Greasy Pole: What’s ‘Appropriate’ Then? (2018)

The Greasy Pole column from the March 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is some time now since we could expect to be warmed and comforted by those big, declaratory Monday morning newspaper photographs of Prime Minister Theresa May, pondering on the most hopeful date to call the next election and how meanwhile she might wrestle with the likes of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Liam Fox (remember him?), Gavin Williamson . . . She was obediently tailed by her husband James May and in accord with their respective backgrounds they were then emerging from some parish church not far from the Chiltern Hills. Mr May was smiling, which could have been motivated by the fact that he is a top executive of one of the biggest and most powerful financial institutions which controls assets worth trillions of dollars, including shares in Amazon and the popular coffee house Starbucks, which have both been listed by Theresa May in her sights for action (or whatever it is) against the keenest of tax avoiders. A lot has happened since then to undermine the political standing of the Prime Minister and her partner. For example there has been the exposure of the relationship between so many of their followers and assistants which has been such as to justify the term ‘inappropriate behaviour’ which means the opposite of something suitable and proper. It is called sexual abuse. 

Misconduct

But on that day, making their way from that local manufactory of delusion, Mrs May and her husband gave no hint that they were in fear of any particular crisis awaiting them in Westminster and beyond. Which probably made it more difficult for them to confront their raw feelings about what their supporters in Parliament and beyond had been up to. There was the brutal reality about the sexual misconduct of a clutch of Honourable Members towards party members and supporters, even as the facts were beginning to emerge. Much of it was revealed in what rapidly became known as the Spreadsheet of Shame – a survey which named 36 particular performers on that score. The events – the abuses – revealed in that document included ’handsy behaviour’ or of a former Member suggesting to his secretary that she might enjoy it to ‘feel’ how long his penis was or another planning to encourage a staff member to get drunk to assist his unwanted sexual advances.

Climbing

Notably prominent – to his own discomfort –  in all of this has been Mark Garnier the Conservative MP for Wyre Forest Worcestershire, whose local opponents are likely to be undermined by the very existence of the thousands who regularly support him. Garnier attended a couple of expensive local schools after which he became a junior clerk in an investment bank in London. This led to a partnership in a firm of hedge fund managers. In his politics he has contested Wyre Forest four times as a Tory. On his first attempt there he lost to an independent candidate but after that in 2010, 2015 and 2017 he won and his present majority is in the region of 13,000. Political climbing runs in the family; a cousin of his did a spell as Solicitor General and he himself was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for International Trade from July 2016 until being sacked in January 2018 – an event which was greeted by a local councillor who ‘. . . would just like to congratulate Theresa May on making a very sensible decision . . .  definitely the right move by the Prime Minister’. At that time Garnier was operating in a style which involved him asking his secretary, one Caroline Edmondson, to buy him some sex toys in a Soho shop while he publicly lauded her as a ‘sugar-tits’. The official government line on Garnier’s sacking was that it was to make way for new blood while he was also in breach of the ministerial code – except that this was contradicted soon afterwards when he was cleared by an official enquiry. Not surprisingly Garnier blurted out that he was bitterly disappointed at being punished for behaviour which he was assessed as not responsible for. It did not seem to occur to him that this was typical of the ruthless, unpredictable technique in the world of capitalist ’justice’. Then there was Damian Green who was until recently one of Theresa May’s special favourites as her First Secretary of State – effectively Deputy Prime Minister – until she had to ‘ask’ him to resign because he was so deeply involved in activities which once encouraged his then future wife to comment that ‘He’s got a very strong sex drive, he’s just not all that discriminating’.

Inappropriate

The affair of the misbehaving MPs, the appointments, the disputes, the sackings, was in response to their ‘inappropriate’ behaviour – a fascinating word for use in survival, even success, in the political world. To begin with, it does have some effect in diminishing the gravity of some of the MP’s actions, for example when the focus was on Mark Garnier. But there are many examples of governmental policies and actions which are considered as ‘appropriate’ but which in their effects are of the cruellest, and most damaging. One of the more recent was a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which described the day to day effects of governmental policies which operate in response to the current problems of British capitalism. Helen Barnard who is head of analysis of the Rowntree Foundation, is quite clear about this: ‘Low-income households are facing a difficult 2018, with rising prices, frozen benefits and a wage squeeze all putting further pressure on household incomes’.

If Theresa May, as she drifted through the church door that day, had asked herself how effectively she could continue to play a role in this class divided society she might have felt the need to use that word ‘appropriate’. For this is typical of the crime against our very language, of how capitalism distorts every aspect of our lives. It is only the socialists who stand and work against this malignant chaos.

Ivan

New Publications (1942)

Book Reviews from the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Parliament, Traitors and Beer

"Vote—What For" (Freedom Press, 2d.), by E. Malatesta, is an adaptation from a work by that author. It is the familiar Anarchist attack on parliamentary methods and government presented in the form of a discussion between two workers, George and Jack, over a glass of beer. George, supporter of parliamentary methods and of the Labour Party, puts up a defence which is demolished by Jack, the Anarchist. The demolition' is rapid. Perhaps it is because the leaflet is only fifteen pages. The vote, says Jack, is a fraud: those elected further their own interests except at election times, when they make fulsome promises to the gullible workers. George, unshaken, replies that we should elect workers, and then we should not be fooled. In reply to this the Anarchist makes two points: one, a majority in Parliament would be a ‘"paradise,” but only for the "elected”: and two—but let Jack speak for himself: "The rich are always in power. Just imagine a poor worker, perhaps with an ill wife and four kids, and you [that is, hard-hearted George] tell him to risk his job and get thrown out of' his house to starve; just to give his vote to a candidate his master doesn't like." From which one gathers that Anarchist Jack's indignation is righteously aroused at the suggestion that the worker should exercise his vote because such action would bring in the bailiffs and impose starvation on an ill wife and four hungry kids and all. Does E. Malatesta (or his adaptor) mean this? It is difficult to say. Anarchist writings do not always mean what they seem to say. However, for tuppence, Freedom Press will enable the reader to judge for himself.

This leaflet, in typical Anarchist fashion, confuses the issue on the question of parliamentary methods. It would have the ingenuous believe that the effort to achieve Socialism through Parliament has failed. Ramsay MacDonald is instanced as a Socialist who was won over by the rich. "As soon as you send anyone to office they turn traitor," the Anarchist says. The answer to such childish nonsense is: (1) Ramsay MacDonald was not a Socialist, nor was the Labour Party which he led; (2) The Labour Governments of 1924 and 1929-31 were not returned on Socialist programmes by the votes of Socialist supporters; (3) The two Labour Governments did not fail to introduce Socialism because of the illusory character of the vote, but because they were elected on reformist programmes to carry on the administration of capitalism. They learned bitterly that they could not reform out of existence working class problems, and that capitalism can only function in the interests of the capitalists.

That the Anarchists persist in accepting the Labour Party as a Socialist party might be regarded as a measure of what they understand Socialism to stand for. (This leaflet describes the I.L.P. as revolutionary whilst another Anarchist pamphlet issued by Freedom Press, "New Life to the Land," by George Woodcock, describes the I.L.P. as semi-revolutionary.) To accept the Labour Party as Socialist and to imply it stands for Socialism exposes the Anarchist claim to stand for a classless society and the abolition of the wages system as a mere form of words. A leaflet which sacrifices logic to propaganda argument. Crude, flat—but perhaps the latter was due to the beer with which George and Jack started the argument.

