The Inhumanity of War (1959)

Editorial from the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

All modern wars are the outcome of economic clashes within Capitalism. As this month is the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the last world war, the effects of which are still with us, most of the articles in this issue of the SOCIALIST STANDARD concern the Socialist attitude to war.

War can solve no working class problem. It cuts across the fundamental identity of interest of the workers of the world, setting sections of this class at enmity with each other in the interests of sections of the capitalist class.

War elevates force into the position of arbiter in place of the common human desire for mutual peace and happiness. Its effect is wholly evil. It depraves all the participants by forcing them to concentrate upon the best methods of producing misery and of annihilating each other.

War elevates lying, cheating, disabling and murdering opponents into virtues, confers distinctions upon those who practise these means most successfully.

Young men and women, in their most impressionable years, have the vile methods of warfare impressed upon them so thoroughly that they lose a balanced outlook on life and are impregnated with the idea that force, with all its baseness, and not reason is the final solution in all problems.

Socialism is completely opposed to war and to what war represents. At the same time it is the only solution to the conditions that breed war. It is a new form of society in which the people of the world will work harmoniously together for their mutual benefit, for there will be neither privilege nor property to cause enmity.

No coercion will be needed in Socialism because each will gain from co-operating harmoniously with his fellows. But it is a new social system that demands understanding of its implications from those who seek to establish it.

With the establishment of Socialism war will disappear and humanity will have taken the first step out of the jungle.

Classic Reprint: The Socialist Party and the War (1959)

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Statement issued by the SPGB in September, 1939

In this, our first issue of the Socialist Standard since the declaration of war, we have the opportunity of reaffirming the Socialist attitude that we have consistently maintained since the formation of the party, including the war of 1914-18. With the increasing international tension of recent years we have again and again pressed home the undeniable truth that as long as the world is organized on a capitalist economic basis the never-ceasing rivalries will continue to produce conflicts ranging from mere diplomatic crises to gigantic armed struggles spreading over the oceans and continents of the world. The Socialist Party of Great Britain re-affirms that the interest of the world working class – on whom the untold misery and suffering of war inevitably falls – lies in abolishing the capitalist economic system.

The present conflict is represented in certain quarters as one between ‘freedom’ and ‘tyranny’ and for the rights of small nations.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is fully aware of the sufferings of German workers under Nazi rule, and wholeheartedly supports the efforts of workers everywhere to secure democratic rights against the powers of suppression, but the history of the past decades shows the futility of war as a means of safeguarding democracy. After the last Great War – described as the war to end war, and as a war to make the world safe for democracy – the retention of capitalism resulted in the building up of new tyrannies and terrorisms through the inability of the capitalist states to solve the problems created by the system of private ownership of the means of production and distribution and the competitive scramble for raw materials, markets and control of trade routes. So little did the last war achieve its alleged purpose that the man who was prominently associated with the Allied victory and the claim that that war would be the last – Mr. Lloyd George – now has to confess that even this war may not be the last war. Writing in the Sunday Express, (September 10th), Mr. Lloyd George says:

  It is only just over 20 years ago that France and Britain signed the armistice with Germany which brought to an end the bloodiest war in history. They are now fighting essentially the same struggle again.
  Germany is again the aggressor. Once more it is a fight for international right – the recognition of the equal right of nations, weak as well as strong, to lead their own independent lives so long as they do not interfere with the rights of their neighbours.
  This conflict has gone on periodically since the dawn of history. It will go on for many centuries to come unless and until mankind accepts that principle as one of the irrefragable commandments of humanity.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain calls on the workers of the world to refuse to accept this prospect, and calls upon them to recognise that only Socialism will end war.

Among those who support the present war is the British Labour Party, who long ago declared that the peace treaties of the last war contained the germs of a future war. At one time the Labour party, in its ‘Labour Speakers’ Handbook’ 1922 declared that the “unjust territorial arrangements” of the Peace Treaties must be rectified, including the return of Danzig and other Polish territory to Germany and the return of other Polish territory to Russia in accordance with the principle of “self-determination”.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds that neither the doctrine of “self-determination”, which the Labour Party then claimed had been violated by the Peace Treaties, nor the German claim for a new carving-up of Europe, nor any other policy for settling minority problems and international rivalries within the framework of capitalism, is capable of bringing peace and democracy to the peoples of the world. Another war would be followed by new treaties forced on the vanquished by the victors, and by preparations for further wars, new dictatorships and terrorism.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain therefore pledges itself to continue its work for Socialism, and reiterates the call it issued on the outbreak of war in 1914:

 Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism.

The Executive Committee, S.P.G.B.

September 24th, 1939

In Flanders Field (1959)

Book Review from the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Great Man" myths have a habit, disturbing for the staid in mind, of toppling to the ground. Generals, politicians and other famous public figures are found, usually some time after their period of usefulness is over, to have feet of clay. The more incisive historical enquiries uncover lies, intrigue and treachery: and the myths collapse, though usually too late to have any practical effect. It is, however, never too late to learn; and perhaps the unmasking of the Great Men of yesterday might make us a little suspicious of to-day's Pillars of the Establishment. The latest victims of the fashionable literary pastime of debunking are the generals and politicians of 1917, and particularly Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig.

In Flanders Fields, by Leon Wolff, Longmans, 25s. is a very fine conscientious piece of muck-raking. It is not a book about war generally, it is a detailed, well-documented account of the prominent men and important events of 1917. The main theme of the book is the policy of “attrition" and its consequences for the soldiers taking part.. The great exponent of this policy of wearing down the enemy by repeated offensives was Haig, and its principal opponent Lloyd George (at that time Prime Minister). There is a larger theme, usually implied but occasionally explicit as in the quotation from Carlyle at the end of the book; that wars are fought in the interests of ruling groups, and that the majority, of the participants are but pawns in a very dirty game.

