Steering the Economy (1982)

From the June 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who seek political support for capitalism have two differing solutions for its present economic troubles. Supporters of Margaret Thatcher believe that the solution lies in a reduction in government spending combined with “wage restraint” which, in effect, means a reduction in real wages. Even among Conservatives, support for this policy is not whole-hearted. It has been described as the “right wing” view. This policy is bitterly opposed by the “left”, composed mainly of Labour Party supporters, and by some Liberals and Social Democrats. These exponents of capitalism are united in believing that government spending should now be increased “to stimulate the economy”and reduce unemployment. It should here be noted that the last Labour government, faced themselves with the problems of administering capitalism, carried out a policy of cuts in public expenditure.

So, which way to turn? Left or Right? The purpose of this article is to show that along neither path lies a solution to working-class problems. In attempting to explain the dilemma clearly and in the space of a short article, some simplification will be made in what is obviously a very complex set of interacting factors.

Those politicians who claim to represent the working class assert that government spending should be increased to build council houses, improve health services, maintain educational standards, repair roads and sewers and, above all, to provide employment. Such activities do not themselves realise a profit, otherwise the government would not be called upon to provide the finance. The purpose of such “social” expenditure is not normally to provide employment but rather to provide the conditions in which workers can be employed in other, profitable, enterprises.

The three sources of government finance are: taxation, loans and currency inflation. Taxation takes many forms, direct and indirect: company tax, income tax, value added tax, excise duty and the like. On the other hand, the government may borrow money, again from many sources: finance houses, banks, insurance companies, the general public, and soon. Finally, when this country abandoned the gold standard in 1931 the way was clear for governments to meet part of their expenses by authorising the Bank of England to increase the supply of inconvertible currency—in other words, by printing an excess of paper money.

We come now to examine the repercussions of these three forms of government spending. Increased taxation reduces profits in a number of ways. Company tax reduces it at the source. Personal income tax on unearned income reduces the dividends received by shareholders. Personal income tax on earned income is also a drain on profits; broadly speaking, wage workers have to be paid enough to allow them to work efficiently and rear children to replace themselves. Their wages must therefore provide for the payment of income tax—as well as various forms of indirect taxes. This is not to say that a general change in taxation does not temporarily affect the standard of living of wage workers. But, in the long term, resistance to any downward pressure on living standards brings wages back to what is socially necessary for efficient production.

To the extent that profits arc reduced by increased taxation, one result has been an increase in investment abroad, in the search for higher profit margins. Another effect is a loss of competitiveness on overseas markets. Reduced profits result, in these and other ways, in reduced production. As an alternative to increased taxation, governments may increase their borrowing. Not only is this merely postponing the repayment of loans (and interest) by other means but also it has the effect of increasing interest rates. The government competes on the money market against the needs of private enterprise, with a consequent increase in interest rates and curtailment of expansion—and in many cases a reduction of production. The third source of government finance, currency inflation, also has the effect of increasing interest rates. The excess issue of paper currency by the Bank of England results in a reduction in its purchasing power. Those who lend money expect to receive an increased return to take account of the effects of inflation. Building Societies find that they have to increase their interest rates to investors, which they will try to pass on to present and prospective borrowers— further impoverishing those workers with mortgages.

Currency inflation reduces real wages by the resultant increase in prices. In 1975, according to the government’s Retail Price Index, prices rose by 25 per cent. This led to demands for wage increases which in many cases could only be achieved by strike action. The present government’s policy of “wage restraint” means a reduction in real wages as prices continue to rise. The major reason at present for the reduction in production and massive unemployment is a worldwide trade depression; but an increase in government spending, although it may provide a limited increase in employment in some areas of the economy, causes a reduction in production in others. This is why all previous attempts by governments to “spend their way out of a recession” have always failed.

To complete the explanation it should be noted that the increase in unemployment due to reduced production means an increase in the total of unemployment benefit. This in turn involves increased government spending—unless the rate of benefit can be cut in the same proportion as the increase in unemployment, and there are obvious limits to this. Moreover, increased unemployment means that the total purchasing power of the working class is reduced. This reduction in purchasing power causes a further reduction in production in those areas of the economy related to working class spending. In such areas there will be a consequent increase in unemployment.

As compared with a policy of increased government spending, the repercussions of a reduction are more direct and immediate. For example, economies in education result in fewer jobs for teachers. Government curbs on local authority spending not only result in a direct reduction in manpower but also in enforced savings in money spent on materials. The slowing down of local authority housing programmes is an example of this. Examine any attempt to reduce central or local government expenditure and it will be seen that a reduction in employment follows. It should also be pointed out that, even where such expenditure is not reduced in money terms, there may in fact be a reduction in real terms due to inflation.

Whether government spending is increased or reduced, there is no way out of the maze of contradictions inherent in the capitalist economy—whether this be private enterprise capitalism or state capitalism (as in Russia) or a mixture of both. The gains made by the working class (those who have to work for wages or salaries) during periods of economic prosperity for the employing class, are rapidly eroded during periods of trade depression. The key to an understanding of the limitations of the present economy can be found in the fact that, in the main, unless capital can be invested at a profit, production ceases. This is a fundamental law of the capitalist system. It is no matter that raw materials and labour, the sole requirements for wealth production, are available in abundance without the prospect of profit, production ceases.

In a socialist society this restriction would be removed. Wealth would be produced solely to satisfy human needs—and in the modern world we have the potential to produce wealth in abundance. There would be no trade depressions because there would be no trade—just distribution. There would be no money because money is only required for trading. There would be no “unemployment” as the working class experiences it—work and “leisure” would be undistinguishable. In fact most of the terms in this article would become obsolete. The “left” and “right” would only be remembered as wings of the same predatory bird: capitalism.

John Moore

The State of Medicine (1982)

From the June 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The National Health Service was sold to us as a guarantee of health and security but is itself now the invalid of the Welfare State. If not actually bankrupt, it suffers from a lack of much needed investment. If not completely chaotic it is periodically shaken by massive reorganisations which attempt to relieve its administrative problems, often by reintroducing a system previously condemned as restrictive and inefficient. In April 1974 a “three tier” structure was imposed, which severed all links with local authority control; now the latest reorganisation has brought back the District Health Authorities, which include local councillors. At the receiving end of all this are the aptly- named patients, who bring their ailments to the surgery or the hospital in the hope that the NHS is alive and well and competent.

This hope is sustained by a popular misconception of the role of the state as the beneficent, munificent parent of us all its children. This concept springs from the belief that only the state has the resources to run something which is both essential to everyone’s interests and wide enough to operate in that way. For example, the Armed Forces are supposed to protect “our" country, “our" freedom, “our" way of life. The driest of Tories would never suggest that the forces should be owned and financed by private companies—quoted on the Stock Exchange, subject to take-overs, asset stripping and the rest. In the same way, when the coal mines were seen as necessary to the efficient and profitable operation of British industry they were taken away from the fragmented, competitive set-up of the private pit owners and were nationalised.

