Stepping Stones. (1934)

From the October 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

For A New Reader

It is sometimes interesting to know how people of professional qualifications react to the Socialist Standard when it is first brought to their notice. Those who have had the opportunity to do so must have been struck by the great similarity of opinions expressed by these people. Such expressions as— “the paper seems fascinated by the idea of capitalism," and “the statement in the Declaration of Principles referring to the consequent enslavement of the working class by whose labour alone wealth is produced is sheer nonsense," are not uncommon. Let us, therefore, endeavour to deal with these particular objections.

To a new reader it does, perhaps, seem that the Socialist Standard is “ fascinated by this idea of capitalism," according to the rather sloppy wording of this particular objection. An inanimate object like a paper cannot, of course, be subject to the influence of fascination. What is undoubtedly meant is that there is throughout the Socialist Standard a continual reference to capitalism as being the main cause of the evils which exist to-day. Those evils are almost too well known to need recapitulation. They are widespread poverty and semi-starvation in the midst of an abundance of wealth, lying advertisements—part of the enormously wasteful method of distribution, with its myriads of shops and salesmen and deliverers, the colossal waste of human effort in the building of battleships, aeroplanes and armaments, the fussy and useless activities in the circularizing of letters and the faking up of news as an adjunct to the advertisers, the waste of valuable human labour in ministering to the whims and caprices of wealthy idlers—these, and the evils which arise directly from poverty itself, such as prostitution, robberies and murders.

If capitalism is the cause of these evils, then it is obvious that any party which maintains that this is the case must constantly refer by name to that order of society. In all sciences there are words which indicate certain basic ideas or principles, and if any discussion upon any section of that particular science is to be understood at all, those words must be used whenever that particular idea or principle is referred to. For instance, in physiology one constantly has to refer to the heart and the circulation of the blood. In the same way, in sociology one has to refer to the elements which constitute a particular society, and the particular form of society in which we are living at the present time, and which therefore interests us the most, has been given the name of Capitalism. It is, therefore, frequently necessary to use this word, and no apology is required for doing so. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that the pro-capitalist Morning Post constantly refers to the existing form of society as Capitalism.

That capitalism is the cause of the evils enumerated above, besides many others, has been abundantly proved in the previous issues of this journal. It is not proposed to go into this in detail here, but it is sufficient to point out that the characteristics of capitalism are—the private ownership of the means of production and the production of articles for profit. It is not very difficult to perceive that those evils arise from this fact of private ownership and the efforts by the few people who own them to dispose of those commodities.

“The consequent enslavement of the working class” is the next phrase which antagonizes our professional friends. Does it not logically follow that if the means of living are owned by one class, then any other class can have no other relation to the first class than that of slaves? But if logical deduction is not sufficient, then what are the facts? Unless he steals or begs, a person without capital has to work in order to live. He has to find a master. That master is generally some big combine or other. During the time that he is with that firm he has to work hard, he has to do what he is told, he frequently has to smile back when he is insulted, he is bullied, and if he dares to stand up for himself, he is sent forth to endure the torments of unemployment. He is now “free,” but as it is difficult to live upon the dole, quick as thought he has to start searching for another master. Whilst he is on the dole he is constantly being summoned to the Exchange for his case to be “reviewed”; an investigator comes round to see if he has managed to put by any savings or if he has earned a few shillings surreptitiously, and if he has and has not disclosed it, then woe betide him. Is this man not a slave to the class which employs him and which, when he is out of work, administers the relief and the unemployment benefit ?

It is, incidentally, of interest to note that the recent creation of a Central Assistance Board to control the local relieving authorities is in parallel with the development of capitalist industry. As capitalism becomes more centralised, the capitalists would not desire local relieving authorities, over whom they could not exercise direct control, to distribute scales of relief in excess of what they, in their just wisdom, might deem necessary. 

The next phrase calling for comment is “ the working class, by whose labour alone all wealth is produced.” The professionals like to think of themselves as performing some useful function, and hence, no doubt, their objection to this phrase. Definition is, however, the starting point of any science, and if it is realized that by the working class is meant all those who are compelled to sell their mental and physical energy—what we Socialists term labour-power—in order to get a living, then it is obvious that this term includes clerical and professional workers and scientists, and it cannot be denied that it is only the application of the energies of the workers to material supplied by Nature which results in the production of all present-day commodities.

The production of these commodities to supply human wants is of such a complicated nature that it can only be carried on by groups of men working together. The commodities which these workers have produced, however, do not belong to them, but to a group of anonymous capitalists who endeavour to dispose of the commodities. In times of trade depression the commodities cannot be sold, the men who have produced them are discharged, and are unable to obtain the very goods which they they themselves have produced and of which they may be in sore need. There is, therefore, a disharmony in the mode of production brought about by—on the one hand—social production, and—on the other hand—private ownership of the means of production. Therefore, by abolishing private ownership and substituting for it social ownership, the disharmony is eliminated and mankind will then be able to lead a free and full life.

Ramo.

Editorial: Trade Unionists in Conclave. (1934)

Editorial from the October 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

The annual conference of the Trades Union Congress took place this year at Weymouth under the chairmanship of Mr. Andrew Conley.

This year’s conference followed the trend of those of late years. The Government of the day was roundly condemned alike for the things that it has done and for the things it has left undone, and resolutions were passed recommending numerous reforms. All of which is to be expected of trade union conferences. This conference, however, was probably rescued from boredom by a provocative address by the chairman, a discussion on the bogey of Fascism, and another on war and the general strike.

