Studs Terkel (2008)

From the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Studs Terkel, a prolific American writer and broadcaster over several decades,  died at the end October at the age of 96. His style and approach is well illustrated by the sub-title of his 1975 book Working: People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do. Besides the subject of work, he dealt with leisure, family and education, culture and sub-culture. An article partly based on his writings appeared in the Socialist Standard for August 2003.

Some of Terkel’s nine thousand interviews — especially the broadcast ones — were with celebrities of various kinds. But his books were mainly about the life experiences of everyday men and women. He quoted these graphic words of an assembly-line worker: “I stand in one spot, about two or three feet area all night . . . it don’t stop. It just goes and goes. I bet there’s men who lived and died out there, never seen the end of that line.” Or again: “They give better care to that machine than they will to you . . . If that machine breaks down, there’s somebody out there to fix it right away. If I break down, I’m just pushed over to the other side till another man takes my place. The only thing they have on their mind is to keep that line running.”

Terkel also captured people’s memories of the Depression years and the Second World War. Again and again the themes of solidarity and sharing shine through amidst the destitution and suffering. A woman born in 1911 recalls the ’20s in a mining town in Illinois: “we’d go out picnics, we’d go out fishing, all families. Everything for the picnic. And then when you went to the picnic, there was no money exchanged, no commercial, everything like one big family. They’d cook a pot of mulligan stew and everybody’d share out of that. That was a picnic. Today you go on a picnic, what is it? It’s commercial. You buy your ticket, you buy your popcorn, you buy your beer. If you haven’t got a fistful of money, you haven’t got no picnic.”

As Oliver Sacks once said, “There is no one in the world who can listen like Studs Terkel.” Reading his books provides an unforgettable picture of working-class American life and shows that, contrary to what may sometimes appear, American workers are dissatisfied with their lot and more than prepared to fight for better times.

Blogger's Note:

A version of this article first appeared on the Socialism or Your Money blog in November 2008.

Obituary: Carol Taylor (2008)

Obituary from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was with sadness that we learned in mid-October of the death of Carol Taylor, and at a relatively young age. Carol will be best remembered for her work on the now popular socialist film Capitalism and Other Kids Stuff, on which she worked as director and editor.

Though no longer formally a member, she had no actual disagreement with the Party case. She was always a fervent defender of the socialist cause and an ardent critic of capitalism, always keen to expose the insanity of the profit system in whatever way she could. On the discussion forum she attached to the initial Socialist TV website she created specifically to promote Kids Stuff she spent hours a day articulately defending the socialist case against our detractors who left messages, and there was a fair few.

Carol can be heard introducing the first ever film we did together here, a short film introducing the Socialist Party and actually put together within an hour.

I worked with her on a few films, including one on the “G8” meeting filmed up in Scotland a few years ago, and we spent a lot of time together collecting stock footage we felt we could use on future socialist films. I fondly remember the many encounters we had with the police who tried to stop us filming around London, often under threat of arrest, particularly the day we tried to get footage of HRH and entourage during the State opening of Parliament and the angry argument Carol gave to the police who came to escort us away from the area and, indeed, the way she cleverly managed to blag us media passes to get on to the press wagon at Teeside Airport when George Bush came for his £1 million fish supper in Tony Blair’s north eastern constituency.

I’m please to have known Carol closely and will remember her as quite a magnanimous person, warm and affectionate, loathing injustice, deceit and fraud and ever ready to speak out against it.

John Bissett

From poverty to power (2008)

Book Review from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World by Duncan Green (Oxfam Publishing 2008)

Duncan Green defines an effective state as one that “can guarantee security and the rule of law,” and has an effective strategy “to ensure inclusive economic growth”. Such a state should be accountable to citizens and able to guarantee their rights. Active citizens are linked to the state by a “combination of rights and obligations”: making use of these rights to improve their conditions.

He argues that it is the combination of poor men and women and their national governments that provide the main actors in the fight against poverty and inequality. Case studies are given to illustrate how even the poorest people have by their organised and persistent actions brought about beneficent change in their circumstances. Like the Chiquitanos people of Bolivia who after 12 years of “unremitting and often frustrating struggle” won legal title to the 1m-hectare indigenous territory of Monteverde.

He is aware that the scales are weighted against the poor in all areas. For example, research is dominated by the private sector: in agriculture 5 large multinational corporations spend $7.3bn per year on agricultural research on high value, high profit products while the staple foods of poor communities are “likely to be overlooked.” In biotechnology the picture is the same with GM crops being genetically engineered to meet the needs of large scale farms. There is no serious investment in the five most important semi-arid and tropical crops.

Half of the world’s population lives in the countryside and the majority of people in absolute poverty live in the rural areas. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) sources are given for the claim that over the past 20 years aid donors and governments have effectively withdrawn from the countryside. Mention is made of the well known ‘structural development programmes’ which imposed a ‘radical free market’ on debtor countries.

Agricultural growth, Green argues, reduces poverty but is most effective when small farmers are able to capture a fair share of the benefits. Local farmers, he says, should be helped to improve the quality of their produce so that for example retail giants like McDonalds and Pizza Hut use local produce instead of importing produce from the USA. Here his ‘active’ citizens would be small farmers “organising their ability to negotiate a fair deal”. However when it comes to buying fertilizer or seeds, or selling produce or their labour, small producers are dominated by the large corporations. Small farmers are “de facto employees”.

In Green’s view efficient states should take the environment and the enhancement of the daily lives of the poor as prime considerations. Global governance (the “web of international institutions, laws regulations, and agreements”) could help, and the 8 main ways he lists include managing the global economy, redistributing wealth through aid or international taxation, averting health threats and avoiding war. However global governance fails to live up to its ideals. “The WTO is frozen, regional trade agreements are proliferating and introducing profoundly unfair trade and investment rules, the G8 is failing to keep its promises on aid…”, then there is the threat of climate change and “a looming financial crisis”.

The book is well sourced with a 24-page bibliography and three further pages listing background papers. There is much useful information covering more areas than can be dealt with in a review. However Duncan Green takes a moral stance whereas under capitalism the prime consideration cannot be the welfare of citizens active or otherwise, but sale and profit; this drives development (forget sustainable) – and can also inhibit it. And the state that in his view is supposed to facilitate change will only do so to the extent that the interests of the owning class are served.

Pat Deutz

Letter: Money must go (2008)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money must go

Dear Editors

The existence of money and property ownership has become a choke point in the further evolution of mankind.

