My Life With Nye (1982)

Book Review from the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Life With Nye by Jennie Lee. Penguin, £1.75.

This is an account of the lives of Aneurin Bevan and Jennie Lee. Bevan came from a Welsh coal mining family and, at an early age, joined the Labour Party. Jennie Lee came from a Scottish mining family and was, like her father, a member of the ILP.

They were both idealists who threw a great deal of energy into their political lives under the mistaken impression that capitalism could be adjusted to work in the interests of the working class.

The author makes several references to socialism but does not define it and one is left with the impression that, like so many people who regard themselves as revolutionaries, she means “nationalisation”.

Later, we find them helping to win World War II and when Attlee had ousted Churchill, Bevan threw himself into the task of building up the Health Service when he was not charging about the world rubbing shoulders with Tito and various other enemies of the working class.

From the socialist point of view there is very little of value in this book, although it is an interesting document in that it records the strong belief among many young people of the nineteen-thirties that Russia was being formed into a workers’ paradise. They can now see how wrong they were. The so-called Communist Party was strong in numbers and even managed to get two members into Parliament. Now, world events have reduced CP membership and those who are left are disenchanted with recent events in Poland and Afghanistan.

Bevan may have been sincerely anti-capitalist in his early days but it seems that he came to the conclusion it was not so bad after he had ceased to be a wage-slave.

As a personality, Bevan was probably everything that Jennie Lee has said that he was, but he was definitely not a socialist.

Luigi

SDP — moderate magic? (1982)

From the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the SDP was launched last March it was fashionable to say that it couldn’t grow because it had no roots. Its opponents wrote it off as short-term opportunism that was bound to fail. Few people considered it a serious threat to the Labour-Tory see-saw. But it has grown. Now, less than a year later, it’s got almost thirty MPs, about 70.000 members and is way ahead in the opinion polls. No one is writing it off any more - not even Labour left-wingers who, while continuing to revile the Social Democrats as opportunists, have now got to admit that at least they look like being successful ones.

Will the SDP ‘break the mould’ and, as Shirley Williams predicted after her by-election victory at Crosby, ‘sweep on to victory at the next election’ (The Times, 28/11/81)? The old adage of a week being a long time in politics may apply here just as much as it was seen to apply recently to the apparent fervour for nationalism in Scotland. But supposing the SDP did come to power at the next election is it possible to know what would happen to Britain?

Policies
Although the SDP has been widely attacked for having no policies, the criticism isn’t altogether fair. It hasn’t got a manifesto as such but it is possible to piece together the broad lines of what it says it will do as a party of government.

First of all the statement Twelve Tasks for Social Democrats issued at the party’s launch shows a clear commitment to continued British membership of the Common Market and support for active participation in NATO with the aim of multilateral disarmament. And these two platforms have been confirmed on many occasions since. It’s true that many of the other points contained in the launch statement (“consistent economic strategy”, “schemes to conserve energy”, “mixed economy”, “fair distribution of wealth”, “better environment”, “equal rights”, “imaginative generosity”) are, as Ian Bradley, SDP sympathiser and author of the first book to be published on the party, [1] says, “so vague that they border on the platitudinous”.

But they are no more so than many of the proposals that the other parties commonly advance when they are out of office, and the SDP can point out that some of the suggestions in their twelve-point programme (proportional representation, incomes policy, apprenticeship schemes, decentralisation) have been amplified since they were first made and in some cases even ‘costed'. They can point for evidence of this to the discussion papers issued for the SDP's first conference last October, to various pronouncements made by their leading figures, and to the idea advocated by Roy Jenkins, the party’s probable leader, of an ‘inflation tax’ which would fine employers for giving workers pay rises beyond a limit laid down by the government.

What is there to be said about the more concrete of these SDP policies? The Ecology Party has described them as a ‘recycling of politics’, and it is indeed difficult, despite the SDP’s claim that they will ‘change the face of Britain’, to find anything in them that hasn’t appeared in one of the other three parties’ manifestoes before and that could possibly make any fundamental difference to the lives of the majority of people in this country in the future.

If we take as an example membership of the EEC, it would be hard, even for the most ardent ‘Europeanist’, to show that it had been of any particular benefit to British wage and salary earners, and even harder to show that future membership will make much difference either. Then, being in NATO, far from helping to bring about world disarmament as the SDP suggests it would, has so far meant increasing amounts of resources spent on bigger and more lethal weapons and the nightmare of nuclear war as near as ever. Incomes policies which aim to punish employers for paying their workers too much have been tried before too (for example by the last Labour government). As they have the effect of depressing living standards and increasing industrial unrest, they founder on opposition both from workers through their trade unions and from employers.

As for the ‘mixed economy’ (part-private, part-state ownership), it’s precisely what the Labour and Tory parties, despite their lip service to other ‘philosophies’, have always practised when in government and it has done nothing to solve problems such as the financial worries, insecurity, unemployment, boredom and dissatisfaction experienced by the vast majority of workers in both sectors. Finally other proposed SDP measures like decentralisation (or regional assemblies) and proportional representation can only be described as new inasmuch as they’ve never actually been tried in Britain. They’re certainly not new as far as Europe goes. Both have been in operation for many years in, for example, Italy, yet Italians (as this writer can vouch for from personal experience) would not think of claiming that this gives them any superior say in the way decisions arc made about their lives.

Wish Fulfilment
So why are so many people thrilling to the SDP if all it has to offer are these more-of-the-same policies? Well, first of all, the evidence of two MORI polls was that at least 50 per cent of SDP supporters were ignorant or mistaken as to its probable policies. And it’s hard to imagine that even informed supporters are excited about the specific policies on offer. What’s more likely is that the SDP’s support is based not on policies at all; but on the attraction of the individuals offering them.

The so-called Gang of Four have been carefully portrayed, both by their own expensively acquired publicity machine and by a highly sympathetic media, as sane, purposeful, trustworthy personalities who, if only given the chance, will produce a brand new political broom and use it to sweep spotlessly clean. They’ve been expertly projected as the team capable of doing a job that others, through lack of honesty, integrity or ability, have failed to do in the past. The party that these nice, reliable, sincere, intelligent people are trying to get off the ground is one based on honesty, virtue and common sense. How can such a venture be anything but ‘a good thing’?

It all smacks of an exercise in wish fulfilment and is ironically reminiscent of the hopes so many people had in 1964 when they elected the first Labour government for thirteen years with a leader referred to at the time as a ‘political magician’. That leader's name was Harold Wilson.

Realities of Government

Will what happened to Harold Wilson also happen to the magicians of the SDP? Well, to an extent it already has, because all four of them are past failures. They’ve all served as ministers in governments which no impartial observer could describe as successful. Will tilings change for them in the future? Is it ‘all different now’ as Crosby SDP voters kept telling reporters who tried to remind them of Shirley Williams’ record as a Labour minister?

In the past governments have failed to deliver the expected goods because the conditions they found once in office didn’t allow them to. And it couldn’t be any different for the SDP. Put in charge of a system which operates through the market, buying and selling and production for profit, the SDP would find, as the other parties have found, that conditions change continuously and unpredictably. Its plan, for example, to reduce unemployment by apprenticeship and job creation schemes would depend on whether its revenue from taxation allowed such schemes to be funded. And this in turn would depend on whether the world market, over which governments have no control, decreed high or low profits for the employing class which funds the government with taxes from those profits. These schemes in any case would be nothing more than a short-term expedient, would conceal a certain amount of unemployment for a time. They couldn’t possibly cope with the rise in the jobless that, if the present recession goes on, will occur whichever government is in power. Employers will not employ people, not even under an SDP government, unless they can find profitable markets for their goods.

