A Push For Socialism (1929)

From the June 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

A friend has written asking our advice as to what he and his friends are to do on May 30th. Are they to vote for the “do-nothing Labour Party,” or to write the word “Socialism” across their ticket once more. Our friend confesses himself tired of waiting for the Socialist Party to put up candidates, and expresses his wonder that the teachings of Karl Marx and Engels are not more stimulating on such occasions. It is unfortunate, but this issue was not published in time to help our friend to make up his mind, but if he is a regular reader of our paper, he will have perused our April number, where this point was purposely dealt with in ample time for the General Election. It may comfort our friend to know that we are more tired than he, awaiting the opportunity to vote for the first Socialist candidate. That opportunity would have occurred last week but for one thing: the workers were not ready. We had the candidate and the constituency. All we wanted was the deposit money. The Representation of the People Act provides that a candidate must deposit the sum of £150 on nomination, and be prepared to forfeit that sum if he fails to poll an eighth of the total vote cast. Among the differences that distinguish the Socialist Party from the Labour Party is the marked paucity of millionaires, majors, peers, professors and divines in our ranks. We therefore have to rely solely and entirely upon the voluntary coppers of the poor. We have not, nor would we desire, a loose arrangement with the Trade Unions by which they provide the funds and we the candidates. Nor do we receive subsidies from the Russian Government. So that until a sufficient number of the working-class want the Socialist solution of the poverty problem, and further are prepared to stint themselves to provide the immediate sinews of war, we can only do what is within our powers.

Our Correspondent is disappointed. So are we. But in our disappointment there is no despair. On the contrary, we were never more hopeful. To anyone who can read the portents, the future is full of promise. Although these lines are written before the General Election, it is obvious that we are in for a politically livelier time for the next generation. It is extremely doubtful if any Parliament in the immediate future will last the time or have the heavy majority of the last one. Political instability, coupled with economic worsening should, as rationalization proceeds apace, give us the audience we wish for. Five years of political torpor dulled concern in things parliamentary, but with interest keyed up by change and economic insecurity, we believe the working-class will respond to the message of the Socialist. Our overwhelming concern of the moment is to get that message across, and to keep hammering it home. Thousands of pamphlets, thousands of leaflets, monthly, weekly and daily journals, those are what we want. Then will follow thousands of members, hundreds of thousands of members, and then — Socialism.

Perhaps our correspondent will feel more hopeful if he learns that after years of patient and crippling effort, we have succeeded in getting offices a little more worthy of the Party. With a building of four stories and a basement, we shall be better equipped to make our name and message known throughout the world. When one thinks of the work that has been accomplished in the old cramped premises, and contrasts what should be confidently anticipated from the new, one feels youthful again and filled with golden hope. When we are settled down, we hope our friends and those interested will come and see us. But more of that another time.

And what about our motor propaganda van? Ah! you have not heard of that. There is every possibility that you will see it in your district before very long. Does not that open up visions of wide and rapid propaganda; of our message being earned wherever a road exists; of provincial towns; of relays of speakers and batteries of literature? The possibilities are immense. Why, instead of feeling disappointed, we know that we are just about to commence in earnest. We see that things are moving and that we are about to take a great leap forward. There is one great and pressing immediate need: MONEY. If we were presented with a whole fleet of motor-vans to-morrow, not one would turn a wheel without petrol. And petrol is not bought with promises. As our dear friend the Prince said recently, "Sympathy is not enough.” It won't buy an eyeful of petrol. So if there is any friend, sympathiser, or well-wisher, who would like to see not one, but a hundred Socialist candidates at the next General Election, let them implement their good wishes with something more solid in a Capitalist world—money.

It can be done in hundreds of small ways. Remember the Thames has been flowing night and day for thousands of years, and it is made up entirely of raindrops no larger than a pea. Buy an extra "Socialist Standard” every pay-day and give it away to a pal. Buy our pamphlet, "Socialism,” 48 packed pages, for twopence; better value than Benns’ sixpenny booklet, three times the price and only double the number of pages. Keep on buying the pamphlet and sending to your friends. They will never become Socialists if they never hear about it. Above all, no matter how small the effort you can make, be regular. A regular income to the Party means regular progress, and regular progress means Socialism — in our lifetime. Look out for the Socialist Van, but if it does not show up soon enough for you, reflect that we have petrol and oil to buy, and tax and insurance to meet. And then, be practical.

W. T. Hopley

Why is the world so cramped? (1988)

Cartoon from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Campaign Against Prohibition in the U.S.A. (1932)

From the September 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the time of writing arrangements are being made to hold a big parade, and it is claimed that many trade unions and working men have applied for permission to march in it.

The parade is to protest against the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), and to demand the legalising of beer. The workers are led to believe that if beer is legalised a lot of jobs will be brought back and this will cause a demand for commodities which will put the workers on the road to more prosperous times.

It is interesting to consider why the Eighteenth Amendment was made the law of the land. We will quote Fort, a member of the House of Representatives, in a speech made before the House concerning the economic causes of Prohibition: —

  With high-speed machinery and increased specialisation in its use, alertness of body and mind became essential for both the safety of the worker and the efficiency of his work.
   With factories organised so that processes were continuous, and a break at any point in the handling chain slowed all the wheels and hampered all the work, each workman’s presence and correct performance must be assured. Midday drinking by one man might cause someone to slip and injure either his fellow workman or the whole system. So, too, the plant must be fully managed every day, each specialised workman at his appointed task. No longer could our industries proceed with a 50 per cent. attendance Monday, 80 per cent. on Tuesday, and 100 per cent., perhaps, by Wednesday noon. In the old days of one or two men it had not been so serious. If necessary the delinquent could work later when sober and make up for lost time. But the eight-hour day and dependence of one man's work upon the other made that impossible.
   . . . Then, too. machines were^st replacing horses. Now a horse would get home with a drunken driver, but a railroad train, trolley car, or an automobile might not . . .
    The swelling power of our new economic era, therefore, had to match swords against the saloon.

(Times, New York February 2nd, 1930.)

Charles and Mary Beard support this view. They say: “ . . . . employers of labour, in their quest for efficiency give money and support to the new crusade, for drunken workers were a danger as well as an economic loss to machine industry.** (“The Rise of American Civilisation," Vol. II., page 733.)

As long as it remained a “moral" issue, Prohibition did not make much headway; but when it was found that drink interfered with the profits of manufacturers, it had to go. The distillery and brewery owners had to be sacrificed for the good of other manufacturers, and their workers lost their jobs. The workers have very short memories, for it is not so long ago that they believed that their poverty was due to drinking, and that if Prohibition were passed they would be better off. But we now find the position of the.worker to be the same as it was before. Prohibition or wet, there is no difference. In relation to the capitalist, the worker is still a wage slave and poverty stricken. Now he believes that Prohibition is the cause of his poverty, but if he would think just a bit and look across the herring pond he would discover many countries in Europe that do not have Prohibition, yet their wage-slaves are in the same condition as in U.S.A., where we do have it.

Thus it can be clearly seen that neither Prohibition nor Repeal is the solution to the wage-workers’ problems. While Repeal might make prosperity for some distillers and brewery owners, the workers will gain nothing.

