Backwaters of History - 8 (1954)

From the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Münzer and the Thuringian Revolt

Eight thousand men were on a hill near Frankenhausen listening to a speech from their leader. They had fortified themselves behind a barricade of farm waggons and carts and, during the period of a truce arranged with their foes, they were debating the terms of surrender offered them.

At the foot of this hill, the Schlachberg, was encamped a well-armed and disciplined army, also of eight thousand men, led by the Duke of Saxony, the Duke of Brunswick and the Landgraf of Hesse. On the 15th of May, 1525, the dukes had granted the truce to the army of ill-armed peasants and workers on the hill-top, to give them time to consider the terms offered, unconditional submission and the surrender of the peasants' leaders, particularly Thomas Münzer.

Some of the insurgents on the hill were for accepting the terms in the face of the formidable opposition lined up against them. Münzer had the two foremost advocates of surrender beheaded and then proceeded to harangue his following. He denounced the enemy with more than his accustomed vehemence, he made rousing allusions to Biblical heroes, how small forces of chosen people had conquered hosts and he concluded by pointing to a rainbow that appeared, just at the moment, as an omen of success.

Before the period of the truce had expired, and whilst the peasant army was still unprepared, the enemy opened cannon fire on their camp and charged through the barricade, mowing down the defenceless peasants left and right, pursuing those who escaped into the town of Frankenhausen where the massacre continued. Münzer was discovered in hiding and, after a period of imprisonment and a letter of "confession" to his followers, he was beheaded. So ended the most significant battle of the German Peasants' War.

The Middle Ages closed on a scene of economic transformation. Commercial activity was shaking the foundations of the feudal system. The feudal peasant and the feudal lord had obligations to one another and the peasant had a measure of security together with a limitation to the degree of exploitation to which he was subject. This was changing to a system of merciless exploitation where taxes, tithes, etc., were continually increased and new methods ever being devised to extract more surplus wealth from the peasantry, which the feudal lord could change into florins, guilders or ducats. Common land was seized and tenant farms confiscated thus giving rise to a class of proletarian cotters.

This increase in exploitation and oppression gave rise to the great peasant revolts throughout Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. The peasants, armed with spears and axes, rose against their tormentors in France in the 1350's, in England in the 1380's, in Germany throughout the fifteen century culminating in the Peasants' War of 1525, and later in Sweden and Denmark.

The economic changes gave rise to a confused mass of conflicting interests. The nobility, the peasantry, the merchants, the artisans, the proletarians, the wealthy priesthood and the poor wandering priests, all had interests peculiar to their own grouping. But through these various oppositions there was a dividing line that gave the majority of the people a mutually common enemy—the Catholic Church. The wealthy, grasping Catholic Church, centralised at Rome, was regarded by all strata of society as the exploiter par excellence, sucking wealth from all the sections of the community and pipe-lining it over the Alps to the Papal headquarters.

On the 31st of October, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church at Wittenburg and gave impetus to a movement which took him and others along with it. Luther started by fighting only against the excesses of the Catholic Church but was carried along by the current to urge violence and the use of fire and iron for the extermination of the cancer that he said was destroying the world.

The struggle that developed was between the Catholic conservatives on the one hand and an alliance of middle-class reformers and revolutionary peasants and proletarians on the other. The peasants at the outset aimed at a re-establishment of their feudal liberties. The famous twelve points around which most of the German peasant revolts centred are evidence of the outlook. Condensed they were:

1. Religious toleration.
2. Abolition of tithes.
3. Interest to be limited to 5 per cent.
4. All water to be free.
5. All woods and forests to be free.
6. All game to be free.
7. Abolition of villeinage.
8. No obedience to a lord, only to the emperor.
9. Re-establishment of old-time justice.
10. The right to elect persons in authority.
11. Abolition of death dues.
12. Re-establishment of the common lands that had been appropriated.

As the revolt grew, large sections of the peasants accepted and supported the communistic reachings of men like Thomas Münzer and Nicolas Storch. The middle-class allies drew away from these communist groupings and Luther turned on them ferociously, urging the nobles and merchants to strangle the peasants as they would mad dogs.

Münzer's teaching, like all teaching of the time, was cloaked by religion. Freedom and Equality must reign on earth. The princes and the nobles denied freedom and equality to the poor, so they must be overthrown and the "common man" must be raised in their place. This was the kingdom of God and all who would not become citizens must be killed or banished. The great barrier to a real awakening of the inward light was the riches of the world. So, in the kingdom of God, there must be no private wealth. All things must be held in common. That was the essence of the teaching that caused thousands of peasants to flock around Münzer.

After a brief and adventurous career (he was only 28 years of age when he was executed) Münzer made his headquarters in Muhlhausen, where he joined forces with Heinrich Pfeiffer, an ex-monk who was the preacher and leader of the local merchant guildsmen and artisans. Pfeiffer and Münzer with their joint forces overthrew the patrician council that governed Muhlhausen and established themselves as benevolent dictators of the town and surrounding districts. Münzer proceeded to put his communist teachings into practice. He took over the Johanniterhof, the monastery of the monks of St. John, and established an equalitarian organisation holding its wealth in common. Thousands of peasants from the surrounding countryside flocked to the town where Münzer preached to them from the Marienkirche, sending out missionaries to the districts around. The communist agitation spread to Erfurt, Coburg and into Hesse and Brunswick.

During the two months of Münzer's regime in Muhlhausen, Pfeiffer with a large section of the twon population, concerned themselves not with communist ideas but with their own local revolt and establishing their own power in the local government. When word was received that the armies of the Dukes were marching against the town and Münzer took his force out to meet them, Pfeiffer remained inactive inside the walls of the town.

A body of Münzer's followers were encamped on the hill outside Frankenhausen and he marched his poorly armed and untrained force to support them. It was here that he met the military defeat that ended his career and his life. The Dukes then turned on Muhlhausen where most of Pfeiffer's supporters deserted him in terror and surrendered the town. Pfeiffer was pursued, captured and, with Münzer, tortured and beheaded.

Münzer had visions of a universal social revolution and he was one of the few leaders of the Peasant War who tried to bring unity into the German peasants' movement by establishing communications between centres, His teachings expressed the vague desires of a vital section of the society of his day. Through him they were given a certain definiteness and in every great social convulsion since his days those ideas arise until they merge into the ideas of the working class of to-day.

History abounds with examples of revolutionary classes seeking and using the support of workers and peasants to gain their ends then turning ferociously on them when they start to voice aspirations of their own. Martin Luther offers an outstanding example. His words when the peasant revolts were being suppressed show his spite and viciousness.

" . . . the murderous and plundering hordes of the peasants. They should be knocked to pieces, strangled and stabbed, secretly and openly, by everybody who can do it, just as one must kill a mad dog. Therefore, dear gentlemen, hearken here, save there, stab, knock, strangle them at will, and if thou diest thou art blessed; no better death canst thou ever attain."

(The Peasant War in Germany, by F. Engels.)

Books to Read:

The Peasant War in Germany by Frederick Engels.

The Peasants' War in Germany 1525-26 by E. Belfort Bax.

Essay, "The Reformation" in "Crises in European History" by Gustav Bang.

W. Waters

1492 and all that (1991)

Book Review from the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Columbus: His Enterprise: Exploding the Myth. By Hans Koning. Latin American Bureau, 1991.

The romance of Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492, and the inevitable celebrations to mark the anniversary in 1992, are the subjects of this study which attempts to reassess Columbus and put the record straight on his character and place in history. It also confronts the issue of "civilisation" versus "savagery" and the ideology which sees the West as culturally superior and as the ideal to which all people should aspire.

For Koning 1492, the year in which Columbus supposedly "discovered" a new world already widely inhabited, "opened an era of genocide, cruelty, and slavery". The motivation for exploration lay not so much in discovery but in the extension and consolidation of the trading rights of rival European powers and in the desire to finance expansionism and acquire spheres of economic influence and political domination.

