50 Years Ago: Freedom of Speech and the Press (1968)

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

“Freedom of Speech”. “Free Press”, “Freedom of Assembly" etc. are hypocritical phrases successfully used to muddle working class minds. Under capitalism there is not, nor has there ever been, any of these things.

Before the war meetings could only be had either by direct permission or on the sufferance of the police. Whenever the authorities or even subordinate officials, wished, the meetings were stopped, and the Commissioner of Police could legally refuse to give any reason for his action. Printers offices could be, and were raided and publications suppressed at the discretion of the authorities. After the raid other action — such as prosecution on some legal point might be taken, but this was not necessary, and often was not done.

When the war started the passing of the Defence of the Realm Act brought these powers to a focus and enabled action to be taken rapidly and without the formalities that had been usual in certain cases. The so-called great English charter of personal liberty — the Habeus Corpus Act — is overridden by it, and scores of men and women have been arrested, thrown into jail and left there without trial and even without any charge being preferred against them, and inquiries are met with the curt answer—when one is given—that it is under D.O.R.A. Often they will refuse to state under which regulation even the action is being taken. With this single, glaring fact before us how shallow and foolish it sounds to claim that there is any “Principle of a Free Press", or “Freedom of Speech” for the wage-slaves. They have them not and never have had.

The only way to obtain these “Freedoms” is the Socialist way. That is by organising to take control of the political powers for the purpose of entering into possession of the means of life—the land and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

In this greatest of all class struggles the workers are quite correct in seizing every vantage point and every opportunity for spreading their propaganda and organisation; but they will be utterly mistaken and will only add to their own confusion by confounding these necessary detail struggles with the central object of the battle or raising them into “Principles” which have no existence in reality.

From an unsigned Editorial in the Socialist Standard, November 1918.

Threat of Famine (1968)

Book Review from the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Famine: 1975! by W. & P. Paddock (Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 42s.)

The authors, an agronomist and a retired State Department official, consider the threat of the most catastrophic famine in world history. While agriculture is now almost static in the undeveloped world, still falling death rales and continuing high birth rates — in some countries higher than had been thought physically possible — combine to produce enormous increases in population, such that already nearly half the people in undeveloped countries are under fifteen years old. Food production can be greatly increased in many ways: birth rates can be greatly reduced, as they have been in the unique case of Japan. But the authors claim that there is no prospect of this being achieved in time to avert prolonged famines involving billions of people. The situation is even more serious than the misleading official statistics indicate.

In the book, the capitalist system is accepted unquestioned, but most of the causes of the present situation can be ascribed to a world economic system not designed primarily to cater to human needs. For example. 95 per cent of world agricultural research expenditure is in the developed world (non-tropical soils). The results of this research cannot he applied in the undeveloped world (tropical soils).

From 1975 on, America will not be able to provide the required food to the “hungry nations" in addition to that needed for domestic and commercial use. It is assumed that Canada, Australia and Argentina will not provide any significant quantities. So say the authors cynically, the "hungry nations" must be divided into three categories: those to be abandoned as hopeless (India, Haiti, Egypt), those which will manage to survive without aid (Libya, Gambia), and those in between which should receive food (Tunisia, Pakistan).

The possession or lack of food supplies could replace that of nuclear weapons as the dominant factor in power politics. We should be glad for one mitigating factor in the chaos and misery of the coining decades, though: "The Time of Famines can be the catalyst for a period of American greatness". This illustrates the depth of cynicism of the book which nevertheless contains some useful information.

S. D. S.

Democracy By Decree (1968)

Book Review from the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Experiment in Industrial Democracy by Flanders, Pomeranz and Woodward (Faber and Faber, 45s.)

This book studies the John Lewis Partnership, a group of department stores and supermarkets employing 17.000 people, that has for fifty years run “an experiment in industrial democracy”. Its introduction did not come as a result of pressure from below. Rather it was the brain-child of Spedan Lewis, the son of a store-owner. The scheme was introduced at Peter Jones, an unsuccessful shop Lewis had taken over from his father. Spedan Lewis believed his father’s shops had prospered by giving good value. It could be improved “if more of its resources were allocated to better pay and conditions, which would attract good workers and encourage them to work well”. The scheme succeeded and was extended to the stores he inherited from his father in 1928. The group has continued to prosper so that:

   Turnover has more than doubled over the past ten years, and profits have more than kept pace . . . Partnership department stores have also been more successful in increasing sales than comparable stores outside.

In a society where goods arc produced to be sold with a view to profit, success can only be measured in terms of sales and profits. In this respect Lewis' scheme has made the grade.

What about the “industrial democracy", then? It consists in the main of elected councils, journals, profit-sharing and welfare schemes. The study shows that employees are more concerned with questions of wages and working conditions than with commercial policies. In fact they have the normal attitude of workers rather than of “partners”. Not that we would expect it to be otherwise. The workers' attitude to trade unions is fairly representative of the industry. Few of the shop workers are believed to be members of USDAW. while the most highly organised are the central London delivery van crews in the TGWU.

The profit-sharing part of the scheme comes up against the same snags in that the workers, having to look after their daily needs, tend to sell the shares issued them. So that whatever the intentions of the firm, it forms part of their wages rather than a stake in the company. Partners opt out:

  The partnership now operates a licensed stock-dealing pool which handles small transactions and arranges to place the considerable quantity of stock which is 'renounced' each year .by partners as soon as they become entitled to it.

