Czechoslovakia: The Choice Before Us (1938)

From the October 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

Though the Daily Herald paused in its campaign on behalf of Czechoslovakia to speed Mr Neville Chamberlain on his way to Hitler with a “Good luck, Chamberlain!” and congratulated him on taking a course “which will receive general support” (Daily Herald, September 15th), it was as plain as a pikestaff that Chamberlain was quite prepared to abandon the Czechs if he thought that by so doing he could safeguard the interests of British capitalism. Now the Herald says this is a very dishonourable action, but when did any ruling class ever trouble about such trifles? The German ruling class in 1914 never hesitated a moment about violating their guarantee of Belgian neutrality. Nor did the British hesitate to make pledges to the Arabs which they never intended to keep. Then they double-crossed Italy, first bribing the latter to desert its own ally, Germany, and afterwards letting Italy whistle for payment when the time came to divide the loot at Versailles. And when has any capitalist politician ever kept faith with the working class?

Yet the Herald could not think of anything better to say to the workers than tell them, in effect, to trust Chamberlain!

Britain Not Ready for War.

Chamberlain was not thinking about the problems of the Czech ruling class–except, perhaps, that he was wondering exactly how they could be induced to lie down quietly while the sell-out took place. (It is really very wicked for victims to be armed and able to put up a fight; they should be defenceless, like the Abyssinians.) What, no doubt, weighed heavily on Chamberlain’s mind is that Great Britain’s re-armament is a long way from being finished and it would be very awkward indeed if Britain were to be forced into war at such a time as this. Among other things, Chamberlain’s own reputation as a politician would suffer a fatal blow, for he could hardly hope to persuade his masters or the electorate that his Government has efficiently handled the re-armament programme in the two years since he became Prime Minister. The guiding line of British foreign policy in recent years has been to prevent, if possible, any widespread conflict which would be certain to endanger the power and possessions of British capitalism and which would offer little prospect of gain in the event of victory – itself a very uncertain factor. Later on Chamberlain will feel readier to take a strong line, or, of course, events might force Britain into war against Germany in spite of Britain’s efforts to avoid, postpone or localise hostilities.

The Tragedy of the Present Position.

The real tragedy of the present position of the workers here and abroad is that they are hopelessly confused and divided, most of them even unaware that there is a Socialist attitude to war. In Great Britain most of the argument only centres about the two traditional views of ruling-class foreign policy. On the one side is the isolationist view: “let the Empire line up with USA and keep out of European wars”. It is marred for the capitalists by the awkward fact that Empire trade routes are very much bound up with the Mediterranean, and no method has been discovered of taking the Mediterranean out of Europe’s way and turning it into a British lake. The other view is the old Balance of Power doctrine: “keep the Continent divided into two more or less equally strong groups, and help the weaker side in case of need”. Although names have changed, and there are various positions intermediate between these two, not only Britain’s capitalists, but also most of Britain’s workers cannot see any alternative policy; except the Communists, who simply echo whatever from time to time accords with the interests of Russia’s rulers.

Save Democracy by War.

The Labour Party’s view is that the workers should in the last resort be prepared to go to war to save Czechoslovakian territory and independence. It has a strong emotional appeal. It is natural for generous-minded people who do not think clearly to be indignant at what looks to them like the aggression of a big Power against a small one, especially when the existence of democratic institutions and trade unionism are involved. It is the same appeal as was made in 1914 for “Poor little Belgium”, but though the British ruling class were and are very vitally concerned with the independence of Belgium they are not so much concerned about Czechoslovakia, so this time the Government and the Labour Party are at the moment on opposite sides. Socialists say that the workers should not be on either of these sides, but should be thinking about a line of their own.

The first step towards clear thinking is to recognise that a majority of the Germans in Czechoslovakia favour the idea of being inside Germany. They have lived under Czechoslovakian democracy, suffered prolonged misery from industrial depression and unemployment, had to put up with some not very serious disabilities imposed on them by the Czechs, and have finally been swept off their feet by Hitler’s promises and his appeal to their nationalism. Foolishly but fanatically they believe that Paradise awaits them on the other side of the frontier. As a matter of cold fact, Hitler would probably be able to alleviate their economic distress and unemployment a little, at least, for a time, just as he did for the workers in what was Austria. Socialists would tell them that they ought not to take short-sighted views and sell themselves to the capitalist Nazi movement for the sake of some small immediate advantage. But the Labourites, including the Czech Social-Democrats, cannot convincingly tell them that, for is it not the essence of Labourite philosophy that workers should concentrate always on the immediate advantage and the petty concession and look with favour on nationalism?

Capitalist democracy and reformism are not enough. The workers in most lands have tried them and are not satisfied. Along comes some glib talker about the efficiency of dictatorship or some patriotic fanatic who can stir their emotions with talk of racial superiority, and they desert their old democratic allegiance. Now it should be clear why Socialists say that war to save democracy is a snare and a delusion. By huge sacrifice of life, and assuming that Germany lost the war, it might be possible to force the Sudeten Germans to remain in Czechoslovakia. It might be possible to drive out some of the existing dictatorships (but not all of them, because some at least of the countries arrayed against Germany would themselves be dictatorships – for instance, England and France would possibly be able once more to buy the Italian Government). Would that bring Socialism nearer? Would it even “make the world safe for democracy” (remember the old 1914 catch-word?)? No, the workers everywhere would still be poverty-stricken and insecure, still political cannon-fodder for the first Fascist mob-orator who came along promising to rescue some new national minority from alien tyranny and save them from the horrors of capitalist democracy. Whichever side wins, war leaves the real problem unsolved and, indeed, by creating still more national hatred, it makes its solution more difficult than ever. The real problem is that of rallying the workers to something which will hold their allegiance against all spurious appeals and hold it for all time. Only Socialism can do that. Only Socialism is worth struggling for.

Socialism at any other time, but not now.

One final word. The Labour Party and the Communist Party are again preaching the doctrine that everything else must give place to the problems of Fascism and Czechoslovakia. Forgotten are all the other “urgent immediate demands” which filled their programmes in past years. Socialists are not impressed. For one thing, in the eyes of the Labour and Communist Parties, there never was a moment when Socialist propaganda was timely. During war they will want all energies turned to killing “the enemy”. During peace they always want to concentrate on disarmament, the “means test”, old-age pensions, or the “vital” question of pushing out one Government administering capitalism in order to put in another, differing chiefly in name.

The job of Socialists at all times, is to propagate Socialism and organise for the conquest of political power in the country in which they happen to live, in unceasing opposition to capitalism and all its agents and parties. We do not wish good luck to Mr Neville Chamberlain, nor do we seek war to save Czech capitalism or British or any other capitalism. We say, hasten the day when the British workers, along with the workers of all countries, can drive from power Chamberlain and his foreign capitalist friends and enemies, both democratic and Fascist, and establish Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Nuclear Waste (1965)

Editorial from the August 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was 20 years ago this month that the world witnessed the terrifying spectacle of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Twenty years of gradually mounting evidence to help piece together like a jigsaw, a background of cynical and calculated brutality that is almost without parallel. Twenty years in which the soundness of the Socialist Party’s stand on the whole question of war in all its forms has been again and again vindicated.

This will no doubt be a month of commemoration and protest. From statesmen and politicians of every variety we may expect the usual tired platitudes, lies and hypocrisy as they spuriously talk about peace and prepare for another war. CND will be well to the fore, attempting to deal with nuclear weapons in isolation from their root cause – Capitalism. But society cannot put the scientific and technical clock back. From this time forward man’s ability to manufacture nuclear weapons is here to stay. The only truly reliable way to “Ban the Bomb” is to establish a society where human relationships could not possibly cause war or call nuclear weapons into use. Only world Socialism really guarantees that Hiroshima or Nagasaki could not happen again.

We have felt it important to return to the question again this month because apart from the threat to humanity’s existence in a world armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, it illustrates well a point we have made many times― the shocking wastefulness with which Capitalism not only squanders society’s material resources, but squanders humanity itself.

We live in a world capable of a tremendous productive effort. The work that went into the first atom bombs must have been colossal, yet it pales into insignificance when compared with the picture today. America’s defence expenditure (never “offence” expenditure) last year reached the staggering estimated figure of $54,000 millions. Comparable figures for Great Britain were ￡2,043 million, West Germany 20,929 million Deutschmarks, and France 23,485 million Francs. The U.S. contribution alone to NATO forces included eight hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles (nuclear if necessary) and over three hundred Polaris submarines. At the beginning of last year, Soviet defence minister Marshall Malinovsky was boasting of Russia’s hundred megaton bomb and the missiles that were available to carry it to any part of the globe.

