Warning: capitalism can harm your health (1994)

From the August 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part of the socialist case against capitalism is that in a society based on ruthless competition the control of economic costs will always take priority over the needs of human beings. Therefore plans to cut government and business costs by weakening health and safety regulations are of little surprise to socialists.

The government gave notice of its intentions last November when in the Queen’s Speech it announced a Deregulation Bill which many feared was directly aimed at diluting some of the Health and Safety laws. This Deregulation Bill would give government departments and ministers the power to abolish laws by parliamentary order (Labour Research, January 1994).

At the beginning of this year it was announced that the Health and Safety Executive, the body responsible for enforcing health and safety standards, was to make 230 cuts in jobs over the next two years because the government has reduced its grant. Its budget has been cut by £5 million for the period 1994-95. In 1995-96 it will get only £192 million which is £10 million less than it asked for. In the coal-mining industry the pit deputies union NACODS failed in an attempt in the High Court to prevent the introduction of new mine safety regulations which will weaken safety standards in the pits. The Management and Administration of Safety and Health in Mines Regulations Act of 1993 takes away the role of pit supervisors to monitor safety at pits. This role will now be given to safety inspectors who will have no legal powers and can be overruled by management (Labour Research, February 1994).

Lower standards

Despite improvement in conditions for most workers since the early stages of capitalist industrial production, many workers still suffer illness, injury and even loss of life due to avoidable accidents at work or through diseases directly related to their working environment. Statistics for 1993 show that 430 workers were killed through their employment and there were 88,536 injuries reported to the enforcing authorities (Labour Research, January 1994).

An example of the type of dangers still facing workers in their employment concerns people working with or coming into contact with asbestos.

The effects of inhaling asbestos dust have been known for decades. Asbestos causes asbestosis, a disabling and ultimately fatal scarring of the lungs, lung cancer which is almost always fatal, and mesothelioma, a painful and fatal cancer of the lining of the lung or stomach. Amongst the workers most affected are miners, dockers, those involved in the manufacturing of asbestos products, building workers using products containing asbestos and those who work in or maintain buildings which contain decorating asbestos products. It has been estimated by the Department of Employment that some six million tonnes of the three main types of the product crocidolite blue asbestos, amosite brown asbestos and chrysotile white asbestos had been imported into the UK by 1986.

The widespread use of asbestos left a legacy of almost 3,000 people dying of asbestos-related cancer last year. Asbestos is responsible for more cancers than any other industrial substance. According to recent research by Professor Peto of the Institute of Cancer Research and the Health and Safety Executive, death rates due to mesothelioma alone will increase from around 1,000 in 1991 to between 2,500 and 3,000 a year. As usual under a system designed to meet profit rather than human need, the victims of these avoidable diseases are very often not properly compensated particularly where they have been exposed to asbestos contained in the buildings they work in.

Obstacles to compensation

Various obstacles are put in the way of claiming so-called benefits. To be able to claim compensation workers have to have worked in certain prescribed industries. This generally means they would have to have had some direct contact with the substance via actual asbestos materials or the machinery or appliances used in the manufacture of asbestos products. Under these limitations for claiming compensation it is estimated that 43 percent of mesothelioma victims actually die before they receive their benefit (Labour Research, March 1994).

Despite all the evidence about the health hazards from working with asbestos there are few signs of a complete ban on all types of the substance. In fact William Bernard, president of the American asbestos workers’ union, at a recent conference on construction safety in the USA, gave the following warning:

"Asbestos manufacturers are once again on the assault. They are arguing that a particular type of asbestos chrysotile is not hazardous to health. They are asking the European Community and World Health Organisation to allow it to be used again, especially for use in third world countries" (Labour Research, March 1994).

The fact that workers still suffer illness, injury and death through their employment is yet another indictment of a system of production for profit. It is also an indictment of the failure of reformism. Not only have years of reformist political parties and trade unions campaigning on such issues failed to resolve the problems, at present we are seeing moves designed to weaken already inadequate health and safety legislation.

Profits first

As with other issues reformism cannot succeed as it fails to get to the root cause of the problem — a social system where human well-being must take secondary place to controlling economic cost for the sake of profit. The failure of reformism can also be seen by the fact that in arguing for, in this case, better health and safety provisions reformists accept a capitalist agenda. The TUC, for example argue for better health and safety on the basis that in the long run it will prove "cost effective". The TUC points out that an analysis of the costs and benefits of legislation such as those prepared by the Health and Safety Executive have shown the legislation involved to be "cost positive".

The economic cost benefit argument may or may not be correct but this is not the point. From the point of the majority of us who have to sell our ability to work to an employer in order to live, and so the potential victims of the profit system, our health and lives must come first and to hell with profit. In the short-term the best way to protect our health and ultimately our lives is to organise collectively and effectively at the point of production in order to assert our own interests as against those of our employer. This factor is more important than arguing for improved health and safety legislation.

Ultimately this issue proves once again that the real choice facing us is a society' based on profit which dominates our lives at present as against that of one based on human need for which we need to organise to bring about. As with so many other issues capitalism has proved that it cannot safeguard our health and life in the production process. If capitalism cannot afford the economic cost of health and safety our answer must be that we cannot afford capitalism.

Ray Carr

Business methods undermine health service (1994)

From the August 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years there have been a number of sinister changes in the National Health Service. The use of deliberately deceptive rhetoric employed in the 1989 White Paper Working for Patients has tried to disguise the fact that the NHS is becoming increasingly subjected to market forces to the detriment of patient care and is becoming increasingly undemocratic. Expressions of dissent are stifled by getting rid of medical and nursing staff who protest at the deterioration in health care.

With a record 1.07 million people on the waiting list for treatment and an estimated two million people waiting for their first appointment before they can even join an official waiting list (Guardian, 7 May), it is clear that there is something seriously wrong with the health service.

Of more serious concern is the fact that so many people are ill. Poverty is the main contributory factor of ill-health and the increase in morbidity rates in recent years reflects the attacks on the living standards of the workers and the continued high rates of unemployment caused by capitalism’s slump.

Almost half the health trusts are failing to reach their financial targets and in 1992-93, £265 million had to be borrowed from the government or from banks and underwritten from taxes (Observer, 22 May).

To try to save money the Mancunian Community Trust is sending letters to its staff asking them if they want to take breaks to start families, take up courses or work overseas. All of these options are cheaper than redundancies, but the Trust’s chief executive Elizabeth Law has warned that if the workforce cannot be reduced by voluntary means then people may have to be forced out (Manchester Metro News, 27 May).

More bureaucrats

Administrative costs in the internal market have risen from four percent in the mid-1980s to eleven percent of NHS spending by 1993, and there are now half as many administrators and clerical staff as there are nurses in British hospitals.

In fact, when one considers that nurses work a three-shift system to cover 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are actually more clerical and administrative staff working in hospitals on weekdays than there are nurses.

