On getting a bit of your own back (1979)

From the May 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Technically, Proudhon was wrong when he wrote that property is theft. But they are inseparable in a way which is not captured by crime statistics, nor portrayed anywhere in five decades of cops and robbers films. The working class version of self-help is not the sort of thing of which Samuel Smiles would have approved, yet it is more universal than his prescription of inventiveness, frugality and diligence as a means of improvement. I mean pilfering.

The world of the workers is one where access to what is needed is heavily restricted by the rationing system of wages; while the world of the capitalist is one of abundance where desire has only to be expressed in pieces of paper for the object of that desire to be accessible. These two worlds come together, in part, at places of work; for there the worker glimpses, at second-hand, what it is like to belong to the master class.

Clock Cards

In factories the stores are always full of materials and tools which the machinist needs to complete his jobs; power flows unrestrictedly through the machine he operates and electric light floods from the roof of the machine shop—with no need for anyone to worry about bills. money for the meter, or who is going to pay to-day. For the machinist adds his measure of labour time to the products which pass through his hands. When the worker is surrounded by this beautifully organised system of social production, he cannot help contrasting it with the paucity of his private ownership; so he gets a bit of his own back as part of the vain attempt to redress the balance, after his employer has taken everything he makes, leaving him only a small packet of money.

Thieves do not form a sub-culture of the working class; most of us are at it. Hence the half-admiring description of the opportunistic worker — "he'll steal anything that's not bolted down". While the sharp-eyed storeman who controls every washer is — "as tight as a duck's arse". Because the worker has no stake in what he makes, the battle between these two is often the only thing which lends interest to the working day. Anyone who doubts that the workers are resourceful enough to run a socialist society should consider their skill in outwitting the storeman.

Self-Help

What happens to the street trade with his barrow, who sharpened knives, shears and landmowers? Every cutter-grinder in the toolrooms where U have worked has two jigs under his bench. One mounts the cylindrical blades of the landmowers his friends bring in for sharpening; the smaller fixture holds the blades of the rotary mowers. Between them they earn him his cigarette or pin-money.

Learning how to get a bit of your own back starts early for most workers. Who does not have an atlas and a few school textbooks on their bookshelf? While teacher tried to stop us from stealing or "losing" books, she kept her house in pens, pencils, drawing pins, Sellotape and envelopes from the stockroom, taken while the school secretary's back was turned.

Jobs which involve collecting money offer endless scope for self-help. The crowded early morning work 'bus often arrives at the factory area before the conductor can collect the fares upstairs. So he stands on the platform as the passengers come down, takes their money and rolls a stream of 5 pence tickets for 25 pence fares. The 'bus inspectors spend a lot of their time looking for discarded strings of 5 pence tickets; so a clever conductor takes them home with him. It is a poor man who does not fiddle enough for his own and his driver's tea money this way.

I once knew a sheet metal worker whose whole house was decorated with low relief brass and copper ornaments, hammered from offcuts of material used in his work. So accomplished had he become in producing the cycle of jobs at the factory, that he was able to divide his time at work equally between jobs for the gaffer and his homework. Standardisation had taken all of his skill and inventiveness out of his trade, so he lavished it on those ornate and decorative tokens of his stolen labour.

Free For All

The existence of this universal fiddling is a strong argument for the futility of criminal reform. Petty crime is as natural an occurrence as rain in Manchester. Small wonder then that a few workers schooled in this tradition take to theft in a big way. The whole process is turned into an institution by dossers in cities. Most of the book on "alternative" London list places where free food, drink, clothes, telephone calls and other unlikely gifts can be had from firms engaged in promotions, display and publicity events.

Fiddling has its amusing side. Norman moved into a new council house. He was nailing down the linoleum in the toilet, when a carelessly aimed hammer struck the lavatory pan a glancing blow. It fell apart and there was water everywhere. Rather than face the wrath of his wife, he unscrewed the two halves from the floor, quietly carried them across the road to the unfinished houses, slipped in through an open window, exchanged the broken one for a new one and crept back home. His wife never learned of all this, but a few days later he was passing the time of day with the site foreman of the estate, who was complaining of vandalism. "They even get into the new houses just to smash the lavatories nowadays", moaned the foreman. "It's terrible" said Norman, "I don't know what the world is coming to".

Socialists know what they would like the world to come to. But the pity of it is that workers in general have no idea of how the stores of the world could be made freely available to them—and not surreptitiously.

Barry McNeeney

Analysing Marx (1992)

Book Review from the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx, Our Contemporary. Social for a Post-Leninist World. by Keith Graham. (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. £35)

Marx is our contemporary, argues Keith Graham in this book, in that he analysed not just 19th century capitalism but capitalism in general, and capitalism, unfortunately, is still very much with us.

Graham's approach is that of what has come to be called "analytical Marxism" which consists on analysing what Marx wrote to get at the logic of his line of argument and then to see where this leads, as well as identifying, and even correcting, any inconsistencies.

Graham applied this technique both to what he calls Marx's "general theory" (basically, the materialist conception of history, how societies are structured and change) and to his "special theory" (of how capitalism works and how it can be abolished). Light is thrown on various problems of interpretation of Marx. For example, what did Marx mean when he wrote about property relations becoming a fetter on the development of the means of production? Is it the class struggle or the development of the productive forces that is the motor of change from one form of society to another?

Graham also discusses Marx's concept of class and its political implications. Marx adhered to the principle that "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself". So do we (it is incorporated into our declaration of principles). So do many others. But the sort of action this commits you to depends on how you define "working class". Which is where the disagreements and misunderstandings begin.

One view defines the working class as, essentially, only manual workers who actually physically manipulate raw materials. This is the popular view and also that of non-Marxists who define class in terms of occupation and way of life. It has definite political implications, as Graham points out:

If it [the working class] is identified with those engaged in manual labour, it constitutes a small and probably shrinking proportion of the population. And, as Przeworski puts it, 'A party representing a class which has fewer members than the other classes combined cannot win electoral battles'. This identification would therefore militate against acceptance of democratic political structures.

As a minority within society, the working class would not be able to use democratic political means to emancipate itself and so would have to reject majority action and favour some other means, such as industrial action.

Another view holds that Marx defined class in terms of class consciousness and political organisation. Graham quotes David McLellan who says that for Marx "a class only existed when it was conscious of itself as such, and this always implied common hostility to another social group", and Ralph Miliband who argues that "for Marx, the working class is not truly a class until it acquires the capacity to organize itself politically . . . without consciousness, the working class is a mere mass".

This view too can lead to an anti-democratic conception of the emancipation of the working class by excluding the un-class conscious and the politically unorganised—and allowing the politically organised minority to act as "the working class".

Graham argues, convincingly, that Marx rejected this view. Marx defined class in terms of a social group's material circumstances (relationship to other social groups with regard to control over and access to means for producing wealth) not of their consciousness. He gave an objective not a subjective definition of class. The working class were the working class, by virtue of their position in society, even if they were unaware of being a class.

So how did Marx define working class? Graham has no difficulty in showing that Marx did not restrict the working class to skilled and unskilled manual workers. First, Marx introduced the concept of the "collective worker" as all those workers who, within the social division of labour, contributed in way or another to the productive effort; this would include those engaged in activities which at a lower stage of technological development would have been done by the same person as actually worked the raw material—planning, researching and co-ordinating the work—and so embraced engineers, researchers, draughtspeople, their back-up clerical staff and other such "white collar" workers.

