Ghana: The Ruling Class and the State (1999)

From the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The concept of classes and class struggle in most African educational and political forums is treated as if it a were cultic secret; a taboo subject. This is not surprising. Class struggles and classes are basically about state power, a fact rightly considered as subversive and extremely dangerous by the ruling and propertied classes, and embarrassing by “objective” academics.

The attitude of academics whose intellectual output supports the capitalist establishment therefore goes beyond mere academic interest. The alleged non-existence of classes and class struggles in Ghana serves the interest of the “haves” both at the national and international levels. It explains why the intelligentsia and politicians strive, even if they have read and understood Marxism, to any lengths to mangle and decant it of its essence. It enables the most vicious and corrupt political leadership to harp on about the so-called harmonious development and the social homogeneity of the African population. Marxism is normally seen as an ideology of violence and division and therefore un-African.

There are two distinct systems of production in Ghana; the modern dominant capitalist sector and the traditional sector. Formerly the capitalist sector was supported by indigenous capital, foreign private capital and state capital. Since 1983 when the government embarked on its privatisation drive, the situation has witnessed a major shift with the marginalisation of the state sector and the virtual asphyxiation of an already fledgling indigenous private capitalist sector. The IMF and World Bank-propelled economic programme has all but put foreign private capital in a very strong position. What is of crucial importance here is the role that these sectors in the economy play in the appropriation of surplus labour. The garb that they present themselves in is of less importance to slaves of capital. They are all vampires whose existence depends on the exploitation of workers. It is the unpaid part of the daily total labour of the Ghanaian worker which is the source of capitalist surplus value. This form of exploitation is not too difficult to identify in the privately-owned enterprises—both foreign and domestic. It is less visible in the few surviving state enterprises. But the fact that there are two aspects of reality must not be lost sight of—the outward appearance of a phenomenon and its true nature.

On the surface, state enterprises present a picture of belonging to the workers. As if to emphasise this fact it is often said that they state belongs to everybody and it is the money of the people that has been used to set up the enterprise. However, the workers are completely shut out of management decisions and have no role in deciding how surpluses should be distributed. The fact is that surpluses extracted from workers in the state enterprises go mainly to the privileged minority class, who control the Ghanaian state, albeit in a subordinate position to international finance capital. The results of production are monopolised, appropriated by this class for the purposes of enrichment and domination of the toiling worker.

It goes without saying that a society like the Ghanaian society in which the labour of the majority is appropriated by a few would inevitably present sharp contrasts in wealth and poverty. In Ghana the privileged minority class almost exclusively have access to bank credit facilities and other privileges like good and higher education, better housing, etc. The situation of the underprivileged is however worrisome. According to the government statistician more than 30 percent of them live below the poverty line. Average real wages and salaries are only 25 percent of what they were in 1968 and per capita income is still $460, exactly what it was in 1957 when Ghana attained independence. The ability of one group to appropriate the surplus product of others has thus engendered the division of the society into classes.

The Ghanaian capitalist class is extremely factious and splintered. Outwardly it presents a picture of monolithicism, but in reality it is fragmented, into “comprador” and “national” sections. There is also a large petty bourgeoisie. Issa Shinji objects to the use of the term “national” to describe one of the segments of this class on the grounds that there is a remarkable absence of the qualities that are normally attributed to the bourgeoisie in Europe. Colonialism discouraged local business enterprise in the colonies; while its policy in the metropolis was free trade. Anyone wishing to achieve wealth and status in the then Gold Coast or present day Ghana therefore had to chase a career in the professions, civil service or the armed forces or work within the banks, industrial enterprises and mining companies, which were by and large controlled by foreigners.

The “comprador” segment is that which is made up of those capitalists who consciously collaborate with imperialism in an attempt to bolster their class interests. In Ghana it is closely linked to Japan Motors, Mobil Shell, Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, etc. It stubbornly protects the interests of these multi-national companies, both politically and economically because it reckons quite rightly that the rate of its profit maximisation and therefore its survival is directly connected to the fate of these companies.

The “national” bourgeoisie on the other hand has a stronger tendency to strive for internal capital accumulation; but this desire is not because it wants to redistribute its wealth to the poorer classes. What it seeks to do is to monopolise for itself the opportunity to milk the working class. Its struggle against foreign capital therefore does not make it more progressive than others. It merely seeks to control all the levers of economic exploitation and this does not make it any different from the comprador section as far as the Ghanaian working class is concerned. The “comprador” and the “national” capitalists have one thing in common—the maintenance of the current relations of production which are based on exploitation. Vampires are all the same—they suck the blood of their victims.

The national bourgeoisie in Ghana has however been incapacitated in its struggle against foreign capitalist interests operating in the country for a number of reasons. It lacks managerial experience, depends heavily on imported raw materials, and is given to a riotous and vulgar lifestyle. But what dealt the so-called national bourgeoisie a more devastating blow was the economic policies of the government, dictated by the two Bretton Woods Institutions—the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The agreement of the government to devalue the cedi led to the rise of the cost of imported materials needed for production. Apart form this the conditions imposed by the donors for the distribution of credits made it more difficult than before to obtain loans to oil the wheels of the domestic manufacturing sector. These coupled with the liberalisation policy led to the influx of an avalanche of cheap goods from the United States and Western European import substitution industries, operating through south-east Asian client states, thus robbing domestic producers of hitherto protected markets. The domestic private sector which is controlled by the national bourgeoisie was suffocated because its avenue for domestic accumulation of capital was choked.

The state, class and political power

The fractionalised nature of the ruling class in Ghana (and most African states) often engenders a high level of political competition in it and hence a high degree of politicisation. Any group within it which emerges triumphant in this competition normally gains a number of advantages. The control of government and the state machine facilitates its monopolisation of the economic means of production and it can manage political power to the exclusion of the other groups. Thus political party campaigns since 1957 have not been geared towards any fundamental structural changes in the economic base of the state to improve the lot of the toiling masses. All the political parties are representatives of the various factions of the capitalist class whose ultimate objective is not the dismantling of the state machine, but its maintenance and the furtherance of their economic interests. This explains why the political parties in Ghana today, in whatever garb or guise they present themselves—Busia-Danguali, Nkrumaist or Third Force—sing the same song: the maintenance of the wage and profit system. All claims to fighting for the common people are not only hollow and meaningless concepts to mask their devious intentions; but actually the funeral dirges of the working people. And they often succeed in carrying out their sinister designs because no genuine alternative choices are presented.

The state thus becomes a major plank for the building-up of the economic power of that section of the bourgeoisie that wins elections and for the consolidation of its political power.

The state is used to procure as much money as possible through over-inflated contracts, corruption and outright plundering of public coffers. As a result the people who voted politicians into office become disenchanted with them, and a feeling of alienation among the masses sets the stage for the rejection of the leadership in the next election. The leaders then become insecure, strengthen the apparatus of repression and brutalise those who had supported them and their opponents alike. An atmosphere of insecurity is created as a by-product of this situation, and the leaders become pre-occupied with the politics of survival, with remaining in office at all cost. In the resultant manoeuvring for security of office all state institutions are personalised. In other words retention of high office and promotion come to depend on the presumed loyalty of the individual to the “Great Leader”. The army and the police are never disregarded. These coercive institutions become active foci of these conflicts and are drawn willy-nilly into the vortex of these battles. They too are divided along these lines of sectional interest and their neutrality becomes compromised. Their response to the demands of the ruling class cannot be predicted with certainty, and they become exposed as pawns in the power games of the capitalist class. The fragility of the neo-colonial state becomes glaring and it cannot be counted on as an instrument of control and reform.