And this is the spectacle which has been the curse of the capitalist world, to come into still sharper focus in the post-war years. Millions go ragged and hungry and badly housed, while unsaleable food piles up in the warehouses and backwater barges, and vast resources of human ingenuity and productive effort are squandered in turning out yet bigger and more destructive weapons. Not only that. There are now five runners in the nuclear arms race with at least two more – W. Germany and India – thinking of entering the slips.

Even whilst CND have been campaigning, more nations have entered the nuclear field. The bombs are bigger, and there are more of them. CND have protested against one aspect of capitalism’s wastefulness. They will miss the important point until they realise that the need is to remove Capitalism itself. Gigantic waste which is horrifying in its effects is synonymous with Capitalism in every direction, from nuclear terror, to world hunger. The campaign against these problems outside the context of the demand for Socialism cannot carry the prospect of success.

It is when we realise this that we see the urgent necessity for the removal of capitalism and its replacement with a world of common ownership, for this is the only way to tackle such a problem. Only then could we be sure that society’s resources would be harnessed to serve human needs instead of the requirements of the profit motive. In a Socialist system there would be abundant wealth to meet everyone’s needs, but waste would be anathema – a thing of the past. Such conditions would make possible the development of human abilities on a scale undreamed of today, for the concern of all would be to produce and distribute the very best of which they were capable. Certainly a goal worth striving for; but more than that, one which becomes a matter of greater urgency with the passing of each day

Socialism, Vote-Catching and the I.L.P. (1958)

From the April 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Socialist Standard, March, 1958, in an article "The Same Old I.L.P.", we maintained, on the ground of the I.L.P., candidate's campaign at Kelvingrove and other current evidence, that the I.LP. is, as it has always been, a reformist organisation. In the I.LP. journal The Socialist Leader (15th March, 1958) "the political secretary of the I.L.P., Mr. Wilfred Wigham, wrote an angry denial.

What is Vote-catching?

Let us make clear what we mean by vote-catching. In essence it means the act of getting votes under false pretences. As the S.P.G.B. holds that the only solution of social problems is to revolutionise society from its present capitalist basis to a Socialist basis, and that only by the votes of Socialists can this aim be achieved, it would be blatant vote-catching if an S.P.G.B. candidate were to try to attract the votes of electors who accept capitalism and whose aim is to raise old age pensions, or introduce more nationalisation (State capitalism), or limit the horrors of war. But if a Labour Party candidate tried to attract such votes it would not be vote-catching if he genuinely believed that these reforms can be achieved, that they will be achieved by a Labour Government and that they would bring the benefits he says they will.

By the same test we really hold that the I.L.P. is not a vote-catching organisation when it seeks votes from non-Socialists and campaigns on reforms of capitalism, because its aim, as we shall show, is not Socialism. Nevertheless, the I.L.P. itself invites the charge of vote-catching when it tries to combine the two irreconcilable principles and claims, as it did at Kelvingrove, that “it will seek to convince the men and women of Kelvingrove that only by Socialism can the challenge of these stupendous times be met And it will not compromise its policy and programme to win votes ” (Socialist Leader, 1st February, 1958. (Our italics.)

The confusion arises because while the I.L.P. claims that Socialism is the only solution it really does not mean Socialism, but a reformed capitalism; and its “policy and programme*' referred to is one of reformism.

The “Socialism" of the I.L.P.

The I.L.P. claims that its aim is Socialism. It has consistently made that claim since its formation 65 years ago. But the meaning attached to the term by the LLP. is a gross misuse.

In the early days its efforts were concentrated on achieving Nationalisation or State capitalism. In the nineteen twenties it published a pamphlet under the title Socialism in Queensland. In 1932 its National Council passed a resolution describing Russia and the Russian Government as “Socialist," and affirming that “the fate of the workers is bound up with the maintenance of Russia’s freedom to pursue her Socialist development unhindered by capitalist attacks" (New Leader, 22nd April, 1932). In its issue, dated 12th February, 1932. the following declaration was made:—

"In Soviet Russia Socialism is not the music of the future. It is a reality of the present.

"During the past year the Soviet Union has completed the construction of the foundation of Socialism. By the end of the Second Five Year Plan it will have completed the construction of the Socialist Society."

In 1935 it fought the municipal elections on a reformist programme, one item of which was: "Socialised Local Services": “Abolition of restrictions on the development of public services (in conjunction, where possible, with Cooperative Societies) of bread, milk and coal. Workers control in every service” (New Leader, 25th October, 1935).

In 1954 the National Council of the I.L.P. passed a resolution calling for unity of “Socialists" and “Socialist organisations” to include the “well-meaning Socialists who are members of the political section of the Labour Party” and giving as evidence of the “Socialist” character of the latter the resolutions they moved at Labour Party Conferences (which were in fact, as we showed, resolutions solely for reforms of capitalism, including in particular nationalisation or State capitalism. See Socialist Standard, March 1954).

We ask the I.L.P. “Is Nationalisation Socialism? Was Queensland Socialist? Was Russia Socialist in 1932? Were the Local Labour Parties and their resolutions Socialist in 1954? ” The Socialist answer is “emphatically NO! ” but the I.L.P. believes that the answer is “yes.”

The I.L.P. and the Reform of Capitalism.

If the I.L.P.’s alleged adherence to Socialism is a gross misuse of the word, its attitude on the reform of capitalism is equally two-faced. On the one hand it lets it be thought that it agrees with the late James Maxton's admission (New Leader, 15th August, 1930) that reformism is futile because before the reforms gained “have been fully operative such advantages as they seemed on a superficial examination to offer were eaten up by the development of new evils or by a further extension of old ones” yet it has always devoted its efforts to securing reforms. Hence, for example, the long list of reforms on which the I.L.P. fought the Municipal Elections in 1935, including "Free baths for the unemployed,” a minimum of 20s. unemployed pay, abolition of large classes in schools, and "Freedom to hold meetings outside Labour Exchanges."

Hence also the Socialist Leader's anger at the charge made by the Labour Candidate at Kelvingrove that she was the only candidate who was opposed to the Rent Act. The editor says this was a lie, and affirms that the I.L.P. Candidate "made it clear from the beginning of the campaign that he opposed the Rent Act in all its clauses.” (Socialist Leader, 15th March, 1958.) Naturally, in conformity with the I.LP.’s reformist policy, their candidate considered that he had been fraudulently deprived of the votes of anti-Rent Act voters and that their votes ought fairly to have gone to him and not to the candidate of the Labour Party, which, he alleged "does not intend to repeal the Act if and when it is returned to power.”

And did the LLP. candidate inform the electors, as he would have done if fighting as a Socialist, that under Socialism there could be no Rent Control because there will be no rents? If not, why not?

The other main issue at Kelvingrove was the H Bomb. If the LLP. candidate had been a Socialist he would have concentrated on showing that capitalism is the cause of war and that Socialism is the only way to eliminate armaments and war from the world. Instead, he made the abolition of the H Bomb the centre of his campaign. Again, it was quite in keeping with the I.L.P.'s reformism that while nominally committed to opposing all war and all armaments the issue of the Socialist Leader for 1st March, 1958, contained an invitation to three opponents of the H Bomb who are also opponents of Socialism and present or recent supporters of war (Bertrand Russell, A. J. P. Taylor and J. B. Priestley), to go to Kelvingrove and speak on the I.L.P. candidate's platform!

Mr. Wigham’s Defence of the I.LP.

In his article in the Socialist Leader (15th March, 1958), Mr. Wigham tries to confuse the issue with a number of silly innuendoes about the S.P.G.B., in the usual dishonest form adopted by the controversialist without a case. He writes: "The S.P.G.B. . . . may advocate that Britain should continue to spend more than a thousand million pounds a year on armaments and the armed forces . . . it may advocate Britain's continued share in the cumulative production of radio-active dust from H Bomb tests . . . Or the S.P.G.B. may think those issues unimportant"; and again, "Is the S.P.G.B. in favour of Britain continuing to manufacture the H Bomb. Or is it afraid to declare itself either way?” Then, with a pathetic show of phoney indignation, "I challenge the Socialist Standard to answer.”

