Editorial: The Pakistan-India conflict (1965)

Editorial from the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The war between Pakistan and India was another depressing reminder that men are still more ready to unite for nationalism and war rather than for world brotherhood. In a region blighted by acute poverty, hunger and disease was accompanied by fighting and violent death.

The reasons given for the conflict are especially cynical. Mr. Shastri’s Congress Party inherits the supposed ideals of Ghandi and Nehru. In the post-war years, Mr. Nehru in particular sermonised at length about peace. Today India is forced into that oldest and yet most modern of arbiters—war! Now that private property is in dispute, the pacifism of Ghandi has been forgotten.

Peace cannot exist in a violent society and Capitalism is violent. It is violent because it rests upon the exploitation of men by men. It is violent because it is geared to commercial struggles and is driven by the profit motive. Capitalism is violent because under it men act out the aggressive nature of private property. To want peace and yet preserve Capitalism is a contradiction which repeats the fatal errors of the past.

Indian and Pakistani workers rallied to the fighting with enthusiasm. Immigrants in this country lost no time in forming defence committees. Some workers readily donated a week’s wages. “My country right or wrong” prevailed.

Those workers involved in the conflict are victims of false religious loyalties, and their support for developing Capitalism in Asia. They mistakenly think that their interests are identical with the interests of the Indian and Pakistan ruling class.

The situation is one in which Capitalism asserts all its priorities. There is the fighting itself, the disruption and added misery this inevitably brings. There is the spectacle of men channelling their resources into destructive causes instead of into the creative task of ending poverty. There is the vicious fervour which can unify a nation on a war footing, stifling criticism, and temporarily diverting internal frustrations. The commitment to the senseless struggle can easily become self-perpetuating.

To Socialists the condemnation of the war between Pakistan and India is a condemnation of world Capitalism. It is not an isolated incident resulting from the aggressions of a single nation. International finger-pointing blinds men against the real cause. It is an event made possible by the support that Capitalism commands throughout the entire world. In this respect, workers in this and other countries far from the scene of fighting, are involved. It is futile to appeal to political leaders to act with more restraint or so-called wisdom. A world of harmony can only be possible when the working class of the world contract out of supporting Capitalism.

It is important to emphasise that although the conflict has been expressed in terms of Muslim versus Hindu, and although religious differences are a factor in the situation, the war was not over religion. The war was over the conflicting Capitalist interests of the Indian and Pakistan ruling classes and rapidly involved the great powers, particularly China.

Our message to Indian and Pakistan workers is that this conflict in which they have nothing to win, can only heap misery on abiding misery. Their interests in common with workers of all countries is to build Socialism.

Just as religion is a bastion of ignorance, so nationalism is a hate-filled lie. Both serve private property interests in which the worker has no stake.

News in Review: Los Angeles erupts (1965)

The News in Review column from the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Los Angeles erupts

For a few days the spotlight was switched from the ever present horror of Vietnam and focussed on the United States itself.

Los Angeles, that most modern of cities—if such an outdated word as city can be used to describe a sprawl of over 452 square miles—erupted into violence. In an orgy of looting, arson and killing the Negro population, so often the victims of mob violence, themselves became the mob. The savage details were too well reported to need repeating, but many thousands of troops were needed to crush what amounted to a rebellion. When it was over, needless to say the Negroes were the worst-hit victims.

The suppression of the Negro, lasting for a hundred years after their “liberation,” ranging from murder to petty discrimination, and running through all strata of society, has produced a distrust and hatred that will take a very long time to overcome. At every moment and in every possible way, the Negro is made to feel inferior.

Such a situation, and the fact that it could be changed, must lead to an explosion. Los Angeles has been a modern legend, that personifies the so-called affluent society, the world of mass-produced commodities in profusion. Brash and ugly, a mass of sprawling suburbs and six-lane freeways where public transport has practically disappeared, the Watts-Willowbrook area where the explosion occurred is known as the Black Ghetto. Can anything illustrate the plight of the American Negro more than the use of this medieval word to describe the conditions of workers in an ultra-modern city?

The riot was crushed, but as long as hatred between workers remains on such a scale and is added to the normal tensions and frustrations of capitalism, such eruptions will continue.

Priorities in Kashmir

How cruelly does capitalism itself expose the innocent delusions of its own supporters !

Consider the case of the host of organisations which collect charity with the professed object of lightening the enormous burden of hunger and destitution in the world.

These charities have an extensive library of photographs of pitiful children, swollen-bellied near skeletons. They campaign with pictures of refugees and victims of natural disasters. Many people find this appeal irresistible, and the money flows in.

India and Pakistan are among the favourite subjects for this sort of charity; both countries have literally millions of starving people, and the problem is periodically intensified by famine and calamities like floods and cyclones.

Yet among the indescribable suffering of their peoples, India and Pakistan can afford to go to war. What does this make of the appeal of the charities?

A few months ago these same two countries were fighting over the Rann of Kutch. While this was going on a cyclone hit East Pakistan, killing thousands of people and making millions homeless. The Pakistani Forces could have been used for rescue and recovery work; they had the manpower and much of the needed equipment. But they could not be spared from the fighting.

This sort of inconsistency does not prevent the charity-mongers appealing for aid for India and Pakistan. What they overlook is that over the past few years aid has been pumped into those countries on a scale which mocks the charities’ wildest dreams.

According to India’s Information Minister, Mrs. Gandhi, Pakistan has received one and a half billion dollars worth of aid from the United States. Mrs. Gandhi also admitted to India having received “only” two million dollars’ worth, but, of course, she did not mention the other aid, open and disguised, which her country has had from the other side in the Cold War.

The point is that the aid was not meant to feed starving people. It went into the two countries’ military machines; Mrs. Gandhi has complained—and she may be right — that American equipment which was supposed to be directed against the Russians was in action in Kashmir.

The Indo-Pakistani conflict has highlighted one of capitalist’s most blatant scandals. It defies all reason, all sense, all humanity, for the world to pour its resources into a massive destructive effort when there is so much to do in the way of feeding and protecting the human race.

This will not be altered as long as capitalism lasts. The war in Kashmir was only the latest example of capitalism’s priorities, which have always counted human interests and comforts as of little importance.

To capitalism it is in the natural order of things that millions should starve and that a battle should rage all about them.

TUC through the hoop

What were trade unionists expected to make of this year’s TUC, when its General Secretary one day argues in favour of a certain policy and the very next day describes that same policy as a “shabby compromise”?

Confusion is inevitable. The connections between the unions and the Labour Party were once supposed to benefit the unions, but they are being used against them.

It is now possible, for example, for a Minister of Labour to use his speech as a fraternal delegate to declare that the time has come for the unions to accept legal restrictions on their freedom to negotiate. It is possible for General Secretary George Woodcock disconsolately to argue in favour of his “shabby compromise,” of forcing individual unions to refer their wage claims to the TUC for vetting, because this was their only hope of avoiding legislation to force them to refer their claims to a Government board.

The unions still seem determined to support the Labour Government, although its professed policy is, as Woodcock put it, to “. . . put some restraint on the growth of incomes”—a policy which Minister of Labour Gunter justified because without it “We shall fail to hold our place in a fiercely competitive world.”

