The German Question (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 9 November last year, that hated symbol of political repression, the Berlin Wall, was opened up for the first time in 28 years. The scenes of joy and celebration as thousands passed without hindrance through the concrete scar that had divided the city were truly emotional. The impossible, it seemed, had happened but how and why?

During the last two years thousands of East Germans have voted with their feet— 330,000 in 1989—leaving a country that failed.to meet their economic expectations. Despite official claims of economic growth and greater prosperity the workers remained unconvinced and many questions unanswered:

Why is good quality meat often not available? Why are clothes so expensive? Why are housing conditions still so poor? Why are there still shortages of a thousand and one little things from needles to biros? Why are supplies of bananas, oranges, lemons and other important fruit still so very inadequate? Why are there still so many slum schools and hospitals? Yes, and why after all these years should the GDR worker still find it difficult to buy his own version of a Volkswagen compared with the West German, French, Italian or British worker? (David Childs, The GDR: Moscow’s German Ally, p.162).

This lack of economic success was difficult for the authorities to deal with as people in East Germany had access to West German television. East Germans could see the “consumer society” of their West German neighbours and wanted to share in it—though when they got there they found themselves the latest victims of the Wohnungsnotstand (housing crisis), having to live in caravans, in prefabricated housing and even on specially equipped ships (Hamburger Morgenpost, 7 October).

Fall of Honecker

The mounting pressure of refugees leaving for the West, coupled with the reluctance of the East German “Communist” Party, the SED, to adopt political reform, forced the protest on to the streets. Mass demonstrations took place in Leipzig, East Berlin and other cities demanding free speech and human rights and an end to the old-style leadership. Many opposition groups were formed to articulate these demands, the most notable being “New Forum”.

The SED was now confronted by pressure from two directions. Internally from mass demonstrations and fleeing refugees and externally from the joint Russian policies of glasnost and perestroika.There can be no doubt that when Gorbachev visited Erich Honecker (then leader of the SED) in October 1989 to mark the 40th anniversary of the “German Democratic Republic”, he brought with him some harsh criticism. Two weeks later, Honecker was toppled from power and replaced by Egon Krenz. However, Krenz was not the ideal choice to instill mass support and trust from the population. It was widely known that he had congratulated the Chinese “Communist” leadership after the massacre of students in Peking. So even though Krenz lifted the travel restrictions, which in turn led to the opening of the Wall, he had no credibility and was too closely associated with the old guard to win respect and quell the unrest. Krenz was soon replaced by Hans Modrow, the SED leader from Dresden who is being championed as a “reformer”.

Modrow has formed a new government, hoping to win back the confidence of the population. Several top Party officials including Erich Honecker were arrested and faced a corruption investigation. Honecker has since been released but it is obvious that he was a man with aspirations to be a English country gentleman:

Mr Erich Honecker, the now disgraced former leader, had at his disposal an annual sum of £2.1 million for luxury goods supplied by a special supermarket in the village of Wandlitz, near Berlin where he and other politburo members lived. A keen hunter, Mr Honecker employed a staff of 22 at his hunting estate north of Berlin where the deer were fed on hundreds of tons of imported corn. (Guardian, 14 December).

Several changes have taken place since the Wall was opened. Along with the drive against corruption, the hated secret police—the Stasi—have been disbanded and the Party has adopted a new name to match its new image SED-DS (“Socialist Unity Party of Germany—Democratic Socialism”). However, the most important changes have been the exclusion from the constitution of the SED’s “leading role” in society and the announcement of new elections in May.

These changes look impressive on paper, but it should be remembered that the SED still holds the reins of power. Out of 27 government posts, the SED have 16. All the important ministerial positions—defence, finance, internal security, education, economic planning, foreign affairs, home affairs—are held by SED members. As yet no real tangible change has taken place and much will depend on how the opposition can mobilise popular discontent and eliminate its political differences, if they are to be successful in the May elections.

German reunification?

Whoever governs in East Germany after May, a gradual move towards political pluralism and economic reform is probable given the pattern in other East European countries. Economic reform will entail relaxing state control and introducing elements of the free market. Western capitalism will be eager to exploit the cheap resources and labour that exist in Eastern Europe. No doubt part of the West’s enthusiasm for recent developments has something to do with the prospect of a large exploitable East Europe becoming available.

Since the opening of the Wall, there has been much speculation about the eventual re-unification of Germany. Opinion in East Germany itself seems to be divided, according to a report in the Guardian (19 December):

Participants in East Germany’s round table talks made an urgent appeal yesterday to the governments in Bonn and East Berlin not to endanger stability in Europe by moving into premature talks on German reunification. The joint appeal by government parties, opposition groups and Church representatives came on the eve of a meeting in Dresden today between Chancellor Kohl and the East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow; Dr Kohl's first meeting with East Germany’s new leadership is expected to attract pro-reunification demonstrations; while opponents to unity have announced protest marches in Dresden and Berlin.

Moreover, in West Germany a recent opinion poll carried out by Der Spiegel magazine (20 November) indicated that only 27 per cent of those asked thought that reunification would be possible in the near future.

Obviously here we are entering the world of speculation, but the author’s guess is that reunification in terms of a single unitary state, joint armed forces and single currency is for the moment unlikely. For such a prospect would entail great changes to the political and military map of Europe and poses many unanswered questions. What would be the position of a unified Germany vis-à-vis the existing miIitary/political blocs of Europe? Would a unified Germany accept demilitarisation and adopt a neutral status? Would a reunified Germany be part of the EEC or COMECON or perhaps of both? The questions are endless The most likely short-term outcome is the development of a “community” of the two German states, with increased economic and cultural ties together with freer movement across the borders. But one thing is certain: whether there is one or two German states, German workers will still face the same social problems and economic insecurities that world capitalism produces.

Workers can change history

The recent developments in East Germany and elsewhere in Eastern Europe substantiate the long-held socialist argument that the so-called communist countries of Eastern Europe have in fact nothing to do with socialism. What exists in Eastern Europe is state capitalism. Workers in these countries are exploited by the state which functions as a capitalist. The “communist” parties with their control of the state machinery constitute the exploiting and ruling class and any challenge to their political monopoly has been hitherto ruthlessly crushed. Despite the official rhetoric that East Germany is a “Workers’ State”, the workers themselves know that the system does not function in their interests. They have experienced the economic exploitation and deprivation, while the Leninist vanguard who claim to represent them live in luxury country houses, drive expensive western cars and enjoy a standard of living that most workers there can only dream about.

All this demonstrates more clearly than ever that workers, both East and West, share a common experience. Whether we live under state or private capitalism we will never truly be free until we liberate ourselves from capitalism itself. The common ownership and democratic control of the world’s resources—-socialism—remains the only answer to the problems we experience as workers. The events have shown that things do change. Workers can change history. What seems impossible today can be reality tomorrow. Old certainties, as well as the Berlin Wall, can fall—why not capitalism?

Steve Dowsett

Propaganda in the west (1985)

From the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrades from the West of England and South Wales were recently involved in an ambitious propaganda tour - a total of nine meetings in three weeks. Such activity, over a huge area, reflected a determination to communicate the revolutionary alternative which far exceeds our numerical strength.

Despite a last-minute change of venue, the meeting in Bristol on "Women and socialism" was not only well attended but provoked a stimulating discussion among a growing band of sympathisers. Workers attracted to the socialist case greatly appreciated our efforts in arranging meetings in the small communities of Llantrisant, Glynneath and Llanelli and asked detailed questions long after the formal discussion had ended.

