Ashley Montagu quotes (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Race” Mixing

Those who deliver themselves of unfavorable judgments concerning “race crossing” are merely expressing their prejudices. . . . The truth seems to be that far from being deleterious to the resulting off-spring and the generations following them, interbreeding between different ethnic groups is from the biological and every other standpoint highly advantageous to mankind.. . . Indeed, if there were any truth in the suggestion that hybridization results in degeneration or decadence man should have died out long ago or else sunk to the level of a deformed idiot, for he is one of the most highly hybridized creatures on earth.

From “Man's Most Dangerous Myth” (Ashley Montagu).

“Race” and “Blood”

Scientists have for many years attempted to discover whether or not any differences exist in the blood of different peoples, but the results of such investigations have always been the same—no difference has been discovered, except in the statistical distribution of the traits which all human beings possess in common. In short, it cannot be too emphatically or too often repeated that in every respect the blood of all human groups is the same, varying only in the frequency with which certain of its chemical components are encountered in different populations. This similarity cuts across all lines of caste, class, group, nation, and ethnic group.

From “Man's Most Dangerous Myth” (Ashley Montagu).

Background to Civil Rights in America (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

A great many—if not most—people make a practice of judging shop merchandise by the display in the window. A policy such as this often leads to confusion, if not error. Much the same might be said for many of those who would analyze the civil rights struggle in America. They concentrate upon the propaganda and personal utterances of spokesmen involved in the struggle and gain an image of the causes, thereby, that is inaccurate to some extent and generally confusing. Slogans such as “Equality”, "Justice”, “Freedom ”, etc. are important in generating enthusiasm among the rank and file membership; they constitute the window display. But if one is to understand the problem it is necessary to get behind the slogans and examine American capitalism and its basic needs. Since the Supreme Court of the United States is a top agency of American capitalism, no better research can be recommended than an examination of their edicts over the years.

The Dred Scott Decision.

Every American school child has been made acquainted with the basic details — if not the underlying significance — of the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s court declared, 5 to 3, that Scott could not be a citizen because he was a Negro and that he was not freed from his original slave status merely because he had twice established residence on soil that was guaranteed free by the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

Whatever the attitude today towards the “morality”, “justice”' and "mercy” of the Supreme Court of 1857, one can be certain that it reflected the prevailing opinions of their time. But more important, they reflected the needs of American capitalism. Southern plantation capitalism was still an important—even if a rapidly deteriorating—part of the United States economy and plantation capitalism operated on a foundation of chattel-slave labour. Chief Justice Taney and his Court were not about to endanger the sanctity of private property nor is it likely that many, aside from an Abolitionist minority, regarded the justices as black-hearted scoundrels.

Even in the North, feeling against the institution of chattel-slavery in the Southern states was not widespread and the Abolitionists were not by any means popular. But they carried on their activities. In Boston, for example, they soap-boxed on the Charles St. mall of Boston Common and they placed posters in Negro neighbourhoods warning the coloured people against conversing with white strangers lest they divulge information that could lead to the capture of runaway slaves. It took the secession of the Southern states from the Union to bring on the Civil War and to end the legal system of chattel-slavery.

“Separate But Equal”

By 1896 American capitalism generally, and Southern capitalism in particular, had new problems. In the North, industry had grown rapidly under the command of the “ malefactors of great wealth ’’—Morgan, Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc. —There was area enough, what with the developing frontier, and wage-labour enough with the deluge of poverty-stricken immigrants, to obviate the need for expansion into the deep South. So the South remained largely a region of small scale, low wage, capitalism. Southern white capitalists had found it advantageous to foster a myth of white superiority and a policy of white supremacy. By keeping Negro labour power generally well below minimum subsistence standards, white labour power was stabilized at a level high enough to satisfy a type of ego that is happy to be “better off" than others, even if considerably below national averages.

The Supreme Court, while not necessarily Southern in sympathy, could reflect the attitudes of American capitalism, generally, and still deliver a verdict on Negro rights consistent with the demands of Southern capitalism of the time. So in 1896 the Supreme Court decided that the State of Louisiana was not in violation of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution when it introduced segregation of Negroes in railway passenger cars. Again in 1908 the “nine old men" decreed that it was entirely constitutional for the State of Maryland to set up segregation in schools. So legalized segregation (“separate but equal") became perfectly natural, normal, moral, and the height of justice in the South and everybody, including such revered Negro leaders as Booker T. Washington, seemed happy at the new development in American democracy. . .

". . . With all Deliberate Speed.”

until 1954, when an entirely new set of circumstances—developed over a period of years and accelerated since the end of World War II—became reflected in a new and opposite Supreme Court decision. In fact, the decision on desegregation in 1954 placed a legal stamp upon a movement that erupted in the wake of a rapidly developing industrialization of the Southland. It is one thing to compel Negroes to take a back seat and refrain from “contaminating” the white man's schools and his pools when the region is pretty much a sleepy backwater. It is quite another problem, however, to segregate the coloured population—particularly the small section with higher educational qualifications and incomes on a par or higher than the vaunted “American standard ”. As big Northern industry moved into the South and as the South became a part of the 20th. century the pressure for “equal rights” under the Constitution reached boiling point and in many instances the lid was blown off in demonstrations, sit-ins, and riots in major cities both South and North.

Not only had it become evident that the “separate’’ Negro facilities, schools, etc. were far from equal, indeed decidedly inferior; it had also become evident to the Supreme Court that the very concept of separateness denotes inferiority and constitutes a violation of the 14th. Amendment, Melville W. Fuller and his Supreme Court of 1896 and 1908 notwithstanding.

But why had the Negro movement reached its present dimensions as late as the mid years of the 20th. century ? Why not in 1900, or in 1920, or 1940? There are those who might infer that Chief Justice Earl Warren's Supreme Court is composed of men of higher moral calibre that the courts of Roger Taney and Melville Fuller. Or perhaps, even, that the moral qualities of the nation are higher today than in 1857 or 1908. Even if we accept that this is true, the question remains; why this should be so at this particular time; All evidence points in one direction. Segregation, except in special instances, is not in the interests of American capitalism today on either the domestic scene or, especially, the international arena. The rapid appearance since World War II of a number of new nations populated and ruled by coloured people has doubtless influenced the conversion of an ardent segregationist such as Lyndon B. Johnson into an outspoken champion of Negro civil rights. And only the more backward states of the Old Confederacy refused to go along with him in November, 1964. For Mr Johnson today represents the interests of the total national capitalist class of America and segregation has now become a positive menace to those interests.

Civil Rights and Emancipation.

Despite the continuing opposition to the Civil Rights Law enacted by Congress in 1964, in parts of the South there seems to be a general compliance. It is but a matter of time until only the most dominant of all discriminations—between workers and capitalists—will remain.

There is no denying the heroism displayed by rank and file Negro and white workers — even children — against fearsome odds. From the “sympathetic” liberals who would have them not ask too much too quickly, from the bigoted and dangerous Birch Society members, Ku Klux Klansmen, and even from Southern “law and order", those who struggle for civil rights find a great many cards stacked against them. But the civil rights groups, themselves, are in a sense reactionary. They organize—for the most part—on the basis of loyalty to America and they demand for Negro workers nothing more than the opportunity to compete equally in the sale of labour-power. They cater to the myth of racialism even to the extent of building an image of a glorious history in Africa. They encourage and foster religious practice among their following. In short, they balance their militancy with the sheeplike propaganda so important to capitalism, and they hide the greater struggle, in which workers of all colours are brothers.

Harry Morrison

(Boston, Mass.).