The Labour Government is, in other words, rallying the TUC in support of its efforts to salvage the international trade of the British capitalist class. This was also the aim of past Conservative Governments, but they were never able to persuade the unions to jump through the hoop so easily. It is worthwhile to ponder how the TUC, and the Labour Party, would have reacted had it been a Tory Government which was threatening to take legal powers to restrain wage claims.

How Mr. Wilson would have thundered his denunciations of dictatorship from the grouse moors! What depths of cliché-ridden oratory Mr. Gunter would have reached! What a riotous assembly this year’s TUC would have been!

But it is a Labour Government which is now moving towards a clash with the unions. These regular, hysterical denunciations of strikes and wage claims are coming from the mouths of Labour Ministers. And this policy—much tougher than the Tories ever tried—is justified with the last-ditch argument that whatever a Labour Government may do they are better than the Conservatives. This argument, which, in fact, allows the Government to get away with anything, is of course quite unsupported by any evidence.

But it is an argument which we are probably going to hear a lot more of Woodcock himself said that prices and incomes have actually gone up more since the Labour Government started trying to keep them down than they did before.

The unions may be like David Low’s famous carthorse—slow, patient, even a little stupid. But they have thrown a few riders in the past and they will do so again.

Recession ?

The Labour Government are going one better than keeping their election promises by claiming that they are giving us something which was not in their programme last October.

They did not promise that within a year of their winning the election we would be in an economic recession, with many industries on short time and the prospect of more to come.

Some of the firms on short time—for example, Ford and Hoover—as well as many City Editors, blamed the recession on to Government policy. While this may be a convenient explanation, it ignores certain facts of capitalist life.

Slumps, like booms, happen when conditions are ripe for them. A big boom overrides any attempt at official control and a slump does not respond to Governmental efforts at revival.

Juggling with interest rates and restricting credit are not policies which fashion events, but largely reactions to those events. British capitalism is not alone in its present difficulties; many other countries are also experiencing them, which indicates that the recession may get deeper yet.

But if we accept the Government’s claim that the closing down of the economy is all their own work, there is a massively awkward question for them to answer.

What happens, in a slump, to their vision of an automated Britain? They came to power on a promise to build a British industry humming with the very latest and most expensive computers and automatic production equipment.

They spoke (in fact they still speak) of a Britain in the forefront of the technological age, driving for its markets under the impetus of massive investment and a fearless determination to innovate.

But in a time of recession industry is definitely not interested in investing in expensive equipment designed to make more of the very things which, because of the slump, cannot be sold. At such times industry is not inclined to innovate; it tends to pull in its horns and to wait for the danger to pass.

Wilson’s Britain of scientists and technologists was, in fact, one of Labour’s more horrible ideas. There need be no regrets that it has joined the long list of pledges, given solemnly but now forgotten, knowing no grave but their own inconsistency.

Things to come

Time, as they never tire of telling us, marches on.

The first men to fly were famous for their daring; the aeroplane was a glamorous marvel of the Edwardian age.

But the First World War showed that the sky was a battlefield, into which each side sent its balloons and aircraft to observe the enemy and to direct artillery fire.

It was not long before other aircraft were developed, to shoot down the observers. Then others were sent up to protect the balloons from attack and later came the fighters and the bombing ‘plane to improve on the artillery shell.

This was the birth of the military aeroplane. The sky is now becoming outdated as a battlefield; the daring young men of the future will probably fight it out in space.

The two Cosmic powers—Russia and the United States—now make no secret of the uses to which their space ventures are being put. Both countries admit that they have observer satellites aloft and America plans to send up a space laboratory to carry out experiments in what they call defence.

The nature of these experiments is not, of course, known but it seems that we are witnessing the opening of another battlefield.

The next step could be a space ship designed to knock out the observer satellites, then another to prevent them being attacked—and then perhaps dog-fights in space.

There is nothing fanciful in this. The military possibilities of space flights have always been obvious and there was never any cause to believe that they would be ignored in capitalism’s constant arms race.

This may rub some of the glamour off the astronauts, which will not be recovered by blatant propaganda dodges like President Johnson’s proposal to send them on world-wide goodwill tours. There is no goodwill in planning to destroy millions of people.

Space war adds another dimension to capitalism’s terrors. It is not a pleasant prospect, but nobody should be surprised that once again society’s resources, and the courage and skill of its people, are being perverted.

Capital’s reserve army (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The capitalist system requires for its proper functioning a reserve army of unemployed workers which it can draw on in times of expansion and cast aside in times of contraction. This remains as true today as when Marx first drew attention to it a hundred years ago. At that time every country had within its borders such an industrial reserve army composed of its own subjects. In Britain today with unemployment since the war at comparatively low levels some people have drawn the conclusion that Capitalism has reformed itself so as to abolish large-scale unemployment. However, Capitalism is an international system, political boundaries don’t matter to it. Industries in all the countries of the world are linked by means of the world market. Looked at from this point of view Capitalism has by no means abolished large-scale unemployment.

International Capitalism may have put to work nearly all the native workers in Britain, France and West Germany, but as Capitalism expands so does its demand for workers. If these can’t be found within a country they must be drawn from outside. This is precisely what has happened. The capitalists of North West Europe have drawn on the reserve of workers in such places as Spain, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia and Turkey as well as from North Africa, Malta and Cyprus. Britain, France and Holland can also draw on their former colonial territories in the West Indies and in Asia. In these areas which are, as it were, on the outskirts of Capitalism unemployment is very high. But it has been noticed that workers don’t leave just because of high unemployment and low wages. They leave and return in accordance with the needs of Capitalism in the more developed parts of the world. They form a true industrial reserve army. The myth has been created in the post-war years that the boom-slump cycle inherent in the capitalist system has been overcome. This is just not true as any worker in the motor industry could tell you. The indices of industrial production, trade and unemployment still show fluctuations. True, the effects of these fluctuations haven’t been so widespread as in the past, but that’s another matter (connected, in fact, with the growth of non-industrial employment). The point is that such fluctuations do still take place. And migration from the “labour reserves” takes place in accordance with them.

In the quarterly magazine Race, for July, 1965, Ceri Peach has an article, West Indian Migration to Britain: The Economic Factors. The article shows how it is not population density or low economic development in the West Indies that causes migration but rather the demand for workers in Britain. There is a “close relationship” between the demand for labour in the U.K. and West Indian immigration.” Using the totals of unfilled vacancies for adult workers as an index of demand for labour, we get (p. 34):

 Year Labour Demand Index Arrivals from West Indies

1956 934,111 26,441

1957 725,571 22,473

1958 535,186 16,511

1959 653,120 20,397

1960 848,542 45,706

This Table shows that “the number of West Indian arrivals rose and fell in accordance with the demand for labour.” The same goes for people returning. More go back when demand is slack than at other times. “Both in the movement into Britain and in the outward movement to the Caribbean, West Indian migrants have been largely governed by conditions in this country.” The 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act upset the pattern by causing a rush to beat the ban in a time of slack demand. But now economic factors are beginning to take over again even under the system where migrants have to get a voucher first. The demand and use of these vouchers also fluctuates with conditions in Britain.

