What is Behind the Fight for Suez (1956)

From the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Because they do not understand the workings of the social system that dominates the world we live in most people see the struggles between political parties and governments in terms of good and evil; good men and good doctrine against evil men and evil doctrine. They see their own "honest, self-sacrificing and reasonable leaders" being prevented from applying just and beneficial policies by the greedy and unprincipled leaders of the other party or nation, and in the atmosphere of fear and anger that conflict arouses they are only too anxious to believe that all the fine sounding principles of law, morality, religion and humanity are on their side; they feel no need to probe deeper for explanations.

The men at the top see more clearly the economic issues and interests involved but as they need to rouse the emotions and win the support of the mass of the people they dress up most of their declarations in the rabble-rousing language likely to move their listeners and readers. So over Suez we have had from the Western politicians a spate of talk about law and illegality, international rights, and wrongs. Fascist acts of plunder, etc., while from the Middle East Nasser and his defenders have worked up themselves and their audiences with passionate speeches about imperialism, oppression, insults to dignity, sovereignty and nationhood.

Not all the utterances are like these. From the “take a strong line" Sunday Express (12 August, 1956) came the following:—

“Forget all about the legalistic quibbles, about the rights and wrongs of the Suez dispute. Forget the mumblings of the self-styled moralists about the sort of example Britain should show the world. They do not matter. Only one thing counts. Say it again and again to yourself. If the Suez Canal falls into the control of Nasser, or any other enemy, then Britain is finished. And so are all our hopes for ourselves and our children."

and the like-minded Daily Mail (14 August), chiding the News Chronicle’s opposition to forcible methods and its appeal to “the moral conscience of the world,” replied:—

"In international affairs there is, in the ultimate, no moral conscience. . . . It may be sad, but it is true, that self-interest is still the first law of nations. Nasser understands this, even if some people here do not. So do Nehru, Kruschev and Mao Tse-tung. The nation that neglects it goes to the wall."

The News Chronicle stands on this issue with those who pride themselves on not being either narrow nationalists or believers in using force in the first place to settle disputes; they believe that an appeal to reason through United Nations will produce solutions good for all parties and harmful to none. Only with United Nation’s endorsement should force be used.

The Socialist does not belong to any of these groups, holding that capitalism cannot help engendering conflict and wars and that the only solution is not in the vain hope of running capitalism a different way but of ending capitalism and replacing it by a new and different system of society.

To the Socialist the world is not capable of being divided into the good and the bad statesman and the good and bad nations; they are all Capitalist and all are impelled by the nature of the social system to struggle for markets for their products, for sources of cheap raw materials, and for control of trade routes like Suez and strategic points like Cyprus. These are the things for which they fight, no matter what the fine phrases and slogans in which their aims and motives are garbed.

The crux of the Suez dispute is firstly the oil that exists in abundance in the countries of the Middle East, and secondly the Canal through which much of it, as well as other cargoes, is transported. Oil is now an indispensable fuel for the motors and tractors, aeroplanes and warships, merchant vessels and factories of the countries of the world. With cool production and hydro-electric power failing to keep up with rapidly growing demand for fuel and with atomic power only a development of the not very near future, all countries need oil and many of them, including Britain, have practically none within their own frontiers.

But though the Middle East is reputed to have the biggest oil reserves in the world and extraction is expanding fast, it has a long way to go to catch up with the older oil producing areas.

The world’s greatest oil production is still in U.S.A. and Venezuela, which, between them, produce well over half the world’s oil. The output of U.S.A. alone in 1955, 2,748 million barrels, is almost equal to that of South America, Europe and the Middle East, and Russia and her satellites, added together (see report of Shell Co. l955, from which the following figures on oil production are also taken). The total production of the Middle East now exceeds 1,000 million barrels, mostly in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Persia; Egypt has only the trifling output of 13 million. Russia and her satellites produce under 600 million barrels, less than a quarter of the output of U.S.A. Among the late comers, but growing fast, is Canada, with 131 million barrels last year. The great attraction of Middle Eastern oil is that it is much cheaper to extract than oil in the Americas, and the source or Europe’s supplies has been switched from West to East. “Before the war most of Europe's oil came from the Western hemisphere; even in 1947 nearly two-thirds of the imports came from the Caribbean or the United States. But in 1955 four-fifths of the imports came from the Middle East” (Times, 14 August). At the same time America’s internal demand for oil has grown so enormously that some oil is now taken from the Middle East to U.SA, in preference to using high cost American wells.

The oil industry in the Middle East is mostly controlled by American, British, Dutch and French companies, to whose shareholders large profits flow after paying royalties to the Arab Governments in whose territories they operate and maintain pipe lines.

The magnitude of profits made in the oil business is shown by results for one group, Royal Dutch-Shell, about an eighth of whose output comes from the Middle East. In 1955 the group made a net profit, after paying taxes, of £160,000,000, of which £33 million was paid out six dividends.

In the Middle East, then, is a great prize for the Power or Powers that can gain control. Each of the Arab countries looks hopefully to being able to squeeze out the oil companies. Egypt’s position is different With practically no oil of its own it has the, at present, irreplaceable Canal through which much of the oil must be shipped. Immediately British troops left the Suez base the way was open for Egyptian capitalism to strike its first blow, which, if it succeeds, will enlarge hopes of achieving the ambition phrased by Col. Nasser as “creating a great Arab Power, stretching from the Atlantic to the Persian Guff.” (Observer, 12 August, 1956); an ambition about which the other Arab States may have their own ideas.

Faced with this situation the Western countries, now dependent on the Canal, are being forced to consider the much more expensive voyage round South Africa (some new oil tankers are already too big for the Canal), and building more pipe-lines like the American-owned £80 million “Tapline” that stretches over 1,000 miles from Arabia to the Mediterranean—but these too are tempting objects for “nationalisation" by the Governments through whose territory they have to pass.

The Lebanon has already threatened to nationalise pipe-lines, and the Financial Times (15 August) expresses the opinion that though existing pipe-lines may be extended it is unlikely that any company will put vast sums into new pipe-lines in view of the risk of nationalisation.

Seemingly the Arab countries are being encouraged to attack the oil companies by the Russian Government, which may hope to get much needed oil in the Middle East or even some form of control of oil resources if Western companies are pushed out. It will be remembered that in 1946, with its armies in occupation, Russia forced Persia to agree to put North Persia oil under Russian control for 50 years; but when the troops withdrew Persia blandly declined to ratify the concession.

It has been a matter for comment that the American Government held back from the more belligerent Anglo-French threats of using force against Egypt. Apart from pre-occupation with winning the forthcoming presidential election and the fact that Suez is not a major American interest, the American Government and even the American companies with big holdings in Middle Eastern oil, are not greatly concerned with the Anglo-French fear that if Egypt nationalises the Canal this will encourage the Middle East Governments to nationalise the oil wells. The American Government has in the past encouraged Middle East oil production partly in order to conserve her home oil resources but the growing importance of Canadian oil may reduce this need. Also the Observer's Washington correspondent reports a divergent view among American oil companies themselves:—

“Another group opposed to any military action over the Suez Canal is the American oil industry. Several oil companies are reported to have expressed the view that they can protect their interests best for quite a long time by making monetary concessions to the Arab States if necessary. This, the companies think, is possible because the cost of extracting oil is much lower in the Middle East than it is in North America, or even Latin America." (Observer, 12th August, 1956.)

The South African and Canadian Governments were also lukewarm in their attitude to the issuer and why not? South Africa would welcome more shipping going round the Cape, and Canadian capitalism has its hands full building up its own oil industry.

At the time of writing the discussions between the Powers have not produced a settlement though the evident lack of war-fever among British workers and the disinclination of other Governments to back up Britain and France in forcible action against Egypt have had some effect in restraining the Eden Government and its supporters.

