The Communists and the Labour Party Alliance. (1922)

From the March 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

There has of late been much talk in Communist circles for and against assisting the Labour Party into power at the next election. The position at the moment is that the Communist Party officially favours the idea of getting inside the Labour Party, but that the latter body nationally (and often locally, too) rejects the request for permission to affiliate. There now arises the problem of whether or not the Communists are to support Labour candidates when Lloyd George thinks fit to appeal to the electorate.

In the main the Communists do not pretend to believe that the accession to power of the Labour Party will directly and of itself solve the problems facing the workers. It is true that Malone, the C.P.’s solitary M.P., is of the opinion that the “few divergences between the Communist Party and the Labour Party … will soon be settled by affiliation” (Daily Herald, January 23rd), but probably the majority of the Communists who desire affiliation regard it as a tactical weapon likely to be of value to them, not as an admission that they and the Labour Party have much in common.

This kind of discussion is not new: for generations the question of alliance with capitalist political parties has agitated the minds of sections of the working class. Our attitude is clear and definite enough. We want Socialism, and we are convinced that we should not be bringing it nearer by angling for the support of anti-Socialist bodies, even although it might seem superficially that some gain would accrue.

The discussion only interests us in so far as it serves to expose the danger to the working class of following those who advocate such a course.

What is strikingly new is the claim for this idea that it has had its origin in Russia, as one of the lessons of the Revolution there. W. Paul, who for years in the S.L.P., opposed alliance with the reactionary Labour Party as a principle (although in practice joint demonstrations, etc., did take place), now that he is in the Communist Party has seen the “Light from the East” and stands forth as a convert. Lenin has taught him what his own knowledge and experience could not.

The object aimed at is, to gain the sympathy of the rank and file, discredit the present leaders, and then capture or disrupt the party. In addition, Paul has in mind the urgency of removing the Coalition in order to save the Bolshevik Government. The Bolsheviks, fully aware at last of the futility of expecting revolution in Western Europe or America, and equally aware that they will only with difficulty maintain themselves in power in face of internal and external pressure, seek to gain relief by aiding their alleged enemies of the Labour Party to gain a Parliamentary majority.

John S. Clarke, in the Worker (November, 26th), opposes the view point of W. Paul. He deals very successfully both with the lack of tactical value of this move, and with its history. His main arguments are that it is not new, having been tried before in this country with unfortunate results, and that the possibility is that the Bolsheviks themselves, far from having; originated; it, actually learned it here.

  “As a political tactic it has had an interesting history and by no means successful one. Not to carry the reader too far back, we see it operating in the year 1841. The Whigs and the Chartists met together in that year on the 21st January to try and arrange a ‘bloc.’ Three months later at a parliamentary by-election (Nottingham), the Chartists actively supported the Tory candidate, Mr. Walter, in order to deal a blow at the Whig Government.”

The Chartist paper, the Northern Star, commented as follows, says Clarke :

  “It is better at all times to submit to a real despotism than to a government of perfidious, treacherous and pretended friends. We are the natural enemies of Whiggism and Toryism, but, being unable to destroy both factions, we advise you to destroy the one faction by making a tool of the other.”

In 1921, eighty years after, we find the Communist Party seeking to destroy one “natural enemy” (the Coalition) by making a tool of another, (the Labour Party). What 1922 will bring forth the Lord only knows.

The Chartists alternately supported. Whigs and Tories, sometimes neither, and sometimes both together. In the Northern Star, on June 12th, 1841, were two leading articles advising opposite policies. We now have the Communist Party actively opposing some Labour candidates (e.g., MacDonald at Woolwich) and taking up a non-committal attitude towards others (Naylor at Walworth).

   “Chartism collapsed in 1848. The Social Democratic Federation was not born until 1885. In 1908 it changed its name to Social Democratic Party, a distinction without a scrap of difference. In 1911 it was joined by a few Clarion Scouts and I.L.Pers, and changed its name again to British Socialist Party.
  "Each of these different political parties (if thy can be writ as different parties) was practically dominated by the same personalities—Hyndman, Quelch, Lee, Hunter-Watts, Belfort Bax, Dan Irving, Tom Kennedy, Jack Jones, and Will Thorne. Each party practised the ‘tactic’ inherited from the Chartists.”

The S.D.F., alter seeking in vain for an alliance with the Liberals, went to the Tories, and fought the 1885 Election on their money, with the avowed object of splitting the Liberal vote. This very nearly brought the party to an unhonoured end, the only good that could have come to the workers out of the transaction.

This policy of political bargaining went on, with varying success in the shape of Parliamentary honours for the auctioneers of working-class votes, until in 1903 the Scottish, and in 1904 the London, branches left in disgust to form the S.L.P. and S.P.G.B. respectively. Old readers of this journal will remember that our pages between 1904 and 1914 contained ample evidence of the persistence of the S.D.F.’s peculiar conception of working-class antagonism to capitalist political organisations. It changed its name to S.D.P. without discarding its errors, and in 1910 another attempt was made to form a “bloc” with the Liberals, who, however, like the Labour Party now, were indifferent if not actively hostile.

In 1901 the S.D.F withdrew from the Labour Party (then the Labour Representation Committee), and for twelve years remained outside, supporting first one and then the other of the capitalist parties. It incidentally carried on a guerrilla warfare with the I.L.P. rather in the nature of a squabble for the spoils attaching to the disposal of the corpse of working-class independence.

