Officers Looking for Infantry (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many political groups fancy themselves as “vanguards” of the working-class. We do not. We say that workers should spurn these would-be elites and organise for Socialism democratically, without leaders.

By fostering wrong theories about what Socialism is and how it can be achieved the “vanguard” organisations are delaying the socialist revolution. It may help to clear away confusion if we list a number of doctrines held by most of these groups, and then state why we disagree with them :

1. State ownership is Socialism, or a step on the way to Socialism.

2. Russia (China, Cuba) is socialist, or on the way.

3. Socialism will arrive by violent insurrection.

4. Socialism will come out of a gigantic slump.

5. Workers cannot understand Socialism, so they must be given bait in the form of “transitional demands.”

6. Workers must be led by an elite, a “vanguard”.

7. There is a middle class in modern society.

It is easy to see that these beliefs interlock and support each other. If, for example, workers are so feeble-minded that they cannot understand Socialism then they need to be led. Socialism will therefore come about without mass understanding, by a disciplined minority seizing power. Minorities are best able to seize power during crises, a fact which renders attractive the notion that capitalism will “collapse”— terminate for purely mechanistic reasons without the necessity for widespread socialist education. Since workers must have some incentive to follow the vanguard, “transitional demands” in the form of reformist promises are necessary, and since these tactics were successful in carrying to power the Russian Bolsheviks, it is assumed that Russia must be on the road to Socialism. The basic dogma on which all this is founded is that the mass of the workers cannot understand Socialism (or at least, not without the constant tutelage of the vanguard) which implies that the vanguard must be recruited from outside the working-class. Therefore, the vanguard groups reject the Marxist contention that there are only two classes in advanced capitalism.

Vanguardists may protest at this summary; they may insist that they are very much concerned with working-class consciousness, and do not assert that workers cannot understand Socialism. But an examination of their propaganda shows that “consciousness” means merely following the right leaders. When it is suggested that the majority of the population must attain a clear desire for the abolition of the wages system, and the introduction of a worldwide moneyless community, the vanguardists reply that this is “too abstract”, or (if they are students) “too academic.”

Indeed, they themselves do not strive for such a socialist system. None of the vanguard groups advocates a world without wages, with production democratically planned to meet people’s needs. Some of them say, when pushed, that they look forward to such a world “ultimately,” but since this “ultimate” aim has no effect on their actions it can only be interpreted as an empty platitude.

Far from specifying Socialism as their aim, they are reticent and muddled about even the capitalist reforms they will introduce if they get power. These also are apparently too “academic” to stipulate. Ironically, Bernstein’s dictum “The movement is everything, the goal nothing” sums up the vanguard outlook very well, as a glance at the Newsletter or Socialist Worker will confirm. It seems fair to conclude, however, that the vanguardists’ ideal is the brutal capitalist regime of Lenin, a fact which causes us socialists some concern, as it means we would be liquidated (a fate which would undoubtedly have befallen us under the Bolshevik tyranny).

The belief that Socialism or something akin to it exists in Russia is common to most vanguard groups. This is to expected: the vanguard strategy has been put into practice many times, and should surely have succeeded once or twice. Russia furnishes fresh proof every day that it is typically capitalist, but all its obviously anti-working-class features are dismissed as the results of “degeneration”. Some look to China or Cuba as less degenerate systems, which sets a useful precedent. By the time the faithful have to write off these nations, other state capitalist paragons will have arisen in Africa or Latin America to replace them.

Thus some vanguardists centre their hopes on capitalist revolutions in backward regions. Inside advanced capitalism reformist politics are seen to be sterile and stereotyped. It is consequently no marvel that a generation reared on TV westerns will lift up its eyes to the Third World, where all the romance of Garibaldi is reborn amidst the waste land of the twentieth century, where the beautiful hero, ten times larger than life, still strides about trusting his life to luck “like a tossed coin”. The Third World Utopians fail to notice that the spectacular energy of change in the underdeveloped zones is precisely a. measure of their spectacular backwardness, and of the telescoped development necessary for them to catch up with Europe, North America and Japan. This acceleration of social growth does result in new, bizarre combinations, both in economic organisation and in consciousness—but these cannot produce a leap forward into Socialism ahead of the more advanced countries. A comparison of Mao with Winstanley, or of Pan-Africanism with the Jacobins, would show how even the advances in consciousness in successive capitalist revolutions are severely truncated by economic backwardness.

There are other vanguardists who have come round to the socialist view that Russia is capitalist, but they still cling to the idea that the Bolshevik revolution was socialist—and by implication, that a future socialist revolution will be run on similar lines. After all, an admission that the Russian working-class never held political power, and that Bolshevism was always a capitalist movement, would call into question the entire mythology of the Left. An increasing number of vanguardists are seriously worried by the question: when did “degeneration” start? More clues to the answer will be found with Robespierre, Bakunin and Tkachev than with Stalin.

In one sense it is true that Russia is progressing towards Socialism—in the same way that all capitalist countries are. But the working-class of the Russian Empire will have to overthrow their state capitalist bosses, and they can only do this after they have won the elementary democratic rights which we have. State ownership is not Socialism, but a major feature of all forms of capitalism. However wage-slavery is administered, it cannot be made to run in the interests of the wage-slaves.

The belief that Russia is socialist or a “workers’ state” has been a source of confusion for half a century. Happily, it is now ebbing away—illusions are usually corrected by material conditions sooner or later. But the fact that such a doctrine could catch on so readily shows the hazy conception of Socialism which has always been popular. Disputes about how to get Socialism usually turn out to be disputes about what it is. For instance, it is apparent that if Socialism is to be a democratic society a majority of the population must opt for it before it can come into existence. Any minority which intends to impose what it calls “socialism” on the rest of the population against their wishes or, for that matter, without their express consent, obviously intends to rule undemocratically. A minority which uses violence to get power must use violence to retain power. The means cannot be divorced from the ends.

Vanguardism often emerges in the minds of people who know that there is a lot wrong with society and aim at something radically different. But they avoid facing up to the fact that the great majority of workers do not want a fundamental change: they grumble, and desire palliatives, but oppose the abolition of those institutions which are so dear to their hearts: the police, the armed forces, money, frontiers—even the Queen. It is the refusal to face squarely that the bulk of the working-class wants capitalism which leads to notions of elitism and insurrectionary violence, to the idea that workers must be manipulated by slogan-shouting demagogues brandishing reformist bait. Discussion, the most potent means of changing attitudes, is treated with contempt. “Action” for its own sake is lauded to the skies. We socialists have never tried to forget the obvious fact that the working-class is hostile to Socialism, but we are encouraged by the knowledge that we, as members of the working-class, have reacted to capitalism by opposing it. There is nothing remarkable about us as individuals, so it cannot be a hopeless task to set about changing the ideas of our fellows—especially as they learn from their own experience of capitalism. How much closer we would be to Socialism today if all those who spend their time advocating “transitional demands” were on our side!

Marx’s (and the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s) conception of the working-class as all those who have to sell their labour-power, from road-sweepers to computer programmers, would be inconvenient to members of vanguard groups, who usually believe that they themselves are not members of the working-class, whilst admitting that it is the working-class which must achieve Socialism. The vanguard people need to chase feverishly down every reformist cul-de-sac, a practice known as “developing consciousness through Struggle.” “Struggle” is apparently a sort of metaphysical driving force which is supposed to turn reforms into sparks of revolution. Such mystification is essential to the curious doctrine that the workers will establish Socialism inadvertently, while they are occupied with something else.