There is of course the danger that the existence of large-scale unemployment in places like Jamaica might give rise there to extremist movements which might succeed in overthrowing a friendly government. But this does not necessarily lead to the loss of the labour reserves. Algerians still go to work in France and elsewhere; even the Yugoslav Government encourages emigration to West Germany. And the flow of refugees is not without its use, economic as well as political. Indeed for many years Capitalism in West Germany lived on refugees from the East.

This August the Labour Government announced tougher restrictions on immigration, mainly for political reasons such as the fear of social unrest and the loss of the racialist vote. That this was done for political reasons is obvious since immigration would begin to fall off anyway when the expected slump in industrial production and employment materialises. However, this manoeuvre could easily backfire. What happens when Capitalism begins to expand again? There will be a demand for more workers who can only come from the traditional reserves. Whichever party is in power, and it may well be the Labour Party, will be faced with an awkward political decision. To prevent their entry and thus slow down the expansion or to let them in and face the charge of “bringing in the blacks.” Such are the problems of administering Capitalism!

We see then that Capitalism’s reserve army of unemployed is still as real as ever. Those who argue on the basis of employment conditions in Britain that Capitalism has abolished unemployment fail to realise that Capitalism is a world-wide economic system. Their argument is as invalid as would have been that of someone who in the 1930’s used the employment statistics for the South East to prove that Capitalism had solved the unemployment problem. The plain fact of the matter is that Capitalism, as an international system, has not and cannot.

Adam Buick

The Passing Show: Peace and Quiet (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peace and Quietude

“London Stinks,” rapped out the young girl to her friend, sitting near me in the bus, one evening. Figuratively or literally, I couldn’t help thinking of the undoubted truth of her words.

Working for my wage packet in the outskirts not far from London Airport, the high summer season has brought the noise of passing aircraft — over 60 of them every hour—to a hideous and almost unbearable pitch. At times the scream of one jet has not had time to die away before its place is taken by another coming in to land or taking off. And so it goes on throughout the working day and far into the night. Of course, you can cut down the noise a little by closing the windows—too bad then if it’s a hot and stuffy day.

Just down the road the rush-hour traffic problem has reached immense proportions, and the noise, fumes and stink are a veritable assault on the senses. Even out of the rush hour conditions are not easy, and you very often take your life in your hands just to venture across the road. Pity, too, those who have the misfortune to live by the new M.4 flyover which has sliced its way across the Great West Road and jumps over factories and houses alike. For these unfortunates it has happened with bewildering speed, this steel and concrete monster, the backcloth to their drab houses huddled together on a pre-war council estate.

Doctors agree that the modern noise problem has bad effects on health, and the Government, with tongue in cheek, tut-tuts in agreement. There was even the passing of a Noise Abatement Act—a private Member’s Bill—about five years ago, much to the joy of The Noise Abatement Society. But its provisions were concerned with acts of nuisance between individuals, and the really big culprits of road and air noise were left unscathed. In fact, the Society’s secretary confessed his sadness at the remarks of the (then) Aviation Minister, Peter Thorneycroft that:—

“he agreed with Lord Douglas that money is more important than the sufferings of people, and would add that so also was the progress of aviation.” (Q.P.—Society’s Journal, January, 1961).

Not the sort of answer to surprise Socialists, although the secretary seems to have been caught off balance by it. However, this did not stop the editorial page from claiming:—

“the undemocratic Civil Aviation Act of 1947 forbids action against owners of noisy aircraft, but public clamour is such that its repeal cannot long be delayed.”

That was more than four years ago and the clamour seems to have been drowned in the much greater and ever increasing din. Is it not surprising then to see a letter to The Guardian of August 19th by the Society’s chairman in similar vein and with even bolder (and wilder) prophecy thus:—

“We aim to get this undemocratic Act repealed, but meanwhile the volume of protest is growing to such proportions that both politicians and civil servants are looking to their defences, and we would not be at all surprised to learn that . . . work is to commence on the new London Airport designed by the Society’s architect friends to cause no noise nuisance.”

Hope, it seems, springs eternal in the reformer’s breast, despite the unpleasant facts of capitalist life. So let me spell out one or two simple home truths for the benefit of this and other organisations. First of all, the noise nuisance bears most heavily on the working class—we have no alternative to putting up with the racket, not being able to pop off to a secluded country mansion when we feel like it. And if recent signs are anything to go by, there’s a whole lot more to come.

The truth is contained in Thorneycroft’s brazenly outspoken words. That is why any Government will only try to tackle the problem if there is the prospect of a cheap solution or if the trouble has reached such proportions that it is adversely affecting the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, or a sufficiently important section of them. Until then, they couldn’t care less.

By Way of Post Script

The Guardian of August 17th reports that work on the construction of a new deep water berth at Aberdeen Harbour was stopped so that the Queen could sleep undisturbed. Said one workman: “There was a whine from a derrick and it might have been noisy if they were not used to it.” No comment .

Wages?

I was tickled pink by this title to an advert in the national press a short while ago. Maybe you saw it, too. There’s this photograph of a comely young man, obviously a newcomer to the firm, looking expectantly at an older man (obviously not a newcomer), and when we get our look in, the question has already been popped.

“Wages?” repeats the older man, rolling the word round his mouth while he thinks of an answer to head the other off. Then at last, “We pay ours by credit transfer.” And that is that. There follows a blurb about the advantages of wages and salaries being paid through the bank, including the very attractive one of huge savings in clerical time, which in turn means cost reductions for the employer.

A clever enough advert really, starting off with the word to make any worker look twice, then switching quickly to the punch line (pity they didn’t show a close-up then of the young man’s face) with particular appeal to your boss but not forgetting to remind you that “it means less likelihood of loss.” You can, of course, lose the money after you’ve drawn it from the bank, but we’ll not quibble over such a small detail as that.

Now I have an interest in the wages question for the simple reason that I am cursed with the fate of having to work for them to get a living. I’m also aware that more employers are turning to paying wages by cheque or by direct credit transfer for the reasons already mentioned and to avoid the risk of pay snatches, which our advert modestly calls “the hazard of moving large sums of cash.” My firm introduced the system over six years ago amidst a flurry of mixed consternation and excitement among the office workers.

But it’s all settled down now. We get paid monthly instead of weekly, and perhaps the only change is that some of us are broke for four days at the end of the month instead of for one day at the end of each week. Maybe some found it a bit precarious at first when they had no spare money to tide them over to the first monthly pay day, but these troubles have long been forgotten, and the pay slip is awaited as eagerly as the old pay packet used to be.

There were some who hinted darkly that the whole thing was a swindle, but of course there was no evidence for this. When the dust of argument finally settled, even the dimmest could see that we were no better or worse off than before. There was a swindle there somewhere, of course, but as usual they didn’t spot it. It lies not in the particular arrangement of wage payment but in the very wages system itself. And the swindle is perpetrated every second of our working day. For no matter what the size of our wage packet (oops, sorry, Pay Slip) it represents a value smaller than the goods we produce and the services we render. There lies the secret of our employer’s riches and of our poverty.

So don’t waste time quibbling over the details of the swindle’s administration, but work to end it by establishing a moneyless, wageless world of common ownership. But don’t bother your boss with this argument especially in working time—he’s not likely to appreciate the point.

Gaspers

“Equality in health is a practical impossibility. The Duke or Member of Parliament will always insist on better attention than the dustman.” (Conservative Party Monday Club Research Group. 2.9.65.)