Part of the tour consisted of a debate in Cardiff with Kim Howells, research officer and spokesman for South Wales NUM on "Coal Industry Nationalisation or Privatisation'. He expressed a close identification with our object and definition of socialism and said that his attendance at Socialist Party of Great Britain meetings had given him a class analysis of capitalism. For a trade unionist. he gave an unusually good account of the development of the nation state and the economic and political reasons for nationalisation. In particular he pointed out that the capitalists, the trade unions and the Labour Party all welcomed nationalisation: the capitalists saw state ownership as a means of maximising profit; the unions thought that a state employer would guarantee jobs, and Labour saw it as an opportunity for vote catching by promising to secure domestic fuel supplies.

However, despite his knowledge of how capitalism works. Kim Howells claimed that the effects and experiences of nationalisation were a necessary historical step, and important educationally, in developing working-class consciousness. In his view, state ownership made the capitalists a more recognisable entity - which supposedly enabled the workers more easily to identify their class enemy and the large scale production of nationalisation gave the working class the necessary skills in organising an integrated industry. He therefore disagreed with the analysis contained within our declaration of principles and suggested a step-by-step approach towards workers' control, which he considered more realistic given the level of class consciousness among workers. This strategy, he thought, had a better chance of success under the leadership of a Labour government, who would be committed to giving workers more say in the running of industry.

Replying for the Socialist Party. Ron Cook stressed that it was a delusion to believe that the wages system could be run to benefit the working class. Socialism meant a revolutionary change in the ownership of the means of production and distribution which had nothing to do with state ownership or workers' control. The working class did not have to experience the reformist politics of nationalisation in order to accept the need for socialism. Industry was already run from top to bottom by the working class and it was not a lack of organisational experience which prevented them from recognising their real interests. The central issue was common ownership and while workers identified themselves with any form of capitalism the revolutionary alternative would always be at the bottom of the agenda. By advocating workers' control Kim Howells was delaying socialism and distorting its meaning.

Brian Johnson

A united capitalist Ireland? (1984)

From the July 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Violence thrives on political stagnation. While those who endure poverty and deprivation have the illusion of hope dangled before them by politicians, direct and indirect support for the blind alley of political violence will diminish. The British Government are acutely aware of this fact and the various Ministers of State for Northern Ireland have, since 1972. strained their modest talents to find an avenue to some sort of consensus politics in the province.

Unfortunately, violence itself takes many forms and, while those who face the fanaticism of the gun- or bomb-toting terrorists grab the attention of a selective media, other dark forces are at work. The "security forces" are violent, encouraged by the ambivalence of government and a pensioned judiciary. The judges themselves engender conflict, including in their number many establishment figures whose political backgrounds demonstrate their bigotry and role in helping to create the problems with which they now deal. Add to this those who have forged political careers and gained wealth and influence beyond the promise of their mean abilities — people whose popular esteem could not bear the strain of peace and reconciliation —  and you have the political combustibles of the Northern Ireland problem.

In this maelstrom of violence, where the most casual or banal of observations can bring the fury of a bellowing Paisley or the inanities of a dead-pan Adams over the air waves, stands Prior and his bewildered team of Tory pragmatists; pragmatically lying, double-dealing and calculating the odds on sell-out, all to no avail.

Only a lunatic could see benefits for the working class in the continuation of violence. History, interwoven with the most appalling social deprivation in western Europe, may explain why members of the working class, on both sides of the politico-religious divide, allow themselves to be drawn into violence. But those who consciously exploit history and social misery to recruit workers onto the futile paths of political violence are the most deadly enemies of the working class.

We know that only when workers understand and support socialist ideas are they beyond the political ignorance of the bomber or gunman. In a majority, they will not only end the present violence but destroy for ever its material base. Having said that, we could hardly be indifferent to anything that might stop the killing and bring about such normality as would allow our fellow workers to make a more dispassionate judgement of the cause of their misery.

The combined forces of constitutional Irish nationalism, after almost a year's intensive study of the "Irish Problem" in the New Ireland Forum, have nothing to say that might bring about peace in Northern Ireland. The contradictory interpretations that Haughey and Fitzgerald put on the Report's findings, immediately following its release, demonstrated that the political con artists of Irish capitalism could find very little to more-or-less agree on without endangering the support of the voting fodder they have carefully cultivated over the years on a strong political diet of emotional rubbish, lies, double standards and doctored history.

The Report dealt with what it claimed were the roots of the problem, citing history and socio-cultural and religious divisions as the principal culprits and the British-devised 1921 Partition of Ireland as the perpetuating agent of these divisions. John Hume, the SDLP Leader, is credited with conceiving the idea of an all-Ireland nationalist Forum — critics say to save his Party from the growing threat of being electorally swamped by Sinn Fein. In his speech following the unveiling of the Report, he pointed out that many other nations throughout the world had been able to engineer political structures capable of accommodating cultural, social and religious differences greater than those that had existed, or exist now in Ireland.

Hume was. of course, quite right and his statement was a factual repudiation of the Forum's contention — subscribed to by Hume — that cultural and religious differences were the origin of the conflict. This being so, we must look elsewhere for an explanation of the cause of violence and division in the country. We must search for a reason, or reasons, to explain why politicians and the class interests they served were committed to the same economic system and yet divided on the question of the political structures that would best maintain it.

The explanation is that, while capitalism existed throughout the country, it was much more advanced and developed in north-east Ulster than it was in the rest of Ireland (see our pamphlet, Ireland — Past. Present and Future). Capitalism had developed late in the south and its emergence was frustrated by competition, largely from Britain. It needed self-government to introduce such policies of economic protection as would ensure its continued development. In other words, those with a growing stake in southern industry and commerce, the emergent Irish middle class, wanted “national freedom" in order to promote legislation that would afford them protection from competition and enhance their capacity to exploit the working class. This aspiration, wholly irrelevant to the needs and interests of the workers, was espoused, first, by the constitutional Nationalist Party and. later, by Sinn Fein. The policy statements of both these organisations were remarkably frank on the subject and the fact that Sinn Fein was able to use emotional rhetoric and anti-working class patriotic nonsense (then, as now!) to persuade workers to invest their lives in their masters’ interests, indicates the dismal lack of working class consciousness that existed in the country.

The reaction from the north, where a highly-developed industrial capitalism was producing ships, industrial machinery and textiles almost exclusively for export, was predictable. Political unity with an area requiring self-government to promote trade protection would have been ruinous. Irish capitalism was implacably divided, not about the welfare of the people, not about jobs or homes or ending the grim poverty that abounded throughout the island. No. The division, the disagreement, was solely about the political structures that would facilitate the growth of their power and privilege. 

Cartoon by George Meddemmen.

It was this division that was converted into “culture", “patriotism" and political and religious bigotry. Each side wielded power through control of clerics and politicians, historically expert in playing on the fears and prejudices of a politically backward working class and small farming community. Earlier economic struggles had left a legacy of bitterness and bigotry; this legacy was revived and given new vigour and direction by the political and religious spokesmen for each side of the conflict within Irish capitalism. As always, workers would be the death and prison fodder in a fight that had nothing to do with them. On the one side, self-interested leaders like Carson and Craig (both contemptuously indifferent to the working class) and the slumming bigwigs of the Orange Order; on the other, the idiot disciple of blood sacrifice, Pearse, the erstwhile socialist, Connolly and, later, De Valera and his cohorts. Such a division ensured that the workers would don the mantle of ignorance and provide the violence and threats of violence to create a fairy-tale ending for the people of property, north and south.

The Forum Report dare not reveal this as the basis of division in Ireland, hence the rubbish about ancient cultural and religious divisions. Nor is it accidental that the new-found willingness to create political structures that will accommodate these rifts comes at a time when the basis of past division within native capitalism, swamped now with multinational interests, has largely evaporated because of changed economic conditions, north and south. Indeed, it is an open secret that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's interests are well represented among the richer plunderers in the south, traditionally Catholic and conservative and wholly receptive to the fiction that “anti-Christ communism" is extant in Eastern Europe. The nations of western capitalism, including Britain — whose interest in Ireland is now largely strategic — would be very sympathetic to an all-Ireland state firmly within NATO. Northern Ireland is an embarrassment, currently costing Britain some £1.2 billion per annum — an amount which British capitalism, deep in recession, must be deeply anxious to retrieve.

