British capital in Malaysia - Part 1 (1966)

From the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Up till a few months ago British and Indonesian soldiers were butchering each other in the jungles of North Borneo. With the ending of “confrontation” Tunku Abdul Rahman, Prime Minister of Malaysia, said that it was a “victory of the forces of good against the forces of evil”. But, when it is known that this relatively small area provides over one-third of the world’s natural rubber, is a leading producer of tin— and that nearby Brunei has the largest oilfield in the Commonwealth, it becomes clear that the war in Malaysia had very little to do with a struggle between “good” and “evil”. The prizes at stake were large enough for the British government, representing the general interest of British capital, to consider it worth spending £255 millions each year to maintain its armed forces in the country. 

The original cause of British intervention in Malaya was trade. For this reason the island of Penang was rented on perpetual lease in 1786, the island of Singapore was bought in 1819 and the decayed port of Malacca was obtained from the Dutch in 1824. From these bases British “protection” was extended—so that between 1874 and 1909 the nine Malay states were brought under control. The sultan of each state signed a treaty by which he agreed to accept a resident adviser and to follow the “advice” in all matters except those that concerned the Moslem religion and Malay custom.. This arrangement still persists in the oil state of Brunei; the Sultan remains the nominal ruler but it is the British government, through its High Commissioner, which is responsible for all external affairs and defence.

Malaya in the 1880's has been described as a museum piece of Asian feudalism, roughly similar to 12th century France or Germany. But with the rapid development of the tin and rubber industries this feudal backwater found itself hurled into the modern, capitalist world. The state of the country was suddenly determined by the prices of these two commodities and no longer by civil wars between rival claimants to the throne. By 1914 the value of foreign, chiefly British; capital in Malaya had already reached $.US 194,000,000. When the Second World War broke out this figure had been dwarfed and there was something like $.US 260,000,000 of British capital alone invested in the tin mines, rubber plantations, etc. In addition there was a further $.US 82,500,000 invested in government loans, which were often floated in London. French, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese and American capitalists had all staked their claims in the rush to exploit Malayan workers, but it was British imperialism which held the whip hand. In recent years there has been some reticence about revealing the total amount of British capital invested in Malaya but some idea of its enormity can be gauged from the fact that in 1961 remitted profits on direct, foreign investment from the Malayan Federation were $.M 321,000,000. In the same year a further $.M 137,000,000 flowed into the country as private, direct, long-term investment. It would be inaccurate to picture this as a one-way process. For example, the native capitalist class in Malaya—through its government—declared its official overseas assets to be $.M 825 millions at the end of 1960. These consisted mainly of British government securities, including local authority mortgages. A clear example that the exploitation of the world’s workers by the international capitalist class is a process that cuts across all national boundaries.

Although Malaya yields approximately one-third of the total world output of tin, it is interesting to note that only some two per cent of it is now produced by the traditional dulong washers. These are individual collectors who concentrate the ore by hand, using a pan in the beds of streams. There are upwards of a hundred mines owned by British capitalists and this represents about three-fifths of the total industry. Its contribution to the profits remitted out of Malaya, taking good years with bad, is a reasonably close rival to that of rubber.

The history of the tin industry is one of desperately trying to impose some sort of order on to the chaos of capitalist production. During the inter-war period an International Tin Committee was formed whose object was “the adjustment of production to consumption and the reduction of surplus stocks by the restriction of output”. This was set up largely as a result of the slump of 1930 when tin prices fell disastrously. The verdict of economists on this attempt at enforcing price stability is that “it was unable to prevent violent short-term fluctuations in the world price”. (L. A. Mills—University of Minnesota). After the Second World War it was confidently suggested that these “short-term fluctuations” could be ironed out by means of a world buffer stock of tin. This was the method adopted when international control of production was again established in the nineteen-fifties. Just how successful this has been is demonstrated by the table below.

As can be seen, after 1958 there was a run-away increase in prices and once again the professional economists were forced to admit that capitalism reduces the most carefully-laid plans to a shambles. Thus, the Economist ruefully made the point:

The tin agreement, which is based on the manipulation of a buffer stock, and was intended to cope mainly with price declines, has been faced with unmanageable rises. The buffer stock manager has had no tin to sell since October, 1963. But, despite the long list of unsuccessful agreements, primary producers go on trying to find the ideal formula. What else can they do?  (10th July, 1965)

Any socialist could supply the answer: nothing at all, within the framework of capitalism. Only the ordered production of a socialist society provides a solution. The economists, yearning for an “ideal formula”, resemble nothing so much as the alchemists who searched in vain for the Philosopher’s Stone. (Incidentally, it has since proved just as hopeless to deal with price declines. Since January of this year, tin has fallen nearly £180 a ton on the London Metal Exchange).

John Crump

(To be concluded)

British capital in Malaysia - Part 2 (1966)

From the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

The situation in the rubber industry is somewhat different from the others because the small capitalists and peasant producers have not yet been eliminated. Of the 3½ million acres under rubber in Malaya, only about two million are controlled by the large estates (which are nearly all over the 1,000 acre mark). The other 1½ million acres are comprised of small plots whose owners have been in a relatively strong competitive position because of their much lower costs of production. This was especially so after the Japanese occupation in World War II when, because of the inexpensive methods of manufacture on the smallholdings, they were able to resume production at once—unlike the plantations, many of which were damaged. Where the large estates have the advantage is that they have had the resources to embark on costly replanting schemes with high-yielding trees. As these trees mature the systematised production on the plantations is likely to pay off and it is thought that the present trend against the smallholdings will strengthen.

Despite this, the nagging problems thrown up by the capitalist system remain to haunt the shareholders. In addition to the political uncertainty enveloping the whole of South-East Asia and the growing threat from synthetic rubber, the market has proved even more temperamental than that for tin. The rubber industry, too, can boast of a long list of futile attempts to maintain price levels. These started in 1922 when it was decided that the forced restriction of exports would keep prices hovering around the 30 cents per pound mark. After this step had been taken the price rose to $M1/b. in 1925, stood at 20 cents/lb. in 1928 and finally, between 1931-33, it sunk to 6 cents/lb. and less. Following this outstandingly successful first attempt many other schemes, including an International Rubber Regulation Committee, have been implemented; each was guaranteed in turn to be the elusive “ideal formula”. The table below makes any comment superfluous

The British capitalist class has other vital interests at stake in this part of the world. The Singapore military base provides the only major dockyard east of Suez and is the heart of a network of 300 military aircraft, including V-bombers. This base also contains major stockpile facilities and its strategic value in the defence of British capital is thus obvious. To take another example, the tiny state of Brunei measures only 2,000 square miles in area but it is graced the title “British protected state” because of the important Shell oilfield at Seria. Malaysia also represents an important market for British manufacturers, although there is sharp competition with other capitalist rivals. 

Again it is interesting to note that each of these capitalist countries listed above has resorted to war, to protect its interests in South-East Asia, during the past few decades. It is against this sort of background that Harold Wilson's statement—“If we had only ourselves to think of, we would be glad to leave there as quickly as possible”—has to be measured. .

That section of the British capitalist class with investments in Malaysia senses that it is in a precarious position. T. H. Silcock (Emeritus Professor of Economics of the University of Malaya) has summed up the outlook for the two major industries: “Even though the tin market recovered in 1961 and 1962, the long-term market prospect is . . . not hopeful, though the threat is probably not as great as for rubber.” Apart from this, the risk of losing capital is high in an area  which has been repeatedly fought over by those countries with conflicting economic interests in the region. As a result there has been a great deal of discussions in the press about “our” defence policy east of Suez and about “maintaining stability” in this part of the world. Some of the rising capitalist powers, like China and Indonesia, have called upon the working class in South-East Asia to support them in their attempts to extend their spheres of influence at the expense of their rivals. But, clearly, in these struggles among different sections of the capitalist class, working men and women have nothing at stake; whichever side wins, for the workers victory means continued poverty under the renewed threat of war.

John Crump

Peru and England. A Comparison. (1912)

From the August 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world has lately been startled by the publication of sensational reports of the methods by which a British rubber company, operating in Peru, obtains its rubber.

The nauseating details which have found their way into the papers do not by any means exhaust the catalogue of atrocities inflicted upon the company’s Indian victims, or sap the infinite variety of the tortures used to terrorise these poor people into superhuman exertion in the collection of rubber ; nor do those widely publicised details touch the limits of ferocity laid bare in the Government Blue-Book.

