"The World For The Workers." (1909)

From the April 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

A SONG OF REVOLUTION

Words & Music by H. J. Neumann

You toilers of the world, arise!
   To bravely speed the day,
When all your forces organise
   King Capital to slay,
And from the master class you'll wrest
   The Powers of the State,
Which, wielded in your interest,
   Your class emancipate.  

There sounds above the class war din
   The battle-cry we use:
Unite! you have a world to win,
   Your chains alone to lose."  

Your lot in life is darkest gloom;
   You sow and others reap.
And want and mis'ry are your doom,
   While idlers treasures heap.
Why have they riches, you distress,
   Though you all wealth have wrought?
It is because the few possess
   The earth, while you have nought.  

There sounds above the class war din
   The battle-cry we use:
Unite! you have a world to win,
   Your chains alone to lose."  

While you an idle class maintain
   For pittances you'll toil.
To own your products you must gain
   Possession of the soil
And of all means the workers need
   To found the Commonwealth,
And thus enable all to lead
   Full lives of peace and health.
  

There sounds above the class war din  
   The battle-cry we use:
Unite! you have a world to win,  
   Your chains alone to lose." 

Arise! the message to proclaim,
   The message full of cheer:
That Labour's freedom is your aim,
   That brighter days are near.
To men exhausted by the fray,
   To women in despair,
To children wanting food and play,
   To all the message bear 

There sounds above the class war din
   The battle-cry we use:
Unite! you have a world to win,
   Your chains alone to lose."

Copies of the above four-part song S., A., T., B. (which will be sung by a choral party at the Annual Social on April the 9th, complete with pianoforte accompaniment and Tonic-Solfa setting may be obtained, price 3d., or post free 3½d., through the branches or from the Head Office.

"The Need For 'Intellectuals'." (1906)

From the April 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is often asserted by the geniuses of the Fabian Society and other middle-class misleaders of the working class, that the workers to-day, and in the future, require the assistance and guidance of educated, intelligent, middle-class men, both to direct their agitation and energies now, and to manipulate municipal and national affairs in the future. The workers, therefore, should not endeavour to obtain control of the political machinery themselves, but should place the "intellectual experts" in that position and obey their behests.

This, of course, is merely the old conservative idea of "Divine Right and a Class to Rule" presented in new terms. Those who carry on all the complicated and interdependent processes of wealth production from top to bottom; who delve the ore, smelt the metal, lay the railways, cut the canals, manipulate and direct enormous engines and instruments in industry ; who erect structures greater than the Pyramids and more wonderful than the Gardens of Babylon: these workers, according to the agents of the ruling class, are incapable, too ignorant, not sufficiently equipped with organising power, to manage these forces on their own behalf and for their own well-being. Hence the need for "experts" to do it for them.
                             
But with all their care and caution, the capitalists' henchmen sometimes forget to speak by the book. Thus Mr. Chiozza Money, in the Daily News, Feb. 16th, comments upon the reception given to the deputation on Old Age Pensions that waited upon the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and were told that these intellectual giants knew not where to obtain the money for these pensions. "As I have so often pointed out," says Mr. Money, "it is not a case that there is any doubt as to where the money is to come from, and I am sorry that the members of the deputation were not prepared to address themselves effectually to the question of ways and means." And he hopes any further deputation will deal exhaustively with the financial side of the matter.

Mr. Money is somewhat new in the political field. Apparently he is somewhat of a novice in the business of misleading the workers for the benefit of his paymasters, though he has learnt some of the tricks of deliberate falsification of history, as Blatchford showed in a controversy between them on the Liberals and Trade Unions. The old hand would not have "let the cat out of the bag" so completely as Mr. Money has done in pointing out how it is desirable, nay, the duty of the workers, not only to produce and distribute wealth, but also to instruct their superiors how to carry on the business of swindle and sweat.

We may thank Mr. Money for adding his quota to the mass of evidence we already possess, showing the incapability to control, and the want of power to direct, the giant forces of production that have outgrown the power of the modern ruling class to control, and that need a reorganiztion of Society to bring them into harmony.

For if the workers are, in addition to producing all the wealth, to instruct their masters in all the details of administration, then it at once follows that they may just as well do the whole business for their own benefit. Why trouble to elect "experts," either financial or economic, if these geniuses have to be shown what to do by those whose superiors they are supposed to be? Forty years ago Karl Marx completely exploded the "Captains of Industry" nonsense in his masterly way; and Engels and Lafargue, among others, have pointed out the facts around us, illustrating the intellectual bankruptcy of the ruling class. Mr. Money, by his advice quoted above, shows first how he recognises these truths, and secondly how much of a novice he still is at the game of Bunkum.

Jack Fitzgerald

Greasy Pole: What It Was All About (2015)

The Greasy Pole Column from the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sprawled out across the lawn it was warm and relaxing until Janet, who was into her third glass of Tesco Finest Chardonnay, blurted: 'So what's all this about Jeremy Corbyn then? I'm going to his meeting at the Town Hall on Wednesday. If I can get in, that is; he's had thousands at his other meetings with overflows so I might have to stand outside'. Jeremy Corbyn. A couple of months before none of them had heard of him but now it was different. Janet told about a friend of a friend who is one of his constituents; they admire his rebelliousness in parliament, where he has voted against the whips' instructions over 500 times (they called it 'challenges') and he was very helpful to her when she took a particular problem to him. At all events he couldn't be much worse than Ed Miliband and that lot who lost the last election. And who were those Labour MPs against him? That Liz Kendall saying she loved Labour but talking more like a proper Tory. What had Andy Burnham ever done to make us think of him as a future Prime Minister? Yvette Cooper? Won't she just perform like Ed Balls tells her to? And Blair having the cheek to prescribe a heart transplant for anyone who voted for Corbyn .

Corbyn

It was in February last year that the Labour Party, nursing some delusions about their chances of winning the next election against the increasingly fragile coalition, adopted a new system of electing its leader. Until then they had fumbled through a three-way performance in which a third of the votes would be cast by each of the Parliamentary Party, the trade unions and individual members. The new procedure was designed to be quicker and simpler and more democratic –one member one vote, to include registered supporters who would be allowed to vote on payment of a fee of ￡3. The Deputy Leader Harriet Harman was satisfied enough with this arrangement to describe it as 'a robust system to prevent fraudulent or malicious applications'. But the flaws in it were exposed when the Daily Telegraph suggested that the whole procedure could be disrupted by Conservative Party supporters – as well as anyone else with the same intentions – paying their ￡3 and going on to disrupt the election by voting for the most unsuitable and divisive candidate who would ensure that Labour lost the next general election. And in that role was Jeremy Corbyn of the relentlessly left-wing opinions and breaches of Parliamentary discipline. Piteously threatened, Andy Burnham warned that 'The Tory press are so desperate for Jeremy Corbyn to win that they're making up stories to give the impression that he already has'. Nominations in the leader election had to be supported by 35 MPs, which Corbyn reached by the narrowest of margins, with only minutes to spare on the closing day.

Austerity

He promised to stand for drastic changes in Labour policy –- like making amends for Blair and his lies by apologising for going to war in Iraq. There would be no more pandering to Tory discipline through austerity, such as in a recent report by the Department of Work and Pensions that between December 2011 and February 2014 there were 2,380 people who died within fourteen days of being struck off Employment and Support Allowances (ESA) after a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) had ruled that they were fit for work. Andy Burnham described the WCA as 'punishing' and promised that a Labour government under him would ensure 'a humane approach to benefits' – in spite of the fact that the punitively inhumane machinery of the WCA was set up by the previous Labour government. This same Andy Burnham also assured the voters that if he is ever Prime Minister he will reduce the National Debt '...towards its sustainable pre-global financial crisis levels' which avoids the crucial question of why and how the 'crisis' came upon us. Then Yvette Cooper, who supported the war on Iraq and the continuation of Trident, promised that she would ensure her government would '...reset Labour's relationships with business'. And Liz Kendall made it all sound so easy: 'We will bring debt down as a proportion of our GDP and will make surpluses in the good times' – assuming that capitalism's economy is always, easily, controllable.

