School dinners and the class struggle (2003)

From the August 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party does not oppose reformism because it is against improvements in workers' lives lest they dampen their revolutionary ardour; nor, because it thinks that decadent capitalism simply cannot deliver on any reforms; but because our continued existence as propertyless wage slaves undermines whatever attempts we make to control and better our lives through reforms. Any fortune – whether in the form of money payments or subsidised services – that falls into our laps becomes an opportunity for those that live off our labour to lower their costs, and increase their profits. So long as there is a class divided society, it becomes impossible for us to enact measures to benefit the whole community.

A clear illustration of this consequence of class-divided society is the current proposal from the ultra-reformists in the (so-called) Scottish Socialist Party to introduce universal free school dinners. A more noble aspiration could scarcely be imagined – an attempt to eradicate poor diets and consequent poor health of children, in a cheap (they say £175 million) and efficient way, without the stench of means testing or qualification. By providing food, for all, through schools, they say, they could avoid the costs associated with administering most types of welfare, and it is fraud-proof and there is no way of transferring the benefit received to third parties.

It has the added advantage of being an age-old demand, one that "Old" Labour types have long held in high regard. With all this going for it, Socialists should have no complaints, surely? Socialists, however, point to the continuing condition of our class as wage-slaves, and affirm that whatever the gains from free school dinners, the wages system will take away in another form with another hand.

The reason why lies in the very form of wage slavery. We are, collectively, compelled to sell our capacity to work – our labour power – in order to get access to those things which we need in order to live as members of our community – our food, clothes, housing, transportation and the like. The value of this labour power is the cost of maintaining and reproducing our capacity to work – and this entails the cost of keeping and rearing the next generation of workers, our children.

This value is not found by some chemical process of deciding what we need to have to keep ourselves and our families, but is instead found through the struggle between ourselves and our employers, as they try to drive our wages as low as possible, and we try to prevent this or push up the price they pay us. It is not driven by the living costs of any one individual, but by the general costs of living in society.

These general costs of living form a pressure on wages, which can force them upwards, as can the level of class consciousness and understanding of the workers; whereas counter-acting forces, such as the availability of a particular type of labour, general unemployment and the use of state power, combine to create downwards pressures on wages. All of which is to say that our wages are set by class struggle. This is a continuous struggle in which every gain has to be defended, and in which there is no relenting.

If the price of one of our necessities of life falls, this will be reflected by a decrease in the upwards pressure on wages. Without a corresponding relenting in the downward forces on wages, our real wages would begin to dwindle towards a new level (either through direct wage cuts, or by allowing inflation – that is a decrease in the value of money – to eat away at our spending power). Free school dinners would be an example of this process in action.

Those workers with children would be relieved of the cost of providing those meals to their children. This would result in a decline in the monetary cost of maintaining themselves and their family, and thus a decrease in the upwards pressure on wages. The typical wage would then tend to fall towards something nearer to living costs of those of a childless worker. This would thus benefit the employing class, both through cutting the overall direct cost of wages, but also through ending the situation in which childless workers were paid unnecessarily from the point of view of the employers.

The employer could be prevented from gaining from this process by an increase in taxation – whether nominally on the workers' wages or directly on employers' profits; this would serve to cream off the difference between the old and the new prices of labour power. In this way, the free school dinners scheme could be made to pay for itself. This would, though, merely represent a redistribution of poverty for the working class, the intervention by the state into the labour market to ensure a more efficient allocation of the workers' ration, so that children get a protected share.

Indeed, there could be a strong capitalist motive for having free school dinners. Efficiency savings through only paying the wages that are actually needed by their workers could increase their profits (especially as the majority of workers do not have children of school age). As could ensuring a healthier future generation of workers, able to work harder and cost less in terms of medical care. All of which, of course, would be subject to the ongoing profitability of the capitalist system and its current need for labour. The costs of the dinners would have to be watched closely, managers constantly pressured to keep the costs of food provided to a bare minimum.

The SSP proponents of this scheme observe that their draft bill will include provisions on nutritional content. This does not mean that the ongoing pressure will disappear. King Canute passed the well drafted Tides' Direction (Reversal) Act over a thousand years ago, to little noticeable effect. The statute books are littered with Health and Safety legislation that goes ignored and unenforced because the political will and resources are not there to counteract the profit needs of the capitalists to encroach on their provisions.

That is, assuming such a Bill would pass unamended. The SSP only have six members of the Scottish parliament, and their current strategy is to apply moral pressure to Labour and Liberal MSPs to vote for their bill; in the course of which, small amendments here and there from the more openly capitalist parties, on whose support it will depend, could well rob it even of its nominal stringency. Such amendments would be simple capitulations to the reality that the ultimate determinant of policy is the ongoing profitability of capital.

If the free school meals were deemed to be too expensive relative to the benefits and profits accruing to the capitalist class, then heavy political pressure would be added to the situation to reform the scheme. Were a Scottish Parliament to make a fight of it, then capitalists would use their capacity to disinvest in Scotland, as they would anywhere else, to go in search of better profits. That is, the limit of any reforms we could win for ourselves on the basis of the capitalist system will always be circumscribed by the need to keep the capitalist system functioning.

Of course, the SSP could fight to form an executive outright and use control of the political machinery to resist the encroachment of capital trying to claw back any costs of running the school dinners scheme. The net result of that, though, is that after going to all that time and effort, they would simply have succeeded in resuming the class struggle as before, only in the domain of the state, rather than in the workplace. Further, they would have gone to all that effort to fight for the crumbs, when by the very same means they could have put an end to the capitalist system itself.

Our objection to reformism is, then, that by ignoring the essence of class, it throws blood, sweat and tears into battles that will be undermined by the workings of the wages system. All that effort, skill, energy, all those tools could be turned against class society, to create a society of common interest where we can make changes for our common mutual benefit. So long as class exists, any gains will be partial and fleeting, subject to the ongoing struggle.

Socialists understand well the urge to do something now, to make a change. That makes us all the more determined, however, to get the message across, to gather our fellows to clear away the barrier of the wages system, so that we can begin to build a truly human society, in which children aren't given a share in a wage-slave's ration – whether at home or at school – but instead receive all the food they need without having to pay. In the face of such potential, why waste time fighting for half measures?

Pik Smeet

The Adventures of Leigh Burr-Parti (1976)

From the January 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

More on Orwell (1955)

From the March 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

George Orwell is in the news. "1984," written in 1949 just before his death, and "Animal Farm" which he wrote in 1945—and for which he could not find a publisher whilst the war was still on—are now "best sellers." Quite recently T.V. audiences were subjected to the horrors of "Big Brother" and the torture chambers of the Ministry of Love (Miniluv in "Newspeak") on their telescreens; and a film of "Animal Farm" is now running at a cinema in the West-End of London—complete with a less despairing ending! Other books by Orwell such as "The Road to Wigan Pier" and "Down and Out in Paris and London" have sold regularly for many years; although perhaps his best book, "Homage to Catalonia" is less well known. The reason for this is, no doubt, because he puts a view on the Spanish Civil War unpopular both to the Communists and the politicians of the Western Powers of the time.

Why, then, is Orwell in vogue? Partly because he has a message for working people, and partly because his writings, particularly "1984" and "Animal Farm" can be used by the Western ruling class in its propaganda war with the Soviet Union, China and the Iron Curtain countries. To our local propagandists "Big Brother" and "Comrade Napoleon" represent a Stalin or Malenkiv. But surely Orwell's message is that these totalitarian tendencies can and do exist in Britain, America, Spain and elsewhere. In fact anywhere that capitalist society with its coercive state structure exists; anywhere that private property, exploitation, and our so-called "welfare-warfare" system prevails.

