The War and its Effects. (1905)

From the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The War in the East will have far-reaching effects upon the Socialist movement in Europe and in America. As Socialists we are neither enthusiastic Pro-Japs or Anti-Russians. We know that whichever wins it is but a win for capitalism. Although we anticipate the ultimate triumph of Japan we do not for one moment believe that this will benefit the Japanese workers, far from it. The only result for them will be a greater intensity of labour necessary for the support of the Japanese capitalists, who, after the few years which, will be required for the adjustment of industry, will enter into the hurricane development that modern capitalism with its machinery and trusts needs.

Japan of to-day is one of the great competitors for the trade in the East. Japan of a few years hence will be the great power. Her close communication with the advanced form of capitalism already in existence in the United States is bound to have the effect of putting her in the front rank of capitalist development, while her relationship with China may well result in her becoming the most important factor in the industrial revolution of that unhappy bone of contention among nations, or the capitalist portion thereof. Japanese officers have already been engaged to drill and organise certain Chinese regiments and as their brains have been used by the Chinese because of their superiority in military affairs, so will they be utilised to organise Chinese industry. The training of centuries in the manipulation of tools enables the Chinese to adapt themselves to the requirements of modern industry in a remarkable way and the "white Australia” policy of the Australian Labour Party, the Anti-Asiatic legislation, if we may so term it, of other countries directed against yellow immigration, bears eloquent witness to the readiness with which the Chinese enter into effective competition with white labour--always, of course, to the detriment of the latter seeing that the standard of comfort of the “Yellows” is so much lower than that of the "Whites,” and seeing that the competition of cheap labour always fosters a tendency for wages to be reduced to that level.

The fact that white workers will have to face is that capitalism is international, and that it is not “Whites” and “Yellows” that meet in the markets of the world, but buyers and sellers, whose nationality does not matter one iota as far as the value of the goods to be exchanged is concerned. Thus though the capitalist class may be induced to legislate against the Yellow races in the White countries, they assuredly will not legislate against the buying or selling of the products of Yellow labour, when these products are made in the Yellow man’s country.

The effect of the War from the East alone, will make a considerable difference to the United States and Canada almost at once. This is certain to show itself in the greater intensification of labour, and the concentration of capital in those two countries. The corresponding effect of these to the workers will be a still larger army of the unemployed and a considerable decrease in the proportion of the total product received by the working-class as wages.

This in brief will be the result of the recuperation of Japan, and the subsequent opening-up of China by her, with all its vast resources of wealth and its unlimited supply of labour. But how shall we fare in Europe?

One thing is certain and that is the overthrow of the Russian Autocracy. Whether this will be accomplished by the disintegration of the West and South-West into a number of independent States at once, or by the adoption of a constitutional government for the Russian Empire as it is, with a later devolution, time will show. But whatever happens it means the more intensive and extensive development of capitalist proper in Russia. To-day, American, English, French, and German firms have their factories there. In spite of the patriotic howl raised by these people about supporting home industries, etc., there is not one of them but who is perfectly willing to establish his factories in “despotic Russia” if he can get cheaper labour or raw material, even if it does mean that a few of his fellow-countrymen have to put up with the mere trifle of being starved in the meantime.

The West of Russia with its large towns of St. Petersburg, Riga, and Vilna. and the South-West with Odessa, Kiev, and Kishenev. and the South with Baku and the other oil towns are being rapidly brought under the full domination of capitalism. True, the old regime holds sway over the agricultural parts, hut with the breakdown of the autocracy and the establishment of a constitutional government capitalism would be supreme in the towns and this would have an immediate reaction on the agricultural life of the surrounding districts.

The increased competition in the markets of Europe would react at once on the whole of the European working-class to its detriment. The effect of the increased competition in both hemispheres would be bound to make itself felt  to the workers in both. The results of such development will make the workers more and more conscious of the fact that their interests do not , lie in the perpetuation of the capitalist system, but in its overthrow. There will be greater opportunities for the Socialist to point out the only remedy—Socialism. The intensified class feeling that will be created, will be moulded into definite concrete form by the Socialists, by the building up of a revolutionary Socialist Party for the overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of the Socialist Republic.

E. J. B. Allen

A New Cure. (1906)

From the March 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the February issue of the Socialist Standard our comrade, Dick Kent, dealt with the latest quack remedy of the Salvation Army for solving unemployment. Now comes a writer in the Daily News, an "economic expert" who traces the cause of unemployment to the wasteful expenditure of wealth. Bow your heads, ye Solomons who taught the workers that they were poor because they were robbed. Shade your eyes from the dazzling light thrown upon this, up till now, difficult problem by the economic constellation alone. Can ye not see that it is not because Dick Turpin robs you that you are poor, but because, after he has emptied your pockets, he spends the proceeds of his industry in a wasteful manner. If, instead of spending this wealth among pals and girls, he were to turn it in the direction of useful production — such as the pistols and ammunition he employs for the purpose of persuading you to agree with him upon the point of wealth distribution - how much better off everyone would be. True! those already engaged in that industry would find their occupation gone by the inflow of new workers, unless they succeeded in beating them off the market by underselling them. In either case one set would still be unemployed.

"I know of no Labour member," says this economic sunbeam, “who does not desire to call men from the building of warships and the making of rifles to the construction of houses and the feeding and clothing of the people."

Note the phrasing of the last sentence. To construct houses does not necessarily mean the housing of the constructors; and to jumble this up with “the feeding and clothing of the people” without explaining how this latter is to be done, is to add to the confusion already existing. He would call men from building warships to build houses, and then, I suppose, place these upon an already fearfully overstocked market, compared to the effective demand, with the result of throwing out of work those at present precariously employed, and so replacing the present unemployed army by another. Then, we may suppose, this army will be set to work and thereby displace the displacers. The Inner Circle is a fool to it. Also the other sections of men now making rifles are to be put to making foodstuffs and clothing so that the sweated bakers, tailors, etc, will either have to “sweat" more to keep their hold upon the market or become unemployed themselves. This solution staggers the imagination of even the best balanced minds to see where it will end—other than where it began.

Under the present system of private ownership of the means of wealth production, and of the wealth when produced, the workers are unemployed just because they have produced too much for the effective demands of the market to absorb. The first step to be taken in dealing with the problem is obviously, not to set about increasing the extent of the difficulty by producing still more, but for the workers to have access to, and ownership of, that which they have already produced. It is not the want of commodities that is the trouble, but the private ownership of them, and the consequent prevention of the workers getting hold of the articles, that is at fault.

But "economic experts" are not paid by the ruling class to spread the truth, but to throw the weight of their “learning” and "science" upon the side of those who are engaged in keeping the mind of the workers directed away from the real question, and fixed upon one of the numerous "red herrings” before them.

Jack Fitzgerald

Another Quack Remedy. (1906)

From the February 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the multitudinous “remedies” for the unemployed problem, one wonders why it should exist at all, or, at any rate, why it is allowed to assume the alarming proportions it does each winter. Notwithstanding stone yards and emigration, Queen’s Funds and the rest, however, the problem remains, and what is more important, increases. But at last the "first practical proposal” has been made. It emanates from that quarter from which one would anticipate “practical” proposals.

The Salvation Army! A sum of £100,000 has been placed at the service of the Army to finance a scheme for putting “a certain section of the deserving poor” “back to the land." Without going into details, the nett result of this “practical proposal" is to create about 200 small holdings of 5 acres each, on which the unfortunate settler will have to work to produce (a) £25 per annum which will be demanded of him as rent; (b) 5 per cent. interest on the sum advanced, and (c) his own livelihood in competition with the larger and more economically organised farms both here and abroad. After 40 years he becomes a "peasant proprietor.”

So far as these potential peasant proprietors are concerned, their unemployment can, if they succeed in complying with the conditions, be accepted as cured; nut for such a scheme to be boomed in the Press as, in any way, a solution of the problem of unemployment, is, misleading and untrue.

