On the stump (2004)

From the June 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Short History of SPGB Outdoor Speaking

When the name of the Socialist Party is mentioned something that springs to mind for many is outdoor public speaking. For much of its political life the SPGB has relied on outdoor meetings for a key part of its propaganda against the capitalist system, these acting as crucial aids to recruitment alongside the Socialist Standard, leaflets, pamphlets, indoor meetings and debates. Indeed, the proportion of Party members citing outdoor meetings as the means by which they first came into contact with the Party was significant until the 1950s when this form of propaganda went into something of a decline.

During the first few years of the Party’s existence propaganda was mostly indoor, outside speaking only being undertaken in the summer months. In these early years the Party was almost entirely confined to   London and its environs, with only Manchester in the provinces holding regular meetings, and from early 1908 a year round London outdoor rota (the “Lecture List”) was established. A range of stations were used across the capital increasing to no less than 22 sites on Sundays during the summer of 1914, before the outbreak of war. Street corners, especially outside pubs, were the favourite locations. Few of these sites were used exclusively by the Party and some had been in continuous use since the 1880s.

Sunday’s best

Sunday was the most important day for outdoor meetings, although on most other nights a Party speaker would be on the stump somewhere in the capital. The pre-war Sunday meeting was an integral part of working class life. Typically the father would be evicted from the house while the Sunday meal was  prepared. Since the pubs were closed he drifted around the streets looking for anything to entertain him,  which is what the street meeting typically did. After his meal he might visit the local during the afternoon  for some liquid refreshment. Afterwards speakers would again be on hand. The typical starting times of the street meeting were therefore 11.30 a.m. and 7.30 p.m. Meetings in public parks were usually held in  the afternoon (3.30 or 4 pm), for a rather more ‘refined’ clientele taking their Sunday afternoon stroll.

Sammy Cash

The outdoor Party meeting was managed by the local branch whose ‘turf’ the site was on and the duty of host (meeting chairman) was highly competed for. In March, 1908, for example, a dispute arose over the  ‘ownership’ of the Clapham Common meeting. Both Battersea and the short-lived Clapham branch  claimed the meeting and tempers frayed so much that five Battersea members went so far as to hand in  their resignations.

The big names of the era, most notably Jack Fitzgerald and Alex Anderson – whose  main stamping grounds were Battersea and Tottenham respectively – featured prominently amongst the  speakers but there was a wide range of others, many now forgotten (as with the membership generally there was a  high degree of turnover during these years). It was by no means uncommon for a speaker to do two  ‘shifts’, though three talks in one day would have been very rare even for Anderson.

While no record exists of what exactly was said at outdoor meetings during this era it can be safely assumed from accounts of the time that the speechmaking was heavy on rhetoric, working perhaps just as much on an emotional as an intellectual level, and was most likely lengthy and littered with stock quotations from key texts on political theory and Marxian economics. The real importance of such meetings lay not just in the speech itself but in the small groups of young workers that gathered afterwards to argue points raised. In this way outdoor speaking acted as a valuable spur to working class intellectual self- development.

Harry Young

All this came to an end with the outbreak of the First World War. Within a short time outdoor meetings stopped as a result of harassment by pro-war ‘jingoes’. The last Party listing published during this period (December 1914) sarcastically noted that “Owing to various circumstances, including the peculiarly British sense of fair play of our opponents, the Party’s Lecture List is considerably curtailed this month.” The following month outdoor meetings ceased altogether.

In the summer of 1919 regular outdoor meetings resumed in London, although with a much lower level  of activity than before the war. In August of that year there were just six Sunday stations. Only four of these  proved to be of any long-term use: Clapham Common, Finsbury Park, Victoria Park, and West Green  Corner in Tottenham. During the mid-1920s these were the only locations in the capital operated by the  Party but towards the end of the decade a modest revival occurred with a few pre-war venues, such as  Prince of Wales, Harrow Road, and several new sites, such as Beresford Square, Woolwich, coming into use. It was not until after the 1929 crash though that more widespread outdoor activity returned. The early  1930s saw a multitude of sites brought into use, the most important being the Cock Hotel at East Ham,  Whipps Cross at Leyton and Brockwell Park. A peak was reached during this period in July 1935 with  twelve Sunday stations in use and a further four on a Saturday.

Interestingly, the latter part of the 1930s  saw something of a decrease in regular outdoor meetings. To some extent this was due to increasing  motor traffic, which rendered certain street locations unusable but was also due to a relative (though  temporary) shortage of outdoor speakers, this in part resulting from the introduction of more stringent  requirements for those wishing to take the platform on behalf of the Party (the introduction of the so-called ‘New Speakers Test’). At this time the Party increasingly moved its attention to propaganda in parks, the focus being on five open spaces: Brockwell Park, Clapham  Common, Finsbury Park, Hyde Park and Victoria Park.

Of these Hyde Park was king. For the SPGB the rise of Hyde Park was rapid as although meetings had  briefly been held here in pre-war days and in the late 1920s these had not always been a huge success, and so it was not until 1937 that Speakers’ Corner again entered the Party’s itinerary. Hyde Park became fertile ground and by the summer of 1939 three ‘shifts’ were operating on a Sunday.

Prolific

The most prolific speakers of this era were Bob Ambridge, the idiosyncratic Sammy Cash, Solomon Goldstein (remembered by those in the Party as a particularly able exponent of Marxian economics), Clifford Groves, Sid Rubin and the grizzled old Canadian orator Charlie Lestor – all of them hugely  capable outdoor speakers, though Tony Turner, with his deep rasping voice and thunderous delivery,  was the most remarkable of all. Turner’s greatest moment was on the day war broke out, when in Hyde  Park he took and held a crowd of ten thousand or more as he railed against the impending imperialist  slaughter.

Bob Ambridge

The outbreak of the Second World War – in contrast to 1914 – did not bring an end to outdoor  propaganda, even if for a time it was severely curtailed as a result of the ‘blackout’ and the Blitz. Until mid-war the parks continued to be the main venues, though as the war progressed street meetings  resumed their importance. A big explosion of meetings then came after the end of the war and by 1949 the SPGB was holding over a thousand outdoor meetings a year. During this period regular Sunday  meetings in London were held at:

Beresford Square, Woolwich

Clapham Common

Cock Hotel, East Ham

East Street, Walworth

Finsbury Park

Heron Court, Richmond

Hyde Park

Islip Street, Kentish Town

Regents Park

Warren Street station

West Green Corner, Tottenham

A further eight sites, including the long-lived Jolly Butchers Hill venue, were used on Saturday with  several others – such as Trebovir Road, Earl’s Court – used on week-nights. The most productive was  always Hyde Park: these meetings alone accounted for over 10 percent of the Party’s new members  during the 1940s. Most of the orators who learnt to ply their trade in the Party during the 1930s continued  to be active, Turner remaining a star turn, along with Wilmott, Dawe and a band of other speakers who  had joined in the years before the war and who brought with them a characteristic platform style distinguished by quick-wittedness, aggression and self-confidence.

An important innovation around this time was the popular weekday lunchtime meetings at Tower Hill, Finsbury Pavement and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with the latter being perhaps the most rewarding in terms of new members. Outdoor speaking was a notable feature of the election campaigns during the immediate  post-war era too. For the 1945 Paddington election, meetings were held every night outside the Prince of  Wales, Harrow Road, and most nights at a selection of venues throughout the area, supplementing the  big indoor meetings at the Metropolitan Theatre.