Not only Soviet Russia but all countries have their secret and state police, their jails, and their laws protecting private property and exploitation of man by man. Russia has its M.V.D., Britain its M.I.5., America its F.B.I.— and "1984" its Ministry of Love!

Orwell's telescreens and Party informers are not so fantastic either. Soviet Russia has long been the classic home of the informer; although the Soviet authorities have recently attacked the abuses of the system. And McCarthyism and the Un-American Activities Committee are well known to all Americans.

An important aspect of "1984" society is the three slogans of the Inner Party: -

WAR IS PEACE.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

This is the "double-think" of "1984." But is it much different from the double-think of 1955? Are we not fighting for "democracy" in Malaya? Is not Spain one of the "free" nations of the West? Are not the Communists "fighting" for Peace? Is not "New China" a "Democratic" dictatorship? And so on.

George Orwell may not have been a Socialist but he understood more of the contradictions and tendencies of our present society than most people. And although not a "great" writer he was able to pin-point these problems and tendencies in an interesting and popular way. In "1984" and "Animal Farm" he gives a warning to the apathetic "couldn't care less" masses; unfortunately he has no answer to these problems and totalitarian tendencies in capitalist society. Only the Socialist has that.

Peter E. Newell

Is The S.P.G.B. the Party of the Workers? (1907)

From the April 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Report of a debate between J. Fitzgerald, S.P.G.B. (affirmative) and E. J. B. Allen, S.L.P. (negative) at the Engineers' Institute, Plumstead, January 20th, 1907.]

Fitzgerald, in opening, said that to decide which was the workers' Party it was necessary to describe the worker's position. To-day he was an article of merchandise, for he had no access to the means of existence save by selling his energy on the labour market. The means of existence and the wealth produced were owned and controlled by the capitalist class, and this economic cleavage between the two classes resulted in an antagonism of interests. The ruling class were numerically small; how then were they able to retain control over the means of existence and the lives of the workers? When the workers showed signs of revolt, police, judicial, military and naval forces were brought against them. But these forces could not exist on air. The supplies necessary to keep and arm these forces are provided for out of revenue and voted for in parliaments. Thus the control of the political machinery enables the capitalist class to retain their position. The Party of the workers must therefore have for its object the control of the means of existence and the capture of political power as chief means to this end.

The ruling class keep employed a specially trained section for this political work and trickery, but the workers have not the wealth, leisure, or opportunity to acquire the same proficiency in trickery (even if it were defensible). Consequently the only method remaining to the workers is an open and above-board organisation for the capture of political power. Fitzgerald then proceeded to examine various political parties such as the Liberal, Tory, and Labour parties and the I.L.P. and S.D.F. from the above basis, and showed how hopeless they were from the point of view of working-class emancipation. He then dealt with the S.L.P., which while claiming to accept the position already laid down, denied this practically by forming their organisation in an underhand way. This organisation, like the S.P.G.B., grew out of the so-called "Impossibilist" movement in the S.D.F. The movement manifested itself at the West Ham and Birmingham conferences of the S.D.F., and at Blackburn the London and Scottish sections agreed to work together. The London section abided this, but just before the next conference news came that instead of working for alteration of the policy of the S.D.F, the Scottish section had been secretly organising a new party. The London section, recognising that the workers must consciously work out their own emancipation, refused to blindly follow either superior persons from Queen Anne's Gate or self-styled geniuses from Scotland, and continuing their work converted so many that after the Burnley conference the S.P.G.B. was formed in an open and straightforward manner. The S.L.P. had a palliative programme when first formed, while the S.P.G.B. ignored these confusing items. The S.L.P. merely adopted parrot-like the actions and phrases of the American S.L.P. without considering whether they were applicable to conditions here.

E. J. B. Allen in reply said that he had attended the meeting of the London "Impossibilists' after the Shoreditch conference, and Fitzgerald had said nothing about having been deceived, but only that he was not going to help form a party with two dozen. Fitzgerald had said that workers must get control of the political machinery, but hah not shown how this was to be done. Marx had shown that it was those who had economic power that controlled in Society, the political and other factors being based in the economic. Engels had pointed out that with the establishment of Socialism politics would be abolished. The workers must have an economic organisation to enforce their expressions on the political field. A political movement without force behind it was a farce. How were they going to get the economic organisation of the working class which would be a real power? One way was to convert the existing class-unconscious organisations. The other ay was to build up a class-conscious organisation themselves.

With regards to the S.L.P. in England adopting methods from America, why did not the S.P.G.B. produce an economic system of its own instead of taking that of Marx? In America the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance had failed, while in the West there grew up the American Labour Union. This and other organisations met in Chicago in 1905 and formed the "Industrial Workers of the World." This was the union they were endeavouring to establish here. In it the workers would be organised to take and hold the means of existence against the capitalist class. It would furnish the might necessary to enforce the political right, and was therefore the most important. How was the S.P.G.B. going to make the trade unions take up the Socialist position? The S.L.P. intended to form an I.W.W. as soon as they had the strength. They admitted members of various political parties into the Advocates of Industrial Unionism.

He challenged Fitzgerald to show where the S.L.P. had violated the Unity Programme as printed in THE SOCIALIST STANDARD. While preaching the principles of unity the S.P.G.B. denied them for the purpose of keeping their little Party alive. With reference to the straight and above-board position of the S.P.G.B., he had read two pamphlets issued by the Islington Branch, and so far as he could see they had made out their case against the E.C. of the S.P.G.B.

Fitzgerald then said that he had insisted so much on the swindling of the Scotsmen at the "Impossibilist" meeting that one present had tried to minimise Yates' admission that the Scotsmen had been building up a new party during two years.

The workers' greatest difficulty would not be to get a parliamentary majority but to get control of the positions of the permanent officials. Regarding Engels' statement that the political state would die out, Engels had defined the political state as the expression of the ruling class; but so important did he consider the capture of political power that he italicised the sentence "The Proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property."

The political machinery was the means whereby the businesses and collective needs of Society were co-ordinated, and which would under Socialism become their co-ordination for the benefit of all. The economic organisation could not take and hold the factories, etc. while the capitalist class controlled the armed forces, for by these the workers could easily be dispossessed.

They accepted any scientific truth or discovery, whether it originated in America or Germany, but a thing was not necessarily correct because it was adopted in America, while we should probably learn as much from the mistakes of other countries as from their truths. From the time of the formation of the S.T. & L.A. right up to 1904 the position of the S.L.P. was that the political arm must dominate the economic: but with the formation of the I.W.W. a complete change occurred, for it is now said that the economic arm must  dominate the political. If this were true why form a political organisation at all? If economic organisation furnishes the might and the method why do not the advocates of I.W.W-ism proclaim themselves the Anarchists they are and give all their attention to the economic organisation? We could not make the trade unions do anything; we could only educate them until sufficient had been converted to make possible the acton we desired. The S.L.P. had violated THE SOCIALIST STANDARD unity programme by their violation of the principle that the workers must consciously emancipate themselves at the very formation of their Party. With reference to the two Islington pamphlets, he had challenged and was prepared to meet Lehane.