So niceness, sincerity, reliability — these things would have nothing to do with the practical conduct of an SDP government. The professional economic forecasters are always divided among themselves on the future conditions the market is going to create and the politicians of the SDP would be unable to read into the future with any greater clarity. Whoever it is that finally formulates the Social Democrats’ election manifesto the leadership, the MPs or their local ‘policy groups’ — the administration called to put that manifesto into effect will find that many of its best laid plans will have to be delayed, altered or simply abandoned.

Duplicity and Deception

For all their need to play it by ear, however, an SDP government would, we can be quite certain, pursue one policy to the bitter end — the policy, unspoken but fundamental and shared with all the other parties, of perpetuating a system in which the vast majority of a country’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small minority of its citizens while the majority of the people — the wage and salary earners — are hoodwinked into believing that this system is run in their interest. The Gang of Four did this when they were members of Labour governments and they will do it as members of an SDP government.

Already they have begun to tarnish their new laundered image, to show the kind of duplicity and deception necessary for running the British profit system. Firstly David Owen, at a public meeting in Swansea attended by this writer (9 July 1981), declared that the two main planks of his party’s foundation were EEC membership and multilateral disarmament but then told a unilateralist questioner that the SDP still welcomed into its ranks those who favoured unilateral disarmament. Then Shirley Williams, in her campaign at Crosby, referred to Graham Page, whose 19,000 Tory majority she needed to overturn, as ‘a healer not a divider of one person from another’ (Sunday Times, 25/10/81). Yet she must have known that this was the man who, three years ago, called for a total three-year ban on all immigration to Britain.

Finally the SDP’s application form for founder membership of the party asked for a £9 subscription and proclaimed: ‘If you really want a party that’s in nobody’s pocket it will mean digging into your own’. It also said that, unlike the Labour and Tory parties, the SDP had ‘no pipeline from big business or trade unions pumping money into its funds. It will belong to its members and no one else.’ Now, articles in the Observer (15 November 1981) and the Sunday Times (6 December 1981) have named a large number of leading industrialists as supporting and making financial contributions to the SDP. The chairman of the SDP’s finance committee is David Sainsbury, finance director of the grocery chain. A trustee is Clive Lindley, millionaire owner of the LCI group and a former longstanding Labour Party supporter. Other supporters include Lord Sainsbury, Sir Claus Moser of Rothschilds, Edmund Dell of Guinness Peat, Cob Stenham, financial director of Unilever, the Rowntree company, John Lambourn of Commercial Union, and John Harvey-Jones, new chairman of ICI. The Sunday Times article also revealed that the party organises lunches for potential donors at its headquarters in Cowley Street, where, according to SDP recruiter Anthony Sampson, ‘the business side is critical’. And this is the party that was to be ‘in nobody’s pocket’.

Quantum Jump

‘Social Democracy’ is a bright new label but the stuff inside the bottle is as unpalatable as ever. Far from taking the ‘quantum jump’ Shirley Williams talks about in her recent book [2], her party can only limp along the same well trodden path as the parties that preceded it. Yet social democracy does have another meaning. For the socialist pioneers of the last century it meant a moneyless, leaderless society of free access, voluntary cooperation and complete democratic control — socialism. And this kind of society not the SDP’s — will be the real ‘quantum jump’, ‘humanity’s leap’, as Frederick Engels put it, ‘from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom’.

Howard Moss

[1] Breaking the Mould? The Birth and Prospects of the Social Democratic Party, Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1981.

[2] Politics is for People, London, Penguin, 1981.

The Birth of Compromise (1982)

From the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

That creaky old monster, the British Labour Party, is in danger of drowning. Even with a Tory government presiding over mass unemployment and endless cuts, Labour’s “alternative” is seen by many workers to be equally unappealing. There are some who may be shocked at the Socialist Party of Great Britain failing to mourn the demise of a political institution which for seventy-five years has claimed to stand for workers’ interests. But the record of Labour governments of strike breaking and cutting workers' living standards in the way the profit system demands, proves their claims to be untrue. To find the root cause of the problem, we must move from the Labour Party’s death throes to its birth pangs.

In the 1870s, after a long history of persecution, British trade unions were legalised, and in 1874 two miners elected to parliament. But by the mid-eighties still only eleven MPs were workers, although the working class formed about three-quarters of the population. After 1867, only a minority had the vote and the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party took it in turns to run capitalism, much as the Conservative and Labour Parties have done since the First World War. There was sometimes little to choose between them, but many workers preferred the Liberals, who made particular efforts to appear more radical than their rivals. The working class lacked unity, but mechanisation and concentration of capital reduced the divisions between skilled and unskilled labour. Large-scale production encouraged workers to recognise their shared class position as one of poverty and dependence, squalor and insecurity.

In the 1880s, small political groups were formed, such as the Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Federation and its break-away group, the Socialist League. Some of their members, particularly those in the Socialist League, had a very clear view of socialism as a system to replace the world order of capitalism, and of the need for democratic action to set up a system of production for use rather than profit. The majority of workers did not support the socialist proposal of freeing themselves from their wage-slavery, and the eleven MPs referred to above voted in the House of Commons as Liberals. A debate arose as to whether workers should try to get representation in Parliament on the basis of supporting capitalism, or whether the movement for socialism should first work towards majority support and then use Parliament to end the system rather than run it. The former idea, which was to win the day at the turn of the century, was expressed by Hubert Bland in Today, June 1887:

A popular organisation must be created for the express purpose of working existing political machinery (our emphasis).

At the same time, the Liberal Gladstone announced that he was prepared to “back the masses against the classes” (The Times, 29/6/1886), that is, the workers against the capitalist class, although he was so “radical” that he regretted the “leaning of both parties to Socialism, which I radically disapprove” (J. Morley, Life of Gladstone, ii. p.346). In fact, both parties were simply making concessions to workers to win their votes, and Lord Randolph Churchill more cautiously wrote that “we have so to conduct our legislation that we shall give some satisfaction to both classes and masses”.

The boom conditions of the late 1880s helped the formation of the “New Unions”, such as the Gasworkers’ and General Labourers’ Union and the General Railway Workers Union. John Burns and Tom Mann of the Social Democratic Federation organised the famous London Dock Strike of 1889. The new trade unions of this time were less exclusive than their predecessors, with lower subscription dues and more emphasis on industrial action to improve wages and conditions. But the early 1890s saw a return to trade depression, higher unemployment and consequently greater pressure to lower wages. The employers organised something of a counter-offensive on the industrial field, and the high increase in union membership of the previous decade again fell.

In 1890, the Shipping Federation was formed by shipowners to allow jobs only to those prepared to work with non-union men. In 1893. William Collison formed the National Free Labour Association as a supply of blackleg workers. In 1896, the Employers Federation of Engineering Associations was founded, to oppose the Amalgamated Engineers, and the following year the Federation responded to strikes with a six-month lock-out, which slack trade enabled them to afford. In 1898, the Employers Parliamentary Council was established to ensure direct influence at Westminster. The law courts began to reverse the terms of the 1870s statutes and overturned precedents in cases such as Lyons v. Wilkins and Quinn v. Leathern, outlawing picketing. In 1901 the House of Lords confirmed the Taff Vale Railway Company’s demand for damages resulting from industrial action by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, amounting to £23,000, which the union had to pay.

