Parliament or Soviet? A critical examination (1920)

From the April 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

The self-styled left wing of the so-called Socialist and Labour movement of Great Britain has for some time past been debating the topic of the Soviet as opposed to Parliament as the means of securing the "dictatorship of the proletariat."

The Bone of Contention

Just as the right wing of the reformist Labour Party has condemned the Soviet as an anti-Socialist institution, so the left-wing Anarchists (for in practice that is what they are) have gone to the other extreme and proclaimed the Soviet as the only means of realising Socialism! What has the Socialist Party of Great Britain to say on the matter? The answer is implicit in its declaration of principles.

"The working class must organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government." 

In the "Communist Manifesto" Marx and Engels clearly stated that the form of application of Communist principles would vary according to the degree of development, industrial and political, reached in various countries. It is equally absurd, therefore, to condemn or uphold the Soviet system irrespective of the conditions out of which it arose.

The Soviet Seed-Bed

In Russia the Soviets arose spontaneously in opposition to the Tsarist (and later the Bourgeois) dictatorship. Parliament has never been the supreme power in the State because the bulk of the population had never been industrially concentrated and politically organised. Local councils acting independently to a large extent, and at most never realising the need for more than federal unity, were, therefore, the natural expression of popular opinion. In adopting the Soviet constitution, therefore, the Bolsheviks did not invent a system: they accepted a fact! Their attempt to convoke a central assembly representative of the mass of the people had failed, as it was bound to fail, in a welter of illiteracy and disorganisation. The point is often missed that is it was not only the Bolshevik Party which was in a minority. The whole of the political parties in the Assembly put together were!

Had that not been the case it is difficult to understand the ease with which the Assembly was suppressed. Contrast this state of affairs with that obtaining in the Western "democracies." For generations the working class has been in the habit of supporting capitalist parties, and for a longer period these parties have been controlling, through Parliament, the machinery of Government. Soviets simply did not exist except in the fevered imaginations of the "left-wingers." Some of the latter indeed appear to regard the Trades Councils, etc., as incipient Soviets, but the value of these bodies for the purpose of establishing Socialism is, to say the least, obscure, and the more "advanced" Soviets are opposed to anything short of industrial unions with a programme of "equal wages." But the central factor of the political situation, i.e., the armed force of society, is not controlled by either trades councils or industrial union. It is controlled by Parliament. Parliament represents the powers of government, and not till it ceases to do so will the necessity for capturing it disappear. This much is obvious.

The Sovietites, of course, trust to a revolt of the army against Parliament; but such a revolt would be unnecessary if revolutionists were in a majority therein, and it would be futile (and in the highest degree unlikely) if they were not. The army cannot establish Socialism. That must be done by the mass of society, the working class, who possess the majority of the votes for the public bodies, national and local, and can therefore convert those bodies into revolutionary agencies whenever they choose to do so. Before the army can come over to the workers it must have something to come over to the to! Some alternative to the existing social order must be immediately practicable. In other words the workers must be consciously and politically organised for Socialism. This requires incessant propaganda effort of the educational character. Not merely inflammatory sentiments but illuminating science is necessary.

But this is not what the Sovietites supply. One surveys the field of their practical activities only to perceive a desperate state of confusion. Thus the B.S.P., alleging its adherence to the "third international," remains part of the Labour Party, which belongs to the second! Declaring for Soviets, it nevertheless continues Parliamentary methods, presumably for self-advertisment sake and to provide scope for its adventurers.

The S.L.P. attacks the B.S.P. theoretically for inconsistency, but in practice never tires of trying to come to a working arrangement with it. Likewise, the W.S.F. which pretends to oppose any form of parliamentary action as anti-Socialist. Opportunists all, they cannot do without their immediate demands, to be realised indiscriminately by legislation or the general strike, they are never cleat or united as to which. Swearing by the Revolution, they yet cannot trust it as the all-sufficient and supreme programme. Like the avowed reformers they denounce, they must be "practical"; must always "talk down" to ignorance. Exactitude they deplore as "pedantry"; consistency they regard as "inadaptability." The Socialist Party, however is prepared to go on with its work, knowing that events will prove its attitude to be the correct one.

Capitalism may develop, but its basis and essential character remains the same. The principles, therefore, which are deduced from that basis and serve as a guide to working-class action remain unchanged. As for the application of those principles, in the words of Marx: "The more highly developed country holds up to the less developed the mirror of its own future." It is not, therefore, a question of us following Russia, but it will be a question of Russia having to follow us. The S.P.G.B. never had to leave the Second International: it was never in it! Representing working-class interests, it is hostile to every other party. Only on such lines can Socialism be realised.

All power to the workers—through the Socialist Party!

Eric Boden

Against Capitalism (1981)

From the August 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

To some people politics is like a football match. Choose your team, then spectate from a distance. Cheer, boo, jump, shout. Up the Arsenal; Vote, Vote, Vote for Maggie—or Michael—or David Roy. Red scarves for the prolies, blue cravats for the gin and mortgage set. Political allegiances flow predictably from the "I've always voted Labour and I always will" of the trade union hack, to the "I'm Tory and proud of it" of the wage slave with one foot in the capitalist class and the other on a banana skin.

When a keen young man with a sociology degree and a clip-board stops you in the street and asks how you'll be voting in the next election, have you ever tried explaining that you are a socialist and there is no slot for you on his printed card? He tries to tick Labour, but you grab his arm. "A socialist", you insist. Not a supporter of state capitalism, of incomes policies, of sending in troops to break up strikes, of partnerships between bosses and workers. Not the Labour Party: I am a real socialist. Eyeing you up and down with suspicion and memories of his idealistic undergraduate youth (he is twenty six), the questioner starts to place his tick in the Communist Party slot. Catching your stare, he stops, crossing out his misplaced tick as he hears your rejection of Russian dictators, production for profit and "socialist armies". Exhausted, he makes for the "Won't Vote" slot. But socialists do vote. Even if there is not a socialist candidate, we write "socialism" across our ballot papers to show what we stand for. We cast our vote for the only political interest which the working class has. Confused sociologist makes his way home with the socialist placed in the slot labelled "Others". If you dissent from the fifty seven varieties of anti-socialism you are an "other" and if you conform you are a "same". It would be easier of elections were simply held between Sames and Others; but then, if all teams wore the same coloured shirts what would be left for the spectators to cheer?

Socialists are totally opposed to the Tories. As such, we are often referred to as Labour Party supporters. Socialists are totally opposed to the anti-socialist Labour Party—just as much as we oppose the Tories. So are we Trots? Socialists are totally opposed to the parties and groups of the so-called Left with their Leninist leadership complexes and their statist reform programmes. If we are opposed to "the Left" are we "Right"? No—socialists are totally opposed to defenders of nationalism, racism, and bigotry of any kind. If we are neither "Left" nor "Right" are we for "the Centre"? No—socialists are totally opposed to the Liberal and Social Democratic parties.

All of this opposition can be summed up in one short sentence: Socialists are totally opposed to capitalism. We are hostile to it; we hate it; we stand solely for ending, and not mending, it.

Socialists are uncompromising. We will only support a party which stands unequivocally for world socialism. In Britain the only such party is the Socialist Party of Great Britain. As revolutionaries we can have nothing but enmity to reformists, even though we may well understand their good intentions. As opponents of the profit system we oppose all who say that production must be for profit. As democrats we reject anyone who poses as a leader for working class sheep to follow. As workers we will have nothing to do with those who aim to disguise the antagonism of interests between the capitalists as a class and the workers as a class.

Sometimes principled refusal to compromise for the sake of popularity is labelled sectarianism and hostility to our opponents is mistaken for senseless aggression. So let it be clear: the Socialist Party is for working class unity—but we can only join together with our fellow workers on the basis of unity of principle. Our hostility to all other political parties is to their ideas and not to individual workers within them. It is not our aim to alienate misguided wage slaves by abuse, but to attack their present ideas so as to direct them to more useful ones.

