Editorial: The Crisis and prices and incomes (1966)

Editorial from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was clear at the time that many Labour supporters, in their jubilation at the victory last March, were overlooking an inconvenient fact. Coming back to power with a decisive majority meant that they had to carry the can; there could be no more excuses.

But of course excuses have been made; they have been falling' thick and fast in the latest financial crisis which British capitalism finds itself in.

Harold Wilson has blamed the panic on to the seamen’s strike; the increase in the price of copper; the Vietnam war; the activities of foreign financiers. He summarised all his excuses in the most famous of them all—the government, he said, had been “blown off course”.

This must have reminded many people of the excuse used by the lamentable Labour government of 1929/31— that they had been struck by an economic blizzard. It is true that capitalism is like a treacherous sea where sudden tempests sweep from over the horizon. But no one should forget Labour’s persistent claim that they could control the economic weather and navigate the ship into blue skies and calm waters.

The facts stand clear. The Labour Party won power in 1964 on the slogan Let’s Go; now they stand for stagnation and recession. They said they would organise a “planned growth of incomes”; now they are imposing a wage freeze. They are the successors of the Labour Representation Committee, which was formed to promote the interests of trade unions in Parliament; now they are pushing through the first openly anti-union legislation in over forty years.

Many union leaders have expressed angry astonishment at the Prices and Incomes Bill, as if this was something the Labour Party had only just thought of. But they had the experience of the Attlee government to guide them, as well as the speeches of Labour leaders when they were out of power:

No one can afford to dodge the issue. Some people prefer to call it wage restraint . . . Labour wants to be able to prevent the total money income rising faster than the total production . . . (James Callaghan, Labour Party Conference, 1962).

We in the Labour Party have the right to ask for this (incomes) policy because we are willing to create conditions in which it can be established . . .We can make the national appeal that is needed because, for us, an incomes policy is the condition of sustained growth . . . (Harold Wilson. Birmingham 19/1/64.)

It is now up to the union leaders to ponder on their continued support for the Labour government—and for their, members to judge them on it.

What of the future?

Whether the unions accept the provisions of the Bill, or whether they try to lake advantage of the same sort of market forces which the government say will be allowed to work unhindered on prices, it is clear that more storms lie ahead.

Perhaps the officials of some of the big unions which have declared that they will ignore, or oppose, the Bill will find themselves in prison for contempt of court after refusing to pay fines imposed under the Bill’s provisions.

It would be fitting if a Labour government, with a long history of anti-trade union activity behind it—including the prosecution of strikers—should end up by making a martyr out of Frank Cousins.

We can look forward, in the days ahead, to the similarity between the Labour and Conservative parties becoming more and more obvious. In the current crisis, this similarity has already impressed almost every political commentator; perhaps it will also get through to some of their readers, and encourage them to grasp some important facts.

Both Labour and Tory parties stand for capitalism. The differences between them are superficial: both aim at running the capitalist social system.

One difference between them is that the Labour Party have claimed to be a Socialist organisation. Events have exposed this notion for all time.

Socialism will be a society of co-operation and freedom, where men will control their environment and really be able to plan their affairs. This is a world away from the sordid turmoil of class interests and economic anarchy in which the Labour Party are enmeshed.

Capitalism: the crisis society (1966)

From the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the American political system the President makes an annual speech under the title “The State of the Nation”. Since Harold Wilson became Prime Minister he has taken up this practice, only his title has become—the Nation In A State.

Despite the vagaries of the British electoral system which seldom produces a House of Commons with a composition equating to the votes cast, it was not surprising when the Labour Party won the election of October, 1964. For some time political and economic commentators had been suggesting that perhaps the Conservative Government was getting tired after 13 years in office and a new virile Labour Party under the leadership of Harold Wilson was proclaiming that it could get Britain moving again.

This time there were no phoney references to Socialism. The whole case of the Labour Party as enunciated by Wilson and company rested on the premise that they could manage the affairs of society—capitalism, that is—more efficiently than the Conservatives. Indeed the nationalisation of steel was not presented as a means to equalise the ownership of wealth, which had been alleged of previous acts of nationalisation, but purely as the way in which to increase the efficiency of the industry and its ability to supply the home market and compete abroad.

Immediately upon taking office the government was faced with problems—as if there was a time when the managers of capitalism didn't have problems—and within a month Bank Rate was raised to seven per cent for the first time since the merry days of Selwyn Lloyd. Further, Chancellor of the Exchequer Callaghan introduced import surcharges, tougher hire purchase restrictions and took the unprecedented step of announcing increases in taxation to be introduced in his forthcoming budget of April, 1965.

Whilst these measures were regretted they were blamed on the state of the economy at the time the Labour Party succeeded the Conservative government. At worst, however, they were to be short term emergency measures whilst the government prepared its plans that would revitalise the British economy.

A number of new agencies, led by the Productivity, Prices and Incomes Board, were formed under George Brown, the Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State, in charge of the Department of Economic Affairs. If capitalism could be planned the machinery to do it had now been created. In the autumn of 1965 after one year in office the National Plan was produced and Mr. Brown, forgetting the lesson he should have learned from Rab Butler, was proclaiming an increase in the standard of living of 25 per cent in five years.

At the same time a number of journals and economists were no longer supporting the government and indeed were becoming critical of its handling of the economy, especially with regard to the exchange value of sterling which was saved from a crisis only by obtaining concerted support from friendly governments. They were friendly to the extent that 40 per cent of world trade is conducted through sterling and if it were devalued they would have to bear some of the loss and the probability of devaluing their own currency.

It was widely held that the economic climate would become decidedly colder during the winter of 1965. Indeed this appeared to be the opinion of the government also. Minister of Labour Gunter was to the forefront of the week-end speakers with their tale of woe as indicated by this extract reported in The Observer of 9th January, 1966: “If we cannot or will not match our productivity to our spending, then measures deflationary in character must follow and unemployment will arise.”

But so unmanageable and unplannable is capitalism that the economy did not deteriorate in the manner envisaged and Wilson was able to have an election in March 1966, and get returned with a massive majority on the slogan “You Know Labour Government Works”.

Indeed the following budget of May surprised all the professionals in not increasing taxation immediately; the new innovation of selective employment tax would not take effect until the autumn.

Even if at this stage the government thought it had the situation under control, its passage had not been without incident. Although the TUC had reluctantly and grudgingly agreed to acquiesce to the part allocated it in the government's charade, those individual unions which had tried to protect or improve the position of their members had met with open hostility from a government party spawned of the trade union movement. Mr. Aubrey Jones, the chairman of the Prices and Incomes Board with all the comfort and security of a £15,000 per year salary, was telling various groups of workers that they could not have an increase of wages until they reduced overtime and became more productive in the normal working day. The Railway workers, thinking they were more secure under the umbrella of the Cameron and Guillebaud reports accepted by a Conservative government, were told by Wilson over a glass of beer at Number Ten that they could not have the rise, despite the threat of a strike. And the seamen who actually did strike could not obtain the rise they sought. During this same period members of Parliament, doctors, senior civil servants and others obtained increases equal to the average wage of those refused.

Let there be no mistake about it; controlling capitalism is impossible. It is not only the British government that is telling its working class that they are overpaid and underworked. Germany, Japan and others which for so long have been offered as examples and targets to aim for are suffering the same troubles. The workers in those countries resort to strike action in support of their struggles and they in turn are urged by their capitalist class to return to work, not ask for higher wages and not to damage the economy.

