An Irish Holocaust (1995)

From the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like most historical events the so-called famine in Ireland in the last century is shrouded in myth. It is commonly believed that not only was there an actual shortage of food but that the British government was solely responsible for the shortage. Needless-to-say, the facts tell a different story.

This year, in Ireland and probably in places like Boston and New York, the 150th anniversary of events in Ireland in the years 1845/49 will bring organised ceremonies of remembrance of the Great Famine that was to lay the foundations of bitter memories and abiding hatred.

In scale it was probably as great as those terrible events of a hundred years later in Nazi Europe which accounted for the state murder of some six million people who were, by religion, or tradition, Jewish. The method of killing in Ireland was not death camps but the utter despair and terror of parents watching their children die, or, perhaps worse, predeceasing their children, which was common to both cataclysmic obscenities. Both arose out of the material conditions of a society where the nourishment of human life was obliterated by the needs of wealth and power.

If that latter contingency belonged to the past, if life today was lived as it could be with the guarantee of the material needs of a full and happy life for every human being, then we might weep for all the victims of class society and build their memorial, in the categorical assurance that such evils have been banished forever.

But they haven’t: famines, real and contrived, are an endemic feature of world capitalism. Dying parents in one part of our world watch stark-eyed children stare .  .  .  hear their futile cries of pain and puzzlement, as mercy ushers them into peaceful death while, in the same place, life-saving food for which the starving do not offer a market is shipped to places where it can be converted to profit.

In Ireland in 1841 census returns showed a population of some 8.1 million people and forecast that, by the end of another decade, that figure would have increased by a further million. Life for the serf-like Irish peasantry was frugal beyond our imagination. Their diet was potatoes, enhanced sometimes by other root vegetables and, for those affluent enough to possess a cow, a bit of butter. It is a compliment to those basic foodstuffs that visitors to Ireland not infrequently remarked on the good physical condition of the people. But life was grindingly hard and physical security non-existent.

Landlordism

Landlordism was at the centre of the Irish economy. Outside of the province of Ulster, the peasant was simply a tenant-at-will, that is to say their tenure and their rent were arbitrarily determined seasonally by landlords or, more often, by their rapacious agents. Holdings were generally tiny, sometimes as little as a quarter of an acre, and any attempt at improvement, either of husbandry or habitation, drew the threat of eviction or higher rent.

Potato blight was common and in the years of the great Hunger the whole of Europe was seriously affected. Today the blight is exorcised by the use of chemical fungicides but then, in most countries where farms were larger farmers grew a number of varieties of potatoes thus assuring that if one species was blighted the others would escape the blight. Given the size of peasant smallholdings in Ireland, this natural antidote to the problem of blight could not be applied and a single variety of potato represented the tenuous hold on life in rural Ireland.

The ravaging of the crop by blight was not uncommon. For the pathetic smallholder and his family it meant months of semi-starvation and an increased burden of debt until the new season’s crop would appear. In 1846 there was a rich crop and the promise of a bumper harvest brought joy to the burdened people. But the promise was not realised for, almost overnight, the blight returned and turned hope into despair as the landscape became infested with putrefying vegetation and the atmosphere filled with the evil smell of decay.

Hope was abandoned: witnesses have testified to the despair of men, women and children sitting on fences, in the dank, overcast day wailing almost ritually at the sight of their life’s support turning to a foul-smelling mucilage. There would be no rent for the agent, and the landlords, doubtless prompted by the 1846 abolition of the Com Laws, were anxious to evict their miserable tenants and turn their estates into cattle ranches.

In the following year, 1847, not only did the blight return but, because of the shortage of seed potatoes and mass evictions from the land, the acreage under cultivation was down and the prospect of saving some potatoes offered even less hope.

For those fit enough to travel, places like Liverpool and the northern cities of England offered hope but the place where: “they say there’s food and work for all and the sun shines always there ” was the eastern seaboard of America.

Coffin ships

Helped often by landlords anxious to get them off the land, they left in their thousands and their need to travel provided an attractive market for speculators who could provide any form of shipping space for these miserable poor. Such were the conditions in the hulks playing the long, pitiless Atlantic crossing as to test the fit. But the starvelings embarking in these “coffin ships” were not only ill-fitted to face the cold, insanitary journey of endless nights and days; they travelled with death as a companion in their midst in the form of typhus and relapsing disease resultant from the conditions they had already experienced.

Until 1854, when the Passenger Acts were strengthened by Act of Parliament, most British ships carrying Irish emigrants provided only the most basic facilities for cooking at sea and sanitary provision was minimal or non-existent. It is estimated, from passenger lists, ships’ logs and medical records in the ports of arrival, that some 25 percent of Irish emigrant passengers on British ships were fatalities of the Atlantic crossing.

Those who did survive nourished a hatred of “England” (Irish folk patriotism always singularised England as Perfidious Albion) that would survive the generations and ensure that rebellion in Ireland was not only funded but most forcibly stimulated. From the Fenians to the plastic buckets of Noraid the folk memory of more than a million sad refugees matured to anger and bequeathed the memory of the other millions whose lives had been torturously forfeited to a semi-feudal landlordism and an equally brutal capitalism.

Food exported

In reality there was not a famine in Ireland during the terrible years of hunger and disease. What did happen was the staple food of the poor was blighted with disease and such was the system of landlordism that there was no fall-back root crops available to the peasantry. It was the rapacity of the feudal aristocracy that imposed this frugal living on the people. They were mainly English but the vile agents who carried out their sentences— for eviction in the prevailing conditions was almost certainly a death sentence— were often Irish.

We say there was not a famine because the well-documented record reveals that during the starvation years, when people ate dogs, cats and rats and when a few instances of cannibalism were reported, enough food to feed twice the number of people in Ireland was continuously exported. Cattle, sheep, pigs and the thousands of tonnes of cereal crops left Ireland during each of the famine years.

James Connolly is among the writers and historians who give us an insight into the grim mathematics of economic murder that capitalism wrought in Ireland in the years between 1845 and 1849:

“The first failure of the potato crop took place in 1845 and between September and December of that year 515 deaths from hunger were registered although 3,250,000 quarters of wheat and numberless cattle had been exported. From that time until 1850 the famine spread, and the exports of food continued. Thus in 1848 it was estimated that 300,000 persons died of hunger and1,826,132 quarters of wheat and barley were exported. ” (Labour in Irish History, p. 102.)

That Connolly’s figures may err on the low side is contested by some other writers and would seem to be borne out by the figures he quotes, earlier in the same work, for the yearly value of the Irish potato crop which was approximately £20 million while, in the year 1848, when the entire potato crop was a total loss, the value of Ireland’s agricultural produce was £44,958,120.

The historian, Curtis, points out that while half of Ireland’s 8.1 million population was entirely dependent on the potato at the time of the potato blight, “three quarters of the soil was under wheat and other crops”. (A History of Ireland, Edmund Curtis, p. 367.)