That the world was round was commonly acknowledged. Columbus's belief that Asia could be reached by a westerly route was based upon a lamentable and stubborn ignorance as to the size of the world. In his public statements Columbus claimed to be motivated by a desire to convert the "heathen", although this seems to have quickly given way to a policy of genocide or enslavement. In fact, the peaceful, generous and friendly innocence displayed by the original inhabitants of the "new" world, and recorded by contemporary observers, was to place them in a perilous position. Decisions as to their fate were being made elsewhere. The desire for gold at whatever cost, and the necessity of economic domination, led to a global arbitration by Pope Alexander VI, who divided the new world between Spain and Portugal, although somewhat to the chagrin of France and Holland.

Unaware of this decision, the inhabitants of the so-called new world were not long in feeling the consequences. The later activites of Pizarro and Cortes have been widely documented yet the systematic brutality of the original conquerors should not be underestimated. The rapid annihilation of the Arawaks, for instance, would necessitate the importation of black slaves from Africa to replace them by 1550. As Koning argues, the brutality of the Spanish and, for that matter the Portuguese on the Guinea coast of Africa, persisted until chattel slavery became uneconomic: "men became humane at the very moment inhumanity lost its business advantage".

As to Columbus, in contrast to his ambitions, the rewards he received were small and mostly honorific, for at this point in the conquest the anticipated gold was not sufficiently forthcoming. In a sense Columbus was as much a product of his time as we are of ours. What we should not do, however, is to hide reality beneath a mythology of the heroic discoverer and the coming of civilisation. But neither should we become complacent in our reading of history. The economic momentum that motivated and legitimized the Spanish conquest of America 500 years ago is the same to which we are victims today.

Philip Bentley

Women's movement (1983)

Book Review from the July 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is to be done about the family? edited by Lynne Segal (Penguin Books)

This collection of essays by seven women looks at the family from different points of view while always keeping the oppression of women at the centre of the analysis. The first essay describes the protest movements of the 60s which rejected all traditional family values. These were short lived and led to nothing but another protest movement: the new feminism of the 70s. The next essay shows how feminists moved away from trying to live out their ideals in alternative households towards a theoretical critique of the family and finally came to concentrate on reforms, often within the Labour Party. This is followed by an attempted Marxist analysis of the particular oppression of women in capitalism, but comes to the disappointing conclusion that the problem simply lies in the social division between productive and reproductive labour. The next essays concentrate respectively on childcare, sex as a product of the family as we know it, communes as alternative families, and the Welfare State in relation to women's economic dependence on their husbands and their need for some form of independent income. The concluding essay takes stock and tries to answer the question posed in the title of the book, but in doing so it has to admit that things have not improved very much at all and that there is no sign that they are going to. 

In this book we find all the typical questions that feminists ask: Why is housework not recognised by society? How can one find security and warmth in association with other people without the pressures of family life? Can the needs of children and women be reconciled? How did women become pure providers? Why can't housework be shared? Who is responsible for the oppression of women, capitalism or men? There do not appear, however, to be any answers to these questions nor any solutions to the problems they raise. In fact one has to feel some respect for the intellectual honesty with which these women look at their involvement as feminists and clearly see the contradictions within the movement and their failure to achieve their aims. But at the same time one cannot help wondering why, if feminists can see the drawbacks and limitations of most reforms and admit to a "depressing failure to improve women's lot generally" (p.221) they do not turn to other solutions and start asking different questions. If they can wonder why "women who form 40 per cent of the population only get 25% of the pay" (p.221) they might consider why the working class, who form 90 per cent of the population and produce all the wealth, only own about 38 per cent of the wealth.

It seems almost as if these writers did not want to find the real solutions outside their movement. Denise Riley, in the face of all the evidence, writes:

But there is no automatic opposite [to the present system] — a  socialism of abundance which would pay full and imaginative attention to the needs of women with children; plenty does not spontaneously flow from a new socialist order, any more than refusing public welfare provision is a timeless characteristic of capitalism (p.129);

and Lynne Segal includes the following comment on her concluding remarks: "But whether we like it or we don't, family life will continue to change" (p.230). Their attitude is one of passive resignation (how ironical in committed feminists!) which leads them to fear that the system will not treat them well, or hope that it might if they plead with it as they all do at the end of each essay, giving long lists of "we want this, and we want that . . . and is it too much to ask?" The mistake they make is precisely to "ask". If we want things to be a certain way, then we must run society ourselves instead of allowing it to be run in the interests of a tiny minority.

The word socialism is used a lot in this book, but mainly as a label that says something about the person wearing it (that she is a good sort of person who wants to improve the lot of people generally), not as a definition of a form of society. Pity. Because that form of society, run by the majority of the people in their own interests, without distinction of race or sex, without wages or money and therefore without property or economic dependence of any kind, would be a good place for a woman to live.

Christine Moss

Obituary: Ted Lake (1977)

Obituary from the February 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is always sad to record the death of older members who formed the backbone of the Party in its critical years. If we refer to the early days as our "vintage era" it is because we are grateful for the unremitting efforts of men like Ted Lake who against tremendous odds ensured the future of the Socialist Party.

Ted joined in 1910 and commenced speaking in 1912. His first meeting was at Buckhold Road, Wandsworth. At that time the Party was running 25 outdoor meetings per week in London, with a strength of thirty speakers. The list that month showed names like Fitzgerald, Anderson, Kohn, Fairbrother, Hoskyns and Fox. Ted was the last of the line and was 88 when he died in January of this year. He was a member of the old Battersea branch, and later SW London branch. He introduced his wife Min to the Party in 1926 and she died only a few days before Ted. Both transferred to Central Branch in 1958 when they retired to Banstead.

On the death of Jack Butler by a bomb in 1944, Ted was elected Party Treasurer and held the position until 1968. He was also a member of the Executive Committee for over forty years. The Party was always short of cash. The EC had to think twice before any venture. With Lake as our hard-headed Treasurer sitting at the EC table we had to think three times. Good husbandry was never better practised and never was an EC so cost-conscious as with Lake at the financial helm.

Ted will be remembered for his irreconcilable opposition to the Party's decision to contest Parliamentary elections. He felt that, bearing in mind the size of the Party, we ought to wait until we had greater support among the working class. Originally the 1944 Annual Conference decided to contest St. Pancras, Marylebone and Paddington. Lake referred to these as the "Railway termini". When we finally chose North Paddington in the 1945 General Election we booked the Metropolitan Music Hall for a mass meeting. Ted remarked wryly  that the electors would be treated to a "new turn". In the event the meeting proved successful beyond expectation; over 1,700 people attended, and several hundred more could not get in. The great enthusiasm and energy of the members caused him to thaw slightly in his anti-election tradition but he never abandoned it.

He lectured for many years, his favourite subject being the State. Forced by his wife's health and his failing eyesight to give up his activities at the age of 80, he managed to appear occasionally at Conferences. Some months before his death he was anxious that his books should find a place in the Party library. This was arranged before he died, and thus we are still able to benefit from a life spent in the splendid cause we have become heir to. To members of his family we offer our sympathy in this double bereavement.

J. D.

Mixed Media: Our Big Land (2015)

The Mixed Media Column from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our Big Land by Romani writer Dan Allum was directed by Amy Hodge last year at the Oval House Theatre in Kennington, London. It is a brutal, bloody and beautiful drama, a 'mystical, dark, epic poem' according to Allum (InSuffolk, 14 February 2014) which centres on the 'bauro diklo', a sacred storytelling/fortune-telling shawl passed from mothers to daughters which symbolises Romani spirit and culture.

