Forum: Free Maintenance. (1908)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Statements of difficulties, criticisms of our position, contributions upon any question of working-class interest, are invited. Members and non-members of the Party are alike welcome. 

Correspondents must, however, be as brief as possible, as bright as possible, and as direct as possible to the point.

1. Does poverty prevent class consciousness ?

2. On state maintenance of children.

A.P. (Walworth.) writes a “friendly criticism” of our position extending to three folios, urging that although he recognises Socialism to be the only remedy, the working class are too unintelligent and ignorant in their present poverty-stricken condition to be able to achieve it. Free maintenance, he argues, is a necessary preliminary. He does not deny that it will bolster up capitalism, but says “the very process of patching up would play no small part in its downfall.” In the first place A.P. errs in confusing ignorance with a lack of intelligence : intelligence meaning a capacity for knowledge rather than the knowledge itself. We deny that the working class are not sufficiently intelligent to understand Socialism, one of the reasons being that we are workers ourselves. What prevents the workers accepting Socialism is the confusion introduced into its propaganda by persons calling themselves Socialists, preaching and doing that which is inconsistent with Socialism. Poverty by itself does not incapacitate a person from understanding anything—many of the intellectual geniuses of all times having struggled with poverty ; nor does poverty prevent a class from being revolutionary. Although the Peasants’ Revolt in this country was undertaken when the peasants were in a condition of comparative prosperity, the revolt of the continental peasants—the Jacquerie of France, in particular—was undertaken at about the same time, when at the lowest ebb of degradation and poverty. To-day, the revolutionary spirit is certainly as manifest in the East End as in respectable Suburbia.

Regarding free maintenance of the children, the very necessity of this as being the necessary outcome of capitalism is an indictment of capitalism, and the only remedy is Socialism. The working-class effort needed to agitate for and administer an adequate measure of state maintenance is about equal to that needed for the Social Revolution, and the working class capable of conducting the one is certainly equal to conducting the other—while Socialism would render the former unnecessary. And seeing also that while the capitalists rule they can only be persuaded to grant anything in that direction, apart from that which suits their own interests, by fear of something worse to follow, we know of nothing more calculated to impress the capitalist class with fear than the concentration of the workers on Socialism. It is quite a mistake to suppose that it is a tenet of this Party that reforms, sops, palliatives, and ameliorative measures generally would be refused. In the first place we cannot refuse them if we would, not having the power ; in the second place we know that the danger lies not in having these things offered as a substitute for Socialism—that would not lessen one class-consciousness—but in stultifying our Socialism by advocating that which is not Socialism. To talk of the patching being necessary to its downfall is simply a contradiction in terms and in fact. The illustration used seems most unhappy. If an eloquent S.P.G.B’er were to convert Haggerston to Socialism, the next week a nice, kind gentleman with a cheque book would be able to convert it back again to Tariff Reform. If the eloquence of the former were successful in converting the working class ia any constituency, that working class would be proof against the cheque book of the Tariff Reformer or any other agent of the master class, The cheque book is only powerful to-day because the workers are not converted and are not class-conscious.

South African time-bomb (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Africa has recently experienced the bloodiest conflicts between rioters and police since the 1976 Soweto uprising. Several dozen people were shot dead by police, who used live rounds in addition to rubber bullets and teargas. The conflict was concentrated in the Vaal Triangle, in Sharpeville, in Sebokeng, Boibateng and Evaton. More than a hundred people were seriously injured in the rioting, which coincided with the introduction of a new constitution upholding the apartheid regime.

In 1976, the state response to the Soweto uprising left more than five hundred dead across the country. Clearly, not very much has changed since then. At the time of the more recent riots, those who boycotted the elections to the new system of assemblies were beaten up by van-loads of police and some of the candidates themselves. Some reporters sympathetic to those not voting were also attacked. However, the intense discontent felt by the majority of South Africans relates to far broader issues than the new Constitution.

There have been protests at rent increases, increases in bus fares and over the high level of indirect taxation. As in 1976, it is children who have led the protests, organising widespread school boycotts as a protest against conditions in those prison camps for the young. During last month's elections to the tricameral parliament these boycotts reached a peak, with 500,000 staying away from school.

The fact that hand in hand with the racist oppression of apartheid goes an underlying class division has not escaped the notice of the rioters. The black majority are turning against black councillors because of their association with unpopular measures such as rent increases, and the government's attempt to distance itself from the discontent by giving some power to black councils in the townships is certain to backfire in the end.

In South Africa today there is an explosive undercurrent of resentment and discontent among the black majority, who are treated like beasts of burden by the ruling class. But the actions of this reactionary white elite are part of a wider conflict which directly involves us all every day: the power struggle between a propertied and privileged minority, and the majority on whose backs they prosper. Of one thing there can be no doubt: the majority in South Africa will defeat those who today sit smugly entrenched in Johannesburg. Victory will set the end of a class division between a powerful minority and the dispossessed majority and the ownership of the means of life by the world’s inhabitants without distinction of race or sex.

The Class Struggle in Poland (1976)

From the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the end of June, following the announcement of huge increases in food prices, strikes and riots broke out in many Polish towns. The government subsequently altered its proposals. At the end of 1970 strikes and riots were started by the dockers and shipyard workers of Gdansk (Danzig), in which the police shot down and killed at least six workers. The 1970 strikes led to a change in the leadership of the “Communist” Party with Gierek, the present Party leader, replacing Gomulka (who had himself come to power following strikes and riots in Poznan in 1956 in which 38 workers were murdered by the police).

The Polish working class like workers the world over, has had to resist attempts by their capitalist rulers to reduce their living standards. If the protest has taken the form of rioting and looting, as well as going on strike, it is partly because there are no independent trade unions in Poland: though no doubt there are political axe-grinders urging workers that this is what they should do. The organizations calling themselves “trade unions” are merely government agencies for disciplining workers and getting them to work harder.

The strikes in Poland show clearly that, even in state-capitalist countries ruled by a dictatorial “Communist” party, the class struggle of the working class against their exploiters cannot be suppressed. It is a myth that the exploitation of the working class has been abolished and Socialism established in Poland, as claimed by the government. The workers of Poland are exploited by the privileged minority who, through their dictatorial control of the State machine, monopolize the use of the means of production just as much as the private capitalists of the West.

An increase in food prices without a compensating increase in wages means of course a cut in living standards; it was to object to the size of the cut that the Polish workers went on strike. For the present the government has postponed its plans, but it has no choice in this matter because the world crisis has led to Poland developing a serious trade deficit. Exports have fallen and import prices risen, so squeezing the profits of the country’s state-capitalist enterprises, the source of income both for capital accumulation and the privileged consumption of the Polish ruling class. As The Times (26th June) put it:

The increases had become an economic necessity. Since 1970, real wages have risen by about 7 per cent a year while food prices have been artificially frozen. At the same time, world inflation has been pressing in on Poland. Government subsidies for protecting the consumer have reached enormous proportions and became a particularly heavy burden because Poland needs desperately to pay off its heavy foreign debts.

So working-class living standards are to be reduced in order to pay off the debts of the Polish state capitalist ruling class! A familiar story and a proof that the establishment of state capitalism with a State monopoly of foreign trade, in place of private capitalism does nothing to free a country from the pressures of capitalism on the working class. A further proof that there is no national solution to working-class problems.

Our message to the workers of Poland is to urge them to recognize this and, while doing what they can and must to maintain their living standards, to join with their fellow workers in other countries with a view to replacing world capitalism, in both its private and State forms, by world socialism. 

Adam Buick

The Evolution of Revolutionary Burns. (1906)

From the April 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Extracts from a speech delivered by John Burns at the Old Bailey when tried for seditious conspiracy on April 9th, 1886).

