The British Shipbuilding Industry (1968)

From the February 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the British shipbuilding industry, 1968 was greeted with tepid optimism. The optimism was based on the hope that world shipbuilding may at last have recovered from the slump which followed Suez and the conviction that the British industry is about to solve some of its longest standing production problems. But it was kept tepid by the memories of the slump, by the continued presence of uncertainty, and by the low standing of British shipbuilding in the world market (See Fig. 1).

The slump which started in 1957 was peculiar in that it came at a time of virtually full employment in developed countries and when the volume of world wide sea traffic was increasing. It was caused by the market proving to be smaller than the shipowners, who are only human and who cannot control or predict the anarchies of capitalism, had estimated.

This misjudgement was widespread. Not just the tramp owners but also the big oil companies, the steel firms, even the United Nations, thought there would be more sea-borne traffic than there turned out to be. The reopening of the Suez Canal in 1957 and the cancellation of the contracts for millions of tons of American coal for Europe contributed to the crash. When it came, shipbuilding prices fell by about 40 per cent over some three years and brand new tankers were being taken direct from launching to be laid up, some of them for years.

This typically capitalist mess was put to rights, slowly, not because of any acumen by the shipping men but by the continuing increase in world trade and the scrapping of some of the older ships. The Liberty ships, for example, which flooded out of American shipyards during the war, are now undergoing their sixth special survey—a rigorous examination which may be so costly to pass that it is cheaper to scrap the ship.

For the time being, then, the outlook is slightly better for the shipyards. “We enter 1968 with future commercial prospects brighter than for some years past . . ." said M. A. Scott, President of the Shipbuilders and Repairers National Association (Times 1/1/68.) But at best this is a fragile hope.

In 1966 British shipyards were responsible for something like 7½ per cent of world launchings. Fig. 2 shows how the British share of an expanding market is steadily shrinking. What it does not show, however, is the historical scale of this decline—the slide from the days when British shipbuilding dominated the world.

Figure 1. Launchings during 1966 (Million tons gross)

In the 1880's, at the peak, something like 85 per cent of all ships launched in the world were built in Britain. It was not until the First World War that this share fell below 50 per cent. During the Thirties it fluctuated; after 1945 shot up- to about 55 per cent and since then has steadily fallen. (See Shipbuilding by A. C. Hardy and E. Tyrrell.)

This decline has not been caused by any reduction in the productive capacity of British yards, which remains at about 1¾ million tons, but rather by an increase in the output of other countries which have successfully modernised their yards, applied new techniques and undercut British prices. Hardy and Tyrrell had this to say about the stagnation in Britain:

The present stage is one of transition and, in British yards at any rate, it is likely to continue for perhaps another twenty- five years, because of physical limitations in the shipyard areas on the one hand and of the economic difficulty of scrapping existing and well-tried establishments and valuable equipment on the other.

Foreign competition is the bogyman of British shipbuilding, none of it more frightening than the Japanese. In 1955 Japan was producing about half the tonnage of Britain; by 1966 they were making about six times as much. In May 1963, when Court Line ordered a 67,000 ton tanker from Japan, the Guardian commented:

This is the first time Court Line has built abroad. It is not the first British flag vessel to be ordered in Japan, but it is certainly rare enough to come as quite a jolt to our shipbuilding industry. (23/5/63.)

Nowadays this event has become more familiar. Even the mighty P & O group, British from stem to stern, has had some of its latest express cargo liners built in Japan and so have Blue Funnel Line and Glen Line. (See Fig. 3.)

The British firms have blamed this onto certain advantages which, they say, their foreign rivals have over them—better credit and loan terms, cheaper steel, a more docile labour force, Whatever the truth of this applied to Japan; it is hardly true of Sweden whose wages and steel prices are high but whose ships are strongly competitive.

This is the situation which gave birth to the Geddes Commission, which investigated British shipbuilding and reported in 1966. As a result the government have introduced the. Shipbuilding Industry Bill, under which loans up to £200 million at any one time will be guaranteed for orders placed with British yards. (This was, in fact, higher than the Geddes recommendation). Geddes also came down for a 10 per cent cut in the price of ship steel (negotiations on this should come to a head this Spring) and for a series of mergers among the shipbuilding firms (many of these have already happened, others are now being talked about).

The other issue—probably the thorniest of the lot—may also be settled some time this year. The men who build the ships. Shipyard workers are among the toughest and have a reputation for prolonged disputes over who-does-what. Their work is hard, dirty and dangerous. Because shipyards, like coalminers, can be built only at certain places, their workers live in concentrated communities near the yard, which makes their unity in disasters, slumps and disputes more solid.

The memories of previous slumps—of Jarrow, of the hulk of the Queen Elizabeth rusting above the houses on the Clyde —hang on. The shipworkers’ unions have a healthy mistrust of new productive methods which mean more intense exploitation and probably sackings. Their policy has been to sell themselves as dearly as they can, and to fight every inch of the way—even if this meant arguing over who bored a hole or who chalked a line.

The Geddes Commission recommended a reduction in the number of shipyard unions, from about 15 to five, and many changes in conditions of employment, apprenticeship and so on. The unions have already said they are willing to sit down and talk and Dan McGarvey, President of the Boilermakers’ Amalgamation, has promised that there will never be another demarcation dispute between shipyard unions.

This, then, is a time of change for British shipbuilding. Geddes hoped that after two or three years of reorganisation the U.K. industry’s share of the world market should increase to at least 12½ per cent and production should rise to around 2¼  million tons.

But only a year ago, as the Shipbuilding Industry Bill, on which so many hopes are pinned, was published, the Shipbuilding Conference was drawing attention to the fact that ". . . it would be misleading not to recognise the present weak state of the international freight market.” This is something which no amount of reorganisation in shipyards and unions can change; and it could get worse. Peace in Vietnam for example, would probably release a flood of shipping looking for freight and upsetting many plans for new ships. Also no one is yet certain about the effect which the container ships will have on the number of ships needed on the busier trade routes.

In face of another slump Geddes would be seen for what it is—another desperate stop-gap for one of capitalism’s insoluble problems. Capitalism can never tell what is around the next comer; shipbuilding cannot see over the top of the next wave.

Ivan

(Figs 1, 2 and 3 are compiled from figures published in Lloyd’s Register of Shipping Annual Summary of Merchant Ships Launched During 1966.)

Finance and Industry: Truth at the TUC (1968)

The Finance and Industry column from the February 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The full report of last September’s Trade Union Congress has just been published. We select two items of interest. First, consider this confession of the failure of parliamentary gradualism, Labour’s theory, made by Sir Harry Douglass in his Presidential address:

  All sophisticated countries have used taxation to achieve a more equal sharing of the wealth produced. In a democracy they have to, or the government would be quickly changed, or even democracy as we understand it would be destroyed. Yet, with all that has been achieved, 5 per cent of the population of Britain still own 75 per cent of the property.

