A Look Round. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Trades Dispute Act, passed by a Government “having something of a Labour Party force behind it” as one jubilant Trade Unionist has expressed it, legalised peaceful picketing. That is to say it made it quite lawful for “one or more persons acting on their own behalf or on behalf of a Trade Union or of an individual employer or firm in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute to attend at or near a house or place where a person resides or works or carries on business or happens to be if they so attend merely for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information or of peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from working.”

* * *

But the question of what is peaceful picketing is of course one for the Magistrates and the Judges. In the course of a strike or lock-out, it is hardly to be expected that strikers or locked-out workers will be able to control their feelings altogether when they see their places being taken by others. The moment they get excited they can be charged under the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875, as was the case at the Old Street Police Court on June 6th, when two men were each fined £10 and ordered to pay six guineas costs between them.

* * *

Another Act of the present Government, the Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1906, comes into force on July 1st. If a workman, after that date, meet with a fatal accident, and his relatives can afford to employ lawyers, or make a bargain with them on the “no win, no pay” system, they may get a verdict of £300 against the employer. And if the latter has not insured and cannot pay, he can make himself a bankrupt, and clear himself of all obligations. No wonder the Act has been described as one for the benefit of insurance companies and lawyers more than for workmen.

* * *

Probably many of the smaller employers will regard a fatal accident to one of their workmen as a blessing in disguise if it enables them, by means of the Bankruptcy Court, to disentangle themselves from the difficult position in which they have been forced under this competitive system.

* * *

The Stringertype is the name of a new matrix composing and casting machine recently invented by Mr. H. J. S. Culbert-Stringer. After a close inspection by a number of experts, the machine has been found to thoroughly justify the many important advantages claimed for it by the inventor.

* * *

Another factor in the problem of men v. machinery !

* * *

The chairman of Barclay, Perkins & Company, Ltd., is much afraid that “after legislation has finished with the Breweries,” the “Socialists” would turn their attention to other so-called monopolies, and the property of the Church itself will be in danger ! This twaddle about the wicked Socialists who would destroy property is part of the game played by the capitalist class. But Barclay, Perkins’ “property,” like that of other sections of the master class, may be depreciated and even destroyed in the ordinary course of capitalist development, without any “Socialist” agitation or action.

* * *

Thus at the meeting of William Cory & Son, Ltd., held on June 11th, Sir Francis Cory-Wright said they ought to put large sums to depreciation and reserve, because they could not say what in the future might take the place of coal, and render much of their assets valueless.

* * *

He went on to refer to the new invention “Coalite,” to exploit which a new company was being formed. Mr. Parker, of Wolverhampton, claimed that it was absolutely smokeless, and that its use would put an end to thick fogs, which were solely due to the smoke emitted from domestic and factory chimneys. There were good grounds for this claim, and if “Coalite” proved successful it would have a great future.

* * *

As I understand it, “Coalite” is obtained by treating ordinary coal in a particular manner. But surely it is within the region of possibility that a fuel may one day be discovered superior to coal in every respect, which would at once depreciate the value of coal mines and allied industries. Then the coal mine owners would agitate for the nationalisation of coal mines and some alleged Socialists would be jubilant at the rate of progress of their ideas.

* * *

On June 12th Mr. Bicknell presided at the meeting of J. C. & J. Field, Ltd., Soap and Candle Manufacturers. He said the year had been a disappointing one. For some years the profits had been steadily growing less, owing to heavy taxation, the increased price of raw materials, in addition to excessive competition.

* * *

When the Soap Trust was operating here, Field's was one of the firms which remained outside. And when the retailers talked of forming a co-operative concern to manufacture soap against the Trust, Field’s advised them not to erect a factory or to put down new plant, but, if they would subscribe £50,000 Capital, Field’s plant could be utilised, etc. All this, of course, was disinterested. Field’s sole desire, as everybody knew, was to help the people fight the awful Trust.

* * *

It is stated that the cause of the trouble at Vickers, Sons & Maxim’s Engineering Works at Erith, was primarily the introduction of a premium bonus system, similar in many respects to the “Rowan” system. In this connection the following extract from The Engineer-in-Charge and Works Manager for May will be interesting to readers.