Adongo Aidan Avugma

Party News: Euro-election results (1999)

Party News from the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The details for the two constituencies we also contested at the last general election were:

Easington: Turnout 17.24%. Labour 6,690. Conservative 1,541. Lib-Dem 800. UKIP 794. Green 451. SLP 177. BNP 125. Socialist Party 96. Pro-Euro Conservative 57. Natural Law 21.

Jarrow: Turnout 19.7%. Labour 6,484. Conservative 2,660. Lib-Dem 1,718. UKIP 787. Green 471. BNP 163. SLP 134. Socialist Party 106. Pro-Euro Conservative 65. Natural Law 38.

No such thing as a free lunch? (1999)

From the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

They say it will never work. They argue that, human nature being what it is. the idea of producing what is needed and taking from the common stock of what is produced, without buying and selling anything, is pie-in-the-sky.

Yet even today, with the profit system makes us wary of giving anything away or having it stolen from us, people are willing to help others at some cost to themselves if they see there is genuine need.

Becky Morris reports (Daily Mail, 4 June) about a writer called Peter, and his dog. who set off on a 500-milc walk from Plymouth to Edinburgh without a penny. Morris describes the kindness shown to Peter as "truly extraordinary"—a description typical of those who have a poor view of the "human nature" imposed on us by capitalist values.

Peter's first night was his worst. He arrived at a church as the congregation was leaving and several people politely refused his request for help. Apparently there was a visiting choir in the village and almost everyone had a guest staying. But eventually someone did offer Peter a spare room and breakfast. Not only that, but he was also offer £10 "for emergencies", which he accepted but later posted back unspent.

He was not very well-equipped for long-distance walking. When he came across an experienced walker he not only had accommodation for the night, a meal, his clothing washed and dried, but was also given some Michelin maps to replace his single sheet of the whole of the British Isles.

Peter continued his journey with sore feet but usually met with kindness and assistance. It was no doubt in his favour that he was willing to do a bit of work if needed, but there was rarely any suggestion that he had to offer anything in return for what he received.

Sometimes Peter was not trusted. One farmer whose help he requested said that there had recently been a break-in at his neighbours house. So Peter had to sleep in the barn, though he still had his food and drink.

This is just one account of the many ways in which people are keen to help each other without expecting anything in return.This despite a capitalist environment which seems to say at every turn "there is no such thing as a free lunch".

To imagine what life will be like in a socialist world we have to subtract all the institutions and the behaviour and the ideas that go to maintain the profit system. Then we have to imagine the huge expansion of goodwill towards others, willingness to help and be helped, opportunities to be creative and not destructive, that a world of common property, democratic control, production solely to meet need, and free access will offer.

Stan Parker

Who owns the world? (1999)

From the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are sufficient resources in the world to provide adequately for every human being on earth. Why then do millions die annually of hunger and hunger-related illnesses? Why then is there poverty in every country throughout the world? Why then are people homeless and millions living in slums? Why then are there wars over markets, trade routes and places of strategic interest? Why is there competition, alienation, crime and the sort of conflict we have in Northern Ireland which, however disguised as a political or religious war is, when stripped of its rhetoric, a profane struggle over access to jobs, homes, status and profits? Why, when there is potential abundance for all to the goods and services that are needed by the whole human family do we live in a state of economic anarchy and political barbarism?

The answer, quite simply and beyond dispute, is that the resources of the earth as well as the tools of production and the instruments of distribution do not belong to society. They are the property of a relatively small minority class of capitalists. The working class is denied access to the land, factories, mills, mines, warehouses, stores and other resources of society except when they are permitted to work in the production of wealth.

It is the working class that applies its skills and energies to the resources of nature and produces all wealth. But workers are only permitted to work in such circumstances as hold out the promise of profit for their masters. Whether its bread or battleships, production is not undertaken simply to satisfy real or imagined need. The primary purpose of production is profit and if there is not the prospect of profit for the capitalist class then, however essential the needs of the working class are, if there is no profit there is no production. That is why people who can not pay for food die of hunger; that is why thousands of children whose parents have not got the equivalent of 50p for readily-available treatment go blind; that is why we say that it is absurd to say that our society is civilised.

There is an abundance of evidence to prove the truth of our assertion about who owns the world. You see that evidence all around you, in the workplace where you sell your mental or physical skills, in the shop or store where, whatever your needs, you only get what you pay for.

Devastating global evidence of our statement is contained in the latest UN Human Development Report for 1998. We quote only a few facts from the report:

• 225 individuals own wealth equivalent to 47 percent of the world’s population
• the wealth of just three of these individuals exceeds the Gross National Product of the world’s 47 poorest nations
• For 4 percent of the combined income of the three wealthiest people we could provide universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, adequate food for all and safe water and sanitation for all

The owning class and their political agents argue that freedom and democracy are based on the right of ownership. As the UNHD Report shows this means that a few own and control the means of life of the many; that the freedom, wealth and privilege of the capitalist class is based on the slavery and poverty of the working class.

Some forty thousand children die every single day of hunger or its related illnesses; millions are denied education, health care, water fit to drink and sanitation while hundreds of thousands of children suffer blindness. In both the so-called Third World and the developed countries people suffer varying degrees of destitution or want. All this in order that a relatively few people can accumulate wealth often far beyond what any human being could require in a thousand lifetimes.

Richard Montague

Does race exist (1999)

Book Review from the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Racialization of America by Yehudi Webster. St Martins Press. 

In the pub after a meeting a socialist was arguing with a man with dreadlocks. “You’re not black,” he said. “Yes, I am,” the man replied. “No,” the socialist went on, “you are no more black than I’m white. We’re both human beings.” Yehudi Webster, the author of this book, would have appreciated this exchange; indeed, he became acquainted with the Socialist Party and our ideas when he was in Britain before moving on to America.

Webster’s basic argument is that the all-pervading classification of the population in America into “whites” and “blacks” is logically absurd, scientifically unsound, self-fulfilling, counter-productive and in fact racist. There are of course anatomical differences between human beings—millions of them in fact—but it is not nature which decides which of these are to be regarded as significant for purposes of classifying people into so-called “races”. That is done by humans and, in this case, on a completely arbitrary basis. Races don’t exist in nature but are an artificial politically-motivated creation.

A question on race was first included in the US Census of 1890, at a time when segregation was being consolidated and given a legal basis. But, nowadays, racial classification is championed more by people who consider themselves anti-racists than by open racists. Sociologists, educationalists and others routinely carry out studies based on comparing the education, health, level of employment, unemployment, wages, housing, etc of those they classify as “whites” and “blacks”. In fact, many universities now have special departments devoted to studying “race relations”. But, argues Webster, as this classification is scientifically absurd, it creates or at least perpetuates artificial “racial” divisions amongst the population by encouraging people to think of themselves as “whites” and “blacks” who are homogeneous groups competing with each other for access to limited resources. In other words, it encourages “racial consciousness” and so racism.

Some partisans of racial classification for social studies purposes, realising that the definition of races on the basis of anatomical characteristics is scientifically unjustifiable, seek to define race more in terms of culture than of anatomy; hence their talk of “ethnic groups” rather than races. But this, says Webster, is even more racist as it posits a link between a person’s psychology and behaviour and their supposed race. And of course, as all humans are capable of acquiring any culture, no particular culture can be, or is, exclusive to one supposed race.

