Anti-fascism (2026)

Book Review from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bye Bye Blackshirt. By Mark Krantz. Bookmarks. 2026. 114pp

This book is a well-researched account of the opposition to Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) as that grouping rose to prominence in the 1930s on the back of similar movements in Italy and Germany. It offers a powerful evocation of the context and the atmosphere of the time it investigates, focusing in particular on the various ways in which, up and down the country and mainly in the years 1934-36, BUF activities were violently countered by left-wing groups and their supporters.

Taking their cue from Hitler’s Nazi party, Mosley and his BUF were virulently anti-semitic, portraying Jews as a malignant force in society – the enemy-in-chief. In a period of severe economic depression, they found a significant number of recruits among frustrated workers looking for ‘others’ to blame for their plight and sense of hopelessness. In London and up and down the country (for example Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Gateshead, Leeds, Swansea, Plymouth, Gillingham), the BUF organised large-scale meetings, both indoors and outdoors, often with Mosley at the helm and sometimes bringing along several thousand supporters dressed in black shirts who paraded slogans like ‘Perish the Jews’ and were primed to deal violently with protestors. At one of their rallies in 1934, Mosley announced that ‘Jews more than any single factor are undermining the prosperity of the British people today’.

The anti-BUF protests that took place were organised mainly by the Communist Party and the Independent Labour Party who themselves encouraged violent means to prevent meetings taking place or speakers being heard. Their tactic was what the author calls ‘direct confrontation and disruption’. So at a meeting in Gillingham in 1934, when Mosley appeared outside the meeting hall, we are told that ‘he was spat upon and missiles were thrown, including bottles’, and likewise, in Liverpool, he was ‘knocked unconscious by stones thrown at his head’.

Police were present at these events in numbers with a brief to facilitate the marches and meetings on ‘free speech’ grounds and thereby effectively siding with the Fascists in trying to prevent or ward off protests. The result was that protestors themselves were often dealt with violently by the police and arrested and charged with public disorder, in some cases leading to prison sentences.

At the most well-known of these events, ‘The Battle of Cable Street’ in October 1936, Mosley and his followers set out on a provocative march through what was known as the Jewish quarter of the East End of London. But the thousands of police seeking to ensure the BUF’s passage found themselves outnumbered by larger numbers of political opponents and locals who had put up barricades, mainly consisting of furniture, to block the procession. They charged to clear the way but were met, the author tells us, ‘with milk bottles, stones and marbles’ and ‘a brick went clean through the window’ of Mosley’s car’. The police gave it up as a bad job and Mosley and his followers had to turn back. The book describes the Battle of Cable Street, perhaps a little over-excitedly, as ‘the apex of the mass anti-fascist protests that stopped the advance of fascism in Britain’. And it is certainly true that, following this, support for the BUF began to wane and, by the time war broke out three years later, it had gone down dramatically, especially as it was seen by the British state as a potential ally to the Nazi enemy.

The book’s key argument is that the reason why the threat of a fascist takeover in Britain was never realised was the vigorous physical opposition it faced from left-wing forces and those who joined them. And this must indeed have had an effect. But it must be open to question whether, even it had not happened, any attempt at a violent takeover of the state by Mosley and his deluded followers could have had the same kind of success as Mussolini’s forces had had in Italy in the previous decade. Though the BUF presented itself as a threatening force, those workers willing to follow Mosley constituted a very small percentage of the population and would probably not have been capable of overturning the well-established system of capitalist democracy that existed in Britain, nor of setting up a repressive right-wing dictatorship as in Italy and Germany.

The writer also draws comparisons between Mosley’s movement in the ’30s and the current right-wing populism in Britain stirred up by such loathsome individuals as Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson. Will these be any more successful than Mosley in fomenting division and hatred among workers? It remains to be seen. But it has to be observed that the alarmism about this that Bye Bye Blackshirt evinces is typical of the longstanding Trotskyist belief in impending catastrophe and the hope that fear of this will cause workers to rally to the leadership of a vanguard party of the left to rescue them from the crisis and assert its own control. Such is the Trotskyist concept of ‘revolution from below’, which is entirely at odds with the need for a conscious spread of socialist understanding leading to democratic political action to establish a true socialist society of common ownership and free access – the real ‘revolution from below’.

Howard Moss

SPGB Snippets: Ann Widdecombe (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

July 15, 2026

Red faces in the Socialist Workers Party after their tweet on X in response to the death of Widdecombe was ‘Hooray, she’s dead’, followed by immediate deletion as furore swept the media. Some even confused the SWP with us.

So we should point out that, while we oppose capitalism and all its works, and urge the world’s people to establish a post-capitalist society of democratic common ownership, we have no truck with the SWP’s infantile reaction to the death (probably murder) of a pro-capitalist politician, however detestable that person’s opinions.

Capitalism is a worldwide system of private property and market trading, which can only be replaced at a worldwide scale by a conscious and informed majority, not by targeting individuals.

Silly Rivalry. (1932)

From the June 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

On May Day some demonstrators marched on the Japanese Embassy and were bludgeoned by the police. The Communists said that it was their stunt, and the l.L.P. journal, Forward, told the Communists how silly it was.

“The whole case against Communism might be summed up in the final feature of the day. This was the march against the Japanese Embassy….. The forces of police, foot and mounted, were overwhelming, and all that happened was a disgraceful scrimmage, cruel batonings, broken heads and several arrests.” (Forward, May 7th.)

Now read what the New Leader, the other l.L.P. organ, says :—

“The United Column…..was well over 1½ miles in length and very impressive. (This) is a piquant comment on the efforts of the Communist Party speakers to represent themselves the bold and true leaders as distinguished from the faint-hearted l.L.P. The small group which, after the police charges finally did break through to the offices of the Japanese Embassy, consisted almost exclusively of I.L.Pers and was led by one of the most prominent of the Divisional I.L.P. Propagandists.”

The I.L.P., like boastful schoolboys, thus present themselves to the Communists with the challenge : “We dare you to think of a stunt so damned silly that we won’t do it, too.”

Letter: Not That Sort of War (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not That Sort of War

I am not a member of the SPGB. Why? I object to Principle 8, line 4. War can prove nothing but who has more money or more brawn.

Winifred Mawson 

Horsham

Reply:

Your objection comes from too literal a reading. The statement that we “wage war against all other political parties” means that we oppose them uncompromisingly and seek to dissuade workers from supporting them, not that we envisage using armed force (or even fisticuffs) against them. War with weapons is not an instrument which Socialists can use. Means have to harmonize with ends. A regime brought into being by force thereafter depends on force: our instrument is understanding.

Editors

Letter: Our attitude on Hungary (1957)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our attitude on Hungary

Salford, 7,


December 18, 1956.

Dear Comrades,

I think the Party’s attitude on this subject needs further elucidation. In this month’s S.S. it is considered that the revolt is not worth the shedding of a drop of working-class blood.