“The workers” cannot grasp anything so “abstract” as Socialism, it is claimed. But the exponents of vanguardism do understand it, or so they say. Evidently then, they are not workers: they are the “intelligentsia” or “middle class”. They constitute the officer corps. The workers are the instrument, but they wield the instrument. Socialism is a paper hoop through which the working-class, performing circus animals, must be coaxed to jump. They are the ringmasters. Or, as Trotsky saw it, the masses are the steam, and the leadership is the piston which gives the steam direction.

This notion that they are not members of the working-class explains why these people sometimes say to socialists: “What are you doing to get in among the working-class?” The socialist worker—who is only too chronically and daily aware that he is among the working-class, and unless he is a masochist would jump at the chance of getting out of it— finds such idealism baffling.

Steele

The Futility of Reformism (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

 "The task before us was formidable. No democratic society in the world — or, for that matter, any other society — has ever succeeded in achieving, all at the same time, full employment, economic growth, price stability, rising wages and increasing social spending" (Labour's mid-term Manifesto, 29 September 1968)

Class Struggle In Russia (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class Struggle In Russia

Under capitalism the class struggle is a form of guerrilla warfare which is fought out continually between wage and salary earners on the one hand and the privileged minority who own the means of production on the other. But the trump card always remains with the latter, since it is they who manipulate the state machinery and can use it to suppress working class resistance if the struggle becomes really savage.

Russia, just like any other capitalist country, conforms to this pattern. In their Open Letter to the Party Kuron and Modzelewski revealed that in 1962 tanks had been used against workers in Novocherkassk, a small town near Rostov in southern Russia. Now the New China News Agency has come out with fresh reports of brutal suppression. According to Peking there were disturbances in Chimkent (Soviet Central Asia) in June 1967 which resulted in tanks and armoured cars being used against demonstrating workers. Casualties are reported as several dozen dead and numerous injured and arrested.

The New China News Agency also gave news of a strike by workers in Kharkov, in the Ukraine. The only details given were that once again it was “crushed by the force of arms".

Unemployment in Russia

In 1965 a number of Western newspapers carried reports of unemployment in Russia and we commented on these in the Socialist Standard (August 1965). These articles were mainly based on a paper by Professor Efim Manevich which appeared in the Russian economics journal Voprosy Ekonomiki (June 1965). Since, then the Novosti Press Agency in Moscow has published a rejoinder by Professor Manevich (USSR: Full Employment?) which gives details of "the employment problems solved and of those that are to be solved in the USSR in the near future".

Manevich states quite plainly at the beginning of his pamphlet that unemployment has been wiped out in Russia—and then proceeds to prove just the opposite.

The seasonal nature of much fanning work is a considerable problem, especially when it is remembered that 46 per cent of Russia’s population is still engaged in rural occupations. Professor Manevich writes that:

  Collective and state farms are taking measures to make better use of their labour resources in the autumn-winter period. It is at this time—from January through March and November-December —that more than a third of all able-bodied collective farmers have no work to do.

He refers to the work of another Russian economist (G. Sarkisyan) whose investigations have shown that "one able-bodied collective farmer is busy in the collective economy less than 200 days a year on the average which is even less than three quarters of the annual sum total of working time". In fact "at many collective farms in the western areas of the Ukraine and Byelorussia, as well as in the Daghestan, North-Ossetian, Chechen-Ingush, Mari, Mordovian and Chuvash Autonomous Republics, the labour force is only 40-50 per cent occupied."

But this is not only a rural problem:

   Random investigations carried out in a number of small and medium-size towns of Chelyabinsk Region showed that more than 18 per cent of the people who were not gainfully employed were unable to take part in social production because of lack of employment in their particular trade or profession or in the absence of housing facilities. For instance, in the town of Asha 21.1 per cent of all polled persons did not take part in social production because they could not find employment in their particular trade and profession.

Other workers can only find work by travelling long distances each day.

   This applies, for instance, to Noginsk, Mozhaisk, Pavlovo Posad and some other towns of Moscow Region where mostly textile enterprises are sited. That is why some of the men there have to find jobs in other towns and spend sometimes 2 or 3 hours traveling to and from work.

The overall situation seems to be that while the fraction of the able-bodied population not employed in social production is 6-7 per cent in Moscow and Leningrad, the figure for the whole of the Soviet Union is 20 per cent and in Siberia it reaches 26 per cent Yet Professor Manevich still denies that there is unemployment on the grounds that those not engaged in social production can occupy themselves with housework (which applies to the many women who cannot find work) or with their "individual auxiliary economies". This last phrase refers to the allotments which all collective farmers and state farmworkers, as well as many industrial workers, have. Professor Manevich argues that these people can’t be said to be unemployed since they can busy themselves on their plots of land and so scrape a living in that way. Ibis is largely a question of semantics—but Manevich can’t have it both ways, either they are employed or many are chronically underemployed. Whichever way you look at it, many Russian workers cannot find suitable work and we will quote the Professor on that:

   (There) are potential possibilities of drawing into social production a certain portion of the able-bodied population especially women, who wait to work but do not do it due to the inadequate development of local industries, services and other spheres which employ mostly women.
     Due to the inadequate development of industry in many medium-size and small towns the working people have to engage in their individual economies and housekeeping.

The Aftermath (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the firing stopped on that November morning fifty years ago, and an unnatural quiet descended on a landscape pulverised beyond recognition, an armistice had been arranged but peace had certainly not arrived. Mar who woe present at the time have described the uncanny feeling as the nightmare closed, and how odd it was to be able to walk erect in places where, only a short while before, it was certain death to raise their head.

For four years the great nations of capitalism had hurled themselves at each other with deadly-effect; the butchery had been unparalleled. Now, that at least was over, but the toll of life still went on. Plague, in the form of Spanish influenza, swept the world and the blockade of Germany, with its cynical and heartless use of starvation to achieve political ends, continued.

The war had revolved around the question of Germany. The older capitalist powers had fought to contain and cripple a new, dangerous rival. Germany had tried to gain political domination in line with its expanding economic and military power. The established powers had grabbed the most profitable areas of the world as sources of raw materials and outlets for their manufactured goods; they controlled the most important strategic points such as the Suez and Panama canals.

German capitalists found themselves forced to expand under unfavourable conditions. They began to prepare to challenge their rivals. They built up a huge and efficient army, began to challenge British supremacy at sea by amassing a large navy. The whole of Germany was organised for war.

Railway systems were laid down to enable the rapid transport of troops to strike points, in case the great fear of a war on two fronts came to reality. In 1914 the time had arrived for the great throw.

The throw failed. Germany was battered, but by no means deterred. The German army was still intact and stood almost entirely on foreign soil. The tremendous offensives of the previous few months had forced them back, but failed to break them. But Germany was disintegrating behind the armies. Modern wars are fought on the factory floor, and in the food queues as well as in the front fine and Germany had had enough.

In October the German admirals decided to send the High Seas Fleet in one final "do or die" attack against the British, but the sailors had mutinied. By 3 November 1918, Kiel was in their hands; within a few days the Kaiser had gone and a Social Democrat was Chancellor.

Germany made frantic last efforts to salvage something from the wreck, but was eventually forced to accept harsh terms in which it was stripped of its colonies. These were not worth an awful lot, as the best areas had been grabbed before Germany had arrived on the scene, but they were to become a mania in the next decade and to enable the German ruling class to build up war fever again, when the time came.

Germany was disarmed, conscription was abolished, its army was limited to 100,000 men. It was allowed no air force, only a small navy, and no submarines, heavy artillery or tanks. German rivers were internationalised. But in spite of this Germany still remained intact. German industry was basically untouched and the army general staff remained. It was only a matter of time before the ambition of the German capitalist class would persuade them to try again.

