Socialism or Barbarism? (1948)

From the April 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is barely three years since the joybells of peace were ringing and yet already war is again casting its shadow over the world. Again and again we were told that peace was impossible until Germany had been reduced to a state from which it could not rise again to threaten the peace of the world. Well, Germany is certainly deep enough in the mire now, but in spite of that the spectre of war has again raised its ugly head.

So, after all, it is not Germany that was the criminal; the real criminal was, and is, the system of production and distribution under which goods are produced for sale. It is this system that breeds the struggle for markets, for trade routes, and for sources of supply. While this system lasts, war will always be the final resort between conflicting capitalist groups.

The present war threat is a result of the falling out of the victors in the last war, and is a scathing commentary on the emptiness of the brotherly sentiments with which the world was deluged at the end of the war by spokesmen of the allied nations. Modern capitalist conditions are a jungle in which competing groups are like tigers, always ready to spring when their booty is threatened; but unlike the tiger it is not the owners of the means of production who themselves appear in the heat of the battle, but the blind producers of the booty, the working class.

As Socialists we are opposed to war; Socialism cannot be obtained by war, nor by armed resistance to oppression, nor can it be helped on by either. Socialism signifies the acceptance of majority decisions, freedom to form and express opinions, rivalry without rancour, peaceful discussion and the amicable solution of differences, and the absence of violence in any form. In order to arrive at this outlook the workers must realise the fundamental identity of their interests all over the world as against the private property interests of the capitalists and the supporters of capitalist conditions, no matter what false colours the latter may masquerade under.

War has never solved, and will never solve, any working-class problem; it can only make the workers’ position worse in the long run. It brutalizes all those concerned in it, cheapens the feeling for human life, develops cynicism and replaces reason by force in the settlement of differences. The end of a war sees the carrying over into peace-time of the pitiless., brutal and destructive characteristics that were glorified during war-time. We are already experiencing this in full measure, just as we were doing after 1918.

Society develops, but that does not mean that it becomes less savage in its ways; in fact the more cultured society has become the more barbaric have been the means adopted by the ruling classes to retain and enlarge their privileges, and the more devastating have been the means devised to carry on warfare; and this is no less true of the Russian dictatorship, which has so often been falsely hailed as the harbinger of a paradise upon earth.

The present situation is a repetition of the previous ones with just a change in the sides taken up by some of the participants as well as the power they wield. Since the end of the war each of the leading powers has been jockeying for the most favourable place in the scramble for markets for the profit of its propertied class. This struggle has been complicated by the devastation left behind by the war as well as by the secret agreements that were entered into and the promises made to their respective workers to beguile them into the slaughter. In the meantime the great game of international bluff has been played with gusto, and Russia, the latest and one of the most unscrupulous bandits, has been accomplishing its imperialist designs by creeping southwards and westwards and threatening to exclude the other powers from important markets and sources of raw materials. In spite of all the boosting of the United Nations, capitalism knows only one final answer to the problem of trade rivalry—war, for which they are now preparing, and to the capitalists of the West Russia has taken the place Germany occupied for so many years as the principal enemy.

In our view war is not yet a prospect of the immediate future for many reasons. But where a situation is fraught with possibility of a resort to arms there is always the risk that some unforeseen circumstance may precipitate conflict even against the intentions of the participants; where there is a powder magazine a chance spark can bring catastrophe.

One of the most shocking aspects during the past year or so has been the fatalistic attitude of many workers who have accepted the coming of another war as something that is inevitable. It has not yet sunk into their understanding that without their active cooperation war in the modern world would be impossible. Yet another war, with the means of destruction now available, would be of such a devastating nature that the mind is appalled at the thought. The war that is now threatened bids fair to convey the world into one gigantic graveyard from which recovery would be difficult, if not impossible. But not a single Government spokesman can guarantee that there are any means available to avoid the coming catastrophe. So little value is the United Nations Organisation that the manipulations of Russia, America and the Western Union are carried on outside its councils!

One lesson the workers must learn, and that they must learn soon, that the development of society has now reached a stage where nothing but the establishment of Socialism can save society from collapsing into ruins. Capitalism is doomed by the fact that it inevitably produces wars; only by the replacement of the present order by the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production in the near future can society be saved. Failing this solution to the social troubles that afflict us the possibility of a complete social breakdown and a relapse into barbarism is a not impossible end to present social development. The future depends upon the workers understanding the source of social misery and taking the only course that can end it. That they will do so is our conviction in spite of the ugly shadows that are gathering.

Gilmac.

What we say (1984)

From the May 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Human beings have very complicated systems of communication; a facility for spoken and written language. What is language? One helpful analysis describes it as a code that we develop to organise, interpret and communicate our experiences to each other. Human languages have developed historically in a way which is related to what we have experienced. Although languages, including people's native language, are taught formally in schools, we always learn the first and most important aspects of our language by listening and experiential learning. Babies are generally not taught the basics of language with a grammar book.

Because language is rooted in experience, it usually makes little sense to describe particular accents or dialects as superior or inferior. They are simply different. We are traditionally taught that a particular variety of the English language is superior to all other varieties. The grammar must be the sort which is described as Standard English and the pronunciation should conform to a style known as Received Pronunciation. This is the sort of English used by newscasters. The reason this brand of English became elevated to the status it now occupies are historical and geographical, not linguistic. London became a key location because of the suitability of its ports for commercial and military purposes in relation to Western Europe. With the growing strategic importance of London from about the fifteenth century, various governmental, military, commercial and financial institutions settled in that city. These were the factors which endorsed the type of language which was used by the Establishment, although at that time a very different sort of language was used including a form of court French. If Liverpool or Newcastle-upon-Tyne had been a more advantageous base for the ruling class, then Standard English would have evolved in a different fashion.

Although we are taught otherwise, it is pointless to judge the inherent qualities of one grammar, accent or vocabulary. There are many examples in English which illustrate this point. The regional accents in English which stress the letter “r” when it comes after a vowel are by formal standards looked on as rural and inferior, for instance the way a person from the West country might pronounce the word “cart”. The same stressed “r”, however, in some North American dialects is regarded as refined. Linguistically, Standard English is no better or worse than Cockney or Geordie, no more so than French is better or worse than Italian. All languages and dialects are complicated, rule-governed systems whose rules are known to and used by their speakers.

The fact that languages arise from experience is significant. Many contemporary aboriginal communities live on the basis of sharing the work they need to do and then sharing the product of their work according to need. They have a word to express the idea of all that they have, common property (naolimba) but no vocabulary for “tax- man”, “UB40” or “neutron bomb”. Similarly with another contemporary group, the Panare Indians. The lifestyle of this group in Venezuela is characterised by the principle of cooperation and sharing. Apart from the enjoyment they find in their work they thrive on a great variety of songs, dances, drinks and festivals. They completely reject the principles of the commercial system and are free from all of the neuroses it produces in the people who suffer such a society. An American evangelical organisation, the New Tribes Mission, which recently attempted to convert the Panare and to make them become meek, fearful and obedient wage-slaves, met with some difficulty. There is no vocabulary in Panare to describe “guilt”, “sin”, “punishment" or “redemption". Nor, because these ideas are outside their social experience, was there any adequate way of paraphrasing these notions. Tragically, some of the Panare have been converted through some peculiar guile from the missionaries. The fables in the Bible were rewritten in Panare casting the ancestors of the Panare as the killers of Christ. The missionaries then said that unless the Panare were obedient to their every instruction they would be burnt alive in hell forever.