We, in the United Kingdom, as one of the wealthiest nations on this planet, can’t afford to keep our pensioners at a level much above abject poverty, and over the next twenty years this will become more acute. We close down hospital wards because next year’s budget isn’t due yet, despite being able to fill them many times over with people who urgently require treatment. We allow people in the third world to die in the most degrading circumstances, because it is more profitable to cheat them out of their national resources. We stand by and watch helplessly, as the drug barons infect out richest resource, our children. Big business rapes and pollutes the limited resources of our planet and encourages us to keep buying, and wasting, to keep the cash flowing.

It doesn’t make sense.

Fortunately, there is a solution which can wipe out these ills and many more.

The two root causes of most human misery are money and violence, and the existence of money is the catalyst for most violence. By removing money and the individual ownership of any and all of Earth’s resources from existence, we instantly remove the barriers to the further evolution of mankind. An evolution away from war, crime, and inequality. An evolution toward global prosperity, universal peace and understanding.

So how could this be peacefully achieved, and what would be the net effect? All we have to do is to decide, as a species, that at a pre-determined point in time, we will stop using money. From that time on, changes will begin to occur which will positively enhance our existence on this planet. All we have to do is keep working, to produce all the goods and services that we need and want. But instead of producing poor quality goods, we can take the decision to produce the best quality, most up to date goods we can imagine, for everyone.

Constricted only by the paramount rules of ensuring the safe availability of the raw materials we require, the safety of the people producing them and the overriding factor of its minimal impact on our planet.

With expert planning, and the positive will of all the people of the Earth, we can build new communities with safe, efficient, integrated transport, energy, waste management, health and entertainment systems, sited in the most geologically and climatically stable environments on the planet, using fully recyclable materials. For all of us.

We can detoxify areas of our planet which have been previously adulterated by industry. We can grow unadulterated food all year round, using the most fertile and suitable areas of our planet for our crops. We can provide first class training for everyone to carry out their job efficiently and knowledgably. We can make those jobs as safe and pleasant as possible, with hours and holiday entitlements pre-calculated by statisticians, so that we do enough to maintain and improve our environment without it impinging too much on our new found social life.

We can gather the finest minds on the planet, equip them with all the materials and technology and help they require, and stand back in awe as they produce solutions to whatever befalls us. If it is humanly possible, and good for our planet and our species then why not? We, the human species can have all of this, and so much more.

As soon as we realise that we are all intimately related. We are one family, estranged by time, distance, environment and philosophy. And as soon as we realise that here on Earth, we are living in a life support system which is, to our certain knowledge, unique. Because it contains the only species in the known universe with which we can fully communicate, and it is composed of all the raw materials we will (hopefully) ever need.

We already have the world we dream about, we can award ourselves undreamt of fringe benefits. The only questions you really need to ask yourself are – why not…..and when?

Ken Scragg, 

Livingston, West Lothian

 

Reply: 

We of course agree that the production and distribution of wealth could, and should, take place without money, but we don’t think it will as easy to get there as you seem to imply. We will need to organise to struggle politically against those who currently own and control the means for producing wealth and benefit from the money-wages-profits system. There will have to be an (essentially peaceful) democratic social revolution to end their monopoly and make the means of production the common heritage of all, which will make money redundant. This done, the benefits you mention will become possible – Editors.

50 Years Ago: Borstal Boy (2008)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Brendan Behan at the age of sixteen came from Dublin to Liverpool with an I.R.A. “do it yourself kit,” for the purpose of blowing up Cammell Lairds. He was arrested, and after a stay in Walton Detention Prison, Liverpool, was sent for three years to a Borstal Institution in East Anglia. The book (published by Hutchinson) tells of his experiences in these places. (…)

In spite of all the tumult and violence of the book, it has a monastic quality in that nothing of any significance from the outside world ever seeps in. not even the war which was going on at the time is mentioned, in fact, the author never seems to have really noticed it. There is no serious discussion, not even about Ireland. Behan indulges in rodomontade about Irish politics, religion and history, but never indicates that he has any grasp of the underlying economic and factors of Irish history. (…)

Behan at least went to Borstal wearing a slightly glamorised would-be Martyr’s crown. He came out none the worse, perhaps even a little better for it. But what of the mal-adjusted, the misfits and the unfortunates; what happened to them? That, perhaps, is the most disquieting thing of all, but Behan never mentions it.

He has nothing to say against patriotism or nationalism either of the English, Irish or any other variety. He seems to regard many Englishmen as stiff-necked and arrogant, but sees no reason why they should not be either in their native country or to people who come from other countries. But in a world of conflicting national interests, being pro Irish, English or American, means even at the best of times being negatively anti-something else. In the worst times such feelings take on an active and hostile form.

[From book review by E.W., Socialist Standard, December 1958]

Nationalization—a Professor’s Misconceptions (1973)

From the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the problems in expounding Socialism is the persistent myth of “clever” men whose endorsement of other views is impressive to many people. Eminent scientists have followed the zig-zag Communist line; philosophers and mathematicians are found to be Catholics, racists or advocates of capital punishment. The common sentiment is that these opinions are given authority by learned men’s holding them, because someone with all those letters after his name cannot be a fool.

Can he not? In fact the opposite is true remarkably often. To the degree that a person has specialized in some field, his ignorance of others can be so acute as to take away the sense of his specialist knowledge. A classic example is that of Sir James Jeans, the most eminent astronomer of his time, who held religious beliefs so crude as to be comical. The “clever” are not exempt from fear, petulance or prejudice, or the propensity for putting material interests first. Harold Nicolson’s diaries show how a scholarly man’s thoughts may go when he wants a peerage, or under pressure from people round him. The whole idea of learned men who are superiors to the rest of us is a fallacy, a meritocracy-version of “God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate”.

Higher Authority

In the October issue of The Freethinker, Professor Antony Flew lays down the law about Socialism. To give the background first, the September issue had an article by Professor Flew on the currently-fashionable Karl Popper. This was criticized in a letter by R. W. Morrell, who wrote:

Professor Flew seems to labour under the impression that nationalization has something to do with socialism, and that the criterion by which to judge the political colour of a party is its attitude to the issue. As a self-declared Popperian, he dislikes ‘sweeping’ social change; but is nationalization really ‘social change’, sweeping or other wise?