One table shows that in January 1966 £13,999,090 or 29.5 per cent of the firm’s capital was issued to outside investors. £5,136.120 was 5 per cent Second Cumulative Preferred Ordinary Stock "most of which was originally issued to the partners under the profit-sharing scheme". This benefits the business and safeguards outside shareholders as follows:

  This part of profit-sharing mainly takes the form of shares which provide a continual flow of new capital, and which rank last in the capital structure, so that the Partnership can offer the best possible security to outside investors, while remaining independent of them for a considerable part of the fresh funds required by an expanding business.

In practice the scheme has served as a means of regulating the employer-employee relationship to get the co-operation of the latter for the benefit of the former.

Capitalism nowadays needs an efficient and enterprising working class running production. Their participation in making decisions has to be tolerated to the extent that it aids the smooth running of industry. It is nonsensical to think in terms of industrial or political democracy in isolation from social activity as a whole. Only in a society which the means of life are held in common will democratic control by society over its affairs be achieved.

Joe Carter

Bolshevism (1968)

Book Review from the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

A History of Bolshevism by Arthur Rosenberg (Anchor Books. 14s.)

This book, first translated into English in 1934, has now been republished. When we reviewed the German edition the Socialist Standard (January 1934) [we] said that it was “a striking confirmation of the stand taken by the Socialist Party of Great Britain on the Russian upheaval and the historic role of the Bolsheviks". Rosenberg, who was till 1927 a leading member of the German Communist Party, concludes, we said, that the Bolsheviks were “the executors of the testament of Peter the Great. To them has fallen the historic task of solving the backwardness of Russia. They are accomplishing this through the institution and development of State capitalism".

The book is a must for all who wish to understand the nature of the Russian revolution.

Marxism versus Maoism (1968)

Book Review from the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beliefs in Society: The Problems of Ideology by Nigel Harris (Watts, 15s.)

Once you've ploughed through the first three, analytical chapters, written in the almost incomprehensible language that is associated more with New Left Review than International Socialism (which Harris edits), this is a very good book.

Harris starts his analysis front the materialist conception of history (“which identifies social classes as the product of a competitive struggle for scarce resources and a social division of labour: the most important beliefs within society are seen as related to this basic struggle, and thus to class"). Ideologies, or systems of beliefs, “relate to the arena o! social conflict, to the purposes of groups competing for scarce resources". They don’t come from nowhere and to no purpose. As examples, Harris takes British Conservatism. Russian Marxism-Leninism (so-called), and Asian, mainly Chinese, nationalism.

He shows how Marxism, originally a theory of the self-activity of the working class in the industrialized parts of the world, became “the conservative ideology of a new class society, a body of formalized doctrine designed to justify the existing nature of society and to leave complete freedom of action to its leaders". The only criticism we would have of this chapter is that Harris plays down the difference between Marx’s views of the self-emancipation of the working class and Lenin’s advocacy of a vanguard party as a necessity even in advanced capitalist states. Indeed Harris almost denies that this was a central part of Lenin’s political theory. But if it wasn’t, why did the Third International lay it down as an organizational must for all its affiliates? Despite Harris’ protests, Lenin did pave the way for Stalin.

Harris re-iterates that for Marx Socialism was not "a tactic for forced economic development under State control” but a society in which the working class will have achieved its freedom:

  Now Marxists identified the industrial proletariat as the sole agency for achieving socialism (and therefore, socialism was only an appropriate aim in developed countries where the proletariat was a majority), not just because it was poor, but because of its role within the economy, because it sustained and developed the industrial economy by its own efforts, because it was concentrated and organised in the major cultural centres, because it learned discipline and the advantages of interdependence, because by its experience it had the ability to run the economy.

Thus to be used by people, such as the Chinese Communists, working in predominantly peasant countries, with no working class to speak of, Marx’s views would have to be revised. Inevitably, in a retrograde manner. In China the result was a theory, disguised in Marxist terms, very similar to the pre-Marxist Narodnik (or Populist) revolutionaries in Russia against whom Plekhanov, Martov and Lenin had argued.

  What would this “regression" entail? A belief that the intelligentsia plus peasants could produce a revolution: that revolution could create socialism; that ‘nationalism’ completely encompassed socialism, that the ‘people’ encompassed the proletariat, and that the local national struggle was the key to the progress of mankind; that the country concerned could industrialise without undergoing capitalism; that socialism was a peasant way of life rather than an emancipated developed society.

Li Ta-chao (see review of Meisner’s book in May Socialist Standard) began this revision and Mao finished it. It is interesting to note that for Maoists Marx’s “workers of the world, unite" has become “oppressed peoples of the world, unite!"

   Mao has revised Marxism to such a degree that it cannot really be considered to be merely a local “application”: the essence has disappeared. What constitutes revolution is not the most advanced urban masses securing their own emancipation by their own efforts, but guerrilla warfare by the least advanced rural groups, operating outside the ordinary social structure over many years, in order to seize power and begin industrialisation. A would-be ruling élite, dispossessed and alienated from the status quo. within a decaying agrarian social structure, fits naturally into Maoism, although even more naturally into Castroism which was not part of Marxism-Leninism in its revolutionary phase in Cuba. Activism and populism provide the dominant themes.

“Guerrilla warfare", Harris points out. “takes us straight back to Narodnik thought, to the revolutionary minority seizing power in the name of the people—despite the people—to the traditional coup d'état rather than social revolution”.

