Planning for After the War (1940)

From the October 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class Co-operation or the Abolition of Classes? 

Mr. Hannen Swaffer, writing in the Daily Herald (August 23rd, 1940), tells of a conversation he had in the house of “a member of the War Cabinet,” with “a Tory high in the counsels of the Premier,” “a Liberal M.P.,” and “a key man in the Civil Service.” The four of them were engaged in what is always a popular pastime during wars; they were discussing the after-war “reconstruction.” They had dealt with ” the inequalities of our educational system, the slums of Tyneside, the plight of Merthyr, the need for health services, a score of evils.” Then the Civil Servant spoke as follows : —

“You three are all politicians, or, at least, interested in politics. I am not. You all agree. People do agree nowadays. Why cannot you, after the war, insist on a plan, work it out, preach it as a gospel and combine to ensure its acceptance ?”

Pause for a moment to observe the smug conceit of the “Civil Servant,” doubtless some highly placed and high salaried official in whose ranks this self-satisfied ignorance is very common. Content with his safe, interesting job and comfortable income, puffed up with his authority over the lower ranks of the civil service, he “isn’t interested in politics.” What he means, of course, is that it is expected of him to kow-tow to whatever politicians happen to be in power at the moment, and so long as his world is kept safe under the shelter of capitalist politics he isn’t interested in any other kind of politics.

He can safely be marked down as a type of those who will put up the most blind and obstinate resistance to the introduction of a better social system.

Mr. Swaffer went on to remind the other three that formulating plans does not solve any problems: —

“I pointed out that it was not as easy as that. I had accepted a plan. In theory, the other two might agree with most of it. But the devil of it was that most of the people I sided with wanted a little more food, more regular work—just a little more immediately—and that, however benevolent-minded the other two of us might be, they would be checked in their desire to obtain this for the masses by interests from which they would find it almost impossible to escape.”

Here, of course, is the crux of the matter: “Interests” will stand in the way of “just a little more of everything for the workers.” But it is well-nigh certain that Mr. Hannen Swaffer does not really understand more than half of the problem. He is prepared to concede to his political opponents a certain benevolent-mindedness. If benevolent-mindedness is the key to the situation, how is it that 40 years or more of Labour Party requests for a little more have produced little or no result? Only the Socialist can explain the mystery and solve the problem, yet the explanation is simplicity itself. Swaffer, along with a host of religious and political advocates of social reforms, accepts class divisions in society. Socialists want the classes abolished. Swaffer wants the propertied class to be more benevolent, socialists see that there is no solution along that road. While society is divided into two classes, one of which owns and controls the means of production and distribution while the other class is in truth propertyless, social reforms must be and will always be subordinated to the necessity of keeping the social system functioning. In other words a class which lives on property income (rent, interest or profit) cannot behave other than as a propertied class, no matter how benevolent some members of it may be. What keeps the capitalist system going is the expectation on the part of the capitalist that he will be able to make a profit out of the sale of the commodities he allows his workers to produce for him. No profit, no production! is the law of capitalism. Against that mere sympathy carries no weight at all. It is the easiest thing in the world for the capitalist to have his conscience salved by tame economists who claim to prove to him that poverty, unemployment and so on are unavoidable and will not be helped by social reforms. Failing that there are always journalistic hacks or others ready to “prove” that there is no working-class poverty, or that it is self-inflicted, through drink, thriftlessness or large families, or that things used to be bad but they are just about to be put right, or that poverty is good for the poor and they like it. Mr. Swaffer, himself, recently addressed some sharp remarks to Viscount Gort, who, in a broadcast, said we had been “leading a pleasant life, with plenty of relaxation and not too long hours of toil,” and that “neglecting our religious obligations and in pursuit of pleasure we filled the roads and deserted the churches.”— (People, August 11th, 1940.) Mr. Swaffer said : —

“Does Lord Gort really believe that everybody in Britain has a motor car, that he leads a pleasant life, and that he does not work hard enough ?

When I went into Merthyr with Edward VIII a few days before he abdicated, I saw there, lined up, all the Old Contemptibles of the town. They numbered 25. They had all been unemployed for five years, and some of them for ten years. And, under the existing system, not one seemed likely to have a chance of working for one hour again as long as he lived !

These men had all rushed to arms in August, 1914, to make it “a land fit for heroes.”

Certainly, when I saw them, they had “not too long hours of toil,” but they had spent much longer hours in the Labour Exchange queue. As for their relaxation—well, perhaps they had relaxed throats.”

One great obstacle standing in the way of Socialist propaganda is that it is not easy even for the worst sufferers from this class-divided social system to rid themselves of the idea that we must have a privileged class. Hence the readiness with which they follow the blind lead of those who are so gratified at witnessing the present contact between the classes. Good relations between the one class and the other is such a pleasant notion, disturbing to nobody. They should notice, however, that it is also productive of nothing once the temporary condition has passed. Good relations in the past between slave owner and slave never abolished the system of slavery. Mr. Emrys Jones, well-known journalist, writing in the Daily Mail (September 28th), is a case in point. He is pleased to find that the householders in a very snobbish and exclusive square where he lives have welcomed evacuees from East End bombing. He says: —

“I am glad to report, there are no stupid remarks about the place being ‘spoiled.’ It seems we are nearer the class-less society now than we ever hoped to be in our time.”

Note the childish words about the classless society. The propertied and non-propertied class do not cease to exist because for a while members of the former readily accept close proximity with members of the latter. What Mr. Jones for the moment forgets is that the propertied class as a whole, believing as they do that they deserve their privilege and that the world could not run except on a class basis, do not and never did hope for a class-less society. On the contrary they feared it and will continue to do so. It is the workers who will gradually become able to see that the future of the human race is bound up now with the abolition of classes.

Socialists have often been attacked for adopting an unhelpful, critical attitude towards the plans and proposals of benevolent-minded persons. Events have, however, always justified our criticisms and our contention that reforming capitalism leads nowhere. Let us now challenge our critics. Let them tell us why they believe that the means by which the human race lives must be owned and controlled by a small minority of persons, companies and combines. Let them tell us why the human race any longer need costly financial and commercial institutions kept going with increasing chaos and disorganisation, backed up with a multiplicity of laws and regulations. Let them tell us why we need a social system which breeds poverty, misery, ill-health and wars, with an increasing proportion of the energies of mankind devoted to trying in a complex, roundabout way to ameliorate these evils with plans and reforms and charity-mongering. Why not that class-less society known as Socialism?

Edgar Hardcastle

The Capitalist Class To-day (1940)

From the October 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Social contact between the proletarian and the capitalist is extremely rare. When it does happen and the proletarian is a Socialist into the bargain, the meeting can be highly illuminating. Such an incident in which the writer was involved produced certain impressions which are recorded here together with some conclusions.

Roughly the capitalists can be divided into two sections. There is the group which takes an active part in directing the political, financial and economic affairs of the nation. This group is continually decreasing in numbers, ability and prestige.

At the present moment we have proof of an extraordinary nature in support of this contention. Men like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, all of them proletarian in origin and up-bringing, have proven themselves more than a match as politicians and diplomats against rivals, who, inheriting generations of economic security and experience in governing a world-empire, possess all the obvious advantages in this game of diplomacy and international relations in which the stakes are nothing less than the right to exploit the natural resources of the earth and human labour power living on it.

In this country the governing class, faced with the greatest emergency in its lifetime, has to call on men who are ordinarily outside its social circle.

The leaders of British Labour are the products of the working class, such as for instance, men like Bevin, Alexander and Herbert Morrison.

All of which, while it will not help the cause of Socialism does show that the proletariat is in fact, not inferior in ability and intellect to its de facto master-class.

In the Socialist movement itself, we have men and women, who, despite the shattering effect of continued and harrassing poverty, are yet able to develop as writers and speakers and match their wits, most certainly their case, with the best that Anti-Socialism can produce.

As in the domain of politics, so in the sphere of production and distribution of wealth the capitalists are rapidly disappearing from the co-ordinating and supervisory activities, which in the past were their exclusive function.

Workers who are trained specifically for organisational duties have taken over this role to a large extent, particularly in those undertakings which having assumed proportions of a national and even international magnitude, are taken wholly or partly under the wing of the state machine.

