Editorial: Two budgets (1952)

Editorial from the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Budgets are the concern of the capitalists, not of the working class, though it suits the Labour Party, like the other reformist parties, to pretend otherwise. The workers are not poor because of the Budget, but because the capitalist class own society’s means of production and distribution. It was admitted by the Economist (25th December, 1943) that:—

"1,800,000 persons, who are 7 per cent. of the adult persons in the country, own 85 per cent. of the private property and draw 28 per cent. of the individual incomes of the country."

The Economist said that their readers would be surprised to team this. Why they should be surprised was not explained; this inequality has been a feature of social life in Britain and the rest of the world throughout the capitalist era, and is equally true now despite all the talk of redistribution.

The capitalist State has to meet the cost of its civil service, armed forces and re-armament programmes and all the rest of the organisation necessary to the capitalist system. It does this through taxation the burden of which falls on the shoulders of those who alone can bear it, the propertied class. The wealth the workers produce belongs to the capitalist class and what the workers receive as wages and salaries is far below the value of what they, the workers, produce. That is how the workers are legally robbed and why they are poor. Rises or falls of prices, rises or falls of taxation and changes from one form to another, do not affect the fundamental position of the working class—at most they have temporary effects. White capitalism continues, the only sound policy for the working class is to struggle at all times to the fullest extent that conditions permit, to raise their wages and resist downward pressure.

During and since the war, under the abnormal conditions then existing, and with unemployment at a very low level, successive governments used the system of food subsidies in order to discourage the trade unions from pressing for higher wages. It was linked with high taxation on drink and tobacco, and, from 1946, the grant of children’s allowances to level the condition of the workers. The whole scheme was a device to lessen the movement for a general rise of wages and to divide the married workers against the unmarried. With it went the incessant demand of the Labour Government that the workers should refrain from "unreasonable” wage claims. Now that the fierce struggle against foreign competitors is hotting up again in the markets of the world, the policy is being modified because it has served its purpose. It was merely a wartime interlude in the running of capitalism, which is now getting back to normal pre-war conditions.

Against this background it will be seen how nonsensical is the Labour Party case against the Butler budget. They call is a “rich man’s budget,” as if any budget could be anything else. Mr. Douglas Jay, Labour M.P., speaking in the House of Commons on 17th March, accused Mr. Butler of "robbing the poor to pay the rich”—as if the details of any particular budget were of any importance by comparison with the ceaseless exploitation of the working class \\hich went on unchanged during six years of Labour government.

They charge the Tories with raising the cost of living, forgetting that while they were in power it went up about 40 per cent. They say that he is against wage increases, as of course he is, but forgetting the years in which they also preached "wage-restraint.” They denounce him for reducing food subsidies, but forget that it was Sir Stafford Cripps who decided not to permit any increase in the subsidies even though that meant a rise of the cost of living; a flat departure from the statement of his predecessor, Mr. Dalton, who in 1945 said:—

“I have decided to hold the present cost of living steady until further notice, even if this means an increase in the necessary Exchequer subsidies." (Hansard, 23rd October, 1945. Col. 1877.)

It was on that occasion that Mr. Dalton admitted the purpose of the subsidies as being "to restrain any disproportionate increase in wage rates,” and paid tribute to the "steadiness and good sense which the trade unions and their leaders have shown during the war in this regard.”

In April, 1951, when Mr. Gaitskell, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeated the decision not to increase the food subsidies, he admitted that this decision would mean a further rise of food prices and indeed the official food index figure rose from 131 in April, 1951, to 143 in October.

Other Labour Party critics charge the Tories with tenderness towards high profits, and one misguided Labour journal Forward, in its issue for 23rd February, 1952, chides the Tories on the ground that company profits repented during January, 1952, were up by £10,000,000. What it overlooked was that the company reports issued in January, 1952, related to profits made under the Labour Government in 1951!

Now that the Labour Party is in Opposition it will wage the sham fight about the details of running the capitalist system, but there was every justification for the jibe of the Liberal leader, Mr. Clement Davies, that if Mr. Gaitskell had been in Mr. Butler's place his Budget would have been "much of a muchness.” All budgets, no matter who introduces them, are designed to promote capitalism, not to undermine or abolish it.

Mr. Butler’s budget of 11th March had been preceded on 6th March by the budget report of the Russian Finance Minister, Mr. Zverev. They differed by five days, and little more.

The Russian Budget

The Russian Finance Minister’s budget report was reproduced in full in Soviet News (12th March, 1952) published by the Russian Embassy in London. It makes interesting reading particularly as evidence of the similarity of capitalism's problems and their treatment in the two countries.

They both have their re-armament problems; naturally both offered as instruments of “ defence,” not of "aggression.”

In 1952 the Russian Government plans to spend "for the defence of the country” 113,800 million roubles (£10,346,000,000 at the Russian official rate of exchange of 11 roubles to the £).

The amount of money to be raised from State loans in 1952 is set at £3,864 millions, and the estimated expenditure on the lottery prizes and interest to bondholders (“to pay out winnings to the population and interest on loans”) is estimated at £800 million. This latter figure relates, of course, to the interest, etc., on the total amount of loans outstanding, not merely to the additional loans to be raised during the year; at the average rate of 4 per cent. it implies that the total amount of bonds outstanding in 1952 will be about £20,000 million.

Turnover Tax (similar to the British purchase tax) brought into Budget revenues in 1951 the amount of £22,500 millions, an increase of 4.9 per cent. over 1950. It is to be increased this year by another 4.9 per cent. 

Mr Butler stepped up the taxes on profits by means of the Excess Profits Levy. His opposite number in Russia, Mr. Zverev, is going to do the same.

“Total profits in the branches of the national economy will amount to 88,100 million roubles in the current year as against 74,700 million roubles in 1951. The rise in profits makes it possible to leave a substantial part of them at the disposal of enterprises and Ministries for expanding production. At the same time, the profits tax paid into the State Budget will be increased and the share of this tax in the State Budget revenue will rise from 10.2 per cent. in 1951 to 12.2 per cent. in 1952.”

“The profits tax paid by State enterprises will be increased by 14,000 million roubles, or 29.2 per cent. more than last year. . ."

Conservative and Labour Party speakers are always urging the workers to produce more and lower the cost of production. Mr. Zverev’s report contained numerous remarks of the same kind. He reported that in 1951 “the labour productivity of workers in industry rose, by 10 per cent. compared with 1950.” But he was not satisfied with this and asked for more. His report also contained many complaints about industries which had failed to keep down their wages bill and operate sufficiently profitably:—

"It should be said that certain Ministries, enterprises and economic organisations are for from making full use of available potentialities for the further reduction of production costs, cutting trade outlays and making the work of economic organisations more profitable.”

“One of the main requisites for the further reduction of production costs is also the improvement of the organisation of labour at enterprises and the frugal expenditure of wage funds. Not all enterprises, however, live up to those requirements.”

For example, he complained that the Ministry of Paper and Woodworking Industry “permitted the mills to cover the over-expenditure of the wage fund,” and the Leningrad engineering plant of the Central Textile Machinery Administration of the Ministry of Machine and Instrument-making Industry “did not fulfil its production plans last year and overspent 13,500,000 roubles on wages.”

