The hollow cry of ‘self-determination’ in a world of borders (2026)

From the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The air is thick with the rhetoric of ‘self-determination.’ From the hallowed halls of the United Nations to the televised addresses of national leaders, the principle that ‘all peoples have the right to freely determine their political status’ is touted as a moral absolute. Yet, for the global working class, this ‘right’ is nothing more than a cruel joke—a deceptive mask worn by the state to protect the interests of the ruling class.

The hypocrisy of the nation-state

The very states that harp on about self-determination are the ones that have historically opposed it whenever it threatened their own economic or military interests. For example, British imperial history is a masterclass in this hypocrisy; the idea of self-determination was seen as a direct threat to the control of colonies essential for economic benefits, military strategy, and international prestige.

Even today, the nation-state remains a ‘prison house of nationalities’. Leaders preach the moral superiority of national self-determination over sovereignty to justify their own territorial claims or to undermine rivals, yet they remain the routine managers of a capitalist system that thrives on exploitation.

The myth of national interest

Socialists maintain that there is no such thing as a ‘national interest’ that includes both the exploiter and the exploited. The nation-state is a territorial entity that identifies itself with a particular ‘people’ only to better manage them for the benefit of the capitalist class. When workers are told to wave national flags, they are being encouraged to block the path to any higher human synthesis and to ignore the fact that they have no fatherland to defend.

In this elemental chaos, the state uses nationalism and racism as tools to divide the working class, making more privileged groups feel that their interests lie with their masters rather than their fellow workers.

The real victim: working-class self-determination

While leaders argue over where to draw lines on a map, the true self-determination of the working class is systematically trampled. We define real socialism as a society where production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and organised for the benefit of all.

Under the current system:

• Freedom is an illusion: workers are forced to sell their labour power for a wage, which entails providing the unpaid labour that forms the basis of capitalist wealth.
• Democratic rights are suppressed: governments and unions often cultivate a myth of an all-powerful government while insisting that nothing can be done about the systemic inequalities of capitalism.
• Solidarity is sabotaged: by emphasising national boundaries, the state ensures that workers of different nations view each other as competitors rather than allies against a common enemy.

A world without borders

We affirm that capitalism is incapable of meaningful change in the interests of the majority. The struggle for national liberation is frequently a trap; when a new national bourgeoisie takes power, the working class finds itself exploited by a new set of masters and mistresses under a new flag.

Our goal is not the ‘self-determination’ of new states, but the abolition of the state itself. We advocate for a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society – a frontierless world community where men and women cooperate freely to produce what is needed. Only by recognising that they are exploited by the same enemy class in all countries can workers reclaim their true identity and achieve real self-determination through a global democratic revolution.

Jake Ambrose (Australia)

Who cares about spies (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why all this fuss about spies and traitors? The commercial press, of course, likes a sensational treason trial. It helps them stir up national hatred. Spies are held up as objects of public scorn. They are, we are told, greedy men and women led to betray their country for thirty pieces of silver. Now come the Spies for Peace. The Spies for Peace have in fact done us a good turn by telling us some of the minor preparations the government has made for its safety in any war. The press, the Labour Party, the churches and other capitalist henchmen, naturally feel differently. They want the “traitors” arrested and punished. They are concerned about Mr. Krushchev getting hold of the pamphlet. But no-one bothers to ask the more basic questions. Why are there state secrets? What is their significance? Does it matter what Mr. Krushchev knows? That he knows there are plans for Regional Seats of Government at Warren Row and the other places where they’re supposed to be?

Consider the matter a little more closely. Today there are two kinds of people around. Those who are rich and wealthy and own all the means of living and the rest of us who own practically nothing. This means we have to work for these owners in order to live. In other words we are slaves. There is no other word for it. The workers are dependent on the owning class—just as the slaves of the past were dependent on their masters. Its the same all over the world. In America, in Russia, in France, in Germany. The working class, we are always told, no longer exists. But how stupid can you get! Of course, the working class exists. Its us—those who work and make everything but own nothing. Everywhere the working class is a slave class with the rich owners as their masters. So what’s all this nonsense about nations? The slaves in Athens didn’t count as Athenians. And we don’t really count as Britons, Germans, Poles, or any other of the names in use. Our political nationality is a fraud. “The Nation” is the owning class. The “national interest” is their interest. So all this talk about bombs and armies being kept to protect us is so much nonsense. They exist to protect our masters. To protect their property. To protect their ruling position. To protect their markets. Ask yourself: what have I to sell save my ability to work? Nothing! Then why worry about whether factory owners can sell their steel, their cars, their machines? But its for these people that wars are fought. To get markets for them. To help their trade. War gives us nothing. In no war is there anything at stake worth dying for. Just our masters’ markets and trade interests.

Everybody wants peace these days. Everybody is against war. But how do you get rid of it? Peace marches, perhaps, or conferences? No, neither. If the set-up didn’t mean that one class lives by selling what the other makes there would be no war. For capitalism has a built-in drive toward war. That’s why its stupid to hope for disarmament under capitalism. Armed forces are not kept for the fun of it. They can’t be disbanded at will. They exist to protect the interests of the capitalist class at home and abroad. A capitalist must sell or die. If he doesn’t sell he gets no profit. If he gets no profit he can’t accumulate capital. If he doesn’t accumulate he can’t modernise his equipment to meet competition. Which means he will be driven to the wall by more efficient-competitors. This is the basic cause of modern war.

The capitalists in various areas join to keep a national state to look after their interests and carry out their wishes. Hence the so-called nation. Every “nation,” or rather every capitalist gang, competes against every other. In this struggle might is right. This is why armed forces exist. Today America and Russia and their allies are at cold war with each other. They are struggling for world domination because they must. Neither of these groups of powers can afford to let the other get ahead militarily. So the arms race and the H bomb. In this race to keep ahead military secrets are important. Important, that is, to the capitalist class and the state they keep to protect their interests. This is why in every country the worst crime is treason, worse even than murder.

But where do we come in? Should we worry about cases of treason? Should we look upon those who give away secrets as traitors? The short answer to questions such as these is that workers have "no country. And it’s not? as if the state and its secrets exist for our benefit. They are only traitors from the capitalist viewpoint because they have committed the worst crime m the book. They have helped a rival capitalist gang. Each secret betrayed to a foreign power weakens the military machine. This is why state secrets are so important to the capitalist class. This is why those who give them away arc labelled traitors and punished harshly. For us it’s different. We don’t need to worry about security and defence matters. They’re not our concern. The war machine is not there to protect us. It’s there to protect our masters’ interests at home and abroad. And more. The armed forces are used to keep the masters masters, and us slaves. They are part of the government machine. And it is through this machine that the capitalist class rules. At home the government machine is used to keep ’’law and order,” to keep the set-up whereby the capitalist class live off our unpaid labour.

We have nothing to gain from war, nor from war or defence preparations. It is for the capitalist class to worry about British “security” services or about whether Mr. Krushchev knows “our” secrets.

Adam Buick

The Last Refuge (1949)

From the October 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The more prominent of the political parties that are trying to cajole the workers in preparation for the next General Election, have each published a pamphlet expounding the programme for which they ask support. These programmes offer “practical” solutions to the problems that confront different sections of the community. There are cures for unemployment to intrigue the workers; promises of houses to attract the homeless; encouraging plans for industrialists; offers of help to the farmers and various inducements to draw the vote of trade unionists. There are special chapters for each of these groups, whilst other chapters are addressed to rather vague social groupings such as “The Common Man,” “The Small Man,” and “ The Consumer.”