For a long time now it has been impossible, unless you are cut off from all dissemination of news, not to be aware that the British capitalist class had problems. The balance of trade, the balance of payments and exchange value of sterling were going from weakness to weakness. And the master planners were helpless. The manner in which Wilson made his announcement before going to Moscow only helped to exacerbate the sterling crisis. And the plans, oh yes, they will always have plans, which were delayed so that they would be complete when they were announced were in fact further amended and reinterpreted for the following ten days.

Naturally those further plans brought further discussion and the opinion now hardening among the '‘experts'’ is that the latest measures would cause deflation and consequently unemployment this autumn. When announcing the measures in Parliament on July 20th Prime Minister Wilson said: “I do not think the House would consider a rise of up to two per cent (470,000) unemployment unacceptable.” At a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting of July 26th Michael Foot asked what would the government do if unemployment reached unmanageable proportions. To which Mr. Wilson replied—they had plans.

It is no part of our case that the Labour and Conservative governments fail because they are not doing the correct thing. If the Socialist Party of Great Britain was foolish enough to attempt the job of managing capitalism it, too, would fail. The vital point that the Socialist Party makes to political discussion is to point out the nature of capitalism and the reason why it can never be other than the way we know it.

Capitalism is a competitive society. Firm competes with firm, industry with industry, country with country, and eventually continent with continent. Never mind that the commodities produced satisfy some human need—and that is not always the case—the motive for production is that the person or persons who put up the original capital for the operation shall at the end receive back their money plus a profit. And the whole operation is enacted for the securing of that profit. If the market conditions are such that the rate of profit, or even the profit itself, is in doubt then production is curtailed.

The trouble with British capitalism today is that it has become senile. It may have been the front runner during an earlier period of capitalism but the nature of the commodities produced and the materials required for that production is changing and the advantage is flowing to other countries. As is often the case, the ageing and formerly successful participator is reluctant to change.

This is not to say that British capitalism is not as successful as it can be within these limitations. The idea held in common by Mr. Wilson and company directors, and usually expressed by the latter over their third pre-lunch gin and tonic, that workers are lazy and inefficient, is belied by the fact that most firms, both large and small, continually and ruthlessly examine their costs to see that they extract every globule of surplus value.

Notwithstanding all the plans, politicians and business men do not run capitalism. Rather the system pushes them around in the manner of a grotesque Punch and Judy show. Despite all the writing on today’s wall there still might not be any crisis this year. It may turn out as Mr. Wilson envisages with half a million unemployed, or, as some pessimistic economist predict, unemployed might reach a million. There is still the possibility of a crisis reaching the proportions of that suffered in the Thirties. Such is the nature of capitalism that nobody knows. Not even the planners.

On the other hand the Socialist Party does not have any plans for socialism. All we can do is to urge you to consider the idea that the productive forces of society be utilised to produce those things urgently required by men and women everywhere. The adequate satisfaction of those basic human requirements: food, clothing and shelter can never be satisfied in a world that requires bombs and bases in space. The two things are contradictory. Socialism is not a Utopia, and when we achieve it that will not mean the end of all problems. But the problems will be of a minor nature compared with those that confront us today. A society that produces for use can never be placed in the position of deliberately curtailing production when people are in need of those things that are no longer to be produced.

Ray Guy

Universities and the working class (1966)

From the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

"But let them not babble of Greek to the rabble,

Nor teach the Mechanics their letters;

The labouring classes were born to be asses,

And not to be aping their betters."

This mean scrap of verse was produced over a hundred years ago, as a protest against the schooling of working-class children. But its vindictive composer might as well have saved his breath; industrial capitalism demanded an educated working class and it is against this background that the education reforms of the 19th century can be understood. Not only did these reforms involve a national system of elementary schools, but the universities were overhauled, too. New colleges were established in London in the eighteen-twenties and in the following decade Durham University was founded. Oxford and Cambridge were reorganised as well. The explanation is given by G. M. Trevelyan, in his British History in the Nineteenth Century, when he points out that the impotence of the ancient universities “must eventually have ruined the country in peace and war, when matched against foreign rivals who valued scientific and educational progress. The timely reform of Oxford and Cambridge by Act of Parliament saved the situation.” Nevertheless, it was still the case that only a handful of brilliant working-class boys stood any sort of a chance of getting to a university—and this remained the case until relatively recent times. But since the Second World War there has been another bout of reforms to meet the changing needs of the capitalist system. Along with the development of so-called “comprehensive schooling” the universities have been greatly expanded. Whereas the number of full-time students in Britain was only 50,246 in 1938-39, this number had leaped to 85,421 by 1949-50. Since then this trend has gathered momentum, so that in the nineteen-sixties it is accepted as normal that tens of thousands of young workers should graduate every year. But why has this situation developed? Obviously it is not because young people are cleverer today than previously; nor does the comfortable notion that we now live in a more egalitarian society hold water. It is simply that, in order to survive in a competitive world, British capitalism needs a growing supply of scientists, technicians and engineers. The Times Educational Supplement (March 15th, 1957) summed up the ruthless economics of the education business:

Education is a weapon of war . . . It is something along with the stocks and shares and the production belt which the hard-faced men realise is necessary to the survival of this nation . . . Education is something we invest in as we once competed in dreadnoughts.

Once more there are conservative academicians to lament the new developments and teaching methods. Take, for example, Professor J. MacMurray, speaking at the Sixth Congress of Commonwealth Universities: “Cultural institutions, such as universities . . . begin to be looked on as subordinate mechanisms in the general technology of the state—their function being to produce technicians and specialists necessary to ‘run the country’." Again he is wasting his time to hark back to the days when the universities were autonomous “cultural institutions” where the sons of the rich could idle away a few leisurely years. Industry now requires a real army of the most highly skilled workers and their education has become such a vital issue that more and more the capitalist state is forced to intervene in this sphere. Between 1945 and 1957 the national grants to the universities rose from £2,000,000 per annum to £35,000,000 every year. Over this period the total grant came to something like £232,000,000. Only the state, representing the general interest of British capital, can provide the vast sums of money required and therefore, over the years, state control of the universities has advanced as the figures below clearly show.

Some people have been inclined to look upon this trend as “creeping socialism” or even as a series of concessions wrung from the capitalist class. It is, of course, nothing of the sort. The process is comparable to that of nationalisation, where other essential services are taken over by the government and run along lines which seem most advantageous to British capitalism. Clearly, it has nothing to do with socialism.

And what about the university students themselves? As the colleges come to resemble more and more mere teaching factories it is worthwhile considering to what extent the undergraduates are provided with a rounded education. When they come off the conveyor belt at the end of a three- or four-year course, how many feel equipped with a broad and useful span of knowledge and how many that they have been churned out as yet another mass-produced doctor, chemist, teacher or mathematician? Perhaps the best that can be said for the universities is that they provide an artificial environment where, for a few years, one can scrape by on a meagre allowance without having to sell oneself for a wage. But when the student finally leaves his college he is faced with much the same prospects as any other working man—a lifetime of selling his labour power to the owners of the means of production, the capitalist class.

