The Age of Keynes (1971)

Book Review from the August 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Age of Keynes. A Biographical Study, by Robert Lekachman. Pelican, 30p.

For most of the thirty years just passed, the academic study of political economy has proceeded on the assertion of the Keynesians that it is not necessary to abolish the capitalist system, because it can be manipulated for the general good. By this they mean, that skilful handling of the economy can ensure that there will always be wage-labour for those who must avail themselves of it because they have no other means of subsistence, while the capitalist class will be able to enjoy untrammelled success to wealth as heretofore.

Considering that the edifice of academic economics erected in modern times is essentially nothing but a camouflage against the works of Marx, it is surely reasonable to hope that, in a biography of his principal adversary, some of his arguments would at least be touched upon in passing. But the hope is in vain. Throughout the book the only direct reference to Marx is a quotation from an essay written by Keynes in 1925, when he was old enough to know better, in which he makes a first class fool of himself by declaring, without any supporting argument worthy of the name, that ‘Capital’ is “without interest or application for the modern world”. The diatribe, including the abhorrence which “an educated, intelligent, decent son of Western Europe” must naturally feel for Marx and all his works, is here printed in full.

Is this what we are expected to accept as Keynes’ final criticism of Marx? Could he not do any better later in life? Did he not, at any time, state an opinion on the theory of surplus value? Is his modern biographer, an American professor of economics, not able to manage just one more bash at the much battered-about labour theory?

Obviously then there is little here to interest an educated intelligent worker, whether he happens to be a "decent son of Western Europe” or the son of Chinese sea cook, but there are some weird themes running through the book which it may be a pity to miss. The most revealing, perhaps, is based on the notion that Keynes’ theories can only be seen working properly in time of war. We are given a description of world economics in 1943; “economies rejoicing in buoyant demand, factories operating at capacity and overfull employment”.

As always with Keynesian economists the question of employment, other people’s employment, of course, not his own, is of anxious concern to this professor. “Making work” for other people, preferably at a factory bench, is an obsession with him. But perhaps the most revolting examples of capitalistic cant are the references to Keynes cleverness in gambling on the Stock Exchange.

It is a frightening thought that students of political economy, the understanding of which is of such overwhelming importance to every human being, still have to soil their minds with this sort of rubbish in universities today.

F.T.G.

Sea Dogs (1938)

Book Review from the September 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Floating Republic" by Bonamy Dobree & G. E. Mainwaring (Pelican Books, 6d.)

"The Floating Republic" (Pelican Books, 6d.) should be read by all who desire to get a truthful presentation of sheer facts about the Spithead and Nore Mutinies of 1797. Deliberate suppression, distortion, misplaced emphasis: these have been the main instruments of historians writing in the interest of their class, or of the class to which they have prostituted, in many cases, their undoubted literary powers. It required centuries to reveal the fact that Thucydides (great Greek historian and no mean admiral) was more actuated by a desire to safeguard his interest in silver mines (2,360 years ago) than by Athenian “patriotism.” Macaulay’s touching picture of William of Orange’s affection for his joint-sovereign queen must be valued in relation to such facts as recorded in “Capital” (Vol. 1, S. Sonnenschein, p. 747; “Everyman,” Vol. 2, p. 801). Look it up. Compton Mackenzie’s blunt statement that Macaulay’s hero was a “homosexual” is not wholly irrelevant here. (“Literature in my time,” p. 82.)

A specific example of misstatement amounting to deliberate lying is afforded in the Rev. J. Franck Bright’s “History of England ” (Period III, p. 1195): “Under [Parker’s] influence, the demands of the mutineers assumed a political character.” He characterises the mutiny at Spithead as “wholly unpolitical.” Readers of the “Floating Republic” will be able to judge whether by any stretch of the word, “political” considerations differentiated the two mutinies—any more than at Invergordon “political” motives governed that very mild “mutiny.”

