Another leader called Tony (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Britain`s largest Trotskyist organisation, the Socialist Workers Party, is in mourning. Last month their founder and spiritual leader, Tony Cliff, left them for his final resting place on the presidium of the great soviet in the sky

Cliff was 82 and had spent a lifetime advancing his own particular brand of the politics of the Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky. Of the three great gurus of the Trotskyist movement in Britain — Gerry Healy, Tony Cliff and Ted Grant — only the latter is now left to act as the Old Man`s emissary in the birthplace of capitalism.

Cliff, who was also known as Ygael Gluckstein, came to Britain from Palestine in the 1940s and soon made a name for himself in the acrid environment of the fledgling Trotskyist movement. An engaging and vociferous public speaker, he devoted his entire life towards building up what is now the largest left-of-Labour party in Britain — from the Socialist Review Group of the 1950s, through to International Socialism right up to the modern SWP, an organisation conceived by him in late 1976 and created out of the old IS weeks later in January 1977.

The real significance of Cliff has been that only rarely has the SWP — or any of its predecessors — taken up a political position seriously at variance with Cliff`s own. His mark has been stamped on the SWP from beginning to end.

Cliff`s political trajectory has been an interesting one. Like all Trotskyists, he rejected Stalinism and the "actually exiting socialism" of the USSR without ever seriously speaking out against the Leninism which underpinned it. However, unlike his erstwhile colleagues Healy and Grant (who were to go on to found, respectively, the Workers Revolutionary Party and the Militant Tendency) his Trotskyism was never of the orthodox variety. Indeed, for a period in the 1950s and 60s his politics — and that of the organisations he led — could only be described as Trotskyist in a loose sense, if at all.

The International Socialists had, particularly in their early years in the 1960s, an internal political structure based more on federalism than the hierarchical democratic centralism typically associated with Leninist and Trotskyist groups. But as that organisation grew and Cliff sensed the world political situation changing in the wake of the discontent of May 1968, he was instrumental in initiating what was termed a "turn to the class". This was, in reality, a turn back to the Leninist politics of the vanguard party that he had openly identified with in his youth.

Whether Cliff`s apparent period of support for political federalism over democratic centralism was one born of conviction or was simply a cynical tactical manoeuvre is still debated. But that a change of sorts took place is undoubted and is reflected quite obviously in the subject matter for Cliff`s biographies — the first of Rosa Luxemburg (in 1959), followed in the 1970s and 80s by multi-volume biographies of Lenin and Trotsky. His one-time veneration of Luxemburg and her conception of the political party was later to cause some embarrassment to the hard-bitten Leninists of the SWP, particularly the following passage and some remarks associated with it:

"Rosa Luxemburg`s conception of the structure of the revolutionary organisation — that they should be built from below up, on a consistently democratic basis — fits the needs of the workers` movement in the advanced countries much more closely than Lenin`s conception of 1902–4 which was copied and given an added bureaucratic twist by Stalinists the world over." (Rosa Luxemburg, p. 54)

This conception is very far removed indeed from the internal structure of the International Socialists after 1968 and especially from that of the present-day SWP, a hierarchical organisation which is dominated by a self-perpetuating Central Committee and which prides itself on ruthlessly banning all internal factions and organised dissension.

Cliff`s other main deviation from the scriptures of orthodox Trotskyism was more long lasting and came with the view he adopted towards the nature of the Soviet Union. An early adherent of the conventional Trotskyist view that Russia was some sort of degenerated workers` state under Stalinist rule, Cliff changed sides in a dispute which convulsed the international Trotskyist movement in the 1940s to side with the unorthodox minority who claimed that what operated in Russia was a system of bureaucratic state capitalism. This theory had been promoted in Trotskyist circles by elements in the main American Trotskyist outfit the SWP (no relation), most notably C.L.R.James and Raya Dunayevskaya. Cliff popularised the state capitalist thesis within the British Trotskyist movement, first of all in a discussion paper within the main Trotskyist party in Britain at the time, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and then in his book Russia: A Marxist Analysis, which was later re-published as State Capitalism in Russia.

That Cliff did more to popularise the main Trotskyist theory of state capitalism in this country than anybody else has led some to mistakenly suggest that he was actually the originator of the theory. This is often the view peddled by the modern SWP, though some have gone even further still to suggest that Cliff was in essence the originator of all the theories of state capitalism. None fall into this category more obviously than his disciple Paul Foot in his recent obituary of Cliff in The Guardian (12th April):

"His unique intellectual contribution was to describe, in the late 1940s, the Soviet Union as state capitalist, and therefore imperialist — a proposition as shocking to most socialists of the time as it was inspiring to those of us who were convinced by it."

The reality is that Cliff`s description of the Soviet Union as state capitalist was not even "unique" within the Trotskyist movement itself let alone outside it. Furthermore, it is a matter of record that the theory of state capitalism when applied to the Soviet Union was not an invention of the Trotskyist movement at all. It was first developed by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the years immediately following the Bolshevik coup d`etat of 1917 and by a number of council communist and left communist groups and theorists in Europe during the 1920s and 30s. Indeed, in Britain the Socialist Party was elaborating a state capitalist critique of Soviet Russia before Trotskyism was even identifiable as a political tendency and well before any "Trotskyists" as such existed.

What was disingenuous about Foot`s particular article about Cliff is that Foot knows how the theory of state capitalism arose quite well, having previously claimed in Socialist Worker that he was originally converted to socialism by speakers from the SPGB in Glasgow. And even the Introduction to the Pluto Press version of Cliff`s State Capitalism in Russia was honest enough to recognise that "[t]he conclusion that the USSR represents a form of state capitalism was in no way novel. It was a view that had often been advanced before, commonly in association with ultra-left ideas" so there really is no excuse for Foot`s attempts to lionise his deceased leader.

Interestingly, one contributor to The Guardian`s letters page claimed that Foot was justified in the sense that Cliff elaborated the first really coherent exposition of the theory of state capitalism even though that term had been used before. But this does not hold water on two grounds: firstly, the SPGB and others didn't "label" Russia state capitalist, but developed a particular analysis to this effect; secondly, Cliff`s arguments were in no way coherent or well-rounded. In an attempt to absolve Lenin and Trotsky of responsibility for the development of Soviet society, Cliff sought to blame Stalin, as Trotskyists are wont to do. To achieve this he had to create an otherwise arbitrary distinction between Russia prior to 1928 (when it was supposedly some sort of workers` state) and then afterwards, when Stalin`s position was finally consolidated (and it somehow became state capitalist). Yet the essential features of the Soviet economy were just the same before as afterwards: commodity production, wage labour, capital accumulation and all the other features which defined it as specifically capitalist.

What Cliff did in his theory of bureaucratic state capitalism was to re-characterise the social formation in existence in Russia solely in response to a perceived change in political control rather than of the social and economic reality, a practice completely contrary to Marxist analysis and demonstrated to be such by Cliff`s critics both outside the Trotskyist movement (e.g. the SPGB, the council communists and left communists) and within it (notably by Ted Grant and Jock Haston).

The other main theory which Cliff helped to popularise was not mentioned at all in Foot`s obituary, this being the theory of the Permanent Arms Economy. It probably did not get a mention because it has pretty much fallen by the wayside in the SWP, though it deserves some comment because for much of their existence the Trotskyist grouping around Cliff (SRG/IS/SWP) has been almost as well known for this as for anything else.

