Socialism and the Fascisti (1923)

From the April 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party accepts the view that it is necessary for the workers before they can begin to introduce Socialism to conquer the powers of Government in order that they may control the Governmental machinery, and through it the armed forces. The fulfilment of our programme requires that a majority of the workers shall understand and want Socialism. Given such a majority and its reflex in a majority of Socialist delegates on local councils and in the House of Commons, the workers will be in a position to impose their will on the present ruling class; an appeal to armed force from whom will be met by the military, acting under the instructions of the Socialist delegates.

This attitude is subjected to many criticisms, one of which is that the capture of the political machinery will not give the power we assert. Those who make this criticism argue that while political power is necessary it can be obtained only by the workers building up a rival organisation and with it overthrowing the capitalist State. They deny that the power of the capitalists rests on their control of Parliament, and point to the Fascist movement in Italy as proof that revolutionary Parliamentary action by the workers is futile. The workers must, they argue, organise armed resistance to the ruling class. They do not explain how the workers are going to obtain possession of the arms and organise in such strength as to offer serious opposition to- the Crown forces, and it seems fairly obvious that the capitalists will easily be able to prevent such organisation within the present system. When pressed on this point the exponents of violence look knowing, and make obscure references to the disastrous Irish insurrection now being crushed by the capitalist Free State Government.

Their chief argument is, however, the rise of the Italian Fascisti, who, they say, robbed the workers by armed intimidation of their constitutional gains. If it were shown to be possible that in an advanced and stable capitalist democracy the ruling class were able to throw aside the recognised forms of government, to ignore the institutions which they had proclaimed to be the basis of society, to rule by brute force and to survive, a condition of things would be created requiring the application of methods other than those we advocate. As regards Italy, however, it just doesn't happen to be true.

What these critics have overlooked is that the Fascist movement existed only by permission of the Italian Government, by the permission, that is, of the people who did control the political machinery and the armed forces.

Nor is there evidence that the Italian workers as a whole had ever reached the stage of desiring Socialism. They had, for instance, not returned a majority of Socialists to the Italian Parliament, nor had they captured more than a minority of the town and other councils.

What is always advanced as proof of their being revolutionary is their seizure of the factories during 1920. But according to the correspondent in Italy of the New York "Nation" (March 8th, 1922) this will bear no such interpretation. The "Nation" article (quoted by the "Western Clarion," Vancouver, May 1st, 1922) gives the following account of the event. The war gave rise in Italy to a new and powerful group of metal industries with banking connections, known as Peronne Brothers, the allied bank being the Banca Italiana Disconto. It was the Peronne factories, the "Ansaldo Iron and Steel Co.," which were occupied in 1920.

This group and its banking allies came into conflict with the older concerns, and at the end of the war, with its consequent slackening of demand for iron and steel for war purposes, the position of Peronne Bros. became acute. Naturally the employers sought to resist the wage demands of their workers, and for this purpose entered into alliance with their rivals. It was their betrayal by their rivals, the Banca Commerciale, which caused their defeat and subsequent bankruptcy.

  "The proletarian seizure of the factories was, in its political and juridical episodes a counterattack of 'safe and sane ' industry upon 'political and new' industry. The Steel operators (Peronnes) were tricked into resisting the demands of the workers on promise of support from all the other manufacturers ; who at once pacified their labourers with reasonable concessions, knowing well that the Steel industries would not be able to follow suit."

It is a noteworthy fact that the government of the day did not at once use troops to eject the workers. The "Nation" suggests that this was because Giolitti, the Premier, was in close friendship with the Banca Commerciale and wanted the factories occupied. It certainly is true that the movement came to nothing. If the responsibility for failure is laid on the shoulders of the men's leaders, this is only another way of saying that the men had no clear idea of their object nor how to attain it : they were, in fact, in a state of unrest, but were not consciously revolutionary, and were therefore not ready to undertake the task of overthrowing capitalism. They decided themselves by ballot vote to evacuate the factories.

As for the Fascisti, a member of the Communist Party of Italy, A. Bordiga. writing in the "Labour Monthly" (Feb. and March, 1923), gives an interesting account of their origin. In brief, he states that the end of the war found the Italian Government faced, like other governments, with the difficult problems of transition to peace. First, there was demobilisation and the absorption of ex-Service men into industry, and then there was the task of disillusioning those who really thought that the workers were going to share in the fruits of victory. To meet the peculiar conditions which arose from having to deal with masses of men who had been under arms for years and had been overwhelmed with flattery and promises, the Government deliberately encouraged the Fascist movement.

That they were able to do so was the result of the unfortunate fact that the Italian Capitalist Government still had the support of the majority of the Italian workers and peasants.

   "After the Nitti, Giolitti, and Bonomi Governments, we had the Facta Cabinet. This type of Government was intended to cover up the complete liberty of action of Fascism in its expansion over the whole country. During the strike in August, 1922, several conflicts took place between the workers and the Fascisti, who were openly aided by the Government. One can quote the example of Bari. During a whole week of fighting, the Fascisti in full force were unable to defeat the Bari workers, who had retired to the working class quarters of the city, and defended themselves by armed force. The Fascisti were forced to retreat, leaving several of their number on the field. But what did the Facta Government do? During the night they surrounded the old town with thousands of soldiers and hundreds of carabineers of the Royal Guard. In the harbour a torpedo boat trained its guns on the workers. Armoured cars and guns were brought up. The workers were taken by surprise during their sleep, the Proletarian leaders were arrested, and the Labour headquarters were occupied. This was the same throughout the country. Wherever Fascism had been beaten back by the workers the power of the State intervened ; workers who resisted were shot down : workers who were guilty of nothing but self-defence were arrested and sentenced ; while the magistrates systematically acquitted the Fascisti, who were generally known to have committed innumerable crimes. Thus the State was the main factor in the development of Fascism."

Further, while it is correct that the Fascisti were not in a majority in the Italian Parliament, they were compelled because of this to accept into their Cabinet representatives of such other parties as would give a combined majority, and Bordiga considers that it is only a matter of months before Mussolini takes Trade Union officials as well into his government.

The critics who argue from the experience of Italy that an armed minority can ignore parliamentary control are also invited to consider Bordiga's statement that :

"Fascism, after having temporarily adopted republicanism, finally rallied to the strictest monarchist loyalism ; and after having loudly and constantly cried out against parliamentary corruption, it has now completely accepted parliamentary procedure."

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: Are the Co-operators Socialist? (1978)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many workers appear to believe that the Co-operative societies are a form of socialism, or at least a step towards the establishment of socialism.

The Co-ops buy and sell at a profit. Otherwise they would cease to exist. This profit is derived from the unpaid portion of the labour of some section of the workers. It is immaterial whether these workers are directly employed in production by the Co-op themselves or by the outside concerns which produce goods in which the Co-op deal. The fact that some of the profit is distributed in the form of ‘divi' among working-class consumers and members blinds the latter to the real position.