“Coal is money, and if men don’t turn up and don’t produce it, then there is no money.” (NCB Chairman Lord Robens. 2.9.65.)

“If the voluntary system fails, we might have to provide for statutory reference of every claim above the norm to go to an expanded and strengthened Prices and Incomes Board . . .” (The Prime Minister, (2.8.65.)

“Companies exist to produce goods and make profits . . .” (Daily Express Editorial, 23.8.65.)

Eddie Critchfield

The story behind Powell Duffryn (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Regent Street, in the posh shopping area of London, is a shop called POWELL DUFFRYN. Now that nationalisation is once again a political issue it is not out of place to tell the story behind this name.

It begins in South Wales, where Powell Duffryn used to be one of the hated coal combines owning pits in the Red Rhondda valleys. Between the wars these coal combines, by their persistent attempts to worsen wages and working conditions and by their union-busting, aroused deep resentment among miners, many of whom devoted their time to campaigning for the nationalisation of the mines. And on January 1st, 1947 their aim was achieved. The mines were handed over to the National Coal Board; the NCB flag was raised amidst cheering and the singing of traditional Labour songs. Powell Duffryn was dead. Or was it?

As a side-line to mining, Powell Duffryn was also engaged in the making of heating equipment, boilers and radiators. This side of the business was not nationalised. In the years that followed, while the NCB languished, Powell Duffryn used its compensation and flourished. Today it has its shop in Regent Street; it co-operates closely with the nationalised fuel industries—the Gas Board and the NCB. Not long ago the papers carried a joint Powell Duffryn-NCB advert. All of this is a mockery of the devoted, if misguided, struggles of the miners to nationalise such outfits, and yet another monument to the futility of reformism.

It is worth spending some time looking into the concept of nationalisation a little more closely. In its modern sense, the term first appeared in 1869 when the telegraph system was nationalised, though for some time before the concept had gone under a different name. Some people had called for the nationalisation of land, and a clause in the 1844 Railway Act had allowed for the nationalisation of the railway system if necessary. The word itself—nationalisation—gives a clue as to its significance. The dominant theories, popular and philosophical, of capitalism hold that the interests of all those who make up the entity variously called the “nation” or the “public”, on the popular level, and “society” or “the community”, in the textbooks of political philosophy, are one and the same.

This is a fraud. Present-day society is composed of two mutually antagonistic classes, between which there is a conflict over the distribution of the product of labour. The interests of these two classes are completely opposed; they have no interests in common. Once this is realised, it can be understood that “nation” and “public” are often little more than polite words for the owning class.

When the apologists of capitalism wish to refer to the situation which exists after the State has taken over a section of industry in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, they sometimes call it “common ownership”. This is how the phrase is used in the famous Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution in its reference to the “common ownership . . . of the means of exchange” (i.e. financial institutions). To talk of the common ownership of financial institutions is a contradiction in terms, the purest nonsense. But to those who use “common ownership” in its capitalist sense it makes sense. As has been well said, the Labour Party stands for “socialism for the capitalist class”!

The capitalist class has been prepared to consider nationalisation as a solution when their interests as a whole have differed from those of a section. This was the position with land in the nineteenth century. The landowners, by virtue of their monopoly position, were able to extract a portion of the proceeds of working class exploitation from the capitalist class. A similar fear that the railway companies might exploit their monopoly position was responsible for the clause in the 1844 Act. In both cases nationalisation, or the assumption of ownership by the State on behalf of the rest of the ruling class, was considered. This had one drawback; it meant that the State had to assume the management of the estates or railways it might acquire.

Most capitalists were not prepared to put such power into the hands of their State officials. The institution of the public corporation was a solution to this problem. It removed the fear of the State becoming more and more powerful and eventually taking over other sections of industry as well. This fear was not groundless; there are historical examples of this happening, in Russia for instance. Here the capitalist class as well as the working class, such as they were, were subjected to a dictatorship of the State. The system remained capitalism however and it eventually evolved into a form of State capitalism.

Where such disputes break out between the capitalist class and usurping politicians or State officials, the workers are invited to take sides. But their interests are no more involved here than they were in the old landowner-capitalist struggle. Despite this, “Leftwingers” delight in backing the new usurpers against the capitalists; only to find that the usurpers end by establishing themselves as a new ruling class. So nationalisation without compensation is no more worthy of working class support that the more moderate means of nationalisation that have been applied in Britain.

With the public corporation the capitalist class felt less fear about nationalisation, so that in 1944 Herbert Morrison could declare that the Conservatives had introduced more “Socialism” than the Labour Party. The nationalisations of the post-war Labour Government however identified the Labour Party as the party of nationalisation.

Soon after 1945, a large section of the capitalist class were becoming dissatisfied with the efforts of the Labour Party on their behalf. They were becoming annoyed at having to pay taxes to prop up inefficient State-run industries. Not that they were completely opposed to all measures of State control; they just came round to the view that nationalisation was not a suitable means of such control. This is the crux of the argument about steel nationalisation.

The Iron and Steel industry has been subject to a substantial amount of State control since the 1930’s. In 1951 it was nationalised but in the succeeding years the Conservative governments sold most of it back to the former owners. Ironically they could find no-one to buy Richard Thomas and Baldwin’s which is still nationalised today. The plans recently announced by the Labour government provided for the sole shareholder of some 90 per cent of the industry to be a National Steel Corporation which can thus control the industry as it wants. The Conservatives and Liberals favour what they call a more competitive solution.

The compensation measures—since in Britain nationalisation amounts to a business deal in which the State buys out the old owners—have been described in avowedly capitalist papers as reasonable, fair and far better than expected. One referred to “jubilation in the City”. It seems that some £660 million will have to be paid out. In present at stock-market conditions much of the government stock which will be given as compensation could well be sold and the capital re-invested in more profitable fields.

This brings us back to Powell Duffryn. The same story will no doubt be repeated for the steel industry as for the coal industry and the others. We conclude by quoting from a recent survey of the State in industry in Britain:

“Nationalisation deprived many companies of their assets but left them with huge sums in cash and stock for re-investment after compensating the former shareholders, The colliery companies alone received nearly £300 million from this source. Some companies became investment trusts; others took over and developed existing businesses or established new enterprises in fields where they could use their technical and managerial skill. Typical examples are Cable and Wireless (Holdings) Ltd.—now quite unconnected with the nationalised concern, Cable and Wireless Ltd.—which has invested its free money to build an interest in about 850 different companies; and Thomas Tilling (Holdings) which continues to manage the interests of the old Tilling Group that were not acquired by the British Transport Commission, and has used its compensation to acquire holdings in some twenty-five companies in industries ranging from light engineering to glass and plastics and from insurance to book publishing” (Government and Industry in Britain, 1962, J. W. Grove, p. 250).

Adam Buick

A marriage of convenience (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since they slipped into power last October the Labour Government have been pursued by speculations on whether they would come to an arrangement with the Liberals which would have the effect of keeping them in power. This speculation has, of course, become more intense as the Government’s majority has been slowly whittled down.

The idea of a Lib/Lab alliance, as the newspapers are fond of calling it, is not new. The Guardian, which is running a campaign in favour of it, recently published a series of extracts from editorials of 1912, 1924, 1926 and 1929 which advocated such an alliance (although it is difficult to appreciate what this was supposed to prove).