What else does he expect? As long as a few monopolise the means for producing wealth, what is produced is bound to be shared unequally between the few who get a property income as rent, interest or profit and the many who get a work income as wage or salary. That is how capitalism works, and must work. But Socialism is nothing to do with “equal sharing of the wealth produced” ; it is about the common ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

When in August last year the Socialist Standard discussed the Means Test we pointed out that some of those in favour were invoking the old socialist phrase: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. They tried to argue that the Means Test ensured that people got what they “needed” (as decided by bureaucratic rules concerned with spending as little as possible). We denounced this as an insolent and cynical distortion of the phrase. One delegate, E. Patterson, of the Constructional Engineering Union, made the same point in a debate on social security, so-called. Though he gives the impression that Marx expected social conditions to improve as a result of people becoming more civilised and rational rather than as a result of a social revolution converting the means of life from private to common property, Patterson puts the position well enough:

  Finally, in support of selectivity, certain people have had the audacity to use the slogan ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ That was real prostitution of a Socialist slogan because that slogan was characterised by Karl Marx in his critique of the Gotha programme as being a possibility in the highest stages of civilisation when the last vestiges of imperialism had gone, when man had become a real rational human being, when man worked for the benefit of the community and for the benefit of his fellow man. When such a thing as a means test was absolutely impossible, then and only then, said Marx, would there be the possibility 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’. The use of it by people in favour of selectivity is a prostitution of that statement

Quite. In the complete Socialist society that Marx envisaged there would be no rationing since in a world of plenty all could have free access to what they needed to live and enjoy life. In 1875 Marx thought that a lengthy transition period between capitalism and complete Socialism would be necessary. He may have been right at the time but now, after nearly a hundred years further development of the forces of production, we say that Socialism, with abundance and free access, could be brought into being in a very short time once the decision to do so was made.

Today, of course, men and women of the working class are rationed and restricted by the size of their wage packet or salary cheque. So the TUC might take note of another Socialist phrase used by Marx. In 1865, three years before the TUC was set up, Marx advised the trade unions to replace the conservative slogan of a ‘fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work’ by the revolutionary one of ‘abolition of the wages system'.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Children of the French Motherland (1968)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

(A French patriot had written urging the SPGB to support the war in order that Alsace-Lorraine, annexed to Germany in 1871, should be restored to France.)

This very annexation, now so loudly denounced, was agreed to by the French capitalist class on condition that the French prisoners of war should be released from Germany for the sole purpose of crushing the Commune of Paris. It was the price of the slaughter by French soldiers of 25,000 French working men, women and children in the streets of Paris. No capitalist eyes then wept for the workers; no capitalist love for the ‘children’ of France saved them from the foul conditions and awful tortures of Salory and other prison camps; no French capitalist ‘chivalry’ stood between hapless thousands and death from hunger and privation in savage New Caledonia. Long after the fighting ceased, the farcical ‘trials’ continued to provide targets for capitalist bullets. In fact, the slaughter was only stopped because of the fear of an epidemic. As the real historian—Lissagary —says, ‘It was pestilence, not pity’, that stopped the murders.

The French and German capitalist classes joined hands, after a tremendous war between the two countries, to crush down, maim and murder the working class in France. The lesson should be burned deep into the minds of the working class, not of France only, but of the whole world. For it shows the foul hypocracy of the capitalist class, whether of France or of Germany, of England or of Italy, of Austria, Russia, America, Japan or any other country, when they pretend to be interested in the welfare of the workers of the particular nations they rule, or aspire to rule, while all the time it is the profit plundered from the workers that is their real concern.

From the Socialist Standard, February 1918.

Black Power in the United States (1968)

From the February 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The American black power movement is a child of frustration. Thousands of civil rights supporters, having long since absorbed the few sops that capitalism can afford to give them, are running squarely into a sociological brick-wall—a wall they have termed the “white power structure.” Their response, the concept of black power, indicates that they have learned many lessons.

They have learned, for example, that “integration” as such is an empty issue when the integrated population still remains without any basic economic control over their own lives. They have learned that white liberals can do almost nothing for them. And they have learned that the Federal Government is not their friend; in the last analysis, it can never be anything but their implacable enemy. Anti-poverty and civil rights legislation masked for a time the nature of government, but last summer the mask was dropped. The spectacle of thousands of American troops, tanks, trucks, and jeeps being called out to crush rebellions on the part of other Americans, finally and fully revealed what governments exist for: to maintain the power of the ruling class by violent force. And they can never, of their own free will, enact any reform that will interfere with this function.

The black power movement itself is not a monolithic entity. The phrase “black power” means different things to the different groups which espouse it. Moderately interpreted, it means nothing more formidable than the idea that black people must be their own source of liberation; and to achieve liberation, they must cease to rely merely on street marches, and begin to make more extensive use of massive economic boycotts, large-scale rent strikes, black co-operative stores, and black political parties. Behind these proposals is often the feeling that American black people are not “Americans”, in the same sense as white Americans, because they are denied the rights and opportunities which normally attend American citizenship. Radical black power advocates assert instead that they are members of an exploited colonial nation, and, their colonial status cannot be changed until they acquire all the ingredients of nationhood: a separate territory, a separate economic unit, and a separate government and culture.

As victims of colonialism, they feel a special kinship with its other victims throughout the world: the Algerians, the Latin Americans, and the Vietnamese. And they are willing, like these other victims, to adopt violent insurrection as a method of separating themselves from their exploiters. American black nationalists, in short, appear to want a kind of North American Israel, a distinct rallying-point that will increase their ethnic dignity.

It is difficult for the Marxian socialist to explain his position to a black nationalist. The socialist rejects capitalist, imperialist, and colonialist ideology, and sympathizes deeply with all of capitalism's victims. It is his outrage at being victimised, in most cases, that originally led him to become a socialist. He recognises, too, that certain sections of the working class take more punishment than other sections, and at the present time the black worker in America generally suffers more than his white counterpart. This is an obvious fact to anyone who has lived in the U.S. with his eyes open. Yet the socialist, because of what he knows about capitalism, must reject the black power concept as a hopelessly inadequate solution.

The exploitation of black workers is not due primarily to their skin colour, but to their position as wage workers. A prejudiced white is able to discriminate against them because they have no share in the ownership of the means for producing goods. Their real oppression does not consist of taunts like “nigger” and “jigaboo”; if it did, then white people should long ago have been reduced to the same social level by the choice epithets that blacks have invented for them. The facts are that black people, as wage workers, are propertyless, and like other wage workers, they must sell their labour-power for whatever price it will bring. They must sell it even if they have to polish shoes, wash dishes, and pick up cigarette butts after the people who call them niggers and jigaboos. The alternative is to roam the streets of some vast concentration camp like Harlem, still propertyless, and therefore without the power to oppose the constant harassment of the police. The mere fact that someone disliked the colour of a black man's skin would be only a matter of annoyance and pity except for the weapons which the capitalist system places in the hands of his enemies—the threat to lower his wages, take away his job, insult him in the streets, and put him in jail. If capitalism were abolished, these weapons could not exist; nor, ultimately, would the urge to use them.

Private ownership of the means for producing goods divides capitalism into two basic classes: those who live on profit, and those who must sell their ability to work for a wage. This class division cuts across all the others. If the entire working class had precisely the same skin colour in a capitalist system, they would still suffer from the same problems: poverty, unemployment, wage slavery, discrimination, poor housing, inferior education, and conscription. These problems are generated by the system of wage labour and the sale of commodities for profit. Though in some countries they may fall more heavily on a particular ethnic group, they cannot be solved for any part of the working class until they are solved for the working class as a whole.

