Background to the Czech Crisis (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democracy is vitally important to the working class. Socialists maintain that it is the experience of working men and women under capitalism which will drive them in the end to understand the need for socialism and, as we see it, this process is enhanced by the degree of democracy which workers have won for themselves. Recent developments in Czechoslovakia before the Russian invasion have a real interest for the working class and the question arises whether socialists should support Dubcek and the ‘liberal’ wing of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party against the conservative forces there and in the other state capitalist countries. But first, to understand what is taking place in Czechoslovakia, it is necessary to know something of the background to the recent reforms.

The Czechoslovakian economy has been in difficulties for some time. These first came to a head in August, 1962 when the five year plan (1961-65) had to be abandoned because of balance of payments difficulties and an all-round failure to increase productivity. As a stop-gap measure an interim plan was devised for 1963 but this resulted in another disaster, with both industrial output and gross national product slumping even further than they had done the year before. Faced with this situation the government was forced to postpone the new five year plan and instead the then President — Novotny — concentrated on exposing the failure of certain key industries to meet their production targets. Yet the .Czechoslovakian economy was in sufficient of an impasse to provoke a more radical approach from many quarters. It was pointed out that trade was heavily oriented towards the Comecon countries, especially Russia which had a virtual monopoly in supplying Czechoslovakia with many of its raw materials. In fact, some of the statistics quoted were quite staggering; Russia was the source of almost all Czechoslovakia’s oil, 80 per cent of its imported iron-ore, 63 per cent of its imports of synthetic rubber and so on. The clear implication was that this in itself was an unhealthy state of affairs and this view was reinforced when the prices paid by Czechoslovakia for some of these raw materials were pointedly compared with those paid by Western countries for the same commodities. Thus, while Italy was known to be getting its crude oil from Russia at 8 roubles/ton, Czechoslovakia was buying the same for 20.8 roubles/ton. There was also criticism of Czechoslovakia’s role within Comecon, since the supranational plans laid it down that Czechoslovakia would concentrate on heavy industry. In 1963, for example, this sphere was accounting for 28 per cent of total investments and this emphasis on heavy industry was said to be helping to produce a lop-sided economy.

These sort of arguments all led in a direction which, for political reasons, Novotny and his colleagues were not prepared to go. However indirectly it was argued, the pressure was for a loosening of Czechoslovakia’s dependence on Comecon and Russia and for an increase in trade with the West. Although the recent struggle in the Praesidium and in the Central Committee of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party has appeared to be focused on an organisational and ideological dispute, it is this clash over economic problems which has formed the real battleground for the upheaval and which led to Novotny being eased out of first the first-secretaryship of the Party and then out of the Presidency. This explains the fact—which has baffled many observers—that in the split in the Praesidium in January, 1968 when the two factions were equally balanced (5-5), the pro-Dubcek camp included such arch conservatives as Hendrych (chief of the Party’s ideological department, who was chiefly responsible for hounding the Czech writers in 1967) and Dolansky (now described as a “reformed Stalinist”) while several so-called liberals voted for Novotny.

The overriding importance which the new leadership attaches to the economic reforms was hinted at by Jaromir Balcar—the vice-president of the Czechoslovakian Chamber of Commerce—when he issued a statement that “the process of political demonstration must, as far as trade is concerned, run in close harmony with the economy of the country as a whole.” In fact, important adjustments to the economy have already been pushed through—such as a reduction of investments in heavy industry by over a third to 18 per cent of total investment. Despite political difficulties, the new Czechoslovak leadership has also been making encouraging noises towards Western powers for intensified economic relations. The Prime Minister, Cernik, has said that Czechoslovakia wants to cooperate with the Common Market and EFTA and there has been a lot of talk about working towards convertibility for the Czech crown. Coupled with this, there has been some forthright criticism of economic relations with Russia, a good example being that involving the $500 m. credit which the Czechoslovakian government originally agreed to advance for the development of the Tyumen oil fields in Siberia. The agreement here was for Czechoslovakia to advance the capital and for Russia to eventually pay it back with oil products from the new Siberian fields. But a controversy has developed over the quantity of oil which Czechoslovakia's $500 million entitles it to. As a commentator on Prague radio put it:

These are precisely the problems Where the interests of the individual Socialist countries clash.

This sort of evidence would seem to be fairly conclusive proof, then that the Czech-Soviet confrontation leading to invasion is rooted in the conflicting economic and strategic interests of the ruling classes of these two countries. This means that workers in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere have no direct stake in this continuing struggle, but it does not mean that they should adopt a completely passive role. Whichever faction in the Communist Party assumes eventual control, the class struggle in Czechoslovakia will continue and the Czech workers should take advantage of any embarrassments which the ruling class is subjected to by pressing ahead with their own demands. And they have done this remarkably well in some respects. Although Dubcek and his followers have found the liberalisation campaign a convenient weapon to hammer their opponents with, it is the working [class] (at least for a time) which has taken over the agitation for democracy and which has already pushed the demands much further than the most 'liberal’ apparatchniks would like to go. Whereas in countries like Russia and Poland recent opposition to the regime has tended to be focused on dissident members of the ruling class (Pavel Litvinov is the grandson of Stalin's foreign minister, for example; Karol Modzelewski is also the son of a late foreign minister) in Czechoslovakia discontent with present conditions has been actively expressed by millions of working men and women. While there is nothing reveloutionary about this—according to opinion polls in the newspapers, over 90 per cent of the Czech population imagines that capitalism has already been eliminated in that country—socialists do not belittle the reforms which workers in Czechoslovakia have been campaigning for. Moves for relaxing press censorship and for establishing something approaching free speech on the streets are important gains for the working class and in the end they will have to rely on nothing but their own efforts to maintain them.

But there are obvious weaknesses as well in this reform movement. The famous '2000 Words' manifesto has underlined these better than anything else. Here the problems confronting working men and women in Czechoslovakia are explained by the 'mistakes’ committed by the previous leadership:

   . . .  the reins of government did not fall into good hands. The incorrect line of the leadership transformed the Party, which had been a political and ideological force, into an organisation of power and it therefore attracted all types of would-be dictators, rogues and charlatans.
   Parliament disregarded parliamentary procedures, the government forgot how to govern and the leaders how to lead. 

Against this was opposed the need for a restyled communist party which would base itself “not on force but on popular support”.

Other workers have a much clearer grasp of the situation and some have been discussing the possibility of forming new political organisations, independent of the regime. Already an independent ‘Non-Party Club' is functioning in Prague and this trend is obviously causing a lot of uneasiness in official circles. This is a development which socialists consider of the greatest importance, for what is desperately needed in Czechoslovakia now is a group of socialist propagandists who can explain that political democracy is not enough, that the working class will only be free when there is common ownership and democratic control over the means of production. For this purpose the Communist Party is useless; it can no more be converted into a socialist workers' party than could the Conservative or Labour parties in Britain. In Czechoslovakia the Communist Party is the organ of the ruling class. Its programme is geared to the interests of state capitalism and inevitably this brings it into conflict with the workers.

This is what the majority of Czech workers have to learn about Dubcek and his party. At the moment his image is one of the humane and good-natured ruler, intent on building a just society in Czechoslovakia. But the problems which harried the working class in Novotny’s days are not going to be eliminated by the new leadership. Superficially the techniques of ruling might be different, but the aim of any capitalist government is always the same—to increase the exploitation of the working class. Novotny realised that the Czechoslovakian economy was in a bad way and sought to use traditional, Stalinist methods to extract more work from the labour force. Dubcek is being more successful with his more subtle approach. Inspired by the call for ‘national unity', employees at the engineering plant of Komorany have decided to create a ‘Fund for the Republic' and to work an extra day without pay in an effort to revive the economy. This move has been taken up elsewhere and at other plants workers have volunteered to give up 1 per cent of their monthly salaries. Already miners in Lezaky (Bohemia) have donated 1,950,000 crowns to the Fund.

The case against men like Alexander Dubcek and Josef Smrkovsky is the argument which socialists apply lo all reformists. However radical the reforms which the new leadership sponsors, they will never allow anything approaching common ownership of the mines, factories and other means of producing wealth. The initiative for this social revolution will have to come from the working class. No socialist, then, could think of supporting Dubcek. Socialists do not take sides in struggles between sections of the ruling class. Socialists in Czechoslovakia will have to form their own party, hostile to “all sections of the master class” and based on principles similar to those of the Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten across the border in Austria.