L. M. Cullen, an apologist for capitalism, unwittingly shows the cause not only of the Irish “Famine”, but of most subsequent famines elsewhere, when he draws attention to the fact that in much of the country a retailing system existed. “Here the problem was not one of the absence of a food market but of the lack of an income on the part of the poorer members of the community. ”

With the exception of the counties Antrim, Down and, to a lesser extent, Armagh, the lifestyle and culture of the comparatively new system of capitalism was foreign to Ireland. But the London parliament, consisting then of free marketeers like the contemporary brigands Portillo, Lilley and their compassionless ilk, preaching the brutal gospel of laissez-faire, did not see the economic murder of the poor as a valid reason for disturbing the free play of the market. In the light of public outcry in Britain and elsewhere, the government did reluctantly introduce some relief schemes but because they had to circumvent market interests they were often absurdly ineffectual and a starving people continued to watch the export of the food that could save their lives.

It is a pattern—market forces dictating that food should be exported from a famine-stricken area towards consumers who can pay, leaving those who can’t pay to die of starvation—that has been followed ever since under capitalism: in Bengal, in the Sudan, in Bangladesh and in Ethiopia.

Richard Montague

Welsh Nationalism (1964)

From the April 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1925 was formed Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party. One of its aims was to achieve Dominion status for Wales.

Today Plaid Cymru has become a national party and a real challenge to the Liberal and Labour parties. Plaid Cymru claims that English domination is the cause of the social ills, such as bad housing, old age poverty, unemployment and rural depopulation from which the people of Wales suffer. What is the attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to Welsh nationalism? Do we support the aim of Welsh independence? The Socialist and the nationalist see society from different points of view. For the Socialist present-day society is divided into two classes: a capitalist class who own the means of production, and a working class who, having no property, are forced to work for the capitalists. The interests of these two classes are opposed and between them there is a class struggle. This transcends national boundaries.

For the Socialist the propertyless working class have no country. The nationalist, on the other hand, sees the inhabitants of one particular area as a unit having a common interest. He ignores the class division of society and the class struggle. For him the nation is all-important. He encourages the worker to believe he has a country. Thus Socialism and nationalism are opposed. They are irreconcilable. Nationalism is in fact one of the means which capitalism uses to blind the workers to class society. It is a delusion which Socialists seek to dispel. For this reason the Socialist Party is opposed to Welsh nationalism and does not support the demand for Welsh independence.

The cause of unemployment and other social ills is in capitalism and its production for profit. When there is no profit to make from production, then production stops and unemployment spreads. Unemployment is inevitable under capitalism.

Plaid Cymru sees the cause of Welsh unemployment in a mythical English domination. Here again the nationalist is mistaken. He sees poverty not as a class problem but as a national problem: a problem to be solved not by class emancipation but by national emancipation. Socialists are committed to exposing this way of looking at social problems. We deny that English domination is the cause of poverty in Wales and consequently hold that national independence is not the solution.

Plaid Cymru promises that if it forms the government it will introduce various social reforms designed to improve the lot of the people of Wales. We say that such reforms will fail. For it is the social system, and not the political regime, which will determine how people will live in an independent Wales. It is obvious that Plaid Cymru, despite its talk of “co-operative Welsh Socialism,” intends that capitalism in one form or another should continue after Wales has achieved independence. This means that poverty also will continue. National independence will merely mean that the capitalists of Wales will pay their taxes to a government in Cardiff instead of to a government in London—a change of no interest to the workers of Wales.

What then is the solution? Since these social problems arise from capitalism nothing short of the complete overthrow of this system will be sufficient. The Socialist Party therefore urges the workers of Wales to unite with workers elsewhere to set up a world Socialist system where the peoples of the world will co-operate to produce for their needs on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life. This will be a society without frontiers, without nations and without war. This is the real alternative to capitalism and nationalism.

Adam Buick

Fake "socialism" ends in Albania (1991)

From the August 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dramatic events in Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990 found at first little echo in Albania, the small Balkan state which had often been described as one of the last strongholds of Stalinism. Over the last nine months, however, political and economic changes have affected Albania too, though, as elsewhere, it remains to be seen just how far-reaching they are.

For many years. Albania was isolated politically as well as geographically. It had diplomatic relations with neither Russia nor America, and was the only East European state to support the Chinese government in the Sino-Soviet dispute. The country was ruled in classic Bolshevik style. The Party of Labour (the "Communists") ruled with an iron fist, and the Party Leader, Enver Hoxha, was a brutal dictator. Industry was state-owned, workers laboured long hours for a pittance, rationing was widespread, there was a ubiquitous secret police, and any speaking out of line was ruthlessly punished.

Relations with China gradually deteriorated in the 1970s, as China became more friendly with the USA and Yugoslavia. A number of Albanian leaders were removed from office after the arrest of the "Gang of Four" in China in 1976, as Hoxha sought to defend his position. He died in 1985, to be succeeded by his deputy, Ramiz Alia.

Hoxha’s policies had in fact become slightly more flexible in his last few years, as the drive for economic development made closer links with other countries imperative. Diplomatic and trading ties were begun with a number of states, and the border with Greece, which had been closed since the Second World War. was reopened. Albania was also linked for the first time with the European rail network. Italian ships were allowed to call at the Albanian port of Durres. Under Alia, these policies were continued, as Albania received valuable foreign exchange through export of oil and iron ore.

These developments proceeded only slowly until last year. Then comprehensive new laws were passed, decentralizing the economy and permitting overseas investment and some kinds of private enterprise. The UN Secretary General visited Albania, and so did a top Chinese leader, no doubt passing on advice about the economic reforms in China. The state-capitalist regime in Albania was being relaxed just a little, its inefficiency being plain for all to see.

At the same time, the Party of Labour was supposedly made more democratic, but it (and its leaders) retained a stranglehold on power. Then last December things began to move faster. There were demonstrations on the streets, and Alia had to concede the formation of opposition parties and "free" elections for 31 March this year. But this did not defuse the situation, and the strikes and demos continued. In February a giant statue of Hoxha in the capital was pulled down—in the circumstances, a highly symbolic action in a country where there were still few ways of expressing political opposition. Another possibility was emigration, and many Albanians hijacked ships and fled to Italy across the Adriatic, though many were forcibly sent back.

The March elections gave the Party of Labour a majority, with two-thirds of the parliamentary seats. But their success was confined to the countryside, and in the towns the opposition (spearheaded by the Democratic Party) won most of the votes. Even Alia failed to be elected in Tirana. But around two-thirds of the population live in small villages where the Democratic Party, which had been in existence for less than four months, could make little impact. The election result was greeted by violent protests in the towns, and at least three protestors were killed by police.

A new constitution was published, abandoning all the spurious claims to being socialist and allowing private businesses to be set up (but few people had the resources to do so). In May a general strike began, and workers demanded pay rises of up to 100 percent, far more than the government was prepared to offer. The Party of Labour was split, with Alia prepared to give more concessions, while hardliners who still revered Hoxha set themselves against any changes whatsoever. At the beginning of June the government collapsed, unable to stop the strikes or restore order. A coalition government took control, run by the Democrats and the "Socialists" (as the Party of Labour has been misleadingly renamed). New elections are to be held next summer, while the government tries to tackle the appalling economic problems and the expectations aroused by the dramatic events of the last six months.

It is too early to know what will transpire in Albania, and clearly a lot can happen between now and next years elections. Popular support for the various parties may fluctuate widely, and the old ruling class will be challenged by the new private capitalists. Ordinary workers have gained some freedom to protest and organise. Yet again the failure of state capitalism has been exposed, and the rapidity of political change has been remarkable. In whatever guise. Albania is likely to be integrated more and more clearly into the world capitalist system.

Paul Bennett

The maxims of Enoch Powell (1965)

From the August 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

"When I see a rich man I give thanks to God".

