Shall We Join The Labour Party? (1923)

From the May 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are some people whose sole contribution to working class organisation is to moan perpetually about the multiplicity of parties, and to bleat day and night for unity. They are the mentally indolent who never trouble to understand the principles of the parties they criticise, and knowing nothing of the underlying causes of political antagonisms their criticisms have no value whatever. In the main, they are probably sufferers from the peculiar sensitiveness of confused and untrained minds, to which the very idea of conflict is intensely painful. They can be happy only in trying to reconcile opposites, and to weld all the mutually destructive elements around them into one apparent whole. Thrust into a world in which class war reigns supreme, they must veil the hideous reality, or suffer the mental torture of having to search for a solution and struggle to apply it. It is a type of mind infinitely valuable to the ruling class, who are themselves vitally interested in hiding facts from their victims. It is the fate of somewhat more discriminating advocates of unity, like George Lansbury, that they receive the support of these muddled sentimentalists. Lansbury wrote in the Daily Herald (31st March) on “A United Labour Party,"  urging all the small political bodies which claim to be Socialist to merge themselves into one. His argument is, that broadly speaking, we all have a common object; and that in addition to bringing its attainment nearer, we should be better able to meet the ruling class in day-to-day battles. Unity “should mean that all who are members of our Trade Unions should be inside the Labour Movement." George Lansbury seems to believe that the working class position would be bettered by the formation of such a united front. Let us then examine the assumptions on which his argument rests.

Have the Socialists the same object in view as the Labour Party? Mr. Lansbury would say, that broadly speaking, they have; but in a sense, that is equally true of all the existing political parties. Owing to the present nearly universal adult franchise, no party can gain power except it has the support of a large section of the working class, hence no party dare omit to make the claim that it stands for the best interests of the workers. This does not involve the imputation of dishonesty to the openly capitalist parties. In addition to the motive of class interest, and often disguising it from them, is the sheer inability of some of the capitalist class to conceive of a social system other than their own. For them the best interests of the workers are bound up in the stability of the capitalist system.

We, on the contrary, know that the interests of the workers are bound up in the destruction of that system. The essentials of Capitalism are the existence of a politically emancipated, but propertyless working class on the one hand; and on the other, a numerically small class owning the machinery of wealth production. The workers are paid wages or salaries for operating that machinery out of the wealth produced, which is the exclusive property of the capitalists. The surplus in the form of rent, interest and profit remains in the hands of the latter. We do not pretend to regard as immoral either the system or those who profit by it. Had we lived at the time of the break up of Feudalism, it would have been our duty to fight for the capitalist form of private property, because that was a necessary advance on the previous form. The capitalists had a mission to perform, but now that their work is completed, another forward move is required. Capitalism, which was the only possible social organisation for the conditions prevailing at its inception, now has to go because conditions have changed. The present conditions are those to which Socialism alone is appropriate.

Just as the Feudal proprietors stood amid the ruins of their world and gazed back into the past, while the revolutionary capitalist class fought for the future, so now the capitalists are still contemplating the shadow of their former glories; while the workers struggle to use their achievements as the foundation of a new and higher form of society. And just as the representatives of that decaying system fought tooth and nail in defence of their class interests, and for the retention of the only stable organisation they knew, so also the capitalists will use fraud, force and cunning in their fruitless endeavour to maintain things as they are. The capitalists are fighting for their right to the private ownership of the means of life, and we fight to take it from them. When the workers awake to their class position they can by the conquest of the controlling force, the political machinery, recast society as they wish, because the minority, no longer in political control, will be powerless before them. We, of the Socialist Party, have no other aim than to give the workers the knowledge that will enable them to act. Because we think that conditions are ripe for Socialism now, and only knowledge is lacking, we are not prepared under any circumstances whatever to divert the workers' attention from the main object; we do not aid the capitalist class, nor do we seek their aid, because we consider these things will not serve any useful purpose; we do not endeavour to interest the workers in the administration, nor in the reform of the capitalist system, because we regard the one as a purely capitalist question, and the other as a means of prolonging the system which we are bent on destroying; we do not formulate immediate demands, because we know that the capitalists will not yield one jot of their position unless they are compelled, by circumstances, or unless the yielding is conceived by them in their own interests. Reforms of the latter type will be introduced by the capitalists and imposed by them, irrespective of our wishes; and when we are strong enough to challenge them we shall formulate the only demand worth making, the final demand. All who are prepared to fight for this are invited to unite with us for that purpose.

Is this the Labour Party’s purpose, too? If it is not, why should we ally ourselves with them? If the Labour Party’s policy is one with which we disagree, we should have to oppose it whether an affiliated body, or otherwise. We consider our end can best be served by opposing all non-Socialist bodies, and apart from its effectiveness, it is hardly honest to enter a party merely to hamper it as disloyal members. Incidentally, we do not share the touching belief of the Communists in the simplicity of the leaders of the Labour Party. The visitor who asks a householder to be allowed through the door in order to smash the windows from the inside, really ought not to expect a very cordial welcome.

Let us now consider what the Labour Party does stand for. Although the rules of that Party prevent its candidates from running as Socialists, the word Socialism is often used by them. This is confusing, because the word is used by them to mean something essentially different from the meaning in which we use it. It is because the word is used so loosely and inaccurately, that we display our objects in every issue of this Journal. Mr. A. V. Dicey, a K.C., and not, therefore, likely to use terms loosely in the ordinary way, takes the trouble to explain in his “Law and Opinion During the 19th Century,” that where he uses the word Socialism, all he means is State as opposed to individual enterprise. Generally speaking, when members of the Labour Party talk about Socialism they also mean State or Municipal Ownership or Nationalisation. Thus we have the Daily Herald (5th April, 1923) devoting its main Editorial to praise of Municipal Trading (tramways, electricity undertakings, etc.) because of their efficiency and the value of the profits in lowering rates; and the Labour Magazine (April, 1923, p. 562) quoting against Sir A. Mond his own praise of the State Department which engaged in house building.

The Daily Herald (24th October, 1922) quotes from the Daily Mail (7th August, 1916) the following :—

  “Take away the working man’s fear of being exploited by private capital, by nationalising the essential industries. Let him see that by doing a full day’s work he is benefiting himself and the nation, and injuring no one . . . and Great Britain will enter on the new era as mighty in the time of peace as she proved herself in war.”

After that in heavy black type the Herald continues : —

“THAT IS WHAT THE LABOUR PARTY MEANS TO DO.”

Mr. Sidney Webb, one of the intellectuals, is responsible for a really priceless exposition of the Labour Party’s kind of “Socialism” (Daily Herald, 1st March, 1922):—

“My Socialism is founded on the four rules of arithmetic, the Ten Commandments, and the Union Jack.”

We have seen some curiosities, but nothing so extraordinary as this, but of course, not being intellectuals ourselves, perhaps we miss the point of it. The same person, in his “Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain," 1920, wrote (p. 1): ”Over a large part of Europe definitely Socialist administrations are actually in office.” It is because we believe that the Labour Party proposes to give us the same kind of “Socialism” as was visible all over Europe to Mr. Webb in 1920 that we oppose it. In passing I would like to draw Mr. Webb’s attention to the fact that, while this “Socialism” may have been based on the Ten Commandments and the four rules of arithmetic, it surely lacked the other ingredient, the Union Jack. Still, if some of the Labour Party’s mentally-fogged and imperialistic minor poets from the Clyde have their way, this may shortly be remedied.

The Webbs do not propose

  “The abolition of the ancient institution of an hereditary monarch (pp. 108), but (pp. 109) unless the court can acquire better manners . . . it may be expected that the institution of monarchy . . . will become unpopular.”

It is not intended to abolish private ownership (page 344) and people are encouraged to save money

  “to be used on such conditions as may be arranged (which may quite reasonably include a rate of interest if this is found necessary or desirable) for the industrial undertakings and public services of the several public authorities.” (Page 345.)

There will be “progressive taxation of incomes and of wealth passing by alienation or at death” and “differentiation against unearned incomes of more than a small amount” (page 346). In fact, we are, if the Webbs and the Labour Party have their way, going to keep capitalism just as it is now is in all essentials, except that we are to call it Socialism. That the limit of their desire is Nationalisation is shown by the following (page 318):

   “The process of transition from profit-making industry to public service, which has during the past quarter of a century made such great strides . . . will continue . . .”