But if the 1940s saw continuous and rapid expansion in the SPGB outdoor speaking scene, the 1950s  saw just as speedy a decline, especially in London, though Glasgow and some other provincial venues  bucked the trend for longer. One by one the old haunts were shut down until by the end of the decade just four Sunday venues remained in the capital: Hyde Park, East Street in Walworth, Beresford Square in Woolwich and Clapham Common. In addition two Saturday stations, Rushcroft Road in Brixton and  Castle Street, Kingston, were retained.

Steve Coleman

These last few outdoor speaking venues took a surprising time to die off and it was not until 1967 that the SPGB held its last regular street meeting in London. This left occasional meetings at Earl’s Court, the  regular weekday City meetings – such as those at Tower Hill – which lasted until 1979, and Hyde Park,  where Harry Young, Steve Coleman and others habitually mounted the Party platform on Sundays and which still sees regular if ad hoc use today.

Outside London

Outside the capital SPGB outdoor meetings have been a feature at a large number of venues in towns  and cities across the UK – with a peak in the 30s and 40s. Glasgow was a city where the Party’s outdoor  speaking activities were significant from the 1920s onwards, and they continued to flourish much later than in London, especially in The Barrows, West Regent Street, Blythswood Street and Exchange Square. Glasgow branch produced many fine outdoor orators but Alec Shaw was truly outstanding.

Other regular provincial venues included Edinburgh (where The Mound was a regular venue into the 1990s), Bristol, Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield, Southend and even Welwyn Garden City for a time. A number of cities in the Midlands and the North including Coventry and Bradford saw periodic SPGB  outdoor speaking activity, with many others seeing flying visits from Party speakers trying to drum-up  interest. In the North of England though, only Manchester proved to be really consistent territory for  speakers on the outdoor platform, with Baritz, Maertens and others regularly holding forth at Stevenson Square and Platt Fields.

Looking back, the reasons for the sad decline of street-corner meetings are not hard to find. It is no surprise that the start of the fall-off in these in the early 1950s, especially in London, coincides almost  exactly with the removal of petrol rationing and in one sense street meetings during and immediately  after the Second World War were a revival of a form already under sentence of death: as has been indicated they had been noticeably curtailed in favour of both indoor meetings and meetings in parks  even in the late 1930s.

The decline of park meetings though is perhaps more complex. Local authority pressure to ‘tidy up’ the open spaces may well have been one reason and the related decline of street meetings another, as  people simply got out of the habit of listening to – and interacting with – outdoor orators on a daily or  weekly basis. In terms of entertainment, competition from radio, and later television, was obviously another factor, as was – most crucially of all – the role of passive receiver of information foisted upon the working class by the entire apparatus of the modern mass media.

Keith Scholey

Anti-parliamentary dogmatism (2001)

Book Review from the April 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Against Parliament. For Anarchism. Anarchist Federation.

This latest offering from the Anarchist Federation (formally known as the Anarchist Communist Federation) once again re-affirms their position that the revolutionary process towards “anarchist communism” can and must in no way involve the use of parliament. Indeed, the pamphlet itself is comprised of a discussion of the main political parties in Britain (including a chapter on the far left and right), all of whom advocate the use of parliament to advance their political programmes.

Unfortunately, the AF did not feel it necessary to mention the Socialist Party which is a shame as we are well-known to the AF and although not part of the same milieu, members of both organisations have been able to strike up cordial relations on occasion. The reason for this is that the AF's definition of “anarchist communist” society is almost indistinguishable from our view of socialism, i.e. moneyless, stateless with free access to goods and services. Perhaps, the main bone of contention is how we get there and here there are some real differences.

Whereas we emphasis mass democratic political action by a majority of the global working class (which may well involve socialist delegates being sent to parliaments) as the best means for attaining world socialism, the AF see the revolutionary process more in terms of community/worker resistance and mass action through strikes and riots and the like. However, some of their views seem remarkably similar to those of the Socialist Party's:

 “Anarchist communism would depend on mass involvement. This is both to release everyone's inventiveness and ideas and to prevent the formation of some sort of elite. Two forms of organisation are crucial in this context. The first is regular mass meetings of communities and workers, to ensure that full discussion and participation in matters affecting a locality could be achieved. The second is federation, as many issues need a broader perspective than the local. Federalism would run through successive bands—local, district, regional, international—to take decisions appropriate to that band” (p.54).

Needless to say that the AF's vision of a new society is far more edifying than the oxymoronic Trotskyist notion of a “workers' state” (state capitalist nightmare), but their anti-parliamentary dogmatism means that the question of the state in a revolutionary situation is effectively ignored.

No-one can be exactly sure which form the revolutionary process will take and it may well involve some of the things the AF point to. However, we in the Socialist Party believe that the potential use of parliament as part of a revolutionary process may prove vitally important in neutralising the ruling class's hold on state power. For us, this is the most effective way of abolishing the state and thus ushering in the revolutionary society.

The pamphlet itself is not a bad read (for a quid) and is especially interesting for budding political anoraks who wish to differentiate between the “National Democrats” and the National Front or the Scottish Socialist Party from the Socialist Workers Party. This said, it is more descriptive than analytical and the AF are wrong—even slightly disingenuous—to mix up the parliamentary reformism of the Trotskyists without reference to the revolutionary approach of the Socialist Party.

Dave Flynn

Lists and drugs (2012)

Book Review from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Psychopath Test. By Jon Ronson, Picador. £8.99.

This is a very funny book, but also a very sad and disturbing one. Its subtitle is ‘A journey through the madness industry’, which gives a good idea of how mental illness is a source of status and profit for some who claim to treat it.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association (which makes $5m a year from its sales), and supposedly provides a list of disorders and how to identify and classify them. But in the case of psychopathy (or sociopathy or anti-social personality disorder) nobody has any real idea as to what this condition comprises. A widely-used psychopathy checklist, provided by Bob Hare, contains points such as grandiose sense of self-worth, proneness to boredom, impulsivity and lack of remorse. Using these and similar tests, maybe half the population can be viewed as having some mental illness, which is good news for the pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs which are claimed to treat such illnesses. And to illustrate the kind of nonsense found in such circles, one nineteenth-century American doctor identified a mental disorder called drapetomania in some slaves (meaning a desire to escape from slavery).

As for actually treating psychopathy, nobody really seems to have a clue, though there have been many attempts (including Nude Psychotherapy), and many criminal psychopaths re-offend quite soon after being released. Too often ‘treatment’ just consists of detaining people.

But is it really just a matter of a few anti-social individuals? Hare claims that psychopaths are responsible for much of what is wrong with society, with many being in top positions in business. For what some see as psychopathic traits, others will view as being distinctive of good leadership. Some chief executives of companies genuinely seem to enjoy sacking workers, especially if it leads to the share price going up. Nobody is arguing that more than a few percent of bosses are psychopaths but, as Ronson says, ‘I wondered if sometimes the difference between a psychopath in Broadmoor and a psychopath on Wall Street was the luck of being born into a stable, rich family.’

