Vanity Blair (2007)

Book Review from the October 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Blair Years – Extracts From the Alastair Campbell Diaries, edited by Alastair Campbell and Richard Stott. Hutchinson. £25 hardback.

Alastair Campbell, former Press Secretary to Tony Blair, has produced a volume of over 700 pages of his diary scribblings that most of the mainstream press has been expectantly salivating over for some time. In approach a hybrid of Richard Crossman’s Diaries and those of Campbell’s long-time friend Alan Clark (while certainly being nearer the latter in tone) it is rarely a dull read, even if there is plenty that has been kept back for fuller, later editions. Whether it met the expectations of the press is a matter for them, though many have been quick to point out that some of the most potentially damaging revelations have been edited out by Campbell for fear of embarrassing the present government, especially particular revelations related to some of the more serious disputes between Blair and Gordon Brown.

Campbell was a man feared by many both inside and outside government, and in truth not all the punches are pulled by any means. Campbell uses his journalistic training to good effect and manages to paint quite detailed personal portraits of the main figures in the UK government over the last ten years and more in a way that has never been done previously. A recovering alcoholic with at least one serious ‘psychotic episode’ as he calls it in his past, Campbell is an emotional man and this makes his diaries all the more readable – and very far removed in most respects from the standard fare usually served up by those deemed to be at the ‘heart of government’.

Apart from the sheer vanity of great numbers of those Blair surrounded himself with over the years (mirroring the vanity of Blair himself), there are at least three other things worthy of comment. First, the way in which an unelected official like Campbell clearly had more authority and power within the government than many – if not most – of the elected politicians, often to the annoyance of both the latter and the civil service. Second, the lack of clarity about how policy decisions sometimes emerged (the discussions and negotiations over Northern Ireland are the most interesting and detailed while the underlying reasons for the Iraq war seem to take poor second place to the military machinations). And third – frivolously if amusingly – the way in which so many of those featured in the diaries appear either partly or fully naked at various points (including Blair himself, Mo Mowlam and several other government officials). Campbell is a former writer of soft-core sex stories, which must have come in handy if you’re recounting heated late night discussions in Downing Street with a Prime Minister sat completely starkers in his office with nothing more than a mug of tea to cover his modesty.

In these edited extracts there were clearly limits to even this though – at no point, for instance, does Gordon Brown ever appear without so much as a tie.

Dave Perrin

Digging up the dead (1998)

From the September 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is the season for disinterring royal parasites. In Russia it was the Tsar. Here in Britain it is the Queen of Hearts.

In Russia they have dug up the Czar in order to rebury him with the blessing of a befrocked inmate from the Holy Asylum of Russian Orthodoxy. Oddly, this church took the view that these were probably not the Czar's real bones-so they carried out the reburial more in the spirit of an alcoholic drinking the blood of Christ than with the respect that they would have given to genuine feudal despotism. In Britain, under Tony Blair's very very modern government, Tsarism has been revived in solidarity with the Romanov dynasty. The "modernisers" have appointed a Drugs' Tsar, and a Roads' Tsar. Peter Mandelson has apparently asked nicely if he might one day become an Ottoman Emperor, even though he is so manifestly suited to the role of Rasputin.

In Britain it is the season for reliving the Death of England's Truest Rose. On the basis that psychotic experiences are always best the second time round, the first anniversary of Di and Dodi's demise down the Tunnel of Love is being celebrated in the manner that primitive tribespeople celebrated the coming of the rain god. Publishers are rushing over one another to produce the most trite and sugary memorial books. Few words, mainly pictures: a fair summary of her approach to life. Fading rock stars compete to perform in memory of the fallen goddess. A memorial garden has been planned for Kensington, although some of the odious residents of that district have protested that this will only bring crowds of awful common people to their patch. The Spencer Family, older in its aristocratic idleness than the Wolfgang-Come-Lately Windsors (aka Saxe-Coburgs), are milking public memory for all they can get; the hero of last year's funeral, the slimy Earl, continues to promote the cult of Diana-worship in the manner of a man with the recipe for making hamburgers out of hamster droppings. The whole thing is manifestly distasteful. But—as the broadsheet feature writers say—What does it say about Britain in the late Nineties?

There was an awful lot of twaddle written last year about how the public reaction to the royal death was proof that British people are soft, gentle and know how to cry. British workers have actually known how to cry for quite a long time. Capitalism has a capacity to give plenty of exercise to the tear ducts of its victims. Even the Guardian, that mouthpiece of the liberal reformer's conscience, published articles suggesting that the Left were spoilsports if they refused to join in the patriotic frenzy which followed the death of the Princess. One or two left-feminists then wrote to the newspaper declaring that at last they could feel as others around them did: yes, they wept, they sobbed, they commiserated with the poor Princes with only the grounds of Eton and several Palaces to console them-they, in short, were as sucked in by the spectacle as everybody else. Yesterday the poor miners and their destroyed pit villages; today the sad Princess; of perspective there was none.

Okay then, Marxist big-mouth, what precisely did this outburst of grief tell us about the condition of Britain and its population? Well, if you really want to know ...

Alienation

When millions of people feel alienated—politically, economically, psychologically—they are easy prey for spectacles inviting them to displace their feelings about themselves for someone or something else. It was tragically moving last summer to hear of people saying that they had grieved for the Princess more than for their own spouse or parents. They were not necessarily being insincere. Just as people who fail in life can enjoy the illusion of success by watching "their" leader win an election or "their" striker score a goal, so it is possible for a repressed ocean of feelings to flood out when it seems safe for people to weep in public. Many workers who grieved were crying for themselves: for their deprived lives and need to invest so much in a fairytale character whose wealth and privilege would never be their own. That she was a vulnerable being-like most of us-whose huge PR success was to manufacture an identity with the unprivileged that the haughty Queen has never even attempted, made the death seem like a personal loss to those alienated from their own personalities. For them, any distraction was more bearable than life as it is.

When people have nothing to say about life they indulge in the rituals of death. That is why burying people is now the main occupational activity of the religious. In Russia it is easier to remember the Romanovs than think about where the next dinner is coming from. In Britain it is easier for Blair to lead the weeping for a caring princess than to give a single penny more to single mothers or the disabled-who are having their benefits cut. When she was living Diana was perceived by most of the press as a pretty vacuous, self-righteous and self-indulgent figure of fun and with a little pity. From her nuisance calls to ex-lovers to her arrogant claim to be the only significant social worker in Britain ("a Queen of Hearts", so help us), she was a living caricature of dim-but-niceness. Once she was dead the follies could be ignored and she could be used to symbolise all of the virtues so manifestly missing in those with any actual power.