The most far reaching effect of the war was the break up of Austria-Hungary. The ancient Hapsburg Empire had covered a vast area in Central Europe. Although, with the rise of the German Empire, it had been somewhat overshadowed by its pushing neighbour, it was still a powerful block. At the end of the war it disappeared as Central Europe was “balkanised”.

The German-speaking Alpine provinces of the former empire, with Vienna as the capital, became the new Austria. The rump of pre-war Hungary, stripped of 75 per cent of its territory and 60 per cent of its population, became the Republic of Hungary, with Buda-Pest as its capital. The old Kingdom of Poland was recreated more or less as it had been before the 18th century partition between Austria, Prussia and Russia. Austria Hungary’s southern provinces of Croatia, Bosnia and Dalmatia were joined to Serbia and Montenegro to become Yugo-Slavia.

Most important from the point of view of future development, was the creation of Czechoslovakia. This was the ancient Kingdom of Bohemia and Moravia with Slovakia and Ruthenia. The outer mountainous ring of Bohemia was occupied by German speaking peoples. This was to become a flash point twenty years later.

France, conscious of its inferiority in numbers with Germany. in the next twenty years built up a system of alliances with these small nations in an effort to ring Germany and adjust the balance. This again was to become a telling point in German war propaganda.

Russia was in a state of turmoil, torn by civil war and invaded by foreign armies, its casualties from war, famine and political murder were numbered in millions. Taking advantage of its weakened state, and believing in the imminent collapse of its government, the allies helped to strip Russia of much of its more advanced areas.

Finland broke away and became an independent state. The Baltic areas, that had been some of the most industrial parts of the old Empire, became Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and Russian Poland went into the new Polish State.

But Russia came back as one of the most powerful states in the world, and its rulers showed they had nothing to learn, when it came to ruthlessness in pursuit of their aims. They were to have one new weapon that had not existed since the French Revolution—a fifth column in the shape of their supporters in many countries, the local Communist Parties.

The Great War ended after millions of workers had died, but nothing was solved, nothing could be solved. The problems of capitalism still remained. The dragon’s teeth of a new conflict were well and truly sown. What is more tragic, the working classes of the world had really learned nothing. They were to fight again in a generation.

Les Dale

Profit vesus Humanity (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has a working knowledge of industry that in the last three years industrial accidents have been on the increase;

No. of industrial                                  No. of days lost
accidents                                                        (millions)
1965 851,200                                   1965 21.78
1966 896,700                                   1966 23.29
1967 938,100                                   1967 24.25
                                                                          (Safety Sept. 1968)

Safety publishes these figures in a vain attempt to persuade the government to set up a Royal Commission to inquire into their causes. Why they should push for a Royal Commission, which is usually a government way of sweeping the dirt under the carpet, is unclear.

The publication of the number of production days lost, and the “cost to Britain", demonstrates the angle from which the British Safety Council approaches these matters. It is also the way the mind of the capitalist works, in fact it is the criterion of capitalism," Cost against Cost".

The cost of a strike against the cost of the wage increase, the cost of a trade blockade against the cost of the loss of sympathy of African governments with respect to the racist policy of Rhodesia, the cost of the loss of production hours in accidents against the loss of production if workers slow down and watch the safety angles.

One thing no government bothers to consider is the human cost: death, pain, suffering. These are things that are so much a part of the way of life of the capitalist system that very few people seem to care any longer. The old. the infirm, the poor, even the starving children seem just an embarrassment, “What can we do about it anyway?", is a remark you often hear.

Why are workers so short sighted? Why can they not see that tomorrow it might be them stretched out on a hospital bed, wondering how the missus is going to manage on sick pay? After all, with all of our cars, fridges, and tellys, we are only as secure as our next wage packet. It is a plausible explanation that workers expect to be cheated, so that when Socialists come along with a straight forward proposal then they feel that there must be a catch somewhere.

To the Socialist it all seems so simple: society is divided into two classes, and the motive behind production is exchange with a view to profit for the owning or capitalist class. All things are sacrificed to this “God" of profits: the safety of workers, the children of Biafra, the Czech workers, the people of Vietnam.

Yet when you think of Socialism, and all the possibilities for humanity within that way of life, where the only criterion of living will be human comfort, we are left asking such organisations as the British Safety Council: 'why waste your time? If you are really concerned with human safety instead of trying to convince Wilson that the cost of safety is less than the cost of accidents, join with us to introduce a way of life where all of us will have free access to wealth, and guiding principle will be human well being'.

Of course we realize that we are appealing in vain, for these organisations are part of the capitalist system themselves, their terms of reference are within the system, and because of this they are quite useless for solving the problems they raise. Every bit of misery that capitalism creates will bring into being a reformist organisation, and so we get a fragmentation of the revulsion that human beings feel when they see any form of suffering. This is of benefit only to the capitalist class, because it diffuses the concern over these problems that is in most of our minds, and prevents most workers from seeing that they have an origin.

Who is worse? The person who seems indifferent to suffering, or the Christian who sees suffering but misdirects our attention to God, and gets us all to sit down waiting for divine intervention? For in both cases the suffering continues.

Even worse perhaps is the person who gets some personal satisfaction from treating the outcome of such suffering, and never gets down to asking what could be the cause.

It is the socialist contention that only when we eliminate the profit account can mankind really deal with the human suffering that goes on in the world today. After all so much of it is down to the economic cost factor, the need for capitalists to produce quicker and therefore cheaper than their competitors, and then to the competition for markets, sources of raw materials and places of strategic importance, that we really can condemn capitalism for murder.

Terry Lord

The Myth of Cut-Prices (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the last ten years shopping for the weekly groceries has become a much more modern and efficient operation.

The ever quickening pace of modern capitalist society with the introduction of labour saving devices such as washing machines, drying machines and dish washers together with the availability of private and school nurseries has enabled some housewives to drop their chores and their children and go out to work. Consequently time spent waiting in long queues at the butchers, the bakers, the fishmongers, the fruit shop and the grocers has become a thing of the past. Now all such shopping for foodstuffs can be done under one roof in the supermarket.

The working housewife can nip out of the office during her lunch break, dash round the supermarket, buy all her immediate requirements and be back in time for another cup of tea before resuming work. At the weekend, when she has more time to spare, she can browse round the store at her leisure. The shelves are attractively laid out, and the goods displayed in such a manner that the higher priced items are made more easily available by being placed on popular eye-level shelves while the lower priced commodities are placed on the slower selling bottom shelves. The displays are colourful and eye-catching (usually containing one popular low priced item together with another related item which has a high profit margin). Soft music fills the air. The tills chatter rhythmically. The butcher shouts some flattering cliches about the quality of his meat. The atmosphere is busy and friendly, not unlike that of a fairground. The housewife is relaxed. She can pick and choose, carefully examine and reject the hygienically pre-packed joints of meat until she finds the one she wants. The tomatoes in the pre-packed trays can be discreetly tested for firmness before buying. Finally when the housewife has paid through the checkout she can go home perhaps satisfied that her care has saved her a few shillings. And why shouldn’t she?

The extensive advertising by supermarket companies on television, in the press, by leaflet distribution and in the windows of the stores themselves often claims that that particular company’s prices are the lowest in the country. When all the supermarket chains are flooding the workers’ minds with such advertising it can be almost convincing and certainly confusing. Further a seemingly logical supposition would be that such intense competition between different supermarket groups operating in closely knit areas would force prices down. But are these the facts? Is the price structure of one group lower than the price structures of others? Does competition between the groups force prices down?

