A happy ending (2001)

Book Review from the September 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Millennium. By Upton Sinclair, Seven Stories Press, 2000.

Now this is a story with a real happy ending: “The last capitalist . . . starved to death . . . and the Co-operative Commonwealth reigned forever after!” As propaganda The Millennium (first published 1924), is hot stuff. Sinclair deals with such heavyweights as the revolutionary transformation of consciousness and the materialist conception of history, by concrete (if ludicrous) examples in an interesting and readable way. Yet the one basic problem is that, despite his relentless materialism, Sinclair was a utopian. It was the inevitable failure of Sinclair’s previous venture, an experimental commune called Helicon Hall, that led him to write The Millennium as a play in 1907. Sinclair brings the woolly utopian ideas, such as the broad-based “humanitarian” appeal to all classes, forward with him. The most noticeable aspect of this is that his co-operative commonwealth (which is as socialist as we could possibly demand) is formed by a policy of withdrawal from capitalist society. It is, and always has been, our view, supported by historical evidence, that this strategy is doomed to failure. Useful as such communities are as examples of the possibilities of co-operation, in the long run they do not enhance the prospects of socialism.

Kaz.

Theatre Review: Sand and Glass by Derek Martin (2002)

Theatre Review from the August 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sand and Glass by Derek Martin (Yale College, Wrexham)

There can’t be too many occasions these days when socialist ideas are brought to an unsuspecting public by performance arts students in a College of Further Education. In fact there are not too many occasions when socialist ideas are directly introduced to theatre audiences anywhere, by anybody at present. So for this reason alone, Sand and Glass – a new play by Derek Martin – stood out like a beacon.

As the programme notes make clear, the inspiration for this play was the attempt to establish a moneyless, co-operative community by the Diggers in 17th century England. The plot revolves around an attempt by a contemporary media company (fast disappearing up its own backside in the hunt for something original amongst the postmodernist slurry) to film a Digger-like community living on a desert island. To complicate matters this community (known as ‘The Commune’) is being invaded by imperialistic Taliban-like forces (the “Taheri”) intent on appropriating the land and turning Commune members into something akin to feudal serfs.

The Commune members speak a version of English shorn of its possessive and individualistic language, not even having a word for “I”. Their names reflect their roles in the Commune – Mend is the doctor, Relay the journalist, Digger a land worker, Stanza a poet. With the men imprisoned by the Taheri all the Commune members on show are women.

One of the most fascinating scenes is when Tell (naturally enough, the teacher) initiates a discussion amongst Commune members to explore why the sneering members of the media company filming them have no conception of a how co-operative society could work without private property and exchange. When this leads to an explanation of how people in ‘Western Globeland’ are only allowed access to something provided they have something else to give in exchange for it – and of how they are hunted by “detectors” and kept in small rooms on their own should they transgress this rule—the other Commune members are incredulous. In the Commune, barter, money and crime are alien concepts. Work is undertaken when necessary and goods and services are freely accessed whenever needed.

As the play develops, matters take a vicious turn. Assaulted by the Taheri and manipulated by the visiting journalists, the Commune are eventually forced into a defence of their entire social organisation, both intellectually and physically, leading to a moving series of scenes as the play reaches its climax.

The performance is a powerful one throughout and the play ends with a memorable call to the audience by the female Commune members to rise up against private property and its dehumanising forces as “cynicism is a sin . . . and we have a world to win!”.

It is apparently hoped by the playwright that other theatre groups and venues will be interested in performing or hosting the play in coming months. Though there is always the usual caveat to be mentioned with depictions of somewhat primitive, pre-capitalist societies such as this (with inevitable, unfavourable comparisons of at least some of their features with the modern industrial age) this is most certainly a play that deserves a wider audience. Indeed, for its depiction of the corrosive elements of contemporary capitalism and its call to a better, co-operative future we can only say the wider the audience, the better.

Dave Perrin

Are we Utopians? (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

A common response to the case of the World Socialist Movement is the word utopian! It is uttered with a note of finality as though it needs no elaboration. "You are utopian !” they tell us, and whether they are one-hundred percent defenders of what is called the American way of life or blood-and-thunder type, self-styled, revolutionists they regard us with an expression of pity and usually change the subject. The anti-establishment radical and the defender of the status quo are, on this subject, allies because they are both convinced that our goal of a world without nations, without buying and selling, without wage labor and capital — employers and employees — is an impossible dream in our lifetime, the lifetimes of our children, grandchildren and possibly our great and ever-so-great grandchildren. It is utopian, they tell us. to feel otherwise.

Well, we are not so certain that our detractors of either variety know quite what they are talking about, that they really understand the meaning of the term utopian as applied to the advocates of world socialism. For the word does have a definite meaning and utopianism did have a definite role to play at an earlier period in the development of capitalism. In fact, it still has at least a debatable reason for existence in lowly-developed areas of the capitalist world. We refer to the organisation of colonies such as New Harmony, Brook Farm, Oneida, and a host of others in early America; to the kibbutzim of modern, but industrially weak Israel; to all of the attempts in the past and the present here, there and everywhere to build islands of peaceful cooperation in a violent sea of capitalism. This is utopianism, and whether it is the idealist who seeks to get away from it all by retiring to a kibbutz or even to a hippie community, or the so-called socialists and communists who believe that socialism — even communism, as they like to put it — can be built within the borders of a nation it is they, not us. who are the utopians.

There will be no peace for them as long as they exist in a capitalist world and to blame this on people of ill-will, on reactionaries, on Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives is to indulge in more escapism from reality, in more utopianism. The pressures of capitalist economics and the pressures of the capitalist state are all around and will allow no peace, no escape, no utopianism. Do we have to dwell on this point?

We are not utopians. We are hard-headed, practical, scientific socialists. We know that capitalism and the suffering for most of the population that goes with it cannot be abolished simply by changing the organization from private ownership to state ownership. Nor can capitalism be improved for most of the population by passing reform legislation in congress or parliament or whatever it is called. Nor does It make sense to retire to some backwoods area where one can live a desperate, hand-to-mouth existence while one is free to toll from sunup to sundown on infertile soil even if the capitalist state were to maintain a complete hands-off attitude, an unlikely probability.

This is not our concept of freedom. Friends! Fellow-workers! There is a world of potential plenty for everybody who inhabit the earth. And it is there for the taking. How do we take it? Not by idle, utopian dreaming. Not by the encouragement of nations whether designated capitalist, communist, or anything else. The way to abolish poverty, war, hatreds based upon skin color and ethnic background is to organize on the political field to abolish nations, to abolish buying and selling, to abolish wage labor and capital, to introduce a world society based upon production for use, not for sale. Anything short of this goal is utopian, will not work. Do you really need more evidence than the history of the last fifty years? Let’s organize now, not for more utopianism but for world socialism.

Brave community (2007)

Book Review from the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Brave Community. The Digger Movement in the English Revolution. By John Gurney. Manchester University Press £55.

Gerrard Winstanley has a prominent place in the socialist tradition. In advocating, in 1648-1652 in the course of the English bourgeois revolution, a new social order where there would “be no buying and selling, no fairs nor markets, but the whole Earth shall be a common treasury for every man, for the Earth is the Lords’”, he was clearly just as much a forerunner of modern socialism as was Thomas More and his Utopia of 1516. In fact, he went one better than More and tried to put his theories into practice when on 1 April 1649 he and others started tilling and planting crops on (St) George’s Hill, near Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, on a communistic basis as a first step towards spreading such moneyless communities throughout England.