And if psychiatrists find it hard to diagnose psychopathy and other mental illnesses, it can be very difficult to convince people that you are actually sane. Ronson recounts an experiment run by an American psychologist called David Rosenhan: eight people presented themselves to mental hospitals, saying they had a voice in their head but otherwise acting completely normally. All were diagnosed with schizophrenia or manic depression, were admitted and were kept in for an average of nineteen days, despite their behaviour from their time of admission being completely normal. But then psychiatrists have little idea as to how to distinguish ‘normal’ from ‘ill’.

We should make it clear that, while capitalism may benefit from having executives who are psychopathic, the problem lies not with the dysfunctional bosses but with a sick system.

Paul Bennett

Speaker's notes (1979)

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 12 June 1904, a few ordinary working men women founded the Socialist Party of Great Britain with the sole object of establishing a socialist society. The aim of the party was clearly defined, as was a set of principles which through the years have anchored the Party to its task.

September 1904 saw the production of the first Socialist Standard; our journal has appeared every month since then. Its production has been carried out entirely by the voluntary efforts of members, often under very difficult circumstances. Lack of funds has been the recurring problem over the years.

The first printer, the late Comrade Jacomb, never pressed for payment. Later, and for many years, the Socialist Standard and other Party publications were printed by a sympathetic firm who were prepared to give us credit. Regularly the Treasurer informed the Executive Committee that funds only permitted part payment to the printer. Thanks to some legacies in recent years we have put these problems behind us.

The contents of the Socialist Standard over the years have reflected changing conditions and the reactions of the writers to these changes. So many years later it is not easy to pick out subjects for special mention and the choice must be a personal one.

There is some material which has become part of history. Jacomb's King Capital's Coronation in 1912, which in later years patriotic compositors refused to deal with, is one such article. Jack Fitzgerald's early statement on the Russian revolution, in which we said that economic conditions made it impossible to establish socialism there, is another. Then there is the Manifesto on War in 1914, repeated at the outbreak of the Second World War, and the Manifesto to the proposed international Peace Congress of 1917, in which the Executive Committee restated the socialist viewpoint on war.

The distribution of our literature has always depended on the work of our members. Difficulties were there to be overcome. There was a bad period during the First World War when, as a result of the Military Service Act male members had to scatter and contact was often lost. Women members had to take on the extra work; some members who had been jailed for refusing military service distributed literature in and around the prisons. During October 1916 the War Office banned the despatch of the Socialist Standard overseas on the grounds that part of it might be useful to the enemy.

May Day demonstrations have always provided members with the opportunity of selling literature, and dodging the park regulations became quite an art. CND marches at their peak were always good for literature sales and propaganda in general. Meetings in Trafalgar Square, held by the Party or opponents, find members busy selling literature, arguing with opponents and discussing with enquirers.

The "stump" - or portable platform - was until quite recently the most successful method of propagating political views. In 1905 there were twenty-five known outdoor speaking spots in London alone and many others in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Manchester. For a Party speaker in London, Sunday could be hectic. A speaker who was a keen cyclist would speak at Wood Green, Tottenham in the morning until around midday. After some refreshment, on to Finsbury Park for an afternoon meeting. Here there would usually be plenty of opponents and occasions when the speaker needed the physical protection of other members. After this he might go to West Ham for an evening meeting. This took place outside a pub and he'd make sure the meeting closed well before the pub did. One such speaker, when he got off the platform, found that his bicycle was missing and he had to borrow his fare home.

During the First World War speaking on the outdoor platform became dangerous and some of the speakers were in prison or on the run. There was a recovery between the two wars, and some good meetings were held on Sundays at Victoria Park in East London, Finsbury Park. Brockwell Park, Hyde Park and Beresford Square, Woolwich. During the 1939-45 war there was a drop in activity, although meetings were held successfully on Sundays in Hyde Park. Audiences often consisted of workers in uniform, and the meeting often continued through air raids.

Modern traffic conditions have made street propaganda almost impossible. In London the only major speaking spot left is Hyde Park. At Tower Hill, where we still hold mid-week meetings, the competition was fierce: there was the man who was tattooed from head to foot, the man who for a few pence demonstrated how he could release himself from the tightest of chains; the Irish comedian and one or two others who were classed as "penny snatchers". Two religious meetings and one Secular Society speaker all competed for an audience. On Monday midday we still put up the platform at the home of the legal profession at Lincoln Inn Fields, but again car parking and traffic have made it very difficult to hold meetings there.

As conditions progressively made the early form of outdoor meetings difficult, the Party looked for other ways of carrying out our work. Elections have been contested in an endeavour to get workers to accept our point of view. 1906 saw the beginning in a small way; probably our most successful venture in elections was in 1945. We still put up candidates as and when we can, but activity today concentrates more on the distribution and sale of our literature, rather than the holding of indoor meetings. Debates with opponents have been, and are still being held - when we can persuade them to take up our challenge.

Over the years the Party has seen hard times and good ones; we have seen many so-called working class parties rise and fall. It is a tribute to our members who have carried on the work that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is still in existence in 1979 and working for its original and only Object.

R. Ambridge

Action Replay: Basket Case (2014)

The Action Replay Column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

You might well be able to guess that football is the most popular participant sport in Britain, but you would probably be surprised to learn that basketball ranks second. Every year over 2.5 million people over 14 play the game.

But in terms of medals and national prestige, things are not so good. The British men’s basketball team has never qualified for an Olympics contest, though they did play as host nation at London 2012, where they won just one match out of five. They recently failed to make it through to the European national tournament in 2015, having lost in the qualifiers to Iceland and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Early this year funding at the elite level was cut from £7m to zero, as UK Sport reassessed its priorities after the London Olympics. This organisation (which receives money from the government and the National Lottery) deals only with ‘top end’ sport, and – in addition to money for athletics – dishes out sizeable sums to sports such as sailing and fencing, which deliver a fair number of medals but have very little impact in terms of participation. It should be pointed out, though, that basketball still gets funding from, for instance, Sport England, which is concerned with grass roots sport.

Former international John Amaechi argued (BBC online, 22 August) that basketball could help solve various social problems: ‘There is legitimacy to all the sports in question, but are canoeing, shooting, archery, fencing, modern pentathlon and rowing the answer to our obesity problem? Are these the sports that can permeate our urban communities and inspire a generation of youth who are dramatically less well off than the previous?’ He proposed radical changes to the way the sport is run, at all levels.

The boss of British Basketball, Roger Moreland, dismissed Amaechi’s complaints, and insisted that progress was being made. Though in relation to the recent qualifiers he could only say, ‘Frankly, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. We just happened to have lost on this particular occasion.’

Amaechi is probably rather optimistic about what sport could do to keep people fit, well and off the streets. This little spat tells us quite a lot about the priorities that drive establishment support for sport: weighing up the furtherance of national glory against promoting a healthy population. But they all see sport as serving some useful (for them) function and not just being for fun.

Paul Bennett

Sidelights on Lenin (1929)

Book Review from the April 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reminiscences of Lenin by Clara Zetkin. Modern Books, Ltd. 2s. and 1s.

This brief account of recollections of Lenin is written by the German Communist, Clara Zetkin, formerly an active member of the large Social Democratic Party. Quite a large part of the book is occupied with Lenin's criticism of the German Communist Party.