Nationalist hysteria

National hysteria is nationalist hysteria. The flag-waving crowds on the day of the funeral were reminiscent of pictures from North Korea after the death of Kim-Il-Sung or China after Mao. How we scoffed at those gullible dupes as they paraded in the streets, forcing out patriotic songs through their tears. The more cynical believed that they were hired stooges, paid a few quid to weep in public. But the Di death squads in this country showed how easy it is for this kind of mania to spread even in the so-called advanced democracies. The nationalist illusion that UK PLC is our company and its ruling elite are the head of our family is precisely the way that vast millions of workers have been kept in line ideologically over the decades of capitalist history-and earlier. The spectacle of the proles from "below stairs" sobbing into their McDonald cartons at the loss of a champagne-swigging aristocrat, who spent her last night at the Ritz in Paris before making her ill-fated journey in the presence of a drunk driver must have been music to the ears of the small minority who possess but do not produce. Far, far better to have the workers marching to the beat of the nationalist drum than behind a miners' union band.

In fact, vast numbers of people were not in the least distraught by the death of the princess. The "public" that mourned as One Nation was, like all unified nations, an illusory construction. The vulgar way of creating this illusion is to lock off those who dissent from the position required by the public. This was what happened to heretics in the past who dared to question religion: they were beaten into submission, locked away or killed. The Russian Czars murdered numerous dissenters. (Will Yeltsin and the Orthodox Church be holding televised memorial services for them, incidentally?) In contemporary China there are literally millions of dissenters perishing in prison camps for the crime of refusing to act like the public their rulers require.

During the Diana madness last September there were many workers whose own lives were far more interesting to them than that of the royal leeches. They were rarely to be heard on the phone-in programmes (except to be demonised as unpatriotic, unfeeling freaks) and were never reported in the media. More than one person has reported to the present writer an actual fear of dissenting in public from the general hysteria. One woman, who was walking away from the funeral route towards the supermarket, said that she was sneered at by the gathering crowds as some sort of a traitor. Yet when she arrived at the supermarket there were plenty of people there. It is quite likely that the majority of us whose indifference to the affairs of the Houses of Windsor and Spencer were in a majority. But there were others determined to project an image of a nation stunned by grief.

It has been said by well-meaning leftists that, even though it might have been a diversionary exercise, the events of last year were an indication of how spontaneously people can create a popular movement. Well, apart from the fact that it may well have been less popular than it seemed, and was certainly not spontaneous, this probably tells us more about the Left's idea of social change than how history can really be made. Certainly, if one's idea of a movement is to have an iconic leader—be it Blair, Lenin, Thatcher or Di—followed by cheering masses (a wholly disparaging term for workers), then last summer's funeral antics were a model of how to generate a mass movement.

The movement of the majority that socialists want will be rather different. No leaders, be they princesses or party chiefs, will have any role to play. No priests. No pathetic dribbling over the corpses of the dead. No mindless anthems or idiots' flags. No followers. No police to keep us in line. Neither gods nor capitalists. That will a movement of the living; more liberating in every way than capitalism's spectacles of the dead.

Steve Coleman

Lenin’s life (2011)

Book Review from the August 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lenin. By Lars T. Lih, Reaktion Books, 2011, £10.95.

This is a good biography of Lenin, who was born Vladimir Ulyanov in 1870, the son of a top Tsarist civil servant. Lih brings out well how until 1917 Lenin was essentially an anti-Tsarist Russian revolutionary with his own particular theory and strategy of how to overthrow the Tsarist regime and replace it with a democratic republic that was the aim of all 19th century Russian revolutionaries. At first many thought that the mass basis for the overthrow of Tsarism could be the peasantry. Then they turned to assassination (Lenin’s brother, Alexander, was executed in 1887 for his part in an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander III). After widespread strikes in the 1890s some turned to the factory proletariat as the mass basis and identified themselves as Marxist Social Democrats. One of these, from 1893, was Lenin.

As Marxists, the Social Democrats accepted that Russia, at least on its own, would have to pass through capitalism, which would create the material basis for socialism as well as preparing the working class to run society. Some argued that it was therefore best to leave the leadership of the popular, democratic (or “bourgeois”) revolution that would overthrow Tsarism to the bourgeoisie supported by the workers and peasants. Lenin disagreed. Lih describes him as holding to “the heroic scenario” of the factory proletariat leading the mass of the Russian people (who were mainly peasants) to overthrow Tsarism and establish a democratic republic. Lenin knew very well that socialism in Russia (alone) was out of the question.

As it turned out, the Tsarist regime collapsed of itself in March 1917 under the impact of WWI. Lih describes how Lenin now shifted his position and began to argue that, instead of a democratic republic and liberal capitalism, what could be established in Russia was a working class regime which could take some “steps to socialism” while awaiting a socialist revolution in the rest of Europe which he was convinced was imminent. It was on this basis that the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917.

The European socialist revolution that Lenin had gambled on failed to materialise (in reality it was never on the cards) and he found himself the head of the government of a country that was both economically and culturally backward. Lenin suffered a first stroke in May 1922 and was no longer at the centre of power until he died after a third stroke in January 1924. Lih detects, as others have done, in Lenin’s last articles written in 1923 doubts creeping into Lenin’s mind:

    “The cultural deficit explained the failure of Lenin’s hopes for the Soviets, but it also posed a direct challenge to the legitimacy of socialist revolution in backward Russia. Lenin was confronted by this challenge in January 1923 when he read a memoir of the 1917 revolution written by the left-wing socialist Nikolai Sukhanov. In notes dictated soon afterwards Lenin admitted that socialist critics such as Sukhanov had correctly asserted that Russia was not ready for socialism. He responded to these familiar arguments with a flood of rhetorical questions (I count nine in two pages). Such questions are the rhetorical device of choice for those who are not quite sure of their position.”

It was to his credit that he did have doubts, even if it was psychologically impossible for him to admit that he had been wrong in 1917. There never was of course any prospect of the Bolsheviks giving up their control of political power. Maybe if Lenin had not died at the relatively young age of 53 the capitalism that inevitably developed there would not have been called “socialism” but the “state capitalism” Lenin knew it to be.

Adam Buick

Editorial: Thieves Kitchen at Gleneagles (2005)

Editorial from the July 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month the world’s most powerful politicians are getting together in Gleneagles to discuss how best to exercise their power. Two thousand years ago, in 60 BCE, the three most powerful men in Ancient Rome – Crassus, Caesar and Pompey – met to form a shadow government, one which recognised the reality of their personal power as opposed to the nearly defunct formal constitution of the Republic; in much the same way as the Titanic recognised the iceberg’s right of way. Known as the First Triumvirate,  it wasn’t to last – power cannot work against the logic it’s based on; so the rulers of Rome were impelled into a civil war they didn’t want because the needs of their camps demanded it.

Now, the G8 has a similar function to this ancient pact: the open and honest rule of the most powerful states beyond the formal international equality and niceties of the United Nations or the World Trade Organisation.  The G8, a self-selected club of the richest countries in the world, co-operating together on trade related issues: an open acknowledgement of the golden rule – them as have the gold rule.  Unlike the WTO or the UN, it is not an international bureaucracy, but an opportunity for the leaders of the powerful states to meet and discuss policy – a caucus rather than a conference.

