The World's Wealth (1948)

Book Review from the August 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The World’s Wealth,” by W. G. Moore, published by Penguin Books at 1s. 6d., is a worthwhile ‘‘buy,” containing in a handy, compact form much useful information about the world’s material resources, as they actually exist at present, and as they are capable of development in the future. The author covers a vast amount of ground and the book naturally suffers from his effort to cram as much information as he possibly can into the short space of 250 pages. All attempts at compression can only succeed at the expense of the less important details and in this case pruning has had to be ruthless. Nevertheless, it can be said that in “The World’s Wealth” the author has succeeded in producing a summary that is most useful and which, at the same time, has been clearly and interestingly written.

The plan of the book is straightforward, little space being wasted on non-essentials. After a short introduction, the author proceeds immediately to examine the resources of the earth, dealing with them in separate, self-contained groups. Several chapters are devoted to the food requirements of mankind—what foods are eaten, where they are eaten, and their chief sources of supply. In similar manner he deals with man’s requirements in the way of drink and clothing. Further chapters deal with trees and their various products, sources of power, metals and other minerals, and transport. In a special chapter he traces the development of industry throughout the world from the time when Great Britain was its “workshop” to the present period of dominance by the United States. He comments also upon the ever-growing importance of Soviet Russia, and the book as a whole strikingly illustrates the preponderance of these two powers within capitalism today, and for some time to come.

The last chapter comes as something of a disappointment, though it is fortunately short. In it. the author sums up briefly what has already been said, commenting upon the wide divergences between the standards of living of the various peoples' of the world, and condemning in particular imperialism and its effects upon the conditions of the subject peoples exploited under it. At the same time he attempts to answer the inevitable question of how these resources of the earth can best be used for the full benefit of its inhabitants. His remedy does not appear to be a very effective one, nor does he state it with much conviction. After remarking, rather piously, that

   “It appears to be now generally agreed that such maldistribution of the world’s wealth as we have briefly reviewed must not be permitted in the post-war world, that acute shortage of the essential commodities of life must not co-exist with the improvident wastage and destruction of resources caused by an ill-adjusted world economy, that widespread poverty and hunger must not remain when greater riches than the earth has yet known await exploitation.” 

he can only express the hope that

   ". . . if there emerges from this situation the general recognition that it is wrong, and the determination that it shall be repaired, then soon, and for the first time in world history, the terms ‘peace’ and ‘plenty’ may become synonymous for every member of the human race.”

A very nice sentiment, no doubt, even with its “if” and its “may,” but it does not get us very far. Mr. Moore ends his book at this point, leaving many things unsaid, which is unfortunate to say the least. We would have liked to have heard more from him, and in more precise terms. This being impossible, we just recommend the book (the last chapter excepted), as a very useful source of “ background knowledge ” of present-day capitalist production and trade.

Stan Hampson

Branch News (1962)

Party News from the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Central Literature Sales Committee report that they attended the Labour Party Conference at Brighton to sell literature and hold meetings. Members living in Brighton assisted on occasions. Labour Party delegates were inundated with all sort of giveaway literature; this made our task more more difficult. However, Socialist Standards and Pamphlets were sold to the value of £3 14s 6d. and our Labour Government pamphlets were freely distributed at a CND demonstration, several evening meetings organised by our members, and at a large meeting run by Tribune. At the latter our literature was prominently in evidence. Our members found this type of activity stimulating and a way to contact comrades who are not directly in touch with a branch. It was decided at a special meeting to re-constitute the Brighton Group with a view to form a Branch in the near future.

Propaganda arrangements for the winter season are well under way—full details are given in this issue of November activities. Support from members and sympathisers is essential for the success of these meetings.

Glasgow Branch in particular have a very full programme, with meetings in Hamilton and Edinburgh as well as Glasgow. These meetings will greatly assist in the election activities which will shortly be in full swing.

A report from Comrade Gloss, Companion Party Secretary of the World Socialist Party of the U.S.A. states that the keynote of their Conference (held in September), was the unity of the world Socialist Movement. One of the first decisions gave the eight delegates of the Socialist Party of Canada  "full voice and vote in all Conference matters ”. From many parts of the world came inspiring messages, written and recorded. Voices from New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa and England, and a greatly appreciated message from Comrade Frank in Austria, accompanied by his pamphlet—the first in Austria—outlining our Principles. They were gratified that the six leaflets written by Comrade Milne of the Socialist Party of Canada had been published in pamphlet form by the SPGB.

The highlight of the Conference was the appointment of Don Poirier of the SPC to tour the U.S. and Canada to help the spread of Socialist ideas and organisation. About $1,500 in pledges were made ($285 in cash collected) at the Conference for this venture. At a social, after the formal sessions, $200 was donated to finance a tour of the Vancouver-Victoria area by George Jenkins (SPC). 

The Conference helped to get the outdoor meetings of the WSP going again on Boston Common (the building of an underground garage had made these meetings impossible for more than two years, they had been replaced by formal discussions on another part of the Common). Excellent meetings were held on the Sundays, prior, during and after the Conference.

The enthusiasm and comradeship at the Conference made the occasion one of the most fruitful in the history of the Party.

Phyllis Howard

Letters to the Editors: A Sympathiser Writes . . . (1982)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Sympathiser Writes . . .

Dear Editors.

I have been a regular reader of the Socialist Standard now for about two years. I have also read your books and pamphlets on various subjects. I had always held the view that reforms by radical governments would eventually change this unfair society; I now realise that this is not possible. I agree 100 per cent with the argument put forward by the SPGB. Why. then, am I not a member? After a lot of thought I have come to a reluctant conclusion. It is this. I have attended meetings and debates, listened and sometimes argued with a multitude of different political opinions. I have argued with workmates, friends in the pub. even members of my family; in fact anyone who appears to be listening. The best response I have had however is. “yes, I sympathise with your beliefs but I will never be convinced that the society you want will ever work”. This is the depressing opinion put forward by class-conscious people who have, at least, bothered to think up to a point. They have, however, been unable to break out of false attitudes about "human nature” which are nurtured all too readily by defenders of capitalism. From an early age people are conditioned by propaganda from all sides. Educated and taught various skills and sciences. Taught about religion with the intention of producing what is known as "a useful member of society”. We all know what that is. The power and therefore the results of this indoctrination are not to be underestimated and I am beginning to despair that even the pure logic and rationality of the socialist case will be able to break it down. 1 have no wish to lead a life of self-imposed frustration trying to convince fellow working-class men and women that socialism is the only answer to their problems. Most of them refuse to listen anyway, preferring to watch the telly or follow other pastimes that eat up what little leisure- time most people have. Let them drool over their favourite political leader’s promises of pie in the sky: or follow religious leaders’ preachings of life after death and that the meek will inherit the earth. Let them fight and die in wars between capitalists and their counterparts in other countries. They are, after all, in the majority.

You may consider this to be a defeatist attitude, and so it is, but how else can constant failure to make headway result in anything other?

I have nothing but admiration for anyone who decides to become a member of the SPGB. They obviously possess a sense of hope and enthusiasm that I would in no way wish to dampen.

G. Nesbitt 

Seaham

Reply:
Socialism will be the result of social forces within capitalism driving workers to the conclusion that the present system does not operate in their interests and that only a society of common ownership of the means of production. democratically organised by themselves, can. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is one among many of these forces. We do not think that our efforts alone will bring socialism, but that the whole range of workers’ experiences (including contact with the SPGB) will prepare them for it. If to some people this preparation seems a tedious process and our progress seems slow, we must say that we too would like to see the socialist idea spreading more quickly. However, important ideas in human history have always taken quite some time to become popular and have only seemed credible to the majority after once being accepted by a sizeable minority. Then they have spread very quickly. Historically speaking the socialist idea has only been around a brief moment. Capitalism has not been around long either. We hope it won’t be with us much longer, but we may have to live under it for some time yet. This we must be realistic about and accept.

We don’t consider that being patient and carrying on our work in the meantime to be “self-imposed frustration”. There can on occasions, we agree, be a frustrating side to working for socialism, but this is far outweighed by the satisfaction we get out of knowing that what we’re pursuing is the only worthwhile social goal and not one of those will-o’-the- wisps chased by those who are concerned to reform capitalism. We also get satisfaction from seeing that people like yourself are capable of responding to and being convinced by our arguments.

