Bolshevising the Red Flag (2025)

Book Review from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Raising the Red Flag. Marxism, Labourism, and the Roots of British Communism 1884-1921. By Tony Collins, Haymarket Books.

In his 1969 pioneering work The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900-1921: The Origins of British Communism (reviewed July 1969), Walter Kendall advanced the view that Bolshevism-Leninism was something that was alien to the formally democratic traditions of the working class movement in Britain, introduced from an economically and politically backward part of the world where conditions were quite different. Collins, writing as a Leninist, argues that in fact those who founded the British Communist Party were all too much in the tradition of reformist labourism. Both views have some merit.

The main constituents of the CPGB when it was founded in January 1921 were the British Socialist Party (BSP), part of the De Leonist Socialist Labour Party (SLP), Workers Dreadnought (Sylvia Pankhurst), and some from the Shop Stewards Movement and the left-wing of the Independent Labour Party (ILP).

The British Socialist Party was the name the Social Democratic Federation adopted when it amalgamated with some branches of the ILP in 1911. It was essentially the same organisation from which the SLP and the SPGB broke away in 1903 and 1904 respectively over its lack of democracy, and its reformism and opportunism. It was to provide the bulk of the original membership of the CPGB and, Collins argues, its political approach too of seeing itself as the left wing of the Labour movement.

Collins examines the origin and practice of the founding factions and finds them all wanting in one way or another from a Leninist point of view. The defect they all (except the Shop Stewards Movement) share, he says, is what he calls ‘abstract propagandism’ as opposed to seeking to lead a discontented but non-socialist majority in an insurrection against the capitalist state. The Shop Stewards Movement is criticised for restricting itself to purely industrial matters and the 1911 pamphlet The Miners Next Step for advancing the slogan of ‘no leaders’. His view is that, on the contrary, new leaders were required, but the leaders of a vanguard party of dedicated revolutionaries. In fact, he argues that it was the absence of this ‘subjective’ factor that was the reason why there was no workers’ revolution in Britain just before and just after the First World War.

Tendentious

Explaining his criticism, Collins writes:

‘The SLP’s answer to the syndicalists was that a party was necessary to win a parliamentary majority which would then support the workers as they took over industry, whereupon parliament would hand over state power to the industrial unions. … Shorn of its industrial militancy, this was not very different from the SDF or the SPGB, who believed in the manner of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists that the working class would come to socialism through being educated about its benefits and thus vote for socialists in parliamentary elections’ (p. 58).

‘The Bolshevik conception’, Collins goes on to bemoan, ‘… did not exist in Britain’.

His criticism is a caricature, and tendentious in suggesting that ‘education’ meant something other than the action of workers, who had become socialist through their experience of capitalism, persuading their fellow workers to realise, on the basis of the same experience, that socialism was the only solution. It was true, though, that the implication was that a majority of workers who wanted and understood socialism was needed before socialism could be established and that, if that majority existed, workers should, among other things, vote for it. The Bolshevik conception rejects the principle that a socialist majority is necessary, indeed even possible, as it teaches that workers can only reach a trade-union consciousness and so require a vanguard party to lead them politically.

Although the SPGB is mentioned in passing a number of times, as here, only one short paragraph is devoted to our political position:

‘By this time the SDF leadership had completed its purge of leftists with the expulsion of the leaders of the London opposition, who formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904. Once out of the SDF, its leftism proved to be a chimera. The SPGB declared its object to be ‘the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery [of government] including [those] armed forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation’, and pursued a grim messianic parliamentary reformism for the next hundred years and more’ (pp. 30-1).

None of our opponents at the time (and even our honest opponents today) would have accused us of ‘parliamentary reformism’, as what characterised us was a refusal to advocate reforms to capitalism (called ‘palliatives’ at the time). We did advocate using parliament but not to try to reform capitalism but to deprive the capitalist class of their ownership of the means of production and their ability to use the armed forces of the state to maintain it.

Collins’s accusation is outrageous, obviously biased and possibly dishonest. It is also ignorant. The term ‘instrument of emancipation’ was consciously taken from the preamble to the 1880 programme of the Parti Ouvrier Français, a preamble that Marx himself had drafted and which speaks of the working class needing to form themselves into a political party which should use ‘universal suffrage which will thus be transformed from the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of emancipation’ (tinyurl.com/bdf7vmj8). Clause Six of our Declaration of Principles which Collins is misinterpreting is saying the same — that to end capitalism the workers need to gain control of the machinery of government (state power) which currently upholds capitalist ownership of the means of production. It is a call for the revolutionary, not the reformist, use of parliament.

It also makes Collins a bad historian as the views of the SPGB are just as relevant, if only in terms of the numbers who held them, to his subject of Marxism during the period he is studying as are those of the SLP, John Maclean and Sylvia Pankhurst. In fact, five of the people mentioned by him either were to become or had been members of the SPGB (Jack Fitzgerald, E. J. B. Allen, T. A. Jackson, Valentine McEntee and George Hicks).

Because he didn’t bother to go into the matter in detail, Collins seems to think that the SPGB favoured participation in elections and nothing else. Actually, like the SLP, the SPGB was (and still is) in favour of industrial as well as political action, the difference being over which was the more important. The SLP said industrial, we said political. Ironically, this is the position Collins himself takes up in criticising The Miners’ Next Step and the Shop Stewards Movement, though, as a Leninist, by political action he envisages a vanguard party staging an armed insurrection to seize state power in a period of acute industrial unrest.

