Letters to the editors (2014)

Letters to the editors from the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stone Age violence: old or new?

Dear Editors

Thanks for sending me this article. As you guessed, I'm not convinced. The evidence for lethal violence goes back well beyond the neolithic revolution (there's a fairly recent list of examples going back at least 500,000 years available in Table S2 of this link, and there are large massacre sites from about 11,000 BC onward. The arithmetic in the article is also misleading. A rate of violent death of 10-20% would mean that your group of 30 HGs would experience 3-6 violent deaths per 30-year generation, which means one killing per 5-10 years. The level of killing mentioned in the article, of 3-6 people per year, would add up to 90-180 violent deaths per 30-year generation, or a rate of 300-600%. That obviously makes no sense, and whoever wrote that paragraph should have realized that he or she had got the sums seriously wrong. On Palaeolithic demography, the skeletal evidence is very clear that the modal adult age at death was somewhere in the thirties, not 72. And Gurven and Kaplan aren't saying that the modal age at death among Palaeolithic hunter gatherers was 72; if you look at their Figure 1d, it shows that they estimate that only 20% of h-g's would have still been alive at 70. If you discount the 40-45% of people who died by age 15, the modal age at death for adults is still going to be somewhere in the early 40s. And one other factual point--whoever wrote the article can't seem to decide whether my name is Morris or Harris.

I think the article also gives Steven Pinker both too much blame and too much praise. The real starting place for the new understanding of prehistoric violence is Larry Keeler's 1996 book War Before Civilization, and the most important analysis extending this perspective through historically documented times is Azar Gat's 2006 War in Human Civilization. Pinker certainly did an impressive job in The Better Angels of Our Natures, but he shouldn't have to bear the lion's share of the criticisms. I'm also kind of baffled about why so many people want to make this debate a left-right issue. I was just today interviewed on a radio show in Washington called ‘Left Jab,’ which is very left of center, and they didn't seem to think the new understanding of the history of violence was a right-wing plot. When Marx and Engels wrote about prehistory they used the most up-to-date scholarship then available, but back in the 1870s and 1880s archaeologists basically knew almost nothing about anything before 1000 BC. If Engels were writing his Origins today, it would be a very different book.

It sounds like this article was just talking about the short essay I wrote for New Scientist. If you have time to look at the book that was summarizing, I'd be interested to hear if you still feel the same way.

Ian Morris (by email) 

Reply: 

We’re sorry about the mix up over names.  

The evidence in Table S2 shows various injuries to the cranium, thorax, ribs, pelvis, shins and feet, most of which also show subsequent bone regrowth and/or infection or osteoarthritis, meaning that the victim usually survived. It’s not obvious what caused the injuries, however the presence at the Lion Rock site in China of bones from rhinoceros, bear, wild dog, hyena and tiger invites an easy speculation. Life in the Pleistocene could well have been risky, even dangerous in places, but it seems a leap on this evidence to guess that the main source of human injuries was other humans. 

In the study we cited, Gurven and Kaplan discuss severe difficulties in reconstructing prehistoric life tables because of systematic biases in bone ageing techniques, and then state that ‘while excessive warfare could explain the shape of one or more of these typical prehistoric forager mortality profiles, it is improbable that these profiles represent the long-term prehistoric forager mortality profile. Such rapid mortality increase late in life would have severe consequences for our human life history evolution…’(p 345), which is pretty much what we said in the article. 

The New Scientist article was necessarily short but it ought to have stated that the 10-20 percent fatality estimate was per generation, not per year, which omission of course was the source of our claim that the loss rate was absurdly unsustainable. Even at this lower rate, common sense suggests that small HG bands would regard ANY loss as too costly and therefore do everything in their power to avoid conflict, probably by moving away, a tactic which perhaps drove migration but which became increasingly difficult in the settled Neolithic.

We do know, through figurines, that sex and fertility were considered highly important in the Upper Paleolithic, and animals and hunting were regular features of cave art. Of all the cave paintings known from this period, not one shows human violence against other humans, in contrast to later Neolithic art where it is prominent.

There is not merely an absence of evidence, there is evidence of absence. The Paleo-Neolithic settlement of Tell Abu Hureyra, near the Euphrates, showed 4,000 years of continuous occupation with no signs of violence (John Horgan, Scientific American blog, 29 June 2010). According to the Wikipedia entry on the Paleolithic, towns of this period ‘are generally unfortified and built in areas difficult to defend. Skeletal and burial remains do not generally indicate the presence of warfare.'  In studies of 21 modern forager bands (Scientific American, 18 July) three had no lethal events at all and only one showed behaviour described as ‘war’ – the conclusion being that violence was not an innate behaviour of such groups but once initiated could become self-perpetuating through blood feuds. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suppose that this could have happened in the Paleolithic, however it was probably the exception not the rule.

So we don’t think the Paleolithic was a playground or a love-in, and the socialist case certainly doesn’t require this to be so, but if advocates of the ‘ignoble savage’ hypothesis want to overturn the accepted textbook narrative of this period, according to which war and organised violence first arose in the Neolithic, they are going to have to do better than the arguments they currently have. If Professor Morris really wants to make the extraordinary claim that ‘war is good for us’, based on his interpretation of human prehistory, he can hardly be surprised when some of us demand to see extraordinary evidence to support it.—Editors.

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Betrayal

Dear Editors

As usual I found the article on ‘The Economic Causes of the First World War’ authoritative and convincing. I was, however, surprised that you made no reference to the betrayal by the reformist left in Germany of the ‘Second International’. There, of course, can be no doubt that this organisation never possessed a majority with socialist consciousness but I think it is important to highlight the inevitable consequences of reformist leftist policies. An early, and quite possibly the greatest, example of betrayal of the working class by leftist leaders needs to be emphasised because without this historical reference the rise of such monsters as Tony Blair would be inexplicable. The fact is that if 100 years ago the German members of the Second International had refused to allow the finance of the war it could not have began. I fully appreciate that the underlying economic tensions made some kind of major international conflict probable but this can never excuse the actions of the reformists that helped make the war inevitable.

Andrew Westley, 

Cambridge

Reply: 
This might be a matter of emphasis and interpretation, but we certainly agree that the pro-war vote of the German Social Democrats was a betrayal of working-class interests, and a milestone in the tragic journey towards out-and-out reformism within European Social Democracy.. -- Editors

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Squeamish                                                                                                                  

Dear Editors

I'd like to add a short comment to the article on Field Marshall Sir Douglas 'Butcher' Haig in the August Socialist Standard.

In To End All Wars, Adam Hochschild cites a statement by Haig's son that his father did not visit casualty stations 'because these visits made him physically ill'. I had not realised he was quite so sensitive, but no doubt this squeamishness helped him to demand high casualty rates.

Paul Bennett, 

Manchester

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Decline

Dear Editors

I am writing with a query about an item in ‘Voice from the Back’ in your July issue. In the paragraph headed ‘the Decline of Religion’ you conclude that ‘religion has always been a barrier to socialism; so no tears here on learning churches are closing’. I understand the decline in organised religion is largely confined to ‘the West’. Does your comment imply that people here are now more open to receiving the ideas of socialism? Is this your experience; and, if not, why not.

