Progress and Politics. (1923)

Book Review from the July 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

Progress and Politics. by Ramsay Muir. Methuen & Co., 36, Essex Street, W. C.2. Price 3s. 6d.

The dust cover advertises this book “as an attempt to survey the whole field of politics from the standpoint of a progressive who is deeply dissatisfied with many aspects of the existing order, but who is convinced that the Socialist scheme of reconstruction is no better than a will o’ the wisp.”

After reading the book we can share the author’s conviction concerning what he calls “the Socialist scheme of reconstruction,” for throughout “Socialist” is used to denote the Labour Party, and for the workers the schemes of that party, like the schemes of the Liberal Party, are will o’ the wisps.

We have no space here to quarrel over the meaning of words, but to apply the term Socialist to the Labour Party is unfair both to responsible Socialists and to the Labour Party. The Labour Party is not, and never has been, a Socialist Party. Even its own publicists admit that, as witness Mr. Snowden’s statement that

  “the British Labour Party is certainly not Socialist in the sense in which Socialism is understood upon the Continent. It is not based upon the recognition of the class struggle.”—(Page, 528, “Manchester Guardian” Reconstruction Number, 26th October, 1922)

And so, while Mr. Muir is convinced the futility of Labourism, he says nothing about Socialism, and it is therefore impossible to know whether he has any convictions on this subject.

But more of this anon; for the present the book itself provides ample scope for comment. It can be divided into three sections, dealing with (1) the broad aims of Liberalism, 2) the achievements of Liberalism in the past, and (3) the Liberal solution of immediate problems. 

To take the last first.

It proposes as a solution of modern financial problems, increased death duties (the capital levy is discussed and turned down), the League of Nations as a means to abolish war, and a re-organisation of industry and an improved dole system to solve the present unemployment problem

The capital levy and death duties are no concern of the workers. The incidence of taxes falls on the people who can pay them, not on the propertyless class. Financial problems are therefore problems for master class, who will have to solve them unless the workers do so by ending the system which engenders them.

As for the League of Nations, only a Liberal can imagine that it will prevent wars. They have their basis in the economic structure of society itself, and result from the struggle for markets under competitive production. And although the workers allow themselves to be used as cannon fodder, they are all the time only fighting their masters’ battles while neglecting their own. The futility of expecting to end war under capitalism by peaceful negotiation is shown with naive clearness by our author himself on page 89, where he writes :

  “It was by the use of the Concert of Europe that Sir Edward Grey succeeded in averting the almost annual threats of war by which Europe was disturbed during the years 1906 to 1914, and he could have succeeded in averting the final menace of 1914 by the same means if Germany had only permitted the concert of Europe to come into being.”

Moreover, somebody will be doing things like this again, for Mr. Muir is not going to trust a pacific League of Nations with an army,

  “for the commander of such an army would have in his hands the means of making himself the despot of the world.”

The League of Nations is to be bossed, not boss, you understand !

And then unemployment. As this did not arrive with the war, but was quite a flourishing problem which should have appealed to Liberals of the past prior to 1914, and as “it is a problem of manageable dimensions capable of a reasonable and just solution” (page 133), it is strange that it was not solved by one of the many Liberal Governments the workers have chosen for themselves. But, there, even Liberals cannot do everything at once, and while the House of Lords needed reforming, what time had they to deal with a problem like unemployment, which was soluble and would therefore present no difficulty? The solution is Government relief work, and insurance by industries. Of course,

  “there would remain a large group of industries which could not be directly helped by this method ; the textile trades, for example. In these industries the only way of minimising—for that is all that is possible—the evils of a period of exceptional trade depression would be a system of organised relay work with partial unemployment relief.” —(Page 136.)

As Mr. Ramsey Muir does not know, or at least does not say, how periods of “exceptional trade depression” can be avoided, this is an admission of blank failure and shows that even Liberalism of the pinkest hue will not give the workers that security of which Mr. Muir prates.

So much for the future Liberalism. What of the past?

In his outline of past achievements, our author is continually compelled to confess that Conservatives shared in the so-called reforms of the nineteenth century. Thus we get frequent passages like these :

  “This Act (giving the counties representative councils) of 1888, though it had been drafted by a Liberal statesman, was actually carried by a Conservative Government.”—(Page 94.)

   “A Liberal Act of 1871 saved the unions from this danger (of prosecutions for conspiracy in restraint of trade), though it had to be supplemented by a Conservative Act in 1875.”—(Page 95.)

  “In the early days, a great Tory philanthropist, Lord Shaftesbury, was one of the most persistent advocates of factory legislation, which always had Liberal majorities.”—(Page 100.)

   “Conservative Ministries and Parliaments contributed from time to time to the work.”—(Page 101.)

From this it is seen that if the worker had cause to be grateful for these reforms, if they mitigated the evils of his slave condition, his gratitude must be showered on Liberalism and Conservatism alike. Such reforms have not fundamentally altered the position of the working class, however, and no gratitude is needed. And if Factory Acts and the abolition of slavery are achievements to be referred to with pride, does Mr. Muir forget that the Liberals like Cobden, so energetic in freeing slaves, were equally energetic in opposing Factory Acts? And in spite of capitalist historians, was the emancipation of slaves so disinterested and high-minded as Mr. Muir would have us believe? The Act liberating slaves was passed in 1832. David Hume had already pointed out in 1711 that

  “from the experience of planters, slavery is as little advantageous to the master as to the slave, wherever hired servants can be procured. A man is obliged to clothe and feed his slave and he does no more for his servant. The price of the first purchase, therefore, is so much loss to him, not to mention that the fear of punishment will never draw so much labour from a slave as the dread of being turned off and not getting another service will from a free man.”

And in Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” occurs this passage :

  “Though the wear and tear of a free servant be equally at the expense of his master, it generally costs him much less than that of a slave.”

The liberation of slaves was as charitable and disinterested as is the sending of “armies of missionaries whom Britain maintained” into every land, which our author claims to be characteristic of a new policy of Liberalism (vide page 92).

  “The purpose of the Missions is not to develop trade, but trade is inevitably developed by missions. They steadily increase material needs: soaps, oils, cloths, sewing machines, books, tools, follow hard on Mission enterprise. Missions teach thrift, industry and honesty in commercial dealings. It is worthwhile for business men to support Missions if from no other motive than that they create new, larger and better markets for their goods.”—(Record of the Home and Foreign Mission work of the United Free Church of Scotland, December, 1919, page 267.)

These are a few of the past achievements of Liberalism which Mr. Muir rakes up. There are some he has forgotten. What of Mr. Asquith sending soldiers to Featherstone in 1893, when the miners were shot down, and Churchill’s calling out of troops at the time of the Dock Strike in 1911, when, by mistake, of course, Mr. Tillett told the dockers to rush the bakers’ shops? For an author who chides Labour orators with trusting to the ignorance of their hearers (page 86), this is a serious omission. And how does he square this use of force with the statement that the Conservative is distinguished from the Liberal by

  “the use of force rather than persuasion as the easiest weapon for dealing with any sign of revolt against the established order.”—(Page 9.)

The use of force as a protection to the master class is another honour shared equally by these two parties, and with the advent of a Labour Government there will arise a third participator.

