Human Nature (1951)

From the December 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of all the bugs that have ever bitten the working class, the Human Nature one is perhaps the most persistent as well as the most illogical. There is certainly no socialist who has not heard repeatedly the statement that Human Nature is against Socialism, or that the people of this country would not stand for socialism.

Of course the words they choose to clothe their arguments are just as incorrect as the objection itself. It is Human Nature to eat when you are hungry, to drink when you are thirsty, and to sleep when you are tired. These things are part of the inherent nature of human beings as indeed of all biological organisms. Nothing can alter this and nobody wants to change it— least of all socialists. What is meant by Human Nature, as used by those who trot it out as an objection, is not human nature at all, but human behaviour. Now human behaviour is quite another thing and its roots are to be found principally in one’s environment and the economic conditions which influences one’s physiological make-up.

Man behaves in the way he does, very largely, although not completely, because of the conditioning he receives from his environment, since he is a social animal and lives in a community.

Normally a Bishop would not steal food, but if he were placed in an environment in which he had no choice but to steal food or die of starvation, his behaviour would be dictated by his environment. He would thus break the 8th Commandment, and be forced to excuse or justify himself by the unfortunate conditions in which he found himself (or which surrounded him).

Now what does the objector find in socialism which warrants his statement that human nature (behaviour) would not stand for it? His only answer appears to be that the workers would not tolerate the regimentation, the filling up of forms, and being told to do this, that, or the other. Indeed not only has the objector a false conception of human nature, but also (as usual), a completely false conception of Socialism. Who knows what the workers will or will not stand for? At least we can be sure that they have stood for two world wars almost without a murmur; and at present they appear to be standing for the preparation for a third.

In England they have stood for rationing for about 12 years, and with the end not yet in sight. They have stood for conservative and labour governments. "The labour party promised them everything and gave them nothing; while the conservatives promised them nothing and saw that they got it.” They have been through crises of unemployment and privations galore, and have received untold promises of better times to come if only they tighten in their belts and work for the common good. But in the end there still remains the struggle for their livelihood and the division of society into two classes, one of which owns the means of production and exploits the other.

Where therefore do the human nature objectors stand? Surely they are condoning the existence of a system which means the continuance of their own exploitation, whether they know it or not? Human nature (behaviour) can be made to tolerate some strange things. What socialism in effect means is the emancipation from exploitation by a ruling class, and if the workers won’t stand for their own emancipation, then things are certainly in a bad way.

Horace Jarvis

What's next for privatisation? (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

"They have monopolised everything that it is possible to monopolise: they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolised the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long time ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air — or of the money to buy it — even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessaries of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless they had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think so and say so. Even as you think at present that it's right for a few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: 'It's Their Land , It's Their Water'. It's Their Coal', It's Their Iron', so you would say ‘It's Their Air', 'These are Their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?’”

— Owen to his fellow workers in Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

Whatever Happened to "Full Employment"? (1974)

From the December 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

In The "Queen's Speech” on 29th October Mr. Wilson included a pledge about unemployment. "My government”, it read, "in view of the gravity of the economic situation, will as its most urgent task seek the fulfilment of the social contract as an essential element in its strategy for curbing inflation, reducing the balance of payments deficit, encouraging industrial investment, maintaining employment, particularly in the older industrial areas, and promoting economic and social justice.”

Maybe Labour Party supporters are reassured by this mumbo-jumbo, but they ought to examine the small print very carefully. If they do they will notice how the form of the pledge about dealing with unemployment has been discreetly watered down. Now it is part of a “strategy”, along with other aims, all of them dependent on the nebulous "social contract”, and the word “full” has been dropped. And all of it stems from the grave economic situation — their euphemistic way of describing a normal crisis of capitalism, aggravated by the inflation that Tory and Labour governments alike have brought about and are still promoting.

When the first post-war Labour government came into office in 1945, buoyed up with the fatuous belief that they had mastered capitalism and abolished crises for ever, their committal to deal with unemployment was in very different words. Then it was "Jobs for All” and "Full Employment”. In the early post-war years (due among other things to making good wartime destruction) unemployment was exceptionally low. In several years average unemployment then was under 300,000, about 1.2 per cent., and of course the Labour and Tory governments claimed credit for it.

Since the mid-fifties unemployment has been moving to higher levels, but as late as 1966 in the Wilson Labour Government John Diamond MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, boasted that they had got unemployment down from 1.6 per cent, to 1.2 per cent, and “that is how we propose to continue doing it" (Hansard, 6th March 1966). Capitalism, however, was not listening to Mr. Diamond and by the time they went out of office in June 1970 unemployment had gone up by about a quarter of a million to 579,000 (2.5 per cent.). In October 1974 it was 643,000 (2.8 per cent.), and with unemployment rising in most parts of the world the Government’s advisers are fearful that next year it may pass the million mark, as it did in 1972.

But if the politicians cannot prevent capitalism from following its normal course, with periodical higher levels of unemployment, their thoughts are turning hopefully to disguising it by “keeping the unemployed on the pay-roll”, paying subsidies to firms in difficulties instead of paying the money to the unemployed. A correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph (22nd September) estimated that subsidies to such companies were running at £2 million a week and that the jobs of 100,000 workers were involved. There is nothing the Labour Party will not try to do with capitalism — except abolish it.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Problem of Problems. (1925)

Book Review from the August 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Problems of the Labour Movement,” by P. Braun, price 2d.—The Labour Monthly, 162, Buckingham Palace Road, S.W.

Problems of the Labour Movement. What an imposing title for a booklet. And what an imposition upon the person who parts with his “tuppence” under the impression that he will learn something about the problems. For, throughout the 16 pages of this booklet, which includes a preface by Mr. A. J. Cook, of the Miners’ Federation, the problems confronting the workers are not even stated.