These repressive measures of about ninety years ago renewed the debate about what action workers could take. Many trade unionists supported parliamentary representation to secure legal rights for trade unions. Some argued that the Liberal Party, which many had traditionally supported, would be unable to do this, and this view was justified by the Liberal Party’s difficulties at the time. Many of their capitalist backers were going over to the Tories, partly because they wanted import duties to protect their industries from German and American competition. Liberal support for capitalism had to be blended with “the new aspirations of the labouring masses out of which the party of the future must spring” (Manchester Guardian, 11/5/1894). But there was no reason in principle why Liberal or Tory capitalists in Parliament could not support limited aims like trade union immunities and various social reforms. In any case, the idea of working-class members of Parliament carrying out these measures themselves was hard to implement. Before 1911, MPs were not paid and had to be financed, so workers approached the Liberal Party asking to be nominated as candidates. Again and again, the local Liberal caucuses refused such requests. Among those they refused were Keir Hardie and Ramsay Macdonald, who were later to sit as Labour MPs.

In 1893, the Independent Labour Party was formed. Its aims included tax reform, an eight-hour day, and “collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. Exchange implies private property, though, and this contradiction is repeated in the Labour Party’s famous Clause Four. What it means is state ownership, or nationalisation, which is not socialism. The Fabian Society had been trying to “permeate” the Liberal caucuses in order to exert a secret influence. Unlike the Militant Tendency, they eventually admitted that this was a futile waste of time. The attempts of the TUC Parliamentary Committee to get Liberal backing met with little success, and so the idea developed of forming a separate party with the financial backing of the trade unions. Three points in particular are worth noting about what happened. It was not a movement for socialism, it only involved a very small minority of the working class, and it was not democratically organised.

Aside from the question of trade union rights, the reform issues adopted were similar to those of the Liberal Party: opposition to the Boer war, improved workers’ compensation, and that classical capitalist policy, Free Trade. (Later on, the Labour Party sometimes came to support instead that other reputable capitalist policy, Import Controls.) At the turn of the century (as now), very few workers actively stood for socialism. In the 1895 election, not one of the thirty-two ILP candidates was elected, and they merely stood for nationalisation, rather than common ownership. If there were a majority of socialists, millions of them, they could easily have financed some of their number to go to Parliament with a mandate immediately to abolish the profit system. But what there were instead, were trade unionists, many of whom were bitterly opposed to socialism.

In 1899 the TUC voted 546,000 to 434,000 to try to increase the number of workers in Parliament. Hardie secured an ILP majority on the executive of the resulting Labour Representation Committee, with his friend Macdonald as secretary. The same year, Hardie was elected at Merthyr Tydfil with the help of £150 from George Cadbury, the chocolate baron. In 1903, Gladstone made a secret pact with MacDonald that the LRC could have a clear run in thirty constituencies, provided that they demonstrate friendliness to the Liberals where possible. At the same time, the “rank and file” at the LRC Conference were actually voting that its candidates must “strictly abstain from identifying themselves with, or promoting the interests of, any section of the Liberal or Conservative Parties”. In one constituency the LRC wanted to put up a candidate where a Liberal planned to stand. Macdonald wrote to the local secretary threatening: “my executive will even go to the length of publishing a condemnatory resolution in the newspaper”.

From 1900 to 1906, the membership of the trade unions which were affiliated to the LRC increased from about a third of a million to about a million, while the membership of the constituent “socialist” groups remained at about twenty thousand, falling to fourteen thousand from 1901 to 1904. The greatest number of votes polled by the Labour Party before the First World War was about 500,000 in 1910, about one tenth of the electorate. Those workers elected as “Lib-Labs” in the first years of this century were prepared to co-operate in parliament with LRC independents, for the sake of expediency. By the 1906 election, the leaders Hardie, Macdonald and Henderson had organised the skeleton of a national political machine, modelled on the established parties. They devised a programme which only contained reform measures compatible with capitalism. Their glorified trade-union pressure group was preparing to replace the Liberal Party in its role of alternative government of capitalism. The Labour Party was born by the “back door” method of collaboration with the Liberal Party itself. In the Liberal landslide of 1906, twenty-nine out of fifty LRC candidates were elected. The ILP and Fabian Society by then accounted for less than a fiftieth of the affiliated membership.

As the Liberal Party floundered, the Labour Party rose, based on active participation by workers in the system which exploits us. In 1904, the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed. In the first issue of the Socialist Standard, in September 1904, there was an editorial opposing the LRC with good reason: the LRC members had no common principles, but only the name “Labour”:

Unity is only possible among those who possess common principles. Unity cannot, therefore, be secured for any length of time by the members of the Labour Representation Committee, but even if it could, the body is not based upon Socialist principles 

which is the reason for the lack of unity in the Labour Party today. That first issue also said of the Independent Labour Party:

Having neither the courage to proclaim themselves Socialists nor to disavow Socialism, they are today coquetting with that working-class wing of the Liberal Party - the Labour Representation Committee. When the question of Socialism was raised on the committee, their chief representative declared that was neither the time nor the place for such discussion.

The victory for compromise marked by the rise of the Labour Party may have seemed complete, but it was not permanent. The Labour governments which have been formed since, have proved the impossibility of trying to legislate against the ugly effects of the profit system. The Labour Party was formed on the basis of popular support for capitalism, and it has become one of the major institutions of that system. Workers need not sorrow for it in its old age, or run to carry the SDP baby which is really its uncle. Now, more than ever, there is a chance, and an urgent need, to build a party to end capitalism, not to run it.

Clifford Slapper

'What are your views on?' (2018)

From the June 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Answers to questions put by a website in Croatia, 'Il grido del popolo'.

1.         What does your political experience say about the future of socialism?

Because we had always said that it was state capitalism and had nothing to do with socialism, when the USSR collapsed in 1991 perhaps we expected people to say 'Yes, you were right, it did have nothing to do with socialism'. Then the way would be clear to put the case for real socialism as a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, with production to directly meet people's needs not for profit, and distribution on the principle of 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs'. But what happened was that people said 'socialism has been tried and failed, it is now irrelevant'. Supporters of capitalism proclaimed the definitive victory of their system and ideology and that capitalism was now the only game in town. This lasted for nearly twenty years. Then came the Great Crash of 2008 and the ensuing slump. 'Capitalism' became a dirty word once more and socialism (however defined) was discussed seriously again. This is still the position today.

2.         Your thoughts on European trade unions? Are they here to help the workers or have they sold out to corporations?

Trade unions were formed by workers to bargain with employers over the price of their labour-power and the conditions under which it is exercised. Over the years they have become huge bureaucratic organisations but still, by and large, continue to be defensive organisations for the working class. They should not just be dismissed as sell-outs. Workers should still join them and work to make them more accountable to their memberships.

3.         What is the UK future after Brexit?

Most of the UK capitalist class want to stay in the EU but their political representatives let them down by organising a referendum that resulted in a 52-48 majority for Brexit. They are probably right to think that the UK outside the EU will not be as good for them as staying in, because they won't be able to get better trade deals than they have been getting as a member. But that's their problem, not ours as socialists and workers. In or out of the EU, and whatever the Brexit terms negotiated, there will still be capitalism and the problems it generates for the majority class of wage and salary worker.

 4.         Your comment on UK foreign policy towards Russia?

That the antagonism between the West and Russia has continued despite the end of 'communism' (in reality, state capitalism) in Russia shows that the conflicts of the Cold War period were not, as presented, based on ideology but were clashes of material interests, mainly over spheres of influence (who dominates Eastern Europe, Russian access to the Mediterranean, etc).

5.         What do you think, is Corbyn a good example for the left?

The Labour Party under Corbyn represents something of a return to what the Labour Party was like in the 1960s, 70s and early 80s – proposing reforms aimed at making capitalism work for 'the many, not the few.' The Labour governments in these periods failed to do this (as it can't be done) and ended up presiding over, and even encouraging, the operation of the capitalist economic system in the only way that it can exist – giving priority to profits and conditions for profit-making over satisfying people's needs. A Corbyn Labour government would fail, and for the same reason that there is no way in which capitalism can be reformed to work in the interest of the majority. So, no, Corbyn is not a good example of what to do.

