State and repression (2026)

From the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

In December 2025 a military court in Yekaterinburg sentenced five members of a Leninist study circle including a pensioner, from Ufa, the capital and largest city of Bashkortostan, Russia, to between sixteen and twenty-two years in prison. Their activity was as a study group specifically reading Lenin’s State and Revolution. No acts were committed or violence planned, but they were sentenced for terrorism and plotting a coup. Thought alone was treated as a seditious act.

In the US at Texas A&M University, a philosophy professor was barred from teaching Plato because he allegedly advocated particular views on race and gender. Two-thousand-year-old texts, including Aristophanes’ myth of the split humans and Diotima’s reflections on love, are no longer permitted to be read . Students were treated not as thinkers but as ideologically empty vessels.

Two hundred courses in the Texas A&M University College of Arts and Sciences have been flagged or cancelled by university leaders for gender or race-related content as the university undertakes its review of all course syllabi, faculty members told Inside Higher Ed. This review is required as per new rules instituted by the university Board of Regents after conservatives waged a harassment campaign against faculty members who taught race or gender-related subjects.

As Gyorgy Lukacs wrote, ‘Ideology functions effectively only so long as it remains unconscious of itself.’ When ideology is exposed, it must be defended by force or ritual. Lenin had observed that ‘the State is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another.’ Both the Russian state and the university act to preserve the dominance of the master class, only telling truth when it’s convenient.

Plato’s dialectical method encourages dialogue, reflection, and contradiction. Gramsci noted in the Prison Diaries that the master class secures dominance by shaping civil society and consent. The repression of readers and students prevents the proletariat from thinking independently and undermining hegemonic authority.

Such systems do not defend meaning. They defend the conditions of their own performance. They are nihilistic not because they believe in nothing but because they cannot tolerate the process by which meaning is made.

Paranoid ideology and its violent political theatre

A woman was shot in the head three times by an agent of the United States in front of her wife. This was violent ideological theatre, not law enforcement. On January 7 in Minneapolis an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, a poet and a U.S. citizen, during a federal immigration enforcement operation that had already brought thousands of armed agents into the city.

The federal response was instantaneous and unapologetic. Homeland Security officials and President Trump rushed to frame the killing as a response to ‘domestic terror’ and defend the agent’s actions as self-defence, claiming Good ‘weaponised’ her vehicle and tried to run down officers. Local officials, video evidence, and human rights groups reject that narrative; footage and eyewitness accounts show her attempting to drive away, not attack, and the domestic terror label has no basis in law. The FBI immediately seized control of the investigation and cut out Minnesota state investigators, deepening mistrust and raising fears of a cover-up. The killing has sparked large protests in Minneapolis and solidarity demonstrations nationwide, and it has intensified debate over ICE, federal power, and accountability in law enforcement.

The political response to this isn’t a botched PR afterthought like the Met’s handling of the Mark Duggan or Jean-Charles de Menezes shootings, where Blair and Cameron let police take the heat and preserved an appearance of separation of powers. This is different. Trump and his cabinet turned a street killing into ideological propaganda, weaponising it against large parts of the working class and their allies, and signalling that dissent and community defence will be cast as terrorism. That escalation, and the fact that a significant slice of U.S. society is willing to accept these justifications without evidence, tells us something grim about the shape of social conflict under Trump’s second term, conditions that eerily echo the pre-Civil War debates over Bleeding Kansas, where political violence became embedded in national policy and identity.

A.T.

Editorial: Iran’s cry of the oppressed (2026)

Editorial from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

People, shot by live ammunition, too terrified to go to hospital for fear of being arrested. Body bags spilling out of mortuaries onto the street. ‘Security’ forces extorting the equivalent of 6 years labourer’s annual wage to return the dead to their families. 18,000 protesters arrested, some facing summary execution. A total communications blackout, forcing some to walk hundreds of miles to border areas to get information out.

As this goes to press the Iranian government, undaunted by Donald Trump’s bluster, says it has killed around 2,500 protesters, but if they’re admitting to that figure, the real toll might well be far higher.

Some protesters were apparently hoping for the return of the monarchy under Reza Pahlavi, son of the hated former shah, who had been energetically trying to stir up Iranian public opinion from his safe home in Washington DC. That was seen by most media pundits as an unlikely, even farcical proposition, and one too monstrous for anyone who remembers the brutal repression of the shah, before the advent of the mad mullahs. But the alternatives, civil war or else a military coup, didn’t look attractive either.

The Iranian people only want what anyone wants, to be free to live decent lives. In pursuit of that modest aspiration they have repeatedly shown a level of personal bravery that commands a heartrending respect. ‘Sometimes parents go to the protests and don’t come back,’ explained one mother to her two young children, shortly before she too was killed by police gunfire. ‘My blood, and yours, is no more precious than anyone else’s’.

They have never stopped fighting the theocracy, and they probably never will. Within just two weeks of the 1979 revolution, women were out on the street protesting against the new mandatory hijab, which followed ‘a ban on alcohol; the separation of men and women in universities, schools, pools and beaches; and limitations on broadcasting music from radio and television.’ More protests came in 1992, ’94 and ’95, then a massive one in 1999 following closure of a liberal newspaper, then in 2007 because of petrol rationing, and again in 2009-10 due to what many saw as a rigged election. More protests followed in 2011 in solidarity with Arab Spring uprisings elsewhere, and later in 2017 over the cost of living, and 2018 over water shortages. Most recently in 2022, months of protest followed the alleged judicial murder of Mahsa Amini, arrested by the ‘morality’ police (as if they knew the meaning of the word) for failing to wear a headscarf. In all these protests, the police went in with guns blazing. Hundreds were killed, thousands arrested, and many executed, including by hanging from cranes in public places ‘to deter others’.

The regime may cling on for now, and the more it crumbles, the more viciously it will oppress its own people. Its leaders – and its army of police thugs – know what will happen to them if they finally lose control. They won’t expect mercy, and they damn well won’t deserve any.

Slaughter in Gaza, slaughter in Ukraine, slaughter in Sudan, in Myanmar, and now in Iran. Dozens of armed conflicts elsewhere. When does it ever stop, in capitalism? The tragedy is that it never will, until we bring an end to the competitive market system which sets humans forever against each other, just so that a tiny few can profit.

South African time-bomb (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Africa has recently experienced the bloodiest conflicts between rioters and police since the 1976 Soweto uprising. Several dozen people were shot dead by police, who used live rounds in addition to rubber bullets and teargas. The conflict was concentrated in the Vaal Triangle, in Sharpeville, in Sebokeng, Boibateng and Evaton. More than a hundred people were seriously injured in the rioting, which coincided with the introduction of a new constitution upholding the apartheid regime.

In 1976, the state response to the Soweto uprising left more than five hundred dead across the country. Clearly, not very much has changed since then. At the time of the more recent riots, those who boycotted the elections to the new system of assemblies were beaten up by van-loads of police and some of the candidates themselves. Some reporters sympathetic to those not voting were also attacked. However, the intense discontent felt by the majority of South Africans relates to far broader issues than the new Constitution.

There have been protests at rent increases, increases in bus fares and over the high level of indirect taxation. As in 1976, it is children who have led the protests, organising widespread school boycotts as a protest against conditions in those prison camps for the young. During last month's elections to the tricameral parliament these boycotts reached a peak, with 500,000 staying away from school.

The fact that hand in hand with the racist oppression of apartheid goes an underlying class division has not escaped the notice of the rioters. The black majority are turning against black councillors because of their association with unpopular measures such as rent increases, and the government's attempt to distance itself from the discontent by giving some power to black councils in the townships is certain to backfire in the end.

In South Africa today there is an explosive undercurrent of resentment and discontent among the black majority, who are treated like beasts of burden by the ruling class. But the actions of this reactionary white elite are part of a wider conflict which directly involves us all every day: the power struggle between a propertied and privileged minority, and the majority on whose backs they prosper. Of one thing there can be no doubt: the majority in South Africa will defeat those who today sit smugly entrenched in Johannesburg. Victory will set the end of a class division between a powerful minority and the dispossessed majority and the ownership of the means of life by the world’s inhabitants without distinction of race or sex.