Any reduction in the cost of living brought about by wholesale buying, irrespective of whether it is done by Co-ops or other multiple shop concerns, simply enables the master-class to reduce wages accordingly. There is thus no advantage to be gained by the workers in the long run along these lines.

From an article by Eric Boden, Socialist Standard, August 1928.

Russia—dissent under dictatorship (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anatoly Shcharansky (sentenced to thirteen years for ‘spying’), Alexander Ginzburg and Viktoras Pektus (sentenced for anti-Soviet activities) have been interned—possibly to face an ordeal through which they will not live, certainly to conditions of the utmost hardship and cruelty. They have dared to criticise publicly the totalitarian dictatorship of the Soviet Union. In mediaeval England, if a subject criticised or disobeyed the monarch, he was destined to incarceration or death; in Tsarist Russia the Siberian mines or the army was the fate of dissidents. As long as the State has supreme power—that is, control over the army and means of coercion, a monopoly over education, the press and ideology and, above all, the ownership and control of wealth production and distribution—the consequences for those who dissent from the ruling class ideology are bleak.

Shcharansky and Orlov (both sentenced to labour camps) were leaders of a group whose intention was to monitor the Soviet Union’s breaches of the Human Rights clauses in the Helsinki Final Act. The evidence gathered by this group has been of considerable interest to those trying to discover the extent of the tyranny of Russian State capitalism. But the quest for political liberty in a country dominated by a party dictatorship must not be seen as an end in itself. What Russian workers must fight for—as must their fellow workers of the world, be they living under dictatorships or in political democracies—is the genuine freedom which comes with Socialism. What the opponents of the Soviet regime must do is to couple their struggle for political liberties and free trade union organisation with a struggle for the establishment of Socialism. 

Shcharansky, Ginzburg, Pektus (only the most recent of a series of dissidents interned by the Soviet government) will probably suffer in vain. The working class, far from learning the lessons of their efforts, are being fooled on every side. Capitalism is a system of profound hypocrisy and this is no better exemplified than by the world reaction to the trials of the Russian dissidents. From every part of the capitalist world which is presently opposed to the Soviet Union we hear empty cries of outrage at the unfairness of the Russian judiciary. That arch-defender of liberty— especially the liberty of capitalists to make huge profits and workers to take less pay—Jim Callaghan, has spoken of the recent trials as reminiscent of the injustices of the Stalin period. In the days of Stalin Mr. Callaghan was singing the praises of the Soviet system:

  “The rewards given to ability in the USSR at all levels are far greater than those given to the employed in Capitalist Britain. I have seen it and it works”.

Reynolds News 17 March 1946

Under capitalism the State fears criticism; when a majority understands and wants Socialism they will turn criticism into action. Shcharansky and most of the Russian dissidents have so far attempted to criticise, but not to recognise the nature of Russian State capitalism and the need for a revolutionary party to win political liberties for the purpose of overthrowing the dictatorial rule of the Communist party and joining with their fellow workers to organise for Socialism. In this the Socialist Party of Great Britain will give them every possible encouragement.

One step forward, two steps back (1978)

From the September 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years the Trades Unions have voluntarily subjected themselves to a policy of wage restraint at the request of the Labour Government. This year, however, the TUC has firmly rejected the government’s proposal of a 5 per cent “guideline” for 1979 which must have been welcomed by many trade unionists. 

It is worth considering exactly what the Labour Government has been trying to achieve with its income policies over the last few years. Is it really all a part of the so-called “battle” against inflation? We think not. Denis Healey has hinted at the real answer: 

  “What we are aiming for is something like the West German system, where Unions, Government and Employers agree each year on the increase in earnings compatible with the needs of the national economy” (Guardian July 22 1978).

What, you may ask, is in the interests of the “national economy”, or to be more accurate a capitalist economy? The answer to that is to have the lowest wage-bill possible.

Socialists have always stressed the need for workers to organize in Trades Unions in order to defend the levels of their wages and conditions (and wherever possible, to improve them). Therefore the decision not to go along with further government wage restraint which by definition can only prevent them from doing this work, can be seen as a step forward.

But it was patently obvious to all concerned that the announcement of this decision would cause acute embarrassment to the Labour Party, and so it was that the TUC also took its two steps backwards.

First of all they declared that the TUC would offer its election fighting services to the Labour Party in whatever way the executive wants to use them”. In the words of Moss Evans, General Secretary of the TGWU, “We will be working exceptionally hard to get the Labour Party re-elected” (Guardian July 31 1978).

Secondly, on the very same day of the TUC Press Conference which announced the decision to reject the pay policy, Callaghan and Murray appeared on a common platform to register their “highest common factor of agreement on social and economic policy” and begrudgingly admit that on a couple of points their views “may diverge rather than converge” (Guardian July 27 1978).

They had, in fact, summoned the press to launch a new document prepared by the TUC—Labour Party Liaison Committee entitled “Into the Eighties”, which was designed to bolster the image of cooperation between the Labour Party and the Unions. From the Socialist point of view it confirms that the Trade Union Movement is (sadly) still committed to support of the stale and useless reformist Labour Party policies.

The TUC argues that it must take an interest in the standard of living of its members which includes “. . . the food on the trade unionist’s table, the clothes on his back, the roof over his head . . .” (ABC of the TUC April 1977). This in itself is an essential attitude, but we must disagree that the Labour Party is the party best able to pursue the interests of the working class. An examination of “Into the Eighties” will demonstrate why.

The statement frequently speaks of “a speedy return to full employment”. We weren’t aware that it ever existed. It promises that the Labour Party will give “high priority” to housing, the health service, education, social services etc. etc. It promises a fairer distribution of wealth, lower prices, care for old age pensioners, the one-parent family, the disabled. In short just about every promise the Labour Party has made over its seventy odd years of existence. During that time it has formed a number of governments and yet we challenge you to name one social problem which has disappeared. There isn’t one. Why is this?

It is because the Labour Party is committed to the idea of running capitalism and believes that this can be done in the interests of the working class:

  We set out below ten points on which we are determined to make progress and we will have to agree on the rolling programme of priorities, having regard to the economic circumstances of the time (“Into the Eighties”, item 37, our emphasis).
  There is no reason why such a policy need be incompatible with proper levels of profitability in British industry. ("Into the Eighties”, item 38).

This is a thoroughly utopian and unrealistic policy. The first and only priority of a capitalist economy is to make a profit. Everything else, including the standard of living of the workers, is subjugated to this aim. We maintain the support of the Labour Party can never satisfy the interests of the working class.

We reiterate the need for workers to organise in trades unions in order to defend their wages and conditions, but at the same time point out that this activity in general can only be useful as a defensive mechanism against the harsh realities of living under capitalism. If living standards can be forced up when market conditions allow, they will just as surely be forced down in times of crises. The last few years has proved this. Trade Union activity can only fight the effects of capitalism, not the causes of those effects, it can retard a downward movement of the spiral, not change its direction.