As the development in productive technique increases the function of co-ordinating and supervising becomes merely the work of clerks and statisticians, book-keeping and the collating of figures, i.e., work that has no direct bearing on the organisation of production itself, which is thus reduced to a mechanistic process, entailing no human directive agency whatever excepting of course, the men who work the machines.

In “Finance,” which is another name for the gamble with the products of labour (as seen on the various stock exchanges) the same factors apply.

It is this disappearance of the capitalist from the economic activity of his system which is so largely responsible for the mental deterioration of that class. It is obvious that the lack of purposeful work is bound to result in the stagnation of the mind.

Where the capitalist is still active, politically or economically, he is invariably found to be openly reactionary, ready to fight tooth and nail even the slightest advance made by the working-class, be it over the question of wages and hours, or the actual threat to his political power.

So much for the active section. The other section, inactive in every social sense, is far more numerous and its ranks are ever swelling.

From the economic point of view, this second group is as one man content not to interfere with the productive process so long as the dividends, which accrue to them as a result of their propertied status, are forthcoming.

Only when disaster threatens, such as an economic crisis or a major war, are they ever heard or seen. Then they swarm out of their comfortable retreats in town and country and raise an outcry against the forces or persons they consider to be responsible for their impending plight.

Not that they are concerned with their own privileged position, so they protest; their woes are the woes of humanity as a whole, their cause is really the cause of all citizens, therefore everyone whether hunting the fox in Berkshire or hunting a job in Lancashire, must rally to the common cause.

Until this war began, how many of us knew that thousands of bourgois hearts were bleeding for a vanquished democracy in Germany, Italy or Spain.

True, the movements of protest against the brutality of the Nazi concentration camp attracted a certain number of the propertied class.

It is still to be questioned however, to what extent these people were moved by genuine love of democracy and humanity or whether fear of Germany’s growing military might was not the actual motive.

It certainly does seem that the policy of the present British Government is to frown on the purely anti-fascist exuberance of some of its most ardent well-wishers.

So Mr. Duff Cooper carefully explains that “it would not he wise to say we are fighting for a new social system.”

This is no more than can be expected; but when we recall that it was Mr. Duff Cooper also who at the beginning of the war prophesied the collapse of the Nazi regime and its replacement by a Monarchy (presumably he referred to a Hohenzollern restoration) we may well ask what Mr. Duff Cooper means by “a chahge in the Social System !”

Then again, there is the internment of Anti-Nazi refugees; Jews, Social-Democrats, Liberals, Communists, most of them people who must surely hate their persecutors with a passion unequalled even by the lofty flame burning inside the righteous hearts of our government.

Yet Prince von Startemberg, late leader of the fascist Austrian Heimwehr, erstwhile puppet of Mussolini, is enrolled in the De Gaulle Section of the Air Force.

It certainly seems as if the British capitalist does not welcome an over-emphasis on the anti-fascist (and pro-democratic) character of the war against Hitler Germany. They prefer the distinction between the two countries to maintain a national character and not to assume too much of an ideological flavour.

In fairness to the title of the article, we must mention the presence of a capitalist fraction which has as yet not been dealt with.

This fraction, small at present, but making itself heard, really belongs to that large inactive group just described.

But just as the preponderant majority of this inarticulate mass turns as one man to the support of its active spokesmen, so this last tiny group attempts to wrench itself free from its economic and political foundations, seeking a line-up with more advanced ideas and even with the proletariat itself.

To this group a number of organisations such as Federal Union and the Peace Pledge Union owe their existence, and individuals of this type have also drifted into the I.L.P. and the Communist Party.

Although many of these people are well-intentioned, they do not belong to that type of capitalist, which as Marx once prophesied, would during the revolutionary epoch rise objectively above their class and join forces with the proletariat.

Objectivity is impossible for that type; their actions are determined either by a sincere humanism or else to provide the frills of a dillettante to an otherwise empty and parasitic life.

Socialism they are constitutionally incapable of understanding and the life of the working class remains, even after inspection, a closed book.

Their most numerous representatives are in the various peace movements.

This is no accident. The capitalist has far more to lose by war than the worker. The life of a capitalist is a far more pleasant one, therefore more precious than that of a worker, his pocket also suffers badly as the cost of modern war reaches fantastic proportions.

These intellectual diversions, often prompted by none to altruistic motives, represent so far the apex of bourgois efforts to get to grips with the bewildering problems of the present age. They support the view consistently held and propagated by the S.P.G.B. that only the working class can be materially interested in the removal of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism.

The mental and physical decay of the Capitalists and their henchmen everywhere is bound to strengthen our cause.

Sid Rubin

A Problem in Historical Materialism by Karl Kautsky (1940)

From the October 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The materialist conception of history has been often understood as if certain technical conditions of itself meant a certain method of production, nay, even certain social and political forms. As that, however, is not exact, since we find the same tools in various states of society, consequently the materialist conception of history is false and the social relations are not determined by the technical conditions. The objection is right, but it does not hit the materialist conception of history, but its caricature, by a confusion of technical conditions and method of production.

It has been said for instance, the plough forms the foundation of the peasant economy. But manifold are the social circumstances in which this appears!

Certainly! But let us look a little more closely. What brings about the deviations of the various forms of society which arise on the peasant foundations.

Let us take for example a peasantry, which lives on the banks of a great tropical or subtropical river, which periodically floods its banks, bringing either decay or fruitfulness for the soil. Water dams, etc., will be required to keep the water back here and to guide it there. The single village is not able to carry out such works by itself. A number of them must co-operate, and supply laborers, common officials must be appointed, with a commission to set the labor going for making and maintaining the works. The bigger the undertaking, the more villages must take a part, the greater the number of the forced laborers, the greater the special knowledge required to conduct such works, so much the greater the power, and knowledge of the leading officials compared with the rest of the population. Thus there grows on the foundation of a peasant economy a priest or official class as in the river plains of the Nile, the Euphrates or the Whang-Ho.

We find another species of development where a flourishing peasant economy has settled in fruitful, accessible lands in the neighborhood of robbers, nomadic tribes. The necessity of guarding themselves against these nomads forces the peasants to form a force of guards, which can be done in various manners. Either a part of the peasant applies itself to the trade of arms, and separates itself from the others who yield them services in return, or the robber neighbors are induced by payment of a tribute to keep the peace and to protect their new proteges from other robbers, or finally the robbers conquer the land and remain as lords over the peasantry, on whom they lay a tribute, for which, however they provide a protective force. The result is always the same: the rise of a new feudal nobility which rules and exploits the peasants.

Occasionally the first and second methods of development unite, then we have beside a priest and official class a warrior caste.

Again quite differently does the peasantry develop on a sea with good harbors, which favor sea voyages and bring them closer to other coasts with well to do populations. By the side of agriculture, fishery arises, fishery which soon passes over into sea-piracy and sea commerce. At a particularly suitable spot for a harbor is gathered together plunder and merchants’ goods and there is formed a town of rich merchants. Here the peasant has a market for his goods, there arise for him money receipts, but also the expenditure of money, money obligations, debts. Soon he is the debtor of the town money proprietor.

Sea piracy and sea commerce as well as sea wars bring, however, a plentiful supply of slaves into the country. The town money owners instead of exploiting their peasant debtors any farther, go to work to drive them from their possessions, to unite these into great plantations and to introduce slave work for peasant, without any change being required in the tools and instruments of agriculture.

Finally we see a fourth type of peasant development in inaccessible mountain regions. The soil is there poor and difficult to cultivate. By the side of the agriculture, the breeding of stock retains the preponderance; nevertheless both are not sufficient to sustain a great increase of population. At the foot of the mountains fruitful, well tilled lands tempt them. The mountain peasants will make the attempt to conquer these and exploit them, or where they meet with resistance to hire out their superfluous population as paid soldiers. Their experience in war, in combination with the poverty and inaccessibility of their land serves to guard it against foreign invaders, to whom in any case their poverty offers no great temptation. There the old peasant democracy still maintains when all around all the peasantry have long become dependent on Feudal Lords, Priests, Merchants and usurers. Occasionally a primitive democracy of that kind itself tyrannizes and explores a neighboring country which they have conquered, in marked contradiction to their own highly valued liberty. Thus the old cantons of the fatherland of William Tell exercised through their Bailiffs in Tessin in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a rule, whose crushing weight could compare with that of the mythical Gessler.