There can be no socialist revolution without socialists. Unless a majority of workers give up their adherence to a system which enslaves them and deprives them of the fruits of their labour there can be no fundamental social change. The political revolution must be preceded by a mental revolution in the way that men and women see the world. To effect that revolution, workers must cross from the spectators' stand to the pitch. Actively, indignantly, consciously and democratically, we must score our own goal and defeat the enemy. To do that we need a party which is committed to that goal and nothing less.

Steve Coleman

A Modern "Metropolis" (1927)

From the May 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Concerning a weird picture being shown at a West London cinema, we read, about robots, or semi-human automatons, who slave in the bowels of the earth, to sustain the guilded drones of their day in the sunlit atmosphere of the regions above; We are brought back to reality, however, for from a professor who has studied American life and prosperity (!) comes the information that the automaton business has actually arrived and is threatening contagion: Our prosperity, he says:-

Can only be obtained at a tragic price, not less than the transformation of millions of workers into automatons. "Fordism," which is the essence of American industry, results in the standardisation of the workman himself . . . France has the same instinctive fear of America as symbolised by Ford, as she of the German system on the eve of the war. (Review of a book by Professor Siegfried, Daily News, 13/4/27.)

Among the bogeys with which we have been confronted from time to time, we have often encountered the threatening one that Socialism would make life monotonous and stereotyped; as in other case, so in this we answer: To observe the consummation of that which is vile, loathsome and de-humanising. Look around.

W. E. MacHaffie

School's Out (2014)

Book Review from the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

David J. Blacker: The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame. Zero Books £15.99.

Remember Tony Blair and his ‘Education, education, education’? That was how he set out his priorities in 1997, supposedly as a way of improving people’s lives and also making British capitalism more efficient and competitive. But with the recession leading to cuts to education budgets, things have not quite worked out that way.

David Blacker’s title is a nod to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the view that, as technological progress continues, the proportion of constant capital (machines, buildings, etc) to variable capital (paid out in wages) will rise – see here. But as it is only labour that produces surplus value and so profit, it follows that the rate of profit (profit as a proportion of total capital) will fall. However, there are so many counteracting forces that this is at most a tendency. One consequence of technological progress, though, is a reduced demand for labour power, including educated labour power. Hence, according to Blacker, not just increases in unemployment and part-time jobs but ‘an abandonment of the ideal of the universal distribution of education’, or ‘the falling rate of learning’.

His book has a mainly US focus but the general points are more widely applicable. One response has been to see education as itself a source of profit, with widespread privatisation. Another has been to transfer much of the cost of higher education to students/workers themselves, by means of loans and debt. US student debt is now well over $1 trillion, and debts pursue many workers throughout their lives, since (unlike with credit cards) education debt is not discharged by personal bankruptcy. But if attending college and being weighed down by debt is an unpleasant prospect, not gaining a degree is even worse, as it can lead at best to a minimum-wage job (‘the fear of McDonalds’).

Blacker classes medical bills together with educational loans as ‘existential debt’, which can haunt people for decades. They should, he suggests, be a focus for protest, part of a campaign for free higher state education. At the same time, though, he argues that educational activism is a waste of time, on the grounds that reforming schools will not usher in serious social and political reforms. It is certainly true that schools and colleges essentially reflect the society around them, and that it is only a revolution in the way society is organised that will lead to proper changes in the function and content of education.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Who Controls the World? (2011)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some people think that a sinister elite controls the world from behind the scenes. Candidates for this role range from the Bilderberg Group (which does exist) to the Elders of Zion (who don’t). These conspiracy theorists would be heartened by a recent headline in the New Scientist: “Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world.”

A study of 43,000 transnational corporations (TNCs) by a team of systems theorists from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich  revealed: ‘a core of 1,318 companies with interlocking ownerships. Each of the 1,318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1,318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "rear economy” - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues. When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity'' of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cert of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cert of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network".’ (newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500)

‘Runs the world’ is too strong as it implies that the ‘super-entity’ is actually in control of the economy whereas its components have to operate within and accept the constraints of the uncontrollable world market.

Nor is any conspiracy implied. It is rather a description of the structure of the world economy. Systems theorists see it as a typical pattern of complex systems. For Marxists, it’s confirmation of Marx’s view that the tendency of capitalism is for the concentration and centralisation of production and ownership.

The researchers claim a practical outcome from their research: that, as the New Scientist put it, it could help identify ways of making capitalism more stable’.

The assumption seems to be that if one of the 1,318 gets into financial trouble this will affect all those others within the network with which it has links. But the links that are relevant for the workings of the economy are not so much ownership and control as suppliers (sellers) and buyers (users). If, for instance, because of overproduction in the industry, a steel plant has to close, then the suppliers of all its materials will be affected; as will its workers and those of its suppliers and the stores and shops which sell them consumer goods. That’s the way overproduction in one key industry spreads to the rest of the economy.

The researchers’ proposal – ‘global anti-trust rules … to limit over-connection amongst TNCs’ – wouldn’t solve this problem. In fact it might make it worse by encouraging more, inevitably chaotic competition. In any event, it is only intended to prevent the initial shock spreading so fast and so far. Since capitalist production proceeds by way of series stops and starts such shocks are inevitable from time to time. There’s nothing governments can do to prevent this. Conspiracy theorists misread this as showing that governments are beholden to a shadowy elite.

They can relax. The world economy is not controlled by an elite (even if there is an easily identifiable elite that benefits from it). It is not controlled by anybody. It’s an uncontrollable economic mechanism that can only be ended by making the Earth’s resources, natural and industrial, the common heritage of all.  A ‘New World Order’, if you like, but a democratic one.

Action Replay: Playing On (2014)

The Action Replay column from the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The aim of boxing is to hit your opponent, though not to punch him senseless. Other sports also lead to head injuries, many of them serious. In November last year the Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris was allowed to carry on playing despite being concussed in an accidental collision. This was sufficiently controversial for MP Chris Bryant to raise the matter in Parliament. ‘I know there are commercial interests in keeping players on the pitch,’ he said (outside the Commons), ‘but there is a long-term health interest in taking precautionary action’ (Daily Telegraph, 8 November). There are commercial interests in keeping players fit and healthy too, so the financial aspect cuts both ways.

In January 2011 fourteen-year-old Ben Robinson died after a school rugby union game. Three times he was sent back on to play after blows to his head. Coaches, officials and his watching parents were worried to varying extents, and just before the final whistle, Ben collapsed and never regained consciousness. The pathologist concluded that it was the succession of knocks to the head that killed him, not one single blow (Guardian, 14 December 2013).

If Ben had been removed from the field after being initially concussed, he would probably have been fine. But at grass-roots level, many coaches and officials are unaware of the recommended procedures, which are not clearly publicised by rugby boards.

Professional rugby players are becoming bigger and faster, which is bound to increase the possibilities of injury in tackles and scrums. It is possible that the authorities will receive legal claims from former players, as happened with the National Football League in the US (they reached a $765m settlement).

No doubt insisting, at school and amateur level, that players carry on is part of the macho culture, the idea of toughness, of not quitting; the referee at the game where Ben Robinson died said he thought some of the players were being ‘drama queens’ (these were school-kids, remember). And taking proper care of players would require a lot of effort and organisation, and surely money too. But a sport that cannot look after its players properly is not a safe sport.

Paul Bennett

The Throwaway System (2014)

From the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

How capitalism treats old people is an increasing issue across much of the globe

Compared with other species, a human being requires very long periods of nurture, growth and development. Thus, parenting implies naturally assuming a long responsibility until offspring are able to survive independently. Yet there is no real obligation in the other direction. From a biological point of view, children bear no responsibility for supporting their parents. In an ideal world, children feel and appreciate their parents’ love so they will return it by supporting and taking care of them late in life. Reality, however, can differ from the ideal.