Democracy

As the leadership campaign began the Labour Party were pleased to represent it as an admirable exercise in democratic organisation. But this confidence collapsed when Corbyn came on the scene and took so convincing a lead. In response there was a move to concentrate the opposition to Corbyn by persuading two of the other candidates to stand down. Or to abandon the contest altogether until the party could re-write the rules so as to prevent the emergence of another candidate like Corbyn. These were not examples of democracy in action but of the subterfuge and denigration typical of relationships within a party of capitalism. No wonder that Corbyn should appeal to people like Janet and her husband Dave, with their mortgage and their jobs and two children coming up to their GCSEs with all the attendant stresses. As a couple they are something of a pollster's dream. Dave's grandparents came over here at the time of the Empire Windrush and now he manages a busy section of a local authority housing department. He sees the brutal reality of austerity every day, putting him under remorseless pressure. Janet has the same type of experiences in her work in one of the caring professions. These two are an example of what David Cameron - as did Ed Miliband - cynically calls Hard-working People. Neither of those twisters used phrases like Ruthlessly Exploited People. Repeatedly Deceived People. Contemptuously Disregarded People. So what was all that about Jeremy Corbyn? We have been here before, when the larger, more established parties were in such turmoil and confusion as to temporarily benefit some smaller, more outlandish group like the SDP and UKIP. It may be that Corbyn succeeds for a time in his stated objective to bring about some changes in society and its politics but our experience tells us that these will be no more significant or enduring than all those others, who are now part of capitalism's disreputable history. That is what's all about Jeremy Corbyn.

Ivan

Against the Left (Part 5) (1978)

From the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE ROAD AHEAD

The English working class had been gradually becoming more and more deeply demoralised by the period of corruption since 1848 and had at last got to the point when it was nothing but the tail of the "great Liberal party", i.e. of its oppressors, the capitalists. Its direction had passed completely into the hands of venal trade union leaders and professional agitators. (Letter from Marx to Liebknecht. February 11th, 1878)

Reading the above, one's immediate reaction is that things haven't changed very much. The working class is still supporting its oppressors, but today the party which pretends to stand for the workers is Labour, not Liberal. Professional trade union bureaucrats, with their social contracts and their productivity deals, still try to manipulate the workers. The lesson of the First International has yet to be learnt: that the working class must emancipate itself. At a glance it would seem that socialism is a distant prospect. But in fact, there is evidence to suggest that some are rejecting the policies of the Left, even if they are not turning to socialism. Let it be clear that we do not recommend workers to abandon Left Wing ideology so as to turn to the Right. To stop voting Labour in order to vote Conservative or Liberal or not at all is to turn them from one pointless exercise to another.

This series has considered the three main tendencies on the British Left: Labourism, Stalinism and Trotskyism. (We have not examined other currents, such as Maoism or anarchism, because they are relatively insignificant today). In this concluding article it is worth posing the question: what are the prospects for the Left in the days ahead?

Still the most popular organisation by far on the Left is the Labour Party. In a sense it is incorrect to see the Labour Party as a single party as it is made up of a collection of local cliques, affiliated trade unions and political factions. The vast majority of Labourites would not see themselves as Marxists, revolutionaries or even Left wingers. A minority within the Labour Party aims to move it in a "leftwards" direction, by which is meant more nationalisation and even more welfare reforms. Remind a Labour Leftist that, despite six Labour Governments and endless reform legislation, we are not a fraction closer to socialism and he will doubtless agree with you. The problem, he will tell you, is that Labour has the wrong leaders. Alas, the memory of the Labour Left is at fault. Recall the election for the leadership of the Labour Party in 1963. The spokesman of the Labour Left Tribune, had this to say about one of the candidates:

He has not only qualities of political acumen, political skill and survival power which no one denies him. Other considerable qualities too for a Labour leader—a coherence of ideas, a readiness to follow unorthodox courses, a respect for democracy . . . above all a deep and genuine love of the Labour movement (Tribune 22 February, 1963)

Who was this man of impeccable qualities who was about to guide Labour in the required direction? It was none other than Harold Wilson, that well known lover of the working class. Well, Wilson won the leadership and Labour won the 1964 election. What did Tribune have to say about Wilson's 'considerable qualities" when he was Prime Minister?

Socialist principles have been tossed aside with almost indecent cynicism and casualness. Racial discrimination in Britain has been condoned and strengthened. American butchery in Vietnam has been actively supported and encouraged. Social welfare and economic development in Britain have been sacrificed to carry out a reactionary economic programme at the best of international finance capital. What of the Left leaders in Parliament? Tell them off on your fingers, comrades, and think of their words and deeds in recent months while the Labour movement has been sold down the river. It is a sad picture and I can personally neither see nor offer any excuses. Are we finished, we of the Labour Left? (Malcolm Caldwell in Tribune, 20 August, 1965)

In his letter of resignation from the Labour party on 24 September, 1965, Alan Dawe, the paper's education correspondent, wrote in Tribune

We are not right to view the Labour party and its latter day works as having anything to do with Socialism. They don't, they won't and it is time we faced up to it.

Since experiencing the effects of Labour Governments large numbers of Labour activists have faced up to the non-socialist nature of their party. Labour is further from its original sentimental intentions than ever before. As we stated in an earlier article, Labour has never stood for Socialism, but was originally intended to defend the working class within capitalism. Its predictable failure adds weight to the contention that wage labour and capital can under no circumstances have coinciding interests. Attend public meetings or branch meetings of the Labour Party and you will witness its diminishing size and prestige; some Labourites have turned to racist and fascist alternatives. Others remain in the political wilderness. Will they turn to socialism?

Since the death of Stalin, numbers and influence of the Communist Party have been declining at a rapid rate. Its stability was shaken by pro-Maoist splits, and by the reaction to Hungary in 1956 (which gave rise to New Left Review). During that period the Communist Party has been in a dilemma between maintaining rigid adherence to Moscow or becoming an openly social democratic (reformist) party like its Italian and French counterparts. In 1977 the new draft of The British Road to Socialism, the CP's policy statement, strongly supported the 'eurocommunist' line, thus rejecting the old Bolshevik slogans for modern reform demands. ideally, the CPGB would now like to unite with the Labour party, but the possibility seems unlikely as Labour bends over backwards to convince world capitalism that is is as 'safe' and 'respectable' as the Conservative party. Eurocommuism has caused a split in the CPGB, with a loyal group, loyal to the 'Soviet Fatherland', leaving to form the New Communist Party. In its pamphlet The Case For The New Communist Party, the crisis of British Stalinism is ably summarised:

The decline in membership and Morning Star circulation accelerated. The Young Communist League collapsed into a tiny unorganised sect . . . At the base of the party the crisis in organisation was even more clear. Thousands of members were no longer organised and many did not even pay their nominal monthly dues of 25p. The tendency grew for branches to appear in public only at elections or at Christmas bazaars. Consistent and regular political work by branches was now quite rare. Meanwhile there grew a number of groups supporting various brands of Trotskyism and ultra-Leftism. A new generation of potential revolutionary fighters were being diverted into anti-communist and anti-soviet groups. (p. 7)

The New Communist Party has pledged itself to maintain the pro-Kremlin line which the CP has decided to play down. Few workers treat seriously this effort to win faith in Russian state capitalism. The CP is destined to continue its squalid struggle for respectability, during which it could even fuse with the Labour Party or, more likely, go out of existence.