This is exactly the analysis we in the Socialist Party have made, but we are more consistent. Such guerrillas are enemies of the international working class, to be denounced as such. Harris (though not in this book) gives them, e.g. the so-called National Liberation Front in Vietnam, “unconditional" support. Why? He’ll have to do better than say Marx supported some nationalist movements in the 19th century, for the simple reason that the 20th century is not the 19th century.

Adam Buick

William Hill discovers a social evil (1963)

From the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ever swelling ranks of society’s reformers have acquired a new “recruit.” Guess who? None other than Mr. William Hill of bookmaking fame. Speaking a little while ago in Birmingham, he complained:

  I was one of those who was all for legalization (of betting shops) . . .  on moral grounds I think it had to happen. Many of you here tonight think that shops are a great success, but I fear that they may eventually become a social evil.
  The existence of betting shops has actually extended betting, with the result that we now have some newspapers warning us that the shops represent a grave danger of a general trade recession.
  Surely it is the duty of the Government to protect the community, for, as I see it, the continued growth of shops can only lead to an increase in betting.

It seems strange that one of Britain’s leading bookmakers should complain about an increase in betting; which really means more business for the layers. When the Wm. Hill organisation insert their large advertisements in the Sporting Press—“Cash or Credit, Hill’s prices lead," and so on—surely they are angling for just this?

In order to understand this speech of Mr. Hill's, let us take a glance at the returns for the year of Holders Investment Trust, which owns the Wm. Hill bookmaking business. According to the Manchester Evening Chronicle of 16th November the profits of this concern fell by over a million pounds in the year to July 31st. Now that’s enough to make any tycoon tear his hair. Nobody need be surprised that if competition from the small fry betting shops has had a hand in this Capitalistic tragedy, then they become a “ social evil ” in the eyes of the big bookmakers.

However, quite without regard to Mr. Hill’s appeal to the Government and his description of “the many gangsters and thugs now holding bookmaker's permits’—the inexorable laws of competition will eventually have their effect, in the usual anarchic way. There will be those who will survive in the betting business and those who “ go to the wall.”

Despite Mr. Hill’s alarm at the number of betting shops sprouting up all over the country and the “cool million” loss in his company—this is the Capitalistic way of life that he and his fellow Capitalists seek to perpetuate. It is front Capitalism itself that the majority of mankind are suffering.

G. R. Russell

This Business of Gambling (1968)

From the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a corner of a busy Manchester belling office sat a frail, elderly woman concentrating all her menial energy on the day's horse racing. She was about 70, with wispy grey hair and a face lined by a life time of wage slavery. Every week she goes to this same office, to play up her meagre pension in a ceaseless struggle to rise above the Plimsoll Line existence laid down by government statisticians. 

After a life on the wages treadmill, she is now trying to get some easy money from this betting business which everyone seems to be having a go at. Adjusting her rolled gold framed spectacles, which have a habit of falling askew through worn hinges, she grimly studied all the facts and figures of form, ignoring the hubbub around her, and floor strewn with losing betting tickets, sporting pages of the various dailies cast away in disgust by those who had lost, and the steady drone of the race commentator as he went through race after race ritual . . .  “They’re going down” . . .  They’re at the post" . . . “They’re under orders”. . .  "They're Off" and the result on which they all hung, especially if there were a photo finish with its added agony of waiting. But she was used to it all now.

Scribbling down her final selections, she handed in the vital stake money, received her ticket and returned to her corner to await the outcome. Her hands trembled slightly as she snapped shut her handbag containing only one more ten shilling note. But she tossed her head defiantly at the thought of yet another week of penury if she failed to find a winner in the next race. She was no coward — and look at those Chinese waiters from the restaurant downstairs, how brave they were — always laughing, even when they lost, and those Negroes from Moss Side—fearless gamblers all. Besides, she felt some fellowship for all these people, who, like herself, were trying desperately to alleviate their poverty.

Long before she started coming into this betting office, she had been tired of ekeing out on her pension. But. still, this so called easy money was proving very hard to get. Especially as her bank was so weak she soon got broke and a gambler without a stake is as helpless as a bricklayer without a trowel. Still, it gave her some interest, and mental activity even at her age and was preferably to spending long hours in her drab back street bed sitter. That really was a vegetable like existence. As she ruminated on. the race was off and the result was a 9 to 2 winner which somewhat eased her grim countenance: she had a whole five shillings on the nose (to win). She was improving at the game. Or was she? From past experiences she well knew there may be some losers lurking round the corner tomorrow . . . ?

The above vignette of real life, culled from our “affluent" society of the Sixties, (what the Manchester Evening News is so fond of headlining as . . . "Booming. Bustling. Manchester”) . . .  provides an ironic answer to those who claim that this is the best of all possible worlds. In fact, many workers show what they think of this world by dashing in and out of the nearest betting shop at every available opportunity for a few shillings worth of each way escapism from the dull monotony of their wage and salary slavery. Indeed, recently, a top bookie, William Hill complained about . . . "The loss in man hours to industry through time spent in bet shops". But as we pointed out in the Socialist Standard in March 1963, Hill is himself a staunch supporter of capitalism, betting shops and all. Gambling is a built in component of capitalism and the hold up last winter in racing in Britain through foot and mouth disease, and the frosty weather, amply demonstrated this when thousands of betting shop personnel were laid off as the betting business slowed down and adjusted itself to dog track trade only. No doubt this millionaire bookie, who complained in 1963 about belling shops being what he described as . . .  "a social evil" (but who later paid £850,000 for eighteen of London’s “socially evil” but profitable betting shops) was pleased at the hold up in racing so that the "loss in man hours to industry” will be curtailed?—Or was he?

