Marxism in Chile? (1971)

From the March 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Salvador Allende is not the first president of Chile to proclaim himself a revolutionary. When Allende’s predecessor, the Christian Democrat Frei, was elected in 1964 he pledged himself to a “revolution in liberty”. Two years later found him sending in the army to break a strike in the copper mines; eight people were killed. As Fidel Castro rather neatly put it: “He promised revolution without blood and has given blood without revolution.”

Like Allende, Frei was elected on the strength of his promises to solve two basic problems. Firstly the concentration of land in the hands of a few vastly wealthy families while 350,000 peasants have no land at all. And secondly the domination of Chile’s economy by foreign (mainly American) capital, which is held to be responsible for the chronic unemployment in the country (currently running at about 7 per cent.) and the destitution of a large section of the population (one half of all families live on less than thirty dollars a month).

Frei’s initial boast was that 100,000 landless peasants would be settled on their own farms. But his attempts at redistributing the land were firmly resisted by the great landowners and in the six years between 1964-70 less than a third of those who had been promised plots of land got them. Estimates of the number of peasants resettled vary considerably, from 18,600 families relocated (Economist, 12 September, 1970) to 30,000 families (Time, 19 October). Similarly American interests in Chile (total US capital in the country stands at about $1,000m., including more than $500m, in the copper mining industry) fought vigorously to avoid Frei’s tentative moves towards nationalization. The Christian Democratic programme involved such schemes as the ‘Chileanisation’ of the $200m. American-owned Anaconda Company, with the government arranging to buy 51 per cent. of the company’s stock, as well as putting pressure on foreign companies to promote more Chileans to top management posts.

Predictably enough, Frei’s inability to fulfil his promises and make any significant inroads on peasant and working class misery, while at the same time he scared conservative elements with his talk of land expropriation and nationalisation, led to a polarisation in Chile’s politics in the 1970 presidential election. The slump in the popularity of the Christian Democratic candidate (Frei had got an overall majority in 1964, while his party’s nominee — Tomic — got only 27.8 per cent, of the vote in September 1970) has been partly explained by the behaviour of the frightened landowners and others who switched their allegiance to the right wing candidate, Jorge Alessandri. But, of course, the landowners form only a tiny fraction of Chile’s population and for Alessandri to get the 34.9 per cent, of the votes which he did, he had to attract the support of hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants committed both to capitalism and the traditional form it takes in Chile. That this was the case is made quite clear by the fact that Alessandri topped the poll in Chuquicamata, the principal copper mining centre in the country and obviously therefore an area with a high concentration of workers.

No less committed to capitalism were the 36.3 per cent. of the voters who opted for the ‘Popular Unity’ candidate, Salvador Allende. Allende has built up a popular front around the so-called ‘Communist’ and ‘Socialist’ parties which also takes in the Radicals and a number of smaller organisations such as ‘Independent Popular Action’ and an offshoot from the Christian Democrats — the ‘Action Union for Popular Unity’. These movements have allied themselves on the basis of an extensive reform programme which, if carried through, will lay the foundation for a restructuring of the Chilean economy along state capitalist lines. Its broad outlines consist of nationalising the copper industry, the banks, the strategic industries and the monopolies in the distributive sector — or, as Popular Unity jargon has it, of nationalising “all the activities which conditions the economic and social development of the country”. Tied in with this, there is to be an “extension of agrarian reform”, measures “to assure monetary stability” and a “plan for social security: health, work, housing.”

All this has been expressed by Allende in popular slogans such as “A half litre of milk per day for each child” or “We want our people to eat, to have work, to have homes, to have the guarantee of health.” And it is small wonder that he has found a responsive audience (including, as he points out himself, the “enlightened capitalists”) when more than half of all children in Chile are recognised to be undernourished and hundreds of thousands live in tenements where one or even two families jammed in a single room is considered normal.

Yet not only does the united front programme not represent an advance towards Socialism as many Popular Unity supporters imagine, but the fact is that Allende’s policies will not even radically alter class relations within the existing capitalist society in Chile. Those who are pinning so much hope on nationalisation should remember that this will not be an entirely new phenomenon. Already the state in Chile controls the power industries (including oil), the steel industry, the railways and — in part — telecommunications. As for the banks, which the new government is in the process of nationalising completely, even under Frei sixty per cent. were controlled by the state. It is obviously relevant, then, to ask just what benefits previous experiments in nationalisation have brought to Chile’s working men and women — and why this new wave of takeovers by the state should produce any different results?

In a public announcement to mark the constitutional amendment which will allow the state to take over the copper industry, in December 1970, President Allende said: “Since 1930 the big companies which exploit the copper deposits have realised profits totalling $3,700m., which represent 40 per cent. of the total wealth of Chile . . . The nationalisation of copper will be worth $70m. a year to Chile.” The popular interpretation which is being put on statements like this is that these profits from the nationalised industries are to be directed towards building more houses for workers, pushing up wages and generally improving the quality of life of the masses of the people. But will capitalism allow such priorities to influence the running of Chile’s economy?

Since Allende is proud to announce that he has read his Marx, he must know that:

  … the development of capitalist production makes it constantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition makes the imminent laws of capitalist production to be felt by each individual capitalist, as external coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to preserve it, but extend it he cannot except by means of progressive accumulation.

Allende’s Chile, just like any other country operating within the world capitalist economy, will have to compete on the international markets to sell its products. The prices of its commodities can be made competitive only by Chile keeping abreast of world developments in industrial innovation, by constantly reinvesting in new plant — by constantly accumulating capital. And this can be done only by Chile’s industries — whether nationalised or not — pumping surplus value out of the working class. That these “external coercive laws” are continuing to operate was made quite clear in a radio speech by the new President when he announced that daily production of coal is to be stepped up from 3,800 tons to 4,700 tons — and then called on the miners to make sacrifices so that Chile’s coal can be sold at competitive prices on the world market.

Because the popular front government is responsible for Chile’s capitalist economy, inevitably it is being brought into conflict with the workers and peasants. Already there have been several strikes, some involving the occupation of factories, both in the capital Santiago and in the provinces. In December 1970 telephone workers in Santiago took over the central telephone building and held some hostages, calling for the immediate introduction of new salary scales which the government said it would introduce in time. In the same month three thousand municipal workers stopped work for 48 hours after demanding pay rises which the ‘Communist’ Minister of Finance refused, while fifteen thousand administrative workers were on strike too.

It could happen, as a result of events in Chile, that as the anti-working class policy of the Popular Unity government emerges more and more clearly, this could be blamed on its electoral strategy. There will, of course, be a number of confused people prepared to argue this way, suggesting that it was Allende’s reliance on the vote which prevented the building of Socialism in Chile, but socialists must explain that it was not the method of using the democratic machinery of elections which has proved inadequate. The capitalist system has persisted for the far more elementary reason that all of the movements in the popular front stand for capitalism and were voted into power by workers and peasants who are also still thinking along entirely capitalist lines.

Indeed, far from elections having been proved worthless, perhaps the only positive lesson for the working class to come out of Allende winning the Presidency is the way it showed how control of the state is all important.

Chile is politically the most advanced country on the South American continent, where there has been no coup d’état for almost forty years. The fact that workers there have achieved basic democratic rights which enable them to organise trade unions and vote freely is a measure of the level of political maturity reached. Once in power Allende found he could push through the reform programme of his government, even against considerable minority opposition, because the armed forces were always at his disposal. In the same way, when there is a socialist majority in Chile, the most ready means of advancing to Socialism will be for the workers there to use their votes to capture the state machine . In that way, they will be able to reorganise society on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, a very different thing from nationalisation. That will be the real socialist revolution — but, meanwhile, the good name of Marxism is being dragged through the dirt in Chile.

John Crump

Aspect: Karl Marx and the Paris Commune (1971)

The Aspect column from the March 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

What happened in Paris in March 1871 must have seemed at the time a tremendous political upheaval. The French government lost control of Paris for a few months to a municipal council, or “commune”, made up of extreme republicans whose banner was the Red Flag and who proclaimed the Emancipation of Labour. What happened was indeed unprecedented. Never before had any government even claimed to represent the interests of the working class; never before had so many workers taken part in the political administration of a large city. Since 1871 of course there have been many governments, at national as well as local level, that have labelled themselves “Labour” or “Socialist” or “Communist” and in which workers have participated, but the Paris Commune was the first.