John Crump

Is the Labour Government Crumbling Away? (1968)

From the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like rotten timber, the Labour government is crumbling before our eyes. The departure of Ray Gunter, which was only the latest evidence of decay, had a significance all of its own. Gunter has never been famous for being a rebel; loyalty has always been his line—loyalty through thick and thin, through incomes policy and Vietnam, through prescription charges and unemployment. There must have been extremely powerful pressure upon him to bring about his change of role and so suddenly lose his desire to be a member of Wilson's government. Of course Gunter may have been disappointed at the recent promotion of Barbara Castle over his head; but it is reasonable to think that, had the government been in better shape, he would have managed to swallow his pique. What probably made up his mind was Labour's poor showing at the polls, and the likelihood that they will be heavily defeated if they fight the next election under Wilson.

Gunter has every reason to be worried—and, if the by-elections are anything to go by, so have the majority of Labour M.P.s. On current form, there are hardly fifty seats Labour could expect to hang on to if there were a general election to-morrow. Such have been their humiliations, as one stronghold after another has fallen, that they actually welcomed the Nelson and Colne defeat with relief because the swing against them there was only around eleven per cent. The voters, it is clear, are not grateful for the age of technological capitalism which Wilson promised to bring in.

Meanwhile, the problem the government have pledged again and again to solve refuses stubbornly to go away. When they came into power in 1964, Labour made a big thing of the deficit in the British balance of payments; they were quite sure that this was the basic cause of many of our troubles and that when they had got the balance into surplus we would all feel terrific benefits. This was, of course, a lie but the millions of workers who have always taken as one of their first concerns the fortunes of the British capitalist class were duly impressed. They hopefully accepted Labour's promise to protect and enhance those fortunes, under the delusion that they would thus do themselves a bit of good.

Callaghan first of all promised that he would get a surplus in 1966. But the great day when the Chancellor was to announce the end of the payments deficit came and went and the deficit was still there. This, said the government, was only a postponement—one or two other difficulties had intervened but everything would be alright by 1967. By 1967 the date of arrival at the Promised Land had become 1968. Now it is 1969, or 1970, or never. The latest trade figures give the government no encouragement. The deficit persists which means that, leave alone establishing Socialism, the Labour Party cannot even master the anarchies of the capitalist system they are trying to organise.

If, by some near-miracle, the balance of payments problem was solved the government would lose one of the arguments they have used to justify another of their unpopular policies—the wage freeze. Ever since the prices and incomes policy was born we have been ceaselessly lectured by Labour politicians on the iniquity of higher wages because, they said, these have a directly adverse effect on the British balance of payments. (Gunter was always particularly keen and verbose on this point.)

This was another lie from the Labour government but any effect it may have had is clearly wearing off. The railwaymen having called off their strike in 1966 just in time for Wilson to call the general election, find that the promises which were used to persuade them to stay at work have not been kept; they have, in fact, got nowhere and they have protested. The engineers have already had a token strike in support of a pay claim and others may follow. BOAC's pilots have made their famous contribution to trade union history. From many quarters, the incomes policy is under fire but so far there has been no talk of any unionists being prosecuted for defying the Prices and Incomes Act which the Labour government introduced with the object of holding wages down.

The plain fact is that this government is now branded as a failure. Wilson, once the political master, is now discredited and exposed as a trickster. (The Tories are trying to cash in on this with massive technicolour posters of Ted Heath looking like an overgrown choirboy, eyes gazing out frank and level, with the slogan "Edward Heath—Man of Integrity." Get it?) It is not so long ago that Wilson had the ear of a national audience. Yet when, in the middle of the uproar over Enoch Powell, he tried to get into the act by announcing that he would shortly make a "major" statement on racialism there was barely a flicker of interest. It was no different when the statement came out; it was received in apathy. Nobody wants to listen to Wilson any more.

But the Prime Minister, famous for his strong nerve, is hanging on, presumably hoping that something will turn up. He claims that his policies are succeeding; in the House of Commons on July 2 he was talking about ". . . new and spectacular evidence from all over the country showing the great robust strength of British industries"—a statement very 4 much in the style of the war communiques in Orwell's 1984. Wilson can try occasional gimmicks, like restricting the powers of the House of Lords as a punishment for their naughty rebellion over Rhodesian sanctions. This might just have started a modern Peers versus People battle, which would have been a convenient diversion from all those embarrassing and persistent discussions of Labour’s record.

One idea the government have decided to try is a "mid term manifesto”, which will come out just before the Labour Party conference in the Autumn, in which they will admit to having made mistakes but plead to be on the right road and to deserve another chance. (This manifesto is largely the brain child of Anthony Wedgwood Benn, who is where he is only because the Macmillan government pushed through an Act which enables the renunciation of peerages. As a result we got Douglas-Home as Prime Minister and such as Quintin Hogg and Wedgwood Benn in the Commons—which seems a good argument against reforming the House of Lords.)

There is no reason to think that a mid term confession will be any more successful than any of the other ruses the government have tried. Wilson must be one of the most precarious Premiers ever. There are continual stories in the press of plots to unseat him. Not only Cecil King thinks he should go — so do the Observer and the Times and the Economist, to name only three of the organs of responsible capitalist opinion and each of them has been helpful enough to suggest a way in which his party can be rid of him. Several names have been put forward for the succession and among them, interestingly enough, is that of Barbara Castle. Imagine an election which might result in the first woman Prime Minister of Great Britain! What a super gimmick that would be! What a thick smokescreen would be ejected over Labour’s history, as the battles of the Suffragettes were fought all over again! It would certainly be overlooked, that the sex of capitalism's leaders is unimportant; that there is nothing in Castle's record, nor in that of any other woman Minister, to encourage the idea that women are any better able to solve capitalism’s problems than are men, or that they run the system any differently or more humanely than men.

But all that, if anywhere, is in the future; for the moment we are left with Ray Gunter, who could not be mistaken for a woman and who has never pretended to be a humane administrator of capitalism. One of the first things Gunter did after his resignation was to suggest that the Labour Party needs a new leader. He wants, he said, to " . . . sit back and think about the terrible danger into which this great movement is getting”, by which he probably means the chances of electoral annihilation, because a sense of danger seems to have taken hold of Gunter only after all those by elections. The other reasons he gave for his resignation—the Cabinet being “overweighted with intellectuals”, the alienation of the ordinary working man from the Labour Party—are not new to the Wilson government and they applied to the Attlee government. But Attlee’s hold on the Premiership was never insecure for the simple reason that his party held on to their votes and their seats.

One thing which can be guaranteed wonderfully to concentrate the minds of politicians is the prospect of being rejected by the voters. The Labour Party, never let it be forgotten, have always claimed that the secret of success was to get into power, on no matter what programme, and then think about reforming capitalism and even introducing Socialism—or rather what some of them think of as Socialism. The result of this theory can be seen at Westminster now—a party with a single-minded obsession with power, entirely without interest in, or indeed knowledge of, Socialism and prepared to try almost any dirty and cynical trick to stay in power. Thus we have the nauseating spectacle of Labour M.P.s hanging together in a unity cemented by their own fear of electoral slaughter, keeping in office the man they know is a liability because at the first sign of revolt from them he will threaten to call the election which would consign most of them to oblivion.

What this amounts to is that the Labour government is being kept in power by its own unpopularity, because it dare not face an election. This is an interesting situation for a party which, when it suits it, condemns the House of Lords as unrepresentative. It is an interesting situation for a party which has claimed to be democratic and to be based upon principle. And it is an impossible situation for a party which once said that they would bring in Socialism. Let us at least hope that, when the Labour government have finally crumbled away, we shall hear no more of that particular piece of monumental nonsense.

Ivan

Scottish Nationalism (1968)

From the May 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Scottish National Party, they must feel that somebody up there likes them. Right now they are on top of the world and everywhere the signs are apparent. The Party badge— a hipped-up thistle—sprouts as thickly as the weed itself. Membership has rocketed to over ninety thousand, and all the frenzied electoral activity has resulted in the election of a Nationalist M.P.

