Unemployment. Tragedy or Farce? (1921)

From the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Notwithstanding the claim, advanced by the daily press, that trade shows signs of revival, the unemployed figures are still in the neighbourhood of 1½  millions. A writer in The Observer, described as an expert and a member of Lord Saint David's Committee, says : "The crisis is a real one, and doubts if any responsible leader in industry would maintain that the volume of available employment in this country can be increased to any appreciable extent before next June." Another paper—The Sunday Pictorial, September 4th—says that the official figures on unemployment are misleading, because they take no account of those who have exhausted their unemployed pay, a body that grows in numbers every week. The Daily Chronicle, September 6th, gives the number of unemployed in the United States as six millions. In Russia and Austria, we are told, millions are actually starving. In fact, the workers of every country are unemployed to an extent never yet experienced, with one exception. We are told that Germany is the exception, and that unemployment there is scarcely known. If this is true, it is not the first time that the workers of a losing country in a great war have been better off than the victors. The same thing was noticed after the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. Some people might argue from this that the way to fuller employment for any country was to have a good war with a neighbouring country and lose it !

Such an argument, however, is on a par with the general capitalist principle that working-class prosperity in one country can only be built up on the unemployment and impoverishment of the workers of other countries. That is necessarily the outcome of the capitalist contention that unemployment can only be reduced by the capture of foreign trade. During the war the capitalist press insisted on the capture of the enemy's trade in various directions, and, boasting continuously that it was a business war, prophesied greater prosperity for British capitalists and workers as the result of victory. But their prophesy was falsified, and the only fact that has been demonstrated is that the abnormal prosperity of any one country can only occur when other countries fall behind in the race for markets.

In normal times unemployment is fairly evenly spread over all capitalist countries, partly because depressions, when they come, affect them all, and partly because workers are attracted to those countries where trade is on the increase. The passage of workers from one country to another is facilitated by capitalist governments because a large army of unemployed insures cheap labour-power to the capitalist, who can sell his commodities cheaper than his foreign competitors with no reduction in his profits. But cheap labour-power to the capitalist means a lower standard of living to the workers. We thus see that the capitalist remedy for unemployment—capture foreign trade—is a delusion for the workers, because its application means worse conditions for themselves and increased unemployment for their fellow-workers abroad.

No single country can find a solution to the unemployed problem. It is a question that affects the workers of every capitalist country equally. The solution must, therefore, be one that can be applied all round ; it must be universal. Now, Socialism is international. As a remedy for unemployment it must be applied universally, and because it fulfils that condition should take precedence in the workers' consideration. Before examining the full claims of Socialism on the workers' attention, it might be interesting to glance at some of the suggested remedies, the hypocritical platitudes and solemn warnings of our masters and their agents. When facing a question of such magnitude, every suggested remedy should be carefully examined before being discarded or adopted.

At first sight unemployment insurance appears to many to be a remedy. Many who think so only find out their mistake when they have exhausted their unemployed pay and have failed to find a situation. Others find out their mistake in trying to live on it. But insurance cannot even be accepted as a suggested remedy, because it does not pretend to reduce unemployment. All that it does is to keep some workers from actually starving until the capitalist wants them back in the factory again. The Daily Chronicle (September 14th, 1921) contends that it is the best and the cheapest method of dealing with the problem. Referring to the immense volume of unemployment, they say that "it has been accompanied by singularly little acute distress or violent discontent." "Acute distress" for the Chronicle might mean any stage in the starvation process down to actual skin and bones, but there is no mistake about the satisfaction it feels that there has been little "violent discontent." Another item that gives satisfaction to the Chronicle is the fact that "by far the greater part of the 'doles' financial cost will be eventually recouped by the State from the contributions of employers and employed."

The chief advantage of insurance for the capitalists is that it is elastic in its application. It can be extended or reduced, in time or amount, to suit the severity of the trade crisis through which they happen to be passing. The Chronicle says that "it is the most scientific policy that any State has adopted. As compared with relief works, it covers much more fully the actual field of distress, while it also entails far less outlay." But the controversy over the relative values of the "doles" or relief works need worry the worker but little. Both will be applied while the crisis lasts and discontinued as soon as it is over. The return of normal trade conditions, while it solves the problem for the capitalists at the moment, still leaves immense numbers unemployed, which increase with every such crisis.

In his presidential address to the Trade Union Congress, Mr. Poulton fell foul of several capitalist papers. Among many other things he said of little or no importance, was the outstanding declaration "that the facilities for producing goods were never more abundant or more efficient than to-day, enabling enormous quantities to be produced at very short notice. This, in its turn, whatever economists might say, had the effect of throwing out of employment multitudes of workers. It was no wonder that we heard at times of workers restricting output." (Chronicle, September 6th, 1921).

Mr. Poulton's remedy is to shorten the working week. But this, like the dole, is no remedy. With an 8-hour working day, the United States is no better than other countries, either in normal times or during the present crisis. If one country alone adopts this measure it inevitably falls behind in the race for markets, unless greater efficiency is exacted from its workers or more up-to-date methods and machinery introduced, or both. It is a well-known fact that American workers gain nothing by their shorter working day. The pace at which they work makes them cheap when compared with European workers.

On the other hand, a universally applied shorter week must remain the dream of impossiblists. Capitalist groups are too deeply engrossed in the struggle for markets to come to a common agreement among themselves on a question that might give the workers more time to think about and discuss their slavery and the way to escape from it. While if the workers were sufficiently united internationally and powerful enough to enforce a universally shorter week, they would be powerful enough to completely overthrow capitalism and establish Socialism.

So much for Mr. Poulton's suggestion. Now for the other capitalist agents of whom he fell foul. The Daily Chronicle, September 6th, 1921, refers to it as "the old blind idea that there is only a fixed amount of work to be done in the world, and that therefore the less one man does in return for his wages, the more there will be for others to do . . . He ought to know that the amount of work available in the world tends to be diminished by every increase in the costs of production; and therefore that reduction of hours, however desirable it may from time to time be on other grounds, must in relation to unemployment normally exert a bad and not a good influence."