In 1870 Marx was still actively working in the International Working Men’s Association, now known as the First International, which had been set up five years previously. His long-term strategy was to encourage the working class in all countries to act independently in order to prepare them for Socialist political action. He was consistently opposed to immediate working class uprisings as advocated by, among others, the anarchist Bakunin. Indeed opposition was his first reaction to the idea of an uprising in Paris following the defeat in September 1870 of France in the Franco-Prussian War. A manifesto, drafted by Marx and issued by the IWMA in September to mark the overthrow of Napoleon III and the proclamation of a Republic in France, advised the French working class:

  Any attempt at upsetting the new government in the present crisis, when the enemy is almost knocking at the doors of Paris would be desperate folly. The French workmen . . . must not allow themselves to be deluded by the national souvenirs of 1792 . . . They have not to recapitulate the past, but to build the future. Let them calmly and resolutely improve the opportunities of Republican liberty, for the work of their own class organisation. (1)

This was a call, not to insurrection, but to work within the new Republic to gradually build up the strength of the French working class movement.

The Paris revolutionaries who, despite this advice, did attempt uprisings in October 1870 and January 1871 were composed of two elements: Jacobins and Blanquists who did look backwards to the First French Republic of 1792 and who were in the majority, and the Paris section of the IWMA who were more interested in organising the workers. Only a handful of them were Socialists in the sense that Marx was, but all of them were in favour of social reforms for the workers (which was enough at that time to be regarded as a socialist).

When on March 18, 1871, Paris did rise in answer to the provocative attempt of the government to take away the cannon of the National Guards, a mainly working class militia, Marx conceded that the revolutionaries had no choice. To have allowed the government succeed would only have demoralised the working class (2). So Marx gave his full support to the insurrectionary Commune once it had been established, even though he knew that it could not survive for long and that it was not really socialist.

Most people must rely for their knowledge about the Commune on the manifesto Marx wrote in May 1871, on behalf of the IWMA called The Civil War in France (3), just after Paris had been brutally suppressed amid great slaughter. This is essentially a propagandist document defending and honouring the name of the Commune and those who died for it. In many respects, however, it gives a misleading impression of what the Commune really was and invests it, as Paul Lafargue who was a close associate of Marx at this time later admitted, with a socialist character it certainly never had (4).

Marx wrote of the Commune that it was “to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundations upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule”. Answering charges in the capitalist press that the Commune was “communist”, he went on:

  Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labour of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land and capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labour, into mere instruments of free and associated labour — but this is Communism, “impossible” Communism!

This suggests that the conscious aim of the Paris Commune was the establishment of Socialism. But this was not so (and even if it had been it would not have made any difference to its chances of survival). Those who held this view of the tasks of the Commune were only a minority, the majority being made up of the Jacobins and Blanquists who looked back to 1792 rather than forward to Socialism and who wasted their time with revived “committees of public safety” and even with the old revolutionary calendar.

Further light in Marx’s view of the Commune is revealed by some draft notes he wrote for the manifesto in April and May 1871 which were not published till 1934 (5). Here Marx says that the most important point about the Paris Commune was its mere existence; was the fact that workers were actually governing Paris. He described the Commune, as a form of political organisation, as

  not the social movement of the working class . . . but the organised means of action. The Commune does not do away with the class struggles, through which the working classes strive to the abolition of all classes . . . but it affords the rational medium in which that class struggle can run through its different phases in the most rational and humane way.

It is quite clear from this that Marx regarded the Commune not as Socialism or even a transition to Socialism, but merely as the political framework within which this transition could take place. He had always advocated that the working class should win control of political power before trying to establish Socialism. He now saw, as the quotes above indicate, the Commune as the form political institutions should take during the period of transition to Socialism. He was not necessarily saying that Socialism was the policy of those who controlled the Paris Commune, but merely that the political institutions they had established — where democratic administration by and for the people replaced the bureaucratic dictatorship of the State machine over the people — were the sort a Socialist working class would also have to establish after they had won political power.

In these draft notes Marx expressed the view that the Commune, as a democratic political institution, would be tantamount to “working class government” in places like Paris where the workers were in the majority. Before the numerical predominance of the working class could become politically significant the old bureaucratic government machine had first to be taken over, then broken up and be replaced by a democratic regime such as the Commune. This is what he meant by the often-quoted (usually out of context and nearly as often misunderstood) statement, which occurs in three different forms in the draft; that “The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” It must be admitted, however, that Marx sometimes seemed to ignore or underestimate the need for the working class to have Socialist ideas as well as democratic institutions before their numbers could be a force for Socialism.

One difficulty in trying to assess Marx’s views on the Paris Commune is that he did not always clearly distinguish between the Commune as a system of democratic government and the Commune as the actual regime which governed Paris from March to May 1871. Whatever may have been the merits of the Commune as the type of administration the workers should have established had they won power anywhere in 1871 — and in 1971 this can only be an academic issue — the real Paris Commune was not a political instrument in the hands of a conscious Socialist majority. Indeed it was not even as democratic as the picture Marx gave of it in The Civil War in France, admittedly before he had a real chance to check the facts. The members of the Commune, for instance, were not paid ordinary workmen’s wages but at least three or four times the wages of the average craftsman (6).

Ten years later Marx by implication admitted that in 1871 he had given a misleading picture of the Commune — though his political conclusions that the working class, after winning control of the machinery of government would have to put it onto a fully democratic basis before using it as an instrument of emancipation was, and still is valid. In 1881 a Dutch Social Democrat, Niewenhuis, wrote to Marx about what the Socialist movement should do once it had come to power. Marx replied on 22 February that he did not think that the Socialist movement would come to power in any country unless at the same time it was strong enough to overcome any capitalist resistance. He went on:

  Perhaps you will refer me to the Paris Commune, but apart from the fact that this was merely the rising of a city under exceptional conditions, the majority of the Commune was in no wise socialist, nor could it be. With a modicum of commonsense, however, it could have reached a compromise with Versailles useful to the whole mass of the people — the only thing that could be reached at the time. (7)

So in 1881 Marx openly recognised that the Commune was not Socialist and that it could not have succeeded beyond reaching some compromise with the French government. We can only speculate what sort of compromise Marx had in mind, but it was probably the establishment of a (capitalist) Republic which would have allowed the working class to organise politically and industrially.

The failure of the Paris Commune in fact vindicated the perspective Marx had of the workers gradually building up their political and industrial strength, rather than trying to stage immediate armed uprisings against the capitalist State. The Paris Commune was one such uprising, an important but exceptional incident in the history of the working class which demonstrated both the need to win political power and the futility of the barricade as the way to do this.

Adam Buick

(1.) K. Marx, The Civil War in France, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1966, pp. 35-6.
(2.) Letter to L. Kugelmann, April 17, 1871, Marx Engels Selected Works, Vol II, FLPH, Moscow, 1958, p.464.
(3.) All quotes are from the Peking edition above.
(4.) “The manifesto of the civil war drawn up by Marx for the General Council invested the Commune with a socialist character it had certainly not possessed during its ephemeral existence”, wrote Lafargue in 1897 (quoted in Tsuzuki, The Life of Eleanor Marx, pp.33-4).
(5.) Included as part of the Peking edition of The Civil War in France.
(6.) F. Jellinek, The Paris Commune of 1871, 1937, p.391. J. Rougerie, Procès Des Communards, 1964, p.246.
(7.) Letter to F. Domela-Nieuwenhuis, 22 February 1881, Marx Engels Selected Correspondence, FLPH, Moscow, 1956

50 Years Ago: More production, more unemployment (1971)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most newspapers are advocating the cutting of governmental administrative expenditure and continually criticise government schemes at home and abroad. These papers say the government must economise so as to relieve the taxes upon the merchants, landlords, and so on . Mr. Lloyd George has soon taken the hint and delivered his cheese-paring speech to the Chambers of Commerce. It does not require a Solomon to see that the world’s markets are glutted — the 'produce more’ stunt has come to fruition. The next step to producing more is to consume less — and that is quite logical in a system of wealth production which belongs to the few in society.

What a vicious circle! Terrible war, awful armistice, horrible peace! Whatever is claimed to be the solution — whether it is producing more, consuming less, economising, going dry, being wet, praying long or short, tariff on goods, profit-sharing, nationalisation — all, all lead to poverty in the midst of plenty.

A while ago a datum line was fixed for the miners, and our bosses made out that it was imperative that at least the miners should turn out so much coal, so that industry generally may flourish and make for good trade. But in spite of the miners producing more than the desired quantity, the discharging of workers has been continuous and it has been computed that there are 1,500,000 workers unemployed. Really if the situation were not so serious it would be comical to note the 'directive ability’ of those who strive to maintain capitalist conditions.

'Produce more’ was the cry; 'the workers are not producing enough’ — and then thousands are discharged so that they can produce nothing.