But if you agree with us, it’s not your admiration we want. That won’t bring socialism any nearer. We want your active support. Join us and help add weight of numbers to ‘logic and rationality’. The bigger we are, the less likely it is that the people you argue with will say they’ll never be convinced that the society we want will ever work.

Editors

Questions about Socialism

Dear Editors,

I have recently received several excellent, informative issues of the Socialist Standard, and as a result I have several questions to ask.

1. In such a socialist society, how does the socialist policy to conflict manifest itself? You have opposed war as a tool of capitalism — do socialists agree that such a state would resist conflict by remaining impartially neutral, regardless of the consequences?

2. What is (or would be) socialist policy towards Northern Ireland?

3. What (if any) are the rewards of becoming well qualified in such a society? Are they substantial enough to create incentive?

4. You mention in your principles that as a working class emancipation party, you must be hostile to every other party. In what sense are you hostile and to what extent?

5. Surely, socialism in Britain would merely be a reversal of roles for master class and working class and therefore the antagonism of interests would still exist? Being primarily a working class party, do you hope to convince the middle class of the merits of socialism.

Michael Brown

Leatherhead, 

Surrey. 

P.S. I hold all socialism’s beliefs because they are contrary to the monetarist system we now have.

Reply:
You raise a number of interesting points. We will try to answer them in order.

1. Your question on how in a socialist society the state would react to war seems to be based on a misunderstanding of our views. There could not be a “socialist state". The state, even in those countries that call themselves socialist, exists to protect the property of the small minority class who own or control the majority of the wealth. Socialism, in our sense of a fully democratic society of common ownership of the means of production and free access to all goods and services, can only be established on a world scale. It will be a frontierless, moneyless society with none of the economic and territorial rivalries between ruling classes that generate war as at present.

2. The Irish problem has its origins in the struggle between rival groups of capitalists in Ireland early this century which workers were encouraged to take part in by being fed large doses of patriotic and religious mythology. The conflict between capitalists died down with partition, but the mythology lived on in workers’ minds and has now come to the surface again under the influence of poverty and feelings of injustice experienced by them. The Socialist Party deplores the killing, hatred and bigotry it has brought, but we are in business to help establish socialism not to help capitalist governments solve the problems they themselves have created. In any ease, the surest way to stop workers from murdering, maiming and terrorising one another is to undermine the false, misguided ideas that get them to do these things. In Ireland, as elsewhere, the real solution is the spread of socialist understanding.

3. Since socialism will be a society in which all people’s material needs will be satisfied and there will be no money or wages, “incentive" will not come from financial or material rewards but from knowing that whatever work one does will be personally satisfying, socially useful and appreciated by other members of the community. What better incentive could there be? Even in capitalism money isn’t the only motivation that will get people to do things. Think of the large amount of work people do for themselves or others on a voluntary basis and of their obvious need (recognised and often used for their own ends by governments) to feel part of a co-operative social effort.

4. The meaning to be given to the word “hostile” in Clause 7 of our Declaration of Principles is that we are in complete political opposition to other parties. We oppose them by rational argument and debate, in fact by all the non-violent means at our disposal. Our opposition is not based on pigheadedness, but on the fact that their aims are not the same as ours. Even if other parties call themselves “socialist”, their aim is to run capitalism in one way or another. It would be futile for us therefore not to oppose them or to support or form alliances with them.

5. The so-called “middle class” (office workers, teachers, dentists, doctors and the like) are in reality members of the working class because, like miners, dockers and roadsweepers, they have to sell their energies to an employer in order to live. The working class therefore comprises about 90 per cent of the population. The other class in society, the “master” or capitalist class, is the remaining 10 per cent—those who own enough not to have to work for a wage or salary, who live off the energies of the 90 per cent, and in whose interest the system is run. It is the majority, the workers, who will establish socialism because they will see it to be in their interest to do so. But socialism, once established, will be a classless society. It will mean complete economic and social equality. Every one will stand in an equal relationship to the means of production, owning none of it as individuals but owning all of it by their membership of the community.

It is true, as your postscript suggests, that socialists are opposed to “monetarism”. But we are equally opposed to non-monetarist and other ways governments may find of trying to run capitalism. The point is that capitalism, no matter what methods governments use, cannot be run in the interests of the working-class majority. Hence the widespread dissatisfaction perpetually felt among workers whichever government is in power. For more detail on this and other issues, can we recommend to you our pamphlet Questions of the Day? It will give you a good overall idea of our views.

Editors.

Letters: It is money that impedes everything (1996)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is money that impedes everything

Dear Editors,

I have been wondering whether to renew my subscription to the Socialist Standard for the coming year, for there are many differences between your views and mine on how to achieve a just and equitable society. For instance, the expressions that you use. such as capitalists, workers, class, are generally regarded as out-of-date concepts and are likely to lose support. Most of us have savings, however little, that have to be invested somewhere if they are not to lose value because of inflation, so we all are capitalists. Again, what is a worker? Few of us slave in a foundry any more. Are we to be excluded from your endeavours?

Even if elected on such a ticket, your parliamentary candidates are unlikely to have any effect on policy or public opinion, and they would only be endorsing the concept of government. Our aim, surely, is to achieve freedom from control by fallible leaders, whatever their ideology.

No-one is better or worse than anyone else. We are no more than the product of our heredity and of the environment in which we find ourselves. If humans are to change, if societies are to eliminate anti-social behaviour, the environment in which they exist must be changed first. That is our task, but change itself requires an atmosphere of reason, an education system that questions, that stimulates interest and enquiry and recognises that concern for our fellows is the greater self-interest.

Unemployment, capitalism, bureaucracy, poverty, are no more than effects. We need to look at fundamental causes. It is claimed that money is the catalyst without which the productive process would collapse in chaos. Yet in reality it is money that impedes everything that we aim to do. The amount of money that we desire to use, whether for education, health, transport or anything else has to be restricted in order to maintain its value. We are so conditioned by it that we cannot imagine society functioning without it. It is all-pervasive, all-corrupting. No socialist society, no conceivable economic or political system, could survive long enough for it to wither away, and since it creates deprivation as well as wealth, it must create conflict also. Only by first eliminating the money system will we achieve a just and stable society.

We need to recognise that we all differ from each other, have different desires and aspirations, so that what we think of as equality depends upon the view of the individual. To take from one to give to another— or even to the community at large—merely provokes confrontation. Such confrontation could be avoided only in an economy that did not impose an artificial scarcity on human and material resources, and in which production would have no limit.

We need to work together to eliminate the underlying fundamental concepts that impede us in everything we do. Fighting each other, allowing ourselves to be distracted by differences of approach and to quarrel over their effects is self-defeating.

Only by co-operation, reason, debate and listening to others rather than deriding or condemning them, are we likely to achieve our objectives.

So I shall be renewing my subscription not because I agree with all you say but because it is the better world that matters, not differences among ourselves.

Melvin Chapman, 

Bath

Reply:
We talk about class because this is the basic feature of present-day society. The productive resources of society are owned and controlled by a minority class and are run for their benefit

Figures (produced by the Inland Revenue and the Statistical Office) show that the ownership of income-yielding financial assets—which are ownership rights over productive resources—is concentrated in the hands of this minority. The top five percent own over 50 percent which is as much as the other 95 percent of us added together. Every one of them owns on average about twenty times as much as everyone else.

This enables them to live on the unearned income their ownership rights provide. Their wealth gives their children privileged access to the top posts in industry and the state, where they are enabled to enjoy bloated “salaries” which bear no relation to the work they do and are in fact a way of giving them a share of the profits produced by the useful majority in society. They are the Establishment, the ruling class, the capitalists.

The other class is made up of the rest of us, who are forced by economic necessity to seek an employer in order to get a living. This is irrespective of the sort of job or type of work we do or indeed irrespective of whether or not we are actually able to find an employer. So we are talking about office workers, civil servants, hospital workers, salespeople, even managers and supervisors, and the unwaged as well as miners, bricklayers and foundry workers—in all, well over 90 percent of the population in an industrialised and urbanised country like Britain.