This social contract that formed the bedrock of culture for centuries, built on the premise that parents would do almost anything to care for their children and then would end their lives in their children’s care. No need for nursing or care homes for the elderly. But younger generations simply found themselves working harder in the hyper-competitive environment that drives capitalism and their parents are often left behind. Many elderly people now live out their final years poor and lonely, without family support. In Korea the elderly are committing suicide at historic rates: from 1,161 in 2000 to 4,378 in 2010. Capitalism with the sheer cruelty of the market has never been a way to strengthen and buttress the family and accord generational justice and respect. The forces of global capitalism are destroying the kind of society which allows and encourages stability, traditional families, and self-sufficient community. Capitalism destroys the very structure of societies. The safety net was created to save capitalism from itself, not to attack capitalism.

Our profit system makes men and women grow old prematurely. Millions look with dread upon the day when, once they have grown old, they will be discarded. Millions of workers struggle through life in penury and want towards a bleak and barren old age, to finally find rest at last in the council care home or the morgue.

It is not uncommon for health issues to become a factor for older workers. As the years progress, some things just begin to wear out and break down, ranging from knees and hearts to stamina and patience. If the job is physically demanding, we may no longer possess the strength or agility to do what the job requires. Once the boss figures that out, ageing employees find themselves without a job. It is a sad state of affairs when someone survives a career and makes it to retirement only to find they are too beaten and worn down to enjoy their final years.

More and more older workers are finding themselves out of a job because of structural changes. These reorganisations and reductions in staff have little to do with individual performance but with scales of production and cost-cutting. You may be doing a good job but find your job eliminated in a wave of redundancies. Tenure and seniority is a thing of the past in most industries. And if you lose your job after age 50, the job market competition tends to favour younger candidates who are often attractive to growing companies.

Once you are over 50, loss of employment can force a premature retirement. Even after prudent saving, you may find yourself forced to exit paying employment before you achieve your goals for financial security. It is increasingly challenging for those over 50 to return to the workforce. Many companies have a compulsory retirement age that employees must adhere to. When 65 rolls around, it is not a matter of choice but rather a policy that your career comes to an end. Even though you may still be very capable of performing your duties, you won't be welcome to stay on the job.

Old age should be about life being made more pleasant with everything society has to offer. After all, everyone holds onto the hope that he or she will someday enjoy what they now offer to others. The old should not haunted by the thought that others are waiting for them to die in order to come into an inheritance. Nor by the fear that once they are old and helpless they will be thrown aside to vanish from all thought. When socialism is built the elderly will not depend on the charity and the alms of the community.

It must be impressed upon the minds of workers that the living standards of a generation of people at or near retiring age are being sacrificed to increase the proportion of resources going into government investment going to businesses. The problem is that people accept capitalism and its logic and therefore see no alternative. Under capitalism welfare has always been an issue. If capitalism is to be judged by what is done for the least fortunate section of the community – the aged and infirm – it will be judged and found wanting. This world possessed of vast resources should be free from the scourge of poverty. Money dominates our social life and our social practices and that can only produce inhumanity.

As Confucius say – ‘The Master said: ‘If there were an honorable way to get rich, I'd do it, even if it meant being a stooge standing around with a whip. But there isn't an honorable way, so I just do what I like.’

ALJO

The Death of Comrade Alexander Anderson. (1926)

Obituary from the October 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with profound regret we have to inform our readers that, after a long and distressing illness, our old comrade, Alexander Anderson, died on September 16th, at the age of 48. He was one of that determined few who in 1904 made history by founding the Socialist Party of Great Britain. During the twenty-two years of our existence his loyalty to the Party and to the working class has been steadfast and unwavering. A born orator, he was never happier than when on the platform, expounding our position, or riddling that of our opponents. Hundreds attended the funeral at Tottenham Cemetery, and a short address was made on behalf of the Party. To those who did not know our comrade, a pen portrait would convey little, and to those who knew him it would be sadly inadequate. It is at intimate, human moments such as these that we realise how much is embraced in the term "Comrade." There is an old and hackneyed saying that in death all men are equal. It is our late comrade's chiefest glory that his life-long efforts were directed towards the achievement by mankind of equality in life. He died a member of the Party he helped to found. We tender to his wife and children the warmest sympathy of the whole Party.

*     *     *

We print the following letter from Comrade Jacomb as a personal tribute from an old Comrade in the Cause :-

Comrades Editors of the Socialist Standard,—Will you kindly allow me, as one of the "old originals," a little space in which to pay my humble tribute to the memory of our departed comrade, Alexander Anderson?

I have never taken up my pen in greater sadness of heart than I do to write these lines—which, I suppose, is natural in one paying his last respects to an old friend and comrade with whom he has worked for nearly a quarter of a century in such a cause as Socialism.

Those members who have joined the Party during the last few years, and to whom Anderson can hardly be more than a tradition, can have no conception of what he was in the time of his virile strength. In outdoor propaganda work he gave of his best with a lavish freedom which has had tragic results. For years, almost without a break, he addressed several meetings a week. It was no unusual thing for him to be speaking for six or eight hours on a Sunday, and he has at times started to address a meeting before noon and carried on into the small hours of the following day. In debate he was a giant, as many a capitalist henchman discovered to his cost; and in the Party councils he was a force of the first magnitude.

Indeed, it is more for his labour and ability in the internal affairs of the Party that his older comrades will treasure his memory. It was there that his light shone clearest. Particularly does the present scribe recall how, when the Party was new, and strong men were striving to shape it each in accordance with his own conception of what was best, he stood his ground beneath attacks from our opponents of such bitterness as would have overwhelmed most men. He fought back, and stuck it out with a firmness which could only compel admiration.

Anderson was a great fighter, and had the qualities in abundance of a great fighter. He also had the faults of those qualities, and these, naturally enough, did not tend to make what is called in the ordinary way a lovable nature. Therefore it speaks all the more eloquently of his merit and value in the sphere in which he did his life's work that those who were most often opposed to him feel his loss most poignantly.

I am not claiming any martyrdom for Anderson's life. If ever a man was happy in the work he had put his hand to, that man was Anderson. But I do think that it is incumbent upon his comrades, in fairness to his children and to that splendid comrade, his wife, who for so many years buckled on his armour and sent him forth fit to the fight, to acknowledge that, so far as human intelligence can judge, his strenuous struggle for the emancipation of his class was the direct cause of his early breakdown and death. His breakdown was a serious blow to the working class, as his death is an infliction to his comrades.

The Party has lost a great asset, and is poorer therefor. The more reason, then, for redoubled effort, If he could give us a message now, it would be this prosaic one—"Get on with it."

Yes, comrades; in memory of Alexander Anderson, let us get on with it.

A. E. Jacomb

Between the Lines: The "Dream" (1994)

The TV Review Column from the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The "Dream"

The early hours of Saturday evening on "The Box" are usually devoted to game shows, sitcoms and old films. Fine Cut (Saturday 21 May, 7.45pm, BBC2) was therefore something of a surprise. It charted through a sometimes confusing mixture of present-day and flash-back film, the progress of an East End family from the time that Richard Harris left Dublin in the 1930s, through five generations to the present.

Such family historians are, of course, not new and though this one ran, as it does with so many, a nostalgia for the "good old days" when there was a sense of community, people felt (however misguidedly) that they could affect the course of events, and everyone had a job (with the usual gloss regarding the grind and abysmal pay).

These programmes are social history in the flesh and as such are always interesting. What distinguished this one were the comments made near the end by the young father and mother of two of the last generation children. They live in a council flat, money is short and work is good when you can get it. When asked about what future he looks forward to, the father says "a world without war, where everyone has work and is equal. Where everyone has enough to eat and luxuries like a television set and a washing machine. There'd be no politicians, but a council of people who are good at this sort of thing would make sure there's enough for everyone and it's distributed properly". His wife says, "Ah yes, that's your dream". He replies "it doesn't have to be a dream". How right he is; the more of us aim and work for it, the sooner we'll get it!

