Editorial: Trade Unions on the Rocks (1946)

Editorial from the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a confused welter of argument about unofficial strikes, big and little unions and the "Closed Shop,” what is by far the most fateful aspect of the trade union situation is being disregarded, though it is the underlying trouble of which the others are largely symptoms. What has happened during the war, and still more since the Labour Government came into power, is that the trade unions have increasingly ceased to be independent organisations of the workers in the struggle against the employers over wages and conditions of work, and have become instead organisations for disciplining the workers in the interest of the Government’s wages and production policies. The present Government, having taken over from Churchill the responsibility of administering capitalism, puts at the forefront of its programme an intense drive to find markets abroad for British exporters in competition with the capitalists of other countries. The plan has several features that are related to each other. One is the continuation of “ austerity ” at home so that more goods can be sold abroad. Another is the effort to lower costs of production to a competitive level in the markets of the world, partly by modernising the technical equipment of various backward industries and partly by seeking the co-operation of the workers, through the trade unions, in the campaign to increase production. The third part of the plan was the Government’s belief that by retaining the control of prices for essential goods, clothing, etc., wages would remain more or less unchanged at the level reached at the end of the war. Not wanting to take the very unpopular step of preventing wage increases by making them illegal—as some governments have done—the Government here hoped to keep wage increases in check by appealing to the workers, and particularly by appealing to the Trade Union executives, to moderate their demands. In short, it was regarded by the Government as essential, if British capitalism was to regain its overseas markets, that the trade unions should largely abdicate their proper function of struggling to raise wages in the present favourable situation, and should instead act as a brake on the demands of the workers. That this is a correct reading of the minds of the Ministers is shown by Mr. Dalton’s speech ill the House of Commons on October 23rd, 1945, when introducing his budget. He pointed out that the Government was spending some hundreds of millions of pounds a year subsidising food and other articles in order to keep prices down, then he went on to talk about the effect on wages : —

“It has also helped to restrain any disproportionate increase in wage rates, which, if it had occurred, might have disturbed the whole balance of our economic life, and might have sucked us into the fatal whirlpool of inflation. Here I wish to pay tribute to the steadiness and good sense which the trade unions and their leaders have shown during the war in this regard. . . . Wage rates . . . have climbed steadily all the time, and that has been right; yet there has been no break-away rise, no uncontrolled rise such as we might easily have seen had it not. been for this continuing cooperation between the Government—in this case the Coalition Government—and the trade unions, both recognising that the common interest was best served by this joint effort of the two parties to keep prices and wages on an even keel.”

Mr. Dalton calls it “co-operation” between the Government and the trade unions, but in fact it has been co-operation between the Government and the trade union executives to hold back the natural and correct desire of the workers to struggle for higher wages before unemployment and eventual slump make it impossible to do so.

Mr. G. D. H. Cole, himself a Labour Party supporter and one who approves of this damping-down policy, described it in very appropriate terms in the Observer (8/9/46). He sees that the workers are restive because they feel they no longer control their officials, and feel that the unions are “merely a bureaucratic machine run by the officials for the purpose of keeping them in order.”

Mr. Cole seeks a remedy, but adds:—

"This is not too easy, now that most wage bargains are national in scale, and wage demands have to be squared with the requirements of a national wages policy—as they have in fact, even if the existence of such a policy is disclaimed. The Trade Unions have become, perforce, instruments for disciplining their more unruly members, as well as for representing them; and this sets up a tension that will be cured only by time, as people settle down to the changed conditions.”

Mr. Cole has correctly diagnosed the cause of the present discontent of trade unionists which shows itself in unofficial strikes and efforts to break away from the discipline imposed by the officials on behalf of the Government, but he and the trade union officials who support that policy are quite wrong in their belief that the workers should, or will, go on accepting it. The trade unions must regain their independence and freedom of action or they will become moribund and useless. The unions are not being endangered by the virile independence shown already by some trade unionists; they are being throttled from above by the fatal tie-up with the Government. Their health will tie restored only when the members can again know that they are able to exercise democratic control over union policy and are free, when they deem it wise, to use the only weapon they have under capitalism, the strike.