* * *

Piecework.—Each engineer must decide for himself as to whether any of the work undertaken in his department can be more cheaply turned out on a piecework basis. Many engineers have to manufacture spare parts in considerable quantities, and in these cases the work can often be done more cheaply by the piece; the workman possibly earns more money, but the total cost will be less when establishment charges have been added.

The chief objection to piecework is the difficulty of fixing a fair rate ; if too high, the workman earns very large wages and the rate has to be cut down, with the result that next time a man is given a job at a high rate he takes care not to work too quickly. To avoid this system the premium system has been introduced, which has the effect of giving part of the additional earnings to the employer and part to the workmen. The method introduced by the late Mr. James Rowan has been more used than perhaps any other : by this system a man is allowed, say eight hours in which to do a certain job, and his rate is 8d. per hour ; if he does the work in six hours he will be paid his ordinary rate plus 2-8ths—2d.; therefore, in this case he will get 10d. per hour. It is obviously impossible, with this method, for a man to be paid double his ordinary rate, and the effect is to increase the man’s bonus for small savings in time and to decrease it for large, that is compared with ordinary piecework ; hence, it is unnecessary ever to cut the rate after it has once been fixed, and this system is undoubtedly useful for work for which the rate is difficult to compute.

* * *

There are no flies on the employers who adopt this system !

* * *

In the current issue of The Contemporary Review, Mr. L. G. Chiozza Money, M.P., deals with the Investments of the Masses. He estimates the total wealth of the United Kingdom at £11,500,000,000, of which £10,900,000,00 is owned by 5,000,000 people, and £600,000,000 by 39,000,000 of the population. Thus about 95 per cent. of the entire wealth of the United Kingdom is owned by about one-ninth of its population. It could easily be shown, he added, that of the 5,000,000 of people above the income tax line a small proportion, about one-fifth or say, 1,000,000 people (about 200,000 or 250,000 families) own nearly the whole of the accumulated wealth of the Kingdom, and that this small group exercise the effective government of the nation by its control of the means of production. “THOSE RULE WHO OWN.”

* * *

Those rule who own. That is the position. Whatever political reforms may be secured will be useless so long as the means of wealth production are private property. Therefore the efforts of the workers for political supremacy must be directed with the object of using the power thus obtained to effect the social revolution. Private ownership of the means of wealth production must give place to social ownership.

* * *

Some societies of working men have been led into supporting the Workers’ Educational Association, which exists for the purpose of encouraging boys and girls to continue their education (of a kind agreeable to their masters) by attendance at evening schools after they have commenced to work. Last month a Conference took place between the Association and employers of labour at Birmingham, at which a committee, with the Lord Mayor as chairman, was appointed to carry out the work. The true inwardness of the movement may be gathered from the Press reports of this meeting, which conclude thus : “It was stated that the decay of the apprenticeship system had caused employers to lose that control of young people which they formerly possessed.” And, of course, by the help of Mr. Albert Mansbridge and his W.E.A., they hope to get it back.

* * *

An instance of the fallacy that only unskilled workers need lack employment in this happy land arose at the City Coroner’s Court on June 6th, when an inquest was held concerning the death of Harry G. Burrell, aged 59, a brass finisher, who dropped dead the previous Sunday evening in Whitecross-st. It was stated that the deceased was a capital workman, but had been unable to find regular employment for the past five years. One witness stated that he had known deceased since January and frequently during the bitter nights of February and March they would lie sodden with rain on one of the seats of the Embankment, only to be moved on and made to walk by the first constable who came across them. Between two and three thousand homeless “heirs to glory” went to the Embankment at night.

* * *

Of course, the jury, being “practical” men, passed the usual verdict: “Death from natural causes.” It is quite recognised by the capitalist class that it is perfectly “natural” for men, able and willing to work, to die of starvation in the midst of plenty.

