Jottings. (1911)

The Jottings Column from the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is culled from the front page of that ultra-respectable journal, the “Labour Leader” :

”LET LIARS PERISH

and prove the truth that Socialism is not Atheism by helping me with

10,000 Socialist Shillings.

Cheques or Bank Notes to help pay off debt of £800 on my New Church. . . Rev. W. Schoneld, Manchester. Thy will be done on Earth, United we stand.”

This from the Church that deadly foe of all intellectual progress, the enemy of Science and the upholder of slavery. Could barefaced cheek go farther ?

* * *

This same gentleman at the last General Election, speaking at a meeting in support of Mr. John Hodge, Labour candidate for the Gorton Division, stated that “he was not a Liberal, in fact he hadn’t a vote at all, but he recognised very clearly that Liberalism and Labourism were identical, and the Liberal workingmen in the audience would be noodles indeed to waste their votes when they could achieve the same object by voting for the Labour man” (cheers). That “object” was the veto of the House of Lords. After appealing for Liberal votes for a “Labour” candidate, he now appeals for “Socialist shillings” for the purpose of still further prolonging the process whereby the workers are reduced to a condition for being all the more easily exploited by the master class. I am fairly safe in affirming that he will not get one Socialist shilling.

* * *

Not only are the working class deluded into voting the parasites into power, they are even required to pay for the chloroforming process which keeps them in ignorance and upon which the capitalist sharks rely so much. These gentry profess to believe in a special Providence : why don’t they appeal in that direction ?

The fact is that when it comes to a question of £ s. d., they are as materialistic as the most brazen Atheist. They evidently believe in practising the (slightly altered) dictum, “you will be done on earth.” When will the workers get wise to this ?

* * *

Speaking at the Prince’s Theatre, Blackburn, on Jan. 22nd, under the auspices of the local I.L.P., Mr. Philip Snowden said :

“Socialism is nothing more than a scheme of industrial reorganisation for the reconciliation of Capital and Labour by placing the ownership of land and capital under democratic control. Out of all their theories they have now evolved that concrete idea.”

That’s all !

* * *

In his opening remarks Mr. Snowden said “He had felt for a long time that the I.L.P. had been so much engaged in mere political work that they had not paid the attention which was needed to the education of the people in the fundamental principles of Socialism.”

The reason is that they do not understand the fundamental principles of Socialism—excepting perhaps, those few who hold to the opinion that where it touches the pocket to tell the truth, it is the very height of folly to be wise. To speak of reconciling Capital and Labour under Socialism is an obvious attempt to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds—but it pays at the moment. Mr. Snowden professes to believe in a kind of harmony between Capital and Labour, but the only harmony I can conceive is that existing between the horse-leech and its victim. Besides, I was not aware that capital would exist at all under Socialism. The existence of capitalism, presupposes exploitation. But, of course, Mr. Snowden, being interested in the maintenance of capitalism, cannot be expected to shout that truth from the housetops.

* * *

This according to Liebknecht: “Whoever conceives of Socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of the evils of capitalist society, is no Socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern Socialism is unthinkable.”

The working class must learn that it need expect nothing from any political party that does not stand upon the basis of the class struggle. The S.P.G.B. is the only party that takes up this position, therefore it is the only party of the workers.

* * *

A remarkable letter penned by a suicide was read at an inquest held at Aldershot recently on the body of an unknown man who was found decapitated on the railway. The deceased wrote :

“Kindly free from censure the courageous driver of that train responsible for this, another tragedy. The cause of this tragedy is the unfair distribution of work. I have searched in vain, for the past three and a half months, for a situation.

“But I say the time is coming when a man who becomes really conscious of the real cause of this hellful drama, the unfair distribution of work, will not commit, as I have done, suicide; but will instantaneously arm himself with a revolver, and he will make a “B” line for the Prime Minister of the country and make him pay the penalty with his life.

“I have been to church—the manufactory of crime—and I am convinced that if people from the North, South, and East refrain from going to church after this day, there will be no recurrence of the Sidney-street affair.

“I do not believe in murder, nevertheless I warn the leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister of this country of the real and, as I believe, proper conviction that is growing….it cannot be stopped.

“Now I am afraid I shall have to close up as my train will be here presently.—Good-bye, BRITON.”

The jury returned a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind. Of course ! It would not do to say that this hellish system of capitalism had forced him to seek oblivion, would it ? It might enlighten the proletariat. And how near to the truth this poor devil got, to say that he was insane. If he had elected to kill someone else instead of himself would he have been found insane ? I venture to think not.

Tom Sala

Editorial: Marx and Hardie. (1908)

Editorial from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Labour Leader, October 23rd, 1908, under the title “Is there to be discord?” Mr. J. Keir Hardie makes a lengthy endeavour to justify the position of the Labour Party in its relation to Socialism. His criticism of the S.D.P. attitude as representing an altogether needless sect is plainly correct, as that body, while holding aloof from the Labour Party nationally, allows its members to work with the Labour Party locally. If the Labour Party is to be considered as an opponent nationally, surely it is equally so locally. To us there appears no reason whatever for thus attempting to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, except either an altogether mistaken notion of Socialist tactics, or an endeavour to play the political game.

But Mr. Hardie, in building his case for the Labour Party, invokes the blessing of Marx, Engels and Liebknecht, and for that purpose quotes two or three sentences from a letter Marx is said to have written in 1871. The rest of the letter is excluded on the plea that it would occupy too much space. Yet one column on the leader page is occupied in announcing and repeating Hardie’s statements, and could easily have been dispensed with to make room for the whole letter ; and if one column was not sufficient, a whole page could have been made available by omitting tlie advertisements of soothing syrup, ointment, pills, boot polish, etc. with which pages are filled. As it is the quotation is by no means satisfactory, and cannot be made to bear the construction Hardie labours to put upon it. As he himself says, “Marx’s great point was the organisation of the working class as a separate political party, apart and distinct from all other political parties.” Despite his assertion, Marx’s great point is emphatically not met by the Labour Party, which is, as we have demonstrated time and time again, a wing of the capitalist Liberal Party, and has its present footing in the “House” only with the consent of that party. Although political prophecy is a dangerous pastime, it is safe to say that the Labour Party will go out on the ebb of the Liberal tide that carried it in.

That portion of the quotation referring to sects which Hardie throws at us is equally inapplicable. “When the working class becomes ripe (for an independent historical movement) all sects are essentially retrograde.” The whole point is, therefore, whether the working class is yet ripe, or in other words, whether the working class is yet Socialist. There; can be no two opinions about it ; indeed, it is not a matter of opinion, but one of fact. The working class has to be converted to Socialism, and when that has been accomplished, the movement necessarily set up precludes the possibility ot sectional differences so far as the course of action is concerned. The present trouble, the exacerbation of which has called forth the pronouncement which forms the subject of this note, arises from the fact that the workers are not Socialist and cannot be driven or led or otherwise persuaded to take a line of action in accordance with the wishes of Hardie & Co. The fact that Hardie & Co’s, line of action is not the Socialist one is not the point for the present. It is not good enough for Hardie to put the thermometer in the furnace and then persuade himself that it registers the temperature outside.