Today the social experience of most people takes place in capitalism—the social system in which the means of producing and distributing goods and services are in the hands of a minority. In capitalism goods are produced as commodities. Things are produced primarily to be sold on the market. In this system the abilities of the majority of people are commodities (or prospective commodities) because they are bought and sold on the jobs market. It follows that capitalism is a global system existing in state capitalist areas like the Russian Empire as much as in avowedly commercial places like the United States of America. Because capitalism puts the need for profits before human needs the system is constantly creating social problems. The lives of most of us are made unnecessarily miserable and difficult because of the social system which we live under.

Language is directly related to ideas and ideas to language. From the time when we are very young and begin to receive and develop ideas about the world in which we live, we are fed with words and ideas in a way which generally encourages us to make serious misjudgements about society. Two of these misjudgements, if we do not correct them, create a distorted view of society. The first is that we are encouraged not to see the organisation of society as a system. The state of society we are born into is just “the way things are". The fact that humankind has developed through a series of different social systems, like slave society and feudalism, is presented in such a way as to make it seem that our development has now stopped and that the basic principles of the profit system are correct forever. According to this fallacy it becomes acceptable to question the desirability of various aspects of capitalism but not to question the necessity of capitalism itself.

The other perversion we are encouraged to accept is dependence on leaders and employers and politicians to run society in a way that will be best for the majority. All the useful work in society—the design. manufacture, servicing and distribution of goods and services and all of the supplementary work needed to run society — is daily carried out by men and women who are not investors, financiers, politicians or economic experts. The process by which we are indoctrinated to lack confidence is a subtle one. The picture of the world we form from the words directed at us by parents, comics, schools, colleges, churches and the communications media all contribute to this process.

In his novel Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell described the Newspeak principle of “doublethink” as

the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting both of them . . . The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.

In criticising some of the emergent contradictions Orwell saw in 1948 he chose to have the three Party slogans plastered everywhere in his 1984 society as:

WAR IS PEACE 

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY 

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

We notice the type of contradictory thought signified by these slogans around us today. "Join the Peace Movement” the banner headline proclaims from a newspaper advertisement. The small print beneath the headline informs us that the Peace Movement referred to is. in fact, the Army (The Guardian, 25 November 1983).

What of Freedom?
We are all linked by a common belief in freedom and in Britain's greatness. (The Conservative Manifesto 1983)
We urge the British people to reject the Tory drift to catastrophe and to support our alternative strategy for peace, jobs and freedom (Labour’s Call to the People, NEC. 1980)

In these contexts the idea of freedom is bound up with wage-slavery. The freedom to be given employment and to be used to make a profit for a minority. It means freedom in a society of governments and armies and prisons and police forces. The idea of nationalism and of making sacrifices for “Britain" is first installed by the acceptance of a set of false assumptions about property. The vocabulary of possession is instrumental in the inculcation of this myth. We are bombarded with talk about "Our country . . . our need to stimulate trade ... our investment overseas ...” For most people this "our” business is quite inappropriate. It should be "their”. In Britain, according to the Inland Revenue Statistics, the top 2 per cent of the population own 64 per cent of all the land and the top 13 per cent of the population own 91 per cent of all housing.

The idea that ignorance is strength is again one which is repeatedly pul to us in the form of exhortations to trust leaders and politicians and bosses. The notion is that by harnessing your mind to that of a leader you will divest yourself of great responsibilities and, with many people transferring their power to the same leaders, those leaders will become very powerful and the better placed to run society efficiently. Minority power exists by consent because power is always, if only potentially, with the majority. We have only to get up off our knees.

Although language and ideas can influence the majority to be acquiescent in capitalism and to regard change as undesirable or impossible, the dynamic, changing nature of society can never be arrested by language. Socialism will entail a society without nations, armies, the rivalry which causes war, employment, money and all of the paraphernalia needed to support the profit system. The idea of socialism is thus born out of capitalism. When people’s experiences clash with the prejudices they have acquired, they can either reinterpret their experiences to conform with their prejudices or allow their experiences to refute their prejudices. Human history, including the development of the sciences, of technology and of language is evidence that experience is mightier than myth.

Gary Jay

Exhibition Review: 'We Only Want the Earth’ (2016)

Exhibition Review from the November 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the anniversaries being marked this year is the centenary of the Dublin Easter Rising (see the March Socialist Standard). James Connolly, who was probably its best-known figure and who had to be tied to a chair so he could be executed by a British firing squad, is commemorated in an exhibition ‘We Only Want the Earth’ at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. As the curators note, Connolly’s life ‘is often remembered more for the manner of his leaving it than for the politically active way he lived it’ (echoes of the Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth).

The exhibition mainly consists of displays of books and pamphlets by or about Connolly and related political movements, together with some letters and panels containing photos and relevant information. It does not, however, say much to explain his move towards Irish nationalism, though it is stated that he had once argued that independence without socialism would just mean replacing one set of capitalist exploiters by another.

But then Connolly’s status as a socialist in the first place is somewhat arguable. He had been a member of the Social-Democratic Federation, and part of the Impossibilist revolt against H.M. Hyndman. However, the Irish Socialist Republican Party, which he helped found in 1896, stood for state-run banks and a minimum wage. Its aim, though not mentioned in this exhibition, was ‘the public ownership by the Irish people of the land, and instruments of production, distribution and exchange’ (so not socialism, as there would still be exchange, and even at this date seen in national terms). He was opposed to divorce, and saw religion as a private matter, not connected to politics.

The doomed 1916 uprising included a statement by the ‘Provisional Government of the Irish Republic’, which begins, ‘In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland …’. Connolly was one of the signatories of this and, even if we regard this phrase as just a piece of rhetoric, the whole text reveals the mystic nationalistic nonsense he was now involved in. A copy of this document is displayed in the Salford exhibition, but without any commentary on it.  

Paul Bennett

The Passing Show: Gallant Christian Gentleman (1959)

The Passing Show column from the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

GALLANT CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN

Mr. James Callaghan, the Labour Party’s “Shadow Colonial Secretary,” had this to say in the debate about the killing of eleven detainees at the Hola camp in Kenya (Daily Herald, 17-6-59): 

The Tories believed that for reasons of State the truth should not be told. By silently conniving they had shown themselves no better than any totalitarians. No better than any Communist, or, if Mr. Lennox-Boyd preferred it, than any Fascist.

“This,” the account continues, “brought a storm of Tory protests and shouts of ‘Smear!’”

It is curious that the Conservatives should protest so much at this reference to Mr. Lennox-Boyd, who, as Colonial Secretary, must bear a large proportion of the responsibility for what happens in the camps where Britain imprisons, often without trial, the opponents of her colonial rule. To show open support for Franco went out of fashion during the war. But before it Mr. Lennox-Boyd made no secret of his support for Franco in Spain. He was a member of the Committee of the “Friends of National Spain”—i.e., the friends of the Rebel side in the Civil War; he was closely associated with such people as the then Sir Henry Page Croft, who made the famous declaration “I recognize General Franco to be a gallant Christian gentleman.” (Details can be found in Simon Haxey’s book “TORY M.P.,” published by Gollancz)

Mr. Lennox-Boyd also claimed in the House of Commons that he was not a democrat or Parliamentarian in regard to India at that time (The Times, 9-2-35). Why, one wonders, are the Tories now so sensitive at these references to their Colonial Secretary’s opinions?

TESTIMONIAL

The Labour Party, when it is in power, is of course as zealous for the defence of British capitalism’s colonial interests as the Conservatives themselves. Sir Roy Welensky, fresh from the jailing of the leaders of the Africans, who are the great majority in his Rhodesian Federation. came to Britain recently and said on arrival that he did not fear a Labour Government (The Observer, 5-7-59). “I have found in the past,” he said, “that I can expect as much realism from the Labour Party as from the Conservatives when they are in office.”

This is a splendid tribute to the Labour Party’s past services to those who think like Welensky. No doubt it will have a prominent place in their propaganda at the next General Election.