Bright also states that Lord Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty, “was met with nothing but insult.” Actually, Spencer refused to hear the men except through intermediaries, and “insult ” may be judged by the fact that, while negotiations were proceeding, the Royal Ensign was hung out on the King’s birthday; both at the Nore and at Spithead the mutineers were pathetically anxious to testify love and loyalty to their gracious monarch. In this connection, it is worth noting that George III “unreservedly concurred” in Spencer’s “express determination not to add to concessions already given.” What these “concessions” amounted to, readers of the “Floating Republic ” will learn for themselves. A petition to “His Majesty’s sacred person and Government,” backed to some extent by a captain of a ship, left His Sacred Majesty “ unmoved.” . . . When the game of Sacred Majesty jamboreeing with Boy Scouts is over, when monarchy is revealed once for all as a tawdry instrument of the capitalised class, we shall learn the real sentiments of the parasitic crowd circling round it—in the lifetime of not a few of us we have seen an Edward-the-Peacemaker’s warm friendship for the Gallifet, who found a fiendish pleasure in massacring working-class men and women who had dared to challenge the position of the governing classes in France in 1871.

Vague impressions of the brutality prevalent in the Navy at the time of the Mutiny—and persisting in its worst forms scores of years afterwards —should be replaced by clear knowledge. Of flogging : “Six blows tore the flesh horribly, after a dozen the back looked like so much 'putrified liver.' After a time the bones showed through, blood burst from the bitten tongue, and expelled from the lungs, dribbled through nostrils and ears. . . .” We apologise to those whom the catalogue of horrors in pages 67-69 gives a sleepless night. . . .

Impatient readers may ask: Why this recital of, and invitation to, nightmare horrors?

A quite pertinent question.

It is to emphasise several important facts which History has established. One is, that an exploiting class, despite all “humanitarian” pretensions, in the face of an alleged “Brotherhood of Man based on the Fatherhood of God,” or any other such meaningless formula, is, and of necessity must be, fundamentally brutal, based as it is upon force, especially in its relations to the exploited class. At the time of the Mutinies, the sweat and blood of men, women and children was being coined into the wherewithal to assist in contesting naval supremacy with France. Admitted scallawags and gaol-birds formed a goodly proportion of “Ye Mariners of England ”—the system manufactured this particular type of goods—it still remains that class distinction spawned also a breed of sadistic bullies who rewarded the rank and file protectors of their invested interest in the sea with contempt, with unspeakable conditions, with flogging, with keelhauling, and with downright theft (for details, see book, which, by the way, is most praiseworthily documented).

Another point emerging is that, faced with dangers arising from the Class Struggle, the capitalist class will stick at nothing—the lying allegation is often made at propaganda meetings that the Socialist Party of Great Britain refuses to face up to this fact. Clause 6 of the “Declaration of Principles” sufficiently refutes the allegation. Control of the “armed forces of the Nation” by a politically informed Socialist working class will not imply imposing march-pasts in Hyde Park with eyes-right to some giant “leader.”

Parker was hanged—Camperdown was won mainly by the sailors who left him to his fate. Whatever may have been his defects, Parker must stand high in the estimation of the Socialist worker. . . . There is no call for Parker martyrs, however, to-day. Since Marx’s analysis of society, the political position has been entirely clarified on broad issues. A Socialist working class will brook no “leaders,” there will be none, therefore, to sell out and there will, on the other hand, be none for the working class to leave to their unhappy fate.

Reginald.

South Africa’s “Communists" (1970)

Book Review from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class and Colour in South Africa, by H. J. and R. Simons, Pelican. 21s.

Most of this book is a history of, or rather an apology for, the Communist Party of South Africa, which is not surprising since its authors were both prominent members of that Party at the time of its dissolution in 1950.

The CPSA, like so-called communist parties everywhere, had a shameful record of twists and turns in accord with the changing policies of state capitalist Russia. At one time it backed the white racist Labour Party and its alliance with the Afrikaner Nationalists; at another it was demanding a Black Republic. Then it violently denounced all other labour and nationalist groups; later it sought a "people’s front” with them.

The CPSA became committed to demanding a Black Republic after its 7th Congress in January 1929. The Simons — and this is typical of their apologies — claim this decision was reached democratically and not forced on the Party by the Communist International. Again, when in 1931 a number of the Party’s leaders and prominent trade unionists were expelled, according to the Simons this was another free decision.

