Capitalist Progress Leaves the Worker behind (1944)

From the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

When capitalism broke the chains with which feudalism bound it, a society whose stability depended on its power to resist change was overcome. The bourgeoisie, an oppressed class under feudalism, broke down by revolutionary methods the caste system where to be born a serf meant to die a serf.

New markets to sell goods were the incentive for intensively exploring the world. This brought about the change from handicraft to manufacture, and finally to large scale manufacture—i.e., production has been increasingly socialised, until to-day few can claim that any commodity is purely their work.

With the rising importance of these markets, knowledge, formerly the perquisite of the Catholic Church, had to be secularised. It was necessary for others besides the church to know about navigation and astronomy, so as to sail the seven seas. And this knowledge had to be based on material fact, which often conflicted with the “truth” of the Roman Church. This, although secondary to the economic dominance of the church, based on feudalism, sharpened the struggle of the bourgeoise against it.

All dominant nations try by all means in their power to exclude the rest of the world from sharing that which has made it powerful, and to use it to continue its domination. Many examples are known, but the forces capitalism sets free control the capitalist class, and not vice versa. During the war against Napoleon I., England blockaded France and cut off her sugar. This did not result in a quick peace, but in the commencement of the sugar-beet industry. The result was that the British interests in cane sugar suffered through her own blockade.

The production of nitrates from the air did not result from the plea by eminent scientists (due at the time to under-estimations of resources) that without a new source of fertilisers other than Chile saltpetre, mankind would at a close approaching period starve. It needed the prospects of a war (1914-1918), in which Germany had of necessity to try and overthrow Britain’s dominance on the world market, in order to find a place in the sun for her own capitalist class, to make this possible. Again the operating factor was fear of blockade. This alone, of course, did not make the process possible, but capital, and therefore effort was thrown into the task to speed the process. Now, instead of cries about lack of fertilisers, industry is worried by the excess that could be produced after this war in that partiular field.

Again, artificial rubber needed in war (cutting off natural rubber and its powerful interests) in which the initial experimental techniques could be transferred to large scale production. During the initial period of heavy capital outlay the artificial rubber industry could not normally have produced commodities capable of competing in the open market with natural rubber. The war, by cutting off the natural source, gave the artificial source the necessary impetus. It is now reported that the artificial source will be able to compete easily in the open market with the natural source, more especially as the latter is likely to be despoiled during the course of the present war. We will thus have at the end of the war two conflicting sources each capable of supplying the world, with its inevitable results.

The British Empire had for many years desired to become industrialised, but the English capitalist class did not desire that their empire, the only certain market for their manufactured products, should supply itself with these goods. So when representatives of the Dominions arrived iu England—e.g., Nash from New Zealand—loans were not forthcoming. Came a war, cutting off these Dominions and forcing them to industrialise themselves. Of course, after the war this means greater competition. The spectacle arises, as recently, when a jute manufacturer operating in England and India closed his English factory because the other source was more profitable.

Admiral Gould, “Brains Trust” visitor, chose as one of the three greatest services to humanity the production of a cheap synthetic nourishing food. Cheap here, of course, means for the working class. Well, we are now well on the way. As reported in the “Chemical Trade Journal and Chemical Engineer” June 4, 1943, a lunch was recently held at Lausanne. The meal consisted of hors d’oeuvres made of chemically treated cellulose, flavoured with coal-tar derivatives. After this came “meat” made of treated wood pulp and synthetic gravy. The sweet was flavoured by artificial vanilla, and the cream came from the same cellulose as was present in the hors d’oeuvres. The only natural products present were vegetables. It was stated to be cheaper than the equivalent nutritional value in natural products. Again self-sufficiency in case of war was its attraction. Of course, for the working class it has obvious possibilities. The recent publicising of grass-eaters in the daily press points in the same direction. If only the capitalist class could put us out to graze on common land during meal-times! How much they would save !

All these great advances seem to have depended to a great extent on a blockade, real or threatened, for their full development. The lack of material thus artificially produced has, as seen, resulted not in, as intended, a deadly threat to those lacking the necessary material, but often ultimately in a deadly threat to the mode of production of that article, often leading to its replacement by a new process or source for that self-same article.

Under capitalism goods are produced for sale, and must therefore compete with the equivalent material on the market. Future possibilities, however bright, must be sacrificed to the market value of the article. The only mode of advancement is to erect a wall around this commodity and nurture it by subsidies from the State or from big combines. Often it is only by the catacylsms capitalism so surely, produces which enable them to gain their feet. Only under Socialism, where there will be no conflicting economic interests, will these substances be able to develop freely without fear of competition by the prevalent materials. There will the final arbitration depend only on its use-value.

It is well known how many inventors die in poverty. and how many fortunes are made by people exploiting these inventions. Edison and Backeland were fortunate in that they had the capital to exploit their own ideas.

