Editorial: Socialist Unity. (1904)

Editorial from the December 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most important questions raised at the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam was that of Socialist Unity. This is by no means the first time that consideration has been given to this subject. It has often been felt by many of those who have taken part in Socialist propaganda and Socialist organisation that much harm was done by the existence in this and other countries of rival Socialist organisations. And those who have thus felt have been anxious to find some means of unifying the Socialist parties in each country. The International Congress has on the present occasion contented itself with passing a pious resolution recommending the various groups in any country to use their best endeavours to secure this end.

We confess that we are not sanguine that anything will be done. And we are by no means certain that if anything could be done that such thing would be desirable. We are all for unity. We believe that unity of party organisation based upon unity of purpose, unity of principle, and unity of method is the one thing desirable. But to-day we are only too sure that such unity of party organisation, so far as the various groups of Socialists in any country are concerned, would be at the expense of unity of purpose, principle, and method.

In the field of Socialist thought and Socialist action there are to-day two distinct tendencies to be found: the revolutionary and the revisionist. At one time the main trend of Socialist development was essentially revolutionary, but today the Socialist movement has been overtaken by a wave of revisionism.

In every country where there is anything in the nature of a Socialist party we have a struggle for supremacy between these two opposing tendencies. And these tendencies manifest themselves in opposing groups. The differences existing in France between Jaures and Guesde and their respective parties are not isolated cases. In Italy we have the patties of Ferri and Turati; in Germany we have the Bernsteinianers; in Belgium the Socialists are almost purely revisionist; in America and elsewhere we have similar dissensions.

In this country we find the same forces, the same influences at work. There are in England —in addition to The Socialist Party of Great Britain three organisations closely identified with Socialism, viz.. The Fabian Society, The Social-Democratic Federation, and The Independent Labour Party. Of these four organisations the three latter are revisionist, the former is revolutionary. Hence while there exists no apparent reason—except the jealousy of the individual members—why the three revisionist bodies should not unite, The Socialist Party, taking its stand on the class struggle, which The Fabian Society and The Independent Labour Party in their writings, and The Social-Democratic Federation by their actions deny, is fundamentally opposed to these other parties.

Unity is an important factor in the growth of a party, but it is not the most important. Better far to have a party, however small, with common principles and a common end, than a party, however large, which is bound by no tie save party interest. We, therefore, who differ from these other parties in essential principles—inasmuch as we accept the principle of the class struggle while they do not—cannot consent to unite our forces with theirs. It would weaken both parties—and the weakening would he more disastrous to the uncompromising section than to the revisionist.

But, it may be objected, does not at least the Social-Democratic Federation accept the principles of the class struggle? Judging from their writings one would imagine that they did. But judging from their actions they do not. And when a party pretends to believe something which their actions belie, the most charitable construction to put upon the matter is that they are avowing their belief in principles which they do not really understand. Their allegiance is but lip-allegiance.

The latest action of the Social-Democratic Federation is proof conclusive that they have little faith in the principle of the class struggle. In the columns of “Justice” recently, the claim was put forward that the Social-Democratic Federation controlled a million votes in the United Kingdom—an avenge voting strength, that is, of nearly 1,500 in each constituency. The absurdity of this claim is shown by the fact, first, that the total strength of their organisation does not exceed, if we judge by their subscription list, 1,500 in all or two in each constituency, and, second, that in those constituencies in which their voting strength is the greatest, as shown by their being selected for contest, their vote has ever failed to reach this number of 1,500. If in selected constituencies they cannot secure this number, how much less can they secure it on the average in all the constituencies?

Why do they raise this absurd claim? Is it not that they hare ceased to be a purely Socialist party and are going in for mere reform? In the first number of The Socialist Standard we expressed our opinion that they had become a reform party seeking only to secure free maintenance of the children. Now they are acting in the stereotyped method of all reform parties and are coquetting with the Liberal Party. They have written to the Liberal Leader asking him for a pronouncement as to the position of the Liberal Party on the question of free maintenance of the children and of the payment of members. Now, what is their position if he affirms that the Liberal Party are in favour of these two principles? They are morally bound to throw the million votes they say they control on the Liberal side: they are morally bound to give their utmost support to the Liberal Party. Hence their million votes! And the Liberal Party, knowing that the million votes are but the figment of the Quelchian imagination, treat their communications with studied contempt.

The Fabian Society is a collection of middle-class men who cannot possibly, if the class war theory be correct, believe in that class war. They think the best method of furthering what they understand to be Socialism is to join other political parties—Tory or Liberal—and educate them from within. And with their type of Socialism they may be perfectly right. But the Socialism of the Fabian Society is not the Socialism of the class struggle, not the Socialism of the Dresden resolution, not the Socialism of anti-revisionism. Their Socialism is a commercial type—the Socialism of the merchant, of the market: as mongrel a breed as the Manchester brand of philosophic radicalism.

The methods of the Independent Labour Party are such as might be expected of a party which was avowedly the child of political cowardice. "We find” said the founders of that "we find that many people dislike the name of Socialism and, therefore, we must start a party with Socialist principles but without the name.” Since its initiation it has held unswerving and uncompromising faith in the principle of compromise. And now it has entered into an unholy alliance with the Labour Representation Committee and is already quarrelling with the other organisations represented therein as to who should have the dominant voice in the administration of that wing of the Liberal Party.

We cannot see, therefore, how we can secure unity by joining hands with these organisations. They are carrying out a policy with which we cannot agree, and we, and with us the Socialist movement of this country, of which we claim to be the truest representatives, would be hindered for a space. We are all for unity, but it is for a unity firmly established on a common aim, and a common method. Any other unity is but a delusion.

We shall continue then to carry on our work of propaganda and organisation in our own way, trusting that our party will gain the support of all those in this country who are desirous of achieving unity, and that as time goes by our present party nucleus will widen until such time as its strength will have rendered it in reality as in name the worthy political expression of the whole of the Socialist movement in Great Britain.

We, for the present, think that a unification of Socialist forces in this country is neither possible nor desirable. As the years go by our work will bear good fruit and we shall grow in numbers until the accomplishment of Socialism shall have rendered our party unnecessary. Its only remembrance will then be in the hearts and minds of a happy and contented people— the children of The Socialist Republic.

Editorial: The Unemployed. (1904)

Editorial from the November 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fontenelle has said that mankind must exhaust the possibilities of error before he can reach the true path. This maxim seems to be fully borne out by the events which have transpired in the political world during the past month. It is true that the capitalist machine at Westminster has for the present completed its “deliberations." The talking shop with its mockery of democratic legislation hiding the rule of the non-producer has closed. But the great organised hypocrisy of which Parliament and Parliamentary government is the chief political symbol is ever with us. Outside Parliament the agents of the great capitalist class are ever at work and of these agents the most powerful workers in the capitalist interest are those who, consciously or unconsciously, seek to lead the workers along non-Socialist lines. Socialism, which is the organisation of the industry of the country on a basis of common ownership and equitable distribution of industrial products, is the only remedy for the evils of present-day Society and therefore any man or section of men who pretend to show .that something short of Socialism would prove a remedy thereby constitutes himself, consciously or unconsciously, an enemy of the working class.

The main question which has come prominently before the public during the past month has been the question of the unemployed. Now anyone who was unaccustomed to the practical politician and his powers of exhausting the possibilities of error would imagine that as a necessary preliminary to solving the problem of the unemployed must come an enquiry into the causes of unemployment. But not so the practical politician. He does not like exhaustive enquiries into causes. He likes to be practical, and being practical cannot search below the surface of the social phenomena immediately before his eyes. For him those causes which are obvious and on the surface are given forth as the real causes of unemployment. Our practical man knows someone who was discharged for his drinking habits, hence drunkenness must be the cause of unemployment. Another politician of the practical school sees cases of thriftlessness, of laziness among the working-class and knowing that the rich are never extravagant and never idle, predicates these characteristics also as causes of unemployment.