The Health Secretary has the power to appoint the general managers of large hospitals and the chairpersons of trusts are political appointees: Ann Parkinson, Sheila Taylor, Sarah Biffen and Mary Archer, all wives of well-known Conservatives, are on the boards of trust hospitals. The government has succeeded in pushing through unpopular measures by political appointments and patronage. Thus, lacking control of local councils in many areas, Conservative ideology can be imposed on the electorate which would have been opposed by councillors on the old boards.

The NHS has never been particularly democratic. Nurses have been subjected to a para-military, hierarchical management which has placed them in a subordinate position to medical staff. A questioning attitude has been discouraged; speaking out considered "unprofessional". Consequently, very few nurses have spoken out about shortcomings in the service or their terms of employment. In the past, large numbers of immigrant nurses were dependent on hospital employment for a place to live and continued stay in this country. And this made criticism extremely difficult because of the risks of speaking out.

Doctors have always been in a privileged position in terms of pay, status and power in the NHS and have been able to speak up for their patients. But in the last fifteen years this has begun to change. Doctors who speak out about shortcomings in their hospitals now risk disciplinary action being taken against them.

Disciplinary action

Early in 1990 Dr Helen Zeitlin, a consultant haematologist at Alexandra Hospital, Redditch spoke at a public meeting against the hospital becoming a self-governing trust. She also criticised the shortage of nursing staff at the hospital (Guardian, 10 May 1991). In November 1990 Dr Zeitlin was told that disciplinary action would be taken against her for misuse of a nursing report on staffing levels. Redundancy was then proposed, only to be changed for a different set of disciplinary charges. These charges were then dropped and Dr Zeitlin was made redundant with 24 hours notice instead of the usual three months.

Hospital bosses sometimes go to extreme lengths to silence critics. Dr Bridget O'Connell worked as a consultant paediatrician at the King George Hospital, Ilford from 1977 until the end of 1982 when she was suspended because of her alleged "inability to relate effectively with clinical colleagues". Significantly, this occurred after she had complained to management of her concern about the standard of care within the paediatric service. For the next eleven-and-a-half years Dr O’Connell remained suspended on full pay of about £50,000 a year before the North Thames Regional Board withdrew all allegations, apologised and paid damages believed to be a six-figure sum (Guardian, 7 May).

A doctor was dismissed in 1993 in Cornwall for misconduct. Nurses had pressure put on them to keep secret diaries of her activities to provide evidence which could be used against her (Nursing Tunes, 13 April).

The row caused by the disclosure that a consultant in Luton, known to be opposed to trusts, had his telephone bugged by the chief executive forced junior minister, Tom Sackville to intervene. He stated that anyone "bugging" a telephone will be sacked but that individual employers have to decide whether to include confidentiality clauses in their contract of employment (Manchester Evening News, 24 May).

Most nurses have not seen the NHS executive Duncan Nichol’s guidelines on reporting incidents which give rise to concern over treatment or staffing levels, and some NHS trusts have introduced catch-all gagging clauses into nurses’ contracts to prevent them from speaking out, although barrister Michael Douglas has stated that some of them are so broad as to be meaningless (Nursing Times, vol.90, 1994).

Spying, illegal telephone tapping and the use of disciplinary action to silence critics all add to the climate of fear and mistrust pervading the health service. For health workers the message is clear: to speak out against the undemocratic, anti-working-class measures is to risk the sack.

Business methods can never operate in the interests of the workers; the whole history of capitalism has shown that misery always follows in its wake. The NHS, in its slow but inexorable move towards private health care, is showing all the ugly features of capitalism. Only by workers uniting to get rid of capitalism can we stop the misery that the system imposes on our lives.

Carl Pinel

50 Years Ago: Control: Remote or Direct? (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Five years of war have dragged by. Countries have been devastated. Food, machinery and lives lost. Millions of people have been moved about like cattle, cajoled or threatened into working long hours, and the products of their labours have gone up in smoke. In this country, we read, tuberculosis and neurosis are increasing. Little wonder, when the present state of affairs is taken into account. To add to all this, science, harnessed to the war machine, has ushered in a new and diabolical piece of machinery— the flying bomb.

From the stone hammers of the Stone Age we have now developed to the stage when it is possible to inflict destruction by remote control. The flying bomb is only a crude foretaste of what is in store for future civilian populations in wars to come. (. . .)

No doubt an antidote will be found to the flying bomb, but the fact remains that it is a form of warfare come to stay. What then is to be done? Are we to go on perpetuating capitalism, with its wars, booms, slumps crises and general poverty for the workers, or are we to substitute a sane form of society?

It is for the working class to decide. Take no notice of the priests and politicians with their social reforms, housing schemes, and foolish ideas for a "new world."

We urge workers to study the case of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, that they may understand the economic causes of the phenomena already mentioned, and work for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism.

[From an article by Chester in the Socialist Standard, August 1944.]

SPGB Summer School (1994)

Party News from the August 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

An audio recording of Ralph Critchfield's talk on Living without the Law is available on the SPGB website.

SPGB Meetings (1994)

Party News from the August 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter: Women's Movements (1974)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women's Movements

It is seldom that the Socialist Standard gives cause for complaint on factual grounds, and also it seems rather churlish to quibble at anything in the lavish, and extremely interesting, 70th anniversary issue.

But in The First and Only Liberationists I read that “the idea that (women) might need a wider horizon than could be provided by a home and family had scarcely dawned”. And the writer also asks, “Who else (other than the founders of the Socialist Party) in 1904 was interested in the freedom of women?”

The answer is, women. The modern assumption that the women’s movement only started up recently is false. The evidence is that there have been women demanding “emancipation” or “equal rights”, as a sex, since the Eighteenth century. In America the First Woman’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls in 1848 and resolved “that the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities”.

Other national conventions were held annually in America right through the nineteenth century and the Washington Convention in 1900 was dominated by the question of working class women and women’s position as wage-earners—“without political expression woman’s economic value is at the bottom of the scale . . . She must do better work than men for equal pay or equal work for less pay”. (Voices from Women’s Liberation) That such a situation still prevails today is proof of our Party’s contention that it is nothing to have a vote if you don’t use it properly.

If I can add something personal on this question, it is that as a women I am proud to be a member of this Party which has never treated me as a (mere) women, has never pigeon-holed me into some specifically “woman’s” work, but has always treated all members, white or black, male or female, as comrades in a common struggle.

C. Sultan 

Woking

Reply:

Thanks for the compliments, which are among very many received, on the Anniversary Issue.

In the context of that article it was not possible to enlarge on the point but “scarcely dawned” was not meant to imply that no one had questioned the  rôle of women in society. Rather that this questioning was not widespread. It is of course true that some women, and a few men, had been actively involved in campaigns for women’s rights over many years. For example the first leaflet on female suffrage had been issued in 1847. The vote was originally seen as a way of obtaining “social justice”. To the sometime scorn of the modern women’s movement its attainment became an end in itself.

The question “who else” was, at that time, interested in women was about political parties. Here the position taken by the SPGB at its formation, in 1904, was unique.