The Take (or Sit) and Hold Theory

"Trade Unionism or Syndicalism?" by Tom Brown (Freedom Press, 3d.).  The author of this pamphlet makes out a case for the Syndicalist practice to replace existing trade union organisation and for the Syndicalist method of taking over the means of production from the capitalists. He discusses what he thinks is the weak spot in trade union organisation, the organising of workers on the basis of their craft, i.e., "according to the tools they use.” The result is that the workers in any one industry find themselves organised in several trade unions (engineering workers are organised in fifty unions). In his trade union branch, usually near where he lives and away from his work, the trade unionist finds his fellow branch members connected with any industry but that in which he himself works. The result is lack of interest. The author advocates workers organised on the basis of one union for each industry. Mr. Brown's criticisms show all the obvious advantages likely to be gained from organisation by industry. That is, however, not the whole story, as the advocates of the rival conception will maintain, and experience in industries where the industrial idea has been more or less fully applied does not show any startling improvement. Moreover—and this should be remembered by both schools—the border lines of an industry are not always clear and fixed. Hence, for example, the conflicting claims of those who would argue that the railways are a self-contained industry and those who retort that they are only part of the transport industry.

Socialists are, however, more concerned with the further aspect. Mr. Brown does not advocate the one union one industry form of industrial organisation for the workers as an end in itself but as a means also for presenting the class struggle along Syndicalist lines, as a means for wresting ownership and control of the factories from the capitalists. The author proposes the " Social General Strike," or the "General Lock-out of the Employing Class" as he would prefer to describe it, and the management and administration of factories and industries along Syndicalist lines by the workers, such industries to be organised on a federal basis. On page 10 he says: "Against this action we hear raised the Social Democratic wail, “If you do that the bosses will shoot and baton you!' We reply, if you don't, they will shoot and baton (and starve) you, but with much greater success, as the history of passive starvation strikes shows. But in order to beat the workers, they must first start knocking about their own property, as they discovered in the 1937 automobile stay-in-strike in the U.S.A. If Mr. Brown is saying that the capitalists would acquiesce in parting with the ownership of the factories rather than see them knocked about, the present war demonstrates the contrary. They accept the facts of quite a lot of " knocking about" even where the certain loss of ownership is not involved. In any case, the sit-down strikes in America, and those in France which he also quotes, were not strikes which had for their purpose the taking over of the factories concerned on Syndicalist lines. Another example is given, with approval, of French shop girls who engaged in a sit-down strike and locked out the customers. Surely they acted wrongly. Ought they not have served the customers and informed the employers that the proceeds were for the benefit of the workers? Commenting on the example of the French shop girls Mr. Brown almost gushes: "And the bloodshed, the vast sea of gore, predicted by the Socialist. NONE!" Might a Socialist humbly suggest that the capitalist state would apply such methods as were dictated by the extent of the menace.

Well written, in a superficially plausible style, the hollowness of the Syndicalist case as stated in this pamphlet is nevertheless almost self-apparent.

Russia To-day

"Soviet Russia in Maps" (edited by George Goodal, M.A., price 2/6, and published by George Phillip & Sons, Ltd.), is a useful addition to an existing library of books on Russia. It consists of thirty-two pages of maps with notes and commentaries illustrating main changes in Russian economics, social and political changes, over seven centuries; it includes figures and comparisons of industrial developments to date.

Harry Waite

Capitalism's Admirable Crichtons (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of J. M. Barrie’s immortal plays portrays the butler who by sheer force of superior mentality and ability assumed leadership over his aristocratic employers when shipwrecked on a desert island. The position is intended to be a more or less fanciful one, but in reality present day society teems with examples of the repression of great minds by the mediocre-minded few. Many of us in even our small circles can point to one or two acquaintances who can find no outlet for really brilliant intelligences, and who are forced by stress of economic circumstance to spend their lives in uncongenial work and uninspiring environment. History has many cases to show of genius which has been discovered too late, of great minds that have been starved of opportunity. Men and women who, even under adverse conditions, managed to leave something behind that humanity is the better for, have in countless cases died of want and hopeless despair. The painting that might fetch a small fortune at Christie’s to-day perhaps was sold by the artist for the price of a loaf of bread. The machine that may make a modern Croesus was invented by one whose life was one long struggle against penury and who died, as he had lived, in obscurity.

Many more must there be who have no opportunity of bringing into the light ideas that would stamp them as being more than ordinary men. Who could expect a man to come back, after a long day’s toil, to a miserable hovel, surrounded by those scenes and noises which are so great a part of the worker’s environment, and to sit down and compose beautiful music, or paint a masterpiece, or write a treatise that should make history ?

All that matters to-day is the ability to make a profit—if that be ability. Very few employers are more intelligent than some of their own machine-minders, but the fact that the machines belong to them and not to the minders is sufficient to obtain for them the comfort and luxury that the latter and their families are not even able to dream of. Even their vaunted “directive ability” is vested in managers and foremen. We had the case recently of an American millionaire who made a fortune while in the madhouse! He, like the rest of his class, could not help it. It requires practically no effort on their part. That is the irony of it all. If ability counted they would not be in the position they are in. The working class invent machinery, they work machinery, they pay their own meagre wages, and hand the surplus to the employers. There is not an operation from the loading of a trolley to the cashing of a cheque that is not performed by a member of the working class.

The position, however, never seems to strike the workers themselves. If a man is a good workman and boasts about it he will compare himself with his neighbour, but never with his employer. In the same way he is familiar with and deferential to names like Rothschild and Rockefeller, but of Faraday and Pasteur, who have benefited society almost as much as the first-named have harmed it, he has not the faintest notion.

It is true of capitalism more than of any other system of society that the good in men does not pay so much as the bad. It is more to the advantage of doctors to pander to the fanciful notions of old dowagers with well-lined purses than it is for them to devote their lives to endeavouring to cure some dread disease. It is useless for a man to invent something that would make workmen in a particularly dangerous occupation safer if it would mean adding to the employer’s establishment expenses.

Only under Socialism will every man find it to his advantage to give of his best, since it will be the community that will benefit and not the the pockets of the few. The machine that will run will not throw men out of work as at present, but will, as it should, reduce the hours of labour. Scientists will not experiment with poison gases and explosives, but will use their knowledge in protecting the human race and bringing health and strength to those that lack it. And what is more, the man in the street, the common worker, instead of being any longer the slave of toil, with only “a soul to be damned, a body to be kicked,” will become a responsible member of society with a right to all that the world has to offer and with no man to say him nay.

Stanley H. Steele

The Work of The Socialist Party (1921)

From the August 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the average working man the Socialist appears as a type of individual who suffers from a fever of discontent—full of complaints, always grumbling. We will show, however, that this view is but one of the many illusions which cloud certain working-class minds. The Socialist possesses ambitions of a particular kind, which do not allow time for morbid reflections. He recognises that “the battle's to the strong," and while, therefore, healthily dissatisfied with modem conditions of existence, nevertheless enjoys contentment of mind in the knowledge that he is working for the only thing worth while; i.e., the overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of Socialism.

The distinction the present scribe wishes to draw is that the Socialist is dissatisfied because he knows the cause of all the evils which afflict the working class, and that knowledge represents his dissatisfaction. On the other hand, the “discontents" are the grumblers and grousers—the unhealthy-minded—because they do not know. Lacking Socialist knowledge, they find themselves always in difficulties, always uncertain, and consequently not equipped to adapt themselves to, or battle with, the problems of every day existence.

Not that I would suggest, however, that the Socialist is able to entirely avoid the effects of the economic system; but generally speaking, he has a better chance because he is conscious of the cause.

Now there are many millions of discontents in the ranks of the working class. We meet them everywhere. Some of them call themselves Humanitarians, some Bolshevists, some Secularists, some Prohibitionists, some Home Rulers, and so on.

The Socialist, claiming that Socialism is the only hope of the workers, and that all else is illusion, is a wholesome distinction. And now to examine and explain the nature of the work of the Socialist Party.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain sets out in its Declaration of Principles that the emancipation of tbs working class must be the work of the working class itself. Special stress is laid on this—the subject matter of this article —because one of the greatest obstacles with which the workers are confronted is the idea, fostered by unscrupulous individuals and parties claiming to champion the cause of the working class, that leaders are necessary. So deep-rooted is this demoralising notion that we are called upon at our public meetings, when stating our claim to be the only Socialist party, to name some of our leaders. Our innocent reply that we have no leaders is met with the incredulous retort: “But you must have leaders!" The word “leaders" implies not only those who lead but those, who are led. Now only those require, or suffer themselves to be, led who cannot see the way for themselves, and naturally, those who cannot see the way for themselves will not be able to see whether they are being led in the right direction or the wrong. Labour leaders, therefore, are able to render to the capitalists the very valuable service of misleading the workers. This is why the ruling class bestow praises and titles upon labour leaders, and entreat the workers to follow their wise (!) leadership. The first work of the Socialist Party, therefore, is to spread abroad among the workers that political knowledge which alone can put them beyond the lure and treachery of leaders by showing them clearly the object they have to attain and the road they have to travel to attain it.