These extracts from a speech of the Burns of the Eighties have been reproduced so that the working class may have an opportunity of contrasting the present views of this Right Honourable person with the views he then enunciated. It has been, and still is, the fashion to gibe and jeer at the volte face of another Right Honourable turn-coat (Joseph Chamberlain) and no one has delighted in the exercise more than Burns himself. Yet it has recently been held to be an exhibition of bad taste to bring Burns’ own past up in evidence against him—and no one was more righteously indignant than Burns ! The Burns revolution has been far and away more complete than that of Chamberlain and it is the more conspicuous because of the price Burns received for his apostacy—a price the recipient has so often rejoiced in the size of. The hope that Burns expressed in ’86 that the penalty for the betrayal of the working class would be heavy enough to deter anyone from attempting it has not been realized. The penalty has not been enough—for Burns ! We do not, of course, suggest anything so absurd that a man may not change his view, seeing it is upon that change of view in the working class that we rely for the realization of Socialism. But we are concerned to emphasize the point that the Burns of yesterday, who has secured his present position by virtue of his influence with the unthinking working class, is very far from being the Burns of to-day. It is more necessary to emphasize this difference than many think. Undoubtedly Burns secured his following as the Burns of the Eighties—by his association as a member of the working class with working-class movements. And undoubtedly it was because this following held to the idea of a practically unchanged Burns, an idea insinuating itself into an ever wider circle, that Burns’ services as a decoy were purchased by the Liberal Party. These extracts may help to destroy that illusion. Burns is now engaged in administering that capitalist system to which he at one time traced the poverty of the working class. To-day he urges the usual capitalist argument of working-class intemperance as largely the cause of working-class poverty, where previously he designated as liars those who held such views. To-day he is a member of the same sort of government, adopting exactly the same sort of method that he denounced so roundly in ’86. Yet poverty has only intensified in the interregnum. Burns’ attitude to-day is the capitalist attitude; his method the capitalist method. Only the unthinking section of the working class could fail to note the fact that between Burns and his Tory predecessor there is no material difference. Unfortunately the unthinking section of the working class is very large. Hence these extracts.

__________________

My Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury,

… I expected that at some time of my life I should be brought face to face with the authorities for vindicating the class to which I belong. I have, from my earliest infancy, been in contact with poverty of the worst possible description . . I have done everything I could in a peaceful manner to call the attention of the authorities to the frightful amount of poverty and degradation existing among the working class . . . I heard that there was going to be a meeting of the starving unemployed of London in Trafalgar Square on February 8th. . . I reached the place at 1.30. I was recognized . . . I got upon the plinth and spoke to 13,000 or 14,000 men. . . I pointed out that a remedy could only he found by bringing pressure to bear upon Parliament and the local authorities as I had tried to do 12 months before when I had to walk the streets of London for 7 weeks for daring to speak as to the condition of the workers . . . I ask you, can you wonder at a workman’s language being strong ? I am inclined to think that the day is not far distant when stronger language will have to be used. When the Fair Traders came, I climbed up the balustrade and acted as chairman of that second meeting. Why? All know that the Fair Traders Messrs. Peters, Kelley, Kenny, Lemon and others, are regarded as arrant impostors by the workmen of London and I was desirous that there should not be a physical conflict between the unemployed and those honest but misguided men who are the dupes of these bogus representatives . . . The day of these mercenaries I am pleased to say is now over. The penalty for betraying the workers I hope, will be heavy enough to deter any man from selling their cause, as it has many times been sold. . . I found that the crowd were becoming somewhat turbulent . . and I thought it my duty to listen to the suggestion that we should proceed in procession through the West End to Hyde Park. . . No damage was done by the procession … until we reached the Carlton Club. . . There is a class of men who make it a practice on occasions of political demonstrations to laugh and jeer from the Club windows at the poverty or what they term “the great unwashed,” to to jeer at the misery their own greed has created. . . The crowd were not in a temper to respond to contemptuous jeers by a smile. . . Stone throwing commenced. And that was the result of the stupid, ungentlemanly, criminal conduct of Carlton Club members. I did my best to repress the stone throwing . . . believing as I do that window breaking, except, perhaps, as warning, is useless to effect a change in our system of Society, based as it is upon the robbery of Labour. . .

John Burns in the 1880s.

Against this system of Society, I frankly confess I am a rebel, because Society has outlawed me. I have protested against this state of Society by which at present one and a half millions of our fellow countrymen, adult males, are starving—starving because they have no work to do. Talk about strong language ! I contend my language was mild when you consider the usage they have received and that the patience under severe provocation displayed by the workers is almost slavish and cowardly. . . We come before you not as paid agitators . . . but as men anxious to change the existing system of society to one in which men should receive the full value of their labour, in which Society will be regarded as something more than a few titled non-producers who take the whole of the wealth which the useful workers alone produce. . .

If you want to remove the cause of seditious speeches, you must prevent us from having to hear as we hear to-day, of hungry poverty-stricken men, who from no fault of their own, are compelled to be out of work. . . . I have not one single word of regret to utter for the part I have taken in this agitation. . . I say we cannot have in England as we have to-day five millions living on the verge of pauperism without gross discontent. . . . I am sorry to say that it seems to be a characteristic of the Government and the governing classes to be influenced only by fear—at least Mr. Gladstone, Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Chamberlain say that their Governments are not susceptible to reason or appeals unless the Hyde Park railings are pulled down and the club windows broken. . . Mr. Chamberlain prior to the riots denied that exceptional distress prevailed; but about a fortnight afterwards he admitted that it was exceptional and severe. . . It (the riot) also made the landlords and capitalists surrender to the Mansion House Fund some of the proceeds of their past robbery in the shape of charity. . . That meeting of Feb. 8th called the attention of the people of Great Britain to this fact that below the upper and middle strata of Society there are millions of people leading hard degraded lives—men who through the unequal distribution of wealth are consigned to the criminal classes and women into the enormous army of prostitutes whom we see in the streets of our great cities. And as an artisan I cannot see poor puny little babes sucking empty breasts and honest men walking the streets for months at a time—I cannot hear of women of the working class being compelled to resort to prostitution to earn a livelihood—I cannot see these things without being moved not only to strong language but to strong action, if necessary. . . And when the Attorney General says we incited to riots, I say that the Social system is to blame. It prompts men to thieve and it prompts women of the working class to resort to dishonest acts by not giving all a fair start in life and not giving them an opportunity to get honest work. Society journals demand our imprisonment. Why ? Because £11,000 worth of windows have been broken. But how about the sacred human lives that have been and are being degraded and blighted by the present system—of capitalism?. .  . . 

I shall serve my cause as well inside a prison as out. The word prison has no particular terror for me. Through the present system of Society life has lost all its charm, and a hungry man said truly (as Isaiah, said in the Holy Book) that there was a time in the history of our lives when it was better to die in prison or better to die fighting than to die starving. . . The wonder is that there was not more destruction, of property and that no life was lost. If we had given the word, not a single inmate of the Carlton Club would have been alive to-day . . .

Editorial: The Steam and the Safety Valve. Limits of Unemployed Demonstrations (1932)

Editorial from the November 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a saying that history repeats itself, first as a tragedy then as a farce. It might be added that once the farce has begun apparently nothing on earth will prevent some of the actors in it from repeating it indefinitely. Not all the experience of generations will teach the I.L.P. and Communist Party that unemployed riots and demonstrations, whatever else they may achieve, do not lead to Socialism. Still, they repeat their parrot piece that once the workers can be got to kick about any one grievance the conflict with the authorities will intensify until the whole working class is involved and capitalism overthrown. So the unemployed riots in Croydon and Belfast are hailed as the beginning of revolution. What is it to Mr. Maxton that the unemployed in Croydon flared up and rushed the Council Chamber exactly 30 years ago, and that troops were brought out on the streets of Belfast in 1907; that the authorities have never in the 50 years since that period been scared as they were at the unemployed riots in the ‘eighties; and that the miserable exploitation of unemployed hunger marchers was tried out with little result in the pre-War depressions and the panicky days of 1921 ? While it is desirable that the unemployed should be aggressive, yet if they get some concession (sometimes even if they get nothing but cracked heads) these movements, based on the uninstructed discontent of non-Socialists, simply peter out and leave nothing permanent behind. What happens is that if the discontent is sufficiently great the capitalist parties rush in and lead it into safe channels or buy the gratitude of the discontented with small concessions. As soon as conditions look more favourable to them, the capitalists—always seeking to keep down the burden of taxes—cut the concession to whatever limit they and their political agents consider safe.