Essentially it was developed by Cliff and one of his earliest supporters, Michael Kidron, in the 1950s and 60s as an explanation of why Britain and some of the other Western powers were enjoying a "long boom" after the Second World War, instead of suffering a major economic crisis. Their argument was that much of the productive capital in the economy at the time was being siphoned off into what they considered to be an unproductive form of expenditure on armaments production. They claimed this was important as it offset the tendency of the rate of profit to fall by minimising investment in the 'productive' sphere of the economy and the associated tendency of the organic composition of capital to rise (the ratio of constant to variable capital). Eventually, they thought, the burden of arms spending would become too great, leading to lower growth among high arms-spending states and deeper slumps.

The SWP used this thesis to inform a number of its arguments on the arms race, imperialism, uneven economic development and economic crises but it increasingly came under attack from other writers with a grasp of Marxian economics. Indeed, one of the best summaries of the arguments why armaments production is in reality little different from other forms of production and with few of the properties attributed to it by Cliff and Kidron is given by Cliff`s fellow (and recently deceased) Trotskyist Ernest Mandel in his Introduction to the Penguin edition of Volume Two of Marx`s Capital. In time, the Permanent Arms Economy and its related concepts drew some sustained criticism from within the SWP too (including from Kidron) and is today heard of a lot less than it was. This is appropriate, for in attributing magical powers to specific types of government expenditure

Cliff's Legacy

Overall then, the intellectual legacy of Cliff is far less substantial than his supporters like to claim. As befitted a man whose overriding aim was to "build the Party", Cliff`s strength really lay in political organisation and the necessary weaving and manoeuvring through the internal strife that is the lifeblood of any Leninist organisation. Indeed, he built his party through the usual Trotskyist method of a centralised, vanguardist organisation on the one hand combined with openly reformist demands and opportunistic practices on the other, and there is nothing original in that — both Grant and Healy successfully achieved this in Britain too, at least for a time.

In one of the SWP`s main introductory texts, its leader-in-waiting Alex Callinicos expressed what Cliff must surely have seen as his own — and his vanguard party`s — pivotal role come the glorious day:

"A revolutionary situation places a premium on effective organisation and leadership. Events move very quickly, and on a snap decision may hang the fate of the entire revolution. What is needed is a cool and clear head, a firm sense of the ultimate objective, the ability to make rapid tactical judgements, and an organisation capable not only of making decisions, but of carrying them out." (The Revolutionary Road to Socialism, p.46)

But the result of Cliff`s vanguardist approach has not been the glorious insurrection he so desired to lead or even, for that matter, a legacy of original and impressive theories for the working class to digest: far from it. Cliff`s main legacy has been the SWP`s long and shabby history of supporting wars and terrorist atrocities, of conning workers into voting Labour and of misleading them about how state capitalism is really socialism if presided over by the correct group of leaders.

The modern SWP is certainly the House That Cliff Built and can indeed boast about being the largest construction on the political left. It is not, however, an edifice of which any serious socialist could justifiably be proud.

Dave Perrin

State capitalism in the Russian Empire (1984)

From the Winter 1984 issue of the World Socialist 

Probably the greatest obstacle to the acceptance of socialist ideas in the present century has been the belief on the part of millions of workers that socialism - or communism - has been established. Quite understandably, workers look at the tyrannies of Eastern Europe, China, Albania and the other self-proclaimed "socialist countries" and reject what they see. The media in the West are quite happy to accept the myth that these police states are "socialist". Since the 1920s the Communist Parties of the world have been spreading the lie that socialism exists; for example, the Communist Party of Great Britain's official policy document, The British Road to Socialism, asserts that

Today socialism is a reality for all to see. Countries with a population of hundreds of millions are socialist states. (October 1968, p.17) 

The constitutions of these countries repeat the lie: article I of the Polish constitution declares that 

The Polish People's Republic is a socialist state in which power belongs to the working people . . . . 

The first article of the most recent constitution of the USSR (established in 1977) states that 

The USSR is a socialist state of the whole people, expressing the will and interests of the workers, peasants and intelligentsia . . .

It is the contention of the World Socialist Movement that these countries are not socialist or communist and must be exposed for what they are: capitalist state dictatorships. It is not our view that the countries of the Russian Empire used to be socialist, but ceased being so on a certain date. (We leave such crackpot theories to the Trotskyists and other assorted confusion-mongers who wish to advocate the Bolshevik recipe while spitting out the Stalinist cake). The Russian Empire - by which term we include the seven members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assurance (Comecon) - is a group of countries which exhibit the features of capitalism. 

As scientific socialists, we shall explain what we see as the two main defining characteristics of capitalism and will then proceed to demonstrate that these exist within the Russian Empire. Firstly, capitalism is a system in which wealth takes the form of commodities. i.e. objects produced for sale on the market. Commodity production is not unique to capitalism, but the commodity nature of labour power is. So, capitalism is defined by the fact that the mental and physical energies of most people have to be sold on the market for a price called a wage or a salary. Where there is wage labour there is capitalism. Secondly, capitalism is defined by the law of value. Value is a social relationship which exists in property society where commodities are exchanged. Where there are no commodities, because production and distribution have advanced beyond the stage of buying and selling relationships, there will be no need for the concept of value or for prices and money. As Marx pointed out, "Value is the expression of the specifically characteristic nature of the capitalist process of production" (quoted in T. Cliff, Russia A Marxist Analysis, p.148). 

Most early socialists, including Marx and Engels, accepted the logical supposition that the abolition of capitalism would necessitate the ending of commodity production, wage labour and the law of value, including prices and profits. In short, they were under no illusion that socialism - which is to be the antithesis of capitalism - could exhibit the social features of the capitalist system. For example, Engels pointed out that "With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with. .," (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific). Marx, replying to a German writer called Wagner who thought that the law of value would exist in socialism, rejected explicitly "the presupposition that the theory of value, developed for the explanation of capitalist society, has validity for socialism". This point is explained in greater detail elsewhere in this issue (see pages 34-42). 

THE BOLSHEVIK DREAMERS 

It is often imagined that the Bolshevik revolution of November 1917 (October according to the old Russian calendar in force at the time) was the most significant event in Russia that year. In fact, this is far from the case. In March (February) 1917 a far more significant revolution took place. This was not led by any party or faction, but resulted from the spontaneous indignation of Russian workers and peasants who were suffering huge losses in the imperialist war, were starving in the towns and deprived of land in the vast peasant areas. The workers of Petrograd and Moscow set up soviets (councils) without any help from the Bolsheviks who later claimed credit for these bodies - in fact, Lenin was living in exile in Switzerland when the revolution broke out and did not return to Russia until April. The workers and peasants of 1917 were not interested in ideas about socialism - their demands were for peace, land and bread. When Lenin turned up in April 1917 he told the Bolshevik party that they should turn the revolution into a socialist revolution - in a country which had only developed capitalism in a few cities and in which three million industrial workers were overshadowed by over a hundred million peasants. Listening to Lenin's unpractical scheme, Bogdanov - a fellow Bolshevik - described such ideas as "the delirium of a madman". Bogdanov had a point. The Bolsheviks won power mainly by offering everything to everyone, even though many of the promises conflicted. Using the anger of the workers and peasants against the provisional government which was set up in March and insisted in pursuing the unpopular war, the Bolsheviks seized power. Having obtained power, the Bolsheviks were forced to act like puppets, dancing to the tune of the existing historical conditions. In short, they were forced to develop capitalism. But, being a party which was led by a number of dogmatic intellectuals, the Bolsheviks maintained the myth that they were creating genuine socialism. For example, in 1919 Bukharin and Preobrazhensky wrote that

Communist society will know nothing of money . . . Thus, from the very outset of the socialist revolution money begins to lose its significance . . . By degrees a moneyless system of accounting will come to prevail. (The ABC of Communism). 