‘‘America’s 15,000,000 negroes are its single most under developed human resource, and they cannot reach their full potential usefulness until they are thoroughly integrated with the white population. . . . Only when negro and white families can live together as neighbours, when negro children and white children can play together, study together, go to the same church —only then will the negro grow up properly prepared for his place in the world of work."

The Manchester Guardian, (15.5.56).

Black nationalism in Africa (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nationalism as a political theory originated in Germany around the beginning of the 19th century, when the German nationalists put forward the theory that those who speak the same language form a natural community which ought to govern itself.

This was to develop into racialism and to give rise to talk of the “Anglo-Saxon race ” and the “German race".

Despite the fact that nationalism has no scientific basis for its claims, it has been a powerful force in the world. Of course, it was not something which suddenly appeared out of the blue; its roots are to be found in the beginnings of capitalist development in Britain and France and the effect this had on intellectual life in Germany. This put Germany in a peculiar historical position.

Germans who had absorbed ideas developed in Britain and France turned to nationalism—the unity of all German speaking people—as part of the drive to modernise their country. Similar nationalist movements and theories appeared in Poland, Italy and Hungry, though only in Italy was the movement to have success in the nineteenth century. Here the achievement of national unity and independence was the equivalent of France’s revolution of 1789; it created the political conditions in which the evolution of capitalist society could continue.

In short in many of those countries which underwent capitalist development after Britain and France, the overthrow of the old order was represented as a form of national revolution—in some cases as a move for national unity, in others for national independence and in others for national regeneration. To refer to nationalism as a weapon of the social revolution from feudal society to capitalism is not to say that the nationalist movements were composed of traders and small factory owners. In fact the relationship is not as simple as this.

Capitalism created the social conditions for the spread of nationalism by alienating sections of the population from the old order. It is among this section—students, past and present, modern army officers and wage workers — that nationalists were to be found. These set about agitating among those they considered their fellow nationals in order to awaken their national consciousness.

From Europe, nationalism spread out during the twentieth century to the Middle East and Asia. Today it is spreading through Africa—Macmillan’s wind of change. The outward form of this nationalism varies from country to country depending on historical circumstances, but its essential remains the same; it is an instrument of the capitalist social revolution in relatively backward countries

In Europe the nationalist theories were based on language. In Africa they are based on colour and “race”. For this reason African nationalism is sometimes referred to as “racist ”. This use is permissible in so far as African nationalism does claim to champion the interests of the black people or “race”. Perhaps a better term would be Black Nationalism; this however should not obscure the fact that there are groups working among Africans which do preach race hatred and race domination. These can be called Black Racialist groups.

The intellectual roots of African nationalism go back to the Negro nationalist movements which appeared in America and the West Indies in the first part of this century. These ranged from openly black racialist organisations such as that of Marcus Garvey — the forerunner of the present day Black Muslims in America and the Rastafarians in Jamaica — to the cultural nationalism, so-called negritude, of the poet Aimé Césaire.

From this developed the doctrine of Pan-Africanism, which proclaimed the unity of interest of all Africans and those of African descent. Educated Africans and African students abroad joined in this movement. On returning to Africa, the students set about agitating for national independence. They would have had no success had not social conditions been ripe for the spread of their ideas.

As in Europe and Asia, nationalism in Africa spread only to the degree that the old order was breaking up. The colonial powers, in training Africans as soldiers and priests and civil servants, in employing them in the mines and on the plantations, undermined their own position. For these detribalised Africans formed the social base of the anti-colonialist struggle. Since the war the further break-up of the old order has proceeded apace. So has nationalism. It is only nine years since the first black African state, Ghana, became independent from colonial rule. Now, with the important exceptions of parts of central and southern Africa, most of black Africa has achieved independence.

The regimes that have taken over from the colonial governments have been various. Some have consisted of a motley collection of tribal leaders and opportunist and corrupt politicians. Others have an iron handed industrialising clique. Ghana provides the model of this last type; there the administrative techniques of Russia have been combined with the doctrine of Pan-Africanism to get what Nkrumah calls "African socialism ”.

Other nations which are modelled on Ghana — Guinea, Kenya, Tanzania — are one party states in which a vanguard party is used to mobilise the population for carrying through the capitalist social revolution. Because of the role of the state —and the influence of Russia—it was perhaps inevitable that these regimes would label themselves socialist. In fact they are totalitarian state capitalist regimes in which an élite uses the state power to try to extend capitalism rapidly throughout the area under their political control.

The situation in central and southern Africa is complicated by the presence of a not inconsiderable minority of persons of European descent. These—the whites—once enjoyed certain political and economic privileges at the expense of the Africans. It is in these circumstances that ugly black-white clashes have occurred and will almost certainly occur again. Among both white people and black there are groups preaching race hatred and intolerance. Many of the white workers are under the impression that they can preserve their security through discriminatory legislation. The African workers, on the other hand, see the solution to their miseries in African nationalism. The murders of Mau Mau in Kenya, and those of the Congo rebels, are examples of nationalism in action, just as the terrorist tactics employed by European nationalists in the past were. In Africa, however, they are now complicated as a clash between black and white.

African nationalism and the one party regimes it tends to set up are respectively the theory and practice of the capitalist social revolution in Africa. The spread of African nationalism together with the attempt by the Whites to maintain their privileges, is almost .certain to lead to further inter-racial violence and terror. Nationalism, with its talk of equality, may not at first sight appear as repugnant as racialism pure and simple. It often however, has the same results: bloodshed in which members of the working class are killed—not for their own interests but for those of their masters present and future.

Adam Buick

News in Review: Progressing backwards (1965)

The News in Review column from the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Progressing backwards

The Labour government’s housing drive is progressing steadily backwards.

At the beginning of May, several big building firms announced that they were cutting back their production of houses.

Wates Ltd. (whose advertisements tell us that they care) said they were reducing by about fifteen per cent. McManus started a cut in its labour force of around twenty per cent. Richard Costain stopped work on two hundred or so part-finished houses — a quarter of their yearly production.

These reductions do not mean, of course, that everyone is now so comfortably housed that there isn't any need to build any more homes for the moment, thank you.

On all sides, the tragic evidence of the housing shortage abounds. The Milner Holland Report, which touched only one aspect of the problem, said that over seventy thousand London dwellings have no proper bath and that more than one million share a bath, a sink and other basic amenities. There are still thousands of homeless people in London alone.

Why, then, are there cuts in building? 

As part of their great programme of bringing prosperity to the working class, the Labour government has imposed a credit squeeze which, among other things, has made it more difficult to raise loans to buy houses.

These loans—a mortgage from a building society, a housing endowment policy—are the only method open to a worker who wants to buy a house he will never have the ready cash.

These, then, are the people who are affected by this aspect of the squeeze. In Glasgow, reported The Observer, tenement flats are being left unsold because young couples cannot raise the loans to buy them. For the same reason, cheaper houses in Leeds and Bradford are not selling. Bigger, costlier houses are not in the same difficulties; in Leeds and Bradford, those in the £8,000 to £15,000 range can be sold easily. People who can afford that sort of house can also raise the necessary loan—if indeed they need to borrow the money at all.

This particular crisis will probably continue. and develop. “We will only start up again," said Costain’s managing director, “When the purchaser shows he can raise the money.” In other words, they will only start building again when they think they can sell the houses.

Housing, like all human needs under capitalism, is a commodity — something which is made to be sold. If for any reason the market contracts, as it is contracting now under the credit squeeze, the houses will not be built.