Professor Flew’s reply is as follows:

Mr. Morrell says: ‘Professor Flew seems to labour under the impression that nationalization has something to do with socialism . . .’ Yes, so I do. So clearly did those who wrote clause IV into the constitution of the British Labour Party. So clearly do all the Communist Parties, who make the implementation of Clause IV a first step after seizing power. So clearly do those who are now dominant in the Labour Party, and who disagree only on precisely how massive an extension of public ownership to propose in their next election programme.

If Mr. Morrell wishes to use the word ‘socialism’ in such a way that nationalization is not a necessary condition of socialism, that, indeed, it has nothing to do with it at all, then the very least he should have done was to indicate what sort of glory he wants to make the word refer to. It is hard to be condemned for not following Mr. Morrell’s eccentric usage when he does not even tell us what it is.

What has to be noted is how the conviction of learned authority works. Every “expert” believes there are other, higher experts — presumably, at the end, a supreme expert before whom nobody may speak. Professor Flew does not consider answering the point. Instead, he refers to the authority of the Labour Party’s Clause IV, the Communist Parties, and “those now dominant in the Labour Party”; to say anything different from them is mere “eccentric usage”. However, there is a much greater eccentricity in his own approach. In the September issue he attacked Marx and “socialism”. Yet Marx’s writings make abundantly clear what Socialism is, and that it is not nationalization. Are we to understand that the learned Professor criticizes what he has not read?

Where's this Better World ?

Professor Flew does speak of concern to “change the world for the better”. It is possible to look at nationalization in that light, without recourse to its economics. People get their definitions of Socialism wrong, but all associate it — however vaguely — with equality, freedom and production for social needs instead of profit. One ought first of all to ask if nationalization achieves any of those things, as a means to judge whether it has “something to do with socialism”.

On that basis, the policies of the Communist Parties can be dismissed immediately. In their model state, Russia, almost all industry is nationalized; personal and political freedom are minimal, the working class has a very poor standard of living and privileged sections have the fat of the land. Some industry was nationalized also in Nazi Germany, and that did not “change the world for the better”.

In this country, the same questions can be asked about the well-established models of nationalization: the Post Office, the railways, the coal industry, the .electricity and gas undertakings. Are workers better-off and more secure in these concerns? On the contrary, all pay poor wages and in recent years have got rid of large numbers of employees. An item in The Guardian on 27th September said:

At a recent Cabinet meeting, according to Field, Ministers were discussing the effects of Stage Three, and the low paid. Somebody asked who exactly were the low paid; nobody round the table knew. Lord Rothschild’s Think Tank was asked to find out, and present a paper on it within two or three days. Among other things that Rothschild came up with was the (fairly well worn) conclusion that it was the Government which was, directly or indirectly, the largest single employer of low paid workers.

Nor is there any benefit to the workers as “consumers”. Each enterprise is bound, as much as it would be in private hands, to compete in the market and try to make a profit. The prices of the commodities produced reflect the general level of prices. Is not Professor Flew ever curious as to why this “socialism” is indistinguishable from capitalism?

Control and Compensation

The purpose of nationalization and the public utility corporations is not to abolish or weaken capitalism but get it to function better as a whole. The last words have to be stressed, because they explain the arguments which take place over any project for State control. Generally, an industry is nationalized when its efficiency is vital to the rest of capitalism, and private groups either are an obstruction in themselves or cannot handle the costs of necessary developments. So far from seeing it as a threat, capitalists are always prepared to consider nationalization so long as their interests — that is, their property incomes — are acceptably arranged-for. What the capitalist loses is control, but not ownership.

Thus, every nationalization scheme includes “compensation”, the exchange of direct shareholdings for State bonds or the securities of whatever corporation is set up. This was done in the post-war Labour government’s nationalizations, and its necessity was reaffirmed in a Labour Party statement Industry and Society in 1957:

It may be that public participation in a private firm can be secured through State investment in it. Where public ownership is extended, full and fair compensation will of course be paid.

Of the present proposals by “those now dominant in the Labour Party”, the Fabian Society has published a pamphlet on housing nationalization called The End of the Private Landlord. The suggested financial arrangements are:

Instead of the standard practice of compensation at market rates, the group proposes the issue of irredeemable but marketable stock whereby landlords would receive the equivalent of a fair rent minus some deduction for management and repairs.

(“Guardian”, 10th September)

This would reproduce what happened in the nationalization of the railways in 1947, where the shareholders were relieved of huge capital expenditures they would have had to make to attain the “fair” level agreed in the compensation terms.

Ownership and Equality

But where do these incomes arise, to be paid to people who — it is said — have ceased to own? They can be provided only from the exploitation of the working class and the production of surplus-value. Nothing, in fact, is altered. The capitalist may have been removed from direct participation in industry and commerce, but he remains the effective owner in that they are conducted as before for profit and interest: which go to him. Professor Flew refers to “those who wrote Clause IV into the constitution of the British Labour Party”. They were more aware of what they were doing than he is. The 1918 statement Labour and the New Social Order spoke of “the progressive elimination from the control of industry of the private capitalist” (our emphasis); nothing about eliminating ownership.

So nationalization has nothing to do with Socialism, but is one form of capitalism. Reformers, attracted by inaccurate phrases like “public ownership”, have seen in it a means of obtaining more equitable distribution under capitalism. How unlucky they have been is shown by facts repeatedly given by Labour spokesmen, when they are in opposition. On 27th September Michael Meacher wrote in The Guardian:

. . . four out of every five households have less than the average income, and only one-fifth have more, largely because in the richest 1 per cent there are some exceedingly rich individuals. If we were as tall as our incomes, they would be 10 miles high whilst most people would be dwarfs.

And in September Lord Shinwell, asked in a television interview what had been achieved in his seventy years as a Labour politician, said: Nothing. There were still the rich and still the poor — just the same.

Socialism, unlike those Professor Flew cites as authorities on it, is concerned first and foremost with ownership, simply because that is the foundation and changing-point of every social system. Capitalism exists on the basis of private or limited ownership of the means of living. From that, all the apparently ineradicable problems of our present world arise. Socialists know, however, that they can be eradicated: by establishing common ownership as the basis of society. The obstruction to it is ignorance — including what a 19th-century essayist called “the ignorance of the learned”.

Robert Barltrop

On the Spot at Con-Mech (1973)

From the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nor entirely satisfied with the mass media’s reporting on the Con-Mech dispute, I went along to find out for myself. As I arrived outside the Sheerwater factory, I saw a group of four or five men on the pavement. Among them I recognised Lindsey Greig, who is one of the two shop stewards. He is 21. A graduate of Warwick University, he joined Con-Mech this summer. From the company’s point of view he is a “trouble maker” and had “spent much of his working time soliciting membership for the AUEW”. The other shop steward, Ron Connor, an ex-miner from Co. Durham, has experience of trade union membership, but is also young.