At the present moment, when the discontent of the unemployed has become manifest through sporadic rioting and demonstrations, the capitalist politicians are falling over themselves to gain or keep the support of these groups. So, suddenly half the London newspapers have taken up the grievances. Sir Herbert Samuel, the Liberal leader, having already collared the Communist slogan of “more trade with Russia,” now takes their other strong plank and demands that something be done about the means test. Then the Prime Minister promises that the Government will immediately look into the matter. All of which means that the 10 per cent. cut last autumn and the imposition of the Poor Law test may have gone just a little beyond the limit deemed safe for electoral purposes. Steam pressure is rising, and the safety valve must be eased a little.

An illustration of the way in which this has been done in the past is given by the changes in the amount of unemployment pay, sometimes going up when discontent is rife, then being reduced when the capitalists think that a reduction can be put over without disturbing the workers’ loyalty to capitalism and capitalist parties.

Before the War unemployment insurance applied to only a few workers, and the amount of benefit was 7s. a week. This was a contributory scheme.

At the end of the War, when the difficult problem of demobilisation had to be faced, the Government gave a “donation” to ex-soldiers of 24s. a week for 26 weeks (see Ministry of Labour Gazette, November, 1918, p. 436). Civil workers received the same amount, but for 13 weeks only. Dependent children under both scales were allowed 6s. for the first child and 3s. for others.

On December 12th, 1918, the rates were raised to 29s. for a man and 25s. for a woman (see Gazette, September, 1919).

After the 26 or 13 weeks’ period the pay was on a lower scale of 20s. for a man and 15s. for a woman.

Then, under the 1920 Act (with prices rising, but the Government less panicky) the amounts were reduced to 15s. and 12s., with no allowance for dependents, and the scheme was now put on a contributory basis.

In 1921, when unemployment had reached large dimensions and unrest was widespread, dependents were admitted to benefit (5s. for a wife and 1s. for each child).

In 1924 the man’s benefit was raised to 18s. And the woman’s to 15s., with 5s. for a wife and 2s. for each child.

In 1928 the man’s allowance was reduced to 17s., the woman’s was left unchanged at 15s., but the wife’s allowance was raised to 7s.

In March, 1930, the wife’s allowance was raised again to 9s. (All the above information is given in the 20th Abstract of Labour Statistics, pages 62-67).

Finally, under the influence of the crisis last autumn, the rates were cut by about 10 per cent., a man receiving 15s. 3d., a wife 8s., and a single woman 13s. 6d. The children’s allowances were left at 2s.

So the I.L.P. and the Communists who believe in the theory of leading discontented non-Socialists on and on to Socialism, are now fighting to get back the 1s. 9d. which was deducted last year. After which they will still have another 12s. to go before they progress back to the unemployed pay of the demobilised soldier in 1919.

Whither South Africa? (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the western outskirts of Johannesburg lies the “shanty-town" of Newclare—an ugly sprawl of wooden shacks, patched up with canvas and corrugated iron, dirty and horribly overcrowded. Buried deep in the misery and squalor of Newclare and other places like it, live the Native workers of Johannesburg and the gold-mines of the Rand.

On February 13th this year, two armoured carloads of police drove into Newclare. Their object was to make a surprise check-up on passes, the documents which the law compels all adult male Africans to carry to show they are in work (and which, incidentally, most of them are unable to read).

These “pass laws” have never been completely effective. They are even less effective now when the Natives have been flocking into the towns in such large numbers that the authorities have found it quite impossible to keep up with them. And so, to remind them that the law still exists even though it cannot be administered properly, the police have taken to making surprise raids (often in the middle of the night), in which they make a sudden swoop on an area, quickly round-up likely suspects, arrest those found without passes, and carry them off to gaol. Sometimes the arrests run into hundreds, and the raid looks more like a minor military exercise.

Perhaps because it was only a small raid, the one on February 13th did not pass off quite so smoothly as usual. When the police tried to make an arrest on this occasion they were immediately attacked by a large crowd of Natives who eventually forced them to retire under a hail of stones and other missiles. Having driven off the police, the crowd then proceeded to throw barricades across the streets and began stoning every vehicle they found carrying Europeans, at the same time setting fire to shops and looting the contents.

The rioting continued unchecked until the following day, when heavy reinforcements of armed police and firemen were drafted to the scene, and to other places where disturbances had also broken out in sympathy. Covering the firemen with rifle and machine-gun fire to enable them to fix the hoses and at the same time prevent the crowd from cutting them, the police began to occupy the area. The crowd resisted fiercely, attacking both the police and the bands of armed Europeans who were now also roaming the district, bent on taking matters into their own hands. (The presence of these gangs was one of the most significant aspects of the riot, and is a disturbing indication of the level to which racial feeling has now risen inside South Africa.) Finally, after several hours of pitched battles, the police cleared the streets, and the disturbances came to an uneasy end.

The incident itself has since been referred to the Riots Commission, which is already sitting to consider five other cases of rioting. All of them have occurred within the last six months.

What has brought South Africa to this perilous pass? What has brought about this situation, in which certain elements in the White group are already expressing their intention of suppressing all future trouble, whatever the cost and whatever the consequences? Where some of the politicians are already talking about the dangers of civil war? South Africa has always had a racial problem. What has happened in the past few years to bring it to such a terrible state?

To answer these questions, we must first make a brief review of the events that have taken place since 1948.

The Past Two Years

There are two main political parties in South Africa, the Nationalist Party under Malan, and the United Party under Smuts. In addition, there are two smaller organisations, the Afrikaner Party led by Havenga, and a Labour Party.

At the last General Election, held in May, 1948, the Nationalists and Afrikaners combined had a slight majority over the United Party and the Labour Party. This enabled them to form a Coalition Government with Malan as Prime Minister, and Havenga in the key position of Minister of Finance.

Backed largely by the Boer farming vote, the Nationalist Party has always taken an extreme line on the racial question, and, indeed, they fought the election on this issue. Malan himself, in a speech at Praal on the 20th April, 1948, said about the election that it was 

  “dominated by the question of whether the European race would be able to maintain its rule, its purity, and its civilisation or float along until it vanishes for ever in the black sea of South Africa’s non-European population.”

Once in power, there is no doubt that Malan would have been prepared to go the whole way with his extreme racial policies if it had not been for the reluctance of Havenga to go the whole way with him. As his Government depends upon the support of Havenga and the Afrikaner Party, he has had to give way—at least for the present. This, however, has not prevented him from pressing on with all kinds of other repressive legislation, with or without the support of Havenga. Prominent in this legislation has been: —

(a) The pushing forward of the general ideal of "complete separation” of all the racial groups of South Africa, “socially, residentiary, industrially, and politically.” This means that, the four groups of South Africa—the Whites, the Coloureds (people of mixed blood), the Indians, and the Africans, will be for ever kept strictly apart. In line with this, legislation has already been introduced forbidding inter-marriage between Europeans and Coloureds (laws already exist forbidding marriage between Whites and Indians, and Whites and Africans).

(b) The intention to keep the Natives on the Reserves, and away from the towns—in Malan's own words, “the Native reserves must become the true fatherland of the Native." In the towns they must henceforth be regarded as “visitors.” 