Others, some imagining themselves to be Marxist, try to combine race and class and see those they call blacks as a super-exploited fraction of the working class. Webster has no trouble demonstrating the contradictions of this view. All he does is to point to the existence of “black” capitalists and better-paid “black” workers, thus showing that those “blacks” who are below the poverty line cannot be said to be poor just because they are black. In fact, in absolute numbers, there are more “white” people in America below the poverty line than there are “black” people. Clearly, then, poverty is not due to racism but to some other cause.

Although Webster shows himself to be well aware of the Marxian theory of class and class consciousness—at one point he denies the existence of a so-called middle class—apparently he no longer agrees with a class analysis of society (he sees capitalism as an irrational human social arrangement which prevents humans from living in a human way). Nevertheless, he still realises that a class analysis and a race (even a race/class) analysis of society are quite incompatible. Either you analyse society and history in terms of class or you analyse them in terms of race, but it is not possible to analyse them in terms of both.

This is why we as Socialists are so opposed not just to racism but to racial classification (we refused to answer this question when it was introduced, for the first time, intoBlogg the British Census in 1991). Both encourage racial consciousness while our task is to encourage class consciousness and, once classes have disappeared, a universalist human consciousness. We want people to think of themselves as members of a world working class and as members of a single human race, citizens of the world, Earthpeople, rather than as British, America, French or black or white.

Is Webster, then, denying that there is such a thing as racism and discrimination against people with black skin? Not at all, but he sees this as but one example of the many ways in which some humans treat or have treated other humans in an inhuman way. Those who oppose such discrimination should, he says, oppose all other inhuman treatments too and strive for a world in which all humans would treat each other in a human way. The answer to “racial” discrimination is not a multi-racial society in which each “race” would get exactly the same treatment (an equal percentage of unemployment, of people living below the poverty line, in bad housing, in bad health, etc) but a completely non-racial society from which the very concept of race would have disappeared. In his view, the first step towards such a society should be the ending of all racial classification, for whatever purpose, both by governments and by social scientists.

Adam Buick

Blogger's Note:

Link to a C-Span discussion from 1993 which features Yehudi Webster discussing the book.

Greasy Pole: Who needs a willie? (1999)

The Greasy Pole column from the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Margaret Thatcher did not make a name for herself through cracking memorable jokes so she probably did not know what she was saying, when she remarked that “Every Prime Minister needs a Willie”. Indeed, part of the joke was that she wasn’t aware of how her words were likely to be interpreted. Another part was the kind of person she was referring to—Willie Whitelaw who, among other jobs she piled onto his ever-willing shoulders was Deputy Prime Minister, Home Secretary, Northern Ireland Secretary. He died last month as Viscount Whitelaw of Penrith but will always be remembered as Willie.

His death unleashed floods of homage which we have come to expect whenever a prominent politician dies. The newspapers devoted pages to telling us how wonderful he was and how great was our loss. His fellow politicians were not slow to come forward with similar slush: “influence throughout his long career was immense…personified decency, compassion and tolerance . . . wise and honourable . . . generous and unselfish” There is no point in listing the authors of these remarks because they are all so similar, the kind of praise which is taken out and dusted down whenever the situation demands. But it is worth mentioning that one of Whitelaw’s successors as Home Secretary, Jack Straw, said he was “an outstanding parliamentarian”.

This is usually considered the highest praise among MPs. But what does it mean? Is a great parliamentarian someone who is good at speaking in debates in the House? Good at ranting about some current meaningless obsession? Good at emphasising some facts while doing their best to conceal others? Good at using what is known as parliamentary language, essential for anyone who wants to state an inconvenient truth about another Honourable Member without using plain words? Good at the back slapping mutual congratulations between the parties in parliament when they are not pretending to be bitterly divided?

Home Secretary

Perhaps Whitelaw was one of the great parliamentarians—whatever that means. Because he seemed to love everyone and everyone loved him. It must have helped him during his time as Chief Whip, when he was adept at twisting arms so skilfully that his victim thought he was just giving a friendly squeeze of the elbow. In spite of his closeness to Thatcher he kept her at arms length: “I wouldn’t have wanted to stay with her socially ” he said. On other levels, when he was visiting a prison as Home Secretary he asked a prisoner what he was in there for and when the man replied that it was murder Whitelaw responded “splendid, splendid” before wafting off to leave the man to get on with his sentence. When he was Northern Ireland Secretary, on a walkabout in Londonderry he was approached by a woman who obviously thought this was her chance to confront him with some home truths. “Now then, Mr. Whitelaw, “she said in a gritty accent, “Why don’t you come down to the Creggan to see how things really are?” Whitelaw inclined his massive head, fixed his rheumy eyes on her upturned face and patted her arm. “My dear woman,” he said as if he had just been invited to a week-end on the grouse moors, “I would love to come to see you in the Creggan”. Unlike most politicians, he flourished in this role he set for himself, never to seem cleverer than he was and if anything to seem slightly less so.

This was probably rooted in his privileged background. His father died in 1919, from wounds received in the First World War when Whitelaw was one year old. Thereafter his upbringing was the concern of his grandfather, who was Chairman of the London and North Eastern Railway and had been a Conservative MP. Whitelaw was brought up in a large house in Scotland and went to Winchester public school where his ability was described as “unspoilt by premature intellectualism”. At Cambridge he got a moderate degree but played a lot of golf. It was what would be expected of someone from a rich land-owning family, who need never be bothered by the need to work for a living. When the war started in 1939 Whitelaw was ready to be an Army officer; he had cast off the shyness and hesitancy of his childhood and developed into a man who expected to be obeyed.

During the war he commanded a tank squadron which in its first battle lost several tanks and many of the men he described as “a harmonious family”. Predictably, the obituaries of Whitelaw said that such experiences had given him a hatred of war as a way of settling international difficulties. In fact there was no trace of such an attitude during the Falklands war when he was a member of an Inner Cabinet concerned with running the British war machine. When a decision had to be taken on whether to sink the General Belgrano, Whitelaw gave no thought to the fact that there would be a huge loss of life on the Argentinean ship, where the sailors might well have been another “harmonious family”.

Loyalty

All Whitelaw’s obituarists agreed that he was loyal—which could mean that he was willing to subvert whatever opinions he might have in the cause of keeping his party in power. Thus he could be a close friend and confidant of Ted Heath and then serve Heath’s hated rival so assiduously that Thatcher could describe him as “quite simply, indispensable to me in Cabinet”. This loyalty—if that is what it was—was strong enough to stand a number of stresses, such as the Tory conference in 1981, when Whitelaw was Home Secretary and getting the rough ride the hangers and floggers of the party ritually reserve for the minister responsible for what they regard as law and order. As Whitelaw resisted the calls for the restoration of hanging he was not amused or encouraged to see the Prime Minister he was so loyal to openly undermining him by applauding the speeches against him. Stifling his anger—for a while—Whitelaw resorted to a well tried defence—when in difficulties, make the most boring speech possible.

That was typical of the manner in which he survived, until the cruel workload brought him down. His failing powers were shown up when he had to give up shooting after he accidently peppered one of the beaters. A stroke in 1987 led to his retirement to his sumptuous home in Scotland, except that he played a part in the overthrow of Thatcher in 1990, when he advised her to drop out of the leadership contest after her too narrow victory in the first ballot. When the assembled media hacks asked him then whether he was one of the men in grey suits who were said to be plotting to bring her down Whitelaw’s reply showed him acting at being stupid again: “I don’t know what you mean; in any case I haven’t got a grey suit”.