The process referred to is in fact the process of transferring industries from individual to State control. This is not Socialism; is in itself directly harmful to the workers; and has not received, and will not receive, the least support from Socialists. Why is it impossible for these anti-Socialists to perceive that Nationalisationers “private ownership” in its last and most tyrannous form? While the capitalists can continue to receive interest on investments it is only because they still own and control the means of life. Does it matter to them whether they draw interest from commercial investments or on Government stock? Mr. Webb proposes that "Expropriation is to take the form of cash or Government securities, at their own market value . . ." (page 334), which is very nice, too—for the capitalists, but it is not Socialism.

Mr. Snowden, on the 20th March, 1923, introduced a Land Nationalisation Bill in the House of Commons, payment for the land to be made in 5 per cent, stock redeemable in 30 years. Mr. Snowden was quite right when he said (Manchester Guardian Reconstruction Number, October 26th, 1922):

  "The British Labour Party is certainly not Socialist in the sense in which Socialism is understood upon the Continent."

nor, I would add, in the sense in which Socialism is understood anywhere else by Socialists.

Mr. Snowden went on to say, again quite correctly, that the Labour Party stands for "nothing more than the nationalisation of the land, mines, and essential public services. . . . The nationalisation of the essential public services referred to does not carry the Labour Party further than many Radicals, who would vigorously disclaim being Socialistic, are prepared to go.”

Mr. Snowden himself, in the House of Commons on 20th March, 1923, used the words, "The Labour Party does not believe in confiscation” (Labour Magazine, April, 1923, page 561).

Now the Capitalists do at present own the means of wealth production. The Labour Party is either going to let them keep their wealth or it is going to take it away from them. There is no third course. To talk of buying them out or giving them something of equal value is absurd. The power to exploit the worker is a monopoly power, and has no equivalent, and there is no accumulated wealth of more than insignificant proportion other than that in the hands of the capitalists themselves. True, it has been proposed to tax the capitalist out of existence, but even Mr. Snowden would hardly suggest that the capitalists will be spoofed into submitting quietly to confiscation provided the confiscation is called taxation.

Mr. J. H. Thomas, in his book "When Labour Rules,” promises that the Labour Party will give the workers  "a share in the management” of industry. With whom are they going to share it if not with the private owners? And why aren’t the workers to have the whole? Mr. Thomas’s answer is that (page 24) "Capital will be entitled to some return.” The rich will, however, suffer "a proper limitation of their unearned wealth” (page 24). What, may I ask, is, according to Labour Party standards, a proper limitation of unearned wealth?

And it is for this that Mr. Lansbury wants us to join the Labour Party. He says (Daily Herald, 31st March) .

   “ . . . the central authority . . .  is not only legislative, but also administrative, and will become more and more so as we nationalise land, mines, minerals, transport, education, and many another industry.”

If Lansbury does not want to see his efforts for unity wasted he had better join MacDonald, who is trying to arrange something of the kind with the Independent Liberals. MacDonald writes of the Independent Liberal M.P.s:—

    “The best of the sixty ought to come over and act with the Labour Party. They share our immediate views on such questions as nationalisation, the capital levy, foreign policy, and not those of their leaders . . .”—(“The Socialist Review,” April, 1923, page 148.)

Needless to say, the Liberals do not share our views, and since all our energies will be directed to the destruction of capitalism, whether in the form of nationalisation or otherwise, Mr. Lansbury will not, if we can prevent it, nationalise anything. We fight nationalisation for the same reason that the Central Union of Industrial, Commercial and Transport Workers in Social Democratic Czechoslovakia fight it. In the Press Service (No. 207) of the International Federation of Trade Unions it is reported that the above Union bitterly protested against the Nationalisation of Forests:—

   “This land reform and nationalisation of forests are in line with the political requirements of the Czech Bourgeois parties. . . . The Trade Unions cannot and will not leave anything undone to protect the workers on the forests and agricultural estates from economic and social pauperisation."

We recognise that this brings us into necessary conflict with the Labour Party, but the recognition is not, as Mr. Lansbury would imply, only one-sided. For Labour Party members to use their majorities on Borough Councils to exclude the Socialist Standard from the Public Libraries, is, although somewhat silly, a quite legitimate form of warfare; it cannot, however, be said to be exactly brotherly, can it, George? One of the Boroughs where this happens is red revolutionary Poplar, a place not unknown to Mr. Lansbury.

If the Labour Party were Socialist this anxiety on their part to prevent their members and others from reading the case for Socialism would be curious.

Mr. Lansbury says of us and of the Communists that we "advocate impossible propositions." It is interesting to have this candid acknowledgment from one Labour man that Socialism is an impossible proposition, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If the Labour Party can solve the problems which now face the working class by putting the brake on capitalist exploitation, and by making the Government and Municipal authorities the main and direct agents of that exploitation instead of leaving it to individual capitalists and private corporations, there is nothing more to say. If the Labour Party succeeds, then the advocates of Socialism are simply wasting their time. But if, in spite of all their patching and reforming, regulating and controlling, the contradictions of capitalism still produce their accustomed crop of class and international conflicts, and if, as I risk prophesying the Labour Party witch doctors fail to hypnotise the workers into contentment with their slavery, merely by labelling it differently, then recourse will still be had finally to the "impossible proposition" we advocate. We shall continue to advocate it because our knowledge and experience teach us that these problems cannot be solved inside capitalism. In the meantime I would only suggest that other supporters of the Labour Party might be as candid as Snowden and Lansbury and admit with G. D. H. Cole (“The World of Labour”) that:

   “It is at least time that all the forces of Labour in this country learnt to forsake the old superstition that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party. . . (page 207).

If they did this they would be honest, which is refreshing; they would be able to conduct their experiments free from the misrepresentation of enemies and the confusion of friends, and finally they would more easily appreciate our proposition—Socialism —when they had experienced the failure of their own.

Edgar Hardcastle

Obituaries: Rolfe Everson and Jack Temple (1968)

Obituaries from the May 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have recently received the sad news of the death of two old members of our companion parties abroad—Rolfe Everson of New Zealand and Jack Temple of Melbourne, Australia.

Both these comrades were tough, steadfast Socialists. Rolfe Everson, after a spell in the British Army in the First World War, escaped from eighteen months of unemployment only by taking a job shovelling coal on one of the hell-ships of the Twenties running to South America. Back on land, his activities during the General Strike brought victimisation down upon his head and he went to New Zealand, where he started something of a new life and raised a family.

Here he was impressed by the case for Socialism and threw himself into the struggle for a new society. For thirty years he was secretary of the Petone Branch of the SPNZ. He died on January 30 last and a hundred people—family, comrades, workmates—came to mourn him at his funeral.

Jack Temple was one of the pioneers of the Socialist Party of Australia. Like his comrade Bill Casey, Temple was a seaman and it was in the Seamen’s Union that these two found the support to form a Socialist group, towards the end of World War I. In those days, when most of the “radical” organisations were hailing the Russian Revolution as the dawn of Socialism, it took a lot of guts to expose, as Temple and Casey did, the fallacies of the “Communists” and others. These were not the only opponents; Temple lived through the days when, during a Waterside Workers' strike, the Labour-controlled police in Melbourne shot dead one of the strikers.

From the group gathered by Temple and Casey the SPA was formed in Melbourne. Temple, now ashore, worked tirelessly for the party—and often proved, on the many occasions when our opponents’ only argument was to knock a man off the platform, that he could take care of himself in the physical as well as the mental sense.

Jack Temple was married to Ollie Williams, who left the SLP to join the SPA. She also was an active party worker; one of her cartoons was published in the Socialist Standard. She died some years back but Jack’s interests in Socialism, after fifty years’ hard work, did not flag.

He died on January 19 last.

The Socialist movement cannot afford to lose men like Rolfe Everson and Jack Temple. All over the world, Socialists pay tribute to them for their courage and loyalty.

Is Democracy Worth While? (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is democracy desirable or not? This is a question that is being heatedly debated of late years, and many people are asking themselves the question very anxiously. Of those who put it some are filled with doubts, others are filled with apprehension. There are a number of people who fear that democracy has become a broken reed that will have to be thrown away, and this view is being strongly urged by some who feel that their economic interests are jeopardised by its continuance.