In the long run, whether the working class gamble or not, their basic position as a subject class will remain unaltered. And even though the grim experience of being dead broke, time and again under a monetary economy, is certainly no joke, the human organism gets used to losing the rent now and again in the valiant and apparently endless attempts to double it.

G. R. Russell

Plaid Cymru is not the answer for Wales (1968)

From the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the results of July’s by-election in Caerphilly and the one last year in the Rhondda are anything to go by, nearly four out of every ten workers in the mining valleys now support Plaid Cymru, which wants a separate state in Wales. Since at the last general election Labour held most of these seats with majorities of up to and over 20.000 this represents a dramatic change of political opinion.

Plaid Cymru fought this election at Caerphilly (where in 1923 stood the first Communist Party candidate) more on Labour’s failure and their own reform programme than on their ultimate aim of a separate slate. With unemployment in Caerphilly at 8 per cent, which on a national scale would mean two million on the dole, they had plenty of discontent to work on. They argue that it is “London government" that causes our problems. The solution, apparently, is Cardiff government. This is nonsense. Our problems are not caused by London government but, as elsewhere, by the class monopoly of the means of production, in short, by capitalism. Their solution lies not in nationalism, which is a delusion and a snare, but in world Socialism.

Sometimes, Plaid members claim their party is the vehicle for “socialism in Wales". This too is absurd as it is not possible to set up Socialism in one country alone.

Labour’s reaction to this challenge was revealing. They stopped at nothing in their campaign against the "separatists" They dishonestly suggested that Plaid Cymru encouraged bomb outrages and wanted to reserve the best jobs (a matter dear to the heart of every Labour councillor) for those who spoke Welsh. They spoke of “incipient fascism". They claimed to be against nationalism as it put up barriers between people. One local official said he had nothing against workers in England, Scotland or Ireland (he did not mention anywhere else) and wanted a “socialist Britain.” Fred Evans, the candidate, too wanted, or so he said, "socialist, not separatist, solutions". The main case against a separate state of some of the Welsh Labour MP's who spoke was obviously a concern lest their careers in London come to an abrupt end. Michael Foot, who sits for Ebbw Vale, was afraid that a separate Wales and a separate Scotland would leave England with a built-in Tory majority, that is. would leave the Labour politicians in permanent opposition. Yet apparently the Tories have their uses. One Labour leaflet headed “Nationalism Doesn’t Pay” was partly a reprint of an anti-separatist item from the Daily Telegraph.

The Labour Party’s attitude here is just hypocrisy. They are not against violence, but have always supported wars and armed forces. If any party deserves the “fascist" tag surely it is Labour who have done so much to lay the foundations for a corporate state in Britain. Nor are they against nationalism: they are British nationalists. As for putting up barriers, was it not Labour who greatly strengthened the immigration colour bar? A “socialist Britain" is no less ridiculous than a “socialist Wales" and for the same reason.

Since a separate state is in fact no solution to our problems Labour was on stronger ground in dismissing this as irrelevant and in pointing to Eire where, despite an independent government in Dublin, there are the same problems as here such as high unemployment and emigration.

Although it is heartening to see a revival of political activity and argument in the valleys after years of Labour one-party rule, it is a pity that this is taking the form of rejecting one futile party for another, even if it is breaking away from the Tory-Labour Tweedledum-Tweedledee farce.

Background to Apartheid (1968)

From the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The system of Apartheid thought out and applied by the National Party regime in South Africa is a consciously racist one. There is a long history of repressive and discriminatory legislation aimed against the ‘‘non-white’’, and in particular the African population. The National Party under its leaders Hertzog, Malan, Strijdom and Verwoerd reduced the limited representation of the none-white population until today it is non-existent.

In an effort to stem the rising nationalist fervour among Africans and prevent the consolidation of opposition forces, as represented by the African and Indian National Congresses, and elements of the "Communist" and Liberal Parties, the government has extended the normal ruling class policy of divide and rule to include actual geographical separation. There have thus been created so-called “Bantustans” which, as a scheme on paper, has been so often used by the hypocritical supporters of Apartheid as a conscience absolver. In fact the “Bantustans” or “Black Homelands” amount to nothing more than a large number of scattered reserves covering about one seventh of South Africa’s territory, much of it of the poorest quality. Claims by the National Party as to the self-governing nature of the reserves are quite false.

The self-set task of the government has been not so much the preservation of the traditional African tribal system as its re-creation. Much of the tribal system was destroyed long ago by military defeat in a series of wars waged against conquest, as well as by the widespread adoption of Christianity. If the government had directed all the resources of the state into a genuine attempt to build up the remnants of the tribal society, it may have halted the clock for a while, but it could not have turned it back. As it was they were unwilling to lose the economic advantage of African farm and factory workers, not to mention personal lackeys. The result has only been to continue and sharpen the internal strife, with the government becoming more desperate and openly repressive in their attempts to safeguard the dominance of the Afrikaner farmer class.

Inevitably the already restricted freedom of speech and press has been removed in an effort to bolster the apartheid regime. Both the African and Indian National Congress that had been so successful in breaking down political apathy among farmers and workers are now banned. One of the most far reaching attacks on democracy made by the government has been the Suppression of Communism Act. The wide definition given to ‘communism’ and the absolute authority given to the Minister has meant its use against any and all opponents of the regime. Govan Mbeki, the author of The Peasants Revolt was detained in solitary confinement for two months under this law before being acquitted of the charge against him. He was only one of many African political organisers to be subjected to this same sort of treatment. Radio and the press are also subject to censorship and the introduction of television is actively resisted by the S. African state.