It was on the same theory that the NHS was born. Before the war, medical services in Britain were disjointed and unco-ordinated, varying in resources and efficiency from one area to another—and not necessarily in accordance with the demands for them. There were over a thousand voluntary hospitals, from large establishments with the most modern equipment and some weightily distinguished consultants down to the small, struggling cottage hospital. About 2000 more hospitals had been founded by local authorities or had sprung from the sick wards of workhouses. They were often precariously financed, living off donations, bequests and flag days, even selling their wall space to the advertisers of patent medicine, which must have been rather confusing to the patients. This haphazard development extended to the other branches of medical care such as GPs, medical inspectors and so on. There was a compulsory medical insurance but this covered only wage earners, excluding their families and was not valid for any treatment other than by a GP.

The war gave an opportunity radically to reshape this confusion into some sort of order and a basis for this was provided by the state-run Emergency Medical Service (EMS) which was at first designed to deal with air raid casualties but whose scope was widened to take in other categories such as evacuated children. The EMS directly employed doctors and nurses, for a wage, and it took over entire hospitals so that by September 1941 it controlled ½ million beds.

At the same time the government was aware of the need to proffer some promises of a better world after the war. as an encouragement to the people who were suffering in the battles, under the bombs and so on. The most famous of these pledges was the Beveridge Report, prepared by a committee which started its work just as Germany was invading Russia and which produced its findings in late 1942. Beveridge promised that “a comprehensive national health service will ensure that for every citizen there is available whatever medical treatment he requires, in whatever form he requires it”.

The coalition government accepted Beveridge’s health service proposals and before their defeat in 1945 two ministers Ernest Brown (National Liberal) and Henry Willink (Conservative) presented plans for a National Health Service on the model suggested in the Report. It was of course left to the Attlee government to push through the necessary Act, to fight the British Medical Association over doctors’ pay and conditions—and eventually to take the credit for what they wrote into history as a great humanitarian reform.

Experience, and the adaptation of the NHS to the everyday needs of a society based on class privilege, have exposed the reform for what it is. Only the most myopic devotee of the NHS would now claim that its services are of the highest possible standard and are freely and equally available to everyone. There is a swelling tide of frustration and disillusionment with the NHS; the 1979 Royal Commission on the NHS commented: “Nor does the evidence suggest that social inequalities in health have decreased since the establishment of the NHS. The position (of partly skilled and unskilled workers) appears to have worsened relative to those in (professional and managerial jobs).”

An essential part of the best treatment is that it should be immediately available; most conditions which need attention can only get worse the longer they are neglected. But one of the big problems of the NHS are the waiting lists, which are well above the half-million mark. An especially grisly economy operates in the waiting lists: economy because it is a matter of resources which are expensive and therefore scarce, and grisly because it often means the death of some of those who are kept waiting. As might be expected, Enoch Powell has described the situation in stark, heartless words:

  If the hospital resources are to be continuously used, there must be awaiting list, a cistern from which a steady flow of cases can be maintained. Private practice can afford to have gaps because patients are buying time. (A New Look At Medicine and Politics.) 

This probably sounds very sensible on the Stock Exchange, or to government ministers who are aware of their responsibility to run this society in the interests of a small minority. The actual flesh and blood people, who suffer and die in the queue, can be expected to see it differently. In the case of kidney disease, for example, the decision to treat or to abandon the sufferer to die is largely dependent on their place in the economic order of priority. One leading kidney specialist has described the dilemma:

  The financial situation is now so acute that children are having to compete with adults for treatment and they tend to lose out because priority has to be given to adults who have families to look after and mortgages to maintain. (Quoted in The NHS — Your Money Or Your Life, by Lesley Garner.)

Many people are trying to escape these obstacles by buying their way into private treatment. The result has been a boom in the insurance schemes like BUPA and Private Patients Plan. Most of this expansion comes from companies who are paying to insure their workers; from their point of view the pay-off is in a quicker, planned admission to hospital, less time off work and easier access to the patient while they are in hospital. (The numbers of people insuring themselves, in contrast, is falling.)

But the private sector too operates on something of a delusion. The kind of insurance which is affordable by wage earners covers only a limited range of ailments—typically, an operation which requires only a brief stay in hospital both before and after the event. It does not cover the chronically sick, the lingering terminally ill, the physically or mentally handicapped, the old people who need intensive nursing during a senility which intensifies towards death. These sorts of ailments can be treated privately but to do so would cost the sort of money which is beyond the scope of the insurance schemes. As one consultant in mental handicap put it: “In mental subnormality you see the patient for the rest of their life”. It is, then, no surprise that BUPA favours a mixed state and private medical service, with the private schemes taking the cream of the short-term patients while the NHS grapples with the rest. A foreseeable result of that would be to depress the state service even further, as investment, doctors and nursing staff were attracted into the private sector.

Whatever the outcome of this conflict, we can be despairingly confident that the basic, vital facts about health and sickness will receive only scant attention. The vast majority of death and disease today does not happen through an accident, nor is it unavoidable. For example, thirty million people die every year from starvation, simply because they are too poor to escape from a famine which itself is the result of the production of food as commodities rather than to meet human needs. Then there are the “industrial” diseases like asbestosis, which are a direct consequence of the way in which some workers get their living and which inflict a brutally slow, agonising death on their victims. More subtly, there is the sickness which can be written into the death certificate as due to other causes but which is in fact the result of the jobs their victims do or the places where they live.

The Working Group on Inequalities In Health recently reported that a labourer, a cleaner and a dock worker are twice as likely to die as is someone in the “professions”; they are twice as likely to suffer respiratory and infectious diseases, have trouble with their circulatory and digestive systems. The distinction is a false one, since both “labourers” and “professionals” are members of the same class but the point is made; it is the former who in many ways suffer the harsher degree of exploitation, the heavier weight of impoverishment. More evidence comes from Professor Harvey Bremner of John Hopkins University, who has spent some twenty years studying the subject. Bremner is convinced that economic stress on workers stimulates physical and mental illnesses; specifically he says that a rise of one million in unemployment over five years could cause an extra 50,000 people to die and 60,000 more cases of mental illness. He also says that Scottish workers are under a peculiar stress, due to a more severe competition between industries there and this is reflected in sickness striking quicker, and more harshly, when there is unemployment.

So it comes down to a matter of class. The working class—those people who need to sell their working abilities in order to live—include those who do the dirty, monotonous, dangerous work as well as those who do the stressful, ulcerative jobs in “management” and the “professions”. It includes the people who crowd into cramped, jerry-built homes under the pollution of industrial capitalism. The other social class, who do not have to work because they own and control the means of life, can afford to live away from all this; they experience no stress of insecurity, their homes are spacious and leisured, they have access to the best of diets. If they want it that way, their lives can be a continuous recreation. The medical care they can command was typified in Tudor Hart’s Inverse Care Law. which laid down that the availability of good medical care varies inversely with the needs of the people it serves. Simply, they can have the best of everything—the best homes, food, education, medicine.