The contention that the legalising of beer will make more employment cannot be accepted. Although the figures given are not capable of proof there is little doubt that there are more persons engaged in the liquor industry now than before Prohibition. In New York City alone there are more than thirty thousand speakeasies ; it is doubtful if ever there were as many saloons as this. Also, owing to the less efficient methods that have to be used now. than when it was legal, room is made in this trade for extra thousands.

And as for workers not being able to get a drink, this is not due to any lack of beer supply, but that they simply cannot afford to buy it. If you have the price you can get all you want. This state of affairs will continue, whether legally or not. There is not a bit of doubt but that when beer is legalised, Prohibition, or something near it, will still be the lot of many wage-workers. They will be unable to buy much beer owing to lack of money.

Since the introduction of Prohibition, considerable changes have taken place. The capitalist is no longer worried about having to make his workers sober by law. Owing to the unemployment situation, police are now required to control the large numbers of applicants for jobs. The wage-slaves stay sober because they know they can be so easily replaced, and that if they get into the ranks of the unemployed they will have to stay sober, anyway. So the manufacturing capitalist is not worried on this score any longer, and for this and other reasons has changed his outlook. Behind the demand for the legalising of beer is the problem of taxation. This is behind much of the propaganda now being let loose upon the working class.

Making beer legal appears to be in the interest of sections of the capitalist class, who want to shed some of the increasing burden of taxes. They cast about to discover how to shift some of this burden of taxes on to other sections of their class. They see that the brewery owners pay no taxes on beer at present; they know it is being made, so why not make it legal and tax it, thus making the brewery section of the capitalist class pay a share of taxes? They would have less to pay themselves, so they are willing to bring back beer, which, like the poor, is always with us, wet or dry.

The worker, generally, thinks that he, also, suffers from the burden of taxes. So he is easily led to believe that his interests are involved when the question of taxation comes up. If he would examine this point a little more closely, he would find that taxes are a levy on property, and that wage-slaves are, in the main, propertyless. To the workers, as a class, it does not matter a tinker’s damn if the taxes are high or low: all the.worker gets when he works is, roughly, a wage sufficient to keep him in a state where he can continue to. produce efficiently and bring up a family, and no more; just enough to repeat the process of bringing new values into existence, new wealth that did not exist before he applied his labour power. If prices fall owing to lowered taxation, or any other reason, wages tend to follow. The employers, not the workers, gain thereby.

Yet we see that reformer after reformer brings out this question of taxes, which, economically, has nothing to do with the workers. This is done to hoodwink the workers into giving support to this or that section of the capitalist class. That section whose representatives succeed in enticing the workers' support secures political control of the State. In this position they have the power to shift the tax burden to the shoulders of other sections, thus relieving themselves in proportion.

It is not due to beer, or lack of it; nor is it due to high or low taxes, that conditions are as we find them. It is due to the system of society that divides mankind into classes, those who own the means of wealth production and distribution, and those who own nothing but their labour-power.

Taffy Brown

Workers' Socialist Party of U.S.A.

Malthus, Marx and Socialism (1975)

From the June 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Malthus could look in at present-day discussions about population and food supply he would no doubt be flattered that he and his ideas are still remembered and that the discussions have gone beyond this country, to occupy a prominent place on the world stage. He would be particularly interested to note that the question now takes in the allegations that world resources are approaching exhaustion and that continued growth of total production is becoming more and more difficult.

Malthus has a special interest for us, both because of Marx’s attack on his theories and because of the purpose for which he published his essay in 1798. Its full title was: Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other Writers. At that time the British ruling class were alarmed by the spread of revolutionary ideas following the French revolution in 1789. Among those who caused them alarm was the philosophical anarchist William Godwin who propagated the idea that people could live happily together, free from poverty and crime in a system of society based on voluntary co-operation, with no coercive state or other institutions of a class society.

Malthus wrote his Essay to show that Godwin and others who shared his views were wrong because they ignored what Malthus called the Natural Law of Population. This law, as stated by Malthus, was that population, if not checked, would always increase faster than food supplies, and that it always is held in check by the limited food supply operating through poverty, war and pestilence, which necessarily bring misery and vice; therefore the Godwin utopia of universal happiness was impossible.

Having to admit that population in theory might be restricted by what he called “moral restraint’’ he fell back on the argument that such restraint could not be exercised in a society that lacked private property to act as incentive. (Much like the argument now used by Sir Keith Joseph for his “Social Market Economy” capitalism.)

Malthus’s Essay was welcomed by some of the ruling class at the time because it could be used not only against revolutionary ideas but against almost any social change. Malthus made no serious attempt to prove the arithmetic of his law, and the nineteenth century in Britain showed the rate of increase of the population falling drastically while powers of production were increasing fast. Interest in Malthus continued though very erratically, declining when trade was good and unemployment low and reviving during every recession, particularly in the Great Depression of the last quarter of the century.

This was the key to Marx’s attack on Malthus. Marx pointed out that capitalism has its own population law, the symptoms of which are that in a boom the population appears to be too small and in a depression too large. Because capitalism does not produce to meet the needs of people but only to meet the effective demand in the market, capitalism never had produced enough to meet the needs of the whole population.

Capitalism has not changed in that respect, and UN officials now estimate that about a third of the world’s population are poverty-stricken as measured by accepted standards of nutrition. This figure is quoted in a recent article by a regular columnist of the Financial Times, C. Gordon Tether (1 May 1975). He used it to show the uselessness of leaving the problem to the interplay of supply and demand and defines it as a double one, that of raising the standards of the “poor” and of providing for the expected big increase of world population.

Mr. Tether has at least come some way from Malthus, for whom there was a second “natural law”, that the poor should go on being poor. Mr. Tether is so fearful of “ultimate global disasters” that he demands “a far-reaching re-structuring of the planet’s economic system during the next few years”. He does not spell out what he has in mind, and it would be most improbable that he envisages the social revolution at which Socialists aim. Yet it is the only one that, by eliminating the waste, the limitations on production and the sheer destruction of capitalism would give the big increase of useful production that he knows is necessary.

One last word about Marx and his collaborator Frederick Engels. They were fully aware of the arguments of the Malthusians and Engels wrote in 1844:

Even if Malthus were altogether right, it would still be necessary to carry out this [Socialist] reorganization immediately, since only this reorganization, only the enlightenment of the masses which it can bring with it, can make possible that moral restraint which Malthus himself puts forward as the easiest and most effective counter measure against overpopulation.

(See Marx and Engels on Malthus by Ronald L. Meek, p.109.)

Engels recalled this in a letter dated 1 February 1881 sent by him to Kautsky, in which he wrote:

There is of course the abstract possibility that the number of people will become so great that limits will have to be set to their increase. But if at some stage communist society finds itself obliged to regulate the production of human beings, just as it has already come to regulate the production of things, it will be precisely this society, and this society alone, which can carry this out without difficulty.

Edgar Hardcastle

"A Decent Living Wage" (1950)

From the March 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

"All a man wants is a decent living wage.” How often has this remark been passed by members of the working class when talking to a socialist. Behind it, one can sense the desire for economic security, and the mental peace and relaxation that would arise from it. So, in a form of society where everything is measured in money, those that have so little of it spend the whole of their lives working and wishing.