The first to register a patent owns it. Others working in the same direction, and having additional valuable information, withhold it until the patent expires. Thus is lost the full fruit of these men’s endeavours. Since these patents give as little information as they can, other firms wishing to engage in the same field, after expiration of the patent, must again cover much available but secret knowledge—a waste of time due to capitalism. Often, too, owing to a previous patent, an invention must utilise an inferior mechanism, as witness the steam engine, where the fly-wheel could not be utilised.

The 1907 Patents and Designs Act provided that a certain difficulty, in direct connection with the piston, troubling the master-class, should be overcome. It definitely allowed a patent to be granted jointly to the inventor and to another person—e.g., a capitalist or capitalist concern—to enable the latter to share the benefits derived. The law thus placed “old man capitalism” very firmly on the back of the inventor. This Act also attempted to rectify an abuse. A firm having profitable patents, which would be adversely affected by a new one, could buy the new one under licence and not use it. No new machinery would be necessary, and since there was no production by the new method, no royalties, due to the inventor, need be paid. In Monk’s “Inventions. Patents and Designs” it is stated significantly that the Act has been altered to protect the interest of the inventor.

Nowadays, in the same way as production has been made social, so has research. No longer can one man very effectively invent a whole process. Co-operation is here, too, becoming more and more necessary, due mainly to increasing specialisation. Hence the increasing tendency for research to come more and more under the aegis of large firms or the State. The inventor becomes definitely a worker, swelling the proletariat.

In the hey-day of capitalism, when markets were large enough to take all that was produced, capitalism continuously revolutionised its means of production and increased man’s power over nature, thus solving a necessity that only capitalism can solve, the problem of production of plenty for the future Socialist society. Competition demanded it by forcing the lowering of the cost of production. But now the increasing monopoly character of capitalism shows itself by the cutting out of competition. Cartels divide the world into regions of influence for its component companies. This is possible only because the cartel adherents can produce many times the world’s needs. Research, while still bent on reducing the cost of production, is increasingly being utilised to enable surplus capital to be profitably utilised in new industries. It is interesting, in this light, to notice that the papers are talking of special investment schemes of an international character, to utilise at a smaller rate ot profit what would otherwise be uninvested capital.

In spite of the restrictions of capitalism, great advances have been made, and when the capitalist class points to these as a justification for their further existences they believe they have a case. But the long-bow won the battle of Crecy, and the phalanx was of great use to Alexander, but the modern general does not accept their past success as a reason for using them to-day against tanks. Compared with feudalism, capitalism represents progress, but only compared with feudalism. Their exalted idea of private enterprise means the enforced lack of enterprise on the part of the working class.

And in any case, in whose advantage has this been? The lot of the working class has not appreciably improved. The advantages and the wealth accrued have gone into the pocket of the ruling class. All this, the work of the only useful class in society, has resulted in a further widening of the gulf between rich and poor. Once again we have the cycle—born a worker means dying a worker.

Holland and Denmark, producers of dairy produce for the world, consumes enormous quantities of margarine. Who eats this margarine ? Workers !

Modern production has caused great increases in mental and nervous disorders and industrial diseases. The village idiot disappears, and the proletarian victim of capitalism takes his place. Hence the increasing study of these disorders and the “kind” donations by our masters, who cannot bear that such sources of riches for them should prove useless. They look for cures, turning their eyes, however, away from the cause, the increasing strain on the worker of his condition of wage-slavery, so aptly caricatured by Charles Chaplin in “Modern Times.”

The working class produces all wealth. Because there is too much food, therefore the worker must starve; because there are too many of the good things in life, therefore the worker may not enjoy one of them—even leisure means unemployment to him. That is the logic of capitalist anarchy. Lord Rutherford hoped that atomic energy would not be harnessed until the ethics and morals of the race were improved. This can only be when there are no more barriers of economic self-interest dividing people, but in their stead a common interest. This is only possible under Socialism. Only Socialism can effectively harness this progress for man’s benefit, not for his destruction.

Within our reach lies a world of peace and plenty. In Socialism we can unfetter progress that it may be used for the advancement of the welfare of mankind. Act then, members of the working class, for once in your own interest!

Samuel Leight

On a holiday (1944)

From the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

A visit to a Holiday at Home entertainment in the local park provides the Socialist with much food for thought. Can it be possible that the rather amateurish playing and singing, the rides on the two long-suffering donkeys, and the many swindles to aid one or more parts of the armed forces are compensating the workers for their fifty weeks of long, arduous toil ?

They certainly, at first glance, seem happy enough, and yet the careful observer could fancy that under this assumed mask of gaiety there was still the realisation that even this poor, short interlude would soon be over, and they would be back again busily amassing wealth for the capitalist class. They are, for the most part, unconscious of this tragic clown’s mask, but these stirrings in the workers’ mind provide material for the propaganda of the Socialist, and small is the step from the subconscious stirrings to the realisation of the idea.

Truly the worker is a source of wonder in that he continues to accept gratefully anything and everything that the capitalist condescends to give him—even in his entertainment.

Does the worker ever think, while partaking of these miserable few hours of enjoyment, either in the local park or at some more distant point (if he has enough energy left for enjoyment after standing for hours in a packed, stifling train) of the members of the master-class having their holidays at some “select” seaside resort, or shooting and fishing on some fellow-capitalist’s estate?