It is popular in Labour circles to denounce totalitarian regimes under which trade unions are State organs, and strikes are forbidden. Mr. Morgan Phillips, Secretary of the Labour Party, on his return from Russia, wrote about the Russian unions: - 

"I am not sure that the workers’ organisations can be regarded as ‘trade anions' in the British sense that they are free agents to act and speak as their members demand, irrespective of Government stricture. The very fact that strikes are illegal seems to dispose of any pretence to freedom of action as we know it ” (Daily Herald, 21/8/46).

It would not be a bad idea if Mr. Phillips would now take a look at what used to be independent trade unions in this country and observe that, by a less brutal and less obvious process of deterioration, they are heading towards the state of the Russian organisations. It is plain that the unions here will not be rescued from that fate by the Labour Government or by the trade union executives who have been responsible for the present state of things. Salvation will come from the members themselves when they wake up to the fact that Labour government cannot abolish capitalism or the class struggle inseparable from capitalism, and when they regain control of their own organisations for the purpose of defending their interests on the industrial field.

It should be added, however, that while Socialists support sound trade union action they have to point out, too, that trade unions, though necessary and useful organs of working-class resistance, cannot emancipate the working class from capitalism—that can be done only by a Socialist working class politically organised to take control democratically of the machinery of government, for the purpose of abolishing capitalism and introducing Socialism.

Communist slogans for capitalism (1946)

From the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Leading Communist Arthur Horner, like the Jack Horner of old, has stuck his finger into the Trades Union pie, and pulled out a nice fat plum—the post of General Secretary to the National Union of Mineworkers. After the cheers of the C.P.G.B. have subsided, let us see if this appointment benefits the mineworkers, or the mine-owners.

Addressing a mass meeting of miners at Tonypandy, he said :—

“Production needs are so great that the time has come to apply the slogan “ If a man won’t work, neither shall he eat ” (Daily Express, 26/8/46). 

Horner, of course, has learned this brutal slave-driving threat from the source of all Communist inspiration—Soviet Russia, and although this self-same slogan was incorporated in the first Russian Constitution of 1918 for the new “Socialist State,” it is difficult to understand why Horner shall proclaim it in Capitalist Britain, unless it is for the extraction of more surplus-value from the miners. Perhaps he, like the Daily Herald, imagines that Britain is now a “Socialist State” !

This wolf in Marxist clothing continues:—

“The present manpower cannot produce the coal that Britain needs to maintain full employment.”

With unemployment figures growing all round him, this so-called ”leader” of the proletariat dares to suggest that “full employment” is even possible under Capitalism, which demands a constant reserve army of unemployed to act as a lever against the struggles of employed workers, much less that it is actually in existence now.

The next “ gem ” (he certainly “went the whole hog” at Tonypandy !):—

“ A large increase of manpower for the pits is vital if there is to be a rapid restoration of coal exports.”

Instead of telling the miners about Marxism, or Communism, this “revolutionary” is forced, by the very nature of his position as ”Labour Tamer ” in the capitalist circus, to sidetrack and confuse the workers’ minds with that old, old capitalist motto, “ Export or die,” which is so necessary (for the capitalist class) at this stage to beat rival capitalist states in the race to hustle commodities into the markets of the world.

Impressively, Horner juggles with figures containing heaps of 000’s, concluding that :—

“If we can restore the 1939 position . . . we can .. . wipe out the American loan and the burden its commitments represent.”

For these few words of cheer the British Capitalist class (who bear the “burden”) will have cause to thank “Comrade” Horner, and perhaps arrange a knighthood for him—who knows? But the matter should not interest the working class of either America or Britain, whose “burden” under Capitalism has always been that of “ making both ends meet ’’—whose wages represent the cost of keeping them fit for reproducing their work and their class. It is absurd to suggest that the American loan is anything but a business arrangement between the master class of America and Britain, and the millions that Horner quotes are of no interest to the working class of either country.

Speaking of unemployment in Wales (having already talked about “maintaining full employment”), Horner, like a Stalin contemplating a “purge,” says:—

“ The cause of the failure must be traced and ruthlessly eradicated.”

For once we can agree, but as the only answer to the social evils of the day is the abolition of the system of society that Horner is supporting, and the institution of a system based on common ownership of the means of life instead of private or state ownership, the task is left to us Socialists to explain to the miners of Tonypandy and workers, wherever the Socialist message can penetrate, their position in society to-day.

