Blood in the Mud (1958)

Film Review from the December 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

I don't like war films. But a Socialist will find much to interest them in "Blitzkrieg," even though it is the latest propaganda effort from Germany.

This film does not tell you anything about why the war arose. Nor does it ask how war can be avoided. But it gives, nevertheless, a devastating picture of what real war is like.

Propaganda films are interesting for one who does not take them at their face value, but recognises them as such. These pictures are made with the intention of making us think, and feel along certain lines. Knowing this beforehand, we can study the methods used by those who hope to influence us.

The makers of “Blitzkrieg” are “good German”a patriots. And, though they have used real news films from all countries in its production, their commentary (in English) is an alibi for their actions and for their defeat: Why did we Germans lose the war? Because of the mud and unending snow which trapped our tanks in the steppes of Russia: because the distances we had to cover were too vast; because of American superiority in production: because our allies—the Italian, the Hungarian and Rumanian troops—fought badly on the Eastern front; because Hitler was a very bad general, and a fanatic, whose strategy was disastrous: because he interfered constantly with the experts of the High Command: and because the Reds outnumbered our soldiers ten to one.

But—as we are incessantly reminded throughout the film—the brave German army and its heroic soldiers were never really defeated. They proved their worth . . . One German soldier is worth several Russians or Italians . . . one can almost hear the commentators say “ Wait till next time; when we try again—with the lessons in snow warfare which we have learnt at such a cost, and with the armed might of Britain and America behind us instead of against us—we shall beat the Russians.”

What caused the war? What were the interests at stake that persuaded the British and German ruling classes to spend so much money fighting each other?

For the Socialist the essential lies in what the film conveniently omits to tell us: How the German Capitalists, undoubtedly with the approval of a good many German people, exterminated millions of Russians, Jews, and Gypsies—and why; how they terrorised and tortured and murdered tens of thousands of German and other Communists, pacifists, and other opponents. It does not tell us of the huge numbers of patriotic men who returned from the war legless, armless, and worse; nor are we shown how the leaders of each country, Nazi and Labour Party leaders, Communists, Christians, Conservatives and Fascists enthusiastically urged the peoples of the world to butcher each other.

What we Socialists are opposed to are the implications that are behind these war films. They are an attempt to justify a past war in order to make a future once more acceptable and they do so by playing on the emotions of the filmgoer. The film is good. But the better it is the more dangerous it is to human well-being. War films are made to glorify war. The majority of those watching no doubt identify themselves with the hero, whether the hero be an individual or army. It is they who, in imagination, perform those deeds of valour, which stripped of their glory, are nothing but killing and terror. This picture is no exception to the rule, and is essentially similar in outlook to British and American war films.

War films reinforce thinking in terms of nationalism and the fake ideals for which fie various countries profess to fight. Films such as this help to prepare people for war, and educate them in its basic ideas: they justify the struggles of the ruling class and they present war as inevitable. And, when they shout “Égalité, Fraternité, Liberté! ” they mean “Infantry, Artillery and Cavalry."

H. L. R.

Seven Days for Socialism (1967)

Party News from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

London

The main meeting of the week was a “Four Party Forum” on Monday, 19th September at head office in Clapham. About forty people came along to hear H. Baldwin speak for the SPGB in opposition to a local Tory councillor and the National Chairman of the Young Liberals. The Labour party speaker failed to attend. Reports of this meeting appeared in several South London newspapers.

Outdoor meetings were held each night from Monday to Friday at Earls Court, these being supported in turn by West London, Greenford, South-West London and Paddington branches. A consistently good turn-out by members resulted in over 150 Socialist Standards being sold at these meetings.

In addition there were the normal weekly meetings held at East St., Walworth (Sunday), Lincoln’s Inn Fields (Monday), Tower Hill (Thursday) and Hyde Park (Sunday). In this same week SPGB speakers also addressed a number of youth political organisations, such as the Kingston and Malden Young Socialists and the Southend Young Liberals.

Glasgow

Glasgow branch started their campaign with a meeting at the McLellan Galleries on ‘The Challenge of Socialism’. About sixty people came along to hear the socialist case. On Tuesday, 20th September there was a literature drive in Ruchill ward and this was followed on the next day by a very successful indoor meeting at the Dixon Halls, Cathcart.

On top of this Glasgow members were busy bill-posting and distributing leaflets. Over the weekend period four outdoor meetings were held in Glasgow' and another two in Edinburgh. 120 Socialist Standard and Western Socialists were sold during the week.

Swansea

Our comrades in Swansea were less successful. Despite advertisements in the local press, only ten people turned up to the indoor meeting they had organised. Nevertheless, our comrade Ambridge spoke on the subject of socialism to this small but interested audience.

Belfast

The Belfast branch of the World Socialist Party of Ireland made its usual herculean efforts to get the most out of their campaign. Literature drives covered the Duncairn, Falls, Stranmillis and Ormeau districts of Belfast as well as Larne. A number of indoor meetings were held despite the attempts of religious bigots ("devout believers in capitalism", as one Belfast member put it) to wreck these. Unfortunately, it was impossible to organise any outdoor meetings because these are at present banned by the city authorities. However, the branch did prepare and distribute a special ‘Seven Days for Socialism’ leaflet.

In all a worthwhile effort and a useful limbering-up for the week of activities which is proposed for May, 1967.

Propaganda Committee

The Extent of Poverty (1967)

From the February 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let us get one or two ideas straight first of all. Poverty is a conditions from which all workers suffer to some extent or another. It is a basic factor of working class existence, whether you are comparatively high or low-paid. Take the word at its full meaning “want of means” and you will see that our claim is justified, for any person who has to depend on a wage or salary for a living must have a restricted access to the means of life, and can never broaden the access sufficiently to enable him to live without the need to work if he wishes. “If poverty is relative” said Professor Townsend recently, “standards are largely determined by the income, wealth, living standards and expectations of the rich.”

How right he was. Yet because of a mixture of ignorance, confusion and petty snobbery, this important fact has been overlooked. And matters have not been helped by the arrival of ‘social security’ schemes since the end of the second world war; to the popular mind, poverty has become synonymous with destitution. The Labour Party must take no small share of the blame for fostering such an attitude. Their policy statement Labour and the New Society, published in 1950, carried the claim, for example, that “Destitution has been abolished.”

Well let us see how such a statement stands up to examination in the capitalism of the sixties. The Board of Inland Revenue report for 1963-4 showed between six and seven million people with a yearly income, before tax, of less than £275. Another 4½ million received between £300 and £500, and ten million were in the £500-£l,000 range. At the other end of the scale, about ten thousand people enjoyed (there is no other word for it) a yearly income of £15,000 or more. In fact an appraisal of the Board’s figures made by The Economist (26.2.65), suggested that two thirds of Britain’s population had no wealth worth reckoning at all.

So much for the cold hard statistics after centuries of reform and a post-war national insurance scheme, the like of which we have never seen before in this country. Now what does it all mean in terms of human suffering and degradation? You can take your pick from a mass of material appearing in the national press over the past year or two, which seems to have touched on most aspects of the misery of being poor. Running like a thread through all these articles, incidentally, is an implied astonishment that such problems still exist. Only the Socialist does not share the astonishment. The Guardian (18.7.64) for example, spoke of ‘a surprising number' of schoolchildren in some areas needing free meals at school; it mentioned also an increasing demand for local authority handouts of free clothing and shoes. Taking the Don Valley area of Yorkshire as only one instance:

In 1958-59, 200 applications for clothing and shoes were granted; in 1963-64 the figure was 500. In 1961, 2,325 children were receiving free meals; in 1962 this figure rose to 2,500.