Now for a closer examination of the nature of that work. Firstly, applicants applying for membership in the Socialist Party of Great Britain have to affirm their acceptance and understanding of the Object and Principles of the party as contained on the application form. If the Party are not satisfied that the applicant sufficiently understands oar position, it is suggested that the application be deferred and that the would-be member should attend our meetings (ALL meetings of the S.P.G.B. are open to the public), read our literature, and get assistance with his or her difficulties from any member of our organisation. When the applicant has shown that his knowledge of the Socialist position is such as to fit him for membership of the S.P.G.B. his application is accepted.

It is now that the real Socialist work of the member begins. The unit of organisation is the branch, and it is inside the branch that an outlet is found for working-class abilities in the true sense of the word. There are the Rules to be read and understood. This done, the new member gets a more complete understanding of the nature of the activities of the branch and of the organisation as a whole—and this understanding can obviously only come about as the result of regular attendance at branch and party meetings.

Now a desire generally begins to manifest itself on the part of the new member to participate more directly in the work of the branch and of the party as a whole. It then becomes a question for the member to decide in what particular direction his abilities would be most useful. By close association with the branch and the party the member soon decides upon a choice of work. The principal branches of the party work (executed entirely by the voluntary labour of the members) consists of the following : Clerical work at Head Office; organisation of sale and distribution of party literature; work of the various sub-committees e.g., the Editorial Committee, whose duty it is to arrange for articles for the Party Organ, publication of leaflets, pamphlets, manifestoes, etc. Then there is the collection of cuttings from newspapers and periodicals of all kinds and from all sources, home and foreign, and their arrangement in suitable order for future reference (this record provides the organisation with facts which enables our speakers and writers to push home their attack upon the capitalist system and to criticise and expose its apologists and defenders); organisation of out door propaganda by area propaganda committees; study classes at the Head Office and in the Branches, where members congregate in order to equip themselves with the knowledge necessary to Socialist propagandists. Finally, there is the Executive Committee, elected at the Annual Conference, and whose duty it is to generally supervise and organise the work of the Party in every sphere.

In these principal spheres of activity various qualifications are needed, and to organise the abilities and resources of our class is the work which confronts the Socialist Party. I would here dwell upon the qualifications of the Socialist propagandist, one of the highest qualifications to which a Socialist can aspire. This entails unremitting labours, in order to acquire a sound knowledge of Marxian economics, history, sociology, trade unionism, and so on, to effectively defend the party’s position at all times and in all places from the attacks of our opponents; also in order to give a clear presentation of our case and a correct and vigorous criticism of current affairs in the world of politics and labour.

These are the main streams of activity of the Socialist Party and its band of Socialist workers. There are, of course, the various duties of the officials of the branches, who organise and carry on the work of the branches and their local activities.

The writer set out to explain the nature of the work of the Socialist Party. He has attempted briefly to do so. To-day, more than ever, the unorganised should ask themselves whether they are prepared and fitted to engage in the great historical mission of the working class—the emancipation of all mankind from the vile conditions of existence imposed upon them by the system of private ownership in means of living.

To those, therefore, who understand our Object and Principles we extend an earnest invitation to. come forward and assist in the efforts we are making to build up a vigorous and healthy Socialist organisation, bound together by a common understanding, with the tie of class-conscious solidarity, determined to wage uncompromising war on all who bar our way toward the goal of our ambition—the establishment cf the Socialist Co-operative Commonwealth, where poverty will give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.

“Rise like lions from your slumbers,
In unvanquishable numbers.
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep hath fall’n on you:
Ye are many, they are few.”

O. C. I.

The Mongol or the Hun (1939)

From the September 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Japanese Ministry of War acts in accordance with a certain policy which, if persisted in, must eventually lead to a clash between East and West; the capitalisms of the two hemispheres are heading for a conflict in which a thousand millions may be embroiled. We are within measurable distance of the time when “Asia for the Asiatics” will become more than a battle-cry; the slaves of the East are shortly to be pitted against the slaves of the West, and millions are likely to perish on both sides, utterly unconscious of the fact that the real issue involved is, which group of exploiters shall have predominance in Asia, the yellow or the white?

The Japanese Ministry of War is a clear-eyed power. This is how they size the situation up—the quotation is obtained from one of their publications which circulate amongst the military clique.

  “From the point of view of the masses which represent the majority of consumers in the entire world, it is desirable that products should be available on the most favourable conditions possible. From this point of view, a country so recently industrialised as Japan enjoys the great advantage of a lower standard of living, whereas countries such as England or the Netherlands are in an unfavourable position. The English and the Dutch favour a small controlling minority in industry and sell their goods at a high price to the coloured population of the colonies: this procedure is contrary to the interests of the masses and to a spirit of fairness. Economic conditions in our Empire, on the other hand, correspond perfectly with the interests of the masses all over the world so that we must, logically become predominant in economic competition. If English and Dutch competition should persist in their methods of unlawful competition, the Empire will eventually be obliged to use armed force so that a spirit of fairness may triumph."

The basis of the quarrel in the Far East is therefore a conflict between two different groups of exploiters; it is as a result of the fierceness of this competition that the dictatorship became more ruthless. In following this development we shall be able to perceive how state capitalism, Fascism and Nazi-ism evolve as a result of the struggle going on amongst the exploiters.

To quote again from the Ministry of War: —

   “We must consider that the commercial drive of England and other countries will be intensified in future. It is easy to predict that the Powers will fling themselves on to the Chinese market in order to offset the difficulties into which the Western world has been plunged. We must therefore reorganise and control the policies governing our foreign trade in the shape of national concentration; private interests must no longer be considered, and at the same time we must decide on counter policies which enable us to meet the crises by finding new markets and recovering our old market in China."

Now we will see what those counter-policies are. Enough has been written to show that the State decided to cease consideration of the interests of private capitalists: it was forced to do so. We will continue and endeavour to show by means of the next quotation how the ideology of a dictatorship is born.

   “It is desirable that the people should abandon their individualistic economic conceptions; instead, they should recognise the importance of a collective economy; they should work towards the creation of an economic system which will rapidly realise the Empire’s ideal. The State should rigidly control the entire national economy."

Here we have an explanation of the appearance of so-called “National Socialism" in not only Japan but Germany, Russia, Italy and, if we look closely, we shall find the same thing developing in the United States, France and even Great Britain.

We have arrived at that stage in capitalist development when the State is compelled to take charge in all advanced countries; the people now exist solely for the benefit of the State.

It is an indication of the fact that capitalism is moving towards its end, much in the same manner as Engels stated it would in his “Landmarks of Scientific Socialism."

What part will Russia play in the scrap that is pending, will she go with the East or with the West? Russia's foreign policy, like that of her rivals, is determined by conditions.

Lenin once stated that he was the logical successor of Peter the Great; Peter personified the spirit of the Russian people, as Lenin did. Bolshevism is simply pan-Slavism with a red shirt on.

“A burning thirst for conquest is as prevalent a passion in Russia as democratic ambition is in the free states of Western Europe. This passion is the unseen spring which, while it retains the Russians in the strictest discipline, unceasingly impels their united forces against all adjoining states.

"The national energy, which is as great as the national territory, rarely wastes itself in disputes about domestic grievances. For all internal evils, how great soever, the Russians hope to find a compensation, and more than a compensation, in the conquest of the world."