To Mr. Enoch Powell capitalism is emphatically not a dirty word. To him it describes a social system before whose uncontrollable processes he stands in awe. In competition, the profit motive, “market mechanisms”, he sees capitalism as containing all that is morally right, socially beneficial and historically progressive. What Mr. Powell deplores above all is any attempt on the part of the state machine to interfere with the economic forces of capitalism. Society should never question what capitalism itself represents as economic necessity, for in its infinite wisdom capitalism knows what is best for humanity.

An example of the kind of government action that Mr. Powell deprecates is the attempt to arrest the movement of the labour force from areas of industrial decline to areas of industrial growth by imposing regional development. Also, he sees the intervention of the state in maintaining uneconomic services on, say, the railways as harmful. The law of economic viability ought to be allowed to run its course. The North-East of England and unprofitable railways should be discarded, for what is dead should be buried. Only what is commercially advantageous is socially best.

Another area of industrial life where Mr. Powell feels the state has no good cause to show its face is in wage bargaining between employers and workers. Here again, he says, the "free play of the market” is the best deciding factor; Mr. Powell mocks the attempts of the government to “plan” incomes as much as he attacks their attempts to plan economic growth. He thinks that Government action in these fields is only likely to frustrate the freedom of people to do what is best for themselves.

Mr. Powell has never carried his ideas to the point where he has refused to serve in governments that have attempted intervention in these various fields. He was part of the government that sent Mr. Quintin Hogg (complete with cloth cap) on a tour of the North-East as part of an attempt to formulate a plan for revived industry in that area. It was the same government that set up Nicky, Neddy and at least paid lip-service to the idea of an “incomes policy”. During this time, Mr. Powell held ministerial rank and was part of the Cabinet.

The case of Mr. Powell presents a curious and unashamed throwback to the ideas of early 19th century laissez faire capitalism. In fact, since the 19th century, the state machine has continued to grow and expand its field of influence through all branches of social and economic life including welfare and pensions, defence, nationalised industries, civil service, treasury, the law, housing, education, transport, science and technology, etc.

Mr. Powell has said that the disadvantage of the state is that it is not directly involved in competitive profit-making and is therefore “devoid of the incentives which tend to sharpen people’s minds in a competitive situation about what might be the right and what might be the wrong course’ . . .  It is this very detached position of the government’s which allows it to view and act upon what it calls the collective “national interest”, plus, of course, the interests of itself as a political party in power. Part of the function of the state has been to try to mitigate some of the more savage effects of capitalism’s jungle laws, by the distribution of doles to the unemployed, subsidised housing, for example.

The intervention of the state in economic affairs, such as nationalisation, rent control, agricultural subsidies, etc., do not compromise the nature of capitalism; they are attempts by the government to facilitate its smooth running.

The tendency in capitalist society is quite the reverse of what Mr. Powell would like to sec. Far from diminishing its influence, the state machine expands and becomes more complex. It is doubtful whether Mr. Powell's views can ever have a practical place in the policies of a future Tory government.

One effect that Mr. Powell’s views do have at the present time is to help to preserve within the Tory Party its conservative identity and pander to traditional prejudices such as distrust of bureaucracy and the mythical virtue of conservative freedom. In practice, Tory governments of necessity administrate capitalism in much the same way as Labour governments. The policies they carry out are prescribed for them not by political principle, but in the main by the economic dictates of the situation in which they find themselves.

In spite of the fact that when they are faced with the realities of government the spurious differences between the Labour and Tory Parties tend to evaporate, as separate organisations they require the front of a separate identity. It is men like Mr. Powell who in the Tory Party help to provide the image of traditional conservatism. Whatever the actual policies of Tory governments in power, his views cater to the emotional requirements and sentiments of Tory Party membership.

Similarly in the Labour Party, the function of a politician like Mr. Michael Foot is that in spite of what the Labour government has done since it took office, the views of Michael Foot tend to create the impression of a “radical left-wing” party who are guardians of working-class interests. This is inspiring to Labour Party workers and helps to provide cohesion within the organisation.

Mr. Powell has said, “When I see a rich man I give thanks to God. What do I feel when I see a poor man? It is that he would be poorer still if there were not the opportunity and the national incentive to people to succeed, to become rich, to make profit”. What, in fact, Mr. Powell is advocating is complete subservience to the economic tyrannies of capitalist society, and more than that, all the class privileges and under privileges that it implies.

Mr. Powell accepts the criteria of profit, commercial advantage, and the opportunities for sale provided by “market mechanisms” as the best motivating force behind the provision of community requirements. In fact, nothing could be more remote from the realities of life under capitalism.

In practice, the private ownership of wealth, commerce, and the profit motive prevent society’s free use of its productive techniques and ensure that a vast proportion of social labour is inefficiently applied to functions that have nothing to do with meeting human needs. The profit motive is not something that facilitates the widest possible distribution of wealth, hut is in itself an economic barrier against the application of man’s accumulated knowledge and techniques in production. An example of this can be found in “National defence", which Mr. Powell concedes is the proper concern of the state. The need for “National defence" arises from the situation where the modern nation states, Britain, France, America. Russia, etc., are competitors over markets, trade routes, sources of raw materials, spheres of national influence, etc. In order to maintain security in a competitive world, governments must maintain standing armies, navies and air forces; they must divert research and technology into the improvement of means of destruction such as nuclear weapons. The government must maintain an armaments industry and ensure housing, food, clothing, transport, etc., for all the personnel involved.

Measured against these facts of everyday life. Mr. Powell’s maxim that competition stimulates production is true only within extremely narrow limits. In practice, economic rivalry carries with it the burden of a vast appendage of wasteful functions which from the point of view of real material needs are utterly useless. Competition and economic rivalry both within nations and between nations generate fear, insecurity and enduring frustration, and result in hatred and violence. The fact of workers being in competition within a nation over jobs, housing, etc., can provide the seedbed of enmity and race prejudice. Between nations, it is not merely that economic rivalry results in all the material wastefulness that is involved in war, but it also causes the destruction of human life itself. The Americans and Vietnamese who are killing each other now are doing so against a background of all that Mr. Powell eulogises as competition and economic rivalry. The effort that capitalist society puts into war and the preparations for war is only one aspect of the material waste and human misery that results directly from production for profit.

The profit motive is not a liberating factor in production but one that stultifies production. The profit motive sets the limitations on what is possible in production and distribution. Against this end, the real material needs of the community take second place. Man under capitalism provides food, housing, clothing, health services, education, etc., within a tight economic framework conditioned by the prior requirements of profit. It is against this background that the enduring problems of society such as housing shortages, ugly urban environments and the fact that two-thirds of the world’s population do not get enough to eat must be understood.

Mr. Powell has talked a good deal about freedom, but the kind of freedom he seeks to maintain is the freedom of entrepreneurs to wield an arbitrary power in pursuit of their narrow private property interests in the most fundamental of human activities—the production and distribution of wealth. Socialists also want freedom, but freedom of the whole community to deploy its productive resources and all the talents and skills of the working class—be they scientists, professional workers, craftsmen, technologists of whatever— in the long overdue work of solving our problems. But Socialism involves more than the possibility of material comfort. Above all, Socialist freedom is the freedom of the individual emancipated from his working-class status and all the indignities of economic servitude and exploitation that Mr. Powell finds so worthy of approval.