Many workers who would in the past have joined the Communist Party are today attracted by the Trotskyists groups, especially the Socialist' Workers Party. These parties would seem to be on the crest of a wave, but it must be remembered that their membership is based upon the opportunism of reform demands. The Right To Work Campaign, for instance, has been a useful source of members for the SWP. Once the present crisis ends, however, and labour is needed to expand the economy, those who have been attracted to the unemployed lobby because they were out of work will probably leave. A membership based on immediate demands will decline if and when the issues they fight for are temporarily solved. Capitalism is always capable of removing resistance by enacting reforms. Evidence of this is the high turnover in membership of parties like the SWP and the WRP. That is why the SPGB has always appealed to workers as a class and not as people suffering from this or that problem.

To imagine that the political situation has remained unaltered for the last hundred years would be to reject the Marxist theory of history. The working class does learn from its experience. It learns slowly and at the expense of its mistakes, but it is that factor—the ability to learn from history—which differentiates humans from animals and which makes the probability of Socialism more than a question of idealistic hope. Marx and Engels, in the last century, thought that socialism was only a matter of years away, as did the founders of the SPGB in 1904. Modern socialists are less ready to predict the course of the future, but for the general prophecy that if capitalism continues the working class can expect misery and if socialism is established we can look forward to hitherto unexperienced freedom. Socialism is not inevitable unless the working class seriously organises for it. Support for the left is support for utopianism in the extreme. The only solution to the historic problem of the working class lies in its own elimination as a class.

Steve Coleman

• Against the Left - Part 1
• Against the Left - Part 2
• Against the Left - Part 3
• Against the Left - Part 4

Is There a Class War? (1904)

From the October 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

MR. J. KEIR-HARDIE,    M.P., ANSWERS " YES-NO " AND "NO-YES!"

The "Socialist" humorist of the day is Mr. J. Keir Hardie, M.P. At least, Mr. Hardie claims to be a Socialist. Of his humour there is no question. That it is unconscious humour makes the gentleman's contortions even a little pitiful. Mr. Hardie has Capitalist friends. He is a Reform politician. One of his methods of advancing Socialism is to give electoral support to non-Socialists ― he would, in fact, cast out Beelzebub by means of Beelzebub. Consequently, he appears to find himself in this dilemma : he desires to "moralise" the capitalists; thinks it possible that the wolves of Commercialism will loose their hold upon their prey voluntarily, and, whilst he is incapable of arguing the position, feels instinctively that he cannot reconcile reform with the fundamental principle of the class war, without recognition of which no scientific theory of Socialism is possible.

In order to conclusively prove this statement it is only necessary to place together the contradictory expressions used by Mr. Keir Hardie himself in a recent article entitled "An Indictment of the Class War."

Mr. Hardie states on the one hand: 

"For my own part, I have always maintained that to claim for the Socialist movement that it is a 'class' war dependent for its success upon the 'class' consciousness of one section of the community, is doing Socialism an injustice, and indefinitely postponing its triumph. It is, in fact, lowering it to the level of a mere faction fight."

On the other hand, he also states: 

"Now, it is not disputed that there is a conflict of interests between those who own property and those who work for wages. The tenant and his landlord and the worker and his employer have interests which lead to inevitable conflict and antagonism, and the object of Socialism is the removal of the causes which produce this antagonism."

It appears, then, that "conflict" is not "war" and "antagonism " means ― mutual interest between two opposing classes! Perhaps Mr. Hardie also considers confusion the same thing as clearness.

Later, this amusingly superficial thinker states "the working class is not a class, it is the nation." How it can be a class and not a class at the same time we leave Mr. Hardie to explain, and he may also let us know what he means by the following:

"Socialism will come, not by a war of classes, but by economic circumstances forcing the proletariat into a revolt, which will absorb the middle class, and thus wipe out classes together."

Thus we have a class which is not a class, a nation without classes, which yet contains a working class and a middle class, the revolt ― not war ! ― of the former which is to "absorb" the latter and the wiping out of classes without those hostile operations which, in ordinary language, are tersely denominated war. And all this confused medley of what is either ignorant stupidity or deliberate misleading in order that Mr.  Keir Hardie may somehow or the other cover the defeat of himself, of his friend Jaures and of the Utopians generally at the International Congress.

But whilst we may smile at the scarcely concealed anger and dismay of the Confusionists at the growth of uncompromising Socialism, it becomes a rather more serious matter when we find  this moral philosopher misquoting  the works of recognised exponents of scientific Socialism and claiming that such men as, for instance, Belfort Bax, are supporting his compromising attitude. In his well-known "Ethics of Socialism," this author has stated :

"All class-character qua class character is bad ... The particular class-qualities in the character of the modern capitalist may be roughly indicated by the definition,  vulgarity IN a  solution of hypocrisy ; the particular class-qualities in the character  of the modern proletarian  as brutality IN a solution of servility." 

Mr. Hardie leaves out the   three essential words "qua class-character," and makes Bax's definitions to read respectively ―

"Vulgarity IN a solution of hypocrisy," and "brutality IN a solution of servility." 

By this substitution Mr. Hardie totally alters the character of the thought expressed.

In non-ethical circles this is known as dishonesty.

But not content with mutilating what he does quote, Mr. Hardie leaves out all those portions of the article in question which would enable his readers to gain an intelligent idea of the author's real meaning.   Will it be believed that in this very essay, Mr. Bax contemptuously dismisses the Keir Hardie attitude as that of a

"Benevolent old gentleman who says, 'Let us ignore classes, let us regard each other as human beings,'"

And as that of the "benevolent bourgeois Radical" ?

It seems most remarkable that anyone noting the differentiation between natural class-instinct and the political class conscious action of the workers insisted on by Bax can possibly hold Mr. Hardie's conclusions. For does not Bax say in the same article :

"Classes exist; you may ignore them,  but they will exist still with the respective characters they engender.  Though you ignore them, they will not ignore you. . . .  In the Socialist workman the class-instinct has become transformed into the conviction that, in the words of Lassalle, 'he is called to raise the principle of his class into the principle of the age.'   He knows that in the moment of victory ― of the realisation of the dominion of his class ― the ugly head of   class  itself  must   fall, and   society emerge. Militant, his cause is identified with class; triumphant, with Humanity." 

Poor, indeed, must be the case of the Reformist reactionaries when they have to bolster up their absurd and contemptible position by mis-quotation and suppression. The marvellous thing is that any intelligent being should be duped by such palpable dishonesty.

H. J. Hawkins

Editorial: The Refugee Crisis (2015)

Editorial from the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the past few months Europe has been facing the biggest influx of refugees since the Second World War. They have been fleeing the war zones of the Middle East and North Africa. The biggest group are those trying to escape the particularly brutal civil war in Syria. The major Powers have had a hand in creating this crisis by fomenting conflicts in these regions. The US and British military intervention there has created political instability in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Syria, Russia and Iran are supplying arms to the Assad regime and American and French drones are bombing Isis targets. British drones have joined in attacking Isis targets in Iraq and David Cameron hopes to persuade Parliament later this year to approve British drones being used in Syria. In 2011, Britain and France undertook the bombing of Libya, which has led to the present unstable situation there that has induced many to make the hazardous journey across the Mediterranean.

Rather than receiving the help they need, these desperate people have had obstacles put in their way. In Hungary razor-wire fencing has been built along its border with Serbia and the police have been tear gassing refugees trying to enter the country. Unable to enter the European countries legally, they have had to resort to paying human traffickers to transport them in unsafe boats to European destinations such as Greece and Italy. About 2,500 have died while attempting to make the crossing. On 27 August, 71 refugees were found dead in an abandoned lorry in Austria near the Hungarian border. Some refugees have been killed trying to reach Britain from Calais via the Channel Tunnel.