Gurney’s book is a detailed examination of the social, economic and political situation in the area that led to this as well as of the other individuals apart from Winstanley who were involved. The driving force of the English Revolution has been analysed as the “middling sort”, i.e. those who were neither big landowners nor landless labourers. In the countryside these were mainly tenant farmers; they had their conflicts with the lords of the manor which radicalised some of them in and around Cobham in Surrey. But it wasn’t them who became the Diggers, even if Winstanley himself was a “middling sort”.

The year 1649, as the year in which the King had been executed, was a year when to many people anything seemed possible. The previous year had seen a bad harvest and many poor people were in desperate straits. It was to them that Winstanley – whose clothing business in London had failed – preached (and this is the right word, as his motivation was both religious and practical) that God had given the Earth to everyone to be used as a common storehouse from which to feed and clothe themselves and that they should use it to produce what they needed without working for wages and without any buying and selling.

According to Gurney, Winstanley wavered between seeing this as the result of the Second Coming (in people’s hearts) that would restore the original situation of no ownership and seeing it as a practical solution of the landless poor in post-civil-war England.

The occupation of George’s Hill did not last long, only a few months till August, when local opposition from tenant farmers who wanted the land for grazing forced the Diggers to move to another site at Cobham. This lasted a little longer, but it too was over by April 1650 as a result of both legal and direct action initiated by two local landlords.

This prompted Winstanley to publish his Law of Freedom in a Platform which is a classic of socialist literature. According to Gurney, Winstanley stayed on in Cobham for the next twenty or so years as a respectable member of the local community, but by 1675 had moved back to London, apparently relatively well off and a Quaker sympathiser. He died in 1676.

Adam Buick

Communism as a practical alternative (2023)

From the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unlike Marx, Engels produced texts much more directly discussing communism. The first were two speeches in his home town Elberfeld in 1845, where he was trying to persuade good German burghers that communism (as socialism was then more generally known) was a good idea. While in them he describes how resources could be rationalised by everyone living in collective homes (showing that, while later protesting against utopianism, in his younger days he wasn’t above a little bit of speculation). But they do show part of the practical bent of thinking about how things owned in common could encourage rationalisation and improvement of living conditions. As in this passage:

‘if you think about this, you will find that human society has an abundance of productive forces at its disposal which only await a rational organisation, regulated distribution, in order to go into operation to the greatest benefit for all. After this you will be able to judge how totally unfounded is the fear that, given a just distribution of social activity, individuals would have to bear such a load of labour as would make it impossible for them to engage in anything else. On the contrary, we can assume that given this kind of organisation, the present customary labour time of the individual will be reduced by half simply by making use of the labour which is either not used at all or used disadvantageously.’

The context here is Engels noting that the institution of communism would see the abolition of many occupations and jobs created by the capitalist mode of production, which would mean that people could be freed up to do more directly productive work, and unemployment as such could be abolished.

As he noted:

‘In communist society it will be easy to be informed about both production and consumption. Since we know how much, on the average, a person needs, it is easy to calculate how much is needed by a given number of individuals, and since production is no longer in the hands of private producers but in those of the community and its administrative bodies, it is a trifling matter to regulate production according to needs.’

This sounds very optimistic, but, as we shall see, he had some basis for this analysis. But note, here information is the key, and the information is knowing what the supply and the demand are, in advance, rather than discovering through the market place. In the first instance, he gives an extended example of getting a bale of cotton from the USA to Germany:

‘Such a complicated way of transport is out of the question in a rationally organised society. To keep to our example, just as one can easily know how much cotton or manufactured cotton goods an individual colony needs, it will be equally easy for the central authority to determine how much all the villages and townships in the country need. Once such statistics have been worked out — which can easily be done in a year or two — average annual consumption will only change in proportion to the increasing population; it is therefore easy at the appropriate time to determine in advance what amount of each particular article the people will need — the entire great amount will be ordered direct from the source of supply; it will then be possible to procure it directly, without middlemen, without more delay and unloading than is really required by the nature of the journey, that is, with a great saving of labour power; it will not be necessary to pay the speculators, the dealers large and small, their rake-off.’

Indeed, he noted the middlemen would then be available for productive work. This text does talk of a central authority, but in terms of seeing statistics and book keeping as the basis for organisation, it seems of a piece with Marx’s discussions. Note, also, the assumption of no economic growth separate from population growth.

If Engels seems a bit hand-wavy with his ‘this will be easy’ approach, it should be borne in mind that he wasn’t just talking from abstract ideas, but with practical examples before his eye. In 1845 he published an article with the title ‘Description of Recently Founded Communist Colonies Still in Existence’ in which he affirmed ‘communism, social existence and activity based on community of goods, is not only possible but has actually already been realised in many communities in America and in one place in England, with the greatest success’ and that ‘all communist colonies so far have become so enormously rich after ten or fifteen years that they have everything they can desire in greater abundance than they can consume.’ The accuracy or otherwise of these descriptions is not the point here but that they show how Engels saw the actual practical structure of a communist society.

He began with a description of the Shaker communities of America, noting their religious character is not essential to their communal organisation:

‘Each of these communities is a fine, well laid-out town, with dwelling houses, factories, workshops, assembly buildings and barns; they have flower and vegetable gardens, fruit trees, woods, vineyards, meadows and arable land in abundance; then, livestock of all kinds, horses and beef-cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry, in excess of their needs, and of the very best breeds. Their granaries are always full of corn, their store-rooms full of clothing materials, so that an English traveller who visited them said he could not understand why these people still worked, when after all they possessed an abundance of everything; unless it was that they worked simply as a pastime, having nothing else to do. Amongst these people no one is obliged to work against his will, and no one seeks work in vain. They have no poor-houses and infirmaries, having not a single person poor and destitute, nor any abandoned widows and orphans; all their needs are met and they need fear no want.’

Note, again, the emphasis on abundance. This also relates to his observation that:

‘In their ten towns there is not a single gendarme or police officer, no judge, lawyer or soldier, no prison or penitentiary; and yet there is proper order in all their affairs. The laws of the land are not for them and as far as they are concerned could just as well be abolished and nobody would notice any difference for they are the most peaceable citizens and have never yielded a single criminal for the prisons.’

The laws hadn’t been abolished, but the conditions for their operation had been obviated. In terms of their practical organisation, Engels noted: ‘They enjoy (…) the most absolute community of goods and have no trade and no money among themselves.’ He quoted a traveller describing their society:

‘The board of trustees keeps all the books and accounts in a public office, and the books are open for all members to see, as often as they choose. […] each family has a separate domestic establishment and lives together in a large, handsome mansion; and all get every article required, and as much as they want from the common stores of the Society, and without any payment. A deacon is appointed to each family, whose business is to see that all are provided with every thing they want, and to anticipate their wants as far as possible.’

Furthermore:

‘The property of the Society is vested in the board of trustees, which consists of three persons, oversees the whole establishment, directs labour and carries on transactions with neighbours. They have no power to buy or sell any land without the consent of the Society. There are of course also foremen and managers in each department of labour; however they have made it a rule that no commands are ever given by any one, but all are to be persuaded by kindness.’

(It should be added that the ‘families’ of the shakers were arbitrary divisions, as their beliefs forbade marriage).