Editors.

Letter: Truth & Politics (1974)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Truth & Politics

Just to conclude the matter of the labour-time vouchers, I don’t see that Horatio’s remark in the May issue gets us any further. We are still stuck at the point that you can’t time a Shakespeare as you can a miner and you can’t get a Schubert to clock on when he jots down an inspired tune in the middle of the night. We must just leave it that now the Socialist position holds good — to each according to his need. Without measuring.

May I express a little surprise that in his otherwise most percipient article on Logic, Truth and Politics, R. Barltrop lapses into naivety when he says there are such things as honest politicians and he immediately proves the opposite by reference to some “thoroughly decent” C.P. leader — who nevertheless “told . . . whopping . . . lies”. But the example of another “honest liar”, Stafford Cripps, is even more odd. The suggestion that he really believed in ’49 that the pound would not be devalued when he swore this right until the day it happened is untenable. To say that the “government” did the devaluing is meaningless. As Chancellor, in this matter, for practical purposes he was the government and he lied because he had to (otherwise speculators would have reduced the pound to waste paper).

I am afraid your writer has rather misunderstood Churchill’s reference to Cripps (“There but for the grace of God goes God”). He did not mean that he thought Cripps was honest — merely a puritanical humbug. The proof is almost contained in the article which refers to the lies about the regime in Russia when Stalin became our glorious ally. Churchill needed as an ambassador someone who would be able to go there and see the atrocities which Stalin was committing against the Russian workers — and send enormous lies home which would be swallowed by the British workers. So the old cynic sent the most plausible leftist liar he could find. Cripps. I agree with Barltrop that the psalmist’s “All men are liars” is wrong. The correct position was stated by the late Crossman (who knew!) when he once wrote in The Guardian “all politicians tell lies” (my emphasis). Lying is one of the evils of capitalism which Socialism will render unnecessary along with greed, envy, etc.

S. Gamzu

Other letters and replies held over to next month through pressure on space.

Letter: Being sure (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Being sure

I think you say that Socialism is scientific, and I appreciate an argument which is presented factually and as a result of convincing research. Your arguments on, say, population and food and raw material resources are compelling but clash with other arguments presented by reputable scientists. On what solid fact or research do you come to your conclusions, and where are your references for checking? It is true that a lot can be deduced from common sense and first principles, but on questions such as “how much fossil fuel is left?” only scientific facts will do. I know that an organization of your size and limited financial resources and research facilities can’t hope to tackle this problem, but references to second-hand figures from other journals leave at least one of your readers wondering: how do they really know?

I think your arguments are at their best when they are couched in cool and temperate language. While agreeing with many of your criticisms, are all monarchs and their hangers-on, politicians and capitalists etc. wicked, malicious, deceitful villains? Or is it not possible that the Queen, say, is an honest, straightforward, well-meaning anachronism and in that sense as, much a victim of the system as you or I? Do you really think that every single member (or leader) of, say, the Labour Party is a cynical careerist or is it possible that most are genuinely misguided sincere men who believe by reformism that they are doing good work? Again, the capitalists themselves: what are they to do in the present system—should one sell all his goods and leave his family as destitute as the rest of the working class just for the sake of it? Such a person may, through his environment, education and upbringing, be a victim of the system. Are there not wicked workers? I’m saying you are right, but can the working class be won over only if there are “baddies and goodies”? Or should we be looking at the system and its effects, treating human nature as an “effect” of the system?

Please reflect on this and see whether there isn’t a bit of truth in it. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea for one or two of you to be bloody wrong for once, because as well as being a bit peevish I think you are a bit smug as well. Try to take a joke.

J.

Greater Manchester (name and address supplied)

Reply

We say that the two condtions for establishing Socialism are (a) when social production can produce a sufficiency of goods and (b) when the majority of the working class understand Socialism and are convinced of the necessity for it. We claim that the first of these conditions exists. Our support for this comes from all sorts of sources. A major one is United Nations statistics (e.g. the Study of the Problem of Raw Materials and Development, UN Gen. Assembly A 9544); and it is unlikely that they are biased in our favour. Others include scientific journals such as the Scientific American and The Ecologist, to which reputable scientists contribute.

It would be easier for us to reply properly if you had been a little more specific: which scientists disagree with us over what? One report which superficially contradicts one of our claims is the MIT Limits to Growth study, 1972, which argues that of the 19 mineral and energy resources vital to industrial society, 10 had such low known reserves that at current consumption rates they would run out in forty years. But this makes assumptions such as (1) that population is increasing exponentially, (2) that current consumption rates will continue, and (3) that it is not possible to develop alternative energy sources. In fact it is no longer true that population is increasing at the 1972 rate.

Maybe there are “wicked, malicious, deceitful villains” around; we don’t allege that the Queen is among them, and we certainly don’t blame individuals for the positions they occupy in society. Capitalism and its effects would still be here if every capitalist and every politician were scrupulously honest. No capitalist is responsible for the present order of things; capitalism was brought about not by individual decision but by the pressures of class interests leading to a change in the mode of production.

We don’t tell capitalists to act the part of philanthropists, but we advise any individual to start propagating Socialism. And we don’t think it is human nature to cheat, be competitive etc.; this is only socially-conditioned human behaviour. If you do know any capitalist who wants to give some away, the SPGB is short of money at the moment. (Most of us do have a sense of humour.)

Editors.

Letter: Catching votes (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Catching votes 

In answering my criticism that the SPGB fails to get across the socialist alternative two reasons were given: lack of funds and the BBC’s refusal to allow the SPGB onto the Open Door programme.

It is deplorable that, through the BBC and its commercial pals, the Government continues to monopolize the broadcasting media in this country and I would say that the BBC’s grounds for turning down the SPGB is highly questionable and ought to be looked into.

But, these problems aside, there is clearly something wrong with the SPGB’s approach to the public. In the May GLC elections the three SPGB candidates managed to net 0.59 per cent of the total number of votes cast in the constituencies of Marylebone, Lambeth and Camden.

This doesn’t leave much evidence of non-party support. So either the Party is failing to make its platform attractive enough to the electorate or the latter cannot, or will not, understand it. Now if the political coherency of the average tabloid daily, popular among the British working classes, is anything to go by the political awareness of our electorate is . . . undeveloped.

So, as straightforward as your present image is (a rare thing in politics) it’s not catching votes. Perhaps the socialist programme is too overwhelming for the average person who has inherited centuries of conscious grovelling to capitalist leadership and wage-slavery. As much as this is inexcusable the SPGB is not going to change it as long as it remain aloof in the higher reaches of Marxist weltanschauung. Start by looking at the wording in your Declaration of Principles: precise it may be but the language resounds with nineteenth century tub-thumping.

Of course you will remind me of the inherent antagonism in the class struggle and the need to attack all the aspects of the capitalist habit. But if the SPGB wants to achieve political legitimacy it’s going to have to adopt fresh ways of approaching us simpletons who haven’t managed to get through every volume of Capital. I hope for everyone’s sake it does.