In 1920 Zinoviev declared boldly: "We are moving towards the complete abolition of money" (quoted in E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, Volume 2, Penguin, p.263). This was pure utopian fantasy. 

Lenin and his fellow Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd, who tended to be less taken in by their own rhetoric than were their Moscow comrades, did not take long to realise that their job was to develop state capitalism. Leninists often gasp with horror when it is suggested that Lenin ever had such intentions - they should read the man himself: 

. . . state capitalism would be a step forward . . . if in approximately six months' time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success . . . ('Left-Wing' Childishness and the Petty- Bourgeois Spirit, May 1918). 

By March 1919 the Bolshevik party congress resolved that "in the period of transition from capitalism to communism the abolition of money is an impossibility". The so-called period of transition, which the Bolsheviks called socialism, was a period of state capitalism - a point which Lenin had explicitly made even before the Bolsheviks seized power: 

Socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people . . . (The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat it, September 1917). 

So, when the Russian Empire describes itself as socialist it does so in the logically perverse Leninist sense of meaning that it is state capitalist. 

In the early days of state capitalism the Bolsheviks claimed that the basic features of their society were different from those which define capitalism in the Marxist definition. By the time of Stalin this had all changed, and in his Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, written in 1952, Stalin admitted that commodity production and the law of value existed in Russia: 

 . . . our commodity production radically differs from commodity production under capitalism . . . It is sometimes asked whether the law of value exists and operates in our country, under the socialist system. Yes, it does exist and does operate. 

So, Stalin admitted that he was presiding over a system of buying and selling, wage labour, value and price- all of the features which Marx attributed to capitalism - but kept up the illusion that this was socialism. 

NO STATE IN A SOCIALIST SOCIETY 

According to the Communist Parties the Russian Empire is socialist, despite its capitalist characteristics, because there is a workers' state. According to them, the state in Russia is controlled by the working class. Logically, this must mean that the workers operate a police state to exploit themselves. Other Leninists, who think that Trotsky's analysis was correct, say that Russia is a "degenerate workers' state" (whatever that is), while others disagree vehemently, declaring that it is a "deformed workers' state". Lengthy theoretical arguments between various brands of Trotskyists' typewriters have gone on for years in this heated and utterly silly debate. The simple fact is that the existence of socialism - a classless society - can have no need of a state machine - an instrument for the coercion of one social class by another. Socialism entails the abolition of the state machine. Leninists answer this by saying that the state in socialist society is "withering away". In fact, the coercive state under so-called socialism has grown more powerful, not less. 

In the state capitalist countries the function of the state is to act as the functionary of capital in the exploitation of wage labour. The bureaucratic elite who run the state live in comfort and privilege as a result of the exploitation of the working class. Of course, just as the state owns some parts of the means of wealth production in the private capitalist countries, so there is some degree of private capital ownership under state capitalism: 80 per cent of Polish land is owned by individuals, some of whom are very rich, and in Russia there are several millionaires who enjoy lifestyles substantially different from the workers simply because they are living off surplus value. In general, the ruling class of the Russian Empire have less legally established rights of power than their Western counterparts. But the essential point is not to point to individuals and say, Look, there is the capitalist class, but to be able to point to the exploitative social force of capital, which in the Russian Empire is represented by the state machine. 

COMECON AS A PART OF WORLD CAPITALISM 

The socialist analysis of capitalism is not based upon the localised investigation of individual nations: under capitalism all nations are involved in, and dictated to by, the world market. It is often claimed the Comecon countries are removed from the capitalist world market. This is not so. In October 1976 the London Times published a supplement headed as follows: " ANGLO-SOVIET TRADE: A SPECIAL REPORT TO MARK THE 60th ANNIVERSARY OF THE BRITISH- SOVIET CHAMBER OF COMMERCE". One does not have to be a mathematical wizard or a searching historian to realise that sixty years before 1976 was 1916, ie one year before the so-called socialist revolution in Russia. In short, the revolution did not interrupt the commercial links between Russia and its capitalist neighbours. 

From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards Tsarist Russia attempted to develop capitalism in Russia by trading with the more advanced countries of the West. When the Bolsheviks took power they had no option but to continue that policy if they were to successfully build up state capitalism. In 1918 Radek reported to Sovnarkom, the council for national economy, that: 

For Russia . . . it is an indispensable condition of restoration of her national economy to establish economic relations with the central powers as well as to maintain and broaden relations with the Entente countries. (quoted in Carr, p.135) 

So Russia set about trading within the world capitalist market. Krasin, who was one of the few Bolsheviks to know much about business, was appointed as President of the Council for Foreign Trade. Such commerce has taken three main forms: 

1 .Counter purchase The earliest form of trade between Russia and the West took the form of barter agreements: products of equivalent values would literally be swapped. In modern times barter has developed into counter- purchase agreements whereby Western firms export vitally needed capital to the Comecon states, but, instead of paying for them, the Comecon countries send back cheaply-produced Comecon commodities to the West. For example, Fiat has exported heavy machinery to the Comecon states and has accepted in return Comecon - made car components. These components allow Fiat to produce cars at a lower price than would be the case if they were produced by the relatively more expensive West European labour power. 

2. Leasing By leasing capital equipment to the Comecon countries the Western capitalists can receive their share of Comecon surplus value in rent on machinery , while leaving open the option of removing the capital if economic or political conditions so dictate. Companies like ITT and Rank-Xerox receive very lucrative rents on technology rented to the Russian Empire. The political strategists also like the arrangement as it allows the West to place pressure on Comecon: You fit in with our market arrangemets or we'll take back our capital. For example, US companies decided in the late 1970s that they would only lease container ships to the Comecon countries if they agreed to join the World Shipping Conference, which is a cartel that regulates world shipping trade. 

3. Co-production Western investment in Comecon industry does not end with counter-purchase and leasing agreements. It is now possible for Western investors to buy shares in Comecon enterprises. In other words, capitalists can, without legal restriction, invest in the exploitation of East European wage slaves. According to the most recent statistics - published by Comecon in 1982 - there are currently over 6,000 co-production projects, ie jointly owned capital enterprises, with one share owned by the state and the other by Western investors. In reality, we can assume that there are many more than 6,000 deals of this kind in existence, but both sides have a political interest in hiding them: the state capitalist governments do not want it to be known how much of their industry is co-owned by the multinational companies which the Western Communist Parties claim to be absent from their beloved "socialist states", and the Western capitalists do not want it to be known that they are invested heavily in their professed ideological enemies. In fact, there are now over 100 US multinationals with trading offices in Moscow. (Deals with the Russian Empire used to be carried out through Austrian and Swiss intermediaries, but the traders have these days thrown out the pretence.) 

Investment in the Russian Empire is very profitable. Since 1976 Poland and Romania have allowed Western capitalists to buy up to 100 per cent shares in their enterprises. There is no shortage of capital for investment in Comecon capital. Why? Cheap labour power-the best reason in the world for a parasite to invest. 