The end of 1916 found the armies in France and Belgium more firmly dug-in than ever. A system of trenches, dug-outs, pill-boxes and barbed-wire stretched for hundreds of miles, and many miles deep. In spite of the horrible battles of 1915 and 1916 the Allied Generals were as determined as ever to break the German lines. The French started their offensive first; and as at the Somme, the result was ghastly failure. There were more serious consequences for the French Government than defeat in battle, for the French soldiers decided that they had had enough. They mutinied in tens of thousands, and the ringleaders were shot in hundreds. One group, numbering 750, were sent to a quiet part of the front line and there massacred by their own artillery. These incidents were to provide Haig with some good excuses later. He was to need them; particularly perhaps to quiet his own conscience.

Passchendaele
The main British effort was directed at breaking the German line in Flanders and capturing the Channel ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge. Haig hoped that after the initial break-through squadrons of cavalry would be able to chase the Germans and turn retreat into rout, thereby breaking the stale-mate that had existed on the Western front since December, 1914. The offensive started on July 31st, and continued for fifteen weeks. The ground, in peace-time carefully drained by an extensive system of ditches and canals, quickly returned to marshland under the heavy bombardment. At the end of one of the bitterest battles ever waged an enormous number of soldiers were placed in a salient, only a few miles deep, more dangerous than the Ypres salient from which they started. Passchendaele, a heap of rubble, about five miles from the starting line, was captured after ninety-eight days. The offensive resulted, according to one official estimate, in 448,000 casualties on the British side; the author estimates that the small French forces under Haig’s command lost 50,000, and the Germans 250,000. It was usual that about a third of the casualties were killed or died of wounds, so that for a piece of muddy ground 250,000 men were killed, and a further 500,000 wounded or captured. It is fair to point out that other estimates, more favourable to Haig (showing more dead Germans, and less British) have been made by other historians; after reading this book it is difficult to place any reliance on them. Many of the wounded (no one knows how many) were drowned in the shell-holes, unable to drag themselves to safety. They died slow, miserable deaths, making feeble efforts to resist the clinging, sticky mud.

The author thinks that the war was being fought for objects that were “demonstrably trivial” a view that is based on a mistaken conception of how and why Capitalism goes to war. Where there are avowed “war aims” they may be only a cloak for objects which are not openly stated because it would be more difficult to get people to fight for them. There were important issues at stake; Europe had not been torn apart because of an assassination: and there were more important reasons for Britain's entry into the war than the preservation of Belgian neutrality.

Several questions are raised by the book, and if not answered in full at least plenty of material is provided to help supply the answers. Why did the British Government allow Haig to continue his hopeless offensive? Why could not Lloyd George remove Haig from his post? And what was the attitude of the Welsh Wizard towards the war?

Lloyd George, the War-Monger

On one thing Haig and Lloyd George were in full agreement—they were both determined to smash Germany. Lloyd George's weepings over the fallen can be treated sceptically; if more concrete results could have been obtained he would no doubt have been quite prepared to send more millions to their deaths. He had already rejected peace negotiations with Germany, and indeed was placed in power because he was in favour of vigorous prosecution of the war. Characteristically, he would no doubt have made his (written) reservations about such a victory that would conveniently have found a place later in his memoirs. Though Lloyd George had once acquired a reputation as a “peace lover” by opposing the war against the Boer republic in South Africa he was quite prepared, along with the rest of his party, to forget about tolerance and humanity for the duration.

Haig, Blood-Merchant

And what of Haig, the man who gave the orders in June, 1917 that led to the deaths of 250,000 men? He deserves a mention, for he was in his day a Great Man, a leading actor in the sordid tragedy of 1914-18; unfortunately a tragedy that is no mere stage-piece. Capitalism lives by savage rules, and millions died so that Britain and France could dominate Europe. Haig did not take a personally tragic part in the events of 1917, being merely relegated after the war to an Earldom, inaction and (by ruling-class warrior standards) an early death: He never occupied any official post after 1920, but in his heyday he was the darling of the ruling-class How Lord Northcliffe’s papers fawned on Haig in 1917! How The Times (and the Top People) loved him! For a few months during that autumn The Times acclaimed a tremendous victory for every move Haig's armies made, every pile of rubble captured, every few yards of mud gained.

Haig was a cavalry officer, and this explains much about his mentality and methods. He had joined a fashionable regiment, married a Queen’s lady-in-waiting, and was the favourite of Kings—and of Kitchener. He owed his position more to influence than military ability. He grew up in the secure world of late-Victorian England, where military exploits were romantic adventures undertaken in far-off countries against enormous hordes of ill-trained, ill-armed tribesmen. (The hordes would be lucky if they possessed the fire-power of one machine-gun.) A very special kind of military tradition was built up in England; the Army was a shell fired by the navy! Secure in their sea communications, small forces would be sent all over the world; and from this grew Britain’s tremendous superiority in overseas bases. What was an advantage in Empire-building became however a positive disadvantage when engaging in a war with another great industrial power.

Haig was a part of this tradition, ideas were modified slowly (from the Boer war the generals gained an exaggerated respect for massed cavalry) new technical innovations were almost beneath the dignity of high-ranking generals. India, South Africa, Omdurman provided a very poor apprenticeship for Ypres and the Somme. Haig with his rigid, Army-trained mind, was incapable of appreciating that cavalry were useless against machine-guns, earthworks and barbed-wire. He held to the end his faith in his horsemen, not seeing that war was changing, that machines were playing an increasingly important part. It is probable that in his 400 tanks Haig held a master-card that could have beaten the Germans, but he never played this card until his Armies had become bogged down in the mud. Where the tanks were given a chance to show what they could do, there were no reserves left to follow up the initial success gained. From reading his private papers it is obvious that he had no very clear idea of the conditions under which men fought. He was a sincere man, religiously convinced that he could win the war. He placed enormous faith in his staff, believing their phony reports of the victories gained. Along with his Staff, he lived in a narrow optimistic world, almost closed to common-sense or mercy.