The nightmare

In Life Can Be Wonderful (C4, 6 June, 11.55pm) Stanley Forman described his own dream, in his case a dream that turned sour. Forman was born into a family of Jews who had fled the Tsarist pogroms in Russia early this century and had settled in the Mile End Road, East London. Taking against the Jewish religion at an early age (partly because of its requirement that he should thank God for not having been born a woman), this East Ender took practical steps towards realising his dream by becoming involved in politics. First in the Labour League of Youth and then the Communist Party, Forman pursued his vision of the future where poverty had been banished and equality established through political action.

For much of his political life Forman actively expressed the view that his dream was becoming reality in Soviet Russia. The USSR, he contended, was building heaven on earth, and Stalin was his Pope. Forman spent forty years in the film industry and a large part of his time making propaganda films for the Kremlin's Empire designed to counter the devious work of the CIA.

Some of the films made in defence of the misnamed "Socialist motherland" were laughable—extolling the technological leaps in tractor-making productivity or wheat-growing, all amid the smiling faces of healthy Russian youths going about their daily tasks to please Comrade Stalin. Others, about the private capitalist Western bloc rather than what was in reality the state-capitalist East, were more truthful. One film produced by Forman dealt with poverty in post-war Britain, and from the clips of it that were shown, it looked accurate enough. But the abiding impression was of a man who had spent decades of his life spreading lies.

Forman stated that if he had known what was really going on in Russia—the gulags, the repression, the misery—his life would have been very different from that of a Stalinist propagandist. He claimed that on his frequent visits to the USSR he saw nothing but showpiece collective farms and enthusiastic Communist Party officials. No political prisoners and no forced-labour camps were in evidence—claims about such horrors were the work of the CIA or bloody-minded Trotskyists.

But Forman must have been blinkered indeed to have so easily dismissed the consistent reports of totalitarianism and repression emanating from Russia and its satellites. Many saw through it and left the CP—some braved the slanders of the Communists and joined the Socialist Party of Great Britain and our companion parties. Others, disillusioned, drifted out of politics altogether or merely traded one type of repressive politics for another and threw their lot in with the Trotskyist mis-leaders of the working class.

Forman soldiered on through the Hungarian invasion of 1956 and the Prague spring of 1968 like the fool he later realised he'd become. In believing the old untruths, he now states "we had too much faith in the leadership and not enough commonsense". Quite. Forman paid the price of letting others do his thinking for him in the form of a life spent in the service of an unworthy cause. But he and thousands like him still have time yet and do something really constructive with their lives—build a real, democratic socialist revolution, carried out by the majority in the interest of the majority. That way, the lives of all those ex-Communists will not have been wasted entirely.

DAP

Some Members (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The history of the Socialist Party is of the men and women who have made it. Remarkable as many of them have been, there are no high places or orders of merit. All Socialists are equal, and none is more equal than others. The jokey justification for obituaries in the SOCIALST STANDARD is that this is all anyone gets from the Party. Not true, of course: we get marvelous camaraderie, and loyalty and the job well done are appreciated. Nevertheless, the point is made.

Several thousand people have played their parts over seventy years, and we still have members—several—who joined before the first world war. Inevitably the speakers come to mind first. Anderson and Fitzgerald of the Impossibilist generation, who set their different stamps on the Party, are mentioned elsewhere. There was Neumann, who wore a frock-coat to Paris Commune meetings, translated Kautsky, and composed an awful Party song—in Germany when the 1914 war began, he was killed in the Spartacus Rising. Freddie Watts, wood-carver and designer. And a little later Kohn, full of knowledge and wit, and Moses Baritz, whose terrifying rumbustiousness made incongruous the fact that he was a scholar and broadcaster on music.

They were all rumbustious in argument. Ted Lake recalled in 1954 his first sight of Fitzgerald, pushing through the crowd at a meeting and roaring: "I demand to take the platform and speak in opposition!" R. M. Fox in his autobiography Smokey Crusade described EC meetings about 1910 in the room above the shop in Sandland Street, with late-night passers-by "looking up at the windows and wondering when the disputants in the brawl would come to blows". A few fell out with the Party. One, sadly after thirty-five years, was sincere and kindly Jacomb; and with him Reynolds, who spoke and wrote with abrasive erudition.

But none of them was thought, or claimed to be, a speciality. The best speakers took their turn on the rota like the beginners, doing the bad spots equally with the good ones; the platform has always been the Party's, not individuals'. And members who did unspectacular work in Branches and on dull committees were and are valued as highly as anyone. Percy Hallard, who was a Branch secretary for thirty-eight years; Jack Butler, who was the Party treasurer and had an account-book in his lap and a pencil behind his ear when he was killed in an air-raid shelter; the general secretaries—Freddie Adams, Merrison, Hilda Kohn.

There have been others who toiled away for years in unlikely places and circumstances. Dick Jacobs in Swansea until a Branch was formed there; Jonathan Roe in High Wycombe; Lamond and the amazing Agnes Hollingshead in Edinburgh; Eric Boden in Sheffield; and a good many more. Or the members like old Beck who have spent years going round with Socialist literature and selling it at street-corners in all weathers, and those who were always there to carry the platform.

We have never lacked such members. Ever since Great Dover Street there has always been tea and something to eat at the Party office (Conferences as well) because we have had bricks of people who would forgo the excitement to make that their job: Nellie Butler, Mark Miller, Helen Rose, Joe Bell. In that connection, the Socialist Party has never been a "man's world". Women have been EC members, speakers and delegates, without any of us finding implications in it. (Others do, of course. A local paper once wrote up one of our platform people as a "raven-haired, barb-tongued beauty"; we thought she was simply an able speaker.) One of our saddest losses was Lisa Bryan's early death in 1960.

There have been members whom no-one who kew them could ever forget. Charles Lestor—he looked like the redskin chief of a schoolboy's dream, and breathed adventure in tales of Jack London and the Yukon. Clifford Groves of the autocratic manner, flaying opponents in debate. Alf Jacobs, who spoke Sunday in Victoria Park for almost a lifetime. McLaughlin, full of enthusiasm when he was blind and deaf.

Writers are relatively obscure though their work is the most lasting, their initials and pen-names often a mystery. "F.F." stood for years of lucid, well-informed articles in the STANDARD; not so many know today that it stood also for Fred Foan. Some of the most delightful writing which ever appeared was the penetrative, gently witty pieces by "W.T.H.", the initials of Hopley. We have with us today two whose work spans longer than most of us have lived. Comrades McClatchie ("Gilmac") and Hardy ("H") have written for the SOCIALIST STANDARD since, respectively, just before and just after the 1914-18 war and edited it for forty and thirty-plus years.

Last year a still-active member was eighty, and a bunch of comrades went round to her with a birthday cake and a lot of good wishes. She said that though she hadn't seen the establishment of Socialism, working for it had given her a lifetime among the best people imaginable. Even when we are disagreeing with one another, that is what we all think.

Robert Barltrop

Greasy Pole: Ouch! What A Lovely War (2014)

The Greasy Pole column from the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the pitiless military killers of World War One there was reputed to be a German General who named one of his problems as the determination of British soldiers to 'fight like lions'. But then – 'lions led by donkeys'. More recently there has been a Minister of Education in a British government who scorned anyone who sympathised with that German assessment: '...an unhappy compulsion ...to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage', regarding the war '... through the fictional prism of drama such as Oh! What A Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths'.

Centenary

To put the matter into perspective – Michael Gove is the MP for the rock-solid Tory seat of Surrey Heath and the Secretary of State for Education. As a key member of the Cameron government – and of the Notting Hill Set – he has lived up to his reputation for managing education not as some kind of personal encouragement to develop but as formal discipline towards a designed conclusion. In this way Gove has provoked the anger and despair of committed teachers but has recommended himself to his leader. After Cameron recently announced that the centenary of the start of the War would be distorted into a celebration of allegedly unique British courage and humanity, Gove was quick to approve: 'The ruthless Social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified'.