The cover titles of these pamphlets, before we open them to read the contents, betray the line of approach to the problems that are dealt with. The Conservative Party issues “The Right Road for Britain”; the Liberal Party, “Programme for Britain” and the Labour Party, “Labour Believes in Britain.” Each proposes to solve the problems of “Britain” without addressing itself to the working class. They make it appear that unemployment, poverty, restricted political freedom, ill housing, bad health, insecurity and war, are the problems of “Britain” and not of one section of the people. If only all goes well with “Britain” we are to assume that these problems will at least be reduced to lesser proportions if not abolished altogether.

We do not expect pro-capitalist parties to view social problems from a working-class angle, but, unfortunately, many workers are confused and misled by this national approach to the evils that they would like to remedy. They live in a competitive world and accept it as inevitable. They are persuaded into a belief that they have an identical interest with everyone who classifies himself as “British,” irrespective of all economic differences. The problems of trade, of imports and exports, of international currency and diplomatic relations are regarded as the urgent affair of all who live in Britain. The proposed cures and reforms must all be regarded from the standpoint of whether “Britain” can afford it, whether the present hour of need for “Britain” will allow of this or that, whether certain steps will conform to the “British way of life.” This national approach to social problems is essentially a capitalist one. The capitalist class of the world is mainly divided into national groups, each group having its state machinery to conserve its wealth and protect its interests against its class enemies at home and its fellow-capitalist competitors abroad. Without a national state the capitalist is lost. His legal claim to property is of little use if there is no means to enforce it. When he must struggle with foreign competitors for trade, for access to raw materials, for control of land, sea and air routes for the transport of his goods, he needs the armed force of his state in his struggle. When he is faced with recalcitrant workers at home, workers who strike and lessen his profits, workers who do not do his bidding with the required alacrity, he needs his police and his judges, his jails and his warders —and, quite often—his troops. This is all part of the state machinery and around it the capitalist weaves his interest. His fortunes become the fortunes of his state, the fortunes of his state become his. He is a patriot, in the sense that he would have us use the word. He symbolises his state with a flag, a Union Jack, a Stars and Stripes or a Tri-colour. He will talk with sentiment about his country, meaning his state, meaning his interests. All those who live under the authority of his state are his countrymen, his fellow citizens. He argues that they have a common interest with him, a national interest, to preserve the country. They all have an interest in the capture of markets from foreign competitors and if necessary, they should be prepared to go to war against the adherents of some other state when such others become aggressive and threaten trade and trade routes. This imagined identity of national interest enables people to be worked up into a condition of national patriotism wherein they will slay one another in their political blindness, “for the glory of their country ” or for the preservation of their “national way of life.” It can also be used to persuade them to suffer want and misery, to work harder and cheaper and to give support to quack, self-seeking politicians and to tolerate exploitation. “Steel—record output at lower prices—for Britain’s hour of need.” Thus shouts a new poster from the hoardings around the countryside. Whilst the workers approach their problems from this angle they will find no solution—they are disarmed. The capitalist will be the foremost patriot and lover of his country, and the workers will be shorn of more and more of the wealth that they produce. It was Dr. Johnson who is reputed to have said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

The problems that are dealt with in the three pamphlets that we have mentioned, all arise from the way in which we live. When we need to make classifications in an effort to solve some problem, we do so on the basis of the problem’s cause. For a biological problem we should divide men into groups according to their biological differences. In a study of language we may have to divide into territorial groups. Economics is the study of how we produce and distribute wealth—how we live. To solve economic problems we must study and classify according to the manner in which we get our living, not according to the particular state under which we were born or which has adopted us. Classifying according to biological differences or variations of language will hinder and not help. If our livelihoods are insecure or if we are impoverished, if we are poor in a world of plenty, if we must go to war in order to be able to live in peace, then we must seek the causes in the manner in which we produce and distribute the things that we are short of or that we have to compete for. As soon as we do this we are faced with one very outstanding fact. Everyone, in any one country, does not get his livelihood in the same way, or have the same amount of the wealth produced. Some, the vast majority, in order to get a living, must seek an employer. They have no tools or instruments with which to till the soil, to weave cloth, to build houses, to get the million and one things that make up the necessities of modern life. They have only a measure of physical and mental energy and this they must sell to someone who is in a position to buy it. So, they become wage workers, or salary earners, it’s all the same. That is their way of getting a livelihood. What of the others? They, the minority, are the ones who can employ the workers. Not because they are biologically different, not because they are cleverer, not because they are of a different nationality, but simply because they are the owners of the means and instruments of production and distribution. They do not of necessity have to work. They certainly do not have to seek employment in order to live. They own the means of production and they own the wealth that is produced. AH that is surplus, when they have paid the working class, they can utilise for their own convenience. They must sell their goods in a world market in order to realise the surplus in a useful form. They must trade. They seek spheres of influence, colonies, trade agreements and all the other things that they hope will ensure them continued and favourable trade. Trade is so vital to them. If there is no trade, there are no profits. If there are no profits there is no purpose in producing. Production slows down or ceases and the workers are unemployed. To capture a market the capitalist must sell competitively. That means cheaply. It also means that goods must be produced cheaply and that means that the workers must work hard for low wages. So, it’s either unemployment or low wages. Both spell poverty. Most of the other social problems are subsidiary to the poverty one. Only a poor man will be ill-housed, under-nourished, worried about unemployment. There is no solution to the workers’ problems within the capitalist system. The only solution lies in its overthrow and the establishment of a system where wealth is produced solely for use instead of for profit.

Of course, to tell the workers to work harder, or take lower wages, or go to war in order to secure the capitalists profits, would have very poor results. But if they can be urged to accept the idea that they have a national interest with the capitalist and not a class interest against him, then their patriotism can be roused and they may be kidded to do all sorts of things that result to their detriment.

The two political champions of to-day, the Labour Party and the Tory Party, and one ex-champion, the Liberal Party, snarl at one another, but are all agreed on the maintenance of capitalism. All are prepared to focus the attention of the workers on the problems of the British capitalist class and to string the working class along behind its masters with bleatings about national unity, Britain’s hour of need, Britain’s future in the hands of the people, blah! blah! blah!

Note the following by Winston Churchill in the Conservative pamphlet (page 5): —

“We earnestly hope that what is written here may be a help to those who wish to make a right decision for the future of their country, and may strengthen their confidence that we have a glorious future and their resolve that we do not throw it away.”

From the Liberal pamphlet (page . 31): —

“If all those who care for Liberalism ‘in their hearts and not with their lips only’ will lend it their support, it can bring salvation to our country and to mankind.”

From “Labour Believes in Britain" (page 30):—

“The Labour Party does not seek place and power for its own sake. We seek the victory for great ends, not for our Party, but for our country and the world. In this document we have approached our task in the British spirit . . . unity in common purpose and of justified pride in our nation’s greatness.”

Yes, the Communist Party has also published a pamphlet, “ Communism and Labour,” being a report by Harry Pollitt. He spends a chapter on criticism of the Labour Government’s foreign trade policy, makes suggestions for improved trade, and talks about “Britain’s economic difficulties ” (page 20). Having had a good slam at the Labour Government he clarifies the issue on page 25 by stating “ . . . if no Communist is standing, we advise the people to vote Labour.”

At election time or at any other time, the issue for the working class is never “Britain versus other countries of the world.” It is always “the Working Class versus the Capitalist class.” Anyone who hides that issue is an enemy of the workers. One can be reasonably assured that he who bleats loudly about “his country” is either a fool or a knave. He is probably taking what old Dr. Johnson called “the refuge of a scoundrel.”

W. Waters.

World View: In whose interests? (2000)

From the March 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

In late January, Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary and master of Orwellian double-speak, made another keynote speech, devoid this time of any reference to “ethical dimensions” to foreign policy and instead focused on the advancing of “British values” of freedom and democracy around the world in the “national interest”.

Although he made references to “common interests”, “international interests”, and “national identity”, as well as the token allusion to democracy and diplomacy, it was the rehashing of the term “national interest” that sickened all but the brainwashed.