Thousands, recognizing that only “Lady Luck” can get them out of the drudgery that is their social possession by birth, spend some of the hard-earned cash in an attempt to beat the horses, dogs or cards. Each week-end millions more have a “flutter” on the pools, and others turn to crime, all in a vain attempt to find their way “upwards” (economically). We say vain attempt, for if these workers would reason collectively instead of individually, it would be clear that although one or two may go up, thousands will go down still further. For everyone who wins a pound thousands more will lose it; for everyone who is successful in crime, thousands more are steadily plodding round the prison yards.

It is to this majority of society, the workers, to the people who day after day sell themselves to be exploited by the owners of the tools of production, that the socialist message is addressed. By understanding and co-operation it is possible for us to take the constant drudgery out of our lives, the boredom that herds us together each week-end to get a little excitement out of football or gambling our money on animals. For the philosophy of “Well, you never know, you may be a pound better off” arises directly out of the realisation that if you had another pound or so, you could perhaps break the boredom for a week. But the tragedy is that most of us never win; we lose that pound and the misery is intensified.

The alternative to this barren existence? It is within the reach of all workers. We could send our delegates to Parliament to take over the “State Machinery” by which the owners protect their interests, abolish private ownership of the means of production and introduce common ownership. Did we hear someone say “Then what?”

Why, then would come the end of wars, the end of poverty, the end of monotony, of insecurity, the end of the capitalist class and the end of the working class.

Man will work with man for the betterment of all, subjecting natural forces for social comfort, serving the cry: “ From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Finally, it will put an end to the remark, “All a man wants is a decent living wage.” For wages being the price that is paid by the owners for our labour power, workers will realise that it is only by putting an end to the wage system that we can get a decent living.

Terry Lord

The Social Revolution (1975)

From the September 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

An immediate and fundamental change in the basis of society. Perhaps, when younger and struck with some glaring contradiction of capitalism, you felt the need for a reorganization in human affairs. Eliminating such superfluous stuff as money, you went on to build a model of this new, perfect world inside your head. Its characteristics were peace, harmony, plenty and so on. As you filled in the details the picture grew clearer and more insistent. You began to question your friends upon their views. Finally, you put forward your ready-made utopia and asked them to follow you.

Suddenly it seemed as if everybody had been rehearsing a hundred objections to your scheme beforehand. It won’t work! You can’t change human nature! Who’ll do the dirty work? There’ll be no incentive to produce! What about the lazy people? Overwhelmed by this tremendous opposition, you had to concede the impracticalities in a few bits of your new scheme. Whereupon the completed system became a patchwork of ideas and one of your friends, who was taking O-level Economics, quoted a passage from the Old Testament, proving conclusively that capitalism had always existed as the natural state of mankind.

This onslaught beat your dream world to the back of your consciousness; parts of it to be resurrected only when sardonic comment upon the world was called for. But even a suggestion of your old utopia received so much stick from your friends that it made your position untenable. A year later, upon hearing something reminiscent of your old view from a stranger, you caught yourself saying — “Yes, I wanted to change the world too when I was younger. It’s part of the process of growing up. You’ll learn!’’ — You’d come full circle and disowned your brainchild! What went wrong?

The source of your error lies in history. You stopped short at Fourier, Owen and Proudhon. Though you may never have heard of these people, yet you were tracing, in your mind and conversation, the practical steps which these men and their followers took to remodel a bit of society upon different lines. Like your theoretical notion, they all came to grief.

If you followed the steps exactly you will have dived straight into trade unionism after abandoning Utopias. Owen did. The Grand National Trade Union which he helped to found, grew to a million members and then petered out. The General Strike of 1926 and the ease with which it was crushed makes plain what is the result of trade unions essaying confrontation with the State.

You may have begun your encounter with the union by advocating protracted strikes — “Bring the capitalists to their knees!” Which advice foundered upon the objections of the plodders, who said; “The masters will just starve us out, they can live off their fat in the Bahamas — we can’t. We never get back from a strike what we lose in pay.” Just like the New Model Unions of the 1850s!

Now if you are an archetype you will have remembered that your uncle was once the lord mayor of Louth. After a long talk with him you joined the local Labour Party. Talked to all and sundry about “Keeping our feet upon the floor of the House of Commons. Doing something practical NOW!” It had all the charm of your early utopian illusions — with none of the drawbacks. You could still foment about wicket capitalists, while at the opposite pole, you dealt in wage-price indices and the regulation of “mixed economies”.

Here is where we found you. On a wet Saturday in September, back where you started, an individual member of the working class. Your mind having reached the peak of its political evolution in society; you bought from the SPGB a copy of the Socialist Standard. The solution is now staring you in the face.

At first it seems like a refrain from the past. Common ownership? Abolition of the wages system? Classless, moneyless society? Production for use — not profit? Free access! Only, the details are missing. The SPGB does not paint a picture of the future society. In this journal there is no blueprint for Socialism. We only say to the mass of the population who, whether they know it or not, are in the working class: pursue your class interest.

Human life is essentially practical. Never mind what men say, think or write — in practice they must prove the truth. Can Socialism be established by the Labour Party? No matter how many workers say or think that it can, how do they act? When the Labour Party is running capitalism, do the workers abandon the economic struggle? Do they give up their trade union organizations? Of course not. Thus, their theory is at variance with their practice.

Similarly regarding life under capitalism. Do wage increases cause inflation? Is the “vicious spiral” all the fault of greedy workers? Never mind what economists and governments say, what do they do? Governments, when they have to, can end the inflation which they began by expanding an inconvertible currency. This action will prove all of their post pronouncements on inflation to have been nonsense. A glance at history, however, will show it makes no difference to capitalism and the working class: with or without inflation things are just the same.

Underlying all government propaganda on inflation is their basic need to sustain the interests of their capitalist class. Wage increases reduce profits. Capitalism’s apologists may deny that the class struggle exists. But on the annual balance sheets of trading and industrial concerns, evidence of the class war is written. In other words — at the highest level of practicality that capitalism assumes, in its budgetary affairs, the age-old conflict between classes is taken for granted.

Recognize the type of historical process by which changes in society are brought about. To introduce Socialism you must get yourself into an organization with that single purpose. Then help convince other workers that Socialism will be in their interest. But before you can introduce the fundamental change from private to common ownership, you must capture political power; to ensure that the state forces of coercion cannot be used against you. Your numerical superiority must be demonstrated, that means the ballot and the representative institutions must be yours also. This plan of action has been the programme of the SPGB for 71 years. We are the only political party which has succeeded in remaining a revolutionary party. Showing that the centuries-long evolution of political parties has not been in vain. And in practice, that is how you prove the truth in politics.

That viewpoint survives which is best fitted to survive. It must be capable of comprehending the world of the past, present and future. The object and declaration of principles of the SPGB express the working-class viewpoint. Against all comers they have never been found wanting. This organization has adhered to them without compromise or expedient. We urge you to make them your own.