The independent movement of the working class for its emancipation, admittedly necessarily Socialist, must be the work of a Socialist party, and the Labour Party is not the Socialist Party. Hardie has already explained that the I.L.P., as a political factor, has completely sunk its identity in the Labour Party, so that it is wih the latter alone that we have to deal.

The Socialist party has first of all, therefore, to convert the working class—has, in a word, to be a propagandist body. During its work as a proselytising force it is bound to take political action. The question which constitutes the rock of offence is whether that political action shall be merely an item in the general work of propaganda, or whether it will play down to the unconverted to win. The I.L.P., the S.D.P., and every other political party outside the S.P.G.B,, has chosen the latter course, and thereby ceased to be Socialist propagandists—fallen out of the Socialist movement. That they stole the Socialist thunder, used the enthusiasm of the rank and file, and prostituted the name and the cause of Socialism does not matter—they won. But the cost of their election is the hindering of the development of class consciousness and the hampering of the work of the Socialist movement. The greatest set-back, the most powerful opponent Socialism can possibly have, is, as Liebknecht has said, the man who comes into our ranks as a friend and a comrade and betrays us.

Wilhelm Liebknecht quote. (1906)

From the June 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

"On the ground of the class struggle we are invincible; if we leave it we are lost, because we are no longer Socialists. The strength and power of Socialism rest in the fact that we are leading a class struggle; that the labouring class is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class, and that within capitalist society effectual reforms, which will put an end to class government and class exploitation, are impossible."

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Quotes from Wilhelm Liebknecht. (1905)

From the June 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not Socialism.—W. Liebknecht

#    #    #    #

Modern Socialism is the child of capitalist society and its class antagonisms. Without these it could not be. Socialism and ethics are two separate things. This fact must be kept in mind.—W. Liebknecht

Blogger's Note:

Both quotes are from Wilhelm Liebknecht's 1899 pamphlet, No Compromise. First published in English in 1900, No Compromise was an incredibly influential tract for early members of the SPGB.

Wilhelm Liebknecht quote. (1905)

From the February 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

“For our party, and for our party tactics, there is but one valid basis: the basis of the class struggle, out of which the Socialist Party has sprung up, and out of which alone it can draw the necessary strength to bid defiance to every storm and to all its enemies. . . . We may not do as other parties, because we are not like the others. We are—and this cannot be too often repeated—separated from all other parties by an insurmountable barrier, a barrier that any individual can easily surmount; but once on the other side of it, and he is no Socialist. . . . Just in this fact lies our strength, that we are not like the others, and that we are not only not like the others, and that we are not simply different from the others, but that we are their deadly enemy, who have sworn to storm the Bastille of Capitalism, whose defenders all those others are. Therefore we are only strong when we are alone.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht

The First International - Part 3 (1957)

From the January 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2

The Congress of 1870 had to be abandoned owing to the outbreak of the Franco-German war. It had been brewing for some time, fostered on the one side by the expansionist policy of the Napoleonic regime, with its stock-jobbing supporters, and on the other side by the capitalist development of Germany, which was unifying the country under the domination of Prussia.

It was a difficult time for the International, with its mixed support, including many who were still moved by patriotic feelings. Its position was not improved by pronouncements upon what constituted an offensive and defensive war, largely inspired by a hatred of Bonapartism, which saw in Napoleon the principal trouble maker in Europe.

The General Council issued an address on July 23rd, 1870, whose sentiments were to be reflected in tile attitude of the Labour movement in subsequent wars, notably in 1914 and 1939.

All governments who take part in wars allege that they are acting on the defensive, and workers on opposing sides have been induced to shed their blood upon battlefields on the specious claim that they have been fighting a war against aggression, though the latest manifestation, the Suez crisis, is put under the heading of a probable aggression! Marx, who wrote the July address, cannot be absolved from the evil consequences to which this attitude has led. The address contained these comments: 

  "If the German working class allow the present war to lose its strictly defensive character and to degenerate into a war against the French people, victory or defeat will prove alike disastrous.”

Once a war commences and workers are thrown into the conflict they have neither the information nor the power to do any limiting. When a war has started no one can successfully predict its result, except misery for the working-class of both victor and vanquished. The Address goes on to make a prophecy that vastly overestimates the influence of the more advanced members of the International and the level of understanding of the workers:

  ‘‘The principles of the International are, however, too widely spread and too firmly rooted amongst the German working class to apprehend such a sad consummation. The voices of the French workmen have re-echoed from Germany. A mass meeting of workmen, held at Brunswick on July 16th. expressed its full concurrence with the Paris manifesto, spurned the idea of national antagonism to France, and wound up its resolutions with these words : “We are enemies of all wars, but above all, of dynastic wars . . . With deep sorrow and grief we are forced to undergo a defensive war as an unavoidable evil; but we call at the same time, upon the whole German working-class to render the occurrence of such an immense social misfortune impossible by vindicating for the people themselves the power to decide on peace and war, and making themselves masters of their own destinies'. "

And the result of this support of a “defensive” war? The outcome of the war was the defeat of France; the establishment of the Commune of Paris in 1871, and the smashing up of working-class aspirations in France for many years; the building up of the German Empire, and the inauguration of the anti-Socialist laws that attempted to put the Socialist movement in Germany entirely out of the picture: the withdrawal of the English trade unions from the International; finally an all round stepping up of the persecution of the international and its members, on the ground that it was responsible for the Paris Commune. In fact, however, the International, as an organisation, had little to do with the Paris Commune, although some of its members played a considerable part in it.

A second Address was issued on September 9th, 1870, also written by Marx. This called attention to the fact that the German Government had now changed from the defensive to the offensive and was demanding the cession of territory, Alsace and Lorraine. This Address was an excellent summing-up of the developments and of the awakened imperialist hunger of the German capitalists, as well as its inevitable consequences, future wars of greater intensity. There was also a more realistic appreciation of what happens once the fervour of war is aroused, as the following quotation emphasises:

  “The German working-class have resolutely supported the war, which it is not in their power to prevent, as a war for German Independence and the liberation of France and Europe from that pestilental incubus, the Second Empire. It was the German workmen who, together with the rural labourers, furnished the sinews and muscles of heroic hosts, leaving behind their half-starved families. Decimated by the battles abroad, they will be once more decimated by misery at home. In their turn they are now coming forward to ask for 'guarantees,—guarantees that their immense sacrifices have not been brought in vain, that they have conquered liberty, that the victory over the imperialist armies will not, as in 1815, be turned into the defeat of the German people; . . . 

  “Unfortunately, we cannot feel sanguine of their immediate success. If the French workmen amidst peace failed to stop the aggressor, are the German workmen more likely to stop the victor amidst the clangour of arms? ”

That last paragraph is strikingly different from the views expressed in the first Address.