Pieter Lawrence

Who Decides What and How? (2016)

From the January 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does complexity rule out meaningful democracy?

When socialists speak of democracy we mean something very different from the concept the mainstream media provides. Instead of giving you permission to vote for some toff or careerist to serve and define your political interests (improbably) for five years we insist that any meaning democracy must entail the involvement of the community at every level in political/economic decision making.

When confronted by this definition of democracy our rulers and their media are incredulous and produce a torrent of reasons why this is impractical at best and political madness at worst. Most of the objections are ideological and do not deserve any serious consideration but there is one that has to be discussed: Does our technological culture depend almost entirely on the expertise of a minority of specialists whose knowledge cannot be easily understood by the ‘layman’ and is therefore inaccessible to democratic debate and decision? Are these ‘technocrats’ the only ones with the talent and ability to make decisions concerning, for instance, scientific research and technological application?

What happens today

Before we attempt to answer this let us consider how such decisions are made in the present economic system. Science and technology are usually financed in two ways within capitalism – either via the state (universities and the military) or through so called ‘private’ investment by big business. These two approaches are motivated essentially by the same desired end – to enhance the wealth and power of the capitalist class. Any benefit enjoyed by the wider community is merely a by-product of this economic dynamic. Over the years within many industries scandals have been exposed as a result of the contradiction between the economic imperatives of profit and the integrity of scientific research. Scientists are human and as such are subjected to the same cultural and political pressures as the rest of us. When science is subverted by economic and political interests then disaster is always a possibility.

Although the owners of the capital that is invested in these industries do take some notice of their tame ‘technocrats’ they listen much more attentively to their accountants. When couched in such phrases as ‘cost benefit’ in terms of the expected return on investment it sounds almost rational – if we are prepared to tolerate the obfuscation and inevitable dangers this entails. The point being, in terms of this debate, that it’s not primarily the ‘experts’ who make decisions about research and technological application but investment advisors (motivated solely by the need to enhance their clients’ investment portfolios).

Politicians share this perspective when deciding how their masters’ tax dollars are to be spent in terms of state investment in science and technology. In other words, in this respect, the technological experts have no political power at all. It would seem that this particular criticism of socialist democracy is specious since whenever the experts’ advice conflicts with economic expectations they are side-lined or ignored completely.

How it could be

Would socialism represent an improvement in the rational application of science and technology to production for need instead of profit?

The decision of the allocation of resources within socialism would have three stages: Dissemination of information, debate and vote.

The first part would rely on the expertise and talent of those involved within the relevant industries, in this case scientists and technologists. Because of the absence of political pressures they would be free to articulate candidly about the benefits and risks of developing certain productive technologies. There would have to be an element of trust in taking this advice but as in criminal trials this will be balanced by experts who take a different perspective.

A debate by the wider community would then take place using this information and evaluating possible contrasting opinions. Again, as in present day trials, the community will be asked which course to take based on their assessment of which evidence they find the most compelling. As is the case now mistakes will be made but at least they will be the result of honest error rather than Machiavellian political intrigue and corruption which is so ubiquitous today. Within this political culture scientists (and their spokesmen/women) will not exhibit the sometimes arrogant and elitist attitudes they do today – after all their future and that of their children will depend on the decisions made. Being a scientist will mean incorporating the ability to communicate about their work with others (as indeed some of the greatest scientists do presently).

Undoubtedly the level of education, both political and general, would be much higher within socialism – we do not concur with the elitist position that only a minority of the community will ever have the intelligence to make these important decisions. Again, if we live in some kind of elitist meritocracy (as the propaganda would have us believe) then the obvious political and scientific disasters that decorate capitalism’s history would imply the failure of this illusory bourgeois approach to ‘democracy’.

We maintain that no meaningful democracy is possible until the decisions concerning the production of the means of life are taken under the democratic control of the whole community. That this is a possibility will make the motivation for democratic activity so much more exciting – in contrast to the obvious impotent and cynical gatherings which parish, county, regional and national councils/governments now represent. Production for profit is the antithesis to democracy because it can only ever work in the interests of the parasitic minority. Democracy is still a concept that waits patiently in the wings of history’s theatre, ready for the consciousness that will finally bring it to centre stage.

Wez.

Another Victim of Capitalism (1997)

TV Review from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among all the protracted TV coverage devoted to the death of Princess Diana. (BBC and ITV all day. every day) several important questions remain unanswered. Not just why she should have received countless hours of TV airtime devoted to her work with the poor and needy when millions across Britain— who have done just as much and rather more besides— never get mentioned and probably never will get mentioned.

And not necessarily the type of questions that have been concerning the media either—like whether Dodi Fayed’s bodyguard was drunk, what speed the car was going at when it crashed or whether MI6 are competent enough to kill renegade princesses. No, there are other questions, at least as relevant as any of these, that spring directly to the fore of the inquisitive mind.

One of the most obvious is this. Which person in modern human history has received the most attention from, and been the subject of more media predictions by astrologers, numerologists, spiritualists, soothsayers and other crystal ball gazers, than Princess Diana? And furthermore, why did not a single one of these professional fraudsters prophesy Diana’s fatal accident? And just as bizarrely, why has no-one apparently noticed this? The British media, increasingly including the TV media, feeds the working class a meaty daily diet of tricksters and charlatans who claim to have the future in their hands. And yet when further incontrovertible evidence emerges of their complete inability to do what they claim they can, we don’t hear a peep from their media pimps. How odd.

Shooting from the hip

More questions, and of greater import still. Who or what really killed Diana? Was it the press? Or, as Andrew Neil and others have seemingly implied, the public who actually watched the news and bought the papers? Frankly, neither of these explanations is truly plausible. The media could hardly be described as sole agents in her death as they were merely responding to the competitive impulses engendered by circulation wars and the market (as indeed were the paparazzi). But in that case, were not the buying and watching public themselves to blame?

This idea is even less plausible.There has not been a single UK national newspaper or TV channel which has not pursued Diana at some time or another to sell papers or attract viewers and advertising and thus make more profit. In that situation, where is the choice for those who want genuine news? Wherever people looked, there she was on the most ‘‘serious’’ of TV channels and newspapers commonly available.

Even if it can be argued that the bulk of the working class have tended to gravitate towards those sectors of the media offering the more sensationalist type of coverage of the royal family it is risible to claim that the newspapers were only providing what the "real culprits’’—the general public—wanted. Firstly, this totally ignores the effect the media has in determining what is on offer to the public and the undercurrent of bias and manipulation with which they steer the public towards certain ways of thinking and acting. Secondly, it is little more than pathetic to suggest that the media was just bowing to "popular demand" as if they—or any rational person—think that majority opinion at any one moment in time and on any issue in today’s society must be followed to the letter.

Given the spurious and hopelessly distorted levels of democracy currently in existence in countries like Britain, majority opinion at any time can be taken to be just that and no more because whatever majority opinion exists on a subject is refracted through a distorting prism called the economy where there is no democracy at all. The resulting picture is often mangled and disfigured beyond recognition as a result. It would be ludicrous to take an opinion and defend it on all grounds simply because it is currently that of a majority. The media have certainly not done so in the past so why use this excuse now?