The relations of the workers' struggle towards art and culture is also dwelt upon by Lenin in his discussions with the author and other women. Lenin upon one occasion pointed out that millions in Russia "are crying out to learn the art of spelling, of writing their names, of counting; are crying for culture . . . "

Clara Zetkin said: "Don't complain so bitterly, Comrade Lenin. To a certain extent it really helped forward the revolution. It prevented the mind of the workers being stopped up and corrupted with bourgeois ideas and conceptions. Your propaganda and agitation is falling on virgin soil. It is easier to sow and to reap where you have not first of all to uproot a whole forest."

"Yes, that is true," Lenin replied, "but only within limits, or, more correctly, for a certain period of our struggle. Illiteracy was compatible with the seizure of power, with the necessity to destroy the old State apparatus. But do we destroy merely for destruction's sake? We destroy in order to build better. Illiteracy is incompatible with the task of construction."

These words of Lenin are an answer to many Bolsheviks who imagine our task of getting Socialism is hindered by education. Even Lenin's point, that it was easier to overthrow Czarism because the masses were illiterate, could only apply to countries like Russia. Modern countries depend upon an enlightened working class to even desire to abolish the established system.

Later in the book we are told how Lenin objected to the German Communist Women's Circle mainly occupying their time discussing sex and marriage. He pointed out that they should be discussing the Proletarian Revolution and the larger social question of which sex and marriage are only a part, and not even a fundamental part.

The book, while fragmentary in its treatment, is interesting. It pays a great homage to the unassuming and helpful character of Lenin.

Adolph Kohn

Dances, Jumble Sales, Table Tennis (1967)

From the June 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why do young workers join the Conservative Party?

Of those we interviewed, most admitted that it was the social life organised by the Young Conservatives which attracted them. Reasons given for joining varied from "I was at a loose end in the evenings" to "I fancied this girl in our local branch". This impression is backed up by a passage in a recent issue of their news magazine, Impact:

'But I'm not interested in these events,' came the comment from someone looking at a local programme for the Young Conservatives.

'What are you interested in then?' asked a Young Conservative.

'What most people of my age are interested in, going out, cars, fashions, pop music, we like to enjoy ourselves.' The speakers was now chairman of the teenage Tories group formed in a town to satisfy the demand for these lively interests involving his own age group.

All this should be borne in mind when discussing this movement. The vast majority of their members are almost completely apolitical. Dances, jumble sales, parties and table-tennis from the horizons of the average Young Conservative's mind. Not that we sneer at these pursuits, or at the idea of enjoying oneself. After all, many of our young members are also interested in fashion and respond to pop music. But the young workers in the Socialist Party of Great Britain joined because they saw through the rottenness of the capitalist system and recognised socialism as the only alternative for the working class. On the other hand, political conviction of any kind is about the last thing the Young Conservatives could claim to have.

One unpleasant feature which any contact with young Tories brings out is that, as with all the capitalist parties, there is a small number of careerists in the organisation. This is hardly surprising because the Conservative party is a powerful, national force and, when you take a look at some of its leaders, you realise that one does not need very much in the way of intelligence or personality to shine in it. Nonetheless, coming from a party where there are no such time-servers, it was a nasty business listening to a few of these greasy characters.

To the Socialist, the most striking feature about the Young Conservatives is the complete absence of even the faintest glimmerings of class-consciousness. Discussions with the, always revolved around "our industry", "our profits", "our balance of payments" and so on. None of them seemed to have asked themselves the basic questions of what stake they have in Britain's industry, or of what profit they are ever likely to realise as wage-earners. A group in one branch was asked whether they thought anyone was exploited in Britain today. Their general opinion was that the workers are—and it was also felt by them that this was only right and proper. It was uncanny listening to these young people, workers like the rest of us, identifying themselves so wholeheartedly with the capitalist class and its system.

A majority of Young Conservatives, like the population as a whole, think of themselves as "middle class". Exactly how they differentiated between one class and another was impossible to say. Most, however, were convinced that there was some identifiable distinction which separated them from the common mass of working men and women. The suggestion that anyone who sells his mental and physical energies for a wage or salary is a worker and hence has common interests with his fellow workers, which clash with those of the capitalist class—was, in most cases, greeted by blank amazement. A minority denied the existence of any classes in Britain today.

One reason for this lack of even an embryonic class-consciousness would seem to be that relatively few are trade unions. Of those who are not, most feel that the unions are too powerful and need to have their strength sapped, "in the public interest." The average young Tory also seems to be a rather blood-thirsty individual, for a large majority supported the American government's policy in Vietnam. War was gaily accepted as one of the facts of life, to be played in much the same spirit as their hockey and tennis matches.

Although the number of Young Conservatives seems to have declined since their peak in the early nineteen fifties, they are still about 100,000 strong—spread over 1,400 branches throughout the country. Bearing these sort of resources in mind, it is perhaps surprising that so much of their propaganda is of a very low calibre—even judged by the standards of capitalist parties in general. Their written material particularly is spiced with wet remarks—e.g. "Ernest Marples has been our greatest road builder since the Romans."

As much as any other movement, the Young Conservatives are evidence of the old socialist saying that the only workers who are opposed to Socialism are those who do not understand it. Objections were mainly on the grounds that it means nationalisation and state control. This is especially galling because the Conservative party—like all the capitalist parties—has supported nationalisation measures, whereas the Socialist Party is the only organisation which fights not just for an end to state domination but for the abolitions of the very system which produces class divisions and the consequent state machinery wielded by the ruling class.

To the Young Conservatives who read this, we Socialists have this to say. The problems which confront you are the same as those which harry us. You are worried about meagre wages and inadequate housing, about the threat of a terrifying nuclear war, in the same way as we are. Socialism offers both of us a way out. But as long as you bind yourself to the Conservative party capitalism, with all its misery and frustrations for working men and women, will grind on. The Conservative party's successes are the measures of your own failure, as a member of the working class, to get up off your knees.

John Crump 

Non-violent Revolution: A Contradiction in Terms? (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many assume that bringing capitalism to an end will require violence. But workers can paralyze the capitalist class without firing a shot.

Revolution is often equated with violence. William Morris addressed this misconception nicely in ‘How We Live, and How We Might Live’, where he explained that:

‘The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people's ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment’.

And 130 years later most still assume that revolution necessarily is accompanied by violence, and that a ‘nonviolent revolution’ is a contradiction in terms.

The Ted offensive

In an article published last year, the radical political cartoonist Ted Rall puts forth the basic argument so often used to defend violent revolution:

‘The privileged classes won’t relinquish their privileges, power or wealth voluntarily. They will use their control over the police and the military . . . in order to crush any meaningful opposition. They are violent. Their system is violence. Defeating them requires greater violence. Nothing less results in revolution’ (‘Not a Revolution, Just an Old-fashioned Coup’).

Rall insists that nonviolence is ineffective for a revolutionary movement and historically unprecedented, as he notes in his criticism of the Occupy movement in the same article:

 ‘At the height of the Occupy movement during the fall of 2011, many knee-jerk pacifists, besotted with the post-1960s religion of militant nonviolence (in spite of its repeatedly proven ineffectiveness), agreed that radical transformation — revolution — was necessary in the United States. Yet these liberals also argued that (even though there was no historical precedent) the triumph of the mass of ordinary American workers over the corrupt bankers and their pet politicians could result from purely nonviolent protest’.