Time and time again he came back to this theme of not spending too much on wages, improving the control of “labour per unit of output,” and watching over “the expenditure of wage funds” and of “the timely and complete receipt of payments into the Budget.” Numerous branches of industry were named as being among those which illegally “overdraw the wage funds.” Others were charged with allowing expensive machinery “to stand idle a great deal,” thus adding to production costs, and many State farms were criticised because they “do not yet have a sufficiently high productivity of labour.”

We are told by Communists that in Russia the trade unions have control over the fixing of wages. What they do have (a very different matter) is the right to discuss the way the “wages fund” is allocated to different grades of workers; but of course the real control resides with those who fix the total amount of the wage fund for each enterprise, that is the Government and its agencies. How true this is can be seen from the Finance Minister’s report. Not once does he even mention as a possibility that the workers or the unions might have pressed for a bigger expenditure on wages. In each of the dozen cases that he refers to he tells the managements firmly that once the Government has fixed the wage fund they have got to stick to it and devote their energies to cutting down production costs and increasing the workers’ output.

British capitalism’s financial wizards and productivity experts would feel very much at home if transplanted to Mr. Zverev’s department.

It is only necessary to add that the Budget Report was unanimously approved. The session ended as follows, according to the Soviet News account:—

“Stormy, prolonged applause. All rise. A prolonged ovation in honour of Comrade J. V. Stalin resounds in the Kremlin Palace.”

It seems to have been like the Tory cheers for Mr. Butler.

The Socialist comment on British and Russian budgets is simplicity itself. The aim of the working class should be to end private and State capitalism and bring the means of production and distribution into ownership by the whole community as the basis of Socialism. While the workers continue to neglect this real issue and devote their attention instead to capitalism’s budgets and taxation they will remain a poverty-stricken exploited class and the exploiters will continue to be safe in the enjoyment of the privileged position that capitalism bestows on them.

Labour, Tory . . . Same Old Story (1994)

From the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Can you spot the difference? Which is the party of Law and Order, Family Values, Prudent Public Spending, the Market Economy: Labour or the Tories? Such is the public confusion over this that even the Tories have thought of exploiting it:

“Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, and other key members of the Cabinet favoured attacking Mr Blair as a pale copy of the Tory party. This is called ‘the Coke option’ by researchers who say the Tories represent ‘the real thing'” (Independent, 26 July).

Since Blair became Leader in July Labour’s strategy has been to criticise the Tories on their terms –as incompetent managers of the economy and unable to implement tough policies against criminals, single mothers and other scroungers. Guided by their marketing advisers, Labour politicians don’t attack the Tories’ policies but only the incompetent and ineffective way in which they are carried out. Vote for us, Blair is saying, and we’ll carry out these policies better than the Tories. The aim is to attract enough ex-Tory voters for him to be able to enter Number Ten as Britain’s next prime minister.

Labour being the vote-catching party it always has been, it had to come to this sooner or later: the end of Labour as a party of radical reform of capitalism. Labour never was a socialist party but it did once see its role as trying to shift the balance of power and wealth under capitalism in favour of working people. They never did do this of course nor, given the nature of capitalism, could they have done so. But this was what they said and this at least showed that they thought capitalism was far from being the acceptable economic system they now think it is.

Incredible as it might seem today, Denis (now Lord, of course) Healey told a cheering Labour Conference in 1973 that he was going to squeeze the rich till the pips squeaked:

“Our job is to get power, and we join battle armed with the most radical and comprehensive programme we have had since 1945. Its aim is honestly stated, to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families . . . We are going to introduce a tax on wealth. We are going to turn the estate duty into a real tax… I warn you, there are going to be howls of anguish from the 80,000 rich people. “

Labour got to power, but it was working people who ended up getting squeezed till the pips squeaked. The result was a massive wave of strikes in the public sector over the winter of 1978/9 – and the election of the Tories under Thatcher pledged, as she openly boasted, to undo everything Labour claimed to champion. Which, as demanded by capitalism’s worsened economic conditions, she did and, spiteful woman that she was, with glee. State industries were privatised, council houses sold off, local services axed, welfare payments slashed and the health service subjected to market forces.

Power for what?

Today all that Labour has retained of Healey’s rhetoric are the first six words: “our job is to get power”. Since radical phrases, indeed any definite policies, are now perceived to be a drag on this drive to get power they have been ruthlessly abandoned. Just attack the Tories as incompetent and clapped out, the marketing team advise, and, anxious for power, the Labour politicians oblige.

But power for what? In the end, since they are only projecting themselves as better and more competent managers of the status quo, it amounts to power for its own sake. The Labour leaders want power because they are professional politicians and the ambition of every professional politician is to become a government minister.

Is this being too cynical? Can they be that bad? Perhaps not, but it doesn’t really matter since even if they were sincere (and, on the law of averages, some of them must be) they still wouldn’t be able to make the capitalist market economy work other than as a system that puts profits first and so as a problem-ridden system incapable of meeting human needs properly.

In so far as they might have a theory of what they would do if they get power it will be no different from that behind the failed policies of ail previous Labour governments : trying to redistribute profits towards socially desirable projects such as a better health service, better education and better housing.

This involves accepting the profit system – not a problem of course for Blair and company – and allowing firms to make the maximum profits, justified on the grounds that this also supposedly maximises the resources available for social spending.

The trouble is this makes what a reformist government can do depend on the profitability of capitalist industry. As Richard Crossman, a Labour politician who was to become a senior Cabinet Minister in the 1964 Wilson Labour government, wrote following Labour’s defeat in the 1959 election on such a classic reformist programme:

“A Socialist Government, it is often argued, would be able to finance the huge extension of welfare, education and other pubic services by encouraging a much faster rate of development in the private sector of industry and then taxing away a sufficient amount of the profits. This was the policy put forward by the Labour Party at the last election and in the short run any Labour Government would to attempt it. But experience should have taught us that the run might be very short indeed. In the Affluent Society no Government is able to give orders to Big Business. After one budget a Labour Chancellor who tried to squeeze private industry too hard would soon discover that he was not master in his own house and that there is a relatively low level above which taxation rates, whether on the individual or the company, are only raised at the cost of provoking tax evasion and avoidance so widespread that revenue is actually reduced. If the motive of your economy is the profit-making of large-scale modem private enterprise, a Labour Government must be prepared to allow very large profits indeed and to admit that the number of golden eggs he can remove is extremely limited. ” (Labour in the Affluent Society, 1960)

His answer was that Labour should therefore seek to establish an enlarged state sector so as to give a Labour government more room to manoeuvre. The present Labour leaders would recoil in horror at such as suggestion, not that anyway it would have worked to protect a Labour government from the economic pressures of capitalism to keep costs down and profits up. Nor that the Labour governments of which Crossman was subsequently a member made any real attempt to do it.

Profits first

In fact Labour ministers ended up making speeches accepting that profits should be encouraged. Here is how one of them (Harold Lever who, like Healey was later ennobled) put it:

“Labour’s economic plans are not in any way geared to more nationalisation; they are directed towards increased production on the basis of the continued existence of a large private sector. Within the terms of the profit system it is not possible, in the long run, to achieve sustained increases in output without an adequate flow of profit to promote and finance them. The Labour leadership know as well as any businessman that an engine which runs on profit cannot be made to move faster without extra fuel.” (Observer, 3 April 1966).

This could be Blair or Gordon Brown or any of the other Labour leaders speaking and well sums up what will be the only economic policy that a future Labour government will be able to pursue. Profits First, that’s the economic law of the capitalist system, which all governments of capitalism have to accept and apply.