Cook speaks of national interest as politicians have for the past century, as if it were something tangible, something that can be seen, something unquestionable. It is indeed a much bandied about term—and many are prepared to take it for granted—but what does it mean?

Well, for one thing, it’s not something the lay person ponders too much. After all, if the politicians think something is in our interests then it must be just that. They know best and if we didn’t trust them we wouldn’t have voted for them. This is, in fact, the kind of mind-set politicians count upon before they can come out with such drivel.

That politicians continue to use terms like national interest is evidence that they premise their speeches on the assumption that the average person on the street is an imbecile. Moreover, the term is so designed, and used, as to distort our perception of reality. From the cradle to the grave we are discouraged from asking significant and searching questions, the type that might embarrass our betters and superiors. We are nurtured to mistrust our own ideas, to respect the views of the clergy, teachers, parents, politicians, the royals and all manner of counsellors and advisers. Little wonder, then, that so many injustices prevail and that so many can speak in defence of the government line, unwittingly acquiescing in their own exploitation, all in the national interest. But this is how it is. So many are prepared to accept that the government embodies the people’s interests.

The national interest conjures up an image that we are all one happy family, all pulling and working together for the good of all, that we all have something to be proud of, to defend and to benefit from. It suggests an absence of strife and antagonism and that the real enemy is “out there”. We’re meant to feel good about the national interest, secure in the knowledge that the well informed are thinking on our behalf. It harks back to the “bulldog spirit” of the blitz years, when even the king and queen seemed half decent because they had been bombed (“Gawd bless ’em all, Guv.”).

In reality, the national interest is anything the master class and their executive, the Blairs and Chiracs and Clintons of this world, deem it to be at any given time, or rather anything that helps perpetuate their ideology and keeps them in power; anything that can undermine the potential for political action geared towards real change. The national interest is the paternalistic jargon of a profit-hungry elite, trying to rationalise in our eyes the lengths they will go to accrue more profits at our expense. It is used by politicians largely to secure support for a course of action they are finding difficult to promote. It is designed to block serious discussion of an issue—who’ll argue against the national interest?—and to marginalise opponents, thus stifling deeper understanding of issues.

Thus, the national interest is a Labour government contemplating the selling of arms to Indonesia, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, the mobilisation of a Western coalition of 750,000 soldiers to tackle a third-world army of farmers in the Middle East. It is a government campaign urging us to shop our neighbours to the state’s protectors. It is an army of police wading into a picket line, truncheons swinging. It is the appointment of drug tsars and the teaching of the benefits of marriage to schoolchildren. The national interest is the Russian army in Chechnya, the USA in Vietnam, Israel’s airforce bombing Lebanon, and Uganda supporting Congolese rebels.

One thing is clear, while all the above can be pushed as national interests, none are in the interests of the working class. The interests of the majority—or the working class—are diametrically opposed to the interests of the capitalist, class. True, we all have basic needs and desires. whichever class we belong to, but talk about shared interests in a two class society is nonsense. The capitalist class have one real interest—and let them deny it—to maximise their investment and to accrue more profit. How many people get hurt and trod on in the process is of no consequence. Neither is much consideration given to environmental concerns. The working class, on the other hand, own little more than our ability to labour, an ability we sell to the master class. Our interest under capitalism becomes getting the best price for our labour power. Indeed such is the onus on us to sell our labour power at as a high a price as possible that its consequences dominate every aspect of our lives.

It has to be remembered that the master class depend on our complacency for their continued survival. Our silence, our willingness to accept everything they say without question, is the victory they celebrate every day. Our job should therefore be to doubt and question everything they say. If we stand for nothing we fall for anything. For we do have interests. As a globally exploited class, denied so many of the benefits of civilisation in a world of potential abundance, it is in our interests, our real class interests, to help put a stop to their insane system, not just for the future of humanity, but for the future of our planet.

Our real class interests lie in establishing a global system of society, devoid of borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders, states or governments, force or coercion, money, wages or salaries, a world in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used to its fullest potential and the benefit of all.

John Bissett

The struggle for democracy (1998)

From the December 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The capitalist system may have nominally democratic institutions, but it relies upon working class compliance, passivity and lack of involvement in the process to carry out its worst and most illiberal functionings. Real democracy can only be achieved on the basis of the common ownership of society’s means of living.

Anyone who has engaged in politics must eventually come across such statements as “democracy is inefficient”; “the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship”; or (a personal all time classic) “the country should be run by experts, well trained managers, not just any Tom Dick or Harry”. Such comments (which are surprisingly common) reflect a general lack of democratic culture among the working class. These points are easily countered: democracy is only inefficient if your only criterion is speed, but if you include wide consultation and a plurality of opinions and ideas within the decision-making process, then democracy is actually far more efficient in the long run. The benevolent dictator idea neglects the fact that dictators must have a class to back them up so as to ensure the primary aim of all dictators—of staying in power. Likewise, with the group of managers, the question becomes, how do we select such managers? And how are they supposed to manage the country? In whose interest?

These attitudes reveal, however, not that the working class is not interested in how the world is run, but that they have a strong desire for it to be done better. The whole ideology behind a benevolent dictator (the sort of ideology that led to the worship of Lenin, and then Hitler and Mussolini in the thirties) is that they have the power to do what is right, without being constrained by laws or petty interests. The dictator becomes the symbol of the law, all-capable, all-powerful, ready to manage affairs in a rational manner, not in the manner dictated by bourgeois law or by propertied interests. That’s the idea at least. The dictator or the managers become a symbol for orderliness and rationality in an insane and disorganised world. They represent stability.

The problem is that most folk do not look to democracy to bring about this stability. The bourgeois propagandists have done their work, and have effectively destroyed any belief in democracy as the idea that folks can run their own lives and own communities. Years of battering and enforced passivity has come to mean that for most of the working class the idea of them being in charge of affairs is inconceivable.

The most damaging thing to the cause of true democracy is the repeated assurances that what we have nowadays is democracy, and so all the sleaze, all the dumbing down, all the secret negotiations and dirty deals get lumped together to suggest in people’s minds that democracy is not all that great. Our masters wouldn’t want it any other way.

Labour rallies

A recent example of the state of democracy in Britain is the Labour Party conference. Traditionally the Labour conference had at least some nominal control over party and policy. However this year, after Blair has wrought his changes, it became a parade ground, and more of a rally than a decision-making body. Hack after hack talked about the old days of Labour scraps and ferocious debates at the conference. None of them mentioned that debate is part of the democratic process, but instead concentrated on the way it used to damage the image of the Labour Party by making it look divided. Likewise, whenever a party official or government member warned conference that they mustn’t go back to the in-fighting of the 70s, they neglected the fact that the infighting was caused by the party’s leaders refusing to do as they were told by the democratic bodies of the party.

Such exercises in amnesia are not accidental. The British Establishment does not like the idea of its government being under any form of democratic control beyond the nominal scrutiny of Parliament. The media plays a powerful role in this. Its whole agenda of trying to detect splits in the governing party, or questioning the “strength” of a Prime Minister’s position, is entirely geared towards promoting anti-democratic, anti-discussion attitudes within the political elite. If a party can lose power because it is seen to have differences of opinion then the only alternative is to keep quiet, and try to get into a good ministerial job to try and “make a difference” there.

It was such a desire to stay in power and limit the appearance of dissent that led to the changes within the Labour Party being agreed to and passed by the very democratic procedures that they have just abolished. The membership of the Labour Party, desperate for a chance to get into power to enact their ever more limited reforms, surrendered their capacity to effect democratic control.