6.         How can modern left politics answer the challenges of the 21st century, when there is no mainstream socialism as in the 20th century?

It is true that for most of the 20th century the existence of a major country calling itself socialist (even if it wasn't) made socialism a subject of current political debate and that this is no longer the case. On the other hand, not having a state-capitalist regime calling itself socialist is an advantage as socialists no longer have to deal with this as a regular objection to socialism. Socialism can be presented positively as a society of common ownership, democratic control, production directly to meet people's needs and not for profit.

7.         Is socialism today important or has it lost all its 'weight' in political arenas in Europe?

Of course socialism is still relevant and important today – capitalism will never be able to solve the multiple problems it generates by its very nature for humanity in general and the wage and salary working class in particular – even if the word 'socialism' meaning an alternative social system is not a subject of political discussions. Socialism will be relevant as long as capitalism exists as, objectively and not just as a matter of opinion, it is the only framework within which the problems capitalism generates can be solved.

8.         Can you make short comments on political parties like the Communist Party of Great Britain Marxist-Leninist and the New Communist Party?

Neither of them is any good, if only because they both support the North Korean government and defend the state-capitalist system there as somehow socialist or pro working class. Another similar organisation, the CPBML, is as nationalistic over Brexit as the UK Independence Party. 'Marxism-Leninism' is a contradiction in terms as Leninism is a distortion of Marxism, mainly through its theory that the working class on its own can only develop a trade union consciousness and so needs to be led by a self-appointed vanguard party. This was not Marx's view; he favoured the democratic self-organisation of the working class in a mass workers' party.

9.         How to educate today's working class when more and more positions in factories and elsewhere are becoming controlled by technology?

The working class is not composed just of factory workers but of everyone who is forced by economic necessity to try to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer in order to live. This is irrespective of the job they do, whether in a factory, an office, a hospital or an educational institution. Most of the so-called 'middle class' are in fact members of the majority class of wage and salary workers. Artificial Intelligence is now threatening their jobs too.

10.       How do British trade unions today work to protect workers, after all that happened with Thatcher in 80s?

The effectiveness of trade unions is largely governed by the overall economic situation, much more than by legislation. In times of capitalist expansion they can work with the labour market to increase wages; in times of slump the most they can do is slow down the decrease in real wages. The type of trade union has changed since the Thatcher years. Today the coal mines and the once powerful miners' union have gone. The big trade unions today are those in the public sector, in national and local government, the health service and education. Given the unfavourable economic situation they don't do too badly.

The Philosophy of Anarchism (1942)

Pamphlet Review from the February 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been asked by a reader to give our views on a booklet, “The Philosophy of Anarchism,” by Herbert Read, published in 1940 by Freedom Press Distributors (36 pages, 6d.).

To obtain an idea of the general superficiality of the work the reader need not go beyond the two- page introductory chapter. Here in a nutshell Mr. Read displays his failure to understand even the elements of Socialism although his whole case is based on his belief that Socialism has been tried, has failed and must fail. The following extracts from this chapter will suffice to prove the point. Mr. Read writes:

   The characteristic political attitude of to-day is not one of positive belief, but of despair. Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past. There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, offers a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country. But it has not changed the servile nature of human bondage. Man is everywhere still in chains. The motive of his activity remains economic, and. this economic motive inevitably leads to the social inequalities from which he had hoped to escape. In face of this double failure, of capitalism and of socialism, the desperation of the masses has taken shape as fascism—a revolutionary but wholly negative movement which aims at establishing a selfish organisation of power within the general chaos.

We can be quite brief and positive in repudiating Mr. Read’s errors. Marxists have not given way to despair nor is their number decreasing. Socialism has not triumphed in any country. Russia was never Socialist and could not have become Socialist under the Bolshevist regime, no matter what methods the Bolshevists might have used in order to impose their system on the population. Russia was not and is not ripe for Socialism, and the majority of the population were not and are not ready for Socialism. At no time did the S.P.G.B. accept the baseless claim of the Russian that Socialism had been or could be established. Lastly fascism is not and has never been revolutionary. One further proof of Mr. Read’s lack of knowledge of his subject is his use of the term, “State Socialism'” (p. 19)—a contradiction in terms through which he blindly slips into his assumption that State capitalist Russia is Socialist.

So much for Mr. Read’s initial assumption. His “philosophy” and his remedies are of a like nature. He believes (p. 6) that to realise the new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values,” and that “thousands, if not millions, of people . . . instinctively hold these ideas”— as if social evolution were a matter of instinct and of moulding society in accordance with a mental attitude of deciding to prefer certain values against others.

He divides the human race into individuals who seek self-expression and those who are servile and want to be shepherded but explains this “fundamental distinction” by saying that the servile ones "are either economically or psychologically predisposed.” He seemingly does not realise that broadly the distinction depends upon an understanding of capitalism and of the way in which Socialism can be achieved. “The only necessity,” he says, “is to discover the true laws of nature and conduct our lives in accordance with them” (p. 16).

Later on Mr. Read admits that his appeal is “to mystical entities, to idealistic notions which all good materialists reject” (p. 20). Notice the absurd position to which his appeal to mysticism has brought him.

His explanation of what he mistakenly believes to be the failure of Socialism in Russia, brings out another of his fundamental beliefs, that society must have a religion. “It is already clear,” he says, “after 20 years of Socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one” (p. 22).

Incidentally this hardly seems to square with his view that “Communism has of course its religious aspects.”

Socialism will fail, he says, because it is not the “new religion” which will emerge from the ruins of capitalist civilization (p. 27), and “the natural ally of Socialism was the Church ” (p. 24).

On the question of working class action he believes that “the natural weapon of the working classes is the strike.” “The State" he says, "is just as vulnerable as a human being and can be killed by the cutting of a single artery. But you must see that surgeons do not rush in to save the victim. You must work secretly and act swiftly: the event must be catastrophic” (p. 33). He advocates insurrection—“An insurrection is necessary.”

He ends the booklet in much the same frame of mind as those whom he criticises in the opening paragraph—despair. He is not certain whether we are faced with the final "paroxysm of a doomed system, leaving the world darker and more despairing than ever,” or whether we shall have "a spontaneous and universal insurrection." It all depends on whether we achieve "a swift apprehension of the destiny that is upon us” (p. 36).

Though he believes that such qualities as "faith in the fundamental goodness of man" alone can save us his faith seems to have half deserted him, and he is not sure what will happen.

Altogether, a very superficial piece of work. We wonder if even his fellow anarchists feel happy at his exposition of their views.

Edgar Hardcastle

Notes By The Way: Wages in Russia (1942)

The Notes By The Way column from the January 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wages in Russia

In view of the popular misconceptions about the social system in Russia, the following recent statements are of interest.

The first, relating to the great inequality of wages, was published in the Sunday Dispatch (August 17th, 1941), along with much other information about Russia. It was prefaced by a personal message from the Soviet Ambassador in London, in which he congratulated the Dispatch on publishing the information.

   Wages or salaries are paid according to ability and the type of work. Specialists are highly paid, but lower grades receive what may be termed a subsistence level, corresponding to the social status of their type of labour. . . . Some workers get quite low wages, but, as there are rarely less than three or four wage-earners in a family, discrepancies may be evened out. Average minimum wage is 250 roubles monthly, though specialists may receive an average as high as 2,000 roubles a month.

The second is a news item in the Evening News (December 30th, 1941), stating that a special war tax was to be introduced in Russia. It ended as follows: 

   Persons with specially large incomes will pay double the normal rate.