When the workers, on their return to their toil, instead of inevitably grumbling and leaving things at that, begin to ask themselves, and their workmates, why . . why . . .WHY? then things will start moving; then the Socialist will come into his own, and it will be up to him to provide the answer—namely, that this system of exploitation continues only because the majority of society (i.e., the workers) are not fully conscious of the fact that they are exploited by a minority (the capitalist class). When this class-consciousness has been achieved, and the ” Why ?” of the workers has been replaced by “What next?” then the task of the Socialist will have really begun. Whoever understands the set-up of the capitalist system cannot fail to agree with the object and principles of the S.P.G.B.

Len Young

Editorial: Armies of Liberation (1944)

Editorial from the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Our men marched singing with a smiling light in their eyes. They had done their job. They thought it was the war to end war. They had won, they thought, the greatest victory in the world.” (Sir Philip Gibbs on the Armistice, 1918. Evening Standard, September 6, 1944.)

“It is against Hitlerism we fight. And we have no quarrel save with those who would help to perpetuate its tyranny in Europe. Because this is the issue, it transcends national frontiers. It transcends nationality itself. . . . Thus the freedom-loving German Socialists make common cause with the British Trades Union Congress, whose president said yesterday that ‘We stand four-square until we have smashed Hitlerism forever and created a world of true brotherhood among the worker'” (Daily Herald Editorial, September 5, 1939.)

If the course of war is rarely predictable, the same is true about war’s aftermath. There are people who, forgetting what happened after 1918, went into the war in 1939 with a simple faith that the military defeat of Nazi Germany would solve all problems and liberate humanity from a prison of oppression into a world of universal peace, and harmony; they must already be wondering. The departure of the German armies from the occupied countries opens up a situation quite unlike the visions of the Daily Herald five years ago. The war, said the Herald, was not to be one for possessions but for spiritual values in keeping with true internationalism. Yet the coming end of hostilities in Europe finds most of the Powers staking out their claims for territories. Russia wants a large slice of Poland and offers in return that Poland shall have a large slice of Germany. This is 1918 again, but on a larger scale, for the Labour Party 25 years ago vigorously condemned the Treaty which gave Poland comparatively small areas in which the population was German or Russian. Russia, according to Negley Farson (who defends the claim), wants to keep the former Baltic Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, though he makes no pretence that the population’s views will be considered : —

“In 1940, under strictly Soviet commissar-conducted plebiscites, Stalin made the people of all three little countries declare themselves members of constituent republics of the U.S.S.R. Not even the Russians will try to pretend there was any such thing as a choice or freedom about it.” Daily Mail, July 26, 1944.)

American spokesmen are busy laying claims to strategically situated territories in the West Indies and the Pacific. China is demanding territories all round the Pacific, hitherto conquered and held by Japan and the Western Powers. French political parties are contemplating an extension of France to the Rhine and beyond, and most of the smaller Powers that were early on the winning side are hoping to get something in the carve-up.

The Daily Express, in its editorial on September 18th, 1944, candidly admits and encourages the Imperialist aims of U.S. A. and Britain.

“Here is a section of American opinion arguing in favour of United States Imperialism after this war. And here in this country concern and apprehension are sometimes expressed in high places on that account. Such fears are quite out of place. If British Imperialism is good for the British, then American Imperialism is good for the Americans. . . . The American Imperialists want a foothold in Dakar, and in the East and the Far East. They seek control of those islands in the Pacific which have been a source of menace and misery to them when held by the Japanese. Is that a good policy for the Americans ? Of course, it is. … Is it good for Britain too? Of course.”

It will be noticed that the Express here writes as if the world is going to be divided between American and British Imperialisms, saying nothing about the fact that other Powers (among them Russia) will also want a say.

It will be argued that these claims are justified on the ground that the Allied Powers will need to hold territories to bar any further attempt by German capitalism to gain military and economic control of Europe—but is this what the Daily Herald and its supporters envisaged by their talk in 1939 of “a world of true brotherhood among the workers?” Obviously the post-war world is going to be a world of capitalist competition, as it was before. Sir Stafford Cripps is so apprehensive about this that he warns us : “A return to open competition between the nations will inevitably lead to another and even more disastrous war” (Daily Express, September 18, 1944).

What of the promised re-establishment of democratic methods ? In some of the defeated countries this is likely, though experience after the last war shows that such re-establishment is no guarantee of permanence in a world of capitalist poverty and crisis. Moreover, one-party dictatorship is still the rule in Russia, and, according to the News-Chronicle correspondent recently in China, the present trend is towards totalitarianism in that country. He writes : —

“Already in China there is no freedom of the Press or of speech or assembly—no right to express any opinion that does not conform with the Government’s political line.” (News-Chronicle, May 2, 1944).