THE EMPIRE OF REGIMENTED LABOUR 

Unlike the unionised workforces in the advanced West (who have the cheek to strike for higher wages and better conditions from time to time) the workforce which investors are exploiting in the Russian Empire is paid little, non-unionised, and disciplined stringently. The Russian Empire is an exploiters' dream - the sort of set-up in which the charlatan, freedom-loving bosses of the West can make money out of the acquiescent wage slavery of an exploited class who are told that they are living in a non-exploitative, classless society. 

Trotskyists like to claim that ruthless exploitation was not intended by Lenin and the early Bolsheviks, but was an invention of nasty Joe Stalin. They should study their history: in fact, as early as 1918 Lenin was making it clear that workers would have to be regimented if state capitalism was to be developed: 

A condition of economic revival is an improvement in the discipline of the workers, in knowing how to work, in speed and intensity of work, in its efficient organisation . . . (Current Task of the Soviet Power, March-April 1918) 

In 1919 Tomsky, the Commissar for Labour, told the All-Russian Trade Union Congress that at that time " . . . no strikes can take place in Soviet Russia. Let us put the dot on this i." (quoted in Carr, p.204) So, Russian trade unions were taken over by the Bolshevik state and used as instruments of labour regimentation. Still today the unions of Eastern Europe are dominated entirely by the state bosses. How many Western workers would be prepared to join a union which is run by the employer? They would be mad if they were - yet that is what the Communist Parties of the West are content with for the workers of the Russian Empire. 

1983 witnessed the initiation of a series of newly repressive labour laws in Russia. These were welcomed by the All-Russian Trade Union Congress, according to a report entitled "STEPS TAKEN TO TIGHTEN LABOUR DISCIPLINE" published in Pravda on 7 August 1983: 

Loafers, truants and drifters frequently feel free to do as they wish, and in terms of wages . . . they are on a par with conscientious employees. In combating phenomena of this sort, poor use is being made of disciplinary sanctions. In future, while making full use of material and moral incentives for selfless labour, it is necessary to resolutely eradicate instances of conciliatory attitudes towards violators of production discipline . . . Violations of labour discipline should be regarded as a deviation from the fulfilment to work conscientiously, which is established by the USSR constitution. 

And that is only what the unions think! The new labour laws are very severe, including penalties of sending workers for up to three months to work in a different area of the country if they are absent from work without leave and the loss of a week's holiday for "loafing or intoxication". We must assume that trade unionists in the Western Communist Parties are fighting to achieve such "socialist" labour conditions? 

With workers as well regimented as that, one can appreciate the words of the American capitalist, Cyrus Eaton, in 1974 when his tyre company entered into a joint-ownership agreement with Comecon: 

This (deal) enabled the East European countries to earn badly needed hard currency and, because of lower labour costs, the venture can sell tyres much cheaper than Western companies can (quoted in C. Levinson, Vodka-Cola) 

Indeed, some Western firms are now objecting to the uncompetitive Comecon - made commodities coming on to the Western market and reducing the sales of the unionised - made products. Examples are Czech and Polish shoes, the Czech-made Fiat 125 and Czech sugar-beet harvesters. Ironically, in Britain the Communist Party, which has a policy of opposing import controls, at the same time is running a campaign to increase imports from the Russian Empire.

BANKING LINKS 

Space does not allow us to investigate the important links between the loans made to the Comecon countries by Western banks and the policies of those countries. At the moment Romania is a member of the International Monetary Fund and Poland has recently applied to join. Most of the major Western banks have offices in the main East European capital cities. Russia applied to the Western banks recently for a £600 million loan; if they receive it, then Russian workers will have to work harder than ever in order to produce the surplus value to pay the interest rates. 

In 1980 Poland owed 27 billion dollars to the Western banks: 500 million dollars interest had to be paid in that year alone. In order to pay the banks food prices were increased. For the first time in the history of state capitalism millions of workers resisted the state's cut into their already impoverished real wages. Solidarity came into being and, despite our criticisms of the religious and nationalist illusions of many of its members, socialists greeted this great emergence of resistance with sympathy and admiration. In the West there was no shortage of rhetorical support for Solidarity from politicians who were busy bashing their unions at home. But the Western banks, on whose behalf the Polish state was trying to exploit its workers, were not concerned about so-called free trade unions: they wanted their loot, even if that meant dealing with the resistance of the Polish workers by force. As one official of a London bank put it in the London Sunday Times of 13 December: 

Speaking only as a banker, it would be a good thing if Russia invaded Poland, because then she would be obliged to honour Poland's debts. 

That day martial law was introduced in Poland. The brute force of the state (using Polish troops and police) did the job which the bankers had asked to be done. 

STATE CAPITALISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Nationalisation or state-run capital is simply another form of capitalism. There are plenty of ways to run exploitation and calling it socialism will only fool those who read the labels without examining the contents of the bottles. Socialism will be a classless, wageless, moneyless, stateless world society. It will in no way resemble the hideous dictatorship over the proletariat of the Leninist police states. As the Solidarity newspaper, Jednosc stated in one of its articles: 

State ownership and social ownership of the means of production are two completely different concepts which should never be confused. The means of production may be owned by the state, but this does not mean that they are thereby the social property of the working class. 

And until the property of the world does belong to the workers - or rather, until we have abolished both property and class - those who speak of the existence of socialism in the world today are either fools, liars or both. 

Steve Coleman (Britain)

Greasy Pole: Labour wins in 1945 (2005)

The Greasy Pole Column from the July 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was the war what done it

In late September 1938 Neville Chamberlain came back from visiting Hitler in Munich and waved a piece of paper which, he assured us, showed that he had cleverly arranged for peace in our time. A year later we found it was in fact war in our time, with serious questions about the Chamberlain government – about its complacency, ineptitude and collusion with Nazi Germany.

It was quickly apparent that there was to be no repeat of official propaganda to justify the war, by the crude “Your Country Needs You” style so typical of 1914/18. More suitable to the times, there had to be a campaign which implicitly accepted criticism of the past while relying on publicity about the horrors of Nazi Germany and of the occupied countries to persuade the British people that their first priority should be the war effort. Out of all the fear and loss and grief of war there would be a happier world, with human welfare as its dominant motivation.

The day after France had surrendered to Germany the Director General of the Ministry of Information set up a debate on “whether opportunity should be taken of an all-party government to make some promise as to social reforms after the war”. A month or so later Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, who looked and spoke like everyone’s version of a typical Tory, wrote to another Cabinet Minister about a meeting with trade union leader Ernie Bevin which had discussed:

“the contrast between the readiness of the Nation, and  particularly of the Treasury, to spend £9 million a day in war  to protect a certain way of life and the unwillingness of the administrative authorities in peace to put up, shall we say,  £10 million to assist in the reconditioning of Durham unless they could see the project earning a reasonable percentage”

Churchill speaks

The official propaganda strategy was to urge the working class to endure the miseries of war in the confident expectation that their reward would come with victory. In March 1943 Churchill broadcast the message, beginning by encouraging his listeners “to concentrate even more zealously upon the war effort” while assuring them that his government were “strong partisans of compulsory national insurance for all classes for all purposes from the cradle to the grave” – the kind of scheme designed by Beveridge, which was attracting popular support. There would, he said, be no unemployment after victory because the state would work with private industry to “enable the Government to exercise a balancing influence upon development which can be turned on or off as circumstances require. There is a broadening field for State ownership and enterprise, especially in relation to monopolies of all kinds”.

