Whose Budget? (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every year, in the months before the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes the Budget speech, the media engage in the popular game of guessing what changes in taxation will be made and giving advice about what the changes ought to be. The professional politicians concentrate on the second aspect: each one. according to party, telling us how, if the government adopts the right financial and taxation policy, the whole nation will benefit, the "right" policy being the one at present advocated by the Tories, the Labour Party or the Alliance. The detailed remedies are sharply divided. Increase income tax and the corporation tax on company profits, or reduce them? Increase government expenditure or cut it down? Get government revenue mainly from income tax or from VAT? Spend more on defence or on education and the health service? Go for more inflation and rising prices or less? The variety is endless.

There are a few things the three main parties have in common, as shown by their programmes at last year's general election. They all promise to reduce unemployment, to do something to help the poor and to get rid of class divisions in society. (The Alliance called their Programme Britain United). Over the size of government expenditure they divide into two camps: the Tories want to cut it down, while the Labour Party and the Alliance want it to be heavily increased, these two conflicting policies being their main remedy for unemployment. The two arguments go like this: The Tories say that if the government spends less and therefore raises less by taxation and borrowing, this leaves more for the public to spend, which creates more jobs. The other two parties say that if the government spends more this creates jobs and reduces unemployment. The Alliance programme put it:

  We will give more spending power to the poorest people in our society, which will itself generate more economic activity.

Both arguments are nonsense. Transferring "spending power" from the government to the public or from the public to the government does not increase the total and does not generate anything. In the years of rising unemployment from 1979 government expenditure not only went up sharply every year but represented also a higher proportion of total national income. Another test is to look at what happened when government expenditure was consistently lower than it is today. Measured against total national income, pre-1914 governments spent less than a fifth of the amount now being spent. But that low expenditure no more prevented the Great Depression, with its heavy unemployment, which lasted for 20 years from 1875 to 1895, than did high expenditure prevent the depression which began in 1979.

We don't now hear of inflation itself being advocated as a cure for unemployment but that was Labour Party policy in the 1930s and as late as 1982 a member of the TUC General Council, Clive Jenkins, was advocating inflation “to create millions of jobs " (Financial Times 27 October 1982). Inflation should not, he said, exceed a rate of 14-15 per cent a year. Events gave him his answer: between 1978 and 1981 the inflation rate averaged 14¼ per cent a year and unemployment went up from 1,383,000 to 2,520,000. The following year it went up to well over three million.

Most workers are convinced that they have a vital interest in the Budget because it can raise or lower income tax (PAYE), and affect the price level. They believe that they would be better off if PAYE was reduced and if prices did not rise. Of course at the moment the changes take place, but in the long run the workers' standard of living does not depend on whether PAYE or prices are high or low; it depends on whether capitalism is expanding or in depression and on the effectiveness of trade union organisation. The question of wages and tax was dealt with by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations (1776). If, in given market conditions, an employer can get the workers needed only by paying them £200 a week, a tax on wages has to be paid by the employer because, in these market conditions, it is still necessary to offer take-home pay of £200 a week. In the 19th century governments accepted that conclusion and income tax was not levied on wages.

After the introduction of PAYE the amount deducted from wages has been consistently high, for many workers 25 per cent or more but the average purchasing power of workers' take-home pay is higher now than it was before PAYE and, with some short-term setbacks, has continued to rise in spite of a massive increase in prices. It has continued to rise since production began to expend again in 1981 and is now about 15 per cent higher in real terms than it was in 1979. In spite of heavy unemployment employers have only been able to get the kind of skills they need by paying more for them.

The generally accepted view is that a direct tax like income tax cannot be "passed on", but some economists take the view that corporation tax on company profits costs the companies nothing because they can get it back by charging higher prices. William Keegan, economics editor of the Observer recently wrote (24 January 1988): "He [the Chancellor] belongs to the school of thought that, in the end, it is the consumer who foots the corporate tax bill". This is a curious belief. If true, why do companies and the Confederation of British Industry keep urging the Chancellor to reduce the tax? Broadly speaking companies sell their products at what the market will bear. They cannot, at will, ignore market conditions and charge more than the market will bear if corporation tax goes up.

What the Budget contains is the outcome of conflict between different sections of the capitalist class, each trying to unload on to other sections the inescapable costs of government. Hence the representations made to the Chancellor before the Budget giving the reasons why he should reduce, or at any rate not increase, the amount levied on the group making the representations. Last year the brewers and distillers got their way and duty on alcoholic drinks was not increased. The tobacco trade, in spite of their argument that they were being "ruined" by cheap imports and high duties, had to put up with another increase.

Coming back to wages it is instructive to see what happened in the latter part of the 19th century. Having been weak and quite ineffective the trade unions grew rapidly in membership and organisation. The study made by Professor Bowley and G.H. Wood of wages and prices showed that between 1870 and 1900 average real earnings of the workers, after discounting price changes, rose by over 70 per cent (the table was reproduced in An Introduction to the Study of Prices by Walter Layton). The organised workers had been able to get a share in increased productivity and also to cut into profits. Frederick Engels, who had watched this going on. noted in 1892 "the remarkable improvement of the conditions of the workers in the great trade unions".

Where do the three parties, Tory, Labour and Liberal, stand on the struggle of the unions to get higher wages? They all profess to approve of trade union organisation but. as governments, their chief concern is to maintain profits by preventing what they call "excessive" wage increases. Every government since 1945 has introduced some kind of "incomes policy" to keep wages down. Under the Labour government of 1945-51. the Chancellor, Stafford Cripps, laid down the principle that wages must not be increased because prices had gone up; the only justification for higher wages had to be increased productivity. Thirty years later, in the Winter of Discontent of 1978-9. the Callaghan Labour government tried to restrict wage increases to five per cent while prices were rising by 10 per cent. In their 1987 Election Programme the Alliance had a proposal to discourage employers agreeing to wage increases higher than the government wanted, by imposing a special tax on the profits of such employers.

The working class should disregard how the capitalists choose to frame their Budgets. They should look to their own organisations, remembering however that there is a limit to what the unions can do. As Marx pointed out. wages cannot rise to the level at which the employers cannot make a profit. He also called on the working class to solve their problems by establishing socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

A day out in Cheltenham (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

An active member of the largest trade union in the country, I was recently asked by a colleague if 1 would attend a march and rally in support of trade union rights at GCHQ Cheltenham. The event was on our doorstep and it would look bad if so large a trade union did not attend the event.

I agreed to go only to find, on the day itself, just three of us there to show the district banner. But even that was not to be — not because we were unwilling but because our District Secretary would not release the banner for the day in case it got dirty or damaged. So the banner remained decorating the wall of his office.

We arrived early for the demonstration. It was bitterly cold and raining. The meeting place was the Pump Room, a huge building set in a park. After buying coffee from the refreshment stall we decided that shelter was needed and that everyone present must be a bit mad to be milling around outside the Pump Room instead of inside. At one end of the building we found double doors with the notice General Council Members Only. So we went around to the other end of the building only to find the same notice. So we went in.