The black power concept, then, has several serious weaknesses:

As a nationalist ideology, it is anachronistic; it does not fit economic conditions in the U.S. Nationalism is basically a capitalist idea, since its political expression is in terms of territory rather than class. Nationalism may be useful in underdeveloped areas which must industrialise on a capitalist basis quickly; but in the U.S. any form of nationalism can only serve to distract workers from recognising their common plight as members of an exploited class. Because their exploitation is due to their membership in a subject class, they must free themselves as a class, not as a nationality. To adopt the black nationalist plan and divide the U.S. into competing nations would also weaken the productive power which capitalism in the U.S. has already built. Socialism, on the other hand, requires economic strength and unity in order to make its benefits available to all.

As an insurrectionist slogan, black power is suicidal. Only 15 per cent of the population in the U.S. are black. One needs no great mathematical skill to figure out who would be victorious in a racial war, not to mention the fact that a bottle full of gasoline is a rather inadequate defense against fleets of helicopters and tanks, armed with napalm, poison gas, and fragmentation bombs.

As a revolutionary theory, black power is divisive and self-crippling. Attacks on the “white power structure” mean little unless one understands that the source of its power is not the skin colour of the bureaucrats, but the enormous property values which employ them. We have already mentioned that any part of the working class cannot alone solve problems which stem from their position as wage workers; they must act together with the majority of their class. The concept of black power implies that black workers have basic interests which conflict with those of white workers. Both black power and white prejudice divide the working class against itself, thereby weakening the class and diminishing the power of each of its members. Black power is not a cure for exploitation, but a symptom of the disease.

Nevertheless, it is possible that black power may also be a healthy sign in the American, working class movement. The young insurrectionists of Detroit, Newark, Boston, Cincinnati, do belong to the urban working class, and this is the first time since the 1930s that masses of American workers have broken with “their” government and openly defied it to put them down. Some black power leaders also feel the need for greater support among white workers, and stress their goals of better schools and housing will benefit more white than blacks.

Class consciousness takes a long time to develop. One of the signs of its development is a wholesale rejection on the part of workers that a treadmill is their only possible alternative in life. The black powerists, the hippies, and the peace movement suggest that large things are happening in America which the socialist need not regret.

Stan Blake

About Ourselves (1968)

From the February 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Gt. Britain is an independent party set up in 1904. We are opposed to all other parties in this country including the Labour Party and the so-called Communist Party. Our only links are with similar Socialist parities in other countries.

Our object is Socialism: a world wide society where production will be solely for use, not sale or profit; where the means of life will be commonly owned and democratically controlled; where classes will have been abolished and all human beings be social equals. Production and distribution will be organised on the principle: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. There will be no buying and selling, no money, wages, profits or banks. All will have free access to what they need to live and enjoy life. As all will have the same common social interests there will be no need for a public power of coercion. The state, armed forces and weapons of destruction will disappear.

This is Socialism. Obviously it does not exist anywhere in the world, not in Russia, nor China, nor Yugoslavia, nor Cuba. What exists in these places is a class society best called state capitalism.

We are a Marxist party, that is, we accept the materialist conception of history, the labour theory of value and theory of the class struggle. In our view Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao Tse-Tung, Castro and the others have twisted Marx's views to back their state capitalist regimes.

President-day society, capitalism, is a class society. The means of production belong not to society as a whole, but only to a section of it, the capitalists. The rest of us have to work for them to live. There are thus two classes in society —capitalists and workers. The working class is not confined to factory workers but includes all who have to sell their mental and physical energies to live; clerks, civil servants, technicians and managers as well.

Built into capitalism is a conflict between these two classes—the class struggle. This struggle over the division of wealth (which is produced by the working class alone) goes on all the time. You are familiar with its forms: strikes, trade unions, employers associations, wage freezes. States of Emergency. This means that the working class is an exploited class. By this we do not mean that workers are treated brutally by bullying employers or that foremen walk about with whips. We just mean that although the workers produce all wealth, the best goes to the capitalists who live off rent, interest and profit. How workers live is rationed by the size of their wage packet or salary cheque. Generally this is not more than enough to keep a man and his family in efficient working order. Despite a world capable of providing plenty for all, workers have to put up with the cheap and second-rate in food, clothes, houses, entertainment, health and so on. We say this is how it must be under capitalism. These social problems are built into capitalism and will not go till the means of production cease to be the monopoly of a privileged class and become the common property of the whole community. Capitalism cannot be made to work in the interests of all. It can work only one way, as a profit-making system in the interest of those who live off profits.

A feature of present-day society that cannot be ignored is the government machine or state—the public power or coercion. It is used today mainly to protect the property of the property-owners. The owners of the places when you work do not own them in the same way as they own their toothbrushes; they are not their personal possessions What they have is a legal title, a piece of paper saying that they are theirs. This title is backed by the law.

Thus before the community can take over industry and run it in the interests of all, the working class must capture political power and, by using the state machinery, strip the capitalist class of their property. The means are already to hand in the vote and the ballot box. Elections are about who shall control the state. At present because people do not want Socialism or think it will not work they send to parliament and the local councils members pledged to keep capitalism going. When they want Socialism, then they will elect socialists. This is an important principle: there can be no Socialism without a socialist majority Socialism can only be introduced democratically to people who want and understand it and are prepared to take the steps needed to get it and keep it going. The only people who can change society from capitalism to Socialism are you, the working class. Nobody, no leaders no MP’s, can do it for you. If you want Socialism, it is something you must get for yourselves. This is where the Socialist Party differs from the Labour Party and the so called Communist Party. Labour says that MP’s by putting through reform measures can bring Socialism for you.The Communists say that a minority, the vanguard party can do the same. We reject both propositions—and the failure of both parties to further the cause of Socialism, let alone establish it, confirms our case. Capitalism has changed Labour, not Labour capitalism, and they have state capitalism not Socialism in Russia.

The Socialist Party stands for democratic, political action to get Socialism. We go further and say that the task of a Socialist party today should be to put the socialist alternative to the working class, and not to get involved in the running of capitalism. We only seek support on the basis of Socialism. We have no reform programme. When we contest elections we do so on a socialist programme and nothing else. This is not because we are opposed to social reforms, but because we are opposed to a policy of reformism. Trying to reform capitalism is pointless; it is like going up a downward moving escalator: you run fast to stay still. No sooner have you put through one reform than another is necessary.

We reject this futile task and set ourselves a worthwhile one: to help in the slow growth of socialist understanding. For this we are organised as a political party. We bring out this monthly journal, the Socialist Standard. We publish pamphlets and leaflets. We hold meetings, indoor and outdoor. We contest elections. We do this because we know that Socialism will not be achieved until a majority want it. There is no other way. There are no short cuts to Socialism.

So we are asking you to study our case and if you agree with us to join our party and so play your part in the struggle for Socialism.

The Review Column: Non! (1968)

The Review Column from the February 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Non!

France’s veto on the British approach to the Common Market added a little more to President de Gaulle’s reputation.

The cartoonists feverishly added another lump to his nose, another crease to his face, another shadow around his eyes. The leader writers dipped their pens deeper into the vitriol and Wilson virtually wished the General dead, when he said that time was on the side of the British application.

Bogymen are always useful to capitalism’s apologists; they are convenient outlets for frustrated nationalism and scapegoats for the unavoidable problems of the system.