A number of embarrassing episodes are glossed over. The Simons merely record without comment the execution of Lazar Bach, then a leading member of the CPSA, when he went to Moscow on its behalf in 1935. Then there is their Party's attitude to the Second World War. "Unlike communists in English-speaking countries, and without any prompting or instructions from outside”, we are told, “the party’s central committee went into opposition immediately on the outbreak of war”. They called for an immediate peace and pointed out to the Africans, Coloureds and Indians the hypocrisy of the government’s claim to be fighting for democracy while denying them the most elementary democratic rights. After the invasion of Russia in June 1941, of course, the CPSA was all out for the war. Now they opposed strikes and urged African and other workers to settle their grievances “while avoiding any stoppage of work”.

There is also much more than meets the eye behind the Simons’ special criticism of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) and its policy of non-collaboration (e.g., boycott of elections to Native and Coloured councils) with the government. The Simons suggest that this was a policy of inaction that particularly appealed to the Coloured teachers who led the NEUM since it gave them an excuse not to engage in activities like contesting elections that might endanger their jobs. Maybe, but the CPSA has good reason to try to discredit the NEUM since, as a trotskyist-influenced and more radical body, this is their main rival for the support of African, Coloured and Indian political activists.

It is facts like these which suggest that other parts of the book are probably unreliable too.

Adam Buick

Twilight world (1985)

Book Review from the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Tyranny of the Status Quo. Milton and Rose Friedman. Pelican Books, 1985, 2.95.

In all developed capitalist countries the same basic pattern has been followed. A take off in government spending, mostly accounted for by reformist welfare schemes, with a relative shift towards central government, away from local levels. In Britain and other European countries this trend started earlier. This leads us to the topic of inflation. The Friedmans are in no doubt that the main cause of inflation over the centuries of money economies has been deliberate acts by governments. This assertion is conclusively backed up by the statistics the authors offer. Noting that inflation in America took off not long after government spending, they show how the large and unpopular tax increases (unpopular to many workers as capitalists in general, although this feeling is based on a misunderstanding of how wages are determined) necessary to finance these programmes can be partially staved off by "deficit financing". Often a government will resort to borrowing as an alternative but problems generally arise about the repaying of loans with interest which increases the temptation to resort to the printing press.

As total supporters of capitalism the Friedmans understandably omit to mention an important advantage of inflation from a ruling class viewpoint. Between one wage settlement and another the workers' purchasing power is steadily eroded, leaving it to them to take the initiative in an attempt to rectify the situation. The mere fact that if deflation rather than inflation were to obtain all this would be reversed is a powerful disincentive restraining most capitalists from pressing for more than reduction in the inflation rate.

In dealing with proposals to bail out "lame ducks" (another allegedly progressive cause), the authors examine the case of the Chrysler Corporation, an example viewed with favour by many leftists. They point out that no change in the car market resulted from this action by the state. Instead of going out of business Chrysler continued to sell cars so there must have been a reduction in sales so there must have been a reduction in sales by their competitors. The jobs "saved" at Chrysler were lost elsewhere. Those who lost were diffused and largely unaware of the connection but wherever they live there was no net gain of jobs. That the Friedmans can see this so clearly puts into a pretty poor light those lefties who are endlessly calling for "job creation".

The authors raise an objection to capitalism being described as the "profit system". They say it is a profit and loss system, and identify the loss component as the more important as it is this, or the fear of it, which they believe enhances the efficiency of the system. Whatever merit there is in this observation, it puts the Friedman's out on a limb even among the open defenders of the present system. Capitalism would still be ugly and inefficient from any sane standpoint even if regular profits could be guaranteed. However, it is the loss factor and the reaction it forces on individual firms that activates the most objectionable features. It is fair to say that most reforms, whether initiated by capitalists themselves or forced from them under pressure, have been designed to mitigate these loss-induced features. From this as we have already seen arises a significant part of the big government and its big spending against which the Friedmans have been railing for so long. The efforts of "entrenched trade unions" (sic) to protect themselves by establishing minimum wages and some form of job security also earn a blast from the authors. Generally speaking the unions have no alternative, although care is required to see that action does not "save" one man's job by taking another's away.