So if the Labour Party is no answer, and Trades Unions only a defensive mechanism, what is the way forward for the working class? We can only repeat the advice of Karl Marx, who advised workers:

 They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto “A fair days wage for a fair days work!” they ought to inscribe on their banners the revolutionary watchword “Abolition of the wages system!” (Value, Price and Profit).

A resolution will appear on the agenda of the TUC Conference this month endorsing the statement “Into the Eighties". We hope that trade unionists will oppose it and consider instead the alternative of revolutionary socialism.

Ian Westgate

50 Years Ago: Scientists and society (1978)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the socialist, the production of the means of living is a social process in which the professional scientist is but a unit. Whether he be engaged in the study of the stupendous by means of a telescope or of the infinitesimal by means of a microscope, he has to be fed, clothed and housed by the labour of others. Others have to delve and blast, to fuse, grind and polish, in order to provide the materials for his instruments. They have to assemble and adjust these instruments to his exact requirements. Others must collect rags and hew timber to provide paper that others, again, may print and bind in order that the accumulated knowledge of the ages may be stored in a form convenient for his reference.

At every turn he is dependent from first to last upon the active cooperation of millions of his fellow beings, not to speak of those with whom he comes in direct contact and with whom he must compare notes and check his findings.

Seeing, therefore, that the scientist is thus dependent upon society, his status in turn is determined by the particular form of the society which produces him. His means of living are the property of the capitalist class. They subsidise his university and endow his professorial chair; maintain his technical institute, found laboratories and colleges.

Is it any wonder, then, that they exact their pound of flesh; or, to be more precise, that, having provided him with the kingdoms of earth, they demand the surrender of his intellectual independence.

From an unsigned article, The Commercialization of Science, Socialist Standard, October 1928.

Reviewing the audience (1978)

A still from the 1978 NYT production of England My Own.

Theatre Review from the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

When I went to see the National Youth Theatre’s production of Peter Terson’s England My Own I spent a good part of the evening watching the audience. The question that concerned me as a Socialist was, what is the play trying to say to the audience and how well does it succeed? Traditional theatre critics evaluate plays on the basis of supposedly aesthetic criteria : they are concerned with the play as such. The concern of this review is with the play as a medium of idea and image projection to the audience. Theatre always involves a separation between the image-projecting performers and the image-consuming audience. This relationship provides considerable power for those who own the means to produce plays for large audiences.

The main criticism of England My Own—and, indeed, of much of what describes itself as ‘political drama’—is that the images it throws out to the audience are all too readily and complacently lapped up, as if the audience has come for its periodic dose of liberal sentiments which it can absorb without having to think. Just as Crossroads panders to those who readily accept its image of society as being real, the National Youth Theatre are pandering to an audience of liberal trendies who know when to boo at the baddies and cheer on the goodies. Good pantomime it is, politically stimulating it isn’t.

England My Own is the story of how a youth, Adam Butler, is driven to join the National Front and is eventually killed while carrying a Union Jack through a West Indian carnival. The events leading to this fatal climax rely on stereotypes (often offensive) and situations which sound as if they were invented by a supporter of the National Front. So, we are shown Adam Butler being badly educated by a trendy teacher (while his Indian classmate who, like all caricatures of an Indian student, wants to become a shopkeeper, studies diligently), refused the position of Head Boy because the liberal headmaster believes that a black pupil should have the prestige, given an apprenticeship under a caricature of a bigoted and indolent cloth-capped worker, sent to borstal where he is disciplined to obey and finally, after his granny is molested by hooligans, is persuaded to join the National Front by a caricature of a repressed homosexual who dresses up in a Nazi uniform. Many of these scenes were amusing and the acting often perceptive, but the question still remains, why did the audience laugh? What’s funny about a racist carpenter who drinks tea all day? This is just another variation on the ‘all workers are lazy’ theme. Why laugh at the illiterate NF Northerner who was conned into the party? Behind this lies the assumption that politics isn’t for the working class. Why have the National Front organiser as a uniformed homosexual? This is only a step away from the logic which says that gays should be kept away from little children. Stereotypes lead the audience to accept certain images about capitalism—images which are just as pernicious as those which back up the National Front.

This is not to say that theatre cannot be used to challenge capitalist values. Political themes can sometimes be dealt with most perceptively in the dramatic form. But in England My Own the audience was simply shown what they expected to see and never anything likely to shake them from the complacent liberalism which is characteristic of the current ‘anti-fascist’ movement. Not once were they told that there will always be the threat of fascism as long as we have capitalism; that leaders are harmful whether they wear uniforms or not; that even if Adam Butler had not become a martyr to a futile cause, his endless problems would still prevail because he is a member of the working class.

England My Own was theatre for pleasure and workers are never going to reject capitalism while they are entertained by it. Consider the comments of Bertolt Brecht, written many years ago. but perhaps the best summary of the inadequacy of political drama today—and its possibilities:

  The dramatic theatre’s spectator says: Yes, I have felt that too— Just like me—It’s only natural—It’ll never change—The sufferings of this man appal me, because they are inescapable—That’s great art; it all seems the most obvious thing in the world—I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh.
 The epic theatre’s spectator says: I’d never have thought it — That’s not the way—That’s extraordinary, hardly believable—It’s got to stop— The sufferings of this man appal me, because they are unnecessary— That’s great art; nothing obvious in it—I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh.
(“Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction” in Brecht on Theatre, ed. John Willett, Methuen)

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: Do we want a Censor (1978)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is unique in keeping open platform for the expression of the point of view of opponents.

We oppose all forms of suppression, not in response to some abstract principle, but because we recognise that socialist society demands for its operation, as for its achievement, a responsible, intelligent population, used to drawing its own conclusions from the observation of facts and the weighing up of the arguments of opposing schools of thought. We only know our position to be correct because it survives continuous criticism. We do not deny that suppression may be immediately useful to the British or Irish governing class. We do deny that it can serve the purpose of the socialist movement.

From an editorial "Do we want a Censor?" Socialist Standard, November 1928.

This is our life (1978)

From the November 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Urban crises; Dockland rehabilitation; Housing problems; Educational choice; Urban renewal; Transport co-ordination. These phrases drip from the lips of pompous politicians and the pens of ‘specialist’ journalists to the point of sheer boredom.

They speak and write about the world in which we live, or at least those features of it they think are problems needing solution. Without always knowing it, they are referring to aspects of the capitalist set-up. Its hallmark of class ownership of the means of production; its wages system; competition, profit motive; market economy. This system has been operating for a long time — far too long for us Socialists. Over decades it has developed on a world scale, more intensely in some areas than others. We have seen the growth of large cities to the point where they encompass all the frustrations of modern life: slums; traffic jams; pollution and an ever increasing housing problem.