Students often fancy themselves as being more alive and socially aware than the bulk of the working class. Superficially there might seem to be something in this, since reformist organisations of all kinds flourish in the universities. But unfortunately the conventional image of a politically conscious student population is no more than a myth. The vast majority stand for the continuation of capitalism with all its humiliations and misery. Although they are often a fairly vocal section of the community the fashionable battle-cries are rarely more penetrating than “Hands off Fanny Hill” or “Hands on Ian Smith".

Yet the outlook is not a black one. As capitalism develops the working class constantly amasses more knowledge and experience. The advances in the formal education which workers receive are only one aspect of this process. As working men and women become trained in the scientific techniques of production so they are more likely to examine society from a scientific position. They are struck by the discrepancy between the individual factory where order and planning can be enforced and the overall chaos of a class-divided society. The educated working man is a force to be reckoned with by the capitalist class. He is less inclined to be taken in by the crudest propaganda or by religious superstitions. He is, in fact, the grave-digger of the capitalist system.

John Crump

The Passing Show: On The Bomb (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

On The Bomb

What sort of picture does that title paint for you? Probably one of unparalleled destruction and misery, of thousands of people wiped out in a matter of minutes; of a shadow of mixed gloom and terror which has darkened the world ever since those fateful days in early August, 1945, when the fruits of the hideous “Manhattan Project” were delivered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I well remember the giant newspaper headlines and the sloppy, hypocritical editorials, bleating about “international control” of this new super weapon, saying how it could be perhaps a “force for peace” if it were kept “in the right hands,” etc, and expressing thanks that it had at least been used to speed the end of the war against Japan and save many allied lives. This has since been nailed as a lie, and the fact made known that the war was kept going in face of Japanese attempts at surrender negotiations, so that the bomb could be dropped. Nevertheless, the lie is often repeated by capitalist politicians, plus the new one that the bomb is necessary as a deterrent to “the other side,” so that this uneasy lull they call peace can be maintained.

Socialists think it is a tragedy that workers in any part of the world should lose their lives in the defence of capitalism’s interests, and this has typified our attitude to all weapons of war. But to the patriotic British or American worker in 1945 it was a case of “Thank God we got there first!” Well, now the wheel has turned quite a few times and the nuclear club numbers five members, with others like India and West Germany wondering whether to join. In the past 20 years the bomb has become a diplomatic weapon of the first importance; one might almost call it a first-class admission ticket to any of the top international conference tables.

It is against such a background that you should consider movements of protest like CND, which have sprung up in this and other countries over the past few years. When we say that these movements must fail, this is not to underestimate the sincerity of many of their members. It is simply that they take no account of the social conditions which have fostered such horrors as the bomb. The roots of war, atomic or otherwise, are in the capitalist system and none of its conflicts yet have been fought with kid gloves.

Once born, man's atomic knowledge cannot be destroyed. It will be refined and developed, and under capitalism perverted for base ends. Within private property society there is no sensible meaning to the term "for peaceful purposes". Only in a Socialist world could we guarantee that atomic energy would be used solely for human welfare, and the monstrosities of nuclear bombs be but a ghastly memory.

The shock of going out to work

I never used to believe my parents when they told me that my schooldays were the happiest days of my life. I began to believe them in earnest on the first day I went out to work. Not that school life is that much of an uplifting experience, as we know; for most of us it is only a training for the workaday world we have to face at some stage in our adolescence. But when that world at last closes round us and the irrevocable step has been taken, we realise with a sudden jolt that the comparatively carefree days of short hours and long holidays are gone for good.

From now on we begin to covet those two or three weeks of holiday a year and the precious evening and weekend leisure hours. Suddenly we seem to be too short of spare time to do the things we’d like to do—neither do we have the necessary cash—and we begin to find the restrictions of factory and office routine irksome to say the least. Perhaps we haven’t yet grasped the full impact of what has happened, but sooner or later the awful truth begins to dawn on us that this is the beginning of our wage earning years, stretching away before us through a lifetime of care and struggle. 

There is the job, and a pay packet at the end of the week or month, and the terrifying prospect of doing something we don’t want to do for the next 40-odd years. Many people try to dodge the issue by changing jobs when the boredom gets too acute, and it’s nothing unusual for boys and girls nowadays to have had a whole series of employers within a year or two of leaving.school. But whichever way we turn, the black ogre of wage slavery confronts us, devouring the peak years of our lives in dull unfulfilling and often stultifying activity. No wonder we set such store by our spare time. It’s usually the only part of the day we can even think about doing something which really interests us.

For work under capitalism is not a means of expressing and developing ourselves to the full. It is merely a means of getting a living wage, and for the employer of course of getting his profits. And this state of affairs is doing a lot of harm to a lot of workers everywhere.

On Authority 

In Ludovic Kennedy’s book on the Stephen Ward Trial, there is an interesting paragraph or two on the functions and activities of “The Establishment” in a time of crisis. It was Kennedy’s contention that whatever Ward’s morality he had committed no legal offence, but had roused the wrath of those in authority by ratting on his former politician friend Profumo. The scandal rocked the government at the time, but says Kennedy, the Establishment closed its ranks and earmarked Ward for special treatment.

Socialists have long realised the ability of the ruling class to stand together when the occasion demands, and ruthlessly destroy anyone who threatens to bring its authority into public ridicule and contempt. For mass loyalty and “respect for their betters” by the working class is certainly essential to our masters if they are to get support for (or at least acquiescence in) the continuation of their system of privilege and exploitation.

Our press and politicians will try to tell us that this is “our” country and that we have a vested interest in being proud of it. In support, they will point to the various institutions, such as the Church and Royal Family, which we can look up to because they are supposed to be above “sectional interests” and therefore bind us all together in common interest. And although risqué jokes may be tossed about at times, this version dished out by authority is generally accepted by workers.

Now both the Church and the Royal Family are exceedingly rich and are symbolic of private property society, and for this reason alone would earn the Socialist Party’s hostility; but it would not really be true to say that they are above politics. True, they make no political pronouncements but they are part of the constitutional set-up in Great Britain and are expected to co-operate with the government in its day-to-day administration of capitalism. The Queen, for example, signs Parliamentary Bills, calls Privy Council meetings and generally does what she’s told. Neither the Monarch nor the Church has any power to resist the will of the capitalist class. That matter was settled a long time ago.

Which in itself is an answer to those who advocate a republic. Whether or not the Monarchy has any power makes precious little difference to the essential division of wealth and the subject position of the working class. France, U.S.A. and Russia, for example, all operate without a monarchy. And they are just as much capitalist states as Britain or Sweden.

Gaspers

“A Labour Government will not be a soft option.” (Jim Northcott, in Why Labour. Penguin Books, 1963).

“My politics were confused. 1 was a Liberal-Radical, a Tory-Democrat and a Fabian Socialist.” (Harold Macmillan—The Winds of Change).

“He (Mr. Wilson) has put aside promises now. He is giving us threats instead. Why? The fact is that he simply has no choice. Britain (like it or not) is a capitalist country, living in a predominantly capitalist world.” (Charles Curran, Evening News, 15.7.66).

“This journal will do anything in its power, short of betraying its principles, to support a Labour government.” (New Statesman. 15.7.66).

“Labour members must realise how wrong they are to describe stop-go as Tory policy. It has been the policy of all governments since the war.” (Selwyn Lloyd, Commons debate. 27.7.66).

Eddie Critchfield

Letter: The War Game (1966)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The War Game

I read the review of the film The War Game (Socialist Standard, July) with great interest and found that it made many points which I would agree with.