For, after all, what leads to this unemployment? Why is it that no one among the ranks of the employers of labour will employ these people? Simply because they cannot do so and conform to the necessities of the system, i.e., show a profit. And this, because the system has developed so as to expose, in bold relief, its essential contradiction, and by virtue of the private ownership of the means of living, and its necessary corollary, wage-labour, to increase with its development, the disproportion between the amount produced and the amount received as wages. It is the accumulation of this difference that produces the glutted market, the depression in trade, the economic crisis, the "over-production ” and the "unemployed problem."

Such a result being the necessary outcome of the capitalistic method of production, how can the effect be removed, and the cause of the effect retained? It is an answer to this riddle which well-intentioned people try to find by means of such artificial arrangements as that mentioned above. For my part, I accept the inevitable, and believe that if capitalism produces the results alleged against it (and they cannot be denied), then to remove the results you must remove capitalism.

The purchasing power of the bulk of the community is limited to their wages. Their wages represent a declining proportion of the wealth produced. The proportion of the community so affected increases. Therefore, the surplus, over and above wages, represents an increasing proportion of wealth which goes to a decreasing proportion of the community. This is the prime cause of unemployment The new scheme (if indeed it can be called new) in no way tends to rebalance those proportions, but, if anything, to enlarge the disproportion. It is, therefore, no solution of the problem.

To attempt to solve an “unemployed problem” that is produced by the capitalist mode of production and yet retain the mode of production is folly and a criminal waste of time. Capitalism out of its own inherent weakness is rapidly preparing its own downfall by the production of such problems as that of unemployment. That downfall is inevitable. There is no escape from it. Upon its ruins only an intelligent working-class may construct the newer system which, by the organisation of the production of wealth for the satisfaction of the wants of those who produce it, will preclude the possibility of such anomalies as the general poverty problem of our time, with the more acute poverty and unemployment always attendant upon it, necessitating, as it at present does, abstinence and starvation in the midst of  plenty, and because there is plenty.

Dick Kent

Another Life of Marx. - Part 2 (1929)

Book Review from the December 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from October.)

I have now given sufficient information to enable the reader to judge of the biased and unreliable nature of Ruhle’s "Life of Marx." The last few pages of the book give us the apparent reason for this attempt to blacken the personal character of Marx. All through the book the writer is endeavouring to show (but without sound evidence) that Marx was a very clever thinker —but allowed his personal feelings to override his judgment. The author is compelled to admit time after time that Marx’s judgments were ultimately sound, as witness quotations given. But he persists all through the book in trying to give the reader this impression of uncertainty. Why? Here is the explanation :—

Marxism, being primarily called upon to stir up the proletarian masses, to make them collect their forces, and to lead them on to the battlefield, must necessarily display itself at the outset in a guise which would encourage optimism; in a guise which, by representing historical evolution as the guarantee of the liberation of mankind, would make the workers believe in their own mission. To gain headway, it must relentlessly clear out of the path all rationalistic and utopian systems of Socialism, and must inexorably proceed on its own course. To-day, when its work is finished, Marxism begins to assume a new aspect. In our own time, not merely can Marxism occasionally recur to the systems of the Utopists and the rationalists; it is directly faced in this direction by the practical demands of the day by the growing claims for positive achievements in the class struggle. (p. 396.) (Italics ours.)

There you have it. Marxism was all right in the past, but now times have changed—Labour rules !—and we can indulge in wars, and all the rest of the reformer’s stock-in-trade. Actually, of course, there has been no change, and practical affairs of the day demand a still stricter adherence to the basic principles taught by Marx unless the workers are to flounder in the morass of Labourism for another century.

Mr. Ruhle, however, in branding Marx as a neurotic, is really making a special plea for himself and his friends. On the last page of the book he writes :—

The main thing was the work which had to be done; the qualities of the doer mattered little. Or, rather, the doer of the work which had to be done, had to be spurred to his task by an impetus such as could only be furnished by the neurosis from which Marx suffered! To-day, we have different problems to solve, and they must be solved by highly qualified persons who have freed themselves from neurosis; must be solved by champions of the class struggle who approach the undertaking with a keen sense of responsibility, an awakened consciousness, and a strongly developed community feeling, (p. 397.)

Now we begin to see light. We must forget Marx’s view, that the workers must accomplish their own emancipation, and put our trust in nice, kind, gentlemanly people like Ruhle and MacDonald, and the rest of the silk-hatted, frock-coated crowd.

It will be observed that I am now suffering from “stomach-ache” and getting personal. Ruhle’s attack on Marx is a fitting reflection of the former’s practical career. A disciple of Alfred Adler, of Vienna, he belonged to the German Social Democratic Party and voted with Liebknecht against the war in 1914. In the German post-war upheaval he took a leading part and was a member of the Council of Workers and Soldiers. Now he is neither in the German S.D.P. nor in the Communist Party, but is a kind of anarchist and has written books on “The Soul of The Proletarian Child,” and similar topics. Hence his kindly feelings towards Lassalle and Bakunin.

In one respect, however, this book can certainly be recommended. It contains voluminous extracts from some of the earlier and less known writings of Marx. These extracts reveal how early Marx obtained a clear grasp of the driving force in history.

Marx’s approach to Socialism was from the philosophical side. His early studies were concerned mainly with law and philosophy. His father wished to make of him a lawyer, but philosophy had a greater appeal at the beginning and ultimately he obtained a degree as Doctor of Philosophy, though he did not make use of it.

While working on the “New Rhenish Gazette,” Marx found his ignorance of economics constantly placing him in difficulties when dealing with questions of the day. When that paper was suppressed he immediately set about making up for the deficiency. In 1843 he did a tremendous amount of reading in history and economics, the first fruits of which was an article in the French and German Year Book entitled ‘‘Introduction to a Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right.” The following extracts give an idea of his early progress towards Socialist knowledge (at the time he was only 25 years old):—

   'Man makes religion; religion does not make man. Religion, indeed, is the self-consciousness and the self-feeling of the man who either has not yet found himself, or else (having found himself) has lost himself once more. But man is not an abstract being, squatting down somewhere outside the world. Man is the world of men, the State, society. This state, this society, produce religion, produce a perverted world consciousness, because they are a perverted world. Religion is the generalised theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compend, its logic in a popular form . . . The fight against religion is, therefore, a direct campaign against the world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
   Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people.
  . . . . Thus the criticism of heaven is transformed into a criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into a criticism of law, the criticism of theology into a criticism of politics, (pp. 57 and 58.)

Thus early in his mental development Marx saw in religion an attempt on the part of the oppressed to escape from the troubles that afflicted them in the world of practical affairs. He also saw that the solution lay, not in theological disputations, not in new philosophical views, but in changing the constitution of society:—

    The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the highest being for man; it ends, that is to say, with the categorical imperative that all conditions must be revolutionised in which man is a debased, an enslaved, an abandoned, a contemptible being . . .  a radical is one who cuts at the roots of things.
    A radical revolution, the general emancipation of mankind, is not a Utopian dream for Germany; what is Utopian is the idea of a partial, an exclusively political revolution, which would leave the pillars of the house standing.
    What, then, are the practical possibilities of German emancipation? Here is the answer. They are to be found in the formation of a class with radical chains, a class of civil society which is not a class of civil society; of an estate which is the dissolution of all estates; of a sphere which is endowed with a universal character by the universality of its sufferings; one which does not lay claim to any particular rights, the reason being that it does not suffer any one specific injustice, but suffers injustice unqualified; one which can no longer put forward a historically grounded title, but only a general human title; one which is not in any sort of one-sided opposition to the consequences, but only in general opposition to the presuppositions of the German political system; and, finally, a sphere which cannot emancipate itself, without emancipating itself from all the other spheres of society—one which, in a word, has been completely deprived of its human privileges, so that it can only regain itself by fully regaining these human privileges. This dissolution of society as a particular estate is—the proletariat.
    If the proletariat herald the dissolution of the world order as hitherto extant, it is merely, thereby, expressing the mystery of its own existence, for it is the actual dissolution of this previous world order. (p. 60.)

