Orange myths (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is Sunday 7 July. In Portadown this morning a riot took place and working people, including policemen, were hurt; some were arrested. Another battle  . . . another myth . . . another contribution to the bitterness and hatred that divide the working class in Northern Ireland.

The government and police and wanted to ban this morning's march through the exclusively Catholic Obins Street district. The marchers, Orangemen going to church accompanied by bands playing sectarian tunes and flaunting sectarian symbols, refused to obey the Government, the police and the law despite their vociferous protestations of loyalty to all three. The police - probably working on the assumption that they could cope more easily with the Catholics than they could with the loyalists - gave in and the march took place. The holy men of the Orange Order marched defiantly through Obins Street to communicate with their god.

The Orange Order intend repeating this exercise on the twelfth and thirteenth of July. The police have issued a notice proscribing these marches and - to compound this lunacy - the Catholics have announced their intention of staging parades at the same time and on the same date.

Paisley and several other loyalist politicians and hate-mongering clergymen have let it be known that they will defy any Government order banning the march. In their eyes the issue is sufficiently serious to justify a civil war. Serious enough to endanger the lives, homes and liberties of working people, for, make no mistake, it is workers who would be asked to slaughter one another. Not because they suffer poverty or live in slums; not because they endure the miseries of unemployment or have mean lives. No. Paisley, who has used bigotry and hatred to become one of the best paid politicians in Europe, and his friends don't experience these things. What they are asking Protestant workers to spill their blood for is something really wholesome and important: the right to march through avenues of Catholics reminding them that their forbears were defeated in 1690!

We would ask our Protestant fellow workers to examine some of the historical facts that make up the myths and damned lies for which their leaders want them to kill and be killed. We have, many times, in the past, exposed the myths that make up the "principles" behind the IRA murder campaign and the fallacious reasoning used to inveigle Catholics into support of Irish Nationalism, so it cannot be said that in exposing the lies and deceptions underlying Unionism we have any sympathy whatsoever with nationalism or republicanism. Our purpose is to disabuse workers on both sides of the notions and fictions that keep them divided; to show that neither Unionism nor nationalism have anything to offer the working class and, to bring them to an examination of the cause of their real, common problems.

King James and King Billy

James II succeeded to the throne of England following the death of his brother, Charles II, in 1685. A convert to Catholicism and a sickly pious man - following a life of profligacy and sexual abandonment - he was determined to re-establish the power of Catholicism in his kingdom. Within three years of becoming king, James' policies had provoked fierce opposition in England and fear and distrust among the Protestant population of Ireland. In 1688 seven members of the English parliament petitioned James' son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange, to become king of England. James reacted by allying himself with the French king, Louis XIV, who manipulated the situation to his own advantage by making England a semi-dependent of his own kingdom.

According to Orange fiction, James was the agent of Rome and popery. Nothing could be further from the truth. In seeking the help and support of Louis XIV, King James was allying himself with the pope's bitterest enemy. Louis, bent on European domination, had made Lorraine a subject state, had attacked Genoa and attempted to sack Rome. The pope of the period, Innocent XI, was outraged and humiliated. In 1686 some of the European powers, alarmed at the strength and ferocity of the French, entered into the Treaty of Augsberg. This Treaty, established specifically to resist the marauding armies of Louis XIV, was subscribed to by the king of Spain, the Emperor of Germany and by William, Prince of Orange. The nominal head of the Treaty powers was Pope Innocent XI. 

So, rather than being an enemy of the pope, as Orange mythology asserts, "King Billy" was the pope's ally when, in November 1688, he invaded England and his armies were partially provisioned and equipped by the powers of the Augsberg Treaty - and he had the official backing of the Roman Catholic church! Contrary to myth, when they fought in the Battle of the Boyne on 30 June and 1 July 1690, King Billy was an ally of the pope and King James an ally of the pope's most bitter enemy, Louis of France. Indeed, when news of King William's victory over King James at the Boyne percolated through to Rome the pope ordered the singing of a special Te Deum in St. Peter's and similar celebrations and rejoicings were held in Catholic churches in Madrid, Brussels and Vienna.

James was a Catholic, of course, and William a Protestant but, as always, the politics and economics underlying their conflict rose above religion.

Religious liberty

What about the notion that King Billy established religious liberty in Ireland and saved the Protestants from persecution? Again, Orange fable stands historical fact on its head.

It was James, as the legitimate incumbent of the English throne, who signed the Acts of the Dublin Parliament, giving freedom of religion to all citizens. King Billy, too, when he agreed the Treaty of Limerick in October 1691, accepted that the various religious denominations should continue to enjoy the freedom of religious worship established in the reign of Charles II and under the Acts of the Dublin Parliament agreed by James. Later he established the Episcopalian Church and effectively outlawed not only Catholicism but Presbyterianism -  the religion of the great majority of Protestants in Ireland.

A Presbyterian clergyman in 1691 was liable on conviction of delivering a sermon or celebrating the Lord's Supper to a term of imprisonment and fine of £100 and they were similarly punished for performing marriage rites. There are many recorded convictions for these "offences" during the period, especially in the counties of Antrim and Down. In 1694 the Williamite government passed a Test Act which effectively precluded Presbyterians from offices under the Crown and a further Act of 1713 set a punishment of imprisonment for Presbyterians convicted of schoolteaching and banned the marriage of Presbyterians and members of the Established church.

The History of Irish Presbyterianism gives the political and economic reasons for the persecution thus:

Presbyterians, having no political power, had to submit to political persecutions. The feudal system which transferred ownership of the soil from the toiler to the landlord was one of many evils introduced by the power of England.

King Billy was the chief agent of that feudal power which persecuted, viciously and equally, both Catholic and Presbyterian in Ireland.

Driven out of Ireland

Such was the "civil and religious liberty" enjoyed by the then, as now, numerically strongest Protestant denomination in Ireland that, in the first half of the eighteenth century, almost a quarter of a million Ulster Presbyterians were driven out of the country. These went mainly to America, where many played a distinguished role in the war of the American colonists to gain political and economic independence from England.

On both sides of today's sectarian divide it is ordinary working people, usually the very poorest, who are the victims of both the republican and loyalist myths. The hate mongers and fable peddlers don't live in the slums and are rarely victims of the violence they so actively promote.

When Presbyterians march to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne on "The Twelfth" and the victory of King Billy over his equally degenerate father-in-law, King James, they are commemorating a victory which was as opposed to the interests of their forbears in 1690 as it is to their own class interests in 1985.

Richard Montague

Belfast Branch WSP

A Great Exaggeration (1972)

Book Review from the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control by Maurice Brinton. Solidarity. 25p.

Built-in to capitalism is a conflict between the capitalists who own the means of production and the wage-earning or working class who operate them. This conflict goes on without its participants being necessarily or fully aware of its nature and its most obvious signs are strikes over wages and working conditions. However, this is not just a wages struggle; it is a struggle between the two classes for control over the means of production. In its highest form the workers consciously organise to win political power with the aim of transferring the ownership of the means of production from the capitalist class to the community as a while.