The Romani matriarch Oceania is played by Robyn Moore who was memorable in 2003-04 in the working class TV soap opera EastEnders. Her son Roman is played by Samuel Edward-Cook, and Sophie, the Gadje (non-Romani) house dweller who is drawn into the world of the Romani as a child, is played by Scarlett Brookes. Allum puts women at the central place of the narrative as Oceania perceives in Sophie a 'gypsy heart', and we see Sophie grow from a girl to become a strong woman.

Allum was inspired by the memory of  'when I was a  kid we used a camp in Essex and in the wood was a traveller mother and – no father. They wouldn't mix with the travellers and non-travellers. It was quite mysterious, and I never forgot about them' (Oval House programme February 2014).

During the early part of the play we hear the cautionary petty-bourgeois nursery rhyme for children; 'My mother said never to play with the gypsies in the woods and if I did she would say, naughty girl to disobey.' The Romani live in the forest apart from bourgeois society. Oceania refers to 'keys for a cage' which symbolise the capitalist fetish for home ownership and private property.

Bourgeois society fears the Romani, and the woods or forests where they live come to have supernatural powers which frighten bourgeois sensibilities. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter set in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1640s, the woods for the Puritans become a symbol of darkness where the devil and his witches reside. The woods are the only place that Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne can meet away from the stern, repressive laws of Protestant society. Protestantism was a result of developing capitalism and was its ideological justification.

Oceania is dismissive when Sophie appears in her school uniform; 'uniforms are for prisons' and later says  'How can you understand freedom, when you've never had it?' Sociologists  have described the Romani as usually engaging in self-employment rather than the more common  wage-labour of capitalist society,  sometimes claiming ‘the Gypsies history is also the history of their refusal to be proletarianised’ (Judith Okely The Traveller-Gypsies), but  Gypsies could also be classified as ‘petty-bourgeois’ under the Marxist definition as they work independently yet are ‘dependent on a wider economy within which they circulate supplying goods, services and occasional labour’ (Okely). It is also important to point out that 'Gypsies enter the market without the protections afforded non-Gypsies, often working in the alternative economy in casual employment' (Brian Belton, Questioning Gypsy Identity: Ethnic Narratives in Britain).

Oceania, Roman, and Sophie later face eviction from their land with bulldozers at the gate which evokes the tribulations of the Irish Traveller community at Dale Farm in Essex who had lived there from the 1980s to the 2011 eviction by bailiffs and riot police. The Dale Farm eviction took place at the same time as capitalist media stereotyping and misrepresentation of the Romani and the Irish Traveller community in 'reality' programmes such as My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. This prompted  Billy Welch, spokesman for the Romani to say 'While Channel 4 should be praised for at least differentiating between Irish Travellers and Romani Gypsies, the first three episodes have in fact focused exclusively on Irish Travellers and their traditions: They called the show Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and you've yet to see a Romani Gypsy in it' (Guardian, 7 February 2011).

Allum's play is defiant and proud with Oceania declaring 'the Romani Nation won't bend or break.' The Romani people need their strength to combat the hostility of capitalist society; at the 2012 Tory Party conference, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles demonised Romani and Traveller communities when he vowed to 'stop caravans in their tracks' (Guardian, 12 October 2012). In August 2013 Pickles declared 'I want all councils to be ready to take action straightaway to stop illegal camps and unauthorised sites' (Inside Housing, 9 August 2013). This follows the scrapping of diversity and equality guidance so that Romani and Travellers can be persecuted. It has been identified that 'there is a recognised national shortage of legal pitches for Gypsies and Travellers' (Inside Housing, 9 August 2013).

Our Big Land is clearly opportune, what with Pickles declaring war on the Romani, and also the Tory government and UKIP opposition to eastern European (aka Romani) immigration. And, in essence, the persecution of the Romani is 'camouflaging the failures of capitalism, particularly in times of economic slump, by seeking out scapegoats' (Socialist Standard, January 2014).

Steve Clayton

The Same Story (1971)

Book Review from the September 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The English and Immigration. By John A. Garrard. Oxford University Press for the Institute of Race Relations. £3.25

It is well within living memory that the Fascists were ranting on street corners about the threat to our culture, our prosperity, our health, posed not by coloured immigrants but by Jews. They told lurid stories about creeping Jewish control of the country; about their dirty habits; about their sexual prowess. Workers who were beaten, confused and angry at what capitalism was doing to them were easy game for this type of malicious propaganda. They were looking for a scapegoat; they found it in the Jew, as their children find it now in the coloured immigrant.

The influx of Jews fleeing from persecution and poverty in Eastern Europe between 1870 and 1914 was one of the two major movements into this country during the past 75 years. The other, of course, was the coming of the Commonwealth immigrants after 1948. Inevitably there are similarities between the two, between the reasons for them, the reactions they aroused and the official way of dealing with the situation.

In the case of the Jews, the great majority went into trades which were experiencing a belated conversion from domestic to factory production—bootmaking, tailoring, cabinet making. The immigrants provided a handy pool of labour to carry over the transition and were subjected to the infamous sweating system.

One trade union leader complained in 1894 that the Jews worked for fifteen hours a day " . . . on cold coffee and bread and cheese . . . " By a process of "reasoning" which we are by now familiar with, popular prejudice quickly arrived at the conclusion that, as the Jews tended to work in sweated trades, they must have originated them. The truth—that sweating was practised in many trades which had scarcely heard of immigration—went almost unnoticed in the hysteria of prejudice.

The official answer to this was the Aliens Act of 1905, which was guillotined through Parliament and celebrated by the Bethnal Green Tories with a great firework display. A year later the Liberals were in power and they tended to emasculate the Act—unlike the Labour government of 1964 which, while paying lip service to international brotherhood, outdid its Tory predecessor in racist legislation.

John Garrard's is a well researched, very readable, book which makes our case — that the prejudices of capitalism do not change and are not to be changed by the lawmakers. Here, for example, is a judge speaking in 1903, in sentiments which might come from a Powellite today:

 . . . we have the riff raff of the whole world pitchforked into this country, and we spend days and days at the Court every session trying these disreputable foreigners.

Not that those who claimed to be socialists were exempt from the charge of prejudice. Garrard has a passage on alien immigration and the new left which illuminates the confusion and racism among the unions and the "labour" movement. The TUCs of 1893, 1894 and 1895 passed resolutions against the landing of "pauper aliens", which was as nice a way of avoiding saying what they meant as the currently fashionable support for immigration control on the grounds that England is overcrowded.

If the prejudice of capitalism remain unchanged this is because the system does not alter basically. Nor do its problems, nor the confused and ignorant attempts at dealing with them.

Ivan

Love of Money under attack (1995)

Theatre Review from the October 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Volpone, Olivier Theatre

Playwrights of yesteryear who were anxious to pillory social attitudes and beliefs had to handle their criticisms carefully.

In 1597 Ben Jonson was imprisoned for three months for taking part in the "lewd and seditious" comedy The Isle of Dogs. Jonson clearly learnt his lesson. In his comic masterpieces, Every Man in His Humour, The Alchemist and Volpone—written at the turn of the century—his barbs and brickbats were more subtle if nonetheless devastating for all that.

Jonson believed that it was "the office of the comic poet to imitate justice and instruct in life", and in Volpone, currently in repertoire in an exhilarating production at the National Theatre, his target is described in the programme as "the immorality if nascent (emergent) capitalism". Jonson gives animal names to many of his characters—most of whom are prepared to lie, cheat and manipulate in order to further their interests—and their brutish behaviour starkly illustrates the depths to which humanity can plummet when self-interest and competition reign supreme.

Although it might seem superficially that love of money is under attack, it is very clear that Jonson is concerned with a more substantial target: beliefs and behaviours which are characteristic of capitalism and which, if their nature, make money the supreme goal. J. M. Keynes offers the revealing opinion that:

"The love of money as a possession—as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life—will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease."