Force is the foundation of capitalist domination, and that force is obtained through Parliament; capitalist control there means capitalist control everywhere. The workers therefore have nothing to gain by supporting any party which seeks to maintain that control. Concessions and reliefs may have been granted in the past by both parties, but none of these concessions, none of these vaunted reliefs, such as Old Age Pensions, State Insurance, etc., have altered the general position of the workers in society. They are still slaves, and whilst Liberalism, Conservatism, or Labourism has their attention they will remain slaves. Mr. Muir admits that

  “Liberalism and Conservatism are united in their belief that private enterprise must, in the future as in the past, provide the main driving force in the economic sphere.”—(Page 7.)

And that statement damns Liberalism for the workers, to whom the only problem of vital importance is the problem of ownership and control of the means of life. The ending of private ownership solves the problem of the division of the product of industry, in which Liberalism promises the workers a larger but still a small share. The object of the workers should be to dispossess the master class. They therefore have no use for any party which denies the class struggle. For the achievement of their emancipation the Liberal Party is as useless as the Conservative or Labour Parties. The workers alone can free themselves from the burden of their condition—this they can do when they wish by organising on a class basis.

W. J. R.

Co-operation—A hopeless experiment. (1923)

Editorial from the July 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

There are many who believe that the Co-operative movement will provide an easy and painless means of transforming present competitive production into production upon a basis of common property. There are others who oppose the Co-operative movement on the ground that it is Socialist. Those who advance these views have not given sufficient consideration to fundamental matters.

The means of production to-day are in the hands of a small but tremendously wealthy class; a class that is powerful because it controls the State machinery. The means of production are operated by a large but poverty-stricken class of wage workers ; a class that is in slavery because it leaves the State machinery in the hands of its oppressors.

Production is on a gigantic scale, based upon sale for profit. The increase in quantity and complexity of the machinery used makes necessary ever less and less workers to turn out the things required by society. The big capitalists undersell the small, and eventually drive increasing numbers of the latter out of business. Only a short time ago the Small Traders’ Association was complaining bitterly that their members were being rapidly wiped out of trade. In fact, the small traders are becoming little more than salesmen for the powerful trusts.

Assuming the continuance of present production for sale, the large capitalists can only be driven out of business by a still larger type. Any organisation that is going to offer serious opposition to the present owners of wealth must have an enormous capital at its disposal. Imagine the size of capital an organisation would require to, compete successfully with, say, the Steel, Oil, or Meat Trusts, or similar gigantic corporations ! Further, such an organisation to live and flourish would have to adopt the same methods as its competitors—exploit its workers.

Over a hundred years ago Robert Owen conceived the idea of organising a new society in the midst of the old. He thought the workers could band themselves together into producing and distributing groups, spread over the whole of society, and eventually freeze the capitalist out. Subsequently he had to modify his ideas somewhat, owing to the strength of the opposition, and tried experiments by establishing co-operative colonies on comparatively virgin soil—but, of course, with people brought up in capitalist surroundings. These experiments all ended in disaster; they ultimately ruined him and demonstrated the futility of attempting to found ideal societies in a capitalist world.

There was an excuse for the dreams of the heroic and good-intentioned Owen. In his time knowledge of the organisation and development of society was comparatively small; and he was one of those by whose disastrous experiments later generations were to acquire a sound understanding. Since his time social investigators have piled up literally mountains of information, showing how one form of society grows out of another, owing to the operation of forces that already exist in the old society; and that a new society is never grafted on to the. old, as it were, from the outside.

In Owen’s day the capital required to start an important industry was but a tiny fraction of what is required to-day; and the power that lies in the hands of those controlling the State was not yet sufficiently realised by the oppressed class or its would-be deliverers. The powerful capitalists have it in their hands to smash to pieces, whenever they wish, any rising productive or distributing organisation that challenges their existence, long before such an organisation could reach any serious proportions. The very fact that they make no serious effort to interfere with the development of the various Co-operative Societies shows that they expect no dangerous opposition from these societies.

In his “History of Co-operation,” the late G. J. Holyoake, one of the best-known advocates of Co-operation, defined it as follows :

  “The equality sought is not the mad equality of equal division of unequal earnings, but that just award of gains which is proportionate to work executed, to capital subscribed, or custom given. . . and there is equality in a co-operative society, when the right of every worker is to a share of the common gain in the proportion to which he contributes to it, in capital, or labour, or trade—by hand or head ; and this is the only equality which is meant, and there is no complete or successful co-operation where this is not conferred, aimed at, and secured.”—(Vol. I., page 4.)

From this it will be seen that he who subscribes most capital will gain most; in other words, those who “have not,” who are the ones that most require aid, will remain as they were before—without. Inequality in the means of living, and hence private property, is at the root of the Co-operative movement—that is, the very opposite to Socialism.

On page 5 of the same volume the author states :

  “It touches no man’s fortune ; it seeks no plunder ; it causes no disturbance in society ; it gives no trouble to statesmen.”

Here the death knell of Co-operation is sounded, from the point of view of any advantage it offers to the workers. If those who own the means of production are not to have their fortunes touched, from whence are to come the productive powers of tomorrow? If there is to be no disturbance in society, then the slaves are to remain as they are—slaves. If it is to give no trouble to statesmen, then the capitalist can rest content that, so far as the Co-operative movement is concerned, the parasite will be kept for ever.

At present the mass of the people obtain, on the average, barely sufficient to keep themselves and their families from starvation; consequently they have no appreciable sum to invest in Co-operative shares. Their wages are so small that as a general rule they must buy in the cheapest market. The wealthy Trusts have demonstrated again and again that, when necessary, they can undersell and bankrupt their smaller opponents.

The Co-operative concern can only flourish by adopting up-to-date methods, employing as few as possible workers to obtain a given output. If, therefore, we were to assume a growth of the Co-operative concerns to an important size it would mean a parallel growth of unemployment. There would be less who could buy shares and more who wanted bread. The problem facing the workers of obtaining the wherewithal to live would be intensified instead of being abolished.

The soundness of this position is borne out by the history of the Co-operative movement. It has adopted capitalist methods and exhibits capitalist evils. At the moment of writing, 15,000 employees of the Co-operative Wholesale Society are out on strike against a reduction in wages. (“Daily News,” 11/6/23).

Co-operation offers no easy road to emancipation. Those who suport the movement,, such as the Communist Party and the Labour Party, are inviting the workers into that alley where they become temporarily disillusioned and apathetic.

The abolition of wage slavery necessitates recognition of the fact that the workers are robbed of the wealth they produce; that the capitalists are the robbers; that the workers can produce for their own consumption more easily than for an idle class ; that the robbery can only be prevented by the producing class owning the wealth it produces ; that such ownership can only be attained by taking from the capitalists the control of the political machinery and converting private ownership into social ownership.

The new society will therefore grow out of the old and not be imposed upon it. All that is valuable in the old society will be retained, and all that is harmful will be abolished. The central idea of present production—profit, with its basis private property—will give place to production for use on the basis of common property.

Gilmac.

More for a new reader. (1923)

From the July 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

We presume that you know little of Socialism. Perhaps you have a dim idea that Socialists are terrible people whose deliberate aim in life it is to overturn everything ; destroy your most cherished ideals out of sheer downright devilment. Let us have a little heart-to-heart talk on the subject. We will not hold your attention long, but we may perhaps assist you to see things in a different way from what you usually see them.

There are many parties appealing for your support, some of whom do so on the ground that they are Socialist parties. “How am I to know which is the right one?” you may ask. You are bewildered by the multitude of parties who all claim that their object is to help you.

There is a well-known proverb that contains an element of truth. It runs : “God helps those who help themselves.” Therefore avoid those who make a great fuss about their desire to help you : seek rather for information from those who urge you to help yourself.