The International itself was divided over the attitude expressed in the first Address. Liebkneckt and Bebel were opposed to war and, in the North German Reichstag they refrained from voting in favour of war. After the fall of the French Empire the Brunswick Committee, of which they were members, and other sections of the International took a stand against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, and were prosecuted by the German Government. Leibkneckt and Bebel were tried in March, 1872, on a charge of high treason and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in a fortress. There was also a manifesto from Swiss sections of the International calling upon the workers to take up arms in defence of the French Republic against Germany, which, it claimed, now represented despotism and reaction. This manifesto emanated from the Anarchists.

After the fall of the Paris Commune the International exerted itself to find asylum for its refugees, and assisted them in every way that was possible. This was made more difficult by the quarrels and mutual recriminations of the refugees themselves.

The bulk of the work of the International during the war had fallen upon the shoulders of Marx. After the fall of the Commune his defence of it appeared under me title of The Civil War in France, which has become one of the Socialist classics.

Although there was no Congress in 1870 nor 1871, a private conference was held in London in September, 1871, under the shadow produced by the Commune. Only 23 delegates attended, nine of whom came from the Continent.

The split between the groups in Switzerland, one centred in Geneva and the other (Anarchist) centred in the Juras, had widened and become a pressing problem that needed immediate attention. In order to check the intrigues of the Bakounin group the General Council asked for more power. The Conference declared that whatever methods of organisation sections of the International had to adopt in countries where it could not be regularly organised, there must be no secret societies. It also resolved to accept adhesions from women’s unions. While reasserting the position previously laid down on the necessity of political action, the Conference declared that the working-class must keep free from all political parties connected with the ruling class, and constitute its own political party to bring about the social revolution.

It was also proposed that a special federal committee be set up in England to deal with trade unions, and local efforts were urged in industries where strikes occurred rather than leaving it to the General Council to institute action.

In 1872 the Anarchists worked hard to overthrow the authority of the General Council, the Jura section tried unsuccessfully to get control of the sections in Switzerland and Belgium. The Alliance (Anarchist), which was supposed to have been dissolved, was active in Italy and Spain. Lafargue sent reports from Madrid that attempts were being made by members of the Alliance to get control of the Madrid Federation of the International. These subversive activities determined Marx to attend the Hague Congress of 1872 and deal the Bakouninists a mortal blow. Bakounin was also to be at the Congress, but he did not turn up.

The Hague Congress had a very wide international representation. According to Lessner (who was a delegate), there were seventy-two delegates present. Sections were represented from the following countries: Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, England, the United States, Austria, Hungary, Australia, and Ireland.

A report covering the previous three years was submitted, and then the Congress got down to the real business, the position of the General Council. A resolution was moved giving the General Council power to suspend any union, section or federation until the next Congress. After a vigorous discussion, in which an amendment was moved that no section could be suspended without the consent of its federation, the resolution was carried by thirty-six votes to six, with fifteen abstaining. Then Engels, who was present as a delegate, dumbfounded the delegates by moving that the seat of the General Council be transferred from London to New York. In spite of heated argument, this resolution was carried by twenty-six to twenty-three; with nine abstentions.

This was the vote that practically put an end to the existence of the International, for although it struggled on for a time in the United States, it gradually faded away.

Before the Hague Congress ended Marx had the satisfaction of seeing the Anarchists removed from the organisation. Bakounin, Guillaume, and others were expelled; the Geneva federation was suspended, and it was agreed to publish the documents relating to the Alliance. Subsequently the Anarchists in Europe met at congresses of their own for a few years, claiming that they were the legitimate International Working Men’s Association.

Gilmac.

(Concluded.)

Fiction and Fact. (1923)

From the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

“If labour were going to establish their position in this country there must be no class of society which they could not touch. The time would come when labour would not be content to live under the old conditions. They needed more colour, more art, and romance and beauty, more pageantry and processions and music and dance to make themselves a power in the land.”

J. Ramsay MacDonald, in an address to a Labour gathering at Neath, Briton Ferry and Port Talbot.  Daily News. 7/5/23.

How these flunkeys of capitalism delight in clouding the class struggle. Here is another one on the same stunt:

 “The Labour Party is no longer a class party. It includes aristocrats and democrats, manufacturers and professional men among its representatives. Mr. H. G. Wells’ arrival among us is significant and valuable.”

Mr. John Hodge, Labour M.P., writing in the Star. 27/2/23.

“Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of Capitalist Society and the foundation of modern Socialism knows also that a Socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not Socialism.”

“No compromise—no political trading.”

William Liebnecht.

Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg (1939)

Pamphlet Review from the March 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg 53 pp; 25 cents. Three Arrows Press, New York.

So far as we know, this is the first English translation of Reform or Revolution. Originally, it appeared in German in 1899, its aim being to show the weakness of the case of Eduard Bernstein and Kondradt Schmidt, which stated that the German Social Democratic Party should abandon all idea of a revolutionary transformation of society and aim to improve the status of the working-class by means of the winning of reforms. Bernstein and Schmidt held the view that reforms themselves, if continuously enacted, would gradually make an inroad into capitalism, with the result that Socialism would slowly arrive.

Two groups formed themselves in the Social Democratic Party which hitherto had claimed to be Marxist; one group led by Rosa Luxemburg, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Karl Kautsky, which still called itself Marxist; the other which gathered around Bernstein and advocated gradualism or reformism.

The pamphlet under review, written in defence of scientific Socialism and to demonstrate the fallacies of gradualism, deserves to be widely read, and we recommend it especially to members of the Labour Party, trade unionists and Co-operators.

Before dealing with the pamphlet itself, there is one aspect of its history that is worthy of note. From it can be learned a lesson in party organisation.

The arguments of Reform or Revolution, though sound in the main, were not accepted by the majority of the German SDP. Bernstein’s reformism was preferred. The question arises, “Why did a party which claimed to be Marxist, reject Rosa Luxemburg’s teaching and adopt that of Bernstein?” The answer is that the SDP, while declaring Socialism to be its aim, entered the political arena from the first with a programme of demands for immediate reforms. Consequently, despite the wishes of many of the founders, adherents were gained who were interested in the reforms offered, rather than in the Socialist objective. Because of this unsound foundation, the party became overwhelmed with reformists. As Liebknecht said in his No Compromise, written in the same year as Reform or Revolution, “When once the thin end of the opportunist wedge has forced itself into the policy of the party, the thick end soon follow”. Readers of Liebknecht’s pamphlet will know that very soon the German capitalist class lost its terror of the SDP, many of them joined its ranks and the class basis of the party was gone. The unsound basis of the party was again revealed in 1914, when it supported its own national group of capitalists in the war, just as the British Labour Party supported the British capitalists. Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution had been powerless against the strong waves of reformism within the SDP.

The lesson to be learned from the above facts is obvious: when organising for Socialism, the offering of reforms on the party programme spells ruin. Thousands may flock into the party, but they are mostly interested in the reform of capitalism, not in its abolition, and these members swamp the Socialist element. Here is a definite answer to those who urge Socialists to join the Labour Party. History has proved, in the case of the German Social Democratic Party, that Socialists inside a reformist organisation cannot convert it and bring it on to the Socialist path. The only logical thing they can do is to break with the reformists and organise on the clear-cut programme of Socialism. Says Liebknect: “Once . . . we have started upon the inclined plane of compromise, there is no stopping”.