HOW TO WIN ELECTIONS

And on the subject of the coming election, the headlines of the Daily Herald on June 17th were not without interest. “Bevan slams H-rebels,’ they ran. “You’d lose us the election.” Apparently Mr. Bevan had told a private meeting of Labour M.P.s the night before that “if the Labour Party fought a General Election on a policy of go-it-alone disarmament the result would be ‘like it was in 1931,’ ” when Labour was heavily defeated.

Which provides strong support for those who say that the leaders of the great political parties shape their policies mainly in order to secure the greatest possible number of votes.

GRIT GALORE

The cinema trade chiefs complain of competition from TV. Filming projects are abandoned. Cinemas close. The industry appears to be having a bad time.

But cinema magnate Lord Rank is weathering the storm. He is lavishing great care on the grouse on his 30,000 acre leased Scottish estate. Apparently the birds have to have grit in their gullets to digest their food properly. So the solicitous peer is transporting various kinds of grit from far corners of the islands, to see which his birds like best. Thirty thousand tons have so far been carried to his estate, ten thousand of them from Cornwall, and other samples from Aberdeen and Ireland (Daily Express, 27-6-59).

Lord Rank’s shooting, at least, seems to have survived the cinema depression.

Alwyn Edgar

World: There is Only One Humanity (2017)

The Material World from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

“No social or revolutionary movement succeeds without a core of people who will not betray their vision and their principles. They are the building blocks of social change. They are our only hope for a viable socialism. They are willing to spend their lives as political outcasts. They are willing to endure repression. They will not sell out the oppressed and the poor. They know that you stand with all of the oppressed.” - Chris Hedges, (political commentator).

Rather than passively accept their poverty, many Bangladeshis endeavour to escape to India but frequently pay the price.  Brad Adams, Executive Director of the Asia Department of Human Right Watch reported in an article in the Guardian (23 January 2011) that India’s Border Security Force had killed more than 1,000 Bangladeshi civilians since 2000.  The problem had come to prominence in 2011 when 15 year old girl was shot dead as she climbed over a barbed-wire border fence.  2017 will be another year of more militarised borders.

The United Nations Convention on Refugees defines a refugee as ‘owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.’ But why is a refugee fleeing political persecution more legitimate than a migrant fleeing a life in a dirty, over-crowded, disease-ridden, dangerous slum where work is the drudgery of a sweatshop for very low wages and little job security? And what about the victims of the politics and economics of climate-change. Droughts have uprooted farmers from their fields, eroding coastlines and floods have washed away homes and displaced many into the urban shanty-town slums.

More than 240 million people worldwide are international migrants. Refugees account for fewer than 10 per cent of the total and, in theory, they are the least contentious group, because countries have signed an international commitment to admit them. When such people travel with refugees, they are often derided as ‘just’ economic migrants. The term ‘forced migrants’ is sometimes used, mainly by academics and rarely by the media, to acknowledge the many people who migrate unwillingly but don’t fall under the Refugee Convention’s technical definition of a refugee and are therefore not entitled to international protection. This would include people who have abandoned their homes and countries because of drought or economic destitution.

Limiting our sympathy to only asylum-seekers and differentiating them from those others who are moving for economic or environmental reasons, fosters a view that they are undeserving of help or compassion even though they too are also genuine casualties of capitalism’s war – the class war. Whether or not they meet the official definition of a refugee, many desperate people are escaping dire conditions that pose a threat to their survival. Globalisation of the world’s economy has not been able to create enough jobs where there are people in need of work. ‘Free’ Trade and corporate land-grabbing has resulted in rural workers leaving their farms. 

The World Socialist Movement describe economic migrants, asylum seekers, climate refugees simply as fellow-workers, fully worthy of our solidarity and in the words of Eugene Debs:

‘If Socialism, international, revolutionary Socialism, does not stand staunchly, unflinchingly, and uncompromisingly for the working class and for the exploited and oppressed masses of all lands, then it stands for none and its claim is a false pretense and its profession a delusion and a snare. Let those desert us who will because we refuse to shut the international door in the faces of their own brethren; we will be none the weaker but all the stronger for their going, for they evidently have no clear conception of the international solidarity, are wholly lacking in the revolutionary spirit, and have no proper place in the Socialist movement while they entertain such aristocratic notions of their own assumed superiority.’

People are social and our capacity for cooperation and adaptation allows us to envisage and build a world beyond the current economic and political system which many regard as unchangeable. Capitalism is beginning to become a dirty word again. People have begun to protest against the profit system and the effect it is having on the quality of life. An unorganised anti-capitalist rebellion can only end in disaster out of which, either the present elite reassert their control or a new ruling class would take advantage of the chaos to gain power. If we are going to get rid of capitalism, the people have to do it by a democratic structure. We need to organise ourselves collectively to create a state-free world society, one without passports and borders.  The solution to the immigration crisis lies not with raising fences and razing camps but with the creation of conditions that does not necessitate people leaving their homes, their family, their friends and their neighbours. The reality is that the solution is world socialism.  Make 2017 the year that you start doing something towards it.

ALJO

What causes Crime? (1967)

From The Changing Face of Crime series from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trying to reduce, or even contain, crime is rather like playing blind man’s buff in a room mined with booby traps. (Rudolf Klein, The Observer, 9.1.66.)

It must be conceded to the world’s do-gooders, champions of the underdog, helpers of lame dogs over stiles. Hope, or whatever it is, springs eternal in their aching breasts. Yet even the most sanguine of reformers has sometimes to admit defeat. One problem which nobody pretends to be able to solve, which everyone agrees resists every attempt to deal with it, is crime.

Of course there are all sorts of theories on the problem and every so often some new legislation, or a new Home Secretary, is welcomed as a step on the road to a solution. Rudolf Klein, in the article from which the sombre sentence above is taken, was enthusiastic about what he hoped for from the present Home Secretary:

It is a dismal prospect for any politician. But if anyone can do it, Mr. Jenkins—with his intellectual honesty and political courage . . .  is the man to carry it off.

So far, the one result of Jenkins' alleged brilliance and courage has been the new Criminal Justice Bill. Nobody seriously thinks that the Bill’s tinkering with court procedure, sentences and police powers will have the slightest effect on the level of crime. But this does not damage Jenkins' reputation.

The great hope for Roy Jenkins was that he is known as a reformer—the sort of Home Secretary to outrage old men in West End clubs by vetoing birching sentences. In a speech to the Press Gallery last June, he said: ,

. . . do not let us for one moment confuse . . .  toughness with a policy of preserving cruel and archaic laws designed, not to protect society, but to enforce . . .  the prejudices or tastes (or lack of taste) of one group of people upon another.

Jenkins was not attacking here the opinions of only those who, on the proceeds of legal robbery, can afford to be members of expensive clubs. The feeling is widely popular, that the way to deal with criminals is to be tough with them—to answer violence with greater violence, to suppress and degrade the robber and the outlaw by long, harsh periods in prison.

Neither side in this dispute can easily defend its arguments. The reason for this was touched on by—if we can be allowed one more quotation from him—Rudolf Klein:

Research . . . suggests that the problem has its roots deep in our society.

Before we discuss how deep the roots, and what sort of society, let us ask—what sort of problem? At the moment, a pretty big one; the number of indictable offences known to the police is now well over a million a year—more than twice as many as in 1948, which was a year deep in the post war crime wave.

The theory of a “wave” of crime, ebbing and flowing, may once have been valid but it cannot apply to the present. From time to time the crime figures may alter slightly; some may be affected by increased police efficiency or by a change in the definition of a crime. But nowadays there is no such thing as a crime “wave”; it is in full flood, and around us all the time.

