committee report that they attended the Labour Party Conference at Brighton to sell literature and hold meetings. Members living in Brighton assisted on occasions. Labour Party delegates were inundated with all sort of giveaway literature; this made our task more more difficult. However, Socialist Standards and Pamphlets were sold to the value of £3 14s 6d. and our Labour Government pamphlets were freely distributed at a CND demonstration, several evening meetings organised by our members, and at a large meeting run by Tribune. At the latter our literature was prominently in evidence. Our members found this type of activity stimulating and a way to contact comrades who are not directly in touch with a branch. It was decided at a special meeting to re-constitute the Brighton Group with a view to form a Branch in the near future.

Propaganda arrangements for the winter season are well under way—full details are given in this issue of November activities. Support from members and sympathisers is essential for the success of these meetings.

Glasgow Branch in particular have a very full programme, with meetings in Hamilton and Edinburgh as well as Glasgow. These meetings will greatly assist in the election activities which will shortly be in full swing.

A report from Comrade Gloss, Companion Party Secretary of the World Socialist Party of the U.S.A. states that the keynote of their Conference (held in September), was the unity of the world Socialist Movement. One of the first decisions gave the eight delegates of the Socialist Party of Canada  "full voice and vote in all Conference matters ”. From many parts of the world came inspiring messages, written and recorded. Voices from New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa and England, and a greatly appreciated message from Comrade Frank in Austria, accompanied by his pamphlet—the first in Austria—outlining our Principles. They were gratified that the six leaflets written by Comrade Milne of the Socialist Party of Canada had been published in pamphlet form by the SPGB.

The highlight of the Conference was the appointment of Don Poirier of the SPC to tour the U.S. and Canada to help the spread of Socialist ideas and organisation. About $1,500 in pledges were made ($285 in cash collected) at the Conference for this venture. At a social, after the formal sessions, $200 was donated to finance a tour of the Vancouver-Victoria area by George Jenkins (SPC). 

The Conference helped to get the outdoor meetings of the WSP going again on Boston Common (the building of an underground garage had made these meetings impossible for more than two years, they had been replaced by formal discussions on another part of the Common). Excellent meetings were held on the Sundays, prior, during and after the Conference.

The enthusiasm and comradeship at the Conference made the occasion one of the most fruitful in the history of the Party.

Phyllis Howard

50 Years Ago: Objections (1962)

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

Two Objections to Socialism —
The avowed opponent of the Socialist movement takes up one of two positions of attack, each antagonistic to the other.

One brand of “anti” informs us, with horror, that Socialism means slavery and vile servitude; that the abolition of capitalism will involve the establishment of prostitution and horrors the like of which capitalism never knew. The other variety tells us that “Socialism is a grand ideal —far too good to be true.” They explain that for Socialism to "work" we have all got to be as heavenly as angels, and they point in despair to the touch of “the old Adam” which they discern in all human kind.

Each type has its cause, and, like most other evils, its cure also. The first is the result of the cast-iron “State capitalism" preached by the Fabian tribe under the name of Socialism, while the second is due to the prevalence of the disease misnamed “Christian Socialism."

*

The “Socialism means slavery” merchant is easily disposed of, for no matter how vivid his imagination may be, he cannot discover one evil which is not found to be rampant in some form under capitalism.

Neither can he show how such evils will be increased by the advent of Socialism, which means to substitute organised social production and social enjoyment for the present chaotic “social” production and private ownership of the wealth produced. That slavery will be more intense under a system of state capitalism is for the advocate of nationalisation to deny, and has no concern for the Socialist.

From the November 1912 Socialist Standard.

Forerunner of Common Market (1962)

From the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The continental politicians, business men and lawyers who have spent years discussing, negotiating and drafting the Treaty of Rome and its accompanying agreements for the establishment of the European Economic Community must often have been reminded of a half century of work on the German Customs Union (Zollverein) that reached its culmination in 1871 in Bismark's German Empire. What happened then in Germany may not, at first sight, appear to bear comparison with the formation of a European Common Market by six separate governments, but the earlier event was in fact an even more complicated business.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century what was later to become a united Germany consisted of 289 separate states, each with its own government and frontiers, as well as 61 cities which were almost self-governing. These states were separated from each other by toll charges and tariffs, by different coinages, weights and measures and different legal systems, not to mention the frequently almost impassable roads.