Armed with sound Socialist knowledge, and the will to unite for victory, the working class will achieve its emancipation, in spite of the confusion and disillusion spread by office-seeking Communist opportunists.

Michael La Touche

Muddled Thinking of a Labour Leader (1946)

From the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

“If ever there was a risk of over-production causing unemployment there is none now. For at least a dozen years there must be conditions of shortage which with the best energy and effort cannot be removed. We are in arrears. We need have no fear of the supply exceeding the demand.”

(Reynold’s News, Nov. 30th, 1919.)

Within two years of making this statement there were over 2,000,000 unemployed.

Now Mr. Clynes is at it again. In a statement from his home in Putney he said:—“Avoidable stoppages, absenteeism and dislocation in the workshop lead to reduced production of goods. The less there is to buy the more men must pay to get what they want. ” (Daily Express, June 17th, 1946.)

Though the wording is different, the implication is the same. All we have to do to ensure a high standard of living is work hard. Intensified production inevitably produces a surplus; under capitalism goods are produced for sale, demand meaning the ability to pay.

At present, in a world denuded of goods, there is a ready market for goods of all descriptions. Modern mass-production methods, as applied to industry, will create an abundance. In due course the markets will be flooded. The capitalists, being unable to sell all the products at a profit, will curtail production, and many workers will be thrown out of work.

Mr. Clynes should think of the years between the wars before he commits himself to these bland statements.

Meller.

"Rake's Progress" (Political Version) (1946)

From the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

The majority of people know Mr. Strachey as Minister of Food. There is a minority who have come to regard him as an exponent of Marxism as well. Indeed, Tom Driberg, M.P., in Reynolds' (1/6/46), said that it was as a Marxian economist that he approached the Labour front bench. That a copy of Marx’s “Capital” leaves Mr. Strachey’s bookshelves when invited to Cabinet discussions is doubtful. Nevertheless, in an article in the Daily Herald (28/5/46) on Mr. Strachey, Mr. Francis Williams resolutely refused to convey any suggestion of a Marxist skeleton in the cupboard of Mr. Strachey’s political past and merely commented "He wrote able and bitter political works, some of which have been regarded as minor classics of the Left.” In these minor classics Mr. Strachey developed major attacks on the Labour Party. In the ”Coming struggle for power” (p. 338) he accused them ”of laying down the working-class organisation necessary for Fascism.” Theorists like G. D. H. Cole, who, he alleged, believed in a form of controlled high-wage-paying capitalism, he charged with having the same political objectives as the Fascist Corporate State. His now somewhat uncomfortable prognostication of Mr. Morrison was that he envisaged a Whitehall or Smith Square controlled capitalism, adding that the difference between Mr. Morrison’s views and those of G. D. H. Cole were merely one of emphasis and mode of expression. His own party he summed up as—“Labour Party rotten before it was ripe” (“The Nature of Capitalist Crisis,” p. 341-352). From the Herald's viewpoint such a skeleton is best kept under lock and key. It was left to the New Statesman to frivolously twitter “Mr. Strachey’s series of Socialist studies must have been the one brilliantly successful attempt to translate Marxism into the King’s English.” While the King’s English reputation of the New Statesman is deservedly high, their qualifications to pronounce on Marxism is notoriously low. It is, of course, Mr. Stracliey’s Marxism which is in question.

Mr. Strachey’s exit from the Conservative Party into the Cloud-Cuckooland of I.L.P. politics, his pre- Fascist Mosley associations and monetary reform theories, are without significance apart from confused thinking. His Marxist reputation rests largely on the fact that via the Gollancz Press he spread and popularised Stalinist fairy-tales of Socialism in Russia for political adolescents of the vaguely termed middle class. Ironically enough it was the Fabian anti-Marxist Webbs who were his intellectual paramours in all this, their work, ‘‘Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation,” his authority. (“The Theory and Practice of Socialism,” p. 49.) The Public Hangman is not usually asked to write a thesis on the need for the abolition of Capital Punishment. Fabianism, whose high priests were the Webbs, is merely State Capitalism, and it was G. B. Shaw who, on returning from a visit to Russia, proclaimed, “The Bolsheviks have only realised the Fabian Programme.” The Webbs’ work on Russia was then but the priestly blessing of their own creed. The "Marxist” Strachey appears as the uninvited acolyte in the Fabian temple.