This stage has yet to be reached, but incidents in working class history already show that the class struggle is more than mere wage bargaining. When, under exceptional circumstances such as occur after wars, the capitalists' control over their factories has broken down the workers have themselves on a number of occasions taken over the means of production and through trade unions or factory committees tried to keep production going. Such "workers' control" was not Socialism nor could it have led to Socialism because most of the workers involved had never been convinced socialists. The State has always been able to re-assert capitalist control.

The classic example of this was the occupation of the factories in Northern Italy in 1921, but before that in Russia in 1917 something similar had happened. Engineering workers in Petrograd in particular took over control of the factories where they worked. Brinton's book is an account of how between 1917 and 1921 the Bolshevik government suppressed this "workers' control" and instituted instead their own state (capitalist) control.

This process of suppression began soon after the Bolsheviks had seized power in November 1917 which clearly showed up right from the start (rather than from the death of Lenin) their anti-working class character. These facts have long been known to Socialists but will probably be new to Trotskyists and their ilk.

The book suffers from a number of defects, not least that when he conies to theorise Brinton shares the illusions of the anarchists, syndicalists and dissident Bolsheviks he quotes. He does not bring forward any evidence to show that "workers' control" enjoyed the general support of the workers he seems to suggest it did. He ignores the problems the partisans of "workers' control" would have faced had they triumphed, in view of the economic backwardness of Russia as a whole where four-fifths of the population were peasants who had never been near a factory.

To see, as Brinton does, the Russian Revolution as essentially an unsuccessful attempt to establish "workers' control" is a great exaggeration. The occupation of the factories was only incidental to the seizure of political power by the Bolsheviks and their use of it to sweep away out-dated obstacles to the development of capitalism in Russia — and was only made possible by the same breakdown of law and order which allowed the Bolsheviks to seize power.

The attempt to maintain "workers' control" was doomed to fail not only because of Russia's economic backwardness but also because of the lack of understanding of the Russian workers. Oddly enough at one point Brinton comes very near to expressing our view — and almost in our own words — of events in Russia in 1917:

"The year 1917 certainly saw a tremendous social upheaval. But it was a utopian dream to assume that socialism could be achieved without a large proportion of the population both understanding and wanting it. The building of socialism . . . can only be the self conscious and collective act of the immense majority."

We do not mind people making the analysis we pioneered but we would prefer this to be openly acknowledged rather than disguised by the kind of inaccurate account of our position given by Brinton in his introduction.

Adam Buick

Class against class (2011)

From the June 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s exploitation that causes workers’ problems.

               

On an ultra-simplistic level we could say that capitalism in the persona of capitalists uses capital (in its basic form, money) to make a profit. By utilising capital in the form of property, equipment, machinery, investment or speculation the capitalist needs to employ members of the working class in order to increase the original capital for the benefit of the capitalist. This can only be done if the workers agree knowingly or unknowingly to their own exploitation.

Why exploitation? In the monetary world society we live in everyone has a need for money on a regular ongoing basis in order to secure the essentials of life. By accepting employment workers undertake to work (knowingly or unknowingly) part of the time for their own remuneration and part of the time in order to meet the capitalist’s need for reinvestment in their business and to augment their accumulation of profit.

There are three elements to the capitalist’s expectation in relation to employees. First, workers must be paid sufficient remuneration to keep them returning to work; the terms and conditions of work may change depending on the available source of labour. Second, the capitalist’s own ongoing costs must be met – replacement machinery, upkeep, purchase of materials etc. And third, there must be a sufficient element of profit for the capitalist as his incentive to continue. As a business gets bigger, employing a larger workforce, the accumulated ‘extra’ time (over and above the length of time required to earn the wages) from this extra workforce gets added to the capitalist’s pot, increasing their profit, not the workers’ pay packets. When demanding a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay who stops to ask about the capitalist’s own fair day’s work? Capitalism labour to make profit, to make big money for a few at the expense and from the labour of the majority, i.e. exploitation.

When the recognition hits home that money is the recurring impediment, the fundamental issue in the daily life of the worker awareness grows of all the many problems it causes. Whatever issue is under consideration – be it getting to and from work, getting married, having children, repair and maintenance of personal property, heating the home sufficiently, having a holiday or a reasonably comfortable retirement – the primary issue is a financial one. Money is the issue.

A season ticket for premier league football is beyond the means of most of us, as is a ticket for the opera, a family trip on an open-top London bus, or even higher education for a growing child (add your own would-be-nice list). For the worker it’s a constant prioritising of seemingly never-ending constraints in the form of utility bills, car payments and servicing, rent or mortgage – all eating away at the possibility of a financially stress-free enjoyable family day out, let alone a financially stress-free month until the next pay day rolls around.

None of the simple pleasures mentioned above are beyond the capitalists’ reach however. They, the tiny minority, can have it all. But, actually, who is dispensable, who indispensable? In a monetary society the worker needs the capitalist and likewise the capitalist needs (some) workers. Notice just how unbalanced this equation is: there are always more looking for work than can find it, whilst those seeking workers have an almost inexhaustible supply. However, in a world of voluntary work and free access (a post-money society) the worker will have no need for the capitalist who will then need to join the rest of us and become a contributor too to fit into the new, inclusive and cooperative society.

Whether from an individual or community standpoint economic problems greatly impinge on social life. Individuals are severely limited within the system as to the impact they can have on their overall situation. Similarly, communities are limited by their local budgets as to the overall impact they can have on the general quality and quantity of facilities available for their residents. Any so-called political ‘solutions’ that are offered or imposed to ease social problems are almost invariably economically based (because what can be done without money?) and limited in scope (because of economic limitations) thus not offering genuine, complete, satisfactory solutions at all.

It’s a vicious circle of individual or community issues requiring solutions which invariably need economic input. The entanglement of social/political issues with economic concerns keeps us bogged down in an illusory, ostensible, false position, one we are led to believe has no alternative– an apparent but deceptive case. Inequality of access, whether to goods or services, is largely an economic factor alienating sectors of society one from another.

The main factor – exploitation – being the element that needs to be eliminated if we are to win the class war, let’s ask ‘who needs money most?’ The working class can win this fight when they recognise the antagonism between the capitalists’ need and their own needs. Money is not what we need – it’s the things it buys us we need. Capitalists do need it – it’s the basis of their accumulation. We win the class war when we plan together for a society of voluntary work and common ownership that will overcome the constraints of capitalism and rid ourselves of the divisive class system. It’s not a moral issue but a simple material fact: the principles of capitalism and socialism being opposite and antagonistic.

Janet Surman

World View: China – fighting back (2002)

From the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The leaders in China no longer even pretend to make Marxist noises – they are too busy trying to oversee the country's fuller integration into the world capitalist system. Despite the rate of growth in the Chinese economy, this is no easy task, and moreover China's workers need to be kept in their place as well, since capitalism inevitably produces resistance on the part of the exploited.

