Letter: Socialists and Parliament (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

Having listened to many of your SPGB discussion tapes I think I broadly understand the Socialist Party perspective. However I still feel very unclear about the vexed question of social change and the agents by which the SPGB sees it coming about. I would be grateful if you could clarify matters for me.

The SPGB apparently favours a parliamentary road, but not a reformist one. It will be a revolution, through the mass vote of the people, which will install a majority of Socialist Party MPs. They will pass a single act which will restore ownership and control of the means of production to the people, and replace parliament by a body of delegates— presumably from communities and regions. They will be mandated to carry out the general will, which will be to establish socialism thereby abolishing classes. Is this broadly correct? If so, several questions come to mind:

1. Isn’t the SPGB position somewhat vanguardist, despite its ostensible rejection of vanguardism? I ask, because it seems that the Party sees its role as educational: to work out and communicate a theory and practice which the majority can learn and apply when they are ready to call for profound social change. At this time, would not the Party, in practice, have a leading position, showing people what to do: thus making it difficult to carry out its declared aim of disbanding and fading into the ranks?

2. How does this parliamentary revolution scenario stand up to the critique of such scenarios implicit in Chris Mullin's A Very British Coup? In that novel (as distinct from the more optimistic film version), I recall that the radical Labour Party was frustrated at every twist and turn by an international and national conspiracy on the part of the owners of the means of production, distribution and exchange. They used their economic and military power effectively to emasculate the nominal, political power of the elected government. In effect, nothing changed from what obtains today, except that the real power was more nakedly and forcefully exerted to put down revolution. And this is surely what would happen. Has the SPGB contemplated what would have to be done then to complete the transition to socialism? Does it envisage that the revolution would very quickly have to become extra-parliamentary, and possibly involve aggressive takeover of all the apparatus of real power? I can quite see the logic in the if-they-won’t-vote-for-it-they-won’t-fight- for-it maxim. But if they vote for it, will they then go on to fight for it if this becomes necessary?

3. Does the SPGB envisage any transitional stage when there might be some members elected as MPs, but not enough to form a majority? What would the strategy be? Would MPs have to behave strictly as delegates, or would they have latitude to develop a united parliamentary line for more effective opposition (effectively a whip)?

4. What is the view on how a mass desire for socialism will arise? I, myself, do not have much faith in a steady process of education and consciousness-raising as a trigger for social change. It will surely be material forces and events— perhaps a series of massive ecological disruptions, coupled with an immiseration of the third world proletariat beyond the point where they are willing to continue to be exploited by a first world bourgeoisie. (But the problem with this particular scenario, according to development expert Michael Redclift, is that third world people are already immiserated beyond the point where they would be likely to achieve revolutionary consciousness and take action). What do you think?

DAVID PEPPER, Oxford

Reply:

1. We do indeed say that the working class should use Parliament in the course of establishing socialism. But your summary of our position is not entirely accurate as it gives the impression that we think it will be the Socialist MPs who will establish socialism on behalf of an essentially passive even if socialist-minded majority outside Parliament. In actual fact our position is the reverse: it will be the socialist-minded and democratically self-organised working class outside Parliament who will establish socialism with the Socialist MPs as their passive instruments. The working class establishes socialism; the Socialist MPs are merely their delegates charged with carrying out certain formalities to try to ensure that the social revolution takes place in as coordinated and as peaceable a way as possible.

Similarly, although at present when there are so few socialists the role of a socialist party is essentially educational, when a majority or even a substantial minority come to want socialism its role will be transformed. There will be no separation between it and the working class since the socialist political party will be the working class organised politically for socialism.

2. Your question about a possible pro-capitalist coup is highly speculative but, yes, we have considered this. Basically, we think that such a coup would have no chance whatsoever of succeeding. Consider what an impending or actual socialist victory at the polls would mean. This would be a reflection of a desire for socialism but not by people who were prepared to do no more to get it than put an X on a ballot paper. It would reflect the determination to achieve socialism of an active majority, who would be organised at their places of work as well as on the political field.

In fact the existence of such a determined majority in itself could be expected to be a deterrent to any pro-capitalist putsch being attempted. But if such a putsch were to be staged then, clearly, the socialist majority would have to take steps to counter it. Obviously they could not, and would not, allow a usurping minority to thwart the majority will for socialism. How precisely to react would be up to the socialist movement to decide at the time in the light of the precise circumstances, but—since anyway we are in the realm of speculation here—it can be imagined that strikes and demonstrations would be organised and that in the armed forces (whose personnel would also have been influenced by the spread of socialist ideas) widespread defections and refusals to obey the usurping government would occur. The position of the putschists would be hopeless and would rapidly become untenable. The only way-out would be the very thing they sought to impede: the establishment of socialism. For once a majority want socialism nothing can prevent its establishment.

3. We have also considered the question of what a minority of Socialist MPs should do. In our view, their main task in Parliament would be to use it as a tribune to propagate socialist ideas; under no circumstances should they do deals or form alliances with non-socialist MPs; nor should they propose any reforms to capitalism. However, this need not preclude them voting for certain measures proposed by other MPs if the socialist movement outside Parliament judged doing so to be in the interest of the working class (safety and heath legislation, for instance). The Socialist MPs would at all times be answerable to the socialist working-class movement outside Parliament and be strictly mandated by it.

4. We agree with you that the "mass desire for socialism" is unlikely to arise solely from “a steady process of education and consciousness-raising”. What we say is that such campaigning for socialism will be an essential clement in the process of the emergence of majority socialist understanding. The other element will be the working-class discontent that is endemic to capitalism, and this is where “material forces and events” come in. You may be right that this could be a series of massive ecological disruptions. Or it could be a nuclear war. Or the growing dehumanization and break-down of social ties that capitalism is bringing about. Or even a particularly severe economic slump. Who knows? Who can know ?

Will the mass movement for socialism start amongst the working class in the so-called Third World? Maybe, but if it did it would not be able to succeed without spreading to the working class in the developed capitalist parts of the world. This is where the main productive resources which will allow humanity to overcome the problem of material scarcity and eliminate world hunger, poverty and disease are situated. The fate of the working class in the “Third World" is indissolubly tied to that of the working class in the "First World”.