J. Kay.

50 Years Ago: The Failure of the Labour Colleges (1975)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

By dint of strenuous and persistent agitation the National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC) has won its fight for recognition by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress. It and the London Labour College are to be permitted to take part in an Educational Scheme in co-operation with their old enemies the Workers’ Educational Association, Ruskin College and the Co-operative Educational Committee.

Elated by being recognized, the Plebs League and other supporters of the NCLC appear not to have recognized that this event has a quite other significance . . . the death of an idea, it gives the final blow to the theory of Independent Working Class Education which they have proclaimed and popularized. The scheme means co-operation with the organizations which in the past have been denounced by the NCLC and the Plebs League as camouflaged instruments of capitalist propaganda.

★

The hard truth is that independence can be had only at a price. You cannot base an educational system on the urgent need for the overthrow of capitalism and yet honestly gain the financial support of Trade Unions whose members would not approve the overthrow of capitalism . . . the NCLC and the Plebs have just decided that the price is too great.

(From an editorial Working Class Education — the Failure of the Labour Colleges, published in the Socialist Standard, July 1925.)

FOOTNOTE: In The Times, 2nd May 1975, Mr. J. P. M. Millar, General Secretary of the NCLC had an article “How the Labour Colleges were Destroyed” detailing the way in which the TUC, once it got control, closed down almost all the activities of the NCLC and has caused the Plebs magazine to cease publication.

The Failure of the Labour Colleges. (1928)

From the April 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

In July, 1925, we wrote on the significant action of the National Council of Labour Colleges in joining its old enemy, the Workers’ Educational Association, in an education scheme sponsored by the Trades Union Congress. We pointed out that the acceptance of money from the Trade Unions to co-operate with such bodies as the W.E.A. and Ruskin College meant the passing of the independence of the “Movement for Independent Working-class Education.” The “Plebs’ League” tried to derive comfort from the fact that, while urging the N.C.L.C. to accept the scheme, they themselves were not bound in any way and could continue their independent propaganda and criticism.

Time has justified our warning. The “Plebs’ League” has ceased to exist as an independent body and three years later others, including men in the N.C.L.C. itself, are recognising the truth of what we then anticipated.

In the Sunday Worker (22nd January) is a letter from Mr. W. N. Dias, Tutor Edinburgh District, Scottish Labour College, commenting on a book review in which T. A. Jackson had directed attention to the essential weakness of the position of the N.C.L.C.

Mr. Dias wrote as follows :—

“Contact with the local Labour Colleges convinces one that there is a gradual desertion of the whole position taken up by the Labour College Movement in the past, and it is gradually becoming another edition of the old W.E.A., which years ago it (rightly) condemned.”

In a subsequent issue of the Sunday Worker, a correspondent, who is described as being “prominently connected with the N.C.L.C.,” gives further support to our criticism. The N.C.L.C., he says :—

“is now fast becoming merely a piece of educational machinery, hitched on to the Trade Union machine, with its own staff of officials concerned mainly with administrative work . . . the N.C.L.C. is tending to come increasingly under the control and influence of this bureaucracy (i.e., the trade union officials) which finances it” (4th March).

In particular the N.C.L.C., as we long ago pointed out, cannot hope to receive Trade Union money if at the same time it exposes the part played by Labour and Trade Union leaders in supporting the capitalist system and its ways. The N.C.L.C. had to choose and it chose the money in preference to the independence. We wrote in 1925 :—

“The price of independence in the existing state of working class indifference and political backwardness is to be left outside the main field of trade union educational activity; and the N.C.L.C. and the Plebs have just decided that the price is too great.”

The significance of that step is now becoming evident.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Working class education. The failure of the Labour Colleges. (1925)

Editorial from the July 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

By dint of strenuous and persistent agitation the National Council of Labour Colleges (N.C.L.C.) has won its fight for recognition by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress. It and the London Labour College are to be permitted to take part in an Educational Scheme in co-operation with their old enemies the W.E.A., Ruskin College and the Co-operative Educational Committee. The participating bodies are to retain their separate organisations and machinery, and each may continue to operate independently any educational scheme it can arrange in addition to the joint scheme.