In addition, I would like to say that the film shows how the institutions which are so dear to capitalism such as the church, law and government, become very trivial in a time of great disaster. Authority cannot work under such conditions and as a result people have to co-operate in order to survive. However. Peter Watkins does not seem to show this consciously.

Yours for Socialism,

Edwin Walters

London, N.W.6

New pamphlet on racism (1966)

Party News from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new Socialist Party pamphlet, entitled The Problem of Racism, is available. The previous pamphlet on this subject The Racial Problem, published in 1947 has been out of print for some time. The Problem of Racism is not just a revision it is a completely new pamphlet. In 1947 it was the Jewish Question that was prominent. Today it is the Colour Question. This change is taken into account in the new pamphlet which examines the colour question in Britain, America, South Africa and Rhodesia. There are chapters too on the scientific theory of race, the historical origins of racist theories and on African nationalism.

There is an unfortunate error. The reference on page 41 to Guyana should, of course, be to Guinea.

Pamphlet obtainable from Socialist Party (Dept. SR), 52 Clapham High St., London, SW4. Price 1/6.

SPGB Meetings (1966)

Party News from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

The January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard carried a brief report by the SPGB's Propaganda Committee about the Seven Days for Socialism campaign. 

There was a write up of Anne Young's talk, 'My American Journey', in the Hackney Gazette.

There was a write up of Solomon Goldstein's talk, 'The Economics of Capitalism', in the Hackney Gazette.

News in Review: In the swim (1966)

The News in Review from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the swim

Quintin Hogg once tried to help his claims to the leadership of the Tory Party by taking a publicity-seeking dip in the autumn sea at Blackpool.

Chairman Mao Tse-Tung’s swim in the Yangste River last month was also a publicity-conscious event, designed to prove, after some rumours of his bad health, that he is still in charge of the Chinese government.

And in case there were any doubts left after the swim, it coincided with another purge among high-up Chinese military and government circles.

The Chinese people were reported to be overjoyed at Mao’s swim, presumably they were also supposed to be glad about what they were allowed to hear of the purge, and to regard it as another protective act by their almighty, all-seeing, all good leader.

But, as Quintin Hogg showed in the gentler atmosphere of England, capitalist politics is a ruthless business. The same is true in China; at any level, capitalism is a hard world to survive in and where the stakes are high the struggle for survival is particularly desperate.

That is why capitalist politicians are such a cold, pitiless lot; why they can give an effortless display of public affection for a hated rival; or deny that they intend to do something which they are actually about to do; or try to attract attention by indulging in public comedy acts.

What is especially irritating about Mao’s swim, and the latest Chinese purge, is that in some quarters they are said to have something to do with Socialism when, in fact, they are part of the same old power struggle which goes on in every capitalist state.

The rules, such as they are, of this struggle are simple.

Every man for himself.

Sink or swim.

World cup willies

Somewhere in its distant past, football was known as a sport.

Even today the hack journalists, when it suits them, describe it in the same way.

They applauded the “sporting” gesture of the Portuguese player who congratulated Bobby Charlton on scoring one of the goals which knocked Portugal out of the World Cup.

They screamed blue murder at the “unsporting” play of men like the Argentinian Rattin and the Russian Chislenko.

Every now and again, though, these same journalists revealed something of what lay behind it all.

The Portuguese team would have received £500 a man if they had beaten England in the semi-final, as well as all sorts of bonuses.

The England World Cup squad—22 men—shared £22,000 for winning the Cup and apart from this there were the payments for playing in each round, bonuses for winning, the higher wages each player will now command from his club, the fees they can get by certifying that they wear particular makes of kit, use a certain hair cream, or do something else with some other commodity.

When we consider what fortunes, for the players, may have depended on a single foul, the behaviour of some of them appears to be not so much “sporting” as businesslike.

Because football is a business. The big wages reflect the fact that famous and skilful players can bring big money to a club. The World Cup contest brought a lot of money to the tourist industry in this country—and to the FA, which had the copyright on the World Cup Willie emblem which appeared on rosettes, plastic hats and bottles of beer.

Not, in other words, so much a sport —more a way of making money.

New Mr. Stop-Go

Some people were surprised by it. Others were shocked. Others amused.

In the latest financial panic of British capitalism, Harold Wilson applied measures which were a more extreme version of what Selwyn Lloyd, who was once Wilson’s favourite chopping-block, tried when he was Chancellor.

Thus Mr. Dynamic Expansion became the new Mr. Stop-Go.

But the surprising, shocking, amusing thing is that anyone should think it remarkable that a capitalist politician goes back on his word.

It is nothing new for a government to come to power pledged to reverse its predecessor’s policies—and to end up following those very policies through.

Indeed, any political party which has any chance of forming a government usually says at some time that it reserves the right to break its promises, if it judges the situation demands it.

This is what Labour meant when they proudly described themselves as a “pragmatic” government. Faced with a crisis in capitalism, they have reacted just as the Tories did.

It is too late now for Labour supporter to be indignant; they asked for this government and they have got it

But even Harold Wilson must come to an end sometime. The next General Election, when the Labour Party are once again claiming to be a Socialist organisation, will be the time for workers to remember that there is no difference in principle—and precious little in anything else—between the Labour and Conservative Parties.

It will also be a good time for them to consider the alternative to all the capitalist parties, to capitalism itself.

A Labourite confesses

You know Labour Government fails. You’ve seen their plans and promises smashed to pieces by the workings of capitalism. Now even Labour MP’s are beginning to see this. On July 26th Lena Jeger, MP for Holborn and St. Pancras South, did some heart-searching in her regular Guardian column.

George Bernard Shaw was once asked how long he thought it would take to get Socialism in working order. A fortnight, he replied. Writes Jeger:

   “Socialists must be either his ‘fortnighters’ or they become grave dullards, sifted and sobered into an army of underpinners, dedicated to making capitalism work, albeit slightly less brutally than is its nature . . .
  ‘‘Where have the economists got us? Under a Socialist Government one per cent of the people still owns 50 per cent of the wealth . . .
   “What sort of socialism is it that can coldly contemplate the deliberate creation of unemployment as a weapon of economic policy? If a Labour Government cannot make capitalism work without an army of unemployed, then perhaps it should start trying to make socialism work . . .
   “The Labour Party at the moment seems like a fly on a revolving wheel— it gets an experience of movement without controlling movement, a sensation of power without the motivating power . . .
  “Maybe the Labour Party needs a fortnight club, a brigade of ‘do-it-quick'. What have we gained slow respect for entrenched positions? Only, it seems, a prospect of unemployment, a vista of despair. Except for those well-off enough to escape. And what has that to do with socialism?”

What indeed! But what a confession of failure! After all Labour’s claim to be able to humanise capitalism was the fig leaf that hid its support for a brutal system. If Labour cannot make capitalism work “slightly less brutally than is its nature”, then it’s nothing.

Mind you, the Socialist Party of Great Britain never believed it could. We have said all along that capitalism can’t be made to serve rational, human ends.

Now a Labour MP all but admits our point. Remember her words next time her type come cadging for your vote. Labour—and all the other would-be reformers of capitalism—are and can only be flies on the revolving wheel of capitalism.

Apartheid Must Go (1966)

From the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist party is opposed to Apartheid, just as to any other policy or movement based on colour prejudice. We think racism is foolish, unscientific and against the interests of the working class. We can see that the South African government's slogan of Apartheid ("separation") is really a hypocritical screen for haasskap (white domination), and that all manner of atrocities and hatreds flourish under the Verwoerd tyranny.