Man is spoken of as being a social animal. He associates with other men—forms part of a society. A society is a group of individuals bound together by a common principle. The larger sense in which the word “society” is generally used refers to the common principle of obtaining a living. Whatever is referred to as “social” concerns man in his connection with other men. It is the opposite to individual or private. For example, when we say a thing is privately produced we mean that one man produces it without assistance ; when we say such a thing is socially produced, we mean that different men produce portions of a thing and their combined efforts make up the finished article. Likewise, when we say a thing is privately owned, we mean one man or a small group of men own it; but when we say it is socially owned, then we mean it belongs equally to the whole of those forming the society.

You are living in a society to-day in which the things produced, and the tools by means of which they are produced (in other words, the wealth of society), are privately owned : that is, owned by one individual or by a small group of individuals—either a single capitalist or a small group of shareholders.

The aim of the Socialist is to make these things social property : to convert these privately owned goods and tools into goods and tools commonly owned by the whole of society. He who acts in such a way as to bring this new state of affairs into being is a Socialist : he who acts in a way that hinders progress towards this end is evidently not a Socialist, no matter what he may call himself.

Owing to the private ownership of wealth the majority of the people of this country are unable to obtain the things they need except by working for those that own them; and these wealth owners can employ whom they please and discharge whom they please, so that the mass of the people depend for their existence upon the desires or fancies of a comparatively few masters. The majority of people are therefore slaves of the wealth owners, because unless they act as the latter wish they are liable to be sacked and lose the wages upon which they depend for getting the necessaries of life.

These two types of people, masters and workers, broadly speaking make up society. They form two distinct classes, one of whom depends for a living upon working, and the other upon owning what is produced.

The workers, then, are wage-slaves. The masters are capitalists because they own capital—wealth (tools and so forth) which they advance with the object of getting back more wealth than was originally advanced or laid out. History will tell you that the wealth the capitalist advances was originally obtained by robbing the mass of the people of their land and liberty.

It may perhaps surprise you to hear that a few hundred years ago there was neither a landless man nor a beggar throughout the whole of this country. When you hear that and see that the mass of the people are without land and practically beggared to-day, you may wonder how such a change has come about. If you want further information of this, go to the nearest library and look for a book entitled, “Industrial History of England,” by H. de B. Gibbins. It is a book of only about 250 pages. In it you will find much valuable information of early and recent conditions in this country. You will learn how the land was stolen from the people and passed into the hands of a few individuals; how the people were ruthlessly driven off the land and herded into manufactories ; how finally, after many trials and troubles, the one-time member of a peasant commune, owning his land and tools in common, became the wage-slave of to-day, owning nothing but his power to labour, and compelled for his living to sell this power to the present master class, the descendants of those who robbed his forefathers.

So much for the “original” capital of the masters. The extra wealth they obtain over and above that laid out is due to the fact that you produce a quantity of wealth to-day that suffices to pay your wages, make, good what is necessary for further production, and still leave a substantial amount over on which the master and his family and those that minister to the enjoyment of him and his family, live upon. You thus produce surplus wealth—wealth that keeps an idle class in luxury. You keep parasites.

Between you and your masters there is a constant struggle going on over the destination of the wealth produced. You struggle to obtain as large a share of the wealth you produce as possible. It is a share you think of, you don’t think of obtaining the whole, because you think of, and argue about, a high or a low wage. Your thoughts are bound up with the wages system. The masters on their side resist your desire for high wages and pay you as low wages as they can. This struggle over the division of the wealth you produce is an expression of what the Socialist calls the class war.

It you have followed the argument so far, it must be obvious to you that the masters will not give up their privileges without a bitter struggle; a struggle that can only end when you have obtained control of the whole of the wealth you produce; in other words, when you have established Socialism.

The masters, in their fight to keep their privileged position, employ any weapon that they think will assist them. The all-powerful weapon is the machinery of Parliament, which gives them control of the Army, Navy, Air, and Police Forces—those forces which they employ against you when particularly bad conditions drive you to go out on strike. This power you give to your master at election time when you vote them into Parliament.

This Parliamentary weapon, however, has one drawback ; it is inclined to be a rather open illustration of the opposition between your interests and those of your masters, and is likely to bring to your notice the fact that the modern State is on the side of privilege and against the oppressed.

There are other weapons the masters employ that are less obvious and frequently very effective. Religious teaching is one of them. You are led to believe that some supernatural power hath ordained it that man shall eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, and you are assured that you are the man to whom this precept refers. You usually forget to ask : “What of the master who works not and yet eats plenty?” You are taught that life on this earth is a purgatory through which you must pass in order to reach the paradise somewhere above. In fact, you are taught to think little of, and not worry about, the trials and tribulations of your short life in this world, as it will be all made up to you in the next. But you will notice that those who subscribe most to religious bodies, and who are most anxious that you should accept the religious outlook, take no chances, but avoid the trials and tribulations of this world, leaving the “hereafter” to take care of itself.

Now you can easily see how useful it is to the master that you accept a view such as that outlined above. Being assured of an endless good time hereafter, providing you work hard and obey those who are over you, you are likely to be content with a slave position here below ; working under bad conditions at low wages without protesting, allowing your masters to enrich themselves to what extent they wish.

Among other methods that suit your masters’ interests are those that keep your mind occupied with petty details ; multitudes of so-called “remedies” for minor evils that waste your time and energy to such an extent that you are prevented from applying the one sweeping solution for all your troubles—the abolition of the cause of your troubles, and that is, as you have seen, the private ownership of wealth.

When the wealth produced, and the tools by means of which it is produced, have been made into the common property of society, no one will want either work or food, because all will give to society of his best and will receive from society the best it can give, regardless of age, sex, or occupation.,

We are members of the working-class, and we want you to join us and help us to carry on the struggle for Socialism. Why are we anxious for your aid? Are we moved by a desire to help you? If you have followed carefully the position outlined above you will see that we are in the same mess as you are, and that we cannot get out of the mess except by the same way as you. We want Socialism because it offers us the only means of leading healthy and happy lives; but we cannot get Socialism until you want it. Therefore we want you to want Socialism and to join with us to fight for it, then we will all have an equal opportunity of enjoying the best that life can offer.

Gilmac.

Oscar Wilde on journalism. (1923)

From the July 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “In England, Journalism, except in a few well-known instances, not having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a really remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people’s private lives seems to me quite extraordinary.

  “The fact is that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything except what is worth knowing.

   “Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmen-like habits, supplies the demands. In centuries before ours, the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump.

    “That was quite hideous.

    “In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the keyhole.

   “That is much worse.”

Oscar Wilde

Intellectual Impostures (1999)

Book Review from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Profile Books, £9.99 1998

The late Nineteenth Century witnessed the rise of Irrationalism. Philosophers rebelled against what they saw as the rigidities of positivist determinism and retreated into subjective idealism. Henri Bergson personified this movement; Hans Vaihinger’s book, The Philosophy of As If, reflected its Humpty-Dumpty logic: the world, according to this book, might be anything that one imagines it to be; one scientific hypothesis is just as good as any other. This rebellion against the scientific outlook of the Enlightenment culminated in more than an academic fad. The Fascists and Nazis of the 1930s rejoiced in their contempt for rational explanations. It was a crude contempt: books were burned; scientists who failed to conform to the mythology of the tyrant state were dismissed from their posts; to be an honest scientist became a reason for exile. It is a lesson of this century’s madness that we forget at our extreme cost. 