(c) Repeal of the previous Government’s law allowing the Indians three representatives in Parliament.

(d) Abolition of present Coloured vote, and in its place a similar system to that now operating for the Natives in which they are allowed three separate representatives (who must be Europeans).

(e) Repeal of the previous Government’s Bill recognising Native Trade Unions.

(f) All training of Native skilled workers to cease.

(g) All voting rights to be taken away from the Indians, and from all Natives living away from the Reserves.

As the culmination to all these repressive activities Malan is now about to introduce an identity-card system by means of which every person in the Union will eventually be registered according to “race.” Its effect will be to put every individual, once and for all, into a racial classification from which there will never be a chance of escape. To the darker-skinned African it will be just another document to add to the others he has to carry already, but for the Coloured group its effects will be profound. It will put an end, in fact, to all possibility of a white-skinned Coloured person “passing over” into the White group.

Finally, the Nationalists have extended the racial laws to cover the Cape Province, formerly the least subject to prejudice. In the post offices, non-Whites are now directed to separate counters; there are separate exits and entrances at the railway stations; “Jim Crow” travels the trains; and rides shamelessly on the buses, where Europeans now sit in the front and members of the other groups sit at the back.

All these things show clearly that the Malan Government is determined to put the clock back in South Africa. But what of the United Party and Smuts? Are they any different? Only to this extent— that whilst they do not wish to put the clock back, they neither wish to put in very far forward. Their alternative boils down to a few reforms here and there which they hope will take the sting out of the Natives' rebelliousness, relieve the pressure on the Indians and Coloureds where it hurts them most, and leave them all once more contented with their inferior position.

The same applies to the Labour Party. Only recently there was a split in their ranks when their Leader and Deputy Leader in Parliament voted against the Indians being allowed the vote. One member abstained and the others voted in favour of the Bill, which was in any case a milk-and-water effort that only allowed them representation by Europeans.

What it comes to is this, irrespective of Party, irrespective of class, almost the whole of the White group are united in refusing to allow the non-Whites anything like a position comparable with their own. They may differ here and there amongst themselves as to which particular rung of the ladder each of the other groups should occupy, but one thing they are agreed upon—that they, the Whites, belong near the top of the ladder and the others a long way further down.

They continue to deceive themselves that they can maintain this situation, that for ever and ever 2½ million Europeans can keep the other 9 millions in subjection. There never was a more forlorn and fantastic hope, nor one with graver possibilities of terrible consequences for themselves. Speaking in the South African Parliament three days after the riot. Smuts said: —

  “Something new is coming into the life of this country. We are accustomed to the orderly conduct of our Natives and on the whole our Natives are well behaved, but some change is coming about  

  “Unless this new development is stopped and stopped at once and unless firm measures are taken no one can be sure of the future of South Africa.” (Johannesburg Star, 15/2/50.)

Unfortunately for Smuts, for Malan, for all the vast majority of Europeans in the Union who think like them on the Native question, there is a change taking place in the Natives, not only in South Africa, but throughout the whole of the continent. Smuts has sensed the change and would like to explain it by the recent activity of Malan and the Nationalist Party. What he fails to recognise is that whatever the Nationalists have done to provoke matters, they have only helped to bring more quickly what is bound to have come in any case. What all the Whites of South Africa fail to face up to is that the Natives are on the move, and will not stop until they have gained the same position as the Whites.

On this question we can do no better than quote from our pamphlet. “The Racial Problem.” What it said three years ago is even more relevant now than it was then:—

  “As industry develops, they (the Natives) will learn more, and want more, and then the same position will face the South African White worker as faces the American White worker at the present time. Then will the South African workers, White, Native. Coloured, and Indian, be at their own cross-roads. What their decision will be we do not know nor do we intend to guess. What we say to the South African workers we have already said to the American workers. They must realise that their interests as workers lie together: until they do so they will remain divided and weakened, wide open to the attacks and encroachments of the capitalist class. Much worse may result; the logical end of the road which the South African White worker is treading can only be bloody violence and destruction. No group can permanently hold down another many more times more numerous than itself, and sooner or later the working class, particularly the White section, will have to face up to the situation and make their decision.”

Recent events in South Africa have served only to underline the warning contained in this statement. The White workers in the Union will ignore it at their peril.

Stan Hampson

Communist Rioting (1929)

From the June 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party takes its stand on the policy so clearly stated and defended by Marx and Engels that the working class must, as a preliminary to the establishment of Socialism, gain control of the political machinery of society. They can do this in the advanced Capitalist countries through political organisation and the use of the vote; the working class possessing, as they do, the overwhelming majority of votes. The Communists reject this theory of Marx founded on the lessons of everyday experience, and advocate the fundamentally different and fundamentally unsound policy of trying to create a working class armed force with which an attempt is to be made to fight and overthrow the armed forces of the Capitalist state. They reject the possibility of gaining control of the political machinery and the existing armed forces, and base their hopes instead on barricades and street fighting. Bucharin, speaking for the Executive at the 1928 Congress in Moscow of the Third International, made no attempt to hide this aim of the Communists. The following extract from his speech is taken from a report in the Communist publication “International Press Correspondence” (July 30th, 1928) :—

  Mass actions must be regarded as one of the best means in our struggle. Our tactics must be to mobilise the masses, to become masters of the streets, to attack again and again the law and order of the bourgeois State and to smash it, to capture the street by revolutionary means, in the strict sense of the word, and then to go further. Only on the basis of a whole series of such events and on the basis of the development of these events—mass actions, etc. —only through such a process can we prepare ourselves for fiercer and more stubborn mass struggles on a larger scale.

May Day Madness

On the instructions of the Third International the German Communists tried out this policy on May Day. May Day street demonstrations by every party had been prohibited by the Berlin Police Authorities because of the alleged danger of conflict between rival organisations. The Communists announced in advance their intention of defying the prohibition. According to a report published in the “Daily Herald” (May 1st) and received from German Labour Party sources, the Executive Committee of the German Communist Party were prepared for 200 deaths, but nevertheless gave instructions for demonstrations to be held at all costs. The demonstrations ended in an attempt by the Communists to hold two Berlin working class districts (Wedding and Neukoln) against the police. Barricades were thrown up consisting of tree trunks, paving stones, overturned carts, etc., and Communist snipers are reported to have fired on the police from houses in these areas. Brutal methods were used by the police. In all 23 people were killed and many others wounded before the authorities finally suppressed the demonstrators. The following summary of this criminal action of the Communists, taken from the “Manchester Guardian,” is based on the first hand reports of their representative in Berlin :—

  Many of the casualties were youthful Communists, most of them were inoffensive passers-by, only a few were policemen—it does not seem that one policeman was killed. Nearly all the execution was done by police rifles and machine-guns. The Communist rioters were poorly armed —they do not seem to have had more than a few revolvers—nor do they themselves seem to have been very numerous. The police showed some restraint at first, but then fell upon their opponents with great savagery, shooting and bludgeoning rioters and casual passers-by alike.” (“Manchester Guardian,” May 7th.)

Only one policeman was injured in the actual fighting on May Day, and the following days, and he shot himself by accident. (“Daily Telegraph,” 8th May.)

The Dummy.