Of course, Mr. Wigham is being completely dishonest. He knows quite well that the SP.G.B. is not, and never has been, in favour of capitalism or capitalism's war-making or its H Bombs, or any of its armaments: unlike the I.L.P. M.P's. who did not vote against war supplies in the 1914-1918 war and the 1924 Labour Government, declared by the I.L.P. to be "To an overwhelming extent an I.L.P. Government," which carried out a programme of naval re-armament. The I.L.P. has now changed its line on that issue and pretends to think that the S.P.G.B. has abandoned its opposition to war.

How dishonest Mr. Wigham's questions are can be seen from the attitude he adopts elsewhere towards the S.P.G.B. Repeatedly (and as recently as last year) the I.L.P. has begged the S.P.GB. to unite with the I.LP. for the purpose, among others, of opposing war: now he pretends not to know the S.P.G.B.’s attitude to capitalism and war!

Continuing his pretended desire for the S.P.G.B. to declare its attitude (as if he didn't know), he asks if the SP.G.B. is “in favour of the continued use of British airfields by American bombing planes and the prospective use of British Land for NATO missile bases?"

By this piece of slickness Mr. Wigham slides away from the issue of the fatuousness of I.L.P. pleas to the British capitalist class to at once disband the armed forces, and the LLP. resolution to "deny” British bases to all other countries. He did not tell his readers what we wrote about this, in particular our question, “How do unarmed civilians deny bases to the armies occupying them? ”, and our example of the Hungarian workers who tried to turn Russian capitalism out of Hungarian bases.

By implication, however, he admits our case on the issue of disbanding the armed forces, for he now writes: “We do not think it likely that capitalist Britain will disarm.” But he goes on to justify the formulation of such demands on the plea that it is an attempt "to show up, in the eyes of the workers, militaristic, predatory Capitalist Imperialism for what it is.”

On the same propaganda plea of asking the capitalist class to do something you know they won't do, why not just ask them to introduce Socialism? And while we are on the subject, is the I.LP's, plea to capitalism to disband its armed forces at once, also directed to capitalist Russia? or is Russia still, in the view of the I.LP., the “Socialist” Society they said it was in 1932?

Keir Hardie and Maxton.

Mr. Wigham puts up another Aunt Sally in order not to deal with the point we raised about the futility of Keir Hardie's and Maxton's reformism. He says he was not surprised at us “dragging in the usual S.P.G.B. criticism of I.LP. industrial ‘reformism'—in fact, I.LP. identification with the day to day struggles of the workers. And, sure enough, it does so instancing James Keir Hardie and James Maxton as suitable forerunners of the I.L.P.” Since it was Mr. Wigham who claimed that the present I.L.P. is “the party of Keir Hardie and James Maxton,” he has no ground on which to object to us following up his lead and dealing with them. But why does Mr. Wigham not fell his readers what we wrote about those two? His readers, on the basis of what Mr. Wigham writes, will be astonished to learn that the one issue about which we said nothing at all was the struggles of the workers on the industrial field. What we did write, and which Mr. Wigham pretends was a reference to industrial action for higher wages was a bill introduced into Parliament by Maxton in 1930 for the setting up of a Government Committee to fix a minimum “living wage," after taking into account the “replacement and extension of capital ”

One I.L.P. M.P. disclaimed any intention of excluding employers from the committee which was to fix the workers' minimum wage. Another gave an assurance that the wage would not include enough for children— they were to be separately provided for. This was to meet the views of an anti-Socialist M.P. who did not want people without children to get more than their due. The I.L.P. Prime Minister would not give government backing for the Bill.

This was not industrial action, but an I.L.P. political sell-out

The I.L.P. in favour of Profit and Rent.

Mr. Wigham challenges us to say whether the S.P.G.B. is “against raising wages and reducing profits and rents: is it against a living wage for all workers? ” If Mr. Wigham were a Socialist he would know that the S.P.G.B., being Socialist, is not in favour of wages, profits and rents, but is in favour of Socialism, which involves the abolition of the wages system, and the abolition of property incomes, including all profits and rents (not, as Mr. Wigham says he is, in favour of reduced profits and rents).

On the issue of workers' action (strikes) on the industrial field, every government administering capitalism opposes strikes for higher wages, necessarily so because unless the State places a ceiling on strike demands, capitalism, depending as it does on profit, becomes unworkable. The S.P.G.B. is in favour of the workers using every effort on the industrial field to press for higher wages and to resist reductions. It is also in favour of telling the workers the truth about the limitations that capitalism places on this action and the necessity of abolishing capitalism (and with it the wages system). The S.P.G.B. also attacks the reformist I.L.P. belief that having capitalism with minimum wage legislation (as in Australia) alters the situation. In particular it reminds the workers that an I.L.P. government, saddled with the responsibility of running capitalism, behaves like any other government in opposing strikes. It was the 1924 I.L.P. dominated government which made preparations to use emergency powers against strikers on the underground railways (Daily Herald, 1st April, 1924.)

Before we leave Mr. Wigham’s reference to Keir Hardie we note that he makes no comment on Hardie's advocacy of coal nationalisation for the sake of fuelling fire Navy. Does this, too, fit into the I.L.P. conception of Socialism?

Abstract Theory and Real life.

Mr. Wigham concludes with a jibe at the alleged “abstract reasoning" of the S.P.G.B., contrasted with the I.L.P., which, he says, “continues to base its political activities on real life," and which knows "something about history."

We are not averse to accepting the term “abstract reasoning" as a description of the need for workers to study capitalism and the history of reformism in order to understand the futility of trying to reform capitalism into something different.

And we are content to leave to the reformist I.L.P., in the Keir Hardie-Maxton tradition, the task of ignoring Socialism and concentrating on the "real life" activity of a reformist organisation, of pursuing the winning of votes and members on a programme of reforms.

Editorial Committee.

Letter: Afghanistan (2002)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Afghanistan

Dear Editors,

Very little has been heard on the media to counter the general assumption that the Afghanistan war is an example of the result of an inevitable ideological/religious antagonism in capitalism between religions, languages, cultures – in this case Islam and Christianity.

In giving the lie to this theory as the cause of war in capitalism, an early Socialist Party pamphlet on war gave examples of countries or groups of the same and of different religions etc. who had fought both against and in alliance with, each other at different times. If the Socialist Standard could provide such information if could prove very useful in countering such theories at the present time.

W. Robertson, 

Hove, Sussex

The Ire Of The Irate Itinerant (2010)

From the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Post-Conflict World (2009)

From the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imagine a world without war

Focus on conflict; spiralling to encompass more and more areas of the world; bringing “terror” into all cities east, west, north, south; wreaking chaos on whole countries; creating friction between different sections of the population — between people who previously had no reason to be suspicious or fearful of the other. This is what those in power around the world would subject us to and in this they are having no small success.

Now focus on how it could be if the majority of the world’s people were to have their say, and imagine a world without conflict following a transformation in thinking. A transformation in thinking that comes about through the realisation and understanding by individuals who alone or in small numbers have little influence over what they can achieve against the powers of a state but when working together for common aims can bring the power to the people where it belongs. Not military power. Not economic power. Decision-making power.

States, i.e. governments, (or even small sections of government) have the prerogative of violence. All means are in their control and they allow themselves the sole right to use violence, to use police and armed forces against whomever they label as enemies, as a threat to the state or as a threat to national security. The citizenry can’t be a party to the details. In fact even discussing making them a party to the details in itself will be heralded as risking national security further and giving them the excuse to restrict us even more. But, imagine gradually more and more people, seeking an egalitarian and peaceful society, protesting at their government’s armed interventions in other countries, as for example today in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And more and more daring to protest at the level of violence at home perpetrated by the authorities towards citizens on the streets. More letters written to more newspapers and to representatives of the people at all levels; more emails flashing around the globe to encourage others to get involved; more websites and blogs to which people can add their name to show dissidence; more meetings and demonstrations displaying withdrawal of support by the masses for their so-called leaders. Bertrand Russell told CND many years ago, “If all those who disapprove of government policy were to join massive demonstrations of civil disobedience they could render government folly impossible.” It’s not impossible to believe that numbers could become such that members of the forces of repression and armed aggression decide that they will no longer act against fellow citizens or against citizens of another nation. Significant numbers have already spoken out against such aggression, more of them beginning to feel the pressure of society, a society of which they are a part, (not apart from!) a society made up of their friends, family members, school mates, neighbours, a society whose interests they are supposedly engaged in defending. In the case of civil disturbances, strikes and demonstrations they will now join ranks with their own masses preventing repression at home and opposing interference in the destinies of other societies which conversely have no argument with them.