It is not surprising, then, that he hailed the new Russian Constitution (direct vote and secret ballot) as a super Democracy, quoting Soviet leaders’ views that a classless society was coming into being (‘‘Theory and Practice of Socialism,” p. 148), although admitting (p. 165) that hitherto the illiteracy of the Russian population had prevented it. Later, Engels is quoted to show that the State is an instrument of ruling-class coercion. The growth of Soviet State bureaucracy indicates, then, a classless society’s need for increasing ruling-class coercion. Leaders, however, were chosen in Russia through long and searching apprenticeship in the Communist Party (p. 163) and were controlled far more effectively than those of the capitalists. It is this, he said, which made working-class control unique. The carefully controlled “chosen” were later liquidated as wreckers, spies and Fascist criminals. Truly this form “of working-class control” was unique. In the section, the Economic System (‘‘Theory and Practice of Socialism”), Mr. Strachey heavily underscored his ignorance of the nature of Socialist society. To Marxists, Socialism is the democratic ownership of the sources of production. But not only will the producers control the instruments of Labour, they will also determine the character and manner of the productive process by which the products of their labour are turned out. Mr. Strachey simply denies this. For him, Socialism is planned production par excellence, the Soviet model its working hypothesis. For common ownership he substitutes a Planning Authority which would control and decree wealth production and distribution, quantitatively and qualitatively. His quick phrase that the Planning Authorities’ conscious and deliberate decisions will be set up and controlled by the community (p. 42) is a pure verbal concession. Ownership and control of wealth production are inseparably integrated; thus the non-control by the wealth producers must entail non-ownership as well, and the workers in Mr. Strachey’s scheme would he as effectively divorced from the means of production as they are now. Mr. Strachey’s “Marxist” production for use suspiciously resembles Stuart Chase's “Economy of Abundance.” Both agree on the economic ideal of maximisation of wealth distribution and centrally organised control. Stuart Chase saw it as a means of continuing Capitalism. Mr. Strachey mistook it for Socialism.

Inevitably, then, all the economic categories of capitalist society reappear in Mr. Strachey’s new one, viz., trade, markets, wage labour, etc. in deference to the new social forces they are called Socialist. Mr. Strachey assures us that Socialism will have an unlimited market, but any Marxist Economic primer could have informed Mr. Strachey that the market is the economic mechanism whereby a profit-making society (Capitalism) merely realises the profits that are created in the productive sphere by exploitation in the form of wage labour. An unlimited market would then presuppose unlimited profits and, of course, unlimited exploitation. A desirable but hitherto unrealisable capitalist ideal. Production of value and surplus value is inherent, then, in Mr. Strachey’s “Socialist Society”; just as in “The Only Socialist Country,” profitability of Soviet enterprise to get higher levels is constantly being stressed by Stalin. Thus the productive limits of such an economy would be set by this profitability principle with its concomitant features of mass overproduction and unemployment. In substance, the difference between all this and a highly developed monopoly Capitalism or State Capitalism is less than the shadow of a ghost’s shadow.

Mr. Strachey thought that inventing, say, a working model of how a planned economy might work in America or here avoids our discussing Socialism in the abstract (“Theory and Practice of Socialism,” p. 29). Actually, it avoids discussing Socialism altogether. Only the theoretically incompetent would pose such a proposition. Socialism cannot be discussed in the abstract because it is itself the historic product and consequence of the actual concrete conditions of present society. True, Socialism will have its technical as well as economic problems (Strachey substituting technical re-organisation for an economic revolution in productive relations confused the two), but these can only be solved by the conscious participation of the majority, consistent with the prevailing ideas and genuine social needs—existing at that time. Socialism cannot, then, by its very nature be a sum of ready-made recipes imposed from above by a Planning Authority. Socialism, because it is an historical process, provides not only the conditions but the means for its own realisation and fulfilment, thus demonstrating its scientific worth over blue-printed Utopias. Mr. Strachey, on his own showing, is a Utopian.