It is against this background that the New Ireland Report sets the stage for a unitary capitalist state. But there are problems. As Marx noted;

Men make their own history but they do not do it just as they please; they do not do it under circumstances chosen by themselves but under circumstances directly encountered. given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. (18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)

The dead generations in Ireland validate Paisley and the Provisional IRA. Both will guarantee that the path to unitary capitalism is a rough one but both can only delay the ultimate verdict of capitalism. Already history is being rewritten and a new political pragmatism is emerging to replace old "principles”. All the indications are that a move towards reconciliation is being actively promoted not only by the Republic, but by Britain, the United States and the countries within the EEC and NATO.

It is estimated that capital in the Republic would have to bear an additional 10 per cent tax burden to meet the costs of unitary capitalism. There is no doubt that this, and the possible inheritance of Northern Ireland's violence, would have a dampening effect on the Republican patriotism of the Irish capitalists. On the other hand, the United States and other interested parties have indicated a willingness to underwrite a settlement in Ireland by promoting investment there — a small price to pay for a strategically-situated Ireland committed to the NATO cause — and there is nothing like the promise of inward-flowing lolly to whet the patriotic appetites of the propertied class!

Nor need the southern capitalists be unduly inhibited about continued political violence. The argument of their political leaders, that a British withdrawal will remove the premise of loyalist violence, is not without credibility and northern violence is costing the south more per capita than it is costing Britain. This financial haemorrhage will continue until there is a solution of the problem — even if limited bloodletting has to be faced.

The New Ireland Forum Report should be studied by the working class in Ireland. The condemnations of violence should be noted, together with the fact that all the main political parties in Ireland, north and south, owe their existence to violence or its threat. The accommodating recipes for peace and reconciliation should be read alongside the literary and verbal patriotism and bigotry of the earlier champions of republican "freedom" and their unionist opponents when the needs of capital dictated division. Above all. the Forum Report should be seen as a vindication of the socialist contention that the causes for which workers have killed and died in Ireland are supremely irrelevant to their interests.

The Forum Report is not an answer to the problems of poverty, unemployment, slums and all the other evils that affect the working and unemployed people of this island. The implementation of the Report’s main recommendation or either of its subsidiary recommendations might conceivably change the forms of violence we live with, but it will certainly not remove the material conditions that makes violence inevitable in a class divided society. Only socialism can do that.

Richard Montague

World Socialist Party of Ireland

Thomas More and Utopia (1978)

From the February 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thomas More was born 500 years ago this month. There is an interesting (though badly lit) exhibition at the National Gallery in London marking the event. A well known figure in his own day, he is known now to most schoolchildren as an adviser to Henry VIII. But More was not just a statesman. He was a highly successful lawyer and an important diplomat. Above all he was a scholar and writer of an enormous number of Latin works. He was also a religious fanatic who found time among all his other activities to persecute those he considered swerved a hair’s breadth from the true faith. As every schoolchild knows, he eventually quarrelled with his patron Henry VIII and suffered the same grisly fate that Henry reserved for many others, including some of his wives.

LATIN JOKE

So what possible interest can a revolutionary party have in this man? The answer is that he wrote a little Latin joke, called Utopia. Unfortunately that book is not as well known to the schoolchild historian as the other, more colourful, events in More’s life.

More lived at a time when the break-up of classical feudal society was being completed. The rise of the merchant class was progressing, wage-labour was becoming the norm, and in general terms the development of capitalist society had started. It was a development that would take many centuries to complete. Nevertheless the time of More witnessed a big step forward in this historic, event.

As to why a man like More, a man of his time, wrote Utopia, it is hard to say. More was a mass of contradictions. Despite his religious ferocity, in his personal life he displayed other characteristics. Erasmus wrote of him that he had “a special hatred of tyranny and a great fancy for equality.” Perhaps such a statement must not be read at its face value—after all the circumstances in which More lived cried out of inequality. Nonetheless one can probably accept what Erasmus wrote as regards his personality: “In company his extraordinary kindness and sweetness of temper are such as to cheer the dullest spirits, and alleviate the annoyance of the most trying circumstances.” As for his “learning” in the classical sense, all his contemporaries vouch for him as one of the great scholars of his age. Karl Kautsky gave as the reasons for More’s writing an amazing work like Utopia the following: “More’s personal character, his philosophical training, his activity in practical affairs, and the economic situation of England. More’s personal character may indeed be regarded as one of the causes of his socialism.”

Whatever the reasons for the book’s appearance, irrespective of the formal Latin in which it was written and taking into account the society out of which it comes, More’s book is still worth reading today. Utopia—the name literally means “no place”—is an island where King Utopus has established an ideal commonwealth. More’s book takes the form of a conversation with Raphael Hythloday (the name probably meaning in Greek—“pedlar of nonsense”) who had lived in this ideal commonwealth for several years. In the first part of the book Hythloday, More and others discuss the failure of civilization as they know it, in contrast to Utopia. In the second part Hythloday describes in detail life in Utopia.

Among the things Hythloday explains about Utopia are the system of government, the work done, the relations between the people, family life, economic relations, inter-state relations, and the designs of cities and houses. However, More is ambiguous (quite possibly deliberately) about much of Utopian life. For example, on the whole, money does not play the part More’s society, and even more so our own, have assigned to it. For example, distribution of goods takes place according to the classic socialist principle “To each according to his need.” Hythloday explains that all produce is brought to the common market (sic) place. Here says Hythloday “the head of each household looks for what he or his family needs, and carries off what he wants without any sort of payment or compensation. Why should anything be refused him? There is plenty of everything, and no reason to fear that anyone will claim more than he needs.” He goes on to point out that it is only fear of want that makes everyone greedy, thus anticipating, by nearly 350 years, what Marx and Engels pointed out in Part 1 of German Ideology. Yet in other places, the work is not quite so explicit on the role of money.

REJECTING PRIVATE PROPERTY

Of most interest in Utopia is the discussion of property. Again More is somewhat ambiguous. Nevertheless it can be said that the view of private property that is put forward is one of complete rejection of this form of social arrangement. Private property, Hythloday explains, prevents justice and happiness. He doubts whether “equality can be achieved where property belongs to individual men. However abundant goods may be, when everyman tries to get as much as he can for his own exclusive use, a handful of men end up sharing the whole thing.” How true!

Not that More is consistent in his discussion of property. After all, the Utopians have slaves! Which leads to another interesting aspect of the work, the condemnation of wage-labour. The Socialist points out that wage-labour results in poverty for the many and plenty for the few, at a time when there could be abundance for all.

It could be that More’s attack on wage-labour is merely that of a quasi-feudal aristocrat. He is objecting perhaps not to wage-labour, but to its converse, developing capitalist production. One argument is that in a picture of a society that accepts and uses slaves (albeit a far more humane and “justifiable” slavery than has ever really existed) and condemns wage-labour, More is actually urging a reactionary step back to ancient times (possibly influenced by Plato)  rather than presenting a revolutionary vision of a communal society. However, it can also be argued that Utopia’s rejection of wage-labour is so strong that it must be what More really felt. Hythlodlay compares the life of a wage-worker with that of a beast of burden, and concludes that in some respects, a beast is better off. And in explaining that in Utopia people do work Hythloday says this: “But no one has to exhaust himself with endless toil from early morning to late at night, as if he were a beast of burden. Such wretchedness, really worse than slavery, is the common lot of workmen in all countries except Utopia.”