Elated by being recognised the Plebs League and other supporters of the N.C.L.C. appear not to have recognised that this event has a quite other significance. No doubt it represents a personal success for the active N.C.L.C. workers, and a propaganda victory for the organisation; but it also signifies the death of an idea, it gives the final blow to the theory of Independent Working Class Education which they have proclaimed and popularised.

The scheme means co-operation with those organisations which in the past have been denounced by the N.C.L.C. and the Plebs League as camouflaged instruments of Capitalist propaganda. Against this the right to operate separate schemes is of little value. A circular addressed to Plebs members by a Plebs E.C. sub-committee admits that in practice “individual Unions…. would probably sooner or later feel it incumbent upon them to transfer their support to any general scheme approved by Congress.”

Nominally, the freedom of action of the N.C.L.C. is guaranteed by a paragraph which concedes “the rights of criticism on propaganda” to the separate organisations “provided that there shall be mutual abstention from criticism of the good faith of any educational organisations recognised by the T.U.C. …” A moment’s thought will show it to be an inadequate safeguard, and this the Plebs E.C. feel for they urge “the importance of getting a clear decision, at the outset of exactly what is implied by the paragraph.” Can one describe the W.E.A. as a body of Capitalist apologists, built up on Capitalist money without “criticising their good faith? ”

In passing, one cannot but ask if the Plebs Leaguers really do believe that working class education is likely to be assisted by the association of mutually warring elements claiming to speak from fundamentally different standpoints. Clarity goes the way of independence and confusion comes into undisputed possession.

The Plebs E.C., while supporting the entry of the N.C.L.C. into the scheme, try to “have it both ways.” They comfort themselves with the argument that “The Plebs League, not being bound by the agreement or signatory to it, will in any case retain the fullest freedom of criticism, and as before show that co-operation with Capitalist-controlled universities and dependence on financial grants from non-working-class sources (as practised by the W.E.A.) are inconsistent with working-class independence.”

The logic is curious. It is wrong for the W.E.A. to associate with Capitalist Universities but not wrong for the N.C.L.C. to associate with the W.E.A., although it always used to be wrong. The N.C.L.C. is right in signing away its independence and Plebs members are to support them in doing so; but in the same breath the Plebs congratulate themselves because they are not doing what it is right for the N.C.L.C. to do.

If the Plebs do continue to denounce the W.E.A. they will find it a little difficult to explain why they urged the N.C.L.C. to co-operate with the W.E.A.

And, moreover, what in fact will be the value of the “fullest freedom of criticism” which the Plebs will continue to enjoy? The “Plebs Magazine,” the chief vehicle of criticism, happens to be the organ of the N.C.L.C., which is giving up its “fullest freedom of criticism.” It is perhaps good propaganda for the vanquished to go on claiming the right to fight while giving up their arms to the victors; but it is not war.

The reasons why this co-operation appears as a desirable object are frankly stated in the Plebs circular. They are the threatened loss of financial aid from Trade Unions and the fear of being “left outside the main field of Trade Union educational activity.” These admissions bear out what we have always contended—that the movement for “Independent Working Class Education” never was really independent. Because their “educational policy,” in the words of the Plebs E.C., “has been from the beginning to win Trade Union support,” the N .C.L.C. had to proclaim and the Labour Colleges had to teach theories which did not offend the reactionary members and officials of the Unions which put up the cash.

To please the miners they were forced to pretend that industrial organisation is the method of achieving working-class emancipation. It is a cruel fate which has reduced the Miners Federation to a state of confessed impotence.

They styled themselves Marxians, but had to take great care, when explaining the significance of Imperialism, not to give offence by exposing the part played by the Trade Union officials in leading the workers into the war.

They talked of the need for revolutionising society, but had to keep on good terms with the Labour Party opponents of revolution.

They followed the popular school of orthodox economists of the Tory, Liberal and Labour Parties in regarding inflation of currency as the chief cause of high prices in Great Britain. Events have here, too, rewarded them unkindly. Although we have returned practically to 1914 currency conditions, including gold export, yet prices remain 75 per cent. above 1914 level.