There is no such thing as a middle class. The so-called middle class is merely a part of the working class. Having a small income from your savings to top up your pension doesn't make up a capitalist. For that you would need to own at least £250,000 in addition to your house—which is the capitalists’ own definition of a capitalist, being the requirement to be a Lloyd's Name.

We can’t see how you can deny that we are living in a class society and that this is the all-important social fact that those of us seeking social change must take into account. In fact, that the immense majority are excluded from the ownership and control of productive resources means that there is a group in society that has a material interest in ending this state of affairs by establishing a society of common ownership and democratic control, it means that socialism is not some ideal society to which all people of goodwill are somehow to be converted. It provides it with a basis in social reality, with a group of people—the overwhelming majority, it so happens—who have an interest in establishing it as the practical solution to the problems they face.

When the overwhelming majority—the working class, as we define it—take conscious democratic political action to do this, classes can then be abolished and a genuine community with a common social interest created. Production will be switched from production for sale on a market with a view to profit to production to satisfy people’s needs. Money—as a means of exchange, a means to buy things produced for sale— will become redundant and disappear.

The existence of money and the existence of socialism are incompatible, since the existence of money implies the existence both of exchange and of private property whereas socialism, as a society of common ownership and production for use, implies the non-existence of both and so also of the need for money.

This is why we don’t understand what you mean when you say that money would have to be eliminated before a viable socialist society could be established. Under capitalism money is very useful, indeed indispensable. Without it capitalism could not function; to try to abolish it would lead to chaos and economic breakdown. So we don’t stand for the abolition of money now under capitalism. What we stand for is the establishment of the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources; this will allow production to be geared directly to meeting people’s needs, so making money unnecessary.

A society dominated by money is one of the effects of capitalism, not its cause as you seem to imply. The only way to end the nefarious effects of money that you correctly identify is to establish socialism, where human values can flourish instead of the commercial and financial values that distort and debase our lives today. 

Editors

Reading the real thing

Dear Editors,

For years I believed I was a socialist, until I began to read socialist literature, the real stuff of course. It became increasingly obvious that I was a reformer.

The first discovery was that nationalisation was not common ownership. There's that old joke that when the coal industry was nationalised, the old lady went from the mining village to the pithead to fill her bucket up; she was promptly told to go and buy it the same as everyone else has to. Public ownership to her meant it was free. The previous owners still got their money through government bonds and the interest. Miners still had to fight for wage rises and safer and better working conditions.

The turning point for me was realising that capitalism cannot be reformed even if it wanted to. Its reason to exist is profit, without which it cannot continue.

When you read of people who say they have given many years of loyalty and have been made redundant, they of course do not understand the system they live under. They are a commodity and as such are expendable. When you hear the Opposition spokesman for education saying we must educate our children so as we can compete in an increasingly competitive world, it’s obvious he is talking about training a future workforce of commodities, not trying to get children to have a love of learning for its own sake. When you have a leader of a so-called socialist party who wants to send his son to a grant-maintained school rather than a state school, you realise what hypocrites they are.

That phrase “the manufacture of consent", or that even more apt phrase “the engineering of consent”, tells all where people accept long-term unemployment, repossessions, poor housing, going to the benefits office, plus of course wars where the unemployed are called upon to be patriots to look after the interests of capital.

In a stateless, classless and moneyless world society, from whatever angle you examine it, the problems that hitherto occurred would not happen. If only people would realise the power they have.

Gerry Geraghty, 

Colchester

Playing with Apartheid (1982)

From the June 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present use of sport for political ends was foreshadowed before World War II by the attitudes of the dictators Hitler and Mussolini, who encouraged and financed the endeavours of native footballers and athletes. The disappointment shown by Hitler and other leading Nazis at the win of the negro Jesse Owens over their own German favourite at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, is still well remembered. Most governments nowadays assist the efforts of “their” athletes of international class. They value success at this level because it engenders patriotic feeling and distracts the working class from problems at home. By publicising the country it helps exporters to gain ground on competitors. So sport today often spills over from its allotted place on the back pages of newspapers into front page headlines.

Although coming into a somewhat different category, in one way or another the apartheid policy operated by the South African government is often involved in such instances. Scarcely a week passes without news of some projected sporting conflict being jeopardised by the “South African Connection”. The latest major incident burst on a sick and weary world last February in an announcement from South Africa that a team of “rebel” English cricketers had arrived to start a tour sponsored by South African Breweries. Many South African cricketers, boycotted internationally for years, welcomed this chance to test their skills against top class opposition.

There have of course been many examples of discrimination in sport not involving apartheid. In many cases—polo, racquets and equestrian events—the high cost of competing eliminates the average worker before the event begins. In this country, cricket was for a long time bedevilled by the distinction between amateurs and professionals. Among other things, the latter—working men playing for a living—had to stay at inferior hotels to their amateur team mates who, in the main, had enough unearned income not to need payment. In some cases however, including that of W. G. Grace, amateurs were secretly paid to ensure that they did not have to openly turn professional. Although officially abolished 20 years ago, vestiges of this traditional separation linger on today. Similar distinctions arose in the United States where, until 1947, the major league baseball teams consisted of white players only. There were separate leagues for negro players. Now many of the major league teams have more black than white players on their staff. In none of these cases was their any legal backing for discrimination, whereas in South Africa apartheid operates within a legal framework, as a result of legislation passed by successive National Party governments since 1948.

The aims of the apartheid policies pursued by the South African government since 1948 are analysed in depth in our pamphlet The Problem of Racism, published in 1966. This government has represented the interests of the Afrikaner farming section of the ruling class, and the policy has been an attempt to preserve the values and attitudes of the old agricultural order and hold back the development of industrial capitalism. The latter is largely controlled by the English speaking capitalists, who would much prefer a free market in labour to the present restrictive situation. Until a few years ago the Afrikaners had a big advantage because of their unity, while the opposition became fragmented. However the increasing Afrikaner involvement in industry and the development of modern capitalist farming have led to dissensions within the National Party, as a section want some relaxation of apartheid rigidity, and others see this as “the beginning of the end”. In the case of its policy on sport, pressure from outside has combined with a shift in Afrikaner attitudes to produce some quite significant changes.

When the National Party government took power in 1948 they applied a rigid apartheid policy in sport as in all other walks of life: sportsfields, seating and clubs were segregated. World reaction took some time to gather pace, but eventually boycotts of South African players started to mushroom. Eventually an attempt was made to apply the policy to visiting teams also, and the situation reached a critical point when it was announced that a New Zealand rugby team, including Maoris, would not be allowed in. On 4 September 1965 the then Prime Minister, Verwoerd, addressing a meeting at Loskop Dam, spelled it out thus:

Our standpoint is that just as we subject ourselves to another country’s customs and traditions without flinching, without any criticism, and cheerfully, so do we expect when another sends representatives to us they will behave in the same way, namely not involving themselves in our affairs, and that they will adapt themselves to our customs.

(Quoted in The Broederband, Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom, Paddington Press 1979)

This statement was like fuel on the fire but, for a time, the government stood firm. To them, the policy seemed quite fair and they may well have expected it to be accepted. When it became obvious that it was seen very differently abroad, the next Prime Minister, Vorster, changed the policy and allowed the Maoris to tour. However he told Parliament a few weeks later: “Inside South Africa there will not be mixed sporting events, irrespective of the proficiency of the participants. On this there can be no compromise, negotiations or abandonment of principle” (Ibid).

Wilkins and Strydom also relate how the Prime Minister had to ride a tremendous backlash from hard line Afrikaners. These reactionaries did not consider sporting prestige important enough to justify any weakening in apartheid, and were perfectly prepared to accept complete isolation if that was the only alternative. It was very probable that Vorster decided in 1968 to “sacrifice” cricket as a sop to these critics. Although both games have their origin in Britain, in South Africa rugby is primarily an Afrikaner game while cricket is mainly played by the English speaking population. This was the year of the “D’Oliveira crisis”. Basil D’Oliveira, a Cape Coloured and as such ineligible for selection by South Africa, had qualified for England and been chosen to tour. “To a cheering (Orange) Free State National Congress, Mr. Vorster announced that D’Oliveira’s selection was political and unacceptable” (Ibid).