It is easy to underestimate the extent of China's involvement already in global manufacturing: the country now produces half the world's toys and two-thirds of its shoes, for instance. In December 2001 China became a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), part of the system set up by the major capitalist countries to try and ensure that the world economy operates without slumps and on the basis of “free” trade. Chinese imports and exports should increase, but under WTO rules, government subsidies to many industries will have to be phased out and various tariff barriers reduced. The Chinese government accepts that the 10th Five Year Plan (2001-5) will involve much economic disruption, including at least three million workers – and possibly far more – being laid off from state-owned companies. The benefits of all this will accrue to the 0.6 percent of the population who own private businesses and the 2.6 percent who are top government officials, not to the ordinary workers.

A number of recent reports have emphasized the resentment felt by many Chinese workers at the way they are treated and the way their bosses line their own pockets. In the north-eastern city of Daqing, once presented as a model for industrial development, workers at a petroleum company have been staging a sit-in to protest against a buy-out package. Oil production has been reduced, as more oil is imported and the main oil company gets listed on the Hong Kong and New York stock exchanges. Elsewhere in Daqing, a construction company simply told its employees not to come to work, as there was no money to pay them. The were not sacked, so had no chance of receiving state benefits. To make ends meet, some were forced to sell vegetables in street markets. They have staged demonstrations, but have not linked up with the oil workers, as they know little of what is happening elsewhere in the city. The government-controlled press, and the lack of any real workers' organisations, make cooperation among different groups of workers very difficult.

Elsewhere, disputes at work are reaching staggering levels, as can be seen from a few examples. In the large city of Shanghai, the number of disputes has increased by 40 percent a year. In February 2000, over 20,000 miners in Liaoning province attacked government buildings and fought with police for three days, as a response to the mine where they worked going bankrupt and their being offered an unacceptable redundancy package. In January 2001, hundreds of workers from a chemical company in Jilin province that was being shut down blockaded a major road for three days in freezing temperatures. But again, these actions tend to be taken in isolation from each other.

In the “Special Economic Zones”, especially in the south of China, overseas companies have been lured in by the promise of tax breaks and cheap labour. The result has been the creation of sweatshops for the likes of Nike, where working conditions are as bad as anywhere in the Philippines or Indonesia. Such places are death traps, with minimal fire precautions and emergency exits often being locked shut. This is the kind of freedom that the advocates of free trade are really talking about. But operating in China can present unexpected problems for overseas companies: for instance, the Italian sportswear manufacturer, Diadora, set up a factory in central China, only to find it often producing more than they had ordered and selling the surplus to local shops at lower prices.

In addition to cheap labour power, the earth's capitalists are attracted by the prospect of China as a market – who can ignore the chance to get at a billion potential new customers? Big US-style shopping malls now exist in most cities, and international brands are well-known. At an elite level, China is the world's largest importer of French brandy. The market for personal computers is growing rapidly, and one prediction is that by the end of 2002 China will be the second largest market (after the US). Apple, who currently have just 0.2 percent of this market, are frantically trying to improve their market share.

Socialists have long pointed out that the Maoist victory of 1949 was not socialist, that ordinary folk were not in charge of the so-called People's China. Surely nowadays nobody can deny that China is just another capitalist country.

Paul Bennett

When Adam Delved and Eve Span (2004)

Book Review from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Adam Delved and Eve Span: A History of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. by Mark O’Brien, New Clarion Press, Cheltenham, 2004.

The publishers say that “the aim of this book is a modest one”, and there are in fact only 86 pages of text. Nevertheless, O’Brien describes the revolt, and its background and origins, in reasonable detail. Of the author, the publishers state that he is a “lifelong socialist and trade unionist”, and then give the game away by adding that “he has stood twice as a Socialist Alliance candidate in Liverpool”. And it does show in parts of his narrative.

   

By the end of the fourteenth century, feudalism was breaking down. The plague earlier in the century had decimated the population, with between a third and a half dying. Many former peasants moved into the towns. Artisans and others demanded, and often achieved, higher wages. The government attempted to keep wages down by law, but with little success. The Church was in crisis, and was corrupt. Jon Wycliffe and, to a greater extent, priests such as John Ball, preached a kind of primitive Christian communism: hence, when “Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?” And, moreover, the Hundred Years’ War with France was crippling the English state. The government attempted to increase the poll tax by three groats. As O’Brien comments, “England was seething with unrest.”

   

By 1381, a peasants’ revolt was inevitable. All over Essex and Kent and, later, beyond the peasants and their supporters organised their army, first  taking Rochester Castle. John Ball had, for some time, been sending letters as well as travelling from town to town, preaching rebellion couched in allegorical and religious sentiments. Wat Tyler, until then unknown, organised an army of probably 30,000 peasants who, on 12 June, arrived on Blackheath, south of the Thames.

   

O’Brien details the taking of London, the capture of the Tower and the attempts of the government, and the king, to placate the peasants. A number of aristocrats and government officials were captured and then beheaded by the rebel army. The showdown between Tyler and the king and his representatives occurred on 14 June, at Mile End, when Tyler was stabbed and, shortly after, taken from St. Bartholemew’s Hospital and beheaded.

   

Meanwhile, as O’Brien writes, the revolt had been spreading throughout Kent, Essex and East Anglia. But by this time, the government had been able to cobble together a few hundred disciplined troops. There were battles in Cambridge. Rebels gathered in Billericay in Essex, but were soon forced to retreat to Colchester. As O’Brien notes, by 15 June, “the revolt was in full flow”. In Norfolk, events were proceeding apace. Incidentally, on the same day that Geoffry Lister mustered rebels on Mousehold Heath near Norwich, on 17 June, my ancestor Thomas de Newell of Craneworth in  the Hundred of Mitford, was indicted for “depriving John de Harlyngg and Adam Galyon of their goods and chattels”. He was, like many others, almost certainly hanged or beheaded.

   

Inevitably, as Mark O’Brien demonstrates, the government won the day and defeated the peasants in battle. The chronicles of the time tell of the execution of 7000 peasants “by the axe and the noose”. Reliable estimates have since reckoned the final toll to be about 2000.

   

What then was the outcome of the revolt of 1381? O’Brien says that it played a decisive role in putting an end to villeinage and the economic base of feudalism in England. It further weakened the power of the Catholic Church. In more recent times, it captured the imaginations of historians as well as writers such as William Morris, who wrote The Dream of John Ball, and whom O’Brien quotes. He also mentions a number of works written by Stalinist and Trotskyist writers, although he does not appear to be conversant with a much longer fictionalised account, English Episode, by Charles Poulsen written in 1946. For those interested further in the revolt and its background, I would recommend G.M.Trevelyan’s England in the Age of Wycliffe despite his “Whiggish prejudices”.

Peter E. Newell

Building profits versus building homes (Part 1) (1984)

From the Winter 1984 issue of the World Socialist

1. THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY UNDER CAPITALISM

Housing is one problem of capitalism which has been a constant source of difficulty and is part and parcel of working class life. Few members of our class escape some aspect of housing trouble.Whether it is the complete crisis of homelessness, or the stress involved in keeping our homes through paying rent or repaying a loan. Most members of our class live in relative poor housing, some of which is within the bounds of adequacy, while the rest reflects the worst in living conditions.

