Labour Leader's Misconception About Socialism (1943)

From the August 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Arthur Deakin, the Acting Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, has taken his place among those self-appointed authorities who instruct us about Socialism.

Trailing along behind Mr. Morrison and Mr. Bevin, he announces (Tribune, May 14th) that the Essential Works Order is not merely a triumph of Trade Unionism, but “a lasting factor" whose retention in industry "Socialists" should support.

The unanimity with which all these leaders agree that “the existing restrictions must be retained, and even extended.” after the war makes us suspect that they know something.

If they are to be believed, the postwar world will be very much like the present, with Control of Employment by the National Service Officer, Rationing, Registration, and other “benefits" in full blast.

Past experience teaches us, nevertheless, that nothing is more uncertain than the post-war world, and the rapid growth of a huge unemployed army will perhaps reduce all their plans and schemes to nought.

In the meantime, following his master. Mr. Deakin is at pains to produce some plausible tale to slip the Essential Works Order over. He admits that the Order “has not been welcomed, in every case, by the workers."

He therefore artfully starts off by claiming that “workers must be conceded property rights in their particular employment."

"Years of honest service, skilled labour and experience are worth something more than a wage adequate for the day; they must be given an accumulating capital value, realisable in the first of the four freedoms."

Socialists will see at once that Mr. Deakin’s knowledge of the economics of capitalism is not enough to cover a pin-point.

First, Capital is not freedom (either first or fourth) —it is Wealth, used to produce more Wealth, with a view to profit.

Workers cannot own it—if they do, they are NOT workers.

Mr. Deakin dimly senses this, and says, “Unlike the investors of capital, the investors of labour cannot cash in on any accumulation of wealth they have helped to create." (Our italics.)

“It is doubtful if this injustice will be remedied within a capitalist structure."

That sounds all right. Mr. Deakin even goes further, and says, “I have examined various schemes which, on paper, professed to give the workers an interest in the business. The motive behind all of them was the retention of skilled labour and experience on terms which satisfy the worker only because he is persuaded that he has been accorded, tenuous status as a partner or shareholder. In every case such a concession is fictitious, and should he attempt to exercise the statutory rights of a part-proprietor at inconvenient times, he will find that, his position differs but very slightly indeed from that of an ordinary old-fashioned wage-earner."

But that is exactly what The Socialist Standard said at the time of the two Labour Governments, and at the time of the Mond-Turner conference of the T.U.C.

Mr Deakin, how can you make such statements during the present Fight for Freedom (four freedoms) and Democracy, when Mr. Churchill has officially stated that your leaders are “full partners"? (“Marx To-day," page 13, H. J. Laski.)

But now we reach the point. “I want a bond between the worker and the job . . . because of my experience of the horrors of casual employment. For this reason, I, in common with every other responsible trade union leader, welcomed the Essential Work Order."

“Employers and workers will have to co-operate in making it workable, as something very like a permanency . . . "

At this point Mr. Deakin actually suggests that National Service Officers may be a feature of Socialist society! “Should we, as Socialists, necessarily oppose the retention in the structure of industry, an officer with similar powers as a lasting factor?"

Having clearly explained that workers cannot be “partners" of capitalists, he concludes by claiming that “Trade Unions must be accepted as full partners in industry." He really means Trade Union leaders.

Mr. Deakin is merely repeating, in a very pompous and involved way, what Mr. Bevin has said repeatedly—for example, in the House of Commons on May 31st, 1942:—

  One of the greatest things that would smooth the working of the war would be for industry . . . to accept the basic principle of the Essential Work Order not only for the war, but for after the war.

We Socialists have to state categorically that Essential Work Orders, etc. (quite apart from the question of their value to Trades Unions), are nothing whatever to do with Socialism.

Those who claim they are besmirch the name of Socialism.

Essential Work Orders are a strengthening of the apparatus of the Capitalist State. Socialism renders the State machine unnecessary because it abolishes private property and classes. The State is a class institution. There will not be any National Service Officers under Socialism, ordering people about; there will not be any police courts or prisons to commit them to, anyway.

  The working class will substitute, in the course of its development, for the old order of civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will no longer be political power, properly speaking, since political power is simply the official form of the antagonism in civil society. (The Poverty of Philosophy, Karl Marx, Kerr edition, p. 190.) 

In this matter we Socialists prefer the dictum of Karl Marx to that of Mr. Deakin.

  After the enslaving subordination of individuals under division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not merely a means to live, but has become itself the primary necessity of life, after the productive forces have increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of capitalist right be left behind and society inscribe upon its banner, “ From each according to his ability, to each .according to his needs." (Criticism of the Gotha Programme, Karl Marx, Point I.) (Italics ours.)

The citizens of the Socialist community will work voluntarily because they are doing a job they love, for the benefit of society as a whole—i.e., in the long run, for themselves.

All labour in the Socialist society will be essential and useful. There will be no need to try to stop people from doing wasteful and unessential things, like pouring luxuries into the lap of already overfed and jaded parasites.

The most extraordinary thing about this so-called “Essential Works Order" now is that it forces people off making bread and boots to make "essential” bombs and bullets. "Guns, not Butter," are essential.

Mr. Deakin has taken it upon himself to inform his members that the "Essential Work Order" is "a good stroke of business.”

That is a matter for him—and them. But when he endeavours to delude bis readers that the so-called National Service Officer may be a feature of the future Socialist society, then it is incumbent upon Socialists to explain that Socialism must be based on voluntary labour—not force, compulsion, trickery, or deceit.

In fact, even Mr. Arthur Deakin will be engaged on really essential work.

Horatio

Empire and Poverty (1943)

From the July 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pages from South African History

A corner stone in the British Empire is the Dominion of South Africa, the Prime Minister of which. General Smuts was made a Field-Marshal of the British Army on his 71st birthday two years ago. The approval accorded to him in the British Press contrasts rather forcibly with the rather nasty epithets bestowed upon the politicians of other countries who have accepted office under their conquerors, during the past year or so.

While still in his twenties Smuts became State Attorney of the Transvaal Republic under Kruger, whose administration (according to most British accounts) was one of the most corrupt on earth. After the war of 1899—1902 the Boer politicians were out of the limelight, their territory being annexed and administered by a High Commissioner of the Crown. The grant of responsible government a few years later, however, gave them their chance once more. General Louis Botha (who had succeeded Joubert as commander during the war) formed Het Volk and secured a majority in the first elections 1907. From that time onwards Smuts was in close association with Botha, until the latter's death in 1919, occupying ministerial positions under him and eventually succeeding him as Premier of the Union. He held this office till 1924, when he gave way to General Hertzog and the National Party, triumphant at the polls with the aid of the Labourites. Some eight or nine years later, however, when the economic blizzard had affected the popularity of Hertzog's ministry, we find Smuts again in office as Minister of Justice in a Coalition with his late rival. Since then Smuts has reaped the reward of his pertinacity and occupied the supremacy so dear to him.

Smuts cannot be accused of neglecting his opportunities, a fact which can be appreciated best against the background of history.

His countrymen fought the war of 1899-1902 in the desperate attempt to preserve their political independence. This had been in a precarious state ever since the British occupied the Cape; and some three-quarters of a century earlier the Boers in large numbers had trekked northwards to avoid British control. Their primitive mode of life was gradually complicated by the discovery of minerals and the arrival in the country of prospectors and their hangers-on, and this led to a clamour for annexation. One attempt in 1877 lasted over three years. The Boers tolerated the position while the British were engaged in their struggles with the natives (chiefly the Zulus) and then revolted successfully, resuming' the status of a Republic in 1881. A few years later the discovery of gold on the Rand laid the foundations of the economic “fifth column," which led to its final downfall.