Errors

But this misbegotten view of an historical event which cost the lives of tens of millions and left the world even less secure than before contains some crucial errors. The persistent denunciation of the war, of its bungling leaders and swamps of casualties, is by no means exclusively the work of 'Left wing academics'. Among the most publicised of critics was the late Alan Clark, whose book The Donkeys was a bitter exposure of the generals who ordered the British Army into so many historical calamities. But Clark would have been contemptuously amused by the idea that he was 'left-wing'. He inherited, apart from much else, the mediaeval Saltwood Castle in Sussex. At first he was rejected by Conservative Central Office as too 'right wing' but he eventually became a Tory MP, at first for Plymouth Sutton and then Kensington and Chelsea. He was a keen admirer of both Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher.

Diplomacy

Another example which undermines Gove's slapdash thinking is Niall Ferguson, whose opinions on the War were markedly controversial – for example he argued that in 1914 Germany was forced into a preventive war by the pressures of British diplomacy which encouraged a regional war to develop into a world conflict. In detail Ferguson has many differences with Gove's crude acceptance of the official Tory line but he is far from a 'left-winger' for he consistently describes himself as 'a Thatcherite'. It is useful also to mention a man who actually endured the trenches and all that followed. Harry Patch died in July 2009. He was known as 'The Last Fighting Tommy' – a lone survivor of the war during which he endured, apart from others, the Battle of Passchendaele. A patriotic Tory, his opinions on his time in the trenches are all too clear: the war was 'not worth one life'; the generals and politicians were 'organising nothing better than mass murder'.

Battlefields

Among the events to mark the centenary will be organised visits by school parties to the battlefields, to see where the trenches were, clamber into the dug-outs, stand in the graveyards, look up at the massive memorials ...There has to be some interest, accentuated by Gove's speech, about these visits. Will the children be free to make their own judgements about what they see, about the war and what came out of it? There is nothing in Gove's record to encourage any confidence that the visits will not be heavily stage-managed to ensure the right – from the point of view of the government – outcome. Consider that one of the first actions of the Ministry of Education when Gove took over was to provide every school with a copy of the King James bible inscribed with the message 'Presented by the Secretary of State for Education'. Before that he had unwisely trumpeted his version of the outcome of the war in Iraq: 'The liberation of Iraq has actually been that rarest of things – a proper British foreign policy success... now a fully functioning democracy with a free press, properly contested elections and an independent judiciary'.

Adoption

When he was still a baby Gove was adopted after his mother could not cope, in the stresses typical of the year 1967, with the demands of looking after a child. Gove's adoptive parents were caring and supportive but he admits to always being 'noisy by nature'; he later wrote to some of his school teachers to apologise for his disruptive behaviour. Importantly, Gove's adoption was rated as a success, enabling him to attend private school, to graduate at Oxford and to hold down jobs as a journalist with The Times, followed by his first steps up the parliamentary Greasy Pole. But his progress has been notable for a succession of manufactured crises. In February 2011 a judge ruled that his decision to abolish the Building Schools For The Future programme amounted to 'an abuse of power'. In March 2012 he and his staff were said to have destroyed email correspondence to frustrate Freedom Of Information requests. In addition to such examples Gove has been the subject of an extraordinary number of protests of No Confidence from various teachers' organisations including one in May last which drew complaints about systematic bullying, fear and intimidation - and this by the Minister responsible for overlooking children's education. But there is nothing to indicate that there is likely to be any change. Gove's response to it all – and to the appalling misery and bloodshed of the First World War – means that the only proper response to him and his kind is, in a word which every teacher will understand – exclusion.

Ivan

What's the Russian for "blackleg"? (1985)

From the November 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Conservatives who fell for Thatcher's conveniently distorted version of "Victorian values" may be gratified to learn that the Russian government recently commemorated one of that country's great exponents of hard work and dedicated patriotism.

In August 1935 a mining team in the Donbas, led by Alexei Stakhanov, cut 102 tons of coal in one six-hour shift. (Or so it was reported; some accounts doubt that it happened at all, or was any more than a propaganda stunt dreamed up by the Stalinist rulers of the time.) This tonnage was about 14 times the norm of the shift (in Great Britain, output per man shift was then about 1.15 tons) and it resulted from Stakhanov devising a more efficient division of labour for his team, separating the processes of cutting coal from that of propping the shaft and assigning each to different workers.

This achievement was immediately welcomed by the Kremlin as an example to other Russian workers, who were being urged to give their all to the Stalin government's drive to overtake the production of western capitalism. Anyone who matched Stakhanov's feat was named, in his honour, as a Stakhanovite and the movement was quickly given official blessing. In November 1935, Stalin himself told the First All Union Conference of Stakhanovites that they were:

. . . a movement which is smashing the old technical standards, because they are inadequate, which in a number of case is surpassing the productivity of labour of the foremost capitalist countries, and is thus creating the practical possibility of further consolidating socialism in our country . . .   

Within six months, some industries had as much as a quarter of their workforce in the movement. All over Russia, workers were hailed as heroes of the tractor factory, or heroines of the cowshed or the beet field. The apex of achievement was to be graded a member of the Brigade of Socialist Labour, or even better—such was the Kremlin's distortion of the dictionary of socialism—the Brigade of Communist Labour. There was, as we might expect, rather more to it than that, in this country which was supposed to be "consolidating socialism" the Stakhanovites were motivated by the established capitalist incentives of material advantages. They were rewarded with special bonuses which could yield a wage ten or 15 times the basic, with better housing, recreational facilities and the like.

The official version of the movement was that it was a spontaneous expression of devotion to the concept of socialism in one country and a selfless determination to see it triumph over the hostile capitalist world outside. It is nearer the truth to say that the Stakhanovites were deliberately encouraged by the Party as a pressure group for a general increase in productivity—or in other words a general intensifying of exploitation. (In other countries, another name for them might have been blacklegs). Far from being spontaneous, the Stakhanovites were carefully selected for stardom and then, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, set up with specially favourable working conditions to give them the best chance of turning out higher production statistics. Managers were naturally keen on the idea, which reflected well on them, and were not above a little  illicit adjustment of the books (just as production control managers in this country have been known to fiddle quota to ensure the highest possible production bonus) in order to have some of their workforce admitted to the ranks of the movement.

The Stakhanovites came into this because, by averaging their production against that of the rest of the workers, it was possible to impose an increase in production norms—to demand that more be produced in the same working time. During 1936, norms were raised in every industry—for coal they went up between 22 per cent and 27.5 per cent; for iron and steel between 13 per cent and 20 per cent; for textiles between 35 per cent and 50 per cent; for building between 54 per cent and 80 per cent; and so on. Like a mass panic, the preoccupation with production quotas took hold and spread, and norms proliferated until there were literally millions of them laying down how much Russian workers should turn out in a given time. It is easy to imagine the glorious complexities this must have created for the bureaucrats, the smug satisfaction of the Stakhanovites, but what fear and anxiety for the ordinary workers. It is less easy to imagine how this elitist, exploitative insult could have been passed off as socialism, as a society where each will produce according to ability and consume according to need. In any case the norms were often as crazy and illusory as the propaganda behind them; during 1937/8 some 60 per cent of Russian workers could not meet their quota, let alone come up to the Stakhanovite standards.

This harassment, on top of what workers expect as the everyday burden of exploitation, was imposed on the Russian workers with scant opposition from, and often with active support of, their trade unions. During Stalin's rule (and of course it is still so today) the official line was that, as Russia was a workers' state, the workers did not need to be protected from it. The unions role was to lubricate their members' exploitation by stimulating production, organising something chillingly called "socialist competition" in the workplace, ensuring that the contributions kept coming in for the "voluntary" state bonds. Seventeen years elapsed between the 9th and 10th congresses of Russian trade unions, during which time the screw of exploitation was tightened by measures such as the abolition of the seven hour day and the laying down of harsh penalties for absenteeism and lateness.