How do the reformers explain this? Before the war a popular theory was that poverty was to blame, that a man who was out of work would readily steal food for his children. This inadequate explanation kept going until 1939 produced another excuse—unsettled conditions, the feeling that any day might be our last, the fact that millions of fathers were away in the Forces and not instilling in their children a proper respect for the laws of capitalism.

Then the war ended and the men came home and the crime figures soared. The reformers were ready; what, they asked, could we expect in the aftermath of a mighty war? Everything would be alright when we settled down again.

Twenty years after 1945, we may be assumed to have settled down but the criminal still runs riot, more wildly, more scientifically than ever and often with an attention to organisation which would be welcome in many a board room. The latest theory is that the “affluent” society we are supposed to be living in is to blame—that we are all so idle and bored, surrounded by washing machines and television sets and travelling everywhere in plush cars that we build up a massive frustration which must somehow be relieved, even if it means coshing an old lady on the way to collect her pension. Learned sociologists lecture on the essential inner rottenness of “affluence”, while the rest of us look at the crime graph going up and up and wonder what the next theory will be.

What are the roots of crime? People who have known the relaxed living in the countryside where nobody thinks of latching a door, let alone locking it, might be excused for blaming it ail onto urban life. Certainly crime flourishes in the big cities and anyone who knows London's East End, or Glasgow, or Liverpool, has probably had some direct, personal evidence of this. The cities grew up because of the industrial and communication needs of developing capitalism, which threw masses of people into concentrated living and, inevitably, into festering slums where life was hard and which bred hard, ruthless attitudes to it.

Many of these slums still stand, with little prospect of being destroyed in the near future, it is not difficult to appreciate that the people who are tough enough to survive in them are tough enough to live by crime. But this again is only part of the story; crime flourishes also on the new estates, in the post war towns and the overspill areas which have not yet had the time to become slums.

We are digging, now, a little deeper and perhaps it is time to ask what we mean by crime. In 1964, of 1,066,467 indictable offenders known to the police, 940,848—over 88 per cent —went under the heading of Breaking and Entering, Robbery and Larceny. In 1965 the number of indictable offences had gone up to 1,133,882 and the percentage was about the same. In other words, the vast majority of crimes are committed against property, a conclusion expressed in a lecture in June 1964 by Professor Leon Radzinowicz, Director of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology:

Ninety six per cent of all our crime consists of offences against property and nearly three quarters is straightforward larceny.

When we talk about crime, then, we are really talking about a particular type of offence, although it is usually the other sort—horrifying murders or sexual offences—which make the headlines and capture the public's attention. And since property is a social relationship it follows that any change in the form of property will be reflected in changes in the form of crimes against it

On a small scale, an example of this is the fact that since before the war the number of thefts from unattended motor cars has increased sixfold, while the number of bicycles stolen has only doubled. On a large scale, an example is that coups like the Great Train Robbery, and most types of blackmail and false pretences, are designed to get ready money—something which only becomes desirable in a developed capitalist economy where money is a dominant means of exchange.

Killing, and what are known as offences against the person, are sometimes connected with crimes against property. In other cases they are quite unconnected—the blind and motiveless acts of sick minds. Here, probably, we are down to the irreducible level of offences, which any human society must suffer and deal with.

Let us be clear that Socialism, a humane social system, will approach this problem uncluttered by the property obsessions and the vengeful philosophies of capitalism. It will, also, be free of capitalism's anomaly, that some killers are treated as heroes—provided they do it in a military uniform.

If, then, crime is mainly a matter of offences against property it must follow that to remove property is to end crime. This argument may not appeal to some of the religious, nor to the legal sadists who dabble in theories of original sin and who are hot for vengeance against anyone who fails to stand firm against temptation. Revenge is a sterile business, best left to the seekers after eternal morality. We are concerned with human society, and with its welfare.

The abolishing of private property society, and with it the end of crime, will bring massive benefits. It will remove the inequalities which are the very incentive to crime and violence. It will give society the chance to treat sick minds for what they are instead of regarding them as candidates for damnation.

Those people who, not having been born into the capitalist class, try to make a fortune by robbing a bank are social outcasts. There is no cure for them in property society. Whatever the reformers try, they cannot solve the problem. In The Courage Of His Convictions, the hardened and perceptive criminal Robert Allerton is quite clear on this point; cruelty, he says, is not the answer to the criminal and, although there may be more hope in it, neither is kindness.

We are back, now, at the roots. The criminal scene is a confusion of violence, desperation and muddled, futile reformers. The remedy for it all is at the roots of society and the only hope is in a basic social change. But there is much ignorance standing between us and that. And among it is the criminal, upon whom so much thought is lavished, so many statistics compiled, so much ink expended—the criminal who is observed, analysed and experimented upon—and who in his own way is as hearty a supporter of capitalism as the most respectable and law-abiding house agent’s clerk.

The clerk dreams of sudden promotion, or of winning the pools. The crook waits and watches for the big tickle. They are both caught in the same net of ignorance, and they both need each other to get themselves free.

Ivan. 

Crime in History (1967)

From The Changing Face of Crime series from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Standards of good or bad behaviour, within a society, are by no means constant. In fact they vary enormously from age to age, and within different societies in a particular age. This is even more applicable to those actions, forbidden by law, that are known as crimes.

Crime is usually defined as “an act prohibited and punishable by law.” No matter how revolting or dangerous an action may be, it is not legally a crime unless covered by a law that prohibits it, and prescribes a punishment for it. However in popular usage the words crime and criminal are used to describe actions that are anti-social, regardless of their legality. This is quite understandable, as throughout history most criminals have been a pretty brutal and heartless lot. The fact that many of them were driven to crime did not make them any more likeable. The Robin Hood type of legend, popular throughout the world, has never had much basis in fact. So that when we are discussing crime, it is as well to get the definition right.

This is not just being pedantic, as a glance at the history of crime will show. Even within a particular age there are great variations. For example, where prohibition exists, to take a drink becomes a crime and the production and sale of liquor carries heavy penalties. But all of this is quite legal and harmless elsewhere. Again laws on such things as homosexuality, blasphemy, gambling and adultery, to name just a few, are completely different from country to country, and even, in a Federal Union like the USA, from State to State.

When we compare one age to another this is even more obvious. Many actions that once carried the death penalty, and were regarded as the wickedest in the calendar, are no longer illegal and often not taken seriously. Witchcraft, once a capital offence that brought torture and death to countless people, is no longer taken seriously. Any legal action that is taken in the matter now is usually associated with alleged fraud. Heresy, atheism and Trade Union activities, once either capital or transportation offences, are no longer illegal in most states.

On the other hand many things once considered harmless or even praiseworthy, are now serious crimes. The Election practices of the Georgians would today land all concerned in gaol for a long period and the kind of satire that slams like a sledge hammer from the cartoons of Gillray and Rowlandson would now be considered criminal libel. On a grimmer note, the ceremonial torturing of animals, like throwing live cats from the belfry at Ypres, would bring heavy, and popular sentences. An even greater crime—the kidnapping, enslaving, buying and selling of human beings— known as the slave trade was once, not very long ago, an honoured profession. Perhaps the most important change of attitude, since, the coming of capitalism, is the increased importance of private property. Crimes against private property bring forth as great, if not greater penalties as crimes against people.

In the early days of Capitalism when each group was struggling for a foothold, and when enterprising but murderous characters were clawing their way into power, the line between criminal and legal action was very thin. One of the great Capital offences of the 19th century was Piracy on the High Seas. But piracy had not always been taken so seriously. The Privateer was a private person commissioned by a government to capture enemy ships, and was behaving quite legally. The pirate, on the other hand, was an outlaw. Drake and Grenville were privateers, while Morgan and Leech were pirates, but it is difficult to see any basic difference in their actions.