It is hopeless to imagine, as some more soppy minded followers of Blair  and Brown do, that the G8 can be turned into a force for good in the  world. As the most powerful figure in the G8, the President of the United States has shown, the self-interest of  the powerful comes first.

He won’t agree to Brown’s proposed International Finance Facility, because it doesn’t fit with America’s plans.  Although Blair’s Big Idea – for want of a better term – in international politics is that “our” values can coincide with “our” interests, the reality often is that the values are the garnish to the capitalist feast. 

Nor, though, can chanting like plebeians voicing their views in the Forum be of much help.  There can be no doubt that in the current world order, the reality is that what these ultra wealthy and ultra powerful states want will happen.  They each have the men, the guns and, by Jingo, the money too. Any hope that they will give any attention to the hoi polloi, other than fobbing them off,  is a barren one.  Business as usual is their god.

Within nation states – where the ruling class is cohesive, their interests similar and where they have to rely on workers administering their interests – political democracy can function and the rule of law have some footing.  Politicians and administrators can be and are held to account.  Between nation states though, in the murky wild-west of international law, all these constraints are off.

International diplomacy is clandestine, furtive, removed as far as possible from the democratic gaze. The meetings at Gleneagles will be held behind locked doors, far away from the eyes of anyone interested in proceedings, as the eight colossi bicker and bargain the loot of the whole world.  In the ancient world, the definition of a tyrant was a ruler who couldn’t walk around without bodyguards: the meetings at Gleneagles will be conducted behind an awesome ring of steel and firepower.

If the G8 were smashed, if its meetings did not happen, the mere practicalities of the existence of these hyper-rich states would mean that they would still have to collaborate and co-ordinate their interests.  Simply by being in existence, they have an effect on the politics of the world as irresistible as gravity.

Clearly then, the only way to make progress is to remove the obstacle of these powerful camps and end the interests and powerbases they represent.   This can only be done by raising a force adequate to resist them – a movement on a global scale, coherent and co-ordinated, so that one day the rulers of the Earth will wake to find our meeting of the workers, a clique 6 billion strong has settled on their doorstep.   Our strength won’t be military or financial but creative. We have made the world as it is by our labour, and by the light of our industry and reason we will finally dispel the shadow of privilege and power.

No revolution? (2013)

Pamphlet Review from the June 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

No Revolution Anywhere. By Robert Kurz. Chronos Publications.

According to Robert Kurz we are in the final days of the capitalist system. The ‘third industrial revolution’, the rise of microelectronics, has led to an irreversible restructuring of the production process, invested capital will soon no longer be able to reproduce itself since the human labour-power that is the source of surplus value and profit no longer plays a central role in the manufacturing process. For the past twenty years growth has been sustained not through real accumulation but through debt and financial speculation, but as the crisis is no longer confined to certain regions or sectors we are now witnessing the bubble bursting on a global scale. Unlike previous worldwide economic crisis this one cannot be overcome because capital has now reached its pinnacle. Crises of the 19th century where overcome because industrial development was able to spread into new areas.

The great depression of the 1930s occurred at a higher level of technological  development but was overcome through the development of Taylorist production methods and Keynesian state regulation. However this time there is no get out for the system, there are no further avenues for the expansion of value extraction. So what validity is there to these claims and was Kurz (who passed away in mid-2012) really ‘the most advanced political and political economic thinker in the capitalist world in this age’ as the publishers of this pamphlet would have us believe?

Whilst we would agree that the ultimate source of all profit is the productive surplus labour of the worker – wage labourers produce a value greater than that they receive back as wages or salaries – and that if production processes reached such a level that the part played by labour was close to zero there would be no source for the further accumulation of value and the era of capitalism would be over. The question remains, have we really reached this point or are we likely to in the not too astronomically distant future? The answer to both these questions is a firm ‘no’. Whilst technology is used in more and more situations (and sometimes pulled back once labour becomes cheaper to use – think hand car washes) we are still a long way from the total elimination of labour from production.

A crisis has the effect of scorching the earth ready for a fresh round of capital growth. Many enterprises fall by the wayside but those that do survive are able to purchase the productive capital assets of their former competitors at knock down prices thus helping fuel a recovery in the rate of profit. This devaluing of capital, one of the factors that Marx saw as counteracting the fall in the general rate of profit, seems to be disregarded by Kurz.

Robotic automation and information technology decrease the dependency of production on labour, as has the introduction of any new technology throughout the history of capitalism, whilst also cheapening the production of both capital and consumer goods. In other words, it takes less time to produce the stuff that is needed for the subsistence of the worker and also less time to manufacture the machinery that makes the stuff. A fall in the total mass of labour therefore does not necessarily lead to a fall in the general rate of  profit. This weakens Kurz’s claims regarding the irreversibility of the present crisis.

The rest of the pamphlet is concerned with criticising various types of reformist activism, much of which we would agree with. What we would not agree with is Kurz’s apparent rejection of the class struggle. For him the working class cannot be an agent for revolutionary change because ‘labour’ is a category of capitalist social relations, labour struggles are just a part of the development of capitalism. For us this is a half-truth, so long as the working class only struggles for petty changes to the terms of exploitation the system as a whole will continue to function. That is why it is necessary to organise politically for the sole purpose of transforming capitalism into socialism. The working class, which comprises of the vast majority of people, will be the agent for this change since it is this class alone that produces and reproduces the material conditions of society.

DJP

Recipe for disaster? (2006)

Pamphlet Review from the May 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Work. Anarchist Federation. £1.00.

It might be thought that a pamphlet on work would begin by setting out what is going to be meant by the word. But this pamphlet does not do so. Instead, it uses the word in two different, even contradictory, senses. Work “must be destroyed before it destroys us”, proclaims the front cover. “Work is a disease” says an illustration. “Arguments against work” is one chapter heading.

But another chapter is headed “Work in a free society” though even this has the subtitle “freedom begins where work ends”. So, after all, work is not going to be destroyed? It is not a disease (or, if it is, it’s still going to exist in a “free society”?). So, in a free society, we are not going to be free when we work?

In physics work is the expenditure of energy. For humans, it is the exercise of a person’s physical and material energies to produce something that has some use, an unavoidable feature of human existence which has to take place in all societies and so cannot be abolished or destroyed. Under capitalism most work takes the form of employment, which is the things the pamphlets says: boring, meaningless, done for the benefit of an employer. It is employment – working for wages – , not work as such, that is a “disease” that can be abolished. What is required is the transformation of work, not its impossible abolition.

The authors of Work make some strong and valid criticisms of the human consequences of capitalist employment. For many workers it means physical and nervous exhaustion, illness, often anti-social laws, damaged family relationships, the intensification and lengthening of the working week, job insecurity, the switch from long-term employment to sub-contracting and self-employment, usually with worse pay and conditions. Even the unemployed, they say, are now engaged in the “work” of “looking for work”.

We agree that in “a society without ‘employment’, without bosses and wage labour”, the work of producing what society needs will be quite different: it will be “freely chosen”, “not measured at all” and an “expression of a person’s pleasure in what they are doing”.