If you accept the profit system, then you have to accept that profits have to be made and all that this implies, including opposing strikes, restraining wages and keeping taxes on Big Business low. Labour does accept the profit system, much more openly than they have done in the past, to the extent that today they are even prepared to advocate these things while still in opposition.

Nobody who is against the profit system has any place in Tony Blair’s bland new Labour Party. If you want more Law and Order, more Family Values, more blurred nothingness you might as well join Labour as the Tories or Liberals. But if you are a Socialist and want to get rid of the profit system you should be in a democratically-organised socialist party campaigning for socialism and nothing else.

Adam Buick

The Rise and Fall of Clause Four (1994)

From the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1918 the Labour Party transformed itself into a national organisation. At the same time it adopted a list of Party Objects, the fourth of which read: ‘To secure for the producers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry, and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry and service.”

This was the nearest the Labour Party ever came to committing itself on paper to Socialism, since this could be interpreted as a somewhat wordy definition of real Socialism not all that different from the Object we in the Socialist Party adopted when we were founded in 1904: ‘The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.”

However, since it was drawn up by the Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and since the Fabians stood for a state capitalism run by an educated elite, it was meant to be understood as a reference to state ownership, or nationalisation, i.e. state capitalism.

This was confirmed when in 1929, as a result of left-wing pressure to commit the Labour Party to the nationalisation of the banks, the words “distribution and exchange” were added after “the common ownership of the means of production”. This made it absolutely clear that what was envisaged was not real socialism but state capitalism.

To talk of the common ownership of the means of exchange is a contradiction in terms. Where there is common ownership there can be no exchange since exchange can only take place between separate owners, i.e. where private ownership not common ownership exists. In a socialist society based on common ownership goods are simply distributed not exchanged, so there is no need for money, banks and the rest of the financial system.

After Labour lost the 1959 election the then leader Gaitskill tried to get rid of Clause 4 on the grounds that it was an electoral liability, but had to back down in face of the opposition. Now Tony Blair is going to try again, with more chance of success it appears.

In a sense he his right: Labour does not stand for state capitalism – it stands for working within the present profit-driven market system dominated privately-owned companies. It stands for capitalism pure and simple. The dropping of Clause 4 will merely make this absolutely clear.

A touch of Blaired vision (1994)

TV Review from the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Watching last month’s Labour Party Conference on BBC was a heady experience. The splendour of the Winter Gardens ballroom. Blackpool, the green-blue space-age set, the forward looking slogan “New Labour, New Britain" boldly outlined for all to see. the pinstripe suits, the floral ties and the presence of that nice young man Mr Blair, all combined to give the effect that was intended by the media men and spin doctors — Labour is back, but this time with a difference. Today it is a Labour Party that you could take home to meet your mother without the worry of it doing anything to embarrass you. This time round father can safely talk to it about how the plants in the greenhouse are coming along. Gone are the bad old days when it wore a donkey-jacket and was the political party from hell spitting on the pavement and farting in public. Labour is back, they say. and it has brought a bunch of chrysanths round and a box of Terry's Old Gold.

Not that Labour hasn’t tried to impress before. In 1992 it tried to sneak its way in the backdoor with claims that it had presents for granny and the young children, but father said he didn't trust it being in same room as his wallet. And father should know — he bitterly remembers being mugged by Labour back in the 1970s. It may all have happened on a dark night but he vividly recalls the bushy eyebrows. Father is not fooled by the new image and won't have Labour in the house again, let alone near his precious greenhouse.

But mother and the kids are not so sure. After all, Labour looks so attractive these days, and says some awfully nice things. It really is a charmer. And it's so boring having the same people round time and again — the bloke from number ten is always popping in with tales of woe. Nobody likes him and even the woman who did the catering for him doesn’t want to see him any more. The chap in the hush puppies from number eleven is no better and father suspects him of siphoning petrol out of the car. Compared to them, Labour seems like a breath of fresh air, but you can never tell can you?

Telling it like it isn’t

Labour is now busy convincing everyone that it is a bad egg that has reformed. Its conference was, in reality, not a conference at all, but an extended Party Political Broadcast aimed at Mr and Mrs Viewer with this end in mind. Its only discernible message was "you have nothing to fear from us — we are on your side”. Capitalists and workers, bosses and unions. Labour loves you all. Co-ordinated by the image-men for the benefit of TV, it was a stream of tepid speeches and meaningless assertions designed to connect with the hopes and, to some extent, prejudices of its potential voting fodder, generally workers whose views are moulded by the self-same media and advertising gurus.

And how the politicians tried to please. TV loves the soundbite, and there were plenty of them to be going on with "Tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime", “traditional values in a modern setting", “a strong economy and a just society" rang out like a mantra, and all to demonstrate that Labour has a new user-friendly identity. Pity the poor TV interviewers, bombarded by a stream of verbal diarrhoea for five days. Sheena MacDonald, the anchor presenter, gritted her teeth every time she was forced to interview one of the front-bench robots, while on other occasions, such as when she had to interview John Prescott, she had to visibly stifle laughter at what are now vainglorious attempts at sobriety.

Tony Blair = I’m Tory Plan B

The Chief Robot’s speech was the ultimate triumph of form over content. Expertly delivered with the help of idiot boards, it was 62 minutes of a vision of a capitalist utopia that has never existed and which, with all certainty, will never exist. He even had the cheek to call it socialism, claiming that socialism was based on the understanding that “the individual does best in a strong and decent community of people with principles and standards. and common aims and values". How many in capitalist politics are going to disagree with that? Answer that question and you are well on the way to understanding what Blair and "new Labour" are all about.

But despite the hours of prolonged tedium, the TV coverage of the Conference did provide a few minutes of welcome relief just before Blair's speech. It is then that the Labour Party “Merit Awards" are handed out to long-serving Party members. The first up was an 86-year-old gent who had worked to help the strikers in the General Strike of 1926. To the palpable embarrassment of those around him, he delivered a speech which denounced the market economy and the world capitalist system and then singled out the drug religion as one of the greatest evils in modern society. Quite what he had been doing in the Labour Party for seventy years wasn’t clear, but it certainly took the cheesy grin off Blair’s face. If only Sheena MacDonald had done us all a favour and interviewed the old guy afterwards she would have found herself confronted by a critical intelligence for the first time all week. 

Dave Perrin

News in Review: Algeria (1962)

The News in Review column from the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Algeria

In Algeria and in France the blood still flows.

The shootings, the bombings, the threats—even the publicity-worthy attempt, by the OAS to extort money from Brigitte Bardot—are typical of a bitter struggle between nationalists and colonialists.

Recent events have been bad enough. But according to some correspondents they are only the lull before another terrible storm breaks over Algeria.

What has happened to de Gaulle, the strong man who was going to clear up this mess? Whatever local influence the French President has had on the struggle—and there is no denying that he has had some—he is pretty well powerless to resolve the basic dispute.

The Moslems are still adamantly for an Algerian Algeria. The settlers stand firm for French control of the country.

Post-war history has been notable for its bloody nationalist struggles as the colonial powers have been pushed out of country after country, not always going without a fight.

This is what can be expected when capitalism throws up its disputes over property and the right to exploit a country’s workers.

That is basically what the trouble in Algeria is about. Within capitalism such struggles must go on.

Weak politicians can certainly do nothing about this. Strong politicians may make a show of doing something but end up no better than the rest.