Our quality of housing acts as good guide to the degree of suffering associated with the many other problems inherent in our class position such as bad health, poor nutrition and inadequate education. We can therefore accept that the problem of housing reflects the problems of capitalism. Accepting this, it is logical to assume that the solution to the housing problem is only attained through the solution of the problem of capitalism.

In the beginning an investigation into housing difficulties, one simple observation should help us overcome our surprise at the absurd nature of our findings: that production under capitalism, not least the production of buildings, is based on he ability to achieve a profit and not to fulfil human needs.

A HOUSING SHORTAGE?

The first fallacy to dismiss is the belief that “housing shortage” is the beginning and end of the problem. As it so happens, there is currently in some areas of the world severe “housing shortage” and this has been the case at different times throughout history. This is not however the source of the problem, because if it were it could be logically assumed that there was some intrinsic inability of society to meet the housing needs of its populus. It has had plenty of time and resources to do so , so this is clearly not the full story.

The problem in the economically developed parts of the world is one of “allocation”. In other words, how best the housing stock is to be distributed to meet human requirements. A scant observation shows that the ability to pay is the deciding factor in gauging the standard of housing to which you are entitled. A walk around the slum areas of your city will tell you that it is the elderly, the mobile poor and the immigrants who are concentrated in the poorest housing stock. It is no coincidence that these lowest financial groups live in the poorest housing conditions; housing conditions which least meet their needs—the elderly with no care facilities, and young children in high-rise flats. It is also important to realise that this group and others such as the homeless, mental patients and ex-prisoners—those who make the poorest section of our class—have little chance of housing themselves, and must accept “being housed”. The limitation on their freedom puts them in a more degrading position than the urban poor in the shanty towns of Latin America and elsewhere who have at least built their own homes, even though living in the most incredible poverty.

NO INHERENT INEFFICIENCY

Another fallacy which tends to cloud our conception of the issue is that which suggests that the housing problem has its basis in the inefficiency and lack of organisation of the building industry. It is true that this industry is not generally well organised in relation to output and the workers employed there; it is also true that at times it can operate in an inefficient manner. The fallacy is however that this is a cause of the housing problem rather than, like the housing problem itself, an effect of an inefficient and unrealisable social system. How can the construction industry possible be efficient when it is subjected to the demands of profitability in a system which produces an uneven flow of work, conflict between employers and employees, and most importantly, the fact that buildings which create the greatest profit in construction are usually the least socially useful and therefore take preference over housing?

In most of the economically developed parts of the world, the construction industry represents (if not the largest) one of the largest employers. Indeed if we include those involved in related industries such as building materials, the number of directly employed and dependent employed increases dramatically. In this current recession the economic stringency is clearly affecting the industry. With inflation of home prices coupled with the wage restraints of workers, our ability to buy property has been depleted. Of greater effect is the reduction of public spending of governments, as they are substantial clients for new buildings. In cases like American, most European countries and Britain, the government constitutes up to half of the building trade clientele. All these things have allowed for substantial unemployment in the industry: in many countries at any given time there is up to 12% unemployment, in this industry alone. This means that we have a situation where people still need housing while those who can build that housing are unemployed because of the economic recession. This is the best illustration against the argument of "house shortage" and it was shown in its most ironic form in Britain in the mid-1970s.

The National Federation of Building Trade Employers represents the largest private firms in the sector in the United Kingdom. In 1976 they initiated a campaign costing a quarter of a million pounds with the title of "Let us Build". The President of the Royal Institute of British Architects led the delegation of employers to the Prime Minister in an appeal for building work. So here was a situation where those who knew the business realised there was no shortage of workers, no shortage of materials, and no shortage in the demand for building work; there was however one thing missing—finance. Of course, these Building Trade Employers were not motivated by anything other than the threat to their profits, but their action did display the real source of the problem.

UNEVEN FLOW OF WORK

The building industries suffer the inevitable slump and peak cycle of capitalist society and therefore suffer the response of the owner of wealth to these trends. The study of building activity acts as a thermometer to the health of the capitalist economy.

Capitalists will, when profitability is high, move surplus value into fixed capital projects such as machinery, equipment and not least buildings. This opportunism of the possessors of capital is a good sign for the building industry and they have little difficulty in finding the resources, men and material, to meet the awakening demands. All is rosy in the garden. Conversely, when profitability is low for the capitalist, particularly the industrialist, in other words in times of economic depression, the first area to be abandoned is that of capital transfer into fixed capital projects. This is equally true of government activity as postponement or cancellation of construction is the easy, obvious way for a government to cut back on its spending. Furthermore, and of much more importance from a supply point of view, in a depression builders ignore housing construction to concentrate on the more profitable area of large building projects, often those of least social necessity.

The nature of the industry diminishes its ability to either prepare for or cope with the advent of slump economic conditions. The overwhelming majority of building firms are very small with 60% employing less than 8 people (taking European countries and America as studied areas), with only the top 2% each employing over 1,000 people. This reflects many features of the industry like localisation, the necessity of specialisation; and most importantly the necessary financial commitment if contractors are to take on the very large contracts. It is relatively easy to start a small building form as the initial capital outlay is low due to the low level of mechanisation and the number of hire firms for the more costly necessities such as mixers, scaffolding etc. All this means is that the small firms concentrate on small sites jobs, improvement work and similar projects. The other side of the coin is the traditionally high tendency for bankruptcy in building firms and in many countries up to a quarter of all industrial bankruptcies can be expected to come from building firms. All this reflects the fluctuation in the demand for building work and is not a general reflection on the inefficiency of these firms to do a good job. One major consequence is that this fluctuation of the building market means that most building firms hire and fire as demands dictate.

The type of unpredictable fluctuation suffered by the building industry puts it in a much more precarious position than most other areas of capitalist commodity production. It tends to attract peculiar action from an economic point of view. For example, one would expect (purely from the economic criteria of capitalism) that if there is inefficiency in an area of production increased investment would be undertaken to improve the productivity of labour. But, as this does not occur due to the accentuated fluctuation in work flow, we see a trend where, in most capitalist countries, the construction industry accounts for up to 8% of the Gross Domestic Product whilst only employing about 4% of all capital employed in production and service industries.

ROADS BEFORE HOMES

The conflict between profitability and human requirements is displayed in abundance in the construction sector. So what is the source of this conflict, how does it manifest itself, and most importantly, what is its effect on a basic human requirement—housing?

Although the methods employed in the building of houses are moving away from the traditional techniques to become more of an industrialised process, it has not been to a sufficient degree to tempt the big investment and concentration of resources from the large building contractors. Since the last world war, the major incentive for firms to put their profits back into fixed capital projects has been in civil engineering. Not coincidentally, this has been the area of the highest productivity in the same period; putting a nail in the coffin of the inherent inefficiency argument.