He doesn’t list the Socialist Standard as among the contemporary publications he looked at. Which will explain how he missed that in March 1915 we published an anti-war statement by the Bolshevik representative in Britain, Maxim Litvinov, when he couldn’t find anyone else prepared to do so . He also ignores, while noting that the BSP, the SLP and Keir Hardie wobbled on the outbreak of the war, that the SPGB immediately denounced it in a manifesto dated 25 August 1914. Nor does he mention that our members were among those imprisoned or going on the run for refusing to be conscripted.

Two issues

The groups which founded the CPGB initially disagreed on two issues which Collins examines in detail — affiliation to the Labour Party and participation in elections. The BSP was in favour of both. Sylvia Pankhurst was against both, while the SLPers favoured electoral action but not affiliation (which would have been our position but we are proud to have had nothing to do with the founding of the CPGB). In the end Lenin and the Communist International decreed that the new party should accept both, which was easy enough to ensure as the bulk of its members had come from the BSP (born SDF).

Collins’s point about the early CPGB being a continuation of the reformism of the SDF/BSP is valid, as we recognised at the time from having opposed for the previous sixteen years the views and actions of those involved. However, in the mid-1920s the Communist International decided to ‘bolshevise’ the CPGB and imposed on it a strictly Leninist organisational form with a leadership that told its members what to do and which way to turn (and which itself took orders from the rulers of state-capitalist Russia). This was, as Kendall had pointed out, quite alien to the traditions of working-class organisations in Britain. Unfortunately, it resulted in the ‘Bolshevik conception’ getting established here and in Leninist theory and tactics passing as Marxism and revolutionary socialism, as Collins’s book itself bears witness. It was left to us, alone for most of the time, to keep the standard of anti-Leninist Marxism flying high.

Adam Buick

Editorial: The Bankruptcy of “Communist” Theory. (1924)

Editorial from the December 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Immediately after the Bolshevik seizure of power there was some excuse for the misconceptions of the significance and causes of that event, which were prevalent here in working-class circles. Reliable information on Russian affairs had been lacking throughout the war years, and to those who were not familiar through historical study with the slow growth of social forces, no rumoured happening behind the wall of censorship was too fantastic to be believed. Those people outside Russia who erred in crediting the Bolsheviks with achievements which were hardly dreamed of by Lenin and other responsible Communists, were quite unable to examine critically the proposals which were put out by the Third International for the conduct of the workers’ struggle elsewhere. They erred again and more seriously in assuming that methods which may have been useful and probably inevitable in Czarist Russia could be applied here where almost every condition is different. Underlying Communist doctrines lay the assumption that constitutional action is futile for the Socialist’s main aim, that the democratic idea is a myth and a danger, and that capitalism can be overthrown not by the deliberate act of an organised working class, but only by a minority, the Communist Party. To the superficial observer the condition of Europe at the end of the war and at the beginning of the peace made these assumptions less absurd than they appear now. There were sections of the ruling class which had lost their grip on the situation in face of a war which they began and could not control, and in face of peace problems which threatened to be insoluble and fatal. The moment passed and even during capitalism’s difficulty, the workers, in spite of equally superficial views to the contrary, were never less ready to act as a class against their exploiters. All that can be said for the Communists is that many of them did believe their desperate creed. They were prepared to pit their puny strength against the might of the capitalist state, to have their own and other people’s heads broken in trying conclusions with the armed forces, to go to jail for defiance of capitalist laws and in general to face the consequences of their own foolhardy actions. Not so our present-day Communists. The violent doctrines of 1920 will no longer stir even the most emotional and youthful would-be rebel. They are too obviously impracticable to stand the test of discussion in the light of the present situation. But while they dare not go on preaching civil war they are not prepared to admit their error. Instead, they now ask us to believe that they are the innocent victims of wicked misrepresentation, and that they never believed these doctrines at all. Accordingly we give below a selection from the host of declarations they now want be forgotten, prefaced by their recent repudiation of their original policies.

  “The Communist Party has repeatedly pointed out that unless it is able to win over to its standard a decisive majority of the working class it cannot realise the social transformation. The Communist Party believes that without the activity of a majority of the workers both in the struggle to set up a real Workers’ Government, and in the subsequent Socialist reconstruction, emancipation is impossible.” (Editor, Workers’ Weekly, November 7th, 1924.)

Lenin writing on Bourgeois Parliamentarism versus Proletarian Revolution (Workers’ Dreadnought, August 28th, 1920) used the following words :—

  “The accusations of siding with the Bourgeoisie can indeed be levelled at all … who, while proclaiming adhesion to the dictatorship of the proletariat in words, in deeds propagate the belief in the necessity of gaining under the capitalist régime the formal consent of the majority of the population (that is a majority of the votes in a bourgeois parliament) before political power can be transferred to the proletariat . . . Let the revolutionary proletariat first overthrow the bourgeoisie, throw off the yoke of capitalism . . . and then it will be in a position to gain the support of the non-proletarian working masses.”

Lenin here uses “proletarian” to mean only the class-conscious minority, not the whole of the working class, as is shown by his following remark that “economically and politically it (the proletariat) represents the true interest of the vast majority of the workers.”

Eden and Cedar Paul, two members of the C.P.G.B., in their pamphlet “Communism” (Labour Publishing Co., 1920, p 12), wrote— “the Bolsheviks believed in the concentration of revolutionary energy in the hands of a comparatively small group prepared to seize power and declare the dictarorship of the proletariat. . . The dictatorship will not be exercised here, any more than it has been exercised in Russia, by the masses. It will be exercised by an oligarchy by a revolutionary élite.”

Lenin, speaking at a Peasants’ Congress (“Ten Days that Shook the World,” p. 303), is reported by John Reed as saying : “If Socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least 500 years.”