He pointed out that the Kuomintang Government (which he referred to as “Kuomintang Fascists”) has half a million of its best troops engaged, not in fighting the Japanese armies, but in blockading the Chinese Communist forces. He ended his article with the ominous words, “A Fascist China might in time be as dangerous as an Imperial Japan.”

Coming back to Europe and the populations liberated from Nazi occupation, no one need doubt the enthusiasm with which liberation has in the main been received, even though this is by no means universal. A correspondent with the advancing Allied armies in France records that in Alsace and Lorraine (territories annexed by Germany in 1871 and “liberated” in the first world war) the reception of the Allies was distinctly cold :—

“As you near Germany and touch the fringe of Alsace-Lorraine, you can sense the change in the attitude of a people that has lived so near to Germany as to be almost German in outlook and in blood. No longer, as we enter a village, do we get the vociferous welcome that cheered our progress to Paris. . . . The villagers look on you sourly; they are less ready to be helpful. Cases of sabotage which we never had in Normandy or on the way to Paris are now being reported.” (News-Chronicle, September 7, 1944.)

What sort of world is it into which the populations are liberated? Are they to open one prison door only to find they are faced with others? Since the world is still to be a world of capitalism, that is what is bound to happen. What is going to be the outcome when workers find that liberation and the end of the war merely means a return to the old chaotic conditions of pre-war capitalism, aggravated for at least some time by the problems of the switch-over to peace? Some will turn to Socialism, others will fall for new nostrums or return to old ones.

Mr. Alan Moorehead, writing on his impressions of France and Belgium, says that from the standpoint of living conditions, life under German overlordship was not as bad as had been reported—”if you were willing to obey the Germans and keep out of their way, then you did not have a bad life—certainly a more comfortable one than in war-time England (Daily Express, September 10, 1944), The reason why the Germans were “hated passionately and viciously” was “because they took away the one thing the people finally cared about, their liberty.” When the Germans went, the population regained their right to take part in political activities, but as the war in Europe ends they will also suffer in the changeover which will affect workers in all countries, the change from capitalism working at full pressure for war and providing full employment to capitalism resuming its normal peace-time condition with unemployment again mounting in volume. This has already occurred in Italy. The Manchester Guardian writes : —

“The economic situation is admittedly disastrous, and it is claimed, it is to be hoped wrongly, that the Germans allowed the people more food than the Allies…. It is extremely short-sighted to allow the Italian people to fall into a mood of such misery and despair that they will blame us for their misfortunes, rather than the Fascist Government which led them to disaster. (Manchester Guardian, August 15, 1944.)

A Times correspondent in Rome writes in a similar strain : —

“The Allies cannot afford to have the population of a capital city on their lines of communication reduced to desperation. A hungry and idle people becomes an easy prey to any extremist political agitation which promises it a quick way out of its troubles.” (September 8, 1944.)

Part of the present difficulty in Italy may be due to military demands on transport, but even when these have ceased and everything is normal again, Italian workers, like other workers, are going to have to face the usual evil results of capitalism. The war has not removed these evils; they are as insoluble as they were before 1939 or before 1914, though this was not at all foreseen by leaders of the Labour Party when they went into the war. They did not envisage the war ending with a return to the conditions of 1939 but vainly imagined that capitalism would be on its last legs and Socialism almost here—just as they had in the world war of 1914-1918. Here is an extract from a speech by a Labour Party spokesman, Mr. Arthur Greenwood, M.P., at his Party’s Conference at Bournemouth in May, 1940. It makes curious reading now : —

“Because we have the courage of our convictions as a movement now, we shall have greater power when it is over than we have to-day. We shall have a trembling capitalist system which can never recover again. We shall have broken the back of the vested interests, and we can build a Socialist commonwealth which will be a powerful factor in the world.” (Daily Herald, May 14, 1940.)

It would be an insult to Mr. Greenwood’s intelligence to ask if he thinks that his prophecy has been fulfilled. Instead, we would like to ask whether he would risk prophesying what the state of Europe and the world, seething with nationalistic hatreds and torn by the rival claims of capitalist groups, will be like at the end of the next four years. Will it be Socialism triumphant, democracy safe, and “true brotherhood among the workers,” or will it be the same old capitalism? Austrian workers who declared (Manchester Guardian, July 33, 1944) “that they do not intend to work for Anglo-American capitalists but desire to collaborate with progressive elements in the Allied countries,” have the right view of the situation, but, contrary to Mr. Greenwood’s anticipation of a trembling and broken capitalist class, that class is in power and the world is still their world.

Not mere release from foreign rule or home-bred dictatorship, but only Socialism will ultimately unite the world’s workers and achieve their emancipation. The workers’ army of liberation is the international army of class-conscious, politically organised Socialists, bent on achieving the conquest of political power for the purpose of ending capitalism and inaugurating world-wide Socialist society.

By The Way: Concern for Workers (1944)

The By The Way Column from the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Concern for Workers

As everyone knows, there is a most terrible housing crisis in London now. The newspapers are full of appeals to the authorities to get something done about it. The Government has brought thousands of building workers from the provinces and arranged for them to work a 65-hour week, Mr. J. J. Mallon, the Warden of Toynbee Hall, has written to the Times pointing out that long hours under modern conditions do not make for greater production.