Undoubtedly, independence is the current big issue and the Nationalists claim they will have it by the early ’seventies. How have the SNP been transformed from the old image of a bunch of Tartan-clad cranks into a considerable political force? The Party is still the expression of some “Professional” and small-business people who see their advancement in breaking with England, but they now enjoy what they never had before—widespread working class support, although how constant this is remains to be seen.

This support was a long time coming, but the breakthrough was helped by Labour’s long absence from power during the ’fifties. This resulted in some of Labour’s traditional support, particularly among the lower paid, switching to the Nationalists. Another factor was disillusionment with the performance of Labour controlled Town Councils. Thus, the Nationalists got what they needed above all—a foot in the electoral door.

What are the forces behind the Nationalist upsurge? Of course, the movement’s “intellectuals” see it as a revolt by a people yearning to return to a Golden Age which existed before the Act of Union of 1707, when a united populace shared a “Scottish Culture” which was the envy of Europe. The idea is absurd. The culture of the untamed, Celtic Highlander was completely different from that of the settled, English-speaking Lowlander. Indeed, Dr. J. M. Beale makes this very point in the Book, Common Errors in Scottish History. Today, in the populous industrial belt, the average inhabitant will sneer at the sight of the Kilt and a significant proportion owe their loyalties to Ireland rather than Scotland.

Even so, Nationalist feeling certainly exists and is implanted at an early age. This is very important in any country’s educational system. Also important is regional pride within a country. Ruling groups find this useful, particularly in time of war—how many Scotsmen have died proving that they were the bravest in the land? So Scottish children have their heads filled with the deeds of national heroes like Wallace and Bruce while the feats of Scots in civil life—Carnegie, Watt, Stevenson—also receive much attention. In sport, especially soccer, the press give the full treatment to encounters with “The Auld Enemy”, with every victory a “Bannockburn” and every defeat a “Flodden”. All this, against a background of Scotland’s historical subjugation by England, has provided a breeding ground for national illusion and resentment.

But why is the revolt happening now rather than ten or twenty years ago? First, there is the decline of the long-established industries with the accompanying hardship and insecurity. Engineering, Shipbuilding and Mining were what Scotland depended on and their cut-back has meant a chronic high unemployment rate. Secondly, the main Parties have been tried over and over and found wanting: they cannot produce the goods, so where else to go? In England many people faced with this dilemma have turned to the Liberals. In Scotland, in the same circumstances, it can only be the SNP. In short, the Nationalist upsurge is really a revolt against a depressed standard of living, and this is where the SNP makes its biggest impact. Every example of lower wages, higher prices, more emigration and less amenities than south of the border is seized upon and skilfully used.

The most interesting point about the demand for independence is that, basically, it is in line with the growing idea that the problems of modem society—Capitalism—lie in its sheer size. Thus, we see the Liberals arguing for smaller administrative units through more Regional Government; the Anarchists and some leftists for smaller productive units through worker-owned factories, and the Scots and Welsh Nationalists for smaller political units as exemplified by the Scandinavian countries. Sweden, with its allegedly high living standards and full employment, is quoted as an example of how smallness plus independence equals prosperity.

These theories are false. Capitalism's problems are the result of non-social ownership of the means of life in the field of social production: more diversity of government or of ownership cannot alter this fact. Nor can the national identity or location of the legislature have much effect on our standard of living. This is influenced by such as the degree of technical and natural resources and, more especially, the state of the world market—what can be sold profitably—and any serious change in this will affect Sweden just as it did in the ’thirties. Anyway, Sweden’s full employment is due to acute labour shortage, and those Irish workers who had a spell in Swedish Shipyards soon returned home, unimpressed by the living standards.

Another Nationalist argument is that there is a deliberate “trend” towards more numerous and smaller Nations and point to the seventy-odd newcomers which have sprung-up over the last twenty years. These have emerged owing to the disintegration of the European colonial Empires. The Nationalists ignore the fact that in the developed world the trend is the opposite way. Nor do these new Nations choose to be small; in fact they are as large as they can get and often squabble with one another over disputed territory and resources.

What it all boils down to, is that the SNP just don’t understand the world around them. Although they claim to be against exploitation they support the production for profit system. Arthur Donaldson, the Party’s chief spokesman, even invites capital to take advantage of "cheap” and "tame” Scottish workers (Scots Independent, 11/2/67).

It is time to reject the notion that there are "Scottish problems” which apply exclusively to Scottish workers and which can be solved by a "Parliament of their own”. Instead of turning their eyes to Scandinavia, those of them who thronged "prosperous” London recently on the occasion of the seating of the Nationalist MP should have looked across the Thames to Southwark, Battersea and Brixton. They would have seen plenty of hardship there, despite the proximity of Parliament. And did it not occur to those who saw the TV epic of the homeless, Cathy Come Home, that the action took place in an English City? Above all else, independence will not mean their release from wage-slavery, and, as everywhere, access to the means of life will be governed by whether the owners find it profitable or not.

Socialists echo the Poet’s desire for the day 'That man to man the world o’er shall brothers be for a' that”. This will be a fact when the world's wealth, owned in common, can be utilised for the satisfaction of all mankind. Capitalism, with its attendant national boundaries and prejudices, makes this just another Poet’s dream.

Vic Vanni (Glasgow) 

"Young Socialists" in Conference (1968)

From the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the trotskyist “Young Socialists" gather in Morecambe for their annual conference this month they will be voting on a proposal from their national committee that they should put forward their own parliamentary candidates in future elections. This would be a clear break from their previous stand of critical support for the Labour party and it is worth taking a look at these new contenders for the workers’ votes.

The "Young Socialists" were originally organised by the Labour party as its youth section in 1960, to replace the defunct Labour League of Youth. As always, tension rapidly built up between the idealist young people who formed its rank and file and the Labour party bureaucracy which wanted to keep them firmly in hand. The spineless policies of the Labour leaders grated on the “Young Socialists” and they were also incensed by the arbitrary control of their organisation by Transport House. This, then, was a classical situation for the trotskyists to move in on and the “Socialist" Labour League played the same role as the “Communist” party had done in the previous takeover in the thirties. The break from the Labour party came in 1964 when a wave of expulsions ended in a complete split in the movement. Those who left retained the name “Young Socialists” and formed a nominally independent organisation, while the rump which remained in the Labour party now operates under the clumsy title of “Labour Party Young Socialists".

If the plans of the national committee ever get off the ground and the “Young Socialists” do run candidates for political office, they will present themselves to the working class on a platform of transitional demands. These can be anything from “Victory to the Vietcong" to the call for “Nationalisation of the basic industries, banks and insurance”. They are intended as a minimum programme (socialism being relegated to some indefinite, doomsday status) but are supposed to have a long-term effect as well. As the original Transitional Programme of the Fourth International put it: 

the Fourth International advances a system of transitional demands, the essence of which is contained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the very bases of the bourgeois regime.

Obviously this process of progressively phased revolution has not advanced very far since the Transitional Programme was first adopted in 1938, as the demands at present being touted clearly show. Just what benefits the victory of the Vietnamese ruling class over the American capitalists would bring for workers anywhere remains obscure, to say the least, while nationalisation of industry — even if total, as in Russia — merely enables the ruling class to tighten its grip on the means of production. If all the supposedly revolutionary, transitional demands of the “Young Socialists” were enforced, the working class would remain in exactly the same position as it started out — propertyless and exploited. The slogans of the “Young Socialists” are a far cry from Marx’s — and the Socialists Party’s — revolutionary demand of abolition of the wages system.

The need for the so-called transitional demands arises in the theoretical framework of the “Young Socialists" parent body (the “Socialist” Labour League) because they take it as axiomatic that the working class cannot possibly grasp the case for socialism if it is presented to them in simple, uncompromising terms — without some form of bait. In fact, the pivot of all their arguments is the conviction that the workers can never arrive at an understanding of socialism by their own efforts and that they must therefore be controlled from above by a leadership. The only useful purpose the working class serves is that it provides the mass basis which the trotskyists hope to make use of in their attempt to gain political power.

This line of thinking is in direct conflict with Marxism. While Marxists have always argued that the socialist revolution must be the result of a united effort by the workers of the world, the followers of Lenin and Trotsky maintain that action by a determined minority, with passive or blindly following masses at the back of them, is all that is necessary. In the case of the Russian Bolsheviks there was perhaps some justification for this attitude, operating as they were in a backward, peasant country. But, however sincere their intentions to build socialism might have been, the historical obstacles were insurmountable and they found themselves leading a bourgeois revolution which conformed in all essentials to the characteristics which, as Engels pointed out, typify the rise to power of capital. They were the “small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses” who lead every revolution which merely replaces one ruling class by another.