The S.D.F. stuck tight to the alliance idea, and in 1913 had decided to re-affiliate with the Labour Party, when the war came. The inevitable then took place, and the B.S.P. went all out for the murder of the workers at their masters’ behest.

In due time another split took place: Hyndman and the jingo group called themselves the National Socialist Party, while the others, still the B.S.P., first worked the I.L.P., and later affiliated again with the Labour Party. Both sections kept their belief in the use of helping one enemy to fight another. The N.S.P. reverting to its old name, S.D.F., is now again urging that the Labour Party should link up any party which will endeavour to oust the Coalition.

The B.S.P. eventually formed the bulk of the membership’ of the Communist Party and that body—having re-discovered the “tactic”—proclaims amid great flourish of trumpets that if only they can help the Labour Party, to help the Liberals, to turn out Lloyd George, the Russian Revolution will be saved and all will be well. They are urged by the Bolsheviks to this course as the last word in political strategy, but, as Clarke points out, many exiles from Russia towards the end of last century were studying the English political world, and at a later date many of those now prominent in the Bolshevik Party, including Litvinov, Rothstein, Tchicherine, and Petrov, were members of the S.D.F. or B.S.P. This, then, was where they picked up the idea, which

“was conveyed to Russia, where the masses are not more, but less, advanced than they are here (vide  Lenin), and where it is alleged to have been successful in the hands of a party of ‘iron discipline,’ which is due, to quote Lenin again, ‘to a great many historic peculiarities of Russia.’ In the process of time it arrives back to the land of its birth, where it succeeded in sowing only distrust and dissension and is dished out to British revolutionaries as ‘Lenin’s revolutionary strategy’ and  ‘the adroit tactic of the Bolsheviki’ in the pious hope that the reiteration of such alluring phrases will convince the unsuspecting that they are marrying a comely damsel of tender years, whereas in truth they are being saddled with a withered-up, pre-historic hag.”

The foregoing brief history of the “tactic” is commended to the notice of those who think that the Socialist Revolution can be achieved by some energetic political wire-pulling, and by cunning manoeuvring of the votes of the “masses.” In a game of that kind the ruling class and their hirelings know all there is to be known. They have been at it for centuries, and if the outcome of it is to be somebody’s funeral, it won’t be theirs. The result of this fooling will be what it has always been, suffering and disillusionment for the unfortunate workers who are taken in by it.

The antecedents as well as the present activities of the “intelligent minority,” who, as the Communist Party, are to shepherd the mere untutored workers, are sufficient to justify describing them as in the main blind leaders of the blind. Under the guise of revolutionary discipline, that party shows just the same slavish hero-worship arid ignorant chatter of revolution as typified the S.D.F. at its worst. A recent incident will serve to illustrate this internal rottenness of the “Burlesque Bolsheviki.” At a meeting of the London District Council (October 8th) the delegates were asked to rise to their feet as a token of respect when ‘‘Lord” MacManus entered the room, and with hardly an exception the request was immediately complied with !’

Could “Jimmy” Thomas expect or receive more?

Whether these people are good or bad leaders is, however, not the important point. The particular course they are advising has in the past proved disastrous, not only here, but in Germany, France, and everywhere else where working-class organisations have left the safe path of independence for the morass of alliances.

Socialism will be achieved by Socialists; by the deliberate action, that is, of those who, understanding. what is at the root of the present evils, know what is necessary for their removal.

The existence of a considerable proportion of convinced Socialists precludes the possibility of swaying the electorate by emotional appeals. Without ignorant emotionalism there is no need, no possibility, of political leadership, whether from a traditional ruling class or from a minority of superior intellects.

Political bargaining exists because Socialist knowledge is lacking. Without such knowledge neither the Communist Party nor anyone else can give you Socialism. Do not, therefore, waste time trying to dragoon the working class into striving for an object which they do not understand;

HELP US TO PROPAGATE SOCIALISM.

Edgar Hardcastle

S.L.P Anchors Dragging – A Review (1918)

Book Review from the February 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The State: Its Origin and Function,” by Wm. Paul. Socialist Labour Press, Renfrew st., Glasgow. Cloth, 2s 6d.

Historians in the past have made many attempts to discover and state what may be called the driving force or dynamic factor behind the various changes that have taken place in Society. As Larfargue has so well pointed out in his essay on ”Marx’s Historical Method.” Vico, the Neapolitan historian, was one of the first to seek for this factor in man’s material conditions. Guizot was of the opinion that it was the development of man’s intellect that formed this driving force, though he failed to show on what this development was based. Buckle, in his valuable History of Civilisation in England, laid greatest stress on the climatic and geographical conditions of Society as being the factors of social change, failing to see how much more rapidly societies change than do climatic or geographical conditions.

The key to the riddle was supplied by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, who, independently, arrived at the same conclusion—that it was the economic development that formed the driving force behind social development, culminating in the changes in the forms of Society.

A brief summary of their discovery is given in the preface to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy, while the famous Communist Manifesto, the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, and the pamphlets on the Civil War in France in 1871 are splendid examples of the application of the theory—or use of the tool, as Lafargue would say—by its discoverers.

In America, apparently without any knowledge of Marx’s and Engels’s work, a famous ethnologist, working from a different standpoint, reached substantially the same conclusion. This scientist was Lewis Henry Morgan, whose great work, Ancient Society, solved the riddle of tribal organisation, throwing a flood of light on the early forms of Society, and tracing the path of social development to the birth of so-called civilisation.