* * *

The Landworker's £3 Wage

When it was announced that the Central Agricultural Wages Board had agreed unanimously to recommend a £3 minimum wage for men on the land, Mr. A. C. Dann, Acting General Secretary of the National Union of Land workers, told a Daily Express reporter how, during the last war, he was sent as a soldier to work on the land in Norfolk and how he was appalled at the horrible conditions under which the farm worker lived. It will doubtless not have escaped Mr. Dann’s notice that the newspapers which under war conditions of food shortage and restricted imports all agreed quite enthusiastically that the landworker ought to have £3, were mostly quite cold and silent in peace-time and not at all disturbed about the horrible conditions. They may be expected to suffer a relapse when peace comes again and when the fight is on between the agricultural interests which want subsidies continued, and the manufacturing interests who will want cheap home produced food and cheap imports because they mean lower wages to factory workers.

Already a start has been made at reducing the value of the £3 minimum. At present the landworker gets his tied cottage at a restricted rent of 1s. or 4s. So the demand is now being made that this restriction of rent should cease, and the landworker be compelled to pay an "economic rent.” Even this pill is sugared with the promise that if he does pay more he will get something better than what the Times (November 18th) describes as his “often slummy " cottage.

A sidelight on the life of freeborn rural Englishmen is provided by a comment in the Times (November 17th) on the difficulty of providing clothes in war-time.

   In ordinary times his wife managed to replenish his working wardrobe economically from the jumble sales, which used to be a regular feature of village life. Now no one turns out clothing that has any virtue. . .

It seems that what, in our urban ignorance, we take for scarecrows on the countryside are the local squirearchy wearing out their own jumble-sale clobber.

* * *

A Bagatelle of £100 Million

In a speech in the House of Commons on October 1st, 1941 (“Hansard," Col. 616) the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, explained why it is not expedient to “soak the rich" by lopping off in taxation all incomes in excess of £1,000 a year:—

   It is probably not realised that if we so increased taxation that no one was left with more than £1,000 a year or his present net income after taxation, whichever was the less—the course which would obviously precipitate very acute problems of many kinds—the additional yield would not exceed something of the order of £106,000,000.

The problems referred to are probably the contractual obligations (rent, etc.) which could not be met if incomes were cut to £1,000. Even so, and even if £100 million does not represent many days’ war expenditure, Sir Kingsley Wood failed to give any convincing reason why the people referred to should be treated so differently from the wage-earners getting £3 or £4 a week, who are told that every penny counts if devoted to war savings.

* * *

A Concession to Income Tax Payers

Workers who for the first time have been initiated into the mysteries of income tax will know that no wage may be reduced in any one week through deduction of tax, below 37s. 6d. for a single man or single woman, or below 57s. 6d. for a married man. They will also have noticed that the official announcement informs them that this concession will be made “unless you ask for the full tax to be deducted," and further that it is only a postponement not a permanent relief: you make up the full amount later on.

We wonder if any of the higher officials of the Inland Revenue Department realise what it means at present prices to make ends meet on '37s. 6d. or 57s. 6d. a week. The “very acute problems" that would arise if large incomes were reduced to £1,000 a year are nothing compared with the acute problem of living on 37s. 6d. a week.

* * *

The Decline of Religion

According to the Rev. E. H. Lewis, an Army chaplain, “only five per cent. of the men who join the Army can say the Lord’s Prayer, 15 per cent, have had no connection with the Church, and 85 per cent. have never been in a church in their lives."— (Sunday Express, November 2nd, 1941.)

The Rev. S. C. Thompson, writing to the Daily Telegraph (December 1st) says: “I would submit that the influence of Christ has declined, is declining, and (humanly speaking) will decline in this country, and that the reason is the general and culpable neglect of organised religion."

* * *

The Health of Recruits to the U.S. Army

According to the Times (October 11th, 1941), the calling up of men for the American Army has disclosed "that roughly 1,000,000 young men— about half of those examined—have been rejected as unfit for service on account of physical, mental, or educational defects." President Roosevelt described this as "an indictment of America."

U.S.A. has been held up in the past as an example of capitalism at its best and as a proof that a high standard of living and low unemployment are not impossible under capitalism. The results do not look anything to be proud of. They will give an impetus to the demand for social reforms to repair the damage done by Capitalism.

Whether the standard is comparable with that applied to recruits for the British army is not known, but it has been claimed that official figures show that in this war the proportion of recruits passed as fit has been about 80 per cent, (i.e., in Grades I, II and III together).—(Sunday Express, October 26th, 1941.)

* * *

Holy Russia

Those who remember the kind of abuse hurled at the Bolshevists in former years will rub their eyes to see some of the things being said to-day. On October 30th the Times published a large advertisement adorned with the Hammer and Sickle Emblem, and containing the following :—

   “Hammer and sickle, symbol once of a distant, mysterious and unknown land, symbol to-day of the power and patriotism of Holy Russia.’'

* * *

"The Best Means of Keeping them in Proper Subjection"

The following in a resolution passed in 1768 by the Committee of the Foundling Hospital regarding the purpose of the religious eduction of the foundlings who were to be placed out as apprentices: -

   That when the children of this hospital are placed out each shall have a copy of the prayers they use in this hospital, the same to be printed on small portable twelves on parchment with a thin paste board cover, and that another copy of the same shall be delivered to the master or mistress of the child, with the preamble as follows:
    As it is of the greatest moment to breed up children in the fear of God, as the best means of keeping them in proper subjection to their masters, mistresses, and superiors—and as praying is the most effectual means to promote such fear, and to enforce obedience to the laws of God, you are hereby informed that it is expected of you to take care that this child . . . aged . . . says his or her prayers constantly every morning, as well as every evening, and you are to give him (or her) due sense of what he (or she) is about, and to this end you must be careful that he (or she) repeats prayers in a slow, serious and solemn manner, and you are further to take care that this child do frequent the public worship on the Sabbath Day, in a sober, pious, orderly manner.

—“The History of the Foundling Hospital "

(Nicholas & Wray, 1935), page 190.

Though later developments have produced other means of persuading the workers that capitalism is all for the best, there are still those who hold that religion has its uses in that direction.

Edgar Hardcastle

Cooking the Books: No Need for More Capitalism (2018)

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

Yanis Varoufakis, the maverick former Greek finance minister, has written an introduction to a new edition of the Communist Manifesto (published by Vintage Classics), reproduced in the Guardian (20 April). It is actually quite good. Here he is writing about ‘the predicament in which we find ourselves today’:

‘While we owe capitalism for having reduced all class distinctions to the gulf between owners and non-owners, Marx and Engels want us to realise that capitalism is insufficiently evolved to survive the technologies it spawns. It is our duty to tear away at the old notion of privately owned means of production and force a metamorphosis, which must involve the social ownership of machinery, land and resources. Now, when new technologies are unleashed in societies bound by the primitive labour contract, wholesale misery follows. ... If we continue to subscribe to labour contracts between employer and employee, then private property rights will govern and drive capital to inhuman ends.’

When he was a member of the Greek government Varoufakis defended himself on the grounds that, as capitalism paved the way for socialism but socialism was not an immediate prospect, it was better to help capitalism out of its crisis than let it collapse – to save capitalism so as to be able to end it later in better circumstances.

He still hasn’t entirely escaped from this way of thinking, as he writes here: 

‘Given that it is neither possible nor desirable to annul capitalism’s “energy”, the trick is to help speed up capital’s development (so that it burns up like a meteor rushing through the atmosphere) while, on the other hand, resisting (through rational, collective action) its tendency to steamroller our human spirit. In short, the manifesto’s recommendation is that we push capital to its limits while limiting its consequences and preparing for its socialisation.’