In the second (concluding) article, the influence of the generals and the policy of attrition will be considered.

F. R. Ivimey

Link to Part 2

Two Quotes (1959)

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Labour politician on recruiting

"Unemployment has helped recruiting, particularly in some areas. I do not know whether hon. Members representing constituencies in Ulster have noticed the figures, but the largest number of recruits has come from around Belfast where the unemployment figure is about 9 per cent., or something of that kind. That figure is not at all irrelevant. We want the recruits, and whether we get them as a result of unemployment or by the provision of high pensions, matters not. We have to build up our conventional forces as best we can.” Mr. E. Shinwell (2nd Day of the Defence Debate in the House of Commons— 26th February, 1959).

♦

An Archbishop on war  

“The use of force of the sword by the State was the ministry of God for the protection of the people. If that were true of the State in its domestic relations it was equally true of the State in its international relations. It all depended upon the motive or intention with which it was used.
  “If the force of an army were used for national aggression or self-assertion, it was wrong. If it were used for the defence of the people, it was right."
Dr. Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury (News Chronicle, October 13th, 1936).

The Failure of UNO (1959)

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a feeling in writing about the United Nations Organisation that one is digging up the dead and almost forgotten past. It might well be asked in 1959, why it is that UNO does not just pack up and go home? The farce is known for what it is and the legend has long since worn too thin to hang together in any presentable form.

Having served throughout its existence as a sounding-board for the international rivalries of the various capitalist participants and facilitated the mutual mud-slinging contests of the self-styled peace lovers East and West, it is now taken no account of when the major capitalist powers decide to take action in line with their mutually antagonistic interests. There are however a number of valid reasons why as Socialists we are still concerned to write about UNO.

To look back at the origin of UNO and to take stock of its record can be very instructive to all those well-meaning people who still persist in trying to get rid of war while leaving intact the conditions out of which it arises.

UNO began as an alleged means of securing a lasting peace. The 14 nations which came together and made the Declaration of St. James's Palace in June 1941, went on record as seeking to “look beyond military victory to the postwar future.” They wondered “would we win only to live in dread of yet another war? . . . Is it not possible to shape a better life for all countries and peoples and cut the causes of war at their roots?”

Atlantic Charter
These high and noble sounding sentiments were followed in August of the same year by another series of empty phrases, known as the Atlantic Charter. This charter was the joint brain-child of Messrs. Churchill and Roosevelt. Clause 6 of the aims of the charter, reads as follows:

  After the final destruction of Nazi tyranny [they] hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.

How far removed this is from the normal insecurity which is the lot of the world working-class! The utter failure of post-war Capitalism to realise the ambition contained in this clause, can be seen by the terrible fear which has hung over the heads of all men in all lands since the war ended.

Clause 8 of the Atlantic Charter, which was upheld and subscribed to in the United Nations declaration reads as follows:

  They believe that all the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained, if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential.

A moment's consideration will show what an empty collection of words this is. The nations which since the war have been involved in most “aggression outside their frontiers,” are the big powers, Britain, America, France and Russia, who were the chief supporters of the Atlantic Charter and later of UNO. Exactly who is going to undertake the disarming of these powers is, conveniently, not mentioned.

To suggest to the national ruling classes of the world that they must abandon “the use of force” when their commercial interests are at stake, is asking them to stand aside while their rivals take the lot. Nothing could be more foreign to the nature of capitalism than this.

Dumbarton Oaks
The next step leading to the formation of UNO was the meeting at Dumbarton Oaks. This meeting declared that putting armed forces at the disposal of the Security Council was “a notable improvement” on the League of Nations which had no forces at its disposal. It also entrusted the Security Council to be “responsible for preventing future war.”

This was all during the war, a period of promises and pep-talks. “War to end war” “Make the world safe for democracy” etc. With such words as these ringing in their ears, many millions of workers died.

When the war ended capitalism continued. The same conditions which had already produced two world wars, continued.

How precarious was the whole idea of launching UNO as an instrument of peace can be seen by the statement calling for the San Francisco Conference —"only those State* which had by March 1945 declared war on Germany and Japan were invited to take part." So the proof of being fit to work for peace, lies in having gone to war!

San Francisco Conference
The San Francisco Conference itself was a very turbulent affair. In fact the Opera House in which it was held had never heard so many discordant voices. Every part of the United Nations Charter needed a two-thirds majority and it is recorded that the crises and clashes were such that some "feared the Conference might adjourn without an agreement."

Those sincere but misguided people who waste their time and energy in peace demonstrations or anti-H-bomb campaigns would do well to note that the San Francisco Conference was the largest international gathering ever to take place. It had the official backing of 50 governments and represented 80 per cent, of the world population. They declared to be "All determined to set up an organisation which would preserve peace and help build a better world." There were 850 delegates, counting their staff 3,500, and a further 2,500 observers from the press, radio, news-reels, etc.

Why has it all failed? Why have all the hopes come to naught? Simply because it was founded on a false basis. The supposition of being able to retain capitalism (the cause) and avoid war (the effect).

The United Nations Organisation, after the stormy meetings in San Francisco and the voting of the Charter on 25th June 1945, was born on the 24th October 1945. Its fine phrases and high-sounding aims were rivalled only by its ineffectiveness. Its complete inability to lift a finger without the permission of those capitalist powers whose pet it was.

In June 1950 the United Nations itself went to war in Korea. The vote was seven to one in the Security Council. Now we are informed, The Observer (19-4-59), under the heading "Riddle of the Universe." “A 21-nation United Nations General Assembly Committee has voted to delay for three years an attempt to define aggression."

So the farce goes on and Korea is only the largest of many small wars since the last big one. Could the need for workers to consider the case for Socialism be any plainer?

