Editorial: Where Bolshevism Fails. (1928)

Editorial from the January 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ten Years that prove our case.

It may appear paradoxical to write of the failure of a movement which has controlled the political machinery in the largest country in Europe for a decade. Success or failure, however, must be measured in relation to the avowed object of the movement. In England we have had, for generations, a movement (known as the Co-operative) which claimed to supersede capitalism. In fact, it has developed into a department of capitalist society. Similarly the Soviet Government employs wage slaves (like any other State), produces commodities for sale at a profit and arranges concessions with other capitalist concerns, private or national; at one time feared and execrated by capitalist politicians it is now treated on level terms at World Councils of the Powers. Why?

The Bolshevist coup of November, 1917, was no miracle. It was in line with the general history of Russian conditions for a century past. The development of industry, and, consequently, capitalist society had been held in check both by external and internal forces for generations. Britain and France had throttled expansion in the Baltic and the Black Sea, while the new capitalist power, Japan, put the finishing touch on the process in the East.

Capitalist industrialism must have markets, but the population of Russia consisted (and still consists) of millions of peasants producing mainly to satisfy their own requirements. Such surplus as they raise is under pressure from the tax-gatherer. According to Trotsky, "More than two-thirds of the consumption of the scattered peasant holdings is excluded from the market, and only the lesser third has any influence on the economy of the country.” — "Towards Socialism or Capitalism” (page 43).

Depending upon such immature productive resources the Tsarist bureaucracy plunged into the war with Germany (a highly industrialised nation) with the inevitable result that three years later its armies melted away, underfed, ragged, ill-armed and ill-equipped, to listen to the agitators. Revolt and the collapse of the governmental edifice followed. Party after party attempted to stem the rising tide. The Bolsheviki alone had the organisation, discipline and insight which enabled them to ride the storm.

Overthrowing Kerensky and his facing-both-ways supporters they endeavoured to obtain the support of the workers along parliamentary lines. Failing in this they proceeded to disperse the assembly by force and have "dictated" by the same means ever since.

Their leaders. Lenin, Trotsky and the rest had studied Marx and professed Socialism as their ultimate object. This, however, does not distinguish them from opportunist parties in other countries.

This programme upon which they gained the support of the army was certainly not Socialism; nor could any army establish Socialism, except under the direction and control of a Socialist working class, and this in turn could not have been found in Russia in 1917.

The army, drawn mainly from the peasantry, wanted to get back to their villages. Along with the workers in the towns they wanted food, and an end to the war in which they had no interest. The Bolsheviki promised them these things.

Although the new régime excluded all other parties from control, it dished them by stealing their programmes. Thus it legalised the Social Revolutionary Party’s ideal, peasant proprietorship, and eventually by means of the New Economic Policy opened up the avenues of development for the petty bourgeois elements in towns hitherto championed by the Mensheviks. It nationalised the large industries by the simple process of confiscation and then paid the capitalists to restart them (vide Trotsky’s book quoted above, page 38). The unreadiness of the workers themselves to assume ownership and control provided the dictators with both the opportunity and the excuse for the policy of compromise, economic and political, which they have since followed.

In foreign affairs, intrigue has been the weapon with which they have endeavoured to make terms with other capitalist powers.

Ostensibly they set out to initiate a world-revolution, ignoring the enormous amount of propagandist spade-work that still remains to be done before any such event is likely. Again the unreadiness of the workers of the world furnished them with the opportunity and excuse for entering into negotiations with the leaders of the "Second International,” whom they professed to be out to smash. Their "sympathisers” throughout the world, who suddenly conceived a respect for the magic of the name "Communist,” similarly commenced by attacking the Right Wing leaders both of Labour Parties and Trade Unions, and wound up by calling upon the workers to support these self-same leaders at the polling-booth. Where Marxian phraseology has appeared to meet their requirements they have used it only to disregard its real meaning whenever that has proved inconvenient.

The high-sounding phrases with which the movement proclaimed its alleged mission to the world have long since degenerated into empty verbiage, repeated parrot-like by the hot-headed "enthusiasts” who encumber the pathway of the scientific revolutionary party.

In Russia the proletariat (i.e., the wage-earning, working-class) is in a minority. Hence any movement on their part is a "minority movement.” In Britain the same class is in an overwhelming majority. It only needs to organise consciously and politically to have its way. Yet we have in this country a "minority movement”! What interests does it represent?

In Russia dictatorship is the traditional mode of government. It is made possible by the unorganised conditions of the majority of the population whose outlook is local rather than national; where politics are concerned the peasants "leave it to others.” In Britain the wage slaves have struggled for and gained legal and political rights which serve as a stepping stone to the control of society along democratic lines.

The Bolshevist movement has failed to teach the workers of Western Europe and America anything new concerning their position and has assisted but little to help forward their education in the task ahead of them. It has fogged the issue by introducing controversy over points long ago settled so far as this country is concerned. Let the workers study the history of their class and they will discover that the methods advocated by so-called Communists were tried and scotched by the ruling class over a hundred years ago.

When the army was quartered among the workers at the time of the French Revolution and the workers themselves were seething with discontent brought about by the advent of the machine industry then, if ever, was the time for seducing the troops from their allegiance. Destitute of political rights, it appeared in those days the only logical policy. Capitalist statesmen, such as Pitt, however, foresaw the danger to their class and segregated the army in barracks. To-day there is only one road to political power and economic emancipation. That is the slow but sure road followed by the Socialist Party. 

Cooking the Books: Marxists Under the Bed (2017)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone reading the Times over the end of the year period could be forgiven for thinking that the paper was waging a witch-hunt against 'Marxists'. An article by Philip Collins, once Tony Blair's speechwriter, on 16 December was headed 'Ministers must stand and fight RMT Marxists'. Another, on 3 January, by Melanie Philips, former Daily Mail columnist (and it shows), on Obama was subtitled 'The outgoing President is poised to return to his Marxist roots and lead opposition to Trump.'

What was the basis of these claims? Collins's argument was that the current series of strikes on Southern Rail was not an ordinary trade union dispute over workers' terms and conditions of employment but a political strike against the government. He cited talk by some of the union's officials about strikes to bring down the government, one of Arthur Scargill's illusions. Even if this was the union's official position (which it wasn't) this would not be 'Marxism' . The view that trade unions should take industrial action to overthrow the government is a syndicalist position, not one Marx held. He always stressed the need to win control of political power, via the ballot box if possible, as a preliminary to ending capitalism.

Collins also pointed to the fact that the RMT has supported TUSC, a Trotskyist front organisation. At least those behind TUSC do describe themselves as 'Marxists', even though they aren't. Trotskyism is a fundamental departure from Marx's own views and TUSC's policies are just Old Labour.

Melanie Phillips's case is even weaker. She can't even cite anybody who even claimed to be a Marxist. Her argument goes like this: Obama used to be a community activist; Saul Alinsky was a community activist; Alinsky was a Marxist; therefore Obama was a Marxist. The logical fallacy is glaring, but one of the premises is not even true. Alinsky never claimed to be a socialist, let alone a Marxist.

But what is a Marxist anyway? Marx himself of course once famously said that he wasn't a Marxist. The term originated in the dispute in the 1870s within the International Working Men's Association. Marx's opponents in the dispute dubbed those who took his side 'Marxists'. They retorted by calling them 'Bakuninists'. Some accepted the description 'Marxist', and, despite Marx, it stuck.

A Marxist is not a dogmatic follower of everything Marx wrote or did, but someone who shares his approach to history and economics and his insistence on the need to win political control before attempting to end capitalism and bring in communism (as Marx preferred to call socialism). In this sense, we would call ourselves Marxists, although our case rests on the facts, not on what Marx said, and stands irrespective of what Marx may or may not have said and even if he had never been born.

We wouldn't want to claim to be the only 'Marxists'. There are historians, such as Christopher Hill and Eric Hobsbawm, who have brilliantly applied the materialist conception of history, but only to history. When it came to applying the same method to contemporary society they had a blind spot, believing that Russia was socialist or had been on the way to socialism, whereas the exploitative, class-divided, state-capitalist society there had nothing in common with what Marx envisaged as the next stage beyond capitalism. But one thing is certain, neither the RMT leaders nor Obama are in any way Marxist.