This incident only serves once more to indicate the futility of the whole Communist theory of armed revolt. The Capitalist class, by their control of the State machinery, control powerful armed forces possessing all the latest and most potent weapons of destruction. In addition they can and do prevent the formation of any serious rival force. Even if the workers had any means of purchasing expensive modern weapons they would have no means of training themselves to use them. The “Guardian” points out how these hare-brained “revolutionaries” sent their boy dupes into action against a semi-military police force, armed only with a few revolvers. The “Guardian” is not quite accurate. According to photographs published in the London press, they also had at least one machine gun—a dummy ! With it they attempted to scare off the police. A harassed policeman is certainly likely to lie low when he sees something which looks like a machine gun. But these Communist children had apparently overlooked the very pertinent fact that to a fleet of tanks it is a question of supreme indifference whether your machine gun is a dummy or not. The authorities brought out their tanks and their armoured aeroplanes, with troops in reserve, and the issue was never in doubt. Even if the Communists could have resisted for a few days they never explained, and do not appear to have considered, what they were going to do with Wedding and Neukoln after they had demonstrated their ability, temporarily, to hold them against the police.

Police Spies

Even the temporary success of such a move depends on a circumstance which is so unlikely as to be well nigh impossible of achievement, that is to keep the plans from the police. It is common knowledge that semi-secret organisations advocating violence as does the Communist Party are honeycombed with police agents and informers.

In Paris, also, May Day demonstrations were forbidden, and there also the Communists threatened to defy the prohibition. The police accordingly rounded up the leaders just prior to May Day and kept a large number under preventive detention. This practice serves a twofold purpose. It deprives the rank and file of their leadership and at the same time enables the police to save their spies from danger or exposure by keeping them, with other prisoners, safely under lock and key.

How prevalent spying is and how difficult to detect is shown by the case of “John Vidor,” author of “Spying in Russia.” This person (the name is apparently an assumed one) claims that he not only wormed his way into the Communist movement, but got himself sent to Russia as a member of the “Workers’ Delegation,” which went there in 1927. (See “Daily Telegraph,” 3rd May.)

The “Morning Post” periodically prints scare articles written by one of its informers who apparently holds some minor official position in the British Communist Party.

Mass Action—Mass Suicide.

History knows many instances of romantic hot-heads vainly trying to overthrow powerful Governments without considering the hopelessness of the odds against them, being, in fact, more interested in heroics and martyrdom than anything else. But it has remained for the modern Communist movement to reduce this tactic to its last futility. Ever since the formation of the Communist Parties we have seen them denouncing the alleged Labour Parties as being in fact parties of Capitalism. We have also seen them voting these parties into control of the political machinery and the armed forces of the State. Finally, having placed in the hands of Capitalist parties the power to build up armed forces for the defence of Capitalism, they then commit the further criminal folly of sending boys “armed” with revolvers and dummy machine guns against the tanks and battle-planes controlled by those whom they have voted into power. The Communists, in pursuing this policy, are a danger only to themselves and to the working class.

Edgar Hardcastle

Peasant revolt (2008)

Pamphlet Review from the March 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Symond Newell and Kett’s Rebellion, By Peter E Newell. Past Tense (c/o 56a Info Shop, 56 Crampton Street, London, SE17). 2007

Mostly family history is a rather tedious collection of meaningless names and dates, occasionally however genealogical research can provide one with a true insight, a personal link to historical events, thus demonstrating the reality of what would otherwise be just a story. Thus it is with Peter Newell’s excellently researched pamphlet. The essentially economic causes, the rather alarming course of events in and around what was then England’s second city, Norwich, and outcome (none too good) of this peasants’ rebellion are clearly illustrated. All in all this is an interesting and informative account of a little known incident in English history.

Kaz.

Further reading:

Symond Newell and Kett's Rebellion in Norfolk

The politics of Class War (1992)

From the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

What are we to make of the Class War Federation? According to the tabloids, who have not been slow to recognise this growing group within British politics over the past decade. Class War (CW) comprises a collection of wild-eyed revolutionary hooligans; the walking, swearing seeds of civilised destruction. But then, when have the booze-soaked brains of Sun and Daily Mail journalists ever come up with a valid definition of what a revolutionary is?

Many on the Left dismiss CW as a gang of loudmouthed lumpenproles whose entire existence is dedicated to gratuitous violence and offensively-stated propaganda. Some police and politicians imagine that behind every urban riot and act of vandalism there are CW organisers in the wings ticking off a list of targets. Others dismiss Class War as a prolier than thou version of Private Eye: satire for those who get their kicks out of wounded cops and dead aristocrats. Whatever worth there is in these analyses, there can be little doubt that plenty of people are talking about Class War, both the newspaper and the federation.

Our analysis will ignore the question of style. Revolutionaries are not identified by image or affectation, but by what they stand for and what they do. Our purpose is to examine and criticise the politics not the pose.

Areas of clarity
Class War understand more about what a socialist society will be like than any of the pseudo-socialists on the Left. We quote from their book Unfinished Business, the Politics of Class War (from which all the other quotes come):

  There will be no need to work for a capitalist to survive. The revolution will mean us clocking off wage slavery for good . . . [A]fter the revolution we can and will survive without (money]. Money will not be replaced by something with a different name that does the same thing such as bartering, coupons, tokens, etc. . . . Just by its existence, money is a measure of the failure of society to organise the production and distribution of goods for the benefit of all; IT HAS TO GO . . . We seek to do away with artificial boundaries and borders. The world will not be divided into countries or States . . .There will be no limitations on travel.

A wageless, moneyless, stateless world society is not a bad start as far as revolutionary vision goes. But ideals are cheap. How does CW do on some of the other basic revolutionary tests so regularly failed by the Left?

On several, they do pretty well. For example, the Left’s long-running sick love affair with the capitalist Labour Party has been one of the enduring comi-tragedies of the twentieth century. Not so CW:

  "At times we have no choice anyway but to fightback . . . This is where the role of the British Left is crucial to the ruling class. As long as they can divert us into stupid campaigns like getting Labour elected, the ruling class are safe”. 

Again, how often do we find leftists romanticising the role of the trade unions, seeing them as bodies of immense working-class struggle? Whilst socialists understand the need for unions as defensive combinations of our class (in which many of us are active) we are well aware that bodies committed to fighting for crumbs will do little to abolish the wages system. CW argues, correctly, that the unions are crucial to the role of "regulation stability and control . . .  In advanced capitalist countries like the UK. capitalism cannot function without the help of the unions".

CW opposes Leninism and those sects which stand for “taking control of the State with a vanguard party on behalf of the working class”. CW avoids falling into the trap of leftists who patronise feminists who are seeking women’s liberation without socialism:

  The objectives of equality for women can only be achieved as part of a wider social revolution . . . The idea of ‘wages for housework’ is an illusion. We believe the only real solution to low pay and no pay for women is the removal of capitalism.

That much-loved concept of the pseudo-socialist, the state that will live on into the new socialist society, is rejected by CW: “We see no transitory workers* State . . . as the Left does, we have learnt the lessons of history". Finally, CW seems to understand clearly the role of mass culture as a means of feeding workers with capitalist ideology, and, unlike many leftists, they are firm in their rejection of religion: “Once you believe in divine beings or forces above humankind with superior power over our lives then you give up the right to control your own life yourself".

These areas of clarity are refreshing contrasts to the usual trash of left-wing thinking, and puts in question the popular claim that CW is just a bunch of noisy but vacuous graffiti kids. Unfortunately, in with the positive points are a load of major negatives—illusions, misconceptions, follies. We urge the supporters of the Class war Federation to think about these seriously.

How many classes?
This is no academic question, although for years it has been a key area of attention for the pseudo-intellectual sociologists. They are concerned to classify people in accordance with the market needs of a consumer-commerce society. That is why they break up the working class into an upper and lower section (often several sections) and are committed to the false view that there exists a middle class.

Our definition of class is clear: there are those who need to work and those who don’t. There are us workers who must try to sell our mental and physical energies in return for a wage, salary or giro cheque, and there are capitalist parasites who live off the proceeds of our work by receiving rent, interest and profit. The profit of the capitalists comes from the legalised robbery of the workers. We give them everything they have. They live in privilege and luxury out of our productive efforts. There can be no common interest between the class of exploiters and the class which is exploited: our class, the overwhelming majority. Willingly or otherwise, the antagonism between robber and robbed takes the form of a constant class conflict. The only way to end the class war is for our side to win. We must throw the very small minority who own the means of wealth production off of our backs. We are many, they are few.