Under the kind of benevolent stewardship Churchill was hinting at there would be expansion in education, housing and the health services. This kind of prospectus, false though it was, was highly appealing to the people whose opinions were reported by the Home Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Information:  “Three years ago, the term social security was almost unknown to the public as a whole. It now appears to be generally accepted as an urgent post-war need. It is commonly defined as ‘a decent minimum standard of living for all’”.

So with the end of the war, as Germany and much of the rest of Europe lay in ruins, as the full effects of the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities was being assessed, it was time for what was hoped would be a new beginning. The Conservatives were widely blamed for the cynical mess of the hapless years between one world war and another. The wartime experience of the state taking direct control of so many aspects of society encouraged the idea that this should be extended into key industries like the coal mines, the railways and the health service. In other words, the Labour Party’s big day had arrived.

Labour government

If there was one lesson I had absorbed during the war, as I grew into my teens, it was that society must look to a political solution for its problems. Taking everything into account, the Labour Party seemed to me to be worth supporting, and anyway the Tory candidate in my constituency was everything I reviled. He was  one of the MPs who had supported the Nazis, attending one of their big rallies and proudly shaking Hitler by the hand. An hereditary baronet, he oozed money along with his ineptitude and his ignorance of the lives of the people whose vote he assumed he could harvest by simply informing them that he supported Churchill for Prime Minister. I threw myself into working for the Labour candidate, who was in much better intellectual shape and was a dynamic campaigner. Excitedly, I stuffed envelopes and canvassed relentlessly, although I was once put out of my stride when a woman at her front door responded to my Labour Party rant by asking “ What about Ramsay MacDonald, then?” I am still embarrassed to remember that I had never even heard of the man, although learning about him  did nothing to lessen my devotion to Labour; MacDonald was, I argued, all in the past, we are a new party now and we will rebuild Britain as it should be. When the results were declared in July 1945 I was able to swallow my rage and disappointment at that Tory being elected again because we had a Labour government, the first one with a working majority, so now there could be no obstacles – and no excuses either.

Some of the new Labour MPs were surprised to find themselves in the Commons. As a symptom of their emotional fragility they outraged tradition by singing The Red Flag in the Chamber. Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton thought it was as if they were “walking with destiny” – except that the destiny which soon became obvious to the most star-struck MP was very different from all those exciting promises. British capitalism had emerged from the war in a severely damaged condition, having lost some two thirds of its export trade, with a consequent imbalance in its trade with America. The ambition – indeed, the priority – of the Labour government was to return British capitalism to its old pre-eminent position.

Worker exploitation

An important part of this was to intensify working class exploitation. A White Paper published in January 1947 laid it down that “What is necessary is increased production per annum. In attaining this everyone has a part to play”. Of course the government did not really mean “everyone” – the people who had to increase their production were those whose livelihood depended on working for wages. In other words, the working class had to postpone any idea about a better, more secure life and accept what was effectively a reduction in their living standards by working harder for less. “We Work Or We Want” was how the government campaign put it, in posters and press adverts all over the country. 

The Labour government quickly made it clear that they would have no truck with any nonsense about socialism (or rather what they called socialism) or workers’ control; they would run this segment of capitalism as it had to be run – in the interests of the owning, ruling class. They resolutely opposed any efforts by workers to improve, or even defend, their conditions; on two occasions when dockers came out on strike they took emergency powers to order soldiers in to run the docks. They began the programme to make an atomic bomb and then a hydrogen bomb, at a cost of ú100 million, without any proper discussion in Cabinet. They sent British troops to fight a colonial war in Malaysia and they joined America in the Korean war. To do this they increased the period of service under military conscription (which they had introduced, for the first time in peacetime, in March 1946) from 18 months to two years, while all those members of the government who had been conscientious objectors in the First World War kept their silence. At home, they abandoned the allegedly sacred alleged principle of the National Health Service by introducing charges for prescriptions (although this was not implemented until 1962, under a Tory government) and then for spectacles and dentures. The list of broken promises and abandoned principles grew longer almost by the day.

Unfamiliar case  

Nationally there was a lot of dismay and resentment among Labour Party members at the massive betrayal of their dream of a more equal, more caring society which they had worked so hard for. For example a motion at their 1946 Conference complained about the “apparent continuance of a traditionally Conservative Party policy of power politics abroad”.  But such doubts had absolutely no effect on the government.

By 1947 it was clear to me that I was wasting my time in the Labour Party. The war had politicised me, as it had so many other people (although too many of them used it for different ends, staying with Labour Party through thick and thin) and I wanted a classless society based on human interests and not on production for profit or on discredited notions about patriotism and international power and influence. That left the question of what I should do. For a while I swirled around on the political surface, bobbing up against one party after another but never feeling good about any of them. Until one Saturday evening in summer when on our local green, a kind of mini Speakers’ Corner, I heard this man speaking from an unfamiliar platform, putting an unfamiliar case about a moneyless world without leaders, with free access to wealth.

Ivan

Middle Class Radicals (1968)

Book Review from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Middle Class Radicalism. By F. Parkin, Manchester University Press.

This book is a study of the social bases of support for a political mass movement —CND. It is not CND itself which is of primary interest to the author so much as certain sociological issues which his study might help to illuminate.

Parkin makes the usual assumption made by most sociologists and advertising men when he labels a certain section of society as 'middle class' rather than seeing that most members of this category although having certain common characteristics are also members of the working class.

Only if sociological techniques are set firmly within a historical frame—and a Marxist conception of the historical process at that—can they be used to full effect. Indeed the inadequate definition of class and of some of the problems posed derives from the a-historical approach of this type of enquiry. The author, in some measure is aware of this, and in an excellent chapter he provides a commentary on the battles that took place within the Labour movement and CND over unilateralism and the way in which this related to the leadership struggle going on in the Labour Party. The tactical shifts for personal and factional advantage, regardless of previous declamations are tersely documented. A veritable little museum of turncoat butterflies, neatly transfixed for Socialists to display as a warning to the inexperienced new voters who could be deceived by the Labour Party's more subtle election ploys now promised.

The book is based upon answers received from questionnaires circulated to CND supporters in 1965 and 1966. Even bearing in mind the specific purposes of the study, anyone remotely concerned knows that 'CND 1958' was definitely not 'CND 1965.' It is true that its social roots might not have changed drastically but the effect of this time-lag should always be kept in mind.

Part of the study assesses the activities of CND supporters in terms of the sociological concepts of 'expressive—instrumentalist' action. 'Expressive' action being that which obtains '. . . satisfactions derived from expressing personal values . . . unrelated to class or material interests . . .' 'Instrumentalist' actions are those '. . . geared to the attainment of specific and concrete goals.'