The TUC steward challenged us, then reluctantly agreed to our staying in the building since it was so cold outside. When we had stopped shivering we had a look around at the columns, arches, chandeliers, a decorated ceiling — and then we spotted the bar. We all immediately felt better for arriving early. However we were told that the bar was for providing free drinks for the General Council. Of course there was no need to worry about drinking and driving since they had luxury coach transportation. We left the building in disgust and braved the elements between the Pump Room and the nearest pub.

When we returned the march had just started. There were bands playing, hundreds of trade union banners and many thousands of dedicated trade unionists from all over the country. We spotted one of our banners from the largest union in the country and marched behind it. This district had gathered much more support — at least six people were present before we joined them.

We stayed with the march until it reached the town centre. By now, none of us were interested in attending the rally and listening to the hypocritical bleatings of the leader of the General Council of the TUC. So we sneaked off to a pub and then went home. For trade unionists it was not an inspiring day.

Mike Tavener

Letters: Life in Socialism (1988)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life in socialism

This month, two interesting letters raise the same question of how socialist society will deal with violent individuals. We hope our reply covers the point in both letters, their other points are dealt with separately.

Dear Editors.

Whilst heavily in support of the aims of your party, I am concerned about the treatment of criminally disturbed persons in your envisaged society, whilst right in your condemnation of the media hype following the events in Hungerford in August 1987. I would like to know how the SPGB sees a Socialist society handling anti-social elements such as habitual drunk drivers or gun-wielding "madmen" without resorting to coercive organisations such as a Police or Militia. (I do realise that in a society of production according to need the pressure to drink to excess would be highly reduced.)

I would also like to raise the matter of professional competence, in a recent (November) issue you talk of an after-shave brewer deciding to grow bananas, are we to take it that the SPGB thinks that anyone could tackle any job in a Socialist society just because they think themselves equal to the task. e.g. engine driver or civil engineer say? I know that the current professional bodies exist to maximise the wages of their members, but I'm also glad to know that the chap who designed the Tay bridge knew what he was doing whenever I cross it.

Yours for Socialism.

Jonathan Drane 

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

#    #    #    #

Dear Editors.

I subscribe to your excellent magazine and can find no fault with your arguments (as an ex-Green Party member I particularly enjoyed the "green" issue) but 1 do have three questions:

1. On a number of occasions your magazine has expressed a belief in the non-existence of God. Is this the view of the Socialist Party or just of the individual writers? Are a belief in God and a belief in Socialism mutually exclusive?
2. You say that Socialism is not possible in one country but must be worldwide. What if a country could be totally self-reliant? I realise that there would be limits on how high their standard of living could rise because of the limits on resources available in any one country but we have this problem at an international level so couldn't a self-reliant country become socialist?
3. Would prisons exist in a socialist society? Of course theft would be a thing of the past but surely there would still be some men who wanted to rape, hurt children etc - surely you can't see capitalism as the only cause of bad behaviour? Yours faithfully.

Michael James

Stockton-on-Tees

Reply

First, our comments on the question of restraining violent people in socialism:

Capitalism is highly selective in its definition of people who are "anti-social" and "criminally disturbed”. If the Hungerford killer had sprayed his bullets indiscriminately among Argentinian soldiers in the Falklands he would have been a national hero. Yet the motivation, the state of mind and the preparation for such acts are often similar. Much "anti-social" behaviour now is really a desperate response to the demands which capitalism makes on us; in many cases it is healthier than a docile acceptance of the indignities of wage slavery. Many human beings can't cope with the repressed. exploited, deprived lives they are forced to lead. They rarely respond as catastrophically as at Hungerford; more typically they haunt their doctor's waiting room, or their local pub or, in extremity, roam the grounds of a mental hospital. Social society will be free of those pressures, which means that most of the "bad behaviour" which is now an everyday occurrence will not happen.

But what about the few who, after all this, will cause problems? How big a problem would this be? Today, only a very small percentage of the people in prison are there because they have committed crimes of violence and of these an even smaller proportion are a danger to the public. Socialist society would be such that even that small number would be even further reduced so that, if the problem was present, it would apply to very, very few people — those who could not be absorbed and coped with through the care of the community. Without doubt, those few would have to be restrained but society's interests would demand that they be treated as the sick people that they are and the places where they are held would reflect that. Unlike the police, the military, the prisons today, this would all happen through majority will, with society's full participation and concern.

On Jonathan Drane's point about professional competence:

The function of much "professionalism" is to surround the "profession" with a mystical defence to conceal the fact of the professionals' fallibility (not every example of civil engineering endures like the Tay bridge). This is an inevitable result of the fact that "professionals" just like everybody else need to sell their labour power to an employer and to the fact that they engage in the production of wealth and services which are for sale with a view to profit. Thus "professionalism" is often aimed at separating the “professional" from the people who experience the results of it — the people who might for this purpose be called consumers. None of this will apply in a socialist society, where production will be a harmonious, cooperative effort. Socialism will be a sane society; it will of course recognise that certain jobs demand special knowledge and experience but those who have that knowledge will not be privileged, apart from the rest.

On Michael James' questions about religion and socialism in one country:

Socialists do not believe in god or in any supernatural influences (neither, strictly, do we "believe in" socialism; we advocate a social system based on common ownership of the means of life because the evidence proves that this is the best way of running modern society). There is no evidence for the existence of god; the only logical and consistent explanation of the world and what happens in it must have a material basis. Socialists affirm that this life is the only one we know of and to preoccupy ourselves with some other existence, outside the known and the material, would divert us from the task of dealing with capitalism's problems by establishing a different system.

Socialism will develop out of modern capitalism; it can't come from any earlier social system. Modern capitalism's interlocked economy and communication means that no one part of it can be self-reliant. For example, what would a "socialist country" do about international travel and safety systems7 Would it refuse to take part in them? Would it refuse to take advantage of developments in productive techniques or medical science in the capitalist part of the world? If not. how could it preserve its socialist nature when dealing with capitalism? Socialism will be a matter, not of just self-sufficiency but of abundance, of full and universal co-operation and participation in all that the world has to offer the human race.

Our brief replies may not do full justice to the questions raised in these interesting and encouraging letters. We urge Jonathan Drane and Michael James to visit their local branch of The Socialist Party. They will be warmly welcomed and have full opportunity to discuss their ideas.

Editors

Lazy people

I have read with great interest your set of principles. and would further like to know the answers to the following points:

1. Do the SPGB believe in Parliament?
2. Even with the support of the majority of British people. Britain would, by the SPGB's own criteria (Para 5) then only be a state capitalist nation, how is the leap from state capitalism to world socialism to be made?
3. In the SPGB's vision of a socialist future (Para 6) it is stated that work will be undertaken on the basis of voluntary co-operation. What is to become of the minority who refuse to contribute? And what incentive is there to perform "dirty jobs" (refuse collection, sewage work, monotonous labouring)? Yours.