Rall actually makes a number of good points in his article, arguing against ‘Western analysts, liberals and even leftists’ who have ‘cheapened the word “revolution”, attaching it to developments that . . . are nothing of the kind’; whereas a true revolution is ‘a vast set of radical transformations in the way that ordinary people live’. ‘You can’t make a revolution without revolutionizing society’, he writes, ‘which requires the complete violent overthrow of the ruling class’.

But is it necessary for him to insist so strongly on the violent nature of this transformation? Is it true that violence is an essential aspect of revolution? Is the use of nonviolent tactics among revolutionaries ineffective and historically unprecedented?

The power of nonviolence?

Non-violent tactics would seem particularly ill-suited for any movement facing an authoritarian regime armed to the teeth. Here, at least, the arguments in favour of violent revolution would seem persuasive. But an article published in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, titled ‘Drop Your Weapons: When and Why Civil Resistance Works’, argues that even in such situations collective nonviolent resistance can be very effective.

The authors of the article, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan,are hardly revolutionaries: Chenoweth is an academic and Stephan a ‘strategic planner’ for the State Department. And the magazine is pure ‘establishment’; published by the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization that seeks to ‘promote understanding of foreign policy and America’s role in the world’.

Not surprisingly, then, many of the examples of violent and nonviolent movements that the authors examine concern ‘regimes’ that the US government has sought to topple. Far from objecting to this meddling foreign policy, Chenoweth and Stephan simply think that supporting nonviolent movements can be more effective in many cases than backing armed conflict.

In any case, their article begins with some statistics about how ‘campaigns of nonviolent resistance’ have been much more successful against authoritarian regimes than violent movements. They examined ‘323 campaigns’ in the period from 1919 to 2006 – covering ‘all known nonviolent and violent campaigns (each featuring at least 1,000 observed participants) for self-determination, the removal of an incumbent leader, or the expulsion of a foreign occupation’.

The authors found that the ‘campaigns of nonviolent resistance against authoritarian regimes were twice as likely to succeed as violent movements’; and that ‘almost half’ of the nonviolent campaigns examined succeeded in achieving their goals, compared to just 20 percent of the violent ones.

These statistics, as you can see, are vague and the category ‘campaign’ includes every sort of social movement, whether its participants saw themselves as revolutionaries or reformists. But the interesting point to note is that authoritarian regimes often found it difficult to stamp out movements of mass nonviolent resistance despite the armed power of the state.

‘Contrary to conventional wisdom, no social, economic, or political structures have systematically prevented nonviolent campaigns from emerging or succeeding’, the authors argue, adding that, ‘movements that opt for violence often unleash terrible destruction and bloodshed . . . usually without realizing the goals they set out to achieve’.

Disarming a police state

The effectiveness of nonviolence, in the view of the authors, has nothing to do with moral suasion:

‘Civil resistance does not succeed because it melts the hearts of dictators and secret police.  It succeeds because it is more likely than armed struggle to attract a large and more diverse base of participants and impose unsustainable costs on a regime’.

Chenoweth and Stephan list a number of reasons why nonviolent tactics can be so effective.

First of all, nonviolence is a tactic that allows a movement to mobilize a greater number of participants and supporters. In other words, there are fewer ‘barriers to participation’ than in an armed conflict, so a wider stratum of society is more likely to take part. And, needless to say, the larger the movement, the more difficult it is for a government to violently suppress it.

Another factor cited by the authors in favour of nonviolent movements is that they can employ a wider variety of tactics than is possible in an armed movement; not only demonstrations and strikes but other forms of noncooperation that make it clear that the legitimacy of the rulers has dissolved.

The authors point to the example of the Shah of Iran, who ‘had little difficulty neutralizing the Islamist and Marxist-inspired [sic!] guerilla groups’ but when ‘large numbers of oil workers, bazaar merchants, and students engaged in acts of collective nonviolent resistance . . .the regime’s repressive apparatus became overstretched’ and soon thereafter the Shah fled the country.

In other words, what was necessary to defeat a police state is not ‘greater violence’, as Rall seems to think, but the mass power of workers to effectively disarm that apparatus of violence: overwhelming it with numbers, dissolving its legitimacy, and winning over fellow workers ordered to pull the trigger.

Even the most repressive regime relies upon a degree of cooperation and consent from the population. When that legitimacy among the citizenry has dissolved, the state’s use of violence becomes increasingly difficult or even counterproductive. There are numerous examples in recent history alone of seemingly powerful regimes that have collapsed suddenly in the face of mass protest.

This essential point was made by Erica Chenoweth in the 21 August interview with the two authors on National Public Radio: ‘When very large and diverse sectors of society withdraw their cooperation from the opponent government, it's extremely difficult for that government to maintain its hold on control. And the reason is because every power holder is 100 percent reliant on the cooperation, obedience and help of people that reside in its pillars of support - the security forces, the state media, religious authorities, educational elites, business and economic elites and civilian bureaucrats’.

Clearly, Chenoweth is imagining a conflict within the ruling class, where the outcome depends on which side the bulk of the elites decide to back. But a similar dynamic would be at play in a socialist revolution as well. That is, when the majority of the working class withdraws its cooperation from the capitalist class, it would be extremely difficult for that class to maintain its hold on power and its pillars of support will begin to crumble.

The problem for the capitalist class in such a situation would hardly be a lack of military firepower; they would always outgun the workers. But unleashing that force against a rebellious working class could backfire, adding fuel to the fire; or the police and soldiers (workers themselves) might refuse to carry out the orders or turn their guns against the rulers.

Tactics are secondary

As advocates of nonviolence, Chenoweth and Stephan may be nothing more than useful idiots in the eyes of the military-industrial complex that actually runs US foreign policy out of the Pentagon, but they do make some good points about how nonviolent tactics can work against authoritarian regimes as a sort of ‘asymmetric’ conflict.

But, to return to the question of revolution, the debate over violence versus nonviolence, however interesting, is not the primary issue for socialists. We are convinced that the success of a revolution depends on a majority of the working class coming to have an understanding of and desire for socialism. This is the key issue; much more important than the specific tactics socialists employ to surmount this or that obstacle along the way.

Ted Rall seems to suggest that the Occupy movement fell apart as a result of sticking religiously to ineffective nonviolent tactics. But the central problem of that movement had less to do with its nonviolent tactics (which were actually remarkably effective), than its lack of a clear vision of what could replace the unequal capitalist society against which they were protesting. It is hard to see how the use of violent tactics would have compensated for that lack of strategy.

Or, perhaps Rall was trying to say that the Occupy movement failed because it did not set itself the goal of sweeping aside the ruling class (which he says requires violence). But even if that is his argument, it only reveals that Rall is focused exclusively on the ‘negative’ or destructive side of revolution, rather than the new society that replaces the old. In other words, like the Occupy movement he criticizes, Rall doesn’t really have a basic goal or strategy for what is to replace capitalism. It is that absence of a goal that accounts for why movements like Occupy fall apart, not their preference for nonviolence.

Our own goal is clearly the creation of a new classless, borderless, moneyless society of common ownership; a society we call ‘socialism’. And our strategy for achieving this goal is for more and more of our fellow workers to understand and consciously aim for this new form of society, until the point of critical mass is reached where replacing capitalism with socialism is a real, concrete task for the working class. At that point, the question becomes how best to take that final step. And we believe that, once socialism has majority backing, a nonviolent, democratic transformation is possible and preferable.