The hard truth is that independence can be had only at a price. You cannot base an educational system on the urgent need for the overthrow of Capitalism and yet honestly gain the financial support of Trade Unions whose members would not approve the overthrow of Capitalism. Still less can you avoid discussion of the ways and means of achieving emancipation, and if ways and means are to be discussed you cannot escape the responsibility of approving or condemning particular theories and existing industrial and political policies.

To try to teach Marxism without pointing out the political implications of the class struggle is to rob it of its meaning and value. The exponents of Independent Working Class Education set out determined to preserve their independence ; but they also wanted to succeed and show tangible results, a very human but, nevertheless, dangerous weakness. The price of independence in the existing state of working class indifference and political backwardness is to be “left outside the main field of Trade Union Educational activity,” and the N.C.L.C. and the Plebs have just decided that the price is too great.

Original approach (1979)

Book Review from the April 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Understanding Marxism: An approach through Dialogue. Harry Eddy. Blackwell 1979 (£2.95 paper)

This little book is certainly original. It takes the Socratic form of a three-cornered discussion on Marxist Philosophy, Historical Materialism, the Class Struggle, the State, Ideology. Religion, Scientific Socialism, Capitalism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Whether the text is an actual record of what took place is not stated, but the discussions were sent to all the study groups of the Workers’ Educational Association in Sydney, Australia, as material for a study course, and are well worth application by branches of the SPGB.

The speakers consist of a self-styled “Marxist”, an anti-Marxist, and a novice who interjects every now and again ‘‘what does that mean?” The book has the merit of extremely simplified, direct language and the interruptions (“I don't get that point") enable the speakers to reiterate their arguments.

The text is remarkable for its complete omission of any mention of Marx’s economics, the corner-stone of his system. Most of the latter half deals with Lenin’s aberrations from, and distortions of, Marxism, particularly with reference to the ‘‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’’, quoting one of the best books on the subject. Lucien Laurat's Marxism and Demoncracy.

The book is not without other defects; the Marxist speaker (Allen) holds that Marxism cannot prove objectivity, because Lenin said so. As is well known, Marx wrote that "the point is to change the world, not interpret it.” He never proclaimed that capitalism would collapse, neither for that matter did Lenin. Socialism is not the common ownership of “means of exchange", which it will abolish. It is not right that all the "Marxists” (meaning people calling themselves that) told Lenin that Socialism could not be established in Russia in 1917. The British Socialist Party went overboard for Leninism, forming the Communist Party.

The Socialist Labour Party said in The Socialist that the Russian Soviets represented De Leonism (SLP) applied to Russia. At least half the ILP supported the Bolsheviks. A huge congress was held in Leeds, attended by Ramsay Macdonald. Sydney Webb, national trade union leaders, writers and politicians, which passed resolutions calling for "Soviets in Britain”. There was one group in Britain which did not support the idea of Socialism in Russia in 1917. It was The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Horatio.

Workers’ education (2014)

Book Review from the May 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Poor Stockinger, the Luddite Cropper and the Deluded Followers of Joanna Southcott’, by Luke Fowler. Contributors Tom Steele and Owen Hatherley; published by Film and Video Umbrella, The Hepworth Wakefield and Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 2013, 80 pages, £7.50

This short booklet accompanies Luke Fowler’s film of the historian EP Thompson as a champion of workers’ education. The booklet contains the essay ‘EP Thompson, the WEA and Radical Workers’ Education in Yorkshire’ by Tom Steele. Steele’s essay covers ‘The WEA and University Education for Workers and George Thompson – Rebellion in Yorkshire’. The WEA had its origin in 1903 as the Association to Promote the Higher Education of Working Men set up by Albert Mansbridge.