Mr. Strachey did tell us that a knowledge of Marxism avoids our becoming the dupes of capitalist planning. Informed by such knowledge, he supported the idea of Popular Front government with a planned programme of social measures. Anyone refusing to co-operate in the formation of this get-together Mr. Strachey stigmatised with the sin of sectarianism. Out of all the political sinners, our sin was the most scarlet. Of our party, he said they neither attempt nor wish to attempt to work in the Labour movement (”What Are We To Do,” p. 909). Had we campaigned for and on behalf of co-operation with the Labour Party a little previously, Mr. Strachey might have hissed "Social Fascists.” He. added that our sole purpose, like religious bodies, was to provide subjective comfort and consolation to our members. Yet Mr. Strachey, in attempting to account for the failure of any real working-class political achievement, had to resort to the expediency of using a S.P.G.B. principle—that working- class knowledge is the essential condition for working-class emancipation—in order to show why this must necessarily be so. In ‘‘The Nature of Capitalist Crises” (p. 347) he admits that lack of working-class understanding leads workers to give their energies, even their lives, hopelessly trying to achieve what is inherently impossible, and finally becoming dupes and blind drudges for talented adventurers. Mr. Strachey unconsciously, it seems, presented the working class with a truly tragic Hobson’s Choice, but at least it concedes us the advantage of providing subjective comfort to our own members rather than material comfort to allegedly "talented adventurers.”

But all this was in the past. Came the war; the second imperialist war, which Mr. Strachey’s Marxist knowledge enabled him to predict with certainty (“The Nature of Capitalist Crisis,” p. 960). What he forgot to predict was that he would support it. At the beginning Russia was outside of it and his former Communist Party allies were violently, even if temporarily, proclaiming it as ”a war between robber nations for world domination.” Mr. Strachey was thus faced with a conflict of loyalties between his own fatherland and adopted one. It was then Mr. Strachey discovered Soviet totalitarianism. He even discovered in the same sentence that “it (Soviet totalitarianism) has not hitherto turned out to be of a totally different character from other totalitarianisms ” (“The Betrayal of the Left,” p. 201).

It is true that the Dictatorship versus Democracy issue (p. 204) is complicated for Mr. Strachey by the fact that the "Socialism” which he supported existed only in the form of a totalitarianism to which he was opposed; and the capitalism which he opposed possessed the democracy which he supported. So Mr. Strachey decided to burn his Russian boats by declaring (on p. 205) "that the enforcement of totalitarianism was a catastrophe from which the world might never recover.”

Nevertheless, the inevitability of war did not necessarily guarantee Allied victory. At times there were difficulties. In an article in the Observer (2/6/46) on Mr. Strachey it is mentioned that a critical moment in the development of British bombing policy had been reached. Heavy raids on German cities, causing heavy civilian casualties among German civilian women might, it was thought, rouse British public objection. But Mr. Strachey was standing by. Says the Observer:

“Strachey was put on the air. Gently he took the minds of his listeners off the receiving end of the bombing attacks and fixed it on the courage of the crews and the plans behind the attack. So the outcry feared by Bomber Harris never came.” 

Consequently, it seems, neither did any bombing respite for German women and children, as the possible result of public sentiment. Mr. Strachey had made a vital contribution. "Mr. Strachey believed in bombing,” says the Observer, "and developed Bomber Command faith with the same invincible logic that had gone before to 'Revolution by Reason,’ the Communist Party and the Popular Front.” The Spectator, once commenting on Mr. Strachey’s “The Coming Struggle for Power,” said "He had established a range of social, intellectual and political contacts which were likely to remain a record.” A range which includes Marxism and Mass-bombing is a record and should remain one.

That Mr. Strachey still accepts the "Marxist” inevitability of war seems to be evidenced in the House of Commons debate (12/3/46). Speaking on the future structure and character of the R.A.F., he said:

"Ultimately it would have to he decided whether the long-range bomber component of the R.A.F. was to be designed primarily for existing types of chemical explosives or atomic explosives.”

It would seem that on many an occasion in the Labour Party a left-wing Mrs. Gamp creates a right- wing Mrs. Harris, not only to give the lady a piece of his mind, but as a useful medium for proclaiming one’s political virtues. As in the case of Dickens’ Mrs. Harris, she becomes after a time an embarrassment to her creator. She is then allowed to quietly lapse into the obscurity from which she emerged. In Mr. Strachey’s case she may have become a war fatality instead—a victim of that mass-bombing from the British, which, from the British side, he supported with such faith and invincible logic.