B.K. McNeeney

Editorial: The Last Fifty Years in Russia (1956)

Editorial from the November 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Elsewhere in this issue we reproduce extracts from an unsigned article: “The Russian Revolution," which, fifty years ago, in November 1906, placed on record the attitude of the S.P.G.B. to events in Russia. In 1904 war had broken out between Japan and Russia over Korea, which then, as today, attracted greedy investors and speculators in the neighbouring countries, and had great importance as a war base. Russia suffered a shattering defeat at the hands of Japan, and this gave impetus to movements demanding political and economic reforms. The capitalists wanted to get rid of the Tsarist autocracy, which hampered their development; workers wanted higher wages; peasants wanted land reforms, and all were able to unite in demanding parliamentary government based on a democratic franchise. Frightened by the wave of strikes, mutinies and riots, the government at first gave way and the Tsar agreed to set up a Duma (parliament); with legislative authority, not merely a consultative body, as had earlier been the limit of concession. But before long, helped on by the lack of unity and purpose in the ranks of the opposition, the Tsar’s government regained confidence and dissolved the Duma. It was while this counter-offensive of the Tsar’s government was in full flood that the article “The Russian Revolution" appeared in our columns, the occasion being the issue, by the International Socialist Bureau, of an appeal on behalf of the Russian workers.

The line taken by the article is for the most part shown by the published extracts, a line that the S.P.G.B. continued to hold when, in 1917, defeat in another war produced more movements of revolt in Russia, though this time they were successful in their aim of removing the Tsarist regime. The victory was to be short lived, because within months the various movements that had been associated in overthrowing the Tsar and establishing a provisional government were themselves overthrown by the Communist Party, which has held power ever since.

Subsequent events have completely justified the declaration made in 1905 (and repeated in 1917) that the outcome of the struggle in Russia could not at that time be Socialism, but only capitalism: what has happened has proved the correctness of the S.P.G.B.’s Marxist approach. Although there are people who know so little about Russian conditions or about Socialist principles that they can still believe that there is Socialism in Russia, serious students have never been deceived; and even the popular impression of Russia held in Western Europe now more or less clearly recognises that it is not a social system better than Western capitalism, but actually worse, because of its dictatorship.

It is an ironical reflection that the anticipation of fifty years ago, that removing Tsarist autocracy would immediately open the way to a democratic republic, should have proved so wrong that it is only now that the “flight from Stalin" promises at least some prospect of progress in that direction. As far as elementary rights of organisation, publication, voting, etc., are concerned, Russian workers might still be living under the Tsars. In 1906 the government of Emperor Nicholas II. dissolved the not very democratically elected Duma, but it remained for the Communist government in 1918 to suppress permanently the first freely elected Constituent Assembly and thereafter forbid all political organisations except the Communist Party.

Along with political reaction has gone the repudiation of early Communist Party ideas about equality, a path along which the British Labour Party has also moved.

But while Russia has, as we forecast in 1905, not produced Socialism, it has built up the modem industries which make it a formidable capitalist, military and industrial Power, second only to U.S.A.

Another saddening reflection prompted by similarity between 1906 and 1956, is that knowledge of and contact with Russian workers is as difficult now as it was then. The Socialist Standard had to admit in 1906 to a lack of information about events in Russia, and this is still true: we do not know to what extent groups of workers in Russia have been able, despite the dictatorship, to keep alive their belief in the ultimate victory of Socialism against all its enemies and false friends in the so-called Communist and Labour Parties.

50 Years Ago: The Russian Revolution (1956)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the “Socialist Standard,” November, 1906 

The Russian Revolution

The other great nations of Europe have long ago burst asunder the feudal bonds on industry and commerce, and the few survivals are more picturesque than effective. The aristocracy, where it has been able to continue in existence, is merged into the plutocracy and forms one compact mass against the workers. Russia, however, lags behind; and her economic backwardness is reflected in her medieval system of government. Hence, in the other nations of Western Europe a straight fight is possible between the proletariat and the capitalist ruling class, whilst in Russia the rising capitalist class has yet its emancipation from autocracy to accomplish; so that, in contrast with practically the whole of civilised nations, the working class and the capitalist class in Russia have, in the abolition of Tsardom’s tyranny, a step to go together. This historical circumstance, which is at once the strength and weakness of the Russian movement, distinguishes it from that of all capitalist countries.

No Socialist, therefore, can withhold his sympathy from the great struggle of the Russian people for the elements of political liberty, and all must heartily wish that the great barrier to economic and political progress, Tsardom, may be speedily broken down. It is satisfactory to note that, in the present communication from the International Socialist Bureau the idea (which was so common at an earlier period of the revolution, and which was proclaimed by many who called themselves Socialists) that out of the ruins of Tsarist Russia the Socialist Republic would arise, is absent; whilst the elements of political liberty, the creation of a Constituent Assembly, or at most the inauguration of a Russian Republic, are taken for granted as the possible outcome of the present struggle. It has been insisted upon in these columns that the Socialist Republic cannot be the outcome of the defeat of the autocracy in Russia, because the economic elements are lacking or insufficiently developed. As Marx said: “No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and the new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have been matured in the womb of the old society.” The industrial development of Russia is still in its infancy, and vigorous though the infant may be, the greater part of the empire is yet untrodden by it. It is indeed probable that whatever government succeeds that of the Tsar will be compelled, if only to appease the peasants—the bulk of the nation—to bring about the most reactionary state of things in which the land is split up among the peasants as their private property.

*  *  *

Let us then do all in our power to help our Socialist comrades in Russia in the hope that they will not be deceived as to the outcome of the present upheaval: in the hope, also, that they will sternly keep their separate identity and distinct aim, so that the Russian bourgeoise State of to-morrow may find a militant class-organisation of Socialist workers leading the final struggle against the capitalist class, whose defeat must herald the Triumph of Humanity.

Marxism and Dictatorship (1937)

From the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is Marxism in any way bound up with the idea of dictatorship? This is a question with which we are often confronted to-day.

Hence we are prompted to deal with the matter again, principally because of its repetition from various sides, but partly in view of a statement which recently appeared in England’s leading Labourist-capitalist journal, the Daily Herald.

Commenting upon the arrest of the leaders of the Spanish workers’ organisation known as the P.O.U.M. (the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unity) the Daily Herald took the opportunity to jibe at the Communists and said: —

  We hope the Spanish Government does not intend to listen to the bloodthirsty demand of the Communists that the P.O.U.M. leaders should be executed.
   Doubtless the P.O.U.M. is a nuisance and a danger. Unlike the Communists its members still take Marxism seriously, with the result that they despise democracy, and are not interested in fighting except for a dictatorship of their own.

Now, apart from the question of the internal disputes between the Spanish workers' parties, the point to note in the Herald's statement is the definite and unqualified association of Marxism with dictatorship. Taken as the statement stands the Herald's intention is clearly meant to convey the idea that Marxism is a negation and violation of democratic principle. But, as Marxists ourselves, we most emphatically repudiate this cunningly contrived imputation. Under cover of the Herald's pronouncement there lies one of the many attempts to discredit Marxism in order to justify the anti-Marxian, anti-Socialist attitude of the reformist opportunist Labour Party. It bids fair to lend support to the slogan of the bourgeois democrats that “Fascism and Marxism are the twin enemies of the human race.”