Where we disagree is over how the Anarchist Federation envisage such a society coming into being – by a general refusal to work:

   “We will take our hands from the plough and the loom, rise up from our desks, cast off our boots and overalls, walk out of the hotels and restaurants, leave the factory and office, meeting with others to join in their refusal to work as they celebrate ours”.

This is a recipe for disaster. If (as this scenario assumes) people had reached the stage of wanting to abolish capitalism and its employment and wage labour, then a more sensible option would surely be to organise, not to stop working, i.e. to stop producing with all the consequences this would have on social life, but to keep production going under worker control while the transfer through political action of social control from the capitalist class to the community as a whole takes place.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: Capitalism is working (2009)

The Cooking the Books column from the April 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Times (9 March) carried an article by Eamonn Butler, the director of the Adam Smith Institute. Yes, they are still around, even if it might be thought that they would be keeping a low profile these days, given that the pursuit of profit has yet again led to overproduction and a financial and economic crisis, a really big one this time.

Butler began by quoting a speech by an American professor called Boettke at a recent gathering of Mad Marketeers in New York:

“If you bound the arms and legs of gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him down with chains, threw him in a pool and he sank, you wouldn't call it a ‘failure of swimming'. So, when markets have been weighted down by inept and excessive regulation, why call this a ‘failure of capitalism'?”

That depends on what you mean by capitalism. Boettke seems to mean the spontaneous operation of production for profit and the market. But that’s not really capitalism; it’s just a policy that some capitalists (and their paid and unpaid publicists) have favoured at some times.

Capitalism is a system of production for sale on a market with a view to profit. Ideologists such as Butler and Boettke are assuming that there is some irreconcilable conflict between the profit system and government intervention. But there isn’t. Capitalism has never existed without government intervention and never will. For a start, it is based on the exclusion of the majority from the ownership and control of the means of production, which are monopolised by a profit-seeking minority. A state is needed to maintain this exclusion. This has to be paid for, so taxes have to be levied. Capitalists in one country are in competition with capitalists from other countries, and governments have always intervened to help “their” capitalists with tariffs and subsidies and, if need be, by military action.

So, capitalism and the state are not incompatibles. They go together. What is true is that the consensus of capitalist opinion varies at times as to the desirable degree of government intervention. What seems to be annoying the Adam Smith Institute today is that their ideological rivals, the Keynesians, who have no qualms about government intervention in the capitalist economy, are making a come-back because of the present crisis.

“Up to now”, Butler wrote, “the Keynesians have made the running. Greed, they say, has brought down the world economy. Only massive public spending can revive it”. If by “greed” Butler means the pursuit of profits, the Keynesians are not against that, even if they certainly are in favour of trying to spend the way of the crisis. But that’s just an alternative policy for the profit system to the one favoured by the Adam Smith Institute. It’s not a negation of capitalism.

Butler proffers his own explanation for the crisis: “excessive regulation” (of course). This assumes that, without this, the crisis would not have occurred. He rather undermines this approach by concluding his article by saying that “occasional crises are the cost of the prosperity that entrepreneurial capitalism brings”.

So, crises are going to occur anyway, even in his ideal, unregulated capitalist world! And what, without excessive regulation to blame, would they be caused by if not by the pursuit of profits leading to overproduction in some sector in relation to the market, from which the only way out is a crisis to eliminate the lame ducks and the deadwood, as capitalists like to refer to their inefficient colleagues? In this sense, Boettke is right. This and other crises don’t represent the “failure of capitalism”, but capitalism working normally.

Culture and Capitalism (1999)

Book Review from the March 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

'A Weapon in the Struggle: The Cultural History of the Communist Party in Britain'. Edited by Andy Croft. Pluto Press. 1998.

This is one of those irritating books the title of which offers a set of expectations which is almost totally out of kilter with its content. Thus the reader isn't offered a cultural history of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but rather a series of essays about the work and impact of various so-called Communist artists and critics living in Britain—some of whom, coincidentally, were members of the Communist Party.

Only in the short, six-page introduction, written by Andy Croft, is there any considered reference to the cultural policies and practices of the British Communist Party and, significantly, this introduction largely ignores the essays which follow. As Andy Croft put it himself: "These essays [consider] some of the achievements and failures of communist artists who, though mostly forgotten now, once had an extraordinary impact on British cultural life."

This said, such references as are made to cultural policies of the Communist Party of Great Britain, suggest that they were frequently hostile to the work of artists, including many of the artists who are the subject of the essays in this book. For the most part the CP's official attitude seemed based on the "norms and expectations being imposed by Zhdanov and the cultural policemen of the Soviet Union".

Indeed, Emile Burns (the chairman of the CP's National Cultural Committee in the early 1950s) went so far as to argue that nothing was to be learnt from the "decadent culture of capitalist society", and that "it is absolutely vital to the working class that they should see culture for what it is—the culture of a decaying class". Leaving aside the fact that culture can heighten our awareness of the world we live in, and thus affect a critique of capitalism, the idea that such cultural figures as Mozart, Shelley, Hogarth and Zola were mere apologists for the capitalist class is grotesque.

But if the title of the book causes readers to wonder about the possibilities of taking action under the terms of the Trade Descriptions Act, many of the essays are interesting and revealing. It helps that the focus of attention is wide rather than narrow and that it encompasses graphic art, pageants, jazz and folk song, in addition to poetry, the novel, film, classical music, and literary criticism. I particularly enjoyed Robert Radford's essay on "the graphic art of the three Jameses" (Boswell and Fitton and Holland), and the accompanying trenchant cartoons; Gerald Porter's piece on folk and vernacular songs; and Hanna Behrend's thoughtful article on Marxist literary criticism.

The latter faces four square the apparent paradox of economic relations determining the ideas that exist in the superstructure of society, whilst at the same time these same ideas provide the basis for further economic transformations. It also hints at a further dilemma: how can a political party judge the value and worth of cultural artefacts, both in terms of their political power and their cultural merit, in such a way as to favour some and criticise others? More about this would have been welcome but given the book's studied avoidance of the implications which flow from its own title, though I wasn't surprised that no more was forthcoming. Nevertheless a rewarding read not least because, if my reaction is typical, it will inspire a lot of further thought in readers.

Michael Gill

Unknown Marx (2003)

Book Review from the February 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Unknown Marx. By Takahisa Oishi. Pluto Press. 214 pages

Actually, despite the title, some of this is old hat. Oishi goes through Marx to show that so-called “Soviet Marxism” had distorted his views; which of course we all knew. There is nothing “unknown” about the fact that Marx was not writing as a simple economist but was putting forward a “critique of political economy” (the title of one of his books as well as the sub-title of Capital), his main argument being that, whereas writers like Adam Smith and Ricardo regarded economic categories such as capital, wages, value, price, money, etc as eternal, natural features of human social existence, these were in fact categories of capitalism which would disappear when it did (but didn't in the ex-USSR, which showed it never got beyond capitalism).