Paul Weston

Manchester

Reply

Socialists aim at the democratic capture of political power, as this is the only way of taking over the state machine and so changing it from capitalism's army of class coercion into an "agent of emancipation", This will entail the election of delegates, by a conscious socialist majority, to the places where the state machine is controlled in this country parliament, in America Congress and so on. That is why we are a political party and not, as some people mistakenly believe, an educative organisation.

As socialism cannot be set up separately in any part of the world it follows that it must be established world-wide and, to all intents and purposes, at about the same time everywhere. This is perfectly reasonable; our ideas are formed through our material conditions and are therefore at pretty well the same stage of development all over the world. In particular the working class in all countries have the same attitude toward the vital question of carrying on with capitalism: they all fall for the same diversions into futile reforms and politicians' promises. Just as capitalism now receives this universal support, so will the ideas of socialism.

With all the incentives to work in socialism it would be only a very, very small minority who might, for some reason, choose to stand aside from the hugely exciting and satisfying task of producing to meet human needs. If there were such people, refusing the opportunities to realise their full potential as human beings, society could easily carry them in their unhappy condition. After all, a massive amount of capitalism's knowledge, energy and resources is now wasted in unproductive effort salespeople, accountants, lawyers, police, armed forces and so on.

Much "dirty" work would easily be eliminated in socialism; all that stands in the way of this at the moment is capitalism's priority for profit above human welfare. Socialism's priorities will put human welfare first. Any such work which could not be eliminated would, we are confident, find no lack of volunteers. Since it would be essential to human society that it be done it is not conceivable that, having established socialism, people will then damage that society by refusing to do necessary work.

Paul Weston's questions are interesting and worthwhile. He would be welcome at The Socialist Party branch in his area, where he could discuss his ideas more fully.

Editors

50 Years Ago: The Communists and the ILP change places (1988)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not often that two political parties change places so completely as the ILP and the Communist Party. In 1919-1924 the ILP was busily engaged in securing the election of a Labour Government, in the belief that such a policy would secure certain immediate gains and pave the way for the gradual reform of the capitalist system. The Communists, on the other hand, denounced Parliamentary methods and preached Soviets and armed revolt. In the intervening years experience has disillusioned the ILP and sent them sneaking into the position vacated by the Communists, while the latter, under Moscow’s orders, are seeking a Parliamentary alliance with Labour and Liberals in the guise of a Popular Front.

The following is a passage from Mr Fenner Brockway’s recent book, " 'Workers' Front" (Martin & Seeker. 3s. 6d.):-

  The hope that Capitalism can be transformed to Socialism through the means of the Capitalist state  . . .  is an illusion. Socialists should use the constitution of the Capitalist State as fully as possible but they should recognise that finally they must conquer the Capitalist class through their own actions and organs, through Workers' Councils or Soviets . . .  and in the last resort, if necessary, through their own Workers' Army . . .

And now the Scottish ILP, at its conference on February 13th. 1938 (The Times February 14th. 1938), is attacking the Communists because the latter advocate the policy "of collaboration with sections of the capitalist class and capitalist governments," in other words, because the Communists have adopted the ILP's own past errors and the ILP has adopted those of the Communists!

The ILP, of course, is as wrong now as it was then, so are the Communists.

[Article published in the Socialist Standard, March 1938]

The Rise of Yugoslavia - Part 1 (1962)

From the October 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The creation of Yugoslavia (the word means "State of South Slavs") was the culmination of an historical process which began fourteen to fifteen centuries ago.

The Slavs came originally from the Russian Steppes and the northern forests of Byelorussia and their history over the years had been very turbulent. Wars and skirmishes had been waged back and forth between various Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian Princes, each trying to extend the territory under his control.

But these rulers all had to submit to a more powerful enemy when the Turks invaded Europe during the fourteenth century. Bloody indeed were the battles, but the invaders relentlessly forced their way north as far as Vienna, eventually retreating some way under pressure from the forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The new line of demarcation split the territory roughly in half, bringing Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovinia, Monte Negro and Macedonia under Turkish rule, while Austria-Hungary retained control of Croatia and Slovenia. The new conquerors lost no time in imposing their religious ideas. Worship under the old Bosnian Church was forbidden. The Roman Catholic Church replaced it in the north, and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the South. Although there was considerable resistance to this, it would be a mistake to think that the many peasant revolts during the next six centuries were over religious issues.

Eighteenth century poets and philosophers of that unhappy land often scratched their heads over the cause of these conflicts. Only by Marx's Materialist Conception of History are we able to grasp their true significance and realise that they had their origin in the oppressive social conditions of feudalism. Religion served only to mask the more deeply rooted troubles. For instance, the feudal set-up peculiar to the area was such that peasants owned no land whatever. They were allowed merely to work the lord's land, surrendering about fifty per cent. of the products to him. This was a constant source of struggle over the centuries and peasant claims to land ownership met with stubborn refusal. Then again, large numbers had been driven to the Velebit Mountains along the coast during the Turkish invasion, but this was very poor land. Subsequently migration took place eastwards to the fertile plain lands of Vojvodina in Serbia, to be met with fierce resistance from those already established there.

The Turks were eventually ousted from the Balkans in 1877. The Serbs did this with Russian backing, and Serbia became an independent kingdom. King Alexander 1 of the Obrenovich Dynasty was the first ruler, but he was assassinated in 1878 and was succeeded by King Peter Karadjordjevicb. Independent Serbia, it seemed, set the pace for Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia still under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was a living inspiration to nationalist dreamers, and for the power-hungry in Belgrade this was indeed a time of plotting and intrigue.

From the turn of the century there were popular demonstrations in favour of Slav unity and in opposition to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Cries of working class discontent were now added to those of the frustrated petty nobility and a thwarted Bourgeoisie. Such was the state of affairs when on that fateful June day in 1914, one student Gavrilo Princip felled the Archduke Franz Ferdinand with a gunshot which rang round the world and sparked the dry tinder of European capitalist conflict into the flame of World War 1. Four years later, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had collapsed and the Versailles Peace Treaty established a new unified Balkan State under King Peter Karadjordjevicb. Yugoslavia had arrived.

Six different regions were incorporated in the new state, each of them still under the influence of one or other of the major powers. Economic development had been patchy and uneven. Most industrialisation had taken place in the north which had been influenced by the rapid growth of European capitalism. The rest of the nation was still largely feudal with peasants representing about eighty per cent. of the population.

Yugoslavia was now a political democracy, but in 1918 the Royalists still held popular sway. Organisations such as The Social Democratic Party, the Nationalist groups “Young Bosnia" and “Serbian Youth” and the Yugoslav Communist Party, were left standing. At the general elections of 1921, however, the Communist Party won 59 seats and came within an ace of forming a government. There followed a bitter struggle with the Royalists that reached its peak with the assassination of Minister of the Interior Drashkovich. The Royalists promptly blamed the C.P. for this crime, imprisoned its leaders and declared it an illegal organisation.

From now on, the C.P. had to exist, clandestinely. It received financial support from Moscow and followed faithfully (or should we say slavishly) the Russian party line. In 1936 the Party was dealt a further blow. Its General Secretary Gorkich disappeared while in Moscow during the trials and his office was handed over to Josip Broz, otherwise Tito.