A socialist revolution is something entirely different, however.

If the conditions have changed in the case of war between nations, this is no less true in the case of the class struggle. The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for with body and soul. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair.

(Engels' introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France)

It is this “long persistent work” which socialists take on in their efforts to convince other workers like themselves of the urgent need for establishing a socialist society based on the principle of “to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability”. Trotskyists, on the other hand, shirk this job. Falling back on idealism or, to use their own language, “petty bourgeois impressionism”, they try to sidestep the task of spreading socialist ideas among the working class as a whole and retain the archaic notion that only a conscious minority is needed. Thus, in the “Socialist” Labour League’s pamphlet — The death agony of capitalism and the tasks of the 4th International:

The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership (our emphasis).

This is nothing but the view which Engels was attacking as already outdated in 1895. It belongs to a different era; to the era of capitalist revolutions.

We might add that there are, of course, no prizes for guessing who the “revolutionary leaders” will be. With customary modesty, Gerry Healy et al. announce themselves as God’s latest gift to the working class.

Apart from the leadership issue, once the slogans and pamphlets of the “Socialist” Labour League are stripped of their mock-revolutionary verbiage, what remains is a thoroughly reactionary programme. Socialists maintain that a class-conscious working class has the ability right now to build a society of abundance, based on free access to wealth—what Marx called the “higher phase of communist society" in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. Any need for possible preliminary stages is a thing of the past. What Marx saw as necessary in 1875 — an initial period during which the productive forces would be rapidly increased — is obviously an outdated concept, when we consider the gigantic strides that have been made in all branches of industry in the last hundred years. Like other socialists, Marx’s suggestions were based on an over-optimistic prediction of the imminent overthrow of capitalism in the closing years of the nineteenth century. The “Socialist” Labour League, however, is still committed to maintaining the wages system in the second half of the twentieth century and its members talk in terms of “generations” before it could possibly be done away with. Supporters of the trotskyists in the trade unions should bear this in mind when they back organisations like the SLL — and it wouldn’t do them any harm either to remember just what happened to the unions in Russia when the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and Trotsky, gained power. It would be interesting to learn how many of the trade unionists and “young socialists” who look to the SLL. for political guidance would be prepared to submit to Lenin's maxim “of unquestioningly obeying the will of the Soviet leader, of the dictator, during the work.”

Another completely reactionary role which the “Socialist" Labour League has taken on itself is that of calling on the workers to vote Labour in past elections. Their national secretary, Healy, advances a sophisticated argument to justify this;

  During the general elections of October 1964 and March 1966 we urged trade unionists to vote Labour and at the same time fight within the labour movement for a socialist policy to be adopted by the government.
  The Socialist Labour League advocated this policy knowing that the vast majority would vote labour as part of their experiences.
   It was our responsibility to go through this experience with the working class. Likewise it is our responsibility today to outline ways and means to fight Wilson within the labour movement, not to desert this fight through abstention at the polls.
   Hence we call on the 'left' MPs to fight him in the Parliamentary Labour Party at the forthcoming conference at Scarborough in order to take the working class through the experience of political struggle in relation to the Labour Party.
  Our job is to expose these 'left’ MPs, just as Wilson is being exposed, and at the same time demonstrate to the working class the need for alternative revolutionary leadership within the labour movement.

The weak points in this would be obvious to any thoughtful worker. If, as Healy admits, the workers were going to vote Labour anyway what was the point of the SLL adding to the confusion! Wouldn’t it have been far better to have taken a stand on socialist principles, as the Socialist Party did, and to have called on the working class to oppose capitalism and all the capitalist parties (including the Labour and “Communist” parties)? Despite Healy’s grandiose plans to “take the workers through the experience of political struggle in relation to the Labour party”, objectively all he has achieved is to help to keep the workers on the Labour-Tory pendulum. Many of those who voted in a Labour government at the last general election will, on present evidence, be voting in a Conservative administration at the next. One sign of hope, to be sure, is the sizeable proportion who seem to have abstained in recent by-elections and, if their present mood of disillusionment and apathy could be replaced by socialist understanding, this indeed would be a breakthrough. But, if for a moment we go along with Healy’s rather paranoiac dreams and assume that they were ready to support the “Socialist” Labour League, where would it get them? Healy’s message is simple:

We say that the labour movement has had enough from such traitors, on the left and the right — a new, alternative leadership has to be built.

Far better for the working class to realise that all leaders, whatever their pretensions, are the political enemies of the workers. There is no substitute for socialist working men and women. What is needed above all are self-reliant workers equipped with a thorough understanding of Socialism, not abject followers cringing and praying that this time they will not be betrayed and compromised.

In any case, the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain does not subscribe to the narrow interpretation of “experience" which is common to all varieties of trotskyist theory. We do not think that the only way to learn is by burning one’s fingers. Applying this to the young workers in the “Young Socialists", we say — why wait until bitter experience forces you to see through “Socialist" Labour League? Why not examine its programme from the standpoint of Marxian Socialism now? Why not come over to the side of the revolution?

John Crump

Hedgehogs for Blair (1996)

From the November 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

New Labour continues to be attacked by Old Labour. So what's new? Not much. If you run a tight ship, as Blair does, then you must expect some of the crew to harbour thoughts of mutiny. Austin Mitchell, MP for Grimsby, recently got publicity by comparing Blair's leadership with that of Kim II Sung. In an article “The hedgehog’s view" (New Statesman, 30 August) he dismissed his party’s The Road to the Manifesto in the following perceptive, if not very flattering, terms:

  "The new document isn‘t intended for you as party members. Your role is to endorse it, preferably with acclamation. This isn't the Labour Party as we know it. Our leaders are playing a different game from us. It’s a power game in which different rules apply. They can't tell us all this. So I'll break it to you now, because a squashed hedgehog on the road to the manifesto sees what's going on."

So far, so good. A Labour Party member sees what’s going on. likens himself to a squashed hedgehog—and hints at taking action against the juggernaut that did the foul deed. No. wait a minute, that can’t be right. The juggernaut pictured in the article has a large message on its side “Vote Blair". Does this mean that Mitchell and all the other Labour hedgehogs who are worried about being flattened by the roadhog Blair will refuse to vote for him? No. of course it doesn’t.

For a hedgehog, Mitchell is quite junglewise. in a puerile kind of way. He refers to members, trade unions, branches, councillors and the rest as bit-part players in Tony’s power game, and goes on:

"So the new deal, in an age of media campaigning, is that we pretend our work is important. Tony pretends to listen. Then he gets on with his real job of putting forward what he wants, in our name."

You would think, from all this, that Mitchell would be wanting out from a party that is so obviously a democratic sham. Not a bit of it. A hedgehog has remarkably low expectations, especially after it’s been squashed. Mitchell writes of "a Faustian compact with Tony Blair, on a back me or sack me basis.” and concludes "It’s a pretty good bargain for a party that blew it a decade ago."

Squashed hedgehogs are remarkably masochistic. They are not clever enough to know the difference between capitalism and socialism but they do know that "Most people’s votes are up for grabs, and they are choosing as consumers: what’s the best buy? What will this product do for me? New Labour is a product. The Road to the Manifesto . . .  is our glossy sales brochure."

The last section of Mitchell’s article shows clearly his Fabian reformism. His waffle includes the historically disproved delusion that "Labour in office can move the levers of power to the people." And “Influencing the holders of power is more useful work than futile dream-building in opposition." Nowhere does Mitchell say what the Labour power holders are to be influenced to do— certainly nothing as radical as to change the basis of society from production for profit to production solely to meet needs.