And now let us turn to the pamphlet itself.

The argument put forward—and shown to be true—is that the working-class cannot hope for Socialism from trade unions, Co-operatives or from reform movements.

Trade unions, Rosa Luxemburg, shows, are a part of capitalism itself. They are the workers’ weapons of defence against the capitalist class which aims at increasing its profits. They are useful in that they enable the workers to sell their labour-power under more favourable conditions than would otherwise be the case. However, they are not able to take the offensive against capitalism, to overthrow it, because they are badly handicapped. They are handicapped because the continued increase in the use of machinery makes for a greater productivity of labour, and therefore enables the capitalist class to employ fewer hands for the production of a given quantity of goods. Furthermore, trade unions cannot increase the share of wealth going to the working class. Owing to the development of capitalism and the greater productivity of labour, this share is continually being reduced. When the workers produce more, their wages do not rise in the same proportion (pp. 16-18 and p. 37).

Co-operative Societies are no more able than trade unions to end capitalism. As Rosa Luxemburg points out (pp. 35-6) they can survive within the present system only if they become pure capitalist enterprises. They have to compete with capitalist firms, and to do so successfully they must adopt capitalist methods of production.

  “Labour is intensified. The work day is lengthened or shortened, according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the requirements of the market, labour is either employed or thrown back into the street. In other words, use is made of all the methods that enable an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market. The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production . . . are obliged to take toward themselves the role of the capitalist entrepreneur—a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives, which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving”.

How capitalist the co-operatives have become in England may be seen from the fact that their employees, like employees in any capitalist concern, have frequently had to strike against their conditions of work.

Those who hope to establish Socialism by means of a long series of reforms will find in this book an explanation of why they are doomed to disappointment.

A revolution and a legislative reform are two completely different factors in the development of society. “A social transformation and a legislative reform do not differ according to their duration but according to their content.” A revolution is the work of a class which has gained political power in order to transform society to suit its interests; a reform is carried out only within the framework of the social system created by the previous revolution. Hence reforms cannot end capitalism; they can modify it to some extent, but they leave its basis untouched. To establish socialism, a revolution—a complete transformation of private property into social property—is necessary.

  “That is why people who pronounce themselves in favour of the method of legislative reform in place of and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society they take a stand for surface modifications of the old society” (p; 43).

Furthermore, the State to-day is a class State, established by the capitalist class and carried on in its interests. It is the representative of capitalist society, wherein capitalist interests dominate. Any social reforms that are passed, therefore, will not be injurious to capitalism. Says Rosa Luxemburg (p. 21):

  “The present State is, first of all, an organisation of the ruling class. It assumes functions favouring social development specifically because, and in the measure that, these interests and social development coincide, in a general fashion, with the interests of the dominant class. Labour legislation is enacted as much in the immediate interest of the capitalist class as in the interest of society in general.”

Since the struggle for reforms cannot alter the slave position of the working class, it ends by bringing indifference and disillusionment to the workers who look to reforms for emancipation.

  “Since the social reforms can only offer an empty promise, the logical consequence of such a programme must necessarily be disillusionment” (p. 26).

If trade unions, Co-operatives and reform movements are unable to oust capitalism and usher in Socialism, what must we do to reach our goal? Rosa Luxemburg indicates the way.

“From the first appearance of class societies . . . the conquest of political power has been the aim of all rising classes” (p. 42). 

The workers, too, being an oppressed class, must aim at capturing political power. And they must make use of democracy for that end. Democracy is indispensable to the working-class “because it creates the political forms which will serve the proletariat as fulcrums in its task of transforming bourgeois society” (p. 45). Democracy the working-class needs, and this can be best preserved, not by compromise, but by struggling for Socialism. Lovers of democracy should ponder carefully the following:

  “Democracy does not acquire greater chances of life in the measure that the working-class renounces the struggle for its emancipation, but, on the contrary, democracy acquires greater chances of survival as the Socialist movement becomes sufficiently strong to struggle against the reactionary consequences of world politics, and the bourgeois desertion of democracy. He who would strengthen democracy should want to strengthen and not weaken the Socialist movement. He who renounces the struggle for Socialism renounces both the Labour movement and democracy” (p. 41).

Rosa Luxemburg puts forward certain points of view with which we do not agree. For example, we hold that she lays too much emphasis on the decline of capitalism and its collapse. Readers of Reform or Revolution would do well to study also our penny pamphlet Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse.

Clifford Allen

("Reform or Revolution" is obtainable from 42 Great Dover Street, S.E.1, at 1s, post free 1s. 1d.)

This Month's Quotation: Wilhelm Liebknecht (1941)

The Front Page quote from the March 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

   “Ever advancing with science and economic development, we are what we were and we will remain what we are”

Wilhelm Liebknecht

This Month's Quotation: Wilhelm Liebknecht (1941)

The Front Page quote from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “Every power outside ourselves on which we seek to lean is for us only weakness ”

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Socialism and Ethics. (1924)

From the January 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

   “Pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of wealth and respect for poverty, such as we find in Christianity and other religions, is not socialism. The communism of early times, as it was before the existence of private property, and as it has at all times and among all peoples been the elusive dream of some enthusiasts, is not socialism. The forcible equalisation advocated by the followers of Baboeuf, the so-called equalitarians, is not socialism.
   In all these appearances there is lacking the real foundation of capitalist society with its class antagonisms. Modern socialism is the child of capitalist society and its class antagonisms. Without these it could not be. Socialism and ethics are two separate things. This fact must be kept in mind.
   Whoever conceives of socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of capitalist society, is no socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern socialism is unthinkable . . . Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of capitalist society and the foundation of modern socialism, knows also that a socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not socialism.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht 

(Page . 34. No Compromise, no Political Trading.)

At One With Us. (1908)

From the May 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “For our party, and for our party tactics, there is but one valid basis: the basis of the class-struggle, out of which the Socialist party has sprung up, and out of which alone it can draw the necessary strength to bid defiance to every storm, and to all its enemies. . . . We may not do as other parties, because we are not like the others. We are—and this cannot be too often repeated—separated from all other parties by an insurmountable barrier, a barrier that any individual can easily surmount; but once on the other side of, and he is no longer a Socialist. . . .  Just in this fact lies our strength, but that we are their deadly enemy, who have sworn to storm the Bastile Capitalism, whose defenders all those others are. Therefore we are only strong when we are alone."

Wilhelm Liebknecht

The Fabians, Bernstein and Revisionism - Part 1 (1956)

From the January 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now and again old ideas turn up and, after some refurbishing, are presented as fresh discoveries. The old wine in new bottles is then described as the sole product of the very latest and most highly developed vineyards. The working class movement has been no stranger to this fraudulent or ignorant artifice, and many a reputation has been built upon the deception.

Since the Socialist movement began most of those who claimed adherence to it have been obsessed with the idea of a mass movement. Even most of those who claimed to be Marxist have hedged, compromised, and thrown principles to the winds in order to swell the numerical support for a movement that put Socialism in the forefront as its theoretical aim, and then took practical action that denied this aim. The result has been defeat, disaster and the submerging of much that was valuable.