Allen then said regarding the economic organisation "taking and holding," the Government were once unable to hold the naval manoeuvres because the South Wales miners were on strike. Under the industrial form of organisation the workers could prevent the transport of troops. If the workers refused to make the weapons, etc., there would be none for the soldiers to use against the workers. Fitzgerald's definition of the political machinery under Socialism was merely the federal council to supervise the economic departments. While he himself and all other Socialists that he knew had been educated from the political side, Allen considered it easier to teach the mass through the economic organisation. They were not Anarchists because the Anarchists denied the need for organisation. The occurrence at Portsmouth showed the shaky position of the capitalist class regarding the armed forces.

The workers had often to migrate for purposes of their employment, and this disenfranchised a large number: he was therefore not sure the workers had a voting majority. Fitzgerald had asked how a man could claim to accept the revolutionary position and yet remain in the I.L.P., but Fitzgerald was not born a member of the S.P.G.B., he had to develop. They of the S.L.P. had never said "We alone are the holy ones. No one can be a Socialist who does not join us." The difference between the S.L.P. and the S.P. was a difference between theorisers and men prepared to join hands with the working class and get them to take united action. No matter what organisation a man belonged to, if he accepted the revolutionary position as laid down by the A.I.U. he was welcomed.

Fitzgerald in his last speech said, as the workers refusing to supply the soldiers with arms and ammunition, that town could give a significant answer. In Woolwich Arsenal seven years' war stores were supposed to be kept, and visitors could see that great stocks were there. Against these years of supply the workers had only empty pockets and empty cupboards. In Italy the places of striking railway men were taken by armed soldiers, by whom such transport as was essential was carried on. He denied that it was easier to teach the workers from the economic side, for there the petty interests arising from the daily struggle hinder the recognition of the class position. We stood upon the correct basis of continuing the education of the workers inside and outside their unions so that the Socialist political and economic organisations may be built up that will accomplish their emancipation.

Allen in his closing speech said the railway strike in Italy was a not a general strike, nor were the men revolutionists, so that what happened there did not disprove his case. If, as Fitzgerald maintained, the capitalists controlled all these stores, how were you going to vote them out? The statement that the political organisation was not concerned with the petty details of the workers affairs showed the error of the position of the S.P.G.B. Such a party degenerated into a side show of word spinners and logic choppers and will inevitably be split into fragments as it was doing now. All the world over Industrial Unionism was growing with Socialism. You must have economic unity before political unity. He knew it was a longer road to organise the workers economically for their emancipation, but they were prepared to face the difficulties and were going on with the work.

The Chairman, H. Stiff (S.P.G.B.), said in closing the meeting it was the first time that revolutionary Socialism had been preached in that hall.

There was a good attendance and the literature of both parties was on sale.

Death of a Comrade (1934)

Obituary from the May 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Party is poorer by the death of Comrade C. Barnes. For over twenty years a member of the late Watford Branch, he seldom missed a branch meeting, and, although occasionally unemployed, he never missed paying his dues. Neither bad weather nor three miles of country roads to trudge deterred our old comrade from what he considered his duty, and one could always count on the appearance of Charlie. He was neither a "writer" not a "speaker," but he was a particularly fine specimen of an unobtrusive member. During the early part of the war he gave an unexpected exhibition of what such a member can do. When a fanatical mob besieged a party speaker and threatened to overturn the platform, Charlie, the mildest of men, rolled up his sleeves and invited them to "come on."

His early death is another of the countless tragedies associated with what is called "progress." He was a coach painter, known as one of the best in the county. (Incidentally he was an excellent landscape painter, but few knew of his work.) The invention of spray-painting led to his final dismissal. A long period of intermittent employment followed; and our comrade was a craftsman to whom inactivity was distasteful. How far this contributed to his final illness is a matter of opinion, but one can imagine the inner feelings of a highly skilled craftsman who is told at 53 that he is "too old." A ghastly commentary on our civilisation. For death there is no remedy, but our comrade's twenty years' unswerving devotion to the party was an inspiration to all who knew him, and they sadly feel his loss.

W. T. H.

Mixed Media: Barnsley: Working Class Culture in the Tarn & Gilbert Daykin at the Cooper Gallery (2014)

The Mixed Media Column from the November 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Barnsley: Working Class Culture in the Tarn

Barnsley's history has been dominated by the glass industry and coal mining but marked by disasters that befell the working class such as the 1838 Huskar pit disaster when 26 children were killed, and in 1866 the worst pit disaster in England at Barnsley Oaks when 361 miners were killed.

The Barnsley Museum at Barnsley Town Hall is well worth a visit and showcases Barnsley's coal mining history, with many artefacts from the class struggle that was the 1984-85 Miners' Strike such as an Orgreave police riot shield. The museum also houses the NUM Yorkshire Area North Gawber Branch banner 'from darkness into light' i.e. 'socialism' via various reforms such as nationalisation and ’employment for all’.

British cinema is represented by the 1969 Ken Loach film Kes filmed in Barnsley, based on the novel A Kestrel for a Knave by Barnsley writer Barry Hines. This working class film publicised as 'They beat him. They deprived him. They ridiculed him. They broke his heart. But they couldn't break his spirit' starred Dai Bradley, a non-professional from Barnsley. The 1996 film Brassed Off filmed in Grimethorpe near Barnsley was set during the pit closures programme of the John Major Tory government in 1992 when 31 out of 50 remaining deep mines faced closure with the loss of 31,000 jobs. In 1980-81 Grimethorpe Colliery had produced 1.2 million tonnes of coal. Barnsley is famous for Charlie Williams, the son of a Barbadian and a Barnsley girl, who was a miner and footballer at Upton colliery then joined Doncaster Rovers in 1948, and was later the first black comedian on British TV in the 1970s.

It's just like watching Brazil is an exhibition about Barnsley Football Club, founded in 1887, nicknamed the 'tykes' with a motto of 'spectemur agendo!' ('let us be seen together in action!') from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and an emblem of a glass-blower and miner. Barnsley were FA Cup winners in 1912 but the exhibition title is from the 'cherished 1996-97 season' when Barnsley were promoted to the Premiership. In March 2014 Barnsley football supporters would unfurl an Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign banner '30 Years of Lies, No Justice, No Peace, Never Forget, Never Forgive' at the Oakwell ground. Tommy Taylor, according to John Roberts in The Team That Wouldn't Die: The Story of the Busby Babes learned his skills in Barnsley on 'the bog, a rock-hard piece of ground where local boys played in clogs, pit boots or bare feet.' Taylor worked in the pit, then aged 15 signed to Barnsley as a ground-staff boy, and in 1948 his weekly wage was £2, 8s, 1d. He was signed for a transfer fee of £29,999 to Matt Busby's Manchester United but was later killed in the 1958 Munich Air Crash aged 26.

************************************************************

Gilbert Daykin at the Cooper Gallery

The Hidden Art of Barnsley at the Cooper Gallery in Barnsley highlighted the work of coal miner and painter Gilbert Daykin. Daykin was offered a bursary from the local Miners’ Welfare Committee to enable him to study part-time at Nottingham School of Art. His work was also brought to the attention of the then local MP Malcolm MacDonald, son of the Prime Minister. Daykin was invited to London and met the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and the Duchess of Portland (she 'cared for' the Nottinghamshire Miners, an example of 'the heart-burnings of the aristocrat'). Daykin would appear on the front cover of the Daily Mirror on 3 August 1931. Daykin's 1938 oil Symbolic-Miner Enslaved is heroic and evokes Renaissance paintings of Saint Sebastian. His Choke Damp is quite macabre and underlines the dangers of working underground. Markham's Ponies portrays coal miners pushing a truck of coal while his The Results of Labour is a somewhat idealized portrait which had been commissioned by the Staveley Coal and Iron Company. Daykin could never afford to give up mining and concentrate on his art, and tragically was killed in a pit accident at Warsop Main colliery on 20 December 1939.