[From an article The Slump by S. W. in the Socialist Standard, March 1921]

Nostalgia (2019)

The Wood for the Trees Column from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

As adults almost all of us have memories from our childhood and adolescence that produce intense emotion; for this reason they cannot to be relied upon as representing some kind of accurate chronicle of the actions of the self and others in the past. They are, however, essential for the development of the identity of the individual. It is the synthesis of the emotional development of identity and these memories of the past that produce the bitter-sweet phenomena we call nostalgia. It seems that as we get older this particular emotion becomes ever stronger until, with some, it almost entirely eclipses the ideas and emotions of their contemporary experience. This can be seen as one of the reasons for the political conservatism of the older generation within any population. Memories that have been selected and processed are, of course, safer and far more stable than the continual confusion and challenge that everyday life confronts us with. We find comfort in the illusory feelings of safety and structure that some memories provide; but there are also other memories that can pose a threat to this illusion and for this reason we process them in a very different way – we usually repress them. We tend to choose the memories that sustain the identity we want to believe in rather than those that can reveal another side of our character that we are not so comfortable with. This complex internal struggle is often at the very core of our political beliefs and can be revealed by the nature and type of nostalgia that we embrace.

My father’s nostalgia for the kind of football played in the 1960s that allowed England to win the World Cup was very different from my own – he saw it as a triumph for the old-fashioned authoritarianism of the England manager (Alf Ramsey) and I saw it as an expression of the cultural liberation inherent in the ‘swinging sixties’. The decadence that he perceived (in contrast to his belief in the authoritarianism that, for him, had won the Second World War) was to become my ‘golden age’ of nostalgia. Conversely I also have a nostalgia associated with his work as a union shop steward and his role within the working class community that flourished at that time. It would seem that most cultures, like individuals, have a memory of a ‘golden age’ that generates part of its identity. Of course the cultural and the individual are engaged in a reciprocal relationship which enabled my father to embrace his ‘Englishness’ and me to reject mine. Listening to the music and watching TV shows from that time will always evoke nostalgia in me but I’m very aware of the danger of an uncritical and quasi romantic embrace of what they represent. I love the hope and confidence but dislike the naivety and superficiality.

In retrospect one of the most obvious elements of naivety can be seen in the narratives that many of the films and TV of that time possessed. There always had to be a resolution that punished the wrongdoer and rewarded the ‘good guys’. Undoubtedly this fed into the politics of the time and seemed to render a ‘black and white’ solution to the problems of the age. This moral illusion lies at the heart of a lot of nostalgia – a belief in a simpler time when there was a shared consensus in terms of social values. The moral ‘high ground’ that had justified the militarism used to defeat fascism was now utilised to defend the use of violence against the much more ambivalent ‘enemies’ of the moral morass that was the ‘cold war’. In the 1969 movie The Bridge at Remagen a German officer who is about to be shot as an enemy of the Reich looks up at the sky and seeing aircraft he asks: ‘Ours or theirs?’. The SS attending officer replies, ‘Enemy planes, sir!’ ‘But who is the enemy?’ muses the officer – surely a sentiment born of the many wars of ‘national liberation’ that were raging during the making of the film.

In contemporary TV we see a stranger kind of nostalgia that reaches back even further to the pre-war Edwardian period. In shows like Downton Abbey and Berkeley Square we see an undisguised enthusiasm for portraying the rigid class system of the time when everyone knew their place. The English working class seems to indulge and even delight in the excesses of the aristocracy. There is certainly an element of class envy but it goes much deeper to the very essence of the identity of what it is to be English; the contemporary casual dismissal of the importance of class identity hides a deep obsession with it. The royal family has become the paradigm of celebrity soap operas due to nostalgia and its obsession with class – there still lurks a suspicion that there must be some reason for their ‘entitlement’ other than the accident of birth. Theirs is the most celebrated ‘family tree’ and many who research their own family history secretly nurse a deep longing to find a connection with it.

Undoubtedly there were periods in history that possessed elements superior to our ‘post-modern’ social context but this is not really the origin of the intense emotion we call nostalgia. It is much more akin to religion where what is absent (justice, moral integrity, meaning, structure etc.) are projected into a supernatural realm; nostalgia likewise finds a place for such a longing in a non-existent past.

Wez

The Ways of Imperialisms (1947)

Editorial from the July 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

If nature abhors a vacuum so does capitalism; the “vacuum" for this purpose being a weak State with a stronger neighbour, especially if the weak State has within its borders such a valuable prize as uranium deposits needed for the production of atomic weapons. The Chinese Government complains that Sinkiang is being invaded by troops from Outer Mongolia, aided by planes bearing Soviet markings. (The Soviet Government denies this.) According to a Chinese Government spokesman Soviet agents had been discovered before the attack making “unauthorised mineral surveys" in an area where uranium deposits were recently reported (Manchester Guardian, June 13th, 1947), though the explanation given by the Mongolians for the invasion was the arrest of eight of their soldiers.

It all reads like the customary procedure when a powerful State has designs on its neighbours. Outer Mongolia is a Russian puppet state and between 1933 and 1939 Sinkiang too came under Russian influence, "when the province was governed by Sheng Shih-tsai, who won his position with Russian aid after a brief but bloody civil war” (Manchester Guardian, June 16th, 1947). As Sinkiang, though ostensibly part of China, is separated from that country by over a thousand miles of semi-desert and is more easily accessible from Russian-dominated Outer Mongolia, it looks as if Russian expansion is bound to gain the day unless some other major Power, equally interested in uranium, considers it of sufficient importance to take a hand as welL

The people who are least likely to be consulted by any of the Governments concerned are the inhabitants of Sinkiang, who probably only want to be left alone to live their own lives in seclusion, free from interference by China, Russia, or any other Power.

Perhaps, if this position develops further, the puppets of the Russian Foreign Office (foreign Communist parties) might do worse than consult Lenin’s "Imperialism" published by themselves.

"The Anatomy of Peace" (1947)

Book Review from the July 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

A very major war is followed by a spate of declarations and statements relating to its cause and purporting to provide for its future prevention. Such a book is the "Anatomy of Peace” by Emery Reves. It has been a great success in America and will probably be so in this country, particularly as it has been published in a cheap form. (Penguin books, 1s.)

The book is a restatement of World Federalism, an idea popular to-day with various political groups, notably those who are not faced with the actual task of administering the affairs of Capitalism.

After discussing at some length Capitalism, Socialism and Religion in the light of their relation to the problem of war and peace, Reves concludes that they have failed, and then proceeds to give a fairly adequate statement of the nature of war and peace from the Federalist standpoint.

The essence of the doctrine is stated in two propositions : (i) “War between groups of men forming social units always, takes place when those units—-tribes, dynasties, church, cities, nations—exercise unrestricted sovereign power; (ii)"War between these social units ceases the moment sovereign power is transferred from them to a larger or higher unit" (page 110). This is followed by the axiom "War takes place whenever and wherever non-integrated social units of equal sovereignty come into contact" (page 111).

To some extent the idea is a measure of the failure of previous attempts to solve the problem of world war, for as each succeeding war increases in intensity and in the area affected so the plans and schemes for its future prevention become more and more drastic.

After the first World War a League of Nations is thought to be the panacea, but it fails. The second World War sees the rise of the Federalist idea, revolutionary to the extent that it requires the surrender of National Sovereignty. A proposition certainly unacceptable to the world of 1919-1939.

Experience shows that political ideas often precede the necessary economic preconditions of their realisation, and this is an observation which is particularly apposite to such a book as the "Anatomy of Peace." For whilst, superficially and as stated syllogistically by Reves, the fundamental propositions of World Federalism seem to be logical and require only the acceptance of humanity for their realisation, there is one all important factor which reduces the ideal to impotency. It is the factor of Capitalism, and for an illustration of the basic fallacy of Federalism Reves need not have gone further than the history of his own country America.

In 1861 America was engulfed in a civil war over, in its immediate aspects, the rights of the southern states to secede from the higher federal unit, the United States. Now that in itself knocks the ground from beneath Reves' feet, for here is a case of a war between two groups existing within the orbit of a higher or larger unit. But why did this war take place? What force was at work which made nonsense of this principal of the "higher unit"? It was the force of economic conflict between two rival Capitalist groups, one exploiting slave labour, the other exploiting the seemingly expensive free wage labour.

If Reves says he is concerned only with wars between sovereign states, then he must explain the phenomena of sovereign states changing their line-up in different wars. 1914-1918 found America and Japan allies. 1939-1945 finds them enemies. Why? The factor of contact obviously has no bearing on this question of alignment.

Reves attaches great importance to the factor of "contact" between sovereign states, and yet he again appears to be unable to learn from the history of his own country. For since the time of Napoleon America has never been at war with Canada, yet they enjoy geographical, political and economic contact. Common economic interests have made the pursuit of war unnecessary and pointless, and this condition precludes many other contacting sovereign states from engaging in war.

Were it not for the chapters on Capitalism and Socialism the book would not deserve the attention of the Socialist movement, for there is nothing new in it, but there is much in these chapters which requires consideration and discussion.

He states that Capitalism has failed to produce freedom, and whilst it would be possible to quarrel with Reves' idea of freedom it is not really necessary to the argument. What is important, however, is the idea that the purpose and function of Capitalism is to provide freedom. He sees Capitalism not as a system which has developed along inevitable lines, but as a system resulting from some preconceived set of principles which have been set into motion, one of them being universal freedom. He says for instance, "The purpose of mechanical industrial economy is maximum production of consumer goods" (page 45). This statement implies a motive for production guided by no other consideration than the satisfaction of human needs. If this were so, then the deliberate destruction of foods, the shelving of labour-saving devices, lockouts, cartels and any other of the restrictive practices of Capitalism would not occur. It is a half-truth. Maximum production is the motive of Capitalist production only provided it is compatible with maximum profit This is partially recognised when he says, "High tariff walls, export subsidies, exchange manipulations, dumping, cartels, the artificial creation of industries through government financing, etc., have completely distorted the free play of economic forces as understood by the classical theorists of the early 19th century"' (page 51).

Further he states the dominating motive of all economic activity outside existing national boundaries to be the determination to strengthen by all means the economic power of the nation states. Reves does not explain how or why the nation states are strengthened by external economic activity.

In the chapter "The failure of Socialism ’ Reves displays even less understanding. His confusion is shown most clearly when he is discussing the problem of Russia (it is notable that he does not distinguish between Socialism and the Bolshevist system). The following quotations will suffice to demonstrate his confusion :

  "Twenty years after the creation of the first Communist state based upon the principles of Marx, Engels and Lenin . . ." (page 66).
   "To state that Russia's development in the first 25 years of the Soviet regime has virtually nothing to do with Socialism and Communism is not to be interpreted as disparaging the positive achievements of the Soviet government . . . " (page 67).
   "Only in Russia has the Communist system been established . . . " (page 88).

It is not surprising that he finds little difference between freedom, foreign policy and methods in Russia and elsewhere. Had he read Engel’s "Anti-Duhring” with greater care (he quotes from this book when dealing with the question of the State) he would never have fallen into the common error of supposing that state ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution is Socialism. State Capitalism, for that is the most suitable term for such a system, means wage-slavery; production for sale and profit; coercion by poverty; money; investments, in fact all the paraphernalia of Capitalism, often with the absence of political freedom.

In this chapter Reves is mainly concerned with the question of Socialism and the State, and, not unsuccessfully, he shows the divergence between the theoretical principles of Marxism on this issue and the actual course of events in Russia.

Strangely enough the development of the Russian social system displays once again the accuracy of Marx’s observation on the time lag between the idea and the conditions of its realisation.

Since Feudal Russia of pre 1917 had no virile bourgeois groups capable of assuming the role of harbingers of the Industrial Revolution, the revolutionary movement took on a predominantly proletarian form. Strengthened theoretically by Marxism this group, the Bolshevists were successful in overthrowing the existing ruling class. However, as anticipated by the S.P.G.B., the Bolshevists having achieved power were forced by the prevailing economic conditions to throw overboard most of the ideas of the nature of the Socialist revolution and its eventual development, and resort to the usual practices and methods required to administer the affairs of a class society. Since then their international propaganda machine has devoted most of its energies and resources to explaining away, by doubtful "dialectics,” this apparently contradictory development

We repeat, the preconditions of Socialism were not present in Russia in 1917 and the economic and political trends since that time have justified our original analysis, based upon the understanding of Marxist principles.

Reves' criticism of Socialism from the theoretical standpoint can be reduced to two main arguments: (i) That the state is not the instrument of class oppression, 14 freedom,” he says, 44 is exclusively the product of the state ” (page 65), and (ii) that the common ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth is a fallacy insofar as it is claimed to promote the wellbeing of society.

He sees the state behaving as a policeman in civil society, settling the internal disputes of the nation, affording protection to the weak against the advances of the powerful and ruthless. Yet he also sees the nation states promoting terrible conflicts between themselves, oppressing and ravaging. The dual character of the state mystifies him. He does not see that the external affairs of the state are but the extension of those very internal practices which he admires so much. The state does perform certain humane functions within its domestic province, but in the main the motive is the maintenance of the fundamental status-quo. It reforms, it adjusts certain anomalies of the social order, but only to placate the increasing temper of the offended. To summarise our position, "The state is the public power of coercion. It makes and administers the laws, and it does so in the interests of the class which is economically supreme at the different epochs.”

The recent development of state power has mesmerised some into imagining that it is a self-motivated organism, beyond the control of any human group, a passionless machine. It is not. As any other social instrument it. is subject to human control, its forms of behaviour are determined by the group controlling it, and in modern society it acts in the interests of the Capitalist class whether controlled by avowedly Capitalist or alleged Labour parties.

On the question of ownership Reves uses the usual arguments that the diffusion of ownership in modern Capitalist society is so great that "it is managed more or less as a Socialist or state owned enterprise” (page 55). We do not quarrel with the idea that the relationships between owners and employees under state owned and privately owned industries are the same. But we do reject the notion that Socialist production can ever produce the same social relationships as Capitalist production. The reasons are obvious. Capitalist production is production for profit, and whether ownership of a particular concern is widely diffused or is in the hands of a small group, the motive is the same.

In any case, recent surveys of the distribution of Capitalist holdings, in America for instance, have shown that this wide diffusion of capital is a myth, and that the great bulk of capital is still in the hands of a numerically insignificant minority.

Reves' proposition that if the total annual world production was divided equally among the members of the entire human race the result would be poverty is probably true. He also says: "In spite of our pride in the miraculous industrial achievements of the U.S., England, France and Russia, our production lags miserably behind existing scientific and technical potentialities" (page 57).

Reves, probably unknowingly, has hit upon one profound objection that the Socialist movement has against the Capitalist system. Capitalism we say has served its historical purpose, it has shown the way by mass production and the division of labour to potential plenty. To-day huge areas such as China and India stagnate and corrode. Great masses of society fritter away their energies pursuing tasks which in a rational society such as Socialism would be regarded as socially unnecessary and accordingly eradicated. The "not enough to go round anyway" idea is a malthusian throwback and would not concern a society properly organised for maximum production for maximum satisfaction of human needs.

In conclusion we say again if the working class dissipate their political energies by pursuing plans and schemes calculated to solve the problem of war by adjusting the political relationships of nation states, then they will be faced in the future with more war and all the horror and tragedy it brings. War is a product of Capitalist society and its conflicts, and the solution lies in the abolition of this system and its replacement by Socialism; there is no other way.

J. L.

Notes by the Way: Peter Petroff on British State Capitalism (1947)

The Notes by the Way Column from the July 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Petroff on British State Capitalism

Peter Petroff, who was active in the British Socialist Party before it merged into the Communist Party and became Russian Vice-Commissar for Foreign Affairs soon after the Bolshevists seized power, died on June 9th, 1947. He had long ceased his connection with the Russian Government and returned to this country, but his former association with the Bolshevists and his later Labour Party activities add interest to the views he recently expressed in an article in the Railway Review (January 3rd, 1947). Under the title “The Trade Unions Under State Capitalism” he opposed the fallacious idea that because there is a Labour Government the workers have less heed of trade union organisation. Here are some extracts:—

  “We are entering a new era. Britain is gradually progressing from private capitalism to State capitalism. The Bank of England has been taken over by the State; the coal mines have at long last been transferred to public ownership; now the nationalisation of the railways and other branches of transport is on the order of the day. These important changes in society raise the question, what role the Trade Unions may be called upon to play in the near future . . .”

Although he held the mistaken view that State capitalism “is likely to change fundamentally the position of the Trade Unions in public life,” he had no illusions about the possibility of dispensing with their only weapon, the strike.

  ". . . under more or less developed State Capitalism the Trade Unions can by no means afford to weaken their protective functions in defence of the wage-earners whatever may be the character of the government in power. The right to strike is under State Capitalism even more important than under private capitalism . . . strong, virile and mighty unions are required to protect the workers collectively and individually against dictatorial tendencies of the State employer . . ."

It must have occurred to some of his railwaymen readers to ask themselves why, in face of the above, Petroff and others should nevertheless urge the workers to support Labourism and State Capitalism instead of working for Socialism.



What Machinery will do for the Miners

On June 23rd, 1947, the Manchester Guardian published an interesting article on the use of machinery in American coal mines, strongly recommending mechanisation as the salvation for British mines also. Along with details of the higher wages the American miners have been able to get from mechanised mines, (though only ‘‘by fighting a hard and sometimes violent struggle for their share of the proceeds ”), the article tells also of the other side of the picture, quoting the President of an American mining machinery company:—

  ‘‘The miners have to be persuaded to accept pay by the hour instead of by tonnage. They have to face up to such a speed-up of work that it takes them several years to adapt themselves fully. Some conservative foremen and engineers have to be removed before you can get the best out of the new equipment, and you may have to retire some of the older men who cannot stand the pace.”

The Activities of the National Union of Mine workers

That governments and employers should spend money on persuading the workers to work harder is an old story but it is surely new (and a spectacle to make the gods laugh) that workers should pay contributions to a trade union in order to spend the money persuading themselves to work harder. The following extract from a letter written by Mr. Will Lawther, President of the National Union of Mineworkers and published in the New Statesman (January 4th, 1947) deserves to be placed on record.
   ‘‘I should be the last person to deny the effective part played by Mr. Shinwell, the Minister of Fuel and Power, in this difficult situation, but surely it must be admitted that without the effective co-operation of the National Union of Mineworkers the position could not have been tackled successfully. Last winter the Union appointed a National Production Officer and Production Officers in the Areas. The salaries of the National Production Officer and eight of the Area Officers, who were appointed for six months, were paid for out of the funds of the Union. Indeed, the Minister of Fuel and Power himself, addressing the Miners' Annual Conference last June, paid a tribute to the work of the Union, and especially that of Mr. A. L. Horner, the National Production Officer. In addition, leaflets and posters were also prepared explaining to the mineworkers the importance of increased coal production. Moreover, during the past year the National Union of Mineworkers has taken the initiative in organising a large number of meetings and demonstrations in every coalfield in the country.
  ‘‘The fact that the National Union of Mineworkers is the first trade union to use its own funds (about £20,000 was spent last winter) to assist in a production drive is surely worthy of mention.

Will Lawther,

President, National Union of Mineworkers.

The Tories and Nationalisation

Speaking at Woolwich on June 28th Mr. Herbert Morrison had the following to say about the attitude of the Tories to nationalisation.

   "In the latest declaration of a committee of the Tory Party they have declared that if they return to power they would not undo much of the nationalisation which we have achieved and are achieving. The truth is they have no alternative policy within the defined field of Government policy in this regard which would stand up to public debate.” (Observer, 29/6/47).

Party News Briefs (1947)

Party News from the July 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Manchester Branch reports have now come in. May Day meetings were hindered by bad weather all day, but a good audience came to the Rusholme Public Hall to listen to London and Glasgow speakers. There were about 600 people at the debate with J. Jones (Labour M.P., Bolton) at the Downing Street Co-operative Hall. The Propagandist/Organiser is holding outdoor meetings on blitzed sites in the city during the lunch hour. We are the only political association holding meetings on these sites, and our pioneering work has been mentioned in the Manchester Evening News. Week-end outdoor propaganda meetings at Platt Fields and Alexandra Park Gates continue very successfully. The branch have in mind the publication of a special broadsheet for distribution at a big Labour demonstration at Belle Vue on July 6th, where Dalton and Jennie Lee are to speak.

Attractive Party Badges will be ready in about a month's time. They will cost members 1/6 each, post free. When ordering please say whether brooch or stud style is required.

P. Howard (Bloomsbury Branch) was elected to the vacancy on the Executive Committee.

The New Speakers' Test is constantly being applied at the request of members wishing to become fully fledged outdoor speakers. Most applicants pass satisfactorily. An examining committee is also at work in Glasgow, where four members have already passed the test.

The Communist Council of Holland (Spartacus Group) asked us to send a member to attend a conference of various groups being held in Brussels during Whitsun. The Executive Committee decided not to send a member but instructed the Overseas Secretary to send the conference a statement of the party's position to be read.

Edgware Branch are arranging a debate with Sir Waldron Smithers on Friday, July 11th. Smithers ought soon to know something about the party's policy, though this should not be taken for granted. Two previous debates with party representatives (in London and Manchester) drew very large audiences who were entertained by Smithers’ pitiful efforts to make the Conservative policy palatable to a working-class audience. He is now coming up for the third time; perhaps this venerable Conservative M.P. is punch drunk! The debate is at 7.15 p.m., Friday, July 11th, at Edgeworth British Restaurant, Hale Lane, Edgware.

Glasgow Branch have a debate with the United Nations Organisation in hand. No further details are yet available.

“Socialism and Race Prejudice” is title of a draft pamphlet at present being considered by the Executive Committee. If published it should be a very useful addition to our literature. There are so many false and confusing theories bandied about on the question of “Race" that a scientific Socialist approach to the whole question is badly needed. The Editorial Committee are also working on a centenary edition of the “Communist Manifesto" with a special party preface for publication shortly. Other pamphlets we hope to have soon are a short pamphlet on “War,” and others on "Socialism and Religion,” "Russia” and the “Trade Unions.”

An Old Comrade in Vienna is now in touch with us again. He was greatly stimulated by what he heard of the party’s election campaigns. The result of the North Paddington bye-election was broadcast by the Vienna radio, our candidate being incorrectly described in the first broadcast. A correction was then given. He says that while people in Austria still cling to the old decrepit parties, they are really in the main indifferent and quite apathetic. They are longing for something new but it is not forthcoming.

Bloomsbury Branch discussion meeting at Head Office on Thursday, July 3rd, should be very interesting. E. Kersley will open up on Priestley's ”Socialism and Art.”

Beverley Baxter, M.P., missed a very large audience when he dodged out of the debate he had agreed to do with a party representative at White Hart Lane New School, Wood Green, on June 13th. The Palmers Green Branch made every effort to let the local people know that Baxter had backed out of the debate, but that our representative would be there as advertised. Four hundred people turned up and the meeting was lively and stimulating. A considerable amount of literature was sold. Two opponents were given time on the platform to put their points of view. They were not Conservatives. If any Conservatives were present they held their peace. Baxter's lack of ordinary courtesy in not even sending a message of apology to the meeting, and merely cancelling his engagement by means of a telephone communication from his local agent, was something which the local "gentlemen” of the Conservative Party would probably prefer not to defend before a working-class audience of electors in Baxter's constituency. The party representative speculated that Baxter funked the debate after receiving our party literature which showed him that the debate would not be the comfortable joy-ride which he obviously anticipated in the first instance. A Conservative meeting addressed by Baxter a few days earlier at Winchmore Hill nearby was very sparsely attended, only about 60 of the faithful appearing, but Baxter probably prefers 60 admirers to 400 workers anxious to examine his policy critically.

Palmers Green Branch followed up the Wood Green meeting with another at the same hall a week later, when the party speaker challenged the Labour Party to defend their policy. Palmers Green Branch’s next debate is with E. Durbin, Labour M.P. for Edmonton, at Edmonton Town Hall, Fore Street, N.9, on Monday, July 14th, at 8 p.m. We hope he will give Beverley Baxter an example of turning up and facing the music.

Shortage Of Funds will have the effect of slowing down the party’s development. Branches, members and sympathisers are asked to send as much as they can to Head Office to the General, Parliamentary or Provincial Organisers’ Funds. Branches who have more money in hand than is required for current engagements would help by sending the unrequited balances to Head Office.

“We Work and Want" is the title of the meeting being organised by Paddington Branch at Paddington Town Hall, Paddington Green, on Thursday, July 3rd, at 8 p.m. The General Secretary will be the speaker.

C. C. Groves,

General Secretary.

Editorial: The Labour Party Drops Its Programme. (1931)

Editorial from the January 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

A very significant declaration has been made by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald in the House of Commons. He was asked by Mr. Kirkwood whether the Labour Government are prepared to introduce legislation for the purpose of preventing reductions in wages. The Prime Minister replied:—

 Wages, either real or nominal, cannot be fixed by legislation for the wage-earners generally. The Government’s policy is to maintain standards of living and secure as equitable a distribution of wealth as is possible. (Hansard, 26 November, 1930.)