Andrew Durrant, 

Norwich

Reply: 
There are many barriers to workers understanding and supporting socialism. Here are just a few. Some believe there is a God and an after-life, so this present existence is of little importance. Some believe that patriotism is of prime importance and we should be concerned about ‘our’ country rather than a world-wide solution. Others think that it is ‘human nature’ to be greedy and acquisitive, so socialism is impossible. All of these barriers to understanding the case for world-wide socialism have to be overcome before we can get socialism. Probably greater than all these barriers is the lack of imagination that can foresee a future society based on co-operation and harmony rather than capitalism with its wars, poverty, starvation, racialism and crime. All we were saying in our article was that the diminishing power of religion is a step forward in the eventual attaining of a new socialist society. --Editors

Work and human nature (1954)

Book Review from the July 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Confirmation of the Socialist Attitude

Every Socialist has, at some time or another, met the "human nature argument." He has almost certainly had to do verbal battle with those who insist that work is distasteful to man, that he is naturally lazy and solely motivated by fear or greed. Such beliefs, we have maintained, correspond to no fundamental human traits, but arise from a confusion of human nature with behaviour under certain social circumstances.

Now along comes a book by a psychologist whose purpose in writing is obviously very far from advocating Socialism—but who nevertheless succeeds in demolishing most of the long-cherished ideas that have been put up against it. The Social Psychology of Industry, by J. A. C. Brown (Pelican, 2/6d.) is one of the best pieces of grist to come to the Socialist mill for a long time.

Dr. Brown packs his book with facts, quotations and sources of information, yet contrives also not to ignore the more personal side of his subject. In a critical survey of the history of industrial psychology he notes the reminiscences of Frederick Winslow Taylor, pioneer of Time and Motion Study: "It's a horrid life for any man to live not being able to look any workman in the face without seeing hostility there, and a feeling that every man around you is your virtual enemy." It is scarcely surprising that "Speedy" Taylor (as he was known to his colleagues) should have encountered such hostility, since he accepted without question the fact that every capitalist workshop exists first, last and all the time for the purpose of paying dividends to its owners.

Brown is critical of the old theory that human nature is unchanging and explicable solely in terms of biological instincts. He contrasts that with the new view that "does not accept instinct as an adequate explanation of human behaviour, and is more interested in how the biological drives are socially modified than in their mere existence; i.e. its explanations are in social rather than biological terms."

He elaborates this view in an analysis of the formal organisations of (capitalist) industry: 

" (1) It is deliberately impersonal.
" (2) It is based on ideal relationships.
" (3) It is based on the ' rabble hypothesis' of the nature of man (i.e. it is assumed that competition leads to maximum efficiency, that when each man fights for himself the best interests of the group are served, and that men are isolated units who may be moved about from one job to another depending only on their ability to do the job)."

Brown rightly points out that such organisation produces harmful effects on people, particularly on the workers who are shifted about from one department to another like so much cattle. It is refreshing to note that he does not think that vast improvements have been made in workers' conditions under the "welfare state," which he likens to a model cowhouse with the workers as the milch cows.

Recognition for Effort

It is often said that it is human nature to want to "get on" (meaning promotion in the sense of higher formal status). Brown shows that this is just another popular fallacy. "What people do want is a position in which it is possible to increase in prestige. Thus the average skilled craftsman does not want to become a supervisor or a factory manager—he wants to become a better craftsman and recognised as such."

Brown quotes Gordon Rattray Taylor's comment that "the best dentist in the community is not the less respected because someone else is the best ploughman", and adds "functional status leads to less rivalry and more satisfaction than derived status based on power or wealth." It is good to realise that, despite capitalist society which habitually defines status in terms of power or wealth, there are other and better ways of recognising the contributions of one's fellows to the social wellbeing.

The critics of Socialism who ask "who is going to do the dirty work?" can also learn something from this book:

". . . the lowliness or nastiness of a job are subjective estimates ... A doctor or nurse, for example, or a sanitary inspector, have to do some things which would disgust the most unskilled casual labourer who did not see these actions in their social context. Yet the status and prestige of such people is generally high.
". . . although few people object to work which is unavoidably dirty or dangerous, they will certainly not forgive the sort of unpleasantness which indicates neglect of their interests on the part of management.
" Above all, it is the prestige of his working group and his position in it which will influence the worker's attitude to such jobs. If the prestige of his group is high and he is satisfied in his membership of it, the type of work he has to do becomes a minor consideration."

Hitherto, Socialists have frequently met the criticism that, with freedom from economic compulsion, no one will want to do certain necessary but dirty or dangerous jobs. If such explanations as Brown's become widely known and accepted, Socialists can expect less of these "dirty work" objections. In any case we have given the answer that people will not be called upon to do such work against their wishes, and that society as a whole will be prepared to do without any products obtainable only at the cost of harmful work.

It is clear that the system of society we advocate fulfils all the requirements considered desirable by Brown—namely, people who hold Socialist ideas see all actions in their social context; management will not exist as a body of individuals over and above the people who actually do the work; and the "working group," being the whole of society, will give the worker the best possible satisfaction in his membership of it. The "problem" of dirty work in fact resolves itself and is merged into the wider problem of wage-labour-capital society.

A Common Task

Dealing with the more positive question of desirable social conditions, Brown again makes statements that back up the Socialist case: "People do not like to be ordered about like automatons; they like to participate in a common task." Explaining this, he writes:

" Ordinarily men and women like their work, and at most periods of history always have done so. When they do not like it, the fault lies in the psychological and social conditions of the job rather than in the worker. Furthermore, work is a social activity . . . Even when their security and that of their children is assured, they continue to labour. Obviously this is so because the rewards they get from their work are social, such as respect and admiration from their fellow-men."

Brown effectively shows that Freud and others were wrong in believing that human nature is naturally aggressive, in the sense of a tendency to sadism or deliberate cruelty. "Aggression" as the need to master painful or unpleasant circumstances is, of course, quite natural. Similarly, the concept of leadership is reduced in the book to the view that "every man should be capable of some degree of leadership—influencing others towards a satisfying participation in collective effort." No Socialist would quarrel with such a concept and practice—because it is obviously very far removed from the prejudices we usually meet about "great men."

To Socialists, Brown's conclusions are both encouraging and disappointing. Recognising that present society, more than any previous one, stimulates people's desires without being able to satisfy them, he believes that "the future approach to health is likely to be primarily in terms of the sick society rather than the sick individual." Yet he misses the significance of all he writes in suggesting that "it is necessary for the politician to bring about a state of affairs in which it is possible for the industrial worker to feel that his own interests and, those of management coincide."

In the last paragraph of the book he tells us that it is up to us to decide whether society develops within a framework of fascist barbarism, communist intolerance, or Social Democratic humanitarianism. He leaves us in no doubt that he is strongly in favour of the latter. It would be a pity if this meant nothing more than a continuation in some form of capitalist society, when the book as a whole is so obviously pointing in the direction of new social relationships based, not on property, but on co-operative endeavour.