We are not encouraged to see them as fellow human beings, but as a menace. They are 'economic migrants', who seek to sponge off the good people of Europe. Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, complains of 'millions of marauding African migrants' posing a threat to the EU’s standard of living and David Cameron talks of a 'swarm' of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to come to Britain. Katie Hopkins, the great sage of The Sun, tells us that migrants are like cockroaches. We have been reliably informed by the Daily Mail that British tourists in the island of Kos in Greece have had their holidays ruined by the presence of refugees there. There have been calls by some politicians and some of the press to send the British Army to deal with the refugee crisis in Calais.

However, this all changed when images of the body of three-year old Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian refugee, washed up on a Turkish beach, appeared in the world press and shamed European countries into taking action. Germany has since pledged to take in 800,000 refugees this year. David Cameron, who previously took a hard line against accepting more refugees in the UK, has relented and agreed to accept a further 20,000 refugees over the next five years. It has to be said that these pledges are not entirely altruistic. Germany's population is falling and it needs an intake of younger workers to support an ageing population. British employers will, no doubt, find good uses for the skills of these newcomers.

Socialists are heartened by the solidarity shown by workers across Europe, in Germany, Austria and Hungary in welcoming the refugees to their countries with offers of food and drink and toys for the children.

We can only look forward to the day when workers extend their solidarity and work together to abolish capitalism, the system which creates the need for war and the resulting human suffering, and establish a socialist society which does away with all divisions between human beings and the conflicts which give rise to these harrowing tragedies.

The Real Class Division (2005)

From the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

We’re supposed to be moving towards a more equitable society. Well how come class division is worse than ever, asks Paul Bennett

It was, the newspaper says, ‘an authoritative new study’, concluding that class divisions are worse now than fifty years ago:

“Britain is more class-ridden than in the 1950s, as children from affluent families take the lion’s share of university places and those from poorer backgrounds struggle to climb the career ladder. People born in the Fifties were more likely to escape their parents’ class than those born in the Seventies, says the report, which compares parents’ and children’s incomes over time, and finds that equality of opportunity in Britain has declined” (Observer, 16 January).

This is a fairly typical example of the way in which the word ‘class’ is often defined, in terms of ‘affluent’ versus poorer families, with people ‘escaping’ from the class of their parents by moving upwards on the social ladder. Varying access to education is often accounted for in similar terms. For instance, the Office for National Statistics noted that in 2001-2, 19 percent of children from manual social classes went on to higher education, as opposed to 50 percent of those from non-manual classes.

In a sense, class is a concept that can be defined as one likes. The British government’s Index of Social Class has a scale from routine occupations such as waiters and cleaners, through ‘lower supervisory and craft’ jobs such as butchers and bus inspectors, to higher managerial occupations such as company directors and bank managers. This is based on the factors of job security, promotion opportunities, and the ability and opportunity to work on one’s own and to make decisions about tasks. Of course, since most company directors are capitalists, they probably rank rather higher on these criteria than the average bank manager.

An analysis along such lines may convey a lot of information about society, but at the same time it hides a great deal as well. By emphasising divisions among employees it suggests that they have different interests and statuses, rather than stressing what they all have in common. It suggests that removing inequality is about people climbing upwards within this scale and so doing better than their parents, rather than overturning the whole system. The traditional division between ‘working class’ and ‘middle class’ also implies that there is a conflict between these two groups, with the middle class being better paid, educated and housed, often at the expense of the working class.

However, there is another way of viewing divisions within society. We can note, for instance, that members of the so-called middle class are as dependent on what their employer pays them as the so-called working class are. It may be called a salary and come in the form of a monthly cheque rather than a weekly wage packet, but its recipients still need it in order to live. From this point of view, in fact, the overwhelming majority of the population are in the same boat: employed, paid a wage, needing to work for a living, at risk of losing their job, pushed around at work, working longer hours and doing less interesting work than they would wish. They shop in the same malls and supermarkets, use the same schools, hospitals and transport systems, are subject to the same laws and government regulations. Above all, they are seen by their employers as a means of creating profit rather than as human beings with feelings and family responsibilities. As far as socialists are concerned, anyone in this situation is a member of the working class, irrespective of their educational background or the accent they speak with.

But not everybody in society belongs to the working class. A comparatively small number of people (the capitalist class) have no need to work or to sign on for unemployment benefit, for they own the means of production, the land, factories, offices and companies. Having a few shares does not put a person into this class, for owning a small number of shares (like having money in a deposit account) does not prevent you from needing to work for a living. In contrast, the capitalists receive enough income from dividends and interest and rents and inflated ‘salaries’ and bonus schemes that not only do they not have to work but their wealth is far beyond what workers can even dream of. In 2004, the top 1,000 people on the Sunday Times Rich List were worth the extraordinary total of £202.4 billion. That’s an average of £200 million each! On the average wage of £21,000 a year, it would take nearly ten thousand years to earn that much. The list includes the Duke of Westminster (worth £5 billion), Philip Green (£3.6bn), Bernie Ecclestone (£2.3bn) and James Dyson (£800 million). These are the people who have several luxury homes in different cities and can afford to stay in swanky hotels and go on expensive cruises. They are also the people who are likely to berate workers for not working hard enough, exhorting us to pull our socks up and put our backs into it.

 And where do these super-rich get their money from? It’s clearly not from the sweat of their brow, because nobody can work hard enough or long enough to be worth a million pounds, let alone several billion. As the saying has it, the rich get rich from hard work – other people’s hard work. Their wealth comes from exploiting the working class, both manual and non-manual workers, whether they toil in shop, factory, office or call centre. Of the wealth that each worker produces (each day, week and month), only a part is covered by their wages – the rest is taken by the employer, in the form of surplus value. Shell, for instance, made £9bn post-tax profit last year (that’s a 9 plus nine zeroes). This is the class division that matters, that between the exploiting capitalists and the exploited workers, not that between workers who are slightly less or more poor than others.

The solution to this situation is not for workers to strive to join the capitalist class, for even if a few individuals manage this, it still leaves the vast majority of workers exploited and subject to capitalism’s wars and pollution. To ‘escape from your class’, do not dream of becoming a capitalist. Work instead for a society in which class divisions no longer exist, just as billionaires and paupers, landlords and homeless, bombs and borders will no longer exist. This is what we call a socialist society, where the means of production belong to everyone, not to a small rich list. Where wealth is produced to meet people’s needs rather than to produce profits for a few. Where there is no social ladder but everyone has the chance to educate themselves in the best and broadest way possible and to do work which is rewarding and enjoyable, without ever defining themselves as a cleaner or a butcher, where everyone has the opportunity to relate to others as human beings rather than as cogs in an uncontrollable economic machine.

Paul Bennett

Do Social Reforms Kill Socialism? (1933)

From the September 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

The "Dole" and the Workers

"What is the effect of the dole upon the mental attitude of the workers? Does it make them more acquiescent towards capitalism"

The question hails from America. This in itself is instructive. A few years ago various prominent English labour leaders and an odd capitalist or two, like Lord Beaverbrook, were advocating the adoption of the alleged "high-wage policy" of American employers. Now the American capitalists are seriously considering the adoption of the British system of State unemployment relief known as the dole. The "high-wage policy," so far from curing unemployment, has, in America, failed to prevent its rapid and enormous growth. Goods have been produced far in excess of the ability of the workers there to buy them back with all their "high wages." We have to note there, as in England, the sharp curtailment of production, wholesale dismissal of staffs, and all the rest of the characteristic methods of the capitalists in the endeavour to weather the "crisis," including drastic wage reductions.