EDITORS

Not Piffle but Propaganda for Capitalism (1974)

Book Review from the October 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Why We Need a Wealth Tax”, J. S. Fleming and I. M. D. Little; Methuen & Co. 34 pages, 45p.

The authors are described as two leading Oxford economists. Another economist, Mr. Patrick Hutber, in his Sunday Telegraph column (1st Sept. 1974) was moved to near-frenzy when he read it: “Little piffle”, “contemptible”, two dons "giving a passable imitation of the gaga”, and more to the same effect, By contrast the Sunday Times of the same date, while pointing to technical weaknesses, was more sympathetic and regarded it as “an important pamphlet, which could well have a big influence on public policy.”

The central idea is to make a tax on wealth a permanent major basis for raising government revenue, so arranged as to wipe out the very rich. The pamphlet was written before publication of the Labour Government’s “Wealth Tax” and “Gift Tax” proposals. In an interview Professor Little stated that there is nothing in the Government’s proposals that would make them want to alter their much more comprehensive scheme (Financial Times, 2nd. Sept. 1974).

The issue between the authors and Mr. Huther is a simple one. They argue that “in a progressive mixed society” (their nonsensical name for capitalism) “some clever, lucky, efficient individuals have to be allowed to become rather rich. But they do not have to be extremely rich — say, with over £250,000.” Mr. Hutber won’t have this at all: he thinks that millionaires are good for us: “It is better to have 300 new millionaires, and old age pensioners receiving £20 a week, than strict equality and a basic pension of £10.”

While Fleming and Little would not make “the accumulation of wealth more difficult” below the £250,000 level, they would start their tax with 1½% or 2% on £21,000 (at 1974 prices) rising at higher levels to 20%. Their case for having the possibility of accumulating wealth is the old argument of all the capitalist economists, that it provides “incentive” and thus increases the production of wealth “for the community”. (Those who are interested in political curiosities may like to compare the Fleming- Little scheme with that advocated by the Communist Party of Great Britain in its 1970 Election Manifesto: “The introduction of a wealth tax. By taxing all fortunes over £20.000 at an average rate of 3% . . .”)

Much heat will be generated about schemes to plunder the rich or very rich, whether from Fleming- Little, the Labour Party, the Communist Party, or any other would-be reformers of capitalism, but from the working-class and Socialist point of view it is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Socialism is not a scheme to redistribute wealth and poverty under capitalism, but to get rid of capitalism. The working class are exploited by the capitalist class, no less by the “small but progressive businessman” whom the authors want to help than by the tycoons who stand to lose. 

Workers should avoid falling into the trap of supposing that because particular politicians come under fierce attack from some capitalists, what they advocate must be in the interests of the working class. Some of the greatest friends of capitalism and enemies of the working class, for example Lloyd George, Roosevelt, Ramsay MacDonald, have come under the fiercest denunciation from capitalist backwoodsmen who had not the wit to see what was really happening.

This is where Fleming and Little come in. They are not seeking to undermine capitalism but to prop it up. They see the resentment aroused by super-fortunes as a danger to capitalism. They want to dope the workers into accepting capitalism. They hold that “anything tending to lead to greater industrial concentration is undesirable and inimical to capitalism in the long run”. In the interests of capitalism as a whole they want to sacrifice the millionaires.

Of course, with the normal blindness of their kind, they never even consider the possibility that capitalism should be replaced by Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

A not very secret service (2000)

Book Review from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

'MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations', by Stephen Dorril. (Fourth Estate, London 2000. 907 pages)

Even before this book had been put on sale in bookshops, review copies had given rise to considerable controversy. Towards the end of MI6 (p.722), Dorril asserts:

"Another MI6 catch was ANC leader Nelson Mandela. Whether Mandela was recruited in London before he was imprisoned in South Africa is not clear, but it is understood that on a recent trip to London he made a secret visit to MI6's training section to thank the Service for its help in foiling two assassination attempts directed against him soon after he became President."

No source is, however, given for the statement. According to the Guardian (23 March), Mandela "reacted angrily to a claim" that he had been recruited as a British "agent of influence"; and he added that "he had never visited the headquarters of any intelligence service". Christopher Andrew in his review of Dorril's book (Times, 30 March) also dismisses the claim that MI6 recruited Mandela. In a letter to the Guardian (24 March), Stephen Dorril's weak reply was "there is nothing implausible in the idea that someone such as Nelson Mandela might have been recruited", as he states in his book with regard to a number of African nationalist leaders.

There is, however, little in MI6 on Africa. As the author says in his Preface, "the prime focus is the European continent, and some areas of the Service's operations and intelligence-gathering, principally in South-East Asia and Africa, are not dealt with in any great detail". The author does detail areas of the Middle-East, as MI6 had the dubious task of subverting, and overthrowing governments and organisations who nationalised or threatened British-owned oil fields and supply routes. Furthermore, although the book describes "fifty years of special operations" by MI6, it largely concentrates on the period between the end of the Second World War, and about 1970, when technological surveillance began to take over from HUMIT (human spies).

Within a very short time following the Second World War, the "allies" fell out, the Soviet Union began to consolidate its control over eastern Europe, and the "Cold War" began. MI6 was more than ready to carry out orders to combat and "roll back" what was erroneously called "communism" in the area. It was soon sending spies and saboteurs into Poland, and particularly western Ukraine. Almost all of these, as Dorril demonstrates, were Ukrainian nationalists who had collaborated with, or fought for, Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union. Most were captured within days by the KGB. Both Conservative and Labour administrations were involved in such activities.

In Greece MI6, supported by Labour foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, backed the right-wing Monarchists; and MI6, together with the CIA, sent scores of agents and saboteurs into Albania over a number of years. Few of them survived or returned to the West. Dorril recounts in considerable detail the, by now well-known, joint-MI6/CIA campaign to overthrow Mohammed Mossadeq, the Iranian Prime Minister who nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. They were successful, but the United States was playing a double game. Anglo-Iranian which changed its name to British Petroleum (BP), was left with 40 percent, and the American corporations got the rest. Stephen Dorril's book also recounts in detail MI6's assassination attempts against Egypt's President Nasser, following his nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956. Such attempts were both sinister and bizarre. Some of MI6's "special operations" were successful; many were not, but all were carried out in the interests, not of democracy but of British capitalism.

With MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations containing almost 900 pages of reading matter, and being divided into seven sections, the reader gets about half-a-dozen books for the price of one. In the main, the book is well-sourced.

Dorril suggests that "given a work of this size", the reader might wish to "dip into a particular area of interest". A good idea. Inevitably, being the size it is, there are errors in MI6. It would be surprising if there were not.

Peter E. Newell

Housing: An Anarchist Approach (1976)

Book Review from the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Housing: An Anarchist Approach by Colin Ward. Freedom Press, £1.25.

This is a collection of articles by the former editor of Anarchy, published between 1945 and 1957: some in anarchist journals, others in architects’ and planning publications. They are informative, and the book can be read as a survey of the housing situation in Britain over the past thirty years. None of the problems has dated, of course. Like the motif of Cathy Come Home, which last month was repeated on television ten years after its original showing, they are still crying out as hopelessly as ever.

The difficulty about the book is in its title. “An anarchist approach” implies that other anarchists would take different views, even opposite ones (the cover describes Colin Ward as a well-known authority, which may well have given some anarchists apoplexy). In fact the approach is a liberal-type reformist one, full of suggestions to the Housing Minister, local councils, and architects’ associations. The book ends with an advocacy of “dweller control”. Though earlier chapters enthuse about the squatter movements of 1946 and 1968 as examples of direct action, in a 1974 article the writer expresses doubt whether seizure of housing is a practical thing to advocate: 

It would certainly save a lot of tedious calculation if we could count on tenant militancy to do the trick, but the possibility, short of a revolutionary situation, is not great. It did not need Clay Cross to demonstrate that in view of the powers of the district auditor and of central government over housing, it needs more than local direct action to win.

The “tenant take-over” advocated comes down, therefore, to self-management under government supervision, or a variation on the principles of the Co-operative Society.

The chapters under the heading “Self Help” give accounts of “cities the poor build” in Latin America, and the shanty-bungalow towns of the Laindon-Pitsea area, in Essex. As Colin Ward says, building regulations and land prices have made sure there won’t be any more of these. He argues that they could provide the guidelines for “a desirable experiment”, helped by the government, to solve the housing problem. Helped by the government, we can guess what it would turn out like. However, these settlements indicate something much more important. If a housing shortage were discovered in Socialist society, it would not constitute a “housing problem”: without the pressures of cost and economic policies, people can create homes and communities anywhere.

As it is, the housing problem in capitalism is neither a shortage nor an architectural poser. It is from first to last an aspect of the poverty problem: huge numbers of the working class are either badly housed or not housed at all because they are workers, their lives’ aspirations bound and gagged by wages. That state of affairs can only be remedied by abolishing the wage-system and establishing Socialism.

Robert Barltrop

A Modern Parable (1948)

A Short Story from the May 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

There once lived a man, Proletarius by name. He had a bicycle, which was old and therefore had many faults. Whenever Proletarius rode it, he crashed and suffered considerable pain in consequence.

These mishaps induced him to try to solve the problem produced by the faulty nature of his bicycle. He saw a friend, Socialist by name, who knew something about bicycles. He explained to Proletarius that it was old and would not stand much more wear and tear. Socialist said he was unable to do anything himself and explained to Proletarius the need for a new machine. He added that only Proletarius himself is in a position to select his new bicycle and must therefore acquire a sound knowledge of them.

But Proletarius, although he worked very hard for his employer and was always ready to help his wife at home and spent hours toiling arduously in his back garden, was mentally lazy. He was unwilling to acquire new ideas and to get a new bicycle.

So he called at “ Reforms Cycle Repairs Co., Ltd.,” whose proprietor was called Leader. Leader said to him, “Entrust your bicycle to me and I will give it the general overhauling it needs. It will run well enough after I have straightened the front wheel and tightened the screws." After a week Proletarius called for his bicycle, paid Leader the price he charged and found his machine running fairly smoothly.

Soon, however, the screws began to fall out again. Proletarius weighed the matter up and thought, "I have chosen the wrong shop; they cheated me. 'Pseudo-Communistus,' who owns the 'Left-wing,' is a kind man and I trust him to do the job properly for me." He had new screws fixed on and the bicycle ran fairly smoothly for a few days. Meanwhile the brakes had become rusty and failed to perform their function. So when he went down hill his brakes failed; he crashed and broke his neck.

His brother, “Revolutionary," inherited his bicycle. But he knew something about bicycles and realised that the machine he had inherited was too old and worn out for further use. He heeded the lesson he learned from his brother’s experience and realised the need for a new bicycle.

And the various bicycle merchants heard of this and offered him the various makes they had in stock. They offered "Jingoism and Red Herrings, Unlimited," "Demagogy" and "Superstition." They used the press, wireless and the screen to advertise their wares.

But “Revolutionary" examined them and realised they were extremely cranky machines. Knowing something about bicycles, he did not need anyone’s advice, and selected his new bicycle himself, in accordance with his wishes, which coincided with his requirements.

Henceforward he had no bicycle troubles.

F. T.

Lansbury: A Figure of the Past (1940)

From the June 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the death of George Lansbury there has gone from the Labour Movement a figure of unusual character. There has passed out a type that will have no place in the future history of the Labour Party. The times that found a place for him have passed away. The necessities of the movement in which he was an impressive personality demand men of a different mould. The world in which we live has driven and will continue to drive that “movement” to place its leadership in the hands of men more able and of opportunistic Inclinations.

Lansbury’s life and work measures to some extent the progress and the place of the Labour Party in the history of the working class. He began his political career before the Labour Party was formed. As a youth, in the early ’eighties he was associated with the radical reform section of the Liberal Party. It was in this period that Lansbury announced his conversion to “ Socialism.” It is said that the conversion took place when, canvassing an East London constituency as a Liberal agent, a door was opened in response to his knocks by a woman whose only clothing was improvised from old sacks. It must be said, however, that this story circulated among those wags of East End workers who were mildly derisive of "Lansburyism.” His early career was devoted to local political activities. The Social Democrat (1900), in a biographical sketch, describes Lansbury fiercely contesting a Guardians election on a programme which included the abolition of skilly in the workhouse and the provision of shirts and drawers for the inmates. Lansbury’s “conversion” led him to the S.D.F. In 1894 he fought an election under their auspices and polled 207 votes: a somewhat ironic commentary on the “Marxist” character of the S.D.F. of the time. Lansbury has been described as a Socialist in the St. Simon tradition. This cannot be substantiated. The St. Simonites produced operative schemes. Lansbury affected a breezy disregard for plans and the details of policy. His last book, “The Way to Peace,” contains a phrase which was the keynote of his approach to all questions. He appeals to all who could adopt "broad principles of action and leave the general plan and details” to look after themselves. It was characteristic of Lansbury and led him to association with all sorts of hole-and-corner reformers and movements with a mission. To Lansbury it was sufficient to possess the urge and the fervour to put the world right.