Examples of this craving for a mass following have been the Fabians, the Bernstein Revisionists, Independent Labour Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Labour Party, the Communists and, recently, movements, like the one sponsored by G. D. H. Cole. Supporters of these movements have brought up old arguments and ideas as if they were newly discovered examples of progress.

As some useful lessons can be drawn from it we will describe the circumstances in which one of these movements, the Bernstein Revisionist Movement occurred. It produced a bitter controversy in the Social Democratic Parties at the turn of the century. What exaggerated the importance of the theoretical dispute was the fact that Bernstein had been a prominent advocate of Marxism for many years, was regarded as an outstanding leader of German Social Democracy, had been a friend of Engels and, along with Kautsky, had been appointed by Engels as one of his literary executors. True, he did not disclose the cloven hoof until Engels was dead.

The controversy was set going by a series of articles on Problem of Socialism, contributed by Bernstein to the German Social Democratic paper, the Neue Zeit, in 1897. A demand was thereupon made that the German party state its position with regard to his ideas, and particularly to his contention that the task of social democracy was “to organise the working classes politically and develop them as a democracy and to fight for all reforms in the State which are adapted to raise the working classes and transform the State in the direction of democracy.” 

In 1899 Bernstein published a book gaining a complete statement of his views. This book was translated and published in England by the Independent Labour Party in 1909 under the title Evolutionary Socialism, with an English preface by Bernstein. The quotations of Bernstein's views that we will give later on will be taken from this edition, although the controversy ranged round the original German edition.

To begin with, let us see what the views were that Bernstein held. Briefly summarised they were the following:

That the numbers and wealth of large and small Capitalists tended to increase and society to become more democratic. That class antagonisms were being modified by ethical and patriotic considerations. That crises were decreasing in size and frequency through a process of adaptation largely influenced by trusts, cartels and the like. That the Materialist Conception of History overestimated the economic factor; the influence of the economic factor was diminishing whilst the influence of ideological factors, including the ethical, was increasing. That Capitalism had undergone fundamental changes since the middle of the 19th century when Marx made his analyses, but, though true for the time of which he was writing, they no longer applied.. That the theory of surplus value was incomplete and needed the addition of the theory of final utility. That the workers have now become citizens of the country and therefore have a fatherland to defend. That as Germany is becoming more and more dependent upon products from the colonies, these colonies should be developed and protected. Savages have only a conditional right to the land occupied by them; the higher civilization of advanced countries can claim a higher right. That Socialism is a long way ahead and will only come by a process that is gradual and almost imperceptible; consequently we should not worry about the future but concentrate on the present, on the extension of the political and economic rights of the working classes and “In all Advanced countries we see the privileges of the Capitalist bourgeoisie yielding step by step to democratic organisations” (Preface, page XI). That the Social Democratic Party should form alliances with the Capitalist parties nearest to them.

These were the views that Bernstein put forward. The controversy that developed was two-fold. On the one hand it was concerned with Bernstein’s ideas, on the other it was a struggle to keep him in the Party, in spite of his heresies, on the ground of democracy. On the latter question Liebknecht made the following observations:— 

“No socialist, therefore, has the right to condemn attacks on the theoretical ideas of the Marxian teachings or to excommunicate anyone from the party because of such attacks. But it is wholly different when such attacks imply a complete overturning of our whole conception of society, as, for example, is the case with Bernstein. Then vigorous defence is in order.” (p. 38, “No Compromise, No Political Trading.”)

However, it is well to remember that all the participants in this controversy accepted the reform policies of the Social Democratic Parties. Where they differed among themselves was that some advocated a reform policy but, at the same time, insisted that the Party should remain independent. The muddled attitude of the German party is made plain by a report of the two conferences at which the Bernstein position was debated. The report is taken from the Social Democrat of January, 1902.

At a Congress at Hanover in 1899, after Kautsky and Bebel had bitterly attacked Bernstein’s views, Bebel moved a resolution that was carried by 216 votes to 21. The resolution began as follows:—

“That the party remains as heretofore on the basis of the class-struggle whereby the freedom of the working class can alone be effected."

But it finished up in this way:—

“The party, without in the least deceiving itself as to the character of the bourgeois parties, does not, on principle, refuse to co-operate with the parties of order from time to time, if the party can thereby obtain some definite advantage, whether for the purposes of election, or in the acquirement of political rights and freedom for the people, or in the event of obtaining some real improvement in the social condition of the working classes, or in the struggle against elements and measures hostile to the masses. . .  and has no reason to change either its principles or fundamental demands, or its tactics, or its name.”

This weak-kneed resolution in fact gave Bernstein his case for reforms and alliances, and he was not slow to realise it. He was precluded from visiting Germany, and consequently could not attend the Congress. As soon as the terms of the resolution were conveyed to him he telegraphed his willingness to vote for it!

The Congress resolution did not settle the question. The controversy went on though Bernstein took no part in it until the middle of 1901, when he delivered a lecture in Germany under the title “ How is Scientific Socialism Possible?” In this lecture he argued that “ to be purely scientific Socialism must cease to be the doctrine of a class, the expression of the class interests of the working class.” This lecture stirred up the flames of controversy again, particularly as the Capitalist press lauded Bernstein as one of their own men. Thus the question came up again at the next Congress, which was held in Lubeck. Bebel opened the attack upon Bernstein, and Bernstein, who was present this time, defended his ideas claiming that he had not attacked the programme, the agitation or the practical working of the party, but only the theory which could not conceivably injure the party, and that he could not recant any of his views.

Two resolutions were moved. The first, for Bernstein, was rejected. The second was carried by 203 votes to 31, and was as follows:—

  “The Congress recognises the unreserved right of self-criticism for the intellectual development of the party. But the thoroughly one-sided manner in which Bernstein has conducted his criticism in the last few years, while omitting to criticise bourgeois society and its leaders, has placed him in an equivocal position, and aroused the displeasure of a large portion of his comrades. In the expectation that comrade Bernstein will accept this view and act accordingly, the Congress passes over the resolutions [there were four demanding a formal vote of censure] to the order of the day.”

After the resolution was carried Bernstein rose and made the following declaration:—

  “As I declared to you at the Congress at Stuttgart, the decision of the Congress naturally cannot cause me to abandon my convictions. At the same time, the decision of the majority of my comrades is never indifferent to me. My conviction is that the resolution is unjust towards me, being based, as I have pointed out, on erroneous suppositions. But since Comrade Bebel has declared that the resolution contains no vote of censure, I declare that henceforth I will respect and observe the decision of the majority of the Congress in the manner due to such a decision.”

This ended the dispute over Bernstein's membership as far as the German Party was concerned. In the next contribution we will discuss the repercussions in England of the German party’s decision.