The system of unemployment insurance was not patented in Great Britain. It was adopted nearly a quarter of a century ago by the Government of the day and applied to a few industries on the basis of foreign experiments. A few years previously Joseph Chamberlain had initiated his campaign for Protection, "to cure unemployment." "Look at Germany!" he said. "Under Protection her industries have forged ahead until their products capture Britain's markets." The Liberals looked at Germany, beheld unemployment rampant there as elsewhere, and also observed a State insurance scheme, which they proceeded to copy. It appeared in their eyes to be a more economical and efficient method of controlling the unemployed than the system of parish relief; and, with the dislocation of the labour market following the war, even Conservative Ministers helped forward its rapid extension to the majority of industries.

The system of parish relief, inherited from the days of Queen Elizabeth 350 years ago, was designed to meet a situation long before large-scale production had brought large-scale unemployment in its train. It had definite drawbacks from the point of view of those capitalists who had to pay rates upon property in industrial areas. They sought to spread the burden over the entire master class of a national scheme. From the standpoint of the unemployed the change in practice means no more than this, that they are paid relief out of the national exchequer instead of locally, and they are periodically badgered by courts of referees instead of by boards of guardians. Under the national scheme they now have six months' respite before the badgering starts, but for this privilege they have, while in work, made compulsory contributions. Since the advent of the National Government in 1931, the "means test" has gone far to lessen any difference between the two methods of securing workers' quietude.

Without some form of relief of the destitute, whether on local or national lines, it is obvious that there would be an enormous increase in crimes against property, ranging from petty thefts to wholesale riots. This, of course, would involve a correspondingly large increase in police activity and expenditure in connection therewith. In any advanced industrial country this is the consideration which induces the master class to adopt some form of public relief in the place of haphazard "charity."

There is no evidence, however, that in the absence of the dole, or some equivalent, the workers would become revolutionary. Such a mental change implies much more than mere discontent with the extremes of poverty resulting from unemployment. In spite of the enormous increase of unemployment in America in recent years and the absence of a system of doles, we do not hear of any rapid increase in the number of Socialists there. On the contrary, the very immediate urgency of the needs of the unemployed prompts the non-Socialist majority of them to give ear to those who promise them "something now" —Roosevelt, for example. They ignore Socialist propaganda as they do when in work.

Similarly, in Britain the establishment of the dole has not altered one way or the other the essential obstacles in the way of Socialist propaganda. Just as workers in employment can be gulled into accepting the fallacy that wage reductions are necessary to enable their master to recover their "share of world trade," so the unemployed can, in large numbers, be persuaded that a reduction in their paltry benefit is necessary to "national stability and financial integrity." The election results in 1931 is eloquent of this. Vast numbers of unemployed voted for the Parties which promised to cut their unemployment pay be 10%.

On the other hand, Socialists do not barter their political support for doles or promises of other reforms. The notion that the revolution is being held up by the existence of the dole is nothing short of ridiculous. This notion found expression (in a typically confused fashion) in the general election of the Communist Party for 1929. On page 25 they declared that, "The capitalist class of this country have been compelled, as an insurance against revolution, to introduce many schemes for the amelioration of the conditions of the workers." This, notwithstanding that four pages earlier they had declared that "the struggle for reforms in the present period leads to revolution." However, the existence of the dole can hardly be blamed for the muddle-headedness of those imagine that revolution can be advanced by "struggling" for "insurances against it."

The mass of the workers, employed and unemployed, accept and support capitalism because they do not yet realise that it is based upon their own enslavement and robbery as a class.

They do not realise that wages and doles represent but a fraction of the wealth which they actually produce to-day, and which they could increase and enjoy to the fullest extent under a system based upon the common ownership of the means of living. They do not realise these things because they are slow to think; slow processes, however, have the advantage of being sure. Socialists rely upon the development of the workers' capacity to think, a development which is forced upon them by the incessant class struggle. That struggle grows more glaring and more intense with every step in industrial progress, and when the workers eventually recognise its existence as such, no dole or other reform, nor promises of reform, will cause them to deviate from the revolutionary path.

Sweeping aside the parties which depend upon this type of appeal, they will organise to establish their supremacy in society in order to refashion it in accordance with their needs.

Eric Boden

Trotskyists in the European Parliament (2000)

From the September 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not many people know this but there are Trotskyist members sitting in the European Parliament. For the 1999 elections two Trotskyists groups in France—Lutte Ouvrière and the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire—presented a joint list and managed to get more than 5 percent of the national vote, so entitling them to 5 seats. It is this example that has inspired the main Trotskyist groups in Britain, led by the SWP and Militant, to get together as the so-called "Socialist Alliance" in the hope of repeating this performance.

But supposing they did get elected to Parliament what would they do? The French Trotskyist MEPs can provide a clue. In order to get full parliamentary facilities they have had to join a parliamentary "group". The one they have chosen to associate themselves with is the "European United Left/Nordic Green Left" made up of "Communist" and various other left-of-Labour MEPs. Too much should not be read into this as it is essentially an arrangement to get access to meeting rooms, interpreters and funds. The French Trotskyist MEPs use some of their share of the money to produce a "bulletin des députés" (members' bulletin) in which they publish their speeches and details of their other activities.

Lenin was not an anti-parliamentarist (he wasn't wrong about everything) but was in favour of Bolsheviks getting elected to Parliament and using it as a tribune from which to get their message across to workers in the country at large. As good Leninists, this is what the French Trotskyist MEPs try to do. There is nothing wrong with this as such. It is what Socialist MPs and MEPs would try to do too, only the message would be different—very different.

Whereas Socialist MPs would emphasise that capitalism can't be reformed to work in the interest of wage and salary workers who should therefore get together to bring it to an end and replace it by a system based on common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit, the Trotskyist MEPs merely repeat the slogans demanding reforms that they shout on demonstrations and publicise in their papers.

Thus the front page headline in the May 2000 issue of their Bulletin des Députés reads: "IT'S THE BOSSES' PROFITS THAT SHOULD BE TAKEN TO CREATE JOBS". Their speeches seem to indicate that they actually believe that unemployment could be ended by doing this. Here's Chantal Canquil (of LO):

    "It is not that it's impossible to immediately end unemployment but that would require a voluntarist policy which would not hesitate to draw on the profits of the financial and industrial groups and on the personal wealth of the big shareholders."

And Arlette Laguiller herself, LO's perennial candidate for President of France, called for a mass movement

    "to force big capital to take from its profits the wherewithal to create non-precarious jobs, paid at a decent wage".

Alain Krivine, of the LCR, who has often been Laguiller's rival in French presidential elections, even outlined a detailed programme as to how capitalism and capitalists could create full employment and decent wages for everyone:

    "A reduction in working time with the obligation to take on people and without introducing flexible working practices; wages to go up in line with productivity; a tax reform harmonising upwards taxes on income from capital; a Tobin tax aimed at discouraging financial speculation; and finally the implementation of a planned programme of energy saving."

Do they really believe this nonsense about keeping capitalism and being able to force, either by legislation or by strikes and demonstrations, the capitalists to use their profits to create jobs for everyone at a decent and ever-rising wage (anyone who knows how capitalism works will know that this would provoke a massive economic crisis)? Or is it just a populist slogan to attract gullible supporters who they believe they can then lead in an assault on capitalism (in fact to replace existing mixed private/state capitalism by full state capitalism)?