Actually, this is not what the Manifesto recommended (unrealistically, it envisaged that ‘the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution’). But it was what Leninists and Social Democrats tried to do in the 20th century, arguably unnecessarily prolonging the existence of capitalism.

Marx and Engels did hold that capitalism paved the way for socialism, by creating its material basis in the form of a worldwide productive network technologically capable of providing plenty for all. In 1848 Marx did argue in favour of free trade on the grounds that it ‘works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the Social Revolution.' But that was in 1848, some 170 years ago now. At that time capitalism, as an economic system, was confined to parts of  Western Europe. As Varoufakis points out, Marx and Engels predicted in the Manifesto that it would eventually come to dominate the whole world. He sees this as having come about in the 1990s. In fact, however, it had come about a century earlier in the 1890s, as reflected in the discussions about ‘imperialism’ that began at that time. By then capitalism had performed its historical role and had become historically unnecessary in that socialism, as a world system, could have been established in its place at any time since.

Capitalism’s continuation beyond its sell-by date has led to two world wars, countless smaller wars and massacres, and now a threat to the planet’s ecology. Who knows what its further development will bring? So, no, the task today is not to ‘speed up capital’s development’. It is to stop it, by establishing a world of common ownership, democratic control, production to directly satisfy people’s needs and not for profit, and distribution on the principle of ‘from each their ability, to each their needs’.

Editorial: Pandering to Prejudice (2018)

Editorial from the June 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fifty years have passed since Enoch Powell made his notorious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech and the current narrative is that the UK has since moved on and that we are now living in a more tolerant and inclusive, multicultural society. London, which is said to be the most culturally diverse city in the world, is governed by a mayor who is the son of a Pakistani bus driver. Even the Royal family has come of age with Prince Harry's recent marriage to a mix-race woman.

However, it seems that Enoch Powell's ghost is haunting the corridors of power. In pursuit of so-called illegal migrants, the government has unwittingly targeted members of the ‘Windrush Generation’, those who migrated to the UK mainly from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1971. Many of whom were unable to produce documentary evidence, that is now required under legislation introduced in 2012, to prove that they are entitled to live in the UK. Thus, despite working and paying taxes for years, they have been denied access to social services and the NHS and have faced the threat of deportation and in some cases were actually deported.

Once these facts came to light, Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, came under heavy pressure and was forced to resign. Jeremy Corbyn and others pointed the finger at Theresa May who, as Home Secretary at the time, was the architect of the legislation. May retorted that the last Labour government ordered the destruction of landing cards relating to the Windrush generation. The left has predictably blamed ‘Tory racism’ and has called for the Tories to be kicked out. Much of the press has put the scandal down to bureaucratic bungling.

In examining the context in which the new immigration rules were introduced, we can see where the real blame lies. In the aftermath of the economic crash of 2008, the government enforced spending cuts in an effort to restore British capitalism's profitability. With falling real wages, high unemployment and reduced funding for the NHS and social services, scapegoats were needed to divert attention from the real causes of austerity. The government sent a van round warning ‘illegal immigrants’ that they would be caught and sent back. Much of the press ran scurrilous stories about ‘bogus asylum seekers’ and ‘economic migrants’ cheating the benefit system and stealing jobs from British workers. UKIP attempted to garner support with scare stories of the country being swamped by immigrants from the EU. The government, by tightening up immigration controls, were hoping to see off their UKIP rivals and show that they were best placed to control immigration.

Labour governments also play the anti-immigrant card when it suits them. In 1968, the then Labour government introduced legislation to restrict immigration from the Commonwealth countries. Gordon Brown coined the phrase ‘British Jobs for British Workers’, which was then taken up by the BNP.

Under capitalism, workers are inculcated with nationalism which encourages them to see workers from other countries as foreigners. This, coupled with the poverty and insecurity that workers endure, provides the breeding ground for the toxic virus of racism. Only with the establishment of socialism, can we rid ourselves of this virus and the ghost of Enoch Powell can be laid to rest.

Party News (1982)

Party News from the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

“We sedulously cultivate free speech in this country, even in its most repressive form.” These were the words of that one-time friend of Stalin and revered politician, the late Winston Churchill. The notion behind these pious words is that free speech is worth promoting because it enables people with conflicting ideas to present their arguments so that action can be based on policies which have been thoroughly argued out on a public forum. Indeed we were told that between 1939 and 1945 the deaths of 300,000 members of the British working class, and the destruction in air raids were all suffered in the cause of protecting the Great Freedoms which exist in Britain.

Strangely, the not-so-famous namesake of the man who was in favour of “showering them with mustard gas” during the last world war does not seem to share his late grandpa's piety. The Manchester Group of the Socialist Party of Great Britain recently invited the present Winston Churchill, who is MP for Stretford, to participate in a public debate on the question “Would socialism be a change for the worse?” In a reply we were informed that Churchill had “no wish to share a public platform with a member of the Socialist Party”. What's the point, you might wonder, of advocating democracy if you are against the idea of entering into political debate against your opponents? As Churchill’s idea of democracy includes support for a minority of wealth owners to live comfortably and securely off the backs of the majority of wealth producers, his political beliefs were already not unblemished with contradictions.

Paying ourselves . . . (1982)

From the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last December 10 saw a grimacing Margaret Thatcher posturing for photographers in a mechanically reclining wheelchair which was one of the winning entries in a competition run by the Design Council. Thatcher had lots of praise for this device and others like it in the competition, for the alleviation of suffering it would bring to the disabled.

In the insultingly patronising “Year of the Disabled” (hard luck presumably, on their terms now 1981 has gone) Thatcher’s mock concern is doubly hypocritical as she is at the front of a campaign to cut money to the second-rate Health Service leaving more to spend on machines of destruction. For instance, on the very day she was pictured in the national press gallivanting with glee around the equipment for the disabled at the Design Council Awards, it was reported that a NHS hospital for the mentally handicapped in South London had been ordered to cut back its expenditure by so much that some children would be left in their wards all day—because of the number of staff to be made redundant—and all sorts of facilities for the children including a hydrotherapy pool would have to go.

Even with cash donations from parents to help the local Area Health Authority pay for the required staff, no new patients from the community, however needy, will be admitted to the hospital because of the lack of resources. When Thatcher said last year in solemn tones, ‘‘We are paying ourselves too much”, most of us who are living in poverty of one degree or another were angered or confused. It now perhaps becomes clearer exactly what was troubling her conscience. Between June 1980 and June 1981 the largest percentage wage increase received by a sector of the British public was not received by the miners, transport workers nor by the shipbuilders for example who received increases of about 10 per cent, 40 per cent and 9 per cent respectively. It was received by none other than dear old Margaret herself and was over 40 per cent! (CIS Anti-Report, 1981, sources: Dept, of Employment Gazette, Hansard, Labour Research Dept.)

Obituary: Death of Comrade A. Guiver (1938)

Obituary from the November 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret that Comrade A. Guiver died on August 14th after several years’ illness. This West Ham comrade was prevented in recent years from carrying on his former active work for Socialism, but older members will recall his tireless enthusiasm. He spent every available minute of his leisure selling party literature and would tramp miles in order to attend meetings where he could do this. Although in poor circumstances, he was always cheerful and carried on his party work with unfailing enthusiasm. He is another of those workers, out of the limelight, who are a sad loss to the party. He joined on July 2nd, 1906, thirty-two years ago.

Socialism and Birth Control. (1930)

From the August 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Has France Abolished Unemployment?
Recently the claim has been made that poverty and unemployment have been abolished in France, and one of the explanations given for this achievement—a surprising one if true—is the popularisation of Birth Control. Before we examine this to see what there is in it which might be copied in this country, it will be necessary to glance at the causes of unemployment.