Harry Baldwin

1914—An Historic Document (1959)

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

. . . on Socialism (1959)

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

"During the four years of the imperialist slaughter of peoples streams and rivers of blood have flown. Now we must cherish every drop of this precious juice as in a crystal glass. The most sweeping revolutionary action and the most profound humanity—that is the true spirit of socialism. A whole world is to be changed. But every tear that is shed, when it could have been staunched, accuses us."

Rosa Luxemburg, 1918

50 Years Ago: Socialism and Reforms (1959)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The S.P.G.B. fully believes that the whole is greater than the part, wastes no time advocating this or that reform, but spend their energies in educating the workers in the fact that in Socialism alone lies their emancipation.

One reason our membership does not increase as rapidly as that of some other parties is that we dangle no "Red Herrings" before the workers. The lot of those whom a political or economic "Red Herring" can allure is one to be pitied and abolished and not one to make political capital out of.

From the Socialist Standard, September 1909.

From The Branches (1959)

Party News from the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Denison House and Hackney Meetings 

The three meetings advertised in August and again in this issue, are being arranged by the Propaganda Committee and Central Organiser. Members and sypathisers are urged to note the dates and time of the meetings and make every effort to give each meeting the fullest support. Denison House, Victoria —Sundays September 6th and 27th at 7 p.m. and Hackney Town Hall, Monday September 21st at 7.30 p.m.

Delegate Meeting

One Saturday and Sunday October 3rd and 4th, the Autumn Delegate meeting will be held at Head Office, 52, Clapham High Street, S.W.4. Commencing on Saturday at 2 p.m. and on Sunday at 11 a.m. Comrades are asked to make a note of the dates and times as being early in the month, the October announcement will not give adequate time for Comrades to make arrangements. Provincial Branch Secretaries should contact Head Office regarding their delegates requirements for accommodation.

Nottingham

News from Nottingham is most encouraging. Socialist activity in that City is at a very high level. For some months now, daily meetings have been held in the Market Square and the weekend meetings, particularly those on Sunday evenings, are tremendously successful. Market Square is an ideal place for meetings, being in the busy City Centre and at the same time, shut off from to-day's big speaking problem —the traffic: it is walled off and paved throughout as a place where people sit and talk. The audiences are most attentive, questions and discussions lively, and sales of literature (including pamphlets) are a positive indication of the generally good reception otaur case.

There are usually groups of people discussing aspects of Socialism with Party members, long after the meetings.

On one such occasion, when the meeting (which had dealt with how profits arise) had finished at 10 p.m., two comrades continued in discussion with some members of the audience until 1 a.m.!

Outdoor propaganda, excellent though it is, is only one aspect of activity in Nottingham. The Branch Organiser is anxiously trying to arrange more debates with opponents. A number of these have already been held, in particular the one with the Catholic Church, which was recently reported in these columns. As is to be expected, some opponents are a little backward in coming forward.

The Branch is also running its own classes with the aid of a London member who has been staying in Nottingham for some months. The classes are well attended and keenly supported and will doubtlessly do much to encourage further investigation of Socialist theory.

The above is a brief report on Nottingham from a London speaker who had the good fortune to spend a week there in July, and who looks forward to seeing those many comrades and friends again in the not too distant future.

Bloomsbury

The Branch Organiser has arranged a series of discussions to be held on the third Thursday in each month. The first, on September 3rd at 8.30 p.m. after branch business. Conway Hall, the meeting place, is easily accessible and visitors are ensured of an interesting evening.

Phyllis Howard

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Publication Date

In order that copies of the Socialist Standard can be on sale in the Provinces on the first day of the month, it has been decided to have it printed several days earlier. This requires that articles shall be delivered to the Editorial Committee at Head Office not later than the 14th of the month. Notices of meetings must also be sent in earlier than in the past, though it will sometimes be possible to secure their insertion later than the 14th.

The Finance of War (1959)

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who Pays for Wars?

In the middle of the first World War the Socialist Standard published an article which brought us into sharp disagreement with both wings of the Labour Party, those who were all for war and the minority who wanted to stop it : on this one issue they were in complete agreement and held that we were wrong. The issue related, not to the deaths and destruction of war, but to the finance of war. The article was called “Who Pays for the War?" (Socialist Standard, Nov, 1916) and the answer given to the question was in line with what the Socialist Party had been saying about Capitalism before the war broke out. The Socialist argument was (and is) that the workers live by selling their mental and physical energies to the employing class. They then go to work and produce wealth for the employers of value far larger than that represented by their wages. It is out of this “surplus value” that the employing class came to be the owners of all but a small part of the accumulated wealth of the country. Broadly speaking, the employing class, in peace and in war, have squeezed out of their workers in factories, fields, mines and offices, all that can be squeezed out of them in the existing circumstances. This is a very fortunate situation for the propertied class, but it has its corresponding disadvantage in that the civil and military costs of running the State, its administration, its police, its armaments and its wars, are in the last resort a burden on their profits and property. In short, it is the propertied class who pay for wars.

The article published in 1916 pointed this out, and pointed out, too, what would be the likely position of the workers of the victorious and defeated nations after the war. It foresaw that in the event of the defeat of Germany the victors would levy war damages on the property owners of Germany, but that this would not alter the position of wage-earners there. The anticipation was in fact confirmed many years later, when it was shown that in 1929 the purchasing power of the wages of German workers had kept in line with that of British workers despite the yearly payment to the British Government of many millions of pounds of “Reparations” by the German government. (Socialist Standard, August. 1929). Indeed, at one period it was a common complaint that while German workers were busily employed producing the "Reparations” goods for delivery to Britain, thousands of British workers were unemployed in the trades that would otherwise have been producing those goods here.