In spite of everything, the Russian workers did not take the Stakhanovite insult lying down. There was much resentment at the attention paid to them, when their apparently higher production was due to unusually favourable conditions and in any case resulted from the joint efforts of their anonymous, unhonoured, work mates. There was anger also at the privileges reserved for the Stakhanovites. In the time honoured tradition of Luddism, there was some sabotage of production and some cases of assault, even perhaps of murder, of Stakhanovites. Reality was, then, nastily different from Stakhanov's airy boast that "For the Soviet people work has become a pleasure".

For fifty years, Stakhanov's image has persisted as an example to the rest of the workers to co-operate enthusiastically in their being robbed of the fruits of their labour. Russian television, commemorating the movement's anniversary, emphasised the continuing usefulness of the Stakhanovite principles and Donetsk miners agreed to put in some extra work as their contribution to the celebrations. Gorbachev recently warned industrial officials that they would be sacked if they did not find new ways of increasing output instead of relying on injections of state investment. "We cannot and will not support those leaders who are oriented towards previous ways, old fashioned norms" he said. Hard work; moderate wages; patriotism; a devotion to the interests of the class which represents us; these are, and have long been, of value to the capitalist class throughout the world. That is why Thatcher launched her campaign about "Victorian values". It was why the employers in this country welcomed the hysteria of "I'm Backing Britain" in the 1960s. It is why the capitalist media praise the "common sense" of the workers who volunteer for wage cuts and harder work so that their employers' profits may survive.

These similarities between Russia and other, avowedly capitalist, states can be explained only on the understanding that all of them operate under the same social system. Whatever superficial differences there are between one country and another capitalism, with its social structure based in ownership by one class and exploitation of the other, exists in Russia just as in America, Britain, Germany, Japan . . . And no class in human society can hope to achieve its emancipation by tightening the screws on itself.

Ivan

The Commune in Paris (1905)

From the April 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

MEETING IN LONDON.

[Specially reported THE SOCIALIST STANDARD]

The thirty-fourth anniversary of the establishment of the Paris Commune was celebrated by a well attended meeting at Sydney Hall on Sunday, 19th March. The meeting was organised by the Battersea Branch of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, and was creditable alike to the occasion which it commemorated and to the members of the Branch responsible for its organisation.

Comrade Crump presided, and after a short opening address called upon H. Neumann to deliver the first speech.

Neumann said that in honouring the memory of the men and women who participated in the struggle in '71, they were honouring some of the bravest pioneers of the movement of the working-class. The event known to history as the Commune of Paris was one of the most glorious, if saddest, in the annals of the proletariat. It showed the heroism of which the working-class was capable, while at the same time it demonstrated the fiendish brutality, the incredible cowardice and the all pervading treachery of the dominant class. Thirty or forty years ago, of course, the workers of France were in a different position to that which obtains to-day. Then Socialism was understood but by a few, but dim as was their perception of the nature of the class-struggle, confused as were their notions as to the economic reconstruction of society, the workers who in Paris in '71 raised the red flag over the Hotel de Ville and proclaimed the rights of labour, gave unmistakable evidence of the powers that were latent in the proletariat. When, through the incompetence and treachery of the French bourgeoisie, Paris had been occupied by the Prussians, the discontent of the metropolitan populace was great, but that discontent, though great, was ill-defined. Nobody, or at any rate no considerable section of the people, knew precisely what ought to be done, but when the corrupt Thiers government sought treacherously to disarm the National Guard, that is to say the working-class of Paris, some of the doubts were solved, and the workers, in successfully baffling the attempt to steal their cannon, were first thrown on the defensive and afterwards brought to a position when they had no alternative but, on the flight of the cowardly Theirs and his minions to Versailles, to set up the Commune and assert their rights such as they understood them to be. The working-class government of Paris under the Commune lasted only a few months. It was easy enough to see now that the Commune was doomed from the outset; but though the Commune failed and was deluged in a sea of blood, the lessons to be derived from the struggle were of first importance. They had heard a lot of talk nowadays, even from some professed Socialists, about the necessity of proceeding to revolution via reform, but let them learn a lesson from the Commune. How often had the Commune sent representatives to the capitalist government at Versailles for the purpose of establishing truces or entering into negotiations for the adjustment of their differences? Did not the working-class of Paris ask brother Capital at Versailles to arbitrate ? And what was brother Capital's reply? Thiers said there was to be no negotiation: he wanted the unconditional surrender of Paris. Surely if there was any truth in the contention that reforms were to be got from the capitalist class, here was an occasion on which a great opportunity was afforded to that class of granting "palliative" measures, and avoiding bloodshed; but what occurred? The material interests of the masters were threatened by an armed section of the working-class, the class-feeling and class-hatred of the bourgeois for the proletaire were aroused, and instead of granting reforms the capitalists waded ankle deep in the blood of the Parisian workers. Let the workers prepare themselves in the school of revolution to deal with the impending collapse of capitalist society.

F. C. Watts spoke next. It was a good thing to hold these Commune meetings. To many, even. the word "Commune," meant upheaval, anarchy and bloodshed; but to Socialists the Commune signified the fight between the working-class and the capitalist-class. They acted wisely and well. Schemes were set afoot for opening the disused factories, by handing them over to be worked co-operatively by the workers, and schemes for forming communes in other parts of France were promoted, but owing to the superior force of circumstances these and other proposals did not fructify. The Commune, however, was a great example of the international solidarity of the working-class. One of the, soldiers of the Commune, while at his post on a barricade, was asked what he was dying for. "Human solidarity" was the answer. That brave worker, dying for the brotherhood of man, was an example of what the Commune stood for. The Commune showed more clearly than any other movement that when the working-class really stand for their own, when they Commune, far from implying crime, denoted the absence of crime, for while the Commune held sway, a man or woman was safer in Paris with the Communards than in Versailles with the French Government, with its forgers, swindlers, and nondescript hangers on. Crime there was, but not on the part of the workers. The charge of incendiarism had been made, but when the working-class, driven to desperation, burned the public buildings, they did so because the Versailles Government cared more for the public buildings than for the lives of the people. The difficulties the Commune had to face were hardly appreciated. They were fighting their own countrymen outside the walls, with spies and traitors within, but notwithstanding these difficulties the Paris Commune, in many respects, really menace the interests of the capitalist-class, that class will use every means to crush the working-class movement. The capitalists resolved that they would crush the canaille and wipe out the whole breed. But though they succeeded in crushing the Commune, they failed in wiping out the working-class movement, which was immeasurably stronger to-day than it was then. The working-class movement, though it vigorously asserted itself in '71, did not, of course, begin at that time, for in '48, while not near so ripe as that movement was in '71, they became troublesome to their masters, and instituted the Social Republic. A quarter of a century produced changes, for in '71 the working-class to a certain extent realised that not alone must the political machinery be controlled but that industry likewise must be controlled. They realised, moreover, not fully perhaps, but anyhow more fully than before, that the master-class and not the foreigner was the enemy. As Karl Marx had said, there must fee no truce between the working-class and the master-class of France and of every country, and as heralding that great coming struggle of classes the memory of the Commune would always be cherished by the working-class.