In the so-called “cut price war” between supermarket groups one essential factor must be kept in perspective— that these groups must make a profit in order to survive. No company has any intentions of cutting its prices so low that it will end up in liquidation. (In the early days of supermarketing some fly by night petty capitalists attempted to jump on the bandwagon by actually cutting prices but they soon ended up bankrupt or bought out.)

During the time of the controversy about trading stamps, about two years ago, a national newspaper took the trouble to make an extensive survey of the price structure in six of the major supermarkets companies in the country. A list of groceries was purchased from each (approximately four pounds worth) and the difference between the cheapest bill and the dearest bill was 1/2. The dearest company issued trading stamps which were valued at 1/-, so the difference was really 2d. Newspapers seem to delight in surveys and opinion polls; however in this instance it was unnecessary. A simple examination of the economics of the situation would have sufficed.

The successful companies are making an annual net profit of 4 per cent. Let us assume that one were to cut its retail price structure by as little as 2½d. in the pound. This apparently trifling sum would reduce the gross profit by more than 1 per cent and, consequently (all other expenses being equal) the net profit would drop below 3 per cent—more than a 25 per cent drop in net profit. To make it clearer let us further assume that the company has 600 branches each averaging in turnover £3,000 per week or £156,000 per year. The total annual turnover would be £93,744,000. Therefore a reduction in its retail price structure of 2½d. in the pound would result in an annual drop in the net profit of £39,000. Any managing director on the board of any supermarket chain who produced such a result through his ambitious tactics in the “cut price war” would, needless to say, find himself out of a job.

Nevertheless the “cut price war” must go on. But without cutting prices how can it go on?

By creating a cut price image and that is precisely what they do—by using skilful advertising, mentioned before, and by several other shrewdly presented methods of salesmanship. For example the stores must, of course, be clean but not clinically clean. (A store which is all white tiles and streamline can give an impression of high prices. It can also lack atmosphere and repel customers). Tumble displays and baskets containing goods which appear to have been thrown in any old how lend a cheaper impression and sell faster than goods in a neat block which looks as if it would collapse around a customer were she to remove any part of it.

Gaily coloured posters and tickets hanging among balloons help to create the required image. But the most powerful image makers are the periodic cut price offers which usually consist of eight items, those being the items most forcefully advertised. At first this may appear to contradict what has been said earlier. It doesn’t, however, and in order to explain why it is necessary to examine how the price structure is arrived at in a supermarket company.

Most suppliers to the food trade have a sliding scale of prices at cost for the commodities which they sell. These scales are based on the case lots purchased—the larger the number of cases bought the lower the terms. Supermarket chains buy in such huge quantities that they command the lowest terms which enables them to sell to the public at a price permanently below the recommended retail price. Conversely selling below the recommended price ensures a large turnover of the particular item and enables the chain to obtain permanently the lowest terms.

Now to return to periodic cut price or special offers. These usually run for a fortnight. The programme of cut price offers is decided on months before they are actually reduced. There are two ways in which the supermarket chain can reduce prices without affecting the gross profit.

First through making a deal with the supplier and getting extra special terms or bonuses by guaranteeing the supplier a substantially larger order.

Second by increasing the price of the commodity about a month previous to special offer fortnight. It may be noted here that what the supermarket customer gains on the roundabout she had already lost on the swings. So there, the trick has been done. Eight items out of 4,000 have been cut in price without loss of profit and the cut price image has been enhanced. In general the prices of food are on the increase as are most other popular commodities. Each week most supermarket chains issue to their branches a list of price increases and a list of price decreases. The former is in almost every case four times longer than the latter. The decrease list contains mostly items which are in poor demand.

Due to mergers and takeovers there are cases where two supermarkets, practically next door to each other, trading under different names but owned by the same company, operate the same price structure. In fact, the “cut price war” between the supermarket groups isn’t as bloodthirsty as they would have us believe.

Finally let us take a quick look behind the counter. In most supermarket chains each supermarket is a unit in itself and must pay for itself, it must make a profit. Any weak links in the chain are closed down. To see that the unit makes a profit is the responsibility of the supermarket manager. The expenses incurred in the running of the store (heating, lighting, refrigeration, window cleaning, shop cleaning, etc.) are more or less constant. However one of the expenses which can fluctuate is the wages bill. The wages bill is composed of, the gross wages plus company insurance—that part of the cost of the national insurance stamps paid by the company. This bill can fluctuate for various reasons — a fall or rise in trade, absenteeism, staff leaving, new staff starting or increases in N.H.I. The food trade is indisputably the fastest moving of all retail trades and, due to low wages, long hours (having to work Saturdays) and several other pressures it also has a very high proportion of staff entering and leaving the trade. Nevertheless the supermarket companies instruct the managers that they must strictly control the wages bill by keeping it at a fixed percentage of the total sales (usually 4 per cent). In order to make clearer the significance of the wages bill being fixed, as it is, at 4 per cent, ten years ago the wages bill in most personal service grocery stores was 8 per cent. Now staff in a supermarket have to handle twice as much sales turnover. The rate of exploitation has risen in a much higher ratio than have wages.

When a new supermarket opens the pre-opening advertising is magnificent. The cut price offers are almost genuine. The crowds pour in. The staff in their bright new overall dash around enthusiastically, trying to fill the shelves which are being emptied by the customers as quickly as they can fill them. The staff work harder than normal by force of circumstances but their enthusiasm is almost undaunted because they are that little bit happier than normal for several reasons. Some of them were out of work before they got the job. Some have just left what they considered a boring job and are experiencing the feeling that a change is as good as a holiday.

But for how long does the enthusiasm last? After a week or so the supermarket company puts its opening cut price offers back in line with the prices in its other branches. Trade immediately starts to fall and, consequently the wage bill starts to climb. After a month or so half the staff have been sacked for one reason or another; the ones remaining have been drained of their enthusiasm and have rapidly lost any feelings of happiness that they had felt. The job, for them, has become just another unrewarding grind in a world they don’t quite understand.

The class struggle, even more bitterly than before, continues inside the supermarket while the soft music plays on.

H. S.

Party News (1968)

Party News from the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The North London Branches are co-operating to run a series of meetings on Sunday evenings to compensate for the lack of Central London venue. These meetings will be held at the Three Horseshoes, Heath Street, Hampstead Tube Stn on the Northern Line. It is a very comfortable room and should provide an excellent centre for Socialist discussion in this area. The success of the first three meetings will determine the running of another series in 1969, so please make every endeavour to attend.

The Suffragettes (1968)

From Punch Magazine, 1918.

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January 1918 Punch signalled the end of the struggle for female suffrage, which had provided it with so much material, with one last cartoon. There was a woman, looking like Joan of Arc, holding a banner with the words “Women’s Franchise”. The caption read simply “At Last”.

In February that year an amendment to the Representation of the People Act gave the parliamentary vote to those women over thirty who held a £5 occupation qualification, or were householders, the wives of householders, or graduates. That was the beginning; in 1928 the Baldwin government, despite one or two diehards still resisting from the last ditches, conceded the vote to everyone over the age of twenty-one, man and woman.

The campaign for the vote was part of a great surge of female discontent which had gathered its force at the end of the nineteenth century. At that time, the full effects of industrialisation were being felt; the old type of home life had been undermined and women had been forced onto the labour market in competition with men. Wherever they could —in the craft unions and, for the better off in the so-called professions—the men organised to resist this competition.