Con-Mech is a small factory-cum-office on Sheerwater GLC estate outside Woking, Surrey. The Group make bread slicers and parts for bulldozers and other earth-moving machinery. According to a circular issued by Mr. Robert Dilley, the company’s chairman, on September 28th, there are 67 people employed of which he claims 51 are “eligible to join a Union” — any union. I asked him over the phone if this figure included staff workers, typists, etc., but he emphatically denied this. However the workers and the AUEW who have checked the branch’s books, assert that the total number of shopfloor workers eligible to join the AUEW was only 31. Indeed I would think that this is the correct figure, as Dilley’s 51 could only have got in with dangerous overcrowding. It is a small factory.

Before September 19th the union had only four members, of whom Ron Connor was one. At the branch meeting 22 Con-Mech workers including Greig became union members. Next day the union members elected Greig and Connor as their shop stewards and decided to apply for a meeting between the District Secretary Geoff Hardy (a member of the Communist Party) and the Company to discuss recognition, etc. The shop stewards’ account of how this application was met is indicative of the employer’s attitude:

Our first discussion with the Management was brief and to the point. We were told that under no circumstances would they afford recognition, and that the two elected Shop Stewards could “pick up their cards” on the way out. (Undated leaflet issued in the name of Ron Connor as Secretary of the Strike Committee.)

It seems that on every point at issue there are two different and mutually contradictory stories. How many shop-floor workers were eligible for the AUEW? Dilley says 51, the union only 31. How many came out on strike? Dilley says only 20, the union 26. How many are still out on strike now (Oct. 26)? Dilley says only 9 — the rest, he says, are either back at work or else have collected their cards and got jobs elsewhere. But the union say they are paying strike pay to 16 men on their books. Were the shop stewards sacked? Not according to Dilley, but it is hard to see why, immediately after their interview with him, there was a mass walkout and decision "to withdraw labour until such time as not only the two stewards were reinstated, but the Company conceded recognition”.

On September 28 Dilley took the case to the National Industrial Relations Court under Sir John Donaldson on the grounds that the strike constituted an "unfair” industrial practice because there had been no seven days’ notice. At which stage the question ceases to be a relatively simple one of an industrial stoppage over a recognition issue, but becomes bedevilled by the AUEW’s stoic masochism and boycott of the NIRC (surely they could have countered Dilley by putting their case on reinstatement of the shop stewards and recognition?), but also by the Labour and TUC opposition to the Industrial Relations Act and NIRC.

At which point I’ll get back to those pavement pickets. Their main motive for being out was nothing to do with the Industrial Relations Act and party political matters. What they wanted was union recognition, not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end, a means of compelling management to do something about unsatisfactory conditions. I was told of safety hazards on some of the machines, of poor ventilation, of the shopfloor being cluttered and dirty. I heard that rates of pay were arbitrarily and unfairly fixed — the longer you stayed the less you got in relation to blokes who had just come in on "outside” rates of pay. For instance, Lindsey Greig, a young newcomer, got a lot more than an older, better and more experienced worker.

Another factor was the high speed arrival and departure of shopfloor workers. There would be seven or eight new ones every Monday, and of these hardly a couple would still be in the place on Friday. There was a tendency to take young workers, including students, and there was a high proportion of immigrant workers — Italians and Pakistanis came to nearly half the workforce. In the event, the Pakistanis have mostly stuck with the union so far, but the Italians went back in.

In the absence of a union, inexperienced, young or immigrant workers are least likely to be aware of safety hazards in operating the machines, and in case of accident are unlikely to be aware of their legal rights on compensation; also they might not be in a position to press any claim. Is this why Dilley is so opposed to recognition of the union? Is he afraid that someone might report him for empty firebuckets? Or get him to modify some of his plant, e.g. the monstrous machine outside in his backyard which chops up metal into different lengths and which the operator can only switch on or off when inside the building? Or to give up some of his old-fashioned habits, like sacking people at the drop of a hat?

The first sentence of Dilley’s circular of September 28th claims: “For twenty-five years the employees and the management have enjoyed excellent labour relations.” The men totally disagree, and they point out that last November there was a stoppage lasting several hours over pay and conditions, which ended when another director conceded a pay increase. In the next sentence, we read: “the conditions of employment have always been superior to those laid down by any Union”. The proof of the pudding is in the eating: there would be little cause for men to stay out on strike with only £6 strike pay for weeks on end and still remain resolved to force union recognition if conditions were as "superior” as Dilley alleges. The men however know very well how badly their conditions and rates of pay compare with other factories in the area, whose workers are solidly supporting them (e.g. in such practical ways as laying on hot tea twice a day, or getting statements photo-copied for the pickets to hand out, not to mention helping out with picket duty).

The employer seems an awful ass, dogmatic and intransigent, characteristically the type who has been using NIRC. The Union leaders seemed at times to have had a stronger eye on making party policy propaganda for the Labour Party than with the immediate interests of their members on strike. But the strikers themselves have shown commendable solidarity and stamina — qualities which, added to socialist understanding, will overthrow capitalism and establish Socialism.

Charmian Skelton

Blogger's Note:

By the look of this obituary for Lindsay Greig from 2015, he would have been a member of the International Socialists group (now known as the SWP) at the time of the dispute. In fact, the strike at Con-Mech is mentioned in the obituary.

So They Say: Light the Blue Paper and Retire (1973)

The So They Say Column from the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Light the Blue Paper and Retire

When war broke out in the Middle East, the leaders of the Great Powers all spoke of “deep regret”. Newspapermen enlarged on the horror and futility of it. In the Sunday Mirror on 15th October Jon Akass wrote:

A pity, really, that technology is not yet up to bringing the smell of war to our living-rooms, because that would finally remove whatever romance is left in human combat . . . The best that Israel can hope for is that the Syrian army will be eliminated and the Egyptian army in Sinai routed. And perhaps another year or two of peace. It will not be enough for the price that will have been paid in blood.

It was as if sons of a good home had been caught housebreaking, to their parents’ grief. But on 16th October The Guardian gave an account of the military background.

The Israeli air force was then [in 1967] predominantly French until De Gaulle placed his embargo on the Mirages. President Johnson supplied the first Skyhawks and Phantoms to Israel in 1968 but the bulk of the $1,000 millions of arms sales to Israel since the June, 1967 war was made by the Nixon Administration.