The above statement was made by a celebrated writer in, 1902, and it then expressed the current view of Russia's policy. In 1904, Arthur Diósy, Chairman of Council of the Japan Society in London, writing in his book, “The New Far East,” said: ” Russia first, and the rest nowhere?” ”That is the idea implanted in every Russian mind, the wish embedded in every Russian heart, but not in the manner of theoretical Chauvinism, that sentimental patriotism that makes the people of every great nation desire to see their’s placed first amongst the Powers; no, this Russian patriotism is more of the ardent, irresistible, Japanese type; it is more than a national feeling, because it is a religion.”

In 1920 the Bolshevik armies were held up by the Polish troops and smashed at the gates of Warsaw.

Russia has since modernised her industrial system and will soon be ready to resume her march to warm water ports and the open sea.

The foreign policy of a country is the outcome of her geographical position and her material interests: so long as the wages system prevails in the land of the Soviets, Russia will act internationally much on the same lines as she did in the days of Czardom.

Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Poland are well aware of her real intentions; the embrace of the bear that walks like a man is apt to be lasting; the above mentioned nations know by experience the fatal results of contact.

The quibbling going on about the Russian alliance is largely due to a desire on the part of Britain to avoid it, if possible; by Britain I mean the present Government: Stalin is demanding too high a price.

Russia would gain much if her rivals in Europe were engaged in slaughtering one another; she would then be free to act in the Far East.

Russia is playing a strong hand in the Chino- Japanese war.

The Chinese Communists are under the control of Moscow and carry out the instructions of the Soviet Government.

The policy is to eulogise the Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek, at every opportunity, but to disintegrate his party, the Kuomingtang.

At every place where they have influence this policy is energetically pursued: the leader is lauded to the skies but the Party to which he belongs is mercilessly attacked with the idea of undermining it. It is thought by the Communists that when Chiang dies, or retires, the Communist Party can replace the Kuomingtang: in this way Russia hopes to control to some extent the future destinies of China.

The foreign policy of Britain is largely determined by one word—India. Japan now threatens India and all observant minds know that the major conflicts of the future will be fought out on the shores of the Pacific.

Should Germany and Italy fight Britain and France, European capitalism would be very much weakened when it was over, whichever side won. Japan or Russia could then launch the East against the West with every hope of success.

The masses of India joined to those of China, armed by Russia, Japan, or others, could then soon make a rag-shop of Europe. This is what the ruling class of Britain, who take a long view, are beginning to perceive; they want to make terms with Italy and Germany, so that when the major clash comes, European capitalism will speak as one. It is essential that those forces amongst the ruling class making for a European coalition should be taken into consideration, otherwise the diplomacy of our masters cannot be understood.

Whatever they do or say, nothing can save their system; the wheel of the capitalist machine now whirls over the whole world, the markets get relatively narrower and the powers of production wider: war cannot avert the economic crisis or enable capitalism to run on an even keel.

The Japanese, Chinese, Hindoo, or Malay wage-slaves have the same troubles as ourselves: they look at life much the same as we do: they endure similar agonies when on the job and suffer in a similar way when unemployed.

They have imbibed the message of Socialism to some extent, but, like the working class of Britain, many are still made to move and act in capitalism’s interest because of the blinkers of nationalism.

It is our duty to do our best to get them to realise that we have no quarrel with them, that their oppressors and ours are of the same class.

The proletariat come into their own when they have the will to be free and the courage to extend the hands of fraternity.

Charles Lestor

Swan Song of the Communists (1944)

From the February 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amazing Speech by American Leader

Readers of the London Daily Worker (January 12 and 14) will have learned that the American Communist Party is about to die—at the hands of its own leaders; though whether the leaders do this because Moscow is no longer interested or because Moscow wants it that way has yet to be disclosed. After a quarter of a century of misspent effort and of innumerable twists and turns of policy dictated first by dependence on the early and erroneous theories of the Bolshevists, then by the shifts and changes of the foreign policy of Russia's rulers, the American Communists are returning to a point even further back than that from which they started, the once despised beliefs of the reformist labour movements. Having promised to show the discontented workers how, by following the Communist lead, they could speedily achieve their emancipation, the American Communist leaders after 25 years are now shepherding their flock back into the fold.

After the delegates at a Party Convention had obediently signified their approval of changes proposed by their leaders, the full significance of the new departure was disclosed by the Secretary, Mr. Earl Browder, at a mass meeting in New York called in commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the death of Lenin. The Times (January 12) reports that the response to Browder’s speech was “ less than enthusiastic.” The audience, not being drilled and disciplined like the Party delegates, may have reflected that the real purpose of the meeting was not to praise Lenin’s theories, but to bury them. The decision to wind-up operates on May Day. The Communists are going to give up any pretence of being an independent political party. Under some such name as “American Communist Political Association,” they are going to accept and work loyally within the traditional two-party system.

This is all because, in the words of Mr. Browder, Allied victory in the war will mean "not only prolonged world peace without precedent in history, but also the flourishing of economic relationships, co-operation and development of economic well-being and social reforms . . .” (Daily Worker, January 12, 1944).

Here is an extract from the Times' report of Browder’s speech at the mass meeting

   Saying that the American people were ill-prepared for socialism, and that post-war plans with the aim of establishing socialism in the United States would not unite the nation but would further divide it, he announced that, for the sake of promoting unity here, so that the policies agreed on by the United Nations at Cairo, Moscow and Teheran could be put into effect, Marxists would not raise the issue of socialism “in such a form and manner as to endanger or weaken that national unity.”
   Mr. Browder added that the Communists had eliminated such measures as nationalisation of the banks, the railways and the coal and steel industries, would change the name of their organisation to "the American Communist Political Association,” and would support in future the candidates of one of the two major parties. Reactionaries, he said, were trying to spread confusion in the democratic and progressive camp by championing free enterprise, but Marxists would not help them by opposing the slogan of free enterprise with any counter-slogan. He went on:—
   “If anyone wishes to describe the existing system of capitalism in the United States as free enterprise, that is all right with us, and we frankly declare that we are ready to co-operate in making this capitalism work effectively in the post-war period with the least possible burdens on the people. We do not draw political lines of division for the 1944 elections on any form of the issue of free enterprise.”—(Times, January 12, 1944.)

Other points are brought out in the lengthier Daily Worker report (January 14). One is that the Communists are going to support “a great united effort in the 1944 elections to guarantee the continuation of Roosevelt’s policies. . . .”

 
They will “not be operating as a 'party'—that is, with their own separate candidates in elections except under special circumstances when they may be forced to act through 'independent candidates.’ ” They are, however, “not . . . entering any other party. The Communists are not joining the Democratic party; the Communists are not joining the Republican party; we are not endorsing either of the major parties, and we are not condemning either of the major parties. We are taking a line of issues and not parties, and choosing men as they stand for or against those issues, without regard to party labels.” (Italics ours.)

An important point to notice is that this new line is not a merely war-time measure: "We are now extending the perspective of national unity for many years into the future. It is no longer an ‘emergency situation' but is merging into a 'normal situation ' " (Browder, Daily Worker, January 14).

About the agreement by Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt at Teheran to "work together in war and in the peace that will follow," Browder makes the remark that "Capitalism and' Socialism have begun to find the way to peaceful co-existence and collaboration in the same world." Those whose memories carry them back four years to the period of the Stalin—Hitler pact of 1939 will recall that this is just the line Communist propaganda was then taking about the friendly co-existence of Bolshevist Russia and Nazi Germany! When that period ended in 1941 the American and British Communist parties dropped their peace slogans and the theories on which those slogans rested, and were ordered into line with the foreign policy of Roosevelt and Churchill. The new turn means that they are now falling into line in home affairs as well.

To see the matter in perspective, let us turn back the last Presidential election in 1940, to see what Browder had to say then about Roosevelt and Willkie and the two parties they represent.

