Russia Was Never Socialist. (1929)

Book Reviews from the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

“An Illustrated History of the Russian Revolution” (Vol. II). Publisher: Martin Lawrence, 15s. “Preparing for Revolt,” Lenin, 5s. (Modern Books, Ltd). “Lessons of October,” Trotsky. 3s. (Labour Publishing Co.).

The first volume of the “Illustrated History” was noticed in these columns in June, 1928. The second volume carries the story from July, 1917, to the introduction of the New Economic Policy.

Lenin’s book consists of a series of letters and articles written between August and October, 1917 ; several appear in the “Illus­trated History.”

Trotsky’s short work was published in 1925. It was written in view of the defeat of Communist strategy in Bulgaria and Germany, and suggests the necessity of “Bolshevising” the Communist International, which, being interpreted, means, “Let’s have better leaders !”; a fairly familiar phrase in this country.

Trotsky claims a considerable amount of credit (as a leader of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee) for the success of the insurrection of October, 1917, and eulo­gises Lenin (“who was not in Petrograd,” p. 61), only in order to discredit Kamenev, Zinoviev and others.

He repeatedly emphasises the dependence of “the whole course of the revolution,” (p. 67), upon “the broken and discontented peasant army of many millions”; yet he tells us on p. 26, “a democratic coalition of workers, peasants and soldiers could not be other than weak, and could not actually attain to power,” hence the necessity for the Bolshevik dictatorship.

An interesting sidelight on this claim is obtained from the “Illustrated History,” (p. 302). “The victory of October is attributed by the Bolshevik Party to the fact that from the very first months of the revolution they rejected not only the Mensheviks’ compro­mises with the Capitalists, but also the idea of a ‘workers’ Government,’ which would have isolated them from the peasants and would have left them to the mercy of the Capitalists.”

Lenin chose the slogan, “All power to the Soviets !” The peasants, and not the workers, were in a majority in the Soviets (if the soldiers are reckoned among the peas­ants). This choice, as Lenin said, “pro­tected” the Bolsheviks from “jumping over the peasant revolution.”

Here is proof positive of the utter stu­pidity of the claim that the revolution in Russia was Socialist, or that the working-class hold power. According to the Bolshe­viks themselves, neither separately nor in alliance with the peasants is such a thing conceivable. The much-vaunted dictator­ship of the proletariat is nothing more than a hollow euphemism for opportunist office-holding by the Bolshevik Party.

Let us turn to Lenin, There is a considerable amount of repetition in his book which might well be boiled down to the two articles entitled “The Approaching Crisis” and “Will the Bolsheviks maintain power?”

In the former he deals with his proposed economic measures.

Here are the chief of these measures :—

1. The nationalisation of the banks.
2. The nationalisation of the trusts (sugar, petroleum, coal and metal monopolies).
3. The suppression of business secrecy.
4. The obligation for all industrialists, merchants and employers to group themselves into trusts.
5. Enforcement of the organisation of the population in consumers, societies under the control of the State.

Speaking of the first proposal, he says, 

“The ownership of the capital with which the banks operate is certified by printed slips called shares, bonds, etc. Not one of these slips is suppressed or altered by the nation­alisation of the banks …. whosoever has fifteen millions, keeps his fifteen millions.” (pp. 107-109).

“Nationalisation would have immense advantages, not so much for the workers (who rarely do business at a bank) as for the mass of peasants and small industrialists” (p. 111).

“From the military point of view it would bring immense advantages, and would in­ crease the military strength of Russia” (P. 112).

Speaking of trust nationalisation, 

“It is necessary to appeal directly to the initiative of the workers and offer them a definite percentage of profits on condition that they exercise complete control and increase production ” (p. 119). And again, “What we have to do, I repeat, is not establish Socialism in a day, but expose the theft of public money,” p. 124 (italics Lenin’s).

“The vital matter is not the confiscation of Capitalist property, but universal, all-embracing workers’ control over the Capitalists and their possible supporters” (p. 192).

How did these proposals work out in prac­tice? In the industrial establishments, as on the land, the closing days of the Provisional Government in 1917, witnessed the growth of anarchy, economic disorder.

“The workers, even before October and during; October, began to occupy the factories unsystematically” (p. 533, “Illustrated History”), therefore,

“The Soviet Power saw itself faced with difficult problems of organisation . . . Not merely was there no idea of the immediate introduction of Socialism, but it was also not held necessary to nationalise the whole of industry.

The Soviet Power adopted the plan of the introduction of a special form of State Capitalism in which the majority of the factories and workshops still remain the private property of the Capitalists, are not yet nationalised.

These factories are joined together in trusts under the control of the proletarian State (from above) and the organs of workers control (from below). This was a programme for the collaboration of the proletarian State and the Capitalists, for the leading; and reconstruction of industry” (p. 526-7).

The years of intervention and civil war, 1918-21, forced the Soviet Power to go much further in the direction of the regulation of private property relations than it had in­ tended” (p. 527).

Yet even so we learn on p. 549 that “up to the year 1921 it is not possible to speak of a Socialist system of production.” As for the so-called “workers’ control,” that went the way of the Constituent Assembly and several other items promised by the in­surrectionists, and even “decreed” — on paper.

“During the second half of 1918, the nationalisation en masse of factories began in the towns . . . The direct leadership of industries by State organs took the place of control of production by the workers.”

During the period of “war Communism,” “Famine and confusion tortured the working population to the limits of endurance” (p. 527). Between July, 1918, and the be­ginning of 1920, something like half-a-million workers (a third of those engaged in large-scale industry) went to work on the land largely owing to the fall in real wages (p. 550).

There “the October revolution had not merely deprived the landlords of their land and given it to the peasants it had also in­tensified the internal conflicts among the various classes of peasantry” (p. 551).

No sooner had “March, 1920, brought final victory to the Red Flag” (p. 543) however, than the peasant ranks closed in opposition to the very “State which had led the struggle against the rebels who were fight­ing to regain the property of the landlords” (p. 553).

"War Communism had forbidden trade, but a new form of secret trading arose. Conditions in these secret trade markets were uncommonly favourable for the peasants” (p. 553).

In the early part of 1921 strikes broke out for increased rations and the restora­tion of trade.

“Discussion disclosed the antagonism within the ruling party, revived the united forces of the other parties, and weakened the influence of the party over the workers at the most critical moment” (p. 551).

Then occurred the Kronstadt rebellion. “Its economic demands were completely met by the N.E.P.,” which Lenin definitely described as a retreat. (Speech at the Ple­num of Moscow Soviet, November 19th, 1922.) Writing in September, 1917, Lenin had declared that “Russia is a country dominated by the petty bourgeoisie. The vast majority of the population belong to this class” (“Preparing for Revolt,” p. 67).

Five years later conditions bore eloquent testimony to the facts that “it is impossible to introduce machinery on a large scale into agriculture in Russia,” and that “no insurrection will create Socialism if the economic conditions do not permit of the establishment of it” (“Preparing for Revolt,“ pp. 152-3).

With the substitution of taxation of the peasantry for compulsory grain deliveries, agricultural production and trade resumed their normal course. The State industries expanded and the number of workers en­gaged in large-scale industry generally increased by over a million in five years (“Illustrated History,” p. 560).

This very great increase, etc., was still, however, insufficient to absorb all the unemployed streaming in from the land. The number of registered unemployed rose to 1,310,000 on December 31st, 1926 (p. 561).

Thus a third of the workers are on the dole.

The reason is not far to seek. “Agricul­ture is not only employing a much larger amount of machinery than before the war, but, as time goes on, more complicated machinery also, as, for example, tractors. In 1914, the total number of tractors in Russia was 187, while in the U.S.S.R. in 1926 there were 23,000 tractors in use” (p. 562).

Yet even this development leaves Russia fundamentally peasant. It is not one, nor two, but several tens of millions who require industrialising on modern lines before they are likely to be fit material for Socialism.

It is owing to “the low stage of develop­ment of Russia’s productive forces and the incompleteness of her economic and techni­cal organisation” that the colossal strain of the World War precipitated Tsarism and the last relics of feudalism into the abyss. The State machine had to be reorganised, not in order to abolish an imperfectly devel­oped Capitalism, but in order to clear the way for its development. As in the French Revolution, so in Russia, the interests of individuals who had amassed great wealth in any form under the old regime had to be sacrificed to the interests of the property-owning class generally.

This is all the so-called “Socialism” of Russia amounts to. The chief victims were the landed aristocrats, who were the most active section of the counter revolutionaries. Split up into half-a-dozen political groups, the rest of the property-owning class were unable to come to a permanently workable agreement.