S. R. P.

First Steps In Socialism: II. - Are Wages Necessary? (1913)

From the July 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our first article under the above heading was devoted to the consideration of the question: "Who are the Working Class?" We will now consider the significance of the working-class position.

The working class are wage workers. That is, they depend for their livelihood entirely upon the money they receive by the sale of their labour power.

It must not be supposed that a wage-worker class has existed through all time. People are so accustomed now-a-days to the wages idea that a great many of them have considerable difficulty in realising that any form or degree of civilisation could have existed without wages. They are so used to the idea that without wages they can get nothing; they are so accustomed to the hard experience that when wages cease to come in they starve; they are impressed and saturated with the concrete knowledge that the orbit of their lives are inexorably prescribed by the magnitude of the magic wage: they are so inured to the aspect presented by these circumstances of their environment, that the admission that under Socialism there will be neither paying nor receiving of wages is sufficient to cause them to reject the Socialist proposition with the remark: "Can't be done!"

But the wages system and the wage-worker, as we understand them to-day, are quite modern social characteristics—newer, say, than St. Paul's Cathedral; newer, perhaps, even than such symbols of God's will on earth as the top-hat and the pipe-clay belt.

When we speak of the wages system and the wage-worker, however, we have in mind a very definite social feature, and it will be as well to explain here exactly what is meant by the terms, for the benefit of those who are new to the study of social science.

If the wage-worker is new, wages, of course, are not. "The labourer is worthy of his hire" was written many generations before the hired labourer was a wage-worker in the modern sense of the term, just as the reference to Joseph's "coat of many colours" was penned ages before the world knew a tailor. Wages are older than the wages system, just as coats are older than the tailoring trade.

The wages system is that system whereunder the whole of the wealth of the community is produced by wage-labour. The wage-worker is one whose sole means of subsistence are the proceeds of the sale of his or her labour power—wages.

Now the wages system, as here described, obviously could not exist save in conjunction with a certain form of property ownership. It is not that this ownership must be private ownership. Property was privately owned centuries before the wages system grew up. The social system which immediately preceded the present one was based on private property, yet very little of the community's wealth was produced by wage labour then.

The particular form of private ownership which is essential for the development of the wages system is that form which provides a propertyless class - that form which takes away from a section every shred of the means of living except their labour power. In other words, the whole of the means of production must belong to a section of the people.

This particular form of private property did not exist till comparatively recent times. Prior to its establishment the working class had free access to the land, and consequently had not to depend upon the sale of their labour power for their livelihood. They did occasionally work for wages, just as they did occasionally sell part of the produce of their labour, in order to procure money to pay taxes, or to purchase the few things required that they did not produce for themselves. But they never became wage slaves while they had access to the sod, for the simple reason that they had at hand the means of producing all the essentials of life for themselves, without being driven to hire themselves to others.

Even the arizans and the handicraftsmen in the towns, where they did work for wages, had their portion of land, on which they produced many of their requirements, and had, besides, reasonable certainty that, when they had become proficient in their craft, the ownership of the implements of their trade would be within their easy reach, and present them with the opportunity of gaining freedom.

So it will be seen that the wages system is by no means an indispensable part of human life. Our ancestors got on very well without it. Indeed, they had neither use nor need for it until they had been stripped of everything they possessed except their labour-power.

Only when they had been driven from their homes and their fields and converted into propertyless outcasts did the working class resort to the labour market for their livelihood. Prior to that they had produced wealth for their own consumption, and money had played but small part in their life. Thorold Rogers calculated that about 16s. a year sufficed to cover all the wants of an average working-class family apart from the direct produce of their own labour for one year, and though the sum represented more then than it does to day, it seems to show how small a figure wages cut in mediaeval life. For that 16s. worth of goods purchased by a family in a year (the chief item of which was boots) represented all that they consumed of the products of wage labour.

I am perfectly conscious of the fact that things have changed greatly since those days; I am aware that men no longer produce the goods they require to satisfy their own needs; I know that it is utterly impossible for us to go back to the state of things wherein each family produced all their own requirements; I understand how the furthermost corners of the earth must contribute to the maintenance of the meanest among us, and if it be even it merest highway beggar , who ties his pitiful rags about him with a waste end of string that has already served a dozen worthier purposes, half the world must labour to provide his girdle: and knowing all this, I ask what function is there that wages serve that is not, like wages, the direct outcome of private ownership in the means of living?

To say that we cannot do without wages and the wages system is to say that which is absurd. Though it is true that wages are the means by which the workers live, it is equally true that wages are the means whereby the workers are robbed. The wage serves no other function than to render possible this robbery. It does not even record the fact that its possessor has performed his share of the world's work, for wages have a fleeting identity, and there is nothing to show how the coins they consist of are come by.

With the abolition of private property, wages, and money, it will be very easy to assure that each person shall perform his or her share of the necessary labour of production, and the "problem" of distribution then would be no problem at all — as we shall see in a future contribution.

A. E. Jacomb.

Barebones (1984)

From the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

A couple of months ago the social historian, F. A. Ridley, gave a talk on "English Revolutionaries". On the publicity material he was advertised as one of the founders of the European socialist movement. Of course, members of the Socialist Party were present to find out how justified this reference to socialism would prove. Sadly, we found that this term had once again been used merely as window-dressing, its direct application being dismissed as unsuited to the current millennium.

The talk began with a survey of revolutionary activity in England over the past 440 years, starting with Cromwell and advancing through Chartism to the two world wars, in which millions of workers were slaughtered in the interests of one capitalist nation or another. Our trip through the tunnels of confusion and disillusion ended with the recent Labour administrations of the profit system, and the current "blue period" of monetarism.

Ridley regarded as most revolutionary those periods in which there had been an apparent upsurge in the cries for reform and mentioned as paramount among these Cromwell's Barebones Parliament. From the audience we pointed out, firstly, that the socialists of the present century are revolutionary in pointing out the futility of reform. Present social problems can only be removed by a conscious, majority desire to change the basis of society. The, we demonstrated how the Barebones Parliament was a vehicle for reform in the interests of the ascendant capitalist class. The vote was granted only to those possessing over £200 and the real revolutionaries of the period, the Diggers, were routed and even put to the sword by Cromwell's Roundheads.

At this point, Ridley compared the Diggers with the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and said that he would have full support for us if only we would retire from the field of active politics and become a merely educational body. To this the socialists present pointed out that for us, theory and practice cannot be separated in this way. The socialist movement has a function which is practical, political and educational. The Socialist Party enters the political field in order to expose and oppose every party whose policy works against the interests of the working class.

Another speaker from the floor began to defend the record of the Labour Party, referring to the building of "20 million" council houses during their periods of office. At this a cry of "slums" came simultaneously from various members of the audience, and Ridley pointed out quite appropriately how the Tory Party has in principle been equally prepared to endorse reform of this kind in order to ensure the smooth running of capitalism. Another question was raised about the existence of a "different form of society" in Russia, but Ridley again dealt with this pertinently by explaining that what has existed there for the past 67 years is state capitalism.