Labour Party members and supporters can choose between Blair who will administer capitalism more or less as the previous five Labour governments have done or people like Mitchell who will (however reluctantly) support Blair who will ditto. But they are not forced to make that choice. If they think that it’s time to replace the system, not its administrators, they will realise they are in the wrong party, leave it and join us in the Socialist Party

Stan Parker

Churchill on War (1948)

From the September 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Surely this is the supreme question which should engage the thoughts of mankind. Compared with it all other human interests are petty and other topics trivial. Nearly all the countries and most of the people in every country desire above all things to prevent war, and no wonder, since except for a few handfuls of ferocious romanticists, or sordid would-be profiteers, war spells nothing but toil, waste, sorrow and torment to the vast mass of ordinary folk in every land. Why should this horror, which they dread and loathe, be forced upon them? How is it that they have not got the sense and manhood to stop it? Nowadays the masses have the power in all democratic countries.”—(“Step by Step,” p.37, by Winston Churchill. Published by Thornton Butterworth, Ltd.).

War and Secret Diplomacy (1948)

From the September 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

With a fine bold air as of someone daring to tell the truth in face of popular prejudice the editor of the “New Statesman” (31/7/48) declares that “the first necessity is to get back to secret diplomacy.” But immediately his courage failed him, and he hastened to add, as if to excuse his boldness, that “no sane advocate of open diplomacy ever urged that difficult and detailed discussions between great Powers should be carried on in public.” Whether it is sane or not in the eyes of Mr. Kingsley Martin, there certainly have been and are plenty of people who hold that secrecy only serves the interests of the ruling class groups of the world and not the interests of the working class. Even in the ranks of the rulers there have been some who on occasion have declared for the abolition of secrecy. The well-known “Fourteen Points,” proclaimed by President Wilson during the first World War as a basis for reaching peace included as point number one, ‘‘Open covenants of peace openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.”

It happened to be the view of the President at that time that America had no interest in seeking to enforce the secret treaties made by Britain, France and Russia for the dismemberment of Germany and Turkey, but the Second World War showed that America like the other Powers was quite prepared to enter into secret treaties of her own.

Another and more telling example of the avoidance of secrecy was the declaration of the Russian Bolsheviks when they got power in 1917, that they too would have nothing to do with secret diplomacy. They backed up their words by insisting that the negotiations between Russia and Germany in 1918 should be carried on in the open. But here again there was a reason why the Bolsheviks favoured open negotiations then but have since reverted to the traditional secrecy of diplomacy. In the Proclamation addressed to the peoples and governments on 29th December, 1917, on behalf of the Russian Government, Trotsky declared that “in these negotiations, with the condition that there should be complete publicity, the Russian Delegation would continue to defend the programme of International Socialist Democracy as opposed to the Imperialistic programme of the Governments, Allied and enemy alike” (“Documents and Statements Relating to Peace Proposals and War Aims,” 1916—1918. Pub. Allen & Unwin, p. 107).

At that time the Russian Bolsheviks were hoping to get much support from the war-weary workers of all countries, and therefore had everything to gain by exposing the sordid imperialist aims of the governments on both sides. They had no imperialist aims themselves at the time and were therefore not afraid to make all their declarations about war and peace in the full light of day. By the same token the present Russian Government with troops in half-a-dozen countries beyond its borders, and cherishing the same imperialist designs as every other Power, has, like Kingsley Martin, been converted back to the belief in secret diplomacy—one set of declarations published openly for purpose of propaganda and another set for the secret archives.

War between the Powers in a capitalist world is not caused by secret diplomacy or by open diplomacy but by the clash of economic interests. Only those, therefore, who, in Trotsky's words, are defending “international socialistic Democracy” can afford to put all their cards on the table. It is in the interest of the world working class, though not in the interest of their masters, that all negotiations should be in the open, but overshadowing the secondary question of open or secret diplomacy it is in the interest of the working class that they should repudiate capitalism and its aims and methods at home and abroad, and seek emancipation and peace by organising to achieve Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Dirty Political Work. (1906)

From the January 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lest we forget Mr. H. M. Hyndman's reference to his organisation as being “wholly destitute of political aptitude” he and other prominent members of the S.D.F make a point of reminding us of the fact.

Last month we dealt with Mr Hyndman's description of a certain political compact as a “dirty dodge" although he and his friends have been guilty of similar dodges. which they have termed " tactics."

Now we have Cllr. Jack Jones standing up for "clean” politics and publicly denouncing and apologising for his fellow members of the S.D.F. for indulging in “political dirty work," to wit, moving an amendment at a public meeting called in support of a Literal candidate!

Once the S.D.F. would have considered that it was part of their legitimate work to oppose all Literals and Conservatives, but not now!

Mr. Jack Jones is doubtless well qualified to speak of “political dirty work!” Is he not the S.D.F. candidate for Camborne, opposing a Liberal candidate with money supplied by some person or persons unknown to the said Mr. Jones, as be himself has publicly admitted?

The scene of this latest exhibition of S.D.F. unity was laid at Stratford Town Hall, at a public meeting in support of the candidature of Mr. C. F. G. Masterman, Liberal, who when he last contested an election (Dulwich) was supported by Mr. J. Hunter Watts, of the S.D.F. Executive, the I.L.P. and by the local Trades Council. Early in the evening the chairman had promised to accept an amendment, and at the proper time Cllr. McAllen and a Mr. Ernest E. Hunter, whom the Stratford S.D.F. had invited for the purpose, mounted the platform to submit it. Mr. Hunter’s right to speak, he not being an elector, was challenged, and an uproar ensued. Then Cllr. Jack Jones mounted the platform and pointing to Mr. Hunter said: — "I have to apologise for the movement I belong to. I never thought they would have stooped so low as to try and get expelled members of our organisation to do dirty work at political meetings. If my Stratford comrades cannot find somebody better to do their dirty work then they bad better leave it alone.”

We are not here concerned with the quarrel between Mr. Jones and the Stratford S.D.F., but we emphasise this point, that, according to the protege of the mysterious rich man who is financing bis Camborne candidature, to move a Socialist amendment is to do “political dirty work!”

How circumstances alter cases !

When Cllr. Jack Jones, Mr. H. Quelch and other prominent members of the S.D.F. supported the recent Parliamentary candidature of Mr. J. J. Terrett, at Stratford Town Hall, without the sanction of the S.D.F. Executive, as required by the rules, was that clean or dirty political work ?

When John Burns, whom the S.D.F. now denounce as a traitor, an apostate, and the like, last stood for Battersea, was he any the less a Liberal, a traitor to the working class. an apostate, than he is now? Had not the S.D.F. previously declared that Bums was a "self seeker and a traitor to the cause of the people” and that he was “firmly caught in the nets of the Liberal Party”? When therefore the S.D.F. Executive not only instructed their Battersea branch to support Burns but permitted Cllr. Jack Jones to go to Battersea to canvass for him, was that clean or dirty political work ?

When the S.D.F. Executive gave permission to one of their number, Mr. Daniel Irving, to sign the L.R.C. Declaration, a few months after the S.D.F. Annual Conference had decided not to rejoin the L.R.C., was that clean or dirty political work ?

When six branches of the S.D.F. recently demanded that the Executive should poll the organisation as to whether W. Thorne should be repudiated as an S.D.F. candidate, because he had signed the L.R.C. Declaration at the request of the Gas Workers" Union, which is paying his expenses, and is consequently running as a "Labour" candidate, and the S.D.F. Executive broke the rules by refusing to take the poll, was that clean or dirty political work?

Jack Kent

A Tooting Tootle (1914)

Party News from the October 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

A propaganda week has once more been carried to a successful issue by the Tooting Branch. Every night speakers addressed good audiences from the van in the Broadway. The merits of our literature were proclaimed, with gratifying results. Free discussion and open platform, as usual, ensured orderly meetings. The steady and persistent flow of propaganda carried on for a number of years in Tooting has its reflection in the branch membership, and the formation of a Wimbledon branch before the summer season ends is a probability as a result of good Saturday-night meetings held there. The fight is also carried into Balham (Ormley Rd.) on Thursdays in the presence of large and attentive audiences. Altogether five good meetings are held every week (weather permitting), which enables the branch to coach its half-a-dozen young speakers and so equip them for the lecture fist.

Newsagents in the district have been induced to stock the "S. S.,” a committee having been formed with that object. In short, the Tooting Branch is active and is growing as a consequence. But there is much to do yet. The Tooting audience with its sympathetic attitude must be got to realise that there is more satisfaction gained by joining up and entering into the fight with us; nay, more, that it is their duty to do so.