In the above extracts we have a remarkably clear foreshadowing of Marx’s final conclusions as embodied in his materialist conception of history and theory of surplus value which together form the foundations of scientific Socialism. And it is a remarkably clear and logical contribution from one so youthful considering the range of the subject and the state of philosophical, historical and economic science at the time he was writing.

I would like to give many more extracts from these earlier works of Marx, but, unfortunately, they would lengthen out this review too much. I must therefore refer anyone who wishes to watch the mental development of Marx to the book itself, in which there is a great deal of useful quotations from these early writings.

There are one or two further points, however, I must mention before concluding.

On page 198 "Hic Rhodus, hic salta!” is translated as "Here is the Rose; dance here!” Surely this really refers to the traveller in one of the ancient classical tales, who, returning home after considerable wanderings, boasted to his friends of his wonderful achievements; among others that while at Rhodes he saw a tremendous statue with gigantic legs spread far apart, and that he had leaped from one of the feet to the other. His friends, already sickened by his tall stories, and wishing to "take down” the boaster, cried, "Here is Rhodes, now leap,” or, in other words— "pretend this is Rhodes, now show us how you can jump.”

On page 199, writing of Engels, Ruhle says he "unselfishly devoted his evenings, year after year, when the day’s work was over, to writing the necessary articles for the 'New York Tribune.’ ” In a review of a previous book on Marx by Ryazanoff we gave our reasons for contesting this view, and we must refer the reader to that review for a full statement. Engels certainly helped Marx by putting his articles into English at a time when Marx had not yet acquired a complete command of English, and he also wrote some of the articles dealing with military matters, but that is all. Ruhle’s appetite for detraction leads him to make these sweeping statements where opportunity offers.

We cannot commend the translators for the bibliography at the end. They seem more concerned with their own translations than with giving the reader a list of Marx’s writings that are accessible to those who can only read English, e.g., "Value, Price and Profit,” "Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy,” "Lord Palmerston,” "The Eastern Question,” “Class Struggles in France,” etc.

Ruhle, in his book, has taken his evidence of Marx’s personal character from those who were his bitter enemies, and who knew comparatively little of Marx’s private life. Let me give the evidence of one who knew Marx for the greater part of his life and one who also suffered greatly and gave the whole of his life work—apart from the time necessary to earn a living—to the struggle for working class freedom. I refer to Frederick Lessner. Liebknecht’s tribute to Marx is well known, but Ruhle is pleased to look upon Liebknecht with the eye of suspicion. No one, however, has yet presumed to throw any mud at Lessner. Here is an extract from his "Recollections of an Old Communist,” with which I very fittingly close this review:—

   Marx was, as are all truly great men, free from conceit, and appreciated every genuine striving, every opinion based on independent thinking . . . as already mentioned, he was always eager to hear the opinion of the simplest working man on the labour movement. Thus he would often come to me in the afternoon, fetch me for a walk, and talk about all sorts of matters. . . . Generally he was an excellent companion, who extremely attracted, one might say, charmed, everybody that came in touch with him. His humour was irrepressible; his laugh a very hearty one. . . .

*****

   Some comrades proposed to erect a monument to him. But no monument could be of finer foundation than his teachings, his actions, and his struggles, which are engraved now into the hearts and heads of millions of workers for ever.

Gilmac.

Portrait of the Labour Party (1930)

Book Review from the May 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Portrait of the Labour Party by Egon Wertheimer (G. P. Putnam. 5s. 214 pages.)

This book is written by a German journalist who resided in London for six years as correspondent for two German Social Democratic newspapers.

The impressions received and the opinions formed of the Labour Party by the author are alternately flattering, candid, and refreshingly simple.

His facts are clouded by romanticism. The leadership of the Labour Party by MacDonald and Snowden is accounted as a great “moral victory for the I.L.P”; Clynes and Henderson are “products which the British Labour Party can justly regard with pride.” Cook is described as a “weak man, intellectually far below the average miner’s agent, fascinated with the half-baked Marxism he picked up at Labour College classes, and mixing the Communist dialect with that of the Nonconformist evangelical preacher . . .” And George Lansbury—” the old class warrior and most endearing figure among all the English left and by whose side a man like Cook cuts a pitiful figure.”

The Labour Party is compared with corresponding organisations in Germany and on the Continent generally. The policies of these organisations are said to be based on Marxian knowledge, in which the members are said to be well grounded. The result being that the German organisations make "less mistakes” than their British brethren. Of what does this alleged scientific Marxian knowledge and outlook of the Continental parties consist? Were they not, in common with the British Labour Party members of the same non-Socialist international which collapsed so pitifully on the outbreak of War in 1914? Did they not support the sectional Capitalist interests of their National Governments, and form Coalitions with the enemies of the working class? In spite of the alleged “Socialism” of the German parties, Mr. Wertheimer says that their Marxism is mere “lip-service,” and that the British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats are in “immeasurably closer relationship than in the first half decade in the twentieth century.” We contend that if there has ever been any difference between the British Labour Party and its equivalents on the Continent, it has never been due to one of them pursuing a policy based upon working class interests, arising from sound Socialist knowledge, in opposition to all Capitalist parties and interests.

Mr. Wertheimer says erroneously that the I.L.P. is a “Socialist organisation of an extreme kind,” that adopted an attitude of “absolute condemnation to the War. ” This is consistent with the author’s “ideas of Socialism,” and “Sound Marxian training and knowledge.” He describes an organisation which permitted its members to support the War on grounds of “individual conscience”—as the I.L.P. did—as being in “absolute condemnation to the War.” The facts are that the I.L.P. decided on a policy, and permitted its members, as “individuals,” to oppose that policy. Such two-faced conduct enabled them to trim their sails to any wind that blew. A game of which they and their colleagues of the Labour Party are masters.

The Communist Party, we are told, was a “child of crisis.” It was formed from the ashes of the Shop Steward movement and the cinders of such obscure organisations as the “Socialist Labour Party” and the “Socialist Party of Great Britain.” This is really unkind ! Our bitterest enemies in their wildest moments have never held us responsible, or partly responsible, for the Communist Party. Neither have we been reduced at any time to that relative condition which could be compared to cinders. That “child of crisis,” the Communist Party, was a creature of circumstance, and working class lack of knowledge. The Socialist Party, which seeks to provide that knowledge of Socialism, certainly did not have any hand whatever in forming or assisting the Communist Party.

The book is moderately priced and makes interesting and easy reading for those who would like to learn what are a foreigner’s impressions of English political life.

Harry Waite

Marx and Soviet Reality (1958)

Book Review from the February 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx and Soviet Reality by Daniel Norman. The Batchworth Press, 1955. 2s. 6d. 

This is a very useful little booklet of 72 pages which demolishes, with numerous quotations from Marx and Engels, a large number of the myths the Bolsheviks have built up to delude the uncritical: particularly their claims to be Marxists and to have established Socialism in Russia.

The author shows that the Russian revolution was fundamentally a revolution, similar to the French revolution of 1789-93, for the purpose of bringing Russia out of semi-feudalism into modern capitalism. Its ruthlessness and barbarity were part of the hot-house process. He also shows that the revolution never went "off the track,” as the Trotskyists pretend, because Stalin only carried on the Lenin programme.

The opening paragraphs of the booklet indicate the author’s standpoint:

  “There it at least one point on which Soviet propaganda and the opponents of Marxian—and Socialism in general— agree: both describe the U.S.S.R. as the embodiment of the Marx-Engels conception of a Socialist society. Both claim to see in the masters of the Kremlin the heirs and faithful pupils of Marx, and in the Soviet policy the extension of Marxian policy in our time.
   "Nothing could be wider of the mark; nothing would have infuriated Marx and Engels more. For under its Marxist veneer of Bolshevik terminology, Soviet reality can be easily identified with everything abhorred, criticised, and fought against by Marx and Engels all their lives.”

Of unemployment in Russia the author has this to say:-

   "How can there by any question of unemployment where important part of the working population is permanently behind barbed wire, working for wages far under subsistence level, that is, in worse conditions than a slave of ancient times.” (Page 27.)