This seems to conflict with previous statements that the Hungarian workers were trying to improve their miserable condition. In my view it also differs from the position on the first Russian revolution recently quoted in “50 years ago.” There it was stated that the workers and Capitalists have a short way to travel together. But not in Hungary!

In any case it needs to be made clear what the workers are supposed to do under a Communist dictatorship. It won’t be smashed without the shedding of working class blood; and there won’t be any Socialism or even propaganda for Socialism till it is smashed.

It has often been said that the Capitalists will never let themselves be ousted but if defeated on the Parliamentary field would form a dictatorship. I should have thought the original success of the Hungarians against their own national dictatorship (before overwhelming Russian intervention) was a good case for the Party in that respect. I think it also might have been mentioned that the working class, even those who had been schooled only on “Communism,” showed that objective conditions still prevailed over ’phoney propaganda.

In general I did feel the S.S. was less than generous to the heroic effort which wrested power, “with bare hands” from a police state.

Yours truly,

L. E. Weidberg.

Having said the above, may I add that the general excellence of the articles in the S.S. over the years is not unappreciated by one who has left the work to others.

Reply

The article in the December S.S. to which the critic refers made it clear that, whilst expressing sympathy with the victims of the “Communist” savagery, the Hungarian revolt was fundamentally a movement in favour of Hungarian Capitalist rule, and therefore was not worth the shedding of a drop of working class blood. One reason for this is that the removal of Russian Capitalist oppression is no guarantee that Hungarian Capitalist rule would be any better in the long run.

We have learnt from experience during the last 50 years. We were urged to support the Russian armed rising against the Czarist Police State 40 years ago. The result of that rising has been the establishment of one of the most savage and oppressive police states in the history of the world. We were urged to support the German rising about the same time and the result was another form of police state equally savage. Austria and China have had similar experiences.

However much we may desire to see freedom of expression where it is denied, armed uprising is not the way to accomplish it. Once guns enter into the dispute then guns continue to be be arbiters in internal clashes of ideas afterwards, until either economic development or organised working class action compels the powers that rule to make concessions. That has been the lesson repeatedly driven home, but not wholly appreciated, during toe last 100 years of working class activity. However much we may desire to make progress there is no quicker way than this organised working class action to clear the road to working class emancipation.

Thus, although we appreciate the courage of those who were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice rather than continue to suffer Russian domination, it is our duty as Socialists to tell the bitter truth. Firstly, that it was not a rising aimed at bringing toe workers freedom; secondly, that armed uprisings may bring a change of rulers but will not bring freedom from class rule; thirdly, that the success of toe uprising would not necessarily have put an end to the police state.

It is not true that there cannot be any Socialist propaganda until a “Communist” dictatorship is smashed. The critic himself suggests that there can be Socialist propaganda when he writes that “the working class, even those who had been schooled on 'Communism' showed that objective conditions still prevailed over phoney propaganda” The revolt was not a bolt out of toe blue. It had been discussed and organised. There is, and has been. Socialist propaganda in all “Communist” and other police states.

It is worth while bearing in mind that, according to the information so far available the peaceful agitation of the Hungarian workers by stopping work has accomplished more, at far less cost in human life, than the armed uprising did. Thus, it certainly appears that the sounder attitude for the Hungarian workers would have been to stick to that method from the beginning in order to accomplish the limited objectives they were after. Sooner than see the whole social fabric collapse into confusion the rulers would have conceded some at least of their demands. However, once an armed revolt was embarked upon bloody conflict was inevitable, with savage reprisals and the use of Russian armed might; and now the atmosphere is still there for further savage reprisals.

Another advantage strike action alone would have achieved would be this. Attacks on peaceful strikers by the police, the militia, and the army, would have made the savagery of the Russian overlords more obvious to the world of Labour. The Russian rulers would not then be able to pat forward the pretence that they were quelling an armed rising against the government.

We are surprised at the last paragraph of the critic’s letter. Over and over again we have expressed our admiration for the courage and devotion of those who took part in the rising; we have, however, been truthful in regretting that it was not done in a better cause, the freedom from all oppression. To be generous without being truthful is to invite cheap praise. We have done our best to be helpful to the working class cause by pointing out realities in order to minimise, as far as possible, useless heroism in the future. We are also mindful of the bitter fact that the victims of today are so often the oppressors of tomorrow.

The revolt did not, as our critic puts it “wrest power, ‘with bare hands,’ from a police state.” The repressive action from outside was a foregone conclusion, and the power remains where it was. Furthermore, the action was not taken “with bare hands.” A portion of the Hungarian army took part in it and arms were in the the hands of the revolters.

Finally, let us consider the reference to the extract from the Socialist Standard of “Fifty Years Ago” that appeared in the November number. It concerns the attitude of the Socialist movement in a country where there is a revolt against a particular form of repression. We would urge the critic to look at the whole extract again in order to get a clear picture of what the writer was driving at. We would particularly urge him to take note of the following selections from the extract:—

“Hence, in the other nations of Western Europe a straight fight is possible between the proletariat and the capitalist ruling class, whilst in Russia the rising capitalist class has yet its emancipation from autocracy to accomplish: so that, in contrast with practically the whole of civilised nations, the working class and the capitalist class in Russia have, in the abolition of Tzardom's tyranny, a step to go together. This historical circumstance, which is at once the strength and weakness of the Russian movement, distinguishes it from that of all capitalist countries." . . .

“ Let us then do all in our power to help our Socialist comrades in Russia in the hope that they will not be deceived as to the outcome of the present upheaval: in the hope. also, that they will sternly keep their separate identity, and distinct aim. so that the Russian bourgeoise State of tomorrow may find a militant class-organisation of Socialist workers leading the final struggle against the Capitalist class, whose defeat must herald the Triumph of Humanity."

It will be seen from the above that the struggle in Russia 50 years ago was to get rid of the semi-feudal barriers, and the Socialist movement there was urged to keep their independence and their Socialist policy. As far as Capitalist Hungary is concerned that is still the attitude for the Socialist to take. Socialists there, just as under autocratic Russia in days gone by, should stand by their Socialist objective and do what propaganda they can under existing conditions, just as, for instance, an Austrian comrade of ours did under the Nazi and Russian occupations.

Editorial Committee.

Jottings. (1911)

The Jottings Column from the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is culled from the front page of that ultra-respectable journal, the “Labour Leader” :

”LET LIARS PERISH

and prove the truth that Socialism is not Atheism by helping me with

10,000 Socialist Shillings.

Cheques or Bank Notes to help pay off debt of £800 on my New Church. . . Rev. W. Schoneld, Manchester. Thy will be done on Earth, United we stand.”

This from the Church that deadly foe of all intellectual progress, the enemy of Science and the upholder of slavery. Could barefaced cheek go farther ?