Jon Lieberman 

Oxford

Reply:

We invited you to expand on how the SPGB could, vide your previous letter, “exploit the media and all the other available channels”, and we find your response extremely lame. You say the BBC’s turning us down “ought to be looked into”. By whom? There have been various committees of enquiry into broadcasting; the SPGB has submitted evidence to all of them, and they have often stated that minorities such as ourselves should have opportunities to speak. The BBC has gone on rejecting us. What do you suggest?

You now abandon the other projects you proposed, and draw attention to our poll in the GLC elections as proof that “there is clearly something wrong with the SPGB’s approach”. However, in your first letter you said it was “a fact” that Trotskyists and other left-wing groups “had greater sway” and “leave the SPGB behind”. An article elsewhere in this issue gives election figures for all these groups. In the 1974 General Election they averaged an estimated .065 of the votes cast, and in the GLC elections they did not do conspicuously better than we. Would you now modify your previous opinion?

We hardly need telling that the political awareness of the majority of the electorate is “undeveloped”. Whether or not our language is “aloof” is a matter of opinion; the Socialist Standard frequently receives letters from readers who find it direct and comprehensible compared with other political journals. But whatever language is used, we still have to get it into the hands of working people. If you know “fresh ways” of doing this, or otherwise promoting the Socialist case, we should be more than interested to hear about them. Hope isn’t enough; as we asked previously, what are you doing to help get Socialism?

Editors.

Letter: Ever-interesting topics (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever-interesting topics

I read with interest your publication this month, and I find that you seem to contradict yourself or the aspect of religion. One of the main themes of your publication is that one should not equate Socialism with the Labour Movement. I ask, then, why is it not possible not to equate Christianity with the Church of today?

Secondly, in reply to N. Fox’s letter in this month’s edition, you state that many people are deserting their religious beliefs “which palpably stand against their material well-being”, and yet in the preceding paragraph you condemn religious institutions “for their role in upholding property and exploitation”. Isn’t there a contradiction in terms here?

Finally, I wish to point out that ever since Adam, man has been interested in three things: politics, religion and sex. Whatever your efforts, you are not going to change that. Far from religion being “an obstacle to understanding” for man, it is the explanation of his being.

G. J. Rajakarier

Sheffield

Reply

To re-state your first point as we understand it, you are saying that Christianity need not be identified with the established churches, and you attempt an analogy with Socialism for Christianity and the Labour Party as the Church. It does not answer our case that Socialism is both valid and desirable, and Christianity (in or out of churches) is neither. We see religious beliefs as an obstacle to understanding that man makes his own history out of material conditions.

An example of people abandoning religious beliefs which conflict with their interests is the Catholic Church’s teaching on birth control. It is founded on the doctrine that the soul is infused by God at the moment of conception : therefore, birth control thwarts the divine intention. Despite that awesome thought, fewer and fewer Catholics adhere to this teaching and the numbers of the Catholic Church are falling. Why? Because, for the working class today, outsize families mean an unacceptable degree of poverty and discomfort.

You apparently have in mind that the capitalist class, who obtain their well-being from property and exploitation, would approve of religion’s upholding rôle. As individuals a good many of them do, of course. But for the capitalist system as a whole, materialism is the necessary basis for scientific and technical development to keep large-scale production profitable in the modern world.

Your final paragraph is mistaken, even overlooking “ever since Adam ’. Politics means participation in the powers of government, and until recently in history it concerned small sections of society. Only since the appearance of capitalism have increasing numbers of the population been widely interested in politics, being required to approve rulers of their nation-states—“dragged into the political arena”, as Marx and Engels put it. The forms taken by man’s interest in sex are closely bound up with changes in society; it has become a subject by itself to the extent that it has become separated from reproduction. As for religion being "the explanation for man’s being”, what religion we are talking about? Voodooism, sun-worship, the Aztec blood-sacrifice?

Editors.

Letter: What Makes us Different ? (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Makes us Different ?

I would like you to consider the difference between the SPGB and other organizations that call themselves Socialist. What is it that makes up the difference? I suggest that it is theoretical knowledge. This has been developed by facing up to hypothetical problems that may have to be faced on the way to, and also within, the new society. It seems to me that this task is not even half-done, hence I called Socialism a half-baked idea. The vast majority of SPGBers seem to think that this task is over, but in fact there is no Socialist politics nor any Socialist economics. In fact the SPGB is not so very far ahead of the mindless SWP in being able to explain what Socialism is. I think we would agree on their theoretical merits.

Anyway, the problems of Socialism will certainly not be solved by wishing them away as Engels did. It is not a fact that all conflict is due to private property. People are likely to clash over other things like temperament, sex and even philosophy and taste. But even if Engels was right, we would still need Socialist law and order until the “new man” emerged. As it is I would drop Engels’ brand of Owenism and attempt to work a theoretical system of politics that will enable you to explain what Socialism is today, and will, perhaps, develop into a body of theory that will give the revolutionaries some idea of how to go about things in the new society.

Of course the majority of revolutionaries will cooperate, but then the vast majority of people always do; in any society. Law and order is a minority problem but this minority is unlikely to be uniform or static. It is likely to be continually changing as people go through phases of development.

A general framework of Socialist economics needs to be added to the politics mentioned above. No matter how much technology improves our standard of living, it will never do so at a uniform rate. Economic choices will have to be made as to what to produce, and of how much as well as the allocation of scarce consumer goods and the effective use of producer goods. As those problems of investment and consumption will remain in the new society, a Socialist solution to them is required. The price system gives us the sort of information we need in capitalism. What is going to replace it in Socialism?

David McDonagh, 

Birmingham

Reply:

Unfortunately we can’t deal with all the points you raise in a short reply. Some of the questions you mention will have to be left to an article.

However, the main point you raise relates to “socialist economics”. In our view “economics” would be a very much simpler question in socialism than it is under capitalism. You require some “socialist economics” to explain socialism in the same way that modern economics explains capitalism. First, modern economics does not explain capitalism, far from it. Second, socialism will not have the need to “justify” itself in the same way that capitalism uses “economics” to justify itself. The theoretical exposition of socialism is the description of the way socialist society will be organised; i.e. common ownership and free access to wealth based on the technological possibilities that capitalism has created. This needs explaining; it does not (cannot) involve the equivalent presentation that those who (attempt) to explain modern capitalism indulge in.

How will socialist society know what to produce when money no longer acts as a guide? The answer may be this: in socialist society people will take freely from what is produced. But when goods are taken there is no reason for them not to be numbered and checked. So for example, the local store supplying product x to the locality could keep a record of the number of “takes” (there would of course be no sales) of product x. It would know how much of product x had to be kept in stock to cover the time between the requisitioning of x and its arrival at the store. Computers could be used to monitor the “take up” of all products as part of the world system, and this information would be relayed to the producers. This system would of course be far more efficient than the present system.