For most women, the one hope of escape from the labour market was by marriage which, since it involved the exchange of conjugal rights for some sort of livelihood, was sometimes stigmatised as legal prostitution. Marriage, in any case, had its problems; the old melodramas about wife beating were based on more than the authors’ imagination.

Yet even marriage was a mathematical impossibility for many. In 1851, for every 1,000 males in Britain there were 1042 females. This surplus went on increasing until in 1911 there were 1068 females for every 1,000 males. The 1851 Census found that, with 24½ the average age for a girl to marry, 42 per cent of females between the ages of twenty and forty were spinsters. [1] 

The unmarried woman found few opportunities for a job outside certain fields. Many became domestic skivvies; others "submitted to the sweatshops in the rag trade or went onto the streets. For the more genteel there was always the dreary treadmill of the governess, of which the 1851 Census recorded 21,000. These unhappy women got their living trying to teach rudimentary mathematics and languages at a cut price to the children of clergymen and stockbrokers, ever fearful of being dismissed, always fighting to preserve their faded respectability to carry on to their next “position”.

Even when, after the turn of the century, women had broken into industry in a big way, their conditions still compared badly with those of men. In 1911, for example, they could work at making army and police uniforms for ten and a half hours a day for a wage of a shilling a day. For four and a half hours’ work basting police trousers they were paid 3¾d. [2] This sort of wage was useless for a woman who had to keep herself.

The reaction to this came when women began to organise into trade unions, and even to form their own union — the Women’s Protective and Provident League. Among the well- to-do it came also in the rise of the “new women”, who demanded that society catch up with the changes which industry had forced upon it and recognise that women could do most jobs as well as men. They were rich enough to argue that their place was not in the home. They wanted the vote as a means of settling their grievances.

When these demands became crystallised into the cry Votes for Women the result was one of the most impressive examples of militancy, beside which Tariq Ali is dwarfed. The most original and determined of the demonstrators were the Suffragettes.*

Few organisations have rivalled the Suffragettes in their techniques of publicity and fund-raising. Without votes and candidates, they could dominate a by-election. They jammed the streets and parks with mammoth rallies. They called up Army reserves with bogus telephone calls, burnt down Lloyd George’s new home at Walton Heath, flooded the organ at the Albert Hall and, in one hectic night in 1914, destroyed three Scottish castles.

The Suffragettes had to endure a great deal of ribaldry, and worse. At one demonstration Churchill, who was then Home Secretary, told the police to deny the women their object of being arrested but to do anything else they liked with them—an order which was faithfully obeyed. The Suffragettes’ answer to arrest was the hunger strike, to which the authorities’ reply was forcible feeding, which was as barbarous and revolting as it sounds. Their ordeals made the Suffragettes’ unity all the stronger, but they did not raise unvarying sympathy; the Socialist Standard for June 1911 made this comment on the rich hunger strikers;

   Starvation, to them, has all the charms of novelty, Self-indulged, it buys a martyr’s crown, clears the blood, and whiles away the prison hours.

It is true that many of the Suffragettes were rich, and many of them aristocrats, and that they aimed at perpetuating the voting privileges which went with poverty. Many of them were moved by the same indignation as a Miss Bancroft of St. Anne’s Manor, who found that the 1868 election allowed three of her male employees to vote but denied it to her. Their organisation was not democratic; it was, in fact, Mrs. Pankhurst’s private dictatorship in which anyone who fell foul of her—like the Pethwick Lawrences—were disposed of.

Indeed, the very tactics of the Suffragettes prevented them being democratic. A lot of what they did was criminal— and crimes cannot be decided upon democratically, after a free discussion and vote. The majority of WSPU members could not know, or influence, what was going on; they had to take the orders laid down by the secret meetings or sent over from Christabel Pankhurst's secret hideaway in Paris.

In time they developed their own notions of sex superiority. In much the same way as the Black Power movement has reacted against Negro suppression with theories of white inferiority, the Suffragettes began to say that men were an unclean menace to Woman’s purity. “Votes for women and chastity for men” became Christabel’s favourite slogan. She also wrote The Great Scourge, an exaggerated and alarmist account of the extent and effects of venereal disease among men and alleged that “only an insignificant minority—twenty- five per cent at most—of men escaped infection from V.D.” [3]

Just as the Suffragettes were hotting up, the First World War, which might have been their big opportunity, finished them. With hardly a backward glance, they gave their talents to the recruiting drive and the scorn which Mrs. Pankhurst had previously reserved for devious politicians was turned upon the men who refused to fight at the call of the government which had so recently tortured her followers:

  Could any woman face the possibility of the affairs of the country being settled by Conscientious Objectors, passive resisters and shirkers? (Queen’s Hall, London, 1/10/1914.)

The popular notion is that it was as a reward for their war work that the women got the vote in 1918. In fact, the vote was not given to the very age and income group which had supplied the muscle power of that effort. More likely, the government simply gave in, knowing that to hold out any longer would have brought a resumption of the whole sorry business.

Since then, one of the central questions of the Votes for Women campaign has been answered. Women have voted, we have had women M.P.s, Cabinet Ministers—we might soon even have a woman for Premier. But the poverty and injustice on which the Suffragettes hung their propaganda are still with us and women have no more idea of how to abolish them than have men.

Indeed, some of the feminists have gone along with the sort of frothy nonsense which it supposed to prove that women are social and intellectually inferior. Here, for example, are a couple of comments—not untypical—on the political scene from a one time woman M.P.:

   I could always tell by Mrs. Attlee's knitting when another grandchild was on the way.
   Mary Wilson (wife of (he Prime Minister) is a sweet girl. Pity to involve her in the political game. [4]

One other question is still to be settled. Women has physiological differences to man but these do not make her inferior; what has often given her a social back seat is the fact that capitalism puts a price on those differences. The employers buy labour power on the most economical terms, which for some jobs means that they must look for labour power which will stay available. These jobs — for example technical, managerial, professional — are usually better paid and are difficult for a woman to hold because her role as a child bearer must periodically take her out of the labour market.

The tendency is therefore to confine woman to the humdrum jobs like typing and simple assembly work where a high labour turnover does not matter to the employer too much. This has the effect of making the man the main wage earner in a family — in the last analysis it is from his wage that the children are brought up and the bills art paid. And the effect of this is to raise the value of a man's labour power above a woman’s, which has the overall result of keeping his wages that much higher. This is not the verdict of a sex war; it is simply capitalism applying its own laws to human beings—and degrading and suppressing not a few of them in the process.

If women are to do something about their place in society, they must first face the fact that most of them are workers, with labour power to sell, just like the majority of men. They must realise that their vote has solved nothing, changed nothing, because—again like the majority of men—it is a vote not backed by an understanding of society. But with that understanding the vote can do more than any Suffragette ever dreamed of — it can bring ". . .  the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex."

Ivan

* The term Suffragette is here applied to what eventually became called the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). There were other organisations in the campaign—for example the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies — which were less militant.

[1] Women’s Suffrage and Party Politics in Britain by Constance Rover.

[2] Women On the Warpath by David Mitchell.

[3] The Suffragette Movement by Sylvia Parkhurst,

[4] Woman In Parliament by Jean Mann.

Votes for Rich Women (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has long been a socialist aim, first voiced by the Utopians, that men and women should be equal in the conduct of social and personal affairs. This was a direct challenge to the Christian doctrine that women were inferior and to the legal contract called marriage which made the wife the private property of the husband. This aim is expressed in our own Declaration of Principles: “the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex”. In other words, the establishment of Socialism would mean an end to all oppression and discrimination against women.

