Debate with Labour Party: "Which Party Should the Working Class Support?” (1952)

From the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

A synopsis of a public debate held at Bexleyheath on Dec. 17, between the Labour Party, represented by Ashley Bramall, and the S.P.G.B., represented by J. Thorburn. The audience numbered 150. In the chair was Mr. Geo. Grieve (I.L.P.).

Thorburn had three sessions of 30 mins., 20 mins, and 10 mins., Bramall having two sessions of 30 mins.

Thorburn (1)
Our claim for working class support lies in our contention that only the abolition of Capitalism can solve the problems of the working class, and that in this country only the S.P.G.B. stands for the object of ending Capitalism and establishing Socialism. Capitalism causes poverty, unemployment and war. To get a living workers are forced to hire themselves to the Capitalist class. Workers are employed in order to produce a profit for their hirers. Only so long as profit is realised are goods produced. Production for profit is in the interests of the capitalists. Raw materials and ready markets are essential to Capitalism. In pursuit of these, Governments are driven to conflict. At best the worker keeps a job, which reduces him to a lifelong struggle to make ends meet, finishing as he started, with nothing. During slumps and consequent unemployment millions eke out an existence in direst poverty and destitution. Such conditions arise from Capitalism, be it democratic or dictatorial, planned or unplanned. It is not possible under Capitalism for workers to be anything else but workers.

According to our analysis it is imperative that Capitalism be removed. If Mr. Bramall and the Labour Party wishes to end poverty and war, does he agree Capitalism is the cause? If so he must agree the ending of Capitalism is vital to the interests of society in general. If Capitalism is not the cause, what is, and where is the S.P.G.B. analysis wrong?

Since 1904 the S.P.G.B. has never deviated from its object. We have always argued that workers in this and other lands must understand and accept Socialism before Capitalism can be abolished. Capitalism is international, so will be Socialism, the nucleus of which exists in the S.P.G.B. and identical parties abroad.

Socialist production will be to satisfy the needs of society. Everyday life will be from each according to ability and to each according to need. Under such conditions money, trade and employment have no place. Socialism does not exist anywhere to-day. The task of the Socialist Party is to make Socialists and speed the day of achieving Socialism.

The Labour Party was not formed to replace Capitalism by Socialism, nor has it ever stood for a socialist object. Herbert Morrison repudiated any suggestion of Labour Government wishing to end the profit system. The Labour Party seeks by reform measures to stimulate Capitalism while trying to curb its harmful effects. Pledged to retain Capitalism, it cannot remove the evils of Capitalism. Of recent reforms, Capitalism’s need for a National Health Service was expressed by parties standing for Capitalism. Nationalisation is not Socialism but an expedient of Capitalism. Openly capitalist powers have nearly all nationalised where necessary. Despite the efforts of Labour Governments, working class problems remain. Housing and health are sacrificed in the preparation for another war. Anyone promising better living soon is dishonest.

Bramall (1)

Socialism is not an end in itself but the means of securing greater happiness for men and women. We are not concerned with some theoretical paradise but with real people who have a right to better lives.

According to the S.P.G.B., workers’ problems are the same now as 150 years ago; are caused by Capitalism. Therefore, since Capitalism can offer no consequents! improvement, Capitalism must go.

It is wrong that present day problems are entirely due to Capitalism. Many are it is true, but it is misleading to suggest that these problems would vanish with Capitalism’s removal. There is fundamentally a struggle of man against nature. Under-use of resources between the wars distorted our thinking and we assume too readily there was enough available to satisfy the reasonable desires of people. It is not just the requirements of this country but of the world over that have to be met. A real problem is general under-use by people outside Capitalism. Another problem is distribution. In large modern societies the division of products according to needs cannot be solved easily. In simple forms of society it was easy, but not today. There are problems of living together; psychological problems. These difficulties existed long before Capitalism and will outlive it.

Secondly, there are faults in the Socialist Party’s analysis of Capitalism. They are wrong in assuming no worth-while improvements for workers can be gained short of Socialism. Capitalism has seen an important transformation. We can trace three stages. The first, when wages were ruthlessly low. According to classical capitalist economists, full employment was assured if wage levels were such that all labour could be used. The second stage—during the slumps —dispelled that. All they could say about mass unemployment was it ought not to be there. Such wage levels were, by T.U. action, not acceptable, hence unemployment. To-day, we see where full employment is again possible by regulating the economy without crushingly low wages. Now that represents an advance gained by Trade Union and political organisation. Again, since 1939 the profits of production have been considerably transferred from those who live by rent, interest and profit, to the working class. In 1938, after tax payments, etc., capitalists had 34 per cent of the national income; in 1950 it was 26 per cent That is not Socialism, but an improvement representing extra wealth and happiness. Another instance concerns Rowntree’s Poverty Line, below which desperately low level one quarter of the working class lived in 1939. To-day the proportion is 2½ per cent. In fifty years the number below the Poverty Line was halved. During the last thirteen or fourteen years it has been reduced by nine-tenths.

The Socialist Party insists these things are not worth doing; as reforms they detract from attaining Socialism. There might be something in that argument if one could be so certain of what the result would be once Socialism is achieved. The Socialist Party’s weakest point is Socialism itself. We hear all about what is not Socialism. They say Labour Government is not Socialism, Nationalisation has no connection with it, neither Russia nor Yugoslavia are Socialist. What is Socialism then? And what chance has their method of getting it? It is intended the workers shall by capture of Parliament abolish capitalism and its property relations, beyond which the Socialist Party offers no blue-print of real life. I say it is not possible to have every i dotted and every t crossed. There will be problems.

The Labour Party is learning all the time from its mistakes, but here we have the S.P.G.B. with only a bland confidence everything will be alright. I say that for such an uncertain future it is not worth turning our backs on the unspectacular results of Labour Party methods for real improvements in working class lives. We share common ground in the aim of Socialism. I believe it can be better gained on the road which brings improvements en route.

Thorburn (2)

As for as the Socialist Party is concerned, Socialism is an end in itself. The Party’s work is done with the advent of Socialism. Capitalism is defined by and erected upon an economic base. The superstructure of Socialist society will be built up on the economic base peculiar to it, namely on common ownership and democratic control of the means of life, production for use, and distribution according to need.

Socialism is not a solver of all problems but of the major problems of our time. What are they? Bramall carefully left out mention of war. In 1945 Labour proclaimed the Left could speak at peace with the Left, yet to-day the threat of war grows even greater. The longer the costly preparation for “Defence ” the more devastating the war will be. Wages, up by 20 per cent. are losing sight of prices which are up by 29 per cent., resulting in increased overtime and a halt in the struggle for lower working hours. Man’s ascendancy over nature is by now well established. On the question of Labour’s improvements, Bramall claims more for Labour Government than Herbert Morrison who admits the vital effect Marshall Aid had in keeping unemployment down in this country. The effect of increased production and trade competition would be shown in unemployment returns before now were it not, also, for Korea and “Defence” preparations.

The three stages of any society are Growth, Decay and Death. Capitalism has passed beyond the growing stage, now moving from one crisis to another. If Socialism is a dream. Capitalism is a nightmare.

The Labour Party is not a Class Party and as an admitted “cross section” of the people, is in line with the Tories. It does not aim at Socialism. For all Bramall's claims of its accomplishments, Glenville Hall was in 1949 forced to admit that 10 per cent. of the people still owned 90 per cent. of the wealth, a situation deplored by the Labour Party back in 1918. The Labour Party works for Capitalism. Despite the “bleak” outlook forecasted for workers, profits had risen. The “socialism” of the Labour Party has benefited only the Capitalist group. Contrary to Attlee's prediction that a Tory victory at the 1951 Election would create a boom on the Stock Exchange, the actual result was written off as a slump.

Bramall (2)

It is true the Labour Party has not attained perfection in its method of trial and error. But the S.P.G.B. cannot show the way. The deficiencies of Capitalism may be removed but that will not escape problems which will exist whether under Capitalism or Socialism. Thorburn is a very long way from an answer to what Socialism will be like. Is Socialism really an end in itself? Surely the question is, does it increase or diminish our happiness? It is not sufficient to say Capitalism is bad, but to show what is better.

The S.P.G.B. has it Russia is Capitalist I agree it isn’t Socialist, but who are the Russian Capitalists inside Communism?