Let Mr. Mallon speak for himself: —

HOURS OF WORK. 

To the Editor of the Times, 

Sir,—It is disquieting to learn that building operatives are to work 65 hours a week on first-aid repairs to houses in the London area. Even though the arrangement is to apply only for three weeks, it is deplorable and against the teaching of all industrial experience. The Regional Joint Committee for London express the view that the Government is “ill advised to propose such hours,” and suggest “that the maximum hours of work should not exceed 60.” Sixty hours are also too many. If 55 or even fewer hours are worked more will be done.

For nearly 40 years as a member of innumerable trade boards and other industrial bodies I have had to do with hours of employment. When these hours are excessive they tend to lessen rather than increase production, to add to illness, accidents, and absenteeism, and so to fatigue the worker as to do him cumulative injury. The reduction of excessive hours always leads to greater production. Surely the example of America, where miracles of war production have been achieved, should not be disregarded. Early in their associated war efforts the relevant American Government departments decided in favour of an eight-hour day and a 18-hour week “as the best working schedule for sustained efficiency in most industrial operations.” The results of their decision fully justify it. The Government should reconsider the 65 hours proposal.

Yours sincerely, J. J. Mallon, 

Toynbee Hall, 

28, Commercial Street, E.I. July 26.”

—(Times, July 28, 1944.)

Mr. H. C. Harland, the President of the Master Builders’ Association, has written to the Times to confirm Mr. Mallon’s verdict. The point that Socialists are concerned with is that Mr. Mallon and his apparently kindly well-meaning fellow Lib.-Labourals are not really worried about the worker, as such, at all. They reduce hours and give medical treatment, holidays, music while you work, etc., in the same way as one puts expensive oil into a motor engine—to make it run better.

They are not the first or the only ones to realise that the old big stick methods of treating the workers are out of date.

Even King Farouk of Egypt is busily running round telling the tale to the workers—a very good reference for Egyptian workers, incidentally. The Times for July 31st records his “visit to the M.I.S.R. Co.’s spinning and weaving (cotton) works, where he had an enthusiastic reception from 26,000 employees.” “In an address to the board of directors he emphasised the importance of the Egyptian worker, and impressed upon them the necessity of providing better living and working conditions. He invited representatives of the workers to the royal table and made a gift of £1,000 to their benevolent society.” “King Farouk is missing no opportunity of establishing closer and more personal relations with the humbler classes of his subjects.” (Times, July 31st.)

Naturally, British capitalists don’t call representatives of their workers to their table to present them with £1,000. They get Sir William Beveridge to do it. The idea is always the same—to get the workers to work better. “All that glitters is not gold.” Working men who allow this talk about concern for them, by capitalist Lib.-Lab. politicians, to delude them into supporting reforms of capitalism will get improved capitalism, not Socialism—that is, increased exploitation and relative poverty.

* * *

“How U.S. Airmen are Taught New Technique"

Under this heading a London evening paper reports that mobile training units, miniature technical schools on wheels, are now following U.S. airmen as bases move deeply into France. “Though airmen are fully trained before coming to Europe, continual aircraft modifications due to experience in battle make it necessary for mechanics to study constantly.” The training has speeded up aircraft repair so much that the director of the training units has sent mobile units to every war theatre in which U.S. aircraft are fighting.

What is happening to-day on the battlefields happens yesterday and to-morrow in industry. The complex nature of the productive methods developed by capitalism force mechanics to “study constantly.”

When mechanics are studying constantly nothing on earth can prevent them eventually contacting and completely grasping the Socialist idea—which is the application of study to problems of society. The reply to those who claim that “the workers will never learn,” is “look around you”—the workers are learning at aeronautical speed, every day, at their work.

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Last Days of the Barricades

A great deal has been written and said about the insurrection in Warsaw. That the plight of the insurgents is rather pitiable can hardly be disputed.

Most ironical of all, the high-priests of insurrection, at all times, in any places, during the past twenty-five years, the Moscow politicians, are supporting their own special Committee of Liberation as against the British sponsored Council of National Unity of the Polish Government in London. Incidentally, the London Council of National Unity is more “radical” than the Committee of Liberation, making play with the phrase “socialisation of industry.”

For this reason, Pravda says that “the Red Army has always warned people against such risings. Handfuls of men armed only with fiery sentiments and cold steel have no chance against modern weapons in battles for large cities.” (Our emphasis.) (The Observer, August 20th.)

To this the Poles reply that the Soviet radio had, in fact, on several occasions shortly before the rising, called on the Polish people, and especially the people of Warsaw, to rise against the Germans.

Apart from this, such statements from the Bolshevik leaders of to-day are the clearest confirmation of the Socialist Party’s repeatedly expressed view on insurrection. Years were spent proving how the Russian Communists were distorting the writings of Engels—for example, in his well-known preface to “The Class Struggles in France”—to try and justify their unprincipled attempts to embarrass foreign governments by riots and street fights.