This declaration of policy—or lack of policy—is tantamount to the abandonment of the whole Labour Party programme so painstakingly built up by the efforts of its members during the past thirty years. The Labour Party in office at a stroke sends tumbling down the castle of cards that the Labour Party in opposition had set up. If wages cannot be kept up by legislation, for what purpose did the Labour Party take office? And for what purpose, other than their salaries and to qualify for Cabinet Ministers’ pensions, do they remain there? How does the Government propose to “maintain standards of living ”? Mr. MacDonald does not say. He does not know. His Cabinet have been in office since June, 1929, and during that year and a half, standards have not been kept up. According to the records of the Ministry of Labour, published monthly in the Labour Gazette, nearly two million workers have had their wages reduced between June, 1929, and October, 1930 (the last published figures). The number who have had increases is not one-tenth as large. The net decrease in wages, after deducting the increases, is equivalent to more than £6 million a year; to which must be added the decreases in pay of clerical workers, agricultural workers, shop assistants, Civil Servants, and others not included in the Ministry’s figures.

To that must be added, again, the far greater losses to the workers caused by the growing volume of unemployment under the Labour Government. On a most moderate estimate, the increase in unemployment has meant a loss in wages amounting to £100 million a year over and above the loss in wages which was going on before the Labour Ministry came in.

The Labour Party’s own “Index of Real Wages,” published monthly in the Labour Bulletin, shows the industrial workers to be 6 per cent. or 7 per cent. worse off now than they were when the Labour Government took office. The Index in question allows for the percentage of unemployment and also for the decline in prices, but takes no account of short-time working.

It may be said that the workers’ losses are not the fault of the Labour Government; they have done their best. But that is only another way of saying that the Labour Party has not got any policy which will meet the situation in which the workers find themselves under Capitalism.

It is also urged in their defence that the Labour Government do not enjoy a Parliamentary majority. They have to depend on Liberal votes, and therefore the Labour policy cannot be applied. But taking office as a minority is itself part of the Labour policy. They are there by the unanimous vote of the Parliamentary Labour Party (including Maxton and his group), taken at the first meeting after the General Election.

From the right wing to the most left of the several fragments into which the I.L.P. is now split, the Labour policy is the one of trying to improve the workers’ standard of living by an accumulation of reforms. But of what use are reforms if every reform is accompanied or followed by a fall in wages? Of what use is a reformist political party which cannot use its political power for the purpose of preventing reductions in wages? Mr. MacDonald’s reply to Mr. Kirkwood is an admission of abject failure; an intimation to Trade Unionists that they have supported the Labour Party to no purpose; a curt reminder that they must fight their own battles without help from those whom they have lifted into eminence.

In practice they have not been helped, but hindered. The wages of large bodies of workers in the woollen and cotton industries, in agriculture, and in the Civil Service, have been reduced by the Government itself or by bodies appointed by the Government.

The Government’s failure is fast exposing the hollowness of the case put forward by all the parties which believe in reforming Capitalism. They promised that a period of "practical work” performed by a Labour Government would convert the workers to Socialism. Experience of Labour Government, if we may judge by the elections, is fast converting the Labour supporters back to Liberalism and Toryism.

A Question to Non-Members. (1931)

From the January 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are puzzled by the existence of a large body of old readers and sympathisers who remain non-members. There must be at least two or three thousand of our regular readers who are thoroughly acquainted with our case and more or less in sympathy with the Socialist Party. We ask those who are in that position if they will write to tell us why they refrain from taking the logical next step of becoming members. We would also like to hear from those who, knowing our case, oppose it; and from those who are still in doubt about some point or other. We do not, as a rule, answer anonymous letters, but if some readers would prefer not to give their name when explaining their reasons for remaining outside the Party or for opposing our cause, we would like to hear from them nevertheless. The names of correspondents will not be published when their letters are answered, unless they desire it.

Is a Gold Shortage the Cause of Unemployment? (1931)

From the January 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gold is causing considerable disturbance in the minds of many people just now. The plea is being put forward that the present abnormal amount of unemployment is due to a fall in prices caused by a shortage of gold.

This supposed shortage of gold is attributed to two causes: (1) Decrease in the production of gold, and (2) Unequal distribution of gold available.

The way this alleged shortage of gold is supposed to affect prices is by causing a shortage in the total amount of money available to buy goods.

The first point to meet, then, is the question, "Is there a shortage of gold? ” and the answer is, "Most emphatically, no! ”

The total world production of gold has gone up from 69 million pounds in 1920 to 83½ million pounds in 1929 (see Economist, February 15th, 1930). This represents an increase of over 20 per cent. in ten years. The Transvaal, which produces 53 per cent. of world’s total, has increased its production by 10 million pounds since 1920, and, according to The Times of December 11th, its production for the eleven months of 1930 is well up over 1929 for the same period.

In the meantime new rich finds of gold have been reported in Australia and Venezuela, and new depths and cheaper working in South Africa.

The Gold Delegation of the League of Nations have made a comprehensive survey of past, present and future production of gold, and have published an interim report on the matter in September, 1930. The conclusion they have come to is that, leaving out of account new finds of gold and improved technical methods, there will be no inadequacy in the supply of gold for at least another ten to fifteen years. On page 75 of their report, Cassel, one of its members, points out that:—

  The net result of the war on the world's monetary system is an extraordinary reduction in the monetary demand for gold, chiefly caused by an almost complete cessation of the use of circulating gold coins. This reduction in the demand for gold has resulted in a fall in the value of the metal and a rise in the general level of commodity prices to about 150, as compared with 100 before the war.

The City Editor of the Evening Standard, referring to the position in England, makes the following remarks in the issue of November 21st last:—

  For the creation of more credit we have now a substantial basis. A year ago the gold held by the Bank of England amounted to 133 million pounds. To-day we have 150 million pounds.
  At present the gold is not being fully used. Inactive Bank of England notes total £64,172,894 against £37,016,505 a year ago. These figures show that the increase of 26 million pounds in our gold has not yet got into active circulation. It is, so to speak, stored up in the reserve.
  . . .   In other words, we have now a reserve army of credit.

In the Evening Standard for December 10th the City Editor writes as follows:—

  The appreciation in the price of gold has been a boon to gold mines containing only low-grade ore. It has made it possible to work them at a profit, and so has given increased employment to those engaged in the industry; has put money into the pockets of shareholders, and has increased the world’s supplies of gold at a time when such increase is most welcome.

A shortage of gold, then, does not exist and, consequently, the present industrial depression cannot be attributed to this cause.

The idea that an unequal distribution of gold is at the root of the trouble is based on the same misconception as the idea that there is a shortage of gold.

The view held is generally known as the “quantity theory of money," and is defined by one of its principal exponents, Sir David Barbour, as follows:—

  Other things being equal the level of prices is proportionate to the quantity of money. (Influence of gold supply on Prices and Profits, p. 47.)
  Under modern conditions, the tendency is for money to change hands more rapidly than before, the resulting influence enabling exchanges to be effected with a less quantity of money, and thus acting in the direction of raising prices. (Ibid, p. 52.)

It is not necessary here to go into the question of the validity of the quantity theory. It is sufficient to point out that this theory cannot account for the fundamental differences in prices (for instance, between corn, oil, and diamonds).

However, let us examine the question on the ground of the quantity theory—that there is not enough gold for currency purposes owing to the fact that America and France are cornering such a large amount of the world’s supply.

If this view be accepted, then America and France should be flourishing. In fact, however, the depression in America is even more marked than here and they are anticipating an unemployed army of about seven millions this winter. In France the clouds are beginning to gather; unemployment is growing and the first fruits of the crisis are already causing considerable disturbance among politicians, as is shown by their efforts at Cabinet building.

In England an examination of the Bank return for the past few months entirely disposes of any idea that there is a shortage of currency. All through October and November there has been over sixty millions of unused currency notes lying in the banking department of the Bank of England. The Bank Return for December 17th shows that even at this time of the year, when there is an abnormal call on currency for Christmas buying, there is still forty-five and a half millions of currency notes lying idle in the banking department.

If it be urged that the alleged shortage does not show itself in currency, but in credit, and thereby lessens the amount available for investment, then it is sufficient to point out that there is a vast amount of money awaiting investment which cannot find an opening, as witness the share issues that are over-subscribed to the amount of millions of pounds in a few hours. This matter is dealt with elsewhere in this issue, and we will only add one or two further illustrations to those already given. In their “City Notes” The Times of November 24th makes the following observations :—

  Some of our correspondents appear to think that the present trade depression, which is reflected in the fall of commodity prices, can only be cured by tackling what is described as the scarcity of gold and currency. There is, however, little evidence of either. America, for instance, has a huge gold stock and a credit-creating power far beyond anything she is making use of at present; the same might be said of France, and in this country the difficulty of banks is to find borrowers of the credit they are anxious to lend.