The spirit and philosophy of Labour’s Defence programme gained world respect. War is not inevitable. It is a bogus "scientific” analysis to predict that war and unemployment are bound to rise again.

Other European countries had Marshall Aid without full employment. The reason was lack of Governmental planning. Capitalism can be made to benefit Capitalists less and workers more. Agreed, the property relations remain unaltered, but given time, with a socialist objective Labour can alleviate problems and generally make life better. Nationalisation is a training ground for trying out Socialism. Labour is not in line with the Tories. Improvements from Tories were wrung from an unwilling hand, in contrast with Labour's anxiety to make improvements.

The S.P.G.B. avoids the issue of problems under Socialism. It asks us to take a blindfolded route into

something we know nothing about. Their idea of everyday life under Socialism is primitive in conception, leading to chaos and disaster, by ignoring organisational difficulties. Before Capitalism goes the next method must be known.

There is more value in Labour's policy of admitting errors and mistakes than trying to blindly convince the world's workers.

Thorburn (3)

Organisation under Socialism will be the responsibility of society, not of the S.P.G.B. Socialism as a system of society is distinct from a form of government. Our end as a political body is the establishment of that society.

Capitalism has outlived its usefulness. The next stage in Social Evolution is Socialism. We are on the verge of an atomic war and the destruction of industrial Europe. It would probably not be so if the Labour Party had spent its time propagating Socialism. They follow instead, policies leaving Capital and Wage Labour firmly entrenched.

Russia has all the features of Capitalism. If Bramall wants to know a Russian capitalist, I name one Berdvebekov.

We know of no measure of human happiness. Happiness will look after itself following the establishment of its conditions.

The Labour Party, so far from assisting the emancipation of working people, hindered it, in their pursuit of the will-o-the-wisp of Social Reform. For all their reforms the problems remain. It is not bogus science to say that if the factors causing war and unemployment continue that these things will re-appear. The Labour Party does not spread Socialism but disillusion. Its big majority of 1945 was reduced to a wafer in 1950, and to defeat in 1951. As to its “ training ground” of Nationalisation and its “trial and error,” Labour was forced to soft pedal on Nationalisation to get workers’ votes, and is bereft of new arguments to replace those having failed. What can the Labour Party offer now?

The unfulfilled needs of present society demand the end of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. Experiences of the past, present and future will continue to hammer that fact home.

Shinbone Pie! Or Who are the Hungry? (1952)

From the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to an Evening Standard correspondent in the Argentine (1-2-52) President Peron has been talking about food and hunger.

Speaking to delegates to the First National Congress of Justice (Buenos Aires) he referred to his statement made to British meat negotiators not too long ago when they were debating price and conditions of selling and buying meat. “You have hunger and we have meat, and we will see who can last the longer”

Congress of Justice, eh! Real capitalist competitive justice and sounding so like the boss class negotiating with workers in strike times.

The “work more, eat less” gospel is being put into practice as the guns or butter effort goes forward.

Now, worker, when did you last have a nice big juicy steak?

Can you afford poultry and expensive tinned food to make up your rations?

Have you a farm to supply you with eggs and extras?

But cheer up, the bombs are bigger and better. It’s all O.K. You and the “enemy” can knock ’em out by the thousands instead of the hundreds. Yes, the work of anatomical dissection will be on a colossal scale, so why worry about the price of meat. At , least the vultures will have plenty!

Peron’s words set the writer’s memory on a backward journey. Time, March. 1941. Place, our old bomb-dissected Head Office at Great Dover Street. Borough, with Party members salvaging what was left of “our effects.”

After a long day, hungry and dry with bomb dust I popped into a snack bar and ordered the best, first a chunk of canary coloured cake and a cup of tea. The cake about as delicious as bomb dust; the tea! war-time tea. So, as the inner man kept shouting “Heave ho,” I asked for a snack, more substantial, and the proprietor suggested an “individual meat pie.” I had a go and after an “all in” with my dentures, I got through the crust and struck the individual meat. It jarred my jawbones and I withdrew from the feast, paid up and popped the question to the proprietor, what did he call the pie? “Individual meat,” he explained. “Yes,” I replied. “the Individual must have been Methuselah,” and my munchers had struck his shinbone, and so with my inner man defiant and unappeased I hopped down the Borough Tube, past the long line of workers already harbouring from the bombing murder, and made for the West End where I was doing a spot of assisting in a luxury business, and there in Piccadilly’s luxury food store windows I saw the very opposite to war-time tea and shinbone pie. Yes. and it was not labelled “For our mangled war ‘ heroes,” it was just for sale—if you had the dough. So now you meat-producing, bomb-making, all wealth-producing workers! Are you really nuts?

Capt. Cook.

Editorial: Population and Poverty (1952)

Editorial from the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are told by a correspondent (J. Caldwell, Glasgow), that the article "Housing and Festivals" in our December, 1951, issue "overlooks the need for the poorer classes to restrict or curtail their procreative activities. Study Malthus, abolish all religious superstition and get down to birth control. India, China, etc., etc., should be a lesson to all.”

Our correspondent tells us that India and China "should be a lesson to all” but does not tell us what the lesson is. If we are to assume that our correspondent means that where the population increases the workers are poor and that in countries where the population does not increase but declines the workers are not poor the answer is simple: the working class are poor in all countries. The population in Ireland has declined enormously during the past 100 years and is still falling. It fell from 2,971,992 in 1926 to 2,955,107 in 1946. By contrast the population in Great Britain, America, Canada, Australia, and in the world generally increased greatly during the same periods. Are we then to believe that in Ireland the workers are no longer poor, or are less poor than the workers in other countries named? If our correspondent really believes this he should supply evidence.

France is another country in which population has declined (from 41,835,000 in 1931 to 40,503,000 in 1946). Are the French workers no longer poor?

One interesting point about our correspondent's case is that he does not offer the benefits of birth control to the capitalists but only to "the poorer classes." In other words, though he apparently thinks that birth control will make the poor rich he does not think that the lack of it will make the rich poor.

What we need to be told by those who hold our correspondent’s view is how their alleged cure for poverty is supposed to operate. They argue that there are too many workers and that a reduction of their number would enable the smaller number to push up wages.

This argument overlooks the fact that under capitalism the number of workers who can get work is not a fixed number, it depends on whether capitalist production is expanding or contracting. At present there are some 22 million workers in employment and not only is unemployment relatively low but, according to the Ministry of Labour (Labour Gazette, Jan. 1952). the number of registered unemployed 302,956 is actually less than the number of unfilled vacancies 335,686. (The explanation is of course that the vacancies may be in areas where there are no unemployed workers suitable for the kind of work). Our correspondent wants the number of workers to be decreased. Let us suppose therefore that his propaganda succeeded in reducing the number from 22 million to say 21 million. But in 1931 according to the Ministry of Labour (21st Abstract of Labour Statistics, page 14), the total number of persons available for work was 21,000,000. Were the workers then in the happy position of being less poor, or not poor at all? By no means, for at that time capitalism was in one of its depressions and there were 2½ millions out of work!

While capitalism continues the working class, whether more or less numerous than what our correspondent regards as the proper number, will continue to be exploited. Not birth control but Socialism is required to abolish poverty.

Problems of Japanese Competition (1952)

From the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since 1945, when Japan decided to cut her losses in the "hot” war by surrendering to the Allies, she has steadily regained the position of workshop of Asia which she held before the war. A turning point in the post-war history of this country of 85 million people was in 1948 when the American Government decided to stop pouring millions of dollars into the vain attempt to bolster up the dying Chiang Kai-shek regime on the mainland of China. Instead the main Far-Eastern investment of the U.S. capitalist class was switched to Japan which, it was hoped, would help to arrest the growth of the Eastern bloc of nations under Russian influence. Last September the Japanese Peace Treaty was signed in San Francisco, and the scene was set for the emergence of Japan, under close American supervision, as a “sovereign” nation determined to find her place in the capitalist sun.

Straggle for Markets
The tremendous increase m the productive powers of the advanced industrial nations (especially of the U.S.) has helped to contract the world’s markets, which would in any case have been the tendency from the slackening of the demand to repair the ravages of war on world capitalism. We are approaching the point when the problems of cut-throat competition and unemployment through “over-production” will return as they did in the 1930’s.