Simple, but bad luck on anyone who has not got anywhere to live. Perhaps the government's intelligence on the matter was represented by Mr. Robert Mellish, who is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing. “Personally,” he said, “I feel that building societies are a machine by which people buy homes . . .”

This brilliant flash of insight, leaving unilluminated as it does the fact that building societies are also machines by which a few people make a lot of money, does not reveal anything new to those workers, who, unable to afford a house any other way, have chained themselves to a lifetime's debt to a building society.

Any year now. as Mr. Mellish settles into his new job, he may catch up with one or two other facts which are common knowledge. He may even go further, and realise that there is a perpetual housing problem for the working class, and that no government can solve it because the problem is an inseparable part of the capitalist social system which they administer.

Pakistan-lndia

One thing is dear about the Rann of Kutch, and that is that the fighting there was not over who should have the right to enjoy the beauties of its scenery.

This is one of the world’s inhospitable spots—a ten-mile square patch of lifeless mud and salt flats, broken by small mounds and peopled only by the Jeroba rat. The 24th. Parallel runs through the middle of it.

But inhospitable or not, the Rann had all the makings of a typical international dispute. To begin with, there may be oil out there somewhere. The Sun Oil Company of the U.S.A. plans to start drilling offshore fairly soon.

This is not to say that the fighting was about oil only. Its origins, as far as they can be discerned, were rather more complex.

India forcibly established its troops in the Rann, north of the 24th. Parallel, in 1956—soon after oil had been struck in the Gulf of Cambay, about two hundred miles away to the south.

At that lime, Pakistan was on the Western side in the Cold War, and was signatory to several American dominated pacts. India, on the other hand, except where its own interests were concerned, was the Great Uncommitted, infuriating Washington by its insistence on playing off the Western bloc against the Russian and acting as honest broker whenever it could.

Whatever else this did, it gained for India a certain diplomatic leadership in South East Asia. Since then, the situation has changed.

Pakistan has recently taken the initiative right out of India's hands. President Ayub has been feted in both Peking and Moscow. The Chinese government has stated its support for Pakistan in the Rann dispute. The Russians have implied that they uphold Pakistan’s case over Kashmir.

India, with no sympathy in Washington to fall back upon, was thus isolated—something which was emphasised by President Johnson’s brusque cancellation of Mr. Shastri’s proposed visit to him.

In this situation of double-cross all round, the Indian government had to do something to try to regain the lost ground and to divert its people’s attention away from India’s defeats.

On these facts, it seems likely that it was India who provoked the fighting in the Rann. Delhi’s propaganda machine was soon at work to make the most of it.

The so-called Socialist Party demanded assurances that the fighting (in which, of course, none of its leaders were actually engaged) should not cease until the Pakistani forces had withdrawn. Mr. Shastri himself said:

I know that each of our 450 million people of India is today prepared to make any sacrifice in defence of the motherland. . . 

The Rann of Kutch, then, had all the requirements of a classical war situation—rival economic interests, diplomatic ploys, political manoeuvres, betrayal and hysteria.

The final irony is that India and Pakistan have always posed as leaders of the “Uncommitted” nations, as the peace- loving neutrals of the Cold War.

The Rann of Kutch repeated the lessons of Kashmir and Goa. The newer nations of capitalism are no better than the old. The peacekeepers of yesterday are the warmakers of today.

Old, old story

In yet another flare-up in the endless round of minor conflicts, the focus of world attention swung last month to the Western Hemisphere.

Once again the United States Marines landed in that trouble spot of the centuries; the island of Hispaniola. This time it was the Eastern half of the Dominican Republic; not very long ago the marines were hovering off the coast of Haiti.

President Johnson's statement that 

All we are in the Dominican Republic for is to preserve freedom and to save those people from conquest.

was rich, even from such a poker-faced operator as the President. As any brief glance at the blood-stained history of Dominica will show, the people there have never had any freedom to lose.

In fact, for most of the time they have been ruled by corrupt and vicious dictatorships with occasional periods of civil war. And if the occupation of a State by the armed forces of a foreign power is not conquest, then the word has changed its meaning.

However, almost in the same breath the Americans came out with the real reason — fear of another Cuba. Dominica was in fact Viet-Nam in reverse. The United States has always been extremely touchy about Non-American states having a foot in the American Continent.

The Monroe doctrine of 1823 was proclaimed to prevent this, and the conditions of the modern world, with its nuclear weapons and its long range missiles, makes the idea of a possible Russian base so near home particularly unattractive.

Whether or not there were actually any so called Communists in Dominica, is unimportant the possibility was enough. Russia and China made all the expected noises, and the usual moves in the United Nations, but obviously did not intend to risk a major war over a possible minor gain.

There was however a further complication for the U.S.A. — namely the Latin American States, with their fears and suspicions of their gigantic neighbour. In the 19th Century the United States could afford to treat South and Central America with contempt, but today they prefer to have amicable relations with them.

They have, over the last 30 years, devoted much energy to their “good neighbour” policies and to the Organisation of American States (O.A.S.)

If the situation really demands it, and American Capitalism is threatened, Washington is quite prepared to go ahead and damn the consequences. Dominica, luckily, was not that serious, which saved all that good neighbourliness from going up in nuclear dust.

Dead duck

The nationalisation of the steel industry may well be the last quack and flutter of a dying, if not already dead, duck.

Nationalisation is not the political issue that it once was. The Labour Party have quietly forgotten their intention, avowed only a few years ago, to take over cement and sugar. They have also forgotten, although less quietly, the fact that Clause Four commits them to nationalise all industry.

The Conservatives are similarly placed. They have left the vast majority of Labour's post war nationalisation untouched. They have even added some of their own state influence—and in the steel industry at that. They set up the Iron and Steel Board, with instructions to “exercise a general supervision over the iron and steel industry. . .”

Steel is probably the last opportunity, for a long time to come, for the sham battles over state control. For both parties, it is something of a political albatross which neither of them can cut away.

One argument has been notably absent from the debate over steel. When the Labour Party wanted to nationalise the mines they always pleaded that this would benefit the miners. They drew pictures of the suffering of the mining areas under private control. “Pithead baths” was a promise on the lips of every Labour candidate.

This had a certain force, especially in the mining communities which nursed dreadful memories of their past. But the same argument could not be applied to the other concerns which the Attlee government nationalised. No Labour propagandist, be he ever so eloquent, could pretend that the clerks in the Bank of England had gone home hungry and filthy before the war. Neither could the argument apply to the airlines, to gas and electricity — and now it cannot be used about the steel industry.

The case for taking over steel rests on other grounds. The White Paper made them clear:

The iron and steel industry occupies a focal and dominating position in the British economy. ... A single new large integrated works may cost £150 million.

. . . There are difficulties in raising private funds for projeots of this sort.

In other words, steel is vital to the economy of British capitalism and only a state controlled, integrated industry can hold out any hope of providing the capital to allow it to live up to its importance.

On this issue the Labour Party’s mind is made up, at least until they change it. Some of their Members revolted over the scale of compensation, but they were rather late in the day here, because the Labour Party have never concealed their intention of arranging “full and fair” compensation to the steel shareholders. The time for revolts on this issue was last October, when these very same rebels were campaigning to get into Parliament on Labour’s programme, compensation and all.

It is true that the terms are what can be called “fair", if by that we mean that the stockholders are not going to lose out on the deal. Government stock to the value of £550 million will be exchanged for securities valued on the market, on the day the White Paper came out, at only £430 million. Any disagreement between the Minister and the stockholders over compensation will be referred to arbitration. What could be “fuller’’ and “fairer” than that?