The whole thing is, in fact, one of the most grisly of all the spectres which haunt the Labour Party from their uncomfortable past. Their first attempt at Government, in 1924, was brought about only because the Liberals supported them, but the same Party turned Labour out of office as quickly as they had put them in. When they came back in 1929, Labour’s leader, Ramsay MacDonald, left us in no doubt about where he thought the blame for his previous defeat lay. “I am,” he told the press, “Going to stand no monkeying.”

This sounded very grand, Yet if anyone was doing any monkeying it was MacDonald himself, because despite his experience in 1924 he was once more relying on Liberal votes in the House to keep a minority Labour Government in power. This showed that Mr. MacDonald possessed the one essential quality of an “intellectual,” which is the ability to ignore inconvenient facts.

As it turned out, MacDonald went further than a mere voting pact with the Liberals. When the crunch came a couple of years later, when the unemployment figures were around the three million mark, when the finances of British capitalism were in turmoil, and when the Government were imposing panic cuts in expenditure, MacDonald did not wait for the Liberals or anyone else to defeat him in the Commons. He led the way into a coalition with the Liberals and the Tories. He joined hands with the men regarded by generations of Labour workers as representatives of the hated mine owners and steel masters, of the hard-faced men who had ground the working class down into unforgettable destitution.

There is no need to recall here the shattering effect which this had on the Labour Party. It is enough to say that the debacles of 1924 and 1931 made coalition a forbidden word in respectable Labour circles.

Of course, these same circles saw nothing wrong in their Party joining the wartime coalition, even if this was under the man who was a lifelong enemy of the working class, who had been openly contemptuous of starving miners and who had so zestfully edited the official British Gazette during the General Strike, when the workers were desperately defending what remained of their livelihoods. The war coalition was, apparently, different. Churchill was no longer cur enemy. He was our friend and protector. This coalition, said the Labour Party, was in what they called (but which they were not rash enough to attempt to define) the National Interest.

We should all be aware by now that when the bugles are blowing to rally us all to defend the National Interest a certain amusement can be had by observing countless politicians, men who swear by their own honesty and consistency, going back on a lot of what they ever said. Thus it was with the Labour Party, when they embraced their bitterest foe and joined the Churchill coalition in 1940. This gave them the experience of running capitalism which stood them in good stead when they took over in 1945 and had to tell the working class that the promises made during the war could not (naturally) be kept.

But no bugles are blowing now. The Labour Party cannot pretend that a pact with the Liberals would have anything to do with their precious National Interest. It would have only one object and that would be to keep the Labour Party in power. Ten regular Liberal votes in the House would enable Mr. Wilson to luxuriate in unaccustomed security of tenure at Number Ten. There is no secret about the price of these votes—a tailoring of the Government’s programme, to drop steel nationalisation and to push ahead with schemes like the Ombudsman.

Or the Labour Party could go into whole-hog coalition with the Liberals, and Mr. Wilson preside over a Government containing one or two Liberal ministers. Or again—another favourite dream of political wanderers—a new party could be formed, a so-called radical party with a programme consisting of bits and pieces from both Parties, mashed up and blended into something which, it is hoped, would attract massive electoral support.

Any of these is possible. It is evident that the Liberals, as distant from power as ever, are awaiting their chance. Mr. Grimond’s famous interview with the Guardian some months ago could not have been entirely a coincidence. It is more likely that the ground had been prepared in advance. This interview might have been Mr. Wilson’s chance to inspire his disconsolate supporters with a valorous, defiant refusal, to goad them forward on their devious, never-ending journey to the Promised Land. Instead, the Liberal offer was met with a heavy silence which, when we consider the business of coalition government, and of government itself, assumes a certain significance.

Governments are there to run capitalism, which means in the general National Interest of the capitalist class. Governments look after the economic affairs of that class, they keep up the machinery by which the capitalists assert their dominance in society. Governments concern themselves with customs laws, trading pacts, the police, prisons and armed forces. They look after capitalism’s finances and they do their best to weaken what bargaining power the working class may have in matters of wages, hours and so on.

Whether they are dictatorships or so-called democracies, governments always face a certain amount of opposition. This means that to stay in power politicians must exercise a deal of cunning and ruthlessness. The manner and the field in which these qualities—if that is the word for them—are applied varies with the type of government. In this country, where governments are elected by popular (if not very enlightened) vote, political skill often expresses itself in a politician’s ability to do one thing and persuade the mass of people that he is doing the exact opposite. This skill sometimes reaches a very high level, as, for example, when it was being practised by Baldwin and later Macmillan. It seems that Harold Wilson has also won his way into this distinguished company.

This is the perspective in which we should view Wilson’s silence at Grimond’s offer of an alliance. The Labour Party are supposed to be opposed to the Liberals, but in fact they have done little, in major policy, to displease them. True, they have pushed through a declaration that they intend to nationalise steel, but so far this remains no more than a declaration. On most other issues, as the Guardian never tires of bleating (“It will be a tragedy if the Government is brought down needlessly. Much of what it wants to do is common to the Liberal and Labour Parties.” 6/9/65), the two Parties are in harmony.

This means, in effect, that Mr. Wilson has the votes of the Liberal members. In other words, he has all the advantages of a Lib/Lab coalition without any of the disadvantages. He is doing one thing while convincing everyone that he is doing the opposite. In addition, he does not have the tiresome necessity of allocating jobs to the Liberals, he is not exciting the emotions of Labour Party workers who remember 1924 and he is left with the tactical asset of being able to fix the date of the next election.

This is by no means a surprising situation. The only thing to prevent an alliance between political parties is a difference of principle and the capitalist parties showed in 1931, and again during the war, that they are all united on the basic principle of protecting the National Interest of the British ruling class. Compared to this, whatever differences they may have are trivial. The Labour Party have always claimed they were basically different from the others, but experience shows us that in fact they are merely another administration for British capitalism.. Even more, they have claimed that their close connections with the unions would enable them to hold wages in check—in other words, to do capitalism’s dirty work—much more efficiently than the Tories could do it. Recent events at the T.U.C., and in Mr. Brown’s Department of Economic Affairs, shows that this is one claim Labour have made good.

The Wilson Government’s policies have upset many of their supporters; in the Guardian of 6th September last, for example, Mr. Reginald Paget, Labour M.P. for Northampton, was asking: “Ought a Labour Government, committed to Tory expediency, be permitted to continue in office? . . . should they be allowed another session?” The obvious answer to these questions is that it all depends upon Mr. Paget—only one vote, after all, is needed to turn the Government out. But who is really to blame for all these broken hopes? Mr. Paget is disillusioned simply because he had illusions to lose. He actually believed, in the face of all evidence, that a Labour Government would be different from a Conservative. Now that Labour have once again shown how similar they are, they have not only confused their friends; they have also confounded their enemies. Even Mr. Heath, strain as he might, can pick no specific quarrel with them—only vaguely accuse them of not doing the “right sort of deeds.”

The whole point is that, whether they formally admit it or not, all the capitalist parties are constantly in coalition to support the private property system of society. In many ways they actually need each other. But even more they need the votes of the millions of workers who are misled into thinking that capitalism is in their interests and who, if Mr. Grimond ever succeeds in getting Mr. Wilson to the church on time, will be lining the aisles to give the uneasy couple their blessing.