If there is one aspect of Socialist thought which may be said to stand out above all others it is the insistence in Socialist teachings that the principle of democracy is of paramount importance. We realise, of course, that at this statement many a Communist will instinctively smile, at the same time scoffing at us with the usual suggestion that we are “doped with bourgeois democratic ideology." Yet, search as you will the records of Socialist literature from the time of Marx and Engels up to, say, 1914, and the references to the question of dictatorship, or even the mention of the word, are conspicuous by their scarcity. In making this point we include the various public pronouncements of many present-day Communists who, before the 1917 upheaval in Russia, were content to call themselves Socialists rather than Communists. We then heard nothing of the present-time sophistries concerning "bourgeois democracy" and “the dictatorship of the proletariat."

In the year 1848, when Marx and Engels first sent their famous “Communist Manifesto” circulating throughout the world, the keynote of democracy was sounded by these pioneers of modern Socialism.

“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities," say the authors of this manifesto. “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority ” (page 28).

Later on in the same work we find the equally clear and concise statement: —

   . . .  that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the battle of democracy. 

Whatever criticism has been hurled at Marx and Engels their emphasis on the democratic principle underlying the Socialist philosophy raised no particular point of controversy until recent years.

How, then, does it all come about that Marxism has been identified with the idea of dictatorship?

Proceeding from the notion that “there is no smoke without fire" we are ready to concede the point that there is at least some basis, in fact, for the idea, even though it be a distortion of Marx’s standpoint.

It was after the formation of the Soviet regime in Russia in 1917 that we began to hear so much about dictatorship in connection with Socialist controversy.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks, seized the governmental power in Russia under conditions that Marx had not envisaged. In fact there is evidence to show that even the Bolsheviks themselves were more than surprised at their success in obtaining control of the political machinery of the State. Only the peculiar conditions of Russia in 1914 at the outbreak of the European War, its general unpreparedness for the conflict, its lack of military equipment, etc., and its final military and social collapse in 1917 could have possibly given such a party as the Bolsheviks the chance of assuming the control of the government. However, the attempt to apply Socialist ideas and conditions in a country where the great mass of the people were ignorant of even the elementary principles on which modern Socialism is founded failed from its inception; as it was bound to do considering the miserably backward state of the country, both economically and politically. But once the Bolsheviks had gained control in the midst of such conditions there seems little else that could have happened than the setting-up of a dictatorship if they were to maintain their hold upon the country irrespective of whether the people wanted Socialism or not. But the important point to notice is that their dictatorship had in reality nothing to do with Marx’s theory of the working class coming to power to overthrow capitalist domination and establishing the Socialist form of society. Yet Lenin in particular, and his devotees in chorus, have insisted that their action was along Marxian lines, using certain statements of Marx to support their case, and what do these statements amount to, anyway?

 

In a letter to his friend, Weydemeyer, in 1852, Marx, among many other things, said: —

  And now as to myself; no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modem society nor yet the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of the class struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular, historic phases in the development of production; (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; (3) that the dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

This is a favourite quotation from Marx among the Communists, but whilst we are about it we might just as well give another of like kind which Lenin used in his controversy with Kautsky.

In Marx’s criticism of the “Gotha Programme” of 1875 we find Marx stating: —

   Between capitalist and Communist society there lies a period of revolutionary transformation of one into the other. This period has a corresponding political period of transition, during which the State can be nothing more than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

Now the outstanding feature of these statements is that they obviously refer to a dictatorship in the sense that the working class has achieved political power, and is about to shape a form of society in harmony with its own social needs.

But note the point, Marx does not refer or say that only a minority of the working class would or need take control of political power during the period of the "transformation of the one into the other.”

The Socialist revolutionary act in the Marxian sense is that of the “self-conscious independent movement of the immense majority.” The phrase dictatorship covers a condition of political power being exercised by and through majority will against a dislodged and dispossessed hitherto ruling class.

But this is a point that is generally distorted as a means of justifying the immature action of the Bolsheviks in attempting to impose Socialism on a country unready and unwilling for its adoption. A prominent Communist writer in this country, T. A. Jackson, in his book on “Dialectics,” makes an elaborate show of “squaring the circle” of Russia’s dictatorship with Marx’s conception.

In a chapter on Democracy and "Democracy” he sets forth the fundamentally democratic concept as follows: —

   No revolutionary worker wants to be dictated to; no revolutionary worker wants to dictate personally to anybody else. Every worker not absolutely degenerate in subserviency feels he ought to have a say in the making of the rules he has to obey; and every worker not absolutely degenerate knows that in real practical life co-operation involves plan, rule and regulation. When the ordinary worker calls himself a “democrat,” he means that he feels in this way; he affirms, that is, his right to a say in the government of his personal and communal life.

After this clear and definite statement Mr. Jackson asks the question : —

   What is the difference between “Democracy” in the British working class sense above, and the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” as Marx Engels and Lenin used the term?

Mr. Jackson offers his own answer to the question. He says, “In essence: no difference at all."

Very well then, if there is no essential difference, and on this point we are in entire agreement, our view of the matter is conceded, namely, that Marx’s conception of dictatorship is none other than majority rule, the majority rule of the working class in establishing Socialist society. If this much had been made clear by the Communists from the time of the Bolshevik uprising in Russia the whole world might have learned by now that the Soviet regime was not instituted according to the principle enunciated by Marx.

Further, we should never have heard the claptrap of the Communists in this country clamouring for the seizure of political power by an "intellectual minority."

Of course, Mr. Jackson will, no doubt, insist that the dictatorship in Russia is what Saint George Bernard Shaw said of it, namely, that the dictatorship there is all right since it is for the good of those who are being dictated to; a plea of defence that is put forward by Mussolini, Hitler and every dictator extant.

We repeat that the dictatorship in Russia is not the “dictatorship of the Proletariat" in the Marxian sense of the term. On the contrary, it has been the dictatorship of a party, a party which in the earlier stages of their conquest of power actually deprived its own members of the power of voting.

Russia, of the Soviet system, has undoubtedly had enormous economic, political and social problems to face, problems which in great measure they have responded to with great skill and political acumen, but the State capitalism of Russia, necessitated by its own internal difficulties, accentuated by the outside world of persistent capitalism, is not what Socialists of to-day, or Marx and Engels of the past, have been striving for. We stand to-day, as always, for the democratic ownership and control of the world’s resources. That this can only be effected by way of social revolution is not merely our determination. It is imposed upon us as a law of history, which decrees that when a subject class needs freedom from the shackles which bind it there is no other way than the conquest of power. That this power can only be gained by the great mass of the workers understanding the task confronting them is an inevitable consequence of the need to abolish class rule in its entirety.

When that task takes its initial form of working-class accession to power it must be by majority decision, the condition of capitalist society as we know it to-day indicates no alternative course. It is imperative to Socialism that the great mass of the workers understand and desire it if we are to establish a form of human association in which, to quote Marx once more, “the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all."

Robert Reynolds

To A Young Reader (1963)

From the January 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

As we write, a meeting of Students is taking place in a Swansea College protesting against the situation in Cuba. Two of the students have commenced a hunger strike campaign.