The Keynes' Scheme in the Second World War

But if it is broadly true that the employing class at all times get all they can out of the workers, they are always willing to try to get something more if they can. And a big war has a double disadvantage for them/ On the one hand they are paying for the war, and on the other hand, under the influence of “full employment,” the workers are likely to press for higher wages. For the employing class this is a very difficult problem. They need maximum production of armaments to win the war and consequently need minimum consumption of civilian products by the workers; but this is at a time when, because of labour shortage, the workers are in a favourable position to press for a higher standard of living. The late Lord Keynes in his How to Pay for the War (Macmillan & Co., 1940), came forward to help. His solution of the problem of how to get the workers in war-time to produce more and consume less was to introduce compulsory saving and refund it after the war.

He was a realist and he recognised that workers with less than 75s a week could not go lower: indeed, he proposed that their standard of living should be raised. (It is one of the ironies of war that quite a sizeable part of the population are better fed and clothed in war-time.) Those with between 75s. and 100s. a week were to continue on their existing standard, but the group with over £5 a week were to be compelled to save, in the aggregate, about a third of their income. Refundment, after the war, was to be achieved through a capital levy. Keynes put forward his suggestions as a way to avoid inflation and as a way to transfer wealth from the propertied class to the workers. Looking back to the first world war which left the National Debt owned by the capitalist class, Keynes thought that his scheme would have the result that at the end of the second world war ownership of the National Debt “will be widely distributed among all those who are foregoing immediate consumption, instead of being mainly concentrated . . . . in the hands of the capitalist class.” (Pages 10 and 11.)

In view of what happened, and particularly in view of the fraudulent “Post-War Credits” scheme, it may be thought that Keynes, in his book, was guilty of promoting the fraud. The truth seems to be that Keynes was guilty of no more than muddle-headedness, over-optimism, and a certain array of political innocence. Under the influence of war-time emotion he had convinced himself that things really were going to be differently ordered when the war was over.

Post War Credits

Borrowing part of the Keynes idea the Government put over the Post-War Credit plan. It allowed the workers to have the higher wages they asked for (and came on strike for, often against the law), but took back some of the wages for repayment after the war. Keynes wrote in 1940 about the workers “deferring” consumption of goods till a later date: the government combined it with a steady inflation and rise of prices so that when the workers got their Post-War Credits, the money (held all these years without interest) would buy only a half or a third of what it would have bought at the time it was stopped from wages. The same applied to all the other savings the workers were induced to invest in war bonds and other government stocks.

But the government got what it wanted. The workers worked longer and harder, by day and by night, and were joined in the factories and services by their wives, grandparents (and even by the schoolchildren, who helped with the harvest). Yet the destruction of war was so great that the increased output of the workers fell far short of making good the losses suffered by the propertied class, an estimate of which put the figure at £7,000 million in pre-war values. The national debt, which in 1939 was about £7,000 million, was three times as large by the end of the war.

In a period of continued inflation and rising prices all items expressed in terms of money appear to be getting larger and larger—an appearance which is quite illusory as the worker knows when he discovers that his higher wages have to buy goods with higher prices. Nevertheless. if wages and profits aye both related to the upward movement' of prices it will be seen that the destruction during the war left its mark on the profits of the propertied class. Whereas wage rates on average have just about kept pace with the rise of the cost of living since 1939, and the total wages of the working class have risen appreciably more (one reason being the larger numbers employed) the total amount of profit, rent and interest of the propertied class in the years after the war had failed to increase in line with the rise of prices.

One other interesting confirmation of the Socialist argument is the way wages have moved before and since the great re-armament which started in 1951. In the years 1947-1951 armament expenditure was about £750 million a year, but wage-rates (due partly to the success of Government “wage freeze” propaganda) were falling behind the rise of prices. Since 1951 armament expenditure has doubled, yet the workers' wages, aided by a greater determination to press their claims, have been rising rather faster than the rise of prices, thus recovering ground lost in the earlier period.

The moral of this is that war in the modern world not only has its cause in capitalism, but it is waged financially in the only possible way, one designed to fit the economic laws of capitalism. The workers, in war and peace, do better to trust to their own determined struggle against the employers than to trust in the promises of governments, economists and politicians, about the rewards they will get later on.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Passing Show: The Devlin Report (1959)

The Passing Show column from the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Devlin Report

The Devlin Report was in line with the opinions of those who see the future of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland lying in the creation of a multi-racial, capitalist society. This strand of thought sees the Africans as being the wage-workers of this society, and wants them treated as wage-workers are treated here, with (ultimately) votes and "free speech" and the rest of the paraphernalia of capitalist democracy. This, in effect, would delude the Africans into believing that they are the real rulers of the country, just as the capitalist class tries to delude the workers in Britain. The result of this would be to turn the Africans (so this school believes) into respectable wage-workers, labouring as steadily for the profit of their employers as the wage-workers do in this country.

It seems likely that this trend of thought will prevail in the counsels of the ruling class, although for the present the British Government, and British officialdom in Nyasaland, seem to have been won over to the “settler" views of the white Rhodesian landowners, who regard the Africans merely as labourers on the land who must be kept in submission at all costs. But whatever the ruling class thinks and does, the view of the Socialist Party is clear. The only way to bring about a sound society, and to secure the free development of the human personality, in Nyasaland as elsewhere, is to establish Socialism.

Beating and Killing

The Devlin Commission allowed the Government one or two crumbs of comfort. It found that at the famous meeting of Congress leaders on January 25th “there was talk of beating and killing Europeans," and that when the trouble started “the Government of Nyasaland had to act or abdicate" The Observer (26-7-59). As to that, those of us who have frequently come into contact with white settlers from Kenya and Southern Africa can only say this: that if every settler who talked of beating and killing Africans were put in jail without trial, then the Africans would have to govern themselves, for there would be too few whites left to do it.

Religious Wars

A recent television broadcast of Bertolt Brecht's play “Mother Courage and Her Children" elicited this information in the Radio Times (30-6-59):

The Thirty Years’ War 1618-1648 was a religious war waged by the King of Sweden and the Protestant Princes of Northern Germany against the Catholics under the Emperor of Austria, aided by Poland and France. It ravaged the whole of Europe and killed half its population on the battlefields or by plague and famine. It brought no advantage to either side.

