Letter: Jesus Christ! — monetary justice? (1994)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jesus Christ! — monetary justice?

Dear Editors,

Scorpion claims, in your August issue, that the Bishop of Birmingham "should be coming out against the market in its entirety and not just its application to one of the necessities of life”. But one has to start somewhere; and the NHS. which we use in times of great need, is as good as anywhere.

You yourself, re Tony Blair, suggest that he is "Christian maybe, but socialist never. He openly supports the market economy and all that goes with it". I point out that Christians worship Jesus who said "Lend expecting no return" (Luke 6.35), in accordance with Old Testament precepts against usury (Exodus 22.25, Leviticus 25.36. Deuteronomy 23.19, Nehemioh 5.7-12, Psalm 15.5, Ezekiel 18.8-17 and 22.12).

Now there are markets and markets; and there may be room for one conducted justly. Some local "LETS" schemes aim at this. It is clear to us in the Christian Council for Monetary Justice (CCMJ) that the capitalist system which has evolved over recent centuries is at variance with Christian ethics; but the churches have largely lost sight of this since the last "top-level" denunciation of usury was made in an encyclical of Pope Benedict XIV in 1745.

The traditional teachings about commerce were endorsed by public opinion until self-assertiveness increased at the Reformation, and Calvin offered a limited acceptance of lending money at interest. This put Europe on a slippery slope, with profound consequences. Moneylending became attractive, and the banks gradually developed the practice of lending more money than had been deposited with them, thus acquiring a private monopoly of credit (or money) creation. Rich men who invested in industries based on the new technologies of coal, textiles, steel and steam-power extorted similar unearned incomes whilst they kept wages at semi-starvation level. Now money and shares have lost their physical meaning as tokens of value; but public acquiescence, fostered by the "haves", lets the rich use them to stay rich in a hungry world. Their "riches are corrupted", their "gold and silver” is "cankered” (Epistle of James 5.2-

3) 

(Coun) Frank McManus, 

Todmorden.

Reply:

We can't argue at this level since we don’t regard the bible as holy writ and so don't regard what it says (even when it doesn't say contradictory things) on any particular issue as authoritative.

We are aware that at one time Christianity did condemn the taking of interest on loans but abandoned this with the coming of capitalism, as is well documented in R.H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. For us, this is a striking confirmation of the materialist conception of history which sees ideologies, such as ethics, religion and philosophy, as reflecting the economic basis of society — and of course capitalism could not function without banks acting as financial intermediaries between those with idle money and those needing funds to invest in production and the exploitation of wage-labour for surplus value. So Christianity had to adapt or perish. This is what the Protestant Reformation was all about, and eventually — a century or so late, as ever — the Catholic Church too followed suit and adapted to the new economic and social reality. To want to impose the old Christian anathema against usury on capitalism today is. in the literal sense of the term, reactionary.

Incidentally, acting as financial intermediaries is all banks can do. They re-lend money that has been deposited with them and make their profits out of the difference between the rate of interest they charge borrowers and what they pay depositors.

The illusion that banks can lend more money than has been deposited with them arose from the fact that they had to hold as cash only a small proportion of the money deposited with them, since experience had shown that on average over a given period depositors were only liable to want to withdraw a small proportion of the total amount deposited. The rest was available for re-lending as short- or long-term loans.

A "cash ratio" of 10 percent does not mean that a bank can lend nine times the amount deposited; it means that it has to hold only 10 percent of the amount deposited as non-interest bearing, ready cash. If banks really could lend more than has been deposited with them as Councillor McManus asserts, and so create wealth out of nothing, then this would be a miracle to rival turning water into wine or feeding the five thousand. 

Editors.

Suffrage and Sex. (1908)

From the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Civilization, carrying with it as it does, patent evidences of its savage ancestry, frantically endeavouring to hide its humble origin, vainly imagining Gardens of Eden and naked simplicity instead of primeval forest and low-browed beast man, indignant when the first glimmerings of truth appear, ashamed and apologetic by turns when its pedigree can no longer be denied, is necessarily the depository of shams and cant.

No cant that Civilization has uttered is more sickening than that indulged in with regard to the

POSITION OF WOMEN.

“Chivalry” is a rosy-hued dream, compounded of deeds of derring-do against wicked monsters and the rescue of innocent maidens. It is left for the Historical Materialist to lift the veil and to INSIST UPON the viewing of the sinister visage underneath ; “Booty and Beauty” in times of war, the feudal lord’s “right of the first night” in times of peace, for one Sir Galahad a dozen Lancelots ; “bars sinister” brazenly emblazoned on shield, and the Madonna enshrined a second Venus—not without corresponding rites.

Protestantism, the true religious reflex of capitalism, affects utmost concern for women, has no bounds for its indignation against monks and nuns who have converted monastery and nunnery into a stews, a virtuous Bluff King Hal and equally virtuous

GOOD QUEEN BESS

are deeply concerned for the morals of the nation, what time Luther is defending polygamy and a “virgin queen” is wantoning with Leicester.

The Industrial Revolution brings in its train a crowd of “philanthropists” and religious revivalists who hold up their hands in horror at the inevitable immorality in factory and field which surely follows the Revolution, the rising tide of prostitution which is actually one of the bulwarks of capitalist society.

And now, to-day, when men are being replaced by women in the industrial world, the woman misleader is apparently commencing to compete with the man of the same genus, and to draw her own particular red herring across the path of progress to the workers’ emancipation. From the platform and from the police dock, to ”courteous Cabinet minister and brutally businesslike “steward ” they shout

“VOTES FOR WOMEN”

—to which Herbert Burrows, member of the Social Democratic Federation, takes exception, and gently seeks to chide. He, as a “revolutionary Socialist,” points out that the fight is “disingenuous,” nay, even “crooked.” They are merely fighting for a limited franchise for women. He urges them to become, like himself, an “ardent adult suffragist.”