It has been found that many truancies from school have been because the children had no shoes to wear. Having grown out of their old ones, their parents were often too poor to buy them a new pair. This point was made in The Poor and The Poorest, a report published at the end of 1965 by Professors Townsend and Abel-Smith. They defined poverty as ‘less than 140 per cent of the basic National Assistance scale, plus housing and other costs' and on this basis, estimated the number of poor people at nearly seven millions —a rise of two per cent in the ten years ending 1960.

In a letter to The Guardian (22.11.66), Professor Townsend severely criticised government departments for the inadequacy of their surveys on the poverty problem, and mentioned specially the question of nutrition. He pointed out that in the lowest income group families (under £15 a week), there was a protein deficiency in their diets of ten per cent and a calcium deficiency of sixteen per cent. In down-to-earth terms, this means meals of baked beans and chips or bread and jam for your children, and virtually nothing for yourself, like the young mother mentioned by Jean Stead (Guardian, 2.2.66):

. . .  who is 28, looks as if she was once very pretty, but now she is worn and undernourished and her top teeth are missing. She lives on tea and cigarettes, like most mothers in poor families, and rarely has a proper meal. Cigarettes kill the appetite.

So we can begin to appreciate the all-pervasiveness of the poverty condition; there is not a single aspect of our lives it will not touch — and degrade — to some extent or another, depending on our particular position in the income scale. Food, clothing, housing, the bare necessities, and the amenities like holidays or a night at the cinema, nothing can escape. The whole quality of our life suffers.

There are those who have even let go of a once-tenuous hold on impoverished respectability and become ‘drifters’, homeless ones often sleeping rough, unable to compete in the struggle to make both ends meet. An official report published last November (which was criticised for being too low in its estimate) mentioned about 13,500 people who were without accommodation when they applied for National Assistance during a week at the beginning of December 1965. With a priggish disdain so typical of that paper, Guardian writer John Fairhall refers to them as ‘derelicts swilling about at the very bottom of the barrel.’

And having told us about the evil in no uncertain terms, what answer have the experts? The usual palliatives are offered and impertinently described as ‘fundamental’ by their authors; yet none of them could do other than keep the poor that way. For example: '. . .  more decent housing for low-wage families at rents they can afford’ (Abel-Smith, Weekend Telegraph, 25.11.66). The truth is that like so many of capitalism’s problems, this one is gigantic. Eighteen per cent of all households in the U.K. are said to be living below National Assistance levels, and such is the depth of their poverty, that it would cost about £500 millions a year just to relieve the effects on their children. In face of such terrifying facts, the “experts” have no answer.

As we said at the beginning, poverty goes hand in hand with wage slavery at whatever income level. True, not every worker suffers as much as those we have mentioned, but capitalism exerts a downward pressure on all of us and no government can do very much about it. Captured in the phraseology of Townsend (a long-standing Fabian and Labour supporter) the score reads something like this:

It will be one of the supreme paradoxes of history if social inequalities become wider instead of narrower, if poverty becomes more widespread, during the term of office of the present Labour Government. Yet the likelihood of this happening is far from remote.

Enough said.

Eddie Critichfield

The Passing Show: Continued . . . (1) (1967)

The Passing Show column from the March 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Continued . . . (1)

Last month, we published an article on British capital in India, and mentioned the nice fat rake off which U.K. capitalists are getting from the exploitation of the Indian workers. We exposed the myth of foreign 'aid’, and pointed out that money spent in India by foreign or native capitalists was for the good old-fashioned purpose of realising a profit.

This is not the impression which governments try to foster, of course. To listen to the bleats of our statesmen, you could be forgiven for thinking that investments abroad are an act of gigantic generosity, aimed only at uplifting the native workers in a land starved of home-grown capital. But this does not explain why the Indian ruling class have done so nicely out of the transactions, and their workers have remained so desperately poor.

In fact, the Indian capitalist class, who have been talking for some time about massively increasing their share of the world export market (see this column October last), now look like taking a leaf out of their foreign competitor's books. They have begun to invest abroad —in Great Britain of all places. A report in The Sunday Times of January 22nd, informs us of an asbestos-cement products factory to be set up near Edinburgh by Birla Bros of Calcutta.

The plant and machinery, costing about £300,000, is being shipped from India. The factory will employ about sixty people, all of whom will be recruited locally.

It is described as the first major Indian investment project in Britain, and no doubt it will be followed by others, part of the development pattern of any capitalist class sooner or later, in its search for suitable fields of re-investment abroad. Possibly some of the profits from British investment in India could be used in the same way. Having been obtained in the first place from the exploitation of British workers, they then play their part in the same process in India and elsewhere, and the profits which subsequently accrue could find their way (at least in part) back to Britain, to continue the sordid business.

It's an ironic and sobering thought, and supports a contention we have always held; that capital exists to exploit the working class, not uplift them. The capitalist class of any country will not be particularly fussy about patriotism when it comes to grabbing a profit. They spend their money in any country so long as a profit is forthcoming.


Continued . . . (2)

It seems that hardly have we uttered some words when they are out of date, or at least need supplementing. In ‘Thoughts on Youth and Age’ (last month) we drew attention to the importance of the teenage market to the capitalist class, but we never gave a thought to that of the ‘pre-teens'. And now, The Observer colour supplement (5.2.67) has beaten us to it. “Big business . . .  has discovered that the little mites are big spenders”, says a report by Ruth Inglis.

In America, for example, the market is estimated at £360,000,000 a year. No comparable figure has been worked out for Britain, but all are agreed there’s quite a bit of pocket money to be mopped up there too. So our rulers are not over-squeamish about the ‘innocence’ of childhood, and all that rot. From books to Batman shirts, they will compete for the schoolkid’s half-crown, and where possible will try to bolster demand, perhaps by sophisticating tastes; one cosmetics firm is going to bring out a range of lipsticks for the girls.

Ruth Inglis expresses surprise that “business men in this country too, are starting to discover and exploit the pre-teen market.” But we do not share her astonishment, because you cannot expect capitalist society to work any differently. Everything gets defiled sooner or later. It’s just a matter of trying to guess where the next blow will fall. And just in case you got the impression from our February article that old people have been written off as a market, take a look at some of the adverts in The Pensioners' Voice sometime. They’re even after the few bob you get when you’re on the scrap-heap.


H.R.H.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s image—no doubt cultivated assiduously by the publicity boys—is one of an ever-youthful, ever-witty man, ever-pertinent in what he says. It is an ever-irritating picture.

But in his role of glorified travelling salesman for the British capitalist class (‘merchant prince’ he recently called himself), he generally says what is required of him. He must be careful to push Britain’s interests while beaming good humour and making harmless ‘funnies’ on the side. Just occasionally, he might overstep the mark, such as he did two or three years ago when he told us all to ‘get our fingers out’ and work harder. But it passed off without any great fuss, and H.R.H. is still making speeches, probably as many as the Queen herself—or not far short of it anyway.

The Duke is a very useful speech- maker. the image of a modem ‘with it’ Royalty, and as we have said, faithfully echoing current British government thinking in his words. Like his effort on December 20th last at a dinner in Paris, held to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Association of France-Grande Bretagne. (Strange how these dignitaries like to lecture us from the banquet table; earlier he had been de Gaulle's guest at a luncheon in the Grand Trianon at Versailles). He pleaded that “we should have a strong faith in Europe, and confidence in each other, based on knowledge and understanding.” (Times 21.12.66.)