To tell us that there are eleven hundred trade unions in England, and to lament the disorganised state of the workers, both nationally and internationally, is not very helpful.

Unity, Unity, Unity, is the keynote of Mr. Braun’s attempt at outlining a policy for working class action. But one is compelled to exclaim, Words, Words, Words.

John Stuart Mill once pointed out that he who proclaims himself a champion of Liberty generally gained the sympathy of his hearers before he commenced to argue a word of his case. And there is a good deal of truth in this, judging by a type of mind not altogether uncommon in the Labour movement. The words “Unity, Solidarity, Freedom,” etc., among many “Labourist” and “Communist” ranters bring as much consolation as the blessed word “Mesopotamia” is supposed to have brought to the mind of a certain old lady.

All the talk in the world about “Unity” is so much clap-trap, unless it is dearly stated what the workers are to unite for. Even then, as our common experience shows, the plans outlined for unity, are more or less worthless. Not that Mr. Braun outlines any plan, he prefers to leave this as severely alone as the problems he set out to state.

Despite this adverse criticism of the Labour Party, he tells us that “the trade unions must organise an influence on the policy of that party,” and among other things, they are “to try to cleanse the Labour Party of lords, bankers, and merchants.”

What a revolutionary proposal! Why does not Mr. Braun go the whole hog and advise the trade unions to write to John Bull about it?

As though the average trade unionist in his present state of political and economic ignorance of his class position could make any fundamental difference on the policy of the Labour Party. Whilst, as far as the lords, bankers, and merchants are concerned, cleanse the Labour Party of these people and that organisation remains what it has always been, a hindrance to working-class emancipation. Or, as Mr. Braun sees it, “a pathway towards rank and career,” even though it be guided by those Mr. Braun styles as “the Left Elements.”

Let Mr. Braun and all those who talk so glibly about “Unity” take note that, as the fundamental problem confronting the workers is how to get rid of their exploitation and poverty, the basis for the organisation of the workers, must be the ending of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. But this means Socialist education, something more than opposition to the trickery of MacDonald, Thomas and Co. Given an intelligent working class, bent upon the removal of the real cause of their troubles, and Capitalism, let alone the MacDonald’s, and the Thomas’s, could not exist. The Socialist Party insists that the first step to unite the working class is to teach the workers that Socialism is their only real hope.

Robert Reynolds

Notes by the Way: The Basque Children (1937)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Basque Children

The rescue of Basque child refugees from General Franco's bombers was a natural gesture of sympathy on the part of workers' organisations in France, England and elsewhere. It provoked in certain quarters some disgusting exhibitions of religious and properties-class hatred and meanness. Although many Catholics actively associated themselves with the refugee committees, some of their less humane fellows used all their influence to prevent the children from being rescued and have since sought to get them sent back. On the plea that the children's religious faith was being harmed they were quite prepared to see their lives endangered. What they fear, of course—and rightly so—is that new contacts may start the children thinking for themselves and freeing themselves from religious shackles.

Other protesters, wealthy people who had never been known to object to the miserable half-starved lives of British children, suddenly became indignant at the idea of spending British money on foreign children while there is so much need for charity at home. The cost of upkeep of the refugees exposed the niggardliness of unemployment child allowances.

The whole gang, aided by some of the viler newspapers, gave distorted publicity to the unruly behaviour of some of the refugee boys. Smug town councils demanded that their lives and property be safeguarded and the hooligans sent back to be bombed. What did they expect of children who have seen the fabric of life destroyed by brutal war? And why not some of the tolerance they habitually show towards the periodical hooliganism of university gangs?

A news item (Sunday Express, September 19th, 1937) provides an interesting parallel with the protests against the refugee camps. The Swanage Town Council has asked the War Office not to send any more Officer Training Corps camps to the neighbourhood on the ground that the university men in the O.T.C. were guilty of various acts of hooliganism and were beyond the control of the local police. One councillor, a magistrate, added that the Territorials (not drawn from university ranks) were much better behaved.

The same gentleman, however, also disclosed something else which was getting the goat of Swanage shopkeepers, the fact that the O.T.C. camps bring all their supplies with them and buy nothing from the local shops. Perhaps this was the reason why so many voices were raised against the Basque children.

Rural Workers Who Cannot Afford Fresh Milk

The Shop Assistant (August 21st, 1937) publishes the following extract from the annual report of the Medical Officer of Health for the St. Faith's and Aylesham rural district of Norfolk: —

In the rural parts of this district there is a large number of households where fresh milk is not used, but the supply is by tinned milk. It is curious to find this occurring near farms. There are some cases in which the reason is given that too great a distance has to be covered to obtain milk, but in the majority of cases it is because the families cannot afford it.

The really curious thing about this is not that it happens, but that the medical officer finds it curious. It is typical of capitalist industry everywhere.

Building workers who cannot afford to live in the houses they build (sometimes even when these are so-called "publicly-owned" council houses), shipbuilders who cannot afford to travel, textile workers who are badly clothed, bootmakers with leaky boots, telephone linesmen who cannot afford a telephone. Yet the doctor finds it curious! What has a better claim to be regarded as curious is that workers who see and feel every day the results of private ownership should go on accepting it.