Keynes seems unaware that the love of money, as a token for capital, is the engine which drives society. To criticise people in a capitalist society for wanting money seems akin to complaining that carnivores like, and at the extreme will kill for, meat. Jonson understood this even if Keynes didn't, but he is too discrete to say so directly. When a dramatist has been imprisoned for giving voice to his opinions it is perhaps understandable if, subsequently, he leaves it to the audience to read between the lines.

Socialists with an evening to spare will enjoy Jonson's trenchant observations, the marvellous playing of a wonderful cast, and a production which drives the action forward at a helter-skelter pace across the wide expanses of the Olivier stage.

Michael Gill 

Especially the male of the species (1996)

Book Review from the November 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas (AK Press £3.50)

Valerie Solanas, the rebellious radical feminist who attempted to shoot Andy Warhol dead in 1968, wrote the SCUM Manifesto as a declaration of war on the male sex and all she claimed it stands for. According to Solanas, war, authority, government, the market economy, sexual abuse of children and mental illness were all created by - and perpetuated by - the male of the human species. Solanas contended that:

"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civi-minded, responsible thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex".

It is, of course, gratifying that someone else should have independently come to some of the same conclusions as us about the necessity of destroying capitalism and its poisonous relationships, but Solanas other ideas - indeed her central contentions - about the male sex only serve to discredit her opposition to the market economy and money.

Her grotesque anti-male sexism - she called men a "walking abortion" who would "wade nostril-deep through a pile of vomit at a chance of achieving sexual gratification" was almost certainly more a product of her own abusive childhood and early sexual relationships than a rounded and considered comment on the intricate nature of bourgeois society and the human attitudes it engenders.

The SCUM Manifesto, in fact, is a nicely strung-together sequence of provocative phrases and slogans, containing wild assertions which are at no time backed up by augmentation or evidence. As such, it has probably brought little but derision to advocates of the moneyless society, and for that reason it's republication cannot be entirely welcomed.

DAP

A Ballad Against Work (1997)

Book Review from the December 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Ballad Against Work. Collectivities. Majdoor Library, Autopin Jhuggi. NIT Faridabad, India.

It is difficult to get one's head round the facts of this publication (62 double-column A4 pages). The physical facts, that is, It is free, coming from a country where the great mass of people are not overpaid. Faridabad is an industrial suburb of Delhi, population around 300,000, most of them overworked, living in overcrowded conditions, reminiscent of Engels' Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. But this is not a lumpenproletariat. Many are overqualified, overeducated for the jobs they do. Bhupender and Ranbjan, the pamphlet reveals, have difficulty keeping body and soul together despite their PhDs.

The pamphlet's basic argument is that the key problem facing those presiding over the accumulation of capital is to get as much work out of their labour forces as they can. This is a problem for them since workers, as humans, have a natural inclination to spontaneously resist the imposition of such an alien work burden. Collectivities see this spontaneous resistance as the potential beginning of a movement that will lead to a non-hierarchical, wageless, moneyless world community.

They have been taken to task by one group in Britain who have accused them of neglecting the revolution. The Communist Workers Organisation in true Leninist style have urged them not to oppose leadership by :exceptionally talented or skilled individuals in particular fields (who) will always be recognised and admired by their fellow creatures, albeit that in a communist world different talents will be appreciated". All will be equal but some will be more equal than others.

How hierarchical organisation could survive in a society where there is free access to all our needs is difficult to see. Those who did not want to co-operate could not be forced to; they could simply walk away. And we could easily accommodate that. If Collectivities' estimate that about two percent of the labour force in the developed countries could supply all needs is correct, the problem in a rationally organised world would lie in finding something to do for those people who wanted to be active, i.e. all those who were sane and healthy. Creative work as opposed to present useless toil.

This is where the Faridabad "Collectivities" group show that they have passed the reform-of-capitalism thought barrier and reject bogus follow-my-leader alternatives to that of complete autonomy. Only free people can organise a free society, something the majority in the "developed" world have yet to learn. And this Indian group take the whole world for their oyster.

Ken Smith

Europe and Mrs Thatcher (1991)

Editorial from the August 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Edward Heath was perhaps being a little cruel in describing Thatcher's mind as "minute". But she asked for it. She has never displayed any sign of even wanting to escape from her narrow small-town shopkeeper background. Heath could have been an example for her. After all he used to be known as Grocer and now he describes Bush's New World Order as the "new imperialism". She, by contrast, has remained Alderman Roberts' daughter - but this has not prevented a Foundation to perpetuate her stupid prejudices being set up.

It was largely because these prejudices were beginning to affect her management of the affairs of British capitalism that her own Tory colleagues got together to remove her from office. They knew, even if she didn't, that the globalised nature of present-day capitalism obliged Britain to take a more positive attitude towards the Common Market.

The EEC is essentially a trading arrangement between a number of European capitalist states who have joined together to face their competitors on the world market. It was inevitable that this trading arrangement would have wider implications. A common trading policy would be made easier by a common economic policy; a common economic policy by a common currency; a common currency by a common central bank; a common central bank would imply common political control and, by this stage, Europe would be well on the way to the vision of a federal  United States of Europe that inspired many of those who set up the Treaty of Rome.

Mrs Thatcher's vision, if vision it can be called, is rather narrower. She wants Britain to remain a fully independent sovereign state, with its own currency and with Westminster not Strasburg as the supreme law-making body. It is the narrow view of the nationalist, in this case of the British nationalist. It is a view shared by Tony Benn and some others in the Labour Party. It is not a view shared by the Socialist Party.

We are, of course, neither British nationalists nor European Federalists but World Socialists. But we can see the special fallacy of the nationalist argument. In the world as it is today, it is neither possible nor desirable for the people of one part to stand apart from the rest.

Satellites and other means of telecommunications mean that we are already living in a global village where what happens in one part of the world can be known almost instantaneously in the other parts. In terms of the production of wealth one world already exists. The goods we consume and the machines and materials used to produce them are all joint products of workers from many parts of the world - something for British nationalists to ponder over at breakfast as they munch their muesli, sprinkle their sugar and drink their tea.

There is nothing wrong with this. A growing consciousness that we are all inhabitants of a single world, that we share the globe in common despite our different languages and cultures, is something to be encouraged. Indeed it is essential if we are to tackle ecological problems such as global warming, the hole in the ozone layer and tropical deforestation.

The European Federalists, for all their faults, at least realise that the people living on this island off the north-west coast of the Eurasian land-mass need to be closely associated with those on the mainland. Where they go wrong is in imagining that this can be fruitful within the context of capitalism. A federation of European capitalist states will no more provide a framework for the resolution of working-class problems than the so-called independent so-called nation-state.

What is required is association with the other peoples of Europe, and beyond that with those of the rest of the world, on the basis of socialism. What is required is not a European Common Market, nor a single European currency, nor a European Super-State but World Socialism where the Earth's resources will be owned in common and democratically controlled through various inter-linked administrative and decision-making bodies at world, regional and local levels.

We appreciate that this vision of a united world represents a nightmare scenario for Mrs Thatcher but that's her problem not ours.

Work and play under capitalism (1988)

From the November 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are a lot of good reasons for being a socialist. Poverty, pollution, nuclear weapons are enough to make anyone want to change the world. Even if you try to ignore unemployment, homelessness and urban decay, it's clear that capitalism is not all it's cracked up to be. Even in the so called affluent countries the system makes our lives needless, petty and unpleasant.

For example, we're always being told that now we live in a "leisure society" where our free time can be more and more filled with fun and enjoyment. Affluence is supposed to bring us satisfaction through more videos, take-away food, hi-fi systems, shopping centres and bingo. Now although socialists are not kill joys—we all like a few consumer goods and services—it;s important to see the human costs at which these things are produced.