We are talking about LIFE for the working class. Not just from when we get a job, but from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Let us look at some aspects more fully, bearing in mind that they are part of the social fabric. They cannot be dealt with in isolation; one relates to the other. Even if you have a roof over your head you cannot escape the housing problem. But it is a social problem affecting hundreds of thousands, concentrated mainly in the large cities. As the Daily Express said (July 24 1978), “After 33 years of post-war development, housing is still the great British disaster story . . . the statistics of human distress are grimmer than ever”. Efforts by political parties to deal with this problem have failed. What they have done in many cases has foundered on the rocks of ‘an economic figure for building’.

Houses built in the 1950s in the New Town of Corby, Northants, recently handed over to the local council for administration, need replacement of all windows and repairs to brickwork, chimneys, roofs etc. Nine thousand houses in all need an urgent repair programme costing £4 million. “The condition of New Town houses is regularly being found to stem from bad basic design” (Guardian 27.7.78.). In short, working class housing is built as cheaply as possible. A more recent case concerns nearly five hundred council homes at Ashford, Kent, built in the late 60s. Total repairs are in the region of £2 millions, but the council are debating whether demolition would be cheaper. At the other end of the scale, a house in Cadogan Square, London is on the market for £1¼ million; it has of course been renovated.

Liverpool, with a housing problem second to none, has long been the football of feuding councils. Flats and houses by the thousand are being offered for sale. Not at £1¼ millions each, but at 10p and 5p. In fact, any offer will be considered. Most have been vandalised, but as the report of Liverpool Housing Committee said last year, “Because of their reputation, location and design, they will now never make any positive contribution to meeting the housing needs of the city”.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which numbers among its residents none other than Princess Margaret and the Soviet and other Embassies, has a waiting list of nearly eight thousand families for rehousing. (Her Royal Highness and their Excellencies, the various ambassadors are not on the list). The Borough posess some of the worst and most overcrowded housing in London. Housing Charities such as Shelter are constantly bemoaning the fact that the Council will not take its finger out. Isn’t it time they realised, Councils are not there to solve this problem, despite what various Acts might say.

The Inner London Docks have been a headache for years. With a revolution in the handling of cargo (containers, unit loading etc) the demand for traditional facilities has fallen away. 8½ square miles of dockland is to be redeveloped, and with the latest overtures from the Port of London Authority to close further docks, the area available may be much larger This development plan has long been a pipe dream. The overall cost is £233 millions to include 9,000 houses, industrial sectors, better transport etc. Industry is to be encouraged to come to the area after years of Government policy to get industry to move out of London into new development zones. The nine thousand houses are estimated to cost £98 millions. About £11,000 a house — a ‘reasonable’ figure for a working class residence.

Training for life
If you’ve got a house, what about a job. Jobs in the big cities are becoming harder to find. Unemployment is knocking around 1.6 millions and there is an even chance of this increasing by another ¼ million over the next year or so. This is no passing phase. Unemployment is part and parcel of this system and many commentators and politicians now refer to it as a structural part of society. But they keep trying new ways to lessen the impact. The Government, among other schemes, have recently announced a new £1 million training programme in ‘life and social skills’ for about five hundred youngsters in the Liverpool/Manchester areas. Called Training for Life, it will give these people a chance to study banking, finance and social and legal rights. Plus courses on sex and coping with freedom. The scheme is aimed at the hardcore of young unemployed people, who have few or no academic qualifications and who may only expect to get low paid manual work. Anything to take them off the labour-market. They should be told of the many young people, with University degrees, who have little hope of a job involving the subject in which they have qualified. Was our Prime Minister being a little more honest than usual when, as Foreign Secretary after a Brussels Conference, he said that the Commissions analysis “will show how a serious structural unemployment situation is developing”. The Commission had formed a committee to look at the problem of unemployment, and honest Jim stated . . . “None of us has any answers, and I do not suppose they have either (Guardian 14.12.76).

You’ve got a house and a job. Your next worry is getting to and from work. As men shoot to the moon at unbelievable speeds, the journey from Hackney to Piccadilly or Willesden to Victoria becomes increasingly difficult. And if you live in the country, a car is almost essential to get and keep a job. Roads in the cities are cluttered with private cars, a large proportion of which are company owned. Hundreds of travellers and reps chasing around for business. And as the juggernauts thunder their way across the country, the British Road Federation claims that cutting back the road programme is costing British industry millions every year and endangering road safety. Their claim that lowering design standards on trunk roads threatens more accidents is possibly true, but accentuated by the need of profit.

To get from one place to another in the shortest possible lime is assessed in monetary values. If capitalism is to continue, with its constant need for trade, we can envisage this island as a criss cross of concrete runways. But for a brief moment think of more leisurely ways of transport — the slow moving canal and its low slung barges. The Government are to reconstruct a section of the Sheffield and S. Yorks canal, enabling barges of 400 tons capacity to reach Rotherham. The waterway is already there and could eventually link up with the Port of Hull for large barge consignments. But the dockers, seeing their jobs threatened by a revolution in barge traffic (akin to the development of contained traffic), look askance at the scheme. Canal transport obviously has a role to play in any society and a less pernicious one when it comes to pollution safety etc, but here is a classic example of the conflict among workers on the industrial field, when capitalism dominates their ideas and the way they live.

Cost effectiveness

The house, job and transport are fixed up. Now there’s the kids schooling. Discussion still runs riot on the effectiveness of comprehensive versus grammar schools. But what about those in the villages, with the old Victorian buildings and, in many cases, sanitary accommodation that leaves much to be desired. In many ways the school is part of a village community. But says capitalism, Big is Beautiful and certainly Big is more economic according to the experts. Over the past ten years, it is estimated that more than 2,000 primary schools with fewer than a hundred pupils have been closed down and the properties put up for sale. The closing of such a school is not just the end of education for kids on their ‘home ground’. The premises are often used for a range of community activities. Capitalism has little thought for people. Can we afford it; does it pay, is its constant theme.

So a couple of weeks holiday. There are some nice beaches in Brittany and East Anglia, but both have been the scene of devastating pollution by oil spillage from crippled tankers. A problem that could be tackled using all the resources at our disposal. But the Department of Trade, Marine Division says, “To be always prepared for the worst would cost too much when it comes to oil pollution disasters”. But the Department is not letting the matter rest. Every effort, they say, should be made to prevent accidents which cause pollution. You will be pleased to know another committee is looking into this.

So, as old age silently creeps up on you, don’t think you can opt out. An independent body, Personal Social Services Council, set up by the Government to advise them, claims that the pace of developments in services for the elderly, mentally ill etc. is far too slow to meet increasing demand. And that it will take 14 years to reach Government guidelines of 200 meals-on-wheels per week, per 1,000 elderly people. So try and hang on until 1992 if you are over 65.

The world is rich and underdeveloped in many ways. The greater part of Japan consists of unused forest-clad mountains, while vast areas in Australia consist of unused deserts and semi-desert. As Arnold Toynbee in his book Cities on the Move says . . .“The proximate reason why, in both countries these tracts are unused is that the cost of transforming them into economically productive areas would not bring adequate returns”. And this world is owned by a few. Why not consider the possibility of us, the producers in this world, taking it over and running it in the interest of all, with human needs the dominant factor.