Engels also discussed the Owenite colony of Harmony in Hampshire. The description is similar to the American colonies, but he notes:

‘…the members of the community were not the sole owners of the establishment, but were governed by the Directors of the Society of Socialists, to whom the establishment belongs, misunderstandings and dissatisfaction arose at intervals from this too. […] these directors are chosen annually by the congress, to which each local Society sends a member, and they have full, unrestricted powers within the Statutes of the Society, and are responsible to the congress. The community is thus governed by people who live outside it, and in these circumstances there cannot fail to be misunderstandings and irritations; but even if the experiment at Harmony were to fail in consequence of this and of financial problems, which however is not in the slightest degree in prospect, this would only be one further argument for community of goods, as these two difficulties have their cause only in the fact that the community has not yet been fully realised.’

This is an instructive observation when it comes to understanding Engels’ notions of communism: the community of goods must be self-organised.

Hence, in his speeches at Elberfeld, he suggested that the community of goods would come about in different ways in different countries, even proposing that colonies such as Harmony might be the way to communism in England, and that different routes might be applied in France and Germany; it would be a conscious and fundamentally democratic decision. Although these colonies came in for a serious kicking in the Communist Manifesto, the point remains that they did serve as focal examples for Engels’ understanding of how socialism could or would be run.

Pik Smeet

Past Imperfect (2023)

Book Review from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Utopians: Six Attempts to Build the Perfect Society. By Anna Neima. Picador £10.99.

The bloodshed of the First World War led many people to think anew about how society should be structured. One particular example of this was the development of ‘utopian’ communities, designed to show that people could live differently, in a more communal and contented way. Two kinds of such a community are surveyed here. One is spiritual or religious (a commune run by Gurdjieff near Paris, the Bruderhof in Germany, and Trabuco College in California, which in fact did not start until the Second World War). The other is characterised rather vaguely as encouraging ‘complete self-actualization’ (Dartington Hall in Devon, a community set up by Tagore in India, and one in Japan). They inspired and influenced each other. In many cases, there was no real blueprint as to how the community would function.

Some were set up by wealthy people, such as Tagore and the founder of Dartington Hall. Others struggled financially: Gurdjieff’s, for instance, could never feed itself and had to raise money in the US. Another problem was that many were notionally democratic but in practice not. Tagore, for instance ‘often behaved in an aristocratic, even dictatorial fashion’. At Dartington Hall, the founders lived in luxury, while the farm labourers lived more frugally. Unsurprisingly perhaps, most of the communities failed to survive for more than a couple of decades. Tagore’s was taken over by the Indian state, Dartington Hall is mainly a wedding and conference centre, and the location of Trabuco College is now a Hindu monastery.

It is the Bruderhof where the original vision has endured best. Founded in 1920, its residents had no private property, with possessions owned by the community as a whole. The daily routine involved long hours of work, whether in the fields or in the printing shop that brought in much-needed funds. However, it was certainly not ‘a lived example of radical socialism’, as Neima suggests. From 1930 onwards, it was influenced by the Hutterite religious community in the US, which among other points meant a new dress code, including ankle-length dresses for women and a kerchief over their hair. The Hutterite link no longer holds, but more generally, there was a pretty reactionary attitude to women, who basically cooked, cleaned and raised the children. The original Bruderhof was shut down by the Nazis in 1937. A settlement still exists in Sussex: when Neima visited, she spoke to a teenage girl who missed her family in the US, but ‘you go where the community sends you’, which sounds considerably less than perfect.

William Morris is mentioned a few times as an influence on some of those who propounded these communities. In fact he criticised attempts along such lines (made by Robert Owen, for instance) as ‘withdrawals from the Society of the day, really implying hopelessness of a general change’ (see a review in the August 2019 Socialist Standard). In 1844, Friedrich Engels examined various ‘communist colonies’ then in existence and concluded interestingly that ‘the people who are living communally live better with less work, have more leisure for the development of their minds, and that they are better, more moral people than their neighbours who have retained private property’.

Anna Neima provides an informative study of these utopian communities, with some interesting observations. They are not socialism in miniature, but they do show that accepting the rat race of capitalism is not the only way to live.

Paul Bennett

The failure of the Co-operative Movement. (1927)

From the January 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

In many minds the co-operative movement as it exists to-day is associated with Socialism and the struggle to overthrow the Capitalist system of society. In continental countries it is customary for the trade unions, the co-operatives, and the “Labour” parties to work in very close contact and it is vaguely understood that their joint aim is “Socialism.” In fact, their unity is only possible, because the so-called Labour Parties are actually concerned not with the abolition, but only with the reform of Capitalism.

When English co-operators speak in this strain they have some apparent justification in the fact that Robert Owen, whom they usually claim as the pioneer of co-operative principles, did during part of his life actively preach to the workers the necessity of finding means of escape from Capitalism. Owen lived in an age when machine production in factories was first making its brutal way in England. A new era was opening, an era of amazing profits for the fortunate few and of almost incredible suffering for the masses. He saw that the workers were helplessly enslaved to the owners of the land and the factories, and he thought that he had discovered a way out. If to labour in another man’s factory or on another man’s land meant hideous poverty for the labourer, then surely the remedy lay in securing land and machinery for the labourers to work themselves. So far it was sound enough, but Owen soon had to realise two things. The first was that the then ruling class had no need to solve the poverty problems of the workers, and certainly did not intend to give up freely their own right to own and to live by owning. The second was that at that time when the workers were uneducated, voteless and unorganised, it was unthinkable that they could hope to obtain possession of the wealth of the country against the opposition of their political rulers. In due course, therefore, Owen announced his solution.

He proposed that small groups of workers should aim at establishing self-supporting “villages of industry” in which there should be no employer, no master—little oases in the desert of Capitalism. They were to own the “land and means of production in common,” and it was anticipated that the idea would spread, until finally the workers would all have achieved their emancipation.

The initial difficulty, of obtaining the necessary capital, was to be overcome by the formation of “union shops” which would buy goods wholesale and sell them to the members at retail prices. A surplus would accumulate in the hands of the society which would otherwise have gone into the pockets of shopkeepers. Then, in due course the fund would be used for the setting up of “villages of industry.”

Between 1825 and 1834 some 400 or 500 of such shops were started, but the whole movement turned out a failure. They failed chiefly because enthusiasm waned with time, and there was no other attraction to secure the continued loyalty of the members once they lost faith in the ultimate end. In addition it was difficult, if not impossible, owing to the existing law for a body of workers to secure protection for their funds.

In 1826 one such store was formed in Brighton, and it is suggested in the cooperative “People’s Year Book” (1926, p. 13) that 1926 should on that account be celebrated as the centenary Year of the movement. The writer in the Year Book says of the Brighton cooperative store that in it “the co-operative movement had definitely started on the lines still followed more or less closely by every consumer’s co-operative society now existing in the world.” In his opinion, however, even so early as that, the pioneer co-operators at Brighton and elsewhere had already lost their interest in the more ambitious and far-reaching plans of Robert Owen : “The schemes of Owen were as much unlike the aims of the first co-operative societies as chalk is unlike cheese.”

But whatever may have been their intentions the shops founded by the early co-operators in England did not prosper, and it was a renewed effort in 1844 at Rochdale which contained the novel feature which was to lead to the modern developments.

The Rochdale innovation was the “dividend on purchases.” This provided a permanent inducement to members to remain loyal irrespective of their views on the desirability of reforming society. Great and growing numbers of workers have thus been drawn into the co-operative movement until to-day it is claimed that in Great Britain there are nearly 5,000,000 members, with £140,000,000 share and loan capital and an annual surplus of over £21,000,000.