A good deal of the doubt about the value of democracy arises from a misunderstanding, a confusion as to what democracy really is, and the varying and contradictory definitions given by professional writers on the subject is one of the principal sources of this confusion. Some define democracy as a system of society, others as a form of government. Some define it as a method of procedure, others as an end in itself. There have been writers who have endowed it with mystic powers, giving the impression that if only we had real democracy our troubles will be over. Then there are the people who give a group character to democracy, and speak of bourgeois or proletarian democracy, as if there were different brands of this particular form. What these latter have done is borrowed phrases from Marx and Engels, and given them a quite unintended meaning.

Before there can be any reasonable discussion of the subject it is necessary to be clear about the meaning of the terms used. In the present instance the meaning can be got at by taking the generally recognised way of using the term “democracy," before professors and others commenced giving their exasperating definitions of it.

When the expression is applied to society those who use it frequently intend to signify the poorer section of the people as opposed to the aristocracy. When, however, the general statement is made that during the last century government became more democratic, the invariable meaning is that the governed had more say in the making of the laws by which they were governed. In other words, the basis of government was widened. The franchise was extended so that more and more of those who compose society took part in electing representatives to the places from which political power was exercised. To-day the capitalists rule by the consent of the majority of the people, though this is only so because the workers (who make up the majority) cannot conceive of an alternative social arrangement.

Behind all the confusion over the meaning of democracy there is one general idea, although it is often very little appreciated. When a club, a political party, or a society is spoken of as being democratically organised, the idea intended to be conveyed is that in all of them each member has an equal power in the control. The fact that sometimes this power is not sensibly exercised has led many to lay the blame on democracy instead of placing it where it really belongs. At bottom, then, democracy simply means majority rule—that the expressed wishes of the majority shall always prevail, but that also minorities will have freedom of expression, and will not be penalised for their views.

In order that the will of the majority may prevail certain conditions must exist which will make it possible to know at any time what views the majority really hold. For this purpose it is necessary that there should be (1) freedom of discussion and means existing for this purpose; (2). freedom and equality of voting; (3) freedom to select those who are to carry out the wishes of the majority, and (4) equality of electoral divisions or districts.

Immediately before the Great War these conditions obtained near enough in most of the advanced countries of the world. Since the War, on the pretext that democracy is a failure or obsolete, these conditions have been modified or nullified in certain European countries.

The first thing that strikes one, in relation to democracy, when taking a sweeping glance over past history, is that the question of the rule of the few or the rule of the many has been a burning one from very early days, and has been productive of considerable internal strife. The source of the strife has, however, been something of far greater importance that lay behind the question of ruling —the economic interests of classes.

The attitude of Socialists towards democracy is determined by the conditions that are bound up with Socialism.

Socialism is a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of production and distribution. It is a system in which the wealth produced, and the work of. producing it, will be spread, as far as required, equally over the whole of society. Each will contribute to society to the best of his ability, and each will receive from society the best that can reasonably be done towards fulfilling his needs. In order to carry on such a system democratic control is essential. Each member must understand the possibilities and limitations of society so that each can help in the orderly arrangement of affairs and also so that no one will make unreasonable demands upon society.

Consequently, Socialism needs democracy— the participation of all members of society in the control of social arrangements.

Society at present is based on the private ownership of the means of production, and all laws are made and administered with the object of keeping this system in force. Those who own the means of production, the capitalists, as a class, are directly interested in the continuance of the present system and, consequently, they and their supporters do what they can to prevent a change. The capitalists have no objection to democracy providing the votes leave them in their privileged position. The doubts about democracy have developed when and where the capitalists feared that their privileges might be questioned. Hence, as long as the workers voted for the masters or their henchmen, democracy was all right, but when the workers begin to show a disposition to vote for their own nominees then the question is raised by the capitalists as to whether the workers are intelligent enough to know whom and what to vote for.

The present system is defended and the laws are enforced by.the armed forces, which are set in motion in this country at the behest of the group which has behind it a, majority in Parliament. Before any social change can be brought about it is necessary to get control of political power, and this can be done by obtaining a majority of Socialists in Parliament—the centre of political power—supported by the votes of a class-conscious majority in the country. This is another important reason why Socialists are in favour of democracy.

Gilmac.

Marx’s Address for the International, 1864 (1937)

From the May 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reprint of a Famous Speech

(Concluded: first instalment published in April issue) 

We have dwelt so long upon these “facts so astonishing as to be almost incredible" because England heads the Europe of commerce and industry. It will be remembered that some months ago one of the refugee sons of Louis Phillippe publicly congratulated the English agricultural labourer on the superiority of his lot over that of his less florid comrade on the other side of the Channel. Indeed, with local colours changed, and on a scale somewhat contracted, the English facts reproduce themselves in all the industrious and progressive countries of the Continent. In all of them there has taken place since 1848 an unheard-of development of industry, and an undreamed-of expansion of imports and exports. In all of them “the augmentation of wealth and power entirely confined to classes of property" was truly “intoxicating." In all of them, as in England, a minority of the working classes got their real wages somewhat advanced; while in most cases the monetary rise of wages denoted no more real access of comforts than the inmate of the metropolitan poor-house or orphan asylum, for instance, was the least benefited by his first necessaries costing £9 15s. 8d. in 1861 against £7 7s. 4d. in 1852. Everywhere the great mass of the working classes were sinking down to lower depths, at the same rate at least that those above them were rising in the social scale. In all countries of Europe it has now become a truth demonstrable to every unprejudiced mind, and only denied by those whose interest it is to hedge other people in a fool’s paradise, that no improvement of machinery, no appliance of science to production, no contrivances of communication, no new colonies, no emigration, no opening of markets, no free trade, nor all these things put together, will do away with the miseries of the industrious masses; but, that on the present false base, every fresh development of the productive powers of labour must tend to deepen social contrasts and point social antagonisms. Death by starvation rose almost to the rank of an institution, during this intoxicating epoch of economical progress, in the metropolis of the British Empire. That epoch is marked in the annals of the world by the quickened return, the widening compass and the deadlier effects of the social pest called a commercial and industrial crisis.

After the failure of the revolutions of 1848, all party organisations and party journals of the working classes were, on the Continent, crushed by the iron hand of force, the most advanced sons of labour fled in despair to the Transatlantic republic, and the short-lived dreams of emancipation vanished before an epoch of industrial fever, moral marasmus, and political reaction. The defeat of the Continental working classes, partly owed to the diplomacy of the English Government, acting then as now in fraternal solidarity with the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, soon spread its contagious effects to this side of the Channel. While the rout of their Continental brethren unmanned the English working classes, and broke their faith in their own cause, it restored to the landlord and money lord their somewhat shaken confidence. They insolently withdrew concessions already advertised. The discoveries of new gold-lands led to an immense exodus, leaving an irreparable void in the ranks of the British proletariat. Others of its formerly active members were caught by the temporary bribe of greater work and wages, and turned into “political blacks." All the efforts made at keeping up, or remodelling, the Chartist Movement, failed signally, the Press organs of the working class died one by one of the apathy of the masses, and, in point of fact, never before seemed the English working class so thoroughly reconciled to a state of political nullity. If, then, there had been no solidarity of action between the British and the Continental working classes, there was, at all events, a solidarity of defeat.

And yet the period passed since the revolutions of 1848 has not been without its compensating features. We shall here only point to two great facts.

After a thirty years' struggle, fought with most admirable perseverance, the English working classes, improving a momentous split between the landlords and the money lords, succeeded in carrying the Ten-Hours Bill. The immense physical, moral and intellectual benefits hence accruing to the factory operatives, half-yearly chronicled in the reports of the inspectors of factories, are now acknowledged on all sides. Most of the Continental governments had to accept the English Factory Act in more or less modified forms, and the English Parliament itself is every year compelled to enlarge its sphere of action. But besides its practical import, there was something else to exalt the marvellous success of this working men’s measure. Through their most notorious organs of science, such as Doctor Ure, Professor Senior and other sages of that stamp, the middle class had predicted, and to their hearts' content proved, that any legal restriction of the hours of labour must sound the death knell of British industry, which, vampire-like, could but live by sucking blood, and children’s blood, too. In olden times, child murder was a mysterious rite of the religion of Moloch, but it was practised on some very solemn occasions only, once every year perhaps, and then Moloch had no exclusive bias for the children of the poor. This struggle about the legal restrictions of the hours of labour raged the more fiercely since, apart from frightened avarice, it told indeed upon the great contest between the blind rule of the supply and demand laws which form the political economy of the middle class, and social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy of the working class. Hence the Ten-Hour Bill was not only a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class.