The great theory which was formulated by these three investigators, and which is known as the “Materialist Conception of History,” is more, and more being adopted by modern historians and economists, often without real acknowledgment, as in the case of Loria in his Economic Foundations of Society, or even with sneers at Marx, as in the case of J. A. Hobson.

To take this theory and use it for the purpose of explaining and tracing the development of one of the features of Society is, of course, quite legitimate, provided the work is done with sufficient care to prevent confusion arising in the minds of its readers. The book now under review in an attempt to use the Materialist Conception of History for the purpose of explaining and tracing the development of one social institution called by the author “The State.” Some objection could be taken to the use of this title, but we may let this pass in face of the greater objections which exist to other parts of the book.

Whether due to the present world-war or to other reasons there is a good deal of slip-shod and even slovenly work in the 200 pages of this volume. Thus the method of placing the titles of the books referred to in the text at the end of each chapter is an awkward one and could only be excused if long extracts were being given in the form of an appendix. Worse than this, however, is the author’s practice of quoting a statement from a work, often consisting of 700 or 800 pages, and giving the title only as a reference. There is no excuse for this slip-shod method.

This carelessness or worse is further illustrated in the uncritical recommendations given to certain works referred to in this book. Professor Jenks' statement that “Ancient Society will ultimately be recognised as one of the great scientific products of the Nineteenth Century ” is quoted on page 9, and then Mr. Paul says : “of no less importance is the Origin of the Family by F. Engels” (italics mine).

Engels himself would be the first to deny this absurd claim. Morgan’s work is an original volume, the result of immense research covering 40 years’ labours, and is one of the great epoch-making discoveries of the human race. Engels’ little volume was intended as a summary, with some additional observations, for the use of those to whom Morgan’s work was inaccessible. A partial analogy may be found in the case of another epoch-making work of the 19th century. Far and away the best summary of Marx’s great work Capital is the little volume by Marx himself entitled Value, Price, and Profit. Here the essentials of Capital are stated in simple language which, later, assists the worker to grasp the detailed working out of the larger volume. But here the analogy ceases. Capital is written in rigid scientific language, often in mathematical form, that is difficult for the beginner to follow and understand. Hence the usefulness of Value, Price, and Profit in stating simply the main propositions. Ancient Society, on the other hand, is written in simple language and in a clear and unaffected style that enables the beginner to follow the arguments with a minimum of trouble. The Origin of the Family does not—as indeed it could not—present the case in any simpler way.

Another instance is given on page 16 where we are told “for a detailed history of marriage in the past and present the famous book of Bebel on Woman Under Socialism is indispensable.”

Two editions of this work have appeared in the English language. The first, published many years ago by Reeves and Co., under the title “Women in the Past, Present and Future”, drew an apology from the Avelings for the historical and other errors it contained. This appeared in their pamphlet Woman. The other edition in English is the translation by Mr. De Leon, of America, of the 23rd German edition, and is the one referred to by Mr. Paul. Here some of the old errors are removed, but new ones are incorporated both of historical judgment and social development. The translator himself had to make some corrections to the text in long footnotes. Generally Bebel’s Woman is ill-balanced and far from being scientifically based, and it lends a larger amount of support to the “Suffragette” notion that the position of women is due to the “wickedness” of man than it does to the Marxian position of class oppression.

A further instance of this slovenliness on the part of Mr. Paul, and one that would greatly confuse the beginner are the various meanings attributed to the word “State.” On page 1 it is implied that the “State” is a “social institution specially devised to perform some social function.” On page 100 Mr. Paul says “legality means not the interest of Society but rather the interest of the State, i.e., of the dominant class,” while on page 108 we read “the making and administration of Law is an important function of the executive committee of the ruling class—the State.” So the State is first a “social institution,” then it becomes “the dominant class” itself, and afterwards it is “the executive committee” of that class. Such loose and faulty methods, however, become absolutely ridiculous when one reads the bombastic statement made in the introduction : ”Social science, like every branch of science, uses terms which must be clearly defined . . . While, therefore, a clear comprehension of terms is scientifically imperative, it would seem that many dabblers in social science do not realise that grave dangers may arise by confusing the minds of the workers regarding the nature and function of social institutions.” (Page VI.) How completely these latter terms fit their own case is shown by the quotations given.

But the most blatantly idiotic claim in the book appears on page 198, where it is said that Mr. De Leon’s pamphlet, the Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World, is “a work equally epoch-making as the "Communist Manifesto.” To compare De Leon’s anti-political and painfully laboured attempt at a defence of the nonsense of Industrial Unionism with the world-famous work of Marx and Engels shows the shallow ignorance and blind hero-worship of one who could pen such drivel.

Among the minor points requiring correction may be mentioned the ignoring of the work done during the periods of Theseus and Draco (the last of whom is credited with having been the first to establish written laws) in ancient Athens, that made possible the changes brought about under Solon and Kleisthenes. The work done during these periods was of great importance as being initial steps towards the complete change.

A similar criticism applies to the section on Rome, where the necessary preliminary developments were carried through during the period of the reputed reign of Romulus—when the first hereditary aristocracy was founded—and of Numa Pompilius.

In both these cases it would be absurd to suppose that such large and fundamental changes could have taken place as those attributed to Solon and Kleisthenes in the one case and Servius Tullius in the other, without previous stages having been passed through. Moreover, the over-estimate of the work of these men, by ignoring the essential steps of their predecessors, tends to keep alive in the minds of the workers who are beginners in this subject, the false notion that “great men” make history (thereby encouraging the following of leaders) that the work of Vico, Marx, Morgan, and Spencer has done so much to disprove.