In face of these imposing figures, and in view of the continued expansion of the movement, how can we seriously speak of co-operation as a failure?

It is a failure because it has not, will not, and cannot, solve the basic economic problems of the working-class. Owen saw, even if he failed to realise all its implications, that the dominance of capital was the root evil. He sought a means of escape, but although the modern co-operators praise him, they have long ago abandoned the intention of carrying on the work he planned.

“Union shops” were to be a means to an end. The co-operative movement has made “divi-hunting” an end in itself. The funds accumulated in the shops were to be used for the foundation of societies in which all the members would co-operate in working their own property held in common and share the proceeds on a footing of equality. The modern movement accumulates funds for the purpose of making further profit out of the employment of wage-workers.

The one, Utopian though it was, aimed at abolishing the wages systems, private ownership and profit-making. The other merely aims at redirecting the stream of profits from the private trader to the cooperative members. It has not and cannot solve the poverty problem either of its members or of its employees.

The basic fallacy in the co-operative idea is a wrong explanation of rent, interest and profit. Yet the position is simplicity itself to all who have missed or have won through the haze of mystery shed by the professional economists. Because the means of production—land, factories, steamships, etc.—are privately owned, the workers who wish to operate these instruments must first enter into a one-sided bargain; one-sided because the goad of semi-starvation forces their hand. They bargain to produce wealth for the owners of capital and receive as the price of the energies they sell wages or salaries which, over the whole field of Capitalism, are only a small proportion of the values they produce. What the Capitalists get is a property-income, something which arises from their monopoly and not from their services, and which varies according to the size of their capital. Rent, interest and profit, if the terms are cleared of some looseness which surrounds their common use, are merely names for this income which goes to the owners of property because they are owners.

Co-operators want to eliminate the middleman and redirect the flow of profit—but what is profit? Profit is the child of private ownership and is obtained by the exploitation of the workers. Co-operative “divi.” is derived from the exploitation of the cooperative employees. The relation between the latter and the societies is precisely the same as that between other workers and their employers.

Owen wanted to eliminate capitalist ownership. The extent to which this could be done by the co-operative movement is illustrated not by the fact that it has five-million members, who with their families make up perhaps a third of the population, but by the contrast between the numbers it employs and the total number of wage-earners. It employed in 1924 about 200,000 persons out of about 16 million workers in Great Britain. Its employees were only 4.16 per cent. of the whole number of its members, and that percentage was actually less than the 1914 figure of 4.85 per cent. Its capital looks large, but against the great mass of capital in the hands of the Capitalist class it is insignificant.

The co-operative movement has all the trappings but none of the substance of success. Its members are still wage-earners, still exploited by the Capitalist class and still, therefore, poor; its employees are in the same condition. If the societies as at present constituted extend until they cover the whole working-class that will still be true.

It has made no inroads into the Capitalist system, and it could not if it would. As the Scottish Co-operator pointed out (23.8.23.) the movement was then weaker than it had been before the war, “weaker financially and weaker administratively.” It does not challenge the Capitalist class or the principles of Capitalism. As Mr. J. A. R. Marriott, M.P., said at the Jubilee celebrations of the Oxford Co-operative Society (Oxford Chronicle, Oct. 13th, 1922): “If he thought the co-operative movement a menace to the private trader he would certainly not be there. But there was plenty of room for both to live and flourish.” This is true inside Capitalism, but under Socialism there will be room neither for private, nor co-operative, nor municipal, nor State Capitalism to continue the exploitation of the workers.

Co-operation has solved no working-class problems and discovered no new principle. It does not abolish profits and interest: it only “defines the rights of capital” (Co-operative News, July 10th, 1926). “It says to the capital-owner . . . ‘ we pay you interest and our obligation to you ends with that.’ ” Sir Thomas Allen (C.W.S. Director) wants to see “those who had capital, those who had labour, and those who had intellect and organising power” to “work in a real co-operative way . . . ” (Co-operative News, July 3rd, 1926).

It has disputes with the employees, strikes and lockouts, sometimes pays less than its private Capitalist rivals (see Co-operative News, 18.8.23.), and has even been known to call in a Capitalist Labour minister in a Capitalist Government to settle its differences with its employees.

When trade is slack it sacks members of its staff, introduces all the familiar speeding-up and wage-reducing devices of its competitors, and in short, behaves like any other joint-stock Capitalist concern, that is, it behaves as it must, being a Capitalist organisation inside a Capitalist system of society.

Some there are within its ranks who look further, but these are learning by hard experience that they are, if anything, less able than Robert Owen to achieve the object which he set before him. “The Rochdale pioneers desired to solve the land and housing problems of their generation. . . . Co-operators now realise that these problems can only be solved by Parliament. They have entered politics to realise the ideals of the pioneers” (Daily Herald, April 24th, 1921). This is part of a speech by Mr. Barnes, Co-operative M.P., in which he explained why a Co-operative Party was formed and was necessary.

Co-operation has not and cannot emancipate the working-class. Only Socialism will do that. The workers cannot escape from the effects of Capitalism by joining cooperative societies. Neither can they escape Capitalism by retiring into Owen’s “villages of industry.” They must obtain for society as a whole the ownership of the means of production and distribution which are now the property of the Capitalist class. For this they must organise in the Socialist Party for the purpose of controlling the machinery of government. Once possessed of power they can then reorganise society on a Socialist basis of common ownership. Owen’s ultimate aims can only be achieved by Socialist methods.

Edgar Hardcastle

Emulating The Ostrich (1951)

From the July 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 20th May the Sunday Pictorial published an article by Douglas Warth regarding a group of people calling themselves the Society of Brothers. Would-be members of this community, which claims to be self-supporting, sell all their personal property and the proceeds of sale go into a common “pool.” They then work on the 545 acre farm at Bromdon in the Shropshire hills and according to Warth "should never have to worry about war or unemployment, loneliness or personal insecurity, world turmoil or money for the rent. As long as Mother Earth can produce crops to feed and clothe them, they may look forward to a simple life and peace of mind." The article states that they are “exchanging the luxuries and amenities of modern civilisation for the simple security which the Society of Brothers have found by stepping back some 1,900 years.” This last would appear, to say the least of it, to be a slight exaggeration. A picture of half-a-dozen of the Brothers complete with superabundant beards confirms that they unanimously eschew the modern idea of using a razor but apart from this they are up to date with tractors, telephone and wireless. The community has its own school and a carpenter’s shop for the making of simple furniture. The women work in a communal laundry and kitchens. In their leisure time they make a study of economics, history and languages. We assume them to be Christians as there are several “servants of the word” whose duties include the celebration of marriages. These marriages are afterwards legalised outside of the community at the registrar’s office. The children go camping in the summer, visit a coal mine or go to see Nature films. There are 300 acres under crops, cattle, sheep, pigs, hens and a 20 acre vegetable garden. Much of the produce feeds the community but what is not needed is marketed and the proceeds go into the common pool for general expenses. They call in help from outside on technical fanning matters. There are 180 members in all and they are pacifists. The idea is not a new one and this community no doubt derives satisfaction from the way of life which they have chosen, but they are burying their heads in the sand if they delude themselves that they have shaken off all worldly cares. As Warth points out their children are liable to conscription. Furthermore in the event of war their crops, etc. would be subject to controls, also the men of military age eligible for call up. Their pacifist convictions might obtain exemption from service but they would be subject to direction. Experience has taught us that in modern warfare, rural districts do not escape destruction from the air. Shortages and difficulties would hit the community such as scarcity of farm implements, parts for tractors and machinery and rationing of fuel. Even in times of so-called peace, farming is a chancy business with its periods of depression, crop failures, and outbreaks of foot and mouth among cattle.