This, however, is not meant in the sense of the degree of physical suffering involved, for it is inconceivable that the agonies of roasting the feet over a slow fire (as quoted by the newspapers) can be transcended, even where the torturers go the length of smashing up a man’s organs with a stick, or inserting burning brands in a woman’s body in a part which even a Blue Book only dares hint at. But these details which the British Press even cannot lift the veil on, add to all the other horrors some inkling of the filthy-mindedness that goes hand-in-hand with British capital, to win dividends for British Christians and the like.

It is not the purpose here, however, to treat the public to a recital of the sickening story of mutilation and murder reported by Consul-General Casement, but to direct attention to horrors no whit lees sickening which are mere everyday affairs much nearer home than the forest glades of Peru. Those who are so startled and shocked to find that the inhumanities which make the names of the old-time Spanish “conquerors” stink in the nostrils, still survive in British capitalism; those who are horrified to discover that the tale of the Congo has been re-written with but varied detail in the solitude of Western forests, those who have observed with pained surprise, the agonised convulsions of a harmless and innocent people being done to death in Southern America, transforming themselves into the sensational throbbing of rubber shares in Throgmorton Street at the time of the great “rubber boom,” do not need to throw their imagination half way round the world in order to find something to move their “bowels of compassion” or stir their righteous—very righteous—indignation.

As a matter of fact murder and brutality—like charity, according to the account of those who know all about it—begin at home. Not only, mark you, the murder of the Peruvian Indians, whose doom is pronounced in the London board rooms by silk-hatted directors and cosmopolitan financiers. We do not have to turn to the diocese of the Bishop of the Falkland Islands (who is now in England trying to raise funds to further the interests of British capital in Peru and the vicinity, instead of being in his diocese supervising the decent burial of the corpses British capital is providing there), one does not, I say, have to go to that Bishop’s diocese to find matter for “thrills” and “shocks.”

No, there is not one of the atrocities related in Blue Book Cd. 6266 that cannot be paralleled in the diocese of the Bishop of London, or in the diocese of any other English Bishop. There is not one page of this voluminous report, reeking with bloody tragedy, that might not have been made to carry as tragic and as bloody an inscription by any faithful hand that should have set itself the task of chronicling the history of any single day in any of the great manufacturing towns of highly civilised, free and Christian England.

Capitalism is very much the same thing in all its operations and in its every sphere of influence. What is good or evil under it is determined only but its result upon profits—by its effect upon ruling interests. Capital, as Marx says, comes into the world dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. And one Dunning many years ago wrote :—

“With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere ; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness ; 50 per cent., positive audacity ; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws ; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged, if turbulence and strife will bring profit, it will freely encourage both.”

So outrage is inherent in the system—nay, that is but half stating the case : outrage is the foundation and corner-stone of the system. The great primal outrage is the seizure by those who rule under the system, of every means by which men might support themselves in any form of independence. Upon that great, tragic outrage—the closing of every avenue of life against the worker, the whole system of robbery, violence and violation rests. And that robbery, that violence, that violation, is as complete, cruel, and shameful here in England as anything Consul-General Casement travelled so far to put on record.

Violation of Indian girls ! It is common enough in any factory district in England for girls to have to submit to the bestial attentions of their foremen and male overlookers. They have to choose between that and starvation. It is a fact well known to the employers, who do not interfere (as has been admitted) because it smooths the way to prostitution, which is the necessary adjunct to the low wages paid by the factory masters. It is a fact also well known and confessed by our legislators, as is proven by the provision made for its interdiction in a projected Bill.

In offices things are much the same, and in large drapery establishments every “encouragement” (such as locking the girls out in the street all night if they are not in by a specific time) is held out for their girl assistants to resort to certain means of augmenting their scant wages.

Notwithstanding that the method is differed the violation at home is as brutal and shameful as that in Peru. In the latter case the weapon made use of is physical force: in the former starvation In the one case the tormentor has possession of the woman’s body, in the other case of her means of livelihood. The compulsion is pretty complete in both cases.

We must not allow ourselves to be led astray by the old capitalist defence that “this is a free country.” The freedom of these girls to leave their employment is merely the freedom to starve. That is the freedom which belongs to every wage-slave. It is the freedom which followed naturally upon the enclosure of all land and the seizure of all the means of living. The capitalist has no need to hunt the forests of this country for workers : he has shut them out of the fields and forests, and left them only the freedom to starve. This freedom the capitalist would not interfere with if he could. It is the greatest asset he has. The slave has not got it, hence the slave must be fed, cannot be trusted with delicate machinery, cannot be speeded up to the requirements of the modern factory system. The lash never has been able to compel anything but the quality of labour most nearly approaching that abstract conception, the “purely physical”—it cannot induce the exercise of “gumption.” Only when the workers are free to starve, and liable to be thrown out on the street to do it, do they become fit and proper instruments for the economical manipulation of the modern machinery for producing commodities.

Hence the masters cherish the workers’ freedom to starve even more than do the workers themselves. It is the basis of all their exploitation, their standby in every difficult situation.

And similarly it is the basis of the whole awful position of the workers. Because this freedom is their only alternative, they present themselves for sale in the labour market. Because they have only the freedom to starve they face death in the mine and torment before the battle-ship’s furnaces. They give up their whole lives to unrewarded drudgery in sordid and bestial conditions, submitting to the vilest prostitution of their labour in the performance of slave tasks, all because they may starve if they don’t.

And at every turn they are offered the same alternative by which it is pretended the women may save themselves from violation, but which, nevertheless, cannot save any workingman from handing over his body, nay, his life, to exploitation, cannot afford one of them escape from a prostitution as vile (if we could only see it thro’ the unaccustomed eyes of the savage) as any that women are subjected to through their sex.

The other atrocities reported from the rubber districts all have their parallels in any capitalist country. The police brutality at Liverpool and Manchester and year ago, when scores of people of both sexes and all ages were maimed for life; the murders at Tonypandy, Belfast, and other places, the kicking of pregnant women quite recently at Canning Town, show very plainly that when it comes to dealing with resistance to their plundering, the master class know not the slightest difference between the Indians of Peru and the working class of England. Rubber is not more bloodstained than coals. Dying Indians are not more contemptuously thrown into the bush to expire than are our miners bricked up in the blazing pits to burn. The Waste of Indian life is no more extravagant than that of shunters on British railways, and callous brutality cannot anywhere outdo that displayed in certain capitalist hospitals, where healthy working-class children are innoculated with filthy diseases and reduced to noisome masses of corruption—because they are cheaper than calves. And where, in the whole of the Consul-General’s report, can a more stupendous crime, a more ghastly butchery, be found recorded than has been recently witnessed in the streets of London, where the shipping masters have deliberately set themselves to crush a hundred thousand men into submission by starving their wives and children ?

Let us be clear in our comparison. Let us get the true perspective. The Indians, the evidence in the report tells us, are so used to being flogged that they do not so much mind it. Let us make sure that our familiarity with the brutality of our daily existence does not blind us to its real horror. The Indians, while they have their forests, have to be hunted and captured. This, as we understand it, is illegal. But generations ago the workers of this country were captured by depriving them of their means of living. Hence if they won’t submit to the masters’ terms they are legally free to starve. It is this illusive difference in the aspect of the cases which blinds us to their essential similarity. Under the cloak of legality the workers of the whole civilised world are enslaved and starved and bludgeoned and raped to satiate the lusts of a parasite class, and when we see our own condition reflected in a savage race, and only revealed because the savage, having his means of livelihood in his native wild wood, has to be exploited by “illegal” means, we are astonished and shocked.

The only remedy, both for ourselves and for the Indian, is to take away from the capitalists the means of life and make them the property of the community, first capturing the political power by which they hold their sway.

A. E. Jacomb

Other “Huns” and Other Louvains. (1914)

From the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

I.—The Belgians on the Congo.

The two faces of the capitalist have been exposed in these pages times out of number, and in various forms. Once again this dual personage has become clearly visible to the merest observer under another set of circumstances.

We have of late heard the squalling of the Belgian capitalists and the officials of the Belgian State. So shocked and horrified were these tender people at the way in which the “brutal Germans” trod upon their sacred soil and destroyed some of their towns, that a deputation was sent to proclaim this sacrilege to the world, with a view to persuading the neutral powers to come to their assistance.

But the Socialist remembers that these capitalists wailing over their wrecked property and pretending to be so concerned about the poor Belgian workers who are being driven from their homes, are the same capitalists who, through their agents, ransacked scores of villages and towns, shot and killed thousands of men, women, and children who had never raised even a finger against them.

Before describing these barbarities it would perhaps be as well to briefly sketch the events that led up to them. If the reader wishes them elaborated he should read “Red Rubber,” by E. D. Morel, to which book, together with White Paper, Africa, No. 1, 1904 (Cd 1933, 8½d.), the writer is indebted for the following information.