Of a different type is the statement in a footnote on page 112 where, referring to Eugene Sue’s The History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages, it is said : “For rescuing this monumental work from the despoiling hands of the Church and the hireling intellectuals of Capitalism the S.L.P. deserves great credit.”

As Mr. Paul’s book is issued by the S.L.P. of Scotland the reader unacquainted with the facts would naturally assume the S.L.P. in this footnote referred to that organisation. The truth is that the Sue novels referred to were translated by Mr. De Leon of the American S.L.P.

A further instance of slipshod work appears on page 169 when the author is dealing with the invention of the steam engine. He says :

  “This new and powerful driving force was able to drive the tool or machine— a machine being simply a complex tool working at an extraordinary speed” ! (Italics mine.)

The finest explanation and definition of a machine occurs in Marx’s Capital, chapter 15, in the part dealing with “Machinery and Modern Industry.” Section 1 reads almost like a romance, and is packed with information. Only a couple of passages can be quoted here. On page 366 Marx says :

  “Mathematicians and mechanicians, and in this they are followed by a few English economists, call a tool a simple machine” (as Mr. Paul does on page 2) “and a machine a complex tool. They see no essential difference between them and even give the name machine to the simple mechanical powers of the lever, the inclined plane, the screw, the wedge, etc. As a matter of fact every machine is a combination of those simple powers, no matter how they may be disguised. From the economical standpoint this explanation is worth nothing because the historical element is wanting.”

And on page 368 Marx gives his own definition in that masterly fashion of his that shows the whole matter in the clearest light. After describing the parts played by the motor mechanism and the transmitting gear he says :

  “The machine proper is therefore a mechanism that, after being set in motion, performs with its tools the same operations that were formerly done by the workman with similar tools. Whether the motive power is derived from man, or from some other machine, makes no difference in this respect. From the moment that the tool proper is taken from the worker’s hand, and fitted into a mechanism, a machine takes the place of a mere implement.”

A comparison of the above quotations with Mr. Paul’s confused and inaccurate definition of a machine shows how little either he or the S.L.P., who are responsible for the production of the book, understand even the simpler portions of Marx’s writings, despite their bombastic claim in the introduction quoted above.

As this book is issued by the S.L.P. of Scotland with a special “benediction” in the introduction, it is fair to assume that it represents the views and policy of the Executive Committee of that body. If that is so then we are treated to a complete somersault in the policy that organisation has been advocating, with variations, for about twelve years. In 1905 the Executive Committee of the S.L.P., without in any way consulting the membership of the party, endorsed and adopted as a policy the position of the Industrial Workers of the World, had been formed in Chicago in June, 1905. Since then it has in various, and often contradictory, ways attempted to defend the claims of the I.W.W. that the workers by organising into industrial unions—one for each industry—could “take and hold the means of production.” They claimed that the industrial unions furnished the “might” to carry through the revolution; that it was the economic organisation that supplied “the power” lacking in the political party, and so on.

How an economic organisation could "take and hold the means of production” while the capitalist class had control of the armed forces was a question neither the S L.P. nor the other Industrialists were ever able to answer. They simply wandered from one absurdity to another in the endeavour to dodge this—to them —fatal question. The endless contradictions and quibbles they have been led into by the catch phrases as “The economic is the basis of the political”; “The political is the reflex of the economic”; “The economic organisation will cast its own political shadow,” etc., etc., have been dealt with in the Socialist Standard on numerous occasions.

But now comes this volume which flatly contradicts all these years’ teachings and takes up the position that the working class must seize political power in order to abolish capitalism.

Quite early in the book this position begins to take form, as on page 41 we read :

  “Throughout history the State has slightly changed its form but its role as the weapon of despotism in the hands of the economically and politically dominant class has remained unchanged. It is able to enforce its will upon those who oppose it, because behind its demands it has the organised armed forces of the Society. ” (Italics mine.)

Referring to the Civil War of 1644 it is stated “The revolutionaries by their control of the political machine were able to use the rents of the Royal estates, the levies placed upon the goods secretly bought by the cavaliers, and the taxes gathered up and down the country to defeat the Crown.” (Page 151. Italics mine.)

But it is in the last two chapters that this position—so long sneered at by the S.L.P.— is stated in its most complete form. In the chapter on “Modern Capitalism” we read:

  “The State has behind every mandate it promulgates the armed force of the nation. It is this power which enforces the will of the ruling class.” (P. 190.)

While in the chapter on ”Revolutionary Socialism” occurs the following remarkable statement—remarkable, that is, coming from the S.L.P.:

  “In order to facilitate the work of the industrial organisation, it is absolutely imperative for the workers to disarm the capitalist class by wrenching from it its power over the political State. The State powers include the armed forces of the nation which may be turned against the revolutionary workers. The political weapon of Labour, by destroying the capitalist control of the State makes possible a peaceful social revolution. But in order to tear the State out of the grasp of the ruling class the workers’ political organisation must capture the political machinery of capitalism.” (Page 198.)

This complete reversal of a policy followed for about twelve years is simply staggering. It is a full confession not only that the S.L.P. has been wrong all this time—a fact we have proved over and over again in the pages of the Socialist Standard and in debate—but also that the S.P.G.B. has been right in its attitude and correct in its policy throughout its existence.