In Britain, these apologists often demand that the government follow something like the policies of de Gaulle, who is determined to expand French influence and power.

This is unpopular in Britain only because it runs counter to the present interests of the British ruling class, Since the war they have seriously misjudged the course of events in Europe, first paying lip-service to European unity, then deliberately trying to frustrate the negotiations for that unity, then choosing to keep the trading links with the Commonwealth rather than join the Common Market.

The erosion of British interests in the Commonwealth, and the hope that there were fatter pickings to be had on the Continent has caused another look at Europe. But the British ruling class still want to have it both ways, to have the EEC fashioned to their design. The French conception of European unity, on the other hand, is one dominated by the interests of French capital.

The fact that the Six are divided over the rejection of the British application shows that even the organisations which are supposed to be based on common interests have their conflicts. If the British government eventually joins, the disputes will continue, over other issues and throwing up other bogymen.

Capitalism is a mass of diverging interests; even its unities are full of conflict


No Arms for South Africa

Most of the criticism which followed the government’s ban on arms sales to South Africa assumed that the decision was almost the single handed work of Harold Wilson.

The Prime Minister was supposed to have been inspired by opposition to racism—in other words, by political principle. This might be more convincing, were it not for the fact that the whole thing blew up at the end of a year which the Labour government had devoted to proving that its political principles do not exist.

The ban will of course make little difference to the South African government who will obviously get the arms they need elsewhere; few weapon salesmen can resist a fat contract. But presumably this had little influence on Wilson who must have acted, if not for political principle then for political reasons.

One of these could well have been that the government’s record has put a severe strain upon the loyalty of its supporters. Last year was one of unbroken gloom for them, culminating in devaluation, another upward lurch in prices and the promise of an even gloomier 1968.

Then Wilson’s policy on Rhodesia is clearly a stagnant failure; no amount of indignant patriotism can expunge the image of the “toothless bulldog”.

If the Labour government had been seen openly to be giving support to the South African regime there would have been a further strain on the Labour Party’s loyalty and on the government’s relations with the new African states.

This settled, Wilson’s superior political skill gave him an easy victory over Healey, Callaghan and Brown; he could appear before his party and the world as the unspotted, high principled defender of the brotherhood of man.

The only remaining question is whether Wilson misjudged his members. Over the past three years they have absorbed a tremendous amount of disillusionment, including the government’s about-face on immigration control. Who can be sure that arms for South Africa was their sticking point? In a party without principle anything is possible.

Backing Whose Britain

Of course Prince Phillip was heartened by the news that some workers were volunteering to work an extra half-hour a day without pay. He is the figurehead of the British capitalist class and if anyone is going to gain out of this it will be them.

For the workers it can only be a dead loss—adding to their working day without getting anything for it. For the employers it might be a clear gain—extra work, extra production which they don’t pay for.

Cutting dividends makes no difference to this. The level of dividends does not affect the amount of profit made from the exploitation of the workers; to cut dividends simply means that more money stays in the company, to be reinvested, distributed later in dividends or used in some other way the directors decide. Whatever happens, it belongs to the employers.

The Prince said that extra work for nothing would soon lick all our problems. But whatever the level of pay, whatever the length of the working day, the working class have always suffered the problems of poverty.

The employers’ problems, too, have always been there. Well-publicised, gimmicky campaigns will do nothing to help them. Apart from anything else, however hard the workers work the things they make cannot be sold without a market. The employers have no control over this; that is why firms go broke and why workers often find themselves out of a job.

Perhaps the few typists who started it all—although others before them had done the same thing, but without such a clever and well-managed publicity drive—did so from the best of motives. Perhaps they thought they were making a sacrifice for the common good—a reasonable enough incentive.

The tragic fact is that they are misled. They have no Britain to back; to think that they have a common interest with their masters is to fasten their chains more securely upon themselves.

If the representatives of the privileged class are heartened by this it is only because it must keep them more secure in their social and economic superiority.

Cooking the Books: Whom to Tax? (2018)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Economists used to think that it doesn’t matter whom you tax, but it does’ was the title of the LSE’s Europp blog (18 November). Written by two 'behavioural economists', Matthias Weber and Arthur Schram, to publicise their research, it began:

‘In most countries, employers and employees both contribute to the taxes (or social security contributions) levied on labour. Employers pay taxes on top of the wage they transfer to employees and employees pay income taxes on the money they receive from employers. For many decades, economists thought that it should not matter who pays. Employers were thought to care only about total labour costs (gross wage paid plus employer taxes). Employees were thought to care only about their net wage (what’s left of the gross wage after income tax). The gross wage itself should be of interest to neither of them, so it should not matter who pays the taxes.’

According to Marxian economics, taxation is not a burden on wage and salary workers as a class. This is not to say that workers don’t pay taxes but that, if a tax is levied on wages, this will ultimately be passed on to employers in the form of higher wages. The increase in wages would not come about automatically, but through the class struggle and the play of supply and demand.

This was the view of the classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo, inherited by Marx. It is based on wages having to be enough to cover the cost to workers of reproducing their working skills. If workers have to pay taxes, this reduces the money they have to maintain their skills to below what is needed ; if employers are to continue buying the same quality of working skills they have to compensate for this by increasing wages.

The bloggers wrote that their research showed that who pays the tax in the first instance does have an effect even if it doesn’t affect the amount of money workers end up with – it affects workers’ perception of what is happening and so their behaviour. They found that, if employers paid all the tax, workers would favour more government spending, and vice versa:

'This suggests that employees believe that their own contribution to public spending is lower when taxes are levied on employers even if there is de facto no difference in the amount of money that ends up in their pockets.’

In other words, we can add, if workers do pay tax in the first instance they consider this is a part of their money that is taken from them. This opens the way for politicians and defenders of capitalism to con them into believing that they are part of a national community of taxpayers with a common interest in getting ‘value for money’ from how the government spends tax money.

The fact is, though, that if taxes on wages were to be reduced, workers would not be better off as their gross wage would fall correspondingly. As Marx pointed out:

‘If all taxes which bear on the working class were abolished root and branch, the necessary consequence would be the reduction of wages by the whole amount of taxes which today goes into them. Either the employers’ profit would rise as a direct consequence by the same quantity, or else no more than an alteration in the form of tax-collecting would have taken place. Instead of the present system, whereby the capitalists also advances, as part of the wage, what the worker has to pay, he [the capitalist] would no longer pay them in this roundabout way, but directly to the state’ (Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality, 1847).

Whatever the form of tax-collecting ‘there is de facto no difference in the amount of money that ends up in their pockets’. As long as the wages system exists, workers should indeed ‘care only about their net wage’.

Methods of Practical Socialism

The following piece, written by the late Pieter Lawrence, is the fourth chapter of his 2006 work, 'Practical Socialism - Its Principles and Methods'. 

Link to Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Methods of Practical Socialism

World Socialism is a practical possibility because over the past three hundred years global capitalism has developed a material basis for the new society.  It has created an integrated world structure of production; transport and distribution systems; instant global communications; decision making bodies and administrative institutions.   These structures   operate at local, regional and world levels in a state of rapid development which increasingly pre-dispose their free use for the benefit of all people. Given the political will they could be adapted as a socialist system over a relatively short period. The methods of practical socialism apply a distinction between the useful parts of production and social organisation which would be continued, and the economic/value factors which would be redundant and therefore removed. 