Burrows believes in progress—backwards. The Chartists 60 years ago “demanded” adult suffrage.

Above this din rings out the clarion cry in the

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES

of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. “The emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race OR SEX.”

We of the Socialist Party of Great Britain refuse to be led aside by any of the discordant cries around us. Our goal is the Socialist Republic, where, economically free, the position of woman will be no longer determined by mere property “relations, where lip-service homage will give place to high devotion, where “the dark shadow ol haeterism” will be as the fast-fading memory of a bad dream, and the hateful marriage mart a hideous fossil found on the shores of Time to remind the race of its hard probation in the wilderness of capitalism, where woman will be

“Spouse, Sister, Angel ! Pilot of the Fate

Whose course has been so starless.

A divine presence in a place divine,

That on the fountain of our heart a seal

Will set to keep its waters pure and bright”

Augustus Snellgrove

Background to Northern Ireland: "A Protestant Government" (1972)

From the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Ulster Unionists weren’t too happy about the 1920 Government of Ireland Act for, although it provided for Partition, it clearly intended that this should be only temporary. Fortunately for them the Republicans in the South didn’t think much of it either and stood by their January 1919 Declaration of Independence under which an all-Ireland Republican government had purportedly been set up. The 1921 Treaty which ended the resulting Anglo-Irish War made Partition likely to be much more permanent than originally intended and the Ulster Unionists settled down to govern their own six-county statelet.

The Belfast parliament was not just a glorified county council. It had some real political power since it had at its disposal armed force: the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), a para-military police force along the lines of the old Royal Irish Constabulary which had been set up in the 19th Century to help hold down the Irish peasantry. This was soon supplemented by a much larger force of part-time auxiliary policemen, also armed and all Protestants (the RUC at least had some Catholic members), called B Specials.

The Belfast parliament also had the power to legislate on law and order in the six counties and one of their first measures was to pass the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act of 1922. This notorious Act, which was renewed annually for some years before being made permanent, allowed the government to detain people and intern them without trial, to ban meetings and newspapers and — the clause one South African Prime Minister said he’d scrap all his own repressive legislation for — arrest a person who does anything “calculated to be prejudicial to the preservation of peace or maintenance of order in Northern Ireland and not specifically provided for in the regulations”. The immediate political problem which faced the new Unionist government was that a third of its subjects — the Nationalist, Catholic minority — were opposed, sometimes violently, to its very existence and would have preferred to be governed by the newly-established Southern Irish ruling class in Dublin. They had to be subdued — by terror and intimidation. Already in 1920 there had been a vicious anti-Catholic pogrom in Belfast, when Catholic workers were driven out of the shipyards, their homes burned and their wives and children sent fleeing South. In other parts too of the about-to-be-established “Northern Ireland” Catholics were driven across what was soon to be the Border. After Partition the B Specials and the Special Powers Act were to be the permanent weapons of anti-Nationalist, anti-Catholic intimidation.

But not even this was a sufficient guarantee to the Belfast capitalists and their politicians in the Unionist party that some day by some means the Northern Nationalists might not succeed in re-uniting Ireland — behind the dreaded tariff walls. The normal rules of political democracy had to be set aside. Before Partition the British government had introduced proportional representation in Ireland, first for local and then for general elections. The Ulster Unionists never liked this for the very reason that it would give the Northern Nationalists representation in proportion to their numbers! They resolved to abolish it at the first opportunity, and did — in 1923 for local elections and in 1929 for general elections. This paved the way for the further gerrymandering of local council boundaries, particularly in areas with Nationalist majorities such as the town of Londonderry and the counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone. Derry was the most notorious example: here a two-thirds Nationalist majority among the electorate was turned into a two-thirds Unionist majority on the council. This was not only because Derry had an important role in Orange mythology, but also — and more importantly — because it was the centre of the Ulster shirt-making industry which, like Belfast heavy industry, was geared to Britain and its export markets. In fact at the time of the 1924 Boundary Commission the Derry shirt manufacturers specifically argued against being transferred to the Free State on the grounds that this would cut them off from markets behind possible Irish tariff walls.

From some points of view Northern Ireland itself was one big gerrymander. The Belfast capitalists were primarily concerned with keeping the link between industrialized East Ulster and Britain, but were prepared to take in other areas so long as they had a Unionist, Protestant majority. The full nine counties of Ulster had a slight Nationalist, Catholic majority which was obviously unacceptable. But once Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan had been conceded to the Free State the Unionists had a two-thirds majority in the remaining six counties, despite the fact that Fermanagh and Tyrone too had Nationalist majorities.

So, right from the start, Northern Ireland was corrupt from a democratic point of view. Not that the Unionist politicians who ruled continuously from 1921 ever bothered to pretend otherwise until a few years ago. Lord Craigavon, its first Prime Minister (who as James Craig had before the war been a leader of the planned Ulster Provisional Government with its armed UVF), openly declared in 1932, “Ours is a Protestant government”, and in July 1934 told the Belfast parliament, “We are a Protestant parliament and a Protestant State” (quoted in Divided Ulster by Liam De Paor).

Such sentiments were repeated by subsequent Northern Ireland Prime Ministers including Lord Brookeborough, the man who once boasted that he did not “have a Roman Catholic about my own place” and who remained Prime Minister until 1963.

One of the reforms introduced in Britain after the second world war was “one man, one vote” in local council elections. Previously only ratepayers and their wives had been able to vote while under certain circumstances a businessman could have more than one vote. The Ulster Unionist government in Northern Ireland chose not to implement this reform for the crude reason that it would have enfranchised more Nationalists than Unionists. It was estimated that this left at least a quarter of adult men and women without a vote in local elections.