Although the means of production are owned by the State the new privileged class that has grown up in Russia had their position legalised by the Stalin Constitution of 1936, which confirmed the right to private property and the right to inheritance. So the claim of the wealthy to the products of the workers’ labour is protected in the same way as in other capitalist countries. Of the relation between the Russian State and the workers the author describes as follows:—

   “The fact that in the U.S.S.R. the State is the owner of the conditions of production—'the general capitalist’—and the direct producers are wage-earners, that therefore the relations between them, according to Marx, are still the relations between capital and labour, between employer and proletarians, whether or not this pleases the Soviet leaders. And there is no difficulty in discovering that all the characteristics of the capitalist system of exploitation are to be found in the Russian system of relationship between the State, owner of the means of production, and the direct producer, the worker." (Page 23.)

The author makes the following general observation on Soviet planning:—

   “The general aim of Soviet planning being the industrialisation of the country, the immediate task for the Russian State capitalist planners is 'augmentation of Capital,' and capital, be it State or private, is accumulated surplus value. The planning of wages is thus naturally reduced to squeezing as much unpaid labour as possible from the worker, and the planners see to it that they are not robbed of their part” (Page 21.)

There are numerous quotations from Capital, as well as from other writings of Marx and Engels to illustrate how different their conception was from that which the Bolsheviks have tried to foist upon them, and how truly the progress of Russian industrialisation has followed the path which Marx had forecast as necessary in order to establish capitalism there.

Marx pointed out that “The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process.” The author shows how the Russian plans accomplished just this, increasing the number of industrial workers by over 20 millions between 1928 and 1940, "without taking into account the millions of peasants who, during this period, were sent to hard labour in Siberia find Central Asiatic Russia, nor the further millions who perished during the famines of the thirties.” (Page 32.)

A letter from Engels to Vera Zasulich April 23rd, 1885, is quoted in which Engels gave an astonishing forecast of events in Russia. After saying that a revolution in Russia was imminent, he goes on:—

    “This is one of the exceptional cases where it is possible for a handful of men to make a revolution . . .  Well, if ever Blanquism—the phantasy of turning a whole society topsy-turvy by the activity of a small conspiracy—had a certain justification for its existence, it is certainly in Petersburg.
   “Once the fire is set to the powder, once the forces released and the national energy transformed from potential into kinetic energy . . .  the men who have set the mine ablaze will be blown away by the explosion, which will be a thousand times stronger than they and which will seek its issue as it can, as the economic forces and resistances determine.
    "Supposing these men think they can seize power, what does it matter ? Provided they make the hole which will burst the dam, the torrent itself will soon rob them of their illusions. But if it so happens that these illusions had the effect of giving them a superior force of will, why complain of that? People who boasted that they had made a revolution have always seen, next day, that they had no idea what they were doing; that the revolution made bore no resemblance whatsoever to that they wanted to make." (Page 45.)

We have now given sufficient to enable the reader to judge the character of this booklet. We can certainly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the subject matter and who has hitherto been misled by the fraudulent propaganda of the Russian Communists and their supporters.

What the author’s own outlook is, apart from the subject with which be is dealing, is not clear. We would be interested to know what he means, for instance, by "the alternative contained in our society: a revolutionary evolution towards a Socialism which implies freedom and democracy” (page 68). Also whether he supports Marx’s mistaken view about the value of the cooperatives “as forms of transaction from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one.” (Page 22) 

This booklet puts views we have been expressing for nearly 40 years—see pamphlet “Russia Since 1917.”

Gilmac.

"Ghosts". (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not many years since Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts” was laughed from the stage. But we are now told that the life of those byegone years rang false; children were born into the shame of Peace, while the men-folk slept in the dull, deep dreams of the quiet of a prosperous world. All were wrapt in politics as shallow as Gladstone, were steadfast to the prudery of Victoria, read the feeblest novels, worshipped academic paintings and German sculpture. Never was an age fitter for the pen of the satirist nor for the reign of a queen without ability. Since it was dead as a doornail a great deal has been written to belittle the Victorian age, but if only we think of the old hostility towards Ibsen’s masterpiece we get one of the saddest, one of the gravest comments on the softness of that age it is possible to obtain.

The age demanded Purpose in everything so that in the end ethics became bracketed with art, became almost synonymous with art. This falsity and sentimentality was personified in Ruskin. He instructed the nation in life. He became artistic dictator. Under his powerful influence the picture became a scientific lecture, and the book a biblical homily. Landscape paintings became like naturalists' studies, while innumerable authors set to work to prove that the Lord Jesus had a hand in the fabrication of the primrose and the apple.

Some few did not submit to this vice, this cramp. The spirit of unrest was personified in Whistler. By the excellence of his work combined with the sting and brilliance of his wit he succeeded in lessening the power of the degenerative spirit. In literature the innovating spirit of romance was personified in Oscar Wilde. In painting, then, and in literature the principle of beauty, the principle of charm without Purpose, triumphed over the old principle of Purpose without loveliness.

Definite ethics, precise instructions on how to live, were forgotten in the passions of the new ideals. There was personality and not humanitarianism or science in the new nocturnes and landscapes, while in the new books the question of the divinity of Christ, even of the genesis of primroses, was lost in the fashioning of phrases.

This new movement in England with Wilde, Beardsley, Whistler at its head, with Shelley and Keats and some Frenchmen at its roots, soon became virile, influential, established. Slightly artificial at its birth, it soon added strength to its charm, till at last the pioneers decided to test their influence with the public by the supremely modern “Ghosts." I do not here pretend to give a complete account of the battles of the books and wits of that transitionary time, nor do I contend that the one or two masters of art named here were entirely responsible for the staging of "Ghosts." There were many men, who were sick and tired of the old stuff, who worked to further the interests of the new movements. But I do maintain that the revolt of these remarkable men against the straight-laced interests of the Victorian era made possible the production of "Ghosts." The public failed the play. The spirit of the public was not so fine or noble as the spirit of the play. The public, despite years of romantic tuition, was still interested in the theme of the play— in " what it was about." They were still spellbound by Ruskin and Carlyle and their principle of Purpose. They could not understand that what was purposeless and useless, even that which they might call immoral, might still be beautiful.

Now the play is again staged. The people go in thousands to see it. It is successful, and in consequence we are told that people have become enlightened People have become nothing of the kind. The play is successful because it has been boomed. It has been boomed by the authorities not because it is interesting to them as a wonderful drama, but because, owing to changed conditions, it has become useful as an ethical tract. The truth of the business is that at the time of the first presentation of "Ghosts" in England the masters had no use for it even as a tract. Not understanding the beauty and strength of its art, none of its characteristics appealed to them technically; its gravity and thought, its passion and lucidness, could not be seen by them. The mere theme of it was evident enough, but what Purpose could it serve, what good could it do to a generation nursed among bibles and crinolines?

“Ghosts” deals with the tragedy of inherited diseases. The pitiful condition of the young art student, Oswald Alving, is given with tragic tremendous power, and, although the interest in the theme is secondary to the real interest one should feel in “Ghosts" as a dramatic creation, it undoubtedly appeals very powerfully to anyone who takes even a slight interest in morality. To the utterly inartistic this ethical theme must come like a storm.

Well, it is this ethical thunderstorm that the masters need now. And this is why. Every man is needed for the Army. Yet the military cannot get every man, for thousands are severely suffering with syphilis; other thousands are suffering in varying degrees with this and other venereal diseases. To say thousands is no exaggeration. The numbers are so huge, and the diseases are spreading so rapidly, as to seriously weaken the armed forces. The only ways the authorities can try to stop the plague are by legislation and personal appeal. A bill dealing with these contagious diseases has recently become law; the personal message is being delivered in such dramas as “Damaged Goods” and this “Ghosts.”

