The M.C.H. Again. (1926)

From the August 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

We call it the M.C.H., familiarly, and easily, because it does not seem such a mouthful as the Materialist Conception of History. Now the M.C.H. presents a difficulty to Mr. F. W. Wood, who writes us from Hackney, a difficulty of a quite peculiar kind. He asks us to publish his letter, and for the benefit of himself and numerous friends, requests our reply. We regret his letter is too diffuse to publish in its entirety, but his point can quite fairly be condensed into a short statement. Here follows the condensation. Mr. Wood has been a supporter of the Socialist Party for years. He thinks he can now claim he has a clear insight into the position of the S.P.G.B. With an unfortunate exception. It is this: He accepts the Materialist Conception of History in its entirety. He is a materialist first, last and all the time. But he finds he has to apply his "materialism” to capitalist society. He further finds that the working class at present seem determined to try the Labour and Communist route to the Promised Land, rather than ours. He agrees, the condition of the working class will get steadily worse, but deplores that the time when they will be compelled to take revolutionary action is inconceivably remote. This brings him to his main point. "If Socialism is still in the dim future, why should I spend time, money and energy in propagating and expounding Socialism, when I sincerely think I will never survive to see that new social order." Mr. Wood asks for a reply "free from vindictiveness,” and not making a butt of him. He shall have it, though we are mildly curious as to why he should make such an observation. Does our journal strike anyone as vindictive? Perish the thought. Honest expression of opinion, and integrity of thought and motive, have nothing to fear but similar qualities from ourselves.

However, to get back to the difficulty. May we suggest, without vindictiveness of course, that our correspondent is a little at sea with his terms. He is a materialist, he says. What does that word mean, precisely? We have found it mean different things to different people. It is often used as a synonym for selfishness. It is often given a sinister twist by 'being coupled with "grossly”—grossly materialist. It is sometimes applied to a plain, matter-of-fact individual who responds to no sentimental or idealist appeals. But these are all colloquial meanings. In philosophy it has a fairly definite meaning, but as Mr. Wood is not concerning himself with philosophy, that need not detain us. But a materialist in any of these senses need not necessarily subscribe to the M.C.H. We think it reasonably certain that Mr. Wood is using the term in the anti-sentimental sense, for he says, why should he give his time, money and energy to educating an unresponsive, inert, working class. There is only one reason, friend, and it is this: You will remember the famous cartoon depicting Ole Bill in a shellhole, up to his armpits in water, and the comforting remark of his pal in an adjoining shell-hole, "If you know of a better ’ole, go to it.” The workers are up to their armpits in the slough of capitalism. We, who can see an inch or two farther than our fellows, tell them how they got into the mess, and how to get out of it. We show that they can only get out of it by united action, as a class. Here and there an individual may climb out by his own exertions, usually on the backs of his fellows, but for the working class to climb out by all becoming capitalists, is obviously absurd. If any individual thinks it a waste of time to urge his fellows to free themselves from slavery, knowing that his own freedom is bound up with theirs, he is quite at liberty to resign himself to his fate, and explain the matter to himself under any heading he pleases. Why not become a capitalist? If the workers won’t move on their own behalf, climb on their backs. But remember there is only limited room. Every rich man means so many thousand poor. You can have a flock of sheep and one tiger, but you cannot have a flock of tigers and one sheep.

Let us hasten to assure Mr. Wood that we are not abstaining from becoming capitalists for purely sentimental reasons. If he can tell us of a fairly expeditious way— (we are past our first youth)—of taking our place with the captains of industry, we shall be delighted to hear of it. But, as a "materialist,” surely he does not ask us to believe he is deliberately avoiding the pleasure of becoming a capitalist, whilst he sacrifices himself in the service of his fellow worker’s enlightenment. Is it not rather the clear recognition that we, the working class, will never be anything else that irresistibly compels us to revolt.

We make that revolt intelligently and consciously, knowing the futility of any other course. We realise we can only revolt as a class, and we must organise as a class. We took the first steps by joining and organising a party to represent the aspirations of our class. If our fellows are dull, or deaf, they are damned, and so are we. We cannot rise without them.

One final word on the M.C.H. A materialist need not necessarily support the Materialist Conception of History. Quite often the contrary. Although at first sight a cumbrous title, it really stands for a very simple thing. History is the written record of the doings of mankind in the past. Thousands read it, few study it. Of the students some think they discern some driving motive or source of action that has driven society through its successive stages, to the present blissful epoch. Some would ascribe the major credit to the work of the Church, others to the wisdom of kings, some to the ability of statesmen, others to a succession of heroes and great men. The M.C.H., however, the supreme work of the genius of Marx and Engels, says that there is something greater than all these. The superstructure of society, it says; its laws and institutions are fundamentally based on the material conditions in that society. As Mr. Wood says, he has read the Socialist Standard for years, he will readily recollect frequent articles on the subject, several quite recently, so there is no need to go over the ground again. Let him get away from the “superior person" attitude and the viewing of the working class as some entity which does not include ourselves. We are in it; we are of it; we are the working class. The only individual question we should permit ourselves is, "What am I doing about it?’’

W. T Hopley

Editorial: Trade Unions and the Employers. (1927)

Editorial from the August 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

While we support any move which will eliminate the existing craft outlook and other barriers which separate trade unionists, we do not make the mistake of supposing that the problems of the working class will be solved by the mere substitution of one great union for many smaller ones. What is of much greater importance is to get the workers to see that capitalism itself is the enemy. The remedy, Socialism, means, not high wages or low wages, but the abolition of the wages system. Trade unions, whether few or many, could not achieve this end, even if the members desired it, which at present the majority do not. A useful corrective to attaching too much importance to a mere change of the form of organisation is contained in a remark made by Mr. Bevin in a speech advocating trade union amalgamation at the conference of the Transport and General Workers’ Union.

  Nobody welcomed their amalgamation more than the employers, who now met one body instead of dozens, with their internecine friction (“Daily Herald,” July 20).

Trade union amalgamation requires nothing more than some small adjustments in the administration of the employers’ industries. Socialism means the end of the employing class. Employers, therefore, under certain conditions, welcome amalgamation. Under no conditions do employers offer such a welcome to the work of the Socialist Party.

The I.L.P's Confession (1928)

From the August 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

  The I.L.P. is certainly not committed to advocating “the overthrow of the Capitalist system." Its “Socialism in Our Time” programme (and I think I have done a little to defend it against its critics) is a carefully reasoned out programme which, as the I.L.P. states in its resolution, “aims at the immediate raising of the standard of life of the working classes and the transference of the key sources of power within Capitalism to the community.” That is a line of policy which does not mean the "overthrow of the Capitalist system.”