These days the scientific outlook is again being exiled, perhaps more by economic than political pressures. Increasingly, scientists are required to prostitute themselves to the commercial activities of germ warfare, genetically adulterated foods and apologism for ecological vandalism. Theoretical science has been slowly driven from the universities by the new crusaders of Postmodernism. But to call them crusaders is to attribute an energy to a listless and intellectually indolent movement of academics who, far from advocating something, are mainly concerned to deride commitment to anything. At their most risible the “philosophers” of the new Irrationalism are transparently bogus producers of mumbo-jumbo, able to convince only the dumbest of Americans of their wisdom by pronouncing their follies in strong French accents, using made-up words. Derrida’s book on Marx was the epitome of such utter nonsense.

It is high time that the fakes were exposed. Sokal and Bricmont’s Intellectual Impostures is a work of meticulous, relentless destruction of the charlatanism of postmodernist writers who have sought to pepper their ramblings with pseudo-scientific formulae. Sokal and Bricmont are physicists and materialists. With detailed references to the works of writers ranging from Lacan and Kristeva to Latour and Baudrillard they demonstrate the ways in which these theorists have used scientific language—specifically, mathematics—without understanding it. Indeed, in several cases they may not have read the works they cite. This is in keeping with the postmodern outlook, which holds in contempt a relationship between the text and its meaning. Althusser, an earlier prophet of the nouveaux charlatans, wrote a book telling people how to read Marx’s Capital; writing years later, after being certified as a lunatic, he confessed that he had not actually read much of Marx.

Sokal and Bricmont’s impressive volume needs to be read to be appreciated. It is a valuable work of scholarship—for, sometimes the task of scholars is to expose intellectual sloppiness and fraud. There is a particularly stimulating chapter on the relationship between so-called postmodernism (a hopelessly ill-defined term) and chaos theory. There is scope, perhaps, for future writers to produce a book explaining the connection between chaos theory and the economic anarchy of late twentieth-century capitalism.

The best books on postmodernism so far have been David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity and Terry Eagleton’s Postmodernism. This is a welcome addition to the literature in defence of the materialist conception in the face of the anti-humanist philistinism of our age.

Steve Coleman

Party names and games (1999)

Party News from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Last year Parliament passed an Act to allow political parties to register, both to protect their name and to present lists in elections where an element of proportional representation has been introduced—as in the elections to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly this May, but also in those to the European Parliament in June and to the Greater London Authority in May next year.

The parliamentary parties brought in this Act mainly to protect their own position by stopping candidates calling themselves, notoriously, Literal Democrats but also Conversative Party and Independent Labour. However it has also settled our dispute with Militant over their attempted usurpation of one of our names (see Socialist Standard, February 1997).

While we have been registered under our full name of “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”, Militant were refused registration as “Socialist Party”. They are now going to Court to seek a judicial review. We don’t know officially on what grounds Militant were refused recognition but this can be gathered from a letter from their Executive Committee to the Registrar of Political Parties published in their paper The Socialist on 12 March. Part of this reads:

The reasons you give are that the similarity of our name to other parties will cause confusion to voters, and that we have adopted our name relatively recently compared to others.

Militant’s letter also includes a passage from the Registrar’s letter to them:

  “other and possibly lesser parties in terms of their organisation and membership have used the name ‘Socialist Party’ over a substantially greater number of years and therefore have a prior claim”.

Reading between the lines it is clear that the Registrar came to the conclusion that, on the evidence, there was another party—us—who had a prior claim on this name because we had used it for longer (95 years compared with 2).

Militant themselves certainly assume this as, in their letter to the Registrar, they try to demolish us in his eyes:

  Over the past two years, we have built up recognition of our name in many areas of the country. There is much greater recognition of our name due to the work we have done, than there is of the SPGB.

In a footnote reference after SPGB they write:

 The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is a small party founded over a century ago who are about one-tenth of the size of the Socialist Party (ourselves). They very rarely contest elections and are mainly a propaganda and discussion group.

This is wrong in nearly every respect. We were not founded over a century ago. We have many times more than a hundred members. And it is not true that we “very rarely” contest elections.

Although numbers can’t settle the issue, for the record, we have contested 12 of the 15 general elections that have taken place since 1945 as well as a number of by-elections and the 1989 and 1994 (and now the 1999) European elections. Geographically we have contested elections in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Salford, Oldham, Newcastle, Jarrow, Easington, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Livingston, Swansea and Belfast. In fact, in the 1994 Euro-elections alone, when we stood 4 candidates (including one against Militant who then called themselves “Militant Labour”), more electors—2 million or so—were faced with “Socialist Party” on the ballot papers representing us than the electorate of all the local wards and Westminister seats Militant has ever contested under the same usurped name added together.  

How Militant took the news

Dramatics in Scotland

In Scotland we found ourselves headline news for a week or so as the Registrar announced his intention not to register the latest name for Militant’s front organisation there of “Scottish Socialist Party”. His reason for this preliminary ruling was, apparently, that the name “Scottish Socialist Party” could be confused with ours, especially as we had contested two seats in Scotland at the 1997 General Election. SSP leader and Glasgow councillor Tommy Sheridan, who already sees himself as an MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament), wasn’t at all happy.

First he said he was going to go to the Commission for Racial Equality because it was “racial discrimination” to refuse to allow a Scottish party to call itself Scottish because an English party had a similar name (Herald, 3 March). Then he claimed it was a breach of “two sections of the European Convention on Human Rights” (Herald, 4 March). Then he threatened “a campaign of mass civil disobedience to disrupt the Scottish General Election in May” (Herald, 8 March). Less amusingly, a section of the press began a smear campaign against us. Matthew Norman, for instance, wrote a piece in the Guardian (5 March) suggesting that while the SSP was a serious party with three councillors we were “a minute, slightly weird group which runs in very few seats, proposes the abolition of money and runs on a programme unchanged since 1910”.

Sheridan needn’t have bothered. First, although of course we don’t like people calling themselves “socialist” when in our opinion they’re not, that’s something to be settled by political debate not law. Our dispute was with Militant in England and their use of the same name as us even on the ballot papers (which Militant in Scotland never did, standing in the last election as the “Scottish Socialist Alliance”). Second, in the end the Registrar adopted a relatively liberal approach, allowing as many parties as possible to register including the SSP, only ruling out blatant cases of parties trying to usurp a name to which they had no historical right.

It is true that there would have been no possible confusion had Scottish Militant stuck to their name till last October of “Scottish Socialist Alliance”. But since we, being resolutely anti-nationalist, would never dream of calling ourselves “Scottish” (or “British” or “Welsh” or “Irish”) socialists, we can agree that any confusion between us and the SSP is going to be minimal.

How to vote Socialist (1999)

Party News from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Voters for the Scottish Parliament will have two votes, one for a constituency member as in elections to Westminster and a second which can be cast for a party list covering a larger, multi-member region.

We are not standing any individual candidates so our message to those who want socialism is to use their first vote to vote against all the various reformist and pro-capitalist candidates by writing the word “SOCIALISM” across the ballot paper.

We are, however, presenting lists in 2 of the 8 regional constituencies (Glasgow and Lothians). Each of the 600,000 householders in these two regions will receive through their letterbox one or other of the socialist election leaflets reproduced on these pages. Here, of course, those who want socialism can show this by using their second vote to vote for the Socialist Party list. Be careful not to confuse our list with that of the “Scottish Socialist Party” which, despite its name, does not stand for socialism but is a leftwing nationalist—a Tartan Trotskyist—party.