The latter part of this statement is entirely false. An increase in the costs of production which affected the world would make no difference whatever in the amount produced, other things remaining as they were. All that would happen would be that higher prices would rule all round. Goods would have their money name changed, including labour-power. Even this need not happen as a result of a shorter working week or higher wages. Under such circumstances competition might not permit capitalists to raise prices, in which case the workers would obviously be encroaching on profits, if the increased cost of production were due to higher wages.

Apart from this, however, it is only when one set of capitalists are faced with a rise in the cost of production, and are unable to compete in the open market, that they are forced to curtail or stop production. The proof of this is seen when we compare two countries like Spain and the United States. The former is a century behind the latter industrially, because it has never adopted to the same extent cheap and efficient methods of production. Yet America, with all its efficiency and cheapness—the qualities that exert a good influence on employment, according to the Chronicle—surpasses every other nation in the numbers of its unemployed.

This brings us to the "old blind idea" of the Chronicle. If low costs of production give more, instead of less employment, why do American factories periodically close down, stopping production while they unload their goods on the market? Why does every country do the same? Not because "there is only a fixed amount of work to be done in the world"—a phrase which only an ignoramus in economics would use —but because within a given period the demand for goods will be limited, if not by the needs of the people, by their ability to pay for them. In the next period the demand may be higher, or lower, but the outstanding fact is that the world's workers with modern means can always meet that demand with millions of idle days to spare. Days of unemployment without wages spread over the working-class. Under a sane system of society, where production was carried on for use, instead of for capitalist profits, they would be days of rest or recreation.

The Chronicle was not the only paper that chastised Mr. Poulton for his suggestion. The Sunday Pictorial (September 11th, 1921) took a different line. One of its writers jeered at him because he "advised the workers to press for a shorter week," and then went on to say "that the needs of the world were under-supplied." This deep thinking agent of capitalism then asked, "How is the supply of things needed by the world to be increased by diminution of the hours spent in making them?" Let him ask any one of the millions of unemployed. They have hands and brains. Why are they idle if the world is under-supplied ? Because it is not the needs of the world that determines the quantity of goods to be produced. The capitalist calls a halt when he can no longer sell at a profit. Or, to be strictly accurate, he only allows production to proceed when he receives orders that will enable him to realise profits. The Sunday Pictorial writer must be a first-class nincompoop if he thinks that it takes all the world's workers all their time either to meet the effective demand or satisfy the world's needs—two very different things. The fact that the world's markets are periodically glutted in normal times, and millions unemployed, with further millions working short time and many millions of days lost through industrial disputes, together with an enormous section of the population engaged in unproductive work, proves the contrary.

With modern machinery and methods, only a small proportion of the workers would be needed for actual production if kept continuously at work.

The biggest mistake made by the workers lies in their willingness to be led, instead of studying and discussing the question among themselves, whether in or out of work. All workers are subject to unemployment. No job under capitalism is sure ; consequently unemployment is the concern of every worker.

There are always plenty of unscrupulous or mad-brained adventurers ready to pose as leaders where a number of people have a grievance. But even if they belong to the ranks of the aggrieved, it does not follow that they are to be trusted as leaders. At Liverpool the Rev. J. Vint Laughland advised the workless to capture the Art Gallery and led the attack personally. They captured the Art Gallery all right, but it proved to be a trap. The doors were closed, and in the words of an eye-witness, reported in the Daily Chronicle, September 13th, 1921 : "A vestibule was crammed with men, who one after another went down under the blows of the constables' batons," and "a stream of injured men were led out or carried away on stretchers ; while many more were led from the building in batches, and taken to the police station in vans under escort."

In Poplar, as in other districts of London where Labour councillors find themselves unable to fulfil their election pledges, they are confusing the issue by dragging in the question of rates equalisation, which is not the concern of the workers at all, but purely a question for the capitalists who own property in the different districts.

The Observer (September 24th, 1921) says that : "The real and permanent cure for the ills of Poplar, and other poor and populous districts now in like case, was, is and will remain the discovery of the essentials for co-operation among those engaged in production." In other words, those who have the luck to be employed must agree to terms that are acceptable to employers, and the unemployed—not being engaged in production—may be safely ignored.

Read where we may, in Capitalist or Labour journals, there has never yet been brought forward any scheme that can cure unemployment. Some boasted remedies, like co-partnership and guild-production, only aggravate the evil. Others, like insurance and relief works, do not affect it at all. In regard to the latter, The Observer (September 18th, 1921) says: "They must not compete with the legitimate opportunities of employment that trade will present as it recovers." When the capitalist wants workers to exploit, there must be plenty of unemployed in order that he may get them cheap. Equalisation of rates is a confusionist cry. A shorter week may or may not reduce unemployment. Electrification schemes, forestry, reclamation of foreshores, and widening of roads are things that capitalist governments may want but dare not undertake because of the outcry against the necessary taxation or the interference with private enterprise. Capitalist governments are bankrupt in ideas to cope with the question. Their agents, political and industrial, religious or patriotic, and sympathetic or unsympathetic with the workers, are only concerned with their private ambitions. Sooner or later the workers will be forced to recognise these facts, and in increasing numbers will focus their minds on the question for themselves. Others will come into contact with genuine Socialist works and workers, and will be convinced that unemployment is the inevitable product of a system in which a small class owns the means of wealth production, and imposes upon the rest of society the necessity of selling their energy as a commodity, in order to obtain the necessaries of life.

Without this knowledge the workers are the slaves of the employing class. With the knowledge lies their hope of emancipation. Determined to organise and act on their knowledge, they can, by first dispossessing the employing class of the means of wealth production, and secondly by making them the common property of society, to be used by all for the common needs, and controlled by all through the democratic administrations they deem it necessary to set up, realise their freedom and satisfy all their needs as freely associating men and women.

F. Foan

"Higher Prices Mean Fewer Jobs." (1921)

From the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

J. A. R. Marriott, M.P., on Unemployment

Mr. Marriott has been offering a solution for the problem of unemployment, and the headline quoted above from the Evening News (September 13th) is the text he uses.