It has been suggested that the capitalist system marks the end of history; that we are now in a final phase of social evolution that is our ultimate destiny and from which there can be no further progress.  But can this strange idea be more than wishful thinking, a desperate hope amongst those who seek to idealise the market system and prefer not to see beyond it?   Far from being the end of progress the market system creates problems it cannot solve. Its competition and economic rivalries cause war and the build up of destructive forces that threaten human existence. The only sense in which capitalism may be the end of history is that it may   destroy humanity. Yet even in a time when faith in ourselves is fragile and our belief in the future is weak we should also  know that we are capable of bringing our rationality, humanity and good sense to bear on our social problems and by doing this, moving on. We may still hope that we can build a better world and create a decent way to live. In fact the intellectual powers required for this are minor compared with the immense complexities of modern applied science which support our modern technical culture. It appears that we are brilliant at sending space vehicles through the solar system whilst languishing in the dark ages when it comes to our social relationships. 

Rather than think that history is at an end it may be more useful to note that during the long period of pre-history,  a time sometimes referred to as ‘primitive communism’, with the use of only primitive tools, our distant ancestors co-operated to provide for their needs. Co-operation at that time conferred vital survival advantages on the group and without it we could never have emerged as a species.  Now we have advanced technology but primitive relationships With this in mind the socialist revolution may be seen as part of a long cycle of change from co-operation at a primitive level to co-operation at a more conscious, technically developed level. Throughout history human kind has been accumulating its collective powers of labour. These are now immense and more than capable of providing every person with a good life and there is no sound reason why we should not do it.

Use Versus Value

Under the capitalist system labour operates in two forms; its useful form and its economic form. Firstly it operates as useful labour producing the things we need to live. This is not unique to capitalism; it is common to all societies. Marx put it thus;  “So far as therefore labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race: it is an eternal nature imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between Man and nature , and therefore no life.”   (Capital, vol I, chapter 1, section 2)

But simultaneous with its useful form, labour also operates in an economic form. Labour has a price that is its wage or salary and this indicates its value. When employed as part of the wage labour/capital relationship the economic function of labour is to create values over and above its own value. This is surplus value which is the source of profit and capital accumulation. The process begins with money capital invested in labour, materials, plant, machinery and land etc., and ends with finished commodities being sold in the markets for profit. It is only the labour component of these investments that produces the increased or surplus values that are realised in the markets through sales. This results in accumulated capital which, all things being equal, then becomes available for further accumulation throughout this circular system of exchange.

The change from capitalist to socialist production does not then require the establishment of anything new.   It is self evident that, although dominated by the economic/value factors of 

commodity production, labour is already working in its useful form and this would continue. The change would be in the internal working relationships of the production systems. The result would be that people would simply carry on doing their useful jobs in co-operation but without the exploitative features of the wage labour/capital relationship.

  

With the enactment of common ownership marking the end of the market system, society will work only with useful labour. The value form of labour will be redundant and will disappear. The wages system will end. Labour will then be free to co-operate to produce goods and provide services directly for the needs of the community. All the freedoms of socialist society will flow from this basic change in the use of labour.  Useful labour will find its freedom outside the economic constraints of the profit motive, commodity exchange and the accumulation of capital. The energies, skills and talents of people will at last be freely applied through voluntary co-operation in whatever ways the community may democratically decide.

The triumph of useful labour over its economic or value form will result in a far more efficient use of labour. The sole use of labour to provide for the needs of the community will mean that a vast amount of labour that is at present allocated to economic functions will become immediately redundant. This great advantage of socialist organisation will be covered at greater length in a later chapter. This freedom of labour also has an important bearing on the nature of the change from capitalism to socialism.  A system based on the sole use of voluntary labour acting in co-operation can only result from the conscious, democratic actions of a majority of people who co-operate to establish the new society.

Sudden and Gradual Change

Some opponents of socialism have argued that a world wide change from one society to another over a short period is unprecedented in history and impossible to achieve at any time. It is said that social change is gradual; it cannot be sudden or cataclysmic and this rules out a world wide change from capitalism to socialism. Set against this is the fact that the productive relationships of capitalism and socialism cannot operate together or be combined over time. Experience also shows that gradualist attempts to develop socialism within capitalist through reforms or other government measures have failed because they are impossible.  But we are not in fact confronted by a stark choice between sudden or gradual change. In practice the two are linked and there are examples from history of sudden, far reaching change.  The question is perhaps best understood through the ways in which gradual change can build up pressures of social, economic and political tensions that are eventually resolved through sudden change. This integrates the concepts of gradual and sudden change and sees them as different parts of a continuous process of change.

 A realistic view of history cannot be happy with the idea of sudden leaps in social arrangements but then neither can we out-rule rapid or sudden change and we would wrong to say that it has never happened. A modern example was the way in which the Bolsheviks abolished the landed aristocracy in Russia in l917. They did this overnight and ‘at a stroke’. It is true that some progress had been made in land reform before 1917 but for the most part feudal type agricultural relationships had existed for centuries and involved millions of people over the entire land mass of Russia. The removal of the entire class of aristocratic landowners and its corresponding mode of agricultural production was enacted by the Bolsheviks at 2.30 in the morning on 9th. November l917.

But the apparent suddenness of this change is misleading. Whilst it was certainly a dramatic political event it cannot be explained solely in terms of what happened on 9th. November l917. Although the power of the landed aristocracy had remained more or less unaltered for centuries, the pressures on it from a wide range of external sources had been intensifying. The change from feudal type relations to what, under Stalin, became state capitalist agriculture can only be fully understood in relation to the more gradual pressures leading up to it. 

The sudden abolition of the landed aristocracy in Russia is partly explained by the slow pace of change during the preceding 100 years and in particular the failure to develop more efficient capitalist agriculture, compared with other European powers. This meant that with the 1st World War, because food as well as industrial production was vital, Russia could not sustain its war effort on equal terms with other more developed combatants. The failures of the Russian army, the bankruptcy of the state, the conditions of the masses in desperate poverty and famine, combined to produce social and political breakdown which gave the Bolsheviks their opportunity to seize power. Thus the failure to develop on more equal terms with other European powers throughout the 19th Century eventually brought severe pressure on the backward nature of social relationships in Russia in 1917.

Whilst not using the terms gradual and sudden change the concept of how these may in practice be an integrated process was suggested by Marx in his distinction between the “material productive forces of society” and the “existing relations of production.” For Marx, this was more than a distinction, it becomes a conflict. “At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production.”  “Then begins an epoch of social revolution.”  (Preface to the Critique of Political Economy)

Applying this to the development of world capitalism it is useful to make a further distinction between the form and the content of its productive relations. The form or the social basis of capitalism, that is to say its  “relations of production,” is the class ownership of wealth. This means that means of production, transport and resources are privately owned or monopolised through state ownership.  In the modern world we see a vast power of ownership by global corporations.  These “relations of production” do not change, they are basic to defining capitalism as a system.  

Also, such economic categories as capital investment, the means of production functioning as capital, commodities and wage labour are key to explaining how goods and services are produced in the market system and who gets what from the pool of goods made available. Two hundred years ago the production of goods commenced with an exchange of wages for labour time and this has not changed.  It is exactly the same now.