But, even apart from this, Marx defined the working class as the class of those whose economic circumstances (exclusion from ownership of means of production) compelled them to sell their ability to work for a wage or salary, including those dependent on them and those unable to find an employer. This included clerical workers, civil servants, teachers and even managers (who Marx referred to as "a special kind of wage labourer"). In a country like Britain we are talking about the overwhelming majority of the population, well over 90 percent of people in fact.

If this overwhelming majority is the working class that is to emancipate itself, then the political strategy for achieving a classless society can live with, and make use of existing democratic political institutions, limited and distorted as they are and must be under capitalism. As Graham puts it:

If you believe that the proletariat is in the process of becoming the majority class in society, and if you believe that this class is the only practical agency which can be expected to carry out and consolidate the desired transformation to the future society, then you have strong grounds for favouring democratic values. Universal suffrage and majority rule will be congenial institutions in that regard.

This was why Marx always supported action by workers to secure the franchise, as the Chartists in Britain, and urged those who had got it, as in France, to transform universal suffrage "from the instrument of fraud it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation" ("Introduction to the Programme of the French Workers Party", 1880).

The principle that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself committed Marx to a thoroughly democratic practice. His was a concept of a democratic social revolution, both in the sense of the workers organizing themselves democratically without leaders and in the sense of democratic methods being employed.

Graham brings this point out well in his book, which can be highly recommended to those who  want to understand what Marx was trying to say on this and other subjects.

Adam Buick

The Central Asian Holocaust of the First World War (2014)

From the November 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Way back in the Socialist Standard of August 1918 we referred to a 'Mr. Price from Russia itself, in his article in the Manchester Guardian for November 28th , 1917, where he describes the cold-blooded slaughter of 500,000 Khirgiz Tartars by the Czar’s Government in 1916. And he caustically remarks: “While Western Europe has heard about Armenian massacres, the massacre of the Central Asian Moslems by the Tsar’s agents has been studiously hidden.”'

Under Tsarist Russian rule, Turkestan was converted to a major cotton-growing region. Cotton cultivation was imposed to compensate for the loss of the US cotton supply in the 1860s due to the American Civil War. The resulting economic development brought some small-scale industry to the region, but the native people of Turkestan were worse off than their Russian counterparts, and the new wealth from cotton was spread very unevenly. On the whole, living standards did not improve, and many farmers became indebted. Cotton price fixing during the First World War made matters worse, a large, landless rural proletariat soon developed, gambling and alcoholism became commonplace, and crime rose considerably. Historian Togan wrote 'after the proliferation of cotton planting in Ferghana [imposed by the Tsarist state at the expense of cereal cultivation] the economic conditions deteriorated'.

On 25 June 1916 the Russian Imperial Decree ordered the compulsory conscription to military service of Muslims in the Central Asian region of Turkestan. This was the beginning of the 'Basmachi' movement or the Turkestan National Liberation movement which was documented by historian and participant Zeki Velidi Togan (1890-1970) who wrote: 'Basmachi is derived from “baskinji” meaning attacker, which was first applied to bands of brigands. During Tsarist times, these bands existed after Turkestan independence was lost and Russian domination began'.

On 11 July 1916, the first mass protest meeting took place in Tashkent and Russian police fired into the crowd. Arrests and summary executions followed. The Russian settlers, who had been brought  into Tashkent some thirty to forty years earlier, began looting, apparently at the instigation of the Russian police. Protest meetings spread to Marghilan, Andijan and Hojend; attacks on Tsarist officials took place in Akkurgan, Akmesjid and Kanjagali. The people of Jizzakh destroyed the railroad at several points. In the middle of August the resistance spread to Ashkhabad, Mervto Akmola, Turgay, Yedisu, Karakul and Chu basin.

The Imperial Russian state declared martial law in Turkestan, and as a concession announced a lower quota of workers to be conscripted under the 25 June decree. Russian generals Kuropotkin and Kalbovo armed the Russian settlers in Central Asia to act as additional military units to reinforce their existing and well-armed regular forces. Russian generals Ivanov and Rynov moved all their forces against Jizzakh. Fully equipped Russian regiments under General Madridov attacked the people of Khiva region, and according to eyewitnesses, massacred even babies in the cradle. Those who were not killed were stripped of their all possessions. Contemporary reports estimated that between 25 June 1916 and October 1917, some 1.5 million Turkic peoples were killed by the Russian forces and settlers. At least half of the Central Asian livestock was destroyed and an inestimable amount of personal property was looted by the Russian military forces and settlers.

Amadeo Bordiga once pointed out that extermination of peoples 'occurred not at a random moment, but in the middle of a crisis and an imperialist war. It is thus from within this gigantic enterprise of destruction.' This can be seen in the midst of the First World War with the Ottoman Empire's genocide of 1.5 million Armenian people but also the 'Central Asian Holocaust of the Turkic Peoples'.

Steve Clayton

World View: The persecution of Taslima Nasrin (1995)

From the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religious groups have a notorious history of stifling dissent by any means possible. And if, in Britain, nonbelievers are no longer persecuted, tortured and killed it is because the superstitious myths and rituals with which religion cloaks itself are no longer taken seriously by the majority of the population. But there are countries where the heads of religion are still able to wield considerable power and influence. To belong to a different faith or to question that religion and try to have a reasoned discussion instead of blindly accepting its "rules" is to take great personal risks.

The humanist and feminist author, 32-year-old Taslima Nasrin has fallen foul of Muslim fundamentalists in her native Bangladesh because her novel Lajja published in 1993 depicts Hindus mistreated by Muslims. In an interview given to the Calcutta newspaper the Statesman she stated that the Sharia law (the Muslim religious law which makes women second-class citizens) needed reforming but this was misquoted as her saying that the Koran needed reform and fuelled fundamentalist anger still further.

Arrest warrant

Fundamentalist Muslims demonstrated in the streets threatening to kill her, and the Bangladeshi government, afraid of public disorder, succumbed to threats and issued a warrant for her arrest under article 295(a) of the Penal Code for "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings". This law was introduced by the British during the days of the British Empire and was intended to prevent inter-religious fighting which would have made Asia more difficult to govern. Ironically, it was now being used to further religious differences and fundamentalist hatred.

After the warrant was issued for her arrest on 4 June 1993, Nasrin went into hiding for a couple of months before appearing in court in Dhaka on 3 August, accompanied by her lawyer, Sara Hossain. She was granted bail. It has been claimed that the secular Bangladeshi government wanted to give her an opportunity to leave the country. This is quite possible given the widespread international support that she received, since her continued persecution by either fundamentalists or the Bangladeshi courts would have created further embarrassment for the Bangladeshi government.

PEN, the international writers' organisation, offered assistance and within a week Nasrin fled to Sweden where she was granted political asylum. Shortly after she appeared in Stockholm to receive the Kurt Tucholsky prize which is given annually to a writer in exile. In 1992 it was awarded to Salman Rushdie, also in hiding from fundamentalist death threats.