This trend has its roots firmly fixed in the evolution of capitalism. Contracts grew bigger with post-war development and the growth of motorways and high-rise buildings and the like. These contracts meant big capitalisation and therefore the big firms came into their own. These firms had the ability to invest in the heavy plant machinery necessary to take on these mammoth contracts and dig the foundations and understructures of the tall buildings. The large firms capable of such investment had a degree of monopoly in the new emerging sector where annual turnover and profits were attractive. This is the more productive sector. The only attraction left in housing for the big firms is in industrialised housing or the possibilities of land speculation in areas for home building, as the high cost of the specialised trades in traditional housing is unattractive to these firms. These large firms can also afford the expense of mobility to search for new and more profitable investment areas. The Middle East is an example of such an area, although indications are that there is currently a reduction in available projects there.

So what is left for the house building sector? The small-time builder picks up repair work and extensions and other small jobs connected with house maintenance. This is the life blood of the small one or two-man firms which might employ a couple of workers on a short-term basis as demand dictates. These types of small forms rarely get beyond this stage and few get the opportunity to become tender competitors in the speculative housing market. The larger firms are better able to meet the demands of the system-building of large housing projects, with the financial ability to buy large areas of land and to keep a large work-force of tradesmen occupied, as many have many houses at different stages of production. This type of housing is common to us all and is a feature of the large estates in the cities we live in. The result is large areas of monotonous housing similar and unimaginative. They quickly become modern slums with vandalism and miserable lives common features. The cause is commonly put down to being the disassociation of the designer to the building process, poor management practices and the inefficiency of competitive tendering, but this is just another way of saying that the job is completed in as short a time as possible as cheaply as possible, to ensure the maximum profit. 

NO WAY OUT WITHIN CAPITALISM

The relationship between the housing problem, the building industry and our economic system has hopefully become clearer. The facts tell us the industry suffers many problems which have been related to one thing: the contradictions and conflicts of the system of capitalism. It is us as members of the working class who best know the problems we go through in order to acquire and keep the place we live in and the standard of accommodation we are subjected to. From this experience it is abundantly clear that the provision of housing is not related to our needs. The facts also inform us that capitalism prevents this from happening because of the economic obligation forced on those who do the building. No one decides we should live in slums.

If our slums are a product of the inability of the building industry to supply to us the type of housing we want, then this is because the building industries are clearly responding instead to the realities of capitalism. That reality is the profit motive and the cost is that human needs will not be met. This will continue for as long as this system continues and you will suffer your housing conditions and be aware of the housing conditions of the rest of our class as long as this system continues.

Brian Montague (Ireland.)

Link to Part 2.

Shot at dawn (1985)

Book Review from the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the Sake of Example, Anthony Babington (Paladin £3.95)

A festival of glory greeted the First World War. All over Europe young men scrambled and wheedled to enlist in the armies and young women to give them a rousing send off. It did not take long for the dream to die—in the mud, the shellfire, the machine guns raking the wire, the indescribable deaths. It was, to be sure, more than human bodies and minds could bear; those who did stick it out managed through some trick of stoicism or more murderous frenzy called courage. A few did not have the knack and tried to opt out of the carnage. Which could be very serious for them; if they were caught they were liable under military law to execution, as happened to 346 British soldiers.

Their "crime: was, in the vast majority of cases, "desertion", with other offences such as "cowardice" much less common. Some of these men were reservists who had been recalled to the Army in 1914. Others were enthusiastic volunteers in Kitchener's New Army, which was all but liquidated on the Somme in 1916. Some were described by their commanding officer as "worthless" because of their consistent inability to strait-jacket themselves into military routine. One or two had been vagrant before joining the army, for them, at least, the outdoor life presumably held no problems but the repressive disciple did.

In many case, however, the executed men could not, even by British military standards (which in 1914/18 were particularly fierce, compared to those of other countries and to those imposed as recently as the Boer War) be described as cowards or slackers. They had endured years of trench warfare without cracking, until an especially horrible experience like being buried alive or having a companion's brains shell-splattered over their face. But the concept of shell shock was not popular. Medical examinations of the "offenders" were not an automatic part of the proceedings and in any case they could be contemptuously cursory: "There's a fellow here who ran away from the trenches. They are going to shoot him and they want me to say of he's responsible. I shan't be long" was how one doctor put it.

The field courts martial were hurried and incomplete affairs, for the defendant rarely had any adequate representation, such as might have been allowed in any magistrates court, and it was not unusual for no defence at all to be offered. A particularly inhuman procedure prevented the court announcing a guilty verdict straight away; instead it was passed up through the various layers of command, each one making  a recommendation even though they might have no direct experience or knowledge of the man. The final decision rested with the commander-in-chief who very often sent the soldier to execution, not on the circumstances of the case, but on his perceived need for a deterrent example.

Anthony Babington is a circuit judge; during the last war he was twice wounded and obviously sees no reason for fundamentally questioning a social system which requires workers to fight and kill each other to settle a dispute concerning the interests of their ruling class. What worries Babington are the peripheral issues, such as the long-distance bellicosity of those staff officers and the bigotry of doctors who ignored their Hippocratic oath in the interests of the war machine.

Babington's reasoning is flawed by the fact that war is not humane. By no rational process does a person attack and kill someone they have no contact with nor knowledge of. The discipline of a military life is designed to stamp out rationality under the boots on the parade ground, the uniforms, the saluting, the "regimental traditions". To deviate from that can be a threat to the whole grisly edifice, in the past often leading to the firing squad. Nowadays it is more likely to bring down a barrage of mental conditioning into an acceptance of the inhuman demands of capitalism.

For the Sake of Example is an unrelievedly gruesome illustration of the inherent madness of 1914/18, which should not persuade anyone to think that the subsequent wars have been any more sane or acceptable. Perhaps one of the unhappiest aspects of it is that all people at such times are under orders to behave as they do. They are—and what, under capitalism, could be more absolving?—only doing their job.

Ivan

The United States and imperialism (1986)

From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist

The history of US imperialism dates back to the times of the foundation of the nation. Whether making and breaking treaties with various American Indian tribes and "nations"—expropriating their lands—or in adventures in far-flung oceans and climes, US capitalism went all-out from its beginnings in muscling its way into world business and, in pursuit of such ends, into the internal affairs of other nations. To be sure, that is not exactly how such activity was always explained by the official moulders of public opinion. Like ruling classes everywhere, the capitalists of the United States were aided in their expansionism by their educational and religious henchmen who found high-sounding moral justification for their nation's conquests. It must be admitted, though, that the primary motivation has been amply clarified by at least some US historians (as well as by some politicians in their more honest moments—see "Foreign Policy for Beginners"). As a case in point it will be instructive to quote directly from The Rise of American Civilization by Charles and Mary Beard (1927):

The revolution wrought by steam and machinery was by no means limited in its effect to factory districts, corn fields, cotton plantations, and mining camps. It widened the borders of economic empire by the expansion of American commerce into the Far Pacific. Though obscured to the vulgar eye by the dust of domestic conflict, the construction of that commercial dominion went forward rapidly from the foundation of the republic. The very year after Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, the Empress of China, fitted out partly at the expense of Robert Morris, merchant prince and 'financier of the American Revolution,' sailed from New York to Canton, carrying the American flag into the midst of the Dutch and British pennants that fluttered in the breezes of Chinese waters. Before the Fathers completed the framing of the Constitution, at least nine voyages had been made to the Far East by enterprising Yankees.