Cyril May

50 Years Ago: That Elusive Property (1978)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was listening to  Miss Sackville-West the other evening lecturing on Modern English Poetry. Very charming, very entertaining, but marred at the outset by a slight inaccuracy. It is a pity when one sits down to be charmed that one should get a half-brick in the car for a start, but so it was. Miss Sackville-West asked us to commence what she called the Georgian period with 1900. She gave as her reasons for choosing that year as a starting point, "the South African war is over, the world is at peace, we are surrounded by the large air of material prosperity . . ."

Now that is where one gets the nasty jar. I happen to have been alive, and taking keen notice of my surroundings in the year 1900. "The large air of material prosperity". I like that! One remembers it so well. Only 28 years ago and it comes back like a beautiful dream. Speaking from memory, according to a tract issued about that time the average wage of the working class was about 25s per week, and one worker in every three died either in the workhouse, hospital or lunatic asylum. The twelve-hour day was normal in scores of industries. And the unemployed! There is a touchstone for the large air of material prosperity. Who that is old enough does not remember the shabby processions of half-desperate men chanting their grubby war-cry. "we want work?” . .  . There were half-a million men out of work. Among other disturbances the Town council of Croydon was stormed by the unemployed.

For one thing, it is interesting to note and dwell upon the fact that one has lived during a period to which the term "prosperity” is applied, lip till now, during my short lifetime, no one has ever discovered prosperity in the present tense. Years ago. or years ahead, yes! Today, never! A case of jam yesterday, or jam tomorrow, but never jam today.

From an article "The great pre-war prosperity” by W. T. Hopley. Socialist Standard, December 1928.

Striking a balance (1978)

From the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who wrestles crocodiles for a hobby might care to test their strength further by going along to any main line London station in the middle of, say, a railwaymen’s work-to-rule and asking the seething commuters what they think about it.

Because workers who strike and thereby cause their fellow workers a lot of trouble in getting to work, or buying essential food, or keeping their homes lighted and warm, are an example of those people—others might be corrupt politicians, hardened criminals, revolutionary socialists—without whom, we are told, the capitalist social system would be a cosy, sympathetic, fulfilling experience.

There is, of course, no argument about strikes causing problems. Sometimes they mean widespread inconvenience—like power cuts when electricity supply workers are taking action—or danger, as when the firemen went on strike. At other times the results are less immediately apparent—for example the effects upon prisoners’ existence of the prison officers' campaign for higher pay.

Now there is no reason for anyone actually to enjoy the effects of a strike; sitting in the candlelight when you would prefer to be watching Bruce Forsyth, or waiting in the rain for the phantom ‘bus not to arrive are hardly satisfying ways of spending time. So it often happens, that the frustrations of the people who directly suffer through a strike—like those commuters at the stations, late home from work — are vented exclusively against the strikers, who are seen as lazy, greedy and careless.

This propaganda line is set in a long, dishonourable tradition. During the general strike, the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, who was widely admired as having one of the most efficient brains in the world, wrote in the government’s mouthpiece, the British Gazette,

The real victims of a general strike are what is called the common people—the men and women who have to labour hard day by day, for their own livelihood, and that of their children . . . 

Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, saw it in starker, more threatening, terms, writing in the same newspaper:

The general strike is a challenge to Parliament, and is the road to anarchy and ruin.

The same type of argument was used almost fifty years later by Ted Heath when the combined effects of the miners’ strike and the work to rule by electricity workers and train drivers provided the political excuse for the three day week in industry. And more recently the hospital works supervisors were subjected to mounting pressure about the effects upon patients of their dispute. On October 23, the Daily Telegraph reported a consultant surgeon saying that “It is impossible to say that any given patient has died as a result of this dispute” but few days later, on October 27, the same newspaper was more definite: “At least 30 people have already died needlessly, in pain and considerable discomfort, because of the Health Service works supervisors’ dispute — and the death toll is rising daily, medical experts confirmed last night.”

Which gives the final touch to the popular image of the striker—lazy, greedy, disruptive and, if need be, a killer as well. Yet many workers who might accept this image themselves come out on strike. Is there, then, another side to the picture?

Failure 
The first thing to be said is that strikers are not the ungovernably omnipotent figures they are made out to be. Strikes often fail, with much damage to the workers who have taken part in them. One historical example was the general strike and then the long resistance of the miners until they were literally starved back to work. More recently, in 1971 the Union of Post Office Workers called the first national strike in their history, transforming the friendly neighbourhood postmen into another threat to the livelihood and the constitutional safety of British capitalism. Four months later the postal workers, defeated, settled for a little more than they had been offered before the strike began. And last winter the firemen — again, this was their union’s first ever national strike—beaten by a combination of a lack of support from the TUC and the use of troops as strike breakers, went back to work on the government’s terms.

There was a lot of sympathy for the firemen, who ran a skilful publicity campaign, but it is questionable whether this feeling would have long outlasted any deaths in a fire for which the strikers could have been blamed. Yet to be successful a strike has to be disruptive, or even dangerous and much of the negotiation which surrounds it is about how effective, in these terms, it might be. And if, after the negotiations, a strike is called, who is to “blame”? The strikers? Or the employers? Neither have given way; both have been prepared to see disruption and danger rather than surrender without a fight.

It is worth looking at a couple of recent examples, to put the matter into some sort of balance. For some weeks now social workers in a few areas—Liverpool, Newcastle, Tower Hamlets—have been on strike for what amounts to a demand for higher wages. This has provoked a lot of derisory comment on the lines that capitalism is unlikely to be brought to its knees by being deprived of social work. “Forget the social workers, let’s get on with it” wrote a Liverpool Tory MP. “Social workers?” said one Newcastle mother in The Guardian, “I don’t care if I never see one again.” On the other hand there was evidence that the strike did cause some problems, even some suffering. Said The Guardian on October 13:

  A social workers’ strike has forced a judge to send two juveniles to prison . . . The boys' solicitor said after the case: “Social workers say they care for people. One wonders how they would like to spend up to 22 hours out of 24 locked up in a cell under the tender care of the prison officers.

And New Society (26/10/78) reported on the strike in Liverpool:

Whatever others may say about social workers, and about their strike, the clients are in no two minds. “They should definitely get more. They’ve helped me a lot with me nerves and helping to get me out of here,” says one young mother in a block fit only for demolition . . .

The attacks upon the social workers ignored the fact that it has not been just their strike which has denied their services to the “clients”. The Labour government has been responsible for an economy drive imposed on local authorities which has resulted in serious cuts in social services; this has been going on for years and it has no discernible end. On 26 October last, for example, The Guardian detailed some of the effects of the economies planned in Birmingham, among them the closure of nineteen establishments for children, including three residential nurseries and a home for handicapped children.