Violence is an effective means for a minority to hold on to power, or for another minority group to topple them and become the new rulers. But the workers make up the vast majority of society– if not ‘the 99%’, pretty close to it. When the majority of workers are moving steadfastly toward socialism, the violence of the minority ruling class would be unable to stem the tide, at least not for long.

Michael Schauerte

The Lust of War. (1914)

From the October 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wars and rumours of wars are round about,
And hell let loose, and death and dumb despair;
The groans of dying men, the victor's shout,
Mingle, befouling what was once so fair.
I feel again the old contempt arise
For men and all men's ways of greed and waste;
World-weariness lies heavy on my eyes;
The joy of life is bitter to the taste.
Is it not tragic, pitiful as well,
That men should dabble in their comrades' gore
To slake their masters' blood and money-lust;
Should suffer all the pains and pangs of hell,
Binding their fetters tighter than before,
Grinding their faces in the blood and dust.

F. J. Webb.

False Real Life (2002)

Book Review from the July 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Martial arts gyms haven't seen such high memberships since the Bruce Lee-inspired Kung Fu craze of the 1970s. Boxercise and Tae-bo are increasingly catering for people who want to get fit but are bored of treadmills. Real Fight Clubs and White Collar Boxing are becoming hugely popular. Thai kickboxing and Ultimate Fighting (a no-holds-barred fighting tournament combining kickboxing and submission wrestling) now have their own slots on Sky TV. David Bowie, we hear, boxes three times a week.

A popular movie starring Brad Pitt has been a part of this trend. Here we review the book that inspired the film: Chuck Palahniuk's first novel, Fight Club (Vintage, £6.99).

I don't think Fight Club is that good a novel. I enjoyed it, but I don't think it really stood up to a re-reading, nor did it strike me as the work of art that, say, Crime and Punishment is. The historian Eric Hobsbawm says that it was only in the 1830s that literature and the arts began to be overtly haunted by the rise of the capitalist society, which he described, echoing Marx, as “that world in which all social bonds crumbled except the implacable gold and paper ones of the cash nexus”. You could argue that Fight Club is just the most recent, and one of the least impressive, additions to the trend in literature that began then. Another commodity in the cultural supermarket. That said, the reason I liked Fight Club so much in spite of its failings was because it succeeds precisely where other political novels fail. To quote the situationist Raoul Vaneigem: “Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984 and Touraine's Cinqieme Coup de Trompette push back into the future a shudder of horror which one straight look at the present would produce … Compared with my present imprisonment, the future holds no interest for me.”

And that's what Fight Club is. A straight look at the present and the possibilities inherent in it. At the heart of the book is the notion that life under capitalism is so unbearable, so alienating, that we need to put cigarettes out on our arms and get into fights just to make sure that we are, in fact, still alive. Compared with the mind-numbing horrors of the office and factory, where we stare at the clock and wish our lives away a minute at a time, almost any “really lived” experience is better than nothing. Outside of the pages of Fight Club, we can readily see this in everything from bunjee jumping to football hooliganism to Jackass TV.

The nameless protagonist of the book is an ordinary white-collar worker who goes along to his doctor because he can't sleep. His doctor says that that's nothing. If he wants to see pain, he should see the cancer patients getting by. And so he does. He goes along to all the different support groups he can find, and pretends to be suffering from the same condition as everyone else. Brain parasites, testicular cancer, etc. And he finds that he can't get by without the experiences he has there. Sharing thoughts and feelings, then crying into the cleavage of some fat bloke who's dying of testicular cancer, is a “really lived” experience, and it makes our hero feel alive for a change. He says:

“This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their chequebook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window. You had their full attention. People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. And when they spoke they weren't telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something and afterward you were both different than before.”

He surrounds himself with death and pain in order to feel alive. Going along to support groups becomes, as he says, “the only real thing in his life”.

Before the fight clubs, the protagonist is the perfect worker and consumer. He goes to work in an office, he keeps his head down, he has a five-year career plan, and he is obsessed with getting all the right things for his perfect little flat, the perfect sofa, the perfect shelving unit, a set of nesting tables. “One day you own all these things,” he says. “The next they own you.” Then, when his whole flat gets blown up one day by a gas explosion, and all those things are destroyed, he turns to his newly found friend and alter ego, Tyler. After a night's drinking, Tyler takes him out into a car park and says: “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

Shortly afterwards, Tyler starts Fight Club. The protagonist finds that he has never felt so alive, not even during his support groups. From then on, consumerism is no consolation compared to the experience, the “real life” thrill, of fighting another man in a pub basement. Eventually, what the Fight Clubs achieved for the individual, Tyler aims to achieve for society as a whole through his 'Project Mayhem'. Project Mayhem, as it says on the blurb on the back of the book, is a sort of “revenge on a world where support groups have the corner on human warmth”. It is also about “hitting rock bottom”—individually in the Fight Club, and collectively as part of Project Mayhem—where there is no longer anything to lose. Only once you've hit rock bottom, says Tyler, can you be reborn. Like Jesus's crucifixion.

The main character says:

“It used to be enough that when I came home angry and knowing that my life wasn't toeing my five-year plan, I could clean my condominium or detail my car. Someday I'd be dead without a scar and there would be a really nice condo and car. Really, really nice, until the dust settled or the next owner. Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teeth in my jaw. Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer … Maybe self-destruction is the answer.”

Is self-destruction the answer? David Lodge, in his novel Nice Work, has one of his characters say this: “All the Victorian novelist could offer as a solution to the problems of industrial capitalism were: a legacy, a marriage, emigration, or death.” To my mind, no more modern novelist, including Palahniuk, has come up with any other solution. And that's no surprise, because it's very unlikely that there are any other solutions for the individual worker. Under Lodge's category of death, for example, we can put self-destruction, and the many forms this can take, from the extremes of a bohemian or anarchistic lifestyle, say, through to the slow suicide of alcoholism, to the young murderer who Oscar Wilde praised because it was better to be someone rather than do something.

Project Mayhem's aim is the destruction of society. Its aim is to make society hit rock bottom so that it can be reborn. We don't learn much about the society that is expected to blossom from this destruction, but the few visions we do get seem primitivist in nature.

But what is it that the fighters are experiencing that is so painfully missing from their everyday lives? Of course, what a “really lived” experience is can only have meaning in relation to its opposite—which is the role of the worker in capitalist society. The worker becomes a cog in a machine, alienated both from themselves and their human nature, from their own productive activity, and from their fellow humans. This alienation makes them a slave in the factory or office, passive in their role as consumer, apathetic in the face of their exploitation and slave status, and, as Marx pointed out, quite ignorant and idiotic generally.

What is being compared is the poverty of everyday life under capitalism and the tendencies to be found in that same everyday life which we believe can only flower into a full and authentic human existence in a socialist society.