Tooty

"Independence" and Sentiment. (1911)

From the June 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The leaders of the Independent Labour Party have assuredly found the right way to deal with any of their followers who attempt to kick over the traces. Understanding the sentimentalism with which the I.L.P. is pervaded, J. Ramsay MacDonald, Keir Hardie & Co. are able, by working upon this feeling, to sway any assembly of I.L.P-ers in which they find themselves to practically whatever position they desire. An illustration of the success of this manoeuvre can be seen in reading the report of the recent I.L.P. conference at Birmingham. The whole tone of the meeting was such as would have been more applicable to a dormitory of love-sick young ladies than to an assembly of Members of Parliament and self styled economists and politicians. During the debate following the report of the I.L.P. Members of Parliament there were several outbreaks on the part of certain members of the rank and file. Even Lansbury—with an eye, possibly, to the future chairmanship of the Labour Party—made several rather unkind remarks.

P. S. Stewart started the ball by pointing out to the assembled delegates that in the division on the Right to Work amendment to the address on the King’s Speech, only a little more than 20 Labour Members had voted. He went on further to protest against neglect of Parliamentary duties by members who left Westminster to fulfil £5 week-end engagements.

F. W. Jowett reminded those present how in 1909 the Labour Party decided to move a reduction of the tea tax, but at the last moment refrained from voting when it was seen that there was a danger of defeating the Government; pointing out that this policy of waiting upon the Liberal party was still adhered to by the Labour Party as a whole.

Lansbury in his speech told the delegates that when the question of the Welsh colliers was raised in Parliament, only 17 Labour men went into the lobby for fear of endangering the Government.

R. C. Wallhead “was not satisfied with the Labour Party, and there were certain Labour Members he would like to see out of the House.”

The impression forced upon one by reading the report is that the I.L.P. members in Parliament are quite content to acquiesce in the coalition between the Labour Party and the Liberals. The admission was made by J. R. MacDonald that Labour Members are in the habit of appearing on Liberal platforms. Keir Hardie told those present that many Labour Members felt they were bound to be the friends of the Government, and give a general backing to those who had given them so much—the “so much” including the “super tax of 6d. in the £ on big incomes, important land taxes, and the valuation of land, and Old-Age Pensions.”

He went, on to say that “ The Government’s programme for this session contained an Osborne Bill, a Mines Rill, the Shop Assistants’ Bill, an Insurance Scheme against Unemployment and invalidity, which were all the outcome of I.L.P. propaganda. The Tories would fight these measures tooth and nail, and therefore there was bound to be a more kindly feeling towards the party that was going part of our way than towards those who were fighting us every inch of the way.” This in spite of the fact that he had complained just previously that the Labour Party thought too much in terms of Liberalism, and his remark that he feared the Liberals with their Social Reform much more than the Tories.

The debate ended in moonshine. The “meta-physical and philosophical” speech of MacDonald, the “heart to heart” talk of Lansbury, the earnest, touching, passionate, eloquent (adjectives fail) peroration of Keir Hardie, apparently reduced the assembled delegates to a state of speechlessness. At any rate, the whole matter dropped. The I.L.P. members in Parliament will go on in the old sweet way, pandering to the Liberals, speaking from Liberal platforms, fulfilling week-end engagements at £5 per time, joining committees in connection with the forthcoming Coronation festivities, writing well-paid articles for the capitalist Press. And through it all they will protest against their claim to independence being in the slightest degree impugned. Moreover, the pity of it is that thousands of the members of the working class still believe in their specious promises and the sentimental cant in which they delight to indulge. The Socialist Party has truly much work in front of it, not only in combating the avowed capitalist parties, but still more in fighting such parties as the I.L.P., which, under the guise of Socialism, is endeavouring to lead the workers into a more degraded and more servile condition of life than even the one in which they now find themselves.

F. J. Webb

The Working-Class Position: A Personal Chin-wag. (1912)

From the October 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is often said that the civilised man cannot understand the savage. If this is true (and of its truth there can be little doubt) it is at all events not altogether surprising. The more surprising, and not less correct, statement is that the civilised man does not understand— himself.

It may be as correct to say that the savage does not understand the civilised man; but the ironical element of the situation is that the “superior” being (to remove any doubt I had better say that by this I mean the civilised man) not only has to see the savage through the savage’s eyes in order to understand him, but he has to see himself through the savage’s eyes in order to understand himself.

The outlook of the savage upon life, and his “inlook” upon himself, can only be understood by the civilised man through the reconstruction of the social system in which the savage lives. Only after doing this; only after building up anew the social system based upon the free and common access to all the sources of wealth and the free and common enjoyment of the social wealth, is it possible to realise the self-abnegation, the sinking of the individual in the community, which is characteristic of the mentality of the savage and the barbarian.

On the other hand, so accustomed has the civilised man become to the life he is living, so perfectly do his conceptions of things as they ought to be fit in with things as they are, that all the unfitness and inconsistencies and incongruities of his environment are hidden from his sight.

If he could only realise that things as they are make his conceptions of thing as they ought to be! If he could only understand that, in order to perceive things as they are he must view them from the place where they are not! If he could only grasp the fact that before he can conceive things  as they ought to be,” he must release his mind from the rusty fetters of things as they are!

An ethnologist of sufficient standing to get his bread buttered on both sides and round the crust by the approved capitalist method of “skating on the surface” of his science, has told us concerning the North American Indians, that they could not be induced to work steadily for wages; they laboured for a time, but would suddenly become tired of it, and would rather sacrifice what they had earned than continue to work a day or two longer and complete their contract. This was a mystery to the “scientist,” but it should be illuminating for the civilised man who is willing to stand in the savage’s shoes in order to understand himself.

In the savage mind the selling of one’s energies to another is prostitution of the vilest kind, and a thing not to be contemplated without disgust—and who can say that he is not right? ,

The savage may have his hardships, but he is a free man. However hardly the seasons may press him, or the elements contest his right to exist, while he does exist he lives. All that is good in nature is his in abundance, with the single exception of food. He has room to live in, and he has time to live. For him the sweet breezes blow fresh and untainted, and the scented dawn ushers the day of joyous life. His work is performed in the sun and air of open day, and no stingy balance is struck between what he has consumed and the power he has gained from it. Only when the seasons have been unpropitious and niggard does he know want, and anxiety as to his livelihood is foreign to him, for all his hard poverty and his slender resources.

The savage views his strength, his skill, his courage, as sacred to the purpose of making the most of life; as social assets contributory to the social welfare, and one holding that view can hardly do other than regard the man who gives over his strength and skill to another for a price as a prostituted person and scorn him as such.

This view is the correct one. notwithstanding that our “high civilisation” does not permit us to perceive it save through the fresh, dear vision of primitive man. Think! The strength of human muscles, the intelligence of the human brain, have been wrought out of untold ages of strife with the external world, the human struggle for a living. They have been perfected through an appalling space of evolution in order to make a bed of roses for the chemical compound which controls them. But from this high purpose they have been diverted. They have been sacrificed to Mammon—the historic mactation before which all others pale.

Yes, so low have the strength of human muscles and the intelligence of the human brain fallen in the hey-day of our “high civilisation,” that they are devoted to the base end of increasing existing values, of producing profit for a class of absorbant, but nevertheless inactive, chemical compounds, who would soon resolve into their simple elements if they were left to their own resources.

O! foul prostitution!

* * *

What this prostitution means to the victims of it strangely enough they are the last to perceive. They give up every joy of life in order to gain bare half rations. While they pour out their heart’s blood in a torrent of wealth for others to riot and exult in, they sink to the floor of their threshing dens overwhelmed with the grain they produce but may not eat, and perish for want of the wealth in which they are buried.

When some novelist paints with vivid touch the wretched Roman slaves toiling in the wheel, and muzzled in order that they shall not eat the flour they are grinding, the modem toiler feels cold-footed spiders running over his face. Yet his own position is very much the same. The muzzle is exchanged for blinkers, but he still painfully grinds the corn which he may not eat; he still wears his life out in unrequited labour, i and drains the cup of misery to the very last I bitter dregs.

* * *

Fellow workers, you can only live once. Ask yourselves how you are spending that one life which you may spend. Ask yourselves how much of that life you spend upon yourselves, and how much upon those who hold you in their grip in order to batten upon you, as the ant battens upon the aphis which it “cultivates.”