We will end this section by pointing out that the ideas Bernstein put forward were not original. He himself had taken them from the Fabians, about whom we will have something to say later on, but there were groups on the Continent holding similar ideas before he put forward his. One of these groups held a view which was described as Integral Socialism. A member of this group, Benoît Malon, published a book in 1891 entitled “Integral Socialism.” Malon was opposed to Marx’s conception of economic motives and class-consciousness, arguing that Socialism was an outlook not for the workers alone but for all humanity, and was inspired by spiritual as well as economic aims, directed at conciliation rather than antagonism of classes, and trying to obtain benefits for all who suffered hardships. An outlook that required the co-operation of the liberal elements in society and involved the moral betterment of the workers.

Believing that Socialism was gradually seeping into society Malon, César de Paepe and others of like conviction, were opposed to any drastic proposals that might interrupt this process and advocated state ownership and the usual multifarious baggage of reformism in their proposals for practical action.

The seeping Socialism must have seeped out as fast as it seeped in, because 60 years later the class struggle has not eased; the workers are still wage slaves of capital and the ruling class is still in the seat of power and opulence.

Gilmac.

(To be continued)

The Fruits of False Theories (1953)

From the April 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Origins of Stalinism

In the eulogies of Stalin, as with those following the death of Lenin, the movement to which both their names are given—Stalinism and Leninism—is represented as an innovation; as an essential departure from the ideas and policies of the social democratic movement, though at the same time it was claimed to be in line with the views put forward by Marx. In fact, however, though both of them broke away from the 2nd International (which had already fallen to pieces), they carried out policies that were implicit in the aims and the practice of the 2nd International. The face of Russia today is the logical working out of these aims and policies. The disputes between the Social Democrats and the Bolsheviks, in spite of the vituperation and clouds of words, was not over aims and policies but over the methods of pushing forward the policies and accomplishing the aims. It was the utter ruthlessness of the Bolsheviks that frightened them.

Both Lenin and Stalin poured loads of scorn and denunciations upon the old Social Democratic Parties and their leaders, as well as upon the syndicalist section of the International, but Bolshevik policy embraced the outlook of them all. Lenin and his associates claimed that the Social Democratic leaders were renegades when, in fact, all that the Bolsheviks could have argued against these leaders was that they were more cautious in pressing forward similar aims. Lenin was a fraternal delegate to 2nd International Congresses and only fell out with these leaders in 1914 on a particular interpretation of the war as the propitious moment to aim at the conquest of power. Although the Social Democrats made much of the minority aspect of the Bolshevik capture of power it was also accepted in their own practical actions in spite of theoretical statements to the contrary.

What has led many people to see a fundamental difference between, for instance, the Social Democrat, the Bolshevik and the Syndicalist in the ranks of the 2nd International is simply that the International contained what is called a left, a centre and a right wing— a group that carried 2nd International ideas to their logical conclusion in practice, a group that vacillated and a group that shut their eyes to the logical outcome of the ideas they advocated.

The Future as seen by Social Democrats

To what, briefly, were the leaders of the 2nd International looking forward? A transition period in which Capitalism would merge into Socialism. And how did they define this transition period? Let us see what they had to say about it. Owing to the limitations of space we can only quote from three sources, but they were leading representatives of the 2nd International on the theoretical side—German, Belgian and American.

First let us see what Karl Kautsky said about the society that would follow capitalism. The quotations are from “The Class Struggle,” a book published in English by Kerr & Co. of Chicago in the early years of the present century.

   “The distribution of goods in a socialist society might possibly continue for some time under forms that are essentially developments of the existing system of wage payments.” (page 141)
  “All forms of modern wage-payment—fixed salaries, piece wages, time wages, bonuses—all of them are reconcilable with the spirit of a socialist society; and there is not one of them that may not play a role in socialist society, as the wants and customs of its members, together with the requirements of production, may demand.” (page 143)

Russia has carried these ideas out.

In 1907 Emile Vandervelde, another leading member of the 2nd International, wrote a book entitled “Collectivism and Industrial Revolution.” In this book he went into considerable detail about the future, and we are quoting from it at some length because the extracts give a fair idea of what the prominent theoreticians of the 2nd International were anticipating as the face of the future.

 “Consequently, under a regime of pure collectivism—to suppose what we do not assume beforehand, that this regime is to be realised some day—the land, mines, manufacturing establishments, the instruments of credit, the means of communication and transport will belong to the community: only articles of consumption would remain personal property.
 “The management of affairs, instead of being as today monarchical or oligarchical, would take the republican form; instead of being given over by right of birth or by right of conquest, to capitalists competing or combined it would belong not to the State, as it is said and repeated in order to mislead, but to autonomous public corporations under the control of the State." (Introduction pages xiii-xiv)
  "By the very fact of its magnitude, this revolution can only be the result of a long and complex series of partial variations. 'Radical changes cannot be sudden: sudden changes cannot be radical.'" (page xv)
   “In fact there is nothing to prevent us imagining a socialist state, in which individual ownership and labour would co-exist with collective ownership and labour." (page 47)

After distinguishing between the authorative and economic functions of the State—the former gradually decreasing and the latter gradually increasing—he projects across the future the “Governmental State" and the “Administrative State" based upon voluntary cooperation and then says of the “Administrative State": 

  "States when thus transformed, regulating in different hierarchical ranks the movements of commerce and finance, presiding over the external industrial relations of the different centres of population, are nothing else than Agencies appointed by more or less numerous associations, and invested with the confidence of those who have chosen them." (pages 160-161)
   "Likewise, in a Socialist state, it is after having satisfied all needs which are of general concern, after having secured for all members of the community the right to existence, that the excess of products, or rather of values produced, should form the object of differential distribution.
   “In the proportion in which it would be socially useful from the point of view of production to allow special advantages to certain workers or to certain categories of workers, in order to stimulate their energies and their power of labour, nothing would prevent a collectivist society from maintaining—mutatis mutandis—the graduated scale of salaries which exists today in the public services.
    “Collectivism does not, then, necessarily imply equality of remuneration.” (pages 177-178)

It will be noticed that at one time Vandervelde uses the State to mean governmental machinery and at another a particular society but, even so, for him the State is still something apart from the mass of people, the controlling and deciding body.

The Practical Result of the Vision

What is the essence of all these quotations but, near enough, what at present obtains in Russia? True, freedom to think does not exist there; the dictatorship is ruthless and bureaucratic—but this was the logical outcome of Social Democratic theory. They held up their hands in horror at the speeding up process which involved the sacrifice of millions of lives, but they accepted, as part of their own idea of protracted development in which millions of lives were also sacrificed in “Offensive" and “Defensive" wars, in which was also implicit the “socialism in one country” idea—the “armed militia,” the “armed people" and the “citizen army.” 

So close was the fundamental identity between the policy of the 2nd International and the policy of the Bolsheviks that leaders of the 2nd International were at pains to try and find some distinguishing characteristic that would enable them to dissociate themselves from the ruthlessness and rebut the criticisms of Lenin. They all had to agree that the Bolsheviks were socialists but —they were doing some things they “didn’t orter do"— they were forcing the pace too much. Not that this would fail to achieve the object, but that it would shake their hold on power.