Ted Wilmott

Mr. Thurtle misfires (1946)

From the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Ernest Thurtle, Labour M.P. for Shoreditch, sometime member of the Fabian Society and I.L.P., and sometime belligerent war-supporter turned pacifist turned war supporter, writes a weekly column of pontifical political comment and behind-the-scenes chit-chat for Beaverbrook’s Sunday Express under the title “ Labour Point of View.” On Sunday, September 1st, he wrote the following: —

"Sympathy for the little fellow struggling against the big one is natural, but in the present dispute between the little and big unions of the transport workers common sense appears to be on the side of the big battalion.

Mr. Frank Snelling, the national organiser of the little union, which is fighting so spiritedly, is what is known in Labour circles as an S.P.G.B’er. Decoded, this means a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, a strict Marxist sect of microscopic membership.

Because the little party had so few members, who oozed Socialist self-righteousness, the larger movement was wont to refer to them derisively as the Small Party of Good Boys.”

That is all Mr. Thurtle has to say. He gives no facts about the dispute and no reasons why he believes that all the common sense is on one side. He does not mention that the S.P.G.B. has members in the T. & G.W.U. as well as in the N.U.P.W., and it is evident that his sole object in. referring to the dispute was to provide a peg on which to hang the unoriginal remarks about the S.P.G.B.; from which we conclude that his anguished outcry is really due to some of the “microscopic membership” of the S.P.G.B. having got under his skin some time or other.

We thank him for one thing. He concedes that the kind of self-righteousness we ooze is “Socialist”—our complaint about Mr. Thurtle and his party is that Socialism is the last thing they can be self-righteous about.

Nearly all of the remainder of Mr. Thurtle’s column was devoted to a penitent’s lengthy explanation of his own errors.

“Let me confess,” he wrote, "that I, along with other Labour candidates at the General Election, in stressing the importance of good relations with Russia, avowed confidently that a Labour Government would win the co-operation of the Soviet. We believed this. How wrong we were !”

Yet he still cannot see that the capitalist clash of interests is not altered by having British capitalism run by a Labour Government and Russian State capitalism run by a so-called Communist Party. He still Ands the situation ‘‘puzzling.” If he had any Socialism to ooze he would not have believed the nonsense he told the electors. (Incidentally, as he obviously obtained votes under a misapprehension, what about emulating his father-in-law, the late Mr. George Lansbury, and resigning to give the electors a chance to say whether they still want him as their M.P.?)

There are occasions when Mr. Thurtle, in his efforts to coin a telling phrase, tells more of the truth than he ever intended. On April 14th, in his Express article, he congratulated Mr. Dalton on having “achieved another Budget success ” ; but he added the following two-edged remark: —

"His 1946 favours are neither large nor numerous, but they have been distributed with great skill. It needs much knowledge of human nature to be able to please so many with so little." (Our italics.)

That final sentence should be treasured as a fitting emblem of Labour Governments—but it needs to be read alongside another saying; that you can’t fool all the people all the time.

P. S.

SPGB Meetings (1946)

Party News from the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Social Democracy Versus Communism" (1946)

Book Review from the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Social Democracy Versus Communism" by Karl Kautsky (Rand School of Social Science. New York)

This book, “Social Democracy versus Communism’’ (Rand School of Social Science. New York. $2) comprises selections from the various writings that Kautsky published in German during the eventful years 1932-37. The selection of subjects is good and covers theory and events: The Materialist Conception of History, The Origin of Socialism, Marxism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, The Beginning of Bolshevism, Lenin and the Russian Revolution of 1917, The Road to Power, Socialism and Democracy, to mention a few. Many of these subjects Kautsky has dealt with in larger works. In this small volume (142 pages) he touches on them again with a freshness, lucidity and soundness which lack nothing because of compression and show that Kautsky maintained his outstanding abilities as a Marxist up to a great age.