But there was in store a still greater victory of the political economy of labour, over the political economy of property. We speak of the co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold “hands." The value of these great social experiments cannot be over-rated. By deeds, instead of argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands'; that to bear fruit, the means of labour need not be monopolised as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the labouring man himself; and that, like slave labour, like serf labour, hired labour is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labour plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart. In England, the seeds of the co-operative system were sown by Robert Owen; the working men's experiments, tried on the Continent, were, in fact, the practical upshot of the theories, not invented, but loudly proclaimed in 1848.

At the same time the experience of the period from 1848 to 1864 has proved beyond doubt that however excellent the principle, and however useful in practice, co-operative labour, if kept within the narrow circle of the casual efforts of private workmen, will never be able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to free the masses, nor even to perceptibly lighten the burden of their miseries. It is perhaps for this very reason that plausible noblemen, philanthropic middle class spouters and even keen political economists, have all at once turned nauseously complimentary to the very co-operative labour system they have vainly tried to nip in the bud by deriding it as the Utopia of the dreamer, or stigmatising it as the sacrilege of the Socialist. To save the industrious masses, co-operative labour ought to be developed to national dimensions, and, consequently, to be fostered by national means. Yet the lords of land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of the economical monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour.

Remember the sneer with which, last session, Lord Palmerston put down the advocates of the Irish Tenants’ Right Bill. The House of Commons, cried he, is a house of landed proprietors. To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes. They seem to have comprehended this, for in England, Germany, Italy and France there have taken place simultaneous revivals, and simultaneous efforts are being made at the political reorganisation of the working men’s party.

One element of success they possess—numbers: but numbers weigh only in the balance if united by combination and led by knowledge. Past experience has shown how disregard of that bond of brotherhood which ought to exist between the workmen of different countries, and incite them to stand firmly by each other in all their struggles for emancipation, will be chastised by the common discomfiture of their incoherent efforts. This thought prompted the working men of different countries assembled on September 28th, 1864, in public meeting at St. Martin's Hall, to found the International Association.'

Another conviction swayed that meeting.

If the emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfil that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people's blood and treasure? It was not the wisdom of the ruling classes, but the heroic resistance to their criminal folly by the working classes of England that saved the West of. Europe from plunging headlong into an infamous campaign for the perpetuation and propagation of slavery on the other side of the Atlantic. The shameless approval, mock sympathy, or idiotic indifference, with which the upper classes of Europe have witnessed the mountain fortress of the Caucasus falling prey to and heroic Poland being assassinated by Russia: the immense encroachments of that barbarous power, whose head is at St. Petersburg, and whose hands are in every Cabinet in Europe, have taught the working classes the duty to master themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the diplomatic acts of their respective governments; to counteract them, if necessary, by all means in their power; when unable to prevent, to combine in simultaneous denunciations, and to vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice, which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the rules paramount of the intercourse of nations.

The fight for such a foreign policy forms part of the general struggle for the emancipation of the working classes.

Proletarians of all countries, Unite!

Marx's Address for the International, 1864 (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reprint of a Famous Speech

(The following address was delivered by Marx on the occasion of the inauguration of the International Working Men’s Association, September 28th, 1864. Apart from its interest as an historical document, it contains many timely lessons for the workers in face of present problems.
   The reader will notice that the tone and phrasing of the Address are moderate and indefinite by comparison with others of Marx’s speeches and writings —the “Communist Manifesto,” for example. This was a restraint imposed on Marx, as he explained in a letter to Engels, by the character of the organisations in the International. They were composed of Trade Unionists and others who had only made the first approaches towards accepting internationalism and towards understanding Socialism. If, too, Marx was more optimistic about some developments of the period than they deserved the essentials of the speech have worn well. How well can be seen by comparing this speech with a typical product of the man Marx was criticising, Mr. W. E. Gladstone. Who cares now what Gladstone said in 1864? Marx, on the other hand, with his remarkable understanding of the slow but inescapable trend of events, becomes every year a more vital figure in the task of moulding the society of the future.
   Some of the points in the speech are dealt with elsewhere in this issue. EDITORIAL COMMITTEE.)

Fellow Working Men: It is a great fact that the misery of the working masses has not diminished from 1848 to 1864, and yet this period is unrivalled for the development of its industry and the growth of its commerce. In 1850 a moderate organ of the British middle-class, of more than average information, predicted that if the exports and imports of England were to rise 50 per cent., English pauperism would sink to zero. Alas! On April 7th, 1864, the Chancellor of the Exchequer delighted his Parliamentary audience by the statement that the total import and export trade of England had grown in 1863 “to £443,955,000, that astonishing sum about three times the trade of the comparatively recent epoch of 1843.” With all that he was eloquent upon "poverty.” "Think,” he exclaimed, “of those who are on the border of that region,” upon “wages —not increased”; upon “human life—in nine cases out of ten, but a struggle of existence.” He did not speak of the people of Ireland, gradually replaced by machinery in the North, and by sheep-walks in the South, though even the sheep in that unhappy country are decreasing, it is true, not at so rapid a rate as the men. He did not repeat what then had just been betrayed by the highest representative of the upper ten thousand in a sudden fit of terror. When the garotte panic had reached a certain height, the House of Lords caused an inquiry to be made into, and a report to be published upon, transportation and penal servitude. Out came the murder in the bulky Blue Book of 1863, and proved it was, by official facts and figures, that the worst of the convicted criminals, the penal serfs of England and Scotland, toiled much less and fared far better than the agricultural labourers of England and Scotland. But this was not all. When, consequent upon the Civil War in America, the operatives of Lancashire and Cheshire were thrown upon the streets, the same House of Lords sent to the manufacturing districts a physician commissioned to investigate into the smallest possible amount of carbon and nitrogen, to be administered in the cheapest and plainest form, which, on an average, might just suffice to avert “starvation diseases.” Dr. Smith, the medical deputy, ascertained that 28,000 grains of carbon and 1,330 grains of nitrogen were the weekly allowance that would keep an average adult just over the level of starvation diseases, and he found, furthermore, that quantity pretty nearly to agree with the scanty nourishment to which the pressure of extreme distress had actually reduced the cotton operatives. But now mark! The same learned doctor was later on again deputed by the medical officer of the Privy Council to inquire into the nourishment of the poorer labouring classes. The results of his researches are embodied in the “Sixth Report on Public Health,” published by order of Parliament in the course of the present year. What did the doctor discover? That the silk weavers, the needle women, the kid glovers, the stocking weavers, and so forth, received, on an average, not even the distressed pittance of the cotton operatives, not even the amount of carbon and nitrogen "just sufficient to avert starvation diseases.”

"Moreover” (we quote from the report), "as regards the examined families of the agricultural population, it appeared that more than a fifth were with less than the estimated sufficiency of carbonaceous food; that more than one-third were with less than the estimated sufficiency of nitrogenous food, and that in three counties (Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Somersetshire), insufficiency of nitrogenous food was the average diet.” “It must be remembered,” adds the official report, “that privation of food is very reluctantly borne, and that, as a rule, great poorness of diet will only come when other privations have preceded it. Even cleanliness will have been found costly or difficult, and if there still be self-respectful endeavours to maintain it, every such endeavour will represent additional pangs of hunger. These are painful reflections, especially when it is remembered that the poverty to which they advert is not the deserved poverty of idleness: in all cases it is the poverty of working populations. Indeed, the work which obtains the scanty pittance of food is, for the most part, excessively prolonged.” The report brings out the strange and rather unexpected fact, "That of the divisions of the United Kingdom," England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, “the agricultural population of England,” the richest division, “is considerably the worst fed,” but that even the agricultural labourers of Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Somersetshire fare better than great numbers of skilled indoor operatives of the East of London.

Such are the official statements published by order of Parliament in 1864, during the millennium of free trade, at a time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House of Commons that

"the average condition of the British labourer has improved in a degree we know to be extraordinary and unexampled in the history of any country or any age.”

Upon these official congratulations jars the dry remark of the official Public Health Report: —

"The public health of a country means the health of its masses, and the masses will scarcely be healthy unless, to their very base, they are at least moderately prosperous.” 