Unfortunately our resources do not permit us to give more than a quarter of Scotland’s 4 million or so electors a chance to cast a vote for socialism. In the six other regions those who want socialism will have to indicate this by writing “SOCIALISM” across their second ballot paper too.

Scottish Parliament Elections: Glasgow (1999)

Party News from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

No to Holyrood, No to Westminister, Yes to World Socialism

Holyrood Hysteria

The press and television are screaming at us about the importance of this first Scottish Parliamentary election.

“The most important event of the century . . . ”

“A moment of destiny that will change all our lives for ever.”

It’s all nonsense of course. The day after the election we will find that it is business as usual.

Men and women of the working class will return to the office, the factory or the hospital where we work for a wage or a salary. That is those of us “lucky” enough to have a job. The same round of work, insecurity and poverty will continue irrespective of the make-up of the new parliament in Edinburgh.

Why We Are Standing

THE SOCIALIST PARTY is taking this opportunity to reach out to as many workers as possible. We are not after your unthinking support. We do not want your vote unless you understand that the present system of society—capitalism—cannot be made to run in the interests of the majority.

We want you to consider an alternative society to the present production for profit rat-race that is capitalism. We want you to look at present-day society and ask yourself: does it operate in your and your family’s interest?

Let’s look at this society and see how it operates against the majority and only favours a tiny handful of wealthy owners.

The Present Rat-Race

The whole purpose of producing anything today is to sell it and make a profit. No profit, then no production. That is why so many live in sub-standard housing while building workers are unemployed. That is why people throughout the world are undernourished while farmers are paid not to grow food.

Production for profit means that the world is armed to the teeth. Billions are spent on armies, the whole purpose of which is to protect markets, trade routes and sources of raw material.

Wars are inevitable under capitalism. Capitalism is based on competition, and the logical outcome of global competition is military violence.

Our Opponents 

At this election you have a wide choices of parties. Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour, Nationalist, Green, even some calling themselves “socialists”.

There are many differences in their policies, but what have they all got in common? They want your vote on the basis that they could run the system better or more fairly. Despite their differences they all want to run the buying and selling system of capitalism, and this applies as much to the “left” as the out and out supporters of capitalism.

This system is based on the production of all wealth by the working class for a wage or salary. The owning class live off the unpaid labour of the working class.

To talk of “fairer” capitalism is like talking of “fairer” robbery.

What Is To Be Done?

As capitalism cannot work in the interest of the majority, it must go. It must be replaced by a new society based on common ownership and democratic control. There must be production to meet people’s needs instead of production for profit. We must all be free to take what we require to satisfy our needs, without being rationed as today by the size of our wage packet or giro cheque.

This new society can only come about when a majority want it and are determined to get it. Nobody can bring it about for you.

So it’s up to you, not the politicians. The future is in your hands, not theirs.

If you agree with the aims of THE SOCIALIST PARTY you will vote for our list, if you are interested in the ideas of socialism you will contact us.

About Ourselves 

THE SOCIALIST PARTY was formed in 1904 with only one object: the abolition of the wages system and the establishment of a society based on common ownership and democratic control.

As part of the world socialism movement, we want a democratic world without frontiers or separate “nation-states”.

We campaign to get workers to say no to a society based on profit, privilege and competition and yes to a society based on equality, cooperation and meeting people’s needs.

THE CANDIDATES ON OUR LIST ARE: Hugh Armstrong, Richard Donnelly, James Fleming, James Robertson, William Ross, Henrietta Vallar, Victor Vanni.

Scottish Parliament Elections: Lothian (1999)

Party News from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Their Scotland or Our World?

That’s the issue in this election, says THE SOCIALIST PARTY

On 6 May, you will have your occasional ration of democracy with the opportunity to vote for the Scottish Parliament.

It’s all very well having a vote—but are you normally given any real choice? Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for the politician’s head on the front of the election leaflet, could you tell which party was which?

It’s tempting—in the absence of any real alternative—to get drawn into the phoney war that is political debate today. Whether Labour or Tory, SNP or Lib Dem, they all spout the same promises. But it all amounts to the same thing—they offer no alternative to the present way of running society.

Do you really think who wins an election makes any difference to how you live?

And do politicians (whether left-wing, nationalist or right-wing) actually have much real power anyway? OK, they get to open supermarkets and factories, but it’s capitalism and the market system which closes them down.

Reality Check

Do any of the political parties address any of the real issues:

• Why is there world hunger in a world of food surpluses?
• Why are there unemployed nurses, alongside closed-down hospitals and waiting lists?
• Why are there homeless people in the streets and empty houses with “for sale” signs?
• Why do some people get stressed working long hours while others get stressed from the boredom of unemployment?

So what’s the alternative?

This time you will have a real choice. We in THE SOCIALIST PARTY are standing at this election to put forward an alternative to capitalism and the madness of the market—a society of common ownership and democratic control. We call it socialism.

But real socialism, not the elite-run dictatorships that collapsed a few years ago in Russia and East Europe. And not the various schemes for state control put forward by the old Labour Party. For us socialism means something better than that.

We’re talking about a world community without any frontiers. About wealth being produced to meet people’s needs and not for sale on a market or for profit. About everyone having access to what they require to satisfy their needs, without the rationing system that is money. A society where people freely contribute their skills and experience to produce what is needed, without the compulsion of a wage or salary.

So what now?

If you don’t like present-day society . . . if you are fed up with the way you are forced to live . . . if you think the root cause of most social problems is the market system, then your ideas echo closely with ours.

If you want to vote for our list we’re delighted. But we don’t really want votes based on a misreading of what we are about. We are not promising to deliver socialism to you. We are not putting ourselves forward as leaders. This new society can only be achieved if you join together to strive for it. If you want it, then it is something you have to bring about yourselves.

If you agree with this, you can show it by voting for THE SOCIALIST PARTY list.

OUR CANDIDATES ARE are: Matt Culbert, Kevin Ferguson, Brian Gardner, Andy Malone, Jim Moir, Theresa Ross, Sandy Wilson.

Elections in North East England (1999)

Party News from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are also standing two candidates in the 6 May local elections in the North East, in Primrose ward of South Tyneside Metropolitan Council and in Deneside ward of Easington District and Seaham Town councils. Further details from the North East branch secretary.

The North East branch will also be contesting the European elections on 10 June. A full list will be presented in the 4-member North East Electoral Region. The Socialist list is: John Bissett, Steve Colborn, Stephen Davidson, Andy Pitts. It is planned to have over a million leaflets distributed to households in the area. Further details next month.

50 Years Ago: The Film Crisis (1999)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “We all thought that the forty-five percent quota and the promise of other measures to come . . . heralded a new day for British Film Production . . . How wrong we were. The business of making Britain’s films has not been so unstable since the crisis of eleven years ago. Equally therefore the employment of A.C.T. technicians has never during the same period been so uncertain . . .” 

Thus reads the editorial of “The Cine-Technician” for November-December, 1948, and this is indeed not one wit an exaggeration of the position confronting workers in the film industry today. It indicates (in admirable fashion) the hopes and aspirations of workers which have been ruthlessly smashed against the bedrocks of capitalism which constitute the film industry—as indeed all industry. It is estimated that sixteen out of twenty-seven feature studios are idle with an unemployment figure of twenty-five percent of all personnel, whilst those retaining their jobs know just what a serious threat is presented to wages and conditions when negotiations on a new agreement between unions and employers commence in April this year.