We have no way of knowing who you are, your personal hopes, your disappointments and your fears. This we do know, however, there are a considerable number of you at the moment agitating and demonstrating in a variety of ways up and down the country on issues of greater or lesser seriousness. Sometimes it is a demand for a college bar (as recently in one of the Welsh Colleges), or to reserve the right to visit your girl friends in their private rooms. At other times, together with your friends in industry, you demonstrate your views quite forcibly on matters of world-reaching importance by sit-down demonstrations and marches (accompanied by a variety of musical instruments) for the abolition of the hydrogen bomb. Though some of you have not yet been thrown on to the Labour Market you have already been active in demanding better grants and better treatment for young workers and workers in training.

These activities have been met with a variety of reactions from the August Bodies concerned, from College Governors to the police and even the Government. Sometimes, your outbursts are met with a show of good-natured tolerance (though it is most difficult at times for a police officer, an M.P. or a college Rector to remain friendly with his face covered in soot or a stream of egg-yolk running down his person). At times Authority, older and more experienced than yourselves, is forced to be more persuasive. But whichever it is you are as heartily sick of the figurative pat on the back as you are of the more tangible tap on the head which has been inflicted on your comrades in areas as wide apart as Wales, Scotland, Europe, America—and Russia.

It is here that the Socialist Party can be of help. It is not our wish to lecture to you, neither to admonish nor to praise— but to offer. We would point out a fact or two which we are sure can be understood by you all, whether you are a product of the Secondary Modern School or a student at a University.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has no desire to add itself to the number of your leaders. We have never even had a Young People's Section of our Party as the Communists, Liberal, Labour and Tory Parties have. Nevertheless, we are not back slapping or head patting when we say that you—the young people of Britain and the world—are the hope of the future. Without your present and future labour power, capitalism has no future.

We seek your understanding and cooperation in the biggest of all projects, not to fight for the abolition of this or that, or the amelioration of that or the other, but for a complete revolution in our social system. Capitalism took the idealism of your fathers and covered it with the mire of two great wars. It took their young bodies and shattered them for its narrow interests. It continues to poison the Earth with Atomic dust: it continues to cloud your vision with falsehoods wrapped up in sentiment and cheap patriotism. It will, if necessary, throw you in conflict against your brothers of other lands.

We suggest you spend an hour or so with the Socialist Standard. Get in touch with any Socialist near to hand and start discussing. Lastly, if you have any questions which you would like us to deal with in detail, write and ask us. Our members are always willing to come to address you at your clubs and colleges, or anywhere else.

Let's hear from you. We shall both benefit from the experiment, and we shall be pleased to print a selection of your views and criticisms in our columns.

W. Brain 

Thomas More and the abolition of money (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

   This year is the 500th anniversary of the birth of Sir Thomas More, one of Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellors, Catholic martyr and saint, feature of the film A Man for All Seasons—and, though less publicized, early advocate of a moneyless society.
    It was through More than the word “utopia” came into the English language as this was the title of a book he published in Louvain (in what is now Belgium) in 1516. “Utopia” is the latinized version—for the book was written in Latin—of a Greek word meaning “nowhere” and More’s Utopia was an account of an imaginary island where society was organised without money and on communistic lines. It also contains a biting criticism of social developments in England at that time where the substitution of sheep-farming for tillage was driving hundreds of thousands of peasants off the land and into vagabondage.
    Despite this More was in 1529 chosen by Henry to be Lord Chancellor. He later fell out with Henry and was executed in 1535 for refusing to recognise him as the spiritual head of the Church in England.
     The passage reproduced below (taken from the translation by Paul Turner published as a Penguin Classic in 1965 and still available) shows why More has always been sympathetically regarded by Socialists.

UTOPIA

Every town is divided into four districts of equal size, each with its own shopping centre in the middle of it. There the products of every household are collected in warehouses, and then distributed according to type among various shops. When the head of a household needs anything for himself or his family, he just goes to one of these shops and asks for it. And whatever he asks for, he’s allowed to take away without any sort of payment, either in money or in kind. After all, why shouldn’t he? There’s more than enough of everything to go round, so there’s no risk of his asking for more than he needs — for why should anyone want to start hoarding, when he knows he’ll never have to go short of anything? No living creature is naturally greedy, except from fear of want — or in the case of human beings, from vanity, the notion that you’re better than people if you can display more superfluous property than they can. But there’s no scope for that sort of thing in Utopia.

When I consider any social system that prevails in the modern world, I can’t, so help me God, see it as anything but a conspiracy of the rich to advance their own interests under the pretext of organizing society. They think up all sorts of tricks and dodges, first for keeping safe their ill-gotten gains, and then for exploiting the poor by buying their labour as cheaply as possible. Once the rich have decided that these tricks and dodges shall be officially recognized by society — which includes the poor as well as the rich — they acquire the force of law. Thus an unscrupulous minority is led by its insatiable greed to monopolize what would have been enough to supply the needs of the whole population. And yet how much happier even these people would be in Utopia! There, with the simultaneous abolition of money and the passion for money, how many other social problems have been solved, how many crimes eradicated! For obviously the end of money means the end of all those types of criminal behaviour which daily punishments are powerless to check: fraud, theft, burglary, brawls, riots, disputes, rebellion, murder, treason and black magic. And the moment money goes, you can also say good-bye to fear, tension, anxiety, overwork and sleepless nights. Why, even poverty itself, the one problem that has always seemed to need money for its solution, would promptly disappear if money ceased to exist.

Let me try to make this point clearer. Just think back to one of the years when the harvest was bad, and thousands of people died of starvation. Well, I bet if you’d inspected every rich man’s barn at the end of that lean period you’d have found enough corn to have saved all the lives that were lost through malnutrition and disease, and prevented anyone from suffering any ill effects whatever from the meanness of the weather and the soil. Everyone could so easily get enough to eat, if it weren’t for that blessed nuisance, money. There you have a brilliant invention which was designed to make food more readily available. Actually it’s the only thing that makes it unobtainable.

Between the Lines: Only Joking (1990)

The Between the Lines column from the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Only Joking

More mature TV viewers must be at a loss what to do with their Monday nights this month. April 9th saw the last in the series of Stand Up Jim Davidson (ITV), which was billed as "adult humour". What this meant in practice was peak-time permission for the chirpy cockney to entertain the troops by setting the clock back thirty years. Remember those good old days before we were taught to worry about the feelings of racial and other minorities? When a good joke had to have a good defenceless target? Well, Jim takes the Sun newspaper and simplifies it into small-screen sniggers for the simple-minded. Asians in Bradford, people in wheelchairs. the blind, women in council flats. Jews. Irish and gays: all these and many more were featured in his gallery of mugs. Only one group was missing from his league table of comical victims: white, male. English boneheads, with a microphone in one hand, half a pint of lager in the other, and not very much in between.

Democracy Versus Marketing

There was a great deal of promise in the early parts of "Remote Control: Television and Democracy" (Channel 4, April 7, 8-9pm). First, there was an excellent survey of the ways in which each period of history has seen a struggle over control of the key means of communication. In the Middle Ages, for example, the translation of the Bible into English was part of a shifting of power from Rome to Canterbury. In the nineteenth century, punitive taxation on publications was used to prevent the free distribution of radical ideas within the working class. And in the twentieth century, the early lessons learnt by the ruling class regarding the political uses of cinema were later applied to radio and television.