Although Parkin is careful not to ignore the instrumentalist aspect of CND activity he tends to overemphasise its expressive role generally and that which it played as the symbolic rallying point for a variety of 'anti-Establishment' positions. This derives, perhaps, from the fact that he is dealing with 1965 not 1958. It should be remembered that one of the techniques employed by ruling groups when policy is being subjected to radical criticism, is to convey the impression via comment in the mass media that their critics are 'honest well-intentioned, chaps, you know, but who are highly emotional and don't really have a grasp of the facts.' Thus while it is true that most CNDers had little grasp of the political or even military realities, an attempt was made to discount their generally accurate knowledge of weapons and radiation which was the factual basis from which the movement grew. Most commentators have fallen for this line of seeing the protesters as primarily highly emotional and —in the jargon, as 'expressive' in their actions. Is this not to mistake ruling class propaganda for fact? Most opponents of nuclear weapons in 1957-8 seem to have been people combining knowledge of atomic and nuclear weaponry and its past and present effects, a simple 'instrumentalist' anti-test, anti-bomb policy, intense moral indignation and an a-political, anti-political naivety which was swiftly and effectively manipulated by astute pro-Labour elements who saw their opportunity to organise and control the growing dissent as a powerful weapon in the coming election battle in 1959. This was 'instrumentalism' indeed!

The cynical Labourites who captured and corrupted the idealism of 1958 are responsible in no small measure for setting in motion the growing anti-parliamentary feeling which exists today. Despair and disillusion arising from the unprincipled actions of nominally 'anti-nuclear' Labourites helped to strengthen the call for direct action and the attack on the democratic process. At the time we warned of the dangerous path to which direct action could lead a radical movement, and now, when the call for violent direct action has grown, the danger to democracy from the 'right' and the 'left' has become clearer for all to see.

The author in a chapter on education, occupation and radicalism brings out a connection between high formal education and radical views which in a period of student unrest (notwithstanding the many other factors operating) is of general interest. He refines the term 'middle class' and locates the main support for CND as coming from the 'educated middle class' offering an explanation for this.

One final thought for Parkin: what are the implications for social theory if it turns out that the 'educated middle class' is primarily a section of the working class? It is about time that the un-Marxist identification of the 'working class' with the manual and industrial workers made by Trotskyists and nearly everyone else was abandoned.

B.

They say, we say (1996)

The 'A Word In Your Ear' column from the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Advertised on some carriages of the London Underground is a new spoof book called More Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. The assumption behind the joke, intended to arouse howls of tittering derision from dopey dupes of the tabloid press, is that the world has gone totally mad because these days people are generally a little more careful than they used to be about using language which is insensitively offensive. The term "political correctness" was not invented by blacks who objected to being called niggers and wogs, women who found rape jokes unfunny or disabled people who were uneasy at the use of the term spastic as a slogan of playground abuse. It was invented by sour and miserable types, angered by the fact that they are losing the battle for the control of popular language. So, who are these bores who persist in this tedious campaign of whining against what they, and nobody else, call "political correctness"?

Firstly, there are those within the political elite who for decades have assumed that language, like everything else on the earth, belongs to them. They have traditionally believed that they effectively owned words; do they not even call it the Queen's English? (Who wants their children growing up speaking with the stilted, pompous aloofness of that parasitic relic?) These arrogant monopolists of speech have been quite happy for many years to twist language into their own politically poisonous notion of "correctness". So, for the indiscriminate murder of war read "defence" and for kicking workers out of their homes read "repossession" and for throwing workers out of jobs read "rationalisation" and for beating up strikers read "public order" and for pauperism read "negative equity". These are the liars and frauds of language who propagandise endlessly to us about "the markets wanting lower wages" and "the markets being unhappy unless welfare expenditure is cut", when the "markets" is in fact simply the politically correct code word for them and their class interests. As they have twisted language, so they have done their best to liquidate those words which are a threat to them. So, in early 1991 Andrew Neil, the Murdoch messenger boy, announced on the radio that nobody but a lunatic would ever use the word socialism again. They do their best to discredit terms like class, and try to suggest that concepts like racism and sexism are mere figments of the fevered imaginations of people who think they are being oppressed.

Then there are the dead and the dying, largely readers of the Express or Mail, whose resentment against all change takes the form of a more-to-be-pitied-than-condemned conservative neurosis. "We always used to call poofters queers when I was a boy — why should we lose a perfectly good word like gay so that they can have it?" This is a linguistic siege mentality, the reaction of the frightened, mean-minded and disorientated who had no sooner got used to the awful idea of women having the vote than now they must psychologically adjust to traditionally disrespected workers being treated, at least on the cheapest level of language, without offence if not with respect.

Then there are the committed bigots. These are to be distinguished from the first group: the political elite whose possession of language was not a product of intended malice, but of ideological delusion. The bigots are people who take the view that there is something harmless about hate-speech. They think that jokes about smelly Asians and mean Scots and thick Irishmen and all women wanting to be raped by pot-bellied lager-louts are either good harmless fun or, if not, the kind of harmful fun which is perfectly harmless to them because the objects of their verbal hatred have difficulty in defending themselves. What has happened — not everywhere, not fast enough, and not always in the most appropriate way — is that defenders of hate-speak are being discomforted by a society made up increasingly of younger people who, confused as they are about lots of things (including the system which exploits them), are no longer happy for hatred against whole groups to be part of their daily vocabulary. Where Baden-Powell taught boys to speak of "nig-nogs" and to fear girls, there is now a movement the other way. This is not to say that there are not still plenty of young dummies who prefer to subscribe to the legacy of verbal insensitivity of their stupid parents or of Bernard Manning videos, but these are a declining and increasingly conspicuous, embarrassing number.

The decline of verbal division within the working class is clearly an irritant to certain people. Smug little public schoolboys who believe that language is what you learn at Eton and that wage slaves who are afraid to say "fuck" but happy to say "nuke" are the best kind, are simply bad losers. The unsuccessful campaign against what they call political correctness is no more than the sulk of the oppressors (so much more pleasing to observe than the sigh of the oppressed).

But we socialists won't mince our words: we don't say that these captains of industry will in the course of the constitutional process meet with a hearty challenge — we say: Watch out you thieving parasites because it won't only be the language you've arrogantly stolen, but the world you've thieved, which is going to be taken away from you, leaving you somewhat revolutionary-challenged. 

Steve Coleman

Labour Unrest. (1919)

From the March 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most striking feature of the wave of unrest sweeping the working class to-day is the chaotic, and even contradictory, character of the claims put forward. The Clyde engineers struck—"unofficially," it is true—for a 40-hour week; the Belfast workers for 44 hours. The Engineering and Shipbuilding trades in general having accepted a 47 hour week with the following as a condition:

The unions will take all possible steps to ensure that in the critical state through which the country has to pass the greatest possible output will be secured and maintained.

were surprised to find the employers at once endeavouring to obtain as large, or even larger, an output in the 47 hours as under the 54, by speeding up, and cutting time for refreshment and so on.

Meanwhile the railway men had obtained recognition of the "principle" of the 8 hour day. Then the motor men on the London Tubes suddenly found that the half hour for meals allowed under the previous system was knocked off. Failing to get satisfaction through their officials they struck. Then ensued one of those situations that on the theatre stage would have caused roars of laughter, but which in real life is almost tragic. The main body of railway workers (apart from the clerks, etc.) are grouped in two unions—the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, and the National Union of Railwaymen. As usual where two unions recruit from one body of workers, considerable jealousy exists between the officials. At first both unions refused to recognise the motormen's strike. Then, seeing a chance to score off the N.U.R., the A.S.L.E.F. declared the strike "legal." Following this they signed an agreement with the Railway Executive that left the situation practically as it was before the strike. Now the officials of the N.U.R. saw their chance. They repudiated this agreement and declared their men as "officially" on strike. In the course of a few days this farcical situation was ended by the N.U.R. officials signing an agreement similar in all respects to that signed by their rivals, except that this empty phrase was added:

The companies are to offer reasonable facilities to meet the ordinary physical needs of the men.

The Shipbuilders and Repairers of the Thames are on strike for a 15s increase, while the Miners are balloting as to whether they shall strike to enforce their claims of a 6 hour day, 30 per cent. on wages, and nationalisation of the mines.

It is a favourite dodge of the capitalist hacks to lay the cause of these actions of the workers on "Bolshevik agitators." But one simple fact put this nonsense out of court. If the unrest were due to any organised agitation, clearly it would have one object or set of objects and follow a co-ordinated policy to obtain them. It is true that a few Anarchist agitators, some of whom call themselves Bolsheviks, are taking advantage of the struggles to shout themselves into a brief notoriety, but they are no more the cause of the trouble than a cork bobbing in a stream is the cause of the water's flow. A couple of incidents proved completely how small was the influence of these people.

The Government decided to break the strike on the Clyde. Well informed as to internal matters of the men's organisation, they determined to deprive the strikers of their leaders, believing that this would collapse the strike.

A deputation had been appointed to interview the Mayor of Glasgow to try to persuade him to use his influence to obtain the intervention of the Government. A mass meeting of the strikers was to be held outside the Town Hall to hear the result. Instead of following the procedure usual when peaceful demonstrations are taking place of ordering vehicular traffic to suit its movements to the demonstration, the police first allowed a motor to drive into the crowd, injuring two persons, and then tried to force some trams through the meeting. Upon protest being made against this the police charged the crowd with batons. The men's leaders rushed out and two of them were struck down by the police. After being taken inside the Town Hall and having their wounds dressed, they were allowed to speak to the meeting, and told the men to peaceably disperse and avoid all rioting. These leaders were then locked up and charged with inciting to riot!

Such a farcical charge exposes the police plot in its entirety. But this was not enough. Pretending that they feared an extension of the "riots," the Government cynically sent Scots soldiers, provided with machine guns, bombs and wire netting, and later some Tanks, to protect the property of the master class. The plot succeeded and the strike collapsed.

Meanwhile a meeting of Electrical Workers in London decided to cease work and cut off all electrical power there to force the Government to introduce a 40 hour week throughout the country. The Government replied by issuing a new regulation under D.O.R.A. making it an offence to leave work on any electrical power plant supplying electricity to public and other services. The Electricians took the hint and nothing occurred.

These collapses show how small was the influence of these "agitators." Still more clearly they show the overwhelming importance of the control of political power.

A calm examination of the situation will reveal that the main factors behind the great unrest are, the high cosy of living and, of greater importance, the dread of increase in the large amount of unemployment already existing with the further demobilisation of soldiers and closing down of various Government department. These are the great common causes manifesting themselves in the different and unco-ordinated efforts of the workers in various parts of the country. They are trying to fight, more or less blindly, some of the effects of a system, while solidly supporting that system as a whole. Even in its immediate details they fail to see the absurdity of the terms they accept. Thus a child could understand that if production is maintained at the old level when hours are reduced, not a single extra worker will be employed. Yet the Engineering trades accept the condition that "the greatest possible output  will be secured and maintained," and thus do their best to prevent the absorption of of such of the unemployed as might have found work under the reduction of hours.

To the other factors causing unemployment may be added the shortage of materials.

The problem thus becomes intensified, and the expedient of shortening hours, good as far as it goes, cannot do more than act as a temporary check, while private ownership of the means of life continues. Not until the working class own and control the means of production and distribution will they be able to adjust the hours of labour to the requirements of society and the number able to work. To do this they must first understand and accept the principles of Socialism, then set to work to establish it by organising to take control of political power for the purpose of wresting the means of life from the hands of the master class. Only then will the "unrest" disappear—through its cause being abolished.

Jack Fitzgerald

Marxism in the USA (1968)

Book Review from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxian Socialism in the United States, by Daniel Bell, Princeton University Press. 17s. 6d.

This book, written over fifteen years ago, has been re-issued with a new introduction by the author. It is a history of the Socialist Party of America and the Communist Party, with a few asides on De Leon's Socialist Labour Party and on the trotskyists.

Marxist and social-democratic ideas in America grew out of the previous populist and labour union movements in the 1870's. In 1876 was formed the Workingmen's Party which next year became the Socialist Labour Party. Its ideas, partly from Marx and partly from Lassalle, were provided by refugees from Germany. Twenty years later under the influence of De Leon the SLP took a more intransigent standpoint, though even today (apart from its syndicalism) there are traces of pre-Marxist ideas like labour-time vouchers and the phrase "the full product of his labour". De Leon introduced a new—and important—suggestion into socialist discussion. He argued that a socialist party should not have a programme of "immediate demands". He also held that the ballot was the way to political power. These ideas had considerable support among that section of the Social Democratic Federation in Britain that in 1904 was to set up the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

At the founding of the Socialist Party of America in 1900 there was a group dubbed "impossiblist" because they were against a reform programme. Although there was always before the first world war a minority in the SPA who took this view the party itself never did. There was a considerable exchange of views between uncompromising socialists in America, Britain and Canada. Bell finds one of their arguments strange. He says that a new member of the SPA would, among other things, "be assaulted by 'impossiblists' who told him that a fight on taxes as a political issue was meaningless because the workers did not pay taxes". We cannot go into this here except to say that the view that taxes are not a burden on the workers was held by Ricardo as well as by Marx and Engels.

The SLP, under De Leon, had always been wrong on the union question. In 1896 they had set up "socialist" unions in opposition to the pure and simple unions of Samuel Gompers but they did give the working class movement such expressive phrases as "labour fakir (or faker)" and "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class".

The peak year for the SPA was 1912 when Debs polled six per cent of the presidential vote and one member was elected to Congress. Thereafter it was decline all the way. Many of the writers and others who had supported the party deserted to Woodrow Wilson especially when America entered the war. The SPA and the IWW, to their credit, opposed the war and were ruthlessly hounded by the government. Many of their members, including Debs, were thrown into jail. The party was by now composed largely of migrants from east Europe who in 1917 were swept off their feet by the Russian revolution. But it was 1919 before all the pro-Bolsheviks had left the SPA.

After Debs' death in 1926 the leadership of the party fell to Morris Hillquit and Norman Thomas. Thomas, a Christian pacifist and moralist, came to symbolise the SPA though there remained many like Hillquit who still claimed to be Marxists. From now on the SPA reminds you of the ILP in Britain: completely confused on every issue, suffering attacks of infiltration from communists and trotskyists, taking an equivocal position on the war, growing smaller and smaller and seeing its top-ranking trade unionists leave for other larger parties.

The Communist Party was a pathetic but at the same time a vicious mob whose anti-working class antics are well summed up by two phrases coined by the SLP (who saw through them if not through Russia): Burlesque Bolsheviki and William Zig-Zag Foster. In the thirties it attracted many famous names, though most of them could not swallow the Moscow Trials. During a patriotic phase before the war the CP tried to show it was a good old American party by praising such bourgeois heroes as Jefferson and Lincoln. After 1941 it enthusiastically supported the war, so much so that in 1944 on Stalin's orders it dissolved itself! This was later reversed and poor Earl Browder was forced to walk the plank. Towards the end of the forties the CP was persecuted and eventually driven underground. Only recently has it re-emerged to be found firmly backing the Democratic Party.