Socialists, in the light of the materialist conception of history, realise that the Thirty Years’ War was not a religious war, and that men do not murder each other merely because they are of different religions—or we should have civil war in this country between the Anglicans and Catholics, who now dwell peaceably together. The Thirty Years’ War was fought, like other wars, because the ruling classes of the countries taking part believed that they would get something out of it—either an increase of their wealth, or at least the safeguarding of the wealth they already had. But the Christians hold up their hands in horror when they hear the theory that the Thirty Years’ War (and others like it) was not a religious war. Such beliefs, they cry, are atheistic and blasphemous, and people who hold them are merely encouraging the spread of materialism.

How the Christians love to claim the slaughter and the devastation for their own!

Sidney Webb

The spate of speeches about Sidney Webb on his centenary mostly contained some sad, head-shaking references to the praise given by the Webbs to the Stalinist system in their book “Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation?" (This was the title of the first edition: the Webbs even went so far as to remove the question mark in subsequent issues.) For example, Lord Attlee’s speech, reported in the Manchester Guardian (14-7-59):

Webb tended to deal too much with institutions and not enough with people, and that may have accounted, Lord Attlee thought, for the extraordinary aberration towards the aid of his life of' his admiration for the Soviet Union.

But why arc these Labour Party men, these Fabians, so surprised? Sidney Webb spent his life working for Fabianism, the slow conversion of private capitalism into state capitalism. Then he and his wife went to Russia, and found their ideal system, state capitalism, in full operation; so, being honest if misguided people, they wrote a book praising it. What is so surprising in that?

Alwyn Edgar

Hiroshima & Nagasaki—The Background (1959)

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

“We take no pride in being able to massacre millions of our fellow human beings, to poison the air, to cripple the children of the future. We find no safety in weapons designed only for wars that nobody can win. . . "

These words from the leaflet announcing the second Aldermaston March, expressed the feeling of the idealistic element of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Heard above the suave evasions of politicians, and the arrogant threats of generals, this call, to those enchanted, seemed the golden echo of truth itself; promising in victory, a finer and happier life for Man.

How and why did this protest arise? What has it achieved? Will it set the foot of Man on the long-sought path of Peace and Happiness?

To answer these questions one must go back to see how it came into being and how it has grown.

THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMB

On July 16th, 1945, in the New Mexico desert, the Los Alamos scientists successfully exploded the first atomic device. Reports of this were hurried to President Truman at the Potsdam Conference. After consulting his advisers he gave authority to an air force group, in special training since the autumn of 1944, to prepare to use the atomic bombs.

In the early days of August, from a warship in mid-Atlantic, Truman gave the final order to begin the atomic bombing of selected Japanese cities. At the earliest indication of clear weather over Hiroshima, a B-29 was dispatched. A uranium bomb, assembled in the air on the way to the target, was dropped. Hiroshima on the morning of August 6th, 1945, became the first atomic crematorium. The “new weapon of special destructive force” which Truman had casually mentioned to Stalin, was a secret no longer.

The Russian government, fearing a belated American attempt to deprive it of some of the spoils of Yalta, hastened to declare war on Japan. A right to participate in the final share-out of the Far Eastern loot; a desire to safeguard their sphere of influence, these were the main concerns of the Russian rulers. No protest at a sickening outrage. No sorrow expressed at the agonies of the Hiroshima victims, the seared, stunned survivors; the radio-active remnants of what had been men, women and little children! So much for the party of Lenin and Stalin in the glorious fight for Peace!

Truman's other allies, the British ruling class, their interests now in the care of a Labour Government, watched, from afar, the results of their joint scientific and industrial enterprise. Three days after Hiroshima, Attlee’s representative, Group Captain Cheshire, was present at the bombing of Nagasaki, where a plutonium bomb, operating on a new principle, was used.

Public awareness of the circumstances in which the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan has always been limited by the facile myth that these bombs were necessary to break the back of Japanese resistance, thereby saving Allied lives. Japan was, in fact, on the verge of collapse.

A GRUESOME EXPERIMENT?

Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, towns on a carefully selected list of possible targets, a gruesome experiment? A callous scheme of sections of the American military, designed to discover the respective merits of different kinds of atomic bombs when used against densely-populated industrial centres?

Was the atomic bombing a practical demonstration of American technical superiority in warfare to warn the Russian rulers against expansion which might further encroach upon American spheres of influence?

Whatever answers posterity may yield, however intricate the web of truth, to Socialists, there is no word, no line, to justify this deed. Nothing can excuse the roasting of the newly-born or the incineration of infants at play, the slaughter of thousands.

Whatever may have been the reasons, political, economic, military or personal, that may have moved the principal actors to speak the lines and play the parts they did, to Socialists one thing is the essential point. This war and all its misery and fire, was rooted in capitalism.

It is not the villainy of militarists, the schemings of armament kings, the bellicosity of dictators, the ineptitude of statesmen, that is the cause of war in the modern world. It is not deceptions practised upon honest by dishonest politicians.

It was not the manoeuverings of Roosevelt and Churchill nor the embargo placed upon raw materials for Japan in 1941 and all the machinations on both sides of the Pacific leading up to the “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbour that were the causes of war in the Far East.

STRUGGLE FOR MARKETS 

Basically, the cause of the war, which led to the bestiality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was the conflict between the different national groups of capitalists, each aiming to improve its position in the relentless struggle to maintain or expand its control over markets and sources of raw materials. Little territory or resources, easily exploitable, remained to the nations such as Germany, Italy and Japan which had come late to the table.

To satisfy their growing appetites, arising from industrial and commercial expansion, the senior predators, they thought, must yield to them a large share of the economic fruits of earlier piracy.