In the sixties and seventies of last century the great commercial countries saw enormous possibilities in the creation of new markets, arising out of notable discoveries by explorers in Central Africa, and each wished to acquire as large an outlet as possible for their own manufactures. The scramble commenced.

The discovery of the Congo Basin by Stanley was the most significant of all, and in this direction the late King Leopold II turned his attention. Having previously juggled successfully with Suez Canal and other shares, he had amassed a considerable fortune. He sent several investigating expeditions, consisting mostly of Englishmen and Germans (how strange !) assuring the world that his intentions were purely scientific and severely disinterested. To carry on this work Leopold formed a company styled “The International African Association.”

This bloody and astute king capitalist played his cards like an expert. He became a member of the Aborigines Protection Society, and promised to support lavishly the missionary societies of England and America. He captured the British Chambers of Commerce by declaring that if the commercial communities supported his proposals the Congo trade would be open to them and would be exempt from all fiscal restrictions.

After a time the various powers became uneasy and jealous as to who should control this vast and rich land. Certain suggestions were considered with a view to placing it under international control. Then on the suggestion of the Portuguese it was decided to recognise the sovereignty of Portugal on both banks of the river up to a certain limit inland, to declare the river open to the world, and to place it under an Anglo Portuguese Navigation Commission to which the accession of the other Great Powers would be welcome. After introducing clauses protecting traders against exaggerated tariffs, and for the protection of the natives (!), etc., the treaty was signed.

But Leopold had not been playing to the gallery for nothing, and immediately the treaty was denounced by the British Chambers of Commerce and the philanthropic societies. The British Government was accused of betraying national interests, and the Portuguese Government was accused by its bosses of a similar crime. France, encouraged by the clamour, became resolutely hostile, and Bismarck, on behalf of Germany, kicked. Belgium was now in an unique position, and received the reluctant support of the British Government, with a proviso to secure freedom of trade, etc. Bismarck’s proposal of an International Conference was assented to, and was opened “in the name of God,” on Nov. 25, 1884.

Fourteen powers were represented, and their first consideration was for the welfare of the natives ! Such was the slimy cant and hypocrisy that we are told “the delegates, figuratively speaking, fell upon each other’s necks and wept with emotion.” They placed the Congo Basin in the hands of Leopold’s company. Articles were signed to ensure the utmost freedom to all capitalists, and for the preservation of the natives, the suppression of slavery and the slave trade, and “the protection of all . . . institutions which aim at instructing the natives and bringing home to them the blessings of civilisation.” We shall see, presently, what these “blessings of civilisation” were.

On August 1st, 1885, Leopold notified the signatory Powers that the International African Association would henceforth be known as the Congo Free State, with himself as sovereign of that “State.” Almost immediately followed a decree claiming all vacant lands as the property of the State. Another decree limited the rights of the native to the area upon which his hut was built, whilst another prohibited the hunting of the elephant “throughout the whole of the State’s territory” (three-fourths of which had never been trodden by a white man). Then they commenced recruiting an army of the most savage tribes. These natives could either volunteer or were taken in raids. For every recruit of the latter order the State officer obtained a bonus according to the physical fitness of his captive. Male children were also taken and drafted to military instruction camps to be made soldiers in due course. Having secured and trained sufficient recruits they set out with a mandate from Christendom to exterminate the Arabs, who had up to then been trading with the natives. Their object was to obtain the vast stores of ivory and rubber in the Arabs’ possession and to capture their markets. This accomplished, everything was clear for Leopold and his thieves’ gang to commence business.

On Sept. 21st 1891 a secret decree was issued to the State officials in Africa, stating that it was the paramount duty of the Congo Free State to raise revenue, and “to take urgent and necessary measures to secure for the State the dominal fruits, notably ivory and rubber.” Other regulations followed, which forbade the natives selling rubber or ivory to European merchants, and threatened the latter with prosecution if they bought these articles from the natives.

The merchants protested, and Leopold defined the position. Everything, he told them, belonged to the State—the land and the produce thereof. The natives were tenants upon State property. If they interfered with that property they were poachers ; and whoever abetted them were poachers, receivers of stolen goods, and violators of the law. How simple and concise !

Other secret documents were dispatched to the Governor-General baiting him to do his utmost to obtain the produce from the natives, “sparing no means.” A sliding scale was fixed by which officials were paid. The less it cost to obtain the goods the greater the bonus ; the more it cost to get the goods the less for the official. In other words, the less the native got for his ivory and rubber the larger the official’s commission and the more for the thieves on top !

One can pretty well guess the nature of the orders of tha Governor to his subordinates, and of the subordinates to their subordinates. Here is a typical one from Commandant Verstracten to the officials in charge of stations in the Rubi Welle district :

“I have the honour to inform you that from Jan. 1st 1899, you must succeed in furnishing 4,000 Kilos of rubber every month. To this effect I give you carte blanche. You have, therefore, two months in which to work your people. Employ gentleness at first, and if they persist in not accepting the imposition of the State, employ force of arms.”

Here is an extract from another :

“Decidedly these people of Inoryo are a bad lot. They have just cut some rubber vines at Huli. We must fight them until their absolute submission is obtained, or their complete extermination.”

Under this system £13,715,664 worth of raw produce was forced out of the Congo natives during the seven years preceding 1906 by the hirelings of this royal member of the Aborigines Protection Society and his confederates.

Let us now see how the rubber was acquired under the stimulus of bonuses and force. The information is furnished by Belgian and French, traders (who, no doubt, felt sore at being outdone by the State monopoly), and travellers and missionaries. The most brutal act of the “German Huns” sinks into insignificance compared with some of them.

The procedure was by levying a tax on the villages and towns payable in kind, and State soldiers would be sent to demand payment—so much ivory or rubber as well as food stuffs—every week or month as the case might be. But let the eye witness describe. The following is au extract from a letter written as early as 1892 by a resident of Likini.

“The frequent wars upon the natives undertaken without any cause by the State soldiers sent, out to get rubber and ivory, are depopulating the country. The soldiers find that the quickest and cheapest method is to raid villages, seize prisoners, and have them redeemed against ivory, etc. . . . Each agent of the State receives 1,000 fr. commission per] ton of ivory, and 175 fr. per ton of rubber.”

This, the reader will notice, was about a year after the decree urging the officials to secure the “dominal fruits.” The bloody events that followed have never been surpassed. The following is from the diary of E. J. Glave, an “independent English traveller” who crossed the Congo in 1894-5. It appeared in the “Century Magazine” in 1896.

“Up the Ikelemba away to Lake Mantumba the State is perpetrating its fiendish policy in order to obtain profit. War has been waged all through the district of the Equator, and thousands of people have been killed. Many women and children were taken, and twenty-one heads were brought to Stanley Falls, and have been used by Captain Rom as a decoration round a flower bed in front of his house.”

The following piece of information was given to the British Consul, Roger Casement, and is quoted in his report (p. 43.)

“Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber, cartridges are given to him. He must bring back all not used ; and for every one used he must bring back a right hand. . . . Sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting ; they then cut off a hand from a living man. … In six months, on the Momboyo River they had used 6,000 cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated. It means more than 6,000, for the soldiers kill children with the butt of their guns.”

If a soldier returned to his station without a sufficient number of hands to make up for the rubber he had not brought, he was shot by his superiors. A native corporal described how in one day he had brought 160 hands home to his officer and they were thrown into the river. Another individual testifies to a village (Katoro) being attacked. Many were killed, including women and children. The heads were cut off and taken to the officer in charge, who sent men back for the hands also, and these were pierced and strung and dried over the camp fire. On another occasion a large town was attacked ; hands and heads cut off and taken to the officer. The witness said : “I shall never forget the sickening sight of deep baskets of human heads.”

According to Roger Casement many had their ears cut off ; also the native soldier, after being told “You kill only women ; you cannot kill men,” would mutilate the bodies and carry the sexual organs to the officer. In fact, in the Mongalla massacre of 1899 the agents confessed to ordering sexual mutilation. Consul Casement says that “this was not a native practice, but the deliberate act of soldiers of an European administration . . . and that in committing these acts they were but obeying the positive orders of their superiors.”

In some cases when protests were made to the Congo Courts a mock trial ensued. Lacroix, one of the agents in the Mongalla region was thus held up, and he confessed to having been instructed by his superiors to attack a certain village for shortage of rubber, and to having killed in his raid many women and children. He said:

“I am going to appear before the judge for having killed 160 men, cut off 60 hands ; for having crucified women and children, for having mutilated many men and hung their sexual remains on the village fence.”