Now you can make what you like of that. Taken by itself it sounds like so much pious waffle, and doesn’t make any worthwhile difference to you and me anyway. But the British capitalist class are having another go at entering the European Common Market and the Duke’s words then fit into the general sounding out of their stubborn opponent. Hence also Prince Phillip’s later remarks:

 “Neither Britain nor any European country can stand alone in the world any more.”

More recently, there was what the newspapers liked to call that ‘hard hitting’ speech on February 9th, when he told five hundred leading British exporters how we are all in the soup together, and that all sections must co-operate to get out of it. There were other remarks, not particularly noteworthy for their originality, such as: “None of us has a monopoly of all the virtues, however much we like to think so.” Blowing his top, thought one paper, but again he said nothing more than what government spokesmen have been saying in one way or another for years.

Yes, a very faithful servant of the British ruling class, the Duke, and a man who takes an obvious interest in his job. Not surprising, though, is it? He’s about the only man in Britain whose interests are identical with those of his employers.

Eddie Critchfield

Greater London Council Elections: Socialism - One People, One World (1967)

Election Manifesto from the April 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

This manifesto is the basis of the election addresses of the Socialist Party candidates in Camden, Ealing, Haringey and Lambeth

WHO ARE THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GT. BRITAIN ?

In this election, many of you are probably hearing of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain for the first time, and connecting us with the Labour Party or with state capitalist Russia. First of all, then, a few facts about us.

The Socialist Party was formed in 1904. We are completely independent of all other parties, except for our companion Socialist organisations abroad. We are, and always have been, opposed to the other parties, including the Labour Party and the so-called Communist Party. There is a very simple reason for this. They, whatever they say, stand for capitalism — where the means of living are the property of a privileged class. We, on the other, stand for Socialism — a world society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution, where wealth will be produced solely for use.

WHY ARE WE FIGHTING THIS ELECTION?

Firstly, the Socialist Party is a political party — we have an object which can only be achieved through political means. Political power is controlled, of course, through Parliament but local councils play an important part in applying many of the laws which are made in Parliament and they can make by-laws. Councils, in other words, are part of the machinery of political power which the working class must take over to establish Socialism.

Secondly, the social change from capitalism to Socialism can only be brought about by democratic means. The vote is not a mere scrap of paper. It can be the means to bring about this change when once a majority of the working class want it. For, until a majority want Socialism it is out of the question.

WHY SOCIALISM?

This manifesto is addressed to members of the working class — all those men and women who are forced to work for wages or salaries in order to live.

Everyone is familiar by now with what the other parties promise — a solution of the housing problem, more roads, more hospitals, better schooling. We also know the results of these promises.

The housing situation is as desperate as ever; slums are forming faster than new houses are being built, there are thousands of homeless families broken up in hostels and homes, many councils have closed their housing lists with thousands of families still unable even to get a place in the queue. One fact which no other party makes clear, however, is that housing is a problem which only affects the working class; it is part of their poverty. Rich people simply do not know what it is to plead for a home, nor to live in the inferior, poky boxes which are considered fit for most members of the working class.

The roads are becoming increasingly congested and the motor car continues to encroach upon our environment. There was once a plan — the Buchanan Report — which put forward some ideas about tackling this problem but its suggestions would have cost a lot of money — nearly as much as the government spends each year on armaments and the armed forces. But even this makeshift has been forgotten.

Hospitals are still inadequate, many of them in ancient buildings run by overworked staff. No wonder the waiting list is so long, with so little hope of it ever being broken down. Here again, the rich person does not have the same problem; money can easily buy prompt and expert medical attention, in a private ward and with privileged treatment.

It is a similar story with education. Working class children are taught enough for them to take their place in the factory or the office, at the drawing board or in the laboratory. They often get their schooling in out of date buildings in an overcrowded classroom under an overworked teacher. The children of the rich are educated in expensive schools where they are given every chance to develop their abilities.

The other parties fail to solve these problems, not through any lack of sincerity. They are pledged to support capitalism, which has its own system of priorities. Roads and schools and houses and hospitals may be very desirable but capitalism produces primarily for profit, which means that human interests come a long way down the queue.

Socialism will end this. It will be a world of common ownership where human interests take first place, where wealth is made for people to enjoy it. It will be a world where goods and services will be in a common pool from which everyone will be able to draw freely to satisfy their needs without the intervention of money or any other means of exchange. Socialism will end the poverty which degrades people today and which restricts the majority to live in insecurity. It will end the economic rivalries which cause modern war. It will be a world with one people co-operating to run a society fit for human beings to live in.

SOCIALISTS REJECT RACIALISM

Many blame working class problems on the presence of immigrants. In fact, there was a shortage of housing, hospitals and so on before the immigrants came; these social problems have their roots in capitalist society and exist all over the world, whether a country loses people as emigrants or accepts them as immigrants. The pseudo-scientific nonsense which some parties use to support their racialist arguments have no evidence in their favour. Finally, racialism is an insidious trap for the working class; the problems of capitalism are international and can be solved only by all workers, whatever their colour, co-operating to abolish capitalism and to replace it with Socialism.

WE MAKE NO PROMISES

Socialism can be a reality if, and only if, you want it. The Socialist Party makes no promises; we do not offer ourselves as leaders; we do not claim to be able to do anything for you. Nor do we cadge for your vote. Let us be clear on this: Only when the working class understand what Socialism is, will capitalism be abolished. So vote for the Socialist candidates only if you understand and want Socialism.

GLC Elections 13 April 1967 (1967)

Election News from the April 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Gt. Britain is planning to contest 14 seats in the coming GLC elections; the full numbers of candidates will be put forward in the following areas; Camden (3), Ealing (4), Haringey (3) and Lambeth (4).

At a much lower cost, this affords the Party an opportunity of putting its case before thousands of people. This requires money and effort. Please send all donations to E. Lake, 52 Clapham High Street SW4—marked ‘Election Fund.' Now, as regards the effort 80,000 envelopes have to be addressed to take our literature. Canvassing is always a vital part of our election campaigns. Meetings are being held and need support It is now up to members and sympathisers to make the venture successful.

The bulk of the work will be done by the branches in the areas concerned. These are Paddington and Bloomsbury (Camden); Greenford and West London (Ealing); Haringey (Haringey); and South West London (Lambeth). Those interested in further details can contact the secretaries of these branches.

CAMDEN

Candidates: W. Buchanan; T. Giles; E. Grant.

Agent: C. May.

For information: WIL. 3437 (Evenings only).

EALING

Candidates: L. Cox; P. George; W. Rose; A. Waite.

Agent: M. Edwards.

For information: SOU. 8584 (Evenings only).

HARINGEY

Candidates: A. Buick; J. Carter; M. Davies.

Agent: J. Vein.

For information: EDM. 1530 (Evenings only).

LAMBETH

Candidates: H. Baldwin; J. Garnham; V. Phillips; M. Sansum.

Agent: J. Crump.

For information: MAC 3811

Election Meetings

CAMDEN

Monday April 10th 8 pm 

Central Library, Swiss Cottage 

SOCIALISM 1967 

The Socialist Candidates will be pleased to answer your questions.

EALING

Monday April 10th 7 30 pm 

Ealing Town Hall

CHALLENGE MEETING

LAMBETH

Monday April 3rd 8 p.m.