Earlier governments had tolerated, and even encouraged, piracy against their rivals and taken some of the proceeds. A successful pirate could always buy a pardon, and settle down in his home country. Morgan, one of the cruellest and unprincipled of pirate captains, received a hero’s welcome in England, and was received by Charles II. He died wealthy and respectable.

By the 19th century British, French and American capitalists dominated the trade routes of the world. They wanted settled conditions in which to operate. Pirates were ruthlessly hunted down and executed. These same Capitalists had used corruption, bribery and the plunder of ancient civilisations to fill their coffers and help finance their more orthodox enterprises. The Great Train Robbers were the descendants of these freebooters of the past. The aim was the same, to acquire wealth quickly and then become “respectable.” But unfortunately for the Train Robbers they came two hundred years too late. Modern Capitalism does not want this kind of action, and emphasises its point with 30 year sentences. Settled conditions are needed and corruption, theft and fraud are crushed whenever they can be detected.

Now what about proletarian criminals, the ones that stole the copper, while the others stole the gold? To be condemned to hang for stealing a handkerchief, by a judge or magistrate whose family wealth had come from piracy, the plunder of Bengal, or from slave produced West Indian sugar was, to use a current slang expression, a bit thick. But that was the fate of many.

The economic revolution of the Tudors, with its galloping inflation, agricultural unemployment and enclosures, drove more and more people on to the roads. They swelled the ranks of the sturdy beggars who roamed in search of subsistence. They flocked to London and settled in hovels in and around the town. Crime was often the only trade open to them. Penalties became increasingly brutal; flogging, branding and mutilation, as well as hanging, were extensively used. Not that the victims got much sympathy from their more fortunate brethren. Public executions had a high entertainment value, and provided an instructional day out for the kiddies. 

Much more profitable was the use of criminals as a source of cheap labour. The 17th century saw more extensive use of transportation to the colonies. The plantations and farms of North America and the West Indies cried out for cheap labour. Magistrates and judges were always ready to commute a death sentence to one of transportation, for a reasonable consideration.

The 18th century was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and new methods of agriculture, with the inevitable enclosures. People continued to pour into the towns but industrialisation was not proceeding fast enough to absorb all of them. London and the growing towns became crammed with people with no legal source of income. They crowded into the most appalling slums—the infamous Rookeries—and lived as best they could. Mayhew, writing in the next century when the situation had eased somewhat, described the pathetic means by which people sought to grub a living. Crime was one of the most obvious ways. In fact successful crime and successful prostitution were about the only means of climbing out of this hell into a more civilised existence, but not many made it.

Meanwhile industrialisation, and the exploitation of the new Empire, brought increased prosperity to the more fortunate section of the population. This led to an increase in crimes against property. The growth of the banking system led to more legislation against forgery, while the expansion of trade caused increased concern over adulteration of goods. The terrible state of the roads, and the inefficiency of the Post Office, gave rise to the highwayman, whose main occupation was robbing the post boys. A programme of road building and fast, well armed mail coaches largely ended this situation, but the growth of commerce and shipping led to organised raiding of ships in the Thames.

The ruling class struck back with renewed savagery, supported up to the hilt by the law abiding citizens. The 18th century saw a surplus of labour in Britain, and there was no use for convict labour at home, so more people were hanged or transported. The Continental countries had built up modern police forces, but Britain’s police were inefficient and corrupt. The British ruling class feared the development of a Police State, and refused to reorganise their own police. Instead they developed what became known as “Britain’s Bloody Code.” Over 200 offences were punishable by death, and many more by transportation.

The loss of the American Colonies upset the practice of transportation, and led to the establishment of the notorious prison hulks. These were old battleships, moored mainly in the Thames, and run by private enterprise. These ships were bad even by the standards of existing prisons. They were a “temporary” measure which lasted eighty years.

The 19th century saw the development of the world we know today. The Capitalist class were firmly in the saddle, and with them came Capitalist morality. There has probably never, before or since, been such an age of reform as the Victorian. It was the age of the rise of the Trades Union and the working class movements. When changes came they came with amazing rapidity, in thirty years the number of capital offences fell from over 200 to four. More important, the Capitalists began to realise that the worker with a terraced house, a piano in the front room, and pretensions to support, made a more docile and efficient slave than the products of degradation in the Rookeries.

Les Dale

Castro: Latin American Nationalist (2017)

From the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 26 November Fidel Castro, one of the oldest dictators in Latin America, died. The announcement of his death was made by his brother Raul Castro on state television. His death was celebrated by the opponents of the government of Cuba in Miami in Florida, and it was also taken as sad news by many of the Latin America Leftists and supporters of the Cuban regime.

In 1959 Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Che Guevara were part of an armed rebellion which provoked the overthrow of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, a government backed by the US for several years. Then, part of the ruling elite of Cuba shifted toward the support of the guerrillas who were fighting in the Sierra Maestra against the Cuban military forces.

After their victory, Fidel Castro and the Communist Party of Cuba initiated the nationalization of all the US holdings and assets, and all private land was taken over by the state. The US declared an embargo on the island.

Castro declared himself a ‘Marxist-Leninist’ and entered a relationship with the Soviet Union, and established a form of state capitalism like the one established by the Bolsheviks, and called it socialism. In a country where agriculture prevailed over industrial production, sugar was the main production that existed in the whole country, and most of the workers were peasants and did not have any socialist consciousness. The level of illiteracy was high in the rural areas of the country. The economic backwardness was as in most of the countries of Latin America

After the defeat of the invasion of the Bay of Pigs which was financed by the US and backed by the CIA, and, at the peak of the Cold War period after the 1962 missile crisis during the government of John F Kennedy in the USA, and Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union, an accord of no intervention was signed between the US and the Soviet Union.

Several social and economic reform programmes were implemented such as state-run medical services, public transportation, and public education. A large programme of education was initiated throughout the country,  

A long period of stagnation, poverty, and scarcity began. While the government blamed this on the embargo imposed by the US, they never recognized that so-called socialism in one country was an impossibility and that despite collaboration with the Soviet Union, which also proclaimed itself a socialist country, the economic laws of capitalism prevailed in the country. Most of the followers of Cuban ‘socialism’ in Latin America blamed Cuba’s problems simply on the US embargo, and never recognized the class character of the ruling elite, and the economical exploitation of the Cuban workers.

For many years, the Latin American left proclaimed Fidel Castro as the leader and commander in chief of the Cuban revolution, and a bastion of socialism in that region where many guerrilla groups were financed by Cuba on behalf of the Soviet Union during the period of the Cold War. Most of those groups were defeated by the military forces of several Latin American countries.

The whole region of Latin America is a clear indication that socialism cannot be established by a small group of armed individuals. The great majority of the class-conscious-less workers never gave support to any of these groups, including the guerrillas of Manolo Tavarez Justo, and the invasion of Francisco Caamano in the Dominican Republic, who at the end did not obtain the support of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Government. In the same manner Che Guevara did not receive any support from the Communist Party of Bolivia.

Che Guevara was assassinated in Bolivia trying to obtain the support of the peasants to carry out the same revolt that took place in Cuba in 1959, and the guerrillas that accompanied him were killed or imprisoned. Within the Cuban leadership he was the only one who verbally advocated a moneyless society but after the Fidelista guerrillas took power he became the Minister of Commerce, and he was in charge of the Central Bank of Cuba, which contradicted his aspiration for a socialist society without money.