In the field of education the non-white population is at a serious disadvantage both through the type and amount available, though education for white workers is warped in many spheres, in particular that of race. A large number of distortions appear in the history textbooks provided for both white and non-white pupils. Two myths in particular are widely believed, namely that the Dutch landed in an empty territory, and that clashes with African tribes were always violent, with massacres of innocent unsuspecting whites by the Africans. This is in complete contradiction to the accounts of many early travellers. The addition of “race studies” to many school curricula has been fraught with danger from the very beginning, though perhaps more for what it left out, than for what it included. There is for instance a high percentage of space devoted to “Bantu tribal life in the reserves” but very little to “Bantu in Urban Areas” which has resulted in the whole picture becoming distorted, and most white children left utterly ignorant of the industrial shanties and slums, and the general frustrations suffered by non-white workers.

The policy of Apartheid has been, and continues to be, a definite hindrance to industrial expansion in South Africa. While it has provided a vast supply of cheap unskilled labour, it has ignored the pressures of world competition toward the need for increased technical skill and specialisation. The National Bureau for Educational and Social Research reported in 1962 a shortage of 12 per cent among junior scientists, and 10 per cent among professional engineers without taking account of posts filled by inadequately trained labour. In its annual Economic Review the South African Reserve Bank drew attention to “an insufficient supply of certain classes of skilled manpower. Such shortages were evident, for example, in the building, iron and steel, general engineering and motor industries”. The Minister of Education, forecast a shortage of 1,500 doctors in 1965, and this in a field which has been more open to Africans than other professions. Capitalist groans at this state of affairs have been echoed by the National Developments Foundation of South Africa, as the following speech by Dr. F. Meyer, its President demonstrates:

  Why cannot we increase productivity and bring down the cost of living? Why cannot we modernise our factories? Why cannot we improve or expand our marketing and selling? and hundreds of similar questions you may ask. The answers arc all the same, namely: because we do not have the trained managerial executive and technical manpower to plan, organize and administer these things. The opportunities are there. We can get the money, the materials and the equipment, but we cannot lay our hands on the trained manpower to turn ideas into action.

It may fairly be said that the capitalist class in South Africa are for the most part opposed to the strict apartheid measures that have been applied, even though their representation on the political field, through first the Unionist and later the United Party, has been one of compromise with the numerically predominant Afrikaner Nationalists currently entrenched in the seat of power The more radical Progressive Party and the now dissolved Liberal party forthrightly called for a multi-racial South Africa taking an attitude very similar to that put forward by W. H. Hutt in his The Economics of the Colour Bar published in 1964 — “When we buy a product in the free market we do not ask about the sex, race, nationality or political opinions of the producer. All we are interested in is whether it is good value for money”. 

In spite of the ideology of Apartheid and its associated practices, the complete separation of people into tribal and ethnic groupings has proved impossible. With such a closely integrated economic structure, and with all the important harbour facilities, the best arable land, and mineral wealth owned by “white" people, it could not have been otherwise. Hampered as they arc industrialisation and urbanisation continue. in many cases with restrictive employment laws being openly breached. Between 1962 and 1964 the African population of Johannesburg increased from 609,100 to 706,389. Increasing numbers are being recruited through the labour bureaux in the Transkei. The figures are endless, all of them testify to the impossibility of complete separation. They reveal the policy of apartheid as a scheme for the subjection of non-white farmers and workers in the interests of Afrikaner farmers.

That the capitalist class will gain political as well as economic control of South Africa is inevitable. The question remains—when and how. Should the National Party remain in power, unwilling to make any sort of compromise then violence will be the only alternative—a bloody revolt will commence, the result of stifled opinion and pent-up frustrations of years of racism.

Michael Bradley

The Socialist Party and War (1968)

From the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are not pacifists. Yet ever since the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in 1904 it has opposed all wars. Our members have suffered imprisonment and persecution rather than fight—and the members of our companion socialist parties have done the same in other parts of the world.

Why is this? It is because we recognise that under capitalism wars arise when rival powers fall out over the control of markets and supplies of raw materials, or over the domination of trade routes and spheres of influence. It is this struggle between rival capitalist states which compels countries like Britain and America to maintain armed forces wherever they have interests. And the same pressures act on the state capitalist powers such as Russia and China.

But in these struggles the working class have no interests at stake. Workers are people who, because they own no factories or other means of producing wealth, are forced to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary. Working men and women throughout the world have a common interest in getting rid of the capitalist system which gives rise to wars and many of the other problems which confront us. By a united effort we could replace capitalism by a new way of organising the world. We call this Socialism or Communism (not to be confused with Labour-administered capitalism in Britain or the brutal state-capitalist dictatorships in Russia and elsewhere). Socialism will be a world community completely without frontiers and based on common ownership and democratic control of all the means of producing wealth. In a socialist world production would be solely for use and enjoyment—not for profit.

When the first world war broke out the vast majority of those who called themselves socialists were soon swept away by patriotic hysteria. In Britain the Socialist Party was alone in explaining the internationalist position which socialists must adopt under conditions of peace or war. We issued a manifesto which ended with the following statement:

   “Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our good win and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of Capitalism and the triumph of Socialism.”

Over fifty years later we still adhere to this position. In fact, our comrades in the World Socialist Party of the United States recently reprinted the extract above in their paper, the “Western Socialist”, to explain their attitude towards the war in Vietnam.