* * *

This same gentleman at the last General Election, speaking at a meeting in support of Mr. John Hodge, Labour candidate for the Gorton Division, stated that “he was not a Liberal, in fact he hadn’t a vote at all, but he recognised very clearly that Liberalism and Labourism were identical, and the Liberal workingmen in the audience would be noodles indeed to waste their votes when they could achieve the same object by voting for the Labour man” (cheers). That “object” was the veto of the House of Lords. After appealing for Liberal votes for a “Labour” candidate, he now appeals for “Socialist shillings” for the purpose of still further prolonging the process whereby the workers are reduced to a condition for being all the more easily exploited by the master class. I am fairly safe in affirming that he will not get one Socialist shilling.

* * *

Not only are the working class deluded into voting the parasites into power, they are even required to pay for the chloroforming process which keeps them in ignorance and upon which the capitalist sharks rely so much. These gentry profess to believe in a special Providence : why don’t they appeal in that direction ?

The fact is that when it comes to a question of £ s. d., they are as materialistic as the most brazen Atheist. They evidently believe in practising the (slightly altered) dictum, “you will be done on earth.” When will the workers get wise to this ?

* * *

Speaking at the Prince’s Theatre, Blackburn, on Jan. 22nd, under the auspices of the local I.L.P., Mr. Philip Snowden said :

“Socialism is nothing more than a scheme of industrial reorganisation for the reconciliation of Capital and Labour by placing the ownership of land and capital under democratic control. Out of all their theories they have now evolved that concrete idea.”

That’s all !

* * *

In his opening remarks Mr. Snowden said “He had felt for a long time that the I.L.P. had been so much engaged in mere political work that they had not paid the attention which was needed to the education of the people in the fundamental principles of Socialism.”

The reason is that they do not understand the fundamental principles of Socialism—excepting perhaps, those few who hold to the opinion that where it touches the pocket to tell the truth, it is the very height of folly to be wise. To speak of reconciling Capital and Labour under Socialism is an obvious attempt to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds—but it pays at the moment. Mr. Snowden professes to believe in a kind of harmony between Capital and Labour, but the only harmony I can conceive is that existing between the horse-leech and its victim. Besides, I was not aware that capital would exist at all under Socialism. The existence of capitalism, presupposes exploitation. But, of course, Mr. Snowden, being interested in the maintenance of capitalism, cannot be expected to shout that truth from the housetops.

* * *

This according to Liebknecht: “Whoever conceives of Socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of the evils of capitalist society, is no Socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern Socialism is unthinkable.”

The working class must learn that it need expect nothing from any political party that does not stand upon the basis of the class struggle. The S.P.G.B. is the only party that takes up this position, therefore it is the only party of the workers.

* * *

A remarkable letter penned by a suicide was read at an inquest held at Aldershot recently on the body of an unknown man who was found decapitated on the railway. The deceased wrote :

“Kindly free from censure the courageous driver of that train responsible for this, another tragedy. The cause of this tragedy is the unfair distribution of work. I have searched in vain, for the past three and a half months, for a situation.

“But I say the time is coming when a man who becomes really conscious of the real cause of this hellful drama, the unfair distribution of work, will not commit, as I have done, suicide; but will instantaneously arm himself with a revolver, and he will make a “B” line for the Prime Minister of the country and make him pay the penalty with his life.

“I have been to church—the manufactory of crime—and I am convinced that if people from the North, South, and East refrain from going to church after this day, there will be no recurrence of the Sidney-street affair.

“I do not believe in murder, nevertheless I warn the leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister of this country of the real and, as I believe, proper conviction that is growing….it cannot be stopped.

“Now I am afraid I shall have to close up as my train will be here presently.—Good-bye, BRITON.”

The jury returned a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind. Of course ! It would not do to say that this hellish system of capitalism had forced him to seek oblivion, would it ? It might enlighten the proletariat. And how near to the truth this poor devil got, to say that he was insane. If he had elected to kill someone else instead of himself would he have been found insane ? I venture to think not.

Tom Sala

Socialism cannot come from the barrel of a gun (2026)

From the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The news cycle has recently thrown fresh attention onto the ‘Socialist Rifle Association (SRA)’, an American organisation advocating firearms training and ‘training working-class armed self-defence.’ A Democratic Party Senate candidate in Maine was criticised for old posts encouraging people to join the group. Graham Platner had posted on Reddit in 2020 with the handle ‘Antifa Supersoldier’, encouraging users to join the SRA. Now reports suggest LGBTQ and left-liberal Americans are increasingly turning to gun ownership out of fear of political repression.

The Cato Institute (a free-market libertarian think-tank based in Washington) found via a freedom of information request to the FBI that the SRA appears to be the active target of an ongoing investigation. The Trump administration’s proposed ‘trans gun ban’ was only one example of the orange man’s Second Amendment rollback.

The SRA flips the American script: guns on the left rather than the right. Its message, community defence, resistance to authoritarianism, and the right of ordinary people to defend themselves, and it appears on the surface to be a working-class concern.

The rise in left-wing gun interest however is less an ideological shift than a symptom of a deeply anxious and alienated working class. When one section of the population arms itself, others feel compelled to follow. Capitalism created the conditions of this insecurity: economic instability, political polarisation, violent policing, and the billion dollar security industry that keeps you safe but only if you can afford it.

The SRA itself frames gun ownership as an answer to these concerns.

The phrase, ‘Any attempt to disarm workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary’, is used on SRA merchandise, patches, t-shirts, coffee mugs… a misquote from Karl Marx’s address to the Communist League in March 1850. What doesn’t fit on a t-shirt is the full quote:

‘Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organise themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary’ (Marx, 1850).

What Marx was speaking of was a specific political moment in 1850, during a faltering bourgeois revolution, not of the general conditions of working class life under capitalism, or of a popular democratic working-class revolution.

We can assume many SRA supporters cite Lenin, who wrote at a time of underdeveloped material conditions in Tsarist Russia, and leaned heavily on Marx’s early writings from the 1850s, written before the bourgeois revolutions had run their course. In those texts, Marx had argued that workers should support the bourgeoisie (emergent capitalist class) in overthrowing autocratic rule while pressing for full democracy. Only after the bourgeoisie attained political power he believed should workers organise politically against them.

Marx’s later position was that the emancipation of the working class must be the conscious act of the working class itself, democratically organised, not the work of a professional armed minority or vanguard.

Capitalism, not the lack of firearms, is what makes the working class vulnerable. It is capitalism that pits factions of the workers against one another: nationalist movements, strongman posturings, racism, gender-based violence. Against these systemic woes the possession of rifles is no more a solution than the ownership of a fire extinguisher is a solution to arson.

The SRA’s rhetoric makes much of ‘community defence’ and the image of the armed worker resisting oppression. Historically, this imagery is lifted from episodes of class conflict eg. Paris 1871, Russia 1917, Spain 1936, and further romanticised by those who confuse coups with socialism. As the Provisional Rules of the International Working Men’s Association put it: ‘The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.’ That means consciously organising for political control, not relying on paramilitaries or armed minorities acting ‘on behalf of’ workers.