His article is more moderate in tone, and contains a larger measure of truth and accurate observation than one expects to find nowadays among those newspapers described as "competent to write authoritatively." He starts by making what must necessarily be for his readers a serious and distinctly unusual admission about industrial crises like the present : "Such crises have recurred at more or less regular intervals during the last century and a quarter," but he believes, in spite of this, "that the overthrow of the existing order would involve us in far more acute and general distress than anything we are likely to suffer during the difficult months ahead."

There is more truth in that last remark than Mr. Marriott thought, and I agree that for him it is not an unreasonable statement; but it is necessary to have clearly in mind to whom that "we" refers. "We," the comfortable and leisured class to which Mr. Marriott belongs, are not suffering from the prevailing unemployment, "we" never have so suffered, and, whoever else does, "we" shall see to it that "we" never do. But what of the future ? If capitalism is overthrown, what happens to "us" and our privileged position ? Is it not enough to make the most open-minded of the capitalist economists pause when they find the direction in which their investigations are leading them ; to make them turn back from the path to the future which the workers alone can follow, and announce that the existing system is the sublime height of mankind's upward progress. "After us the deluge" ?

"What, then, is the cause of the phenomenon of recurrent unemployment, and what is the appropriate remedy ?" Mr. Marriott dismisses off-hand the "glib answer of the Communists" that capitalism is the cause, and work or full maintenance, and the immediate abolition of the system, the ultimate remedy.

He admits that crises are "the concomitant of the new order in industry initiated by the industrial revolution," and that unemployment is "an incident—perhaps an inevitable incident—of large-scale production for a world market" ; but this, he says, is not capitalism. I would like then to ask what was the "new order initiated by the industrial revolution" ? What was it if not modern capitalism ? Where can Mr. Marriott find an instance of "large-scale production for the world market" except under capitalism?

Although Mr. Marriott cannot face his own conclusions, he admits our case in its entirety. Unemployment is part, and an essential part of the system under which we live. He even goes so far as to speak of "that reserve of labour upon which the periodic prosperity of an industry is dependent." It is, in fact, just because Mr. Marriott cannot help but recognise, as we do, that capitalism and unemployment are inseparable, that he does not even claim to have found the solution he set out to discover.

The utmost he can do is to suggest the speediest and least difficult way out of the present state of stagnation, without touching what he himself admits to be the real problem, the recurring crises.

Again, he tells us that prior to the present era chronic unemployment was unknown. Why, then, must we acknowledge our impotence to escape an alleged "inexorable economic law" which had no terrors for our ancestors of some hundreds of years ago ? Are we patiently to accept starvation for our class, knowing as we do that our powers of wealth production are a hundred times greater than then, just because of the class-biassed economic theories of Mr. Marriott ?

"So long as countries were self-supporting in agriculture and industry, crises occurred only at rare intervals, being the outcome of pestilence or famine, or some great upheaval in the natural world." Poverty is no longer the result of natural phenomena; it is a product of society itself, of artificially restricted production, and unequal distribution of the product.

Mr. Marriott criticises the "Communists" for wanting to return to pre-capitalist conditions, but does not give evidence that they ever propagated such an absurdity. Anyhow, we know, and Mr. Marriott knows, that it cannot be done.

The case Mr. Marriott has to meet is this. He admits the existence in the recent past of a form of social organisation to which unemployment was unknown; he admits also the enormous increase of productivity since the inception of modern capitalism. What, then, is the factor, or what even is the kind of factor, which prohibits production for use instead of for private profit ?

In further criticism of the "Communists" he cites the experience of Louis Blanc in 1848 with his "national workshops" and the application of the theory of "the right to work." He rightly says the provision of full maintenance for the unemployed is incompatible with the continuance of capitalism. Louis Blanc learned by experience what everyone now knows to be true. But here, again, Mr. Marriott might observe that the "Communist Party" have explicitly conceded the impossibility of their demand being met; it would mean "suicide for the capitalist class." Incidentally, it illustrates the dangerous tendency of "Communist Party" propaganda that the uninstructed sympathy of the unemployed should be gained by promises incapable of fulfilment.

Now we come to Mr. Marriott's remedy. It is that the wages of those still in work must be lowered. Lower wages—lower prices—more foreign trade—work for the unemployed.

It looks sound, but the chain has weak links. Firstly, lower wages mean not lower prices, but higher profits; and, secondly, this solution, if otherwise genuine, can only help one country at the expense of others. Can that be a solution for a problem of world-wide magnitude ? There is no corner of the capitalist earth immune from the effects of industrial, commercial, and financial depression.

The argument that the workers must accept less wages to enable their employers to compete with the sweating "foreign" manufacturer is used in every country in the world, unfortunately with some effect. But has anyone ever heard of an employers' association which proposed to deal with such a situation by assisting the unfortunate foreign worker to organise and improve his status ? No, because the capitalist will always sell his goods at the maximum the market will bear, and he knows that the paying of a wage higher than he can compel his employees to accept is a dead loss to him, a subtraction from his profits.

True, prices must come down, for the simple and sufficient reason that stocks in hands are great and the owners cannot all wait indefinitely for an increased demand. They want ready money, and must sell at a reduction, at a loss even. Every penny, therefore, they can knock off their labour costs is a clear gain to them. Hence Mr. Marriott's anxiety on behalf of the capitalist class to persuade the out-of-work that his enemy is the employed man who stands out against wage cuts. In conclusion, as
against Mr. Marriott's dicta that "the utmost the workless can claim is subsistence," and that "those in work must be content with something not much above that level," our advice is, that while capitalism lasts, the workers, whatever their condition, in work or out, will get, and will be entitled to, just as much as they can compel the capitalist class to give them. It is to be hoped that they will soon become so dissatisfied with their meagre portion that they will join us in getting the whole
lot, the earth.

Edgar Hardcastle

£1000 Fund. (1921)

Party News from the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Where Russia Stands. (1921)

From the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 3.

Earlier in this series of articles we promised to examine more closely the oft-repeated assertion that the Russian Bolsheviks were carrying further, and in the same spirit, the movement begun by the Paris Communards in March, 1871.

On comparing the Commune with the Bolshevik movement we find that there are fundamental differences between them.