Poland is state capitalist (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before the Second World War Poland had been governed by a military junta led by Pilsudski. The political outlook of Pilsudski was close to that of the largest pre-war political grouping in Poland, the National Democrats — a band of crudely anti-semitic fascists whose national ideal was similar to that of Hitler’s Germany. During the war the Polish working class were victims of some of the foulest Nazi atrocities. In June 1945 a Committee of National Liberation declared Poland to be a ‘People’s Democracy'. There was by no means a wide Polish consensus in favour of the new government, which was seen to be a political puppet of the Stalinist state bureaucracy which was effectively the capitalist ruling class of Russia. In 1945 a "Democratic Alliance", comprising the Communist Party of Poland and the Socialist Party of Poland, won a number of votes in the election. Soon after the election the Socialist Party was expelled from the “Alliance" and the agents of Russian capitalism dominated Poland.

The leader of the Polish Communist Party in 1945 was Gomulka who, above all else, was a Polish nationalist. Even before adhering to the Russian policy of state capitalism he was committed to the equally anti-socialist policy of strong national pride. The difference between state capitalism and private capitalism is that under the former a state bureaucracy (composed of senior Party members) possess capital, whereas under the latter form of capitalism the means of wealth production and distribution are privately possessed. Neither form of capitalism excludes the other entirely; for instance, in 1945 the Labour Party nationalised a number of industries; this did not stop them from being capitalist concerns, which produced wealth for profit rather than use. but simply altered the political arrangements.

Similarly, although Gomulka's Poland was primarily state capitalist, this did not stop his government from trading with the West and borrowing 40 million dollars from Western banks. These bank loans are of crucial importance: as soon as a professedly ‘socialist state’ borrows money from a bank it has to repay the loan and the only way it can do this is by the process of exploiting its workforce. A second economic area in which Gomulka resisted pressure from the Kremlin to establish total state capitalism was agriculture. The Stalinist policy was to nationalise all land, but Gomulka found it politically inexpedient to do this. He had gained power by promising the Polish peasant farmers that they could retain ownership and control of their land. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had promised the same thing to the Russian peasants in 1917, but they broke their promise when in power. Gomulka kept his promise to his supporters and as a result 80 per cent of the agricultural land in Poland remained the possession of 10 per cent of the population. This is still so today.

Gomulka's political insolence, which he was forced into in order to retain the support of his capitalist-nationalist-minded supporters, earned him the criticism of his Russian masters. In September 1948 Gomulka was removed from the leadership and replaced by the hard-line pro- Kremlinite, Bierut. From 1949 until 1956 Poland, like other Stalinist satellites, underwent a period of state terror and unprecedented economic hardship for the workers. During this period, marked by the notorious Six-Year Plan, everything was sacrificed so that industrial capital could be accumulated. The aim of the government was to turn Poland into an industrial power and in order to do this maximum profits had to be extracted from the labour of the wealth producers.

Just as in Britain in the early 1800s. and in Chile and Zimbabwe today, working class combination is outlawed so as to ensure the passivity of labour which is necessary for the rapid accumulation of capital, so in Poland the trade unions were regarded as an unacceptable obstacle to the objectives of state capitalist production. As in Nazi Germany, the state did not ban unions, but took them over. During 1949 and 1950, 80 per cent of Polish trade union officials were purged. The state-run unions ceased to be a weapon of working class resistance against the rate of exploitation (which even before 1948 they were hardly able to be) and became a weapon in the hands of the exploiters to extract as much profit as possible out of the exploited. The excellent Polish film, Man of Marble, provides a vivid social portrait of the appallingly tyrannous condition of Polish capitalism during the period of the 'plans' for capital accumulation.

The death of Stalin and Bierut, and the relaxation of state terror which occurred after Krushchev denounced Stalin at the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, resulted in a desire on the part of many Poles — including some Party members — to liberalise state capitalism. In Hungary, the period of so-called destalinisation was considered by the Kremlin to be excessive and in 1956 the Russian tanks went in to Budapest. In Poland the end of the brief period of “liberalism" was decisive, if less dramatic. In 1956 fifteen thousand workers in Poznan held a demonstration to complain about the high production targets which they had been set. The militia was used to break up the demonstration and eighty workers were murdered on the streets.

After 1956 Gomulka returned to power. As in 1946, he chose to finance Polish industrialisation by borrowing from the Western banks. Between 1957 and 1963. 529 million dollars were borrowed from America alone. The result was a consistent effort by the state authorities to intensify the rate of exploitation — notably in heavy industries like ship building. In 1970 the workers in the Gdansk shipyard decided that enough was enough: they went on strike and made the fatal mistake of demonstrating in the streets. The state responded in the only way it knew—just as the authorities in Manchester did at Peterloo — and once again workers were fired on and killed.

In Gdansk in 1970 the state had exposed itself as a ruthless defender of capital and an opponent of the working class interest. Learning from the street demonstrations of 1970. many Polish workers began to realise the need for organisation. After the Gdansk affair Gomulka was removed for a second time and Gierek was brought in to replace him. Although the leader was new, the policy remained the same: Gierek borrowed heavily from the West, receiving 100 million dollars from Russia and 50 million dollars from the West in 1971 alone. There seemed to be an initial success. By 1973 Poland had the third fastest productivity growth rate in the world. Production of consumer goods rose by 7 per cent and real wages rose by 40 per cent between 1970 and 1975. By 1975 Poland owed 6,000 million dollars to the Western banks. To pay off these debts more wealth had to be produced. To produce more, machinery had to be imported. To buy the machinery, more debts were incurred. Eventually, the Polish state decided to cut back on the production of consumer goods for the home market and devote more and more production to goods for export. The contraction of production for the home market led to increased prices of consumer goods and a second problem: the private farmers, who own most of Poland's land, refused to sell their agricultural produce to the state because they had nothing useful to buy with the money. The commodities required by the peasant farmers, such as machinery and chemicals, were being produced for export. Consequently there was a desperate shortage of food, as the price increased still more.

By 1980 the Polish state owed 27,000 million dollars to the banks. It was finding it difficult to sell its goods on the world market because of the world recession. Productive growth, which increased by about 9 per cent between 1971 and 1977, was contracting. Sixty per cent of the industrial products due to be completed in 1980 were unfinished at the end of that year due to lack of goods, leaving Poland with 10.6 billion dollars worth of frozen assets. In 1975, 30 per cent of Polish government expenditure was on food subsidies and welfare services; by 1980 this had fallen to 20 per cent. In 1980 there was a coal shortfall of 12 million tons; shipbuilding amounted to 400,000 tons, 35 per cent less than in 1978. Truck production fell by 6 per cent of 1979 figures and there was a sugar beet shortfall of 30 per cent.

It was thus in response to a crisis of capitalism that the workers in the Gdansk shipyard went out on strike in 1980. In 1981 the workers' journal, Jednosc, contained an article which posed the question: how is the emancipation of labour to be achieved? The answer given was that "it involves true socialism, undistorted socialism . . ." and went on to make the highly perceptive statement that “State ownership and social ownership of the means of production are two completely different concepts which should never be confused. The means of production may be owned by the state, but this does not mean that it is thereby the property of the working class”.

Socialism means the common ownership and democratic control of the world and everything in it by the whole community. There cannot be socialist countries or socialist governments or socialist banks or socialist police or socialist prisons. Our fellow workers in Poland must learn from their experience of opposing their oppressors in recent times. The enemy is capitalism, whatever its form, and to the end of destroying it the Polish workers will have the support of socialists everywhere.

Steve Coleman

Asked & Answered: More questions about our position. (1912)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

More questions about our position.

E. J. Higgins (Philadelphia) asks the following questions arising out of our answers to his questions in our May issue.

(1) —“Wherein is the wideness and advantage for revolutionary purposes of the platform of Parliament? Are you assuming that the capitalist Press would publish your speeches?