Imagine the power falling away from those who have used it recklessly around the world and into the hands of this majority seeking an egalitarian and peaceful society. Imagine the armed forces, now under the democratic control of the people, committed to securing all weapons, armaments, vehicles, planes, helicopters, ships, submarines, war materiel of all kinds including factories and depots; securing them from any further use whilst and until they can be dismantled, recycled or made safe.

 Are people to stand by passively observing societies descend into the dystopian dissolution that many see as inevitable or shall they stand up together against aggression in all its manifestations in a process of struggle and achievement? Imagine this amazing specimen of revolution, this fantastic human organism, coming together at last to realise its full potential – for what the preamble to the UN Declaration of Human Rights refers to as dignity and worth, freedom, justice and peace.

As Edward Said has written, “There is always the possibility of another social model.”

Janet Surman

The British Communist Left (2005)

Book Review from the September 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Communist Left by Mark Hayes (International Communist Current, 2005) £5.00

This is a history of the so-called ‘Communist Left’ in British politics from 1914-1945, published by one of the main, contemporary organisations of this tradition and written by one of their sympathisers.

It is a largely accurate account of those identified with the left-wing of Bolshevik politics in this era, a political tendency chastised by Lenin in his famous ‘Left-wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder’. Over a long period this tendency gradually struggled towards taking up socialist positions on the nature of the future society, reformism, the state capitalist nature of Russia, China, etc while also developing a virulent hostility to ‘bourgeois democracy’ and trade unionism. As this pamphlet unwittingly shows, it was a political current which made some serious errors during its political evolution too – and continues to do so, largely because of its adherence to the vanguard politics of Leninism.

The left communists in Britain were small in both number and influence compared to their counterparts in continental Europe, specifically the German, Dutch and Italian lefts. While elements in the Socialist Labour Party and British Socialist Party held views associated with left communism for a short time after the Bolshevik takeover, the most significant left communist organisation in Britain emerged out of the radical suffragette movement led by Sylvia Pankhurst during the First World War and was grouped around the paper Women’s Dreadnought, which by 1917 had been renamed the Workers’ Dreadnought.

This became the paper of the Workers’ Socialist Federation, a group dominated by Pankhurst and with support drawn from political activists mainly in the East End of London. The WSF never numbered more than about three hundred members at the very most and, after eventually being subsumed within the Communist Party of Great Britain in January 1921, vanished as a group or faction by 1924. Pankhurst had been expelled from the CPGB within a year for her criticism of the official Party line, before moving on to other, more eclectic (and openly reformist) causes. Although Mark Hayes doesn’t mention it, what is clear from this and every other related study is that while it would be an exaggeration to say that the Workers’ Dreadnought group was a one woman show, it would not be that much of an exaggeration. When Pankhurst moved on, the group collapsed and the paper – always owned and largely financed by Pankhurst herself – ceased publication.

Small organisations around the idiosyncratic Glasgow anarchist Guy Aldred such as the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation also came and went in this period, veering between left communism and anarchism, but none of them amounted to much. And that in essence is it: left communism in Britain until its re-appearance with the ICC itself and one or two other tiny groups in the 1970s.

After interesting beginnings, the ICC has mutated into an organisation regarded by virtually all other political groups (including those on the communist left previously well-disposed towards it) as a paranoid sect, and its treatment of the SPGB here is an interesting one, not least because we are the one workers’ political organisation discussed still in existence and thereby the most obvious target for its spleen.

The key ‘class frontier’ for the ICC and other left communist groups is whether a political organisation takes sides in a capitalist war or not. Yet, despite our impeccable record of actively opposing both world wars and all other wars too, this book gives the SPGB short shrift. It claims, “in practice” that in 1939, just as supposedly in 1914, “the SPGB made no attempt to oppose the war” (p.101). What it means by this is that we did not raise the ICC’s suicidal slogan of ‘turn the imperialist war into a world wide civil war against capitalism’.

The Socialist Standard is criticised for not publishing openly anti-war articles for part of the Second World War because of the strict Defence Regulations relating to seditious printed matter which caused the suppression of the Daily Worker, but no mention is made of the Party’s open anti-war propaganda by other means or the way in which the SPGB sought to prevent mere pacifist opponents of the war from becoming members. Presumably never having been sent to prison himself for his political beliefs, Mark Hayes also sneers at the SPGB members who applied during the world wars to be conscientious objectors, scores of whom were imprisoned by the British state for refusing to kill their fellow workers.

Quite why the ICC thinks that a few hundred political activists starting a civil war against the might of the capitalist state is a sensible socialist tactic is anyone’s guess. The SPGB members who successfully applied to be conscientious objectors or went ‘on the run’ were at least able to work for socialism and keep the organisation alive, whereas if the ICC was ever crazy enough to put its own tactic into operation it would soon cease to exist organisationally. That the ICC is not really serious about this type of abstract sectarianism though can be seen by the fact that “in practice” (to use its own phrase) there has not been one single occasion when any of its sections across the world has ever tried to do anything other when faced with a war than what the SPGB did in 1914 or 1939, i.e. denounce it as a capitalist conflict not worth the shedding of a drop of blood.

The ICC do exist in something of an unusual – not to say unique – political bubble, as this book repeatedly demonstrates. While the SPGB is lambasted for its insufficient opposition to wars and for betraying the future moneyless commonwealth by opposing the misguided tactics of the Bolsheviks (at least until the early 1920s when the ICC retrospectively thinks this became respectable), the Trotskyists – who then as now took sides in ‘national liberation’ struggles and wars, were reformist, advocated state capitalism, supported the Labour Party, etc – are regarded with some affection, until they finally ‘betrayed’ the working class by taking sides in World War Two. For sheer illogicality and inconsistency there can be little to beat this.

When it is filtered for its Leninism and sectarianism, the British Communist Left is not all bad as it is a useful historical account in parts. While it is a short book it is nevertheless a bit of a trying read, best characterised as a largely academic piece infused with heavy doses of the ICC’s somewhat tiresome political liturgy. If page after page of references to ‘centrism’, ‘opportunist currents’, the ‘proletarian terrain’ and ‘ambiguous swamps’ are your thing then go out and buy it immediately. It’s not too unkind to say you are unlikely to be killed in the rush.

DAP

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.

Letter: The SPGB and War (2014)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

I was very surprised indeed that the SPGB and the Socialist Standard did not use the opportunity of the centenary of the start of the First World War to re-publish, and in full, one of what must be one of the most powerful anti-war messages produced by revolutionary socialists, that of the SPGB, published in the September 1914 Socialist Standard.

You quite rightly re-published part of it in the October 1939 Socialist Standard in response to the start of the Second World War, and I understood the Party was extremely proud of the prose and the revolutionary socialist anti-war message it expressed.

As you have chosen for whatever reason not to re-publish your original anti First World War manifesto, may I have at least part of it re-published in your letters column?

  Placing on record our abhorrence of this latest manifestation of the callous, sordid and mercenary nature of the international capitalist class, and declaring that no interests are at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working class blood, we protest the brutal and bloody butchery of our brothers of this and other lands, who are being used as food for cannon abroad while suffering and starvation are the lot of their fellows at home. We have no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to the 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 World for the Workers!

I note the one good thing the SPGB ever said about the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution was that they took Russia out of the war. The workers and peasants revolution in Russia in November 1917 was surely the single most powerful and most effective anti war action ever taken in modern history.

Does not the fact that the Bolshevik Revolution so clearly and unambiguously pulled Russia out of the First World Slaughter, and published and exposed all the secret treaties and pacts, showing all the dirty connections and inter relationships between apparently hostile imperialist powers, indicate that, perhaps, there was more of a proletarian content to that Revolution than the SPGB has ever felt able to acknowledge?

With very best wishes

Andrew Northall (by email)

Reply:

There’s no doubt the Bolshevik Revolution (in reality more of a coup d’état) was carried out by proletarians in the main and it did have the positive effect of taking Russia out of the First World War, as we indeed acknowledged at the time. Set against that though is the legacy of the decades of totalitarian dictatorship that followed, and the mistaken association of this brutal state capitalist regime with ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’. – Editors.