Either way they are condemned as anti-socialist. If they believe this is possible, then they stand exposed as reformists, and naive and unrealistic reformists at that. If they don't believe it, then they stand exposed as dishonest and cynical demagogues perpetuating reformist illusions just to win a popular following. Perhaps Krivine and the LCR believe it and LO don't. The LCR does offer more specific reforms than LO who confine themselves to vague general slogans. On the other hand, the LCR could be the more Machiavellian (or Leninist—the same thing) since it thinks the more practical you appear the better chance you have of attracting a bigger following.

Genuine Socialist MEPs of course would not advocate such reforms or encourage such reformist illusions. They would tell it like it is: that unemployment is inevitable under capitalism and will go up and down depending on which stage of its unavoidable business cycle capitalism happens to be in and that there's nothing that can be done to stop this; that there is no such thing as a decent wage since capitalism is based on the exploitation of wage labour with wages always being less than the value added in production and appropriated by the capitalists. Having said this, we would be less than honest if we didn't concede that occasionally the Trotskyist MEPs have used their speaking time to make the same criticism of capitalism as we would, even if from the perspective of establishing full state capitalism rather than real socialism.

But what about their voting record? This is a tricky one even for Socialists as this has been a subject of controversy within our own ranks. In the early days there were members who argued that Socialist MPs shouldn't take their seats and others who advocated that they should either vote against or abstain in all votes. But the majority position, which is still our current position, was that whereas Socialist MPs shouldn't propose anything (other than Socialism) they might under certain circumstances vote for something proposed by others i.e. a measure considered by the Party to be in the interest of the working class or the socialist movement). So we can't criticise the Trotskyist MEPs for sometimes abstaining, sometimes voting against and sometimes even voting for. For the record, they have generally voted against or abstained on economic issues and have only voted for general anti-racist declarations and pro-ecology measures.

Basically, the French Trotskyist MEPs either are or have behaved as leftwing reformists and so have done nothing to further the cause of Socialism. There is no reason to suppose that Trotskyist MPs in the British House of Commons would behave any differently.

Adam Buick

Social Evolution (1969)

Book Review from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Man's Rise to Civilisation as Shown by the Indians of North America, from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State by Peter Farb. Secker & Warburg, 55s.

Those whose ideas about North American Indians have been moulded by Western films and novels will find Peter Farb's book a revelation. The author takes his readers on a three-dimensional trip, north to south, east to west, and past to present, calling on all the familiar names like Cheyenne, Apache, Pawnee, Seminole, Iroquois, Eskimo, and Aztec, as well as lots of lesser-known ones. He sheds a lot of light on their customs and behaviour.

When 'white' men invaded America they met a confusing babel of languages and a multiplicity of different social organisations. They experienced varying reactions from the different groups of Indian natives. Some were warlike, others peaceful; some honoured agreements, others broke them; some were passively resistant, others fled; some were regarded as noble red men and others as ignorant savages. Some were organised under powerful chiefdoms with strong military institutions. Some were groups of families which looked to a senior member for advice which they did not necessarily have to take, and in consequence did not consider themselves bound by agreements supposedly made on their behalf. Some had well-defined social classes with a state machine to protect the interests of the the privileged class. Farb classifies these under four main headings: 1. The Band, 2. The Tribe, 3. The Chiefdom and 4. The State—the first two with sub-headings.

Farb shows that the stage of social organisation to which each Indian group had evolved determined its attitude to the white explorers and invaders, from Columbus and Cortes to the Puritan pilgrims and the westward-thrusting farmers and traders. He also explains the effects of the white man's institutions on the native organisation: how fur trading affected the communal organisation of the Indians in the Hudson Bay and Labrador areas and how the introduction of the horse and the gun affected the Plains Indians.

The book attempts to explain social evolution by cultural development and Farb understands culture to be "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Those 'other capabilities' must include technology; in fact, Farb says so later in his book when he refers to cultural reasons as "social, political, economic, and technological" ones.

To explain social organisation by cultural development is like explaining that the reason a man crosses a road is to get to the other side—it leaves us wondering why he wanted to get to the other side. For a more complete understanding of social organisation we must isolate one part of the culture, and without ignoring the other parts see how its influence is decisive in determining social development.

If we isolate the technological aspect we can see how a social group has been able to extend its control over nature by the discovery and invention of tools and processes and we shall see how this aspect is the foundation of all human activities, determining their condition and defining their limits.

Peter does not miss the technological aspect, far from it, but by failing to emphasise its fundamental importance he lessens the weight of his words. By lumping it in with what we would call 'the social superstructure' he blurs what would otherwise be an excellent definition. 

With the advantage of an additional hundred years of archaeological research behind him, Farb shrugs aside the classifications of men like Lewis Morgan and Frederick Engels as being too general to be useful. We appreciate that when people at different levels of social organisation come into contact they absorb aspects of one another's culture and this makes the pieces of the historical jig-saw more difficult to piece together.

Man's rise to civilisation has not been determined by his laws, arts, customs, religions, etc. but by his increasing inventiveness and adoption of more efficient tools, machinery and techniques of production. Although much of what Morgan, Engels, and others of their day wrote is outdated, the historical milestones they uncovered are still there to point the way. If history is to have a meaning it must reveal the motivating factor of social development so that we may gauge progress into the future.

Just as the digging stick and the rabbit snare were fundamental to the social organisation of the Shoshonean Indians, so modern methods of production are fundamental to capitalism and are the driving force towards Socialism.

Farb may be able to prove that man has not travelled the road to civilisation by a strict rotation of steps, there may have been leaps forward or steps backward, but he cannot prove that the type of social organisation of any people has not been limited by the technology of the time and place.

The latter chapters of the book deal with the recent aspirations of the Indians and the attempts at a cultural revival. These read like the story of the Maccabees and other people who have been swamped by a society at a higher level of social development. They looked for a messiah to lead them back to the good old times. But Farb's portrayal of Karl Marx as a messiah, Lenin as a prophet, and Stalin and Trotsky as disciples is amusing.

W. Waters

Obituary: Comrade Bill Waters (1970)

Obituary from the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to report the death of our comrade W. Waters after a short illness. 

Bill Waters was 66 and had been a member of the Party for forty years. He was a very active propagandist for Socialism. A good indoor and outdoor speaker as well as a good writer, he contributed numerous excellent articles and book reviews to the Socialist Standard, especially during the forties and fifties. He served for a short time on the editorial committee, was the secretary of the pre-war Dagenham branch and, at one time, our overseas secretary. He represented the Party in the North Paddington by-election in 1953. He was active to the end, ever ready to do a lecture or write an article (the last of which appeared in September 1969).

Our comrade Waters was a bus driver and a very active member of the Transport and General Workers Union, playing a prominent role in the big busmen's strikes of 1936 and 1955.

Bill had many interests other than politics. In his hot house he raised a variety of exotic flowers; he was a keen and skilful photographer and he had a great knowledge of London and its history, which he used in talks on the radio.

We extend our sincere sympathies to his family; we are conscious that their loss is also ours.

Plus Ca Change . . . Aristocracy, old and new (1969)

From the August 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The French have a saying which, roughly translated, reads: "The more it changes, the more it remains the same thing". This is a very apt description of one aspect of capitalist society. It is constantly changing. Lots of things are very different from what they were even a decade ago, while if a worker of a century ago could come back to life (we're not saying he would want to, of course!) he would, at first at any rate, hardly recognise the dear old system. However, it would not be long before he realised that it really had remained the same thing: society was still divided into two classes and the minority that owned still lived on the proceeds of the exploitation of the majority that did not own. And although he would marvel at the fantastic progress over the last century (after all, when he died only that comparatively short while ago, he knew nothing of cars of planes or nuclear energy or even old-fashioned electricity), he might utter a sardonic comment or two before returning to the peace of the cemetery when he realised that the average worker still left behind him, when he kicked off, more or less the same as he did. Just his bones.