But be the laws never so stringent, the sorrows of venereal diseases presented in never so pitiful a wav, still most this generation pay in pain and anguish for the generations of ignorance that have preceded it. It it useless to try and remedy the damage and wreckage of ignorance, of generations of capitalistic schooling and social conditions, with s couple of dramas, be they the greatest in the world. Dramas are not the palliatives of injustice, they are the tragic or sweet fruit of our lives. A man here and there may appear to change after having witnessed some didactic drama, yet he only alters in so far as his earlier life has prepared him for an acceptance of the play’s pronouncements. A development of emotions is what we should expect from plays, only that, and not any change in our ideas. Dramas should be beautiful and useless as music.

So the authorities are quite mistaken again as to the nature of Ibsen’s “Ghosts.” It is neither an immoral play as they first thought it, nor is it moral as they now think it It cannot be crushed for being the one, nor exploited as the other. It is almost worthless as a tract for soldiers. It is useless for the authorities to get soldiers with syphilis to go to the playhouse; it would be more remedial, by means of some royal proclamation, to get them to set spinach.

Poor Ibsen! It would have been better had your poor “Ghosts" rested this while in the shadows of the contumely of its earlier years than be dragged and boomed onto the robbers’ stage for as churchy a purpose as preserving army divisions. Still must those wonderful words in that gem of composition be the precious keepsake of the lonely student—at least till social wisdom brings the great reconstruction and brotherhood.

Then will a play be, not a thing like Synge's "Playboy of the Western World" to be hissed at for heterodoxy, or a thing like “Ghosts” to be given prominence as a moral tract, but a thing of beauty only (and both the above plays may be considered as such) to thrill and cheer and inspire those whose liberated minds can grasp the might and sublimity of dramatic construction. Science then will have its own just dominions; the theatre will have its own. When the world is free, when the harvests of the earth are sensibly gathered and distributed, then will the peoples congregate in the theatres for the enjoyment of the artistic presentation of all the beautiful, jubilant and woeful pageants of the world—and that only.

H. M. M.

The Blind Directing The Blind. (1917)

From the July 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are so often told how naughty we are because we so bitterly oppose the pseudo-Socialist parties that we feel doubly pleased when such organisations readily themselves hand us the weapon wherewith we smite them. The following extract from the organ of the Socialist Labour Party, an organisation which for months past has tried to explain how very much alone it has been in defining the true Socialist position in its relation to the war, is distinctly good when compared with its companion of earlier date. It reads as follows:

LOOKING FOR A POLICY.

What with capitalist development and the S.L.P. propaganda the I.L.P has a painful feeling that it s been on the wrong track. That the I.L.P. has decided to re-examine its policy at the forthcoming Summer School deserves nothing but praise; and we wish it every success. The S.L.P. sends its best wishes.-—"The Socialist," June 1917.

That the I.L.P. is on the wrong number after 25 years of shouting is a sad thing indeed—-for its supporters. But the idea of the S.L.P. taking upon itself the task of putting its sick relative upon the right track it frankly amusing, as will be seen from the following gem published by the S.LP. in the same journal in November 1914 :

A PERSONAL NOTE.

That there are differences of opinion in the S.L.P. as in other parties, on the question of the war must have been apparent to most readers of “The Socialist." Last month I tried to show what the different views were, but I have not been able to find out what support each side has, consequently I cannot say definitely what the official attitude of the Party is.

Three months after the declaration of war and still ignorant of its attitude toward that colossal butchery of the working class in the interests of their inveterate enemies! Could anything be put more clearly? The attitude of a Socialist party needed no discussion among its members at such a time. A true Socialist party would automatically fall into its only groove, as the S.P.G.B. did. This party did not find it necessary to discuss even for a moment what its attitude should be, or to adopt any other method of getting it defined. The path was made clear, the contingency fully provided for, by its formulated principles, and an examination of the Socialist Standard from August 1914 will show conclusively how steadfastly our position has been maintained, and how clearly our attitude of bitter opposition to the present war has been presented to the world. The workers themselves shall be the judge and jury- -our position is impregnable.

B. B. B.

Captain Anarchy (1982)

A Short Story from the June 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Skip was squatting on a bedroll amid the wellingtons, tweed jackets, tractors and mud of a farm auction; bearded, longhaired and wearing a floppy hat, like a relic from the hippy revolution. He was on a sponsored walk from Land’s End to John O’ Groats and had come to the auction in passing. So I invited him home for tea.

You don’t often meet round the world sailors on top of a Somerset down, particularly not one with a badge on his hat that read “One World for One People”. 1 asked him how we could get such a world and shyly he put his case.

He was an anarchist down to his toenails, with a butterfly mind that flitted from hatred of the rich to contempt for the law he’d served seventeen months for vagrancy and theft. “I’ll be hitching at a roundabout”, he said, “and every police car will stop and tell me to move. They even tell me where I ought to stand on this earth! That’s really bad news! We’ve got to do away with those pigs and all their rules. We don’t need them. Everyone knows right from wrong. The law doesn’t help you in a force seven gale on the Atlantic.”

Incongruously he was a trained boat designer and builder who, as well as refitting yachts for capitalists (the bastards!), had planned and made his own dory and a junk-rigged yacht that was destroyed at anchorage in a storm. Now unemployed, his dream was to get enough money out of penny-a-mile sponsors to build a new yacht for a circumnavigation; proclaiming pacifism by example, against all the talk of politicians, with a crew of fourteen, in a boat called World Peace.

“We’ve got to destroy the concept of war” he said, warming up. I pounced: “No good, they’ll invent a new one. Even if you get rid of the rockets, tanks and guns, the armies, navies and air forces of all the nations of the world, it wouldn’t destroy war. It’s the competition between nations for markets, materials and spheres of influence that brings armies into being and drives each towards war". It was a bit too concentrated for him and he returned to the topic of his voyage.

The springs of anarchist thought are truly amazing. His boat was going to be designed and launched according to the principles of the Cabbala or Talmud! The most magical of all numbers is seven. So his boat had to be seventy-seven feet long, seven times longer than its beam, with a seven-sail schooner rig. His last boat had been launched at 7 minutes past 7, on 7 July 1977! Pressed for a reason, he twinkled and said, “it just happened that way”.

The idea of promoting an alternative way of living by high adventure is not new. In the 1930s the lone climber Maurice Wilson hoped to encourage his own brand of asceticism, fasting and peace, by conquering Everest. John Harlin, who died on the North Face of the Eiger in 1965, was a more modern example:

He was convinced that through the gospel of climbing, which he would preach in his International School, a panacea for the world’s sickness would emerge. Differences of race, colour and creed would disappear in the collective search for the truth and beauty of life as revealed by the climbing of mountains. (D. Whillans and A. Ormerod, Don Whillans, Penguin, 1976, p. 266.)

Internationally mixed expeditions are often commercially promoted using a weaker form of this sentiment, as with the Thor Heyerdal raft and boat journeys. Anyone who has read the literature of the attempts on the South Pole before the First World War must be impressed by the incredible idealism which drove men to trek across a thousand miles of ice. Yet all this heroism means nothing as far as creating a new world goes. Scott was a leader who inspires followers and patriotic death or glory boys. Harlin was a climber of incredible strength, reach and drive. Skip is a phenomenal sailor, who ran the teak-built Virtue class yacht Jan Guilder from Britain to the Azores and back in a race. Each in their own way prove only what exceptional people can do in extraordinary fields.

But the new world that Skip wants must be one which the majority can form and take full part in; what then is the use of example? The attempt to change from competitive capitalism to co-operative socialism, has nothing to do with the heroic striving after impossible goals by supermen and superwomen. It is a task for ordinary people, and must fall within the scope of ordinary lives and experience.

The romantic impulse, wherein a hero dares to do something against all the odds, while it may have spurred the early socialists to press their analysis of capitalism past the awful point where state power was challenged, has little relevance for a democratic social revolution. Socialism requires that men and women, safe in their terraces and semis, should dare, against all the heroes of capitalism who failed, to change the world, using only the ballot box.

Still, Skip and his crew might achieve something worthwhile. An anarchistic circumnavigation would knock a great big hole in the myth of the essential captain on the high seas, the capitalist of sailors ruling the waves.