(Answer.) We know that the Press to-day is carried on for profit and for profit only ; and if anything furthers the sale of their papers they will publish it. We know from past experience how sensational they consider speeches of revolutionists and the prominence they give them, hoping, very often, to frighten the non-Socialist workers by accentuating the “extreme” nature of the speeches published. But if they were to change their tactics and engage in a conspiracy of silence, we should win all the same. The fact that no reference to Socialist members’ speeches appeared would sooner or later raise in the minds of the exploited the question : “Why this silence?” The very silence itself would be eloquent and cause workers to seek for themselves in the proletarian Press the speeches delivered, thus bringing more toilers into our camp. The danger of silence would soon alter our masters’ tactics, though, of course, whichever way they turned they would be but marching toward their graves. In fact, by reporting the speeches delivered in opposition to our members they could not help referring to our point of view.

(2) “Do you hold that the State which so long as the workers are disorganised on the industrial field must fulfil its real function as an engine of repression—do you hold that your ‘advance guard’ will be able to turn an engine of repression into an engine of emancipation? ‘Will the capitalists let you do this?”

(Answer.) The implication that the repressive functions of the State cease with economic organisation is opposed to history and every-day experience. Organise how and to what extent you like and the repression continues. We claim that the political machinery can be used by the toilers to control the armed forces and thereby give the workers power to enter into the ownership of the land, factories, railways, etc. The point as to whether our masters will allow the toilers to do it begs the question of their power to stop it.

The masters depend upon the political power put into their hands by the votes of the workers, and when the flux of time, with its influence upon the toilers’ minds, puts into power the working class through its delegates, then the masters face defeat, for the power over the supplies for and the movements of the armed force passes into the hands of the working class. You may say that the masters ere this will destroy constitutional government, but when they do that they commit suicide. Under the naked despotism and barbaric rule of governments without a Parliament and a Constitution, the smooth working of trade and commerce is impossible. Mexico is a good example of this.

(3) “Is it your opinion that the capitalists are looking for pretexts to make the State fulfil its function as an engine of repression; that they are concerned with our method of expropriating them and will not bother so long as we are doing the expropriating ‘peacefully,’ or as the little pope of the S.L.P. would say, in a ‘civilised manner’ ?”

(Answer.) Socialism can only come by the consent of the working class, that is, at least a majority of them. If we neglect the present institutions and fly off to “violence” we do provide our masters with arguments whereby they can retain the support of our fellows. By showing that we refuse to try the Constitutional means first we are branded as “Terrorists” in the minds of the toilers. Thus the coming of Socialism is retarded. If, on the other hand, we are willing to try political action, then the blame is upon our masters should they attempt to repudiate and destroy their own machinery of government. Not only do they outrage those who sympathise with our aims but all others of our class as well. Hence.—Nemesis !

Adolph Kohn

Poland December 1970: A Clarification (1978)

From the November 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article that appeared in the Socialist Standard in May this year we stated that "hundreds” of workers were shot and killed by government troops during the unrest over price rises that took place in Poland’s Baltic sea ports in December 1970. A previous article in September 1976 had stated that “at least six workers” had been shot dead in Gdansk (Danzig). The discrepancy between these figures is to be explained by the former being based on the highest unofficial estimates while the latter refers to the number officially admitted as having been killed on December 14, the first day of the unrest in Danzig alone.

The precise number, in the other ports as well as Danzig — and even one death would prove the brutal anti-working class character of the Polish state capitalist regime — is unknown. Keesing's Contemporary Archives says:

No definitive figures of the total number of casualties were available at the time but official spokesmen in Warsaw said early in January 1971 that 27 people had been killed in. Gdansk. Gdynia and Elblag and 346 injured, including 265 policemen; no official figures were given for Szczecin and Slupsk. On January 20, however, Polish newspapers revealed that 44 people had died in the December riots — 18 in Gdynia, 16 in Szczecin, nine in Gdansk and one in Elblag. It was also stated that there had been 120 injured, many seriously in Gdansk, where about 100 people were under arrest charged with looting, arson or attacking police. Unofficial estimates put the total casualties as considerably higher than those officially given (January 16-23 1971. p.24391).

Letters: Insularly aloof? (1974)

Letters to the Editors from the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Insularly aloof?

It appears that in this society you are either meek and humble, or aggressive. There is no other, no middle road under capitalism, in the world at large.

Which of the above categories do socialists come? What do socialists do outside the political arena? Do they stand insularly aloof within?

(Unsigned.)

Reply:

Socialists oppose the capitalist system uncompromisingly. Many have undergone hardships through doing so, particularly in wartime but also through adherence to their convictions at any time. We leave to our correspondent to decide whether that makes us “meek and humble” or “aggressive”.

We oppose reformist and direct-action activities which mean the banging of heads against brick walls. Addicts of those policies have accused us of “standing aloof”: we say anyone can get a sore head.

“Outside the political arena” Socialists go to work, are trade-unionists, read, watch tv, and do other common-place things.

Editors.

Lenin and lies

We have had enquiries about the source from which an article in February Socialist Standard stated that Lenin advocated “lies, trickery and deceit” as methods for Communists to use in the trade unions.

The version of Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism published by the American Communists (“Workers’ Party of America”) in the early nineteen-twenties with the title Should Communists Participate in Reactionary Trade Unions? contains the following passage:

Communist must be tactful 

There is no doubt but that the opportunist leaders of the unions will resort to all the dirty tricks of bourgeois diplomacy, invoking the help of the capitalist governments, priests, police, judges, etc., in order to prevent the Communists from penetrating into the trade unions, to force them out of the unions, to make their work within the unions as dangerous as possible, aiding the police to persecute and run them down. But we must be able to withstand all that, to be ready for any and every sacrifice, and even if necessary, to practice trickery, to employ cunning, and to resort to illegal methods, to sometimes even overlook or conceal the truth—all for the sake of penetrating into the trade unions, to stay there and by every and all means carry on the work of Communism.

This publication led to strong condemnation of Communists in America, and they found it difficult to defend these intentions laid down for them by Lenin. Consequently the Communist Party of Great Britain’s edition of Left-Wing Communism had a watered-down version of the passage, as follows:

It is necessary to be able to withstand all this, to go the whole length of any sacrifice, if need be, to resort to strategy and adroitness, illegal proceedings, reticence and subterfuge, to anything in order to penetrate into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on Communist work inside them, at any cost.

Editorial Committee

"Isolated itself from the real world"

Once again the Socialist Standard has aligned itself with the most reactionary elements in society. The article “Fascism, Violence and the Left” in the July edition was not only factually incorrect but also dangerously wrong in its analysis.

Firstly, the various left-wing groups involved in the Red Lion Square demonstration were not attacking the National Front. The left-wing groups were marching to a meeting to protest against the neo-Nazi N.F.’s march. You ignore the fact that the police only took action against the left wing demonstration. This ignoral of the police’s tacit support for the right wing and repression of the left is sadly not an isolated incident but in complete accordance with the S.P.G.B.’s record of no comment on the increasing state repression of socialists and trade unionists.

Secondly, the article gives the impression that the death of Kevin Gately was the result of the “violence of the Left”. In fact it was the police attack on the march which caused Kevin’s death. .This attack began before the N.F. had entered the square, the police were not protecting the N.F. against left-wing violence but engaging in a senseless action that even the liberal capitalist papers such as the Guardian were forced by the facts to admit was unnecessary.

The unwillingness of the S.P.G.B. to face the reality of the state’s repressive role is not an isolated phenomenon. Rather than become involved in class struggle the S.P.G.B. has remained on the outside producing a series of dogmatic dismissals of partial economic struggles, women’s lib, gay lib, fights against racism and fascism, student politics, etc.