If the Tories denounced the compensation as a fiddle, this was only a haggle, an attempt to bump up the price of steel shares. The Stock Exchange provided a more reliable reaction: “The voice of protest,” said The Guardian, “ was muted. . .”

A couple of days later, the point was rubbed in when millions were added to the values of steel shares. Whatever the reason for this, one thing it does not suggest, and that is that the capitalist class are trembling behind their Walls of Jericho at the sound of Fred Lee’s steel band (state controlled, of course).

Correction (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the April issue of the Socialist Standard, in the article The "Welfare” State, we said that the first Factory Act was passed in 1812. This was incorrect; the first piece of factory legislation was the Morals and Health Act of 1802. We apologise for any confusion caused by our mistake.

Editorial Committee.

SPGB Meetings on the Race Question (1965)

Party News from the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Party and Immigration (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

High-flown phrases about "the brotherhood of man” fall thickly from the lips of the Capitalist politician, and perhaps some of them are sincere, at least some of the time. Fenner Brockway, until last October the Labour M.P. for Eton & Slough, tried and failed no less than seven times to interest the Commons in a bill to outlaw racial discrimination. "When a child is born", he said with a note of Christian piety on December 13th, 1961, “ it is not its physical form or the pigment of its skin which makes it sacred—it is the spiritual life, the personality within ”,

The precise meaning of those words is a matter for discussion, but what is undeniable is the anxiety of Mr. Brockway and other M.P s over the growing signs of racial friction in Britain. However, it is one thing to condemn racialism, but quite another to deal with it effectively in a world of private property, where antagonisms and prejudices of all sorts are fostered. In any case, whatever Mr. Brockway’s opinions may have been, he was a Labourite and cannot escape responsibility for his party's actions over the question of racialism and immigration control.

Indeed, despite fierce Labour opposition to the Commonwealth Immigration Bill in 1962 (and we shall come to that later), it may not be generally remembered that it was two Labour members, H. Hynd (Accrington) and M. Lipton (Brixton) who over four years before (on April 3rd, 1958) had said in the Common that “. . . the time has come for reconsideration of the arrangement whereby British subjects from other parts of the Commonwealth are allowed to enter this country without restriction ”. At that time, it was the Tory spokesman, Miss P. Hornsby-Smith, who resisted their motion and reminded the freedom lovers of the Labour benches of the part coloured workers had played in taking jobs rejected by whites:

Anyone who uses public transport in our big cities, will know that they have filled a very great gap in staff and . . . have done a very good job.

But as she also had to admit, the heavy demand for labour was easing, and coloured workers were finding it more difficult to find employment than before. Here we can detect one of the economic pressures which made the question politically explosive in the early sixties, and perhaps cost the Labour Party three constituencies in 1964-5.

It was convenient for the Macmillan government that so many people seemed to forget that housing and employment problems existed long before coloured immigrants set foot here in any numbers. The Tories saw the issue as a political godsend, among other things an opportunity to deflect criticism of their own failures to solve these problems onto the innocent shoulders of the coloured minority. And despite their assurances to the contrary, the subsequent Immigration Bill was far from colour-blind in its provisions. The Tories were in fact pandering to the worst prejudices of public opinion and, by using a minority as a scapegoat, were taking crafty advantage of racist sentiment without incurring the stigma usually attached to it.

Here it was that the Labour opposition under Gaitskell committed a first class tactical blunder in assuming that it was still enough to label a party racialist to condemn in in the eyes of the public. Conditions in British politics were changing, but Gaitskell showed little awareness of this when commenting on the Queen’s speech on October 31st, 1961:

. . . whatever hon. Members opposite may say, whatever the Home Secretary may say . . . this will be regarded very largely throughout the world as the imposition of a colour bar over here.... To impose restrictions is a very grave step indeed, and , one that I personally hope the Government will not, when they come to it, actually take.

This bitter and unqualified attack was resumed the following day by George Brown. He threw the words of the Tory Cyril Osborne into the Government’s face (“This is a white man’s country and I want it to remain so ”), and ended by saying:

The proposal to take these powers is not really to solve the difficulties and the real consequences of the proposal is to give themselves gn alibi for what they are refusing to do, whether for brown, black or white.. . . The casual way in which this is dealt with is a gross reflection on H.M. Ministers, and if the house were easily to accept it, it would be on the house.

It is old news now, that the government’s measure was passed in the teeth of fierce labour opposition, something which was to cost Gordon-Walker his seat at Smethwick three years later. By then, however, Labour policy under Wilson’s leadership hail undergone a right-about-face on the issue. Forgotten were Gaitskell’s words (“ immigration from the Commonwealth has been of economic benefit to us.”) for the new leader was wily enough to see that the old stand was a positive vote loser.

So the 1964 Labour manifesto talked of retaining the very measure of which they had been so scornful, and indeed since their return to power, Labour have actually tightened control at all points of entry. Of course, they are at one with their Tory sparring partners in denying any racial bias, but in the light of this, the words of their home secretary, Sir Frank Soskice, have a strange ring. In a Commons debate on Match 23rd, he resisted any extension to the law because:

I should have to ask you to give these powers to be used against Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, against all members of the old Commonwealth countries as well as the new. They would have to be operated against visitors and students, from all these countries with complete impartiality.

True, the Labour government have since introduced a bill outlawing racial discrimination in certain spheres, but this is as much a question of public order as anything else. Statesmen can learn from the mistakes of their counterparts elsewhere and British capitalism cannot afford another Selma or Little Rock in Smethwick or Brixton.

However, even if immigration restrictions achieve their purpose, there are almost a million coloured workers in Britain and they are here to stay. They will have children and their numbers will swell. They will suffer the same problems as their white brothers, but with the added indignity of resentment and prejudice which no law enactment can cure. The coloured vole will also increase and this is something which no Labour or Tory politician will be able to ignore when trying to keep the situation in check.

They have all pandered to ignorance and bigotry in the furtherance of their vote catching—racially prejudiced workers are always impressed by government restrictive measures against minorities—but the boot may not always be on the same foot. The present set-up could conceivably produce an offspring in the shape of mounting coloured resentment against while workers in the future; already some ugly signs of this are appearing elsewhere in the world. But whatever happens, it should be interesting to watch Labour and Tory antics as the drama is played out. and should prove as instructive a lesson in political tightrope walking as we have ever seen.

Eddie Critchfield

50 Years Ago: Reformers, not Socialists (1965)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the working-class student who has begun to free himself from the the mental bondage of capitalist teaching, the admissions of some of the agents of the master class often come as a surprise. This surprise sometimes has the effect of obscuring his view of the relative value of the other statements, made by these agents, and so leading to unsound or even false conclusions.

This is seen in the attitude adopted by the rank and file of the Labour Party. Clarion organisations, the so-called Independent Labour Party, etc., when some capitalist supporter happens to admit the existence of evils that stand out clear enough for any child to see. These supporters are at once hailed as “advanced”, or even as “Socialists”, when not the faintest real ground can be found for such a claim. The worker who has a firm grip of the essentials of Socialism, however, sees the matter from another standpoint. He knows that the development of capitalism forces forward certain changes (accompanied by new evils) that call for some regulation on the part of the masters. These admissions are, to him, evidences of the changes, signs of the development; but in no way do they mislead him into fancying the makers of these admissions are Socialists. He always applies the touchstone of Socialism to their views and actions on fundamental matters, and usually finds that these persons are the more acute and up-to-date of the capitalists' agents, and that their work is the more misleading on that account.

From a review of "Elementary Principles of Economics” by Ely A Wickers, Socialist Standard, June 1915.