Socialism cannot be imposed by force, nor defended by pockets of armed militants. The failure of the USSR shows this to be true. A society based on common ownership and democratic control requires an active majority to be politically convinced and politically organised, not a vanguard with guns, bombs and bullets.

Armed groups, whether on the left or right, reflect capitalism’s logic of coercion, alienation and the struggle for dominance. The SRA rejects right-wing gun culture, but it mirrors it and as such it remains bound within capitalism’s framework. It’s a consumerist solution – buy a gun, get training – to combat a structural problem. But, as the Libertarian Socialist Organisation (LSO) in Australia pointed out in 1979 in an essay against anarchist terrorism, ‘You can’t blow up a social relationship’.

Socialism cannot be created by armed vigilantes because socialism is not a change of rulers but a transformation of society. The revolution must be conscious, majority-led, democratic and international. No amount of gun owners can substitute political consciousness and political will.

King Capital will not be dethroned by an armed militia, but by a working class organised consciously and democratically to remove the master class from control of the state.

The SRA is not a revolutionary awakening, but a reaction to a society that offers people no security except what they can buy and carry.

A.T.

Letter: Free speech (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free speech

Dear Editors

I was quite shocked to read the article about Charlie Kirk in the November issue of the Socialist Standard who was murdered on a university campus. The avowed Left is often indifferent about issues around free speech but I was not expecting the same thing to come from the SPGB who have a rich tradition of its defence in both theory and practice. Has the SPGB changed their view on this?

Name and email supplied

Reply:

Rest assured that the Socialist Party’s position on free speech remains unchanged. We defend (and host) open discussion as essential to the working class’s democratic organization. The article did not excuse the violence, but contextualised how groups like Turning Point USA use the cloak of ‘free speech’ to promote reactionary politics and incite hostility; including incidents of harassment and intimidation against students, trade unionists and minorities. Actions by TPUSA (and TPUK) show that their defence of ‘free speech’ is often a cover for silencing opposition and reinforcing existing hierarchies rather than fostering genuine democratic debate. – Editors

Fascism again? (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The last War was ostensibly fought in order that the destruction of fascism might be permanently effected. Its measure of success in this direction may be judged by the recent revival of fascist activity. Under the new guise of the “British League of Ex-servicemen” a number of meetings have been held in the London area. The scenes that characterise these meetings are reminiscent of pre-war days. Rabid anti-Semitic propaganda, intense nationalism, slogan-shouting between supporters and opponents, invariably culminating in street brawls between both rival factions.

As a consequence a large measure of publicity was given by the daily Press. Among those perturbed at this state of affairs was Mr. John Platts Mills, M.P. At a meeting of the Finsbury Council he proposed a resolution “viewing with concern the recent outbreaks of anti-Semitism and increase in Fascist activity.” (Star, 26/9/47.)

He went on to say : ”I don’t think any of us would have imagined two years ago, after a war in which the whole world was embroiled in order to smash the most devilish system of government ever recorded in history, that we would now find people seeking to propagate the same system of government in our country. These people are self-declared traitors.”

Apparently Mr. Platts Mills is one of many who mistakenly assume that wars are fought over political systems and ideologies. It might interest him to know, however, that the S.P.G.B., while steadfastly proclaiming its Socialist opposition throughout the war, re-iterated the unpalatable truth, that whatever the outcome would be, the menace of fascism would not be removed. The cause of fascism must be sought in the economic structure of society prevailing in the world today. This system of Capitalism is based upon the ownership of the means of life by a comparative few, resulting in the consequent enslavement and subjection of the dispossessed majority in society, the working class.

Fascism then, arises when millions of workers, lacking a knowledge of their class position and desirous of seeking a scapegoat as the cause of their economic ills, fall an easy prey to the rhetorical arguments of the fascist demogogues.

Believing also that democracy can serve no useful purpose and therefore what is needed is a one-party government with a strong man at the helm, the workers in their political blindness hand over power to these tyrants, resulting in the inevitable abrogation of democratic institutions, with the subsequent establishment of a ruthless, repressive regime in its place. The rise of Hitlerism in Germany is a classic example of this.

The only safeguard against dictatorship is the conversion of the working class to the ideas of Socialism. When the majority are convinced of its necessity, they will wrest political control from the Capitalist class by sending their own Socialist delegates to the seat of power with a mandate to transform society from one of class ownership to one of common ownership and democratic control.

With the inauguration of a Socialist society, dictatorship, Fascist or otherwise, will be inconceivible, because the means of life will be owned and controlled by the democratic community of the world. Wealth will be produced solely to satisfy the needs of all, whereas today it is produced primarily for the profit of those who own, which results, in the starvation of millions who inhabit this globe if these profits are not forthcoming.

Socialism, then, will not only solve the major problems confronting society today but will afford the fullest possible life imaginable to all humanity. Such monstrosities as war, Fascism and economic insecurity will go and will be replaced by peace, democracy and plenty for all mankind.

J. Pizer

Press Cuttings (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Son of Matteotti

“The municipal elections due to take place next Sunday have been marked by violence towards those left-wing candidates who are insisting on a Socialist line independent of Communist policy. Signer Matteotti, son of the man who died in anti-Fascist resistance during the Mussolini regime and who still vehemently insists on a policy opposing Communism, has had two meetings this week broken up by violence, his car burned and stones thrown at platform speakers.” (Rome Correspondent of the Times, 10/10/47.)

* * *

The Labour Party and Taxation

“We hold that indirect taxation on commodities, whether by Customs or Excise, should be strictly limited to luxuries; and concentrated principally on those of which it is socially desirable that the consumption should be actually discouraged.”—(“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.19.)

“Mr. J. W. Belcher, £l,500-a-year Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, said last: night: ‘When the price of cigarettes is doubled it makes far more difference to the £5-a-week man than it does, to me. The tobacco tax falls hardest on those who can least afford to pay it.'”—(Daily Express, 10/10/47.)

* * *

The United Nations Can Agree

“Lest it be thought, however, that the United Nations is incapable of making quick and lasting decisions, it should be reported that the Legal Committee yesterday settled something in five minutes that the League of Nations abandoned after ten years’ fruitless argument. It adopted a flag for the United Nations and left it to the Secretary General, Mr. Lie, to decide its dimensions and its code of courtesy. It is to be a white globe on a field of blue. And there is no truth at all in the report that the Yugoslavs have suggested it should bear the motto ‘Manners Makyth Man.”—(Manchester Guardian, 9/10/47.)

* * *

The Labour Party and the Factory Acts

“The amendment and consolidation of the Factories and Workshops Acts, with their extension to all employed persons and the restriction of the working week to not more than 48 hours, is long overdue . . .” (“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.6.)

“Night work in the factories for girls of 18 and youths of 16 will be legal after September 22.

“And anyone over 16 may work more than 48 hours a week—but not for two weeks running.

“These amendments to general conditions were announced last night as part of the staggered hours plan which will spread the electricity load.

“After September 22 a district inspector of factories can. permit an earlier start or later finish for day work.