And the Beards continued their interesting disclosures:

In the year of Washington's inauguration, ten ships from Salem plowed the waters of the Indian Ocean. Before he delivered his 'Farewell Address,' warning his countrymen against foreign entanglements, American captains were at home in the ports of China, Java, Sumatra, Siam, India, the Philippines, and Ile de France. In 1979, the date of his retirement to Mt Vernon, a crew of thirty boys, the oldest not over twenty-eight, took the Betsy, a boat of less than a hundred tons, on a voyage around the world by way of the Horn, Canton, and Good Hope, netting on an outlay of about eight thousand dollars the neat profit of a hundred and twenty thousand. (I, page 661) 

The World Socialist Party (US) has for many years recommended the Beards' Rise of American Civilization as an excellent source for information on the material factors influencing US history. They were not socialists but they did as much, if not more, than most professed socialists (and/or communists) in this country to straighten out the generally mistaken views on subjects such as the causes of the American Revolution, the Civil War and the real reasons behind Wilson's switch on World War I which brought about US entry into that shambles only  some five months after he had been reelected in a platform accentuating the slogan: "He kept us out of the war!" Having been written in 1927, this book does not go much beyond World War I but the Beards did manage, during their lifetime, to bring their chronicle of US history up to the times of World War II with their Basic History of the United States.

MODERN OVERSEAS ADVENTURES

It would not be possible within the scope of an article to list the instances of US imperialist adventure throughout its history completely. At least some of the oldest among the present population are no doubt passingly familiar with most of the thrusts of US military power in defense of her imperial interests - not all of which have been successful - since World WarI. There must be a few, though, who have not been made aware of US "meddling", overtly and covertly, into the affairs of the nations of Southeast Asia and, particularly, the countries of Central and South America . From the time of Fidel Castro's "conversion to Marxism" and embrace of and by the Soviet Union there has been hostile, even at times, violent, reaction by officialdom in this country and indeed, wherever purported Marxists gained or even threatened to gain control in the Americas. Were it not for the Nixon and Reagan flirtations with the head dispensers of Chinese "marxism", one might at least suspect that the basis of this hostility toward leftist regimes in Latin America is truly ideological.

The truth, of course, has to be otherwise. The hostility is obviously based upon the threat to important US capitalist interests by left-radical nationalists in those countries. As is well known, even if the knowledge is sublimated, as it usually is, by the more conservative-minded among capitalism's apologists, bourgeois antipathy towards Bolshevism has not been carved in stone. There have been many occasions since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 when US, British, and other heads of the more traditional variety of capitalists have heaped encomium on the heads of the Soviet dictators. Particularly this was true during most of those years of World War II when Western Capitalism was allied with Bolshevik State Capitalism and when the topmost political leaders of Britain and the US hailed Joseph Stalin as a contemporary "genius". In fact, had Stalin not lived on into the period of "Cold War", reverting to his status of "monster", he would quite likely still be depicted in US school texts as the savior of Russia.

CONFLICT OF INTERESTS NOT IDEOLOGIES

In any case. one thing should have been made clear since the times of World War II: it is not professed ideological differences between nations that propel them into open warfare against one another. It is, rather, the fact that their economic foundations and the basic philosophies that arise from them are all but identical, notwithstanding some differences in nomenclature and that they are, at least temporarily, threatening one another's imperial interests. Both Hitler and F. D. Roosevelt put it succinctly: Hitler with his "Germany must expand or explode" and Roosevelt's "Our frontier is on the Rhine".

What should be emphasized, though, is that "anti-imperialism" is, or should be, regarded as of no concern of the working class of either imperial or subject nation. It is just another red herring injected into the class struggle, whether with deliberate intent of confusing or through simple ignorance on the part of the propagandists. The cause of mass poverty, insecurity, and war, is not imperialism but the very relationships themselves of capitalism - wage labor and capital.

Harry Morrison (USA.)

FOREIGN POLICY FOR BEGINNERS

"We want a foreign market for our surplus products."

- William McKinley, 1880's

"In the interests of our commerce  . . . we should build the Nicaragua canal, and for the protection of that canal and for the sake of our commercial supremacy in the Pacific we should control the Hawaiian islands and maintain our influence in Samoa  . . . The great nations are rapidly absorbing for their present defense all the waste places of the earth. It is a movement which makes for civilization and the advancement of the race."

- Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, 1890s

"It seems to be conceded that every year we shall be confronted with an increasing surplus of manufactured goods for sale in foreign markets if American operatives and artisans are to be kept employed the year around. The enlargement of foreign consumption of the products of our mills and workshops has, therefore, become a serious problem of statesmanship as well as well as of commerce."

- State Department 1898

"Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even of the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process  . . . the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down."

- Woodrow Wilson, 1907

"The real reason that the war we just finished took place was that Germany was afraid her commercial rivals were going to get the better of her and the reason why some nations went onto the war against Germany was that they thought Germany would get the advantage of them."

- President Woodrow Wilson, St Louis, 1919

" . . . our general diplomatic and strategic position would be considerably weakened - by our loss of Chinese, Indian and South Seas markets (and by our loss of much of the Japanese market for our goods, as Japan would become more and more self-sufficient) as well by insurmountable restrictions upon our access to the rubber, tin, jute, and other vital materials of the Asian and Oceanic regions."

- US State Department, 1940

"The real stake in this war is sea control, is the domination of the avenues of world trade."

- United States News, Sept. 13, 1940

"There never was a war at arms that was not merely the extension of a preceding war of commerce grown fiercer until the weapons of commerce seemed no longer sufficiently deadly."

- General Hugh Johnson (1882-1942)

"As you know, we've got to plan on enormously increased production in this country after the war, and the American domestic market can't absorb all that production indefinitely. There won't be any question about our needing greatly increased foreign markets."

- State Department official, April 1944

"In May of 1962, we stand at the great divide; we must either trade or fade. They (the Russians) are ready to take and sell any area in which we leave a gap. And we do not intend to give way."

- President Kennedy, May 4 1962

"What is the attraction that Southeast Asia has exerted for centuries on the great powers flanking it on all sides? Why is it desirable, and why is it important? First, it provides a lush climate, fertile soil, rich natural resources, a relatively sparse population in most areas, and room to expand. The countries of Southeast Asia produce rich exportable surpluses such as rice, rubber, tea, corn, tin, spices, oil and many others . . . "

- Kennedy's Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson - Early 1963

"My approach to Africa is in some ways like the Japanese approach to Asia, and approach is not necessarily humanitarian. It is in the long-range interest of access to resources and the creation of markets for American goods and services."

- U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, 1977

Source: Daily Battle, Berkeley, California; Socialist Party of Canada leaflet

Editorial: Rockefeller's roast. (1914)

Editorial from the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

For six months past the miners employed by the Rockefeller interests in Colorado have been out on strike against the truck system, and for the right to live where they pleased, and to be attended by their own doctors.