A. Anderson, who followed, said that viewed from the standpoint of the working-class there was no revolution in '48, nor could it be said that there was a revolution 'in,'71. The upheavals of these periods were certainly not working-class revolutions, for despite the fact that the workers took part in these movements, their objective was not the advancement of the material interest of the working-class, and the Social Revolution would be a failure unless the Socialists saw to it that they had behind them the well organised support of the working-class. To get an example of what a revolution really meant that movement which culminated in France in 1789 would have to be studied. Then the whole of society was stirred to its roots by social development acted upon by the litterateurs and champions of the rising middle-class. Prior to '89 the bourgeoisie had diffused that knowledge which was necessary to dispel the old ideas of property, and by an educational propaganda the peasants through their material interests were enlisted on the side of the new order. The peasants burned the castles and the leases of the feudal aristocracy, whose reign was speedily brought to an end. The Voltaires and the Rousseaus of the middle-class had well prepared the ground and the bourgeois revolution triumphed. With regard to the working-class, they were not a political force at all before '71, and the Commune marked the baptism of fire of the working-class in the political field. The events associated with the Commune showed clearly that the capitalist-class is the most cowardly class that ever figured in the world's history,. They fled from Paris to save their skins, while the working-class were compelled to rise and take hold of the reins of government. A great deal had been said about the shooting of hostages—it had been said there was a bloody week, a bloody month. But it took longer than a week or a month to satisfy the ferocity of the capitalist-class, for between January '71 and January '72 the number of insurgents arrested by the Thiers government was 38,578: of these 10,131 were sentenced to imprisonment, and 23,121 were shot. Let the revolutionists of to-day teach the-workers that while for their own ends the Liberal and Tory sections of the capitalist-class were playing with them, to deceive and decoy them into supporting capitalism by promises of reform here and promises of reform there, when the workers determined to fight for their own cause they would be shot down just as mercilessly as were the men and women of the Paris Commune. The Commune failed because the moment had not struck for the Social Revolution, and before that could be brought about a large amount of educational work must be done. The working-class must realise that it is not by putting men into power over their heads and imagining that in that way a revolution would be brought about from the top, that their emancipation would be accomplished. The working-class revolution must commence with the working-class itself, intelligently organised and well-disciplined. Then and now the heart of the people was sound, but revolutions were not questions of the heart, a revolution was a question of the brain. The duty of the hour was to educate the working-class into a knowledge of its power and mission, to clear away the confusions created by Liberalism and Toryism and thoroughly discredit the pretensions of spurious Labourism and alleged Socialism, The flag of the Commune was the heirloom of the working-class, and if the banner of Socialism was let fall by one organisation, another party must spring into existence to rear it aloft. The Socialist Party of Great Britain guarded the flag-in this country, and had never compromised. Let its members go forward with good cheer and carry the ensign of freedom into every town and hamlet in the land.

J. Fitzgerald then mounted the platform, and referring to the statement frequently made by capitalist writers, to wit that in establishing the Commune the workers had chosen the wrong time, said that this was a favourite argument of the upholders of capitalism. When the workers tried to better themselves, they were always told it was the wrong time. In fact never had the-workers done anything that was not done at the wrong time. In 1830 the capitalists were compelled to give the workers some political power, and in 1848 the workers had political power, and weapons to defend it. The men of property never relished the idea of seeing arms in the possession of the men of no property, and the reason was obvious. Theirs saw that if the capitalists of France were to continue as the dominant class, the working-class must no longer have arms, and it was decided that the National Guard must be disarmed. These arms were not the property of the government, as they were paid for by public subscription : and moreover at the surrender of Paris to the Prussians it was clearly stipulated that they were not to be given up. But Thiers ordered them to be seized, and in the night a detachment of the military marched on Montmartre to steal the cannon of the National Guard. The-attempted governmental theft was discovered just in time, and the Parisian working-class-refused to be disarmed. That was the beginning of the revolt. The working-class, however, had not then realised that the only people the working-class could rely upon were the working-class themselves, and so they were looking for help and counsel from some middle-class men who only succeeded in muddling matters. The establishment of the Commune came as a surprise to the rest of France, for when the Commune issued a manifesto to the other towns, the people in the provinces said they did not know the men who signed the manifesto. This in itself was sufficient evidence-that the ground had not been prepared, and even in quarters where perhaps assistance might have been expected the Paris workers were sadly disappointed. The radical left, the men who were "coming our way," were determined to help the working-class, and to-day should a crisis involving similar grave issues be prehistory would repeat itself, and the are "coming our way" would be found wanting. Let the Socialist working-class beware of these men. From the Commune many important lessons were to be derived, the first being the unreliability of any section of the capitalist-class . Secondly it showed clearly that the working-class ought to look askance at the students, the class that provided the material for future "intellectuals," for during the struggle in '71 the Latin quarter, the students' quarter, went over to Versailles, whence they heaped opprobrium on the working-class. We were told by "Social-Democratic" papers to-day that the students in Russia were aiding the working-class, but the converse would be nearer the truth. The Russian revolution now in progress was a middle-class revolution, and it was misleading to say that it was a working-class revolution. He (the speaker) found all doubts on the subject vanish when he heard that the students in Russia were in the movement. Another point to be noted in connection with Commune was the fact that the working-class had not half enough hatred nor half enough organisation. The working-class will learn yet that the class struggle is war to the knife against capitalism, a war which allows of no parleying with the enemy. Thiers demanded the unconditional surrender of Paris, and to-day in like language, The Socialist Party of Great Britain demanded the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class. Organisation was of prime importance, for without a sound organisation of the working-class there would be another Commune—another wholesale slaughter of the workers. He had heard someone once say that what they ought to do is to wait for a while and then "make a rush for it." Make a rush with what ? Without organisation nothing could be done. Again, they had been told by some by worthy people, even by a man of the stamp of Morris, that the soldiers would fraternise with the people. Did the soldiers fraternise in '71 ? No, they did not do so, nor would they do it to-day, for the soldiers of capitalism are kept apart from the people, and do not sympathise with the people. The soldier as a rule only learnt to obey orders and would shoot when told. The Commune also showed the nature of the "religion" of the disciples of Christ, as the treatment of the wounded by the Sisters of "Mercy" testified. Finally, the utter uselessness of "humanity" in dealing with the foes of the working-class was shown during the Paris struggle. Let them realise that there would be no successful revolution of the working-class until that class had studied well the economic and political history of the workers; until the memory of the working-class is well stored with a knowledge of what has been done to them by the ruling-class. Cluseret, who in a manifesto told the Paris workers that without military organisation the workers could be relied upon to defeat the best strategist, was a dangerous fool. Let them beware of the of to-day, and learn above all that there was no hope from "Labourism," "bogus Socialism,", or any other manifestation of capitalist politics.

E. J. B. Allen, who spoke next, wished to draw the attention of the workers to the fact that when the Commune rose, the capitalist-class who were previously divided, united against the working-class. The French capitalist government did not kill all the working-class because then the capitalists would have to their own work. In addition to the lack of organisation shown during the Commune, there was also the fact that the working-class did not understand its mission, but if the Commune was a failure it still stood as a beacon light for the workers of to-day. Let the watchword be "No compromise," for any movement that compromised was doomed to failure. 

C. Lehane said that it was indeed fitting that at meeting held to honour the men and women of '71 should be called together in Sydney Hall, the premises of the Battersea Branch of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. Battersea would go down in the annals of the Party as the Montmartre of the Socialist movement in Great Britain. As in '71 with the attempted seizure of the guns at Montmartre the Parisian working-class had the first brush with the enemy, so in 1904, with the passage of what was known as the "Battersea resolution," at Battersea, the working-class, of London exchanged the first shot with capitalism and all the forces of reaction. Well he remembered that engagement, for he was present when Ernest Allen, the previous speaker, who commanded the Battersea Battery on the 15th of May last, fired that well directed and penetrating shell which spread such confusion among the ranks of the enemy. As a result of that shot, The Socialist Party of Great Britain sprang into existence to fight and win the battle of the working-class. It had been pointed out that when the Commune issued a manifesto to the provinces calling upon them to act, the answer came that the manifesto was signed by unknown men. The manifesto issued on behalf of the "Battersea Meeting" calling for the formation of The Socialist Party of Great Britain was also signed by "unknown men," but he, the speaker, trusted that the response to that manifesto from provincial Britain would be more cheering and more decisive than that which came to the Paris manifesto in '71. Let the Socialists in the provinces rally to the support of those who in the metropolis were doing battle on behalf of the working-class of Great Britain and of the world. At the present time they should not calculate on any chance luck or happy accident, but they should go forward steadily with the work of organisation. Depending on the soldiers' to fraternise with the people in the hour of need was trusting to chance, for it was only a chance. Let them remember the "fraternising" that took place at Mitchelstown and at Featherstone. In Ireland the military police sent their billets-doux in the shape of bullets and in England the soldiers sent their love-messages at long range. The butchers of Featherstone served the soldiers with bullets capable of cutting through 35 inches of solid elm, and the capitalists would yet have reason to believe the workers were wooden-headed if they did not recognise that in the last resort they had nothing to rely on but their own well-disciplined strength.. Let them learn the coalescence of the French and German capitalist governments against the workings-class of Paris in '71, that the "patriotism" by which reactionaries tried to keep asunder the workers of all countries, was only a snare, and let them realise that the development of the economic forces demanded international action on the part of the working-class. International solidarity to-day transcended geographical boundaries, for rivers were bridged and mountains scaled by mankind in its onward march.