52 Clapham High Street, SW4 

Local Problems and Socialism (Housing, Education etc.)

Monday April 10th 8 pm 

Lambeth Town Hall 

The Socialist candidates will speak on Capitalism and Socialism

Wednesday April 12th 8 pm 

52 Clapham High Street, SW4 

Eve of Poll Meeting

FOR FURTHER ACTIVITIES 

CONTACT LOCAL CENTRES 

SEE TELEPHONES ON LEFT

London goes Tory (1967)

From the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Tories have won complete control of London government. Not only have they captured the Greater London Council by 82 seats to 18 but they will now also control the Inner London Education Authority. Labour lost 46 seats and has been reduced to only six boroughs in the East of London. No wonder the papers spoke of a massacre.

People are obviously fed up with Labour rule, with what Labour has had to do in running capitalism on the national level. Labour failed to honour its promises and, worse, took steps to cut living standards. At best the results show that there is a limit to the extent the working class will allow themselves to be pushed around by any government. Though it is sad to think that this takes the form of returning the Tories, the traditional party of social inequality and privilege.

For the record, let us set down some of the Tory promises. They say that they will, among other things

—improve road and traffic conditions,
—take realistic action to solve London’s housing problems.
—provide better educational opportunities for our children.

We can safely say that the Tories won’t be able to do these locally any more than Labour can nationally. To the sceptic we can only say: wait and see.

A notable feature of this election was that some three quarters of a million people were given the chance to show if they wanted Socialism. Only a few thousand indicated that they did and many of these, like the supporters of the other parties, seemed to have been confused by the long list of names without party labels on the ballot papers.

The results for the four boroughs in which the 14 Socialist Party of Gt. Britain candidates stood were:

HARINGEY (3 seats)

Rains (Con.) 35.073: Gilley (Con.) 34.635: Malynn (Con.) 34.437; Remington (Lab) 27,057; Vitoria (Lab) 26,599; Dimson (Lab) 25,878; Goode (Lib) 3.493; Lambton (Lib) 3.451; Parker (Lib) 3,100; Ramsay (CPGB) 2,820; Buick (SPGB) 1,277; Carter (SPGB) 1,191; Davies (SPGB) 1,067.

CAMDEN (3 seats)

Butterfield (Con.) 32,375; Townsend (Con.) 32,216. Mansel (Con.) 31,587; O’Connor (Lab) 28,504; Campbell (Lab) 27,923; Bondy (Lab) 27,284; Willett (Lib) 4,911; Bevan (Lib) 4,269; Cook (Lib) 4,187; Nicolson (CPGB) 2,133; Buchanan (SPGB) 907; Grant (SPGB) 419; Giles (SPGB) 411.

EALING (4 seats)

Fletcher (Con.) 53,539; Gaffney (Con.) 52,965: Grahm (Con.) 52,142; Leach (Con.) 51,912; Franks (Lab) 35,468; Anderson (Lab) 35,379; Higgins (Lab) 35,141; Palmer (Lab) 34,512; Garden (Lib) 5.201; Lewisohn (Lib) 4,937; Stewart-Deane (Lib) 4,753; Smith (Lib) 4,643; Bean (National Front) 2,164; Holbrook (National Front) 1,690; Kemp (National Front) 1,665; Downton (Union Movement) 1,290; Tank (CPGB) 1,274; Cox (SPGB) 1,250; George (SPGB) 1,107; Rose (SPGB) 611; Waite (SPGB) 441.

LAMBETH (4 seats)

Gumbel (Con.) 45,371; Livingstone (Con.) 45,140; Vaughan (Con.) 44,912; Pattie (Con.) 44,438; Humphrey (Lab) 32,332; Mishcon (Lab) 31,706; Melman (Lab) 31,220; Serota (Lab) 31.079; Dudley (Lib) 4,428; Hawthorne (Lib) 4,267; Monteath (Lib) 3.580: Wagman (Lib) 3 457; Hope (CPGB) 1,620; Garnham (SPGB) 1,362; Styles (CPGB) 1.361; Baldwin (SPGB) 1,202; Phillips (SPGB) 970; Sansum (SPGB) 806.

Obituary: Alex Shaw (1967)

Obituary from the June 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death occurred late last year of Alex Shaw, veteran member of Glasgow Branch. Alex joined the party over 40 years ago and was an active member for most of that time.

Alex was particularly active during the “Red” Clydeside era. and so much was he associated with the Party here in those days, that wags dubbed us the “Shawcialist Party. Indeed Alex Shaw was still speaking publicly up to the last, and Glasgow members heard him in excellent form only two days before his death.

The stories concerning Alex are legion and although well worth the telling there is not the space here. Suffice to say he was the most humorous speaker this writer ever heard.

We, in Glasgow, will always remember his contribution to Socialism and extend to his widow and family our deep sympathy.

Poverty (1967)

Pamphlet Review from the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poverty, Socialism and Labour in Power by Peter Townsend (Fabian Society.)

This Fabian tract is based on a lecture given in November 1966 by Professor Peter Townsend of the University of Essex. It gives ample evidence of the existence of poverty—and worse—says absolutely nothing about Socialism and demonstrates the failure of Labour in power.

Reviewing a wide field—income distribution, retired persons, fatherless families, the sick, the unemployed—Townsend examines housing, education and nutrition. “Not only are the numbers of poor large,” he says, “they are almost certainly growing.”

In Townsend’s view, “By the late 1950’s the Labour Party had begun to develop a coherent strategy for dealing with poverty. Of the statements published . . .  before October 1964 the most radical was probably Signposts For the Sixties.” His proposals are similar to Labour’s: increased family allowances are “most urgent”; he wants general pensions and allowances for “the long term sick and those disabled in civil life”; regular state allowances for fatherless families; the end of the “wage stop” in supplementary benefits and earnings related unemployment and sickness schemes.

Leaving aside the matter of why the Labour Party has failed to solve the problem of destitution, let us ask the question; would the complete introduction of their programme—indeed of Professor Townsend’s — abolish poverty, abolish the economic and social problems of the working class? The answer is no.

Poverty is suffered by all workers, to a greater or lesser degree. Sometimes it comes as bad housing, malnutrition, inferior schools, inadequate clothing or as fear of what the future holds. These problems, which are unknown to members of the capitalist class, spring from the class division of society.

What has Townsend got to say about this? “Structure determines poverty” — without apparently recognising what that structure is. In 1936 (see The Distribution of National Capital — Daniels and Campion) five per cent of the population owned 80 per cent of the national capital; according to Townsend “Real income re-distribution does not seem to have markedly changed since before the war.” Since the cause of poverty is still there, then, the problem will continue.

Why do different workers suffer different degrees of poverty? All of them have the same problem—of getting the best possible price for their mental and physical energies. If they can’t sell those energies they are unemployed. If they can sell, in the long run their wage is fixed by the value of their labour power. Highly skilled surgeons and erudite professors of sociology are paid more than farm workers and builders' labourers because more effort is needed to produce their particular types of skill.

Workers who suffer extreme poverty —destitution—are those who are unable to work, or whose energies are not in any great demand. Townsend’s solution is to pay lower wages to highly skilled managers and “professional” workers who, he asserts, gain at the expense of the low-wage earners, the children in large families and the sick and disabled.

The short term effect of this can only be, as we said in our pamphlet Beveridge Reorganises Poverty, “a redistribution of misery”. The total poverty of the working class would remain the same. Why does not Townsend suggest rent, interest and profit as a source for redistribution, for increasing low income? Perhaps he recognises these as the source of new capital, so vital to capitalist society.