On the other hand Arab workers, misled by the belief that nationalisation of the Canal Co. (and eventual nationalisation of the oil industry) is in their interest, have been reported as giving vigorous backing to their Governments.

This is the real tragedy of the Suez dispute, that there is no unity among the workers of the different countries in opposing the war-talk of their Governments. In the main the trade unions in each country give such large measure of support to the claims of their own Capitalists and Governments that the basis does not exist on which they could act in unity with the workers of other countries when a clash of Capitalist interest is involved. Not realising the possibility and necessity of building a social system in which production solely for use will replace production for sale in competitive markets, because private property is the means of production and distribution will have given place to common property, the workers of the world do not realise that their common interest should unite them impartially against Eden, Nasser, Kruschev, Eisenhower, and all their kind. The trouble, as we said at the beginning, is that most people do not yet understand the workings of the social system, Capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Revolution in Chinese marriage (1956)

From the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, despite the usual misleading Communist phraseology, marked the completion of the Capitalist revolution there. The new system of society which is emerging from it has changed many things hitherto fundamental to the Chinese way of life, and not the least of these is marriage.

The majority of people, both in Europe and Asia, regard their existing form of marriage, together with the sexual morality that their society claims as sacrosanct, as something permanent, something that always has been and always will continue. But, in fact, marriage laws and sexual morality change in keeping with changing social systems.

Early Chinese Marriage

In ancient times in China the aristocracy were married with elaborate rites and ceremonies. The wife of an aristocrat would be associated in the rites of her husband’s ancestral temple; the temple of his "Clan.” Marriage was particularly important because property was involved and the heirs’ legal claim to the estate had to be established.

But the peasants were not included in the clan system, had no surname or pedigrees, and consequently could not participate in ancestor-worship. Moreover, they did not possess any land of their own. They were serfs, cultivating their master’s soil under his direction. They dwelt in groups in villages during the harsh winter, and in huts built among the fields during the summer when agriculture was possible. Every spring, the peasants celebrated a festival in which the youths and girls of neighbouring villages met in free association, only translated into formal marriage in the autumn if the girls were with child

The Traditional Chinese Marriage

Feudalism was abolished in China in 300.B.C. and replaced by a unified central government ruling through a civil service. Wealth increased rapidly, and extended to fresh groups of the population. This spread of private property necessitated a change in morality as well as in the marriage customs of the population for peasants wished to leave their farms to their own sons, and marriage, therefore, became a social necessity for them. But the heavy tasks of draining farmland in the marshy valleys and the irrigation works that were needed afterwards, required the labour of large family groups. 

A system of ethics was evolved which was expressed by the teachings of the sage Confucius, laying down a code of behaviour to cover all relationships. The submission of the subject to the ruler, and, within the family, the submission of the individual to the head of the household. Moreover there were rules formulated to cover relationships such as between younger brother and elder brother, husband and wife, wife and mother-in-law. Thus Confucianism not only made the task of ruling over vast China easier, but enabled the individuals in these otherwise unwieldy family groups to live together in more or less harmony and co-operation. Some of those whose mothers-in-law lived with them as one of the family may perhaps have received an inkling of the desirability of such regulating of family life and behaviour.

This somewhat puritanical code of Confucianist morals was rigidly adhered to in conservative China, where changes were extremely gradual because the Chinese made their living by engaging in small scale intensive agriculture, which has developed very slowly right down through the ages until a few years ago. It also forms the philosophic basis for the literary classics, a thorough knowledge of which was necessary to pass the civil service examinations.

In China until recent times it was the custom for the parents of the bride and bridegroom to be brought into contact by a marriage broker, the parents being the final arbiters on the suitability of the proposed union. The couple had no say in the choice and moreover did not meet before the ceremony. The Chinese compared this form of betrothal with a cold pot that is put on the fire and gradually heats up; whereas marriage in the West usually taking place after courtship was likened to a pot boiling at the time of the ceremony, but thereafter beginning to cool off.

Marriage in “Communist” China

The Marriage Law of the Peoples Republic of China, which came into force on 1st May, 1950, indicates the need for a new set of family rules to govern behaviour in this new Capitalist system of society. It reveals too an interesting side-light on some of the social changes taking place there; for it is only to be expected that China, the latest recruit to the State Capitalist system, should adopt the most up-to-date set of Capitalist marriage laws.

Article 1 of the new law formally abolishes the previous marriage system, and in its place institutes the “New Democratic” Marriage Law which, it states, is based on free choice of partners, on monogamy, on equal rights for both sexes, and of the lawful interest of women and children.

“Husband and wife are companions living together and shall enjoy equal status in the home. Both shall have the right to free choice of occupation and free participation in work or social activities."

Other Articles deal with prohibition of bigamy and concubinage. The local government is delegated to issue the marriage certificates.

The change in the status of women has the advantage for the ruling-class that the women are “free" to become wage-workers.

Rights and duties are further detailed, as well as the relations between parents and children; and divorce is to be granted only when the efforts of the local government officials have failed to bring about a reconciliation. After appropriate measures have been taken for the care of children and property, divorce certificates are to be issued without delay. Both parents still have the duty to support their children. In case of divorce, the wife shall retain such property as belonged to her before her marriage.

As a further indication of the trend of society in modern China, 12 put of the 27 articles that go to make up this law deal wholly or partly with money or property matters.

For the smooth running of capitalism, workers must conform to the rules of behaviour which have been found suitable for the social system; and because the needs of capitalism are similar irrespective of which part of the globe is involved, the marriage laws, which codify a part of this behaviour pattern are also similar, differing only in detail in the various national sections of the Capitalist world.

It is understandable that the new Chinese marriage law abolishes the previous marriage system; it is in the interest of the Capitalists to try to increase the surplus value obtained from the labour of the workers, who are induced to speed up their work by the prospects of a higher standard of living. This elusive prize is dangled before them, like the carrot before the donkey’s nose. Moreover, in order to get the Chinese worker to work harder, the old-fashioned household, consisting of several related families sharing the income of their wage-earners, has had to be broken up into smaller units; in this way the wage-earner and his immediate family receive all the benefit from his wages.

The breaking-up of this now out-moded household into the more modern form of family unit has the further advantage, from the Capitalist point of view, that the parents, because the family is now dependent on their sole earnings, are more amenable to Capitalist demands. Hence, the new marriage laws of China, by substituting for child betrothals, the “free choice” of husband and wife and by fixing the responsible minimum marrying ages for women and men, transfer the responsibility for the marriage; financially and otherwise, from the large family group to a smaller family unit; the unit which is now considered normal in the Capitalist world.

This change in the status of women has evoked great interest in China, and Chinese newspapers and magazines frequently carry photos showing the various jobs women have undertaken. One day the Peking newspapers carried on their front pages photographs of women proudly driving the local trams, other pictures showed women repairing these trams, and others, gear-cutting in the machine building shops. A picture of a group of smiling nurses had a caption to the effect that 85,000 medical assistants were to be trained in the next five years. On the railways some of the engine crews are women and there is a train on the Peking-Tientsin run entirely staffed by women whose photographs show them as being understandably pleased with their accomplishments. There are many pictures published of proud "Labour Heroines ’’—those pacesetters of China’s industrialisation drive.

Work teams composed of functionaries of the People's Court and members of the Democratic Womens’ Federation and the Youth League, visit the villages to see that the Marriage Law is properly enforced. They help to settle marital disputes on the spot and illustrate the merits of the law through plays, skits and lantern slide exhibitions.

It is reported that the special panel meetings for husbands and mothers-in-law are proving very effective.