STIMULATING SKETCH

There is much in More’s book that a Socialist would criticize. Nonetheless, the work is a stimulating sketch of how it is possible to re-organize society, and of the problems engendered by property relations. To that extent the work is still of interest. Utopia, whether as a joke or political propaganda, was exceptionally influential in the years after More’s death. Many of the early settlers in America were influenced to the extent of trying to develop communities on the lines of Utopia. In particular, Utopia is part of a long history of “utopian” Socialism, out of which scientific Socialism was developed.

Ronnie Warrington

Does Socialism mean Free Love? (1927)

From the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent complains of his inability to understand the attitude of the Socialist Party towards “free love.” The following is an attempt to make matters a little plainer to him and possibly to others.

"Free love” is one of those terms like Atheism, Republicanism, etc., which are used by the professional anti-Socialists as a means of arousing the prejudices of their listeners, or readers, as the case may be, and rendering the calm and intelligent consideration of the subject more difficult on their part. As a rule the anti-Socialist has only to deal with the so-called “Socialist” who supports the Labour Party and who meets his opponent either with a mere denial of their charges or with a retort upon the lines of “You’re another!" For nothing is easier than to show that there are supporters of capitalism, naked and unadorned, who claim to be Atheists, Republicans, Free Lovers, etc. This, of course, merely dodges the issue; but the Socialist Party has, necessarily, something more to say on the subject.

Marriage as we know it to-day is a legal contract whereby the man assumes the responsibility of maintaining the woman and acquires certain rights over her person. The State enforces the terms of the contract where possible, but its ability to do so depends,' in practice, upon the social position of the couple concerned. In the case of members of the capitalist class who possess definite and relatively secure means of livelihood, all is plain sailing. The woman, if necessary, can obtain effective security and the man can proceed for divorce and damages against the usurper of his rights.

In the case of members of the working-class, their economic circumstances alter the position, although in theory the same law applies to all. The working man’s wages are, in numerous cases, quite insufficient for the maintenance of a wife and family, and even where they are sufficient, their permanence is uncertain. Hardly any sections of the workers are free from the haunting menace of unemployment. Under such circumstances it is obvious that the legal regulation of marital relations becomes a mere matter of form. Married or unmarried, the woman of the working-class has to work in order to maintain herself and her children; while the latter are also under the necessity of contributing to the family income as soon as possible.

Modern industry has wiped out the property of the peasants and the handicraftsmen, and has therefore wiped out the economic basis of marriage as far as the workers are concerned. Property and security are concentrated in the hands of the capitalist class, and as a consequence it is only among them that the legal contract retains its meaning. This, of course, does not prevent the religious and moral sentiments associated with the institution continuing to influence the minds of the workers.

Just as the workers accept the guidance of their masters in the political sphere, so in the realm of domestic life it is left to the Socialist to strip the veil of illusion from the hideous reality.

The parsons, and other hirelings of Capital, pretend that marriage is necessary for the protection of women. They have never yet explained, however, how it is that thousands of women of the working-class, married and unmarried, have had recourse to some form or other of prostitution in order to supplement their inadequate earnings or to escape for a time from the foul and squalid environment in which they have found themselves entrapped. Nor have they shown how the institution of marriage helps the girl who is confronted with the unwelcome attentions of her foreman, manager or other superior who holds her livelihood in his hands.

Sexual servitude is, in fact, but one of the inevitable aspects of the servitude of a class. Its form has changed with the changing of the forms of society. The feudal knights of the Middle Ages who played the part of gallants towards the women of their own class regarded the womenfolk of their serfs as legitimate prey. The patriarchs of ancient times were not content with numerous wives, but took to themselves concubines from among their slaves.

These various forms of sexual relationship | took their rise from the property basis of society prevailing at the time. In more primitive times, however, before property had developed and assumed basic importance, other forms of the relationship existed in which women enjoyed a position of equality. Morgan, in his “Ancient Society,” for example, has shown how the institution of marriage arose and developed along with the changing conditions of obtaining a livelihood.

The effect which the social revolution will have upon marriage can, of course, only be dealt with in a general way. We are not prophets and do not profess to know just exactly how the men and women of the future will order their lives. It is not for slaves to make plans in advance for those who will be free.

This much, however, is plain. When the means of life become the common property of society, every individual will enjoy economic security which they will inherit from society as a whole. The present-day dependence of individuals upon others for their subsistence will disappear. As a consequence, the relationship between the sexes and between parents and children can then only be based upon mutual feeling.

We can, therefore, only surmise that the legal contract will vanish along with the economic necessity upon which it is based. The distinction between married and unmarried mothers or between legitimate and illegitimate children will simply become meaningless, along with all other distinctions which arise from the institution of private property.

Socialism, in short, will provide for the free development of each and all. 

Eric Boden

The General Strike of 1926 (1966)

From the May 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

London's Piccadilly was jammed with traffic. So was the Thames Embankment. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes—cars, vans, bicycles, horses and carts, almost anything on wheels— had been pressed into service.

This traffic chaos was news, but there were no newspapers. Out of Fleet Street came only a few bundles of single-sided cyclostyled sheets with a very brief digest of news snippets.

The railway stations were quiet except for the murmur of voices of bewildered people who had turned up with the hope of getting a train.

The docks were still and silent. Only at the gates, where groups of dock workers stood around, was there any sign of life.

The same pattern prevailed in towns and cities all over the country.

It was Tuesday, May 4, 1926--the first day of the General Strike. Workers whose Trade Unions had called on them to stop work, did so unanimously. The solidarity of the strike surprised even Trade Union officials and confounded thousands who had not expected the strike to take place.

During previous months, talks and negotiations, committees and commissions, reports and announcements telling how Trade Union leaders, the Government, the clergy and some prominent individuals were striving to find a solution to the deadlock, had led lots of people to believe that the strike would be cancelled at the last moment or that, if it was called, it would be a feeble affair, causing them little inconvenience. So, many awoke on that May morning without a thought that the day would be different to the one before.

For nine days the strike continued, more Unions joining in when called upon. At midday on the ninth day the General Council of the Trades Union Congress went to the Prime Minister and announced, “ . . the General Strike is being terminated today.” The news was broadcast at 1 p.m.

This abrupt ending caused more consternation inside Trade Union ranks than the calling of the strike had caused outside. Thousands of active, local Trade Unionists were struck speechless by the news. When they recovered their wits they set up a howl of protest and recrimination. They were the men who, during those nine days, had organised the pickets and demonstrations, arranged entertainment and recreation for the strikers, produced local strike bulletins, issued transport permits, planned help for the halt, the maimed and the blind and done the multitude of organisational jobs that had kept the strike solid. They had been the N.C.O.s of the battle. With confused ideas about the strike—theirs not, they thought, to reason why—they had done their job with enthusiasm. When, at the height of their zeal, they heard the retreat sounded, they were flabbergasted and enraged.

Angry voices accused the T.U.C. General Council of cowardice and treason. The General Council accused the miners of making impossible demands. Denunciation, recrimination, spite and mud-slinging were rife for weeks but, by the time of the next Trades Union Congress, the venom had subsided and members of the General Council were re-elected to office.

During the forty years since the General Strike the question has been frequently asked, “If the strike had not been called off so precipitately, could it have been brought to a successful conclusion?” The questioners have different ideas about what would have been a successful conclusion.

Their question implies that the Trade Unions planned the strike with a particular object in view, that the workers were led into the fight towards some preconceived goal. This is a complete misunderstanding of the event.

The threat to strike was an act of defence and defiance which the T.U.C. General Council did not expect to have to put into effect. They candidly admitted that they did not want the strike, that they did everything to avoid it including, as one of them said, grovelling to the Prime Minister. The Government forced them into the fight.

Ten months earlier the coal miners had given notice of their intention to terminate the miners' national agreement, to reduce their pay and increase their working hours. Failing acceptance of these demands, the miners were faced with a lock-out. They sought support from the T.U.C. and a committee of Unions representing miners, dockers, railwaymen and road transport workers planned to completely stop the handling of all coal if the lock-out notices were not withdrawn. At the final hour the notices were withdrawn, the Government granted the mine owners a nine months subsidy and set up a commission to investigate the coal industry.