Over the course of its history, as pre-capitalist ways of life have been swept aside, more and more people have come to be producing within the wage labour/capital relationship. Markets have expanded to their greatest capacity than at any other time. There is a greater pool of capital still being accumulated from the exploitation of workers than ever before. Structures of government have expanded. Capitalist states are stronger with more arms and greater powers of destruction than ever before. The capitalist system has spread to every corner of the planet with the result that it now exists as a gigantic world structure, with economic events in one place having repercussions throughout the world. 

What has changed within this expansion has been the social/technical content of the wage labour/capital relationship. Within this we include techniques of production, developed communications, productivity, a more complex division of labour, new products and new markets, administration, institutions, democratic rights, our knowledge of the world, social attitudes, living standards, etc. In each of these fields there is rapid change but these do not alter the basic wage labour/capital relationship through which production takes place. Nor does the motive of production change, which is that goods, as commodities, are produced for sale on the markets with a view to profit. This is the same now as more than three centuries ago when capitalism first became the dominant economic system. 

The dynamic technical and social changes which have been part of capitalism since the beginnings of the industrial revolution and which continue with increasing momentum have made no impact on the basic class relations of the system or its motive of production. This contrast between rapid social change that continues on a basis of static class relations is creating social and economic and political tensions that can only be resolved by the establishment of socialism.

We can acknowledge that at its beginning the capitalist system was in many important ways a progressive development of society. It is doubtful if even the most devoted admirer of privilege would want to return to feudalism and the absolute rule of monarchy.  However, having once moved us on the market system has long since outlived its ability to make progress. It now operates as a barrier to progress. The more our powers of production are developed the greater becomes the gap between what we could produce and what we actually produce. With deep social problems desperate to be solved the continuous accumulation of our productive powers comes into greater conflict with what appears to be our fixed economic relationships. This conflict between our limited economic options and our greater powers of production places increasing pressure on the need for political action to change society. Given a majority of socialists the task would present no difficulties. The developed powers of production and organisation that now exist pre-dispose the ease with which a world wide socialist movement could stop the operation of capitalism and immediately commence the operation of socialist society.

In this perspective, the question of a sharp distinction between sudden and gradual change is dissolved.  It is a matter of neither one nor the other.  Even now, the position of governments where they find themselves boxed in by severe economic constraints, or worse, as they stagger from crisis to crisis, is against a background of immense powers of production and social organisation that cannot be brought into use. This contradiction, or tensions, between static economic relations and developed powers of production can only intensify and bring about increasing pressure for change which by the nature of the two systems must take place over a relatively short period.

Method

Practical socialism is defined as the work of proposing how existing powers of production and social organisation could be used directly for the needs of all people according to the principles of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use. It therefore follows that one method of work is to identify the socially useful parts of production such as industry and agriculture etc., that could be applied directly to the solution of problems.  These should be distinguished from parts of production that can only serve the objectives of capitalism and would therefore become redundant, for example, finance and business services, weapons and armaments production.  (More on this in a later chapter)

This method involves more than the factors of production; it must also include decision making bodies, means of organisation and administration. In its approach to the question of which bodies and institutions could continue in socialism the sole criteria is whether or not they could serve a socially useful function.  This method of selection must bring with it an open mind, free of any pre-conceived ideas that may come as part of the ideological baggage that can, unfortunately, travel with socialism as part of its diverse history.

For example, it is a prejudice of the anarchist school of thought that the entire machinery of government, having been part of the state, would be abolished.  These are merely the sterile attitudes of individuals who have used the socialist movement as a means of dissociating from society.  In fact Ministries such as the Ministry of Food, The Department of Transport, Department of the Environment, etc., together with their staffs and technical officers would have a vital part to play in the organisation of socialism.   No doubt the Treasury, Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue would become redundant but not because they are part of the machinery of government.  These would simply have no job to do.

A further method is the work of proposing how the existing machinery of government could be democratised so as to play a part in a system of democratic administration.

 Beyond continuous social and technical change which expose existing productive relations as static, destructive and historically redundant, the actual nature of the change from capitalism to socialism should be kept in clear perspective. We are not looking towards a sudden transformation of all aspects of society. In fact, substantially, we are looking towards the continuation of the most important things that society does.

The life of society depends upon people doing their useful jobs. With all their energies and skills it is working people of all kinds, from labourers to factory workers, technicians and computer operators who already run the world production system. There could be no sudden change in the work processes of people in mining, industry, manufacture, transport and distribution, farming, building and construction, energy supply, health services, education and the many other services. With the enactment of common ownership all these people would carry on with what they are doing, but in circumstances in which all the economic factors of the capitalist system will have been removed. With no wages system and no production of commodities for sale at a profit, this would be people working in voluntary co-operation for themselves and for the community at large.

Necessity

The aim of socialism is to establish the relationships of equality that will dignify and empower our communities and so enable them to solve social problems in the interests of all people. The problems are huge. The actions and organisation required to solve them mean that to begin with communities in socialism will be bound to respond to these compelling pressures of necessity.  This will determine what socialism will have to do and this sets out a framework of known facts within which we may propose how socialism could be organised. As has been emphasised, this also rescues socialism from its tendency towards utopian speculation.  It provides an agenda for creative work that can be developed as a serious practical alternative to existing capitalist society.

Beyond the solution of social problems, as the pressures of necessity are lifted from communities, the options on how to live will widen. Because in this prospect we cannot sensibly anticipate what choices will be made, any attempt to do so would move from the sound work of proposing how existing problems could be solved into utopian spheres of futuristic speculation.

The “future” only exists in the sense that it is being contested now through the clash of political ideas.  These conflicting ideas reflect conflicting interests and whatever the future may be will be the outcome of these arguments. Opponents of socialism hold that in one form or another the capitalist system should continue into the foreseeable future. They argue that the means of production should remain under private or state ownership; that the market system should continue and that profit should come before the needs of people. But socialists argue for a different future and whether or not this happens will be the outcome of present political choice.

Needs

It would be impossible to argue a definition of needs valid for all time and for all circumstances.  Such a discussion would be endlessly subjective and irrelevant to our purpose. For practical socialism the question is answered from what socialism would have to do to solve existing problems.  Implicit in this is a working definition of needs. There is common agreement about what these problems are and they are defined as problems because they arise from a definite human need of one kind or another. This provides a context and a practical basis for saying what we mean by needs.

For example, who could seriously doubt that food is a vital human need? Socialism would give the utmost priority to stopping world hunger. Capitalism fails to do this.  The numbers of hungry people in the world are increasing. Between the years 1974 and 2000 the number of seriously undernourished people doubled from 435 million people to over 800 million. (FAO Fact File) Communities in socialism must stop people dying from hunger and could do it immediately. Beyond this a choice of good quality food would be produced for all people. This would require increased world food production.

Socialism must also house the world’s population in comfort, providing for the basic necessities of piped clean water, drainage systems, cooking facilities and other domestic amenities. In addition socialism must establish a safe world energy supply, stop pollution and adopt techniques able to work within the natural systems of the environment in non destructive ways. There is a need to bring into balance the world distribution of means of production, transport systems and storage facilities.  There is a need to extend health and education services and further develop communications of every kind.  For all these great projects, socialism would begin with a structure of production, inadequate for the supply of these needs. This would require a rapid expansion of production.