As if the Soviet’s statement on the futility of insurrection in Warsaw were not enough, further confirmation is to hand from Paris : —

“The Patriots had a very had time, but they recovered and managed to form a defence line in the streets near the building with the aid of barricades built of anything they could lay their hands on.

The barricades were not strong enough, backed by our small arms, to hold the tanks. The German armour smashed them down, then went through the Patriots, firing right and left and affecting shocking slaughter. We had not the weapons to prevent them. . . . All Paris is waiting for the Allies to enter the city and clear out the German tyrants.” (Star, August 25th, 1944; our italics.)

It may be added that in Paris, as in Warsaw, practically the entire population was in support of the revolt; arms had been freely distributed by parachute by the Allied Air Forces. Yet both failed completely, though the circumstances could not have been more favourable.

The Editors of Pravda are quite right. “Handfuls of men with fiery sentiments and cold steel have no chance against modern weapons in battles for large cities.”

In other words, without the all-powerful State machine, with its complex armed forces, revolts are doomed to disaster. And yet there are still “direct action” maniacs in public places urging the workers to commit suicide in barricade revolts.

The statement of Pravda will be chalked up for those post-war C.P. and “Unemployed” fire-brands who will once again urge workers to bash their heads against the State machine.

The Socialist Party urges the workers to think before they act, and then vote intelligently for Socialism, thus giving incidentally an infallible indication of the progress of the Socialist idea and the intellectual development of the working class.

With a Parliamentary majority it is the capitalists who will be faced with the prospect of illegal barricades, which the Socialist controlled army and air force will go through like cardboard, if they ever get put up.

To those who claim that the capitalists will close down Parliament before the Socialists can attain the majority, the reply is that’s their funeral—if they are ever stupid enough to do so.

* * *

Easier for Lord Latham

The evening papers (The Star, September 7th, 1944) inform us that one man whose task has been easier by the relaxation of the black-out is Lord Latham, who since 1940 has been mainly responsible for Civil Defence in the L.C.C. area. He is Chairman of the L.C.C.

By the queerest coincidence, in addition to being Chairman of the L.C.C. and in charge of Civil Defence in London, Lord Latham happens to be Chairman of the London and Thames Haven Oil Wharves, Ltd. Lord Latham, as Chairman of the L.C.C., is very concerned in the re-planning of London. According to the Evening Standard (August 29th), Lord Latham is also very interested in the port of Havre. The Company of which he is Chairman owns about (about) £1,000,000 of property there. “It is the largest shareholder in an oil installation, a hotel, and wharves. Now the shares, like those of other concerns with interests in Occupied Europe, are on the rise.”

Following is the City Editor’s report on the Company (Evening Standard, August 28, 1944) : —

London and Thames Haven 

Feature in the market recently has been the further rise in the shares of London and Thames Haven Oil Wharves. These 4s. shares are now up to 15s. 6d., which compares with a low of 1s. 1d. in 1941. This price gives the Ordinary shares a market valuation of around £3,100,000, which compares with a market valuation of around £5,700,000 in the years when the company was paying tax-free dividend of 10 per cent, plus a less tax bonus of four. Since then the capital has been written down to provide for losses.

The company has paid no dividends for six years, but secured earnings last year of 3.8 per cent. tax free. The prospect is that the company will shortly recover the property which it owns at Le Havre. It has been improving its position steadily and has reduced its bank overdraft to £331,000. The directors are considering issuing more capital to pay off the bank overdraft, and no doubt, once the French position is more clearly seen, some action may be taken along these lines.

Mr. Churchill has a word for this. He said the war “as it progresses becomes less ideological.” In this case about £1,000,000 less.

* * *

Lend to the End (of What?)

Peace Savings Soon.—Sir Harold Mackintosh, Chairman of the National Savings Committee, said last night at the jubilee dinner of Birmingham Municipal Bank that the time would soon come when the war-savings campaign would become a peace-savings campaign.”— (Manchester Guardian, September 2nd, 1944.)

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“Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings”

The New York Times Magazine, April 30th, carried an article by a young British evacuee, Anselm Acker, describing his impressions of American life, in the course of which this schoolboy says of New York: “The sight in the subways, when the people are returning from work, sitting and standing like sodden bales of hay with their mentality apparently all drained from them,” displeased him. Good for you, young Anselm, you are a perspicacious youth, whose keen eye will assist him much in penetrating the surface to see the real nature of the things beneath.

No wonder American magazines carry ads. for “No-Dozies,” guaranteed to keep you awake. And the comic strip of the Philadelphia Tribune shows a small child asking its mother : “Mom, what do these candies do to me ? Nothing, Son. What, don’t make me regular? No, Son. Don’t make my complexion clear? No, Son. Don’t make my breath sweet? No, Son. What! you mean I can eat ’em because I like ’em? ”

All the most simple elementary things of life are utterly commercialised and distorted. Everything is “packed,” “processed.” American troops are issued “Energy” crackers. Ham becomes Spam. Life is in a packet or carton.