Fundamentalist insanity

In accepting the prize, Nasrin thanked the Swedish government for granting her asylum and pledged to continue her fight against "fundamentalist insanity . . . which is spreading darkness in the world". She is trapped in a conflict between liberal secularism and religious fundamentalism, with, the extreme Islamic group, Jamaat stating that "the blood lust will have to be satisfied elsewhere".

Nasrin had criticised Islamic law on previous occasions; in an interview for the New York Times she stated that: "some men would keep women in chains-veiled, illiterate and in the kitchen". She added: "There are 60 million women in my country, not more than 15 per cent of them can read and write. How can Bangladesh become a modern country and find its place in the world when it is dragged backwards by reactionary attitudes towards half its people? It is my belief that politics cannot be based on religion if our women are to be free".

In an interview for Index (September/October 1994) Nasrin was asked if she wanted to revise the Koran. She stated:

"The Quran can no longer serve as the basis of our law. A thousand years ago it may have been useful for fending off barbarism. But we live in modern times, the era of science and technology. The Quran has become superfluous. It stands in the way of progress and the way of women's emancipation."

Asked of she still considered herself a Muslim, Taslima Nasrin replied:

"No, I am an atheist. All forms of religion are anachronistic to me. I dream of a world without religion. Religion gives birth to fundamentalism as surely as the seed gives birth to the tree. We can tear the tree down, but if the seed remains it will produce another tree. While the seed remains we cannot root out fundamentalism."

Religion is the badge of the mentally-enslaved. It uses a cloak of mystification to reinforce its authority by promising a mythical afterlife as a reward for blind obedience and by making threats of eternal punishment, backed up by intimidation and persecution for those who do not submit. It has been a useful tool in the hands of the ruling classes to keep their subjects subservient.

Carl Pinel

Material World: Capitalising on Disease (2014)

The Material World Column from the November 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The World Health Organization (WHO) now estimates that the Ebola death toll in West Africa had surpassed 4,000—though it warned that the statistics ‘vastly underestimate’ the true scale of the epidemic. Hundreds of health workers have died in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, three of the countries where the disease has hit particularly hard. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released new estimates that Ebola may infect 1.4 million people in Liberia and Sierra Leone by the end of January. WHO said in a statement:

‘The Ebola epidemic ravaging parts of West Africa is the most severe acute public health emergency seen in modern times. Never before in recorded history has a biosafety level four pathogen infected so many people so quickly, over such a broad geographical area, for so long. The current situation is so dire that, in several areas that include capital cities, many of these common diseases and health conditions are barely being managed at all’ (commondreams.org/news/2014/09/27).

Properly called Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), the virus damages the cells it hijacks so badly that victims often bleed from every opening of the body. This epidemic has been compounded by a shortage of health workers and facilities plus a belated and insufficient response from the international community. A relative handful of courageous medical workers have struggled to control the spread of Ebola and to treat people with the virus. Many of these people have themselves died.

In an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Doctors Jeremy Farrar and Peter Piot wrote that the epidemic ‘was an avoidable crisis.’ They go on to write ‘We are concerned that without a massive increase in the response, way beyond what is being planned in scale and urgency, alongside the complementary deployment of novel interventions (in particular the use of safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics), it will prove impossible to bring this epidemic under control’ (commondreams.org/news/2014/09/23).

Heeding such warnings many nations are sending medical teams and mobilising their militaries to set in place treatment centres.

In a world that is dominated by capitalism, no drug has ever been approved to treat Ebola, and little research has been done although the disease was first identified in 1976. An article in the New Yorker explained that ‘diseases that mostly affect poor people in poor countries aren't a research priority, because it’s unlikely that those markets will ever provide a return’. The World Bank President Jim Yong Kim co-authored an article in the Washington Post which said that ‘If the Ebola epidemic devastating the countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had instead struck Washington, New York or Boston, there is no doubt that the health systems in place could contain and then eliminate the disease.’

We have now witnessed the near-panic reaction of some elements of the press as Ebola has indeed broken out in the USA and Spain. All over the world, airports are now screening passengers from affected regions and hospitals drawing up action plans to cope if indeed what some say is inevitable does happen.

Nevertheless, there is a tendency to blame the pathology of the disease (and the victims) for the epidemic. John Ashton, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, places this crisis in its proper context, explaining 'We must also tackle the scandal of the unwillingness of the pharmaceutical industry to invest in research to produce treatments and vaccines, something they refuse to do because the numbers involved are, in their terms, so small and don't justify the investment. This is the moral bankruptcy of capitalism acting in the absence of an ethical and social framework.’ He said the international community needed to be ‘shamed into real commitment’ to address the ‘poverty and environmental squalor’ in which epidemics can thrive' (Link).

Previous Ebola outbreaks used to be restricted to the rural areas in poor African countries. In other words, there are no large markets or high profits for the pharmaceutical industry. From a pure business perspective, the Ebola market used to be tiny compared to other viral diseases like influenza. Investors are more interested in a company that can prove it has an effective cure for influenza and sell to the global market for many years. Billions in revenues would be generated annually, driving stock prices far above those that could be achieved via rare diseases like Ebola.

It is not beyond human capacity to contain or defeat Ebola in West Africa since it is spread primarily by contact with victims and is not as easily contracted as airborne diseases such as SARS. Ebola victims are infectious only when they exhibit the actual debilitating symptoms and then they can be quarantined. In Nigeria due to a more developed health infrastructure, health workers were able to utilise their contact tracing teams, which were originally set up to detect and treat polio, to effectively stop its spread (theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2014/oct/07). Decades of civil war in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea has ensured that their health systems are fractured and in disrepair.

Barack Obama raised in a television interview the worrying scenario that Ebola could mutate and become much more communicable. The virus already exists in at least four forms and it could happen although this need not be a mutation to a more lethal form but can be into a more benign mutation. But let’s imagine that Ebola undergoes a mutation that increases its ability to spread and then let us pretend that it then kills, on average, 40,000 to 50,000 Americans and at least a quarter million people globally every year. Now, for the capitalist class and the pharmaceutical industry, in particular, that is where you invest your money for a healthy (sic) return!

ALJO

Left, right — strange bedfellows (1971)

From the August 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has often been pointed out by Socialists that the conception of left and right wings in politics is a snare and a delusion serving only to con the working class into thinking that there is some sort of real choice between the major parties. In practice there are over 600 MPs in Parliament who all have one thing very much in common — and that the only thing that counts. They all support capitalism. Half of them make some sort of noises from time to time to suggest that they have an idea they might be Socialists (or would like you to think they are). It is hard to imagine how they can ever have the cheek to make such claims in future in light of an advert that appeared in June 7 in that great working class organ, the Times.

This expensive piece of propaganda was not exactly for Socialism. It was a denunciation of the projected entry of this country into the Common Market and in case anyone has an idea that this argument could have anything to do with Socialism, it needs only to be mentioned that it contained a host of signatures of well-known Tory MPs. Not exactly the chaps you would expect to associate with Socialists. Particularly when you see that among them are some of the better known Tory backwoodsmen, rabid reactionaries like Soref, Montagu, Bell. One cannot imagine the reason Enoch himself was not in the list but there is no doubt that the arch-racialist would have found congenial company there. And he would also have found the arch leftist, Michael Foot, as ever was. A strange aberration on his part? Certainly not, for he has got all his pseudo-socialist creeps with him, all the great Tribune heroes, Mikardo, Mendelsohn, Allaun, Orme etc, etc ad nauseam. The anti-marketeers held a meeting in the Central Hall where the great leftists and rightists shared a platform to signify their common interest in the future of British Capitalism Ltd.