At the street corner. (1927)

From the June 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of our earliest, and one of our wisest decisions of policy, was that wherein we allowed an opponent access to our platform. Having heard our case, and subject only to the common usages and decencies of debate, we offer any opponent the right to oppose us, on our own platform. We believe that, as a party, we are unique in this respect. But then, of course, we are unique in having a position that we know will stand the test. Obviously a case can be made out for anything, even the most absurd proposition, if you ignore enough, and throttle the opposition. So that propagandist parties of all sorts, religious or political, who decline to allow their statements to be combated, where and when uttered, stand self-convicted of cowardice or dishonesty.

To allow questions is not enough. Their very allowance is often transparent trickery, for a false position can rarely be overthrown by one question. As soon as a questioner follows up by supplementaries, one usually finds the speaker evading an issue by saying the questioner is selfishly monopolising too much attention. He should give someone else a chance.

Or again, an awkward question is parried by another question from the speaker, or met by a provocative remark, and the succeeding jeers and howls used as a cover, whilst a more congenial questioner is baited. This is notoriously the method of the Anti-Socialist Union, and analagous bodies. They will not permit anyone on their platform to state a reasoned opposition. Oh, no! But questions! Bless you, yes!

There was a speaker the other day in a London market place, representing the British Empire Union. His remarks were a strange blend of sense and fallacy. He said, very wisely, “Do not be led hither and thither by leaders of any sort. Do not read the exclusive literature of any one party; read all, and come to your own conclusions. Read and think deeply,” he said. "Do not hurry to a decision, but let what you read and hear, have time to digest in your brain and then, as an individualist, stick to your own opinion.” How wise! How sensible! It impressed the audience. But someone asked him what he meant by an ”individualist,” a term he had used rather frequently. He replied : "One who believed in making his own bargain with an employer, and not being dictated to by a union.” Then, of course, the storm broke. Howls and jeers from obvious Labour adherents, gradually died down into questions, dealt with as outlined above. Then the mention of China was seized upon by the speaker as a useful get-out, and a peg upon which to jibe at the Labour Party and then invite further questions. Did he think it right, asked one questioner, that the Chinese women and children of Shanghai should have to work 14 hours a day in the cotton mills. As an "individualist,” replied the speaker, he believed anyone should have the unquestioned right to work as many hours as they wished. More howls and jeers, and then a quiet, insistent little man who had evidently thought out a short series of consecutive questions, got a hearing with his first one. "What was the cause of the trouble in China?” he asked. Twice the speaker ignored him. The third time the speaker paused, waved the crowd into comparative silence, and replied : "I don’t know, do you?” Bang went the little man's series. Thrown on the defensive, he said, "But I’m-asking you.” "Yes,” retorted the speaker, "but I don’t know. I’m asking you.” Bravely the little man started to explain conditions in the cotton mills in Shanghai when the lecturer interrupted by asking which mills, British or Chinese. The little man was not quite certain, but said both, when the speaker followed up by saying, "How many British mills are there out there?” The little man got nettled and said "I do not know, and the number is immaterial. What I contend—” "Oh, no!” said the speaker, "you are not sure of your facts. Let us have the facts,” and so on. Collapse of the little man.

So that the acceptance of questions at a public meeting does not constitute it a fair vehicle for the diffusion of views. Politics is essentially a subject for public discussion, and that cannot be called discussion which says "These are our views. You may ask us questions about them, but we will not allow your contrary views to be heard.”

Obviously, the British Empire Union is not concerned with the dissemination of accurate views, for its speakers must know perfectly well that the phenomenon they call an "individualist” cannot exist in human society. They must know that in ten short minutes a capable opponent could make the absurdity of such a claim apparent to the simplest intelligence. They must know, in spite of their waving of Union Jacks and their blether of King and Country, that the Government gave very short shift to "individualists” during the War or during the coal trouble. The B.E.U. therefore, take no chances. The capable opponent is kept off their platform. He may question, but not expound.

The Socialist Party is not built that way. We have a position, a philosophy, a policy, which has been tested in every possible way. Scientists, economists, politicians, have attacked it, belittled it, sneered at it, but Socialism remains. It is the one subject that is the common talk of the whole civilised world. Wherever human progress has attained the stage known as Capitalism, there inevitably the problems it raises are sure to be soluble in only one way. Nothing hinders its steady onward march. Even a world-war, overturning thrones and making hay of political frontiers, leaves Socialism still the talk of the world, and the hope of millions. As a policy, we of the Socialist Party have always realised that Socialism can only come when the majority of people want it. We conceive it our task therefore, to convert a majority of people to our point of view. With this clear object before us, we believe there cannot be too much opportunity for discussion. We are so convinced of the impregnable strength of our position that our platform is open to anyone who cares to try to prove us wrong. We have nothing to hide, no secrets to keep, no leaders to apologise for, nothing but straight Socialism to preach. So we have nothing to fear. If anyone thinks we are crying for the moon, or are on a wild-goose chase, he is at liberty to tell us so. If he can prove it, he will save us wasting our precious time, and so do us a service. On the other hand, if we can in turn show that he is harbouring delusions unawares, he should be indebted to us. We have everything to gain by discussion. Can it be said that any of our political opponents are similarly anxious for discussion, or that they are prepared to offer equal facilities? Try them and see. And in the meantime read our pamphlet called Socialism, still obtainable at the modest price of twopence (plus postage) in spite of its 48 packed pages.

W. T. Hopley

Violence at work (1992)

From the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Prince Charles falls off his horse or the Queen Mother gets a fish bone stuck in her throat we are invited to grieve over such matters by newspaper headlines and bulletin announcements to the accompaniment of Big Ben's chimes. When 500 workers are killed at work every year, however, this is not regarded as dramatic news. It is often looked at as something pretty much beyond human control. To describe these deaths as “accidents”, however, can be seen as perverse because although they are not intended by employers, neither are they chance, unpredictable incidents. They are, in most documented cases, plainly foreseeable.

In November 1991, Tony Linehan, the government's chief factory inspector, announced that industrial injury claims have doubled since 1985. On average two people a day are killed at work and 3,500 are injured. Almost half-a-million people each year suffer as a result of their working environments.

The violence of commerce

First let us consider the extent of the problem. Employment is violent. In 1989- 90 426 people, a third of them in the construction industry, died in violent incidents at their work. They were burnt, drowned, asphyxiated, electrocuted, crushed and impaled. In the same year over 21,000 suffered “non-fatal serious injuries"—amputations, for instance—and 160,000 suffered “serious injuries".

In addition, it is estimated that each year as many as 10,000 workers or more die a slow and painful death from the effects of industrial disease.

Most of these deaths are unnecessary and easily preventable. According to the Health and Safety Executive over 70 percent of workplace deaths are the fault of management and their failure to provide proper equipment or training or supervision.

Examining the same problem in the USA. one writer has given the issue a particularly striking perspective. He estimates that in 1972 the number of people in the USA dying from occupational hazards (diseases and accidents) was 114,000, whereas only 20,600 died as victims of personal homicide. Represented on a time clock, for murder there would be one personal killing every 26 minutes but:

If a similar clock for industrial deaths were constructed . . .  and recalling that this clock ticks only for that half of the population that is the labour force—this clock would show an industrial death about every four and a half minutes! In other words in the time it takes for one murder on the time clock, six workers have died just trying to make a living! (J. Reman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison. 1979 p.75).

Blackspot Construction is a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) report which analyses the circumstances of 739 deaths in the construction industry between 1981 and 1985. Referring to these deaths, John Rimmington, the Director-General of the HSE, said "they represent a very saddening loss of life, particularly because most of the deaths could have been prevented" (Emphasis added). The report shows that the immediate reasons for most deaths were lack of supervision, inadequate training and lack of attention to detail:

   The figures in this report clearly show that the basis causes of the deaths of 739 people from 1981-1985 have not changed over the last ten years. There were, on average, two deaths every week on construction sites. Ninety per cent of these could have been prevented. In 70 per cent of cases, positive action by management could have saved lives. (Emphasis added). (HMSO, 1988, p.4).
   In another report, Agricultural blackspot (1986), a study of 296 deaths between 1981 and 1984 the HSE concluded that in 62 percent of cases "responsibility rested with management”. Again, in Deadly Maintenance (1985), a study into deaths at work in a range of industries, the HSE concluded that "management were primarily responsible in 54 percent of cases".