Mr. McGovern is Amazed

In the recent by-election at Springburn, Glasgow, at which the Labour Party candidate, Mrs. Hardie, was elected, Mr. McGovern, M.P., advised the members of the I.L.P. to refrain from voting. One of his reasons was that, although the Labour Party claims to be Socialist, the word "Socialism" was never mentioned once in Mrs. Hardie's election address (The Times, September 7th, 1937). Now, it would indeed by remarkable if a Socialist Party were to run candidates on a non-Socialist programme. Actually what has happened is not at all remarkable since it comes from the Labour Party, which is not Socialist. Where can Mrs. Hardie have learned this trick? Perhaps she learned it from her old acquaintance, Miss Jennie Lee. In 1928 Miss Lee was elected at a by-election at North Lanark. She was the I.L.P.’s nominee and they financed her. Her election address not only contained no reference to Socialism, direct or indirectly, but she did not even mention the I.L.P. or her membership of it. Mr. McGovern should see her about it.

Incidentally, he should also recall that it was the I.L.P. which reduced to a fine art the practice of pretending to be Socialist but running as candidates of the Labour Party on a non-Socialist programme. How else does he suppose that some 200 of its members got themselves into Parliament at the 1929 General Election? Mr. McGovern himself first got into Parliament as candidate of the Labour Party, which he knew was not a Socialist Party.

It is true that Mr. McGovern and his associates in the Independent Labour Party now include at least the words “Socialism" and “Socialist” in their election addresses, but they have made little other change. Votes are still solicited on every kind of reform; which means that the candidates know quite well that they are dependent on the votes of non-Socialists.

It is reported that Glasgow members and branches of the I.L.P. are returning to the Labour Party because they disapprove of Mr. McGovern’s action in advising them not to vote for the Labour candidate.


French Workers Learn by Experience

Fools are said to learn by experience. The working class are not fools—just doped with capitalist propaganda and blinded by leader-worship—but it seems that many experiences are needed before they learn. Every Labour Government, no matter where it exists, is an attempt to defy the truth that the only way that capitalism can be administered is a capitalist way. But still Labour Governments come and go, each one blind to the truth and oblivious of the fate of the last. In 1929 the Labour Government in Great Britain went into office “accepting the present order of society ” (Mr. J. H. Thomas, Daily Herald, July 6th, 1929). Its principal pledge was to reduce unemployment. Two years later it was out on its neck, with unemployment at a record height and capitalism jogging along. The Labour Party was still prepared to accept the present order of society, but the owners of the present order of society for the time being were not prepared to accept the discredited and not-very-competent Labour leaders. Major Attlee and his associates are now busy dressing themselves up for another performance, as purblind as ever.

In the meantime the French Labourites have tried a similar experiment, marked by the same infantile hopefulness in the impossible. In Great Britain in 1929 the Labour Government depended on Liberal votes in the House of Commons. In France the Labourites formed a coalition government with the Liberals, under the premiership, of Leon Blum. After running for a year Blum was forced to quit and hand over the premiership to a Liberal, still maintaining the "Popular Front,” though already the workers are sadly disappointed. It is to be hoped that they will learn how little can be done until capitalism has been got rid of.

Three newspapers which gave approval to Blum’s Government (Daily Herald, Manchester Guardian and The Times) have recognised the simple facts of the situation.

The Daily Herald (June 22nd, 1937), in an editorial, says that Blum fell because “he did not possess the confidence of the big men of property, of the financiers, and the bankers"; which provokes the thought that if Blum went into office prepared to govern "within the present social regime” (his own words, The Times, May 2nd, 1936), yet supposed he could do so without having the confidence of those who own the present social regime, it is time he began to wake up to realities.

The Times Paris correspondent has shown a remarkably clear appreciation of the role of Labour Government and of the narrow limits within which they can diverge from traditional Liberal and Tory policy. On August 23rd, 1937, The Times published an article from him in which he wrote that Blum’s “Socialist” Minister of Finance

Does not seem to have realised that within the framework of the capitalist system social reform can be paid for only out of the profits of industry, and that if the entrepreneur is frightened out of his wits profits disappear. . . .

Two weeks later (The Times, September 7th, 1937), in another article, he wrote: —

M. Blum now supports the Radicals because he has realised that, short of provoking a dangerous upheaval, the problems of a capitalist system must, if they are to be resolved with capitalist support, be met by capitalist methods. . . .

One action of the present Popular Front Government which is highly praised by the British Labourites is the amalgamation of the railways into a single company in which the Government will hold a majority of the shares. The workers expect that it will benefit them, a point on which they will be better informed when they have seen it at work. Just now the French railway shareholders are feeling grateful to the Popular Front Government, because the nationalisation scheme had the result that “ their shares have actually enjoyed a remarkable boom on the Bourse ” (Manchester Guardian, September 1st, 1937).

This recalls the way in which British capitalists supported the Labour Government’s London Passenger Transport Board, which, of course, had no more to do with Socialism than the French railway nationalisation has.

Beaverbrook Outbids the Labour Party

Not only on foreign policy, but on home policy also. Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express is interesting as an example of the way avowed defenders of capitalism can outbid the Labour Party at the game of vote-catching by social reforms. A few of the planks in the Daily Express's policy during recent years are: Higher wages, paid holidays, shorter hours, State control of banking, and now the drastic curtailment of inherited wealth by means of much heavier death duties. (“There is only one serious complaint to be made against death duties. They are not nearly steep enough”—Express editorial, September 15th, 1937.) So successful is this policy that the Daily Herald's 2,000,000 circulation has fallen a bad second to the 2,400,000 of the Express.

It can be said, of course, that Beaverbrook has one policy for the Express and another for the Evening Standard. This is an old game of the Press barons. While Odham's Daily Herald backs the Labour Party’s new pension scheme, a regular contributor to Odham’s People (August 22nd, 1937) poured cold water on it.