This class do not need the National Health Service, which was designed for the workers, to patch them up and get them back to work as quickly and as productively as possible. Whatever medical care is available to the working class exists only because it contributes, in the short or the long run, to the production of profit and the accumulation of capital. One of the reasons for setting up the NHS, for example, was that it is cheaper to pay for the hospitals, GPs, health centres and the rest through taxation than through the complex process of means testing, claims and rebates which was operated in the private system. Doctors who have trained for years to relieve sickness are persistently faced with agonising choices, based on the demands of a balance sheet rather than human comfort and survival:

   If I abandon or downgrade the patient with advanced cancer of the stomach in favour of two patients with hernia, how do I make a cost benefit analysis? How do I equate the loss of six months dyspepsia-free survival with the economic utility of the return of two breadwinners to work? (Garner, op. cit.)

Well, she or he can’t. The NHS is sick because at best it is struggling against the inexorable demands of the social system in which human needs count for little. Capitalism deprives its people of their dignity in many ways — in sickness and in health and in the end in their tragic, unjustifiable deaths.

Ivan

Appreciation. (1915)

From the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following are selections from messages of encouragement and appreciation which have reached us from many corners of the far-flung Empire in which we live. As adumbrated in the leading-article, these messages are at once an encouragement and a fulfillment.

"Having read perhaps the bulk of Socialist (real or so-called) printed in the English language, we wish to express admiration regarding the attitude taken up by the S.P.G.B. towards the European conflict. It is certainly a beacon light for the others. May your propaganda continue to spread. It is the only antidote to patriotism and the other poisons instilled into the minds of the workers.”

T. Anderson, J. Sullivan.

Blackball, New Zealand. 

Trusting you will continue to maintain your clear-cut and unequivocal stand, unlike so many of the pseudo-Socialists in the land of your masters, and in other lands, I am
                                                                    Yours for real education,

Simon Freestone.  

Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.

I, along with the Party here, greatly appreciate your stand during the present crisis.

Robert Temple.

Nanaime, British Columbia.

I am pleased to say that I have bean receiving the "S.S.” regularly lately, and that it still keeps up its reputation as the best Socialist paper published.

F, C. Wright.

Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

"Members admire the stand and courage of tbs S.P.G.B.”
"Wherever the 'Socialist Standard’ has been read it has met with approval.”

E. R. Bales.

(Sec. Socialist Party of North America.) 

Toronto, Ont.

I think l can truthfully say that yours is the most consistent of any publication I know of, and I have passed many of my copies to comrades. Each and every one agrees that you are treading the only path possible for a clear-cut revolutionary organisation.

Jas. Brereton. 

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

I may mention that the comrades of the S.P.G.B. have the goodwill and appreciation of the local comradec.

Sidney E. Gage, 

William Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

  I am at a loss for words in which to express my admiration for the great little paper, and keen appreciation of the courageous stand of the S.P. of G.B. in these trying times. I recognise fully that from the class-conscious proletarian standpoint it is the only stand to take. The act remains, however, that there are numbers who have certain convictions, and who know the causes, yet lack tbs courage of their convictions.
  In the midst of the confusion obtaining in the ranks of labour as a result of the mouthings of the different labour fakirs, and the outpourings of tbs various intellectual prostitutes and other humbugs, the attitude of the "Socialist Standard” is clear and unmistakable; it is a beacon of light in a wilderness of stygian darkness.

F. J. Connett,

Kenora, Ontario.

Editorial: A Year of War. (1915)

Editorial from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the present issue the “Socialist Standard” will hare completed an extremely important volume. Socialist propaganda under war conditions in the capital of a belligerent nation is naturally not the easiest of tasks,yet throughout this onerous year, as heretofore, that task has been faithfully accomplished. We have the consolation of knowing that we have said nothing that we shall need to unsay when "peace" comes—be that soon or late. And we have said many things that we are most thankful to have said; and have kept the Socialist flag proudly flying in the face of the coalition of robbers, the treachery of labour organisations, and tbs hostility of a, people war crazed. And we have, moreover, the somewhat melancholy satisfaction of knowing that we are the only party in the belligerent countries—so for as can be ascertained—that has not betrayed the Socialist position.

At the beginning of the war every effort was made to maintain outdoor propaganda meetings, but the brutality of crowds made drunk with patriotism, the prohibitions by the authorities, and the series of police prosecutions of our speakers, compelled the rank and file of the Socialist Party to put an end to the fruitless sacrifices of their spokesmen by stopping outdoor propaganda. But propaganda did not cease. It changed its form.

The "Socialist Standard” became of even greater importance to the Party, and it has unflinchingly held high the flag of intelligent revolt against the system of robbery and murder.

Yet even here the mailed fist has been closing in. Every month that passes sees an increasing restriction of the liberty of the Press. Tbs assassination of freedom of speech was followed by the destruction of the liberty of the Press. Unceasing vigilance has been and is needed to keep the "Socialist Standard” out of the grip of the brutal bands of the ruthless coalition of exploiters. And it will be our endeavour to keep this "Standard” constantly fluttering defiance of oppression until the workers come at last into their own.

Throughout the year the Party has stood as one man. There has been no doubt, no hesitation, and no faltering in its ranks as to the attitude to be adopted. And this unequivocal maintenance of the Socialist position amidst the difficulties of this hellish time, has completely justified our faith in the efficacy of Socialist education. Once the working doss as a whole are imbued with Socialist knowledge the cause is won. No blandishments of patriotism, no lies of an unscrupulous and corrupt Press, can then seduce them from the accomplishment of their mission. Therefore we continue in the work to our hands—the great task of Socialist education, satisfied that at least we have done our duty as far ac in us lies during this year of madness and murder.

There is also satisfaction to be obtained from the fact that the circulation of our official organ has been wall maintained during a period noted for its shipwreck of labour journals. This journal, as well as the Party, emerges strengthened by its time of trial; and the volume that now closes will have a particular value in after years as a record of the firm stand of the Socialist Party of Great Britain for Socialist Principle in the midst of almost universal apostacy.

Nor has this voice of the Party been unheard or its work unappreciated. From far and near have messages of encouragement and rapport reached us. And to show how we value such spontaneous messages of appreciation and fraternity we print a selection of them in another column. They are words of encouragement to us all in the dreary times of the present and in the difficult and dangerous times ahead. They an an acknowledgment that our labour is not in vain. They fan the flame of our faith that the cause of the workers must triumph despite the difficulties and dangers that undoubtedly beset its path. We know that it is always darkest before the dawn. The intellect of the workers slumbers fitfully at present, but this cannot always be. The march of events, the pressure of economic circumstances, of the greed and callous brutality of the ruling class, will help to open their eyes and make them rise to an adequate conception of their great historic mission. Then we may say with Shelley, but with a deeper meaning to the working class:

"Rise! Like lions after slumber,In unconquerable number,Shake your chains to earth like dew That in the night had fallen on you.Ye are many, they are few.”