Those who thought film making was in some measure “different” from other sections of industry were rudely awakened by the same old demand last year to cut costs, stop up output and increase efficiency. The first strong protest against the worsening conditions was the Denham film strike of November, 1948, following the issue of notices to ninety-two employees. The union executives refused to back the strike which lasted three days and failed to prevent the majority of these workers being dismissed.

(From an article by “FILM WORKER”, Socialist Standard, April 1949)

Whither South Africa? (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the western outskirts of Johannesburg lies the “shanty-town" of Newclare—an ugly sprawl of wooden shacks, patched up with canvas and corrugated iron, dirty and horribly overcrowded. Buried deep in the misery and squalor of Newclare and other places like it, live the Native workers of Johannesburg and the gold-mines of the Rand.

On February 13th this year, two armoured carloads of police drove into Newclare. Their object was to make a surprise check-up on passes, the documents which the law compels all adult male Africans to carry to show they are in work (and which, incidentally, most of them are unable to read).

These “pass laws” have never been completely effective. They are even less effective now when the Natives have been flocking into the towns in such large numbers that the authorities have found it quite impossible to keep up with them. And so, to remind them that the law still exists even though it cannot be administered properly, the police have taken to making surprise raids (often in the middle of the night), in which they make a sudden swoop on an area, quickly round-up likely suspects, arrest those found without passes, and carry them off to gaol. Sometimes the arrests run into hundreds, and the raid looks more like a minor military exercise.

Perhaps because it was only a small raid, the one on February 13th did not pass off quite so smoothly as usual. When the police tried to make an arrest on this occasion they were immediately attacked by a large crowd of Natives who eventually forced them to retire under a hail of stones and other missiles. Having driven off the police, the crowd then proceeded to throw barricades across the streets and began stoning every vehicle they found carrying Europeans, at the same time setting fire to shops and looting the contents.

The rioting continued unchecked until the following day, when heavy reinforcements of armed police and firemen were drafted to the scene, and to other places where disturbances had also broken out in sympathy. Covering the firemen with rifle and machine-gun fire to enable them to fix the hoses and at the same time prevent the crowd from cutting them, the police began to occupy the area. The crowd resisted fiercely, attacking both the police and the bands of armed Europeans who were now also roaming the district, bent on taking matters into their own hands. (The presence of these gangs was one of the most significant aspects of the riot, and is a disturbing indication of the level to which racial feeling has now risen inside South Africa.) Finally, after several hours of pitched battles, the police cleared the streets, and the disturbances came to an uneasy end.

The incident itself has since been referred to the Riots Commission, which is already sitting to consider five other cases of rioting. All of them have occurred within the last six months.

What has brought South Africa to this perilous pass? What has brought about this situation, in which certain elements in the White group are already expressing their intention of suppressing all future trouble, whatever the cost and whatever the consequences? Where some of the politicians are already talking about the dangers of civil war? South Africa has always had a racial problem. What has happened in the past few years to bring it to such a terrible state?

To answer these questions, we must first make a brief review of the events that have taken place since 1948.

The Past Two Years

There are two main political parties in South Africa, the Nationalist Party under Malan, and the United Party under Smuts. In addition, there are two smaller organisations, the Afrikaner Party led by Havenga, and a Labour Party.

At the last General Election, held in May, 1948, the Nationalists and Afrikaners combined had a slight majority over the United Party and the Labour Party. This enabled them to form a Coalition Government with Malan as Prime Minister, and Havenga in the key position of Minister of Finance.

Backed largely by the Boer farming vote, the Nationalist Party has always taken an extreme line on the racial question, and, indeed, they fought the election on this issue. Malan himself, in a speech at Praal on the 20th April, 1948, said about the election that it was 

  “dominated by the question of whether the European race would be able to maintain its rule, its purity, and its civilisation or float along until it vanishes for ever in the black sea of South Africa’s non-European population.”

Once in power, there is no doubt that Malan would have been prepared to go the whole way with his extreme racial policies if it had not been for the reluctance of Havenga to go the whole way with him. As his Government depends upon the support of Havenga and the Afrikaner Party, he has had to give way—at least for the present. This, however, has not prevented him from pressing on with all kinds of other repressive legislation, with or without the support of Havenga. Prominent in this legislation has been: —

(a) The pushing forward of the general ideal of "complete separation” of all the racial groups of South Africa, “socially, residentiary, industrially, and politically.” This means that, the four groups of South Africa—the Whites, the Coloureds (people of mixed blood), the Indians, and the Africans, will be for ever kept strictly apart. In line with this, legislation has already been introduced forbidding inter-marriage between Europeans and Coloureds (laws already exist forbidding marriage between Whites and Indians, and Whites and Africans).

(b) The intention to keep the Natives on the Reserves, and away from the towns—in Malan's own words, “the Native reserves must become the true fatherland of the Native." In the towns they must henceforth be regarded as “visitors.” 

(c) Repeal of the previous Government’s law allowing the Indians three representatives in Parliament.

(d) Abolition of present Coloured vote, and in its place a similar system to that now operating for the Natives in which they are allowed three separate representatives (who must be Europeans).

(e) Repeal of the previous Government’s Bill recognising Native Trade Unions.

(f) All training of Native skilled workers to cease.

(g) All voting rights to be taken away from the Indians, and from all Natives living away from the Reserves.

As the culmination to all these repressive activities Malan is now about to introduce an identity-card system by means of which every person in the Union will eventually be registered according to “race.” Its effect will be to put every individual, once and for all, into a racial classification from which there will never be a chance of escape. To the darker-skinned African it will be just another document to add to the others he has to carry already, but for the Coloured group its effects will be profound. It will put an end, in fact, to all possibility of a white-skinned Coloured person “passing over” into the White group.

Finally, the Nationalists have extended the racial laws to cover the Cape Province, formerly the least subject to prejudice. In the post offices, non-Whites are now directed to separate counters; there are separate exits and entrances at the railway stations; “Jim Crow” travels the trains; and rides shamelessly on the buses, where Europeans now sit in the front and members of the other groups sit at the back.

All these things show clearly that the Malan Government is determined to put the clock back in South Africa. But what of the United Party and Smuts? Are they any different? Only to this extent— that whilst they do not wish to put the clock back, they neither wish to put in very far forward. Their alternative boils down to a few reforms here and there which they hope will take the sting out of the Natives' rebelliousness, relieve the pressure on the Indians and Coloureds where it hurts them most, and leave them all once more contented with their inferior position.

The same applies to the Labour Party. Only recently there was a split in their ranks when their Leader and Deputy Leader in Parliament voted against the Indians being allowed the vote. One member abstained and the others voted in favour of the Bill, which was in any case a milk-and-water effort that only allowed them representation by Europeans.

What it comes to is this, irrespective of Party, irrespective of class, almost the whole of the White group are united in refusing to allow the non-Whites anything like a position comparable with their own. They may differ here and there amongst themselves as to which particular rung of the ladder each of the other groups should occupy, but one thing they are agreed upon—that they, the Whites, belong near the top of the ladder and the others a long way further down.

They continue to deceive themselves that they can maintain this situation, that for ever and ever 2½ million Europeans can keep the other 9 millions in subjection. There never was a more forlorn and fantastic hope, nor one with graver possibilities of terrible consequences for themselves. Speaking in the South African Parliament three days after the riot. Smuts said: —

  “Something new is coming into the life of this country. We are accustomed to the orderly conduct of our Natives and on the whole our Natives are well behaved, but some change is coming about  

  “Unless this new development is stopped and stopped at once and unless firm measures are taken no one can be sure of the future of South Africa.” (Johannesburg Star, 15/2/50.)