Terms of imprisonment were inflicted, but were never served. Why ? Because “they had acted on instruction.”

The Congo Free State is split up into several “Companies” or “Trusts,” each occupying a specific area. One named “The King” was worked in the interest of Leopold’s private purse. Other portions were handed over for stewardship to financiers, “personal friends and officials of his European Court,” etc. In the “Companies” the King or the State usually held half the shares. One is named the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company. In six years this company, with the aid of the State soldiers, made a nett profit of £720,000 out of the rubber slave trade on a paid-up capital of £9,280 ! Thus each share of a paid up value of £4 6s. 6d. has received £335 in the same time. King Leopold held 1,000 of these shares.

However, it seems quite clear that, although the Belgian capitalists, backed by the arms of the State, had a big hand in this dirty business, there was along with them the international gang of plunderers. If this were not so, why was it that, although the evidence of these devilish horrors was before the Governments of America, Italy, France, Portugal, Germany, and the rest of them for years, they did not move to stop them ? Why was it that for six years the British Government was continually having reports of atrocious maladministration on the Congo and yet refused to move ? Why, indeed, did it absolutely suppress these reports—which it has never yet made public? Sir Henry Johnston, who has travelled a good deal in that direction, is evidently in the know. He says : “If there have been bad Belgians on the Congo, there have been bad Englishmen, ruthless Frenchmen, pitiless Swedes, cruel Danes, unscrupulous Italians.” (See preface to Morel’s “Red Rubber,”)

At any rate, how do these brutalities practised by Belgian bullies upon a defenceless people whose country they had invaded compare with the German atrocities of to-day ?

I am not attempting to defend German autocrats, but merely to make it plain that it is nothing but sheer hypocrisy for the Allies to point an accusing finger at Germany, for there is not one of them but has been guilty of deeds of brutality every whit as appalling as has been charged, not to say proved, against the German butchers. With the Belgian workers the sympathy of all Socialists must lie, but suffering is no new thing to them, any more than it is to the workers of other countries. And if their pains and travail contribute to their political enlightenment, then they will not have suffered in vain.

J. W. Pyle

Merdeka in Malaya (1957)

From the October 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

On August 31st Malaya attained Merdeka (independence), after over a century of British colonial rule. The day is a memorable one for the people there, who celebrated amid scenes of wild rejoicing and shouts of “Merdeka.” In the capital, on the stroke of midnight, the new Prime Minister told the people:

“A new star rises in the eastern sky—a star of freedom for yet another Asian people. This is the greatest moment in the life of the Malayan people, for a new nation is born —a nation that will stand forth free and independent." 

Incidentally, this little speech recalls our article in last December's issue of the Socialist Standard entitled Happenings in Hungary, where it was pointed out that the battle cry of “Freedom ” was used to rally support to a budding capitalist class trying to seize power in Hungary. The last sentence in that article will probably prove as relevant to Malaya as to Hungary: “In other countries whenever the new ruling group is firmly in the saddle of government they lose no time in turning on the workers.” 

Miss Nancy Simmons, a Colonial Office was also present She had been invited as a representative of the British working-class by the Malayan Prime Minister. This point illustrates the usual procedure of the rising ruling-class when taking over governmental power, of attempting to give their cause a working-class flavour.

What Malaya is worth

The transfer of power has taken place with the blessing and co-operation of the British Government, who had despatched the Duke of Gloucester there to represent the Crown, and, as part of the ceremony, hand over the instrument of transfer. A glance at recent events may indicate the reason for this support, which, at first sight, might seem against their interests.

Foreign investment (mostly British) in Malaya was nearly £100 million in 1937, chiefly invested in rubber plantations and tin mines. Imports into Malaya amounted to £484.5 million in 1956, of which U.K. was one of the largest suppliers.

But for several years past profits have been reduced by internal strife—Chinese "communists” attempting to gain power by force. The Chinese population is important, being as numerous as the Malays. These Chinese miners and agricultural workers find that developing capitalism is no panacea for their problems, and so they give their support to the Communist Party under the mistaken impression that their policy will radically alter society. This Party is influenced to an extent by the regime in China, to whom it looks for moral support. British interests in Malaya, seeing that there is a real threat to their investments, called in the British Army. Many members of the British working-class have already lost their limbs, their health and some their lives, fighting for their masters’ interests in the steaming jungles of Malaya.

Besides the antagonism that all this may arouse in Britain how much better to let the native rulers take over the thankless task of tying to make exploitation popular in Malaya. Merdeka in Malaya is the answer.

Trade Union Movement

The beginnings of a working-class (in the present-day meaning of the term) occurred with the rapid development of that country at the turn of the century when rubber and tin became useful to industry and the development of the steamship and the Suez Canal made bulk cargoes from the East a proposition for industrial Europe. Tamil workers were imported into Malaya from India to work on the rubber plantations. There are 400,000 such workers now employed. Chinese were imported for the tin mines. As an indication of the growing trade union movement, in 1947 696,036 days were lost in strikes on rubber plantations. In Singapore in 1945 173,000 workers came out in a general strike.

In the first elections held in 1955 the union of the various nationalistic political parties won 51 of the 52 seats. The only opposition seat was won by the Islamic party. Many of tbs workers in Malaya believed that their troubles were due to the country being ruled by foreigners and, therefore, they supported their native capitalist class. Presumably these workers will find out that a change of administrative personnel will not alter their class position.

Women and Merdeka

One feature in the capitalist development in Malaya is the lack of status of the Malay woman, despite her influence in favour of Merdeka. At the elections the newspapers expressed astonishment at the voters. Some of them had trudged miles carrying babies to get to the booths. By tradition, Malays are allowed to divorce their wives with only three months' sustenance as alimony, and it is estimated that 60 per cent of Malay marriages end in divorce. As a result of all this there is widespread prostitution. Very little other employment is open to women, and destitution is the only alternative.

One thing of which we can be confident is that a modem capitalist welfare state will not stand for the expense of directly keeping large numbers of unproductive discarded women and their children. For the women of Malaya capitalism will no doubt in due course bring them an up-to-date capitalist marriage system. It is a useful spur to productivity for a worker to be burdened with the worry of providing for a wife and family. But it will be economic causes, the need for a larger labour supply educated to some degree, that will change the way of life and their bondage for many of Malay women. The “independence” of their country will play but a little part. 

What are the prospects?

Malaya is a heaven for big business. The two chief industries, rubber and tin, require vast capital outlay for efficient exploitation. The price of labour is comparatively low, but the demand for these raw materials is tremendous and constantly expanding. What more can a capitalist wish for—low wages and an expanding market. Furthermore, the development plan for the period 1956-60 envisages a capital expenditure of over £1,000 million. Merdeka will, they hope, mean a rich harvest to the foreign capitalists (who own much of the wealth of Malaya) without the headache of repressing a working- class continually growing more aggressive.

The following tip (straight from the horse’s mouth) sums up the position for the capitalist in Malaya, and, incidentally, for the worker too. This is an advert by the Malayan Government in Eastern World (August 1957): “INVEST IN MALAYA, THE LAND OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY. BIGGEST RETURNS ON INVESTMENT, LOWEST TAX ON PROFITS. SECURITY ASSURED BY STABLE GOVERNMENT.” But riches at one end of the scale presupposes poverty at the other, and it will be poverty that will continue to be the lot of the workers in their promised land of Merdeka in Malaya.

Frank Offord

Capitalist Progress Leaves the Worker behind (1944)

From the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

When capitalism broke the chains with which feudalism bound it, a society whose stability depended on its power to resist change was overcome. The bourgeoisie, an oppressed class under feudalism, broke down by revolutionary methods the caste system where to be born a serf meant to die a serf.

New markets to sell goods were the incentive for intensively exploring the world. This brought about the change from handicraft to manufacture, and finally to large scale manufacture—i.e., production has been increasingly socialised, until to-day few can claim that any commodity is purely their work.

With the rising importance of these markets, knowledge, formerly the perquisite of the Catholic Church, had to be secularised. It was necessary for others besides the church to know about navigation and astronomy, so as to sail the seven seas. And this knowledge had to be based on material fact, which often conflicted with the “truth” of the Roman Church. This, although secondary to the economic dominance of the church, based on feudalism, sharpened the struggle of the bourgeoise against it.

All dominant nations try by all means in their power to exclude the rest of the world from sharing that which has made it powerful, and to use it to continue its domination. Many examples are known, but the forces capitalism sets free control the capitalist class, and not vice versa. During the war against Napoleon I., England blockaded France and cut off her sugar. This did not result in a quick peace, but in the commencement of the sugar-beet industry. The result was that the British interests in cane sugar suffered through her own blockade.