The above outline does of course depend on society being able to produce sufficient of the things people require for no one to go without. But it is possible that society as a whole will decide that one particular product (an example given in the September ss was a Rolls Royce) will not be produced. How society would decide which products to do without would of course in part depend on the product in question. At this stage, all we can indicate is that no human being would be without any “need” and anything over and above that which might be required but not be socially possible will be decided on by society, democratically.

So far as your question on Law and order is concerned, there is no space to go into that here. We would refer you in particular to The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Engels, which shows that law is a product (and therefore a problem) of property society, and will be of no relevance to propertyless society.

Editors.

Letter: Taxes and Labour (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taxes and Labour

Thank you very much for your stimulating reply to my letter which was published in your January, 1978 issue. In order to clarify my ideas, I should like the opportunity to answer the criticisms made of my theories.

Firstly, you asserted that, where my hypothesis assumes a retrenchment in the rate of direct taxation (and, ergo, a fall in government revenue from paye), unless the total cost of administration also decreases, then the government has to make an equal increase in the amount of tax collected directly from the capitalists (I presume that here you allude to Corporation Tax). However, if we assume that the cost of administration has remained the same, are there not other sources of government revenue which would obviate the need for more tax to be collected directly from the capitalists. For example, indirect taxation and loans which are not collected from the capitalists.

Secondly, you maintain that it cannot be assumed that a reduction of PAYE can enable the workers to improve their bargaining power increasing their net pay. But if you accept the above explanation of alternative sources of government revenue, which enable the total outlay of the capitalist to remain the same, then perhaps you will also agree that the capitalist will not be concerned about the in creased net pay of his workers since his aggregate outlay on tax and wages has not increased. In fact, he may be pleased if the fall in the rate of tax, by increasing the net pay of his workers, forestalls pressure for higher gross wages, which, if successful, would increase his total disbursements on wages and tax.

P. S. Maloney, 

Palmers Green

 

Reply:

In your earlier letter (SS January 1978) you accepted the proposition "that taxes are paid by the employing class", but argued that a reduction of PAYE would benefit the workers without costing the employers anything. You forgot that if government total expenditure remained the same (which was assumed in your letter) they would have to raise additional tax revenue to meet it. Our reply took the simplest case, that of additional taxes on profits.

You now accept that you had overlooked that if government expenditure remained the same they would need to raise additional revenue following the reduction of PAYE, but you say the government could increase indirect taxation or raise revenue by loans.

Without wishing to go into the complex question of the effect that indirect taxes have on the price level, we can take both cases, i.e. that prices remain the same, or that they rise.

If the capitalists' selling prices remain the same but indirect taxes go up his profits are reduced. If prices go up then the workers have an additional inducement to press for higher wages—and again his profits are affected.

About loans you also overlook the fact that government borrowing via the banks goes along with the persistent increase of the note issue with its effect in raising the price level.

The more important issue is whether the struggle that workers have to engage in to maintain or increase real wages can somehow be avoided by a reduction of PAYE; the implication being that if workers' wages did not come into the scope of Income Tax at all they would be better off. In the 19th century hardly any workers came into the Income Tax range. Are we to suppose that this made it easier for them to maintain or increase real wages?

The fact is that any concession received by the workers lessens the urgency with which they will press for more, as is shown in every strike settlement. Mr. Healey's strategy clearly lecognises this. He has told the Unions that if he succeeds in limiting the increase of money wages to 10 per cent he will make tax concessions, but will not give both a higher increase of money wages and a reduction of PAYE.

The one weapon the workers have on the industrial field is the strike. It is a dangerous illusion that the class struggle can somehow be side-stepped by campaigning for tax reductions.

Editors.

This Month's Quotation: George Bernard Shaw (1937)

The Front Page quote from the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Let as therefore dismiss the fear that persons of exceptional ability need special inducements to exercise that ability to the utmost."

G. B. Shaw

This Month's Quotation

The quotation in the panel on the front page is from Shaw's "Intelligent Women's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism," Pelican Books Edition, P. 322.

Blogger's Note:

The Shaw book quoted from was reviewed in the August 1937 Socialist Standard by Edgar Hardcastle.

What is Behind the Government's Spanish Policy? (1937)

From the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people have been puzzled at the attitude of the British Government, the capitalist Press and the ruling class generally towards the civil war in Spain. It was natural that their class prejudices and their associations with Spanish Conservatives and the Catholic Church would make them sympathise with General Franco’s revolt and hope for its success. Yet it might have been expected that they would quickly see the force of the argument, put forward by the Naval correspondent of a Conservative newspaper, that from a strategic point of view the interests of the Empire are bound up with the defeat of Franco and his German-Italian backers. This correspondent pointed out that German-Italian dominance of Spain and Spanish Morocco, including the approaches to Gibraltar and the control of the Balearic Islands in the western Mediterranean, unquestionably threatens the British hold on the Mediterranean and seriously, hampers communications with East Africa, India and beyond. Mussolini’s military and naval experts have not troubled to keep secret the intention of turning the sea into an Italian lake; and their British counterparts have been compelled to recognise that the threat is not an idle one. The handling of the Abyssinian affair showed that the British Cabinet were not prepared at that time to risk an open clash with the Italian forces. What, then, is the explanation of the Government’s behaviour, apparently so little in keeping with their class and imperial interests ? The attempt to provide an answer must take into account many divergent factors.

Willing But Not Yet Ready For War

First, there is the aspect, referred to above, that the Government was not ready for a possible war with Italy. That was an important factor in 1935 when Italy invaded Abyssinia. It is less important now that British naval and air rearmament has got well under way. It will be noticed that the recent announcements about the building of new or reconditioning of old warships and about the completion of more and more up-to- date squadrons of aeroplanes coincide with a noticeably more aggressive policy towards encroachments on British capitalist interests in the Mediterranean. Where before there was comparative reticence we now have the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Eden, declaring in unmistakable terms that British disinterestedness in the Spanish conflict does not mean indifference where British interests are concerned “ on the land or the sea frontiers of Spain or the trade routes that pass her by ” (Report of speech in Parliament, The Times, July 20th, 1937). He and the Prime Minister issued a plain warning to German and Italian capitalists that the Mediterranean is for British capitalism “a main arterial route, and we intend to maintain our place on it.”

Mr. Eden further warned Italy that : —

It has always been, and it is to-day, a major British interest that no great Power should establish itself on the Eastern shore of the Red Sea.

That the German and Italian threat is a serious one is shown by the information about big guns overlooking Gibraltar erected in the past six months by Franco’s foreign friends. Even the most loyal of Franco’s Tory supporters began to choke at the idea of “The Rock” being dominated by German or Italian guns and, with unconscious humour, they now grow more enthusiastic for strong action to prevent the intervention of foreigners in Spain.

It escapes their notice that to a patriotic Spaniard the most outrageous of all intervention of foreigners on Spanish soil is the existence of this British fortress at Gibraltar.