“The starting and finishing hours of 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. can be extended to 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., and 6.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. for those under 16.”—(Daily Mail, 2/9/47.)

* * *

“More of Everything for Everybody”

”We have greatly increased our capacity to produce more things during this war. We must use the skill of our people and our great productive resources to make more of everything for everybody in times of peace.”—(From “Your Future—After Victory—What Then?” Published by Labour Party, June, 1944.)

”What the nation needs is undoubtedly a great bound onward in its aggregate production. But this cannot be secured merely by pressing the manual workers to more strenuous toil . . . What the Labour Party looks to is a genuinely scientific reorganisation of the nation’s industry . . . on the basis of the Common Ownership of the Means of Production; the equitable shaving of the proceeds among all who participate in any capacity and only among these . . .”—(”Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.12-13.)

* * *

Sir John Boyd Orr on Food and Capitalism

“Warning the United Nations Economic Committee, at Lake Success yesterday, that more people will die through the food shortage in Europe and Asia in the next 12 months than were killed in any year of the war, Sir John Boyd Orr declared :

” ‘This presents an opportunity to the nations, assembled here to concentrate less on the political problems which engender misunderstanding and conflict, and concentrate more on the concrete problems on which there can be no misunderstanding.’

“He pointed out that the General Assembly agenda contained no reference to food and economic difficulties, and stressed that the food situation in Asia was just as bad as in Europe.

“Food production would need to be increased by 110 per cent, in the next 25 years to provide sufficient for the world’s population.”—(Daily Herald, 7/10/47.)

* * *

“Meanwhile, in the producer countries, the paradox of the years between the wars shows signs of being repeated. While people elsewhere face starvation, farmers tremble at the prospects of ruin—not because they cannot produce the food the hungry peoples need, but because they can produce more than the peoples can buy . . .

“At one and the same time we have these problems : How to get maximum production to salvage the world from present hunger and how to deal with unmarketable surpluses which will again bring ruin and misery to millions of land-workers and endanger the stability of the whole economic system.

“For failure will mean that the existing economic system cannot carry the burden of the material wealth which modern science can produce.”—(Sir John Boyd-Orr, News Chronicle, 1/8/47)

* * *

Labour Party and Conscription

“The Labour Party declares emphatically against any continuance of the Military Service Acts a moment longer than the imperative requirements of the war excuse.”—(“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.11.)

* * *

Labour Government and Wages

” ‘As a trade union official, if I were, faced with the choice of keeping the Labour Government in office or a reduction in wages, I would advocate a reduction of wages,’ said Mr. Sam Watson, general secretary of the Durham area of the National Union of Mineworkers.

“He was speaking at a week-end school of the National Council of Labour Colleges at Morecambe.

”‘Unless we can lift production, increased wages are simply a means of increasing the dangers of inflation and rising prices,’ he said.”—(Daily Herald, 6/10/47.)

* * *

Housing under the Swedish Labour Government

”Many tourists, observed Mr. Osborn, have come back believing that the Swedes have everything to tell us about standards of housing and architecture. They are misled by the cleanliness and furnishing taste everywhere displayed. Housing standards in Stockholm are, as in most other European cities, appallingly low. Of the 670,000 people within the city boundaries, 90 per cent. live in flats, and only 7 per cent, in one-family dwellings. More than half the dwellings (51.6 per cent.) have only one room and kitchen or two rooms without kitchen. Another 26.7 per cent. have two rooms and kitchen.”—(Mr. F. J. Osborn, Chairman of the Town and Country Planning Association Municipal Journal, 26/9/47.)

Life and Times: Way back when (2025)

The Life and Times column from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was a ring on the bell. When I opened the door, a smart looking young man wearing suit, collar and tie and carrying a brief case told me he was selling insurance (those were the days when insurance was still sold door to door), but then he quickly added that what he was really interested in was the Socialist Party of Great Britain. He was very polite and said he knew about the SPGB and had found my name as a contact. I was surprised but also pleased to have someone actually coming round to the house to find out about socialism. So I invited him in and we sat down in the front room. He asked me to tell him about the Party and I tried to sum it up as quickly as possible. I said we stood for a moneyless, wageless democratic world of free access to all goods and services, without leaders or led, based on the idea that this will happen when the majority class in society – all those who had to work for a wage or salary – develop the consciousness necessary to democratically take power from the tiny minority in society who own and control the wealth and to establish the new society. Or something like that.

Andrew – that was his name – seemed enthusiastic and I showed him some of the Party’s leaflets and pamphlets. He appeared particularly interested in certain ideas and positions – for example our attitude towards the use of violence as a political instrument (I told him we were opposed to it) and what was going on in Ireland at the time (it was the period of ‘The Troubles’). He appeared satisfied with this and asked if he could become a member and he would pay the subscription there and then. I told him there wasn’t a joining subscription and I couldn’t enrol him, but, if he came to our next branch meeting at the Swansea Central Library, he could apply to join then. He kept apologising for being an insurance salesman while patting his briefcase and telling me he needed to do that to keep the wolf from the door for himself and his family. I said I understood and he left, telling me he’d see me at our next Monday evening branch meeting.

I felt somehow exhilarated about this – until, that is, my wife emerged from the adjacent room, where she’d been listening to everything that had gone on. ‘He’s a policeman’, was the first thing she said. Wow! It took a moment to sink in, but then it dawned on me that his coming to the house and asking questions in particular about violence and Northern Ireland had to be a bit peculiar. It dawned on me that I’d been naïve. But maybe that was to the good, because, if he was a policeman – an undercover policeman – he might have had a weapon in that briefcase for if and when he might be challenged. And that felt a bit scary.

But was that over-dramatic? Well, I never really found out because Andrew never came to one of our meetings. But I did see him again – about a year later when I attended an indoor public meeting in Swansea put on by the organisation called the International Marxist Group. A group of us were selling our magazines and handing out our leaflets before we went in. As we did, I found myself faced with a casually dressed man who seemed to be one of the organisers. He wasn’t someone I recognised but he said hello to me, looked embarrassed and then sort of blurted out that he was out of the insurance game now and how was I? I realised it was Andrew and reciprocated his ‘hello’ before sitting down.

Make of that what you will. Was I (am I) being paranoid in regarding this as confirmation that he was a police spy? Maybe. But when in 2022 I read and reviewed for the Socialist Standard a book entitled Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century by David Caute, my mind went back to that time. The book’s author had drawn on official but publicly available documents which gave startling insights into the enormous efforts (and massive resources) put into tracking the activities and affiliations of an extraordinarily wide range of people and organisations suspected of being subversive, of constituting a possible ‘threat to national security’.