The Japanese forces slowly advancing into Indo-China were a menace to American, British, Chinese, and Dutch interests in the islands and archipelagoes of South East Asia, fabulously rich in raw materials. Rubber, tin, nickel, oil and the like were never absent from the calculations of all concerned. The Japanese sought to control the Chinese mainland and to bring all South East Asia under their economic and cultural sway, by force of arms, if necessary.

In the West, if Germany over-ran Europe, the American rulers would find their long-term interests threatened, by a collossus commanding vast technical and industrial resources. A bitter struggle therefore ensued. The bomb and the bayonet became the means to convince where the honeyed modulations of sleek and urbane ambassadors had failed.

The attack on Pearl Harbour, the possibility of which American admirals had been discussing since the early thirties, helped to persuade the ordinary American people, who like people everywhere else, had no desire to become involved in war, that war was necessary in the interest of the nation as a whole. The Pearl Harbour attack roused the American people to a fury; they were in the war before they knew what it was all about. To the American man in the street the atomic bombing was a justified reprisal for the Japanese attack four years earlier. Thus does violence breed violence.

RUSSIA

It must not be thought that Russia comes into conflict with the other powers because of ideological reasons; because its social system is alleged to be “Socialist.”

Russia is a capitalist country. All the basic features of capitalism exist there; class monopoly of the means of production, backed-up by a powerful state apparatus, the dominance of commodity production and the profit motive, the subjection of the majority to wage-labour, the “anarchy of production” called “state-planning”; all are there.

All modern nations have these basic attributes. They may have particular features arising from the different national and economic backgrounds from which capitalism developed in each country. Each emerging capitalist class was born into a certain historical situation. The new industrial capitalists of England in the nineteenth century had the world at their feet; the later arrivals to the capitalist jungle, while having advantages in being able to learn and apply the latest techniques, found themselves surrounded by already entrenched rivals.

It is not what men think or say about themselves that is crucial to the analysis of a social system. It is how they are related to other men about the means of production, what role they play in the productive process, what, in fact, they do. In struggling with the traditional capitalist groups of the world, the top-ranking Communist Party bureaucrats, and politicians, the military, and industrial senior executives, in short, representatives of Russian capitalism, are different in no fundamental way. They are all as helpless to prevent war, and all as ruthless in its prosecution when diplomacy has failed.

FOR SOCIALISM

Socialists want no part of this nightmare world. Socialists are opposed to war, whether nuclear or “conventional" weapons are used.

The solution however, does not lie in the banning of a specific kind of weapon. Weapons are only necessary in a world of capitalist competition. The real enemy is the social system that breeds it. Our task is to keep the issue clear. To insist on the need for a society without privilege, poverty, or war. We take our stand solely for socialism.

B.

Appended at the bottom of this article in the original issue of the Socialist Standard:

Lord Attlee and the Bomb

"He [Mr. Truman] had to take the decision about the atom bomb. It is questioned sometimes. In my view, in the light of the knowledge we had at that time, he was absolutely right."

Lord Attlee at a Pilgrims' Dinner (July 21st, 1956) reported in "Daily Telegraph" (July 22nd, 1956).

Is Marxism a Class Ethic? (1959)

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE ETHICS OF MARXISM (4) (See Parts 1, 2 & 3)

Marx never denied that an order was to be found in history. He did deny that the order was a non-human or teleological one. He did not deny determinism in history. He denied pre-determinism or fatalism. The ends in history he thought are not realised merely because they are willed by men, but he insisted that the process of social development has no ends to realise which are not willed by men. He states: —

History does nothing—it possesses no colossal riches; it fights no fight; it is rather man—real living man who acts, possesses and fights in everything. It is by no means "History" which uses men as a means to carry out its ends as if it were a person apart; rather History is nothing but the activity of man in pursuit of his ends.

Marx sought an explanation for men's historical activity. His own historical insight discovered it was not in what men think about themselves—not in the Slogans and battle cries of "contending interests"—not in their abstract ideas or in the ideals they proclaim, but in concrete human needs and the social situation out of which these needs arise. It is these needs—albeit they have taken on the character of class needs since the passing of primitive society—which constitute the dynamic of historic activity. It is these needs which set men their problems and which give them the impulse and will to overcome them.

Class Needs and Ethics
Along with the development of the material forces of Society, goes the development of human needs, quantitatively and qualitatively. It is these human needs which lie at the base of the objective possibilities of social development and which men through concerted social action seek to realise. In a class society such action is class action. Social need are not subjective or personal. They are objective and as integral a part of the social situation as the social relations of production themselves. From these social needs—in class society they take the form of class needs—arise the theories and ideals which constitute theoretical responses to concrete social demands. Marx never denied the influence of men's beliefs on their social activity. What he made explicit was the historical impact which made "ruling" ideas projections of class interests and under what conditions these ideas grew, flourished and declined. For Marx no study of social behaviour had any serious claims to objectivity which failed to take into account the refracting nature of class interests.

It should be clear then that one cannot understand the ethical values of an epoch without reference to concrete social needs. Marx opposed the classless morality of Kant with its categorical imperatives and "private guilts" for that reason: just as he opposed the morality of Feuerbach and Hess, who having got rid of the divine attributes of God, then transferred these attributes to men and instead of worshipping an abstract deity, worshipped an abstract humanity. While ethics and human needs are inseparable in class society, they take on the character of class needs. A genuine ethic is never then a question of negative moral injunctions but basically a series of positive demands and in a class society they are class demands. From this standpoint, Marxism is frankly a class ethic. Moreover, in the light of its own assumptions about extant society it is a revolutionary ethic. It rejects a timeless, placeless morality with no specific application to concrete circumstances because it hides from men the real nature of the conditions which give rise to their social problems.

Humanism and Class Needs
Marx's criticism of the current humanism, too, is the refusal to relate humanistic assumptions with the objective tendencies of social development and hence the failure to see that existing social relations of production determine the social existence and the conditions of life for the vast majority and that the inhuman consequences of present day society are bound up with a form of social organisation—Capitalism.