The Acting Editor of “Forward”—the I.L.P. journal—writes the above in the issue of July 7th. It is a very candid and timely confession on the part of these gentlemen of the I.L.P. that they do not stand for the overthrow of the Capitalist System. “The immediate raising of the standard of life” is one of those general phrases which will easily fit into any reformer’s programme and means practically nothing.

The Russian Upheaval. (1905)

From the December 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Pseudo-Socialist Press and organisations, who here at home are preaching social reform and palliation as bona fide Socialism with impunity, have naturally not the least compunction in presenting international labour struggles or national working-class action in other countries in the light of the reform movement. Their accounts and criticisms of recent Russian events have been so grossly misleading and exaggerated as to the real proletarian position that it becomes necessary to place before the workers of this country, however briefly, the situation in Russia from the Socialist standpoint.

Some of the aforementioned critics have asserted that large numbers of those Russian workers who have been and are now engaged in strikes and demonstrations against the Government are class-conscious Socialists fighting the “social battle” of the working-class; others have praised the principles of the General Strike as deserving emulation by a “United Socialist Party in Great Britain” and especially as a prelude to the “Social Revolution”; and others again, particularly those who, believing in the emancipation of the workers by a long series of reforms enacted by a Liberal-cum-Labour party, have expressed their admiration of the intelligence and tact displayed by the Russian toilers in “working so gallantly hand-in-hand with the other forces of progress and revolution in the corrupt Empire of the Czar” for, as they call it, the “freedom of all”.

No one can gainsay the fact that the Russian workers have in the present upheaval shown great power of organisation and class solidarity, but, on the other hand, nobody understanding even in the smallest degree the causes of the great Russian crisis can honestly assert that the struggle in which the Russian workers now are taking part by means of strikes and demonstrations is distinctly working-class in character.

In order to obtain a clear conception of the real meaning of the whole outbreak it is necessary to consider briefly the historic course and present stage of Russian economic development.

Although factories and workshops in Russia date from the period in which Peter the Great ascended the throne (1696), the beginning of modern capitalism, the industrialism of this epoch, can be distinctly traced to the sixties of the nineteenth century. When in 1861, Alexander the Second by an imperial ukase abolished serfdom it was not for the purpose of uplifting the toilers, but this breaking of ancient ties, so vociferously applauded at the time by the bourgeoisie of other countries, had become an economic necessity. Russia, whose industrial activity had until then almost exclusively been given to agriculture, was suddenly roused to the fact that the new world with its virgin soil, its highly developed machinery and scientific methods of production was becoming not only a formidable competitor in the international markets of agricultural produce, but that Russia ran the risk of being altogether cut out, unless it encouraged and helped on agricultural production on modern capitalist lines. Above all was the “Liberation of the serfs” directed towards the creation of a working-class, free to sell its labour power to the highest bidder, a class which, being without property and unable to find employment on the land, would migrate to the towns, there to enable the bourgeoisie to develop industrialism like the rest of western civilisation.

At the present time two-fifths of the land in Russia is held by the State, consisting mostly of forests and wasteland; one-fourth is owned by land proprietors, and one-third by peasants. Of a population estimated at 140 millions, about half belong to the peasantry, and quite 20 millions to the agricultural labouring class employed by the land proprietors. The industrial population of the towns, including railway workers and miners, does not exceed 15 millions in number, that is to say, there are only about 3 million industrial workers throughout the whole of Russia.

And now as to the economic position of the working population. The peasants’ conditions of existence are becoming more and more intolerable owing to their intense exploitation by means of imperial and local taxes, direct and indirect, and to the keen competition of the large agriculturists in Russia and abroad. The only means of keeping the peasant in subjection is a sop of a little more land to increase the scope of his income. But this remedy is impossible for a length of time and applicable only sectionally with the aid of the aristocratic land proprietors, who run in fear of losing their lives should the peasantry rise in rebellion against them. The agricultural labourers working for the farm proprietors are gradually reduced in circumstances. Great numbers of them, having been thrown out of employment, migrate to the towns, and still more congest and overcrowd the industrial labour market, making the conditions of the industrial workers more and more deplorable. Competition is increased, the level of subsistence is lowered, and very little new capital is being invested in industrial undertakings owing to the financial insecurity of aristocratic rule, the exploitation of all those producing is becoming unbearable. The largest proportion of the wealth exploited from the peasants, the agricultural labourers and the industrial workers finds its way into the pockets of the Ruler and his family, the aristocratic land proprietors, the bureaucracy, and the merchant princes. The smaller capitalists of the bourgeois class, denied the opportunity of exploiting labour without let or hindrance, owing to the privileges and powers of mediaeval origin possessed by the ruling class, make common cause with the workers, whom they induce, by means of the strike, to fight out the political battle of the capitalist bourgeoisie.

Now it must be borne in mind that although Feudalism was formally discarded in Russia in 1861, the social and juridical changes that have in every other country accompanied the economic revolution ushering in the capitalist system of unhampered competition were stubbornly withheld. Capitalism without universal capitalist conditions in the social and juridical respect must naturally produce economic dilemma, and in Russia the thirty years of capitalist industrialism in an economic atmosphere nourished on the social and political soil of autocracy were bound to bring this pronounced contradiction to a head, an unhappy, disastrous war completing the chain of economic failure. Thus it is that we have on the one hand the peasants sucked completely dry by the ruthless taxation, the agricultural labourers despoiled to starvation level, many deprived of employment altogether owing to aggravated competition within the country and from abroad; the industrial workers collapsing under the super-human burden of oppression, over-work and starvation pay, more and more influenced by the growing number of unemployed agricultural labourers pouring into the towns in search of work, and on the other hand ever more wealth accumulation on the part of the Autocrat and his henchmen, the archdukes, aristocrats, large land-owners, high officials, merchant princes, and big capitalists.

The disgusted and envious bourgeoisie comprising the manufacturers, merchants, and professionals in Law, Art, Science and Literature forced to stand by and see the wealth scooped in by their superiors in privilege, corruption and violence, raise an outcry for capitalist liberty and equality, and the revolutionary spirit seizing the enraged and oppressed working-class, they join the revolution in sheer despair, hoping to gain some amelioration by participating in the fight for a “free capitalist Russia”.

The bourgeoisie by the aid of working-class strikes and demonstrations succeed in removing the terrible contradiction in the semi-capitalist system, a constitution is granted and all capitalists, small and great, and their hangers-on rejoice, for now at last will they be able to flourish in the enjoyment of free competition.

But for the working-class there is nothing but a return to wretchedness and the outlook of gloom and despair and unless indeed they have learned the lesson of reliance upon no other class but their own to effect that amelioration in their condition that they desire, so only will they attain to that class-consciousness with its appreciation of the universal solidarity of proletarian interests that shall presently deliver them and with them the whole human family from the throes of slavery for evermore.