Nevertheless it is sometimes interesting to notice some of the changes which do take place within the system, while not affecting in the slightest its fundamental nature as a system of exploitation. One such change is in the relative positions of different groups of workers in the social scale. Before the war, the upper crust of the working class was generally thought to consist of such people as policemen, teachers, bank clerks and so on. (So much so, that if you met a bank clerk at the tennis club, the odds were that he would indignantly deny he was a member of the working class at all. His white collar qualified him for membership of some vague entity he would call 'middle class'. Nowadays, he would probably not quarrel with the term 'white-collared workers'. Some progress, anyway.)

Today, however, when one reads glib phrases in the papers about the 'aristocracy of labour', they seldom mean this type of worker at all. In fact, it is a complaint among policemen etc. that whereas before the war they were looked up to as the lucky ones because they had fairly secure jobs while the spectre of unemployment was always hovering around most groups of workers, nowadays they have fallen a rung or two on the ladder of jostling wage-slaves. Unemployment 'only' affects a couple of million people (including families) at present so that there is no longer a premium on security. Only the actual size of the pay packet counts now and in that sense these groups are not among the aristocrats. Who are the new aristocrats then? Well, it seems dockers are (among others of course). It seems they get the vast sum of about 30 quid a week and while there are still groups of workers, such as agricultural workers, who average less than half that princely figure, the dockers really are rich beyond the dreams of avarice. (It's true that even 30 quid is only about five or six in pre-war money but let's not quibble over details.

'Love on the Dole'

Now, I am a trusting sort of chap and would never think of doubting government figures about that 30 quid. Indeed, not all government figures are automatically false (only most of them), One recalls, for example, that Marx went out of his way to praise certain government factory inspectors whose reports he used in connection with his researches. And it happens that, having lived most of my life in an inland part of the country, I doubt if I have stumbled across many dockers. I have merely read about them as being those difficult chaps who are not satisfied with their good fortune but who on the contrary persist in holding the country to ransom and going on strike. And it seems they they don't even give a damn about 'our' balance of payment problem (which worries the rest of the working class so much) when they refuse to load the ships with those precious exports.

But a few weeks ago, I found myself early one morning in the heart of London's dockland and went into a dockers' 'caff' for breakfast. The little place was crowded with about 20 dockers and they looked anything but aristocratic. In fact, the whole scene looked very much like one from Love on the Dole, the famous pre-war play about the depression years in Lancashire. I have no wish to wring anyone's withers and I am not  saying the dockers looked quite like the pictures from Biafra, but it was impossible to resist the thought that if these were the aristocrats the word has certainly changed its meaning. Or, to put it another way, if these were aristocrats, it was Gold help the peasants.

After I had risked my life by making some corny joke about how honoured I was to breakfast with the new aristocracy, one of the blokes pulled out a crumpled wage slip showing £12 and assured me that he had not averaged more than that in take-home pay for months. It seemed, too, that his mates were in more or less the same case. They were enjoying the benefits of 'decasualisation'. One of the great reforms of recent years has meant that dockers (in return for certain concessions on their part, of course), were guaranteed a 'fallback' wage of around £12 a week in cases where they could not get work owing to the spasmodic nature of the industry. These aristocrats assured me that many of them had to live on that sort of money for many months. And how would I like to do that with the present cost of living in London? It seemed they could not even afford to throw bottles at their favourite Millwall football players because they couldn't afford the beer. But while it is good to see that workers cab still keep their sense of humour in such circumstances, it was difficult to see anything funny in the situation. Even less so a little later when I gave one of the men a lift to his dock a mile away. (When I ventured to remark en route that the general impression was that every docker had at least one car outside the door as a basic right under our 'socialist' government he merely gave me a withering 'do me a favour'.) And there I saw how the dignity of man has been rescued under the new enlightened régime since decasualisation.

A group of dockers stood waiting patiently to see if any of them were going to be privileged to be exploited that day. If they were selected, then presumably they would be able to earn the rate of £30 a week we hear so much about. If not, then not. My friend explained to me that, except where there was a sudden spate of urgent work, there would always be a number who were not wanted each day. And, as one would expect, it was usually the same ones who would be chosen. Presumably the ones with the strongest arms. And the weakest tongues. Under any exploitative system, the exploiters will be bound to want workers who are docile and not those who kick against the pricks. It may well be that the old system was even worse. Which only proves that capitalism remains capitalism and the very act of one class buying the other's labour power for the purpose of exploitation is degrading in itself, no matter whether the exploitation takes place under a (more or less) privately owned economy as in America, a so-called mixed economy like Britain's, or a wholly state-owned one like that in Russia. Reforms are merely surface tinkering. It is the thing itself that must be abolished. The act of employment is in itself a degradation.

And just to complete the picture, by one of those little ironies with which life abounds, on the same morning I read in the papers that a real aristocrat, not a peasant or a docker, called Lord Melchett, was dissatisfied with his wage as chairman of the 'socialised' (ye gods!) steel industry which the Wilson government has bestowed on a grateful working class. It seems he was only getting around £20,000 a year and he needed another £5,000 to make it pay (figures very approximate; workers shouldn't quibble about a few thousand here or there for their masters). And a little more irony here. How did his lordship become an aristocrat and a millionaire? Answer: he inherited both from his grandfather, Alfred Mond, the founder of ICI and in his day as fierce a fighter against trade unions as any capitalist could wish for. And now the successors of the union leaders of those days are happily rewarding Mond's successor with the overlordship of their own ark of the covenant, the nationalised steel industry. It is as though they are trying to make it clear to the workers that the more it changes the more it remains the same. But when will the workers see?

One last item. My docker friend averred that the dockers' position would be a lot worse were it not for their unofficial leader "good old Jackie Dash". And of course it may well be true. The official union leaders have to try to play ball with the government, especially 'our'Labour government. So a 'communist' like dash can easily fish in troubled waters and gain credit for the Communist Party while so doing. I confess I did not even try to point out that if the Dashes had their way, then the rights of trade unions would go the same way as all democratic rights have gone in the CP's fatherland, the Soviet Union. My friend was clearly in no mood for thinking about such things. He had enough problems on hand in trying to make ends meet that day. But until the dockers, along with the rest of the working class, aristocrats and the rest alike, start thinking about Socialism, they must be resigned to accepting all the miseries that capitalism has to offer.

L. E. Weidberg

Russia and the US Face Up Once Again (1998)

Editorial from the March 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the crisis in the Gulf escalates, it is noticeable that the Russian ruling class is busy lining up behind Saddam Hussein`s Iraq. This is not because of any love affair with Saddam, but due to Russia`s transparent need to counter United States influence in the region while simultaneously exploiting divisions between the "old alliance" of the western states.

Just like the French, Russia also wants to bring Iraq back into the world economy (not least of all because Russia wants to recover its Iraqi debts). The current stand-off between the Russians and the Americans--including the recent diplomatic contact--has only served to promote the anti-Yeltsin extremes in Russian politics such as the neo-Fascist leader Zhirinovsky, currently making much noise about "solidarity with Saddam". And these are precisely the type of forces which have the largest influence on the Russian Duma.

But this is not all. The current plan to expand NATO into eastern Europe is highly antagonistic to Russian interests as it considers this to be an incursion into its traditional "sphere of influence". If this situation progresses and NATO eventually grows to include the Baltic states, a latter-day cold war scenario is again on the cards. The recent rapprochement between the Russian and Chinese ruling classes has demonstrated that Russia`s possible membership of the World Trade Organisation (with millions of dollars of aid) and Yeltsin`s observer status at the G7 meetings will not placate a wary Russian ruling class.