At that time the Communists were opposed to the war. They denounced it as an Anglo-American plot "to make the world safe for Wall Street and the City " (Daily, Worker, November 30, 1940) The American Party was praised on the ground that "alone of all the political parties, the C.P. of the U.S.A. has exposed the imperialist character of the war and has warned against both Roosevelt and Willkie " (Daily Worker, October 28, 1940).

In a speech reported in the Daily Worker on October 11, 1940, Mr. Browder declared that Roosevelt and Willkie, though they were rival candidates, had the same foreign policy (based on that of Great Britain), the policy of encouraging Hitler, pushing Germany into war with Russia so that Russia would be destroyed, and at the same time Germany would be so weakened as to remove her as a threat to Britain. "Only the Communist Party," he said, " has proposed and consistently fought for a foreign policy for our country which could replace the disastrous policy now being followed."

So much for foreign policy—now for his earlier views about the home policies of the Republicans and Democrats. In 1940 Mr. Browder, himself a Presidential candidate opposing Roosevelt and Willkie, issued a statement explaining just what part the two parties play in making America safe for capitalism, and denouncing the traditional two-party system which the Communists have now decided to accept.

The 1940 conventions of the Republican and Democratic Parties restored once more the traditional "two-party system" by which Wall Street (finance, capital and the great monopolists, the "sixty families," the " economic royalists"), controlling both major parties, invites the masses to choose the label under which they shall be exploited and oppressed for the ensuing four years. For the masses of the American people there is no way to advance their interests through either Republican or Democratic Party." (Daily Worker, October 28, 1940.)

On November 4, 1940, the Daily Worker, alleging that at the previous election in 1936 "Roosevelt himself was hoping that the New Deal would bring him Communist votes," went on :—

   But to-day neither Roosevelt nor Willkie will get Communist votes; their policy "of crushing civil liberties, planning a huge arms programme, and drawing nearer to participation in the war is too obviously directed against the liberties of the people.

Just at that time the American Communist Party was compelled, through the restrictive Voorhis Act, to resign from the Communist International, but while doing so it "reaffirmed the adherence of the Party to the policy of working-class internationalism” (Daily Worker, November 20,1940). Now, with the Communist International destroyed on Moscow orders the American Communists are going to back the two parties of capitalism, controlled as they are by Wall Street and big business, and thus join in the game of inviting the workers "to choose the label under which they shall be exploited and oppressed for the ensuing four years."

Some of the possible reasons for the decision can readily be guessed. Their failure to make any headway in elections may have been one factor; in 1932 they polled 103,000 in the Presidential election, but in 1940 their candidate polled only 46,000 votes. More important, however, will be the desire to follow a line suitable to the present foreign policy of the Russian Government. It is obvious that the Russian Government during the past year has been concerned to make itself popular in U.S.A. and Britain, and to avoid doing anything that would strengthen the hands of political groups opposed to the Russian alliance—hence the efforts of Russia's supporters to secure wide publicity for the new recognition of religion and the disbandment of the Communist International. The Manchester Guardian (January 12, 1944) considers that the winding up of the American party is another step which "will make for better feeling towards Russia."

Fully to understand the complete change of policy since 1940, it has to be remembered that at that time, when the Communists were opposed to the war and opposed to Willkie and Roosevelt, they (and doubtless their inspirers in Moscow) had a very different opinion about the way world affairs were going from the one forced on them in June 1941 when Germany invaded Russia. Mr. Browder, in October 1940, thought that the foreign policy he ascribed to Britain and America had failed, and that Russia would be able to keep out of the war because "the Soviet Union had grown too strong and too consolidated to offer a tempting field for military adventures for a Hitler, who likes to have his victories assured before he goes into action." (Daily Worker, October 11, 1940).

Events were soon to prove Browder wrong. Russia was not strong enough to stand alone, without American and British help. Mutual dependence of the three Powers called for a revised Communist Party policy. Subsequent changes, including the present attempt of the American Party to operate alongside Democrats and Republicans, have been in harmony with the position of the Russian Government internally and in its foreign relationships. That, and not the incredible belief in a new world of peace, progress and class harmony which Mr. Browder professes to cherish, is likely to be the real reason why his party has been called upon to make itself a laughing stock by repudiating the fundamental creed on which it was founded. Whether it will establish any sort of stability on the new basis, and whether further developments of Russian policy will lead to still further changes, are two questions time will answer.

We may speculate whether the British Party will follow the American example. The Manchester Guardian points out (January 12):—

  The arguments for it are much the same. Before the Communist International died the maxim of the Communist parties of the world was, of course, "When father says Turn, we all turn." Will our British Communists, like the Americans, prepare to lie down gracefully?

Maybe this time, however, the American and British Communists will turn in different directions, if we may judge by the editorial comment on the American changes published by the Daily Worker on January 13, 1944. The editorial argues that it is a mistake to interpret the American political system in terms of our own because in U.S.A "there is no Labour Party or organised political Labour movement." The main task in America to-day and in the immediate post-war period, says the Daily Worker, " is not the transformation of the social system but the rallying of all progressive forces in order to prevent reaction from turning that mighty country from the path of Teheran." The editorial goes on to give fulsome praise to Roosevelt's New Year speech, which, it says, calls America to a "noble fulfilment" of its destiny. The Daily Worker finds that both the Republican and Democratic parties "include reactionary and progressive elements," yet it plumps for supporting Roosevelt, leader of the Democrats. In view of Browder's 1940 statement that there is nothing to choose between the two parties, this distinction between Tweedledum and Tweedledee is not convincing. Nor is the Daily Worker's argument that things are different in this country because we have a Labour Party. In 1929 (see "Class Against Class"), and for several years afterwards, the Communist Party habitually referred to the Labour Party as the "third capitalist party."

It remains to be seen therefore what new line the British Communists may be required to take—and what peculiar justification they will, in that event, discover for taking it.

To enlighten them in their task of seeking to justify their own and the American Communists’ policy of supporting capitalist parties in the name of national unity, we bring to their notice the following passage from "Class Against Class," the General Election Programme of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1929:—

    "Three parties—Tory, Liberal and Labour—appeal to you in the name of the " nation." . . . .  No party can serve two masters. No party can serve the "nation" so long as the nation is divided into two warring classes—one which owns the wealth and one which produces the wealth and does not own it. No party can serve the robbers and the robbed at the same time."

Edgar Hardcastle

Really? (2018)

Book Review from the March 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

'A Party With Socialists In It. A History of the Labour Left'.  By Simon Hannah. (Pluto Press. 2018. 250 pages)

It was Tony Benn who wrote that ‘the Labour Party has never been a socialist party, though there have always been socialists in it’ which Hannah has taken as the title of his book. The first part is true but the second depends on what you mean by ‘socialist’.

When it was founded  in 1900 as the Labour Representation Committee, the Labour Party was to be a group of MPs, separate from the Liberals and Tories, to press for legislation in favour of trade unions and their members and didn't actually become the Labour Party, as a parliamentary group, until it had some MPs elected in the 1906 general election.  It didn’t even claim to be socialist. However, one of its constituent parts, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) that had been founded in 1893, did. In 1918 the Labour Party adopted a new constitution which included the famous Clause IV, which committed it (on paper and in the very long-term) to full-scale nationalisation; it also allowed individuals to join directly rather than via the ILP or the Fabian Society, which marginalised the ILP which eventually, in 1932, broke away and so was no longer 'in' the Labour Party.

Hannah’s history is that of the ILP up to 1932 (which he sees though rose-tinted spectacles), the Red Clydesiders, Sir Stafford Cripps and the Socialist League, Bevan and the Bevanites, Benn and the Bennites, and, now, Corbyn and the Corbynistas.

But were they socialists? They certainly considered themselves to be but understood socialism as the implementation of Clause IV. As this envisaged the nationalisation of ‘the means of exchange’, it implied the continuation of production for the market and the wages system; in effect state capitalism. Basically, they were leftwing reformists.