Taking some examples, if the majority of people had been calling for Diana’s imprisonment or worse on grounds of treason would that have been okay and would the media have led the charge simply on the grounds of giving the public what it wanted? Extending this logic further, if the majority of the population was overtly racist would we all have had to start going round killing black people and would the media have campaigned for the setting up of concentration camps? Hitler had majority constitutional backing at one key point in Germany’s history—was that all right too? Of course not, and the media must know it. Democracy is a qualitative not just a crudely quantitative phenomenon.The bottom line is that if you know something is wrong you argue and fight against it, not pander to the worst sort of prejudices going. What the media have been doing is merely using the public to divert attention from their own alleged complicity in the whole affair.

Which brings us back to what really did for the "people’s princess". Avoiding the trap of scapegoating, it was clearly the pressures and conflicts brought about by present-day society itself, not just isolated parts of it. At root we live in a money and status-obsessed society which elevated the wretched girl to the ridiculous and fantastical heights of being a royal princess, stuffed her mind full of some of the most ridiculous notions and "rules" imaginable until she became possibly the world’s most visible neurotic, and it was this same hierarchical and profit- hungry society which hunted her to death in the pursuit of the great god Mammon.

Socialists are unremittingly hostile to hierarchy and privilege (far more so of course than Diana herself— despite the claims of Trevor McDonald and his like) but that does not mean we have no sympathy at all for those outside the working class who are also sometimes victims of a mad. uncontrollable system. For let there be no mistake. Diana the Princess of Wales was not merely killed by “the media", the "paparazzi" or the amorphous "general public". Diana, in truth, was created by capitalism and then killed by it too. But what are the chances of a week's constant TV discussion of that?

Dave Perrin

What makes you angry? (1992)

From the July 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are you irritated? Annoyed? Angry? What causes this? Standing in a ten-year supermarket check-out queue? Your children scattering their toys and clothes all over the house? Gameshows on television? A social system where the many are economically exploited by. and for the benefit of, the few?

Everything’s relative. To be a victim of a capitalist’s pension fraud rates rather higher on the cosmic scale of things to get upset about than does burning the breakfast toast. Whilst the one event is an obvious effect of a social system based upon production for profit where the continuing accumulation of wealth overrides all other human considerations, capitalism can’t be held responsible for burnt toast. Unless it’s a result of having to rush in order to fulfil one’s obligations as a wage slave.

My local newspaper gives front-page prominence to the news that in the town where I live a clothing store run by the WRVS for the distribution of free second-hand clothing to the poor and needy is closing. One volunteer said that she never knew there was so much poverty until she started working for the scheme. Although 10,000 items of clothing had been distributed during the last twelve months, she was distressed that the powers- that-be knew nothing about the needs of people affected by the recession.

Still, it’s all relative. According to the 480-page, 43rd edition of Britain—an Official Handbook published by the governmental Central Office of Information, Britain is a prosperous society enjoying unprecedented wealth (Wolverhampton Express & Star, 9 January). Little mention is made in the handbook of the effects of recession or of rising unemployment. It’s unlikely that those members of the working class queueing up for free hand-me-downs, or buying from charity shops, are among the one in four who now own shares.

A few hundred British Telecom shares doesn’t put you in the capitalist class. Try giving up your paid wage slavery, assuming you have some, and living off the share dividends. You'll quickly discover that you’re still a member of the majority who are forced to sell their labour power in order to survive in a capitalist society. Even if you have “taken advantage” of the many privatisation share offers of recent years, statistics show that most people take a quick profit and run.

Debt

The number of people owning their own homes, says the Handbook, has risen almost four-fold compared to 40 years ago. If you have actually paid off your mortgage you are one of the fortunate minority. Most “home-owners’” houses and flats are still owned by building societies. As more and more families and individuals find themselves unable to maintain their mortgage repayments and have their homes re-possessed, the effects of living in a “private property” society become devastatingly clear.

Still, it’s all relative, isn't it? Compared to conditions in other parts of the worldwide capitalist system life in the geographical economic unit called Great Britain remains reasonably safe and civilised. Or does it? What odds on your being one of those members of the working class who lose their life in one of the 600 work-related fatalities every year? Or being seriously injured in one the 100,000 work- related major accidents every year? Money spent on health and safety in the work-place reduces profits—and profits are more important in a capitalist society than workers’ safety.

If you believe that the odds on your becoming one of the above statistics are too long to worry about, those on your being, or becoming, in serious debt are much shorter:

High interest rates, easy consumer credit and poverty have driven 2.5 million British households into debt. Research published by the independent Policy Studies Institute shows that 12 per cent of British households have problems with debt. The report rejects stereotypical views of people running up huge debts on credit. It concludes that poverty, rather than excessive consumer spending, forces many families into financial difficulties. Mr Berthoud. a senior research fellow at the PSI, said, “We don't find that buying lots of videos. televisions, cars and so on is very strongly implicated in debt; we do find that not having much money to live on, running out of money at the end of each week, what we call hardship, is implicated in debt”. Poorer people are no better off than they were in 1979. (The Independent, 27 February 1992).

It’s all relative. But need it be?

A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut. However high it may shoot up in the course of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls. (Wage Labour and Capital. Karl Marx).

Capitalism

The majority working class has no cause to feel satisfied with capitalism. The time has come for the working class to translate its dissatisfaction into positive political action.

“But what", you ask, “of socialism?" It is too facile to sneer at the idea of “civilising” capitalism. What do you imagine the trade unions are about? Or the welfare state? It is a plain fact, which we should all recognise, that there has been no comprehensive programme (Bolshevism apart) (sic) to replace capitalism as the dominant system in this country since the early 1830s when there was massive but brief support for Robert Owen’s niillenarian vision. Two lessons surely stand out from the past 13 brutal years. One is that it is better to have a “civilised” capitalism (sic) than the kind sponsored by Margaret Thatcher or John Major. The second is that, with the internationalisation of capital, there cannot be Keynesianism, let alone socialism, in one country. (Joe England, Tribune, 24 January).

This is the “solution” offered to the working class by all other political parties—reforming capitalism, civilising capitalism. It is not the solution presented to the working class by this particular party, the Socialist Party. All it takes to do away with all the ills of capitalism is a politically aware and motivated working class which wants and understands socialism.

There was a man I used to have business dealings with. I never met him, we used to converse over the telephone a lot. After the company employing him went bust I never heard from him again. I read in the newspaper that he had run a rubber pipe from his car exhaust and gassed himself. The inquest was told that he owed creditors lots of money, and letters from his bank were found beside him. I still feel sick when I think of the unimaginable, the pressures on an individual that forces him into doing that. It’s said that you can be poor and still be happy. The evidence to show that you can only be poor and miserable, or worse, in a capitalist society is all around us. What makes you angry?

Dave Coggan

Worked to Death (2016)

From the January 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

A look at cases of people being killed or injured because of their work, and at why such things happen.

Over the last two decades at least twenty thousand sugar-cane cutters in Central America have died of kidney failure, caused by dehydration, heat exposure and physical stress (New Internationalist, November 2015). This is not the usual kind of industrial ‘accident’, but it was clearly their work that was responsible for these people’s deaths.

A more common kind of workplace death is exemplified by the case of Cameron Minshull, a 16-year-old apprentice killed at a factory in Bury in 2013. Cameron, who earned just £3 an hour, was dragged into a lathe and died of head injuries. There was no safety regime at the company; young workers were untrained and unsupervised, and had to clean the lathes while they were still running. The firm’s owner was sentenced to eight months in prison, the company admitted corporate manslaughter and was fined, and the recruitment agency (which had been paid by the government for placing Cameron at the firm) was also fined. His mother said, ‘He should never have died for doing the right thing, for going to work to earn a living and to be trained to become an engineer.’