With an army in revolt and economic col­lapse in sight, power passed into the hands of the only party with sufficient organisation and understanding to face the task of peace and reconstruction. That this party con­tained a considerable working-class element and possessed also a marked degree of Soci­alist knowledge, is an encouraging symptom of working-class ability and the spread of revolutionary ideas.

All this, however, does not blind us to the fact that the Bolshevik power rests on the control of a conscript peasant army and that political expression of the class antago­nisms (which are denied legal form outside the Party) find vent within the Party. The Bolsheviks silenced the Social Revolutionary Party, but carried out their agrarian pro­gramme.

In like manner a “Labour” Government, in this country administers Liberal reforms. The foreign policy of the Bolsheviks which was announced with such a flourish has likewise proved but a variant of the old Tsarist policy of intrigue. Instead of assist­ing in the education of the international working-class it has financed confusion and the propaganda of criminally futile policies of insurrection, long ago obsolete in West­ern Europe.

The working-class in this and other countries must capture power, but this will not be accomplished by the influence of magic slogans. When the workers are ready to establish the co-operative commonwealth, they must at least be ready to vote for it.

Eric Boden

A Look Round. (1929)

From the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Army of To-Day.

When we point out to so-called Communists and others that as a prelude to emancipation a Socialist working class must control the political machine in order to give them control of the armed forces of the State, we anticipate certain stereotyped objections. These we have met again and again in these columns. So far, no evidence has been produced to show that our policy understood by a majority of workers would not enable them to deal with any eventuality that might arise in the future. One of the stock objections raised is that the Army and Navy is officered by members of the capitalist class, and will therefore refuse to take instructions and orders from a Socialist-controlled Parliament. Apart from the fact that those who get control also get control of the finances upon which the whole Army must depend, the bulk of the Army and Navy officers are today not members of the capitalist class. By the time also that a considerable Socialist opinion has developed among the working class, it is reasonable to assume that soldiers drawn as they are from working-class homes will be more or less permeated with Socialist opinions.

The Capitalists of today are a numerically small class, and are compelled to have their Army, Navy and Air Force officers trained in the same way that they have to train their managers, organisers and specialists. Just as the latter have grown more numerous than their masters’ requirements, so is the Army officer landed in a similar plight. When, for various reasons the master class no longer require the services of their “gentleman” officers, they become the most helpless section of the numbers who go to swell the growing army of the unemployed. Let the Communists note well the following :—

“At Clements Inn alone over 2,000 ex-Officers are registered as unemployed, and these are only a part of those who, apart from work, need food and clothing. Ex-Officers there are with University honours, who are compelled to perform menial tasks in lodging houses in order to earn money for food. In a similar plight are men from all the leading Universities, men from Eton, men from Sandhurst, members of the Institute of Civil Engineers. (Letter to the “Daily Telegraph,” 9/7/29, from W. E. Southgate”, Capt., ex-Officer Unemployment Committee.)

Our Rich Friends.

“Socialism does not mean confiscation. Labour protests against the misleading suggestions of its opponents that it attacks private property and preaches class war.” (Mr. Arthur Henderson, at Blackburn, “Daily Chronicle,” 27/5/29.)

We have always claimed, and proved, that Socialism necessarily involves the conversion of capitalist private property into the commonly owned property or means of life of the whole of society. Such a revolution we also claim would remove the antagonism in society which arises out of the capitalist ownership of the workers’ means of living and their consequent enslavement. That antagonism of interest is the class struggle, eventually manifesting itself as a struggle for emancipation. Mr. Bernard Baron, a wealthy capitalist, apparently understands this, and sees that only Socialists will ever struggle for emancipation.

He knows that the Labour Party cannot be a Socialist Party without Socialist supporters, and that in their own words they are a “bulwark against revolution.” Other capitalists who support or join the Labour Party know likewise, and that the political ignorance which such a party reflects will also preserve the system which enables them to filch nine-tenths of Labour’s product. Need we be surprised, then, when we read that “Mr. Bernard Baron forwarded to Mr. Arthur Henderson a cheque for £5,000 for the Socialist (!) Party funds? Mr. Baron contributed a similar amount at the General Election of 1924” (“Daily Herald,” 10.5.29.). We also are entitled to protest against the “misleading suggestion” that the Labour Party is, or ever was, a Socialist Party.

Either or Either.

Sir Herbert Samuel is one of those brainy Liberal gentlemen who, like the rest of his lawyer-like tribe, can prove black is white as occasion arises. People who don’t handle the truth carefully, should, as the maxim reminds us, cultivate retentive memories, otherwise “bright young people” may discover that these gentlemen are nothing but political charlatans. After the following we need not wonder either, how it is that Liberal lawyers like Sir W. Jowitt can go to bed Liberal and wake up “Labour.” No wonder Ramsay wrote “I have often wondered what there was of any substance which really divided us.” (“Times,” June 8, ’29.) Says Sir Herbert number one: “In the Labour Party’s manifesto Socialism was relegated to the background. For the most part it was a Liberal programme which Mr. MacDonald and his colleagues advocated” (“Times,” May 2, ’29). Says Sir Herbert number two : “The Labour Party declares itself to be definitely Socialist. The speeches of its leading members, the resolutions passed by its conferences, have made this clear beyond the possibility of doubt.” (Article in “Answers,” May 25, ’29.) Without doubt Sir Herbert Samuel would also find no more difficulty in turning a political somersault than Sir W. Jowitt.

The Right to be Lazy.

According to the “Daily Chronicle,” (10.7.29), there are 1,142.400 out of work, an increase of 24,593 on the previous week. The total on July 1 comprised 889,000 men, 28,300 boys, 199,500 women and 25,500 girls. In the same paper, same date, same column, we also read under the sub-heading of “Society Acrobats” that:

“The diverse activities of well-known people have been keeping the photographers exceptionally busy, according to this week’s issue of that bright review ‘The Sketch.’ Half the social world appears to have skipped over to Le Touquet for the golf tournament of Buck’s Club, while the other half was either at the Peterborough Foxhound Show or the extraordinary circus held in a West-End mansion. Polo and a water party at Roehampton claimed many notable people, some of whom are seen doing complicated ‘physical jerks’ on Major Paget’s lawn to time set by gramophone ” (Ibid).

We are not kill-joys, nor are we much concerned with these antics about which the tripe journalists write so much trash. What we do object to is the humdrum existence we, like the rest of the workers, have to submit to because they do not understand the ease and comfort possible for all if the present means of wealth production were commonly owned and utilized for that purpose. If the pleasures of these idlers appear somewhat inane and trumpery, it is mainly because they are only the pleasures of a pampered few which in the present system is based upon the slavish and joyless existence of the many. An intelligent race of men and women would require more elevating enjoyment than baby parties, freak dinners or society circuses. When the working class begin to realise that the ushering in of a system free from stupid social absurdities and contradictions depends entirely on their own efforts, the end of this capitalist pandemonium will be well in sight.

Catholic Truth.

In these days when everything in the political world is dubbed Socialism, those desirous of obtaining knowledge should ever be critical even of those claiming to be Socialists. One would hardly expect the late Prime Minister to air Socialist views, yet in a leading article in the "Daily Mail” (June 10, ’29) we are seriously informed that:—

“Mr. Baldwin has contributed as much to the growth of Socialism as Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, for he is a Semi-Socialist. His speeches and his pronouncements have frequently been indistinguishable from those of avowed Socialists.”

Of course, this is only eye-wash for the working class. Our masters and their agents know that the Socialism that they dread is that which is in line with the teaching of Karl Marx, a Socialism founded on Science. It is because of our masters’ need to know the real enemy, and not the bogey used to frighten the workers, that we sometimes get the truth in strange places as follows :—

“It is of little purpose to point out that the Socialist condemned (by the Pope) is Marxism, and not Fabianism or its analogues in various countries.” (Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. 14, p. 67.)

Something Now.

The futility of the policy of waiting for “Somebody to do something” is illustrated in the following. In the House of Commons it appears there is a catering department the staff of which receives the following enormous wages : Waiters, 31/6 (with food), barmaids (after 10 years’ service), 29/-; cash desk attendants, 24/-; kitchen hands, 20/- per week. Remembering that we have in office a Labour Party for whom eight million people voted, it is instructive to note that, in answer to a question in Parliament, a Mr. Compton, Labour member and Chairman of the Kitchen Committee, stated that : “An immediate revision of wages could not be entertained” (“Daily Chronicle,” 18.7.29.). After all it might set a bad example to cotton operatives, railwaymen, and others to concede wages to these people on a level with the cost of the keep of paupers and convicts (sic). Perhaps we shall be told that the Labour Party is not yet in power.