Dazzled by the “Progress of the Nation,” statistics dancing before his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstasy: —

“From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by six per cent.; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861 it has increased from the basis taken in 1853 20 per cent.: the fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible.”

“This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power,” adds Mr. Gladstone, “ is entirely confined to classes of property.”

If you want to know under what conditions of broken health, tainted morals, and mental ruin, that “intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power entirely confined to classes of property ” was, and is being produced by the classes of labour, look to the picture hung up in the last “Public Health Report” of the workshops of tailors, printers and dressmakers. Compare the “Report of the Children’s Employment Commission” of 1863 where, it is stated, for instance, that: —

"The potters as a class, both men and women, represent a much degenerated population, both physically and mentally,” 

that the unhealthy child “is an unhealthy parent in his turn,” that a progressive deterioration of the race must go on and that "the degenerescence of the population would be even greater were it not for the constant recruiting from the adjacent country, and the intermarriages with more healthy races.” Glance at M. Tremenheere’s Blue Book on the "Grievances complained of by the Journeymen Bakers.” And who has not shuddered at the paradoxical statement made by the inspectors of factories, and illustrated by the. Registrar-General, that the Lancashire operatives, while put upon the distress pittance of food, were actually improving in health, because of their temporary exclusion by the cotton famine from the cotton factory, and that the mortality of the children was decreasing, because their mothers were now at last allowed to give them instead of Godfrey’s cordial their own breasts.

Again reverse the medal. The Income and Property Tax Returns, laid before the House of Commons on July 20th, 1864, teach us that the persons with yearly incomes valued by the tax gatherer at £50,000 and upwards, had, from April 5th, 1862, to April 5th, 1863, been joined by a dozen and one, their number having increased in that single year from 67 to 80. The same returns disclose the fact that about 3,000 persons divide amongst themselves a yearly income of about £25,000,000 sterling, rather more than the total revenue doled out annually to the whole mass of the agricultural labourers of England and Wales. Open the Census of 1861, and you will find that the number of the male landed proprietors of England and Wales had decreased from 16,934 in 1851 to 15,066 in 1861, so that the concentration of land had grown in ten years 11 per cent. If the concentration of the soil of the country in a few hands proceeds at the same rate the land question will become singularly simplified, as it had become in the Roman Empire, when Nero grinned at the discovery that half the province of Africa was owned by six gentlemen.

(to be concluded).

Unemployment (1984)

Book Review from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unemployment by Kevin Hawkins (Penguin. 1984)

It may be one of life's sick jokes to explain to the unemployed why unemployment exists; and to show how one form of poverty can more effectively be replaced by another. Hawkins begins his work by dismissing some of the myths as to why there is unemployment. It does not occur as a result of "the provision of generous welfare payments nor any other such diversionary nonsense" (p. 5). He points out that labour shortages can exist alongside unemployment. This is not because generous welfare payments make the unemployed too clumsy but often because there is a mismatch between the skills of the unemployed and the requirements of labour. Similarly. the existence of "scroungers" does not explain current high levels of unemployment. This myth can be exploded by examination of the levels of benefit which are supposedly being "scrounged”. Between 1971 and 1980, levels of unemployment benefit "fell from 70 per cent to 46 per cent . . .  of average earnings" (p. 26). Without earnings related supplement the figure dropped from 45 per cent to 33 per cent of average earnings.

Hawkins, as Director of the West Midlands CBI, views the problem of unemployment from the standpoint of the industrialist. He talks of the necessary "professional approach to the use of resources, especially manpower" (p. 78) that has arisen out of the current recession. Manpower is simply a resource that must be manipulated for the prime good of a social ethos whose only consideration is profit and “efficiency".

Hawkins accepts unemployment as a prominent feature of British society for the rest of the decade. This may seem to offer little comfort to the long-term unemployed but he does suggest some measures which he believes will alleviate the problem. He claims that his strategy to reduce unemployment is based on principles that are “humanitarian, economic and political in character" (p. 107), yet the humanitarian approach takes a nose dive two pages later when we are told that the rationale must be assessed “not by their effect on the unemployment figures but by the contribution they make towards improving the supply-side performance of the economy” (p. 109).

Hawkins' plan for the future lies in reducing business costs not generated by market forces, and by these he means taxes on employment. He argues that government must stimulate employment in roads and railways and that it should cease subsidising specific firms and increase the supply of highly-skilled manpower. His big plan for the future is to reduce the costs of labour — the main ingredient in this economic soup. He argues that wage costs must be adjusted to the current level, a sufficiently vague phrase which he explains “in more common language, until workers ‘price themselves back into jobs'” (p. 115). This is the old old story of when in doubt blame the workers. We are expected to accept the old adage of what is good for industry is good for the people.

Hawkins calls for an immediate wage freeze that will shock workers into a new sense of realism and keep them in their place. His alternative strategy is to further weaken the power of the unions, presumably to enable industry to dictate all conditions of service and levels of pay. He also advocates the subsidising of employment by central government and applauds the Community Programme Scheme. It is interesting to note the extent to which the humanitarian approach has given way to economic and political considerations when he says:

It has also been argued that the financial incentive to apply for a CPS place is inadequate insofar as the average wage of £60 a week on the scheme is less than the benefit income which a married man with several children can draw. Rather than increase the average wage to take it above the benefit ceiling, thereby increasing the gross cost of the scheme, the remedy may well be to expand the number of places available at the current wage and simultaneously reduce the benefit income. (P 124)

This is allied to such schemes as job-sharing in which the wage is split between two persons, supposedly to ensure a statistical reduction in unemployment but more realistically a statistical increase in poverty. To ensure that even this does not burden the employer by increased paperwork it is suggested that a grant be made available to implement the scheme. Hawkins recognises that his policies may well increase inequalities and social division but “no apology is made on this account", for he has already explained that he is concerned with “the importance of wealth-creation, as distinct from wealth-distribution” (p. 132). In this the book reads like some latter-day Capitalist Manifesto. The working class are punished for the inefficiencies of capitalism and its inability to satisfy the needs of society's members. To cling in desperation to such a system seems absurd. To justify that system by a more systematic exploitation of the working class is contemptible.

Philip Bentley

Municipal Elections. (1906)

From the October 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Struggle for Political Supremacy

The tremendous efforts made by the ruling class to retain control of the political machinery when seeking the suffrages supremacy of the workers in National and Local elections, is a most significant, though generally uurecognised fact; and the millions which are spent in parliamentary, and the thousands in municipal, contests should show to the thinking man or woman the immense importance the ruling class attach to this matter. An explanation is thus demanded from those who claim to represent the interests of the class that is ruled — the working class— as to why they also are in the political field and are fighting for the control of this machinery.

Let us at once point out that the term “Political Machinery” means all those methods and arrangements which the dominant class have found it necessary to collectively control in extending and maintaining their domination over the rest of Society. The National or Parliamentary section is. of course, the most important, although, due to geographic and social divisions, local and organic subdivisions of this machinery are formed and perpetuated in the shape of County, Borough, Town, and Parish Councils, Boards of Guardians, Asylum and Education Boards. It must, however, be noted that these are after all only subdivisions, and as such are ultimately under the control and domination of Parliament. This limitation of the powers of municipal bodies needs to be clearly understood by the working class, particularly as the various so-called “reform” and “labour” parties are either ignorant of, or else deliberately conceal the fact at election times, promising all sorts of measures quite without the power of a local body while the present system lasts.

The Necessity for Class Organisation

What must be clearly recognised by the workers is that to-day they are in the position class of articles of merchandise; they are quite cut off from any access to the means of living and wealth production (Land, Machinery, Mills, Railways, etc.) except by selling themselves for such price (termed wages) as they can get upon the Labour Market. All the means of living, and the wealth therewith produced, are owned by another section in Society (the capitalist class) who perform no useful function therein, but live in idleness and luxury upon the wealth they appropriate from the workers. Wealth in all societies being the matter of the globe converted to the use of mankind by human energy, it necessarily follows that if any able-bodied individuals are living in Society without doing useful work they do so by the robbery (direct or indirect, it matters little which) of the useful workers. Between the robber and robbed there is thus a direct and complete opposition of interests.