Pay Pause

There was, of course, much moaning in the House when they got the news that the pay pause had been defied by the award to the electricity workers.

No moaning in the power stations, though. The workers were bound to resist the pause, because it is a threat to their living standards. That is what drove the teachers to demonstrate and what may cause the civil servants to start working to rule.

For the workers, then, it is simply a matter of fighting for their interests.

And for the employers?

For some of them the pay pause was a welcome thing. But for others it was not so simple.

Some weeks before the electricity award many private employers in the road haulage industry had chosen to ignore the Minister of Labour’s ruling that a pay increase and a cut in hours could not operate until the first of this month. The employees of these firms got their rise and reduction in hours in the middle of last November.

Why did the road haulage firms give in? Simply, they reckoned up the cost of surrender. Then they balanced it against the cost of the strikes and other protests which would follow a postponement of the rise. They found that capitulation was the cheaper course. So they paid up.

Which goes to show how capitalism’s divided interests extend to the employers themselves and often defeat the capitalists’ own ends.

Scooter Slump

One by one, the never-had-it-so-good industries are feeling the unaccustomed draught of recession.

Cars, television sets and refrigerators have already had their slumps. Now a side-show industry in the post war consumer goods boom has taken a fall.

Scooters and mopeds took their share of the boom, winning a lot of young people away from the bicycles they used to pedal around. Like the rest, they had their glorious summer in 1958 when the H.P. controls were off and everything sold like hot cakes.

This was the time when Raleigh Industries, already famous for their pedal cycles came in to try to take their share of the scooter and moped market.

Since then times have become hard. Lambretta recently had to cut their prices drastically in answer to their competitors’ reductions. Now Raleigh, who have already suffered in the slump in bicycle’ sales have announced that in March they will close their factory at Smethwick which turns out their scooters and mopeds. Fifteen hundred people will probably lose their jobs.

Perhaps this only amounts to a recession from which the stricken industries will soon recover. But there are enough of them in trouble now to cause fear that it is more serious than that.

Capitalism is still a system of ups and downs. Its spells of relative prosperity cannot have any permanent value. Workers should not wait until they are on the dole queue before they learn the truth of this.

Lib-Lab?

It is early days yet for the Labour Party seriously to consider an alliance with the Liberals. Mr. Gaitskell still has enough hope of becoming Prime Minister in his own right to explain his description of Mr. Woodrow Wyatt’s suggestion of a Lib.-Lab. link-up as “silly.”

It is safe to assume, though, that the suggestion finds rather more favour among the Labour Party members who arc getting sick of being on the losing side. If the Tories give them one or two more drubbings at the polls, anything could happen.

Nothing new in this, of course. The Labour governments of 1924 and 1929 blamed their alliance with the Liberals for their failure to run capitalism. They swore that they would never again allow their hands to be so tied.

But having the 1945 government to themselves made no difference—the Labour Party failed again. The best that some of them can now suggest is to revive the idea of a Liberal alliance— which they themselves told us was discredited by the events of 1924 and 1929.

There is nothing surprising in this. The Labour Party do not exist to propound political principles. Like any other capitalist party, they are out first of all for power.

This goes for the Liberals as well. They have made it plain that they would only consider an alliance which was worth their while in terms of Members of Parliament.

All good, clean, cynical fun this. May we be excused if we do not see anything to laugh at?

Caught In The Act: Time for a change (1991)

The Caught In The Act Column from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Time for a change

Who is Margaret Thatcher? It is necessary to ask the question because it seems she has disappeared. Only a few months ago she was the indestructible Iron Lady, terrifying her foes, doing all her minister's jobs herself and ruthlessly squashing out any of them who fell from her favour. But now she is hardly mentioned.

For example the Gulf Crisis simmered and burst into war without any stimulus from her; she might have been expected at least to make a speech about the wishes of the Kuwait people being paramount (provided, of course, the dictatorship there allowed the people's wishes to be known). British capitalism is sliding into another recession but she is not expected to launch into one of her searing damnations of the Moaning Minnies who refuse to acknowledge that millions unemployed and an unprecedented bankruptcy rate are actually signs of a booming economy.

When one of Thatcher's Ministers left — or was ejected from — her government it was usual for the Downing Street media manipulators to quickly spread the word that the ex-minister was not much loss or even that the government was better off without them. The more prominent the ex-minister and therefore the more threatening their absence — the more violent was the campaign to undermine their reputations.

So it was that the likes of Howe and Lawson were on the receiving end of particularly malicious stories. Of course we couldn't expect that Thatcher would now be treated like that — John Major is supposed to be a much nicer, much less obsessive personality. In fact a rather gentler and more subtle technique has been used. Thatcher's standing now was expressed by a Tory grassroots member in the Ribble constituency: "I'm grateful for all she did for the country", said this patient, malleable blockhead, "But it was time for a change".

But whatever the style employed the fact is that Thatcher is the victim of an exceptionally efficient demolition job. The Tories have a long history of these things, often plotted in some bastion of chivalry such as the Carlton Club or the discreet offices of City merchants.

When the knife was wielded it was done with due regard for the Tory reputation as the Gentleman's Party. For they are the most single-minded bunch of political operators, who thoroughly understand that politics is about getting power to keep capitalism running in their way, at whatever cost. In the business of fighting elections and disposing of leaders who damage their chances of winning they leave their opponents standing. Ask Douglas-Home. Or Ted Heath. Or Margaret Thatcher.

Labour in change

It is ironical that Thatcher may eventually be seen to have left more of a mark on the Labour Party than on their own side. As the Tories have shown that they could win enough votes from politically deranged workers to keep them in power for a long time, the Labour Party decided that their best hope of winning a general election lay in imitating the Tories as closely as possible. The new Labour policies have provoked anger and confusion among those grassroots members who joined the party under the mistaken impression that it took a principled stand for a basically different society.

Their anger is based on the recent policy statement Meet The Challenge, Make The Change, which openly accepted market forces and private industry and was aimed solely at winning the next election. But how much of a change is this from the Labour Party of the past?

In October 1964 the Labour President of the Board, Douglas Jay, assured a dinner of the International Chamber of Trade that "the new government starts with no prejudice or bias whatever against private business and industry". In May 1965 George Brown, who was then head of the Department of Economic Affairs, told a meeting of company directors and managers that "the profit motive has an ' important role to play as an incentive and test of efficiency". In April 1966 Harold Lever, who later became a Treasury minister, wrote "Labour and business are already moving towards a mutual understanding".

And what about Labour's leader then, Harold Wilson. How does he compare to Neil Kinnock? In September 1964 — just before Wilson won the election — Anthony Howard wrote that ". . . he has already transformed the Labour Party from being primarily an ideological movement into being an election-minded organisation". Lest you misunderstand — Howard was one of Wilson's admirers.

Disappointed Leader

It could be that Kinnock has misled himself enough to be disappointed, were he to learn that he has not really changed anything about the Labour Party. It is some years now since he was a rebellious, CND-marching, fiery left winger; he dropped all that to concentrate on the serious business of exploiting working class readiness to disregard their interests and to vote parties like Labour into power.

To do this Kinnock must associate himself with, and defend, election programmes the attraction of which lies in their unrealistic claims to be able to solve capitalism’s problems and to reconcile essentially conflicting class interests.