But the war clouds were gathering again, and in April, 1941. Yugoslavia was overrun by the Nazis. King Peter fled to England. From then until 1945, it was the familiar story of a peasants’ resistance movement to the German occupiers, but this again was divided broadly into two opposing sections. First there were the Royalists, known as the Chetniki, under the command of General Milhailovich. The Partisans were the other major group, organised and led by members of the Communist Party. Both groups had their eye on the future and fought with the intention of establishing their own type of government after the war.

Various minor parties such as the Social Democrats, Trotskyists, and Liberals hated both Royalists and Communists and were quite prepared to support the Nazis against the resistance movement. The Nazis were quick to see the value of "divide and rule" tactics and in 1943 by promising the Royalists a share in post-war government, managed to enlist their aid against the Partisans.

The Partisans fought on against gigantic odds, but it would be wrong to suppose that their heroism and courage were inspired only by a desire to be rid of the German invader. The peasants sighed for an end to the conditions of pre-war Yugoslavia, which had many similarities to Tzarist Russia. They lent a ready ear to the Communists who promised land reform and industrial development, and clearly compromise with the old order to any extent was impossible. Capitalist development was due for a fillip after the war.

"Peoples Republic"
In 1945 a plebiscite was held and declared heavily in favour of the establishment of a "people’s republic”. The Communist Party won the ensuing General Election by a large majority and the Royalists were eliminated as a political force. A formidable task faced the new government. Forty per cent. of the towns were in ruins and one-tenth of the population had perished during the war. The survivors were asked by their rulers to work hard and deny themselves now for happier times in the future. Millions gave their enthusiastic but misguided support to the government having been told that this was the path to Socialism Where have we heard all this before?

The Communist Party leaders were now in control of the state machine and theirs was the job of changing the feudal face of Yugoslavia into a Capitalist one —with the co-operation of the workers, of course. What matter that they called the new conditions "Socialism” or the "transitional period to Communism"? Mass working class ignorance would see that they remained in power for some time to come at least. Marshal Tito, the tireless underground leader in pre-war days and fearless partisan during the war, became the dictator of the new Yugoslavia, the man at the helm of the young capitalist State.

Like their brothers elsewhere, the Yugoslav Communist Party had many times said that they would grab the state machine as a temporary measure only, and use it to usher in Socialist society, It would then wither away, they claimed. How little they understood the role of the state machine. Since their rise to power it has become progressively stronger in the administration of Yugoslavia's private property society.

The C.P. cry of "Electrification and Industrialisation" meant sweeping changes in favour of the industrial capitalists. But there had to be a compromise because agriculture was and still is a major industry, and the transformation of the peasant into a wage worker had to slow down. The average peasant had no desire anyway to exchange the devil he knew for one he did not, and stoutly resisted attempts to drive him into the factories and workshops. Collectivisation of farms was then abandoned, at least for the time being.

Remy Starc.

[To be concluded]

Link to Part 2

The Rise of Yugoslavia - Part 2 (1962)

From the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

The new constitution of 1945 brought ninety per cent. of Yugoslav industry under State control. Only those which were not worth bothering about were allowed to escape, such as shoe making, watch repairing, inn-keeping, etc. Agrarian reform dispossessed the old landlords and distributed the land to the peasants according to family size. “The land should belong to those who cultivate it,” was the cry, but this was no common ownership, only the handing over of land from one set of private owners to another.

In any case, the peasants’ troubles were by no means at an end. They still had to sell their agricultural produce in a market, capricious and uncertain as markets are. So that in times of glut it was less costly to leave salad stuff and soft fruit to rot, than to try and sell it. An old and familiar problem, by the way, and one of the many which prompted the start of collectivisation in 1949.

As we mentioned in Part 1, there was much reconstruction and industrialisation to complete, and as early as 1946, the government had announced a five year plan aiming at 400 per cent. increase in industrial production. Belgrade called for workers to assist with voluntary labour, and the response found expression in such projects as the gigantic iron works "Lilostroy” of Ljublijana, the Samac-Sarajevo and Doboj-Banjaluka Railroads and the Cetinje hydro-electric power station.

But in other ways also, Yugoslavia was making her presence felt. Tito had visited Stalin in 1945, and signed a treaty of mutual assistance. Russian technicians and military advisers went to Yugoslavia as a “help to fraternal countries” and quite clearly the country was earmarked for inclusion in the Soviet sphere of influence. Tito and his henchmen began to doubt the wisdom of allowing so much Soviet infiltration and signs of a rift were apparent at an early stage.

It has been said that the 1948 disagreement between the two states was a battle waged for Yugoslavia’s “Socialism” against Russian “Stalinism,” but this is quite untrue, if only for the reason that there never was any Socialism in Yugoslavia anyway. Tito himself came nearer to the mark when he said at the time:

  The real issue is the relation between one state and another. In my view they are using ideological questions as a pretext for putting pressure on us and our state.

The Yugoslav government strongly resented the Russian attempts to regulate buying and selling between the Cominform Stales, seeing it as a threat to their already weak economy.

Nor must we forget the part that Yugoslav/Albanian relations played in widening the breach. Moscow and Belgrade had agreed in principle to the unification of the two states and already their economies were becoming linked, with Yugoslav influence predominating. But the Russians were taken unawares by the subsequent agreements (signed without consulting them) to allow Yugoslav forces to be stationed in Albanian territory. According to Milovan Djilas, who was deeply involved in the dispute with Moscow, it was this military move most of all which persuaded Stalin that in Tito he had a rival rather than an ally. Yugoslavia was promptly expelled from the Cominform to the accompaniment of the most violent abuse.

In 1955, there was some reconciliation between Yugoslavia and the USSR, and since then Tito has managed to sit precariously on a rather wobbly fence, obtaining economic aid from both sides of the Iron Curtain, but refusing to join either power bloc, at least for the time being. It remains to be seen how long he can play one side off against the other in his efforts to win economic elbow room for his ruling class. Only recently, America has scaled down her financial assistance to Yugoslavia, causing Belgrade to go into a panic-stricken huddle. One result has been a renewed demand for farm collectivisation, although many of Tito’s colleagues remember its previous failure and are not enthusiastic. Neither are the peasants, who want to remain proprietors in their own right and not become agricultural wage workers.

Yet this may well be the future tendency, as industry develops and the demand for labour increases. The old peasant family proprietorship will be regarded as wasteful of labour and efficiency, and there is likely to be increasing interference by the State. There is a growing working class today in Yugoslavia facing the same sort of problems as their brothers elsewhere. Sooner or later they will have to get down to an appreciation of the need for Socialism, but there is no sign of this happening, as yet.