Karl Radek (“The Development of Socialism from Science to Practice”) describes “the notion that the proletariat should undertake no revolution until it is satisfied it has the majority of the people at its back,” as “nonsense.”

Bela Kun (“Liberator,” March, 1920), declared in an interview that “only a small part of the Hungarian workers were Bolshevik . . . But the most effective means of revolutionising the masses is revolution.”

Clara Zetkin, speaking for the Third Interrnational at the Berlin meeting of the three Internationals in April, 1922, declared that “The new political organism cannot at first be broad-based upon the people’s will . . . The revolutionary élite wrests the powers of the State from the grip of the capitalist class, and establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat.” (Official Report, p. 15, Labour Publishing Co. Ltd)

The Thesis of the Third International on “Parliamentarism, etc.,” adopted at the Moscow Congress, 1920 (C.P.G.B., p. 4), “repudiates the possibility of winning over parliament.” “The Statutes and Conditions of Affiliation” (C.P.G.B., page 4) declares that “the aim of the Communist International is to organise an armed struggle for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie …”

The “Workers’ Republic” (Communist Party of Ireland, April 7th, 1923) states that “the advanced workers, organised in a Communist Party . . . will put the capitalist class out of existence by handing back to the workers that which has been filched from them.”

So much for the Communists’ repudiation of minority action and the armed revolt against the capitalist class. They have changed their watchwords because the old ones were growing ever more unpopular and absurd, but they have failed to see where they have drifted.

In 1920 they were sharply differentiated from other so-called working class parties, but this distinguishing feature removed, they fall back where they truly belong, into the ranks of the reformists. With their long and continually changing list of “Immediate demands,” ranging from capitalist measures like nationalisation to the dissolution of the British Empire, both of them a recognised part of the stock-in-trade of the Labour quack in the ‘eighties, they will have difficulty in showing any reason for their separation from the I.L.P. and the Labour Party. They have demonstrated that Communist theory is barren of hope for the working class.

Where Russia Stands. (1921)

From the July 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2

On the question of whether a Socialist Revolution is possible without, as a prerequisite, a majority of the population understanding Socialism, and being in favour of it, we have contradictory views expressed by the Bolsheviks. We will quote some opposite statement as examples of their confusion.

Lenin states on one occasion :

  The first problem of any rising political party consists in convincing the majority of the population that its program and politics are correct. … The second problem of our party was the conquest of political power and the suppression of the resistance of the exploiters. (The Soviets at Work, p. 10.)

He puts this point of view even more strongly in "Left Wing Communism", as witness the following:

  Without an alteration in the views of the majority of the working class, revolution is impossible . . .  It follows that for the revolution it is essential first that a majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the conscious, thinking, politically active workers) should fully understand the necessity for a revolution, and be ready to sacrifice their lives for it. (Page 65.)

If the above quotations have any meaning at all they surely signify that, before the workers can conquer political power, there must be a majority understanding Socialism and in favour of it. In other words, there must be a majority of class conscious workers.

Were we of a guileless and trusting disposition we would accept the above evidence that Lenin was against minority action—Blanquism. But alas! we are critical, and so we find that Lenin in other writings took up exactly the opposite point of view.

Under the heading “Elections to the Constituent Assembly” the following appeared in the Workers’ Dreadnought, 21.8.20:

  This is a process which the representatives of the Second International have never been able to understand, namely that the proletariat can be victorious without conquering a majority of the population. To limit or condition this victory to the acquisition of a majority of votes at an electoral contest under bourgeois domination is evidence of chronic intellectual indolence, or else, quite simply, of a device to deceive the workers. In order to bring the majority over to its side, the proletariat must first overthrow the bourgeoisie and take possession of the power of government, and then, after having destroyed the old state apparatus, introduce the Soviet system, whereby the domination and authority of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois democrats over the non-proletarian labouring masses is at once nullified. It must finally complete the destruction of the influence of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois democrats over the majority of the non-proletarian labouring masses by satisfying their economic needs in a revolutionary manner, at the expense of the exploiters.

Lenin, in the above quotation, states in effect that first of all a minority of the workers must conquer political power and then induce the majority of the workers to come over to their side. In the previous extract, however, he states that first of all we must have a majority in favour of Socialism and then conquer political power. He tries to have both ways, and is on this account self convicted of being wrong in one attitude or the other.

On this particular point it was left to a gasbag to put the finishing touch to the absurdity. In The Development of Socialism from Science to Practice Karl Radek stated :

  The notion that the proletariat should undertake no revolution until it is satisfied that it has the majority of the people at its back is nonsense, for in no capitalist State would the democracy be left free to convince itself that it had the majority of the people at its back. Young working men and working women, exploited as they are to the uttermost by the capitalist, are nowhere to be found in the enjoyment of their full (political) rights. Were they possessed of them the bourgeoisie would straightway send Parliament to the devil rather than allow the workers to carry into effect the will of the majority of the people. (Page 20. Socialist Labour Press.)

The latter part of this passage shows that Radek, at any rate, is opposed (or should be if he is logical) to parliamentary action, as, on the surface, it does not appear to be much use accompanying parliament to the devil! Of course Radek gives no evidence for his statement—but that would be too much to expect from one who contends that Socialism has left the domain of Science and entered that of Practice.

The Bolsheviks, as a matter of fact, had a majority in favour of the “Peace, Bread, and Land” part of their programme, but by no means a majority of CLASS-CONSCIOUS workers — hence the compromises and concessions to mass ignorance and their attempts to justify compromising policy. This also explains the contradictory statements they were driven to make on various occasions. For instance, we have Lenin saying—

  What can be achieved at once by a revolutionary act has been achieved at once ; for instance, between the 26th October, 1917 and the 8th November, 1917 all private land ownership was abolished. (The Workers’ Dreadnought, 3.7.20.)