Speaking on the conference resolution for a forty hours week, Mr. Conley said: 

  “Trade unionism may yet have to use more drastic means of making effective its demand for this reform— and other of its claims. We may have to resort to other methods if the Government and the private interests which keep it in power continue to stand in the way. I am not using the language of menace but stating the conclusions which responsible officers of the trade unions are being driven to by the pressure of events. Many of us are being compelled to ask ourselves whether the best use is made in existing circumstances of the tremendous powers resident in our trade union organisation. The presentation and prosecution of wage claims, claims for shorter working hours, and other measures of general industrial application have been left to individual unions to press forward in limited application to their own industries or trades. Is it not wise and timely to consider the simultaneous presentation to employers in all industries of a carefully planned programme of wage increases, and a standard of working hours which each union or group of unions, with the assistance and guidance of the General Council, can make a matter of negotiation in the trades with which they are concerned?
  “Piece-meal wage movements are on foot. They are backed by the argument that more spending power must become available in the hands of the wage-earning class, to lift the standard of life and to bring consumption up to the level of productive capacity. These sporadic and uncoordinated movements should be linked together in a disciplined and ordered effort to carry the unions forward as a united body. No infringement of the autonomy of unions is involved here. It is the logical next step in the development of the powers of this congress. The functions of leadership and unification of policy which congress expects its general council to exercise, find their justification here."

The above is worth its lengthy quotation. It is an attitude uncommon at the moment among trade union leaders, for it has been interpreted by the Press as logically leading to a threat of a general strike. This may or may not be the logic of Mr. Conley’s position. It does, however, reflect an increased aggressiveness among trade unionists, which in its turn reflects the increase in trade and production. There is less pre-occupation with the “crisis” and more inclination to regard the employer as the enemy, a greater disposition to press for concessions and less of the attitude of peace in industry.” Nevertheless, Mr. Conley would have improved upon the situation had he anticipated in his argument the simultaneous refusal by employers when faced with the threatened "simultaneous presentation to employers in all industries of a carefully planned programme of wage increases.” Remembering the back-door tricks of the T.U.C. in the so-called general strike of 1926, many trade unionists will await with interest to see whether Mr. Conley and "other responsible officers” will make their views heard on the General Council in the near future.

Conference developed discussion on the general strike in dealing with a decision of the last Labour Party conference calling upon the trade unions to call a general strike in the event of war. The subject was the kind to bring politicians to their feet. For example, Mr. Clynes: “Did the critics mean that under no circumstances should they offer resistance to an aggressor threatening to destroy democratic institutions?” Shades of 1914 and the “War to save democracy,” and twenty years later a trade union leader before an audience of working men and women can get away with the melodramatic suggestion that an “enemy” capitalist goes to war with "our” capitalist because he is anxious to destroy our democratic institutions. Mr. Bevin favoured deciding on a “course of action when the danger was on them." Others favoured the point of view that a war of defence against an “aggressor nation" was justifiable. The Daily Herald, on this point, suggested that there is “little likelihood that Britain would be an aggressor country." Is the inference obvious? Is the Daily Herald preparing a defence for a future Labour Government that might find war “justifiable” ? It seemed to occur to no delegate to question whether a general strike would be successful in preventing war, or what possible benefit it would be for the working-class to fight in any war to further capitalist interests. The motion calling for a general strike was defeated and the conference contented itself with the motion that the “General Council would call a meeting to decide what action it would take if war was declared."

The capitalist class will, we think, lose no sleep over the possibility. The Daily Telegraph, September 7th, without conscious irony, pointed out that on July 31st, 1914, on the eve of the late War, the late Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. Arthur Henderson issued, on behalf of the British section of the International Socialist Bureau, a flaming appeal to the British working-class. It ended: "Down with class rule! Down with the rule of brute force! Down with war! Up with the peaceful rule of the people!" Hardly had the ink dried before the official Labour Party and Trade Union movement were enthusiastically supporting the War. And later, Mr. Henderson “downed" those who made themselves a nuisance to the capitalists by recommending obstinate strikers for deportation.

In the debate on the proposal for raising the school leaving age to sixteen years, leaders of religious organisations came in for some criticism because of their sectarian differences. No mention was made of the fact that the Labour Government's bill for raising the school leaving age to fifteen years was prevented from becoming law because of the opposition of religionists within the Labour Party, led by the late Mr. John Scurr, then Labour M.P. for Mile End.

Likewise, the new Unemployment Insurance Act, which, though differing only in minor points from the Act which was in force during the period of the Labour Government, was described as a “ slave bill."

The affiliated membership of the T.U.C. was given as 3,294,581, a decrease on last year’s figures of 73,330. It was pointed out, however, that the decrease has now fallen off, and an actual increase taking place. Moreover, it was stated that, as affiliation fees are based upon the membership of individual unions, these unions tend to be conservative in their estimated membership, owing to financial difficulties due to prolonged unemployment.

This year’s conference gave no signs of having got any nearer to the Socialist understanding of capitalism than former conferences.

Editorial: 1904 -1934 and Progressing (1934)

Editorial from the November 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first number of the Socialist Standard appeared in September, 1904. From that month to this it has appeared regularly every month, advocating the same policy and aiming at the same objective. It is the only paper left of those in 1904 claiming to represent the interests of the working class.

Incidentally, it is interesting to notice that the old organisations have also gone along with the papers they published, for, now that the I.L.P. has become practically a limb of the Communist Party, it would hardly be fair to saddle it with the views of its parent.