We do not appeal to you merely as people who think that war is senseless and want to see an end to it. We appeal to you as working men and women whose interest lies in establishing a world socialist community. We do not ask for your support, for you to accept us as new leaders; rather we need your comradely help in working to achieve Socialism.

50 Years Ago: Morals and Socialism (1968)

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

The Socialist’s opposition to the bourgeoisie and the capitalistic system for which they stand by no means springs simply from a recognition of the misery, slavery and degradation which capitalism entails, though being human and not mere automata of logic, Socialists are naturally strongly influenced by such facts. They know, however, that capitalism has been a necessary and useful stage in the evolution of human society. It is because the system is neither of these today, because it can be shown that the functioning of wealth as capital is now a hindrance to economic and therefore to social and intellectual progress, that the Socialist regards capitalism as an obsolete and evil institution.

If the Socialist holds exploitation and class oppression to be morally wrong, it is because, for the first time in history since the formation of class divisions away in the remote past, the material means are now available wherewith these, together with all their consequences, may be eliminated from human institutions. It is because this latest existing phase of class society, capitalism, is the great obstacle, holding mankind back, so to speak, on the very threshold of a new and splendid era manifesting untold developments in the material, social and mental triumphs of the race, that the Socialist holds this system and all the agencies which uphold or tend to perpetuate it, in hatred and abomination.

From an article by R. W. Houseley, Socialist Standard, October 1918).

The Review Column: Czechoslovakia (1968)

The Review column from the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Czechoslovakia

What did the Russians crush in Czechoslovakia? The British press by a large majority, decided that the tanks and soldiers were in Prague because Dubcek had introduced democracy and, since the Russian government is a dictatorship, this could not be allowed to continue.

Thus the Russo/Czech dispute was reduced, as are so many similar clashes, to a question of ideology. Thus the newspapers ignored, as they so often do, the essential facts of the situation.

First, Czechoslovakia was not a democracy. Recently the workers there had won a measure of freedom but even so they were still a long way from the limited rights of workers in, say, Britain. Certainly, a Socialist party could not have existed freely and openly in Dubcek’s Czechoslovakia.

Second, the invasion was not a case of one country imposing an ideology upon another. Czechoslovakia’s importance to the Russian bloc is mainly strategic—as it was to Nazi Germany in 1938.

Dubcek’s policies were threatening to take his country out of Moscow’s sphere of influence. The Russians, as devoted to the “domino” theory as are the Americans over Vietnam, feared that if Czechoslovakia went so might Rumania, Jugoslavia—and who knows what might then happen to the Russian empire?

The invasion, then, was no more than a normal reaction by one capitalist power against another when it sees its interests in jeopardy.

Normal, also, was the hypocrisy on both sides. Those who wept crocodile tears over great big Russia attacking little Czechoslovakia were dry-eyed when Britain went into Suez. The Russians, on the other hand, were practising the same sort of imperialism as they denounce in Vietnam.

Finally, and most important, both Russians and Czechs claimed to represent the interests of Socialism when what they were really engaged in was just another sordid and ruthless dispute of capitalism.

Nixon or Humphrey?

The Republican and Democratic Parties have now decided that next month the American working class can choose between capitalism under Richard Nixon and capitalism under Hubert Humphrey.

Even as capitalist politics go, this is not an exciting choice but there is no encouragement to believe that the voters in America will not go to the polls with as great an impression of destiny as ever.

They will be sure that they are making an important choice between two different courses. As the election campaign develops, what will be called the issues will be stimulated and publicised, with the object of increasing the sense of importance.

Whoever wins will do so to a great surge of optimism; his supporters will greet his victory as the opening of a new era of sanity, or safety, or perhaps high adventure and achievement.

Then what will follow? In 1964 President Johnson won the election with an unprecedented majority. Everywhere he went, the crowds in their thousands adored him. The Republicans were shattered; Goldwater’s defeat had reopened their wounds, so that Theodore White wrote of them, in The Making of the President 1964, that they had chopped themselves in two and that no one could tell whether they would recover.

White, like many other observers, was forgetting—or perhaps he simply did not know—what capitalism can do to a politician’s reputation. He assumed that Johnson and his party would continue in the same tumultuous bliss of their victory.

Now the problems and the disputes of the system Johnson has tried to run have finished him and it is the Democrats, as they showed so clearly at Chicago, who are almost literally warring.

In four years’ time we shall be reviewing the failures of the man the Americans elect as President this November. In four years the American workers will have yet another chance to reflect upon the futility of choosing between one type of capitalism and another.

TUC 1968

The Trades Union Congress, because of its close connections with the Labour Party, is composed largely of men and women who reject the case for Socialism.

They are people who, rather than work for a basically new social system, prefer to reform the present one, to support capitalist political parties, to involve themselves in all sort of political manoeuvres and compromises.

This, they say, is preferable to working by principles. It is called Getting Something Now.

Well this is the TUC’s centenary year and it might be expected that the delegates at Blackpool asked themselves what, after one hundred years, they had got.

During that century the problems of capitalism have not diminished. The majority of people are still subject to the degrading and impoverished life of a worker; they live in inferior homes, they eat inferior food, they have access to inferior schools, medical treatment and so on.

There are still upheavals like Vietnam and Nigeria in which a capitalist dispute brings untold suffering to millions. The world is indeed a desperately unsafe place, hovering as it does perpetually on the brink of nuclear devastation.