In this Kinnock must upset his old friends, outraged by what they see as his change of course. In fact the real problem lies with them for Kinnock is following the inexorable route of a party which stands for a reformed capitalism and which must therefore compete for power over the system, cadging for votes with policies and promises which are as false and as cynical as they need be. This is as ruthless a business as the Tories getting rid of Thatcher; that is the nature of capitalist politics.

So it is not only incorrect to give Thatcher the blame — or the credit, depending on how you look at it — for Labour changing its policies and its style. It is also unfair: the Labour Party have always been as they are now only at times they are less effective in their campaign for capitalism. In any case, to be charitable to Thatcher: in the depths of anonymity of wherever she is, hasn't she got enough to answer for?

Ivan

Letter: Vote Labour? (1991)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vote Labour?

Dear Editors.

As a paid-up member of the Labour Party, I agree with “Anti-Capitalist", of Seaham. in regard to ending the capitalist system (Socialist Standard, December 1990), but I believe he is rather short-sighted in his view that without capitalism there would be no poll tax, rent, gas and electricity bills, etc, because unfortunately they are a necessity of life.

What is required to be controlled is the immorality and hypocrisy of this Tory government which makes the rich richer and at the same time—if there were no trade unions—would impose on the already low-paid working class families a 6½ percent wage rise, as they tried to impose on the NHS ambulance crews and failed.

So it is my honest working man’s belief, as one who worked from the age of 14 in 1939, who fought for his country from the age of 17 in 1943, that capitalism be legally controlled, the denationalised industries now in private hands be returned to public ownership, the profits from all the industries accounted for to ensure that the workers get a fair return coupled to productivity and inflation. Also that the government ensure that working class families have decent housing with all mod cons, and good bus services, shopping centres, sports facilities and entertainment facilities, decent hospitals, doctors’ surgeries.etc.

Isn’t this only what we deserve as the “factory fodder" in peace and the close combat “cannon fodder” during the wars every generation endures? That way we get a fair return for the hours we need to work to give us the pride in working for a living, a wage to pay for the necessities of life. gas. electricity, an acceptable rent and rates system based on the ability to pay. a decent education for our children.

We need a socialist Labour government to ensure that Britain returns to having a truly democratic government, which this lava-tory government can’t claim to be because it has sacked loyal British citizens at GCHO because those working class men were not prepared to surrender their democratic right to belong to an accredited trades union. That act of fascism was the first "goose-step” on British soil by a British government claiming to be democratic but creating the stench of nazism in England’s fresh and. so far, free air (until it gets privatised).

There is one light at the end of this dark gory Tory tunnel and it is this. The millions of good honest working class families, of all political persuasions, who thought that they could afford to vote Conservative because of the false promises of Margaret H. (for "Hypocrite" not “Hilda") Thatcher's dreams have found that these turned into nightmares. Inflation, mortgage interest rates, freezing of family allowances, and—most disgusting of all— the freezing of the old age pensioners’ £10 Xmas gift, plus additional charges for eye tests, dental checks, transport costs to get to work, and the effects of the poll tax making the rich even richer and working class families poorer—all the above have taught the working class young lads and lasses a very hard lesson: that the Tories, as they have always done, only look after their own. the fat cat families.

This is why at the next General Election all those who thought they could afford to vote Conservative and did so to their ever-lasting regret (yes, they were the ones who voted the Tories into power) will be the ones to vote them out. out. out.

George Ellis 

Timperley, Cheshire

Reply:

You are probably right. Hundreds of thousands of workers will be voting Labour at the next General Election for the reasons you give. Since the Tories really have done all the things you list, we can understand why no worker with the slightest inkling of class consciousness would even consider voting Tory. But is that a reason for voting Labour?

It might be if it was governments that caused the problems and miseries that workers face under capitalism. But they don't: governments merely preside over the capitalist system while it works in the only way it can. as a profit-making system in the interests of the profit-takers and against those of the wage and salary workers.They have to carry out what the continuing profitable operation of the system demands.

Changing the government doesn’t change this. All this does is to change the individuals who make up the government. Different individuals can of course have different attitudes and we freely acknowledge that Labour politicians, for various reasons, don’t have the same desire to make the rich richer and to bash the working class as theirTory counterparts. But what counts in the end is not what government ministers may or may not want to do, but what they will be forced to do as administrators of the capitalist system.

Capitalism forces all governments, including Labour ones, to dance to its tune. Have we not seen Labour governments cut benefits, freeze wages, impose health charges, break strikes and preside over the rich getting richer and unemployment going up? There is no reason to suppose that a Kinnock government would be any different. No government of capitalism can give workers the sort of "fair" deal you outline—and make no mistake about it: a Kinnock government, like all previous Labour governments will be a government of capitalism. A "socialist Labour government" is an absurd contradiction in terms, but this is not even what Kinnock is promising as he has openly proclaimed that the aim of the next Labour government will merely be to try to make the market economy—capitalism—work better than the Tories.

Since it is capitalism that is the cause of working class problems, to solve them what is required is not a change of government but a change of economic and social system— from one based on class property and the profit motive to one based on common ownership, democratic control and production for use: and. yes. this will mean that electricity, gas and housing will be provided, like everything else, as free public services.

Editors.

The Leader and the Labour Party (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Scarborough it was outwardly politics that were being discussed, but the Leader and his supporters were also on trial. The questions were what should be the policy and who should be the leader.

On the main resolutions decisions were reached which will hold unless and until they are reversed, but the question of leadership was not decided, though various groups which think it was are looking round for Gaitskell's successor.

On different aspects of the dominating issue of nuclear weapons there were four resolutions, and Mr. Gaitskell and the Labour Party executive were defeated on all of them, though not by large majorities. It was a severe but perhaps not yet fatal blow for Mr. Gaitskell and the Labour M.Ps, the majority of whom stood for the official policy.

A resolution was carried that “Labour policy is decided by the Party conference which is the final authority,” but the executive gave it an interpretation which seems to rob it of much of its meaning. Mr. Len Williams, the Party's National Agent, told the Conference that “the Parliamentary Labour Party” (that is, the Labour M.Ps.) is under no direction from conference or any other body. Mr. Williams said the National Executive did not wish to oppose the composite resolution if it was understood that it involved no change in the long-established principle governing relationships between conferences, National Executive and Parliamentary Party. And it had to be understood that nobody had the power to instruct the Parliamentary Party on the way it carried out its responsibilities." (Daily Herald, 5/10/60.)

And the day after the Conference Mr. Gaitskell made it clear that he has no present intention of resigning and on the contrary is preparing to overturn the Scarborough votes. Speaking in a TV interview he declared: “I regard it as absolutely vital that we should reverse this decision at next year's conference and I shall do everything I can to get that done.” (Daily Mail, 9/10/60.)

He also gave it as his opinion that the Parliamentary Labour Party will by a majority support the policy defeated by the delegates at Scarborough, the implication of which is that they will also confirm him in the Leadership, which incidentally carries with it the leadership of the Opposition at a government- provided salary of £3,000 a year.

Many Tory and Liberal newspapers, while criticising and regretting Mr. Gaitskell’s unsuccessful tactics, lavished praise on him and openly hoped that he may survive his defeat by Conference.

