Letter: Communists and Kings (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communists and Kings

It was of course very wrong of the Morning Star to have published an attack on any aspect of the capitalist State, it should know that only the SPGB is allowed to do that. At any rate that is the opinion of the SPGB. Indeed the outside cover of your March issue should have read “Royalty, Rates, Taxes and the Working Class, Tzar Brezhnev and the Jews, Do They Matter?”, since without rates, taxes and Tzar Brezhnev capitalism would still exist as your pages of Socialist Theory make clear.

I notice that although you do not approve of the Morning Star article you nevertheless follow its lead in exposing the character of royalty. You in the end come down in its support because it gives “pageantry and a show”. If they did not get this some workers would have to start reading the Socialist Standard to find out why Royalty was not Rubbish.

Tom Braddock 

East Preston

Reply:

Obviously the Socialist Standard makes you wild by being right. If you are prone to the Morning Star, that is understandable; though, curiously enough, we never mentioned the Morning Star in the article you object to. We do not think, either, that anyone else thought the final paragraph “came down in support” of royalty.

However, since you draw the Morning Star to our attention, we will say that no notice need be taken of it. First, because it does not attack the capitalist state. It supports it in Russia all the time and elsewhere some of the time, as expedient. Second, because Communist parties and papers are quite prepared to support national figureheads. The Morning Star's predecessor The Daily Worker in 1947 (21st June) wrote of the present Queen’s 21st birthday:

The dignity of a modern state can only be met when its titular head is chosen from among its most eminent citizens.

In July 1938 the French Communist paper L’Humanite welcomed a visit to Paris by the King and Queen of England in these terms:

We applaud the visit of these rulers in the measure to which it is devoted to this end . . . Our good feeling is extended to that England which fights on the front of Collective Security; that England in the name of whom leading bourgeois such as Lord Cecil, Churchill, Lloyd George, and prelates like the Dean of Canterbury, pronounce regularly such grave warnings . . .

And haven’t you heard yet that a royal visit to Moscow is in the air? Tom Braddock, you are confused.

Editors.

Letter: Messages distorted (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Messages distorted

Your experts say they will answer my letter if I say what it means, and to assist me to do so they ask me three questions. I am very glad to answer so that I can get their reply as I have no doubt many other readers of the S.S. will.

(a) The workers of Britain will take the advice given them by socialists because they will finally have no alternative. Capitalism has broken down, it doesn't work any longer. Money, stocks, shares, investments etc. will no longer have any value, it is rapidly falling now as the first two articles in your own current issue point out. I quote as follows from the second article: “Capitalism . . . has outlived its usefulness” (I do not think it was ever any use but you obviously do). “Production will be owned and controlled by the whole worldwide community”. It was this that made me say the S.P.G.B. expects to go on for ever; but I take the view that there is no need for us to wait, it will be much better to set up a socialist economy and set an example for the world-wide community to follow.

(b) How they may take control. By taking over by the workers in them of all fields, factories, and workshops and taking no notice of the S.P.G.B.

(c) If you don’t like the expression “socialist state” will “socialist economy” suit you better as in my reply to (b)?

In reply to your last paragraph, I agree that it is no great hardship to have to dodge back but note that in the current issue you have managed to avoid this. I am surprised that you take so much notice of the posh magazines but even they do not dodge back, they just put the advertising in and then go on.

Tom Braddock 

East Preston

Reply:

We are not experts! We simply pen the answers that any Socialist Party member could give.

Capitalism has not broken down now, just as it did not collapse in the ’thirties. Economic crises are a normal part of its existence. The view that capitalism has outlived its usefulness has not suddenly been reached because of the current crisis.

Socialism would not be a practical proposition without the ability to produce in abundance. Through capitalism, with its insatiable quest for profit, the means for production have been developed to the point where abundance is possible. It is in this historical sense that capitalism has been useful.