The people who work the confidence trick through which capitalism is kept in existence come in all shapes and sizes and manners. Some of them are strident—like Thatcher—and some—like Whitelaw—are subtle. Read his memoirs and you will see that he cultivated blandness to the point of being evasive. And it worked—he played a large part in keeping his party in power, in convincing the working class for a long time that capitalism under the Tories was the best of all possible worlds. Prime Ministers may need people like him but we can do without them.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: The Dispute At The London Docks (1999)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The trouble at the London docks is an excellent illustration of the capitalist outlook of the Labour Government. The dockers are willing to unload all ships except the Beaverbrae and Argomont, the two Canadian ships which are involved in a Canadian trade union dispute. The dockers are also prepared to see troops unload the Canadian ships but are not willing to unload them themselves because they contend that these ships are “black ships”. The Dock Labour Board refuses to allow the dock workers to unload other ships unless they are prepared to unload the two Canadian ships. At the moment of writing the government has threatened to declare a state of emergency unless the Port of London is working fully on Monday, July 11th: thus the Labour Government, like all previous capitalist governments, is taking the side of the employers against the workers.

On July 10th Reynolds News contained the following:

“Mr Sam Watson, chairman of the Labour Party, said at Brandon (Co. Durham) yesterday that the dock strike was the work of foreign agencies, was purely political and could be solved if the members of the unions threw out the anti-British agitators.”

What a familiar ring this statement has. For a hundred years every strike of any size has been put down to the nefarious influence of “agitators” sometimes foreign, sometimes home-grown. Many of the Labour leaders who are fighting the dockers were included in this category long ago; now that they support the Labour administration of capitalism they take up the capitalists’ cudgels and sing his tune.

(From the Socialist Standard, August 1949)

Population and Social Progress (1942)

From the June 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Fashions in social theory are as changeable as fashions in clothes. During peace-time industrial depressions, when unemployment is rife, the advocates of birth control come into favour with their theory that unemployment is due to an excessive population; but when war is the order of the day the urgent demand for man-power and the fear that other nations are becoming numerically stronger and therefore more formidable as military powers gives a chance to those who preach the need for more children. And just as clothes are fashioned to suit the taste, occupation and purses of different groups of people so also with population theories, as witness the unmarried of both sexes who urge the poor to have large families, the wealthy parasites who brazenly support the argument that large families are the cause of poverty and the Eugenists who want the rich to be fruitful and multiply and the poor to curtail their devastating torrent of children. In 1913 Mr. Allan G. Roper, B.A., in his “Ancient Eugenics,” could write of the “reckless propagation” of the “lower classes,” but now the Government and numerous propaganda bodies are considering family allowances and other devices to encourage a more reckless spirit among working-class husbands and wives in order to stop the threatened decline of the population.

There has been much inquiry into the remedy for the problem and much into the cause of the decline, but most of it is marred by an inability to recognise fully the nature of the capitalist system of society in which we live. The inquiry starts with the fact that since 1870 the birth rate has declined from 34 per 1,000 to 15 per 1,000; only partly offset by a decline of the death-rate per 1,000 from 21 to 13. For many weeks all sorts of learned and other persons have written to the Times offering to explain why this has happened. Among the varied suggestions are the following : The spread of knowledge about birth-control methods, the increased employment of women in factories and offices, the growth of unemployment, the failure to provide adequate housing accommodation at low rents, the decline of religion, the fear of war, and lastly, the new milling processes which in the seventies popularised white bread and consequently robbed the population of the elements in wholemeal flour which made for greater fertility—we are told that this alleged deficiency will be counteracted by the new national loaf.

The reader can examine these claims in the light of his or her own experience and knowledge. One thing, however, that is undeniable, is that many working class men and women looking at their life and prospects under capitalism are reluctant to have as large families as their parents and grandparents. Economic insecurity and war play their part in this attitude and also the recognition that young children stand in the way of activities outside the home, whether recreations and amusements, or taking part in organised activities, including those of political parties. For women of the working class it is difficult if not impossible to have the care of young children and at the same time to take an intelligent interest and share in the work of a political party. Another factor of course is that the parents feel that if they are to give their children “a better chance in the world” than they had it is necessary to limit the number, and it is to this feeling that the advocates of family allowances make their strongest appeal. They argue that wages are inadequate for the maintenance of a family, therefore an additional 5s. a week given in respect of each child would raise the standard of living and encourage larger families. Let us examine a typical statement of the case, that contained in a leaflet, “Family Allowances and the Labour Movement,” issued by the Family Allowances Labour Group.

Their statement is “that wages are in many cases too low to support more than one or two children; that therefore the greatest source of poverty in this country is the possession of young children.” Put in that form it appears plausible enough. Ask a worker if he would be better off if he were relieved of the cost of supporting his children he would naturally reply yes ! Meaning, of course, that he would be better off provided that his wages remained unchanged and he received children’s allowances in addition. But the same argument could be used, and has been used, about other items of working class expenditure. There are those who have maintained for years that the greatest cause of working class poverty is high rents, so they advocated rent restriction or subsidised State housing. What has been the result ? Wages have adjusted themselves to changes in rents. In spite of the rent restriction acts during the past 28 years, working class poverty has not been materially lessened. In Vienna and other cities where rents were much reduced it was established by independent inquiry that wages followed suit. Agricultural labourers have very low rents, 3s. or 4s. a week, but their wages were also the lowest of any industry, and now that their wages have been raised to 60s. at once a movement is on foot to charge “economic” rents.

What about food ? Would not the worker be better off with free food? Mr. Fred Montague, M.P., opposes family allowances and states a case for an alternative proposal, that of spending a like sum of money in providing free milk and bread (Manchester Guardian, May 13th, 1942). Here again the workers’ problem would not be fundamentally different from what it is now. They would still have to struggle to maintain a given level of wages, with the certainty that such a cheapening of the cost of living would encourage a tendency for wages to fall. Are domestic servants, agricultural labourers and others who get board and lodging as part of wages better off than other workers who do not ?

We need not dispute that family allowances, or free food, or low rents, would probably be a gain to some sections of the workers on very small wages. And for a time to all workers with dependent children. But it would still leave the workers in the position of having to struggle unceasingly to maintain their standards, still faced with the permanent insecurity that is their lot under capitalism.

The basic argument of the above mentioned Family Allowance Group is false. The greatest source of poverty is not the possession of young children. Are there not hundreds of thousands of single men and women and childless families in dire poverty ? Are all our surtax payers celibate ? Were agricultural labourers on their pre-war average wage of 34s. only poor through having young children ? Will not the mass of the workers still be poor if they get family allowances and even if they were able to keep up the level of wages as well ? The source of poverty is the capitalist system which simultaneously prevents the maximum production of articles needed by the workers, entails enormous waste, and endows the propertied class with a large part of the wealth produced. The cure for this is Socialism, not family allowances or subsidised food or rents.

Socialism also offers the only cure for the problem of a declining population by removing poverty, economic insecurity, and the fear of war. It will also dispose of the problem which worries the eugenists. When Mr. Roper and others say that their problem is “the diminishing numbers of the upper classes and the rapid multiplication of the lower,” they overlook the fact that that problem too will disappear when there is no longer an upper and a lower class, a capitalist class and a working class. In their minds, of course, is an assumption that there is some innate, inherited, superior quality in the “upper classes,” but the truth is, as has been well said, that there is nothing wrong with the poor except their poverty. Indeed, if the eugenists take to heart one lesson of this war, the way in which things have been bungled by a considerable proportion of our ruling class civil and military notabilities, even they must now wonder whether the “upper class” are superior in anything but their wealth.