In its rejection of any partial demand the S.P.G.B. has isolated itself from the real world and developed an internal conservative inertia. It has failed to answer the question of what should revolutionaries do in a non-revolutionary period by completely failing to intervene in such a way as to develop revolutionary consciousness and to strengthen the organisation and self-confidence of the working class. As such the S.P.G.B. has not developed in the last seventy years, degenerating into a group of philosophical utopian socialists incapable of bringing their ideas into relevance to non-socialists, only by achieving this by relating the struggle for socialism to the day to day struggles of the working class can socialist conscious develop.

G. Wright,

Wirral.

Reply:

Thank you for so ably confirming everything in our article “Fascism, Violence and the Left”.

Your rebuttal of allegedly “factually incorrect” statements consists of not facts but inferences — “tacit support”, “gives the impression”, and that we "ignore” this and that version. As a fact, we did not attribute Gately’s death to anyone. The article said: “and a young student was killed”.

It is strange you should say the SPGB does not “face the reality of the state’s repressive role” and, earlier, “increasing state repression” of socialists (so-called) and trade unionists. These events took place under a Labour government for whose return the left-wing groups in the demonstration had all worked at the last election. Who does not face reality?

The same can be said of your reiteration that through not supporting “partial economic struggle” and reformist movements the SPGB “has not developed in the last seventy years”. If — as you say — the working class now lacks revolutionary consciousness, organization and self-confidence, and — as you say — reformists and trade unionists are being repressed under the Labour government they elected, that is the outcome of seventy years of the struggles and activities you nevertheless still advocate. If it were not pernicious it would be laughable.

Editors.

Other letters and replies held over to next month through pressure on space.

The Passing Show: The Vanguard (1956)

The Passing Show Column from the August 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Vanguard

The Communist Party proudly boasts that it is “the party of the working-class," 'the vanguard of the proletariat.' It bases this claim on the fact that when members of the working-class who live in the countries of the Anglo American bloc go on strike or demand higher pay, the Communist Parties of those countries usually give them support. But this is not the real test. The real test is this—what do the Communist Parties do in those countries where they are in power? The answer is, of course, quite clear to anyone who studies the systems obtaining in those countries with an unbiassed mind—the Communist Party in power builds up a system of State Capitalism, in which the workers are denied even those elementary democratic freedoms which they have won in those countries where capitalism has been established for a longer time.

Poznan

The Communist Party's claim to be a Socialist Party rests chiefly on the sympathy they appear to extend to the workers in countries where they do not form the government. But if this makes the Communists into supporters of Socialism, it also makes all the other ruling classes in the world into Socialists.

For example, when there are any disturbances or strikes in Communist-dominated countries, the Press in the Western countries immediately leaps to defend the strikers. The authorities in the Communist-dominated country (just like the authorities in any other country, when faced with a similar situation) allege that all the trouble is caused by agitators. But the supporters of the ruling class in the Western world claim that the real reason is the oppression of the working class. After the recent riots in Poznan, the Sunday Times—an avowed supporter of capitalism—had this to say (1-7-56):

“For the cause of the riots was primarily economic. They were an outburst of discontent by over-driven, underfed industrial workers. Suggestions that they were the result of long planning by 'imperialist agents' are discounted by authoritative observers in the West and Poland itself."

Kind Words Cost Nothing

How easy it is for a ruling class, or its supporters, to sympathize with the victims of oppression by a rival ruling class! This kind of sympathy has nothing to do with Socialism, or with the support for the international working-class. It is simply a part of the cold war. The British ruling class weeps crocodile tears for the sufferings of the workers—on the other side of the Iron Curtain; and the Russian ruling class loudly bemoans the fate of the workers—on this side of the barrier. The Communist Parties of the Western World are simply the agents of the Russian ruling class in this propaganda war.

Redundancy

The British Motor Corporation has decided that 6,000 of its workers are redundant, and has sacked them on the spot, giving them a week’s pay in lieu of notice. This action seems unnecessarily arbitrary, so much so that even the Conservative Chancellor, Mr. MacMillan, and the Minister of Labour, Mr. MacLeod, have indulged in some finger-wagging at the B.M.C. The unions feebly say they ought to have been consulted first; as if a man is any less unemployed because discussions have gone on about him before he got the sack. Several factories went on strike as soon as the news spread; and subsequently the leaders of all the unions concerned met and recommended a withdrawal of all labour from the British Motor Corporation from July 23rd.

But what the union leaders appear to have overlooked is that in this kind of situation a strike may play into the hands of the employers. At the present time too many cars are being produced for the economic demand; production is running at too high a level. A strike will reduce production again; it is equivalent to the B.M.C. sacking all its workers for a week or two, or however long the strike lasts, without pay or compensation of any kind. Indeed, the action of the B.M.C. was so abrupt that it raises the question whether the corporation did not intend to precipitate a strike by its employees.

Impasse

But what else can the workers do in this situation. The answer is—Nothing. Under capitalism the workers always get the thick end of the stick. In some circumstances the workers can use the weapon of strike action to defend their standards of living and even to raise them; but when the employers have more labour-power than they can use, it is a bad time for the workers to strike. The only way the workers can bring about a lasting and worthwhile improvement in their conditions is to abolish capitalism and create, in its place, a Socialist society.

“Towards” Equality

From 1945 to 1951 the Labour Party was in power in this country, and it constantly proclaimed that it was pushing through a social revolution. The constant reply of the Socialist Party—which looks not at what men say, but at what they do—was “what revolution?” And now the Labour Party itself seems to have come round to the same point of view. For it has recently issued a new pamphlet "Towards Equality" and in it is contained the remarkable admission that after six years of Labour Government “half Britain’s wealth is still owned by one per cent. of the population while half the nation own little more than their personal and household effects" (Reynolds News, 8-7-56). This pattern of property-distribution—with the small Capitalist class owning vast amounts of wealth, and the large working class owning hardly anything—is the same as it was in 1945, before the Labour Party came to power, and in 1951, after it had carried through all its reforms. The Labour Party made no change at all in the Capitalist nature of society; it turned various industries over from private to State Capitalism—but Capitalist they remained. Has the Labour Party learned anything from its failure in 1945-51? Judging by the pamphlet, it has not. The old panaceas are trotted out—better pensions, higher family allowances, industrial democracy (whatever that might be in a capitalist society)—they are all there. The Labour Party has nothing better to offer than further doses of the reformist medicine which (as its pamphlet now virtually admits) failed so abysmally last time.

Touching Tale

From the Evening Standard, 21-6-56:

“The 71-year-old Duchess of Leinster has been telling my reporter why she has settled in Jersey, where income tax is 4s. in the pound and where there are no death duties. It is, she said, ‘ a mother’s duty.'

“Living here is my only chance of helping my children,’ added the Duchess. ’If you have got any feelings for your family, you will do everything possible to safeguard their future.'"

The older members of the working class who are now surviving (living is too strong a word) on the Old Age Pension, and who would be profoundly thankful to have an income on which it was possible to pay income tax, may be interested to hear about the Duchess. It is clear that this kind of parental affection is confined to members of the upper class. You never hear of aged workers retiring to Jersey on the grounds that red wine is 3s. 6d. a litre, expensive cars cost £700 less than in London, and petrol is a third cheaper—further reasons given by the Duchess for her move. But though driven from her homeland by excessive taxation, the Duchess is still one jump ahead of the workhouse. Her son-in-law and daughter (the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, as readers will know), bought the 24-roomed farmhouse where she is living for £18,000, and are spending £10,000 on renovations.

"In a fortnight’s time the.Duchess is going away on a 10-week caravan holiday on the Continent. The 18-foot caravan has been built to her design. Her chef and his wife will be going, too."

Which forms a pleasant contrast to the charity Day’s Outing to Southend, which is the corresponding treat enjoyed by aging members of the useful class in society.