Local councils also had other opportunities to discriminate against Nationalists and Catholics. Certain jobs and houses were reserved for Protestants and particularly for supporters of the Unionist party.

The Catholic minority gave its political support to the reactionary and clerical-dominated Nationalist party who were often known as “Green Tories” and, in Belfast and one or two other towns, to various Labour parties — “Irish Labour”, “Republican Labour” and even on occasions “Northern Ireland Labour”. The Nationalist party lost much of its support at the 1969 Northern Ireland general election to various Civil Rights and Labour candidates who later formed the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), at the moment the main political party supported by the Catholic minority.

The Unionists retained the support of the Protestant workers and small farmers by continuing to stir up sectarian hatreds and fears. It was a measure of the backwardness of politics there that “REMEMBER 1690”, "NOT AN INCH", "NO SURRENDER” and the like were, and still are, powerful political slogans. The Unionists successfully tricked the Protestant workers into believing that there was some special advantage for them in Northern Ireland being part of Britain rather than of Ireland. The Protestant worker came to believe that he was privileged as compared with his Catholic fellow worker and that any extension of civil rights to the Catholics would be a threat to his supposed privileges. This was a great illusion, but one which has retained mass Protestant working class support for the Unionist party, the Northern Ireland counterpart of the British Tories. The average Protestant worker has never even advanced to the limited-enough trade union and reformist consciousness represented by support for a Labour party. The Northern Ireland Labour Party, despite protestations of loyalty to the Crown and even of support for the Special Powers Act, has always remained a small minority party.

The Protestant worker never has been in any privileged position. He has always suffered from the working-class problems of poverty, slums and unemployment. And indeed it was only because of this that Unionist local councils were able to bribe a few of them with the occasional job or house in preference to a Catholic worker. One of the more pathetic Northern Ireland scenes has always been to see on the twelfth of July the Protestant slums of Belfast adorned with the unintentionally ironic banner, “THIS WE WILL MAINTAIN”.

The trade union movement in Northern Ireland is largely an extension of that of the rest of Britain and is the one mass organisation which unites both Protestants and Catholics, though there are two “transport and general workers’ unions” in the docks, one Protestant, the other Catholic. As in the South trade unions suffered more legal restrictions than in Britain, at least until the recent Industrial Relations Act. This Act does not apply to Northern Ireland (so making here, somewhat ironically, the part of the whole British Isles with the least restrictive trade union laws), but the 1927 Trades Disputes Act passed as a punitive measure after the British General Strike still applies and on one occasion the Special Powers Act was used against trade unionists. The main effect of this Act has been to make trade unionists who want to pay the political levy to finance the pro-capitalist Labour Party “contract in” (but Socialists don’t object to this since it is more democratic than the British system whereby those who don’t want to finance the Labour Party have to “contract out”).

This situation — where a corrupt Unionist clique ruled continuously by lies and threats and, despite having majority support, undemocratic practices — was accepted by successive Westminster governments, Labour as well as Conservative, until the whole system began to break down in 1968 and 1969.

As long as the Southern Ireland government pursued a protectionist policy the demand for a United Ireland, which most Catholics in the North supported, really was a threat to the material interests of the Belfast capitalists. Accordingly, those interests demanded that the Unionists continue to stir up sectarianism as a means of retaining mass support for Union with the British market. But when, from about 1960 onwards, the Southern Ireland government finally abandoned protection and sought, and eventually got, free trade with Britain (including Northern Ireland), the Irish Nationalism of the Catholic minority was not such a threat and the way was open for more friendly relations between Belfast and Dublin. This change was symbolized by the resignation in 1959 of De Valera as Prime Minister and his later election as figure-head President of the Irish Republic and the resignation in 1963 of Lord Brookeborough as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

De Valera’s successor, Lemass, began to speak of the North as “Northern Ireland” instead of the previously obligatory “Six Counties”, thus conceding it a certain amount of legitimacy. In the North the Nationalist MPs agreed to become “her majesty’s” official opposition and Brookeborough’s successor, O’Neill, authorised flags on official buildings to fly at half-mast on the death of Pope John in June 1963, a startling sight in a city like Belfast where the slum walls were daubed with the slogan “NO POPE HERE”. In January 1965 Lemass travelled secretly to meet O’Neill in Belfast; the following month O’Neill slipped off to Dublin. In December the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement was signed. It appeared that the future held out the gradual disappearance of the sectarian bitterness which had been a feature of Northern Ireland political life since the 1880’s, a hope seemingly confirmed by the failure of the 1956-62 IRA campaign against the North because of lack of support from the Catholic minority.

But this was not to be. The Unionist government could now without danger have abandoned its corrupt and undemocratic practices and O’Neill — the first Northern Ireland Prime Minister not to claim to be governing a Protestant State for a Protestant People — did urge this. But it was no easy task for the Unionist political machine to suddenly turn off the hatreds it had assiduously cultivated for the previous eighty years. In fact nearly every prominent figure in Northern Ireland life — judges and Church leaders as well as politicians — is on record as saying, not so very long ago, what the Rev. Ian Paisley now says.

When a Civil Rights movement arose to demand the end of the various corrupt and undemocratic practices — the gerrymandering, the restricted franchise, discrimination over housing and jobs, the B Specials and the Special Powers Act — the Unionist government, with present Ulster Vanguard leader William Craig as Home Affairs Minister, reacted as it had done towards all previous opposition movements supported by Catholics: it saw it as a threat to the existence of the Unionist statelet, as a Republican plot to be ruthlessly crushed. It was a fatal mistake which within four years led to the overthrow, by a British Tory government, of fifty years of Unionist rule in Northern Ireland. In any event, almost the whole Civil Rights programme — with the exception of the repeal of the Special Powers Act, but even this would probably have been replaced by something less comprehensive but just as effective had not war broken out between the Provisional IRA and the British Army in February 1971 — had already been conceded. In fact the franchise in Northern Ireland is now wider than in the Republic: it gives votes at 18 while the South still sticks to 21.