Raoul Vaneigem's book The Revolution of Everyday Life reads like a critique of Fight Club, and examines in detail how and why genuine attempts at communication and liberation can descend into nihilistic destruction, as it does in Fight Club. Indeed, the influence of Situationism and its analysis and tactics is evident throughout the novel, none more so than in the following extract, where the narrator explains to us the appeal of fight club. In fight club, the people are involved and there because they want to be there, not because they have been thrown together by a commuter train. They are participants in something they are creating themselves. There is an honesty about no-holds-barred combat that you could never get huddled in an office, where we smile at people who we'd much rather spit in the eye. Here's how it is explained in the novel:

“Fight club is not football on television. You aren't watching a bunch of men you don't know halfway round the world beating on each other live by satellite with a two-minute delay, commercials pitching beer every ten minutes, and a pause now for station identification. After you've been to fight club, watching football on television is like watching pornography when you could be having great sex.“Fight club gets to be your reason for going to the gym and keeping your hair cut short and cutting your nails. The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says….“Your aren't alive anywhere like you're alive at fight club.”

What about Project Mayhem? I won't detail everything that Project Mayhem does, suffice to say that it culminates in a massive explosion that will blow up a huge skyscraper, and takes in smaller acts along the way, such as putting “Drunk drivers against mothers” stickers on cars. (As an aside, Palahniuk is actually a member of a sort of neo-Situationist group, whose pranks have included protesting outside pornography shops, complaining that their material is too expensive to be enjoyed by children.) What must be said however is that, whatever Palahniuk may have had in mind artistically when creating Project Mayhem, it must be stated clearly that the things he describes can in no way form the basis of a genuine revolutionary, working class organisation.

Project Mayhem, although arguably inspired by Situationism and some more primitivist strands of anarchism, is decidedly fascist in organisation and terrorist in tactics. The members of Project Mayhem are expected to obey Tyler's instructions without question, and do not even know what the aims of any specific action are. Tyler argues that Project Mayhem is like a gun: all it does is focus an explosion in one direction. In a way, that's what we want to do too. Revolutionary organisations aim to focus the explosive power of the working class against the capitalist system as a whole. The point, however, is that this cannot be achieved by a self-appointed elite. The explosion must be self-organised, and self-focusing. To quote Vaneigem again, a highly hierarchical army may win a war, but not a revolution. An undisciplined mob can win neither.

So our answer is different. The answer is not Project Mayhem. The collective solution to our collective problem is not terrorism—it is the escalation of the class war, and the end of the class war, and all classes, with the establishment of socialism. The desire to live, as Vaneigem says, is a political decision.

Stuart Watkins

Obituary: A. Young (1971)

Obituary from the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have learned of the death recently of Albert Young, of Walthamstow, at the age of 64. Comrade Young represented a remarkable association with the socialist movement. His grandfather was an active member of the Social-Democratic Federation. His father, Percy, and his uncle, Byron Young, both joined the Socialist Party of Great Britain about 1906. Byron was a well-known speaker for the Party for several years before he emigrated to Australia in the nineteen-twenties, and Percy remained a member since 1945, first in the old Leyton Branch and then in Hackney.

A lively, forceful person, Albert Young kept a stall in a London market (the family were craftsmen brushmakers). He was always anxious to expound and discuss socialism, and there must be many people who remember chance meetings with him in art galleries or on trains, and the comments on society thrown out as he sold things from his stall. His special interest outside the Party was in art; he was a talented amateur painter, and went out in the country whenever possible to find subjects for landscapes. In 1968 he had a serious operation, and was able to go out very little thereafter.

Our condolences go to his family. Their socialist tradition is carried on by Albert's son, who is a member of the Party—the fourth generation.

That Word "Unity" (1944)

From the January 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

That word "unity" has a charm of its own. Ethically it symbolises an idealist condition and appeals to the gregariousness of human beings. Having this fine appeal, it is continuously used by all sorts of unscrupulous people and bodies as a cloak. We have appeals by vested clerical interests for "Christian" unity, capitalists and their Labour and Communist allies clamour for "National" unity, federationists seek "European" unity; we have got the term United Nations, and prominent statesman are clamouring for "world" unity. The charm of the "idea" of unity has produced phrases which have become of daily use, such as "there's safety in numbers," "we sink or swim together," and many other common expressions of speech. All this indicates the "social" (not Socialist) aspirations of human beings, and challenges the Victorian conception of "it's every man for himself." Capitalism being a class-divided society, Socialists can only concern themselves with what matters to the Working Class. That automatically rules out any plea for "national" unity. Realising the reactionary role of religion, Socialists cannot be concerned about "Christian" unity. Socialists seek to establish a new system of society World Wide, and this rules out talk of "European" unity, and understanding the basis of the profit-making system, with its competing combines, we cannot see the possibility of "world" unity. Is then ours a policy of despair? No! nor is it a policy of "snare." The question of "unity" has come to the front by the recent application  for affiliation to the Labour Party by the Communist Party. As Socialists we are always interested in anything applying to the working-class and parties and groups thrown up by them. This does not pledge us in their support. A group or body or organisation may be entirely working-class but that does not make it Socialist; it often is reactionary. The Socialist's question about Unity is, Will it help abolish the wages system and establish Socialism? If it will not, then it is futile except for political crooks to use as a tool.

In my days of youthful exuberance I worked for "unity." Some thirty-two years ago the Social Democratic Party decided the time was ripe for "Socialist" unity, and along with the Clarion movement (cyclists, not Socialists), a few of the I.L.P. and odd bits here and there, we established the British Socialist Party. There occurred a brief hectic period, and during the middle of the war of 1914 this "united" party split. From thence until the end of war a United Socialist Committee was formed representative of B.S.P., S.L.P., I.L.P. for "anti-war" purposes. Twelve months after the war, arising out of the Russian revolt, the leading members of the S.L.P. formed the Communist Unity Group, and in 1920 this coterie, plus the B.S.P. and odd groups round and about, formed one of three parties calling themselves Communists. In a short while a further conference was held in Leeds to unite the uniters, and the result was the brew—C.P.G.B. Ere a few years had passed these united Communist parties began to split on the continent, and in Russia itself the "Trotskyist" section was eliminated. Soon the British Communist Party began to clamour for unity. They drafted a programme (without consulting anybody else), then circularised other bodies asking them to unite—on a programme set out by the Communist Party itself. In the industrial field they played similar games. They brought about the split in the Miners' Union and the Garment Workers' Union, and established break-away unions which they cynically named United Clothing Workers' Union and United Mineworkers of Scotland. Later came the extended forms of Unity, in Popular Fronts and People's Conventions, and a whole series of groups and societies, ostensibly legitimate bodies, but in reality tentacles of the Communist Party.

Whilst addressing an outdoor meeting prior to the war the question put was, "Why don't you Socialists unite?" That is a question which must be answered. Let us try to answer. Before Socialists can unite we must be sure they are Socialists. If they are Socialists they will have a clear conception of fundamental principles. The tragic history of the workers' parties and groups (excepting S.P.G.B.) has been one of futile reformism. Every effort to achieve unity was foredoomed to failure. Time, energy and money has been continuously wasted in fruitless groupings and re-groupings. The thousand and one stunts, reform measures or immediate demands have not had the slightest unifying effect, but has merely bred bitter chagrin and disillusionment. This does not mean that Socialists do not want unity, They do, but it must not be chimerical or ephemeral, but must be solid and lasting. Such unity can only come about on the basis of correctness in theory, which will ensure correctness in practice. In no other way is Unity possible. The growth of Socialist knowledge is a guarantee of a united working class, therefore spread Socialist knowledge.

Lew.