When the S.P.G.B. was formed in 1904 it laid down one aim—Socialism. It drew up a Declaration of Principles that has solidly withstood all attacks from every quarter. Paragraph 6 of that declaration states :

  “That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.”

We now have the S.L.P., in the pages of this book, taking up an attitude that corresponds completely with the above clause of our Declaration of Principles. Has it taken this world-war, with its terrific maiming and slaughter, to drive the simple but fundamental fact of their minds that it is control of the political machinery that is the essential factor in the domination of Society? What have the members of the S.L.P. to say to this complete change of policy? Does it represent the considered view of the members? or is it another example of the E.C. of that body laying down its own policy, in exact opposition to one preached for so many years, without any authority or mandate from the membership? Do the members understand and accept this new situation, and if so how can they justify the retention of their membership in the S L.P.?

Nor is this the only change in the policy of the S.L.P., though it is by far the most important. In addition to the claim that the Industrial Union furnished the “might” and “power” to overthrow capitalism, the S.L.P. claimed that these unions were the “embryo” of the Socialist Republic; that they provided the “framework” or “skeleton” of Socialism.

This silly and childish “Utopianism” the absurdity of which we exposed long ago, would hardly require notice here but for the change of attitude that is now adopted. To lay down here and now the details of what the organisation of production will be under Socialism is on a par with Bellamy’s Looking Backward.

In the first place we have no means of knowing at what particular step in the development of capitalist production and methods a sufficient number of the working class will be converted to Socialism to carry through the revolution. The details of the economic organisation must depend upon the particular stage of development at that period. Moreover, the majority of the working class will then be Socialists—otherwise the attempt at revolution will be a fiasco—and they will have the requisite knowledge and ability to construct their economic organisation in conformity with the conditions then prevailing. It is, therefore, easy to see how foolish is the attempt to settle now the details of an organisation that will be called upon to act then. Even when the I.W.W. was first launched we pointed out that capitalism then was outgrowing the “Industrial” sub-division and large combinations of capitalists were controlling whole groups of industries. The increase of this factor that has since taken place—and which looks  as though it will extend still faster under the form of National and Municipal control as a result of the war—adds further strength to this point. In addition it has to be remembered that economic organisations formed now have to fight the battles of wages and conditions of employment now. But to do so with any hope of success they must enrol as many as possible of workers in the particular businesses they are dealing with. This means the enrolment of Socialists (a small number of the workers at present) along with the passive and active anti-Socialists, all in the same union. This fact shows the utter impossibility of forming a Socialist economic organisation until a majority of the workers in a particular occupation have been converted to Socialism. Hence the farcical failure of the various attempts to form “Industrial Unions” before a sufficient number of the workers have accepted these particular teachings.

In the book now under review the question of Industrial Unionism takes so subordinate a place and is so watered down, compared with the former claims of the S.L.P., that if the term “Industrial Unionism” were left out the ordinary reader of the Socialist would fail to recognise this attitude as being the one taken up by the S.L.P. How much has been given up the following quotation will show :

  “We see, therefore, that the function of the future administration of society will be industrial. The constructive element in the social revolution will be the action of the Industrial Union seizing the means of production in order to administer the wants of the community.
  True to the dictum of social science, that the embryo of the future social system must be nourished within the womb of the old system, the revolutionary Socialist movement sets out to build up within capitalism the industrial organisation of the workers which will carry on the administrative work under Socialism on behalf of the community. Thus Industrial Unionism is the constructive weapon in the coming social revolution.” (Pages 197-8.)

This very general and greatly modified position of the S.L.P.’s claims for Industrial Unionism shows how far they have come—implicitly, at any rate—to admit the correctness of our attitude on economic organisation. What the title of the future economic organisation will be is really guess-work now and is only of small importance, though the misleading, anti-Socialist, and Utopian associations covered by the term “Industrial Unionism” will certainly go far to discredit it in the minds of the workers as they become Socialists. Much more educational work requires to be done, however, before such an organisation can be started, for it is only as the workers learn that they are slaves, and clearly grasp that the essential factor in their emancipation is the control of political power, that they will build up the Socialist organisations, political and economic, necessary for the establishment of Socialism.

The nucleus of the political organisation exists now in the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The economic organisation cannot be started until numbers fulfilling the conditions laid down above have been converted to Socialism.

Jack Fitzgerald

The Communist Wreckers. (1924)

From the March 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Towards the end of the war there was a small but growing body of workers who viewed with ever greater disgust the Labour Party, which they had previously supported. These Trade Unionists who had been tricked into enthusiastic approval of the war by appeals to their patriotism and to their natural sympathy for “defenceless” Belgium, had their suspicions aroused by shameless profiteering at home, and by rumours of secret treaties between the Allies. The discontent was fanned by the daring seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

The workers found themselves gagged and blindfolded by D.O.R.A., bound in industrial conscription and flung into the war machine. They saw all the liberties for which they were asked to fight taken from them, and the armed forces used to intimidate men at home who made spasmodic efforts to retain some few of their hardly won safeguards against workshop tyranny. When the war ceased and the soldiers returned, discontent grew in spite of attempts to set ex-Service men against the rest. They were beginning to think, and their anger was turning against the leaders and the policy of the Party which had betrayed them; against the Clynes’s and Thomases who had sold them for honours and turned the Labour Party into a recruiting machine, and against the minor officials of the Trade Unions who had bought immunity from military service themselves by defending and assisting the better known labour leaders in the work they were doing for successive Capitalist Governments. The workers were slowly groping their way to a realisation that these patriotic braggarts who were hand-in-glove with the ruling class were not fit and proper guides for the workers in their struggles; and always fresh evidence was forthcoming in campaigns for increased production, for making Germany pay, etc., led by Labour men. (It is interesting to note that Clynes is still an unrepentant advocate of increased production in spite of our 1½  million unemployed. See Current Opinion, Jan., 1924.)