After the Bolshevik Capture of Power

The third member of the 2nd International whom we will quote, is Morris Hillquit, once a prominent theoretician of the Socialist Party of America. He summed-up the position in 1921 in his book “From Marx to Lenin." Here are some extracts from it:

   "And it is idle cavilling to dispute the Socialist character of the Russian Revolution. A socialist revolution does not mean the immediate establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth. It is only the political act of seizing the power of government on behalf of the workers and with the object of using it for the abolition of private ownership in the means of production and for the development of collective work and enjoyment.
   “The Russian revolution has taken possession of the government in the name of the workers. It has effectively expropriated private capitalist owners and has nationalised the greater part of the industries. It has also written into its program the socialisation of the land. Measured by all practical tests it is therefore a Socialist revolution in character as well as intent.” (Page 33) .
   “What is the historic form of a Socialist government?
  “Every attempted answer to the question must take into account the fact that political institutions are not viewed by Marxist students as static forms, nor as definitely demarcated historical periods. The Socialist political revolution marks the conscious beginning of the process of transformation into Socialism, but only its beginning.
  “The revolution, which is the working-class conquest of the political power, leaves the capitalists for the time being in possession of the economic power. On the day of the revolution the capitalist class still owns the essential means and instruments of wealth production and distribution. It manages the financial, industrial and commercial institutions of the country and controls the whole intricate and delicately interwoven economic life of the people. The transfer of all industries from private capitalist ownership into communal property and public management; in short, the break-up of capitalism and the building up of a pure Socialist order, calls for a series of planful and fundamental industrial and political changes. Such changes will, of course, not be undertaken by the capitalist class. They can only be brought about by the workers. In order to accomplish them the workers must be in control of the governmental machinery and their control must continue until the task of Socialisation of the industries has been fully performed, all economic class divisions have been abolished, the working class itself has ceased to exist as a class, and the working class government has given way to the classless administration of the Socialist regime. The consecutive stages of development roughly succeeding each other may be regarded from different points of view and characterised according to the angle from which they are viewed.” (pages 49-50)

Here again we see clearly expressed the harmony between the outlook of the 2nd International and the practice of the Bolsheviks in spite of the hot air that developed between them over the years. Hillquit identifies the conquest of power by the Bolsheviks as the conquest of power by the workers. Thus, by implication, he illustrates the accepted idea of leadership which was ingrained in the 2nd International, in spite of protestations about capture of power by the workers. Lenin, at a time when he was writing eulogies on Kautsky and the German Social Democratic Party, was also contending that the workers were incapable of developing social democratic ideas from within their own ranks; these, he said, they could only get from outside, from the “ bourgeois intellectuals.” Stalin has only carried on this contempt for the mass of people along with the expansion of the bureaucratic machinery so dear to the social democrats.

Syndicalists and Bolsheviks

Now let us compare the ideas of the advocates of Syndicalism in the International with those of the Bolsheviks. Syndicalists argued that Syndicalism was based on the principles of Marx; they were opposed to democracy as a capitalist form; they contended that the mass of workers were ignorant and inert, requiring an intelligent and militant minority to lead and force them into the promised land; they claimed that Syndicalism was the form at last discovered under which the workers could work out their emancipation; they propagated the idea of violence against both workers and capitalists; they claimed that the days of theory had passed and the days for action had come; they also put forward a number of other ideas which, as well as those mentioned, became a part of Bolshevik propaganda and demonstrate a certain similarity of outlook between Syndicalism and Bolshevism, indicating the common source of both movements. Even the much vaunted Soviet organisation was a reflection of Syndicalist ideas eventually set out in detail as a social organisation by the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, a group that included a confused mixture of political and industrial action as a means to accomplish the end they had in view.

Syndicalism set out to secure the victory of a militant minority by the use of violence just as the Bolsheviks did. The claim that they were acting in the interest of all reminds one of the anarchist in Richard Whiteing’s novel “No. 5 John Street” who defined anarchism as a system of society in which everyone shall do as he likes, and those that don’t shall be made!

Beginning and End of the Dream

Lenin constantly referred back to the French Revolution and the attitude of the Jacobins for inspiration. The practical policy that grew out of the French Revolution and continued like a red thread through the working class movement afterwards, openly adopted successively by Blanqui, Bakunin, De Leon and Lenin was based upon the idea that an active minority can carry with it an inert and ignorant mass; it is a policy that depends upon leadership and ultimately places power in the hands of one or two outstanding people, finally degenerating into personal quarrels between these leaders as Bolshevism has amply demonstrated. The 2nd International was soaked in this despite the protestations and lip service to the control by the masses by some of its outstanding spokesmen. What Lenin and Stalin did was to stress whatever part of the 2nd International hotch potch best suited their purpose to get and keep control in Russia; thus they vacillated from one aspect to another and then back again, but always moving towards, and eventually achieving, that alleged transition form envisaged by the spokesmen of the 2nd International. Time has had its joke. The “transition form” has emerged as simply a particular form of unbridled Capitalism.

It should be clear from the quotations we have given that the Russian dictatorship, far from representing a fresh and fundamental departure from the ideas accepted by the 2nd International, has only been the logical working in out in practice of those ideas, though at a more rapid pace than was originally anticipated. The end of the process has been—just a particular form of Capitalism. No wonder Wilhelm Liebneckt was apprehensive and took time off from a holiday to write “No Compromise” in 1899, which contained the following pregnant words:

  “We cannot traffic in our principles, we can make no compromise, no agreement with the ruling system. We must break with the ruling system and fight it to a finish." (page 55)

Gilmac.

The Workers' Internationals (1945)

From the March 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much has been written on the "lessons" to be learned from the efforts to set up an international organisation that would co-ordinate the national straggles of the workers against capitalism.

The first experiment arose out of a visit of Parisian workers to the London International Exhibition of 1862. when during the visitors' reception the London trades union officials, Odger and Applegarth, proposed that international congresses of workers be regularly held.

Thus was formed the International Working-Men's Association, whose committee invited Karl Marx to draft their "Inaugural Address," which was delivered at St. Martin's Hall, London, in September, 1864. While in the main dealing with the industrial struggles of Europe’s workers who became affiliated to it, the International essayed to shed light on the steps to be taken by the workers towards their emancipation. For instance, the second part of the Geneva resolution, dealing with the trade unions, might be written to-day. It states:

The trade unions hitherto concentrated their attention too exclusively to the local and direct struggle against capital. They ’have not completely realised their power to attack the very system of wage slavery and present-day methods of production. That is why they keep aloof from social and political movements. 

Born in the period of the turmoil of the bourgeois revolutions, feared and hated by European governments during its life, the International became the debating ground for the working-class thinkers of the day, the main cleavage being that of Marx and his supporters, who held that the workers must gain political power for Socialism, as against the Anarchist section led by Bakunin, which, while acknowledging the economic theories of Marx, argued that only by the forcible smashing of the state by direct action could the workers get their freedom.

Basically the division was that of the industrial workers whose mission is the remoulding of a complex capitalist society where the franchise can be the instrument to effect the economic change, as opposed to those who still had to fight against a despotic feudalistic state, as in Spain and Russia, where suppression led to assassination, insurrection and minority action.

Theoretically expressing these conditions, the anarchists, though hating capitalism, could only visualise a decentralised agrarian economy of individual owners relieved entirely of state interference.