Except for a visit the following season by an Australian team (which incidentally lost every Test Match by enormous margins). South Africa has played no cricket at international level since then. The position with rugby was only slightly different. The 1970 New Zealand tour was a great success, the Maori players being among the most popular. In 1974 a British Lions team arrived and shocked the Springboks by winning three of the four international matches and drawing the other. It was now obvious that South Africa faced an indefinite period of total sporting ostracism and a decline in standards through lack of the necessary level of competition.

The Afrikaner government was in a terrible dilemma. Wilkins and Strydom report that a 1974 survey of opinion within the Broederband, and exclusive Afrikaner body, showed 97 per cent in favour of national sporting policies for every “nation” to be affiliated with world bodies (a policy rejected by these bodies because the “nations” were not considered to be independent); 92 per cent were opposed to mixed teams being fielded in sports other than athletics; whereas 93 per cent accepted the inclusion of non-whites for the Olympic Games, but as an interim measure only. Yet despite this, writing only four years later, Wilkins and Strydom could predict that “in about two years all races will play together on club, provincial and national level, will sit together on stands, will use all the club facilities such as bars and toilets, and that no more applications for permits will be needed”.

Certainly significant changes have been made. The pressure from abroad, combined with internal pressure from inside and outside Afrikanerdom, has overcome a white backlash which, observing events elsewhere on the continent, was and still is terrified of the consequences of “giving in to the blacks”. A British Lions rugby team visited South Africa in 1980 and played against non-whites in some matches. A South African touring party, containing some coloured players, visited New Zealand in 1981. Despite these isolated events however the sports boycott of South Africa is still virtually complete.

Internationally the capitalist class has reacted in fairly predictable fashion to the anti-capitalist policies pursued by the National Party governments. While perfectly prepared to trade with and invest in South Africa, openly or secretly as circumstances dictate, they have nevertheless made it clear that they expect conformity to normal capitalist practice; for example an open labour market, without the reservation of certain classes of jobs for whites. The expulsion of South Africa from the Commonwealth in I960 was a result of this stand.

However, whereas countries like Great Britain—where capitalists are mostly white—would be satisfied with a South African capitalism dominated by a white ruling class, this does not appear to be the case generally. Countries like India and the emergent ‘Third World” nations, where the capitalists are mostly non-white and perhaps under pressure from extremists in their own ranks, want rather more. South Africa has now become an anomaly in another sense: it is the only part of the continent still under white rule. It could well be that India, for instance, feels that better trading terms could be obtained from a non-white ruling class (a class of wealthy Indians has long been in existence) rather than from white capitalists still harbouring old prejudices from the apartheid era.

This difference is reflected in the field of sport. Sporting bodies in states such as Britain and New Zealand, expressing satisfaction with efforts in South Africa to provide multi-racial sport, show some willingness to resume relations. The position of New Zealand is particularly delicate. The large farming element there may to some extent sympathise with Afrikaner attitudes, and their main sport is also rugby football. South Africa and New Zealand have traditionally had the best teams, so New Zealand players and turnstiles have keenly felt the loss of fixtures with the Springboks.

Walter Hadlee, past New Zealand cricket captain and test selector, gives expression to his frustration in an article in the 1982 Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack entitled "The Escalating Effect of Politics in Cricket”. He criticises the Gleneagles Agreement drawn up by Commonwealth governments in June 1977 to effect a common policy on sporting links with South Africa, aptly noting: “Different interpretations have given rise to endless controversy, much of it still continuing . . . Governments and anti-apartheid groups never seem to clarify their demands by setting out the precise requirements to be met either by the South African government or the sporting bodies concerned”. Hadlee interprets Gleneagles as meaning that when apartheid is no longer practised in any particular sport, normal relations can be resumed. From this viewpoint he comments on South African cricket that “they attained this in 1977”. Similar impatience was displayed in an editorial in the April 1982 issue of The Cricketer International". “India, Pakistan and Guyana, for instance, exercise some repression on ethnic or religious grounds. Moreover cricketers from these countries have cheerfully played with and against South Africans in England. Where should principles stop being applied?”

In non-white dominated countries a different view is taken. Here the Gleneagles agreement is interpreted as demanding an end to apartheid—not just on the sports field. They question whether the multiracial South African teams now being fielded are in fact selected on merit. Here there is a practical problem. Because of years of discrimination, only a few non-whites have achieved the necessary standards. What may be a genuine selection on ability can appear to an outside observer as an attempt to appease critics by fiddling one or two non-white “passengers”.

In this case the counter discrimination does not stop at a refusal to play against South African representatives. Teams and individuals who have previously played in, or against, South Africa are also boycotted. The England cricket tour of India last winter was jeopardised because Geoffrey Boycott and some other members of the party had played and coached in the Republic (coaching mainly non-whites, incidentally). On that occasion a declaration by Boycott of his personal opposition to apartheid was accepted by the Indian government. However, when Boycott and other current England players travelled with the rebel band earlier this year, the only way in which India and Pakistan would agree to go ahead with their projected tours of England this summer demanded that these individuals be prevented from taking the field against them.

To prevent a crippling loss of much needed gate receipts, the Test and County Cricket Board had no alternative but to impose a ban lasting for three years on the selection for England of these rebel players. More extreme action has been taken in the West Indies. The Guyana government cancelled a Test Match because the England team included Robin Jackman, a player with a South African wife, who had played in South Africa. The West Indies Cricket Board cancelled a projected cricket tour by a New Zealand team because of the 1981 tour of New Zealand by the South African rugby team. In neither case, it appears, were the opinions on apartheid of the individuals objected to considered to be of any importance.

Criticism is often directed at individuals for allegedly introducing politics into spheres of activity which, it is said, should be outside the political arena. Sport is often considered to be such a sphere, but the criticism is manifestly absurd. Because the class division of present-day society is to some extent reflected in all aspects of life, informed comment on any of these activities, particularly by those who seek to abolish this class division, must of necessity be political in content. We have seen, how pressure applied in the field of sport, but with the broader aim of modifying the wider South African society, does appear to be meeting with some success. It does increasingly look as if this story of sport and apartheid will not end until South Africa has a non-white capitalist government. The present white ruling class can scarcely be expected to acquiesce in this, as it will inevitably mean the reduction of many of them to the status of wage workers. The present unstable condition of many black African states increases still further the paranoia of the rich South African whites. Yet even the establishment of a black capitalism in the Republic will not prevent sundry prejudices from bedevilling sport, as in all aspects of life.

E. C. Edge

Why water is a commodity (1989)

From the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

"It's outrageous", Sara Parkin, the Green Party spokeswoman was quoted as saying, "that water should become a capitalist commodity".

Commodity production is a hall-mark of capitalism and if Sara Parkin could be persuaded to dip into Volume I of Marx's Capital the first words to meet her eye would be:

  The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities; our investigation therefore must begin with the analysis of a commodity.

And what does this investigation show? That what makes a good (a use value) into a commodity (an exchange value) is its production for sale, with a view to profit. However, how can it be that water through our taps costs us £s a week whereas falling in a storm it is free? The answer lies in the analysis of a commodity.

This brings us back to capitalist society, where water is a commodity possessing value (exchange value). All commodities must have two kinds of value: use value and exchange value. To be a commodity a good must have use value, otherwise it wouldn't sell and so have no exchange value. Water down our necks in a storm is useless but we need water to do the washing or make a cup of tea.

So what is it that converts water from a useless nuisance into a valuable commodity? There is no shortage of water in the world. It is only unequally distributed in nature. The water is available but has to be brought to where it is needed, as to meet the demands of modern conurbations. As was well said by a World Health Organisation expert, "there is no shortage of water, only pipes", and therein lies our answer.

Reservoirs, tanks, pumps, filtration plants and drains can only be produced by human labour, and it is only human labour which, in capitalist society, imparts exchange value. If value depended upon usefulness, water would be the second most expensive item (after air) on Earth. Rain irrigating crops is indispensable but contains no human labour and so is valueless (free), like the air we breathe. Installations to store, purify and supply water necessitate human labour and water thereby becomes a value-bearing commodity depending on the amount of socially necessary labour required.

Therefore, Sara Parkin's idea that water could be somehow exempted from capitalist commodity production is a non-starter. Like so much of the Green Party outlook, it is the same old story of capitalism without commodity production, which Pierre Proudhon was advocating 140 years ago.