All this was brought back to me by a recent investigative series on BBC Radio 4 presented by Mark Steel and entitled Shadow World. The People Versus McDonald’s. It was largely about the so-called McLibel case in the 1990s when two anti-McDonald’s Greenpeace campaigners were pursued through the courts by that company for making claims about their activities and methods which McDonald’s said were libellous. The series was an interesting one in itself, but one of the things that emerged from it was the discovery by one of the campaigners that a member of her group she’d engaged in a two-year relationship with was a police infiltrator. He then vanished, but when she later tracked him down, it emerged that, while he was with her, he was married to someone else. She also discovered that other undercover policemen had had relationships with other female activists (over 60 of them in all) from small ‘suspect’ groups. One of these policemen had been involved with four different women, with one of whom he fathered a child. Finally, Mark Steel revealed that, as a member of one such ‘suspect’ group himself in the 1980s, his local branch of the Socialist Workers Party had discovered that one of their members was a police infiltrator, and that records now available showed that, from 1968 to 2008, Special Branch oversaw what he called the ‘massive expensive palaver’ of spying on more than 1,000 different organisations in Britain.

So why not the SPGB as part of that? Just in case. After all it would only be a small part of the massive expensive (and wasteful) palavers of every description that capitalism is full of.

Howard Moss

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The unrest reflected much deeper frustrations, including high unemployment, particularly among young people, growing poverty and anger at corruption and mismanagement. People see public resources channelled into luxury spending and infrastructure deals benefiting a few powerful figures connected to the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), while basic services and jobs are neglected.

[Inter Press Service News Agency]

In 1978, Clive James reviewed the official biography of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982) by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CPSU Central Committee. “I read the whole thing from start to finish, waiting for the inevitable slip-up which would result in a living sentence. It never happened.” James found it so dull that “If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead.” 

[MSN]

The announced $7 billion would be the biggest official tranche of funding to Ukraine’s drone industry so far. It’s close to the $6 billion that Ukraine’s defense minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said Kyiv needs to cover this year’s production of first-person-view drones, interceptors, long-range drones, and missiles. While new, Ukraine’s drone industry has increasingly been in the spotlight for producing cheap but effective weapons regularly being used to destroy Russian loitering munitions, armor, artillery, and production facilities. 

[Yahoo]

From an anarcho-communist perspective, this moment is not simply about one man’s death. It is about the world that produced both Charlie Kirk and the man who killed him. It is about capitalism’s ever-present violence, about the state’s monopoly on force, about the way political antagonisms are escalating into open bloodshed. It is about what happens when a society soaks every interaction in hierarchy, coercion, alienation, and humiliation, and then acts shocked when someone pulls a trigger…Wage labour itself is enforced by violence. If you refuse to work, you starve, or you are policed, or imprisoned. The entire edifice of private property rests on threat and force. 

[The Slow Burning Fuse]

North Korea’s Kim vows to build a ‘socialist paradise’ [sic]. 

[Morning Star]

Having a home of our own is essential to leading a dignified life, but in Venezuela, where access to housing is enshrined as a right in the Constitution, renting adequate accommodation is an unattainable luxury for hundreds of thousands of families, and buying property is almost impossible. Not only do market prices far exceed the average household income but inflation has also wiped out home loans, leaving citizens without access to financing. 

[Equal Times]

There is no genetic or biological basis for dividing the human race into distinct “races”. There are just groups of human beings — all of whom came from Africa originally — who developed slightly different physical characteristics over time as they travelled to, and adapted to, different climates and environments. 

[The Conversation]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Letter: The miners’ strike & the Socialist Party (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard  

 

The miners’ strike & the Socialist Party

Dear Editors,

Naivete is not what one expects from the columns of the Socialist Standard but the article on the miners’ strike (September, 1984) comes very close to it in stating that the SPGB will support any strike between the robbers and robbed, except when they are political. It is implied that this strike is more than just a political action, thus qualifying it for SPGB support.

Well, as I think that it is just a political strike, and you think it isn’t the score is now one all, a draw. The article goes on to say that 120,000 miners can't all be wrong, to which I must reply that 60,000 other NCB workers say that they are. As you can't produce a ballot to show what the 120,000 think, and my 60,000 can, you lose on the re-count because you cannot substantiate your case.

You enter a very dangerous minefield in trying to decide what is a political strike and what is not. The SPGB has been explaining for eighty years that politics is but an expression of the economic facts of life, then, all of a sudden, hey presto . . . we have the purely political strike. The two examples given, "dockers against immigration" and “Labour’s day of Action” had their roots in economic problems confronting the working class and being directed to political ends. This is exactly how I see the miners’ strike. So what is the exact mix which will trigger off SPGB support for a strike? 85 per cent political and 15 per cent economic? Or 60 per cent and 40 per cent? Or even perhaps 51 per cent and 49 per cent? May we be informed please?

So, is the strike political then? Messrs. Scargill and Co. have made it very plain indeed that the mere mention of Thatcher gives them all indigestion and sleepless nights, and they want to bring down the government immediately. This strike was called when coal stocks were at an all-time high, summer time just round the corner, plenty of nuclear power and oil about and no ballot. It was either "daft" (Lord Gormley) or politically motivated. In your article you state that the Labour Government did exactly what the NCB now proposes but there was no strike. So, if given exactly the same conditions, the miners didn’t strike under Labour, and are striking under the Tories, what other reasons except political reasons can there be?

Will the SPGB support any strike? I can't believe that it would be so stupid. The Socialist Standard in the recent past has quoted items from the "propaganda press" showing that certain strikes are welcomed with gratitude and delight by the bosses and are pleased to prolong them to bring the workers to heel. Support for this kind of strike brings only extra poverty and extra subservience to the workers involved. You indicate that the miners’ strike may well be in this category.

The word "support” in my working class dictionary means "to hold up — assist - sustain”. Would the SPGB assist in the prolonging of these strikes? Did the early SPGB back the Hansom Cab workers in their struggles against the encroachments made by automobile manufacturers? Would they have backed the Sword-Pikestaff and Bow and Arrow Makers Union against the encroaching Rifle. Gunpowder and Bullet manufacturers? I think not. The kindest thing to do is sometimes to advise people to leave a dying industry and not support their unavailing efforts? If nuclear power eventually takes over from coal will the SPGB be there sustaining the last striking miners in the last pit?

Mr Scargill and the NUM Executive and their bully-boys remind me of an embryonic Hitler and his storm-troopers gagging the union and menacing those who disagree. The SPGB finds fault only with the gagging, keeping a respectful silence on the activities of Scargill’s storm troopers. Activities well known to everyone in England except the SPGB. This policy of putting all the violence down to police brutality can best be described as fifty per cent SPGB and fifty per cent Trotskyist. As the gagging of the union. the split in the union and the mass violence of the striking miners are all part of the same coin, your article betrays a dangerous naivete, the implications of which need to be debated. Working Nottinghamshire miners must be wondering who the SPGB thinks is harassing their homes, property and families if it isn’t the bully boys . . . maybe it’s the police. What is certain is that working Nottinghamshire miners will regard the SPGB as a party to shun, which is a very great pity, for even Mr Kinnock has come out of his mouse-hole and condemned all violence.