Who could have thought that only a year or two ago, when the party that these lefties belong to was in charge of the management of British Capitalism Ltd., that the then Managing Director of the firm, a chap called Wilson, along with his deputy Brown, were hawking Britain's application to join the Market round the capitals of Europe like a couple of clapped-out commercial travellers? The Labour Party was so keen ("we mean business" said Wilson; what else would a "socialist" like him mean?) that they sent their twin stars on this trip even though it was clear at the time that the Head Buyer, name of De Gaulle, was going to slam the door in their faces. And at the time of writing, even Wilson himself, who led the great crusade into Europe during the whole of this tenure of power, has not come out in support of the same crusade under the new M.D., Heath. He has chosen to sit on the fence as long as he can with a cynicism that even hardened political correspondents in the newspapers find hard to swallow. Who knows? Maybe by the time this appears, Wilson will have decided that there are more votes in opposing the Market. Maybe Enoch is waiting to join him on the platform. The example of Foot and Mouth joining hands with Soref and Bell should be example enough that left and right are capitalist sisters under their skins. (Some of us are old enough to remember the picture in '39 of Molotov and Ribbentrop shaking hands; the picture that launched a myriad corpses).

The real truth is that the lefties are merely safety valves to head off working class discontent. Can you imagine the Times printing a leader devoted to the praise of Foot if Lord Thomson's minions really thought he was a socialist — a man who stood for the expropriation of Lord Thomson and all his class — as they did during the election?

As to the Market issue, we can but repeat what we have said before. This is an issue for the capitalist class, for their leaders and their stooges. Any difference (joining or staying out) to the workers of this country or France or German would be marginal indeed. The interest of the working class of the whole world is to abolish the very concept of a market economy in its entirety and build a world where wealth is produced for people to enjoy. That is a task that lefties will never perform. For the workers of the world it's a case of do it yourself.

L. E. Weidberg

The end of utopia? (1991)

From the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

NO MORE UTOPIAS—this was the bold headline above an article in the European section of the Guardian on 27 September written by Norberto Bobbio and which had originally appeared in the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

Bobbio thinks that the collapse of what he calls "the communist regimes" in eastern Europe and, particularly Russia, means the end of communism as an idea which has persisted in one form or another for 2000 years.

And he seems to know what communism (we also call it socialism—the two words mean the same) means:

"The communist ideal is about forming a society which is radically different from any that has gone before, a society based on the elimination of private property. The latter is condemned as being the cause of all the ills afflicting mankind, from minor disputes over boundaries to the great wars that have turned the whole world upside down. It is also about setting up a regime based on common ownership, if not of all goods, at least of those that form the major source of wealth and of man's dominion over man. Right or wrong this is communism".

That is sound enough but he then spoils it by claiming that the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917 was "the first major attempt to achieve a communist society in the genuine sense of the term, a society in which private property would be abolished and replaced by the almost total collectivisation of a country with a population of millions".

This is nonsense because even Lenin recognised that socialism was impossible in such a backward country as Russia. All the Bolsheviks could do was to hope that revolutions in the developed European countries would come to their aid and, in the meantime, they would begin to modernise Russia by introducing state capitalism. They certainly didn't think that socialism could be established in one country. That idea came later.

So there was no attempt by the Bolsheviks to abolish private property. Even their promise of equal wages, which has nothing to do with socialism anyway, was quickly dropped and large differentials in income were encouraged instead, while the Bolsheviks (who became the Communist Party) made sure that all property came under their direct control and, in effect, ownership.

Bobbio's unhistorical approach is clearly shown when he compares Thomas More's Utopia with state capitalist Russia. He recounts how in Utopia the traveller who has discovered "the happy island where common ownership is rigorously observed" defends it from sceptics who argue that it cannot work because of human nature—greed, laziness, etc—by telling them "you talk like that because you haven't seen what I have seen". It is impossible now, says Bobbio, to give such a reply any more because "no one who has visited a communist country can now say come and see, then you can talk". What connection can there possibly be between Thomas More's 16th century ideal society and 20th century Russian state capitalism?

To those who insist that there has never been communism in Russia Bobbio replies that it is not enough to say this:

"You have to say why it is so, and suggest which other paths you can follow in order to avoid past mistakes. I don't know of there is anyone around today who can provide answers to these uncertainties".

Yes, signor Bobbio, there are and we will! The Socialist Party and its companion parties overseas have always insisted that communism/socialism can only be established when the essential conditions for it are present. For one thing, the productive forces of society must be developed to the point where they can provide plenty for all. Capitalism itself has long ago solved that problem for us. For another, the majority of the world's workers—all the people who have to work for a wage or salary and in whose interests socialism will be—must agree that it is both possible and desirable. Socialism could not possibly have come about in such an economically undeveloped country as Russia where the vast majority of the population neither understood nor desired it.

The Socialist Party welcomes the collapse of Russian-style "communism" as a significant step in clearing the way for genuine communism to which it has been a serious obstacle for over 70 years. And the idea of a classless, moneyless, worldwide society of production for use will not go away because something entirely different has failed. The proof of this is—and will be—the existence of its advocates in many parts of the world.

Vic Vanni

At the Graveside of Karl Marx (1938)

From the April 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

On March 14th, 1883, Karl Marx breathed his last. He was buried a few days later in the same grave as his wife in the cemetery at Highgate, at that time a suburban part of the great metropolis of London. Although I am a Londoner by birth, and have lived within a few miles of Highgate, although I have been an admirer and an exponent of Marx's teachings for many years, I have not, until March 14th of this year, visited Marx's tomb.

In a cemetery which abounds, like most places of its kind, with profound human emotions, expressed in the form of stones, some marked by a bourgeois relationship by their expressive style, only to bring out in bold relief the proletarian character of those remaining, the grave of Marx is conspicuously of the proletarian order. The class division in modern society cannot fail to reveal itself in the graveyard. I could not help reflecting, as I stood in this thickly depopulated place, what a wealth of philosophy could be made to focus upon so small a portion of "The Good Earth."

For more than half a century after this man had ceased his life's work on behalf of the exploited toilers of the world, the ideas, the theories for which he, to all intents and purposes, gave his life, still circulate and animate in some way or another millions of our class, aye, and the opponents of our class, too, the capitalists throughout the world. Further did I reflect to recall the words of his life-long friend and collaborator, Frederick Engels, who, in a letter to old Wilhelm Liebnecht, on the day of Marx's death, said:

"Although I have seen him to-night stretched out on his bed, the face rigid in death, I cannot grasp the thought that this genius should have ceased to fertilise with his powerful thoughts the proletarian movement of both worlds."

Engels herein expressed a sound sentiment. The influence of Marx goes on, and the bourgeoisie, with their henchmen, do still find in his theories the "haunting spectre" signalling the downfall of their social domination.