Cooking the Books: Green Economic Policies (2014)

The Cooking the Books Column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Green Party held its annual conference at the beginning of September. According to the BBC, ‘the Green Party have sought to position themselves to the left of Labour and the Lib Dems by adopting policies such as the renationalisation of the railways, and curbing private NHS work’ (BBC online, 5 September).

Being more radical than Labour and the Liberals is easy enough and it is true that in her speech as their leader Natalie Bennett did seem as if she might have been speaking at a Labour Party Conference in the days of yore.

The Green Party, she told the BBC, is ‘the party of real change, the party with plans and policies for how to transform our economy so that it works for the common good … What we really have to do is rebalance our economy. At the moment, wealthy individuals and particularly big multinational companies aren't paying their taxes and aren't paying adequate wages. Britain is a low-wage economy. We have to allow people to get a decent return on their labour.’

This is to assume that the economy - which is capitalist - is something that a government can manipulate or mould at will, but the evidence of all past governments that have tried to do this is the opposite. It can’t be done. Rather than governments being able to change the way capitalism works it’s been the other way round. Governments have to dance to capitalism’s tune and that means putting profits first.

The Green Party may not like capitalism in its present form and want to ‘rebalance’ it, but they still see no alternative to capitalism as a system of production for profit based on wage-labour and are resigned to working within it. It is true that the sort of capitalism they envisage would not be dominated by tax-dodging multinationals but one in which the profit-seeking enterprises would be small and eco-friendly. But there is no more chance of an eco-friendly capitalism than there is of going back to small-scale capitalism.

Transforming the capitalist economy so that ‘it works for the common good’ is precisely what cannot be done. Capitalism is a class-divided society driven by the imperative for those who own and control the means of wealth production to make a profit. It can only function as a profit system in the interest of those who live off profits.

All governments have to take this constraint into account and frame their policies so as to give priority to profits and profit-making. This means that they have to back off from taxing the rich too much – to pay, for instance, for ecological measures or higher wages and benefits – in case they reduce the incentive to pursue profits and so provoke an economic crisis.

Derek Wall, once a Green Party spokesperson (in the days before they had a Leader) once put this rather well:

‘A Green government will be controlled by the economy rather than being in control. On coming to office through coalition or more absolute electoral success, it would be met by an instant collapse of sterling as 'hot money' and entrepreneurial capital went elsewhere. The exchange rate would fall and industrialists would move their factories to countries with more relaxed environmental controls and workplace regulation. Sources of finance would dry up as unemployment rocketed, slashing the revenue from taxation and pushing up the social security bills. The money for ecological reconstruction – the building of railways, the closing of motorways and construction of a proper sewage system – would run out’ (Getting There, 1990, p. 78).

The answer is not to steal Labour’s abandoned clothes but to get rid of capitalism and its production for profits and working for wages.

Workers Socialist Party vs. Independent Communist Labour League

From the January 1938 issue of The Socialist

On Sunday, October 3rd, a debate was held with the Independent Communist Labor League, (formerly, the Communist Party Opposition or Lovestone Group). The debate took place at the headquarters of our Local Boston, 12 Hayward Place, Boston. The I.C.L.L. was represented by a Mr. Mautner, while the W.S.P. spokesman was Comrade I. Rab. The subject debated was "Whose Principles Are Correct: Workers Socialist Party or Independent Communist Labor League?"

Mr. Mautner, in his main talk laid down the major  tenets of his organization. In doing so, he said that the I.C.L.L. was concerned with the tactics and strategy for setting the masses in motion. He quoted Frederick Engels to show that "a great national movement, no matter what its form, is the real starting point of working class development," pointing to the 400,000 members of the Auto Workers Union as an example of such a movement, adding, "Some were formerly Ku Kluxers and members of the Black Legion, now they are good workers for the cause of labor." This union activity, he continued, led to a formation of a Labor Party, "something totally new." He further went on to say, "We expect to be in opposition to the Labor Party in the future, but now the problem is to break the workers from their old ideology."

Mr. Mautner spoke of reforms, recognizing that such measures help bolster up the capitalist system, but claiming, however, that fighting for reforms has value in that it teaches the working class the need for political action.

In dealing with Russia, Mr. Mautner described the situation there as a "Proletarian State" where the Russians are engaged in "Socialist construction." However, current history forces him to note "bureaucratic distortions existing there." Despite this, he claimed the Soviet state is organized exclusively for the workers, pointing out, however, that the new socialist economy in Russia had not yet developed a new terminology, therefore, "wages" really means "certificates." "The workers receive according to their deeds."

Mr. Mautner concluded by maintaining that a Labor Party program in America would lead to a Marxist program.

Comrade Rab, in his main talk analyzed the differences in principles between the two organizations. He listed the four main differences as follows: (1) The value of parliamentary activity; (2) The question of reforms; (3) The question of trade unionism; (4) The analysis of Soviet Russia.

In dealing with the first, Comrade Rab stated briefly the Party's position on parliamentary action, concluding this point by showing that the I.C.L.L. maintained that the revolutionary act comes about with the smashing of the existing state; that it must be an armed uprising led by a matured vanguard, a position contrary and opposed to that of the W.S.P. which defined the revolutionary act as the seizure of political power by a class conscious majority of the proletariat.

Discussing reforms, Comrade Rab maintained that the only way the workers can improve their lot is by the establishment of Socialism. He showed that the I.C.L.L., on the other hand, supports a "struggle for daily aims based on the existing stage of understanding."

On the trade union question, he brought out that although economic organization of the workers is very necessary in order that they sell their labour-power to the best advantage, unions have many limitations and weaknesses. Unions must depend upon numbers rather than on understanding. They cannot, in the long run, alter the downward trend of working class conditions. They are concerned primarily with wages and  hours problems rather than with overthrowing capitalism.

In dealing with the Russian question, Comrade Rab denied the existence of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Soviet Russia as accepted by the I.C.L.L. He pointed out, among other things, that the U.S.S.R. is going through a period of capitalist development and showed that the social relations of a capitalist economy exist there.

Mr. Mautner opened his rebuttal by asking Comrade Rab where there was surplus-value in Russia. Next, he denounced the use of the ballot saying, "When a Socialist Party advocates the ballot it breaks away from the principles of Socialism." "Marx stood for the smashing of the state." He insisted "what the workers need is a revolution based on soviets."

Comrade Rab in his rebuttal answered the questions raised by Mr. Mautner. Dealing with the question of "surplus-value in Russia," he defined surplus-value as the wealth that is extracted from the workers through the wages system. In Russia they have all the relationships of capital and wage labor and therefore, surplus-value. The existence of inheritance and income taxes, a banking system, laws pertaining to investments and interest, together with workers living on the barest of subsistence alongside of another group living in luxury—all go to describe surplus-value production or capitalism in Russia.

On the question of political action, Comrade Rab showed that the Socialist working class does not smash the state, pointing out also that marx in no place advocated the smashing of the state, pointing out also that Marx in no place advocated the smashing of the state, but on the contrary advocated its capture so that the workers could, "lop off its repressive features and transform it into an agent of emancipation."

Dealing with the Labor Party he showed its many weaknesses, how it was used for class collaboration, reforming and administering capitalism, and therefore against Socialist principles.

In conclusion, he called for a united front for Socialism.

According to the arrangements for the debate, the question period took place between the main talks and the rebuttals. Most of the questions dealt with the experiences of the British Labor Party.