In 2014–5 a total of 142 workers were fatally injured in Great Britain; this was lower than the average for the last five years but slightly higher than the figure for 2013–4. In addition 102 ‘members of the public’ were killed in work-connected incidents in 2014–5 (excluding rail suicides).

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) makes much of the fact that, since the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work Act in 1974, fatal injuries to employees have fallen by 86 percent and reported non-fatal injuries by 77 percent. On the other hand, deaths from asbestos-related diseases increased by a factor of ten between 1974 and 2012, largely because of exposure to asbestos prior to 1980. So it is not purely a matter of being killed or injured while at work; deaths and injuries arising from work must also be considered (as the example of the cane-cutters shows).

Agriculture (including forestry and fishing) is the most dangerous industry sector in Greta Britain, according to the HSE. Only one worker in a hundred is in agriculture, but one fatal injury in five occurs there. The number of fatal injuries has been reduced since 1974, but much less than in other industries. In 2013–4, there were 27 workplace deaths among agricultural workers, the most frequent of which involved being struck by a moving vehicle; in addition, four members of the public were fatally injured. Furthermore, about ninety deaths a year among those who work or worked in agriculture are attributed to occupational carcinogens. Non-fatal incidents are common too, with 292 major injuries to agricultural employees in 2013–4 (this figure excludes the self-employed, who make up about half the agricultural workforce, and it is generally accepted that there is a high level of underreporting of non-fatal injuries).

In construction, there were 35 fatal injuries in 2014–5, almost half of them caused by falls from heights. The fatality rate per employee was 3.5 times the average across all industries, though far less than that in agriculture. And in any year, around 69,000 construction workers suffer from an illness they believe was caused or made worse by their work (around 40 percent of these are new conditions started during that year).

In the US, workplace deaths are much higher, with 4,679 fatal work injuries in 2014, the highest figure since 2008. Deaths in the oil and gas industries have risen dramatically, but construction remains the most dangerous industry, with one worker death in five occurring there. The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) emphasizes that, since its creation in 1971, workplace deaths have been reduced from 38 a day to twelve, but this is still an astonishingly high figure (over thirty times that in the UK, with a population only five times the size).

In April 2013 the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed, killing well over a thousand people who worked in garment factories in the building, making clothes for international brands such as Gap and Benetton. At least 500 Indian workers have died in Qatar while building the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup. Sadly, similar examples could be listed almost without end.

In 2014–5 there were 258 cases of prosecution related to health and safety in the construction industry, 243 of which resulted in a guilty verdict for at least one offence; nearly £4m was levied in fines. The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act of 2007 expanded previous legislation and made it possible to convict a company if it could be shown that senior management had committed a gross breach of duty of care. But by April last year there had been just eleven convictions for corporate manslaughter in the five years since the Act came into law. In the US, the OSHA has in over forty years achieved just twelve criminal convictions of errant companies.

The HSE notes that in 2014–5, the equivalent of 1.7 million working days were lost in construction because of workplace injuries and work-related illnesses. The ‘total economic cost to society’ (i.e. to the capitalist class) in 2013–4 was £0.9bn; across all industries the cost was estimated at £14.3bn. This is a crucial point, that workplace deaths and injuries give rise to costs for the specific employer and the wider employing class, in terms of health care and lost profits. Safety regulations exist partly to ensure that such costs do not get out of hand. And enforcement is often more about appearing to have done something than about actually performing rigorous inspections.

It is clear that much work is potentially dangerous, such as anything involving chemicals, machinery or working above ground. But that does not by itself explain why there are so many injuries, fatal and otherwise. While ‘accidents’ cost money, regulations and enforcement are expensive too. All impinge on profits, which are the main reason for production under capitalism. Companies will say that they take health and safety seriously, but they have to take profit most seriously of all. We cannot say that there would be no workplace deaths or injuries in a Socialist society, but we can be sure that the safety and well-being of those who produce the goods and services will be paramount. There will be no shortcuts, no cheap and nasty solutions, no forcing people to work in unsafe situations. Producing in the interest of the whole community will include making production as safe as is humanly possible – something that capitalism simply cannot deliver. 

Paul Bennett

Cold comfort (1969)

Book Review from the April 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver Jonathan Cape, 35s.

There are more ways than one of exploiting the Negroes’ downgraded social standing. A Negro, for example, can cash in on it himself by writing the sort of book that will be assured of big sales by a raptuous reception from Left-wing reviewers. Such a book need not say very much and what it does say can be confused. Provided it has a leavening of swear words, sex, and anger, the self-appointed 'intellectuals of the Left will rush to give it their uncritical, patronising approval.

Eldridge Cleaver is the Black Panthers' Minister of Information (their Prime Minister is Stokely Carmichael). He has been imprisoned for possession of drugs and for rape. He was a candidate in the last presidential election. With such credentials, almost any book from his was foredoomed to be hailed as a masterpiece. Thus Richard Boston, in his review in The Times, wrote of “complex arguments . . . put‘ forward with extraordinary clarity and intelligence.”

In fact, Soul on Ice is the same weary old stew of violence, sex. and four-letter words. On racism it has nothing more perceptive than a rant. Politically it is pathetic. Cleaver writes about “the rebellion of the oppressed peoples of the world” and although everyone knows who he is getting at, socialists perceive his lack of understanding that there is only one oppressed people, suffering in varying degrees. They are more simply known as the working class; they exist all over the world and their skins are of all colours. They have one interest — to get their masters, who are also of all colours, off their backs.

Now think about these two sentences:

If the capitalists are in power, they enforce laws designed to protect their system, their way of life . . .  If Communists are in power, they enforce laws designed to protect their system, their way of life.

It is almost impossible to know where to begin unravelling the confusion and naïveté of these examples of extraordinary clarity and intelligence. Does Cleaver think the ’Communist’ states are basically any different from those like America and Britain? Does he think that Communism will be a social system where one class has power and imposes laws to protect its interests? What is meant by “If the capitalists are in power”? Are they, or aren’t they?

Racism is one of the fouler fruits of workers' ignorance and frustration. The Negroes in America have suffered terribly under it and a man like Cleaver — he was born in Little Rock — must have made a tremendous effort even to become literate. That is the achievement, if we are looking for one, of Soul on Ice. But now, as the American Negroes begin to kick back, is no time to lose our balance.

Unquestioning admiration for a black man is as bad as unreasoning hatred for him. Soul on Ice must stand or fall on its merits and not on the colour of the hand that wrote it. And it falls.

Ivan

Knowledge is Power (1980)

From the February 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

The greatest weapon available to the working class in its fight against the system which oppresses us is knowledge. The wealthy and powerful capitalist class can destroy us with bombs, lock us up and ignore our poverty, but the one thing that they will never be able to beat or ignore is a politically conscious working class. To reach consciousness of our class position and what we can do about it requires knowledge. That is why every new member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain must show that he or she understands and wants the revolutionary objective to which our party is committed. It is not an objective based upon emotional appeal, but upon a rational comprehension of the nature of society. The chief task of the SPGB is to develop and spread knowledge about the world around us.