About fifty or sixty people, including another comrade of the S.P.G.B. and myself, were present at the graveside on the above-mentioned day. Most of them appeared to be members or sympathisers of the Communist Party. Although a comparatively small gathering, it was chiefly organised by Communists, who had appointed two speakers to speak to those assembled around the grave. Apart from eloquent tributes paid to the memory of Marx, we, of course, had to hear the usual nonsense about his theories having been established in a sixth part of the earth, Russia, and a statement from one of the speakers that if Marx were living to-day he would be writing for The Daily Worker.

Poor Marx! Whatever he did to deserve this strange "tribute" I cannot think. Can anyone outside of the Communist International?

What Marx would be doing, were he still amongst us, is an idle enough question, in all conscience. We can but think that Marx's whole life work was directed towards something totally different from, and in opposition to, the present torturous and murderous state-machine such as Stalin and his gang controlling Russia. The suggestion that Marx would be writing for what, in fact, is little more than a social reformist snippety-bit species of journalese, plus a horse-racing, football pooling "Daily," is the harshest thing said about Marx for many a long day.

ROBERTUS.

News from the Branches (1962)

From the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good news from Glasgow Branch which is going strong propounding Socialism to workers in Scotland. Eleven outdoor meetings were held in June, three of them in Edinburgh. Audiences averaged 100 and literature sales totaled £5. A collection of £3 was taken at an indoor meeting and £5 at the outdoor ones. Average attendances of members was nine.

Swansea Branch held a successful debate with the Liberal Party represented by R. Gool. The SPGB representative our comrade Harris gave a critical survey of the history of the Liberals demonstrating how their reformist policy was of no value to the working-class, and that there was no alternative to Socialism if workers wanted a better way of life. The Liberal attacked the idea of the "class-war" and belittled the Party because it was small and therefore ineffective. He argued that the Liberals were concerned with "day-to-day" issues and gave a list of reforms which he claimed would solve all the problems of the British. Good questions were put from an attentive audience who were clearly sympathetic to the Socialist case. Literature sales, 16s. and a promise was made by a member of the audience to donate her late father's books by Marx and Engels. More indoor meetings are planned especially in view of the interest shown at this debate.

Coventry Group have linked up with Birmingham Branch to conduct propaganda meetings in the Midlands, the first of which was held in June. This lasted for two hours with an audience never below 100 and at times 200. Other meetings will be held in Coventry and surrounding towns. SS subscribers have been notified of future meetings. The local library ban on the SS has been lifted as from June.

The newly formed Bromley Group is already very active busily canvassing the constituency with introductory leaflets and following up with sales of the SS and are finding the method very successful. Comrade May addressed a meeting at the local library. Advertising was made by handbills and posters. (Poor positions were chosen by the bill-posters so members quickly placed more in prominent positions). A van literally covered with posters for the meeting was placed in a busy shopping area on a Saturday. The same was intended on the Monday but was met by a police reception committee. A challenging letter in the local press failed to evoke any response from the Colossi to whom it referred. A contingent of CND supporters attended the meeting and were challenged to debate. Socialist Standard and pamphlets were sold and a collection of £2 taken and a report appeared in the local press. A lively and very promising start.

Bloomsbury Branch have sadly learned of the death of Nat Posner, who had been ill for some time. A member for over twenty years, he had known and supported the Party a long time and had interested workers in Socialism for more than forty years. Some of these joined the Party thirty years ago becoming very active in propaganda work. Originally working as a group at their place of work they sold thousands of Socialist Standards and pamphlets and took regular weekly collections for the Party from sympathizers over a period of years. Thus, our comrade Posner by quietly and patiently convincing others, set off a chain of socialist activity. He was a frequent chairman at outdoor meetings especially at Hyde Park; a consistent and staunch member, he will be missed.

P. H.

The fall and fall of the Labour Party (2001)

Book Review from the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Strange Eventful History: Democratic Socialism in Britain. By Edmund Dell, Harper Collins, 2000.

Last year's centenary of the foundation of the Labour Representation Committee led to a number of histories of the Labour movement being published. Edmund Dell's was one such, steering away from the more self-congratulatory tone of some of the other offerings. In fact it is an excellent account of the Labour Party written by an ex-Labour MP and Cabinet member.

Clearly describing the limitations of Labour in government, Dell takes the reader through the main political currents of the Labour movement from its inception to New Labour. From the Webbs and Keir Hardie through MacDonald, G.D.H. Cole, R.H. Tawney, Harold Laski, Evan Durbin, Bevin, Attlee, Cripps, Bevan and co., to Gaitskill, Crosland, Wilson, Callaghan, Jenkins, Healey, Benn and Foot, up to Kinnock, Hattersley, Brown, Blair and Mandleson – from Labour's claim to be able to advance to what it called socialism (basically state-managed capitalism) through the control of political power, through to Attlee's partially nationalising government beset by currency concerns, Wilson's liberal and state welfare extending government which was also beset by currency crises and inflation. Callaghan's government which ended Labour's commitment to full employment and attempts at Keynesian economic management in the face of an insupportable borrowing requirement, to Kinnock, Smith and Blair's final rejection of anything that might be considered at odds to the interests of capital. All the way the leaders tried to drag the membership away from any hope that Labour could deliver anything much different from any other party managing capitalism.

Time and failure led the Labour Party:

"further from socialism [state capitalism] and nearer to, and eventually beyond , the acceptance of capitalism ... Starting often from a far left, or even Marxist, orientation, they would move through a series of third ways from left to right, from radical intentions to an acceptance of capitalism modified only by a wish to root-out its greater evils. In many cases even the wish to undertake serious reform disappeared."

Dell tells the story as the critical insider, having gone to the Labour Party, via the “Communist” Party in the 1930s, from business as a manager for ICI and being unconvinced of the core of “Old” Labour political economy:

"My experience of industrial management made me sceptical of the practicality of traditional socialism [state capitalism], and of economic planning. But I regarded the Labour party as the humane party and I did not feel that to remain a member I had to endorse Clause Four which, in any case, seemed no longer an expression of serious Labour intentions."

What exactly Dell did endorse is never clear as, despite persistent attacks on the gap between Labour's aims, ideas and reality and on the personalities of the Labour movement, he remained a member of the Wilson and Callaghan governments and later joined the Liberal-SDP Alliance in the 1980s. Perhaps he stayed a Labour member as a humanitarian or some such but at any rate, very early on in the book, Dell declares that because the Labour Party failed to bring about a socialist society, socialism is also dead:

"As a new form of society, socialism was never a practical project in Britain. Democratic socialism was a mirage, beautiful in the eyes of the beholder, but beyond reach. The hope that by democratic means one form of society, capitalism, could be replaced by another, socialism, proved to be nothing other than one of the more striking human self-deceptions ... the insurmountable obstacle to democratic socialism was democracy, and democracy would have killed socialism's chances in Britain even unassisted by the ineptitude of successive Labour governments in managing the economy."

Nationalisation not socialism ...