A description of some of the gentry the Boers were expected to tolerate is contained in a small volume, "South Africa" by J. I. A. Agar-Hamilton, lecturer in modern history at Pretoria University. ("South Africa" Modern States Series: Arrowsmith.)

  Pioneers are always pleasanter in retrospect than in close proximity in the flesh, and many of the earliest inhabitants of Barberton and Johannesburg were drunken rowdies and ne'er-do-wells, who were a pest to any law-abiding citizen. In the second wave came international crooks, swindlers and bullies, criminals of every sort who needed a respite from the attentions of the European police. (P. 36.)

More formidable were the large financiers such as Rhodes, who became Prime Minister of Cape Colony in 1890 with the support of Hofmeyr, the leader of the Cape Dutch. The Rand magnates backed the demand for the enfranchisement of the alien element in the Transvaal. .The answer of the Kruger Government was to raise the residential qualification to fourteen years (1890), and any prospect of a more moderate attitude was killed by Dr. Jameson (Rhodes' friend and Administrator of Rhodesia), who "invaded" the Transvaal in 1895 in the vain hope of bringing to a head a much talked of rising on the Rand. The Boers rounded him up with his 500 men and handed the captives over to the British High Commissioner. This magnanimity, however, did not indicate any weakening of their purpose. In October, 1899, the Transvaal and Orange Free State, making common cause, demanded the withdrawal of British troops and the war was on. The Boers could not maintain their initial success. In June, 1900, their capital, Pretoria, was in British hands and Kruger was in flight. None the less, the conflict dragged on, guerrilla fashion, for another two years. To bring it to a conclusion. Kitchener had to evacuate the rural population; concentrate them in camps, and supply them with rations.

The farmhouses were then systematically destroyed and blockhouses and barbed wire sought to restrict the movement of the commandos. ("South Africa," p. 44.)

So great a havoc was wrought that no indemnity from the vanquished was possible. On the contrary, the victors had to advance considerable sums to restore agricultural production.

Although the Boers could hardly be suspected of aiming at world domination, the workers in Britain were fed the customary pap about their "enemies" being skulking cowards who hid behind rocks to snipe the manly British Tommy, who, as often as not, had to beg his bread in British streets when the war was over. The bioscope shows of the day depicted the ruthless Dutch farmers attacking the hospitals (plainly marked with red crosses) and molesting the helpless and attractive nurses. A large percentage of the wounds were supposed to be due to "dum-dum" bullets. Then of course the Boers were brutal to the niggers; but this did not prevent them being allowed to retain their rifles, when peace was signed, "for their protection" against these same niggers, and they were "secured against a native franchise." (South Africa, p. 44.)

From the Orange to the Limpopo the countryside lay waste, without house or inhabitant, and its simplest agricultural needs were imported from elsewhere— Swiss milk, Australian butter and Irish eggs. The whole rural population had to be repatriated, the economic machinery of the country must be set going once more, and a new civil service and administration recreated. (p. 48.)

Under these circumstances it is hardly surprising that Botha and Smuts felt their dependence on their conquerors, and that their policy of conciliation received the support of the majority of their countrymen for a period of several years. In the Orange River Colony which had no large English-speaking population like the mining towns in the Transvaal, this policy was by no means so popular. Nevertheless the Union of the two ex-republics with the British colonies of the Cape and Natal was eventually effected in 1910.

Botha became the first premier. He expanded Het Volk into the South African National Party aiming to include British as well as Boer supporters. The mining interests of the Transvaal, however, combined with British elements in the Cape to form the Unionist Party, which retained its independent existence for ten years. The Labour Party, though strong in the Transvaal towns, was naturally weak in an agricultural country run on unenfranchised native labour, and "direct action" has, on more than one occasion, led to considerable violence on the Rand.

It was not long before the Government found itself in conflict with this element of the working-class. In July, 1913, a miners' strike brought out the whole Imperial garrison to restore order. Six months later an attempt at a general strike, including the State railwaymen, "was countered by the Proclamation of Martial Law. . . . Nine trade union leaders were summarily deported without trial" (South Africa, p. 58.)

A few months earlier, Hertzog (one of Botha's ministers who was dropped on account of his open hostility to the British elements) formed a new National Party. When the European War broke out in 1914, he advocated neutrality. The Botha Government, however, proceeded to send an expedition to invade German South-West Africa. A 'rebellion led, among others, by De Wet, gave them some trouble, but the leaders of the Nationalist Party had little confidence in its success and Botha kept control of the situation; his party lost ground, however, as the followers of Hertzog increased in number. Smuts held a place in the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917 along with Lord Milner, the High Commissioner of Boer War days.

Botha died "execrated among his own people" but "the hero of the Imperialists" (South Africa, pp. 62-3) and " Smuts inherited a peck of troubles. The elections (1920) returned the Nationalists as the biggest single party, while the Unionists lost heavily to the advantage of Labour in the towns" (p. 65). Smuts had only one course in order to retain office. He secured support from the Unionists who sank their identity in his party and allowed three of their members to join the Cabinet. Botha's dream of conciliation was realised—a Dominion of the British Empire in South Africa had been established.

March, 1922, saw a revival of the Rand trouble. Strikers drilled openly on the Reef, the defence commandos were called out and aeroplanes and field artillery were finally required to quell the rising.

At the next election in 1924 the Labour Party formed a pact with the party of Hertzog to avoid splitting the anti-Government vote. As a piece of tactics it was an immediate success. The Nationalist-cum-Labour coalition had a substantial majority and two Labour leaders entered the Ministry.

In order to secure the support of the Labour Party the Nationalists dropped the Republican clause from their constitution. Nevertheless General Hertzog spent some years trying to clarify the status of the Union. He wanted the right to secede recognised and it took two Imperial Conferences to satisfy him. In economic matters his government pursued a policy of Protection coupled with Factories Acts, Wages Boards and Industrial Conciliation.

In native affairs Hertzog stood for white supremacy and repressive legislation (such as the Colour Bar Bill, 1926, which limited natives in mines to unskilled labour, the Riotous Assemblies Act, 1930, and the Native Service Contract Act, 1932) found its way on to the Statute Book. As Mr. Agar Hamilton points out, he "could always rely on the support of ultra-British Natal for the more repressive side of his policy" (South Africa, p. 122). And, we may add, that of the more short-sighted white members of the working-class who fail to realise the necessity for organising irrespective of race or colour.

In 1929 the Labour Party split over the Question of continuing their pact with Hertzog. In the elections of that year the Coalition lost ground but the Government retained its majority. The following year the world depression made itself felt throughout the Union where the number of mortgaged farms is abnormally high. "Long established landowners were ruined and those small farmers and "bywoners" who normally lived dose to the poverty line suffered appalling privations" (South Africa, p. 80),

The diamond mines were closed as the price of their product collapsed and thousands of diggers in the Western Transvaal found themselves destitute. Relief works became the order of the day.

After a vain struggle to remain on the gold standard the Government finally abandoned it in December, 1932. During the following year negotiations were opened between the Nationalists and the South African Parties. The two Labour Ministers were dropped while Smuts and five of his supporters joined the Government. "Parliament was dissolved, but an adroit system of parcelling out the seats ensured the return of the two big parties very nearly as before " (South Africa, P. 84).