“Not for the Prime Purpose of Making Profits"

Lord Beaverbrook, in a signed pronouncement in the Evening Standard (September 9th, 1937), has this: —

The Daily Express is not run for the prime purpose of making profits. This newspaper is a public institution, which, in the national interest, sacrifices money to the main plan of serving the public.

We now await an invitation from Beaverbrook to serve his public by stating the Socialist case in the Daily Express, and we know that with the price of newsprint rising the Daily Express will not try to reduce its size in order to save profits, and we expect when Beaverbrook dies he will turn out to be a poor man—worth only £2,000,000 instead of £5,000,000.

It is all very noble and touching, only we don’t believe it.

The Ellerman Fortune—What Price Social Reforms?

A news item in the Evening Standard (September 8th and 9th, 1937) gives a staggering jolt to the hoary belief of the Labourites that you can gradually tax the capitalist out of existence and find yourselves sliding imperceptibly into Socialism. Sir John Ellerman, after a life of accumulation of the proceeds of the exploitation of the workers, left property worth £40,000,000, of which £17,000,000 was in cash and Government securities. Under the death duties the State took £22,000,000, leaving a paltry £18,000,000 for the heir. On the authority of Sir William Cox, manager of the Ellerman estate, the Evening Standard states that the value of the estate has increased in four years back to the original level of £40,000,000! This as any economic textbook will tell you, must have been due to the brains and work of the present Sir John Ellerman, but the Evening Standard says it is due to the all-round rise in share values:—

Some people have expressed surprise at so rapid an expansion. An examination of the increase in the values of property and securities during the last four years shows that such a growth is by no means exceptional.

It looks as if it will take capitalism quite a long time to die from death duties.

Simultaneously with the above news item, the Labour Party published its brand-new plan for old-age pensions of £l at 65. It will cost £80,000,000 a year, rising in ten years to £90,000,000 a year. As however, under a Labour Government “there will be strict limits . . . to what is practicable to add to the Budget,” the scheme is to be a contributory one: the workers are to pay 1s. men and 9d. women per week in order to qualify (see “ Labour’s Pension Plan,” " National Council of Labour,” 2d., page 29).

When the Labour Party say that expenditure of £80,000,000 a year is not practicable they don’t mean that the Ellerman’s cannot afford it, but that they won’t pay.

The moral of which is, get rid of capitalism, but as the Labour Party pamphlet goes on to say, rather unnecessarily: —

We shall not be living under Socialism during the period of office of the next Labour Government.

The Labour Party should ask Lord Southwood, who is associated with Sir John Ellerman in the recent purchase of Illustrated Newspapers, to tell them about the Ellerman fortune. Lord Southwood (formerly Mr. Elias) is head of Odhams, who own the Labour daily, the Daily Herald.

The Inefficient Russian Dictatorship

One of the popular features of Communist propaganda in the days before they became ashamed of dictatorship and went all democratic was the argument that dictatorship is so very efficient because it doesn’t waste time on talk and doesn’t allow the “stupid” rank and file, in their ignorance, to elect rogues and fools to positions of responsibility. (Nowadays the Fascists can be heard putting over the same arguments.) If ever there was a living example of its falsity the Russian dictatorship provides it. Never a day passes now without more declarations by the Russian Government that its hand-picked men in high places are corrupt and inefficient, rogues and fools, spies and wreckers. One instance out of many is of special interest because it relates not to one of the original hand-picked regional dictators but to the man who was picked to succeed one who had been thrown out only a short while ago. He is Abdullah Rakhimbayev, Premier of the Soviet Republic of Tadjikstan.

He was appointed as recently as 1934 to succeed a former premier discovered to be a "counter-revolutionary." The new genius was instructed to clean things up. This, according to the Moscow correspondent of the Daily Herald (September 13th, 1937), was how he did it: —

   Rakhimbayev was revealed here to-day to have lived like an Oriental potentate, with a harem of three wives.
   One of the wives was an Uzbek, the second was a Tartar, and the third an Ossetian, from Georgia.
  Rakhimbayev, it is asserted, inherited his feudal attitude and habits from his father, a prominent landowner.
   He used to travel about Tadjikstan with the pomp once accorded to the Emir of Bokhara.
   Peasants were treated with the utmost contempt by the Premier’s retinue, and on one occasion 500 collective farmers were forced to trudge eight miles to meet Rakhimbayev.
  (Rakhimbayev was appointed in 1934 to succeed a counter-revolutionary. He was instructed to “bring back Tadjikstan into the proper road of a model Socialist Republic.”)

With all its faults, democracy was never so stupid and stultifying as dictatorship, and it will take more than the new fake democratic constitution to clean up the mess produced or perpetuated by dictatorship in Russia.

Labour Programme of the Indian Nationalists

Mr. V. V. Giri, Minister for Labour and Industries in the Indian Congress Government of Madras, spoke on July 25th about the policy the Government will pursue: —

   You all know that Congress stands for the fundamental rights which have been described by the famous Karachi Resolution. Chief among them being freedom of association and combination, freedom of speech and of the Press, living wage for industrial workers, limited hours of labour, healthy conditions of work, protection against economic consequences of old-age, sickness and unemployment, abolition of contract labour, right of labour to form unions to protect their interest, and a suitable machinery for settlement of disputes through conciliation, substantial reduction in agricultural rent or revenue paid by the peasantry, control over exchange and currency policy to help Indian industries and bring relief to the masses, control by the State of key industries, and ownership of mineral resources and control of usury.
   I do not for a moment claim that this programme is cent, per cent. Socialism, nor do I say that it must satisfy all Socialists. But I am bound to admit that these fundamental rights should be the basis for all workers to unite and organise the economic life of the masses, by organising every peasant in every village and every worker in every industry.—(Indian Labour Journal, August, 1937.)