The Passing Show: The Blame Game (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ignorant will blame anyone or anything for a problem, without any worthwhile evidence. He will blame the weather for his corns and the moon for his madness. and the “blacks” for just about every social evil afflicting us today. The "blacks” have taken the place of the Jews. Irish and Welsh as a focus of the bigot's vehemence and hatred when he tries to account for problems which one government after another has failed to solve. At sometime or another in the past few years I have heard coloured workers blamed for: unemployment, bad housing, low wages, sexual depravity and very recently for the worsening traffic problem. Yes, one workmate even chucked that one into the pot for good measure.

The other scapegoat minorities of former days must be sighing with relief that for a change it is not their backs that are being beaten, but if the racialist ever gets through with hating coloured workers, we may be sure that some other minority will be in for it. The fascist-minded worker — let us not mince our words — clings to these spurious ideas from a twofold purpose. First of all, he can dismiss any social evil with a wave of his mental hand, by blaming the selected scapegoat. To blame is easy; it avoids the tedious job of hard thinking. Then again, spleen and anger are handy ways of working off the frustration which life under capitalism causes him, but which he has no idea how to tackle. To rant, snarl and blame are his stock-in-trade, to scratch under the surface and try to explain — never.

But how many outwardly calm and reasonable people fall for this sort of stuff? A good many I should say, if Smethwick is anything to go by, although perhaps they would shy off supporting an avowedly fascist party. The man who blamed darkies for the traffic congestion was one such as this. A very even- tempered, quietly spoken, even reticent chap, likeable in a dull and uninteresting way, but harbouring the same sort of misconception about capitalism’s problems as any fanatical hot-gospeller of race hatred.

It is anyway the same basic attitude—see a problem—think up a theory—and then try and make the facts fit it. Such is the stuff on which fanaticism and bigotry thrive. All capitalist politicians use this method to some extent at some time or another. The tragedy is that it goes down so well with the average audience.

Gaspers

 

"Give generously . . . He did" — Churchill Memorial Fund Slogan.

“The Minister for Economic Affairs drove home his point — that Labour wanted to create a Britain for which non-Socialists could be persuaded to vote"

(Guardian report 3.5.65).

“I will never so long as I am Minister of Defence be a party to putting British. soldiers, sailors and airmen into action without the tools of their job.” (Denis Healey, 2.5.65.)

“An incomes policy is part of the price we ought to be willing to pay to ensure that men and women are kept at work." (James Callaghan—Chancellor of the Exchequer. 2.5.65.)

Eddie Critchfield

Letter: Workers' Control (1965)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the article “Workers’ Control”, in the January 1965 Socialist Standard, you appear to me to use the term “society” rather as an abstraction. After some not unfamiliar arguments, you conclude, rather arrogantly, by asserting that the workers in industry would be incapable of running affairs. It is so ‘‘incredibly complicated” that only “society" can do the job.

But in what does society consist but men and women, mostly the workers in industry, as asserted by the people you are criticising? And who runs “society” today but the “higher” echelons of the working class?

If they are considered incapable of assuming responsibility, who will do so?

John Adamson, 

Blackheath, S.E.3.

Reply:

We have never said that the working class, in industry or elsewhere, are incapable of running affairs. In fact one of the central points in the Socialist case is that, under capitalism, the working class run the world from top to bottom—only they do it not in their own interests but in the interests of the class who own the means of wealth production and distribution.

Socialism is the expropriation, of this owning class and the transfer of the means of wealth production to society as a whole. In other words men and women (no longer a working class since classes will have disappeared) will run affairs in their own interests; they will produce to satisfy their needs.

Nor does the Socialist Party regard society as an abstraction. Society is made up of men and women organised in a particular way. Today, production is social; the means of wealth production are complicated in the sense that they consist of a world-wide network of mines, factories, railways and the like.

The article “Workers’ Control” said, among other things, that since production is social, and not a collection of self-sufficient units, then the administration of the means of production must also be social. We did not suggest— and we do not think—that the reason for this is that the people who operate a particular part of this social productive apparatus are incompetent. It was merely a plea to those who accept the confused idea of “workers’ control” to face the facts of social life.

After all, a mine or a factory is not self-sufficient. Finally, we should mention that the whole idea of "workers’ control" is coloured by the conditions of capitalism, that it suggests that the centre of peoples' lives under Socialism will be the place where they happen to work under capitalism.

It ignores the fact that under Socialism men and women will no longer have to be tied to a particular job and a particular place of work, but will be able to use their various abilities in many different ways. This is what “from each according to his abilities" means.

Editorial Committee.

The Dangers of Race Prejudice (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The root cause of modern race-prejudice is the capitalist system of Society, a society of competition and struggle; struggle between capitalist and worker, struggle between capitalist and capitalist; struggle between worker and worker. For the working-class, who constitute the overwhelming majority of its population, it is a society of poverty and insecurity; to most of them it offers not the slightest chance of escape from a lifetime of constant, heart-breaking effort to earn a living. For the working-class, it is a society which breeds war and strife, in which their masters, on whose behalf they fight, use every device to stimulate antagonism and hatred between them.

From the cradle to the grave, they are subjected to a mass of propaganda which deadens their minds, works on their prejudices, and endeavours by every means possible to turn their thoughts away from the real cause of their troubles. They are the tools of political leaders and demagogues who make them promises which they do not keep. Disappointed, they exchange one set of political leaders for another, whose promises are no more fulfilled than the promises of those before them. They become disillusioned, bitter, and cynical; fair game for dictators and “strong men" who promise to lead them to a "promised land ”, but instead lead them into greater disasters and misfortunes.

All the time they are experiencing unemployment, poverty, insecurity, competition for jobs, struggles to “rise up the ladder”. They seek to escape from the harsh world of reality in dreams and games of make-believe, in football pools and cinemas, but only for brief moments, for capitalism soon brings them back to things as they are, and not as they would wish them to be. They still have to contend with poverty, unemployment, insecurity, and war. For the working-class, Capitalism is a society of mental, social, and economic frustration; as such it breeds race-prejudice as a swamp breeds pestilence.

To the extent that Socialist ideas permeate the minds of the working-class, wherever they may be, to the extent that workers realise that their interests are in common, irrespective of race, and opposed to the interests of the capitalist class, irrespective of their race, to that extent win they become proof against race-prejudice and will work together for the establishment of Socialism which will end, once and for all, the problem of race-prejudice.

In the words of our Declaration of Principles: ". . . the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex ”.

From SPGB pamphlet “The Racial Problem —A Socialist Analysis" (1947).

Work for Socialism—Now ! (1941)

From the December 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is a question of historical development. That is to say, certain historic conditions must exist before Socialism is possible. It could not be brought about merely because people willed or desired it—in the absence of the economic and political circumstances which make it possible. It could not be brought about in the absence of the will and desire for it, even if the economic and political circumstances were favourable. The two things must go together: favourable economic conditions, and the desire, before Socialism can displace the existing social order.

Nothing is more certain than that to-day all the circumstances necessary for the establishment of Socialism do not exist. Those lacking are the desire, the will and the understanding. In a world in which the majority of the workers in one of the largest continents are organised behind their respective governments in a war which promises to provide the most wholesale example of suffering and self-sacrifice by any subject class since the beginning of civilisation cannot, by any strain of the imagination, be described as a world which is even remotely ready for Socialism. Millions are at death grips with each other in a war which, whatever the outcome, means the continuance of capitalism in one form or another.

And yet ideas concerning Socialism are more widely spread than ever. True that many are bastard ideas; true, tragically, also that few recognise their illegitimacy.