Socialism is not about workers controlling factories etc. but about human beings having social ownership and democratic control of their total environment. Such a social system cannot be established without the full understanding and active co-operation of the vast majority of the working class. They will come to this understanding because Socialism is the only solution to all of the problems posed by capitalism. Socialism is by definition a worldwide concept and it is nonsense to speak of “setting it up” in this or any other country. Incidentally if you think otherwise what are you waiting for?

We in the SPGB are not keeping anyone waiting but are enthusiastically working to achieve our objective —Socialism!

Editors.

Letter: More about Rents (1972)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Editorial Committee is slipping. The reason why Glasgow people won their rent strike had nothing to do with house building having ceased. There had been housing shortage before the war, as indeed there still is, but the tenants did not and do not effectively challenge the landlords as they did in 1915 when the landlords tried to put up the rents; it seemed to them quite a natural thing to do since the butchers, grocers, etc. were all putting up their prices. People had to have food but, as they discovered, they did not have to pay the landlords; indeed, there was a decided advantage in not doing so, they had more money to spend in the shops. That is what forced the Government to step in and save the rent system.

If tenants could not be forced to pay rent in 1915 it is obvious they could not be forced to pay rent today if they stood together and refused to do so.

The Editorial Committee also assume that if tenants refuse to pay rent it will enable the non-landlord members of the capitalist class to reduce wages by that amount. Why? If, by combined action, the workers free themselves against the burden of rents they will find themselves strong enough to refuse to accept reduced wages; in fact, they would rapidly, having realised their strength, demand increased wages, finally making profit taking impossible and so ending the capitalist system. This is the reply to the last paragraph in the Committee’s reply to me; it shows them what the working class would achieve by first of all destroying the landlord class. Certainly, every household would be better off by spending money for themselves instead of giving it to the rent collector.

It is quite likely that I am about the oldest reader of “Socialist Standard” still alive. I started in 1907, I used buy it off “Hutch” ‘a member of the Tooting S.P.G.B., after that I got it in Charing Cross Road and now that I am a refugee on the South Coast I get it by post direct from Clapham. I have always read it to the great advantage of my faith in Socialism. It is only on this matter of rents that I have found the S.P.G.B. not agreeing to any working class struggle. I am well aware that, at the same time, they warn the struggle can’t succeed until all the workers of the World become Socialists which, of course, is absurd. For instance, in Bulgaria today the workers pay no rent or rates or suffer any deduction from their pay for pensions. Why? Because the Bulgarian State owns 80 per cent of all productive work, the present remaining 20 per cent is covered by a very small income tax.

Tom Braddock,

East Preston.

Reply:

The questions referred to here arise from the article Why Must the Rent Go Up ? in the Socialist Standard for January this year. Tom Braddock’s first letter disputing the Socialist Party’s attitude to rent control appeared, with our reply, in the July issue.

On the question of what happened in Glasgow in 1915 having “nothing to do with house building having ceased”, we quote from Housing Finance and Development by A. J. Merrett and Allen Sykes (Longmans, 1965). In the opening chapter they say:

“House building virtually ceased with the advent of war and rents began to rise, particularly in munitions-producing areas. This provoked an outcry such that in 1915 the government passed the first rent restriction Act — the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act, 1915. It froze the rents of all unfurnished tenancies (approximately 85 per cent of the total) below certain limits at the August 1914 level, and landlords were virtually forbidden to evict protected tenants save for obvious defaults such as non-payment of rent.”

This passage also makes clear that Braddock’s assertion in his second paragraph is untrue. It is correct only in the technical sense that — of course — tenants could not be forced to pay rent raised above the level permitted by their wages, i.e. to produce money they had not got. The alternative to the 1915 Act would have been for the government to let wages go up to meet increasing rents; instead, the Act restrained wage demands by keeping rents low — and provided also that workers, in Glasgow or anywhere else, were forced to pay them. Braddock appears not to realize that this “blow against landlords”, as he called it in his previous letter, was struck not by the workers but by the government in the wider interests of capitalism.