Starvation and misery, together with much brutality on the part of thugs, were endured stoically by the strikers, but they were eventually turned out of their "homes," owned by the Rockefeller Mining Company, and forced to erect tent colonies in the wilds.

Rockefeller was appealed to by the Miners' leaders to go to arbitration, but he was adamant against any alteration in the status quo.

Eventually one million dollars were voted for a Special State Militia, to be used against the miners; and according to the evidence of a Captain Carson, a large percentage of the "militia" were also hirelings of the Mining Company.

Machine guns were brought into play, and to make things look black against the miners, arms and ammunition were hidden in the vicinity of the latters' tents.

At the end of April there took place one of the bloodiest events in the annals of industrial warfare. The forces of "Law and Order," not content with allowing militia men to outrage the workers' daughters and beat all the workers they could find, were determined to wipe the strikers out of existence.

The Gatling guns were trained right on to the tents in Ludlow City whilst the women and children were asleep in bed. Explosive bullets were used and other means of civilised effort. The horrors of that day are almost indescribable, but the plain fact is that, with the dead and dying hopelessly intermingled, the soldiers made paper torches, dipped them in Standard Oil, and set light to all the tents.

A hundred men, women and children at least were either murdered by gun, suffocated by smoke, or literally burned to death.

The story of the charred bodies of a score of little mites is awful reading indeed, as is also the news that dozens of women in the Tent City were expectant mothers, one woman actually giving birth to a child whilst the conflict was raging.

The Coroner's Jury have "found" that the responsibility for the murder rests with the State Militia, but, of course, no further action has been taken.

These are the barest facts indeed in the callous murder of our fellow-workers in the land of the Almighty Dollar. It shows the most dull-witted worker how similar is the conduct of the class war by the masters all the world over. It vividly recalls the slaughter of the miners in the Lena Goldfields to mention one instance.

Rockefeller jun., before the Congressional Committee in New York, declared that his father owned 40 per cent. of the stock but took no part in the working—only in the plunder. He said that they had too many interests to know what went on, but if the miners attempted to restrict the Company's liberty they would shut down every mine in Colorado.

Such is the policy of No Compromise preached by the masters. Stop our liberty to roast some of the worker's children alive and we will starve the rest.

Rockefeller virtually owns the Cavalry Baptist Church in New York, and there were many demonstrators against him there. But here again armed force was used to brutally illtreat the defenders of "the lambs of God."

Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to the friends of our murdered fellows in Colorado. We urge upon them to learn well the blood-sealed lesson of class hatred taught them by the masters; let the toilers of America steep themselves in a knowledge of the class war, and act always with that for their guide. No Compromise; No Quarter, politically and economically, must be the burden of their song. Thus only will vengeance for the vampires' victims be secured.

Further Reading:

Witness at Ludlow by Sam Orner

Letter: A nail in the coffin (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

I was born in 1900 and am four years older than the party. I became a socialist after hearing Alec Shaw destroy Peter Kerrigan [of the Communist Party] at an outdoor debate in Clydebank in 1928. Since then I have voted by writing Socialism across my ballot paper, although in recent years through old age I have not bothered. But recently I was able to vote for a socialist for the first time in my life. Although I had to be taken in a wheelchair and the effort may well have killed me, I feel as if I have finally hammered a nail into the coffin of Capitalism. I feel as if the ice age is over and the next century will be ours.

By voting and reading a comment in the Standard by Steve Coleman "we are a movement not a monument" I feel rejuvenated. Some time ago I was given a book called The Monument which claims to be a history of the SPGB. The author says this is not an official history as he did not have access to the party's records. The book is therefore anecdotal and relies heavily on the writer's memory (or imagination). An example of the dubious nature of this information is the tale of Glasgow branch voting to expel John Higgins for bringing a gas mask to a branch meeting during the war.

This statement caricatures the men and women who were stalwarts in the struggle for socialism in those days. There is no other comment in the book about Glasgow comrades which leads me to think that Mr Barltrop has never been there.

Jimmy Brodie was a joiner, like myself, and he used to give history and economics classes during the lunch hour on whichever boat we were working on. The steel bulkhead was the blackboard (the location was changed daily to avoid the gestapo) and the socialist message remained on the walls for weeks. These classes were attended by hundreds of workers and the debates engendered carried on into worktime much to the consternation of foremen and managers. Not to speak of the Commie second fronters.

It took a lot of guts to advocate the socialist case in the emotional climate of the 1940s. Tommy Mulheron was prominent in the dock strike. Alec Shaw in Howdens. Joe Richmond an apprentice where I worked organised a strike in 1943 which brought the firm to its knees. In spite of Union opposition the apprentices won.

My branch of the union had lots of socialists, Willie Travers, Joe Richmond, Jimmy Craig, Eddie Hughes, John Fitton, Jimmy McGowan, Willie Henderson, so that it became known as the Socialist Sixth. These men were indefatigable exponents of the Socialist case, some of them were speakers for the party, but all of them were influential in the Union. The Socialist Party has never had leaders, it has no need of them. But it has had its heroes and been all the stronger and richer for them. This book, The Monument, diminishes these men whose worth is greater than all the Maxtons, Bevans, Pollitts and Gallachers, whose names are still revered by many workers today.

The present Socialist Party stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before and should give credit to the breadth and depth of those shoulders. Surely, approaching its centenary, the party can write an official history, not only of the party but the whole world wide Socialist movement.

Do not leave it to the Barltrops of this world. Do not let our heroes die without trace if left to word of mouth they will become as myth and legend, more fantasy than fact, and spawn books like The Monument which does the Movement a disservice.

I am now 94 years old and must be one of the last of my generation. I grieve that my old comrades have died unsung although they were heroes all.

Yours for the Revolution,

Paddy Small, Glasgow

Reply:

Thanks for your comments. And thanks also to all the other Socialists - supporters and sympathisers as well as Socialist Party members - who contributed the money (£22,286, to be precise) that enabled us to put up a Socialist candidate in Glasgow and three other seats in last year's Euro-elections and to get a socialist leaflet distributed to one million households.

Editors.

Old Fallacies—a look at International Communist Current (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The organization called International Communist Current is a mixture of perceptiveness towards some aspects of capitalism, blindness to others, and a belief in long-exposed fallacies. It recognizes that nationalization is state capitalism, that the so-called national liberation movements are anti-socialist and that Russia, China, Cuba, etc. are "just so many capitalist bastions" — "There are no socialist countries on this planet".

ICC claims to be Marxist but shows no appreciation of Marx's analysis of capitalism's economic laws. Politically it belongs to the early 19th-century world of Louis Blanqui (originator of ICC's slogan "Dictatorship of the Proletariat") and the young and inexperienced Marx and Engels. It rejects the mature Marx's view of the necessity to gain control of "the machinery of government, including the armed forces", and offers instead confrontation with the state power and "world civil war" to be waged by "armed workers' councils" (see ICC pamphlet Nation or Class). 