50 Years Ago: The Anti-War Campaign (1960)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our report of the International Congress at Copenhagen we referred briefly to the absurd proposals to organise the workers of the world to ensure "universal disarmament and the prevention of warfare.’’

#    #    #    #

The main demands in the resolution which the German Social-Democratic Party forced upon the Congress were, compulsory arbitration upon international disputes, and Parliamentary action for disarmament and the prevention of wars.

#    #    #    #

The master class, being but a tenth of the population, can only keep possession of the means of production by their control (through the political machinery) of the armed forces. While the master class have that control it is hopeless for the workers to attempt to seize capitalist property. It is sheer madness, therefore, to expect that the capitalist class would, because the workers demand it, either abolish the armed forces or hand their control over to the working class. That would be to abolish themselves as a ruling class. Further, the interests of the capitalists of one country clash with those of the capitalists of other lands, especially in the matter of obtaining markets, and so long as capitalism lasts there will be this clash of interests, necessitating ever-increasing armaments and the inevitable appeal to arms. It is then absurd to waste time and energy in an endeavour to convince the capitalists that wars are superfluous and a curse under capitalism.

Let the workers learn their position in society and unite to obtain control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces. Such action will make it possible for them to take possession of the means of production and use them for the benefit of all. In that way alone will they be able to usher in a system of society wherein universal unity of interests will abolish all war, be it between classes or nations.

(Socialist Standard, December, 1910.)

The Falklands Crisis (1982)

From the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

In face of the imminent threat of war over the potential wealth of the Falkland Islands the Socialist Party of Great Britain affirms:

1. That despite the wave of jingoistic hysteria in the press and its endorsement by Labour and Tory politicians alike, no working class interests in Britain, Argentina or the Falklands themselves can be served by war.
2. That neither the military junta in Buenos Aires nor the elected representatives of British capitalism, least of all the business interests of Coalite-Charringtons, can justify the shedding of a single drop of working class blood.
3. That the new-found outrage at the undemocratic and oppressive nature of the Argentine regime rings false coming from a government which was arming that regime until the eve of hostilities.
4. That the crucial role of Argentine capitalism in profitably making-up the notorious shortfall of agricultural production within the Russian Empire goes far to explain the support given to the junta by the local “Communist Party” and the muted criticism of it by the same circles who so vociferously denounce the similar dictatorship in Chile and its parallel suppression of trade unionism and free speech.

We therefore reiterate that having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow-workers of all lands the expression of goodwill and socialist fraternity and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism in all its guises and the establishment of socialism throughout the world, the only way to end war.

The Executive Committee

13 April 1982

The War, and the Socialist Position. (1914)

From the September 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whereas the capitalists of Europe have quarrelled over the question of the control of trade routes and the world's markets, and are endeavouring to exploit the political ignorance and blind passions of the working class of their respective countries in order to induce the said workers to take up arms in what is solely their masters' quarrel, and

Whereas further, the pseudo-socialists and labour 'leaders' of this country, in common with their fellows on the Continent, have again betrayed the working class position, either through their ignorance of it, their cowardice, or worse, and are assisting the master class in utilising this thieves' quarrel to confuse the minds of the workers and turn their attention from the class struggle.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY of Great Britain seizes the opportunity of reaffirming the socialist position which is as follows:

  That society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living by the capitalist or master class and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.
  That in society therefore there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a CLASS WAR, between those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess.
  That the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers.

These armed forces therefore will only be set in motion to further the interests of the class who control them—the master class—and as the workers' interests are not bound up in the struggle for markets wherein their masters may dispose of the wealth they have stolen from them (the workers) but in the struggle to end the system under which they are robbed, they are not concerned with the present European struggle, which is already known as the “BUSINESS” war, for it is their masters' interests which are involved, and not their own.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY of Great Britain pledges itself to keep the issue clear by expounding the CLASS STRUGGLE, and whilst placing on record its abhorrence of this latest manifestation of the callous, sordid, and mercenary nature of the international capitalist class, and declaring that no interests are at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood, enters its emphatic protest against the brutal and bloody butchery of our brothers of this and other lands who are being used as food for cannon abroad while suffering and starvation are the lot of their fellows at home.

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 WORLD FOR THE WORKERS!

THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

August 25th 1914

WAGE WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! You have nothing to lose but your chains, you have a world to win! – Marx

Resolutions Against H Bombs (1958)

From the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The meeting abhors the use of ‘ H ’ bomb and calls upon the Government to stop ‘H’ bomb tests, and participate in a Summit Conference."

How often have we seen this type of resolution passed at a variety of trade union and other meetings. They all seem to have the same effect, as a knock on the door of an empty house.

The ritual, too, is exactly the same. The mover reads out a few of the possible horrors of “H” bomb warfare, and scares the pants off everyone. He is then followed by speaker after speaker in the same vein. Then the vote is taken, carried unanimously, and everyone is happy (or are they?).

The writer is sorry to make so light of it all, as he knows that some well-meaning folk really believe that this is the way to get rid of “H” bombs, and then go on to general disarmament. But you know its all been tried before, and as history shows its all failed before too.

First, let the Socialist point out that the problem of the “H” bomb is inseparable from war; which in turn is inseparable from the system of society in which we live.

This system produces poverty, insecurity, disease, and all the vicious things that stem from those, and it gives rise to the wars for which governments are constantly preparing.

The Socialist doesn’t raise these points just to be awkward, or to be academically correct. The writer has three little children, and realises that the stakes are very high: in fact the possible extermination of many of us.

But resolutions of disapproval of war, and of certain methods of warfare, have all been passed before. They have all had no effect.

Pacts have been made, international organisations have been set up, in fact every method of getting real peace, and disarmament has been tried except Socialism.

Time and time again the Socialist has demonstrated that war stems from capitalist struggles for markets, trade routes, sources of raw materials, and places of strategic importance. All this springs from the production for sale, with a profit motive for a small section of society, the capitalists. This in itself works against the interest of the overwhelming majority of society, the working class.

This “working class” is in every “nation” and faced with exactly the same problems as the “working class” of England. So it is at this level that international conferences must take place, and it must be international conferences for Socialism.

The leaders of the major “nations” will be conferring in the interest of the particular units of capitalism they represent. Trying to fiddle the spoils of war, without actually going to war, and trusting each other about as much as the proverbial cat and mouse.

If anybody can really delude themselves into believing that out of conferences of this nature the “Peace of the World” will come, their gullibility can know no bounds.

It goes deeper than this, for these resolutions are “red herrings” and “time wasters.” We have a job to do, in this century, the establishment of Socialism, and while workers are pursuing these dreams, they are falling down on their historically appointed task.

Terry Lord

This Month's Quotation: Socialist (1939)

The Front Page quote from the November 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism and only Socialism will convert weapons of destruction into instruments of Peace.

Falklands Comment (1982)

From the June 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is There Life After Jingoism?

The children who were taken off the requisitioned ship Uganda might have been bitterly disappointed at losing their cruise but instead they lined its rails singing Rule Britannia. The message that South Georgia had been taken was in a style which might have been used by Nelson and ended with “God save the queen”. Jingoism is not dead.

More significant was the absence of any popular protest of a size to disturb the government. Have the working class been duped yet again, after two world wars to end war, after Korea, Cyprus, Suez? What now of the peace movement, of the great marches and demonstrations, and the gentler protest of flowers slipped into the advancing rifles? We were told then that this movement was irresistible. that it was the way to build peace in the world and that peace was a priority above socialism. Yet another reform movement has been exposed as futile.

Workers who support capitalism are easily overborne by the propaganda supporting its class rule, exploitation, poverty, famine, war . . . Only the socialist—who is conscious to the facts of capitalism and the need to replace it with socialism—is immune. Socialists are not alone in hating what capitalism does to its people but they are unique in their understanding of why it does and of how to end it. Only a socialist society will abolish war. Socialists are the only true peace- mongers.

Gutter War

That prime example of gutter journalism, the Sun, published an article boasting that its man with the British Fleet in the South Atlantic had signed a missile sent to blow up an Argentinian ship. The missile, according to the Sun, had written on it, “Up Yours, Galtieri”. Needless to say, the missile was not aimed at Galtieri, but the uniformed wage slaves who serve his regime.