Clearly, Ridley has an understanding of how capitalism functions. He recognises the limitations of reformism and the inability of state control to serve the working-class interest. But what this meeting demonstrated was the urgent need for him, like the rest of the working class, to join the movement for world socialism without delay. Reformism has not brought us any closer to resolving the fundamental contradictions of capitalist society. Four hundred years of so-called revolutionary history demonstrated this.

AM/CS

Anthony Blunt: no sort of traitor (1980)

From the January 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Did Anthony Blunt —that frail, effeminate, learned man — ever dream that we would be responsible for so much confusion?

Consider, first, the sorry plight of the left wing. Blunt might have been one of their heroes, for he turned his back on his past — the public school, one of the more exclusive Cambridge colleges — to become an agent for Russia, which has nourished so many left wing false hopes and delusions. Yet Blunt also enraged the left because the personified the cohesive protectiveness of their arch provocator — the Establishment. And worse, Labour ministers, including Wilson and Callaghan, connived in this apparent exercise of the Establishment looking after its own. No wonder Willie Hamilton fumed in the House of Commons: " . . . feelings of outrage . . . I have never felt so sick, angry and frustrated . . . squalid conspiracy in high places . . ."

Then there are the Tories, who work most comfortably on the assumption that the best of all possible property societies is one run by an indulgent elite from the best families, schools, clubs, regiments  . . . This elite pretend that they hold their privileges as an act of kindness to the rest of us; they don't really own those thousands of acres, stately homes, works of art, stocks and shares. They merely hold them in trust for the less fortunately born majority in society. If this theory is to be at all presentable, it is essential that no member of the elite should let the side down. When one of them does — and, in the case of Blunt, in the worst possible way, by spying — the Tories too are thrown into confusion, aggravated by the knowledge that their ministers also knew about, and protected, the spy.

Brilliant Young Men

And out of all the confusion emerges a picture of British capitalism which does not meet the demands of modern, thrusting, super-competitive capitalism. The Blunt affair, like its predecessors in the Great Whitehall Spy Drama, was taken by many people as evidence that Britain is run by a bunch of effete, disreputable upper class twits who all went to the same school, and who are too stupid, or too corrupt, to recognise a spy even if he was delivered to their In Tray in manacles. Well, there is nothing to be gained by discussing the accuracy of that caricature; it is more useful to point out some of the lessons to be learned from the infamous scandal of Anthony Blunt.

We have already said that Blunt is a very learned man — although it is another matter whether his talents would ever have seen the light of day had he been born into a working class family, who rely on selling their labour power to live. There is little demand among employers for experts in the works of Nicolas Poussin. But then the other spies Blunt was associated with — Philby, Maclean, Burgess — were also very clever. Burgess, said Blunt, was " . . . one of the most remarkable, brilliant, and one of the most intelligent people I've ever known". (He might also have used words like 'drunken' and 'abusive' except that such minor faults can be overlooked in one of such rare gifts.) Philby too was once highly thought of, the rising star in the Secret Service, described by Hugh Trevor Roper (The Philby Affair) as " favoured by society, liberally educated, regarded by all who knew him as intelligent, sensitive, transparently sincere".

Stalinist Murders

Now the working class are depressingly willing to pay their respects to people who are described as 'intellectuals' even when, like this bunch, they are blind to some obvious facts of reality. Blunt has told us their version of reality in the Thirties:

. . . in October 1934 I found that  . . . almost all the intelligent and bright undergraduates who had come up to Cambridge had suddenly become Marxist [sic] . . . and there was this very powerful group, very remarkable group of Communist intellectuals in Cambridge . . . 

(This provoked a doctor to write, irritably, to the Daily Telegraph from Moreton-in-theMarsh: "I was up at Cambridge in 1935 and many of my circle were bright. But had any of them expressed Marxist views he would have been debagged and thrown into the Cam")

But what was happening in Russia at that time to impress all those incredibly brainy undergraduates? In 1934 the 17th Party Congress was held, with perhaps many of the participants being as brainy as those bright young men in Cambridge. Unfortunately, their leader Stalin was not favourably impressed with them, and soon afterwards he had over half of them shot, along with nearly three-quarters of the Central Committee they had elected. This was a comparatively minor incident in the horrifying story of imprisonment, torture and murder which characterised Stalin's rule over Russia. One estimate of the total casualties during these years appeared in Robert Conquest's book The Great Terror. Conquest used a variety of sources — participants' accounts, official statistics and the 1959 Census — and he came to the conservative estimate of 20 million dead.

Forgetful Politicians

Much of the information about this was available at the time, but it did not impress those brilliant students at Cambridge. Some of them were even prepared to justify the August 1939 pact between Russia and Nazi Germany. "We argued", said Blunt, "that it was simply a tactical necessity . . . " In fact he carried his enthusiasm a bit too far, continuing to pass British secrets to Russia after the two staters were in the war on the same side. This illustrates not only his blind devotion to the blood-soaked dictatorship but also the actual fragility of the unity between capitalist powers, even when they call themselves the Allies.

But it was not only Blunt and his fellow geniuses who have been confused, because several prominent politicians said they had quite forgotten being told that a senior member of the royal household was a Russian spy. One of these politicians is Lord Brooke, who could never be accused of being an intellectual and who 'forgot' quite a few things during his time as Home Secretary. So how much more do the leaders of capitalism 'forget'? Do they 'forget' the realities of capitalism — its power cliques, its privileges for the few, its international conflicts, its cynicism and deceit? Do they 'forget' that the whole rotten mess is kept in being by the very people who suffer under it — the working class — the people who get excited about the Blunt Affair because they have been induced into a trance of patriotism? And who will help them 'remember'?

One thing to remember is that international conflict is ineradicable under capitalism. Those conflicts are fought out by all appropriate means and not just in the military sense; all sides have an elaborate machinery of espionage. Those who operate that machinery develop an especially cynical devotion to the interests of the master class they serve. The schemes they hatch often have an arithmetic a lot more intricate than that of a simple double cross.

Concepts in Privilege

If one side uncovers another's spies they usually give vent to a great blast of innocent indignation, which is designed to obscure the fact they they have their own agents busily at work. Thus Burgess, Maclean and the rest had their counterparts — Volkov, Petrov, Dolynytsin and, arguably the significant of them all, Penkovsky, who passed to the Western powers thousands of items of secret information, including some on Russian rocketry, notably at the time of the Cuban crisis.

Nobody needed Anthony Blunt to tell us that capitalism is a society in which a small minority are privileged a long way above the rest of us. But he throws an interesting light on the extent of that privilege. His job in the royal household, for example, consisted of looking after the Queen's pictures, rehanging them and redecorating the rooms where they hang (or at any rate ordering other people to do the actual hanging and decorating). As a flunkey to a super-parasite, he lived in a different world to the rest of us, with concepts and expectations quite foreign to those of the majority. He described his interrogations between 1951 and 1964 as 'mainly comfortable conversations'. This is in stark contrast to the treatment habitually handed out to workers who 'help the police with their inquiries' over some offence against capitalism's laws. On the very day of Blunt's press conference, a fatal 'accident' inquiry in Glasgow was told by a former policeman of how sickened he had been at the violence meted out by the police there to a man who later died from his injuries.There are few 'comfortable conversations; between the police and the workers they arrest in places like Glasgow.