Nor is it all that unknown that the mere abolition of the legal private property rights of individual capitalists is not the same thing as the abolition of capitalism, which is a social relationship between capital and wage-labour. What needs to be abolished to end the exploitation of workers is this social relationship; which never happened in Russia. Oishi, however, does make a rarely-heard point when he says that, for Marx, in socialism/communism (which he recognises Marx didn't distinguish between) “the immediate workers have free access to the means of production” and that they do not “belong to some institution independent of the workers themselves” (as in the ex-USSR and as Oishi rather unfairly accuses Engels of suggesting), i.e. that common ownership means no ownership not state ownership.

Although Oishi's style is off-putting and possibly counter-productive (he analyses Marx's writings as “texts” in the same sort of way that mediaeval monks analysed Paul's epistles), his book does have a certain interest as an analysis of the economic parts of Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (most commentators concentrate on the philosophical aspects).

Oishi identifies the key economic concept put forward there by Marx as “estranged labour” in the sense of labour that doesn't control what it produces since this is the private property of someone else; capital is accumulated labour that has come to escape from the control of the direct producers and has come to dominate them as an alien, exploiting force. He also brings out that, already in 1844, Marx had reached his basic “critique of political economy” (that it took the economic categories of capitalism for eternal, natural features).

Oishi is able to argue plausibly that there is a continuity between these positions of the so-called “Early Marx” and the Marx who wrote Capital. This is to be expected as what Marx wrote when he was 26 and what he published when he was 49 were after all written by the same person. However, Oishi rather overstates his case. While it is true that the 1844 manuscripts do contain the concept of capital, wages, money, etc as categories of capitalism, the argument that wage workers are exploited by capitalists, and the criticism of money for its effect on human relations and the call to abolish it along with wages, there is a lot that is still not there.

Marx had not yet distinguished either between “value” and “exchange value” or between “labour” and “labour power” and so was not able to give an adequate theory of exploitation; in fact the whole concept of “surplus value” is absent from these manuscripts, as it was from The Poverty of Philosophy which Marx published in 1847 and which Oishi also submits to detailed textual analysis. At this time Marx still talked about workers selling their “labour” to the capitalists which presented him, as the other socialists of the time who based their theories on Ricardo's version of the labour theory of value, with the problem of explaining exploitation (the capitalists' profit) other than as a swindle (unequal exchange) or as a non-economic phenomenon (legalised robbery permitted by the state). Unlike Paul, Marx wasn't perfect. He didn't get it right the first time.

Adam Buick

Pro-Labour History (2017)

Book Review from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Rebel Footprints'. By David Rosenberg, (Pluto Press)

Labour history, like all history, is seen through various lenses, distorting and magnifying certain aspects of reality, filtering out unwanted intrusions. Its resulting narratives reflect fundamental assumptions and serve to boost and consolidate those convictions. Here, David Rosenberg, presents us with a particular view of Radical London designed with a particular aim in mind. One which, since it already carries ‘likes’ from Corbyn and the TUC, ought to be pretty obvious.

Such it is not to the uncritical eye. For the best propaganda does not look like propaganda. Ostensibly, this book really does tell the story of ‘how defiant grassroots Londoners responded to their circumstances from the beginning of the 1830s until the end of the 1930s’ in relation to localities in which they occurred. Here, indeed, are the strikes, the campaigns, the events which any historian of the subject would be bound to include.

Already, however, our vision is limited time-wise. Why 1939? Did history magically end, Fukuyama style, with the invasion of Poland? Of course, this is not Year Zero at all. For the Left Labourite, the Golden Age began and history ended with the general election of July 1945. Hurrah for the use of troops to smash the dockers! Hurrah for the Indian massacres! Hurrah for the atom bomb! Go Clement go! And since that time, the Labour Party has been a most integral part of the political ruling class, so any account of strikes, campaigns, would inevitably be a Jeremiad (!) against that very Labour Party, which Rosenberg has come to praise. And not, like us, to bury.

What then, is the point of these campaigns, these strikes, that Rosenberg (to give him credit) accurately (bar a few niggles) and with an attractive liveliness (if with also butterfly flitting) describes? Whereto is the admirable sense of solidarity generated by the action of working together for a common cause directed? And how are the questions inevitably posed by such campaigns answered? Why, sir, need you ask! Instead of directing such justifiable anger, such togetherness, such criticism, against the system, the Labourite, consciously or unconsciously, co-opts these sentiments for their own ends.

And these are made clear: A change of political masters; Government charity – ‘free’ wigs, a council flat, and a nice job on the bins – for the worker; and a comfy seat on the board for ‘his’ rep. Apart from capitalism as normal, its wars, its poverty, its misery, this is all we can expect from the resurrection of Corbynite Old Labour. That this alternative to the Blairite New Labour holds any sort of appeal shows the depth to which we have sunk, propelled thence by the twin millstones of Leninist ‘Communism’ and Labour’s ‘Socialism’ – both in reality one and the same state capitalist nightmare.

As to the alternative, the world turned upside down, the lowly made high and the masters downtrodden, of this, to which a good half of those name-dropped herein subscribed, nominally or genuinely, there is no mention. We, and those like us, do not want ‘justice and equality’, our path is not mere protest, defensive and backward looking, but the revolutionary road to the world made anew.

Kaz.

Editorial: The Future of Sir Stafford Cripps (1939)

Editorial from the March 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir Stafford Cripps has made clear his policy of bringing together political parties and individuals on the basis of a limited programme of reforms and the defence of democracy, but what will happen now that the Labour Party Executive have expelled him and are threatening his supporters in their ranks is not easy to decide. The News Chronicle, which backs Cripps, claims that he is receiving a big volume of support inside and outside the Labour Party and trade unions. The Daily Herald, which opposes him as a disruptionist, stresses the solid block of opposition from the ranks of most of the big unions. He has made one thing clear, his opposition to the formation of a new party. Speaking at Birmingham on February 10th (News Chronicle, February 11th), he is reported to have said that he had received thousands of letters urging him to start a rival organisation, but, in his view, “that would be the most tragic folly.”

It certainly would be a strange way of securing unity to divide the Labour Party just before a general election. Whatever Sir Stafford Cripps’ present intentions are, he may find himself pushed or persuaded into forming a rival party if the Labour Executive succeed in getting a conference vote against his policy.

In view of his skill in Parliament, and his personal popularity in East Bristol, it certainly seems that he can safely depend upon holding his seat there against the Labour Party Headquarters if they put up a rival Labour candidate. In many respects, Sir Stafford Cripps resembles another onetime leader of revolt against the Labour Party Headquarters and the trade union executives—Mr. James Maxton. Mr. Maxton has equal popularity in his own constituency and equal skill as a Parliamentary and platform orator. Maxton, too, tried to combine the leadership of revolts with a determination not to split the ranks of the Labour Party. He found himself in due course outside the Labour Party and fighting against it in the constituencies. But after several years in the “political wilderness,” faced with declining popularity and membership, Mr. Maxton and his remnant of the I.L.P. are now on their way back into the fold. Every new experience of this kind confirms the soundness of the attitude of the S.P.G.B. in recognising that there are no short cuts, no advance to Socialism without Socialists. 