Good Old Capitalism

The blessings of this capitalist era: —

   Ours is an age of banditry, piracy, civil wars, savage aggressions, guerrilla struggles, frontier fights, gangsters, gunmen and graft, interesting for future historians, never dull for those of who stay alive. —(Daily Express, September 22nd, 1937.)

   No one who examines the evidence can doubt that, actually, the use of torture is more widespread to-day than it was half a century ago.—(Report on treatment of prisoners: “The Accused. An International Survey,” issued by the Howard League for Penal Reform.) 

                                                MALNUTRITION.

   One result of the inquiry into nutrition had been a relisation of the deplorable malnutrition which existed to a smaller or greater degree in all countries of the world. This inquiry had demonstrated in a remarkable manner the fact that malnutrition could not be eliminated without a general improvement in the standard of living.

   Vital statistics showed clearly the connection between poverty on the one hand and ill-health and premature death on the other. Even in advanced countries death rates were 60 per cent. higher in poor areas than in well-to-do. Infantile mortality was as 2 to 1, while the death rate from tuberculosis was as 4 to 1. Could they reconcile it with their consciences that such contrasts should continue to exist? Would the general mass of the people continue to tolerate them?—(Mr. Bruce, representing Australia, at the League of Nations Assembly, September 21st, 1937. Times, September 22nd.)

Edgar Hardcastle

A New Campaign: Join the CCD (1962)

From the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

No, this is not a misprint. It stands for The Campaign for Chemical Disarmament which, doubtless, will soon start up when frustrated members of CND and others looking for good causes to follow have digested the facts recently given in an article in The Guardian under the title "U.S. Arsenal revised. Chemicals for defence”.

From the article is appears that the U.S. Army's projected expenditure for 1963 on research and development shows a drop of 20 per cent, on nuclear weapons and an increase of 67 per cent, on chemical and biological warfare. This, by the way, is a “faint ray of hope” for humanity, according to the former Chief Officer of the U.S. Army, General Creasy, who is reported to have said in 1959 that these weapons could lead to a “less total form of war". Apart from other possible results of chemical warfare, such as the interruption of nerve signals in the body causing convulsions and death, there are such effects as temporary paralysis, deafness, blindness and mental aberration. So much for less total forms of war!

Elsewhere in the article is mentioned the Hague Protocol signed by certain nations after the First World War and ratified by Great Britain (although not the United States) by which it was agreed not to use poisonous gases and chemicals in warfare. Yet a few weeks ago consternation was caused by the finding of hundreds of cylinders of mustard gas on a beach in Wales, manufactured by Britain during the Second World War and subsequently dumped. So much for the agreements between nations which the CND and similar organisations would have us believe will preserve us against the use of terrible weapons. The fact that gas was not used during the 1939/45 war only means that it was recognised as a rather inefficient method of murdering opponents, depending as it does on weather conditions. The same attitude, it may be added, did not apply to the napalm bomb or the flame thrower.

And so far we have only been discussing chemical weapons. So-called biological warfare is still very secret, although a year or two ago it leaked out that scientists were working on germs which could wipe out cities with far less trouble than hydrogen bombs and, what is more, leave property unharmed!

History has shown that summit meetings, treaties and promises come to nothing when the operations of capitalism force governments to protect their spheres of interest, if necessary, by war. Weapons will be manufactured secretly and held in reserve for the right moment. Equally we know that governments have not shrunk from using such weapons however terrible, when the interests of capitalism demand it.

Nobody can say that they will not do so again.

S. Goodman

A Dirty Lie (1919)

From the February 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the “Daily Chronicle” of Jan. 24th appears the following, purporting to be sent by that paper’s “diplomatic correspondent.” It occurs in a pronouncement dealing with Wilson’s proposal to ask Russian representatives to a conference on one of Prince’s Islands.

The conditions of existence in Russia were shown to be appalling; the nationalisation of women and other facts of Bolshevik rule pointed to a species of organised depravity.

Whoever this “diplomatic correspondent” may be he is a filthy-minded liar. His statement that the Russian Revolutionaries have nationalised women is so ridiculous one would think only the mental and moral dregs of the bourgeoisie could swallow it. It bears the impress of the organised campaign of slander and villification which the parasitic ruling class invariably launch against any section of the working class which has the temerity to challenge its supremacy. Such stuff is written for working-class consumption. Our masters, arguing that a class which will for ages permit themselves to be plundered by another class must be fools indeed, never hesitate to show their contempt for working-class intelligence, and too often they are justified by results. But in this instance, surely, they have reached a little too deep into their mental cesspool in their eagerness for unnameable filth to throw at those they are at a loss to combat in any other way. The muck they have reached up reveals its source in its stench. It stinks of capitalism. It reeks of the system in which, as notorious cases at present before the Courts show, the young beautiful women—nay, children, for “suffer little children to come unto me” is no less the command of the capitalist ravishers than the capitalist Christ, and their victims often are dead and buried before they can be called women—of the working class are at the disposal of the “rich friend”—private monopoly, not nationalisation! Note the difference.

No, working class revolution has never yet failed to effect a moral cleansing. When the Commune of Paris was in being the prostitutes of Paris flocked to Versailles, to their bourgeois patrons. In Paris no woman had to sell herself for food under the Commune. Prostitution is a pillar of capitalism, a common foundation of starvation wages. That this feature of the system of private property should assume a “nationalised” form along with the “nationalisation" of all the other means by which they are enabled to plunder the workers easily enough suggests itself to the filthy minds of the capitalists, and it goes without saying that there will be some mugs in the workers’ ranks ready to swallow the noxious concoction. 

J.