If all private land ownership has been abolished then we, who are thousands of miles away, would only be logical if we assumed, on the strength of Lenin’s statement, that there was no longer any private ownership of land in Russia. What are we to think, then, when we read the following, under the heading “A Rough Draft of the Thesis on the Agrarian Question—For the Second Congress of the Communist International” ?—

  However, the direct problem of the victorious proletariat should not be the expropriation of the rich peasantry, for the necessary material, especially technical necessaries needed for the socialisation of such farms, fail. Besides that, the social conditions do not allow for this. In exceptional cases, allotments are confiscated which are let out on hire or which are necessary for the petty-peasant population round about these parts. Part of the agricultural machines, which belonged to the rich peasantry, should be lent to these peasants gratis, and so on. According to the general rule—the proletarian State power—the rich peasants should be assured of their land, which should be confiscated only in case of rebellion against the existing labour power. . . Concerning the question of how the land, confiscated from the rich landowners, is worked, in Russia, which is economically backward, this land was divided amongst the peasantry ; only in exclusive cases the so-called Soviet farms were organised.

From the above it will be seen that private property in land has only been abolished on paper. Practically private property still persists. In actual fact, so far as land is concerned, Russia has retreated a step from social production, as land is parcelled out in smaller lots than formerly, the result being a more primitive form of production.

The Bolshevik programme of compromising (“revolutionary compromises”) is not merely put forward as being action necessary in Russia, on account of its backwardness, but is laid down as an axiom to be followed out by Socialists in all countries. This is where we come right up against Lenin and the Bolsheviks in general. Here is Lenin’s advice to class-conscious British workers (Left Wing Communism, published by the Communist Party of Great Britain):

  . . . since the workers in Britain still support the British  Scheidemanns and Kerenskys ; since they have not yet experienced a government composed of such men . . it follows without any doubt that the British Communists must participate in Parliament. They must from within Parliament help the workers to see in practice the results of the Henderson Government; they must help the Hendersons and Snowdens to vanquish Lloyd George and Churchill united (p. 65).
  The Communist Party must offer to the Hendersons and the Snowdens a compromise, an electoral understanding:—”Let us go together against the union of Lloyd George and Churchill; let us divide seats in Parliament according to the number of votes cast by the workers for the Labour Party or the Communists (not in the elections but by a special poll), we to retain the fullest freedom of agitation, propaganda, and political activity (p. 66).

Let us submit the above excerpts to a close examination.

In the first paragraph Lenin states that the majority of the workers “still support the British  Scheidemanns and Kerenskys.” In his succeeding remarks he makes it clear that he designates by this phrase the Henderson and Snowden group. A superficial examination of the situation here would show that the above statement is very wide of the mark, yet Lenin’s advice is based on such imaginary material. The result of the last General Election, and also of the more recent Bye-elections, clearly demonstrates that the workers in this country overwhelmingly support the avowed capitalist candidates against the alleged Labour candidates. The fact is that recently the. Labour vote has relatively shrunk against the vote cast for Independent Liberals, Coalition Liberals, Tories, and Coalition Tories—none of whom come within the scope of Lenin’s phrase “British Scheidemanns and Kerenskys.” As a matter of fact Lenin slaughters himself in the same paragraph when he recommends us to help the Snowden group to beat Lloyd George & Co. If the majority of the workers support the Henderson and Snowden groups, then the latter should be the majority in Parliament and should want no help to overthrow Lloyd George and take over the governing power. If they do not desire to take over the governing power our help would be wasted. And finally, by the time we would be strong enough to force them to take over power we should be strong enough to take over power ourselves. However, Lenin is badly informed as to the position. The Labour group is in the minority though they support the Lloyd George Government.

The naiveté of the suggestion that the Communists should offer “to the Hendersons and Snowdens a compromise, an electoral understanding,” but “we to retain the fullest freedom of agitation, propaganda, and political activity” is too good to pass over. To imagine that the wily Labour leaders are so simple as to walk blindly into the net spread with so much ostentation and “hot-air” needs a child-like, trusting, and simple conception of things such as we cannot lay claim to. This point of view is urged on the ground that the change in view of the workers can “be brought about by the political experience of the masses only.” On the same line of argument are we then to support every new party that arises so that the workers shall learn the rottenness of such parties by experiencing their shortcomings as governing parties ? Why not give Bottomley’s Business Government a chance to shine ? No wonder Lenin thought it would take five hundred years to establish Socialism !

Gilmac.

To be Continued.

Communist Consistency. (1921)

From the June 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Communist’, April 20th, 1921:

  (Page 2.) “ . . . let us also emphasise the fact that those who come into the real working-class International must come prepared to concentrate on industrial organisation and the freeing of the workers, leaving political and social questions to fall into their proper place for attention after the Revolution.” 

  (Page 3.) “The Communist Party . . . will conduct an unflinching campaign against the power of capitalism; and relentlessly strive by industrial organisation, agitation, and revolutionary political and parliamentary action to urge the working class on towards revolution.”

Same paper, same date:

Report of Chairman’s address to Manchester Conference.
  “ . . . the chairman stated the attitude of the Party to be in opposition to all other Labour organisations.”

This is the same Communist Party which applied for and was refused permission to affiliate to the National Labour Party. It still allows its branches to affiliate locally, has members on Borough Councils who were elected as Labour men and are still members of local Labour parties and has taken joint electorial action with these bodies.