Let us therefore restate a few basic essentials of the Socialist case. We need not apologise for doing so. We regret it has been necessary for forty years. It is still necessary. Socialism involves the abolition of private and class ownership in the means and instruments of production, and the establishing of an order of things wherein they will be owned by society. For the first time in civilised history mankind will face the problem of organising production for society without an owning class. Things will be produced solely for use and because people need them. They will not be produced to sell and to provide profit for the owners of the means and instruments of production as they are under capitalism. There will be no profit. There will be no wages because men and women will not need to sell their energies in order to live. The function of money to circulate goods will disappear because it will not be needed. The function of wages to ensure that the worker receives only part of the wealth he produces will disappear because the worker in Socialist society will enjoy the full fruits of his production, after meeting the necessary replacements and enlargements of the means of production and distribution. Wages are an indication of working-class poverty and measure only its extent. The continuance of the wages system under any government or with whatever modifications is still capitalism.

The revolutionary change in the economic basis of society from private to common ownership will produce corresponding changes in the whole organisation of social life. Culture and leisure will be free to all instead of to a minority. Social, moral and family habits and customs which rest upon the private property basis of capitalism will adjust themselves to fit into the new order. Capitalist ideas will dissolve into history’s melting pot. Freed from the poverty and servitude of class-society men and women will face each and the other as free and equal social beings. All social values will undergo revolutionary changes. Reflection upon the potentialities of society organised on a Socialist basis humbles the imagination.

Anything short of this is not Socialism : it is capitalism by whatever name it is called.

Even most workers who desire some change would not accept Socialism as defined above. They would reject it because they are not ready for the revolutionary and profound changes which Socialism would involve. Socialism to them expresses no more than a drive for some particular adjustment in social conditions or some improvement in the conditions of life of the workers. Steeped in the prejudices of the capitalist system and all the ideas which go with it, most of them would reject Socialism as we expound it. The Socialist Party is opposed to them only on the grounds of logic and science. Simply, they are not Socialists.

We do not exaggerate the position. Take the I.L.P. as an organised political party, as an example—and, incidentally, since most other sections of the Labour movement have given up or suspended any claim to a role in the struggle for Socialism during the war the I.L.P. is perhaps the one organisation which to-day provides obvious examples of the misconceptions concerning the nature of Socialism. In the “New Leader” (November 15th) it announces that it has decided “to start a campaign for a Socialist Britain,” and accompanies the great news with bold headlines. And the programme? Just the old reformist trash : (1) “Social justice in Britain and National Liberation in the Empire”; (2) “To shorten the war by stimulating Socialist Revolution against Nazism in Europe”; (3) “To save Soviet Russia.” Plus the usual features in I.L.P. “programmes”—”the nation to take over the banks” . . .”the control of prices,” and “minimum standards of living,” etc. The disappointing thing about the “decision to start (our italics) a campaign for Socialist Britain now” was the realisation that the announcement did not preface a confession of the discovery, that until the “start now” the I.L.P. had concerned itself with anything but Socialism. Another striking thing was the uncertain interpretation as to whether it was in support of the war (“Save Soviet Russia”) or in favour of stopping it, as formerly.

We repeat, the fact that Socialism is assumed to denote no more than social reforms or government decrees shows that the worker is not yet ready for Socialism. Socialism is not round the corner. To pretend that it is or to ignore the immense tasks that yet lie before Socialists and the working class would be a disservice to Socialism, We scorn the easy road that might lead to large support and popularity. We have been in the business of making Socialists for nearly forty years for no other reason than that a majority wanting Socialism is the first condition for its establishment. For nearly forty years events have provided innumerable tests of the soundness of our Object and Declaration of Principles. Nothing has deflected us from our purpose and path, or diverted us to the pursuit of any secondary purpose or of any other object than Socialism. We have tenaciously ploughed our way unshaken by revolutions, civil wars and world wars. More than ever to-day we take our stand on the position that the economic and social problems of the world can be solved only by Socialism; that workers everywhere have a common interest with each other which overrides all other interests. When this second world war is over and the armed struggle for dominance is suspended pending recovery or regrouping, there will be a return to the problems which existed before the war. The workers will face basically the same problems as before. Unemployment and insecurity and the perpetual fear and threat of war.

There can be but one answer to these problems for the workers. There is no solution to any of them separately. The solution to any one of them is the solution which will sweep all of them away together. That solution is the one we have proffered at all times throughout our history as the remedy for the social and economic problems which confront the workers. That solution is not a new discovery. At all moments throughout our history it has been our answer. It still is and will continue to be:

It is SOCIALISM NOW !

Harry Waite

Editorial: Must Socialism Wait for the Last Hottentot? (1941)

Editorial from the December 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people who—without being Socialists—have seen that the future of the human race lies in the direction of international organisation are worried and perplexed by the problem of the “backward races.” Forgetful of the processes by which their own opinions were changed and their knowledge enlarged, they look with dismay at the seeming hopelessness of converting the rest of the population. As one “young man in a hurry,” who later drifted into Fascism, used to ask, “Must we wait for Socialism until the last Hottentot has been converted ?” At present nobody worries about the Hottentots and other dark-skinned peoples, for the apprehension has taken a new twist. Now we are asked how the world can ever deal with the savage Germans and jackal Italians and other low-grade peoples who have fallen into the absurdities and brutalities of Fascism. For their part, of course, Germans and Italians who have swallowed the racial dogmas of their leaders despise the supposedly degenerate supporters of democracy and loathe the Jews. Taking a short view, the outlook for Internationalism and Socialism may look black, but actually the widespread character of these theories of racial inferiority, and the multiplicity of changes they undergo from time to time, are a good indication that the whole conception is false and will not endure. If history could show that the majority of the human race had been consistent in its belief that some one section was inherently inferior there would be a case to look into. Instead, history shows no agreement, no consistency. The sub-human races of one day are the esteemed brothers in arms of the next, and each new generation has disproved the judgments of the last. In our own century there have been wiseacres who have said that the Slav races (notably the Russians) are incapable of acquiring the mechanical knowledge and skill of the Latins and Teutonic peoples of Western Europe; just as, less than a century ago, it was confidently prophesied that the Germans were incapable of catching up the industrial development that had gone ahead in Britain and France. Latterly the view was that the yellow and black races were inferior to the white in this matter of mechanical and inventive skill. Japan and China and India have disposed of that view, and the present war has shown North American Indians, Maoris, Indians, East and West Africans, and many others acquiring all the knowledge and training required in the handling of the mechanical marvels of modern war.

Only a few months ago the following report appeared in the Times of the training of Abyssinians to operate telegraph systems :

“One of the most curious and impressive sights in Addis Ababa at present is that of 200 young Ethiopians, with hardly a word of English between them, who are being initiated into the arts and mysteries of telegraphy by half a dozen British n.c.o.s of the Royal Corps of Signals. These pupils are destined to form the nucleus of both the new Ethiopian Telegraph Service and a signal company in the Ethiopian Army.

A few of them have had some slight experience of the matter during the period before the Italians were evicted, but most are complete novices. Nevertheless, after eight weeks’ training, a handful are already sufficiently advanced to be employed as assistant wireless operators, while others are out reconstructing the telegraph lines destroyed during the war, under the supervision of British signallers.”—”Times,” August 27th, 1941.