The political economist, the apologetic theorician of the capitalist regime rejecting those as true causes of unemployment, seeks them in the fact that we possess  a gold standard of circulation, or that we have a system of free imports under which we pay 15s. per head of the population in import duties as opposed to an average of 8s. per head in countries with protective tariffs, or, like Mr. William Stanley Jevons, he sees in the periodicity of sunspots a relation to the periodicity of magnetic storms in the earth and through this to the periodicity of bad harvests and trade depressions. We have a maximum of sunspots every eleven years, a recurrence of magnetic storms about every eleven years, and trade depressions every decade. Hence sunspots are the cause of unemployment!

The Socialist opposes both the practical politician and the orthodox political economist and seeks for the causes of unemployment, not among the moral characteristics of man nor among the physical configurations of the Solar System, but among the economic conditions of production and distribution. The Socialist first looks to the earth as the primal repository of all potential wealth and asks if the earth can furnish sufficient raw material to satisfy all the material needs of man. The answer of the Socialist may be given in the words of Kropotkin in the July “Nineteenth Century and After":

   “Mankind has reached a point where the means of satisfying its needs are in excess of the needs themselves. To impose, therefore, as has hitherto been done, the curse of misery and degradation upon vast divisions of mankind, in order to secure wellbeing for the few, is needed no more; well- . being can be secured for all, without overwork for any."

Nature with the aid of man’s labour is prolific in the supply of raw material which can be wrought into the means of satisfying man’s wants. Men there are in abundance capable of turning this raw material into finished products. Labour there is in plenty to produce sufficient to supply the “effective demand.” If this ‘‘effective demand" meant the sum total of the things required by human kind, existence of the unemployed would simply mean that man had limited demands and it only required the work of a limited number of people to produce the food, clothing, houses, &c. of all, and this could be dealt with by a reorganisation of industry, but the existence of the working-class unemployed means, however, under present conditions, the existence of hunger, of semi-starvation, of lack of the means of livelihood of the unemployed. In the midst of plenty they are devoid of the means of sustenance because they can find none to employ them.

We have then to seek in the process of converting raw material into manufactured products for the cause of the “industrial reserve army of the unemployed.’’ In some phase of this conversion, in some period of manufacture, we must find the main cause of the throwing of men out of work; and to the Socialist this main cause is the introduction of the machine as the dominant factor in production. We who are Socialists are, of course, fully aware that the introduction of machinery with its potentialities of reduced labour time for those employed is an important stage in Social and industrial evolution. Under the control of those who use it, who work with its aid, it would have been followed by a continually diminishing working day, but owned and controlled by a few, by a small section of the community, it has been used as a factor in the oppressing and enslaving of men and has proved a curse.

The machine, produced by machinery, is ever producing a greater and greater output with the aid of fewer and fewer men and, therefore, as we find has been the case in the textile industries, there is at the end off every decade a smaller number of workers employed, and the number displaced is greatly augmented by the displacement of men’s labour by that of women and children. We contend then, that so long as the machinery of production is owned by a class which uses the growing power, of the machine to throw men out of work rather than to reduce the duration of the day’s work, so long shall we have an unemployed problem.

It is true that many off those who have been displaced have been reabsorbed in the creation of luxuries and the satisfaction of the needs of the capitalist few. The production of luxuries has grown to an enormous extent during the last few decades, while the number of those who are engaged as domestic servants or who find a living in other ways, all having for their end the pleasures of the rich, has grown greatly. This process of the multiplication of workers performing comparatively useless functions has its limitations and when these limits have been reached there will exist no means of absorbing those thrown out of work by the development and speeding up of better machinery. We must, then, look forward in the near future to a constant increase in the number of the permanent unemployed.

What are we to think, then, of those who, knowing these things, are yet to .be found in brotherly harmony with the capitalistic sections of the community seeking for means for dealing adequately with the unemployed problem and yet afraid to say that they think the only solution of the unemployed problem is to be found in the establishment of a Socialist system of society. This is what we find at the present moment. Men styling themselves Socialists, the members of a body claiming to be Socialist are found to-day hobnobbing with men whose interests are essentially bound up in the maintenance of the present system of society which produces the unemployed, and putting forward as means for solving the unemployed problem, farm colonies and such like nostrums.

We refuse utterly to accept these men as true exponents of Socialist principles. Prating of the class-war, in which they say they believe, they yet are found in alliances with middle-class parties, thus placing themselves in opposition to the class-war. Bound by the Dresden Resolution, for which they voted at the last International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam, and which protests against

  “the substitution, for the conquest of political power by an unceasing attack on the bourgeoisie, of a policy of concession to the established order of society," 

they are among the first to make concessions to the established order of society by virtually admitting the non-Socialist, non-class-war principle that the unemployed problem can be solved within that capitalist system of society of which it is really the outcome.

We of the Socialist Party of Great Britain remain firm in our conviction that nothing but uncompromising propaganda of our principles and the political organisation of the masses upon a basis of uncompromising Socialism can do aught to solve the unemployed problem, or any other of the Social problems, engendered by the capitalist system. End the capitalist system. Establish a Socialist system in its stead, and we shall have once and for all laid the foundation of a regime in which the labour of all men and all women can be usefully employed during such limited time as may be determined by our needs, and then having no unemployed problem, we shall not have any of the evils, the miseries, and the degradation which spring from unemployment.

Editorial: The Socialist Policy and the Strike. (1913)

Editorial from the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

What has been called the “labour unrest” continues to be as much in evidence as ever. Up and down the country there are strikes and lock-outs, and rumours of strikes and lock-outs. Askwith, the peacemaker, is kept pretty busy rushing hither and thither, tendering hie services at the moment when the men are exhausted in the struggle, in order to aid the pretence that the powers that with ride and baton have cleared the way for the blackleg and the strike smasher, really do take a detached view of the case, really do desire to “keep the ring" impartially, really do feel solicitous regarding the welfare of the worker. Here and there the workers have tasted the fruits of victory, and won perhaps a few pence advance in wages, to go with the increased cost of living, or have gained an hour or two more leisure, as a set-off against the increased speed of their labour, or have established the right to wear a button—an emblem of freedom, to give the lie to the police badge and other trappings of slavery. In more numerous instances the men have suffered defeat, and have had to return, where they have not been supplanted, to as bad conditions of toil as before—or oven worse. And in some cases the protracted struggle goes on, with terrible consequences in working-class “homes"—and not one whit less terrible because bravely endured.

No one in his senses will deny that, under the present social system, these battles and the suffering they involve are both necessary and inevitable. They are inevitable because in a competitive system, with labour-power possessing the commodity nature, the price of that labour-power can only be determined in the way that all other prices are determined, that is, through struggle.

But to say that the strike is a necessary weapon is by no means to say the last word about it. After all, the strike is but an attempt to withhold labour-power, an organised effort to prevent the masters from purchasing that human potential energy which they must have. And it is just because the strike to day almost invariably fails—not to win the strike: the significance of the situation does not lie therein — but to withhold labour-power, that it has become the object of the Socialist's criticism.

That the general policy of the trade unions in restricting admission to the organisations is one of the contributory causes of the failure of the strike weapon cannot be denied, but the fact is not of first importance. The inroads of machinery in the vast majority of trades is every day making it easier for the masters to replace strikers with blacklegs, partly because of the increasing number of unemployed, but still more because of the lower proportion of “skilled” workers required in industrial processes. One baker, for instance, can direct a score of labourers who have only to feed material into machines in order to produce bread.

It is this increasing supply and availability of blackleg labour that presents the problem to the striker. It is a growing power in the masters’ bands. It grows in spite of the workmen’s frenzied attempts at organisation and it undermines their position in the very hour of victory, and crushes them to the ground in helpless ruin even as they reach up for the meagre reward of their pain and suffering.

The unions at present have no other idea of combatting the terrible scourge of blackleg labour than the crude one of opposing it with bottles and brickbats. It is safe to say that all but an infinitesimal portion of the “rioting” which almost invariably accompanies strikes is directly due to the endeavour of the masters to introduce blacklegs into the positions vacated by the strikers. Of course the latter cannot afford to let this pass without putting forth every effort to prevent it. The result is collision with the armed forces, and maimed and murdered workers.

In such circumstances—with an ample reserve of men who are driven by hunger to the detestable crime of “scabbing,” and an armed force sufficient to ‘‘ preserve the peace," which means in this connection to enable the masters to smash the strike with their blackleg reserve— the strike weapon falls inert and innocuous, st least u far as the masters are concerned.

Nor is this all. Emboldened by the impunity with which it may be done, those in power show a marked tendency to resort to the murder of the workers upon progressively smaller “provocation” or excuse. The use of the military in the great railway fiasco—placed under arms before the strike had commenced; promised to the masters even before they dared to drive their miserable slaves to extremities—and the brutal smashing up of peaceful meetings at Liverpool, and more recently st Dublin and other places, proves this. The Law, which seems to be helplessly paralysed in the face of the Carsons and Smiths fulminating flagrant treason and wholesale sedition, can be strained to outlaw every movement of the workers, and even to shatter that imaginary, but firmly believed-in institution, free speech!

The reason for this growing contempt for the liberties the workers had got into the habit of thinking their fathers had won for them is not at all obscure. Time was when any Government thought twice before they antagonised the vast body of working class voters by open acts of brutality for which even the most plausible of them could find no passable excuse. But that political retaliation which the politicians feared has, as far as the Liberal party is concerned, been effectually scotched by the Labour Party. Bitterness against the open and avowed Liberals will express itself simply in more votes for the sneak Liberals masquerading in Labour’s robes.

Those workers who placed their faith in this precious party of traitors which dares to call itself the Labour Party, may now cast a dubious or even rueful eye upon their chicken when it comes home to roost. But at least it should have taught them one useful lesson. Is it conceivable that astute politicians, so eager for pelf that they cannot keep themselves clear of Marconi entanglements, would jeopardise the sweets of office by placing the armed forces at the disposal of every trumpery concern that chose to butcher its employees on the question of 6d. a week? In the face 42 true Labour men who could throw the politicians out of office at any time they would not dare to do it. In the face of ten, or five, or two men elected on the class struggle, who would get up in the name of their party and proclaim such acts of aggression what in fact they are —simple acts in the class war—they would certainly be more circumspect

For every such act then, instead of merely shifting the workers’ allegiance from Liberalism to Laboralism, would drive home to thousands the need for uncompromising hostility to all capitalist political parties—and it is just this that all capitalist politicians, from Asquith in the clouds to Macdonald in the gutter, hate and dread.

It is for this reason that, even for the immediate purpose of fighting the question of wages and conditions under capitalism, the political policy of the Socialist Party is superior to the trade union policy of political alliance with those to fight whom on the economic field they ostensibly exist.

But it would be prostituting our cause and our ideals to leave the argument there. It is not for the advantage of the moment that we Socialists strive. That the Socialist political policy is the best one for the worker engaged in the everyday struggle on the economic field, is so because the same facts environ every phase of the class struggle. The same armed forces face the striker endeavouring to obstruct the blackleg as faces the revolutionary aspiring to overthrow the system. The same police and military uphold the right of the masters to smash a strike as uphold and preserve the system of wage-slavery. For this very reason the course of trade unionist, seeking to restore to the strike weapon some of its old-time efficiency and power, and that of the revolutionary aspiring to the abolition of the master class as such, lie along identical lines. It is to get their hands on the instrument controlling the movements of all the armed forces.

This instrument, of course, is the political machine. So it amounts to this—the trade unions must adopt the political policy of the Socialist Party, even for their own purposes. They have tried the experiment of getting their “leaders” into the House of Commons with the aid of Liberal votes, only to find that they have been attached to the tail of the Liberal kite. They have allowed ambitious men to climb to place over their backs, assisted by the friendly hands of their masters, only to discover that when times hands are reeking with the blood of murdered workers, the “Labour” members, instead of repudiating them, but cling to them more tightly, because to let go is to fall.

It is clear, then, that the trade unions, even for the purpose of playing their part as a brake on the downward trend  of working class conditions, must aim at placing the greatest possible restriction upon the use of the armed forces for strike-smashing purposes. But to accomplish this they must rely upon the working class alone. They must take their stand upon the class struggle, because the only thing the masters are afraid of is that their acts of brutality may illumine the line of class cleavage. They must take control of their own political power, and so order things that it is they who command, that it is they who must be obeyed, that it is them, and not the masters, with whom their representatives dare not break faith.

To achieve this end it is clear that neither the workers nor their representatives may owe anything to the master class. All must be gained in the teeth of the enemy. Hence there must be no compromise. The masters fear only the growth of the recognition of the class struggle. It is through this fear alone that the workers, until such time as they have captured the entire machinery of government, can hope to exercise any restraining influence upon the brutal instincts of the masters fighting for their profits. They must stand, then, upon this class struggle, giving the utmost prominence to it, so that every aggressive act of the masters shall stand clearly out as class aggression, and, by increasing the class-consciousness of the workers, frighten the rulers into second thoughts before they serve out ball-cartridge to their minions.

Only the revolutionary candidate can fulfil the requirements of the trade union (or any other) worker, because it is only of revolution the masters are afraid. Only the properly so-credited candidates of a sound working-class political party can meet the needs of the worker because only through such an organisation can the workers’ representatives be guaranteed and controlled. Only the Socialist Party is a sound working-class political party, because it alone is based on the class struggle and is hostile to all other parties. The moral is obvious.

H. G. Wells on the Home. (1908)

Book Review from the May 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Will Socialism Destroy The Home? by H. G. Wells (I.L.P. 1d.)

Two points are introduced in this pamphlet, with both of which we disagree. The first is the idea of remuneration under Socialism being relative to the size of the family. The second is the suggestion of municipal baby-farm for children of unworthy parents.

With regard to remuneration, all Socialists will object to the proposal “to make a payment to the parents for their children.”

Prognostics in the name of Socialism as to how the family after the revolution will be constituted, need a sound recognition of the basic principle's of Socialism and of science generally, for even approximate accuracy. We have no evidence that Mr. Wells possesses any such recognition. Although he soundly criticises the existing system for the difference between the family as it is commonly supposed to be, and the family as it is, yet he fails to indicate the causes which have produced the difference. Those causes are economic and have been traced in the second part of Das Erfurter Program published under the title of “The Working Class,” shortly to appear as the fourth of our pamphlets, nor has the economic base of the impending change been made of sufficient clearness. Yet only by this means can an insight be had. The main factor would seem to be the complete freeing of women from economic dependence on men. This means the freeing of love from the influence of social position and the cash nexus, and a corresponding increase in the importance of the mutual consent of both parties to a marriage, whatever form that marriage takes.

The ability or worthiness of the parents need never be questioned, as the factors which to-day promote unworthiness will have gone, while the wilful neglect of children by parents able to attend to them would, under Socialism, probably indicate the necessity for the services of a mental physician! Just as the other bugbear to the non-Socialist—the won’t work will probably be a subject for similar treatment.

The brief historical sketch of the family with which Mr. Wells concludes, might easily have been made fuller, and for the purposes of the pamphlet carried a little ahead with more definiteness. For the rest it is an interesting speculation, admirably written, but it does not get far enough away from the idea of State baby farms and State boarding schools to satisfy those to whom “uniformity” and “regeneration ” are as objectionable as ever thcv were.

R. H. Kent

The People. (1908)

From the May 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Written in 1600.)

"The people is a beast of muddy brain,
That knows not its own strength and therefore stands
Loaded with wood and iron. The powerless hands
Of a mere child guide it with bit and rein;
One kick would be enough to break the chain.
But the beast fears, and what the child demands
It does, nor its own terror understands
Confused and stupefied by bugbears vain.
Most wonderful! With its own hands
It ties the gags itself, gives itself life and war,
For pence doled out by kings from its own store.
Its own are all things between earth and heaven;
But this it knows not, and if one arise
To tell this truth, it kills him unforgiven.”
                                                                               - Father Campanella.

At One With Us. (1908)

From the May 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “For our party, and for our party tactics, there is but one valid basis: the basis of the class-struggle, out of which the Socialist party has sprung up, and out of which alone it can draw the necessary strength to bid defiance to every storm, and to all its enemies. . . . We may not do as other parties, because we are not like the others. We are—and this cannot be too often repeated—separated from all other parties by an insurmountable barrier, a barrier that any individual can easily surmount; but once on the other side of, and he is no longer a Socialist. . . .  Just in this fact lies our strength, but that we are their deadly enemy, who have sworn to storm the Bastile Capitalism, whose defenders all those others are. Therefore we are only strong when we are alone."

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Just a Russian Revolutionary (1970)

Editorial from the April 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why we criticise Lenin

Those who read Marx and Lenin cannot fail to notice some difference in the views of these two revolutionary thinkers. Few, however, realise the full nature and extent to which Lenin's views differ from those of Marx. In this issue of the Socialist Standard on the occasion of the centenary of Lenin's birth we analyse Lenin's theories, particularly those concerning imperialism, the state and social evolution, and show how they are radically different from Marx's.

Now that Russia is obviously just another capitalist and imperialist state, it has lost the attraction it once had for many confused critics of society. The tendency, however, is to blame Stalin for distorting Marxism into the ideology of a state capitalist ruling class. Lenin is still widely regarded as a genuine Marxist. That this is so the Socialist Party of Great Britain emphatically rejects.

It is undeniably true that Lenin, and the Bolshevik party he led, spoke the language of Marxism and sought to justify their policies in Marxist terms. This requires some explanation in terms of the materialist conception of history.

Capitalism in Russia, which began to develop in the last quarter of the 19th century, had its own special features. The capitalists there were weak and dependent on both the Tsarist government and on foreign investors. As a result they were politically isolated and incapable of leading the revolution against Tsarism which was necessary for the full development of capitalism in Russia. The task of overthrowing the Tsar — Russia's bourgeois or capitalist revolution — thus fell into other hands, those of the intelligentsia, a social group peculiar to the Russia of that time made up of university-trained people employed in various professional capacities by the government.

The anti-Tsarist struggle, and its theory, was started by sections of this intelligentsia. In view of the weakness and cowardice of Russia's capitalists (and, in the early stages, of the virtual absence of capitalism) it was not really surprising that these revolutionaries should be attracted by anti-capitalist ideas. The great bulk of them, even though they never claimed to be Marxists, always regarded themselves (wrongly in our view) as socialists. Later some, including Lenin, did pick up a few of Marx's ideas but this still did not mean that their theories served she interest of the working class.

Lenin's theory of the vanguard party — his most notorious departure from Marx which says that the revolution can only be achieved by a party of professional revolutionaries leading the discontented masses — was taken straight from the Russian revolutionary tradition. Its pedigree can be traced back through Tkachev and Ogarev to West European thinkers like Babeuf and Buonarroti whose idea of revolution was coloured by the Great French Bourgeois Revolution.

It is true that Marx began has political activity as this kind of old-fashioned revolutionary democrat, but he soon realised that the socialist revolution would have to be radically different from what had happened in France because it would be the first revolution carried out by a majority conscious of its own interest. Marx went beyond, and specifically repudiated, the idea of self-appointed liberators leading the mass of ignorant people to freedom. Lenin never really advanced much beyond this. He remained, in his theory as well as his practice, essentially a bourgeois or capitalist revolutionary. In fact it was because Russia in the opening decades of this century was ripe for such a revolution that his ideas had any social or political significance.

Stalin did indeed twist Marxism into the conservative ideology of a state capitalist ruling class, but he was merely building on Lenin's previous distortion of Marxism into the ideology of that same class while it was struggling for power.

Lenin was just a Russian revolutionary, while Marx was a revolutionary Socialist. This is the great difference between them.

A Christian History. (1912)

From the April 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Universities, having grown out of cathedral schools, have ever been pillars of the Church. In this country these “seats of learning” are even more bigoted and reactionary than the rest of the ruling class. Here is an example.

There is now being published by the Cambridge University Press, a new work called “The Cambridge Medieval History,” in the words of a familiar advertisement, as a supreme product of a great university. If past experience of a bulkier product from the same source is a guide, copies are already being specially reserved for us, and soon we may expect the postman’s knock to herald the avalanche of Yankee swank inadequately describing its merits. It is not, however, the marriage of medieval thought with bustling methods of advertisement that need concern us here. Perpend.

"The Observer," an influential Conservative organ, has reviewed the first volume of this eventful history, and some of its remarks are worthy of note. It said:—

   “After a glance at the table of contents one is not surprised to find that the hook has a strong theological bias.   . . . Whereas Gibbon assailed Christianity with the most subtle reasoning, the present volume assumes (an assumption which the facts of the period show in a peculiar light) that the rise of Christianity was the steady conquest of good over evil: fine theology, doubtless, but a little presumptuous, perhaps, as history. This is seen, too, in the importance given to the actual creed of Christianity as apart from its importance as a political factor or organisation.”

Your theologian is ever the greatest falsifier of history. He writes “history,” invents an Atheist shoemaker, and imagines a death bed scene of a Darwin, with but a single aim —the greater glory of his trade. And “The Observer" goes on to say : —

   “It is Professor Gwatkin (The Rev. H. M. Gwatkin, one of the editors) who is the most marked partisan; he writes of ‘the heathens’ with a scornful unction, seen in his description of Constantine’s anxiety to unite Paganism and Christianity. . . . And he writes a little later: ‘After all, Christianity is not a monotheistic philosophy, but a life in Christ,’ a definition which is, of course, clear as sunlight to the initiated, but is the kind of phraseology which is better suited for a British Weekly than for a European History. After all, Christians and not 'heathens' scraped the philosopher Hypatia to death with tiles in the church called Caesariitm, A.D 115."
  “In consequence, however, of such ideas as those expressed by Professor Gwatkin, one turns back to the wider view of Gibbon or of Dill with an added recognition of its value. Whatever the influence of religion may be upon individuals, it is generally the authority a nation gives itself for doing what is profitable."

The Italics are our own.

It would appear that, in the best informed capitalist circles — as distinct from the bigoted medieval obscurantism of the theologians — a dim recognition of the essential truth of the Socialist case against religion cannot be suppressed. Like murder, it will out.

F. C. Watts

Editorial: The Strike and its Lessons. (1912)

Editorial from the April 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

A million miners are out on strike. From the ferment around us one might think they were asking for the mines. Every foul epithet and calumny is being hurled at them by the hireling Press. It is they who are unpatriotic; it is they who are ruining the trade of the country; it is they who are bringing the people to starvation. No one suggests that the mine-owners, who cling so tightly to the last atom of profit which they can screw out of those who go down into the pits, are culpable.

Of course not. Is it not only fair and just that capital should have its reward? and who can say that the mine-owner is any too well recompensed for his risk and his labour? Not the capitalist papers, certainly.

These drew many fancy pictures of the fabulous wages and astonishing luxury of the miners, and marvelled that there was anything left for the owners at all. Yet within a week of the men ceasing work the Press rang with the cries of the miners starving wives and children, and Mr. Chiozza Money, M.P., showed from the Income Tax returns that in the last nine years the owners had made over 200 million pounds out of the unpaid labour of the workers!

It is stated that the granting of the minimum wage would only cost £50,000 a year, which is less than ¼ per cent. of the profit the masters take, and a very minute fraction of one per cent, on their capital. It is a pregnant demonstration of what the meaning of the word "patriotism” is on the masters’ lips, when they plunge the country into such misery for the sake of so insignificant a morsel of dividend.

Another lesson taught with irresistible force is the utter uselessness of the master class, for no sooner do the workers lay down their tools than production comes to a standstill. After this no one should have any doubt as to who produces the wealth of society, or should urge that we cannot get on without the capitalists.

Asquith and the Liberal Government have followed the usual course, hut so far without the usual success. He has called conferences at which he has paraded the true Asquithian bluff. But he had rather a difficult row to hoe this time, for the miners have not forgotten bow the railwaymen were "Lloyd Georged” into going hack to work with empty hands. After the conferences Asquith tried his trump card: Compulsory Arbitration in spite of the fact Mr. J. M. Robertson had told the House that countries which had Compulsory Arbitration suffered severely from “labour unrest.”

The next move on Asquith’s part was to bring in his Coal Bill. This was an audacious attempt to dish the miners by a fraudulent, hypocritical measure framed by lawyers to look a lot and give nothing.

It was a measure to legalise the “principle” of the Minimum Wage without stating the minimum. It provided for district conferences with a Board of Trade Chairman who would have the casting vote, and who was to decide the minimum if both sides failed to agree—a bright look-out indeed for the miners.

The trade union leaders—the Labour Party—voted for the Second reading of the Bill, simply asking the Government to give them some semblance of minimum figures on which they could lure the men back to work.

Mr. Ramsay Macdonald said they agreed with the principle of the Bill and would do all they could to get it through. But the Bill was a measure that called for the fiercest opposition of any workmen’s representative.

It was simply a dodge to get the men back to the mines with depleted funds, and therefore in a much worse position than before. That accomplished, it offered them nothing but delay, —the machinery for the fight for the minimum, with all the weapons in the masters’ hands.

Every loophole, every safeguard, was provided for the masters. So much so was this that Mr. Macdonald was able to point out to the Government that they need not be afraid to put the figures 5s. and 2s. in the Bill because there were safeguards in it by which the minimum could be reduced. According to the “Daily News" (March 23) he said: “Does the House understand what it is doing? It can put on the 5s. and 2s. and make these figures subject to sub section 4 of clause 2 of the Bill.”

This acceptance by the Labour Party of a minimum that was not a minimum was seized upon by the Government, and they immediately proposed another conference upon it.

It is easy to see the game both the mine-owners and the Government are playing, indeed, it has been hinted at in these words by the “Daily News” :

  “The owners are convinced that if the strike goes on . . labour as a whole will be bled white, and utter exhaustion will be the beginning of a long peace.”

The Government have been dallying and delaying in order to let starvation do its work. They know how slender are the trade unions’ resources, and that the masters can afford to sit in calm confidence amidst their luxury while the men stumble on to surrender.

The miners’ leaders, such as Brace, Edwards, “Mabon,” Harvey, and Stanley, are imbued , with the ideas of the master class. Above all , they want peace, peace at any price. Their security of their jobs and their position is their first and last consideration. Every device to humble the men and to weaken their position has been tried during this strike.

How treacherous they are the 1910 South Wales Miners’ strike showed. When the South Wales Federation ran out of funds the English Federation reluctantly came to their aid, but after five months the men’s strike pay was stopped, and Mr. Thomas Ashton, the secretary, bitterly denounced the strikers and helped to drive them back under a worthless agreement with the masters.

The majority of trade unionists, unfortunately, do not yet understand the bitter conflict of interests between the owners and the toilers — the Class Struggle. They, like their leaders, do not yet see the only remedy for them and theirs. They have to look beyond the details of the present system and take an intelligent part in that great struggle in which they are the unconscious participants. They must understand clearly that while the master class control the political machine they control their lives. They have possession of that power which orders the armed forces to butcher them when they attempt to take the wealth they have produced.

The workers must capture that political machine in order to take over the means of life for themselves to be owned in common, and used in the common interest. Surely the hardships and misery that strikes involve, so terribly out of proportion with what is gained by them, and so hopeless, must drive the toilers to seek a better way. The saner, surer method for a real and permanent triumph is for the workers to no longer submit to be “leadered,” but to learn their own politics, understand their own interests, realise their own destiny, and rely upon their own courage and strength and intelligence to bear them on to that destiny—their emancipation through Socialism.

Debate at Caledonian Rd. Baths. (1912)

Party News from the April 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most successful was the debate organised by our Islington comrades between Mr. A E. Moise, of the North London Christian Evidence League, and F. Vickers, as champion of the S.P.G.B.

The hall was crowded to its utmost capacity, so that the doors had at length to be shut. Fully 1,000 were present. The collection realised £4 7s. 0d. and the sale of literature 13s. 6d.

Mr. Moise made the best of a bad case, but Comrade Vickers simply wiped his every contention away.

Sidney Hammond, Sec. Islington Branch.

The Fabians, Bernstein and Revisionism - Part 1 (1956)

From the January 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now and again old ideas turn up and, after some refurbishing, are presented as fresh discoveries. The old wine in new bottles is then described as the sole product of the very latest and most highly developed vineyards. The working class movement has been no stranger to this fraudulent or ignorant artifice, and many a reputation has been built upon the deception.

Since the Socialist movement began most of those who claimed adherence to it have been obsessed with the idea of a mass movement. Even most of those who claimed to be Marxist have hedged, compromised, and thrown principles to the winds in order to swell the numerical support for a movement that put Socialism in the forefront as its theoretical aim, and then took practical action that denied this aim. The result has been defeat, disaster and the submerging of much that was valuable.

Examples of this craving for a mass following have been the Fabians, the Bernstein Revisionists, Independent Labour Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Labour Party, the Communists and, recently, movements, like the one sponsored by G. D. H. Cole. Supporters of these movements have brought up old arguments and ideas as if they were newly discovered examples of progress.

As some useful lessons can be drawn from it we will describe the circumstances in which one of these movements, the Bernstein Revisionist Movement occurred. It produced a bitter controversy in the Social Democratic Parties at the turn of the century. What exaggerated the importance of the theoretical dispute was the fact that Bernstein had been a prominent advocate of Marxism for many years, was regarded as an outstanding leader of German Social Democracy, had been a friend of Engels and, along with Kautsky, had been appointed by Engels as one of his literary executors. True, he did not disclose the cloven hoof until Engels was dead.

The controversy was set going by a series of articles on Problem of Socialism, contributed by Bernstein to the German Social Democratic paper, the Neue Zeit, in 1897. A demand was thereupon made that the German party state its position with regard to his ideas, and particularly to his contention that the task of social democracy was “to organise the working classes politically and develop them as a democracy and to fight for all reforms in the State which are adapted to raise the working classes and transform the State in the direction of democracy.” 

In 1899 Bernstein published a book gaining a complete statement of his views. This book was translated and published in England by the Independent Labour Party in 1909 under the title Evolutionary Socialism, with an English preface by Bernstein. The quotations of Bernstein's views that we will give later on will be taken from this edition, although the controversy ranged round the original German edition.

To begin with, let us see what the views were that Bernstein held. Briefly summarised they were the following:

That the numbers and wealth of large and small Capitalists tended to increase and society to become more democratic. That class antagonisms were being modified by ethical and patriotic considerations. That crises were decreasing in size and frequency through a process of adaptation largely influenced by trusts, cartels and the like. That the Materialist Conception of History overestimated the economic factor; the influence of the economic factor was diminishing whilst the influence of ideological factors, including the ethical, was increasing. That Capitalism had undergone fundamental changes since the middle of the 19th century when Marx made his analyses, but, though true for the time of which he was writing, they no longer applied.. That the theory of surplus value was incomplete and needed the addition of the theory of final utility. That the workers have now become citizens of the country and therefore have a fatherland to defend. That as Germany is becoming more and more dependent upon products from the colonies, these colonies should be developed and protected. Savages have only a conditional right to the land occupied by them; the higher civilization of advanced countries can claim a higher right. That Socialism is a long way ahead and will only come by a process that is gradual and almost imperceptible; consequently we should not worry about the future but concentrate on the present, on the extension of the political and economic rights of the working classes and “In all Advanced countries we see the privileges of the Capitalist bourgeoisie yielding step by step to democratic organisations” (Preface, page XI). That the Social Democratic Party should form alliances with the Capitalist parties nearest to them.

These were the views that Bernstein put forward. The controversy that developed was two-fold. On the one hand it was concerned with Bernstein’s ideas, on the other it was a struggle to keep him in the Party, in spite of his heresies, on the ground of democracy. On the latter question Liebknecht made the following observations:— 

“No socialist, therefore, has the right to condemn attacks on the theoretical ideas of the Marxian teachings or to excommunicate anyone from the party because of such attacks. But it is wholly different when such attacks imply a complete overturning of our whole conception of society, as, for example, is the case with Bernstein. Then vigorous defence is in order.” (p. 38, “No Compromise, No Political Trading.”)

However, it is well to remember that all the participants in this controversy accepted the reform policies of the Social Democratic Parties. Where they differed among themselves was that some advocated a reform policy but, at the same time, insisted that the Party should remain independent. The muddled attitude of the German party is made plain by a report of the two conferences at which the Bernstein position was debated. The report is taken from the Social Democrat of January, 1902.

At a Congress at Hanover in 1899, after Kautsky and Bebel had bitterly attacked Bernstein’s views, Bebel moved a resolution that was carried by 216 votes to 21. The resolution began as follows:—

“That the party remains as heretofore on the basis of the class-struggle whereby the freedom of the working class can alone be effected."

But it finished up in this way:—

“The party, without in the least deceiving itself as to the character of the bourgeois parties, does not, on principle, refuse to co-operate with the parties of order from time to time, if the party can thereby obtain some definite advantage, whether for the purposes of election, or in the acquirement of political rights and freedom for the people, or in the event of obtaining some real improvement in the social condition of the working classes, or in the struggle against elements and measures hostile to the masses. . .  and has no reason to change either its principles or fundamental demands, or its tactics, or its name.”

This weak-kneed resolution in fact gave Bernstein his case for reforms and alliances, and he was not slow to realise it. He was precluded from visiting Germany, and consequently could not attend the Congress. As soon as the terms of the resolution were conveyed to him he telegraphed his willingness to vote for it!

The Congress resolution did not settle the question. The controversy went on though Bernstein took no part in it until the middle of 1901, when he delivered a lecture in Germany under the title “ How is Scientific Socialism Possible?” In this lecture he argued that “ to be purely scientific Socialism must cease to be the doctrine of a class, the expression of the class interests of the working class.” This lecture stirred up the flames of controversy again, particularly as the Capitalist press lauded Bernstein as one of their own men. Thus the question came up again at the next Congress, which was held in Lubeck. Bebel opened the attack upon Bernstein, and Bernstein, who was present this time, defended his ideas claiming that he had not attacked the programme, the agitation or the practical working of the party, but only the theory which could not conceivably injure the party, and that he could not recant any of his views.

Two resolutions were moved. The first, for Bernstein, was rejected. The second was carried by 203 votes to 31, and was as follows:—

  “The Congress recognises the unreserved right of self-criticism for the intellectual development of the party. But the thoroughly one-sided manner in which Bernstein has conducted his criticism in the last few years, while omitting to criticise bourgeois society and its leaders, has placed him in an equivocal position, and aroused the displeasure of a large portion of his comrades. In the expectation that comrade Bernstein will accept this view and act accordingly, the Congress passes over the resolutions [there were four demanding a formal vote of censure] to the order of the day.”

After the resolution was carried Bernstein rose and made the following declaration:—

  “As I declared to you at the Congress at Stuttgart, the decision of the Congress naturally cannot cause me to abandon my convictions. At the same time, the decision of the majority of my comrades is never indifferent to me. My conviction is that the resolution is unjust towards me, being based, as I have pointed out, on erroneous suppositions. But since Comrade Bebel has declared that the resolution contains no vote of censure, I declare that henceforth I will respect and observe the decision of the majority of the Congress in the manner due to such a decision.”

This ended the dispute over Bernstein's membership as far as the German Party was concerned. In the next contribution we will discuss the repercussions in England of the German party’s decision.

We will end this section by pointing out that the ideas Bernstein put forward were not original. He himself had taken them from the Fabians, about whom we will have something to say later on, but there were groups on the Continent holding similar ideas before he put forward his. One of these groups held a view which was described as Integral Socialism. A member of this group, Benoît Malon, published a book in 1891 entitled “Integral Socialism.” Malon was opposed to Marx’s conception of economic motives and class-consciousness, arguing that Socialism was an outlook not for the workers alone but for all humanity, and was inspired by spiritual as well as economic aims, directed at conciliation rather than antagonism of classes, and trying to obtain benefits for all who suffered hardships. An outlook that required the co-operation of the liberal elements in society and involved the moral betterment of the workers.

Believing that Socialism was gradually seeping into society Malon, César de Paepe and others of like conviction, were opposed to any drastic proposals that might interrupt this process and advocated state ownership and the usual multifarious baggage of reformism in their proposals for practical action.

The seeping Socialism must have seeped out as fast as it seeped in, because 60 years later the class struggle has not eased; the workers are still wage slaves of capital and the ruling class is still in the seat of power and opulence.

Gilmac.

(To be continued)

Fireproof death (1983)

From the October 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Consider these two recent events — the stories of Alice Jefferson and Anne Philips. Alice worked with asbestos at Cape Industries Hebden Bridge factory for nine months when she was a young girl. Thirty years later, (in February 1982) she died a very painful death from mesothelioma (asbestos cancer) leaving her husband and two young children. She had suffered from tiredness and breathlessness for the last eight years of her life. In 1980 when her husband was unemployed she had been forced to take her fourteen-year-old son with her to work because she was too weak to do her cleaning job on her own but she needed the money. Her pain was excruciating and despite the use of the addictive pain-killing drugs dicanol and heroin she still suffered sleepless nights of agony. (Labour Research, April 1983). Her death must have been a great release although a compounded agony for her family.

On the other hand, consider the situation of Anne Philips. She lives at a place called Gatcombe House in Gloucestershire which her mother bought for her as a present. It cost somewhere between £450,000 and £725,000 and stands in 750 acres of prime farmlands and woods with plenty of stable space as well as a lake and boathouse. Anne receives over £50,000 a year as pocket money — one of the larger giro cheques paid by the state. When it was confirmed that white asbestos was present in a farm drive leading to Anne’s mansion, members of the Health and Safety Executive were immediately sent to inspect the possible danger. Tests of air samples were swiftly undertaken by scientists and the results indicated that the asbestos fibre levels were, in fact, less than one hundredth of the levels currently permitted by law. The managers of the Gatcombe estate were nevertheless "advised by the Health and Safety Executive to consider ways of reducing the amount of dust thrown up from the road". (The Standard, London evening paper, 31 August 1983.)

Asbestos is used in many products. It is to be found in gaskets, seals, textiles and friction materials. It is also in cement products, spray and insulation board used in buildings for fire protection. It is a fairly cheap and therefore profitable fire resistant material. Because of the fire hazards of modern urban areas and certain legal requirements, the ruling class are prepared for its use by workers as "protection” in the institutions of working class life, but they are not so keen when it comes to their own dwellings. Although it has been known for a long time that asbestos presents a great risk to health, the substance has continued to be used by working people. The directors and shareholders in the construction industry have generally been more concerned about the size of their dividends than with the depth of their workers' lung scars.

A report of the Factory Inspectorate in 1898 spoke about the “evil effects" of asbestos. In 1930 the government commissioned an investigation into the effects of the substance and the analysis of the Merewether and Price Report showed a massive incidence of crippling lung-scarring then occurring in the asbestos textile industry. Richard Peto, Reader in Cancer Studies at the University of Oxford has stated:

The foregoing estimates suggest there will be a total of about 50,000 asbestos-induced deaths in Britain over the next 30 years or so. 50,000 deaths is so enormous that it is difficult to comprehend. For example, it greatly exceeds the likely number of murders during the same 30 year period . . . because it is so widespread, asbestos may well be the worst occupational carcinogen (cancer causing substance) ever. (Selikoff and Lee, Asbestos and Disease, 1978.)

There is a calculable risk of contracting an asbestos-related disease at places where the substance is used. For example, at the Hebden Bridge factory where Alice Jefferson worked there is a one-in-eight chance. 2,200 people worked at this factory between 1939 and 1970. Of those who have been traced, 13 per cent had developed asbestos-related diseases — that is 279 workers — and 107 had died as a result of their condition. (Journal of Royal College of Surgeons, vol. 12, p. 2917, and report of Dr. Bertram Mann.)

In September the Health and Safety Commission imposed much stricter controls on the use of all types of asbestos in this country and recommended bars on the import of the two most deadly types of the material. “All the medical doubts are now over" belatedly declared the chairman of the Commission, Bill Simpson (Guardian, 24 August 1983) who, we must conclude, is either not very quick on the uptake of medical evidence or is less than honest.

Since society has become aware of the dangers of asbestos thousands of people who have had to work with it have been sacrificed on the altar of profitability. There are safer substitutes for nearly all uses of asbestos, and in many cases the substitutes are actually better. A 1982 Home Office report for the Fire Brigade, on the performance of heat resistant leather as fire blanket fabric, concluded: “this material gave a superior performance to that of asbestos".

Asbestos-related deaths which are all now socially unnecessary are only a grave in the cemetery of needless human waste which is capitalism. Think of the thousands who die prematurely or are maimed in industrial accidents. One of these victims was labelled by the news media in June as “the bravest man in Britain" after he had walked over half a mile while carrying his dismembered left arm which had been torn off in a hay baling accident. The accident may never have happened had there been a £20 guard on the machine, but the boss was not keen to spend the money. Think of the thousands who die for want of medical apparatus like kidney machines while immense resources are channelled into producing better bombs. Over 100,000 people go blind each year because of simple vitamin A deficiency and unclean water.

The magnitude and persistence of these problems within capitalism (the global social system of minority ownership of the means of life) cannot be eradicated by a tireless assault of reform measures and "stricter controls”. It is in the nature of this system to act in the economic interests of the minority with general disregard of social factors such as the health, safety and welfare of the majority who produce all the wealth.

Imagine a society where those responsible for testing the safety of products had to conduct their experiments in badly lit rooms against the nagging pressure of the flowing sands of an egg-timer with £ signs on the glass tube; where the entire staff of the hospitals were working with one arm tied behind their backs. That is similar to the society we operate at present. Then imagine how healthy and efficient we could be if doctors, industrial researchers, scientists, nurses and hospital staff could have all the time and the best conditions and equipment that they wanted. Such a society is a possible and urgent necessity. In a socialist society, asbestos and similar hazards will be consigned to the morbid museum of murderous relics which, through inadequate research caused so much damage: the mountain of Thalidomides, Rowan Points, Ford Pintos, Osmosins, inflammable toxic furniture, lead based petrol and poisonous Spanish cooking oils. Grim mementos of an epoch before social sanity.

Gary Jay

Book Review: “Pheasants and Men". (1929)

Book Review from the September 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Pheasants and Men.” By “Medicus.” Old Royalty Book Publishers. Price, 3s. 6d. 255 pages.

“Medicus ” is evidently a doctor in a rural area—“ Clayshire ”—which bears a marked resemblance to Lincolnshire. His aim in writing the book is to portray the mastery which the landowners exercise over the lives of all who live by the land. He knows his types and introduces a number of incidents which make interesting reading. It must, however, be confessed that the love episodes, dragged in to please the reader of modern romantic fiction, are too slight and are not handled with sufficient skill to make a very effective novel.

The story shows how an agricultural labourer holding ideas that are against the economic interests of his employer, the landed gentry, is hounded down and becomes a marked man, his means of livelihood gone. Louth, the man in the story, assaults one of his master’s foremen for an unjust accusation of theft made against him and having previously been suspected of rebellious ideas, he is prosecuted and heavily fined. His master dismisses him and he is unable to get further employment. The tenant farmers fear the wrath of their land lords, the “gentry,” and the owner farmers are hand-in-glove with them, so that Louth is refused everywhere.

The justices who try Louth are all the landed gentry from the immediate neighbourhood, and agree that Louth’s behaviour is a direct menace to their interests as a class, and he must be suppressed. They systematically hound the man from that time forth. Louth’s master, although a thoroughly gross and uncouth individual, is regarded as of the same class as the gentry because of his position as owner farmer and possessing great wealth. Lord Prentice, a good-natured, inept kind of man, secretly pays Louth's fine and gets him a job on the road. The rest of the gentry are upset at this, but cannot find out who did it. They succeed in getting Louth's wages cut down and nip in the bud the endeavours of his sons to obtain employment. Louth’s daughter Mary is taken on as a maid in Lord Prentice’s service and meets her affinity in Lord Prentice’s son John. This love affair is the “ thread of romance” described as* runntng through the tale. The cover itself, by a faintly suggestive picture, gives the book all the appearance of a novel by Victoria Cross, but the “affair” is quite decorous. The lady in her capacity as maid takes John his morning tea to his bedroom, sits upon the bed and feeds him with bread and butter, both murmuring sweet nothings the while. The “romance” finishes by Lord John marrying good little Mary in the approved Peg's Paper style.

Louth is left a legacy of three hundred pounds and rents some land from one of the gentry who let it to him with the express idea of watching this smallholding idea fail. Contrary to expectations, instead of Louth being once more humiliated, with the help of manures, etc., he enriches his poor land, keeps poultry, and he and his sons begin to make money. Then the landowner puts more pressure on him. He raises his rent and gets the assessment committee to raise his rateable value. This enrages Louth, and at the election Louth opposes Lord Prentice’s son John, and had it not rained would have won the day. The brain of the gentry, Scutton Mamby, goes mad, and as he was the magistrate who could always find a way to convict the most innocent of victims, the stuffing seems to drop out of the gentry and the story finishes by Mary being introduced by Lord Prentice’s plebian mother (she had been an actress) to her friends and assuring Mary that old Louth’s future was now assured.

The author, although no doubt possessing sympathy with the agricultural workers, does not clearly appreciate their social subjection. He points out that the people who make the laws also punish those who offend against them, and that it is the people who possess who make the laws. Thus Lord John enters Parliament as a property-owner and his father acts as magistrate to enforce the laws his son helps to make.

These facts, however, are very well realised by those who dwell in rural districts and the position is much the same in the towns, although perhaps not so apparent. Most labourers in the country realise that it it hopeless to take any troubles with their master to court. They know that the owner or tenant farmers are backed up by the magistrates on all occasions. It is not only, however, the gentry who are magistrates. The farmers themselves, especially when retiring, are often made J.P.’s and are worse tyrants than the former. They are more feared because, having been in personal contact with the labourer, they know just how to terrorise their victims. The labourers certainly do not, as the book suggests, go in such fear of the gentry as they do the farmers. So long as they keep out of court they rarely meet. The gentry to them are like their god, living behind iron gates instead of gold. The parson acts as high priest and intermediary between them. The author also gives one the impression that the farmers rather fraternise with the gentry, but this is hardly true. The farmers,, schoolmasters, publicans and tradespeople, usually have their own Buff lodges and hunting clubs, and their social activities, fetes and flower shows, etc., are sometimes graciously patronised by the gentry, who will deign to open any charitable show that is going to help the poor and take them off of their own doorstep; and then as graciously fade away again. The doctor and God’s servant are accepted as runners-up to them.

Louth, in the story, is supposed to possess more than the average intelligence of his mates. He, however, utters no revolutionary or enlightening speeches and really acts rather stupidly in not clearing out. when he came into his money and getting away from the people who had personal animosity towards him.

The only real points of interest to a Socialist are the facts which show how the laws are framed and administered in the interests of the possessing class. The book shows the severity of the game laws even on trifling thefts, but does not try to show that all the “Thou shalt not steal ” laws are based upon a society which allows one section of the community to possess and not produce,, and the other, the vast majority, to produce and possess nothing, eking out a miserable existence on an insufficient wage that makes stealing almost a necessity. 

May Otway

Cooking the Books: No Profit, No Care (2017)

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

'Elderly lose home care as providers pull out' read the headline in the Times (20 March), a reminder that under capitalism even basic needs are not met unless they can be paid for.

It must have seemed a good idea – to ideologically-motivated supporters of capitalism. Take running care homes for the elderly out of the control of local council bureaucrats and let the profit motive operate. So, the government came to require local authorities to farm out this service to private profit-seeking companies. These were invited to tender for the service and, if successful, would be given a contract paying them to provide the service which would include an element of profit.

The idea was that, as they would be able to increase their profits if they cut costs, this would act as an incentive to provide the service more cheaply than local councils had been doing. The principle was the same as taxation in Roman times when the collection of taxes was given to contractors who paid the state a fixed sum and then were free to tax people as much as they could get away with. The difference is that, today, the contractors are paid a fixed sum but are then free to reduce their costs, so making an extra profit.

It is applied not just to care homes, but to utilities, trains and buses, 'free' schools, and parts of the health service. This is not free market capitalism, but state-dependent capitalism, even crony capitalism where politicians campaign for 'privatisation' and the contracts go to those who had lobbied them.

The failure in 2011 of Southern Cross, then the biggest provider of care homes, had already shown that the priority was making profits not providing care. Southern Cross had been acquired in 2004 by a group of vulture capitalists who introduced a dubious scheme involving the care home buildings before getting out just before the property boom burst (in the meantime making pots of money). Commenting at the time on the failure, the Observer (11 July 2011) noted:

'Even during the best of times, profit margins in the care business are thin; as long as occupancy rates remain comfortably over 85%, a company that leases homes from landlords can make good profits. But below that level, it becomes harder to break even, leaving businesses vulnerable to relatively small changes in the trading climate'.

This is the other side of the profit 'motive'. If profits are good it is an incentive to produce, but if they are bad it's an incentive not to produce. This is what is now happening in the home care market. The 'trading climate' has changed; costs have gone up which local councils are not in a position to cover. The result, as the Times news item reported, is that 'dozens of care providers are going bust and a quarter are at risk of insolvency'. A spokesman for Mears, one of the largest care home companies, which had cut its losses and handed back its contract with Liverpool, was quoted as saying:

'We absolutely did not take that decision lightly, but frankly what choice did we have?'

What choice indeed. If you are a business providing a service for profit and are not making a profit then you don't have a choice. You have to stop providing the service. That's the way capitalism works. Profits before needs. And some people still think that this is the best way to organise the production and distribution of useful goods and services.

Sosialaeth: Y Byd Yn Un (1969)

From the July 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Erthygl Areiniol

Mewn byd sosialaeth fe fydd pawb a'u boced yn wag, fe fydd diweithdra drychynllyd a fydd phob masnach ar ben.

Dyna pam r’ym yn credu bydd yn syniad da, ond efallai bydd yn well i ni fanylu tipyn,

Ni fydd dim arian mewn byd sosialaeth. Yn wir fe fydd dim prynu a gwerthu ogwbwl. Bydd pobol yn rhydd i fyned i’r siopau a’r marchnadoeth a cymeryd beth y fynnent heb dalu ac heb ddogni. 

Gall byd gael ei gynal fel hyn oherwydd fod gennym yn barod y ffordd tegnegol i gynyrchu fwy nag sydd eisiau ar ddynion. Ar hyn o bryd arian sydd yn gweithredu fel math o ddogni. Os nad ydych yn gallu fforddio rhwybeth, mae rhaid mynd hebddo. Dyna pam mae pobol yn newynu a teuluoedd yn cael eu gorfodi i fyw mewn sylms a dyna paham mae dynion, bynywod a phlant drwy’r byd yn cael eu amddifadu au bywyd yn ddistryw. Nid effaith prynder yw’r system arianol ond y system arianol yw achos prynder. Mae yn eglur nad yw bwyd yn cael eu gynyrchu mewn digonedd i boblogaeth y byd, nid o achos fod gan ddyn dim ddigon o adnoddau i wneud hyn ond am y reswm nas gall dim elw i’w wneud allan o bobol newynog.

Mae sosialaeth yn golygu newid mawr yn ffordd y byd ac ei ddodi mewn arfeddiad pan fynn ffatrioedd, gweithiau glo, trafnidiaeth a siopau yn cael ei perchen au ddefnyddio er lies i boblogaeth yr holl fyd. Dyna pam yr ydym yn dweud fydd di-weithdra dychrynllyd mewn byd sosialaeth. Mae dosbarth o ddynion yn y gorllwin ac yn y gwledydd comiwnydd, yn yr holl math o weithredoedd yn prnu ein cryfder gan arian ac yn ein gorfodi i weithio iddynt eu hunain, yn cael ei newid i gydweithio yn foddlonol i bob gradd o gymdeithasau. Un o’r pethau cyntaf iw gwneud mewn byd sosialaedd fydd cael darfod ar waeth diflas, sydd heddyw yn gwneud bywyd mor galed, a’u newid i waith mwy pleserus a deniadol.

Bydd rhaid cael byd sosialaeth heb derfyniadau. Nid oes modd ei sefydlu mewn un gwlad nac mewn un man o’r byd. Mae hyn yn golygu dim prynu a gwerthu rhwng unigolion a dim marchnad gwhaniaeth wledydd. Bydd y byd eang mewn sosialaeth yn ymdrechu i gynyrchu beth fydd eisiau, a bydd pob math a bobol yn cael rhyddid i gymeryd beth bydd yn cael ei gynyrchu.

Dichon fod un neu ddau o’r cynnygion gwreiddiol i’r system wedi dyfod i’ch meddwl. Efalli eich bod yn meddwl fod dyn yn rhy ddioglyd ac ynrhy drachwantus i wneud sosialaeth i weithio, ac efallai eich bod yn meddwl fod popeth yr ydym yn awgrymu yn ddi-rhan i naturoliaeth. Mae sosalwyr yn wastad yn barod i resymu ac mae’n ymchwiliadau mor bell wedi ein arwain o’r diwedd i’t tyb fod sosialaeth nid ddim ond yn beth o da, ond y mae ei eisiau yn druenus, i esbonio y problemau sydd nawr yn ein poeni.