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This “party of the workers” proposes to teach “the smallholders and farmers  . . . that the Revolution comes as their friend and to relieve them of the unendurable burden of landlordism.” It considers that “the mischievous land nationalisation policy of the (agricultural) unions must be fought and overcome in favour of a policy of socialisation without compensation” (Agrarian Question, p. 7.) It also supports the nationalisation of the mines.” (Communist, 2nd April, 1921.)

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The “Marxist” Communist Party on wages

‘The Workers’ Dreadnought’, 19th March:

“A Marxian American gives his viewpoint.”

“If too great a proportion of the workers are employed, the effect is to temporarily bring about a crisis of unemployment. Wages continue to rise until they actually catch up with or pass the increases in the cost of living . . . As soon as the increasing wages seriously reduce or threaten to destroy his (the employer’s) profits he closes down his plant.”

‘The Communist’, 19th February:

  “For generations the trade unions have been attempting to improve the status of their members by increased money wages. This has proved futile. Every nominal increase conceded to-day is filched back to-morrow by an even greater advance in the cost of living.”

Asked if this meant that the Communist Party accepted the view that “employers can at will raise the price of their goods to the buyer,” Mr. Francis Meynell, Editor of the Communist, replied (28th February:

  “Because we say that every nominal increase conceded to-day is filched back to-morrow by an even greater advance in the cost of living we do not mean, as we do not say, that this must be so. If the selfishness of the Capitalist class could be destroyed, or that class destroyed itself, probably an easier task, one could happen without the other.”

So now we know all about it.

The capitalist, being selfish, can put up his prices and to whatever extent he chooses, so presumably he doesn’t mind giving increased wages. He also resists increases until he can no longer do so and then closes down. Also in the Communist Millennium, supposing the capitalists have been rendered unselfish, we shall be able to get higher wages without higher prices, but should they be obdurate they will be destroyed and replaced, I suppose, by unselfish Communists.

The real gem of the reply is the concluding paragraph, which refers the enquirer to Wage-Labour and Capital and Value, Price and Profit for further information !

When this interesting correspondence was followed up Mr. Meynell wrote this (March 16th):

  “I was foolish enough to think that your first letter was a genuine enquiry out of a desire for information. As it was no more than a trap for my time and temper, I refuse to put either of them any more at your disposal.”

If Mr. Meynell ever does change his mind and decide to answer will he please tell me too if bad tempers, like “selfishness,” will debar entrance to the promised land.

Edgar Hardcastle

Equality and the Wages System. (1931)

From the September 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The changes in the administration of some of the State industries of Russia, recently announced with the usual pomposity by Stalin, have given the capitalist press another chance to extol the alleged economic superiority of capitalist methods of production over what they mistake for Socialism.

Actually, these changes merely make more clear the essentially capitalist character of the Russian State industries, frequently pointed out in these columns.

Piece-work is to be extended, and many of the "worker-administrators” are to be sent back to the factories. The specialists and managers are to be given greater powers of control, and be more liberally treated. These changes, however, involve no new principle. Ever since the introduction of the New Economic Policy ten years ago things have been moving along this direction, albeit spasmodically and inconsistently. 

Nevertheless, we have the "Manchester Guardian” seizing upon the occasion in its weekly issue of July 10th to expound a little capitalist economics. Speaking of the workers in the factory, the editorial scribe asserts that, "He may work slowly or badly but he will draw his wages just the same unless there is some system of fines or piece rates." It would seem that this brilliant journalistic gem dwells in a world where the "sack” is unheard of.

Wages are paid only in order that employing concerns may squeeze out of the workers that profit which it is the object of their existence to obtain. This applies whether the workers are on piece rates or not. Piece rates have the advantage, however, in those industries where the system can conveniently be utilised, from the capitalist point of view, of reducing the need for supervision to keep up the pace of production; a fact which led Marx to declare, “that piece-wage is the form of wages most in harmony with the capitalist mode of production,” "Capital,” p. 567 (Sommenseheim).

Stalin and his supporters, however, claim to be "Marxists.” They declare that, "it is necessary to organise a system of a sliding scale of wages which would take into account the difference between skilled and unskilled labour . . . Marx and Lenin say that this difference will exist also in Socialist society even after the abolition of classes; that only in a Communist society will this difference vanish. Therefore, wages, even under a Socialist regime, must be regulated in accordance with the work accomplished and not the need felt.”

Then they proceed to condemn "those trade unionists and economists who are in favour of equal wages” as being opposed to Marxism and Leninism.

To take the last point first, Marx certainly exposed the absurdity of the demand for "equal wages,” a demand which figured prominently in the propaganda of a section of the Communist Party in this country (in the "Workers’ Dreadnought” particularly) in its early days.

On page 31 of "Value, Price and Profit,” Marx says, "Upon the basis of the wages system the value of labouring-power is settled like that of every other commodity; and as different kinds of labouring powers have different values, or require different quantities of labour for their production, they must fetch different prices in the labour market. To clamour for equal or even equitable retribution on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system.” (Italics Marx’s.)

It is obvious enough that Marx is referring here to wages under capitalism, but where did he speak of wages under Socialism? Stalin does not tell us. Wages, whether equal or unequal, are ‘part and parcel of capitalism, i.e., a system based upon the ownership by the master-class of the means of living, and the consequent enslavement of the working class by whose labour alone all wealth is produced. Or, as Marx himself put it in his criticism of the Gotha Programme, "The system of wage-labour is therefore a system of slavery and a slavery that becomes more and more arduous as the socially productive forces of labour develop, and independently of the question whether the labourer is better paid or worse.” (Section II, par. 5.)