In the meantime, it is interesting to speculate on the future role of Yugoslavia in the changing pattern of capitalist world politics. A glance at the map will show the strategy of her position with an Adriatic coastline facing Italy and frontiers with Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Austria and Italy. As her industries develop, we may well see her jostling for a share of the markets in an increasingly competitive world. But it is difficult to view her future as other than that of a minor capitalist power at most. This does after all make sense in a world where even Germany, France and Britain—the major powers of yesterday—have been ousted from dominance, and the arena left to America and Russia, two colossi of capitalism, glaring at each other in sullen anger.

(Concluded)

Remy Starc.

Finance and Industry: Trouble in Agriculture (1962)

The Finance and Industry Column from the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trouble in Agriculture

One of the big question marks over the Common Market talks has to do with agriculture. British farmers are worried about what might happen to them if Britain is accepted by the Six, and Commonwealth countries like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are afraid for their exports of wheat, meat, and dairy produce.

British fruit growers and market gardeners see a dire threat to their interests from efficient Dutch production and from cheap Italian output ripened under natural sunshine instead of in heated glasshouses. And if Denmark eventually joins there will also be intensified competition from Danish bacon and butter.

But looming over all of them, British or Common Market, is the shadow of French competition. Only now beginning to rise to its full potentialities, with one half of the total agricultural land of the Six, the most favourable climate for agriculture in Europe, and soil fertility higher than the average, French agriculture threatens them all. With a negligible amount of farm machinery at work on its farms after the war, it is now mechanising rapidly. Tractors and combine harvesters are now replacing animals and men in ever-increasing numbers.

The shadow of surplus

Production has been rising steadily in recent years and the French Government is becoming increasingly concerned about rapidly mounting surpluses of cereals, butter and milk products, and beef, as well as fruit and vegetables. This year there will be a record wheat harvest of 13 million tons (the previous highest was 11½  million tons in 1959) which compares with the present U.K. estimate of 3.3 million tons. The French export surplus is likely to exceed in fact the total U.K. output.

The situation will be eased somewhat since the maize crop has been cut to a quarter of normal by drought. But this year’s results in general have served to re-inforce the warning to the rest of Europe that with every year that passes France will be a more and more dangerous threat—and to the French Government that they are in for bigger and bigger headaches. The French Minister of Agriculture has already announced that “ the fighting aim of 1963 will be the conquest of the external markets.”

The same pattern

As usual under capitalism, this ever increasing production is coming from fewer and fewer workers. Statistics show that, as in most other countries, the population living off the land is falling. The farmers are leaving the land and going into the towns. In France, there are 12 per cent. less people in agriculture than there were six years ago. Just how far this process still has to go is shown by the fact that it still leaves 20 per cent. of the population on the land, compared with 3 per cent. in this country.

There are clearly still great changes to come in French agriculture—and their repercussions are likely to be wide.

More absurdity

The shattering losses made by B.O.A.C. this year (no less than £65 million) reflect once more the crazy capitalist world we live in.

One of the main reasons for these losses has been, we are told, the frantic efforts made by the company to keep up with the constant developments in aircraft. So swift are the changes that planes have to be put on the scrap heap long before they have given their full term of useful life. That nearly all the other major airlines of the world are doing the same thing, and suffering equally crippling losses in the process, only makes the situation more farcical.

The apologist for capitalism will, of course, reply that progress must always be allowed full scope and that the new planes constantly coming forward will be better and safer than their predecessors. Even this is not true. The Press has been full of stories recently about whether safety is not being sacrificed in the bitter struggle among the national airlines. Allegations have been made that the strain of the new and ever more complicated aircraft on their pilots is becoming too intense, that they are being worked more hours than is safe, and that many airfields are just incapable of meeting properly the demands of the new machines.

Tailpiece

We discuss elsewhere Professor Titmuss’s new book exploding the myth of growing economic equality—a subject incidentally to which we have ourselves given attention in recent issues. Samuel Brittan in the Observer (he is Economic Editor) gave a useful review of it recently. But the most interesting few lines of his article were those in which he defined the capitalist class in a paragraph at the end. Here they are:

  The existence of a separate class of people who own the means of production (including land) and are not therefore dependent on their own personal earning power is still the basic characteristic of capitalism. . . .

Our own definition, in fact. True he spoils it all by bringing in Russia later on, but it’s a crumb of enlightenment al! the same.

Stan Hampson

Another Sea Disaster (2012)

Rena aground

From the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The MV Rena ran aground on Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, North Island, New Zealand on 5 October last year, spilling fuel oil and containers into the sea. The Rena is a Liberian-flagged, Greek-owned Flag of Convenience (FOC) vessel. The crew consisted of 23 Filipinos.

Not surprisingly, the grounding of the Rena, and subsequent oil spill, has caused outrage and concern, and has been reported worldwide. The ship disintegrates on the Reef. According to Joe Fleetwood, general secretary of the Maritime Union of New Zealand, writing in The Maritimes (Issue 36, Summer 2011/12), many in New Zealand are confused as to how the disaster happened, and who was responsible. People have a right to know, he said.

Flag of Convenience

The Maritime Union blames the New Zealand government and authorities as much as individual crew members. The authorities have created a situation where FOC shipping has been encouraged. Their “open coast” policy has meant that “unacceptable practices have become the norm in New Zealand waters”.

Many in New Zealand were shocked to discover that the FOC system operates on the New Zealand coast. They should not have been. In many of these FOC states such as Liberia, there are few regulations. Says Joe Fleetwood: “This is deregulation operating in a globalized market, with no oversight, no responsibility and no morality.” Quite. He continues:

 “Flag of Convenience ships are notorious for their exploitation of crews, and safety risks. They endanger our environment and port security, and are a threat to the future of New Zealand maritime industry… It is a cheap way of doing things. But as we all know, doing things on the cheap has a funny way of ending up being more expensive in the long run.”

Legacy of Neglect

Was the Rena faulty? Apparently, prior to its arrival in New Zealand, it had been hauled up in China and Australia for numerous issues and multiple problems.

Was a full inspection by Maritime New Zealand made given numerous documented failings? According to the union, a Maritime New Zealand “inspection” consisted of asking the Master of the Rena if the previous problems had been fixed. Presumably, he said they had. So that was OK then! Following the disaster, the Master was arrested. He was blamed two weeks after the grounding and spillage; a convenient scapegoat.

According to The Maritime, a TV3 News investigation noted that the government was repeatedly warned that New Zealand wasn’t prepared sufficiently for such an oil spill. An Official Information Act indicated that the New Zealand government had considered whether a specialist oil response vessel was needed. But it decided against. It had, it said, such vessels as “The Awanvia”, with suitable equipment which it could seek for assistance. In the event, however, it was almost five days before it arrived on site and began pumping fuel off the Rena.

Union Criticism

Not surprisingly, the New Zealand Maritime Union is highly critical. General Secretary, Joe Fleetwood complains that workers are under threat because of lack of proper regulations and enforcement in the industry. Workers are expendable. Both local and overseas workers are being harmed in the workplace because of slack regulations. And, it is worse on FOC vessels.

Says the union:

  “The incidents on Flag of Convenience vessels, including foreign charter vessels in the New Zealand fishing industry, make for a long and grim list. Sinkings, drownings, asphyxiations, severe injuries, physical attacks, underpayment, pollution and overfishing, abuse and exploitation are all documented throughout the maritime industry. For years the problem has been out of sight and out of mind.”