Our attack on apartheid is quite distinct from the attacks made on it by other organisations such as the Labour Party, Communist Party, Christian Action, etc. We do not support the “anti-apartheid" movement.

Socialism will be a world wide democratic community without private or government ownership of the means of production and will mean the end of Apartheid, together with a lot of other major human problems like wars, slumps and poverty.

To detach ourselves from other organisations who attach apartheid is no sectarian quibble: the most that members of the anti-Apartheid Movement can suggest to replace Apartheid is something rather like we have in Britain today. In other words, they want to swap one system of oppression for another. The only “equality" they want for the races of South Africa consists of the equal "privileges" of wage-slavery.

The best interests of industrial capitalism in South Africa call for the abandonment of Apartheid policies and the putting into effect of social reforms aimed at integrating Africans into the labour force as better trained exploitable wage workers. However, in view of the historical background of South Africa, capitalism has to adjust itself to a political situation that expresses the deeply entrenched prejudice that exists.

The contradictions between Apartheid and developing capitalism manifest themselves in hundreds of ways. Year by year the number of black Africans living in the “white" towns rises. Government policy is to strengthen tribalism: town life smashes tribalism. Without black African custom many "white" shops would have to close. Employers are increasingly annoyed at not being able to choose their own African workers: they have to recruit them through labour bureaus. The African workers' unions are not recognised by the government, but increasingly they are by the employers. Because of an acute shortage of labour, especially skilled labour, the system of job-reservation is being ignored “temporarily" in numerous cases

Soil erosion is a massive problem in South Africa, especially on the 13 per cent of the land occupied by Africans. To bring in adequate conservation measures, at least a quarter of the Africans on the reserves ought to leave, but government policy is to cram even more in.

Verwoerd wants to develop a series of “Bantustans" or “heartlands’ for Africans alone, and these provinces are supposed to evolve towards self-government. But it is commonly accepted even in $outh Africa that only one of these, the Transkei, will ever have more than nominal existence. The fact that a third of the African population lives on white-owned farms shows the ludicrousness of the Bantustan policy—but the government must try to carry this policy through to preserve the myth that the ethnic groups are being gradually separated, whereas in fact, African migration to urban areas continues.

The contradictions are there—and growing. But they are to some extent cushioned by the present boom. As long as the rate of profit is as high as it is in South Africa today, industrialists will be merely irritated by job reservation, etc., and will hang on to the apron-strings of the farming interests and the Verwoerd government. With greater pressures on profit margins, however, the apartheid statutes which help to maintain an exclusive, high-priced white labour supply, would become a more serious threat to industrial prosperity. The capitalist class would then become more aggressively dissatisfied. This dissatisfaction is already being expressed in these sections of the South African press which support industrial capitalism. The financial column of The Johnnesburg Star, (29.6.66) said:

  “South Africa is being drawn inexorably into a decisive choice between the demands of economic necessity and the dictates of ’idealistic principles,’
  “An obvious and surely inevitable step will be the more efficient use of the country's vast labour force, a major proportion of which is at present not only not being effectively used but is not being properly trained for the future.
   “And if South Africa is to retain its present competitive position in world markets and to build up internal demand for its products it must train its total labour force and raise the earnings of the thousands of workers who become more productive.”

Any large-scale anti-state action by the South African people (riots, mass strikes, etc.) would cause a drop in foreign investment in South Africa, disrupt the stability of society and call for far greater expenditure on repressive forces.

The attitude of the British capitalist towards South Africa is conditioned on the one hand by the fact that South Africa is Britain’s third best customer, and that two-thirds of all pays lip service to a repugnance for apartheid in its everyday relations with South Africa, it is business as usual.

Only the Socialist looks beyond all this, to a world where exploitation of man by man has gone. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is with the working class of South Africa in their struggle for democracy, for the vote and for the right to strike. But more than that, we work for the day when black, white, coloured and Indian workers in South Africa will unite with workers all over the world to remove wage-slavery and establish Socialism.

Steele.

I'm not interested in politics (1966)

A Short Story from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The inexperienced young speaker had been on the Socialist Party platform for about ten minutes. Most of that time had been spent talking to thin air, and he was becoming disheartened. In desperation he called out to someone of about the same age who was passing by.

“Excuse me, do you mind coming over here and chatting for a bit? I’m getting rather lonely up here. 1 shan’t keep you long—I only want to talk to you till I’ve got an audience, anyway.” Surprisingly, the passer-by obliged.

"Who's this mob you're speaking for?” he asked.

"The Socialist Party of Great Britain,” replied the speaker, “not to be confused with cheap imitations.”

“Well, you're wasting your time with me. I'm not interested in politics.”

“That’s O.K. Neither am I.”

“What are you doing up there, then?”

“I’ll explain. I’m up here because I happen to think life’s pretty scabby.”

"You sound very bitter. What makes you say that?" 

“Well, certain things I think we might agree about. Work’s the biggest moan for a start. I don’t suppose I’ve been going to work any longer than you, but I'm fed up already with the way my life revolves around it. 

"Up we get at some uncivilised hour when the alarm clock goes off, and after that the whole day is regulated. Some stuffy office till the best hours of the day arc gone—in winter you don’t even see daylight except through the window. I spend the majority of my waking hours doing something I'm not interested in, and my own life can only begin in the few hours when I’m not at my job. Even then my activities are limited because I'm constantly aware that I must be up in time to go back to work the following day.

“And that’s not the worst of it. You and I are going to have to do this five days a week, 50 weeks a year, for the next 40 years or so. And if you want to know what the result of the process is just look round at our parents. I sometimes look at my own father and wonder what he's got to show for a lifetime’s hard work. Answer: a mortgage round his neck, callouses on his hands, and me—hardly a great accumulation. You might as well say he's ended up with what he started out with—nothing.

"But on the other hand he's been through two world wars and a slump, so a whippersnapper like me can't tell him anything. Whether our generation ends lip with this big-headed attitude remains to be seen."

"Well, you haven't told me anything yet. I do agree that life’s pretty rotten in the ways you’ve said. But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing up on that platform. I thought you would consider your time too precious to waste.”

“I’d like to explain, but I don't want to keep you out late. I expect you’ve got to go to work tomorrow yourself.”

“Of course I have. So has everyone else.”

“Well not quite everyone; Some of those people who are so wealthy they don’t need to work, probably won’t for a start.”

“You mean the bosses?”

“Yes. Not the managers, who probably put in more hours, unpaid worry included, than you or me. 1 mean the people who actually own all the industries in the country. They are few in number—about 10 per cent of the population— and for that reason are very rich.

“Now don’t you feel slightly peeved that there are people in this privileged position? They don’t have to put up with the same dull routine as we do.”

“I suppose so, but I can’t do anything about it, can I? And anyway, good luck to them, they must have worked some time to have got what they have."

“No. First, it’s not strictly true that members of this privileged class must have necessarily worked to own all they do. A great deal of their wealth is inherited. But in any case, let’s ask ourselves how these fortunes are made in the first place. After all, they’re so huge it seems unlikely that they are made simply by living a frugal life.”

“You tell me then."

“Well, what I want to suggest is that these fortunes are made out of mugs like you and me.