It certainly is the case that socialism cannot be arrived at through electing Labour governments. It is also the case that the Labour Party was created only to represent trade unions (never particularly radical) in parliament and that when Labour adopted “socialism” in the form of Clause Four in 1918, it was only support for nationalisation of the means of production (of the so-called “commanding heights” of the economy). Quite what Labour hoped to achieve by bringing industry under state instead of private ownership was not very clear apart from vague and fuzzy ends of “greater equality” and centralised planning these were apparently going to transform capitalism into something that could be controlled by the state (via the myriad economists and managers that had an interest in perpetuating the myth that their expertise was all that was required for growth and prosperity). This, surprisingly enough, didn't happen. On transferring coal, steel, iron, fuel, power and transport to state ownership (with weighty compensation to their previous owners), after 1945 the performance of British industry in the world market still remained declining and working conditions remained mostly unaltered for those employed by the state sector. Indeed, Dell notes:

"Nationalisation was a technocratic act, placing industries under the control of managers thought better capable of running them than their predecessors, though they were often the same persons."

The remarkable blind faith of the Labour Party in nationalisation began its decline from the Attlee government. And this decline in the faith of nationalisation as somehow moving towards a new society is associated, not just by Dell, as being the death of socialism. There are still a few in the Labour Party and in the ranks of the hotchpotch of Trotskyists, Leninists and “Old” Labour in the so-called Socialist Alliance who would still claim that it was not nationalisation that was at fault but Morrisonian nationalisation (that based on the model adopted by Herbert Morrison) and that vast swathes of British industry should still be nationalised. But such methods clearly have nothing to do with socialism. As the Socialist Party has consistently shown since 1904, “public” ownership as favoured by the left of capitalism is simply state ownership and a society with a high percentage of state- compared to privately-owned capital is clearly state-capitalism and does not represent a new form of society. Social (common) ownership means that the means of living (production) are owned by, and its products accessible to, all, with no need for artificial systems of exchange (money). Ownership of the means of production by individual capitalists or by the state makes no difference. Where goods or services are produced for exchange values (for sale) and not for use, where the majority work for wages and a minority (either capitalists or the state) siphon off the surplus value (profit) produced by working people, there is capitalism.

In this sense the declining faith in nationalisation and the Labour Party to effect real change is a positive development for real socialism as the results of Labour in government can be seen for what they are – management of capitalism with a touch of, not always beneficial, reformist tinkering. The problem and challenge is that those in the Labour movement and its surrounds, such as Dell, persist in perpetuating the myth that nationalisation is socialism (the standard dictionary definition) and that as its influence as an attractive option for capitalism declines, so does socialism. The fact is that Labour was never socialist and for that reason it is absurd to claim that socialism is dead while it has never been put before most of the electorate, let alone been a choice in any but few places in a handful of elections. The myth of nationalisation as an answer to the problems of capitalism is more or less dead but socialism as a political movement is yet to come, aided it is hoped by the abandonment of the false hopes of Labourism's palliatives.

... nor is the Welfare State

It may be argued that the state welfare and social security provisions initiated by the Attlee and Wilson governments have benefited the worst-off sections of the working class and that municipal housing and suchlike, often but not always initiated by Labour in local government, have done likewise. This may be the case for the very worst-off who may now find a very basic social security net, albeit one which now forces claimants to take the best job on offer whatever it might be and for whatever pay. But as we all know, there are still many homeless and destitute in every town and city and, according to government statistics (and the government has no interest in increasing the figure) one-third of all children live in conditions of poverty. For most members of the working class very real destitution and poverty still lies just around the corner. Further, low pay and job insecurity, so-called “flexible” working conditions, are on the increase as the power of states to regulate capitalism diminishes – global capital increasingly asserting its power over states who need capital inflow more than capital needs them, thus pushing down the level of basic protection of labour that can be expected to be enforced by any given state.

In Britain the post-1945 welfare state (implemented to streamline existing state welfare rather than creating anything particularly new), the National Health Service, Family Allowances, the Social Security Act, have all come under attack in the last couple of decades, reducing its stated purpose from being a universal security blanket for all to a system of benefits for the worst-off. It is the case that many workers would be better-off without them anyway, given the tendency of the presence of state benefits and allowances to reduce wage levels (indeed Barbara Castle consistently appealed to trade unions in the 1960s and 1970s to take account of the “social wage” that the Labour Party had provided in the form of state social security, pensions and so on, in order to try to inhibit wage demands). The simple case is that systems of social security and welfare do not change the character of capitalism. Poverty hasn't been reformed away and poor housing, ill-health, unemployment and job insecurity remain the very real concerns of most working people. Meanwhile the rich are still getting richer and the failure of Labour's attempts to “redistribute” wealth seem the more amusing for New Labour's being “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” – if you can't beat them join them, eh Peter?

Dell's account runs from Labour's beginnings, to the apex of its hopes and down the whole slippery slope of disappointed expectations and wasted efforts. The reader at times feels sorry for this bunch of radical optimists, having to chop and change their views and, through experience of their failures, mutate into the sort of political economists (though let's not forget the professional politicians climbing the greasy pole) that the Labour Party once, in the fast fading past, professed to despise. Dell shows very well the limits of a government running capitalism to control the economic and social forces acting upon it. But his conclusion, that socialism is dead, comes from his assumption that socialism is “what Labour governments do” or are prepared to do.

In the Prologue Dell sets out three main currents of thought in what he calls socialism, that is the Labour Party – a vision of “a better society which would replace capitalism and which would be characterised by greater equality, common ownership, and production for use rather than profit”, a belief in democracy, and a managerial element which believed that the expertise of economists could transform capitalism through centralisation and nationalisation. It does not seem to occur to Dell that the managerial strand to Labour's thinking contradicted the socialist vision or democracy, despite its claim to be able to run capitalism better and its professed need for centralisation. But then the Labour Party was always more concerned with getting elected, with what they suppose is “doing something”, than in progressing the cause of socialism.

If they could claim that they could eradicate capitalism's ills without the effort of persuading the majority of the socialist vision and the necessity to act for themselves, then socialism could be arrived at without a great deal of disruption, without the need to “make socialists”, to educate a socialist majority and consciousness. In this way what socialist vision many Labour pioneers had and what desire to advance democracy there may have been, were rapidly pushed to the back of minds of activists by the need to gain political power and enact their economic miracle – much in the way that William Morris, in the 1880s and 90s had suggested it would. Thus, gradually, what emerged from years of reformist efforts was not a slowly evolving socialism but a Labourism which increasingly judged itself by the success of the one thing it could do in government – manage capitalism; all reformist baggage being abandoned in the pursuit of Labour's desire to manage capitalism better than the other lot.

Colin Skelly

News from Mars (1998)

Book Review from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod. Legend £5.99.

Here is an unusual novel, and not just because one of the major characters is the son of life-long members of the Socialist Party. It is a political science-fiction novel (like MacLeod's previous book The Star Fraction), with scenes ranging from recent student politics to a future "anarcho-capitalist" Mars.

Let's look as some of the passages relating to the Socialist Party. At one point the narrator meets his parents at that old Socialist stomping-ground, Speakers' Corner:

" . . . they were doing a respectable trade in a pamphlet. In between keeping half an eye on the demo and chatting to whichever of them wasn't in full flow, I flipped through 'Is a Third World War Inevitable?': its cover as lurid as any peace-movement propaganda, its contents a frosty dismissal of two centuries of peace campaigns—all of which had failed to prevent (where they hadn't actively endorsed) increasingly destructive wars."