What do you know of the sun and fresh air? There are 168 hours in a week, and lucky you if you have for six or eight of those hours “a place in the sun.” The rest of the time you are either slaving or recuperating. One hour in twenty, one day in twenty, one year in twenty: —that is your lot and portion in your own life. You exist for thirty years, on the average, and you “live" for eighteen months!

O! those eighteen months of crowded delirium. overshadowed as they are by the pinching poverty which requites toil, and the anxiety of caring for the morrow; purchased as they are with so many years of weary effort and hopeless drudgery; drenched as they are with the blood of murdered hopes and wet with tears: are they worth it? are they worth it? are they worth it?

When I hear an old man of the working class, whose life has been cast in the common groove of those about him. whose back has bent to the common burden, and whose hair has whitened in the common woe—when I hear such a man declare that he has not had enough of it and more than enough, and wish himself young again, then I will say, yes, perhaps they may be worth it.

* * *

Where is the need for all this grinding, wearing. anxious poverty? The savage never knew it. He starved only in the rare and exceptional season of dearth. The barbarian who came after him, and the early husbandman who ploughed with slow oxen, and sowed broadcast, and threshed out the summer’s grain with a flail in the dull days of the winter; who spun each thread of yarn for his clothes through his fingers, and shot the shuttle for every strand for his wearing—these never knew the anxious care and stint in which the modern worker fashions his strength into wealth for others' keeping.

The average wheat crop in medieval England was four bushels an acre, and it was garnered with great labour—the average crop at the present day is thirty two bushels, prepared for with the steam plough, the Darby Digger, and (latest word in such matters) the motor plough; sown with the seed-drill, hoed with the horse hoe and cultivator; cut and tied with the reaper and self-binder; threshed out and winnowed and cleaned and sacked by the threshing machine. Yet the sickle and the flail gave the workers plenty to eat and abundant leisure, while all these aids to easy production have brought them only unceasing drudgery and starvation.

Why is it ?

* * *

The cause is very simple: the means of living have fallen into the possession of a few. As a result the others are compelled to prostitute themselves by selling their labour-power. For this they receive as much as it costs to produce. But this amount is almost constant, hence all the benefit of the improved machinery and methods goes to the employing class. And the growing surplus which the workers produce, which they are unable to buy back and consume because it it surplus—because it is product exceeding what they are paid—this surplus heaps up in the warehouses and gluts the markets, and then workers are thrown out of work because they have produced too much.

The evil does not stop here. As a constant succession of workers are thrown in the streets to starve, they, clamouring at the factory gates for employment, compel those in work to work longer and harder and for less money than ever. So in the end the machinery has only fixed toil more surely upon the worker, and confirmed him in his poverty.

* * *

There is only one escape for the workers. They must take possession of the means of producing wealth and use them to satisfy their needs and to lighten their labour. They must decline to be the beasts of burden of an idle class, and must demand that all able-bodied adults within such limits of age as may be found necessary, shall contribute their share to the necessary work of satisfying the social needs.

Why should any able person escape the labour of supporting himself or herself? Why should any class be permitted to throw on another class the burden of supporting them? The colossal impudence of it is overwhelming.

The way lies through the capture of political power, by means of which the master class retain their hold upon the means of production. It is through Parliament that the Army, Navy, and Police are controlled, hence Parliament must be captured by the working class. Having secured control of the armed forces production and distribution must be organised on a new basis—a basis of common ownership of both the means and the product. Then production will continue as long as goods are needed, instead of only so long as they can be sold.

That system of society is Socialism. Study Socialism and work for it.

A. E. Jacomb

In The Train: Bermondsey Bunkum Baulked (1909)

A Short Story from the November 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Characters: PETER PIP—a Bermondsey voter.

                     VIATOR—a traveller.

Scene. Third-class “smoker ” on the S.E.C. Railway. Peter Pip is seated in corner smoking his pipe. Enter Viator, who takes opposite seat.

VIATOR : Good evening. I suppose things are pretty lively just now down Bermondsey way?

PIP : Yes, the election’s in full swing—all three candidates are hard at it.

VIATOR : Who do yon think will win ?

PIP: Oh! The Socialist, Dr. Salter. He’s bound to get in. I and my mates are for him, anyhow.

VIATOR : I thought the doctor called himself “Labour” candidate.

PIP : Well, it’s all the same. Labour is Socialism, isn’t it ?

VIATOR : May I ask you some questions by way of trying to answer yours ?

PIP : Certainly.

VIATOR : Well then, the doctor was chosen by your local branch of the I.LP., wasn’t he ?

PIP: Yes.

VIATOR : The local branch had to get sanction from the National Council of the I.L.P. ?

PIP : Why, yes, of course.

VIATOR : Of course you know that before the doctor could be run as a candidate for Parliament, the I.LP. had to get sanction from the Labour Party executive, being affiliated to that body?

PIP : That’s so.

VIATOR : The candidate must sign the Labour Party ticket and agree to obey the Party whip?

PIP : Yes.

VIATOR : One of the conditions to be agreed to is, I think, that the candidate must stand as “Labour,” and not as “Socialist.”

PIP : Quite true.

VIATOR : Doesn’t it strike you as odd that a Socialist should not be allowed to run as such, and that if returned he must obey the Labour Party whip, nine times out of ten voting with the Liberals?

PIP : It never struck me like that. But all the same Salter’s a real good Socialist. Why just look at his programme!

VIATOR : Ah, let me see it. (Pip hands him a copy of the election address.) Yes! I thought so. Same old story.

PIP : What’s wrong now ?

VIATOR : The first article in his confession of faith is the dear old “Right to Work Bill.” Hum!

PIP : But you surely don’t condemn the “Right to Work Bill?”

VIATOR : No need to: it condemns itself! What about the clause empowering a municipality to find work for the unemployed? If the unemployed are not satisfied with the kind of work allotted them, or the rate of pay, and refuse to do the work, the municipal authorities, who are representatives of the master class, have power given them to haul the offending workers before a magistrate. That means six months gaol! Fancy a Socialist voting for such a measure.

PIP : But I say—

VIATOR : Next item. General Eight-Hours Day. Well suppose you get it—and mind you, you have got to get it from the masters; many of them are in favour of it and would vote for it. That fact alone ought to make you suspicious of it. “Timeo Danaos et dona ferantes.” That’s French or Figian—you know, for “When the masters send you a gift horse, look in the beggar’s mouth.”

PIP : (Rather uneasily, feeling he is being “got at ”) Well but—

VIATOR : But me no buts! Can the master class—or employers as you call them— can they or can they not speed you up in the factory to the highest possible pitch, 8 hours day or no 8 hours day ? Aren’t they doing it now? If you are going to cross the road to vote, vote for something that’s to do you good!

PIP : I think you will have a job to get round the next item.

VIATOR: Then I’ll go under it. Minimum wage! Minimum fiddlesticks! Do you suppose the labour market is a thing to be played with so? There was a "maximum wage” law as the result of the dearth of labour after the plague in the middle ages, a law strengthened by far more severe penalties than any a capitalist government is likely to attach to a mere "minimum wage” enactment in these days of “freedom of contract”—the futility of the attempt to enforce this law should be a lesson for all time. When labour was scarce the labourer was master of the situation, in spite of the Statute of Labourers which the employers of labour themselves caused to be enacted, in their anxiety to obtain labour power cheaply, but which they were compelled to evade. Now that labour power is so terribly redundant the masters will remain masters of the situation, minimum wage laws notwithstanding, for starvation will compel evasion on the one hand, and profit-hunger on the other. But if such a law can have any effect at all in preventing sweating, there is one counterbalancing factor that will rob it of all benefit to the working class. When any one talks to you about minimum wages, shorter hours, and so on, don’t forget that grim spectre at the worker’s elbow—his constant competitor— machinery. Every restriction placed upon the exploitation of labour power, makes for the advantage of machinery; every lifting of the price of labour-power handicaps it against machinery. So far then as a minimum wage law can affect the situation it can only result in the extended use of machinery and the factory system, and the further displacement of workers.

PIP : That seems to make the struggle hopeless. (Removes his hat, wipes his brow, and looks out of the carriage window.)