But as a lotus petal separated from the flower is carried along in the grip of the wind, so have the women of China been broken away from the relatively secure group-household to start on a separate course of life. This has at least begun with great hopes of happiness. The publication of the Marriage Law was accompanied by articles written by leading Chinese personalities—the-Vice-President of the Supreme People’s Court and the Vice-Chairman of the All-China Democratic Women’s Federation—anticipating domestic bliss as a consequence of the operation of this law. In other parts of the globe where somewhat similar laws obtain, the mounting figures of divorces, separations, and juvenile delinquency resulting from broken homes, give cause for doubts about such optimism.

And in China, some of the smiles must surely have changed to tears by now, for another photograph published later shows a parting between a young mother and her toddler at the entrance to a factory nursery. The caption reads—“Come, dear! Let your mother go to work."

Other pictures show women members of the armed forces in Korea of whom it is stated that they are merely in the medical corps but that others are taking part in the fighting as combat troops. This information has been borne out by reports in Western newspapers of women figuring in the fighting in Korea. Thus is the road to woman's “emancipation" via blood, toil, tears and sweat."

And so the world changes. But the more things change the more they often really stay the same; for in a class-dominated society so many reforms, on the eve of fulfilment, turn to dust and ashes. By the promulgation and enforcement of the Marriage Law of the Peoples' Republic of China are the women of China free—free to become wage-slaves.

Frank Offord

The Critics Criticised – Professor Popper Looks at History pt.4 (1956)

Book Review from the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from the August issue)

Mr. Popper is what may be styled a militant Christian. His social doctrine is the familiar secularised interpretation of the New Testament. We must cast out false idols—lust for power; seek humility, do things for their own sake, be guided by our conscience, etc., and all this in a world where profit is the ruling motive, power politics a normal social mechanism, and where the vast majority are excluded from control and genuine participation in the wealth producing agencies. The social ethics of Mr. Popper are the age long belief of all social reformists: the belief that humanity will triumph over lust for profit, and power, while leaving the basis of the present system intact. Mr. Popper, like so many other social reformers, seems to regret the fact that under capitalism, Capitalists continue to behave like Capitalists and not as ardent humanitarians and social philanthropists.

Again selfishness or unselfishness are not attributes intrinsically good or bad as the abstract morality of Christ, Kant, and perhaps Mr. Popper, maintains. They can only be given real content in the social environment in which they arise and the purpose and ends which give effect to these attributes. Thus a section of the community, fighting to resist encroachments on its standards of living, may impose hardships on others, to call upon them to cease their struggles would be to ask them to sacrifice their own human interests. Mr. Popper talks about morality but fails to see that the watershed of any genuinely human morality must be the concrete needs of men. The Marxists maintain that only the abolition of social privilege based on ownership can best serve the concrete needs of the vast majority and hence constitute the truly human morality.

Mr. Popper, while he soft peddles on the present system, finds it easy to take the organ stops out when dealing with the past. For him power politics loom most large in the story of men. It is the story of the powerful and wicked against the weak and virtuous. How it came about we are never really informed or why it took the social forms it did. As such it does not explain the past, it merely explains it away.

While Marx never ceased to roundly condemn the cruelties and stupidities of the past and present, he never attributed social evils to be basically the outcome of wickedness on one hand or the ineptitude of virtue on the other. Instead of passing empty categorical judgment on those who have gone before, Marx insisted that men’s actions should be studied in the light of the social situation which initiated and gave meaning to them. Marx held that all systems based on a class structures tended to perpetuate a set of beliefs, theories, and social rationalisations in keeping with the needs of the ruling section, and because the privileged minority are by virtue of their social position, connected with the agencies which disseminate social ideologies they are not only able to exert a major emphasis on those ideas favourable to their interests but to set the tone of the extant cultural pattern which produces the social pressures which make for uniformity of outlook among all members of a given society. What is known as the general outlook will prevail until it is challenged effectively by counter beliefs set up in the interests of a new social group. It is from the warp and the woof of the generally accepted ideas that social ideals and doctrines are formed. That is why although the pages of history tell of man’s inhumanity to man and reek with blood of the innocent, there has never been a lack of social doctrines to justify men’s deeds.

Marx calls this incongruence between the ideals which men set up and the real nature of the social relations on whose behalf these ideals function—” false consciousness.” This is not due to some grave moral defect in human nature, or to a lack of logical consistency in their theories and beliefs but to a set of social beliefs which, under the guise of acting on behalf of what is known as "the general interests,” are projections of certain group wills and interests and thus act as polarising and refractory agents on the social vision of men. It is because of this process of social deception that men become victims of their own ideologies. And abstractions like justice, freedom, the rights of man, etc., not only become battle cries but take on the character of real things. While men then have been guilty of all manner of cruelties in the name of ideologies they have to a great extent been innocent of the real sources from which they sprang. No amount of cruelty or slaughter, Marx thought, would correct this deception, nor, we might add, moralising platitudes. Only when men grasp the real content of the relations between themselves and nature can a socialised humanity emerge. The verdict of Marx on history reveals a more profound and more tolerant attitude than the crude denunciations of Mr. Popper.

Marx was also opposed to judging human beings by some absolute scale of ethical values. He believed that men must be appraised by the standards of their time. No doubt members of the Capitalist class would be horrified at the idea of keeping slaves. Yet are we to believe that the slave owners of the 18th and 19th centuries were wicked men? They certainly did not think so. Judged in accordance with their own lights they were not exempt from humane feeling and consideration. They did not, however, oppose slavery or demand its abolition, no more than the employing class demand the abolition of capitalism based on wage slavery. Socialists demand the abolition of capitalism not because Capitalists as such are inhuman or lack consideration, but because the form and content of their humanity and ethical values are circumscribed by the type of social organisation of which they are the social representatives. Our claim is that ethical values do not function independently of the social context in which they are expressed and which Mr. Popper should have sought to prove but he never did. Only when class division has ceased to count in human affairs will the meanness, hatred, cruelty and antagonism which are so much features of contemporary culture disappear and the values and motives of Capitalist society be replaced by more humane values and more humane motives.

Mr. Popper follows the traditions of the Fabians, Bertrand Russell, G. D. H. Cole, and others, in seeing the value of Marxism as a moral appeal. Marx, however, sharply disassociated himself from the utopians. As Marx pointed out “the utopians have a bent to interpret surplus value in moral terms and then appeal to society for correction of its glaring injustices.” For Marx, morality had to rest upon a theory of objective conditions to ensure its success.

Some of Mr. Popper’s inadequate ideas of Marxism can be seen from his assertion that Marx held that the rate of profit must fall (p. 184), when Marx held no such view. Another idea he puts forward, that Marx also held that the fall in the rate of profit was an automatic process for the increasing misery of the workers (p.p. 183-185). What Marx said was that the tendency of the rate of profit to fall was an incentive for Capitalists to attempt to increase productivity. He never said that all increases in productivity go to the Capitalist in the shape of profits. Some go to workers in higher wages but he maintained never proportionately to the productive power of labour. Again we are told that Marx held that wages oscillate round starvation level (p. 173). Marx again did not say it but emphatically denied it. How Marx vide Mr. Popper came to believe that workers’ conditions would continue to worsen from starvation levels, he Mr. Popper does not explain. Finally he repeats the hoary myth that Marx held that capitalism would crash (p. 179).

If we seem -to have spent much time on Mr. Popper it is not in deference to his criticism on Marxism, but because he has in his book summarised most of the criticism of Marx in the last 50 years. The views on Marxism and history held by Mr. Popper can themselves be summarised as mostly Poppercock.