Marx never grounded his theories in the belief of a pre-established harmony of human nature based in alleged pre-established natural or divine laws. He saw men as they actually were in the work-a-day world—a world which itself had been the outcome of an actual historic process. The fact that since the advent of private property, history had been class history and individuals, class individuals was not something to be deplored, but something to be understood. Only in that way was it possible for the real nature of the social problems to be grasped and surmounted.

One cannot even begin to talk of the essential unity of men from a so-called classless ethic, in a class world which cuts them in half and where the ties between men take the alienated form of exchange relations. It is no answer to say as some humanists do that Socialism would be of ultimate benefit to the exploiting capitalists as well as the exploited worker. Such humanists see the working class in the vague category of the underdog. But the needs of the working class are not merely the alleviation of distress or poverty but the outcome of its economic function as a class, unshared by the privileged group. It is the capitalist division of labour which mutilates the worker, not the capitalist, and leaves at least the latter as an unproductive whole and not as in the case of the former a fragmentised productive appendage. It is Capitalist Society which has stripped its producers of their productive and most basic human capacities. "Denied the growth of the powers that slumber them" and impoverished their individuality. The most urgent class need of the wealth producers is not a social and moral reevaluation within the framework of existing society or a mere quantitative addition to current class-conditioned existence. What their working class human nature must demand if it is to attain to a truly human level is the abolition of the inhuman consequences of the present state of affairs and the integration of the human personality into a collective social whole.

Marx refused to disassociate ethics and ideals from economic development and the function of social classes. A long historical development had transferred all productive processes to the numerically largest section of the capitalist community: yet this section as a class is unfree so long as a private property system with its appropriate division of labour separates the produce of their labour from them and places it in other hands as a means of class domination, and as a corollary to this confines their human powers within the narrow and nihilistic orbit of capitalist production. But as the sole productive class they alone have the active and hence dynamic function capable of transforming the existing social situation. Nevertheless, they can only emerge from class unfreedom to classless liberty by becoming conscious of the path they must follow.

It should be clear then that for Marx the "what ought to be" must be functionally related to the "what is"; that is why any genuine ethic must be a demand for something capable of realisation. By this criterion the Marxist Ethic is richer in human content than any other set of contemporary values.

Class Ideals and Social Reality
Marx refused to accept some absolute scale of values which claimed an above the struggle neutrality. In this way, are we to understand his refusal to talk in the name of "Humanity," "Justice," "Freedom." For Marx, the abstract character of these categories could be shown by asking, Whose humanity? Justice for Whom? and Freedom for What? and in a class society, the answers will always reveal a class standpoint. In a changing world, men's needs cannot remain static: nor for that reason can their ethical values. As the social environment develops, so do men's needs, and with them their concrete ethical demands.

Marx has been ignorantly accused of denying that ideals are a valid part of social reality. On the contrary, he held that morality was as old as man himself. There have been no human societies without ideals and moral values of some kind. What Marx went on to investigate was the social source of these ideals. On whose behalf were they fought; what expectations did they seek to justify?His answer was that this could be most fruitfully found in the study of class relations. Ruling ideas—Social ideals—are, said Marx, only historically effective when they express material (class) interests. This explains why some ideas triumph and others fail. It explains why ruling ideas are modified. Why sometimes these "material interests" demand more liberty, more democracy, more equality and sometimes a restriction of these things. Ideas play an important role in history. Their significance can, however, only be evaluated by seeing the integral connection of ideas with human needs and interests. But Marx went further by investigating what specific class interests are crucial. What is the theoretical and ideal formulation of these class demands? How do they establish themselves as ideologies? In this way did Marx formulate one of the prime canons of Historical Materialism.

Need for Class Assertion
Marx did not glorify selfishness or unselfishness. He never treated them as abstract qualities, but as concrete expressions of social behaviour in a given social context. To the accepted morality, working class demands, strikes, etc., often appear as selfish forms of class assertion, but it is only through class assertion that some decent existence can be won for its members. Without class assertion, the workers would forfeit their own human claims; to give up their struggle for maintaining or improving their living standards would lead to social and material deterioration as well as moral abasement. That is why Marx was consistently bitter against those who sought to nullify working class action by pleas and brotherly love, and praying for the "Soul" of the "Enemy." In present society, self-assertion not self-denial must be the watershed of working class morality.

Mr. Taylor (Is Marxism a Humanism*) sees the Social Revolution as an explosive force. That may well be so in that it blows up the base and superstructure of the old society. It will not be, as he seems to imagine, a blind explosive force whose parts will be picked up and pieced together by an elite of "Social Engineers" into a new social design. Whatever explosive impact the Social Revolution produces, it will first take place in the consciousness of men and will include their skills. techniques and Social experiences. A new Society can only be built by "new men." The Social Revolution will mark their emergence.

It is amazing that Marx's critics should have so misunderstood his conception of men. That the line of historical development leads to man's conscious control of all social agencies was central to his humanistic assumptions. For him the abolition of classes would see the emergence of the classless individual freely associating with others of his kind. What he demanded above all else was the abolition of a state of affairs whose productive agencies crippled, even annihilated the essential human elements of personality. An alleged Social Revolution which subjugated and physically destroyed members of another class as well as workers would have filled him with abhorrence.

A man is known by what he fights for. Mars all his life fought for the removal of oppression and inequality. His goal was Socialised Humanity. His concern for the individual was evidenced as early as his doctor's dissertation, and later his attacks on censorship and the filching of peasants' wood rights. To suggest as Mr. Taylor does that his political doctrines and the ethical values associated with them have given in any way theoretical support for Soviet Society and unfree Soviet man, is either gross misrepresentation or misunderstanding.

In any case both are indefensible.

In the next issue we shall conclude the series on Marxist Ethics by discussing the concept—NECESSITY AND FREEDOM.

Ted Wilmott

* See June, July and August Socialist Standard