There are further anti-democratic forces at work in the general political discourse, some of which have been with us a long time. One of the most potent is the argument that there is a need to elect to Parliament the people best able to run the country (back to those managers again). Thus there is a selection process for candidates that has a set of criteria to be fulfilled to show ability, usually involving being white, and university-educated, and either a teacher, lecturer, lawyer or banker. Thus Parliament is stuffed with clones of the type most likely to help the ruling class rule. Any notion that Parliament is there to represent the people, and that a constituency should elect someone that they think is most like them, and represent their interests, goes completely out of the window. Even the most limited scope for democracy is subtly elided by propaganda, ideology, and the practice of the main institutionalised parties.

At the last Labour conference, when Tony Blair complete with mechanical body language and a look of good intent, strongly emphasised his strong belief and strong determination, he was met with slavish rapture by the ranks of Labour hacks. They loved his insistence that a strong Britain would be good for everyone, and loved his ideas about working in partnership with our exploiters for mutual gain.

This is the old nationalist lie that we are one country, one people, working together for a common interest. Or, to take a leftist version, as Orwell put it “one family, with the wrong members in charge”(The Lion and The Unicorn). This ideology allows politicians to present us as if we have one common interest. “I’d rather be unpopular than wrong” Blair declaimed, in the full expectation that his unpopularity was about to come from a Labour government acting against the interests of the working class (yet again) in defence of the “National Interest” (the interests of the exploiters of the ruling class).

Nationalism allows the politicians to limit democratic choice on the grounds that there is only one national interest and therefore only one general programme, one set of policies to be followed. However, one of the basic points about liberal democracy is that, as we put it in our declaration of principles, “all parties are but the expression of class interests”. This has long been a guiding principle in British politics, with the different interests of different sections of the ruling class being represented by the different parties. Whilst the Labour Party has always firmly supported the interest of the industrial sections of the ruling class, it has also, at its most reformist, sought to be a conduit for working class interests within capitalism.

Money talks

That Labour has renounced even the most basic reformist platform reflects the interests of a ruling class that is itself in something of a crisis. The poor growth of the last twenty years, the need to keep wages and welfare down, and the need to find new markets have meant that our rulers have had to clamp down on possible channels for dissidence. They cannot, in their current condition, accept any challenge to their profits. When the Major government looked like it was too hostile to the Euro, and thus to the interests of big business and one of their few possible escape routes, they deserted it, and took their money to the Labour Party, newly reformed to appeal to their interest.

In its switch from Tory to Labour the age-old influence of Money has been much more visible than it usually is. The Labour conference attracted heavy criticism for the sponsorship it received from many companies up to and including the delegates’ name tags sponsored by Somerfield. Powerful vested interests have been shamelessly brought in to help Labour “co-operate” better with their kleptocratic masters. They conspicuously drew from the corporate world by bringing Lord Simon (a former Director of BP) into the cabinet by way of the unelected House of Lords. There was nary a whisper of protest at this, not from the media at any rate, and not from the Tory opposition, who doubtless approve of such things.

The influence of Money was plainer to see in the last general election too. Of some £26 million spent by the Labour Party, only £9 million came from unions and members. Nearly all the rest came, according to the recent Neill Report on Party Funding, from private donors including businesses and 21 millionaires who each gave a minimum of £50,000 and not much more. This effectively meant that Labour policies were being sold to these people, and had to be acceptable before they would buy them. This is of course nothing new, but it is more blatant than before.

Although the government is due to introduce reforms to the party funding system, this is unlikely to do much to change the basic fact that money dominates elections. For that matter, most of their “democratic reforms” are unlikely to make any real change either. Abolishing hereditary peers will simply allow for a House of Appointees—it is unlikely, given that Blair exercised his power of appointment to get Lord Simon into the cabinet, that he would wish to renounce such an option for the future. He defends himself against charges of being a control freak by pointing out all the extra voting that he is allowing for Scottish and Welsh devolution. However, this merely means voting parties in to oversee the bureaucratic work already going on, and to enable regional government to make itself more business-friendly.

Neither do other options being considered add to the democratic culture in Britain. Given the low turnouts in many elections (which the goons at Class War celebrated after the last general election), there has been talk of introducing compulsory voting. This would amount to a state forcing its citizens to legitimize it and runs totally counter to any real notion of democracy. PR, if instituted, would just be a way of further institutionalising parties, and changing the question from representation to one of balancing the parties’ share in the executive. It would merely mean that it would become more difficult for one party to dominate the government and thus go against the ruling class interest in the way the Tories did at the end.

All of these changes, however, are merely cosmetic. They represent changes to formal democracy, which has no real power to affect the course of events. At the moment a small group of people control all the wealth and property, and it is upon their interests that everything hinges. It is only by removing such people, and not by tinkering with the form, that true democracy can be reached.

Democracy is not a set of rules or a parliament; it is a process, a process that must be fought for. The struggle for democracy is the struggle for socialism. It is not a struggle for reforms, for this or that political system, for this or that leader, for some rule change or other—it is the struggle for an idea, for a belief, a belief that we can run our own lives, that we have a right to a say in how society is run, for a belief that the responsibility for democracy lies not upon the politicians or their bureaucrats, but upon ourselves.

Pik Smeet

Editorial: Wages and Human Needs (1940)

Editorial from the December 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The apologists for Capitalism are all reluctant to admit the truth about the way wages are fixed. They do not like to admit in the first place that the means of production and distribution are owned by a small minority of the population and that society is divided into a propertied class that lives by owning and a working class that lives by the sale of labour-power to the owners. Nor do they like to admit that wages are fixed in a fierce, unequal struggle between employers and workers, so that the cost of the bare necessities of life of the various grades of workers provides the levels to which wages generally conform. Rather than admit that this is the way Capitalism works, those who defend it give much thought to formulating theories of wages which do not look so brutal and unprincipled. The theories differ in their phraseology. Some try to present the facts in terms of the so-called “value of work” of the different grades of worker, others point to schemes of co-partnership and profit-sharing, etc., but all have in common the assumption that the workers as a whole have little to complain about, although in particular occupations or industries there may be a need for some improvement. Social reformers who accept Capitalism, of whom Mr. Seebohm Rowntree is an outstanding example, have given years of study to the problem as they see it—but without the problem ever being any nearer to solution. Now the war has brought the question of engineers’ wages into the foreground and the theories are being examined again. The employers state that in their view it is against the “national interest ” to grant the wage increase asked for by the Amalgamated Engineering Union. They do not take their stand on “inability to pay” the increase, but on the plea that wages are already high enough and that the Government should exercise control. The view of the Union has been put in an interview with the Daily Herald by Mr. Jack Tanner, President of the A.E.U. :—

“We are still a democratic state,” he declared. “It is not for the engineering employers, or any other set of employers, to say what is in the best interests of the country.

“We are anxious that the industries of the nation, together with the Navy, the Army, and Air Force, should be put on a common basis.

“We raise no objection to the conscription of labour if that is necessary, provided that wealth is conscripted also.

“Take the profit motive out of industry. Let there be a common pool for using all the resources of the nation—employers to be on the same footing as the rest of the community. Let payment from the nation’s resources be on the basis of service and value to the nation.

“If the engineering employers are so concerned about the national welfare, I suggest that they agree that the industry should be nationalised as are the armed forces, so that the conscription of wealth may be the same as the conscription of life.”—(Daily Herald, November 29th, 1940.)

It will be noticed that Mr. Tanner, though he criticises the existing arrangements, offers as an alternative that “payment from the nation’s resources be on the basis of service and value to the nation.”

He is probably unaware that avowed defenders of Capitalism use the same nebulous phrase about “service and value to the nation,” a meaningless form of words which capitalist investors, who claim that they render “service” by their investment, will readily accept on their own interpretation. It also obscures the sectional point of view which permits workers with a non-Socialist outlook to believe that it is possible to measure the “value to the nation” of different types of work, and hence desirable to perpetuate different incomes for different grades of workers.