This presents a reasonable description of the pamphlet in question, and gives a good idea of MacLeod's basic attitude to the Socialist Party: poking gentle fun at us, but in a basically friendly way. Elsewhere, the same character recalls some of his childhood memories:

"The Russians were in my mind a vague, vast menace. They had done something unpleasant and unfair to a friend of my father's, an old gentleman whose photograph was framed above the fireplace: Karl Marx. The Russians had distorted him. Whatever that was, it sounded painful."

A chance finding of the Russia today pamphlet Soviet Millionaires in a bookshop leads to the observation that "It hadn't stayed in circulation long, not after the SPGB had seized on it as irrefutable proof that behind the socialist façade the USSR concealed a class of wealthy property-owners."

In an article in the science-fiction journal Matrix, MacLeod has discussed his political activities and ideas. He was for many years a Trotskyist, but also acknowledges that he was influenced by "thinking about the implications of the 'non-market socialism' associated with the few but persistent propagandists of the Socialist Party of Great Britain". And he mentions with approval William Morris's idea of Socialism as "a world-wide classless, stateless, moneyless society", using language rarely found outside the pages of the Socialist Standard. It is plain, too, that he now has little time for the traditional left.

However, he also refers to having learned from the so-called libertarians, professed advocates of capitalism with a "free" market and a minimal state. These are the ideas that have influenced the Martian society depicted here, though it still has room for authoritarian legal structures but "privatised" ones, so perhaps that's OK.

MacLeod describes The Stone Canal as "a communist novel about libertarians", but frankly its communist/socialist viewpoint is not explicit enough for this. Despite his apparent sympathy for the Socialist Party's view of the world, he has not written a communist/socialist novel. But he has written a highly-interesting one that may get some readers interested in knowing more about us. Read it—and hope that in future novels he may write more about the moneyless, classless society he states he wants.

Paul Bennett

Proper Gander: A Barrage of Farage (2014)

The Proper Gander Column from the November 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Switch on the BBC news and chances are you’ll be greeted by the sight of Nigel Farage’s face, usually stretched out in a smug grin. The BBC’s apparent response to accusations that it gives a disproportionate amount of airtime to UKIP has been to give it even more exposure, albeit with an expose of its seamier side. On Panorama’s The Farage Factor (BBC1), steely determined reporter Darragh MacIntyre hopes to wipe the smile off Farage’s fizzog.

Some of the dodgy practices MacIntyre reveals include Farage endorsing e-cigarettes after UKIP was given £25,000 by an e-cigarette manufacturer, and an allegation that Farage siphoned off more than his share of party funds to pay for his publicity campaign. The programme also points out that Farage co-chairs the ‘Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy’ group within the European Parliament, which includes openly homophobic and far-right members. Unfortunately, these claims aren’t explored in enough detail, perhaps because UKIP advised its staff not to co-operate with MacIntyre’s investigation. More vocal are the former members with a disgruntled axe to grind about Farage ‘stabbing people in the back’ and how UKIP is his ‘ego trip’. Farage describes them as ‘the dregs of our rejects’.

Despite these concerns, UKIP’s rise continues, with Farage leading the march to its mythical utopia, where society’s ills have been magicked away along with immigration. UKIP’s brutal and blinkered politics have found support partly because of Farage’s slick, confident image. He realises that maximum media exposure drums up followers, especially if he plays up to his persona. Farage (like Boris Johnson) promotes himself as a likeable bounder eager to crash through the usual way of doing things, but he still subscribes to the status quo, with his viewpoint being particularly harsh. And The Farage Factor shows that he behaves in the same self-serving, shady way as other politicians.

Mike Foster

Obituary: Phil Rabin (1995)

Obituary from the December 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

An organisation calling itself the Socialist Party of "Great Britain" might not be where you would expect to find the grand old man of traditional east European Jewish cuisine but for most of the sixty years since he first joined our old Hackney branch, Phil Rabin was an active participant in our advocacy of a new world-wide social system.

Before the Second World War—when he joined—Phil was a keen amateur boxer and his talents in this field were sometimes called upon to protect our outdoor platform from being attacked by fascists when certain of our speakers were speaking. At that time he worked as chief carver at Bloom's Shoreditch restaurant and at the end of the war he played a key part in building up a chain of shops selling government surplus goods for recreational purposes trading as Millets, Victoria. That phase enabled him to set up his famous salt beef bar in Windmill Street, Piccadilly designed by his architect son. It became the focal point for figures from the sporting scene, the underworld and showbiz.

After Arthur Miller once brought in Marilyn Monroe for a snack she expressed her satisfaction by giving Phil a peck on the cheek, which he would never forget. Some of his comrades in Islington Branch like to think that the Beef King's adoption of a vegetarian diet in his later years might well have assisted in his reaching the ripe old age of eighty-five although for those interested he would still provide the recipe for making authentic salt-beef. To wash it down only he could make the perfectly thirst-quenching glass of lemon-tea.

Phil was a widower for thirty years but gained much comfort from his son and daughter and their families. He was a keen fisherman and guided by Isaak Walton was a "Brother of the Angle" of whom it might be said, "This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men". Years after he sold it the Windmill Street business still operated under the title, "Rabin's Nosh Bar" but he was to spend several years in the catering trade in Portugal and South Africa where he had relatives, before settling down in his flat in Dalston.

ESG

The Spanish Civil War Revisited (1998)

Book Review from the February 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Friends of Durruti Group: 1937-1939 By Agustin Guillamon, trans Paul Sharkey. AK Press 1996.

Buenaventura Durruti was killed on the Madrid front early in the Spanish Civil War. His comrades in the "flying column" of dedicated anarchists he led formed a group at his death dedicated to continuing his aims. These were to oppose collaboration with the Spanish Republican Government which the majority of the CNT had entered into, and to convert the war into a revolution by seizing the land and factories.

The CNT (National Labour Federation), which Durruti belonged to, was the biggest workers' organisation in Spain with a claimed membership of over a million. It had a core of political activists, the FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation) numbering some fifty thousand, and was strongest in the Southeast i.e. Aragon, Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante-the most economically developed part of the country. The language spoken there is Catalan, not regular Spanish (i.e. Castilian). The other languages of the peninsula are Galician, a Portuguese dialect and Franco's mother tongue, and Basque, a language unrelated to any other in Europe.

This linguistic-cultural diversity has always created problems for central governments in Spain, as did the landscape which has rivers and high mountain ranges running from East to West, making communications difficult. It is ideal guerrilla country, whence the word arose during the attempted occupation by Napoleon's army. This was the setting for the Spanish Civil War, something of a misnomer, since after the first few months it became a European War by proxy, and a dress rehearsal for World War II.

In 1936 a conspiracy of generals backed by conservative groups, the aristocracy and the high clergy had mounted a coup d'etat against the five-year-old Republic which succeeded the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. The uprising failed; the main centres of administration-Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia-were not captured and the rebels were left in the countryside with winter coming on. Most of Spain is a vast plateau and in the winter has more in common with Tibet than anywhere else.

At this point Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sent forces in to help their right-wing proteges, and Soviet Russia intervened, helping the Communist Party (which was a relatively insignificant organisation) rather than the government. The war ended with a million dead and the Franco dictatorship in power from 1939 until 1975.