A further useful point was made by this documentary, regarding the current debate about the likely effects of the impending "deregulation" of broadcasting, and the arrival of cable and satellite. The debate has been almost exclusively based on arguments about "quality" and choice. Will deregulation lead to a widening of choice, a degeneration of quality, or both? But this is to regard television as purely another product for mass consumption like any other in the capitalist world market. The stress being placed on the concepts of quality and choice place the millions of viewers in a passive role, their only function being to pay their money and flick their remote control switches. But television, as a means of expression and communication, has always had the potential to be more than simply a product for mass consumption. The technology, particularly since the advent in the 70s of small, hand-held video cameras, could allow large numbers of people to be making programmes as well as watching them. Present government plans for the future of broadcasting fail even to pay lip service to such possibilities.

It was at this point that the programme began to flag somewhat. Lacking any really pertinent political analysis, it was not able to touch on the reasons for this, or to approach any real solutions. This inability of present-day society to allow proper participation in the broadcasting process is in fact symptomatic of a much wider problem. Real, full democracy in society is simply not compatible with a class-divided, property and profit-based social system. With regard to possible solutions, the programme focused on access slots like the BBC's "Open Door", the problems they have encountered, and on Channel Four, with its special remit to cater for minority views. Radical commentators trotted out tired modern cliches about their wish that TV would become more "empowering", "enabling" and "facilitating" for people, but had little idea how this might happen.

The conclusion reached, however, was refreshingly realistic: that the direction in which TV is heading shows less and less concern with the exciting ways in which it could be used as a democratic means of expression, and more and more preoccupation with being a profitable investment within the market system.

Steve Coleman

Editorial: A "Socialist" Government (1924)

Editorial from the February 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are on the eve of great events—at least, Mr. Garvin, of the Observer, says we are!

  “The reason is that to-morrow in this country will see the end of the last purely Conservative Government—none of the same name is ever likely to exist again—and will instal the first Socialist Government in its place."

We really must take exception to this constant tying of the labels “Socialist” and “Marxian” to the Labour Party. It is not fair. Mr. 'Ramsay MacDonald has frequently pointed out that the Labour members are thorough gentlemen, that they do not propose to disturb seriously existing relations, and that “moral flourishes” will be one of the principal weapons. And is not Dr. Addison one of their pillars?

Anyone in doubt about the policy to be pursued by the Labour Government can obtain fruitful information from the columns of the New Leader. In the issue of January 4th they make the following remarks, under the heading, “ Labour’s Agenda: Suggestions Invited ” :—

   “All of us are discussing the items which may find a place in Labour’s programme, when it takes office, as it almost certainly will, before the end of this month. Everyone understands that many of the bigger changes to which we are committed are excluded by the composition of this House or by the conditions of national finance. As to the main lines of our policy, there is no doubt or division of opinion. We must (1) substitute work for doles, which involves a Housing scheme; (2) recognise Russia and bring to suffering Germany the promptest rescue we can devise; (3) clear up the dangerous tangle over oil, stop the Singapore dock, and drop the territorial claim to Mosul; (4) apply our Labour policy to the urgent case of agriculture as fully as the House will allow."

Can anyone, with even the most powerful microscope, find anything Socialist in these “main lines’’? Capitalism, the present social system, involves the private ownership by the capitalists of the means of wealth production and signifies the enslavement of the propertyless workers, the mass of the population. Socialism involves the common ownership, by the whole of the population, of the means of production, and signifies the end of slavery. The change from Capitalism to Socialism is a revolutionary one and admits of no piecemeal policy. The “main lines” of Socialist action, therefore, are revolutionary ones, definitely laid out to uproot the capitalistic foundations of the existing social system.

The attempt by Garvin and others to identify the ideas of Socialism with the Labour Party’s policy is a convenient method of curbing the workers’ desire for freedom and increasing the Confusion already existing. The tendency of the workers to see in capitalism the real source of their miseries is dangerous from the point of view of the upholders of the present system. Garvin and his kind are astute, so they endeavour to fix the workers’ attention upon the Labour Party as the representatives of the new social idea. In due course the Labour Party will fail at the same obstacles—unemployment, and so forth—as the older parties. The Garvin group will then point triumphantly to this failure as an illustration of the incapacity of Socialism to solve economic problems. They bank on the idea that disappointment will breed apathy. This is one reason why we are so anxious to dispel any illusions the workers may have about the advantages to be expected from a Labour Government.

The Labour Party is not a Socialist body, and it repudiates the views of Marx. It is a snare set for dissatisfied but unwary workers.

From the Fighting Line. (1907)

From the January 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Branches should see that reports of work, incidents of the local fight, and all matters of Party interest and propaganda value for publishing under this heading, are regularly communicated.

Battersea—“All work and no play.” etc. After the heat and burden of the municipal fight, Battersea took a siesta in the form of a concert and dance at historic Sydney Hall, on the 9th ult. (Incidentally, Battersea also took a collection in aid of the Party Organ Fund, which was thoughtful and helpful.) For the occasion Paddington sent over a troupe of mummers who produced an impressive little dramatic sketch, "Wasted Lives,” which had been specially written by Comrade Fred Leigh. Setting the scene in Moscow during the time of the bloody street fighting between Russian workmen in revolt and the brutal forces of autocracy, Leigh skillfully presented the spectacle of a Fabianesque English doctor being driven by the irresistible logic of events from the position of a dilletante anti-revolutionary, into the necessity for taking sides for or against the struggling factory workers with whom lie finds himself. He chooses the side of the people and in the final tableau falls with the tiny remnant of a barricade defence who, forced to retreat into the house, make a last stand, and are shot dead by the victorious Cossacks.

Having regard to the narrow limitations of stage space and the almost entire absence of stage properties, Messrs. Leigh, Allen, Charles, Hopley and Jackson, (not to mention Stage-Manager Lewis) are to congratulated upon a very meritorious performance.

The musical contributions of Comrades Beale, Stuart, Greenham, Lewis, Passit, Shipper, and others were hugely appreciated, while Comrade Gray took the chair (and the collection) in his own ahem! inimitable manner.

Tottenham has not the vantage ground that Islington Branch possess in Finsbury Park, but Tottenham are by no means depressed. By dint of sheer hard propaganda work they have during the past season almost doubled their membership, and against the combined efforts of local pseudo-labour parties to squelch them, have not only held their own finely, but carried the fight into their opponents' quarters, to the profound discomfiture of the latter every time. Tottenham are now one of the strongest branches in the Party, and have been able to make a weekly donation to the Central Office of 10/- for some months past.