What do we mean by this? Well, for one thing, our freedom to enjoy all these goodies (providing we've got enough money to buy them) contrasts dramatically with our lack of freedom when we're in work. As we wander round the shopping mall on Saturday morning we're certainly free to ask ourselves "what shall I buy, wear or eat?" On the other hand, when it comes to Monday morning at nine o'clock, very few of us are free to ask "How shall I run this company", "what shall I do to solve the problem of mass starvation?". or even "when shall I go home?" In work the message is normally "do as you're told", or "no profit, no jobs!" The alternative of being without work is often a lot worse.

Under capitalism our well-being in the workplace is sacrificed to the great good "Profit" because our work satisfaction doesn't figure in the balance sheets. We don't normally get to choose what we produce, how it's produced, or who gets what we produce. It's only when we get home that we're supposed to have choice again, and it's here that the TV ads tell us to treat ourselves, and "Relax in a warm Radox bath". And though this freedom as a consumer is certainly overrated in the media, our alienation in work is barely even mentioned. The customer may always be right when firms are trying to sell us things, but if you believe the popular press, workers are only ever right when they toe the management line.

The tabloid newspapers know that work is a four letter word for most people so they tend not to depress us all by writing about it. Instead, their pages are packed with suntanned models, unspoilt beaches, gossip about pop stars, bingo and saucy vicars - preferably all in the same story! In fact compensation for the lack of colour in our profit-dominated working lives. Fortunes and dream holidays won in banal competitions capture our imagination because they are things that most of could never have even if we saved for the rest of our lives. Free money and endless holidays seem magical in comparison with the way that every penny is normally earned through wage slavery.

But it's not just the problem of the days spent in boring work to afford goods. There is an awful lot of boring work that goes into making goods for our recreation. Holidays, meals out, stereos, and newspapers don't come from heaven. They're certainly not the result of the magical power of money, profit or Robert Maxwell. They are the product of workers just like us.

In the main, capitalism is not too anxious to publicise the human cost of all this production for profit. This is especially true of the poorest countries; not many adverts say "children worked round the clock on tread mills to make this carpet". Although the Socialist Party would not agree with Nigel Harris' conclusions, he sums up clearly how capitalist production works:

The spoonful of tea that you pop in the pot does not cry out because the Tamil fingers that plucked the leaf in Sri Lanka were weak with malnutrition. Fortunately commodities are mute.

(Of Bread and Guns, p. 10)

So when adverts tell us to relax with a cup of tea they certainly don't shout about the poor work conditions of tea pickers. Instead they tell us that "we could do with a D" or "It's to do with the little perforations" or "chimpanzees drink this tea".

And equally, these same workers who make leisure goods are going to look to their free time to make up for lost time in work, and will in turn want more leisure services and goods to escape from their work. And as stressed earlier, these goods in turn are advertised as having nothing to do with the miserable conditions in which they may have been produced. So the system makes us carry on looking to leisure to make up for what's missing in work, but in doing this, we inadvertently buy consumer goods and services made by other people in the very work conditions from which we're trying to escape!

Now even when it's acknowledged that the present system causes profound problems, the solution is always more of the same. The answer to the chaos and misery brought about by production for profit is always seen to be more production for profit. Stress through work is dealt with by tranquilizers or biofeedback, the unemployed are told that they must learn to train and sell themselves better, and people fed for years on fatty, additive-filled food are sold expensive diet programmes. Capitalism is very good at finding money-making answers that don't get to the root of most of our problems—capitalism itself.

Health foods, mediation and nature holidays are taken up by the very system that creates our longing for them in the first place. Nuclear shelters and medical insurance become sources of profit in a society that cannot even offer us security and health. Even peace of mind itself becomes something to be bought over the counter. For example, here's Luke Rhinehart talking about the value for money of the psychotherapy, EST:

When one considers other programmes that people seek to revitalize their lives . . . one can only conclude that for most consumers, both before and after trying EST training it is a good buy

He goes on to make the bizarre statement:

more aliveness is achieved at less cost than by other seemingly related offerings.

(The Book of EST, p.215)

One has to question the sanity of ay society that creates a need for people to search for "aliveness: as if it could be bought from a shelf like a packet of soup.

So we can see how the present system's need to produce a profit makes work mostly a chore and means that our leisure becomes an escape from and a compensation for this misery. It also spends a lot of time and effort persuading us to buy things produced by other workers under similar misery.  Finally it sells us more goods and services for profit as palliatives to problems caused by this very system of production for profit.

In the long run it's important that we see how under capitalism, neither work nor leisure offers us the chance of real fulfillment. The mad see-sawing between arduous work and passive leisure needs to be replaced by something altogether different. Only when all goods and services are produced for need and not profit will things change. And under this new system—socialism, if leisure goods were awful to produce we might not make them at all, we might make less and share them in common, or more excitingly, we might make them in a totally different way. We certainly wouldn't waste resources persuading people to consume things they didn't want. In a socialist world our leisure might become more active and creative, and work itself might even become a form of leisure!

Keith Aubrey

Unseen and Unprotected (2015)

Book Review from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hsiao-Hung Pai: Invisible: Britain’s Migrant Sex Workers. Westbourne £10.99

In Chinese Whispers (reviewed in the August 2010 Socialist Standard) Pai examined the living and working conditions of undocumented Chinese migrant workers in Britain. Now she looks specifically at migrant sex workers, herself courageously working underground as a ‘housekeeper’ in several brothels.

About a quarter of the eighty thousand sex workers in Britain are immigrants, mostly from China or eastern and south-eastern Europe. There has been much economic disruption in these areas; women workers have been particularly badly hit by the closure of state-owned businesses in China, for instance. One solution, which is especially appealing for those with young children to bring up and educate, is to emigrate and then send remittances home. One Polish woman who Pai spoke to could earn as much in a day in a brothel in London as she could earn in a month in Katowice.

Not that most come intending to work in the sex industry. It’s just that badly-paid and insecure work in agriculture, food-processing factories or restaurants is not enough to support a family back home or to pay off the debts of those who were smuggled here illegally. As one madam tells Pai, ‘No one would do this job if they weren’t desperate.’ They may be able to earn £300 a night, after paying part of their takings to the brothel-owner. One woman was returning to China, having earned £20,000 in four months.

But you would indeed need to be desperate to work up to fourteen hours a day, having sex with a dozen or more men, six or seven days a week. There is an ever-present fear of violence from customers or of being robbed. Whether prostitute, housekeeper or madam, there is no prospect of negotiating working hours or conditions. Illegal immigrants have great difficulty in accessing health care, including sexual health, and their poor English and social isolation often handicap them in this regard.

Further, many women are trafficked into Britain specifically for sex work. This seems to be particularly common among Romanian women and Pai mentions one woman smuggled here and then sold from one pimp to another for £2000.

The government’s crackdown on undocumented migrants has led to sex workers from outside the European Union being driven further underground in order to avoid immigration controls and make themselves, in the book’s title, invisible to the authorities. 

Paul Bennett

Hiroshima, August 1945 (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

Forty years ago the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan. The following poem was written by a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain shortly after he heard the news of the bombing.

Like a blast from hell the atom bomb came,
And a city in ruins was hurled;
On wings of fear, it thundered its name,
Through a shocked and war torn world;
This atomic force with transmutable breath,
Its first warning sign we see,
Garden of plenty, or desert of death;
What is this world to be?
The challenge is vital, and urgent the hour;
When this Capitalist era must pass,
And workers control this atomic power,
So misused by the ruling class;
This nuclear power from the atom was wrought,
It evolved in the womb of time,
Born of the labour of man's social thought,
Its baptism, Fire, blood and crime;
Dark is the future if our governments command
This scientific genie of might,
Secret diplomacy knows no remand,
From chaos and abysmal night;
The Capitalist powers are still planning our fate,
And with their lies seek to stifle our fears,
Turning worker against worker, in blind bonds of hate,
For their new orgy of blood sweat and tears;
A Socialist world, no other solution,
Presents itself to mankind;
The workers must strive for a world revolution,
And cast off those fetters that bind;
This atomic force with transmutable breath,
For good or for ill must abide,
Garden of plenty or desert of death?
The workers themselves must decide.