Coming back to the point of view of the open defender of Capitalism we find The Times (November 30th) expressing itself as follows: —

“In fact any increase of wages in an industry almost wholly devoted to munitions must be paid by the country. The questions to be decided are whether the wage rates and the earnings of engineering workers are fair and reasonable when related to human needs and to wages in other industries, and whether an advance, which the industry could pass on to the taxpayer, would be justifiable.”

The Times approaches the dispute cautiously and with an air of not being committed to either side. This is a reminder that there is a war on. In times of peace the issue would be fought out in the usual way by a strike or lock-out, but now that is the last thing desired. It is indeed one of the difficulties that beset Capitalism at war, for the normal cut-throat capitalist procedure cannot be reverted to when, for military reasons, output must not be interrupted. The employers, the Government, and The Times are all hoping that arbitration will avoid any such interruption, but notice the hollowness of the principle to which the National Arbitration Tribunal is to direct itself. It is asked to decide whether engineering wages “are fair and reasonable when related to human needs and to wages in other industries.” The Tribunal is therefore to take into account all those sections of industry where wage rates are at their lowest; for example, the agricultural workers’ 48s., and the Post Office and railway workers getting in some cases even less. (Mr. Tanner should notice Post Office wages when he pins his faith to nationalisation.) What kind of principle is this? All it does is to accept the fact of low wage levels in some industries and elevate it into a principle for regulating wages elsewhere.

And what of “human needs”? The simple minded, not used to the subtleties of arbitration tribunals, will suppose that human needs can only mean the needs of human beings. Nothing could be further from the thought of The Times ! The Times is not proposing that engineering shareholders, cabinet ministers, millionaire newspaper proprietors, church dignitaries, and arbitrators shall all be ranked together with engineers and labourers for the purpose of deciding what are the needs of all as human beings. What is meant is that the class division of society shall be taken for granted, and that “human needs” shall be considered solely in relation to the needs of that sub-species known as the working class.

This state of affairs will not be remedied until class-divided society has given place to Socialism. Then there will be no wages problem. Class struggle will have disappeared to make way for common ownership of the means of production and distribution and for the application of the Socialist principle, “From each according to his capacity; to each according to his need.”

"We Must Produce Cheaper". (1918)

From the November 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

The New "Patriotic" Stunt.

To-day, the subject of greatest interest and importance to our masters, next to the successful prosecution of the war, is how to increase production—how to reach the maximum of wealth output with the smallest possible expenditure in wages.

Much has been done during the war, by dilution and the abolition of privileges, toward this end, but the capitalist looks forward to the piping times of peace, when the supply of labour-power will exceed the demand, for a fuller realisation of his avaricious dreams.

The question as to how it will affect the workers does not concern him ; first, because he is a capitalist and therefore only interested in profits, and secondly because he keeps an army of unscrupulous journalists whose business it is to persuade the workers that whatever is beneficial to the class that own the means of wealth production, must be beneficial to society as a whole, and therefore to the working class.

To prove, however, that an increase in production, side by side with a reduced wages bill, will improve conditions for the working class, would seem an impossible task; nevertheless, the economic quack, relying on the workers' ignorance of economics, proceeds to demonstrate it. One writer who advocates shorter hours of labour as a means to increased production says that after the war—

"We shall need the greatest possible output and the most economical production, consistent with health, to enable us to get the most trade and re-establish our position and profitably employ all our people."

Other writers lay even greater stress on the last suggestion, claiming that industry is run by the capitalists as much to give employment as to obtain profits. Hence we find an economic quack measuring a capitalist's usefulness to society by the number of "hands" he employs.

It is perfectly true that the capitalists of every concern have a keen desire to employ more and more workers, but there is a proviso—markets must be assured in order that the surplus-value produced by the additional workers can be realised in profits on the same scale. For that reason only, and only in that sense, is the capitalist interested in giving employment to the workers (ignoring, of course, for the moment, his inborn antipathy to work himself). He employs the workers when by doing so he obtains profits. In the past, when new machines and methods have enabled him to increase output while at the same time reducing the number of his workers, he has never objected on the score that unemployment would be intensified. Neither has he hesitated to advertise extensively among the nations of the earth for workers with which to flood the labour market, long before the wage-slaves who were "his own countrymen" were absorbed. In short, the record of the capitalist class speaks for itself. Ever since the days when our peasant forefathers were driven off the land in order that they might be available for the forerunners of the modern capitalists in the towns, up to the present day, it has been one of the chief concerns of our masters to have a substantial margin of unemployed, and for two reasons. First, to keep down wages, and second, to be called upon in case of a sudden expansion in trade.

There is another side to the question, however. The capitalists of every land want "the greatest possible output, the most economical production, and the most trade." They know that the world market is limited, that within a certain period, say one year, the world's population can only absorb a limited amount of wealth, and that goods or wealth produced beyond this amount will be left on the owners' hands. The same applies to those goods whose owners, for some reason, fail to place them on the market at the prices ruling there. Hence the need for the most economical production, in other words, for the maximum of labour-power in exchange for a minimum wage. "Consistent with health" is capitalist irony, because the workers' health is never studied except for the purpose of increasing their productive power.

The other side peeps out in the sentence "to enable us to get the most trade." The workers of each country must submit to 'the most economical production" in order to assure to their masters "the most trade." Thus they enter into a new form of warfare against the workers of other countries in the interests of their masters. And when the capitalists of one nation succeed in obtaining the "most trade," and their workers demand higher wages, because the masters can afford to pay them, these same masters reward them with the sack, and entice the workers of other lands to fill their jobs. Where, then, do the workers of the world come in, whether they win for their masters markets or wars?

The capitalist group of every nation will point to their own prosperity as evidence that employment is good, when they deem it necessary to gloss over the unemployed army—that instrument of coercion against their workers. They boast that there is no sentiment in business, and an unemployed army is necessary to their business. In the past they have—except in a few rare instances, chiefly occupational—always been blessed with a solid margin; the future is full of promise for them, and we can rely on them to make the most of their opportunities in order to coerce the workers into the economic war.

Already in the mad race for markets we are told that—

"The old slack methods have given way to something approaching American hustle. Supervision is more strict, rest times have been reduced, furnaces are bigger and hotter, machines run faster, tools and appliances are heavier and need more strength and nerve for their manipulation, shops are more noisy and crowded, dusty and hot, materials are harder to work, labour is more fatiguing and hazardous."

But, like everything parasitic, the capitalist is insatiable. The concerns in which his capital is invested must either beat their competitors in the race for cheaper production or go under. And concerns do go under almost daily, their share of the market being taken up by their competitors, while the workers they have employed swell the unemployed army until they can be "profitably employed" by other capitalists.

Capitalist governments have for years made promises to deal with unemployment—they have even made pretence of doing something—but the evil has grown. One government gave us Labour Exchange—to find jobs for the unemployed, they said —but all these institutions did was to save the capitalist time and money in his search for the workers he needed. The latest suggestion is that hours of labour should be reduced, but those who advance it claim that a reduction in hours would result in greater production. Coming from those who plead that the workers should be more fully employed, this suggestion is a curiosity in logic.

But the richest contribution to the whole discussion has been made by the "Committee on Adult Education." They say:

"Industry exists for man, and not man for industry. The world seems to have been carried on in the opposite principle, and it will be no easy task to alter it."

Rich in irony is this utterance when we get behind the camouflage of assumed innocence, for the committee know that industry is run for their class, that they, as a class, own the nature-given material of the earth, that the dispossessed workers of the world, owning nothing but their energy, are forced by hunger to sell even that as a commodity. They know that the factory with its raw material and machinery absorbs the commodity labour-power, and out of the union comes surplus-value to be realised in profits. To them the working-class is god-given—a class to work for them while they luxuriate in idleness.