Seven miles from Barnsley is the old pit village of Goldthorpe where in 1984 during the Miners' Strike two teenage brothers Paul and Darren Holmes were killed while collecting coal when an embankment collapsed. In April 2013 an effigy of Thatcher was burned to celebrate her funeral. Since Goldthorpe colliery closed in 1994 the village has 'died' and the Goldthorpe and Highgate NUM Club is subtitled 'Lest We Forget' those from the 'great class war' that was the 1980s Miners' Strike. At NUM headquarters in Barnsley there is a monument commissioned by NUM Yorkshire Area, sculpted by Graham Ibbeson in 1992, and unveiled by Arthur Scargill, President of the NUM in July 1993 which portrays a miner, his wife, young daughter and a babe in arms, and says 'In memory of those who have lost their lives in supporting their union in times of struggle.'

Lenin was of the opinion that 'the field of art in particular should be imbued with the spirit of the class struggle being waged by the proletariat' which Barnsley culture could be said to demonstrate but tragically the Barnsley working class does not 'constitute itself as a class for itself' (Marx) as the area still elects four Labour MPs.

Steve Clayton

Bolshevism: Past and Present (1934)

Book Review from the January 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some Historical Debunking

Die Geschichte des Bolschevismus (Rohwolt Verlag, Berlin, 1932). The History of Bolshevism, by Arthur Rosenberg, should appear any day in English. The author, who was up to Hitler's rise to power, a professor of history at the University of Berlin, and from 1920 to 1927 a member of the Communist Party of Germany, a member of the central committee of of that Party, and a member f the executive committee of the Communist International, states that he does not wish to present the viewpoint of any party or group, or retail scandal to Russian inner court politics, but that he aims to set forth an objective account and study of the beginnings, past tendencies and present direction of Bolshevism as a social phenomenon. The book is a striking confirmation of the stand taken by the Socialist Party of Great Britain on the Russian upheaval and the historic role of the Bolsheviki. as such, the translated "History" will sow consternation, and possibly also understanding among the various uncritical utopian - radical elements that, from 1918 to date, have been flirting with acts and slogans that they did not try too hard to analyse.

The book begins with a study of the historic elements of Marxist thought. The writer points out that in the course of the second half of the 19th century the organised working-class movement of Europe passed through two stages, each possessing a distinct theoretic programme.

The declared aim of the first was the completion, by the proletariat, of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, with Socialism as the ultimate goal. Here the workers found themselves under the leadership of small groups of professional revolutionists who hailed from the ranks of the radical bourgeois intellectuals. This stage is typified by Marx and Engels of 1848, and, because of the similarity of local social circumstances, by the Russian Bolshevism in the 20th century.

In the second stage, the Western European workers had so far developed that they directed themselves in their own organisations. In spite of the theoretic growth of Marx and the implication of his later writings, the revolutionary aim was set aside, and the workers' political organisations adopted as their programme the betterment of their lot within the framework of the capitalist society they lived in. This forms the period of the Second International.

When the development of the labour movement is traced in an historically logical progression, declares the author, one reaches a third stage and a new political attitude. This attitude marks the completion of the Marxian programme for the future. Here the working class is fully aware of its fitness to lead itself, and, no longer satisfied with the promise of having its condition bettered within the framework of capitalist society, wants to attain power. This is no longer to be a radical-democratic revolution, as in the first stage, but a Socialist revolution, which is to change capitalist property to the common property of society. In this revolution, the workers will not be the led instrument of a party directorate, but will act unaided, in accordance with their class understanding.

The conditions requisite for the third stage are: first, an extraordinary advance in the development of capitalism; second, the approximate destruction of the middle layers found between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, so that all tactics of alliance on the part of the proletariat, on a national democratic basis, become superfluous; lastly, the overwhelming majority of the exploited must find themselves in conscious opposition to the small minority of the capitalist exploiters. That is, the third stage calls for the revolutionary education of the proletariat, who, by their own strength, through their own will and self-discipline, are to win power and build a new world.

The European working class of the World War generation had not yet reached the height of the third stage. The theoretic protagonists of this political attitude, as Rosa Luxembourg in Germany, Gorter in Holland, and scattered small groups in other parts of Europe, has a limited following. At the same time, the theorists of the second stage were leading all the existing large Labour Parties. Among them were two distinct groups. The revisionists, led by Bernstein, recognised that the only practical object of the "Labour" Parties of the Second International was reform inside of capitalist society. They called for open programmatic revision. Opposed to them were the "radicals" as Kautsky, Bebel, etc., then in charge of the International, who, though content with a practically reformist programme, objected to having open political compromise "written down in the books."

All three tendencies, including the two sub-divisions of the second, found adaptations in Russia. Echoing either the "revisionism" or "radicalism" of the German Social Democracy, the Menshevists proposed the abolition of Czardom and the institution of Western liberal political institutions that would allow the free capitalist development of Russia. The majority group, the Bolsheviki, had a programme that was, excepting for special organisational details, a very modest and somewhat distorted copy of the the measures proposed by Marx and Engels in the second chapter of the Manifesto of 1848. This programme was to be applied through what Lenin called the "democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants," which was to have a democratic coalition-government guise, but was to be guided by a hand-picked party directorate. This supervised partnership of the workers and peasants was going to deal with the growing Russian capitalism organised in a national syndicate of industrialists (the Corporate State!) and wait for the Socialist revolution that would in time take place in the industrially advanced Western Europe.

The theories of Luxembourg and Gorter—representing the third stage of Marxist thought—found a response in Russia in the voice of the precocious Trotsky, who opposed the Bolshevik plan of a dictatorship by a small circle of leaders over the workers which was made necessary by Lenin's programme of a coalition of the Russian proletariat with the peasantry. He held that soon after coming to power the idyll of the democratic dictatorship over Russian capitalism would be marred by trouble with the syndicated capitalists on the one hand, and by the struggle between the two partners in the dictatorship, on the other. Trotsky conceded that in a backward agrarian country such as Russia the Socialist workers could not get a majority against the peasants. The salvation of a proletarian move in Russia therefore lay in a revolution in Western Europe. "The Socialist workers' revolution can only survive, if it spreads; it dies, if limited to our country."

The judgement of history on Trotsky, comments the author, will be made doubly difficult, inasmuch as in 1917 he formally took sides with the Bolsheviks who, in the fervour of the unhinged world situation, and roused by their own national victory, adopted, and for a time called their own, the Luxembourg and Gorter lingo of the "permanent and spreading World Revolution." In 1927 came the unavoidable reaction and break. The national needs of Russia brought the Bolsheviks back to their original programme. Trotsky's claim that he represents true Bolshevism (and genuine Leninism) in opposition to the present leadership of the Russian state, can, therefore, bear no authority for objective historic analysis.

The existence of the Bolshevik group within the Second International was made possible by the Russians' belief in the similarity of their own programme and organisation to the German Social Democracy. Indeed before 1914, Lenin recognised the inner circle of the German party as a sort of party directorate. He was a supporter of the "radical" section of the Social Democracy. The personal hate with which Lenin pursued Kautsky after 1914 cannot be explained, indicates the author, merely by their difference of opinion in regards to the degree and manner of opposing the war. "Thus hates only he who had loved too much." So did Lenin revenge himself for having followed and honoured Kautsky for 20 years.