The members who saw the first issue of our paper in print were young and hopeful. In spite of the difficulties of the time they expected to see Socialism here during their life-time. Progress has been slower than they anticipated, but for all that it has been solid and greater than appears from a first glance.

The standard of education of the workers is higher than in those earlier times, and Socialist ideas are widespread. In fact, Socialism is no longer the view of cranks, hut is something to be reckoned with. Dictatorships are partly efforts to kill the dragon.

As reform movements collapse and the Labour Party, with its satellites, reap the whirlwind that eventually reaches the discredited reformer, the prospects for Socialism will become brighter.

Russia is steadily proceeding with its industrialisation programme and, unless anything unforeseen happens, will one day take its place as a first-class capitalist power. It will eventually destroy its alien Communist supporters and bring to an end the Communist movement that has spread a blight over the movement for Socialism since the war.

One thing above all is essential to ensure the triumph of Socialism, and that is the enthusiastic advocacy of our principles and policy by those who accept them. Given this enthusiastic support then there is every reason to believe that Socialism will be a matter of our life-time. It is just because Socialism is a practical question of to-day, and not an ideal of a hundred years ahead, that we are organised in the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Consequently, we urge all really practical workers to give our principles and our policy their serious consideration. The more convinced and enthusiastic advocates we have the sooner will Socialism be here, and with it an end to our economic troubles.

It should be an inducement to waverers to know that here is a Party whose principles are so soundly based on facts that they have been a safe political anchorage for thirty years, through peace and war and post-war troubles.

Letter: The S.L.P. and the Conduct of Meetings. (1934)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received the following letter from a reader in Vancouver : —

“Vancouver, B.C.,

“Canada.

“ September 21st, 1934.

"Comrades,

“In the September issue of the Socialist Standard, in reference to conduct of public meetings, you publish a statement of the Secretary of the British Section of the Socialist Labour Party, quoting that they allow questions and open discussion at all propaganda meetings.

“In this respect the British Section are ahead of the American Section, as last month (Thursday, August 16th), at the Victory Hall, Vancouver, I attended a meeting of the S.L.P., addressed by Eric Hass. Questions were allowed, but discussion was not allowed, and when the Chairman’s decision was protested from the floor he adjourned the meeting.

“I might add, the speaker was in difficulty over a question of the Communists dealing with the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat,’ but the meeting was orderly, and the attitude of the Chairman could only be construed as evidence of the weakness of the position of the S.L.P.

What They Were Fighting For. (1934)

From the November 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Lloyd George’s “War Memories” (Vol. Ill) recall the wartime controversies about the secret treaties in which the Allied Governments set down their real war aims, which were in violent contrast with their published ones. General Smuts, at one time beloved of the “peace-by-negotiation” groups, wrote a report for Mr. Lloyd George when the latter was Premier. It contained the aims for which he thought the War should be waged and hundreds of thousands of workers’ lives should be thrown away. Here are the first two aims:

 (a) Destruction of the German Colonial System, with a view to the future security of all communications vital to the British Empire. This has already been done—an achievement of enormous value which ought not to be endangered at the peace negotiations. 

(b) Tearing off from the Turkish Empire all parts that may afford Germany opportunity of expansion to the Far East and of endangering our own position as an Asiatic Power. This has essentially been achieved, although the additional conquest of Palestine may be necessary to complete the task.

The Chief Task of our Times (1934)

From the December 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

In these times of fast communications and well-organised news services, with airmen hopping half-way round the earth in a few days, we are given the advantages of knowing fully and almost at once what the other half of the world is thinking. We find that they are thinking very much the same as we are. They are thinking that life is very hard, and the outlook very cheerless, for the human race. If they are workers they are wondering why it is so difficult to get and to keep employment; why there is food and the means of producing food alongside idle men who lack a sufficiency of it; why it is that work is so drab, tedious and exhausting when obviously it could be made very much more agreeable; why the ingenuity of craftsmen, scientists, inventors and so on is being devoted so largely to producing and perfecting weapons of destruction; why the world’s statesmen all proclaim their brotherly sentiments, but cannot translate them into the practical form of abolishing or reducing the armed forces.

These and many other questions flow through the minds of the world’s workers as they set off to or return from their employers’ factory, mine or office, or line up at the Labour Exchange or its equivalent, in New York, in London, in Tokyo and in Berlin.

Members of the propertied classes worry their heads, too. They have their own doubts and difficulties. They wonder why the working-class animal is such a difficult, unaccountable creature. Why it will not accept all the soothing answers given to it by those in control. They wonder, too, why foreigners must keep on thrusting themselves into the markets, territories and investment areas in which capitalist interests are centred. If they are British they wonder whether to open the door to Sir Oswald Mosley, who is knocking at it, or whether they can safely slam it in his face. They wonder whether the next election may bring a Labour majority; whether that will be very disastrous for them or whether they had not better accept it, lest worse befall.

And everyone, capitalist and worker alike, Socialist and non-Socialist, bears in mind the possibility that international rivalries may sooner or later culminate in a world war more deadly than the last.

These cheerless signs are not novel, but they are more depressing for most people because many of the accustomed opiates have been taken away. It gets harder every year for an intelligent person to believe that he can safely leave the world’s intricate problems to the experts, politicians, journalists and so on. There was a time when, for the average man or woman, it was comforting, and not outrageous, to stifle doubts with the thought that the leaders know all about it—leave it to them. But now? Will anyone confidently leave it to MacDonald and Thomas, the lost leaders of the Labour Party, or to the other leaders who ran away from the application of measures they had already agreed to? Or the statesmen who drowned the world in blood, and who now confess that they none of them want war, but do not know how to prevent it? The statesmen who say that capitalism is the best of all possible systems, but who do not know what crises are or how they arise, let alone how they can be prevented? Shall they trust their war lords of land and sea, their Haigs of Passchendaele, and their muddlers of Mesopotamia? Shall they trust their Bottomleys and Kruegers, Hatries and Insulls, or the non-criminal, but equally fatal, bankers and business men, politicians and newspaper proprietors, churchmen and lawyers, who have led them into the present stupefying chaos?