The meeting, having given hearty cheers for the Commune of '71, the Social Revolution to come, and The Socialist Party of Great Britain, was brought to a conclusion by the singing of "the International."

Letter From Europe: Communist Party's racist policy (1981)

The Letter From Europe column from the February 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

"STOP IMMIGRATION, official and illegal" is one of the campaign slogans for the French presidential elections next April of . . .  Georges Marchais, General Secretary and candidate of the French Communist Party (PCF). Those who imagine that a party calling itself "communist" must have some internationalist sentiments, however vague, will be surprised at this, but not those who know anything of the history and present policy of the PCF. The PCF is also in favour of the French H-bomb and has plastered walls throughout France with a poster saying "Produisons français" )"Produce French") and its anti-Germanism has to be seen and heard to be believed. So it is not really surprising that they should also have adopted a narrow, nationalist policy with regard to immigration.

On this issue their policy is virtually identical to that of the French government: no more immigration, encouragement of immigrants already in France to go back where they came from, more or less equal treatment for those who despite this still choose to stay. When Lionel Stoléru, the French Minister of Labour, declared on a visit to Metz in October that "there is no question of admitting a single new foreigner into France"(Républicain Lorrain, 15 October 1980), he expressed a sentiment the PCF echoes, only they accuse him of not being tough enough, of allowing illegal immigration to continue!

Two PCF councillors from the Paris suburb of Ivry-sue-Seine, interviewed in Le Monde of 4 November, were asked "You want a reduction in the number of immigrants. So you and Mr. Stoléru are in the same battle". They replied "He talks, but there are no measures". As if to confirm that this was not just the opinion of two low-ranking officials in a sensitive area, the next day the Political Bureau of the PCF repeated his view in an official declaration on "The Housing of Immigrant Workers" which was published in full in L'Humanité, the Party's official daily paper, on 6 November:

These workers have been called to France by employers and a government greedy for profits. Today, the government states that immigration must be stopped. We say, we communists, yes, immigration must be stopped otherwise new French and immigrant workers will be thrown out of work. This is in their mutual interest. But M. Giscard d'Estaing's government and his Minister Stoléru do not do what they say. They contribute to the organised illegal entry of workers with no social rights with the aim of depressing the rights of French workers. We insist that these practices be ended and that the traffickers who engage in them be repressed. 

There are about 4 million immigrant workers, with their families, in France. Most of them are from Portugal, Spain and Italy but an appreciable number are from North Africa, especially Algeria, with a few from other former French colonies—Senegal, Mali—as well as refugees and others from Indo-China. There are also people from France's remaining colonies in the West Indies (Guadeloupe and Martinique) and the Indian Ocean (Réunion) who are not officially immigrants since they are French citizens but in the popular mind are nevertheless still regarded as such. Prejudice against immigrants in France is directed overwhelmingly against Arabs and black people.

The immigrants in the Paris area have tended to settle, or rather have been forced by economic necessity to crowd together, in the poorer traditional working-class districts on the outskirts of Paris. Many of these districts have PCF mayors and it was from these mayors that the pressure came to launch the current PCF anti-immigration, not to say anti-immigrant campaign. The Secretary of the PCF federation in the Val-D'Oise department, Pierre Blotin, declared at a press conference at the beginning of October that "the rate of immigrants in the communist towns of Val-D'Oise is unacceptable and dangerous" (Républicain Lorrain, 10 October 1980). He complained that employers purposely directed immigrant workers towards PCF run towns rather than to better-off areas run by the other parties. The PCF leaders in the Val-de-Marne department on the other side of Paris took up this claim, alleging that the government's Prefects were also involved. But the prize in this anti-immigration auction must go to Lucien Lanternier, PCF mayor of Gennevilliers, just outside central Paris. He went so far as to organise a demonstration to demand that immigrants be housed in a empty block of flats up for sale in the nearby, posh suburb if Neuilly!* Interviewed in L'Humanité on 4th November, under the heading "Why Shouldn't Neuilly also Receive Some Immigrants?", he explained:

I learnt that the town of Neuilly, whose social composition is known to everyone, was going to put up for sale a large complex of about 30 apartments. I immediately wrote to the mayor of Neuilly as well as to M. Stoléru and the Prefect, for the sale to be suspended and for the apartments in question to be reserved for the rehousing of immigrant workers with large families who only aspire to live in decent conditions. M. Peretti [the mayor of Neuilly] informed me that he would meet me on 29 October but two days later, by telegram, he refused any meeting. He thus closed, with the agreement of M. Stoléru, the door to our propositions. The policy of racial and social segregation practised by the government and the elected representatives of the Right can thus be judged from the facts. This attitude is part of the Giscardian apartheid which wants to concentrate the immigrant workers in working class municipalities while certain towns and fine quarters are reserved for financial magnates and the rich. 

This is rather like the National Front in Britain demanding that Pakistanis be housed in Hampstead Garden Suburb in London rather than in Tower Hamlets! And of course it is pure demagogy on the part of the PCF mayor, though it could easily have back-fired since many "native" French workers from Gennevilliers might also have liked to be rehoused in Neuilly. The PCF mayor had in fact found a very clever way of indicating to those who had elected him that he understood their sentiments of "Arabs Out" and "Blacks Go Home" without actually having to utter such words himself. For on paper the PCF (like the government) is opposed to racism, but actions such as that of the mayor of Gennevilliers clearly show that the PCF is determined to exploit anti-immigrant feelings to pick up a few cheap votes in the coming presidential elections. Unlike in Britain most immigrants in France don't have the vote; only those from colonies like Guadeloupe and Martinique do. But in any case the PCs of these islands are not urging their supporters to vote for Georges Marchais, for a quite unrelated reason admittedly (they want independence from France).

Although the PCF avoids crude expressions of anti-immigrant prejudices it sails as close to the wind here as it can. The Politbureau statement published in L'Humanité openly states at one point that the interests of French workers must come before those of immigrant workers:

Communist elected representatives employ considerable efforts to harmonise the interests of all. Immigrant workers recognise what has been done in the municipalities run by communists. But in no way can this be done to the detriment of French workers (our emphasis).   

This, no doubt, is why the statement went on to say "we approve the communist elected representaives who limit the global volume of social aid to immigrants". In other words, when it comes to distributing the meagre aid for the destitute for housing, schooling, and so on immigrant workers must expect to be treated by PCF-controlled councils as second-class citizens. "Britons First" as the National Front in Britain would say.

Adam Buick

*Since this article was written the British press has reported yet further escalation in the PCF anti-immigrant campaign. Paul Mercieca, PCF mayor of Vitry-sur-Seine (Val de Marne department), in a bid to prevent some African immigrants being transferred to his town from a nearby non-PCF controlled area, went so far as to arrange for the vandalisation of the hostel set aside to receive them. (see The Times, 29 and 30 December 1980).