Ted Wilmott

(Concluded)

Notes by the Way: Mr. Bevan being Statesmanlike (1956)

The Notes by the Way Column from the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Bevan being Statesmanlike

When he is not calling other supporters of capitalism vermin the Rt. Hon. Aneurin Bevan sometimes writes sober, statesmanlike articles for the Capitalist Press as in the Sunday Express (5 August, 1956). His subject was "Why I want Ike to Lose.” Although Bevan is not a Socialist he likes to parade himself as one on the strength of his continuing support for State Capitalism (nationalisation), and one would have expected the article to be a trumpet blast for setting up an English-model “Welfare State" in U.SA and a repudiation of Eisenhower because he and his party are not likely to do it. But not at all. The article said nothing about America's need for Bevan’s State Capitalist schemes (and naturally nothing about Socialism). It said hardly anything about any policy, beyond a tepid preference for Adlai Stevenson on the ground that be would change the American attitude towards Chiang-Kai-Shek, and might finally end McCarthyism. All he could say about Stevenson was that “his views are not particularly advanced, judged by Europe's standards, and there are even some Conservatives who might not think him sufficiently progressive."

No, Mr. Bevan’s main and almost his only theme was that Eisenhower is sick and consequently liable to reactionary pressure—as if the course of American capitalism is going to be determined by Eisenhower, well or ill. But Mr. Bevan evidently thinks it is:—

“I find the project depressing in the extreme. The President is obviously a sick man and by all the evidence he is likely to become more and not less sick. We shall therefore have less than half a man failing to do what is by general consent a job more than enough for a man in full possession of robust health. The most important political office in the world will be in feeble, fumbling and wavering hands, and it is little consolation that it may be done by the democratic choice of the American people themselves."

So Mr. Bevan can pass by without comment the fact that the American people by democratic choice are about to rivet themselves to capitalism again; this be does not think worth notice; but he is very depressed because American capitalism may be in the hands of a semi-invalid. As if by comparison with the real issue it had any importance at all, except for Mr. Eisenhower.

•  •  •

Bevan Looking in the Mirror

This attitude towards politics does explain why Mr. Bevan got so angry with Attlee and now dislikes Attlee's successor, Gaitskell. When Bevan looks in the mirror be sees a whole man, in robust health; obviously better fitted to lead the Labour Party and become Prime Minister than these fumbling half men.

But how does Bevan work out, in wider spheres, his policy of supporting the robust and opposing the weak? In the same issue of the Sunday Express “Cross Bencher" reported that Mr. R. A. Butler is a robust man, too: “His cheeks glow. His step is light. And he is only 53.“

And what about Colonel Nasser, who is described as  “a tall, strongly built man, with great physical stamina? "

•  •  •

Nationalisation and the Arab Workers

The Arab workers' trade unions in Egypt and other Middle-Eastern countries, have given delighted support to the act of nationalising the Suez Canal and the threatened nationalisation of oil plants and oil pipe-lines. They think their troubles will be over when “their country owns their oil and their canal." They have a rude awakening in store when they find that the beneficiaries will be their exploiters, the local Capitalist class. But what a pity they could not learn from the experience of workers in Britain, Russia and other countries about the illusory benefits of State Capitalism. The people who ought to have told them are the British and other trade union leaders who have international contacts, but they, of course, still cherish the same illusions themselves.

Colonel Nasser has used against the Western Powers the argument that as Egyptian workers built the Canal “Egypt" should own it. But the same can be said of all the accumulated wealth of Egypt and all other countries; the workers produced it but somebody else owns it. The Colonel very well knows that nationalisation is not going to take the wealth of Egypt out of the hands of the rich who own it. If he had any such dangerous thoughts and suggested applying them he would soon be got rid of.

•  •  •

U.N.-The Dream Fades

Except as a face-saver and rubber stamp organisation for the big Powers, nobody seriously considered United Nations as a body to provide a solution for the Suez Canal dispute. A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian at Geneva comments on the parallel disillusioning with one of U.N..'s subsidiaries the United Nations Economic and Social Council. He comments on the failure of this council in the fields of world trade and economic development and goes on:—

“What is considered even more serious, however, is the growing impression among the delegates that, just as in the field of effective world security, the United Nations is becoming almost impotent in the economic and social fields as well. It seems as if there were an unspoken agreement among the industrial as well as the less developed countries that the United Nations has been reduced to a forum where lip-service has to be paid to ideals which no longer apply to the level of sophistication which has now been universally reached. Articles of the United Nations Charter seem to serve as no more than good debating points."—(Manchester Guardian, 9th August, 1956.)

•  •  • 

The Results of Keir Hardie

On the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Keir Hardie he has been acclaimed by both wings of the Labour Party and by the Communist Daily Worker. He is not acclaimed by the S.P.G.B. any more than he was when he was alive; though we must in fairness admit that when we contemplate the low level of the present Labour Party notabilities it does add a certain relative lustre to Keir Hardie. And this, of course, pin-points our "attitude towards his reformist activities and his masterpiece the formation of the Labour Party. His admirers tell us what fine and enduring work he did but they are vague about what it was and why it should be admired. Surely the test to be applied to a man who believed that the way to get Socialism was to build up a trade union-political, refformist Labour Party, is to examine his success in achieving what, he said, it would achieve.

 

Mr. Bevan, in an article “The man who still points the Way ” (Reynolds News, 12 August, 1956), has this to say:—

“We are not yet even within sight of the 'just society' that Keir Hardie dreamed about The society we belong to is not only still unjust it is also unstable. We lurch unsteadily from one crisis to another with the sole satisfaction that our feet are better shod than they were in Hardie's day."

Mr. Bevan puts it very well, but what becomes of the claim of Hardie and the other reformists about the superior wisdom of reformism? And incidentally what were Mr. Bevan and the other members of the Labour Governments doing to leave society in such a mess?

One of Keir Hardie's mistaken beliefs was that the problem of war could be dealt with under capitalism. Now, half a century later, Mr. Bevan tells us in effect, that if we disappear in an H.-Bomb war it will be nice to know that our feet are dry.

•  •  •

Zilliacus Egypt and Israel

Mr. Zilliacus, Labour M.P., for Gorton, is one of the Labour Party M.P.'s who do not approve of Eden's policy towards Egypt, or of his own leader’s policy. He wrote to the Manchester Guardian (6 August, 1956), to put his point of view. He attacked Mr. Gaitskell's statement that the Suez episode “Must be recognised as part of the struggle for the mastery of the Middle East" and declared that “to contemplate going to war is madness," this because Nasser has behind him the whole of the Arab world as well as support from outside.

But point four of his four point explanation of his position included “as an immediate emergency measure, the arming of Israel . . ."

One wonders therefore just what Mr. Zilliacus does think. Against whom is Israel to be armed if not against Egypt and the Arab countries? And since this involves the possibility of war what happens to the view that contemplating going to war is madness, especially as he also wants “the guaranteeing of peace between Israel and the Arab States?"  “Guaranteeing" frontiers means being prepared to go to war.

•  •  •

They’re Fascists !

Trying to interpret events in the international dogfight in terms of how much you like the politicians and how friendly you think they are becomes confusing because the actors keep on changing places and changing colours.

Sir Anthony Eden likens Nasser to Hitler (to which the Colonel with more politeness seems to have made no retort in kind), but similarity to the late Nazi leader and his crimes is just what the Greeks have been seeing in Eden because of Cyprus.

The Communists have had the same trouble. Some readers of the Daily Worker have objected to the Communist Party’s support for dictator Nasser’s policy on the ground that Nasser is anti-Israel, while Communists in Stepney “are pro-Israel." To which another Daily Worker reader retorts that the manner in which the rulers of Israel treat the Arab minority is “fascist-like." (Daily Worker, 8 August).