Confidence is a somewhat shop-soiled commodity these days, but those who set great store by it are now at a loss which way to turn. They would still like to believe, but there are too many awkward memories.

The Socialist Message of Hope.
Socialists alone can look at the world without pessimism or despair. Socialists never built up false hopes, and have not been disillusioned. Seeing the world as it is we know how great the task is, but we know what can be done by determined, organised work towards a clearly-outlined goal. The world is out of joint because the social system is faulty at the foundation. The private ownership of the means of production and distribution is no longer necessary or desirable. It produces the evils of poverty, unemployment, competition, war and class hatred. It has got to be abolished. Instead of an anarchistic war of private owners seeking profit and permitting the workers to produce wealth only when profit is to be obtained by so doing, the social system needs to be refashioned on the new basis of common ownership. Society must assume possession of its means of life. The private owners must be dispossessed. Their private interests and their class privilege must not be allowed to stand in the way of social progress and the welfare of the whole community. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has taken on the great task of organising for that end. We concentrate on the one vital question, capitalism to be replaced by Socialism, private ownership to give place to common ownership, privilege to give place to equality.

Our aim is one to which the workers of the whole world can rally, "without distinction of race or sex.” The Socialist movement is the one movement in the van of social progress, able to face the present world troubles with understanding and confidence.

Edgar Hardcastle

Are You a Slave? (1934)

From the December 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the question at the head of this article be put to people to-day most of them will reply emphatically that they are not slaves; that apart from a few places abroad, slavery was abolished long years ago.

Book after book has been written denouncing or explaining the slavery of antiquity and of the Southern States of America during the last century, all with the implication that slavery has now practically disappeared.

Books are still being written and societies organised to abolish the chattel slavery that still exists in outlying parts on the ground that it is a shameful thing and a moral blot upon civilisation.

On the last point one or two preliminary remarks may perhaps be useful to illustrate a general and curious example of defective mental eyesight. The evils that exist thousands of miles away stir up the passionate indignation of people who daily pass the human wrecks of 'the modem industrial system without giving them a thought. People who contribute pounds to societies for the alleviation of the hardships of native peoples often would not dream of contributing a penny towards the alleviation of the poverty of the toilworn workers by means of whom they obtain their own incomes. It is easier to see the mote in a neighbour's eye than the beam in one’s own.

The chattel slave was unquestionably a slave: upon that everyone is agreed. These slaves were owned just in the same way that horses and cattle are owned. They were well looked after or worked to death according to which of the two methods was most profitable to their owners. The important thing that distinguished the slaves from the owners was the fact that the slaves depended for their living upon the will of another person or class, for slaves were owned sometimes by individuals, sometimes by groups and sometimes by the privileged class as a whole. For instance, the policemen in ancient Athens, owned by the State, were Scythian slaves.

One can therefore define a slave as one who depends for his living wholly or mainly on the will of another person or class.

The chattel slaves of times gone by were employed in a variety of occupations covering the whole field of the production and distribution of the means of life of the times both as overseers and as workmen. Some even occupied at times governmental posts on behalf of the privileged. It is well known that there were Emperors of Rome who were in origin slaves, and, as such, climbed to places of influence under the patronage of their masters or mistresses. In the Southern States of America during the Civil War, the slaves carried on all the work of the plantations while the planters were away fighting.

A well-known American economist, Professor Seligman, defines slavery as “an institution designed to secure the services of others by force.” While he says that this applies entirely to the chattel slave, and in a less degree to the bond worker, he looks upon all who form the citizens of modern states as outside the application of his definition.

Finally it may be pointed out that the people of chattel slaves States were split into two main groups. At the top was a relatively small, privileged class having control of Society and of the means of production. At the bottom was the mass of the people (the bulk of whom were chattel slaves) engaged in industry—whatever had to do directly with the work of getting a livelihood.

Let us now examine modern society in the light of the foregoing remarks.

Here we again find a privileged group at the top owning the means of production and possessed of the control of government. Underneath is the mass of the population, the working class, dependent on the owning class for their means of living.

In order to live the worker must find a buyer for his manual and mental energy. It does not matter what the nature of his working capacity may be, he must find employment for it in order to live. With few exceptions this is the lot of the worker from early years until old age.

To whom does the worker apply for a job? To the masters individually or collectively. It is true that it is not to the masters in person that the worker applies for a job as a rule, because nowadays the masters are usually hidden behind a company, a trust or a state concern. It is to a paid representative of these concerns that the worker must apply.

All the while the worker is at work he is haunted by the fear that he may lose his job and perhaps not get another one, or be thrown among the wreckage of the industrial system. Consequently he humbles himself in ways that sometimes make him squirm. He is respectful and subservient to those above him and to the wealthy class in general. He fears and jumps to the call of “the guv’nor.” Like the chattel slave he depends for his living on the will and the whim of another. Consequently he is a slave. It is true the worker is personally free, which the chattel slave is not, but this is cold comfort when the hooter goes, calling him to his daily toil.