Lansbury’s “principles of action” were so broad that his activities gained support from the most diverse quarters. He was one of those few Labour leaders whom those masters of scurrilous invective, the official Communists, refrained from attacking. He was "dear Mr. Lansbury” to thousands in the drawing rooms of the minor gentry. He was a lay preacher in the Church of England, and though of the High Church persuasion he was unique in that his broad principles straddled the gaps between the High, Low, and the Broad sections of the English Church, just as they managed to straddle the apparent extremes in the politics of the Labour Movement. Each section could claim Lansbury for its own. In his books, on the platform, in the pulpit, Lansbury preached a mixture of Christian Humanism and politics that could not be identified as anything particular. It was “Lansburyism.” Gossip (possibly originating among the sardonic unbelievers) had it that Lansbury, in his earlier days as a public figure, was a member of the free-thinking National Secular Society! The story may be false. But it could quite conceivably be true. What could there be in the “broad principles” of Lansburyism that could not approve the ethical principles and the human object of the N.S.S.? If Lansbury swallowed the S.D.P. without qualm or consciousness of inconsistency, then the N.S.S. pill needed no sugar. It would be pointless to argue Lansbury's sincerity. Where the capacity for self- delusion is so complete and rides unchecked there can be no test for sincerity. It is meaningless. It says something, perhaps, for the character of the man that he could address a hard-bitten audience of workers on strike in the soul-saving language of the Salvationist without embarrassment to himself or to his audience.

By all reasonable standards George Lansbury should have been shocked by the militant atheism and the methods of the Bolshevist regime. He was not shocked. He visited Russia and talked with Lenin, saw the baby creches, and came back and wrote an eulogy of Russia. He only saw what he wanted to see. According to the “broad principles” and contempt for “details” which constituted Lansburyism sufficient was it that the will to change things existed. Of the historic significance of the Russian movement it would be flattering to Lansbury to assume that he understood anything about it.

His services to the Labour Party were among that Party’s assets in the formative period of the movement. The needs of the early Labour Party demanded missionary zeal and ability, not the qualities of the administrator. Lansbury fulfilled the need and without doubt made many thousands of sympathisers for the Labour Party in the days when (curious thought) it had to make efforts to break down the opposition from the prejudiced and the respectable. His zeal for causes brought a great deal of advertisement to himself and to the Labour Party. In the earlier days this was not unwelcome, to the latter, though in later years it brought a priggish rebuke for “Poplarism” from the pompous MacDonald. In 1912 he resigned his parliamentary seat in the Bow and Bromley division of Poplar and refought it on the Suffragette issue. He lost it. Despite his temperament he was not without shrewdness. On private support he managed to run the Daily Herald independently of the official Labour Party until it was taken over by Odhams and the T.U.C. Against it in pre-1914 years the official organ of the Labour Party, the Citizen, failed to survive. In 1932, by accident, because almost all the leaders of the Labour Party had lost their seats in the landslide against them in the election of 1931, he became the Party’s parliamentary leader. His reign was short. Political and international developments were driving the Labour Party into support for war and into conflict with Lansbury’s pacifism. After a brutal speech by Bevin accusing him of “hawking his conscience from conference to conference,” Lansbury lost the leadership. He was finished. And out went another leader. Another cruel lesson was driven home to him and to thousands who accepted his standards—the lesson that events mould men and movements despite their will.

The Labour Party will have little need or scope for future Lansburys. It will need men of a different calibre to attempt to prevent the disintegration which the future holds for it.

If Lansbury’s life teaches anything it teaches the futility of the reformism which was not only his but was the essential doctrine of the Labour Party. After half a century of fervent reformist zeal he left the world with a working class facing all the old problems existing more intense and numerous than ever.

Labourism and reformism, of which Lansbury was the embodiment, will be as ineffectual in facing those problems in the future as Lansbury’s peace talks with Hitler were in preventing the war.

Harry Waite

Letter: Lenin - "Shoot the idlers" (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

Yes indeed, Lenin did say, "One out of every ten idlers will be shot on the spot" (Gary Cubbage's letter, June Socialist Standard). This is from his "How to Organise Competition" written in December 1917, well before Stalin or the market economy of the NEP had provided Trotskyist excuses. It is also quoted in the article, "Lenin & Blanqui, Victims of Self-Deception” in the Nov/Dec 1984 issue of “Socialist Comment” journal of the WSPA.

In researching that article and checking through the three volumes of the Moscow edition of Lenin's Selected Works, I was struck by the numerous times that Lenin made statements that differed depending on the type of audience. One of the most significant is his address to the Conference of Political Education Workers in 1920 admitting that it is a “utopian view that workers are ready for socialism” contrasting with his more optimistic statements to a wider audience.

This demonstrates the opportunism forced on leaders trying to capture and hold onto power, and to influence events in the face of working class lack of understanding, cooperation and support. And the Russian working class was, in addition, a minority class.

Of course, if majority understanding existed it would negate the need for leaders anyway and change the whole concept of the revolutionary capture of political power and its implications, and to come back to Gary's letter, also of the question of 'the lazy man'.

Latter-day Leninist parties have learned little from Lenin's experience as revealed in his writings, of trying to deal with those problems to which he, his tactics and his hopes ultimately succumbed. A few months before his death, a disillusioned Lenin admitted, 'we lack enough civilisation to enable us to pass straight on to socialism”. Coining a new confusing definition of the system in Russia, he bemoaned the fact that “Not a single book has been written about state capitalism under communism. It did not occur even to Marx to write a word on this subject; and he died without leaving a single precise statement or definite instruction on it”. Why Marx should have written instructions for running state capitalism Lenin doesn't say.