The Trade Unions were delighted and the day of victory passed into the annals of working class history as “Red Friday”.

To those who did not blind themselves to what was happening around them, it was apparent that the employers and the Government had bought time to prepare for a show-down. The Trade Union leaders did the three monkey act; they saw nowt, heard nowt and did nowt.

The Government, without any effort at secrecy, instituted a strike breaking organisation, The Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, mainly under the control of military and naval personnel. At the same time they held out hope to the miners by appointing a commission of enquiry into the coal industry.

Months later, when the commission reported, it offered the miners nothing and, with the end of the Government subsidy drawing near, the mine owners again submitted their demands.

With the Prime Minister acting the part of a benevolent mediator it was simple to misunderstand, if not ignore, the Government’s bellicose activities. After Red Friday it appeared logical to again threaten strike action as a counter to the mine owner’s threats. But with the passing days it became clear that the Government and employers were digging in their heels.

As zero hour approached, a conference of Trade Union delegates met in London and the T.U.C. General Council, acting as negotiating committee, met the mine owners and the Prime Minister daily. The Council found itself shuttled between an immovable Government and an irresistible delegate conference. When finally they reported their inability to move their opponents, the assembled delegates voted by 3,653,527 to 49,911 to empower the General Council to go ahead with the strike.

Despite the overwhelming vote, the General Council utilised the twenty six hours between the decision to strike and the appointed time for it to commence, to again try to get the miners’ lock-out notices withdrawn so that negotiations could continue without strike action. Eventually, a full cabinet meeting flatly refused even this modest request and the Prime Minister told the General Council that the proceedings must close because the strike had been called and because of overt acts, affecting the freedom of the press, that had already taken place. Printing Trade workers on the Daily Mail had refused to print an anti-working class article, and had walked out.

The Government utilised these last few hours to set its strike breaking machinery into operation. The King signed a proclamation declaring a state of emergency under the Emergency Powers Act of 1920. Orders in Council were issued, army leave was cancelled and troops moved to industrial areas. The commissioners of the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies were instructed to put their machinery in motion. The mine owners made a final offer to the miners to settle with reduced wages and increased hours. At midnight on Monday the strike was on.

Throughout the strike the Union leaders emphasised that it was entirely an industrial dispute. The Government insisted that it was a challenge to the state and the democratic constitution and would lead to civil war. Communists urged that the strike could be used to displace the Conservative Government in favour of a Labour one. A few scatter-brained individuals even saw the strike as an attack on capitalism by class conscious workers, with the prospect of a social revolution.

All the circumstances considered, it was obvious the workers could not win. The number involved in the strike action was about three million. (G. D. H. Cole put the figure at 2,751,000).) That was quite a small portion of the total working class. The remainder were sympathetically indifferent, apathetic or hostile. The Government, despite a mild pretence at being an unbiased referee, was doing its job of keeping law and order. That meant preserving capitalist law and preventing the workers from being disorderly. Strikes create disorder. From its position of strength the Government could not lose.

Had the Government been weaker, and resigned under the strike threat, its successor, whether Liberal or Labour, would have had to do the same job of running capitalism. Subsequent Labour Governments proved that. Under similar circumstances they did similar things in the attempt to make capitalism run smoothly. The present outcry against unofficial strikes is a continuation of the policy. The workers must be kept at work without interruption for the hours and wages that the current trade condition requires.

That the General Strike could have led to a social revolution is a fantastic notion. The three million strikers reacted to what they considered an injustice, not because they were conscious of their class status and certainly not because they understood capitalism and the need to overthrow it.

When the strike was over the workers showed how un-class-conscious they were. Trade Union policy during the following years was one of greater class collaboration than ever before and Trade Union leaders cemented themselves more securely in their jobs.

The strike should have revealed the true nature of capitalist government, the real function of the state and the futility of leadership. But very few learned.

The workers will continue to struggle within capitalism and, whatever political party is in power, the government will use the state machinery against them, to keep them from disrupting the system or damaging the prospect of profits.

The General Strike was one battle in a continuous war. It was not a Waterloo. It was more like a Dunkirk. Battles on the industrial field, whether won or lost, will leave the workers still a subject class. With the employers entrenched behind their state, it requires political organisation with a knowledge of Socialism to dislodge them.

W. Waters.

What is the Class Struggle? (1931)

From the June 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Probably no phrase used by Socialists is the subject of more misunderstanding and misrepresentation than “the class struggle." The professional “anti-Socialists,” who trade upon the fears of the “small investors,” do not tire of horrifying their patrons with the imaginary spectacle of a horde of strikers and unemployed raiding their peaceful homes; and the language frequently used by equally professional Communists lends a certain amount of colour to the conception of the class struggle as a physical conflict in the streets between roving bands of pugnacious individuals drawn from the two classes which form modern society. Yet nothing could be a greater travesty of the facts.

The class struggle is, at bottom, a conflict between the class of possessors who own the means of living and the class of producers who are exploited by them in the fields, mines, factories, and on the railroads, etc. The struggle at first takes the form of a series of strikes and lock-outs, by means of which the masters try to increase, and the workers try to limit, the extent of the exploitation. These skirmishes, which periodically interrupt the process of production under capitalism, centre round the terms upon which the workers part with their energy to their masters, i.e., the amount of the wage, the length of the working day, and a host of minor conditions related thereto. Few workers are exempt from the necessity of thus debating with their employers the price of their commodity, i.e., the power to labour, their only possession and source of maintenance. It forms a normal condition of their existence under the existing social order.

In spite of this, many workers still harbour the delusion that there is a harmony of interests between them and their masters, that it is up to them to produce more cheaply in order to help their masters to recover lost markets at home and abroad; and this delusion is fostered by many Trade Union leaders.

The other absurd extreme is represented by the professional Communists, who try to persuade us that strikes are the result simply of their agitation. When the discontent of the Trade Union rank and file reaches a certain height over a given question and the leaders “regretfully” call a strike, we witness the spectacle of the Communists telling the world that this is because of the fear with which they have inspired these leaders. They invariably forget, however, to let us know how it is that these leaders recover their courage. They are too busy denouncing them as traitors, to admit their own inability to prevent the strikers returning to work.

The class conflict is due neither to the weakness of the leaders nor to the schemes of the agitators. The decisive economic factor in a strike is the state of the labour market, which the constant progress of machinery and improved methods of production tend to turn more definitely against the workers. Treachery and stupidity aggravate the defeats which the workers repeatedly encounter, but even if their leaders (actual and would-be) were as loyal and intelligent as they are frequently the reverse, the main trend of economic development and its results would remain, broadly, the same as now.

This does not mean that the workers should abandon the struggle as hopeless; indeed, they cannot do so without being crushed beyond chance of recovery. It does, however, impose upon them the need for studying the cause of the struggle and discovering new methods of dealing with it. 

The struggle is contested at first upon the industrial field, but it does not end there. In fact, so long as the workers see no further than the need for sectional defensive tactics, there is nothing to prevent the struggle going on indefinitely to j their disadvantage.

The possession of the means of living places an overwhelming advantage in the hands of the master class; but it is essential to realise that this possession depends upon conditions which it is possible for the workers to alter.

Possession, to-day, is no longer a physical relationship. It is a legal one. The shareholders of a joint stock company which owns a mine, a group of mills, or a railway system, may live at the ends of the earth, may never see their property, may know next to nothing about it, and yet go on receiving dividends upon which they can exist in comfort and luxury without labour. Superficial “revolutionaries,” who advocate that the workers should “occupy” the factories, forget that the workers are continually doing this—they have to—and that the last thing in the world that the capitalists want to do is to occupy the factories themselves. Physical contact with the means of production is a pleasure which they are quite prepared to surrender entirely to the workers—on terms. They merely insist upon controlling, through salaried agents, the ownership and disposal of the products. When and where such sale ceases to be sufficiently profitable, they use their legal powers to lock the workers out; and, in either case, their ownership and control, whether exercised negatively or positively, depends upon the State.