Thus the intrigues and trickery with which we are familiar in the case of the Mother of Parliaments, are very closely reflected in her youngest daughter. Those workers who believe that the British Empire is democratic in principle might reflect on these facts; and, further, ask themselves what is the lot of the workers in the latest addition to the Commonwealth of Nations. According to Mr. Agar Hamilton, "two major problems commonly exercise the minds of the people of South Africa, the Poor White and the Native" (p. 105).

The Carnegie Commission reckoned that in 1929-30, before the effects of the depression were felt, 17.5 per cent, of the white population were "very poor." After 1930 the position became more serious, i.e., 20 per cent. Poverty among white workers in Africa has its peculiar features due to local conditions yet Professor Macmillan says: "The poor whites are little more than the 'reservoir' of unemployed to be found wherever Western industrialism has dislocated the old agrarian system." (Complex South Africa, p. 16.)

The native population of five and a half million may be divided broadly into three groups. First some two and a half million have their homes in "Reserves," i.e., "the last vestiges of the land once occupied by independent tribes" (South Africa, p. 111). They are little more than a breeding ground; for the majority of the able-bodied males are away working in the mines or on farms for the greater part of the year. The Reserves are not capable of feeding their inhabitants and the shortage of production has to be made good by imports paid for largely by remittance from the absent wage-earners.

The second group of two million (the so-called "squatters") reside on the farms of the white invaders who annexed and divided up the land. They pay for the accommodation either in labour or produce according to the requirements of the owners. The remaining group work in the towns.

All alike suffer poverty. In the words of Professor Macmillan: "There is little room left for doubt that the natives of the Union as a whole are a community dragging along at the very lowest level of bare subsistence." (Complete South Africa, p. 221.)

From all of which it would appear that the Commonwealth of Nations is not incompatible with the poverty of its people.

Eric Boden

Who Rules Britain? (1943)

From the June 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who are the Real Rulers of Britain?

This question was set and replied to by Professor H. J. Laski and Captain L. D. Gammans, Conservative M.P. for Hornsey, in the New York Times, and reprinted in the Evening Standard (March 29th and 30th, 1943).

That such a question should be debated at all in the pages of the capitalist press may surprise some of our readers. However, this issue is common topic among the workers here, whilst the dollar kings of the United States find it useful occasionally to deride the feudal moss with which British capitalism is still bedecked.

Professor Laski’s contribution is useful—so far as it goes. But it only goes half-way. For reasons best known to himself, the Professor shrinks at the implications of some of his own conclusions. Where he does not shrink, he clothes the living facts his article does contain with the cap and gown of academic jargon.

Here is how Professor Laski begins.

“The law which constitutes the form of government," wrote Saint-Simon nearly a century and a half ago, “is less important as it touches the happiness of a people—far less—than the law which constitutes property. It is the law of property which determines the real character of the people."

This is merely a half-truth. It draws a distinction between ownership of property and the mode of government. This distinction does not exist. The political constitution of a country corresponds to the needs of its property-owners, the people who own and control the means of life. In Britain the government depends on adult suffrage, and minorities are allowed to express contrary opinions. But to appreciate this fact does not mean that we must endow the British ruling-class with virtues they do not possess.

Professor Laski evidently feels under an obligation to the British ruling- class for their “permission" of political democracy. Such “permission," however, is not the prerogative of rulers. It is a historical product, based upon the needs of capitalism at a particular stage of its development. The decisive fact is this: That this particular form of governmental laws alone enables the owning class of Britain to secure the support of a majority of the population.

Having conceded to the mass of the people the right to elect their rulers, the question stands: Who does, in fact, control political power in this country?

Professor Laski answers, and rightly answers, that it is “the propertied class or their representatives . . . in whose hands all the vital controls of State power remains."

He goes on to specify the ruling-class elements in detail.

"Politically, the ruling class expresses its purpose through the Conservative Party. Anyone who analyses the composition of this Party in the House of Commons cannot avoid the conclusion that its essential purpose is the protection of the interests of private property in the means of production. Forty-four per cent, of them are directors of public companies; between them they hold nearly 1.800 directorships. All important economic interests are represented there—banks, insurance, railways, shipping, iron, steel, engineering, textiles, electricity supply, coal, oil, tobacco, foodstuffs, newspapers, and so forth."

On the role of our land-owning aristocracy he is equally enlightening:

“The great aristocrat of to-day is not merely a landowner. Like the Duke of Montrose, he may be a banker; like Lord Burghley . . .  he may be a director of a railroad, a bank and an insurance company. And if to persons in the Conservative Party connected with the peerage we add members who hold either a baronetcy or a knighthood, we find that nearly 250 members of the House of Commons out of 815 fall into this category."

So far, so good. Since the demise of the Liberal Party after the last war, it is undeniably the Conservative Party which embodies the will and the interests of the propertied class in Britain. But then comes a gap in the argument. Professor Laski is completely silent on the two periods during which a Labour Government was in office. True, on both occasions it was a minority in the House of Commons (though in the second period—1929-1931—they constituted the largest single party in the House). The Professor’s silence is easily understood when it is born in mind that he himself is a prominent member of the Labour Party. For flowing logically from his own arguments is the inescapable conclusion that on both occasions the Labour Government willingly acted as caretakers for the property of the British capitalists.

Here is revealed the fundamental flaw in Professor Laski’s contribution. For there is no recognition of the fact that no matter which party assumes the responsibilities of government, whether it be Conservative, Labour or any other movement which may arise in the future, real power will remain secure with the owning class, so long as the avowed programmes of these parties—their labels notwithstanding—do not solely aim at the expropriation of the present owners of the means of production, etc., and their transference to ownership by the whole of society.

This is Socialism and, of course. Professor Laski's Labour Party does not aim at Socialism. Perhaps that is why he ends his article by asking tamely “whether Britain's ruling-class will adapt itself to post-war conditions by maintaining and extending its well-known capacity for compromise." As if the abolition of capitalism could ever be a matter for compromise!

Nevertheless, the substance of his article merited a better rejoinder than the naive platform-foolery which serves Captain Gammans as "argument."

"The majority of the British people," he says, “will have none of Professor Laski's Marxian theories of class struggles."

And again: "He has revived the theory of the ruling-class conception of government which the British electorate time and time again has refused to accept, and which to-day is as dead as the dodo in British political life."

But the issue of this debate is not which view a majority of the electorate appear to hold at the present time. The allegation which Professor Laski makes and which, as quoted above, is backed up by facts and figures, is that the propertied class impose their political rule  through the Conservative Party. This allegation Captain Gammans does not attempt to refute. The mass of the people, including the workers, seem to have all kinds of ideas floating in their heads, from Churchill-worship to astrology. To what extent these ideas correspond to the realities of the world to-day is quite a different matter. Captain Gammans certainly appears to hold a very low opinion of the intelligence of people when he makes the following claim:

"With two short intervals, the Conservative Party was in power during the twenty years between the two wars. There is no reason for it to be very much ashamed of its record at home."

This is the kind of statement calculated to bring even the deadest of dodos back to life. Mass unemployment, slums, the wholesale reduction of the workers' standard of living (enforced, as in the case of the miners in 1926, by a lockout), all this pitiful record of poverty and downright starvation imposed consciously and deliberately on a people by the wealthiest ruling-class that ever existed—culminating in a world war! It is obviously not in the nature of a ruling-class to have any sense of shame.

Captain Gammans attempts to bolster up his boast by a reference to the social services which he claims "have effected an almost unbelievable improvement in the health and general well-being of the community."