In thus finally, and perhaps unwittingly acknowledging the vast gap between his and Marx's concept of a post-capitalist revolutionary society, Lenin also gives the lie to those of his followers who hold the opposite view - that they corresponded.

Lenin's life should be read as a cautionary tale by would-be revolutionaries, although it could provide a few drastic pointers to those seeking to organise competition.

Yours fraternally,

William Robertson

Bothies: Any Volunteers? (2017)

From the May 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

When socialists introduce our fellow-workers to the concept of common ownership, of making work voluntary, we frequently meet with the response, 'It's all very well but it can’t happen in practice'. This often makes socialists rock back on our heels with surprise because we can see all around us where the principles of cooperation and mutual aid are applied by ordinary folk with a shared need.

A 'bothy' was traditionally a building constructed for the accommodation of farm or estate workers. However, these days it means a building used as shelter for hill-walkers and climbers, mostly in remote areas. The Mountain Bothies Association (MBA) maintains about 100 shelters across Great Britain. These shelters are unlocked and are available for anyone to use. The maintenance and upkeep is carried out by volunteers.  Users are asked to follow a 'bothy code' which prohibits the use of the buildings by commercial groups, for example by guided tours or adventure holidays although they are free to use the bothies as a lunch shelter or in the event of a genuine emergency. It is only profit-seeking commercial groups that abuse this. As the BMA complained in a statement last August:

'There have been incidents when legitimate bothy users have been made to feel unwelcome, inconvenienced or even refused entry when commercial groups have been in residence. Our volunteers who maintain the bothies, not unreasonably, feel aggrieved to know that their hard work is contributing to the profits of a business that probably does not support our organisation in any way.'

As one user explained "Of course, not everyone is going to be your new best pal, and there are people who simply prefer to keep their own company, but the one thing you should be able to rely on from a bothy companion is trustworthiness and mutual assistance. I've both given and received advice in bothies, shared someone's last teabag and seen a drookit (drenched) traveller clad for the night in bits and pieces of several others' dry clothes while his own hung in front of the fire. In a bothy you really are all in it together".

Also we should not ignore how ramblers and mountaineers rely upon mountain rescue volunteers in an emergency. Rescue teams give up their time to provide a free service to people who request assistance. Volunteers save lives and are available 24/7, 365 days a year, in all weather conditions. Some suggest that in socialism unpleasant and dangerous jobs would be avoided but there never seems to be any lack of volunteers for mountain rescue.

And who would willingly place themselves in a life-threatening position? Well, lifeboat crews of the non-state organisation, the RNLI, voluntarily and without recompense risk their lives in storms at sea for the welfare of others and the common good of society. And there exists a waiting list of suitable applicants to join it, so recruitment is not a problem.

Kropotkin, the author of Mutual Aid, pointed out:

'The crew of a lifeboat do not ask whether the men of a distressed ship are entitled to be rescued at a risk of life... One of the noblest achievements of our century is undoubtedly the Lifeboat Association. Since its first humble start, it has saved no less than thirty-two thousand human lives. It makes appeal to the noblest instincts of man; its activity is entirely dependent upon devotion to the common cause, while its internal organisation is entirely based upon the independence of the local committees'. (Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles).

One thing we don't require to be told is people's capacity to organise self-help in support of each another. Along with many other charities these are affirmations of our humanity.

ALJO.

Obituary: Death of L. Jones (1947)

Obituary from the May 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to have to report the death on April 5th of comrade Lew Jones of Leyton Branch, at the early age of 33. Comrade Jones joined the Party in 1933, and soon showed his all-round capacity and single-minded devotion to the Socialist cause. He studied hard to gain knowledge, and steadily applied himself to becoming a speaker and writer. His quiet and persuasive manner and his care for accuracy of statement made him a very effective propagandist in speech and in writing. He was secretary of the Branch for many years and treasurer until his death. He gave great help in editorial work and for a few weeks this year he was working as part-time assistant to the editorial committee, but owing to a worsening of his health during the recent spell of bitterly cold weather, he regretfully had to give it up. During the war, while working on the land to which he had been directed by a Conscientious Objector Tribunal, he contracted pleurisy.

He was refused a medical certificate and had to continue digging ditches in spite of his condition. As a result tuberculosis developed and he was very ill for the two years before his death. It was only towards the end of 1946 that he was reported to be sufficiently recovered to resume light work. In spite of the further relapse he was looking forward eagerly to resuming activities in a few weeks and his great concern was that his illness should have interfered with his work. In the last few days before he died he was working on an article. The Socialist movement has lost a fine and valuable comrade.

We express our sympathy with his family.

They Never Had It So Good In 1860 (1962)

From the February 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pick up any governmental speech, or article in the newspapers, on the subject of strikes and it is an even chance that a dividing line will be drawn between the “bad old days” when strikes were legitimate and the present time when strikes are said to be unnecessary, useless, dangerous and immoral. Nowadays, they will say, the workers are well off and don’t need to strike; and what is more, “the country” is in such a precarious state that strikes will lose markets for British goods and cause suffering all-round, to the strikers among others.

It is a seductive line but not at all persuasive when you realise that the same arguments were being advanced back in "the bad old days” of a century ago, as may be seen in the Quarterly Review, which in 1860 published an unsigned article on strikes, with particular reference to Papers on strikes read to the British Association in 1838 and 1854.

It started off with some splendid blarney about what a fine worker the Englishman was and how French peasants at Rouen, seeing English railway builders for the first time, gaped in wonder and admiration at the energy, the dexterity and the vast output, (It is possible, of course, that the translator was at fault and that the bench peasants were really saying "did you ever see such clots? ”).

The next thought of the writer in the Quarterly was that it was only right that such magnificent workers should be "liberally remunerated" and receive "a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work.” He was not, however leading up to the theme that workers ought to be paid more but that they were already being paid enough:

  At no previous period has so large a number of skilled workmen received higher wages, and in no country are they able to live more comfortably upon the proceeds of their toil, if we except only those new colonies in which land is unusually abundant. There never was a time when skill and diligence received more general encouragement, or in which there was a greater disposition to do honour to the lot of the labour.

Not only were workers well off, but look at the chances they had of becoming really wealthy: “It is notorious that many of our most successful employers, and some of our largest capitalists have sprung directly from the working class . . ."