The practical results of the achievement of many a trade unionist's highest ambition — the election of a Labour government—could be seen at the TUC —in the many critical speeches, in the rejection of the incomes policy.

Nineteen sixty eight is not a happy centenary year for the TUC. At a time when they should be able to look back on their achievements, all they have to remember is a century of confusion and frustration.

They themselves must take the blame for this. They, after all, are the people who reject the idea that the unions' job of protecting their members’ interests cannot be reconciled with compromising with, and supporting, the political parties of capitalism.

Beating Racialism (1968)

Book Review from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Racial Discrimination in England by W. W. Daniel, (Penguin Special 6s.)

In April last year PEP released its report on racial discrimination in England, based on a survey of six areas carried out by Research Services Ltd. Research Services used three methods to assess the extent of discrimination, defined as "a practice or policy which affects members of a minority group differently because of colour or country of origin in ways that are of significance either socially or to them personally". They interviewed immigrants (from West Indies, India, Pakistan and Cyprus) and persons in a position to discriminate (employers, landlords, estate agents, etc.) and. organised "validating situation tests" in which they sent a white man from England, an immigrant from Hungary and an immigrant from the West Indies to apply for the same job. room, or motor insurance. What was the conclusion of this thorough and objective survey, here written up by W. W. Daniel of Research Services?

  In the sectors we studied—different aspects of employment, housing and the provision of services-there is racial discrimination varying, in.extent from the massive to the substantial.

In housing it exists in private letting, in house buying and even in council housing. This means that in all sectors of housing only the worst is available to coloured workers. You would expect migrants, and not only from overseas, to live at first in the worst areas but then in time to disperse. The effect of the informal colour bar in housing is to prevent this dispersal. And the racialists have the insolence to accuse coloured immigrants of creating slums! Some employers will only give coloured people unskilled labouring jobs; others provide separate eating and washing places; some operate a quota system. The trade unions, to their credit, have generally opposed discrimination.

What can be done about all this racial discrimination? Daniel rightly says that it will not be overcome as "an inevitable consequence of contact and of time". If racial prejudice is to go it must be fought But how? Should the Socialist Party campaign with others opposed to racialism for laws against colour bar (useful as these might be educationally)? Should we support “black power"? Should we use "fists against the fascists?" None of these. Capitalism gives rise to working class problems and so to working class discontent and, as long as workers are not class conscious, they will remain open to suggestions that this or that conspicuous minority, not capitalism, is the cause of their problems. To give up our uncompromising struggle against capitalism for alliances with groups that openly or by implication support it would be shortsighted. For, in maintaining the system that gives rise to discontent we would be defeating our object—a world without racialism— and would indeed even be encouraging racialism. In the long run the only effective way of combatting racialism is by building up a strong, world-wide Socialist movement, and this demands uncompromising opposition to all pro-capitalist groups

Adam Buick

Socialism in one island (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is well-known that one of Stalin’s distortions of Marxism was to say that Socialism could be established in one country, thus rejecting the international nature of Socialism. Communist parties outside of Russia naturally fell into line with this and since 1935 have given their propaganda a patriotic flavour. The present programme of the Communist Party in Britain, for instance, is called the British Road to Socialism. In the Channel Islands, the programme of the Jersey CP is called Jersey's Way to Socialism. They have made a start, too. At the end of 1966 their leader, Norman Le Brocq, was elected to the States Assembly. Needless to say, he was elected not on a socialist, but on a capitalist reform programme. His party’s programme also is full of theoretical errors, the chief one being as to the nature of Socialism:

  “As there is much confusion as to the real meaning of the word Socialism, we must define what the Communist Party, which works for Socialism, means by this system. To us, Socialism means simply that political power is held by the working people, and that all factories and workshops, transport, banks and the land are publicly owned and worked for the benefit of all."

This is not Socialism, but state capitalism. Socialism is a system of society based on the common (not state or “public”) ownership and democratic control of the means of living by and in the interests of the whole community. The state, or political power, would be replaced by the administration of things and banks would disappear as the aim of production would be use, not sale with a view to profit (even state profit).

Socialism must be world-wide for the simple reason that capitalism, the system it will replace, already is. Frontiers and national boundaries are artificial and irrelevant. The Jersey CP is not so stupid as to think that “socialism” could exist in Jersey alone but they still think along national lines:

  “Socialism in Jersey would owe its existence to the inspiration and protection of a Socialist government in Britain. Linked with the other Channel Islands, it would form an autonomous unit of a British Socialist republic.”

The important part of the programme is a list of immediate demands — slum clearance, higher pensions, unemployment benefit, price controls, comprehensive education, etc, etc. — some perhaps useful but justified thus:

  “This fight for better housing, better social services, lower rents, and so on, becomes a fight to change the system that cannot give these things.”

But is this so? Do reform struggles lead to a desire to change society? Rather, they attract to the party with a reform programme those who only want reforms, not fundamental social change, and so ruin that party as an instrument for such change. This is confirmed by Le Brocq’s report-back meeting (Jersey Evening Post, 22 May 1968). His record has been a determined and persistent fight for the reforms he was elected to get. That is what those who voted for him are interested in, not Socialism.

The Jersey Communist Party, like similar parties everywhere, is a nationalist and reformist party that stands for state capitalism.