The country which three centuries earlier was the first World Power had become moribund. Features which had virtually died out in the rest of Europe were still very much alive-a military class, a priestly class, competing monarchical claims, near-serfdom among seasonal rural labourers, and mass illiteracy. Consequently, understanding Spain is not easy even for those interested. But for those who are, Paul Preston's one thousand pages of text and notes deals splendidly with the enormous mass of data from before, during, and after the war.

He is not detached. It is difficult to imagine anybody with experience of representative government and a free press, secular education and freedom of movement-however heavily qualified-being indifferent to these questions. Hugh Thomas in his History of the Spanish Civil War came close to it. No doubt in good time creatures will emerge from the woodwork and try to do a revisionist job on Franco. It was Stalin's slaughter of his comrades and fellow Russians that allowed this malignant, pot-bellied dwarf to pose as the saviour of European civilisation, and caused many British conservatives, including Churchill to support his claim.

The losers, as always, were the common people, pawns in a struggle between power brokers. Those who weren't killed were crammed into Franco's concentration camps, penal labour battalions, or settled down to a hungry future. The country swarmed with 57 varieties of police. It really was government by machine-gun and terror.

Then twenty years after the war, a totally bizarre and novel factor entered the scene. Billions of pounds, francs, florins and deutschmarks poured into the country in exchange for blue skies, warm sea and sand, cheap wine and other agricultural surpluses, and a vigorous folklore. Spanish capitalism took off vertically. Mass tourism had arrived.

Other than as a dress rehearsal for World War II, the events in Spain from 1936-9 were not of great consequence for the rest of the world, but they have generated an enormous amount of debate.

At the time the issue appeared to be a simple matter of democracy versus dictatorship, and provoked passionate debate in the Socialist Party as it did in the reformists parties here and abroad. The attempt of the Communist Party to enter the debate was frustrated by their rejection of democracy in the first place ("democratic centralism" was what they called their version of dictatorship). But for libertarian organisations there was a real problem. If there is no democracy, how could Socialist ideas be spread? On the other hand, a war within capitalism could only be fought on capitalist terms. You can't have a democratic army, as the anarchists in the CNT found out.

"Arming of the people is meaningless. The nature of military warfare is determined by the class directing it. An army fighting in defence of a bourgeois state, even if it should be antifascist, is an army in the service of capitalism . . . War between a fascist state and an antifascist state is not a revolutionary class war. The proletariat's intervention on one side is an indication that it has already been defeated. Insuperable technical and professional inferiority on the part of the popular or militia-based army was implicit in military struggle on a military front" (Guillaman, p.10).

And if you have an overwhelming majority, you don't need any army anyway. No amount of oppression can be made to work against it, as the Communist Party found out in Moscow in 1989. But that overwhelming majority has to know what it is about. And that is what the Friends of Durruti concluded:

"What happened was what had to happen. The CNT was utterly devoid of revolutionary theory. We did not have a concrete programme. We had no idea where we were going . . . By not knowing what to do we handed the revolution on a platter to the bourgeoisie and the Communists who support the farce of yesterday."

There are a number of traps for the unwary in Guillamon's book. The word junta does not mean the same to a Spanish speaker as to an English speaker. Also, the revolution we are told has to be "totalitarian". This cannot be personal dictatorship which is what the word has come to mean. It can only mean wholehearted, excluding the possibility of a halfway house between capitalism and socialism.

A greater problem arises on page 11: "why the revolutionary option was not exercised. And the answer is very simple: there was no revolutionary vanguard capable of steering the revolution". This Trotskyist recipe contradicts anarchist emphasis on personal responsibility and originally arose from keeping bad company and because the consciousness and conditions for real social change were not there.

The Friends of Durruti were "not brilliant theorists nor gifted organisers but essentially barricade fighters". Heroism is not enough, although there was plenty of that. These brave people deserved better from history.

Ken Smith

The First World War (1964)

Book Review from the March 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The First World War: An Illustrated History by A. J. P. Taylor (Hamish Hamilton)

Perhaps Mr. Taylor is, in the strict sense of the word, our most eminent modern historian. Yet whatever a man's knowledge, nobody should be deluded into believing that his conclusions are unassailable.

Consider, for example, Mr. Taylor's opinion on the cause of the First World War:

Men are reluctant to believe that great events have small causes. Therefore, once the Great War started, they were convinced that it must be the outcome of profound forces. It is hard to disciver these when we examine the details. Nowhere was there conscious determination to provoke a war. Statesmen miscalculated. They used the instruments of bluff and threat which had proved effective on previous occasions. This time things went wrong. The deterrent on which they relied failed to deter; the statesmen became the prisoners of their own weapons. The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.

and

The First World War had begun—imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age.

Now this may appeal to those who hold the "accidental" theory of history. But that theory does little more than spell out the process of events; it tells us nothing about the causes of those events nor does it illuminate the larger canvas of human history in all its social phases. Like the 1914/18 soldiers' song, it says, in effect, that we are here because we are here because . . . 

The theory that the First World War was an avoidable accident ignores the previous history of Europe. It ignores the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War, the German ambitions in Africa and the Middle East and the threat which an expanding German capitalism represented to the established European powers. It ignores, even, the very fact that nobody tries to ignore—the massive build up of military strength on the Continent before 1914 and it certainly tells us nothing about the reasons for that build up.

Mr. Taylor, in truth, cannot ignore this fact: -

The German general staff did not believe that they could conquer decisively if they had to fight at full strength on two fronts, against both France and Russia at once. Therefore they had long planned, ever since 1892, to put practically all their armed weight in the west and to knock out France before the slow machine of Russian mobilization could lumber into action.

And if there is a contradiction in a theory which says that a war can break out by accident, although one power has planned for over twenty years to knock out another—well, that is Mr. Taylor's contradiction, not ours. We know how fallible the experts can be.

Apart from this, Mr. Taylor is fashionably harsh upon the generals (one picture of Sir John French, in morning coat and topper hurrying through a crowd, describes the B.E.F. commander as " . . . in training for the retreat from Mons.") and favourable to Lloyd George. The photographs are nothing less than brilliant; each one loaded with the atmosphere of its time. Here are pain and courage, pathos and provocation. Look at these pictures again and again—there seems to be something fresh there every time.

Those from the fighting itself are positively horrific—a legless French soldier, some Tommies who have been blinded in a gas attack and stand dumbly in line, each man guiding himself by his hand on the shoulder in front. The pictures from the home front are no less impressive. The shot of the Eton schoolboys on their way to dig over some plot shows how timeless are the fashions and the demeanour of our master class. These boys could have been photographed yesterday—unlike the working class lads who, on page 21, are cheering the volunteers outside a recruiting station.

And the pictures are supported with biting captions.

The First World War released a flood of human suffering such as few had foretold in 1914. It slashed a great gap into a hopeful generation and it wrecked Europe's morale. Yet in 1939 they were ready to go into it again, ready with the uniforms and the flags and the claptrap about the glory of war.

Let those workers who urge their fellows into uniform study the photographs in this book. Let them smell the mud and the cordite, feel the tight fear of men about to go over the top, share the endurance of a civilian population under bombardment. And let them see, almost at first hand, the pompous cynicism of the generals and the statesmen—the leaders who are at their most beloved and trusted when the world is at its deepest in agonised confusion.

Ivan