And the so-called "Fall of the Second International," so warmly dramatised by Lenin, the author sees as no fall at all, but as the logical victory of the "revisionists" over the muddled "radicals" inside the Social Democracy. Contradicting Lenin, he indicates that the degree of militant opposition to the war shown by the various "Socialist" parties had little connection with the "revisionism" or "radiclaism" of their programmes. Bernstein was a more militant war objector than Kautsky. The reformist "Socialist Party of Italy" did, it is true, show out-and-out opposition to having Italy enter the war on the side of the Triple Alliance in 1914; but on anti-revolutionary grounds—sympathy with the Entente. The "Labour" parties formed small minorities and could not have taken effective steps against the war, as was shown by the Bolsheviks' own helplessness in the Russia of 1914.

On the 22nd of January, 1917, in Switzerland, Lenin stated at a public meeting that "We of the older generation will possibly not live to see the battles of the coming revolution." His programme still provided for a workers' revolution in Western Europe—this relegated in the manner of Kautsky to the dim future—but it spoke of an early Russian uprising, which was to complete the bourgeois democratic revolution under the supervision of a workers' and peasants' coalition government.

Later, the same year, when he was already in Russia. he cast aside the old Bolshevik plan of a peasants' and workers' dictatorship—that is, a "populist" and "Socialist" coalition government—and spoke of seizing power in Russia to aid an imminent Western European proletarian revolution. Here he met opposition in his own Bolshevik group.

The most numerous party of the moment, the peasant-populist "Socialist Revolutionaries," wanted to control the government of the country as a "loyal opposition," having adopted the Menshevik position of 1905. In accordance with their programme, the spontaneous Soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers were to be the organs of democratic control that to be exercised over the new government till the convening of the constitutional assembly, which was then to take over the job of supervising the reconstruction of Russia.

In Switzerland, in 1917, Lenin, who had doubted the historic use of the Soviet in 1905, made the sudden discovery that the popular Russian council was the typical State form of the coming "Socialist revolution." He declared that the Soviet was Marx's State form, in which the armed people are the police and army, and in which functionaries are controlled directly by the people—resembling in this respect the medieval city states and the direct democracy of the early American settlements. (The author points out that the current Soviet system, as developed from 1918 on, popularly bears the name of the Russian institution of 1905 and 1917, but is entirely distinct from it.)

Lenin's slogan of "All power to the Soviets!" was tantamount at first to the establishment of a revolutionary-democratic coalition, as the Bolsheviks were still in the minority in the Soviets. It meant giving power to the masses, as the Soviets of 1917 were more or less the spontaneous organs of representation built by the masses themselves. Privately, however, Lenin had not given up the idea of a dictatorship by a centralised party. His theses called for a break with the Allied Governments, the non-support by the Soviets (the actual holder of State power), of the provisional government, the confiscation of the large estates, the regulation and taxation of large industry, but not the "institution of Socialism." The masses wanted land, peace and bread. He was ready to assume power.

The opposition of the majority of the old Bolsheviks to the "rearmed" Lenin was embodied in Kamenev's analysis of the situation: a Socialist workers' party gaining power can only have as its programme a Socialist revolution; this, in a predominately agricultural country, was to be considered adventurous in the light of orthodox Bolsheviks' teachings. Trotsky's estimate of the situation paralleled Kamenev's, but he thought he saw the possibility of a Socialist revolution in Western Europe. He thought he saw in Lenin's changed outlook adherence to his own "internationalist" ideas, and, in this comedy of wishes and mistakes, Lenin found in Trotsky, who had now joined the Bolshevik organisation, support against his own comrades.

The author's appraisal is that the "rearmed" Bolsheviks did not make the october revolution, but that they saved the popular revolution of 1917 by leading the completion of the victory of the masses. (According to Trotsky's testimony, it was the Military Committee of the Soviets, and not the Central Executive of the Bolshevik group, that engineered the actual gesture of the insurrection.) If Lenin and Trotsky had run aground in October, no democratic development would have come but the anarchy and chaos of popular fury, which might have ended in pogroms and white terror. At 5 minutes to 12, so to speak, they proclaimed the uprising, giving the impression of a sudden occurrence taking place at their command. By heeding the will of the masses, neo-Bolshevism won the authority to lead Russia further.

The five "revolutionary-democratic" proposals—the economic programme of victorious Bolshevism—were the nationalisation of the banks, the nationalisation or government regulation of the biggest capitalist monopolies (sugar, oil, coal and metal), the obligatory syndicalisation of industrial concerns, the obligatory membership of the population in consumers' co-operative societies, and the dissolution of merchant combines. This programme took a stand against the abolition of private property, and promised easier credits for the smaller capitalists. All in all, it was a programme aiming at the completion of a capitalist revolution in the 20th century. But already, as Kamenev had feared and Trotsky had promised, more advanced elements urged more. The total disorganisation of the productive process in the country made an attempt at economic enterprise by the State imperative. The unbalanced political situation following the War held out the false hope of a revolution in the West. The Bolsheviks were, against their own plans, obliged to reach forward to State ownership, and they adopted Trotsky's consequence, that the Russian Revolution could only be saved by a proletarian revolution in Western Europe. It was, to use Lenin's paraphrase, only the prologue for the near World Revolution. From 1918 to 1920, all the Bolshevik leaders were, for the "spreading," or say "permanent," revolution, and the Communist International was a busy and hard-working organisation.

But already reality was asserting itself. The author traces in two incomparable chapters the rise, under the influence of the national economic needs of Russia, of a third period in Bolshevism, that of so-called "Socialism in Russia alone," the national Russian Bolshevism of our day, which he finds much closer to the limited Russian programme of 1917 than to the international realignment of 1918.

The Bolsheviki, he concludes, are the executors of the testament of Peter the Great. To them has fallen the historic task of solving the backwardness of Russia. They are accomplishing this through the institution and development of State capitalism. Since 1917 Russia has been advancing, while the Communist International has been withered away. Bolshevism, which was progressive for Russia of the Czars, was found reactionary for industrial West Europe, where the capitalist revolution had long ago been completed and peasants were not the majority of the population.

The heroism of the Russian workers in the years of 1917-1920 has roused abroad the impression that Bolshevism was a form of the proletarian world revolution. A great number of European workers wanted to attain power in union with the Bolsheviki. Rosa Luxemburg and the Dutchman Gorter recognised the bourgeois character and what they described as the Jacobinery of Bolshevism, and they promptly disowned it. Many European workers and "intellectuals," however—the majority of whom the author classifies as "utopian radicals" as opposed to the grouping of Marxists—fancied that the Russian Revolution was a Socialist act, and wanted to follow the Bolshevist leadership, which, having "rearmed" itself with an internationalist programme, had retrieved the name "Communist" and formed the Third International. But events showed the impossibility of such leadership by an agrarian State. So that, little by little, the Russian State and its foreign working-class supporters separated. The theory of "Socialism in one country" is merely the reflection of this separation. The isolated, national Russian Bolshevism is not even in the position to lead the national movements of the Asiatic peoples, as was shown in the case of China in 1927-27, let alone a revolution in the West.