VIATOR : It makes Socialism the only hope, at all events. (Pointing) That’s a very nice piece of land over there, isn’t it? Look well nationalized, wouldn’t it? “For sale. Apply Law, Jaw, Wynstun & Co.” I see your worthy doctor has “nationalization of land” on his card. In Japan they have nationalization of land; in Russia the mines are national; in Germany the railways are national property. Yet the proletariat (that’s you and me, you know) who work all those services are not a whit better off—worse off in some cases. German and Belgian State railway workers for example.

PIP : That’s true.

VIATOR : Then : “Municipalisation of means of transit, lighting, water, milk, electricity and power.” Let’s see. In Bermondsey you have all these things run either by the County Council or the Borough Council. Milk, you say,—better milk. Yes, quite so, but a doubtful advantage if you’re a milkman out of a job. Can’t you see, my dear fellow, that you can nationalise and municipalise ’til you’re black in the face, but so long as you leave the masters in full possession of the political power, they will take good care to keep top-dog?

PIP : Surely you will support the next item : “Votes for all men and women of adult age”?

Viator : The principle’s all right, but as a vote catcher it’s all wrong. Besides, aren’t there enough votes now to get Socialism if they were used properly? What we want to do is to educate the present working-class vote— which greatly preponderates—as to the meaning of Socialism, not to bother about extensions of the franchise, and above all, not to use such issues, however much we may agree with them in principle, as bait to catch the voles of those who are opposed to us on the question of Socialism.

PIP : (With an air of conscious superiority) Well, you must agree that raising the amount of old age pensions and lowering the age limit, as our candidate suggests, would be a good thing ?

VIATOR : Yes! for the master class! Shifting the burden of the aged poor off the rates on to the taxes, neither of which affect the worker tuppence. No' if that's the best your doctor can do for you you might as well vote : for Dr. Cook.

PIP : What shall I do then?

Viator : Stop at home this time and don't vote. I tell you the disease Bermondsey is suffering from can’t be cured by medicine. What is wanted is a surgical operation. Here you are, this will tell you all about it. Read this (hands him a Manifesto). Full details - how to cure poverty and when you're tired of messing about with quacks and their nostrums, take your courage in both hands and try “the knife.” Here’s my station. Good night! (He gets out. Pip is left thinking.)

“Fritz”

The Gospel According To St. Andrew. (1907)

From the April 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Andrew Carnegie, library purveyor and morality expert (what a tribe of experts there seems to be in the world) has been at it again, He thinks “wealth is so obviously unequally distributed that the attention of civilised man must he attracted to it from time to time.” He adds "no amount of charity in spending fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them.” He quotes with approval President Roosevelt's statement that he “would discriminate in the sharpest way between fortunes well won and fortunes ill won, between those gained well as a whole and those gained in evil fashion by keeping just within the bounds of mere law honesty.” and concludes, “There are fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits; but I say my partners are the people ” !

Dear, good Saint Andrew! His partners are the people. How true ! How trite! Of course they are all in the firm. All partners of the somnolent variety — sleeping partners in short. And while they sleep Andrew may sing on and preen his flight feathers prettily, preparatory to taking his place in the angelic choir wherein he has already, with canny prescience, booked a prominent place, as I doubt not. Well for Andrew, now and presently, if his shrewdness impel him to take his departure before his sleeping partners wake; for I fear the much that it will be woe indeed for Andrew if he should in that day be with us in the flesh. 

“There are fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limit” Most upright judge!  "No amount of charity in spending fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them.” Oh 'a Daniel come to judgment.’ What a lead for the “partners" when they wake!' Under the spur of such urging, under the whip of such counsel, how readily will they locate the owner of the fortune which, despite all its possessor's widely advertised and loudly lauded efforts to dispose of it, persists in accumulating without even a hand-stir effort on the part of its owner; and how quick will they be to recognise this “fortune swollen beyond all healthy limit.” And when they hear the story of Pittsburg and how the history of its rise and development has stank in the nostrils of ‘‘civilised man” for years, in what a flash will come the appreciation of the inwardness of Andrew’s other pronouncement as to the insufficiency of charity to compensate for the methods by which fortunes are built up.

Verily there is a great day in store for the “partners” and for Andrew—when the sleepers wake. And one of the surest signs that the “partners” still snore, is in the fact that Andrew can walk abroad giving off his smug and unctuous dicta without risk of more than a halting effort at half humourous protest even from the most desperately “advanced ” organs of public opinion. Well, the sleepers will not always sleep. There’s a good time coming and the Laird of Skibo’s share in that good time may not be altogether what he would himself design.

And I’m not quite sure that, assuming he has left us before that day dawns, he will be quite happy in that “undiscovered country from whose bourne’’ etc. I claim no special knowledge in the matter, but I am reminded of the story told, upon as good authority as any story of the sort, of the experience of one, Pullman, who at one time was in the sleeping car business (these sleeping care were not much used, I believe, by Andrew’s sleeping “partners” referred to). It chanced that Pullman died and found himself at heaven’s gate whereat he knocked loudly. In response to his peremptory summons Peter appeared and of him Pullman demanded admittance. “And who are you?” asked Peter. “I’m Pullman,” answered the applicant, “ Pullman, of Pullman, U.S.A.” “Ah!” said Peter, “1 think we have heard something of you. Will you be good enough to wait a moment while I refer to my instructions?” And Peter opened a large book on his janitor’s desk. "Well, hurry up then,” quoth Pullman. “I’m not accustomed to being detained in this way. My time’s precious.” Peter turned the leaves leisurely. “Don't worry,” said he. “Time doesn’t matter quite so much here as it does where you came from. Ah! here we are. Pullman of Pullman, U.S.A. M—yes! I thought I was not mistaken. Will you kindly take a seat in the lift yonder.” Pullman entered the lift and waited. The liftman made no sign. “Well, what's the matter? Why don’t you start?” he asked. “There’s no hurry,” replied the liftman. "I’m expecting a few more along shortly. We generally fill up fairly quick.” Pullman stumped about impatiently and one or two more came in, but the lift was still not full. “Come! Come!” he said, “I shan’t get in to-day if you’re much longer. When are we going up?” "Sir,” replied the attendant, “ this lift does not go up!” 

A. James

Breaking the Chains? (1987)

Book Review from the August 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cuba Libre: Breaking the Chains? by Peter Marshall (Victor Gollancz, £14.95)

After a historical account of Cuban politics, the bulk of this book discusses various aspects of present-day Cuba, based largely on visits by the author in 1984. For anyone wanting an introduction to these topics, it will prove very useful.

Marshall makes no secret of his sympathy with Castro and Cuban developments. He points out the contrasts with the squalid and oppressive dictatorship of pre-Castro days, the expansion of literacy and education, the comprehensive health care system. At the same time, he discusses, often at length, many features of Cuban society which clearly show it to be no model for emulation.

Trade unions are basically just government tools, and strikes are illegal. A catch-all statute concerning "crimes against state security", which can result in the death penalty, has been used against workers involved in unofficial unions. There are thousands of political prisoners, even though dissidents are every so often packed off to the United States. Appalling anti-gay prejudice exists. Stress-related diseases are common, and the seventh most important cause of death is . . . suicide. Through identity cards and personal files, the state can exercise close control over every worker and student, each supposed shortcoming being recorded for posterity.

From being a sugar-based economy closely-tied to the US, Cuba has become a sugar-based economy closely-tied to Russia. Marshall notes that such economic categories as profits, interest and wages are prevalent, and adds:

The only difference between Cuba’s economic system now and capitalism is that so-called profits’ theoretically go to benefit the people as a whole rather than individual owners or shareholders, and that every aspect of the economy is developed according to an inflexible five-year plan.

But there has always been a free market, of varying extent, operating in Cuba, and state plans simply do not and cannot plan for everything, as witness the abortive attempts to reduce the dependence on sugar. As for profits benefiting everyone, even Castro has admitted to the creation of "a class of newly rich", and power and wealth are by no means equally distributed.

Before taking power, Castro had promised free elections within a year, but this was soon reneged on. Marshall is aware that direct democracy and workers' control are lacking, and describes Cuba’s political system as a "consultative oligarchy": a small number of leaders monopolise power but consult with others, especially top Communist Party members. This is a pretty feeble form of consultation, however, and ordinary working people have effectively no say in the running of an all-powerful state which brooks no opposition and interferes in all aspects of daily life.

It is clear, then, that Cuba is a capitalist country where workers, far from having broken their chains, are bound by the same chains as workers everywhere.

Paul Bennett