Hans Neumann

"Verily, 'tis a great country." (1905)

Snippet from the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Major Roper W. Caldbeck, delivering an address before the Army League, said that every year 8,869 men were invalided, 7,162 deserted, 2,903 were discharged for misconduct, 1.563 were discharged as not likely to become efficient, and 21,943 were committed to Military Prisons (excluding India), and and the Army Estimates for 1905-6 provided an extra sum of £95,000 for “additional prison accommodation." Verily, 'tis a great country.

Party Notes. (1906)

Party News from the July 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Quarterly Delegate Meeting will be held at The Communist Club on Saturday, July 28th, at 6.30pm. The Quarterly Report and Financial Statement will be sent to branches immediately the Branch Return Sheets are all received at Head Office, to enable the Report to be completed.

#    #    #    #

The Islington branch deserve a few words mention of their splendid literature sales during the quarter. Of The Socialist Standard they have taken 156 copies of April issue, 377 copies of May and 533 copies of June, making a grand total of 1,066. During the same period they have taken 650 copies of the S.P.G.B. Manifesto.

#    #    #    #

Of course, we know that all branches cannot go and do likewise, but the sales by other branches clearly prove that nearly all are doing better this season than last.

#    #    #    #

The E.C.  have been in communication with Mr. H. J. Wishart, of Woolwich I.L.P., who has publicly expressed his desire to debate the policy of the S.P.G.B. Full particulars will be announced later.

#    #    #    #

By the Lecture List it will be seen that meetings have been restarted at Watford. The action of the police will be awaited with some interest.

#    #    #    #

Back numbers of The Socialist Standard can be had through any Branch Secretary or from the Central Offices of the Party, 28. Cursitor Street, E.C.

An Open Letter to Robert Blatchford: Wanted — A Party. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Dear Robert,

If it isn’t a rode question, where have you been living for the past three years? 1 did hear you had been in London most of the time, but 1 can hardly credit that. Unless, indeed, you have “sported the oak” of your reading room to the exclusion of all information from the outside world. But that can’t be, for I have observed articles from your pen on current topics. You must have kept in communication with London affairs, and as you call yourself a Socialist, I take it you have kept touch with the Socialist movement in London. Or relied upon somebody to keep you in touch. If so, if you have relied upon somebody, he has let you down and made you look silly. He has made you write: “We want a real Socialist Party . . . we have an S.D.F. and an I.L.P. and a L.R.C. and a Fabian Society; but we have not a British Socialist Party. What is to be done ? ”

What is to be done? Well! Had you asked me I should have answered—wake up! If I, as a London Socialist writer, said, “we have a Justice and a Labour Leader and Daily Mail but we have not a Clarion,” you would think that my education in such matters had been neglected.

Everybody in London professing Socialism knows of the Clarion, and by the same token everybody in London professing Socialism knows of The Socialist. Party of Great Britain, or their education in such matters is defective.

We have not a British Socialist Party! Why, I’ve been a member of the British Socialist Party three years. This paper is issued by—just the Party you are enquiring for, a real Socialist Party.

And you didn’t know of its existence. Oh! Robert, Robert, where have you been buried ?

No, don't thank me. This is the fellowship. I confess to the greatest astonishment that you were ignorant of this good thing, but the discharging of my fellowship obligation in sending you the news calls for no thanks. Only mark that “Socialism” is not S.D.F’ism or l.LP'ism or Fabianism or even Clarionism. They are quite different things, as we show in our “Manifesto,” and in this journal. It was precisely because we had discovered that S.D.F’ism and the rest did not make for Socialism that we anticipated your desire for

A Real Socialist Party.

We are very emphatic on this point, and you will readily see how necessary such emphasis is. The clear duty of a real Socialist Party is to work for real Socialism. It has no justification for existence apart from that.

It is urged that conceptions as to what constitutes work for real Socialism may properly differ, Conceptions on this point among Socialists should not differ: do not in fact. The only work a Socialist can do is to preach Socialism. He can never preach anything that conflicts with his Socialism while he remains a Socialist; for that is to obscure his Socialism and to stultify himself as a Socialist.

Suppose he becomes an advocate for Payment of Members as the S.D.F. member does, a little Women's Suffrage, after the fashion of the I. L.P'er, Municipal Public Houses, like unto the Fabian, what then? In the first place his Socialism has receded, however temporarily, into a secondary position. Socialism is not being preached — the working class crying for bread is given— a stone. Secondly he is doing work that needs no Socialist Party at all. Thirdly the particular reform worked for will not appreciably affect the condition of the working class as such. Fourthly  it will therefore have wasted the working-class strength concentrated upon realising it. Fifthly it will, because it has effected no material improvement in working class conditions, have bred disappointment, and, from disappointment, apathy. And finally it will have made existing confusion worse confounded in the minds of the working class.

Therefore I contend that preaching Socialism and explaining the phenomena of industrial development in the light of Socialism is the proper work of a Socialist. If he does any other propaganda work he is not a Socialist.

In the issue of the Clarion which contained your note already quoted, you plead for the all- sufficiency of the logical method. You say “If we overleap logic we overleap ourselves and land in a bog of confusion and disappointment,” which is very true. I am all for the logical method, therefore, I think that the argument I have submitted is strictly logical. If yon think otherwise perhaps yon will confute me.

Now will you turn to our Declaration of Principles on the back page and read it closely. It is an important pronouncement. So important that we reproduce it in every issue. It is important to you if you want a real British Socialist Party, because it is the base of the real British Socialist Party—which you will have to sign before yon can realise your desire. Perhaps you will point out wherein we overleap logic.

I will anticipate one objection you may raise. It is raised by your non-Socialist S.D.F., I.L.P., F.S. and the rest. It is our statement of hostility to all other political parties.

You may think we are too narrow, too doctrinaire. You may think it an impossible position, as the others do, but is it? I ask you, Robert, to proceed with your examination logically, without regard to the feelings of members of other political parties; without concern for the probable effect upon the sale of the Clarion. Proceed as you did in your examination of Christianity.

We are only interested in the maintenance of truth. Truth can only be maintained inside the logical method. "If we overleap logic we overleap ourselves and land in a bog of confusion and disappointment.’’ Therefore,—the truth, even if it means that we become for the time as voices crying in the wilderness.

The cause of working-class misery is private ownership of the means of life. The interests of the workers, who do not own the means of life, are opposed to the interests of the capitalists, who do own them. This clash of interests is the class struggle. I presume we may take that as read.

These things continue because

The working class are ignorant.

Although their interests continually clash with those of their masters, they do not understand that this is inevitable. Nor do they understand that their masters' ownership of the means of life is at the bottom of the trouble. We may take this as read also.

Now why, with this continual conflict of interest, do the working class remain ignorant ? And why are they so desperately apathetic? Is their ignorance not because the truth has not been told? And is their apathy not born largely of disappointment with the results of past efforts of their class to secure some amelioration of their condition?

We need not enquire for the moment into the honesty of working-class teachers and leaders. We need only deal with the teaching and leading.