The emphasis here must certainly be placed on the word "unbelievable." Enquiries conducted previous to the war by nutrition experts, such as Sir John Boyd-Orr, revealed that at least a third of the nation did not receive a sufficient income per head to provide themselves with the minimum food required to maintain a reasonable standard of health. And has Captain Gammans asked the Army Medical authorities to give him the percentage figures of working-class recruits found in good health?

What seems to have escaped the Captain's notice altogether is this question:

How is it that one section of the population is in a position to dole out social services and another, a majority, is forced to accept them in order to keep alive?

Surely the answer to that question alone can tell us who rules Britain.

Sid Rubin

Inquest on the I.L.P. (1943)

Book Review from the May 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fenner Brockway's "Inside the Left" (Allen & Unwin, 15/-) contains no original contribution to Socialist thought nor even an adequate restatement of old theories. Brockway says of Sir Stafford Cripps (p. 264) that Cripps "has no experience of the working-class and he has no real knowledge of Socialist theory. . . . I doubt whether he has ever read Marx or any book of fundamental Socialist economics." Brockway has experience of the working-class and has probably read more about Socialist theory than Cripps but it is not unfair to say that he has.no real understanding of it. In this he is a representative figure in the I.L.P. The I.L.P. membership, taking each incident of the working-class struggle in isolation, are able to use what they know of Socialist theory and past experience to discuss the pros and cons of short-term courses of action but have no clear idea of Socialism or of how capitalism is to be abolished. They have no standard, except a sentimental desire to do some immediate good to the workers, by which to measure their actions. When their actions happen to be sound it is only by accident. They have theories but no theory, aims but no aim, enthusiasm and energy but no direction.

Brockway's book is full of interesting incidents and observations. It is written with candour and is honest according to the author's lights. It is like the many books written by competent journalists who have "been there when it happened"; and like some of those books it will be a useful work to the critical reader but without the living of it and the writing of it having been of much use to the author from the point of view of acquiring understanding of what is going on below the surface of things.

The chief use of the book will be to serve as a warning of the futility of attempts to build a Socialist movement on a foundation of sentiment, hero-worship, and reformism and (though he may draw no useful conclusions himself) Brockway is completely candid in showing this, as one or two examples will indicate.

Of the I.L.P. in the war, 1914-1918, he writes: —

   The Party membership was not so united as the National Council. The I.L.P. had no clear-cut philosophy or policy at this time; its idealism impelled it to oppose war, but Socialist sentiment was up against another sentiment, the intense emotion of patriotism, and probably one-fifth of the Party succumbed (p. 47). 

And again: —

    . . . the truth is that the I.L.P. had no unifying anti-war philosophy. One section of it was pacifist; another was opposed to a "balance of power war" on the continent but in favour of national defence; a third, while ready to take part in a class-war, was not prepared to support an imperialist war, though even this section had no thought-out revolutionary tactic (p. 52).
    We were not revolutionary Socialists. We were democratic pacifists (p. 55).

He admits by the way that MacDonald's attitude was never that of complete opposition to the war, and gives (p. 56—59) an interesting and fairly convincing explanation of how McDonald, by a political error of judgment or the swift movement of events, found himself isolated when in fact he was hoping to place himself at the head of a powerful group (including Lloyd George) hostile to Sir Edward Grey's foreign policy.

After 1918 Brockway devoted himself to the anti-war movement, believing that solid resistance to war could be built on the sentimental reaction against war that was then the fashion. He received from Bernard Shaw a sensible comment on its uselessness. This was in a letter (26 July, 1922) refusing to address a peace demonstration:—

   I grieve to say that I don't believe in these demonstrations. People who get emotionally excited about peace are precisely the people who get emotionally excited about war. In this matter, action and reaction are equal. Lloyd George will do all that is necessary to make the nation send Xmas cards to all the other nations until he wants to send them to the trenches again. Ten minutes after that he will have them telling stories of enemy sergeants (probably French this time) with their pouches full of gouged English eyes and throwing bricks at you as you are dragged back to prison (p. 135).

Brockway acknowledges the truth of this—afterwards.

    Writing in this year of war crises, 1939, one realises how. superficial was the effect of imposing No More War demonstrations which we organised from 1922 to 1924 and how justifiable was Mr. Shaw's cynicism.

Another illustration of the I.L.P.S floundering relates to a much later period, 1931-1933.

   I was elected chairman of the I.L.P. at Easter, 1931, and remained chairman until the end of 1933. During this period the I.L.P. disaffiliated from the Labour Party and began its inner struggle towards a revolutionary Socialist position. In the course of this inner struggle the I.L.P. experimented in many directions, at one time approaching the Communist International, and at another moving towards the Trotskyist position, at one stage attaching its hope to united fronts and at another reverting to purism, at one period going all out to prepare for Soviets and at another recognising again the value of Parliament (p. 237).

To see this in proper perspective it needs to be remembered that 1931 was after the I.L.P. had been in existence for nearly 40 years.

A last example is the attitude of Brockway and the I.L.P.. towards leaders and leadership. As a youth Brockway was constantly being swept off his feet by oratory. John Morley's " finely-phrased oratory awed me, but I felt more enthusiasm for the audacious speech of a young recruit to Liberalism—Mr. Winston Churchill " (p. 11).

This was before his conversion to "Socialism" but his attitude to leaders did not change. He was "entranced" by Keir Hardie (p. 17). He was a "Shaw worshipper" (p. 22), and MacDonald "expressed his opinions with the manner of a god and I felt at least that I was in the presence of a great man . . . his rich organ-like voice and oratory captivated me" (p. 35). He tells of a speech (in French) by Jean Jaurès, which Brockway "could not follow" and which probably not "one man in a hundred" of the audience understood, "but we all understood that he was illustrating the rise of the workers from slavery to freedom, and at his final cry of triumph we were all on our feet cheering with him" (p. 36).

Of course it can be said that this emotionalism, like admiration for the art and artifices of actors, is harmless; but in politics where it is played upon by leaders to sway the emotions of followers without regard to their understanding it is not harmless, far from it. Brockway gives a striking example of how harmful it can be. He had become thoroughly mistrustful of MacDonald because, among other things, MacDonald was working early in 1914 for a definite Labour Party alliance with the Liberals at the General Election. When Keir Hardie died MacDonald spoke at a memorial meeting in Glasgow and "many of those who heard him say that his oration rose to heights greater than they had ever known in human utterances. If there were doubts about MaoDonald before in the minds of Scottish Socialists, this speech removed them. The extraordinary loyalty of Glasgow to MacDonald, which was responsible for his election to the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1921, and was never dispelled until the betrayal of the workers by the second Labour Government, had its roots in this speech more than in anything else " (p. 65. Italics ours).

Can anyone read this and not perceive the truth of the S.P.G.B.'s claim that dependence on leadership is a menace to the working-clam movement and that not emotionalism and leader worship but knowledge, understanding and self-reliance are the workers' road to emancipation?

Yet Brockway (who incidentally mistrusted MacDonald but for years deliberately refrained from passing on his grounds for mistrust to the workers) is still, at the end of his book, putting the case for leadership and hoping to find leaders who will be "worthy of the name" and who will "not be tempted by careerism" (p. 342), and stating that, in the final struggle for Socialism "and the critical period of the transition following it," of course large power of direction must be given to the leaders" (p. 345). True, Brockway desires that "even then the final decision on issues of principle should remain with representatives of the workers," but he does not explain how a movement of workers brought up to be spell-bound worshippers of oratory and personality are going to acquire the knowledge and self- reliance necessary for the task of breaking the spell. 