We would expect an organisation called Class War to agree with all this. And at one point in their manifesto they do: “Struggle is inevitable because society is divided into two opposing camps, the working class and the ruling class, who are fundamentally at odds in this world” (our emphasis). But, aside from this accidental clarity, CW’s analysis of class is hopelessly confused and should be abandoned sooner rather than later. In chapter 3 on “Class" they claim that there are three classes under capitalism: ruling, middle and working. They claim that the ruling class in Britain comprises 5 percent of the population—which is probably much larger than the real size of the capitalist minority. They then claim that “the middle class" comprises 20 percent of the population and includes doctors (but not nurses, who are listed as workers), social workers, researchers, teachers and small employers.
The reasoning behind this false division is that the middle class are those with more power than the workers. In fact, this power which people in the middle class think they have is illusory. There are those who imagine that a “good” accent or a college degree or a job with a monthly salary puts them in a higher class. Look around the dole offices and see how wrong they are: these are just the deluded workers who are being hit, especially in the South East, now that the recession is cutting into welfare services, banking and insurance and other so-called safe jobs.

The myth of the middle class was invented by sociologists who saw themselves as being an intellectual vanguard for such a class, and CW has fallen into the trap of accepting their self-deceit. But there are practical questions which CW had better face up to. In the event of a working-class revolution, are we to assume that millions of teachers and social workers—or, put more clearly, people given a salary to teach infants to read or paid a wage to work in old people's homes or centres for the mentally handicapped—will be regarded as part of the non-working-class enemy? Are we to assume that a nurse with a posh accent or a bank clerk who plays golf at the weekend (both defined as working-class by CW) will be inherently more revolutionary than a junior doctor working sixty-plus hours a week for a pittance or a newsagent who employs a couple of part- time staff? We suggest that CW’s ridiculous class analysis is based upon a romanticised view of the workers as horny-handed sons of toil who wear cloth caps and drop their aitches and a large dose of sociological nonsense based upon middle-class guilt.

What is a revolution?
There are two areas of disagreement here. Firstly, CW throws out the democratic baby with the parliamentary bathwater. Secondly, having rejected a democratic road to the new world society they commit themselves to a policy of foolhardy violence.

As to democratic change, there is a long-standing confusion on this issue which requires serious debate amongst those who seriously seek a new system of society. For us the democratic principle is paramount. There can be no socialism without a majority who want and understand it. Only a socialist majority can enact the revolution. Democracy is not merely a strategic appendage to the thought of the Socialist Party, but it is inseparable from our aim: a truly democratic society. Unless those who seek to establish socialism do so as knowing participants in their emancipation, the outcome cannot be socialism, as it is bound to be the case that those who followed others into any new system would remain followers within it. Democratic change—which means a majority who are conscious and not willing to be passive— is a prerequisite for revolution.

In different parts of the world conscious socialist majorities will express their mandate for the new social system in different ways. In Britain workers have the vote.The vast majority use it now to elect leaders to run capitalism. They are not forced to do so; workers are deceived into wasting their votes on the continuation of their class slavery. Used by revolutionary workers the vote would be the most orderly and peaceful method of giving a mandate for socialism.

CW rejects this, but we see their objection as more based upon anarchist dogma than experience. They say that “as it exists, democracy is most definitely an illusion. It fools us into thinking we can change things through the vote". They argue that instead we should elect workers’ councils or soviets with instantly recallable delegates. The Socialist Party has no dogmatic objection to workers expressing their will through such bodies—why should we? But we warn CW that these bodies can become just as anti-democratic and leader-controlled as parliaments have been if those doing the voting for them are not politically conscious. The soviets in Russia in 1917 were used by the Bolshevik leaders as a means of getting a grip on the malleable workers in them; soviet power became party power.

Parliaments with instantly recallable and democratically elected and accountable delegates sent to outlaw capitalist property rights will make perfectly useful revolutionary bodies. And they can be won now, simply by having a majority of workers using the vote as a revolutionary weapon. CW is just wrong when it claims that "the condition for us to have a right to vote in this competition is that all the candidates are on the bosses’ side". We do live in an undemocratic society and the bosses do have millions to spend on their rotten candidates, and their laws do make it very hard for us to stand against them, but we can and we have. Imagine if we revolutionary socialists had enough candidates to stand in every constituency—if we could win one in ten of the votes cast—if workers started to realise that there is a real political opposition. Could the ruling class ban us at that stage in our growth? Let them try and see how much faster we would grow.

We realise that there are long-standing anarchistic sentiments which make the case for the majority vote seem unappealing. So the debate on this matter must go on, particularly amongst people who agree on the aim of a classless, wageless, moneyless global society. But in the meantime CW is committed to a case for revolution which rejects democracy. They say that “a revolution is not ‘democratic’ in the sense that there might be a majority of our class involved”. From there on in CW’s entire revolutionary strategy is useless.

Who needs violence?
What they seem to envisage is a growing minority of workers rioting, creating no-go areas, entering into violent conflicts with the police and army and eventually bringing about a civil war. They “see violence as necessary and inescapable”. Of course, in a minority revolution violence would be inescapable—and the ruling class, backed by the most sophisticated weaponry and well- trained and paid military force, would rout the insurrectionaries. There is nothing romantic about such a prospect. Look at how the Serbs are currently dealing with the Bosnians and then imagine what would happen if a civil war, fought between an army with NATO-type equipment and a well-tooled gang of glorified rioters, was ever to be fought in the name of working-class revolution.

At times CW glibly glorifies violence, such as in a rather sick passage in Unfinished Business where they recount an occasion in the Spanish Civil War when peasants shot the local nuns and priests and then dug up the bodies of previously dead clergy in order to shoot bullets through them too. “This brilliant piece of working class propaganda sets very well the tone for dealing with religion”, comments CW. But what about dealing with the teachers and the social workers and the greengrocers and the other so-called middle class enemies who must be defeated? Shooting people, even if they are of the most confused and ideologically unpleasant kind, has nothing to do with revolution and is, in fact, a recipe for the rule of bullies and psychopaths.

CW proposes the setting up of no-go areas administered by vigilante-type workers’ militias. You cannot run an army democratically. On the contrary military organisations are notoriously authoritarian. Living on a council estate where thuggish police hassle young workers and blacks is bad news, but the way out is not to create new cops who will, as CW might put it, “sort out their own”. Workers in Ireland who have been on the receiving end of so-called paramilitary justice will be the first to warn against new self-policing squads.

CW warns of “the dangers of these forces becoming detached from our class and becoming a new power in themselves”. The only safeguard against this is to close the doors of the revolutionary movement to those who think with their fists and are happiest when they are playing authoritarian militarist roles. We don’t need them, In a majority revolution the capitalist minority will be likely to cave in peacefully, but even if they do not they could easily be dealt with by the socialist majority.

The basic prerequisite for a socialist revolution is widespread working-class self-education. The Left, who have contempt for workers’ intelligence, have always been against this. They are just officers looking for infantry. The Class War Federation seems to be still at a stage where it is willing to debate and to learn. To that end we challenge them, as workers to workers, to enter the process of public scrutiny and discussion of their ideas and ours.

Steve Coleman

Why society is falling apart (1997)

From the May 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dave Perrin continues the series of articles describing why capitalism is a reactionary, decadent social system ripe for overthrow.

Socialists contend that capitalism is a politically decadent and obsolete social system, wracked by periodic world crises, constant warfare and characterised by unprecedented inequality and exploitation. Having brought about a huge development in the forces of production unparalleled in human history, it has proved itself incapable of utilising its vast resources and technologies properly. Capitalism’s method of distribution is in open rebellion to the vast productive forces built up over the last two centuries, because the market and the profit motive are no longer a stimulus to progress as they once were, but a barrier and fetter.