A great deal of indignation has been spilled out over Anthony Blunt, but outraged workers would do better to direct their feelings against this social system itself. Capitalism is a society in which one class, although numerically insignificant, owns the means whereby the rest of us live. That fact is central to all privilege — the aristocrats, the clubs, the old boy network, the cover-ups in high places. It is also a society in which a lot of effort goes into persuading us that we should devote ourselves to the work of keeping capitalism going on the orders if some super-intellectual beings. Anthony Blunt has provided the latest piece of evidence to show what a myth that is. Workers should not trust leaders, no matter how allegedly brainy or evidently stupid they are; they should organise their own confidence to run society on a different basis, in their own interests.

The sordid story of Blunt and his clever friends is but a minor episode in the horrendous, cynical passage of a society which can operate in no other way. Blunt betrayed his own ruling class, but to capitalism itself he was no sort of traitor; he was, and remains, its most devoted, if devious, servant.

Ivan

Obituary: Sandy Easton (2014)

Obituary from the August 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are sorry to have to report the death (aged 60) of our comrade Sandy Easton, for many years a member of the old Islington Branch and before that of the old Croydon branch, then latterly of North London Branch. Raised in Edinburgh where he also attended university, Sandy joined the Party there in 1974 after hearing Socialist Party orators at the Mound. He was very active throughout most of his membership, serving many times on the Party’s Executive Committee and being a former long-standing member of the Media Committee and its predecessors.

Sandy was a dedicated socialist, always interested in the historical detail of theory and diligently committed to the principles of fair process. He was open-minded, much influenced by his huge interests in folk-music (and its meanings) and in radio drama. He was a fine actor in his own right; some members once saw him in a superb performance of Wesker’s ‘Roots’ in which all the parts were played by blind actors. He was also a very accomplished keyboard player and singer too – indeed many attendees at Conference socials over the years will remember his particular penchant for mining disaster songs! We will also remember his incredible ability, as someone who was blind, to navigate his way around London streets and the underground system with minimal help or assistance from others. And there are many who will swear even now that Sandy could tell who’d entered the room by the distinctive sound of their footsteps or other, barely detectable means that indicated their presence.

In a great many ways he embodied the principles for which he stood. It is impossible to think of Sandy without hearing a calm, reflective, knowledgeable socialist voice. For many years he was a telephonist for a bank though in the Party his vocal abilities were often put to even better use as a Party speaker and debater. He was a lovely, gentle and incredibly insightful human being who will be greatly missed.

SC/DAP

Putin Rehabilitates World War One (2014)

From the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The embalmed corpse of Lenin must have turned over after hearing Putin's speech in August at the unveiling of a monument to Russian First World War 'heroes'.

Putin's speech (eng.kremlin.ru/news/22756) sought to rehabilitate the First World War and use it to bolster Russian nationalism and capitalism. Putin is busily rewriting Russian history; 'Russia did everything it could to convince Europe to find a peaceful and bloodless solution' but Russia as a world power was as culpable as all the western capitalist states. He spoke of 'our people's spiritual and moral upsurge at that moment' which is bunkum considering Russia was a semi-feudal, autocratic Tsarist Empire with no democracy and the peasantry just a couple of generations away from serfdom. Maybe he was talking about the priest Rasputin 'lathering up' the Russian Empress.

According to him, ‘our country had no choice but to rise to the challenge, defend a brotherly Slavic people and protect our own country and people from the foreign threat.’ He even glorifies the 1916 Brusilov offensive which cost the Russians a million casualties. ‘Victory’, he claims, ‘was stolen from our country. It was stolen by those who called for the defeat of their homeland and army, who sowed division inside Russia and sought only power for themselves, betraying the national interests' when in fact it was the Russian peasant and proletarian soldiers in the army who walked away from the front and demanded land, bread and an end to the slaughter. We hold no brief for Lenin and the Bolsheviks but we can recognise that the one good thing they did, in response to Russian soldiers voting against the war with their feet, was to take Russia out of the First World War. Putin would have sent millions more to the slaughter.

Steve Clayton

The Call. (1918)

From the December 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Come from the slum and the hovel,
From the depth of your dumb despair;
From the hell where you writhe and grovel
Crushed by the woes you bear;
There are joys that are yours for the taking,
There are hopes of a height unknown,
A harvest of life in the making
From the sorrows the past has sown. 

Come from the dust of the battle,
Where your blood, like a river, runs,
Where helpless as driven cattle
You feed the insatiable guns.
You fight when your masters bid you,
Now fight that yourselves be free,
In the last great fight that shall rid you
Of your age-long slavery. 

There's a murmur of many voices
That shall roll like thunder at last;
The shout of a world that rejoices
In a harvest ripening fast.
For the slaves their shackles are breaking
With wonder and ecstasy;
There is life, new life, in the making
In a new-won world made free.

F.J. Webb

The Movement In Manchester. (1908)

From the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The hard work put in by "The Two Revolutionaries" last winter in Cottonopolis and the visit paid by Comrades Kent and Humphrey in August bore fruit in the shape of the Manchester branch of the S.P.G.B., which branch, although only formed in October, has already made itself felt, and will prove a very prickly thorn in the side of the "reformers" and political job-hunters of the S.D.F. and I.L.P. brand as soon as the open-air propaganda season commences.

On October 20th Mr. J. T. McPherson, Labour member for Preston, who, with Messers. Seddon and G. D. Kelley, recently had his expenses paid to Switzerland and back by those friends of Labour, the National Service League, spoke at a meeting of a local Ethical Society and eulogised the Labour Party, singling out Mr. Crooks, M.P., for special mention. In the course of the discussion our comrade Jim Brough pointed out that Crooks had broken the Constitution of the L.R.C. by sending a letter in support of Mr. Hamar Greenwood, then Liberal candidate (now M.P.) for York, Mr. G. H. Stuart being the L.R.C. candidate for the Division.

Mr. McPherson replied that Crooks had not proved false to the Labour Party's Constitution since signing it. Following upon this correspondence took place and the member for Preston promised on October 24th to obtain information which would enable him to justify his assertion. Up to the time of writing he has not done so. In connection with the same matter Comrade Brough wrote to Mr. Hamar Greenwood drawing his attention to the issue of the Postmen's Gazette of February 17th, 1906, stating that extracts from Mr. Crook's letter in support of Mr. Greenwood were posted and issued as a handbill during the contest. Mr. Greenwood, who may of course be out of town, has not yet replied. Comrade W. L. Brown also wrote to Mr. G. H. Stuart, M.P. for information and this gentleman informed our comrade that Mr. Crooks did not deny writing the letter referred to, but he did deny that the construction placed upon it was the correct one!