Edgar Hardcastle

Greasy Pole: Laughter At A Price (2017)

The Greasy Pole column from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for humans now, There isn’t grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death!

Was John Betjeman’s 1937 despairing plea to Europe’s rampant air forces to put a halt to the menacing industrialisation of that Berkshire town with its vulgar profiteers but to spare the bald young clerks who add those profits? But it was not long after this that Slough nurtured a young man whose talents as a cartoonist were devoted to exposing the very social structure and circumstances that Betjeman despaired of: It’s not their fault they do not know, The birdsong from the radio. Steve Bell was raised in Slough at the grammar school where he enjoyed the Art lessons (and the novels of P.G. Wodehouse) but had something of a conscientious objection to being duffed up on the rugby field. So he moved up north where he could develop his illustrative skills along with burgeoning passions for left wing protest to the point that when his work was published worldwide, he was decorated with numerous honorary degrees and repeatedly named as Cartoonist of the Year. Early on in his time he fathered a succession of characters such as David Cameron as a speaking condom, Harry Hardnose as a newspaper editor and Able Seaman Kipling aboard a Royal Navy warship in the Falkland war. Such disrespect for the noble, enriched eminences of the social system of class was bound to provoke outrage, which served only to emphasise the truth that Bell at his most perceptively offensive was merely illustrating with an unfailing eye the facts of capitalism in its exploitation, cruelty and deceit.

HIGNFY

In whole this process is often referred to as satire, which can yield an impressive income when it is transmitted in the right place and time. For example there was the television programme Have I Got News For You (HIGNFY) – a kind of panel game in which two personalities – Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, each with a partner, presented themselves to ameliorate popular dismay at some current events by exploiting anything about them liable to cause a laugh. Between these two, as a kind of conductor orchestrating the laughter, was Angus Deayton. There were rumours that Hislop and Merton were resentful of the fact that Deayton was paid £50,000 for each programme, which was a great deal more than they got. There was some concern that they took their revenge on him when in October 2002 he was sacked after big headline revelations in the red top press that he was in the regular habit of taking drugs such as cocaine and using a succession of prostitutes – all of which was officially beyond the bounds of the programme. But HIGNFY has lost none of its appeal since then.

Straight Women

One of its recent victims was Nicky Morgan, the Tory Minster and MP for Loughborough. Among her ministerial jobs was in 2013 as Economic Secretary to the Treasury and soon afterwards Minister for Women – excluding the bit in the title about Equalities – which was said to be due to her voting against the proposal for same-sex marriages which, said her detractors, made her just the Minister for Straight Women. She was locked in an enduring clash with Minister of Education Michael Gove   over his proposals which did not prevent her supporting his later bid to become Tory leader. On another matter she accepted donations from a constituent who was at the head of a local radio programme and of a company specialising in security – which involved spying on other political organisations in order to develop legal advice to be passed to the opposition.

Trousers

These events were politically undermining, keeping Morgan in an uncomfortable spotlight and some of her comments led to her leader Theresa May issuing terse instructions that a person she identified as ‘that woman’ should not be admitted to any cabinet meetings discussing Brexit. Then Morgan made matters worse by sneering at May after she had posed on a couch wearing – or perhaps 'displaying' would be a more appropriate word – glamorously patterned leather trousers. The news that this garment had cost £995 did not help May’s efforts to persuade us that she stands for a government of the ordinary hard working struggling folk; even worse that the people who make the trousers in some Far Eastern sweat shop are paid some £1.49 an hour. Dismissing Morgan from the government did not cost anything like that and amid the uproar it was overlooked that Morgan was herself not averse to a bit of expensive leatherwear because she is often seen carrying her bits and pieces in a handbag made of the stuff, which at £950 had cost almost as much as May’s legwear. Morgan’s response to this humiliation was to withdraw from a pending appearance as one of the panel alongside Paul Merton on HIGNFY. Perhaps she did this in the hope of keeping a low profile but that did not happen because the programme responded by substituting her handbag.

Hattersley

That was just one example of how HIGNFY might keep its reputation for ruthless responses to popular politicians who reject an opportunity to appear with them. There was Roy Hattersley, or Baron Hattersley PC FRSL, who when he refused to appear was not substituted by costly luggage but by a tub of lard – which was justified by Paul Merton on the grounds that there were similarities in appearance and style of operation. Hattersley first came into Parliament in 1964 as MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook. He had previously failed to win at Sutton Coldfield in 1959. He then devoted considerable energy to being selected for another seat, trying twenty-five constituencies until he was accepted at Sparkbrook and went on to win there. During his time in the Commons he held a variety of shadow and ministerial jobs and after Labour’s disastrous defeat under Michael Foot in 1983 he became Deputy Leader under Neil Kinnock, who was Party Leader until he had his own disaster in 1987. Alistair Darling admired Hattersley and ‘…enjoyed working with (him). He is good company, convivial and thoughtful’. He remembered the advice Hattersley gave him in 1988 after inviting him to join his shadow Home Affairs team: ‘You’d better remember that in politics there is no such thing as gratitude’. Which should have counted when Leo McKinstry in The Spectator derided him as ‘…this charmless figure of epic mediocrity’. 

Laughter may be a defence against the essential nature of a social system which judges everything through a price and when profit can be reaped from the sale of entertainment. To change that would really be News For You.

Ivan

Where Reformism Fails (1943)

From the March 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dispute between Reformists and Socialists is not a very easy one to disentangle. This is partly due to the variety of arguments put forward by reformists, but above all to the failure of reformists to grasp the Socialist explanation of the problem that has to be solved.

The problem is not that of a social system that is satisfactory on the whole and only needs improvements here and there. If it were the reformist would be on the right road —but then there would be nothing in the Socialist case for the abolition of Capitalism.

Nor is the problem that of a social system which started as capitalist but is steadily evolving towards something fundamentally different, Socialism. If it were there would be nothing in the Socialist explanation of the true nature of Capitalism; that it is a system the character of which is determined by its being based on the division of society into two antagonistic classes, a capitalist class which possesses the means of production, but does not produce, and a working class which produces, but does not possess. The Socialist points to the fact that though capitalism changes in superficial ways, its foundation does not change. The capitalist class are as much the owners and controllers of land, factories, railways, etc., as they were 60 or 100 years ago. Capitalism changes but not in essentials. It does not evolve to Socialism. While the capitalists remain in control of political power they will continue to avert any change which would deprive them of their ownership. They constantly introduce reforms to deal with the most resented effects of their system, but they firmly resist attempts to interfere with the foundation of capitalism which is the cause of the evil effects.

Socialism cannot be achieved without a social revolution, that is a change in the property basis of society, from private ownership to social ownership and democratic control.

In the past most reformists held one or other of the first-mentioned views; either they believed that the social system is essentially sound but needed improvements in detail or they believed that an accumulation of reforms would ultimately produce a fundamental change. We need not here concern ourselves with the first group, since the workers who believe this now are certainly a diminishing number; but the second idea is still the idea that guides the majority of supporters of the Labour Party. The idea is wrong and harmful, not so much because those who hold it labour largely in vain, but because while they continue to hold it they will not direct their efforts to the real task that has to be accomplished.