For Future Reference. (1916)

From the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

At a War Savings meeting held at the Mansion House on Monday, June 19th, Lord Buckmaster insisted on the following facts:

• Four days of war represents the cost of a year of education.
• Three days of war is more than the whole of the Old Age Pensions for a year.
• Five weeks of war costs more than the annual peace budget.—“DailyMail," June 20.

Therefore, said in effect my Lord Buck, with paralysing logic, hurry up and save more money to throw down the bloody sink!

The Christian Butcher. (1917)

From the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

One notices among a myriad of flag days one set aside for what is termed “a silent tribute to the late Lord Roberts.” In connection with this the following funny extract, dished up in characteristic Christian style, is not without a touch of real spice. The Bishop of Salisbury, speaking at Poole respecting the death of the “hero” of Kandahar said:

  A noble pattern for the last recruit in our new army to try to follow, he lived with the sword in his hand, but with his eyes upon Christ. His crowning glory was the pre-eminence he gave to God.

Now while it may be quite conforming to custom for people like the brave dope doctor and other high and mighty folk to hold other people’s coats what time they themselves survey the non-existent Johnny from a position twenty miles behind the front trenches, we are of the conviction that from the view-point of a soldier the advice is more likely to gain for the onlooker one "where the chopper hit the chicken” and a free passport into heaven. Still, doubtless this also forms part of the “crowning glory.” Who knows.

B. B. B.

The Revolution in Russia: Where it Fails (1918)

From the August 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

By far the most important event in the social sense, which has occurred during the world war has been the upheaval in Russia, culminating in the revolution of March and November, 1917. For the working class these events are of supreme interest and worthy of close and deep study, not only for the purpose of keeping in touch with events as they occur, but also for learning the lessons these may impart.

Just here, however, the working class of Great Britain are faced with a most formidable obstacle in the way of their gaining even a slight knowledge of the happenings, or reaching a position where a full consideration could be given to the facts of the revolution. This obstacle is the Defence of the Realm Act.

By operations of this Act the master class sift all news coming into the country, by either Press or post, and take care that only matters allowed to be published are those that suit the interests of this class in one form or another. Thus, quite apart from their ownership of the General Press, they are able to prevent groups or individuals in this country obtaining information that might be useful to the working class. In other words, the only information or statements anyone outside of government circles can obtain here is just what it suits the master class to allow them to have.

In spite of this simple and glaring fact the I.L.P. have not hesitated in to denounce the action of November, usually called the “Bolshevik Revolution,” while the S.L.P. has acclaimed it as a great Socialist revolution.

Point is added to these facts by the appearance of two pamphlets written not only by Russians, but by men claiming to be Bolsheviks. Here, if anywhere, one might imagine, will be found useful information, concrete facts, detailed accounts of events, that would be useful in guiding us to a sound judgement.

Unfortunately, nothing whatever is told in either pamphlet, apart from expressions of opinion, except the statements already given in the capitalist Press, which for the reasons above must be taken with the utmost caution.

The first pamphlet entitled: "War or Revolution", is written by Leon Trotsky, and is published by the S.L.P. at Glasgow. No date of its writing is given, but from internal evidence it was seemingly written in 1915—before the fall of the Czar—and appears to have been originally published in America.

While claiming to be a Marxist Trotsky appears surprised at the actions of the so-called Socialist International in voting war credits and supporting the war. To any serious Marxian student this was only to be expected. The Socialist Party stands firm and solid on the line of the class war. Only here is he impregnable. Only on this basis can the workers organise successfully for the overthrow of capitalism. For years past the S.P.G.B. alone in this country, and the Marxist groups in other countries, have pointed out that sections from England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, etc., that formed the majority of the International, either had abandoned, or had never taken up, a stand upon the class war, and were therefore really not Socialists in the proper sense of the word. Their actions when the war began and since have simply emphasised the truth of our former case. That it took this world-slaughter to enlighten Trotsky as to the real position of these sections shows how little he grasped their actual attitude before. He is equally mistaken in his judgement of events in England, for on p.16 he says:

In England the Russian Revolution [1905] hastened the growth of independent Socialism.

Quite apart from the fact that the 1905 upheaval in Russia was a capitalist and not a Socialist movement, this statement is absolutely incorrect. A movement that is not independent cannot be Socialist, and the Russian episode had no measurable effect upon either the Labour or the Socialist movement in this country. The real break with the old compromising policy that had saturated the movement in England, took place in 1904—a year before the Russian outbreak—when the Marxists formed up in the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Equally mistaken is Trotsky’s statement on the same page that “six or seven years ago [that is six or seven years before 1915] in England, the Labour Party, after separating from the Liberal Party, entered into the closest association with it again.” As every student of the history of the Labour Party knows, that party has never been out of the “closest association” with the Liberal Party since the day it formed. Just as incorrect is the phrase in the concluding section (p.27) where the author says: “Socialist reformism has actually turned into Socialist imperialism.”

Reformism and Imperialism are capitalist, and can by no stretch of the imagination be called Socialist. Such misuse of the latter word, especially by one claiming to be a Socialist, is a direct assistance to the master class in their endeavours to further confuse the minds of the working class by misrepresentation of various kinds.

The second pamphlet was written by M. Litvinoff in March 1918, but it adds nothing to our knowledge of affairs in Russia, as it simply consists of a selection of the statements that have appeared in the capitalist Press of this country. In some instances these statements are exceedingly useful against agents of the master class like Kerensky, and we have used these admissions ourselves in the Socialist Standard when Kerensky was in power. Some of the other statements are significant in their bearing on the actions of the workers in Russia in a manner unsuspected of Litvinoff.

One feature of extreme and peculiar importance in these movements is treated by both the above writers in exactly the same manner, i.e., with silence. This feature is the economic and social position of the working class in Russia. For a matter of such importance to be neglected by both writers, shows either a lack of knowledge of the Russian situation or a deliberate attempt to conceal such knowledge from their readers. As two such Russians are either unable or unwilling to supply this information the only thing left is to take that available before the war and try to apply it to the solution of the present situation. Clearly this can only be a provisional judgement while awaiting reliable news of the revolutions and of the present position of the workers in Russia.

Even to-day Russia is largely an agricultural country, some authorities stating that 80 per cent. of the population are engaged in that calling. Their system, however, has certain peculiar features that would take a large volume to describe.

In the main the agricultural population is divided up in village groups or communities largely based on what is called the “Mir.” Each peasant is allotted a certain amount of land, depending on the number of his family. The holdings are changed periodically so as to prevent any one individual retaining the best land. If the population increases beyond the limits of the land controlled by the “Mir,” a group forms up and moves out to new lands in a manner so well described by Julius Faucher in his brilliant essay on The Russian Agrarian System. As this group is related to the old “Mir,” communication and intercourse are kept up and a division of a race may have a whole series villages spread out over a certain area, and having a more or less loose connection with each other. The land, however, is not owned by the village group. In the ultimate it is owned by the Czar in his capacity as “Father of the People” though large number of estates have been granted to the Nobles for their military and other services rendered to the Crown.

This ownership, whatever particular form it may take, is admitted by all the “Mir” by the payment of a charge for the land, usually termed a tax. This tax is paid to the Noble where he holds an estate and to the Czar where the latter is personal owner.