On November 20th, Comrade J. W. Marsh represented the Party at a debate at the Co-operative Hall, Ashton Old Road, his opponent being Mr. Tom Swann, I.L.P. The subject was "Does the I.L.P. deserve the support of the Working Class?" and Dr. Garrett of the S.D.F. presided. In his opening remarks the chairman said there was nothing to lose but much to gain by discussing this and similar matters in public. They had differences and these should be fought out before the public. Comrade Marsh opened the debate. He pointed out that the development of Society from feudal times had resulted in the political power being secured by the owners of the machinery of wealth production, which ownership enabled them to practically own the worker. The antagonism of interest between the possessing class and the wage earners demanded the formation of a working-class party based upon a clear recognition of the class position, and he showed how all other parties were useless to achieve any real good to the workers. By a Socialist party he meant one whose aim was the capture of the political power, for until that was done class domination could not be ended. A party not preaching Socialism all the time, not openly and avowedly organising for Socialism, was not doing the work of a Socialist Party. He gave many instances of confusing and pro-capitalist tactics of I.L.P. members, and having dealt with the futility of reform, closed by declaring that the answer to the question was in the negative. Mr. Swann, in his opening speech, denied that they had anything to do with the action taken by I.L.P. leaders, even if they had violated the constitution of the Party. For every backslider that Marsh could name, 99 could be mentioned who had been true to the Cause. He became irrelevant by referring to the fact that certain prominent members of the S.P.G.B. were expelled from the S.D.F., and tried to make out a case for the I.L.P. by comparing the number of its weekly meetings to those held by the S.P.G.B. The I.L.P., he said, had more branches than the S.P.G.B. had individual members. It had spent £250,000 in propaganda since it was founded. Alluding to Marsh's attack on the advocacy of reforms, Mr. Swann quoted from a pamphlet on Free Maintenance to the effect that in times of strike the men would be encouraged by the knowledge that their children were being fed. He admitted that capitalism not only produced but demanded a reserve army of unemployed, but said the capitalist class must be compelled to find work for the unemployed. He described the policy of the S.P.G.B. as a dog in-the-manger one. Not only was it trying to prevent the I.L.P. doing good work but it was also trying to undo that already done. The S.P.G.B. were dreamers trying to disunite and leg down the workers. He claimed that the I.L.P. contributed more to that unity which was essential on the part of the workers than any other party and therefore deserved their support.

In his reply Comrade Marsh pointed out that the I.L.P. leaders who had violated the principles preached by the Party still had the support of the rank and file. and the I.L.P., like any other party, must be judged by the actions of its representatives. He pointed out that the master class could take away Free Maintenance as well "concede" it, and the strike argument therefore fell through. Moreover, so long as they controlled, through Parliament, the Army and Navy, they could and would use these against workers on strike. He denied that Mr. Swann had dealt with the points, which was evidence of his inability to do so. Mr. Swann concluded by declaring that his view of the S.P.G.B. had been confirmed. He had always thought they were "a set of fanatical, skyscraping, moonraking, rainbow chasers," and having delivered himself of much more to the same effect he sat down. The hall was crowded and a good sale of literature was effected.

The Manchester branch is thus fairly on its legs and the "political job hunters" had better look out for squalls. We have now enrolled a vigorous fighter in the person of Moses Baritz, late of the S.D.F., well known throughout Lancashire and the Potteries, and we have no doubt the branch will from time to time, be enabled to report favourably of  its doings.

A B.

Since the above was written a further report has been received, from which we gather that for the first three weeks in December the branch disposed of 300 copies of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD and the S.P.G.B. Manifesto. Good propaganda meetings have been held. On Sunday, December 8th, Baritz spoke at Stevenson Square in the afternoon, and at Tab Street in the evening. Here Councillor Sam Hague, of the I.L.P., opposed, and after Baritz had dealt with his opposition the audience bought 10 pamphlets in a few moments. At the meeting at Stevenson Square on the afternoon of December 15th two members of the S.D.F. opposed. They claimed to be revolutionists but believed in reforms. After the S.P.G.B. speaker had quoted the words of Mr. H. M. Hyndman concerning palliatives obscuring the issue and reform being impossible, these opponents repudiated Mr. Hyndman. One admitted that "there are a few fakirs and shakers in the S.D.F." The branch has challenged the local branches of the S.D.F. and I.L.P. to set debates and is awaiting replies. —Ed.

The Twilight of Bolshevism (1937)

Book Review from the September 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

From "Lenin to Stalin," by Victor Serge. (Pioneer Publishers, New York.)

The above volume, of one hundred pages or so, presents in brief the views given in greater detail in the author's larger work, "The Fate of the Revolution," $2.00.

In a note about Serge, we are told that his parents were émigrés in Tsarist days, one member of the family having been hanged after the assassination of Alexander II. Serge appears to have moved in anarchistic circles until 1917 in France and Spain, but joined the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1919.

"He became a member of the Russian Communist Party and a colleague of Zinoviev on the E.C. of the Communist International during the Civil War. He then became a gunner in a special battalion, a member of the military defence staff, and a commissar of the archives in the secret police under Krassin in 1919  . . . He spent considerable time in Germany (during the preparation of the 1923 uprising) and in Austria. Since then he has been a member of the Opposition. Expelled from the party and imprisoned in 1928 . . . deported to Orenburg in 1933, he was banished from the U.S.S.R. . . . in 1936."

The author's theme is the change, real or supposed, which has come over the Soviet Government since Lenin's time. He might have entitled it, "From Heroism to Cowardice." The careful reader who has studied the progress of events will fail to be convinced by such an over-simple presentation of the case. For example, compare the recent slaughter of Russian military leader with an incident in the Civil War, quoted by Serge on page 30:—

"The first Red troops retreat on every occasion. Kazan, the key to the Volga, is lost. Trotsky, Ivan Smirnov, and a group of militants arrive by special train in the midst of this débâcle . . . The  morale of the troops recovered. Trotsky signed this order:— 

'The soldiers of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army are not a cowardly rabble. They want to fight for the liberty and happiness of the working people. If they retreat or fight badly it is the fault of the commanders and commissars.
  

'I serve notice that if a unit gives ground, the political commissar will first be shot. Then the commander . . . For this I assume responsibility before the Red Army.'

"Many Revolutionists disapproved this speech and action, but Lenin approved it heartily."

This typically anarchist view of the responsibilities and powers of  individuals appears to have infected Bolshevism at an early date. The full fruits of the superstition are only now being reaped. When Serge deals with the confessions of people like Kamenev and Zinoviev the same semi-mystical streak appears. On page 81 he says: "Such confessions are made out of utter devotion and there is also an element of calculation about them. Smilga, an Oppositionist 'capitulator,' who has been in prison since 1933, once said: 'We must retreat, surrender for the present, and when the masses awaken, we shall put ourselves at their head.'"

Serge adopts a similar attitude to the defeat of Stalin's policy on the international field. Whether it be China or Germany, Serge evidently fails to realise the fantastic character of the proposition that a different "leadership" would have led to substantially different results. Like Trotskyists generally, he appears to imagine that the workers and peasants of the entire world are only waiting for genuine revolutionary messiahs to effect their deliverance. The tame slogan of "Socialism in one country" only expresses the belated recognition by the ruling clique of the Russian Communist Party of their limited influence outside Russia.

Lenin was by no means exempt from the pressure of external forces, as Serge's own pages bear witness. For instance, on page 29, we read: "Lenin and his co-workers did not contemplate the total nationalisation of heavy industry, but rather an effective workers' control and the growing participation of the Socialist state in mixed trusts in which the capitalists would retain some place."