. . . [The Soviets] arms shipments were designed to enable Egypt and Syria to do exactly what they have done in the last nine days, which is to defend themselves against Israeli air power while making limited incursions into occupied territory.

So the sorrowful parents are shown as a Fagin family — teaching the art, supplying the tools, and then lamenting the consequences. Capitalism calls this hypocrisy “diplomacy”.

Lord God of Property

Talking of hypocrisy, the Church of England springs to mind. Its finances were reviewed in the Business section of The Observer on 4th October, with two writers advising how the Church Commissioners’ “£600 million-plus assets” might produce a higher income. Their chief criticism was of the Commissioners’ unadventurousness in holding on to house-property with a relatively low return:

Margaretta Terrace, SW3, provides a good example. This street contains about 40 houses, with an average rent of around £1,000 a year: as the houses are worth a minimum of £40,000—and probably much more—the ‘true’ yield is thus only 2.5 per cent.

Their suggestion was to sell, and to require a down payment of £5,000:

The balance of the consideration would take the form of a 25 or 30-year mortgage: and, at the current mortgage rate of 11 per cent, the Commissioners would receive £154,000 a year.

Eye of a Good-Sized Needle

The Church Commissioners have had this sort of advice before and — no doubt for equally sound business reasons — chosen not to follow it. But an interesting question is raised here. “The current mortgage rate of 11 per cent” has taken on the status of a social problem in recent months. Its rise to that figure was a financial vicious circle: to get more money to lend, the building societies had to offer higher rates to investors, which meant charging a higher rate to borrowers.

But the Church Commissioners do not have that problem. Selling the houses in question, they would not be advancing money but simply taking deferred payments. Using the Observer calculations, if they charged a mortgage rate of only 6 per cent, they would receive £84,000 a year from those houses — which is still more than twice as much as they are said to be getting now in rents. The Commissioners would not only do what the writers want them to do, i.e. make more money; they would be Giving a Christian lead to the Nation, etc.

Is it likely that they will? No. It will not enter the Commissioners’ heads, any more than it did the Observer writers’. As the Good Book says: “Where a man’s treasure is, there shall his heart also be.”

Beggars Cannot be Choosers

And talking of borrowing money. Newspapers have given a good deal of publicity to the Consumer Credit Bill published on 2nd November. It is designed to check “abuses” in hire-purchase, moneylending, second mortgages, and so on. The provision which was asked for most persistently is the one requiring that borrowers shall be told clearly what they are letting themselves in for:

Borrowers required to put up their homes as security for loans and those who obtain loans by mail order will have to be informed of their right to back out before finally signing the loan agreement; and all borrowers will have to be given a copy of every agreement they sign.

(Observer, 4th November)

The Observer writer on "Family Finance”, Paul Wilson, thinks this is inadequate:

Why not lay down a formula by which loan interest rates are calculated, so that all advertised rates are comparable? Why not define what constitutes an extortionate rate of interest, so consumers will know when they have cause for complaint?

This talk is as fatuous as the Bill itself. People go to moneylenders and second-mortgage companies when they have no alternative, and therefore no choice but to accept the terms whatever they are. Can you imagine a loan company’s client, with creditors breathing down his neck, exercising his “right to back out”? Every rate of interest is extortionate. The only way to end problems like this is to get ride of capitalism and, with it, money.

What Makes Great Men ?

People, particularly those who think themselves mentally superior, are often reluctant to accept our contention that intelligence is a social concept. The acclaimed genius of one set of circumstances can be the blithering idiot of another: it depends what society is looking for.

There is an example in the balance at present. Harold Bate is a retired engineer who runs a car on methane gas made from pig and chicken manure. He has done it for seventeen years, and has occasionally appeared in newspapers and on TV as a comical curiosity. Now, suddenly, it is being taken seriously and he has had to take production to a Walsall firm. The Sunday Express on 4th November reported his growth:

“At the moment I am receiving around 150 orders a day from the US and Canada. They are coming in shoals from all sorts of sources—even oil companies. Two major American oil companies—I agreed at their request not to name them—have already used my conversion kit to convert a fleet of oil delivery tankers to run on gas."

Is Harold Bate a genius or a crank? We have yet to learn. What will decide is the world fuel situation. If there is a world shortage of oil, he may well go down with Edison and Stephenson and his story be told to every schoolchild. If it doesn’t happen, he will have been nobody of note.

Gaiété Mancunienne

The magazine calls her Marie-Helena. a model born in Lyons and now living in Paris. But Paula, on a commerce course at school, lives with her parents in a council house at Wythenshawe, Manchester.

(News of the World, 14th October)

The magazine is Men Only. The cream-bun fantasies it sells cannot be set in Manchester or anywhere else the readers may actually live. How sad.

Robert Barltrop

Leaders and led (1973)

From the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chong Tse, a great Chinese sage of ancient days (over 2,000 years ago) said that as long as we have great leaders, just so long will we have great masses of followers, which means that some people will be in subjection. Equality was the ideal. Let all men think for themselves. The law, said he, does not prevent crime. In fact all law was a crime in itself for all law was the law of the strong thief who guarded his theft with it. This was the law of the leaders. 

From a pamphlet China and the Social Revolution by Kiang Kang Hu, National Secretary of the Socialist Party of China. Published in San Francisco, 1910.

Blogger's Note: 

This pamphlet  by Kiang Kang Hu was reviewed in the September 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Recent books on trade unions (1973)

Book Reviews from the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Strike at Pilkingtons by Tony Lane and Kenneth Roberts. Fontana. 50p.

Ford Strike by John Matthews. Panther. 40p.

Trade Unions ed. by W. E. J. McCarthy Penguin, 60p 

Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism by Richard Hyman. Pluto Press.

Strikes by Richard Hyman. Fontana. 50p.

The New Militants by Paul Ferris. Penguin. 25p.

The increased trade union militancy of recent years has brought a rash of books on the subject. Of these listed above the one by Paul Ferris is a short and very readable journalistic account of meetings with various union leaders such as Scanlon, Jones and Daly.