Townsend does not recognise that the problems of capitalism spring from its basic structure. His tract is but another contribution from one who wants to reform or modify some aspects of capitalism. The only thing to recommend it is the fact that it provides valuable evidence, from a supporter of the Labour Party, that all is not well in Harold Wilson’s heaven. It shows that a Labour government has not eliminated destitution, that “social security” has failed and it supports the case that as long as capitalism lasts poverty will be widespread.

Ken Knight

Russia 1917: As We Saw It (2017)

From the August 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the time the piece on General Korniloff was published, he had staged, in August, a failed putsch to overthrow Kerensky who by then was Prime Minister.

The tit-bits that appear in the newspapers here regarding Russia and the revolution are of a very contradictory nature. However, some very interesting quotations do occasionally creep into the columns of the Press, as instance the following:

'The organ of the Council of Soldiers and Workmen's Delegates, after quoting two English newspapers to the effect that the declaration of the Provisional Government and the pronouncements of the revolutionary leaders show that the Russian peace formula coincides with the British and French war aims, says:

"You are deceiving yourselves, gentlemen, or, rather, you are vainly striving to delude your fellow-countrymen concerning the real policy of the Russian revolution. The revolution will not sacrifice a single soldier to help you repair "historic injustices" committed against you. What about the "historic injustices" committed by yourselves and your violent oppression of Ireland, India, Egypt, and innumerable peoples inhabiting all the continents of the world? If you are so anxious for 'justice' that you are prepared, in its name, to send millions of people to the grave, then, gentlemen, begin with yourselves."―(Daily News, May 30th, 1917)

After well chewing this delectable morsel I can quite conceive the need for sending the decoy ducks, Thorne, Henderson & Co., to Petrograd to counteract this rather frank statement of Russian opinion concerning the aspirations of their British and French Allies. Ireland, India, and Egypt! A hit, a palpable hit, my masters! 

(Socialist Standard, July 1917)

'Quite recently one of the regiments of Siberian Rifles, which had fought so splendidly at the beginning of the revolution, abandoned the Riga front, and nothing else but the order to exterminate the whole regiment availed to make it return to its positions'—(General Korniloff, Russian Commander. in-Chief, at the Moscow Conference).

A side-light, this, on the way "heroes" are made. Had these men stood out against the order of "Comrade" Kerensky's colleague in butchery and been exterminated, the world's skunk Press would have been howling "cowards! traitors!" over their reeking corpses. But they chose the un-heroic part, and so will yet become ''heroes'' and ''high-souled patriots," "going into battle with joy," and "making the great sacrifice" for Holy Russia. So it is in all countries. Apart from individuals, the highest courage is to be found farthest back from the trenches. It reaches a high level at "Staff Headquarters," where ornamental soldiers of blood "win their spurs" without losing their lives, and it reaches sublimity as far back as Fleet Street and the Cabinet chamber. But the nearer the front it is the more it has to be manufactured by making the soldier more afraid of his own tyrants than of the "enemy".

 (Socialist Standard, September 1917).

Boring from Within (1967)

From the August 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among members of the Labour Party are some who, while admitting that Labour is not Socialist and cannot be an instrument for Socialism, still say that it is the party which, at the present time, Socialists should join. One particular group of such people is centred on the quarterly journal International Socialism. Their argument is well summarised in an article by P. Mansell "Work in the Labour Party’’ in their publication Socialist Review:

   Reformist illusions in the working class go very deep. They can be shattered only by experience. Reformism must be tried and found wanting.
   What must, at all costs, be avoided, is isolation from the mass of the workers and the development of their political consciousness.
   The Labour Party commands the allegiance—even if it is the pretty passive allegiance—of the great majority of the workers.

So, Socialists should join the Labour Party.

Let us concede that this argument is quite logical. What we are challenging in this article is not its logic but the assumptions on which it is based.

Who, first of all, are the working class? This is a basic question for all who claim to accept that “the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself’. There is, in Britain, a social group which is regarded and regards itself as “the working class” or “the working classes”. This group is made up of urban, industrial workers, the men and women who operate the machines and do the unskilled manual work in factories, mines, docks, railways and the like. However, it is not the method of the materialist conception of society to accept what people say about themselves. And, in fact, the class properly called the working class takes in many more than this. A class is made up of people who have a common economic interest because they stand in the same relation to the means of production. In Britain the social status group known as the “middle class” stands in exactly the same relation to the means of production as the so-called working class. Clerks, civil servants, technicians and managers all too have to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer to live. So the working class in Britain make up over ninety per cent of the people.

If this point is conceded and this broader concept of the working class accepted, then difficulties arise at a later stage in the argument. For it is just not true that “the great majority of the workers” support the Labour Party or look on it as theirs. The political allegiance of the working class is at present about evenly split between Labour and Tory with a substantial minority backing the Liberals. This means that if Socialists should be where the working class are they should be in the Tory and Liberal parties as well as in the Labour Party.

In fact International Socialism avoids this difficulty by assuming that the working class is confined to industrial workers. So they are saying the agent of social revolution is not to be the working class as a whole but only a section of it — a significant departure from the Marxian position and one which the Socialist Party rejects.

Secondly, what is meant by “experience”? It is of course quite true that the experience of workers under capitalism will, in the end, lead them to want to change society since all ideas arise from social and material conditions. However, in the argument, the word seems to have the special restricted meaning of direct, immediate experience. People, however, learn not only from their own experiences but also from the experience of others. Indeed the greater part of everybody's knowledge is that of others, inherited from the past and handed down by oral and written tradition. What distinguishes man from the other animals is his ability to generalise, to think abstractly. Lower animals do only learn from their own experiences, like Pavlov's dogs and circus animals. If you argue that the working class can learn "only by experience" you are reducing their intelligence to a very low level Lenin, whose ideas greatly influence boring-from-within groups, himself did not think much of the working class's intellectual capacities. He wrote in 1902 in his pamphlet What is To be Done?

The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.

T. Cliff, writing in International Socialism for Autumn 1960, employs an even more revealing analogy:

The role of the Marxists is to generalize the living, evolving experience of the class struggle, to give a conscious expression to the instinctive drive of the working class to reorganize society on a socialist basis.

Instinctive drive! The Socialist Party rejects this view which implies that the working class is a simple tool to be used by Socialists as a mass basis for their capture of power. The change from capitalism to Socialism can only be carried out consciously, as the conscious act of the great majority of the working class.

Finally, what is so special about Socialists? To argue that they should strive to avoid "isolation from the mass of the workers" is to assume that Socialists are not members of the working class; that they are people, whose ideas have evolved outside of the working class, who must strive to get into the working class and to impart to them Socialist consciousness.

The origin of this peculiar view of the role of Socialists is pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia and is outlined by Lenin in the above-mentioned pamphlet. In Tsarist Russia the bulk of the anti-Tsarist revolutionaries were members of "the intelligentsia". Intelligentsia is a Russian word and defined a peculiarly Russian social group composed of qualified, technical personnel of non-noble origin employed by the central and local government At one time, the revolutionary intelligentsia looked to the peasants as the mass basis for their insurrection. Later, some turned to the working class and dabbled in Marxist ideas. They were thus faced with the problem of how to get the working class to play the role they had allotted them. They did have the problem of how to make contact with the working class. Lenin refurbished an old Russian revolutionary idea of a party of professional revolutionaries which was to be the so-called vanguard of the working class.