It is the State, with its machinery of coercion, including the armed forces, which upholds the conditions condemning the workers to sell themselves piecemeal into lifelong slavery. It is the State that repels every attack upon the property rights of the master class by starving strikers or unemployed, and which, by doing so, makes the workers’ struggle a political one.

For the masters' grip upon the State machine is the weakest link in the chain which binds the workers to the present system. It is a link which can be snapped whenever the workers as a class say the word. For generations in this country their masters have flattered and wheedled and bribed them, and kissed their babies, in the endeavour to secure their political support. Encouraged by this, numerous leaders of the workers have adopted politics as a career, and have, to a considerable extent, relieved the masters of the need, for administering governmental affairs directly, just as in the realm of industry the capitalists have long ago surrendered the task of supervising production to paid managers, foremen, etc. Just as the masters rely on a section of the workers to exploit the others on their behalf, so now, also, they entrust to Trade Union and political leaders the job of maintaining the system which makes that exploitation possible; but whereas the managers and foremen have little need to curry favour with their subordinates, the. “Labour” politicians have reduced demagogy to a fine art.

They know just where the shoe pinches, and can estimate to a nicety just how much to relieve the pressure in order to preserve in the minds of the workers the necessary degree of docility; but there are limits to their powers. While they may lull the unemployed by judicious adjustments here and there, they cannot prevent the increase in their numbers. They can do nothing to stop the process whereby the little security of livelihood which the mass of the workers enjoy is being constantly undermined. They can do nothing to prevent the speeding up of the workers in the factories, with the consequent increase in the accident rate. They admit that they cannot stop the attacks on wage standards already miserable enough.

They are of no real assistance to the workers in the struggle, nor can they remove the cause of the struggle. They can only assist the master class by administering to the workers periodical doses of dope, and holding in readiness the forces necessary to quell restiveness when dope proves ineffectual. In a word, they have proved themselves fit to govern.

The more effective a government is, as a government, the more certainly it becomes unpopular. Periodical changes are, therefore, inevitable, and the rapid rise of the Labour Party to the favour of the masters and the support of the workers may speedily change into an equally rapid descent; but the class struggle will go on. No mere change of government, whether constitutional or dictatorial, can stop it. It can only introduce an alternative method of attempting to suppress the symptoms.

Nothing short of the conversion of the means of living into common property can remove the antagonism of interests between masters and slaves. That is the object of the Socialist Party, which it alone has consistently adhered to. It alone, therefore, expresses the interests of the working class, and all workers of both sexes, plain or coloured, employed or unemployed, are invited to join.

Eric Boden

The Illusion of Disillusionment (1950)

Book Review from the June 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Because of its inner contradictions Capitalism is a dying and decadent social order. This decadence is reflected not only in its institutions but in its literature. That is why some of its most effective literature is that of despair, cynicism and protest.

The first World War did much to shatter the complacency of 19th century Capitalism. The slumps, massive unemployment and wide “Labour unrest” which followed it, seemed for many to threaten social disintegration.

It was in this period of shell-shock disillusionment that many “intellectuals” began to lose faith in Capitalism and to search desperately for a new faith. Having no real historic evaluation of social development, they had no real solution to existing social problems. It became easy—fatally easy—for them to seek escape from the obsessional anxieties of a dark capitalist reality in the wishful thinking of an enchanted socialist fairy-land—Soviet Russia.

A miracle had happened. Socialism had been established in an economically backward country, All things were now possible. Not only were the “toiling masses” to be freed but art and literature would also be freed from its degrading commercial morality and cash payment. For many “intellectuals” well might Russia look to be “ All this and Heaven too.”

The six contributors to “The God That Failed” (Hamish Hamilton) could easily be fitted into that category of intellectuals. The dust cover also announces it as “Six Studies in Communism.” The contributors are Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Andre Gide, Louis Fischer, the American negro writer Richard Wright and the poet Stephen Spender. All are Soviet apostates, ideological crusaders in an holy war against their once adopted Russian Fatherland.

This book is not primarily about the objective state of affairs in Russia but the subjective state of mind of each of the writers over Russia; their doubts, inner conflicts and guilt feelings as part of the protracted process of disillusionment resulting from the shattering impact of their experiences inside Russia or the Communist Party or both. Each appears not so much as an objective commentator on Russia but rather in the role of a Dostoevsky of a fallen and disgraced ideology.

In the first fine careless rapture of their conversion they regarded themselves as “servants serving a higher purpose”—vide Mr. Crossman, M.P.. who writes the preface. They were however “intellectuals” and, according to Mr. Crossman, better able to interpret the social significance of an age than were the inarticulate millions. How catastrophically they failed in this respect their own confessions bear damning testimony.

The totalitarian requirements of Russian State Capitalism were unwilling or unable to make concessions even to gifted servants. Mr. Crossman tells us that these intellectuals were treated with indifference by the Party apparatus. He also makes the suggestion that the Kremlin might have regarded their influence as negligible. It does seem that this “indifferent’ of the Kremlin towards them gives the book its strong personal edge on Russia. This accounts for their concern when “The Party line” affected them as individuals and consequently clashed with their own preconceived ideas on their role and status as “intellectuals.” It might also explain why on matters that affected them less, i.e. the glaring anomalies in Russian social life, they showed, in spite of the overwhelming proof at their disposal, an almost unbelievable capacity to believe what they wanted to believe and an almost incredible credulity in swallowing Kremlin rationalisations of the ugly contradictions and crass inconsistencies existing in Russia.

Indeed Mr. Crossman in a revealing passage tells us that “If the Comintern had only shown an occasional mark of respect for the western intellectual it could have won the support of the largest body of progressive thought in the world.” He adds that “not one would have hesitated to have returned in the protracted process of withdrawal if the Party had shown a gleam of understanding of his belief in human freedom and human dignity.”

So for “an occasional mark of respect” these intellectuals could have got round the awkward dilemma of vast social inequalities in “Socialist Russia;” have ignored the brutality and repression of its state machinery, its Moscow trials and slave camps. They might even have returned to the cess pool unconscious of its mud and slime, all for “ an occasional mark of respect.”

Perhaps these people were deceived by the Kremlin but most of all they deceived themselves. In spite of their inner conflicts and Dostoevskian torments they never achieve the level of objective self-criticism; never see that their own attitude as intellectuals and their claim to interpret social reality in a way different from the “ inarticulate millions ” has, in its way, contributed to the perpetration and perpetuation of the Russian myth as effectively as Soviet inspired propaganda.

People like Gide and Silone are in essence religious idealists. They preferred to regard Soviet Russia less as a social phenomenon than as a religious revival, and Socialism as not basically the transformation of one set of productive relations to another set, but as a way of living like the early Christians. To their patronage of Marxism they brought the authority of the Gospels. Marx, it seemed, played the role of “ John the Baptist ” to Lenin’s “Jesus Christ.”

Richard Wright came to Communism he says knowing nothing of economics which meant he knew nothing of Socialism (the terms Socialism and Communism are of course synonymous). He also was a religious convert to the Communist Party and brought to it that humourless, deadly earnestness with its readiness to live and even die for “the cause,” so typical of many Communist converts. For him, the cause was mainly the "coloured question.” It was Stalin’s National and Colonial Question that won his interest. His internationalism was in effect merely a black and white cosmopolitanism. He fails to appreciate that only the abolition of Capitalism can guarantee the emancipation of workers, black or white, from their real thralldom, the thralldom of those denied access to the productive resources to a privileged section who own those resources. His writing becomes at times almost hysterical. His account of his persecution at the hands of the Chicago Local is more reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan than a so called proletarian party.