The wage-labour system in Russian State industries, like the system' here and elsewhere, is a system of Slavery. The spread of piece-work will intensify the slavery; it will enable the "Communist” rulers to squeeze more surplus-produce out of Russian workers, just as it has helped the Conservative and Liberal capitalists of this country. Alleged “quotations” in support of it from Marx merely brand Stalin & Co. as hypocrites and their followers as ignorant dupes. The Russian Government must make a profit in order to pay interest upon its loans if for no other reason, and this fact alone is sufficient to explode the myth that Russian State industry is run on Socialist lines.

The Russian Government has to borrow money to run its industries, like any other capitalist concern, because it has to pay for machinery and raw material, because its employees have to pay for the food, clothes and houses they need; because, in a phrase, all the means by which these requirements are produced are private property. It has not established an oasis of Socialism in a capitalist desert. Had it tried to do so it would have been speedily annihilated.

Does this then prove that capitalism is the only possible economic system, as the “Manchester Guardian” would have us believe? Is the equality, which the Socialist Party fights for, incompatible with productive efficiency? In order to answer these questions it is necessary to be clear as to what we are to compare capitalism with, and also exactly what we mean by equality. If we compare capitalism with the forms of society which preceded it, we find that it has resulted in an enormous and unprecedented increase in the produce of labour; but it has also resulted in the concentration of the bulk of this produce in the hands of the few.

The gulf between the workers of to-day and their capitalist masters is greater than that which separated the peasant-serfs from the robber barons or the chattel-slaves from their patrician masters. Before the increased productive power of modern labour can become an advantage to the whole of society the instruments of production must become common property. They are socially operated; they have yet to become socially owned and controlled.

This of course involves the abolition, through political action, of the “rights” of the capitalists to own and control the land, factories, railways, etc. It implies the conscious assumption by the working- class, organised for the purpose, of complete control of the machinery of government so that they may obtain control of the entire industrial resources of society.

This abolition of classes is the equality at which Socialists aim (not a mathematical equality of income which is fantastic and unwanted); but an equality of access to the means of living and of obligation to contribute to their production. Such an equality would render the term “wages” a meaningless one, for no one would be in a position to buy the services of others in order to make a profit, just as no one would be in the position of having to sell their energies in order to obtain a bare subsistence.

Under such a system it would be to the interests of all to expand the material resources of society as rapidly as possible in order to increase the common stock of Necessities and amenities. For so long as these resources are fettered by capitalist ownership, whether in the form of private capitalism or nationalisation, the workers will be restricted to the consumption of such a quantity of goods as is sufficient to enable them to go on producing a profit. Hence we find everywhere that the capitalists, faced with a quantity of goods which cannot be sold, are compelled to take steps to restrict production.

Socialism will abolish the need for such restriction and while, even with the present resources of production, it would immediately increase the wealth available for the workers' enjoyment, it would also render possible a considerable expansion of those resources in order that the free development of every individual should be translated from a dream into a reality.

Eric Boden

"Revolutionary Political Action" (1921)

From the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communist Brand.

In the leading article in the September Socialist Standard the Communist Party’s Caerphilly Election Address was quoted from as follows:

 Pledged as it is to Political Action the Communist Party is enabled by this opportunity to demonstrate just how far and in what way Revolutionary Political Action differs from the creeping thing the worker has learned to know and to hate as Parliamentarism.

The article went on to say: "If the election has provided the Communist Party with an opportunity to explain the meaning of Revolutionary Political Action, then that Party has certainly failed to take advantage of this opportunity."

If the Communist Party failed on this occasion to make clear what they mean by revolutionary political action, there have been other occasions when they have taken the opportunity. On the Poplar Board of Guardians sit two members of the Communist Party, A. A. Watts and Edgar Lansbury. On June 22nd, at a Board meeting of the Poplar Guardians, the General Purposes Committee recommended a list of reductions in wages of men employed by the Board, building labourers, women sewing machinists, and bakers. What did our two exponents of "revolutionary political action” do? They voted for the reductions!

It was only when the following recommendation was made, viz., “That our action be approved and confirmed and that the wages of the above-mentioned officers be further reduced by 2s. 6d. per week each for every fall of 10 points in the cost of living under figures below 120,” that Edgar Lansbury said, "I’m not opposing the reductions. We’ve already agreed to it, but I don’t like us pledging ourselves to do it in the future.” (Quoted by "Workers’ Dreadnought,” 2/7/21.)

Who have been louder in their denunciation of this principle of the cost of living basis of wages, that the workers should for ever be tied to one bare level of subsistence, than the Communist Party? Yet here we have two of its members lending it their support.

In the "Industrial Notes” in the "Communist” (28/5/21) occurred the following passages:

  Will somebody explain what has happened to the committees set up by the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress to consider joint action against wage reductions.
   One explanation offered is that the members of the sub-committees have been so busy negotiating reductions for their own members that they have had no time to meet.
   Agreements, even, are being broken and strikes are resulting. Aggression by the boss class is seen on every hand.

Clearly a case of the "pot calling the kettle black.” Even Councillor Charlie Sumner, not a revolutionary Communist, but just a Trade Unionist who believes in "a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” said, “Yes, but d’you see, the baking trade has always been a terribly sweated trade, and it isn’t to say that we should join in just because everyone else is coming down on them.” The same is true, of course, of women sewing machinists. Even this failed to move our “revolutionaries”; Sumner, as a matter of fact, voted for the reductions.