Ivan

The Monarchy—past, present and future (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Old ideas die hard, and every age, including the present, is strewn with the debris of the past.

By far the biggest collection of such debris is the Monarchy. All levels of society, from Parliament down, are thick with relics of this once powerful institution. In theory the Monarchy is the centre, and ultimate seat, of power; in reality it is a mere shadow with nothing left of its old influence. But although a shadow, it has a tremendous hold on unthinking minds.

The Monarchy for many centuries really was the centre of power and authority, and the battle against it was long and bitter, but even now when it is won and over, large numbers of people either fail or refuse to grasp the fact. They still write personal letters to the Queen asking her to exercise one of her prerogatives such as the prerogative of mercy. Such letters are, of course, automatically passed on to the appropriate department. But the royal prerogatives and powers, completely hollow as they are today, were not always so. Each one was a powerful weapon in the hands of the Crown, and it used them constantly in its battle with Parliament.

To quote just a few; the Privy Council was once the King’s Council, the highest body in the land; it supplied the Ministers of the Crown, and through the Court of Star Chamber could overawe any subject. The right to create Peers enabled the Crown to fill the Upper House with its own supporters, while the right to grant and withdraw charters to towns was used to pack the Lower House. The right to dissolve Parliament (still in theory a Royal Prerogative, but in practice decided by the outgoing Prime Minister) was used to get rid of an awkward Commons, in the hope of a more pliable one being elected. Again Wardship, so beloved of Sunday Newspapers in elopement cases, once gave the King control over heiresses. This was both a means of putting political pressure on their parents, and—by the sale of the control of minors—a source of ready cash.

The Monarchy today is popular. After all it is difficult to fall out with something that says nothing, attacks nobody, expresses no controversial opinions, and is all things to all people. The Monarchy is said to be above politics, which means out of politics. It will accept all governments whatever their party or policy, and although the titular head of the Church of England, will greet the Pope or the Salvation Army with the same meaningless affability, Jew or Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist, they are all in the fold; in fact it is difficult to keep out of it.

This was not always so. Until well into the 19th century the Monarch was a politician, and as such suffered the ups and downs of popularity common to politics. Queen Anne was a Tory and recognised as one, while Victoria on her ascension openly supported the Whig government of Lord Melbourne. Monarchs shared the unpopularity of the parties they identified themselves with. William IV, at the time of the 1832 Reform Bill, was pelted with clods of earth by the London mob, while Victoria was greeted with shouts of “Mrs. Melbourne” by the same well-mannered crew. Victoria spent most of her long reign in various stages of unpopularity. In the early days attempts were made to assassinate her, and bitter personal attacks were made in the Press. The Prince Consort was made the butt of comic songs from the stage of the early Music Halls. It was only during Victoria’s last 20 years, when the power of the Crown was largely at an end, that she began to be built up into a legend.

The usual line, which was heard a lot of at the last Coronation, was that the Georges were unpopular because of their immoral lives and bad behaviour, and that Victoria’s blameless life restored the prestige of the Crown. This theory does not bear examination. George III, who reigned for 60 years—nearly as long as Victoria—lived a life of domestic dullness that not even the most prudish of Victorians could have objected to. This fact, far from endearing him to his subjects, was the cause of ribald songs sung in taverns, treating his “virtue” as a joke. It was the political position of the throne, and not the private life of its occupant, that decided popular sentiments.

By the time of the Restoration an uneasy balance between King and Parliament had been struck, with the King as the Executive—a kind of permanent President—appointing and dismissing Ministers and controlling affairs, and Parliament as the Legislature, with the sole right to levy taxes. This was the idea accepted by most of the participants in the Civil War. Only a minority of people, with ideas ahead of their times, thought of Parliament as the sovereign body. Judicial murder, although becoming rare, was still a hazard during the reigns of Charles II and James II. An unsuccessful politician still stood the chance of having a phoney charge of treason fixed on him, and conviction by a packed court. This largely disappeared after 1688.

The Revolution of 1688 weakened the Crown, William and Mary becoming joint Sovereigns on conditions laid down by Parliament. The Bill of Rights established Parliament’s right to elect the sovereign, change the order of succession, and depose a King. The Act of Settlement of 1701 extended these powers. Kings were forbidden to leave the country without the consent of Parliament, and no judge could be removed except by Parliament. Thus began the slow but steady stripping of power from the Crown, and its transfer to Parliament, that went on through the 18th and early 19th centuries. This process was aided by the fact that from Queen Anne to William IV, or to quote the terms of common abuse from “Brandy Nan” to “Silly Billy,” the throne was occupied by a line of people of the most monumental incompetence. Not that Parliament in the 18th century was even remotely democratic, the vast majority of the people having no vote. Power at National level was largely in the hands of the Aristocracy—the large landowners—and at local level in those of the gentry or lesser landowners. The masses, especially in London, expressed themselves by bouts of rioting and arson.

By the time of Victoria’s ascension the power of the Crown was largely gone, but she could still, in 1839, keep a Whig government in power by refusing to appoint Peel to Prime Minister in spite of the government’s lack of a proper majority. Victorian politics were tough and dirty, and the methods used to force the hand of the Queen were ruthless in the extreme. An interesting point is the part played by those later pillars of respectability, the Times and the Morning Post, who printed stuff that would land a modern editor in gaol.

What the future of the Monarchy will be is anybody’s guess. One thing is certain. If the bulk of the Capitalist class decide to end it, they will do so. After all they got rid of one King in 1936, and would not hesitate to get rid of the whole lot. Something that is equally certain is that if the Monarchy goes, but Capitalism remains, the working class will not notice any difference. Except perhaps for a different head on the postage stamps.

Les Dale

Inflation and prices - Part 4 (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 3.

In this last instalment it may be useful to make a few brief comments on the subject which we have been discussing.

A great many people think that higher prices are caused by higher wages; they look at what has been happening in the last 20 or 25 years and they think this proves their point. One fact is enough to dispel this belief. Between 1945 and 1951 the retail price index was more or less continually rising faster than wage rates, it was not a question of wages going up and prices following, but the reverse. Secondly, it has to be remembered that in a period of continuing inflation, when manufacturers can more or less confidently expect that there will be a steady rise of prices of, say, five per cent a year because of inflation, they would often prefer to give a wage increase when it is demanded than to risk a strike. And, of course, they never fail to represent the price rise which would take place anyway as having been due to the wage increase. They will often time their price increases to follow a wage increase to give this impression, although if market conditions are against them, they cannot put up their prices whether they want to or not and whether wages have gone up or not.

At the present time the Government in Great Britain talks in terms of having no more inflation, even if this might mean fighting the trade unions over wage claims and risking big strikes. It remains to be seen whether they will. While relatively full employment lasts, the trade unions are in a fairly strong position, rather different from the situation between the wars when there was always at least a million unemployed.

Governments do not always prefer inflation. In certain countries they carry out the reverse—a deflationary movement—as the British Government did after the First World War. On that occasion prices went down by about one-third, and wages came down with them. Russia since the Second World War has twice up-valued the rouble, replacing the old currency by a new and much reduced quantity of notes. France did the same in 1960. One of the reasons why in Great Britain the Government is unlikely to try to reduce prices to anything like their former level is that its obligation to pay hundreds of millions of pounds on the National Debt would become an enormously increased real burden, if they had to pay it in currency, the purchasing power of which was being increased by the deflationary fall of prices.