Why We Must Organise Politically and Industrially. (1913)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

M. Geeson (Toronto) writes:—

  “In reading the editorial of the S.S. for February 1913, I came across a statement which I would like you to explain a little fuller. The statement is this: ‘In regard to the revolutionary economic organisation the Socialist position is identical. That such an organisation will be called for as part of the organisation of the working class for the achievement of their emancipation must be admitted by every Socialist.' The question I would like to ask is, does not the political organisation exterminate the economic organisation, or vice versa, as the case may be, for one or the other must be incorrect for the emancipation of the working class, and if that is so a person accepting the double position must, consciously or unconsciously, deny the class struggle.”

Reply:
It would have been much easier to deal with this matter had Mr. Geeson attempted to support his statements with arguments. As life is too short, and energy, at the present price of provisions, too valuable, to permit one or the other to be wasted in slogging at ideas which perhaps exist neither in Mr. Geeson’s mind nor in anybody else’s, the present penman is forced back on to the request for a fuller explanation.

The emancipation of the working class must not be conceived as a simple, single step to be taken either on the political or the industrial field. It is nothing of the kind. On the contrary it is to be a process, and an elaborate process at that, carried out upon both the political field and the industrial.

The process commences on the political field, and ends on the economic. That, at all events, is the Socialist position. The Anarchist position is that it commences on the economic field and ends there. A certain party in this country (the S.L.P.) has taken up the position that it commences upon the economic field and ends on the political. It is left for Mr. Geeson, however, to complete the round in the implication that the process of emancipation begins and ends in the political arena.

Now the Socialist and the Anarchist argue that the end aimed at is economic transformation. The former says that, under present conditions, this transformation must be preceded by the capture of the machinery of Government, while the latter cries out upon political action. The S.L.P. man stands upon his head and does his thinking with his feet, for the implication of his position is that we must bring about Socialism in order to capture the political machinery. But Mr. Geeson—ah! courtesy forbids.

The Anarchist thinks that the machinery of government is to be overthrown by merely ramming the people’s heads against it. They would oppose the rifle and bayonet, the prison and the hangman’s noose, with the petard that so often goes off in its maker’s pocket, and the hunger-strike that so effectively prevents its devotees doing any mischief. Such people, logically enough, have no use for political action, and hence no use for a political organisation.

The Socialist, on the other hand, holds that the process of emancipation involves, first of all, the disarming of the master class. This must be the fruit of a political struggle, and therefore renders political organisation necessary at all events up to the time of its achievement.

But would Mr. Geeson have matters stop there? Does he think that the emancipation of the working class is completed with the disarmament of the master class and the decreeing of common ownership in the means of life? It is quite a while now since food came down from heaven. It is because we can only feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves through the means and instruments of production and distribution that we are going to so much trouble to obtain possession of these means and instruments. But they will no more operate themselves as the common property of society than they do as the private property of a class. On the contrary, their economical operation will, for obvious reasons, call for far more perfect organisation than exists to-day.

Such organisation is, of course, economic, not political. It is economic from the very nature of things—from the very fact that it is organisation on the economic field for an economic purpose. Whatever the organisation may call itself, or whatever its members may think themselves, directly it takes concerted action on the economic field, the action is necessarily economic action and the result of organised economic effort. Such action becomes imperative for the simple reason that when the political organisation has shot its bolt, or, if you like it better, when the revolutionary working-class organisation has shot its political bolt, it has not by any means emancipated the working class. It has only, by destroying the State, made it possible for the workers to complete their emancipation. This they must do by taking possession of the means by which alone they can live, and operating them intelligently and collectively so that they may live.

This, then, is what we mean when we say that the workers must organise both politically and economically. The emancipation of the working class necessitating organised action upon both the political and the economic plane, obviously necessitates both political and economic organisation.

A. E. Jacomb

War. (1923)

Book Review from the May 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

War: Its Nature and Cure by G. Lowes Dickinson (Allen & Unwin, 4s. 6d.)

“War: its nature, cause and cure,” is the title of a book by Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson (Allen & Unwin, 4s. 6d.), which opens in a promising manner, but concludes in a manner decidedly disappointing, by reason of its utter lack of logic. A few remarks upon it, however, may serve to illustrate the. Socialist view of a problem of vital importance to practically every member of the working class.

Mr. Dickinson brings out, in his terse, vivid style, the sheer senseless horror of modem warfare. He shows clearly and emphatically that its mechanical character leaves no room for the chivalrous sentiment which was supposed to find a place in the conflicts of the mediaeval and ancient worlds. Indiscriminate slaughter and destruction, aided by all the resources rendered available by science, limited only by the limits of the productive forces controlled by the warring units, respecting neither age nor sex, recognising no distinction between “combatants” and “civilians,” logically tending towards the complete exhaustion and annihilation of the human race itself—such is the picture the author draws for us. And who, remembering the four years from 1914- 1918, and faced with the facts that the powers that be are arming to an ever-increasing extent and show no signs of settling their differences by any other methods, can say that this picture is overdrawn? Airships, submarines, poison-gases and liquid fire have made war a reality to the stay-at-home individual as it has never yet been in history. There is no escaping the issue; we must either end it, or it will end us. That is Mr. Dickinson’s contention, and so far the Socialist has no quarrel with him.

Equally well can the Socialist agree with him over the cause of war, which he defines as “the greed of individual states for power, territory and markets” on the one hand, and the susceptibility of the working class to bellicose excitement on the other. 

At the psychological moment the ruling class play upon the blind passions of their slaves in order to secure the necessary support in the pursuit of their political ambitions, arising out of their economic interests. Yet, left to themselves, the workers have no more desire for war than they have actual interests at stake therein. It is simply their ignorance concerning their interests which renders them pliable tools in the hands of their exploiters.

Mr. Dickinson deals with the recent conflict in the light of these facts. He shows how each power manoeuvred to try and make its enemies appear in the light of aggressors, in order to influence its own subjects with the false idea that they were fighting a purely defensive battle. He outlines the history of the Entente, and shows how it arose from the failure of the British Government to carry their negotiations with Germany to a successful conclusion. The German was proved to be the most dangerous manufacturing and commercial rival of Britain; hence the latter’s policy of isolating him.

A secondary cause of the actual conflict Mr. Dickinson considers to be the existence of armaments. No armaments, no war, of course; but as the will to construct and use them precedes their existence, we are compelled to fall back upon the interests and ambitions of the class which controls the machinery of government as the prime and sole sufficing cause of war under present conditions.

To the logical mind it must appear that the cure for war lies in the removal of the cause, and this is where the Socialist parts company with Mr. Dickinson. His cure is not the removal of the cause, but rather that the cause itself shall somehow act contrary to its own nature. He proposes disarmament, and the League of Nations as the solution to the problem. The capitalist class are expected to surrender the only weapon they possess to protect their interests simply out of respect for the general welfare of humanity.