It is for this reason that Islington branch has decided to run an education programme which will cover some of the basic areas of socialist knowledge. The programme is primarily intended for members and sympathisers in the Islington-Haringey-Camden area, but we shall, of course, welcome interested people from any part of London. The classes will be in history, anthropology and economics and will provide introductory information, while at the same time providing an opportunity for critical discussion.

They will be held every Sunday evening at 8pm SHARP at the Latin American Bookshop, 29 Islington Park Street, which is adjacent to the Hope and Anchor pub in Upper Street and 2 minutes walk from Highbury and Islington tube station. We list below details of the education programme:

ECONOMICS Lecturer: E. Hardy. Dates: Feb. 3, Feb. 24. Mar. 16, Apr. 6, Apr. 27, May 18, June 8. (Subjects for each class to be announced at the first class).

HISTORY Lecturer: S. Coleman. Dates and subjects: Feb. 17. THE MARXIST PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY, Mar. 9. THE EMERGENCE OF CAPITALISM, Mar. 30. THE INDUSTRIAL AND AGRARIAN REVOLUTIONS, Apr. 20. THE ASCENDANCY OF THE CAPITALIST CLASS, 1789-1871, May 11. THE POLITICAL ORGANISATION OF THE WORKING CLASS, 1848-1904, June 1. THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF THE SPGB, June 22. IS THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION INEVITABLE?

ANTHROPOLOGY An Introduction to the Study of Pre-History. Lecturer: H. Walters. Dates and subjects: Feb. 10. General background and relevance of related sciences. The birth of the Earth, the organic period and the beginning of organic matter. Mar. 2. The succession of life through geological time. History of the primates and the emergence of the hominid line. Mar. 23. The evolution of mankind and the emergence of homo sapiens. Apr. 13. Darwin, Wallace and the theory of natural selection and the misrepresentations thereof (Social Darwinism). May 4. From hunter to farmer and the neolithic revolution. May 25. The natural division of labour and the subordination of women. Mankind the toolmaker. June 15. An appraisal: Is Human Nature a Barrier to Socialism?

All classes are free and will be open to any member of the public. It is intended to tape record all of the lectures; members wishing to obtain tapes should contact Cde. H. Walters. Further information is obtainable by visiting or writing to Islington branch.

ISLINGTON BRANCH

Comparisons with the nineteen-thirties (1977)

From the February 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most frightening things about the present depression to large numbers of people is the destruction of their belief that “bad times” would never come back. After the long post-war period without unemployment on the pre-war mass scale, it was widely assumed that chronic depression belonged to a past era which had ended. When the crisis took hold, the spectre of 1929 was raised by journalists and commentators; and as its effects intensified, the feeling spread of an old film with a cast of millions being shown again. Are the nineteen-thirties being re-enacted? There are differences as well as similarities. Some of the factors in the pre-war situation were apparent opposites to those at work today, showing that they are neither causes nor remedies of the depression. A comparison is of interest.

The 1929 crisis originated in agriculture, and was marked by the collapse of a speculative fever in the United States. In Britain it was preceded by a short boom period in new industries such as electricity, chemicals and motor-cars. It took place when — as a result of government restriction of the note-issue — the pound sterling had risen, i.e. was dearer abroad: this, and a close-down on lending in America following the Wall Street crash, killed purchases of British exports in the USA. Prices fell throughout the period 1929-33 when the depression was most acute. The British Index of Retail Prices of Food went down from 160 in 1927 to 154 in 1929, 131 in 1931, and 120 in 1933.

The present depression was preceded by minor crises which increased in severity from the nineteen- fifties onwards. Its strongest industrial features were the break in the motor-car boom and the slump in house-building; but it has been accompanied by continuing price rises now running at an annual rate of 15-20 per cent. This has been the result of inflation promoted by Labour and Conservative governments alike since the war, and one aspect of the crisis is the long run of that economic policy. Previously in the 19th and 20th centuries the operation of any policy was interrupted after a few years by a prolonged depression or a war.

The inflation policy was started by the post-war Labour government, and until now no economic or political catastrophe has baulked it. In the early nineteen-sixties party leaders were clearly unsure how to continue it, or if it could continue. Thus, immediately the 1964 Labour Government was elected Wilson and Callaghan announced measures to deal with an economic “Dunkirk” which was upon Britain, while the Tory leader Douglas- Home denied that a crisis existed (reversing the position a year earlier, when Home claimed there was a crisis and Wilson disputed it).

The world’s finance ministries in 1929 were firmly against using government expenditure to try to remedy the fall in demand. Later, groups of MPs of different parties argued for State interference and planning — Torv MPs (including Macmillan) from the depressed north-eastern areas, as well as Labourites and Lloyd George, the Liberal. Against this, the recovery in Germany took place with the ruling Nazi party declaring opposition in principle to State management; the Nazis in fact de-nationalized many undertakings. In the Economic Journal R. F. Kahn contended that “the creation of money” could do nothing but good when there were idle resources and unused productive capacity, and this was taken up by Lord Beaverbrook in his papers: the remedy for the depression, said the Daily Express, was inflation.

The Express and the Mail also campaigned for import controls — taxing all imported goods, but giving preference to those produced in the British Empire. In 1932 a 10 per cent duty was imposed on all imports except wheat and meat, and the Ottawa Agreements establishing Empire Preference were signed. Though Labour and Liberal MPs opposed Protection, both parties supported a campaign to “Boycott Japanese Goods”. This was presented as a moral stand in view of Japan having invaded Manchuria and left the League of Nations, but a flood of cheap Japanese goods into Britain was held to be putting British workers on the dole: at the 1935 Jubilee and George VI’s Coronation, girls stood in Japanese stockings and waved Union Jacks made in Japan while they watched the parades.

The popular cries on all sides were remarkably similar to those of today. “The right to work” was demanded in marches and demonstrations on behalf of the unemployed. This “right”, incidentally, was a constitutional one in Nazi Germany, and is part of the Russian constitution also. C. W. Guillebaud’s 1939 book The Economic Recovery of Germany, 1933-38, described the position:

Rather than permit this [prolonged unemployment] the State will itself provide alternative employment in some form—if not 'regular’ then ‘substitute’ employment. As a corollary to this recognition of the right to work the State imposes the duty to work, and this is a very far-reaching obligation.

The “training centres” for unemployed young men set up half-heartedly — as now — by the Government in Britain were opposed by the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, but in letters to The Times supporting the centres there was a lot of praise for the German labour camps for the unemployed.

As now and always, the working class was blamed for everything and it was commonly said that the unemployed were layabouts living too well on the dole. The magazine Good Housekeeping referred to “profiteers, dole-drawers, music-hall artists — in fact the only people who have money today”. (Quoted in The Long Week-End by Graves and Hodge). The National Confederation of Employers’ Associations claimed in 1931 that unemployment pay was sapping the nation’s strength by preventing "unemployment acting as a corrective factor in the adjustment of wage levels”. There was pressure also to stop married women being either employed or registered as unemployed, under the Anomalies Regulations of 1932. This can be compared with the discovery by “a top doctor”, headlined in the News of the World on 2nd January 1977, that married women going to work are in dire peril of bad health and infertility.