The capitalist class, however, are able to safeguard and preserve their position only by virtue of their control of the political machinery. They thus make and administer the laws, direct the police and judicial officers, and, above all, maintain the trained armed fighting forces in the country to keep the workers under control and to guard the capitalists' property. In other words the capitalist class know, or are conscious of, their position and interests, while the workers in the main are far from having clearly grasped the situation as it affects them. The first thing requisite on the workers’ behalf is a clear recognition of the deep gulf existing between the robbed working class and the robber capitalist class, and following thereupon the application of that fact to their action in the political field by taking up a position of uncompromising hostility to all supporters of capitalism in any shape or form.

Before the workers can better their position to any material extent, they must wrest the political machinery from the hands of the capitalist class. They should, therefore, ignore the shouting of "Progressive” and "Moderate" factious, admittedly capitalist as they are, as well as the so-called “Labour” or “Socialist” candidates who urge the saving of the rates, and who advocate the municipalization of the trams, gas, etc. for the purpose of providing safe investments for small middle-class capitals, to make sinecures for their friends and relatives, and to use the profit for reducing rates, all of which depend upon the continued exploitation of the workers.

The task of clearing the confusion created by these bogus “labour” parties is truly Herculean, and, were it not that the wage-slaves, municipal and other, are being forced to recognise that in municipal trading they only meet their old enemy capitalist exploitation in a new guise, the task would be well nigh hopeless. But the class antagonism cannot longer he masked. Whether engaged in sweeping the roads or running the trains, whether delivering letters or making army clothing, the fact is being brought home to the workers that to-day municipalization or nationalization is not Socialism, but that on the contrary the workers have to reckon with their must powerful enemy, to wit the capitalist class united in municipal and national government against any of the workers' demands.

The articles which have recently appeared in the columns of that Liberal advocate of municipal trading, the Daily Chronicle, on the strike of the Halifax municipal tramway employees are significant of much. They speak of the coming ‘"Labour Danger" in municipal exploitation, and evidence the determination of the ruling class that the workers shall not be any the less exploited because they happen to be employed by the municipality.

The Advantages of Municipalism Examined.

Upon closer inspection the boasted advantages of municipal or national employment are seen to dwindle: a "paper” ten hours day is in one instance found to cover sixteen hours in reality, and a few pence increase in wages is found to be really a reduction with the greater intensity of work involved. Neither does any greater security of employment exist, as the numerous "odd men" of the municipal services and the recent wholesale discharges from government works, eloquently testify, whilst sweating in government departments is a regularly recurring scandal.

  

The statement that municipalization and nationalization are object lessons in Socialism, is, then, an absurdity, whilst the assertion that they lead up to complete organisation of production is hardly more true of the municipal service than it is of the huge company or trust, since the officials are similar and the methods of exploitation the same. Indeed, the fact that tramway, lighting, and other services of the municipality cannot overstep the local boundaries. is evidence that, upon those fields at any rate, a huge company or trust would in reality present a greater economic advance by embracing larger areas. Moreover, the workers will have to fight as hard to gain control of municipal or national industries, as they will to gain control of the trusts.

We, however, no more wish to hinder the advance of municipal or national undertakings than to arrest the growth of the trust or combine: but to have them bailed as instalments of Socialism is utterly misleading when they are, in reality, only more efficient means of exploiting the working class for the benefit of property owners.

Let those who regard such things as Socialism ponder the meaning of the use of nationalization by Napoleon, by Bismarck. and even by the Tsar of all the Russia, for the purposes of the ruling class. In truth, it is to be feared that just as a splendid weapon may be powerful for good in just hands but quite as powerful for harm when in the hands of an unscrupulous enemy, so national or municipal industry, however powerful an agent for good when controlled by the workers, may nevertheless be an instrument of fearful economic tyranny when used by the capitalist class for its own ends

The Bogey of the Rates

The present municipalization  movement, however, appears to regard the condition of the workers as quite a minor consideration. Its great concern is, in fact, to save the rates. But where the shoe really, pinches may have been learnt during the past year from the great outcry raised by London property owners and their agents over the rising rates, which, they averred, caused residents and manufacturers to migrate to the outlying to the outlying districts. Their cry was that the high rates depreciated the value of their property. In several districts, as has already been pointed out in the Socialist Standard, there has been decrease in rents owing to the diminished demand for accommodation following on high rates. Obviously, also, anything which increases the advantages of any district or town, increases the competition for house room in the favoured district and forces up the rents.

If through the profits on municipal capitalism rates were abolished anywhere, neither the lodgers nor the tenant ratepayers would in the long run be one penny the better off, for the landlords would, through the increased number of people attracted by the absence of rates, be enabled to raise the rent until it absorbed the whole of what was formerly paid as rates. Indeed, in all probability the landlords would increase the rent immediately by the amount of rates saved, Judge, then, in whose interests the rate-saving munipalizers are working.

Even the Fabian Society realise the futility of grants in aid of rates, although, as might be expected of that middle-class body. their acts belie them. In Fabian Tract No. 107 they say: “You cannot relieve the ratepayer by reducing, or even abolishing, his rates, since freeing a house of rates simply raises the rent. In fact, the ratepayer is only a foolish catspaw for the landlord. At Tonbridge, Bedford, and certain other places, pious founders have endowed the schools so splendidly that education is nobly cheap there. But rents are equivalently high; so that the landlords reap the whole pecuniary value of the endowment. . . . Suppose a misguided billionaire were to take on himself the cost of paving and lighting some London parish, and set on foot a free supply of bread and milk! All that would happen would be that the competition for houses and shops in that parish would rage until it had brought rents up to a point at which there would be no advantage in living in it more than in any other parish. Even parks and open spaces raise rents in London, though, strange to say, London statues do not diminish them.”

The Only Way For The Workers,

Clearly, then, to save the rates is not to benefit the working class, nor is the matter mended if tram fares are reduced and municipal services made cheaper, for a precisely similar thing occurs. An improvement in means of transit, or a reduction of fares, immediately causes a proportionate rise in rents in the districts favoured, as numerous instances have shown during the past few years.

The workers, therefore, must beware of those who would lure them from the path of emancipation with the red herring of municipalization.

Neither municipal nor State capitalism can ease the worker of his oppressive burden. To improve his lot he must organise with his fellows for the control of industry whether municipal or national, whether under company or trust. And the workers cannot gain control of industry unless they first wrest political power from the hands of the master class in national as well as in local government.

But these facts also explain the extensive and untiring efforts of the capitalist class to retain control of the political machinery, often, it is true, masquerading in local elections as "Independent” or "Non-political” candidates: as though candidates for political power could be non-political! The capitalist class are untiring in their efforts to retain supreme political power, because their continued existence absolutely depends upon their control of that power.

The candidates of the S.P.G.B., therefore, whilst quite prepared to use the local powers for such small temporary benefits as may be forced from the capitalists' hands for the workers in those districts, nevertheless do not seek suffrages for this, which can only be a secondary business of the political party of the workers. The fact, pointed out above, must be strongly reiterated, that the powers of the local bodies are strictly limited and are controlled by the Government.

The Limitations of Local Authorities

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters into municipal contests as a step in the work of capturing the whole political machinery. Fully realising, and pointing out to the workers, the strict limitations of the power of local bodies, making no promises that are beyond our power to fulfil, we ask the members of our class, when (but not before) they have studied these facts and realised their correctness, to cast their votes for the candidates of the S.P.G.B. who alone stand on the above basis/

In those districts, however, where there are no S.P.G.B. candidates in the field, the workers are asked to abstain from voting altogether, since any votes cast under such circumstances can only assist the enemies of the working class.

Costa Proletaria (1987)

From the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following the annual fortnight’s parole I, like thousands of other workers, am now once again chained in the bondage of wage slavery. During the long winter months we eagerly looked forward to the forthcoming sun, sea, sand and sangria experience. This was fuelled, as it is every year, by a television advertising blitz that began on Christmas Day immediately following the Queen talking about her unemployed family and the difficulties of managing on the pension and two thousand million quid.

Swayed by the alluring images of sun-soaked beaches, swimsuit clad models sipping bacardi, and the prospect of another year ahead full of the same old problems, we rushed off to the travel agent. We staggered back with all the brochures. Capitalism isn't so bad you know, especially if you can afford two weeks away from it all. The trouble is that all the problems and frustrations that we want to leave behind will still be here when we get back.

Come the big day and at the airport we discover why Package Holidays are so called. Hundreds of other packages are all waiting to depart too. Why do the companies selling holidays studiously avoid showing how crowded a beach or a hotel can get when everyone seems to be going to the same place at the same time?