Edgar Hardcastle

Will the Workers Learn? (1942)

From the June 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard 

We can tell you the answer in a moment. They will learn. And there are abundant reasons for thinking so. But there are others who hold a contrary view. These gentlemen constitute two schools of thought. One group says that the workers are mentally incapable of ever understanding Socialist ideas, and the other group believes that there is something defective in Socialist propaganda. They say that our appeal lacks colour and vigour, in short, imagination. For example, we do not paint pretty pictures of what life will be under Socialism, the changes in domestic life, personal habits, social customs, architecture, music and art. Now, of course, we are aware that a system of production solely for use will make human society quite different from what it is now, but we obviously cannot sketch the details, It would be foolish to assume that we could accurately foretell the detailed reactions of the majority of people to the conditions of a Socialist society. In fact, we cannot say that everything will be perfect, that there will be no problems to solve, and no difficulties to settle. What we do say, and say it continuously, is, that in present society no problems may be solved, and no adjustments made, without first giving due consideration for the interests of a class of property owners. That only in a classless society will these hindrances be removed, and the way thrown open for development and improvement, and that there will be no poverty problem. We offer Socialism to the working class as a simple and practical solution to certain problems that face them. These problems are serious, and they become more and more urgent with time. The workers are faced with increasing insecurity set in a background of poverty and unhappiness. They are compelled to endure the kind of poverty that injures their health, and puts them into premature graves, half-starved or completely starved. This, mark you, in the so-called rich countries where the workers are said to consume larger quantities of nutritious food than the unfortunate workers in other countries that are not so prosperous. Remember that we are told that the workers of America and England drive their own cars, live in their own houses and that they bring home heavier wage packets than the miserable work beasts of Germany, Italy and Japan, not to mention the teeming millions of “over-populated” India and China. It is true that the workers in some countries eat more meat, but eating-more meat, particularly the embalmed variety, is no more indicative of happiness and good health than buying a car on the H.P. is evidence of economic security !

Many workers support the war because they believe that the imperial wealth in their employers’ hands allows them a much better standard of life and that the loss of this wealth would place them at a disadvantage. Now if it is true that German capitalism was too impoverished to allow the workers in that country higher wages and better social services, how can one explain its tremendous military power? It was estimated in 1939 that the Nazi Government had spent something like £6,000,000,000 in military expansion. Surely manna from heaven !

Japan, another “poor” and “over-populated” country, has maintained armies in China for four years, and is now strong enough to overrun strongholds in the Far East, even if only temporarily. This was accomplished by a superiority in machines. Quite obviously, men with empty stomachs cannot fight wars, nor can they work in armament factories. In order to produce the same tanks and planes as the workers in this country they have to be maintained in approximately the same degree of efficiency. In all of these “have not” countries there are groups of wealthy people who are engaged in the war with the one object of increasing their wealth because they feel that they are strong enough to do it.

The fact is glaring. The world is rich in untapped resources. Its mineral wealth is incalculable. Many more acres of land could be placed under cultivation. More factories could be built. And there are millions of men and women expending their energies in unproductive work who could easily do something useful. Socialism would make this possible. Why then do the workers turn a deaf ear to the message of the Socialist?

The question can only be answered by taking a long view. The workers are a comparatively young class, hardly out of their swaddling clothes, even in England. The vast countries of the East, with their great resources, have merely been scratched by capitalism. It is only in the last twenty years that Russia has begun to develop its agriculture and industry along modern lines.

In fact, it is only in America, Europe and the British Dominions that there exists, at present, the economic foundations on which Socialism could be established. It would be difficult to find means of measuring whether working class political development is slow or fast, but there is certainly not a shred of evidence to indicate that the workers will never understand their class position. They have definitely made very useful progress. They are enfranchised and educated slaves. They read and write, and they produce complicated instruments of great ingenuity. They have a knowledge of organisation and administration.

Darwin has shown that even animals will learn from painful experience. Men also learn from experience, perhaps more rapidly.

If the great majority of mankind were incapable of absorbing ideas, learning from their mistakes, and adapting themselves to changing conditions, then present development would never have appeared. But men fear the future. They cling tenaciously to outworn institutions until it becomes clear to them that these institutions have to be abolished if life is to become tolerable for them. The people who say that the workers will never understand Socialism are always anxious to emphasise that the capitalists are well aware of their own position in society. But if their theory is sound why should this be so? What is it that makes the capitalists conscious of their interests in apposition to the workers? They certainly do not possess a more than average capacity for abstract thought. But they to have something which the workers lack. They possess centuries of accumulated experience behind them. They have learned their lesson. The workers have yet a larger field of experience to investigate before they learn their own lesson.

Kaye.

Editorial: The Future of Political Parties (1942)

Editorial from the June 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

The late Lord Fisher, discussing a proposal to place the fleets of allied nations under one supreme commander, disposed of the matter with the remark, “the great objection to an allied fleet is that you cannot hang the allied Admiral.” The same kind of difficulty applies to political parties joined together in a coalition government. It starts off by pleasing all the members of all the parties concerned but ends by pleasing nobody. The leaders have to accept and defend a compromise programme and policy, and have to try to justify it to their own followers. They cannot take the usual course of blaming the leaders of the other parties. If the rank and file of the various parties develop strong views of their own their leaders cannot fall into line, for to do so would jeopardise the coalition. We can see this working out strongly at the present time. The entry of the Labour Party into the Churchill Government was overwhelmingly approved by a Labour Party conference but now—as is shown by bye-election results—local Labour Parties and the electors of all the parties in the government are kicking against the discipline imposed by the headquarters organisations.

The result of this strained feeling inside the large political parties is that independent candidates are getting elected in spite of the joint efforts of the party machines and there is much talk of new groups being formed such as the “People’s Movement,” formed by Mr. W. J. Brown, M.P., Mr. Edgar Granville, M.P., and Captain Cunningham Reid, M.P., with the aim of attaining “total efficiency in total war.” What is exercising the minds of party leaders is whether these events presage the decline of the old parties and the formation of new ones. The B.B.C. “Brains Trust” was recently asked if they agree that the party of the future will be formed out of a group from the Labour Party joining with the Communist Party? One member of the “Trust” gave the view that there would be no essential change, merely a shake-up of the old parties. Another thought that active spirits in the Conservative and Labour Parties would rally round the Liberal Party. Mr. Hannen Swaffer, a Labour Party supporter, has expressed himself as follows : —

“Conservatism, as we knew it in pre-war days, is dead except in the minds of the diehards who would still strangle us with the Old School Tie and who control the Party machine.

As for the masses of Labour people, while they remain loyal to their trade unions, without which they would be helpless, many of them feel that the Labour men in the Government are in the pockets of their Tory bosses.

As we are ruled by ‘joint Cabinet responsibility,’ we do not know what ameliorative schemes have been insisted upon by Attlee, Greenwood and Bevin in the past.

Nor do we know how much dragooning of the workers they have stopped. But, anyway it is obvious that the majority of the electorate are no longer going to be controlled by either Party machine.

Their new hero, whether they are justified in idolising him or not, is Stafford Cripps. And yet he belongs to neither party, and has no supporters except his own constituents in Bristol.

Were the Labour leaders well advised, they would make every possible endeavour to get Cripps to rejoin their ranks. He stands out as a national leader. The Tory machine may not like it. The Labour machine may not like it. But it is true.”—(“People,” May 3rd, 1942.)