Alwyn Edgar

The Class Struggle in India (1949)

From the July 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

For nearly 200 years, India was under British rule. Throughout these years the workers of India were exploited and oppressed and any attempt by them to resist was met with brutal suppression from the British ruling class. The mass shootings at Amritsar in 1919, Bombay in 1921, Calcutta in 1930, Cawnpore in 1931 and Karachi in 1935 are but a few instances of the treatment handed out to Indian workers by their British masters. As Lord Brentford said in 1925:

“ We did not conquer India for the benefit of the Indians . . . We conquered India by the sword, and by the sword we shall hold it.”

For many years the Indian workers have struggled against foreign oppression. Under leaders like Gandhi and Nehru they have striven for national independence. They have used hunger strikes, passive resistance, demonstrations, strikes' and other weapons in the struggle. They have been heroic. Now that they have had their much desired national independence for some short time, we can take a look at the situation and learn a few things.

When a foreign conqueror dominates a country, he either exterminates or subordinates the native population. If the conqueror ushers in capitalism and the people of the country are at a low stage of social development, there will be no place for them in the process of capitalist production. They will be thrust aside as were the Red Indians of America and the Maoris of New Zealand. If they are not exterminated, but are allowed to live side by side with people of a higher stage of social development, the rate of their own social development will be hastened. But, at first, such people do not fit into a system of factory production or commercial enterprise. If, on the other hand, the people of the country have arrived at a stage of development that makes it possible to exploit them, then they will be exploited. When the people of a foreign—capitalist—dominated country can be proletarianised, they will be absorbed into capitalist industry as it develops in their country.

A few of the local population, either because of the position they held before the foreign domination, or because they have been able to take advantage of some chance that the new capitalism offered, will constitute a native capitalist class. This minority will, in time, find itself hampered by the capitalists of the ruling power. These native capitalists will want to control their own system of taxation and to regulate their own tariffs. They will resent a large share of the proceeds of the exploitation of the workers going into the coffers of foreigners. They will resist the continued rule from some other part of the world. To resist successfully they must have the support of the majority of their working class countrymen. Hence, there is built a nationalist movement in which all those who consider that they have a common interest as nationals, will gather and struggle. This is what has happened in such countries as Egypt, Ireland and India. The years of cruel struggle in India have resulted in the achievement of national independence and the arrangement agreed to at the Commonwealth talks in London during April of this year.

What is the position of the workers in India now that this state of national independence has been achieved? Are they free from exploitation and oppression? Are their conditions of life improved? What have they gained from the struggle? We can see, what socialists have always seen, that “India for the Indians” has been a rallying cry to muster the workers under the banner of a group of native exploiters in an endeavour to throw off the yoke of the foreign ones. With the battle won, the workers find that they have got rid of one bunch of tyrants only to be subjugated to another one which speaks their own language and has their same coloured skin, and which can be as brutal and merciless as were the British.

David Raymond, writing about Nehru in Reynold's News (April 24th, 1949) sums up the matter briefly. He

says:

“So long as the fight was for independence it had an aim that united all, rich and poor, exploiter and exploited.”

He also says of Nehru that:

“He has many times written and spoken to the effect that India will not be free until her millions —many of them constantly on the verge of starvation—are free from exploitation by their landlords and by their own capitalists, whom he once described as 'quite amazingly backward'. "

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru came to this country this year to negotiate an arrangement which will give the Indian capitalist class freedom to exploit Indian workers without interference from Whitehall, whilst at the same time conserving to them some of the advantages to be gained from being linked to the “British Commonwealth of Nations.” The Congress Party, which was the backbone of the Nationalist Movement, now forms the government of India, of which Nehru is the head.

The Congress Government in India today is continuing the beatings, shootings, wholesale imprisonment and brutal treatment of the native workers with as great ferocity as did the British. From the Trade Union Record, monthly bulletin of the All-India Trade Union Congress, we get information of the treatment handed out to Indian workers by Indian capitalists and their henchmen. In the issue for March, 1949, we read that,

“. . . Trade Union offices have been broken into, ransacked, records confiscated and the offices sealed . . .”

"Besides the hundreds of Trade Union workers arrested during the last twelve months, more than 2,000 have been arrested during the last fortnight alone.”

Acts have been passed by the central and provincial governments which virtually deprive the workers of the right to strike. The government proposes to amend the Indian Trade Unions Act of 1926 in a manner that will withdraw the freedom to organise from many workers.

Continuously rising prices are giving rise to much discontent and a large number of strikes. Compulsory arbitration has been imposed but trade union officials have been arrested before, and even during, the arbitration proceedings. The same issue of the Trade Union Report states.

"More workers have been killed by bullets in the last one year and a half than in any other period of Indian history.”

In a previous issue of this bulletin, a report from Assam, the country of tea plantations, referring to the month of June, 1948, states,

“In the course of the last month more Trade Unionists have been put behind the prison bars in Assam than even within a year of the worst days of British rule.”

During those days of British rule we often heard of Indian workers being charged and beaten with lathis (bamboo sticks). We still learn of similar instances.

". . . when a deputation of the workers (of the Naivasal Mohamed Hussain Tannery works at Vaniambadi) started to go to the management to make representations they were severely lathi-charged. Twenty workers, including four office bearers of the Union, were arrested and beaten.” 

The general situation is summed up in the following statement from the same source,

“During the last two years the Government has more than once displayed its desire to 'meet the legitimate demands of their employees and other workers’ with lathis, tear gas, bullets and jail.”

This position is not peculiar to India. Wherever a native ruling class has ousted a foreign one it has always been as eager as its predecessors to extract the maximum amount of wealth from the labours of its workers. It will be equally as ruthless in the process and often, being less experienced, will be more crude in its methods. For the workers, the remedy lies not in supporting one national section of the capitalist class against another, but in abolishing all exploiting classes, native and foreign.

There is one thing that emerges from these struggles within capitalism. Out of the turmoil between conflicting sections of the capitalist class and the striving of the workers for political elbow room, there develops the modern type of democratic government with an ever-widening franchise. Thus is formed within capitalism the weapons that the workers can use for its overthrow. When the working class realises the futility of supporting class society in any form, it will find that out of the welter of class conflict has emerged the instrument which can be used to wipe away class domination and privilege—the franchise.

We are often told by our fellow workers from different parts of the world, particularly by our coloured colleagues, that the Socialist solution is too remote. They cannot wait for the day when the workers of the world will overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. They are being ruthlessly exploited by foreign capitalists and subjected to brutal oppression. They need a speedy remedy. Their answer is contained in these extracts from an Indian Trade Union journal. No matter how the workers struggle within capitalism, they will remain an exploited and oppressed class. Socialism is not just the speediest remedy, it is the only remedy.

A slave is no less a slave when he has changed masters.

W. Waters

World View: Sierra Leone (2000)

From the June 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

(We publish below an email we received on 9 May from a political party in Sierra Leone (the SPSL—Socialist Party of Sierra Leone—with which we have some contact) and which provides some first-hand information on what has been happening there.)

I am afraid we have lost a comrade, Abu Koroma. He died early this morning as a result of multiple wounds sustained during a peace demonstration we had yesterday with all other political parties and civic organizations. Two other members, comrades Nim Dixon and Opah Thomas are still recovering. Dixons case is a bit serious and all is being done to save their lives. British forces are here and I saw them around the beach taking position today. They are only providing security for the diplomatic and wealthy areas, we the poors are left to the mercy of the rebels. There is still lots of shooting going on in the city and no one seems able to stop it. We have locked the office and we have removed all our little belongings for safe-keeping around the beach, to be exact at Cape Sierra hotel.

Hope to keep in touch if there is power and if I can get to a computer.

Army shoots schoolkids in Gambia

(A correspondent in West Africa writes about an incident in Gambia in April during which at least 16 school students were shot down by the security forces and which went virtually unreported in the press.)

Perhaps, for a country considered to be the Lilliputian of sub-Sahara Africa, Gambia was the most unlikely place for such mayhem to have occurred. Commentators had concluded that, with the military coup in Ivory coast, the last haven of Africa had lost its decorum. In the words of Achebe, the Nigerian writer, things had fallen apart and the centre could no longer hold.