That the idea is wrong can be seen if a little attention is given to the results of the activities over a number of years. Have those activities been fruitless? If we judge by the very large number of reform measures passed by Parliament in the past 50 years we would say that they have been very fruitful; but if we go to the heart of the matter and ask whether capitalism has become a system in which life is comfortable, happy and secure for the workers we see that the gulf between reformist hopes and their practical achievements is enormous. The legislative changes are too numerous to count but nothing material has been altered thereby. The workers are still poor, still haunted by unemployment and insecurity. The capitalists are still rich, still in control of power. The explanation of this seeming paradox is absurdly simple once it is grasped. It is that reforms do not reform capitalism, nor is that the intention of those who introduce them. Reforms are not positive improvements added to a firm structure but piecemeal measures to alleviate the worst effects of new evils (or old evils grown more acute) as they arise. As each new evil arises or old evils get permanently or temporarily worse the cry goes up that something must be done. The reformers step in with their proposals, but the capitalist State, when it tardily takes action, just does the least that it believes will suffice to patch up the evil. The reform may be a gain for the workers if it is compared with the worst state of the evil just at the time when the reform is introduced, but it may mark a worsening of the workers' position compared with the position a few years earlier when the evil was of smaller dimensions, and still more so when related to society's growing powers of producing wealth. The reformer, however, looks only at the immediate alleviation and forgets that capitalism can go on producing new evils as fast as old ones are temporarily dealt with. As Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb and others (most of whom failed to act up to their own knowledge) wrote in a "Manifesto of English Socialists" exactly 50 years ago: "Meantime small improvements made in deference to the ill-formulated demands of the workers, though for a time they seem almost a social revolution to men ignorant of their own resource and of their capacity, will not really raise the condition of the whole people."

These words might well be studied by men and women who to-day acclaim the Beveridge Report as "almost a social revolution."

There are still other reformists who say they realise that Socialism is the only solution, and that it requires a basic change in the foundations of society after political power has been obtained for that purpose. Their case for advocating reforms is rather different. They argue, as did Shaw and his associates in the above-mentioned Manifesto, that reforms give the workers more leisure and less anxiety so that they are better able to turn their attention to Socialism; or else they argue that the struggle for reforms is part of a valuable and necessary educational process for the workers. Both arguments could with greater justification be made for the trade unions, where the workers wage their own struggle over wages and conditions of work. Where the argument fails in its application to the Labour Party's efforts for legislative reforms is that it overlooks the part played by the openly capitalist parties. Fifty years ago it was supposed that a Labour Party would take the lead in securing the introduction of more or less drastic reforms, up to and including the time when there would be Labour Governments able to take the initiative in drafting bills and pushing them through Parliament. Nothing like that has happened. Can anyone point to any outstanding Act of Parliament associated in the public mind with the Labour Party? Do the workers remember the two Labour Governments for any bold measures they introduced? On the contrary, despite the spade work of the Labour Party, outstanding reforms are associated with their political opponents, particularly Lloyd George and now Sir William Beveridge.

The Labour Party has worked up agitation for one demand after another, only to see them introduced by Liberal or Tory Governments which naturally reaped whatever credit there was to be obtained. Far from educating the workers towards some ultimate goal, the effect has been rather to persuade them that the capitalist politicians are not so bad after all, for do they not introduce measures similar in name if different in detail from those on the Labour Party programme? At the present time we see a spectacle that is still more remarkable, a Labour Party which believes in leadership yet devotes much of its efforts to popularising the leader of the Tory Party, Mr. Winston Churchill, and heaping its praises on a Liberal, Sir William Beveridge. So far has this gone that probably many Labour voters do not even know who is the leader of their own Party.

After all these years of effort by the reformist parties, capitalism is intact and as powerful as ever. It will continue to be so until such time as the workers turn their attention away from reformism to the task of capturing the capitalist citadel—control of the machinery of government —for the purpose of taking over the means of production and distribution for the community.

Edgar Hardcastle

Progress and Reaction (1943)

From the February 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Already, before the war, there were numerous critics of the turn which human affairs had taken. The promise which early capitalism appeared to hold out to mankind had not been fulfilled. The industrialisation of the nineteenth century may have seemed then to open up new horizons of unlimited wealth for all. The social stagnation of a feudal agrarianism was swept away impetuously as machine upon machine fertilised man and nature into heights of productivity hitherto undreamt of. Economists and philosophers combined in lyrical praise of the new social order, and predicted that humanity had at long last entered the portals of a social system that could guarantee material well-being to all. "The greatest good of the greatest number” was the assured estimate of the new society's potentials.

But the new avalanche of wealth did not succeed in stifling the critical faculties of all thinking men. These could not help being aware of the fresh, profound social evils which the industrial revolution had brought into being. The newly begotten plenty brought no added comfort to the majority, but flowed mainly into the rapacious pockets of a favoured few. The masses of men and women, many of them forcibly ejected from their meagre but secure existence on the land, laboured unlimited hours amid the stench and filth of factories and mines. Their reward was hunger and disease. Even the children of this modern proletariat were not overlooked by the new class of economic masters in their hunt for profit-producers.

The grievous sufferings of the workers eventually led to opposition and revolt. The working class, “organised and disciplined by the very process of associated labour,” finally succeeded in securing some amelioration by the combined strength of their vast numbers. Trade unions and labour movements appeared all over the capitalist world. The new needs of scientific wealth-production demanded education on a mass scale. Comparative freedom of political expression was fought for and won. Labour organisations assumed increasing importance and influence in the affairs of state. The feeling was widespread that the way was now cleared for uninterrupted and substantial advances along the "road of progress.” As some of the early and most primitive anomalies of capitalism had partly been eliminated, so, it was felt, would, the more deep-rooted problems of poverty, bad housing, unemployment and war yield to the persistent efforts of “practical working-class politics.”

The minority, the Socialists, uncompromising in their advocacy of a social system based upon the Common Ownership of the Means of Life, were dismissed as "Impossibilists.” The doctrines of Marx and Engels, formulated upon the most penetrating and exhaustive investigation into the anatomy of capitalist society, provided scientific foundations for the view of Socialists. They proved conclusively that the expropriation of the capitalists by a Socialist working class was necessary to assure humanity as a whole the advantages held out by the new technique of production. These doctrines were attacked as "fallacies” or ridiculed as "out-of-date” by critics many of whom did not trouble to analyse the theories of Marxism. It was easier and more comfortable to "lead” the workers and in the process share in the good things which capitalism offered to the privileged. The watchword of the times became "The inevitability of gradualness.”

Since then a world-wide economic depression and two world-wars have shocked the “practical politicians” and many of their supporters out of their complacency. The policies of economic and political lassez-faire have largely been abandoned. On the continent of Europe they have been eliminated by forces whose outlook and methods are reminiscent of the dark ages of a mediaeval world. The spectacle of a continent, which in the past contributed an imposing array of men and movements, who have helped to illuminate the knowledge of mankind, now held in the grip of political adventurers, must on all accounts be a source of depression.

However, this state of reaction cannot be confined to the borders of Germany or the German-occupied countries. Nor can its roots be isolated from recent economic and political events and tendencies throughout the world. On the contrary, they are symptoms of a particularly virulent character reflecting the prevailing impotence of a society unable to solve its problems.

The war has done nothing to bring a solution nearer. The main social issues still await a much-promised settlement. The problems of unemployment and poverty in general still inflict their cares upon the minds of most people. The hideous slums, relics of the barbarous greed of capitalism a century ago, remain a token of the unchanged character of social relationships. The machinery of the “ democratic ” capitalist state bristles with powers of coercion, and the workers find restrictions of every kind drawing an ever closer dragnet around their existence. It may be argued that they are a temporary measure only, dictated by the necessities of war. But against that we have the statements of leading politicians. Thus we hear Mr. Bevin, Minister of Labour, proclaiming:

  Don't Ask for Old Liberty Back Too Soon.
 Mr. Ernest Bevin to-day appealed to trade unionists not to ask for their old liberty back too quickly after the war.

The report quotes him as saying:

  I would appeal to my fellow-workmen to insist that the country carries on some control for a considerable period. We want to do it, because if there is a sudden let-up, if we lose this discipline and control, we may get back into the orgy of speculation and chaos that we had at the end of the last war. (Evening Standard, January 13, 1943.)

We know what is in ruling-class minds. They want to level the economic ups-and-downs of their system through "planning" on national and international lines. They hope that the economic and political arrangements that serve them in war can be modified to serve their purpose in peace. But these "plans" involve many doubtful factors. They demand the agreement of capitalists, nationally and internationally. They need a quiescent working class. So far, capitalism has never been able to achieve such a permanent "truce." The competitive nature of the capitalist order has in the past doomed any permanent arrangements of an international and even national character. And what of the workers? Will they submit to the “discipline” that is the inevitable counter-part of capitalist "planning"? When the victory for "freedom” has been won and tyrants overthrown, what will be the attitude of the class that has born the brunt of the fighting? What will be the feeling of the workers in the defeated and devastated countries, the victims of war and persecution?

Many more questions could be posed. They would show that the capitalists are confronted by a social riddle that becomes more complex as the war drags its destructive way to eventual conclusion. There are some who believe the present conflict to be one of a series of social convulsions marking a revolutionary transition in social affairs. As to the kind of world that will emerge after these bloody "transitions," we are not informed. It may well be asked: "What can be expected to result from years of bloodshed and destruction, from hunger and persecution?"

The answers given by capitalists and their "Labour" supporters are not convincing. They seek to persuade the working class that a modified capitalism will not repeat the catastrophies of the past They expect to dazzle the minds of wage-slaves with promises of permanent doles and better social reforms.

"Progress by Reform" is the only hope they can hold out to a shattered world.

Sid Rubin

Rocky Foundations of the New World (1943)

From the January 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “brave new world" is still news, bat as its vague outlines emerge in the public speeches of allied statesmen and in various articles and statements by prominent people, the new world of dreams recedes farther and farther away. The jokes made by working men on the subject suggest that in general the view is held that the high-sounding phrases which have travelled round the world are but “sound and fury, signifying nothing."

An article in The Spectator (October 30, 1942), under the title "The Quest for Aims," put as definitely as anywhere else an interpretation of governmental view on the subject. Discussing the criticism that Russia and China “were not sure whether we knew what we were fighting for," the writer goes on :—

    Russia and China are both fighting because the soil of their country was wantonly invaded, the United States because her fleet, lying in a harbour of one of her oversea possessions, was made the object of outrageous and treacherous aggression. We, as a plain matter of history, because not our own territory, but that of Poland, which we had pledged ourselves to defend, was attacked by Hitler. Having entered it we have bound ourselves to make no peace till Hitler, and all he stands for, is swept away, and till Japan is finally crushed. That is a simple and sufficient statement of war aims.
    Peace aims are another matter. We did not go to. war, and never should have, to reconstruct the world, but so much of the structure of the world as it existed before 1939 has been destroyed by war that reconstruction is essential, and the task of planning that enterprise and carrying it out will tax all our wisdom and all our energies. Here it is a question of proceeding from the general to the particular, from agreement on principles to their application. The difficulty of even making a beginning is illustrated by the vigour of some of the protests against the apparently innocuous statement that we are fighting for the defence of Christian civilisation. That, it might be supposed, was of the nature of a truism, or near enough to a truism, to be incapable of being an irritant. A Christian civilisation is not a condition of life in which (to quote from last week's debate in the House of Commons) belief in the Athanasian creed is forcibly imposed. It denotes rather a regime, based on common conviction and consent, in which the virtues, Christian, but by no means exclusively Christian, of justice and truth and good faith and freedom of conscience and defence of the weak—the very antithesis of the qualities inculcated in the Germany of to-day—are accepted as the guiding principles of national as of individual life. 

We regret the length of the quotation, but the elusiveness of the ideas hidden in clouds of words makes it necessary in order to extract something concrete.

Here we see that the war is for the purpose of defending Christian civilization and the peace aims to reconstruct it from the ruins of war. In the first place reconstructing is rebuilding what has existed, not building something new, and secondly, justice, etc., etc., was the alleged object of the French Revolution, the American Revolution and various other upheavals since. The civilization we got from these was first of all the factory system with all its early abominations of child labour and so forth, and in recent years all the evils that church dignitaries and statesmen are now holding forth upon as ugly features that must never reappear.

As, however, the social system of pre-war days (Christian civilisation) based upon private ownership of the means of production, which involves the two antagonistic classes of capitalist and worker, is to be reconstructed then it requires no great thinker to prophesy that the evils of pre-war days will be with us in the future like old but disreputable friends.

This forecast is substantiated by the plan for the post-war world drawn up by 120 leading industrialists, who are, of course, typical representatives of the capitalist outlook, and, moreover, are the type of people who in the past have determined social policy and are economically and politically strong enough to continue to do so.

The signatories to the plan are interested in various industries such as banking, chemicals, munitions, engineering, coal, steel, etc. Among them is Lord Melchett, Lord Perry, Sir Samuel Beale, Sir Francis Joseph and Mr. J. V. Rank.

The Daily Express (November 11, 1942), discussing the plan in an article entitled "120 Big Business Men Plan their Post-War World," says it is “ based on the first essential: Private enterprise must stay,” with the profit motive included. They are against the extension of State ownership and operation in peace time, which they contend would he a national calamity. And further:

They do not think it is "theoretically possible” for “big combines and amalgamations to retard invention, restrict production, or maintain or raise prices unduly. It would, however, be checked,” they say, "by public opinion.”

This project of the “new world,” as sketched by influential capitalists, has a far better chance of reflecting reality than either the hazy promises of politicians or the groundless expectations of well-intentioned reformers.

An American writer, examining the future position of Britain in an article entitled “Can Britain Live in the New World Order” (Asia, October, 1942), has no illusions about the shape of things to come. To him it means an alteration in the balance of competitive power with Britain taking a back seat and helped along like a lame dog, as the following extract illustrates, and the lamest part of the dog is represented by the workers :—

No doubt the British will have to reorganise their economy. They will probably find it necessary to reduce the national standard of living. They will simply have to consume less and to produce more. British industry will have to be modernised and placed on a competitive footing; it will have to change to different lines of production. Britain will have to rely less and less on the traditional export stand-bys:—cotton goods, bulky iron goods, simple consumer articles, coal—and turn increasingly to the production of industrial machinery for export, machine tools, chemical products, complicated consumers goods, high quality textiles, including textiles of artificial fabrics. Above all, Britain will have to rely less on income from interest, banking and insurance services. Local agriculture will have to produce more of the foodstuffs consumed by the population. Finally it may prove necessary to resort to planned emigration.

It may be thought that the above unpleasant forecast is an over-statement by a prejudiced "foreigner,” but it also has a fair chance of representing the grim reality, and we may once again witness, as happened after the last war, posters on public hoardings with pictures of labour leaders embellishing exhortations to “produce more” in order to enable industry to get back on a paying basis.

It is taken for granted that Britain's carrying trade is gone beyond recovery, but it may well be, owing to war time concentration upon the production of the huge transport aeroplanes, that competition for sea trade will be replaced by competition for aerial transport, and thus a fresh fight for economic supremacy be inaugurated that will blot out the bulk of the present New World ideals.

Gilmac.