It will be seen that very different methods of production are compatible with the peasant economy. How are these differences to be explained? The opponents of the materialist conception of history trace them back to force, or again to the difference of the ideas which take form at various periods in the various peoples.

Now it is certain that in the erection of all these methods of production force played a great part, and Marx called it the midwife of every new society. But whence comes this role of force, how does it come that one section of the people conquers with it, and the other not, and that the force produces this and not other results? To all these questions the force theory has no answer to give. And equally by the theory of ideas does it remain a mystery where the ideas come from which lead to freedom in the mountain country, to priest rule in the river valley land, to money and slave economy on the shores of the sea and in hilly undulating countries to feudal serfdom.

We have seen that these differences in the development of the same peasant system rest on differences in the natural and social surroundings in which this system is placed. According to the nature of the land, according to the description of its neighbors will the peasant system of economy be the foundation for very different social forms. These special social forms become then side by side with the natural factors, further foundations, which give a peculiar form to the development based on them. Thus the Germans found when they burst in on the Roman Empire during the migration of the peoples, the Imperial Government with its bureaucracy, the municipal system, the Christian Church as social conditions, and these, as well as they could, they incorporated into their system.

All these geographical and historical conditions have to be studied, if the particular method of production in a land at a particular time is to be understood. The knowledge of the technical conditions alone does not suffice.

It will be seen that the materialist conception of history is not such a simple formula as its critics usually conceive it to be.

Dictatorship and Democracy in the Ancient World - Part 2 (1940)

From the October 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from September issue).

One cause of complaint against Athens was the fact that after the Persian War the wealth which had flowed in as tribute from the Allies to build the Athenian fleet was diverted to beautifying the city. Pericles defended this policy on the following grounds: —

“It was right, Pericles argued, that after the city had provided all that was necessary for war, it should devote its surplus money to the erection of buildings which would be a glory to it for all ages, while these works would create plenty by leaving no one unemployed and encouraging all sorts of handicraft. . . . As he did not wish the mechanics and lower classes to be without their share, nor yet to see them receive it without doing work for it, he had laid the foundations of great edifices which would require industries of every kind to complete them.”—(Plutarch, Pericles, 12. Quoted by Grant, Pericles, p. 217.)

The menace that always lurked in the background of the Greek world up to the time of Alexander was the huge semi-barbarous Persian Empire which sprawled over Asia and at intervals stretched out tentacles to embrace the thriving Greek cities. It was the attack of the Persian hordes on the Ionian Peninsular that assisted the Athenians to lay the foundations of their empire. The Persians had obtained control of the Greek cities on the Asiatic mainland, but their defeat at Marathon and the growth of Athenian power freed the mainland for a time from the Persian dragon.

After the Peloponesian war had run for ten years mutual exhaustion compelled the two leading contestants to agree to a truce. During the truce Athens conceived the plan of attacking Syracuse in Sicily, an early colony of Corinth which had grown wealthy enough to become second only to Athens in commercial standing. The Athenians sent out a large fleet and a powerful army and looked forward to obtaining much booty as well as crushing a growing rival. But political jealousy deprived them of their most gifted commander, Alcibiades. The fleet had hardly arrived at Sicily when a message was received recalling Alcibiades to stand trial on the accusation of violating sacred monuments. Alcibiades, however, was not prepared to risk the trial. Instead of returning he went to Sparta where he urged the Spartans to send aid to the Syracusans. The suggestion appealed to the Spartans, although the truce with Athens was still in operation. As a first step Sparta made an arrangement with the Persian colossus under which the latter was allowed to resume its hegemony over the Greek cities of the mainland on condition that Sparta was allowed a free hand in Greek lands and waters. Throughout the war Sparta also received regular subsidies from Persia, while Athenian revenues were diminishing.

The Syracusan expedition was the end of the Athenian Empire, for it suffered a crushing defeat and never really recovered from the blow. Henceforward Sparta dominated the Greek world until its harsh oligarchical rule eventually drove the subject cities to revolt and recreated a modified Athenian Empire.

Although Sparta had obtained a firm grip of the bulk of the Greek states there were still those on the Asiatic Mainland under Persian control. How Sparta proposed solving this problem is explained by Robertson in “The Story of Greece and Rome.”

“There remained the liberation of the Greeks from Persia. The defeat of the Persians at Mycale did not mean their retirement from the AEgean. They still held all their possessions, both in Asia Minor and in Thrace. But to drive them out and liberate the Greek cities meant the maintenance of an efficient fleet in the eastern AEgean for a considerable time, and such a policy was, as might be expected, distasteful to Sparta. She, therefore, proposed that Asiatic Greeks should leave their cities and migrate to new homes to be provided for them in Greece.”–(P. 127.)

Before concluding this little sketch of conditions in Greece at the time, it remains to say a little more about that section of Greek society that went under the name of “Oligarchs,” particularly as it has a modern significance.

The Greek philosophers carne principally from the democratic states, but they represented a revolt against the abolition of the political privileges of the rich, and their teaching was directly antagonistic to existing government. Philosophers had reached the stage of doubting the value of all that was accepted and hence democratic government come in for their criticism. Socrates compared the existing constitution of Athens with his ideal state and found it wanting. The Sophists objected to the acceptance of anything on tradition and exalted the individual above the state. It was a reaction against the extreme democracy of the time.

It may appear strange to us that the slaves, who formed a large element in Greek society, were entirely ignored by both philosophers and politicians. But in those days the slave as such had no more standing than a horse or a bullock, although it was possible, under exceptional conditions, for a slave to obtain his freedom. Commerce was a great assistance in helping slaves to become freedmen.

The philosophers were the intellectual expression of oligarchical aspirations, and helped to influence dissatisfied sections of the population in favour of oligarchy—the dictatorship of one man or a small group of men.

The Oligarchs were a minority section that organised in secret clubs, threw their weight for or against any project or legislation that favoured their aspirations, and were able at times to seize power by force when conditions favoured a coup.

The following excellent summary of oligarchy is taken from Whibley’s “Political Parties at Athens,” and although it is only concerned with Athens, it nevertheless applied generally: —

“The oligarchs as a whole were a disloyal faction, for neither their methods nor their objects entitle them to be regarded as a party. They not only rejected the obligation to obey the laws, but they were traitors to their country, for they intrigued with the national enemy against it; their ends were always selfish and treasonable, and were pursued by means of conspiracy and terrorism. 

They formed, as their name implies, a small minority of the State, and were for the most part men of wealth, or political adventurers who saw possibilities of their own advancement in the chance of revolution. In particular, many of the young aristocrats, who looked with contempt on the rule of the lower classes, and were anxious to overthrow it, joined their ranks. 

The motives which had put rich men in opposition to the constitution are obvious …. the political conflict was reactionary, the rich striving to regain the powers they had lost.”—(P. 81.)

From what has been written it should be clear that the Peloponesian War was no different from other later wars in the sense that it arose directly out of the economic conditions of the time. It is also an example of how little “human nature” has changed in the course of two thousand years.

Gilmac.

Buckle on War and Religion (1940)

From the October 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Whatever religion may be in the ascendant, the influence of its ministers is invariably strengthened by a long and dangerous war, the uncertainty of which perplex the minds of men, and induce them, when natural resources are failing, to call on the supernatural for help. On such occasions the clergy rise in importance; the churches are more than usually filled ; and the priest, putting himself forward as the exponent of the wishes of God, assumes the language of authority, and either comforts the people under their losses in a righteous cause, or else he explains to them that those losses are sent to them as a visitation for their sins, and as a warning that they have not been sufficiently attentive to their religious duties ; in other words they have neglected rites and ceremonies in the performance of which the priest himself has a personal interest.”—(“History of Civilisation in England,” Vol. 3, p. 34. World’s Classics Edition.)

Dictatorship and Democracy in the Ancient World (1940)

From the September 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Critics of our interpretation of history are in the habit of putting forward what they consider to be devastating examples of the absurdity of our claims. One such example is the Peloponnesian War which threw into turmoil the ancient Greek States about two thousand four hundred years ago.

To some readers it may appear futile, in these turbulent times, to discuss a conflict that raged so long ago. It may be that before we have reached the end of this article they will have reason to change their minds.