Gambia, the lowest spot in West Africa, almost below sea level, had until now seen itself as the haven of peace in Africa. For decades it has used as its national slogan “Gambia No Problem”, meaning the land and its people were at peace with one another.

In Gambia today questions are piling up as to why the darling of peace let go its steam almost without notice. On the morning of 10 April students called attention to the years or decades of wrongs handed out to them by the capitalist system. Two pivotal events highlighted their case: the rape of a female student by a paramilitary officer during the inter-school athletics meet at the National Stadium and the broad-day killing of a schoolboy by six fire service officers.

In the opinion of the students, there was something seriously faulty with a system that allows a security officer to openly rape a student and proudly walk away dusting his uniform. But then, they said, a system is morally moronic that allows a teacher to go beyond the confines of his school in reporting a male student to the fire service and not to the school principal.

Six fire service officers then took it upon themselves to punish the boy by first physically assaulting him, then they made him carry bags of cement for long periods. As a result of the brutal punishment the boy was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. The students demanded justice, and then came the pathologist’s long-awaited report, “the boy died from natural causes”. For the aggrieved students that was not only a miscarriage of justice, it was equally a denial of justice. The writing was on the wall; everyone saw it except the capitalist masters who thought a show of strength would be sufficient to calm the protesting students.

The authorities got their calculations woefully wrong. By 8 am the students had stamped their willingness to protest and their loss of confidence in a system that reduced them to anything but human. The Head of State was in Cuba attending the Group of 77’s summit hosted by Fidel Castro. The protest started peacefully with students chanting their displeasure, carrying placards and banners.

The security operatives went into full gear by firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Instead of dispersing the students, this hardened their resolve to defend and die for what they believed in. The security forces were rudely awakened from their nest of slumber. More troops were brought to beef up their strength, they used live ammunition to shoot students, they beat them and molested female students. But amidst the armament employed against them the students stood their ground.

They went on the rampage, burned down four police stations; they caused physical harm to public and private properties including transportation, telephone outlets, stores and shops. What actually baffled the custodians of the capitalist system was how unarmed students were able to withstand the firepower of the security forces and still wreak such destruction–unique in the country’s history–to property.

The message was clear, from Beijing, Berlin, to Seattle, to Banjul, the days of the totalitarian era are over. Man cannot rule man against his will. The breeze of change was blowing across the face of Gambia and it was high time its capitalist leaders took note.

Unfortunately, and as expected, afterwards came the time for the capitalist leaders to apportion blame. The opposition came in for a blasting, they had “instigated and motivated” the students to demonstrate in an effort to bring the government down. But did the students have to demonstrate, did 16 of their colleagues–according to a government estimate–have to die with dozens wounded in all shape and form? Was it politically motivated or were the students only trying to vent their frustration with a rotten system?

To better understand the dynamics of everyone collaborating in the death of those students, it needs to be appreciated that, irrespective of where it occurs, the lords of capitalism are never at ease with themselves when the working masses venture or attempt to take their destiny into their own hands. Every and all effort will be exhausted to muzzle and nip it in the bud.

The problem was a Gambian one, but has a universal appeal. Masters are uneasy when servants are awake.

Daniel Wah

Guns and coffee in El Salvador (1981)

From the June 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the defeat of the American-backed dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979, the American ruling class has been concerned that the testing-ground for the “domino” theory would shift from Southeast Asia to its own backyard, Central America. Would Guatemala and El Salvador be the next countries to instal new rulers who were less well-disposed towards the US? In El Salvador, in particular, massive American military aid is being used to maintain in power a ferociously repressive junta.

Since the late nineteenth century, El Salvador has been a leading coffee grower and exporter. In the 1880s, with the help of conveniently passed laws, Indian communities were uprooted from their land and large coffee plantations were formed. Many former peasants became seasonal workers on the coffee estates, able to find employment only between November and March. Since 1930, there has been much urban industrial development, largely in the form of capital-intensive export industries owned by US corporations such as Exxon, Texaco and Westinghouse Electric. But El Salvador remains a predominantly agricultural country.

It is also a land of great poverty and inequality. The entire economy — agriculture, finance, industry — is dominated by a tiny elite of fourteen families. Two per cent of the population controls over sixty per cent of the cultivable land. At the other extreme, only one peasant family in twenty owns enough land to support themselves, while on 1974 figures over forty per cent of urban wage-workers were earning less than the legal minimum of around five pounds a week. About half of El Salvador’s infants die of malnutrition or related ailments before their first birthday. Such is the status quo the American government is defending, to the tune of ten million dollars in 1980-1.

For half a century El Salvador has been ruled by one military dictatorship after another. In 1930, in the midst of the world depression, the candidate of the reformist Labour Party was elected President, only to be overthrown by the army in the following year. In 1932, after the so-called Communist Party had won some local elections, the generals refused to recognise the result and a large-scale peasant uprising took place. It was put down brutally: between twenty and thirty thousand people were killed (equal to between one and two per cent of the total population!). Since then, the government has been in the possession of a series of different factions of the army and the fourteen families, with some mock elections but no political democracy. Since 1960, many peasants have been won to support of the the regime in power by means of a rural paramilitary body known as the National Democratic Organisation, or ORDEN. Its members were helped to avoid the worst poverty by means of such “favours” as special credit terms, preference in employment, or extra health care. ORDEN members acted as informers against suspected subversives in the villages. Thus many potential opponents were recruited as bulwarks of the government.

The Christian Democrat Party was founded in I960. In 1972 their presidential candidate was deprived of electoral victory by yet another army coup. By this time, guerrilla organisations were being formed in the countryside, aimed at resisting ORDEN and, in the long run, at taking over the government themselves. Besides ORDEN, there are other pro-regime terrorist groups ranged against the guerrillas. In addition, there is a veritable plethora of “left-wing” opposition groupings of various kinds, religious, political, trade-union, student. Since April 1980, these have come together in the Revolutinary Democratic Front (FDR).

The current Salvadoran government came to power in a coup in October 1979, when the Christian Democrats and a section of the army overthrew the existing military regime. The new junta promised “radical reforms”, and set up a cabinet involving civilian ministers. However, it immediately proclaimed a state of emergency and banned meetings of more than three people. Clearly the junta was not even superficially different from—let alone better than—the outright military dictatorships that preceded it. By the end of 1979, the junta w.as openly backing its own terrorist organisations. In 1980 El Salvador entered a period of civil war. On the one side were the army and the other state-run terrorists (supported and trained by the Americans) and on the other the guerrillas, backed by opposition movements and, supposedly, supplied with arms by Cuba. In the first nine months of 1980 alone, five thousand Salvadorans were killed in the fighting.

What are the two sides fighting for? The government and the army are defending the existing order and the interests of the present ruling élite, the Salvadoran capitalist class, and the American companies who own much of Salvadoran industry. The American military aid is designed to protect the massive profits of these US companies, and to defend America’s strategic interests in Central America. The guerrillas are a nationalist movement, fighting against United States control of the Salvadoran economy and government, and aiming to establish Salvadoran state capitalism. This is apparent from an examination of the “Programmatic Platform of the Revolutionary Democratic Government”, issued in February 1980 by the Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the Masses, the umbrella grouping of guerrilla organisations.

The platform calls for widespread nationalisation of the banking and finance system, of foreign trade, of electricity distribution, of petroleum refining. It is stated, though, that “None of this will affect small or medium-sized private businesses, which will be given all kinds of stimulus and support in the various branches of the national economy”. There will be an agrarian reform, and the tax system will supposedly be transformed “so that tax payments no longer fall upon the workers”. (As taxes are a burden only on the capitalist class anyway, this transformation is difficult to envisage.) There will be wage regulation, price controls, increased social services, no unemployment . . . It all sounds quite impressive, till you realise that you’ve heard it all before from politicians elsewhere, and that the supposed benefits of nationalisation never quite permeate to the workers. State-run enterprises will still be concerned with making a profit and the platform admits as much: “the state will receive substantial income from the activity of the nationalised sector of the economy”. They will still be subject to the ups and downs of the world markets, in coffee for instance. As elsewhere, nationalised industries will be concerned to keep profits up by keeping wages down, and to discharge workers when what they produce cannot be sold profitably.