If you would like to turn up the writings of a man who never went to New York, Anselm, by the name of Karl Marx, who wrote over sixty years ago, you will find that he said :—.

"Within the capitalist system all methods of raising the social productiveness of labour are bought at the cost of the individual labourer . . . they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work, and turn it into hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process, in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power : they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital: as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his pay high or low, must grow worse."—(“Capital,” Vol. I., chapter 23.)

Nowhere is this clearer in the world to-day than New York.

Horatio.

SPGB Meetings (1944)

Party News from the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Coming Slump: Does the Gold Standard Matter? (1944)

From the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The correct answer to the question, "Why are the workers poor?" is: "They are poor because the means of production and distribution are owned and controlled by the capitalist class instead of by the whole community, and consequently so is the wealth produced by the workers." This is the starting point from which the working class should view all schemes for improving capitalist trade, currency systems, etc. It is naturally not the starting point for the defenders of capitalism. They take private ownership for granted and leave out of their enquiries any possibility of ending it. As a result, their attempts to find out why poverty, trade depression, unemployment and crises exist, and how to end them, are sterile and fruitless.

The workers are poor because over and above the period of their work in which they are producing the equivalent of their wages they are working further to produce surplus value (rent, interest and profit) for the propertied class. They suffer unemployment because the capitalists, in the limitless search for profits and accumulation of capital which the system imposes on each of them if they are to survive in the competitive struggle, are always seeking new methods and new machinery which will save labour and cheapen the product the capitalist owns and must sell. Every wage increase the workers are able to obtain when conditions favour their struggle gives the employers a new incentive to instal labour-displacing machinery, add to the army of the unemployed, and thus create conditions in which the existence of large unemployment tends again to depress wages. In times of "good" trade and expansion capitalism floods the market with commodities for sale at a rate which increases far beyond the capacity of the workers in employment to purchase the goods they need but cannot afford.

In this is to be found the reason why "overproduction" occurs, with its ensuing crises and slumps, and the efforts of capitalists to remedy their own financial problems by driving down wages, by putting up tariffs to stop foreign competition, and by juggling with the currency only make the situation more acute.

When Mr. George Bell, Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions, says (Daily Express, September 7,1944) that a return to the gold standard after the war would inevitably bring depression and poverty, he is ignoring facts easily ascertainable. The workers have always suffered poverty, whatever the arrangements about gold. The version of the facts offered by the Daily Express in its year-long campaign against the pound sterling being formally linked to gold on the basis that existed before 1914 is that the unemployment and trade difficulties that existed from 1925 (when that basis was resumed) to the crisis of 1931, when it was again suspended, were all due to gold. A variation of this propaganda is that announced in a letter to the Prime Minister by Mr. Craven-Ellis, M.P., that “America’s almost complete cornering of gold since 1929 was the basic cause of the world slump and mass unemployment" (Daily Express, September 12. 1944). “We went to hell," he says. "on a gold standard in 1931 and we do not want to repeat the journey."

To answer this line of propaganda it is only necessary to point out that crises have been occurring intermittently for over 100 years, at a time when neither America nor any other country had cornered gold; and that the periods before 1925 and after 1931 were not different from other periods as far as the workers were concerned. Their poverty continued as before, capitalists then as before complained of trade depression, and unemployment during these periods followed much the same course as at other times. In the years after 1931 unemployment was mostly well above the 2,000,000 level, and just before the outbreak of war was still well above 1,000,000. Likewise, from 1919 to 1925 (the year in which the return to the pre-1914 gold basis was made) unemployment was nearly always well above 1,000,000. It is true that in 1930-31 it reached 2,500,000 or more; but so it did in 1921.

The representatives of the Allied Nations in their recent conference in U.S.A. have been divided, according to the City Editor of the Manchester Guardian (September 7, 1944), about the problem whether the Governments should first settle the currency question and the exchange relationship between the currencies of the different countries or whether they should first deal with trade problems and remove tariffs and embargoes by which Governments seek to protect home industries by keeping out foreign products. A similar division existed at the World Conference of 1933, with the interesting difference that the President of the U.S.A. now takes a changed attitude from the one he took in 1933. But both attitudes ignore the fact that "over-production" and trade depression necessarily arise out of capitalism, and the erection of tariffs and the schemes to give a fillip to the exports of certain countries by lowering the gold content of their currency and thus cheapening their exports in terms of currencies of countries that had not devalued, are alike symptoms of the exiting depression, not its prime causes.

A better view of capitalist trade problems is given by war, which is the one time when there is an unlimited sale for all the goods that the capitalists can put on the market. The capitalist newspapers have been commenting on the slump in share values that has recently occurred because of the approach of peace. The City Editor of the News-Chronicle (September 13, 1944) writes: —

   The stock market slump—it is scarcely too strong a word—continued and if anything gained momentum yesterday . . .