Into the developments, complications, abuses and rogueries that have resulted from this system we have not the space to go. One illustration can be found in Carl Joubert’s Russia as it really is and Stepaniak in his Russian Peasantry, has given a masterly description of its workings. It will be sufficient to point out that apart from minor modifications three broad divisions have developed.

In the wild forest regions of the North, the people are still in the upper stage of Barbarism, being a mixture of hunters and pastoral workers, who know practically nothing of the affairs of the outer world. In the middle regions the spread of the use of money and the effects that follow have resulted in more modern methods of working the estates. Owing to the heavy tax imposed large numbers of peasants have been unable to pay this charge after a poor season, with the inevitable result that they fall into the hands of money-lenders—who in numerous cases are actual members of the “Mir” —or they have to give up their holdings and either work for the money-lender or drift into the towns in search of work.

In the South or “Black Belt” region, largely owing to the fertility of the soil, old-fashioned methods still persist and the peasants make desperate struggles to retain their holdings, but were slowly losing their grip before the war.

The abolition of serfdom on private estates in 1861 and on the Czar’s estates in 1871, was loudly announced as a great emancipation of the peasants. Under these decrees the peasants were supposed to be placed in a position were they could purchase their holdings, either individually or as a village group or Mir. The Nobles, of course, still retained the bulk of the estates granted to them, and it was intended that the big landlords would be balanced in the social system by the large number of small owners or peasant proprietors that would be sure to follow the great act of “emancipation”. In the vast majority of cases, of course, the whole thing was a fraud and the landlords and moneylenders being the only ones, as a rule, able to purchase land, we have the paradox that the measure introduced to extend peasant proprietorship has resulted in the concentration of large estates in fewer hands than before. This has increased the number of landless peasants which recent estimates have placed at about one-third of the agricultural population, while even those who favour the system do not claim that more than another third have become owners of the land, either individually or through their village groups.

The local affairs of the Mir are managed by the open general meetings, and these meetings elect the Elder or Mayor, who is the spokesman and delegate before the authorities. As stated above, the moneylender of the village is often a member of the Mir, and owing to his economic hold on the peasants he is often elected as the Elder.

It was, and is, people of this type that Kerensky represents. The Mir, of course, is under general Government control, usually through a “superintendent” or police officer.

In the Western area and the Southern Oil Belt industrial towns of the usual capitalist type, have developed in late years, and contain a number of genuine proletarians or wage slaves.

Is this huge mass of people, numbering about 160,000,000 and spread over eight and a half millions of square miles, ready for Socialism? Are the hunters of the North, the struggling peasant proprietors of the South, the agricultural wage slaves of the Central Provinces, and the industrial wage slaves of the towns convinced of the necessity, and equipped with the knowledge requisite, for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of life?

Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change has occurred immensely more rapidly than history has recorded, the answer is “No!”

And it is extremely significant that neither Trotsky nor Litvinoff say a single word on this aspect of the situation. In fact, as far as one can judge, the best, but all too brief, account of the present position in certain parts of Russia is given by Mr. Price in his articles in the Manchester Guardian during November and December, 1917.

Leaving aside the subsidiary differences in the economic positions of the different provinces, the one great fact common to the mass of the peasantry is their desire to be rid of the burden of the tax they have to pay for their land, whether to the local lord or to the Government, so that they may gain a livelihood from their holdings. This applies to both the individual and the group holders. Hence the peasants’ movements are not for social ownership, but merely for the abolition of the tax burden and their right to take up new land as the population increases. In other words, they only wish to be free the old system of individual or group cultivation from governmental taxes and control.

The agricultural and industrial wage-workers would be in a similar position economically as the same class of workers in Western Europe, if allowance is made for the lesser capitalist development of Russia.

What justification is there, then, for terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists. M. Litvinoff practically admits this when he says (p.37):

  In seizing the reigns of power the Bolsheviks were obviously playing a game with high stakes. Petrograd had shown itself entirely on their side. To what extent would the masses of the proletariat and the peasant army in the rest of the country support them?

This is a clear confession that the Bolsheviks themselves did not know the views of the mass when they took control. At a subsequent congress of the soviets the Bolsheviks had 390 out of a total of 676.

It is worthy of note that none of the capitalist papers gave any description of the method of electing either the Soviets or the delegates to the Congress. And still more curious is it that though M. Litvinoff says these delegates “were elected on a most democratic basis”, he does not give the slightest information about this election. This is more significant as he claims the Constituent Assembly “had not faithfully represented the real mind of the people”

From the various accounts and of the capitalist Press (and, as stated above, M. Litvinoff does not supply us with any other information) it seem the Bolsheviks form the driving force, and perhaps even the majority, of the new Government, sometimes called the Soviet Government and sometimes the “Council of Peoples’ Commissaries”. The Soviet Government certainly appears to have been accepted, or at least acquiesced in, by the bulk of the Russian workers. The grounds for this acceptance are fairly clear. First the Soviet Government promised peace; secondly they promised a settlement of the land question; thirdly they announced a solution of the industrial workers grievances.

Unfortunately various and often contradictory accounts are given of the details of this programme, and Litvinoff’s statements are in vague general terms that give no definite information on the matter. Until some reliable account of the Soviet Government’s programme is available detailed judgement must remain suspended. That this mixed Government should have been tacitly accepted by the Russian workers is no cause for surprise. Quite the contrary. They (the Soviet Government) appear to have done all that was possible in the circumstances to carry their peace proposals.

And we are quite confident that if the mass of the people in any of the belligerent countries, with the possible exception of America, were able to express their views, free from consequences, on Peace or Continuance of War, an overwhelming majority would declare in favour of Peace.

As is admitted by the various sections of the capitalist Press, the Soviet representatives at the Brest-Litovsk Conference stood firm on their original proposals to the last moment. That they had to accept hard terms in the end is no way any discredit to them, but it was a result of conditions quite beyond their control. If they had done no more than this, if they had been compelled to give up office on their return, the fact that they had negotiated a stoppage of the slaughter and maiming of millions of the working class would have been a monument to their honour, and constituted an undeniable claim to the highest approbation of the workers the world over.

Of course the capitalist Press at once denounced the signing of the Peace treaty as “dastardly treachery”, and so on. We can quite easily understand that the agents of the foullest and most hypocritical ruling class the world has ever seen, steeped to their eyes in their own cruel treacheries, should have been astounded at the Soviet Government keeping its pledge to the Russian people, instead of selling them out to the Allied Governments.

Then follow the usual stereotyped “outrages” and “crimes” that the master class agents never fail to provide when an opponent dares to stand in their path. Unfortunately for these capitalist agents, their own correspondents are allowed to move freely over the country, and often “give the game away” by describing improvements both in ordinary administration and economic conditions under the new rule. And Mr. Litvinoff scores neatly here over the capitalist Press by comparing the alleged “outrages” with the actions of the master class against the workers after the fall of the Paris commune. A still more striking illustration is given by the Mr. Price from Russia itself, in his article in the Manchester Guardian for November 28th, 1917, where he describes the cold-blooded slaughter of 500,000 Khirgiz Tartars by the Czar’s Government in 1916. And he caustically remarks:

   While Western Europe has heard about Armenian massacres, the massacre of the Central Asian Moslems by the Tsar’s agents has been studiously hidden.