Unfortunately for Smuts, for Malan, for all the vast majority of Europeans in the Union who think like them on the Native question, there is a change taking place in the Natives, not only in South Africa, but throughout the whole of the continent. Smuts has sensed the change and would like to explain it by the recent activity of Malan and the Nationalist Party. What he fails to recognise is that whatever the Nationalists have done to provoke matters, they have only helped to bring more quickly what is bound to have come in any case. What all the Whites of South Africa fail to face up to is that the Natives are on the move, and will not stop until they have gained the same position as the Whites.

On this question we can do no better than quote from our pamphlet. “The Racial Problem.” What it said three years ago is even more relevant now than it was then:—

  “As industry develops, they (the Natives) will learn more, and want more, and then the same position will face the South African White worker as faces the American White worker at the present time. Then will the South African workers, White, Native. Coloured, and Indian, be at their own cross-roads. What their decision will be we do not know nor do we intend to guess. What we say to the South African workers we have already said to the American workers. They must realise that their interests as workers lie together: until they do so they will remain divided and weakened, wide open to the attacks and encroachments of the capitalist class. Much worse may result; the logical end of the road which the South African White worker is treading can only be bloody violence and destruction. No group can permanently hold down another many more times more numerous than itself, and sooner or later the working class, particularly the White section, will have to face up to the situation and make their decision.”

Recent events in South Africa have served only to underline the warning contained in this statement. The White workers in the Union will ignore it at their peril.

Stan Hampson

Of Mice and Men (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to The Economist (25/2/50), Mr. Herbert Morrison regrets that the activities that take place in the Stock Exchange are influenced by politics.

The society we live in is called capitalism. It received that name because “capital,” strictly speaking, money invested to gain more money, is the driving force in the production of society’s needs. This money is spent on means and instruments of production, fields, factories, raw materials, machinery and the buying of labour power, and under present conditions most of the money is invested in huge companies and state concerns which produce the bulk of the goods and services society requires. The title to ownership in those organisations is stocks and bonds, and the main market where they are bought and sold is the Stock Exchange. In the commodity market when prices rise this shows which goods are in demand and the production of these goods increases until supply overcomes demand and prices fall. So in general the price of shares on the Stock Exchange rise and fall under the influence of the same kind of factors. The Stock Exchange is a necessary adjunct of capitalist society. Mr. Morrison realises this: he “presumes the Stock Exchange has useful functions to discharge,” and says, “We ought to recognise that in our money and industrial system such an institution may well be necessary,” but Mr. Morrison “would urge them not to allow the political straws to affect investments.”

To this criticism, Mr. John Braithwaite, the Stock Exchange chairman, very effectively replied: —

  “It is quite true that prices are influenced by the ebb and flow of opinion as to the result of the election as they are by every form of news and opinion on domestic or foreign affairs that has any bearing on the investment market. . . .

  

“What Mr. Morrison seems not to understand is that movements of prices are not made by the whims or wishes of members of the Stock Exchange. They are the result of the actions of countless individuals and institutions all over the country and by no means all of one political persuasion who are moved by countless different reasons to send instructions to the Stock Exchange to buy or sell securities. . . . These are the tides of business influenced by economic and political conditions the world over. . . . The Stock Exchange can no more control or influence those tides than King Canute could order the tides of the sea.”—(The Economist, 25/2/50.)

What chance has Mr. Morrison and the other Canutes of the Labour Government planning a system like that? Even a Cabinet with the alleged talents of the Piddingtons wouldn’t have a chance.

Mr. John Strachey, Secretary of State for War in the present Labour Government, a few years before the war made the following statements in “The Nature of the Capitalist Crises”; they bear repeating: —

  “The whole of the present official leadership of the British workers looks forward, like G. D. H. Cole, to the possibility of an organised or planned high wage paying and centrally controlled capitalism. . . .

   "Unfortuntely, however, as we have seen, whatever else may happen upon this uncertain planet, the establishment of a planned, stable, high wage paying capitalism is impossible” (page 354).

Planning is only possible when goods are produced for use and not for profit, and at the present stage of social development with the gigantic social productive forces production for use implies common ownership of those productive forces—in a word, Socialism.

J. T.

Is There a Future for State Capitalism? (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Tory M.P., Mr. Hugh. Linstead, has tried to define the issues that will divide the parties in coming elections and has concluded that the electors will be asked to decide the question: “Is it State capitalism or private capitalism which can provide the largest amount of wealth for our community?” (Times, 8/3/50). Looking still further ahead he sees the possibility of a new division arising, that of Labourism versus Socialism. His second forecast is correct, but the first is over-simplified to the point of unreality. The Labour Party would now not attempt to fight an election on a programme of all-round Nationalisation, and the Tories are fully committed to retaining most of the existing Nationalisation schemes and to accepting some form of State regulation over the operations of private industry.

A better appreciation of the election is shown by the editor of the Observer (5/3/50) when he says that the Labour Party’s advocacy of further Nationalisation “was small and, in its character, noticeably lukewarm”; and by an Italian journalist in London who wrote: “The welfare State is accepted by all. Some parties want more and some less Nationalisation of industries, but this difference does not constitute a real battle. It is more a question of confidence as to who can guide the vessel of State better.” (Il Mondo, Rome. Quoted in Manchester Guardian, 22/2/50.)

Nationalisation is not very popular and the Labour Party is taking due note of the fact. One Labour supporter, Mr. Hannen Swaffer, wrote: “The British people decided last week that, for the present at least, it did not want any more Nationalisation.” (People, 26/2/50.) A Labour Peer, Lord Strabolgi, said in the House of Lords (7/3/50), “We did not get a mandate for further Nationalisation; we did not even get a mandate to continue the Iron and Steel Act.” The Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Tom Williams, assured the House of Commons, “the simple fact is … that land nationalisation forms no part of our programme and policy to-day.” (“Report,” 8/3/50, Col. 396). And one Labour M.P., Mr. R. Crossman, is reported by the Times (4/3/50) to have told the Oxford University Labour Club that he “thanked Heaven that the motorcar industry was still under private enterprise. He would rather have private enterprise with Government control and regulation than one of the gigantic public corporations which had been taken out of politics and over which there was no public control.”

The Ebb Tide of Nationalisation

As far as Western Europe and the British Dominions are concerned (except perhaps industrially very backward countries like India and Pakistan) the history of the years after the first world war is being repeated. After a brief period of widespread extension of Nationalisation a reaction has set in, at least for a time. New governments in Australia and New Zealand are opposed to its extension and in the ranks of the defeated Australian Labour Party a move is on foot to commit the party to the maintenance of “private enterprise” as the rule, with the introduction of Nationalisation as the exception. It is reported from France that Nationalisation is now so unpopular that for the next election “no party …. has yet advocated any extension.” (Daily Telegraph, 28/2/50.) All three of the Scandinavian Labour Governments, Denmark, Norway and Sweden have expressly or tacitly abandoned further Nationalisation. Sir Arthur Salter goes so far as to claim that the British Labour Government’s pre-election intention to extend Nationalisation to sugar, cement and insurance placed it in the position of being “alone in Western Europe, in the Commonwealth, in the whole of the free world.” (Manchester Guardian, 18/2/50.)