The Financial Times for November 10th, under the heading “Ample Funds for Investment,” states:—

  The fact that about 70 million pounds was subscribed for the issue of 5 million pounds S. Africa 4½ per cent, loan 1955-75, offered last week at 95½, serves to draw attention once again to the great volume of money available for investment, etc.

The Evening Standard of November 25th reports that Sir Andrew Duncan (head of the Central Electric Board) said: “The eager over-subscription of yesterday [£6 million C.E.B. stock] . . . is an additional proof of the plethora of money awaiting safe investment."

The evidence is therefore conclusive that there is a superabundance of gold, of currency, and of money awaiting investment. Why, then, the gold scare? There are two reasons; both of them old and both of them a consequence of the present system of Capitalist private ownership.

On the one hand, the Capitalists’ professional spokesmen, at a loss to understand the source of the disorganisation and misery produced by the working out of the economic laws of Capitalism, clutch at any straw that gives the appearance of an explanation. On the other hand, any explanation that gives the Capitalists a weapon to force down wages is joyfully laid hold of and used with vigour.

The ignorance or knavery of the leaders of the Labour Party makes them willing tools in the hands of the Capitalists, as the following statement by Mr. William Graham, President of the Board of Trade, at Middlesbrough on December 7th, testifies :—

  I fervently hope that American and British financial authorities will be able to arrive at an agreement in the use of gold reserves which will provide on a sound basis a great credit structure, and so minister to a common recovery.

(News-Chronicle, 8 Dec., 1930.)

Thus do Labour leaders help the Capitalists to obscure the real cause of the present depression, which is, in fact, an accentuation of the over-production of goods. So fruitful are the means of production to-day, that the wholesale limitations imposed upon production have failed to prevent an over-stocked market. Capitalism is being choked by an enormous surplus of goods, and yet there are millions of workless and starving.

Increased production of gold or increase in money is, therefore, not the solution of the evils. The only solution is for the working class of the world to take over the means of production and carry on the work of society on a new foundation that will secure to each member of the community a sufficiency to satisfy his needs, and will ensure that a surplus of production will only mean less work for each.

Gilmac

SPGB Meetings (1931)

Party News from the January 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Don’t sweat the small stuff (2019)

From the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

We’ve been hearing a lot about traditional politics being ‘broken’. There is deep dissatisfaction and disillusionment with all political parties, with their failed promises, their increasingly transparent dishonesty, the personal ambition of their representatives, and their idiotic circus of privileged shouting matches in the Palace of Westminster. But beneath the surface, our discontent is really a frustration at the social system itself, and its perpetual inability to deliver genuine comfort and security for all, regardless of which party has its hands on the wheel.

This is an era of profound social crisis, both culturally and economically. We are witnessing new levels of corruption, decadence and mendacity in public life. Decades of intelligent discourse and positive social evolution seem to be unravelling in front of our eyes. Frustration with the way things are is leading to a new surge in irrationality and abuse. The past year has seen a dramatic increase in the number of violent racist attacks in the USA, Britain and throughout Europe. The gap between rich and poor widens, and the rich and powerful are succeeding in persuading large numbers of the impoverished to scapegoat those even poorer or more vulnerable, rather than focus on their actual exploiters.

More and more the issues facing us are global and deadly in their urgency. In that context, the petty squabbles within the British Labour and Conservative parties are irrelevant and absurd in their self-importance and pomposity. There is an increasing risk of major and possibly nuclear conflict, which could kill millions. Even though Britain is one of the world’s most developed states, the figures for poverty are chronic and worsening. Confidence in the democratic process is plummeting to new lows. There is evidence of the French gilet jaunes, who started by protesting against fuel price rises, now being partly hijacked by expressions of anti-semitism, whilst groups of political thugs in Britain have also donned high-vis tunics in a crude, confused and blunt protest against the so-called ‘liberal elite’.

The social problems which have vexed us throughout modern history could have been solved long ago, by a radical and imaginative change in the basis of society, but true radicalism has at each turn been dismissed, as much by the Left as by conservatives, in the name of ‘realism’ and reasonable expectations. We inhabit a social system of brutal capital accumulation and dehumanisation which can only get worse, and periodically implode as it is doing now. This could be a time for a great positive change, if we question and replace the underlying economic system – or for a plunge into the abyss, if once again we don’t.

Whilst Labour and Tory seem to be falling apart at the seams, the new groupings are essentially no better. There was a very telling moment when Kirsty Wark interviewed Anna Soubry for Newsnight about the new Independent Group. Wark pressed her on what they stood for and she had absolutely no answer. Eventually, she actually paused and laughed patronisingly at Wark, pityingly saying: ‘You see, you’re still in the old way of doing things. This is something new!’ However, she then admitted that they had ‘no policies’ yet. Pushed again, she said they ‘believe in sound economic policies, and a sound economy’. So, that’s clear, then! That moment when she tried to reverse roles and criticise the reporter questioning her was similar to what Trump does, attacking reporters for asking the right questions, turning the question back on them, switching roles in order to avoid scrutiny.

Within three hours of being formed, one of the Independent Group, Angela Smith MP, referred to ‘people of a funny tinge’ in the context of saying that discrimination against minority ethnic groups was not just about colour, and had to apologise for her offensive phrase.

On a much more positive note, February saw the beginnings of a new global movement for change from school students, with strikes and protests about the lack of action on climate change. Inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who protests every Friday outside her country’s parliament, the British action (Youth Strike 4 Climate) was swiftly condemned by Theresa May and others as ‘wasting time’! – wanting to avert global catastrophe is clearly sneered at by these dinosaurs of political depravity. These advocates of a rotten and murderous system, who would herald a new dark age if we let them, should be held in utter contempt.

There is one thing which ties all of this together, and overshadows the petty, parochial politics of Britain, Brexit, Labour, Tory, Independent Group and all of the other intellectual pygmies bleating to sell us into slavery on the altar of the profits of a few. The uniting thread running through all of these crises, of climate change, militarism and war, insecurity, racism, violence and political cynicism is the unspoken, open secret of ownership and control. On this, Karl Marx was spot on, and the clarity of his observations is even now becoming more and more compelling. Capitalism is still the social system which exists throughout the world and its effects get worse every day that it staggers on. Wealth concentration is now even more extreme than it was in his day, increasing the already extreme social power of a tiny and largely anonymous elite, which cuts across every country and culture.

Such an absurd system can only continue to cultivate support and acceptance by persuading us to see a world divided into rival states, cultures and religions rather than realise that the absolutely fundamental divide, between the billionaire class and the rest, between capital and labour, in fact cuts across such cultural contrasts and is blind to them. British billionaires like James Dyson and James Ratcliffe of Ineos (Britain’s richest man) supported Brexit, but have recently both moved their headquarters and assets away from Britain in order to protect their value. This simple point is often missed. For example, why do so many industries, businesses, and governments resist the need to reduce carbon emissions? Because they believe that to do so might cut into certain profit flows. Because we inhabit a system which depends, regardless even of the greed or kindness of individual investors, on maximising profits.

To resolve the climate change crisis will absolutely necessitate ending the economic system of minority ownership and of profit. Likewise, wars are fought between rival groups of those who own and control the planet’s resources. More than 99 percent of us have no real stake in any country. We are already ‘the dispossessed’. All of our problems in society will be solved by dispossessing the tiny but all-powerful global minority, and replacing private and/or state ownership of the world and all its resources with a new and thoroughly democratic system of common ownership, democratic control and production not for profit, but instead purely to meet needs.

Clifford Slapper

The human nature argument (1993)

Book Review from the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most frequent arguments used against the possibility and viability of socialism is that the ideas and behaviour it requires are against “human nature”. So any book that makes a detailed, well-researched and thoughtful analysis of the whole subject is likely to be useful to socialists. Such a book is Alfie Kohn’s The Brighter Side of Human Nature published in America in 1990. His references to capitalism and socialism are few but he is no apologist for the status quo. He is aware that most of what has been written on human nature has focused on its darker side. So his aim is to present examples of and discuss “altruism and empathy in everyday life” (the book’s subtitle).

Cynical consensus
Described as “an independent scholar, lecturer and journalist”, Kohn previously wrote No Contest: The Case Against Competition (1986). He starts by asking us to consider a curious set of facts about our culture:

  Someone who thinks well of himself is said to have a healthy self-concept and is envied. Someone who thinks well of his country is called a patriot and is applauded. But someone who thinks well of his species is regarded as hopelessly naive and is dismissed.