At the time the war broke out Athens, by far the best known and most venerated of the Greek communities, had reached its highest pitch of brilliance in all the arts; architecture, sculpture, literature and the rest. It was the age of Pericles. But it was the economic conditions of the times that were responsible for this brilliance, and it was the political struggle arising out of those economic conditions that brought about the Peloponnesian War and eventually reduced this brilliant civilisation to ruin.

Nearly three thousand years ago Greece was invaded by two Hellenic tribes, Dorian and Ionian, which settled in various places as small self-sufficing land communities. The places in which the communities settled had a considerable influence on the subsequent development of four of the principal states, Sparta, Athens and Corinth and Megara.

Greece consisted of numerous landlocked valleys and islands, and the climate was inclement. The soil was generally poor, especially in Attica, where Athens was situated, corn in particular did not flourish there, and in later times the bulk of the grain supply was imported from eastern lands. The ensuring of an adequate grain supply was the great problem that agitated the Greeks, just as in later days it agitated the Romans.

Before the arrival of the Hellenes, Greece, Asia-Minor, and the islands of the Argean Sea were dominated by a great maritime civilisation centred in Crete. By the time the Hellenic tribes had settled in their new homes the Cretan civilisation had fallen to decay, its colonies over-run, and its maritime trade taken over by the Phonoecians. But the colonies established by Crete on the Greek mainland exerted some influence on the rude Hellenic barbarians, particularly in the products of art such as pottery.

As time passed the nature of the Greek settlements commenced to diverge. At first they were all farming communities, but in the course of time those near the coast commenced to engage in seafaring, and commerce as a source of wealth began to take the place of farming. Athens, Corinth and Megara were states of this kind, but Sparta, owing to its position inland, remained a farming community ruled by an agricultural aristocracy.

In order to understand the position before war broke out a brief description of the leading participants is necessary.

The community established by the Spartans has become a byword for physical fitness and the value of plain living. The system of physical training is ascribed to one of the early “lawgivers,” Lycurgus, and became necessary to conserve the rule of the Spartans over their subject people. When the Spartans came down into Peloponnesus they reduced the people they conquered there to the condition of serfs, who since have gone by the name of “Helots.” The country they conquered consisted of valleys surrounded by mountains and was one of the most fertile portions of Greece. The Spartans (or Lacedaemonians) were not all of equal status. Only the free citizens of the city of Sparta itself controlled the government of the country. Throughout the rest of Sparta settlements were planted to guard the frontiers and help keep the Helots in subjection. The inhabitants of these settlements, who were called Periscii (“dwellers round about”), were free, had full control of local affairs, but no share in the government of the state.

In numbers the Spartans were only a small proportion of the state, and it was the necessity they were under to keep the Helots down that led to the stringent discipline they imposed upon themselves. One rising of Helots that threatened to overthrow the Spartan rule gave them such a fright that they decided to abandon luxurious living and keep themselves always on a warlike basis.

The means adopted by the Spartans to forestall any risk of revolt on the part of the Helots, who were about eight times as numerous, is described in the following passage from A. J. Grant’s “Greece in the Age of Pericles,” which was written towards the end of the last century : —

“And there were in the life of the Helot certain terrible possibilities that quite explain their restiveness. We need lay little stress on such grotesque details as Plutarch’s story that it was a Spartan custom to make Helots drunk in public that they may serve as warnings to the Spartan youth. It is more important to notice that the system of secret police (crypteia) was devised against them. At the beginning of every year war was declared against them, that their murder might not bring blood-guiltiness upon the state. Year by year a certain number of young men put themselves, as secret police, under the direction of the Ephors. It was their duty to go into the country districts to spy out any discontent or designs of insurrection that might lurk there; and if any Helots seemed to entertain designs contrary to the interests of the state, they were at once to be put to death without form of trial. An incident in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war does not allow us to believe that the system of secret police was a mere threat. In that terrible struggle the Spartans were forced to give to the Helots not only the light arms with which they usually accompanied their masters to battle but the full panoply of the heavy-armed soldier. To put such weapons into the hands of so hostile a population was clearly a great danger that must be met. How it was met Thucydides shall tell. “They proclaimed that a selection would be made of those Helots who claimed to have rendered the best service to the Lacedaemonians in the war, and promised them liberty. The announcement was intended to test them; it was thought that those among them who were foremost in asserting their freedom would be most high-spirited and most likely to rise against their masters. So they selected about two thousand, who were crowned with garlands, and went in procession round the temple; they were supposed to have received their liberty, but not long afterwards the Spartans put them all out of the way, and no man knew how any of them came to their end.” (Pages 57-58).

Pretty ghastly ! It would seem that the German Gestapo and their like still have something to learn !

While the Spartans were settling in and dominating the Peloponnesian peninsula the Ionian tribes had gone down into Attica, settling in Athens, on the coastline of the Aegean Sea and the adjoining islands. A glance at the map will show that this territory, with the island of Crete at the south and Asia-Minor on the east, made a little world of its own, admirably set out for commerce with uninterrupted access by sea everywhere. It was, in fact, commerce that eventually dominated the economics and politics of this area. The history of the city states round the Aegean fundamentally diverged from that of the other states, like Sparta, that always remained under the rule of landed aristocracies. Thus the class struggles and conflicts that developed were waged between rich and poor, commercial groups and landed classes, expressed politically as wars against aristocracy, dictatorship or democracy.

The development of Athens, the leading commercial state of the time, is typical of them all. Founded as a landed aristocracy, the poverty of the soil of Attica soon drove the people of Athens to the sea to obtain by barter (principally of pottery, as they had one asset—good potters clay) the sustenance they could not obtain from the soil. The introduction of coinage eventually helped on the ruin of small landowners, who were forced to mortgage their land and implements and finally their bodies to creditors. We have not sufficient space now to give this interesting history.

The economic aspect of Athens at the opening of the war was as follows: —

There was a free citizen population of about 105,000; a free non-citizen (mainly alien) population of about 30,000; and a slave population of 100,000. The greater number of the citizens lived in the country, cultivating their own farms. All of these landowners did not live on their own estates, many of the richer ones living in the town and leasing their property or having it worked by slaves. Of the rest of the citizens the richer were interested in industry or commerce, either as principals or lenders of money, the poorer as craftsmen, sailors and so on. The bulk of the inhabitants of the town and its port—the Piraeus—were poor men reduced to the necessity of manual labour and, with the poor aliens and slaves, formed the industrial class.

Politically the rich landed proprietors supported aristocratic government, and the industrial class supported democratic. Between the two were the rich class, interested in commerce, and the moderate landowners who alternately favoured aristocracy or democracy as one or other appeared likely to serve their momentary interests. Thus during the war Athens, unlike Sparta, was constantly torn by internal conflict.

The invasion of Greece by the Persians gave Athens the opportunity to build up a great maritime empire. While Sparta, the farthest from the conflict, hesitated and fell back, Athens was compelled to fight. The island and coastal states formed a confederacy and voted Athens, who had the largest navy, to the headship, sending money to build up the navy and fortifications. Athens acquitted herself well and used the large navy, with which she was provided, to acquire a virtual monopoly of the commerce and the carrying trade of the Aegean. This monopoly drove two wealthy trading states, Corinth and Megara, into the arms of aristocratically ruled Sparta, and was the real cause of the Peloponnesian War.

Corinth and Megara were situated on either side of the isthmus that divided Peloponnesia from Ionia, and built up a profitable trade owing to the goods that were transported across the isthmus to avoid the dangerous sea journey round the Peloponnesian peninsula. Grant makes the following remarks about Corinth : —

“She had invented the war-ship, the trireme, which had now become the main instrument of the greatness of Athens. Her position upon the Isthmus had given her great advantages for trade, and she made full use of them. A vast slave population ministered to her wants at home and abroad. At Corinth probably life was more luxurious and more unhealthy in its social conditions than elsewhere in Greece. This state now found herself hemmed in by the growth of Athenian power.” (Page 242, “Greece in the age of Pericles.”)

The carrying trade monopoly established by Athens compelled the bulk of shipping to avoid the harbours of Corinth, and the result threatened Corinth with economic ruin !

Largely by the influence of Corinth a conference was held at Sparta in 432 B.C., at which the Corinthians urged Sparta to declare war upon Athens. The following extracts, with their striking modern parallels, are from the speech of the Corinthian delegate at this conference.