Good luck Skip. I hope you get round the world. On a cold assessment your example will confuse and divert workers from the simple democratic and political solution of abolishing capitalism. Yet unreliable and quixotic as you are, I feel you will be with us on the day of revolution.

B. K. McNeeney

Alcoholics Anonymous (1999)

A Short Story from the September 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Idly browsing through a magazine not so long ago I came across a questionnaire on people's drinking habits. The questionnaire, which was headed "Are You An Alcoholic?" suggested that anyone answering with a total of five "yes's" out of twelve questions had a proclivity towards alcoholism. I was stunned to discover that my score was eight. Alcoholics Anonymous here I come, I thought.

Several days later I took stock and reflected that in all seriousness I could hardly believe myself to be a true alcoholic. I could, by a sheer effort of will, abstain from drinking for weeks at a time, though I was honest enough with myself to own up to the fact that as soon as I resumed the habit I seemed to be making an unconscious effort to make up for lost time. The questionnaire advised that this was not good news. It pointed to bingeing, it said. I made enquiries about the next meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and took myself along.

On the night if I thought I would be entering a room occupied by red-nosed, broken-veined down-and-outs, carefully concealing their hip flasks and uttering in slurred voices, then I was certainly in error. I am not sure that I did think that, but still my expectations were such that I imagined alcoholics not to be "normal" people going about their daily lives just like everybody else. A couple of people introduced themselves to me and I was offered a cup of tea. I heard friendly banter being exchanged between those who were regulars and knew each other. About twenty people had gathered, their ages ranging between twenty-five and sixty. (Later I was to learn that a few of the older people hadn't "touched a drop" for ten to fifteen years.) We stood round a large table, linked hands and in unison (except for me; I didn't know the words) recited a kind of litany, which talked about life and what our attitude should be to it—presumably to contribute to keeping us sober. What I remember most about the litany was a phrase which said we should learn to "accept that which we cannot change". My hackles were up. I found that idea too fatalistic, believing that most things can be changed, apart from the fact of death, that is. Then we sat down and the meeting began.

People who felt moved to speak gave their case histories—all in matter-of-fact tones, rather as though they were relating an assortment of experiences common to us all, events likely to overtake most people during a lifetime. Marriages and partnerships had come to an end because all money coming into the house had been, either surreptitiously or openly, squandered on booze. Some people had lost their houses, businesses and jobs, their careers, the love of their spouses and children. A few of those present had spent nights on park benches often landing up in hospital to be dried out. Some were not regular drinkers but were now and then compelled to go out on nights of carousing, seeking asylum in pubs and in the company of other drinkers, consoling themselves and each other in their addiction.

Sitting amidst all this tragedy, endless cups of tea and overflowing ashtrays, I stayed silent but tearful. One thought, however, persisted in my mind and I knew I should be ashamed of it; it was that if we could all have a cosy drink together then we would, at least temporarily, be able to forget all our misery. It was fortunate indeed that what little wisdom I had prevented me from voicing this absurd, and somewhat revealing, notion.

Some alcoholics had sought refuge in religion, others in a simmering hatred of the social system under which we live. "I couldn't get a job" was one refrain. "I felt the world was a cruel place and there was very little compassion in it" was another. Politicians failed people and so did religion and much of what happened in our social order appeared not to make sense.

As a socialist I recognised what had sustained me over the years (as well as frustrating me and causing me enough rage to find me reaching for the bottle on occasion). I understood something about social alienation and if I had not been so overcome with emotion at the sad stories I heard that night, then maybe I would have told my own story, of years of reading and learning to analysis, at least to some extent, the capitalist system and the effect it can have on people's lives. If the propensity for alcohol is innate (and that is debatable) then the profit system, the National Lottery with its appeal to selfishness and greed, this grab-all environment against which we are expected to function, will always be a hindrance to the cure of sensitive people who bend under the strain of so much social tension.

I never returned to Alcoholics Anonymous, though I did kick alcohol for seven months. The truth is that I lacked the courage to re-visit the place where I had listened to so many harrowing stories . . . and so many heroic struggles with the demon drink.

Heather Ball

Another Life of Marx: Queues at Truth. (1929)

Book Review from the October 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Karl Marx,” by Otto Ruhle. Translated by Eden & Cedar Paul. Allen & Unwin, 15s.

This book has been written with a heavy hand. It is a curious mixture of contradictions, bitterness, excellent quotations and “modern” psychology. When a man gets on his hobby horse he is apt to leave the world of reality and ride off into the realm of dreams. The author of this book has a hobby horse and when he gets astride of it his dreams are ugly ones. Such was my view when half-way through the book, but as I read on I began to get suspicious. The blacks in the picture were put in a little too thickly and too often. The last two pages supplied the key, and I have come to the conclusion that the book was written for its last two pages and is, in fact, an apology and an excuse for the actions of German Social Democracy. However, I will deal with this last point later.

Now there are. already a number of Lives and Monographs of Marx in existence, including Liebnecht’s, Spargo's (the photos in which are practically identical with those in this book), Beer's, Ryazanoff's and others. Why then this new one, which, apart from mud spattering and some new quotations, adds nothing to what has already been done?

On page 371 the author sets out his psychological views upon the subject of his biography in the following terms:

   If we translate into psychological terms these principles of the method of historical materialism, we get the following. Man forms his character out of his organic constitution and his social and family position. The biological and social interests that promote his safeguarding find expression (unconsciously) in aims. The main trend of his behaviour arises with reference to these aims. Opinions, conceptions, ideas, manifest themselves as forms of expression of the individual's aim to safeguard his own existence. Decisive for each of us in the formation of character and in the development of trend of behaviour is, in the individualistic epoch, the urge to self-expression as an individuality, an urge dictated by the circumstances of life.
  When, in the light of these guiding principles, we contemplate the man Marx—contemplate him solely as a man, apart from his work—our attention is riveted by three characteristics:—
   First, his persistent ill-health, from which we infer that there was constitutional weakness or organic defect.
   Secondly, his Jewish origin, which he felt as a social stigma.
   Thirdly, his position as a first-born child.

The author then proceeds to elaborate his theory, the essence of which is that Marx suffered severely from an "inferiority complex” arising primarily from a bad constitution, and this was the motive that urged him to outstrip everybody and abhor a rival “near the throne.” The "scientific” nature of the author's analysis of Marx may be gathered from the following further quotation (page 376):

If, in the light of these considerations, we turn to examine the personality of Marx, we see the before-mentioned biological, social and family traits in a new and instructive light. But the traits in question are only the elements, the first crude constituents, of a psychological analysis— with which we have to content ourselves, since we lack more detailed materials as regards the life of Marx. Obviously, they do not suffice for an exhaustive analysis. Many of the gaps in our observation will have to be filled in artificially; a schematic construction will have to supplement the defects of observation. Nevertheless, we can get a great deal further than was possible by earlier psychological methods. Even if we do not achieve definitive knowledge, in this respect psychological analysis is no more inadequate than the other sciences, for science has to leave many ultimate problems open.