Despite their socialist and Marxist rhetoric and phraseology none of the leaders of the Cuban revolution including Fidel Castro ever had a real conception of what a socialist society should be. Most of the speeches and writings of Fidel Castro show that he was an apologist of Latin American Nationalism and later representative of the struggle of the Latin American capitalist class to liberate themselves from the influence of the US capitalist, like Domingo Peron in Argentina, and Ernesto Cardenas in Mexico, and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

The case of Cuba is a living example of what the Socialist Party and the companion parties of the World Socialist Movement have indicated for many years, which is that socialism cannot be established in one single country, and that it must be established in a world scale by the vast socialistically conscious majority of the workers, and that socialism cannot be established in an economical backward society to be a free access society. That is the reason why the Cuban regime had to initiate a rationing programme with the excuse to create equality among the workers, while the ruling elite enjoyed all kinds of privileges and benefits.

Marcos.

Good work in Manchester (1950)

Party News from the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the visit of the Provincial Propagandist to Manchester, our outdoor propaganda increased, from what could be described as a struggle to express ourselves, to a point whence from day to day the case for Socialism was put before the workers of Manchester. Our main speaking site is in the centre of the city and for a change, the workers who usually spend their staggered lunch hours listening to street traders and strong arm men, heard the party’s case, acquired useful political knowledge and were made to realise how little they really understood the world in which they live. After a week or two on this site, the laughs which greeted our attempts to expound Socialism, the arguments that we were utopian dreamers, or too advanced, began to change, the audience were interested, discussions became lively and questions began to show that our case was being thought about and that the literature sales were having effect. The importance of this site should not be under estimated as these lunch hour meetings served workers from all the suburbs of Manchester. In addition to these excellent meetings and others which were held on our normal sites, the large industrial concern of Metropolitan Vickers was given a treat, speaking sites which had gone in to disuse owing to lack of speaking strength, were again opened up with success, efforts were made to revive Eccles. where, although the audiences were small, literature sales were good and it was thought that given time a reasonably good hearing could be obtained. One Sunday evening, one could hear the case for Socialism being expounded in Eccles. a bus ride into Manchester the same thing was happening, and again on the other side of the city, in Platt Fields, this vital propaganda was in progress. It really did seem that the workers would waken up under such bombardment. As an experiment Liverpool was tried on a Saturday afternoon and the large audiences of 300 to 500 and literature sales of approximately 14/- gave promise for the near future.

In all 50 meetings were held including two indoors, one of which was held to round off the month’s propaganda. £8 of literature was disposed of, including 32 dozen Standards, and collections, which were not often taken, amounted to £2 15s. Od. There is no question on the grounds of literature sales and though it is hard to measure to what extent socialist knowledge was acquired by people hitherto unfamiliar with our case, we certainly upset the Labour Party supporters and the Stalin idolisers and even the religious meetings increased to combat the dreadful spread of materialism. If anything, a month is far too short, but the least we of the Manchester branch can do is to make every effort to continue with the excellent work put in by the part time organisers. That along with our new methods of door to door canvassing, which is showing excellent results will, we hope, bring into being new branches in this area and help to fill in those blank spaces between here and London.

A. G. Atkinson.

Propaganda Organiser.

Manchester Branch.

Interpreting Shakespeare (1950)

Book Review from the February 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

New books on the life, works and ideas of Shakespeare are continually added to the enormous literature on the subject. Recent additions have included Ivor Brown's "Shakespeare," Duff-Cooper's “Sergeant Shakespeare" (in which it is suggested that be must have served in the army to have gained his familiarity with military matters), and a reprint of Hesketh Pearson's lively and entertaining "Shakespeare" that Ivor Brown catalogues under the heading "Imaginative.” Pearson seeks to interpret Shakespeare’s writings in the light of political and other happenings at the time, and of Shakespeare's likely reactions to them. Writing during the recent war when, as Pearson puts it, the world had before its eyes in the persons of Hitler, Mussolini, etc., a large number of modem Julius Caesars. Pearson claims that Shakespeare, with a similar example to study at first hand in Queen Elizabeth, had a much better understanding of Caesar and of all dictators than is shown by G. B. Shaw in his idealised version of the ancient Roman dictator.

But for Socialists a much more profitable study is "Shakespeare—A Marxist Interpretation,” a short work by A. A. Smirnov, translated from the Russian and published in 1937 by the “Critics Group” (96, Fifth Avenue. New York).

Smirnov set out to relate Shakespeare's views to the basic economic and political changes and class struggles taking place in the 16th century.

He argues alike against those who see Shakespeare as "the ideologist of the feudal aristocracy” as against those who see him as "the ideologist of that section of the nobility which was acquiring bourgeois trappings.” To Smirnov, “Shakespeare was the humanist ideologist of the bourgeoisie, the exponent of the program advanced by them, when, in the name of humanity. they first challenged the feudal order, but which they later disavowed ” (Pages 92 and 93). According to this interpretation, which Smirnov supports with many quotations from the plays, Shakespeare in the early years portrayed in a favourable light the absolutist monarchy needed by rising Capitalism as a protection against the warring feudal barons. Later, that need became less urgent, the Monarchy and Court degenerated and leaned towards feudal reaction, and at the same time the narrow Puritan group emerged as a representation of capitalist interests and outlook.

Then Shakespeare, who was particularly antagonised by the Puritan hostility to the theatre, found himself, like other "humanists,” faced with the dilemma of the contrast between early bourgeois ideals and the sordid money-grubbing of the bourgeois way of life. To some extent he then "surrendered his former position and yielded to the taste of the reactionary aristocracy which held such triumphant sway over the London stage in 1610.” (P. 85.)

The evidence adduced by Smirnov is necessarily partly speculative and may or may not convince the reader; but those who follow his argument will at any rate appreciate that here is a serious study worth many of the more usual superficial interpretations.

It is not made clear whether Smirnov is, or was. a supporter of the Stalin regime in Russia and he wrote very guardedly when expressing dissent from views on Shakespeare held by some Soviet writers. But one of his tributes to Shakespeare would certainly now give offence to Stalin worshippers. He praises Shakespeare for having had the insight to realise "three centuries before the appearance of scientific history,” that the battle of Agincourt was not won by “a little group of well-born heroes, but by the English soldiers.” If Shakespeare lived in Russia now and wrote plays dealing with the war he would have to reshape his ideas and become a groveller. He would have to pay slavish tribute to "the great leader and supreme commander of genius. Generalissimo of the Soviet Union. Stalin." “the greatest man of our planet." "creator of Soviet military science.” etc., etc.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Abyss revisited (1950)

From the January 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the beginning of the century a young American writer came to the slums of London in search of experience. In the guise of a tramp he spent many months amidst the filth and squalor that thousands of people knew as home. The writer was Jack London, and his researches led to the publication of the “People of the Abyss.” If anybody doubts, or seeks more evidence of the vile foundations upon which present-day society is based he need go no farther than this small volume. It is not pleasant reading.

Many people would read it merely as history. The bad old days. They would tell you that poverty is a thing of the past. The “philanthropic” Tories, the “bluff generous Liberals, and the newly powerful Labour Party, with Beadle Bevan well to the fore, would all agree with them, and argue among themselves as to who was responsible for removing this evil. Maybe we would take sides in this squabble, but first of all we must be sure that the evil has actually been removed.

In spite of all its anomalies and contradictions the capitalist system does comply with certain economic laws. As the mass of wealth produced by the working-class increases, due to revisions and improvements in the means and methods of production, greater skill is required from the working-class. This means a rise in the cost of production of a worker. In order for him to reproduce his mental and physical energies he must consume increasing amounts of food, clothing, shelter, entertainment and education. Many examples of this can be gleaned from contemporary history. Hundreds of natives of Africa who a few years ago were eking a bare living from the soil are to-day employed in Strachey’s ground nut scheme, with the result that they now require those social conditions befitting a labourer, lorry driver or mechanic. Where to-day is the Indian factory worker who can exist upon a daily handful of rice? In other words, as the mountain of commodities increases, the molehill returned to the workers in the form of wages and salaries does grow also. Consequently the poverty of an electric, near atomic era is very different from an era of gas power wherein the internal combustion engine was no more than a daring experiment.