Boring-from-within groups still seem to see Socialists as if they were Bolshevik professional revolutionaries trying to latch on to the working class. Socialists are not a special type of being whose ideas are formed in a different way from the rest of the working class. They are simply members of the working class who want and understand Socialism, faced with the problem of how to get their ideas over to the rest of the working class. To do this, they need take no special steps to be with the working class. They are already there.

What is the view of the Socialist Party? The Social revolution from capitalism to Socialism must be carried out by conscious democratic, political action. In other words, those who make the change must know what they are doing; must be in a majority; and must employ political means.

The task of Socialists at present, when they are a tiny minority, is to organise themselves in as effective a way as possible to put over the case for Socialism and to help the evolution of Socialist understanding. For this an independent political organisation and propaganda agency is best suited. This is the only organizational form which allows Socialists to express their views fully and freely, openly and honestly. If they were part of an organisation whose aims they did not share, Socialists would have to waste their time on the problems of that organisation, And besides, they would be associated with it and its failures.

This is not to lead an isolated existence. As already said, Socialists are members of the working class. In Britain there are many ways of getting ideas across to other workers; through your own journal, pamphlets and leaflets; through meetings indoor and outdoor; through canvassing and discussion. This is what the work of the Socialist Party is at the present time.

Further, we are a political party and as such contest elections in opposition to the other parties. Elections are about who shall control the state. At present, because the great majority of workers don't know what Socialism is or don't see it as a real alternative, they elect to office people pledged to run capitalism. Socialist Party members, however, vote only for Socialist candidates. We play no part in handing over political power to the capitalist class. Not so groups like International Socialism. In campaigning for Labour they are campaigning for one of the major parties committed to defending the interests of the capitalist class. They play their part, however little, in handing over power to political agents of the capitalist class to oppress and intimidate the working class with wage freezes and the like. For this reason alone, they forfeit the right to be called Socialists.

Adam Buick

Obituary: Freddie Adams (1967)

Obituary from the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our comrade Freddie Adams, of Haringey branch, died in hospital on June 12 at the age of 84. He joined the old Wood Green branch in 1910 and between the wars was involved in the central administration of party affairs as assistant and later as general secretary. After the war he was a regular attender and lecturer at Palmers Green branch. One of the last things he did for Socialism was to help in the GLC campaign in April by proposing, in accordance with the law, our three candidates in Haringey. He was very pleased that before he died he had the chance to cast his ballot for a Socialist world community.

What's Happening in China? (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is China communist? Look at the trouble in Hong Kong and you will get the answer.

It started in May with an industrial dispute between the employees of a factory and the owners over pay and conditions of work. The Hong Kong Communist Party used the dispute to make political capital and were backed by the Chinese Government on the Mainland. The rioting spread to a large overcrowded working-class area where many badly paid and frustrated young workers joined in. Some of the local capitalists panicked and prepared to move out; many rushed to change their local currency for gold. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange went dead, prices slumped and for a day or so not a single bargain was done.

As the British Administration of this Crown Colony cracked down heavily with police anti-riot squads on the dissatisfied workers, they probably silently sniggered at the Chinese Government’s dodge of using foreign adventures to divert the attention of the mainland workers from their problems at home—a dodge they would recognise as so often having been resorted to in the West.

The trouble continues with shots across the frontier, killing and wounding of workers in Hong Kong.

Mainland China is still in the throes of Red Guard trouble which at times appears almost like a civil war and the present seems a propitious time for analysing the origins and background of the Cultural Revolution, as this upheaval is euphemistically termed. Charges and counter-charges, vilification, discussion about The Thoughts of Mao and what he really means when correctly interpreted, all act as a smokescreen which conceals the basic differences, which are in fact largely economic, between the two groups of antagonists who are fighting to control China and impose their ideas of how capitalism should be developed there. This is the cause of the so-called Communist Party dividing into two mutually hostile groups, which, for simplicity’s sake we refer to as the old-time Communist Party leadership and the modern managerial elite.

The old-time members of the Communist Party organised the agrarian revolt throughout the countryside and finally won the civil war against the Nationalists in 1949 by the successful use of guerrilla fighting.

Both groups are agreed that war with the U.S.A. is inevitable. But the Old Guard plan that the professional army should absorb the brunt of the first shock of war but would be finally smashed. The army command should then knuckle-down and retreat—beaten—leaving the prosecution of the war in the hands of the guerrilla forces who they believe would eventually win.

These old campaigners, with their muddle-headed ideals and their fixed policies based on success in the now distant past in conditions that now no longer exist, have had their day. But like the old soldiers in the song, they never seem to die and are taking an unconscionable long time in fading away—too long for the likes of the up and coming management bureaucracy.

But the younger modern army officers are not taking this lying down—they are pressing forward to train the soldiers in the efficient technology of killing with modern equipment including the nuclear missiles which they are rapidly developing. They are horrified at the idea of confining their abilities to the training of an old fashioned amateur militia in what they regard as outmoded methods.

The Communist Party membership were drawn from the same class as the former mandarin administrators. For instance, Mao tse-Tung, who is a well-known poet and scholar, is the son of a landowner and employer of labour who could afford an expensive education for his son. Chou en-Lai, the Prime Minister, is a scion of a traditional mandarin family. The rest of the Party came from much the same background. So, the educated elite flocked in; the ordinary worker being conspicuous by his absence.

In the civil sector the Communist Party successfully roused the population to the policy of tighter belts and more work (so familiar to the workers of the West) by frenzied political exhortation.

The original leaders have remained practically unchanged in their ideas and policies, except, of course, that they are growing older (Mao tse-Tung, for instance, is 73).

But China, caught in the maelstrom of world capitalist techniques, developing with great' rapidity and, of course, in the concomitant power politics, is catching up with breathtaking speed.

The new bureaucracy of the Communist Party are not confined to the administration of the state machine; they are also in the management of the tremendous number of State Corporations running the factories, mines, transport, importing and exporting, and banks, in addition to the vast civil engineering enterprises. The young professional army officers of the 2½ million army, together with the allied nuclear missile scientists, are included in the elite.

These slick unprincipled executives, with a hankering for the good life and not for the continual sacrifices demanded by the Establishment, see the outdated policies of the old-timers as the burden of the past hanging around their necks like millstones and rendering these oldsters unsuitable for the important governing positions they still fill.

But they are as modern as their opposite numbers in Western Capitalism and trained in the sophisticated professional and management techniques, which owe very little to political haranguing in the efficient exploitation of the working-class.

At the heart of the political turmoil is the dispute over economics. Sun yeh-Fang, director of the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences, spokesman of the anti-Mao brigade, makes no secret of his views that China should be run by orthodox Capitalist economic policies:

  In deciding what projects should receive investment funds, the State should insist that priority be based on potential profits. Capital should go to those projects that promise the greatest returns—any other criterion, Sun says, will be disastrous.
  If there is any question of taking political factors into account, he seems to argue, these too should be weighed up on the basis of their implications for future profits. The hallowed slogan of “putting politics in command" is derided as the "lazy-bone's" economics. Sun believes that the “Law of Value” must guide the economy at every step. By this be appears to mean basing economic activities on their returns to the economy and letting prices reflect the need to regulate the economy on the principle of profitability. (Far Eastern Economic Review—2/2/67.).

Then there is the disaffection of the urban working class with their pay and conditions. By now granting improvements where they feel they have to, the management elite are rallying this expanding labour force under their banner, and thus putting another nail in the coffin of the die-hards.