It would be rash to be precise about the future of the political parties that bear the old names, though it seems most likely that after a period of depression the Conservative, Labour, Liberal and Co-operative Parties will regain much of their old position when they regain freedom of action in Parliament and the constituencies— even though the present leaders may give place to new ones. What is more important is not, however, the emergence of new names, but whether any new leaders or new parties will be essentially different. While capitalism remains there will be the same interests seeking to use political parties for the furtherance of their policies in Parliament. There are, for example, the interests represented in the Conservative M.P.s’ Committee known as the 1922 Committee. They were recently responsible for urging on the Food Minister the policy of making the multiple stores and the co-operative societies pay higher prices for their bacon, biscuits, butter, etc. In this they represent the interests of the smaller traders, who complained that the big stores bought direct from manufacturers or importers and thea sold at the same retail prices as the small traders who had to buy from wholesalers, at prices well above the manufacturers’ or importers’ prices. (Daily Express, May 16th, 1942.) The same Conservative Committee successfully opposed the proposed coupon fuel rationing scheme, this time in the interests of the fuel companies. The Manchester Guardian (14th May) says: —

“There were two strains of Conservative critics, and they met on the 1922 Committee. . . . One of these strains reflected very clearly the private interests concerned with fuel, the coalowners and the gas and electricity undertakings”

Similarly the trade unions use the Labour Party to look after day to day political questions affecting them as organised bodies, and the co-operative societies use the Co-operative Party. These are the forces that matter in capitalist politics, not the vague talk of new worlds after the war, or condemnation of the excessive rigidity of the old party machines, or the need for new blood and less old school tie. The latter are secondary matters, and there is little doubt that the politicians will find means of bringing themselves into line with discontented sections of the electorate who want capitalism to be reformed in slightly different ways or under different slogans.

In short, until the working class understand that their interest lies in achieving Socialism and not in reforming capitalism, capitalist politics in spite of such surface restlessness and re-grouping will go on in the same way as before.

The Labour Party and Socialism (1942)

From the June 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the Trades Union Congress of 1899 a resolution was carried calling for the formation of a Labour Representation Committee. In 1900 a conference was held at which this latter body was formed. According to H. R. S. Phillpott, writing in the Daily Herald, February 27th, 1940, “the concrete thing that came out” of the conference was a declaration in favour of “establishing a distinct Labour Group in Parliament, who shall have their own Whips, and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to co-operate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interest of Labour, and be equally ready to associate themselves with any party in opposing measures having an opposite tendency.” Arising from this the Labour Party was formed in 1906. In regard to this, Mr. C. R. Attlee, in his book, “The Labour Party in Perspective” (Labour Book Club Edition, 1937. p. 40), says : —

“The new Labour Party was formed on a very simple basis—that of the return of Labour members to Parliament. For all the years up to the end of the war this simple object sufficed. In 1917 as in 1906 its object is stated to be : ‘To organise and maintain in Parliament and the country a political Labour Party.’

“The conception of the Labour Party at that date is well expressed by Mr. Wardle in his presidential address in 1911 : —

“‘From the very first, the ties which bound the Party together were of the loosest possible kind. It has steadily and, in my opinion, wisely always refused to be bound by any programme, to subscribe to any dogma, or to lay down any creed. Its strength has been its catholicity, its tolerance, its welcoming of all shades of political and even revolutionary thought, provided that its chief object, the unifying of the workers’ political power, was not damaged or hindered thereby.'”

According to Mr. Attlee (p. 45), in 1918 “the Party now adopted Socialism as its aim. No longer is the mere return of Labour members sufficient. In 1918 the objects of the Party were set out approximately as they stand to-day,”

Object No. 4, which gave expression to this newly adopted aim, was as follows : —

“To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.” 

We shall return to the contents of this object later.

Mr. Attlee goes on to describe the “very lengthy and diffuse” manifesto issued by the Labour Party at that time, Labour and the New Social Order in which “all Labour adherents could find their own particular reforms,” as “an uncompromisingly Socialist document” which, amongst other things, “did not consider for a moment the re-establishment of pre-war capitalist industry. The war, it stated, saw the culmination and collapse of a distinctive industrial civilisation, which the workers will not seek to reconstruct.”

In 1928 this manifesto was replaced by “Labour and the Nation”

Once again, even though Mr. Attlee states that it differed considerably from its predecessor it was “a very long document, and, though not so all-embracing as its predecessor, comprised a bewildering number of subjects. A four-page summary set out no less than seventy-two proposals that a Labour Government, if elected, intended to carry out. It was obvious that nothing short of a miracle could have enabled the Party, even with an overwhelming majority, to get all these measures passed into law within the life of one Parliament, yet there was no suggestion as to which of them was to be given priority. It was, indeed, designed to rally to the Party a great variety of supporters.” (Page 53. Italics ours.)

After his description of the earlier pamphlet Mr. Attlee makes the following statement: —

“Allowing, however, for the difference in the country’s position in 1918 and to-day, the programme shows that as far as general principles are concerned Labour stood then where it stands to-day.”

We have quoted at length in order to establish from the best possible sources the basis of Labour Party policy, both at its formation and at the present day. Let us now consider a very brief history of the Party in the political field, and the results obtained as a consequence of attempting to follow such a policy.

At the election following the 1914-18 War the Labour Party became the official Opposition, and in 1923 was elected into power as a minority Government. Regarding its activities whilst in power, Mr. Attlee says (p. 52) : “The greatest success was scored in foreign affairs. . . . On the home front there had been no real decision as to what should be done first. Useful work was done, but nothing very striking.” And this was after the publication of that “uncompromisingly Socialist document” and the adoption of Object referred to above ! We must suppose that “all Labour adherents” were busy sorting out “their own particular reforms.”

In 1929 the Labour Party again formed the Government, this time being the largest party in the House of Commons, 288 members; the Conservatives totalled 267, the Liberals 59.

In Mr. Attlee’s opinion there were “three possible courses open to the Labour Party: to refuse office, to accept office and invite defeat by putting forward a Socialist programme and place the onus of rejecting it on to the Liberal Party, or to come to some agreement with the Liberals on a programme which would secure joint action in the House.” After discussing the pros and cons of these courses of action, he says : “No one of these courses was followed.” (P. 54 et seq.)

Regarding the activities of this Government Attlee records how “MacDonald was right in thinking that in the sphere of foreign affairs a great lead for peace and disarmament could be given, but he had no clear idea as to what course to follow in domestic affairs.” As a consequence those members of the Labour Party who wished for a “vigorous lead in home affairs found themselves side stepped and frustrated at every turn.”

Further on in his book (p. 109) we find Mr. Attlee describing the democratic constitution of the Parliamentary Party. In regard to this he says : “Party action in the House is therefore decided by the whole body of the members. … In practice a considerable degree of latitude is given to members, and the Party shows much toleration of individual vagaries. It insists, however, on majority rule.”

Relating this democratic procedure to the activities of the 1929 Government it would appear that the majority did not desire a “vigorous lead in home affairs” but preferred to peddle League of Nations theories on the Continent. No doubt they spent their week-ends sorting out the “bewildering ” “four-page summary” of “seventy-two proposals” in Labour and the Nation, or studying the Bible to find out how miracles were performed.

It seems, however, that this democratic procedure failed to function in 1931, according to Mr. Attlee. He attributes the lack of success and ultimate collapse of the Labour Party almost entirely to the ineptitude of Ramsay MacDonald, culminating in his betrayal of “those who had given him their trust.” “Mr. MacDonald had led the Party into an acceptance of gradualness …” Earlier Attlee says that MacDonald had “got more and more out of touch with the rank and file.” We may well ask, what was the rank and file doing, through the medium of democratic procedure, to allow MacDonald (and others) to so drift away, and yet remain1 the official spokesman of Labour policy ? It seems as if the Parliamentary Party was somewhat analogous to a sheep farm, with the flocks being driven hither and thither by a few “trustworthy” shepherds.