The school instruction of the working class is not such as would enable the child to get a glimmering of the truth of the position. It would be surprising if the capitalist class, dominant in the legislature (because dominance there is essential to the maintenance of their economic ascendancy) should take steps to instruct the children of the working class concerning working-class poverty, So we will consider the teaching and leading the workers receive alter they have entered the industrial and political arenas.

Now do the majority of working-class teachers | teach that the working-class position is inevitable under present conditions? that there is no name given under heaven whereby the working class may be saved except Socialism? that until Socialism there can be no cessation of the clash of interests between Capital and Labour?—that the class struggle persists unflaggingly? 

Leave out of account those who do not claim to be Socialists. If Socialism is the only remedy, and they are not Socialists, their teaching cannot be right because they do not teach Socialism. That’s agreed, I think.

But what of those who profess Socialism? My answer is that although they talk of it occasionally, they do not teach it. Nor do their leadings square with their occasional professions.

The important thing in a teacher of Socialism is that it should always be Socialism that he teaches. If he does not explain every manifestation of class conflict in the light of his Socialist philosophy, he is little, if any, better than the non-Socialist misleader. His teaching is neither logical nor consistent. He lands his audience in a bog of confusion.

And if, as very frequently happens, his actions directly conflict with his

Occasional Socialist Professions;

if he mouths the class straggle and the fundamental importance of its full appreciation, what time he is doing those things which can only obscure the appreciation of the class struggle, I submit that he can only be classified under one of two heads. Either he is a fraud or a fool.

These be hard words, Robert, but they are not bitter, for I also am a Determinist.

However, the working class ignorance and apathy which must be dispelled before Socialism can be realised, so far from being effectively combatted by working-class leaders and teachers are contributed to by most of them. For example. If I were to tell the unemployed that unemployment must last as long as capitalism and were then to recommend them to send a deputation to the representatives of the capitalists to ask that they [the capitalists] should abolish unemployment, I should either be a knave or a fool. 1 should have cut myself off from logic and landed my audience in a bog of confusion and disappointment. If I argue that capitalist representatives are in control of the political machinery to conserve their own interests as against those of the working class (as we all agree is and must be the case); and that we must regard capitalist representatives always as a hostile force against whom war must be waged unceasingly until they are utterly vanquished. And if in face of that I suspend hostilities and enter into alliance with them, I overleap logic and land my followers in the bog of confusion and disappointment.

If I postulate that poverty and misery must last till Socialism, that until Socialism nothing can materially or permanently affect the position; if I say that palliatives are therefore of little use, so little use indeed that I must have a party that shall concentrate upon the thing that matters (Socialism) rather than the things that do not matter (palliatives); and if notwithstanding I secure that my organisation, founded because palliatives were not good enough, shall concentrate working-class effort upon the realisation of palliatives, I am riding rough-shod over logic and doing my level best to engulf my followers in the pit of impotence and despair.

Well, dear Robert, that is precisely what your S.D.F., I.L.P., Fabian Society, and—yes, and your Clarion are doing. If you want details I have told you already where you can get some. If you want a special list of

Clarionese Fatuities

say the word.

You think highly of the Clarion, naturally. I think myself it is an excellent pen’orth too— sometimes. But it is not a Socialist paper. It is written to please those who fancy themselves “advanced’’ and caters for the organisations to which the “advanced” person belongs. It will give space to anything or anybody bearing one of the many recognised labels. But it wont give space to the S.P.G.B. representative who wishes to reply to a misleading reference to his Party, which is the more curious because you are enquiring for the Party.

No,

The “Clarion” is not a Socialist Paper.

It is a jumble,—a gorgeous, inconsistent, illogical jumble. Which wouldn’t matter tuppence if it didn’t help throw the workers into confusion.

But the pity of it, Robert, the pity of it! You might do good work for Socialism if only your vaunted adherence to principle was a matter of fact instead of a figment of fancy. With your fine literary sense, your faculty for the selection of the apt phrase and the illuminating quotation, the appeal of your imagery, the grace of your style these powers might make a mighty instrument in the education of the working class. Instead of which you handle pitch and are defiled; you persist in the folly of emphasising non-essentials and scamping essentials until I begin to fear you must for ever remain a stumbling block and a rock of offence.

That’s what I had in my mind when I said that having had the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the party you are enquiring for, brought to your notice, and having decided that it is the party you must apply for membership in, you must do all in your power for Socialism, as distinguished from S.D.F’ism, Clarionisin, and the rest. “We are all Socialists now,” quoth a certain knight now dead, and I suppose he spake as truly as he knew. Yet he was absurdly wide of the mark. Not every one who proclaims himself Socialist shall find place in the ranks of the Socialist army. Not those whose desire is personal aggrandisement, nor those who aspire to superintend the workers’ activities, nor the experts nor the superior persons nor the palliators, nor the compromisers, nor the hosts of the otherwise damned are of the confraternity of working-class educators. Rather are they conscious and unconscious perpetuators of ignorance, workers of evil, misleaders, and false friends. But those who, understanding the working-class relation to the economy of production; understanding the forces that have been at work through all history to present in this the twentieth century that appalling anomaly of a starving people in the midst of a riot of wealth of their own creation; understanding how the physical and intellectual well-being of the workers is conditioned by the measure of their control of the means by which they live; understanding that control of these means of life can only be secured by workers similarly enlightened; those who understanding these things and the necessity for eliminating every factor tending to confuse the issue in the working-class mind, have set themselves steadfastly to the task of translating their knowledge into clear, logical, consistent action to the end that their fellows may the more readily acquire the knowledge that shall make them free, only these are the Socialists and only these can form in England or elsewhere, the Socialist Party.

And that, Robert, is all I can say to you today, and I hope it will be helpful if not to you at least to some others and lead them to come over and help us. At present the labourers are few. You if you will may help to make them many. If you will not, well, we must needs do without you. This is the fellowship.

And so no more at present from—

                                                                                                                                     Yours truly,

'Filius Populi'

Pathfinders: Stars Like Us (2018)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

 Stars Like Us

Last month a black woman was ‘crowned’ Miss Universe Great Britain, a first in the beauty contest’s 66-year history, and called it ‘a great achievement’. Somehow, apparently, being selected as the country’s showpiece exhibit in an annual sexist meat parade is to be considered a success for black women everywhere. 

Recently there have been a lot of stories about female and minority representation in ‘the arts’ (meaning TV and cinema). Huge excitement came earlier this year with the first all-black superhero film, which proved that you can make money out of utter bollocks regardless of ethnic considerations. This followed the success of a female-led superhero film, and UK viewers can soon look forward to the first female Doctor Who and the first lesbian Batgirl TV series, all of which prove that . . . anyway, you get the picture.