But a well-known “expert" on world affairs, Mr. Stephen King-Hall thinks that the British Government should use their trump card, the existence of Israel which he describes as “the only, democratic State in the Middle East." (Manchester Guardian, 8 August).

The odd thing is that they all now use “Fascist” and "Nazi” as terms expressing abhorrence, forgetting how all of them have been willing to do a deal with Mussolini, Hitler or anyone else when in need of allies.

Which prompts a further note on the use of language. Why has not “you're like Stalin,” come into common use as term of abuse? What did Adolf have that Josef hadn't got?

•  •  •

Profits from “Welfare” work

“Industrial Relations News” of New York announce publication of a book called “The Dollars and Sense of Human Relations in Industry.” It sets out to answer the question “Do Human relations programmes pay their own way?”

The publicity leaflet notes that “companies to-day are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on human relations courses for supervisors, house organs for employees, recreation facilities, attitude surveys, and many other types of human relations programmes”

It’s their money and they want to know what they get for it in addition to a nice warm feeling.

So the editors “investigate the many areas in which good human relations can result in definite dollars-and-cents contributions to company success.”

This sort of thing must be a bit of a problem to honest christians who have been brought up to believe that they have to choose between wealth and goodness and can't have both. Under this enlightened, modern capitalism christian Capitalists have to have both whether they like it or not. They seek goodness by providing welfare for their wage-slaves and the only result is to give them more dollars and cents than ever.

Another line on “human relations” concerns protective clothing worn in factories and warehouses, dealt with in an article “How Clothing Can Help Production" (“Furniture Record,” 13 July, 1956). The writer, Mr. F. S. Winfield, Managing Director of Raynor, Webber and Stiles Ltd., claims that much study is given to the advantages of such clothing apart from its function as protective against accidents and against damage to ordinary dress.

Putting women workers into smart uniform, working garments prevents envy from interfering with concentration oft work:—

“The modish new spring skirt of a young unmarried operative cannot, for instance, be the object of rueful contrast during working hours with, say, the sad-looking frock that middle-aged widow has had to make do for with a couple of years."

It has been found, the writer says, that “identification of rank by colour differentiation has a marked effect on discipline and bearing . . . ” 

And when one firm decided to put all its men into clean overalls, washed each week by the firm, the result, within a week, was “an appreciable improvement in the tidiness and appearance of the machine shop.”

The article ends:—

"As more and more firms undertake to issue their workers with protective clothing, it becomes increasingly clear that the American conception of the provision of these facilities as an investment certain to show profitable returns in extra smartness and extra enthusiasm is a correct one."

The personnel experts call their study of how to get profitable reactions from the workers “human relations.” It is about as human as the preparation of thousands of pay sheets by an electronic computer.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Home Owners (1956)

From the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Reproduced from the “Western Socialist," Boston Massachusetts, May-June, 1956).

This is the saga of American home-ownership and American home-owners—of that not inconsiderable percentage of theoretical homeowners in the United States who are a part of the working-class. Let us begin with a scientific generalization.

The working-class, we Socialists maintain, is a propertyless class which owns nothing but its labour-power, its ability to produce. In exchange for this labour-power which the workers sell to the Capitalist class they receive back on the average enough of the necessities and the luxuries to keep them producing and reproducing themselves as a class. Home-ownership is certainly not to be figured as a part of the cost of producing and reproducing labour-power.

In the face of appearances, however, this would seem to be rather a bumptious statement insofar as the American working-class is concerned. There is, without doubt, a mountain of paper in the form of deeds and titles of ownership to homes of all types which might be found in the possession of American working -people and the ledgers in the nation's registries of deeds will bear this out. On the other hand, however, there is another mountain of paper in the form of first and second mortgages. liens and attachments and so forth reposing in the nation's banks and finance companies which fairly well serves to uphold the validity of the Socialist claim and which exposes working-class home-ownership for what it is—an illusion.

The “Propertied” Working Class

Since the introduction of the G.I. Bill of Rights which arose out of World War II, nominal home-ownership among the American workers soared. Despite die astronomical heights to which the price of property rose since that conflict, it became possible for a G.I. to purchase a home with a down-payment which varied from nothing at all to a mere 5 per cent. of the selling price. The banks would put up a portion of the money and the Government through its Veterans' Administration would guarantee the rest of it.[1] Nor does the fact that the G.I Bill does not extend its benefits to non-G.I.'s excepting in the case of the numerous instances of artful transfer of such privileges by G.I.'s to others, exclude another large portion of the working-class from the ranks of home-owners. For in many cases at least a large part of a down-payment can be raised by the “buyer” by means of a second mortgage—in most cases a short term loan with a long rate of interest

And so we find that a large percentage of the American working class has become and is becoming “owners” of real estate, even landlords. Just how little average equity the worker has in his home is another matter, however, which does not need too much research to unearth. First of all, we have the first mortgage. An article in the Boston Sunday Globe for June 10, '56 tells us that there is an “unprecedented debt of nearly $90 billions on home mortgages . . ." This mortgage debt, we are informed, “is being repaid by American families with remarkably low rates of fore-closures." Be this as it may, the picture looks something like this:

Let us say our worker buys a home for $10,000 (a pretty shabby sort of deal at today's market) and that he gets his loan at 4½% interest. If he pays $60.00 per month for principle and interest it will take him 21 years and 11 months to pay off the loan.[2] But this is not the whole story by any means, for the city or town gets its cut and in most cases these taxes are added to the monthly payments making the total in this case more like $80.00 per, rather than $60.00, and which also means that the $10,000 home has within the span of a typical 20-year mortgage, just about doubled itself in cost. 

It never rains but it pours

“The course of true love never runs smooth,” they tell us, nor for that matter is the course of a 20-year mortgage any smoother. A home, like its owners, does not get any younger as time goes on. In fact, figures show that almost 50% of them are at least as old if not older than the workers who buy them and in the years to follow there is much to be done in the way of repair. This section is not required reading for those workers who are able, after a hard day's labour at the shop or where have you, to repair or replace the roof, paint the sides, instal or repair the plumbing, heating equipment or electric wiring, build a fence, grow and trim a hedge, etc. This applies rather to the overwhelming majority of our fellow-worker home-owners who are too exhausted, or too inexperienced to do the work of a dozen craftsmen in their spare time. These make the grist for the Home Improvement milk with their "easy payment” plans backed by the Government's Federal Housing Authority or by various Home Improvement Plans sponsored by individual banks. These can tie them up for periods up to five years in amounts ranging up to $2,500 plus interest. Providing, of course, one's credit still warrants such a loan. For those who have slipped and have fallen by the way-side, credit-wise, there are the second mortgage and other types of friendly finance companies which ask no more than an arm and a leg in return for the loan.

In the face of the continuing debt which confronts the worker “home-owner” in the years his mortgage has to run, fortunate indeed is the fellow who does not lose his status and revert to that of tenant in name as well as tenant in fact. In recent years there have been a fairly insignificant number of foreclosures—insignificant when compared with the vast increase in nominal home-ownership. According to the Statistical Abstract of the U.S. for 1955, pg. 457, estimated non-farm real estate foreclosures for continental U.S. ranged from 68,100 in 1926 to a high of 252,000 in 1933 and a low of 10,453 in 1946. The figure for 1954 was 26,211.

This data was taken from approximately 1,400 counties, cities, townships, or other governmental divisions. It represents the number of properties acquired through foreclosure proceedings but excludes voluntary deeds of sale in lieu of foreclosures or defaults on real estate contracts. And this last item is by no means inconsiderable. Anyone who has engaged in the so-called art of salesmanship in the home improvement field has become cognizant of the fact that a not insignificant percentage of "home-owners” become delinquent in their mortgage payments or their payments on the roof, side wall or combination storm and screen windows, with the result that they are either foreclosed or jump clear with a few dollars fa lieu of foreclosure.