Walter Atkinson (Britain)

Bellamy, socialism and utopia

From the Winter 1987-88 issue of the World Socialist

For as long as there has been human oppression there have been dreams of the oppressed. Oppressed people have not usually had access to the means of recording their dreams, so too many of them have been lost. Nor have they had the power to communicate their dreams as widely as the powerful have been free to spread theirs, so all too often such visions of what could be have been relegated to an area outside of "serious politics", derided as the literary yearnings of unimportant masses, or neatly filed away under the heading of "impossibility" — a heading which is made to measure the needs of the ruling class of the day, as Mannheim clearly showed in his book, Ideology and Utopia.

The politics of Utopia begins with the visions of those who see beyond the way life is. Utopia — which derives from the Greek words for good place and no place — is never compatible with the mistaken certainties about how society must always be which all ruling classes in the history of class society have sought to perpetuate. Utopias smash through the barriers of "reality" (our rulers' reality) and project a new form of existence.

Early Utopias reflected naive and physically unrealisable wishes of the oppressed majority. For example, the 14th century poem, The Land of Cockaygne, depicts a world where geese fly around ready-roasted calling out to be eaten. This was no realisable scheme of how society could one day be, but it did reflect the impotent desires of hungry serfs, just as the American folk song. The Big Rock Candy Mountains (originally a Norwegian Utopian song, according to the folk music historian, A.L. Lloyd) tells us something about the dreams of the American hobo when it depicts its land of soda water fountains, lemonade springs, streams of alcohol trickling down the rocks, and lakes of stew and whiskey too which you can paddle all around in your own canoe.

Not all Utopias have been fantasies. Many have constituted genuine critiques of the existing social order. In The Politics of Utopia by Goodwin and Taylor it is contended that we should take what have been labelled as Utopian ideas seriously; instead of pushing them aside to a discarded limbo between political science and mere literary criticism, those interested in politics should find time to recognise the important contribution of "utopian" thought:

Consciousness of the difference between existing reality and a non-existent, but potentially existent, future — a morally desirable future — was one of the most important ingredients of this quest (for the good life). Unless we feel absolutely confident that we have now reached the limits of our capabilities and creativity, that we have advanced to perfection already, to dispense with utopianism would be to renounce a large part of what it is to be a political animal.

Our present rulers, be they avowedly conservative or allegedly radical, do feel confident that with the present social system we have reached our human destination: reform it, perhaps, but scrap it: impossible, it's utopian.

Capitalism, with its big promises of liberty and rewards for hard work and freedom, and the mean reality of what the system has been in experience, has given rise to utopian thought. Never was such thought more expressive than in the decades of disappointment which followed capitalism's hour of glory, the French Revolution. Schemes were drawn up by men who believed that they alone had the blueprint for The New Social Order. These men — Fourier, Owen, St Simon, Babeuf, Weitling — were "utopian socialists". Much of what they dreamed about would not be dismissed by socialists today, either in terms of their political ends, such as the abolition of government and money or their poetical impulse to destroy the pompous claims of property-based civilisation. To be sure, much of what they envisaged seems crazy now — some of it must have done then — but that is the price to be paid for the idealistic act of constructing a blueprint for the future.

MARXISM AND UTOPIA

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels began to construct their theory of revolutionary socialism at a time when to be socialist was regarded as an act of futuristic utopianism. Most socialists in the 1840s were followers of one blueprint or another; in America the Utopias had become more than blueprints and embryonic Utopian socialist communities had sprung up in their thousands.

Marxism (that rather inadequate term which we use to sum up the essential theories of Marx and Engels and those who think in their tradition today) is a materialist theory of history. Its starting point is not based upon the moral imperative of what should be or the ideals of blueprints which start and finish in the realm of human consciousness, but upon the material recognition that in order to transform society we must revolutionise its material (productive) base. We should not be surprised, then, that the advocates of such an outlook would find themselves at odds with the utopians of their day.

The main criticism levelled against utopians by Marx (and, with greater force than in any other work, by Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific) was their lack of a theory of history: Who was going to construct their Utopia? The answer of the Utopians was, We are — we who have had the unique foresight of seeing life as it could be. For Marx and Engels that was the arrogant nonsense of philosophical idealists who imagined that Ideas make History. The working class, which constitutes the majority of humankind, must be the creators of the new social system. If the workers are to create socialism (or communism; Marx and Engels used the words interchangeably) they must want it and desire it. The utopians had no time to wait for the workers to be brought in on the act of their own emancipation. This was a crucial reason for hostility between Marxism and utopianism, just as it is for the battle between modern socialists and the Leninists and other vanguardists who like the Utopians believe that they, as exclusive possessors of the revolutionary ideal, must lead the witless masses to the New Jerusalem — which all too often comes to look something like East Berlin or Gdansk.

Marx and Engels refused to prepare recipes for the cook-shops of the future. The only statements which they could make about what socialism would be like were made upon the materialist basis of what was then possible. Of course, time has rendered some of these projections obsolete, and, as good materialists, Marx and Engels would be the first to admit the outdated nature of some of their comments about socialism which came out of 19th century conditions, but are still advocated religiously and unhistorically by 20th century utopian leftists. For example, the view of Marx that labour vouchers could play a role in the distribution of goods in the early days of socialist society before enough for all could be produced, has been superseded by developments in technology which make the move to a moneyless world society an immediate result of the socialist revolution to come.

So, we can see that the utopian outlook, which we began by praising as the innocent child of oppressed desire, met the wrath of science and became perceived as a hindrance to revolutionary change. In short, it is precisely when "Utopia" becomes practical that Utopians become obstacles to the achievement of the new way of living. We need to dream when we are unfree to act.

BELLAMY'S UTOPIA

Marxism left the task of transforming society to the workers. For historical reasons too complex to enter into here, the workers did not jump to the task. On the contrary, capitalism survived the scientific theory of its destruction, just as it had outlived the utopian desire for the same end. Socialism and Marxism came to be dirty words and those seeking change began to look in new directions.

Edward Bellamy, the son of a strict Baptist Minister and a frighteningly puritanical mother, a journalist of some ability, born in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts on 26 March, 1850, set himself the task of writing a utopian novel which would show the world how different society could be from the rottenness of American capitalism. That he did well depict the absurdity of the capitalist way of organising society is demonstrated by the passage from Looking Backward which we re-publish at the end of this article. That his novel did have an impact is clear from the fact that approximately half a million copies of it were sold in the few years after its publication in 1888. It was, according to Goodwin and Taylor, "probably the most widely read fictional utopia ever written". In addition to being read it was acted upon: the novel gave rise to a Nationalist movement, seeking to put into practice the vision of Bellamy's novel. According to Cyrus F Willard (who was one of the movement's leading figures), the Nationalist Clubs had over 6,000 members and 500,000 "believers''. He wrote that:

We have fifty or more papers and magazines unreservedly advocating Nationalism. (The Nationalist, II, No. 1, December 1889)

The Nationalist movement's principles were based upon those in Bellamy's book and the book was a bestseller, so the obvious question remains, what did it say? The novel tells the story of Julian West, a prosperous resident of Boston, who, unable to fall asleep, has his butler hypnotise him and . . . then, one hundred and thirteen years later when he wakes up, he finds himself in a fundamentally transformed Boston, the social details of which are explained to him by the rather tedious Dr Leete and his daughter, Edith — with whom, of course, Julian falls in love during his trip to utopia. What is Bellamy's utopia like? The following features, supported by some quotations from Bellamy's own summary of the novel in the Dawn of 15 September, 1889, define the new system:

1. The entire nation of the USA has become "a general business partnership, in which every man and woman is an equal partner".
2. All people in the new society are part of the "army of industry" which they must serve in some form between the ages of 21 and 45. The argument is that just as capitalism conscripts labour for destructive purposes in times of war, the new system conscripts labour for peaceful, productive ends. There is, incidentally, a special corps of the "army" for professional people and even one for the disabled.
3. No wages are paid for working, but people receive vouchers (in fact, an elaborate credit card system operates) which allow them to have what they need from the common store. If some fields of work are less attractive than others, then the hours of work are shortened.
4. The feminine corps of the army is "devoted to the lighter classes of occupations".
5. At the age of 45 all people are discharged from the army of labour and are "free to occupy themselves as they will for the remainder of their lives".
6. There is no money (in the old sense) and credit cannot be stored by individuals, so creating economic inequality.
7. There is virtually no crime: "Robbery, theft and fraud of every sort are without a motive in a society where all have abundance, where covetousness is not stimulated by different degrees of luxury, and where equality of resources is annually renewed".
8. Much more wealth is produced than under capitalism because waste is avoided and science is properly used for peace and not war.