Industry will only exist for man when man controls industry, To-day the workers cannot control industry because the means of wealth-production are owned by the capitalist class, and their ownership is defended, through their Parliament, by armed forces.

Until the working-class control industry, industry will exist for the capitalist class, as it exists to-day. And the working-class can only control industry when they own the means of wealth-production. Ownership of the means of wealth-production is the basis of capitalist domination; their ownership, however, is maintained politically, and until their political power is broken, or acquired by the working-class, the latter cannot take possession of the means of wealth-production. Before industry—or production and distribution—can exist for man, therefore, the working-class must organise as a Socialist Party; second, secure control of the political machine; third, take possession of the means of wealth-production; and fourth, establish society on a Socialist basis by arranging for the democratic control of production and distribution by the whole of the people.

F. Foan

50 Years Ago: May Day before the 1939 War (1989)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is no practical effective internationalism except that which springs strong and self-reliant from the workers' community of interest, sweeping across national frontiers like a cleansing wind blowing away bestial hatreds and fears. The future of the human race demands the destruction of the national barriers which divide the peoples of the world. Not the defence of national independence but the destruction of capitalism must be the watchword of those who would build for the future of the human race and at the same time help to stem the flood of war in which capitalism threatens to engulf civilisation. The doctrine that each group of workers should rally round their own ruling class in defence of the "national interest" only plays into the hands of the warmakers in every country. Just as British and French workers gain hope and courage whenever they read of German and Italian workers who have resisted the mass propaganda of their rulers for war and nationalism, so also the internationally minded workers in Germany and Italy would be inspired to further brave efforts if they heard that their British and French comrades were refusing to ally themselves with Anglo-French imperialism: and correspondingly depressed to learn that many of those workers were falling into line behind their capitalist rulers For, make no mistake, Europe is not on the verge of war for the sake of Nazism and democracy, but for the sake of a re-division of the spoils of the last great capitalist war.

(From an editorial "May Day and the War Clouds", Socialist Standard, May 1939.)

Some Lessons from Spain (1937)

From the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

While the war clouds are fast gathering in Europe, the Spanish Civil War continues its devastating course, taking heavy toll of working-class lives and spreading ruin and misery over Spain.

Although six months have passed since it commenced the murderous attack of Franco and his international cohorts has not yet accomplished its object. While the avowed aim of Franco and his supporters is to keep the old order in Spain as it was the indiscriminate bombing and artillery barrage of towns is fast wiping out the objective evidence of old Spain.

We are accustomed to the sanctimonious reverence of the ruling class for the art treasures of the past but the savage methods of the Franco group shed a dear light on the object that inspires the real reverence of the property owner. Pictures, statuary, fine buildings, cathedrals and all the other irreplaceable relics of the artistic passion of the past weigh as nothing in the balance against the possible loss of revenue to the erstwhile rulers of Spain. And so it has always been and always will be while one set of people see an opportunity of living on the backs of the rest of the population. .

Again and again we are given evidence of the emptiness of the protestations of the property owners and their mouthpieces when an opportunity comes to give effect to their views. When war is called for, or resistance of any kind, by the rulers of society then priest and politician will find reasons why the war should be prosecuted or workers should be prepared to lay down their lives for a State that is not theirs.

Last October Dr. Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking at a Diocesan Conference at Canterbury, urged that complete pacificism was harmful as it left the State at the mercy of violent men. The object of his remarks was to impress upon his audience and the world at large that a defensive war was a just war. As all combatants in war claim that they are on the defensive (witness the last European War, and the statements of all leading European spokesmen now that they all want peace) this is equivalent to supporting any war on behalf of capitalism.

In the course of his remarks the Archbishop is reported as having put forward the following points: —

  The use of force of the sword by the State was the ministry of God for the protection of the people. If that were true of the State in its domestic relations, it was equally true for the State in its international relations. It all depended upon the motive or intention with which it was used.
 If the force of an army were used for national aggression or acquisition or self-assertion it was wrong. If it were used for the defence of the people it was right.

(News Chronicle, 13/10/36.)

In Spain a democratically-elected government has been subject to the onslaught of a rebellious military and land-owning clique who have carried out the attack with extreme brutality and have enlisted in their support native tribesmen as well as thousands of alleged volunteers from aggressive dictatorships. As far as we are aware neither Dr. Lang nor his friends have taken any practical step to see that aid was given to a government that was employed in just that defensive action for which he pleaded. Are we to assume that in reality Dr. Lang was simply giving his blessing to the rearmament projects of the British Government and thus fulfilling his function as a pillar of capitalism? It certainly looks as if this were the case.

The agony of Spain is only a matter of concern for the capitalists of other nations if any of them have interests involved or if there is any prospect of gain by fishing in troubled waters. For the rest it is a matter of minor importance to them that thousands of Spanish workers are losing their lives just because landowners and the Catholic Church want to keep intact their privilege to rob the wealth-producer of the product of his toil.

One of the spokesmen of the Spanish Government recently said that over a million lives had already been lost in the present civil war. It is a sad thought that in spite of the many and bitter lessons during the last hundred years, in which millions of workers’ lives have been sacrificed, the mass of the workers of the world still fail to grasp the fact that capitalism offers nothing to them but toil and misery, and they still turn away from the Socialist message. Yet, in the advanced countries at any rate, the workers produce and distribute the wealth upon which all live. While the capitalists control this wealth they use their position to live in idleness and luxury. The workers can, and some day will, obtain control of the means of production. When they do so they can banish want and economic misery and the bestialities of the struggle between classes. The lesson is a simple one and so easy to learn if only workers will look facts in the face.

Gilmac.

Cripps on wages—or hope deferred (1947)

From the June 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “We should like shorter hours of work and better pay, but with the urgent need for production and the danger of inflation, neither of these things is now in the national interest. We must discipline ourselves to do without them until such time as they become national economic possibilities.”
(Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade, addressing the Band of Hope Union. Reported in the Daily Herald, 12/5/47).

  “They deserve and need reasonable remuneration for their work, whether they are managers or workers, and that ought to be a first charge upon our production. But beyond that it is good working conditions and team work that will produce the results we want. The idea of an ever-rising spiral of inducement wages is one which makes me shudder at the economic consequences that might come.”
(Cripps, House of Commons, 21/11/46. Hansard, Column 1096).

  "It is notable that those who complain most vigorously about high wages are those who are very well off.”
(From the "Labour Party Speakers’ Handbook,” 1945, p.152).

 Edgar Hardcastle

Is It War? (1937)

From the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The international situation becomes each month more tense and dangerous, and early war is on all sides spoken of as a possibility. The German ruling class, strongly armed for war, along with what allies they can find in Italy, Japan and elsewhere, are bent on carving out territorial gains in Europe and the colonial lands. Against them on the present line-up are the Governments of France, Russia, Britain and other countries, anxious to keep what they have. The spokesmen of the British ruling class, themselves frantically hastening war preparations, declare that this country will only go to war for its own “vital interests”—a truly admirable-sounding doctrine. We, too, are of opinion that the working class should only fight for its own vital interests. But what are the vital interests of the world working class on the one side and the national sections of the ruling class on the other? The British ruling class find their vital propertied interests scattered over the seven seas and across the surrounding continents: in India, China, South America, Africa and the Mediterranean lands. It even appears, according to The Times (January 20th, 1937) that it is a vital British interest, “that the political independence and the territorial integrity of Spain should be preserved." But what matters to the workers is not where the ruling class have an interest, but what that interest is. All the time the defenders of capitalism pretend that capitalist and worker have a mutual interest. Let us test it by seeing what the capitalist Governments do about the urgent problem of working class poverty. President Roosevelt can admit, in a speech at Washington on January 20th, 1937 (see Daily Telegraph, January 21st), that one-third of the American nation are “ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished.” The same can be said of Great Britain, Germany, and most countries. All the Governments, past and present, have promised to deal with it, but none of them have done so or will do so. They do not consider it a vital problem. If they did they would have acted with the promptness and decision they all show about armaments and war for the defence of the propertied interests of the capitalist class. The British ruling class may have a vital interest in Spain, but it is not concerned with helping the Spanish workers to escape from the miseries of oppression and exploitation at the hands of the landowners, the military and the Catholic Church. To this the politicians hasten to reply that their concern is with British workers, not with Spaniards. Professor Haldane recently gave the most crushing answer to this, when he pointed out that the workers in besieged Madrid are probably better fed than those in our depressed areas like Merthyr. What have the British ruling class to say to that?