There never had been such working class affluence, indeed, the writer clearly thought it had been a bit overdone. ’’Will it be believed that the annual earnings of many families engaged in the cotton manufacture amount to more than the average incomes of the clergy of England?"

And London engineering workers were getting more than "the whole body of dissenting Ministers": iron workers being paid as much as an army captain with ten years’ service: and other workers with a larger income "than falls to the lot of most professional men." The figures given for these Staffordshire "ball-furnace men” were £300 to £400 a year (“when trade is brisk”). At current prices this would be equivalent to between £1,500 and £2,000: “Yet the houses of these favoured labourers are scenes of disgusting untidiness and squalor.”

But in 1860, as now, all was not well. The affluent workers did not always appreciate their good fortune, or understand how easily it could be destroyed. Some of them formed unions and came out on strike, whereas if well advised they would have been abstemious, saved money and joined the ranks of the capitalists.

If these workers came out on strike they were, said the writer, flying in the face of all experience because, as he sought to show with lots of examples, all strikes are either defeated or else they gain only temporary victory or they drive trade into the hands of foreign rivals. (He omitted to explain how the French could capture English markets in view of his quoted evidence that one Englishman did as much work as eight Frenchmen).

He summed up his arguments about the futility of strikes with the declaration: “Indeed there is not an instance of any extensive strike, no matter how well organised and supported, having ended otherwise then in suffering and defeat to the workmen.”

But he was not at all confident that workers would be convinced by what he thought he had proved. He feared that though you might prove "by political economy" that strikes were useless, some workers just would not be convinced. He quoted the case of a trade unionist who “boldly declared in Hyde Park"—"If political economy is against us, then we are against political economy! ”

There were other workers trying to resist machinery—he noted in passing that the workers were often encouraged to do this by rival employers.

It was all there, just like today, and not forgetting the final gentle admonishment to the employers:

   At the same time, employers ought not to stand too strongly upon their rights, nor entrench themselves too exclusively within the circle of their own order. Frankness and cordiality will win working men’s hearts, and a ready explanation will often remove misgivings and dissatisfaction. Were there more trust and greater sympathy between classes, there would be less disposition to turn out on the part of men and a more accommodating spirit on the part of masters.

Edgar Hardcastle

Capitalism against apartheid (1987)

Book Review from the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism and Apartheid. South Africa 1910-1986. by Merle Lipton (Wildwood House. 1986). 

Defining capitalism as what we would call private capitalism, Merle Lipton argues in this well-documented book that capitalists (both private capital in South Africa and international capital with investments there) do not want, and never really did want, apartheid. In particular they do not want its application to the labour market (job reservation for whites, pass laws for blacks), seeing it as a costly and cumbersome brake on capital accumulation.

Lipton makes the point, however, that it would be a mistake to see capital in South Africa as a monolithic bloc with a single interest: different sections of the capitalist class have different interests and in the beginning some sections did support some aspects of apartheid:

   Capitalists in SA have never been unanimously or wholeheartedly in favour of apartheid. During the first half of this century, the economically and politically more important farmers and mine-owners supported some major apartheid policies, which the less important manufacturing and commercial capitalists had less interest in or opposed. Over time, particularly since the mid-1960s, opposition to apartheid increased among all capitalists, particularly those in the fast-growing manufacturing and commercial sectors.

Today most sections of the capitalist class in South Africa are opposed to apartheid. Thus in 1975 the then President of the Chamber of Mines. A.W.S. Schuman. said "aside from the human rights argument — the right of a worker to sell his labour on the best market — I doubt whether we can afford restrictions which prevent the market from finding in a capitalist fashion its own level and a sound balance between supply and demand", while the Natal Sugar Farmers declared in evidence to a government enquiry in 1977 that "workers should be allowed free labour movement and choice of employer . . .  no undue restrictions should be placed on the right of employers to employ whom they like . . . the abolishing of the present system of restrictive legislation and the encouragement of a free system of competition in an open labour market will ensure better utilisation of available manpower".

But the demands of the South African capitalists go beyond merely instituting a free labour market in South Africa. They want, as a logical development of this, to give the black urban working class that has emerged a permanent stable situation. As Lipton puts it. speaking of the 1970s:

   Increasingly, urban businessmen wanted their workers to have a stake in society, to live with their families in their own homes, and to be well supplied with shops, amenities, and entertainment. They believed this would reduce black turnover and increase competition for white jobs, and also make for a less explosive situation and a more contented black working and middle class, enjoying higher standards of consumption and providing a larger domestic market for their goods.

But even this would not be enough for the logic of capitalism in South Africa:

    The strategy pursued by capital in response to black unrest therefore went beyond a reformist welfare programme; even when it did not explicitly embrace political reform, it envisaged a restructuring of society that involved a shift from the hierarchical racial structure to a class structure, which would be difficult to reconcile with separate political rights.

This case for a non-racial capitalism in South Africa (which Merle Lipton herself supports) has of course been consistently put over the years by Harry Oppenheimer. until recently chairman of the giant Anglo-American Corporation and by MP Helen Suzman, author Alan Paton and others, and is now explicitly advocated by the main white opposition party, the Progressive Federal Party. 

But if, as is the case, South Africa is a capitalist country and if, as is also the case, apartheid conflicts with the interests of capital, why was apartheid introduced and why does it still exist? Here historical and political, and not merely economic, factors must be taken into account to explain that, although the capitalist class is the economically dominant class in South Africa it has not (except for two brief periods in the 1920s and 1940s) and still does not exercise complete political control.

The political party which has had an iron grip on state power since 1948 - the National Party - came to power as the representative of backward sections of the owning class in South Africa, in particular Boer farmers, with the support of poor white Afrikaner workers in the towns, mobilised under the banner of anti-English, anti-black and anti semitic Afrikaner nationalism. The NP used its control of political power to codify and legally enforce the already existing social and residential segregation (racial classification, ban on mixed marriages, separate facilities, etc), but also to try to go further and impose an economic segregation by preventing the emergence of a permanent African urban working class.