There is some evidence, as you might expect. that the toll on workers gets worse during an economic recession. Serious injuries, for example, suffered by young people on the government's Youth Training Scheme increased by 86 percent between 1986 and 1990.

In fact, the Health and Safety Commission published research last December indicating that the number of accidents at work is six times higher than the official figure.

Consider the social system in which these deaths and injuries occur. We live in a class-divided society. One economic class of men and women between them own and therefore control the means by which we all live. They own the factories, offices, transport and communication systems and so forth: in short the means of producing and distributing wealth. The empty and fraudulent rhetoric of people like Margaret Thatcher and John Major speaks of a "property-owning democracy" and “classless society”, and the nationalistic nonsense of John Putnam, Neil Kinnock and the Labour Party tries to fool people into thinking that everyone beneath the Union Jack has a common interest.These are shibboleths which are entirely refuted by the economic facts.

As the Inland Revenue, a body not known as an avid supporter of the Socialist Party, reported in January in Inland Revenue Statistics 1991, the richest one percent of the population today own more marketable wealth the poorest 50 percent of the population. In fact, the top one percent owns three times more than the poorest half of the population.

In this system wealth is produced not directly to satisfy human needs but to produce a profit for the owners of the means of production. If something is not profitable it will not be produced. In the cutthroat economic rivalry between companies to win contracts or keep their customers, costs are cut to a minimum wherever that is possible. Employers do not get rich in capitalism by being kind or charitable. Safety is often an expensive matter to a company. It involves paying for training, equipment and, perhaps, using methods which take longer than those which are unsafe.

The reports of the HSE are replete with how the cost-benefit principle of capitalism operates to cause death and injury but two vivid examples from other sources demonstrate what often happens when profits and safety are counterpoised.

On 13 September 1978, Ford Motor Company was indicted in Indiana, USA, for reckless homicide. A Grand Jury decided after three days of deliberation that Ford was to be tried as a responsible party for the deaths of three teenagers, who were burnt to death when their Ford Pinto burst into flames following a low-speed, rear-end collision. Many people had died in similar incidents all over the USA. One writer on the issue has stated that “by conservative estimates Pinto crashes have caused more than 500 deaths”. (M. Dowie, in Injury and Death for Profit, 1987, cd. S. Hills). The actual trial resulted in the company being acquitted but evidence was produced in the case which demonstrated that Ford was aware of the danger posed by the Pinto but had used a cost-benefit calculation to decide that the cars should be left unaltered with their owners. It would have cost less that 11 dollars per car to remedy the defect but calculations had shown that subsequent insurance claims resulting from the number of people predicted to be killed and injured would not exceed the $137 million that it would cost to recall and alter all the Pintos it had sold.

This sort of cost-benefit analysis, which relegates human life below the considerations of profit, is not peculiar to Ford Motor, Company or to recent developments. It is a feature endemic to the system of commerce. Max Weber commented on this issue in relation to its implications for capitalism in American cities. In 1904 he observed that:

After their work, . . . [Chicago] workers often have to travel for hours in order to reach their homes.The tramway company has been bankrupt for years. As usual, a receiver who has no interest in speeding up the liquidation manages its affairs: therefore, new tramcars are not purchased. The old cars constantly break down, and about four hundred people a year are thus killed or crippled. According to the law, each death costs the company about $5,000 which is paid to the widow or heirs, and each cripple costs $10,000, paid to the casualty himself. These compensations are due so long as the company does not introduce certain precautionary measures. But they have calculated that the four hundred casualties a year cost less than would the necessary precautions. The company therefore does not introduce them. (Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 1958, H. Gerth, C. Wright Mills, p.16).

It is this sort of thing that may have been in the mind of John Cullen, the Chairman of the HSE, when he said in 1989 that:

The enterprise culture, the opening up of markets, and the need to survive competition place businesses under unprecedented pressure . . . the scale and pace of technological change means that increasing numbers of people—the public as well as employees—are potentially at risk. (Guardian, 4 May 1989).

Within capitalism, economic imperatives will always prevail. In a contest between principles of profit, morality and religion, profit will always triumph.The Chairman of British Steel will not keep Ravenscraig steel works open this year because it is morally better that 1200 people should not lose their jobs. The government will not make Sainsbury and Tesco shut on Sundays because various vicars and priests implore commerce to respect religion, neither will they be shut to protect the economic interests of shop workers.

The economic mechanisms of capitalism mean that workers will be killed and injured on the sacrificial altar of profit whenever the pressures are strong enough.

Anyone in any doubt about this can consider the position of workers as a result of health and safety legislation. The annual pattern of death and injury has been no different under Labour governments than it has under Tory governments, and there is no significant change as the result of the introduction of legislation like the Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974. The annual profile of deaths at work has remained the same every year for the last 17 years since the coming into force of the Act.

Even now there are people clamouring, often with the best intentions, to bring in new legislation to amend the rules of capitalism. They seek to raise the fines paid by companies who kill or maim workers; to make the police investigate all construction site deaths and to make coroners call directors as witnesses so as to incriminate them.

These proposals, however, even if implemented exactly in accordance with the wishes of the reformers, cannot really deal with the problem because they leave intact the system of commerce and the paramountcy of companies. As Marx observed, within capitalism large employers have an interest in supporting safety legislation. By supporting legislation like the Factory Act of 1867, many capitalists were able to improve their positions by, on the one hand, having a hand in making sure the law was not going to adversely affect them and, on the other, making sure that it did impose conditions which could not be met by their less prosperous rival firms who would be put out of business by the costs involved in meeting the new safety requirements.

Only by transforming the basis of the production of wealth can we eradicate the violence of work and make safety its number one priority. In those circumstances it may even be safe enough to allow walking disaster areas like the royals to have a go at some useful work.

Gary Jay

BEGGING FOR A LAST CHANCE (1992)

From the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

BEGGING FOR A LAST CHANCE

"How do you know when politicians are lying? When you see their lips move”. Politicians have failed us so many times it is a standing joke. But it's not a very funny joke. They cruise comfortably through disaster after disaster while in power, but when elections loom they panic completely, lose all dignity and promise anything they can think of.

And what is unfunniest of all is that we believe them. Each election they beg for another chance. Each election we give it to them. And the starvation and misery in the world, the poverty, the pollution, the stress in our lives and the despair of so many, all of these get worse instead of better. In spite of "greening" themselves politicians can do almost nothing to stop the immense destruction caused by pollution, basically because it's cheaper to pollute than to reprocess waste.

And what could they do about poverty? Abolish it? If they do that then they must also abolish riches, surely, because you can't have one without the other. And what will the rich have to say about that? Can they abolish homelessness, perhaps by giving people free houses? Again, what would the rich building contractors say? Can they abolish hunger by making food very cheap? Not if they want the support of rich food producers. Politicians who are smart know this.

They know exactly how helpless they are in the face of problems which defy any attempt to control them. But they know also that to admit defeat is political suicide. Somebody else will make the same promises and get all the votes instead, as we've been seeing with the Greens. So instead they always beg us for one more last chance.

But there could be a better way.

NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

We are going to make some proposals. They are not "common sense" proposals, so "realists" won't be interested. But that's all right, because they have all the rich and clever ideas of ordinary politicians to choose from. We think, however, that it is time to think big. The proposals we make are ambitious. Probably more so than any you will have heard before.

Because the problems are world-wide, we think that the solutions have to be world-wide. First, we are going to propose that the world organises itself democratically. It is not so at the moment, because we rely on leaders. We put people into positions of power, where they can control vast fortunes and vast armies, and then we expect them to act in our interest. That's like putting children in charge of a sweetshop. We should not be surprised when they let us down. But the world is no sweetshop, it is a matter of life and death. If we cannot trust leaders, we must learn to stand on our own feet - without leaders. We are not children, however much we are treated like children. We do not have to be helpless and weak. If we decide to make our world into a democracy, we are well able to do it.