Pills for Earthquakes.

“The workman who owns his own house and has saved enough to assure himself at least of bread and butter for his family is one of the rocks against which the doctrines of revolution will always foam in vain.” (“Evening News,” 13/7/29.)

Although apparently this thrifty individual becomes a householder, he still remains a workman. Only a very small percentage of the millions of the workers own their own houses. If house ownership could form rocks against revolution, we wonder why our masters don’t rush to pay wages that might enable the majority to buy a shelter. Let us suppose, only suppose, mind you, that they did. Would not the wicked revolutionary creep in with his insidious economics and point out that, with an all-round removal of the cursed rent item, a lowered cost of living would mean lowered wages? He would ! True, numbers have to save, scrape, and mortgage in order to buy a house; they could not get one in any other way to-day, but it requires more than a house or a Post Office Savings account to secure the worker against the insecurity of modern times. None but a fortunate few manage to save even sufficient to provide for an emergency or old age, and irony of ironies, millions who have toiled their lives through piling up wealth for others pay a few coppers insurance per week to save them from the stigma of a pauper’s grave.

W. E. MacHaffie

Aspects of the “Woman Question.” (Part 2) (1929)

From the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

(Based on Notes of a Series of Lectures on “The Sexes in Evolution.”)

The status of woman in primitive society is examined. There are divergent opinions among the anthropologists themselves re­garding this feature of social development. Some assert that a matriarchal stage last­ing a long time was passed through by most primitive civilisations—a stage in which women were dominant. Others be­lieve that if such a state did exist it was probably of short duration. They claim that though evidence unearthed in Egypt, Mesopotamia and elsewhere indicates that a high degree of civilisation existed as far back as 20,000 years ago, there is very little to show that women occupied a truly dominant position.

The only way to arrive at an answer to these questions is to study the lower cul­tures that can be observed to-day, or have been observed and recorded within “histori­cal” times. Where there is history there is, of course, continuity from prehistory, and it is the task of the anthropologist to trace this continuity as far back as possible.

Briffault, in his monumental work, “The Mothers,” concludes that women occupied a relatively high position. In his opinion, the primal human group is not the family (in the modern sense), but a larger group which he calls “motherhood.” The assertion, he says, that “the family is the foundation of society” is belied by all the facts, anthropological and biological. He bases his claim for a belief in the relatively high position of woman on the fact that they could not have forced themselves up from an original subjection to the position they are assumed to have occupied. To some extent he appears to have followed Bachofen, though Bachofen could hardly have been conversant with the theory of the development of the human species from pre-existing orders. Support is lent to Briffault’s contention of the existence of a matriarchal group by researches which have revealed that early economic relations were based on productiveness, and not on property, and that women were the chief producers. Out of woman’s early activities, based on the maternal instinct which conserves the highest interests of her offspring, was established the principle which afterwards governed human groups—the principle of cohesion and sympathy—a factor which made organisation possible and progress attainable.

At one period she was elevated to the ideal of the mother goddess. As a divinity she was set apart what time the male was busy reacting to the herd instinct, and incidentally diverting the line of social development. At another period she is degraded to the position of a chattel, actually below that of cattle as regards her value. In early Greece women sank so low that they were treated as mere agencies of reproduction. In Biblical times both Moses and St. Paul were hostile to women, and the same hatred was displayed by both Tertullian and Origen, early Fathers of the Christian Church.

We then pass on to a consideration of her position within historical times, where the evidence is more reliable and easier to interpret. Under Feudalism the position of women improved somewhat, and in the Renaissance we find their lot still better, comparatively. But with the growth of wealth in the later Middle Ages their position changed from that of the cult of the saint to that of a mere colourless female character compelled to servitude. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution changed conditions forced them from this servitude to that of another kind—production in the home, with child labour as one of its deadly features, until, with the rise of modern capitalism, we arrive at conditions as we find them to-day.

Tom Sala

(To be continued.)

Letter: Old Age Pensions in U.S.A. (Letter from a reader in America.) (1929)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrades,

In recent years it has become a quite common occurrence for the various Capitalist newspapers in England and elsewhere to point to the U.S.A. as an example of unparalleled prosperity. A land in which the workers are enjoying a “Golden Age of Labour.” Where automobiles are owned by each and every worker who cares to own one. (Until he omits to pay the next instalment.) And where, in short, the problems that afflict the workers and the rest of the Capitalist world do not exist.

Those of us who are compelled to sell our labour power in the U.S.A., and who are interested in working-class conditions, can only smile and wish that the conditions of the working-class as set forth in the foreign press were real, instead of existing as the “suppressed desires” of so many journalists with whom the wish is “father to the thought.”

This kind of Capitalist propaganda is not limited to envious foreigners, for here in the U.S.A. the gospel of prosperity is preached far and wide.

The question of importance is : Do the American workers enjoy prosperity? In order to answer this question, I will quote from an article appearing in the “New York World” (Sunday, June 2nd, 1929). The article deals with the growing need for old-age pensions in the U.S.A. The author is Mr. Herbert H. Lehman, Lieut.-Governor of the State of New York. He is a leading member of the Democratic Party, and we are informed by his interviewer that Mr. Lehman has close contacts with industry and banking.

To begin with, the gentleman informs us that:—

“The prosperity of every country depends on the well-being of its workers. Although the United States is enjoying a period of great prosperity there are two major labour problems, already the cause of wide discontent, that will become more acute as production speed increases : the dearth of employment for able-bodied men between 45 and 65, who cannot meet the speed demands of industry ; and the condition of the dependent aged who have nothing to look forward to but the poorhouse.”

As further proof that this is not a future tendency, but an existing fact, our writer continues with :—

“As production speed increases and labour-saving devices multiply, fewer and fewer jobs will survive that do not require the speed of youth. In addition to the decreasing value of the middle-aged man in speed work, the spread of group insurance increases the discrimination against him because he is a more expensive risk than the young man. The age employment limit, now set between 45 and 50 by many industries, seems likely to be pushed even lower. In the meantime medical science is steadily increasing the span of life. Between the machine that takes his job and the achievements of science that make him live longer, the worker is caught between two millstones.”

The writer is not in favour of the poor-house, partly because he dislikes the stigma of charity, but mainly because he is one of the few members of the Capitalist class who realises the costliness of building and supporting poorhouses. In fact we are told that :—

“I am convinced that even if the poorhouse system of New York State could be enlarged adequately to meet the needs of our aged dependants, the cost would be considerably larger than that of an assistance system which would allow the old people to live in their own homes.”

As an alternative to poorhouses he suggests pensions for the aged.

This suggestion so far does not meet with the approval of the rest of the Capitalist class. Their arguments in opposing this measure range from its being “Socialistic” to the danger of its being responsible for the “loss of incentive” on the part of the workers when given such aid. But our writer is not at a loss for answers to all of these criticisms. To the first criticism his reply is :—

“Some of the opponents of old age pensions have been shouting about “Socialistic policies.” The pensioning of the aged is no more Socialistic than the care of the sick and the insane.”

Thus the demands of the English Labour Party find favour in the ranks of the American Capitalist Class. And as for the menace to working-class incentive we are informed by the writer that:—

“Certain critics of old age assistance, argue that such a policy would withdraw all incentive to save and would tend to pauperise the labouring classes. This contention scarcely carries conviction when we remember that the maximum pension thus far considered is $1 a day in case the worker had no other income. This would be sufficient to supply only the barest necessities of Life. No one would deliberately choose such a state of poverty.”

No ! No one would. The amount of choice the American worker has in staving off the inevitable of poverty and destitution can easily be imagined when we are informed by the same gentleman that :—

“I cannot see how the average worker can be expected to support his family and save enough money to take care of unemployed old age, regardless o£ apparently high current wages. The margin of earnings over the minimum cost of respectable living is too small.”

Just what he means by “respectable living” he does not inform us. Although our author is a business man, he is not altogether “hard-boiled.” In fact, it is because he is a business man and knows something regarding the workings of the Capitalist system that he lets slip his journalistic crocodile’s tear.

“All of us know personally cases of industrious small shop owners who raised large families and were useful citizens ; but when they became too old to work found themselves without resources and faced what seemed to them the disgrace of ending their days in the poorhouse.”