Louis Fischer’s is the most objective account—that of a humane and sympathetic supporter whose sentiments over Russia led him badly astray. Stephen Spender is just another of the pink poets who left the Fabian drawing-room in search of red-blooded political adventure. He appears to have wandered back without ever finding out what it was all really about.

Koestler is the most orthodox of these “Communist” converts. He even claims to have accepted Marxism, although his account of it is never more than the tedious rubber-stamped version of the typical communist editorial. In effect he was one of the many highly emotional anti-Fascists who believed that the Communist Party was the best instrument for serving such ends.

Koestler’s account of his seven year membership of the Communist Party is a piece of sheer self-dramatisation. Indeed Marxism merely serves as a somewhat dubious literary device for sustaining the suspense and tension of a thriller. The chief impressions one gathers from his tale are of a temporary period of conspiratorial anonymity; visits of party “contacts,” from whom he received instructions and to whom he gave bits of information gleaned in his journalistic capacity in a big newspaper publishers; his studies in the art of going underground and acquiring techniques for insurrection; his participation—although he was, he says, never in the actual shooting frays—in the political cum Chicago— gangster warfare between Nazis and Communists. All of which activity suggests not so much adult political reasoning but rather an adolescent desire to play “Cops and Robbers.”

He left the Communist Party as the result of three carefully chosen phrases which he used at a meeting of German emigre writers. One was “ No movement, party or person can claim the privilege of infallibility.” Another was a quotation from Thomas Mann—“A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.” Although at the meeting he uttered no criticism of Russia or the Communist Party, it was, he says, a declaration of war. A few days later he resigned his membership.

This piece of typical Koestlerian crypticism simply adds up to the plain fact that he had merely discovered that lies and corruption are still lies and corruption no matter under what guise they appear; that the end does not justify the means because in such practices the means themselves become the end. It took seven years of intense political experience and on-the-spot observation for this intellectual to painfully acquire what the newest convert to our organisation regards as an almost self evident proposition.

Nevertheless “ Fight Fascism ” was still for him the political categorical imperative. He supported the war. He regarded it in the character of a crusade. In an article in the New York Times Magazine during the war he referred to the war as a showdown between the powers of light and darkness. He did make the half hearted reservation that it was not the final showdown. Nevertheless he left no doubt about his belief that it was a showdown.

Koestler is always getting his political objectives mixed up with his “ id ” and “ super ego ” As an admirer of Freud he is always seeking truth, not at the level of empirical observation but in the dark depths of his “unconscious,” to which he seeks to descend. Occasionally he comes up for air but it is never with the truth but always another error.

Koestler tells us in the preface to “The Yogi and the Commissar” that since his schooldays he has not ceased to marvel at the fool he was the year before. He says this is still true today although in a modified form. For some that may be a Koestlerian epigram. For us it would be fitting words for his political epitaph.

We cannot resist the temptation of saying that what is happening in Russia today is an empirical confirmation of the correct position we took up right from the first as to the real nature of Russian social and economic development, while the intellectual Christopher Columbuses were feverishly discovering “The Socialist Sixth of the World.”

“The God That Failed” might provide one of the popular formula’s which serve as current explanations of Russia. They are often successful because, although they do not say anything objectively valid about Russia, they do give the illusion of understanding what they do not really understand. It will perhaps be accepted by people who are politically naive and no more than merely curious about social affairs.

The writers of this book seem to have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Russia still remains for them a sinister historical enigma. All of them still believe Russia had got on the right path but somehow has taken the wrong turning. Believing as they do in a non Marxist sense that men make history, they believe that bad men make bad history.

Having started with illusions they were ripe—rotten ripe one might say, for disillusionment. In substance their disillusionment consists of the replacing of one set of illusions with another set. One hardly knows whether to call the book a study in tragic futility or a lesson in futile tragedy.

But this is where we came in.

Ted Wilmott

The attitude of the SPGB during the Strike (1966)

From the May 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our attitude towards the General Strike was determined by the following considerations. The limits of trade union action; the determined attempts by the employers to depress wages since the great war; the evils of leadership; the lack of understanding on the part of the workers; and the fact that, in the last resort, power rested with the Government backed by a non-Socialist working class.

We pointed out at the time of the general strike that the workers should remain in complete control of the movement and not allow themselves to be hood-winked into a worse position than before the strike. And, above all, not to follow the stupid slogans of the communists to place all trust in the leaders. After the strike the communists put the blame for the failure on the very leaders they had urged the workers to trust, and advocated fresh leaders from the same group that had influenced the collapse.

Although the possibility of a general strike had been in the offing for some time the trade union officials and their supporters had made no effort to prepare for such an eventuality, whereas the employers had completed their plans long beforehand.

After the strike we made the following comments in the June 1926 Socialist Standard:

The greatest trade union action that was ever taken in any country was closed by the most gigantic swindle in the whole history of trade unionism. . . . The splendid solidarity of the rank and file, along with their studied refusal to follow the maniacs who advised the formation of "Workers Defence Corps" and other methods of crude force are healthy signs of the beginnings of an understanding of their slave position that forms the first step in the work of establishing Socialism.

Gilmac.

Equality Means Diversity (1954)

From the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism—the society we desire and work for— means a world in which all people will be social equals. There will be no owners of property and no non-owners, no rich and no poor, neither superior nor inferior classes, “ races ” or sexes. Why, it may be asked, is such a state of affairs desirable?

There is, of course, one very obvious answer. It will give better material conditions to those who now go hungry, badly clothed or poorly housed—in short, to those who suffer any form of poverty. It is the expression of their demand, as Oscar Wilde put it, to be seated at the board instead of being grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.

The justice of the claim to better living conditions is seldom disputed; it is only opposed on allegedly practical grounds. No one (except, possibly, the religious fanatic) says that he would wish the hungry to remain hungry. Instead it is claimed that there is “ just not enough food to go round.” If the prime social mover were satisfaction of people’s needs, all forms of poverty would quickly melt in the warm sun of common humanity.

Unfortunately, the existence of class society based on property deflects the human purpose, which is to live fully and harmoniously. Men and women who enter into the antagonistic relationships of master to slave (lord to serf, capitalist to worker, etc.) are denied the opportunities of human development which only equality can bring.

"Free access to what is needed” is a feature of socialist society which contrasts markedly with the un-free access allowed in property-based society. Property is restrictive; its institutions are concerned with guarding the rights of exclusive possession. But the guard who watches a prisoner becomes almost as much a prisoner as the prisoner himself. To be a member of a dominant class may be vastly preferable to being a subject—but it is no substitute for living in equalitarian society.

Socialism is needed for the full development of the human personality. People who are denied direct participation in living (apart from merely existing) must to-day accept spurious substitutes. In place of useful and satisfying work, there is the need to sell your energies as a commodity on the labour market; in place of creative leisure (which should be continuous with work) there is an entertainment industry seeking to sell you a good time by proxy; in place of living with people whose interests and outlook you share, there is either the family (economic unit) or the impersonality of being some form of paying guest. The mental problems of the latter type are not really separable from the physical needs to which the term “poverty” more usually refers.

Most people are more or less aware of the poverty of the capitalist way of life. This awareness often takes the form of a feeling of frustration, of wanting something different without really knowing what it is or how to get it. To some extent, this is mitigated by the growth of the means of mass influence—newspapers, cinema, radio, television—so that everyone knows that there are millions of others who are also “ tuned in ” to the same influences and are, so to speak, in the same boat. If it is customary to want to win the football pools, for example, there is also a feeling of solidarity among the countless losers making the best of things until next Saturday.