Health Service

These cuts are being enforced on the grounds of economy—to balance a budget. For some reason this is aceptable to many people, while the efforts of social workers to balance their budgets, by getting higher wages, is not.

The resistance to the hospital supervisors’ claim was also based on government policy—this time on the official limit on wage rises, to which workers in places like hospitals are specially vulnerable. “Just not on,” was the response from David Ennals, the Social Services Secretary, to the supervisors’ claim for a 15 per cent bonus. When the dispute was over the Sunday Times accused Ennals of agreeing to a settlement which had been available to him before the dispute began, which indicates that he, too, was ready to gamble with patients’ lives.

Whatever the truth of this, it is clear that any suffering caused to sick people originated in the government’s policies, to which the workers’ action was a response. These policies are still operating and in the case of the Health Service are responsible for a seriously declining standard of treatment and facilities :

   Standards of care in the health service have drastically worsened through lack of money, more work and shortage of nurses, the Royal College of Nurses said yesterday.
   A delegation from the college yesterday told the Secretary for Social Services, Mr. David Ennals, of untrained staff being left in charge of hospital wards, neglect in basic nursing routines, and inadequate supervision of learners . . .
   Mr. Ennals is accused of exploiting his staff. “It is an indictment of those responsible for the health service that a response is only forthcoming when there is a threat of strike action . . .” (The Guardian, 31/10/78)

So if (and it is a very big “if”) the nurses were to strike, and patients were to die as a result, who would be to blame—the nurses struggling for a living wage or Ennals who has exploited their reluctance to struggle? And who is responsible for the people who are already dying, through lack of facilities in the health service, much of it aggravated by the Labour government’s economies?

Policies like pay restraint were designed without any reference to human needs but to protect the interests of the British capitalist class, on the established principle that profit is good and loss is bad. When they draw up such policies, governments are aware that, directly or indirectly, people will suffer burdens additional to those which capitalism ordinarily imposes upon them. But little, if any, account is taken of this.

Strikes are not acts of bloody mindedness; they are an unavoidable result of the class division of capitalist society, which sets the non-owning majority against the owning minority. This struggle is about the division of wealth; it is not a matter of morality, of strikes with “justice ”on their side or of employers in the “right”. Like all struggles, strikes are a matter of power; if the workers can exert the greater pressure upon the employers they will win, as they have done in some recent, famous cases. But when the situation is reversed—as it was in 1926—the employers will ruthlessly assert their superiority and grind the workers to defeat.

How long capitalism endures is a matter for those who suffer under it and who are misled by it—the working class. They have the power to establish a society of harmony. We are talking here about a massive movement of ideas—no less than a majority revolution to overthrow one social system and replace it with another, an historically unique act. Beside that, wrestling crocodiles is gentle exercise with far fewer rewards.

Ivan

Burns Night (2018)

From the January 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 25 January Scots people round the world celebrate Burns night, piping in the haggis along with the neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes), and all the rest of it, to celebrate Burns’ birthday. What do socialists think of Burns? Is it possible that Burns could be called a socialist?

The answer must be ‘No’. In the eighteenth century the co-operative, friendly, work-together society that socialists strive for had not yet been crystallised into a political programme; the aggressive, snarling, stab-in-the-back society that capitalism tries to impose on us all was triumphant, or about-to-be-triumphant, everywhere in the world. And Burns was a Scots nationalist (‘Scots whahaewi’ Wallace bled . . .).

Yet there are many facets of Burns’ poetry, and of Burns’ philosophy, that must strike a chord with all socialists  (and it is well worth making the effort, though sometimes it’s not easy, to understand Burns’ Ayrshire dialect of our common language.) For example, Burns was always (just like socialists) able to see the larger significance of what appeared to be small, unimportant events – to see the greater meaning lying behind something apparently trivial. There are two well-known examples.

In church one day Burns sat near a well-to-do lady, dressed in her Sunday finery, seemingly pleased with her smart appearance. But then Burns saw a louse, openly crawling up her fashionable bonnet. Burns enjoys the joke, pretending to tell the louse to clear out, and get its dinner off some ragged beggar instead; but then the contrast between the lady in her posh clothes, and the “winks and finger-ends” which showed that other people had seen the louse, leads to a thought of deeper moment:

‘Oh wad some Power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as ithers see us, It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion;
What airs in dress and gait wad lea’e us,
And e’en devotion!’

Then there was the time when Burns was out ploughing one December – he had a small farm – and suddenly realised that he had destroyed a mouse’s hide-out, which it had constructed with much labour to shelter itself from the winter weather (“ That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble, Has cost thee mony a weary nibble”). The poet apologises for breaking ‘Nature’s social union’, and goes on:

‘But Mousie, thou are no thy lane, [you aren’t alone]
In proving foresight may be vain
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley, [often go wrong]
An’lea’e us nought but grief and pain,
For promis’d joy!’

Then Burns added an extra verse. In some ways, he thought, it could be said the mouse was better off, being only concerned with the present; while the poet could see nothing to please him in either the past or the future. ‘But Och! I backward cast my e’e, On prospects drear! An’ forward, tho I canna see, I guess and fear!’

Burns had little time for the social set-up of his day. In The Twa Dogs, Burns describes a landlord:

‘Our laird gets in his racked rents,
His coals, his kane, and all his stents, [kane - fowls paid as rent, stents – dues]
He rises when he likes himsel’,
His flunkies answer at his bell;’

He travels in a horse-drawn coach, and his silk purse is full of gold pieces. As for the landlord’s factor or land-agent, when the rent is due he tyrannises over the impecunious small tenants:

‘Poor tenant bodies, scant o’ cash,
How they maun thole a factor’s snash: [must endure his abuse]
He’ll stamp an’ threaten, curse and swear,
He’ll apprehend them, take their gear; [he’ll collar them, take their possessions]
While they maun stan’, wi’ aspect humble,
An’ hear it a’, an’ fear and tremble!’

Then in The Cotter’s Saturday Night Burns praises ‘an honest man’, while dismissing his supposed social superiors – ‘Princes and lords are but the breath of kings’:

‘What is a lordling’s pomp! A cumbrous load,
Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin’d!’
Perhaps Burns’ philosophy is most clearly expressed in A man’s a man for a’ that.
‘The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The Man’s the gowd [gold] for a’ that.’

As for the upper class:

‘Ye see yon birkie [bighead], ca’d [called] a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, and a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof [fool] for a’ that:
For a’ that, and a’ that,
His ribband, star [decorations], and a’ that,
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a’ that’.

Then Burns sums it up:

‘Then let us pray [earnestly desire] that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that,)
That Sense and Worth, o’er all the earth,
Shall bear the gree, [be victorious], an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That Man to Man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that. ‘

If you take ‘Man’ to be all humans, or if you add ‘Woman to Woman shall sisters be’, it’s a sentiment that socialists share.