Kautsky’s anti-Sovietism was never based upon petty party considerations. His opposition to the Soviet régime and to Bolshevism arose out of his fine understanding of history and Marxist theory. His case for Democracy is not one of sentiment or preference for one form of working-class struggle as against another, but that without Democracy there can be no Socialism. Two simple propositions form the basis of Kautsky’s opposition to the Communists in Russia and elsewhere: (1) Democracy and free discussion are the only means upon which could be built a Socialist party which could give the working class the experience and knowledge which would fit it to achieve its purpose. (2) Socialism was not possible in Russia because the material conditions which would permit it were not there. These two propositions he argued with scholarship and closely reasoned deductions which were never answered by the early Bolshevists nor by their apologists and admirers since. In the section “Lenin and the Russian Revolution of 1917 ” he restates and re-examines the circumstances in which the Bolshevists took power in Russia in 1917. He argues a strong case that Russia would have developed industrially and politically more rapidly than has been the case under the dictatorship. Briefly the facts stand repeating. The Bolshevists were brought to power in 1917 by military and administrative collapse and the inability of a weak and immature capitalist class to take control of the situation. Up to the time they took power the Bolshevists demanded a Constituent Assembly based upon universal suffrage. After the election the voting revealed 9,000,000 votes cast for the Bolshevists and 23,000,000 for the other “Socialist” parties, the Menshevists and the Social Revolutionists, the openly bourgeois parties receiving only 4,000,000 votes. Thus the Bolshevists received only a quarter of the votes cast. Here was an opportunity for the “United Front” ! Ignoring the bourgeois parties, all the other parties had similar aims, and in and through the Constituent Assembly could have carried out all that was realisable at that time in the interests of the workers and peasants, allowing for the limitations imposed by the backwardness of Russia. Instead the Bolshevists watched their opportunity and used their control of the armed forces, which they had through their control of the soldiers’ soviets, to crush the Assembly. That was the last that was heard of Democracy and freedom of speech in Russia. Civil war followed with disastrous consequences for the recovery of Russia. And, Kautsky notes with emphasis, the civil war and the reign of terror followed the Bolshevist suppression of the Constituent Assembly and did not precede it. Instead of co-operation and support, which the Constituent Assembly would have received from the people through the safety valve of Democracy, there were years of civil strife, organised and unconscious resistance to the plans for industrial development and reform. The Bolshevists were only able to hold power through a ruthless dictatorship and police-ridden bureaucracy. Thus the Bolshevists overthrew the pretence of democracy. Before they came to power they had defended dictatorship within the party organisation as a necessity imposed by the secret nature of Russian political organisations in the days of the Czar.

As to whether Kautsky is right in believing that the course of European history after 1917 might have been profoundly different had the Bolshevists remained faithful to Democracy will not be discussed at length here. Certainly Sidney Hook makes a point in his preface when he says:—

   “ . . .  If one denies that there are major alternatives in history, and makes his moral judgement completely dependent on historical fact, not only must he believe that Stalinism and Hitlerism were inevitable, but that whoever wins is right.”

The “right” or “wrong” of Hook’s deductions will not be argued here. But both Kautsky and Hook deliver a blow to what was a popular assumption, and is to-day a widely held belief, that the Bolshevist Dictatorship was inevitable and justifiable in Russia in 1917, and that there was no alternative. The "major alternative” the Bolshevists might have chosen was support for Democratic and constitutional freedom for the workers. A mature understanding of the part that they were playing in Russian history would have shown them that in the circumstances as they existed they could not achieve more than this. In their blindness they chose Dictatorship. The Russia that exists to-day followed logically from that step. If there was anything "inevitable” about the Bolshevist Dictator- ship it was because of the limited Socialist understanding among the select few in the ranks of the Bolshevists who claimed it. Can it be argued that the Dictatorship was any the less inevitable when history, in producing the alternative, did not at the same time produce the men who could see it and grasp it? The picture of the Russian Revolution as being an example of the "enlightened few” imposing its paternal will upon the ignorant majority was never historically true. Those who accepted the picture were mostly those who saw "Socialism” in the glorified state capitalism in Russia, and who aim at a similar state of things in this and other countries, though with the pious reservation that it should be achieved in a constitutional manner. History has shown that the "enlightened few” were very immature in their Socialist understanding and were a reflection of the general backwardness in Russia. There are many to-day who see this who were unable to do so before. If there is one lesson that comes out of the Russian Revolution above all else it is that Democracy is the life force of working-class politics, without which it cannot emancipate itself. It is an essential principle of Socialism, and to betray one is to betray the other. Russia and the Communist organisations that it controls are a warning to the workers that they abandon Democracy at their peril.

Kautsky was among the few who saw the Russian picture clearly from the beginning.