During the last 25 years the holders of Government securities have found that the real value of their holdings and the purchasing power of the interest they received on them are steadily being reduced by the falling value of the pound. This has suited the interests of the general body of capitalists in Great Britain.

When Russia in 1947 up-valued their rouble they got over that particular difficulty by simultaneously reducing the amount of bond holdings. A Russian, for example, who had Government bonds to the value of 1,000 roubles, found when the up-valuing of the rouble took place, that his holding of Government bonds was cut by one-third or one-half.

No city editor or orthodox economist accepts the Marxian view that the increase of a non-convertible note issue is a cause of inflation. Some of them, including some of the followers of the late Maynard Keynes, deny that the note issue has been excessive, and say that it has merely kept pace with the currency needs required by expanding trade. It is, however, for them to explain why it was necessary to multiply the note issue in Great Britain by nearly five times in face of the fact that the actual physical volume of production in Great Britain is now not more than about five per cent above the pre-war level. Obviously, these two facts do not square with the interpretation put on the note issue. It is a reasonable assumption that the excess issue has only been made necessary by the multiplied price level, which has itself been largely caused by the note issue. Another group of economists deny that the note issue matters any more, one way or the other. It is for them to explain why the Government troubled to multiply the note issue if it is not of sufficient importance to have any effect.

Edgar Hardcastle

(Concluded)

“Visit a socialist country this year” (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

“Visit a socialist country this year,” said the advertisement. The result of reading this was that one dreary Sunday morning several months later I found myself in the centre of Karl Marx Stadt, in the middle of a vast crowd, listening to a speech by Walter Ulbricht—First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, and Chairman of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic.

The “Socialist Unity Party” was formed by the union of the “Communist” Party and the Social Democratic Party in the Eastern sector of Germany on 21st April, 1946. Here, then, was the “socialism” of East Germany plain for all to see. The country’s leading party proclaimed itself a “socialist” party, the town of Chemnitz had been renamed after the socialist pioneer Marx, and—-to clear up any remaining doubts—the official travel guide (VEB edition, Leipzig 1962) announced, in terms that brooked no argument: “The German Democratic Republic is a socialist state.”

Ulbricht was addressing an international rally of pioneers—the youth organisations of the East European countries. Following his speech the children were marshalled and then followed a massive parade of the marching pioneers in their thousands, complete with uniforms, banners and martial music. It was certainly an impressive spectacle and, for sheer military precision, it must surely have equalled anything the Hitler Youth could have achieved. The party of Young Communist League members, with whom I was travelling, was wild with enthusiasm and evidently could see no contradiction between the sight of these herded and dragooned youngsters yelling their slogans in carefully rehearsed unison and the professed socialist nature of the organisations to which they belonged.

The Socialist Unity Party officials were continually bringing to our attention aspects of their country which, they contended, illustrated its “socialist” nature. A favourite example was the national health service. Yet Otto Lehmann—director of the East German social insurance service—has some interesting revelations to make on this subject:

“But there are also hidden reserves of labour power which can be tapped by improving workers’ health and living conditions . . . Herr Lehmann described how effective measures of this kind can be. In the Nunchritz chemical factory, for example, labour productivity and output were doubled and profits increased by 400 per cent between 1958 and 1963, while the sickness rate fell from 5.56 per cent to 4.81 per cent . . . These good results can be traced quite clearly to better working conditions and preventive health measures . . .” (Democratic German Report, February 19th, 1965).

This is reminiscent of nothing so much as Sir John Anderson speaking in the House of Commons and saying:

“On a long view the improved standard of health and education resulting from the development of the social services ought to increase enormously our productive efficiency as a community.” (Our italics. Hansard, 11th April, 1949).

How can it be that in “socialist” East Germany and capitalist Great Britain the national health services can find such identical justification? Yet this muddled thinking on the part of the membership of the “Socialist Unity Party” is less surprising when some of the profundities of its leader are examined. Walter Ulbricht can hardly be recommended as a beacon of socialist understanding. For example, he advises how socialism may be achieved “in some countries”:

“… the question can be examined as to whether the workers in some countries may not be able, under capitalist conditions, to use their political and economic struggle in order to reduce the power of the great monopolies, and later to “buy them out”.

Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx had considered this not only possible, but under certain conditions possibly the “cheapest way” of establishing socialism(!.), Walter Ulbricht recalled.” (Our emphasis. Democratic German Report. October 16th, 1964).

So there we have it, comrades; First Secretary Ulbricht (in the name of Marx and Engels) points the way to cut-price socialism.

However, the visit to East Germany was certainly not without value. For example, I learnt that by 1980 the wages system will definitely be abolished in the U.S.S.R.; or, at least, so one earnest young “communist” assured me. But, without a shadow of doubt, the burning question of the day in the “communist” world at present is nothing so mundane as the abolition of wage labour but, instead, the Sino-Soviet dispute. Ulbricht has clearly demonstrated his own discomfort on this issue. At a meeting in the Schwarze Pumpe coal combine on November 3rd, 1964 he stated in reply to questions about relations with China :

“I have no intention of avoiding this question . . . but I must say quite frankly that our knowledge is not great enough to say anything in detail about such questions.”

Within the rank and file of his party, however, opinions are expressed which—though they cannot be recommended being any nearer to the socialist position than Ulbricht’s—are, nevertheless, less bigoted. My most cherished memory of East Germany is of an argument with a member of the “Socialist Unity Party”. Because of the strange ideas I had been expressing, which he had evidently not bothered to listen to, he thought I must be a supporter of Mao tse-Tung and therefore launched into a violent attack on the Chinese leader. He ended by storming: “Mao tse-Tung is not a good communist!” I pointed out that surely Mao tse-Tung had been described as a great communist by Stalin and other leading communists in their day. Seeing his dilemma, he compromised: “Mao tse-Tung is a great communist but not a good communist”.

John Crump

What a lovely war!—for some (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “rights” and “wrongs” of the war in Vietnam are discussed ad nauseum, and the story varies according to who is telling it. One thing which everyone knows is that each day people are killed, wounded, made homeless and their lands and means of livelihood devastated.

Although everyone knows that weapons are needed to conduct a war, not much thought is generally given by the Man In The Street to the enormously increased profits being raked in by arms manufacturers.

In the Financial Times of 12th May appeared an article “The Defence Industry’s Shot in the Arm”. At the end of last year, it appears, much concern was caused among arms manufacturers in the U.S. by the announcement of an Industrial Research and Management Consultancy firm that the aerospace industry must expect a drop of 30 per cent over the five years up to 1969, due to the cutting back of the missile programme.

However the capitalists of this industry can, it appears, once more sleep easily, secure in the knowledge that orders for military helicopters have been doubled by the Defence Department. The Bell Company has already received a contract worth $50 million for the production of these helicopters and the Avco Corporation are to get an order worth $45 million.

In addition there is the happy expectation in other parts of the Defence Industry of the need for another 200 Douglas Skyraiders; and orders for replacement parts for these aircraft and for Thunderchief bombers are likely to be heavy. Lockheed Transport expect a large increase in orders for their military transport planes and several new war planes are under test with a view to their use in Vietnam.