The capitalists as a class own the means of production, and are therefore in a position to determine when, where and how the worker shall live. There is no escape from the shackles under present conditions apart from death. The worker depends on the wage he receives in order to get the necessaries of life, and he is rightly described as a wage slave to distinguish him from other kinds of slaves.

Hypocrisy is a leading characteristic of modern times, and one often reads remarks of satisfaction over the fact that slavery is long since dead and that freedom is the right of all people to-day. Unfortunately the victims of the system are themselves only too ready to accept this view, even though they occupy abominable slums, hurry in harassed and turgid streams over the bridges in the morning, haunted by the fear of being late on the job.

Within the ranks of the working class itself there are many who suffer from the illusion that they are in a class apart from and above the common worker; in fact that their interests are identical with those of the masters as against the rest of the workers. Amongst these are scientists, managers and salaried workers of various kinds.

These types of workers would be under no delusion if they would apply to their condition the test of a slave. On what do they depend for their living? Are they dependent wholly or mainly on selling their energies for wages or salaries in order to live? If this fits their economic condition then they are members of the working class, slaves, always in fear of losing their jobs and suffering accordingly.

The point always to be borne in mind is the frailty of the hold upon that on which the living depends, and the ease and swiftness of operation of the power of the job-controllers. Many in exalted positions have had this very cruelly impressed upon them, and although they scorn the suggestion that they are enslaved, yet they take good care to placate and dance to the tune of those responsible for the salaries.

There is no escape, therefore, from the conclusion that the fundamental interest of all who depend upon wages or salaries is identical, and is opposed to the interest of those who own the means of production and pay their slaves wages or salaries. It is a slave interest opposed to an ownership interest.

The slaves of old tried to release themselves from their bonds by bloody revolts, which, however, were always suppressed, because the masters controlled the political machinery, the instrument of power. The slaves of to-day have had passed over to them the means to obtain control of the political machinery. Thus they are able to mould society to suit their needs when they know what those needs are and how they can be satisfied.

Gilmac.

Attacks on Religion (1934)

From the December 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent (G. M., Mildmay Park) writes complaining that at a meeting of this Party he heard the speaker, instead of expounding the case for Socialism, making abusive and insulting remarks about religion. We can assure the reader in question that abusive and insulting remarks addressed to opponents, whether religious or political, have no part in the propaganda of Socialism, and are discouraged by the S.P.G.B. The Party defines its attitude towards other political parties and towards religion in its pamphlets and in the Socialist Standard, making the reason for our disagreement clear. With regard to the particular complaint, inquiries have failed to discover the speaker whose attitude was objected to.

Editorial Committee

Russian "Gold Rush." (1934)

From the December 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following throws light on Russian development as a power, with the orthodox capitalist interest in world trade. The present position may be contrasted with Lenin’s view as to what the Bolsheviks would do if they were victorious on a world scale, as in the early days they confidently expected to be.

From the “Manchester Guardian’s” Moscow correspondent: —

  A "gold rush” in the Soviet goldfields by farmers become prospectors is envisaged by A. Serebrovski, president of the Gold Administration, in to-day’s “Izvestia.”
   After the harvest the Government is stocking shops in the gold regions with a profusion of goods for fair exchange for miners’ nuggets and dust, for the Government recently reversed its policy of confining prospecting to State trusts, and freelances have already played a considerable part in the year’s sharp rise in gold output. Serebrovski, indeed, emphasises the necessity of encouraging them in every way. (“Manchester Guardian,” September 13th.)

Lenin on Gold : —

  When we conquer on a world scale we shall, I think, use gold for making public lavatories in the streets of the great cities of the world. That would be the most “just” and graphically edifying use of gold for the generations which have not forgotten that for gold ten million people were massacred and thirty million crippled in the “great liberation” war of 1914-1918. (Quoted in “Lenin,” by Ralph Fox.)

50 Years Ago: On Whom do Taxes Fall? (2000)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The S.P.G.B. holds then that the question of high or low prices or taxes is not a working class question because what the working class live by is wages and they have to struggle to maintain wage levels whether prices and taxes are high or low and the principal factors in the struggle are, on the one side, the workers’ cost of living, and on the other side the factors such as good or bad trade, much or little unemployment which help or hinder the trade unions in pressing wage claims.

If then taxation (and this includes rates as well) is not a working class problem whose problem is it? Taxation is the problem of the capitalist class. All of the wealth that the workers produce is the property of the employing class. When the employers have succeeded in selling the goods produced by the workers they employ, and after they have paid wages and met all other expenses of production, they still have to meet the demands of the local and central government for rates and taxes of various kinds. All of the employing class have an interest—as they continually show—in trying to reduce the cost of government. As far as is politically practicable and militarily safe they try to reduce the amount the government raises as taxation and spends on civil service, military service, prisons, police, etc., etc. If they succeed in getting taxation reduced it is in the hope of benefiting themselves; certainly not with the intention of passing on the benefit to the workers.

But beyond this the capitalists are much concerned with trying to place some of the burden of taxation on the shoulders of other sections of their own class. When the brewing interests try to get beer duties reduced (because they hope thereby to increase sales and profits) they do not at all mind if the government meets the situation by putting a corresponding increase of taxation on the capitalists in some other industry—the cinemas for example. But however the struggle between sections of the capitalists over taxation may turn out that is their problem and it involves no interest affecting the working class.

[From “The Bogey of the Tories” by ‘H’, Socialist Standard, November 1950.]

Stop the Newspeak (2000)

From the December 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the article “Education Serving Capitalism” in the April issue Stan Parker made an enlightening analysis of how schools are used to perpetuate the profit-oriented system. He quoted a prominent World Bank official who admitted that “it is true that schools have ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ and that one of their nominal purposes is to take human ‘raw material’ (i.e. children) and convert it into something more valuable (i.e. employable adults)”.

This kind of mis-education and dubious indoctrination obviously costs something and governments spend large sums to provide it. However, there is another more subtle kind of indoctrination which is not only without cost but is also targeted at adults and not just at students.

Under this type of misinformation, words and phrases are manufactured by the World Bank, IMF, UN, etc for use by their operatives. These catchy words and phrases are then extensively used in books, periodicals and newspapers and picked up by politicians, researchers and the like and parroted without giving them a second thought—”duckspeak” as George Orwell might have put it.

Such vocabulary à la Orwellian Newspeak has the damaging effect of not only distorting and concealing the reality of capitalist exploitation and the class struggle but it also slowly narrows the range of thought. A few examples will suffice here.

Global Village: The capitalist propaganda machine coined this phrase to describe the great achievements in the sphere of communications. This term eulogies the presence of the Concordes, Boeings, Airbuses, telephones, email, TV, the Internet, and what have you in the Information Technology industry. These make it possible for events in one part of the world to be followed simultaneously by people in other parts while improved air transport has made it possible for people to be anywhere on Earth within hours. The term “global village” makes it sound that the globe is a like a real village where people can get up and walk from one end to the other. But what people are not told is that only the minority owning class can afford to pay for this. How many people within the working class can conveniently travel round the globe in the same way as a person walks round a village? We can appreciate the advances made in the communications industry (thanks to the labour of the working class) but the other hidden fact about “global village” is who reaps all the profits from the costly gadgets and the sky-rocketing air fares? “Global village” will only be true to the extent that everyone is able to surf the Internet, more anywhere, telephone anywhere at no cost.

Third World: Unwittingly contradicting their concept of a single global village, the same propagandists come up with the concept of a “Third World”. This idea depicts the “village” not as one but as three: the First (the West), the Second (USSR and East Europe) and the Third (Africa, Latin America and Asia). But in reality there is only one world and the division that exists in it is that there is the class of owners of property and the class of those who own no property. Today’s only world consists of the capitalist class and the working class, the rich and the poor. The term “Third World” is a deliberate misnomer designed to push into the background the class nature of this one world of haves and have-nots.

Enabling Environment: The World Bank, the IMF and the so-called “donor agencies” in general normally make loans available to poor peripheral countries only on condition that these countries create an “enabling environment” for business. This term may appear to the less inquiring mind to mean putting in place genuine structures for development. But the real meaning of the term is devaluing the monetary unit of poor countries; strengthening the army, police and judiciary to hold down the working class whilst these countries’ wealth is plundered without any resistance; selling state assets to private capital owners, etc. In short, “enabling environment” is a euphemism for enslaving the working class more and more.

Stakeholders: This is another phrase which is constantly used unquestioningly by NGO staff and government officials. These people revel in repeating their master’s voice without actually understanding it. “Stakeholder” is a term coined to deceive the people that projects in poor countries benefit all those involved: the donor agency, the government and the target group (the poor people). The term sends the wrong signal that all three categories are equal. But the truth is that the working people (the target group) who provide the labour component of the project are always disadvantaged. However, the government boosts its image by posing as the middleman while the capitalists reap benefit as they sell their products (all the machinery and other materials used in the project).

Collapse of Communism: The capitalists and their bankrupt media and academia ignorantly refer to socialism/communism as a system in which the means of production are controlled by the state. With such crass stupidity the capitalists thought that the former Soviet Union and the East European states were communist. People were taught to think this as a means of deliberately camouflaging the truth that the USSR and Eastern Europe were actually profit-oriented entities practising state-capitalism. Therefore as soon as perestroika took hold of the USSR and the Berlin Wall collapsed, the Western powers got another hypocritical opportunity to trumpet repeatedly to the whole world that communism/socialism was dead. But what actually happened in the USSR and Eastern Europe was that state capitalism gave way to Western-style capitalism. In other words, state control of the means of producing and distributing wealth was replaced by individual and corporate control.

Asian Tigers: Fortunately, the capitalist propaganda machine can’t stand the test of time. A clear example is the recent joke of the “Asian Tigers”. To conceal the facts surrounding the pillage and plunder of the human and material resources of the “tiger economies”, the world was inundated with the false story of the success of these Asian peripheral countries. But the lies blew up in their face one morning as the world woke up to see that the tigers had not only lost their teeth but their clawed paws had gone numb.

The important question in the face of such dubious misinformation is whether humanity can afford just to wait until the capitalists confess and swallow their own untruths as time exposes them. This would amount to condoning crime. Therefore humanity must act. The first step should be to grasp the socialist (which is humane) understanding of society; people must know the real causes (not the ones based on faith) of poverty, want, disease, illiteracy, the purpose of production of wealth, etc. Armed with the basic principles of socialism one can easily see through the pseudo-philosophies and phrase-mongering tactics of those presently gagging humanity and human progress just in the interests of their super-profits.

Suhuyini

Greasy Pole: Prescott on class (1999)

The Greasy Pole column from the September 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nicholas Soames is a Tory MP—the sort who is instantly at home in the club-like atmosphere of the House of Commons with its adolescent misbehaviour, its false camaraderie and its ravenous appetite for rumour. Soames is rich, privileged, secure. He speaks in a booming voice and is insultingly deferential or disparaging towards women. Claire Short, for example, is a natural victim for him. He likes to indulge all his appetites; the equally obnoxious MP Alan Clark tells of him taking up a lot of time during Agriculture Questions recommending “. . . an incredibly powerful new aphrodisiac he had discovered” (is this why people are elected to the Mother of Parliaments?) and on another occasion even the famously immoderate Clark was uncomfortable at the thought of how much he and Soames could spend on one meal in an exclusive restaurant.

To put it another way, Soames is an overweight, arrogant buffoon who, had he not been born into a very rich family, would have had difficulty in persuading an employer to give him a job stacking shelves in a supermarket. If he had got the job the other shelf-fillers would not have appreciated his “jokes”, which are manufactured and trumpeted out for the benefit of Soames rather than his defenceless listeners. For example, if Soames is in the House when John Prescott gets onto his feet he usually greets him with the cry: “Two gin and tonics please, Giuseppe.” This is supposed to be funny because it refers to the fact that in his early days, before he climbed the ladder of trade union officialdom, university student, MP and minister, Prescott was a waiter on an ocean-going liner. It is not amusing, especially for those who have heard it for the fortieth time. But perhaps it rattles Prescott, who recently got some unwelcome publicity about the fact that he no longer admits to being a member of the working class and instead lays claim to membership of that vague, indefinable, mysterious social strata called the middle class.

Father

The story was ecstatically embraced by the media. After all Prescott has a reputation of being the only representative of Old Labour in the Cabinet—the only link with the days when the governments of Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan were following roughly the same policies as Blair but not so blatantly. As might have been expected the Sun led the pack with an interview with Prescott’s 89-year-old father in his wheelchair. Prescott senior is angry with his famous son for many reasons: “spiteful” was how he described him in a typical Sun headline. The father began his working life as a railway porter and ended it as controller of Liverpool Lime Street station. At some stage he fell out with his son who, he says, has not spoken to him civilly for three years. For 50 years he has been a “traditional” Labour Party member, from which we can infer that he does not approve of John Prescott’s apparent shame at his roots.

There is rather more to it than that—as there is to the whole business of which class John Prescott belongs to and why and what he feels about it. A former Labour Party leader in Hull—which has John Prescott as its MP—says that he “. . . bent over backwards to show he is middle class”. Bending over backwards seems to entail living in one of the biggest houses in the city, with turrets and decorated chimney pots, having two Jaguar cars and other trappings. All of this sits uneasily with Prescott’s pose as a rough, tough son of the proletariat. It makes him seem to want to forget his time as a waiter (except that Soames won’t let him) and to be ashamed of his class origins (which Soames will never be).

Pride

The inference of this is that shame—and therefore pride—should come into the issue of class. It is usual to hear Labour politicians who declare themselves to be working class stoutly asserting that they are proud of it. On the other hand Prescott, according to the Sunday Times of 18 July, is proud of being in another class—of “. . . having hauled himself up” from the proletariat depths. It is a mystery, why anyone should feel pride in being born into one class or another, which is something quite out of their control and not something they have achieved. That is why millions of people who may be proud of being workers try so persistently to remove themselves from the source of their pride by winning the lottery. The same goes for members of the ruling class; it is no achievement of theirs to be born of parents like Nicholas Soames or Rupert Murdoch or Jonathan Aitken.

This is typical of the confusion in which the matter of social class is embedded. Living in a larger house and running a couple of cars does not in itself raise someone into another class. Neither does earning a bigger wage. The roller-coaster of capitalism’s economy has recently brought thousands of people in this country sharply up against the fact that there is more to it than that. Thousands who thought that taking out a mortgage on a house made them middle class were deprived of that delusion by the reality of re-possession. Thousands who assumed they were middle class because they sat in a manager’s chair and drove a company car were forced to re-arrange their concepts about society when they got their redundancy notice.

Exploitation 

A great deal of anguish might have been saved for these people through a proper understanding of capitalism’s class structure—what it is, how it operates and what it does to us. Simply—class is determined by a person’s economic standing and interests. Those who have to be employed—at whatever job—for a living are members of the working class. Their interests are the same as those of all other members of that class and opposed to those of the one other class, who as a class employ and exploit them. In this process capitalism’s class structure is protected and perpetuated.

Whether John Prescott understands this or not is another matter (although as he still describes himself as a socialist he ought to have at least an inkling of it—or did he not pay attention during his time at Ruskin)? He has made it almost to the top in government—hauled himself up so that he has a big say in organising the exploitation of workers like his dad to the enrichment and comfort of parasites like Nicholas Soames. Now that is something to be ashamed of.

Ivan

Social Protest Literature (1999)

Book Review from the September 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Social Protest Literature: An Encyclopaedia of Works, Characters, Author, and Themes. Patricia D. Netzley, ACB-CLIO Inc. 1999.

You will learn a lot from this dog’s dinner of a reference book. Did you know that “monkey-wrenching” in America is a form of environmental sabotage? Or that a character called Teacake, in a black feminist novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, contracted rabies and had to be shot by his wife? You didn’t? Well, you do now.

The trouble with Netzley’s confection is that it is wilfully selective, often tediously trivial—and, frankly, just too American. Of the 343 works cited, no less than 93 percent were published in the US. The British ones include those by or about Dickens, Aldous Huxley, Gilbert Murray, Herbert Read, Shaw and Raymond Williams. Bernard Marx, a character in Huxley’s Brave New World, merits a 200-word discussion. No entry for Karl Marx—only a passing reference to him under communism and socialism. The social reformer Edward Bellamy, with his boring prediction of a nationalised “socialist” America in Looking Backward, gets an enthusiastic 700-word coverage. For William Morris’s much more imaginative News from Nowhere—zilch! The entries for communism and socialism are disappointing. We are told that the principles of communism developed in ancient times, that Marxists split into several factions during and after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and that McCarthy led a crusade against communism. Not a word about what communism actually is as an alternative to capitalism.