Even with our somewhat charitable interpretation this exhausts the digestible parts of the book. Big government is the enemy and the answer is to reduce it, the authors say ad nauseum here and elsewhere. Exactly how far they wish to go along that road is not made clear, but at least they don't pretend to be advocating "socialism" or even to be benefitting all workers. Clearly they regard socialism (as we use the term( as pure fantasy, while liberally applying the word to other forms of capitalism. Some absurdly simplistic "solutions" are put forward. Crime, for instance, could be cut by from a third to a half by simply legalising the trade of narcotic drugs. Incidentally we are told that crime cannot be related to social conditions because if it were the rate in Bombay and Calcutta would be much higher than in American cities instead of the reverse being the case. The Friedmans' notion of who pays taxes is almost the complete inverse of reality. They deny that the capitalists pay any taxes, because they think they can pass the cost on to the customer, and see the whole tax burden as falling on individuals, mainly workers.

The Friedmans' arguments, given in more detail in their earlier works, are only a contribution to the continuous debate on how best capitalist can be run, a subject in which we have no interest. Unlike many others of their ilk, they have stuck to their views with some consistency which is why they occasionally make telling points which escape or are ignored by their rivals. If for instance a government increases tariffs on certain imported goods, it may well be, as the Friedmans imply, that in the long term more harm than good may come to the local capitalists as a whole. But those immediately threatened may well have gone out of business before the longer term effects are noticed and they will therefore press for all they are worth for a protectionist policy. When any harmful side effects manifest themselves other short-term crises will have arisen to divert attention from the cause. Not that sectional interests are not sacrificed, indeed even this oversimplified example shows that not all capitalists can be accommodated at once. It is this continuous cut and thrust from which the authors stand apart, seeing attempts by governments to follow a consensus line as weakness and lack of principle. The Friedmans point out that the Reagan and Thatcher governments were elected promising apparently sweeping changes of which they (for once) approved. However after a honeymoon period these administrators lost momentum. They are correct in thinking that this is a common occurrence, and the basic cause is as illustrated by the tariffs' example but multiplied to cover all capitalist interest who feel threatened. Usually the government is forced to pay attention to this clamour and modify many of its policies, although there have been some exceptional cases. What cheek it is to describe this process as a tyranny! Being forced to sell our labour power to an employer as the only way to make any kind of living, now that is a tyranny.

E. C. Edge 

The Young Marx (1972)

Book Review from the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx before Marxism by David McLellan. Pelican. 40p

This book, now republished as a Pelican, traces the development of Marx's ideas until in 1844, at the age of 25, he became a Socialist (or Communist, as would then more usually have been said).

Marx was born in May 1818 in Trier in in the Rhineland, which had been annexed to France between 1795 and 1814. His father was a legal official who was originally a Jew but who, on the return of the Rhineland to Prussia, had to become a Christian in order to keep his job. Marx himself was baptized as a Lutheran Protestant and went to the local high school and later to university at Bonn, then at Berlin and then back at Bonn again, eventually getting a doctorate from the University of Jena for a thesis on the Ancient Greek philosophers, Democritos and Epicurus.

Marx had originally intended himself becoming a lawyer, but then planned an academic career as a teacher of philosophy. When political considerations made this impossible—Marx had become one of the Young-Hegelians who gave Hegel's philosophy an atheist and radical-democratic twist—he turned to journalism, becoming in October 1842 the editor of the liberal Rheinische Zeitung. At this time Marx was still politically a radical democrat and argued forcefully against censorship and for freedom of the press in Prussia. So forcefully, in fact, that the paper was banned in March 1843. In June Marx married Jenny von Westphalen (whose father had not only been a German baron but also related to the British Dukes of Argyll!) and in October moved to Paris.