Bell's book is interesting but it should be read in conjunction with the issue of the Western Socialist (No. 4, 1966) marking the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of our companion party, the World Socialist Party of the United States, for a socialist analysis.

Adam Buick

Those were the days (1954)

From the September 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even in those far-off days Paddington was a very active branch. They had amongst them five official speakers, two chairmen, two members of the E.C—one of whom edited the S.S. for a time—and two writers. And—there was a choir. About ten musically minded members used to foregather at a member's house before Branch meeting and blend their voices in what it was hoped was harmony. It was, in any case, very enjoyable. One Christmas Eve it was suggested we go carol singing for Party funds. A carol is defined as a religious song in praise of Christmas; but the dictionary also says that to carol is to warble. So we went warbling. In view of our object, where better we reasoned than bourgeois Bayswater!

It was a beautiful evening, as like as could be, one of the more popular Christmas cards; keen, bright, a powdering of snow but dry underfoot and a pale moon overhead. Sedate Bayswater was very peaceful, and it was with an almost guilty feeling we shattered the silence with "Hail Smiling Morn." Further items from our repertoire followed and presently a butler emerged to bestow upon our efforts his blessing and a shilling. Another pitch drew blank, but a few further successes encouraged us to keep going. Then came the reveller. A hansom cab drew up and discharged—discharged is the word—a festive figure complete with tall hat, opera-cloak, a roll of music and a load of alcohol. He insisted on beating time with his music roll to the strains of "Brightly Dawns our Wedding-day," and to "Comrades-in-Arms." "Hail Smiling Morn" incited him to dance, but alcohol did not aid his agility, and after degenerating into an elephantine shuffle, he bestowed upon his blessing and half-a-crown. A further half-crown—quite a sum in those days—came from a window, thrown to us by a smiling housemaid. After that a financial famine seemed to set in and a friendly butler explained to us that Bayswater was empty except for servants; all the families had gone to the country for Christmas. We should have guessed it. However, we enjoyed the experience and Party funds benefited—if memory serves—by about 12/6.

W. T. Hopley

In the trenches (1980)

Book Review from the March 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death's Men by Denis Winter (Penguin Books)

It is November 11, 1979. The Queen has just laid the wreath for the Unknown Warrior at the Cenotaph to commemorate "Our Glorious Dead". The bands have played God Save the Queen and the flags have been saluted.

Glorious! You've got to be joking!

From August 1914 to December 1915 the voluntary enlistment amounted to about 100,000 a month. By the autumn of 1915, fifty-four million posters had been issued, eight million letters sent and twelve thousand recruiting meetings organised. One recruiting sergeant wrote in the Whitby Gazette "I've talked to twenty fellows this morning. Not one of them has any intention of enlisting . . . others told me to mind my own business". And this despite the fact that poverty was so widespread that men were often much better off in the army on a shilling a day than in their civilian jobs. Winter quotes the case of Harry Winter (no relation) a clerk in Hackney on 15 shillings (75p) a week. With his army pay-off, his firm's allowance of five shillings (25p) and his uniform and ration allowances of 18/1d (90p), he was actually receiving more than double his peacetime pay.

The bovine stupidity of the army commanders was out of this world. On joining his regiment the recruit received 11 weeks "basic training" which had nothing to do with the war at all. Its purpose was to "instill discipline". Disobeying orders resulted in bread and water in solitary confinement, loss of pay and leave and field punishments Nos 1, 2 or 3—lashed to a gun carriage wheel for so many hours.

The army regulations were substantially the same as those drafted by Wellington for the Spanish campaign. The bayonet drill, charging a sack of straw and sticking a 15-inch bayonet into it was a relic of the times when an infantryman might be attacked by horsemen. It was a defence against cavalry and part of the British army tradition from the Colonial wars in Africa and India, Bayonet inflicted wounds in the Great War were .03 per cent of all casualties.

Most of the High Command were cavalry officers from the colonial campaigns—French and Haig from the North West Frontier in India and Kitchener from the Sudan. They regarded motor engines and aircraft with grave suspicion, revelling in the memory of the Charge of the Light Brigade. One General said he had "little time for machine guns". They were military Luddites, dumbfounded when men and horses were mown down like ripe corn by the accurate German machine gun fire.

"Life" in the trenches was utterly unspeakable. The soldiers were soaked to the skin in three feet of bloody mud, sniped at and bombarded, frozen stiff in winter, harassed by the rats living off the stinking corpses, infested by lice and plagued by flies in summer. Trench fever was rife. During the two or three weeks of front line duty, soldiers were often unable to remove their clothing or boots. They subsisted on a diet unfit for a diseased dog—bullybeef, stale biscuits and plum jam; supplemented by a revolting mess known as "gype", which consisted of a mixture of tealeaves, cocoa, sugar and soup in hot water.

Officers above the rank of major were seldom seen in the front line, prompting Sassoon to write:

If I were bald and fat and short of breath

I'd live with scarlet majors at the base

And speed glum heroes up the line to death

You'd see me with my puffy, petulant face.

Officers' pay was ten times that of privates. They could spend their more frequent leaves in towns where privates could not afford to go, even if allowed to. And after all this—for those lucky enough to get back home—what was the glorious Hero's reward? Full disablement pension for a permanently incapable invalid was 25/- (£1.25) a week. Soldiers with one arm missing at the shoulder received 16/- (80p) weekly; above the elbow 14/- (70p); below the elbow 11/6d (57p); a left arm was paid 1/- (5p less). Legs were similarly assessed.

Denis Winter rightly says that the  books on the war were written by poets, journalists, politicians and, above all, Generals trying to explain away their crime. Robert Graves, J. B. Priestley, Harold Macmillan and Rudyard Kipling to name but a few. The impression is left that the great mass of common soldiers just didn't think at all. But Winter has tried to find out what "Other Ranks" felt about it all. He frequently refers to the simple triviality of their gripes and complaints—such things as whether the rations had arrived, how soon they would be relieved in the line and so on.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, with the advantage of historical knowledge was able to issue its 1914 Anti-War Declaration, calling on the workers of all countries to unite against the war. But this appeal fell largely on deaf ears and those who made it were scattered to the ends of the earth or locked up in Wormwood Scrubs. So, predictably, in 1939 it all happened again. During the last war there were 66,000 conscientious objectors. This war was for "Democracy", so it was hardly politic to suppress public meetings at which Socialists denounced war, especially as the meetings grew larger as each war went by.

In 1911 the hand grenade lobbed by human muscle power was the infantry-man's weapon. Today the old fashioned foot-slogger, the Poor Bloody Infantry, has practically ceased to exist. Artillery barrages, flinging huge quantities of metal, are already obsolete. In 1917 guns were set every six yards, delivering 4¾ tons of steel per yard of enemy front line. Today a missile launch pad capable of hurling nuclear warheads to destroy whole cities are stationed throughout the world and fitted to submarines at sea. The technical difference is greater than that between the Roman invasion of Britain and the Battle of the Somme.

Despite all the appeals to "never let it happen again", both Russia and America are perfectly capable of using their terrifying powers to destroy much of humanity should their interests demand it. Nuclear war can happen if workers continue to ignore the Socialist appeal of 1914:

Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow-workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and Socialist fraternity and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism.

Socialist Standard, August 1914 

Horatio