And not just in New Zealand, I would add. Indeed, complacent politicians come and go, and “profits kept flowing to the shipping corporations”. Fleetwood observes that in the current environment, profit comes first. “Unless we have strong unions on the job to defend health and safety, and legislation that is backed by some teeth, then we will see more and more preventable deaths and injuries.” Too true. But, unfortunately, legislation and reform measures, even if acted upon, will not solve the problems. Only the abolition of the cause – capitalism and the profit motive system – will do that.  This is what the World Socialist Party of New Zealand, and socialists elsewhere, propose and for which they are organised.

Peter E. Newell

Beyond The Global Capitalist Crisis (2012)

Book Review from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beyond The Global Capitalist Crisis. Edited by Berch Berberoglu. Ashgate. 2012

This collection of essays is a restatement of classical Leninist economics and politics. The authors argue that the current global crisis “is permanent and irreversible”. The theoretical framework is provided by Lenin’s theory of capitalism as imperialism, in which the contradictions of capitalism which “would have led it to collapse on the national level were thus transferred to the global level”. In 1917 Lenin “showed the way forward” by identifying the source of the crisis and its solution: “socialism – i.e. a state and society ruled by the working class”.

One contributor claims that, for a number of unexplained reasons, “actually existing socialism” succumbed to a crisis of its own in which “socialism” in the USSR and elsewhere collapsed. It’s no mystery. These state capitalist regimes stagnated under the rising costs of a bureaucratic-military state machine (since this must be largely financed out of surplus value redirected from the productive sector of the economy) and an increasingly expensive dictatorship over the proletariat.

Capitalism will not collapse, nor will the crisis be permanent – if for no other reason than that there is currently no working class movement for socialism. In the absence of that understanding, desire and action for change, capitalism in one form or another will persist. State capitalism (nationalisation or state ownership) is not socialism; nor is a step towards socialism as Lenin believed.

 Lew Higgins

Long Day’s Journey Into the Night (2012)

Theatre Review from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill (Apollo Theatre)

This 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, written in 1942 and recently staged at the Apollo Theatre in London, was not performed until after O’Neill’s death.  This was because of its autobiographical nature, its inclusion of characters clearly drawn from members of the O’Neill Irish-American family and its descriptions of real incidents within it.

O’Neill was a breath of fresh air in American theatre in the 1920s, a writer of realistic dramas inspired by the naturalism of Chekhov, Strindberg and Ibsen. He avoided melodrama and sentimentality and concerned himself with tragedy, pessimism, and socialism.  He used vernacular speech and portrayed working-class characters in works like ‘Anna Christie’ and ‘The Iceman Cometh’.

O’Neill moved in left wing circles in Greenwich Village, New York City, where he met John Reed and Louise Bryant (their menage-à-trois is portrayed in the 1981 film ‘Reds’). Reed, a member of the Socialist Party of America, was in Russia in 1917 at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution and wrote about it in his book ‘Ten Days That Shook The World’.  He helped form the Communist Party of America.

In the early twentieth century there were exciting times for socialism in the USA. These saw the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, an organisation which advocated the abolition of capitalism and the wage system and opposed the First World War.  The increasingly reformist nature of the Socialist Party of America led car workers in Detroit to leave in 1916 and form the Socialist Party of the United States.  This later became the World Socialist Party of the United States, the fraternal party of the SPGB.

‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ dissects the conflicts of  the bourgeois thespian James Tyrone (O’ Neill’s father) and his wife and two sons, and covers themes of patriarchy, the lack of fulfilment for women, addiction (alcohol and morphine), resentments, self-deception, illness, greed, failure, artistic promise, and general dysfunction in bourgeois family life in early twentieth-century American capitalism. The Irish-born family patriarch emigrated to America at the time of the Great Hunger of the 1840s when the potato famine and subsequent failure of the British government led to a million deaths and mass emigration from the Emerald Isle. O’Neill describes Tyrone’s experience of child labour and family poverty in the expanding industrial capitalism of nineteenth-century New York City.

Tyrone’s son Edmund (O’Neill) is a budding playwright, with a TB condition who has left Princeton early.  O’Neill himself left after a year because as the apocryphal story goes “he threw a beer bottle through the window of Professor Woodrow Wilson” (later the US President who promised voters to keep America out of the First World War but took them in, and later oversaw the Volstead Act which prohibited alcohol in the USA for 13 years).

O’Neill analyses the dysfunctionality of a bourgeois family in capitalism and shows the neuroses associated with bourgeois family life. Marx and Engels pointed out that the bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course with the abolition of capitalism.

Steve Clayton

Film Review: J. Edgar (2012)

Film Review from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

In J. Edgar, Leonardo Di Caprio, under Clint Eastwood’s direction, gives a thoroughly credible performance as FBI Chief, J. Edgar Hoover. Di Caprio portrays him as the paranoid, vindictive, delusional, hypocritical (he refers to Senator McCarthy as an opportunist) and egotistical man that he was; certainly not high on the list of guys you’d want your daughter to marry.

Arnie Hammer as Hoover’s paramour, Clyde Tolson, Naomi Watts as Helen Gandy, his long-serving secretary and Judi Dench as his overly attentive mother (“You will restore our family to greatness”) all turn in fine performances. Hoover is, in fact, shown as a mama’s boy who went in for crime-busting to please the law-and-order obsessed lady.

Too much is devoted to exploring Hoover’s sexuality, though screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who is gay, probably felt it necessary. To quote Black, “it was a thing you couldn’t discuss even in the privacy of your own home and even with someone you might have feelings for, because it was still a love that did not speak its name.” Black, surprisingly, has Hoover enrage Tolson by confessing he once shared a romantic liaison with Dorothy Lamour.

This gives one some idea how petty he was. Hoover’s ambitions knew no bounds; when shut out of the Lindberg kidnapping investigation by the New Jersey State Police, he had Congress pass a law making kidnapping a federal instead of a state crime so the FBI, could horn in.

Surprisingly, Black makes no mention of Hoover’s greatest ambition to make the FBI a world-wide intelligence organization, which the CIA eventually became. Hoover had his vast army of agents pursue whatever grudges: criminal, political, sexual or personal, that he held – and he held plenty of them. He kept tabs on the extra-curricular activities of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Eleanor Roosevelt.  In Eleanor Roosevelt’s case that included spying on her trysts with lovers of both sexes. No-one in the FBI was allowed to be more popular than Eddie baby. That meant destroying the career of agent, Melvin Purvis who had gunned down John Dillinger.

Too much attention is devoted to his relationships with Tolson, Miss Gandy and his mother in this 135-minute movie, which fails to pursue more intriguing matters – such as, Hoover’s refusal to pursue organized crime as opposed to nickel-and-dime bank robbers. Rumour has it the mob had photographs of Hoover in drag and in a compromising position with Clyde Tolson who he made his number two man in the FBI.