Hannah himself, an ex-Trotskyist, sees socialism as nationalisation under workers’ control but this is no way forward as, given production for the market, workers would be forced to run their industry on capitalist lines. He describes Benn’s politics as ‘greater democracy, greater worker involvement in industry, and a more accountable political class’ and Corbyn’s as ‘anti-neoliberal without being anti-capitalist.’ Both true.

Adam Buick

Exploitation (1974)

From the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the time of his first arrival in England Marx was surrounded by what was then the most advanced section of capitalist society in the world, and the one showing the greatest contrast between affluence and abject poverty. There were available to him numerous works on economics and government reports, all of which Marx made use of and acknowledged in his book Capital. The following quotation from Vol. I demonstrates this:

  Once for all may I here state, that by classical political economy, I understand that economy which since the time of William Petty has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois society, in contradiction to vulgar economy, which deals with appearances only, ruminates without ceasing on the materials long provided by scientific economy, and there seeks plausible explanations of the most obtrusive phenomena for bourgeois daily use, but for the rest, confines itself to systematizing in a pedantic way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the trite ideas held by the self complacent bourgeois with regard to their own world, to them the best of all worlds.

To Marx capitalism is a system of commodity production, and commodities are the unit of capitalist wealth. The Marxian analysis of capitalist production commences with the analysis of the commodity. A commodity is a useful article, a use-value, produced not for its usefulness to its producer but for exchange. Masses of commodities are put on the market where they exchange for one another. The equation of commodities with diverse use-values in exchange implies the possession of some common quality, otherwise equation would be impossible. All commodities, whatever their differences of use or appearance, are the products of labour: all of them embody a certain amount of human labour and so can be equated with one another.

There are many different kinds of labour, such as the labour of the tailor and that of the miner; they are but different ways of expending the mental and physical energy needed for the production of social wealth. Commodities not only exchange, but exchange in definite quantity—two tons of coal may exchange for one suit of clothes, and not two suits for one ton of coal. This quantitive exchange relationship of commodities is determined by the relative values of the commodities exchanged. A commodity has value to the extent that it contains social labour. In the illustration just used, a suit of clothes is twice as valuable as a ton of coal because there is contained in the suit twice as much social labour as in the ton of coal.

A valuable commodity such as gold is valuable because a considerable amount of social labour is taken to produce a small quantity. If gold were produced with the same expenditure of social labour as is taken to produce chairs, gold would have no more value than chairs. As labour is measured by time, the length of time taken to produce a commodity determines its value. If a suit of clothes is produced in ten hours and is exchanged for two tons of coal, then it follows that the time taken to produce a ton of coal is five hours.

It must not be imagined that Marx argued that the time taken by an individual to produce a commodity determines its value: that would mean otherwise identical commodities produced in different times having different values.

Capitalists do not buy Labour
The capitalist system of production is a system of profit-making. The capitalist expects to, and usually does, receive a greater amount of money at the end of the productive process than he originally put into it. If, as has been stated, commodities are exchanged at their value, the commodities produced for and sold by the capitalist must have a greater value than those purchased by him (raw material, machines, labour-power, etc.). Moreover, the increase in value must take place during the process of manufacture, in which process the commodities he purchases are turned into the finished product he sells. The increase in value implies the addition of labour. But does not the capitalist buy labour along with the raw material, machinery and other means of production, as a commodity at its value?

The capitalist does not buy labour; the commodity he buys from the worker is labour-power. The distinction between labour and labour-power is not a quibble but a fundamental distinction. The power to work or labour is what the worker sells, not the actual work he performs for his employer. Labour-power is a peculiar commodity because it has the power to produce a greater value than its own. The value of labour-power is determined by the value of the necessities for its own production. For example, a worker who consumes commodities containing four hours of labour can work for eight hours, and by so doing creates twice the value of his own labour-power. Because the capitalists have monopolized the ownership of the means of production, the workers are forced to sell their labour-power to them in order to live. In other words they are able to exploit the peculiarity of labour-power described above, and to take from the worker the surplus value created in production.

The existence of a free working class is a necessary condition for capitalist production. Before the workers could be turned into wage-slaves they had to be “freed” from the land and the instruments of labour: they had to be property-less in the means of production. In England this was accomplished by ejecting peasants from the land, and the seizure of common lands. There was thus created a class with no other means of existence than the sale of labour-power to the capitalist employers.

Once there exists the relationship of wage-earner and capitalist, it tends to perpetuate itself. By spending his wages as he must, the worker is forced continuously to sell his labour-power. The capitalists, because of their monopoly of the means of production, are able continuously to buy it and appropriate the surplus-value it creates. This surplus-value is divided into rent paid for land and buildings, interest paid for loans of money, taxes paid to the State for services performed on behalf of capitalism as a whole, and profit. Part of the profit is consumed by the capitalists, and part is reinvested in production.

The rate of reinvestment of profit is determined not by the whims of individual capitalists but by social forces over which they have no control. Competition and market conditions tend to reduce the prices of commodities. To meet this threat without reducing profits, capitalists endeavour to enlarge their businesses so that the costs of production can be reduced; this means the introduction of more efficient machinery, the speeding-up of the work process, and the effecting of economies made possible by large-scale production. Those capitalists who fail to do this will be in danger of being forced out of business.

The growth in size of businesses makes competition even more severe. Small concerns are always in danger of failure; only the largest and best-equipped are able to survive the struggle. Competition, by killing-off the small and less efficient concerns, concentrates control in the hands of relatively few large capitalist monopolies and also causes a continuous improvement in technique and an increase of productive capacity.

However, the same growth creates many problems. At first it requires an increase in the numbers of workers employed, but with advancing technical improvements the rate of employment falls whereas the rate of increase in the numbers of the working class tends to rise. Though these tendencies are offset by others, they are always at least potential pressures against the perpetual need of the working class to be employed. At all times the market for labour-power is subject to the factors which cause market conditions for all commodities to fluctuate. The capitalists have to look for fresh markets in non-capitalist (i.e. undeveloped) countries; and finally the whole world is brought into the stream of capitalist economic life.

Constant and Variable Capital

Technical improvements change the composition of capitals. A larger share is invested in means of production (machines, raw materials, etc.) called by Marx constant capital, and a smaller share in the purchase of labour-power or variable capital. This changed composition produces very important results. The capitalists reckon their profits on the whole of their capital, and any increase of capital that does not result in a corresponding increase of labour-power employed (since that is the only commodity which can produce surplus- value) results in a fall in the rate of profit.

A capital of £100, of which £80 represents constant and £20 variable capital, produces a surplus of—say— £20 and a rate of profit of 20 per cent. A capital of £200, of which £180 represents the constant capital and £20 is the variable capital, with the same exploitation of the workers, will still only produce surplus-value of £20: which means a lower rate of profit, that is 10 per cent.

As more and more capital is assuming the shape of machines (constant capital) and in proportion less is being invested in the purchase of labour-power (variable capital), it follows that the rate of profit is a falling one. In the highly industrialized countries, despite the intensification of exploitation by speeding-up and other methods, there is a continuing long-term tendency for the rate of profit to fall. To help overcome it, capitalists export capital to less advanced countries where the proportion of labour-power required in relation to the total capital is high and, as a result, the rate of profit is high also.

As the capitalist industrial system spreads over the world, the problems become wider in extent and more severe in their effects. To protect their interests the capitalists are compelled to form trusts, combines and mergers, and endeavour to restrict or eliminate competition and to restrict production to the requirements of the market.

Though the main purpose of these moves is the abolition of competition, it is never accomplished. Trusts and combines are usually national or semi-international in scope, though we are now witnessing the growth and power of multi-national concerns. Though all the producers supplying home markets might be organized in trusts, the capitalist market is the world market, and there the national and semi-international trusts struggle against one another. The effects of such international competition are far more harmful than those of competition between numerous small concerns. Thus, the contradiction between the order and efficiency of production, and the anarchy of the market, becomes and is irreconcilable: the economic crisis becomes a feature of capitalism. The contrast between the relatively increasing poverty of the working class and society’s increasing power for producing wealth becomes greater, as does the contrast between the social character of production and its private or class ownership and control.