If we decide that we should not be ruled over by tyrants and masters, we are well able to do that too. If enough of us organise together, we can accomplish anything. Which is just as well, because not everyone would welcome more democracy. In fact, there is a tiny minority of people who would not be at all pleased if we decided to run things ourselves. And that's because they happen to own nearly everything on this planet.

SMILE, THERE'S A GUN AT YOUR HEAD

Imagine what life would be like if someone discovered how to stop you from breathing without their permission. That person could charge any price they liked, and you would have to pay. Just how free would you be then? Fortunately, no-one can do that to you, but consider this - can you eat without anyone's permission? If you think so, think again. You will be arrested if you try it.

You must pay the owner first - for permission. It's the same with everything else - heating, clothing, housing, travel, communications - we have to pay for permission to have these things. And what happens when they can't pay because you have nothing to sell? Then you must sell your time and your skills - you must find a job. If you can.

There's nothing wrong with owning things. We all do. But when somebody owns the food you need to live on, it's as if they are holding a gun to your head. They can make you do almost anything. The world we live in is so arranged that a small minority of people holds that power over a very large majority, simply because of what they own. And this affects everything we think, feel and do.

Rich people don't have to wait in queues. They don't have to swallow their pride, or shortchange their kids at Christmas and birthdays, or buy cheap clothes, or take abuse from bosses. They don't go red when policemen look at them, or worry about being late, or avoid people’s eyes. Rich people are beautiful people with beautiful lifestyles. And what, then, does that make us? If we want a real democracy, we must face the fact that property stands in the way.

However huge a step it is, we cannot ever be free until we have abolished the ability of people to hold such terrible power over each other. Property and money are worldwide institutions. To uproot them would mean turning the world as we know it virtually upside down. We do not propose such a change lightly. The implications are so enormous that they cannot possibly be covered in a few leaflets.

We know how much is against us, and we know what the rich and powerful might try to do to stop it.

Yet we believe it can be done, that it can be done quickly, and that it can be done without violence of any kind. In the next leaflet, we'll explain how.

Taken from a series of leaflets produced by our Lancaster branch.

Introducing a dirty word (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

INTRODUCING A DIRTY WORD

There are lots of things in our lives that we don’t find it easy to talk about. Some of them are even "taboo". But there's one thing which we talk about, all of us, all the time, and never give its proper name because that name is, for most of us, a rather dirty word. That thing is Politics. It is such a dirty word that you could well be ready to throw this leaflet away right now. But before you do, think back for a minute on the conversations you’ve had this week.

What were they really about? Did you complain about the price of something which has gone up again? Did you talk about problems with the Council, or with your mortgage, or with your wages? If you work, did your boss get you down again this week, or was it the fighting in the office? If you’re unemployed, were you depressed because you walked past shops and people who all seem to live on a separate planet? Or was it a row with a loved one over money, or with the kids, or just because you’re so tired and full of stress that anything sets you off?

If your week sounded anything like that, you're not alone. What happens in our lives is not entirely up to us, and when we talk about life we are also making political statements about how we would like things to be. Politics is only a dirty word because the Thatchers and the Kinnocks have made it into a game that you play in parliaments and score off the opposition.

Their games are none of our concern, but our own lives matter, and the politics of our lives must matter to us as well. In the coming weeks we will be putting some leaflets through your door. They will be about politics, but don’t be put off by that. The things that worry you, that may be mentioned above, are the sort of politics we want to talk about. Not party politics, or 'real-politik'. but real life.

COMMON SENSE ISN'T EVERYTHING

What happened in 1066? Well, not the Battle of Hastings, for one thing - that was apparently around 1087. It must have happened to you that you’d believed something for years without question only to find out one day that it wasn’t true after all. Life is full of popular myths that, like the Battle of Hastings, may be interesting to explode but don’t really matter to anyone. But one myth that is still around, and matters rather a lot, is the myth of 'common sense'.

If something is ’common sense', it is true. Many of the ideas we hear through the TV and papers are put in this way. We take them very much for granted. They are what is called "realism". In our last leaflet we talked about the dirty word ‘politics'. Politicians are fond of "realism" and "common sense approaches". Nowadays you don't have to prove somebody wrong, you just call them "unrealistic" or "naive". Politicians have managed to make everybody else’s ideas sound childish and naive. Major and Kinnock, like the good Mummy and Daddy they try to be, know all about 'common sense'. They should, they manufacture most of it.

The problems that we have in our lives, that we mentioned in our last leaflet, don't get talked about by the papers or politicians. That is left to us, on our own, in pubs or among friends. Why do we have to work for bosses? What is the point of saving when inflation eats it all up? Why do people starve when supermarkets throw food away? But it's not common sense’ to talk about things that Kinnock is not interested in.

In the next few leaflets we are going to ask exactly the sort of questions that Kinnock and Major are not interested in. The sort of questions you don't read about in the paper, or hear on 'Question Time’.

Some of the conclusions we come up with might well sound like science fiction, and not common sense at all. But they might also sound just like things you've said yourself in the past. Try not to lose patience with us. Things which aren’t ‘common sense' aren't automatically wrong. We ask you to judge for yourself.

COPING WITH A BAD ATTITUDE

In our last two leaflets we have explained why we think politics should not be a dirty word, and why 'common sense' answers aren't necessarily right answers. We hope you saw what we meant by that.

Here are some examples of this 'Common Sense', and underneath, the feelings, or as they are more usually called the "Bad Attitudes" that a lot of people have about them. 

Common Sense: This is a prosperous country.

Bad Attitude: Where is all this prosperity when you're on the dole or three months behind with the mortgage?

Common Sense: If you want to 'make it', work hard and be thrifty. 

Bad Attitude: Like my parents did, and look at them. Besides, what's the point when some yuppie can make my life’s earnings in twenty minutes on the Stock Exchange? 

Common Sense: Other people are worse off than you. If you've got an ounce of decency you should be grateful, and give to charities.

Bad Attitude: Alright, I can't walk past a collecting box without feeling guilty, but however much I pay, the problems don't seem to go away. If anything they get worse. Why don't the government pay?

Common Sense: Politics is for politicians. I wouldn't fancy trying to run the country.

Bad Attitude: Mind you, for £35 thousand a year plus expenses I couldn't do any worse than them, could I? All they care about is their own power.

If you have something like this 'bad altitude problem', don't despair. There are others like you, not in hundreds or thousands, but in millions. Just think of election-time, when you get to make your own mark for democracy. In spite of all the rousing speeches, the rallies and the broadcasts, many people still don't bother to vote. They obviously think it makes no difference to their lives who is in power and who isn’t. This, we are told, is because they have a bad attitude. Perhaps so. Perhaps, too, if speeches and policy reviews don't matter to them, they should get together and find out what does. They might find out they’ve got quite a lot in common. With each other. With us. With you.

Taken from a series of leaflets produced by our Lancaster branch.

Women's Freedom (1935)

From the June 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

How many of the slaves who sing with swelling breast that "Britons never never” ever give thought to what they mean by freedom. It is a word that is given a different interpretation as many times as it is used. Thus the capitalist free trader desires freedom to sell his goods in every market of the world regardless of the fettered millions who have produced them. Freedom to him means freedom to trade and make profit. The so-called free worker under capitalism finds that his freedom leaves him free to starve when he cannot find a boss. The “down and out” under a recent Act of Parliament is now free to sleep under the stars without incurring the wrath of the powers that be and without the doubtful hospitality of a police cell that used to be free to him. The suffragettes fought for the freedom of the vote so that they could have their say in the laws governing their property. The position of millions of working class women who had no property and were, in fact, bound hand and foot by their economic dependence upon the employer directly or upon some employed male relative did not rouse the ire of the suffragettes. Obtaining the vote has done nothing to alter that. Only when working class women learn their true position in society will they know how to use their vote wisely, and for this the suffragette movement had no time. Wilberforce, who was the champion of the black slaves' freedom, was one of the stoutest supporters of the combination laws which forbade trade unions and were designed to keep the white slaves of this country in subjection. The pious utterances of the dealers in cant and humbug stand for nought when we discover how far their principles of freedom take them. The Labour Party, the self-styled champion of the poor and oppressed, supported when in office the killing of natives who were misguided enough to believe that they, too, were fighting for their native freedom. The Labour Party soon taught them, however, that there is no such thing as freedom when capitalist interests are at stake.