Having been processed through the airport and fed plastic food, eaten with plastic cutlery, on the plane we finally arrive. When R. L. Stevenson wrote that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive, he had obviously never been on a jam-packed Boeing 737.

As we transfer to our hotel (30 minutes by coach the brochure said but only possible in this time because of Spanish driving) how many of us give a thought to the many Ronan Points along the way which house Spanish workers? Does it occur to us that they suffer under capitalism too?

The entertainment opportunities afforded in the sunshine are myriad. Providing you can afford them. Spain may have a "socialist" government but try getting a drink from a bar without engaging in an exchange transaction and see how quickly the municipal police arrive.

What with crowded beaches, crowded bars, fighting for a table every time we take our buffet type meals, it's almost a pleasure to be able to rest in the airport for 11 hours because the aircraft taking us home has broken down through overwork.

And when we finally arrive home. 18 hours later than planned, to find a welcoming pile of bills on the door mat, we sit down, have a cup of tea and prepare to sell our labour power for the next 50 weeks to pay for our next holiday.

Dave Coggan

The Unknown Question (1958)

Film Review from the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently many film critics and many picturegoers have clapped their hands at the end of films that deal with war; the war with all the dead and wounded, the war with all the bullets and shells. Somewhere in these films we find the hero mumbles something that clearly shows how “confused” or “unnecessary'’ wars really are. “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “Paths of Glory,” and “The Young Lions” are a few examples. “The Unknown Soldier” (shown at the Academy) has more bullets fired, and more blood spilled than any of them. It also provides a record of war that is seemingly harsh but really quite accurate in its two-hour-plus description of the Finnish army's advance and subsequent retreat in Russia during 1941.

The director, Edvin Laine, employed a largely unprofessional cast in the making of this first war film from Finland. There are no real heroes, certainly not in the Hollywood U.S. Marine tradition, for it is obvious from just ten minutes of this film that however unflinching heroes may be they rarely live to see the medals handed out.

A handful of agricultural workers forming a National Service machine gun detachment are the centre of the film’s interest. They are shown from their first time in uniform as awkward recruits, to their final savage battles in retreat from the overwhelming Russian army.

Presenting a faithful picture of war it does not employ any of the patriotic devices usual to most war films. Most noticeable is the absence of the enemy—the Russians. They are seen here and there marching or advancing as a body, but never are they identified as the aggressors by means of propagandist tricks showing the enemy as the rapers, monsters, and barbarians which is also common to war films. A typical example of the portrayal of the Russians is a marching column in the snow, vague figures in heavy uniforms. Two Finns sit behind a machine gun ready to fire upon the unsuspecting soldiers; one speaks, “If that bastard has a maker, start forgiving his sins now, and quickly!" This sums up the attitude of the film to the enemy.

Finns are not shown as brave and relentless fighters, everyone of them living proof of the term “plucky little Finland.” Many of them are shown as fools and cowards, two of them are shot for indiscipline.

A bitter humour pervades the film. As the detachment force their way into Karelia then suffer severe losses during the retreat the soldiers become unmoved by violent death; it has no real significance..

In a review in the Observer (Sunday, June 13) C. A. Lejeune says: “‘The Unknown Soldier’ is a rough work with certain qualities of greatness, but to watch it is a great ordeal.”

No punches are pulled, and scenes are brutal and horrifying in an arms-and-legs-all-over-the-screen fashion.

The final conclusion is that all the killing, all the dying, all the shooting and all the fear has been something of a waste of time. Forlorn and pathetic the soldiers stand in the trees of a vast forest, last shots have been fired, the sun shines through the tree tops. Voices swell in a last triumphant anthem and everybody is glad because of peace. Peace that is silence and the sun shining—the only trite device used by the director.

“The Unknown Soldier” is a war film that shows men, who have worked all of their lives, suddenly fighting. They fight because they have to. But no reason is given for war, nobody knows why, because if they did they would not be fighting.

“For religion and home" the soldiers cry together, a scared group of men who yell because it gives them courage. They fight so they can go home to their families and work hard and forget about it. The violence and fear are to be forgotten, put aside, just as any attempt to think why the soldiers fought was to be put aside. They would have no other choice but to go home and work after the war, but they would not think of that either.

Robert Jarvis.

Labour Governments and armaments (1965)

From the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party has always prided itself on being different from the Liberals and Tories it its attitude to armaments and war. It charged the Liberals with having been responsible for the First World War and has often called the Tory leaders war makers. It declared its trust in the League of Nations and later in United Nations as means of preventing war, and condemned the Tories in particular for lack of enthusiasm in supporting the League and UNO. It was always to the fore in declaring its belief in disarmament and in securing peace among the nations through peaceful discussion to settle disputes. It attracted and tolerated a fringe of self-styled pacifists. In its early days it gave a certain amount of lip service to ideas of international working class action to prevent war. One of its best known leaders, Keir Hardie, writing in 1907, claimed for the Labour Party and the parties in other countries with which it was associated that the evil of war was already on the way to being eradicated.

   "Whatever differences there may be in the International Socialist Movement concerning the tactics to be pursued in achieving Socialism, there is perfect agreement on two leading points of principle: hostility to militarism in all its forms and to war as a method of settling disputes between nations is the first. In countries where the Socialist parties are a real influence in the councils of the nation, the war spirit is suffering appreciable eclipse. It would, for instance, be a difficult task, and one yearly becoming more so, for the rulers of say France and Germany, to again embroil these two nations with each other. Probably the first effective service to which the growing forces of International Socialism will be put will be to make war upon war. The Holy Alliance which Socialism is achieving is not that of crowned heads but of homy hands and therein lies the only real hope there is of peace on earth. The other point of agreement concerns the essential principle of Socialism" (From Serfdom to Socialism).

These were the beliefs and hopes of Keir Hardie at that time: and all of them were wrong, as events were soon to prove. When the war came in 1914 the French and German governments had no difficulty at all in rallying the majority of the workers for war, including the majority of members and supporters of the parties Keir Hardie was writing about. They —and this included Keir Hardie—let themselves be tricked by the plea that in each country “National interests" were at stake and that these involved the working class.

The collapse of the International was represented as a failure of the Socialist movement to stand the test, a charge which was examined and shown to be false in lengthy article in the Socialist Standard fifty years ago. in the issue of March 1915. It was the collapse not of parties grounded in Socialist principles but of parties which, in the pursuit of mass membership, had turned aside from the hard task of spreading an understanding of the problem of replacing capitalism by Socialism, to follow the seemingly easy and fruitful road of chasing reforms of capitalism. They were parties aiming merely to take on the administration of capitalism and to show that they could do it as well as their Liberal and Tory rivals.

But the belief still persists among millions of Labour Party supporters that their party can indeed run affairs differently and in particular that they can bring a new attitude towards the avoidance of war. Yet all the evidence of the past Labour governments shows this to be a vain hope.

The Labour Party supported the war in 1914 and joined the coalition government to fight the war. In 1924, in office as a minority Labour government dependent on Liberal votes, they were responsible for expanding the navy and air force though claiming that by concentrating on more deadly but cheaper weapons they were able to cut the overall cost. And at the Labour Party Conference a year later (1925) the Executive was able to defeat a motion to support disarmament with the plea that “they could not afford to ignore the question of defence.” Ironically the “enemy" the delegates were asked to fear was not on this occasion Germany, but France.

The Labour Government had, to quote the words of one of their leaders Mr. J. H. Thomas, taken on the job of governing "while accepting the present order of society.” They were administrating capitalism, and armaments and war are an inescapable responsibility of those who do so. They carried on in the same way in the second Labour Government 1929-1931.

After the second World War, when again they were part of the National Government, they had six years of rule, this time with a large majority but again without any mandate for Socialism. Before they left office if had fallen to them to be involved in the Korean War and to initiate the great rearmament which sent expenditure up from £777 million in 1950-1 to £1,110 million in 1951-2. They were responsible for the development of nuclear weapons. In office again since last October they have made a special feature of their aim to reduce armaments but, according to forecasts of the forthcoming budget (Sunday Times 8.1.65.) the expenditure in the coming year is likely to reach the record figure of over £2,000 million.

The Labour government have already found themselves committed to sending troops to Malaysia, with the Navy Minister, Mr. Christopher Mayhew, voicing the possibility of sending additional forces to strengthen the 50,000 men and 70 warships already there. They may before long be involved in Vietnam.