A. A. Watts was himself, as Chairman of the Sub-Committee, the signatory to a recommendation to reduce relief to the poor (excepting widows and aged persons) by 10 per cent. The Communist Party’s “revolutionary” Caerphilly Election Address demanded “for the unemployed work or maintenance at full Trade Union rates.” The case of Poplar illustrates how the Communist Party deals with the unemployed when it has the power. Evidently there is little to choose between the Communist Party and those ancient adepts in the art of “piecrust” promising, the Liberal and Tory Parties.

And have Watts and E. Lansbury been expelled from the Communist Party for violating their “principles”? Not a bit of it. Only Miss Sylvia Pankhurst has been expelled for not handing the paper, which published the information, over to the control of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party, of which Watts is a member.

Another occasion is taken advantage of by the Communist Party to show what they mean by revolutionary political action. In the “Communist ” (17/9/21), under “Notes of the Week,” occurs the-following:

  We, as Communists, welcome Poplar’s action for two reasons. The first is that work or maintenance at full trade union rates is a demand which the Communist Party has always pressed, for the revolutionary reason that capitalism can neither refuse it with dignity nor concede it without suicide. Secondly, and more importantly, because the Poplar Council has carried out the advice of the Third International: To capture the machinery of bourgeois administration and use it for revolutionary ends. (Communist’s italics.)

In regard to the first reason, imagine, if you can, capital committing suicide to save its dignity. The idea is too ridiculous to need serious refutation. The Communist Party has been in existence over a year now, and so far capital has refused this demand, which the Communist Party “has always pressed,” and risked its dignity. As for committing suicide—— 

And what is the revolutionary end that the Labour Party has captured the “machinery of bourgeois administration” to effect? The Poplar Borough Council has refused to levy the precepts of the L.C.C. and other outside authorities as a means to bringing about the equalisation of rates. I take it then, that if this revolutionary end is achieved, the system of society advocated by the Communist Party and called by them “Communism,” will have been inaugurated? Let us see.

Prior to the Rent Restrictions Act the effect on the working-class of equalisation of rates would have been nil. There was an excess of supply of houses over demand and rents were competitive. Higher rates in one borough had to be compensated by lower rents, so that the total amount paid for a house was the same all round for the same class of house. Cases have been cited in the Socialist Standard where rent has even fallen while the rates have been rising. But under the Rent Act the amount of rates in excess of the rate levied in 1914 is added directly to the rent allowed by the Act. This fact gives credence to the idea that the working-class is affected by high or low rates. But what would naturally take place if rates were reduced in working-class boroughs as a consequence of equalisation? Wages, especially in the state the labour market is at present, would almost immediately reflect the reduction.

But, apart from the benefit the capitalists who exploit the workers in London would derive as a consequence of the reduction in the latter’s cost of living, who would really benefit by the change? The big factory owners and other Capitalists who have premises in Poplar and other boroughs whose rates would be reduced. And it would be pertinent to ask who is paying for the floods of literature, some of which is sent to voters in stamped envelopes, with which Poplar is being deluged? No working-class organisation dependent on the pence of its members and sympathisers could afford it at the best of times. The whole thing, so far as the working-class is concerned, is simply summed up: it is yet another red herring serving the purpose of diverting them from their real interests and from what should be their only goal, Socialism.

T. D.

Direct Action in South Africa. (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent attempts on the part of the Rand miners at Johannesburg to gain their ends by force of arms affords another striking instance of the futility of adopting such methods in the face of the organised, well-disciplined force of the governing class. Into the pros and cons of this particular case we do not propose to go. The broad facts of the case are sufficient for our purpose. In the mining districts of South Africa we find the masters organising for wage reductions; in fact, throughout the Capitalist world the same thing is going on all round. In England we had the coal mine owners making the first grand onslaught towards wage reductions. The Engineering industry at the present moment witnesses another great move on the part of the masters to force a reduction of wages.

In both instances the workers have been locked out. In all these contests we have the advocates of direct action on the industrial field proclaiming that this is the appointed time for the workers to use their “industrial power.” These people do not explain what this industrial power of the workers is. The reason is simple—there is no such thing as this so-called “industrial power” or “economic power,” as some prefer to call it; it is just a phrase, mouthed about by “revolutionary” Labour leaders, to impress their sheep-like followers with their “revolutionary heroism.” “Industrial power,” “ the power of industry,” “economic power,” are meaningless terms so far as advantage to the workers’ cause is concerned.

The fact that has to be solidly grasped is that, a ruling class exists to-day—the owners and controllers of the means of life. It matters not under what national banner or flag these captains of industry — the Capitalist class—are domiciled, whether it be in South Africa, Australia, America, the same force is used—the army, navy, and aerial contingents—to impose the masters’ will over the subject class, the working class. Therefore, while the workers of the world remain politically ignorant—i.e., vote their enemies into the seat of power—then it logically follows that that power, which gives them control of the forces of the State, be used whenever occasion demands, as witness on the Rand in South Africa.

As a writer in the Manchester Guardian, 17/3/22, says, commenting on the matter—

   “There certainly has been no indecision about General Smuts' way of taking up a clear challenge; not, of course, that the challenge from the rioters on the Rand was personal to him. He received it as the chosen head man of the European .Democracy in South Africa. It was no individual will, but the will of the majority—evidently a vast majority—of South African voters."

In this case the "vast majority” in their political ignorance voted for the return to the seat of power—the State Assembly—representatives of the owners of property in land, mines, railways, etc. Therefore, when this property is attacked by bands of rebel workers, it is naturally defended by the forces of the State.

Now listen to the champions of "industrial action"—"Workers' Dreadnought" (18/3/22) —commenting on the South African trouble :—

   “Labour will not be victorious whilst it merely strikes and starves. It must take control of production and distribution before it can achieve anything.”