Yet such social derelicts as Jack London describes still doze upon the walls of Spitalfields Churchyard and they are not all old. Some carry young babies and openly feed them. You see them scrounging around the fruit and vegetable market in search of discarded “specks” and fag ends. Occasionally they come to blows over the division of their spoils and are carted off for 28 days in the comparative comfort of Wormwood Scrubs. The well-meaning self-satisfied social busybody points out that they could enter institutions and be well cared-for. It is easy to say but these people are suffering from more than material poverty. Years spent in such conditions have made their mark upon their minds. All self-respect has gone. Beer, cheap port or even methylated spirits are the peaks of their ambitions.

The streets are narrow and between the houses are tailoring sweat shops. The clatter of the machines, the hissing of the steam presses, the discordant singing of the girls pour from the windows. Now is the “season” and many of these places exhibit notices offering attractive conditions of work. After Christmas they will disappear and work will be scarce. At 12 or 1 o'clock the girls come out. They are young and dressed not in gay but gawdy clothes, their pallid faces over-decorated with paint and powder, their nails highly varnished (but notice the work-worn hands). The greyness of their surroundings gives them an uncontrolled desire for colour. Their one topic of conversation is men.

For marriage seems their only form of escape. And what an escape! See the places wherein they live and breed—the vast prison blocks of the Peabody Estate and other such organisations. See the women on their balconies with sagging breasts and distended stomachs, old before their time. See the market places—Wentworth Street, Brick Lane or Mile End Waste—where they haggle with the vendors. See the schools wherein their kids are trained to replace them in the factories and mills. Many of these places were destroyed by bombs. In their place rise the slums of 10 years time.

To-day employment conditions are fairly good and the majority of capable men and women are in work. The many public houses are doing well. “Why aren’t they saving for a rainy day?” screeches the social nosey-parker. Why? If these people had a little less self-righteousness and a little more commonsense the answer would be clear. The people of the abyss have forever lived in poverty, spending literally years plodding from factory to factory and then back to the labour exchanges for a few bob to tide them over. As children, youths and then as parents they have always had to scrimp and save to keep body and soul together. Is it then not natural that when a few extra shillings come their way they are going to enjoy those things which to their limited horizons appear as luxuries.

Such conditions must obviously affect the ideas of those who suffer them. As the previous paragraph demonstrates, their general attitude is one of “ here today and gone to-morrow.” Always must they live from hand to mouth. Their kids are not ill-treated, but left from an early age to fight the battle of life for themselves. They become precocious and unwilling to respect the “sanctity” of private property. They learn to steal, fiddle and avoid the law. Many find their way into the juvenile courts, to approved schools, Borstal institutions and thence to prisons as habitual offenders.

Politically they are easy meat for the opportunists. Many of them, especially among the Jewish community are attracted by the subtle propaganda and glib promises of the Communist Party. Since the war the familiar “flash and circle” has reappeared upon the walls as the Fascist Movement with its vicious anti-Semitic nonsense, has crept back on to the scene. To support such organisations as these is an outlet for their emotions, a means of hitting out at something. Consequently we have seen the battles at Ridley Road.

Yet in spite of all these obstacles there are oases in this desert where man’s natural love of beauty can rise to the surface. On the windowsills of the tenements’ window boxes filled to capacity bloom and are tended with loving care. Queues of work-worn men and women wait outside the Whitechapel Gallery or the People’s Palace to experience works of art. See them in the evenings, still in their working clothes, hurrying to and from the public libraries.

A contradiction? Not at all. Here again capitalism shows itself as its own gravedigger. As the system becomes more involved we have seen how necessary it is for the workers to receive more “education." In itself this is nothing, but in widening the worker's horizon its effect is colossal. He becomes ever more aware of the world in which he lives and how it operates. The fallacies become more apparent, and slowly, the solution more clear.

For these are the producers. I have spoken of London because it is within my own experience, but with very little modification these conditions prevail in every industrial area throughout the capitalist world. Those who are the most useful suffer the worst conditions. But it is a temporary state. All over the world a wind is rising, a wind that will eventually destroy capitalism and its festering sores forever. Hasten the day!

Ronald.

Fact from Fiction (1950)

Book Review from the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Novelists and story writers create fictional characters, but, unless these characters are to appear ludicrous, they must be portrayed against a background of the social conditions of the period and part of the world that is the scene of the story. The characters must eat, dress, play and behave in the manner of their time, their country and their class. They must live in buildings and travel by the transport facilities available in their day and to those of their social status. Thus, the writer of fiction can present us with a picture of living conditions in different parts of the world at varying periods of history. The more correctly he describes the living conditions, the more real will his characters appear and the better will be his work. He that sets the story in the conditions in which he himself lives has a simplified task.

Vera Fiodorovna Panova is a Russian authoress who writes of her own times. She has received official Russian awards and prizes and for her first novel she received the Stalin Prize of 10,000 roubles. In 1948 there was published in Russia her second novel entitled “Kruzhilika.” This has now been translated into English and is published by Putnam & Co. under the title “The Factory." The blurb on the jacket of the book says, “Obviously it has to be reckoned with in any portrayal of Soviet life."

The story has no plot to be cunningly unfolded. It is simply a series of interlinking scenes of everyday life in Russia, centred around a factory. Naturally, in such a setting, the majority of the characters are workers and it is mighty interesting to learn how they live.

In the early pages of the book we are treated to a view of a meeting of the “town party executive,” where most of the time is taken by a trade union official who complains that the factory directors do not allow the Trade Union to play a sufficiently important part in the affairs of the factory. The main function of the Trade Union appears to be to assist in improving production, suggesting technical improvements, and complaining because ”. . .  the director does not pay enough attention to the voice of the masses.”

The factory director lives a vastly different life from that lived by the factory workers. The following extract from pages 257-258 illustrates. The director, Listopad, is driving around the town in his car because he wants to think about his new girl friend. The car is driven by Mirzoev (Akhmet), his chauffeur.

“The car glided softly up the steep street, swam up to the turning into the high road and dashed away from the settlement. A tram was climbing up the street very slowly, it seemed to be standing still; a small tram with people clinging to it—those who lived in the settlement and worked in the town—returning home. If a man worked in the town, thought Listopad, he ought to live in the town. Only those who worked in the factory ought to live in the settlement. Otherwise they had to go through this misery twice a day—waiting a long time in the frost, crowding on the steps, hands freezing as they hung on the rail."

Listopad then goes on to soliloquise about the housing shortage and ” . . . these hideous brick cubes with two hundred flats in each and five stories without a lift.” Then his thoughts come back to his girl friend and the prospects of having her in the car with him. He speaks to his driver;

"Akhmet.”
Mirzoev turned to the director.
“ Tell Averkiev to get me another car rug. A good one—wolfskin."

All the characters in this book are interesting. There is the demobbed soldier who returns home, gets married. spends his gratuity and then has to sell some of his old clothes in the market to raise enough money to get a meal. In the market we meet the usual marketplace patter, sales talk and trickery.

We read the troubles of the Trade Union collector who has the week’s subscriptions stolen from his pocket in a tram. He borrows from friends and relatives to make up the money, and.

" . . . from then on, three-quarters of hit earnings went to pay off what he owed. The remaining quarter was not sufficient even for the barest necessities and be got heavier and heavier behind."