“. . . . Time alter rime we have warned you of the mischief which the Athenians would do to us; but instead of taking our words to heart, you chose to suspect that we only spoke from interested motives. And this is the reason why you have summoned these allies here to Sparta too late—not before but after the injury has been inflicted, and when we are smarting under the sense of it. Of all persons who has a better right to speak than ourselves, who have the heaviest accusations to make, outraged as we are by the Athenians, and neglected by you ? If the crimes which they are committing against Hellas were being done in a corner, then you might be ignorant, and we should have to inform you of them; but now, what need of many words ? Some of us, as you see, have already been enslaved; they are at this moment intriguing against others, notably against allies of ours; and long ago they had made all their preparations in expectation of war. Else why did they seduce from her allegiance Corcyra, which they still hold in defiance of us, and why are they blockading Potidoea—the latter a most advantageous post for the command of the Thracian peninsula, the former a great naval power which might have assisted the Peloponnesians ?

And the blame of all this rests on you; for you originally allowed them to fortify their city after the Persian War, and afterwards to build their long walls . . . . By this time we ought to have been considering, not whether we are wronged, but how we are to be revenged. The aggressor is not now threatening, but advancing; he has made up his mind, while we are resolved about nothing. And we know too well by what road and how little by little the Athenians move upon their neighbours. While they think that you are too dull to observe them, they are most careful, but when they perceive that you with full knowledge overlook their aggressions, they will strike and not spare. Of all Hellenes, Lacedaemonians, you are the only people who keep at rest warding off (an enemy) not with your active power but with delay; and you are the only people who do not destroy the increase of your foes in the beginning but when it has grown to fulness. How came you to be considered safe? That reputation of yours was never justified by facts. We all know that the Persian made his way from the ends of the earth against Peloponnesus before you encountered him in a worthy manner; and now you are blind to the doings of the Athenians, who are not at a distance as he was, but close at hand. Instead of attacking your enemy, you wait to be attacked, and take the chance of a struggle which has been deferred until his power is doubled. . . . Some have already been ruined by the hopes which you inspired in them; for so entirely did they trust you that they took no precautions themselves. . . . There are important interests at stake to which, as far as we can see, you are insensible. You have never considered what manner of men are these Athenians with whom you will have to fight, and how utterly unlike yourselves. They are ready to resort to novel devices, equally quick in the conception and in the execution of every new plan; while you are conservative—careful only to keep what you have. . . . Again they are bold beyond their strength; they run risks which prudence would condemn. .. . .” (Thucydides I. 68-71.)

The above forceful language shows how bitterly the Corinthian ruling class felt the loss of their commercial position and the successful rivalry of Athens.

Early in the war Pericles delivered a funeral oration over the Athenians who died in action against Sparta. The following extracts from it give a typical Athenian view.—

“But before I praise the dead, I should like to point out by what principles of action we rose to power, and under what institutions and through what manner of life our empire became great. For I conceive that such thoughts are not unsuited to the occasion, and that this numerous assembly of citizens and strangers may profitably listen to them.

Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognised. . . . Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition. . . . .

And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirit many relaxations from toil; we have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year; at home the style of our life is refined; and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish sadness. Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth now in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as of our own.

Then again, our military training is in many respects superior to that of our adversaries. Our city is thrown open to the world, and we never expel a foreigner, or prevent him from seeing or learning anything of which the secret, if revealed to any enemy, might profit him. We rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own heart and hands. …. The Lacedaemonians come into Attica not by themselves, but with their whole confederacy following; we go alone into a neighbour’s country, and although our opponents are fighting for their homes and we are on a foreign soil, we have seldom any difficulty in overcoming them. Our enemies have never yet felt our united strength; the care of a navy divides our attention, and on land we are obliged to send our citizens elsewhere. But they, if they meet and defeat a part of our army, are as proud as if they had routed us all, and when defeated they pretend to have been vanquished by us all.”—(Thucydides ii. 35-46.)

Unfortunately for the Athenians in the prosecution of the war they came up against evils which have also afflicted modern states. One of these was the profiteer, as the following quotation from a speech made in the prosecution of certain grain dealers. Grain was almost the basis of Athenian life, hence the severity of the penalty, death, for anyone caught hindering its free disposal. Yet the fact that there were prosecutions for attempting to evade the law shows that the urge to make profit, even in those days, was strong enough to induce people to take grave risks.

“When these men (the grain dealers) are required to pay a special tax which everyone is going to hear about, they are reluctant, and plead their pretended poverty as an excuse, but when they have done something for which the punishment is death, and which it behoved them to keep secret, they make the outrageous assertion that their illegal acts were on your behalf. Yet you are all aware that they are the very last men who ought to put forward such a plea, for their advantage is diametrically opposed to that of other people. They make their greatest profit when some public calamity becomes known and the price of grain goes up. They are so delighted to learn of your misfortunes that, in some instances, they find out about them before other people, and in others, themselves concoct false news of disaster—that the grain fleet in transit has been lost, or has been captured by the Lacedaemonians, or that the truce is going to be declared at an end. . . . When you happen to be most in want of grain, they get their hands on the supply and are reluctant to sell—to the end that we may not quarrel about the price, but may be content if we can purchase and carry home the least little bit.” (The speech is quoted in full by Calhoun, “Business Life of Ancient Athens,” p. 73.)

Another interesting Athenian view is that put into the mouth of the disputants by Plato in his “Republic.”

“And as they are all Hellenes themselves they will not devastate Hellas, nor will they burn houses nor even suppose that the whole population of a city—men, women and children—are equally their enemies, for they know that the guilt of war is always confined to a few persons and that the many are then friends. And for all these reasons they will be unwilling to waste their lands, and raze their houses; their enmity to them will only last until the many innocent sufferers have compelled the guilty few to give satisfaction.” (P. 470.)

(Space prevents the conclusion of this article in this issue. It will be completed in the next issue.)

Gilmac.

The Importance of Marxism—(continued) (1940)

From the September 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Continued from the August 1940 issue.

In the concluding paragraph of last month’s article we stated that surplus-value is produced in industry. Let us now examine the productive process.

Constant and Variable Capital

The capital of the industrialist can be divided into two parts. One part consists of buildings, machinery and raw materials, the other of human labour-power. Marx calls the former part constant capital, because its value undergoes no change in the process of production but is simply transferred to the article; whereas the latter part Marx refers to as variable capital on account of the fact that in the productive process it produces a greater value than that contained within itself. This distinction in the two aspects of capital is not one made by the capitalist. The latter usually lumps the whole of his capital together and calculates his profit on the total sum invested. If he makes any distinction at all it is between what he calls fixed capital, i.e., buildings and machinery, and circulating capital, i.e., raw materials and wages, etc. The Marxian classification, however, enables us to penetrate the inner mechanism of capitalist production. Its full meaning will become clear at later stages of the argument.

Labour and Labour-Power

During the course of our discussion we have frequently used the expression “labour-power.” So as to avoid all possible misunderstanding, let us give the Marxian definition of the term : —

“By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description” (page 186, Vol. I, Modern Library Ed.). Labour-power is therefore the energy contained within a worker’s body and brain. On the other hand “labour” is the energy thrown out from his body, the juice itself, so to speak. When this energy is incorporated in a product it forms the substance of value. The capitalist economists were wrong in assuming that the worker sells his “labour” to the capitalist. The worker cannot sell something that does not belong to him. What he in fact sells is his labouring-power for a day, or a week, or a month, and so on.

Wages

Wages are the price of labour-power. The value of labour-power is determined by the labour time required to reproduce it, which, in effect, means the labour time required to produce the food, clothing and shelter necessary to keep the worker (and his family, if he has one) alive. Wages are therefore determined by the cost of subsistence of the worker. It must not be assumed, however, that the worker’s standard of living is a fixed quantity. On the contrary the standard is influenced by the climate of a country and by historical factors. So Marx points out: —

“His natural wants, such as food, clothing, fuel, and housing, vary according to the climate and other physical conditions of his country. On the other hand, the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also the mode of satisfying them, are themselves the product of historical development, and depend, therefore, to a great extent on the degree of civilisation of a country, more particularly on the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and degree of comfort in which, the class of free labourers has been formed. In contradiction, therefore, to the case of other commodities, there enters into the determination of the value of labour-power a historical and moral element. Nevertheless, in a given country at a given period, the average quantity of the means of subsistence necessary for the labourer are practically known” (page 190).