Alwyn Edgar

So Much Alike! (1941)

From the January 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia, according to the Stalin Government and its unthinking groups of devotees, is a Socialist country. We have the strange spectacle of a prominent clerical dignitary declaring one-sixth of the earth to be Socialist. Now, surely, it is a sound guide to know your fundamentals first. Thus, if an object is declared to be triangular, we can only agree that it is so, if we first know a triangle. On the same principle, if Russia is declared a Socialist country, is it not the surest and safest thing for us to understand Socialism first, otherwise how are we to be sure we are not being sold a pup ? Therefore the knowledge of Socialism is vital. What then is Socialism? Socialism is a system of human society of a special kind. Its fundamental is the common ownership of all that is necessary to the common good. This implies the end of buying and selling and the end of the wages system. From this fundamental we must look at Russia. When we do look we find that buying and selling and wages obtain there as elsewhere—wages varying in rate, etc. Then, as Russia does not conform to our fundamental she cannot be Socialist. The Communist party, Left Book Club and similar people, however, have a ready answer. This is it! The fundamental (no wages) is a fundamental of Communism, and Socialism is a half-way house in which wages, money, buying and selling must exist until, by a slow process, they are eliminated and Communism is then reached. Russia, we are told, is going that way. Let us take them at their own word. If Russia is Socialist and moving towards Communism, according to the Stalinites each move should be away from payment for goods or services. The recent decree of the Russian rulers, however, is away from free education in schools to payment for it, ranging from one hundred to four hundred roubles. Let us face the facts and declare openly—Russia is not a Socialist but a Capitalist country, approximating to, though not identical with, totalitarian Germany. The German capitalist class have bluffed millions by styling their system “National  Socialism," the bulk of their population being German. Russia could not do this as easily, large chunks of her people being non-Russian. In order to gain support for her capitalism Russia has to delude millions of people that she too is Socialist (though not national). In order to slip this across the world she has made a “Socialism” of her own (like Germany), and subsidises numerous organisations to boom this for her (again like Germany). Those in her own borders who do not agree because they perhaps understand Socialism she shoots or imprisons (how like Germany). Prominent people (not understanding Socialism) write about a Socialist sixth of the world. Socialists, however, see through the game.

Lew Jones

Our Difficulty is Your Opportunity (1941)

Party News from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

This appeal is addressed to all members and sympathisers. The Socialist Party is experiencing grave difficulties in the distribution of the Socialist Standard.

Does this mean anything to you? You may have come in contact with our paper or organisation quite recently, or you may be a supporter of some years’ standing—one of the “old brigade"; whichever category you come under we ask you to give your immediate and serious attention to this appeal.

The present position is not due to any fault of the organisation, but to the severe conditions now prevailing, particularly in London. These conditions have so hampered us in the task of distributing recent issues of the “S.S.” that sales have decreased. Not alarmingly, but sufficiently enough to cause us to call upon our readers everywhere to give a helping hand.

Elsewhere in this issue, reference is made to the remarkable achievements of the organisation under circumstances which, though very difficult, are not comparable with the present ones. No attempt is being made here to pander to anyone in a begging fashion, no demands are being made, no excuse is being made; it is just a part of the struggle, and we would be failing in our duty if we took cover and waited until the trouble passed by.

Now, comrades and friends, as many of the usual avenues through which the “S.S.” reached its readers have been closed as a consequence of events beyond our control, fresh ones must be established immediately. This is where you come in! You are asked by us to become agents and sellers of the “S.S.” We suggest that you order bundles of three, six, twelve, or more if you like, Socialist Standards each month.

How many times in the past have some of you missed the chance of handing to a friend a copy of this journal which, you know, would have made him keener to learn more about Socialism ?

Just think, is there one amongst you who couldn’t sell or give away to an enquiring member of your class a copy of the “S.S.”? Why! Most of you, if you tried but little, could sell six to twelve copies a month. (The writer knows of individuals who sell upwards of 100 “S.S.” per month.)

Therefore you are asked to take a job: there ' is no pay for it—except the satisfaction that you have increased your work for the Party and Socialism.

Political parties must be judged by their record—our record is contained in the “S.S.” first published in September, 1904, and in each successive issue right up to the one you are reading now. No other political party in this country has handled the case for Socialism in line with Marxism, that job was, and is, the job of the S.P.G.B. Whether or not this job is to be tackled with increasing vigour really depends on YOU—because the Party is as strong, and no stronger, than the efforts of our members and friends make it.

Apply yourself, therefore, with enthusiasm to the task you are asked to undertake: the Party and its journal must, and will, emerge from this war stronger than ever to carry on the struggle for Socialism. 

In a future issue a report of the response to this appeal will be published, and we hope that it will make all concerned happy in the knowledge that in these difficult times the influence of the “S.S.” is not only maintained, but growing from strength to strength.

Send your orders to:

S.P.G.B.,

42, Gt. Dover Street, London, S.E.1,

to whom all cheques, money orders, and postal orders should be made payable. Money with orders from sellers will be appreciated.

We express our thanks once again to those, who, in the past, have helped the Party, and we feel confident that every friend of the Party is going to see to it that we win this, the most critical battle in our history.

“Let battle commence!”

Angus McPhail

Press Cuttings (1941)

From the March 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Reuter Moscow telegram says that the Russian people are told in the Soviet journal "Socialist Agriculture” that the "capitalist Powers,” including Britain, are trying to "wreck the Soviet Union" by sending diseased seeds and bulbs into the country.

During the past nine years, says the paper, the Leningrad quarantine laboratory has examined 1,200,000 samples of seeds and plants from 67 foreign countries and has found 6,000 insects and diseases in them. The earth surrounding the roots of medicinal herbs bought from England are alleged to have been infected with potato cancer, while tulip and hyacinth bulbs bought in Holland were also found to be diseased. (Manchester Guardian, December 16th, 1940.)

#    #    #    #

The B.B.C. is extending its anti-Pacifist blockade. It has now blacklisted three famous preachers—Dr. Donald Soper, of Kingsway Hall and Tower Hill; Dr. George MacLeod, of Iona; and Canon Charles Raven, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. . . .  In these three cases, as in the case of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir, banned because of the pacifist views of its conductor, Sir Hugh Roberton, the B.B.C. is assumed to have acted as the instrument of the State. No attempt has been made to disguise the reason for the action. . . . (News Chronicle, January 4th, 1941.)

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The concept that twice two make four is somehow differently tinged in the minds of a German, a Frenchman, a negro, or a Jew. (Herr Hommes, a Nazi writer on Racialism. Manchester Guardian, January 2nd, 1941.)

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On the plinth of General Sherman’s statue in Washington are cut these words: “The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace.” To me this is a profoundly wise saying. (Major-General Fuller, Evening Standard, January 4th, 1941.)

#    #    #    #

Three Stalin prizes of 100,000 roubles each, and five prizes of 50,000 roubles each are to be awarded to Soviet citizens for outstanding work in science and art. Three prizes of 100,000 roubles each will be awarded for outstanding work in poetry, prose, drama and literary criticism.