Here then was material for the building up of a really powerful revolutionary movement ; but out of this ferment we got, instead, the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Worshipping, without troubling to understand, the very real achievements of the Bolsheviks, the leaders of this Party trumpeted forth their supposedly brand-new principles of working class action.

To hell with that “bourgeois shibboleth” Democracy! Hail the “Dictatorship” and revolution by a minority of intellectuals! Down with Parliament; “the Soviet form of government” is the “historically necessary form of this dictatorship.” (Statutes of Communist International, August, 1920.) Let us prepare for the armed struggle, let us form communist groups in the army and navy. War to the death against Henderson and Clynes and all the “lackeys of the Bourgeoisie.”

We, poor hidebound creatures, thinking that Socialist propaganda was still useful and necessary, were “cave-men” ; we were stranded on the mud-flats of  “Bourgeois ideology” (what a godsend that word "Bourgeois” was to the ranter as a cover for his ignorance of Socialist principles); we did not move with the times, and were unaware that Capitalism had crashed about our ears, and that we were plump in the midst of a “revolutionary situation.” In short, they were sorry for us, but we were simply played out.

So they had their glorious fling. In the joyful exuberance of youth these blind dreamers preached the necessity of “living dangerously”; they tickled themselves nearly to death with thrilling conspiracies and landed many of their followers needlessly in jail (usually themselves keeping well within the laws of that “myth” parliament.) They planned insurrections and drilled with broomsticks in secret places. They opposed MacDonald and Morgan Jones at bye-elections, furiously denouncing them for their infamy and frightening nobody but the ignorant and nervous readers of the Morning-Post. They went about preaching Sovietism and did great harm by butting in with this propaganda whenever an industrial dispute occurred. Each succeeding strike or lock-out was without hesitation (or thought) greeted as the revolutionary crisis, and as each passed without their hopes being fulfilled so their wrath against the criminality of labour leaders became more violent and uncontrollable.

They organised spectacular boycotts of the export of arms for wars in Russia and Ireland with “terrific” success. The boycotts only failed in the quite minor respect that the arms went through. (Communist, October 7th, 1920.)

They helped to organise the unemployed and were even more disastrously futile. This is their own estimate of their work :—

  “The unemployed have done all they can, and the Government know it. They have tramped through the rain in endless processions. They have gone in mass deputations to the Guardians. They have attended innumerable meetings and been told to be ‘solid.’ They have marched to London, enduring terrible hardships. . . . All this has led to nowhere. . . . In weariness and bitter disillusionment, the unemployed movement is turning in upon itself. . . .” (Workers’ Weekly, Feb. 10th, 1923.)

Consistent only in failure, the Communists were forced to find fresh stunts to hold the attention that their plentiful supplies of money had won for them.

In due course they were ordered to stage the “United Front” farce. They had to eat their bold words and line up with “Capitalist flunkeys” in the Labour Party. They had to prove themselves constitutionalists in spite of all their brave speeches, and had to humble themselves at the feet of Henderson and Ramsay MacDonald. It is only fair to say that some at least of them did so with every sign of shame; they excused themselves by saying that they wanted to “shake Henderson’s hand only in order to get hold of his throat.”

Later still all pretence was dropped and at the 1923 elections we find quite a number of Communists running as official Labour candidates. We find Mr. W. Paul, sometime firebrand, going to the poll with an election address graced by a message from Ramsay MacDonald (Socialist, Jan., 1924). We have these erstwhile Bolsheviks who were once too revolutionary to shake the “bloody hands” of the “Social patriots,” boasting of having given unqualified support to the worst of them, to Thomas, Clynes, and the rest. We have Harry Pollitt, writing in the Workers’ Weekly (Dec. 21st, 1923) to expose the latest trickery of Frank Hodges, and confessing that “we did not expose Mr. Hodges during the Election because we did not desire to split the workers’ vote. . . ” His article has a postscript, “Miners, away with this man !” Does Pollitt think that Frank Hodges cares twopence about people who keep their exposures until after the Election? He is now Civil Lord of the Admiralty and can snap his fingers at the people who might, had they known him, have checked his career at the polling booth. His power to do harm to the workers was increased by the deliberate action of these Communists. Do they anticipate that Frank Hodges will now organise “Communist nuclei” in the ranks of the men of the Navy?

And what has happened to the Soviets? You will search their Election literature in vain to find mention of Soviets now. They, with minority action and armed insurrection, have gone into the discard with other of their “brand-new” principles, which were really very old. Tom Bell, Editor of the Communist Review, an official C.P. organ (Jan., 1924), comments on the Election and jettisons almost all the remainder of them.

  “The advent of a Labour Government, even of a Liberal type, would nevertheless be a matter of tremendous importance in world politics. For one thing, it would help to spread confusion in the camp of the swashbuckling reactionaries now rampant in Middle Europe. This, in turn, may open a period of democratic pacifism, which would have the effect of stupefying such large masses of the working class, instinctively yearning for peace, as to postpone any revolutionary action for a decade, and certainly once the workers are affected by the illusions of pacifism and reformism,  and that upon an international scale, Capitalism throughout Europe may very well strengthen its position. A Labour Government, therefore, in Great Britain, especially supported by Liberalism, with its repercussions on the Continent, and particularly on that of the social democratic elements in Germany, might conceivably give rise to that era of  ‘Wilsonism' predicted by Comrade Trotsky at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International. That is a prospect to which we Communists cannot shut our eyes and ignore.”