The shadow of the great Russian Revolution still drags along a section of the international working class. Bolshevism, however, no longer wields an active influence among the workers of the world. The historic task of the Bolsheviki, says the author, was an immortal task, but the international capitalists are no longer afraid of Bolshevism. They have reason for fearing an international working-class movement. With that, however, affirms the author, Bolshevism is not identical.

Interesting is the discussion of the Soviet as an historic institution. The Russian popular council, an organ of expression for the spontaneous will of the masses, is foreign to Bolshevik theory, states the author. Having personally opposed the Soviet, in 1917 Lenin used the slogan "All power to the Soviets!"—when the popular, democratic Soviets were the real holders of power—in order to win the directorate and later to instal his own State apparatus, i.e., the rule of a small disciplined minority of professional political workers over the great mass. The Bolsheviks came to employ the Soviets as the decorative symbol of their rule. And, such is the irony of history, that the term "Soviet," which in 1905 and 1917 stood for crude but the most radical democracy imaginable, has become known, through Bolshevist symbolism, as the name for the very opposite of democracy.

A somewhat similar alteration, he points out, transpired in the case of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat." The Marxian phrase, as found in the "Criticism of the Gotha Programme" and "Civil War in France," denotes the dictatorship of the proletarian majority over the minority of capitalists, and is identical with majority rule. The Bolshevik State-form is the dictatorship of a party or a party apparatus over the proletariat and the rest of the population. Prophetically, Rosa Luxembourg wrote from her prison in 1918:—

"With the suppression of political life in the entire country must also the gradual destruction of the Soviets. Without universal franchise, the liberty of the Press and assembly and the unhampered struggle of opinion, the life of every public institution withers away, and bureaucracy alone remains as the active element. This law is never contradicted. Little by little will your public life be lulled to sleep. A dozen party leaders, full of inexhaustive energy and boundless idealism, will direct and govern. From time to time, a picked section of the workers will be invited to the meetings. There they will applaud the leaders' speeches and say 'Yes' to prepared resolutions. In other words, you will have the rule of a clique—not the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, but the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, i.e., a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense, a dictatorship in the manner of the Jacobins."

Gersom,

Workers' Socialist Party (U.S.A.).

Addendum

The March 1934 Socialist Standard carried the following correction:

"Owing to a misapprehension it was incorrectly stated in the January SOCIALIST STANDARD that the writer of the article "Bolshevism, Past and Present" is a member of the Workers Socialist Party, U.S.A."

Why reform a rotten system? (1999)

From the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many think that reform is positive, but why should Socialists divert their energies to repair and patch up a system they want to end altogether?

"Campaigning for reforms is a distracting and diversionary waste of time," I declaimed, to the massed ranks of blank uncomprehending Socialist Worker Students at one of their campus meetings, "that mostly will attract people interested in reforms, and not Socialists!". I had as usual, to fill up the abject spaces in time due to the lack of debate, spoken too much—or so I presumed by the scowling cat's-arse face of the most grungy (and therefore dedicated and friendless) Trotskyist in the room. "Bollocks," he eventually said. I had gone too far, I had attacked the sacred cow, I was a heretic.

I must have been speaking Dutch that night, for it was plain that no-one in the room was understanding the least word I said. I was incomprehensible. "But, but," said the deputy dedicated Trotskyist, "we need reforms, we need to fight for higher wages, against factory closures, we need to keep the Tories out"—all said with the same matter of factness and certitude as statements like "gravity is" or "the Earth is flat". I was fascinated to note not one mention of things like nationalisation, union recognition laws, nor capital regulation tariffs, clearly such little matters do not occupy the activists' time (although they each form a part of the SWP's amazing "Action Plan" against the economic crisis). I then, however, went on to point out, presumably in Ancient Hebrew, that higher wages were not what I understood by the word reforms, whilst the latter list were nothing else. The looks of incomprehension (and contempt) grew. I sat down, and made my peace, and suffered the interminable summing up by their speaker.

Such is the triumph of the spirit of reformism that it presents itself to its adherents as if a natural law, an obviousness, a natural thing that must be done. There could be no questioning of the principle of fighting for reforms, no exploration as to their efficacy or need. Politicians' logic prevails:

1. Capitalism is terrible.

2. We must do something.

3. Reforms are something.

4. Therefore we must enact reforms.

Reforms are beyond question, apparently.

It is a tribute to the ideology of the possible that Labour penny-snatchers can pass themselves off as radical allies of the poor, when in fact they are their willing and servile oppressors, gradgrinding through their careers. It is a tribute to "reform" that it has come to take on a wholly positive meaning, as if any reform of a system is inherently good. Such are the fruits of one hundred years' deleterious perseverance.

The average Labourite can of course claim that they are just working to improve the lives of working folk. They do not question the property and market systems, they accept them as a natural fact, and thus work within them. Our fine feathered Trotskyists, however, have no such excuse. They claim to be fighting for Socialism, for an end to property and the madness of the market, so how can they justify fighting for reforms predicated upon just such a pernicious system?

When I asked, I was met with two responses. The first was half-way reasonable—the working class must fight to defend itself under capitalism, and to improve its lot and avoid poverty. Fair enough, and of course it must; that's the whole point of the class war, but that is hardly a revolutionary platform; because the working class is engaged in such a struggle every day, every pay cheque is an act of class war. Further, any defence of the working class or gains for the working class must be won by ourselves, for ourselves, because we cannot expect the capitalist state to administer affairs for our benefit. Changing laws does not help the working class, because they are only a change on paper. Only a real social change can aid the working class. Everything else is just window dressing.

Reform-minded

But, "Aha!" they cried, "there is another, more important reason for fighting for reforms, we must help workers gain the confidence to effect a revolution". I stroked the feeble wisps of hair on my chin that some wags have named a beard, and thought this through, as they filled in the details:

1. The working class has a reformist consciousness.

2. It is the duty of the Revolutionary Party to be where the masses are.

3. Therefore, to be with the mass of the working class, we must advocate reforms.

Further:

1. The working class is only reformist minded.

2. Winning reformist battles will give the working class confidence.

3. So that, therefore, they will go on to have a socialist revolution.

I swear, this is the argument that they have put to me. What none of them has ever relayed to me, was exactly how the jump from reform-mindedness to socialist consciousness would come about. There are three basic models for how this may come about:

1. The working class will learn from its struggles, and will eventually come to realise that assuming power is the only way to meet its ends.

2. That the working class will realise, through the failure of reforms to meet its needs, the futility of reformism and capitalism, and will overthrow it.

3. That the working class will come to trust the Party that leads them to victory, and come a social crisis they will follow it to revolution.

The first relies upon a notion of the inherently revolutionary nature of the working class (a popular Leninism), and that through the class struggle this inherently revolutionary character will show itself. After the best part of a century it hasn't, so I think it safe to say it doesn't exist.

The second reason is flawed because it shows no reason why, due to the failure of reform, the workers should turn to socialism. Why, since it was people calling themselves socialists who advocated that reform, don't they turn against it, or even to fascism? However, given that that is precisely what Lenin advocates in Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder we can assume that the loyal Leninists of the SWP leadership have this idea thoroughly in mind.

Just as likely is that they will have number three in mind as well. Since they want to be leading the revolution, they will have to find a way for themselves to become leaders. "The revolution is made by the minority" (Trotsky said so, so it must be true) and the way for the minority to become a good little bunch of leaders is to show that they are the successful ones.