The first two books describe two particular strikes, the unofficial seven-week strike at Pilkington glass works in St. Helens in 1970 and the official strike at Fords in 1971. Of the two Lane and Roberts’ is by far the better. Matthews sees only four parties involved: the unions, the rank and file, the employers and the government. In other words, he uncritically accepts the shop stewards’ claims that they represent the ‘rank and file’; indeed that they are the rank and file. In fact, however, though at times they may more faithfully represent the ordinary worker than the official union they too are just as much a minority leadership group. They are no more the rank and file than are the full-time union officials, but are essentially one of two rival groups seeking the leadership and support of the rank and file. This is fully recognised by Lane and Roberts.

The men at Pilkingtons were members of the General and Municipal Workers Union, one of the most bureaucratic and conservative unions. In April 1970 the men went on spontaneous unofficial strike, ostensibly over a wage miscalculation. The union told them to go back to work, but the strikers’ demands soon escalated to a claim, for a £10 wage increase. The union did in fact manage to get them a £3 increase (a sign of how it had failed in its job over the years of course). This wasn’t enough for the strikers, at least for some of them. A Rank and File Strike Committee (RFSC) kept the strike going in face of the opposition of the GMWU.

Lane and Roberts paint a sympathetic picture of the members of this Committee: they weren’t seasoned militants but ordinary workers who suddenly found themselves in the unexpected role of strike leaders. But the two authors don’t let this sympathy cloud their judgement. They recognised that after the union had negotiated the £3 increase a majority of the men, a small majority, but still a majority, wanted to return to work. Why then did the strike continue for another four weeks? Because, argue Lane and Roberts, those who wanted to continue the strike were better organised and led by the RFSC.

The GMWU would have been the natural organiser and leader of those who wanted to return to work, but it had been completely discredited by its role at the beginning of the strike. It was widely held to have let down its members. They, it was felt, had been paying dues to the union as a kind of insurance for just such a situation as happened at the beginning of the strike. “Something went wrong” but, instead of the union supporting its members, it told them to go back to work. The members, understandably felt betrayed; in fact they were betrayed. Hence the RSFC emerged as an alternative organisation which the workers turned to.

In the end the superior resources and skill of the GMWU leaders led to the defeat of the amateurs of the RFSC. The men went back to work for £3 a week extra, though with a pledge of no victimisation. The RSFC then made the mistake of organising a rival Glass and General Workers Union. This provided the GMWU with an excuse to deal with them. With the help of Pilkingtons the Glass Workers union was crushed and most of its members lost their jobs.

The Pilkingtons' strike, as can be seen, raised many issues of trade union tactics—democracy, strike ballots, unofficial committees, breakaway unions—all of which are intelligently discussed by Lane and Roberts. In fact it is an excellent book and essential reading for those who want to understand trade unionism, its uses and limitations.

Trade Unions, edited by W. E. J. McCarthy, is a collection of readings for management students, but it still contains material of interest to Socialists. The picture emerges of trade unions as bureaucratic organisations trying to defend the wages and working conditions of their members. "The aim of the union”, says one author, “is to primarily to benefit the group of workers concerned, rather than the workers as a whole or society as a whole”. Writes another, “Most unions seem to have come into being originally as defensive organisations to preserve a standard already enjoyed”. Both views we ourselves have often made. The unionization of an industry is estimated to have had a once-for-all effect of raising wages by 10 to 15 per cent, but thereafter to have maintained them at the same level. This would fit in with Marx’s view that at best all unions could do was to ensure that their members got paid the value of their labour power and that without unions employers would drive wages down below this level. The 10 to 15 per cent would presumably be the measure of the extent to which this had happened.

Marx’s views on unions, together with those of Lenin, Trotsky and Michels, is the subject of one of Hyman’s books. Apart from the conclusion—Hyman is a member of IS and seems to favour creeping ‘workers management of production’—this is a useful book which discusses the various different and contradictory (employers need unions to discipline and regulate their work force) roles played by the unions. Hyman’s book on strikes, however, is not so good. The obscure sociological jargon and hundreds of references make it difficult reading. Nevertheless, if you wade through it you’ll get a more accurate picture of strikes than you get in the press or on television.

None of these books state the attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain on trade unionism (though they do provide evidence to confirm its correctness): trade unions are essentially only defensive organisations whose actions should be supported insofar as they perform this job of defending working class living standards, but whose other activities in support of capitalism—co-operating with employers or governments or reformist parties—should be opposed along with any manifestations of the narrow sectionalism to which they are inevitably prone.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: The Profit-Sharing Snare (1973)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we have pointed out that profit-sharing and bonus schemes introduced by so-called good employers were merely means to increase profit, effect economies, and attempts to subdue the growing unrest of the workers, we have been accused of being impossibilists, carping critics, or agitators actuated by malice. From time to time we have dealt with the boasted benevolence of the Levers’, the Cadburys, and the various co-partners, and now we have further confirmation of the correctness of our case from the profit-sharing proposals of Lloyds Bank, Ltd. Discussing these proposals, Mr. J. W. Beaumont Pease, the Chairman of Lloyds, said (Daily Chronicle), October 22, 1923;

  “The directors firmly believed the scheme would improve relations between employer and employed and would be all for the good of the shareholders, the directors and the staff.”

To improve relations means, of course, to anticipate the stifling of future discontent, and the recent organisation of bank clerks may have helped the directors toward their latest decision. Further we read:

  “The scheme was not likely to diminish the amount of profit available for the shareholders’ dividend, and it was quite possible it would not cost the bank anything. There was, Mr. Pease added, no question of the loyalty of the staff, but the scheme would increase the zeal with which they worked for the bank, and it would materially increase the profit. . . .With the large number employed, these economies in the aggregate would mean much.”

[From an unsigned article in the Socialist Standard, December 1923.]

SPGB Meetings (1973)

Party News from the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Party trouble with the Co-operatives (1949)

From the December 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

In “Labour Believes in Britain” the Labour Party says that since its foundation “the Party has been solidly based on our great Trade Union and Cooperative Movements.”

While the Labour Party was in opposition and had a free hand to defend the claims of the Co-operators in such matters as taxation, and to give general support to wage increases, this partnership worked fairly smoothly. Now they are in power rifts are appearing. On the one hand, the Government is antagonising trade union members by the policy of wage-freezing and refusal to allow wages to keep up with the cost of living; and on the other, trouble is brewing with the Co-operative societies on several issues.

First the Labour Government upset the Cooperative Society leaders by the threat to nationalise the Co-operative Insurance Society along with the rest of the insurance industry.

Reynolds News, the Co-operative Sunday paper, in an editorial (30.10.49) had the following:—

“We think it is neither good Socialism nor good sense to absorb the Co-operative system in a State scheme, as Labour proposes to do. A strong case can be made for leaving the Co-operative and State systems to function side by side, to the benefit of the community .”