Mr. Winston Churchill made a characteristic statement. Speaking at Wanstead on July 4th (Manchester Guardian, July 5th) he regretted Mussolini’s recent policy and said: —

If I had been an Italian I should have been on Mussolini’s side fifteen years ago when he rescued his country from the horrible fate of sinking into violent Communism. All the more do I regret some of the recent utterings of Signor Mussolini.

Happily, Mr. Churchill continued, the power and preponderance of the British navy is growing rapidly. It already far exceeds the preponderance we possessed over other European Powers at the outbreak of the Great War.

Spanish Mineral Wealth An Issue

Then, again, Spain for the rival powers is not only the arena of a conflict about democracy and dictatorship, but also and more importantly a country of great mineral wealth. The facts are well known. Frank C. Hanighen summarises them in an article in the New Statesman (April 24th, 1937): —

Spain constitutes a far richer preserve of the basic elements which nourish industry than either Ethiopia or the former German colonies. Iron, the principal staple in munitions making, which both Germany and Italy lack, exists in abundance near Oviedo, near Vigo, and in the beleaguered Basque provinces. The best copper mines in Europe lie in Huelva province. Not far from the mercury of Almaden, the famous Pefiarroya mine produces high-grade lead. Other essential minerals—coal, tin, tungsten, silver, molybdenum, salt, phosphates, pyrites, graphite and zinc—are scattered throughout the peninsula and, across the straits of Gibraltar, Spanish Morocco contains iron, lead and manganese. Under monarchy and republic, foreign interests and, to a lesser extent, Spanish capital developed only a part of these resources. Accordingly, when the republic faced serious civil strife, it was natural that the two most predatory Powers in Europe should look hungrily towards Spain.

Mr. Hanighen. shows how Germany began organising the shipment of iron ore from Spain in 1934, but for a considerable period the trade was interrupted owing to Germany’s financial difficulties. Then, in 1936, by arrangement with the rebels, shipment was resumed on the basis of exchanging ore for armaments. He quotes Edgar Mowrer, correspondent in Spain of the Chicago Daily News, as saying on December 22nd, 1936: “ An entire fleet of ships is engaged in bringing arms to Spain, returning loaded with iron ore for Germany,” and adds his own opinion that “it is not too much to say that the German adventure in Spain saved the German re-armament programme.” He contends that before the revolt occurred in July, 1936, the iron ore situation in Germany had become serious: “Britain had started to compete for Swedish ore, one of Germany’s best sources. The French Socialists, in power in France, had been talking of an embargo on Lorraine ores to Germany. Spanish iron ore for the past year had been unavailable because Spanish exporters could not obtain German import licences as a result of the German currency shortage.”

Here we have Germany’s interest. Italy was likewise concerned to gain control of the tungsten and vanadium deposits, the iron, lead, copper and sulphur near Cartagena, and the mercury mines of Almaden, north of Cordoba.

It is plain enough why German aeroplanes should bomb Guernica, in the north, on the way to Bilbao and Oviedo, and why Italian troops should be engaged in trying to capture Almaden in the south'. Indeed, Hitler and Mussolini have lately been quite candid about it.

Addressing a Nazi gathering at Wurzburg on June 27th, 1937 (News Chronicle, June 28th), Hitler said:

Germany needs ore. That is why we want a Nationalist Government in Spain—to be able to buy Spanish ore.

and Mussolini, in an article in Popolo d'Italia on June 26th, 1937 (The Times, June 28th), wrote: 

 Italy has not been neutral, but has fought, and victory will also be hers.

But while the policy of Italy and Germany has been easy to understand and has been complicated only by possible divergences of interest between the two powers, the situation, from the standpoint of British capitalism, has been more complex.

The private interests of British shareholders in companies working mines in Spain have had to be considered and these have not necessarily coincided with the interests of the British imperial exploiters as a whole.

The Choice for British Capitalists

First consider the difficulties of the situation facing the big and wealthy companies operating in Spain : the Rio Tinto Co., Ltd., which owns great copper and sulphur mines in the province of Huelva; the £2,000,000 Orconera Iron Ore Co., “in which the Consett Company and Guest Keen Baldwins Iron & Steel Co. hold investments of a nominal value of £800,000 each ” (Daily Express, July 20th, 1937); the Barcelona Traction Co. and many others.

The aim of the directors in such concerns is naturally that of protecting their properties and maintaining profit-earning capacities. Beyond that they would incline to hope for a Franco victory as more likely to give a “strong government," which would “stand no nonsense from trade unions,” particularly when they read the declarations of the aims of some of the Popular Front Government’s supporters. How, in fact, have British capitalist interests fared?

The Anglo-Spanish Construction Co., which owns and operates the Santander-Mediterraneo Railway, say that everything has been satisfactory since General Franco took control of the area (The Times, July 9th, 1937).

From Government territory the Barcelona Traction Light & Power Co. tell a different story in a statement to shareholders (The Times, June 26th, 1937).

The company found so many difficulties in its relationships with the Workers' Committees that it withdrew its staff in September, 1936.

They state that since the date of the issue of the two circulars last year the general conditions in Spain have grown steadily worse and have, in fact, developed in such a way that it has been found impossible to obtain any reliable information as to the true position of the affairs of the enterprise in that country in which the Barcelona company is interested. The seizure effected by the Workers’ Committee in Barcelona covers all the properties, funds, and banking accounts of the enterprise.

Representations made through the British Foreign Office against the usurpation of the interests of the enterprise, and protests from time to time by the British Consul-General in Barcelona to the Catalonian Government, have produced no satisfactory results. The funds and cash have been removed from the banking accounts of the enterprise and appropriated by the Workers’ Committee. [Times, June 26th, 1937.) 

While firms in Franco territory have had to submit to financial losses and such inconveniences as the murder of hundreds of their workers (as happened with the Rio Tinto Co.), it is not to be wondered at if they prefer that to the seizure of their property and funds by Workers’ Committees.

It is therefore hardly surprising that Rio Tinto shares dropped from £22 to £13 following the electoral victory of the Popular Front Government in February, 1936, and rose sharply after the rebels captured Huelva in August, 1936 (New Statesman, April 24th).

About the Orconera Iron Ore Co. and its mines in Bilbao province the position is somewhat obscure. The Times City editor says (July 19th, 1937) that until about a month earlier there had been no interruption of shipments from these mines. Then there was a stoppage during the fighting round Bilbao, which resulted in Franco’s capture of that town. Franco then gave a verbal promise that ore supplies to Britain would not be interfered with. It was, however, reported from Berlin (News Chronicle, July 20th, 1937) that a German treaty with Franco provides that Germany’s much-needed iron ore for re-armament will be supplied from the Basque mines.

This may mean that Franco is acting against the interests of the British companies or it may mean that an agreement has been arrived at between the interested German, British and Spanish companies. The article in the New Statesman, quoted above, gives support to the latter view, although it deals with other companies than the Orconera Co.