Torn by these ideological differences, together with the reaction arising from the crushing of the workers of the Paris Commune, the General Council decided to remove to New York, where after some activity in workers' organisation, the I.W.A. died a quiet death in 1875.

The First International, though providing a valuable apprenticeship for the workers, and in spite of being guided by thinkers as brilliant as Marx and Engels, was premature in face of the political immaturity of the workers themselves. It nevertheless taught the world's workers how to "walk by themselves" tactically and theoretically in their struggles against capitalism.

With the growth in Europe of parties whose declared intention was the seeking of political power in the name of Socialism, a second International was set up at the Paris Congress in 1880, and by 1907 at Stuttgart 26 nationalities were represented: the British Labour Party joining in 1908.

While without doubt Marx’s Socialism meant the abolition of the wage system and the uncompromising class struggle, these parties very soon abandoned their "Marxism," or, like the Labour Party and Fabians, initially denied it altogether for reformism and revisionism. A brief survey of the principal parties will make this apparent.

At the German Erfurt Congress of 1891, which ratified the merging of the Marxists and Lassallians, William Liebknecht, who had effected this fusion, held the following view :—

The possessor of the means of production expropriates the man who has none, and must work for him for a wage; he pays in the wage only a part of the work performed; the surplus value, the unpaid performance, becomes in his hand (the hand of the possessor of the means of work) capital, and enables him to draw tighter and firmer the worker's chains. . . .  Nothing in the process can be altered by pious wishes. . . . All attempts to remove the "excrescences" of capitalism, while maintaining its basis, are Utopian. These “excrescences" are the logical results, the inevitable consequence of the capitalistic system; whoever wants to remove them must remove it, their cause. By this demand the social democracy distinguishes itself from all other parties, and stamps itself a revolutionary party, while all other parties, without exception, take their stand upon the private ownership of the means of production. ("Modern Socialism," A. C. K. Ensor, 1904, p. 7.)

This stand gave place later to the "revisionism" of Bernstein, within the party, and though countered by Kautsky, Germany's foremost Marxist, opened the door to a huge membership of elements which made it a shade paler than the British Labour Party. It had gathered numbers and votes at the expense of its former concept of Socialism.

While forming a Republican Government after the last war, its ministers Ebert and Noske were responsible for the murder by Government troops of such Marxists as Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg.

M. Beer, in "Fifty Years of International Socialism," says: "Ebert and Noske saved Germany for the Nazis by exterminating all determined men and women of the Socialist movement! Thousands were killed by their mercenaries, thousands maimed and driven into exile." (p. 192.)

Britain's Social Democratic Federation, like the German, began with a display of "Marxism" by its founder, H. M. Hyndman. in 1881. The movement suffered several splits, William Morris breaking away and forming the Socialist League, an anti-parliamentary sect which was finally captured by the anarchists.

Max Beer, in his "History of British Socialism," makes clear how the S.D.F. tried to ride two horses, one the advocacy of "Marxism," the other the more popular one of vote-catching reforms and arrangements with capitalist candidates.

It was on this issue that Scottish members split away and formed the S.L.P., leaning towards syndicalism, while the London secessionists formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain to advocate Socialism in 1904.

The I.L P.. Labour Party and Fabian Societv had all by then been formed with the “practical" policy of reforming capitalism, thus leaving the S.P.G.B. the only party in the field advocating straight Socialism.

The German and British Labour Parties held the largest representation at the Copenhagen Congress of 1910, which confirmed an oft-repeated pledge in a resolution which ran: "If war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working class to use every effort to prevent war by all means that seem to them appropriate. Should, nevertheless, the war break out, it is their duty to intervene to bring it promptly to an end, and use the political and economic crisis to rouse the masses from their slumbers and hasten the downfall of capitalist domination." ("Everybody's Book of Politics," Odhams Press, Ltd.)

Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik section of the Russian Social Democratic Party, declared that this resolution had been betrayed, and in his "War and the Second International’’ wrote a scathing indictment describing how the "Socialists” had placed themselves behind their capitalist governments, voted for war credits, and made a patriotic case for doing so.

This onslaught on the Second International virtually declared dead by Lenin, together with the apparent success of Bolshevik methods in bringing "Socialism" to Russia, heralded the formation of the Third "Communist" International in 1919. The Leninists built up their organisation on the basis of an elite of professional revolutionaries who were to lead the slow-witted masses to revolution.

Disdaining democratic parliamentary methods as "bourgeois," and only to be used as a "platform," their main urge was to civil war, through which in a crisis such as a war the government would be thrust aside, the "Communists" assume the state power and establish the "dictatorship of the proletariat," as in Russia.

For years the respective national sections disciplined by the "Comintern" talked civil war or supported the Tories in turn, according to the needs of the foreign policy of Russia, even dissolving . completely, as in America. Eventually with Russia's state capitalistic development and its arrival as a “great power," the need for international "reds" fell away and was even an embarrassment to Russia's diplomatic concert with her allies in World War 2, whereby the Third International was formally dissolved by Stalin. Russia's national leader, in February, 1944.

History had played a cruel trick on Lenin's international, for it was killed by a capitalist war, as surely as the Second which he himself declared dead—a war which it declared to be imperialistic, only to change to one for freedom when Russia itself was attacked.

There is left to mention the “Trotskyists," who have declared a Fourth International based on the tactics and doctrines of Lenin. Believing that Socialism would have been established in Russia but for its betrayal by the Stalinists, they perpetuate the illusion that Socialism can yet be won by Bolshevik methods. With a logic all their own, they have demanded “Immediate despatch of arms and material to the Soviet Union," while at the same time stating the war to be imperialistic. The Trotskyists are but the faint echo of the Third International in its Lenin's heyday, and while they think that slogans and leadership can take the place of a majority of convinced Socialist workers in ending capitalism, they are on the same road as their predecessors.

The ruins of the "Internationals" testify to the workers’ urge to put into effect Marx’s injunction, “Workers of all lands, unite." But for what? The S.P.G.B., with its companion parties in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America, have stood outside the "Internationals" on the grounds that they were non-Socialist bodies, and the failure of Labourism, Fabianism and Sovietism to achieve Socialism is proof of the correctness of our position. We state this in no sectarian spirit, but as a part of the workers' movement struggling for emancipation. Meanwhile capitalism is still here, with its wage system, its national struggles for trade, armed or “peaceful," and the workers have but mentally reached the stage of thinking that state control of capitalism by “labour” is Socialism in practice.

That the workers must challenge the basis of capitalism and end this vicious circle is apparent to many, and we make no apologies to the organised workers in asking them to examine our record and fitness to form the nucleus of a true Socialist Workers’ International.

Frank Dawe

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (22)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 22nd of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 988 friends!

Recent blogs:

The bogey of taxes

"All This Hard Graft No Longer Makes Sense"

Workers have no country

This week's top quote:

"Nobody has combatted State Socialism more than we German Socialists, nobody has shown more distinctively than I, that State Socialism is really State capitalism!" Wilhelm Liebknecht, 1896

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain