Editorial: Society and nature (1985-6)

Editorial from the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In this issue of The World Socialist we raise some questions about the relationship of society to nature. These are vital issues affecting the quality of life not just for this generation but for generations to come.

The subject involves a paradox. Humanity is a part of nature which evolved as one species amongst many within the processes of organic evolution. Yet we commonly see ourselves as something separate from nature. The function of nature is perceived as providing for the means of human existence. Behind this human-centred view is the nature of human consciousness and this is simply that, we are a self-aware part of nature as a whole.

This consciousness now has its own history which is still in the making and a key part of its development has centred on accumulating knowledge of the natural world. This knowledge is now so complex and extensive that no individual could hope to master more than a sub-division of the total.

The discovery of the processes, principles and natural laws through which natural elements interact have been applied as practical techniques of production. This has been humanity's increasing ability to control and manipulate the natural forces of the environment. Since the Renaissance and particularly since the industrial revolution the application of science-based knowledge has gained a rapid momentum. In principle this has been held to be a great advantage and so much has this been the case that in the 19th Century the work of science was invested with high optimism. It was popularly equated with “progress".

But since that time, applied science has also been regarded as a social menace. Given examples include the fact that applied physics has led to the nuclear arms race so that we now live under the threat of self-destruction. Hundreds of millions of people have been killed during this century using the technical methods of modern war. The science of botany and genetic control has resulted in new agricultural techniques, but have these been used for the benefit of humanity? On the contrary, there are more people suffering malnutrition and dying from hunger today than ever in the past. Similarly in the work of energy supply, despite there now being a wide range of technical options for establishing a safe and adequate world energy system, people still die from the cold and hundreds of millions still rely on gathering firewood. The energy production methods in use pose an increasing threat to the environment. Although there have been some undoubted gains, our developed knowledge of the natural world has not led to a better society nor to a better relationship between society and nature. The story of applied science in modern society is a story of waste, destruction and increasing dangers.

Thus, the hopes invested in accumulating knowledge have eroded, leaving the scarred remains of disillusion and pessimism. The mood now is different, but it is a superficial response to blame our present problems on science or our greater understanding of the workings of the natural world. It can be admitted that previous optimism was unsoundly based but behind our problems lies the fact that science has been subject to a different kind of investment - capital investment. Applied science in the form of technology operates as invested capital. The consequences of this have meant that control of the natural world for the benefit of humanity has been subverted by the uncontrolled and anti-social objectives of invested capital and the militarism which has been part of this.

Our understanding of the way capitalism uses the earth and its resources is blurred by a popular misconception. In the ordinary way we may see ourselves simply as useful producers with a useful job of work to do. We think of the environment simply as the natural world. We are aware of land, seas, forests, river valleys and deserts. We are also aware of useful resources such as coal, oil or natural gas and such metals as iron ore, copper or tin deposits. All these features of the natural environment present themselves in our minds as useful means of providing for life. But in the property form in which present society operates we are not simply useful producers and natural resources are not used simply for the reproduction and enjoyment of life. In reality, what we think of as our useful work is economic activity. We are waged or salaried workers functioning as invested capital working on natural materials for the production of commodities for sale on the market with a view to profit.

A farming enterprise cannot view land simply as land, a useful resource for the production of food. In the eye of agribusiness, land and farm labour are the natural elements of invested capital operating for profit and further capital accumulation. Similarly, forests, seas, oil, coal, natural gas resources, iron ore, tin or copper deposits are all taken over as part of the class monopoly of the means of life to be worked upon by wage labour for profit.

As capitalism has spread across the world to become the dominant economic system, including the state capitalist countries such as Russia and China, so has the entire planet come to exist in an economic form as providing for the elements of capital. Rival capitalist nations struggle over control of resources, exploitable populations, and the various trade routes on land and seas. They adopt military strategies for maintaining economic and political control or influence over the various parts of the planet, Most recently, British and Argentine capital was at war over the profit potential of the South Atlantic and the Antarctic, with the Falkland Islands as the strategic gateway to them.

The interests of capital dominate in every branch of knowledge. Capital finances the institutions of education and research. This determines the direction of applied science and technology. Vested capitalist interests control the world’s air waves, the media and the centres of world information. As a consequence, within the prevailing boundaries of thought acceptable to capitalist interests there exists a wide gap between the way nature is perceived and the reality of its economic existence. But we cannot clarify this view of nature by looking outwards at the natural world. The way we use nature and the relationship of society to it is determined by the social relationships between people themselves. It. is in the nature of social organisation that we find the relationship of society to nature.

Society cannot consciously regulate the impact of its activity on the natural world unless it can first consciously regulate its own productive activity. The present inability of society to control its destructive effects on the environment results from the inherently uncontrollable operation of the economic laws of the production-for-profit system which arise from the class monopoly of the means of life. It is awareness of this and the political action to change society which must follow from it which is the important advance in ideas and action represented by the movement for World Socialism.

What is lacking in the present state of human knowledge will not arise from any further focus on the wider natural world. Our existing understanding of this is far beyond what is required for a proper care of the environment. The material in this issue of The World Socialist shows that care of the environment is not primarily a practical or technical problem. It is a problem arising from the prevailing social relationships of capitalist production. By freeing labour from its exploitation by capital, socialism will also free the natural environment from its exploitation by capital. With a direct relationship of work activity to needs, socialism will be free to work with methods which ensure care of the environment. With co-operation based on the common ownership of the means of life socialism would aim at an equilibrium within the balance of natural systems without altering them in any destructive way.

Exhibition Review: Saddleworth Museum (2017)

Exhibition Review from the May 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Saddleworth is an area of farms and villages on the western edge of the Pennines, about halfway between Manchester and Huddersfield, with some spectacular scenery. Traditionally part of Yorkshire, it has, since the local government reorganisation of 1974, been part of the Borough of Oldham (which is itself within Greater Manchester). This annoys some of the residents, who maintain it is still in its previous county and have set up the Saddleworth White Rose Society (as if it matters in the slightest). The area is often described as ‘a Yorkshire community on the Lancashire side of the Pennines’.

Saddleworth Museum is located in the area’s largest village, Uppermill, in what was once the steam house of a mill. Originally established in 1962, it re-opened last year after extensive refurbishment. It traces the history of the area, with artefacts and display boards. Castleshaw, in the north of Saddleworth, has the remains of two Roman forts dating from the first and second centuries CE, which were important bases on the road between Chester and York. But most of the museum naturally deals with more recent times.

The acidic soil meant the area was not good for crops, so farmers had to rely on keeping sheep and cattle, combined with home weaving of cotton and wool. It was not a prosperous area, and in the early 1800s one-third of the population were on poor relief, unable to find work. From the 1840s wool and cotton mills were established, becoming the main local employers. For a hundred years down to 1960, looms were manufactured in one of the local villages, for use locally and elsewhere. The displays include a replica of a banner carried by the Saddleworth contingent at Peterloo, with the slogan ‘Equal Representation or Death’. Suffragette Annie Kenney was born here in 1879, and worked in a cotton mill from the age of ten before becoming very active in the Women’s Social and Political Union.

In the course of the twentieth century, the mills closed in the face of competition and were either demolished or converted into housing. Saddleworth is now mainly a dormitory district for Manchester.

An interesting local museum which gives a very worthwhile account of a rather unusual area.       

Paul Bennett

Editorial: For A Democratic World (1985)

Editorial from the Spring 1985 issue of the World Socialist

The world today is divided into 140 or so states, each with its own flag, its own Head of State, its own government, its own nationalism and above all, since institutionalised violence is the essence of the state, its own armed forces. Only a minority of these states even pretend to be democratic. The rest are dictatorships of one kind or another in which the ruling minority uses the most vile means, including torture and murder (as documented by organisations such as Amnesty International), to preserve its power and privileges. We refer here not only to the host of military dictatorships in Asia, Africa and Latin America but also to the state capitalist countries like Russia and China where the privileged ruling classes have reached the depths of cynicism with their claim to have established a classless socialist society.

Even the “democratic” states are only democratic in the limited sense of allowing their subjects a say from time to time in the choice of the personnel to fill certain important posts on the administrative side of the state. This is not to say that universal suffrage, the right to express and propagate dissenting views from the ruling ideology, the right to organise and to go on strike are not of vital importance. They are and nobody needs to tell us that they had to be achieved by years of struggle against the direct ancestors of the present ruling class, but in themselves they do not amount to anything like democracy in its full sense of a society run by and in the interest of the whole people.

Freedom to cry ''exploitation” from the roof tops does not in itself abolish exploitation; indeed it can be used to give the impression that exploitation no longer exists, as is done by defenders of capitalism in countries like the United States, Britain and Canada. According to them the populations of these and other countries with the same kind of political regime form national communities with a common interest and elections there are about choosing the men and women to administer the common affairs of these communities in the interest of the whole population. This claim is as false as that of the ruling class in Russia to be the mere servants of the community in a classless society of equals. It ignores the fact that society, even in the so-called democratic countries, is divided into antagonistic classes.

Throughout the world, in all countries irrespective of their political regime, the means for producing and distributing wealth are monopolised, either privately as individuals and companies or collectively through the state, by a minority class. As a result the rest of the population of any country are economically dependent on the monopolising minority, being obliged to sell their mental and physical energies to them for a wage or salary far below the value of the wealth they produce and which the minority appropriate. Wherever a class is deprived of the fruits of its labour exploitation exists, and it exists just as much in the United States, Britain and Canada as it does in Chile, Russia or South Africa.

As they take place in class-divided societies, elections in the 'democratic countries” are not about choosing delegates to run social affairs in the common interest; they are about choosing the men and women who are to run affairs in the interest of the minority class which monopolises the means of life. The task of those elected is to use the powers of the state machine to further the interests at home and abroad of the capitalist class of the country concerned. At home this involves maintaining "law and order”, upholding the established social order where the law grants the members of the minority capitalist class property rights in the means of production; the interests of the capitalist minority must be protected against the "enemy within", i.e. against the majority class of wage and salary earners wherever they take action to defend their living standards, by strikes and other forms of industrial action, against the ever present downward pressures exerted by capital. Abroad it involves protecting and furthering the commercial interests of the capitalist minority over markets, sources of raw materials, trade routes and investment outlets by the threatened and if need be the actual use of armed force. To this end each state has to arm its forces with the most destructive and most devastating weapons it can afford. Hence the arms race, continual local wars and the ever present threat of another world war.

Elections, such as those which took place last year in the United States, Canada and Australia, are thus about who shall fill the top posts in the state and run affairs in the interest of the established capitalist class. The choice that is offered is not really a choice at all since the main parties involved all stand for the same system. This is obvious in the case of America where the Republican and Democratic parties are openly mere rival gangs of political place-hunters, but is also the case in countries like Britain, Australia and New Zealand where one of the contending parties claims to represent the interests of the working class. Experience over the years of “Labour" governments shows that in practice they are just as anti-working class as any government formed by openly pro-capitalist parties. This is inevitable since the capitalist system can only function in one way: as a profit-making system in the interest of the profit-taking class. No government could change this economic law of present-day class society. On the contrary, all governments are obliged to abide by it and apply it whatever their original intentions might have been.

Politics in these countries is a game of ins and outs remote from the lives of ordinary people who, even though they participate in this game by exercising a “choice” when given the opportunity, generally do so without illusions since they know by experience that it makes very little difference to their everyday lives which party—which particular gang of place-hunters—wins. Politics is seen, and presented, as a sort of never-ending TV serial in which various media-puffed personalities vie with each other for power and place. No wonder most people don’t want too much to do with “politics". This is how it is today, but it need not always be so. When socialist understanding has spread sufficiently amongst the majority wage and salary earning class in these countries elections can be turned against the minority capitalist class. But until this happens the spectacle will go on and the use to which democratic forms are put will remain a farce that is an insult to the intelligence of thinking men and women.

So throughout the world, state power is exercised for the benefit of minorities, even if this power is sometimes exercised by people who have been chosen by the exploited majority class living in the country concerned. It could not be otherwise since state power and minority rule are inextricably linked: states exist precisely to uphold and protect minority rule and privilege, To create a truly democratic world the people of the world must take democratic political action to abolish all the states into which the world is currently divided, along with all the privileged classes whose interests they serve, and establish in their place a global classless community with a democratic unarmed world administration. Only then will we be able to talk of democracy. Only then will have been created the framework within which can be solved once and for all manifestly world problems such as disarmament and the threat of war, pollution and the plundering of non-renewable resources, and mass hunger, disease and ignorance,

Banking for Food (2017)

From the May 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Food banks are one of the most obvious examples of the extent of poverty, and more and more people have been using them. In the six months to September last year, the Trussell Trust, which operates a large number of food banks throughout Britain, handed out three-day food parcels to over half a million people, an increase over the same period in 2015. There are also more food banks in operation now than ever before. Many of the hungry are in fuel poverty too, and some food banks have even begun to give out tampons, as some women were using newspapers or handkerchiefs when they could not afford proper sanitary products.

Clearly, poverty is the reason why people resort to food banks to feed themselves and their families, but specifically two out of five who went to Trussell Trust operations cited delays in receiving benefits or changes to benefits as causing them to go there. A DWP spokesperson stated, ‘Reasons for food bank use are complex so it’s misleading to link them to any one issue’ (Telegraph online, 08/11/16). Individual cases vary, of course, but talk of ‘complex reasons’ just serves to muddy the water. To put it plainly, it is poverty and the inability to make ends meet that drive people to food banks.

In 2014 the Mail on Sunday ran a typically nasty story claiming that people could get vouchers for food banks without ID or checks and just by telling sob stories. Moreover, many of those who used the food banks were asylum seekers! This exemplifies the capitalist propaganda machine: focussing on a tiny number who supposedly ‘abuse’ the system rather than the widespread poverty that makes the system necessary, just as allegedly-dishonest welfare recipients are publicised in order to undermine the whole system and so humiliate, discourage and harass those who have genuine claims.

In 2015, 391 people in the UK died from malnutrition or hunger-related causes, and there were 746 admissions to hospital on grounds of malnutrition. There seem to be no reliable figures for the extent of hunger in Britain, but the increase in children starting school under weight and the rise in use of food banks suggest that the situation is bad and getting worse. One volunteer reported on some painfully thin people who attended one food bank: ‘There were people who had not eaten that day or the day before, or who had walked for two hours to get there, because paying for a return bus journey was out of the question’ (Guardian online, 29 January).

What is usually claimed to be the world’s first food bank was started in Arizona in 1967. In the US 42 million people still face hunger now, including nearly thirteen million children and five million seniors (feedingamerica.org). That is roughly one person in eight, which shows graphically why food banks are still badly needed.

One in nine of the world’s population – that’s 800 million people – do not have enough to eat, and nearly three million children die each year from hunger-related causes. According to the Global Foodbanking Network (foodbanking.org), households and nations suffer from food insecurity, ‘conditions where people do not have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food’. The GFN is currently aiming to raise $1m ‘to provide nutritious meals to eight million people facing hunger by the end of 2018’; but this is barely a drop in the ocean of what is needed.

Food banks are a classic case of dealing with the symptoms, not the cause. But the need for food banks and the increasing demands on them show very clearly that capitalism cannot provide a decent and secure life for everybody, despite the potential to produce more than enough of food and other goods. 

Paul Bennett

Editorial: Why capitalism cannot serve human needs (1984)

Editorial from the Winter 1984 issue of the World Socialist

It is an undeniable fact that throughout its history capitalism has been unable to meet the needs of the world's population. It has not done so in the past, it does not do so now, and it is not going to do so in the future.

We are interested in the needs of the community. Capitalism does provide for, and more than provides for, the needs of those who are rich enough to buy all they want. Nor are we interested in the total production achieved under capitalism, but only with that part that meets human needs. We are not interested for instance in armaments production, the vast allocations of resources and labour throughout the world given to the military. Tanks, guns, nuclear weaponry and their delivery systems do not contribute to meeting human needs as socialists understand them. We are interested in production which provides for life and not for the destruction of life.

Over one hundred years ago Marx wrote that "it is not a fact that too many necessities of life are produced in proportion to the existing population. The reverse is true. Not enough is produced to satisfy the wants of the great mass decently and humanely" (Capital, Vol III).

In modem terms, what is meant by providing for needs "decently and humanely" can be put in the form of a question. Does capitalism produce everywhere in the world enough good quality food, clothing, housing, water and sewage systems, energy for heating and lighting, health services and education facilities, books, radio and TV services, entertainment, means of travel recreation and so on? The answer is emphatically that it does not.

In the chapter from which the above statement was taken, Marx was dealing with the confusion which existed then, and still exists now, about the fact that periodically capitalism enters depressions in which it is found that some commodities have been "overproduced". But, as Marx showed, overproduction of a commodity for its particular market has nothing to do with the important question about whether capitalism produces enough to meet the needs of the great mass of the world’s population.

Frederick Engels put the position well in a letter he wrote in 1865:

Too little is produced, that is the cause of the whole thing. But why is too little produced? Not because the limits of production are exhausted. No—but because the limits of production are determined not by the number of empty bellies but by the number of purchasers able to buy and pay.

This is still the case. At the present time not only are productive resources not being used, but production is being cut back. In spite of the need for more food, the US and European governments are restricting food production because of limited market capacity for sales at a profit.

This difference between overproduction for the market and insufficient production for human needs demonstrates the contradictory way in which capitalism operates. When farms or industries have overproduced for their particular markets and have accumulated unsold stocks, it is precisely at that point that the ability of workers to buy decreases because of unemployment.

There are still many people who think that the appearance of unsold commodities is evidence that capitalism does produce enough to meet all needs. This is not only factually untrue but it would be a contradiction of the basic principle on which capitalist production is carried on.

In every country throughout the world, including the state capitalist countries of Russia and China, companies and governments own and monopolise means of production and distribution such as land, factories, shops, transport, communication systems, and so on. They employ workers to produce commodities to be sold in the market for profit. Selling at a profit is what the whole economic arrangement is all about. When, periodically, some industries find that they have produced more than can be sold in their particular markets at a profit, their reaction is immediate. They don't go on producing goods which they cannot sell. They curtail production and stand off workers they no longer need.

Capitalism does not go on producing commodities which it knows it cannot sell at a profit. The many millions of unemployed throughout the world are unemployed because they cannot be employed at a profit. Even at peak production during market booms capitalism never produces enough for the whole population, and in the recurrent market depressions it produces still less.

An accumulation of unsold products means that those who control them have a number of options. They can hold them at some expense until the market recovers. They can sell them at cut rates in order to get cash. In some cases they will be destroyed. There is one exception to these options about accumulated unsold stocks. World capitalism is not just a collection of industrial and trading organisations. It is also, of necessity, a collection of armed capitalist states with overriding political and military objectives. Governments, for political and military reasons, promote the production of some commodities beyond the demand of the market and accumulate stockpiles of petrol, food and strategically important metals. They do this because they are in constant conflict with each other over the acquisition and defence of sources of raw materials, trade routes and markets.

It is true that capitalism has greatly increased mankind's powers of production, but this has not been for the object of providing for human needs The economic stimulus has been profit and the accumulation of capital, and though these increased powers of production exist they are not available for the benefit of mankind. Quite apart from armaments production, they have been dissipated by the creation of a vast number of unproductive employments such as finance and banking which are essential to a profit system but which would be completely unnecessary in socialism which would be concerned with useful work producing useful goods and services.

Throughout the world today we find that powers of production are not being used to anything like their full capacity. Even in relation to existing market possibilities there is at the present time unused productive capacity in almost every line of commodity production.

The structure of capitalism and the way it operates always prohibits the full use of productive capacity. For a very short time at the peak of a market boom it is sometimes used to its full extent, but this can never last. But in any event such productive capacity as exists under capitalism is never in relation to the needs of the population. It is fixed at a level in relation to market capacity for the object of selling goods at a profit and this remains far below what would be required to meet the needs of the whole population.

Capitalist production is regulated by its own economic laws and cannot be controlled by any policy of so-called economic management. Nor is this position affected by the political complexion of particular governments, who for the most part remain in the powerless position of having to react to economic conditions which they cannot control. The conscious direction of production for human needs is only possible with the establishment of socialist society on the basis of common ownership, democratic control and production for use.

The Inseparables — War and Capitalism

Cover art by George Meddemmen.

From the April 1984 issue of the World Socialist

When the late President Yuri V. Andropov of the Soviet Union invited an 11-year-old American schoolgirl to visit the USSR after she had written to him in the spring of 1983 asking if he would “vote to have a war or not", even the most gullible might suspect a propaganda ploy, this one somewhat reminiscent of former President Carter's publicized encounters with the perplexed youth of America, including on one occasion his own daughter.

Andropov's guest claimed that if they were to ever meet, she would ask him: “Do you promise me the Soviet Union will never start a war?"

"The Americans are not going to start a war, either. So why are we still making all these bombs and pointing them at each other?"

Certainly there is nothing wrong with children confronting the supporters of American and Russian capitalism with such probing, pertinent questions—but where are the answers? Also, it might be construed as indicative of a somewhat strained, parlous political relationship existing between the two major powers when such publicity tactics are used, which inveigle the innocent into the quagmire of deception and international intrigue, related to matters of war.

The socialist position regarding war holds that, (1) Capitalism is the cause of war in the modem world. (2) Wars are inevitable under capitalism and the conditions that give rise to them are inherent within the system, and (3) All wars are fought over the interests of the capitalist class and we are unutterably opposed to ail of them without reservations of any kind.

While politicians throughout the world all claim to seek peace, abhor war and lament their occurrence, their reformist policies fail abysmally in securing their professed objective. War is rampant on a global scale. According to a survey conducted by the US News & World Report, July 11, 1983, 40 countries are presently involved in hostilities that have claimed as many as 5 million lives.

These conflicts are prosecuted with so-called conventional weapons forming an inescapable continuous pattern of human destruction. True, wars preceded capitalism, but war in the current era is the result of the private property relationships of the existing order of society and the causes of war are tied to the economics of capitalism. These forces are beyond the control of parties leaders and “United Nations", otherwise wars would not materialize—virtually on a day-to-day basis.

Policies and negotiations between the various capitalist states attempt, in most instances to avoid war if this is at all possible and to only regard them as a last resort should all else fail. The continuous proliferation of war proves beyond reasonable doubt that all efforts to prevent war within capitalism are doomed to fail.

Since the advent of the atomic bomb, towards the end of World War Two, the major powers have indulged in a massive and unceasing arms build-up that has stockpiled nuclear weapons, based upon the philosophy of either mutual deterrence or a potential first strike capability. I suggest these two alternatives because the actual intentions of governments, and the specifics of their negotiations, are always shrouded in secrecy—we are by no means living in an open society. Therefore, it is quite conceivable that governments have under consideration, from time to time, the practicality of exercising a nuclear "first strike" should they evaluate the overall circumstances to assure them a "victory" that would offset contemplated losses. This occurred when the US made their pre-emptive, atomic attack against Japan.

Preparations for war therefore, or for speculative avoidance of war, have been divided between the two arsenals of so-called conventional weaponry and those of the thermo-nuclear variety. To date, conventional warfare has prevailed and the dreaded holocaust avoided, although Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be regarded as full-dress rehearsals in miniscule form of what the future might have to hold. War, consequently, has not been avoided only total human annihilation — so far, that is!

There is, most unfortunately, an ominous fallacy in the approach to the problems of war in general and the potential nuclear horror in particular, that is pervasive in the thinking of all those who support the continuation of the present system, especially among the politicians and reformist parties that strive for viable solutions. Their energies are directed along technological, strategical and militaristic lines whereas the problem is one deep-rooted within the economics of capitalism. Wars originate from social factors that are the outcome of the manner in which a given society conducts its affairs and they require a social solution not a technological one.

Preparation for war, or armament build-ups claiming lo be "defense" measures that will preclude war, or negotiations between powers on specific nuclear devices and their geographic placements or curtailments, or "freeze" programmes, or the unending debates on various types of nuclear devices, or the pros and cons of conventional weaponry as compared to nuclear, germ and chemical monstrosities, or so-called super-weapons, or satellites in space, or a lawful mutual “spy" system, are all measures that do not in any way come to grips with the core of the situation. They are primarily technological approaches to war. but what is needed is a social solution to a social problem—all else is futility, fraught with terrible danger lo mankind and unnecessary procrastination particularly when a practical solution awaits recognition.

Governments can never be expected to research solutions that will in any way threaten either their status or the system that they are appointed to protect and upheld. They therefore have no real alternative but to proceed along the technological courses that produce the bottomless pits of a never-ending arms build-up.

President Reagan in his "Star Wars" speech of March 23.1983. proposed the development of space-based missile-defense systems that would have the capability of destroying enemy missiles in flight. With euphoric rhetoric he urged: “Let us turn to the very strengths n technology that spawned our great industrial base, and that have given us the quality ol life we enjoy today". This "quality of life" it should be remembered embraces the wars, not to mention the numerous other social problems.