Ever-increasing Japanese competition, not only in textiles but in metal goods, machinery and pottery, has been aggravated by the American-influenced decision of the Japanese Premier Yoshida to recognise Chiang Kai-shek in Formosa instead of the Mao Tse-tung regime on the mainland of China. If, as is more than likely, this has an adverse effect on Japanese trade with China, Japan will have to look elsewhere to sell her exports, and will no doubt cast covetous eyes on the markets in the British Commonwealth.

The inevitability of such problems as these within the present economic system and just how little their character is affected by the individuals who are mistakenly supposed to be in control of events can be seen from the following comment by a writer in the New York Times, Lindesay Parrott:—

  “The Japanese people, after six years of shelter behind a benevolent occupation, were learning that sovereignty soon would confront them with the 'guns or butter’ problem so familiar to other post-war nations, and they did not like the prospect.
   “In the face of hard world facts, Japan had little option other than to follow the path the Premier pointed out” (New York Times, 27-1-52.)

Sweated Labour
So far we have been concerned with questions of trade from the point of view of that class in whose interest trade is carried on. Let us turn to the position of the workers in Japan, who are pushed around like pawns in this grim game. In an article in the Daily Herald entitled “Made In Japan” Dudley Barker gave some interesting facts about their unenviable conditions:—

  “The labour force in Japan numbers nearly 37 million and the average working week is nearly 50 hours. For that the average worker gets a wage of £11 a month— barely enough to keep his family, even at a low standard of living (more than half of it goes in simple food).
  "In the textile trade the position is worse. Textile workers get between £5 and £7 per month (latest available figures) in a country where inflation is raging.” (Daily Herald, 28-1-52.) 

However, there are factors which tend to make profit-making a little more difficult for Japanese capitalists as a whole than they would no doubt like it to be. According to the terms of the San Francisco treaty Japan is to pay reparations, mostly to South-east Asian countries, and, to quote Lindesay Parrott again, “a South-east Asia, seething with resentment against Japan for what the Philippines and Indonesia consider their just due in war damages, would offer the worst possible field for this trade relation, vital to the Japanese economy.”

In the 1930’s Japan obtained most of her imports from Asia, which also absorbed the greater part of her exports. Lost sources of supply and lost markets there will have to be replaced by more costly sources farther afield and by greater exports to markets outside Asia. In addition to the problems directly connected with foreign trade the Japanese capitalist class will have to saddle itself with its own burdens of “defence,” now that their benevolent American protectors have decided to grant them sovereignty. Already mention has been made (New York Herald Tribune, 25-1-52) of a Japanese military force of 150,000 ground troops, 1,500 planes and 308 warships after the peace treaty goes into force.

Another interesting sidelight was thrown on the question by Mr. Anthony Greenwood in the parliamentary debate on the Peace Treaty:—

  “If, as we all hope, the Korean war finishes in the near future, this will mean another difficulty for Japan, because Japan has been prevented from exporting a large amount of textiles to markets where we want to sell our textiles, by the fact that she has been selling them extremely profitably to United Nations Forces fighting in Korea. Indeed, during the past few years Japan has become, ironically enough, the arsenal of democracy.” (Hansard, 26-11-51, col. 943.)

American journalists can thus point to the problems which face the Japanese capitalists, and they can affect a paternal attitude to their masters' comparatively new-found friends.

   “The principal fear expressed by members of Congress is that Japan, once on its own, will trade with Communist China. For the Japanese the problem is admittedly difficult. Though overwhelmingly anti-Communist, they must trade to live; and many of them fear that in South-east Asia competition with the British Commonwealth will be adverse.”

(New York Herald Tribune, 26-1-52, italics ours.) 

It is interesting to compare this attitude to Japan with that expressed by various propagandists on behalf of British capitalists who see in the growth of Japanese competition a serious threat to their profits. The threat of foreign competition is always accompanied by the demand that to meet it workers shall produce more at cheaper cost—harder work and a less riotously high standard of living are the watchwords the working class is exhorted to take up. It does not need much imagination to deduce from the similarity of the disease that the workers of Japan are being given the same sort of medicine as workers here, possibly with some slightly different ingredients necessitated by conditions in that part of the world.

The Grim Future
What are the future prospects for the workers in Britain and Japan, assuming that they continue to give support to the capitalist system? Let us take first the Japanese workers, whose doubling of their industrial output in the last four years has made very little difference to their miserably low standard of living. The following is from an article “ The Revival of Japan ” by D. Duxbury: —

  “The political and economic trend in Japan itself now suggests that some of the benefits of the Occupation in preventing excessive exploitation of labour may soon be lost. Trade Unionists during last year expressed to me their fears that the American attack on Japanese Communists might in suitable conditions be extended to become a witch-hunt reaching for any union leader or simple worker who had the insolence to stand for his rights or resist any worsening of wages or conditions. Present news from Japan confirms that industrialists are waiting for an opportunity to reverse the labour laws passed under American tutelage.”

(World Review, Jan., 1952.)

The rest of his article indicates that this writer is by no means sympathetic to the interests of the working class against those of their masters.

The Way Out?
We have drawn from the writings of others on the nature of the problems, so let us now try to see what solutions they put forward. They are all agreed that the standards of living in Japan and in the East generally must be encouraged to rise. They also agree that there is a huge potential demand for goods there, if only that demand could be made effective, i.e., if only the workers were given sufficient wages to buy back the things they produce. Here, for instance, are Dudley Barker’s views on this question:—

  “Of course the real solution is not to howl as Japan's manufacturing capacity gathers strength again, or quarrel over unfair competition, or fight for markets.
  “It is neither practical nor moral to try to prevent any nation from manufacturing goods. The sensible thing, by a world mutual aid plan, is so to increase the purchasing power of the huge masses of poverty-stricken people that they can absorb all that Japan, or any other nation, can produce as an addition to the world’s wealth.” (World Review, Jan.. 1952.)

This is typical of the approach of those who want to have capitalism without the problems to which it inevitably gives rise. Of course we shouldn’t fight for markets—but then a little knowledge of the world in which he lives should show Mr. Barker that it is in the nature of markets that they are fought for, “ peacefully ” if possible, and by force of arms if necessary.

A world mutual aid plan seems at first consideration to be a splendid idea, but, like all the seemingly practical schemes of reformers, it disregards the “facts of life” of capitalism. Now employers in certain industries may not mind other wages in other industries being higher, but they are in no circumstances in favour of higher wages being paid to their own workers—indeed it would be foolish to expect them to jeopardise their profits by doing so.

So, when we come to consider international trade rivalries, we see that British capitalists (or at any rate that section of them whose interests are affected by Japanese trade) are in favour of higher wages being paid to Japanese workers. But can anyone be naive enough to think that the Japanese employing class is in favour of paying more wages to its own workers than the minimum they can be forced to take?

Socialists contend that the only sort of mutual aid that will do the working class any good is that which spreads socialist knowledge. One of the paradoxes of capitalism is that workers must not only struggle, consciously or unconsciously with their immediate exploiters but they must also, on peril of losing their jobs, help the latter in their struggle with foreign competitors. The S.P.G.B., unlike its opponents who prefer to take an unreal view of the nature of the present economic system, sees no hope of any fundamental change in the pattern of boom, slump, war and preparation for war, so long as the workers of the world refuse to think for themselves and until they decide to have Socialism.

Stan Parker

Letter: Organisation—Industrial or Political? (1952)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

  In our October issue we published and replied to  a letter from John Robertson, Edinburgh. We have received a further letter. 

Edinburgh 6.

The Editorial Committee.

Dear Sirs,—

In your reply to my letter on industrial organisation you falsely infer that my position is the outcome of six years of “Labour Government.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The position stated by me originated during the decade preceding the first World War, and advocates industrial and political organisation, and the urgent necessity for both.

If the strike were the only weapon which the working class have on the industrial field, then such an event as the Social Revolution would be impossible. The strike pays homage to the right of the capitalist class to own and control the workshops and the right to exploit the labour-power of the workers. Their slogans, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” and “ Defence, not Defiance,” are but admissions of loyalty to the system that enslaves and degrades the workers.