The section "Is Soviet Russia a Socialist State” is potent in facts and argument. It would be a service to the workers if it could be distributed to members of all working-class organisations. Space forbids more than a quotation:—

   "Collective ownership and management of large enterprises with fullest freedom for the workers is Socialism, which is superior to industrial capitalism. But this capitalism is superior not only to the small industry of the guild craftsman, but also to large industry with compulsory labour, as well as to every form of state economy based upon conscript labour. Every economy of this sort must be rejected in spite of the fact that it is not capitalist.
    Our duty is not merely to abolish the capitalist order, but to set up a higher order in its place. But we must oppose those forces aiming to destroy capitalism only to replace it with a barbarous mode of production.
    It is for this reason that the democratically-minded portion of the working class must oppose all tendencies toward dictatorship threatening the freedom of the workers, tendencies manifested not only by the capitalists, but also those that originate with anti-capitalist groups.
     What we see in Russia is, therefore, not Socialism but its antithesis. It can become Socialism only when the people expropriate the expropriators now in power, to use a Marxian expression. Thus the Socialist masses of Russia find themselves, with respect to the problem of control of the means of production, in the same situation which confronts the workers in capitalist countries ” (p. 90).

It is fundamentally true that the workers in Russia are faced with the same problems as workers elsewhere. But it is not the "control” of the means of production by the workers which will bring Socialism, but the ownership of them by Society. Kautsky appears to indicate here that his alternative to the prevailing form of capitalism in Russia would be "Collective ownership and management of large enterprises with fullest freedom for the workers ”; in short, a form of State Capitalism without "conscript labour.” This would conform to his position in the reformist Labour Movement and to the habit of the Labour parties everywhere in describing any form of State enterprise as Socialism.

Quoting Otto Bauer, Kautsky says:—

    "Russia is a State of unlimited absolutism, much more than it was under the Czar. The Government is all-Powerful. No meetings are permitted except those agreeable to the Government, no newspapers except those of the Government party. Members of all other organisations are at best jailed, at worst shot. The control of the police over the population has attained a measure which can hardly be imagined in free countries. It is a régime of absolutist dictatorship, of a power quite without any limitation, which holds every human being completely in its hand but is itself subject to no control.
   Such a system of dictatorship destroys all intellectual liberty. In Russia there is only one form of science—that officially authorised by the Government. He who entertains scientific views other than those prescribed officially is thrown out to starve and must, indeed, consider himself fortunate if he is not exiled or shot ” (p. 91). 

Kautsky continues:—

    "In this manner there has been set up, after the destruction of the old classes, a new differentiation of classes, a hierarchy headed by a Pope.
     The fruit of the Bolshevist régime has been the establishment of a new class rule. The Bolsheviks, to be sure, have destroyed the old classes, but new classes, new elements of aristocracy, have arisen under their régime. They have arisen of necessity from the conditions of the Bolshevist dictatorship, although they may be invisible at first glance because they had not been foreseen in Bolshevist ideology and phraseology. But they are there, nevertheless. They are striking ever deeper root and are becoming in ever increasing measure the determining factor in the actions and aspirations of Bolshevism. Its ultimate Communist objective is becoming more and more a matter of decoration, a mere memory or allurement for Socialist idealists whom the dictator seeks to utilise for his own purposes” (p. 98).
   "Erstwhile Communists who preached the doctrine of equality have become the parvenus of a climbing party hierarchy, archbishops and cardinals of the pope of the Bolshevist church. The new generation of Communists, however, consists for the most part of conscienceless careerists, whose Communism is limited to mere lip service and whose activities are devoted solely the attainment of power and the privileges it implies.
       Acquisition and retention of these privileges is their only aim ” (p. 99).

Sidney Hook, in his preface, takes Kautsky to task for starting off this section with the proposition that the Communists are a working-class party. He argues that it mars the strong case that he has made out, that the basic loyalties of the Communist parties are not to a set of values or principles, but to the concrete interests of the Russian State, that to abandon the working class of any nationality in order to serve the Russian State brands them the servile instruments of that State, and the enemies of the workers who have long since removed themselves from the working-class movement

To assume that the Communist Party might so betray the workers in the future charges them with no more than being consistent. But to say that the Communist Party has removed itself from the working-class movement is to ignore the fact that in some countries the workers are organised in considerable numbers in the Communist organisations through which the class struggle manifests itself.

A work which will repay time and money if the reader does not waste time trying to understand why so outstanding a Marxist theoretician was at the same time a Labour reformist.

Harry Waite