Editorial: "What Will He Do With It?" (1919)

Editorial from the January 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Martial Law General Election has come and gone. As was generally expected, the “Coalition” gang got there. They polled, in the United Kingdom, 5,091,528 votes, against 4,589,486 polled by the non-coalitionists. Thus they had a majority of 52 per cent of the votes cast. This astounding majority, we are seriously informed, overwhelmed David Ll. G. But, as showing how minorities fare under capitalist “democracy,” it may be remarked that this five per cent. vote majority gives the Coalition (leaving Ireland out of it) a majority of some 317 seats.

For us, of course, the election was bound to provide consolation prizes. It is sweet to observe that Butcher Asquith has got left, and it is sweeter than saccharine tablets to note that J. R. Macdonald has bitten the dust. The Liberal henchmen have proved who their masters are, alike in the defeat of men like Henderson and Macdonald who have been unfortunate enough to lose their masters’ support, and in the victory of men like Thorne who, openly flouting their “labour” crutches, clung frantically to the hand that doles them out their £400 a year, and found, if we may mix the metaphor in a good cause, that they had backed the right horse.

And now Lloyd George goes on to juggle with his promises. Pledged up to the hilt to Home Rule for Ireland, he is going to carry it with a vast Unionist majority! He is going to make a “beautiful new world” with a majority of the stoutest defenders of the old sordid and bestial working-class environment. Well, we hope the workers are about to learn a few useful lessons—and we think they are.

Another Election Lie.

At the fag end of the election campaign Lloyd George made a bid for the soldiers’ votes by declaring for rapid demobilisation and no conscription after the war. As to the first, we shall see presently what he means by that, but as for the second, he has warned us beforehand that he was simply lying.

Earlier in the campaign the wily one said that the question of Conscription depended upon the terms of the peace settlement. He was opposed to Conscription, he said, but if other countries had large armies—why, of course, and so on. He at the same time declared that Britain must retain her navy, which he said is a defensive force.

Now it must be obvious that if Britain is to retain her gigantic navy other countries are going to provide themselves with instruments of defence. The American Naval Secretary soon showed this when he declared that “It was his firm conviction that if the Versailles Conference did not result in a general agreement to put an end to naval construction the United States must bend its energies to the creation of incomparably the greatest navy in the world.” (‘"Star,” 31.12.18.)

It is sheer rubbish to talk of the Navy as being a defensive weapon. Lloyd George’s persistent claim that without the British Navy the Allies had never won the war proves that it was an offensive instrument of the first order. If it were merely a defensive weapon then it might be extinguished in a general disarmament. But Lloyd George says no, it must be retained. And Secretary Daniels, knowing that it is the factor in the control of trade routes, and therefore of.the world market, declares that America does not intend to be shut out of the world market.

And so there we are. The game is about to begin all over again—and nobody knows it better than Lloyd George. So when he says that he is in favour of no-conscription he is only lying to catch votes. He tells us the truth when he says Conscription in this country depends upon what obtains on the Continent, for that means that he is already preparing to institute it as an integral part of the “beautiful new world.”

Confirmation!

“If Germany had waited a single generation she would have had a commercial empire of the world.”

Thus spake President Wilson in Rome on Jan. 3rd. Strange, is it not, how our opponents and apologists for the war prove the correctness of our statements regarding the root cause of the conflict and belie their own beatitudes concerning the high ideals which have actuated the Allies. Can it possibly be that they find, when the bill is finally presented, and shows ten million naval and military deaths alone, to say nothing of the millions of other deaths for which the war is responsible, that the old shallow bunkum of honour and the like is really too absurdly inadequate, and that is better to rely on the truth—that it was an economic war?

Obituaries: Tommy Jones and Willie Stewart (1992)

Obituaries from the July 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

From his daughter we have learned of the death of Tommy Jones at the age of 84. He was active in the old Hamilton branch and was its secretary during its ten-year existence.

Tommy had a hard life: he worked down the pit and in foundries for many years and struggled to bring up a large family, but he always did what he could for the party in the Hamilton area.

We also learned at the same time that Willie Stewart, another old Hamilton stalwart, had passed away. Although disabled from an early age Willie never missed an opportunity to forcefully put over the socialist case. He was 86.

Tommy and Willie were lifelong friends as well as comrades and they never wavered in their commitment to the party. We extend our condolences to their families.

Much Ado About Nothing (1951)

From the February 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Listeners tuning in late to the Light programme at 8 p.m. on 11th January probably thought they were hearing a knockabout cross talk act by the Crazy Gang. A perusal of the “Radio Times” however would inform them that it was an "argument between two controversialists from opposite sides of the House of Commons.” Dr. Chas. Hill, erstwhile Radio Doctor and Lib.-Cons. members for Luton and Beds., and Douglas Houghton, Labour member, Sowerby, Yorks. The Doctor kicked off by expressing his ardent desire for a stronger Government. After he had reiterated this several times we begin to feel that his proposed ideal government would be so strong it would positively stink. Sounding very much like an irate and peppery Colonel about to throw an apoplectic fit or burst a bloodvessel, he ranted of the Fuel Crises, Housing shortages. Rising Costs and Government expenditure. His opponent tried to keep his end up, questioning if Conservatives had in the past or would in the future do any better. He hadn’t the Doctor’s booming volume or bulldozer approach and was bogged down like a centipede in wet sand. The "argument” more or less developed into a slanging match, at times both speakers "hogged” the air simultaneously, the Chairman endeavouring to maintain some semblance of order and guide the course, not very successfully. Houghton got in a dirty crack about the Drs. "bedside manner,” the point of it we lost in the general melee. He also called attention to the Labour Government’s “achievements” since 1945. But spluttering like a damp squib on firework night the Doctor once again asserted that a stronger government was needed and called passionately for an early General Election. Again he poured his wrath on the Fuel Crisis, the Chairman headed him off but he dived back again later like a homing rabbit or a dog to its juiciest bone. Towards the end Houghton recovered his wind a bit and made a brave try. (The Daily Graphic of 12th January, referred to the whole thing as a “Hot talk with a tepid reception.")