That so-called Common Stake

The nominal home-ownership by American workers will no doubt continue and even to expand as time goes on. To a considerable extent and especially in the case of that large number of workers who "own” city tenements, they in effect act as rent-collectors and maintenance-men for the banks that hold the mortgage. It certainly works fine for the Capitalist class to have a working population, a large part of which has such a tangible stake in the nation as a real-estate deed even if the balance on the mortgages, the outstanding F.H.A’s, attachments and liens just about obviate the tide. Anything that adds to the feeling of a common bond between the workers and their masters is a wonderful thing—for the masters; especially when it costs them nothing. To the extent that such "ownership” exists the illusion helps to hold back worker class-consciousness. The working-class home-owner is less likely to favour strong action against his employers in a strike for example. His 20-year mortgage and his F.H.A. notes loom darkly before him and help influence his actions.

This sort of thing, however, can but help to hold back the tide. It can not prevent it from ultimately sweeping in to engulf the Capitalist system, to finally relegate it to the history of past societies. The vast majority of workers, even in America, may aspire to but will not be able to attain even the spurious type of home ownership we have been discussing. Capitalism is a system which provides real property ownership only for the Capitalist class.

Harry Morrison

[1] Last year 30% of all houses were bought with V. A. guaranteed private loans, although out of a total of 14.5 million G.I.'s of World War II more than 10 millions have taken advantage of this feature. (National Real Estate and Building Journal, May, 1956.)

[2] From a table published by “Changing Times" for February, 1956.

50 Years Ago: The Trade Union Congress (1956)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The so-called "Parliament of Labour ”. . . will be larger than ever according to the statement of the Liberal M.P., who is secretary. The usual resolutions which have been moved every year are to be moved yet again; amid the usual clamour of self-advertisement. In point of futile resolutions and wasted words the Congress compares unfavourably with even the tower of babble at Westminster.

A Congress that is supposed to represent and express the aspirations of over a million and a half of working men should (it would seem) enunciate a definite and logical working class policy; it should break down the barriers between union and union and bring about the economic unity of the workers, and should be itself to the fore energetically and unequivocally battling for the interests of the toilers against the class who prey upon them. But the Congress does none of these things. It is rather in the position of the poultry in William Morris's fables, who spent their time discussing with what sauce they should be eaten, and who sent in resolutions and deputations to the farmer's wife and the head poulterer regarding this vital question, but who were horrified at the revolutionary suggestion, of a battered looking and middle-aged barn-door cock, that he did not want to be eaten at all.

The aimless resolutions that are passed by the Congress in the intervals of junketing, the deputations and petitions that are sent to the class in power regarding the weight and shape of the shackles that are worn by the workers, the praise and advertisement that are given to the assembled delegates by the enemies of the working class, all demonstrate the uselessness and impotence of the Trade Union Congress. The reason for this impotence is, however, not difficult to find, and it illustrates the supreme importance of the work that we are doing—the propagation of the principles of scientific Socialism to the workers who are within and without the trade unions. The Congress is impotent because the majority of the workers within the unions are as ignorant of their real interests and as blind to their historic mission as are those who are contemptuously dubbed “blacklegs." And the leaders of the blind—even those who see clearly— have in the main no desire to awaken their followers to their class position and rightful aim; they have little desire to break down sectional divisions and ignorant prejudice among the rank and file; for if the workers were brought together as a class upon the economic field, if the workers became aware of the meaning and importance of the class struggle, an consciously pursued their revolutionary aim of the conquest of political power and the democratic control of industry, why then many of the leaders would lose their soft jobs, and many would have to abandon once and for all their hope of attaining to the flesh pots in the gift of capitalism.

(From the “Socialist Standard," September, 1906)

Party News Briefs (1956)

Party News from the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Provincial Propaganda. Speakers have been visiting the provinces during July and August and it is hoped that good results will be reported from Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Nottingham. Bristol group has had success on Durdham Downs (a pre-war regular speaking spot). There has been difficulty over selling literature there but our comrades have taken the matter up in the local Press. Their letter has been published giving the full name of the Party. Meetings with audiences of 200-300 have been held.

• • •

Literature Sales. Comrades are still energetic on the various canvasses being organised by Ealing and Camberwell Branches. This work is particularly good as owing to the bad weather, our outdoor propaganda must have suffered and in consequence the sale of literature at meetings has not been as well as expected.

• • •

From Wellington, New Zealand, we have received news of the death of an old comrade, Con Killeen. The Overseas Secretary of the Wellington Branch writes: "He died in his sleep on the 9th April 1956, aged 78 years. He was a member of the old New Zealand Marxian Association. Con could always be depended upon to help in Party work, very seldom was he absent from EC meetings. He did not suffer a long illness. According to reports he was reading until 12 p.m. on the night he died."

• • •

From High Wycombe we also learn that Comrade Gibson died recently. Comrade Gibson had been a member since 1920, a speaker in his younger days, and although moving around, always joined his nearest branch. He will be particularly remembered by members of the old North London Branch.

Phyllis Howard

Tranquilizers (1956)

From the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life under modern capitalism gives rise to all sorts of anxieties, tensions and "complexes." To start with the securing and holding down of jobs in that "increasingly competitive world," which the politicians are constantly referring to and in the advent of automation.

The working class housing problem, keeping up with hire-purchase commitments, having relatives in Cyprus or other trouble spots; all these problems tend to produce various mental disorders.

No small proportion of people suffering as a result of society's contradictions join the steadily expanding ranks of the mentally ill as patients, voluntary and otherwise, in the mental hospitals and asylums.

There is also an increasing tendency to resort to drugs, known as "tranquilizers" to temporarily obliviate the nagging problems. Taking sleeping pills for insomnia is nothing new of course, but these tranquilizers are a comparatively new phenomenon.

In the U.S.A. a commercial drug called Miltown (named after the town of its manufacture in New Jersey) is fourth largest selling drug in the country and, according to a Daily Herald article ((8/6/56), is becoming a "dangerous national habit."

Again, according to the Herald there are two tranquillizers produced in Britain—reserpine and chlorpromazine, the former in some cases leading to suicidal depression.

What a commentary on present day society!

Surely it should be apparent that the very real problems which confront us are inseparable from capitalism.

In the world of harmony and co-operation that will be Socialism, the circumstances that give rise to worry and anxiety will be absent.

Where the very means of life, i.e., those of production and distribution, are commonly owned and democratically controlled, resulting in the replacement of the profit by the use motive, the constant fear of economic crises, of new industrial techniques, and the perpetual struggle, will be things of the past. Likewise the tragedies being enacted in Cyprus and Algeria, and the ever present threat of large scale war arising from capitalism’s struggle for markets, strategic bases, trade routes and spheres of influence.

Resorting to artificial antidotes in an attempt to momentarily obliviate our problems is worse than futile.

Their permanent solution, indeed the only solution to working class problems, is really self-evident, the emancipation of our class from the enslavement of capital.

Fellow workers, let us stop eternally trying to escape from society’s ailments, but face them, understand them and based upon that Socialist understanding take the necessary political action.

F. S.

Animal crackers (1956)

From the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is psychology the bunk or am I afraid of what might turn up through delving into individuals minds? The answer depends on what psychology is and this I confess my inability to decide.

Whilst reading Reynolds News (8-4-56) I noticed an article headed “ The 'Animal Crackers’ Character Test” and sub-headed “Would You Rather Be A Fish?” This aroused immediate interest As the article was written by Dr. Brian Welbeck, Reynolds News crack psychologist (he is their only one), I anticipated a fount of information.