So Northern Ireland too is now back where it was before the first world war: ruled directly from Britain. The fifty-year stretch of Ulster Unionist rule over the six counties of North-East Ireland stands out as an episode in the development of capitalism in Ireland, as a means of preventing the Belfast capitalists from having been cut off from the rest of industrial Britain behind the tariff walls of an agricultural Ireland. The fear of the effect this would have had on profits has been the material basis of Belfast’s steadfast Unionism and "Loyalty”. The Unionists, as the saying puts it, were basically more loyal to the half-crown than the Crown.

Adam Buick

For an exposure of the Southern Irish Capitalist Republic see last month’s issue.

Editorial: Neither London nor Dublin but World Socialism (2021)

Editorial from the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

This year marks the centenary of the founding of the Northern Ireland statelet, also referred to as the North of Ireland, the ‘occupied six counties’ or Ulster depending on your point of view. In April, this anniversary was greeted with serious rioting in Protestant working-class areas of Belfast. Three causes were given – anger at the new hard border established in the Irish Sea by the Northern Ireland ‘Protocol’ as part of the final Brexit agreement with the EU, resentment at Sinn Fein politicians not being prosecuted for allegedly breaking Covid rules while attending a funeral of an IRA man, and the young rioters allegedly being put up to it by local loyalist gang leaders who wanted cover to protect their criminal activities. There are fears of further rioting during this month’s marching season.

But these explanations fail to consider the wider context in which this social unrest is taking place. The new statelet was born in 1921 in the aftermath of the Irish war of independence. In the North, pogroms were incited against the Catholic population leaving over five hundred dead, mainly Catholics. Thousands of Catholic workers were expelled from their workplaces in the engineering and shipyard industries. The Northern Unionist capitalists, anxious that the Northern industries centred around Belfast and Derry stay within the markets of the then British empire, agreed to a separate state in the North remaining in the UK. Not all unionists envisaged a state that marginalised its Roman Catholic minority. Edward Carson declared ‘from the outset let us see that the Catholic minority have nothing to fear from the Protestant majority’. James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, had other ideas when he stated ‘All I boast is that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant state’. Under his watch, constituencies were gerrymandered to create Unionist majorities, the state forces, the notorious B-Specials and the RUC, were set up to keep the Catholic working class in their place. The Unionist ruling class reckoned that they needed to secure the support of the Protestant working class, by ensuring that the best paid jobs in the shipbuilding and engineering industries went to Protestant workers.

Although Northern Ireland has since been reformed, the religious sectarianism imprinted on its political DNA has not been fully erased.

It has often been pointed out that the Good Friday Agreement assumes a frictionless border between the North and South. Another less visible assumption was that the capitalist economy which was booming at the time in 1998 would continue to do so generating more jobs and higher incomes for the working class. However, this was never going to be the case. The capitalist economy tanked in 2008 with the resulting austerity and again with the current Covid-19 pandemic. Many workers have been plunged into greater poverty. Given the poisonous mixture of systemic sectarianism and economic insecurity, it is no wonder that violent clashes have occurred where workers turn on each other.

The truth is that Protestant and Catholic workers have more in common with each other than they have with the capitalist class. Protestant workers have no interest in a Northern Ireland linked with the UK and Catholic workers have no interest in a united Ireland. They both have an interest in establishing socialism.

The Passing Show: South African Revolution (1960)

The Passing Show Column from the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

South African Revolution

The recent events in South Africa have made starkly clear the real nature of the conflict there. The entire capitalist world, Governments and press, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, has denounced the measures taken by the present ruling class in South Africa to bolster its position. The Nationalist newspaper Die Burger, the organ of the ruling landowners and farmers, admitted that staid Conservative British papers like The Times and the Daily Telegraph had been “practically hysterical in their vehemence.” The Times, indeed, went so far as to say in its leading article of April 6th, that it was sixteen days “since the revolution began in South Africa.” 

After the Sharpeville massacre it was announced that the pass laws would not be enforced for the time being. This was an astonishing concession for the ruling landowners' class to make to the capitalists. It showed how much the landowners had been shaken, for the pass laws are the cornerstone of the society built by the landed interests. The aim of these laws is to keep Africans in the country, where they must work on the white men's farms in order to live, and to prevent them coming to the towns, where they could obtain higher pay in the capitalists' factories. If despite the pass laws they come to the towns, they are arrested—in numbers running to hundreds of thousands each year—and sent back in convict gangs to labour on the farms for a mere pittance. The news that the pass laws had been suspended was a tonic to the South African capitalist class: the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, which had slumped at the news from Sharpeville, recovered some of its losses. Then came the announcement that the pass, laws would be reimposed: again share prices fell. And the South African Federated Chamber of Industries was reported to be seeking a meeting with Dr. Verwoerd to urge some modification in his policies.

The question now in South Africa is this: how long will the growing capitalist class allow the landed interests to continue ruling the country?

Calvinism

Christians are sometimes harder on their fellow-Christians than many materialists would be. For example, when on April 8th the House of Commons was discussing the open police brutality against Africans in the streets of South African cities, Sir Godfrey Nicholson (the Conservative member for Farnham) said the situation was partly due to the Afrikaners' “background of a rigid Calvinistic creed." This is a case of putting the cart before the horse. Many other peoples in the world share the Afrikaners' Calvinism, but not being in the same economic position, have no sympathy with the South African landowners’ apartheid. The Afrikaners' “Dutch Reformed Church” originated in Holland, whose inhabitants are also closely related to the Afrikaners. But far from sharing the Afrikaners’ beliefs, the Dutch leaders go out of their way to criticise apartheid. The Calvinist Scots Presbyterian Church has long attacked the white farmers’ policies in both South Africa and the Rhodesian Federation. No, religious beliefs do not determine political views. Both of them are, in the long run, expressions of the economic and material position in which a particular class finds itself.