Of course the Co-operative Movement is no more concerned with Socialism than is the Labour Party and what they are really troubled about is that if the Co-operative Insurance Society is nationalised it would be a bad stroke of business for the Co-operative Movement. A writer in Co-operative News (20th October, quoted in Manchester Guardian, 21.10.49) dealing with this aspect had no scruples about admitting this. He wrote: —“ Our own 'private' enterprise in this sphere of investment and activity has been a good money-maker.”

The same writer in the Co-operative News went on to doubt whether it would even be worth while to try to get special exemption from nationalisation, because the Government would be bound to lay down the condition that if the Co-operative Insurance Society remained outside nationalisation it would be on the basis “that all Co-operative insurance profits will go, after administrative and collecting expenses are paid, back to the insured persons.”

Like the ordinary capitalist industrialist and trader, what the Co-operatives are concerned with is profits.

The second row between the Labour Party and the Co-operatives started with a speech by a Labour Peer, Lord Shepherd, that the Government might in certain circumstances set up State retail shops—a threat to the Co-operatives as well as to private traders. Mr. Strachey hastened to soothe the Co-operatives’ feelings but the harm was done. According to the Co-operative News the threat of State shops had caused “ consternation in high-up Co-operative circles ” (Manchester Guardian, 14.10.49).

Not unnaturally, the Liberals and Tories have hastened to intervene and assure the Co-operatives that they, and not the Labour Party are their real friends. Lord Woolton (Sunday Express, 30.10.49) assured them that they would be safer under Tory Government; while a prominent Liberal, Mr. Arthur Seldon, writing in Co-operative News (27.10.49) implored his readers to desert the Labour Party for Liberalism.

But while the Co-operatives resent those parts of Labour Government Policy that cut across their profit-making activities in the world of capitalist trade and industry, they do not at all mind the Government’s attempt to keep down wages. On the contrary they have given it a warm welcome. The following appeared in the Daily Express (4.11.49): —

“More than a thousand Co-operative societies were urged yesterday by their National Wages Board to resist pressure for more pay. The Board accused some union organisers and branch officials of using tactics 'which do not square with the promise of restraint.’ ”

Covering the same ground the Co-operative Reynolds News (6.11.49) under the heading “Wage Tactics: A Warning," stated that the National Cooperative Wages Board had issued its warning because of “Local trade union pressure on Co-operative Societies, especially in the Central Midlands, to pay more than agreed national rates of pay."

The warning was that this practice might cause the negotiating machinery to disintegrate.

The whole of this Labour Party — Trade Union — Co-operative bickering is a row about the effects of the capitalist system, not about its abolition and replacement by Socialism. The trade unions, if they are to survive, must defend the workers against the employers, including the Co-operative employers, and the State as the employer in the nationalised industries. They must also oppose the efforts of the Labour Government to solve capitalism’s problems by wage-freezing. The Co-operatives as capitalist concerns have the same interest as other capitalists in striking a good bargain with the Government if their concerns arc nationalised, and in resisting trade union wage demands.

The dispute between the Co-operatives and the Labour Party about whether Socialism requires nationalised insurance or Co-operative insurance betrays the non-Socialist outlook of both sides. What insurance exists for is to protect the insured against some evil consequences that arise out of capitalism, that and nothing else. The idea that insurance will be needed under Socialism is ludicrous, an idea that could only be held by those whose talk about Socialism covers a neglect ever to think what it really means.

Edgar Hardcastle

Blogger's Note:

'Labour Believes in Britain' was a draft programme published by the Labour Party National Executive in April 1949 for the next upcoming General Election.

Leadership and Lenin (1949)

From the December 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The idea of “ Leadership ” developed alongside the growth of private property; it was a reflection of class-divided society, and the leader or leaders always represented property interests. Behind the idea was the theory that a few are born to lead whilst the many are born to serve. Over 2,000 years ago Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, put the idea this way;—

“He who can foresee with his mind is by nature intended to be lord and master, and he who can work with his body is a subject, and by nature a slave."

“And so in one point of view, the art of war is a natural art of acquisition, for it includes hunting, an art which ought to practice against wild beasts, and against men who, though intended by nature to be governed, will not submit, for war of such a kind is naturally just."

In the last century Thomas Carlyle, in his essay on Chartism, put the idea in a more polite form:—

"Surely, of all 'rights of man,' this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablist. Nature herself ordains it from the first; Society struggles toward perfection by enforcing and accomplishing it more and more . . . In Rome and Athens, as elsewhere, if we look practically, we shall find that it was not by loud voting and debating of many, but by wise insight and ordering of a few that the work was done. So is it ever, so will it ever be."

As soon as the workers began to combine to try to obtain some amelioration of their conditions their Movement was also cursed with this idea of leadership, and a contemporary of Carlyle, William Lovett —a working man who drafted the six points of the Charter —complained bitterly about it: —

“They were always looking up to leadership of one description or another; were being swayed to and fro in opinion and action by the idol of their choice, and were rent and divided when some popular breath had blown that idol from its pedestal. In fact the masses, in their political organisations, were taught to look up to 'great men' (or to men professing greatness) rather than to great principles."

Despite Lovett’s complaints the leadership idea was firmly entrenched in the radical and social democratic movement, and became one of the pedestals of Bolshevism. Lenin, the most prominent of the early Bolsheviks, had a complete contempt for the workers, looking upon them as just pawns in the struggle for power. In a pamphlet written by him in 1902, entitled “What is to be Done,” he indicated the attitude that governed his actions. The following quotation will make clear what this attitude was: —

“We said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. This consciousness could only be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working-class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness, i.e., it may itself realise the necessity for combining in unions, to fight against the employers and to strive to compel the Government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.

The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. The founders of modem scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia." (pages 32-33.)

“The workers can acquire class political consciousness only from without, that is, only outside of the economic struggle, outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers." (page 76.)

Lenin was arguing against those who contended that only the trade union struggle mattered, but in doing so he showed his hand. It may be pointed out, in passing, that it was largely from the theories of French, German and English working men that Marx and Engels acquired the knowledge that they systematised into scientific Socialism.