The interest of the workers everywhere is not in helping their rulers to grab or hold, but in the speedy overthrow of capitalism everywhere, the ending of the exploitation of one class by another. Let the workers of all countries apply that touchstone to the policies of their respective Governments. If the British ruling class—from Rothermere, the near-Fascist, to Beaverbrook, the “isolationist"—want the worker to take armed action in any quarter of the globe, ask what working class interest is at stake. Make no mistake, the armed forces of the capitalist State are not set in motion by the capitalists who control the machinery of Government for any purpose but their own class interest. Whether they call their wars offensive or defensive, struggles for colonies or to protect trade routes, for democracy or for Fascism, for religion or against it, the true purpose will be to hold or increase the wealth of the various sections of the ruling class. Workers, have none of it! Accept their advice and think only of the vital interest of your class, against capitalist wars and for Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Job of Governing (1966)

From the August 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the last two general elections, the Labour Party was able to present itself as the party who would “get Britain moving”. Trading on the sense of weary failure that inevitably attached itself to the Tories, the Labour party came forward with an air of dashing modernity. Despite the note of appropriate caution, “this was not going to be easy”, they left no doubt that they were the people who would sweep away “tired toryism” and ring in an era of fast moving progress. They spoke in racy terms about rising incomes and expanding social services against a background of technical development and high productivity. In fact we have found that the so-called incomes policy has meant nothing more in practice than a continuous government attempt to prevent wage and salary increases. As for the free deployment of society’s technical resources, we find that it is as crippled as ever it was. The only things which are recently new in the Labour government's management of capitalism are red baiting and the legal intimidation of trade unionists.

Under Labour, capitalism is limping along from crisis to crisis in much the same way as it always has, and for the immediate future, there is no prospect of it doing anything else.

During the recent elections, the Socialist Party of Great Britain said that nothing could come of the optimism generated by the Labour Party. We knew that the post election periods would be times of creeping disillusion. This is not because the Labour Party has no genuine desire to do something about social problems, but because the ideas they have about how to deal with these problems are mistaken ones. Moreover, it is doubtful whether the Labour Party can even correctly define the nature of these problems.

Reforms v. Revolution
It is worth recalling the debate that went on during and before the first years of the existence of the Labour Party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain. In those days the parties were nearer to each other in the sense that they shared a clearer understanding of the phraseology that both parties used. Those who were active in the Labour Party and I.L.P. argued that through a process of reforms, including nationalisation, capitalism could be gradually abolished. The very least that was claimed for this reformist programme was that as an expression of a mass working class movement it would achieve a more equal distribution of wealth throughout society.

This argument embodied many disastrous errors. One of these errors was the denial that Socialism presupposes a majority of Socialists. It was enough, they thought, to have a government whose intentions were right. Another error was in thinking that capitalism was susceptible to the kind of manipulation and control that their argument assumed.

The Labour Party has moved a long way from talking seriously about Socialism. Its public speakers cannot utter the word “capitalism” without obvious embarrassment or as a slip of the tongue.

The Labour Party frankly cares more about votes than it does about ideas. It has on more than one occasion achieved power, but power to do what? The only power the Labour Party has is the power to run capitalism, and even then not in the way the Labour Party would like, but largely in response to the economic and international pressures bearing on them. The abiding anti-climax of Labour Party politics is that as a party it has achieved the power that its early members dreamed of, but the power they have is worthless. This situation is inherited directly from their mistaken ideas about capitalism both past and present. It is one of the ironies of history that the Labour Party, the social springboard of which was the working class, should now manage a system which can only be damaging to the interests of the working class. They may have once set out to tame capitalism, but in fact capitalism has tamed them.

The Seamen's Strike
One of the most recent examples of the way the Labour Government is running capitalism against the interests of workers was the role played in the Seamen’s strike. From the very beginning of the dispute, the government, apart from one or two hypocritical references to the “real grievances” of the Seamen, in fact supported the stand of the shipowners throughout. The effect of the government’s stand was at all times to encourage the shipowners to resist the Seamen’s demands. This attitude was even carried to the point when during the strike the government look the initiative from the employers in resisting the Seamen. The fact that the government justified its stand around such dubious concepts as the “national interest” and their so-called incomes policy, has no bearing whatever on the clash of interests that was involved.

The Seamen found what working men have always found, that in the hard economic reality of their struggle, they were confronted not only by the employers, but also by the state, this time in the form of a Labour government.

“The Incomes Policy”
Even if the ideas of the Labour government about an “incomes policy” are not consciously dishonest, they are completely impracticable. Under Labour government management, there was to be an even rate of growth with productive output steadily expanding. They envisaged stable prices. They envisaged an overall productivity rate of 4 per cent, per year. Related to this steady increase of wealth, they saw rising incomes for every section of the community and expanding social services, hospitals, schools, roads, etc. Listening to its speakers, it was always possible, particularly at election times, to take a brief trip in the Labour Party dream boat.

The reason the Conservative government during its thirteen years of office, or any other government in the past, failed to achieve these controlled results from the economy was not due to their lack of intention or technique. This government will also fail. They are naive to think otherwise. They will of course blame this in part to a “scramble for higher wages”. The absurdity of the government’s position is that although they manage a system that is dominated by commercial competition and the pursuit of narrow economic gains whenever the moment is favourable, they expect people to behave as though this were not so. They wish in fact that capitalism would not be capitalism. Even so, there is no evidence whatsoever that restraint on the part of workers in pursuing wage increases would in any way affect the cycle of expansion and contraction inherent in capitalist economics. The real result of the government’s so-called “incomes policy” is that it always comes down on the side of the employers in the struggle over the division of wealth.

“The National Interest”
One of the more confusing ideas that gains renewed currency during industrial conflicts is the spurious myth of the “national interest” Though the effect of appeals to national loyalty on the course of a dispute is very doubtful, it is one of the means by which governments attempt to show up strike action in a bad light. The phrase “against the national interest" carries with it the implication of a small group of men holding the community to ransom over narrow selfish ends. Significantly, it is always strike action that is “against the national interest". It is never relatively low wages or intolerable working conditions.

At its best, the idea of a “national interest" turns a blind eye to the realities of capitalism, that is, class divided society. Within an economic set-up based on exploitation and dominated by commercialism with intense competition within slates and between states, there can be no such thing as a community interest. There is the individual's struggle to get what lie can out of life. There is the endless battle between trade unionists and employers over wages and conditions. There is no harmony of mutual interests, either national or otherwise.

At its worst, the talk of a “national interest" is a cynical attempt to persuade under-privileged men to set aside their demands in favour of social ideals that capitalism by its very nature could never achieve.

The vindication of Socialist theory

The policies of Labour governments have shown the correctness of the Socialist stand during the early debates. Events have shown that the fundamental problem of capitalism that is the social production, but private expropriation of wealth, cannot be altered by a programme of social reforms. Experience now shows that any government landed with the problem of managing capitalism, regardless of its determination to achieve change, must shape its policies to the economic requirements of the situation they find themselves in. In the case of the Labour Party, these economic pressures, both domestic and international, will make a mockery of whatever aspirations the Labour Party is now left with.