The first (and most important) difference that comes to our notice concerns the method of control. The Commune aimed at, and realised during its short life, control of affairs directly by the whole people; whereas the Bolsheviks aimed at control by a few. It is true the Bolsheviks, in some of their proclamations, have made it appear that the Russian masses were in control, but we have already supplied abundant evidence through these columns illustrating how different the actuality is from the appearance. In order to bring the Bolshevik position on this question clearly to mind again, we submit the following further illustration:

  Nevertheless, we do not for a moment deny that our apparatus is rigidly centralised ; that our policy towards the bourgeoisie and towards the parties of the compromising Socialists is repressive in character; that the organisation of our own Party, as a ruling Party which exercises a dictatorship through the Soviets, is of a militarist type. —(“The Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Russia,” by N. Bucharin in the Workers Dreadnought, 4/12/1920).

Such, is the Bolshevik position—the antithesis of control by the masses.

What was the attitude of the Commune on this question ? Let us permit Engels to give his evidence first.

In his introduction to the German edition of the Civil War in France (see The Paris Commune, NewYork Labour News Co.), Engels points out that :

 The members of the Commune were divided into a majority of Blanquists, who had also predominated in the central committee of the National Guard, and a minority, which consisted for the most part of members of the International Working Men’s Association, who were adherents of the Proudhonian School of Socialism.

He then shows that both the Blanquists and Proudhonists did the very reverse of that which the doctrines of their school proscribed . Of the Blanquists he writes as follows:

  The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, held together by the rigid discipline essential to it, they started from the conception that a comparatively small number of resolute, well-organised men would be able not only to grasp the helm of State at a favourable moment, but also, through the display of great energy and reckless daring, to hold it as long as required, that is, until they had succeeded in carrying the masses of the people into the revolutionary current and ranging them round the small leading band. To accomplish this, what was necessary, above all else, was the most stringent, dictatorial centralisation of all powers in the hands of the new revolutionary government. And what did the Commune do, which in the majority consisted of these very Blanquists? In all its proclamations to the French people in the provinces it called upon them for a free federation of all French communes with Paris for a national organisation, which, for the first time, was to be the real creation of the nation. The army, the political police, the bureaucracy, all those agencies of oppression in a centralised government, which Napoleon had created in 1798, and which since then every new government had gladly used and kept up as ready weapons against its enemies, were to be abolished everywhere, as they had been abolished in Paris. —Page 16.

Lenin repeatedly cries out against the charge of “Blanquism” levelled at his group, and asserts “We are not Blanquists,” yet it is obvious that Engels’ description of the French Blanquists exactly fits the Bolsheviks.

We have previously quoted Zinovief‘s statement that the Russian Communist Party controls the State machine from top to bottom, though the membership of this Party was only a little over 600,000 in April, 1920, some of whom were excluded from voting. Taking Zinovief’s statement with that of Bucharin, quoted above, what is the difference between the Russian party and the Blanquists as defined by Engels? Only this. The Bolshevists are Blanquists in practice, whilst the Blanquists acted directly opposite to the Blanquist idea.

Now let us hear what Lissagaray, the historian of the Commune, has to say.

Of the Central Committee, the committee appointed by the National Guard prior to the promulgation of the Commune, he writes as follows :

  Their farewell address was worthy of their advent : “Do not forget that the men who will serve you best are those whom you will choose from amongst yourselves, living your life, suffering the same ills. Beware of the ambitious as well as the upstarts. Beware also of mere talkers. Shun those whom fortune has favoured, for only too rarely is he who possesses fortune prone to look upon the workingman as a brother. Give your preference to those who do not solicit your suffrages. True merit is modest, and it is for the workingmen to know those who are worthy, not for these to present themselves.
  They could indeed “come down the steps of the Hotel de Ville head erect,” these obscure men who had safely anchored the revolution of the 18th March. Named only to organise the National Guard, thrown at the head of a revolution without precedent and without guides, they had been able to resist the impatient, quell the riot, re-establish the public services, victual Paris, baffle intrigues, take advantage of all blunders of Versailles and of the Mayors, and, harassed on all sides, every moment in danger of civil war, know how to negotiate, to act at the right time and in the right place. They had embodied the tendency of the movement, limited their program to communal revindications, and conducted the entire population to the ballot-box.” —Page 124.

The Central Committee referred to by Lissagaray was composed of delegates appointed by the National Guard. The latter body comprised the able-bodied citizens of Paris after the departure of the Versaillese. The delegates in question were none of them appointed as members of any particular group or party; all were, as, Lissagaray repeatedly emphasises, unknown, obscure men, who voluntarily relinquished the power they held as soon as they had arranged for, and carried through, the elections of the delegates to the Commune itself.

The Bolshevik movement is the attempt at dictatorship on the part of a group within the Russian Communist Party. The Paris Commune, on the contrary, was no dictatorship of a party or group, but an endeavour to realise the participation of the whole of the people democratically in the administration of social affairs.

Much has been written by the Bolsheviks and their supporters around the question of freedom of the Press; volumes of ridicule and abuse have been poured upon the heads of those unfortunates who opposed the suppression of the bourgeois press, or who suggested that there was no point in gagging the press if the Russian masses were sufficiently advanced to understand the position. It must be borne in mind that the Bolsheviks make great capital out of the alleged overwhelming support they received from the workers, soldiers and peasants.

What did the Communards do (with no precedent to assist them) in this connection when faced by a position similar to that facing the Bolsheviks? Let us hear Lissagaray again :

  Sunday the 26th (March, 1871) was a day of joy and sunshine. Paris breathed again, happy, like one just escaped from death or great peril. At Versailles the streets looked gloomy, gendarmes occupied the station, brutally demanded passports, confiscated all the journals of Paris, and at the slightest expression of sympathy for the town arrested you. At Paris everybody could enter freely. The streets swarmed with people, the cafes were noisy ; the same lad cried out the Paris Journal and the Commune ; the attacks against the Hotel de Ville, the protestations of a few malcontents, were posted on the walls by the side of the placards of the Central Committee. The people were without anger because without fear. The voting paper had replaced the Chassepot.— Page 172.