These features provide only a rough summary. For example, Bellamy devised an elaborate scheme for electing officers for the national army, giving the vote only to those over the age of 45! We shall not bother ourselves here with the more obviously outlandish features of Bellamy's vision. Its most important contribution to the thinking of the time was its vision of a moneyless, wageless, classless society — although, as will become clear, those conditions were somewhat equivocal in Bellamy's scheme of things. His utopia showed workers a society where life could be different — better, happier. That is what socialists must be doing. The influence of Bellamy upon the American working-class movement was considerable. The foremost Marxian thinker of early 20th century America, Daniel DeLeon, was quite evidently influenced by Bellamy. (Indeed, DeLeon maintained some of Bellamy's non-socialist utopian features within his own vision of socialism even after he ceased to be a Nationalist.)

UNSATISFACTORY DEPICTION OF SOCIALISM

Like all Utopians, Bellamy lacked an historical theory of social transformation. By far the weakest part of his book is that which describes the coming of the new order: it came because people saw that it was a good idea, so they let it be, capitalists collaborating with workers, without any violent resistance, without any political action. Indeed, Bellamy goes out of his way to state that socialists were a counter-productive influence upon the great utopian change. But history does not change like that. The class struggle will not collapse into a utopian act of national goodwill. And Bellamy's utopia was an historical non-starter. The Nationalist movement, which sought to bring about the utopian change simply by the moral preaching of educated persons of goodwill did not take long to fall to pieces, now utterly forgotten except by historians. 

So, the first criticism which socialists must make about Bellamy is that he was utopian, not in the sense of being a visionary (which all revolutionaries are), but in the sense of rejecting a scientific or materialistic idea of change. But it was not only the lack of a means of achieving socialism (and Bellamy refused to call his utopia that in case it might offend Americans) for which socialists criticise Looking Backward. The very depiction of socialism presented is unsatisfactory. The idea of such a change occurring in one country is an impossibility, given the global interdependence of the capitalist system. The state-capitalist sense of the nation being organised as a huge business corporation, with all the people as its conscript employees, does not inspire those of us seeking a truly liberated society. The abolition of the wages system (a quiet common socialist demand in American history) is spoilt by the picture of everyone having to live in a society of credit cards. The sexism of the role of women is unattractive to socialists, as indeed is the potentially eugenicist notion of creating a perfect human race which follows from Bellamy's ideas on marriage. The new social order (and you will need to read the book to get the sense of this) is over-concerned with consumerism, technology and the pleasures of living an ordered existence. That crucial element of socialist vision which is about the unity of work and art, values beyond immediate consumption, and life being more than a process of individual satisfaction, is too often missing from Bellamy's outlook. No wonder that it was William Morris, a socialist who embodied all of those broader notions of what it is to be a revolutionary socialist, who was amongst the first to attack Bellamy's novel. Indeed, it was Morris's disgust at reading Looking Backward which led him to write his infinitely better novel about what socialism might be like: News From Nowhere.

Looking Backward, published a century ago, is a novel worth reading, if only for the kind of penetrating critique of capitalism typified by the extract which follows. His rather less interesting book. Equality, written in 1890 and lacking the literary quality of Bellamy's magnum opus, pursues the same corporatist vision, showing clearly the link (one which is often a source of embarrassment to the state-loving Left) between state-capitalism and fascism as corporatist ideals of economic organisation.

A century after Looking Backward came off the press the oppressed are still entertaining visions of what could be. Those of us who seek to pull from the roots the rottenness of what our rulers say must always be are still derided as utopians. But then, as Thomas Muntzer, the anabaptist revolutionary of the Sixteenth Century, pointed out, history belongs to those of us who "possess the strength to realise the impossible".

Steve Coleman

Edward Bellamy on how people live under capitalism

By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of the way people lived together in those days, and especially of the relations of the rich and poor to one another, I cannot do better than compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach to which the masses of humanity were harnessed and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was Hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest ascents. The seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust, their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merit of the straining team.

Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons were slipping out of them and falling to the ground, where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to drag the coach, on which they had before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one's seat, and the apprehension that this might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the happiness of those who rode.

But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their brothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their own weight added to their toil. Had they no compassion for fellow beings from whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh, yes; commiseration was frequently expressed by those who rode for those who had to pull the coach, especially when the vehicle came to a bad place in the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the team, their agonized leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of Hunger, the many who fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire, made a very distressing spectacle, which often called forth highly creditable displays of feeling on the top of the coach.

At such times the passengers would call down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them to patience, and holding out hopes of possible compensation in another world for the hardness of their lot, while others contributed to buy salves and liniments for the crippled and injured. It was agreed that it was a great pity that the coach should be so hard to pull, and there was a sense of general relief when the specially bad piece of road was over. This relief was not, indeed, wholly on account of the team, for there was always some danger at these bad places of a general overturn in which all would lose their seats.

It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the spectacle of the misery of the toilers at the rope was to enhance the passengers' sense of the value of their seats upon the coach, and to cause them to hold on to them more desperately than before.

If the passengers could only have felt assured that neither they nor their friends would ever fall from the top, it is probable that, beyond contributing to the funds for liniments and bandages, they would have troubled themselves extremely little about those who dragged the coach.

I am well aware that this will appear to the men and women of the twentieth century an incredible inhumanity, but there are two facts, both very curious, which partly explain it. In the first place, it was firmly and sincerely believed that there was no other way in which Society could get along, except the many pulled at the rope and the few rode, and not only this, but that no very radical improvement even was possible, either in the harness, the coach, the roadway, or the distribution of the toil. It had always been as it was, and it would always be so. It was a pity, but it could not be helped, and philosophy forbade wasting compassion on what was beyond remedy.

The other fact is yet more curious, consisting in a singular hallucination which those on the top of the coach generally shared, that they were not exactly like their brothers and sisters who pulled at the rope, but of finer clay, in some way belonging to a higher order of beings who might justly expect to be drawn. This seems unaccountable, but, as I once rode on this very coach and shared that very hallucination, I ought to be believed. The strangest thing about the hallucination was that those who had but just climbed up from the ground, before they had outgrown the marks of the rope upon their hands, began to fall under its influence. As for those whose parents and grandfathers before them had been so fortunate as to keep their seats on the top, the conviction they cherished of the essential difference between their sort of humanity and the common article, was absolute. The effect of such a delusion in moderating fellow feeling for the sufferings of the mass of men into a distant and philosophical compassion, is obvious. To it I refer as the only extenuation I can offer for the indifference which, at this period, marked my own attitude toward the misery of my brothers.