Church Comment

The Archbishop of Canterbury announced that he is opposed to wars unless they are necessary in order to protect life and property. So now we know: “Thou shalt not kill, unless . .."

His Own Petard

Even before the sinking of the Sheffield it was expected that the Argentinians would be pretty tough opponents—especially as they would be using a lot of weaponry made in Britain.

It was not, in fact, ironical that British servicemen should be shot at by ships, guns and missiles made in this country, directed by Argentinians who had been trained to use the weapons effectively over here. Britain is one of the world's great arms manufacturers and the armaments trade is highly competitive. Every arms producing country sends its salespeople out into the world to get orders, trying to persuade other states that their weapons are the most accurate, destructive and murderous on the market.

Armaments are commodities, made to be sold at a profit. Workers in the weapons factories use their abilities to turn out things which may at some stage be turned against them or against their fellow workers abroad. It is all good business, strictly in accordance with the precepts of capitalism. In any case, the country of origin of the missile which kills a worker is of no importance. What matters is that he or she dies in the interests of their masters, when they should be living and struggling for a society free of war.

Smashing Fascists

“Fight the fascists wherever they dare to show themselves”, said the Socialist Workers’ Party. Now that the Tory government is giving them the opportunity to pursue their futile fight against the fascists, SWPers are nowhere to be seen. Can it mean that they favour fighting ignorant fascist bootboys on the streets of this country, but they oppose the same dangerous tactics on an international level?

Money and Life

“Let’s get on with the war and damn the expense’’, demanded excitable Manny Shinwell in a House of Lords debate on the Falklands. It was assumed that the ageing ex-boxer, left-wing rebel, pacifist Labour minister, was talking about money but workers’ lives are also part of the expenditure of war.

As the first British ships sailed out of Portsmouth, one reliable estimate was that it would cost about £50 million just to get them across to the South Atlantic and back again, without staying for any length of time or doing any actual fighting.

Now we all know that these are hard times. There must be cuts. There must be no wasteful spending, so frivolous things like hospitals and old people’s homes must be slashed to the bone or we shall all sink beneath abject penury.

There were in fact a few feeble protests, from the customary feeble quarters, at spending so much on a military expedition instead of on schools, hospitals. social services and the like. The protesters, as usual, missed the fact that we live under a social system in which the priority is profit, not human comfort and safety.

Capitalism is always prepared to spend a huge part of its resources on destruction, regardless of how much deprivation there is in the world. It is no coincidence that it is at its most inventive, efficient and productive in wartime, when its aim is to destroy as much, and murder as many, as it can. It will need no help in this from outworn cynics like Shinwell.

The Socialist Party and War (1968)

From the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are not pacifists. Yet ever since the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in 1904 it has opposed all wars. Our members have suffered imprisonment and persecution rather than fight—and the members of our companion socialist parties have done the same in other parts of the world.

Why is this? It is because we recognise that under capitalism wars arise when rival powers fall out over the control of markets and supplies of raw materials, or over the domination of trade routes and spheres of influence. It is this struggle between rival capitalist states which compels countries like Britain and America to maintain armed forces wherever they have interests. And the same pressures act on the state capitalist powers such as Russia and China.

But in these struggles the working class have no interests at stake. Workers are people who, because they own no factories or other means of producing wealth, are forced to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary. Working men and women throughout the world have a common interest in getting rid of the capitalist system which gives rise to wars and many of the other problems which confront us. By a united effort we could replace capitalism by a new way of organising the world. We call this Socialism or Communism (not to be confused with Labour-administered capitalism in Britain or the brutal state-capitalist dictatorships in Russia and elsewhere). Socialism will be a world community completely without frontiers and based on common ownership and democratic control of all the means of producing wealth. In a socialist world production would be solely for use and enjoyment—not for profit.

When the first world war broke out the vast majority of those who called themselves socialists were soon swept away by patriotic hysteria. In Britain the Socialist Party was alone in explaining the internationalist position which socialists must adopt under conditions of peace or war. We issued a manifesto which ended with the following statement:

   “Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our good win and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of Capitalism and the triumph of Socialism.”

Over fifty years later we still adhere to this position. In fact, our comrades in the World Socialist Party of the United States recently reprinted the extract above in their paper, the “Western Socialist”, to explain their attitude towards the war in Vietnam.

We do not appeal to you merely as people who think that war is senseless and want to see an end to it. We appeal to you as working men and women whose interest lies in establishing a world socialist community. We do not ask for your support, for you to accept us as new leaders; rather we need your comradely help in working to achieve Socialism.

Party Paragraphs. (1914)

Party News from the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Branch of the Party has now been formed in Birmingham. For particulars readers in the district are referred to the Branch Directory on the back page.

*     *     *     *

Party Members and sympathisers are reminded of their duty to assist us in our propaganda work by every means in their power. This duty is more urgent now than ever. The Englishman's proverbial “love of fair play,” and his devotion to the “rights of minorities, have already been manifested at several of our meeting places. Two of our comrades have been arrested and victimised, and a few meetings have had to he cancelled.

Nevertheless, our work is telling, and as the vast majority of our hearers welcome our message, they should firmly make up their minds not to allow a few mistaken individuals to spoil the good work. We are strong enough to hold our own if those who are with us will translate their good will and convictions into active support. Not only in France and Belgium is there fighting to be done, positions to be held, manhood to he proved, and victory to be finally achieved.

*     *     *     *

Our literature on the War is in great demand and every effort should be made to place it in the hands of the workers It will act as an antidote to the “poison of the Press" served up by the master class in their lust for blood.

*     *     *     *

From the Socialist Party of Canada, the Socialist Party of North America, and the Socialist Party of Italy come manifestoes opposing this capitalist war.

*     *     *     *

Economic classes have been opened at Tooting and Battersea, and a public discussion is held every Friday at 8 30 p m. at the Socialist Hall. 41, Albert Road. Peckham.. S. E.

O.

Slaughter in Vietnam (1970)

From the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists look at war in a fundamentally different way from people with other political persuasions. We contend that war in the modern world is caused by the workings of capitalism with its struggles over trade, investments, oil and other resources.

The workers of the world have an identity of interests and have nothing at stake in the thieves’ quarrels of their masters. The working class owns no country. None of the resources are theirs; they have nothing to fight for and everything to gain by uniting to end the system that enslaves them and produces wars and other terrible problems.

Supporters of Trotskyism and the so-called Communist Party support war and take one side or the other, thus lending themselves to the shedding of working class blood for the profits of the capitalist class East or West.

In the case of Vietnam these people seek Victory for the Vietcong and line up behind the nationalist aspirations of developing Vietnamese capitalism.

If it could be shown that Vietnam was an exceptional incident to an otherwise peaceful and humane capitalism and if all that needed to be done was to end this war and all would be well in the world, all the talk and press comments about “this senseless war” might have some point. The fact is that no argument can be advanced condemning the war in Vietnam which would not be equally valid for the first and second world wars, for Korea and all other 73 conflicts that have taken place in the last twenty years. War is a normal condition of capitalism. An article in US. News and World Report (August 28, 1968) shows there have been no less than 128 wars since 1898 and that 57 per cent of these have taken place since the last world war. It must be clear from this that a particular war is an effect which cannot be dealt with in isolation. What we are confronting is a society that produces wars.

The present series of outrages coming to light in Vietnam are part of a greater outrage—the world-wide menace of capitalism. The American Government presents a tragic and ironic spectacle. They would like the world to believe that their concern is freedom and yet the very people they are supposed to be protecting and liberating, including women and babies have been gunned down in their hundreds by American soldiers. A White House press statement put the figure at 567 in My Lai alone.

The subtle extent to which people are conditioned to accept war can be seen from the fact that remote-control killing of scores of thousands of their women and babies by rocket fire and napalm bombing, is seen in a different light. Millions of men, women and children have been blown to pieces by bomber planes whose crews only see a target area from thousands of feet up. The press-button techniques and modern warfare make it possible for large guns or rocket launches to devastate towns and villages many miles away. Are the men who operate these weapons, any less conscious of the fact that they are killing people than if they were shooting them at close range? The argument that killing innocent babies in My Lai is different from killing “enemy” babies is the only rationalisation capitalism can fall back upon. This shows the utter depravity of this system of society.