Under capitalism every useful thing containing human labour produced as a non-use value to its owner becomes a commodity, with a price. This is so whether the means for producing it are nationalised or privatised. Trying to except the water supply (or electricity or gas or transport) from commodity production under capitalism is like trying to run the Boat Race outside the river.

It is capitalism (commodity production) not privatisation which is the cause of water being a commodity. Only its complete abolition will end the situation which so outrages Sara Parkin.

Horatio.

The Importance of Marxism—(continued) (1940)

From the July 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Continued from the June 1940 issue.

Thomas Hodgskin was joint honorary secretary of the London Mechanics’ Institute. According to Marx, his writings are outstanding in the realm of economic science. In his work,. “The Natural and Artificial Rights of Property Contrasted,” Hodgskin says: —

  “At present, all the wealth of society goes first into the possession of the capitalist, and even most of the land has been purchased by him; he pays the landowner his rent, the labourer his wages, the tax and tithe gatherer their claims, and keeps a large, indeed the largest, and a continually augmenting share of the annual produce of labour for himself. The capitalist may now be said to be the first owner of all the wealth of the community. . . . The capitalist was originally a labourer, or the descendant of a villein, and he obtained profit on what he was able to save from the produce of his own labour, after he had wrested his liberty from his masters, because he was then able to make them respect his right to use the produce of his own industry. But what he then received, and now receives, under the name of profit, is a portion of the wealth annually created by labour. In fact, the capitalist has obtained the whole of the landlord’s power, and his right to have profit is a right to receive a portion of the produce of the landlord’s slaves.” (PP. 98-99, Steil Edition, published in 1832.)

In another work entitled “Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital” Hodgskin writes:

   “The capitalists and labourers form the great majority of the nation, so that there is no third power to intervene betwixt them. They must and will decide the dispute of themselves. . . .  I am certain, however, that till the triumph of labour be complete, till productive industry alone be opulent and till idleness alone be poor, till the admirable maxim that he who sows shall reap be solidly established, till the right of property shall be founded on principles of justice and not those of slavery, till man shall be held more in honour than the clod he treads on or the machine he guides—there cannot and there ought not to be either peace on earth or good-will amongst men.” (P. 105, Labour Publishing Co. Ed.)

Like Thompson, however, Hodgskin advocates the establishment of communist colonies with “just exchanges.”

J. F. Bray (1805-1895) is the author of “Labour's Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy” (1839). In this work he uses vitriolic language against what he contends to be the forcible and unjust robbery of the working class. In the opening chapter he writes:

   “Throughout the whole universe, from the most stupendous planet to the individual atom, changes are perpetual—there is nothing at rest— nothing stationary, to affirm therefore that governmental institutions require no reformation—that social systems need no alteration—is just as absurd as to say that the man shall wear the swaddling clothes that befitted his infancy and be pleased in maturity with the rattle which charmed his childhood. . . . What are the working classes of every nation but beasts of burden without hearts and without souls whose doom it is to labour and to die? If they complain of tyranny and dare to resist they are slaughtered like wild beasts. The very marrow of their bones and the life blood of their children is drunk up with incessant toil.” (London School of Economics Ed.)

Bray repudiates any attempt to solve the workers’ problems by reforming Capitalism. His comments in this connection would be very well directed to the Labour Party of to-day.

   "Slavery in nature, if not in name, has ever been, is now, and ever will be, the portion of the working classes in every country where inequality of property exists in connection with the gradation of classes (p. 21) . . . . from this it will follow that the present state of things cannot be remedied unless we change at once our whole social system, for alter our forms of government as we will, no such change can affect the system and no such change can prevent inequality of possessions and the division of society into employers and employed—and therefore as a necessary consequence no such change can remove the evils which this system and this division of society engender." (P. 37.)

The following statements by Bray are humorous as well as fiery:

   “In all civilised communities, as they are called, society is thus divided into idlers and producers, into those who obtain double allowance for doing nothing and those who receive only half-allowance for doing double work." (P. 23.)
   “No other than the present social system could by any possibility create and perpetuate the gross injustice which is now inflicted upon the great body of exchangers—the working class. They form, like their parent earth, a common pasture-ground, on which all crawling and creeping things may feed and fatten." (P. 88.)

Finally, have we not often been confronted with the objection that there will he no incentive to invent things under Socialism? We shall let Bray reply to this point:

    “The inventor will ever receive, in addition to his just pecuniary reward, that which genius only can obtain from us—the tribute of our admiration.” (P. 45.)

Karl Rodbertus (1805-1875) is in many respects a spiritual ancestor of the Nazi “theoreticians," who to-day, prattle so much about “True German Socialism." (Wahrer Sozialismus.) Like the English Utopians, Rodbertus deduced his “Socialism" from the implications of the Ricardian theory of value, but he differed with them in this respect : In his work “Zur Erkenntniss unserer Staatswirtschaftlichen Zustande,” 1842 (On the Explanation of our Economic Position), he maintained that the collective ownership of the means of life was something to be established in five hundred years to come. In the meanwhile, he contended, rent, interest and profit (Rodbertus called all three “Rente”) would still have to exist, but the Prussian State would have to take over the means of life and distribute the products of labour equally among the three classes of the German community. That is to say that for having laboured twelve hours the worker would receive under Rodbertus’s scheme a certificate entitling him to the product of four hours' work, the Junkers and Capitalists receiving the other two thirds. In his “Zweiter Brief an Von Kirchmann" (1850-51, published in English by Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., 1898, under the title of “Overproduction and Crises"), Rodbertus writes:

    “. . . . Present-day society may indeed be well compared to a band of travellers in the desert. Suffering with thirst they find a spring which would suffice to refresh and strengthen them all, but a small number constitute themselves masters of the spring; they grudge giving the majority more than a few drops to quench their thirst; they themselves take long draughts, but the stream flows faster than they are able to drink, and so from satiety and want of good-will they let half of the gushing stream waste itself in the sand.” (PP. 57-58.)

Rodbertus falsely laid claim to be the founder of Scientific Socialism. Engels, however, has aptly categorised him as the “veritable founder of Prussian State Socialism.” In his preface to the second volume of “Capital” Engels says amongst other things:

   “Marx began his economic studies in Paris, in 1843, starting with the prominent Englishmen and Frenchmen. Of German economists he knew only Rau and List, and he did not want any more of them. Neither Marx nor I heard a word of Rodbertus' existence, until we had to criticise in the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung,' 1848, the speeches he made as the representative of Berlin and as Minister of Commerce. . . .  On the other hand, Marx showed that he knew even then, without the help of Rodbertus, whence came the 'surplus value of the capitalists,’ and he showed furthermore how it was produced, as may be seen in his ‘Poverty of Philosophy,' 1847, and in his lectures on wage-labour and capital, delivered in Brussels in 1847.” (P. 14, Kerr Ed.)

On page 24 of the same preface Engels continues :

   “Marx stands in the same relation to his predecessors in the theory of surplus-value that Lavoisier maintains to Priestley and Scheele The existence of those parts of the value of products, which we now call surplus-value, had been ascertained long before Marx. It had also been stated with more or less precision that it consisted of that part of the labourer's product for which its appropriator does not give any equivalent. But there the economists halted. Some of them, for instance the classical bourgeois economists investigated, perhaps, the proportion in which the product of labour was divided among the labourer and the owner of the means of production. Others, the Socialists, declared that this division was unjust and looked for utopian means of abolishing this injustice. They remained limited by the economic categories which they found at hand.
    “Now Marx appeared. And he took an entirely different view from all his predecessors. What they had regarded as a solution, he considered a problem. He saw that he had to deal neither with dephlogisticized air, nor with fire-air, but with oxygen. He understood that it was not simply a matter of stating an economic fact, or of pointing out the conflict of this fact with 'eternal justice and true morals,' but of explaining a fact which was destined to revolutionise the entire political economy, and which offered a key for the understanding of the entire capitalist production, provided you knew how to use it."