State Industries in Russia

Russia, too, has her problems of Nationalised industries, the interesting feature being the great extent to which their operations conform to the British pattern. While British Communists may criticise Nationalisation here for its "capitalist” features – as if basically it could have any other – State concerns in Russia show quite clearly that the Communists in power have found no means of running State industry to meet the needs of a capitalist world, except the traditional methods of Capitalism.

Some Labour Party theorists have argued in the past, and still do, that State capitalist enterprises can be run without the need to show a profit, i.e., either at cost or even at a loss, the loss being met out of State subsidies; and also that so-called “workers’ control” can be grafted on to Capitalism. In 1918 the Labour Party was committed to “democracy in industry,” “Nationalisation and workers’ control “; and the Communists in the early days took a similar line. None of them ever squarely faced the meaning of what they demanded, for if the workers who form the great majority were allowed “democratic” control of industry that would include control over its finances and power to take it over and stop the payment of profits or interest to shareholders or bondholders. In practice no Labour Government or Communist Government intend to concede such power – if it did the result would simply be to bring Capitalism to chaos. So in Russia, as in Britain, management of State industry and its finances belongs to directors appointed from above by and under the continuous control of the Government. And if in Britain nationalised concerns produce commodities for sale and have to show a profit, so they do in Russia.

In private industry if a firm cannot make a profit goes under. So every firm must strive to keep production costs below selling price. And nobody has yet discovered any other way of achieving low production costs in Nationalised industries than by requiring them to make a profit. In Russia, in addition to paying to the Government a turnover tax which is a percentage of what the concern receives from its customers, State enterprise has to pay profits to the Government. The procedure is explained in The Soviet Financial System by M. L. Bogolepof, Director of the Financial Division of the Russian State Planning Commission: —

  “Each establishment, having received from the State for its exclusive use both equipment and capital, proceeds to operate on its own. with its own financial accounting, bank account, credit facilities and, finally, with the right to make a profit,” (p. 9.)

What he here oddly calls the “right to make a profit” is in fact an obligation, rigidly enforced by the Government, and the profit does not belong to the undertaking—” his profit, as well as the proceeds from the turnover tax belongs to the State . . . .” (Bogolepof, p. 9.)

How much of the profit is kept by the Government and how much is returned to the undertaking depends on whether it can show that it requires additional capital for expansion. According to another Russian writer, A. Antonov (Soviet Weekly, 25/9/47), in some cases the Government keeps as much as 91 per cent. of the profits, while in other cases it may keep as little as 10 per cent.

Bogolepof explains (p. 34) how every State undertaking is compelled to go to the State bank for a loan (on which of course interest is paid) if this is needed as additional capital for short periods; and is likewise compelled to apply to the bank if it finds that it needs for an extended period more working capital than was planned for it.

Then the State bank acts as an inspector into the way the undertaking is being operated.

  “If the deviations from the production programme . . . are due to the fault of the enterprise, the bank refuses to supply additional credit, and the financial difficulties of the enterprise become the object of investigation by the competent authorities. As bank loans are provided on the basis of an analysis of the borrower’s financial and economic position, they have become one of the most valuable and effective forms of control by the Government over the activities of State enterprises.” (p. 34.)

It will be seen that if Mr. Bogolepof were to find himself transferred to one of the British nationalised industries he would find the capitalist-financial atmosphere remarkably like the one he breathes at home.

In one respect Russian State Capitalism does differ from British, because in Russia there is no burden of compensation to the original owners. (In the East European Russian satellites, however, some compensation is the general rule.) But while this was an important difference in the beginning it has become of less importance as the new army of bondholders has come into existence who have lent to the State the money used to provide new capital for State enterprises. The interest they receive is much higher than the rates received by Government bondholders in England.

Nationalisation of the Land

The Labour Party has disowned land nationalisation but they used to declare that it was an essential part of their policy. As set out in their 1918 programme, Labour and the New Social Order, their intention was to nationalise the land and organise agriculture on the combined basis of large “national farms,” small holdings, municipal farms, and farms run by cooperatives. In the meantime the Russian Government has established a farming system very much like the Labour Party’s scheme. It consists of large State farms, small family-farms, and co-operative or “collective” farms in which, however, the farmers also have their own private holdings. The whole idea of being “collectivised” was detested by large numbers of farmers and force had to be used. Large numbers, though they had to submit, have never become reconciled to it, and during the war while the authorities had their hands tied with the German invasion they saw their chance and seized collective farm land and added it to their own farms. According to a correspondent writing in the Manchester Guardian (1/3/50) the public reproof administered late in February to the Minister in charge of agriculture, A. A. Andreyev, rested on the allegation that his method of organising collective farmers into small units working only on their own collective farm (as against large units working on any farm) encouraged them in their attachment to the idea of private farming.

Late in 1946 a move was made to compel the farmers to give back the land they had illegally appropriated, and according to an official statement quoted by the writer referred to above, the authorities secured the return of some 11 million acres. But the illegal acts have continued and further large-scale seizures have been reported as recently as November last. A new campaign is now reported with the object of persuading the farmers not only to restore land taken illegally but also to throw their own legal holdings into the pool. “In this way all private ownership of even the smallest plot of land, it may be assumed, will be gradually eliminated.” Whether that writer’s anticipation will be borne out remains to be seen. With all the main features of Capitalism in full force, with the growing emphasis on inequality of income and ownership, the accumulation of property will continue to be universally attractive and the peasants are not at all likely to give up easily the private ownership of which every effort of the Government has so far failed wholly to deprive them.

The Myth of Nationalisation

One thing the experience of Nationalisation has shown is that the conception of all-round State Capitalism as a workable and stable alternative to private Capitalism is a myth. If Nationalisation is only partial, as in Britain (about 20 per cent. of all industry is nationalised) it has to be run on normal capitalist lines and brings no comfort to the workers; and if it is wholesale Nationalisation, as in Russia, it likewise has to be run on strictly capitalist lines, and likewise fails to satisfy the needs and desires of the population.

Events have played havoc with the theories of the nationalisers, here and in Russia, and the Labour Party now finds its propaganda robbed of one of its main ingredients. The deep-seated discontent of the working class has never been wholly satisfied with promises of immediate social reforms. There was always, in addition, the vague but persistent desire for some more alluring ultimate objective. Among the early Labourites Keir Hardie met this desire by the argument that Nationalisation, though not much worthwhile for its own sake, was justified because it was a necessary step to the achievement of Socialism (or “free Communism” as he sometimes called it). Later Labourites dropped Keir Hardie’s argument and put in its place the view that wholesale Nationalisation is the ultimate aim, to be achieved gradually industry by industry. But to make this acceptable they had to claim that Nationalisation is itself of great and immediate advantage. A generation of workers were converted to this belief and are only just learning that it is false. Now Nationalisation propaganda has turned sour on the Labour Party and they find that their responsibility for running Capitalism for five years has turned them into a Party trying to live on past achievements, a Party of “conservers” of what exists – the so-called Welfare State. Like the other Conservatives, the limit of what they can hold out as a glittering future prize is almost comprised in the ever-receding prospect of overcoming the crisis.

The Communists in Russia are in a like dilemma. Copying the Labour leaders whom they affected to despise so much, they have given to State Capitalism the name Socialism; but unlike the Labour Party, they have adhered to Keir Hardie’s line of holding out as a solace for present troubles an ultimate but never materialising Communism.

It remains to be seen for how much longer the partial and the complete nationalisers will be able to hold the allegiance of the working class in face of evils for which neither group of distorters of Socialism can find a remedy.

Edgar Hardcastle