Sailing before the wind

The Readers' Digest, which claims a world circulation of over twenty million copies, is one of the most accurate indicators of the current policies of the American ruling class. During the war it was full of articles showing how bestial the Germans and—even more the Japanese were. As soon as the war was over, and it became clear that in the next war the United States' enemy might well be Russia, with West Germany and Japan lining up as America's allies, the content of the articles shifted abruptly. Now it was the bestiality of the Russians which was written about; references to Germany and Japan became friendly. The editors even went so far as to print articles about the heroic deeds of German and Japanese soldiers in the Second World War.

Rome

But besides Germany and Japan, the United States also fixed on the Catholic Church as a useful ally against Russia. References in the Readers Digest to Roman Catholicism therefore became friendly. The fact that the Catholic Church is hand in glove with Fascism in Franco Spain, and supports at least one South American state (Colombia) where Protestants are harried mercilessly, was ignored. In the March, 1960, issue there is an article on “Good Pope John,” in which the writer talks about the “warm humanity, irrepressible humour and amiable wisdom” of the Pope with all the starry-eyed enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old girl listening to Cliff Richard. Still, that’s not surprising. If America’s alleged “defence of democracy” can be stretched to include military and other assistance to the Fascist Franco, it can't be too much of a strain to take in Franco’s friend as well

The nearly royal family

The news (in the Daily Express, 31/3/60) that at the forthcoming royal wedding there may be present not only Mr. Armstrong-Jones’ father and mother, but also his mother's present husband, his father’s present wife, and his father's other previous wife—the five of them all coming roughly under the heading of “the bridegroom's parents"—reminds one of the extent to which the divorce courts are patronised by the ruling class. The American millionaire Tommy Manville, who has had ten wives (or is it eleven now?) is exceptional, but the difference is not a matter of principle: it's only a question of how often the principle has been applied. Cases of husbands with three or four successive wives, or wives with three or four successive husbands, are not uncommon, as anyone who glances through the gossip columns can testify. Monogamy, at least in the upper class, now appears to have been replaced by this successive polygamy, at it were. The whole subject is worth careful study by anyone who claims to understand the workings of modern society.

Alwyn Edgar

Past Class Struggles. (1919)

From the May 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

As was pointed out in a previous article, early England was Feudal, and under the Manorial system rural England was composed of estates divided among villeins (a particular kind of peasant proprietors), who owed certain services to their lords.

The growth of commercialism broke up the Manorial system and introduced the Capitalist system. The foundation of the Capitalist system was laid by divorcing the labourer from the soil, i.e., converting the peasant into a "free" labourer.

Feudalism rested upon the reciprocal duties of lord and peasant or villein. The rise of the trading and manufacturing class brought about the need for a large number of labourers who could be exploited without restriction. In order that the commercial or capitalist class could become the supreme class in society the serf had to be converted into a free labourer—free of all feudal ties and relying only on wages for his living.

The commercial class, who had acquired money through trade, had steadily grown and permeated the existing system to such an extent that it was gradually breaking the bonds of Feudalism. In this the trading class were assisted by the great feudal lords themselves, who, while despising trade as vulgar, coveted its riches.

But the starting-point of capitalism was the free labourer. The landed proprietors, to get money, leased their lands and commuted labour rents into money rents. The rise of woollen manufacture on the Continent brought about a corresponding rise in the English wool trade. Then the great landowners commenced enclosing the common lands and evicting the peasants to make room for sheep. At the same time the suppression of the monastries and the break-up of the bands of feudal retainers, drove thousands of other people to seek employment under the growing new conditions.

In these various ways the principle raw material of capitalism—the free labourer, who must work for wages or starve—was produced.

The whole system of government, however, was built upon the feudal organisation and the Court was in control. As the capitalist organisation was breaking up the feudal, it became necessary for the moneyed class to obtain supreme control of social affairs in order to sweep away the privileges and restrictions that were hampering its development. Society had to be reorganised, politically and religiously, to conform with the new economic organisation.

The religious change took the form of the Protestant Reformation, Catholicism, with its many fast days and ceremonials, was inimical to commercialism, hence the fight of the commercial class for political power was suffused with the glamour of a new religion. Freedom of contract in earthly affairs was bolstered up by the plea of freedom of judgment in affairs spiritual.

During feudal times a struggle had been going on between the Court party and the great nobles. In 1215 the nobles forced from John the concession of the "Great Charter," the gist of which was that the sovereign could not levy taxes himself, payments having to be granted by a council of barons and bishops. In 1265 the town element (representatives of shires and boroughs) was introduced into this council of Parliament. The succeeding history is that of the struggle for supremacy of Parliament against the royal power.

The merchants, embittered by the harassing and interrupting of commerce by enemy ships and the waste of money on foreign wars, time and again refused to grant the necessary subsidies and Parliament was dissolved. But the emptiness of the regal treasury always compelled the sovereigns to re-assemble Parliament.

By the time the bourgeois had arrived at wealth, then, and desired to become the ruling power, the Crown had secured the powers of government into its own hands, but at the same time, the necessities of the regal exchequer had compelled the feudal party to concede certain privileges and powers to the new class, and in this way the former helped to dig its own grave.

At the outbreak of the Revolution the parties taking part were : The Court Party, the lords and large landed proprietors ; the merchants ; the small farmers or country squires ; the town shop-keepers ; the political adventurers or opportunists ; and underneath all the poor of town and country.