Lenin was an opportunist struggling for power and when it suited his policy he glorified the intelligence of the workers (see for instance his arguments in favour of trusting “ the masses ” in “Lessons of the Russian Revolution," page 24) pouring scorn on the alleged intricacies of organisational functions; later on he was just as emphatic in the opposite direction. This whole organisational policy, however, was built upon the idea that only a few possessed the intellectual capacity to direct the masses, and this was his interpretation of the “ Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Let us just give an example of how he wrote when he was appealing for working class support:—

“Capitalist culture has created industry on a large scale in the shape of factories, railways, posts, telephones and so forth, and on this basis the great majority of functions of ‘the old State' have become enormously simplified and reduced, in practice, to very simple operations such as registration, filing and checking. Hence they will be quite within the reach of every literate person, and it will be possible to perform them for the usual 'working- man's wage.’ This circumstance ought, and will, strip them of all their former glamour as 'Government,' and. therefore, privileged service.

The control of all officials, without exception, by the unreserved application of the principle of election and, at any time, recall; and the approximation of their salaries to the 'ordinary pay of the workers'—these are simple and ‘self-evident' democratic measures, which harmonise completely the interests of the workers and the majority of peasants; and, at the same time, serve as a bridge, leading from Capitalism to Socialism." (“The State and Revolution," page 46.)

The above was written just before the Bolsheviks obtained control of State power; after this was accomplished the tune changed. To illustrate this change of tune here are some extracts from “Resolutions and Regulations of the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (29th March to 4th April, 1920) Published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International. Moscow, 1920." In considering these extracts it must be remembered that Lenin was the dominating figure in both the Russian Communist Party and the Communist International-

“The Congress makes it obligatory to all members of the party mercilessly to fight that particularly obnoxious form of ignorant conceit which deems the working class capable of solving all problems without the assistance in the most responsible cases of specialists of the bourgeois school. The demagogic elements who speculate on this kind of prejudice of the more backward section of our working classes can have no place in the ranks of the party of scientific Socialism.

Registration of individual output or productivity of labour and the granting of corresponding individual premiums must also be carried out in a way suitable to administrative technical staff. Better conditions must be secured for our best administrators and engineers to enable them to make full use of their capacities in the interests of Socialist economy.

A special system of premiums is to be established for those specialists under whose guidance the workers can attain the necessary qualifications to make them capable to accept further independent posts.'* page 16.)

Gone was simplicity, election of officials, equality of wages and the rest of the support-catching slogans. In place of them the iron hand of dictatorship and of the “intellectual minority” was revealed. Many pages of the report were given over to arguments alleging the necessity and advantages of one-man management and responsibility. It is interesting to notice that the penalties to be imposed for failure to fall in line with labour discipline included internment in concentration camps. This shows that forced labour and concentration camps were used to bolster up dictatorship at the beginning of Bolshevik rule.

“The way to fight this labour desertion is to publish a column of desertion fines, the formation of labour detachments of deserters under fine and finally internment in concentration camps.” (page 20.)

The quotations we have given will show that leadership, an attribute of private property society, which has cursed the working class’ movement from its inception, was elevated into a guiding principle by the Bolsheviks, and sedulously followed out up to the present, bringing with it domination and the “flesh pots of Egypt” to the privileged minority whilst the masses suffer penury, hard labour, and the threat of the concentration camps or worse.

(All italics in the quotations arc in the originals.)

Gilmac.

Editorial: No socialist theories in the Labour Party (1949)

Editorial from the December 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nobody can read carefully the speeches of Labour Ministers about Socialism and Capitalism without soon discovering that their minds are in a muddle about what they mean. And it all traces back to the fact that the Party was “founded by non-Socialists and has perpetuated among succeeding generations of members a tradition of avoiding inquiry into Socialist theory. This is not merely an outside criticism but a statement accepted proudly by the Labour leaders themselves. Mr. Attlee has often referred to it without any realisation that it can be other than a matter for self-congratulation. In 1938 he contributed to John A. Lee’s “Socialism in New Zealand,"  a Preface from which the following passage is extracted:

“ He (John Lee) recognises frankly the work of the Radical Governments which held power from 1891-1912. He acknowledges the Socialistic legislation of the Conservative Governments which held sway after the war. Indeed, he makes the point that these Governments were, despite all their prepossessions, compelled to adopt Socialist expedients in order to meet practical problems. This is an eminently practical book. There is little or no abstract theory. Like the British Labour Party, the New Zealand Socialist Movement is not doctrinaire. It draws its inspiration from the same broad streams of thought and emotion as in the Old Country. Its Socialism is the result of a common-sense endeavour to bring society into conformity with social justice." (P. VI.)

The same disregard for Socialist theory comes out iu an appeal for subscriptions and donations just issued of the Fabian Society over the names of Attlee, Cripps, Dalton, Laski, Morrison and others in the New Statesmen (5.11.49).

"Our full members are, and always have been. Socialists; but beyond insisting that our Socialism is ‘democratic,’ we leave them to define the word for themselves.”

As the individual members of the Fabian and Labour Parties may, and do, define the word how they chose, they can never agree on what they mean.

For most of them nationalisation as in the Post Office is Socialism; but it was Mr. Attlee himself who in the New Statesmen (7.11.1931) called the Post Office “the outstanding example of collective capitalism.” This was one of the few occasions when a Labour Party leader happened to stumble on the truth.

It was said at a time when the Labour Party was switching over (for vote-catching reasons) from the "Government Department” form of State capitalism to the “Public Board” form, now embodied in the nationalised mines and railways. But here again their past admissions rise up to smite them for in 1923 (Daily Herald, 30.7.1923) Mr. Herbert Morrison had admitted that the Public Board (he had in mind the Port of London Authority) is a capitalist device, to enable the capitalists “to do for themselves collectively what they and a number of private companies had been unable to do with success individually.”

Another statement by Attlee on the Labour Party's lack of Socialist theory can be found in his “Labour Party in Perspective” (1937, Page 36): —

“ It is characteristic of the British Labour Movement that the origin of the Labour Party is to be found in fact rather than in theory. The Labour Party was originally the by-product of Trade Union activity. . . . The Movement which resulted in the return of the first Trade Union representatives to the House of Commons in 1874 was far from being revolutionary, and the men themselves were not Socialists. They entered Parliament, not to overthrow the Capitalist system, but to win for the workers certain definite reforms. Apart from their specific demands on Labour questions they formed part of the Liberal Party.”

This brings us to the root of the matter in a manner not perceived by Mr. Attlee. The Labour Party does not work without any theory, nobody does, but with theories that are not Socialist.

And when we look at the result we see the force of the remark attributed to Disraeli, that men who boast of being practical are usually to be found practising the errors of their forefathers.