But whether he goes or stays the prospect for the Labour Party is bleak indeed. In the constituencies and in Parliament there will be rival groups each determined to put their point of view, and laying the Party wide open to attack from Tories and Liberals. This may, as the Liberal leaders proclaim, give them an opportunity to win back former supporters who joined the Labour Party. One political commentator, Mr. Robert McKenzie, thinks that even if Mr. Gaitskell survives for the moment it will solve nothing for the Party. His opponents will regard it as a cynical trick that Mr. Gaitskell only claims the right to defy the Trade Union block vole when it ceased to support his policy.

It is almost inevitable that the victims of this “trick” will fight on, either until they are expelled from the parliamentary party, or until Gaitskell himself is destroyed. And as the next election looms ahead, even some of those who admire Mr. Gaitskell's courage may decide that he must make way for someone who has at least a chance of reuniting the party.

(Observer, 9/10/60)

His own opinion, and hope, is that a new anti-H-Bomb Labour Party will be formed and that the Gaitskell faction will then come to terms with the Liberals.

Another danger for the Labour Party is that the conflict will lead to loss of some trade union support and may influence relationships between the Party and the TUC. Sir Thomas Williamson. Secretary of the General and Municipal Workers Union told conference that some of the branches would withdraw support from the Labour Party if the anti-nuclear resolutions were carried. (Daily Telegraph. 6/10/60.) The correspondent of The Times (7/10/60) reported that events at the conference had strengthened the already existing movement to reduce or sever the TUC’s connection with the Party.

It is an accepted convention of professional politics that the politician always claims to speak “for the people or, as he sometimes qualifies it—“for all intelligent people.” It is not so easy to decide what a Labour Party conference vote represents. Mr. Cousins claimed that he speaks “for Britain ,” a claim that Tory newspapers angrily rejected. Out of more than 22 million workers in this country, of whom 9,600,000 are in trade unions, the TUC has in its affiliated unions about 8 million, and the Labour Party 5,600,000. If Labour Party conference votes represented the views of its affiliated trade unionists and the additional 875,000 individual members who belong to local parties, cooperative societies, etc., they could be taken as representing directly the considered wishes of the majority among 6 million workers. (A large, but unknown number of the individual members also count as part of the affiliated trade union membership). But Labour Party spokesmen are well aware that their voting methods, including the trade union block vote, can produce distorted results. Even so, the claim of the Daily Herald (which now supports the H-bomb) that the great majority of Labour supporters are with them on that issue is, to say the least, somewhat surprising. According to a poll undertaken by Odhams Press Research Division “an overwhelming majority of Labour supporters and trade unionists are against the West giving up H-bombs and nuclear weapons so long as Russia keeps hers . . . . more than four out of five Labour supporters think that Britain and America should keep the bomb.” (Daily Herald, 4/10/60.)

There are, of course, sceptics who think that public opinion polls may be no more accurate than block votes.

The Guardian shares the Herald's view of the vote and roundly declared that the Conference is not democratic “while it is governed by trade union block votes. . . . There is no democracy in giving Mr. Cousins one million votes. As the world will probably see today, one or two men can turn Labour's policy upside down.” (Guardian, 5/10/60.)

Mr. Gaitskell, defeated on the H-bomb, gained the day on a policy statement which in effect discards old aims of wholesale nationalisation, and puts in their place the possibility of nationalising a few selected industries, together with the plan for a Labour Government to buy shares in companies without taking them over. It recognises that “both public and private ownership have a place in society.” Delegates speaking in opposition called it “underwriting capitalism” and the abandonment of “Socialism.” Mr. Gaitskell retorted that the proposals were just as much “Socialist” as is Nationalisation, a fact on which Socialists can heartily agree, since nationalisation is state capitalism and has never been advocated by the S.P.G.B.

While the delegates were maintaining, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, that they still believe in nationalisation as the answer to the workers’ problems, strikes were going on in the nationalised coal industry (they break out at the rate of over 30 a week year after year), the Railwaymen were preparing for a strike over pay and Postal workers were discussing a strike resolution over hours of work. And it would seem from the rent strikes and the riots that followed forcible eviction of council tenants by a local council that nationalisation's little sister municipal ownership is no less unpopular.

The day that the Daily Herald reported the vote on the policy of the government buying company shares it reported developments in the direction of a little private enterprise by the local Labour parties themselves. They are planning to form a Unit Trust to invest their funds in company shares and thus cash in on the rise in the profits and prices of ordinary shares that has accompanied inflation. A trade union Unit Trust is already being organised.

Edgar Hardcastle

Between the Lines: I'll take the Whitehouse (1988)

The Between the Lines Column from the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

I’ll take the Whitehouse

ITV opened its autumn season with a blockbuster (for which read: expensive, short-run soap opera) called I’ll Take Manhattan. It was the usual story of highly suntanned men making love to dollar signs and women who failed the audition for Dynasty or Dan Quayle's past. In between endless bouts of what the Sun calls bonking, these blokes compete over who can be the richest swine and own most of New York.

As unbelievable and tasteless tedium, such soap bubbles fade into insignificance when compared with that bigger-budgeted soap opera which has been dominating the US media in recent times. The great battle for the right to preside over American capitalism, between the Democrat with the permanent grin and the Vice President who has spent the last eight years as the chief assistant to Washington DC s village idiot.

The media dominates the US election. It dominates it in a manner that turns conventions into variety shows, speeches into prolonged smiles peppered with cliches and ideas into temporary interferences in the struggle to say least and win most support. The media campaigns of both parties in the US election are such that no socialist opposition, even if it was numerically big enough to mount a campaign against them (which at the moment the World Socialist Party of the United States is not) would be in a financial position to even begin to compete equally in an attempt to persuade the US workers of the case for the socialist alternative.

Instead of any serious attempt at presenting society as it is or offering solutions to its manifold problems, of which the wage slaves of the USA are far from free, the election advertising which is put out concentrates almost entirely on fascistic leader imagery. As in the implausible soap operas, the audience is urged to suspend disbelief and devote their minds entirely to superficial issues of personality. Thus it was that while Congress voted millions of dollars to arm the Contra terrorists, supported by both Bush and the Republican and Bentsen, Dukakis’s running-mate, the media "news" was about whether Bush's partner, Quayle. had once slept with a Playboy model when she was working as a hired "political lobbyist".

Instead of there being any debate about why one in four US children are now living below the official poverty line, the men with the media agenda were more interested in finding out how it was that Quayle. the super-patriot, managed to do the sensible thing and, like many other rich young kids of his class, dodge the Vietnam war where workers were sent to be mutilated and murdered.

Nobody elects the owners or controllers of NBC. CBS or ABC. Yet it is widely acknowledged in the USA that if they want to destroy a Presidential candidate they can. With them lies the power to tell the millions of American workers what "the real issues" are. Approximately half of the American workers will respond by not voting. It is bad enough having to watch tripe like I'll take Manhattan. without being told that you have to appear as an unpaid extra in it.

I’ll take Downing Street

While Hollywood beefcakes were pretending to take Manhattan and political half-wits were trying to take the Whitehouse. poor old Neil is still trying to storm Ten Downing Street. Panorama (BBC1. 9.30pm, 5 September) was all about the Labour Party’s current policy review exercise. Who ever said that good old tragedy was dead?