“In any industry, the workers produce more in terms of wealth than they receive as wages—because they are not paid for what they produce, but just enough for them to live at a certain standard of living. This is then used up and then back we go to work again the following week. In other words, it’s because wages, on an average, only provide us with enough to keep alive and healthy—plus enough to reproduce sufficient offspring to carry on the job of piling up more wealth than we ever see—that we have to perpetuate the agony in the way I've described. And it is the difference between this amount and the amount actually produced by workers which accounts for the profits of the owners. So we also perpetuate our compulsory generosity at the same time.”

“But even if all this is true, it doesn't get us very far. After all. these people do own everything, and even if I agree that their position depends on exploiting us, we can’t do anything about it by shouting our heads off on a soap-box."

“This is the other point you made a moment ago, and I must say I disagree with you. For a start it depends on how many people listen to what you say on the soap-box.

“Now the present system, and the way it is run. depends entirely on the effort of people like us, who have to work. We run the whole show from, lop to bottom. For that reason, if all of us united together, it would be in our power to set up a system where there would not be the rat-race that exists at present.”

“What do you suggest—shooting all the owners or something!"

“No. Even if that were a practical possibility it would only result in other people taking over their privileged position. What I do seriously suggest is a complete and fundamental change in the way we run our lives at present. I suggest that we set up a system where we all co-operate to make necessary work as pleasant as possible and our conditions of life the best possible, too. This, in turn, I suggest, can be done by establishing a society where all wealth is owned in common.”

“It sounds marvellous. How are you going to do it?"

“No. How are YOU going to do it. 1 can’t do a thing on my own, and neither can the Socialist Party. What is needed is a majority of people like us to do something.

“And this brings me back to what 1 said about not being interested in politics. 1 joined this party only because I realised that my own interests are identical with the interests of 90 per cent of people in society; and that all of us can only achieve an appreciable improvement in our position by political action.

“This doesn’t mean going into Parliament and forming a government. Rather it means going into Parliament to end the need for a Parliament at all! As far as the hours spent there by the professionals concerned, I find it about as boring as you do. But for all that it’s very important. It is from Parliament, you see, that the system of private ownership is ultimately run. The government of the day deals with affairs which affect the owners of industry as a class rather than as individuals. Hence all the time spent on finance, influence and control over whole industries, and so on. All this will go when private ownership goes.

“Now one day, we hope, this is a task for which the Socialist Party can be used. It doesn’t run for office, as all the other political parties do, since they clearly don’t want to abolish property society. It exists as a vehicle which the population can use for ending property society, if it decides to, by sending the party’s delegates to Parliament for that purpose.

“This is the reason, and the only reason, the Socialist Party contests elections. We always lose, but that doesn’t mean to say we’re wasting our time. We expect to lose elections until enough people have accepted the arguments for the radical change I’ve been talking about. And by contesting elections we help to propagate these ideas. So at this stage we are mainly a propaganda organisation; that explains what I’m doing on this platform.”

“But your party can’t be very powerful. I hadn’t even heard of it before tonight."

“Well, we’d be very fortunate if that was all that was wrong! But I find myself in the following position, and I suggest that whether you realise it or not, so are you. I can see that there can only be a radical change in the way I must lead my life if there is a corresponding radical change in society. I recognise that this must be done ultimately by a majority of the population bringing about the kind of change I’ve indicated.

“Now I agree with you that the task seems almost hopeless. But there is a slim chance, and so far as I'm aware the only organisation which gives voice to these ideas is the Socialist Party of Great Britain.”

Keith Graham

Man should matter most (1966)

From the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent years have been times of vigorous protest. The Bomb and World Poverty have been two issues which have sparked off great indignation and organisations such as CND and Oxfam. However, the ability of CND to sustain its enthusiasm has undoubtedly waned. CND has been an organisation built up around what seemed to be a simple answer to a clear-cut problem. On analysis, however, CND undoubtedly asked more questions that it could itself answer. Involvement in its activities was its own invitation to doubt and further criticism. CNDers became embarrassed by the irrelevance of their narrow protest, the Bomb, to the problem of war in general. Other questions they began to ask were—should they act politically, what form of political group or party should their protest take?

At the same time, members of Oxfam have been expressing their own doubts. Inevitably as the years begin to pass, the idea has begun to grow up that Oxfam cannot as a charity organisation begin to solve the problem of world hunger. These doubts were made clear at a recent discussion week held amongst young people at Sibford, Oxfordshire. As one speaker expressed it—“it’s no use feeding 100,000 beggars in Calcutta if next year you still have 100,000. You can't go on just handing round the rice bowl every day and changing nothing."

Also put up at this conference was the idea that Oxfam must adopt a political view. “The choice is crucial—to become just a fund-raking organisation or to accept that we're involved in social change and take steps to facilitate it. We've got to evolve."

The briefest glance at the enormity of the problem of world hunger compared with the efforts of such organisation as Oxfam is enough to show that these self criticisms are amply justified Two-thirds of the world's population have a diet inadequate to sustain good health. Even if aid to under-developed countries were to be increased a thousand times, a figure far beyond the most hopeful dreams of Oxfam, the basic cause of world poverty would not be touched.

But inadequate diet is not a problem which only exists in underdeveloped countries. In the industrialised countries of Europe and America, this kind of deprivation also affects such people as low-income workers and their families and old age pensioners. A recent enquiry by the London School of Economics found that 500,000 children in Britain were deprived. The constant references to the so-called richer nations tends to conceal the facts of poverty in western countries.

These then are the effects of the problem, and until the nature of the problem is defined it is impossible to begin to overcome it. The varying degrees of material deprivation from which the majority of the world's population suffer is due to the failure of world capitalism to provide for human needs.

World capitalism as the dominating system of production and distribution can never be rationally organised in such a way that it serves the needs of the community. Private ownership, economic exploitation and the distribution of commodities through a marketing system with a view to making profit form the barriers that prevent man from making the fullest possible use of his labour, technology and natural resources. This is the nature of the problem of poverty.

Any attempt to deal with world poverty within the framework of capitalist society is bound to fail, since it accepts all the pre-conditions of the problem. The priorities of capitalist society are privileged properly rights and the pursuit of profits.

This is not to say that man has abandoned himself completely to the anti-social values of property society, and the existence of such movements as Oxfam is evidence of this.

The dramatic pictures of starving children who are nothing but hollow-eyed walking skeletons, never lose their effectiveness in moving men to indignation. The tragedy of it all is that in the main, victims are appealing to other victims for charity. The truth is that the working communities of the so-called rich nations are preoccupied with their own struggles, and to appeal for money from men who are harassed throughout their own lives with the difficulties of supporting families and making ends meet is to illuminate the hopeless futility on which charity is based. It must he said that the activities of Oxfam run the risk of being quite ineffective in dealing with poverty, but at the same time, creating the general impression that something is being done.

The 15 million pounds per year private aid collected in this country, even taken together with the larger amount of overseas development aid made available by the government, is a refined irrelevancy in relation to the problem. The task is straightforward. Men mutt produce much more food. This is made to appear difficult because the attempts now being made are conditional upon a profit making system.

Oxfam are right to now question the effectiveness of their own efforts. They are right to begin to think that political action is necessary. But even now, will their ideas develop along useful lines? Some sections of Oxfam are now in favour of bringing pressure on the government to increase overseas aid. The economic difficulties of the government at present completely rule this out. But even if this were not so, no amount of overseas aid that might he practical on behalf of the British or any other government could improve the situation to any appreciable degree. The only effect of this kind of operation would he to further delay real solutions. Any idea that accepts the economic conditions of capitalism is self-defeating.