The heyday of the Suffragette movement was the decade before the outbreak of the first world war. During that period also, the Socialist Party of Great Britain was set up. Since political democracy is the only condition in which a genuine socialist movement can become effective, it may surprise some to learn that the Socialist Party not only did not advocate woman’s suffrage but was opposed to the Suffragettes. But we opposed them mainly because their demands were undemocratic; they did not stand for universal adult suffrage.

People often do not realise that universal suffrage was not achieved in Britain till 1929 and that about four out of ten men were excluded till 1918. When, for instance, in 1912 McKenna, the Liberal Home Secretary, introduced an unsuccessful bill to extend the franchise he estimated that there were twelve million men over twenty-one of whom less than seven-and-a-half million had the vote. Incidentally, we denounced this bill which would still have left over two million men voteless as a typical Liberal vote-catching swindle. Only certain ratepayers had the vote under a system called Household Suffrage. The Suffragettes wanted to give women the vote on these terms. The Socialist Standard of June 1908 pointed out what this would mean:

   What are the facts regarding the Suffragettes? Under the pretence of sex equality they are buttressing class privilege. Under the guise of democracy they are endeavouring to strengthen the political power of property. They plausibly propose that women be admitted to the franchise on the same terms as men, and since all Socialists want sex equality this looks attractive. But wait. What does it really mean? Men vote at present under the £10 franchise. The suffrage is thus upon a property basis with plural voting for the wealthy. Therefore, according to the proposals of the women Suffragists, only those women having the necessary property qualifications are to be allowed to vote. This excludes not only all those single working women unable to qualify because of their poverty, but it also bars practically the whole of the married women of the working class who have no property qualifications apart from their husbands'. Further, it increases enormously the voting power of the well-to-do. since the head of the wealthy household can always impart the necessary qualifications to all women of his house, while the working man, through his poverty, is entirely unable to do so.

Votes made by transferring enough property to unqualified persons were known as ‘faggot votes”. We returned to the same point in February 1912:

   As already stated (and it has not been denied) the Suffragettes oppose adult suffrage. The vote to women on the same terms as men as at present would exclude the mass of working-class women (or their husbands) because of their lack of property. It would permit the doubling of the voting strength of property by enabling the wealthy to provide their women with the requisite qualifications. It would deal a blow at the whole working class, and set back the hour of emancipation.

When a Parliamentary Franchise (Women) Bill was introduced in 1910 we were able to show that our opposition to the Suffragettes was fully justified. Even Winston Churchill, then a Liberal, pointed out that its effect would simply be to multiply faggot votes for the wealthy. The whole trend of the debate, commented the August Socialist Standard, “showed how essentially undemocratic is the spirit of the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the measures it proposes.” This was also why the Liberal leaders said they were against it. Indeed Asquith earned what must have been the only praise from us (normally we called him “butcher” as he was Home Secretary in 1893 at the time of the Featherstone shootings) for the way he opposed “the hysteric demands of women for the enfranchisement of the propertied ones among them”!

Thus we opposed the Suffragettes because their demands were against the interests of workers, women as well as men. Their proposals would have strengthened the political power of the capitalist class by increasing the proportion of rich people who had the vote. The movement, we stated, was “only a means of providing votes for the propertied women of the middle class, and faggot votes for the wealthy”. They wanted not votes for women, but more votes for property. We warned “the women of the working class are being used for the purpose of obtaining a limited suffrage in the interests of propertied women”. The Women’s Social and Political Union we denounced as “essentially a rich women’s organsation”.

The attitude of the Socialist Party towards reforms is basically that a socialist party should not advocate them as this inevitably leads to compromise with capitalism. This is not to say that all reforms are against working class interests. They are not, and we have never said they were. Obviously some are, and some are not. The Suffragette proposal to extend the Household Vote to women on the same terms as men was and we opposed it for that reason. Universal adult suffrage was a different proposition. We were not opposed to this and frequently said so: “we are of necessity Universal Adult Suffragists” (April 1906) and “we are necessarily and without qualification democrats” (July 1912).

However, we did not advocate universal suffrage or seek support on the grounds that we thought it useful. This was because there were already sufficient workers with the vote to win political power for Socialism if they were so minded. We held that in the political conditions of pre-1914 Britain there was no need to advocate extension of the franchise. The Socialist Standard put this well in answers to queries on this point:

  The Socialist Party is not opposed to Adult Suffrage, but maintain that the working class have quite sufficient votes at their disposal to effect the revolutionary purpose when the class are sufficiently class conscious to make the time opportune. It is a question of education, not of extensions of the franchise (December, 1910).
   While Adult Suffrage would be a useful measure for the working class, to enable them to more quickly and completely take control of political power when they understand how to use their votes, yet as the working class have a franchise wide enough for the initial steps of their emancipation, it is not the business of a Socialist Party to spend time and energy in advocating the extension of that franchise, but to educate the workers in how to use the voting power which they already possess; hence the business of a Socialist Party is to advocate Socialism only (November, 1913).

Of course had there not been enough workers with the vote, as in Britain before 1868, this would have been a different situation.

The woman’s suffrage issue was first raised in these columns in April 1906 in a letter asking for funds from Mrs. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence of the WSPU. In our reply we pointed out that no doubt when the workers had won political power for Socialism one of their first acts would be to introduce adult suffrage, if indeed the capitalist class had not already done so in a bid to ward off their coming dispossession. Demanding the whole baker’s shop, we said, was the best way of getting the whole loaf.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Freedom of Speech and the Press (1968)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Freedom of Speech”. “Free Press”, “Freedom of Assembly" etc. are hypocritical phrases successfully used to muddle working class minds. Under capitalism there is not, nor has there ever been, any of these things.

Before the war meetings could only be had either by direct permission or on the sufferance of the police. Whenever the authorities or even subordinate officials, wished, the meetings were stopped, and the Commissioner of Police could legally refuse to give any reason for his action. Printers offices could be, and were raided and publications suppressed at the discretion of the authorities. After the raid other action — such as prosecution on some legal point might be taken, but this was not necessary, and often was not done.

When the war started the passing of the Defence of the Realm Act brought these powers to a focus and enabled action to be taken rapidly and without the formalities that had been usual in certain cases. The so-called great English charter of personal liberty — the Habeus Corpus Act — is overridden by it, and scores of men and women have been arrested, thrown into jail and left there without trial and even without any charge being preferred against them, and inquiries are met with the curt answer—when one is given—that it is under D.O.R.A. Often they will refuse to state under which regulation even the action is being taken. With this single, glaring fact before us how shallow and foolish it sounds to claim that there is any “Principle of a Free Press", or “Freedom of Speech” for the wage-slaves. They have them not and never have had.

The only way to obtain these “Freedoms” is the Socialist way. That is by organising to take control of the political powers for the purpose of entering into possession of the means of life—the land and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

In this greatest of all class struggles the workers are quite correct in seizing every vantage point and every opportunity for spreading their propaganda and organisation; but they will be utterly mistaken and will only add to their own confusion by confounding these necessary detail struggles with the central object of the battle or raising them into “Principles” which have no existence in reality.

From an unsigned Editorial in the Socialist Standard, November 1918.

Votes for some Workers (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

November 1868 is a significant date in British working class history. For in that month was held the first general election in which the majority of electors were workers. Most workers, it is true, were still excluded but enough had the vote to elect a majority of socialist delegates had they wanted to. It is true also that the Second Reform Act of 1867 was a miserable compromise between the Tories and the Liberals, both of whom were opposed to democracy and afraid of giving the vote to too many workers.