And between sniffs of sympathy we are left to wonder if their usefulness is to be found in their raising “large families.” The worst is yet to come, for—

“Shoemakers, butchers, grocery storekeepers and bakers—they eke out a living but not enough to insure the future. In the next decade their plight will be worse than ever because many of them are exhausting the savings of a lifetime in a vain fight against the encroachments of chain stores.“

So this is an example “of prosperity in America.”

The obvious and only conclusion one can draw is that the workers of the U.S.A., like the workers the whole world over, are faced with the self-same problems; the problems of poverty and destitution. These problems have a solution, and the solution lies in the abolition of the present social system that produces such conditions, and in its place the establishment of a system of society wherein the wealth of society shall be enjoyed by all in common.

I am,

Yours fraternally,

Sidney Felperin

Blogger's Note:

Sid Felperin was a longstanding member of the SPGB's companion organisation in the USA.

Correspondence: Currency Reform and Socialism. (1929)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

E. Wright (Denmark Park), tells us that we ought not to ignore money reform because, we would be able, by means of it, to “do wonders in starting State-owned industries.” Our correspondent omits, however, to explain what advantage to the working class State-ownership is, or what it has to do with Socialism. Our aim is Socialism not State capitalism.

Editorial Committee.

Letter: The New Translation of Capital (1929)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

A letter from the translator.

To the Editor of the Socialist Standard.

Dear Comrade,

 We want to thank Comrade Fitzgerald for a very useful list of misprints (see the opening article in your March issue). He complains of our translating geistig as “spiritual,” when Moore and Aveling’s translation (revised by Engels) has “intellectual.” There is a German word, intellektuell, and we think if Marx had meant what the English mean by “intellectual,” he would have used that word. He was referring to wants which belong to the sphere of feeling as well as to that of the intellect, and, therefore, used the more comprehensive term, geistig. But this word is often difficult to translate, and we agree that possibly “spiritual” may convey an un-Marxian impression, so in the reprint now being called for we are changing the word to “mental.” The misprints mentioned, and some others, are likewise being corrected.

As to the question whether the new translation is an improvement on the old, it is not for the translators to offer an opinion of their own. They were commissioned to make a new translation by publishers who thought that the old translation did not do justice to the book. They were instructed to use the fourth German edition as their text, the last one revised by Engels; and certainly no disrespect to Engels’ memory was intended or implied by holding that he could not be considered a final arbiter upon questions of English terminology and style.

As to what reviewers think of the new translation, Comrade Fitzgerald is in good company in doubting whether it is an improvement. The “Times” holds the same view, and is surprised that a new translation has been made. Comrade Ryazanoff, the learned chief of the Marx-Engels’ Institute in Moscow, takes the translators severely to task in a letter to the “Labour Monthly.” But with these notable exceptions, the new translation has been greeted with an almost universal chorus of approval. We quote a few voices at random :—

“A new translation . . . the work of such experienced translators … is to be welcomed. . . . Mr. and Mrs. Paul have done their work extremely well.”—”Nation and Athenaeum.”

“The work is exceedingly well done, and those who may have previously found Marx unreadable will do well to try again with this competent and well-written translation in their hands.”— “Friend.”

“This new translation … is much superior to the only other one this reviewer knows. . . It can be read without risk of mental collapse.”—”Bulletin” (Sydney, N.S.W.).

“Anyone who has ever wrestled with Marx knows how terribly bad and unreadable the old translation of Das Kapital was. In the skilful hands of Dr. and Mrs. Paul, Marx reads like a different man. . . Something of the real quality of his own style appears in the translation.”—”New Statesman.”

“The Moore and Aveling edition is so inelegantly rendered that,” etc., . . “The present rendering is so superlatively good that,” etc., …”The present smooth and delightful translation will introduce Marx to a wider circle of English readers than he has ever had in the past.”— “Cherwell.”

“Those well-known translators, Eden and Cedar Paul, have added to their long list of personal triumphs a work for which posterity will have good cause to thank them.”—”Yorkshire Observer.”

“This excellent translation . . . will be doubly welcome . . . more readable than any previously published in this country.” —”Bookman.”

And so on ; and so on ; and so on.

“Bourgeois opinion,” we seem to hear the critics murmur—Comrades Fitzgerald and Ryazanoff, anyhow, though probably not the “Thunderer” of Printing House Square.

Yes, bourgeois opinion. But it is not a case of a Labour leader being praised for kow-towing to the Prince of Wales, and there are times when the old adage holds good, fas est ab hoste doceri—it is expedient to learn even from an enemy.

Yours fraternally,

Eden and Cedar Paul. 

SPGB News. (1929)

Party News from the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Interesting to note that the newsagents listed are in some of the poorest districts in 1920s London.

Knowledge. (1929)

From the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following Books can be obtained from Head Office :—

Anarchism and Socialism. Plechanoff. 3/6, paper 1/2

Civil War in France. Marx 2/9.

Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844. Engels. 5/-

Critique of Political Economy. Marx. 6/6.

18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. Marx. 3/6.

Evolution of Property. Lafargue. 3/6, limp 1/6.

Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Engels. 3/6.

Poverty of Philosophy. Marx. 6/6.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution. Marx. 3/6 limp 1/6.

Social and Philosophical Studies. Lafargue. 3/6.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Engels. 3/6, limp 1/6.

Postage extra.

Capitalism and War. (1929)

From the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

When man’s control over nature was considerably less than at present, there was always the fear of thousands being laid low by famine and disease. The productive capacity and means of transport existing today have obviated the danger of famine; shortage in one part of the world being counterbalanced by abundance in other parts. And hygienic and medical knowledge enables man to check contagious disease in its early stages.

There remains, however, a fear which oppresses millions of people at the present time; the fear of war. The mechanical and chemical means of slaughter in existence today are so vast and terrifying that scarcely anyone can view the prospect of war between powerful nations without feelings of horror. In short it is not the natural elements that inspire the greatest fear, but man-made instruments of destruction.

The horror engendered by the contemplation of this danger gives rise to organisations with the abolition of war as their object.

So much has been written of late on the subject of peace and disarmament, and so much of it by people whose business it is, not to lay bare the actual causes of war, but rather to hide them ; and so much of it by well-meaning people who do not understand the causes, that it may be useful for the benefit of new readers to clarify the matter.

The first wars were fought between nomadic peoples in search of the means of subsistence, and as there did not exist any class division within the communities, the war was fought in the interest of the whole group, the spoils being enjoyed by all. With the rise of classes—which could not take place until it was possible for the producers to produce a surplus above their own needs —and the division of society into ruling and subject classes, wars were then waged in the interests of the rulers, and from that time onward have always been in the interests of the particular ruling class.

It is necessary to note that from the beginning wars had an economic cause, for it is the purpose of this article to show that all wars are at bottom the outcome of conflicting economic interests. A superficial knowledge of history, such as is imbibed at school, would lead one to think wars in the past have been due to bad rulers instead of good, or to the wickedness of foreigners, or maybe to religious differences ; that the last war was caused by the ambitions of the Kaiser, or by his habit of wearing his moustache at an angle of 45 degrees.

The crusades, in particular, are often alleged to have been fought because the Holy Land had fallen into the hands of the infidel Turk, the fact that they barred the trade routes to the East (the major cause) not being considered worthy of mention.

Under capitalism, production is carried on for profit, which profit is not realised by the capitalist until the articles are sold. As they cannot all be sold profitably inside the country of production, the surplus must be sold abroad.

When the capitalist nations came in contact with peoples in backward countries who did not welcome them as traders, they resorted to force of arms and forced their way into these countries. Obviously, this process has limits, and the big capitalist powers were bound to come into conflict over the division of the coveted areas.

When all the avenues of trickery, double-dealing, or “diplomacy,” have failed to bring about a satisfactory division, one side or the other plays its trump card—armed force—and the workers are called on to lay down their lives in the interests of their respective masters.

Modern capitalist powers stand little chance of waging war successfully without the support of practically the whole population ; for, apart from the huge armies engaged in the actual fighting, the arms and munitions have to be produced and transported, and the troops fed and clothed; smooth working is therefore essential.

This necessary support is forthcoming only because the workers do not realise their slave position, but believe they have interests in common with the capitalists ; this belief being assiduously fostered by the whole of the press and the professional politicians.

A typical instance may be given. Mr. Tillett, as chairman of the T.U.C., gave his views, along with prominent capitalists, in the Daily Herald of December 27, 1928, on the prospects of trade during 1929 :—

“If Britain is to recover her industrial prosperity and her lost markets, there must be courage, initiative and competence equal to the past.