As far as the skilled worker is concerned, his labouring-power possesses a greater value than that of the unskilled worker because more labour time has been required to produce it, i.e., to train him, consequently he can command a higher price for his commodity on the market. Let us assume, for the sake of example, that the means of subsistence necessary to maintain the worker for a day can be produced in four hours. Let us also assume that in four hours 12s. gold can be produced. In that case, if the worker, say, sells his labouring-power to the capitalist for a day and receives the sum of 12s., he is getting a price corresponding to the full value of his day’s labour-power. Utilising this example let us see what happens in the factory. Our figures are, of course, quite arbitrary, but they will serve the purpose of illustration.

The Production of Surplus Value

Let us assume that the factory owner is a manufacturing furrier, selling, say, marmot coats at £10 3s. per coat, that he has bought the labour-power of a worker for a day (8 hours) and that the worker produces the entire coat, from start to finish. For the production of marmot coats the factory owner requires buildings, machines, benches, boards, skins, lining, etc., and labour-power. Now let us set down the expenditure of the capitalist on a single coat :—

If, according to the above example, the worker produced only one coat a day, the capitalist would actually lose. But let us assume that the worker can produce a coat in one hour. In that case, after eight hours he will have produced eight coats, each valued at £10 3s., making a total value of £81 4s. (£80 being previous value, and 24s. fresh value), thus producing a surplus value of 12s. Now let us set down the expenditure of the factory owner for a day:—

The value of the coats is £81 4s., and the capitalist has made a surplus-value of 12s., or appropriated four hours of labour for nothing if he sells the goods at their value.

Rate of Surplus Value

As we have seen, surplus-value is labour-time for which the capitalist does not return any equivalent. It does not matter whether we regard surplus-value from the aspect of time work or piece work. The formula for surplus value can be expressed : —

With regard to the formula (b) Marx says : —

“After the investigations we have given above, it is no longer possible to be misled by the formula unpaid labour/paid labour, into concluding, that the capitalist pays for labour and not for labour-power. This formula is only a popular expression for surplus-labour/ necessary-labour. The capitalist pays the value, so far as price coincides with value, of the labour-power, and receives in exchange the disposal of the living labour-power itself. His usufruct is spread over two periods. During one the labourer produces a value that is only equal to the value of his labour-power; he produces its equivalent. Thus the capitalist receives in return for his advance of the price of the labour-power, a product of the same price. It is the same as if he had bought the product ready made in the market. During the other period, the period of surplus-labour, the usufruct of the labour-power creates a value for the capitalist, that costs him no equivalent. This expenditure of labour-power comes to him gratis. In this sense it is that surplus-labour can be called unpaid labour (pages 584-585).

Marx calls the surplus value, calculated on the variable capital, “the rate of surplus value.” In the instance we have given it would be 100 per cent. The rate of surplus value discloses the degree of exploitation of the worker. Once we know the length of exploitation, which may vary, how long the worker has been engaged in producing his wages and surplus value, we then know the degree of exploitation of the proletarian.

Solomon Goldstein

(To be continued.)

The Materialist Conception of History (1940)

Book Review from the September 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some misrepresentations of Marx turn up again

The Labour Book Service recently published “The Politics of Democratic Socialism,” by Mr. E. F. M. Durbin. It was highly praised in reviews in the Labour and Liberal Press, and Mr. Herbert Morrison and Professor Tawney were among those who congratulated Mr. Durbin on his work. There is a good deal of merit, though perhaps not much originality, in some parts of the book, but the section dealing with the Materialist Conception of History shows a reckless and profound ignorance of the subject. So far as the writer of the article is aware the reviews of the book said nothing about that section, though it is of the greatest importance.

In it Mr. Durbin discusses what he believes to be the Marxian view, and dismisses it as wholly untenable. It is, he says, impossible to accept “as a true theory of history” (page 179). Readers who are not already familiar with Marx’s views and who find Mr. Durbin’s destructive criticism convincing will be surprised to learn that in fact he does not deal with Marx’s view. Instead, he alters its name to “economic interpretation of history,” robs it of its real content and substitutes other things that would have amazed Marx and Engels, treats as qualified exponents of it such people as Laski, Strachey and Cole (the last of whom took upon himself to alter its name to “realistic interpretation of history”), and ends up with the condescending remark that “Marxists show no willingness whatever to accept the more reasonable version of their own theory” (page 175).

Before dealing with Mr. Durbin’s errors it may be remarked that he is not at all original. It has all been done before; though Mr. Durbin’s ignorance of Marx probably extends also to an ignorance of his predecessors in the art of knocking down Aunt Sallies of his own construction. He might, with profit, look up Kautsky’s “Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History” and Boudin’s “Theoretical System of Karl Marx,” where he would find that the critics who preceded him are duly answered.

As it is impossible for reasons of space to deal with all of Mr. Durbin’s errors it must suffice to show the line on which his argument is developed.

The doctrine which Mr. Durbin shows to be untenable is the doctrine “that history is determined, and the action of individuals and groups controlled, by rational acquisitive self-interest” (page 168). To clinch his argument he makes the following points (page 171): —

“We are clearly influenced continuously by the thought of our material welfare. But are we influenced by nothing else ? Do we order our whole lives and choose all our group loyalties by the thought of nothing but our real wages. … It is only if we are moved by these considerations alone that a purely economic interpretation of history can be sustained.” (His italics.)

All very true, but what on earth has this to do with Marx and the Materialist Conception of History? Mr. Durbin, to be sure, is certain that it has everything to do with it; but the reader of his book will notice that nowhere does he show where Marx or Engels ever wrote anything about history being determined “by the thoughts of nothing but our real wages.”

Instead Mr. Durbin adopts an old device of quoting not from Marx to prove his point against Marx, but of quoting from Laski, Cole and Strachey, whom he blandly describes as “the modern exponents of the doctrine” and “the newest schools of Marxist thought” (page 158).

May we protest to Mr. Durbin that it would not occur to serious students of Marx that Marxism has been understood and correctly stated, much less improved, by the speculations and interpretations of these gentlemen.

How Marx really stated the view held by him and Engels can be seen from the following passage in his preface to his “Critique of Political Economy,” 1859: —

“In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations which are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.”

It is not that Mr. Durbin is entirely unaware of what Marx and Engels said about the Materialist Conception of History. Indeed, he quotes on page 157 of his book the following passage from Engels’ 1888 preface to the Communist Manifesto: —

“In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes.”

But after quoting this, instead of examining it to see whether it is tenable or not, he prefers to make a slashing attack on some other and utterly absurd theory which explains historical movements as the sole result of thinking “of nothing but our real wages.” Did it not once occur to Mr. Durbin that it would be odd for a prosperous manufacturer like Engels to devote much time and money to the working-class movement and the abolition of capitalism (and prosperous manufacturers) if in fact he held the view that (in Mr. Durbin’s words) “we order our whole lives and choose all our group loyalties by the thought of nothing but our real wages”?

Did Mr. Durbin never notice that “the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it”—this being the definition used by Engels—is wider than, and very different from, the conception of mere individual or group self-interest?

Does he not appreciate that the prevailing “mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it” exercise an influence on the ideas and aims and actions of individuals and social groups far beyond the simple notion of individual wages or profits. This confusion of “material conditions” with “material interests” has misled many others besides Mr. Durbin. It was, for example, dealt with by Boudin in his ”Theoretical System for Karl Marx,” published in 1907 (Chapter III).

Did Mr. Durbin never ask himself why Marx and Engels habitually used the term materialist conception of history and not “economic” interpretation, still less “economic determination”? (the phrase used by Professor Seligman and those who have followed him).

Engels, in a letter to a student written in 1890, anticipated Mr. Durbin’s errors. He wrote: —

“According to the Materialist Conception of History, the factor which is in the last instance decisive in history is the production and reproduction of actual life. More than this neither Marx nor myself ever claimed. If now someone has distorted the meaning in such a way that the economic factor is the only decisive one, this man has changed the above proposition into an abstract, absurd phrase which says nothing. The economic situation is the base, but the different parts of the structure—the political forms of the class struggle and its results, the constitutions established by the victorious class after the battle is won, forms of law and even the reflections of all these real struggles in the brains of the participants, political theories, juridical, philosophical, religious opinions, and their further development into dogmatic systems—all this exercises also its influence on the development of the historical struggles and in cases determines their form. (Italics Engels’.)