S Levitt

London NW3

Reply:

Against Capitalism

It is a clear sign that a critic is standing upon thin ice when he resorts to distortion in order to make a case. Consider these examples: 1) Levitt claims that the article in the September Standard states that the Socialist Party supports all strikes, except for those motivated by political intentions to reform capitalism. He then bases a large part of his criticism on the use of the word "support". If he re-reads the article he will see that the term he objects to is not even used. 2) Levitt claims that the article suggests that "120.000 miners can’t all be wrong". No such statement is made. Clearly, it would be foolish to say that because a number of workers are taking an action they must be right. 3) Levitt — whose silly hysteria about "storm troopers" we deal with below — claims that the Socialist Party has kept “a respectful silence” on the question of violence by picketing strikers (unlike Mr Kinnock whose moral stand wins the approval of our critic). As a subscriber to the Socialist Standard, our critic will have read the article "An Open letter to the Miners” (July, 1984) in which it is stated that "insofar as the reports of workers persecuting those who disagree with them are not false or exaggerated, socialists condemn unreservedly the anti-working-class intimidation of fellow miners”. Of course, this condemnation might not satisfy Levitt, whose own exaggerated description of the picketing resembles some of the most ignorant comment of the gutter press. 4) Levitt claims that the Socialist Party attributes all the violence to the police, whereas no such point is made in the article. In fact, the Socialist Party is not in the business of blaming one group or another for the violence which is endemic to the class war. So, four distortions in eight paragraphs: now let us try to make sense of the other fifty per cent.

Our critic suggests that it is difficult to determine what is a political strike, in the sense in which the term was used in the article. The difficulty does not trouble the Socialist Party: as far as we are concerned, the role of trade unions is to defend and improve the wages and conditions of workers under capitalism. In short, they have a defensive, economic function. Strikes intended to use working-class combination for the purpose of affecting the overall administration of capitalism are politically reformist and socialists oppose them. For example, when miners went on strike to oppose immigrant labour being introduced into British pits this was not an economic action; neither was Labour’s Day of Action, which was an attempted strike designed to show that a Labour government of capitalism would be better for workers than a Tory one.

Of course, no strike is entirely economic because there is no separation of politics and economics under capitalism. So, while the miners' strike is an economic strike, not very different from others conducted by other unions, it has a political dimension insofar as its result can affect the balance of political strength between organised labour and organised capital. It may well be true that the officials of the NUM want to get rid of the present government (so does the Socialist Party), but it is naive of our critic to think that 120,000 strikers have somehow been hoodwinked into striking for such a purpose.

Levitt cannot believe that socialists would be so stupid as to support any strike. We cannot believe that Levitt can be so stupid as to think that we might, when only four paragraphs earlier he acknowledges our opposition to strikes designed to reform capitalism. As for the question of "support" — a term not introduced by us — let us be clear that, as early as 1905, when the Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was published, the socialist view has been that trade unions are a necessity under capitalism and “any action on their part upon sound lines should be heartily supported". We do not exist as a party to advise unions on how to conduct their necessary struggles within capitalism, although, as socialist trade unionists, we do our best to ensure that our unions act on sound lines and that we support union action to the best of our abilities. We might add that socialists within the NUM have done precisely that during this miners’ strike. The role of the Socialist Party is to advocate socialism and to point out that beyond the sectional, limited and repetitive struggle of trade unions there is a revolutionary struggle to establish world socialism which is both urgent and more important than mere defensive actions.

Levitt suggests that the Socialist Party — in a spirit of kindness — should advise the miners to leave their dying industry. Having issued such advice, does he propose that we urge them to buy some bikes and travel the country looking for thriving industries? The Socialist Party does not exist to urge workers to fit in with the absurd economic priorities of capitalism. What we can say to the miners is that, with an estimated 300-years’ supply of coal underneath Britain, there is no reason why a socialist society need let the coal industry die. Of course, a socialist society might decide that there are other energy sources which are preferable to coal; if so, such a decision would neither be based on profit calculations nor cause hardship to men who had been miners in the past. We think that the growing rejection of the profit-based priorities of capitalism, which has led mine workers to challenge the NCB’s definition of “uneconomic", should be regarded with enthusiasm by socialists. Our task is to show the miners that only in socialism can the economic priorities which offend them be eliminated.

The remarks about picket-line violence are stale and naive. Certainly, socialists have emphasised time and time again, both in our propaganda and in our unions, that violent tactics should be avoided by workers who can win by force of numbers. But the state, which is an institution of legalised violence, will not simply sit back and let workers picket as they please. Laws allowing pickets to persuade non-strikers have been largely ignored during this strike — vans carrying strike-breakers (‘‘rebels”) have driven through picket lines at such speeds that it has been impossible for pickets to speak to their fellow-workers. So, mass picket lines have been formed in order to ensure that the strike-breakers either stop and listen or stay out of the colliery.

Does our critic really think that the condemnation of picket-line violence by Neil Kinnock will make any difference to the class struggle? After all, Thatcher. Kinnock and the other hypocrites who are appalled by picket-line violence are the same leaders who support the creation of war machines designed to murder civilian populations. The Socialist Party does not issue moral condemnations of selective acts of violence — we are busy advocating the case for the abolition of the social cause of such behaviour. We did not notice the Fleet Street propaganda rags condemning the picket-line murder of seven striking miners in South Africa (reported briefly on BBC’s Newsnight on 18 September).

Our critic is concerned that the working miners of Nottinghamshire will shun the Socialist Party because of what we have written about the strike. Well, they were shunning us before the strike started, but that did not stop us from trying to convince them of the validity of our case, which applies to all workers, whether unionised or not. striking or working, militant or conservative.

Editors.

Charlie Kirk: A victim of his own ideology (2025)

From the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Charlie Kirk is dead, the CEO of ‘christo-fascist’ Turning Point USA, the man who built a career attacking queer people, striking workers, students, bled out on stage in Utah after being shot in the neck. His death was streamed live, his last words delivered in response to a question about whether trans people should be allowed to own firearms. In a final moment of irony, the man who weaponised speech was silenced by a bullet.

His followers scrambled to crown him a martyr to ‘free speech’. But what they mourn is not free speech. What they mourn is the collapse of their own manufactured spectacle.

Turning Point USA Campaigns have never been about dialogue. They have been about stalking, smearing, and silencing. Kirk built an empire on ambush videos, ‘debates’ edited into propaganda, and campaigns of harassment targeting professors, students, and workers. What TPUSA calls activism is in fact a weapon: surveillance masquerading as politics, intimidation dressed up as freedom.

At the University of Illinois, TPUSA turned graduate worker Tariq Khan into a national target, dragging his family, including his children, into a torrent of racist abuse. At Arizona State, English professor David Boyles was blacklisted, stalked, smeared, and beaten bloody. Across the country, countless educators have been doxxed, filmed, and threatened until they censored themselves or fled their jobs. Students, too, are thrown into the crosshairs, forced to navigate a campus environment poisoned by manufactured confrontation.