In 1832 the workers had been tricked into backing their employers' demand for a share with the landed aristocrats, big merchants and bankers in running the government. The First Reform Act was framed so as deliberately to exclude workers and in fact, in some cases, they were actually disfranchised. This was not an experience they easily forgot. The manufacturers had used the threat of a workers' uprising to scare the governing classes into sharing power with them. One of the first acts of the government elected under the new franchise was to reform the Poor Law system: they made it harsher in order to drive people into the factories (or, as they would say today, to encourage “mobility of labour”). Partly as a result of this for the next decade or so the government was, in Chartism, faced with the real threat of a workers’ uprising.

Chartism, the first independent workers’ political party in the world, was an expression of general discontent with early capitalism. Their six-point charter, which included universal manhood suffrage, added up to a demand for a democratic state. They were convinced that with democracy the workers could reshape society in their own interests. This was well expressed in the words of one of their songs: “We will get the land, when we get the Charter”. It was this emphasis on the need for winning political power that commended Chartism to Marx and Engels and it taught them that the workers’ class struggle must become political. The Chartists in fact failed to achieve any of their aims. Their last monster demonstration in 1848 failed ignominiously. Faced with the choice of passively accepting parliament’s rejection of the Charter or insurrection they backed down. The more determined kept up the struggle for a few more years coming to absorb the ideas of the French utopian communists like Babeuf and Blanqui and even those of Marx and Engels.

By the 1860’s the trade unions, after years of syndicalist-type opposition to “wage-slavery”, came to accept the wages system and put forward the conservative slogan of “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.” Their leaders were rejecting violent overthrow of the the government in favour of working for small improvements within the system.

The manufacturers, who were the gainers from 1832, were now eager to push out the old landed aristocracy and have the state machine all to themselves. The successful Anti-Corn Law campaign led by Cobden and Bright had whetted their appetite. They saw as one way of increasing their control to extend the suffrage to their workers who they knew would vote for them. So despite the failure of Chartism the Reform issue was raised from time to time after 1850. However, the restricted franchise did not allow the radicals their due weight inside the Liberal party. The Whigs, themselves landed aristocrats, still had a great say and Lord Palmerston refused to allow a Reform bill. When he died the way was clear and in March 1866 Gladstone introduced a Bill which by lowering the property qualification would have given the vote to many workers. But the Whigs had their last fling. Some forty of them voted with the Tories against the bill. The government resigned and a minority Tory one took over. Almost immediately they were faced with a country-wide Reform agitation. Bright on behalf of the manufacturers’ National Reform Union called for ratepayers’ suffrage while the trade unions and the First International backed the Reform League which, like the Chartists, stood for universal manhood suffrage. It was the League that organised a great demonstration for 23 July at Hyde Park which the government banned. The organisers refused to accept this and the demonstration went on. The crowds pulled down the railings at Hyde Park and swarmed in. The fear of insurrection and a revival of Chartism, suggested by this, scared the government and Disraeli introduced his own Reform bill, more radical even than Gladstone's, in order, as he said, “to dish the Whigs”.

Marx commented favourably on the tactic of playing off one section of the governing classes against another which the workers had used to get factory laws. The passing of the Second Reform Act presented the same spectacle. The Tories proposed to give the vote to all ratepayers in the towns, while the Liberals wanted a steadily falling property qualification. Since the Liberals had a majority in parliament the actual Act, which with similar ones for Scotland and Ireland increased the electorate from 1,350,000 to 2,470,000, was a compromise.

If Disraeli had hoped to gain the new voters' gratitude and so dish the Whigs he must have been disappointed. The 1868 election returned Gladstone with a big majority. The new government then set about stripping the aristocrats of more of their privileges: they reformed the civil service and the universities; they disestablished the Church in Ireland; they brought in compulsory elementary education. Once again the workers had been used by the manufacturing capitalists as tools in their fight against the landed aristocracy. But this time it was voluntary. The workers allowed themselves to be used in this way. The new voters of 1868 set an unfortunate precedent which has been followed at every election since: they used their votes to hand over political power to the capitalist class.

One of three Tory Ministers to resign was Lord Cranbourne (who later as Lord Salisbury was three times Prime Minister). His complaint was that power was being transferred to

those who have no other property than the labour of their hands. The omnipotence of Parliament is theirs.

Marx and Engels took a similar view. Writing on the Chartists in the 1850's they had pointed out that universal suffrage in Britain would amount to political power for a class-conscious working class. They seem to have regarded the Second Reform Act as a “radical sham” and a travesty on democracy, as indeed it was. But, although fearing a “pro-slavery rebellion", Marx knew its significance as he showed in his famous speech at the Hague in 1872 when he stated that in America, Britain and perhaps Holland the workers could win power for Socialism peacefully, by winning a majority in a general election.

The government extended the franchise to workers in Britain under pressure, partly from the workers themselves and partly from some capitalists who saw this was in their interests. The workers' vote is a real gain, a potential class weapon which should, in Marx’s phrase, be used as “an instrument of emancipation". The government could not, as some claim, now suddenly suspend democracy, for besides being essential to the smooth running of modern capitalism, it is part of the political consciousness of the working class. By their past actions, from Chartism to pushing down the railings in Hyde Park, they have forced governments to take their views into account. Nor is universal suffrage a fraud, as these same people claim, a trick to convince us we have some say in the running of social affairs while the real decisions are made elsewhere. Parliament does control how the state machine is used—whether troops stay East of Suez or fight in Aden, what the police should do to control riots outside the American embassy, what laws the Courts should enforce—and universal suffrage does allow workers to choose who shall sit in Parliament..

Adam Buick

The Greatest Show on Earth (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Harding or Cox? Harding or Cox?You tell us, populi -You've got the vox.

This piece of lumbering wit was a typical embellishment of the 1920 American presidential election, when Warren Gamiel Harding for the Republicans gave James M. Cox for the Democrats the drubbing of a lifetime. Harding won every state outside the South—and in those days southern votes would have gone for a chimpanzee, provided it was a Democratic chimpanzee.

Harding’s nomination had been a chancy affair. He went to the Republican National convention that year, Senator from Ohio and his state’s ‘‘favourite son’’ candidate—a dodge used then, and now, not as a serious bid for the nomination but to keep control of a state delegation.

But the Republicans were deadlocked and after four ballots they retired for some intensive nocturnal bargaining (it was said to have gone on in the legendary "smoke filled rooms"). The result of this was that the party pros settled on Harding as a compromise and the next day, on the tenth ballot, he emerged as the candidate. Harding was a keen poker man and his dazed comment was that he felt “ . . . like a man who goes in with a pair of eights and comes out with aces full."

Anxious not to upset his concentration on the cards by too complicated a campaign, Harding appealed for “normalcy’’. The voters were probably no clearer on the meaning of this new word than was Harding but they liked the sound of it enough to sweep him triumphantly into the White House, where, as his campaign manager had hoped, he made a “great looking President.”

The nomination is not always so uncertain. More often the successful man has it all tied up—like Johnson in 1964 (because he was already President); like Goldwater in 1964 and Humphrey in 1968 (by patiently and determinedly building up support at every level of their parties); like Kennedy in I960 (because of a series of compelling primary victories).

Kennedy’s primary campaigns were classics. He entered them to prove that a young Roman Catholic could win votes and to erase the memory of the Democrats’ disastrous experiment with Al Smith in 1928, since when no Catholic had got within smelling distance of the nomination. Kennedy fought the primaries with all the ruthless efficiency for which his clan are famous, destroying Hubert Humphrey on the way (Humphrey went out on a flood of his own, easily produced tears) and sweeping to the nomination on the first ballot.