One way in which an individual overcomes the feeling of insignificance, in comparison with what he feels to be the power of forces outside himself, is by conforming to them. He ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns, and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. The American National Comic Weekly assures us that the four out of five adults who read comics“ live with the personalities. They take their habits from them. They wear what they wear, eat what they eat, and talk like them, and even act like them.” This appears to be a typical over-statement on the part of those who are concerned to make the greatest claims on behalf of their product, in this case, the comics.

It is significant that most aspects of our lives have that “mass-produced” look. It is not just the material things that are stereotyped. Take a few random examples. Our humour is repetitive, our entertainment " canned,” and our sport actively engaged in by a tiny minority with the rest as passive spectators. There are a few individual artists—and countless impersonators and impressionists, intentional or otherwise. Last year every girl looked like Elizabeth Taylor (well, tried to, anyway)—this year we are assured that every girl is to appear as another Audrey Hepburn. The dull uniformity of male garb is notorious, and even the sartorial rebels conform to the prevailing fashion of rebellion. Perhaps these are some of the least harmful ways in which monotony expresses itself but, in being taken for granted, they may not be recognised as part of commodity-living.

The capacity for original thinking is stultified in present society. The fact that aspects of our “ private lives” become typical questions on which experts and guidance councils pronounce opinion encourages the view that the problems of social life are too complicated for the average man or woman to grasp. The popularity of various kinds of readers' advice columns in the newspapers and magazines testifies to the willingness and even anxiety of people to consult the specialist or leave it to the experts—” Gods With Heads of Clay,” as we called them last month in another connection.

It can probably be accounted a growth in human freedom that to-day our lives are shaped by anonymous authorities like “public opinion” and “common sense” rather than by dictators in person. But the socialist way of life, in which all people will participate as equals, stands quite apart from any such forms of compulsion. It is the overcoming of a set of social relationships, of a system which discourages people from trusting their own capacity to think about those problems that really matter.

We have said that Socialism will develop human personality. We must confess to having no definite ideas of what particular form this personality will take. Our goal is not so much an ideal of perfection as a condition for free development. It must be sufficient for us to catch glimpses of the future in the ideas and actions of people to-day. We know that where interests are in harmony people work together with a will. To-day antagonistic interests predominate. We know that, given half a chance, most of us want to express ourselves in some artistic way (in the widest sense of the term). To-day we must earn a living. The growth of socialist ideas means an increase in the number of people who understand society, in the dual sense of knowing how to abolish property and how to really live without it

It may be that the cynic will remark that a world without the excitement of war, the pride of possessing property, and the delight in human inequality will be a dull place indeed. In dismissing the first two of these conditions as psychological perversions, we are not in any way passing judgment on individuals—only on the social system. To those who get to know about Socialism there is something exciting and rather wonderful about the prospect of all people living in cooperative harmony and on terms of equality. We have tried to show that, far from making people equal in the sense of being the same, Socialism offers the prospect of a richly variegated society—how can it be otherwise when human needs, among which is variety, are the prime consideration?

Stan Parker

Palestine — dream or nightmare? (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip is “home” to 60,000 people. They live in corrugated iron hovels — on average 16 people to every two rooms. The camp has no proper sewage system; dysentery and malnutrition are rife. Thousands of Palestinians are also treated each year for psychological problems caused by the stress of life in a refugee camp.

On the other side of the razor wire that keeps the Palestinians in, is an Israeli settlement — Gush Katiff — surrounded by look-out towers and machine guns. In the centre of the settlement is a luxury hotel and conference complex, no more intended for the Israeli settlers than it is for the Palestinians in the refugee camp. They live in small, heavily guarded farming communities along the twenty-eight miles of sandy Mediterranean coast that is the Gaza Strip. Their living conditions are undoubtedly better than those endured by their Palestinian neighbours. But a further difference of greater significance is that they have chosen to live there, mostly out of a misguided belief in the policy of Jewish settlement of the occupied territories, while the Palestinian refugees in the camps did not choose their fate.

The Gaza Strip and the West Bank were occupied by Israel during the 1967 war but the origins of the Palestinians’ grievance go back beyond this to the days of British rule in Palestine. Until the end of the First World War both Jews and Arabs lived side by side in Palestine. The end of the war saw the beginnings of large-scale Jewish immigration spurred on by the Balfour Declaration promising a “Jewish homeland” and Zionist ideas which played on justifiable fears of Jewish persecution and presented a “return” to Israel as the only secure solution to their continual oppression. With the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s those fears were more than ever before justified and Jewish immigration to Palestine increased rapidly as a consequence.

Arab leaders in Palestine feared that an influx of jews would lead to the British reneging on their promise of Palestinian self-government. As a result Arab turned on Jew and groups of Jewish terrorists — the Irgun Zvi Leumi and the Stern Gang — were organised to respond to Arab attacks, engage in guerrilla warfare against the British and to intimidate non-Zionist Jews into supporting them.

The mass immigration to Palestine of Jews seeking to flee from Nazi extermination camps and the indifference of the “Allies” was welcomed by neither Arabs nor the British administration in Palestine. Ships carrying Jewish refugees were refused permission to land at Haifa and their passengers were treated as illegal immigrants by the British authorities. Finally, unable to cope with the difficulties of placating both Arab and Jewish leaders, who had both been promised the right to govern, the British withdrew leaving a bloodbath in their wake as Jews and Arabs battled it out for control of the new state. The Jews emerged victorious; the state of Israel was established in 1948; 1,750,000 Palestinians left or were driven out.

Since that time the dream of a “homeland” free from oppression and insecurity that led so many Jews to rally round their leaders in the name of Zionism, has been bitterly disappointed. The state of Israel has been at war with its Arab neighbours in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and, most recently, the euphemistically entitled “Campaign for Peace in Galilee” — the invasion of Lebanon. The expropriation of land from the Arabs and the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have resulted in a legacy of frustration and bitterness among many of the 750,000 Arabs who stayed in Israel after the 1948 exodus and continue to endure discrimination in employment and welfare and among the one and a half million refugees in camps in the occupied territories. That bitterness and frustration finally erupted into angry protest in December last year and has since then been further inflamed by the brutal attempt by the Israeli state to crush the protest.

The current outburst was, apparently, triggered by a road accident in which four Palestinians were killed by an Israeli vehicle. Since that initial seemingly spontaneous outburst, various organisations which trade in the same kinds of religious and nationalistic sentiment that underpins many Zionist organisations, have tried to hijack the Palestinians’ protests for their own political ends — Yasser Arafat’s PLO, its youth wing, Shabiba and the fundamentalist Islamic Jihad.

It is easy to see why the oppressed people in the refugee camps might view the promise of Palestinian self-government as an answer. It is not surprising that settlement of the occupied territories by orthodox Jewish zealots who subscribe to the racist religious nationalism of Rabbi Meir Kahane and his Kach movement, which advocates the expulsion of all Arabs from “Greater Israel”, has resulted in an equally vicious hatred of Jews by many Palestinians. But to strive for the replacement of an oppressive Israeli state by a Palestinian one cannot be an answer. It can only result in continued oppression — class oppression — by a Palestinian ruling class that would replace the Israeli ruling class. The dreams of Jewish workers of a life free from persecution and oppression finds its echo today in the dreams of Palestinian workers. Jewish dreams have not been answered by the setting up of the state of Israel and Palestinian dreams will not be answered by the establishment of a Palestinian state.

In the refugee camps Palestinians are vociferously questioning a regime that takes away their land, herds them into camps and then beats them when they step out of line. But some Israelis are also questioning why young conscripts should be sent into the refugee camps to carry out the beatings. Was this the kind of society that they have, on so many occasions, fought to defend and that their parents and grandparents dreamed about and struggled so hard to bring into existence? Israeli workers and Palestinians are asking essentially similar questions. Let’s hope that the answers that they come up with recognise their common interests and reject the nationalism and religious bigotry that engender false divisions, violence and racial hatred.

Janie Percy-Smith