Nor did the movie show his relentless persecution of homosexuals, eventually forcing them out of the closet as an act of retaliation. One psychiatrist would later say, “They should call that the J. Edgar Hoover Syndrome – persecuting the very thing he was.”

When Richard Nixon was elected it was the proverbial and possibly the literal death knell for Hoover. Nixon, though heterosexual, was very similar; mean, ambitious and unscrupulous (no kidding). Nixon wanted possession of Hoover’s files and the only way to get them would be to kill him. It isn’t mentioned that Hoover wanted to be Director for life, a life many would like to see end ASAP. It is only slightly implied that his doctor injected him with chemicals that wouldn’t exactly prolong it. Rumour has it that a life shortening pill, which looked like an aspirin tablet, was put in amongst them.

The most significant aspect of Hoover’s career wasn’t mentioned. He became head of the FBI in 1924, a year after the Teapot Dome Scandal in which some senior members of the Harding administration were implicated. In 1973, a year after his death, the Watergate Scandal broke out, but in the intermediate 48 years in which he reigned as the Bureau’s boss, there were no major scandals affecting the presidency.

One may wonder if the seven presidents he served under and their administrative staffs were not like Nixon’s thugs at all; that they were all goody-goodies who wouldn’t stoop to an illegal act.  Or, perhaps – just perhaps – once or twice they did and J. Edgar was on hand to contain the mess, conditional on getting the laws passed and the budgets he wanted – take your pick.

One comforting thought is that it’s highly unlikely in a sane society that anyone would be as sick as J. Edgar Hoover, but if there was such a person, he would receive help, and as the movie makes clear, he surely needed it.

Steve Shannon

Proper Gander: A Masterclass in Manipulation (2012)

Charley Says . . . 

The Proper Gander Column from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The goggle-box has burned some pretty bizarre images onto the nation’s psyche over the years: squirrels wearing yellow trousers learning to cross the road, an unintelligible orange cat warning us not to talk to strangers, and gloomy icebergs as AIDS metaphors. Public Information Films have lurked in the gaps between programmes for sixty-five years, waiting to jump out and attack us with a government instruction. But not any more. Tufty the squirrel and Charley the cat have been made redundant by the closure of the government’s Central Office of Information, which produced the films. Britain Beware (ITV1) marked the demise of the Public Information Film with a nostalgic retrospective presented by a jovial Adrian Edmondson.

The early films told bemused middle-aged men how to use new-fangled zebra crossings, and nosey housewives how to sniff out Nazi spies. As the tone and content of the films changed over the years, and as censorship rules were relaxed, the producers set out to shock. Each drink-drive campaign has been a bigger pile-up of gore and emotional blackmail than the one before. And the notorious Apaches film traumatised a generation of flare-wearers into not playing on tractors or drinking weedkiller. Then, when the public grew tired of shock tactics, humour would often be used on the next campaign. Such as slovenly Joe and Petunia, who showed us how not to behave when picnicking in a cartoon field. Occasionally, shock and humour would collide in a mess of awkwardness, like when Jimmy Savile joked to a teenage car-crash victim in a wheelchair that he wouldn’t be going to any more discotheques.

As Britain Beware points out, Public Information Films told us to avoid dangerous things like using drugs or having unprotected sex, but they also encouraged us to sign up for a risky career in the Army. Each Army recruitment campaign has led to a rise in the numbers of naïve applicants hoping for the jet-set adventures the films promised them.

Public Information Films used all the tricks up the advertisers’ sleeves – shock, humour, exaggeration – to drive home their message. Watching them is like a masterclass in manipulation. And the changing subject-matter of the films – wearing seat belts while driving, avoiding smoking around children – reflected wider changes in legislation and attitudes. As a gauge of social trends, Public Information Films tell us more than just how to avoid grisly, slow-motion accidents.

Mike Foster

50 Years Ago: Russia Puts the Clock Back (2012)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the first flush of Bolshevik victory radical parties all over the world acclaimed the victory and gave them generous support, even where they had doubts on some of the methods adopted. The German Social Democratic Party, when threatened, sent to Russia the writings of Marx and Engels and other archives for safe-keeping, believing that Russia was now a budding free Socialist state where writings and documents would be safe from interference. How wrong they were!

It soon became evident that Russia was not embarked upon even a democratic society. The secret police and the concentration camp were on the way.

The mass of the Russian people knew nothing about Socialism; most of them could not even read. The peasants, who formed the bulk of the population, wanted land, and all wanted peace and bread. It was on the basis of the peace, bread and land programme that the Bolsheviks were enabled to seize power.

Once in power the Bolsheviks established what they misnamed the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In fact, it was nothing of the kind. It was not even the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party (which again they misnamed the Communist Party), but the dictatorship of a small inner group with Lenin as the guiding star. They established a system of treachery and terrorism, first against opposing elements and eventually internally against those who would not abjectly submit to the dictates of the inner circle. In the end this led to members of the inner circle trying to destroy each other. It reproduced the position in the French Revolution when one group ate another until finally Napoleon was left at the top. First Trotsky, then Kamenev, Zinoviev and Radek fell victims to the terrorism they had built up. Fortunately for him, Lenin died before he could become a victim of the system in which he was the leading actor.

(From article by Gilmac in Socialist Standard, June 1962)

Action Replay: Playing Partners (2012)

The Action Replay column from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Olympics will soon be on us, with their massive TV and press coverage and their never-ending opportunities for sponsorship and money-making, as well as some sporting contests. The International Olympic Committee is a brand in its own right and a very powerful one at that, as it can require host governments to introduce legislation protecting its copyright.

So in 2006 the UK parliament passed the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act, which went even further than existing law in preventing companies who have not paid for sponsorship or partnership rights from making any use of Olympic terminology or symbols. Even using ‘Games’ and ‘2012’ together might constitute an offence, unless you’ve paid for permission. So Coke and Adidas (as official sponsors) will be OK, but Pepsi and Nike will have to be very careful about what they say. During the Games themselves, athletes will not even be able to blog about their breakfast cereal unless it’s made by a Games sponsor. A spokesperson for the local organising committee put it bluntly: “Without the investment of our partners, we simply couldn’t stage the Games.”

This is not working as well as those behind it might wish, however, with so-called ambush marketing (where a non-sponsor manages to link itself to an event in some way) proving very effective. Thus Adidas is apparently less associated with the Games in people’s minds than Nike, and British Airways (the official airline partner) less so than Lufthansa.

Just imagine the effort that intelligent and creative people are putting into ensuring that companies keep within the law but exploit the Olympics for their own profit.

Paul Bennett

Rhodesian background (1962)

From the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

In South and East Africa lives that peculiar person, the white settler. To some people he is a farmer who has robbed the African of his land. But, in fact, especially in southern Africa, most Europeans are ordinary workers or business men. Many can't really be called settlers since they were born in Africa and have never been to Europe.