It is all right for the hypocritical press and politicians to scream “atrocities”, but what about the society that puts guns into men’s hands in the first place? What about the leading statesmen of the world who have presided over the organised butchery of tens of millions of workers, who test and stockpile nuclear bombs capable of wiping out all life on earth, who poison the atmosphere with radiation causing thousands of deaths each year from leukaemia, who sell massive armaments around the world for profit, and the propaganda machine which strives to make it all acceptable in the name of freedom and humanity?

It is absurd to separate a few individuals and say they are guilty of atrocities when they are involved in situations created by society.

In the early days of the 1914-1918 war, posters purporting to show Belgian babies on German bayonets were used to whip up war hysteria. Now, such things are regarded as all part of war. George Brown says “stop weeping and get on with it”. Woodrow Wyatt, another stalwart Labourite supports him. Brown argued that the Labour Party ought to think about the threat to freedom if the “communists” win. What freedom Mr. Brown? The freedom to be gunned down by soldiers? Socialists repudiate the vile lie that butchery and napalm bombing of men, women and children, whether carried out by Americans or the Vietcong or anyone else, can have nothing to do with freedom.

To cover up its murder, capitalism has always raised the cry of freedom. Wage-slavery is capitalism’s freedom for the working class. In keeping with the Labour Government’s support for the war, the Parliamentary Labour Party’s Liaison Committee rejected the demand for Brown’s resignation as Deputy Leader. Meanwhile, demobilised American soldiers were appearing on the T.V. admitting the gunning down of babies, and the question of Nixon setting up a special tribunal to try those charged was being debated. Nixon subsequently appeared on television to say military tribunals would serve the purpose and that the guilty would be punished. He also announced the withdrawal of large numbers of American troops from Vietnam. Some Americans had already received long prison sentences over a rape and murder case known as “Hill 192”. The real culprit, will of course get away with it. What really needs indicting here is the capitalist system. A system that trains young men still in their teens to kill, a system that brutalises and degrades all humanity.

The war in Vietnam is now entering its eighth year with open American involvement. Whatever the outcome the workers will have gained nothing on either side. Hundreds of thousands of them will have been crippled or blinded so that the capitalist class, East and West, can pursue their sources of profit and wage future wars.

In America there have been massive anti-war demonstrations and thousands of young men have destroyed their draft cards. These are hopeful signs of emerging attitudes that desperately need to be taken much further. Even among the protesters American nationalism is still strong. It is the names of the American dead that are read out at demonstrations. The idea of world-consciousness; of being opposed to all wars and coming to understand the cause of war, has yet to take hold in significant proportions. This will come with the general growth of Socialist understanding.

It is noteworthy that with modern means of communication, the attitudes prevailing at home are rapidly reflected by workers in the armed forces. The Pentagon is faced with thousands of deserters and underground “peace" journals circulating among armed men, both in America and overseas. The arguments levelled at Socialists that the armed forces are isolated from the rest of the working class and are therefore cut off from Socialist influence, thereby making them a threat in the hands of the capitalists against the workers organising for Socialism, is clearly out of date.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain rejects the plea of the “left" that the nationalist ambitions of the North Vietnamese ruling class are worth dying for. This amounts to workers killing each other to determine who shall be their future exploiters. Nationalism is a divisive anti-working class concept. Home-rule is a bosses’ issue. We have home-rule in Britain but the capitalist class still own the means of production.

"

The “left-wing” supporters of the Vietcong are as deadly to workers interests as their more openly capitalist rivals. Do they really expect the aftermath of Vietnam to be any different from that of Korea? Do they really think it will do other than leave the way open to future wars? While both groups of workers, those who favour the Eastern bloc, and those who favour the West, go on deluding themselves with the plausible sounding excuses for supporting wars they are both in fact supporting capitalism. They are helping to guarantee that wars will continue.

The consistent opposition of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to all wars has proven to be the only valid position. The establishment of Socialism demands the unity and co-operation of the workers of the world. Such unity and cooperation can only arise from Socialist understanding, that means a clear recognition of the need to change society. To establish a system without frontiers or armed forces, where the scramble for trade and profits no longer exists. The resources of the earth, instead of being a class monopoly used to exploit and destroy, will be commonly owned and used solely to satisfy human needs.

Harry Baldwin

A criticism answered (2004)

From the August 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The March, April, May and July issues of World Revolution, paper of the British section of the “left communist” group known as the International Communist Current (ICC) carried a long four-part critical article on the Socialist Party to coincide with our hundred years of existence and which described us “a group caught between sectarianism and opportunism”. The articles criticised in particular our attitude towards war, trade unions, political democracy and the development of socialist consciousness.

Before these criticisms can be answered, something needs to be said about where the ICC is coming from politically. Its basic theoretical assumption is that by 1914 capitalism had become “decadent” as an economic system in the sense that it had become unable to develop the forces of production any further. This claim is based on Rosa Luxemburg’s mistaken view that there was a flaw in Marx’s Capital, in that he had failed to recognise that a lack of purchasing power was built-in to capitalism and that therefore it had to rely on external markets to expand; once these had been exhausted – as the ICC claim had happened by 1914 – then capitalism would enter a period of economic stagnation and breakdown. (For a detailed argument as to the ICC’s mistake here see the article in the August 1980 Socialist Standard “World Revolution: Another Confused Group”.)

From this mistaken assumption, the ICC draws a political conclusion: that, after 1914, capitalism could no longer offer any lasting concessions to the working class, whether in the form of social reforms or in the form of increases in real wages. This means, according to the ICC, that working class living standards can now only be defended by revolution and that in fact the socialist revolution will develop out of the struggle to defend living standards, a quite inadequate, economistic conception of how socialist consciousness will develop.

When this analysis, and this conclusion, was first put forward by “leftwing communists” in Germany in the aftermath of the First World War it had a certain plausibility: this was a time of mass unemployment and roaring inflation there. But when it was revived by the political ancestors of the ICC in the 1960s, it made no sense at all. By then, despite the theory, capitalism had further developed the forces of production (by the application of, for instance, plastics, electronics and atomic energy); more social reform measures, in particular the so-called “Welfare State” had been enacted; and the real living standards of workers, at least in the heartlands of capitalism, had increased. To deny this was to fly in the face of the facts and to dogmatically cling to a disproved theory.

Two periods

A product of the ICC’s dogma that capitalism has not been able to offer concessions since 1914 is that the ICC divides capitalism into two distinct periods – pre-1914 and post-1914 – during which different, and in the event diametrically opposed, policies are appropriate.

In the ICC’s view, whereas after 1914 revolution has been the only way to defend working class living standards, before 1914, when capitalism was still expanding and so capable of offering concessions, these could also be defended, and improved, by pressure in parliaments to enact social reforms and by trade union action, which were both therefore worthy of socialist support. In other words, the policy of European Social Democracy of having, in addition to the maximum programme of socialism, a minimum programme of social reforms to be achieved within capitalism was justified. Hence what became horribly wrong after 1914 was right before 1914.

Thus we are criticised, for instance, for having completely written off the Second International in an article on its 1910 Copenhagen Congress. The ICC takes the view that before 1914 socialists should not have broken away from the Social Democratic parties of the time and that, in Britain, the “impossiblists” in the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) should have stayed within it as a leftwing faction struggling for its reform programme to be achieved by mass action rather than through election deals and parliamentary manoeuvres. In short, the SPGB should never have been formed. Those who founded the Socialist Party should have remained within the SDF, which later became the SDP and then the British Socialist Party, and should have gone over, with the bulk of the membership of the BSP, to the Communist Party of Great Britain when it was formed in 1921.

The March article accuses the SPGB (and the Deleonist Socialist Labour Party, another impossibilist breakaway from the SDF) of making the same mistake that the ICC see William Morris and the Socialist League as having made in the 1880s, of rejecting “the struggle for reforms” and opposing “any support for reforms”. The Socialist League is even denounced for having taken up the position that the ICC now holds of rejecting “participation in parliament” and opposing “participation in elections”. What was then “sterile purism” is today a key revolutionary position, even a “class frontier”!

It’s the same with trade unionism. The early members of the SPGB are criticised for not taking a more positive attitude towards trade unions, for not seeing “the unions in a dynamic way, as part of the process of the class coming to consciousness”. The early members did in fact support trade union action on sound class lines and a large number of them were active trade unionists, but it is true that they saw such action, though part of the class struggle, as being essentially only defensive. This is still our position. But times have moved on for the ICC and, whereas they criticise us for not having been pro-trade union enough before 1914, they criticise us now (as in World Revolution 11 in 1977) for holding the view that . . . “the working class can defend itself through trade unions”. Instead, we ought to be calling, like the ICC, for the unions to be “smashed”.