We, who were “behind the times,” observe with some bewilderment Communists assisting into power a Labour Government;, which may have the effect of “strengthening Capitalism” and postponing “any revolutionary action for a decade.”

After affirming that “MacDonald, Webb and the other Fabian leaders of the Party will strike the road of  ‘Wilsonism.’ ” Tom Bell goes on to say that:—

  “As things are, the proletarian opposition to the Fabianism of MacDonald, Webb and the dominant Parliamentary leadership falls to Wheatley, Maxton, Johnston, Kirkwood, and the other proletarian element,”

who, he says, are

  “already committed to the policy of a fight to a finish with Capitalism.”

It is cheering to know that working class interests are in such safe keeping. Wheatley, the Jesuit, who, according to his Election address, sees the cause of our troubles in our not having “an unselfish ruling class,” and who wants to lead us “along a safe and sane course ” of the Labour Party, which is going to benefit “shopkeepers and every other class “; Maxton, whose Election address proclaims higher wages as the solution for unemployment, and who seeks to divide the workers on the Capitalist demand for Scottish Home Rule; Johnston, who condemns repudiation of financial obligations to bond holders entered into by Capitalist Governments as “dishonesty” (Forward, Feb. 11th, 1922); dishonest to expropriate the robber class! Kirkwood, who at the Election also prosperity promised to “merchants and manufacturers” and “every other class” (Election address.) These are the broken reeds on whom the Communists tell you to depend. Is their present advice more reliable than their past action would lead you to expect? In the Workers’ Weekly (Jan. 11th, 1924) Albert H. Hawkins, a C.P. official writes as follows :—

  “In the December issues of the Communist Review and Labour Monthly, no fewer than four members of the Party E. C. attempted to explain the underlying causes of the General Election, and each one had a different explanation. This tragedy was only surpassed by the greater tragedy that very few Party members appeared to notice the confusion of thought. It would appear that we are losing the arts of political discussion and criticism.”

Not one God but four Gods; not one United Front, but four United Fronts !

And these are the “intelligent minority,” the men of “first class brains” who were to be your heaven-sent guides.

In these few years they have revived a number or long-rejected policies and proved their futility once again; they have multiplied confusion in the ranks of the working class and boxed the political compass; and worst of all they have rallied the growing mass of discontented workers, led them up half a dozen blind alleys and then manoeuvred them back to where they were in 1919, in the ‘Labour Party. As the Daily News says (Dec. 10th, 1923), for the Labour Party to keep these elements where they can do no more harm is a “laudable and valuable service.” This Capitalist journal ought, however, if it would be fair, to give some of the credit to the leaders of the Communist Party of Great Britain, who, seeing that all of their candidates failed to get in, have so far been very inadequately rewarded for their unconscious services to the Capitalist class.

Edgar Hardcastle

Should Socialists vote for Labour candidates. (1928)

From the September 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

At its formation the Communist Party of Great Britain decided by a small majority to seek entrance to the Labour Party. But while willing to sacrifice their independence, they nevertheless denounced the leaders of that Party and ran candidates against MacDonald at Woolwich, and Morgan Jones at Caerphilly. Later they were ordered by those who pay the piper and call the tune to advocate the policy of the “united front." They expressly pointed out that this did not mean unconditional support of the Labour Party, but only a willingness to co-operate in any action against the employing class. At the 1922 Congress of the Communist International, the following statement was issued :—

The tactics of the United Front should by no means imply the forming of electoral combinations of leaders for the pursuit of certain parliamentary aims. The tactics of the United From is the call for the united struggle of Communists and of all other workers, either belonging to other parties and groups, or belonging to no party whatever, for the defence of the elementary and vital interests of the working-class against the bourgeoisie. (Fourth Congress Thesis on Tactics, page 10).

In actual practice, although the Communists have all along strenuously denied that the Labour Party has been engaged in “the defence of the elementary and vital interests of the working-class," they have given them full and unconditional support at election times.

Now Moscow has ordered another volte face, and the Communists are busy trying to prove that the United Front never existed, or alternatively, that it is not inconsistent with opposing Labour candidates.

At the Linlithgow bye-election they first put up a Communist candidate against the Labour candidate (E. Shinwell) and then withdrew him on the plea of shortness of time and told the workers not to vote at all. Their manifesto says:—“We, therefore urge the workers not to waste time and energy in voting for any candidate in the present election."—(Sunday Worker, 25th March.)

A few weeks later, at the Hanley bye-election, the Communist, J. R. Campbell, was speaking in the constituency, billed as the "man who brought down the Labour Government.". After denouncing the Labour candidate at Hanley, Campbell told them to vote for him!—(Daily Telegraph, 19th April, 1928.)

In the Labour Monthly (April, 1928) the Communist Editor, R. Palme Dutt, tries to explain away this confusion, and actually has the temerity to quote with approval the views of Marx on the need to run independent working-class candidates. At Aberdeen the Communists did indeed run their own candidate—but on a programme of reforms!

With the views expressed by Marx on this subject in the Address to the Communist League (1850) we heartily agree. They are in line with our own attitude and directly opposed to that of the Communist party in the past seven years.