Truly “it is a mad world, my masters,” but there are none so mad as the members of the working class who will not use their one freedom, their freedom to think and act in their own interests. The freedom upon which all freedom rests is the economic freedom of a class in society from the domination of another class.

This freedom is the object of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and is the only freedom worth fighting for, because it embraces all liberty that is possible for all mankind without distinction of race or sex. Working class women as well as men will find their political expression in the S.P.G.B. The so-called woman question is no different from any other working class problem. Working women are either in economic bondage to an employer or to their husbands, and Socialism ends both states of bondage. The petty tyrannies of domestic life are often the shadows of those in the industrial world. The worker eats, sleeps, and takes his leisure at the dictates of his job. His life is moulded round his job. In other words, while producing everything worth while in life his ability to enjoy life is regulated by the meagre amount of wages he receives. The man, then, should regard his wife as a partner and as a comrade to let off as lightly as possible and with whom to fight jointly against capitalism. Instead of this he sometimes assumes in his turn the role of master and initiates a fresh set of petty tyrannies. It is useless for women to fight against these various effects of the one great evil. They must break the economic stranglehold which holds the man, and they can only do this by breaking the economic stranglehold of capitalism upon the whole of the working class. On, then, with the fight for freedom, but let us first realise what we mean by freedom.

Primitive society knew no private ownership in the means of production. Nor will Socialism. The means and instruments for producing wealth must be the common property of the whole of society. It will then be out of the power of any person to coerce by threat or promise of material gain, any other person. Personal property suited to the taste and needs of individuals remains untouched, and fresh supplies being always available nobody will covet anybody's things, nor want to hoard up supplies for themselves. Freedom for the first time will be effectively realised and break its own shackles. The worker must first, however, use the faculty that he proudly claims distinguishes him from the brute. He must stage an intelligent revolt against the conditions that keep him as dull as a cow in a field. Then will he become really free.

May Otway

The Mask off in China. (1927)

Book Review from the May 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

"What’s What in China.” Price 1d. L.R.D., 162, Buckingham Palace Road.

This 16 page booklet is "A description of the forces involved in the struggle in China, and of the interests they represent.” It serves a useful purpose in shedding a little light on the confusion in the Chinese struggles, but it suffers from the stupid and inexcusable vice of assuming that Chinese nationalism is for some reason, never to my knowledge stated, different in kind from Irish, German, British and other brands of patriotism. All forms of nationalism are in origin and effect anti-socialist and anti-working-class. Barely was this booklet off the press when events—as we foretold they would—proved how unsound is the view that the working-class movement should support Chinese nationalism, or any nationalism. On page 7 the author writes of the Cantonese movement that the class conflict within its ranks "has for the time being been softened by the formation of the united front,” and that "Chiang-Kai-Shek (Commander-in- Chief), has not hitherto shown himself any more tender towards the interests of the foreign capitalists than have the Communists or any other section of trade unionists of China” (Page 9), and lastly that “The single control of the Southerners is exercised by a civilian government to which the military are strictly subject ” (Page 7).

There is, of course, every reason why Chinese capitalists should be opposed to foreign capitalists, since they both wish to exploit the Chinese workers, but what we want to emphasise is that the Chinese capitalist nationalist movement is anti-working-class. At the moment Chiang-Kai-Shek is demanding the dismissal of certain civil ministers of the Cantonese Government (Daily News, 16th April), and has, during the past week or so, been busily engaged in dissolving trade unions by military force and in shooting Communists and others who were misguided enough to think that workers who offer themselves up for sacrifice as cannon-fodder in nationalist wars, thereby obtain the right to a voice in the policies of their capitalist masters.

Mr. Arthur Ransome recently interviewed Borodin, the Russian adviser to the Cantonese, on the aims of the Chinese movement. Borodin is quite frank :—"At present and for years to come Communists and Capitalists alike in China must have the same ideal of a prosperous and much more highly developed industrial China and a general rise in Chinese standards of living . . .  The Chinese Nationalists want an agrarian revolution, but they want it in order to clear the way for China’s capitalist development.” —(Manchester Guardian, 20th April.)

We recognize, as Marx recognized, that China, like other backward countries, must pass through the stage of capitalist development, but that is no reason for deluding the workers there or here into the belief that nationalism is anything but a capitalist movement. Premature attempts to seize power before economic conditions are ripe and before the workers are numerous enough and conscious enough to make success thinkable, are foredoomed to failure. Racial prejudices are aroused among the workers by association with Nationalist propaganda, violence is encouraged as a substitute for political education and organization, and the resulting disappointment, bitterness and social unsettlement are not conducive to rapid or orderly development of the working-class movement. Those organisations in this country which support any nationalist movement are deceiving the workers if not themselves, and are demonstrating their unfitness to claim to speak in the name of Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

By The Way. (1918)

The By The Way column from the November 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Lloyd George in his Manchester speech once again crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s of the Socialist propagandist. It was in dealing with the lessons of the war that the Prime Minister told his hearers that “the State must take a more constant and more intelligent interest in the health and fitness of the people.” Why this interest was to be manifested was in order to maintain the Empire, and because the war and the need for fighters had shown what a pitiable caricature capitalist society had reduced its wage slaves to. The speaker went on to say— '

I asked the Minister of National Service how many more men could we have put into the fighting ranks if the health of this country had been properly looked after. I staggered at the reply. It was a considered reply. It was, “At least one million.” . . .  Here we are combing out the essential industries . . . and yet you had a million men who, if the State had taken proper care of the fitness of the people, would have been available for the war. . . . I solemnly warn my fellow-countrymen that you cannot maintain an A1 Empire with a C3 population. Unless this lesson is learned war is vain.—“Daily News,” Sept. 13th, 1918.

Now, I submit that this is a pretty strong indictment of capitalism. Strange, is it not, that it should require a world war to bring home to our rulers the truth of our contention of the indifference, even to the point of callousness, in the treatment meted out to the workers in the piping times of peace by the master class? Mate, it’s up to you! Is capitalism worth fighting for? Think it over!

* * *

Next our glib-tongued orator turned his attention to unpacking a box of red herrings, termed in these days reconstruction. The question of housing reform was an essential feature in improving the health of the people; healthier conditions of workshops, and wages which will sustain life in full vigour; more attention to be paid to the schools, encouragement of production and national assistance: all these things are offered as tempting baits to the unwary to lure them into further support of capitalist apologists. Coming to close grips with this specious thing, he adds—

  Let us have it when the nation is riding the chariot of a high purpose ere it comes down to the dusty road. That is the time to reconstruct, that is the time to build —when there is the spirit of fraternity throughout the land, when there is no longer rich and poor, one party or other, but one people, one spirit, one purpose, one soul—to lift our native land, not merely above the menace of a foreign foe, but above the wretchedness, the squalor, the horror, the misery which so many men and women and children who live on the hearthstones of this old land have been enduring. I have been amongst the people and I know it, and I want to see this thing righted after the war.

All these things are offered to the credulous if they will but bow down and worship him. But let us pause for a moment and ask if he will really “deliver the goods.” What of the promises made years ago? What of the land campaign, the 1909 budget, the easier and pleasanter road, the road through fields of waving corn, and the benefits to be conferred on long-suffering humanity by the insurance act. Long years of office and a total inability to deliver the goods in the past emboldens me to say that these fine words are but empty vapourings.

* * *

In these days when shortage of shipping is a continual cry, the following announcement is illuminating,—from South Africa this time—

  A boat arrived here the other day with motors and racehorses for Solly Joel, but no mails or anything of any use to the general community. No ships can be found for wheat, wool, hides, and a thousand and one things that are wanted at home in England, but a ship can be easily spared for Solly Joel's racehorses, motors, etc.—“Daily News,” Aug. 28th, 1918.

Cheerful news this for those who “spot” winners and “back” horses. But what matters it for those who lack the necessaries of life so long as we maintain this glorious form of sport ?