Engels went on to explain that the overemphasis of the economic factor was in part the fault of Marx and himself—”Facing our adversaries we had to lay especial stress on the essential principle denied by them, and, besides, we had not always the time, place, or occasion to assign to the other factors . . . the part which belongs to them.”

Nevertheless, at no time did Marx or Engels put forward the view that the economic factor is the only one or that “economic factor” is so narrow a conception as mere “acquisitive self-interest.”

In Ins letter Engels elaborated the Marxian view in its correct form, a form quite unlike that of Mr. Durbin’s imagination: —

“The economic conditions, which we consider as the determinative basis in the history of society, we understand to be the manner in which men in a given society produce their means of subsistence and the ways in which they effect the exchange of products among themselves (this as long as division of labour exists). The entire technique of production and transportation is here included. According to our conception this technique determines the mode of exchange, of distribution of products, and—after the disintegration of the tribal society—the division of society into classes, the conditions of master and slave, of State, of politics, law, etc. Further, among the economic conditions under which these phenomena obtain, must be included the geographical environment, and also the actual remains of former phases of economic evolution which often persisted by force of tradition, inertia, or because of circumstances which surround that form of society.

Even if …. technique largely depends on the condition of science, yet, in a greater measure, does the latter depend on the conditions of and the need for, technique. If society is in the need of the development of a certain technique, this helps science more than ten universities.”

And again: —

“History is not as some would imagine, for the sake of their greater convenience, an automatic effect of the economic situation, but men themselves make their own history. Certain it is, however, that men act in accordance with the prevailing conditions that dominate their field of action.” (Italics Engels’.)

It will also be seen from Engels’ letter above that he did not hold the view that for Marxists “economic forces” can be narrowed down to “technical discoveries” alone. Mr. Durbin, however, is able to reach that conclusion, by quoting from Mr. Laski and Mr. Stratchey. After the quotation (pages 156 and 157) Mr. Durbin says: —

“These quotations demonstrate beyond doubt that the first of the four basic contentions of the Marxist analysis—that history is exclusively determined by “economic” forces, and even exclusively by technical discoveries—has been seriously maintained by Marxists from the dawn of Marxist thought in the forties of last century down to the most recent publications of the Left Book Club.” (Page 157.)

This conclusion may be true as regards Laski and Strachey, but Mr. Durbin cannot base it on the passages he quotes from Marx and Engels.

This fact about technical development was dealt with by Louis Boudin (“Theoretical System of Karl Marx,” page 35) in a passage which concludes with the following: —

“Be it therefore said here for the Nth time, that while changes in the technical development of the means of production usually go together with changes in the material conditions of the people, they do not necessarily so go together and are separate and distinct from each other. While the technical developments in the means of production and distribution are the chief cause of changes in the material conditions of the people, they are not always so and not necessarily so. There are other causes which may affect the material conditions of the people, and there are changes in the technical part of production and distribution which do not at all affect the material conditions of the people. And the Marxists claim that it is the changes in the “material conditions” that are the prime movers of history, no matter what the causes of these changes may be. The technical development only affects the course of history indirectly and only in so far as it causes changes in the material conditions under which people live and work.”

Another of Mr. Durbin’s errors disposed of by Engels is the belief that Marxists “are committed” to the doctrine of “the impotence of ideas” (page 175). It will be noticed that Engels mentions “political theories” as one of the factors which exercise an influence on historical struggles. Does this surprise Mr. Durbin ? Has he forgotten the lifetime devoted by Marx and Engels to studying and teaching, and to Socialist propaganda?

We could say a lot more about Mr. Durbin’s book, but perhaps it will be sufficient to add that if Mr. Durbin really wants to do a serious job of work he should start off with the assumption that Marx and Engels meant and understood what they wrote, and should take the advice Engels himself gave to a student in the letter written in 1890—“I would further ask you to study the theory from its original sources and not from second-hand works; it is really much easier.”

When Mr. Durbin says (page 179) that he and others “who cannot accept any of the existing variants of this theory, await any new forms of it with sustained and lively interest,” our advice to him is to go back and look at the theory as it really was in the original and is still, and to remember that his “variants of it” are not variants of Marx but variants on the theme Cole-Laski-Strachey. This is not the same thing.

Edgar Hardcastle

Party Speaker fined (1940)

Party News from the September 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

As a result of a speaker of the Party being fined in connection with a Party meeting in Hyde Park we have had to meet a bill for £18 8s. Donations are invited to prevent this expenditure interfering with the Party’s normal activities.

Send to S.P.G.B., 42 Great Dover Street, S.E.1 Cheques and Postal Orders should be crossed.

To Readers of “The Socialist Standard” (1940)

Party News from the September 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hitherto war-time conditions have not placed as many obstacles in the way of producing and distributing the Socialist Standard as had been expected. Now, however, difficulties are rapidly increasing. Paper is more costly and the shortage has already made it impossible to print as many copies as could have been sold. Later on it is probable that the size will have to be reduced.

At the moment, however, a more pressing problem is the difficulty of selling the Socialist Standard at meetings in streets and parks. The number of meetings has been reduced, and, for various reasons arising out of war-time conditions and restrictions, opportunities for selling the Socialist Standard in the streets may be drastically curtailed.

We therefore ask readers who have been in the habit of buying the Socialist Standard at meetings to cease relying on this and take out a subscription for six months or a year.

All that is necessary is to send a postal order to the Literature Secretary, at 42, Great Dover Street, S.E.I.

The cost has been increased owing to the recent raising of the postage rates, but it will still cost you only 1s. 6d. for six months, or 3s. for twelve months.

Send in your order now if you want to be sure of receiving your the Socialist Standard regularly each month.

Please cross your postal orders.

Appeal for Donations (1940)

Party News from the September 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some months ago I described the remarkable success of our propaganda efforts during last winter—the crowded meetings, the huge literature sales and the big collections. Well comrades and friends Winter is drawing near and although the conditions may be such that will prevent us from repeating our successes on quite the same lines, nevertheless we are planning to adapt our efforts to changing circumstances.

We must of course have money—every fund requires it; Propaganda, General, Educational and Publicity Funds all require enlarging. Is there any need for me to say more? You know how vital is the Party’s need for money. Send it in as quickly as you can. Thanks.

H. G. Holt, 

Party Funds Organiser.

The Shape of Things to Come—and The Forces That Will Shape Them (1940)

From the August 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who seek to explain by reference to “ideologies” the swift movement of events in the world, the sudden collapse of impregnable positions, the seemingly inexplicable changes which show the grand old men of yesterday to be the dodderers of to-day, must be bewildered and confused by what is going on before their eyes. In a short period of time they have seen those exponents of supposedly irreconcilable doctrines—Stalin and Hitler—joined in a pact of friendship, while Catholic Italy and Catholic Spain fall more and more under the influence of Nazi Germany, erstwhile enemy of Catholicism. They have seen democratic France turn towards Dictatorship, and Conservatives proclaiming the need to back up “revolutionary” movements. The idealist who tries to discern the pattern in history, past and present, is prevented from doing so because he believes that ideas and beliefs have an independent origin and that one set of ideas will triumph over another if only the men who hold them have leaders of goodwill and integrity. The Socialist who looks to social relations and economic forces is better placed. Not, of course, that the Socialist can predict with certainty just how and when a conflict of forces will work out in the future, but at least he knows what is the nature of the forces on which the issue depends. Knowing, as Marx puts it, that “it is not men’s consciousness which determines their life,” but “their social life which determines their consciousness,” he also allows for the fact that at any given period of history the vital forces at work have to struggle with ideas which resulted from past conditions—”the tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living.”