When you think about it, this set of facts isn't so much curious as characteristic of capitalism. Individual-ism is lauded as superior to social-ism, so that when some individuals cream off the profits while others go short of what they need this is regarded as “natural". Patriotism is the individual expression of nationalism, and the capitalist world is divided into nation-states because it suits leaders to divide and rule. Thinking well of one’s species is what people do when they overcome individualism and nationalism—when, as socialists, they identify with humanity as a whole.

In the following passage it is necessary to read "we" as referring to the current majority viewpoint, not that of the author and not, of course, that of socialists:

  The phrase “human nature” . . . is reserved, as if by some linguistic convention, for what is nasty and negative in our repertoire. We invoke it to explain selfishness rather than service, competition rather than cooperation, egocentricity rather than empathy. On any given day we may witness innumerable gestures of caring, ranging from small acts of kindness to enormous sacrifices, but never do we shrug and say. "Well, what did you expect? Its just human nature to be generous".

Illustration by George Meddemmen

After giving some examples of the ways in which characteristics such as aggression and competition, selfishness and egocentricity are persistently overstated, and their opposites understated, Kohn goes on to present what he describes as a more balanced perspective, "an affirmation of what there is to appreciate about humankind without ignoring the reality that people sometimes act rotten”:

  In response to a stubborn refusal to recognize what is heartening about humans, I am chiefly interested in showing that there is more to us than the negative qualities we have come to identify with human nature. Most of us have heard only half the story. Human beings are selfish and self-centered, looking for any opportunity to take advantage. But human beings are also decent, able to feel others' pain and prepared to try to relieve it. There is good evidence to support the proposition that it is as “natural” to help as it is to hurt, that concern for the well-being of others often cannot be reduced to self-interest, that social structures predicated on human selfishness have no claim to inevitability—or even prudence. In short, the cynical consensus about our species is out of step with the hard data.

The evidence that Kohn presents later in the book is all the more remarkable because it is evidence of how people behave in capitalism, a society that encourages and, indeed, depends for its very existence and continuation upon, a set of beliefs that emphasizes competition, being tough, accepting market forces, looking after yourself, and so on. In other words, people today are shown to behave much more pro-socially than the system urges them to. How much more pro-socially would be likely to behave in a system that emphasized the brighter, rather than the darker, side of human nature.

Pro-social behaviour
In his chapter on pro-social practices, Kohn gives us a number of examples from the literature on the subject. Some of them are findings from artificially contrived "research" situations of which experimental psychologists are unfortunately so fond. But other examples are from the author’s own experience or from studies of everyday life and are thus more credible:

  In my experience, cars do not spin their wheels on the ice for very long before someone stops to offer a push. We disrupt our schedules to visit sick friends, stop to give directions to lost travelers, ask crying people if there is anything we can do to help. According to polls, nearly 90 percent of Americans give money to charitable causes and nearly half take the time to do some sort of volunteer work. In one study, 83 percent of blood donors indicated a willingness to undergo anasthesia and stay overnight in a hospital in order to donate bone marrow to a complete stranger. And if we, like some researchers, choose to expand the idea of pro-social behaviour to include cooperative activities—working with others for mutual benefit, such as in structured collaboration at work—we would find even more evidence of prosocial inclinations. All of this, it should be stressed, is particularly remarkable in the light of the fact that we are socialized in an ethic of competitive individualism.

Kohn spends 15 pages tackling the question of whether aggressive behaviour is part of human nature. He concludes that it isn't. Here are some extracts:

  The frequency with which nations draft their citizens into combat (and invoke stiff penalties for those who resist it) qualifies as powerful evidence against the idea that wars reflect natural human aggressiveness. 

  There is absolutely no evidence from animal behavior or human psychology to suggest that individuals of any species fight because of spontaneous internal stimulation. 

  Like other beliefs about the intrinsic unsavoriness of our species . . . an assumption about aggression can also be explained . . .  in terms of images presented to us by the mass media, and in terms of the powerful interests who are benefited by just such an assumption. 

  The simple assumption that we cannot help being aggressive helps us to continue being aggressive. No circle is more vicious than the one set up by the fallacious assumption that we are unable to control an essentially violent nature.

A lengthy account is given of what a military historian of World War II discovered about the unwillingness of American soldiers to kill enemy troops. After interviews with hundreds of military companies in the central Pacific area and Europe, he found that on average not more than 15 percent of the men had actually fired at the enemy positions or personnel. This reluctance to kill was true not only of novices but also of those who had been through several battles. The historian concluded that the average and normally healthy individual has such resistance towards killing a fellow human that they will not take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility.

Illustration by Peter Rigg.

One-sided individualism
Kohn devotes three chapters to altruism, after having introduced the subject earlier in the book. The famous study by Titmuss of blood donors gives perhaps the best example of altruism. When asked why they gave blood, most donors spoke about having either a duty or a desire to help others, or talked about wanting to express gratitude for being in good health or for having received someone else’s blood in the past. Less than two percent said they were hoping to receive some benefit from donating. A further example is given of altruistic behaviour among French civilians in World War II. Residents of a village agreed to hide Jews despite the enormous risks this involved. The helpers did not see themselves as heroic: they typically said that they simply did what had to be done, they answered a call, they made the obvious choice.

Kohn is highly critical of the doctrine of individualism, as expressed from Hobbes to Freud and from Ortega y Gasset (“human life as radical reality is only the life of each person”) to Margaret Thatcher (“there is no such thing as society"). Of psychology he writes “almost every branch, school, speciality, and theory within it is based on individualism”. The separate self as the fundamental level of analysis is one way of making sense of the world. But something is missing from the picture—and that is human relationship.

The belief that concern for self is more real than concern for others results from a very partial view of human behaviour. In the last century Toqueville remarked of the United States "the individual is free . . .  to expand as a standardized individual". Kohn updates this judgment: “Our miserable individuality is screwed to the back of our cars in the form of personalized license plates”.

Part of the “human nature” argument for preserving the status quo is that the worlds work will only get done if people are paid to do it. Of course, the system does get people to work, up to a point. But, as Kohn observes, “People do their best work when they find it fun. not when they are in it for the money”. Rewards actually erode intrinsic interest. Encouraging pro-social behaviour by the use of incentives or other appeals to self-interest doesn’t work very well or works only in the short run:

  When we are rewarded for pro-social behavior, we tend to assume the reward, and not altruism, accounts for our having acted as we did . . . encouragement to think of oneself as a generous person—an appeal not to self-interest but to genuine altruism—seems to be the most reliable way to promote helping and caring over the long haul and in different situations.

Economists and other egoists have long claimed that we make all our decisions on the basis of trying to maximize our individual gains. But people (in the US) regularly do things like contribute to public television and radio stations even though self-interest theory predicts everyone should wait for others to contribute and then watch or listen for free. Actually it is not too difficult to promote behaviour that is in everyone's best interests:

  People will usually cooperate with others in a group so long as they are given an opportunity to feel a sense of belongingness to that group. Allow someone to meet and talk with the others and he or she will subsequently tend to make decisions in the group’s interest rather than trying to take advantage of the others.

Kohn makes the important point that our thinking about what is natural is affected by our economic system (he actually says “may be affected" but that seems too weak). Also there is the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy:

  If we have been socialized to expect a tat for every tit, to keep score silently in relationships so that things are nearly symmetrical (and to feel uncomfortable when they are not), to construe the act of helping as doing a favor that ought to be repaid, then these expectations can create a reality as real as any determined by natural egoism.

However, social anthropologists tell us that in some cultures the emphasis is on gifts rather than exchanged commodities, gifts made with no assurance of anything in return. That is no doubt how it will be in socialist society. After all, even in today's mercenary society we sometimes give help to strangers just because they need helping, not because we expect to get something out of it.

Humanity
In his last chapter “Beyond Altruism" the author has a tantalizing section Where Humanity Begins. He suggests that we need a morality of thought and of feeling, of principle and of care. Throughout the book he emphasizes questions of morality and philosophy, although he is obviously aware of the economic—and to a lesser extent the political—implications of what he writes. Earlier he refers to the need to detoxify "the poisonous We/They structure of nationalism”. But his main message is summed up in one sentence: “Altruism—one self helping another without consideration of personal gain—is both realistic and commendable”.

The last paragraph of a book is often important because it contains the thoughts the author wants to leave us with:

  No imported solution will dissolve our problems of dehumanization and egocentricity, coldness and cruelty. No magical redemption from outside outside of human life will let us break through. The work that has to be done is our work, but we are better equipped for it than we have been led to believe. To move ourselves beyond selfishness, we already have what is required. We already are what is required. We are human and we have each other.