Beside the bourgeois democratic candidates there shall be put up everywhere working-class candidates, who, as far as possible, shall be members of the League, and for whose success all must work with every possible means. Even in constituencies where there is no prospect of our candidate being elected, the workers must nevertheless put up candidates in order to maintain their independence, to steel their forces, and to bring their revolutionary attitude and party views before the public. They must not allow themselves to be diverted from this work by the stock argument that to split the vote of the democrats means assisting the reactionary parties. All such talk is but calculated to cheat the proletariat. The advance which the Proletarian Party will make through its independent political attitude is infinitely more important than the disadvantage of having a few more reactionaries in the national representation!!

Now contrast with Marx’s definite and clear-cut attitude the muddled Communist record. At the 1923 election quite a number of Communists were running as official Labour Candidates. Mr. W. Paul went to the poll with his election address graced by a message to the electors from Ramsay Macdonald. The Communists worked and voted for J. H. Thomas and Clynes, and the rest of the Labour defenders of Capitalism and boasted of it. In particular compare Marx’s advice to ignore the “stock argument ” about splitting the democratic vote, with the following words written by Mr. Harry Pollitt after the 1923 election. He said that the Communists, if they had used the information in their possession, could have prevented the election of Mr. Frank Hodges. Instead they supported him. "We did not expose Mr. Hodges during the Election because we did not desire to split the workers’ vote."— (Workers' Weekly, December 21st, 1923.)

As against this tortuous and ineffective Communist policy we commend to Palme Dutt and his fellow Communists the passage he quotes from Marx.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Election Reflections (1924)

Editorial from the January 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Armchair Philosophers" is the phrase that has often been flung at us by the "men of action" when at a loss to meet facts and logical arguments from facts. Well, let us sit back in the armchair for a little while and ponder over the doings of the "men of action."

"Men of action"—the phrase at once brings to mind the Communist Party. "Action" has been the poison gas in that Party's programme for a long time; and in the name of "action" many weird and wonderful antics have been performed.

Not very long ago the Communist Party had difficulty in finding adjectives strong enough with which to belabour Ramsay MacDonald and the Labour Party. He who proposed union with the Labour Party was described as a traitor to the working class. But a change has come over the scene. The Communist Party transport us in imagination to Maskelyne and Devant's home of mysteries, where the waving of a wand performs marvels. The wand used by the Communist Party is the "United Front." Here are a few of the marvels it has performed.

In the Workers Dreadnought (21st February, 1920) Wm. Gallacher wrote:—

Any support given to Parliamentarism is simply assisting to put power into the hands of our British Scheidemanns and Noskes. Henderson, Clynes and Co. are hopelessly reactionary.

Since then Gallacher has twice contested Dundee as a Parliamentary Candidate on behalf of the Communist Party; and the latter has done all in its power to return the Labour Party candidates to Parliament in the 1922 and the late elections.

During the Caerphilly bye-election of August, 1921, the Communist, of August 13th, published on its front page a call to the workers to support Stewart, the Communist candidate. In the course of this front page article they make the following remarks:—

The Labour Party, as it stands, is what its leaders make it—and they will neither lead you into battle nor allow you to lead them.
The leaders who brought about the Triple Alliance disaster, in spite of the splendid solidarity of the rank and file; the leaders who beat back the miners after a three months' death grapple, and did so in contempt of the magnificent defiance embodied in your ballot vote; the leaders who, in industry after industry, accepted reductions and defeat in advance, and with a mere pretence of consulting the rank and file—these, and not the rank and file, constitute the Labour Party as it stands. "The best of men, of he were elected under their auspices, would be paralysed by their vacillation or crippled in the cogs of their controlling machine."

Bearing in mind the last sentence in the above quotation, it is curious to notice that Wm. Paul, a prominent member of the Communist Party, accepted the Labour Party constitution (see Daily Herald, November 30th, 1923) and was put forward as Labour Party candidate for the Rusholme Division of Manchester in the recent election. The following quotation from the Workers' Weekly (December 7th, 1923), the official organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain, is also both curious and interesting:

The Labour Party has officially endorsed as its candidates both Comrade Paul in Rusholme, and Comrade Vaughan, in Bethnal Green. There are now four Communist candidates officially supported by the National Labour Party: while local organisations of the Communist Party are working their utmost for Ramsay MacDonald in Aberavon, Bromley in Barrow, Ernest Hunter of the I.L.P., in Hackney, J. R. Clynes in Manchester, and in hundreds of other constituencies.

Now contrast the above with the following quotation taken from the Communist of September 10th, 1921:—

Are you going in waiting in the streets for something to turn up, or do you want ACTION? IF you are a miner, or a docker, or a railwayman, are you happy and proud of your Black Friday leaders? Do you trust and believe in Thomas, Hodges, Bevan, Williams? Do you feel satisfied with the leaders who betrayed on Black Friday? Do you feel a sense of solidarity with Thomas, Hodges, Bevan, Williams? Will they do your fighting for you? If you think you can lie safely under their warm. protecting wings—well, try it. But the Party calls you if you want ACTION.

In the name of "action" you were  asked then to throw over Thomas, Hodges, and Bevan, who had betrayed you. Thomas, Hodges and Bevan were candidates in the recent election, and in the name of solidarity you were asked by the Communist Party to support these traitors in the recent election. The Communist Party then stands self-convicted of betraying the interests of the working class and of supporting the opportunist line of action that has led the workers into so many blind alleys in the past. Such are "the men of action."