What was happening, in fact, was that the Labour Party was reaping the harvest from seeds it had sown in its early days and had since carefully tended.

If the quotations at the beginning of this article are studied it is evident that at no time did the Labour Party ask for the support of the working class for the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of a socialist system of society. Throughout the whole of its history it has sought to gain the votes of the workers, not for Socialism, but for reforms within the existing system. It has sought to gain political power at well nigh any price. It has stood for a reformed capitalism, a State capitalism, a nationalised capitalism, but never for the establishment of a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution.

Even in the Party Object No. 4 quoted above, which is to some extent similar in wording to the object of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, we would draw attention to the very important point that it does not call for the establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of production, etc. With regard to the phrases, “to secure for the workers,” “the most equitable distribution,” and “the best obtainable system of popular administration,” when these are placed in relation to the rest of Labour Party ideology, which does not visualise the need for social revolution, they imply only one thing. The “most equitable” and the “best obtainable” under capitalism.

Under Socialism there can be no question of the “most equitable” distribution, there will be only one distribution, and that will be in accordance with the needs of the individuals comprising society: and than that nothing can be more or less equitable. Under Socialism there will be no “best obtainable” system of administration; the system of administration will of necessity be fully democratic and consequently the best possible. Also, there can be no question of securing for the workers under Socialism the full fruits of their labour; everybody capable of working will work as a social duty and will receive in return as a social right a proportion of the fruits of the labour of society, in accordance with his or her needs. Lastly, let us point out that the use of the word “exchange” in relation to political economy can have only one meaning : that is the exchange of commodities. If exchange is retained, commodities are retained, buying and selling is retained, capitalism is retained.

N.S.

(To be continued next month)

Voice From The Back: The wasteland (1999)

The Voice From The Back Column from the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Wasteland

Derelict land in England now covers an area equivalent to a city twice the size of Birmingham, according to the country’s most detailed survey of vacant sites and buildings. The so-called national land use Data Base, due to be released shortly, finds that almost 130,000 acres are idle—in theory enough for 2.5 million medium-density homes. Guardian, 20 May.

How are the mighty?

The world’s biggest personal computer maker was thrown into crisis today as two of its top chiefs dramatically quit following a dire profits warning and plummeting share price . . . Compaq stunned Wall Street two weeks ago by announcing its first-quarter earnings would be half of what analysts expected, leading to a 23 percent tumble in its shares. Evening Mail, 19 April.

Russian capitalism 

Fifty-three percent of the Russian people are said to be living below the “official” poverty line; 2 percent own 57 percent of the country’s wealth (land, means of production, etc). the super-rich have, since 1991, managed, largely illegally, to transfer between 200 and 250 billion dollars out of the country. In 1997, 27 percent of the workers’ salaries had not been paid. The economy will contract by 6 percent this year. Source: The Centre of Studies for Living Standards, Moscow.

Capitalism is depressing

“There are more people suffering from depression in Britain today than asthma and diabetes combined. It is a major problem,” said Dr [Chris] Manning. One in four of the population suffered depression at some point in their lives. Four thousand people suffering depression committed suicide each year . . . According to the survey, money worries are the most likely trigger of depression, cited by 88 percent of people, followed closely by death and illness in the family, work worries and marriage or relationship problems. Guardian, 22 April.

Great expectations die again

Former freedom fighters and militant unionists who spent decades struggling to topple South African capitalism have become instant millionaires as the directors of new black-run companies or white-owned firms keen to get a few black faces on the board. Trade unions, the Communist Party and a slew of other organisations that once campaigned for the nationalisation of the gold mines and other “commanding heights” of the economy have joined the scramble to buy into private business. But critics say that black-owned firms treat workers little better than the white companies that financed apartheid . . . When a former Robben Island prisoner, Mzi Khumalo, took over a major company, JCI he was asked whether he would be sympathetic to the unions. “I have spoken to the unions at JCI and made it clear: we are here to run a business. I’m not for any of this brotherhood stuff.” Guardian, 22 April.

Winning the war

The world’s estimated 6m millionaires have shrugged off the effects of last year’s financial turmoil and are getting richer by the day. New research by Merrill Lynch, the investment bank, with Gemini Consulting, a management consultancy, found the wealth held by high net worth individuals with more than $1m of financial assets grew last year by 12 percent to $21,600bn. The World Wealth Report produced by the two firms projects a steady rise to $32,700bn by the end of 2003—a growth rate which is expected to attract more firms into the lucrative market for private banking and wealth management services. Financial Times, 17 May.

Class war casualties

More than 1m people are killed at work every year—including 12,000 children—and 250m suffer workplace injuries which force them to take time off, according to International Labour Organisation estimates. The worldwide annual workplace death tally of 1.1m outstrips the numbers killed in road accidents, war, violence and Aids and costs 4 percent of the world’s gross domestic product in terms of absence from work, treatment, disability and survivor benefits. Guardian, 28 April.

Losing the war 

Our Health Challenge:

• Thirty percent more men [in the area] die from lung cancer than the national average.
• Sixty-eight percent more people die from heart attacks.
• Eleven percent more people die from strokes.
• We are among the country’s ten worst places for deaths of babies at or just after birth.
• We have one of the country’s highest teenage conception rates.
• Thirty percent of households have someone with a long-term illness.

Our Social Challenge:

• Thirty-five percent of households have no central heating.
• Twenty-three percent of public housing and 17 percent of private housing are unfit for human habitation.
• Four percent of privately rented accommodation have no exclusive use of bath/shower or inside toilet.
• Ninety-five percent of Sandwell people have no qualifications beyond school.
• Fifty percent more people are unemployed than the national average.

Better Health for Sandwell People.

Editorial: Voting and democracy (1999)

Editorial from the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Only about one in four people bothered to vote in last month’s election to the European Parliament, the lowest ever in a national election in Britain. Some are saying that this is a threat to democracy and an insult to our forefathers who struggled for the right to vote. Maybe, but only if you define “democracy” as the kind of representative system we have today where, every once in a while, we give the politicians a blank cheque to do what they want, or can get away with, in the meantime. Whether we can call this charade, in which rival leaders parade before us asking for our votes, a real democracy is another matter.

A real democracy is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of leadership. It is about all of us having a direct say in the decisions that affect us. Leadership means handing over the right to make those decisions to someone else. We don’t vote for leaders to implement this or that decision; we vote according to our ideological inclinations to give them a “free hand” to make decisions.

Does that mean that in a real democracy all our time will be taken up with making decisions leaving no time to do anything else? Not at all. A person may not be particularly interested in, or significantly affected by, what happens in a neighbouring community, judging that this is something better left for them to decide. On the other hand they may well feel concerned by the problem of global warming but, within the framework of a “representative democracy”, the only recourse available to them is to join some environmental lobby group to petition governments who are under no obligation to comply with their wishes but who will in fact be more obliged to attend to the needs of Big Business whose very activities have directly contributed to this problem.

The point is that the very mechanism of decision-making we have today is a product of the social system we live under. The market economy, with its built-in contradictions and conflicting interests, has massively complicated the process of decision-making itself. It has moved it further and further from the ambit of “ordinary people” as the system itself has become more and more globalised. It is this that has made the paper pledges of our elected leaders seem increasingly irrelevant and ineffectual as they attempt to grapple with the monster that holds them in its tightening thrall.