The programme exemplified much that is the pathetic tragedy of the reformist Labour Party. There was Tony Benn addressing a small rally of believers who had come to hear the rhetoric of radical change. The noises he made were good ones; some of it sounded like selected paragraphs from the Socialist Standard. It was, of course, the unselected passages which let him down and make him essentially no more than a useful frontman to be used by Kinnock and the rest in order to appropriate the hope of workers who should be using their energies destroying capitalism, not trying to run it. There was John Prescott who believes that Labour Party policy is fine and the world would be a much happier place if only the Labour Party had an extremely opportunist Deputy leader who comes from Hull and has no particular ideas about anything and is called John Prescott. Roy Hattersley. looking more than ever like a sad parody of himself, dribbled on about the importance of developing the Labour Party's ideas, by which he meant that more people should read his extremely dull book about why individuals would be more free under a "mixed economy".

There was even a two-second shot of a couple of Socialist Worker sellers standing outside a Labour Party meeting telling the Labourites how they have betrayed the workers once again. Of course. Socialist Worker urged workers to vote for these Labour betrayers in 1987, as they did in 1983, 1979, 1974 . . . The tragedy of the Panorama programme was that it showed the consequences which the Labour Party has brought on itself by 80 years of promising to reform away the inherent problems of the capitalist system without seeking to abolish the system itself. The simplicity of the socialist alternative — the need for a voice to be heard urging workers to abandon all illusions in reformism was not heard on the programme. The fact is that there are those seeking to change society and there are those seeking to change the seating arrangements in the Palace of Westminster and Kinnock's party has become so absorbed in the latter process that it no longer even occurs to them that whoever wins, the workers will lose under capitalism.

Your chance to be critics?

Right to Reply (C4. 6pm, 3 September) came from the Edinburgh TV Festival where four ’ordinary viewers" were invited to have their say about what's wrong with TV. In a half-hour programme, which included a five-minute introduction and several minutes of media controllers patting the "ordinaries" on the head, this big chance for the workers to have their say amounted to about five minutes each.

Of course, Channel Four chose who was to be invited to come along and criticise them and — surprise surprise — the Socialist Party member from Glasgow, who was told by Right to Reply that they would probably want him to come along, was eventually dropped from the programme. In the event, the four "ordinaries raised some pretty ordinary criticisms which, even if acted on. would not change the fundamentally undemocratic, pro-capitalist. life-distorting. minority-controlled nature of British TV output.

This column will continue to expose TVs crucial role as an agency for capitalist propaganda and manipulation of news, ideas and images. We shall praise them when, as occasionally happens, they tell the truth and offer some enlightening material for the consumption of our class. (In that respect, we can only be pleased to see the repeat showing of the excellent documentary, Fourteen Days in May and the follow-up documentary shown last month.) But we shall not desist from demonstrating that between the lines of most of what is not shown on TV is a poisonous intellectual diet which workers absorb at their peril.

Steve Coleman

The T.U.C., What it is and What it Should be (1956)

From the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not difficult for anyone who reflects dispassionately on the world situation to see broadly what the human race needs to solve its problems; an end to war and war preparations, an increase of the production of useful articles and services, and means to secure that these things are made available to all. Put in so general a form, these aims would be endorsed with more or less sincerity by members of all political parties all over the world; but there the cleavage begins. Non-Socialists, if they believe the ends practicable at all, think they can be won by modifications of the existing social order and by building up United Nations. Socialists hold that class and international conflict can only be ended by replacing Capitalism by Socialism and that until this is done neither the problem of achieving a large-scale increase of production of useful articles, nor the problem of distribution to all, can be solved; while Capitalism endures there will always be wars, and the workers will go on producing wealth not for themselves but for the Capitalist owners of the means of production and distribution, with accompanying waste of labour and materials on armaments and other Capitalist anti-social activities and with inevitable poverty for the many and riches for the few.

Where does the T.U.C. stand in this? It represents a large proportion of organised workers in Britain, is committed in theory to internationalism through its affiliation to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and vaguely approves of a new social order declared to be the aim of the Labour Party here and of similar parties in other lands.

How does it shape up to its responsibilities? Regrettably it does so very ill, as the recent Brighton conference shows; this despite the much overrated shift of attitude from half acceptance of some degree of “wage restraint” to a more or less definite repudiation. On every issue it dealt with effects not causes and this was as true of the “militants” as of those they condemned.

Certainly the organised workers should use what strength they have to press for higher wages but how far does this carry them? They have been doing this ever since there were trade unions and in so doing they tacitly accept Capitalism and the wages system. The limit of trade union pressure on the industrial field is set by the state of trade. When trade declines or when the sales of Capitalist industries in one country are hit by competition from other countries, the ability of the trade unions to do more than fight rearguard actions disappears. How can motor workers fight for higher wages against employers who have less need for labour?

No delegate even thinks it worth mentioning that, as Marx pointed out, the only way out of this is that trade unions should recognise the need to aim at the abolition of the wages system. This means aiming for Socialism but among all those who pay lip-service to Socialism no-one ever reminds T.U.C. conferences of it.

Conference gave its approval to “automation” while seeking safeguards for displaced workers and consultation between employers and trade unions, but nobody thought fit to raise the one vital issue that the new automation plants, like the old ones, are the private property of the Capitalist class, used for their profit not for the good of the community as a whole. The extent of the demand that the delegates considered they were entitled to make was. in the words of the Communist, Mr. Haxell, of the E.T.U., being ready to fight “and win some of the increase of productivity for the workers."—(Manchester Guardian, Sept. 5.)

Some delegates urged support for automation on the ground that if British industry did not adopt it, while industries in foreign countries did, British products would be priced out of world markets. Here was a chance, which the Conference did not take, of recalling that the international trade union movement ought to have as one of its functions united action to prevent employers playing off the workers in one country against those in others, to the detriment of the whole working class.

The resolution demanding the 40 hour week was an exhibition of unreality. True the trade unions ought to struggle for shorter hours but they have most of them long ceased to do so in any real sense. Before the war 47 hours were the typical working week in British industry. Now it is nominally 44 hours; but in fact, through widespread overtime working, average actual hours are longer than before the war. The only people who have actually reduced hours are the employers in those industries where falling sales have resulted in a compulsory shorter week with shorter pay.

The resolution against “wage restraint” showed muddled thinking and demagogic speeches at their worst. Socialists would have stated the Socialist case for the ending of Capitalism and with it the ending of the wages system. What conference did was to tie up wage restraint with an attack on the Tory Government because it had not played its part in controlling Capitalism—as if the workers were any better off when the Labour Government was in power trying vainly to improve Capitalism by “controlling it.” Mr. Campbell, of the N.U.R., in what goes for a “fighting speech,” slated the Tory Government for saying that “balance of payments” difficulties made wage restraint necessary and he received the applause of delegates by declaring that Tory policy had meant “to many working class households,” “difficulties with their balance of payments ."—(Daily Telegraph, September 6.). This is the veriest claptrap, for working class households have been faced with difficulties of making ends meet ever since there was a working class and just as much under Labour Government as now. Indeed the evidence shows that under the Labour Government the position happened to be rather worse. Official figures show that between 1947 and 1951 wage rates rose 22 per cent, while the cost of living outstripped wage rates with a rise of 29 per cent. Since the Tories came in, helped by more resolute trade union pressure, that position has been reversed and now wage rates at 64 per cent, above 1947 are ahead of the cost of living at 56 per cent. This was recently pointed out by a Labour M.P. Mr. Crossman. Writing in the Daily Mirror (November 15, 1955), he admitted that but for the workers' acceptance of the Labour Government’s “wage restraint” wages under the Labour Government could have been higher than they were. The workers failed, he wrote, to extort “the highest possible price for labour in a free market.”