In the conflict between the rulers of Prussia and Austria as to which was to dominate central Europe, the Customs Union was to prove a powerful weapon in the hands of Prussia though at the outset its possibilities were so little realized that the Prussian government actually had Austrian approval. It started in 1819 as a Free Trade area for Prussia's own scattered territories, behind a Customs barrier. As Prussia completely surrounded some of the smaller states and controlled the main trade routes into Central Germany, it was possible for the Prussian authorities to impose heavy transit charges on goods crossing Prussian territory and to put pressure on other states to induce them to join the Union.

It was not until the eighteen thirties that the Union expanded among the more important of the other German states with the accession of Bavaria, Wurtenberg, Saxony, Baden and the city of Frankfurt. An attempt by Hanover (under the British Crown until 1837) to form a rival union of North German states was a failure and the question of admitting Austria produced some of the kind of difficulties that now arise for the British Government through its links with the Commonwealth countries. Austria at that time controlled Hungary, Lombardy and Venice as well as being influential in the policies of the other governments in what is now Italy. The issue was whether Austria should enter the Customs Union bringing Hungary and Italy along too, and whether the latter were to be excluded from what purported to be a Union of German Peoples. In the long run it was settled by military means with the crushing defeat of the Austrian Army in the "seven weeks war” at Sadowa in 1866. From then onwards Austria was no longer in a position to challenge or hinder the achievement of German unity under Prussian leadership.

What the Customs Union gained for German capitalism was that after the eighteen thirties the major part of Germany formed an economic entity. Communications were improved, an identical system of weights, measures and currency introduced, and prices fell and became uniform. At first the trading and economic changes brought no corresponding political changes, and as the Encyclopaedia Britannica has it: “it was not until later that Bismark was able to utilize the Union for the furtherance of his schemes for National unity."

Among the internal industries that thrived behind the tariff protection of the Customs Union were German wine production, sugar beet growing and processing, and tobacco growing, with the corresponding decline of imports from abroad and loss of trade in what had been the ports of entry. There had been no question of Britain and France being allowed to join the German Customs Union, which was of course intended to operate as a protection for home industries against cheap imports from those two countries among others.

H. de B. Gibbins in his Economic and Industrial Progress of the Century had this to say about the British and French reactions to the Customs Union:

  One effect of it was seen at once in the imposition of severely protective duties on all foreign manufacturers, though the raw materials for home manufactures were wisely admitted free. The result was that England and France did not regard the Zollverein with much favour. . . .

One of the tasks the Prussian ruling class had to carry out in Germany was to break down very strong local "patriotisms” of the' multiplicity of German states, and replace them with an all-German patriotism.

It took time, but long before the end of the nineteenth century, German patriotism could compete in stupidity and fervour with anything the other empires and republics could boast. Nowadays we hear supporters of the European Common Market who argue that getting into a group of countries, since it means giving up some of the independence of each country, is a step towards internationalism. The argument is fallacious because in a capitalist world the only difference between the isolated country and the group of countries is that the later is industrially and militarily more powerful—it does not diminish the international antagonisms. Association with the European Common Market is no more a step towards internationalism than is association with the British Commonwealth or membership of United Nations.