Socialism fares only a little better. After being told that it “is an ideology that advocates equality and the abolishment of class structure and capitalism” we learn that “Socialists believe that the people, in the form of the state, should control all property and production of goods”!

Perhaps the main problem with this book is her focus on the word “protest”. It is a weak and even cunning word, exemplified in the protest vote, when you vote for someone you don’t agree with to give someone else a warning. Protest is often ineffective and done from a position of subservience: you protest the price of fish when you ought to be boldly changing the world. Socialists don’t go much on protest—vigorous opposition and constructive imagination are more our style.

Social Protest Literature has some good points. As the blurb says it is beautifully illustrated and would look good on a coffee table. It gives a fair introduction to a wide range of fictional literature on the lives of victims of property society. But don’t expect to find anything useful about how to abolish that society and replace it with socialism.

Stan Parker

Capitalist Priorities (1999)

From the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

I have just received a letter (dated 19 April) from a friend in Cleveland, Ohio. It is worth quoting almost in full as the contents demonstrate the priorities, as well as the contradictions, in the United States, the “land of the free”.

  “I am unemployed at the moment. I am receiving unemployment benefits, but they are very low. In this country, such benefits amount to half of the salary you were drawing, and they last half a year. It’s a real bummer, as we used to say.
  Other than that, though, I’m in good health, which is a good thing because people in this situation usually don’t have good health insurance, either. Some hospitals and many doctors won’t treat a person without such insurance. As it happens, I live quite close to a local charity hospital. So I’m assured of emergency care if I need it.
  What’s that I heard about this being the “greatest nation on earth”? (they actually say that, you know).
  News from the Balkans is quite depressing. This country is being led towards a ground war, with troops being called up, etc. I’m enclosing a newspaper clipping, complete with the “appropriate” photograph.
  A couple of months ago, Congress was in such an argument about how to spend a surplus of funds that normal legislative business was not being taken care of. That argument, of course, is totally irrelevant now.”

The enclosed clipping, an article by Paul Richer from the Los Angeles Times, stated that the Kosovo campaign will cost $4 billion through September, and that already there are insufficient reservists and volunteers. “We’ve gotten to the limits of volunteerism,” said a Pentagon official.

Apparently the only people who have gained anything from all this are the Iraqis. The Pentagon has had to scale back its activities in the “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq, and shift the planes to Europe. The “appropriate” photograph from the newspaper is of Amanda Brown, 8, holding up a drawing she drew, bidding goodbye to her father, as he and other members of the 133rd Airlift Wing leave Minneapolis for Europe.

Meanwhile, back in the States, if Amanda Brown or anyone else falls ill and needs hospitalisation, but haven’t gotten insurance cover, then they won’t get suitable treatment. Such are the priorities of American capitalism.

Peter E. Newell

Sick society (1999)

Book Review from the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Cancer Stage of Capitalism by John McMurty, Pluto Press, 1999.

In the UK, one in three people will suffer from some form of it. At most about 5 to 10 percent of cases are caused by defective genes, the rest have their cause not just in the natural environment but—as oncologists are increasingly becoming aware—the social environment. (How long before the Chief Medical Officer issues the health warning: “Capitalism seriously damages health”?) McMurty takes the argument much further and identifies the causes of the world’s social problems in the global market, which in the last 30 years or so has developed a cancerous state. He argues that the global market is “a profound perversion” of the market, “much as a diseased cell formation is a perversion of a healthy cell formation, but succeeds in invading its host by masking its nature as the normal ‘self’ of the body”. Money no longer has a direct relation to wealth creation. Within the global market transnational corporations in particular make money out of money. Corporations “create credit and thus increase domestic money supply with no restriction on the amount of new currency demand so created in the host economy”. This is the carcinogenic disorder within the global market.

McMurty claims that the global market and the new role of money is a development that Marx did not foresee, and that “the gold standard, and therefore the dead-labour basis of money value which Marx supposed as money’s stable yardstick, was eliminated in 1974”. However, Marx’s theory of money, which explained the prices of commodities by the value of gold using a fully convertible currency, is not the same thing as the Bretton Woods gold standard which McMurty refers to, which was concerned mainly with international exchange rates between currencies. If McMurty were correct in his claim that transnational corporations make money out of money, mainly through the creation of credit, then this would be incredibly inflationary. In fact, in recent years in the UK and US and a number of other countries, inflation has declined while globalisation has continued apace. Furthermore, no corporation would go bust in this scenario. If in difficulty, corporations would merely pull themselves up by their own bootstraps by “creating money”. McMurty’s grasp of what constitutes capital is decidedly shaky: “wealth that can be used to produce more wealth”. In which case your garden spade and many other inanimate objects become capital. It would have made more sense if he had added: “for sale with a view to profit”. But then this would have altered his argument about the dynamics of capitalism and this would have been a very different book.

Is the prognosis for capitalism terminal? With enough political momentum, McMurty argues, internationally enforceable legal limits can be established so that money “returns to its proper value function”. This begins the eradication of the carcinogenic disorder and markets then serve the common interest. If you believe that, then you don’t understand the economics of capitalism.

Lew Higgins