What all this amounts to, then, is that his view of Marx is guess-work; there are gaps, but these are filled up by assumptions! But if psychological science has not progressed far enough for an accurate analysis, why guess now? What was the urgency of the matter in this special case—particularly as the enemies of the Socialist movement are at their wits end for weapons with which to hinder our progress? And if so much of it is guess-work, why the particular bitterness of the diatribes against Marx by the author? The following are specimens of the author’s estimate of Marx. I have numbered each quotation for convenience in dealing with them:

(1) He (Grun) had wrongfully accused Marx of not protesting with sufficient vigour against expulsion from France, and Marx, who was always too ready to take offence, had therefore conceived an animus against Grun which formed the undertone of a fierce criticism of the latter's attitude towards the problems of Socialism, (p. 98.)
(2) . . . . One day, when Marx insisted upon the rejection of fanciful and over-enthusiastic schemes for universal happiness (passing by the name of Communism), Weitling advocated the cause of the Utopists, the dispute leading to an open breach between him and Marx. Since the latter had an unhappy talent for introducing personal animus into theoretical disputes, the relations between the two men were poisoned henceforward, and they became irreconcilable enemies, (p. 123.)
(3) There is no use blaming a man for his character. All we are to infer from these descriptions is that Marx, despite his thirty years, his extensive achievements and his reputation as a man of learning and a politician, was still what he had been in youth, one fighting to secure recognition, one doubtful as to his prestige. His arrogance, his self-conceit, his dogmatism and disputatiousness and irritability, must reveal themselves to everyone who understands human nature as masks for a lack of self-confidence, under stress of which he was perpetually trying to avert the danger of exposure. He could not listen quietly to an opponent, because he was afraid that his opponent might get the better of him if allowed to continue. He had to shout down every hostile opinion because he was haunted by spectral doubts lest this opinion should gain adherents and leave him unsupported. He tried to discredit his adversaries because he hoped that personal onslaughts would shake the validity of opposing arguments. He could not tolerate rivals because he was perpetually tortured with the dread lest it should become apparent in one way or another that not he, but his rival, was the ablest of the able, the most efficient of the efficient, the most revolutionary of the revolutionists.
   This domineering behaviour was animated by the unconscious conviction that he would be able to overawe the timid among his opponents. When he made fun of the opinions of others, he was trying to fortify the sense of his own superiority. When he crowned himself with anticipatory laurels, he did so in the belief that this would ensure his triumph, and entitle him to wear the laurel crown.
   Only one person would Marx allow to express opinions—Engels. The sole reason for his tolerance in this quarter was that he could rely on being able to use Engels’ remarkable talents for his own purposes as dictator, without Engels expecting any return or thanks, or grant of equality. As long as a collaborator was a willing servant, he could work on the best of terms with Marx. But when this collaborator expressed an opinion of his own, or claimed to assert his own will against that of Marx, the fat was in the fire. , Marx was a typical authoritarian. (p. 158.)

I will forbear quoting more, but there are numerous similar examples through the book. Now for a few remarks on the above.

(1) No evidence is given that Marx had “conceived an animus against Grun.” Surely an historian who claims to be scientific should at least give evidence for his charges? The justification for Marx’s “fierce criticism” is provided by Ruble himself. On the same page he gives the following description of Grun:

Among the “true Socialists,” perhaps the most notable was Karl Grun, a Westphalian. He had been one of Marx’s fellow students, and Moses Hess had made him acquainted with Engels. His socialist career had started from the radical “small-beer Liberalism.” Then he had coquetted with Fourierism for a time, until at length, having got into touch with Hess, he deviated towards early Socialism. All possible varieties of Socialism were jumbled together in his head. Out of borrowed and undigested thoughts from Proudhon, Feuerbach, Hess and Marx, he had brewed the most amazing elixir of happiness, whose formulas were aesthetically tinted and were couched in a feuilleton style. From Paris, writing hastily and irresponsibly, he sent his lucubrations to the German Press, and especially to the “ Triersche Zeitung.’’

(2) Weitlung, another of those towards whom Marx is accused of having a personal animus, is described by Ruhle as follows:

. . .  when Weitling turned up in Brussels, and joined the Workers’ Educational Society there, it became apparent that his development had proceeded no further, and that he had become infected with inordinate vanity, with an undue sense of superiority. He was continually miking about utopias and conspiracies, and imagined himself a prey to the persecution of envious rivals, (p. 122.)

Seemingly a very easy man to fall out with! But perhaps he also had the stomach-ache!

(3) This paragraph by the author is immediately based on the statement of Carl Schurz relating to a meeting he attended when he was 19. Schurz had hardly reached an age to give a dependable judgment. Besides, in harmony with the author’s theory, would it not be necessary to know all about Schurz and the other opponents of Marx to be able to decide whether their judgments were also vitiated by an “ inferiority complex.” In fact, according to this delightful theory, it would appear that one really “knows nothing about nothing," but just goes on guessing!

The paragraph is also similar in essentials to Bakunin’s description of Marx, the value of which may be gauged from the following:

Bakunin honestly endeavoured to be on good terms with Marx [How does Ruhle know?] and to avoid friction. But he could not entertain cordial sentiments for Marx. The two men differed too much in mental structure, in theoretical trend, and in fundamental attitudes towards the revolutionary problem, for this to be possible. Bakunin loved the peasants; detested intellectualism and abstract systems with their dogmatism and intolerance; hated the modern State, industrialism and centralisation; had the most intense dislike for Judaism and all its ways, which he regarded as irritable, loquacious, unduly critical, intriguing, and exploitative, Everything for which he had an instinctive abhorrence, everything which aroused in him spiritual repugnance and antagonism, was for him incorporated in Marx. (p. 280.)

Evidently another very difficult man not to fall out with! But the strangeness of it! In face of the above, Ruhle yet drags in Bakunin as a witness for the prosecution!

At the period Marx was carrying on his work the working-class movement was youthful; it was honeycombed with emissaries of the various governments, whose mission it was to undermine and destroy the movement. Men of all kinds of opinion found their way in and tried to impose their schemes upon the rest. Political job hunters endeavoured to use the movement as means to personal aggrandisement, and Governments were ever ready to buy off dangerous opposition with either money or flattery. Marx plunged into this welter of ignorance, chicanery and egotism and endeavoured to build-up a movement on sound principles with a clear understanding of the necessities of the time. He met with bitter opposition from the earnest as well as from the treacherous. Always surrounded by intrigue, was it any wonder that he was suspicious and occasionally lost patience? Particularly as his suspicions were proved in so many cases to have been well-founded.

It is quite easy for Mr. Ruhle, in these comparatively comfortable times in Germany, to sit back in his chair and see in Marx’s bitterness only the results of stomach-ache, but surely the accumulations of surrounding treachery and pettiness can play upon the strongest nerves until they eventually produce irritability without such irritability having its original source in a feeling of inferiority!

Ruhle complains of Marx’s attitude towards Bakunin and Lassalle. Surely anyone familiar with their actions must agree that, apart from political and economical unsoundness, they lent themselves to suspicion: Bakunin by his underground tactics and Lassalle by his showy methods. The historian of the present has written information in front of him that was not in the hands of those fighting at the time, and if there is to be praising or blaming then it should be accorded with this in mind—unless the author has the stomach-ache!

That Marx had adequate reason for his bitter hostility to Bakunin is surely borne out by the following quotation, when it is remembered that Ruhle is at much pains to show that Bakunin was professing friendship for Marx during that time:

At the Berne Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom. Bakunin had tried to induce the League to adopt a revolutionary programme, and to affiliate to the International. When this attempt failed, he resigned from the League, and. in conjunction with J. P. Becker, founded the International Alliance of the Socialist Democracy, also known as the Alliance of Social Revolutionaries. His aim now was to get this Alliance accepted as part of the International; then, by degrees, to excavate and absorb the International until, at last, the International would be replaced by the Alliance, (p. 283.)

A very pretty plan! He aimed at quietly smashing up the International, and yet Ruhle cavils at Marx for his bitterness! Mr. Ruhle is really too well-mannered a gentleman altogether.

(To be continued.)

Gilmac.

Link to Part 2

The Uses of Monarchy (1958)

From the March 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quite a thing has been going on recently concerning a picture of the Princess Margaret. This is virtually a repetition of what went on over the same painter’s portraits of the Queen and her husband, and there is no need here to add comments or repeat arguments. What is of greater interest is the trend of which this tiny storm is part: that is, that the Royal Family to-day is as constant a news-feature as football or film-star gossip and is, in fact, more popular than royalty has been since the nation-state began. When you consider that fewer than ninety years ago the reigning monarch was tipped as the last, and a vigorous republican movement was being led by prominent politicians and writers, it is obvious that the British monarchy has somehow had a boost in recent times.