A very large percentage of present day evils can be laid at the door of capitalist society, and these groups of people who endeavour to escape into a world of their own making are tacitly agreeing to a continuance of that system so long as they can go their own way unmolested (they hope).

Since the 1914 War there have been active pacifist movements in all parts of the world, increasing rapidly since 1945, organising petitions and clamouring for peace. Never in all their previous history have these activities been so amply demonstrated to be absolutely futile and impotent as at the present day. With various comparatively small scale wars on their plates the nations in the western bloc appear to be heading for a global conflict which bids fair to dwarf into insignificance previous records of horror and devastation. The efforts of the pacifists are misdirected and quite useless. Their cry of “peace” is as puerile as a man shouting in a desert. The juggernaut of capitalism lumbers on unheeding to the inevitable clashes, pitting worker against worker in ineffectual and ghastly conflict. The pacifist loudly calls attention to the evils .of war (of, which we are already painfully aware) but stops short of unearthing the cause, i.e., capitalist competition between the nations for trade routes, markets and sources of raw materials. The solution follows logically, i.e. a world wide movement by the workers for the establishment of socialist society.

The slow growth of socialist ideas among the workers is in its way a silent tribute to the efficiency of radio and press propaganda and is not due to the workers’ inability to grasp the cause of their slave position in society. Preoccupied with their very real day to day problems the vast majority accept these ready made ideas unquestioningly and uncritically. Those workers who do interest themselves are more often than not side-tracked into political dead-ends.

In his fourth talk on “The New Society” and reported in “The Listener” of 31st May, E. H. Carr says:—“Propaganda is as essential a function of mass democracy as advertising of mass production. The political organiser takes a leaf out of the book of the commercial advertiser and sells the leader or the candidate to the voter by the same methods used to sell patent medicines or refrigerators. The appeal is no longer to the reason of the citizen but to his gullibility.”

Confusion is worst confounded by the Labour Government calling itself “Socialist.” However, in time, worsening conditions and the ever present threat of war together with the efforts of socialists will speed the ultimate awakening of the workers. We are working for the overthrow of capitalist society which has already drawn too large a draft on the bank of time. Wc ask for your understanding, help and co-operation that the necessary knowledge may be spread to the workers and a world wide brotherhood of man be established in our time.

F. M. Robins

Jehovah's Servants (1961)

From the June 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Until a couple of centuries ago human knowledge of the physical universe and of man’s historic development was scattered and very limited. The principal guides were religious works and teachings, the most familiar being the Bible. The idea of the World and Universe coming to an end, and being reborn again in some other form, stemmed from man’s primitive struggles with nature, the observance of life and death among plants and animals, the waxing and waning of the heavenly bodies.

The strong religious theories and dogmas influenced ideas about society.

It was when the class struggle became more acute that suppressed groups combined theories about new societies with the contemporary religious ideas on the ending of the world. Politics in 'those days were never far removed from religious hair-splitting and supplication.

In the 16th century Germany was in a state of upheaval. The creed of one Protestant group, the Anabaptists, included a belief in ’the return of a divine power and the establishment of a system of common ownership. The dramatic outcome of this movement was in 1535 when the Anabaptists under John of Leiden, took over the town of Münster and attempted to set up the millenium on earth. The adventure was an experiment in a commonweal society which the feudal landowners, aided by the Church, stamped out in mass bloodshed. In England at the time of Cromwell a similar but smaller group called the Fifth Monarchy men exited. Successfully hampered by the magnates and Cromwell, they awaited the Restoration to gain a place in history. Frustrated then at every turn they took to the murder of legal gentry, and followed this up by a comic opera attack on the Tower of London. This adventure effectively erased them from activity.

With the opening up of the United States the ideas of the Millennium took on a more peaceful form. In North America, where land was plentiful, colonies calling themselves the Lord’s Elect set up their Edens, practising mutual aid, pooling of resources, and strict living. Others more colourful awaited what they hoped was to be the second coming under some self-appointed Messiah or Shiloh. The weakness of these colonies lay in their exclusiveness. The outside world interested them only slightly; they had no desire to interfere with society.

However, in the 1850’s one group formed a different attitude. Known as the Christadelphians, they laid down very definite views on their God's plan far mankind which they based on biblical study. They claimed that the old earth would pass away with Christ's return, and a new world with no evil, oppression, or wars, would be the reward of the believers, with an everlasting life thrown in. They made a name for themselves as conscientious objectors in the American Civil War.

By 1872 Pastor Russell, living in the U.S.A., had formed another group based on Christadelphian theories. These groups called Bible Students were worldwide, linked to their chief, Russell, by a system of publications and pamphlets that embodied the Russellite theories. After the death of Russell in 1916, the mantle of leadership fell on the shoulders of Judge Rutherford, who had American know-how on sales pressure, publication and organisation. The Bible Students were banned in the U.S. during the first World War and Judge Rutherford was jailed.

It was in the unsettled conditions of the world after 1918 that the Bible Students turned their propaganda to eye-catching and shock provoking tabloids. Such statements as, “ Millions now living will never die ” (in a world still numbed by the World War losses) or “ Religion is a racket ” at least arrested attention, even if the subsequent arguments were lacking in proof.

The Rutherford clique tightened up on the old members and widened the base of membership. The original select class were quietly pushed out and the members eventually became known as Jehovah’s Witnesses—a more comprehensive name and helpful in making new members.

The ideas of the sect are disturbing to other creeds. They renounce the conventional ideas of heaven and hell, the immortal soul, and the holy trinity. Backed up by Biblical quotes, the Witnesses argue that Man was created and lived under perfect conditions, but fell under the influence of a fallen angel, namely, the devil. Since then the world and its social systems have fallen more and more under the sway of the devil and his legions. Wars, sovereign states, hunger, poverty, oppression and death itself are all manifestations of mankind's turning away from Jehovah’s revealed truth.

The current troubled society fills them with hope, however, as the Witnesses proclaim that the day of Armageddon cannot be far away. The faithful, they say, will survive the final struggle in which the devil will be made captive, and "this system of things” swept away. Christ will rule the earth, supported by some 144,000 spiritual beings who once lived on earth. The rest of men will not die, and under the theocratic order the earth will flourish as a garden.

When the earth is fruitful again a resurrection of all the dead will take place. All will enjoy the paradise on earth and so remedy past sins by acknowledging Jehovah and Christ. However, after a thousand years the devil will be released to tempt the wavering. This is the final struggle and the devil and his followers will be finally condemned to death.

A cynic might wisecrack and ask how anyone could turn "bolshie” after a thousand years of the millennium; will it be the outcome of boredom? Many may howl with laughter at these theories —at the same 'time as they are swallowing other dogmas, religious and political, that are just as unreal.