It is to the point to recall that when the German Customs Union was absorbing economically the separate German states as a prelude to unifying them politically, there were people who fancied they could see that, too, as a step towards international brotherhood. Gustav Schmoller, the German professor of political science wrote his book, The Mercantile System round the theme that “ historical progress has consisted mainly in the establishment of ever larger and larger communities as the controllers of economic policy in place of small.” It was illustrated chiefly from Prussian history. Writing in 1884 when Europe was already conscious of growing European tensions over trade and colonies and the consequent threat of war, Schmoller was nevertheless able to deceive himself about the part played by the formation of the larger economic group he wrote about. He admitted that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the conduct of the separate nations had been "characterised by a selfish national commercial policy of a harsh and rude kind," and pointed to the way England had reached commercial supremacy by 1800 “by means of its tariff and naval wars, frequently with extraordinary violence," but he could imagine that capitalism had later changed and that “the struggle . . .  had a tendency, with the progress of civilisation, to assume a higher character and to abandon its coarsest and most brutal weapons.”

Schmoller thought he could see the capitalist jungle being tamed or civilised by the formation of leagues of states, by alliances for customs and trade questions, and by the growth of international law which was bringing into existence “ the moral and legal community of all civilised states.”

How wrong he was; but no more blind to the realities of capitalism than are most of those who now argue for and against the European Common Market.

Edgar Hardcastle

A plea for human survivaI (1962)

Book Review from the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is a brilliant, powerful, bitter book.

The military machine is one of capitalism's ugliest children. Ugly not only because it is a killer machine, but also because of the discipline, stupidity and wastefulness which its killer motive compels it to have. Some workers glory in these things. They never forget their days in the Forces; they join ex-servicemen's associations, parade in their campaign medals, perpetuate the slang they learned in the Nissen huts.

Catch-22 looks at all this with the searing eye of remorseless satire. Colonel Cathcart commands a squadron of American bombers based on a small Mediterranean island. He is the sort of man the medal-janglers love; military bearing, tough on the outside, contemptuous of weaklings. Contemptuous, too, of Yossarian. Although the Colonel never actually flies on any of them, he is always ready to volunteer his men for the most dangerous raids on schedule. And he persistently increases the number of missions they must carry out before they are allowed to go home.

Yossarian - the hero (if that is the right word) of the book - is a bombardier who is afraid of being killed or wounded for the simple reason that he enjoys the sensations of living. He knows nothing and does not care about the causes and motives of the war. He only knows that he is scared stiff all the time he is in the air and he is not reluctant to show it. Anybody who wants to fight, he thinks, is crazy. He discovers, in fact, that the Army thinks so as well. But:

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed. "

In a world gone mad with drums and bugles and medals and guns, Yossarian openly and persistently pleads for human survival, As persistently he is asked, "What if everyone thought like you?" and has his answer ready: "Then I'd be a damn fool to think any other way, wouldn't I?" He has seen through war and through religion and is aghast at the struggle human beings go through to exist. A psychiatrist screams at him:

"You're antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Slums depress you. Greed depresses you. Crime depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if you're a manic-depressive!"

Let's keep the book in perspective. Joseph Heller is another of the people who, without being Socialists, can compose impressive indictments of capitalism. He is a writer of enormous impact, who constructs and times his sentences to perfection. He can make us laugh and he can grip us horrified with sensitive, compulsive prose. His description of Yossarian brooding through Rome, watching human behaviour decay all around him, will haunt us for a long time. All in all he makes the post-war wave of British novelists, with their startling discovery that a lot of people under capitalism have to work for their living and that in their spare time they sometimes get drunk and have illicit sexual relations, look pretty sick.

Because Heller goes for the lies and hypocrisy which are used in such abundance to sustain capitalism's wars:

"Men went mad and were rewarded with medals, All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb Line were laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all the boys who were laying down their young lives. There was no end in sight."

At the moment, Catch 22 is sweeping the United States, where cars carry window-stickers which say "Better Yossarian Than Rotarian." Nobody need think, because of that, that if capitalism throws up another world war the people who have laughed at, been moved by, and agreed with Heller's book will not turn the required mental somersault and join up with a will. We know now that working class ignorance runs that deep.

For all that, Catch-22 deserves to be read and to find its place among the books which stand out against the lie that war is romantic and glorious and necessary but which say unmistakably that the people have nothing to gain from war and that war is sordid and obscene and futile.

Ivan