This is not an accident. It is a strategy. Behind TPUSA’s empty rhetoric of ‘free speech’ is a campaign of fear designed to corrode academic freedom and terrorize opposition into silence. It is a politics of humiliation, coercion, and intimidation. And now, that politics has come full circle. That is the inevitable logic of a politics with violence as its core.

This is not just about Charlie Kirk. It is about the capitalist system that made both Kirk and his killer, a world where capitalism enforces its order through alienation and hierarchy, a world shocked by bloodshed even as it marinates every social relationship in class violence. Kirk’s end is not a tragedy of free speech. It is the mirror of the politics he championed: politics through religious domination, politics enforced by fear, politics that ends with blood.

A.T.

50 Years Ago: The Communists and Democracy (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

But who put democracy in danger? In recent years it has been the Communists above all others, yet they are now most vociferous in demanding a United Front to save it. It was the Russian Communists who set the modern fashion of seizing power and installing a dictatorship. It is undisputed that Mussolini, and after him Hitler, learned much from Lenin in the technique of seizing power and holding it by force, supported by mass propaganda and political suppression.

It was the Communists who, year in and year out, derided democratic Government, poured scorn on Parliament and the whole parliamentary system, preached minority revolt and civil war, and in every way idealised the method of violence. Everywhere that their propaganda penetrated they left a trail of hostility to parliamentary methods and a liking for the pseudo-progressive system of armed force and dictatorship.

#    #    #    #

At the 1929 Conference of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Mr. Harry Pollitt made a speech in which he explained to his fellow Communists that “only through armed insurrection can the workers gain power” (see report in Manchester Guardian, December 2nd, 1929). At the same conference, Mr. Gallacher, who now pretends that armed revolt was not intended, said this: —

   "They had talked of a Revolutionary Workers’ Government, but did they realise what was implied? Would the organisation of the workers for the revolutionary Government be a legal one? The task of fighting for a revolutionary Government would be a task of bringing the workers out on to the streets against the armed forces of capitalism.”—(Worker's Life, December 6th, 1929.)

[From the editorial, "The Truth about the Popular Front", Socialist Standard, September 1936]

Letter: Ban the ultra-right? (2006)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ban the ultra-right?

Dear Editors

I read your article titled “the case against censorship” (March Socialist Standard). I am also in favour of freedom of speech. It is true that Islamists and racists as individuals should be free to express their viewpoints and that atheists and socialists should also be free to criticise them by any unconditional means they find appropriate.

Islam’s “prophet” knew how to read and write and wrote the Qoran that reflects the tribal beliefs of barbarian Arabs who lived in pre-feudal socio-economic conditions but announced that was unable to read and write and that the “holy” book had been “posted” by god to his address in Saudi Arabia.

Racists deny equal rights for non “white” and non “English” citizens of this country and want to apply force and remove them from this bullshit country and also answer workers’ and socialists’ demands for the right of freedom of speech, press and organization by police force, jail, torture and murder exactly like terrorist Muslims. In other words, they both represent social forces that want to add more dictatorship to the present level of dictatorship of capitalists and their murderous suppressive British regime.

I think that those Islamic organizations that support and organize terrorist activity and also “white founded” organizations that preach for “white power” or even “English power”, should be banned from doing activity, since every year quite a few “whites” and a few more “non whites” are killed by these terrorist organizations.

When we can make workers accept that ultra right, whether it is Muslim terrorist or racist fascist, should not exist as an organization we would deprive the capitalist ruling class of the use of the ultra right to suppress the looming socialist revolution by using these ultra reactionary forces as its political and suppression machine representatives.

Siamak Haghighat,

London

Reply :

We are opposed to appealing to the capitalist state to ban any political ideas. It doesn’t work anyway.

– Editors

SPGB Meetings (1948)

Party News from the August 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

• The SPGBer speaker for the debate with the IWW was Bill Waters. There was a report of the debate in the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard. It'd be interesting to know how big the IWW was in Britain in the late 1940s.
• I'm intrigued about the notice for the special meeting of Party members on the subject of "Socialism and Violence". I wonder what prompted the meeting? I cannot see any report of the meeting in later issues of the Standard from that period,
• I included details of the Dublin Socialist Group 'cos it gives me another excuse to post a link to the obituary for Mick Cullen from the March 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard. Another stalwart from our tradition. Sounds like an incredible bloke.

A Discussion on Unemployment. (1908)

From the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The leading article in the December issue of the Socialist Standard has been replied to—in a way.

On Christmas eve, when thoughts were turned to wishing Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All Men, the author of that article met Messrs. Williams and Greenwood. Williams said nothing— Greenwood said much.

He assured me he had read my “mean, contemptible, despicable article” in my “dirty little rag,” and proceeded to give his opinion of the Party in general and me in particular. This opinion was not very flattering nor couched in particularly elegant language, and I suggested that when he had quite exhausted his vocabulary of abusive terms he might attempt to refute the statements in the article, or even argue the points mentioned. He assured me, with much gesticulation, that the only way he would argue with me would be to take me by the throat and strangle the life out of me. But as this would still have left the points of difference in dispute the offer was not accepted.

Then I was subjected to a further denunciation for “belittling men who had made such sacrifices for the movement.” The Communist Manifesto states “the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains ; they have a world to win.” And as I presume you cannot sacrifice what you never had, I disagree with his remarks about sacrifices.

But he didn’t mind my theorising on the question of unemployment; what he objected to was my way of imputing dishonesty to them. I replied that if they could square their method of organising the unemployed with the principles of Socialism I should be glad to hear it. Again he expressed his desire to punch my head, but Ludgate Circus at 2 o’c in the afternoon did not offer a good opportunity, so that his discretion supplanted his valour (!). True, he invited me to “bring up my pals” after the punching process, but the invitation was declined. His parting shot was that he was of the opinion that I was not a Socialist but a paid agent of the Tory Party ! This after waxing wrathfully eloquent over my “insinuations.”

It is doubtful whether the incident is worth much attention. The anger of Mr. Greenwood clearly shows he has no case and knows it; and, personally, I regret that he should have so far descended as to make a fool and a blackguard of himself. To bystanders, hearing a man raving in the name of Socialism does not reflect any credit on it, and when he wants to strangle an opponent and go to other absurd lengths to manifest disagreement they are still less likely to be attracted to the movement. If I had said anything in my article which was incorrect, it was, and is, open to Mr. Greenwood or any other to write to the editor explaining the error, and demanding a withdrawal. For my part, I am certain that the mere receipt of a decently courteous expression of disapproval would do more to alter my opinion than all the abuse and the threats which even Mr. Greenwood is capable of.

I trust that his attitude is not typical of his organisation on this matter of argument, because if questions in dispute are to be settled by an appeal to physical force, the S.D.F. would be proved wrong by the powers that be, as would any opinion that happened to be in the minority, and I cannot believe that the man with the stronger arm is always more correct than the weaker one, any more than Mr. Greenwood’s greater size and strength would infallibly prove the incorrectness of the position of—

R. H. Kent.