The production of nitrates from the air did not result from the plea by eminent scientists (due at the time to under-estimations of resources) that without a new source of fertilisers other than Chile saltpetre, mankind would at a close approaching period starve. It needed the prospects of a war (1914-1918), in which Germany had of necessity to try and overthrow Britain’s dominance on the world market, in order to find a place in the sun for her own capitalist class, to make this possible. Again the operating factor was fear of blockade. This alone, of course, did not make the process possible, but capital, and therefore effort was thrown into the task to speed the process. Now, instead of cries about lack of fertilisers, industry is worried by the excess that could be produced after this war in that partiular field.

Again, artificial rubber needed in war (cutting off natural rubber and its powerful interests) in which the initial experimental techniques could be transferred to large scale production. During the initial period of heavy capital outlay the artificial rubber industry could not normally have produced commodities capable of competing in the open market with natural rubber. The war, by cutting off the natural source, gave the artificial source the necessary impetus. It is now reported that the artificial source will be able to compete easily in the open market with the natural source, more especially as the latter is likely to be despoiled during the course of the present war. We will thus have at the end of the war two conflicting sources each capable of supplying the world, with its inevitable results.

The British Empire had for many years desired to become industrialised, but the English capitalist class did not desire that their empire, the only certain market for their manufactured products, should supply itself with these goods. So when representatives of the Dominions arrived iu England—e.g., Nash from New Zealand—loans were not forthcoming. Came a war, cutting off these Dominions and forcing them to industrialise themselves. Of course, after the war this means greater competition. The spectacle arises, as recently, when a jute manufacturer operating in England and India closed his English factory because the other source was more profitable.

Admiral Gould, “Brains Trust” visitor, chose as one of the three greatest services to humanity the production of a cheap synthetic nourishing food. Cheap here, of course, means for the working class. Well, we are now well on the way. As reported in the “Chemical Trade Journal and Chemical Engineer” June 4, 1943, a lunch was recently held at Lausanne. The meal consisted of hors d’oeuvres made of chemically treated cellulose, flavoured with coal-tar derivatives. After this came “meat” made of treated wood pulp and synthetic gravy. The sweet was flavoured by artificial vanilla, and the cream came from the same cellulose as was present in the hors d’oeuvres. The only natural products present were vegetables. It was stated to be cheaper than the equivalent nutritional value in natural products. Again self-sufficiency in case of war was its attraction. Of course, for the working class it has obvious possibilities. The recent publicising of grass-eaters in the daily press points in the same direction. If only the capitalist class could put us out to graze on common land during meal-times! How much they would save !

All these great advances seem to have depended to a great extent on a blockade, real or threatened, for their full development. The lack of material thus artificially produced has, as seen, resulted not in, as intended, a deadly threat to those lacking the necessary material, but often ultimately in a deadly threat to the mode of production of that article, often leading to its replacement by a new process or source for that self-same article.

Under capitalism goods are produced for sale, and must therefore compete with the equivalent material on the market. Future possibilities, however bright, must be sacrificed to the market value of the article. The only mode of advancement is to erect a wall around this commodity and nurture it by subsidies from the State or from big combines. Often it is only by the catacylsms capitalism so surely, produces which enable them to gain their feet. Only under Socialism, where there will be no conflicting economic interests, will these substances be able to develop freely without fear of competition by the prevalent materials. There will the final arbitration depend only on its use-value.

It is well known how many inventors die in poverty. and how many fortunes are made by people exploiting these inventions. Edison and Backeland were fortunate in that they had the capital to exploit their own ideas.

The first to register a patent owns it. Others working in the same direction, and having additional valuable information, withhold it until the patent expires. Thus is lost the full fruit of these men’s endeavours. Since these patents give as little information as they can, other firms wishing to engage in the same field, after expiration of the patent, must again cover much available but secret knowledge—a waste of time due to capitalism. Often, too, owing to a previous patent, an invention must utilise an inferior mechanism, as witness the steam engine, where the fly-wheel could not be utilised.

The 1907 Patents and Designs Act provided that a certain difficulty, in direct connection with the piston, troubling the master-class, should be overcome. It definitely allowed a patent to be granted jointly to the inventor and to another person—e.g., a capitalist or capitalist concern—to enable the latter to share the benefits derived. The law thus placed “old man capitalism” very firmly on the back of the inventor. This Act also attempted to rectify an abuse. A firm having profitable patents, which would be adversely affected by a new one, could buy the new one under licence and not use it. No new machinery would be necessary, and since there was no production by the new method, no royalties, due to the inventor, need be paid. In Monk’s “Inventions. Patents and Designs” it is stated significantly that the Act has been altered to protect the interest of the inventor.

Nowadays, in the same way as production has been made social, so has research. No longer can one man very effectively invent a whole process. Co-operation is here, too, becoming more and more necessary, due mainly to increasing specialisation. Hence the increasing tendency for research to come more and more under the aegis of large firms or the State. The inventor becomes definitely a worker, swelling the proletariat.

In the hey-day of capitalism, when markets were large enough to take all that was produced, capitalism continuously revolutionised its means of production and increased man’s power over nature, thus solving a necessity that only capitalism can solve, the problem of production of plenty for the future Socialist society. Competition demanded it by forcing the lowering of the cost of production. But now the increasing monopoly character of capitalism shows itself by the cutting out of competition. Cartels divide the world into regions of influence for its component companies. This is possible only because the cartel adherents can produce many times the world’s needs. Research, while still bent on reducing the cost of production, is increasingly being utilised to enable surplus capital to be profitably utilised in new industries. It is interesting, in this light, to notice that the papers are talking of special investment schemes of an international character, to utilise at a smaller rate ot profit what would otherwise be uninvested capital.

In spite of the restrictions of capitalism, great advances have been made, and when the capitalist class points to these as a justification for their further existences they believe they have a case. But the long-bow won the battle of Crecy, and the phalanx was of great use to Alexander, but the modern general does not accept their past success as a reason for using them to-day against tanks. Compared with feudalism, capitalism represents progress, but only compared with feudalism. Their exalted idea of private enterprise means the enforced lack of enterprise on the part of the working class.

And in any case, in whose advantage has this been? The lot of the working class has not appreciably improved. The advantages and the wealth accrued have gone into the pocket of the ruling class. All this, the work of the only useful class in society, has resulted in a further widening of the gulf between rich and poor. Once again we have the cycle—born a worker means dying a worker.

Holland and Denmark, producers of dairy produce for the world, consumes enormous quantities of margarine. Who eats this margarine ? Workers !

Modern production has caused great increases in mental and nervous disorders and industrial diseases. The village idiot disappears, and the proletarian victim of capitalism takes his place. Hence the increasing study of these disorders and the “kind” donations by our masters, who cannot bear that such sources of riches for them should prove useless. They look for cures, turning their eyes, however, away from the cause, the increasing strain on the worker of his condition of wage-slavery, so aptly caricatured by Charles Chaplin in “Modern Times.”

The working class produces all wealth. Because there is too much food, therefore the worker must starve; because there are too many of the good things in life, therefore the worker may not enjoy one of them—even leisure means unemployment to him. That is the logic of capitalist anarchy. Lord Rutherford hoped that atomic energy would not be harnessed until the ethics and morals of the race were improved. This can only be when there are no more barriers of economic self-interest dividing people, but in their stead a common interest. This is only possible under Socialism. Only Socialism can effectively harness this progress for man’s benefit, not for his destruction.

Within our reach lies a world of peace and plenty. In Socialism we can unfetter progress that it may be used for the advancement of the welfare of mankind. Act then, members of the working class, for once in your own interest!

Samuel Leight

Classic Reprint: Atrocities in the Congo (1960)

A Classic Reprint from the September 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Congo has dominated the headlines in the past few weeks. Readers will find the following—from the Socialist Standard of December 1914—of great interest. The information in the article was largely based on British Government White Paper, Africa No. 1, 1904 (CD 1933) and "Red Rubber," by E. D. Morel.

In the sixties and seventies of last century the great commercial countries saw enormous possibilities in the creation of new markets, arising out of notable discoveries by explorers in Central Africa, and each wished to acquire as large an outlet as possible for their own manufactures. The scramble commenced.

The discovery of the Congo Basin by Stanley was the most significant of all, and in this direction the late King Leopold II turned his attention. Having previously juggled successfully with Suez Canal and other shares, he had amassed a considerable fortune. He sent several investigating expeditions, consisting mostly of Englishmen and Germans (how strange !) assuring the world that his intentions were purely scientific and severely disinterested. To carry on this work Leopold formed a company styled “The International African Association.”