The reason for Mao tse-Tung organising a separate Red Guard is that the Communist Party, of which he is nominally chairman, being largely composed of the new style bright young people, is not so amenable to his commands as formerly, and so he has had to go outside this organisation to create a loyal and reliable following.

So it seems that the present ruling group is in the process of losing the support of the educated elite, but whoever wins out in this internal struggle for power, Mao tse-Tung will be likely to stay in nominal control because of the great prestige that has made him so useful not merely as a labour leader but almost as a God—as their Prophet of “Communism”.

This process of building-up Mao as a combined labour-leader, soothsayer and general know-all has taken many years and a great deal of money to accomplish and cannot be thrown away. The agnostic authoritarian dogma of the Communist Party, so similar to the Confucianism which was used for training the elite in former times, needs a God as orthodox religion does and Mao tse-Tung fills this vacuum.

Whichever side wins it will not be the Chinese workers, either in the cities or on the farms, even if it is they who are doing the actual fighting and suffering the casualties. It is not their interests that are being fought for. But part of the profits of their exploitation will provide large salaries and emoluments for the high-ranking managerial and military echelons in addition to paying the interest on capital invested.

Frank Offord

The Bolshevik Revolution (1967)

From the November 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution is now with us, and again dramatic and romantic descriptions of the Bolshevik seizure of power will circulate. Lurid official paintings of the event, with Stalin well to the fore and Trotsky nowhere to be seen, will appear in the glossy magazines. In fact the events that took place in Petrograd on November 7 1917 (October 26 by the old Russian Calendar) were largely a noisy farce. What little bloodshed occurred was unnecessary, the result of muddle and hysteria.

The grand climax, the storming of the Winter Palace and the capture of the Provisional Government, had all the makings of a legend—the ultimatum, brought by two armed cyclists across the river from the fortress of St Peter and St. Paul, the opening of the bombardment from the fortress and from the cruiser Aurora, while the cruiser’s searchlights swept the city. Finally the Red Guards closing in to storm the place. All the time, of course, Lenin from the Smolny Institute was directing operations with an iron hand.

In reality the cruiser fired only blanks, while most of the shells from the fortress went anywhere but the Winter Palace. The defending troops had been melting away all day, and the remnants gave up without a fight. In the final scene the cabinet made a pathetic pretence of being in session when the Red Guards broke in and captured them. The real work of the revolution had lain in the months that had preceded it, and in the ruthless period of consolidation and repression that was to follow. On November 7 the only well organised body in Russia, the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, took the power from the nervous hands of a government whose writ hardly ran beyond the committee rooms of Petrograd.

The overthrow of the Tzar, in the February insurrection, had revealed a country in a state of complete collapse, politically and economically. When the Tzar departed the whole machinery of government went with him. The completely unbending nature of the autocracy had made it impossible for any of the opposition parties to obtain real political experience; consequently nobody had any clear idea of what to do. All authority had centred on the Tzar, so with the monarchy gone loyalties shifted about and swung from one rallying point to another.

The army, the mainstay of the Tzarist State, had been broken by the unparalleled slaughter of the past three years. The economy was in ruins. Once the lid was off, the repressed grievances of the workers and peasants burst out in numerous acts of violence. It was predictable that the first organised body strong enough to rally substantial support would take control. That body was the Bolsheviks.

The revolution had been quite spontaneous and unplanned, and while the victorious soldiers and workers thronged the streets there emerged what has become known as the dual power. Two centres of power arose in opposite wings of the Tauride Palace, both of them relics of the 1905 revolution.

One was the State Duma or Parliament, which was the only institution of the old autocratic government to survive. It had been very limited in its powers, it was based on an extremely restricted electorate, and had been set up as a sop to revolutionary feelings in 1905. Like the Parliaments in Tudor England it was called only when there was trouble such as the outbreak of war, and very little notice had been taken of it. The Duma was to become the nucleus of the new Provisional Government. Its members were drawn from the landowning and embroyo capitalist classes, and its principal party was the Constitutional Democrats or Kadets. The Kadets had also come into being in 1905, and they favoured a Constitutional Monarchy. They were “progressive liberals”, but in any other place they would have been considered extreme reactionaries.

The other body was the Soviet of Workers', Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies that had been set up in imitation of 1905. Soviet is merely the Russian word for council. Its members were Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks with a few Bolsheviks and other minor parties. The Soviet held the real power, through the fact that the revolutionaries would take orders only from them. No train would run, no telegram would be sent, and nothing would be printed without the Soviet permission. The War Minister, A. I. Guchkov, in a letter to a general, wrote

The Provisional Government possesses no real power and its orders are executed only insofar as this is permitted by the Soviet of the Workers and Soldiers Deputies, which holds in its hands the most important elements of actual power, such as troops, railroads, postal and telegraph service. It is possible to say directly that the Provisional Government exists only while this is permitted by the Soviet. (A Short History of the Russian Revolution, Joel Carmichael.)

But the great irony was that, although the Soviet held the real power, they refused to exercise it. They held the view that a bourgeois government must first take power and engineer a capitalist revolution before a Socialist Revolution could follow. This, combined with their inexperience and the suddenness with which they had been pitchforked into power, led them to bolster up the Provisional Government, rather than make use of the power they held. Such an arrangement would have been difficult in any circumstances; in the Russia of 1917 it was doomed to failure from the start, and served to paralyse things still further.

Meanwhile the peasants throughout Russia were taking the law into their own hands, seizing land and burning down manor houses. This led to a further deterioration in the supply of food. And all the time the war was dragging on. It was into this mess that Lenin, a master of political organisation and intrigue, arrived in April. He began, with the able assistance of Trotsky—his equal in these matters— to organise the Bolsheviks, a despised minority party, into the only effective body in Russia.

The Provisional Government was determined to carry on with the war and in mid-summer Kerensky launched the long awaited offensive. It was a ghastly failure; the Germans smashed through the Russian lines and the Russian army was at an end as a fighting force. Men began to desert in droves, flocking back from the front and giving rise to the much-quoted expression of “voting with their feet”. The workers and soldiers of St. Petersburg outdid the Bolsheviks in revolutionary fervour. In the July Days, the uprising that led to the temporary suppression of the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks had been dragged along, rather unwillingly, behind events. It was to cash in on these feelings that the slogan, “Bread, Peace, Land" was devised.

In late August the Commander of Petrograd, General Kornilov, attempted to march on Petrograd and overthrow the Provisional Government. He had massed troops half way between Petrograd and Moscow, and began a serious attack on Petrograd. But once again the unreliability of the army was apparent and the troops just melted away. The immediate effect was to swing opinion, that had built up against the Bolsheviks after the July Days, back towards them.

When the Bolsheviks finally moved in October, it was quick. In Petrograd it was soon over. In Moscow resistance was greater, and fighting lasted for over three days, but the result was never really in doubt. The take over was quite easy, but the Bolsheviks’ troubles were only just beginning. The events in Petrograd had happened so quickly that the newspapers on October 26 came out with leading articles written the night before, talking of the “isolation of the Bolsheviks.” The Bolsheviks immediately began to show their hand, and on the first day the entire bourgeois press was shut down.