Given all this it is no wonder that Boris Yeltsin has indicated that a further demonstration of US firepower in the Gulf could be the precursor to a "third world war". Russia may not be the superpower it once was, but in this apparent phase of each nation state against all, the outlook of its ruling class faced with threats from another imperialist force demands attention from the working class. For the working class have been led sleep-walking into wars before--they should not, and cannot, let it happen again.

Branch News (1963)

From the February 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite the extreme wintry weather, Glasgow Branch have held five successful indoor lectures, this really reflects on the consistent work done by all the members. Fourteen members attended these meetings regularly, average audience 27, collections and literature over £8. After much correspondence with the Bellshill Constituency Labour Party, the Branch is optimistic that agreeable terms can be arranged for a debate sometime in February. The "advance guard" has already started the literature sales drive in North Kelvin in anticipation of the election (local) in May. It is hoped that the Cosmo cinema can be booked for the May Day Rally. There is no doubt that over the Border our Comrades are really consistently working hard for the Party in its work to spread Socialist propaganda.

We are happy to report that on the occasion of our comrade Lawrence's visit to his father in Vienna he met many friends and comrades of the Party and in order to mark the occasion they sent a contribution of £6 to the Party in London. We should like to thank our comrades in Vienna—R. Pechinger, Franz Klas, E. Schuster, Fran Draschinsky and R. Frank for the generous thought and we assure them that their contribution will be used in the best possible manner. We should also like to congratulate them on the work they are doing under quite difficult conditions.

It is with regret that we learn of the death of Fred Clarke of Burton-on-Trent, brother of Charley Clarke who died recently. We extend our sincere sympathy to his brother, J. Clarke who will, we know, continue his good work for the cause of Socialism.

Branches have planned well ahead for propaganda meetings, and 1963 should prove even more successful than last year, when provincial and London branches held regular series of indoor and outdoor propaganda meetings.

Ealing Branch continued its winter programme of films and lectures with two film shows during January. Attendance was good considering the weather. There was also a good response from branch members to Paddington branch's invitation to their lecture on the Common Market at which Comrade Hardy was the speaker. This was the first of the inter-Branch meetings, arranged jointly between Paddington, Bloomsbury and Ealing, and it was very successful.

Members are asked to make special note of the two lectures being held this month—on the 8th and 22nd—at 8 p.m. prompt.

Note. The Socialist Standard is regularly on sale at A. Rowe's newsagents shop at 30 High Street, Woolwich, S.E.18.

Will the following members please contact the Central Branch Secretary as soon as possible as correspondence sent to them has been returned by the post office—S. Killingbeck (Leamington), A. Thomas (Botley, Oxford), A. W. Kent (Aylesbury).

Phyllis Howard

The Thirty Years War (1962)

Book Review from the February 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Thirty Years War by C. V. Wedgwood, Pelican Books, 5s.

The Thirty Years War was in fact a series of conflicts lasting from 1618 to 1648, which devastated vast areas of Germany. Fought with a savagery that has seldom been equalled even in this bloody 20th century, the war has held the imagination of succeeding generations, whilst other and vaster conflicts have sometimes been forgotten.

Primarily a war between the States that comprised the disintegrating Holy Roman Empire, it was part of a greater conflict between the developing nations of Europe—and it involved most of the Continent and spilled over into the New World. Spain and France, England and Holland, Sweden and Russia, the permutations were endless, but the result was always the same—misery for the mass of the people.

Germany was then the main highway of Europe. As the author states:

Germany was a network of roads knotted together at intersections by the great clearing-houses at Frankfort on the Main, Frankfort on the Oder, Leipzig, Nuremburg, Augsburg. West Indian sugar reached Europe from the refineries of Hamburg, Russian furs from Leipzig, salt fish from Lübeck, oriental silk and spices from Venice through Augsburg, copper, salt, iron sandstone, corn were carried down the Elbe and Oder, Spanish and English wool woven in Germany competed with Spanish and English cloth in the European market, and the wood that built the Armada was shipped from Danzig.

The cities of Germany were more thickly spread than those in any other area of Europe. Rich, a tempting prize to neighbouring ruling classes, its semi-independent states and free cities were loosely held together in the largely unworkable Empire. In the North, along the shores of the Baltic stretched the wealthy trading cities of the Hanseatic League. Once powerful and feared by their competitors, they were in decline as the opening up of the New World swung the centre of trade to the Atlantic seaboard. Sweden, Holland and Denmark better placed geographically, fought a cut-throat battle to capture this trade.

The Holy Roman Emperor was elected to office by an Electoral College consisting of seven Princes and Cardinals, and was usually a powerful landowner with vast possessions outside the Empire. It was with private troops from these possessions that he imposed what authority he could on the states within the Empire. For over a century the Imperial office had been held by members of the Hapsburg family. Their capital at Vienna was to become the centre of the Austrian Empire which dominated Central Europe centuries later.

The Reformation had split the Empire, and an uneasy settlement in the year 1555 had given to each state the religion of its ruling house. Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists each persecuted the dissenting elements within their borders, Surrounded by powerful and grasping neighbours, and lacking a strong central government, Germany went into an economic decline.

Meanwhile German credit declined and dangerous speculation led to the collapse of one great banking house after another. The firm of Manlich of Augsburg failed as early as 1573, that of Haug a year later; the larger business of the Welsers collapsed in 1614 and the world-famed family of Fugger itself could not work out the storm but went into liquidation shortly after.

To the west Spain and Holland, who had been locked in a struggle since 1572, had signed a truce that was nearing its end. Both were manoeuvering for positions from which they could renew the conflict. France was beginning to challenge the power of Spain, and across the channel a newly united Britain was on the brink of the great surge forward that was to make it the dominant capitalist power. In the south-east the Ottoman Empire was pushing on to the gates of Vienna itself. Sweden to the north, with its ultra-modern and fanatical army, looked into Germany and Russia for room to expand. This was the explosive situation in Europe when in 1618 the "key" state of Bohemia rose in revolt against the Emperor and blew the lid off the witches' cauldron.

The Thirty Years War was first published in 1938, when Germany occupied the same position in the popular mind that Russia holds today. In some ways the book reflects the attitudes of that period. Miss Wedgwood traces, with admirable clarity, the progress of a conflict as complicated in its intrigues as it was sickening in its brutality. The war at its very beginning assumed an international character, when Spanish troops moved up to support the Imperial Forces, and a large mercenary army from Turin arrived to back up the hard-pressed Bohemians. In turn, France, Denmark and Sweden entered the struggle, and Germany became the battlefield and training ground of foreign armies—a picture so familiar to us in the 20th century.

The author tells us a lot about human suffering, which was indeed appalling. To the usual horrors of war, the murder, torture and rape of civilian populations as ruffianly mercenaries and the fanatical troops of Sweden and Spain fought over the land, was added a new horror—that of systematic pillage. Armies lived off the land for years. As one area was reduced to a desert, they moved on to new territory. No attempt was made to provision armies and the most successful general was the one who could organise pillage most effectively.

The crowning horror was the Sack of Magdeburg in 1631. This rich trading city on the Elbe fell to Tilly's half-crazed soldiery. Its inhabitants were butchered without mercy, and fire reduced the town to a blackened ruin. Whether this was a deliberate act of terror by the Catholic authorities or the action of troops out of control has long been debated. But design or accident, the result was the same to the wretched inhabitants. The news of the outrage inflamed the Protestant world to further acts of counter-violence. Years afterwards, Imperial prisoners asking for quarter were shot down with the cry of "Magdeburg quarter."

This is a book that can be read with profit by all who wish to increase their knowledge of the world in which Modern Europe, the Europe of capitalism arose.

Les Dale