Kings and Queens, traditionally, are romantic figures, the subjects of an inculcated mythology from everybody’s childhood. Every fairy tale revolves round them: once upon a time there was a Beautiful Princess or a Handsome Prince or a King who was Also a Magician. Elementary-school history devolves upon them: Merry Monarch, Good Queen, Peacemaker, Bluff King (never hooligan or wife-beater). For all that, the fact is that only for the last twenty years—if as long—has the Crown been really popular in Britain, and for a large part of the time it was very unpopular. Some idea of the change in the climate of opinion was given last year by the frenzy against critics of the Royal bearing and diction: the young Queen Victoria was ridiculed by cartoonists, and George V openly disparaged in the Press on his accession.

The idea of the monarch as head of the nation is a modern one, belonging to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and depending on the Crown’s holding no political power. Mediaeval kingship was a different thing. The king was supreme overlord, apex of the pyramid of feudal owning interests; his power was actual, deriving from and integral to the feudal system. This kind of monarchy declined as feudalism declined; as rival interests grew, the king became merely head of one of the contending factions. Edward IV, Richard II, Henrys Four, Five and Six were dependent on their factions, and their successors reasserted monarchy and appeared strong kings for a time only because the factions had exhausted themselves fighting.

The struggle against the monarchy was a vital part of the struggle of the rising commercial class. For half a century it held back for the struggles against the Papacy and Spain, but the storm was gathering before Elizabeth I’s reign ended. The bourgeoisie was a revolutionary class, needing control of the powers of government: the execution of Charles I was, in fact, the decapitation of an epoch.

After the swan-sang of the Restoration and James II's short, pitiful reign, the Whigs had one political aim above all others: to keep the Stuarts, with their feudal traditions and their Papal associations, off the throne. Even William III, brought and maintained by the Whigs as mere figurehead, was never pushed too far by them for fear he should name a Stuart as his successor.

Thus, the Hanover family was imported to be the new Crown dynasty, with nothing to commend them and the populace not prepared, as the 1715 and 1745 Rebellions showed, to lift a finger to support them. Drunken, stupid George I, of whom Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote “Our customs and laws were all mysteries to him, which he neither tried to understand, nor was capable of understanding if he endeavoured it.” and Lord Chesterfield said: “The King loved pleasure, and was not delicate in his choice of it. No woman came amiss to him, if they were very willing and very fat"; George II, full of senseless cruelty; George III, shaking hands with the trees in Windsor Park. Of the whole bunch, indeed, Sir Charles Petrie wrote in his Monarchy in the Twentieth Century: “There had clearly been a streak of abnormality . . . from the beginning.” A nineteenth-century poet, Landor, expressed it more feelingly:

“When George the Fourth from earth descended.
Thank God the line of Georges ended.”

However, it was with the Georges on the throne that the modern concept of monarchy developed. Bolingbroke’s Idea of a Patriot King, published in 1749, proposed (although Bolingbroke had the Stuarts in mind) the monarchy as the embodiment of national ideals, and after the final collapse of Jacobite opposition, this became accepted as the real function of monarchy. In fact, there were no interests now that the monarch could represent other than the “national” ones—that is, those of the propertied classes as a whole. No longer an overlord, removed from control of armed forces, set up in maintenance of bourgeois interests against those of the old order, the king had become King Capital’s torch-bearer.

Whatever remained of royal power and prestige sank to rock-bottom in Victoria’s early years. Her predecessors had shown as much interest as they were permitted in government; Victoria’s acquiescence established the convention that the Crown did not take part any more. The working class had little reason for enthusiasm, and the ruling class no longer had to support this dynasty in case something worse came along. When Victoria withdrew from public life after her husband’s death, a strong movement headed by Thackeray, J. R. Green. Morley. Joseph Chamberlain, Bradlaugh and several more asked if the monarchy were necessary at all. The movement faded, principally because the Empire-builders found the Crown too useful a figurehead, but the Crown had learned that it ought to show itself in public.

For that reason, the last years of Victoria's reign had royal display in plenty, and Edward VII gained still greater benefit from pageantry. It is doubtful if the monarchy became much more popular in Edward’s time, except among the beer-swilling and odds-laying sections, but he did open an important new field for the ruling class by carrying regal display—and with it, British interests— abroad. His visit to Paris, starting with compliments to actresses and ending with cheering crowds in the streets, in 1903 prepared the ground for the Franco-British Entente. Lansdowne and Grey conducted the negotiations, but the French President spoke of the “happy impetus” given to them by Edward's window-show. Subsequent monarchs and their families have done as much and more.

There has been one other important influence in the twentieth century in securing the position of the British monarchy: the rise of rival nations with other kinds of figureheads. First the Kaiser, then Mussolini. Hitler and Stalin caused the thought that, if this kind of thing were the modem alternative, there was something to be said for the British monarchy after all. George V was never greatly popular, but in the nineteen-thirties he was almost the only national figurehead in Europe whose public utterances were not inflammatory harangues on war and encirclement.

The real reason why the King never did so. apart from whatever personal inclination he may have had, was simply that it was not his place to speak as a leader or to state foreign policy. The monarchy in modem times is devoid of political power or autonomy. The last time a British monarch expressed himself independently on a political matter was when Edward VIII showed concern over the slums of Glasgow and South Wales; few people believed that the King’s wish to marry Mrs. Simpson was the only issue in the constitutional crisis of 1936. However, many people must have been given food for thought by the fact that potentially the most popular of all British monarchs was dismissed, as summarily as a worker from a factory, when he refused to toe the line laid down by the Cabinet on behalf of the ruling class.

If there was doubt among pro-capitalist politicians in the nineteenth century of the usefulness of monarchy, there is none today. The Conservative Party has never wavered in supporting monarchy, of course; and, since the first Ministers in the first Labour Government made their low obeisances, nor has the Labour Party. Indeed, in the Abdication crisis the Labour Party was solidly behind the Conservative Cabinet, and the Daily Herald's commentary was undistinguishable from that of the Mail or the Express. And since the war there has been ample opportunity—a royal wedding, an accession, a coronation, and a great deal of subsidiary display—to see the cap-touching and sycophancy which make plain the allegiance of a party which initially gained support by big talk about the abolition of privilege.

The only Labour criticism of royalty in fairly recent times was made from the viewpoint of what was good for Capitalism. Shortly after the coronation of George VI, Mr. Attlee spoke of the need for the Crown to come down to the man in the street a bit more—and found Conservatives agreeing heartily (“For them he must be no mere king in a gilt State coach.” wrote Wilson Harris in The Spectator). That policy was pursued with a vengeance, less with George VI himself than in the preparation of his daughter for the throne. No monarch ever started off so well for popularity: a popularity favoured by youth, romance and motherhood and skilfully fostered by every newspaper in the land (most of all, incidentally, by the pro-Labour Mirror and Pictorial).

The present Royal Family comes as close as any capitalist politician could desire to the modern monarchical ideal. No interference in politics, but a worthy interest in science; admirably suited to gather prestige abroad; most of all, a continual and absorbing attraction to the working class. There have been hints recently that the publicity has been overdone, that there have been too many chambermaids’ reminiscences and news items like the Sunday Pictorial’s announcement that the Queen's bust-line had improved to maintain the essential dignity of royalty. Nevertheless, the Crown today as never before embodies the national ideals—the ideals, that is, of the national ruling class.

But does monarchy serve any interest for ordinary people, beyond giving a holiday and a pageant now and then? It may be said that if it does them no good, it does them no harm either. If it were true that to fill people’s heads with nonsense did no harm, that might be so; and most of it is nonsense. There is no reason for thinking that the Queen and her husband are not pleasant decent people. If things were otherwise, however, the truth is that they would still be presented as paragons. Some monarchs have been cruel, irresponsible and contemptibly low, but their subjects have still been asked for reverence. Within a week of Edward VIII’s abdication his shortcomings were common knowledge, and Sir Charles Petrie (in the book already quoted) hinted at a strain of abnormality in Edward from the Hanover ancestry; would those things have been said if Edward had remained the King?

It is not the monarch that is at fault in all this, but the social system which needs a shining symbol; where there is no monarchy, something else has to be held up to dazzle the dispossessed. The man with the flag and the girl admiring the pictures in her magazine have the light full in their eyes just now—but they need only look away for a moment to see who holds it up, and why.

Robert Barltrop