Naturally this eventually failed since, although political power can slow down for a while the economic changes that capitalism brings (in this case, the emergence of a permanent African urban working class) it cannot hold them up indefinitely. All that the vicious NP governments of the 1950s and 1960s were able to do was, at enormous human cost, to put the clock back for a while. Eventually, even within Afrikaner nationalism, an openly pro-capitalist wing emerged, based on the modem Afrikaner capitalist class that had developed with investments in mining, manufacturing and commerce and not just agriculture. These exerted pressure for "reform" for the abandoning of economic apartheid (ending the job colour bar. relaxing the pass laws, granting property and voting rights to urban Africans, and so on) which recent NP governments have accepted and implemented. The current state President. P W Botha, is in fact a representative of this verligtes ("enlightenened") wing of Afrikaner nationalism.

The next step which the South African government is sooner or later going to be obliged to take will be the granting of political rights to Africans at national level. Botha has already conceded this in principle but, as Merle Lipton explains in the last part of her book and as is evidenced by the daily news bulletins, he has certain political difficulties in managing an orderly transition towards it. When it happens this will represent the end of the attempt, so costly in terms of additional human misery, to impose a colour bar inherited from colonial times on a modem capitalist economy. But the non-racial capitalist regime that would then emerge would still leave working class problems unsolved. It would merely mean that South Africa would have caught up historically with the rest of the modern capitalist world.

Adam Buick

Drum (1957)

From the September 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a recent edition of the magazine Drum, published in Accra, in the new state of Ghana, edited by Mr. Drum and claiming the “Biggest Sale in Africa.”

What is it like, this paper of the rising continent? Is there anything fresh about it? Hardly. Here are all the well-known features of the less-respected and therefore well-established British journals. Consider the advertisements. A Negro woman applies, with a fetching smile, the same brand of skin cream as a million budding English roses. Successful men (Negroes, sitting at many-telephoned desks) underline their success with the right shoe polish. And here is the father and wife and picaninnies, beaming vigorously and full of a popular laxative. Detergents and blood tonics jostle on the page with disinfectants and pep-pills.

There is an interesting article alleging the existence of slavery on the Spanish-held island of Fernando Po, in the Gulf of Guinea. This article reproduces a poster issued by the Anglo-Spanish Employment Agency, which promises a life of sophisticated leisure on Fernando Po. the poster sketches a Negro in traditional pukka-sahib garb, complete with topee and carrying an umbrella! A few pages are taken up with a chillingly meticulous description of the procedure followed in executions in James Fort Prison, Accra, including pictures of a doctor and a priest leaving just after a hanging. There are comic strips (one of them about a Negro boxer taking on a Chinaman in, of all places, Switzerland), some tit-bits, jokes, and a mystery story. 

A heartbreak column is run by Dolly. A young man complains that his girl-friend drinks heavily, swears at him, has secret love affairs. Dolly's advice, If the girl is given to having secret affairs, forget her, . . .  as such a situation is not a desirable one” To a teacher who has fallen for one of his pupils she says: “To have an affair with one of your pupils would be abusing your position. Maybe when she has completed, yes. ” And there is the usual heavily guarded reply to the anonymous, desperate one whose problem cannot be discussed in the column, but who had better tell her mother.

Many African nationalists think that the developing independent states of Africa will throw up some vague and far-described moral and cultural superiority over their European counterparts. Drum gives the lie to that. Apart from the black faces and crinkly hair of its illustrations, it would not be out of place in the hands of any typist on the rush-hour tube to the West End. Capitalism always must fill the workers’ leisure with the inferior and shoddy, for to encourage them to think is dangerous. Hence the growth of die trash-press in this and other countries.

Now capitalism, lured by the markets and minerals, is developing in Africa. The markets it will exploit and the minerals develop. It will bring industrial organisation and the harsh, acquisitive sophistication that we in England know so well. That is in the future. For the present, if a reading of Drum is any guide, it has already brought, among other things, constipation and rheumatism, indigestion and neurasthenia.

Ivan.

Odds and Ends: The Workers’ Paradise in Russia (1957)

The Odds and Ends column from the May 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Workers’ Paradise in Russia

When a Communist or Communist-dominated delegation visits the Soviet Union they generally publish a report containing much praise and wonderment at the marvels of the Moscow Underground, the Kremlin Palace, the Church of St. Basil, and the new Moscow University building; but they say very little about the life—and living conditions—of the ordinary workers and peasants of Russia. When a non-Communist delegation visits the Soviet Union the position is often reversed.

Last year an official Mineworkers’ delegation went to Russia. They have just published their report, summarised in the Manchester Guardian (15/3/57). They visited Moscow and a number of other towns, where they found that “an average of sixteen people are housed in a living space equal to a British council house.”

They report that hours of work exceed those worked in the mining industry in Britain; and “women in the Soviet Union are in many cases required to do work that is the hardest of manual work—to work in the pits, to do the heaviest types of jobs, including the handling of heavy materials and the mixing of concrete on the surface.”

And this the Communists call “Socialism.” Some Socialism!

Smash ’em up!

Socialists have always claimed that things are not produced to satisfy people’s needs, or to last long—if it can be helped. Most things today are cheap and shoddy. But if it was not for the fact that things are produced primarily for profit, some things if desired, could last virtually for ever. For example. The New Scientist (14/3/57) brings us an interesting story about glass—and tableware.

A leading glass manufacturer is producing some tableware which is very strong: plates can be crashed together like cymbals, and nails knocked into wood with the bottom of a glass with little or no damage done. But, continues the New Scientist, even stronger glasses and plates could be produced. But this would be uneconomical for the producers.

During the last war drinking glasses used by the American marines had a life of only seven trips to and from the kitchen. A specially strengthened glass was then produced which lasted nearly one hundred trips. But, alas, the manufacturers found this unprofitable. Eventually, a glass was made toughened only round the rim which lasted an average of twenty-three trips. Such are the workings of our present society. A sane society would produce glassware—and everything else—solely for people's use. because they wanted it; and only the best would be made.

The Perversion of Science

It has often been claimed that scientific discovery and development is misused and perverted in our modern capitalist society. The following passage from The New Scientist (14/3/57) bears this out.

  "In Europe, the search for better navigational methods arose from the desire for trading and from the warfare that ensued. Harrison's famous chronometer, which he perfected in the eighteenth century, was made in order to win an Admiralty prize of £20,000 for a method of determining longitude at sea. Even today progress in navigation is usually to meet military needs, and now it is the development of guided missiles which is throwing up the commercial navigation of the future."