Dealing with the civil war, on page 32, however, he says: "To an ever-increasing extent the economy must be directed with a view to war and stringent measures of nationalisation are extended to the whole of production. Factory-owners ask to be nationalised, as they cannot live otherwise."

Finally, when the civil war over: "The Poles are driven from Kiev. Lenin at once conceives the project of an offensive against Warsaw to make Poland a Soviet State . . . The workers and peasants of Poland fail to rise, and this, once again, proves that the revolution cannot be brought into a foreign country at the point of a gun."

The peasant risings in Russia itself (Serge instances the region of Tambov, where the peasant force reached 80,000 men), coupled with what he describes as the "useless massacre" of the Kronstadt sailors (rebelling against a Central Government, which had suppressed democracy), forced Lenin to put forward a new economic policy. "War communism" went by the board. Requisitions of grain were abandoned, peasants and others were allowed to trade, and all the feature of small-scale capitalism reasserted themselves. Even the ties between the State and its industrial trusts were slackened, and these began to participate in buying and selling in the ordinary market.

If we are to regard Lenin's régime as one of heroism, we are also compelled to recognise the magnitude of the illusions from the results of which many of his followers have had to suffer.

Serge's account of the war on the Opposition makes dismal reading: "The purge of the population of Leningrad (by imprisonment and deportation) includes between 80,000 and 100,000 victims. And that is in 1935, a year of economic recovery." (Page 77.)

Lenin changed the name of his party from "Social-Democrat" to "Communist." In Spain, Stalin's followers become "Socialists" in order to hound down expelled members of the Communist International. More treacherous than the Fascists, Serge shows that they denounce the P.O.U.M. militia as "the agents of Franco-Hitler-Mussolini," in a word of those who bid fair to reverse Lenin's famous slogan and turn a civil war into an imperial one.

Eric Boden

Realistic portrayal (2014)

Book Review from the August 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Charley’s War: Volumes 1 to 10,  Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun, Titan Books

Charley’s War has been described as the best British comic strip ever produced and it is difficult to disagree. It can be heartily recommended for younger people as an easy introduction to the First World War and for adults as a gripping read in itself.

The strip originally ran in Battle from 6 January 1979 to 26 January 1985 and follows the teenage Charley Bourne from his enlistment in early 1916, through the bloody battles at Somme and Passchendaele to the end of the war and beyond. It is a dramatic but realistic portrayal of life in the trenches, and through flashbacks and other devices deals with other less well known aspects of the war – the war in the air, at sea and on the home front, the experience of the French at Verdun, the Etaples Mutiny, and the intervention in Russia. It even features a conchy, though not a socialist – they were, alas, rare birds indeed.

Naturally various narrative devices of the genre are used in order to maintain attention and pace but the strip is never a standard boy’s own tale of daring do. Charley is treated as a real person, with a past, as a worker on the buses in London, a future, on the dole in the ‘30s, and a family life, father, mother and sister, and later a wife and children. It is easy to pick holes, e.g. its all too free adoption of the ’Lions led by Donkeys’ approach, which neglects the physical constraints of the fighting environment (could all the Generals on all the sides really have been such idiots?), and the occasional dubious historical details (although there were some horrific evil weapons in use, the acid sprayer used to melt soldiers depicted in the final book almost certainly never existed). However, the shock and power of the story lines overcome all niggling objections.

Charley’s War has been reproduced over a period of years by Titan in high quality hardback editions, which does the highly detailed art of Joe Colquhoun proud. The books have restrained but stylish black covers, which will not embarrass the non-genre purchaser. The reprints come complete with lots of finely crafted background information and excellent introductions. The full set is now available and is heartily recommended.

KAZ

Romantic rebels (1988)

Editorial from the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago this month the French took an unscheduled holiday together. For three romantic weeks a minority of revellers bathed in a glorious self-deception, erecting barricades, occupying their places of work, popularising a critique of consumer culture and sending wish-you-were-here cards to the workers, who responded with a General Strike for better wages and conditions but refused to "take power and overthrow capitalism". Here and there legal authority was replaced by self-catering communes, which actually managed nothing more productive than festivals, traffic and 24-hour talking shops. General de Gaulle's five-minute television broadcast of 30 May called a halt to the entertainment and within a few days the radicals - like naughty pupils caught misbehaving - were back in class with their heads down. Tedious normality returned, leaving a handful of Redcoats without audiences and British and American sociologists to ponder whether we had witnessed a "revolutionary situation" or an extended lunch break.

The student revolt which triggered worker unrest had its roots in the strict subordination of universities to the Ministry of Education, a factor which served to create a uniformly militant state of mind amongst the young elite. The libertarian spirit of the time had also fostered a New Left rebellion against Communist orthodoxy and liberalism, but the practical result of its propaganda was limited to a number of wildcat strikes in the aftermath of the Communist-led General Strike of 13 May. Cold reality was that the majority of wage and salary earners wanted nothing more than improvements and reforms -  a fact confirmed by the overwhelming ratification of representative democracy in the June general election, when the Gaullists were returned with an increased majority.

The events of May'68 are of concern to socialists because they probably represent most people's ideas of what a revolution would entail - blood and barricades, factory occupations and the violent overthrow of legal authority. The leading actors in the drama may have represented different strands of left-wing ideology but they all shared a belief in the primacy of industrial action and force as the means to effect social change, the central arguments of syndicalists and anarchists being repeated by Bolsheviks of all varieties. The backbone of their theory was and remains the General Strike, which begins in a small way, spreads in sympathy strikes and occupations and develops into the overthrow of the entire system. A fundamentally elitist approach, it assumes the working class to be a simple giant that needs taking by the hand and leading into the class struggle. Revolution is viewed as the culmination of hundreds of industrial struggles in which workers gain experience and an ever-stronger sense of solidarity, and rests on their ability to take and hold the means of production in face of the combined forces of the state. Its advocates dismiss the possibility that workers can ever reach their exalted level of consciousness without such vigorous exercise.

It is impossible to deny that ideas are conditioned by people's material experience, but this is a long way from suggesting that industrial struggle will, in itself, automatically produce socialist consciousness. Activists who took to the streets of France in 1968 were not preoccupied with the abolition of the wage labour and capital relationship and its replacement with free access, and no amount of struggle could have conjured these concepts out of the air and into the majority of heads. Had the French left been able to turn their dreams into reality (let's assume for argument's sake that the armed forces all happened to be on holiday) they would have had no choice but to administer capitalism since their followers would have gained as little knowledge as they had of its alternative.

Spontaneity may be an asset for the stand-up comic but it is of no use when attempting to dispose of capitalism. The ownership of the means of life  cannot be settled at the factory gate or the barricade because such methods leave the coercive state in the hands of the owning class. When workers are sufficiently class conscious to capture the political machinery for socialism, they will have already used their knowledge to bring their workplace organisations to a similar state of development. They will talk not of mines for the miners or factories for the factory workers, but of the democratic control of the world's resources by the whole community.