The Chairman then spoke a few soothing words and said they are not really cross, they’re grinning at one another. Possibly because each flattered himself he had put up a good show—in raucous cacophony they certainly had, but reasoned or intelligent argument, definitely no. In future when we read in our daily papers that “pandemonium reigned in the House” we shall visualise this exhibition multiplied and magnified, a veritable Tower of Babel.

This “argument” was the 2nd of a series of three. The writer missed the first by accident and will miss the third by design.

F. M. Robins

UFOs identified (2011)

From the May 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Saddam Hussein did not have any Weapons of Mass Destruction. But America has. Many. And stored all over the world, including in England. And, of course, in the United States itself, including the Nevada nuclear test site southwest of the Nellis Air Force Range, also known as Area 51 shown on old maps. Up to 1994, the Pentagon denied the existence of the so-called Dreamland base, although later that year the US Air Force (USAF) finally admitted to its existence. Even now, much of what goes on at “Area 51” is officially secret.

Lockheed

Area 51 was founded in 1954 as a secret base in which the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation could develop spy-planes, and other aircraft, for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Lockheed first developed, and constructed, the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft there. More than 55, in various versions, are known to have been built, according to Jeffrey Richelson in his The U.S. Intelligence Community (p.157).

On November 24, 1954, at a meeting with CIA chief Allen Dulles and other top officials, President Eisenhower gave approval for a programme to build 30 special high performance aircraft at a cost of $35 million. Richard Bissell, CIA Director of Plans, was given responsibility for the project. On August 8, the following year, the first plane, designated Utility-2 (or just U-2) made its official flight from the secret CIA facility at Groom Lake, Area 51, in Nevada. By 1956 the CIA deployed the first two U-2s from the RAF airbase at Lakenheath (American Espionage and the Soviet Target, Jeffrey Richelson, pp.140-142).

On October 29, 1956 the US Air Force awarded Lockheed a further contract to develop Weapons System 117L, later known as Pied Piper; and in 1958, Dulles and Bissell obtained Eisenhower’s approval to develop a follow-on aircraft to the U-2, the SR-71, also developed by Lockheed. By then Lockheed were well-established in Nevada, at Area 51.

UFOs and Aliens from Mars?

For decades, maps of a vast area beginning about 100 miles north of Las Vegas merely showed nothing more than barren desert. Yet there are roads, building, bunkers and a massive runway. And much more besides. There are within Area 51.

Public access to the area is strictly forbidden. One notice states: “Photography of this area is prohibited. 18 U.S.C. 795.” Another, ominously, says: “WARNING. Restricted Area. It is unlawful to enter this area without permission of the Installation Commander. See 21, Internal Security Act of 1950, U.S.C. 795. While on this Installation all personnel and the property under their control are subject to search. Use of deadly force authorized.” Indeed, trespassers have been arrested, put in leg-irons, strip-searched, heavily fined and even jailed for ignoring the warning signs.

Not surprisingly, ever since the Area 51 base was established, people reported seeing odd-looking objects in the sky. Rumours of alien spacecraft, and little grey or green men from Mars, abounded. At first, such claims were rubbished. There were no UFOs, they asserted. No little men.

In 1997, however, the CIA admitted that it had lied about alleged UFOs, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s. They weren’t from Mars or outer space but they did, and do, exist. To some extent, it probably suited the authorities for observers to imagine they had seen flying saucers from outer space.

The CIA Comes Clean

In a report, “The CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90”, published on the 3rd August 1997, the Agency admitted it had lied to the public about the real nature of UFOs, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s to preserve secrecy during the Cold War.

It admitted the validity of reports of hundreds of sightings from the public, aviation experts and pilots. Initially, they were supersonic spy planes such as the U-2 and Blackbird.

Said the report:

“More than half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights…
This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears, and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project.”

Commenting on the CIA report, the Guardian (4 August 1997) says:

“The planes were built at Area 51, or Dreamland base, in Nevada, whose existence the Pentagon still denies. The U-2s flew to more than 60,000 ft and the Blackbird to 80,000 ft.”

The CIA report added that the decision to paint the aircraft black, as well as with the Stealth bombers was, not just to camouflage them militarily, but to reduce UFO sightings. The report noted that, originally, the U-2s’ silver bodies “reflected the rays of the sun,” encouraging the sightings of “fiery objects.” At the time, and for years after, UFO fever became a huge obsession in the United States, notes the Guardian.

More recently UFOs were reported over Afghanistan and Pakistan. These, in fact, are unmanned drones. Although the CIA, or any other US government agency, is unlikely to admit it, it is more than likely that these pilotless aircraft, which have caused havoc, and killed and injured many people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, were also developed at the Area 51 site.

What a useless and destructive waste of natural resources!

Peter E. Newell

Reading . . . (1924)

From the June 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing- an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had ' need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know what he doth not.”

Francis Bacon

Schooled for capitalism (1991)

From the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

When our first daughter was eighteen months, there came through the post some pictures to colour, some stickers and a mobile. “Congratulations! You’ve won a FREE Rupert Funpack in our competition”, said the accompanying blurb. Which was news to me because I didn’t even know we had entered. You thought Rupert Bear was a creation with a taste for natty scarves and a propensity to talk in rhyme? Wrong. Rupert has become an investment adviser. Rupert has diversified into Unit Trusts.