It appeared from the article that headmen who examine head cases find it important to determine the characters they are investigating. Incidentally, I have not got acquainted with how psychologists determine the subjects willingness and capacity to pay the bill for treatment. Neither do I know now they manage to keep this dark in view of the whole host of other characters, rent collectors, insurance agents, credit merchants, and so on, who are deeply interested in this facet of an individual's character.

Not only is it important to determine character but it should be done as simply as possible. This seems highly desirable as it cuts down work tremendously and expedites business no end. Happily this has been achieved; only two easy questions are necessary.

At this stage instructions appeared in the article. Personally I'm a guy who is always getting instructions, at school, at the Labour Exchange, in the Army, from the wife, in the factory. Indeed, it is difficult to mention where I don’t get instructions. This made things very easy for me. This is what I had to do: “Before you read any further—stop.” I did this! nothing happened. I proceed to the next word, “Look.” This I am doing I know because I can see the word, still no reaction. The next word is “listen.” This produced another blank. I try them all together simultaneously. This is difficult sitting in a chair with a paper in my hand. Still no dice. All this makes me aware of how really mysterious psychology is.

Next I have to write down my “ own ” answer to . the two easy questions. ,

The Dr. sure appreciates the uncertain world we live in. Be careful. All of us are aware of the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Some answer other than our own may inadvertently slip in. Make sure it's your own answer and not the Admiral’s whom you don’t happen to be.

The first question is: “If you had to be an animal which animal would you choose?” My answer came fast—a human. The second question was curt and terse, no beating about the bush. “Why?” This shook my morale. Me being a wage slave, and not knowing any other animals that have, for example, dogs and wage slave dogs, I got no animals to look down on. I got out of that dilemma rapidly. I was cheating, picking the card I was not meant to choose. I tried again, “sabre toothed tiger.” Why? Because its extinct, if it wasn’t it would be very useful to chew up Capitalists with. This completes the test. Now follows the real hard work interpretation.

From a number of examples of interpretation provided I choose the first case at random that Dr. Welbeck recalls as a pale, plump, young woman. Her choice of animal was gazelle, and the reason is because they are very graceful with long beautiful legs. It transpires that this dame is very unhappy about her large cumbersome frame and wants desperately to be like Jane Russell or Marilyn Monroe. This is very shocking because I never knew that pale, plump, young women had large cumbersome frames, which goes to show how good a psychologist the Doctor is and Reynolds News is making no mistakes.

Now comes the interpretation of my own character. The first extinct animal that sprang to mind was a sabre toothed tiger. Immediately my mind projected on the nearest wall, the spectacle of the most ferocious tiger imaginable chasing bloated Capitalists in 78 carat gold limousines all over the place. This I can recommend as highly enjoyable to unhappy people like myself who are very desirous of becoming plain ordinary citizens of the world.

The real importance of my choice of animal is because it is extinct. One reason why animals become extinct is because they are separated from their sustenance. This is really what I would like to happen to the Capitalists. To see them deprived of their rent, interest, and profit, by the world’s workers taking over the livelihood the means of wealth production and distribution and making this the property of everybody or nobody and thus making everyone plain citizens of the world.

This analysis reveals that I am a very frustrated character. This I shall remain until the workers of the world allow me to assist them in the performance of the delectable task of eliminating capitalism and establishing Socialism.

The characters reading this who are not acting as willing and able physicians in removing my frustration or in curing the social ailments of the world are altogether very deplorable.

D. W.

Holes—particular and general (1956)

A Short Story from the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Evan was a cripple who looked after holes, or perhaps it would be truer to say he protected the public from holes. Before the war be had been a "digger of holes,” but having lost a leg in a hole on the Normandy beach, the local council had taken him back as a "hole minder.” During 25 years employment he had become thoroughly conversant with holes of various dimensions and purposes.

There had been occasions during a particularly lean period (due to Government economy) when there were no holes to hand out and Evan, divorced from a job, would complain bitterly. On such occasions be would say—when the Government was in a hole they pinched his. Of course, if he had given the matter more thought he would have realised that in work or out of it, holes and himself were inseparably bound together.

Like most specialists, Evan was an authority on the particular rather than the general. Taking any given hole, he could analyse it from a number of standpoints; its shape, cost, suitability, etc., etc., and more important than all, how long it was likely to remain (the “ life ” of a hole was especially important as his job depended on it). What he failed to see was the unending vista of “ holes ” with which society was riddled, each filled with countless millions of his class striving to clamber out of them. Evan was a strictly "practical” man not given to theorising and only concerned with the “ immediate hole.”

Having told you something of Evan’s difficulties, perhaps it would be advantageous to consider the question of “ holes ” more closely. The term “ hole ” is, of course, widely used in popular parlance to describe “ a condition of things,” so that when people talk of being “ in a hole ” we know what they mean.

The trouble is, that usually, they don’t know that the particular “hole” they have in mind is circumscribed by a much wider and deeper “ hole "—Capitalist Society, and that however much they strive, the workers never succeed in getting out of a “hole ” permanently.

Holes, big and small, that exist everywhere in Capitalist Society, are called by Economists, Government officials, and such like "experts,” "Crises” and no sooner is one filled in than another is created. Sometimes, despite the waste and time involved, crises do afford a short lived measure of sustenance for some but invariably it is at the expense of others. Eventually a “hole” comes along into which thousands tumble with wide spread ruin and loss of life such as when Capitalism goes to war.

And so we say, study the "hole” you are in together with the rest of society of which you are a part, get to understand the nature of “holes," “crises.” and other impedimenta of Capitalism that frustrate, keeps you poor, and occasionally demands your life and limb. Having understood, take steps to fill them in. The tool for the job is waiting, it is labelled "Socialism.”

W. Brain

Fresh thinking with stale ideas (1956)

From the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every now and again in the radical movement there crop up attempts “to think out afresh the foundations of a Socialist faith and its implications in the modern world." The alleged “fresh” thinking always turns out to be a rehash of earlier attempts to bypass the obstacle of universal working class understanding; each attempt also overlooks, or is ignorant of, the fact the old ground is covered again in much the same way as it was covered in the past. Always the world of production and distribution is supposed to have thrown up some aspects that merits a change in outlook—but the outlook does not change; it is just the same reformist outlook attempting to iron out some of the wrinkles that mar the smooth running of the Capitalist social system.

These attempts at “fresh" thinking are generally the work of "intellectuals" whose ideas are not rooted in the working class movement, and who feel frustrated and confined in their efforts to make a mark in the world. The fruit of their work has always boiled down to the oiling of the machinery of capitalism to reduce some of the squeaks though the “fresh" thinkers have been too  "intellectual" to notice this.

Since the war there has been a plague of this furbishing up of stale ideas. In earlier times the touchstone of the “new” thinking was Social Democracy; since 1917 it has been Russia. Now the Communists are torn by a plethora of it, and, in this country, have even issued a journal, “The Reasoner," as “a Journal of Discussion," to re-examine the views they have been putting forward as established truth for nearly 40 years. What they are doing is going back to the earlier arguments over Dictatorship, which figured under the misleading and nonsensical title of “democratic centralism." Again and again we pointed out in our columns, in the early twenties, the absurdity of attaching the name democracy to the rigid centralised dictatorship of the Bolsheviks. Apparently some Communists and fellow-travellers are at last beginning to have doubts about dictatorship. But the basis of their discussions, like the “new" thinking of the past, will get them nowhere because, like their forbears, they accept commodity production, as a continuing state of affairs, and the swindle that, with all its faults, the Russian State Capitalist system is really Socialist.