This shows clearly that the author does not fully appreciate the nature of the system of which war, as he deals with it, is the inevitable outcome. The capitalist state, no less than the capitalist individual, is compelled to avoid extinction by ceaseless expansion at the expense of its competitors. Markets are not things which can be utilised or dispensed with at will. They are the essential necessity to capitalist production. “Sell, or go out of business ”— that is the law! And when all the various sections of the international capitalist class have more goods to sell than they can find purchasers for, what then, Mr. Dickinson? Will the League decide which section is to go bankrupt? If so, how will it keep order in the dominions of the bankrupt power without armaments when the starving out-of-works are clamouring for maintenance?

No! Peace under Capitalism is a chimera! Even could the rival groups of financiers come to terms, it would only be in order to crush more firmly their rebellious slaves. It would be but an indication that war had changed its form and that the class struggle had at last overshadowed, in urgent and immediate importance, the sectional struggles of the masters. Armaments then would be more in demand than ever, for the masters never have dealt, and never will deal, with the workers in kid gloves. Force is the mainstay of their rule; without it they vanish.

Does Mr. Dickinson wish them to vanish? Nowhere does he face this plain issue. He disregards the fact the capitalist class control, through their political power, the economic vitals of society, and that nothing short of their removal from this dominant position will destroy the influence of their ambitions upon political affairs. Nothing less than the social revolution can make peace possible, for nothing less can abolish the competitive character of the existing mode of production which is at the root of all wars.

Mr. Dickinson gives no evidence that he understands what the social revolution means. He regards it as a danger, for which “foreign war” is the readiest cause. He has in mind events in Russia, and suggests that similar events in Western Europe can only have similar results. Thus, he evades the issue which is not: “Shall the workers of the West imitate those of Russia?”; but rather: “Shall they organise as a political force to convert the socially necessary instruments of labour into common property? ”

“Constituencies,” says the author, “determine policy . . .  it is, therefore, to the electors that I have addressed these pages.” But the electors are left in the dark as to what policy they are to pursue even to gain the limited aims of their adviser. The political party which is to achieve the latter remains unmentioned. One can only infer that the author pins his faith to the Labour Party, since that Party is the loudest in its support of these aims. And what is the history of the Labour Party?

When the great call, “To Arms,” in defence of British capitalist interests arose, the “party of peace” echoed the call, and later shared the plums of office in Coalition with the other parties of the bosses! Do not forget that fact, fellow-workers! If you want a peace which is of any use to you, study Socialism; all else is illusion!

Eric Boden

Property-owning democracy (1963)

From the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are always being told that more and more people are owning their own houses. This, we are assured, is a great step forward. We are now on the way towards a “property-owning democracy” —the Conservative Party takes great pride in the phrase.

To begin with, these houses which some workers are now coming to own are in fact usually owned not by the occupiers but by the building societies or the local councils, or whoever else advanced the money for the purchase. A worker who undertakes the ownership of a house which has had to be mortgaged to the hilt to make the purchase possible is simply adding yet another monthly repayment to those he is already probably making on his furniture, his car, perhaps even on his clothes and his holidays. Besides the mortgage repayments, he has to face the steeply-rising demands for rates from his council; and, unless he is going to allow the place to fall down round his ears, he has to foot the repair and redecoration bills, or give up his spare time to doing it himself—first buying the necessary paint and materials.

Leaving aside the question of the deposit which has to be found at the very outset, and adding up only the mortgage repayments, the rates and the repairs, a worker who embarks on house-ownership is likely to find his outgoings much higher than his old rent. If rates continue to soar as they have been doing, some house-buying workers fear that the rates and repairs alone will soon take nearly the same proportion of their income as the rent would have taken before the war.

The hard sell
Apart from these factors, the vote-catching phrase “property-owning democracy” is very misleading. It seems to have been dreamed up by the publicity departments and advertising agents who now advise the big political parties on their “image” and their approach to the electors: as if the all-too-serious questions of the future of mankind were on a par with marketing a new brand of detergent or smell-remover. The phrase appears intended to counter the critics of capitalism who say that (despite our regular phantom “social revolutions”) the ownership of property is just as firmly in the hands of a small ruling class as it ever was—if anything, indeed, it appears to be becoming more concentrated still.

The figures have not been at all affected by the undoubted fact that more people are having to buy their houses in order to keep a roof over their heads. And this is not surprising when one reflects that the property which the ruling class has in its grip comes mainly under the heading of “capital goods’—land, factories, dockyards, and so on: for it is the possessors of this kind of property who own also the results of production in the factories and mines, and who then sell the products to realize their surplus value.

Landlord democracy?
Now houses, in the context of the phrase “property-owning democracy,” are not capital goods at all. For those who talk about “property-owning democracy” encourage us to look forward to the days when every worker will own his own house. And if everyone owns his own house, there will be no one else to rent houses to. Of course, houses which are rented out to other people are the kind of property which, like factories and offices, brings in an income without work to the lucky owners. But the Tories, when they brought out this idea, can scarcely have meant us to look forward to an extension of house-ownership in this sense: otherwise “landlord democracy” would have been a more appropriate phrase. No: they simply meant that more people would own the houses they live in.

Potatoes
But in this sense, houses are merely consumer goods. It is quite true that the worker has property in his own consumer goods. It is quite true that he owns the pound of potatoes he gets at the greengrocer’s until he has boiled and eaten them, and that he owns the coat on his back until it goes to rags. In the same way, if he buys the house he lives in, he will own that too until it is pulled down under some future slum-clearance scheme. But, as we said earlier, if the “property-owning democracy ” theory becomes practice, and everyone owns his own house, then the house-owner will have no one else to rent his house to—even if he wished to do so. His house will be merely part of his consumer goods.

Docile
Who would get the advantage of such a scheme? The capitalists or the workers?

To take employers of labour first: there could certainly be advantages for some of them. For the workers would be much less mobile. If a wage-increase was refused (in time of boom) or if wages were cut (in time of slump), the worker who only rented his house might well hand in his notice and go to a better-paid job in another district if he heard of one. But a house-owning worker would not be able to move half so quickly. He would have to put his house up for sale, and wait till a buyer came along; then he would have to find a new house in the new district. He would have to pay the solicitors' fees and the estate agents’ fees on the sale of his old house, and the solicitors’ fees and the stamp duty on the purchase of his new one. Besides that, unless he had completed his repayments, there would be the trouble and expense of paying off one mortgage and taking out another. His removal would be a much more expensive undertaking, and he might well accept a lower wage than his house-renting fellow-worker, rather than go to all the trouble—in time and money—of selling his house and buying another. House-owning, in short, might well tend to make the worker more docile in his dealings with his employer.

Idyllic picture . . .
What would be the advantages to the worker?

Let us put the case at its highest. Let us assume that, unlike most politicians' plans, this one comes into full operation. Every worker in the country will own his own house: let us assume that there are no rates to pay, no repairs or redecorations bills. Every worker has his own dwelling, free from rent, rates, or any expense whatever. What then?