This bloody and astute king capitalist played his cards like an expert. He became a member of the Aborigines Protection Society, and promised to support lavishly the missionary societies of England and America. He captured the British Chambers of Commerce by declaring that if the commercial communities supported his proposals the Congo trade would be open to them and would be exempt from all fiscal restrictions.

After a time the various powers became uneasy and jealous as to who should control this vast and rich land. Certain suggestions were considered with a view to placing it under international control. Then on the suggestion of the Portuguese it was decided to recognise the sovereignty of Portugal on both banks of the river up to a certain limit inland, to declare the river open to the world, and to place it under an Anglo Portuguese Navigation Commission to which the accession of the other Great Powers would be welcome. After introducing clauses protecting traders against exaggerated tariffs, and for the protection of the natives (!), etc., the treaty was signed.

But Leopold had not been playing to the gallery for nothing, and immediately the treaty was denounced by the British Chambers of Commerce and the philanthropic societies. The British Government was accused of betraying national interests, and the Portuguese Government was accused by its bosses of a similar crime. France, encouraged by the clamour, became resolutely hostile, and Bismarck, on behalf of Germany, kicked. Belgium was now in an unique position, and received the reluctant support of the British Government, with a proviso to secure freedom of trade, etc. Bismarck’s proposal of an International Conference was assented to, and was opened “in the name of God,” on Nov. 25, 1884.

Fourteen powers were represented, and their first consideration was for the welfare of the natives ! Such was the slimy cant and hypocrisy that we are told “the delegates, figuratively speaking, fell upon each other’s necks and wept with emotion.” They placed the Congo Basin in the hands of Leopold’s company. Articles were signed to ensure the utmost freedom to all capitalists, and for the preservation of the natives, the suppression of slavery and the slave trade, and “the protection of all . . . institutions which aim at instructing the natives and bringing home to them the blessings of civilisation.” We shall see, presently, what these “blessings o£ civilisation” were.

On August 1st, 1885, Leopold notified the signatory Powers that the International African Association would henceforth be known as the Congo Free State, with himself as sovereign of that “State.” Almost immediately followed a decree claiming all vacant lands as the property of the State. Another decree limited the rights of the native to the area upon which his hut was built, whilst another prohibited the hunting of the elephant “throughout the whole of the State’s territory” (three-fourths of which had never been trodden by a white man). Then they commenced recruiting an army of the most savage tribes. These natives could either volunteer or were taken in raids. For every recruit of the latter order the State officer obtained a bonus according to the physical fitness of his captive. Male children were also taken and drafted to military instruction camps to be made soldiers in due course. Having secured and trained sufficient recruits they set out with a mandate from Christendom to exterminate the Arabs, who had up to then been trading with the natives. Their object was to obtain the vast stores of ivory and rubber in the Arabs’ possession and to capture their markets. This accomplished, everything was clear for Leopold and his thieves’ gang to commence business.

On Sept. 21st 1891 a secret decree was issued to the State officials in Africa, stating that it was the paramount duty of the Congo Free State to raise revenue, and “to take urgent and necessary measures to secure for the State the dominal fruits, notably ivory and rubber.” Other regulations followed, which forbade the natives selling rubber or ivory to European merchants, and threatened the latter with prosecution if they bought these articles from the natives.

The merchants protested, and Leopold defined the position. Everything, he told them, belonged to the State—the land and the produce thereof. The natives were tenants upon State property. If they interfered with that property they were poachers ; and whoever abetted them were poachers, receivers of stolen goods, and violators of the law. How simple and concise !

Other secret documents were dispatched to the Governor-General baiting him to do his utmost to obtain the produce from the natives, “sparing no means.” A sliding scale was fixed by which officials were paid. The less it cost to obtain the goods the greater the bonus ; the more it cost to get the goods the less for the official. In other words, the less the native got for his ivory and rubber the larger the official’s commission and the more for the thieves on top !

One can pretty well guess the nature of the orders of tha Governor to his subordinates, and of the subordinates to their subordinates. Here is a typical one from Commandant Verstracten to the officials in charge of stations in the Rubi Welle district :

“I have the honour to inform you that from Jan. 1st 1899, you must succeed in furnishing 4,000 Kilos of rubber every month. To this effect I give you carte blanche. You have, therefore, two months in which to work your people. Employ gentleness at first, and if they persist in not accepting the imposition of the State, employ force of arms.”

Here is an extract from another :

“Decidedly these people of Inoryo are a bad lot. They have just cut some rubber vines at Huli. We must fight them until their absolute submission is obtained, or their complete extermination.”

Under this system £13,715,664 worth of raw produce was forced out of the Congo natives during the seven years preceding 1906 by the hirelings of this royal member of the Aborigines Protection Society and his confederates.

Let us now see how the rubber was acquired under the stimulus of bonuses and force. The information is furnished by Belgian and French, traders (who, no doubt, felt sore at being outdone by the State monopoly), and travellers and missionaries. The most brutal act of the “German Huns” sinks into insignificance compared with some of them.

The procedure was by levying a tax on the villages and towns payable in kind, and State soldiers would be sent to demand payment—so much ivory or rubber as well as food stuffs—every week or month as the case might be. But let the eye witness describe. The following is au extract from a letter written as early as 1892 by a resident of Likini.

“The frequent wars upon the natives undertaken without any cause by the State soldiers sent, out to get rubber and ivory, are depopulating the country. The soldiers find that the quickest and cheapest method is to raid villages, seize prisoners, and have them redeemed against ivory, etc. . . . Each agent of the State receives 1,000 fr. commission per] ton of ivory, and 175 fr. per ton of rubber.”

This, the reader will notice, was about a year after the decree urging the officials to secure the “dominal fruits.” The bloody events that followed have never been surpassed. The following is from the diary of E. J. Glave, an “independent English traveller” who crossed the Congo in 1891-5. It appeared in the “Century Magazine” in 1896.

“Up the Ikelemba away to Lake Mantumba the State is perpetrating its fiendish policy in order to obtain profit. War has been waged all through the district of the Equator, and thousands of people have been killed. Many women and children were taken, and twenty-one heads were brought to Stanley Falls, and have been used by Captain Rom as a decoration round a flower bed in front of his house.”

The following piece of information was given to the British Consul, Roger Casement, and is quoted in his report (p. 43.)

“Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber, cartridges are given to him. He must bring back all not used ; and for every one used he must bring back a right hand. . . . Sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting ; they then cut off a hand from a living man. … In six months, on the Momboyo River they had used 6,000 cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated. It means more than 6,000, for the soldiers kill children with the butt of their guns.”

If a soldier returned to his station without a sufficient number of hands to make up for the rubber he had not brought, he was shot by his superiors. A native corporal described how in one day he had brought 160 hands home to his officer and they were thrown into the river. Another individual testifies to a village (Katoro) being attacked. Many were killed, including women and children. The heads were cut off and taken to the officer in charge, who sent men back for the hands also, and these were pierced and strung and dried over the camp fire. On another occasion a large town was attacked ; hands and heads cut off and taken to the officer. The witness said : “I shall never forget the sickening sight of deep baskets of human heads.”

According to Roger Casement many had their ears cut off ; also the native soldier, after being told “You kill only women ; you cannot kill men,” would mutilate the bodies and carry the sexual organs to the officer. In fact, in the Mongalla massacre of 1899 the agents confessed to ordering sexual mutilation. Consul Casement says that “this was not a native practice, but the deliberate act of soldiers of an European administration . . . and that in committing these acts they were but obeying the positive orders of their superiors.”

In some cases when protests were made to the Congo Courts a mock trial ensued. Lacroix, one of the agents in the Mongalla region was thus held up, and he confessed to having been instructed by his superiors to attack a certain village for shortage of rubber, and to having killed in his raid many women and children. He said:

“I am going to appear before the judge for having killed 160 men, cut off 60 hands ; for having crucified women and children, for having mutilated many men and hung their sexual remains on the village fence.”

Terms of imprisonment were inflicted, but were never served. Why ? Because “they had acted on instruction.”

The Congo Free State is split up into several “Companies” or “Trusts,” each occupying a specific area. One named “The King” was worked in the interest of Leopold’s private purse. Other portions were handed over for stewardship to financiers, “personal friends and officials of his European Court,” etc. In the “Companies” the King or the State usually held half the shares. One is named the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company. In six years this company, with the aid of the State soldiers, made a nett profit of £720,000 out of the rubber slave trade on a paid-up capital of £9,280 ! Thus each share of a paid up value of £4 6s. 6d. has received £335 in the same time. King Leopold held 1,000 of these shares.