The Decline of Coal (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Coal played a great part in the development of capitalism in Britain. Wood used to be the main fuel but in the 18th century coal mining was stepped up as coal was needed for smelting iron. Many mines were in fact owned by the ironmasters. Coal was also used for steam-raising and, with the expansion of steam driven locomotives, ships and machines, in the second half of the 19th century, production increased from about 50 million tons in 1851 to over 240 million in the first decade of this century. The peak year for the British coal industry was 1913 when 287 million tons were mined, of this nearly 100 million were exported or went into bunkers for ships sailing to overseas ports. In the nineteenth century coal had no serious rival as a source of fuel and power. Coal was and still is used to raise steam for electricity generation and also in the manufacture of town gas.

Because of its importance as a source of fuel and power for modern industry, coalmining was particularly hit by industrial depressions, as our graph shows. It also placed coalminers in a strategic position. The miners played a major role in the development of the working class movement in Britain. Their history was one of continuous struggle against rapacious mine owners, often involving bloody clashes with the military. The first working class MP’s, elected for the capitalist Liberal Party, were miners. The Miners Federation of Great Britain, set up in 1889, was at one time the largest trade union in the world. The General Strike of 1926 was called by the TUC in answer to a lock-out of miners. Although the strike was called off after nine days, the miners heroically held out for nine months before being defeated by hunger. Between the wars, and specially at the beginning of the thirties, almost the whole adult male population of many mining villages was out of work. It is probably fair to say that, as a result of their experiences and of living in their own communities, the miners reached the highest degree of industrial class consciousness of any group of workers in Britain; at least this is true of the South Wales miners. 

Coalmining was an industry in whose efficiency all capitalists were interested as they wanted the cheapest energy they could get. The old owners were notoriously inefficient so that nationalisation was advocated by many besides the Labour Party and the MFGB. The Tories nationalised the coal before the war, and Labour the mines after. On vesting day, 1 January 1947, every one of the thousand collieries displayed a large notice proclaiming: THIS COLLIERY IS NOW MANAGED BY THE NATIONAL COAL BOARD ON BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE. Many miners thought that this was Socialism or at least a step toward it but it was only state capitalism. The miners remained exploited wage-workers even though nationalisation allowed an improvement in working conditions. There has been no official strike in mining since nationalisation; so-called unofficial strikes have been frequent however. The main union is the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), as the MFGB became in 1946. The NUM has rivals organising clerks in the Clerical and Administrative Workers Union (CAWU) and various underground supervisors in the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS). Management grades are in the British Association of Colliery Management (BACOM).

For the first ten years of nationalisation the miners never had it so good. They were in a strong bargaining position as the demand for coal far exceeded its supply. Industry wanted every ton that could be produced but it was not until the early fifties that pre-war output and productivity levels were reached. As a useful reminder that even militant unionism is based on sectionalism, it is worth quoting from an agreement reached in 1947 between the NCB and the NUM on the employment of Polish workers. This agreement, after reasonable provisions about any Polish workers being employed on the same terms as everybody else and on union membership, went on:

  In the event of redundancy Polish workers shall be the first to go. They shall be transferred or dismissed wherever their continued employment at a particular pit would prevent the continued employment or re-employment of a British mine-worker who is capable of and willing to do the work on which the Polish worker is employed and who might otherwise be displaced by redundancy at that pit or at another pit.

Then, in 1957, the bottom dropped out of the market for coal. The change was dramatic. In its report for 1957 the NCB declared:

  Total coal output in 1957, including that from opencast sites, was 223.6 million tons. This was 1.4 million tons more than in 1956 and the highest annual output since 1952.

But in 1958 it was a different story:

  Total coal output in 1958 was 215.8 million tons, including 14.3 million tons from opencast working. For the first time, the Board had to take steps to restrict production to meet a decline in demand; the years output was 7.8 million tons less than that of 1957 and was the lowest for eight years.

The following table illustrates the change:

What had happened, then? The table shows that consumption fell drastically in 1957. It had in fact been falling since 1955 and this represented increasing competition from oil. But an event at the end of 1956 hastened the switch to oil. Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt and the Suez was blocked. Oil supplies from the Middle East could not get through to Europe. The oil companies opened up new sources to meet the shortage so that, when the canal was cleared, they found themselves with a surplus. They brought down their prices and were able to beat coal. Coal production has fallen every year since 1957. It has been the same story in France, Germany and Belgium. Oil use as a proportion of total fuel rose in the period 1957-67 from 15 per cent to over 37 per cent. The government’s Fuel Policy White Paper, published last November, foresees that this trend will continue though oil will be under pressure from natural gas and nuclear energy. By 1970 coal production, they guess, will be down to 155 million tons; still nearly 50 per cent of fuel use in Britain though. Lord Robens has gone further: he says it will be 120 million by 1975 and perhaps only 80 million by 1980. This coupled with increasing mechanisation will mean a huge reduction in manpower. The areas worse hit by the closures are and will be the older coalfields in Scotland, Cumberland, Durham, Northumberland and South Wales. Already there are workers in these areas who have been unemployed for over a year and so are on “supplementary benefit” (the old National Assistance) being subjected, perhaps for the second time in their lives, to a means test. The government has announced fairly generous, by capitalism’s standards, redundancy payments for those who have lost their jobs since July last year—this of course is a reflection of the strength of the workers organised in their unions.

The post-war history of coal-mining in Britain bears out the socialist case: trade union action, though essential, cannot do much more than work with or against market trends. For the first ten years of nationalisation the demand for coal exceeded the supply; for the next ten the position was reversed. All the NUM is doing now, and of course it can do no more, is “retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction” as Marx put it in another context.

Adam Buick