The sales pitch is aimed at the emotional underbelly of the anxious parents who, being unaware of socialism, still realise that there is never something for nothing in capitalism. The investment can easily grow into the kind of money they’re going to need when it’s their turn to face the world, wheedles Rupert. Think of the cost of a car. the deposit on a house, think of all the money your child is going to need when they reach adulthood. How can you refuse an offer couched in those terms? Easy. Investigate socialism, a society based upon production for use, not profit.

But we’re still living in a capitalist society. Capitalists arc determined to keep it that way. A little indoctrination goes a long way. Especially when your child enters the laughingly-called education system. In May 1990, a guidance document on education for economic and industrial understanding was published by the National Curriculum Council. It outlined ways in which the government wanted to see schools introduce pupils to greater economic understanding and awareness. It gave examples of how pupils might be taught to develop an interest in commerce and the economy and learn how to handle their own finances. It suggested that seven-year-olds learn about money through tackling simple maths problems. John MacGregor, the then Education Secretary, said:

We have been encouraging too many of our brightest youngsters to go into non-profit-making activities. I think it is important that more of them understand that we live in a competitive world, including the need to make a profit by meeting customers' requirements.

The Education Secretary was obviously ignorant of the fact that profits derive from the economic exploitation of the majority by a minority ruling class. Or was he?

The enterprise education unit at Durham University is also doing its bit to instil free market values into children. With financial backing of £200,000, given by Marks & Spencer, the Durham University Business School has devised a scheme to teach children as young as five how to become “classroom capitalists”. They are to be encouraged to run their own business and enterprises. The scheme intends to show five- to eleven-year-olds, by the use of comic-strip instruction books, how to make a business plan and how to borrow money from a bank. Durham University’s David Absalom, denying that the scheme would brainwash children into Thatcherite thinking, said

"It’s not political. We hope the children will become more enterprising and have more confidence in their ability to communicate. negotiate and work with other people”. There has been an increase in the number of sightings of flying pigs in the Durham area recently.

The status quo

Emphasising other areas, such as law and order, nationalism and responsibility to society—capitalist society— reinforces the acceptance by the individual of an economically exploitative social system. Education for Citizenship, a draft report prepared for the National Curriculum Council, suggests that from the age of five children should be taught to be active citizens. It says a fundamental requirement placed upon all citizens in a civilized society is the need to acknowledge and accept the rule of law.

The success of the type of tactics employed on the young and impressionable is evinced by the results of a survey carried out for industry at the end of 1989. A survey of attitudes amongst 16- to 24-year-olds found that they were rejecting idealism, looking after number one. and turning against minority groups. A third of those surveyed were racist, a half were homophobic and ninety-four per cent thought that hard work was the key to success. (Young Britain: A Survey of Youth Culture in Transition). These findings, no doubt, give quiet satisfaction to the ruling class who can consider the money it costs them to train the working class and instil acceptance of the status quo into them well spent.

But the cost of training future generations of workers has to come from the total share of the surplus value expropriated from the working class by the ruling class. So why do the working class any favours? A study conducted by government education inspectors at the end of 1989 found that primary schools are increasingly relying on money from parents for a reasonable stock of school books. At the beginning of 1990, MacGregor ruled that schools could charge pupils rent for classroom lockers and parking space in bicycle sheds.

As my daughters reach their teens in the twenty-first century, what can they look forward to? They may come out of the "educational” system with a few certificates and the opportunity to encumber themselves with a loan to fund their passage through university. Perhaps they will think that continued training will result in their getting a "good job". What aspirations for their lives may they have? Well-paid wage slavery? Marriage? House owned by building society? Children? Will they still unconditionally accept a social system that limits their potential to experience the fullest possibilities of emotional, personal and social growth with its reduction of all human experience to a cash nexus? Will their continuing exposure to the prevailing ideas in society, those of the capitalist class. have turned them into homophobic, racist, right-wing, sullen youngsters?

Enough is enough

Capitalism is an anarchic market system—it lurches from boom to crisis with the regularity of the sun rising every morning. It is unnecessary for this generation or the next, or the next, to wait until life has become so intolerable under capitalism that the majority decide enough is enough and look for the alternative. By then it may be too late. By then there may not be a society or planet left to change. The alternative exists now. All that is standing in the way of a transition to a social system based upon production for use, not profit, is a lack of understanding of capitalism, and of a determination and political will on the part of a majority of the worldwide working class to alter the insane society in which we live, capitalism, for a sane one. socialism. It's not enough simply to create another life. That life has to have a future. Which future would you rather have for your children, capitalism or socialism?

Dave Coggan

Obituary: Sidney Beck (1969)

Obituary from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Members who remember the familiar figure of our comrade Beck selling the Socialist Standard and other literature at his post in Hyde Park through fair weather and foul, will be sorry to hear that he died in hospital last December. Sidney Beck joined the Party in 1938 though he had been a sympathiser since the early 1920s. He was well-read and was for a number of years, Secretary of our Hackney Branch. "Beck” as he was known simply to other members, spoke several languages and could always lay his hands on any book that was wanted. Many members were encouraged and taught a lot by Beck, and we will remember him with affection and pride.

Adam Buick

English Journalism. (1925)

From the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “In England, Journalism, except in a few well-known instances, not having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a really remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people’s private lives seems to me quite extraordinary.
  “The fact is that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything except what is worth knowing.
   “Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmen-like habits, supplies the demands. In centuries before ours, the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump.
   “That was quite hideous.
   “In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the keyhole.
   "That is much worse.”

Oscar Wilde.