Indeed, if the Soviet Government were to start on a campaign of deliberate slaughter, it would take them many busy years to even approach the huge number of victims of the last Czar’s reign. But so far all the evidence points to the allegations of Bolshevik butcheries being but a tissue of lies fabricated to suit bourgeois purposes.

And what of the future? It is impossible to offer any close forecast in the face of our lack of knowledge. We do not know what the Soviet Government has promised the peasants. We are ignorant of what measures they are putting into operation to solve the complicated land question. Despite the existence of the Mir organisation it will be easier for the Russian government to arrange for the management of the factories and industries of the towns than to settle the various and widely divergent, detailed demands of the peasants of the different provinces. There is no ground whatever for supposing that they are ready or willing to accept social ownership of the land, along with the other means of production. Are the Bolsheviks prepared to try to establish something other than this? If so does it not at once flatly contradict M. Litvinoff’s claim that they are establishing Socialism?

And grim shadows are spreading from both sides. On one side the Germans are trying to exploit and plunder as much as possible while they have the chance; on the other side the Japanese, assisted by British and American forces are entering on an exactly similar expedition, with the same objects in view. Also it has been reported that the Allied forces landing on the Murman coast are either under the command of or are accompanied by a notorious Czarist officer, General Gourko, who is working hard for the restoration of the Romanoffs.

With the mass of the Russian people still lacking the knowledge necessary for the establishment of socialism, with both groups of belligerents sending armed forces into the country, with the possible combination of those groups for the purpose of restoring capitalist rule, even if not a monarchy, in Russia, matters look gloomy for the people there. If the capitalist class in the belligerent countries succeed in this plan, the Soviet Government and its supporters may expect as little mercy as—nay, less than—the Khirgiz Tartars received. It may be another Paris Commune on an immensely larger scale.

Every worker who understands his class position will hope that some way will be found out of the threatened evil. Should that hope be unrealised, should further victims be fated to fall to the greed and hatred of the capitalist class, it will remain on record that when members of the working class took control of affairs in Russia, they conducted themselves with vastly greater humanity, managed social and economic matters with greater ability and success and with largely reduced pain and suffering, than any section of the cunning, cowardly, ignorant capitalist class were able to do, with all the numerous advantages they possessed.

Jack Fitzgerald

Comparisons. (1919)

Jack Cornwell, VC
(8 January 1900 – 2 June 1916)

From the August 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

“We do not forget Jack Cornwell,” said the Lord Mayor of London addressing same of the men of the Navy. The humbug of it is paralyzing to those who remember how the class for whom he was speaking kept Jack’s mother out of her pension, tied up the money publicly subscribed for her benefit, and left her to starve. 

Similar cant is the Government’s eulogies of the rank and file who did the fighting and the suffering, and the workers who supplied the means by which the war was carried on and won. Thousands of those who bore and reared the men who died in the trenches or at sea, and those men and women, and boys and girls, who were blown to pieces in the munitions factories, are Old Age Pensioners, yet, we are informed by the “Daily Chronicle” (Aug. 5th), notwithstanding that the London Old Age Pensions Committee is “still urging the Government to authorise a special allowance to old age pensioners in order that none of them, owing to poverty, should be left out of the peace rejoicings,” the Chancellor of the Exchequer “has hitherto declined to authorise a special allowance of 5s. to every pensioner, as recommended by the Committee.”

And at the moment when they are refusing a stingy 5s. to the poverty-stricken fathers and mothers, and grandfathers and grandmothers, of their “heroes,” they are showering hundreds of thousands upon their fighting-chiefs, and fighting like the very devil to pass a Bill to raise their own salaries from £2,000 a year to £5,000. They are as dead to shame as they are to humanity.

Stir yourselves, workers, and settle with the gang once for all.

J.

Birthday Honours. (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

With, this number we complete the sixteenth volume of our Party Organ, the Socialist Standard. During the sixteen years through which we have run our journal we have had trying times—times which have been as severe tests, both of political solidity and of determination to survive, as we are likely to encounter short of the final struggle of the Revolution, and we have come through with unsmirched banner and untarnished record. There have been many hands at the helm, but as time has removed some and brought others to the labour the changes have left no discernable mark upon our pages. Just as we have found no occasion to alter one word of the. Declaration of Principles which has appeared in each copy we have sent out, so, no matter what changes have taken place in the personnel of our staff, what editors have come and gone, what successive Executives have taken control, in all things that matter our paper has remained unchanged. The reason for this is not far to seek—they have all done their work under a sound Declaration of Principles, published to the world, a guide alike for those within to work by, and for those without to test that work by.

So through these years we have held on our course without deviation, true to every clause, every statement, every affirmation, of the guiding principles under which our journal was launched. Others have tried all manner of shifts and dodges to find a short cut, or even to snatch personal advantage for interested Controllers. We, however, sure of the correctness of our claim that there it no royal road to Socialism, no other path than the hard and steep one of working-class revolutionary education, no other helpful policy than that based on the Class Struggle, have resolutely and consistently left such expedients to those others, content to have them provide our object lessons for us.

For our part we still proclaim that the proletariat must want Socialism before they can establish it, and that they must understand Socialism before they can want it; we still assert that society is divided into two classes—a master class and an enslaved class—with diametrically opposed interests, and that the freedom of the enslaved class can only be the fruits of victory in a class struggle; we still declare that the basis of society as at present constituted, is the private ownership of the means of living, and that reforms—anything in fact short of the abolition of private ownership in the means of living, and the establishment of common ownership in its stead—must be futile and utterly helpless to effect amelioration of the general condition of the workers' position; we still preach that the road to this overthrow of the present social system lies in the capture of the political machinery, and we are as emphatically insistent as ever upon the point that the means to such end are already in the hands of the workers in their possession of the vast bulk of the voting power in all advanced capitalist countries.

Such being our beliefs we have shaped our policy sternly in accordance therewith. We have set our faces against compromises of every shape and form. We have refused to have anything to do with reforms, no matter how alluring they appeared, or how much they ran in the popular fancy. We have conducted all our activities in the light of the class struggle, keeping clear the issue—the overthrow of the dominant capitalist class and the system under which they dominate.

This policy has not been without its reward. The sickening records of the pseudo-Socialist parties become increasingly maloderiferous in the nostrils of thoughtful working men and women, and as our exposures drive, and historical events draw, these renegade parties into the open, and force them more and more to reveal themselves as the anti-Socialists they are, our clean record is appealing to increasing numbers. The demand for our Party Organ, notwithstanding the smaller facilities for disposing of it at our disposal, is greater at the close of the sixteenth volume than it has ever been, a fact which has its reflection in greater enquiry for our application for membership forms and a steady enrolment of new members.