The birth-rate was low in the nineteen-thirties. In 1933 it touched he lowest point of any peace-time year before or since, and it was predicted that by 1961 the population of Britain would be under 40 millions. Family allowances were proposed to try to turn the tide. The question was debated in Parliament in 1937 with reference to the “danger to the maintenance of the British Empire” from under-population: Malthus was stood on his head. There was no shortage of particular scapegoats for the plight of the time, immigrants and Jews. The British Union of Fascists, like the National Front today, traded in this kind of ignorance, and it is a melancholy reflection that the fascist-fighting Communist Party recruited numbers of Jews who were unaware then of what happened in the Communists’ beloved Russia.

 

The CP and other ’‘militant” groups based much of their propaganda in the ‘thirties on the belief that the capitalist system would collapse, and this fallacy has risen again in the same guise of a serious theory. It was contended that radicals of all varieties should rally together; the Communists sucked up to the Labour Party they had recently been ready to attack physically, and sought an alliance with the ILP. Another still-persistent belief was that the crisis itself was a manoeuvre by powerful agents of reaction; the Labour Daily Herald said it was “a bankers’ ramp”. Radical factions formed and re-formed, with titles remarkably like those of today; and there was a fear among trade-union and labour leaders of subversion by “revolutionary” movements.

Throughout the depression, it was all right for some. The first knighthoods of trade-union leaders were given in 1935: Sir Arthur Pugh and Sir Walter Citrine, for services to capitalism. The violent contrasts between the lives of rich and poor furnished material for damning (but reform-minded) reports similar to the Inner City Studies published on 12th January 1977. The crisis and the depression affected the rich very little. Colin Clark, the economist, estimated a fall of 9-11 per cent, in personal expenditure of those with incomes over £250, from 1929 to 1933 — a figure well balanced by the sharp fall in prices.

The depressed areas of the ‘thirties were those with older industries such as shipbuilding, iron and steel, coal, and textiles. The new light industries in other areas expanded, and the multiple stores selling cheap shoddy goods paid high dividends (a table published by the News Chronicle called Woolworth’s and their like “depression-proof investments”). It was a chaotic, insensible time brought about by the senseless chaos of capitalistic production, and that applies with undiminished force in the nineteen-seventies. What were proposed as cures for the economic and social problems then are in operation in the depression today, but are regarded as part of the trouble: inflation and the Welfare State. Conversely, today’s alleged solutions were part of the situation in the nineteen-thirties: a “strong” pound, import controls, and low prices (including wages).

One more similarity is the circuses provided to mollify the breadless. In the midst of mass unemployment, they had a Royal Jubilee and a Coronation; by what may be thought a nice coincidence, 1977 offers a Jubilee too. In Coronation week, 1938, everyone registered with the Unemployment Assistance Board was paid an extra 2s.6d. What overwhelming bounty is in store this year? W.H. Auden called the nineteen-thirties a "low, dishonest decade”. No more so than any other decade under capitalism, Mr. Poet; and that isn’t the point anyway. The ’thirties and the ’seventies show the capitalist system in its cycle, which will come round again if it is not stopped. On a brief inspection, plainly the only alternative is Socialism.

Robert Barltrop

A Letter from a Former Communist. (1935)

From the March 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

[We have received the following letter from a former Communist. It is particularly interesting, as the writer took an active part, in the Manchester area, in the work of the Communist Party. While we may not see eye-to-eye with the writer on every point, his letter merits serious attention, as an example of the outlook to which years of wholehearted support of the Communist Party has brought one of its adherents.—ED. COMM.]

Stockport.

      February 20th, 1935.

The Editorial Committee,

              THE SOCIALIST STANDARD.

Dear Comrades,

Although in the past I have been an active and enthusiastic member of the Communist Party, the recent change of policy in relation to the Labour Party has compelled me to re-examine the principles and policy of the Party I formerly supported. The conclusions, for what they are worth—but by no means lightly arrived at—are set out below.

At the moment, the C.P., notwithstanding all specious reservations, is committed in principle to the return of a third Labour Government as a “lesser evil" to the National Government of to-day. This in spite of past vehement declarations that Labourism was Social Fascism, was, as Stalin declared, “objectively the moderate wing of Fascism." I, at least, have learned the lesson that the Labour Party “is the most dangerous enemy of the working-class within the working-class" too well; so well, in fact, that I find it impossible to support one capitalist party against another in the supposed interests of unity—even though the Party I am asked to support calls itself Labour.

The incontestable truth is that the change from unqualified opposition to the Labour Party and I.L.P. (quite clearly defined in the C.C. Resolution of the C.P.G.B., 1931) to one of support, was imposed from above by the Comintern when, after the German disaster and at a moment’s notice, it issued its world-wide appeal to its component parties to make unity overtures to organisations hitherto denounced as “Social-Fascist," etc. Evidently, one policy having proved so disastrous, it was decided, with a complete lack of political principle, to try something else.

The indecent haste employed by representatives of the Soviet Union in attempting to conclude pacts of an economic and political character with the butchers of the German working-class; the entrance of the Soviet Union into that “thieves' kitchen," the League of Nations; the substitution of the “defence of the Soviet Union" for the world revolution, can only mean that the Comintern has become completely subordinated to the special interests of the Soviet Union; and that, consequently, the various Communist Parties have been degraded to mere advertising agencies for Russia.

The advent to power in Germany of the Hitler dictatorship proves quite conclusively the bankruptcy of Communist policy. Through their blind “fetishism" of violence, the German Communists contributed just as much to the dissipation of the working-class forces as did the Social-Democrats through their shameless prostitution of the name of Socialism. Palme Dutt, in his book, "Fascism and the Social Revolution," quotes, in support of his case, Kautsky, who, in his introduction to the third edition of his book, “The Proletarian Revolution" (1931), says: “In November, 1918, the Revolution was the work of the proletariat alone. The proletariat won so all-powerful a position that the bourgeois elements at first did not dare to attempt any resistance." What lesson is drawn from this? That the German Social-Democrats betrayed the revolution because they persuaded the German working-class to adopt the “ peaceful path to Socialism," as against the path of violent revolution advocated by the Communists.

The one clear and indisputable conclusion, namely, that Social-Democracy was able to operate a policy of capitalism, suitably garbed in “Socialist" phrases, because the majority of the German working-class were in complete ignorance of Socialist principles, has so far been completely ignored by Communist writers on German events.

Before the workers can obtain political power, and wield it in their own interests, they must be conscious of those interests. The Communist Party, in urging the workers to fight for reforms, has not assisted in any way in aiding the workers to realise the need for Socialism. In fact, the thousands that have drifted in and out of the C.P. proves that they have failed to educate their own members in Socialist principles, to say nothing of the working-class.

For a so-called revolutionary party to enter into competition with reformist parties for reforms, is utterly futile. Any reforms that capitalism may think necessary will reach the working-class via parties with years of experience, organisation and traditions in the reformist business.

If the emancipation of the working-class is to be the work of the working-class itself, it follows with iron logic that the working-class must know from what it has to emancipate, and to what its emancipation will lead. This can only be achieved by spreading Socialistic knowledge.

Therefore, I appeal to all thinking members of the Communist Party to earnestly consider whether their time could not be more profitably employed in working for a Party that stands uncompromisingly for Socialism, instead of in a Party where half their time has to be occupied in explaining away the political somersaults of the Communist leadership. and the other half in urging workers to fight for reforms, which, even if granted, leave the position of the working-class materially unaltered.

                                                                                                                        Yours fraternally,

A. H. Maertens