We have at our disposal today the very means, in the form of modern telecommunications, that could enable us to resuscitate the ancient model of Athenian democracy on a truly global level. What we conspicuously lack is the will and the imagination to look beyond the crippling assumption that capitalism is here to stay. In the meanwhile we delude ourselves into thinking that the economic dictatorship imposed by this class ownership of the means of living can somehow be made compatible with democratic control within a system of political “representation” which is essentially adapted to that end. But we can have a real democracy—as soon as a majority of us are prepared to replace minority class ownership by common ownership.

Mary Gray and Eleanor Marx (1999)

Eleanor Marx

From the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

A number of papers of Mary Gray (1854-1941), an active member of the Social Democratic Federation before the First World War, have been donated to us. They contain some interesting material, including two previously unpublished letters from Marx’s daughter Eleanor.

The SDF had been founded in 1881, mainly on the initiative of H. M. Hyndman, as the Democratic Federation, a federation of London Radical (i.e. leftwing Liberal) clubs. In 1883 it proclaimed Socialism as its aim and changed its name to Social Democratic Federation. However, it kept its programme of “advanced” reforms to be achieved within capitalism, or what its 1892 Programme and Rules (which are amongst these papers) described as “measures called for to palliate the evils of our existing society”. In 1884, over this issue of retaining a reform programme as well as over the authoritarian behaviour of Hyndman, part of the membership (including William Morris) broke away to form the Socialist League. However, the SDF survived, and was always the bigger organisation.

After the demise of the Socialist League following its take-over by bomb-throwing anarchists, the SDF was the only organisation in Britain propagating the ideas of Marxian Socialism. Most of the early members of the SPGB had been members of the SDF, the Socialist Party being a breakaway from the SDF in 1904 for the same reasons that had led to the SL breakaway 20 years earlier.

Mary Gray joined the SDF in 1890. She had been born Mary Rogers near Wokingham in Berkshire, the daughter of a baker, in January 1854; in 1876 she married Willie Gray, a stonemason, and lived in Reading where their daughter, Florence, was born in 1879. Later the family moved to Battersea in London.

Mary Gray became a very active member of the SDF. In 1895 she stood as an SDF candidate, and was elected, as a member of the Battersea Board of Poor Law Guardians. She was a speaker and lecturer for them, and not just in London. Amongst the papers is a handbill advertising two meetings by her in Coventry in November 1896, one on “Socialism, The Only Hope of the Worker” and the other on “The Economic Position of Women”. There is also a press cutting from an Ilkeston paper of an outdoor meeting she addressed in the market square there in July 1897 on “Society As It Is”. For a time she was on the Executive Committee of the SDF.

As the title of the second lecture in Coventry shows, Mary Gray was interested in what was then called “The Woman Question”, not just votes for women but also the economic position of women generally under capitalism. She was on friendly terms with two other prominent women members of the SDF, Marx’s daughter Eleanor and Edith Lanchester.

Eleanor Marx lived with fellow Socialist Edward Aveling without getting formally married. This was a daring thing to do in the 1890s as Edith Lanchester found to her cost. A schoolteacher who at the time lodged with Mary Gray, she stood as SDF candidate in West Lambeth for the London School Board elections in 1894. The next year, when she decided to follow Eleanor Marx’s example and live with a man without getting married, her family found a doctor to certify her and she was locked up in a private mental asylum. As a result of the outcry and campaigning that followed she was released after three days. Various items in connection with this campaign are included in the papers.

The papers also contain two letters from Eleanor Marx, or Eleanor Marx Aveling as she called herself. Eleanor Marx was not simply Karl Marx’s daughter but an active Socialist in her own right. She had been amongst those who had left the SDF in 1884 to found the Socialist League but had resigned a few years later because she disagreed with the anti-parliamentary position it eventually took up. She rejoined the SDF in 1896 and was a frequent attender at the classes at the SDF offices at 337 The Strand, where Aveling lectured on economics.

Eleanor Marx’s letters to Mary Gray are not political but we reproduce them as they have not been published before. The first, dated 25 September 1896, is a short note which reads:

Dear Mrs Gray,

As you cant come Wedy you + Florrie must fix some other day. But try & come tomorrow night to 337. First because of classes, but also to fix up an evening to come here.

Yours

Eleanor Marx Aveling.

Florrie was Mary Gray’s daughter, who was then aged 17, and “here” was The Den, Jews Walk, Sydenham, London, where Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling lived.

The second letter, dated 24 January 1898, is longer:

My dear Mrs Gray,

I had a letter from Edith on Saturday — + if you have any news of her please let me know. I’ve written to Sullivan to ask if I cd see Edith. Is n’t her boy lovely? I am quite in love with this delightful little man.

I shd have been to see you — but as you know, Edward has been dangerously ill. He is now at Hastings, but though the lung trouble seems better, it seems certain that he must soon — in a week or so — undergo a most dangerous operation for the abcess he has so long suffered from. The operation is so serious that there is the utmost danger. But without operation there seems no hope at all.

So you will see, dear Mrs Gray, that I have very great trouble. Of course, I have not said anything to Edith in my letter of this — it wd be unwise for her, but I tell you, as I am so sure of your kindly sympathy.

Hearty greeting to Mr Gray + Florrie + you, + a big kiss to the sweet little man.

Yours

Eleanor Marx Aveling.

“Edith” is Edith Lanchester and “Sullivan” is James Sullivan, the man she lived with and the father of the baby boy mentioned in the letter. What is poignant about this letter is that within two months Eleanor Marx was dead. While he was on the South Coast, Aveling—who had never been highly regarded in the Socialist movement for his personal integrity—married an actress he knew. Eleanor felt she had no alternative but to commit suicide, at the age of 41. Those who believe in some form of immanent justice will be reinforced in their belief by the fact that Aveling did not survive the year.

Mary Gray is credited with founding the first Socialist Sunday School, in Battersea in 1892. Battersea happened to be one of the SDF branches which contained many of the founding members of the SPGB—the protest meeting which eventually led on the founding of the Socialist Party was held in Battersea Town Hall—and it is interesting to note that the Battersea branch of the SPGB continued the Socialist Sunday School tradition, a report from the branch in the Socialist Standard for November 1904 reading: “A Sunday School class for the children is held every Sunday afternoon, and is well attended, and after the school a communal tea is provided to which all comrades are most heartily invited”.

There existed a Socialist Sunday School Union, organised from Glasgow, though it seems to have been more of an ILP rather than an SDF movement, using progressive teaching methods and preaching a kind of “ethical socialism” but which was still recognisably socialist in general terms. For instance, a handbook published in 1923 which is amongst Mary Gray’s papers gave two definitions of socialism, one of which was:

Socialism is the co-operative ownership and control of the vital industries (connected with food, clothing, housing, transport, etc) and the means of education by all the adults of a national community, and it implies the abolition of rent, interest, profit and the wages system.

Also, a model lesson on “Money” ends as follows:

When the fields and factories, the trams and the houses, and all the material wealth of the world shall belong to all the people, and shall be used for the happiness and welfare of the people, no money will then be needed nor any millionaires.

At least this shows that socialism, as we have always defined it, is not our own invention but was once the more or less widely accepted definition.

Mary Gray was well-entrenched on the reformist wing of the SDF and wouldn’t have had any sympathy whatsoever for those who broke away from the SDF to set up the SPGB. The papers include a poem she wrote in 1903 on the first birthday of her grand-daughter which contains twelve excruciating lines describing an SDF meeting held to celebrate Hyndman’s recovery from an illness at which “the cheers that went up showed the love and reverence” of “his comrades and friends”.

The papers have nothing on her political views after 1903 but she remained in Battersea until at least 1935 before moving to Hampshire and then Wiltshire. She died in 1941.

Adam Buick