Watford. From the home of one of the largest brunches to the home of one of the smallest. Watford at present is the most distant outpost of the Party (although rumour hath it that even this distinction may shortly he lost); its membership is small and the local conditions are exceedingly difficult for straight Socialist propaganda. The town has probably a larger collection of the one-step-at-a-time-and-the-smaller-the-better parties than any other town of the same size can show, and the unhappy effects of their confusionist work is very marked. A branch of the Party several hundred strong could find plenty of work to engage its constant attention. Yet a very few determined members even under these conditions can make their presence felt, and the little Watford Branch can claim to have done that during the past year. Its manifesto on the local elections back in the Spring made an effective case against the candidates claiming to represent the specific interests of the working class with the result that all of them were defeated by large majorities. Sunday open air meetings of a fairly good character have been held throughout the fine weather, and although the seed sown may take longer to germinate under the adverse local conditions, there is no doubt at all but that the work put in will presently bear good fruit. Steady does it at Watford. Better a few members acting as one than a few hundred acting at sixes and sevens.

Tooting. The Tooting Branch has been very much alive of late, although no reports of their doings has appeared for some time.

The Branch decided to contest the local ward at the recent Borough Council Election, hoping that by participating in a such a contest in opposition to all and sundry, they would clear away some of the cobwebs from the minds of those who, taking their Socialism from the capitalist Press, labour under the delusion that Socialism is simply Liberalism and Labourism in an advanced form.

The contest also answered those critics who contend that our principles only afford scope for a negative attitude. We entered the field of positive political action with Comrades Barker. Dumenil, and McManus, and when the wire-pulling in the capitalist camp had run its course we found we had for opponents 3 Municipal Reformers, 4 alleged Independents (really 2 Liberals and 2 Tories running jointly) and 3 “Labour” candidates. We placed our position before the public against the position of all the others without fear or favour, repeatedly challenging anyone to come upon our platform and show any real difference between the other ten. No one attempted the impossible.

We got an advertisement from an unexpected quarter which is interesting as showing the tactics of the confusionists. Speaking for the S.D.F. in Tooting Broadway, on, the Sunday before the election, T. Glossop, in the course of his address, without any question being asked, advised the working men of Tooting to vote, not for the “Labour" candidates, but for the three run by the S.P.G.B., who were the only Socialist candidates in the field. Posters were up all over the district at that moment announcing that Mrs. Despard. F. Knee and W. H. Humphreys, all S.D.F.’ers, would speak in support of the Labour candidates at Tooting Graveney School on the Monday. We have since heard that Glossop tried hard to induce F. Knee and Humphreys not to address that meeting but without success, for they all kept the engagement. When the public of Tooting want to know why we are opposed to the S.D.F. they can for the future have some local matter as well as national. The gulf between the S.P.G B. and the "Labour" Party (any section) should be now apparent to all interested. The Branch got an election address into practically every house and flat in the ward irrespective of the resident being a voter or not. The Labour Party, who are so desirous of educating the workers, ignored the voteless. which is an advantage as the voteless have less to unlearn. We did no canvassing whatsoever, but held plenty of open-air meetings at which we had a little Radical opposition, which was easily dealt with and a fair number of questions. The public generally showed much more interest in our election meetings, than in our ordinary propaganda ones. It may interest some also to know that a considerable influx of new members is one result of the campaign. Tooting is getting a move on to some tune, as, in addition to increased membership, the speaking capabilities of the members have improved considerably as a result of the increased practice that they have had. The total cost of the election to us was £3 3s 6d and the votes recorded for our candidates were Barker. 94. McManus. 77. Dumenil. 59. Of these 50 were plumpers.

(Notes from West Ham. Romford, and Paddington held over.)

How It Will Come About. (1914)

From the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Socialist meetings one may very often hear the interjection: “You have said a great deal about Socialism and what a good thing it will be, but tell us how it will come about."

Maybe the request is a reasonable one, but oh! if those who prefer it were only as reasonable. However, they are not: they seem always to expect to receive a curt, cut-and-dried answer.

Before the Socialist has had time to answer the first question the second arrives : "How long will it be before Socialism is here?"

Now, before we can commence to discuss these questions it is of the utmost importance that we understand what Socialism really means. To-day, under capitalism, we are allowed to live (!) under hellish and murderous conditions. Let me deal with that system—the system wherein men, women, and children starve in the midst of plenty.

The whole production of wealth to-day is organised purely with a view to making a profit. It may seem strange to those who have not thought this question out, but the clothes we wear, the food we eat, are not made for us to wear and eat, but are produced in order that a profit may be obtained by the manufacturer.

Do you suppose that the master baker or the master builder, in having bread made or houses constructed, would ask if the bread was pure and wholesome or the houses dry and healthy ? No, they would simply ask : “ Shall I be able to I make a profit out of it?"

This was clearly shown at the enquiry held into a fatal accident that occurred during the erection of a building in High Holborn some time last year. A chain broke and a worker was done to death. The coroner ask the representative of the firm who made the chain whether, after testing a chain, they went over it to see if there were any cracks, and the answer was:

"No, the profits will not allow of it."

The master class do not care if the chains break and you are killed; they do not care if you eat bad food or live in death-dealing, insanitary houses: You can perish and rot so long as their profits come rolling in.

You, the workers, produce all economic wealth. All such wealth is produced for profit, and that profit, that wealth which is made but which is filched from you, goes to overstock the markets, and then you are shown the door. You produce all wealth, and then you starve.

All we ask you to do is to look round at all the good things of life that you have created, and then ask yourselves why you are poor. We only ask you to sit down and seriously try to find out the cause of your poverty. For when you have discovered this the only remedy, obviously, is to abolish that cause.

Now we Socialists claim that the cause of poverty and of all the evils which arise from it lies in the fact that all the means whereby you live are owned and controlled by a section of society. These people not only own the factories, ships, mines, etc., but, by virtue of this fact, own your very lives. You are slaves—aye, worse! For you are doomed to watch your wives and children starve.

You are allowed, not to live, but merely to exist as profit making machines, because all the methods of getting a living are taken from you except that of placing yourself on the labour market. You are forced to sell your energies. So you go to the factory gate, the pit-head, or the office door in order to sell your labour power to the owner.

You ask for work, and when "hands'' are wanted  you are informed that you can go inside, you can use the machinery, and you can produce wealth—all on the condition that the wealth you produce belongs to the owners of the means and instruments by which you produce it. This is where the robbery takes place; this is the cause of poverty.

You receive only a fraction—from one-eighth to one third of what you yourselves have produced, which, generally speaking, is a bare sufficiency to keep you in a condition to continue to work.

Now it should be very plain that the cause of poverty is that you do not own the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution and are denied free access to them. Your masters, the owners, do not allow you to work except when they can make a profit out of you.

The cause of your poverty being the robbery by the master class of the wealth produced by the workers, the only remedy is to abolish that property condition which gives the master class the power to rob you—the private ownership of the means of living —and to introduce ownership by the whole people; to establish Socialism and produce wealth, not for the profit of a few useless "ladies and gentlemen” who would probably drop down dead if you were to tell them that to morrow they must start work, but for use—bread to feed you, houses to shelter you, and clothes to cover your bodies.

As to the second question—"How long will it be before Socialism is here?"—that rests with the working class themselves. They are the obstacle. When they have come to realise the need for Socialism, and to see that the road lies through the capture of the political machinery by an organised and class-conscious working class, when they have organised themselves in the political party of the workers—the Socialist Party—for the capture of this political machinery, then Socialism will be at hand.

N. E. Gwynn.