Labour has its contribution to make and will respond, if invited. Trade Unionists as well as employers must move with the times in organisation and equipment, and catch the new spirit. I have no fear that the organised working-class movement, or its leaders will fail when the test comes.”

The Herald, of course, in its leading article comments favourably on Tillett’s views. Industrial prosperity could only be “recovered” by those who had formerly enjoyed it, and as the lot of the workers under capitalism has always been poverty, only the employers stand to recover anything, and it is precisely out of the struggle for markets, whether lost or newly discovered, that wars arise. Those who maintain that the workers have mutual interests with the employers in this struggle for markets should therefore maintain that it is to the workers’ benefit to engage in the wars arising therefrom, and such individuals, although they are fervent supporters of peace during peacetime, often become equally fervent recruiting agents in wartime, or, as Tillett puts it, they “move with the times.”

The Socialist attitude on this subject is clear and definite. Those who do not own the country cannot have it taken from them, and even a complete victory by one capitalist power over another, resulting in the complete subjugation of the vanquished state, would not benefit the workers of the victorious country, and would only mean a change of masters for the workers in the defeated country. The conditions of the workers in victorious Britain are—broadly speaking—similar to those obtaining in defeated Germany, whilst the capitalists of the allied countries have benefited at the expense of their fellow thieves in Germany.

When war broke out in 1914 other so-called working class parties were thrown off their balance and either supported the war or were divided on the subject. The Socialist Party alone pointed out the truth concerning the issues at stake and affirmed the unity of interests of the workers throughout the world and their antagonism of interests with the capitalists throughout the world.

There is a type of propaganda against war which is perfectly sincere but is the outcome of emotion rather than knowledge. This takes the form of drawing attention to the horrors of war, and such books as the recently published “All Quiet on the Western Front ” are regarded as excellent anti-war propaganda.

One can readily agree that modern war is a ghastly, horrifying, inglorious destruction of human life, but the mere realisation of this is not sufficient to prevent the workers from supporting war if they think they have an interest in doing so. Many went into the last war fully realising its horrible nature but not its sordid origin. Those who are swayed in one direction by emotion can be swayed in another direction if the emotional pressure brought to bear is sufficiently strong; and we know the power of the press to sway such people.

Then there are those who believe that it is the competition in armaments which is responsible for war, but a little thought should show them that this competition is itself an effect of a cause, and must continue so long as the cause remains.

The fact is that capitalism requires an armed force at its disposal for two reasons : to use against rival powers, and to use against the working class if they attempt to lay their hands on their masters’ property. The proposals of the Russian Government, therefore, for complete disarmament were fatuous nonsense equivalent to proposing to the capitalist powers that they commit suicide. All governments rely ultimately on armed might, the Soviet Government included.

The present writer recently heard a worker, unable to meet other criticisms, say “Well, at any rate, it must be admitted that the Labour Party is a peace party.” The idea behind such a statement is that wars are caused by the particular statesmen forming the government. This is entirely erroneous. No matter how much disposed towards peace a government may be, when the conditions are ripe for war the government is forced to take action in accordance with the interests of the ruling class, whether that government is labelled Conservative, Liberal, or Labour. So that even granting the Labour Party to be more in favour of settling international disputes by arbitration, it does not alter the fact that war is as likely to occur with “Labour” in the seats of power as it is with the Conservatives or Liberals there. In fact, if the Labour Party have the confidence of the workers to a greater extent than the other two parties it would be more convenient to the capitalist class to have a Labour Government to pave the way should war become inevitable from a capitalist standpoint.

Even if it were possible to abolish war within capitalism, capitalism would still remain, and it is the mission of the Socialist Party not to fight against particular features of the system, but against the system itself.

In conclusion, therefore, let us urge you not to waste your time with futile anti-war movements, but to join with us in working for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism, confident that with the ending of the system will end the danger of war resulting therefrom.

J. Lockwood

Can peace be piecemeal? (1981)

From the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

On January 19 this year Harold Brown — the then American Defence Secretary — told Congress that an all-nuclear weapons exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union would kill as many as 165 million Americans and 100 million Russians. Speaking on Radio 4 in March, on the subject of “Home and Civil Defence” Lord Belstead, Minister of State for Home Affairs, told us that if we suffered the sort of nuclear attack which “we think we can expect” between 25 and 40 million people living in Britain would be slaughtered.

By the tone and terms in which some of these statistics are put to us you might have thought they referred to grains of sand, not human beings. The first atomic bomb weighed two kilogrammes — less than five pounds — and was a little larger than a cricket ball. On 6 August 1945 it killed 140,000 people, and has killed thousands since by the delayed effects of its radioactivity. Now, according to the Home Office Manuals, we must expect an attack with weapons of 10 megatons — 10 million tons of TNT — nearly a thousand times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb.

As the recession spreads further into the world economy, a major war is increasingly possible. The relentless grind of the commercial system towards war as the ultimate competition seems to create a horrific sense of inevitability. The Chinese Senior Vice Premier, Deng Xia-o-Ping, has said “a third world war is inevitable but we should adopt measures and policies to postpone its outbreak.” (Guardian, 2/9/80). Apart from channelling colossal resources into equipment for fighting a war the government is busily preparing for an aftermath. A Home Office circular which was only issued to senior local authority officers had this to say under the heading “Disposal of Human Remains”:

When radiological conditions permitted movement, District and London borough controllers should assume that one of the priority tasks for their staff, in areas where survivors were to continue residing, would be to collect and cremate or inter human remains in mass graves . . . the location of the mass graves and the method of disposal would be a local ad hoc decision at the time having regard to the availability of peacetime factories, the location of the bodies . . .

With human society teetering on the brink of unprecedented destruction there is a great clamour of groups opposed to militarism. The groups range from opposition to a particular variety of weapon in a particular district — ‘‘Keep Cruise Missiles out of Middlesex” — to total world disarmament — The World Disarmament Campaign. Prominent among all these groups is the resurrected CND. While many of its members are now born-again Campaigners from the early sixties, the majority in CND are new recruits. Since 1958, when CND was founded, nuclear weapons have become more sophisticated and widespread.

Whether or not the re-born CND suffers from the shortcomings of its predecessor (and most of those are inherent in such a campaign) it will be incapable of achieving its limited aims. It will be Canute defiantly attempting to halt the waves. Weapons are not designed and produced to defend or protect people. They are made to murder and maim. Their production in increasingly destructive designs continues in an organised way irresponsive to mass choruses of indignation and opposition. This is because the weapons of war are an integral part of the way we are currently organising society.

When you examine why it is that the world explodes into war it becomes apparent that until we reorganise the basis of society it will be as necessary to carry on producing armaments as it will be to produce truncheons for policemen and keys for prisons. As society is presently arranged, the means of producing and distributing social wealth (the farms, factories, mills, mines, offices, docks, airlines . . .) are monopolised by a small minority of people. This division, between the small minority who possess most of the wealth but do not contribute to its production and the great majority who possess almost nothing of the social wealth but produce it all, exists as much in state-capitalist nations like Russia and Poland as it does in the West.

Under this arrangement wealth is not produced simply and directly to satisfy human requirements. This creates antagonism between members of the owning class as they compete to capture markets for their commodities, to gain control over sources of raw materials, and to dominate strategic trade routes. The international competition between capitalists is sometimes conducted by negotiations (“business deals”, bribery and threats) at conferences, summits and through diplomatic relations, but periodically such negotiations will break down. At times, although many people may be starving or in need of all sorts of goods, too much will have been produced to be profitably sold and then the competition between the capitalists will intensify as they struggle to dominate fresh markets in order to maintain their level of sales.

The industrial and commercial concerns will expand at the expense of others. The final stage in this sort of competition is war. It is an integral feature of the social process of the profit-system and in trying to gain superiority and bargaining power over one another, sections of the wealth owning class from different countries will have developed for their protection even more barbaric weapons. So long as the working class consent to the privilege and authority of this minority, it will be pointless and rather pathetic for groups (even mass groups) to haggle with governments about which weapons are and are not acceptable for social decimation. CND has taken its place on a long list of morally indignant crusades to ameliorate warfare by opposing each more horrific weapon as it has been invented. Campaigns were waged against making war on civilians, against artillery bombardment of towns, against aerial bombing, against poison gas, the blockade, submarine warfare and napalm bombs. But, of course, warfare is not concerned with welfare and the pleas of the campaigns were ignored by government and military officials.