Backwaters of History - 7: The Paris Commune (1954)

From the April 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Paris Commune

Whilst crowds lined the streets of London to watch Queen Victoria pass on her way to open the Albert Hall, on Tuesday, March 28th, 1871, the streets of Paris were lined with denser and more exuberant crowds. Around Paris was camped the German army of Prince von Bismarck with a young lieutenant Hindenburg amongst his officers. On the previous Sunday Paris had been to the polls and on this Tuesday the results had been declared. Now, with a predominantly working-class Commune, the Parisians were jubilant and staged a monster procession.

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the great Napoleon I, who had made himself Napoleon III of France, had embarked on a war with Prussia, mainly in an endeavour to revive his failing prestige. His war had been unsuccessful and after defeats at Saarbrucken, Weissenberg and Metz, Louis Napoleon surrendered to the Prussians at Sedan on September 2nd, 1870. The French armies were held prisoners in Germany and at Metz. On the 4th of September Paris rebelled and proclaimed a republic. A collection of lawyers, professional politicians, careerists and job hunters constituted themselves a Government of National Defence and, although the Prussians were at the gates of Paris, this government proposed to offer resistance. Behind the scenes it prepared to capitulate.

On the 28th Juanuary, 1871, Paris, starved out, capitulated, its fortifications were disarmed and the weapons of the regular troops were handed over to the enemy. But, within Paris there was a military organisation known as the National Guard, a voluntary defence organisation composed mainly of members of the working class. This National Guard retained its weapons and cannons and entered into a truce with the Prussians. The troops of Bismarck who had besieged Paris for 131 days and were now prepared to occupy it, found that the workers of Paris would only allow them to occupy certain small sections of the city and, in those section, they were virtually prisoners.

The Government of National Defence resigned and on February 8th a National Assembly was elected at Bordeaux. This assembly almost unanimously elected a M. Thiers as head of the executive power. Theirs saw the danger that an armed working-class presented to French capitalism and made plans to disarm the Parisian National Guard.

He sent General Lecompte with troops to sneak away the cannons that the National Guard had purchased with its own subscriptions, claiming that these cannons were state property. The plan was to get the guns away before the people of Paris realised what was happening, but the scheme went awry. The people came out of their houses and surrounded the troops, offering them coffee and breakfast until finally the troops fraternised with the workers handing their rifles into the crowd in exchange for glasses of wine. In all parts of Paris the attempt to steal the guns had failed. Paris was now up in arms against the Thiers government seated at Versailles.

A Central Committee of the National Guard, elected without distinction of rank, from the various companies, took over the control of affairs in Paris and set about the job of maintaining distribution of what food and supplies were available and seeing to the general running of the city. This committee firmly met the opposition of the city mayors and other pro-government elements until it stood down in favour of the newly elected Commune.

The Commune got straight to work. On March 30th, it decreed the abolition of the standing army and conscription and declared that only the National Guard, to which all citizens should belong, might bear arms. The rents of all dwellings were remitted from October 1870 to April 1871 and if rent for that period had been paid it was to be deducted from future payments. Pawnshops were stopped from selling pledges. All foreigners elected to the Commune were confirmed in their jobs, it being claimed that "the flag of the Commune is that of the Universal Republic."

On April 1st it was decided that no member of the Commune, nor any of its functionaries, should receive a wage or salary higher than 6,000 francs a year—a workman's wage. On the following day the Commune disestablished the church, stopped payments from public funds for church purposes and decided to confiscate all ecclesiastical property on behalf of the people.

During the next few weeks Judges and other judicial functionaries were brought under the control of the Commune, so was the police force; the guillotine was publicly burnt; night work for bakers was abolished; Pawn shops were closed; Napoleon Bonaparte's triumphal column at Place Vendome, which was "a symbol of chauvinism and mutual hatred amongst nations," was overthrown and a chapel, built in expiation of the execution of Louis XVI, was destroyed.

Plans were prepared to organise a federation of co-operative societies into which working men were to be enrolled with a view to taking over and managing those factories and workshops that had been closed by the employers. Educational facilities were made available to all and many outstanding grievances were remedied.

The Commune was composed mainly of working men who made of it a working, and not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time. With only workmen's wages to be earned all the political sharks and job seeking racketeers who had previously occupied the administrative posts, faded from the picture and working men took their places.

Whilst the Commune was passing its various enactments the Thiers government at Versailles was preparing to suppress the rebellious city. Attacks had been made since the early days of April, in fact the city was under shell fire whilst the Commune was sitting. Thiers persuaded Bismarck to release French troops taken prisoner during the war so that an army could be built to march on Paris. During April and early May thousands of the Parisians were taken prisoner by the Versaillese and subjected to revolting atrocities. Thousands more were killed.

On Sunday, May 21st, the newly formed Versaillese army marched into Paris through five breaches in the defences. The workers of Paris threw up barricades and fought like tigers.

"Let good citizens arise! To the barricades! The enemy is within our walls. No hesitation. Forward, for the Commune and for liberty. To arms!"
"Let Paris bristle with barricades, and from behind these improved ramparts still hurl at her enemies her cry of war, of pride, of defiance, but also of victory; for Paris with her barricades is inexpungable."

(Two proclamations of May 22nd, quoted by Lissagaray in his "History of the Commune of 1871.")

The government troops fought their way through the city inflicting great slaughter and destroying buildings. By the following Sunday, May 28th, the Parisians were defeated, the Commune was gone and most of its members were dead. When the city was subdued the Thiers government took its revenge.

"And now the murder of defenceless men, women and children, which had raged the whole week through in ever-increasing proportions, reached its highest point. The breechloader no longer killed fast enough; the conquered were slaughtered in hundreds with the mitrailleuses; the 'Wall of the Federals' in the Pere la Chaise cemetery, where the last massacres took place, remains to-day a dumb but eloquent witness to the frenzy of the crime of which the governing classes are capable as soon as the proletariat dares to stand up for its rights. Then, as the slaughter of all were seen to be impossible, came the arrests en masse, the shooting down of arbitrarily selected prisoners as victims for sacrifice, and the transference of the remainder into great camps, where they awaited the mercy of the courts-martial."

(F. Engels' introduction to "The Civil War in France," by Karl Marx.)

The "Wall of the Federals" was the wall against which one hundred and forty seven of the Communards were lined up and shot in cold blood on May 28th, 1871. Every Whit Sunday workers of Paris march and lay wreaths against this wall.

"Twenty-five thousand men, women and children killed during the battle or after; three thousand at least dead in the prisons, the pontoons, the forts, or in consequence of maladies contracted during their captivity, thirteen thousand seven hundred condemned, most of them for life; seventy thousand women, children and old men deprived of their natural supporters or thrown out of France; one hundred and eleven thousand victims at least. This is the balance-sheet of the bourgeois vengeance for the solitary insurrection of the eighteenth of March.
"What a lesson of revolutionary vigour given to the working men. The governing classes shoot in a lump without taking the trouble to select hostages. The vengeance lasts not an hour; neither years nor victims appease it; they make of it an administrative function, methodical and continuous."

(Lissagaray's "History of the Commune of 1871.")

It is easy, today, to see the faults of the Communards but we must not lose sight of the fact that they were not Socialists. Very few of them had more than a feeling of working-class solidarity, with an urgent desire to do something to remedy the evils of their day. If all their reforms had been fully operated capitalism would still have held sway, although with a different complexion.

Nevertheless, the Paris Commune stands as an heroic landmark in the history of the working-class and gives us an indication how workers can act when called upon to re-organise society.

Books to read:-

"Civil War in France," by Karl Marx.

"History of the Commune of 1871," by Lissagaray.

"The Paris Commune of 1871," by Frank Jellinek.

"The Paris Commune," by V. I. Lenin.

"The Paris Commune," by E. S. Mason.

Selected Chapters in:

"The State and Revolution," by V. I. Lenin.

"Terrorism and Communism," by K. Kautsky.

"Defence of Terrorism," by L. Trotsky.

"Vital Problems in Social Evolution," by A. M. Lewis.

W. Waters