Where this gets a bit weird is the ongoing discussion about ‘representation’ in the arts. The broadcasting watchdog Ofcom reported last year that "lots of people feel there are not enough programmes on TV that "authentically portray their lives and communities".

 Why is this weird? Because in expecting, nay demanding, that made-up stories should be ‘authentic’ people seem to have lost sight of the essential difference between fiction and reality. This is not to belittle the genuine human need for social affirmation. We all crave a sense that we are not some lonely isolated freak in a hostile and indifferent world, and that others like us exist. Socialists know that feeling too, indeed it’s behind a lot of the things that we do as an organisation. If you’re reading this magazine, you probably feel the same way at times. But one thing we definitely don’t do is go round complaining about our ‘under-representation’ in the arts and demanding our own superhero. It would never occur to us that the ‘arts’ were anything other than a fictional construct owned and controlled by the capitalist class and used mainly for the oppression and psychological manipulation of the working class. If it ever tried to ‘represent’ a socialist character it would not be as a superhero  but more likely a stoned 1970s hippy or else an unhinged Bond villain. Much as we all love artistic creativity, we should not lose sight of the fact that capitalist art is generally a weapon used against us, even when it’s just for entertainment.

 So, not only is this question of ‘representation’ a fundamental illusion – as if the success of some black beauty queen can ever be an achievement for you – it is also a hopeless expression of passivity, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome where we love the thing that enslaves us so much that we want it to look like us too. 

This is what the capitalists want – a population of brainwashed automatons who don’t know what’s real anymore. They want us to sit indoors and let the capitalist TV construct our world for us, removing every jarring trace of cognitive dissonance that might alert us to the fact that we are in dream-mode. 

Entertainment is supposed to be escapist, to give us a break from reality. By dressing our entertainment in faux-liberal credentials we’re not affirming our ‘liberty’ or ‘diversity’, we’re fusing reality with fantasy and locking ourselves more inextricably into a prison of our own making. Better to get out there and construct our own world, for real, and with the TV off.

Voting for the Electric Chair

Here’s a work-place experience not unfamiliar to many. The meeting grinds on, chaired by a boss too clueless to be any use but too senior to be challenged, while the air is filled by the drone of tedious gobshites who love to hear themselves talk. The agenda lies forgotten, the plot lost, the will to live gone, and still another hour before anyone can go home. Not surprisingly, a recent informal BBC study discovered that many people doodle during such meetings, or write haiku, or play ‘meeting bingo’, a secret competition to throw in as many pre-agreed random words as possible. Imagine, the article goes on to suggest, if all this were not so, the meeting made effective, and the bores told to shut up. What would it take to effect such a miracle? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if an artificially intelligent meeting bot could take over?

Wait. What? An AI bot? An electric chair? Yes indeed, says a computer scientist quoted in the article, ‘if no new points are made after a while, the AI could suggest to wrap it up’. Apparently this is an ability which humans don’t have, according to a meetings consultant: ‘while it’s a lovely idea to think everybody will be fabulous at running meetings, everybody is not’. 

 This will be news to socialists, who have been running their own meetings, fabulous or otherwise, for over a hundred years, and have never yet felt the compulsion to introduce an artificial robot to chair any of them. How is this miracle possible? Because, despite what the ‘experts’ think, humans are perfectly capable of learning how to do things like running meetings, even, dare we say it, whole democratic societies. We do these things with the help of what are known as ‘rules’ and then by following these ‘rules’, more or less strictly according to circumstance and preference, we manage to get through a whole list of ‘decisions’ that need making. Really, it works surprisingly well. These AI enthusiasts ought to try it some time. They might be amazed what humans are capable of, especially when the useless boss is removed from the picture. 

Paddy Shannon

A Parliamentary Joke. (1929)

From the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Captain D. W. Gunston is Tory M.P. for Thornbury and also a humorist. It is the aim of those who combine these two features to try to trap unsuspecting ministers with questions which are only seemingly innocent. It will be remembered that immediately after the General Election Sir W. Jowitt, K.C., M.P. for Preston, who had been elected as a Liberal, accepted the office of Attorney-General and joined the Labour Party. Below is Captain Gunston’s question and Mr. Clynes’ reply (Hansard, July 11, ’29):—.

Captain Gunston asked the Home Secretary if he will consider the introduction of legislation to prohibit the practice of the payment of sums of money on the transfer of professional football players from one club to another?

Mr. Clynes: The answer is in the negative.

Captain Gunston: While appreciating that the Government do not want to interfere with the transfer of talent, may I ask the right hon. gentleman if he is in a position to inform the House of the transfer fee, if any, in the case of the Attorney-General?

Notes by the Way: Laski's Error. (1930)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Laski's Error.

Professor Harold Laski, writing in the current number of the Political Quarterly, refers to the “well-known” view of Marx and his followers that capitalism can only be overthrown by violent means.

This may be well-known to Professor Laski, but it is unknown to us, and was unknown to Marx. It is a pity that Professor Laski does not give the evidence for his extraordinary statement. When, about three years ago, his book on "Communism" was reviewed in these columns, attention was drawn to other mistaken views about Marx which are held by Laski, but although a copy was sent to him and acknowledged, he did not attempt to defend his statements. He continues to repeat them, still without evidence.

#    #    #    #

The American Socialist Party Gets Further Away From Socialism.

About a year ago the American Socialist Party, in its endeavour to become more popular, dropped from its constitution the mention of the class-struggle. It is now considering the advisability of dropping the word Socialist from its title and calling itself the "Independent Labour Party." We are sure that all Socialists, both here and in the U.S.A., will be quite enthusiastic about the idea. The American Socialist Party was never in any respect Socialist, and the proposed change of title would clear the way for our colleagues of the American Socialist Education Society to form a real Socialist Party.

#    #    #    #

The S.L.P. in Trouble.

The Australian S.L.P. has broken with and been repudiated by the parent body in America. The Australians claim that "the American S.L.P. has weakened from the Principles, Policies and Tactics advocated by Daniel De Leon.”

The trouble appears to have arisen largely out of the insertion in the American Weekly People of advertisements of books containing matter contrary to the S.L.P. position.

The whole controversy, as described in the Australian Revolutionary Socialist is, however, so clouded under a stream of personal abuse that it is a little difficult to tell what really is the matter. Anyhow, they are annoyed, and describe Peterson, of the American S.L.P. as a "demented being," the associate of "assassins," "slanderers," "larceny - mongers," "thieves," and "thugs."

Movements Abroad. (1931)

Party News from the August 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Australia.

Our companion party, the Socialist Party of Australia, reports very successful propaganda meetings in Melbourne. During May two debates were held, one with a free-lance Communist on the existence of capitalism in Russia, and the other with a Single-Taxer. The two halls were filled to overflowing. A large and interested audience attended at their platform on the Public Forum on May Day.

The S.P. of A. are trying to get larger premises to cope with their growing activities.