It will be said truly enough that mechanical skill and capacity is only part of the problem. What about the other qualities, without which the smooth working of a world social system based on common ownership is unthinkable ? How can peoples co-operate who are given to aggression and filled with a desire to dominate those weaker than themselves ? To which the answer is that these are not inherent, racial characteristics. There are no peoples or groups which would not acquire them under appropriate conditions and were incapable of shedding them with changed conditions and greater knowledge. Take the Italians who have supported or condoned Fascist intolerance and imperialist brutality. By general agreement the Italians were regarded, to use the phrase of a recent book on Italy, as “one of the most kindly and tolerant peoples on earth.” It was stated in the Press only last month that Italian prisoners of war in a camp in England refused to draw their small pay on All Saints’ Day. They asked that it be given to the poor in a neighbouring village, “especially to any poor families who have lost men in the present war” (Times, November 21st, 1941). Will anyone who knows the Italian workers and their past record of loyalty to the earlier attempts to form international working-class movements believe them incapable of playing their part in the future, on the ground that they fell into the common error of trying to solve the problems of capitalism by the road of dictatorship and colonial conquest ?

The truth is that, no matter how much the conduct of human beings may deteriorate under bad conditions, nor what mistakes workers may make in their search for a way out of the chaos in which the world finds itself, there are no nations or races in which the suppressed class have been or can be permanently robbed of the desire to understand and to learn. What Mr. H. G. Wells wrote of young people in this country is true, at least in large measure, of adults here and everywhere else. “Most people want to learn,” he wrote. “Put the stuff attractively before your new generation and they will take it greedily, just as they will grow healthily if wholesome food is put within their reach” (Sunday Dispatch, November 23rd).

One nation learns from another, and one group of workers learns from another as well as from their own experience. If we who are Socialists look after the task of teaching Socialism, we shall not in the long run have to trouble overmuch about the so-called backward or degenerate races.

Blogger's Note:

Naturally, I was intrigued by the following passage in the editorial, 

As one “young man in a hurry,” who later drifted into Fascism, used to ask, “Must we wait for Socialism until the last Hottentot has been converted ?”

I believe this is in reference to a debate that the SPGB had with the British Union of Fascists in 1935 where the B.U.F. representative, Probyn, said the following during the debate:

Socialism asks us to wait until world conditions are ready for a change, but that will be over 500 years hence. We are not going to wait until every Hottentot has a bicycle. Fascism believes in getting down to earth and making the best of the material we have now  . . . 

(April/May 1935 Socialist Standard)

Earlier in his speech Probyn had 'confessed':

Mr. Probyn said that as usual he found nothing new in the Socialist case. He had been a Socialist for ten years and had even flirted with the S.P.G.B. However, he would leave the question of Socialism until his second speech and would first put the case for Fascism.

 Funnily enough that line "Socialism asks us to wait until world conditions are ready for a change, but that will be over 500 years hence . . . " sounds familiar. Didn't Lenin say something along the same lines?

The Problem of India (1941)

Book Review from the December 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is no Sleeping Beauty. The apostles of the “inevitability of gradualness” have been pulverised by the crashing blows of events during the last decades. War—crisis—then war again; the false complacency of “improvers” and social reformers is now revealed in all its inadequacy, for like a series of terrific earthquakes, capitalism administers periodical shocks.

The backward countries are particularly affected. Already it is clear that the battleground of the present conflict is moving east. Africa and particularly Asia will bear much of the brunt of the world-war.

Again, the productive powers of the warring countries will be strained to their limits, no source of supply will be left untapped; think of these factors and then think of India.

“The Problem of India,” a “Penguin Special,” is a book of some two hundred and fifty pages. The author, Doctor K. S. Shelvankar, an Indian student, presents his case exhaustively, efficiently and clearly. In his foreword he claims that it is not “pro-British and anti-Indian or vice-versa,” but that he is “pro the things that can bring food and freedom for the millions who are to-day deprived of them.” “Food and Freedom !” In his historical survey of pre-British India the author makes it quite clear that there was not much of the first and none of the other for the masses of peasants and handicraft workers. A multitude of oppressors and exploiters, princelings, landowners and middlemen, plus the inevitable crowd of religious parasites, the priesthood, had to be maintained according to their social status out of the products of the labouring masses. The system of agriculture was backward even when compared to the then feudal structure of Western Europe. This was due to a variety of reasons: Lower fertility owing to lack of irrigation, wasteful methods of tilling, little domestication of animals. It is not the purpose of this article to follow the author deeply into the historical development of India, for Socialists here the main question is the position of India under the rule of British capitalism.

However, Dr. Shelvankar’s investigation of India’s past is an impressive, though necessarily condensed, piece of work. Methodically he describes for us the whole structure of India as it was when the traders from the European continent came to barter and cheat the Indian population under the banner of Christianity. First the Portuguese, then the Dutch and the French and finally the British in the form of the East India Company. The British stayed.

At this time, during the 15th century, the country was under the rule of a Moslem dynasty, the Moguls, having been conquered by a series of attacks some four centuries previously. Victors and defeated were of different religion, the former were Mohammedans, the latter Hindus. The two faiths did not assimilate each other; both existed side by side and do so to the present.

The invasion made little or no difference to the economic life of the country; it merely deposed one ruling group and substituted another. Peasants toiled on the land, the craftsman worked on his job, but the surplus-value, politely called “tax,” went to the princes and priests of Islam instead of to the Brahmin caste.

The Indian feudal structure differed in important essentials from the system prevailing during the same period in Europe. This must be remembered in order to see why India did not develop into capitalism of its own accord, but had to have the capitalist virus injected into the body economic from without.

The Indian village community remained static. The handicraft worker stayed put, the victim of the peasant’s abysmal poverty; the towns remained the pleasure-grounds of the feudal rulers. Commerce was restricted to the needs of the thin upper crust, a mere by-product of an effete social system, as was the highly-skilled artisan labouring in the prince’s courtyards.

Into this paradise for capitalist exploitation came the British merchants and soldiers ready to assume the “white man’s burden” of gold. The Whig politician, Sheridan, described the East India Company as “wielding a truncheon with one hand and picking a pocket with the other.” The truncheon was soon replaced by the rifle and bloody battles throughout the country blazed the trail of British conquest. Then came the mutiny in 1857, the Company was wound up, and India came under the control of the Government, as the “brightest jewel in the British Crown.”

For more than eighty years India has been a Crown Colony. The British ruling class cannot therefore disown responsibility for the conditions now obtaining among the mass of the Indian people. It is not a pleasant thought. Out of a total population of 353 millions, and a working-mass totalling 154 millions, excluding children, about 66 per cent, are still employed on the land either as smallholders or labourers. Only 18 per cent. are employed in trade, transport and industry. There is a middle group composed of professional workers, officials, small business men, etc., numbering roughly 15 millions. Then comes the top layer of big landlords (princes, etc.), industrialists and others living on big private incomes.

The preponderance of agriculture is evident. It is not agriculture as we know it in the Western world. Large-scale farming is practically unknown except in products designed for export such as cotton, jute, linseed, tea and coffee. The production of food grown for home consumption, cereals, pulses, sugar, and so on, has been left to stagnate under a system of primitive small-holdings, the owners of which are burdened down by government tax and money-lenders. The standard of living among these peasants as well as the urban proletariat is so low as to be incomprehensible to our minds. To quote the author:

“Excluding the cultivators, most of whom, clinging to dwindling plots of land, are on the brink of insolvency and steeped in debt, we have sixty or seventy million agricultural and industrial workers holding on to dear life by the skin of their teeth. Very few of them—a fraction of 1 per cent. at the most—earn as much as 1s. or 1s. 6d. per day (i.e., between £12 and £18 a year); all the rest toil and sweat for a few pennies a day.”