The "If" Man Again. (1921)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sirs,

As a regular reader of the Socialist Standard I read with interest the article “Parliamentary or Direct Action,” also “Where Russia Stands” in May issue. I fully recognise the importance of parliamentary action in the struggle to establish Socialism, but should like to ask a few questions. Any talk of armed rising in face of the up to-date bloody methods of warfare employed by capitalist States is mere madness. I agree there.

But what is to be done if the master class refused to allow the use of the ballot box when the workers understood their position? Again, why shouldn’t Socialists get into the Labour Party to convert its rank and file to Socialism as in the trade unions ?

The Labour Party is a working class party, its rank and file being anti-capitalists.

Do you favour Socialists working for the development of Socialism from craft and industrial basis? And concerning your article on Russia, suppose the SP.G.B. had been the S.P. of Russia, what would have been its position in 1917.? I believe the Communists of Russia to have done the only thing possible considering the time, country, and conditions. Our methods will be different, as our conditions will be different.

S. Warr.

Our Reply.

The master class can only refuse to allow the use of the ballot box at the expense of chaos. As pointed out in the article “Parliamentary or Direct Action,” capitalism has become far too complicated a system for the capitalists to manage personally? Hence the continued delegation of powers and functions to various and increasing bodies, as County Councils, Borough Councils, Town Councils, Boards of Trade, of Education, of Agriculture, of Asylums, etc., right down to the little Parish meeting.

These bodies carry on the normal and detail functions of society under the laws made in Parliament, and under the general control of that central body of power. The extension of capitalism and the concentration of wealth into fewer hands compels the ever-increasing delegation of these social functions with the necessary growth in the number of elected persons and the consequent extension of the Franchise. To attempt to hold up all this elaborate machinery would result in appalling chaos, far worse than anything described in the worst tales about Russia. If the capitalists ever dreamed of taking such a course it could only be as a last act of despair when the circumstances and conditions would render such an action too late to be effective.

Trade unions are organisations that the conditions of capitalism bring into existence. They arise out of the imperative necessity which the workers are under of debating the price and conditions under which they sell their labour power. Their essential work is confined to the industrial field. Socialists as workers, are faced with the necessity of joining trade unions for the purpose of carrying on this daily struggle, just as other workers are. Inside the unions they use the opportunities offered to carry on Socialist propaganda.

The Labour Party is a political party supporting capitalism—see, for instance, its actions on the War, and the other evidence in our Manifesto—while its rank and file are obviously not anti-capitalist, or they would have compelled their representatives to oppose instead of supporting capitalism. Hence for a Socialist to join the Labour Party means supporting a defender of capitalism and is in direct contradiction to Socialism.

The Socialist works inside the trade union as he does outside, to develop the workers’ knowledge of the slave position of their class. As their knowledge grows they will have their organisation on this class basis instead of on that of craft or industry.

It is easy to suppose all sorts of absurdities when endeavouring to place ideas developed from one set of conditions into an entirely different set. If the S P.G.B. had been the S.P. of Russia, clearly the S.P.G B would have had all the misunderstanding and ignorance of the European situation that the S.P. of Russia had, and would have acted as the latter did. If, however, our correspondent means if the S.P.G.B. with its knowledge and understanding of European conditions had been in Russia in 1917, then that party, at all events, would not have made the great mistake of the Russians— the mistake of thinking that the working class of Europe were ready to rise in revolt against capitalism and to establish Socialism in its place.

Whether the Communists did the only thing possible is a debatable question, as full knowledge of all the circumstances is not yet available. The position of the S.P.G.B. at the time of the upheaval in Russia was that conditions there made the establishment of Socialism impossible. The evidence and events since then have shown the correctness of our analysis.

Editorial Committee

Workmen's Compensation. (1922)

Book Review from the August 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workmen's Compensation. by W. H. Thompson, Solicitor. 2s. 6d. Labour Publishing Co., 6, Tavistock Square, W.C.1.

This is another of the Labour Publishing Company’s useful books. True, it deals with the administration of capitalist laws—made to assist the smooth running of the “wheels of industry’’—but although the author in his preface describes his as “not propagandist,’’ at the same time he does not claim to be impartial. He treats his subject with a definite bias towards the worker—and this plain statement of the Act shows the nature of our capitalist administration in no uncertain manner. Mr. Thompson has outlined a complicated subject in a clear and concise manner, and all workers who are likely to come in contact with the operation of the Act would do well to purchase this book.

Its production is a credit to the publishers—neatly bound, well written, clear type, with a useful index—it deserves a wide circulation. Its price makes it possible for every Trade Union branch to purchase a copy, and a study of it should help workers to avoid many of those apparently trivial mistakes and omissions which allow employers and Insurance Companies to escape observing the provisions of the law.

Inside the capitalist system, while the care of the casualties of industry remains a legal obligation unwillingly borne and readily shirked, instead of a social duty, it is for the workers to get the maximum amount possible. The scope of the book is limited in this sense, but within the limit it is excellent.

R. Bird

Brains and Bullets. (1923)

From the August 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

How the S.D.F. fights for Socialism.

   "Few advanced thinkers have devoted more time to promoting international fraternity than Thorne. . . . He championed the cause of the Entente, and took part in the campaign for voluntary recruiting.”

— Will Thorne’s Election Address, 1922.

How The Law Protects Property. (1924)

From the August 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

The foundation of Capitalist society and civilisation is—as its name indicates—the private ownership of property. The state or the organisation of government in Capitalist society exists nominally to preserve the equilibrium—the balance of antagonistic forces within society—and it does this by maintaining with all the power at its command this private property basis.

In the fulfilling of this, its primary purpose, the State acts in the main according to certain rules—rules of its own making— which collectively are known as “the Law.”

The protection of property and the preservation and enforcement of the social forms and observances dependent upon property is thus the essential function of the Law.

These are elementary facts of sociology, well known to Socialists, but, unfortunately, still unrecognised by the majority of our fellow workers. Their minds are so warped by the press, platform and other agencies of mis-education controlled by the property owning class that for them, as for the parasites who live and flourish on them, the Law is the great and wonderful preserver of social order without which all organisation would vanish and anarchy prevail.

The Law thus regarded comes to have a halo of sanctity thrown around it. It becomes a god-like power, beneficent in its ruling but terrible in its vengeance upon the transgressors. As a god it has its own sacred books and ritual, its prophets, priests and tabernacles.

Through all this glorification and mysticism the Socialist must crash with the axe of his logic and show the world’s workers that the Law is one of the most powerful weapons of those who exploit and oppress them—that it is an agent of slave owners for the perpetuation of slavery.