Here Marx came into contact with German and French Communists (indeed he lived in the same house as one prominent member of the German Workers' League of the Just, which later became the Communist League for which the famous manifesto was written) and his writings take on a more pro-working class character. McLellan dates Marx's adherence to Communism as sometime during the first three months of 1844.

Marx's writings of this period are, to a modern reader, excessively philosophical, being full of the difficult terminology of the then fashionable German philosophers Hegel and Feuerbach. Marx's whole conception of the socialist revolution too was still philosophical: he saw it as the combination of man's most advanced consciousness (German philosophy or, rather, its outcome) and man's most suffering section (the proletariat). This conception had élitist undertones—the proletariat was to be the instrument of philosophy, i.e.,  a weapon in the hands of philosophers, to achieve Hegel's "rational reality" or Feuerbach's "true species-life"—which Marx was soon to abandon when he teamed up with Engels and the two of them began to put socialist theory on to a more scientific basis. Hence the title of this book of course.

McLellan here provides a good introduction to Marx's writings of this period: the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of the State (some unpublished notes written in March 1843 before he moved to Paris), on The Jewish Question and Introduction to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law (both of which were published by Marx soon after moving to Paris, the latter containing the famous phrase about religion being the opium of the people) and the so-called Paris Manuscripts (again unpublished notes).

These works are not essential reading but they do provide the key to what Marx and Engels meant when in later works they wrote of "the end of philosophy" and of leaping "from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom" and of Socialism as "the beginning of history".

Adam Buick

G. B. Shaw as a Guide to Socialism (1937)

Book Review from the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, republished in the Pelican Books series, in two volumes at 6d. each runs to nearly 500 pages and includes two new chapters on “Sovietism” and “Fascism.”

It contains in handy form Shaw’s views on a vast number of topics. It is an entertaining work with much well-aimed and swiftly-phrased sniping at the defenders of capitalism, but it provokes the obvious question: to what extent is Shaw a reliable guide to Socialism? In a review of the first edition Professor Laski claimed that the book had one merit which far outweighs all the faults: and up to a point Socialists can agree. The feature Laski had in mind was Shaw’s sustained and devastating attack on all the silly or dishonest arguments with which capitalists and their friends defend inequality of income and property. That is a useful piece of work and one still more necessary now that the advocates of inequality have been joined by some new recruits, the Communists, who are to-day anxious to repudiate Lenin’s sensible advocacy of equality.

With the rapid growth of inequality as a deliberate policy in Russia it remains to be seen how long Shaw will continue to regard the Soviet Government as an “amazing success,” for he says repeatedly that Socialism and inequality are quite incompatible – ”Socialism means equality of income or nothing” (page 468).

Socialists, of course, do not accept Shaw’s view – an essentially Utopian one – that there will be money-incomes under Socialism. Shaw shows in every chapter that his great defect is his lack of a thorough knowledge of economics and of the nature of capitalism. When he is blowing up capitalist pretences and prejudices he is good, but as soon as he tries to present an alternative he falls into the error of his Labour Party associates of thinking that the capitalist foundation can be made to support a Socialist system of society. He thinks that the production of goods for sale, the wages system and all the many financial and commercial institutions that minister to the needs of capitalist profit-making can be made the servants of Socialism. So he supports the idea of using “every device of taxation of income, restriction of inheritance and the like” to make incomes equal (page 442). He does not really see that the basis of capitalism is the private ownership and control of the means of production and distribution and that when this has given place to common ownership and democratic control there will be no need and no place for buying and selling, a wages system, money incomes, or a monetary system at all. It will be the job of the population to co-operate in producing the things needed by all and of distributing them freely to the population. Just that and nothing more. Shaw says Marx made a man of him. If only he had let Marx make a Marxist of him how he would have delighted to laugh at the absurd notion that under Socialism those who have produced the wealth by their joint efforts shall not permit themselves to consume it until they have first used a grotesque institution called a banking system to issue to themselves tickets-of-leave labelled banknotes or wasted useful metal on coins of the realm.

This brings us to Shaw’s indefensible attitude towards Marx. He repudiates most of the important theories for which we are indebted to Marx, but nowhere does he give a valid- reason. Always it is some smart irrelevance.