The actual struggle commenced in 1642, when the Commons strove for the right to control the militia, and so take the military power out of the royal hands. In spite of the refusal of Charles to grant this request the militia were rapidly enrolled and lord lieutenants appointed.

The Lords desired to limit kingly power, the Commons to abolish it. In the early part of the war the Lords or Presbyterian party predominated and the policy of compromise was adopted. Underneath the Lords, however, were the Independents, growing daily in strength, menacing the policy and position of the Lords, and eventually compelling them to go over to the Court.

The Independents appealed only to Reason. Institutions, laws, customs everything, was by them brought before the bar of Reason and called upon to order itself according to the will of man, i.e., mercantile man. Equality of Rights, the "just" distribution of social property, was their cry. Let us hear Guizot speak of them.

"There was no contradiction between their religious and political systems ; no secret struggle between the leaders and their men ; no exclusive creed, no rigorous test rendered access to the party difficult; like the sect from which they had taken their name, they held liberty of conscience a fundamental maxim, and the immensity of the Reforms they proposed, the vast uncertainty of their designs, allowed men of the most various objects to range beneath their banners ; lawyers joined them in hopes of depriving the ecclesiastics, their rivals, of all jurisdiction and power; liberal publicists contemplated by their aid the formation of anew, clear, simple plan of legislation, which should take from lawyers their enormous profits and their immoderate power. Hanington could dream among them of a society of sages; Sidney of the liberty of Sparta or Rome; Lilburne of the restoration of the old Saxon laws; Hanison of the coming of Christ; even the non-principle of Henry Martyn and Peter Wentworth were tolerated in consideration of its daring ; republicans or levellers, reasoners or visionaries, fanatics or men of ambition, all were admitted to make a common stock of their anger, their theories, their ecstatic dreams, their intrigues ; it was enough that all were animated with equal hatred against the cavaliers and against the presbyterians, would rush on with the same fervour towards that unknown futurity which was to satisfy so many expectations."

"History of the English Revolution," Guizot, p. 216.

The principal figure in this party was Oliver Cromwell, a country squire of Hundingdonshire. Cromwell was a descendant of the unprincipled adventurer chosen by Henry VIII. as his chief instrument in the confiscation of the monastic lands, in which, process Cromwell the elder succeeded, by embezzlement, in amassing an enormous amount of wealth. Cromwell's parents had further augmented the monastic spoils by the profits derived from a lucrative brewery business. Such were the origin and connections of the man who was to lead the wealthier merchants to victory.

He organised a band of religious zealots drawn from the ranks of farmers and tradesmen, who contributed much to the earlier successes of the Parliamentary forces and also considerably exalted the power of their commander.

As the war progressed the Independents gradually gained the ascendant, and Charles I. was executed Jan. 30, 1648.

By 1649 the Independents had become strong enough to declare a commonwealth with a single House of Commons and Council of State, Cromwell managing to manoeuvre himself into the position of Lord Protector. The final working out of this was that all the executive power was centred in his hands. Then commenced the much desired epoch of the Merchants.

The commercial wars of Cromwell are described by Gibbins as follows :

"He (Cromwell) demanded trade with the Spanish colonies, and religious freedom for English settlers in such colonies. Of course his demands were refused, as well he knew they would be. Whereupon he seized Jamaica (1655) and intended to seize Cuba; and at any rate succeeded in giving the English a secure footing in the West Indies. He seized Dunkirk also from Spain (then at war with France, with a view of securing England a monopoly of the Channel to the exclusion of our old friends the Dutch. . . . Not content with victory in the West, Cromwell, with the full consent of mercantile England, declared war against the Dutch, who were now more our rivals than our friends. It would have been perfectly possible for the English and Dutch to have remained on good terms ; but the great idea of the statesmen and merchants of the 17th and 18th centuries was to gain a sole market and monopoly of trade, and so the Dutch had to be crushed. . . . Cromwell succeeded in his object. He defeated the Dutch and broke their prestige in the war of 1652-54, and designed to win their trade by the Navigation Acts of 1651. The contest between the English and Dutch for the mastery of the seas was already practically decided by the capture of New Amsterdam (New York), and the subsequent wars of Charles II. reign, completed the discomfiture of Holland."—"Industrial History of England," p. 123.

The defeat of the Dutch gave the English merchants the carrying trade of the Baltic and the Mediterranean. The Navigation Acts of 1651 referred to above set forth that all goods brought to England must be carried in ships of the actual country manufacturing the goods. As the Dutch had been previously the principal carrying nation, this was a direct blow at their supremacy, and also an indication of the growing power of the English mercantile marine.

Cromwell died in 1658, and shortly after the Royalist element began to regain a little power and succeeded in obtaining the recall of Charles II., but with greatly reduced royal power. This sovereign, more wily than his father, played into the hands of the wealthy class and was thereby enabled to enjoy a life of luxury. He pursued a foreign policy similar to that of Cromwell, enlarging the sphere of action of the merchants. He died in 1685, and his successor, James II., too thick headed to recognise the trend of the times, tried to restore the old supremacy of the Court.

In the meantime the French had grown in power and began to threaten the commercial position of England. William of Orange drew the attention of the English on account of the skilful way in which he harassed France. In consequence of this, and of the dissatisfaction aroused by the conduct of James, William was invited to the English throne in 1688. He landed with a force of Dutch, and with the help of the merchants and landowners defeated the Royalist forces.

William was presented with the "Declaration of Rights," after signing which his coronation was celebrated.

In the "Declaration of Rights" was incorporated the principles of the now all powerful capitalist class. The two chief points were—

"The raising and maintenance of a standing army to be the prerogative solely of Parliament.
Levying of taxes or loans without consent of Parliament to be illegal."