New Zealand.

We learn with interest that supporters of the S.P.G.B. in Wellington, New Zealand, got together early in the year and formed the Socialist Party of New Zealand. After holding public meetings for some weeks these had to be suspended for the time being. The result of the efforts of these comrades has been shown in a considerable demand for our literature. Efforts are now being made to organise study classes and speakers’ classes in Wellington and Auckland.

Who Are The Fatalists? (1932)

From the August 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

In its issue of May 19th, the Daily Worker published, without dissent, a letter from a correspondent (C. I. H., Manchester), from which the following passages are taken:—

   During our May Day Meeting I heard a local party speaker say that capitalism is responsible for the world economic crisis, but that the individual capitalist is not to blame.
   In the May number of the revisionist Marxist (tea) party's paper, the Socialist Standard, the conclusion of an article on Kreuger states that he was a victim of the capitalist system.
   This view is held by many workers and is a source of much confusion. . . . This philosophy of blind circumstance, somewhat similar to that of divine predestination, is the philosophy of mental and physical paralysis . . . Where is the system?

The first paragraph quoted seems to indicate that the Communist Party possesses at least one intelligent speaker with some understanding of the nature of capitalism.

Let Karl Marx reply to the second paragraph :—

   To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class relations and class interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history can, less than any other, make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them. (Preface to Capital, p.xix. Sonnenschein edition.)

From the third extract one gathers that the correspondent not only fails to understand the difference between Marxism and Calvinism, but that he is ignorant of facts known to most schoolboys.

Are we to regard the Puritan rebels of the seventeenth century (who regarded themselves as the predestined “servants of the Lord,” wreaking his vengeance upon the unholy Cavaliers) as examples of paralysis? Were the fatalistic disciples of Mahomet, who overran Northern Africa and invaded Spain, samples of passivity? On the other hand, is the modern Pleasant Sunday Afternoon brother, who prates of his “free will" and tamely acquiesces in his exploitation by the capitalist, a fair specimen of virility ?

True, under certain social conditions we do find fatalism associated with servile submissiveness to the will of the ruling class. Oriental countries offer numerous cases in point; but this apparent contradiction illustrates in a forcible manner the principle that the political life of a given country or epoch can only be explained by reference to its stage of economic development, and not merely by its philosophy. The Puritan movement in England offers an admirable example of the way in which a class, forced to the surface by economic conditions, can revive antiquated ideas in order to express new needs, pouring new wine into old bottles, usually with disastrous results to the bottles.

Marx, however, was the product of a scientific age. People who ascribe their activity, or lack of it, to chance, fate or God, only show thereby that they do not understand the real forces which mould their conduct. It was the task of Marx to lay those forces bare and to show that the development of social life, like every other aspect of evolution, takes place according to certain discoverable laws. In particular, he demonstrated that the accumulation of capital follows a definite and inevitable course (inevitable, that is, in the sense that while it can be retarded or accelerated, it cannot be avoided), and that this accumulation has certain definite and equally inevitable results, including constantly recurring crises and intensified suffering for the workers.,

Those workers who have grasped the teachings of Marx, however, are far from being blind creatures of circumstances. They are class-conscious; conscious, that is, of the class nature of the system which has made them what they are. They recognise the social character of the productive forces which has reduced the present system to an obsolete absurdity which can be swept away when the producers will it. As a result, they endeavour to co-operate with those social forces by persuading their fellow- workers to take the necessary political steps. They do not foolishly imagine (as does C. I. H.) that they can “ fight the system by struggling against the conditions imposed by the individual capitalist.” They know that the system is the cause of these conditions and that one does not get rid of causes by tinkering with effects.

The policy advocated by C. I. H., like that of all reformers (so-called Communists included), resembles that of individuals who, when faced with a house on fire, try to prevent the flames blistering the woodwork. They are just as blind as any fatalist in their violent revolt against the effects of capitalism.

The basis of present-day society is the ownership of the means of living by the capitalists as a class. It is the class that holds the power; not a number of isolated individuals acting independently of one another. Capitalism survives as a system because it is organised. Communists, however, encourage the workers to fritter away their energies in sectional conflicts, thus reducing the ability of the workers to organise as a class for the establishment of a new system. They teach the workers to regard strikes as the weapon of their emancipation.

A hundred years or more of strikes have failed to shake the capitalist ownership of the means of living. They are necessary and useful from time to time as measures of defence against capitalists, but they do not, and cannot, alter the fact that the workers are compelled to go on producing profits in return for wages so long as the capitalist class retains its ownership of the land, factories, railways, etc.

The workers cannot gain possession of the factories by walking out of them, nor even by staying in, so long as the capitalist class controls the coercive forces of the State. The class struggle, therefore, necessarily assumes a political form. In the words of the declaration of principles of the Socialist Party : "The working class, must organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that .this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation.’’

This policy, consistently advocated by the S.P.G.B. for nearly a generation, is not that of fatalists or paralytics. It is the policy of those who understand their environment and adapt their efforts intelligently to it. It is no more blind than the attitude of the electrician or engineer who uses his knowledge as a tool to enable him to take advantage of a natural force instead of submitting himself to annihilation by it. 

As for paralysis, nothing is more futile than the attempt to work miracles or to find a port by means of a weathercock. Nothing finally produces greater apathy than the expectation of the impossible; yet these are the characteristic attitudes prevalent in the Communist Party, whose leaders have affected, in the past, such hearty contempt for patient study and organisation. Signs are not wanting that "ruthless self-criticism” is about to give way to reckless self-destruction. Morbid introspection generally leads to a fit of the blues!

Eric Boden

Mr. Lansbury's Solicitude for the Capitalists (1933)

From the August 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Lansbury is often regarded by many misguided people in the so-called Labour movement as a “sincere” worker in the cause of the workers. Sincerity without knowledge or intelligence is useless to any cause, but Mr. Lansbury clearly indicated his concern for the capitalist class, euphemistically referred to as “the taxpayer,” on the occasion of the discussion in the House of Commons on the subject of the £400,000 loan to Newfoundland to enable that state to pay interest on its external debt. “He was very disturbed at the lack of evidence of the future ability of Newfoundland to pay the money. The Government were accepting a responsibility for which, sooner or later, the taxpayers would have to foot the bill.” (News-Chronicle, 29/6/33.) Is it of any interest to the members of the working class whether their masters choose to finance the capitalist class of Newfoundland or not? The burden of the taxes falls on the capitalist class, and it is their concern, and theirs alone, whether they should lend money to foreign states. Mr. Lansbury, deliberately or otherwise, endeavours to get the workers interested in their masters’ troubles, and so lead them away from getting a correct understanding of their position in society.

R. M.

More About Roosevelt's "New Deal" (1934)

From the August 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

An important element in the N.R.A. is the provision in Section 7a;

   “That employees shall have the right to organise and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of labour, or their agents, in the designation of such representatives or In self-organisation. . . .” 

The N.R.A. was, of course, framed in such a way as to seem to uphold the prevailing American myth that the interests of capitalists and workers are, at bottom, one and the same. Certainly, Roosevelt, in several broadcast speeches, has attacked certain unnamed, selfish capitalists, who wickedly exploited their workers, but he has made it clear that these are an insignificant minority, that the great mass of employers" are thoroughly fairminded, sound at heart and good Americans to the core. The American Federation of Labour has always officially accepted this absurdly false view of capitalism, and so its leaders saw nothing anti-working class in offering the N.R.A. the fullest co-operation. They openly gloried at the chance to obtain for the first time in American history a sort of quasi-official status for themselves and their organisations.

Under the stimulus of what seemed to be benign encouragement from the President himself, there began a period of intensified activity on the part of the labour unions, and a great drive for membership. Within a few months millions of workers had been recruited, raising the number of organised from about 2½ millions in January, 1933, to around 5 millions in May of this year. Optimism filled the breasts of the unionised workers and their sympathisers amongst the Liberal Radicals. However, within a few months it was dear that the “collective bargaining” guarantee was to have very different consequences from those expected by Roosevelt’s worshippers.

The interpretation of “Section 7a” has led to the bitterest conflict between the unions and employers, more particularly in the Steel and Automobile industries, which have for many years maintained an “open-shop,” anti-union policy with the strongest persistence. Alarmed at the great strides in unionism, and determined to brook no interference from outside organisations, the great capitalist concerns in these and other industries have insisted and acted upon the assumption that “company unions,” largely financed and controlled by themselves, properly complied with the provisions of the N.R.A.

The A.F. of L. has repeatedly urged the Government to come out uncompromisingly in support of the workers’ “rights” under the N.R.A. and against the “open-shop” and company unions. But, as was to be expected, the Government spokesmen, though making rhetorical speeches, apparently favourable to the workers, have sat on the fence on this question, neither daring nor desiring to break the power of the strongest industrial capitalist groups in the country. In the meantime the organisation of company unions has gone on apace, and they now embrace several millions of employees. It is certain that in granting their workers an unsolicited 10 per cent. wage advance recently, the Steel and Auto industries were motivated chiefly by the desire to win over their workers to the company union idea.

The N.R.A. has greatly strengthened the employing class for industrial conflict with the workers. The advantages which they normally possess have been enhanced by the almost complete organisation by industry which the N.R.A. automatically gives them. The workers, on the other hand, are for the most part unorganised. Even after their recent growth the labour unions only embrace about one-tenth of the total number of workers. For purposes of genuine collective bargaining the growing company unions are sheer fakes, having limited “rights” of negotiation, but no means of applying adequate pressure on the employers. In the April, 1934, issue of “The Nation’s Business,” issued by the United States Chamber of Commerce, the chief advantage of company unions over trades unions from the capitalist point of view was stated quite frankly: “The company union does not affiliate in any manner with organisations outside that industry, and generally not outside the operations of a single employer. The employers demand this aloofness or isolation, because its abandonment would mean the strength of alliance for his employees and the ability of his employees to have counsel not dependent upon that company’s pay roll.”

In the numerous strikes that have occurred during the last year a dominant motive has been the desire of the workers to enforce union recognition, which many had naively assumed to be settled once and for all with the coming of N.R.A. In the main, the A.F. of L. leaders have co-operated with the N.R.A. authorities through the Labour Boards in efforts to persuade strikers to return to work on the strength of promises. Where persuasion has been ineffective and the strikes have been prolonged, the State forces have, in the manner usual to pre-N.R.A. days, been used against the struggling workers. The following brief, vivid digest hardly suggests that the workers under the benign wings of the Blue Eagle are on the verge of a millennium:—

   “The New York Sun reported in November that 1,176 policemen were on continuous strike duty, the highest number on record in the department. In the Pittsburgh area the great steel, coal and automobile companies have struck back at their militant workers with the use of armed thugs, barrages of tear and bombing gas and lead. In the coal fields of central Illinois there have been beatings and lawless raids by armed men. In New Mexico the State militia was brought in to break the coal strike, led by the left wing National Miners' Union, and strike leaders were tried by drumhead court martials. In the fruit and cotton strikes, under radical leadership, in the San Joaquin Valley in California, night riders have terrorised Filipino workers; Mexican workers have been threatened with the bull pen and deportation; men have been kept in jail without trial for weeks and then their cases dismissed for want of evidence. The American Civil Liberties Union reports that more than 16 strikers have been killed. 200 injured and hundreds arrested since July 1st, and that more than 40 sweeping injunctions have been issued against workers.” (The Social Questions Bulletin, February, 1984.)

The source of the above quotation is interesting as indicating the intense interest in economic and especially in “labour” questions that four years of depression and the world situation have developed in this country even in the most unlikely quarters. The Bulletin is issued by The Methodist Federation for Social Service.

With the industrial improvement of the past few months has come a rising wave of capitalist criticism directed at the N.R.A. One business house after another has attacked the administration, claiming that its measures are strangling rather than helping recovery. A growing number of capitalists now regret their panicky stampede of a year ago. At that time, as Mrs. Roosevelt in a recent address put it with, shall we say, a little dramatic licence, “Industrial leaders were coming to the government at Washington and saying: ‘Take our business and run it for us.' ” Now, with the first whiff of revival, she complains of their eagerness to throw off all government interference. 

In a summary of the reports of over one hundred local organisations of the Chamber of Commerce throughout the country it is stated that, “There was a large group of complaints about unequal consideration for employers and employees, with so much favour to the latter as to cause disturbances, the effect of which upon recovery locally was feared.” (New York Times, May 1st, 1934.) We have indeed seen how thoroughly the philanthropic policies of the N.R.A. have “favoured” the workers!

The heads of the N.R.A. are wide awake to the rising tide of opposition, and prominent Democrats (who will have to fight the forthcoming elections on the strength of the "vast benefits” the recovery administration has brought to the "common man”) are replying to the attacks with vigour. One class of attack, as, for instance, the much publicised report of the committee headed by Clarence Darrow, claim that the N.R.A. is fostering monopoly and strangling the small business man. There is obviously much truth in this, for by their very nature the clauses in the codes limiting competition mean the virtual suspension of the so-called anti-trust laws. There is abundant evidence that many big industrial concerns which may have strong objections to the labour clauses in the N.R.A. very decidedly approve of the standardisation of trade practices under the control of self-goveming trade associations which the code system provides. From the first, prominent industrialists have been solidly behind the “New Deal,” and have held high official posts in its administration. Charles M. Schwab, head of the Iron and Steel Institute, has declared, “The action of the automobile, textile and other industries in formulating and executing their various codes is . . . the great practical result which has been accomplished thus far. The principles which they adopted are in line with what we have advocated and hoped for over these many years.” (N.Y. Times, May 25th, 1934.) The Nation, which dubs the Steel Code the Magna Charta of Monopoly, points out that “plural voting based upon volume of sales is such as to ensure control by two or three largest steel producers.” "Price cutting loopholes of almost every conceivable variety have been foreseen and corked up.” (May 23rd.)

By the usual irony of history the swarms of petty and middling capitalists who rushed to the support of Roosevelt during his campaign, and who were, according to the rousing speeches of the New Dealers, to be amongst the chief beneficiaries of the recovery programme, are now turning out to be its victims. Many of them must be bitterly wondering if after all they have been but pawns in the game of the powerful interests. They, along with millions of disillusioned workers, will be ready material for the next swing of the political pendulum.

In the old traditional manner, the New Deal is being attacked and defended by appeals to the historical sentiment of the electorate, to their supposed attachment to the ideal embodied in the “glorious constitution.” Ogden L. Mills, cabinet member with Hoover, thunders the awful warning that "the New Deal conflicts with the fundamental principles upon which our government is founded, and to the extent that its philosophy overrides or supplants them it is a revolutionary one.” (N.Y. Times, May 20th.) On the other side of the fence, Richberg, legal counsel for the N.R.A., glowingly proclaims the N.R.A. to be a ”counter revolutionary movement definitely and deliberately designed to perpetuate our American institutions and instrumentalities of individual liberty and self-government.” (N.Y. Times, May 13th.)

All signs point to the developing of a first-class political fight in the near future. Many conflicting capitalist interests are involved, and the form of industrial regulation eventually adopted will necessarily be a compromise between the differing sections. It is impossible to forecast the outcome with any assurance. Much depends on the degree of industrial recovery reached. To any considerable revival of foreign trade there are many obstacles, of which the great growth of artificial trade barriers is only one. Any serious attempt to reorganise American agriculture and manufactures on more nationally self-sufficient lines will entail vast and destructive conflicts, arousing readjustments including the scaling down by government aid of the industries built up primarily on an export basis.

The N.R.A. is involved in a tangle of antagonisms and contradictions. These are a product of the normal development of capitalism the world over. The Socialist does not say that the trends of capitalism cannot be hastened or slowed down by legislative measures, but he does emphatically declare that such modifications are slight and that the general problems of the system can neither be overcome nor circumvented by such methods. This is not to say that America has not now reached a new stage in its evolution, an epoch of still more highly monopolistic and centralized and state regulated capitalism that will bring special problems of its own.

One thing can certainly be said of future developments—that, whatever they may bring, the workers will continue to get the worst of the bargain until they cease to be deluded by the red herring of reform, by attempts to patch up capitalism, and until they unite for the only programme that can solve their problems—the abolition of the whole rotten system itself and the establishment of Socialism.

Though there is abundant discontent, and though the Communists, with their usual cockeyed vision, profess to see “a revolutionary upsurge stirring the American masses,” there is in actual fact a lack of class-consciousness and an abundance of the most confused thinking amongst the workers. This, to a Socialist, is lamentable— but understandable. Economic developments are producing conditions that make the case for Socialism more strikingly clear than was possible in the past era of rampant individualism, and collectivistic ideas of sorts are floating around and being discussed in the most unlikely circles. But in the building up of a sound and powerful party of Socialists, for which The Workers' Socialist Party affords a nucleus, a very great amount of work remains to be done, and must be done. If you are interested, fellow worker, study our principles. If you are convinced, join our ranks.

R. W. Housley

Workers' Socialist Party of the United States

Answers to Correspondents (1935)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Defence of Reforms by K. Kautsky.

A correspondent sends us a copy of the New York New Leader, dated May 4th, 1935, containing the last of a series of articles by K. Kautsky in which he reaffirms the view that democracy is essential to the Socialist movement. Our correspondent is interested chiefly in certain conclusions drawn by Kautsky regarding “reformist" and “revolutionary" measures. 

The relevant paragraphs are given below: —

   Once it comes into power, all measures undertaken by our Party assume a Socialist tendency. The determining consideration of all social measures and innovations then becomes centred in the question whether or not they contribute to the material and moral well-being of the masses. In evaluating such measures it would be absurd to draw a line of demarcation between “reformist” and “revolutionary” measures, to exclude the first, or to draw a distinction between two kinds of Socialists—to condemn the reformists and to hail the revolutionists. Reformist measures are those compatible with the existing system of production. Revolutionary measures are those designed to promote its abolition.

The extent to which any measures we may undertake are to be regarded as reformist or revolutionary depends at all times upon the historic circumstances. To be sure, it would be ridiculous to remain reformist at all times and on all occasions. But no less ridiculous is it to confine ourselves at all times to revolutionary measures. When we achieve power we shall be called upon to institute both reformist and revolutionary innovations.

Reply:

Needless to say the S.P.G.B. differs fundamentally from Kautsky on the above-mentioned questions. The point of view expressed well illustrates what it is that divides the Labour and Communist Parties on the one side from Socialists on the other—and this, in spite of the fact that Kautsky's criticisms are addressed primarily to Communists. What Kautsky and the Labour Parties in general fail to appreciate is that basically there is, and can be, only one revolutionary measure for Socialists: that is, the dispossession of the capitalist class of their ownership and control of the means of production and distribution and the transfer of these to society as a whole. That act once accomplished, all the rest of the adjustments necessary after the abolition of capitalism will fall into line. But if that act is not accomplished then there can be no question of Socialism. Kautsky fails to recognise this vital distinction and does not see that the parties he has in mind, the Labour Parties, have no such purpose. Even if some leaders understand what is required the rank and file of such parties do not, but have been recruited on reformist programmes, “those compatible with the existing system of production." Parties of that kind cannot in any circumstances whatever serve as instruments for the entirely different purpose of the one revolutionary act for the accomplishment of Socialism. If Kautsky cannot see what is the nature and composition of the Labour Parties, that is no doubt because he has long accustomed himself to cultivating illusions about the real strength and growth of the Socialist movement. He is still living in a fool’s paradise.

One simple test is provided by Kautsky's statement that “once it comes into power, all measures undertaken by our Party assume a Socialist tendency." Apply this to the British Labour Party, the German Social Democrats, the Austrian and Scandinavian Labour Parties. Is it true that the mostly futile and often dangerous and hostile acts committed by them “assume a Socialist tendency"? It is transparently untrue.

Moreover, we need not wait until they achieve power to measure up their actions. What a party does in power is only a continuation and repetition of what it has been in the habit of doing out of power. The compromising, vote-catching, and essentially non-Socialist activities of the Labour Parties show the fallacy of Kautsky's argument.

Despite the weakness of his argument on this question it must not be forgotten that Kautsky has made valuable contributions to Socialist theory in many directions.

Editorial Committee.