He rejects Marx’s theory of value as “a blunder which was presently corrected and superseded by the theory of Jevons” (page 464), but the reader is left to guess where Marx is supposed to have erred. He finds the Materialist Conception of History to be “easily vulnerable to criticism as a law of nature” (page 465), which would be interesting if Marx or any one else had ever offered it to us as a law of nature. He says that the Bolsheviks nearly wrecked Russia by following Marx, but does not substantiate the statement that they followed Marx, which we, as Marxists, deny.

Altogether Shaw is a bad guide to the basic principles of Socialism because he was unable or unwilling to learn them before offering to teach.

He has, however, a merit which lessens the harm he may do in that direction, the merit of saying plainly what he thinks. Because he is never ambiguous his self-contradictions stand out for all to see. There must be few people who can persuade themselves that they can agree with all Shaw says, so they can hardly fail to start thinking on their own account when they find him wittily “proving” that black is simultaneously both black and white.

Many instances of his contradictions and of his habit of turning and rending his friends come to mind. He says that Russia is an “amazing success,” which pleases the Communists, but it is only a few years since he found Italian Fascism also an “extraordinary success” (see correspondence in Manchester Guardian during October, 1927) and since he violently approved the “civilising” conquest of Abyssinia by Italy (see letter to The Times, October 22nd, 1935).

His friend, Lord Passfield (Sidney Webb), goes into raptures about the new Russian constitution, but although Shaw recommends his readers to learn all about Russia from the Webbs’ Soviet Communism he goes on to describe the new constitution “as a feat of window dressing to conciliate Liberal opinion in Europe and America” (page 442).

Long ago he delighted the Bolsheviks by declaring himself a supporter of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” But in a letter to The Times (August 20th, 1931) he explained that this alleged dictatorship of the proletariat is something:

“By which the proletariat is much more effectively dictated to for its own good than under our system.”

Whether the Russian workers think it is for their own good Shaw, with his innate preference for rule by the “intelligent minority,” i.e., by himself and his fellow-Fabians, would never dream of asking. Shaw has done much harm by his ridicule of democracy and praise of dictators and dictatorship. Typical pronouncements are : –

“Parliament is hopeless.” – (News Chronicle, January 6th, 1936.)
“Sir Oswald Mosley is a personal friend of mine, and I am very much interested in the whole affair [i.e., Mosley’s Fascist movement]. The Parliamentary system is breaking up.” – (News Chronicle, May 18th, 1934)

What Shaw never discloses is that he himself, in the Fabian Essays, and elsewhere right up to the War, helped to encourage the illusion that we could make progress to Socialism by using Parliament to introduce social reforms. Now he scorns the notion and turns to dictatorship, but he has not the grace to say that the S.P.G.B. opposed and exposed the fallacies and dangers of that policy right from the start. Nor does he see that reformism by dictatorship is not one whit better than reformism by democratic means.

One last instance of Shaw’s limitations touches on his inability to discriminate between men of substance like Marx and a political-journalist like H. G. Wells. In a letter to the Bolshevik paper Isvestia (published in the Daily Herald, December 8th, 1924) Shaw wrote flatteringly of Trotsky, but added this criticism : –

“But even he has allowed himself to speak of Mr. H. G. Wells with a contempt which shows that he has not read Mr. Well’s Outline of History, and has, therefore, no suspicion of what an enormous advance, on Das Kapital that work represents.”

Shaw went on to criticise Lenin, too, for his lack of appreciation of Wells and said that since Wells was not duly esteemed:

“What hope is there of any understanding for Mr. Sidney Webb (another English writer who has gone far beyond Marx) or for Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, or, may I say, for myself ?”

Doubtless, Shaw will say that his own reputation has risen since 1924, but even he must wonder now at his own stupidity in comparing the Wells, Webbs and MacDonalds with Marx. But perhaps not. Perhaps he still believes that it is better for the workers to trust in a MacDonald, a Wells, a Mosley, or Hitler than trust in themselves.

Edgar Hardcastle