The two most important areas, South Africa and Rhodesia, are moving politically in opposite directions. South Africa has chosen “apartheid" or separate development; Rhodesia appears to be moving, however slowly, towards a society in which a man will not be judged by the colour of his skin. But certain actions—or lack of actions—of the Southern Rhodesian Government have raised doubts about its sincerity when it talks of partnership. First, it has until now been slow to remove legal discriminations against Africans and, second, it has taken very wide powers, encroaching considerably on recognised civil liberties, to deal with anything it regards as a threat to law and order.

Three trade union leaders were recently sentenced to eight months hard labour under these laws for calling for a general strike in Salisbury last May.

The ruling United Federal Party does not, however, stand for white supremacy. It stands for free enterprise capitalism and represents the growing multi-racial business class. By a unanimous decision of its 1961 Conference the UFP is committed to remove all legal discriminations against Africans which Cabinet Minister Abrahamson has denounced as “morally wrong and absolutely indefensible.” This, of course, includes the notorious Land Apportionment Act which means that it is no longer true to say, if ever it was, that “multiracialism" is but another name for Verwoerd's fascist policy of apartheid.

The European business man is in favour of African advancement for a number of reasons. Firstly, he knows that Africans can eventually be trained to be as skilled as any European and, secondly, he sees in the Africans a vast expanding market for his goods. The capitalist in Africa therefore tends everywhere to be an opponent of racial privilege. He is against racism, black or white; in fact he generally wants to be free to employ the man he considers to be the most suitable for the job, regardless of race or colour.

The European worker, however, is not so keen on African advancement. He sees the African as a threat to his job. Most European workers are craftsmen, a section of the working class which the march of capitalism everywhere tends to eliminate. The skilled worker is replaced by the semi-skilled machine operative. In Europe and America the redundant craftsman tends to feel resentment against those who replace him, but in Central Africa the position appears more dangerous since the man who would take his job has a black skin. As a result many of the European workers support parties wanting to “keep the African in his place.” These, together with a section of the farmers and others still living in the past, provide the bulk of the support for the main European opposition party, the Rhodesia Front. This party looks South for inspiration and, although it has African members, it is the party of white supremacy.

The main African nationalist party is, or was, the recently banned Zimbabwe African Peoples’ Union led by “Great” Nkomo. ZAPU is the recognised Pan-Africanist party in Southern Rhodesia (or Zimbabwe) and has the blessing of the Osagyefo in Accra. The main ZAPU demand' for “One man, one vote” has won it the support of a number of European and Asian radicals. African support, however, is won on a different basis. ZAPU flourishes among Africans on widespread discontent over low wages, unemployment and land reform. This is not something peculiar to Africa, for the birth of capitalism is always accompanied by unrest. In Central Africa this unrest appears as African resistance to white authority, as African nationalism.

Migrant worker

Owing to what is known as the migrant labour system, most African workers are extremely poor. The migrant worker circulates between two different social systems, the so-called “subsistence economy” and capitalism. He spends a part of the year in his farm in the tribal reserve and a part working for money in other industries. Altogether about two-thirds of the African labour force are migrant workers. This system tends to hold wages down to a level sufficient only to maintain a single worker while staying in the “location.” As a result, many of the African families who have settled permanently in the towns live in extreme poverty. The recent Phillips Report on the development of Southern Rhodesia describes further bow this system keeps wages down: “The large and elastic supply of workers seeking employment in urban activities restrains a rise in wages, while the impermanence of this labour supply reduces the wage the employers are prepared to pay”

The employers would like to see the migrant labour system ended and to see a stable working class paid a “reasonable” wage, perhaps double the present minimum, take its place as soon as possible. They recognise, however, that their system cannot at present “provide every African urban family with an income adequate to secure minimum nutritional, housing and other standards.” “Unhappily,” explains the Report, “there is not enough wealth in the country to effect changes on this scale for the mass of the people.” This is not true for Rhodesia could, if properly irrigated, and if the mineral sources were fully exploited, more than provide an “adequate” income for its inhabitants. What the report means is that capitalism cannot use this wealth.

The African who is employed is badly enough off but many don’t even have the privilege of trying to live on near-starvation wages. These are the 70,000 or so unemployed. Unemployment is something new for Africans. “Before the Europeans settled in this country,” writes one paper:

  and before they brought their chaos creating institutions, unemployment was unknown, hence the lack of this term in any African dialect. There are other words such as ‘Simbe’ in Shona; this means a lazy person who does not want to work. This differs well from a person who is unemployed because there is just no work for him although he wants it. The whole African population lived on land and everybody who could do some work found it. There was ploughing and harvesting, ironmongery as well as many other crafts. Women were busy with domestic chores and also assisted on the land. Everyone had a piece of land to work as the whole land belonged to them. The chiefs only held it in trust for national use.

The “chaos-creating institution” which the Europeans brought was capitalism, and ever since they first settled in Rhodesia in the 1890’s the traditional African way of life has been threatened. Soon after their arrival the Europeans imposed a poll tax on the Africans to force them to spend a part of their time working for wages. Hence arose the migrant labour system.

Before the situation arose which led to the passing of the Native Land Husbandry Act in 1951 the African peasant seeking work in the town would either find it or return home to his farm. But the LHA put an end to this, for it had the same effect as the Enclosure Acts in England: it drove Africans to the towns by making them landless. The Act was revolutionary as it introduced a new concept to the African peasant: private ownership, albeit conditional, of land.

The primary aim was to eliminate soil erosion and overstocking and to bring the African peasant into the money economy. A stable African peasantry was to be created with a stable urban working class. Under the Act all indigenous Africans, who were actually cultivating land in a given area at the time at which the Act was proclaimed to apply to that area, were entitled to a certain prescribed acreage of arable land. This meant that any African from the area working in town at the time of the proclamation was dispossessed; overnight he became landless. Now the African peasant believes not only that everybody has the right to use the land, but also that nobody has the right to own it. So that such a revolutionary change as the Act envisaged was bound to create a reaction; the situation was aggravated by the fact that thousands of those entitled to a holding got no land. ZAPU has taken advantage of this land hunger and rural unrest and has been making headway in traditionally conservative areas.

In Rhodesia the vote is at present restricted to those with certain educational and income qualifications which means that although nearly all Europeans, Coloureds and Asians have the vote, only a small percentage of the Africans do. ZAPU says this is wrong and demands “one man, one vote.” The UFP feels, however, that were it to grant this immediately, dictatorship would rapidly follow.

Pan-Africanism or Pan-African Black Fascism as it has been justly called, certainly is totalitarian and racist, rejecting democracy as “ un-African ” and “ Western.” At present, however, ZAPU is able to pose as the champion of democratic liberties, just as the Communists are in such countries as Spain and Portugal. This is in accordance with the pattern elsewhere: in opposition the Pan-Africanists shout loudest for democracy, but once in power show scant regard for political or trade union opposition. The ZAPU protest, when they were banned, that African political freedom had gone was so much cant. For ZAPU, and especially its Youth League, has used all kinds of intimidation to terrorize those Africans who oppose them. The banning of ZAPU merely illustrates the fate of those who choose to challenge the State directly by using violent or illegal means to get what they want.

Adam Buick