Inevitably, the idea of birth control has also cropped up. The ability of the so-called theory of over population to divert men's minds from the real causes of poverty seems inexhaustible.

We must constantly draw attention to the contradiction inherent within capitalist society. The problem of hunger cannot be isolated from world poverty maintained year after year by the economic barriers of capitalism. This is not a technical problem: it is not a problem of overpopulation. It is a question of the kind of social priorities that people choose to accept. If it is to be capitalism, it will be production and distribution geared to the private accumulation of wealth by a privileged minority. It will mean economic recessions, unemployment, the curtailment of production at a time when humanity desperately needs more wealth. It will mean that technology will be stifled by the limitations of investment programmes. It will mean that the price mechanism and the market will sometimes result in the stockpiling or destruction of food whilst people are starving. It will mean the waste involved in war and commerce.

If it is to be world Socialism, it will be the common ownership of the means of producing wealth. It will mean the free application of human labour to the earth's resources with the most efficient utilisation and further development of technology. It will mean a productive system built up on relations of social equality and adjusted to the idea that man matters most.

Pieter Lawrence

Vietnam and the anti-war movement (1966)

From the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vietnam will one day take its place beside Hiroshima and Auschwitz as an example of a time when the sickness of capitalism exploded into a kind of psychotic nightmare. It is no mere piece of sensationalism, either, to compare Vietnam with Hiroshima and Auschwitz, for there is a direct parallel between the causes, method, and results of all three events. Their causes can be traced to capitalist society. The method in each case amounts to genocide: the slaughter of as great a number of a population in as short a time as possible. The results thus far have been to create a world that looks like something out of a nightmare. For how else are we to regard a country that invests a quarter of a million dollars in the death of every “communist’  guerrilla, when close to one- third of its population lives in poverty?* How else are we to describe a system where announcements of the latest Viet Cong body count come over the radio and TV networks in the U.S. almost as regularly as the weather report?

But if we call this behaviour insane, it is not therefore purposeless. The United States is turning Vietnam into a virtual death camp for a purpose—a purpose which results directly from the way in which modern capitalist society is organised. And it is only when we understand this purpose and this society that we can see the insanity of the Vietnam war and its cause for what it is.

Capitalism generates wars because it is organised in such a way that its wealth can only be produced and distributed by a process of competition. The industries of capitalism are the private property of a small class of persons, and wealth is produced primarily for sale with a view to profit. A capitalist enterprise requires markets, trade routes, supplies of wage labour, raw materials, places to invest capital, and the power of a state to protect these interests. The foreign policy of a capitalist state attempts to acquire these needs in its relations with other countries. The rub is that there are several capitalist states in the world competing intensively for the same needs, and the size of the planet is limited. They must necessarily come into conflict with one another; and if the conflict cannot be settled or negotiated to the satisfaction of all parties concerned, they go to war.

In competing for their essential business needs, capitalist countries seek control over territories in which they can sell goods, and from which they can extract profit and raw materials. The United States, for example, has over $10,000 million worth of direct capital investments in South and Central America, which return enormous rates of profit, varying from 15 to 50 per cent a year. In addition, Latin America supplies the United States with oil, iron ore, copper, tin, nitrates, coffee, cocoa, beef, and bananas at cheap costs, and Latin America is a lucrative market for U.S. commodities. France, Britain, Germany, and Russia all have similar relations with territories in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. If another power were to seek control over Latin America (as did Russia in 1962, for example) or if the United States were to seek control of the European Common Market, antagonisms would erupt between these nations which could easily lead to war.

It is this kind of economic control which the United States has tried to secure in Asia ever since the arrival of Commodore Perry in Japan in 1853; the U.S. interest in the South-east portion rapidly accelerated with the withdrawal of the French after their defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. In supporting the South Vietnamese dictators Ngo Dinh and Marshal Ky, the United States has only followed the pattern of control that it has followed for decades in Latin America, with its support of various civilian dictators and military juntas.

Capitalism generates more than one type of war: for example a war between an imperialist power and a rebellious subject territory, and a war between developed capitalist countries for sources of profit, markets, and territories. The armed conflicts between France and Algerian rebels, and the United States and Dominican rebels, are examples of the former type. World Wars I and II were both examples of the latter. The war between United States troops and Viet Cong guerrillas was at first primarily an example of the former type, but with the forced entrance of the more industrial North Vietnam and threatened hostilities with China, the war has been steadily escalating into the latter as well. The reasons the United States is in Vietnam are all directly contingent on its requirements as a capitalist power. United States capitalism does not wish to give up control of this potentially lucrative area; and the United States fears threatened rebellions in Latin America should the Viet Cong rebellion set a successful example.

The working class, of course, has not one shred of interest to justify their participation in any of capitalism’s wars. They will not invest capital in Vietnam when and if it is cleared of Viet Cong. They will make no profit by employing the Vietnamese at low wages, selling commodities in a Southeast Asian consumer market, and extracting cheap raw materials from the area. They stand to lose no property if Latin American countries rebel. The only task they will be called upon for is to leave their mangled bodies in the jungle slaughterhouse. And the interesting thing about the Vietnam War, to the socialist, is that so many American workers are beginning to realise it. Perhaps not since 1898 has the war propaganda of the United States been so completely cynical or so completely transparent to so many people. The mental contortions required to believe it would tax the citizens of 1984: a war to protect the “freedom  of the U.S. which supports an avowed Hitlerite dictator (Ky), bars the Viet Cong from representation in elections, and spreads its happy gospel of democracy among Vietnamese villagers with napalm, rice poison B-52s. and razor-blade bombs. It is no wonder that so many draft-age Americans take to the picket line. The wonder is that there are not more.

The Philadelphia based Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, in fact, reports a growing list of those who prefer prison sentences to military service. The courage of many of those in the American peace movement cannot fail to impress the socialist. But however stirring its appeal, the movement has an equally disheartening and perhaps tragic weakness that is slowly emasculating it. Most of its participants do not understand that capitalism generates wars. It is capitalism which must be attacked, not the foreign policy of the United States, which is simply asserting its vital interests as a capitalist power. Even more depressing, perhaps, is the conduct of many of those who claim to represent the “socialist" base in the movement: Students For A Democratic Society; Young Socialists Advance; Socialist Workers Party; the Du Bois Clubs, and the American “new left". A genuine socialist would point out that the war is part of a whole related pattern of social problems generated by capitalism; and because it is part of a related pattern, the war cannot be attacked in isolation from the rest of the pattern or from its roots in the needs of capitalist society; the only way this problem, and others like it, can be permanently solved is to establish a system of society in which the means of production are owned and democratically controlled by the whole people, and goods are produced for use and not for competitive exchange and profit.

The solutions of the “new left”, however, are the old, reformist, and futile solutions which have failed to stop any war since 1914: “negotiation", “disarmament". Support a League of Nations or a United Nations Repeal Conscription. Or, at their most imaginative, withdraw the troops, fight anti-communism, and institute a type of Soviet-style state-capitalism in the United States. Solutions which involve joining the other side, of course, are not even seriously intended to be peaceful.