In order to resolve this contradiction, the class—that is, the working class which is at present exploited and will continue to be exploited so long as wealth is produced as commodities—this class must take control of political power. This is the power which at the moment makes it perfectly legal for the capitalist class to appropriate the surplus-value produced by the combined efforts of the working class. It must be used now to convert the property relationship in the means of production from the present private or class ownership to one of common ownership: so that wealth—that is, useful things— may be produced because they are useful and necessary. And so society can go forward to its next goal, Socialism.

Robert Ambridge

Grant Allen: A Tribute to His Scientific Work (1919)

At the time of publication, The Proletarian was the paper of the Proletarian University of America. It's editor John Keracher, and its leading supporters Dennis Batt and Oakley C. Johnson were still part of the left-wing of the Michigan State Socialist Party. The Proletarian Party was not to form until the spring of 1920. The author of this article, Adolph Kohn, was an SPGBer who left Britain during World War 1 to avoid being conscripted and was involved in radical circles in and around Detroit. One of the pen-names he took during this period was 'John O'London'.

 From the May 1919 issue of The Proletarian

Many of the ablest thinks of the revolutionary movement are forgotten except by a few. Social science has given us notable pioneers whose work and memory are neglected because they did not serve in a popular cause. Karl Marx set an example in giving due recognition to his fore-runners. In “The Poverty of Philosophy” (1847) he is careful to acknowledge the able work of the early socialist of Ireland—William Thompson—whose “Inquiry into the Principle of Human Happiness” (1827) was a book on surplus value, remarkable for its time. John Gray, author of “The Social System” (1831) and J. F. Bray, who wrote “Labor’s Wrongs and Labor’s Remedy” (1839) were both rescued from oblivion by Marx’s international lectures and studies. How easily gifted workers for socialism are eclipsed in our memory can be gathered from the few who recall the writings and activities of Peter Lavroff and Felix Volkhovsky who did so much for the Russian revolution and died in exile before they saw the Promised Land of their ideals. So too, men like Paul Lafargue and women such as Eleanor Marx Aveling never received one-tenth the attention given to less able if more popular stars in the socialist firmament. And the same is true of natural science. Lamarck the deep and original thinker of evolution who died in abject poverty has been practically forgotten by those who praise Darwin to the skies. Professor William Kingdon Clifford, the brilliant essayist of evolution and rationalism, died when young and his spirited warfare against superstition and ignorance is now hardly known. Half a century ago in the days when Darwinism was fighting for its life, the soldiers of science used no kid gloves and called a spade a spade unlike our respectable and apologetic rationalists and men of science now living. And in sheer abiltiy and quality of effort they are unequalled in this age of cut-throat commerce and break-neck-speed industry. Modern America is the country, par excellence, where instruction is plentiful but ideas scarce. The record of the fine work and unrewarded genius of such a thinker as Grant Allen should be useful to stimulate study and illustrate the truths we teach.

Born in Canada in the memorable year of 1848, Grant Allen came from Celtic stock. His father was an Irish clergyman who later revolted against the compulsory reading of the Anthanasian Creed with its damnation clauses for those who honestly disbelieved. His mother was Scotch of French parentage and thus the Celtic spirit of lively, alert and fluent power combined with scientific knowledge to make Allen the man he was. Life as a boy amongst the flora and fauna of the “Thousand Islands” of Eastern Canada, taught him much of that fine grasp of plant and animal life which blossomed later into the scientific studies which have charmed and helped our generation. Those flower and bird and insect rambles ripened into his “Evolution at Large,” “Flowers and Their Pedigrees,” “The Colors of Flowers,” “In Nature’s Workshop,” “Common Sense Science,” “Science in Arcady,” “Falling in Love,” “Story of Plant Life,” “Colin Clouts Calendar,” “Vignettes from Nature” and many others. These books combine charm and simplicity of language with the latest science such as not even Huxley could excel.

Adverse falls in family affairs cut short his Oxford University life and drove him to private tutorship— the last hope of a university man. Spencer, Darwin, Huxely, Tyndall, and others were making scientific history and Grant Allen saw his life work in the same field. He began to accumulate materials for an investigation into the History of Religion but he had to spend his days in a bitter struggle to provide food and shelter for himself and wife and child. He became Professor of Moral Philosophy at Spanish Town Government College, Jamaica, but British capitalist domination did not arouse the negro to education and Allen’s classes lacked pupils and he was jobless again. So like many others he found that unless you prostituted your education to the service of the few—poverty stares you in the face. As Jack London has so bitterly recorded—you can make more money writing rubbish than scientific books.

People spoke of London’s “Call of the Wild” and “White Fang” as good dog stories, whereas they were written as applications of Spencer and Darwin’s teachings on heredity and the struggle for existence. Grant Allen incorporated truths of science—heredity, ethnology and psychology in his stories but people saw the romance and tragedy and understood nothing more. Like Jack London—Grant Allen had to satisfy popular “taste” and his own pressing needs by writing potboilers such as “Hilda Wade,” “The Typewriter Girl,” “The African Millionaire,” etc. “What’s Bred in the Bone,” “The Great Taboo,” “Rev. John Creedy” were written to embody scientific principles but publishers wanted “light stuff” and the talented man of science bitterly turned his back on the real work of his life for many years. As soon as possible, however, he began to write books which pleased himself and will please many generations to come—if they value knowledge.

In his earlier days he had written many magazine articles such as “The Positive Aspect of Communism,” “Socialism and Natural Inequality,” “The Genesis of Genesis” and many articles on woman’s share in primitive social life, in debate with Lester Ward whose theories of the female being the original sex Allen disagreed with. His study of original materials gave us “Anglo-Saxon Briton”—a history of social institutions and social evolution in early Britain—not a history of kings and heroes but a great advance upon the history-writing methods of his day. Andrew Lang —the prominent writer on mythology—said of Allen’s “genius, the most versatile, beyond comparison of any man of his age. Had he been able to devote himself entirely to physical science, as he desired, it is not for me to conjecture what he might have added to the sum of human knowledge. But”—here the tragedy—“he had to live by his pen—by scientific work he could not live.”

Allen found more money in writing guide-books to Italy and France than by his most brilliant studies in science. He stopped writing a “Philosophy of History” based on the facts of evolution in order to write such novels as “All Shades” to keep from starvation. Long study of physics caused him to plan the original work on “Force and Energy” which he was compelled to issue privately in 1873. Publishers did not care to speculate. The theory of attractive force and repulsive energy foreshadowed many ideas which are commonpalce in our day. Jack London and Grant Allen had in common profound regard for the writing of Herbert Spencer who influenced the views of both these men considerably. Spencer had nothing but high praise for that now scarce book of Allen’s “Physiological Aesthetics,” an original treatise on the origin of the pleasure we derive from natural and artificial products. Allen showed that the foundation of all sensation is in the laws of nervous action and that all aesthetic feeling is finally based on sense delight, tastes, smells, touches, sounds, forms or colors. Dedicated to Herbert Spencer the latter said it was a valuable development of evolutionary thought. Spencer tried to get Allen a position as educator, but in vain. Not more than three hundred copies of the book were sold and Allen lost two hundred and fifty dollars through advancing science. In 1879 he published that remarkable study in psychology—“The Color Sense.” Darwin, Wallace and Spencer esteemed it a valuable investigation into that difficult problem of comparative psychology—The Origin of a Color Sense. After ten years Allen obtained one hundred and fifty dollars from the book and he sarcastically said: “As it took me only eighteen months, and involved little more than five or six thousand references, this result may be regarded as very fair pay for an educated man’s time and labor, and should warrant the reproach of the thoughtless critics for deserting the noble pursuit of science in favor of fiction and the filthy lucre.”