It is really not at all a difficult problem. We do not need to look for a solution at the uttermost ends of the earth, because it is here, right before our eyes.

Being workers, we know that most of us get just about enough pay at the end of the week or the month to enable us and our families to live. We spend what we get as soon as we get it, a case of hard come and easy go. Most workers do not save anything worth mentioning because they cannot afford it. The rich are in precisely the opposite situation; they save money because they cannot help it. Many of them get much more than they can possibly spend in spite of their big houses, their servants, their expensive cars, expensive foods, and luxurious ways of living generally.

The surplus they re-invest. The effect of this is that instead of the incomes of the wealthy being used to buy the goods which the factories can produce in such vast quantities, their money is used to build more factories and instal still more efficient labour-displacing machinery, thus adding to the army of the unemployed. This is a permanent feature of the capitalist system, and it is an illusion to think that this or that capitalist country has somehow escaped the common fate.

How Unemployment is Disguised.
But although the politicians who seek to perpetuate capitalism cannot get at the root causes of unemployment, they have discovered many devices for mitigating the effects of those causes. In general, the devices are of two kinds. One kind consists in withdrawing workers from the labour market and keeping them unoccupied (or occupied on non-productive work); the other kind depends for its effect on the ability to make the wealthy spend their money by appealing to their sympathy, their patriotism, or their fears.

Thus we see Liberals, Tories, and the Labour Party busily engaged in popularising rival schemes for raising the school age, or for further old-age pensions, with the object of withdrawing old and young from the labour market. Large numbers of workers are subtracted from the army of unemployed, dressed in uniforms, and called soldiers and sailors. The capitalist class will tolerate the expenditure of their money on keeping hundreds of thousands of soldiers strenuously engaged in producing nothing, much more readily than they will tolerate spending smaller sums of their money on the other unemployed army, those without uniforms who line up at the Labour Exchanges. Expenditure on armaments, on charities, on wars, on missions, and on war service pensions, are all instances of devices which help to obscure the full extent of capitalism’s great problem, the problem of the wealthy with so much money that they cannot spend it, and the poor with too little money to buy the goods they produce.

The "Marvels" of Birth Control.
The argument of the advocates of Birth Control as a cure for poverty is two-fold. First, it is argued that if the birth-rate is reduced the expenditure of each family will be less and the family will be better off. If father had not got Maggie and Willy to consider, his £3 a week would extend to jam for tea for Thomas and Mary Jane. The second argument is that if the population were smaller there would be no unemployed. Before considering the matter in detail, it is as well to notice that the second effect, if it takes place at all, cannot do so until 15 or more years have passed. Father is not replaced at his job by his son Thomas, aged 1, but may be replaced by him when he reaches the age of 15 or thereabouts.

But are either of the arguments correct? These advocates of Birth Control entirely overlook the way in which wages are fixed and the way in which unemployment is created. They forget that if the cost of living of working class families is decreased, no matter how, wages tend to fall correspondingly, so that a general reduction in the size of families would be wholly counteracted by a decline in the level of wages. If this is doubted it is only necessary to consider the way in which money wages rose between 1914 and 1920, and the speed with which they fell when prices declined. Civil Servants, railway men, local Government employees, and many others have had their wages directly related to the cost of living, but whether the reduction in wages takes place automatically or not, it invariably does take place for workers as a whole. They are unable to resist successfully the pressure which the employers can bring to bear.

If the average working class family becomes smaller, father and all the other fathers will find that their £3 has shrunk with the shrinking of their cost of living.

Birth Control and the Unemployed.

We are told that if the population were smaller and there were no unemployed, the workers could keep their wages up in spite of their lowered cost of living. But unemployment is not the result merely of there being a large population. The organisation of industry and its private ownership are the important factors. The constant introduction of more efficient machinery and methods displaces workers from employment. It is much more direct, more important, and more speedy than anything which could be done by Birth Control.

The restriction of the population is of no practical use for the purpose of lessening unemployment. An illustration of this exists in the United States. After the War the U.S.A. Government introduced a policy of restricting immigration. But in spite of the limiting of the numbers of immigrants, the introduction of labour-saving machinery has produced its millions of unemployed. Any attempt to raise wages immediately gives the employers an additional inducement to introduce such machinery. We see, therefore, that the standard of living of the workers is kept down by the joint effect of unemployed workers competing for jobs and of employers introducing labour-saving machinery. The restriction of the population, whether by birth control or any other means, is quite ineffective to safeguard the workers against this pressure.

The Position in France.

France, with a smaller population than this country, has a much larger number of workers withdrawn from production in some of the ways mentioned earlier in this article. Her army, navy, and gendarmerie number nearly 600,000. There were 1,500,000 Frenchmen killed in the war, and there are nearly another million disabled ex-service men capable of little in the way of productive work. In 1926 (the latest figures available) public assistance was given to more than 700,000 destitute persons. The number of aged poor registered for relief on 31st December, 1926, was 526,000. (See Statesman’s Year Book, 1930.) The French Government’s employees number about a million, which is much more than the number in the British Civil Service and local Government Service. A very large percentage of Civil Servants are, of course, engaged on non-productive work.

Actually, in spite of birth control, the total population of France is more than it was in 1911. In that year the population was 39,604,992; in 1928 it was estimated to be 41,020,000. (Statesman’s Year Book, 1930. Pages 849/851). This is due partly to a lower death rate, partly to the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine from Germany, and partly to the influx of workers from abroad. If we exclude Alsace-Lorraine (population about 1,800,000) the population of France is now some 600,000 less than it was in 1911. On the other hand, it has been pointed out by the French economist, Francis Delaisi (Daily Herald, 17th January, 1930), that the number of workers in France has been added to by 1,300,000 men and women who, before the war, were small property owners, but are now compelled to work for their living. They have been squeezed out of the ranks of the small capitalists.

Is There Unemployment in France?

It is true that at the present time the published figures of unemployment in France show only a few thousand, but it has to be remembered that the French Government does not keep records of unemployment for the whole of France. The published figures refer to Paris only. And it is a mistake to suppose that widespread unemployment is unknown in France. In March, 1921, there were 44,000 unemployed in Paris alone, while a year before the figure was 70,000. (See "Unemployment as an International Problem,” by J. Morgan Rees, M.A., 1926, Page 83.)

Another factor is the employment of foreigners. Hundreds of thousands of the low paid workers in French agriculture and industry are by nationality Poles, Italians, or Belgians. As soon as unemployment threatens to become serious, these people are sent back to their respective countries. It may be said that during periods of industrial depression the French unemployed will be found lining up at Mussolini’s Labour Exchanges.

Are French Workers Well Off?

One important fact is often forgotten. It is that unemployment is not the only or even the chief cause of poverty. In every country in the capitalist world we find that the larger part of the workers are poor in comparison with the employing class, and a very large percentage of them are permanently unable to secure more than the bare necessities of life.

There are, of course, differences between the rates of pay in different occupations and differences between the levels of pay in different countries, but it is nevertheless true that inside each country there is this contrast between the position of the workers and the position of their employers.

The absence from France of millions of unemployed workers competing for jobs has not enabled those in work to secure any appreciable improvement in their low standard of living; the competition of the machine is more than sufficient for the employer’s purpose. According to the International Labour Office the purchasing power of the French workers is about three-quarters of that of the German workers, and is only 58% of the purchasing power of the English workers. The comparisons made by the International Labour Office are not claimed to be absolutely complete, but they do suffice to indicate what is approximately the relationship between the workers' position in the two countries. So low is the standard of living that only a couple of months ago the Postal, Telegraph, and Telephone staffs in Paris came out on strike in order to try to force their employer to raise their wages to the pre-war level. (For the benefit of those who advocate Nationalisation, it may be remarked that the employer in this case is the French Government.)