While Germany and Italy quite openly fight battles for raw materials, international capital takes a stand which can only be construed as co-operation with these Powers. In the Riff, for instance, British and French mines receive no payments for the ore which is being sent to Germany (all payments, as it has been shown, are applied to Franco’s armament debt). Yet these companies show an odd diffidence about the matter. Not a single protest has been filed by these companies or their governments. On the contrary, the financial elements in London and Paris representative of these companies are known to be strongly pro- Franco.

Consider the extraordinary case of the Rio Tinto mines . . .According to the Manchester Guardian, the output of Rio Tinto is being requisitioned and sold to Germany, at a price of 42 pesestas to the pound, whereas the current rate is between 80 and 90 per pound. Has an international capitalist “understanding” been reached with Franco and his Fascist backers ?

“. . . . Why should not these British and French interests find in a Franco victory a solution of difficulties which have prevented them from being impartially (and prosperously) international ? Currency restrictions and the consequent inability of Germany and Italy to buy freely have kept many companies from profiting from the German and Italian armament booms. But with Franco in power, British and French capital might flow into a newly-organised Bank of Spain, Germany and Italy might borrow from this institution to pay for raw materials, and dividends in Penarroya, Almaden and the foreign companies in the Riff would be amply assured.”

What exactly these various British companies may be doing behind the scenes it is impossible to know, but it is certainly likely that they would seek some such solution as the one suggested by Mr. Hanighen. It must also be noticed that the controllers of these companies are exceedingly influential in British political as well as financial circles and would be able to exert great pressure on Government policy in a direction which would help them strike a good bargain with Franco and Franco’s friends.

There remains to be considered still one more aspect of the problem, that is the dependence of British re-armament on metals from Spain and elsewhere.

Ore For British Armaments

While British capitalists would have no objection whatever to making profit by selling materials to Germany or Italy for their armaments, the British Government, acting for the capitalists as a whole, cannot be indifferent to a stoppage of supplies needed for British arms. Already there is an acute shortage of steel and the loss of well over a million tons a year of Spanish ore (which cannot easily be replaced by poorer-quality ores from English or other mines) would be a serious matter for British capitalism. The Times City editor (July 19th, 1937) summarises the problem as follows (it will be noticed that, as regards Swedish ore, this statement rather conflicts with that made by Mr. Hanighen): —

If imports from Spain were to be cut off through ore being diverted to Germany or for any other reason, the task of making good the deficiency might present serious difficulties. Large deposits exist, it is true, in many parts of the world, but owing to the higher level of freight rates the cost of shipping ore from distant countries like India and Australia is apt to prove prohibitive. Of countries near at hand Sweden has probably the richest deposits, but exports are limited by the Swedish Government to about 10,000,000 tons annually, the bulk of which goes to Germany under contracts that have still several years to run. Except through a direct agreement with the Swedish Government, the scope for expanding supplies from this source is probably limited. In the first half of the current year imports from Algeria, Tunis, and especially Norway, were all higher, and should Germany contrive to satisfy a larger proportion of her requirements in Spain there is a possibility that still larger supplies in these countries would be available to Britain. Meanwhile, as the Import Duties Advisory Committee pointed out in its report, events are stimulating a movement towards the proportionately larger use of low-grade native ores, deposits of which, distributed through Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, and Northamptonshire, are estimated at not less than 3,000,000,000 tons, or sufficient for an annual output of 10,000,000 tons of steel for 100 years. Substitution of native low-grade ores for foreign ores with high metallic content could not, however, be effected wholesale without considerable modification of existing plant and, therefore, offers no immediate solution to the problem of the scarcity.

How the British capitalists try to solve their problems in Spain is, of course, their own affair, but it is necessary for Socialists to try to understand the main lines of their policy, if only in order to combat the notion, increasingly prevalent in Labour circles, that British capitalism can be trusted to pursue a peaceful, idealistic foreign policy free from the violent and sordid motives which underly the policies of the dictators.

British Government policy at the present time probably runs on the following lines: —

Determination to resist German and Italian control of Spanish territory. A desire to see a Spanish Government ultimately strong enough in armed force and popular support to prevent this. A desire not to see either side in the civil war overwhelmingly victorious, since such a Government would feel less dependent on British capital and British support. And a willingness—on terms—to do a deal with either side in the struggle, the terms to include safety for British investments and guarantees for the continued supply of ore.

Edgar Hardcastle

Here and There: The Church in Spain (1937)

The Here and There column from the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Church in Spain

Among a series of excellent articles on Spain in the Manchester Guardian one deals with the function of the Catholic Church in Spain and its attitude towards the Civil War. The correspondent, who spent a year in Spain, says: —

The burnings were often carried out by the villagers without any instructions from outside— indeed, they were often as spontaneous and, seemingly, as natural throughout Spain as the seizure of land was in the South of Spain. . . .

But, generally speaking, the war on the churches seems to have been a popular, spontaneous movement. And even when a gang arrived from outside the villagers, would, as a rule, stand round passively and look on while petrol was poured on the altar and set alight and the priest was dragged from his hiding- place.

In a country where the majority of the people have been, and still are, Catholics this indifference to the fate of the clergy needs some explaining. Read on: —

A Materialist Church.

Genuinely Christian priests have been killed. Much fine art has been destroyed and some of the finest music in the world been silenced. But the problem of the Church in Spain has another aspect. It was a Church more permeated by materialism than any other in Europe. It was largely—though by no means entirely—a commercial enterprise. It was the biggest landowner in a country of big landowners. It had a vast, and sometimes even a commanding, share in various industrial and commercial interests. A Church that identifies itself too closely with a temporal order is in danger of sharing the destiny of that order. And if a Church throws its weight on the side either of revolution or of counter-revolution, it will survive with the one or perish with the other.

The Spanish clergy has used Catholic teaching to influence Spanish workers to assist in maintaining the landowning and capitalist interests of the Spanish Church. They have failed and millions of Spanish Catholics are now the bitter enemies of the Catholic Church. The Jesuit boast that Catholic teaching until the age of seven years immunises the mind for life from heretical influences is a patent myth. The dominating influence in class struggles is class interest. The class interest of the Spanish workers, or what appears to them to be their class interest, dominates the influence of religious superstition. In many thousands of cases the open struggle with the Catholic Church will be sufficient to destroy its influence entirely. The position surprises many people with exaggerated ideas about the power of religion. The attitude of the Spanish worker to the Catholic Church is no less a logical expression of material interest than the attitude of the angry Spanish peasant who hung the image of St. Anthony upside down in a well after a failure of his crops. (An instance quoted by the Guardian correspondent, which can be paralleled by many stories from countries where there is a large Catholic peasantry.)

The Catholic Church is lined up with the landowning class behind Franco in a desperate fight to retain its ownership and feudal privileges. That is its chief interest in the struggle; and its resources are at the disposal of Franco. Many churches have become arsenals and many priests have discarded the cassock for the rifle. It is a ruthless and bitter class struggle in which life and property inevitably are destroyed.