Kennedy, in other words, fought the primaries because he had to. In theory the primaries are ultra-democratic, giving the electors a say in the people who stand for office. The fact is that no American politician ever enters them willingly — there are other ways to the nomination and, while victory in the primaries is usually inconclusive, defeat in them is disastrous.

In I960, Humphrey wailed to the pressmen assembled in an unheated coach bumping across snow covered roads that " . . . any man who goes into a primary isn’t fit to be President. You have to be crazy to go into a primary"—which might have had more point if Humphrey had not at that very moment been fighting a primary himself. Politicians after power do not shrink from putting votes before democratic theories; the primaries are an accepted field of political manoeuvre.

Of course an awful lot of nonsense is talked about them. Theodore Roosevelt’s attempt at the Republican nomination in 1912 was one important influence in increasing the number of states selecting their Convention delegates by primaries and in the course of his campaign Roosevelt seemed to be under the impression that he was God. That year the Republican pros were determined that, however many delegates Roosevelt won in primaries, the nomination would go to Taft. Roosevelt became an abrupt, fervent convert to the sanctity of primaries, although he had not had the same high regard for the voice of the people when he controlled the Republican machine.

After the primaries (and these are usually held in only about sixteen states) and after the painstaking work of collecting delegates all the way up from precinct caucuses, district committees and state conventions, come the National Conventions. The convention, we learn from certain novels and films, is a part of the American way of life, when overwrought business men and suburban fathers can show that there is still some life left in them. Here, amid the ballyhoo of processions and banners and mock-nomination of the favourite sons, comes the serious business of selecting the party’s candidate. Here, no matter what the primaries may have said, the delegations’ votes are traded or are thrown onto a bandwagon in the hope of political and other favours in the future. (In 1960 Kennedy’s men freely used the threat that, if Adlai Stevenson's supporters were too much of an obstacle to the nomination, their man would not even be considered for Secretary of State when Kennedy became President).

The nomination is usually an unexciting affair — only rarely is there the uncertainty which meant forty-six ballots before Wilson won the Democratic nomination in 1912, or the Democrats’ 103 to select J. W. Davis in 1924. Then follows the election campaign itself, when the candidates justify all the months and years of work, manoeuvring, threats and intrigue by a cynical attempt to deceive as many people as possible into voting for them.

Sometimes this deceit is quite blatant. In 1916, Wilson won on a promise to keep America neutral but six months after his election he took the country into the War. In 1932 F. D. Roosevelt attacked government interference in industry and deficit financing. He promised a balanced Budget and, among other things, a 25 per cent cut in federal spending. None of this prevented Roosevelt following different policies when in office, nor his becoming famous as the man who “cured the slump” with a combination of federal spending and Budget deficits. In all the admiration of Roosevelt’s magic genius no one noticed that the slump was lessening all over the world and that the politicians who happened to be in power at the time—for example Adolf Hitler—were getting the credit for it.

Some of the candidates’ deceits are a little more subtle. Every election brings its slogan, like Wilson’s “New Freedom”, F. D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal”, Kennedy’s “New Frontier”, Johnson’s “Great Society”. These all have the same advantage; they mean exactly what everyone wants them to—but they also have the same implied admission that the existing situation is bad enough to need altering. The voters are usually so bemused by these slogans that they vote for them without asking what happened to the old catch phrases —why, for example, did they need Johnson’s Great Society in 1964 when Kennedy’s New Frontier should have solved everything?

This kind of question is much too awkward to be faced. The workers dumbly vote for one of the candidates and then after Inauguration Day the way is clear for the process of disillusionment to begin. In 1964 LBJ was everyone’s favourite; he won an unprecedented victory, taking every state except Arizona and the Deep South. He had once voted a straight racist line but now, he said, he was a “liberal”. Even more—he had a “liberal” Vice-President, a “liberal” Congress, even a ‘‘liberal” Supreme Court. Nothing, apparently, could stop the Great Society.

We all know what happened. The Democrats’ failures and frustrations, after their years of overwhelming power, were vented in the splits and the brutalities of their Chicago Convention. Many of the voters, too, showed their frustrations and the vicious depth of their despair—they came out as supporters of George Wallace.

The American Presidential Election, with all its flags and bands and drum majorettes and campaign boaters and massive crowds, is one of the greatest shows on earth. It is certainly among the most expensive—according to Look magazine, the candidates will spend nearly $50 million on their campaigns. That may sound a lot of money but think what is at stake — no less than the hoodwinking of tens of millions of people, and power over the greatest state in world capitalism.

Ivan

Editorial: The Importance of Elections (1968)

Editorial from the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month, a lot of the Socialist Standard is devoted to the question of elections. One article deals with the American Presidential election, another with the campaign which led up to the Reform Act of 1867. There are two contributions about Votes for Women.

One hundred years ago this month, the first British general election in which most of the voters were workers was held; fifty years ago there was the first general election with women voters.

Elections are important because the party—and the class—that wins them thereby controls political power. It is a sad fact that ever since workers have had the vote the vast majority of them have chosen to support capitalist political parties and so helped to keep in being the system which exploits them and deprives them of liberty, abundance and security.

This has led some to question the usefulness of elections and to turn to so-called “direct action” as an alternative. “Direct action” usually means marches and demonstrations — sometimes violent and provocative-sit-ins, takeovers of colleges, factories and so on. The organisers of these activities hope that in some way they will lead to the overthrow of capitalism.

The one fact which this hope leaves out of account is that “direct action” is necessarily the tactic of a minority; a majority has no need to demonstrate for its demands because it can use its power as a majority to get them.

At the moment the majority are expressing their demand —or preference—for capitalism. They vote for representatives of capitalism who go to the various legislative bodies throughout the world to run society in the interests of the capitalist class, to protect the property rights of capitalism, to administer the state machine and to maintain the “law and order” with its basis in the privileges and exploitation which are part of property society.

There can be no opting out of this. Any threat to “law and order” will be met by the capitalist state, but that state does not act in isolation. The majority of the electorate—which means the majority of the working class—support with their votes the police cordons, the flailing truncheons, the bayonets of the National Guard, the water cannons of Belfast. The experiences of the demonstrators, far from proving the futility of political action, show its power—and (he need to control that power.

Does “direct action”, then, achieve nothing? In practical terms, these are some of its recent results. In France, after the May riots, the Gaullist government came back with an increased majority and so with a clear mandate from the French workers to deal firmly with the insurgents. In America there is a similar story; George Wallace won a lot of votes in unexpected areas from workers who wanted to see the ugliest measures taken against anyone they saw as a threat to the stability of capitalism.

British politics have also been affected; is probably true to say that every demonstration provokes the same sort of reaction among workers here as in America and France and so increases the support for politicians like Enoch Powell with his own particular appeal to working class ignorance and frustration.

Are the demonstrators, then, to stay silent and docile? Must we never protest against the bestialities and degradations of capitalism? No socialist would accept that proposition. But we want our protest to be effective, as no protest can be unless it strikes at the roots of the system— at the political power which keeps the capitalist class in their position of privilege and from which all else flows.

At the moment, in many capitalist countries, the workers have one of the essential tools for this—they have the vote. The capitalists fully recognise the importance of elections; that is why they at first opposed universal suffrage and why they now spend vast sums of money in hoodwinking the voters.

The other essential tool — socialist understanding — is at present lacking. And the way to stimulate it is not by spreading confusion, nor by opportunism, nor by provoking ignorance. There is only one way—the establishment and propagation of the case for the alternative society of Socialism.