Marx's “Capital”

In our survey we have ranged over the entire field of political economy prior to Marx. Let us now turn our attention exclusively to the economic writings of Marx himself. We have already indicated (see May Socialist Standard) that the central theme of all political economy is the theory of value. This theory is intended by Marx not merely to solve the riddle of the determinant of prices, but also to reveal the economic law of motion of modern society. Apart from his earlier writings on economics Marx's main works are “Capital," volumes I, II and III, and “Theories of Surplus Value" (three volumes). Only the first volume of "Capital" was published during Marx's lifetime. Volumes II and III were issued by Engels in 1885 and 1894. “Theories of Surplus Value" (Theorien über den Mehrwert—not yet translated into English) were issued by Karl Kautsky, Engels' literary executor. The works published after Marx's death were compiled from his remaining fragmentary manuscripts, and consequently are not so rounded-off as the first volume. Notwithstanding this they remain to this day the most exhaustive scientific analysis of Capitalism that has yet been published.

Solomon Goldstein

(To be continued.)

The Proposed Socialist Party of India. (1932)

From the July 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those responsible for a movement to form the "Socialist Party of India" have issued a Declaration of Policy (published by the "Advocate of India" Press, Bombay).

It begins with a short statement of the position of the workers in the capitalist system of society. This opening statement is in the main accurate and simple, and only a few faults can be found with it. It states, for example, that the capitalists are there "controlling the principal instrumentalities of production and exchange," but it does not bring out with sufficient clearness and emphasis that the ownership and control by the capitalists of the means of production and distribution is the basis of the capitalist economic system, and that through their ownership and control the capitalists are the owners of the whole of the products of the workers’ labour. Any misunderstanding of these essentials may cause a failure to realise that the aim of the workers should be to dispossess the capitalists of the means of production and distribution and to make these the property of society as a whole.

A second fault is that the statement gives the impression that the Socialist case is addressed only to part of the working class, i.e., not to the clerical, technical and so-called professional sections of the working class. In view of the frequent assertion by the opponents of Socialism that its appeal is to "manual” workers only, a declaration of policy should carefully avoid possible ambiguity.

The first part of the Declaration recognises that it is the abolition, not the reform of, capitalism that should be aimed at.

  The more industry is rationalised the more the capitalist system is perfected, the worse become its resultant evils. It is not by any reform of the existing economic order, but only by the substitution of a radically different one that they are to be ended.

But having stated this, the Declaration then proceeds to make a case for a programme of "immediate demands.” We entirely agree that the workers should use trade-union organisation to resist the encroachments of the employers, but it is essential that the workers should realise the limited value of such activity. It is not a service to the workers to foster quite illusory hopes of considerable betterment to be achieved thereby. Although the expansion and technical development of capitalist industry in India will doubtless lead to the employment of better-educated and better-trained workers, and consequently to a higher standard of living, trade-union organisation will not be able to give the workers security under capitalism, nor can it prevent a worsening of their position relative to that of the capitalist class.

And the case for trade-union organisation is not also a case for the adoption of a programme of immediate demands by a party claiming to be Socialist. Nor is it a case for supporting the Co-operative Movement.

As the drafters of this Declaration could learn from the more advanced capitalist countries, every party which has adopted immediate demands under the impression that it can do so "while keeping its ultimate purpose always in mind and clearly proclaiming it on all occasions” has failed to do the latter. In every case, sooner or later, the supporters recruited for the immediate demands have swamped the ultimate purpose. This is inevitable. The fight for the immediate demands alters the composition of the organisation, destroys the clear grasp of Socialist principles, leaves no time or energy for necessary study, and introduces the disintegrating forces of careerism, opportunism, and the desire to become the Government at all costs.

The Co-operative Movement is another form of activity which is of negligible use to the working class, and is a hindrance to Socialist propaganda. At most it serves its members as a somewhat expensive method of saving. Genuine co-operative societies (in which the members themselves carry on the work and own and share in common), have invariably failed to make headway against the forces of capitalism. The so-called consumers’ co-operatives which have made headway possess no real element of co-operation. They are merely joint stock capitalist trading concerns owned by small investors and exploiting their employees like capitalist concerns in general. The outlook engendered by the Co-operative: Movement is no more favourable to Socialist propaganda than is the outlook of non-co-operators. Support of such blind-alley activities confuses the minds of the workers by making them think that the social problem can be solved within capitalism and without Socialism.

Another grave objection to this Declaration is the intention of joining the Labour and Socialist International. That organisation is composed of parties (like the British Labour Party) which are utterly lacking in Socialist understanding and purpose. The International is in no real sense either Socialist or international. It tolerates the most shameful alliances with capitalist parties and governments, and its recent attitude of taking sides in the Chino-Japanese conflict shows that it is as lacking in an understanding of the logical Socialist attitude toward capitalist wars as it was when rabid nationalism overwhelmed it in 1914.

It is good to see that Indian workers are taking a serious interest in Socialism, but it will be regrettable if the proposed new party ignores the lessons to be learned from working-class history in Western Europe, Australia and elsewhere, and commits itself to a policy which will inevitably promote reformist at the expense of Socialist elements within it, and will prevent it from being a Socialist party except in name.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Our Eleventh Conference. (1915)

Editorial from the April 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 11th Annual Conference of the Socialist Party was held in circumstances unique in its history, the delegates meeting to review the work of a year in which the task of spreading Socialist knowledge has been greater, whilst the tendencies of the capitalist system of society have probably been made clearer, than ever before. It may be objected that the main tendencies of the capitalist mode of production and the present system of society have been quite well understood long before the outbreak of that system's latest horror. Let us explain, therefore, to whom those tendencies have been made clearer. It is to the apologists of modern civilisation, and to those who have been misled by those apologists.

The idealistic opponents of Socialism and the peace prophets who knew that no more great wars would be fought have had their lesson, which will serve also as a useful example for their colleagues who maintain that revolutions in society belong only to the past, and for those who would persuade themselves and others of capitalism's power to live for ever. In fact, had we less experience of our opponents, we might expect to hear from them in the future rather less about the stability and adaptability of the system of society that is responsible for— that demands as a condition of its continued and full development—the slaughter of its only useful units on the scale that has recently obtained. After all, there is a limit to human endurance, and the reaching of that limit by the working class is a powerful inducement to thought and action—those deadly enemies of working-class enslavement.

One of the most striking phenomena brought into prominence by the world-conflagration now raging is the utter confusion existing among the apologists of modern civilisation as to the cause of the war, its probable results, and economic phenomena in general. This confusion is of first-rate importance to the Socialist, and is brought out in greatest relief when compared with the clarity of vision and well- defined attitude of those workers who have understood the Socialist criticism of the existing régime. These latter are, admittedly, few, and the number of those who still follow the capitalist apologists many. But the confusion of these apologists grows always greater, and always the number of their working-class followers becomes smaller, with the increasingly difficult nature of the task before them—the defence of the existing order. And it is the every-day facts of proletarian existence that are responsible for that increased difficulty: the ever more hated, because ever greater, insecurity of employment, resulting from the introduction of more efficient machinery; the consequently tighter hold of the master class on the workers and greater strain on the latter in resisting their encroachments; and, last but not least in importance, the growing number of recorded failures of measures alleged by the dominant class and their "labour" hacks to have been aimed at the betterment of the conditions of working-class life.

The economic development, then, makes harder the task of those agencies which would support capitalism by attempting to show identity of interests between masters and workers, and by endeavouring to show an improvement in proletarian conditions of existence.

But the recognition on the part of the workers on the falsity of these claims; the increasing discontent at their own impoverishment and their master’s enrichment: these alone do not indicate a remedy ; do not not of themselves point out the path to freedom. More is necessary: a knowledge of the great generalisation that human society evolves, and that the existing social order will no more be the last than it was the first; the realisation that the proletariat is today the only class that fulfils a useful function in society; the recognition that the means of production have already reached a stage where their manipulation is capable of supplying fully the necessaries of life for every member of society ; and the understanding of the means by which the dominant class of to day maintains its ascendancy. The rise to power of the working class and the establishment of Socialism become possible only after the acquisition of this equipment, this knowledge of its own strength and of the prize to be won—to supply which equipment must be in large part the work of the Socialist Party.