And in spite of his bold words on rejecting wage restraint Mr. Campbell went on to say that if the present government were to restore the controls used by the Labour Government “ trade unionists might not be compelled .to press for wage increases to meet the price increases forced upon us.” He is prepared, in other words, to go back to the defeatest trade union policy operated under the Labour Government.

Br. Cousins, who carried conference with him on the resolution, demanded that the Tory Government should go in for disarmament and thus save £750 million as an alternative to wage restraint.—(Manchester Guardian, September 6.). He also spoke for a Labour Government. It brought applause from delegates who seemingly forgot that it was the Labour Government who launched the £1,500 million a year rearmament programme and inaugurated the “wage restraint” policy.

But having thus attacked armament costs and having also resolved to press for a reduction in the length of military service below the two years fixed by the Labour Government Conference went on to pass a resolution on the Suez dispute which, while anti-war in tone nevertheless committed Congress to support the use of force if it was approved by the United Nations. But war is no less war because carried out under United Nation auspices as the delegates should well know from the Korean conflict into which the Labour Government entered in 1950. Supporters of this resolution mistakenly argue that workers' jobs are involved and therefore trade unions must act including giving support to war, if United Nations gives approval. Which brings us back to the total failure of the T.U.C. to envisage the urgent necessity of getting rid of the social system that causes wars.

After being in existence for three-quarters of a century the T.U.C. is still going nowhere and offering no guidance to the workers about their vital interest.

Edgar Hardcastle

A word of advice to Labour Party supporters (1952)

From the October 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party is searching for a policy. The nationalisation of the basic industries and the extension of the social services have been brought about and still the position of the working class remains unchanged, the workers must sell their ability to work for a wage that scarcely buys the necessities of life. At the last general election a large number of workers showed their discontent with the Labour Party’s administration by placing the Tories in power. To rally the support of the workers next time, a host of publications have been issued recently by the Labour Party and groups within it. All attempt to find some new solution to the problems of Capitalism, since nationalisation and the welfare state have failed to solve them.

One of these publications, the “New Fabian Essays,” was reviewed in the Economist (May 25th, 1952). The reviewer wrote:—

“Mr. Crosland presents a skilful analysis of the mixed economy, neither Capitalism nor Socialism, that war and six years of Labour rule have created. Mr. Strachey thinks rather well of the result and Mr. Crossman, naturally, dismisses it contemptuously as ‘welfare capitalism.' Neither manages to define the Socialism which he wants to evolve from it. Mr. Crosland himself effectively challenges the stock Left-wing assumption that the mixed economy is naturally transitory and must pass quickly into some sort of Socialism; and he dismisses several of the orthodox lines of advance—more social services, more nationalisation, more controls, more direct taxation—without making the alternatives at all clear . . . 

“. . . . The gross result is certainly not even the beginnings of a new philosophy either of socialist change or of consolidation in the welfare state."

The Glasgow Forward (23rd August, 1952) commented upon another of these publications:—

“The Labour Party's latest policy statement—ironically titled 'Facing the Facts'—has met with all-round criticism. It tries to please everybody in the party and ends of pleasing nobody. At the moment the Labour Party is suffering from too many personalities, too many platitudes—and too few policies."

Another pamphlet published by the Socialist Union, “Socialism—A Restatement of Principles,” is called by the Tribune (11th July, 1952) “ Sunday School Socialism.” According to the Economist (June 28th, 1952), the pamphlet argues that “The Labour movement is not . . . concerned with overthrowing Capitalism and replacing it by something called Socialism . . . All the social and economic changes from the Capitalism of the nineteenth century cannot be seen as part of the transition to some definite socialist system . . .” 

From this the pamphlet goes on to protest against the class war as an instrument of socialist advance: it declares roundly that the programmes and thoughts of socialists “have all grown out of the discontents of the past, and were designed to meet the injustices of a past age it not only objects to the identification of nationalisation with Socialism, but asks whether anyone knows what “socialisation” means. . . .

“All this is, of course, destructive,” wrote the Economist. “Positively, socialist union offers as yet ethical, not political, principles; and the best of ethics can lead men to almost any practical conclusion.”

Over 70 years ago. Frederick Engels had something to say about the relation of ethics to Socialism which was later published as “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.” Here Engels traced the origin and development of Socialism, its historical conditions and philosophical ideas. He called those who sought to bring about a better society by appealing to ethical principles. Utopians. He wrote:

"The ‘Utopians” mode of thought has for a long time governed the Socialist ideas of the nineteenth century. and still governs some of them. Until very recently all French and English socialists did homage to it. The earlier German Communism, including that of Weitling was of the same school. To all these Socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered. With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding. his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive one of the other. Hence from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion, a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of the different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition, a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed, the more the definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.

“To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.” (“Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” Vol. II, pp. 117-8, Marx Engels' Sel. Works, published by Lawrence & Wishart, Ltd.)

As the foregoing comments on the Labour publications show, Engels’ words also describe the Labourites of the 20th century.

Engels pointed to the working class struggles in the early 19th century and argued that these ’’facts more and more strenuously gave the lie to the teachings of bourgeois economy as to the identity of the interests of capital and labour. As to the universal harmony and universal prosperity that would be the consequence of unbridled competition . . .”

"The new facts made imperative a new examination of all past history. Then it was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange—in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as the religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period. . . .”

"The Socialism of earlier days certainly criticised the existing capitalist mode of production and its consequences. But it could not explain them, and therefore, could not get the mastery of them. It could only simply reject them as bad. The more strongly this earlier Socialism denounced the exploitation of the working class, inevitable under Capitalism, the less able was it clearly to show in what this exploitation consisted and how it arose. But for this it was necessary—(1) to present the capitalistic mode of production in its historical connection and its inevitableness during a particular historical period, and therefore, also, to present its inevitable downfall; and (2) lo lay bare its essential character, which was still a secret. This was done by the discovery of surplus value. It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labour is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and of the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it; that even if the capitalist buys the labour power of his labourer at its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet extracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the ultimate analysis this surplus value forms those sums of value from which are heaped up the constantly increasing masses of capital in the hands of possessing classes. The genesis of capitalist production and production of capital were both explained.” (“Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” Vol. II, M.E.S.W., pp. 123-5.)

After tracing the development of modern social production from small handicraft, Engels wrote:

“The means of production, and production itself, had become in essence socialised. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which presupposes the private production of individuals, under which, therefore, everyone owns his own product and brings it to the market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests.

“This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalistic character, contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonism of to-day.” (M.E.S.W.. Vol. II. pp. 128-9.)

Engels explained in detail the social antagonisms that follow from this fundamental contradiction and pointed out how it would be eliminated ”with the seizing of the means of production by society.” (P. 140.)

By this Engels didn’t mean nationalisation. He claimed that

"the transformation . . . into state ownership does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces . . . the modern State . . . is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as the individual capitalists. The modem State, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers—proletarians.” (P. 136.) 

Members and sympathisers of the Labour Party seeking a policy to which they can give their support should lay hold of ”Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” and read it carefully. They can find it included in “Marx, Engels, Selected Works,” Vol. II. The language may reflect the conditions under which it was written, but as an exposition of the rise and development of capitalist society and the solution to its problems. Socialism, it is right up to date.

We hope that many of them would then realise that the object of their policy should be the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments of production and that to ” thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism.”

J. T.