With regard to the quotation from Marx, i.e., “Only the economic organisation can set on foot a true political party of labour, and thus raise a bulwark against the power of capital,” this is a typically Marxian observation. None but a Marx could have made it. The bona fide Trade Union of Marx’s day is far removed from the reactionary Craft Unions of to-day, which are a deadly menace to working-class emancipation. Far from the political party of Socialism, “winding up and waiting in the hope that class organisation on the industrial field will come into being," my letter expressly stales that “Without the political organisation, the class-conscious economic organisation cannot be forged.” The true political party of labour recognises the necessity for a class-conscious economic organisation as a powerful lever of emancipation. There is no “waiting” to be done.

My letter also states that “economic unity . . .  is the only solid fact from which political unity can be reflected.” It is puerile reasoning to deny the truth of the statement by saying that there is no such economic unity to-day. The same puerile reasoning would deny the truth of Marx's statement that “the proletariat alone is a truly revolutionary class” (Communist Manifesto), by saying that the proletariat today does not adopt a revolutionary posture.

With regard to the quotation from “Value, Price and Profit,” it is quite true that Marx stated that the economic organisation is “a lever for final emancipation,” and the word the should not have been used in connection with the quotation. But the S.P.G.B. do not even admit that the economic organisation can be used as “ a lever for final emancipation.”

Ownership of the means of life, that is, the means of wealth production, is the source of all social power, and the capitalist political State reflects the capitalist ownership in the means of life. Marx observes this fundamental truth when he states, “In the middle ages the contest ended with the ruin of the feudal debtors, who lost their political power together with the economic basis on which it was established." (“Capital,” p. 112, Swan Sonnenchein Edition.) The S.P.G.B. mistake the shadow for the substance when they organise only for political action.

To destroy the State machine, the capitalist class must be dislodged from ownership of the industrial plants of the land. Only the working class, organised into a class-conscious economic organisation to take and hold that which they produce by their labour, can achieve this and establish the socialist system of society, based on the social ownership of all the means of wealth production.

It is not the function of the political party to take and hold the means of wealth production.

Its function is to raise a bulwark against the power of capital.

Yours fraternally,

John Robertson.

Reply

Our correspondent has misread our reply to his earlier letter. We gave an introductory paragraph stating that a revival of the advocacy of industrial action may be expected to follow the end of Labour government. This was followed by a paragraph explaining the attitude of the S.P.G.B., and then by a detailed answer to our correspondent's lettter. There was no statement that his attitude was the outcome of six years of Labour government.

As we called it a “revival” it should have been clear also that we recognised that the attitude itself is older than Labour government.

Our correspondent repeats the statement alleged to have been made by Marx to Haman in 1869 and ignores the reasons we gave for refusing to accept as authentic Hainan's version of words alleged to have been spoken by Marx at an interview. In any event, as we pointed out, there is no possibility now of deciding what Marx actually did say.

When we are told that the bona fide trade unions in those days were “far removed from the reactionary craft unions of to-day,” we need only refer our correspondent to the pamphlet from which he quoted, Marx's "Value, Price and Profit,” for it was in that pamphlet that Marx had to urge the unions of his day to abandon what he. described as their “conservative motto, 'a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.’ ”

Our correspondent repeats his statement that "economic unity . . .  is the only solid fact from which political unity can be reflected,” and he objects that our comment on this was "puerile.” He has failed to see the point of our comment! If his statement is correct and if it is correct as he also claims, that "only the economic organisation can set on foot a true political party of labour,” then it surely follows that there cannot be a true political party of labour in advance of "economic unity.”

As there are in existence political parties of socialists but there is not "economic unity,” i.e., industrial organisation on a class, socialist, basis, then there appears to be something wrong with his contention.

We note that our correspondent admits to having misquoted from "Value, Price and Profit.”

When he chides the S.P.G.B. with not even admitting that the economic organisation can be used as a lever for final emancipation, we reply that we have no quarrel with Marx's statement that the trade unions "fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organised forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.”

This is, however, very different from our correspondent's version that the economic organisation is the lever for the final emancipation of the working class.

We would add that it is only with the spread of socialist understanding that the workers, whether in trade unions or not, will want to achieve emancipation, and when they do they will have to use political organisation and action to obtain control of the machinery of government.

Our correspondent then goes on to imply that political power is the shadow and the economic forces is the substance. If he really believes this we ask why he states (at the beginning of his letter) that there is urgent necessity for political organisation. There can be no necessity, urgent or otherwise, to pursue shadows.

Our correspondent then tells us that it is only through working-class economic organisation that the capitalist class can be dislodged from ownership. But here, as in his earlier letter, he fails to tell us by what means the economic organisation is going to do this.

We repeat that only by political organisation and action to gain control of the machinery of government can the capitalists be deprived of their ownership. It is not capitalist ownership that keeps the working class a subject class, but the control by the capitalists of the machinery of government, including the armed forces, which alone enables the capitalists to continue owning.

Editorial Committee

"Wozzeck" (1952)

Theatre Review from the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

On January 22nd the first stye performance in England of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck was given at Covent Garden Opera House.

These columns may seem to some an inappropriate place in which to review one of the luxury entertainments of our rulers but it is of interest to those helping to speed the end of decadent capitalist society to note its gruesome effects expressed in one of the most moving of 20th century operas.

Wozzeck is the first world-renowned operatic work to have a working class family as its main characters, and inevitable poverty, degradation and misery as its subject. As a programme note by D. Millar Craig says,

  “Wozzeck and his Marie do impress themselves upon the hearer’s thought as living types of the average man and woman—pathetic in their helpless drifting amid the current of life towards the inexorable tragedy in whose shaping they have no conscious part.”

It is about the wretched, poverty-stricken militiaman Wozzeck, the butt of everyone, not only of the Captain of his regiment, whose servant he is, but of the Doctor, who laughs at him to his face, regards him merely as an interesting subject for scientific experiment, and uses him for demonstration purposes to the students. The events finally drive him mad enough to kill his wife.

To those who only desire tuneful music the opera Wozzeck has little to offer. In such horrifying and pitiful scenes as occur throughout the work only the atonal methods used by Berg could make them musically convincing. The distinguishing features of art today, in comparison to the past, are in this opera; ugliness, violence, despondency with neither hope nor cure for the sordid events it portrays. Though rousing opposition among some people there is no doubt that such features in art are fashionable now. Modern films, novels and painting show this. One book reviewer Marghanita Laski was asked by a reader “Why the books she chose to notice are all sad, bad or mad and not good cheerful ones ” (Observer, 8-4-51).

In many ways this is favourable for the socialist. The ideas prevalent in society today are no longer of the illusory sentimental kind held in the 19th century. No longer do poets, painters and musicians escape from the ravages of capitalism and rhapsodise on the Lake District, the Constable Country or Wenlock Edge. Today the taste is for the brutal realities of life without relief or hope.

A perusal of the reviews of art critics reveals this. The following statement by Raymond Mortimer in the Sunday Times (23-10-49) gives perhaps the reasons, “To-day not only poets, painters, and preachers, but almost everyone who indulges in the luxury of thought is dismayed by the age in which he lives.’’ The ugly realities of life under capitalism are apparent to most people—only the socialist solution eludes them.

There is one thing certain. The spread of socialist knowledge will revive once more optimism and hope in works of art, and the establishment of socialism will no doubt also revive a music lyrical and tuneful as a direct outcome of the more happy and contented lives lived by its members.

W.

Not Guilty (1952)

From the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following note is part of a comment that appeared in the Hampstead News (December 13th, 1951):—

  "Embarrassing Support.—Support for Mrs. Barbara Brooke's rent rebate scheme comes from an unexpected (and probably embarrassing) direction this week. The 'Socialist Leader,’ organ of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (more revolutionary than the revolutionaries) writes approvingly of the scheme under the heading, 'As a Socialist Sees It.' They say: 'At the risk of being shot at, we confess a liking for the Hampstead Council’s plan to fix rents of all new tenants according to the family’s total income.”’

The “Socialist Leader” is the weekly paper of the LLJP., and the S.P.G.B. is not guilty of having supported the rent rebate scheme.

It is of course characteristic of the I.L.P. to proclaim that socialism is the only hope of the working class and at the same time to be ceaselessly tearing off after all sorts of reforms of capitalism in the hope that there are other hopes to be found within the capitalist system. The one interesting aspect of the “Socialist Leader’s” comment is that the writer of it has so far glimpsed the possibility that there is something in the socialist case that he anticipates being "shot at" for supporting capitalism.