The intention to add 340,000 men to the armed forces in Vietnam spells fat contracts for clothes, vehicles and ammunition, and contracts worth millions of dollars have recently been awarded to various weapons and ammunition manufacturers.

No doubt all these manufacturers look forward with happy confidence to the next few years. Compared with such profits and prospects the loss of a few thousand lives—Vietnamese and American, while regrettable, must surely—in their view—be borne with equanimity.

E.G.

Party News: Swansea Discussion (1965)

Party News from the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

A successful discussion between members of the Swansea Young Socialists and the Swansea Branch was held on September 6th. Our comrade Ambridge opened the discussion and .the Branch feel that this was a good propaganda occasion. The audience participation was keen and eager and the Branch are hoping for further discussions with other organisations during the forthcoming autumn season.

SPGB Meetings (1965)

Party News from the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

50 Years Ago: Socialists and Religion (1965)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The spectacle of the warring nations of Europe supplicating the same good and almighty god for armed victory over each other is ludicrous enough. Small wonder that it is subject for derision.

Moreover, practically every religious sect has hastened to put its private brand of almighty power at the service of the capitalist interests which are responsible for the modern machine-made murder . . .

Nevertheless the power of religion to keep the workers servile is fast waning. Technical progress, the advance of knowledge, the march of events, drive it continually farther from real life. True it is that religion cannot entirely disappear until man's relations with his fellows and with nature become clear, ordered, rational and unambiguous. True it is that man’s emancipation from wage-slavery, from irrational poverty and ignorance will alone finally lay the ghost of superstition. Yet the present fading of religion is an unmixed good. The power of religion has ever been potent for evil. It has been throughout political history the abetter of oppression, the enemy of freedom, of science and of humanity. It is still used as far as practicable as the hand-maiden of class domination.

As Socialists, indeed, our main attack must be against the entrenched political power of capitalism, and to this all else must be subordinated; but the war on religion, which is the power of inertia of human development, is part of the work that must be done in that great struggle. 

[From the article 'Superstition at bay' by F. C. Watts, Socialist Standard, October 1915.]

Letter: State Capitalism in Russia (1965)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

From reading the national press it appears that the term “State Capitalist” will become an accepted phrase when applied, for example, to the contemporary Russian and Chinese economic systems. Am I justified in assuming that the SPGB were the first to apply the theory of State Capitalism to Soviet Russia in me 1920’s? Can you tell me something about the origin of the term; e.g. where the credit lies for first developing this theory.

J. E. K.

Coventry

Reply:

The Socialist Party would not wish to claim what is not our due. As a matter of fact the Bolshevik’s themselves were the first to apply the term “state capitalism" to Soviet Russia.

Lenin first used the term in 1918 to describe the only policy that a “proletarian state" could pursue in the circumstances. He took as his model the war-time system of controls which had been built up in Germany whereby the State assumed large powers to control capitalist industry in the interests of the war effort. Lenin held that in Russia capitalist industry could be similarly controlled but in the interests of the mass of workers and peasants. He knew that Socialism was impossible in Russia because the economic basis for it, large-scale social production, hardly existed. A policy of State Capitalism, or the development of the large-scale social production of capitalism under the control of the “proletarian state”, was all that could be done. Lenin admitted this openly when introducing plans for the New Economic Policy in 1920. This policy of State Capitalism upset the more Utopian and simple elements among the Bolsheviks who both in 1918 and in 1920 denounced the “betrayal” and “retreat” which they claimed this policy represented.

Although this is open to debate, Lenin seems to have regarded the socialist aspect of Soviet Russia to lie not in the economic field but in the political, in the control of State power by the Bolshevik party, the “vanguard” of the working class. It is true however that on occasions he did refer to the “socialist industries” of Russia.

In the disputes in the Bolshevik party which followed Lenin’s death in 1924 this ambiguous position was used by both sides. At the XIVth Party Congress in December 1925 and in a book, Leninism, Zinoviev went so far as to claim that the nationalised industries in Russia were not socialist but were state capitalist; in other words that the workers who were employed in the State trusts were still exploited. Stalin opposed this insisting that these industries were socialist. Trotsky too rejected Zinoviev’s views.

It can thus be seen that the term “state capitalism” was in frequent use, and not necessarily as a term of criticism, in the early discussions of the victorious Bolshevik party. After the final triumph of the group led by Stalin and the suppression of free discussion in the party altogether the term became unacceptable. In 1928 began the “era of socialist construction” ending in 1936 with the proclamation of “socialism” in Russia.

Dissident Bolsheviks of all kinds insisted on the “state capitalist" label against the claims of the Stalinist majority though the largest group of them, the Trotskyists, never did accept this argument. Trotsky held that the trouble was mainly political; the loss of political power by the working class to the bureaucracy represented by Stalin. This however did not alter the fact that the "socialist" basis of the economy still existed in the nationalised industries.

The Socialist Party operating in Britain faced a different situation. Many of the admirers of Soviet Russia in Britain were not equipped with the Marxian knowledge of men like Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev; they talked about “socialism" as if it already existed in Russia; all sorts of extravagant claims as to what the Bolsheviks had done or could do were made. In this situation the Socialist Party used its Marxian knowledge to bring home a few basic facts: Socialism was not possible in Russia; whatever the Bolsheviks could do to help the working class in Russia (and they did do something at least at the beginning) they could not introduce Socialism; neither the material (social production) nor the intellectual (a socialist working class) prerequisites of Socialism existed in Russia. Only Capitalism was possible.

The first reference to state capitalism in our journal, the Socialist Standard, was in July 1920 in a discussion of Lenin's pamphlet, The Chief Task of Our Times. Lenin’s admission in this pamphlet that Socialism was a long way off in Russia and that the capitalist stage of economic development would have to come first in the form of State Capitalism was seen as a complete vindication of the position the Socialist Party had maintained from the beginning.

We also denied the claim of the Bolsheviks that they had established a “proletarian state" or a “socialist republic”. Their rule was not, as they claimed, equivalent to that of the working class. The Bolshevik party was supported by only a minority of the working class, let alone of the population as a whole, and maintained itself in power by undemocratic means such as the suppression of other parties and their journals and the jailing of opponents; a fact which was to have a significant effect on the subsequent evolution of the regime in Russia.

From its foundation in 1904 the Socialist Party maintained that nationalised institutions like the Post Office were examples not of socialism but rather of state capitalism.

 

Thus we had no difficulty—or hesitation—in pointing out the state capitalist nature also of the nationalised industries in Russia. When in the 1930's this sector was greatly extended and the whole system labelled “socialism", our reply was to deny this and describe the whole system as “state capitalism".

Even if the Socialist Party was not the first to use the term we do feel that we deserve credit for developing a coherent theory of what was possible in Russia and for consistently standing by it—to be proved correct by events. In the 20's. 30's and 40's, despite the unpopularity of our position, we were the only organization in Britain to point out the real nature of what was called socialism in Russia. As such we became the scourge of the so-called Communist Party and its fellow travellers.

In recent years, it is true, the state capitalist designation has become more widely accepted but without any recognition of the pioneer work we have done in developing this theory or, unfortunately, any understanding of the lessons of what happened in Russia.

Editors.