Herein lies the terrible danger of the duly elected leaders' seemingly, but not in actuality. oblivious to the real economic causes of war, offering their impotent remedies and receiving political acquiescence from their supporters, allowing the madness of the present system to continue.

The late Russian leader, Ardropov, whose alma mater was the notorious KGB, responded to Reagan's anti-missile plans as an “insane" and "extremely perilous" strategy aimed at rendering the Soviet Union helpless to US nuclear attack. Simon Ramo, one of the developers of the inter-continental ballistic missile, asked: Who says that this technique will be used only to knock out missiles in the sky? If it's such a good technique, why not use it to knock out things on the ground?” (Quoted in Los Angeles Times, supplement on the Military-Industrial Complex, July 10, 1983.)

In other words, just because a government describes its weaponry as "defensive" it invariably is regarded as quite the opposite by its opponents. Reagan’s proposal, in fact, was just another rehash of the old delusion that a supreme weapon can be discovered that will intimidate, subdue or conquer the enemy. However, "supreme weapons” in due course have a way of being duplicated, circumvented or eventually surpassed.

Reformist attitudes to war have not prevented stockpiles of nuclear and allied weapons of gigantic proportions that continue to grow incessantly. In addition to the major countries that already possess nuclear arms, Argentina, Brazil. Pakistan. Israel and South Africa top the list of potential new nuclear powers— perhaps already having the actual capability. The United States in May 1983 was reported to have 2,011 intercontinental missiles and bombers with 9,681 warheads; the Soviet Union 2,480 of these “strategic launchers", with 8,781 warheads. [Arizona Daily Star, May 13, 1983) The same Associated Press report staled that the United Slates plans to deploy 464 ground-launched cruise missiles and 108 Pershing 2 ballistic missiles in Western Europe. The Soviets have a similar number of SS-20s and other medium-range missiles, all but 100 or so within striking distance of Western Europe.

The US News & World Report in an article dated December 6, 1982 stated that six nations have nearly 43.000 atomic weapons—the US, Russia, Britain, France, China and India. The Report further states that “Scientists estimate that if all the nuclear weapons in the world were detonated, the force would equal 10 trillion tons of nuclear explosive power."

Has saturation point been reached? By no means, for on July 13, 1983 the US Senate authorized $130 million for the production o' a new generation of nerve-gas bombs and artillery shells. At the same time the Senate was working on a bill that would authorize $4.5 billion for development and production of the MX which is the latest intercontinental ballistic missile proposed for the US arsenal. Another provision of the bill is for the construction of the B-1 bomber at a cost of $6.2 billion. And so it goes on.

The Los Angeles Times on July 10. 1983 published a 16 page supplement entitled “Servants or Masters? Revisiting the Military-Industrial Complex", on which a team of reporters and editors had worked for four months. The report refers to President Reagan's plans for an unprecedented five-year, $1.8 trillion expansion of defense spending. It states that more than 30 per cent of the country’s mathematicians work somewhere in the military-industrial complex, along with 25 per cent of the country’s physicists, 47 per cent of aero-astronautic engineers and 11 per cent of the computer programmers. Referring to California the report claims that one of every eight Californians with a job works, directly or indirectly for the military-industrial complex.

If one takes into consideration the millions of men and women employed in the production of armaments and allied occupations, it would be reasonable to suppose that n order to protect their jobs workers would be sorely tempted to rationalise political support for the arms build-up, until of course such times as they acquire a genuine, socialist opposition to a system that not only economically enslaves them but subtly entraps them into producing instruments of human destruction.

The dreadful tragedy of current wars, together with the awesome possibility of worse things to come, will not be removed by reformism, vacuous protests or dependence upon armed might, governments or leaders. The working class have a formidable task confronting them of self-education towards the scientific grasp of their problems. They alone hold the key to the future and each ore of us has a part to play in the process

When artificial borders between countries no longer exist, when the sole purpose of production and distribution is to satisfy the needs of humanity with no concern for profit, trade or barter, when classes have vanished because each person owns in common with their fellows the means for producing and distributing wealth with free unfettered access to ail goods and services, all of the conditions that cause war will have been finally and irrevocably removed. 

Furnaces throughout the world will become the recipients of a colossal amount of scrap metal—a fitting tribute to the long-awaited commencement of social sanity.

Samuel Leight (USA.)

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