The early part of the Revolution had witnessed the desire of the revolutionary Bourgeois to abolish kingly power, but they soon found that such a measure was not entirely in their own interests. The mass of the people, seeing old habits and customs so ruthlessly jettisoned, began to question even the right of private property! During the expedition for the conquest of Ireland undertaken by Cromwell in 1629, a body known as the Levellers broke out into open insurrection, demanding "true and perfect freedom in all things." This outbreak was crushed, but it frightened some of the "eternal laws of reason" out of the capitalists, hence their acquiescence in the restoration of the shadow of kingship.

The successful culmination of the rebellion put the rising capitalists in a position to reap to the full the advantages of the new system of colonisation and unlimited competition. It brought to the English working class a depth of misery and slavery hitherto unknown.

Gilmac.

Painting Dutch Capitalism (2012)

The Night Watch by Rembrandt

Art Review from the December 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Rijks Museum in Amsterdam is home to the art of the Dutch Republic of the 17th century, which was ‘the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.’

The Dutch bourgeoisie declared their independence from the Spanish in 1581. The Explosion of the Spanish Flagship during the 1607 Battle of Gibraltar by van Wieringen reflects pride in the victory of the Dutch fleet over the Spanish. The Celebration of the Peace of Munster, June 1648 by van der Helst depicts a banquet and displays the bourgeois pride in independence and victory over feudalism.

The world financial centre was in Amsterdam. It had the first ever Stock Exchange, the Bank of Amsterdam, capitalist cycles of boom-and-bust, speculative asset inflation (‘Tulip Mania’), and Isaac Le Maire, the first stock ‘bear trader’.

The Syndics of the Amsterdam Drapers Guild by Rembrandt depicts the sampling officials who checked the quality of dyed cloth, and it reflects the Calvinist simplicity of bourgeois self-confidence.

Amsterdam was noted for its ‘schutterij’, the bourgeois civic militias and these are portrayed in two famous paintings of the era: The Company of Captain Reynier Reael by Hals, and The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq better known as The Night Watch by Rembrandt. 

The bourgeois religious sensibility was dominated by Calvinism which provided a theological justification for the developing capitalist mode of production. The Merry Family by Steen appears to be a celebration of alcohol, music, and tobacco but a note in the painting provides the subtitle of ‘as the old sing, so pipe the young’ which warns the viewer not to copy such dissolute behaviour.

The Dutch Republic was the imperial power (‘the colonial system of trade and navigation ripened like a hothouse’) with colonies and trading posts in North America, Brazil, the East Indies and South Africa. The Dutch East India Trading Company controlled the maritime trade routes and dominated world trade for 200 years. By 1650 there were 16,000 Dutch merchant ships. View of Olinde, Brazil by Frans Post depicts the former Portuguese colony that had been taken by the Dutch in order to exploit Brazil’s sugar cane plantations.

Economic competition with England for control over the seas and the trade routes led to three naval wars between the Dutch Republic and England which confirmed Dutch domination of world commerce until the Napoleonic Wars.  Several marine paintings by van de Velde depict Dutch merchant and naval supremacy such as The Cannon Shot and Dutch Ships on a Calm Sea.

The Portrait of Baruch de Spinoza depicts the great Dutch philosopher who advocated a classical pantheism, opposed Cartesian dualism and was admired by Marx for his materialism. Hegel believed ‘you are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all’.

Marx concluded ‘the total capital of the Republic was probably more important than that of all the rest of Europe put together and the people of Holland were more overworked, poorer and more brutally oppressed than those of all the rest of Europe put together’.

Steve Clayton

Religion, War and Nazism (1940)

From the November 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The claim has sometimes been made that religion in the modern world is a unifying force rising above national barriers. The war has shown again how little truth there is in this. Catholics and Protestants and Mohammedans are to be found supporting both sides, and it is difficult to discover any important respect in which the members of any of the religions are marked off in outlook or actions from the rest of the population. Inside the Church of England and the Non-Conformist Churches there is the utmost diversity of opinion, following political or other non-religious divisions, from an anti-war or pacifist attitude to extremes of belligerency demanding wholesale slaughter of the German civilian population. Only small bodies such as the Quakers show more consistency.

The subordination of religious theories to the needs of the State at war is most noticeable in the Catholic Church, not, however, because it is essentially different, but because the Catholic Church claims to be an international organisation. Some of the defenders of the Pope and the Catholic Church have claimed that the Pope's attitude is one of outright opposition to Nazism and Fascism, and that it is only because the Pope is bound by Treaty not to intervene in international affairs affecting Italy without the consent of the Italian Government, that reserve is maintained by the Vatican since Italy entered the war. That, of course, leaves the Vatican to defend the action of entering into such a Treaty, not to mention the difficulty of explaining why, if the Pope is opposed to Fascism and the war policy of the Italian Government, the Pope can receive 200 Italian army officers and say to them “we bless all you who serve the beloved fatherland with fealty and love.”—(News Chronicle, October 31st, 1940. Telegraphed report from Vatican City.) 

What we do see is the State everywhere trying, with considerable success, to use religion and religious organisations for political and war purposes. If the Churches are everywhere ready to subordinate their beliefs to the needs of the State, this is only matched by the readiness of the politicians and political parties to sacrifice their own professed principles in order to make religion their handmaiden. Now that the Nazis have conquered territories containing some 50 million Catholics, in addition to the 21 million in Germany itself, it is reported (Sunday Express, October 20th, 1940), that Hitler, the erstwhile denouncer of religion in general, “is making frantic efforts to win the Vatican’s sympathies and induce the Holy See to change its attitude towards totalitarian policy.”