However, it seems quite clear that, although the Belgian capitalists, backed by the arms of the State, had a big hand in this dirty business, there was along with them the international gang of plunderers. If this were not so, why was it that, although the evidence of these devilish horrors was before the Governments of America, Italy, France, Portugal, Germany, and the rest of them for years, they did not move to stop them ? Why was it that for six years the British Government was continually having reports of atrocious maladministration on the Congo and yet refused to move ? Why, indeed, did it absolutely suppress these reports—which it has never yet made public? Sir Henry Johnston, who has travelled a good deal in that direction, is evidently in the know. He says : “If there have been bad Belgians on the Congo, there have been bad Englishmen, ruthless Frenchmen, pitiless Swedes, cruel Danes, unscrupulous Italians.” (See preface to Morel’s “Red Rubber,”)

1960 Postscript

These were the atrocities which were responsible for the formation, at the beginning of this century, of the Congo Reform Association. One supporter of the Association was the late Arthur Conan Doyle, who in 1909 wrote a lengthy pamphlet called The Crime of the Congo. This pamphlet was an account of the barbarities which the agents of the Belgian rubber companies committed against the Congo natives. Some of the examples given by Doyle also appeared in the Socialist Standard of December, 1914.

Even in a world which is accustomed to organised savagery, Doyle's pamphlet is shocking to read. But one piece of it induces a grim smile on the reader's face:

"Sir Edward Grey has told us in his speech of July 22nd, 1909, that a danger to European peace lies in the matter. . . . Whence does it come? Is it from Germany, with her traditions of kindly home life—is this the power which would raise a hand to help the butchers of the Mongalla and of the Domaine de la Couronne? . . . Both in the name of trade rights and in that of humanity Germany has a long score to settle on the Congo.  . . . Or, lastly, is France the danger?  . . . For my own part, I cannot believe it. I know too well the generous, chivalrous instincts of the French people. . . ."

Consider the work of the kindly, home-loving Nazis. The most brutal of Leopold II's commissaries would have been aghast at their concentration camps. The French have shown us in Algeria that they have instincts other than the generous and chivalrous. Obviously, Doyle was wide of the mark when he thought that only the Belgians were capable of perpetrating such outrages.

Are we, then, being wise after the event? No. Socialists know that, when they expand their influence by conquest and colonisation, the capitalist powers often resort to violent coercion. And because we know that as capitalists they all have the same interests, we have never supported one ruling group against another. Atrocities which are committed in the process of expanding an empire are not the work of only one or a few countries. Every colonial power has done its share. Violence and terror are part of the atrocious capitalist system of society.

Editorial Committee.

Amazon: Fiercely Resisting (2020)

From the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

One indication of the global spread of the coronavirus was the report (Guardian online, 10 April) that a member of the Yanomami indigenous people in Brazil had died after contracting Covid-19. It was not clear how he had become infected but it was entirely possible that it had been through direct or indirect contact with the gold-miners who have flooded the territory of the Yanomami (also known as the Yanomamo).

This was of course by no means the first Yanomami casualty resulting from contact with non-Amazonians. It is difficult to establish firm figures, but a great many have died from contracting diseases to which they had no immunity. In 1982, more than half the children in one area died from whooping cough, and there have been plenty of epidemics of other diseases too, such as measles, smallpox and malaria. More widely, only 800,000 in Brazil classify themselves as indigenous, out of perhaps as many as 15 million prior to European contact (though estimates vary greatly), with many peoples having become extinct or suffered drastic reductions in population. For instance, the Nambiquara numbered twenty thousand when first visited by Europeans in 1909, but are now just twelve hundred.

Nor was it just a matter of death through disease, as there have been many wars and invasions aimed at indigenous peoples and their defenders. There have also been targeted assassinations, the best-known being that of Chico Mendes in 1988, after his efforts to protect peoples and forests. He was killed by a rancher after receiving many death threats.

The main aim of the government and other ‘outsiders’ is to exploit the vast resources of Amazonia. This began with the rubber boom in the late nineteenth century, centred on the rubber tree that is native to the area. By 1910, four-fifths of the Brazilian government’s income came from the rubber trade, but the bubble burst after that, as rubber seeds had been smuggled out of the country and taken to plantations in Asia. More recently, the interest has been in metals such as tin and, especially, gold. Prospectors have moved into the Amazon area in vast numbers, disrupting the lives of local people and polluting rivers and ponds. Thousands work as modern slaves, on farms, construction sites and so on. From the late 1980s, the Brazilian government developed a plan for building massive hydro-electric dams, implying long-distance transmission lines to convey the energy to industrial centres on the Atlantic coast. This was partly aimed at reducing the country’s dependence on oil imports, but entailed large-scale borrowing and occupying land traditionally settled by indigenous peoples (and, again, spreading disease). At least a million people, indigenous and others, have been affected by dam construction.

The Yanomami, who live on both sides of the Brazil–Venezuela border, are among the most-studied of all tribal peoples, and anthropologists often refer to them as ‘the fierce people’, on account of the extent of the fighting that takes place in many of their villages. They practice female infanticide, which leads to a gender imbalance and much conflict over women. Marvin Harris (Cannibals and Kings) argues that population and ecological pressures, not any innate aggressiveness, are the main reason behind their fighting: villages break up as a way of dispersing population when game resources are too limited.

Yet the Yanomami are not just fierce warriors: they share food as a way of showing friendship. They have no interest in possessions, and the goods of a dead person are systematically destroyed as a way of cancelling their memory, rather than passed on to other family members. ‘The Yanomami are warriors; they can be brutal and cruel, but they can also be delicate, sensitive, and loving’ (Jacques Lizot: Tales of the Yanomami).

They have also had to withstand massive changes to their lifestyle:

‘What cultural earthquake in the West could possibly let us experience change on the same scale as the sudden and simultaneous arrival of shotguns, malaria, helicopters, writing, land ownership and political autocracy among people who had never seen any metal object only one generation ago?’ (Dennison Berwick: Savages).

Berwick notes that change is an inevitable consequence of meeting between Westerners and indigenous peoples, and may be beneficial to both, with, for instance, many forest plants having medicinal value. But conquest and genocide are the likely result of contact aimed at exploiting land and resources. The transmission of disease may be unintended but can be just as destructive, and the coronavirus has led to many of those working to protect people and environment leaving the area, allowing loggers and miners to move in.

As on so many occasions, considerations of profit and power outweigh any regard for human health and well-being and for the good of the environment.

Paul Bennett

Two Stories of Synthetic Rubber (1942)

From the April 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two newspaper reports on synthetic rubber together provide an illuminating commentary on the capitalist outlook and on the way in which war speeds up the development of new industries and thus destroys the value of investments in the old ones.

The first is from the Times Washington Correspondent (Times, March 28th, 1942):—

  The revelation of the nature and effect of a cartel agreement between the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and the I. G. Farbenindustrie, of Germany, has aroused bitter feeling in and out of Congress. Broadly, it has been shown by Mr. Thurman Arnold, Assistant Attorney-General, in evidence before a Congressional committee, that an American process for the manufacture of synthetic rubber, which was withheld from American manufacturers, has been made freely available to the Germans, and that in 1939 the Standard Oil Company’s subsidiary in the Reich was helping to design plants for the manufacture of aviation spirit according to an American formula.
  The Standard Oil Company had secured from the Farbenindustrie its process for the making of Buna rubber, but, Mr. Arnold said, had delayed its use in the United States because the Hitler Government objected. Then the Standard Oil Company had developed its own butyl process for the production of synthetic rubber. Before America entered the war the company had informed Germany, alone among foreign nations, of this process, and had refused the licensed use of it to independent producers in the United States.
  Mr. Arnold continued his testimony to-day, in the course of which he said that the Farbenindustrie was found to have more than 100 cartel agreements in the United States, for "one cartel agreement leads to another.” 

It may be added that the Company denies that its cartel agreement "weakened the war effort," but does not dispute the facts.