We agree, but we are not told how the workers are to get control. Also same authority commenting on the Engineers' lock-out: -

  “They must show themselves able and ready to supply their own needs and those of the proletarian community as a whole.”

We agree, but how? And further same authority :—

   “The questions the locked-out workers have to ask themselves are just these :—
1. 'Why should we suffer want in a land of plenty? ’
2. 'How can we avoid doing so? ”

The answer to No. 1 is that the workers will continue to suffer want, so long as the means of life are owned by a few—the ruling Capitalist class.

The question as to how this state of things may be avoided is readily answered by the Socialist, who claims that the means of life must be made the common property of the people—i.e., by the establishment of Socialism, viz., "a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community." The Declaration of Principles on the back page of this issue sets out concisely but clearly how that object may be attained.

Revolutionary wind may be very relieving to people like the writer in the “Workers’ Dreadnought," quoted above; there’s been an epidemic of it since Bolshevism was discovered in Russia. What the workers need is Revolutionary knowledge. Study our position and then act.

B. I.

The Evolution of W. Gallacher (1923)

From the February 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once upon a time the Communists were furious in denunciation of the treachery and reformism of the Labour Party and the I.L.P. No abuse was too violent, and they translated their hostility into deeds by opposing J. R. MacDonald when he fought the Woolwich Bye-election as a Labour Party nominee in 1921.

W. Gallacher wrote in the "Workers' Dreadnought" (Feb., 1920), for the Scottish Workers' Committee, as follows: -

"This Committee is definitely anti-Parliamentarian . . . We represent the revolutionary movement in Scotland . . . For a considerable time time we have been sparring with the official Parliamentarians . . . But this state of affairs cannot continue long. We are winning all along the line. The rank and file of the I.L.P. in Scotland is becoming more and more disgusted with the idea of Parliament, and the Soviets or Workers' Councils are being supported by almost every branch. This is very serious, of course, for the gentlemen who took to politics for a profession, and they are using any and every means to persuade their members to come back into the Parliamentary fold. Revolutionary comrades must not give any support to this gang. Our fight here is going to be a most difficult one. One of the worst features of it will be the treachery of those whose personal ambition is a more compelling force than their regard for the revolution. . . . The official I.L.P. is bitterly opposed to the Third International, the rank and file is for it. Any support of the Parliamentary opportunists is simply playing into the hands of the former."

Later the C.P.G.B. wanted to get into the Labour Party and they began to drop their aggressive tone. Their application was refused, but they persevered with a demand for the "united front." They decided that it was necessary and desirable that the Labour Party should gain a Parliamentary majority as soon as possible. Any person with the least knowledge of the political situation would have realised at once that the greatest service the Communists could do the Labour Party was to declare open war upon it. This would have enabled the Labour Party to repudiate entirely the untrue but damaging charge of coquetting with Socialism and Revolution. As it was, the Communists insisted on supporting Labour men and must have lost them thousands of votes. W. Gallacher (the same W. Gallacher) ran as Communist Parliamentary candidate at Dundee. It was a double-membered  constituency, and the only official Labour man was E. D. Morel, an ex-Liberal strongly critical of the Government's foreign policy, and equally strongly anti-Socialist. Although Morel hotly repudiated Gallacher, Gallacher advised all his supporters to vote for Morel. Morel writes on this in the "Labour Magazine" (Dec., 1922): - 

"Another factor in his (Scrymgeour's) favour was the appearance of Mr. Gallacher, the Communist, who never had the ghost of a chance, but who insisted on every occasion in trying to couple himself up with me, despite my emphatic declaration (and the local Labour Party's official disclaimer) that I was unalterably opposed to Communism. For his own purposes, Mr. Churchill also used the same tactics from the beginning. The result was, that Mr. Gallacher played into Mr. Churchill's hands; that many working women electors, who have no use for Communism, were alarmed, when they got to the booths, to find Mr. Gallacher's representatives coupling my name with his, and "plumped" for Scrymgeour instead of voting  Scrymgeour-Morel; and that lost a number of "silent" voters who, but for the Gallacher-Churchill tactic, would probably have voted for me." 

In spite, however, of the unwelcome Communist "support," Morel got in.

Then only three weeks after he had been telling Dundee workers to vote for Morel, Gallacher expresses the opinion that "It is expected on all sides that there will be a split sooner or later, and that the Morel-Wedgewood crowd would go back to Liberalism" ("The Worker," 9th Dec., 1922). Not only that, but while himself a member of the Party (C.P.G.B.) which has defended its support of reactionary Labourites by the gag about the necessity for "unity," he adds: -

"This is a sort of 'hangman's whip' that will be held over the heads of the Glasgow team (I.L.P men, by the way!). 'Don't split the Party' will be the rallying cry of the moderates, and it will be used to the fullest to keep the others in check."

It is always difficult to understand why some alleged revolutionaries will go to an infinite amount of trouble to avoid recognising an unpalatable truth. Although they cannot wait to  propagate Socialism, they are prepared to go on for ever, alternately denouncing known enemies of the working class and supporting them for "tactical" reasons. They will discard every principle and make themselves personally ridiculous and contemptible by perpetual shuffling, all in order to gain something by manoeuvre which they cannot gain in open fight. They never do get anything worth having, and the working class have to pay the price of failure in the despair of the disappointed followers of these blind leaders. The cause of this lies simply in their refusal to recognise the fact that Socialism cannot be won without Socialists. They shelter behind the excuse that the workers are too ignorant and foolish ever to understand their own interests, but, as Voltaire very shrewdly remarked, "He who dreams that he can lead a great crowd of fools without a great store of knavery is a fool himself."

Edgar Hardcastle