The workers and peasants of HI Salvador have nothing to gain by supporting the opposition groups or guerrillas, who will simply become their new rulers and exploiters. The platform we have discussed aims at no radical transformation of society: it envisages the continuation and further development of capitalism in El Salvador, a society of haves and have-nots. The change will be in the personnel of the ruling class, and a change from private to predominantly state capitalism. And that makes no difference to anyone but the capitalists themselves.

Paul Bennett

Notes by the Way: Fallen Idol Department (1957)

The Notes by the Way Column from the January 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Fallen Idol Department

Every crisis stimulates a brisk trade in fallen idols and models of new supermen. The cynical commentators, shedding a few crocodile tears as they hurry away the clay feet and big heads to the junk yard or the House of Lords, get on with the fascinating task of telling the public who will clean up the mess and lead them on and on and up and up to new crises. It is only a short while since the Tories were congratulating themselves on having got rid of the old war-horse, Churchill, and replacing him with the glamorous, virile, vote winning Eden. Now, if the Press reports are to be believed, they only don’t get rid of Eden because they can’t find anyone who even looks a likely candidate for supermanship. One commentator, Mr. Alistair Forbes, of the Sunday Dispatch (who was early in the demand to shelve Churchill and put in Eden) now does not know which way to turn. In his Column on December 9, he says that Eden only remains leader because, though considered “the worst Prime Minister we could now have”—except Gaitskell—the Tories can’t find a successor.

 “Sir Anthony no doubt hopes that the usual Tory difficulties about finding someone who can be all things to all Tories, if not all men, will keep him in office. Certainly many Tories must feel that if only Mr. Jo Grimond was a Conservative and not a Liberal, their troubles would be over.”

And before Labourites break out into derisive laughter about these troubles of the Tories they might recall that it is only a few years ago that many of them were wishing Eden would join the Labour Party.

Is it Inflation?

The answer, according to the “experts,” is yes, or no, or maybe. The Daily Telegraph had an editorial with the title “ Not Inflation.” (8/12/56).

Next day the City Editor of the Sunday Dispatch, writing under the heading, “Inflation Prospect Brings in Buyers,” explained why Stock Exchange prices had risen smartly:—

  "No doubt it was the realisation that we are at the beginning of another period of inflation which persuaded some of the big institutional buyers to come into the market” 

On the same day (December 9), another City Editor (Empire News) plumped for inflation, but the City Editor of the Sunday Times was cautiously non-committal. Under the heading "Inflation or Deflation” he posed the question “Are we in for a period of renewed inflation or deflation?” He quoted the opinion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that “inflation was still the greatest danger,” but asked “ Is he right?”

His one really definite commitment was that the recent rumours of a further devaluation of the pound were "nonsense.” We shall see; remembering that while no Government absolutely has to devalue its currency—it is merely a choice of methods for dealing with a problem —the temptation to do so may prove irresistible as it did for the Labour Government in 1949. Faced with trade union pressure for higher wages on the one side and increased foreign trade competition on the other, the present Government, like Attlee’s in 1949, may decide for devaluation. It would solve nothing permanently, but it would give a fillip to exports and at the same time cause the cost of living to rise gradually and let wages rise with it.

In the meantime the Government goes on increasing the currency with another £50 million issue early in December. The Financial Times (7/12/56) expected that a further £50 million would be authorised before Xmas, which would constitute a highest ever, at £2,000 million, some four times the pre-war level.

Nehru’s Cyprus and Hungary

Nehru won’t discuss independence with the Naga tribesmen of Assam for the same reason that the British Government won’t discuss with Makarios the independence of Cyprus—they are two areas of great strategic importance and in both areas the resistance has proved more obstinate than was expected. From Delhi the Times reports:—

 "Mr. B. N. Datar, of the Home Ministry, replying to questions in Parliament, claimed that the movement for full independence in the Naga Hills district was 'fizzing out,' but he said that road convoys and outposts were still being sniped at, patrols ambushed, headmen and other loyal villagers kidnapped, and food and money extorted.. . . Some 686 malcontents had been killed since the beginning of operations and a further 146 were presumed killed.”—(Times, December 8, 1956.)

Nehru’s admirers have been embarrassed by his reluctance to condemn the Russian invasion of Hungary and his refusal to support a United Nation’s proposal for internationally supervised elections in that country. He has good reason for this attitude since the Russian excuse that they were asked to intervene by the Hungarian puppet government, is identical with the way Indian troops occupied large areas of Kashmir as a preliminary to the declaration that Kashmir is now part of India. As the Economist reports "to agitate in favour of Pakistan is to be guilty of sedition. A number of the leaders' of the opposition Plebiscite Front are under arrest. Above all, Sheikh Abdulla himself remains! in jail, where he has been for three years without trial.” (Economist, November 24,1956).

Now the Pakistani Foreign Minister accuses Nehru of wanting "to establish a brown imperialism.” (Daily Telegraph, December 8, 1956). Of course Pakistan wants Kashmir itself and thinks a Plebiscite would lead to that result. Nehru, having pledged himself to a Plebiscite, now repudiates it

Nehru has denied the charge that his preaching of principles that he won’t practice can be described as a “Holier than Thou ” attitude. One wonders why.

And what about Tito?

Some of the muddle-heads who, tired of Stalin worship, transferred their affections to that “good Democrat and Socialist Tito.” Now a Belgrade lawyer has been sentenced to three years’ hard labour “on a charge of spreading hostile propaganda by criticising the Yugoslav regime. The prosecutor in the district court . . . said that Djordjevic had declared, while in a barber’s shop in February, 1955, that there was no freedom in Yugoslavia now, but there had been before the war.” (Manchester Guardian, December 8, 1956).

That’ll teach him that there is freedom under Tito! 

The Black Inquisition and the Red

Cardinal Mindszenfy, Catholic Cardinal in Hungary, who was kept in jail for seven years, described to the Daily Mail (December 8) how he was tortured to make him confess to his "Communist” jailers. .

"For 29 full days it lasted—29 days and nights without sleep. The naked bulb in his cell was kept burning. When he collapsed from exhaustion he was promptly revived so that he would be deprived of even the rest of lost consciousness.”

A few days earlier two Americans, who had been in Spain checking up on the brutality of the Government of that Catholic gentleman Franco, reported in the People (2/12/56)), about a worker they called Eugenio.

“When he was taken to the Direccion General de Seguridad—Spain’s equivalent to Gestapo H.Q.—no specific charge was laid against him. Eugenio described this underground hell. Many of the cells measure only three feet by three feet. It is impossible to lie down. Eugenio spent weeks in one of them curled up like a dog.”

Are you Hungarian and under 18 ?

Last August when the Hungarian Government was making its first experiments with letting M.P.’s voice public criticisms of the way things were run, a woman deputy drew attention to the practice in textile factories of making young people under 18 work at night. The responsible Minister did not deny the charge that the law was being broken but said that workers under 18 could only be gradually exempted from night work. He made the point that a number of workers, including expectant mothers, had already been exempted and it would appear that he was defending the employment of some young workers at night on the ground of the difficulty of replacing them if the law were enforced fully and at once.

If there happen to be any Hungarian refugees under age 18 who find employment on British railways they may find that in one respect things are just the same as at home.

The following is from the Manchester Guardian (December 8, 1956):

“The British Transport Commission was fined a total of £92 on 23 summonses, and ordered to pay 10 guineas costs at Bristol yesterday for employing fifteen junior railway firemen, aged under 18, on night work. It was convicted of five similar offences in March, when it was fined £10.

“Mr. P. C. Wreay, prosecuting, said that the evidence showed “a deliberate and continuous flouting” of the law. It was admitted that there were considerable staffing difficulties.