He goes-on to say that some of the “experts” are of opinion that “the proper money-making course" for stock exchange speculators is to sell out their shares now and be prepared to stay out for two years “presumably until the immediate post-war chaos period is over." The Daily Mail City Editor (September 12, 1944) asks the question, “Has the slump come?" and says that the investor “has been depressed by references of industrialists to the difficulties of the transition period from war to peace."

What is, however, most instructive is the explanation given by the News-Chronicle. The City Editor says that for three years or more the minds of investors "have been attuned to a war-time economic system in which profits are more or less stabilised and full production is assured over a particular range of commodities."

This is an inherent defect of capitalism. Except in war it can never guarantee continued full production. Periodically the flood of goods on the market will come up against the problem of finding buyers who can pay the price necessary to provide the profit which alone is the aim of capitalist production.

While we are not in a position to prophecy exactly when the next slump and trade crisis will come, come it will despite all the plans and conferences of capitalist Governments and Labour Parties. The only remedy for the poverty and crises of capitalism is to abolish capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Weakness of the Trotskyists (1944)

From the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recognising the class antagonisms that arise from the capitalist ownership of the means of production, the Socialist Party holds that the workers can only solve their problems—poverty, war, unemployment—by the overthrow of the capitalist class and the institution of a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of living.

That this can only be accomplished by the workers sending a majority of Socialist delegates to Parliament is a fact recognised by the S.P.G.B. Thus, in order to do this, the workers must themselves understand Socialism, or, in other words, become Socialists. The S.P.G.B. therefore devotes itself to the unspectacular business of educating the workers—the making of Socialists. When the workers become Socialists they will change the basis of society. Thus the policy of the Party is revolutionary, because it follows the only course that will produce the change.

The Trotskyists, known variously throughout their history as the Revolutionary Socialist League, the Militant Communist League, etc., also claim to be the only revolutionary party in this country.

To examine this claim it is necessary to go back a few years to explain briefly the origin of the Trotskyists. The Russian Revolution in 1917 resulted in the political supremacy of the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky. The breakdown of Russian society after World War No. 1 and the inability of the Russian capitalists under Kerensky to deal with the situation resulted in the Bolsheviks being swept into power on a programme of Peace, Land and Bread. The S.P.G.B., basing its analysis of the situation upon the material conditions existing at the time in Russia, pointed out that the Bolsheviks, in spite of their Marxist phrases, could not impose Socialism upon an economically backward country, and that Russia would have to go through a stage of capitalism before a Socialist society could be possible in Russia, and then only in conjunction with the class-conscious workers of the rest of the capitalist world.

After the death of Lenin, the Bolsheviks divided into two rival factions under Stalin and Trotsky. Stalin believed in the possibility of establishing Socialism in one country, whilst Trotsky still believed that the Russian Revolution could be the starting point of a world revolution. The material needs of Russia, living in a capitalist world, resulted in the victory of Stalin, the expulsion of Trotsky, and the building up of a strong pro-capitalist state in Russia.

That the Soviet Union has now a firm place in the capitalist sun and has dropped the facade of Communism, such as the Comintern, is proof of the correctness of the S.P.G.B. method of analysis—historical materialism. This is not the method of the Trotskyists, despite their revolutionary jargon. Their conception of history is just a belief that working-class politics is a game of leaders, that the revolution would have taken place but for the fact that the workers were betrayed by their leaders, that Stalin “betrayed the revolution.” This surface scratching of history is typical of Trotskyist literature. According to them, every political upheaval, every wave of strikes, would have resulted in the revolution but for the fact that workers lacked “revolutionary leadership.”

The revolution is always round the corner. They believe that one day a “ revolutionary situation ” will arise in which they will seise power and lead the masses to victory. This wearisome nonsense abounds in the columns of the Socialist Appeal (the Trotskyist organ).

It is obvious that there is something lacking in a working class that is continually side-tracked. It is precisely because the workers lack Socialist knowledge that reformist leaders rise to power. If the workers’ leaders do not represent the interests of workers, they do certainly reflect the outlook of the workers. When they do acquire Socialist understanding, the workers will not require leaders—revolutionary or otherwise.

Due to the Trotskyist belief in “revolutionary situations,” no explanations of the nature of Socialism will be found in the columns of the Socialist Appeal. As the revolution will take place at any moment, there is no need for this painstaking work. The line of their propaganda is rather like the instructions of a general staff to its army—“Second Front—and the tasks of the working class,” “Workers must fight for equal pay,” etc.

In spite of their claims to be revolutionary, their official policy contains the usual reformist nonsense, such as the “Nationalisation of the land, mines, banks, transport and all big industry." "A rising scale of wages to meet increased cost of living." "Confiscation of war profits," etc.

The Trotskyist attitude to the war is vague and ill-defined. Whilst denouncing the war as imperialist, they want the "unconditional defence of the Soviet Union against all imperialist powers, despatch of arms, food and essential materials to the Soviet Union."

The Trotskyist claim to be revolutionary is ill-founded. Once again we insist that the S.P.G.B. method is the only revolutionary one, and we will continue to do what the Trotskyists do not do—advocate Socialism as the only cure for social ills.

G. Ewbank