An appeal to people solely on the basis of opposition to nuclear bombs will yield a membership with a confused mixture of political beliefs, perhaps even a majority of whom have no general opposition to war — like all those from the first CND who went on to support the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. Again, suggestions that nuclear disarmament and world peace can be accomplished if we are all nice to each other are to be expected from a campaign which does not focus on war in general — the pleasant, “conventional” old-fashioned type — and trace its causes to the property basis of society. Lastly it is worth considering what the results would be if CND did receive overwhelming support in the Labour Party, a manifesto pledging total nuclear disarmament and a weighty back-up of trade union support.

How far would a Labour Government be able to implement such disarmament and how would we benefit if it was successful? To start with it should be remembered that the Labour Party has only ever stood for government with a manifesto to run capitalism which has included plans to spend huge resources on “defence” apparatus. The British atomic bomb was quietly developed under the Labour government of Clement Attlee, whose representative was present at the bombing of Nagasaki, and during the last Labour government 1974-79 the Cabinet agreed to replace the out-moded Polaris submarines with a new Chevaline warhead (guaranteed to destroy millions of “foreign” workers) for the Royal Navy. The cost, which was kept secret at the time, was £1,000,000 but they weren't that hard up for cash, what with the cuts they were making in the social services.

There is an episode in the CND recruiting film, All Against the Bomb, where a Labour councillor tells us that CNDers should be crusading alongside people who were protesting against cuts in the education, housing and health services, to emphasise the awful priorities of the destruction industry over welfare services. The only trouble was that the Labour councillor was having to say this in 1975 when the callous government in office was Labour! Even if you can conceive of a day in the near future when a Labour government tells you it has rid British soil of all nuclear weapons and Michael Foot, recalling images of Chamberlain in 1938 appears on television waving a piece of paper which is a promise from his Military Chiefs of Staff verifying the disarmament, could you then slump back in an armchair with relief at the thought that Britain could never again be involved in a war? Would you trust Foot? Would you trust the Military Chiefs of Staff? Would the Kremlin trust them?

The left-wing and fragmentary “radical” organisations are equally bankrupt of proposals; even their plans for nuclear disarmament are caught between bold statements that “only the overthrow of capitalism will create peace” and a myriad of reform measures that need to be immediately supported so that we can be in a better shape for “tomorrow” when we will begin to enact the revolution. In Big Flame no. 97 (July/August 1981) the paper of the Revolutionary Socialist Organisation Big Flame, the Editorial says that “In Big Flame we’ve always argued that capitalism cannot be transformed little by little by parliamentary means . . .". a following article maintains that one of our main tasks at the moment should be to try and persuade a particular local council not to adopt expensive plans for a post nuclear attack Health Service. Similarly, in Missile Madness, a Socialist Workers Party pamphlet, we are told “we cannot stop with simply aiming to get rid of a single sort of weapon” (p. 27), because as long as capitalism lasts wars will be fought with one sort of horrendous weapon or another, including chemical and bacteriological varieties, while a moment later we are urged to give every support to the divergent escapades of CND whose professed aim is simply to get rid of one sort of weapon.

Some CNDers agree that capitalism is the cause of war but state that although a new social organisation is desirable a nuclear holocaust would prevent the establishment of socialism for ever, and therefore the anti-nuclear movement should be given priority over the movement for socialism. But this argument assumes something which has yet to be substantiated: that CND will be able to prevent a nuclear war. For the anti-nuclear movement to succeed it would need a majority of people in all the major countries to be steadfastly opposed to nuclear weapons and ready to act against their governments if necessary. They would have needed to have shed all nationalistic feelings. Even then nuclear warheads could still be fired, but can anyone imagine that such a trans-national movement of solidarity could be moulded from such a disparate membership. At the moment, the means of production and destruction are the property of a minority, worked by us for their benefit. Only a democratic movement to put these things into the hands of the whole community will ensure a world of peace. Then we can carry out production for human enjoyment, not for profit, and melt down the weapons, perhaps keeping some as relics of pre-civilisation.

Gary Jay

The Troubled Air (1981)

From the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like other industries, the airlines have been hit by the world depression. In addition they have had to face the enormous increase of petrol prices, the undercutting of fares by the Laker Company and, in America, the Air Traffic Controllers’ strike. Also, as in other industries, while some companies are on the verge of bankruptcy, others are still making profits. The nationalised British Airways lost £141 million in 1980 and Pan-Am is expected to lose £50 million this year, but British Caledonian and Laker Airways, and several American companies, are holding their own.

Inevitably the workers have suffered. Pan Am staff in America have accepted a ten per cent wage cut and a freeze on wage increases in 1982 and their staff all over the world, including Britain, are facing a similar demand. British Airways have announced a 9,000 cut in staff and the number is likely to be increased. All the American companies are standing workers off.

Financially hard-hit companies, under pressure from the banks anxious about safeguarding their loans, are being forced to sell assets to raise cash. British Airways is to sell its Victoria Air Terminal site, and has sold, for £80m, two Boeing 747 planes before accepting delivery: Pan Am sold its New York Head Office building for £22m; and its chain of profitable hotels for £265m to the British Grand Metropolitan Company.

Laker Airways also has its problems. It owes £130m to banks and the interest charge (payable in dollars) has risen sharply owing to the fall of the pound against the dollar. The Laker invasion of the market of the established airlines was based on the principle of offering “economy-class” travel, pruned of expensive “luxuries”, at an estimated 25 per cent below existing lowest fares, but with each plane carrying a full load, as against the often part empty planes of his rivals. But now Laker is to introduce a new transatlantic “luxury business class” with higher fares — claimed, however, to be comparable to the economy fares of other companies.

Of course the other companies had to cut their fares in competition with Laker or to offer new attractions like Pan Am’s “two seats for the price of one” to anyone who buys a first class return ticket to Miami before 30 September. Now, in face of increased petrol prices and other costs, all air fares are expected to rise. All the companies are waiting hopefully for the passing of the depression to get then out of trouble.

In the meantime the very great number of American internal services and the relatively few flights to and from America were disrupted by the American Air Traffic Controllers’ strike and the Government’s fierce reaction to it.

When a politically stable government, in full control of its armed forces and police, resolutely decides that a vital issue is at stake on which its policy and its own survival depends, it can and will take decisive action without regard to cost. (In 1921 when a combined strike of miners, railwaymen and transport workers was threatened, the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, called the leaders to a meeting and is reputed to have told them that, as the army was disaffected, if the strike took place the Government would resign. Had they considered their next move after that? Their reply is not known, but the miners fought a lockout on their own and were defeated).

In such a situation Trade Unions which contemplate “taking on the Government” can, perhaps, test the matter to find out if the Government really does regard the issue as vital to itself. If not it will quickly make concessions. But the Unions, before they act, have the elementary duty to weigh up very carefully whether the government’s position is such that it is bound to use all its powers to fight the strike. This the American Air Traffic Controllers’ organisation (like the British Civil Service Unions in their recent unsuccessful strike) signally failed to do. They may have been misled by the fact that, in different circumstances, the American post office workers in 1970 did strike with some success against the government, and equally illegally.

The Air 'Traffic Controllers “seriously underestimated the Reagan Administration’s determination to resist its demands”. The Union President, Mr Robert Poli, said in a television interview that his Union “could be accused of miscalculation. I was surprised. I didn’t really believe that they would have taken such harsh action” (The Times, 18 August 1981).

As government employees their strike was illegal and the controllers individually had signed the standard declaration that they would not strike. The government did indeed take harsh action. It gave them a short time to return to work or be sacked and cease to be eligible for re-employment in the government service. It got Court injunctions declaring the strike illegal, freezing Union funds, imposing fines of £55.000 an hour (later reduced on appeal) and putting several officials in jail for contempt of Court.

The government set about keeping the planes flying with Army air traffic controllers and the minority of strikers who returned to work, and started immediately recruiting and training new permanent replacements. The strikers received only expressions of sympathy from other American unions, though some Unions in other countries did, for a time, give help by blacking flights to and from America. Other air line staffs in America, including the pilots, continued at work.

There was chaos and hardship for air passengers for a time, mainly outside America, but by the end of August the Government reckoned that it could hope to maintain some two thirds of its flights until new staffs were trained. There was an obvious danger of air disasters, though the American pilots denied that the risk had been increased.