The American peace movement, in short, is contradicting itself into impotence by opposing a war and then supporting the system of society which has generated it. It is not a socialist movement, and because of this fact it is already beginning to wither into crowds of confused and frightened students and quarreling splinter-groups. Whether it ever becomes anything more will depend upon whether it ever develops a socialist consciousness. For until it does, the body counts will only grow higher, and the nightmare of capitalism will continue—business as usual.

Stan Blake (World Socialist Party of U.S.A.) 

* For verification of this figure, see Gabriel Kolko, Wealth & Power in America (Praeger, 1962) p. 101.

Are we armchair socialists? (1966)

From the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The charge is one of indifference, of detachment, of sectarianism. of refusing to join the blood-and-earth struggles for the betterment, the dignity and the survival of the human race. It is, in other words, a charge of being talkers, theorists—armchair Socialists.

We plead not guilty.

We have only one witness to call and that is History, whether it is the history of our early days or of more recent times.

During our sixty-odd years of life, the Socialist Party of Great Britain has seen two World Wars and many other periods when politics was a violent business. At such times, if we had truly been armchair theorists, we could have packed up our platforms, forgotten all had we ever said about capitalism and Socialism and quietly slunk away.

In fact, we intensified our activity. In wartime we stood out against the official propaganda. We exposed the lies which were being used to persuade British workers to take arms against their brothers abroad. Our members went to gaol rather than join in the slaughter. More than once our speakers were assaulted, our meetings broken up. In London's Hyde Park, during the Second World War, we spoke out for Socialism with anti-aircraft guns banging away across the grass; often ours was the only meeting there at such times.

In fact, whatever restriction—official or unofficial—we have met we have persisted in our propaganda and our attitude has never wavered. This can hardly be described as politics from the armchair; there were no soft seats in Wormwood Scrubs, nor in the Serpentine.

If there is any excitement in the politics of the power-hungry parties, then we have none of it. There are no throngs, no massive marches for us. If we ever came out on to a balcony the only living things to mark our presence there would be the pigeons. As far as excitement and glamour of that sort is concerned, we live a politically abstemious life.

In case anyone is looking for it, there is a massive compensation for this. The politicians who feed on glamour and public acclaim may find it an agreeable diet, but there is a bill to pay for it: they must have a hard time convincing themselves that their theories are in any way relevant to modern society. Perhaps there is glamour in appearing at the door of Number Ten to announce that your policy is in ruins. Perhaps there is excitement in getting up in the House and promoting something which is in direct contradiction to what you have always said you stood for. This may suit some all-too-famous temperaments. But even they must wonder, in the wee small hours, at the meaning of self-respect.

This is a problem which Socialists do not have. We have never had to go back on our policy, we have never had to betray our principles, we have never had to compromise. Our analysis of capitalism remains valid. The capitalist social system still produces a mass of terrible problems; human beings still suffer, are still deprived, suppressed, degraded and killed—because of capitalism. And the solution to it all is, still, the setting up of a Socialist commonwealth.

To this, to say it, to read it or hear it, may not quicken the heart beat. But the facts, the facts of History and the evidence of the world we live, say that it is correct and in that there is more satisfaction—more inspiration even—than all the mass rallies and the demonstrations of the vote-catching political parties.

Perhaps this seems smug. There are many protest movements which have no formal connection with the big parties. although in fact most of them in the end come down to an attempt at influencing the policies of one of the two parties which are likely to get into power. We have no part in these protests. Although we refused to fight in the 1914/18 War, we did not join the demonstrations against the war. (Apart from anything else, we knew that many of the demonstrators would soon be enthusiastically rolling on their puttees. And in 1939 the political descendants of those 1914 demonstrators were gathering again in Trafalgar Square—but this time they were in favour of war.)

We did not join the Hunger Marchers, nor the anti-fascists, nor the CND, nor the Freedom From Hunger demonstrators. Of course, we have left out a lot of other protests which are, or have been, popular—Second Front Now, Movement For Colonial Freedom, Victory for the Vietcong. If we brought them into the argument we might be facing another charge; of selecting our evidence.

Why didn't we join? First, we must be clear that we do not stand aloof from lack of sympathy with the motives which may lurk somewhere in the depths of the protests. We, too, are affected by capitalism, and we do not like it. Our members were out of work and hungry in the Thirties. We didn't relish the prospect of a dictatorship. The Bomb would wipe us out along with the rest. We are moved and indignant when we see photographs of starving children.

We don't join for the simple reason that the demonstrations are a waste of time. The first thing which is clear is that, after decades of protest about the effects of capitalism, the system goes on throwing up the very problems which the protest industry exists on. In all this time, a few problems may have been suppressed—although the demonstrators would have a hard job to prove that they were responsible for this—but in their place more have appeared.

Anti-Fascist protests have not made democracy any more secure—especially as many of the protesters were themselves anything but democrats. Pacifist marches have not removed war. After some ten years of CND, nuclear weapons are spreading all over the world and in this country the government of which unilateralists once had such high hopes has cooly gone back on all it ever said about abandoning the independent British Bomb.

Hunger, disease, poverty, fear, crime—capitalism, which can produce scarcity in the essentials of life, has them all in abundance. The demonstrators have marched and shouted, scuffled with the police, shown up in court and paid their fines. The things they protested about are still there, waiting for the next outburst. These problems have seen off many generations of protesters, some of whom have grown old and become part of the Establishment against which the protests break their fists.

It is impossible to separate the problems of capitalism from the system itself. Capitalism cannot exist without war. It cannot function unless the mass of its people are condemned to live in poverty. It is a system without a system—an anarchic society which will not be planned or controlled. It inexorably produces glaring anomalies and contradictions. It has millions of people starving while it destroys the food which would keep them alive. It wastes a huge part of its knowledge and resources on destruction, while it admits that it desperately needs to create and construct. It condemns its people to compete against each other when they need, and long, to co-operate.

The only effective protest against the effects of capitalism is to protest against the system itself. How to do this? What keeps capitalism there? The fact is that capitalism's people themselves keep the system in existence. Although they may hate and fear what it does to their lives, they give it their unwavering support. When they think about it, they decide that capitalism is the best of all possible societies; they work for it year in and year out and every so often, when called upon to do so, they give capitalism's political figure-heads another lease of power to continue running society in the interests of a small minority of parasites.

There is only one way in which this can be changed. To strike at the ideas which keep capitalism in existence is to strike at its heart. But we cannot strike at those ideas by suggesting that capitalism can be altered so that it need not produce the problems which are in fact inherent in it. We do not, for example, strike at them by complaining about nuclear weapons while we support a political party standing for the social system which has bred those weapons. We do not, in other words, strike at capitalism's heart by compromising and by confusing the issue.

For the issue is plain. We can have capitalism, with its problems and its never-ending parade of protests. Or we can build a new society in which men stand equally about the world's wealth—a society of freedom and dignity. We can have capitalism or Socialism.

But we won't have Socialism by urging people to keep up their support for capitalism. We won't have it by protesting that capitalism can be tamed by the right reforms, or by the right leaders, or by the right sort of demonstration. All of these have been tried and in the end it has been capitalism which has done the taming.

It is because the demonstrators are confused and contradictory that Socialists will not join them. This does not remove us from the struggle; we are committed to attack capitalism at its roots—to attack the ideas which feed and nurture the system. We stand—and we protest and we demonstrate—for the new, better, saner world.

And we who are called Armchair Socialists will not rest until we have got it.

Ivan