His excuse for doing so is the usual reformist case that “any scheme” which seems to give the workers a chance of getting into a council house “is worthy of support.” (This appears in a subsequent passage of the “Socialist Leader’s” comment.)

May we put it to the “Socialist Leader” that the only scheme which will enable the workers to get decent houses and decent everything else is Socialism.

Editorial Committee

The Hell Bomb (1952)

Book Review from the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the past half century the workers of the world have met disablement and violent death in varying forms, fighting their masters’ battles. A brief review of present-day instruments of wholesale slaughter, ever increasing in efficiency, daunts the most optimistic nature. The main features of World War I were trench warfare, bayonet attacks, “Big Berthas,” small-scale air raids, the early tanks, flame throwers, and gas attacks. By 1939 man’s weapons against man had made formidable strides; combatants and non-combatants were in the thick of battle owing to the introduction of V.2 rockets and the saturation bombing of large cities, not to mention scattered raids on rural areas. When the first atom bombs fell upon Japan in 1945 and the tale of death and destruction was unfolded before the world, the majority of people must have felt that the outside limit had been reached in honor and suffering.

“Peace” was declared and U.N.O. was born with the avowed intention of “ fighting to keep it."

During the post-war years various small-scale wars spluttered up in spite of this august body. The "cold war” with Russia developed, down came the Nazi bogey and up went the red menace. In June, 1950, U.N.O. intervened when war broke out in Korea, and at the time of writing, prolonged peace negotiations are hopelessly in dead-lock. The world is dotted with simmering trouble spots, the Suez Canal, Persia, Burma, Malaya, Indo-China, etc., which may herald the outbreak of a global war.

In the American column of the Daily Express (28.8.51) it was reported that “America is making atom bombs on an industrial basis, 250 a year, and the production rate is expected to be soon doubled or trebled.” The new bombs are a great improvement on the original ones, that is to say, in destructive capacity.

But “progress” continues and the world is faced with the possibility of an even greater menace, the hydrogen bomb. William L. Laurence, New York, has written a book on this subject entitled “The Hell Bomb,” published in London by Hollis & Carter, 1951. The first part of the book is devoted to a detailed account of the composition and suitability of various combinations for the “H” bomb. It explains that the fusion of hydrogen into helium in the sun is the source of the energy that made life possible on earth and will continue to do so for billions of years. This is the principle upon which the “H” bomb was planned as long ago as the spring of 1945 before the first atom bomb was tried out. Nothing was done, however, till 1950, although Laurence says that during the years since Hiroshima, they (the American scientists) have “accumulated a vast body of knowledge about the reactions necessary for a successful H-bomb.” The first atom bomb exploded in New Mexico made the H-bomb a definite possibility as it generated a central temperature two and a half times that of the interior of the sun. This provided for the necessary “match” to light the H-bomb, the flame of which needs a temperature of 50,000,000 degrees centigrade, and is thus incorporated and used as the trigger for the super-explosion. A “super-duper” could be built a thousand times the power of the atomic bomb, radius of total destruction by blast would be ten miles, or a total area of 314 square miles. A “super-super-duper” (an expression the scientists use in their “lighter moments”), could be “exploded at a distance from an abandoned innocent-looking tramp ship, radius of destruction by blast 100 miles, and a destructive area of 30,000 square miles.” A bomb of a thousand-fold the energy would produce fatal burns 20 miles from the centre of the explosion.

The book has a nightmare quality, especially when we learn that the casing of the bomb can be “rigged” to form a gigantic radioactive cloud “that would kill everything in the area it blankets. Nor would it be confined to a particular area, since the winds would take it thousands of miles, carrying death to distant places in addition to the danger of a boomerang effect on the attacker.”

The author writes from the ruling American angle and the book is besprinkled with the usual excuses to justify war. The H-bomb is being built to “deter aggression and prevent its use against us or our allies.” it is “not to bring Russia to her knees but to her senses.” Production of the bomb has been hurried forward owing to “Korean aggression instigated by the Kremlin.” To renounce it would “condone the advance of the Red Army.”

When President Truman directed that work be continued on the bomb twelve eminent physicists (working in that connection) issued a statement urging that the United States should make a solemn declaration not to be the first to use even the non-rigged bomb on the ground that “it is no longer a weapon of war but a means of extermination of whole populations.” They added: “There can be only one justification for our development of the H-bomb and that is to prevent its use.”

According to Laurence, the scales are heavily balanced in favour of America as regards the vitally necessary deposits of uranium used in the manufacture of the bomb. She has access to the two richest deposits in the world, whereas Russia is working depleted mines and can only develop the H-bomb at the cost of her atom bombs. The book has one informative and interesting chapter on atomic energy. It also gives particulars (and incidentally demonstrates the futility of) of negotiations and proposals between nations from May, 1945, to January, 1950, regarding international control of atomic weapons. Following this President Truman said that the United States would proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb. This record clearly shows the cleavage between American dominated U.N. and U.S.S.R., and the closing words of the book are indeed poor comfort: “Peace (with Russia) step by step appears to be the only alternative to possible catastrophe. One limited objective after another must become our major policy.” Nevertheless, in spite of the author’s specious arguments we are left with the prospect of war between America and Russia (together with their respective satellites).

According to the Daily Express (18-9-51) President Truman is asking for another appropriation for the H-bomb project, which brought the amount to be spent on it to over the 1,000 million dollar mark. British scientists are also being offered big money to emigrate to the U.S. (Daily Express. 21-1-52) and work for the big new American H-bomb plants.

So this mis-shapen horror child is to be born of that unhappy union between Science and Capitalism. Unlike the atom bomb which cannot be made below or above a certain size, the H-bomb can be made as small or large as the designer wants it. It could be made equal to a million tons of T.N.T. Laurence
argues that “it is no greater evil to destroy thousands of your enemy in one great flash than to destroy them by goring them with bayonets.” He ignores the point of the vastly accelerated and increased method of destruction. No doubt the H-bomb will eventually be used to “save” life by shortening a war, as the atom bombs on Japan.

When the first world war broke out, Lord Grey, the Foreign Secretary, attributed the origin to the “enormous growth of armaments in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them; it was these that made war inevitable.” He added. “We must disarm or perish.” (The Listener. 20-12-51.)

In 1936 the late W. M. Hughes. Prime Minister of Australia, said, “Talk about peace in a world armed to the teeth is utterly futile.” (News Chronicle, 25-7-36.) His words were proved true in 1939 and could be again unless the workers of the world unite to overthrow the present form of society that hatches out monstrosities like the H-bomb. Science wedded to Socialism would be working for the good of mankind and not devilish, ingenious means of mass destruction. The workers could welcome and not fear fresh discoveries.

Help us to teach them that they have no quarrel with their fellow workers abroad, that their real enemy is in their midst, the predatory capitalist class which makes nightmares like the H-bomb possible in its pursuit of gain. An enlightened working class can usher in peace and prosperity for the whole world, for always.

F. M. Robins

Stop Being Fooled! (1952)

From the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world is large, and individually workers are small and at present united under no cause beneficial to themselves. Because of his ignorance and feeling of inferiority the worker considers the affairs of state and the understanding of politics far too complicated for his inadequate brain to comprehend. So he trusts the course of his life to others—namely the government— and remains employed, exploited and ruled.

It is difficult to have to realise that the worker himself can suffer the horrors of the capitalist system without being even conscious of being exploited. He reads the national newspapers and is bemused with such meaningless boastings as “Why is the Daily Express the paper for the people?—because it represents the heart and soul of the people it serves.” (31/12/51). Come, workers, let’s stop being so naive. Let’s get down to realising the fact that the ‘nation’ these newspapers serve is nothing more than the British capitalist class, and that they are part of the medium by which capitalists continue to fog your brains and sense of reason with such empty phrases as ‘national prestige.’ and ' duty and honour first.’

P. R. Lawrence

The Printers Object to an Article (1952)

From the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

An article that should have appeared in this issue entitled “The King is Dead” has had to be withdrawn. The compositors' chapel at our printers objected to the article, and it was too late to carry the matter further without holding up publication of the issue.

The article dealt with the general question of kingship from an historical point of view, and only had two incidental references to King George VI in his capacity as king.