Steele writes about an important figure in WEA history, a George Thompson (no relation to EP), a carpenter and WEA Yorkshire District Secretary from 1914-45 who was supported by Arthur Greenwood, Labour Party politician who would later hold Cabinet positions in MacDonald’s and Attlee’s Labour governments. George Thompson believed ‘the aim of workers’ education should be to enable the student to raise not rise out of his class. The education he received was not intended for personal advancement but as trust for the good of others, and workers’ education was not to de-class the student but to deepen his understanding of class solidarity’ (JFC Harrison). However in Steele’s essay we can see the reformism of the WEA. The WEA Yorkshire District Commemoration Souvenir (1935) by Arthur Greenwood ‘could list no fewer than 350 past and present members of WEA classes currently holding public office, from the parish council to the House of Commons.’ Steele confirms that ‘the function of trade union education was to prepare organised labour for a role in government.’

It is with grim irony that ‘the more open form of class-sensitive cultural studies’ such as Culture and Society (1958) by Raymond Williams, The Uses of Literacy (1957) by Richard Hoggart, and The Making of the English Working Class (1962) by EP Thompson appeared at ‘the pivotal historical moment when Thompson’s digging into the historical origins of the working-class, and making a compelling narrative of its world-historical success in becoming a ‘class for itself’, tragically occurs just when working-class self-belief seems to be waning, and the WEA nationally had all but given up on the working-class.’

It is instructive to recall George Thompson who wrote in A Socialist’s View of the WEA: ‘Workers will only achieve emancipation when they are capable of thinking out issues for themselves and have the capacity and sufficient tolerance to achieve the ends collectively.’

Steve Clayton

The Poverty of Sociology (1976)

From the January 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

A member has written to us as follows:

   “I have just started a WEA course in Sociology and have purchased a copy of the book recommended by the author—Sociology: An Introductory Course by P. Selfe (Nelson £2).
    Page 1 defines Sociology. ‘It studies the behaviour of people in a careful and scientific way. Sociologists study the way in which a society is organized', and so on.
      On page 55 we get a photograph of Marx and a chapter entitled ‘The Marxian Theory of Class’. It starts with definitions of the two main class groups and that Marx ‘argued that to own the means of production is to be in possession of political and economic power’. It goes on to say: ‘In his interpretation of history (which he claimed was a scientific interpretation) he placed a great deal of emphasis on the struggle between the owners of the means of production exploiting the class of wage earners. He predicted that after a succession of crises capitalism would collapse, a revolution would occur and power would be transferred to the proletariat, and a more egalitarian society would emerge. His concept of class was based on the single economic dimension — that of economic power. But sociologists do not consider that this alone is a satisfactory way of defining class membership. Furthermore, many of the predictions made by Marx in relation to his theory of class and social evolution have not been borne out. One can also question the extent to which it is possible to develop a “scientific view” of the unfolding of history and a blueprint for the ideal society. If you were to draw up a plan for the perfect society, how many of your friends would find it acceptable? Marx looked towards a society in which there would be complete equality between all citizens, no distinctions of status or class, total co-operation between all members, and the gradual elimination of any form of organized govrnment — the state eventually “withering away”. Some of his ideas have been put into a novel by William Morris entitled “News From Nowhere”.’ So much for Marx!
     As this purports to be written in ‘a careful and scientific way’, would you care to comment?”

The most illuminating thing about this summary is that practically every sentence is wrong, and a WEA student who learned it by heart would have acquired a collection of erroneous ideas about Marx.

Classes and History

“The Marxian theory of class” is a theory Marxists have not heard of before. Marx laid down two detailed propositions: the materialist conception of history and the labour theory of value. The first deals with the reasons why societies take the forms they do and why they change, and the second is his analysis of capitalism.

Marx did not argue “that to own the means of production is to be in possession of political and economic power”. The contrary is true. A class cannot make itself effective as the owners of the means of production and distribution until it obtains political power. A large part of political history is about struggles to that end. Numerous examples can be given. In Britain, the upheavals of the 17th and 18th centuries were for the breaking-down of the rule of the monarchy and aristocracy as an essential to the replacement of feudalism by capitalism. The French Revolution had the same purpose. Similarly, the establishment of Socialism requires a political act, the conquest of the powers of government, to replace class ownership with common ownership.