The second is from the Manchester Guardian (March 24th, 1942), and deals with the Government schemes to speed up and cheapen the production of synthetic rubber in order to meet the situation caused by the Japanese conquest of the rubber producing territories in the Pacific. It is estimated by the Oil and Gas Journal of U.S.A. that the synthetic rubber known as “Buna” can be produced from raw materials taken from the petroleum industry cheap enough to be sold at not more than 10 or 15 cents per pound (5d. to 7½d.). The Guardian questions this, and shows that the cost of production will actually be much less, with consequent drastic effects on the marketing of plantation rubber:—

  That forecast applies, of course, to a scale of output that may not be reached for two or three years. But it disregards the fact that capital expenditure, which will account for almost the whole of the production cost, will be cheapened by Government assistance, either through tax reliefs or by low-interest loans. Further, while the war lasts certain raw materials necessary for both synthetic rubber and aviation spirit will be somewhat short, but as soon as the war ends abundant supplies will be at hand. All this means, first, that the plantation interests must abandon all hope of seeing "shilling rubber” return, and, secondly, that they will have to concentrate, when the time comes, on finding means of competing with the new rival.

What is true of rubber will be equally true of many other raw materials and finished products which will be faced with the competition of substitute products and goods produced in countries whose industries have been developed under the pressure of war.

Edgar Hardcastle

About Books (1953)

Book Reviews from the May 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

A number of novelists, from time to time, have written books that revolve around some particular industry. The stories, if they are the product of a knowledge of the industry plus good writing, can be both informative and entertaining.

A really first-class book of this kind is “The Weeping Wood,” by Vicki Baum, published in cheap edition by Michael Joseph for 6s. Here is the story of rubber from the days before the discovery of America, when the Amazon Indians found the tree which they called Cahuchu, meaning weeping wood, up to recent times, when the German I.G. Company and the American Standard Oil Company competed and cooperated to produce a synthetic rubber. 

Each chapter of this story is a separate episode in the history of rubber; each chapter is a separate story linked by this main historical theme. Only in a few instances do the same characters appear in the different chapters. In the introduction the author tells us that the story,

". . .  contains as much fact as if contains play and make-believe; . . . All the facts and figures, the details of history and background, all notations pertaining to rubber are authentic, as are, evidently, the documentary fragments scattered about. On the other hand, all the characters are inventions, bubbles of fantasy; all save the few historical ones which appear briefly in the course of these tales, but are also presented in more or less fictitious situations."

The story portrays for us how the Amazon Indians used Cahuchu gum to make toys for their children and how a Jesuit missionary brought a pair of sticky, smelly, moulded shoes to a high priest of his order, only to be outwitted and robbed of his discovery by an unscrupulous church financier and a native boy.

It then swings to the middle of the 19th century to tell of the struggles of Charles Goodyear to raise enough money to carry on his experiments to improve rubber fabrics, to make them impervious to heat and cold and to remove their evil smell whilst still retaining their elasticity.

We learn of the intense exploitation of men and women who lived tough and lonely lives in the Brazilian jungles gathering the gum; how seeds of the rubber tree were illegally exported from Brazil and sent to Kew, where seedlings were raised and shipped to Ceylon to start rubber plantations. The story then transports us to the rubber plantations of Sumatra to tell of planters and native workers; back again to America to show the methods used to intensify the labours of the workers in the rubber tyre factories at Akron and of the workers' struggles to organise in unions to resist their employers; return to Brazil after the crude rubber monopoly was lost to that country to see the effect of the one crop system on the native population; then to Germany during the last world war to tell of the frantic efforts to discover a synthetic substitute. The story ends in Washington, where efforts are still being made to find the perfect synthetic substitute, and where there is political manoeuvring to make America independent of world supplies of crude rubber.

Here is a story that reveals every unscrupulous trick and dirty device that has been conjured from the mind of man to wring profit from the exploited rubber workers, whether in the jungle, on the plantation, in the factory, or in the laboratory; it reveals the total indifference to human suffering in the scramble for profit from rubber; it shows how the booms and the slumps of capitalist trade, as well as its wars, have affected the rubber industry and the lives of the workers employed in it

This is a good six shillings' worth. It is the only book of its kind that Vicki Baum has written. Her other novels may be good, but they have not the same social significance as "The Weeping Wood," they are as different from it as chalk is from cheese.

One of the foremost writers of this type of novel, perhaps THE foremost, was Upton Sinclair. In his early days he wrote magnificent stories round a number of different American industries. Some of them have recently been republished by Werner Laurie.

“The Jungle" (10s. 6d.), originally published in 1906, was the first of these books and the one that made Upton Sinclair famous. It caused an international sensation by revealing the horrible conditions that prevailed in the American meat canning industry. It caused an investigation to be made, followed by a revision of the Federal meat inspection laws by the U.S.A. Congress. It is a gruesome page in working-class industry and, despite its date, is still worth reading.

“Oil” (10s. 6d.) was first published in 1927 and, as the title implies, it deals with the oil industry.

“Little Steel" (8s. 6d.) has as its theme the struggle between workers' and employers in the iron industry. First published in 1938.

“The Flivver King” (7s. 6d.) tells the story of Henry Ford and the workers in the American automobile industry. This is a particularly good story. First published in 1938.

These books by Upton Sinclair should not be confused with his “World's End Stories," which he has written in recent years. In our opinion the books in this series do not compare with his earlier work. There are many other books that Sinclair has written which have not been republished in late years, but which may sometimes be found on secondhand bookstalls. “Boston" is one. It narrates the story of Nicola Sacco and Bartelomeo Vanzetti, who were condemned to the electric chair in 1927. The “Socialist Standard" for September, 1927, had this to say of the Sacco and Vanzetti case

“The workers, generally speaking, have assumed their innocence, and have seen in the case the vindictiveness of a ruling class which manipulates the machinery of the law against property-less wage-earners.”

“Mountain City" deals with the coal industry; “The Wet Parade" deals with prohibition in America, and “Sylvia's Marriage" deals with venereal disease. There are many more of Sinclair's books that we have never read and some that we have read but cannot recommend.

A more recent author who takes an industry for the theme of a novel is Thomas Armstrong. His first book, “The Crowthers of Bankdam," published by Collins for 10s. 6d., is outstandingly his best. He gives us the history of the English woollen industry during the past hundred years. The story opens at the time of the Crimean War, when hand looms were almost extinct, having been ousted by power-operated ones. Prior to that time many Yorkshire Cottages had boasted a hand loom, but with the application of steam power, those who could muster a little capital brought small numbers of workers under a common roof to produce woollen cloth with the new power looms. Soon the hand looms were discarded and left cluttering up back gardens and waste plots of land where they were thrown, not worth their weight as junk.

This was the period in the woollen industry when small capitalists were laying the foundations of the vast fortunes that were later required to expand their mills and their trade and enable their descendants of today to survive in a world where gigantic amounts of capital are required to launch and maintain an industry.

Simeon Crowther was one of those early capitalists, a hardworking, frugal-living, astute business man who, with his wife and family, worked in his mill beside his employees, building for the future the firm of Crowther and Sons, of Bankdam Mills.

Ben Pickersgill was a weaver, the father of a dozen children. As a sickly creature of four years of age he had been brought to Yorkshire amongst hundreds of other pauper babies.

“In the mill, he with rows of other wizened tots, had slept miserably under coarse brown blankets and horse covers until before the dawn during the greater part of the year, the brats' overseer had clattered down the long, chill room, to rouse again to toil overstrained little bodies which often, so mercilessly driven, wilted and died . before there had been an adequate return on the capital outlay.” (page-48) .

But Ben survived and we find him in his kitchen, where,

“Abysmal poverty cried aloud from everything in it, from cracked pottery to makeshifts of all kinds. Poor tattered rags of underwear hung from a line over the fireplace. A torn strip of rug, a pitiable ameliorative striving to give some warmth to the damp stone floor, served but as a danger to the unwary walker.”

Out of child labour and the long hours of toil of the poverty stricken workers, the early capitalists were enabled to amass wealth and accumulate. That is where the story of the Crowthers starts and it proceeds down the years from generation to generation. Trade slumps and booms, wars, tariffs, bankruptcies—all play their part in determining the vicissitudes of the Crowther family fortunes. By the end of the story the firm owns a number of huge woollen mills, various subsidiary works and factories and has offices and representatives in many parts of the world.

The story, in the main, centres on the capitalist family, not on the workers. It shows the sharp practice, the double-dealing and the downright fraud that capitalists use to exterminate one another, even friends and relatives, in the cut-throat competition born of capitalism.

Mr. Armstrong has also written a lengthy novel on the cotton industry called “King Cotton.” We must confess, having had two bites at this book, we have given it up as indigestible. It fails to hold our interest, despite the loud acclaim of the critics when it was first published.

No matter what any of these authors claim for themselves, they are not Socialists. It has not been their task to find remedies for the evils that they have depicted or solutions for the problems that they have revealed. But in very entertaining form they have shown us the evils and brought us face to face with the problems! They have something to teach, we have much to learn.

W. Waters.