How do they exist? Dr. Shelvankar tells us.

“The average village dwelling is a low, flimsy, crooked structure with mud walls, a mud floor and a thatched roof. It is windowless, airless and has no sanitation.”

The urban proletariat vegetate in hovels “with no windows, chimneys or fireplaces. There is neither light nor water supply, and, of course, no sanitary arrangements.”

Their diet is reminiscent of kept animals, only much smaller in quantity. The daily food of an industrial worker in the towns of Bombay or Madras consists of l¼ lb. of cereals and little else. The average consumption of milk per head in working-class households in Bombay “is less than ½oz. supplemented by .05oz. of melted butter.” Many of the peasants exist on an even poorer diet.

Is it any wonder that during the first thirty years of this century “Cholera has claimed 10¾ million victims, influenza 14 millions, plague 12½ millions and malaria 30 millions ” ?

And yet pacifists can only see the horrors of war !

What remedies can be applied to alleviate such distress? As was to be expected, the author of this book argues strongly that first of all India must be freed from British domination before any comprehensive policy of progressive amelioration can be put into effect.

The core of his case is, that by a deliberate policy of imperialist exploitation the development of industry has been stifled, whilst a mortal blow has been dealt to the old village communal system, adding the burden of alien exploitation to the existing native incubus. As a consequence the demand for working recruits to industry is not large enough to relieve the economic pressure on the over-populated small-holdings. He contends that the country has in the main been allocated the role of supplying to British capitalism the natural products so vital for an empire of industry and commerce, plus the provision of countless well-paid sinecures to members of that exclusive ruling-class “freemasonry,” the old school tie.

During and since the last war, however, there has been a marked rise in industrial output, particularly in textiles. It is certain that this industrial impetus will be intensified as a result of the present war. Therefore, even if it were the wish of the British ruling class to retard the growth of capitalism in India, the evolutionary process is not a thing that can be held back for ever.

That is the Socialist view, and it should be taken into account when we are dealing with nationalism in a colonial country. Further, it has yet to be shown that “national liberation” would prove to be something worth the effort and sacrifice for the hungry millions.

For as the author himself notes:

“The outstanding feature of Indian industry to-day is the degree to which ownership and control are concentrated within a comparatively narrow circle. ‘The same set of individuals’—rich merchants with a sprinkling of the more prosperous professional people—‘hold the bulk of the shares in all the cotton, jute and other concerns.’” (Page 155.)

We have still to be convinced that in matters of economic welfare or on any other questions the Indian masses could expect a better deal from their native exploiters.

Dr. Shelvankar seems to recognise the truth of this. He agrees that the handing over of the country to a native bourgeoisie, or worse still, the princes, would not improve the situation. In his view the only hope for India lies in the introduction of a “planned Socialist economy” for which national liberation would provide a stepping stone, a period of brief “transition.”

It is a view which has no basis except in the optimistic imagination of the author, who assumes that “liberation” would give the nascent Indian bourgoisie only a short lease of life. Quite the contrary. Success in the struggle for national freedom may have the effect of eliminating for a long time to come whatever influence (and it is very small indeed) the ideas of independent working-class action, not to speak of Socialism, has in India to-day. The very status of national independence presupposes a powerful native ruling-class secure in the support of a nationalist-minded population.

The author several times quotes Ireland in dealing with the agrarian problem. It is a pity he did not allow himself, and his readers, a glimpse at the virtual stagnation of the working-class movement in the Irish Free State at the present time. It is certain that this standstill is partly the result of the struggle for national independence which completely occupied the energies of the Irish workers.

Dr. Shelvankar wants his working-class compatriots to make the same mistake, but expects them almost immediately after to turn on the movement for which they have suffered and bled, throw over the nationalist illusions with which they have so long been nurtured, and proclaim their conversion to socialist ideas.

However desirable Mr. Shelvankar’s hopes may be, they are totally unrelated to the problems he is attempting to solve. Under present conditions in India, and with the standard of political consciousness prevailing among the majority of its inhabitants, the platform of national liberation can at best only lead to some form of native capitalism. This is clearly seen from the nature of the mass-movements India has so far produced. The Congress Party, though some of its leading spokesmen such as Nehru claim to the Socialists, is in fact no more than a movement of national liberation. This is implicitly recognised by the author himself when he deals with the growth of Indian industrialism during the last war. On page 176 he says: “These developments marked a critical transition in the nature of Indian capitalism. From being predominantly commercial in character, it was launching out into industrial production. But its real strength lay not so much in the economic resources at its command as in its affiliation with a political movement (the Congress Party) which was becoming a menace to imperialism.”

Later, in dealing with the record of Congress in office, in 1937, he has to admit that so far from justifying hopes of a working-class character, it showed even amity to British rule. As for the peasants, they received a rude shock when, in the province of Bihar, their champions entered into a pact with the landlords, whilst “the entire labour movement . . . denounced a Trades Disputes Bill designed to interfere with the right to strike,” which was the act of the Congress Government of Bombay (page 231).

But the chief force in India is still wielded by Ghandi. He is the real spokesman of the peasants, the bulk of the Indian people. For him the future of India lies in the past, a return to the primitive agricultural community; he is the idol of the masses, the illiterate, half-starving millions, who have not yet been pulled out of the primitive slough of religious fanaticism, and are left to the mercies of money-lenders and their agents. Not content with their “legal” whack, they take advantage of that illiteracy to double-cheat their prey.

The author’s sympathy for Ghandism is evident by the approval with which he quotes the policy of the peasant leagues, “which is nothing less than the abolition of landlordism and the cancellation of peasant debts and reorganisation on such a basis that exploitation in every form would be ended and ownership vested in the cultivator himself” (page 221).

This raises the question: What does Dr. Shelvankar mean by Socialism ? What kind of India does he visualise that would justify the term “planned Socialist economy”? For Socialists private ownership of land, as well as any other form of ownership in the means of life, is not compatible with Socialism at all. On the contrary, the small land-owner is a particularly reactionary obstacle to the achievement of Socialism. Dr. Shelvankar reveals his misconception of Socialism when he refers to Russia as a Socialist country, and gives the Soviet state-capitalist order as the example which India must follow.

In fact, the author, like many other left-wing Indian nationalists, completely disguises, perhaps even from himself, the real issues of the Indian problem. The vexed questions of religious and caste differences are fobbed off under the theory of the British policy of “divide and rule.” This may or may not be true. But that they are able to do so depends primarily on the low level of understanding, and particularly class-consciousness, which inevitably exists among the Indian masses to-day.

An important omission from the book is the total absence of any appraisal of the international issues of which the Indian problem is only a part. The wars in Spain and China have apparently taught Dr. Shelvankar nothing, but their lessons have not been lost on Socialists. Backward and smaller countries cannot assume a ”national independence” that does not exist in fact. Even Russia has had to face the bitter tragedy and humiliation consequent upon a balancing of capitalist world-power. The chances of an independent India are nil.

Socialists have, of course, to aim to break down all barriers, whether of nation, race or religion, which to-day divide the workers of the world according to the convenience and benefit of their exploiters. And let it be noted by cynics, pessimists and opponents of Socialism alike: The world to-day is more interdependent than ever before. The conflict raging at present will leave its mark in every corner of the globe. In India it will have far-reaching effects.

Socialists everywhere feel the deepest sympathy for the Indian masses in their struggles to raise their heads from under the yoke of poverty, of domination, alien and native. The problem of India is part of a world-problem; a world-wide movement for the achievement of Socialism is the only solution.

Sid Rubin