If Catholic priests were murdered by angry Spanish peasants they have the reactionary and callous attitude of the Catholic Church to thank.

Whatever the outcome of the immediate struggle in Spain the hypocrisy and charlatanry of the Catholic Church there has dealt a blow to its moral influence which will not be rebuilt so easily as the walls of its churches.

Civilising Spain

The Irish Brigade, raised by General O’ Duffy to fight on behalf of Franco in Spain, has returned to Ireland without having done much fighting. The Manchester Guardian (June 23rd, 1937) quotes from the Irish Times and the Irish Press an account by the volunteers of what they saw in Spain.

We saw General Franco’s army executing “Reds” each morning in massed groups. They machine-gunned the condemned people, beginning at their ankles and directing the fire up along their bodies. The “ Reds,” in their last moments, lifted their clenched fists in the Communist salute, snouting “Viva Madrid !” This was in Caceres. It was in this town that the brigade spent most of their time.

That “great gentleman” and Catholic, Franco, will find a place in history with those murderers of the Paris Communards, the French ruling class. 

Marx—by Mr. Woodburn

Mr. Arthur Woodburn, secretary of the Scottish Labour Party, N.C.L.C. lecturer, and exponent of finance and economics, arch-squarer of the circles in Labour Party policy, says in the June Plebs: —

When individuals deny the obvious and proved fact that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party there is no point in arguing with them. . . . No one can join the Labour Party without proclaiming himself a Socialist.

It is, perhaps, too much to expect an Oracle to argue, but does he need to? Surely an "obvious and proved fact” should speak for itself? The “obvious and proved fact” that prominent members of the Labour Party have openly repudiated being Socialists and that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party does, however, appear to require explanation. Would you oblige, Mr. Woodburn? And would you also mention where evidence can be found for the statement that Marx agreed that 

It was quite conceivable that the capitalists would be bought out if they were paid very well if (as an exception, and England at that time was an exception) circumstances so developed that the capitalist would be obliged to submit and proceed in a cultured and organised manner towards Socialism on terms of compensation, 

and where

Elsewhere Marx said that "Under certain conditions the workers will not by any means refuse to buy out the bourgeoisie.”

There may be “not much point in arguing,” but, really, Mr. Woodburn, we would like to know.


The "New Leader” and “ The Socialist Standard"

In an article, “A Communist Leader and the Right to Strike,” which appeared in the July The Socialist Standard, it was stated that: “No reference has appeared, or—to be pedantically correct—has been noticed,” in Labour and Communist newspapers to the Bedwas Agreement signed by Mr. Arthur Horner. We learn now that such reference had been made. John Alpin, industrial editor of the New Leader, writes to say that it carried a critical analysis of the agreement and that a reply to that analysis by a member of the South Wales Miners’ Federation was dealt with point by point. Rather disagreeably, he says that he “would have assumed that the S.P.G.B. . . . would have read the columns of the New Leader each week.” We make the correction suggested by Mr. Alpin, if such it can be called, gladly. The number of weekly and monthly journals published by working-class organisations is numerous, and when writing is a voluntary task and journals unobtainable through the usual channels it is quite easy to miss an issue of any particular journal. The New Leader could help to avoid the recurrence of such “errors.” We suggest it put us on its exchange list. We put this suggestion to several journals, including the New Leader, a few years ago. Many agreed, even where the price is much higher than The Socialist Standard and publication more frequent: the New Leader declined. Perhaps, Mr. Alpin, you would do something to adjust the matter?

The Indian Workers and their Exploiters

Congress, India’s Nationalist Party, has climbed down from its earlier attitude of refusing to form governments in the six Provinces where it obtained majorities in the recent elections. In the resolution embodying the decision to form Governments, the draft of which, according to the Daily Herald, is attributed to Gandhi, it is said: —

The proper description of the existing relationship between the British Government and the people of India is that of exploiter and exploited, and hence they have a different outlook upon almost everything of vital importance.

Having admitted that exploiters and exploited must have a different outlook, Mr. Gandhi ignores the obvious, that exploited Indians can have no harmony of outlook with the Nationalist exploiters of their own race. To say, as he has said, that the Indian princes, landowners and capitalists can be persuaded to be “trustees” for the Indian masses, dodges the issue. The British capitalists would claim “trusteeship” for millions of Colonial masses throughout the world with nothing more to support it than the pious hypocrisy which cloaks their real interests. The practice of capitalism does not reveal the capitalist class to be any less the robbers because the class they exploit happen to speak the same language. The Indian workers have yet a painful road to travel before they acquire the understanding necessary for their emancipation. 

More Russian Puzzles

The Russian Government’s purge of "Trotskyites,” “diversionists,” ”wreckers” and “spies” continues, apparently, unabated. As must obviously happen, no amount of bias or coloured phraseology can obscure the contradictions which obtrude through the evidence against the “traitors."

The Moscow correspondent of the Daily Herald (June 29th, T 937) gives the number executed for spying in the Far Eastern Province of Khabarovsk as 133 to the end of April, and quotes the Russian newspaper Izvestia, that “the spies were able to persuade railway workers’ to sell them uniforms." The reason why workers, who, according to Russian and Communist claims, are well paid, should want to sell their uniforms, is left to the imagination of the reader who is keen enough to notice the contradiction.

Another report from the same correspondent (July 3rd, 1937) states that a notorious spy, who had been run to earth, succeeded in organising "a gang of ex-priests, monks, kulaks and discontented young people'' (Our italics.) Perhaps a Communist friend could explain that “discontent" of young people.

Many of the “honourable Communists" who helped to draft the Constitution have since become victims of the purge, including Tukhachensky, Gamarnik, Uborevich, Yakir and Chervyakoff, who are dead, and Goloded and Postysheff, who are disgraced.

The Moscow correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (June 29th, 1937) refers to the purge among industrial leaders whose production figures have fallen, and quotes from Pravda an attack on the woman Communist President of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, who. it is alleged, spent £600 on clothes suitable for her to wear to meet foreigners, when sent on an official trip abroad. The reward of Socialist competition?

Yet another report comments on the arrest of a “Trotskyist bandit,” Doletski, head of the Tass News Agency, which supplies the bulk of all news to Soviet papers. He is ”accused of having suppressed news about wreckers in industry and having over-emphasised news of successes." (Daily Herald, July 8th, 1937.)

Suppression of news inimical to its interests is inevitable where there is political dictatorship and a host of minor dictators in their own particular spheres. No regime claiming to represent working-class interests, which has a sound basis, need repress news or criticism. Socialist principles have nothing to lose and everything to gain from free and open discussion. Under dictatorship even the mildest criticism of the regime, or opposition on questions of policy, must result in intrigue against the Government and take insurrectionary forms.

Where there is dictatorship by a person or a clique, who decide what is right for the majority, it is inevitable that discontent and inequality arise. When discontent becomes widespread a scramble takes place to place culpability on the shoulders of others. Socialist interests can only thrive under the free and open conditions of democracy. 

Harry Waite