The market economy has carried out its historic mission of providing the technical conditions for the establishment of a new, higher, social order based on common ownership, democratic control and production for use. Indeed, scarcity should no longer be a problem for the human species: free access to wealth can replace the fetter of the money system and its outdated categories of profits and wages, so that human needs, desires and potentialities can at last be fulfilled in a world of material abundance. But until the working class of wage and salary earners organises itself to put an end to the absurdities of the market economy, capitalism will continue, and the owning class will reap the benefit.

The twentieth century has been an era of growth in global inequality, of world economic crises and world wars, and yet capitalism continues to stagger on even though the basis for its continued existence — working class support — is undermined more and more by the dynamic of capitalist development. Nothing provides a better example of this than the development of capitalism in the industrialised countries over the last 30 years or so.

Surplus value
The most significant economic phenomenon in the major capitalist economies in recent decades has been the decline in the number of workers directly producing surplus value (rent, interest and profit) for the capitalist class, together with the massive and concomitant growth in the number of unproductive workers and expenditure in the economy. In a country like Britain those engaged in manufacturing production — where the vast bulk of wealth and profits are created — has halved during the last 30 years so that today barely 4.5 million work in manufacturing. This is not a phenomenon exceptional to Britain, and it has led to a massive attempt by the capitalist class to increase the rate at which the remaining workers creating surplus value are exploited. It has not, however, entirely succeeded.

While workers are more heavily exploited than ever before, giving more and more unpaid labour to their bosses, profit rates are barely two thirds of what they were in the 1950’s, 60’s and early 70’s for the major capitalist powers. What is worse is that the burden of necessary unproductive expenditures has at the same time risen in nearly all capitalist states with higher welfare bills, huge demands on state pensions and rising state expenditure generally — expenditure which in the last analysis has to be financed from profits. The result has been a massive squeeze not just on the ‘headline’ rate of profit, but the real rate of profit after tax. Privatisation of state concerns eased the pressure of this problem for a while in the 80’s, but in most states including Britain that is a temporary tactic which is already worn out. The economic significance of this trend has been profound and it is a phenomenon which has in many ways dominated economic thinking and policy making since the early 1970’s whether on tax or health service expenditure.

But its importance for the capitalist system and the workers who suffer under it has not been purely economic at a social level capitalism is now in serious crisis and it is this squeeze on profit rates which has played a more important part than anything else in bringing this situation about.

Social decadence
The drive to maintain an adequate rate of profit has increasingly led to a situation where money and commercial considerations have intruded into more and more human activities. Far from capitalism extending sectors of the economy where goods and services are given away free e.g. in health care or transport, the market economy has spread its tentacles everywhere. There is barely a human activity, good or service left which does not now have a price. Everything has become a commodity and the bottom line revolves around cost and profit

A whole host of reformers from the Labour Party to the Trotskyist movement have been proven wrong about the ability of the capitalist state to provide resources based on need rather than ability to pay. The ultimate source of all state finance is surplus value, and when profit rates fall during economic crises and when the burden on profits rises in the form of added demands on the state to ease poverty, unemployment and provide health care, then commercialisation and cutbacks proliferate.

When forces like these are unleashed — as they have been across the world over the last 30 years or so — they have profound social consequences. In particular, the social and moral codes which developed alongside the rise of the capitalist class during the system’s ascendancy have been undermined. The nuclear family, the bourgeois work ethic and the sanctity of private property have all taken a battering under pressure from the rampant and ruthless individualism unleashed by the market itself. For any system of society to survive and prosper it needs its own codes and regulations of behaviour, but those that developed within bourgeois society are now being ceaselessly undermined by the market, the profit motive and rampant competition, yet another example of the contradictions of the capitalist system.

No sector of society appears more worried by this phenomenon than the capitalist class. Capitalism the world over is in economic and social crisis to varying degrees and yet all their old so-called ‘solutions’ are played out — state intervention, nationalisation, Keynesian economies, monetarism, protectionism … it is a long list. Today the capitalist class has nowhere to go except market forces, market forces and more market forces. And yet it is these very same market forces — the only ‘solution’ the system comprehends — which are undermining the entire social cohesion of bourgeois society. Every other columnist in the serious newspapers sings from the same hymn sheet — “society is falling apart — what can be done?”

At present, society is in deadlock. The capitalist class have no perspective to offer society other than even more of that which is causing the problems. And for its part the working class has been unable to implement its own historic solution to the contradictions of capitalist society – socialism. The result of this situation on the political field is a form of political stalemate, and on the social level the descent of capitalism not just into the type of political decadence already discussed, but a very real social decadence too. Society does indeed seem to be rotting on its feet, and nobody has been able to do anything to stop it.

This putrefying of capitalism’s social basis and codes has taken on a number of forms, all of which are symptomatic of a society which is, to paraphrase, “ill at ease with itself”. Here are some of the most obvious manifestations of capitalism’s social decadence:

• the ongoing break-up of community relationships and the atomisation of the individual. This has been particularly characterised by the development of a competitive “every man for himself” type culture as the dominant one in society, and by the appearance and consolidation of seemingly unbridgeable generation gaps.
• the massive explosions of crime and drug taking, phenomena which were once peripheral or isolated in pockets, but which are now generalised throughout the market economy. Even in ‘tranquil’ Britain the official crime rate has more than doubled in the last 15 years alone, and drug culture and youth culture are now virtually synonymous.
• the increases in violence and social disorder, spurred on by the horror and violence infecting the media (especially for children), and the re-appearance — generally for the first time since capitalism’s turbulent infancy — of mass rioting on a regular basis. The worst of these riots, such as in Los Angeles, have turned major cities at the heart of capitalism into uncontrollable war zones.
• the continuing, if not increasing political vacuity of the capitalist class which has been mirrored in the rise of a nihilistic “no future” culture among large sections of young dispossessed workers who see no progress and no hope beyond their pint glass or next ‘hit’.
• the massive corruption of capitalism’s political apparatus, which is particularly evident in Britain with the succession of ‘sleaze’ scandals, but which is in fact a feature of the modern nation state virtually across the globe, from the US to France to Japan (let alone in Africa or Latin America).
• the revival of religious fundamentalism, creationism and the spread of mystical and millenarian sects, this being based on a loss of confidence in science and human progress together with a general rejection of rational thought and problem solving.
• and lastly, though certainly not least, heightened nationalism, racism and inter-ethnic violence, engendered and encouraged by the rampant competition eating away at the social fabric of society.

It is in these ways that capitalism is undermining the principles and continued existence of collective life. Social decadence has eventually followed on from political decadence and all the signs are that it will continue and probably deepen, for there are few if any forces or tendencies within capitalism operating in the opposite direction. Filling the prisons is no long-term solution on many grounds, not least of which is cost, and no government following this line has yet really succeeded in reversing the process which the market has started. None of the TV evangelising by Tony Blair or political appeals to “family values” are likely to succeed either as the very continued existence of capitalism and the forces it has unleashed make that near impossible. Appealing to some sort of higher morality or set of values within the context of the market is clutching at straws, a long way from a considered and practical response to the problem. If the social decadence infecting society is to be overturned it has to be tackled at source — and that means the abolition of the market and the poisonous relationships which spring from it.

Dave Perrin

Capitalism did not collapse (1969)

From the December 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part I

Part II of the abridged version of our pamphlet, Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse, originally published in February 1932.