The American Air Traffic Controllers’ Organisation had last year supported Reagan in the Presidential election, but Presidents (like British Prime Ministers) are not in office to help trade unions but to keep wages down to a level which enables profits to be made. The Traffic Controllers came out on strike to get their average pay increased from the £22,000 a year which was on offer, to £27,000, but also to get their hours reduced from 40 to 32. This latter was probably their main concern because they complain that the excessive strain of work, and the conditions under which it is performed, undermine their health, causing heart disease and premature retirement.

One result of the strike and of the government’s action in planning a cutback of flights to 80 per cent of pre-strike capacity is that the profitability of the airlines inside America will be improved. “At a stroke it will remove the excess capacity which is bedevilling the business”.

This would boost profits because it would mean the airlines would scale back their costs to a level justified by the lower number of flights while the number of passengers and the revenue from ticket sales will stay the same.

(Sunday Times 16/8/81) 

This idiot’s progress of the airlines industry is how capitalism actually operates, as distinct from the smooth efficiency represented in the economic textbooks. For the workers the lesson is that there are no trade union solutions to their problems: at best they deal with effects and place limits on exploitation. Yet the unions everywhere continue their blind support for capitalism in the hopeless belief that they, or their Labour Party allies, can make it operate in the interests of workers.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: The Communists and the Labour Party (1981)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard 

At the 1923 General Election all pretence about ‘conditional support’ was dropped. Now the Communists were not only willing supporters, but were almost lyrical in their enthusiasm for the leaders of the party which they said “was not a Labour Party at all”. MacDonald they had formerly described as a “lackey of the Bourgeoisie”; now they felt so friendly that the Workers’ Weekly (December 7th 1923) affectionately called him ‘Ramsay Mac’. Their local Branch Secretary reported on their activities: 

“We Communists here are doing our best to help Ramsay MacDonald to beat the capitalist candidate”.

The Workers' Weekly described the election campaign as follows:

‘Local organisations of the Communist Party are working for Ramsay MacDonald in Aberavon, Bromley in Barrow, Ernest Hunter of the ILP in Hackney, J.R. Clynes in Manchester and in hundreds of other Constituencies’

(Workers' Weekly. December 7, 1923) 

In Barrow where they were helping J. Bromley, the Labour candidate, their secretary wrote:

“All our illusions and theoretical deductions have been hung out on the clothes line to dry”.

(From an article The Communists and the Labour Party: How Moscow helped MacDonald published in Socialist Standard October 1931.

Aborigines (1981)

From the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Very often large firms engage costly public relations consultants to influence public opinion in a way favourable to what they deem to be their shareholders’ interests. In Western Australia a subsidiary of the giant mining company RTZ—Ashton Joint Venture (AJV)—has engaged the services of one of the most expensive public relations firms in the world, Eric White Associates, to off-set unfavourable publicity on AJV’s snatching of Aboriginal lands in the Kimberly region of Western Australia.

Before it settled its plans to steamroll into Aboriginal settlements, AJV managed to “persuade” four members of the local community, whom it recognised as the traditional owners of its potential main mining site, to sign away their rights to the land. But since that agreement it has been claimed that at least 35 Aboriginals have rights to the land signed away to AJV, and a fierce quarrel has arisen with AJV steadfastly clinging to its ownership by virtue of the signed agreement.

So in this dispute the Aboriginals, who are not yet familiar with the ruthlessness of the profit-system, will largely be left to fend for themselves, while AJV will award their PR company 315,000 Australian Dollars to mount a lobby with state and federal government ministers, MPs and appropriate members of the public service in an effort to ensure that the mining company now have valid, legal ownership of the settlement lands.

Political Notes: They have been warned (1981)

The Political Notes Column from the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

They have been warned

It seems always to escape the attention of most of the people who vote for it, but every period of Labour rule in this country has been notable for a bitter fight with the working class over wages.

To add insult to injury, Labour ministers have the impudence to tell us that they are fighting us for our own good. The late Richard Crossman went so far as to describe a Labour incomes policy (which in plainer language means wage cuts) as “socialism”, on the argument that everyone (every worker, that is) was supposed to suffer equally under it.

Workers who resisted wage restraint have always been dubbed by Labour governments as saboteurs of their plans for abundance and security. Thus Attlee’s lot castigated “communist agitators” in the mines and the docks: Wilson huffed and puffed about “a small minority of politically motivated” seamen fomenting a strike in the merchant navy; Callaghan had his “winter of discontent”.

Well, they are still at it, even though they are out of power. Last month’s TUC spent some time discussing how they thought the issue of wages would be handled under a Labour government. Their clear decision against wage restraint was no comfort to Peter Shore, the man lined up to be Labour’s next Chancellor of the Exchequer and who, like all his predecessors, is hoping the unions will do a deal with him and so save all that unpleasantness about striking.

Shore’s disappointed response to the vote was to offer a euphemism fit to take its place among the countless others uttered by Labour leaders about pay. He talked about a “new economic consensus” in which pay would be an element. These menacing words promise battles to come, if the workers are foolish enough to think that another Labour government would handle the crises of capitalism any better than the Tories.

And that is something which the unions still, in spite of all that experience can teach them, seem determined to fight for. For example Postal Workers’ leader Tom Jackson advised the assembly to “pray for the return of a Labour government”.

Well, they have been warned.

Nothing new

The Social Democrats, as is clear to anyone who can swallow an outworn cliche, are a party with a new outlook; a fresh departure from the weary, discredited old gang who have made such a mess of running Britain. Well anyway that’s what they say.

It is, of course, impertinent for people like Roy Jenkins and David Owen to claim that they stand for anything new — and especially so when they are simply rehashing the elements of the mess they themselves managed when they were in office.

Of a type with this is the squabble which went on over the election of a SDP leader. In the course of this, the bonhomie which bonded the Four into a Gang, in those carefree days of the Limehouse Declaration, was seen to be melting fast in the heat of the battle for the top job in the party.

It is instructive to note the line up in the preliminary clash in this battle, over the method of electing the SDP chairman and their leader in Parliament. Jenkins and William Rodgers forgot all about this desire to get away from the old style and plumped for election of the leader by MPs only (and so did the majority of SDP MPs) which was the very method used by the Labour Party before they changed it at their Wembley Conference last year.

On the other hand Owen and Shirley Williams went for election by the entire membership and this is also interesting because it was when Labour changed their rules for electing their leader to something like this that the Gang of Four decided that they had had enough. Well at least none of them can be blamed for being hidebound by principle.

So even before they have an agreed constitution, or the necessary programme of promises with which to deceive the electors, the SDP is in the sort of mess we have grown accustomed to seeing from the Old Gang parties of capitalism. A mess of cynicism, backtracking and double dealing. And in that there is nothing new.

Long knives

It was not exactly a Night of the Long Knives, more like a month of them because, if the copious leaks to the press were any guide, Thatcher took some weeks in deciding on the reshaping of her government. It is said, for example, that Ian Gilmour wrote his resignation statement a month before he got the chop.

Significant beyond all the chit-chat about how many wives, children, neckties, pieces of toast for breakfast, the new ministers had, is the fact that so drastic a reshuffle indicates a serious crumbling of support among Thatcher’s higher ranks.

Now it would need a very naive person to believe that this is due to any concern for working class suffering. If Thatcher had been lucky enough to be in office during a boom, with belching chimneys blackening the sky and all the Job Centres empty of customers, there is little doubt that people like Gilmour and Prior would not have found much to quarrel with in her policies.

When Gilmour warned that the government is steering “full speed ahead for the rocks” he probably meant the rocks of electoral defeat. It is by that standard that the administrations of capitalism are judged. None of them can master the system; they blunder a while in the dark and how they are remembered by the working class is something largely out of their control.

Perhaps the Tories are beginning to think they are having bad luck with their leader, who can’t be helping their prospects with her pose of stubborn belief in her own rectitude and by her liking for giving the other side some wonderful propaganda chances.

On the buses (1981)

From the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Confronted with some socialist literature and an SPGB candidate at the last GLC election, one local newspaper responded in amazement that, while everyone else was worrying about problems like urban decay, unemployment, rubbish in the streets, high rates, inflation and the lousy bus service, our only solution was the prospect of a classless, moneyless world community. A candidacy like that, said our local rag, was eccentric to say the least.

As long as there are so few socialists then what we do is bound to seem eccentric to the rest; so let’s give the local newspaper their conventional point. But from our side of the fence the policies promised by the other political parties as solutions to the problems of the day are not just eccentric, they are laughable; and when workers keep their wits about them they agree with us. During the GLC campaign some members of the Labour party toured the constituency of Islington in an ancient, open-topped, double-decker bus, all festooned with balloons. Two women were talking on the pavement as it passed. They looked up and one remarked, “that must be the extra bus they promised in their election leaflet!”