An Industrial Revolution.

France since the war has been going through what amounts to an industrial revolution. Before the war France was predominantly agricultural, and the land was to a large extent worked by peasant proprietors, producing for their own use and for the home market. Owing to the acquisition of coal and iron and industrial areas from Germany, and owing to various changes in world trade and industry, France has rapidly developed as an industrial nation. This has been accomplished by a chronic decline of agriculture. The French correspondent of the “Economist” said in January, 1929, that the agricultural depression was rapidly approaching a critical stage. It is estimated that the cost of producing wheat in France can be met with a yield of 8 quintals per acre, but the actual average yield is only 6 quintals per acre. The area under wheat in 1913 was 16,250,000 acres. In 1927 it had fallen to 12,750,000 acres, or more than 20%, and it is still falling. France is faced with a steady decline of agriculture, and the abandonment of once profitable farms. (Economist, January 12th, 1929.)

But while many farms have been abandoned, the full effect of the slump is not shown.

If the production of coal or boots becomes unprofitable, the factory owner closes down and the workers become unemployed. But when a small farmer finds himself getting poorer, the final process of squeezing out may be deferred for years. He, and his family, work harder and longer, live on a lower scale, and postpone the final calamity while it is humanly possible.

“An Immense Economic Crisis."

A special factor has operated since, and as a consequence of the war. Reparations payments received from the German Government have been used to make good the enormous destruction wrought during the war, and to re-equip French industry. This has made work for French and foreign workers in France, and has meant a big sale for goods produced in various groups of French industries.

Now, however, that reconstruction work is finished, there is less demand for workers and less home demand for the products of French industries.

At the same time, the demand from abroad is also falling off.

In 1928 the French Government stabilised the currency on a gold basis. The way in which it was done had the result that for the time being the franc had a higher purchasing power inside France than outside. English or other foreign buyers could purchase more goods in France with 124 francs than they could buy abroad with although £1 could be changed into 124 francs. In other words, French prices were below world prices. The consequence was that until French prices rose, or foreign prices fell, French manufacturers were able to sell abroad more cheaply than their foreign competitors. Factories were working full-time and unemployment was reduced to a low figure.

But now that condition is passing. At the end of 1927 the price level of French products (compared with 1914) was below the price level of products imported into France. By April of this year the price level of foreign imports had fallen well below the level of French products. French manufacturers are losing their temporary advantage. Exports from France during the first 6 months of the year were appreciably below the value and quantity of exports during the first 6 months of 1929.

French industries cannot in the long run escape from the conditions which apply to industries elsewhere. English textiles are depressed; so are textiles in France. British coal exporters complain of foreign competition. French coal interests protest against the increasing imports. of cheap coal from Russia. Wine growers are being drowned financially in the enormous stocks of wine which they cannot sell. They are appealing to the Government to rescue them by increasing the soldier’s free daily ration of wine.

The newly appointed Minister for Finance states (Economist, July 5th) that “the country is faced with an immense economic crisis.”

Sooner or later it will be evident that Birth Control in France is just as ineffective as a cure for unemployment as are all the other schemes for saving capitalism from the evils which it produces.

Anti-Working Class Busybodies.

In conclusion, some comment appears to be called for on the impertinence of the busybodies who advocate such remedies for economic ills.

There are human problems for which birth control may provide the solution, just as there 'are good reasons why some people should avoid alcohol, why others should spend more time in the open air, and why most of us should have more leisure and use it profitably. What, in fact, happens under capitalism is that many workers cannot afford to marry or to have children; they are driven to alcohol or some other stimulant owing to the fatiguing and depressing conditions of their work and their lives; they are worked too long and too hard and have not the money or the time to cultivate, properly the occupations of people with more leisure.

We want the working class to resent this utterly unnecessary denial of opportunities for enjoyment and for making the most of their lives. The world is rich enough if the workers would but rid it of the out-of-date capitalist system. But we find our work for Socialism impeded by the muddle-headed enthusiasts who preach salvation through prohibition, birth control, industrial psychology, and what not. Nominally, they are actuated by pure sympathy for the workers, but invariably their remedies consist of ingenious methods of indirectly helping the employing class. The only reason they admit for doing anything or changing anything is to lower the employers’ costs of production. Our natural desire for sexual intercourse and for children is to be limited so that the employers may get cheaper labour; we must not “waste” our money on alcohol because without it we should be more efficient workers; we must keep out of cinemas and spend our week-ends in the parks and playing fields, which our kindly employers or the state provide for us; if we do we shall be fine and fresh on Monday morning. We must work reduced hours; but only if the industrial psychologists can show that it will pay the boss, and only reduced just to that precise point at which it pays most.

We are to be born, educated, married, rationed in children and alcohol, our whole lives carefully supervised, and finally we may expect to be killed in war, all for the sake of the employing class, and all conducted under a smoke-screen of propaganda carried on by the birth controllers, the family endowment advocates, the prohibitionists, and all the other mischievous people who do not grasp or who deliberately obscure the simple outlines of the one great social problem.

Edgar Hardcastle

Brownian Motion (2018)

Book Review from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

'My Life, Our Times'. By Gordon Brown. (Bodley Head. 2017. £25)

The former Prime Minister’s memoirs are not quite the mammoth exercise in self-justification most commentators expected. They are arguably more moving at times than would have been thought – Brown writes well about his personal battles, including about the serious eyesight problems that dogged his career. And in some ways he is more genuinely reflective about his political actions and legacy than his predecessor.

Brown undoubtedly has both intellect and a certain, relentless focus – and at times this has served his well politically. He seems critically aware of some of the major dynamics and features of our times too. Writing of the major financial crisis that marked his Premiership, he says:

‘Bankers and boardrooms had awarded themselves bonuses they did not need for work they had not done and for risks they had taken at the expense of those who went without’. (p. 423).

He is not wrong – but then this is also the man who had, against all the evidence of history, pledged to abolish boom and bust and even now fails to understand that the financial crisis was not caused by a failure of global governance but by the ‘animal spirits’ that are integral to the capitalist economy and its inherent cycles of creative destruction.

As always, Brown appears focused and intense – but only as a micro-reformist with a moral purpose. His response to a problem in government was invariably to introduce a tax allowance there, or provide a subsidy there, tinkering to give the impression of dynamic action when there is really little substantive movement or none.

Throughout these pages Brown uses phrases such as ‘we needed to get the job done immediately’ and ‘I set about the task straightway’ and similar, just to reinforce the impression of an Action Man at work. But even at a political level, this approach only appears convincing (if at all) when the waters are relatively calm, not when there is a uncontrollable storm brewing, let alone a gale force wind howling. And it was the headwinds of the financial crisis that blew Brown’s economic record – first as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister – to pieces, with a severe recession propelling unemployment higher when he left office than when he entered, and with income inequality little changed despite the decade and more of relentless tax system tinkering. Not forgetting an electorate so embittered within a short time it had voted to leave the European Union and almost to create a separate Scottish state too (both to Brown’s mounting concern and near horror).

Despite the differences that emerged between Brown and Blair over time, this book illustrates that one thing still unites them at least – a continuing failure to understand that the type of micro-reformism they espoused within the overall movement towards globalised capital is what has in large part led to the type of knee-jerk populism that now befuddles them. If Mrs Thatcher famously said that her most enduring legacy was Tony Blair, then the enduring legacy of Blair and Brown are the comedy book-ends of Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn, and yet they still don’t appear to understand why.

DAP