From the above it will be seen that the statements of the Bourgeois were circulated as freely and openly as the statements of the Communards—exactly the opposite of the procedure in Russia. The Bolsheviks suppressed antagonistic journals; put into operation a “Committee of Public Safety” against their adversaries; demolished the Assembly that had been one of their watchwords ; put into operation labour and military conscription; and, in general, ruled with a mailed fist.

The Bolsheviks claim that the working class must break up the capitalist state machine as a preliminary step to the social revolution. On this question they make excessive use of Marx’s phrase, from the Civil War in France, the “working class cannot simply seize the available ready-machinery of the State and set it going for its own ends.” We have already dealt with this point, but a little further examination of it will be useful, particularly as Lenin employs several pages of his The State and Revolution to force an unwarrantable inference from Marx’s words.

In the first place, what constitutes a social revolution? A social revolution goes through three phases : First the educational and agitational phase; then the conquest of power; and finally the reorganisation of society to meet the requirements of the class just arisen to power.

Marx analysed the Commune and showed that once in power (that is to say, having reached the second phase) the Communards provided an illustration of the methods to be adopted by the workers to accomplish the revolution in conditions; that stopping at the mere laying hold “of the ready-made State machinery” would not solve their difficulties; but he nowhere suggests that the workers should abstain from, in the first instance, obtaining control of this machinery. Engels makes the matter quite clear when he says, in the Introduction to the Civil War in France (already quoted) :

  From the very outset the Commune had to recognise that the working-class, having once attained supremacy in the State, could not work with the old machinery of government.  (Italics ours.)— Page 17.

It is necessary to use the evidence of the Commune very carefully in this connection, because at the time a peculiar position had arisen. The French Bourgeoisie had already divested themselves of the greater part of their power by their intrigues and manipulations with Germany. In fact, in order to fight the Commune they had to beg of Bismarck the release of the French soldiers interned in Germany. The general in charge of the operations against the Commune was the same MacMahon who had “sold out” at Sedan.

The break-up of the capitalist State machinery may be a preliminary step to the revolution in social conditions, but it certainly is not a preliminary step to the conquest of power. The Bolsheviks, when blinding themselves with “the break up of the State machinery ” infer that this machinery must be “smashed ” before power can be obtained (it is true they frequently contradict themselves, as we have shown elsewhere), hence their contention that strikes and street insurrections are the main methods of action. For example, in the Socialist Review for July, 1920, there appears a translation of an official document entitled “Parliamentarism and the Struggle for the Soviets.” The following paragraph from this document makes clear the Bolshevik attitude :

  What we would particularly emphasise is the following : The real solution of the question is to be found, under all circumstances, outside Parliament, in the street. That strikes and insurrections are the only methods of resolute war between Capital and Labour is now clear. Therefore, the chief efforts of comrades should be directed to the work of the mobilisation of the masses, the establishment of the Party, the development of its own groups in industry and their control over it, the organisation of Soviets during the course of the struggle, the leading of mass action, agitation for the revolution among the masses—all that in the first line ; Parliamentary action and participation in election campaigns only as one expedient in this work—nothing more ” (Italics ours.)—Page 272.

The above document is signed “G. Zinoviev, President of the Executive Committee of the Communist International,” and dated September 1st, 1919. It must be remembered that Lenin is a leading member of the E.C. of the Communist International.

Many further illustrations could be given, but the above is sufficient to indicate what a subordinate position is given to parliamentary action by the Bolsheviks.

To those who refuse to be carried away by mere verbiage, it must be obvious that to attempt to smash the political machinery, without first getting hold of it, is the best way for the workers to get their heads smashed. If they first get hold of the political machinery (which they can do when the majority so wish) they can then, as Engels puts it, lop off its worst features at once. Engels’ statement, anent the State, made in 1891, is as follows :

  But in reality the State is nothing else than a machine for the oppression of one class by another class, and that no less so in the democratic republic than under the monarchy. At the very best it is an inheritance of evil bound to be transmitted to the proletariat when it has become victorious in its struggle for class supremacy, and the worst features of which it will have to lop off at once, as the Commune did, until a new race, grown up under new, free social conditions, will be in a position to shake off from itself this state rubbish in its entirety. —Page 20. Introd. to German ed. Civil War in France. (Italics ours.)

The above rather brief comparison of the Paris Commune with the Bolshevik movement will convey an idea of the nature of the differences between them.

Before concluding our sketch of the Russian movement there is another point to which we wish to draw attention.

Lenin and other Bolshevik writers frequently contend that they did not base their hopes of success upon an early uprising of the international working class. If we examine their proclamations and the reports of their speeches, however, we find that the contrary is true. The following quotations should set any doubts upon this point at rest :

  If in awaiting the imminent proletarian flood in Europe, Russia should be forced to conclude peace with the present-day Governments of the Central Powers, it would be a provisional, temporary, and transitory peace, with the revision of which the European Revolution will have to concern itself in the first instance. Our whole policy is built upon the expectation of this revolution.” (Italics ours.)—Page 160. From “What is a Peace Programme,” by L. Trotsky. Printed in International Conciliation” (New York, No. 149, April, 1920.)

In the same journal from which the above extract is taken there appears a May 1st Appeal from the Communist International “to the Toilers of the Whole World,” which is signed by the “Executive Committee of the Communist International,”‘ and concludes as follows :

 In 1919 was born the great Communist International.
In 1920 will be born the great International Soviet Republic.—Page 181.

It must be again pointed out that Lenin is a leading member of the Executive that sent out the above appeal, and Zinoviev is the secretary.

In different contributions, Trotzky and others go into ecstacies over the alleged spreading of the Soviet Movement throughout the world. Trotzky, in particular, states (Pravda, April 23rd, 1919) :

  At the present moment one awaits from day to day the victory of the Soviet Republic in Austria and in Germany. 

We are afraid the days are rather long ones, and Trotzky relies too much on wishes and too little on exact information.

However, time will bring the solution to Russian doubts and difficulties, as it has brought the solutions to the problems of the past.