Under the model of revolution presented by the Trotskyists this can be the only way I can see the working class could come to socialist consciousness. This, then, explains their dubious point about needing to "be" where the mass of the working class is. Being a poor ignorant fool, I always wondered about quite why a revolutionary party should change its mind to be with the masses, rather than trying to get folk to change their minds and be with it. They do not want folk to change their minds, merely to become followers. Their efforts are not geared towards changing minds, or raising revolutionary class consciousness. The problem is that the central committee doesn't tell the sloggers on the ground this, because, just perhaps, our enthusiastic cat-arse faced friend might just object to being manipulated, just maybe.

Capitalist ideology

Fighting for reforms is to fail in the duty of socialists to demystify and dispel capitalist ideology. This is important to note: capitalism is in the end an ideology; everything it does, all of its workings, all of it is a human product, constructed in the minds of humans, and obeyed because it presents itself as the natural law, as the real world, and the realm of the possible. Money itself is the example par excellence of ideology at work; it is a sign, an idea, used to cover up the contradictions in property society. Money presents itself as the natural and only way of dealing with property relations, and as a socially neutral object, and not as a way of controlling poverty and inequality in favour of a small minority, which it really is.

To fail to reveal the ideology, to de-mystify and explain it, means to remain within it. To work with workers under the influence of the ideology of capitalism, to attempt to use the ideology to lead them, in the end means that you will find yourself replicating the ideology, obeying its demands, and replicating the social structures of dominance and obedience that it helps build. As such this amounts to a heinous flaw in Leninist politics. However, the Leninists claim, the workers are not capable of seeing through ideology; only they are, the minority, and so they must work this way. This is why, in the end, they are doomed to recreate capitalism.

For so-called socialists to fight for reforms then is to fail as socialists, to become enmeshed within the working of capitalism. Can the SWP's action plan work? Wouldn't raising the taxes necessary to nationalise all failing industries at a time of reduced profits just exacerbate the crisis? Or is that what they want? Whatever way, fighting for reforms effectively becomes a way of retaining leaders and leadership, of running away from the more difficult and radical task of changing minds.

A Trotskyist friend of mine showed me a petition of people who had voted Labour, but who now were sick of them, and of how these people were coming to the SWP. Had any of these people changed their mind? Were any of them now more revolutionary? Or had the SWP just filled in a space left by the Labour Party, and effectively changed nothing. Politicians' logic—the urge to "do something"—must be resisted. Doing something is no good, we need to do the right thing. We need to campaign for socialism.

Pik Smeet

Breaking them in (1967)

From the June 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party has always been unlucky with its youth sections. Before the war it lost control to the so-called Communists and, more recently, to assorted Trotskyists.

By 1960 the leaders of the Labour Party had regained enough courage to set up a national youth section again, this time called the "Young Socialists". That they lost control of this within two or three years was partly their own fault. The Labour Party has no principles or theory. Its policy is shaped entirely by electoral considerations. Indeed party officials tend to be suspicious of anything that smacks of theory. Hence the emptiness of their appeals for support.

Consider this passage from a leaflet now given out by Labour to new electors:

"The Labour Party provides commonsense government with an eye on the future. Modern government, with the conviction and determination to press ahead, making all the changes essential in today's fast moving world. Government with a heart, conscious of the problems of the young and the old, the weak and the needy".

How could this appeal to anybody?

But, worse, the Labour leaders were determined to give no power to the YS in deciding party policy. They tried instead to harness the time and energy of its members to going around cadging for votes. The position is well summed up in a study on "Young Activists in British Politics" by Philip Abrams and Alan Little in the British Journal of Sociology for December 1965:

The Young Socialists, then, are expected to be political but powerless; 'servants of the party' who will carry the burden of constituency work without presuming to meddle with policy. The movement is not allowed to edit its own journal. Its national committee has little contact with Labour leaders and that it has is usually formal and to do with matters of discipline. No notice is taken by the Party of resolutions passed by the Young Socialist Conference unless, again, they are felt to be an occasion for discipline. At the same time, little positive effort is made to supervise the political education of the Young Socialists. The political work wanted from the movement is practical not speculative.

It was against this background that the trotskyists moved in. They filled the theoretical vacuum and gave the YS members a practical purpose beyond vote-catching. Their papers such as Keep Left, Rally, Rebel, Young Guard and Militant—all save Keep Left really produced by YS members—were lively and interesting compared with the stodgy and little read publications of Transport House New Advance and now Focus.

But to give the Labour youth managers their due, they didn't stand a chance against the so-called Socialist Labour League, the premier trotskyist group in Britain. It is no exaggeration to say that for a number of years the national committee of the YS was controlled by the SLL through its nominees. The SLL had a secret organisation, complete with membership cards, within the YS. In other words, in true Bolshevik fashion, it was out to control the YS. The other trotskyist groups didn't stand a chance either. However much they might envy the success of the SLL they could not match its conspiratorial methods (which included violence and intimidation). It os doubtful if they really wanted to for their supporters were, and still are, loose groupings without central discipline or outside control.

Naturally the Labour Party was not going to put up with this for long. They proscribed Keep Left and later, after the 1964 YC Conference, launched an attack on the SLL nominees. Many were expelled. The rest, taking many of the YS branches with them, broke away and held a conference of their own at Morecambe in 1965. The Labour leaders must have been relieved but they still faced the problem of what to do with the remains of their youth section. They forced the unofficial papers to swear allegiance to the Labour Party, further weakened the powers of the YS and change the name to "Labour Party Young Socialists". (It is important to realise that now there are two bodies calling themselves "Young Socialists". One, the YS, is the youth section of the SLL. The other is the LPYS).

However, YS conferences since 1964, even without Keep Left, have continued to reject Party policies and to call for more nationalisation, ban the bomb, support the Vietcong and the like. But the Labour leaders are not worried. They know that there is no closely-knit Bolshevik-type organisation trying to take over. They know, in fact, that slowly but surely they are winning the battle to break in their unruly young members to the ways of Labourism. Abrams and Little well describes how it works:

The Young Socialist movement thus functions as a school of conservatism. It takes the raw material of a new generation of activists—people eager to re-define the terms of political conflict—and teaches them to walk in the established paths. If one agrees to work 'within the Party' one quickly agrees also to accept the Party's terms on policy and procedure. The alternative is a return to the wilderness of sectarian impotence. As he learns to prefer the possible to the ideal the young activist tends to move away from the Young Socialists and to devote his energies directly to the Party.

The sad thing is that, while Labour is changing them, they think they are changing the Labour Party.

Adam Buick

This article was part of a special issue of the Socialist Standard. Other articles in the special issue include:

• Young Communist League: The YCL's Land of Hope and Glory
• Young Conservatives: Dances, Jumble Sales, Table Tennis
• Young Liberals: Britain's "Red Guards"

Marx in Miniature. (1921)

Book Review from the November 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx. By M. Beer. National Labour Press, Ltd. 3s. 6d. net.

As an example of stern compression and yet lucid exposition of Marx's teachings, this little book deserves high praise. In 132 pages of fair-sized type there is given a sketch of the life of Marx, his development in knowledge and thought, his work in the various movements of the Working Class, his theories of history and class struggles, and his economic discoveries. In addition, a brief account of the Hegelian Philosophy, so far as it deals with the Dialectic, is placed in 19 pages of the Introduction. Marx's connection and debt to this school of philosophy is well shown.