And although, as stated, our Conference met this year in unique circumstances, to review the work carried on during a particularly difficult period, we are safe in recording that its determination to carry on that work is as firm as ever. This was shown by the enthusiasm of the delegates, their reports of our members activities in so many directions, and the sales of our literature, particularly the Socialist Standard,

The Making of History (1996)

From the March 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Contrary to what ill-informed writers on the history of socialist thought and activity invariably say about the Socialist Party being a small, unimportant sect, the history of our party is one of theoretical innovation and politically holiest dedication to the interests of our class

It has become common over the years for political writers and academics to characterise the Socialist Party as an exclusive Marxist club or a moribund sect, that is when they haven’t chosen to ignore us completely. Historian Walter Kendall in his work on the early revolutionary movement in Britain claimed that the SPGB has “retained its political virginity only at the expense of not reproducing anything at all”, and this comment is fairly typical.

That the Socialist Party is a living organism will be obvious to virtually anyone who has been a member of it— furthermore, we do not dogmatically make assertions against the evidence and have shown ourselves capable of making real contributions to the development of political and economic thought. Of course, the Socialist Party has not worked in a vacuum—our core ideas were bequeathed by the early anti-capitalist revolutionary movement, and, in particular, by Marx and Engels who developed a theory of social development and an economic analysis of capitalist society which forms the bedrock of the Socialist Party’s position even now. But this doesn’t mean that real developments have not been made or that the Socialist Party has been repeating an inflexible mantra ever since our formation.

Sometimes the Socialist Party has developed quite original and distinctive arguments in response to developments within capitalism—we were, for instance, possibly the first political party in the world to contend that the Russian dictatorship was “state capitalist” rather than socialist, a contention later taken up by many others. On other occasions the Socialist Party has developed new distinctive arguments in that we have effectively blended existing strands of political and economic thought into a completely new mix. This is most notably the case with our views on the “reform or revolution” question where two seemingly incompatible theories were entwined into a unique new political position.

There are a number of distinctive arguments the Socialist Party has developed since 1904 and while socialism has not yet been achieved, we have helped make some serious contributions to the development of socialist political and economic theory — weapons for battles now being fought and still to come. Here are eight of our most significant contributions:

•  The Socialist Party helped solve the “reform or revolution” dilemma which had plagued the early labour movement by rejecting reformism but not democratic political action to capture state power, two views which had previously been associated with one another. An early forerunner of the Socialist Party, the Socialist League of William Morris, Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx, had been taken over by anarchists in the 1880’s largely because it combined it opposition to reformism with anti-parliamentarianism, specifically a tendency to view elections as a bourgeois diversion and parliament as merely the “talking-shop” of the capitalist class. The founders of the Socialist Party learned from the mistakes of the Socialist League and other groups, and contended that opposition to elections and Parliament did not logically follow on from opposing reformism. For a socialist revolution to be as peaceful as possible, the state machine and armed forces would have to be democratically captured from the control of the capitalist class and converted from being “an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation”. This would also mean that the capitalists’ appeals to democratic legitimacy would be thwarted by the majoritarian political action of the socialist movement.

•  The Socialist Party resolved that modern wars are fought over issues of concern to the owning class and not the workers; specifically being disputes over spheres of influence, trade routes, sources of raw materials and sometimes markets. When war broke out in 1914 the Socialist Party was the only political organisation in Britain to unequivocally oppose the conflict. Other parties purporting to uphold the interests of the working class took sides, having identified anti-militarism, “national liberation” and other causes as goals worth pursuing before socialism.

•  In the nineteenth century socialists like Marx and Engels supported so-called “progressive” wars against feudal reaction at a time when capitalism had not yet become the dominant world system. They thought that sweeping away feudal restrictions and the power of reactionary regimes like Tsarist Russia would help pave the way for socialist organisation and eventually revolution. Their position in the period of capitalist ascendancy over feudalism was taken by some supporters of war in 1914 as justification for their own actions. The Socialist Party maintained that, whatever Marx and Engels’s views in the nineteenth century, there could be no question of socialists taking sides with any section of the capitalist class once capitalism had become the dominant world system and socialism the pressing alternative to it. When capitalism has advanced far enough to create the material conditions for socialism the capitalist class becomes socially useless and all nation states reactionary, needing to be swept aside and not bolstered.

•  Unlike most of the “left-wing”, the Socialist Party opposed the establishment of the dictatorship in Russia under the guise of “workers’ control” or “socialism”. The Socialist Party argued that Russia under Bolshevik rule would be forced to take the capitalist road as the only one open to it. Socialism in one country (an economically backward one at that) and without popular majority support, was impossible. The Bolshevik “Revolution” was in fact more of a political coup d’etat by a self-appointed elite of political conspirators with no respect for the wishes of the majority. For decades the Socialist Party has maintained in distinction to Bolshevism that minority action can never lead to socialism or anything like it.

Socialists have affirmed that Soviet Russia was capitalist and could only have been so given the nature of its political birth. It exhibited all the principal features of the capitalist mode of production in one form or another, notably wage labour, capital accumulation, commodity production, class division and exploitation of one class by another.

 

•   In the 1920’s and 30’s the Communist Party and Independent Labour Party (ILP) argued that capitalism was going to collapse, with socialism arising phoenix-like from the ashes. The Socialist Party contended that this was nonsense and that capitalism would not pave the way for socialism without majority political action. This contention was repeated in the years after the Second World War to Trotskyists and Left Communists who took up afresh the mantle of “capitalist collapse”. In particular, the Socialist Party denied the claim that capitalism would collapse because of an in-built lack of purchasing power, with the workers and capitalists combined unable to buy back the entire product of industry. This claim was based on an entirely fallacious view of the relationship between productive labour and effective demand in capitalism — that somehow there is a permanent mismatch between the value of the mass of commodities produced at any one time and the income derived from this production in the form of surplus value (unpaid labour) and the value of workers’ labour power (paid labour). This “deficiency of purchasing power” claim, sometimes called “underconsumptionism” and wrongly credited to Marx, is a myth and has been disproved both on a theoretical level and by history. The Socialist Party has argued that enough purchasing power exists in capitalism—it is how it is used which causes difficulties, as its relationship to production is not planned. This is the phenomenon which gives rise to periodic (not permanent) crises and slumps and the trade cycle which has been a characteristic of capitalism since its infancy.

•  The Socialist Party, in response to the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, resolved that bourgeois democracy, with elementary political rights, is the most favourable condition for the overthrow of capitalism. In addition, we maintained that workers living under dictatorships should struggle to establish basic political rights, though without ever giving support to capitalist organisations, including those professing bourgeois democracy as their aim. This is not only because of the general reformist and anti-socialist nature of such organisations, but because these organisations in government are compelled to use the might of the state machine against the working class in the interests of capital.

For similar reasons, the Socialist Party resolved that socialists cannot support allegedly “democratic” countries fighting wars against dictatorships. In addition, socialists are aware that wars are never fought over such lofty ideals and that history has proved that “democratic” states will prop up and assist dictatorships if it is in their interests to do so. The Socialist Party position was vindicated after the Second World War when the Allies carved up Europe in such a way as to hand half of it to the wretched Stalinist dictatorship while leaving Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal, among others, to persist as neo-fascist regimes.

•  The Socialist Party argued that the setting-up of the “welfare state” in Britain and other countries after the war would not solve the problems of the working class, which are integral to capitalism. To the extent that the welfare state represented a gain for some workers on the previous arrangements, we noted that it was always dependent on the maintenance of a low level of unemployment and destitution—a situation capitalism is incapable of sustaining for long. In recent decades unemployment, the rise of the so-called “underclass” and demographic change have undermined welfare provision as it came to be  built up.

Over time the burdens on the welfare state have increased just as the capitalist class finds it increasingly difficult to finance it through taxation of profits. These increased burdens have led to a squeeze on the rate of profit after tax—the bottom line for the capitalists—which is the main factor determining the pace of future investment and growth, and also whether firms or entire nation states sink or swim in the competitive world economy.

•  In distinction to the main political parties, the Socialist Party was never taken in by the claims of Keynesian economics, which promised low unemployment, steady growth and stable prices for the post-war period on the basis of government borrowing, “easy money” and redistributive taxation, especially when slump threatened. Unlike most of capitalism’s economists, socialists argued that Keynesian policies could not prevent unemployment and crises as the major determinants of these—production for profit, the anarchy of production and capitalism’s antagonistic system of income distribution, are integral features of the market economy.