If we in the Socialist Party take the same position on (not advocating) reforms and on trade unionism now as in 1904 this is not because we are committed to an “invariant dogma” as the ICC argues but because we don’t accept their particular argument that capitalism became economically decadent in 1914, and its corollary that very different policies were appropriate before and after that date. We do say, of course, that capitalism has become historically redundant, but this dates from when it had finished creating the material basis for a world socialist society, which would be some time in the last quarter of the 19th century. We can agree, too, that this justified a change of policy in some respects: the abandoning of the support Marx gave to measures and events that he felt would help capitalism create this material basis as rapidly as possible, for instance, in particular support for various nationalist movements and taking sides in wars. For our position on this see the article “Marx in his Time”.

The year 1914 was significant in that it was the year that the first world war broke out, thus confirming that capitalism had become the dominant world system and which ended by reinforcing this through the collapse of the last three dynastic states in Europe (Imperial Germany, Hapsburg Austria and Tsarist Russia). But significant as 1914 was, this was not because it was the date by which capitalism had become economically decadent in the Luxemburg/ICC sense and it did not require a change of socialist “tactics”.

Conspiracy theories

The April and May articles criticise our members for having opposed the two world wars as “conscientious objectors” which the ICC sees as a mere individual and even pacifist opposition. This is an easy, not to say cheap, criticism from people who have no doubt never faced the dilemma of what to do when threatened with coercion into being trained to kill fellow workers in a war. Some SPGB members in both world wars did refuse, as a matter of principle, the status of “conscientious objector” but most took the view that if the state allows this why refuse to take advantage of it? In fact, many SPGB members were able to carry on important political work for socialism precisely because of this, something which seems to bypass the ICC completely.

The suggestion that during the Second World War the SPGB, in the words of the July article, “was used by the ruling class as a safe channel for the questioning and anger produced by the war” is a typical example of the sort of other-wordly paranoid conspiracy theory for which the ICC is well-known. This is also exemplified by their credulous reliance in the same article on a pamphlet by a disgruntled ex-member of the SPGB which advances a conspiracy theory about “factions determined to take over the Party”.

What SPGB members should have done in both world wars was, apparently, to have worked to turn, as advised by Lenin, “the present imperialist war into a civil war”. This should have involved “illegal organisation and propaganda within the army”, which presumably means that socialists should have joined the army after all. But this would have been suicidal for the individuals involved (the quickest way to a firing squad for mutiny) and massacre for the working class (as happened in Dublin in 1916 when a section of the Irish nationalist movement tried to start a civil war in the midst of an imperialist war). SPGB members rightly rejected such irresponsible advice and adopted the correct socialist position of a plague on both your houses and not a drop of working class blood for either side.

Democracy and dictatorship

Whereas the ICC is all in favour of elections, parliaments and “bourgeois democracy” before 1914, after then all these became anathema to them. In fact, our refusal to denounce political democracy seems to be our worst failing in their eyes. “Through its defence of the democratic principle,” they say of us, “it actually reinforces one of the greatest obstacles facing the working class.”

Excuse us if we disagree, but we don’t regard universal suffrage and political democracy within capitalism as “one of the greatest obstacles facing the working class”. The vote is a gain, a potential class weapon, a potential “instrument of emancipation” as Marx put it. Despite Lenin’s distortions quoted by the ICC, Marx and Engels always held that the bourgeois democratic republic was the best political framework for the development and triumph of the socialist movement. This is another pre-1914 socialist position we see no reason to abandon.

Certainly, political democracy under capitalism is not all that it is purported to be by many supporters of the system and it is severely limited, from the point of view of democratic theory, by the very nature of capitalism as an unequal, class-divided society. Certainly, “democracy” has become an ideology used to give capitalist rule a spurious legitimacy and to mobilise working class support for wars. But it is still sufficient to allow the working class to organise politically and economically without too much state interference and also, we would argue, to allow a future socialist majority to gain control of political power.

If political democracy under capitalism really was the great obstacle facing the working class that the ICC claim, then socialists ought logically to work for and welcome its abolition even within capitalism. While the ICC stridently calls for other such (in its view) obstacles, for instance trade unions, to be smashed, it has not dared call for the workers’ vote to be abolished or for the smashing of ballot-boxes. However, Bordiga, who they quote with favour in the May article as a commentator on “the democratic principle”, did indeed take opposition to this principle to its absurd logical conclusion, arguing in an article written in 1948 that socialists “must gladly welcome” the coming of fascism on the grounds that it is supposedly easier to mobilise the workers when there’s a naked capitalist dictatorship than when this is disguised by a democratic façade. He even claimed that workers were less oppressed under fascism than they were under democracy (see “Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle” (Part III) in Communist Program 3 of May 1977). The ICC itself, in its July article, challenges the statement that “it is better to live in a society where there is some degree of democracy than in one where opposition to the regime is not tolerated”. It is thus rather the ICC, in toying with such ideas, not us, that is trying to spread dangerous ideas amongst the working class.

Of course political democracy is better, from a working class point of view, than political dictatorship. The point shouldn’t need arguing. We don’t deny that having a positive attitude towards “bourgeois” political democracy under capitalism has sometimes created theoretical and policy issues for us when it has been under attack (as between the wars) and when it has not yet been established (as in the former USSR’s empire). But it’s not a solution – in fact, it’s a cop-out – to evade the problem by trying to argue that there’s no difference between political democracy and political dictatorship, that they are as bad as each other, and that workers should be indifferent as to which one exists. Our position is that political democracy is a gain for the working class but that this does not justify socialists allying themselves with capitalist parties to get it or supporting one side in a war to supposedly defend it.

Consciousness

The ICC attributes to us a caricatured position of seeing “the development of consciousness as an accumulation of individual socialists”, as the conversion of workers one by one to socialism until there’s a “mathematical majority”, as if anyone could hold such an absurd position. Of course, as Marxists, we hold that socialist consciousness develops out of the workers’ class experience of capitalism and its problems.

If we use terms such as “majority” and “majoritarian” this is not because we are obsessed with counting the number of individual socialists, but to show that we reject minority action to try to establish socialism – majority as the opposite of minority. Socialism can only be established when through the experience of capitalism, including hearing the case for socialism (itself the distilled past experience of the working class), a majority (yes, but in the democratic rather than mere mathematical sense) have come to want it. For, despite Lenin and Bordiga, socialism can’t be imposed from above on a working class that doesn’t want or understand it. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. And of course, unlike the ICC, we don’t think that the seizure of power by the minority Bolsheviks in November 1917 was a “proletarian revolution”.

The ICC’s own conception of the development of socialist consciousness is not at all convincing. Because, as mentioned, they think that since 1914, and still today, capitalism is unable to grant any concessions to workers that will improve their living standards, they argue that socialist consciousness will arise out of struggles by workers to stop their living standards getting worse. Thus they see the task of socialists as being to get involved in such struggles and to try to push them towards revolution as the only way of winning them in the sense of getting an increased standard of living.

We have no objection to socialists getting involved in industrial struggles but without illusions, in particular the illusion that they can have a revolutionary outcome. The socialist revolution is not likely to start from some strike over wages spreading to the whole of the working class. Certainly, workers can learn from the experience of industrial struggles against employers that socialism is the only way out and, in this sense, strikes can contribute to a growth of socialist consciousness. But so can the many other experiences of the way capitalism works againt the interests of workers (bad housing, poor health care, pollution, wars and the threat of war, etc, etc).

The ICC’s obsession with strikes shapes their whole activity beyond abstract (very abstract in their case) propaganda. When a strike occurs they go down to the picket line with leaflets denouncing the trade unions and calling on the strikers to spread the strike – unsurprisingly with no success, since when workers are on strike they are generally concerned with getting a favourable settlement not with launching a revolution (and, despite the ICC’s theory, concessions today can still be extracted from employers).

Indeed, since the ICC is rabidly anti-union, sees no difference between political democracy and political dictatorship, and espouses an anarchist stance on elections and parliament, as well as having a penchant for conspiracy theories, we suggest that they are not in a position to give other groups any lessons in how to spread socialist ideas while avoiding the dangers of sectarianism.

Adam Buick