Is it that they want war? Of course not, any more than Keir Hardie did in 1907. But they are pursuing a course which is equally fatal. Capitalism is a jungle of warring capitalist states—on both sides of the Iron Curtain- and in this jungle all governments live by the same rule of force in the pursuit of markets, raw materials etc. The only way out—half glimpsed by Keir Hardie—lies in united working class action to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism, not in alliance with the governments of the separate countries but against all of them. Far from endorsing the Socialist view on this, the Labour Government, like its predecessors, accepts the function of representing British capitalism against the rival capitalist groups.

The Government, and its supporters, devote their efforts to the task of gaining markets for British exports. As a first step towards understanding something about the nature of the capitalism they disown with words but support with deeds, they might ponder a wartime declaration of the late Sir Stafford Cripps, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the earlier Labour government:

  If after the coming of peace, we were to start once again the vicious circle of international trade competition we should be lost, and in a few years would be confronting another war.

Edgar Hardcastle

Know your place (1984)

From the January 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

    "I can't cope with it. Sometimes I have to go hungry in order to feed the child. For two or three days at a time, I go without food. I just drink a cup of tea” (a single parent, Breadline Britain. LWT, 1983).   

  "Roland Waller (Tiny) Chairman and Managing Director of Lonrho, according to the company's latest set of accounts, picked up £266,034 in salary (1982). plus £3,990,513 in dividends. His income of £4,250,000 is the equivalent of £82,000 per week" (Labour Research, 1983).

What is wealth? It is the result of human effort being applied to the material environment. In order for human society to continue it needs to produce wealth. As our technology to operate on the environment has been changed in character, so the system of social relations in which we combine to produce wealth has changed. Very early forms of human beings arranged their production and distribution of wealth on a communistic basis. They suffered under no governments. They had no notion of individual property by which one person could exclude others from access to the wealth which many of them had taken part in helping to produce.

When, for reasons of scarcity of raw materials, competition between communities arose, the phenomenon of property took root. Since the emergence of property society the ways in which we have related to each other in the process of producing wealth have been changing. One epoch in human history was characterised by most of the wealth producers being physically owned and possessed by the ruling class. These were the ancient slave societies: what the doublespeak history books describe as the “ancient democracies of Greece and Rome".

Another era in our history worked on the basis of a pyramidal hierarchy with the monarch at the pinnacle and beneath him aristocrats, knights, serfs and peasants. The modern set of social relationships in which we work to produce wealth are those of the profit system — capitalism. We have reached a stage where we have developed a very efficient means of producing and distributing wealth, but the system (the set of social relations) that we use to produce and distribute wealth is one which conflicts with the needs of the majority of people. Today the factories, farms, offices, transport and communications networks are owned by a small minority of people and state bureaucracies. In return for wages and salaries the majority work for the minority. Each worker is paid less than the value of what he or she produces and the capital-owning minority live off the surplus value thus donated by the workers.

So the rich get increasingly rich by not working, while the workers remain in a constant state of poverty as wages and salaries are used up before the end of each week or month. Production in this system is aimed at the goal of profit. From the point of view of the capitalist there is no reason to allow commodities to be produced if there is no prospect of being able to sell them for a profit. This explains why millions of human beings die each year from starvation although society has the capacity to produce more than enough for everyone.

The nineteenth century social investigators Booth and Rowntree exposed and commented on the wretched poverty of Victorian society. Many subsequent improvements in society were, and still are, measured against this sort of backdrop. But the argument that “at least we are better off than we used to be" is not very helpful. You could say that compared with the workers of a century ago. the workers of today are not poor. But poverty is not measured by reference to the past. It needs to be measured by reference to the present. Bearing in mind the sort of prosperity that most people could enjoy today because of what we could produce, the majority are poor. There are, of course, degrees of poverty ranging from the millions who are destitute and starving to the millions who exhaust themselves each week in order to varnish the mediocrity of their lives with artificial fun.

Since the implementation of Beveridge's plan for social security by the Attlee government of 1945-50 some people have opposed the urgent need for socialism — that is classless society — on the grounds that you could, after all, make capitalism run well for the working class. Because capitalism works on the principle of continuous impoverishment of the working class it can never work in our interest, any more than a prison can be designed to work in the interest of the prisoners. The welfare state provides a careful system of indoctrination to produce literate, numerate. punctual, obedient and docile wage- slaves: state education; and a cheap medical service to keep workers just healthy enough. In a House of Commons debate on the Beveridge Report. Quintin Hogg MP (now Lord Hailsham) remarked that.

Some of my honorable Friends seem to overlook one or two ultimate facts about social reform. The first is that if you do not give the people social reform they arc going to give you social revolution . . .

(Parliamentary Debates. 17 February. 1943, Col. 1818)

In fact, Beveridge himself saw his plan as a means of making the existing social services “more economical". He observed that.

It is to the interest of employers as such that the employees should have security, should be properly maintained during the inevitable intervals of unemployment or of sickness, should have the content which helps to make them efficient producers.

(Beveridge Report. Social Insurance and Allied Services, p. 109)

In the same vein Samuel Courtauld, millionaire chairman of the great rayon company. said that he was.

   . . . strongly in favour of the principles and almost all of the proposals of the Beveridge Report . . .  I have not the faintest doubt that if we can survive the first severe business contraction which arises after the war, social security of this nature will be about the most profitable long-term investment the country could make. It will not undermine the morale of the nation’s workers: it will ultimately lead to higher efficiency among them and a lowering of production costs.

(Manchester Guardian, 19 February 1943).

The relative poverty of the majority is endemic to capitalism. The majority under this system will have to live second-rate lives. And being in this condition of poverty cannot be easily escaped from. Generally, you do not get rich by working hard. You just get tired.

Poverty is a social problem today not because there are insufficient resources. We can project laboratories into space. We can construct thriving cities where once there was desert. The current state of agricultural and industrial technique enable us to adequately feed and clothe all of the world’s 4.2 billion inhabitants. The political parties which stand to operate this present social system do not have a solution to the problem of poverty. According to the “virtuous" Victorian values advocated by vocal members of the Conservative Party it is individual frailty or idleness which is the cause of poverty although not perhaps in the case of the House of Lords and the top exclusive gentlemen's clubs.

Throughout its history, including prior to the seven occasions when it has formed the government, the Labour Party has made promises about reducing poverty. Perhaps more so than the other parties, it is seen as the party to do away with poverty. But because it has only ever stood to run capitalism the Labour Party has always, as a government, acted against the interest of the working class. During their last period of office, according to the Department of Health and Social Security, the number of poor families increased by 37 per cent between 1974 and 1977. Over the same period the number of individuals living in poverty increased by 43 per cent. The social service cuts introduced by the last Labour government meant the loss of 25,000 hospital beds. In its first two years, the share of the nation's wealth held by the top five per cent of people increased from 43.1 per cent to 46.2 per cent, while that of the bottom 50 per cent of the population fell from 7.1 per cent to 5.6 per cent.

Although the SDP/Liberal policy is difficult to discover, it appears that the Alliance is moderately in favour of moderately reducing poverty to an acceptable level. Before it eliminates poverty from society, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) seeks to sack Thatcher, reform the Labour Party and create more jobs. As jobs, or employment, or exploitation, were the cause of poverty in the first place, voting Labour to abolish poverty is about as logical as jumping into the bath in order to get dry.

The only solution to poverty is for the majority of people to act democratically and to put the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth into the hands of the whole community. With production carried out on the basis of "from each according to ability, to each according to need” there will be no poverty, just one prosperous world community. There will be no antagonism of economic interest between those who produce but do not possess and those who possess but do not produce. With one worldwide community democratically using the earth's resources to provide for our needs, we will finally have stepped from the contradictions of property society. The most painful and stark contradiction we suffer now is that the profit system itself has created a single, world-integrated society of production. Labour and resources come together from all over the planet to constitute many goods. Commerce has accelerated the development of highly efficient communications networks (including telephones, television communication, computer link-ups and holographs) and transport systems. But standing in the way, preventing this technology from being used to satisfy our needs, is the tyrannous idea that we need to have a social system with property owners, money, profits, wages, policemen, prisons, passports and nations. In his essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism, Oscar Wilde observed:

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor.

Gary Jay