* * *

More business ability! Recently Mr. J. M. Hogge, M.P., was speaking at Liverpool, where he read the following letter received by a discharged soldier—

   The Minister of Pensions has decided to continue your pension at the rate of 22s. 9d. a week from July 31,1918, till January 31,1919, then at the rate of 19s 6d. for life, at the expiration of which you will again be medically examined with a view to consideration of your claim for further pension.

Funny, isn’t it? Evidently the age of miracles is not yet passed.

* * *

Whilst so many people are busily employed with the mote in the German’s eye regardless of the beam in their own it is interesting to read President Wilson’s Proclamation condemning manifestations of the mob spirit. I read:

  There have been many lynchings, and every one of them has been a blow at the heart of ordered law and humane justice.
  No man who loves America, no man who really cares for her fame and honour and character, or who is truly loyal to her institutions, can justify mob action while the courts of justice are open and the Governments of the States and nations are ready to do their duty.
  We are at this very moment fighting lawless passion. Germany has outlawed herself among the nations because she has disregarded the sacred obligations of law and has made lynchers of her armies. Lynchers emulate her disgraceful example.
   I say plainly that every American who takes part in the action of a mob, or who gives it any sort of countenance, is no son of this great democracy, but its betrayer. “Star,” Sept. 3rd, 1918.

In this “land of the free” we are also acquainted with the mob spirit. One has only to call to mind recent happenings at Plumstead Common and Abbey Wood. And we have no recollection of seeing any condemnation of such tactics by those who are alleged to be the custodians of the rights of small nations.

The Scout.

The Problem of the Small Shopkeeper (1934)

From the March 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lord Beaverbrook, who says that Fascism must be sternly resisted, and Lord Rothermere, who says it is the only solution, have joined hands to deal a stout blow at the Co-operative Movement, and are obligingly writing articles in each other’s papers about the iniquity of co-operative stores ruining the little shopkeepers.

The two lords are noted for their political stunting and for their frequent startling reversals of policy, and the present campaign shows them, as usual, wildly disregardful of consistency. Lord Beaverbrook, for the past three years, has loudly clamoured for higher wages, on the ground, among others, that higher pay means more money to be spent at the counters of the stores which advertise in his columns. He also found it a useful stick with which to beat the Labour Government early in 1931. He now makes a major point in his indictment of the co-operative stores, that they also have reduced the pay of their staffs. Yet Lord Beaverbrook finds no difficulty in associating with Lord Rothermere, whose papers have always been foremost in defending every wage-cut there ever was, and which now oppose the restoration of the 1931"cuts,” which Beaverbrook supports.

Lord Beaverbrook denounces the co-operatives because they dabble in politics. A trading concern, he solemnly says, should not be allowed to go in for politics. Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere themselves are interested in trading concerns, their newspaper companies. Do they keep out of politics? On the contrary, as everybody knows, politics, their own personal ambitions, their wirepulling and political back-biting, are the life-blood of their newspapers.

Then Lord Beaverbrook declares that the cooperative stores are to be condemned on two grounds: (a) That their prices are higher than those of the small traders, and (b) That the co-operatives have an unfair advantage in being able to return to their customers at the end of the year a “ dividend on purchases.” It should be apparent to Lord Beaverbrook that if, in fact, co-operative store prices are higher than those of private traders, then the “dividend on purchases" merely represents the accumulated savings of the customers. They pay more for the goods and in due course get the excess back again. If that were all the difference between the co-operatives and the small traders then the latter could help themselves quite simply by starting similar schemes for saving up their customers' spare cash.

The real trouble between the co-operatives and the small traders is a quite different matter. The gist of it is that the small trader is small, and the co-operatives are becoming mammoth capitalist trading concerns, just like any other.

That is where the shoe pinches, and Beaverbrook and Rothermere have observed it. They have learned from Hitler the political value of exploiting the resentment of the small trader at his extinction by the chain store and department store, and—also like Hitler—they have seen the wisdom of directing that resentment in a quarter least harmful to themselves, i.e. against the cooperatives. Logically, of course, Beaverbrook and Rothermere should march determinedly, not only against the co-operatives, but also, and mainly, against all the big battalions, Boots, Woolworths, Marks & Spencers, Selfridges, Harrods, Imperial Chemicals, Unilever, the London Passenger Transport Board, and so on. They do not do so because that would rouse too much and too powerful opposition, and would directly harm their Lordships by cutting off revenue from the advertising of the products of those concerns in their pages. The moral would appear to be that the co-operatives should pay for immunity by placing big advertisements in the Daily Mail and Daily Express. As they have recently taken a whole page in the Daily Telegraph, perhaps that is what the co-operative directors are going to do.

Before leaving the subject of the small trader and the big store, a candid declaration made by Mr. Gordon Selfridge deserves to be rescued from obscurity. In an address broadcast to a conference on retail distribution, held at Boston on September 18th, 1933, he said that both in U.S.A. and Great Britain there are “too many retail shops." (See report in Daily Herald, September 19th.) What he thought about small shopkeepers was this: —

This surplus of shops is an uneconomic proposition, and most of these inexperienced managers or owners are attempting to do work for which they are unfitted either by temperament or ability.

Small shopkeepers who have faith in Beaverbrook and Rothermere should ask their Lordships if they will publicly denounce Mr. Selfridge, and if not, why not.

A few words about the forerunners of Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere may also serve to show the danger of trusting to the promises of politicians that they will turn back the march of large-scale industry. Ten years ago, and twenty years ago, the Labour Party was vigorously defending the “little men” against the “great soulless corporations." “ Down with monopoly” was their battle-cry. As Mr. Clynes put it, a short twelve years ago, better a large number of small capitalists than a small number of large ones.

But capitalism marched on unheeding, and one day the Labour Party found itself in office, saddled with responsibility for tackling the problems of capitalist adjustment to changing economic conditions. At once the defence of the small man became inconvenient, and by the time the Labour Party entered office again, in 1929, the old coat had been turned inside out. It had been discovered by Mr. Herbert Morrison, Mr. Bevin, the late W. Graham and others, that monopoly is the salt of the earth. All the Labour leaders, except a few who resented this volte-face, now preached salvation by public utility corporations.

So now the small shopkeeper is looking to new groups of politicians, Hitler and Dollfuss, Rothermere and Mosley, to save him, but in that quarter the old game of broken pledges is proceeding merrily. Rothermere and Beaverbrook have no intention of attacking their own big-business friends, and Hitler, before being in power a year, was already explaining away his unwillingness to demolish the German chain stores and departmental stores.

That, however, is the affair of the small shopkeeper, not of the Socialist movement. What is our affair is the need to repudiate the charge put forward by Beaverbrook and Rothermere that Socialists support co-operative big business against the small shopkeeper. The co-operative movement (which, incidentally, is so unlike the dreams of its founders as to be almost unrecognisable) and the Socialist movement are as chalk and cheese. We have not the slightest interest in the efforts of the co-operative movement to extend its business organisation. Some workers may find co-operative "divi." a convenient method of saving, but, as a movement, it never will or could bring emancipation any nearer. It can thrive only by accepting and imitating capitalism. It can never bring the workers more than a few crumbs from the capitalist table.

As Socialists we do not gloat over the personal tragedies of the wiping out of the small shopkeeper any more than we do over other tragic effects of ruthless capitalism. What we do say, is that Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook have no intention whatever of setting back the clock of capitalist development in order to retrieve the fortunes of the small man. If they have, let them show it by retiring from the fight in which their newspaper combines crush out the small local newspaper.

 

Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook appear to have devised an astute plan for boosting circulation and delimiting their respective interests. They agree to disagree about Fascism, they agree to co-operate about the co-operatives, they agree to be dumb about the other big stores which advertise in their columns, they agree to disagree about higher wages and restoring the “economy cuts," and, above all and all the time, they are completely silent about capitalism and Socialism, except to gloss over the evils of the one and misrepresent the other.

The appeal of Socialism is primarily to the workers, that is, to all who live by selling their mental and physical energies, their labour-power, to an employer, for it is our class which provides and will provide the driving force towards Socialism.

At the same time we point out to those groups of "small men” trying to maintain a precarious and often illusory independence against large-scale industry and commerce, that there is no salvation for them under capitalism. As individuals their place is within our ranks, when they recognise that the prime need of our age is the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, and the establishment of Socialism, and when they are prepared to work with us to that end.

Edgar Hardcastle

A Job for Life (1951)

From the October 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

"There, my son, you have a good job. Look after it and it will be a job for life.”

How many fathers have launched their sons into the world of wage-labour with that advice? How many sons have spent the best part of each day for the major part of their working lives polishing the seat of their pants on an office stool or fraying their cuffs at a workshop bench because of that advice? How many young working-class men have aspired to a life as motor mechanics only to find that the job they get requires them to be merely unit adjusters, grinding valves or drilling holes or pressing on bearings day after day? How many young girls have dreamed longingly of marriage and romance only to find that married life for a worker's wife offers them the drudgery of washing dishes, clothes and floors?

To the man, or woman, with imagination, who recognises variety as the spice of life, there can be little that is more detestible than the idea of having to hold on to the same job for life. To be chained to an office desk, or a drilling machine, or a steering wheel, or a kitchen sink for all one's working days is to know boredom in the extreme. When the novelty of such a job is past and the worker's eyes wander continuously to the clock, knowing that the same process will go on day after day, week after week, year after year, then he experiences one of the most cruel curses of Capitalism.

Small wonder that men talk with animation of the days when they were soldiers, even though in those days they experienced pain and suffering, discomfort, dirt and danger. Those were the days when they escaped, for a while, the monotonous routine of the alarm clock, the 8.15 train to town or the factory hooter. No wonder that they queue during their leisure time for a seat in the cinema to escape for a brief spell, to a “screen world” of adventure.

The idea that there is an advantage in having a “job for life” arises from the insecurity of livelihood under Capitalism. In a world where a man can, at any time, lose his livelihood through no fault of his own, a job that offers a prospect of continuous employment is one to be sought after, no matter how dull or monotonous the task to be performed. "Looking after” such a job implies being a loyal and docile worker so as not to displease the employer and invite dismissal.

In addition to the repetitive nature of many of the tasks that capitalist production demands, the worker is deprived of an interest in the product of his toil. Unlike the craftsman of bygone days, he can have little joy in his work and even less pride in the product. The process of production is too impersonal. He performs just a part, a small part, in the chain of production. Frequently he does not see the finished product at all and, maybe, does not know how it will look or be used. He is just a cog in the process of producing wealth for his employer. There is nothing about his job to stimulate his enthusiasm and relieve the monotony of his work.

With the ever increasing sub-division of work that Capitalism imposes, together with the process of making production more and more automatic, there is removed the final remnants of anything that might have held the worker’s interest and saved him from complete boredom.

Anyone who has visited the South Bank Exhibition and seen the girls feeding the sweet wrapping machine or withdrawing wafer biscuits from the revolving grills as they come from the oven, will understand how the machine sets the pace at which the worker must work and how the worker must keep mind and eye on the process of making the same short movements over and over again at intervals of a few seconds.

Anyone who saw the televised visit to a cigarette factory on August 25th will have an idea of the monotony of watching a completely mechanical process through a small window for hours on end.

Again, anyone who knows of the almost completely automatic process of oil refining will understand the dullness of sitting for days and weeks just pushing buttons and watching meters.

To see the film, No. 36 in the series “This Modern Age,” is to be impressed by the tasks of workers engaged in pressing gramophone records, making safety pins and electric light bulbs, printing wallpaper and linoleum and a host of other productive jobs that are sheer repetition of small hand movements made as quickly as possible or as quickly as a moving belt demands. Other jobs are simply machine watching, requiring the worker to stand and be attentive to a mechanical process in which he has no part until the machine fails.

Workers may laugh and joke and appear contented with their jobs, but usually they are simply resigned to the monotony, making the best of necessity. The eagerness with which they welcome finishing time is evidence of their anxiety to escape the boredom.

Think, for a moment, of the men and women who spend years of their lives screwing on nuts or stitching buttonholes, watching intently the cables of a rock drill, running up and down the stairs of an omnibus making little holes in pieces of coloured pasteboard, or adding up columns of figures that denote the extent of other people’s wealth. Think of these workers, and multitudes of others, and then no longer be surprised at the popularity of cigarettes and aspirin tablets.

Even the worker who is fortunate enough to capture a job where he can still use a little initiative and set his own pace is not free from the boredom of repetitive tasks. Capitalism calls for specialised efficiency and that is best obtained by keeping a worker at one task so that he will become as speedy and faultless as mechanical action can make him. It is speed of production that matters, not the nerves of the worker who does the producing. Profit is the motive, not the satisfying of human wants or the comfort of the workers.

Those sensational characters, the inventor and the detective, are being drawn from their fields of adventurous discovery into the laboratory to perform their jobs in a routine repetitive manner.

When the profit motive is removed from production and men produce things in order that they may enjoy them, they will have a different outlook on the tasks that they will have to perform. Making life more pleasurable will involve giving men and women opportunities for variety in their occupations. High-speed automatic production can still be an asset, but to tie a man to one routine job for years will be a torment that must be abolished. Interest in the work can be instilled by allowing men to engage in the various processes necessary to convert raw materials to finished products, or to formulate and perform social services. Just as men nowadays can become highly skilled in the tasks that they undertake as hobbies so they can become highly skilled in a number of branches of activity and have changes of job that will retain their interest and enthusiasm. With variety of occupation boredom will be banished, with an interest in the work, "automonotony” will end. With goods produced for use instead of for profit, pride in production will return. A man can be proud when he is doing a socially necessary job for the society of which he is a member, but not when he is toiling to fill the pockets of parasites.

Whilst the profit motive remains there will still be insecurity and men will crucify themselves to their jobs in an effort to avoid it. When the workers abolish Capitalism, the clock-watching commodity, labour-power, will be abolished with it. To condemn a man to a “job for life” will be tantamount to giving him a life sentence. There will be less square pegs in round holes and a lot more moving around of pegs in holes of the right shape.

W. Waters

The Socialist Party and You. (1926)

From the April 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before many weeks have passed we may hope that brighter weather will permit us to begin a new propaganda season. It will permit, but it will not compel. Be the sky never so blue and the sun never so warm, no seeds of Socialism will be scattered unless there are sowers to do the work. Capitalism may prepare the ground in men’s minds, but that alone will bring no harvest. The growth of Socialist knowledge requires effort; the effort must be organised and the organisation must have resources.

Knowledge of Socialism we have, and the rudiments of organisation; resources far below even our present needs and a measure of effort quite inadequate to the task we have in hand.

HOW DO WE STAND?

We have a few hundred members, upwards of 5,000 readers of the “Socialist Standard,” some 40,000 copies of the three pamphlets advertised in this issue; we hold a certain number of indoor and outdoor meetings and doubtless we all find time and opportunity to impress our point of view on our acquaintances. These activities, with the difficulties, by no means few or negligible, which attend publishing our Journal and finding the necessary money, absorb all of our available energies. And with this “Light Brigade” we propose to conquer the world—not unnaturally a subject of mirth for the enemy!

Why is our membership numbered in hundreds instead of thousands? Why not fifty thousand readers, and why not a weekly paper? Why not 30 pamphlets and meetings too numerous to mention? These things, you will say, are at the moment pleasant to dream about but not practicable propositions. True, but there are other developments by no means beyond our range, only waiting for just that little extra effort. Another 1,000 copies of the “S.S.” sold and it would more than pay for itself; double its circulation and we could reduce the price to 1d. ; make a hole quickly in those 40,000 pamphlets and we can get on with printing some more; give us a little more financial support and we could offer much needed assistance to scattered provincial members anxious to make us known and organise new branches.

WHY DON'T YOU GIVE US A HAND?

These words are addressed in a sense especially to those numerous old readers and sympathisers of long standing who have never yet felt the urgency of joining actively in our work. Many of them would justify standing aside, perhaps, with the remark that they would willingly join in if they could see some signs of activity; if only the S.P.G.B. would be more lively and do something. To which we can only reply that with their help, perhaps, we might, and in any event if they would but come inside they would better realise how great are the difficulties to be overcome before we can do even what little we succeed in doing now.