  The first sign of the Nazi change of policy was when, on Hitler’s orders. Catholic priests accompanying his armies were decorated.    This step has been followed by the despatch to Spain of an important delegation headed by Bishop Derning, of Osnabruck, and Bishop Preyssing, of Berlin. They have offered the Spanish Churches three wagon-loads of crosses, religious paintings and Church furniture collected in Germany. Valuable pieces offered by Hitler himself are included.
   At almost the same time a new Catholic weekly paper has been launched with the title “The New Will.” It is edited by Bishop Razkowsky, of the army, whose father was one of Hindenburg’s sergeants. This weekly makes a great effort to emphasise that “Hitlerism is not as it was before.”
—(Sunday Express, October 20th, 1940.)

A little earlier the Times reported the following:—

   Most reliable sources in the Vatican city confirm a report which was first current about a fortnight ago that Pope Pius XII is about to issue a world-wide Encyclical warning all Roman Catholic believers against the continuously increasing peril of Communistic influences, which the Holy See is convinced are fast spreading throughout the world.
   These Vatican sources assert emphatically that the Church is about to initiate a decisive campaign against what the Holy See considers the catastrophic expansion of Bolshevist ideology in consequence of the efforts of various Governments to induce Russia to enter the present world-conflict. Great Britain, it is pointed out, has been openly trying to persuade Russia to become her ally, and the United States, the Holy See fears, is also prepared to come to terms with Russia in order to settle favourably the Far East struggle against Japan.
    On the other hand, the German-Russian pact has brought not only Germany but now also Italy and even Japan into the sphere of the pernicious Soviet influence. The Pope has grave fears that even the staunchest Roman Catholic country, Spain, may also fall a prey to the same course of developments. It is recalled how in the past year the geographical dominion of Soviet influence has widened to include half Poland, part of Finland, the Baltic States, Bessarabia, and north Bukovina.

—(The Times, October 8th, 1940.)

It is obvious that if at a later stage the German capitalists find themselves in open conflict with the Russian Government, the "anti-Communist” line of the Vatican would be a very useful background for an attempt to form a new grouping of Powers against Russia.

Catholicism again plays its part in the imperialism of the Spanish capitalists so that Professor Allison Peers gives it the name "Catholic imperialism” (Manchester Guardian, August 8th, 1940). Some more discreet exponents of this imperialism might say that they were concerned only with defending “a spiritual and religious conception of civilisation,” but Professor Peers sceptically asks the question whether that is all General Franco meant when he declared “We have a will to empire.” The collapse of France opens the way to Spanish expansion in Africa, and the Spanish Press talks about "Tangier, Gibraltar, Casablanca, Algiers, Fez, Oran."

Luther The First Nazi?

However, it is not by any means a question of British Protestants lining up against foreign Catholics and holding them responsible for the world’s troubles. On the contrary, several writers have sought to blame German protestantism and particularly Martin Luther for the Nazi creed. In a review of "French War Aims” (Denis Saurat, Methuen, Is.), the Manchester Guardian says: —

   One of the most interesting of his discussions is on religion. He finds a chasm between the conception of Christianity held by Germany and that which subsists in the Western democracies. German Christianity from Luther to Karl Barth is based on the idea of predestination and of the election of special persons and nations as the chosen instruments of God. In the Western democracies Christianity implies the freedom of the individual soul.

—(Manchester Guardian, July 9th, 1940.) 

The Very Rev. W. R. Inge is more explicit in his denunciation of Lutheranism. Writing on "German Frightfulness” in the Evening Standard (August 1st, 1940), he blames it all on the way the Lutherans reconciled the Christian’s adherence to the Sermon on the Mount with their acceptance of the State, "which includes among its institutions war, criminal justice, the acquisition of wealth, and, perhaps, slavery.”

The first compromise solution, he says, was that the Church said to its members you must do one or the other, either accept the State and all it implies or else retire to a monastery.

  The Christian conscience was never quite happy about this compromise, which was thought to be sanctioned by Christ’s words to the rich young man, “If thou wilt be perfect, sell all thou hast and follow me." At the Reformation the prevailing view was that this double standard could not be accepted. " We are all bound to obey the commands of Christ.
   This left the old conflict between religious and secular ethics quite unsolved. Martin Luther made a new compromise, which has had disastrous consequences, not only for Germany, where his teaching was most popular, but for Europe generally. He taught that Christianity is a matter for the individual only, not for the State. The State is not only not bound by the teaching of Christ: it need not obey any moral principles at all.
   This had been already accepted by Machiavelli, who found, truly enough, that petty States of divided Italy were absolutely unscrupulous. He coolly said that this was, in fact, the principle, or want of principle, on which Italian politics were conducted.
  Ever since the time of Luther, this horrible doctrine has been openly taught in Germany by theologians, philosophers and historians.
    I will quote two examples, one from Luther himself, the other from a modern Lutheran. “ The hand which bears the sword is no longer man’s hand but God’s. It is not man, but God, who hangs, breaks on the wheel, beheads, strangles, and makes wars.” So Luther found it consistent with his Christianity
to hound on the German princes to butcher the unlucky peasants who were in revolt against intolerable conditions.
  My other quotation is from Naumann, who had a reputation as a theologian in modern Germany. “Both are necessary to life, the mailed fist and the hand of Jesus. Only upon this foundation is the higher morality of the Gospel to be realised. This sounds hard and cruel, but it seems to me to be soundly Lutheran.” I am afraid it is.

It will be understood that those who tried and still try to solve the above problem by juggling with morality and some supposed divine necessity of obedience to authority are in a hopeless tangle. They will never solve their problem.

Dean Inge goes on to quote a saying of Frederick the Great, which sums it all up in a manner more true than Inge himself appreciates. What Frederick said was this: —

   I take what I want, I can always find pedants to prove my rights.

There we can leave the matter. The ruling class everywhere take what they can and have little difficulty in getting professorial and parsonical pedants to prove their rights.

Edgar Hardcastle