It seems harsh to shatter what must seem, to some workers, an idyllic picture. But it must be done. For this “property-owning democracy,” within capitalist society, would bring no benefit to the workers whatever.

. . .  and the reality

This is why. Wages arc the cost of producing and reproducing the labour-power which the capitalist must have to keep his mines and factories turning out goods for sale. And in wages, the rent the worker must pay—or his housing expenses of mortgage repayments, rates and repairs—forms an important item. This is recognized perfectly clearly by all the large political parties. When, in the last war, the ruling class felt that its very existence was at stake, and wage-increases had to be avoided at all costs, then rents were among the first-controlled, and among the most strictly-controlled, of all workers’ expenses. This strict rent-control was introduced by the Coalition Government, supported by the Conservative, Liberal and Labour Parties. For they knew that if rents went up, there would be such industrial unrest—strikes, go-slows, and so on—that wages would have to go up proportionately to cover the increases. Alternatively, if rents could be kept down, then wages could be kept down as well.

Workers’ wages have to cover their expenses of food, clothing, housing, and so on. And if every worker in the country owned his own house, and either had to pay nothing for his housing, or less than his present rent, then the “housing element” in his wages would be correspondingly reduced or eliminated entirely.

Inescapable

It is easy to say that if there was no rent to pay, the workers’ standard of living would be higher, and that he could enforce this higher standard by industrial action. But if the workers can obtain a higher standard of living simply by deciding to have it, and by resolving to support their demands by industrial action—well, in that case, they could have it straight away simply by striking for higher pay, without going to the trouble of buying houses. In fact, whether they pay rent or not, the workers will be in exactly the same position as before: their wages will be enough to cover on the average their necessary living expenses. By exceptional militancy, they might get the wage level somewhat above this standard; by exceptional lack of militancy, the wage-level might fall somewhat below it. But. taking the whole of the working class together, that is what the wage-level is. And the workers will not avoid that inescapable fact of life under capitalism by running after the latest reformist slogan.

In fact, the “property-owning democracy" is like all other reforms: the more capitalism is “changed,’’ the more it remains the same.

Alwyn Edgar

For and Against the Popular Front (1938)

Editorial from the May 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

In spite of large votes against the Popular Front registered by conferences of the Labour Party, some of the rank and file of that party still hanker after the idea—much to the consternation of the Daily Herald and many leaders of the Labour Party. The reason why the latter oppose the proposed alliance with Liberals and Communists and “progressive” Conservatives is twofold. On the one hand they fear that Communist assistance will frighten away many more votes than it brings in, and, on the other, they fear still more that the Liberal Party—an army with more generals than soldiers—will make up its own deficiency at the expense of the Labour leaders.

Mr. Lloyd George would probably have little difficulty in stealing the allegiance of the Labour rank and file if he once got into the fold; and then there is Winston Churchill, a Conservative without a Cabinet job, who might also join up in a promising Popular Front with expectations of leading it. So, for the Labour leaders who lack the more impressive political gifts, it is better to be leaders in the Labour Party than to be thrust into the background by more popular stars.

The idea behind the Popular Front is that as the Labour Party cannot hope to get a majority on its own it should unite with others on a limited programme of social reforms and a policy of peace, anti-Fascism, and anti-war. That being the idea, one might expect the Communists to condemn it as a betrayal of independence and Socialism, and expect the Labour Party to back it on the ground that it is an idea thoroughly in line with the past policy of that organisation. But times have changed and the roles are reversed. Sir Stafford Cripps is for the Popular Front, but admits quite frankly that “Clearly, any idea of real Socialism would have to be put aside for the present” (Daily Herald, April 16th, 1938).

The Communists, too, are for the Popular Front, but, according to the Daily Herald (April 14th), in the Communist Party's 2,000-word manifesto, “the word 'Socialism' does not occur, and every single specifically Socialist measure has been dropped from the programme itself."

To add to the troubles of the Labour Party Lord Beaverbrook is giving his blessing to the Popular Front, though whether his motive is solely the one he gives or whether it is also a move in the campaign to steal readers from the Daily Herald is hard to say. Anyway, here are Lord Beaverbrook’s views, set out in the editorial column of the Daily Express on April 18th, 1938:—

   The Daily Herald, organ of the Socialist Party, declares against a Popular Front of Socialists, Liberals, Communists. Co-ops. The Socialist Party, says the Daily Herald, are the Popular Front and the alternative Government.
    That is sheer bunk. The Socialist Party alone can’t form another Government in Britain for many years. They can’t even form a decent Opposition, and that is what should concern every democratic person, party, and newspaper.
   It concerns the Daily Express, which cares very much for democratic government and hates dictatorship.
    Dictatorships go for strength in government, but democracies go for justice in government, which is a higher and a more enduring quality.
    Under present conditions in Britain, with a Government not all-powerful and an Opposition which is feeble and stupid, we get the worst of both worlds. It would be good for Britain and for the form of British government if the parties of the Left here were joined in a compact and well-defined alliance.

(It will be noticed, by the way, that Beaverbrook, who recently declared that the Labour Party is not a Socialist party, hah decided to call it one again.)

The Daily Herald, instead of giving a welcome to an attitude so reminiscent of its own past, hotly denounces it now that the Communists have adopted it, and proceeds to rend it asunder by making use of sound Socialist arguments, the very arguments we have used against the Labour Party. The editorial in the Daily Herald of April 14th contains the following remarkable statements, remarkable, that is, when they appear in the Labour Party’s official mouthpiece. The question is put as to whether it is "worth while to surrender independence and compromise Socialist in order to defeat the National Government?” The Daily Herald answers, “No!” and points out, quite correctly, that fictitious unity is not a source of strength but of friction, quarrelling and weakness. The Herald next rejects the Popular Front because it would mean dropping Socialism—as if the Labour Party had ever fought an election on anything else but a programme of vote-catching reforms. Next it argues—again quite correctly— that the advocates of a Popular Front are suffering from “a fundamental lack of faith and confidence,” and that victories are not won by such defeatists as these.

The Herald finally clinched the argument against Popular Fronts by actually quoting the last Labour Government as an awful warning of what happens to a Labour Government “without independent authority and relying upon non-Socialist support for its majority.”

Two days later, after the Chairman of the Co-operative Party, Mr. Alfred Barnes, M.P., had urged an alliance between the Labour and Cooperative Parties and “the Liberal Party, religious leaders, and a good section of the Conservatives” (Daily Herald, April 16th), the editor returned to the attack, and asked: —

    What must be the practical (and the emotional) effect of such talk upon the millions of loyal Party workers whose whole heart is set upon seeing a great instalment of the living Socialist Commonwealth in their time?

In short, the arguments used by the Labour Daily Herald to defeat those strange bedfellows, Liberals, Co-operators, Communists, followers of Stafford Cripps and progressive Conservatives, are arguments worthy of a better cause, the cause of Socialism.