In addition 25 prizes of 100,000; forty prizes of 50,000 roubles each; and 60 prizes of 25,000 roubles each are to be awarded for outstanding inventions, including military inventions.

It has been decided by the Soviet Government that these prizes will be awarded not only for work in 1940, but also for work during the last six or seven years. (Daily Worker, January 15th, 1941.)

#    #    #    #

Sir,—“ We wish to know,” an old Chief said to me the other day, ‘‘how it is that England, France, and Germany can have a war whenever they like, but when we want to fight another village the District Officer comes with his police and stops us.” (A letter to The Times from a correspondent in Africa, January 1st, 1941.)

"Black Record" (1941)

Pamphlet Review from the April 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir Robert Vansittart’s pamphlet “Black Record” is a very curious production. As Mr. G. P. Gooch, a well known historian, remarks in a letter to the Manchester Guardian (March 12th, 1941): —

   It is an eloquent and impassioned speech for the prosecution of the same one-sided character as foreign writers have often hurled at “perfidious Albion.” He calls Germany a butcher-bird, just as Reventlow, during the last war, called England the vampire of the Continent. In such propagandist works there is always a considerable measure of truth, for no country can show an unblemished record, but they lack the judicial spirit. The writers are so obsessed by the wickedness of the enemy that they try to produce the impression that there never were such monsters of iniquity.

Sir Robert condemns Sir Neville Chamberlain and others for not facing the truth as far as the German character is concerned. The “truth” being, in his estimation, that the Germans are by nature cruel and have been across the centuries predatory and vicious. This he urges over and over again. On page 16 of his pamphlet he makes the following assertion: 

    Hitler is no accident. He is the natural and continuous product of a breed which from the dawn of history has been predatory and bellicose.

Whatever truth there is in that assertion applies just as strongly to every "breed” that can trace ancestry back to the “dawn of history,” and most emphatically to the Latin nations. What blood and tears stains the history of Italy, of France, of Spain—and may we include England, or does the Germanic strain rule it out?

An incident: is related on page 4 that the author witnessed as a youth in Germany:

    I was eighteen at the time, and it was a bitter winter. A starving German lad of my own age stole a cutlet from a butcher's shop and bolted. He was pursued, caught, and kicked into a mess—not by- toughs, but by apparently ordinary citizens. I tried to intervene, but was told that, if I didn't stand clear, I would be served the same way.

The incident is given as an example of the fundamental cruelty of the Germans, and is a fair sample of his one-sided method of arguing. It is quite true that the case in point is a horrible illustration of the brutality born of the property instinct, a violation of which is always liable to convert the meekest ordinary citizen of any nation into a temporary fiend—particularly if it is his “own” goods that are touched. But if we are to accept the incident at Sir Robert’s valuation, what is to be said of a nation that produced the factory lords of the middle of the last century in England, who had little children of six to twelve years of age driven into factory hells to waste their health and limbs working up to eighteen hours a day producing the means to allow their master to live in luxury? Many of them slept in beds that were never cool, and all of them lost youth’s birthright—joy and laughter. Or, again, what of the nations that produced the perpetrators of the atrocities of the Belgian Congo, where natives were mutilated and villages burned if rubber in sufficient quantities was not brought to fill the bottomless maw of the profit-hunting rubber companies? Again, it was Frenchmen who tortured and slaughtered their own fellow-countrymen in 1871 for daring to resist the attack of Germany and establishing a commune in Paris.

No, acts of violence and brutality do not damn a nation, it only damns the motive that inspires the brutality.

War is the culminating brutality, but peace under capitalism is also full of brutalities.

Nazism, Fascism and Russian Communism are modern examples of systematic brutality, but they are each the product of a civilisation whose basis is the subjection and exploitation of the wealth producers.

Democratic countries exhibit brutality in a less glaring form. The hungry man who steals a loaf is not beaten into a mess, he is sent to jail because he has infringed the laws of private property.

Sir Robert rails against the Germans for aiming at world domination. But are they alone in that? What of the Greeks, the Romans, the Tartars, the Arabs, the Turks, the Spaniards, the Dutch? And, also, brother, why is a large part of the earth painted red on our school maps? Sir Robert, standing on a dirty doorstep, hurls his venom at only one of the gentlemen who occupy the other dirty doorsteps.

He also points to the fortunes acquired by Hitler’s fellow-gangsters out of the miseries of millions. But are they alone in that? What of the war profiteers of 1914-1918, who acquired fortunes out of that war? Are they free of dirt?

On page 19 the author writes:

   Julius Caesar says that in Germany 2,000 years ago “Robbery has nothing infamous in it '' when committed upon a neighbour.

Now, surely, Caesar ought to know, he was the author of the famous despatch, “I came, I saw, I conquered,” with reference to the Gauls. And, by the way, what was he doing so far away from Rome, anyhow?

Farther on Sir Robert adds:

   The Romans knew what their savage neighbours were like as clearly as the French knew later; so the Romans, too, built a Maginot Line and tried to demilitarise the Rhineland.

What a strange illustration to bring forward. The Romans, by cajolery, treachery, cruelty and force crushed their neighbours in ever widening circles until the major part of the known world of their day was under their sway. Then, when weakened internally, largely owing to the fruit of conquests, they were unable to extend the empire further or resist the pressure of their furthest neighbours, so they attempted to stem the impending flood by fortifying their frontiers. Not because the Germans were ferocious, as large bodies of German peoples were fighting in the Roman armies and helping to defend the frontiers.

It is extraordinary that an empire should be chosen as an example, which threw Christians into the pits to be devoured by wild animals, and which brought home captives to Rome to slaughter each other in the gladiatorial arenas for the benefit of a populace that crowded there to see the fun, and whose capricious thumb, pointing up or down, determined whether or not the fallen gladiator should be slain! So well known is the ferocious nature of the old Roman crowd that two thousand years later it is still a common phrase, “butchered to make a Roman holiday.”

We haven't space to deal further with the over-statements and historical peculiarities that litter the pages of this pamphlet. The Nazi regime can be shown to be brutal enough without this type of approach to the question.

Hitler and his clique climbed to power with the assistance of the so-called “Right" and “Left" wings in Germany. The general dissatisfaction of the German workers with their poverty-stricken conditions gave him his chance and he got the backing of industrial magnates by promising to obtain access to sources of raw materials and markets for German products. He strengthened his position by eliminating his opponents piece-meal and by misleading the workers into the belief that they were poor because Germany was denied access to markets in which to sell the products that would make more work. It is an old and familiar story.

Once in power he has been able to keep it so far by a mixture of coercion and promises of a paradise to come when Germany has conquered its enemies.

The German workers fell for Hitler’s promises in the same way as workers all over the world have for years fallen for the promises of leaders.

One day, however, the German worker will become sick from hope deferred, and that day will mean the end of the Nazi regime, if it does not collapse from outside pressure beforehand.

Gilmac.