Shape of things to come (1981)

Book Review from the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mike Cooley, Architect or Bee? Langley Technical Services, 1980.

This is a tantalizing, awkward but informative little book. The question that Cooley does not answer is whether and in what way a socialist society could use the new technology—that is, automation, chips, computer aided design, computer-linked robotic production and so on. But he skirts around it and answers a hundred other related questions, so that all may find something useful here.

Cooley was a design engineer with Lucas Aerospace (he was sacked quite recently for taking time off work to propagandise the views in this book). His own attitude to modern technology shows an interesting evolution; he began by assuming that technology was neutral—that computers were inherently useful but that their use was perverted by what capitalist society demanded; he now thinks that the technology of any society is an integral part of its politics. The last point is worth labouring. Cooley holds that with a change in the politics of capitalism the uses of technology could change. Correspondingly, he holds that with a change in society the shape of technology must change. Consecutively, he holds that the drive to change society is linked with the drive to find socially harmonious uses for the new technology. For him these sum up the human/technology relationship. Such a position has led him to champion the Lucas Aerospace Corporate plan—a trade union-backed series of alternative production projects that are offered to industry, like vehicles for spina bifida cases in place of nuclear weapons.

Cooley thinks that something has been lacking in the socialist analysis of science and technology. We concentrate too much on the contradictions of distribution (poverty amid plenty) and neglect the contradictions of production (technological systems that produce an abundance of products by degrading skilled work). As a corrective he suggests that we should question the assumptions embodied in science and technology and find out whether the ideology of capitalism has helped to determine the experimental designs and theories upon which they are based. This balanced analysis would help us to determine the types of technology that would be compatible with a socialist society.

Computer aids to production have become very sophisticated over the last decade and a wide range of engineering components can be produced, inspected and delivered under continuous data processing control—including the design and planning of the product. It is important not to miss the last point. Gone are the days when a master craftsman suggested a new idea to a draughtsman and worked in conjunction with him to develop its design, materials, process treatments, properties and conditions of use. With data processing engineering there is only the draughtsman who draws the original design on a digitally coordinated board, translates this spatial information into numerical terms and types it into a central processor; the computer then specifies the entire sequence of movements required by all the machines under its control that are used in the making of the product. The other point not to miss is that this system works only for the range of product types and production operations that are given in the control programme, innovation outside this range is impossible; for that the system has to be re-programined, rebuilt or even replaced. The outcome is not merely that creative and co-operative work among craftsmen and designers is redundant, but that in factories with engineering data processing it becomes impossible.

The problem for a socialist society using this equipment would be to recognise when the process was destroying the potential for creative labour, or impeding technological innovation, or both. On this matter there can be no other guide than the tacit knowledge, skills and expertise of individuals; but on the face of it these may not be acceptable, because when this computer-controlled equipment produces a design for a component at the limit of its control programme, a craftsman may see it and only be able to say “it doesn’t look right to me”. Whereas the writer of the control programme and the system designers can produce masses of technical argument to prove that it will work, just by pressing the read-out buttons. Moreover the new components may function for several years before they fail and justify the craftsman’s intuition. The problem resolves into a social question—how much influence respectively do you allow the technical expert and the practical craftsman over production decisions when they are in dispute? In simple terms—who has the power to decide and how? If socialist society were to use present technology then its democracy could be tested by controversies about technics versus skill.

Computer aided design presents more problems still. There are now systems where a designer works with a light pen directly onto a video display unit, linked to a computer programmed with a design package. The designer has a basic idea for a building, he draws the rough outline on the screen and then gets the computer to manipulate this basic material with the set of subroutines in the programme. Effectively the computer can turn a few lines into a fully drawn Greek temple, or turn the basic specification for a tower block into a picture and project it on the screen in dramatic perspective. It can construct and display a picture of a non-existent structure in an architectural setting so that you can judge whether the proposed building will harmonise with the environment and will even give you a picture of what the outside world would look like from inside a building that was only an idea in your head a few minutes before.

“Terrific!” may be your first response to all this. Cooley suggests that “ugh!” may be your second. It hardly needs saying that the use of this equipment to capitalist society is to reduce reliance upon a range of architectural, draughting and civil engineering workers; resulting in redundancies, cutting of costs, increasing output and so on; bringing the design process under the “scientific management” of capital.

But what use would this equipment be to a socialist society? Once again there could be clashes between those who felt that architectural aesthetics were being obliterated in computer simulations and, however good it seemed on the screen, it wouldn’t be right to build a Centre Point on the Acropolis—or a Centre Point anywhere for that matter. Such disputes might be the stuff of life for a socialist society. Imagine two sets of protagonists flinging themselves into such architectural discussions with the zeal of William Morris in his crusade against industrial architecture, and the propagandist power of the Futurists for modern architecture. When they had exhausted themselves, a socialist society could count heads and do what the majority wanted.

But would the battle over ideas in such cases be an equal one if computer aided design takes over? It’s an interesting question and provides the core of Cooley’s book, although he doesn’t answer it.

The trouble with computer aided design is that on a large scale it will replace intuition, creativity and the sheer tactility that goes with the craftsman’s approach to the physical nature of production. As it does so the popular notion of good design becomes just a completed decision sequence in machine code. In one way computer aided designs can always be justified, because the programmes work with a simplified model of reality that raises no decision problems. While in the sophisticated reality of the craftsman all decisions arc reached in the face of bewildering complexity. The craftsman can rarely explain how he is able to identify and locate faults in a complicated machine just by listening to it running. But the programmer can explain in a million steps how his impoverished model of reality will yet deliver the goods. As victories for computer aided design go up, says Cooley, so does our hold on reality go down and with it the direct interaction between production systems and the real world. If this technology is utilised unchanged in a socialist society then the development of production will be out of control in fact, even with the purest form of democratic control being exercised over it.

Information and understanding are the obvious keys in solving this problem. Provided that the population of a socialist world are aware of the situation then that society can provide self-adjustment processes and if they don’t work then it must abandon the technology. We must take the craftsman’s approach—suck it and see!

Cooley takes the leftist approach and strives to construct a theory of socialist development based upon current popular reactions against unemployment, nuclear power, the degradation of the natural environment and so on. The Lucas Aerospace Corporate Plan above mentioned is an example. Socialist society, says Cooley, becomes possible as the workers can conceive of an entire range of socially useful products to replace the destructive garbage that capitalism turns out. This would be an interesting point to discuss, but Cooley ruins it by describing the Russian revolution as a socialist transformation that went wrong, because Lenin introduced F. W. Taylor’s work measurement and control techniques after 1920; socialist production was thus supposed to have been converted back into capitalist toil. Howlers like this make you doubt whether he’s been talking about the same things as you all along. Particularly when he says that other countries are striving towards socialism.

How useful would computers be to a socialist world? The current crop of machines and programmes are laughably inadequate to represent even the noddy view of the capitalist system professed by bourgeois theorists. The original simulation of capitalism on a computer programme, written by Forrester in the late 1960s, was developed by Meadows, et al, in their doom-laden prophecy called Limits to Growth. Even in later sophisticated forms—Mesarovic and Pestel, Mankind at the Turning Point—it still does little other than predict that what is happening now is going to continue.

Cooley may well be right in a way he doesn’t realise. Computers are electronic aids in the production of surplus value. The design and languages of electronic processors stem from and are geared to quantitative assessments of production in units of currency-business languages. Can the current range of machines be used with programmes designed to sense human needs? Can the current-programming skills of computer personnel encompass the idea of production for use and free access? Let’s all become socialists and find out.

B. K. McNeeney