A basic difficulty about establishing Socialism is that such a social system, involving as it does the disappearance of buying and selling, wages and prices, and the coercive state, could only be operated if the mass of the population understood and wanted it and were ready to accept all the new responsibilities of voluntary co-operation that would rest on them. If the working class as they are at present, most of them attached to capitalism, preoccupied with wages and prices, wage differentials and trade-union demarcation lines, and dependent on management direction and trade-union leadership, were suddenly faced with Socialism there would be chaos and no alternative but to return to capitalism.

Two solutions were offered. One was the Blanquist and early Marxist view—a transition period during which the mass of the population would be "educated to Socialism". This is the ICC policy. The other, the mature Marxist, view was stated by Engels in his 1895 Introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France:

“The time is past for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses. When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they are to act. That much the history of the last fifty years has taught us.”

And again, referring to France:

“Socialists realize more and more that no durable success is possible unless they win over in advance the great mass of the people, which, in this case, means the peasants. The slow work of propaganda and parliamentary activity are here also recognised as the next task of the party.”

ICC rejects the Marxist idea of socialists gaining control of Parliament on the ground that Parliament is nothing but "mystification of the working class". Of course defenders of capitalism use Parliament to mislead the working class, just as they use religion, sport and the bogus economic theories of J. M. Keynes. They can do this only because the workers lack socialist understanding—which fact ICC fails to see. It thinks that if non-socialist workers spontaneously throw up workers' councils these can't be "mystified". Experience has shown how wrong ICC is. Lenin, in State and Revolution, complained that his political opponents had

“managed to pollute even the Soviets, after the model of the most despicable middle-class parliamentarians, by turning them into hollow talking shops.”

ICC greatly admire the Workers' Councils set up in Germany after the first world war. At the Workers' Councils National Congress in 1918, and again in 1919, they were bamboozled by Social Democratic politicians into voting their support for the Social Democrat Government, which government then sidetracked the Councils and used state forces to crush resistance.

The argument that because the franchise has been used to trick the workers they should not use it was sensibly answered by Marx in the preamble he wrote for the French Workers' Party. In it, he commended transforming the vote "from a means of duping, which it has been hitherto, into an instrument of emancipation".

As ICC are not going to wait until there is a socialist majority, they have to find some other spur to working-class action. Like the young Marx and Engels, and like the British Communist Party in the 1930s, they find it in capitalism's periodic crises and depressions which stir up discontent about unemployment and falling living standards. But, as Engels pointed out in a letter to Bernstein (25th January 1882), when the depression passes and production and employment expand again "returning prosperity also breaks the revolution and lays the basis for the victory of reaction".

Are depressions permanent?

ICC think they have an answer to this. They say that the present depression is permanent, that it throws up problems the capitalists are impotent to deal with, and that capitalism cannot afford any more concessions to the workers. The great changeover is supposed to have happened in 1914, after which capitalism became "decadent", ICC evidently does not know that all these themes are almost as old as capitalism itself.

In every one of capitalism's depressions there have been people, capitalists as well as workers, who have been convinced that it would be permanent. In the "Great Depression" of the last quarter of the 19th century, which lasted for twenty years, it was widely believed. Lord Randolph Churchill, shortly before he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared in 1884: "We are suffering from a depression of trade extending as far back as 1874, ten years of trade depression, and the most hopeful either among our capitalists or our artisans can discover no signs of a revival . . . Turn your eyes where you will, survey any branch of British industry you like, you will find signs of mortal disease."

Even Engels in 1886 temporarily abandoned Marx's view of crises and announced a theory of "permanent and chronic depression". Marx's own view was tersely summed up in his statement: "There are no permanent crises."

ICC's example of the supposed impotence of the capitalists to deal with a problem relates to inflation. In International Review No. 10 (page 10) ICC says that “the bourgeoisie" is equally terrified of more inflation and of ending inflation by "restriction of credit". From which it is evident that ICC does not understand the cause and purpose of inflation, rejects Marx's demonstration that inflation is the result of excess issue of inconvertible paper currency, and has—like the Labour Party—fallen for the Keynesian nonsense about the supposed consequence of expanding or contracting credit. Inflation, like free trade, is just a way of operating capitalism. It suits some capitalists and not others. Inflation serves the interests of borrowers, including industrial capitalists, who take up loans and repay them later in depreciated currency.

Inflation and Credit

Inflation, at least for a considerable period, also enables many employers to get away with paying reduced real wages. Deflation, on the other hand, suits financial interests and lenders. If and when inflation reaches dangerous levels, or when those who favour deflation get their way, inflation will be curbed or ended as it has been on scores of occasions in the past, in this and other countries.

Marx showed what he thought of the people who held ICC's superficial view about credit.

“They looked upon the expansion and contraction of credit, which is a mere symptom of the periodic changes in the industrial cycle, as their cause.” (Capital Vol. 1, p. 695, Kerr edn.)

To show that capitalism is not what it used to be before 1914, ICC points to recent falling production and living standards, and rising unemployment, but this is what has taken place at the beginning of every depression for nearly two hundred years.

Capitalism did indeed change in 1914. As Professor E. H. Carr puts it, up to 1914: "Britain was the pre-eminent Great Power, and the directing centre of the worldwide capitalist economy." Now the industrial and military centres of power have shifted to New York, Moscow and Brussels; but this has not altered capitalism's economic laws or introduced a new "decadence".

ICC's belief that since 1914 capitalism cannot afford to make concessions to the workers is belied by the facts, and betrays a failure to understand the economics of capitalism. The capitalists (supported by ignorant or servile academics) have always "proved" that they could not afford to concede anything, as for example giving up the twelve-hour working day and the employment of small children: but the concessions have continued since 1914 as before, and particularly since the second world war.

As output per head of the workers increases (a process speeded-up during the present depression) of course the capitalists can afford to let the workers have some of the increase—as ICC will discover when the depression lifts and in the programmes at the next General Election.

Regarding "the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", ICC admit that during their prolonged "transition period" the dictatorship will be operating capitalism all over the world (see Nation or Class). They have, however, not seen its implications. How will the dictatorship deal with the next normal capitalist crisis and the strikes that will accompany it? Will they have an "incomes policy"? or suppress the unions?

The peasants are not to be allowed to share in governmental power. What if they seize the land? And what will the ICC dictatorship do when workers, discontented with the effects of capitalism, carry on ICC policy and set up "armed workers' councils" to fight the dictatorship?

All of ICC's assumptions about capitalism are wrong; but let us suppose that they are right. Suppose that a minority of workers sets up armed councils all over the world, and suppose (absurd as it is) that they could win against the massive combined armed forces of all the world's governments, and suppose they succeeded in setting up their world dictatorship—what would have been gained? The problem of winning over the mass of the population before Socialism could be established would still be there, its completion put back a few more years by ICC's unnecessary and useless war.

Edgar Hardcastle

A Cassette tape recording of the recent debate between I.C.C. and the SPGB is available from H.O. price £1.60 or 50p to hire.