Running Commentary: If Thatcher goes (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Thatcher goes

It may take some time to accustom ourselves to the idea that Michael Heseltine wants to take care of us all — to protect the weak, the sick and the poor — but that is what we may have to face, if Margaret Thatcher should cease to be Tory leader. If it comes to that, not so long ago it would have been difficult to accustom ourselves to the idea of Thatcher losing her grip but now, as the Westland affair swells from a cloud no bigger than an ex-Defence Secretary's hand to a darkness stretching to the far horizon, the unthinkable becomes readily believable.

The opposition to Thatcher within her party is. we are told, to do with her style of government— her ruthless and overbearing pursuit of her ends and her preference for a cabinet full of unquestioning toadies rather than suffer a single stimulating critic. This has left her back benches crowded with what is called ministerial talent who were not however talented enough to prevent themselves being quietly snuffed out or to remember that Thatcher's adopted style was what once, in those heady days after the 1979 and 1983 elections, endeared her to the party.

How gleefully, for example, they all once grasped at the Russian award of that title of the Iron Lady; how approvingly they regarded her forays into EEC negotiations, showing those nasty foreigners that they could not pull the financial wool over her steely eyes; how gratefully they applauded her implacability over the Falklands war: how rapturously they laughed when she scornfully denied to a Tory conference that she wanted to be another Edward Heath: "This lady's not for turning".

If the Tories are deserting her now. this can be for only one reason. Exposed as no different from the rest, as a cynical and deceitful politician whose principles are those of day-to-day opportunism. Thatcher suddenly looks like a disaster. There is panic in the Tory ranks; how else can we explain Heseltine's audacious claim to be a compassionate politician?

And if Thatcher goes, what then? Will she be replaced by a Tory government pledged to introduce the politics of One Nation? Will the Tory wets come squelching back into the cabinet? Will British capitalism become managed by a bunch of landed gentlemen from the shires — Pym, Gilmour, Prior — rather than upstart advertising executives and small business people? Will all of this be bolstered by the sulking Ted Heath and by Willie Whitelaw, desperately plugging the holes in the dykes of party unity?

Such a government would be presented to us as offering new hope for a more humane and secure future. There would be whispers about reducing unemployment, reviving the National Health Service, smoothing the rougher edges of the deepest poverty. It might be a propitious time to overlook the fact that these leaders are already associated with wretched failure, in the governments of Heath, Douglas-Home and Macmillan. There is no reason to believe that they will be any more successful in the future.

One Nation is in any case not an exclusively Conservative idea. Every Labour government comes to power with the same sort of promise, to unite the interests of everyone into a great drive for competitive British exports, full employment, a controlled economy, efficient state services and so on. They may call their policies by different names the National Plan, the Social Contract but essentially they are the same as One Nation and they suffer from the same basic fallacy.

Capitalism is not a society of unity. It is based on class ownership of the means of life and therefore on class conflict. It cannot be controlled or moulded by politicians or economic experts into something which it is not. It cannot operate in the interests of the majority of its people. It must continue as a system of anarchy, poverty, disease and war.

All of that is taught to us by experience and by an analysis of capitalism. Unless the working class act to abolish capitalism, the prospect is dismal — a succession of ineffective governments distinguishable only by their style of empty promises and of the excuses they give for their impotence. We have had time enough to accustom ourselves to that idea — and time to act on what we have learned from it.


Policeman’s brawl

The role of the police is primarily one of institutional coercion on behalf of ruling-class power. Anything else — helping old ladies across the road, for example — is entirely incidental. This being the case, it is plain to see that activities such as we have witnessed on. say, the miners' picket lines, or at Grunwick, are not in any way exceptional but rather conform to the normal expectations of the class that recruits and pays the police. In exchange for these relatively lucrative services the police in turn can normally expect to be shielded from prosecution or conviction should their activities kill or maim. The cases of Jimmy Kelly and Blair Peach are only two of the many instances where this has proved true.

So what about the latest example of protection from the consequences of brutal thuggery for which, in the knee-jerk terms of the Director of Public Prosecutions, there exists insufficient evidence on which to prefer charges? We refer, of course, to the vanload of policemen looking for a punch-up in Holloway who gratuitously attacked five boys, two of whom — the black ones, significantly enough — ended up in hospital.

On this topic, somewhat surprisingly, the Guardian has managed to serve up something a little less bland than its usual jesuitic fare. Its second leader of 5 February. "Police beyond the law", contains much that is unquestionably accurate, including the clear recognition that the government is protecting the police. Of course it is. But what sticks in the Guardian's craw is any nasty revolutionary notion that such partisanship is class-based. The inescapable truth is that capitalism's police, "right" or "wrong", have a bounden duty to close ranks in tribal complicity on behalf of their and our masters.


Kick start

In the month that saw politicians stabbing each other in the back and rival groups of capitalists fighting it out for a share in Westland helicopters, life for the working class went on pretty much as usual.

The number of people registered as unemployed rose to 3.4 million. Shortly before the figures were announced, the Job Start scheme was launched by the government. This is the latest attempt at cosmetic surgery to conceal capitalism's failure to provide people with employment and hence the means to live. It is to be run in nine key areas (not necessarily those with the highest unemployment) and involves unemployed workers being offered £20 a week to "top up" their wages if they take a job which pays less than £80 a week. In other words, the government is subsidising bosses who pay low wages. The rationale is that the long term unemployed lose confidence and need encouragement to go back to work. Of course what they are really worried about is that unemployed workers who realise that they will only be a few pounds a week better off by taking a job that pays very little may decide not to bother. But having bribed workers to take on low paid work with the extra £20. the government will withdraw the grant after six months.

Capitalism depends on workers selling their labour power for the lowest wage or salary that employers can get away with paying. Workers are educated, trained and conditioned into believing that wage slavery is freely entered into and necessary to human dignity: to work for a living, no matter how badly paid the job, is better than "living off the state". But if workers see through this myth and decide that it is not worth going to work for a few pounds more than they can get in benefits, then the state has a variety of ways of coercing people into going to work for low wages. YOPS and YTS schemes have been used to try to instil the work ethic into young unemployed people and now Job Start is to be used for the same purpose with older unemployed workers.

Print unions fight for survival (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not for the first time The Times newspaper is at the centre of a bitter industrial dispute. In November 1978 Lord Thomson, then owner of the paper, decided that he was no longer willing to run it at a loss. He demanded from the unions agreement to accept new printing technology, the elimination of “unofficial" strikes and a big reduction of staff. Failing to get agreement he locked out the workers and The Times was off the streets for nearly a year. When work was resumed it was on terms far short of what Thomson wanted and two years later he pulled out and sold to Rupert Murdoch. In January 1986 Murdoch took the printing of his papers, The Times, Sunday Times, Sun and News of the World out of Fleet Street to his new plants at Wapping and Glasgow.

At Wapping printing is being carried on by 500 workers belonging to the electrical workers' union and the print unions, in place of the former 5,000 members of the print unions, all of whom were sacked when they came out on strike. Murdoch admitted that the changes had not been fully effective. There was a fall in the number of copies printed and considerable difficulty arose over distribution, in spite of the fact that in London it was taken over by a new fleet of vans. Murdoch said he was confident that all the difficulties would be overcome in a few weeks. Print union officials said it was only the beginning of a struggle which could go on for months.

Much had happened since 1978 to change the position of the unions and the management, including the building of the Wapping plant at a cost of £100 million of which £7 million was spent on American computer equipment. The law governing strikes and picketing had been tightened by the Thatcher government, and the print unions had already been defeated in their resistance to the use of the new technology by Eddy Shah, who is publishing a new paper in March without employing members of those unions. Conflict with the law in that battle had already cost the National Graphical Association heavily. The Financial Times (27 December 1985) estimated that the cost, including further court claims still pending, may reach £2.000,000.

A similar struggle over new technology was going on at the same time between the print unions and other newspaper proprietors including Robert Maxwell, owner of the Mirror group of papers. That dispute was settled by agreement with the unions, which led Maxwell to say rude things in the Mirror (27 January) about his rival. Whereas, said Maxwell, he had followed ‘The British Way" of negotiating with the unions. Rupert Murdoch, importing brutal tactics from Australia and America, "prefers to destroy them". Lest it be thought that "The British Way" differs essentially in its purpose from the Murdoch way. it should be noted that the Mirror has also got rid of 2.000 printers, "most by early retirement or voluntary redundancy".