The Witnesses can argue their case with ability and verve, which is more than can be said for the average Catholic, Tory or Labourite. Fundamentalists in a world of science, they fearlessly attack theories of evolution by rapier thrusts at the weak links in Darwinism. They are the type of religious opposition to keep materialists on their toes. They have been scourged by the dictatorships which have tried to keep them from their domains as if they were the plague. This is to be expected when great “Leaders” are filling their workers up 'to the brim with home brewed ”People’s Republics” and ‘‘New Orders.” The Witnesses might appear to their masses as some rival supermarket.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses may be painstaking in argument, energetic, skilful in propaganda, obedient in organisation; but after all this they are supporting some theory that has no basis in fact. For their case ultimately pivots on a manlike conception of a god; a deity with human emotions and ideas, a god made in man’s image. The grimness of capitalism has driven these people to feel that man cannot help himself; he must forever wallow in blood and hatred, never growing up, always dangerously infantile.

In fact, only man himself can. work out his own salvation. In spite of the setbacks, heartbreaks, and mistakes, Man learns step by step to deal with his problems.

That is the final answer to the Witnesses of Jehovah, and to all other purveyors of religious theories.

Jack Law

True Levellers (2019)

Pamphlet Review from the November 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stand Up Now, Diggers All! The 1649 'True Levellers' Commune at St George's Hill (Past Tense Publishers, London, 2019.)

One simplistic vision of the English civil war has been that it was an early version of the proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie. It’s an idea that has been especially popular with Leninists. Romantic as it may seem, and intensely brave and admirable as many of those were who opposed that ‘man of blood’ Charles I, it is, unfortunately perhaps, not the case.

Levellers did not want to level, to make everyone equal. As stated in the Leveller document An Agreement of the People (1649): ‘We therefore agree and declare, That it shall not be in the power of any Representative … to render up … nor level mens Estates, destroy Propriety, or make all things Common.’

In the same way that, for example, a term for an Irish outlaw – Tory – was applied to the group that became the British Conservative Party, the Levellers were given that title by their enemies. William Walwyn, considered to be one of the more radical of the Levellers, nevertheless advocated free trade to the Committee for Trade and Common Affairs, opposing monopolies such as the Levant Company (naturally, the government sided with the Company at the expense of small enterprises). This is not to say that their motivation had no class interests, but there was a strong interest of the ‘freeborn’, that is, men (only men) with some property; their platform included a property qualification to have the franchise.

But it was different with the True Levellers, or Diggers. Parts of their manifesto, The True Levellers’ Standard Advanced, ring clear to socialists across three and a half centuries. Once the earth returns to being a common treasury,

  ‘Then this Enmity in all Lands will cease, for none shall dare to seek a Dominion over others, neither shall any dare to kill another, nor desire more of the Earth then another.’

This Past Tense pamphlet takes in the events of 1649-1650, principally around the attempts to cultivate the common land at St George’s Hill. It starts with the first attempts to dig there on 1 April 1649 and finishes the following April with the death threats and final burnings of the dwellings and crops there and in the neighbouring Cobham Heath commune. It details the events between, and includes not only the threats, legal judgements and violence perpetrated against them, but also some extraordinary published critiques. For example, from the royalist publication Mercurius Pragmaticus quoted in the pamphlet:

  ‘What this fanatical insurrection may grow into cannot be conceived for Mahomet had as small and despicable a beginning whose damnable infections have spread themselves many hundreds years since over the face of half the Universe.’

In the end, the attempt at holding property in common was defeated.

The pamphlet is interesting and informative. One criticism is that, although it mentions the religious dimension of the Diggers, it does not reflect how central their religion was to them. These were people in a time when many thought that Christ’s second coming was imminent.

It would also have been interesting to have looked at, in particular, Winstanley’s subsequent writings. The Wigan-born cloth merchant Gerrard Winstanley, one of the movement’s main writers, wrote a piece in 1652, The Law of Freedom in a Platform, addressed to Cromwell, containing ideas not unfamiliar to socialists:

  ‘Shall we have no Lawyers? There is no need of them, for there is to be no buying and selling; neither any need to expound Laws.’ 

  ‘If any say, This will bring poverty; surely they mistake: for there will be plenty of all Earthly Commodities, with less labor and trouble then now it is under Monarchy. There will be no want, for every man may keep as plentiful a house as he will, and never run into debt, for common stock pays for all. ‘ 

  ‘If you say, Some will live idle; I answer, No: It will make idle persons to become workers… There shall be neither beggar nor idle person.’ 

  ‘True Freedom lies in the free enjoyment of the Earth.’

A historic twist: St George’s Hill, just outside Weybridge, is now a gated community. The place where the True Levellers planted their crops is now where a local estate agent can proudly announce:

  ‘From music legend to sporting royalty, St George’s Hill has an impressive list of celebrity residents such as: John Lennon, Tom Jones, Elton John, Cliff Richard, Ringo Starr, Jenson Button, Sue Baker, John Terry’

and applaud the high prices of the properties therein.

Notwithstanding the zeal of the estate agent, the pamphlet begins with the first line of the song The World Turned Upside Down by Leon Rosselson: “In 1649… at St George’s Hill”. The existence of the Socialist Party demonstrates the truth of another line from the song “They were dispersed, but still the vision lingers on”: an egalitarian society of common ownership.

Vincent Jones 

50 Years Ago: Co-operation — a Hopeless Experiment (1973)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over a hundred years ago Robert Owen conceived the idea of organising a new society in the midst of the old. He thought the workers could band themselves together into producing and distributing groups, spread over the whole of society, and eventually freeze the capitalist out. Subsequently he had to modify his ideas somewhat, owing to the strength of the opposition, and tried experiments by establishing cooperative colonies on comparatively virgin soil — but, of course, with people brought up in capitalist surroundings. These experiments all ended in disaster; they ultimately ruined him and demonstrated the futility of attempting to found ideal societies in a capitalist world.

There was an excuse for the dreams of the heroic and good-intentioned Owen. In his time knowledge of the organisation and development of society was comparatively small; and he was one of those by whose disastrous experiments later generations were to acquire a sound understanding. Since his time social investigators have piled up literally mountains of information showing how one form of society grows out of another, owing to the operation of forces that already exist in the old society; and that a new society is never grafted on to the old, as it were, from the outside.

In Owen’s day the capital required to start an important industry was but a tiny fraction of what is required today; and the power that lies in the hands of those controlling the State was not yet sufficiently realised by the oppressed class or its would-be deliverers. The powerful capitalists have it in their hands to smash to pieces, whenever they wish, any rising productive or distributing organisation that challenges their existence, long before such an organisation could reach any serious proportions. The very fact that they make no serious effort to interfere with the development of the various Co-operative Societies shows that they expect no dangerous opposition from these societies.

(From an article by Gilmac in the Socialist Standard, July 1923)

Strictly Marxist (2019)

Book Review from the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

William Morris’s Utopianism: Propaganda, Politics and Prefiguration. By Owen Holland. Palgrave Macmillan. 300 pages. 2017.

This is an important book that shows that Morris was not a ‘utopian’ in the sense of wanting to set up small-scale intentional communities run on cooperative or communistic lines. This is what Marx and Engels had called in 1848 in the Communist Manifesto ‘duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem’, as advocated – and to a certain extent practised – by Charles Fourier, Etienne Cabet, Robert Owen and their followers. Morris was a utopian only in the sense of being the author of a utopian novel about a future communist (or socialist, the same thing) society and how it came about. Even in News from Nowhere, there is a criticism of ‘utopian socialism’ as when Old Hammond says of Fourier’s ‘phalansteries’ that they were a ‘refuge from destitution and little more.’