The Weakness of France

Some of the explanations given of the French collapse are of the most superficial kind : Petain, we are told, was a “pessimist ” even in 1917, and Laval “a defeatist and potential traitor”; there were elements in France who were “vaguely anti-Parliamentarian and anti-democratic and equally vaguely pro-Fascist”; Daladier was “a civilian mediocrity,” and Gamelin “a military mediocrity”—and so on. These “explanations” cry aloud themselves to be explained. A little nearer the mark is the Economist’s French correspondent (July 20th, 1940), who says that he interviewed many French officers and “cannot recall one who was not a pessimist, not about the outcome of the war, but about the social and economic difficulties which would open up for France after the end of hostilities.” “It was not,” he says, “the mental attitude that wins wars.”

Some of the newspaper correspondents have, however, shown a more correct and robust grasp of realities in their judgment of the forces at work in France.

A Special Correspondent in France of the Daily Telegraph (June 25th, 1940) pointed out that Petain and Weygand were scared by reports (proved to be incorrect) that Communists had seized public buildings in Paris. This incident shows that preoccupation with maintaining France’s social tranquillity and repressing subversive movements weighed heavily with the two aged soldiers, and that they did not see the situation in its true perspective.”

Mr. Ward Price (Daily Mail, July 8th) mentions the “rich and influential Frenchmen” (including an unnamed “owner of iron ore mines in Lorraine”) who were behind Laval because they thought that “their personal interests would be benefited by co-operation with Germany, or, conversely, that war between the two countries would ruin them.” As long ago as 1931, in pre-Nazi days, Laval had proposed a Franco-German Committee of Economic Co-operation.

Another Daily Mail correspondent, Mr. Francis Tuohy, classifies the people behind French Fascism as “Catholics, Royalists, Officers, aristocracy, big business, police and functionaries, intellectuals and students, the propertied classes in general” (Daily Mail, July 22nd), and according to a French ex-editor, writing in the Manchester Guardian (July 22nd), one of the members of the Petain Cabinet is a Senator named Mireaux, editor of the Temps. “That paper,” he says, “is the organ of the Comité des Forges, the head of which is M. de Wendel, a great friend of M. Laval.” (The Comité des Forges is the organisation of French heavy industry.)

One last quotation on this aspect is from an editorial in the Manchester Guardian (July 12th) :

“That France needs reform is evident enough. In the last twenty years she has had forty-two Ministries. Only five Governments have kept themselves alive for twelve months. Such rapid changes give a mischievous instability to politics. In the background there lurks the power of what M. Herriot called “the 200 best families,” obstructing all social reform and threatening the Governments that did not obey them. It was, indeed, because the revolt against the sinister rule of the banks and big business was so certain at the end of the war, however the war ended, that many rich men were anxious to compound with Hitler ; they were more afraid of victory than of defeat. When defeat came they spoke like the rich friend of Cicero who wrote to him, ” Since the Republic is lost, let us at least keep our property!””

Forces for Change in Europe

The safeguarding of property interests is the dead hand of the past, but what of the more active forces pushing towards change and reorganisation in Europe? Can the men who appear as leaders hold developments in check, or failing that can they guide them into the channels they desire? Are they the creatures or the masters of the forces behind and below them ? We need to be cautious in forecasting events, but it seems a safe conclusion that the regime of Petain and that of his friend Franco are both doomed to fail. Petain’s Foreign Minister, Baudouin, can say (News Chronicle, July 18th) that “the world existing before May 10th is definitely buried,” and think that he is free to determine the destiny of France so that “new relations will be instituted between Capital and Labour and there will be new conceptions of life based on authority, order and obedience.” So also Franco’s brother-in-law and Foreign Minister, Serano Suner, can say (Daily Express, July 19th) that “freedom has been buried for ever in Spain,” but events will determine otherwise. Franco, only a brief while ago, was talking of a new stable order in Spain based on the peasants and national self-sufficiency just as Petain’s Government at the present time “apparently sees France’s role in the new Europe as primarily a peasant and handicraft country” (Daily Telegraph, July 23rd). But the clock of industrial and capitalist development cannot be turned back to medievalism. Franco and Petain both ignored or forgot that they live in a world which is subject to the intense and inescapable pressure of trade and competition ; on the one hand, and working-class resistance on the other. It is not to be forgotten that “a million Republicans are held in prison camps” in Franco’s Spain (W. Forrest, News Chronicle, July 18th). And it is from a Spanish newspaper correspondent in Vichy that the report came that Petain’s Government had to shift from Clermont-Ferrand to Vichy because of the violent and threatening attitude of the workers at the Michelin tyre factory in the former town (Daily Telegraph, July 19th).

Franco used to talk of being free from the pressure of capitalist forces, determined to build up Spain within her own border and on her own resources, but already he has been forced to change his tune to the more familiar one of Spain’s “duty and mission” to command Gibraltar and go in for a policy of Empire building : “We have shed the blood of our dead, not in order to return to the decadent past but in order to build a nation and create an empire” (The Times, July 19th). “Expansion in Africa” is now the order of the day.

When considering the prospects of such dictatorships as those of Petain and Franco, it is worth noticing that the four dictatorships that succeeded in establishing themselves (Russia, Germany, Italy and Turkey), along with some differences had two things in common. In each case power was obtained by a new group, not a mere reshuffling of representatives of existing parties and interests, and in each case those who seized power contrived to do so by using (or exploiting) the more or less constitutional machinery without waging open civil war against the workers or other large representative section of the population. On one or the other of these counts both Franco and Petain fail to possess the qualities that make for comparative permanence (not, of course, that other dictatorships have real permanence either).

It is relevant at this point to consider the position of Russia, and the urge that drove the Stalin regime to enter into the pact with Hitler. The military consideration of not wanting to be isolated in face of Germany and Japan was one aspect, but observers have recently confirmed that behind that fear was the factor of internal economic difficulties. The Moscow correspondent of the American New Republic (quoted in Forward, July 20th) gives it as his judgment that slackening industrial development compelled the Russian Government to take the view that “in both technical organisation and labour, efficiency was advancing so slowly that it would be generations before these departments would compare with those of the modern industrial States.

“Stalin’s way out was an alliance with some big industrial country, in order (1) to ensure Russia’s position of strength in the coming European war; (2) to supplement consumer’s goods industries until they would be able to stand on their own; (3) to supply the machine tools, optical apparatus, etc., which Russia is still forced to import.”

Mr. Louis Fischer, who was for 14 years a newspaper correspondent in Russia, says much the same in his “Stalin and Hitler” (Penguin Special, 6d., May, 1940). He attributes Russia’s industrial slowing down to several factors: “In part (it is) due to military preparations. But it is more adequately explained by the purges and several inherent Soviet economic weaknesses.” (P. 62.)

Here again, as in every other instance of international trends, it is idle to look wholly or mainly to abstract ideas and motives whether of rulers or ruled.

Before leaving the question of the forces making for change in Europe, it is interesting to view the spectacle of Conservatives being forced against every inclination to support movements that may help to undermine the German-Italian dictatorship systems. It is put most strikingly in the columns of the Daily Express. Below are two quotations from recent issues. The first is from an article by Mr. Geoffrey Cox, showing how Franco should be attacked at home if Spain goes to war on Germany’s side: —

“Seize the Canary Islands and other Spanish island possessions and set up there at once a Republican Government which we recognise.

But we can only do this if our appeal is a genuine Republican revolutionary appeal for straight-out revolution.

We must be prepared to co-operate with all the parties of the last Spanish Popular Front Government—Socialists and Communists and Anarchists, as well as Liberals and Radicals. We must get out of our minds all questions of whether these people are Red, or pink or white.

For no other appeal will rouse Spain now except the cry of the Republic.”—(Daily Express July 19th.)

The second quotation is from an editorial: —

“Our allies are ordinary people, not Fascist dictators. And since the ordinary people of Europe are now ruled by Fascists we must organise revolutions.

If (by some terrible folly) Britain were ever at war with Soviet Russia, we would work for a Right Wing revolution there. Since we are fighting Fascists, we must work for Left Wing revolutions in Europe. That is only common sense.

And so our Foreign Office and Ministry of Information should change their whole mentality.

Respectable ex-public school-boys and English gentlemen were admirably suited for conducting our relations with Right Wing politicians abroad. But they are the wrong people for carrying on underground intrigues, organising strikes, arranging sabotage and fomenting general discontent in Europe.”

— (Daily Express, July 23rd.)

In that quarter, at least, the dead hand of the past has been thrown off in so far as the winning of the war is concerned.

Edgar Hardcastle