“Mr. M. Corkery, for the Commission, said that it was deeply concerned about the matter. .In spite of difficulties, it was doing everything possible to avoid using young men on night work.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Blessings of British Imperialism (1939)

From the April 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two interesting letters appeared in the Manchester Guardian Weekly (January 20th, 1939). Both of them dealt with the same subject: the suppression of native political rights in the British Empire, but while one referred to Cyprus, the other was concerned with Kenya.

In his letter, “Cypriot" wrote: “No one acquainted with Cyprus affairs is unaware that the present autocratic rule favours a small number of people. I remember when in the summer of 1936 there was a strike by the Skouriotissa miners everything was done by the police and other officials to suppress the strike. The committee of the strikers were arrested, and after considerable time in gaol they were charged with organising a meeting without the permission of the district commissioner. . . . An official committee set not long ago to investigate the living conditions of the villagers, recommended that the heavy municipal taxes on rural products should be reduced. Up to the present nothing has been done to this effect, and the Press can make no comment on the delay."

“Cypriot" makes the further charge that in the past two years censorship has existed from time to time in various forms. The Press has been censored; also “two years ago there was the postal censorship. Even invitations to a wedding, a funeral or any other social event had to be censored. No meetings of any nature (even athletic) are allowed without the previous permission of the District Commissioners. The police in Cyprus can obtain an order from the Court for the banishment to a remote village of any individual whose activities are suspected not to be in favour of the Government. Nearly all the provisions of the Defence Order (which amounts to martial law) have been incorporated into statutes similar to those in force in the totalitarian states."

The letter on the subject of “Native Rights in Kenya" tells the same tale of suppression. The writer, after quoting laws in force in Kenya, sums up the effect they have in these words:—

“These, in practice, mean that meetings may not be held without the permission of the district commissioner or headman."

He refers to a case when several natives, returning home from church, were arrested and punished, on the ground that, being more than five in number, they constituted a meeting. "In his summing-up, the judge concluded that a meeting had been held because more than five persons were present, and though he expressly stated that the objects of the meeting did not appear to be dangerous, the meeting itself constituted an offence."

Believers in the British Empire and the liberty it bestows on natives need not, however, despair entirely; Africans are not discouraged from attending either football matches or Salvation Army meetings.

The snag is, unfortunately, that the natives are not altogether satisfied with those concessions, because, the writer states, “they are not regarded as acceptable substitutes for the right to form trade unions, co-operative societies, and other organisations to protect African political, economic and cultural rights."

Since it is chiefly to the British worker that we address our message, we would urge him to ask himself why such suppression is necessary. Is it because the British worker, himself, wishes it? Or is it because capitalism requires such suppression, so that the exploitation of natives can go on uninterrupted?

If he decides for the second reason, it is his duty to join with us in the work of abolishing a system of society which causes such brutality, and of establishing Socialism which will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or colour.

Clifford Allen

More Blessings of British Imperialism (1939)

From the September 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the February issue of the Socialist Standard we gave evidence of the plight of the coloured workers in the West Indies. In the April issue we drew attention to the way natives were being suppressed in the British colonies of Cyprus and Kenya.

News of brutal suppression comes now from Sierra Leone. Mr. George Padmore, General Secretary of the International African Service Bureau, tells of the state of affairs in Sierra Leone in a letter to the Manchester Guardian Weekly (June 16th, 1939).

A few extracts from his letter seem to indicate that the freedom so often boasted of in connection with the British Empire is unknown in Sierra Leone. Here are a few points from his letter : —

“During the past months a number of strikes have occurred in the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone, British colonies in West Africa. In Sierra Leone the workers’ leaders were arrested and kept in prison for one month and eight days without trial, in order to demoralise the strikers and force them back to work. All these efforts at official intimidation have, however, been without success. In order to arrest the development of free trade unionism and to curb political activities of the workers, an attempt to impose upon the natives the most repressive legislation is now being made.”

Laws are about to be passed by the Legislative Council (“a body on which the workers have no representation on account of the property qualifications, which exclude them”). The results of these laws, says Padmore, will be : —

“1. Where natives of Sierra Leone are sentenced to deportation they will be segregated in special areas in concentration camps, and if they or their family are in possession of any kind of means compelled to contribute to their maintenance there.”

“2. Any British subject (Englishman, Scot, Australian, West Indian, etc.) who renders any assistance to native workers and peasants in Sierra Leone in forming trade unions or co-operative societies can be arrested and deported from the colony.”

“3. The Undesirable Literature Ordinance will empower the Governor to prohibit the publication, importation, circulation and reading in the colony of any book, pamphlet, newspaper, magazine or any other kind of literature which in his opinion is undesirable. The possession of such proscribed literature will constitute a criminal offence punishable by two years’ imprisonment.”

“4. The ordinance outlining penalties for incitement to disaffection is aimed at subduing agitation among the armed forces. In Sierra Leone unrest is widespread, not only among the industrial workers, but throughout the Civil Services and armed forces. The new ordinance will prevent any soldier from purchasing and reading of his own will any book even so remotely revolutionary as George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism.’ . . . All persons and premises may be searched upon suspicion of harbouring such literature or being connected with agitation, by force if necessary.”

It will be noticed that the authorities in Sierra Leone, in order to keep their coloured wage-slaves in subjection, are using methods which, we are told, are foreign to “the democratic spirit of Britain,” but peculiar to the Fascist states.

Mr. George Padmore ends his letter by asking those “British people who value their own liberties and respect those of other nationals” to send letters of protest to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

We sympathise with the natives of Sierra Leone, but we are afraid that little can be achieved on their behalf by sending letters of protest.

The British are in Sierra Leone to exploit the natives, to make profits for a parasite capitalist class, and make profits they will, even if this means untold suffering for thousands.

If the workers of Britain wish to end the suffering now forced upon natives within the Empire, they will have to end their own sufferings also. They will have to take matters into their own hands. They will have to gain control of the machinery of government with the express purpose of abolishing capitalism, for, as long as capitalism lasts, brutality in many forms will be found. This is only to be expected when to-day there is a class in society which lives on the backs of the workers, which lives by exploiting them. Profits must be produced to enable our exploiters to live in idleness and luxury—that is a law of capitalism. What the consequences are for the millions of toilers is of little importance to the capitalists. As long as the profits are forthcoming, the workers can live in poverty, dwell in slums, be blown to bits in war. If the workers acquiesce in capitalism, they must expect brutalities, every day and everywhere.

Incidentally, what hope one can place in “protests” to help the natives of Sierra Leone can be seen from a letter to the Manchester Guardian Weekly, published in the very same issue as Mr. Padmore’s. It is from “A British Resident” in Cyprus and deals with affairs there. The writer complains that the intervention attempted by the Manchester Guardian on behalf of the natives some months ago has been fruitless. He writes: —

“In December last you called, in a leading article, for action by Parliament. Some questions were asked, which were more or less unsatisfactorily answered; but since then nothing has been done, though things have tended to become more and more repressive, especially in regard to attempts to form trade unions.”

In Cyprus, he says, “newspapers have been suppressed, partially and entirely, or placed under censorship, without the offence being specified, and without the offender being given a chance to argue his case before a responsible tribunal.”

It is clear that the British capitalist class is being hypocritical when it directs the attention of their workers to the brutalities performed in Germany, China and other states.

To those workers who are growing tired of their own exploitation and would like to bring a speedy end to the brutal suppression which capitalism causes everywhere, we extend an invitation. We invite them to join with us in our struggle for Socialism—a system of society which will bring to an end their own exploitation and “will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex.”

Clifford Allen.

Since the above was written there comes news of still further strife within this glorious Empire of “ours.” The Evening Standard (June 17th, 1939) reports that: “Renewed strike troubles in Jamaica led to a pitched fight in one of Kingston’s main thoroughfares. The fighting lasted an hour, and I was ended when police fired warning shots over the heads of the crowd.”

And it is this “one big, happy family” (the British Empire) you are asked to lose your life in defending. Remember that, Fellow Worker !