Better than the most comprehensive set of facts and figures, heartfelt graffiti on the bus shelters reflect the situation; “They don’t bury people in Finsbury: they just stand them at bus stops”. All of the other political parties had promised to do something about the bus service in London it’s the one truly inexhaustible political concern. Voters can forget the bomb, but never the number nine bus.

A Dose of Capitalism

In the 1930s congestion, lateness and dropped services were blamed upon the trams, which were considered to be noisy, uncomfortable, expensive to run, inflexible and the cause of traffic jams at junctions. So they were phased out. In the 1950s the blame was put upon the trolley buses, which were considered expensive to run, inflexible and the cause of delays when their pantographs slipped off the overhead wires. So they too were phased out. Since the 1930s too we have seen the end of private enterprise when London and General were bought out by the London Passenger Transport Board in a partial nationalisation scheme; followed later by the London Transport Executive. Since those days when big was considered beautiful, London Country Services have been bought out by the omnivorous National Bus Company (which grew big by snapping up corporation bus systems that could not meet their financial deficits out of the rates) and the National Bus Company itself has become as famous as Beeching for cutting services.

The range of this history takes in what the politicians are offering today. With the rise in the price of oil since 1973 all concede that electric trolley buses would now be cheaper to run than diesel buses; but nobody can afford the outlay on a new overhead system. Others favour high subsidies from the rates, while their opponents insist that local industry is being crippled by the existing rate burden and that private enterprise buses are the only answer. So it’s back to trolleys, the London and General and square one perhaps. Meanwhile the buses suffer from a really bad dose of capitalism.

Runners and Chokers

Why does reality so rarely match the promise? What stops public transport from being a public service? The bus industry provides a set of jobs that display perfect symbolic parodies of the capitalist and worker relationship; so that, even without the administrative and technical problems above, it is unreasonable to expect anything except what you get.

The job routine can turn workers into mechanical beings, jack-in-the-boxes who pop up when the alarm clock triggers them off. Who better to observe this than the bus driver on an early turn?

There was I, driving along without a care in the world, I turned a corner and runners came at me from all directions. They seemed to come up out of the very drains, running, shouting and waving their arms. In two stops we were chock-a-block, I got three bells from my clippie and the old RT groaned along on sagging springs, steering like a pregnant camel. Four stops later they all poured off at the factory area and we were empty. Rape must feel like that.

A London Country driver 

This is not an essay in cynicism. To the bus company accountants there is no difference between hauling coal by road and hauling people, except that on the buses the load gets on and off of its own accord at each stop. The attitude of the bus crews to the passenger-commodities is a measure of the dualism that goes with production for sale. Passengers are both mere bundles of exchange value and living characters who kick when they are treated like cattle. What can a poor conductor do? If he takes the passengers’ side that buses should be a public service based upon need, then he would run the bus as the users desire, collect no fares, make detours from the schedule and get sacked when an inspector found out. If he takes the company side then he has to dawdle and pick up the maximum number of passengers, yet keep to the timetable within an accuracy of one minute, collect all fares on his fully loaded bus by every third stop, while helping mothers with push chairs, children and the disabled on and off the bus. Telling all and sundry the time and how long the next bus will be (time you bought a watch and twenty-seven feet).

Them Versus Us

It used to be worse of course. During the blitz in the last war the employers forced the crews to suspend the rule of five only standing downstairs (in the interests of national production) and for a time the throughput of passengers on London Transport approached that delight of first world war infantry, the French cattle truck, with its plate bearing the legend “cheveaux 8, hommes 40”.

Then, after years of austerity, in 1949 the bus crews flexed their trade union muscles and tried a half-day strike to wipe out a long-standing anomaly and achieve time-and-a-half for Saturday afternoon work and double-time for Sundays. The employers promptly invoked an agreement forced through during the war and threatened legal action against the strikers (this in a nationalised concern and under a Labour government). Fortunately the bus crews faced down the employers and got what they wanted.

But, as if to show that trade union action unlinked to a movement for socialism is futile, in 1971, when the crews were desperate for a pay rise, the employers faced them down over a strike and offered them half of what they wanted, on condition that they worked Saturday and Sunday at flat rate. The crews accepted and things got worse again.

There may exist a more tricky bunch of accountants than those employed by London Transport, but you'll never convince the crews that this is so. It is legendary at all garages that just before a pay claim goes in the fleet of cars that are held for the use of the managers at administrative centres like Chiswick, Crawley and Marylebone are all renewed. So, whatever the true trading position, the accountants can demonstrate to any tribunal that the board cannot possibly afford any wage increase.

These board members cannot be got at by the crews, but there are surrogates—the inspectors or jumpers, who jump the buses and have to get the crews to sign their cards so many times a day. An index of industrial friction at any shed is the number of crews who refuse to sign the inspectors’ cards, or do so only “under protest”.

Jumpers and cash

The bus crews and the jumpers are at war with each other, either openly or concealed, and the result is occasionally an absurd farce that can only be appreciated long after the event.

You’d never believe what we used to get up to. There was a rota with a dead journey from Luton back to Hitchin at 3.15 every Wednesday (dead because nobody ever travelled on it). My conductor at the time wanted to build a garden shed, but couldn’t afford new wood. So 1 rushed the bus out to a builder’s scrap yard in Luton at 3.15. In pissing rain we loaded the lower deck with half a ton of old timber and dashed back to his house at Hitchin. Halfway, I came over Offley Hill and there was a bleeding jumper with his arm out at a stop. If I picked him up we’d have both got the bullet. So I sailed past to his pitiful cries and covered the bleeder with spray. But the bastard saw the wood as we passed and there was hell to pay when we finished the rota that night. We stuck to the story that we didn’t see him in the rainstorm and as he couldn’t prove anything got away with it. But they came down on us all like a ton of bricks over the tiniest fault for months afterwards.

A London Country inspector (ex-driver) 

But most of the aggro between jumpers and crews centres on fiddling of fares. A wise conductor will be tardy over collecting upstairs fares on a bus where the passengers alight at a terminus. As they come down the stairs he'll run off a string of tickets at the lowest fare and pocket the difference between them and the real fares handed to him. Cunning ones will not dump the scroll run off this way in the used ticket box, because equally cunning inspectors search the boxes for them as the first pointer to a fiddler. The cash clerks at the shed, who receive and inspect the take at the end of a rota, here link up with the roving jumpers. Every journey has to be logged by the conductor and the take broken down into the number of tickets of each denomination run off; in this way the cash clerks build up the history of all such journeys. So when the take on a regular rota falls below the average and the number of low value tickets rises above the average, the word gets around and the jumpers start hiding behind cars and lurking in doorways at strategic points to catch the culprit.

It puzzles some people why services with a fare-box facility beside the driver are not supposed to provide change. Most drivers will oblige of course as it provides a fiddle that is impossible to trace. You give the driver fifty pence for a twenty pence fare, he gives you thirty pence change and as you move away he drops two coins in the box. They may be pennies, tuppences or fivepences, depending on how far the driver is pushing it. The only answer the company has to this is to police the buses with a large plain-clothed inspectorate.

The Political Terminus

Work on the buses is not unique, but it provides a caricature of the shifts and subterfuges, the collisions and the wrangles that go on wherever workers handle the revenue that keeps an institution going. Over the years the characteristically cynical attitudes of the bus crews to the passengers has been formed by their experience in the “public service vehicle industry” and any politician who fancies the chances of cutting through the omnibus jungle, uniting the employers, crews and passengers in a real public service is indulging in self-deception.

Even the abolition of fares would have little overall effect. To be sure the bus companies would save on fare machinery, the wages of conductors and cash clerks; while the omnibus jungle would be thinned out as each bus journey ceased to be a transaction between the public and the company. But another jungle of political wrangling would spring up around the problem of who pays for the service. Should the burden be equally loaded on the rate bills of shops, offices, factories and householders; or should the money come from central government? Such questions are the perennial concern of governments, whose battles are fought in the capitalist jungles of council meetings and offices, parliaments and civil services. You get ideological glimpses of these battles at elections and ultimately you may be called upon to do a government’s international battling when the fighting becomes real in war time.

There you are, just one industry, just one problem that all politicians promised to reform at the last GLC election. Yet it proved to be as tangled as the whole capitalist world.

Who are the eccentrics now? The socialists, who want production for use and free access—or the politicians who promise the earth for nothing?

B.K. McNeeney