Allen’s journalistic work on the staff of “London” came to a sudden end with the collapse of that paper and he accepted the drudgery of compiling an index for the Indian Gazeteer. This was done to the end that he could later devote hmiself to his late work on the inquiry into the origins of religion, and after twenty years’ patient study, collection and comparison of materials he published the book that took him ten years to write—“The Evolution of the Idea of God” (1897). The title was suggested by Herbert Spencer and the book is one of the greatest proofs of the earthly origins of Gods and belief in “Spirits” ever written. Huxely and Spencer, amongst many others, considered it a masterpiece, though the view Allen took of the origin or religion differed in some respects from his contemporary investigators. Those who are familiar with the great work of Frazer “The Golden Bough”, Tylor’s “Anthropology” and Spencer’s “Sociology” will find easy indications of the foundations of Allen’s views.

Allen adopted the essentials of Spencer’s position that religion arose among savages in Ancestor Worship. Answering the question, “By what successive steps did men come to frame for themselves the conception of a deity?” Allen summarizes the evidence of the early beliefs of savages, past or present, and the testimony of historical documents and ancient monuments. How did men come to believe first in many gods —polytheism? How did men come to remove most of their gods until eventually certain races believed in one single, supreme and all-powerful God? And from that how did the advanced races and civilizations conceive of God as a trinity with a human person as one of its three forms—The Origin of Christianity? Allen followed the main conclusion of Spencer but added to it and modified it many ways. He adopted the view that ghost worship was the foundation of belief in gods, and the worship of corpses and not the association of spirits with non-living things was the first form of practiced religion.

The conception of the life of the dead was shown to pass through three stages, corpse worship, ghost worship and shade worship, and were associated with the three stages of mummification, burial and cremation. “In its origin,” says Allen, p. 16, “the concept of a God is nothing more than that of a dead man, regarded as a still surviving ghost or spirit, and endowed with increased or supernatural powers and qualities.” The worship of the sun, moon and the stars is not primitive, but a later derivation. Many writers hold that religion grew out of fear, but Allen shows that does not answer the question, why men revered and worshipped their gods as a beneficient and generous father. Allen demonstrated that religion consists not in ethical theory but in ceremonial practice and custom—prayer, propitiation, praise, offering, etc. “In its simplest surviving savage type, religion consists wholly and solely in certain acts of deference paid by the living to the persons of the dead.”

In England the Rationalist Press Association published a twelve cent edition of this wonderful book, and in a short time one hundred thousand copies were sold to working men—much to the dismay of a historic enemy—the church. Those who want to understand the reasons for socialists taking their stand on the scientific grounds of criticism of religion must read Grant Allen. For two years Allen went from publisher to publisher, but they were afraid to publish until a relatively obscure man did so. After Allen’s death the materials for a second volume were found and published as they stood under the title of “The Hand of God”— a study in the “Worship of Death”. This is a brilliant addition to the earlier work and contains many essays on modern evolution.

The little book on “Charles Darwin” by Grant Allen is one of the best studies ever written, and as Spencer well said, is one of the few books on this subject that is fair to Darwin’s contemporaries and accurate in its views. It shows the credit due to Spencer for his presentation of cosmic evolution and to Darwin for his discovery of the origin of species. It shows also how every great mind depends upon the society of his time for his success.

The barbarous religions and social conventions of his time found a burning critic in Grant Allen. The hypocrisy of “respectable society”—the idiotic and property relations between the sexes gave us articles like the “New Hedonism” and those poems on the woman victims of a rotten system, printed in his charming “Lower Slopes”—the only book of verses Allen issued.

When he felt the hardest part of his sordid struggle with poverty ending Allen embodied his views on the marriage and social question in two novels—written to please himself—not his publishers. After a long struggle he succeeded in getting a publisher and “The Woman Who Did” and “The British Barbarians” upset the respectable world of his time. They picture people trying to avoid the conventional codes of morality and show their treatment by the “upright” hypocrites around them.

They trace the paralysing influence on men and women of established institutions and point a better way to a brighter life. These two books are well worth attention by the seeker after real pictures of social life.

In 1898 he was asked to write an article on the Defense of the Dominion for the Canadian Yearbook, and his reply is a good lesson for the Haeckels and Lankesters of today. Allen wrote:

  “You can know very little of my aims and ideals if you think I would willingly do anything to help on a work whose avowed object is to arouse ‘military enthusiasm’. Military enthusiasm means enthusiasm for killing people. My desire in life has been not to kill, but to help and aid all mankind, irrespective of nationality, creed, language or cult. I hate war, and everything that leads to it, as I hate murder, rapine, or the ill treatment of women. I dislike slavery, however cloaked under the guise of ‘imperialism’. I contribute gladly to works designed to strengthen the bonds of amity between nations ands to render war impossible, but I cannot contribute to one which aims at making peaceful Canadian citizens throw themselves into the devouring whirlpool of militarism.”

After a lifetime of illness, Allen died on October 25th, 1898, at the early age of fifty, with much of his chief projects unfinished. , Down to his last day he was in Shelley’s words 

Singing songs unbidden, till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heedeth not.

Adolph Kohn

This article was signed under Kohn's pen-name of 'John O'London'.

Why I am striking

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Lecturers are on strike again, with the first tranche scheduled to last fourteen days in all.  Cue jokes about academics sat at home not thinking, or troops being sent in to give seminars on the use of Christian symbolism in late period Anglo Saxon poetry.

I am not an academic, nor am I even in their pension scheme, the root of the conflict.  I am a university worker, and I have been standing on the freezing cold February picket line, asking staff and students not to cross it.

I understand that academics have achieved something very difficult.  The Tories have introduced a new law to make it so that public sector workers have to achieve not only a majority of those voting, but a majority of those eligible to strike must vote as well.  (Universities claim to be public sector for this purpose, but have managed to get themselves declared private sector for the purposes of procurement, because a majority of their money comes from fees now).  

The result of this is that instead of the gentlemanly dance of previous university strikes - two days here and there - the difficulty of getting a strike called at all means it has to be decisively disruptive: these are the counter-productive aspects of the Tories trying to regulate strikes out of existence, the pressure valve is gone, and it will make strikes more bitter.

The root cause is an attempt to change the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pension from being a defined benefit scheme, into a defined contribution scheme: throwing all the liabilities of the Universities onto the vagaries of the stock market.  The scheme has already changed from being final salary to being career average related (and employer and employee contributions have both been raised in recent years).

The cause of this is under accounting rules, the scheme must be funded so that if all universities went bankrupt tomorrow, all the liabilities could be met.  This creates a phantom deficit of billions of pounds, despite all universities not being bankrupt, and the scheme currently being able to manage its liabilities.

Make no mistake, universities are far removed from the rarified world of a David Lodge novel: today they are vast DIckensian factories employing thousands of staff and servicing tens of thousands of students each.  As Boris Johnson noted in his recent farcical speech on Brexit, Britain stands a long way up the value chain, not producing raw materials or components, but designs and innovation.  Thousands of foreign, particularly Chinese, students come to the UK to study, bringin in much needed revenue.

When I discuss this matter, friends tell me that academics are lucky to still have defined benefit pensions, or that they themselves have had their pension downgraded.  For me, this makes it all the more important to put a marker in the sand to stop this downgrading of all our deferred salaries.

I understand that what is at stake here is the ability to strike at all, and to have a conscious say in our workplaces: the academics are being attacked as workers, and they recognise their position as workers by calling this strike.  They deserve support and solidarity, even at the cost of 14 days pay, because anything that makes employers think twice about downgrading terms and conditions of their employees is a benefit for all workers, everywhere.

Capitalism draws increasing numbers into the condition of wage slavery, many academics are on the equivalent of zero hours contracts, or have to continually search for funding for their own salaries.  Of course, ending capitalism and abolishing the wages system is the necessary political act, but in the meanwhile the class struggle rumbles on, and we have to engage with the struggle to defend ourselves and pursue the best living standards we can manage under the the labour market.

If we don’t strike, we all lose: and maybe, for all those students who smile wanly, shrug and say they have to go in to lectures, the library or to study, they can learn the lesson that they too will soon be waged workers, who will need solidarity to protect them in their workplaces.

P. Soter