In his purely political writings Morris was even more critical, accusing those who set them up of opting out of the struggle to establish socialism on a society-wide basis. Holland quotes from a book review Morris wrote in Justice (10 July 1886), the journal of the Social Democratic Federation, that ‘although these communities were experiments in association, from one point of view they were anti-Socialistic, as they withdrew themselves from general society—from political society—and let it take care of itself.’ Holland goes to quote from a lecture Morris gave in 1894 entitled Why I am a Communist in which he said that ‘such experiments are of their nature non-progressive; at their best they are but another form of the Mediæval monastery, withdrawals from the Society of the day, really implying hopelessness of a general change.’

What Morris favoured was socialists staying in capitalist society and propagating the need for revolutionary action to change the basis of society to the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life, the same criticism that Marx and Engels had made of those they encountered in the 1840s who argued for setting up intentional communistic communities.

In the book as a whole, Holland places Morris’s ideas in the context of late Victorian society, as in his examination of Morris’s views on the ‘women’s rights’ movement of the time and the peoples of the ‘backward countries.’

As a socialist Morris was of course opposed to all oppression of women, but he seems to have thought that women were better, if not naturally, suited to doing certain kinds of work (such as serving food, as in News from Nowhere) and unsuited for others (such as working down coal mines or at night). Not that the feminists of the time (now known as First Wave Feminism) campaigned for the ‘right’ of women to work at night or down the mines. They were more concerned about their property not passing to their husband if they got married. Many, Holland notes, saw the way forward for women in terms of individual personal development rather than a change in the basis of society.

Adam Buick

Letter: What about Cuba? (1969)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir,

I would be very interested to know the SPGB policy on Cuba, China and the USSR. Conceptions like the abolition of wages which the SPGB advocates are beginning to take place in Cuba. I can understand that the SPGB have a very good case for saying that the USSR is a state capitalist society, but the problem seems much less clear on Cuba or China.

Do the SPGB imagine that socialism could possibly be achieved without force in Cuba to create a social democracy if not a socialist society.*

C. D. E. Meesom 

Oundle

Reply:

Why does Mr Meesom think “that the SPGB have a very good case for saying that the USSR is a state capitalist society”? From the earliest days of Bolshevik power the Socialist Party argued that only capitalism could emerge there and since the late 1920s we have applied the state capitalist label to Russia. Over the years more and more people have come to accept this but many have done so without fully understanding how capitalism works. Thus we now have Maoist groups referring to the ‘red bourgeoisie’ in the Kremlin and attempting to prove that Russia must be capitalist by the foreign policy it pursues. Similarly there are groups of dissident Bolsheviks who identify the consolidation of capitalism in Russia with Stalin’s triumph over Trotsky and the other opposition forces. But although Russia does, of course, pursue a capitalist foreign policy and although Stalin was instrumental in industrialising the Soviet Union on a state capitalist basis, these are not the basic reasons why Russia must be a capitalist country (and why China and Cuba must be as well).

Because of the way in which the capitalist system works, the ruling class of any country is not a free agent but is subject to certain pressures which act on it remorselessly. It must compete with rival ruling groups for markets and supplies of raw materials and, such is the pace of industrial innovation in the modem world, it must continually accumulate capital — and at an ever-increasing rate. When Marx produced his analysis of 19th-century British capitalism in Capital he noticed how this affected individual factory owners:

  . . . the development of capitalist production makes it constantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition makes the immanent laws of capitalist production to be felt by each individual capitalist, as external coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to preserve it, but extend it he cannot except by means of progressive accumulation. (Capital, Vol. I. Moscow, 1961. p592).

Today these same pressures can best be seen acting on whole industries and on entire national capitals, since capitalist development has virtually eliminated the individual factory owner of Marx's day. Faced with this inescapable need to accumulate capital, the rulers of any country have only one way in which they can act — just like the 19th-century mine master or steel lord they must attempt to increase the amount of surplus value they are wringing out of the working class. So, to take the most obvious example, the pressures of world capitalism acting on Mao and these Chinese leadership are forcing them to develop a modern industrial base (which involves a nuclear weapons programme) just as a generation earlier Stalin had to set his sights on 'catching up with America’. And the development of steel plants, power stations, and nuclear weapons in China is being paid for, as always, in working-class misery.

If we turn to Cuba, it would be a simple matter to point to various features of that island which prove that it cannot be socialist. We could refer to the opponents of the regime in jail (anarchists, trotskyists, even out-of-favour members of the ruling party such as Escalante), to the semi-Stalinist attitude of the authorities towards Cuban artists, to Castro's support for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. But what really proves Cuba state capitalist again is the way its economy works. The aim is to build up industry and to mechanise agriculture and this is being achieved by screwing down the working class (not in an absolute sense — the workers are better educated, probably healthier than under Batista — but in a relative sense, by extracting more surplus value from them). As Che Guevara put it: "The working class is not putting forth its full effort".

As for utopian experiments such as the 'Island of Youth’ (formerly the Island of Pines) where only low wages are being paid and such things as food and housing are supplied free we have already dealt with these in an earlier Socialist Standard (December 1968). As we said then, "the Island of Pines must be seen within the context of the overall state capitalist economy".

Finally, Mr. Meesom asks if we think Socialism can be established 'without force’. The Socialist Party has always held that political power should be used to establish Socialism. In other words the state machine, which is the public power of coercion, will be used to force the capitalists to give up their privileges and hand over their wealth to the community. Whether or not this use of political power will involve actual physical violence — the setting in motion of the armed forces, the firing of guns and the killing of people — will depend entirely on the reaction of any pro-capitalist minority at the time of the socialist victory at the polls.

We think it unlikely that, faced with a determined socialist majority in control of political power, a small pro-capitalist minority would be so foolish as to take up arms to prevent the establishment of Socialism. But if a violent minority tried to prevent the implementation of a democratically expressed will for Socialism, then the socialist majority would have to use violence against them. As the old Chartist and socialist slogan put it: "Peaceably if we may; forcibly if we must”.

Editorial Committee

* We reproduce Mr. Meesom's letter exactly as he wrote it. We would say that only socialism will be a social democracy.

Mixed Media: ‘The Low Road’ (2013)

The Mixed Media column from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Low Road’ by Bruce Norris

The Low Road by American playwright Bruce Norris was recently produced by Dominic Cooke at the Royal Court Theatre in London. The play seems inspired by 18th century picaresque novels such as Candide by Voltaire, Tom Jones by Henry Fielding or more probably Thackeray’s work The Luck of Barry Lyndon.

The Low Road is the low road of profitability rather than the high road of principle, and the amoral anti-hero Jim Trumpet played with viciousness and without any charm by Johnny Flynn follows the former course in pre-revolutionary America. Jim expounds the economic individualism of Scottish political economist Adam Smith. Smith is himself the narrator and part character in the play and is played with relish and Brechtian flourishes by Bill Paterson.

Jim quotes Adam Smith from his seminal work of bourgeois political economy The Wealth of Nations: ‘every individual endeavours as much as he can to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry. He neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, led by an invisible hand to promote an end that was never part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it’. To which Norris adds ‘and once his prosperity is thus achieved, the rest of the damnable world can stick it up their fucking arsehole’. Marx identified that to Adam Smith ‘the means of production are to him from the outset ‘capital’, labour is from the outset wage-labour’.