Sure enough, everywhere Keynesianism was attempted it proved disastrous and eventually provoked the return to “laissez-faire” economics in the 1980s Its lasting legacy—still with most of the capitalist world—has been persistently rising prices. This has been brought about by the mistaken belief—exposed by the Socialist Party from the standpoint ofMarxian economics—that an excess issue of inconvertible paper currency would act as a stimulus to production and trade.

•  In Anti-Duhring Friedrich Engels had written of production in socialism being guided “on the basis of one single vast plan”, but given the complexity of modem society, this is not possible. The Socialist Party realised that socialism could not be built on the basis of a centralised allocative plan which would be, by definition, antithetical to local decision-making, and which would be unresponsive to changing needs. Instead the Socialist Party suggested that socialism would operate a system of production for use operating in direct response to needs, these needs arising in local communities. The operational basis for this system would be calculation in kind (e.g. tonnes, kilos, litres, etc.) instead of monetary calculation, combined with the responsive system of stock-control outlined in our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical AItentative. Such a system would be able to allocate resources much more efficiently, responsively and democratically than a pre-determined allocative plan which has proved next to useless for state capitalist regimes and is no model for a real social democracy.

That the Socialist Party is no sterile, unthinking organisation full of dogmatists should now be clear. Socialists are not content to sit on the sidelines of history—we are original thinkers and are open to innovation and new ideas—providing, that is, that they are sound. We are willing and able to co-operate with men and women the world over to bring about a better society, and we are proud of the small contribution we have already made to the movement that will sweep away capitalism once and for all. Our message to those who can see no future so long as the market economy remains is join us— and help make history.

Dave Perrin

Editorial: The Truth About the Popular Front (1936)

Editorial from the September 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amidst the heated argument for and against the formation of a "Popular Front" of Liberals, Labour Party and Communists in Great Britain, one very significant aspect has been entirely overlooked. Having their eyes fixed on the question which appears to them to be so important at the moment, the advocates of uniting the parties on a strictly limited programme of popular demands have not noticed that their action is a tardy admission of a fundamental mistake made by the British and Continental workers 30 or 40 years ago. At that date, more especially in Great Britain, the workers were faced with two great capitalist parties, the Tories and the Liberals. Because the latter represented very largely the interests of industrial capitalists, they had stood traditionally for democratic government against the earlier undemocratic rule of landed property and the small number of ruling class families. With the extension of the franchise to the workers, both Liberals and Tories had to busy themselves with questions of social reform. Nevertheless it was the Liberals who were associated, more or less justifiably, with the two ideas of democracy and social reform, and for many years before (and even after) the formation of the I.L.P. and Labour Party the notion persisted that the workers must look to Liberal governments for the defence of democracy and the extension of reform legislation. Mr. Lloyd George’s campaigns for political and social reforms in the years before the War were a case in point.

Needless to say, the results were disappointing for the workers. Capitalism cannot be made to work satisfactorily from the point of view of the exploited class. It was therefore inevitable that more and more workers should turn their attention to other methods of securing working class emancipation or at least relief from the worst evils of capitalism. It was here that a disastrous mistake was made. What was the need of the times? Two answers were given to that question. The Labour leaders said, “ Form a new party of democracy and social reform," which meant in effect forming a new Liberal Party. The S.P.G.B. pointed this out and warned against it. We said—and who will dispute it now?—that unless the new party was to be a Socialist party, composed of Socialists and fighting for Socialism, the workers might just as well go on as they were. Why spend a lifetime breaking up one Liberal Party only to form another ?

Events have proved us right, but they have done something more. Without realising it, the advocates of the Popular Front are trying to undo their own handiwork. They are trying to reconstitute a great mass party, able to win a majority at an election, and based on the two pillars of democracy and social reform! They are trying to reconstitute the great Liberal Party which they smashed to form the Labour Party.

Their argument is a plausible one. “Things are bad for the workers economically," they say, “and democracy is in great peril. Let us then unite to save the latter and introduce social reforms to relieve the former." But who put democracy in danger? In recent years it has been the Communists above all others, yet they are now most vociferous in demanding a United Front to save it. It was the Russian Communists who set the modern fashion of seizing power and installing a dictatorship. It is undisputed that Mussolini, and after him Hitler, learned much from Lenin in the technique of seizing power and holding it by force, supported by mass propaganda and political suppression.

It was the Communists who, year in and year out, derided democratic Government, poured scorn on Parliament and the whole parliamentary system, preached Minority revolt and civil war, and in every way idealised the method of violence. Everywhere that their propaganda penetrated they left a trail of hostility to parliamentary methods and a liking for the pseudo-progressive system of armed force and dictatorship.

Let there be no mistake about this. When Mr. Gallacher, for the Communist Party, writes, as he did in Forward (25th July, 1936), that the Communists did not mean “military violence or military revolutionary action," Mr. Gallacher is a liar. The original basis of the Communist International (the “Twenty-one Points") prescribed an “armed struggle," and “heavy civil war" was the favourite catchword. But we have more recent evidence from Communists, indeed from Mr. Gallacher himself. At the 1929 Conference of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Mr. Harry Pollitt made a speech in which he explained to his fellow Communists that “only through armed insurrection can the workers gain power” (see report in Manchester Guardian, December 2nd, 1929). At the same conference, Mr. Gallacher, who now pretends that armed revolt was not intended, said this: —

   They had talked of a Revolutionary Workers’ Government, but did they realise what was implied? Would the organisation of the workers for the revolutionary Government be a legal one? The task of fighting for a revolutionary Government would be a task of bringing the workers out on to the streets against the armed forces of capitalism.”—(Worker's Life, December 6th, 1929.)

While the Communists are explaining away the above proclamations of their intention to stage armed revolt, let them also try to justify, if they can, their complete somersault with regard to association with the Liberal and Labour parties. Mr. Gallacher now declares his willingness to work with the Liberals. Only a year ago, at the 7th World Congress of the Communist International, when G. Dimitrov presented a report on “The Working Class against Fascism,” that report specifically mentions the need, while supporting the Labour Party, to oppose Lloyd George, the Liberal leader. (Report published by Communist Party of Great Britain, p. 36.) Even more amazing, however, is the change of front towards the Labour Party and Labour Government. At the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain, held in November, 1932, a report was considered called “The Crisis Policy of the Labour Party, the T.U.C., etc.” In this interesting declaration of Communist policy we read that the policy of the Labour Government in 1929-1931 was not only “capitalist” but also “Fascist,” and that “the Labour Party took decisive steps towards strengthening the dictatorship of the capitalists during the Labour Government.” Also that, while opposing the means test in words, the Labour Party “supported the attacks of the National Government upon the unemployed.”

Then we are told that “parliamentary democracy” is a “sham” which the Communists must expose, and that: —

   Any party which accepts parliamentary democracy, however revolutionary its phrases, is an instrument of the capitalists.

Lastly, the Report tells us: —

   It is unmistakably clear that a third Labour Government is not a “Lesser Evil” than a National Government, or a Tory Government, or a coalition between Labour and capitalist parties.

We are not here concerned with the accuracy of the statements then made by the Communist Party—many of them are absurdly inaccurate—but only with the fact that the Party which held these views now pretends to be enthusiastic for Labour Government, democracy, parliamentary methods, etc. They want now to save us from Fascism, and tell us to do it by supporting the Party whose policy when in office was a “Fascist policy.” They want to save democracy and fight dictatorship (yet their masters created and glorified dictatorship in Russia), and their method is to have another Labour Government, although they say that the last Labour Government helped to strengthen “the dictatorship of the capitalists.” They want to save democracy, although as recently as 1932 they declared it to be a sham.

In short, the Communists are what they have always been, fickle, unscrupulous, superficial in their judgment of working class questions and an unmixed danger to the interests of the working class and the Socialist movement. True they do not belong to the conception of a reconstituted Liberal Party (whether called Liberal, Labour or Popular Front) which could gain a majority on a programme of democracy and social reform. But neither do they belong to the conception of a Socialist Party, for democracy is essential to the progress of the Socialist movement. They are unwittingly an instrument of reaction, unable to assist in saving democracy in the present, and equally unable to use democracy for the promotion of the Socialist movement.