#    #    #    #

   There is still abundant evidence that the law continues to prefer property to persons. For example, if you assault an ordinary person the maximum punishment is one year’s imprisonment, but if you are a poacher and assault a gamekeeper the maximum sentence rises to seven years' penal servitude. One might think that a policeman had interests to safeguard as valuable as those of the gamekeeper, but the law holds that if you assault a policeman in the execution of his duty the maximum punishment must not be more than two years’ imprisonment.
   On the other hand, forgery affecting the transfer of money or money’s worth can be rewarded by a sentence of penal servitude for life, and so can malicious damage to bridges, railways, and ships, and even such damage to plants in a garden can be punished by five years’ penal servitude. If three or more persons go poaching a sentence of fourteen years may await them, but if a man indecently assaults a woman or a girl two years’ imprisonment is the maximum imprisonment, and if you allow a girl of 14 or 15 years of age to reside in a brothel the utmost indignation of the law is expressed by six months’ imprisonment. (Manchester Guardian, July 26th, 1924).

R. W. Housley

Asked and Answered. (1925)

Letters to the Editors from the August 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

J. G. (Belfast) asks five questions on our policy. We give question and answer below:

1. Q. What is meant by political action? —A. Political action is that action taken to use or control the institutions of government, local and national.

2 Q. Is Parliamentary action a phase of political action?—A. Parliament is the central institution of national government, and action taken to use or control Parliament is therefore political action.

3. Q. Is the ballot the Marxian method of capturing the political state?—A. As the central machine of the political state is Parliament and the ballot gives the workers an opportunity of electing a majority, the use of the ballot by a Socialist working class is the means under present conditions for the capture of the State. This policy is | based on Marx’s teachings and is in harmony with the necessities of the situation.

4. Q. Do we advocate political organisation to the exclusion of industrial organisation?—A. No; our party manifesto points out that economic organisation is necessary under capitalism.

5. Q. Trade unions not being class conscious at present, would our party assist them in their struggles against the masters —A. Yes. When they act for the workers’ welfare Socialists support their actions, but point out the limits of all trade union action. The function of Socialists being to make Socialists and assist to establish Socialism, the Socialist Party therefore points the lesson to all trade unionists that only Socialism can secure to the producer real and permanent improvement in his conditions. The work of a Socialist Party is to teach Socialism and organise those who agree with it.

Editorial Committee

The M.C.H. Again. (1926)

From the August 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

We call it the M.C.H., familiarly, and easily, because it does not seem such a mouthful as the Materialist Conception of History. Now the M.C.H. presents a difficulty to Mr. F. W. Wood, who writes us from Hackney, a difficulty of a quite peculiar kind. He asks us to publish his letter, and for the benefit of himself and numerous friends, requests our reply. We regret his letter is too diffuse to publish in its entirety, but his point can quite fairly be condensed into a short statement. Here follows the condensation. Mr. Wood has been a supporter of the Socialist Party for years. He thinks he can now claim he has a clear insight into the position of the S.P.G.B. With an unfortunate exception. It is this: He accepts the Materialist Conception of History in its entirety. He is a materialist first, last and all the time. But he finds he has to apply his "materialism” to capitalist society. He further finds that the working class at present seem determined to try the Labour and Communist route to the Promised Land, rather than ours. He agrees, the condition of the working class will get steadily worse, but deplores that the time when they will be compelled to take revolutionary action is inconceivably remote. This brings him to his main point. "If Socialism is still in the dim future, why should I spend time, money and energy in propagating and expounding Socialism, when I sincerely think I will never survive to see that new social order." Mr. Wood asks for a reply "free from vindictiveness,” and not making a butt of him. He shall have it, though we are mildly curious as to why he should make such an observation. Does our journal strike anyone as vindictive? Perish the thought. Honest expression of opinion, and integrity of thought and motive, have nothing to fear but similar qualities from ourselves.

However, to get back to the difficulty. May we suggest, without vindictiveness of course, that our correspondent is a little at sea with his terms. He is a materialist, he says. What does that word mean, precisely? We have found it mean different things to different people. It is often used as a synonym for selfishness. It is often given a sinister twist by 'being coupled with "grossly”—grossly materialist. It is sometimes applied to a plain, matter-of-fact individual who responds to no sentimental or idealist appeals. But these are all colloquial meanings. In philosophy it has a fairly definite meaning, but as Mr. Wood is not concerning himself with philosophy, that need not detain us. But a materialist in any of these senses need not necessarily subscribe to the M.C.H. We think it reasonably certain that Mr. Wood is using the term in the anti-sentimental sense, for he says, why should he give his time, money and energy to educating an unresponsive, inert, working class. There is only one reason, friend, and it is this: You will remember the famous cartoon depicting Ole Bill in a shellhole, up to his armpits in water, and the comforting remark of his pal in an adjoining shell-hole, "If you know of a better ’ole, go to it.” The workers are up to their armpits in the slough of capitalism. We, who can see an inch or two farther than our fellows, tell them how they got into the mess, and how to get out of it. We show that they can only get out of it by united action, as a class. Here and there an individual may climb out by his own exertions, usually on the backs of his fellows, but for the working class to climb out by all becoming capitalists, is obviously absurd. If any individual thinks it a waste of time to urge his fellows to free themselves from slavery, knowing that his own freedom is bound up with theirs, he is quite at liberty to resign himself to his fate, and explain the matter to himself under any heading he pleases. Why not become a capitalist? If the workers won’t move on their own behalf, climb on their backs. But remember there is only limited room. Every rich man means so many thousand poor. You can have a flock of sheep and one tiger, but you cannot have a flock of tigers and one sheep.

Let us hasten to assure Mr. Wood that we are not abstaining from becoming capitalists for purely sentimental reasons. If he can tell us of a fairly expeditious way— (we are past our first youth)—of taking our place with the captains of industry, we shall be delighted to hear of it. But, as a "materialist,” surely he does not ask us to believe he is deliberately avoiding the pleasure of becoming a capitalist, whilst he sacrifices himself in the service of his fellow worker’s enlightenment. Is it not rather the clear recognition that we, the working class, will never be anything else that irresistibly compels us to revolt.

We make that revolt intelligently and consciously, knowing the futility of any other course. We realise we can only revolt as a class, and we must organise as a class. We took the first steps by joining and organising a party to represent the aspirations of our class. If our fellows are dull, or deaf, they are damned, and so are we. We cannot rise without them.

One final word on the M.C.H. A materialist need not necessarily support the Materialist Conception of History. Quite often the contrary. Although at first sight a cumbrous title, it really stands for a very simple thing. History is the written record of the doings of mankind in the past. Thousands read it, few study it. Of the students some think they discern some driving motive or source of action that has driven society through its successive stages, to the present blissful epoch. Some would ascribe the major credit to the work of the Church, others to the wisdom of kings, some to the ability of statesmen, others to a succession of heroes and great men. The M.C.H., however, the supreme work of the genius of Marx and Engels, says that there is something greater than all these. The superstructure of society, it says; its laws and institutions are fundamentally based on the material conditions in that society. As Mr. Wood says, he has read the Socialist Standard for years, he will readily recollect frequent articles on the subject, several quite recently, so there is no need to go over the ground again. Let him get away from the “superior person" attitude and the viewing of the working class as some entity which does not include ourselves. We are in it; we are of it; we are the working class. The only individual question we should permit ourselves is, "What am I doing about it?’’

W. T Hopley