Jim is forced to avail himself of the ‘christian communism’ of the New Light of Zion Colony where he engages in arguments with the congregants; ‘for if one’s coins sit idle there can be no growth, and without growth there can never be profit’ to which Constance replies that ‘all profit is theft’ and ‘to take from each, according to his ability’ is the mantra of the colony. Constance sees Jim’s financial dealings as ‘usury, money-lending and Jesus drove the moneylenders from the Temple’ but Jim believes ’tis speculation, finance and Jesus was an asshole’.

Constance says of capitalist society; ‘there never was justice in this world. There was only ever violence and gold’. The Low Road is witty, perceptive, indeed it is a rip-roaring blast and a very clever take on the nature of capitalism. Constance’s parting words to the capitalist ideology of Adam Smith personified by Jim Trumpet are ‘Damned be your soul and damned your fucking lies’.

Steve Clayton

Robert Owen's place in history (1989)

Robert Owen (1771-1858)

From the October 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Manufacturer Robert Owen, a man of deep-rooted convictions, a reformer, an advocate of Utopian Socialism and of the materialist philosophy that people's characters are made for them by heredity and environment earned the respect of many of his contemporaries, including Friedrich Engels. Owen was a critic of religion, marriage and private property and a founder in 1834 of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union of Great Britain and Ireland (numbering between half a million and a million members). In April 1834 he supported the mammoth procession to present a petition to the Home Office against the conviction of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. He also championed the National Equitable Labour Exchange (opened in September 1832) in its attempt to dispense with money and opposed the cruel and ruthless treatment of children under the factory system.

Shop assistant to capitalist
His birth and death (1771-1858) were in Newton, Montgomeryshire, where his father combined the occupations of postmaster, ironmonger and sadler. By the time Owen was seven, he had assimilated all that his school could teach him and in the two years thereafter acted as assistant teacher. At the age of nine, he became a shop assistant in his home town, and at ten entered the service of a Stamford linen draper in Lincolnshire. A few years later, he was employed in a Ludgate Hill shop in London, where he endured a crucifying workload. At 18, and with a small loan from his brother William, he set up in business with a man named Jones, making and selling cotton-spinning mules (then displacing the spinning jenny and the water frame). But Owen was soon required to sell back his share of the business to Jones — a transaction which left Owen, at the age of 19, in possession of three mules. He then rented a building, employed three men, and started a small-scale business on his own account. Soon after, he learned that one Drinkwater, a rich Manchester cotton manufacturer, had advertised for a manager. Owen successfully applied for the position and within a short time was offered, and accepted, a partnership in the business. He resigned in 1795 and became one of the managing directors of another large concern, the Chorlton Twist Company. In 1797 Owen had accumulated enough capital to enable him and some wealthy partners to purchase the New Lanark Cotton Mills from the philanthropist David Dale. He married Dale’s daughter and settled in New Lanark as manager and part owner; in 1800 he was vested with sole management.

New Lanark
Owen now had an opportunity for social experiment. Rejecting the Christian doctrine of original sin, he implemented his theory that people are creatures of pre-natal and post-natal circumstances. The environmental improvements he brought about at New Lanark saw the disappearance of vice, crime and drunkenness, and in their place a model village. He worked tirelessly to set up infant schools and to stop recruitment of children from the Edinburgh and Glasgow workhouses. He also reduced the New Lanark working day to ten-and-a-half hours — unlike his competitors who employed their workers fourteen hours a day. He ensured that medical attendance was denied to no-one in his community, and that a sick fund was created for the purpose. All these welfare and educational measures led to the founding in January 1816 of the Institution for the Formation of Character, a centre of communal life marked by a spirit of harmony and co-operation. Visitors were deeply impressed by the temper of the children and Friedrich Engels, in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, remarked:

  At the age of two the children came to school where they enjoyed themselves so much that they could scarcely be got home again . . .

Fall from grace
Gradually New Lanark's fame spread throughout Europe and it became a centre of pilgrimage, visited by bishops, economists, philanthropists, royalties, statesmen and diverse celebrities. Nicholas 1, Czar of Russia, was a pilgrim in 1816 and even Napoleon, in exile on the Island of Elba, knew of the New Lanark experiment. Owen at this time was at the height of his fame, but as soon as he proclaimed what were considered outrageous views, he fell from grace. As Engels explains:

  . . . As long as he was simply a philanthropist, he was rewarded with nothing but wealth, applause, honour, and glory. He was the most popular man in Europe. Not only men of his own class, but statesmen and princes listened to him approvingly. But when he came out with his communist theories that was quite another thing. Three great obstacles seemed to him especially to block the path to social reform: property, religion, the present form of marriage. He knew what confronted him if he attacked these — outlawry. Excommunication from official society, the loss of his whole social position. But nothing of this prevented him from attacking them without fear of the consequences, and what he had foreseen happened. Banished from official society, with a conspiracy of silence against him in the press, ruined by his unsuccessful Communist experiments in America, in which he sacrificed all his fortune, he turned directly to the working class and continued working in their midst for thirty years . . . 

Instances of Owen's courageous dedication and financial sacrifice are legion. In 1806, when the American embargo on cotton nearly brought business at New Lanark to a halt, he prevailed upon his capitalist partners — whose priorities were profit rather than welfare — to pay the workers their full wages throughout the four-month embargo. Following disagreements with his partners, Owen offered to buy the New Lanark undertaking, but on their refusal of his offer he resigned as managing director. However, in December 1813 New Lanark was auctioned to Owen at £114,100, then a vast capital sum.

Yet for all Owen's benevolence, he could not put his social theories into practice other than by means of capital, wages and their corollary money, which ultimately determined the success or otherwise of his New Lanark and other co-operative communities. Nevertheless he did conceive of purely communistic societies that went far beyond limited reform of capitalism. In these societies the workers would labour in a community of common interests and enjoy free access to the necessaries and comforts of life. No disputes would arise over divisions of property and the desire to accumulate goods would disappear. Such was his vision. But because of the inescapable logic of capitalism, he could not but depart from the simplicity of his aims.

Defeated by economic laws
In other words, Owen was defeated by the economic laws of capitalism. His collapsed experiments at New Harmony in Indiana, at Orbiston near Glasgow, and at Tytherly in Hampshire, are enough to show that these laws cannot be suspended or overridden. Invested capital must yield rent, interest and profit and welfare must play second fiddle. This reality applied to Owen's model villages, which were anyway inextricably tied to the outside market economy. Village land, buildings and machinery represented capital, and where Owen was not the sole proprietor the economic pressures were even greater, for his shareholding partners expected a return on capital. ‘‘Excessive" wage and welfare costs which eroded profits and threatened bankruptcy were not viewed by them with favour.

The incompatibility of Owen's Utopian benevolence and capitalism's laws was manifest at Orbiston, which in the late autumn of 1827 was close to collapse; the land, buildings and standing crops were sold by public auction because of pressure by the mortgagees to recoup the £16,000 security they had advanced on the property. No less disastrous was the agricultural experiment at Tytherly which may be said to have ceased in the summer of 1845 — Owen having spent enormous sums on projects which were never completed and the enlargement of farm buildings, none of which was worked at a profit. Small wonder, then, that these losses and those at New Harmony left Owen a comparatively poor man. Such was the sacrifice he had made in a life-time of sincere endeavours to eliminate poverty and misery from workers' lives.

Owen has an honourable and lasting place in working-class history. Since his death in 1858 socialists have had not only the benefit of the work of Marx and Engels, but also more than one hundred years' political experience.

Vic Berry