At the time of writing it is not possible to know with certainty what will be the outcome of the dispute but the prospects for the unions look extremely bleak. They were counting on the help of the TUC and other unions, but already most of the journalists, though against the instructions of their own union, have accepted Murdoch's terms. The printers are hoping that the Transport and General Workers' Union will succeed in blacking the distribution of Murdoch s papers and that the TUC will condemn and possibly expel the Electrical Workers' Union, which however shows no sign at present of obeying TUC instructions. Many transport workers too, are ignoring the instructions of their union not to carry Murdoch's papers.

Basically what the struggle is all about is the ceaseless development of new techniques as a feature of capitalism in the search for cheaper methods of production. The capitalists who adopt the new and cheaper methods capture the market. Those who fail to do so go out of business, as has happened with several newspapers and threatens others. There have been many such developments in the history of printing: from the hand compositor setting individual letters, to the keyboard monotype and linotype and latterly to the new system which enables journalists to print the final product without the involvement of compositors. The writing on the wall for the London newspapers is the claim by Eddy Shah that he will be able to sell his newspapers at less than half the price of existing papers. The whole newspaper industry has to adopt the new technology or face bankruptcy, because the advertisers' money will flow to the cheaper journals.

Workers in every occupation have always been affected by this aspect of capitalism. The railways almost destroyed the canal companies and horse transport, only to be hit themselves by motor and air transport. Sailing ships were replaced by coal fired steamships and then by oil burning ships. The inland telegraph service has gone. There has been an enormous reduction in the numbers of coal miners and farm workers. Along with having to meet competition from oil, gas and nuclear power the coal industry has seen a change which replaces men in the pits by workers in other industries. Before the newly opened Selby pit produced a single ton of coal, £1,000 million had been spent on new coal cutting machines and other appliances. In agriculture the old. nearly self-sufficient farms have been replaced by those dependent on a vast input of fertilisers, weed-killers and pesticides from the chemical industry. Jobs on farms have been replaced by jobs in the chemical industry.

The trade unions, in seeking to protect their members' jobs, have had to make a hard choice. They can hope to delay the introduction of the new techniques and can often do so, as have the Fleet Street printers, but at the end of the road they either have to negotiate a reduction of jobs, as on Maxwell's Mirror, or risk losing all the jobs as on Murdoch's Times group of papers.

The stock argument of capitalist economists has always been that workers should not resist the new techniques but welcome them on the ground that if the price of the product is reduced its market will expand and there will be more, not fewer, jobs. In a limited way this is sometimes true. Following the publication of the Daily Mail in 1896. and other cheaper papers with wider circulations the numbers of workers employed in the printing and paper trades continued to increase. And it is reported from America (Sunday Times 19 January) that a similar development has taken place there, following the use of new technology.

  The new technology revolution in American newspapers has brought increased circulations. a wider range of publications, and an increase in newspaper jobs — in spite of reduced manning in the composing rooms.

The increase of other jobs is of course no cause for gratification to the compositors whose jobs have gone. In general, technical developments hit hardest at older workers, unable to adapt to the new requirements.

And the argument of the capitalist economists ignores the fact that not only is capitalism always creating some unemployment but periodically it rises to peak levels, as at present and the parties of capitalism can do absolutely nothing to prevent it.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: Socialism everywhere (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Years ago, socialist propagandists used to point out to the reformists that their work of popularising old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, etc., would only end up with the openly capitalist parties dishing them by adopting the proposals for themselves and getting the credit. To clinch the matter, socialists added that a time would come when capitalists would steal the word "socialism" itself and use it to gain a further lease of life for capitalism. Events have faithfully followed this anticipation. If what they say were really true, the workers' difficulty today would be to find some spot where socialism isn't. First, there are Russia's 170 millions supposed to be living under socialism. Now Germany. with its “National Socialist Party" in the saddle, has just been officially declared to be socialist. The Berlin correspondent of the Economist (February 1st) writes as follows: ". . . it is affirmed that Socialism is under way (indeed, this week it is officially stated to have already replaced capitalism)." Then the three Scandinavian countries, with their Labour Parties in power, are described as "socialist" in the English Labour Press, along with New Zealand and Western Australia. At home we have the old-fashioned section of the Labour Party still insisting that the Post Office is socialism, while the new gang (Mr Morrison) calls the Transport Board "socialisation." and tells us that we have a socialist London County Council. Where the Government is not controlled by a Party calling itself socialist, it often has one or more leaders who were Labour Party stalwarts, e.g., MacDonald and Thomas, Mr Lyons the Australian Premier, and Mussolini and several of his colleagues.

Only knowledge of socialist principles will make the workers proof against being misled by capitalist and Labour Party misrepresentation.

[Editorial from the March 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard.]

Terms time for teachers (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

In February, I obtained an interview with John Bills, the West Midlands representative on the National Executive of the National Union of Teachers. By coincidence, it was exactly a year since the teachers' unions in England and Wales began their industrial action in support of their pay claim.

Like most TV viewers and readers of cheap newspapers. I have found it very difficult to be sure of the facts in the dispute. I know that a large number of parents are angry at having to fetch children away from school at odd hours. I know that there is increasing concern about the examination prospects of older pupils. I know that the police have been receiving complaints about the behaviour of youngsters on the streets when they would normally have been in school. But about the teachers' side of the case I have heard very little .

This is not very surprising. The present government's union-bashing policy has received careful but consistent support from the media. And most people, workers themselves in other jobs not under immediate threat, have watched — some have even applauded or collaborated as one section after another has been isolated, attacked and defeated. GCHQ workers, the miners, newspaper printers are just some of those whose downfall has been carefully engineered and publicised.

Now it appears that teachers' unity is breaking down in the face of relentless government pressure and bad publicity. The representatives of the National Association of Schoolmasters and the Union of Women Teachers are balloting their members with a recommendation to accept the terms offered by the local education authorities, their direct employers. Sir Keith Joseph, the Secretary of State for Education and Science has refused to support any agreement based on these terms with extra government money. The National Union of Teachers, the largest union, has refused to accept the terms.

The recession
John Bills is the Head Teacher of a junior school in Oldbury, near Birmingham. The school was cheaply built at the back of houses about twenty-five years ago. Now it is deteriorating badly. It needs a lot of money spending on it. but it won't get it. Pupil numbers have fallen over the years with the declining birthrate. Like other industries, education is going through a recession. Thousands of teachers have left the service, and real salaries have continued to fall with inflation in spite of annual pay negotiations. A joint working party set up by the unions and the employers in 1984 concluded that, in the ten years since the pay structure was last revised, teachers' real income had fallen by 34 per cent. The salary structure is very complicated. There are over 300 different pay levels for teachers in schools (quite apart from colleges, polytechnics and universities). It is designed to produce competitiveness and hierarchical divisions among people who will pass these values on to the rising generations. NUT policy has always resisted this trend, and its present campaign for a flat-rate increase of £23 a week has aimed at improving the conditions of the lowest paid teachers in particular.

A new teacher who has satisfactorily completed three years' full-time training is paid £5,442 (£104.65 a week). If he or she takes a degree, the general practice these days, this is raised to £5,883 by giving them two years seniority. With thirteen years seniority their salaries will have risen to £8,556 (£164.53 a week). Anything above this must be reached by gaining promotion.

Why not strike?
Teachers earning this sort of money are unable to afford a strike. Their trade unions have no strike funds like those of the older industrial unions with long histories of battles with their employers. It is only in recent years that teachers have been forced to recognise that they, too, belong to that huge class of people in society that has to sell its mental and physical energies to employers on the labour market in order to get a living.

In this respect they are weak when it comes to a struggle to resist reductions in their real wages. So they have wisely avoided an expensive all-out strike. But they have strengths too. A large proportion of the work that most of them do in practice is not acknowledged in their contracts. Officially they are not paid for running sports or clubs or school trips outside school hours They are not paid for running errands in their cars or taking children abroad on holidays or attending meetings on new examination structures or meeting parents or supervising pupils during their lunch break or taking other teachers' classes when they are absent. All this is expected of them traditionally as what has come to be called "good will". And it is this which they have withdrawn to a large extent over the past year, together with very brief, selective strikes, often of only a few hours. The disruptive effect has been considerable, but inevitably it has injured children and their parents rather than the employers or the teachers' ultimate paymaster, the state. It is. however, precisely this strength in teachers' hands which the government, in the person of Keith Joseph, is determined to take away from them.