The depression shows itself, every few years, in the accumulation of stocks of goods in the hands of retail stores, wholesalers and manufacturers, farmers and others. While trade is relatively good each concern tries to produce as much as possible in order to make a large profit. It is nobody's business under Capitalism to find out how much of each article is required, so that industries quickly expand to the point at which their total output is far larger than can be sold at a profit. Quite young industries, like artificial silk, soon reach the degree of over-development shown by the older industries. Goods such as farm crops, that are ordinarily not produced to order, but with the expectation of finding a buyer eventually, naturally tend to accumulate to a greater extent than those produced only to order— such as railway engines.

As traders find it more difficult to sell, they reduce their orders to the wholesalers, who in turn stop buying from the manufacturers. Plans for extending production by constructing new buildings, plant, ships, etc., are cancelled and the workers are laid off.

Here is a situation that always arouses grave discontent. It is from this discontent that the believers in the theory of the collapse of Capitalism think that they can draw the force which will overthrow the capitalist system. But it does not work out like that. In spite of riots and agitations, Capitalism still continues. The actual events show why this is and why it must be so.

IV. What happens in practice

In Great Britain two outstanding events may be considered. First, there was the great depression of 1921 and 1922, when, as now, unemployment was between 2,000,000 and 2,500,000. Then, in 1926, there was the spontaneous demonstration of sympathy with the miners in their resistance to wage reductions, that resulted in what is known as the “General Strike." Since the communists have been the most persistent advocates of the doctrine we are attacking, let us see what came of their efforts to take advantage of these two crises.

Round about 1921 and 1922 the communists claimed that they had the leadership of the hundreds of thousands of members of the unemployed organisations. They organised marches and demonstrations, deputations to Cabinet Ministers and local authorities, and attempted to seize public buildings. They did everything they could to force the authorities to grant their demands for better treatment. By winning the confidence of the workers in this way the communists then hoped to be able to lead them on to an attack on Capitalism.

What was the result? A writer in their official organ tells us: —

 The unemployed have done all they can and the Government know it. They have tramped through the rain in endless processions. They have gone in mass deputations to the Guardians. They have attended innumerable meetings and have been told to be “solid". They have marched to London, enduring terrible hardships . . . All this has led nowhere. None of the marchers believe that seeing Bonar Law in the flesh will make any difference. Willing for any sacrifice, there seems no outlet, no next step. In weariness and bitter disillusionment the unemployed movement is turning in upon itself. There is sporadic action, local rioting, but not central direction. The Government has signified its exact appreciation of the confusion by arresting Hannington.
  The plain truth is that the unemployed can only be organised for agitation, not for action. Effective action is the job of the working class as a whole. The Government is not afraid of starving men so long as the mass of workers look on and keep the ring (Workers' Weekly, 10th February 1923.)

In 1926 the communists had an excellent opportunity to try out their theory on the millions !o workers who were involved in the strike or were sympathetic towards it. The result was just what we have said it must be. Strikes can serve a useful purpose in resisting wage reductions or securing increases, but they cannot overthrow Capitalism. To begin with, the workers themselves have not that purpose in mind, and even when they become socialists they will still need political organisation in order to capture the real centre of power — the machinery of government and the armed forces controlled by it. This no strike can do.

In a large strike, as in a small one, starvation fights on the side of the propertied class against the wage earners. We know from the General Strike, and from revolts of workers attempted in many countries at different times, that desperate men and women will take desperate action when goaded to it by the hardships of their life under Capitalism. But we have seen in the General Strike of 1926 how such spontaneous outbursts are always crushed by the forces at the disposal of the ruling class through their control of the machinery of Government. How much easier it is, and how much less costly in human suffering, to convert a majority to Socialism than to engage in these blind revolts!

There is, too, another factor of great importance. The ruling class usually and in the long run are not blind to their own interests, and do not drive the working class as a whole into revolt. They are not so foolish as to leave only that alternative. By means of charity, doles, and unemployment insurance, and, if need be, the grant of higher wages and other concessions, the capitalists can always take the edge of the workers' bitterness and misery, and thus tide over the difficult periods of the more acute industrial depressions.

V. The only road to socialism

The lesson to be learned is that there is no simple way out of Capitalism by leaving the system to collapse of its own accord. Until a sufficient number of workers are prepared to organise politically for the conscious purpose of ending Capitalism, that system will stagger on indefinitely from one crisis to another.

So long as the workers are prepared to resign themselves to the evils of Capitalism, and so long as they are prepared to place in control of Parliament parties that will use their power for the purpose of maintaining Capitalism, there is no escape from the effects of Capitalism. The workers will continue to suffer from the normal hardships of the capitalist system when trade is relatively good, and from the aggravated hardships which are the workers' lot during trade depressions.

That is the prospect before the workers of all the world unless they actively interest themselves in understanding socialist principles and assisting in socialist organisation.

(Concluded)

Down Mexico Way (1996)

From the August 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again guerrilla warfare has flared up in the Mexican state of Guerrero. A little over twelve months after the killing of 17 peasants near Coyuca de Benitez in the south of the state, a group of up to 100 masked men and women, carrying automatic weapons, and claiming to be members of a 500-strong guerrilla organisation formed after the killing, clashed with police on the Acapulco-Mexico City highway about one hour's drive out of Acapulco. Three policemen were injured, according to a report in the Guardian (1 July). The group, calling themselves the Popular Revolutionary Army, then read a proclamation calling for the overthrow of the "anti-popular, anti-democratic, demagogic and illegitimate government". Guerrero was, and still is, considered to be the most violent and repressive state in Mexico. In 1912, during the civil war, Guerrero was said to be "aflame"; and in 1915, the forces of Venustiana Carranza advanced across the state from Acapulco and into Morelos, only to be driven back again by the Zapatistas who almost captured Acapulco.

In 1969, Lucio Cabañas, a flamboyant former schoolteacher, formed a guerrilla army known as the "party of the poor”, which had considerable grassroots support among the dispossessed campesinos and peones in Guerrero, and operated in the vast, almost impenetrable mountains and jungle areas between Acapulco on the Pacific coast and Morelos in the cast. They assassinated the Acapulco police chief, attacked army outposts stationed along the Acapulco-Mexico City highway, and then kidnapped Guerrero Senator, Ruben Figueroa, at the time a candidate for governor of the state. More than 10,000 army troops were dispatched to Guerrero to kill or capture the guerrilleros; but it was not until 1974 that Lucio Cabañas and 27 of his men were finally killed in a gun battle with the army. But the "party of the poor" and their "brigade of peasant executioners", as they were called, were still active in 1980 when I was there.

Following the murder of the 17 peasants on 28 June, last year, masked gunmen carrying AK-47 automatic rifles ambushed a truck carrying a group of policemen near the town of Cualac, north-east of Acapulco, killing five and wounding two of them. The previous week, 12 members of one family were also killed in the state by "persons unknown", but assumed to be police officers.

Meanwhile the economy continues in recession. Probably 1,250,000 workers have lost their jobs since the end of 1994. Many more have never had a job in the first place. Just over 18 months ago, President Zedillo's government declared Mexico City's publicly-run bus company, known as Route 100, bankrupt; and fired 10,000 bus workers. According to reports earlier this year, the only businesses which are booming are sex clubs and hundreds of so-called night-clubs. Furthermore, confidence has not been helped by the escape of the disgraced, corrupt, ex-president, Carlos Salinas, alleged author of Mexico’s economic collapse, and brother of Raul Salinas, charged with murdering a political rival. Carlos Salinas was last reported in Ireland; and brother Raul is said to have more than £80 million stacked away in Swiss and United Kingdom banks.

All of which is a long way from Guerrero.

Time and time again, the peasants and dispossessed workers of Mexico, particularly in the states of Morelos, Chiapas and Guerrero, have struggled, sometimes peacefully but often violently, against the increasingly powerful Mexican state and the effects of a crisis-ridden capitalism; but, as elsewhere, have yet to organise, not for a reformed capitalism, but for its overthrow.

Peter E. Newell