The problems of the Labour government are not the legacy of Tory mis management. In the wake of its own inevitable failure, it will leave to the next Tory government the same kind of mess. What the Labour government is really up against is the anarchy of capitalist production and that endless war of economic attrition, the class struggle.

Current Political Dangers

The Labour Party has nude a great deal of its ability to control capitalism, yet its programmes have not even begun to get off the ground. Wilson & Co. will go on banging their heads against the brick wall of capitalism with mounting frustration. In view of all that is expected of them and what they expect of themselves, their failure will become desperate. In politics, a desperate failure is a dangerous failure. The red-baiting episode during the Seamen's strike together with the penalties of imprisonment of trade unionists embodied in the Prices and Incomes Bill arc ominous signs. It is possible that the government may tempt to go much further in creating a general atmosphere of intimidation and victimisation. If indeed this happens, it will he the vile fruit of erroneous theories.

In a recent debate in the House of Commons, as a rebuke aimed at one of his party. Mr. Wilson said “You know, some of us have the job of governing". The remark was intended to separate the “responsible" from the irresponsible, but in fact it expressed everything that is wrong about the Labour Party and the Labour government. For his own party’s ability to deal with social problems, Mr. Wilson could not have chosen a more succinct epitaph.

Pieter Lawrence

Turmoil in the Coalfield (1944)

From the May 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Four days after the Miners Federation, the coal-owners and the Government reached an agreement which it was stated would guarantee peace in the industry for four years, the South Wales Miners' Executive Council recommended to the delegate conference that they reject the proposals (29.3.44). It was also announced that day that 80,000 Yorkshire miners were on strike; only two weeks had passed since 91,000 miners had returned to work in the South Wales coalfield. Four years is a short period for a peace pact when compared with Chamberlain's “peace for our time," but when considered against the background of turmoil in the coalfields, it seems as though the miners' leaders are guilty of wishful thinking. Industrial peace like international peace is impossible in capitalist society and we can confidently state that should the proposals be accepted, they will last only a short time. Little has been said about them but the main features are wage stabilisation and simplification. How these proposals will guarantee peace is not shown; rising or falling prices will compel owners and workers to press for changes in wages. The disputes are resolved, sometimes by arbitration, often by strikes or lock-outs. The miners will discover that like all previous agreements, this will leave their poverty intact.

Underlying much of the recent trouble are the experiences from which the miners have suffered during the bitter struggles of pre-war days, and also that many know that an even more grim struggle lies ahead when the war is over. These experiences and this knowledge makes them hostile to the glib and complacent phrases of their leaders. An example of this was the strike in the S. Wales coalfield which started on March 6th and soon involved 96,000 workers; the miners went on strike against the advice of their leaders. The immediate causes are now fairly generally known. According to the Porter "award" all underground workers (adult) are to receive £5 per week minimum wage. Whilst the terms of payment were drawn up the £5 was made inclusive, i.e., that special allowances for working in excessive dust and water were to be discontinued and also an extra, charge of 1/6 per week was proposed for the "cheap" home coal that miners obtain as a "privilege." These proposals had the effect of reducing the increase to a mere 2/6 for many miners; some had less while piece-workers had nothing. The immediate result of the strike was to hasten negotiations and extract a promise that the anomalies created by the award would be removed. The editors of Fleet-street surpassed themselves in scurrility; from their offices they hurled terms such as "plain anarchy" "intolerable" "industrial sabotage" and "difficult and irrational temper" against the coal producers. The Labour press offered much sympathy but they also "deplored" the strike. From the Times to the Daily Worker advice was offered to the miner that it was in his interest to return to work; it seemed as though the only person blind to the miners' interest was the miner. The Daily Mail discovered cause for alarm in the fact that the miners ignored the advice of their leaders (13/3/44). Our hearts, however, are warmed to the miner who at a mass meeting in the Rhondda, when urged to follow the lead of the officials, yelled "Follow your lead? we will lead you." A sound attitude. The Daily Telegraph added to the lighter side of the struggle, and became comical in its rage; it complained that the miners were able to get their extra 9-oz. of cheese, although idle (14/3/44). So we lost not merely 300,000 tons of coal but also about 20 tons of cheese. An interesting light on capitalist impartiality was provided by the Manchester Guardian Weekly, With the strike in progress they reported: "As for the strikes there is no 'bold imaginative step' open except the appeal to loyalty and common decency" (10/3/44). Four weeks earlier their comment on the explanation advanced by the mine-owners for not paying the increase, was: "The owners explanation is logical enough " (11/2/44). Logic it would appear is the prerogative of the ruling class and its representatives when dealing with discontented workers, who apparently lack even common decency.

Mr. Arthur Horner made an attack on the "comfortable people" who speak in "contemptuous accents" of the miner, who Horner states: "is a sport; when things are bad he can take it on the chin" (Reynold's News 12/3/44). On previous occasions when miners have found it necessary to take industrial action their leaders were the people who helped to create prejudice and spread contempt for them. The following examples of mud-slinging are from Trade Union sources: Mr. A. Horner; "Anarchy in the coalfield," "Certain irresponsible elements" (D. Herald 18/10/43). Durham Miners' Association : "These unwarranted stoppages," "Sabotaging the war effort and assisting the enemy." and "Section of disruptionists." (D. Herald 18/10/43). We agree, Mr. Horner, these "smugly righteous people" should note a few facts.

A Word on Wages
The method of computing wages is extremely complicated, and is very confusing to anyone not connected with the mines; it has been described as "baffling the outsider." Piecework rates are fixed, sometimes by measure, sometimes by weight; there are allowances for working in excess dust or water and also a percentage addition that differs in each district. Because of this confusion there has been agitation for a simplified wage structure which it is understood will be obtained under the new proposals. We cannot see that it will be of any real advantage to the miners as even though the method be simplified the wages will still be roughly the same as before i.e„ barely sufficient to replenish the energies of the worker and to enable him to keep a family. It has always "baffled" the writer how people lived on the wages. We suggest that in place of the reorganisation of the wage structure the miners follow the advice of Marx and substitute "Abolition of the wages system."

While on the subject of wages it is interesting to note that the Economist had the distinction of making a most reactionary proposal:

      "There may even be something to learn from the Soviet Wages system. Traditionally, the response of coalminers to increased wages is "heterodox"; above a certain level of earnings they are satisfied not to earn more by harder work. Increased wages should therefore not be guaranteed ay a flat rate. First the ratio between day wages and hewing pay should be weighted much more in favour of the latter, which is more dangerous, less attractive and more productive. Secondly, according to Soviet example, and contrary to the miners' own proposals, minimum wages should be left unchanged. Thirdly, increases in piece wages should be heavily weighted in favour of output above a certain minimum. Both time and piece rates should be made dependent on minimum attendance and minimum output. Should these fall below it, in the Soviet system, cumulative deductions are introduced. Thus the avenge wage of a miner would rise and fall substantially with output." (1/1/44. Our italics.)

One feature of the strike and its immediate sequel, the new agreement, was the critical attitude of the men to these new proposals and to their leaders. It has just been reported that the S. Wales miners' conference have rejected the proposals (2/4/44). Their attitude to it is that it is merely the "old meat—fresh gravy." It will become even more difficult for the capitalists to submit schemes for dealing with working-class poverty that will satisfy workers. The miners' exhausting toil has made wealth and luxury possible for the mine-owner—his toil has brought the miner only disease and poverty. They have worked hard so that their masters may live easily. They are now urged to forget the past, when their heavy work was no guarantee against poverty, and to work hard now, so that in the future, when the mistakes of the past will be avoided, we shall all enjoy prosperity. Hard thought, not hard work is required. Hard thought will show the miners and other workers the solution to their difficulties —the common ownership of the means of wealth production.

Lew Jones