The only movement in the interest of the great majority that can ever be successful is one they understand, desire and vote for. Industrial action for political ends can produce conditions of chaos. But chaos is not socialism, and so long as the great majority do not want socialism, socialism cannot be the outcome.

A Tale of the Submerged. (1912)

From the January 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bertram Williams, a homeless labourer of 21, fell, it is reported, into the Thames. In a moment of aberration of mind he got out again. An idea smote him, perhaps because it was a raw December night. He thought he would try and find somewhere to dry his clothes. He went to two police stations, where he was referred to the casual ward. There they would not admit him because he had no "order".

There was one other place he could apply at in Christian England, overflowing with the traditional "peace and goodwill" of Christmastide. To the Salvation Army Shelter! Ah! yes, a good idea. "Knock and it shall be opened." "Do unto others --." "For He e e doth mark th' spa a-rrow's fall." Excellent! B. Williams would go unto the Good Samaritan.

He found the G.S. on duty even at that early hour (4 o'c in the morning), which is not surprising, for thee Salvationist watch as well as bray. It is a habit they acquire through watching the financial aspect of their "prayer skirmishes." When Williams preferred his request to be allowed to dry his clothes, he was told to call again at 5, because their rules did not allow them to admit anyone before that hour. You see, though it is true that the bridegroom cometh, the S.A. are so firmly convinced of his respectability that they make no provision for his reception before 5 o'c in the morning.

Of course, the wisest course for B. Williams to have followed at least, from the moral point of view, would have been to get back into the river for an hour or two. Such Christian meekness would probably have met with its promised reward. He would have inherited the earth, or at least, six feet by two of it.

But there, we can all be wise after the event. Williams smashed the S.A. shelter window.

Oh dear! That's a crime against private property, you know. So they hauled him off to the police-station, where he was received with open arms. They didn't refer him to the casual ward now - he had smashed a window.

In the fulness of time Bertram appeared before the magistrate, to whom it was explained by the Good Samaritan that the Commissioner of the S.A. took a very serious view of the offence. That is only to be  expected. It is a much more serious affair, smashing a window, than sowing the seeds consumption in a homeless young labourer. But what a wonderfully convenient thing the prison is to those who preach the gospel of turning the other cheek to the smiter.

A. E. Jacomb.

Piecemeal (1983)

Book Review from the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The CND Story, ed. John Minnion and Philip Bolsover, Allison and Busby (1983).

In the preface to this book the editors point out that it is a collection of individual views and that it is 'in no sense an "official history"' (p.7). This has always been the stance adopted by CND, which claims to be a movement not an organisation as such. Its aims are simple but vague enough to bear many interpretations. It is a broad church which embraces christians, pacifists and left-wingers. There are a multitude of peace groups now in existence: Scientists Against Nuclear Arms, the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons, Journalists Against Nuclear Extermination, Teachers for Peace, Families Against the Bomb, Women Oppose the Nuclear Threat, Tories Against Cruise and Trident, Babies Against the Bomb, Women for Life on Earth, etc. They represent an outcry against the horrific consequences of technological advance in weaponry. Such protests have always existed. There were protests against waging war on civilians, the bombardment of towns, chemical weapons, submarines, napalm and atomic weapons. Socialists also oppose the slaughter of human beings, but in any form of war whether conventional or nuclear. CND in the 1970s developed its campaign to "increase its opposition to chemical and biological weapons" (p.32) yet it still wishes to see the retention of capitalism. For this reason CND's programme of action is futile. Restricting the type of weaponry available does not reduce the chances of war nor the horrific consequences of war.

Janet and Norman Buchan in the section 'The Campaign in Scotland: singing into protest' say:

From a very early stage we had won full support from the Labour Party, Trades Council and the STUC  . . . And it was they who were largely responsible for securing the biggest post-war demonstration in Glasgow till then, at the start of the 1960's. Incidentally, that was the demonstration that produced the sectarian slogan to end all sectarian slogans. Just as we were turning round the corner of Sauchiehall Street two grim stalwarts of the Socialist Party of Great Britain were standing heralding the march with a huge banner and slogan which read: "This demonstration is useless—You must first destroy capitalism" (p. 53).

The Buchans have clearly not grasped the profound nature of this criticism of CND. They may wax lyrical about the support from different reformist groups but this has in no way reduced nuclear weapon proliferation. War is endemic to capitalism. Nuclear weapons represent only one aspect of the arsenal of modern capitalism and these weapons will be used if the capitalist powers (whether NATO, Warsaw Pact, China or any other) feel the need to. In 1925, 114 countries signed the Geneva Protocol banning the use of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases but countries still reserved the right of retaliatory usage. This is the recurrent hypocrisy of the arms race but it does not mask the willingness to develop, produce and ultimately use any weapons. Supposed peaceful intentions do not hide the reality of weapons retention. CND's problem is how they can effect a change in government policy in order to bring about unilateral disarmament. 

Andrew Papworth says that CND must avoid "the dangers of creating illusions about the extent to which Britain is a responsive democracy" (p. 126). He talks about the failure of political parties to carry through into government disarmament policies and about their failure to respond to disarmament demands. What he should recognise is that this is the inevitable outcome for political parties who are committed to capitalism. Dan Smith argues that the strength of CND is in its non-political nature and that its "basic role is to close the door against certain options in defence policy — nuclear options" (p. 107). What Smith's argument does emphasise is that CND is not concerned about the eradication of war; he talks of guerrila style territorial defence and non-nuclear armed forces. Nuclear weapons are an unpleasant aspect of war but death in the wastes of the Falklands is not glorious and is no less final than nuclear obliteration. John Fremlin argues that to call for a rejection of all weapons would turn away those who "genuinely afraid of giving up our conventional territorial and naval defence" (p. 104).

It is little wonder that The CND Story presents a confused image of what CND is about for the various attitudes adopted within CND are essentially confused. For Joan Ruddock the task of CND is to "make work within the Labour movement a priority" (p. 98). Such faith in the Labour Party suggests that CND have learnt little since the reversal of the Labour Party's unilateralist vote between 1960 and 1961. Ruddock also talks of extending political activity through the newly formed Parliamentary and Election Committee. It will be interesting to see if CND secure any more votes than the 1,000 or so gained by Michael Croft when he stood for an Independent Nuclear Disarmament Election Committee in 1964. What most CND supporters claim is that there  is a need to swing the policies of one of the established political parties and for David Griffiths the "Labour Party is, for the present, the only serious candidate" (p. 133).

CND have always claimed that their strength is in being a broad church. This is in fact one of their weaknesses. Not only do disagreements occur as to how to get rid of nuclear weapons within CND but there are now a host of different peace groups. They may ostensibly share a single aim but profound disagreements occur as to how to achieve that aim and what exactly that aim is. The CND Story emphasises the frustration and anger felt by people in response to the threat of nuclear annihilation. What CND and the other peace groups have failed to grasp is that wars do not occur as a result of having weapons but because of the conflicting economic interests of capitalist states. CND have helped to bring into public debate the horrific consequences of nuclear war. What is needed is to go beyond a moral outcry and to attack the system which creates war. Good intentions will not solve the problem of war but there is a revolutionary alternative: "You must first destroy capitalism".

Philip Bentley