After so clear a summary of Marx's economic theories, it is astounding to find the following statements by M. Beer on page 130:

"Marx's theory of value explains neither the vast and unparalleled accumulation of wealth nor the movement of prices during the last sixty years. Wealth, measured in values, has, in the last few decades, increased by many times the increase in living labour power. In this connection the old formula can be reversed: wealth increases in geometrical, living labour power in arithmetical progression. The greatest difficulty in Marx is that inventors and discoverers, the chemists and physicists, the pioneers and organisers of industry and agriculture are not regarded by him as creators of surplus value. Thinkers who, by chemical researches and discoveries, double the productive capacity of the soil and conjure forth values in millions from the waste products of industry; physicists who place new sources of power and means of production at the disposal of mankind and multiply the productivity of labour; organisers who co-ordinate new methods of working—all this creative and directive work demanding, as it often does, an infinite amount of intensive intellectual effort, is not considered to have increased the total sum of exchange values of the nation."

How familiar, even stale, all this reads to the student of Marx. How long, for instance, is it since W. H. Mallock said very similar things and tried to  justify the Capitalists' ownership of wealth by claiming that it was due to the wonderful intellectual endowment "of the Few."

And in another respect M. Beer is like Mallock and Co.—he is unable to give any alternative explanation. Nay, more; he does not even attempt to demonstrate or prove his case—he merely states it and passes on. Fortunately, there is one author who has met the objection of M. Beer that "creative and directive work" does not count in the theory of value. This author says:

"All combined labour on a large scale requires more or less a directing authority in order to secure the harmonious working of the individual activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the action of the combined organism, as distinguished from the action of its separate organs. A single violin player is his own conductor; an orchestra requires a separate one."

Further on the same author says:

"As co-operation extends its scale this despotism takes forms peculiar to itself. Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from actual labour as soon as his capital has reached that minimum amount with which capitalist production, as such, begins, so now he hands over the work of direct and constant supervision of the individual workman and groups of workmen to a special kind of wage labourer."

This author's name is Karl Marx, and the quotations will be found on pages 321 and 322 of "Capital" (Sonnenschein Ed.). It is the wage-labourer who provides exchange value, and, as here seen, the organisers, chemists, physicists, etc., are but "special kinds of wage-labourers."

In the matter of prices, Marx was always careful to point out that, while he assumed free and full competition among the Capitalists in working out his theory, the factor of monopoly would make an important difference. This is seen to-day where combinations or trusts exist. Here prices are fixed by what "the market will bear," though the latter will sometimes be affected by the competition of substitutes. The Standard Oil Trust has a practical monopoly of petroleum oils used in Australia; but local substitutes act to keep down the price of petroleum to a certain level. But even in these cases the difference between price and value, and the enormous profits made by many Trusts, are only explainable by Marxian laws—no other explanation fits the facts. Strange to relate, after all the shortcomings of the Marxian theory which M. Beer has discovered, he says:

"However, as far as the distribution of products is concerned, Marx's theory is, generally speaking, correct." -Page 130.

This admission knocks out so much of his previous statement, that one wonders why either—or both—were made.

The charge of three shillings and sixpence net for a 132 pages pamphlet in paper covers is ridiculously high. In view of the usefulness of the work, the price should be reduced to bring it within the reach of the mass of the workers.

J. Fitzgerald

Connecting the dots (2007)

From the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Remember the “Good Old Days” before Nintendo, when the cutting edge of gaming technology was a page full of dots and numbers in some comic or magazine? Starting at 1 a line was drawn sequentially through all of the numbered dots and gradually a pattern emerged until eventually we were presented with an elephant or some other familiar creature, building or wonder of engineering. Sometimes the compilers of these dot-pictures were pretty clever and by adding background or texture they could keep you guessing for ages before the brain sorted the apparently random outline into a recognisable pattern. Most times it was possible to catch on really quickly and the general response was an immediate loss of interest and a move on to the next page of dots and numbers where the pattern would be repeated, over and over.

Understanding capitalism, our answers to it as Socialists and why it’s so important for us to spread awareness of Socialism is, I find, a bit like joining the dots.

The capitalists want to keep everyone on Join the Dots Book 1; get up – open the book – pick up pencil – start – get up – open the book – pick up pencil – you get the picture. The pattern on each page is obvious, easy to see and unchangeable. Getting a little bored? Another chocolate, episode of Big Brother or shopping trip for stuff you don’t need or really want will keep you docile and pliable. Oh! and don’t forget to keep turning the pages and joining a few dots, there’s the rent or mortgage to pay, remember?

As Socialists we’ve moved on from Book 1. We’ve got beyond the “Well, I know the system’s not perfect, but what else is there? There’s nothing I can do” stage. Some of us might still be joining background or texture dots, and we may not have sussed the complete picture yet, but it’s certainly not that same old, tired elephant and, in fact, it’s looking more and more like an albatross.

We workers in the developed world are still slaves to capital, despite some outward appearances. The actual chains and leg-irons may have disappeared but their virtual equivalents are still there in the form of the need to exchange our labour power for the means of survival and to meet our responsibilities to our families.

Think about it. What a clever dot-picture capital has created; in the beginning the slaves were chained to the galley oars and the masters beat the drum and wielded the whip. But how to enjoy the fruits of their labours when every hour was taken up with thumping the drum and keeping the slaves in line? The answer was simple enough, unchain a couple of slaves from the oars, give them status, a title (overseer or manager), and a whip. They would need a set of virtual leg-irons (do the job right or you’ll end up down there with the slaves again) of course, but otherwise capital has got itself a very useful ally and can now retire to the yacht in Cannes secure in the knowledge that someone else’s labour will pick up the tab for the Pimms, canapés and roulette chips.

The ruse is simple and is presently working well enough; if enough of us are kept reasonably satisfied with our lot and reminded often enough of the dangers of bucking the system (loss of income, loss of status, debt, homelessness), if we allow ourselves to be anaesthetised by capital’s drugs of consumption, trivialisation and obsession with personalities, then the future is indeed bleak for the majority of our world.

Moving beyond Book 1 is not a matter of education or intelligence but is a matter of awareness. Understanding the big spin-off for capital from its strategy of divide and conquer, and doing something to counter the lies and propaganda is what our job is all about. In the developed world many think they stand above the majority of humankind, as a foreman or manager, totally failing to realise that there is a common cause among all workers, whatever we earn.

How often do we hear the opinion, amplified in the capitalist media, that “I’ve had to work for everything I have” or “I don’t pay my taxes to give hand-outs to parasites and illegal immigrants” or “Bloody foreigners, taking all our jobs”? The list is endless. Us against Them, except it’s the wrong “Them”. How can we be so stupid that we eulogise about Bill Gates giving away millions to the poor and desperate of the world, without a single question being raised about why the poor and desperate are in that state in such numbers and about the role played by the likes of Gates and his ilk in their condition?

This illusion that we are not in shackles will take some cracking; people earning a wage or salary can’t see them as the chains of capital. They feel so free that they actually think that they are paying taxes for the good of their country when in actuality wages, taxes, social insurance, etc. are all simply an overhead of capital, an overhead well worth carrying in order to buy off unrest and perpetuate the divisions between the workers of the world.

Our challenge as socialists is to help others move on from Book 1 to Book 2 and beyond; to help people see through the mind-numbing illusions to the reality of what Capitalism is; what it’s doing to them and what it’s doing for the capitalists. We need to be bridges for people, helping them to shake off their conditioning, enabling them to find out more for themselves. In the process they’ll join up more dots – and so will we.

Alan Fenn