Nor is it correct that class is based on “economic power” (or that this phrase has any meaning). Class is the relationship of groups of people to the means of production. In capitalism there are two classes only, owners and non-owners — capitalist class and working class. Rather loftily, the writer says “sociologists do not consider” that this is a satisfactory definition of class — without explaining why. Certainly society is riddled with “false consciousness” of class: do sociologists accept these conditioned evaluations, or do they seek categories in “a careful and scientific way”? However, the alleged concern is to render Marx’s view, and his done—wrongly.

The writer shows another misconception in saying that “in his interpretation of history” Marx “placed a great deal of emphasis” on the struggle between those two classes. Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Prior to capitalism, many classes were involved. The critical struggles were not between slaves, plebeians or serfs and their masters, but between existing and aspiring ruling classes. Each time the outcome was, as The Communist Manifesto says, “either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” It is the class struggle under capitalism that is a confrontation between the owners of the means of production and wage-earners.

These mistaken observations are followed by a string of assertions which might be headed “fallacies about Marx”. First, Marx did not claim that as a result of crises capitalism would collapse. The idea of capitalism collapsing is drawn from a section in Volume III of Capital, “The Theory of the Law of the Falling Tendency of the Rate of Profit”; included in the chapter is a list of “counteracting causes”, which operate separately or together at different times against the tendency Marx described. Second, the sole avenue to revolution for Marx and Marxists is the working class organizing consciously: not to get “power transferred” to it (by whom?) but to take ownership and control of the means of living.

New World

To speak of a “more egalitarian” society “emerging” is completely misleading as to the nature of Socialism. Inequalities in society all arise from the single fundamental inequality between owners and non-owners of the means of production. When common ownership is established, all people then stand in the same relationship to society and its wealth. There is no question of inequalities being removed by degrees, as the words “more egalitarian” and “emerge” imply: they all go, as an organic consequence of the change.

The writer says Marx “looked towards” a society of complete equality in which there would also be “gradual elimination” of the state. It is true that when The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848 Marx and Engels had to take into account conditions which are now different; their preface to the 1872 edition observed that some measures they had proposed would be “very differently worded” after twenty-four years. They were perfectly aware, however of the state’s nature as “the executive committee of the ruling class” and that its function would end after the establishment of Socialism. Today we can say that would not be a gradual abolition but an immediate one.

The writer attributes to Marxism the idea of “a blueprint for the ideal society” and asks if people would find it acceptable. A reasonable question — only there is no blueprint; indeed, Engels pointed out that is was not Socialists’ business to provide “recipes for future cookshops”, or tell the working class what it was going to like. The outlines of Socialism, implicit in common ownership, are: complete equality; free access to all the wealth of society and consequently no money; the absence of the problems of capitalism — wars, economic crises, poverty and the countless problems associated with it. People are at liberty to infer or surmise details about work, social life and effects in personal relationships. The important point is that whatever vision is formulated is not a strait-jacket for the entire community; Socialism will afford not a single way but many ways of life. In that connection, a final error must be pointed out. News From Nowhere is Morris, not Marx. Morris said he had never read Marx; conceivably, Marx might not have cared for Morris’s enthusiasm for the mediaeval. But does the writer not think Socialists capable of independent thought?

This is, of course, only one of a great many cockeyed accounts of Marx. The majority are found in weightier works where the author is concerned to push an economic or political viewpoint and claims “scholarship” for misrepresentations. The serious thing about this book is that it is an elementary work for students, and for a good many will provide their only information about Marx. Where do these garbled snippets masquerading as “careful and scientific” knowledge come from? They are notes, passed on in endless scrappy courses. A lecturer who hasn’t read Marx gives out the notes and comments he took from his lecturer; his students reproduce them, and any who become lecturers hand them on; one writes a study-course incorporating them, and they are turned into notes again . . . It is like the party game where a message is whispered from ear to ear round a circle, for the fun of the inevitable distortions — “Going to advance, require reinforcements” comes out as “Going to a dance, need three and fourpence”.

Any WEA student is recommended to write to us for some pamphlets and issues of the Socialist Standard that will put him in the picture, as well as Marx’s own work. There is no substitute.

Robert Barltrop