Second, our reply did not say that the non-payment of rent would enable employers “to reduce wages by that amount”. Wage cuts have not operated for a number of years. What happens nowadays is that pay increases endeavour to keep up with the cost of living, and where part of the cost of living is artificially held down by subsidies or controls the effect is to check the pressure for pay increases. Braddock must have read, of late, that the Labour Party wants the new rent rises postponed for just this reason: that the keeping down of rents is essential to make “an incomes policy” — that is, wage restraint — work.

Last — leaving aside the remarks about Bulgaria, which show more confusion than is possible to deal with in a short reply — Tom Braddock says the contention that the majority of workers in the developed countries must become Socialists or “the struggle can’t succeed” is absurd. It is nothing like as absurd as the urging that what workers should continue with is rent strikes and attempts to reform capitalism. This sort of “struggle” has been going on for more than a century without the workers’ position in society changing; and we are asked to support more of the same thing!

Editorial Committee.

Blogger's Note:

Not sure what happened with the fact checking for the Editorial Committee's reply to Tom Braddock's letter but the article Why Must the Rent Go Up ? actually appeared in the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard, not the January issue and Tom Braddock's first reply to that article appeared in the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard, not the July issue.

Letter: Rents: To Pay or Not To Pay? (1972)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like all other papers of what is known as the "left” you just now devote a good deal of attention to rents. In your February issue for instance there are two articles on the subject. In each of these you mention the 1915 rent controls. But you do not give the reason why the control was imposed in 1915. It was because in Glasgow and other towns in Scotland tenants not only refused to pay the increase but refused to pay any rent at all. As indeed some are doing in Northern Ireland to-day. The government in Westminster was terrified and in great haste passed the Rent Control Act making it illegal to demand increased rents. This of course was a great blow to landlords and they have by one means or another, with the assistance of all governments, been getting round it ever since as described in your first article “Why Rents Must Go Up”.

Unfortunately you have not learnt the lesson, if tenants of council or landlord living accommodation refuse to pay any rent at all or if those who are forced to borrow money to get a place to live in refuse to pay out rent charges no power can force them to do so if they stand united.

Having read your paper for many years I know your normal reply would be "What of it”, even if British workers do not pay capitalism will still exist and people in France, the USSR, China etc. etc. will still be paying rents. True enough but if the British worker can defeat the landlord and money lender in the matter of rents etc., it will not be long before others follow their example. After all you are not against the miners, you say, — “They should have the support of all other workers etc. etc.”

Let us see the SPGB taking up the fight for the workers on the rents issue and advocating "No rents or interest charges for lousy accommodation”.

Tom Braddock

East Preston.

Reply: 

The episode to which our correspondent refers was a consequence of housing shortage after the outbreak of the 1914-1918 war. House-building virtually ceased when the war began, and in the munitions-producing areas the shortage gave a special opportunity for profiteering in rents. In Glasgow, tenants in slum districts refused to pay increased rents and were supported by the militant Clyde workers. The outcry was a principal factor in causing the government to pass the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act, 1915.

It was, as Tom Braddock says, "a great blow to landlords”; this was one of the themes of our article Why Must the Rent Go Up? However, he is assuming that a blow against landlords is a blow against capitalism. In fact, a reduction in so large an item in working-class living costs is extremely welcome to the other sections of the capitalist class. Rent control has remained in force for fifty-seven years because it has helped keep wages down; a free market in rented housing would inevitably mean universal demands for higher wages. The present government and its predecessors have been as frightened of this as Braddock says they were of agitation in 1915, and have made concessions to landlords only because the alternative — already happening — was having large numbers of controlled houses deteriorating into slums.

As for the suggestion that the working class should now refuse altogether to pay rent or mortgage interest, Braddock does not tell us what would be achieved by this. He does not imagine, surely, that every household would then find itself better off by that amount every week? If he does, his reading of the Socialist Standard for many years cannot have been attentive.

Editorial Committee.