We are a working class organisation and our funds are accordingly very strictly limited. The whole of the work of the organisation has so far depended entirely on the voluntary unpaid services of our members. This must, of course, remain generally true, however our activities may grow, but there are many things which can be done so much better, and others which can only be done at all by full time paid officials. We cannot, for instance, have organisers at work in the provinces until we can afford the expense, and only those who have tried know that there is a soon reached physical limit to the spare time work that can be performed after our employers have had their eight hours of the best that is in us. Much as we should like to attain a level of efficiency in internal administration equal to that of the best business concerns, it is a sheer impossibility to do so with the necessarily irregular and haphazard efforts on which we must rely.

If, then, you have in the past been discouraged by our little show of activity, you will realise that we carry on under difficulties. We are, in fact, in the position of having to trust to the excellence of our wares. We cannot compete in advertising and service with the numerous purveyors of political shoddy who are our competitors.

WHAT CAN YOU DO.

If, then, you already understand and accept our principles, why not apply for membership? To do so will give encouragement to us; it will keep you in touch with the internal work of the party, show you our difficulties and open up forms of activity you had not considered. You can, perhaps, find ways of co-operating with other members, at present isolated and inactive like yourself. All who can afford it can give us welcome financial aid.

Practically everyone can make a point of pushing the sale of the “ S.S.” and our pamphlets. You can and should perfect yourself as a speaker or as a writer, for in both directions we are sadly handicapped. You can send us your criticisms of the matter in our publications and of the manner of its presentation. If you dislike what we say or how we say it we can promise to consider your points and endeavour to meet them so far as our limited powers permit. Above all, if you have difficulties or want particular subjects dealt with and explained, do not hesitate to write and tell us. Without some such guide it is difficult indeed to know to what extent we are making the best use. of our limited resources.

Never before have external conditions been so favourable! never have the workers been more ready to listen to and examine the Socialist case, but with this decline of hostility has come a corresponding disinclination to give enthusiastic support, due, no doubt, to the disappointment born of repeated disillusionment suffered at the hands of professional politicians of the old school, or at the hands of the new and numerous brood who distort and bring into disrepute the Principles of Socialism. Remember that you and we are of the working class and we cannot, if we would, wash our hands of working class troubles. Their problems are also yours and ours, if they sink further into the mire so do we and you. If we cannot win the workers for Socialism, they will be retained for the Capitalist system and you will share the suffering that will ensue.

Just think it over and consider whether it should not be your duty and privilege to have a hand in this work.

Edgar Hardcastle

Squaring the Circle (1967)

From the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russian state capitalism claims that Marxian economics is its economic theory. The Socialist Party of Great Britain rejects this claim. A comparison of Marxian and Russian state economics will show that in Russia Marx’s theories have been twisted beyond recognition.

In Capital Marx examines the working of capitalism in detail. He takes as the basic unit of the capitalist economy the commodity, an item of wealth produced for sale. Where goods are produced for sale then, and only then, do they have a value. The law of value operates only where there is commodity-production. For thousands of years goods, produced for sale under pre-capitalist conditions, exchanged more or less at their values. Capitalism, which is a system of production for profit as well as for sale, is more complex and commodities only accidentally exchange at their values. Nevertheless the law of value still operates. In fact, under capitalism all the paraphernalia of exchange—money, prices, trade, banks, bills, bonds, credit—are developed to a high degree.

For Marx the classless society that would replace capitalism—which he called either Socialism or Communism— would not be an exchange economy. Wealth would be produced for social use and not for profit or for sale. Hence the law of value would not operate in Socialist society. There would be no commodities, no money, no prices, no trade, no banks and the like.

This was also how all the Social Democratic writers on Marxian economics, people like Kautsky, Luxemburg, Boudin and Untermann, saw it. The standard textbook on Marxian economics used by all sections of Russian Social Democracy, including the Bolsheviks, was A Short Course of Economic Science by A. Bogdanov first published in 1897. Bogdanov was not a Bolshevik (in fact he later came to see Russia as state capitalist) but his book was still used after 1917 and was translated into English in 1923 and distributed by the so-called Communist Party of Great. Britain, from whose edition we quote:

The new society will be based not on exchange but on natural self-sufficing economy. Between production and consumption of products there will not be the market, buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organised distribution (p.389).

After 1917 the Bolsheviks felt a need for a textbook on their party's theory. Bukharin and Proebrazhensky were commissioned to write one. This work, The A.B.C. of Communism, appeared in Russian in 1919 and was translated into English in 1922. Here is what Bukharin wrote of Socialism (which he, for political reasons, calls Communism):

The communist method of production presupposes in addition that production is not for the market, but for use. Under communism, it is no longer the individual manufacturer or the individual peasant who produces; the work of production is effected by the gigantic co-operative as a whole. In consequence of this change, we no longer have commodities, but only products. These products are not exchanged one for another; they are neither bought nor sold. They are simply stored in the communal warehouses, and are subsequently delivered to those who need them. In such conditions, money will no longer be required (p72).

This, then, was the theory that the Bolshevik rulers inherited and it was in fact the Marxian position. After thinking they were introducing Socialism in Russia immediately, the Bolsheviks were forced to face the facts: the transition from capitalism to Socialism which they saw as their task was going to take a long time. Their experts on Marxian economics argued that in the transition period the law of value, together with money, prices, wages and profits, would continue to operate but would gradually wither away as the transition period drew to an end.

However, when in 1936 Stalin proclaimed that Socialism now existed in Russia, such a radical departure from Bolshevik, let alone Marxian, theory was bound to lead to difficulties. For Marx Socialism was not an exchange economy, yet in supposedly Socialist Russia all the paraphernalia of exchange existed. How was this contradiction to be explained? Stalin’s philosophers erected a false distinction between Socialism and Communism (which Marx used interchangeably to refer to the classless society of the future) saying that Socialism was a stage below “full” Communism, when there would be no exchange. But this was not really adequate for till then the Bolsheviks had not seen even their “lower stage of communism” as an exchange economy. After much mental gymnastics the state economists had no choice; they had to square the circle. An article on “The Teaching of Economics in the Soviet Union” appeared in 1943 (translated into English in the American Economic Review of September 1944); The authors were quite frank:

The mistakes of the former teaching in denying the operation of the law of value in socialist society created insurmountable difficulties in explaining the existence under socialism of such categories as money, banks, credit, etc. The understanding of the role and significance of the law of value under socialism makes it possible correctly to cast light upon all these problems, in a strictly logical interrelation, proceeding from the premise that under socialism too the law of value functions and, furthermore, evaluating the fundamental peculiarities under which it functions in socialism (p.523).

They overcame the difficulties by merely asserting the law of value would still operate under Socialism and had the insolence to add that “the notion that the law of value plays no part in socialism is, in essence, opposed to the whole spirit of Marxist political economy.”

They argued that whereas under capitalism the law of value worked blindly under “socialism” it was controlled by the state in the interests of society. This led them to make some peculiar statements which seem like parodies on the Marxian position:

The labour of the members of socialist society produces commodities.
The value of a commodity in socialist society is determined not by the units of labour actually expended on its production, but by the quantity of labour socially necessary for its production and reproduction.
In socialist society the product of labour is a commodity; it has use value and value.

There was, however, one conclusion they stopped short of; that wages in Russia were the price of labour power. This would have conflicted with the claim that in Russia the exploitation of man by man had been abolished and that work was performed by the free labour of members of a classless community. For if wages existed so would the whole mechanism of exploitation. To this day this remains an inconsistency in Russian state economics. If anyone in Russia is going to point it out it will have to be the workers there, not the state philosophers.

After the war the Great Leader himself stepped in. In his Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., Stalin discusses “commodity production under socialism” and “the law of value under socialism”. The position decreed in 1943 still holds. A popular pamphlet Fundamentals of Marxist Political Economy, brought out by the Novosti Press Agency in 1965, poses the question “How does the law of value operate under socialism?”

Under socialism this law operates as a controlled force but it remains an objective economic law (p.122).

As a matter of fact the Russian state does try to plan capitalism by monkeying about with the law of value. Substitute “state capitalism” for “socialism” and Russian state economics begins to make sense. What is claimed to be Marxian economics is in fact the (mistaken) economic theory of state capitalism. It has nothing in common with what Marx wrote save some of the terminology.

Adam Buick