This was the shape of things to come. The Bolsheviks had used the revolutionary fervour of the masses, but they had no intention of acting in a democratic way. The long awaited Constituent Assembly was called, but as it gave a large majority to the opponents of the Bolsheviks, it was dissolved the same day. One by one the other political parties went down, and the murderous civil war, that was to rage for two years, was fought by as vicious an autocracy as ever the Tzar had been. In 1918 the Cheka, the new political police, were established and they soon acquired absolute powers. It was not in the gay, romantic, brave uprising of the legend, that Russia was to be changed, but in the grim butchery of the civil war, in the quiet killings in the cellars of the Cheka, and the famines which followed the attempts to collectivise the land. Workers will be well advised to study that grim chapter of history, known as the Russian Revolution, when they are confronted with glib invitations to solve their problems with violence.

Les Dale

1917 Question and Answer (1967)

From the November 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question is, did the Bolsheviks know what they were caught up in? Did they realise that the upheaval in Russia would cause fifty years of argument, theorising and confusion about the working class? About working class courage, social consciousness, ambitions?

The Russian Revolution was not the only event of November 1917; about a thousand miles south-west of the crowds in Petrograd something was happening which supplied all the answers necessary to straighten out the theories and clear up the confusion which followed the Bolsheviks taking power.

On the 20th of that grim month Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, commander in chief of the British army in France, decided to close down what has become known as the Battle of Passchendaele. It had, he said, served its purpose. The battle had opened at the end of July; in the four months of fighting the British had advanced a few miles, had captured a small number of piles of rubble which had once been villages where human beings lived and worked, had landed themselves in what some soldiers thought was a more exposed position than when they had started — and had lost about three hundred thousand men.

Afterwards, Passchendaele was justified by the British commanders as a successful exposition of the art of attrition. This art is based on a grisly theory, which gives an insight into what is approvingly called the military mind. Attrition meant a battle carried on to destroy an opposing army, at no matter what cost. At Passchendaele it meant sending men out into an impassable swamp which was swept by concentrated machine gun fire and protected by blankets of barbed wire, in the hope that, while tens of thousands of them were being killed, they would kill more of the other side

This, bad as it was, was not the original intention behind Passchendaele. The battle was planned to capture the Channel ports, break the U-Boat threat, smash through the German lines in Flanders and open the way for the cavalry to speed into the heart of Germany and finish the war. Prime Minister Lloyd George — who mistrusted the plan from the start — recalled bitterly Haig’s promises for the offensive — the hands sweeping irresistibly over the map, as if with his fingers Haig could roll back the German armies, his nail resting on the frontier so far behind the lines.

The reality was very different. The Flanders countryside, its drainage system destroyed by the artillery, became a swamp under the late summer rains. Men waded waist-deep through the sticky yellow mud; sometimes they drowned in the stuff. If they were wounded they often simply disappeared into the slime. One survivor — Siegfried Sassoon —wrote savagely:

Two bleeding years I fought in France, for Squire:
I suffered anguish that he’s never guessed.
Once I came home on leave: and then went west . . .
What greater glory could a man desire?
                                                                           (Memorial Tablet)

and another — Alasdair Alpin MacGregor — contributed this to a recent discussion in the letter columns of the Daily Telegraph:

That autumn’s mud-and-blood baths were occupied mostly by young petrified, under-trained, lice-ridden, wounded, dying, drowned, parched, famishing, conscripts, cowering in the shell-holes, if not already hanging on the barbed wire.

(14/9/67).

Inevitably, the failure of Passchendaele released a torrent of criticism which, fifty years after, still flows strongly. Soon after the end of the battle, Lloyd George unburdened himself to C. P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian:

If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow . . . The thing is horrible, and beyond human nature to bear, and I feel I can't go on any longer with the bloody business. [1] 

Which would have sounded more convincing were it not that the same man had earlier said of the very people some of whom did know, did want to stop the war — the conscientious objectors —

I shall only consider the best means of making the path of that class a very hard one. [2]

But wherever the the horrors of the war, and however powerful the criticisms of it, the peoples of Europe continued to fight it with a stupid courage. Passchendaele was not the first blood bath on the Western Front; it had been preceded by such as Loos, Verdun, the Somme, Aisne and it was to be followed by the last German offensive of March 1918 and the Allied counter-attack which finished the war.

Through all this, the working class remained solidly behind the war. The French soldiers showed the strain after Verdun and again after Nivelle had murdered tens of thousands of them in his attack in 1917. But they held. So did the Germans. And the British, in the words of Lloyd George, could be “. . . absolutely relied on for any enterprise.” [3]    

This support for the war was incited and encouraged by the politicians when it suited them; for example, it allowed an official blind eye to be turned to much of the inhuman treatment dished out to the conscientious objectors. But it was a weapon with two edges. Lloyd George, who could always rouse a mob, would dearly have loved to sack Haig but, apart from the political background to his appointment, the Field Marshall was the mob’s hero. To dismiss him would have been to admit the failure of all those spectacular offensives which, the newspapers were busily saying, were about to finish the war. If that happened, if “the people really knew”, the war might even be stopped — even tomorrow . . .

The Prime Minister held his hand, and kept his job, and the war went on. Later, his son Richard wrote that this was his final test “. . . and he shirked it." [4]

But perhaps Lloyd George was not shirking a test so much as facing it. In all the belligerent countries, the working class had been roused to the pitch of patriotism which brought them cheering onto the streets in August 1914. In London, the crowds singing the National Anthem outside Buckingham Palace merged with the mob who were smashing the windows of the German Embassy.

These were the people who most fervently supported the politicians. In particular, they were the people who backed Lloyd George as the man to prosecute the war in the most ruthless way. They were the people who attacked aliens and pacifists, who broke up Socialist meetings. They wanted victory above everything; they welcomed each great battle, gorged themselves on the bloodthirsty lies of the war correspondents.

Not everyone, of course, was a fiery patriot. There were also the apathetic, the bewildered and the docile, who assumed they should join up because Kitchener had said so, and because everyone else seemed to be doing it. Perhaps, if they thought about it, they justified their presence in the trenches by remembering the promises which were being made, like Lloyd George at the 1917 Eisteddfod:

Our footprints may be stained with blood, but we will reach the heights. And beyond them, we shall see the green valleys and the rich plains of the new world, which we have sacrificed so much to win. [5]

All of these people were cruelly deceived. They were deceived over 1914/18 and they were deceived over the Russian Revolution. Sadder yet, the deception goes on. Capitalism spawns the working class as a distinct social group, separate from its capitalist antagonists. But the ideological climate of capitalism — its morals, its priorities, its fables — convinces the workers that they are united with their masters.

A working class which accepts this, which believes that both classes have common interests, that class exploitation is eternal, that wars are periodically necessary, will not only fail to establish Socialism; It will perform massive feats of achievement and endurance for capitalism. It will, as it did fifty years ago, fight out a Passchendaele with hardly a word of complaint.

It is this fact — that working class awareness is vital to the achievement of Socialism and to the struggle under capitalism — which is persistently ignored by many of the political theorists who have confused matters so seriously since the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks in 1917 were presiding over the birth of a social system new to Russia — capitalism — and of its two opposing classes.

Since then, the Russian working class have conformed to the pattern. The evidence builds up, to support our opinion of 1917 that Socialism in Russia was impossible. The Russian working class, whatever the theorists may say, have done all that capitalism has required of them. They have even had their own Passchendaele, when tens of thousands of them died in hell but called—Stalingrad.

Ivan

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Frank Owen — Tempestuous Journey.

[2] David Boulton — Objection Overruled.

[3] John Terraine — The Western Front.

[4] Richard Lloyd George — Lloyd George.

[5] Frank Owen — Tempestuous Journey.