Big deal
Joseph has insisted that everything included under the heading of "good will" should become compulsory before teachers are given any more money. And the money that he has been talking about in rather shifty global terms would amount to a pay increase of just over 2 per cent a year for the next four years, with no preference given to lower paid teachers. He has mentioned the figure of £1.25 billion, but central government would provide less than half of this. Local authorities would have to find the rest out of their existing budgets. In addition, Joseph has already begun to earmark some of it in advance. He has had second thoughts about compelling teachers to do dinner duty. He has instructed education authorities to set aside £50 million in the first year to pay part-time staff to do the job. Subsequent years will probably take more.

Little deal
It is not surprising that the teachers' unions were united in finding the government's proposals unattractive. In comparison, the terms offered by the local education authorities have begun to seem almost acceptable after nearly two years without any increase — at least that is how it looks to some teachers. And perhaps this has been part of the government's strategy. The employers have offered a 6.9 per cent increase. For those higher up in the salary and management hierarchy (heavily represented in the NAS/UWT) this could mean a substantial improvement. For the lowest paid teachers it would give only an extra £7 a week.

But the offer is not without strings. And the strings are very similar to those of Keith Joseph: to qualify for the 6.9 per cent, teachers must first call off all industrial action and "return to full normal duties". Then they must accept a ruling as to what constitute full normal duties, and these would become contractually obligatory. The ruling will be made by a three-man team set up by ACAS (the government's conciliation and arbitration service). In other words, unconditional surrender for a one-off pay increase.

So the government is now nearly half-way home. The teachers' unions have been split, and for the same reasons as other trade unions have been broken in the recent past: some sections thought they stood to gain, even though others lost. This can seem like hard-headed (if selfish) realism in hard times. It is not. In the teachers' case, the employers' offer was put on the table only because they were taking united action; and because that action was disruptive without weakening the teachers. If, as seems likely, NAS/UWT members vote to accept the employers' terms without the NUT members, then they will have sold both strengths: unity and freedom of action. The next time there is a confrontation with the employers, they will be without any bargaining power at all. That is short-sighted, not hard-headed. I learnt a lot when I went back to school that morning.

Ron Cook

Star Wars (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the end of January, the American space shuttle Challenger blasted its way, not into space, but into oblivion, with a spectacular televised explosion. The seven crew members were all killed, including a schoolteacher who had been intended to be the first civilian in space — part of the propaganda battle to give the massively expensive space programme some public respectability. But such projects are not primarily about propaganda and certainly not about the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. Half of the shuttle's flights are for specifically military purposes, and it plays an important role in preparations for the latest of Reagan's fantasies, the Star Wars programme.

Star Wars is officially known by the euphemistic title of Strategic Defence initiative. The declared intention is to place a "dome'' or “umbrella" around the United States, making it immune to attack from ballistic missiles launched from Russia. Existing anti-ballistic missile systems work on the principle of destroying or disabling the incoming warheads as they re-enter the earth's atmosphere over their target. Star Wars envisages this as simply the third line of defence in a far more sophisticated network. The first element of this would be to attack the missile boosters just after they are launched and before they release individual warheads, which would in turn be the subject of the second set of interceptors. If each layer of defence destroys 90 per cent of its targets, only 0.1 per cent of the warheads launched will reach their destination.

It is the first part of this network — against the booster phase — that represents the biggest innovation and is most dependent on new technology. Various kinds of beam weapons have been proposed to accomplish this aspect, including such exotica as X-ray lasers. All would be incredibly risky and expensive — one proposal, for instance, would require for its functioning the use of at least one-fifth of the entire American electricity output. Add to this the fact that whatever system is chosen would be of enormous complexity, could never be operationally tested and would have to work perfectly at the first time of asking. It is no wonder that many leading American scientists have flatly stated that the whole Star Wars project is technically just not feasible.

The arguments about Star Wars display the logic of the madhouse, but this after all is the logic of capitalism. The American government's justification for Star Wars is that it is. in Reagan's words, "about peace, not war". With the US supposedly immune from nuclear attack, there would be no further place for the deterrence doctrine of "mutual assured destruction" (MAD), which nuclear ideologues claim has so far kept the nuclear peace. Instead there would, it is claimed, be a real incentive on all sides for drastic reduction of nuclear weapons and their eventual complete abandonment.

Sceptical critics have pointed out a number of flaws in this cosy picture. One is that if the Russian rulers saw as imminent the installation of an impregnable nuclear shield over the United States, they might be minded to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike first; Star Wars would then have triggered, not prevented, nuclear war. Another shortcoming in the Reaganesque logic is due to a change of emphasis which has taken place in the Star Wars plans. In place of the original vision of watertight security, realisation of the problems with this has caused its replacement by the idea of almost total security — a leaky umbrella, as it were. But this radically changes the options available, for the revised version is only useful for defending military targets (though this has naturally not been stressed in US government propaganda). The reason for this is that if only a single warhead out of one hundred launched at a city gets through to its target, that city is destroyed. But even the leakiest umbrella may be able to delay the destruction of missile silos long enough for a retaliatory nuclear strike to be launched. In addition, a leaky umbrella might suffice to beat off an attack from any Russian response to an American first strike — which would make such a first strike a more "attractive" proposition to American hawks. It should be noted, too, that Star Wars offers no defence against low-flying cruise missiles or submarine-launched missiles.

It should not be thought, however, that Star Wars represents the first step in the militarisation of space, for this is something that was achieved long ago. Over three thousand satellites have been placed in orbit since Sputnik I in 1957. and three-quarters of these have had military purposes. Of the huge sums of money spent every year on space research by Russia and America, about half is on military work — not taking account of the fact that much work done for civilian reasons may have military applications. The simple idea of dropping bombs from satellites is out of the question (the bomb would simply continue in orbit) but ballistic missiles, spy satellites and anti-satellite weapons are all very real.

Even under capitalism, though, not all uses of space are military. Satellites already provide masses of other kinds of information about the earth: the position of mineral deposits; the routes of oil slicks and icebergs; developments in the weather; the effects of soil erosion; the likely location of earthquakes; and so on. Some of the information which can be gathered in this way is incredibly detailed. For instance, healthy and diseased wheat reflect infra-red radiation to very different degrees, thus making it entirely feasible for satellites to provide data leading to discovery of the amount of diseased wheat growing in a particular area.

Satellites are also useful for communications purposes, such as international telephone calls. In addition, they can monitor for distress signals. One such system is said to have saved over two hundred lives (in maritime emergencies and forced aircraft landings) in a two-year period. Such undertakings demonstrate that the global co-operation envisaged in a socialist society is not at all outlandish. All the information obtained from space could then be used for the benefit of humanity, not to defend the wealth and power of a few.

There are, of course, international treaties concerning space. In 1967. the United Nations negotiated the signing of the Outer Space Treaty which, for example, bans military bases on the moon. But it does not outlaw all military uses of space, nor does it define the crucial and vague term, "space”. A particular bone of contention is what is known as the geostationary ring. This is the area of space 36.000 kilometres above the equator: satellites located here remain fixed in relation to an observer on the earth, so that they never set or rise, thus offering obvious advantages from a communications point of view. At present "slots" in this geostationary ring are allocated by a branch of the International Telecommunications Union. But in 1976 a group of representatives of countries on the equator met and issued a declaration to the effect that any country on the equator automatically owned that portion of the geostationary ring that was directly above it. Thus are capitalist property rights extended into the vacuum of space.

Which brings us back to Star Wars. The first reactions of Western European rulers were consternation and disarray. The French government opposed the whole idea, the British government was divided (Thatcher for, Howe against). Then came the news that $26 billion was earmarked for Star Wars research over the next five years, and that some of this might be coming Europe's way. Already. Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh has received a grant of $150,000 to work on optical computers. The French government is now encouraging French companies to compete for a share in these research funds. But there is no doubt that the bulk of the money will go to the large American arms manufacturers such as Rockwell, Boeing and Lockheed.

What a waste it all is. All the resources and know-how which, throughout the world, are devoted to "perfecting" the means of killing could so easily be devoted to ending hunger and poverty. But to do that means campaigning not for a change of government or for nuclear disarmament, but for the only line of defence against war — the establishment of socialism.

Paul Bennett