These aims would have to be accomplished in stages in an order of priorities, doing what was manageable at first, monitoring the progress made and then going on.  As we have said, this anticipates a stage of development in socialism when pressures of necessity will be eased with the result that communities will have wider options on how to live.   In these circumstances, no doubt, various philosophies of needs will be widely debated leading perhaps to a great diversity of life styles. But given the present state of things, our desperate need is to solve our problems. 

Pieter Lawrence

Link to Chapter 5

50 Years Ago: The Curse of National Prestige. (1955)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

What the Socialist has to realise clearly is that the interests of his fellow workers in other lands are nearer to his than are those of his master in his own country. The bonds which bind worker with worker, irrespective of nationality, are those of class solidarity. The meeting of Japanese and Russian on the platform of the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam in August last was but symbolical of this solidarity. From the Capitalist-class of every country the worker is divided by a gulf of class antagonism which can be bridged only by the absorption of the Capitalist-class in the working-class, the result of the coming Social Revolution.

When the Capitalist-class fully realises that they can no longer depend upon the working-class, when they find that the worker has at last come to understand his class position, and that he has no reason for fighting in his master’s interests against those with whom he has no personal quarrel, he, the Capitalist, will see that it is impossible to appeal to national prestige, to patriotism, to the spirit of “our imperial race” and all the rest of the phrases used of old. and then it will be impossible to make war in so light a spirit, or to raise questions likely to create a tension between the ruling classes of different nations.

It is for the worker to see that his position demands that be should fight only for his class emancipation, and that nothing, internal reform or national strife, should draw him away from his determination to fight for the realisation of the Socialist regime.

Workers of all countries unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.

From the August 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard.

The Only Remedy for Strikes (1955)

From the August 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Government and the Opposition are agreed about the merits of Sir Walter Monckton and both pay tributes to the way he has handled strikes since he became Minister of Labour when the Tories came into office late in 1951. Verbal bouquets have also been presented by the T.U.C. and by the Railway Unions' officials.

It must be, therefore, that Sir Walter is thought to have been very successful. But what is it he is supposed to have succeeded in doing? He certainly has not been able to prevent strikes from taking place. During the period of three years and five months from January, 1952, to the end of May, 1955, strikes averaged over 1,900 a year; which works out at about six new ones every day of the working week. His admirers cannot even claim that his average is better than his predecessors, for during the last five years of Labour Government (1947—1951) the average was only five a day. (These and other figures are taken from the Labour Gazette, May 1955, the Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1954, and Labour Statistics, 1913).

Socialists hold that strikes arise out of the present organisation of society. In our day and in all other countries work is carried on by men and women who are employed to do it and are paid a wage by their employer. The employer is sometimes an individual who owns a business; sometimes a company controlled by a Board of Directors on behalf of the shareholders and sometimes a Government Department or a Board set up by the Government; but these forms of control are all alike in the important respect that in all of them orders are given to the workers, and discipline is maintained over them, by or on behalf of the employer or employing body. The workers do not own the factory, farm or railway, on which they work, nor the things they produce there. Their main concern is the wage they get and the conditions under which they work and this interest brings them into endless conflict with the employers' aim of making profit and cutting costs. That is why workers strike; not because one Minister of Labour is more or less clever or more or less urbane than another.

Some Governments try to avoid strikes by arbitration while others (including the Russian Government) stamp them out by heavy penalties and force, but none of them can run this system of wage-labour without there being friction and discontent. The Socialist remedy is to change the basic organisation of society so that the relationship of employer and employed disappears along with the division into an owning class, the capitalists, and a working class, all those who depend for their living on selling their mental and physical energies.

The social reformers do not believe this to be practicable or necessary. One group, the Labour Party, believed for years (though recent events have shaken their confidence) that the setting up of Whitley Councils, Joint Industrial Councils, etc., and the encouragement of arbitration, would lessen industrial unrest and that the best remedy of all was to have the workers employed by a nationalized board instead of by a company board of directors.

More Strikes than Fifty Years Ago

So the Labour Party told us to expect that in this respect things would get better and better and strikes would disappear.

What has happened is quite different

In the five years 1900—1904 industrial disputes (strikes and lock-outs) averaged 495 a year; in 1947-51 they averaged 1,593 a year and in the period of Tory rule, 1,907 a year. The number has steadily increased since 1952.

In these three same periods the average number of workers, directly or indirectly involved, grew from 166,000 a year in 1900-1904, to 432,000 a year in 1947-51 and to 773,000 a year in 1952-5. It has steadily increased since 1952.

In one respect, however, the trend has been in the other direction. Strikes nowadays are often local and are usually shorter; in consequence, while the number of days lost through stoppages averaged 2,900,000 a year in 1900-1904. it was 1,850,000 in 1947-51 and 2,300,000 in 1952-5.

It is, however, rising and the Prime Minister said on July 5 that the recent railway, coal and dock disputes have cost 2,000,000 days between them.

Two of these industries are nationalized and in the third (the docks) employment is through the National Dock Labour Board, set up by the Government.

In the coal mines in 1954 there were 1,464 strikes, costing 468,000 days and involving 204,400 workers. (In these as in other figures the Ministry of Labour ignores strikes affecting less than 10 workers or costing less than one day unless the total of days lost exceeds 100).

The Labour leaders, like the Tories, are trying to think up new ways to eliminate strikes but their thinking in this field is bound to lead nowhere because they rule out in advance the probability of a fundamentally new classless, social relationship, that offered by Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: Mr. Keir Hardie's Election Address (1955)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

MR. KEIR HARDIE’S ELECTION ADDRESS MERTHYR BOROUGHS PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION, 1900

To the Electors 

Gentlemen, 

It is with pleasure that I accept the hearty invitation of the TRADE UNIONISTS OF THE MERTHYR BOROUGHS to come forward in the Labour interest as a Candidate for the representation of the constituency in the House of Commons. 

The confidence and friendship shown by this invitation is an honour which I value as being far above riches.  

WE ARE NO STRANGERS TO ONE ANOTHER. 

I was among you endeavouring to cheer, encourage and strengthen you in the dark days of your recent great Industrial struggle. Not many years ago, when during the Hauliers’ Strike, the Government sent soldiers into your District, it was MY VOICE THAT PROTESTED against this in Parliament, when others upon whom you had more claims were silent

 My Programme is the Programme of Labour. My Cause is Labour’s Cause—the cause of Humanity—the Cause of God.

For twenty-four years I have been before my fellow-men as a Trade-Union Official and a Political Leader. 

MY RECORD FOR THESE YEARS is the best pledge I can give of what my future course of action will be. Whether in Parliament, or out of it, I always have been, and always shall be found on the side of the Workers. I know everything that is to be known about the life and work of a Miner. 

Born and reared in a collier’s cottage, and afterwards working for FOURTEEN YEARS IN THE PIT, I know only too well what such a life means, and I am not willing that any human being should continue in the life, without further essential reforms. 

I am a Democrat in Politics, and a Socialist in Economics. I first learned my Socialism in the New Testament, where I still find my chief inspiration. 

Our claim for one representative is moderate and reasonable enough. In a constituency where we are in an overwhelming majority, we ask but for half the representation. Workers! in being true to me, you will be TRUE TO YOURSELVES! Let us, then, work hard for a great Labour Victory at the Polls on Tuesday next.  