In the U.S.A., at the beginning of the thirties, there was also an upsurge of “new" thinking. The “Modern Quarterly’’ for the winter 1930-31 contained several pages of this controversy. One of the participants was Lewis Mumford. V. F. Calverton replied to him effectively, but his reply was marred by his sympathy with the general Russian outlook.

We will give some quotations from Mumford, and readers will recognise the similarity between his ideas and those that are going the round to-day. After referring to what was happening in Russia he stated that in America they were faced with an entirely different set of conditions. That although there were many and serious evils in America under which workers suffered:

   “It is not the presence of prosperity, but the absence of terror, hunger and desperation that makes a revolution in the Russian sense of the word remote. More important, however, than the lack of desperate incentive is the fact that our society, unlike that of Russia in 1917, is a highly complicated industrial one, and the operation of our industries requires a high order of intelligent co-operation. . . . A revolution in America must be accomplished as the Grand Central Station was built tearing down the old, building up the new, and keeping the train service on schedule, all at the same time."

The last few lines is the key to his outlook. The little by little and bit by bit attitude of the reformers. He puts his view more clearly later on:

  "Our society, then, will not be changed by a catastrophe; it will be changed by the continuous pressure of economic groups, working towards concrete ends, the control of an industry, the socialization of a municipal utility, the nationalization of a resource, the planning of great public works."

Well we have had all these in this country, and the result? In last month’s Socialist Standard we quoted Sir Anthony Eden's statement that unless inflation could be got rid of we were going downhill to poverty for ourselves and our children. Which shows how valueless, from the working class point of view, is all this planning and building like the Grand Central Station. It has no effect worth talking about on the fundamental basis of capitalism—on the class cleavage between workers and Capitalists. Who does, and must, carry out the planning that Mumford mentions? The Government of course— the Executive Committee of the ruling class. In face of this the following grandiose statements by Mumford reveal his fatuity:

   "In back of these concrete changes must be the sense of general ends and ultimate goals; the growth of a common culture, the development of friendly ways of living; the spread and renewal of the arts and sciences and their infiltration into every aspect of life; for without such ends all our material renovations will be baseless and impermanent To be conscious of these ends and to project them vividly is one of the definite rôles of the intellectual in preparing for the transformation."

Well, how has it gone with the world, and with Mumford, and his like, since he wrote those words? We have suffered a gigantic war, we have seen the fratricidal strife in India, the Korean War and others, and we are living in dread of the destructive power of the Hydrogen Bomb. At the moment, also, the Suez Canal is the centre of a conflict that has an ultimate goal alright but has nothing to do with the development of friendly ways of living. We have also witnessed the many somersaults of the “Intellectuals” in different fields.

Mumford, himself, is not an exception to this charge. The man who urged the development of friendly ways of living turned jingo in 1939, calling Americans to arms to fight Germany. Mumford’s book "Men Must Act,” published in 1939, was a criticism of British policy for giving way to Hitler and urging the "democracies” to fight. In the preface he says:

  “The internal contradictions and conflicts that have piled up in Soviet Russia will remove, in all probability, the one menace that need cause a moment’s concern: the possibility of their effecting a tacit alliance with Fascist governments." (Page 15.)

Of course the "intellectual" leader, Mumford, was entirely wrong. Russia did form an actual alliance with Germany and took part in the dismemberment of Poland. Mumford winds up his preface as follows:

  “Democracy has still a fighting chance of surviving in the present world, on one condition, that it is prepared to fight The main purpose of this book is to rally together those in America who have a firm belief in democracy; but its ultimate appeal is to men of good will throughout the world . . .
  “If we are ready to die rather than submit to Fascism we may still establish a world in which peaceful men may again, not unhopefully, live. . . . Every man and woman must face this choice."

Well Fascism was defeated and now we are hopefully living under the threat of the Hydrogen Bomb, and the world is a maelstrom of trouble. Mumford is just a glaring example of the ineptitude of the “intellectual” except as a tool to help sections of the master class out of trouble.

Before concluding we must make one more quotation from Mumford’s article in the American Quarterly:

  “What then, must be the attitude of the intellectual in America who seeks to further a creative transformation of our society? He must aim to keep alive in himself the essentials that are needed in a whole society which is oriented to the good life."

Was be doing that when he shouted for war? He certainly helped to send the cream of youth to a bad death, even if be aimed to keep himself alive.

But the "new” thinkers are all the same. They are windy purveyors of stale ideas and tools of the ruling class —even if unconsciously.

Gilmac

State Capitalism in Russia: Pravda is Annoyed (1956)

Editorial from the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

André Philip, who recently visited Russia with a delegation of members of the 'Socialist Party of France," wrote up an account of what he saw and heard for the Manchester Guardian (his articles appeared in the. issues of 2,3,6,7 and 8, August). On August 8 the Guardian also published an article dealing with an attack on Philip which appeared in the Moscow Pravda on 28 July, 1956. Pravda devoted a quarter of its space on that day to criticism of what Philip had said about Russia on his return to France. Above all Pravda was angry because Philip denied that there is Socialism in Russia, describing it as "State Capitalism."

Pravda's argument to prove that Russia has Socialism is as follows:—

  "In the Soviet Union the means of production are the property of the working people. Since there are no capitalists, how can there be any talk of State capitalism? There is no capitalist ownership; there are no exploiting classes. This is the complete triumph of Socialism."

Pravda goes on to lecture Philip on the meaning of the word Socialism that has been "accepted by Socialist thought throughout the world for more than a century." This meaning, according to the Russian newspaper, is “the liquidation of the private ownership of the means of production and the transfer of the means of production to public ownership.”

The thing that must strike the Socialist on reading this stuff is that Pravda writes just like some woolly-minded member of the Labour Party trying to prove that since the railways and coal mines have been “transferred to public ownership" that they are now the property of the working class. We have hard it all before, from the MacDonalds, Attlees and Bevans, and now we have to hear it from the Communists.

Our first point in reply to Pravda is to deny the truth of the statement about what Socialist thought has accepted for a century. What exists on Russia is not in the least like the definition of Socialism used by Socialists. In Russia production and distribution are largely in the hands of the Government as are the coal mines and railways, etc., here. They are operated to produce commodities for sale at a profit, and backing them financially is the very large Russian national debt owned by large and small bondholders. There is in Russia as great (or even greater) inequality of income as in this country though not as great inequality of ownership of accumulated wealth. Also though Russia has private trading it has not the British company system of shareholders.

This is State capitalism just as are the nationalised industries in Britain. And when did Socialists ever describe it as Socialism? We can of course answer for ourselves that the S.P.G.B. never did so on any occasion since its formation in 1904.

And if, as Pravda maintains, Socialists for a century have used the name Socialism to mean what exists in Russia why is this flatly contradicted in Communist works published before this distortion of the word had been decided upon. Let the Communists look for example at "A Short Course of Economic Science," by A. Bogdanoff, published in 1923, by the Communist Party of Great Britain. Here we were informed that Socialism is “the highest stage of society we can conceive" (p. 391), that “under Socialism the question of profits will disappear in production also” (p. 380); and that “with the establishment of Socialism, all taxes, including the progressive income tax, will become superfluous" (p. 295).

Perhaps Pravda will now tell us how it squares the above, which is what Communists used to say, with what they say now about alleged Socialism in Russia, for not even Pravda can deny that an elaborate system of differential taxation exists (including a profits tax) and that the State concerns are required to make a profit or show good reason for not doing so.

Pravda might also recall that back in the nineteen-twenties Lenin was advocating State Capitalism in Russia (see his “Chief Task of our Times”) and not pretending that it is Socialism as does Pravda now.

Before we leave the subject a word to André Philip. He is quite right to point out that the Russian system is not Socialism but State Capitalism, but is he always so clear-headed and outspoken about the muddle-headed propaganda carried on by his own party in France?