Calypsos Next?

According to the people who are supposed to know—in Archer Street and Fleet Street—Rock 'n' Roll is on the way out, and the Calypso is in. But, so far, those who have cashed in on “Rock”—Tommy Steele, Winnie Atwell and others—are still “coining the loot,” and very few Calypsos have been heard yet on the radio. This writer does not think that the Calypso will be such a money-maker as Rock Y Roll with its simpler beat and lyric, its noise and gimmicks. Anyway, if the Calypso is going to take the place of Rock 'n' Roll it will have to be “cleaned up” a bit, since many of its lyrics are hardly suitable for the B.B.C., or the record companies. For example, “Chinese Children Calling Me Daddy”:—

“Since I am small I am living with women
And all I can get from them is false children.
Some with blue eyes and some like Chinese,
Any kind of child my girl make she stick me.
But I'm waiting on her patiently.
Its about ten months now she aim't kissed me.
And you know the bold-faced woman is telling me.
Any kind of child that born in my house. I'm the daddy.
I'm so ashamed I don't tell nobody
Chinese children calling me daddy.
You know my mother does want to beat me when
Chinese children calling me daddy.
For I black as jet and she just like Tar Baby, still
Chinese children calling me daddy.
Left, right, in front and behind,
Chinese children calling me daddy. ”

For the time being it looks as though we shall be stuck with Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog or Bill Haley's Don't Knock the Rock. There's more money in it; and it won't upset anyone's moral susceptibilities!

The Church and Socialism

In Britain only about 10 per cent. of the population regularly go to Church, although many more say they believe in some sort of a god or Creator, whereas in the United States about 60 per cent. are Churchgoers. The American workers, it seems, are more superstitious than their British counterparts. But even in Britain, one Church—the Catholic Church—claims 3,000,000 members (including the backsliders?). All the various Christian churches and sects oppose Socialism, but the Catholic Church is possibly the most vociferous in its opposition (and misrepresentation) of Socialism.

In a pamphlet called Socialisation, and “published with the authority of the Archbishop and Bishops of the Catholic Church of Australia,” we are told that “Socialism, in its strict sense, is a theory which advocates that the State should take over and operate the entire machinery of production, distribution and exchange.” That this statement is a complete lie from beginning to end does not worry our Catholic Bishops and Archbishops. For the information of any Catholic who may read this column, Socialism means the common possession of the means of life; an absence of a state apparatus, and no machinery, or means of exchange.

Man will no longer pray for his daily bread; he will just make it and consume what he requires!

It is not only the Catholic Church which propagates the figment that State ownership of the means of production is Socialism. Political parties, such as the Labour and Communist Parties, also make the same claim. The Communist Party, which, when it suits, boasts of its support of the theories of Marx and Engels, is perhaps the most shamefaced. For did not Engels explode this hoary old idea for all to read. In his book, Socialism : Utopian and Scientific (which all workers should read), he writes:—

   "But the transformation . . .  into State ownership does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. . . . The modem State, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers—proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution” (pp. 71-72)

With the establishment of Socialism the State dies out. “State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and by the conduct of processes of production” (pp. 76-77).

Peter E. Newell

Editorial: Another 1926? (1962)

Editorial from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The background of industrial unrest and resentment at the Government's wages policy, highlighted by the stoppage of work by three million engineering and shipyard workers for one day on February 5th, led many newspapers to surmise that perhaps we may see a repetition of the ”general strike” of 1926, when upwards of two million workers came out in support of the miners who were on strike against a reduction of pay. The Government, under cover of a Declaration of Emergency, used troops and the courts and its control of propaganda to defeat the general strike in nine days, and the miners, though they endured semi-starvation for nine months, eventually had to go back on the employers’ terms. The propertied class had won, though it cost them £100 million.

Could it happen again? The Government possibly thought that it might and according to the Sunday Express (28/1/62) a plan to meet that eventuality was prepared last July at the time the Chancellor announced the "pay pause.” If the Government had wanted to provoke a repetition of 1926 it could probably have got it by enforcing an immediate freezing of all wages for an indefinite time some of its self-appointed advisers in the Press said that it ought to do this in the name of “logic” and “fairness.” But perhaps the outward appearance of muddle, uncertainty, vacillation and illogicality were not just stupidity but a flexible Government policy of dragging out the dispute, dividing the workers and preventing what they failed to prevent in 1926.

They bought off the teachers, then the electricity supply workers, and got the miners and railwaymen negotiating over small offers made to them—it is, of course, absurd to suppose that the Government, if it had really wanted to, could not have barred all concessions in the three nationalised industries. In January they announced the restoration of powers to the Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal. except the right to back-date awards past April 1, 1962, thus inducing the civil servants to call off their “work-to-rule”; brought the main Post Office work-to-rule to an end and left the Post Office engineers working-to-rule on their own.

Then came the White Paper, The Next Step, with its prospect of small wage increases in stage two of the wages policy. Six months respite had been gained, six months nearer to the time, they hope, when some improvement in exports will ease the position. This left the Government and the employers still facing the main threat, a possible prolonged strike in the engineering industry. But in the meantime they had induced the TUC to join the National Economic Development Council, thus further lessening the possibility of any united trade union support for an engineering strike. True, the TUC had declared that it would not endorse the Governments' pay pause, but the Sunday Pictorial (4/2/62) discloses that the TUC rejects the pause because it is considering the alternative of replacing wage increases at the present time by increased old age pensions or sick benefit, or by allocating savings bonds redeemable within three to five years. By contrast, the TUC had in 1926 been pushed by the rank-and-file into leading the general strike.

While we are on the subject of comparisons with 1926 some other aspects ought not to pass unnoticed. The railwaymen. miners and electrical workers were then demanding a “solution” of their problems by nationalisation: now they have it and are not so sure, but the engineering workers and builders still cherish the same delusion.

They were all longing for blessed relief in the next Labour Government which turned out to be the great debacle of 1929-1931. And then, as now, the economic journals carried the outpourings of the “new men” who had, they said, at long last discovered how to manage Capitalism, rid it of crises and make it function smoothly.

The more Capitalism changes, the more it is the same thing!

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