At the present moment nature is playing a tragic part in the business. In ordinary circumstances a drought in Russia is a very serious matter owing to the primitive agricultural methods and the failure of the peasants as a class to make provision for the future. At the present juncture, when a world-wide drought of a particularly severe character has been combined with circumstances due to Bolshevik dictatorship, the results are greatly exasperated and presage disaster to the Bolshevik regime.

This fact, however, is no excuse for jubilation on the part of Bolshevik opponents, nor is the shedding of crocodile tears over the starving peasantry helpful. It should, however, induce the workers—and particularly the self-styled “revolutionists” of the brass band variety—to study the whole of the conditions, so far as information is available, that have given rise to the present state of affairs. By such action they will enlarge their knowledge of principles and tactics, and be capable of taking an understanding part in the struggle for international working class emancipation.

One lesson above all Russia drives home : No backward nation can leap the intermediate stages of development and jump ahead of the vanguard. One nation learns from another, and progress is, on the average, parallel in the advanced countries.

The laws of historical development, which work with an iron-like consistency, are defeating the Bolsheviks more conclusively than any capitalist army.

Gilmac.

"Revolutionary Political Action" (1921)

From the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communist Brand.

In the leading article in the September Socialist Standard the Communist Party’s Caerphilly Election Address was quoted from as follows:

 Pledged as it is to Political Action the Communist Party is enabled by this opportunity to demonstrate just how far and in what way Revolutionary Political Action differs from the creeping thing the worker has learned to know and to hate as Parliamentarism.

The article went on to say: "If the election has provided the Communist Party with an opportunity to explain the meaning of Revolutionary Political Action, then that Party has certainly failed to take advantage of this opportunity."

If the Communist Party failed on this occasion to make clear what they mean by revolutionary political action, there have been other occasions when they have taken the opportunity. On the Poplar Board of Guardians sit two members of the Communist Party, A. A. Watts and Edgar Lansbury. On June 22nd, at a Board meeting of the Poplar Guardians, the General Purposes Committee recommended a list of reductions in wages of men employed by the Board, building labourers, women sewing machinists, and bakers. What did our two exponents of "revolutionary political action” do? They voted for the reductions!

It was only when the following recommendation was made, viz., “That our action be approved and confirmed and that the wages of the above-mentioned officers be further reduced by 2s. 6d. per week each for every fall of 10 points in the cost of living under figures below 120,” that Edgar Lansbury said, "I’m not opposing the reductions. We’ve already agreed to it, but I don’t like us pledging ourselves to do it in the future.” (Quoted by "Workers’ Dreadnought,” 2/7/21.)

Who have been louder in their denunciation of this principle of the cost of living basis of wages, that the workers should for ever be tied to one bare level of subsistence, than the Communist Party? Yet here we have two of its members lending it their support.

In the "Industrial Notes” in the "Communist” (28/5/21) occurred the following passages:

  Will somebody explain what has happened to the committees set up by the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress to consider joint action against wage reductions.
   One explanation offered is that the members of the sub-committees have been so busy negotiating reductions for their own members that they have had no time to meet.
   Agreements, even, are being broken and strikes are resulting. Aggression by the boss class is seen on every hand.

Clearly a case of the "pot calling the kettle black.” Even Councillor Charlie Sumner, not a revolutionary Communist, but just a Trade Unionist who believes in "a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” said, “Yes, but d’you see, the baking trade has always been a terribly sweated trade, and it isn’t to say that we should join in just because everyone else is coming down on them.” The same is true, of course, of women sewing machinists. Even this failed to move our “revolutionaries”; Sumner, as a matter of fact, voted for the reductions.

A. A. Watts was himself, as Chairman of the Sub-Committee, the signatory to a recommendation to reduce relief to the poor (excepting widows and aged persons) by 10 per cent. The Communist Party’s “revolutionary” Caerphilly Election Address demanded “for the unemployed work or maintenance at full Trade Union rates.” The case of Poplar illustrates how the Communist Party deals with the unemployed when it has the power. Evidently there is little to choose between the Communist Party and those ancient adepts in the art of “piecrust” promising, the Liberal and Tory Parties.

And have Watts and E. Lansbury been expelled from the Communist Party for violating their “principles”? Not a bit of it. Only Miss Sylvia Pankhurst has been expelled for not handing the paper, which published the information, over to the control of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party, of which Watts is a member.

Another occasion is taken advantage of by the Communist Party to show what they mean by revolutionary political action. In the “Communist ” (17/9/21), under “Notes of the Week,” occurs the-following:

  We, as Communists, welcome Poplar’s action for two reasons. The first is that work or maintenance at full trade union rates is a demand which the Communist Party has always pressed, for the revolutionary reason that capitalism can neither refuse it with dignity nor concede it without suicide. Secondly, and more importantly, because the Poplar Council has carried out the advice of the Third International: To capture the machinery of bourgeois administration and use it for revolutionary ends. (Communist’s italics.)

In regard to the first reason, imagine, if you can, capital committing suicide to save its dignity. The idea is too ridiculous to need serious refutation. The Communist Party has been in existence over a year now, and so far capital has refused this demand, which the Communist Party “has always pressed,” and risked its dignity. As for committing suicide—— 

And what is the revolutionary end that the Labour Party has captured the “machinery of bourgeois administration” to effect? The Poplar Borough Council has refused to levy the precepts of the L.C.C. and other outside authorities as a means to bringing about the equalisation of rates. I take it then, that if this revolutionary end is achieved, the system of society advocated by the Communist Party and called by them “Communism,” will have been inaugurated? Let us see.

Prior to the Rent Restrictions Act the effect on the working-class of equalisation of rates would have been nil. There was an excess of supply of houses over demand and rents were competitive. Higher rates in one borough had to be compensated by lower rents, so that the total amount paid for a house was the same all round for the same class of house. Cases have been cited in the Socialist Standard where rent has even fallen while the rates have been rising. But under the Rent Act the amount of rates in excess of the rate levied in 1914 is added directly to the rent allowed by the Act. This fact gives credence to the idea that the working-class is affected by high or low rates. But what would naturally take place if rates were reduced in working-class boroughs as a consequence of equalisation? Wages, especially in the state the labour market is at present, would almost immediately reflect the reduction.

But, apart from the benefit the capitalists who exploit the workers in London would derive as a consequence of the reduction in the latter’s cost of living, who would really benefit by the change? The big factory owners and other Capitalists who have premises in Poplar and other boroughs whose rates would be reduced. And it would be pertinent to ask who is paying for the floods of literature, some of which is sent to voters in stamped envelopes, with which Poplar is being deluged? No working-class organisation dependent on the pence of its members and sympathisers could afford it at the best of times. The whole thing, so far as the working-class is concerned, is simply summed up: it is yet another red herring serving the purpose of diverting them from their real interests and from what should be their only goal, Socialism.

T. D.

A Sentimentalist in the Antipodes. (1921)

From the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Marxist has many kinds of critics. Some endeavour to refute his “statement of facts," others admit the facts, but quarrel with the Marxists' generalisations therefrom. A third variety centre their attack upon what they are pleased to call the Marxists' "dogmatic, intolerant, and narrow" attitude of mind. Frequently these anti-Marxists pay lip-service to the Marxian theories of society, and call themselves “Socialists." Such an individual is M. Sawtell, who contributes an article— “Greater than Marx"—to the “Socialist" (Australia, 17/6/]21).

“Although Marx and the Marxists are right in much of their economic and historical data," he tells us, “they are generally wrong in their philosophy and attitude." As he gives no evidence in the article before us to show that the Marxian philosophy is unsound, we can waive a discussion on this point and deal with his criticism of the Marxists' “attitude.” His attack, however, is vague and confused. He makes no definite and concrete accusations against the Marxists, but contents himself with throwing out insinuations and making rhetorical assertions.

He says, “ . . . we must leave this intellectual parasitism of sucking other men’s minds by merely memorising their writings.” “It is fatal to the scholar and the Socialist to be continually memorising other men’s ideas. Nothing vitiates a movement so much as this slavish acceptance of intellectual authority or repressed on being asked, 'Dare we to refute Marx?' " “Let us be ourselves.” “Let us be greater than Marx.”

We have not yet met the Marxist who has “memorised" the writings of Marx, but we would very much like to. One may exist, of course, but even so it is folly to take that individual as typical of Marxists in general, for they, poor fellows, have neither the capacity, nor the time, nor the desire to perform such a remarkable mental feat.

As for memorising Marx’s ideas (if by this is meant his main principles and theories), it is difficult to see how a person can understand theories at all, let alone accept or reject them, without committing them to memory. Memory is one of the most important faculties of the mind, without which all reasoning and intelligent action becomes impossible. Of course, anyone can see that, were it possible for anyone to be “continually memorising,” it would be “fatal” in a very literal sense, whether they were “scholar,” “Socialist,” or even ordinary human being. Total lack of sleep is a very unhealthy thing.

As a matter of fact, the Socialist memorises the main principles of Marxism (and, for that matter, Manchesterism and Toryism) during the process of understanding them. He keeps vivid and renders more detailed these “memories" by reading, discussion, and observation, and uses them as a means of further understanding and as a guide to thought and action. 

Some Marxists, of course, may, and do, exaggerate the personal importance of Marx as an authority owing to their admiration for his genius—they are not perfect, they are human beings, not automatic logic machines—but it is quite untrue to suggest that they as a body “slavishly" accept his intellectual authority.

Marx and Engels made wrong judgments, like other people. In 1848 and even later they under-estimated very considerably the longevity of Capitalism. Engels, especially in his later years, had an exaggerated idea of the strength and soundness of the Second International, and particularly of the German S.D.P.

Mr. Sawtell has no use for slavish Marxists, intellectual parasites, and continual memorisers. He tells us in the most definite terms the type of individuals of which a movement ought to consist. “The greatest and most useful people are not those who strive and struggle, or who waste time and energy denouncing those who do not agree with them; but rather those who serenely and calmly cast themselves upon the great unseen laws of Nature, for peace and power.” What these wonderful people who neither strive nor struggle nor propagate their opinions, but merely cast themselves (etc., etc.), are "most useful” for, he does not tell us, nor does he go into any detail about the "great unseen" laws upon which the "casting" is performed, so that criticism of this remarkable passage is somewhat difficult.

More definitely he tells us that "any self-reliant individual is worth a whole movement of imitators." It seems to us rather difficult to reconcile the "self-reliants" with the "anti-strife, serene-casters," but we'll let that pass.

All men are "self-reliant"; all men are "imitators." There is no antagonism. There are extreme types, of course, but in no case is one faculty developed to the exclusion of the other. As a matter of fact, it is because man is imitative that he can become self-reliant. Imitation, as an elementary acquaintance with social psychology would show, is one of the fundamental bases of human society. All of which shows the un-wisdom of taking copybook headings as axioms from which to theorise.

Part of Mr. Sawtell’s antipathy to Marxians apparently arises out of his geographical situation, for he tells us: "We have every hope that Australia will be a cradle of the new civilisation. There is no need for us to slavishly follow the examples of the old world." "Let us, in a new land, inspire a new attitude; let us be creators, not imitators. . . ."

As neither the land, nor the people, nor the form of Society, nor its traditions are NEW, Mr. Sawtell’s sentimental appeal has little groundwork in facts. Which shows the foolishness of building a theoretical edifice (or even a one column article) upon idiotic catch phrases. 

R. W. Housley

The Communist Party of Australia (1921)

From the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

 “Marx was a Communist, and as a Communist he understood the proletariat as being the class conscious workers, possessing the revolutionary ideology necessary to carry out their task. "

The above statement is taken from an editorial in The Communist (official organ of the Australian Communist Party), dated July 1st, 1921. It is not correct.

Marx has been accused of many things by dishonest opponents and ignorant would-be supporters alike, but he never said that. Variously believed in certain quarters to have caused the war, bitten the late King of Greece, and to have produced his whiskers to sicken the sight, and his terminology to fuddle the brain of Mr. Wells; he did none of these things.

For chronological reasons he can safely be exonerated from blame for Alexander’s most unkingly exit, and his real motive for growing a beard is, as Mr. Macdonald said when asked why he supported the war, “in the hands of history.”

Mr. H. G. Wells said he could not understand the word proletariat. It was the truth, but journalism has a moral code of its own. It was intended for people not likely to be much interested in verbal accuracy, and not likely to have read other works where the word is frequently used by Mr. Wells in circumstances which make it quite clear that he attached to it the same definite meaning as it has for us. What Wells writes in the Sunday papers does not matter much, but here we have the Communist expounding tactical methods to be adopted by the workers, and as the editor rightly says about the Labour Party, those who would teach the workers should first have learned themselves; “the educator himself must be educated. “

As these Communists claim for themselves more than the average intelligence, they ought to have no difficulty :—

  This work, (i.e., formulating working-class principles and policies) could only be done by those workers who by certain, force of circumstance were endowed with greater power of intellectual penetration than the average workers possessed.”

What Marx really did understand by the “proletariat” can easily, be discovered from the Communist Manifesto. I go to that for preference because of its brevity; even a Communist “in a hurry” can hardly plead “the revolutionary situation” as an excuse for not having stopped to read it.

Marx described as the proletariat in modern society the property-less wage worker. The mass of men and women, rapidly in process of becoming the most powerful numerically in every country in the world, who own nothing but their power to labour and who by reason of their being compelled to sell that power in order to live, stand face to face in an antagonistic relation to the buyers, the capitalist class.

A footnote to the 1888 edition by Engels gives: “the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour-power in order to live.” Nothing, you will notice about “intelligence” or “class-consciousness” !

Again in the text itself: “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority”.; and in reply to the question, “In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole,” the answer is : “The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.”

In these quotations, as throughout the Manifesto and other writings, it is made abundantly clear that the statement attributed to Marx is utterly false. Why then was it made?

Mr. Wells told a lie to prove a certain theory on Bolshevism, and the Communist is guilty of a similar action. By misrepresentation of Marx they wish to support a piece of special pleading in favour of an indefensible case, the case for minority revolution.

Marx taught that the development of the system would produce in the workers that outlook, that class-consciousness, which would precede their organising to overthrow capitalist domination, but he expected the workers to emancipate themselves; he certainly did not teach them to rely on self-styled intelligent minorities.

As the editor himself pertinently says, “We have seen lately in England the disaster that followed trusting men who did not understand the proletarian conception.”

We have.

Is it necessary for the Australians to follow the theoreticians of the Communist Party in order to repeat that performance?

Edgar Hardcastle

Famine in Russia (1921)

Editorial from the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

To most of-those who know the history of India under English rule, and of China during the nineteenth century, the huge advertisement of the Russian Famine by the Capitalist Press of this country must seem singularly strange.

In 1918 there were 6,000,000 people carried off by the results of famine—camouflaged as Spanish “ ’flu ”—in India. Yet not one-tenth of the space was devoted to this appalling catastrophe that there has been to the Russian Famine, though the former was immensely more disastrous than the latter up to the present. Huge numbers of people have died of hunger in China during the latter portion of the nineteenth century without receiving more than a few lines notice in the Capitalist Press.

Why this sudden solicitude for starving people on the part of our masters? Have they become tender-hearted overnight, and full of desire to ease suffering wherever it may be found? One need go no further than the nearest street to find the answer.

There will be found “heroes” from the trenches often without a limb or an eye, “patriots” from the munition works, and women from the shell factories, each and all proclaiming their want and misery due to lack of employment or support. The Executive Committee of the ruling class, known as the Government, stops the Housing Schemes, thus adding a large number to the already immense army of unemployed, and then reduces the unemployed insurance pay, and so decreases the purchasing power—poor as it was—of those drawing such pay. Those in work have suffered reductions of wages in far greater proportion than the small fall in prices, and further reductions are threatened in all directions.

The class responsible for the forcing down of the standard of living of the workers, that looks on callously at the want and misery existing here among the masses out of work, and which rules an Empire where millions die of starvation in less than a year, cannot be accused of either sympathy or tender-heartedness towards the Russians. An explanation must be looked for elsewhere.

The various notices in the Capitalist Press are marked by a unanimity in charging the Bolshevik Government with being the cause of the Russian Famine. This statement is such a stupid lie that only the befuddled mentality of’ those who blindly follow that press and its teachings would accept it. The simple fact is that the extraordinarily dry spring and summer has affected Russia more than the rest of Europe because of her primitive methods of agriculture. This is aggravated by her lack of means of transport, though the Russian Government has made strenuous endeavours to improve this service during their control of power. The canting hypocrisy of this lie is shown by the fact that not one of the papers spreading it have attributed the famine in India to English rule, though there is a vast array of evidence to support such a contention.

Another point on which some of the Capitalist Press are openly, and others more guardedly, giving voice is the suggestion that the Russian Government is playing false over the matter of relief measures. Hence the demand for “committees of inquiry,” “full control of supplies,” etc. These demands only thinly veil the intentions of these capitalist ghouls. Under cover of these claims they would sort out the claimants for relief, and take care that only those opposed—really or apparently—to the Bolshevik rule would be assisted. A more sinister object that lies behind these moves is the attempt to use the famine as a means of entering Russia, , and, under the claim of “full control of relief,” seize positions of power for the purpose of overthrowing the Russian Government.

Here, then, is the explanation of the beating of the big drum about Russia. Not charity, nor humanity, nor fellow-feeling for suffering millions in Russia, but the slimy endeavours of the foul capitalists of Europe to use the disaster there as a means of seizing control of Russia, with its vast natural resources—not for the wellbeing of the Russian workers, but for the profit of those engaged in the burglary.

While the capitalists are haggling over the sending of relief to the starving people in the Volga basin, they are supplying huge quantities of munitions to Poland and Rumania for the purpose of military operations against Russia (see Daily Telegraph, September 13th, 1921). If these operations were to turn out successfully for the capitalists, the Russian workers might starve even to the extent that happens in India, but the Jackal Press would not then be able to find room to report so ordinary an occurrence.

It is another lesson for the working class, showing that only when they control the means of life will they be able to make provision against famines or floods. As soon as they learn the lesson they will set to work to establish that ownership by inaugurating Socialism.