We are given a picture of the workers spending their Sundays digging their small allotments in order to grow potatoes to help eke out their wages. They make the day a family outing, taking sandwiches for dinner. We also read of the young factory worker who was awarded a bonus of 19,000 roubles for special work one month. With that money he left the job, to the great annoyance of the factory chiefs who regretted the loss of so useful a worker, so good a pace setter. This incident suggests to us that the Russian State chiefs found it more beneficial to give medals and diplomas for exceptional work.

Whilst reading this book one is struck by the idea that, except for the climate, the vodka and the queer sounding names, this is a story of workers in any part of the world. Despite the claims of the Communist Party and their supporters, it appears that the lot of the Russian worker during the years 1945 to 1948 differed but little from that of workers in other countries. They were poor, overworked and ill-housed, just as the victims of capitalism the world over. Like good patriots they sacrificed for the war effort and they hated German workers like hell. The voice of Joe Stalin over the radio is received like the voice of the Pope by a devout Catholic. The State is their religion. They work till they drop for their church and their Pope—and their wages.

W. Waters

Editorial: Out of the nightmare (1981)

Illustration accompanying the original editorial.

Editorial from the December 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s been happening in the world this year? Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or injured in wars; some of these we’ve read about in newspapers or seen on television screens; others, in Eritrea, Timor or Cambodia have been ignored or forgotten about. Many more hundreds of thousands of people, in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America, have been fleeing from these wars and filling the world’s refugee camps. Tens of thousands of people have been arrested, tortured or murdered. Millions of people (about 30 million) have died of starvation and many millions more have been left so weak from undernourishment that irreversible damage has been caused to their mental and physical faculties. Millions of children, from Thailand and South Korea to Africa and South America have worked in semi-slavery and under conditions that defy description.

It has to be admitted that none of this is new. Equally horrific things have taken place at other times in human history. But the difference today is that, for the first time, these scourges could be eliminated. Famine, torture, disease and war need no longer plague the human race. There could be enough food, shelter, clothing and other things to satisfy everyone’s needs the world over. Much infectious illness could be a thing of the past everywhere. Wars are popular with virtually no one and most people would like nothing better than to see all the inhabitants of the earth live in peace together.

Yet nearly all of us, without knowing it, give our support to and help perpetuate the very things we find unacceptable. We endorse the poverty, hunger, cruelty and warfare that blight humanity. We do it every time we express support for the big political parties, every time we vote for them. Because all of these parties stand for the continuation of a world system of which poverty, hunger, cruelty and warfare are an integral part. They stand for a system that will only produce goods when there is a profit to be made and which can never therefore hope to put food in the belly or clothes on the back of people who have no cash to pay for it. And when profits can’t be made, even goods that have already been produced aren’t given to needy people. They’re stored, burned, dumped or buried - anything else would “upset the market”. So large ‘gluts’ of food and other goods are produced in some parts of the world while millions go starving or undernourished elsewhere. All the big parties say they are opposed to this, but they are all committed to administering the system that makes it happen.

The big parties also say they are opposed to war. But when it comes to it, they all accept war and prepare for it. They give encouragement or help to one side or the other in bloody conflicts taking place in other parts of the globe. They insist that they themselves must have ready the best and most sophisticated weapons in order to “protect the country”. But when we consider that, in all countries, the vast majority of the wealth is owned by a tiny minority of the population, we can see who is getting the best deal from “protection”. Wars break out - as a nuclear war could break out — when the economic interests of this wealth-owning minority (their markets, trade routes and sources of raw materials) are threatened and their profits are endangered. And then the only protection ordinary people get is to be told to fight and die for the country. The protection that even civilian populations get is derisory. As many modern examples have shown, they suffer death, misery and destruction on a large scale.

How then do we go about not supporting poverty, famine, disease and war? The answer is to take a long hard look at the world around us, to see that all attempts to improve the nightmare system of production for profit are futile, and to join a vigorous democratic movement determined to replace it by the society of abundance, equality and security which is there for the taking. But it can only be taken when a majority of men and women use their votes not to elect leaders who promise to run things for them but send to the seats of political power democratically elected delegates from a mass socialist party who are committed to one thing and one thing only the abolition of the outdated system of money, wages, profit and buying and selling and the bringing in of a new, truly humane society which will produce only for people’s needs and will make full rational democratic use of the abundant resources of planet earth.

The Passing Show: Censured (1962)

The Passing Show column from the June 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Censured

In the May Socialist Standard was reprinted part of an article on the Titanic disaster from the May 1912, issue. It recalled some of the unsavoury details of the tragedy—the desperate rush (in order to attract the rich transatlantic passengers) to break speed records for the crossing, which resulted in an insufficient look-out being kept; the much higher proportion of first-class than steerage passengers rescued; the officer who kept steerage passengers from the lifeboat with his revolver; and so on. Now another significant piece of evidence has come to light.

As the Titanic went down, many of those on board clearly saw a ship which made no attempt to come to the rescue. Afterwards, it was found that the liner Californian had been in the vicinity at the time of the Titanic's collision with an iceberg. At the subsequent enquiry the captain of this ship was censured for not going to the help of the Titanic, although he maintained to the end that he had never seen the Titanic's distress rockets.

Under observation

Now the general secretary of the Mercantile Marine Service Association has claimed that it was the Norwegian ship Samson which saw the Titanic in distress at less than 10 miles range. But (according to a recent Norwegian TV broadcast, quoting the Samson's chief officer) this ship, which could have given invaluable assistance, then steamed away.

Why did it do that? Why did the captain and crew of the Samson so deny their common humanity with the crew and passengers of the Titanic as to leave 1,635 men, women and children to drown?

They steamed away "because they had been engaged in illegal seal hunting operations, and thought they were under observation by the American authorities.”

Having broken Capitalism's laws, they feared punishment' by the Capitalist state authorities. As so often happens, Capitalism forced these men to stifle their pity, and behave without compassion.

The whole Titanic episode, in fact, seems to offer a microcosm of the workings of Capitalist society.

Confidence

Even for the Capitalists Fascism has its drawbacks. It makes wartime propaganda, about the defence of freedom, and so on, even more difficult to put across than it is in the democracies; and it is an expensive system—the secret police have to be paid, and to keep even one political prisoner in jail costs many pounds a week. So while the Fuhrers and Duces and Caudillos of Fascism strut vaingloriously on their balconies and puff out their chests before their gigantic rallies, each one knows at the back of his mind that he is there because he is doing a job for his ruling class.

Which is why General Francisco Franco, Caudillo of Spain, must be a worried man just now.

In Asturias 30,000 miners have come out on a pay strike. Franco has had to proclaim a state of emergency covering Asturias and the Basque provinces of Vizcaya and Guipuzcoa, where several thousand more workers have gone on strike. Altogether, more than 50,000 are involved. Students demonstrating in Madrid shouted support for the Asturian miners. and several were arrested, joining the 50 workers already reported to be in jail.

As The Observer (6/5/62) puts it:

   The crisis constitutes the most serious challenge to General Franco's regime since the end of the Second World War.
   If the Government can get the strikers back to work only by force of arms, it is likely that the industrialists, who have for so long supported the regime without question, will lose some of their confidence in General Franco's ability to safeguard their interests.

And if the industrialists lose their confidence in Franco, there is no future for him. 

‘‘Defence’’

Mr. George Wigg, Labour M.P., is worried about the state of the army. He thinks Britain does not have enough soldiers. And he does not hesitate to apportion the blame. Recently he stated forthrightly:

The responsibility for the state of the Army lies fairly and squarely on the shoulders of those politicians of both parties who took their decisions about Army manpower because it was politically convenient so to do and not in the light of Britain's defence needs.

Britain's Capitalist class need never lose sleep over the next war, while they have Labour M.P.s like Mr. Wigg to look after their “defence needs” for them.

Alwyn Edgar