I am. Gentlemen, respectfully yours,

J. KEIR HARDIE, 

Lochnorris, Cumnock, Scotland. September, 1900.

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It will be observed that Keir Hardie made a point of reminding the electors that he was claiming only half the representation of Merthyr. Merthyr was a two-member constituency, and hitherto it had been represented by two Liberals. D. A. Thomas and Pritchard Morgan. The I.L.P.’s electoral tactic was to put up only one Labour candidate and to attack only one of the Liberal candidates and not the other, hoping in this way to get Keir Hardie returned along with one Liberal and with Liberal votes. They therefore attacked Pritchard Morgan, who supported- the Boer War, but supported D. A. Thomas who opposed it The tactic was successful, the votes being:—

D. A. Thomas         8,508
J. Keir Hardie         5,745
W. Pritchard Morgan 4,004

Commenting on this, William Stewart, in his Life of Keir Hardie (“J. Keir Hardie,” I.L.P. Publication Department, 1925, Page 175) wrote:—

“Their energies were directed wholly against Pritchard Morgan, characterised by Hardie as a dangerous type. They did not expect, and, indeed did not desire, to defeat D. A. Thomas, the senior member (known in later years as Lord Rhondda), who was one of the few Liberals definitely opposed to the war. . . . " (p. 170).

Stewart says that Hardie had suggested for the general election, that “all the anti-imperialist forces should work in unison with each other.” and among those he particularly mentioned were “some Socialists like Dr. Clark and Lloyd George.”

Even Stewart found it difficult to stomach the description of Lloyd George as a Socialist:—

  "The latter name classified as Socialist, sounds strange today, but was certainly justified by some of the Welsh politician’s utterances publicly and privately on social questions at the time."

It is characteristic of the kind of opportunist tactics followed by Keir Hardie and the I.L.P. that before many years had passed they were discovering that the “good” Liberals they had supported in 1900 were just as odious as the “bad” Liberals they had opposed. They supported Lloyd George and D. A. Thomas in 1900 for being anti-imperialistic and in 1914 were opposing them for supporting an "Imperialist war.”

Editorial Committee

Keir Hardie's election address was from the September 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Obituary: A. Maskell (1955)

Obituary from the September 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to announce that another old member of the Party has recently died. Comrade A. Maskell, of Paddington Branch, who joined in 1927. He had been ill for a considerable time.

Prior to the war, he engaged in all Branch activity, and sold many copies of the S.S. to personal contacts. He was Branch Treasurer for more years than one wishes to recall, and throughout the war years was one of the most regular Branch attenders. In two election campaigns in N. Paddington he put his flat at our disposal for us as Committee Rooms, and it gave him great pleasure to feel that, despite his enforced inactivity, he could still be of assistance to the Party. Many of the older Paddington members will recall the assistance he gave them at all times and we should like to express our sympathies to his wife and family.

Phyllis Howard

Party News Briefs (1955)

Party News from the October 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Autumn Delegate Meeting is being held at Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road (near Victoria Station) on Saturday and Sunday, October 8th and 9th, commencing each day at 11 a.m. A Social will be held at Head Office on the Saturday evening from 7.30 p.m. when members will be assured of a happy evening.

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Films at Head Office. As mentioned in the September Standard a programme of documentary films has been arranged and will be shown every Sunday from October 2nd at 52, Clapham High Street, at 7.30 each Sunday. These films will each be followed by a short talk by a Party lecturer and time will be given for questions and discussions.

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Bloomsbury Branch has again arranged to hold Sunday evening meetings this winter at the Forum Club, 32, Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road. The first meeting commences on October 2nd, at 7.30 p.m. Owing to the fact that the Delegate meeting will be held on October 9th, it has been decided to exclude this date from the syllabus. Details of titles of lectures will be given elsewhere in this issue.

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Dundee. Comrades Coster and Wilmot spent two weeks in Dundee during August and held some very good propaganda meetings in the City Square. In all ten meetings were held, despite the fact that our members were advised that meetings would be impossible without the aid of loudspeakers (on Sundays) as other organisations used them. With the support of local comrades, one of whom acted as chairman, very successful meetings were held, with audiences averaging 300 people at the Sunday meetings. The mid-week evening meetings were also successful. There was opposition from the Communist Party, Scots Nationalists and Labour Party supporters. Our speakers presentation of facts soon quelled their opposition. Our speakers gathered that local tradition at these meetings had it that no questions were permitted until a speaker had completed his talk—many speakers used most of the time available by talking, leaving very little time available for questions. However, our Comrades followed the procedure usual at our meetings, and asked for, and obtained questions during the meetings which were lively and interesting. Good literature sales resulted. It is hoped that before long the Group will become another branch of the Party.

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Ealing Branch report that branch meetings have now been resumed after the summer break, and we have a fairly heavy programme of activity before us. The first series of lectures have been arranged, and all members should by now be in possession of full details.

A visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum has been fixed for Sunday, 16th October, under the guidance of Comrade Coster. The usual social will be held in the evening afterwards. All branch members wishing to join the party are asked to notify the organising committee as soon as possible, for there is a limit to the numbers who can be taken on such a visit, and the committee must be given an idea of the numbers attending the social in order to arrange for the catering.

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Swansea Branch. In the last week of August the branch held three outdoor propaganda meetings. On Sunday evening, August 28, Comrade Ambridge addressed a large crowd in the “Forum” near Swansea Guildhall. A religious group attempting to heckle the speaker were ably dealt with and the Labour Party supporters were easily defeated—a lucid definition of “ nationalisation ” and its part in the machinations of Capitalism holding the interest of the crowd. Some Socialist Standards were sold and back numbers were given away. Altogether a successful visit, auguring well for the future of Socialist activities in the Swansea Area.

Phyllis Howard

50 Years Ago: T.U.C. Resolutions (1955)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The resolutions passed by the Congress consisted in the main of the usual appeals to the Capitalists to make a few concessions to their ever humble and obedient servants, the “organised workers” of the Kingdom, and their petitioners will ever pray. Of course they will, just as the petitioned will refuse to answer the prayer until they have become convinced that their class interests demand, that concessions, for what little they are worth, shall be, and can safely be, made.

There was the resolution concerning fiscal policy, in which it was declared that “any departure from the principles of Free Trade would be detrimental to the interests of the working-classes . . . and injurious to the prosperity of the national as a whole.”

This was ultimately carried by 1,253,000 votes to 26,000 and alleged Socialists, prominent members of organisations claiming to be Socialist, spoke and voted for it, despite the manifestoes issued by their organisations in which it has been rightly pointed out that under Capitalism the working-class must be plundered by either Free Trade Crows or Protectionist Kites. For those claiming intimate and first-hand acquaintanceship with the condition of the people, to talk of the “prosperity of the people" is bad enough, but what can be thought of those claiming to be out for independent and anti-Capitalist political action deliberately playing into the hands of the Liberals as they did. If the maintenance of Free Trade is of such vital importance to the working-class, then it is of vital importance that those who are in favour of altering our Fiscal System should be kept out of the House of Commons, and that those who are against “any departure from the principles of Free Trade” should be put in. The Trade Unionists are therefore bound, in honour, to support Free Traders, i.e.—the Liberals—as against Tariff Reformers— the Conservatives. No wonder the Liberal Press was-so jubilant at the voting.

From the October 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard.