Review: January 1972 (1972)

The Review of the Month column from the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

The New Year came in to the ominous sound of politicians and economic experts assuring us that 1972 is going to be a boom time to remember. Ominous for those who recall, or who know about, all those other Januaries when the same forecasts from the same quarters turned sour. Most spectacularly, and most memorably, the year of the Great Crash—1929—was welcomed as a bumper year. There is plenty of evidence that the people who claim to control the economy of capitalism have no idea of what is happening but at times they make it too obvious.

Thus boom year 1972 opened with about one million out of work; what did they think, of the gay assurances on the city pages? of the reports of the bumper time many big investors had in 1971, and expect to better in 1972? It opened with the miners striking in a desperate attempt to hold the slide in their standard of living, with a strike. What sort of a boom is it, in the mining villages with only a ghost of a pit to remind them of the reality of capitalism’s economics—and its anarchy? When the experts tell us we are in for a good time, wise men take cover.

Some had to take cover literally, as the drums of poisonous chemicals from the sunken steamer came bobbing in on the tides along the beaches of southern England. This will not help the seaside landladies to get their share of boom time 1972. The incident sparked off, again, a great uproar about the environment and the way in which capitalism fouls the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat.

In some ways this is all to the good; after all, who chooses to take their holiday swim in a sea full of sodium cyanide? But it is fair to ask, where the environmentalists have been all this time, while socialists have been spelling out the facts on the pollution which capitalism has to cause. A clean world fit for humans to live in is an impossibility while society is organised on the basis of production for sale and profit. Capitalism pollutes and corrupts everything it touches, not simply our directly physical environment. We have been hammering home this lesson for over sixty years; and it still isn’t too late to do something about it.

Abroad

The freeing of Sheik Mujib Rahman gave the people of East Pakistan a new god to worship; presumably they now feel secure and certain in their future. Nobody should be misled into thinking that the scenes of massive, hysterical rapture which followed Mujib’s release could happen only in a country like Pakistan. The memory of Nazi Germany, and of the mass adulation given to Churchill, is too close for that. The mob emotion in Pakistan is a symptom of the political backwardness of its people; just like their counterparts in more “advanced” countries, they are sure to be disappointed when they find how frail, how humanly impotent against the demands of class society, their new god is.

Meanwhile, a few thousand miles across the world the first preparations for the election of a new god are under way. In America the Democratic Party are beginning to sort out the contenders for their nomination for the next presidential election. From now until August there will be a series of primary elections, which will be contested with an intensity of purpose so strong that it may disguise the true nature of the whole affair. The same old promises, dressed up in up-to-date terms, will be dragged out and offered. There will be the same old talk about qualities of leadership, as each candidate modestly puts himself forward as the new superman who can solve all the problems of the American workers simply by being in the White House. A great deal of money will be spent in the campaigns. And the end result will be another leader of capitalism.

Politics

For some time it has been muttered, that Heath was about to reshuffle his government (“reshuffle” is a good word — after it all we’ve still got the same old cards) and present us with a new set of political bosses. There was some surprise, that this had not happened immediately in the New Year — and probably some anguish from the hopefuls who were looking to take the first steps up the ladder of political ambition. To the workers of Britain it need not matter, who rules over the part of capitalism they happen to live in. Their resolution for 1972 should be to do something about getting rid of the system, with all its suppression, its poisons, its cynicism and despair.

Editorial: The Class Struggle. A Lesson from Germany. (1927)

Editorial from the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are large numbers of people who believe that discontent and social upheavals are caused by the propaganda of “agitators,” and conversely that they can be prevented by counter propaganda. For them Czarism was overthrown by Lenin, the miners’ strike was the work of Cook and the class struggle was created by Marx. They are unable to distinguish between the observation of facts and their causation. Marx did not preach the class war in the crude sense of desiring class hatred, either for its own sake or for any other purpose. What he did was to observe that in society as it existed before his eyes there was an employing, property-owning class and a propertyless employed class. No-one disputes this as the statement of an obvious truth, but for Marx it was not only interesting but also historically important. And having observed and examined the class division and consequent class struggle Marx rightly urged the need to apply this knowledge to current political movements. The workers must, he said, recognise that at bottom their movement, like the preceding movement by capitalists to establish and promote capitalism, is a class movement. It must eventually define clearly its class aim of transferring the means of production from private hands to the community. Marx never supposed that he, or other Socialists, “invented” the class struggle or the idea of Socialism. Socialism is the product of Capitalism in that the facts of the existing system gradually force themselves upon the notice of the workers. The task of the Socialist propagandist is to hasten recognition of the facts of social development by directing the workers’ attention to them.

The Socialist could not hope to propagate Socialist ideas outside of capitalist conditions or before the existence of capitalism. The propagandist with the Socialist idea is himself only the product of those conditions. A handful of Bolsheviks, intelligent and devoted though they may be, cannot build Socialist society in a country—Russia—which is overwhelmingly peasant in composition and organisation. They can and are doing the good work of speeding up development on modern industrial capitalist lines. Similarly unlimited capitalist propaganda in industrial Germany and England cannot prevent, it can only delay, the growth of Socialist ideas in the minds of the workers. It is with great pleasure that we read of an enquiry undertaken by the International Catholic Labour Unions “into the sentiments of those German workmen who are organised in the Roman Catholic ‘Christian Trade Unions’ which have a total membership of more than 600,000.” The enquiry is reported fully in the Manchester Guardian (January 1st, 1927) from which the following is reproduced :—

“INDUSTRIAL PEACE” IN GERMANY.

Views of Catholic Trade Unionists.

(From our Berlin Correspondent). 

“The idea of “industrial peace” and of “reconciliation between workmen and employers” has been promoted with as great energy, skill and sincerity in Germany as in any other country. Leading German industrialists, even when they themselves are Conservative, have publicly declared that Germany cannot be governed without the help of the working class, and that Germany should have a coalition Cabinet in which the Socialist party is represented.

What German workmen themselves think of “industrial peace” has been rather a mystery, to which the Labour Press has given no satisfactory clue. But members of the Roman Catholic Centre party have, on behalf of the International Catholic Labour Unions, made an inquiry into the sentiments of those German workmen who are organised in the Roman Catholic “Christian trade unions,” which have a total membership of more than 600,000.

The result is of extraordinary and universal interest. The Christian trade union, which have been criticised as “unrevolutionary,” as subservient to the Church, and as hostile to the class war, form the moderate right wing of the German Labour movement.

The inquiry has been conducted with that complete honesty which the German Centre party always shows when it tries to establish facts that are important to itself. Questionnaires were circulated amongst the Roman Catholic clergy throughout the industrial districts of Germany as well as amongst the officials of the Christian trade unions. The following is a brief summary of the main subjects of the questions, as well as of the answers that were returned. Many of the answers are detailed enough to fill a book, and many were after long discussions with the workmen. In every case the questions relate to Roman Catholic workmen organised in the Christian trade unions.

I. — RELATIONS BETWEEN WORKMEN AND EMPLOYER.

The general tendency of the answers is to record growing enmity. The mildest expression used is “cold neutrality.” Other answers mention “estrangement,” “distrust,” “opposition,” “tension,” or speak of downright hostility. One answer says that the employers “have no soul and no conscience,” and another that “the purely capitalist attitude of most employers does not allow trustful co-operation to grow up. . . . In the factory the workman feels that he is not treated like a human being. … In public and political life he sees that the employers are, for the most part, on the side of reaction, and hostile to democracy.” The possibility of any improvement is denied. Some of the answers show that the industrial peace overtures made by German employers have aroused nothing but suspicion. Those employers who are themselves Roman Catholics are criticised with special severity. One answer says that “there is bitterness over the fact that Roman Catholic employers limit their Catholic ethics to their private lives and are anxiously concerned not to allow these ethics to appear in their business activities.” Many complaints are made about the “soullessness” of the big industrial concerns. Complaints from smaller factories and workshops, where a more personal relationship between employer and employed is still possible, are, on the whole, less acrimonious.

II.— THE CLASS WAR.

Intellectually and as a Christian the Roman Catholic workman condemns the class war. But, as many of the answers show, hostility towards the possessing classes has a deep emotional influence upon him. Workmen who have no property of their own and are entirely dependent on their wages are filled with a sense of insecurity and dependence. They feel an ever-deepening resentment, “especially when wealth is displayed before their eyes by the propertied classes. It is their daily experience that the propertied treat the non-propertied classes as beings of a lower order — nothing, indeed, embitters a workman more than this.”

III. — THE INTELLECTUALS.

A common fate in the years of revolution and inflation created some fellow-feeling between workmen and intellectuals, but almost all traces of this have vanished. It is only “in an occasional priest or an occasional physician that the workman sees a true friend nowadays.” Generally speaking he likes and respects the clergy who are engaged in welfare work, but the clergy and the Roman Catholic Church as a whole are losing their hold upon him. An answer from the Rhineland states that “one must be blind in both eyes not to see that the authority of the clergy is dwindling.”

IV. — SOCIALISM.

There has been a great change; for whereas Roman Catholic workmen in Germany used to be hostile to Socialism, they are now no longer so, except in a purely theoretical manner. Almost all the answers agree on this point, although they vary in their attempts to explain it. In the economic struggle there is practically no difference between Socialist and Roman Catholic workmen. If the Church were to wage war on the Socialist movement, it could not, so the answers emphasise, expect the Roman Catholic workmen in Germany to show the slightest enthusiasm for such a war.

V.—COMMUNISM.

On the whole the prestige and the persuasive power of the Communist movement have diminished. It still takes a hold on those who think that Socialism is not coming quickly enough. Its influence on young and undeveloped workmen is considerable. The attempt to make Communism attractive to Roman Catholics by representing it as a kind of primitive Christianity has met with some success.

VI.—THE YOUNG GENERATION.

Youthful Roman Catholic workmen on the whole show great mental independence and an inclination towards Radicalism. They observe the formalities of the Catholic faith but without religious enthusiasm. There is a broad tendency amongst them to strive for a united trade union movement, irrespective of faith. Considerable numbers are attracted by the semi-military organisations of Fascist Right and Communist Left.”

Here we have extraordinary evidence of the truth of the materialist view of history. The highly organised, richly financed and skilful propaganda of the Roman Catholic Church is helpless against the educational effect of the actual conditions of working class life. Marx truly described religion as the “Opium of the People,” but to misquote a Biblical saying, “Man cannot live by opium alone.” In the long run he demands material comforts, and rejects the social system with the religious apologists for it, because they offer him the opium of religion when what he needs is bread.

The Monistic Conception of History by G. V. Plechanoff (part III) (1927)

From the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Plechanoff’s Famous Work now translated.]

Link to Part II

Chapter II.

“One of the most important conclusions to which one must come through the study of history is that the government is the most potent cause in shaping the character of the people; that the qualities and defects of nations, their strength or their weakness, their talents, their education or ignorance, are almost never due to climate or racial peculiarities; that nature gives everything to everybody, and the governments preserve or destroy the gifts of nature that constitute the common possession of the human race.” In Italy there were no marked changes either in climate or in race; “nature was the same for the Italians of all times; the only thing that did change was the government—and these changes always brought with them, or came together, with changes in national character.”

Thus argued Sismondi against those who tried to make the fate of nations dependent upon their geographic environment. His arguments contain some truth. Geography can really not explain much in history, especially because it (geography) is part of history, and because, as Sismondi says, governments do change, though the geographic environment remains the same. But this is only by the way ; we are interested in an other question. The reader must have already noticed that the fluctuations of the historical fate of nations is opposed to the stability of geographic environment. Sismondi knows of only one factor that can explain these changes : government—that is, the political order of a given country. The character of a nation is wholly determined by the character of its government. It is true that after dogmatically stating this theory, Sismondi tries later to soften it. Political changes, he says, come either before changes in national character or after them. That means that the character of the government is sometimes determined by the character of the people. Sismondi then has before him the same contradiction that the French “Enlighteners” had. The character of a nation is determined by the character of its government; the character of a government is determined by the character of the nation. Sismondi could just as little solve this contradiction as the French “Enlighteners.” He was therefore compelled to take as foundation for his discourse at one time one, at another time, another, member of this antinomy, But, as long as he has once taken the view that the character of a government determines the character of a people, he had to exaggerate out of all proportions the concept of government. It meant for him the whole social environment, all peculiarities of social relations. It would be more correct to say that for him, all peculiarities of a given social environment are affairs of government, the results of the political order. This is the stand point of the eighteenth century. When the French materialists wanted to express, in a short and vigorous manner, their convictions as to the all-powerful influence of the environment on man, they said : “C’est la Législation qui fait tout”—and whenever they spoke about legislation, they always meant political legislation, political order. Vico has a small article called Essays on a System of Jurisprudence in which the Civil Rights of the Romans are Explained by Their Political Revolutions. Though this essay was written just at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the ideas expressed in it, on relations between civil rights and the forms of government, were the accepted views until the restoration period. The “Enlighteners” reduced everything to politics.

But since the activity of a legislator, though not always teleological, is invariably conscious, and the conscious activity of a man is always dependent on his “opinions,” we come again to the thought then, that opinion is above everything else, although we set out to prove the supremacy of environment. The younger set of French historians took an entirely different view of this problem.

The course and results of the French Revolution, with its numerous surprises, was in itself a flaring denial of the power of “opinions.” Many had become entirely disappointed with “reason,” and others, who did not succumb to disappointments, became more and more inclined to the view that environment is all-powerful, and the investigation of its development became all-important. But their views on environment were also changed. The great historical happenings have demonstrated the weakness of legislators and political constitutions to such an extent that to declare them as the determining historical cause was ridiculous. Political constitutions began to be viewed not as a cause but as a result that is to be explained.

“A large number of writers, learned historians and publicists,” says Guizot in his Essais Sur L’histoire de France, “tried to explain the given state of society and state of civilisation through the prevalent political order. It would be far wiser to begin with the study of society itself in order to understand its political institutions. Before these institutions can become causes they are results ; society creates them before it begins to change itself under their influence. Instead of judging a people according to its political institutions, we must first study the people to find out what sort of a government it must of necessity possess. Society, its constituents, the life of its individual members, their dependency on their social positions, the relations between various classes of men—in short, the civil life of men (L’etat des personnes), these are the problems that should first engage the attention of the historian who wishes to know how people lived, and the publicist who wishes to know how they were governed.”

This view is just the opposite of Vico’s. The latter would explain civil laws through political revolutions; Guizot, on the contrary, would explain political institutions through civil life, that is, through civil laws. But the French historian goes even further in his analysis of society. According to him, the civil lives of all nations that entered the historical arena after the fall of the western Roman Empire, are strongly tied to their land relations (état des terres). The study of their land relations must therefore precede the study of their civil life : “In order to understand political institutions, it is necessary to study the different groups that constitute a given society, and their mutual relations.” In order to understand these groups, it is necessary to know the nature of their land relations. From this standpoint Guizot studies the French history of the first two dynasties. For him it is the history of a struggle between various groups of society. In his history of the English Revolution, he goes a step further, describing it as a struggle of the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy, and thus silently admits that in order to explain the political life of a country, it is necessary to study not only the land relations, but their property relations in general.

This view was not only held by Guizot, but was also shared by Mignet, Thierry and others.

In his Vous des Révolutions d’Angleterre, Thierry represents the history of the English revolution as a struggle between the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. “All those whose ancestors belonged to the conquerors,” he says in speaking about the first English Revolution, “deserted their castle for the King’s camp. At the time it could be said that the armies assembled—one in the name of leisure and power and the other in the name of labour and freedom. All those who did not work, all those who looked to life only for the pleasures that they could get without working for them, assembled under the King’s banner, to protect their common interests; all the descendants of the conquerors that were drawn into commerce fell in with the party of the people.”

The religious movements of that time were, according to Thierry, only reflexes of real life interests : “Both sides fought for real interests. All the rest was only for pretext. Those who were on the side of the subjects were mostly Presbyterians, that is, they did not want any subjection even in religion. Those who fought on the other side were Anglicans or Catholics, that is, they strove for power and taxes, even on the religious field.” Thierry quotes from the History of the Reign of James the Second the following words : “The Whigs looked on all religious opinions as politicians ; even their hate of the Pope was caused not by the prejudices and idol-worship of that unpopular sect, but by their desire to make the power of the state absolute.”

In Mignet’s opinion “social movements are determined by ruling interests. These proceed to their goals, stop as soon as the goal is achieved, and make place for other movements which are unnoticed at first but which grow to be predominant in time. This was the way of feudalism. Feudalism exists in the needs of men—but not yet in practice—this is the first epoch; in the second epoch it existed in practice, slowly ceasing to correspond to man’s needs and finally ceased to exist entirely. No revolution was accomplished in any other way than this.” In his history of the French Revolution Mignet interprets these events from the standpoint of the “needs” of different social classes. The struggle between these classes is for him the mainspring of what happened. Of course this standpoint did not find favour in the eyes of the eclectics of that time. The eclectics accused the new historians of fatalism, and the spirit of system. As it usually happens in such cases, the eclectics did not see the really weak points in these new theories and energetically fought against its strong points. At all events this conflict is old and at present uninteresting. It is more important to note that these views were defended by the St. Simonist, Bazar, one of the most brilliant representatives of socialist thought of that time.

Bazar did not think that Mignet’s book on the French Revolution was perfect. As one of its defects he considered the fact that according to Mignet the French Revolution was a thing in itself, without any connection with “that long chain of efforts which, after destroying the old social order, were to make the introduction of the new order easier.” He knows, of course, that the book undoubtedly has its good qualities. “The author strove to characterize those parties that led the Revolution consecutively. He wanted to show us the connections between those parties and the interests of certain social classes, to show how the development of events put first one party and then another at the head of the movement and caused them to disappear entirely afterwards. The spirit of system and fatalism, for which these historians have been so severely criticised by the eclectics are, in Bazar’s opinion, most valuable assets.”

If one should have asked Thierry, Guizot or Mignet whether the character of the people determines the form of its government, or the form of the government determines the people’s character, every one of them would have answered that in spite of the fact that between these two there is always a strong mutual influence, they must, nevertheless, both be explained by a third, more important factor : “by the social life of the people and their property relations.” And the contradiction that could not be solved by the French materialists of the eighteenth century, could thus be solved now.

(To be continued.)

Trans.: H. Kantorovitch for the "Modern Quarterly".

Letter: The Single Tax and Socialism. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Editor,

Sir,—In various articles which appear in the Socialist Standard stress is laid on what the S.P.G.B. declaim a fact, that the working class can expect nothing under capitalism, only their upkeep, i.e., food, clothes and shelter.

It is also claimed by the S.P.G.B. that the standard of living of the working class tends to the downward grade.

This statement is true, but it does not follow that the standard of living cannot be raised instead of sinking. I claim that the single tax will raise the toilers’ living—by taxing the owners of land and compelling them to pay economic rent for land in use or not in use. This would solve the unemployed question, because the land will be open for anyone desirous of using it on conditions of paying the economic rent. The toilers working in factories, etc., could increase their wages, because there would be no competition for jobs. A. MacLaren, M.P. for Burslem, is regarded an expert on the land question, and I have heard him challenge all opposition, either in set debate or by questions, but S.P.G.B.ers have been conspicuous by their absence or silence.

The S.P.G.B. are flippant in abuse of Labour M.P.s and ought to be prepared to defend their position in debate.

Henry George spoke of Socialism as a noble ideal, which was sure to be realised.

I have no desire to write a lengthy letter, because space is needed for your own writers, but perhaps you will be kind enough to print my letter and also your reply.

Thanking you in anticipation,

Single Taxer.

Reply to “Single Taxer.”

The position of the working class in relation to taxes—single or compound—has been dealt with on numerous occasions in the pages of the Socialist Standard, but as our correspondent does not appear to have seen these articles, we may deal with the point again.

“Single Taxer” admits that our statements that the workers only receive, on the average, sufficient for maintenance and reproduction, with the standard of living tending to fall, is correct. But we need to know why this is so to meet “Single Taxer’s” claims.

The various things necessary for producing wealth—land, factories, machines, railways, etc.—are owned by one class in society—the capitalist class. The working class only possess their power to labour. Before they can apply this labour-power to either the land or the instruments of production, they must obtain permission from the capitalist class to do so. The latter class only give this permission when they calculate that they can sell the things produced at a profit. The fact that individual calculations may sometimes be erroneous does not affect the main point. Moreover, the capitalists are not concerned whether the articles are used for necessities, comforts, or even vices. If they can be sold at a profit the uses to which they can be put does not matter.

Another important point to bear in mind is that when the articles are produced they belong to the capitalists—not to the workers. Thus the workers are without any means of living—even after working—until a share of what they have produced is handed back to them in the form of wages. The share left to the capitalists, after paying wages and replacing the value consumed in production, is called surplus-value. Out of this surplus-value various charges such as advertising, rates, taxes, etc., are paid. “Single Taxer’s” theory is that by placing the whole burden of taxes upon the landowner the unemployed problem would be solved, “because the land will be open for anyone desirous of using it on conditions of paying the economic rent.”

The first point to be settled here is what does “Single Taxer” mean by “economic rent”? He does not say. Various definitions are given by different writers, but the one in general use is “the price paid for the use of land apart from any buildings or structures upon it.” How would this rent be fixed? Again, “Single Taxer” does not tell us. Generally single tax theorists claim that it will be settled by competition among those desiring the land. It is easy to see that this is how the bulk of such rent is decided to-day. For instance, a wealthy oil firm bought some land in the City of London a year or two ago upon which they built their offices. Now this land was “open for anyone desirous of using it on conditions of paying the economic rent,” and it may be asked why some labourer, suffering from lack of house room, did not take up this land and use it for himself. The answer would be “he could not pay the economic rent.” It thus is quite evident that the only people who could hire the land under the single tax scheme would be the same as those who hire it to-day— namely, those wealthy enough to pay for it. This would leave the working class exactly where they are now—unemployment and all.

“Single Taxer” may argue that the position would be different because the “economic rent” would be taken by the Government for the purposes of taxation, thus relieving industry of a burden it bears to-day. This may be granted, and from this point of view, the single tax is the ideal form of taxation for the capitalist as it would be placing the tax where it would be the least trouble to him. But “Single Taxer” cannot show how this would alter the position of the workers. They would still remain slaves to the capitalists and still receive, on the average, a maintenance wage. How the capitalists have to divide up the surplus value they have robbed from the workers is of little concern to the latter. Their interest and business is to abolish the robbery by taking control of political power for that purpose.

Editorial Committee.

Letter: A discussion of the Money Question. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editor,

“Socialist Standard.”

Dear Sir,

In reply to A.W.S. in the December issue of the Socialist Standard, on the question of currency, you deny that inflation had taken place during the war period, and, presumably during the years immediately after. In support of that contention you employ a formula which, as you insist, requires for its validity, “any given period under normal conditions” (italics mine).

2) It would be interesting to know by what line of reasoning, or by what stretch of imagination, the war period, and the post-war period up to the resumption of the gold-standard by this country, could be regarded as normal, and treated as such by you.

3) Gold was at no time during the actual war period allowed to function freely as a commodity. The whole supply of the British Empire representing upwards of 60 per cent. of the total gold output of the world, was commandeered by the Government for the use of the Bank of England. Consequently the possibility of measuring the depreciation of paper-currency, relative to gold-currency, which obtains during normal times, by the excess of the market-price of gold over its mint-price, was denied us.

4) No person was permitted to melt or export gold. Those who defied the law were known to make large profits; and thus the depreciation of the paper-pound could be gauged roughly by inference.

5) During the sterling exchange slump in 1915, the Bank made a gallant attempt to maintain the sanctity of the gold-standard and exported a considerable quantity of the metal over a short period. The pace was found too hot, however, even for a Bank that could monopolise for its exclusive use the major part of the newly mined gold, in the world, and the Government was compelled to come to its assistance and by the mobilisation of American securities held in this country, and by their subsequent sale abroad, managed to peg the dollar-exchange at a rate that made it more profitable to settle adverse balances by the purchase of bills, or drafts, than to export bullion.

6) The phenomenon of rising prices preceding the increases of currency during the war period you cite as proof evident that inflation could not have been the cause of high prices. A little consideration, however, will convince one that such precedence is quite in harmony with excessive issues of bank credit. The total credit-units, i.e., legal tender—currency, plus cheque currency, operating at a given time being conditioned by, and strictly limited to, the mass of credit entered on the books of the banks.

7) Thus in the sense that currency is merely an effect, the terms inflation, and deflation, of currency, are meaningless. The amount of currency employed being that needed to allow commodities to circulate at their prices ; which may, however, be paper prices.

The war-time inflation was a credit inflation which in its turn necessitated additions to the currency to give effect to it.

8) For example, as late as 1920 the Government still owed the Bank of England the sum of £400,000,000, which it had borrowed from time to time on “ways and means” account. Is it reasonable to suppose that when the Bank created that mass of credit (purchasing-power) goods of a gold value equivalent to the nominal amount of the loans, were actually available for exchange? And if not then rank “lawism” was being indulged in.

9) It is a matter of common knowledge that on the unpegging of the exchange in 1919, and when gold was again permitted to function freely on the open market it immediately commanded a premium ; thereby pricking the bubble of pretence of non-inflation.

I am, sir,

Yours faithfully,

William Nicholls.

Reply to W. Nicholls. 

For ease of reference we have numbered our correspondent’s paragraphs, but before dealing with his letter in detail it may be as well to note that the only place where he attempts to deny, definitely, our case is in the last line of his letter. All his other objections are in the form of suggestions and inferences.

1) This paragraph reads rather strangely. Mr. Nicholls introduces an emphasis not to be found in our reply to A.W.S., when he says we “insist” upon a certain formula, We did not “insist.” We merely stated the facts in ordinary terms. Why does Mr. Nicholls introduce the emphasis? Perhaps the second paragraph will supply the answer.

2) Neither in the reply to A.W.S., nor anywhere else, have we stated that the war period, or the post-war period, could be regarded as normal. This is a deliberate misrepresentation of our statements. When this is noticed the emphasis of his first paragraph may be explained as a stepping stone to the misrepresentation of his second.

3) This paragraph is just journalistic claptrap. For some time after the war had started gold was still in use as currency, but neither then, nor at any subsequent period would a sovereign purchase more commodities in the ordinary market than a £1 currency note. The two circulated as equals, proving there was no depreciation of the paper currency here.

4) This paragraph displays an ignorance of the economic basis of money. Outside of currency, gold is a commodity—a paper note is not. The only place where they can be compared accurately is in the country issuing the paper. (See June, 1922, S.S.)

5) This paragraph shows the confusion that arises from merely looking at the surface. The Government had to make huge purchases abroad, chiefly in America, and, with the issue of the war in doubt, the paper of every belligerent country was either only accepted with reluctance or entirely refused. But this has nothing to do with “inflation” here. If the amount of paper currency had been reduced to one tenth of the quantity then existing, it would have made no difference to the reluctance to accept this paper abroad. Hence the paying for the goods ordered by the securities called in.

6) Here Mr. Nicholls has to abandon his case. The careful reader will notice that he does not deny our statement of the facts. Neither does he say that the rise in prices was due to excessive issues of bank credit. He only suggests it by a non-sequitor. The question is not whether a rise in prices could

result from an excessive issue of bank credit, but whether the particular rise we are dealing with did so result. Mr. Nicholls does not definitely claim that this was the cause.

Although it is a side issue in the present discussion we may point out that there is no such thing as “cheque-currency.” Currency consists solely of legal tender. Cheques are not legal tender and therefore cannot be currency.

7) This paragraph gives us our case once more. That the wartime inflation was a “credit inflation,” we had already explained in our June, 1922, issue. But a credit inflation is not a currency inflation. Neither are additions to the currency necessarily inflation, as we have already explained.

8) This paragraph really has nothing to do with our case, but it shows once again how Mr. Nicholls has missed the essentials of the problem. For what purpose did the Government borrow the £400,000,000 “from time to time”? Firstly, for munitions of war. Secondly, to pay interest falling due on the loans. In the first case it is not only “reasonable to suppose,” but an actual fact, that goods of a gold value to the amount of the loans were available—and delivered—to the Government to be consumed in war operations. In the second case it is simply an alternative to raising taxes to pay this interest. Ultimately these loans will be liquidated by operations with the taxes.

9) This paragraph mixes two things—the so-called unpegging of the exchange, a Government manipulation—with the restoration of the gold standard. Gold was not permitted to “function freely” until the gold standard was restored in 1925 and only then if the “bull” may be permitted, under certain restrictions. That there was no such thing as “the bubble of pretence of non-inflation,” was shown by the fact that neither then nor now will a sovereign purchase more than a £1 currency note. And this despite the enormously important fact that, along with the so-called restoration of the gold standard, the £.l currency note was, for the first time, made inconvertible.

Editorial Committee.

Party Activities. (1927)

Party News from the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two splendid indoor meetings have recently been held in the Town Hall, Battersea. On December 5th Comrade Fitzgerald lectured on “Socialism and the Anti-Parliamentarians” to a very crowded audience. A large number of questions were answered and the opponents who took part in discussion completely showed the mental bankruptcy of the Anti-Parliamentarians.

On January 16th Comrade Kohn spoke on “The Socialist Case against Communist Policy.” The Hall was again crowded and many questions were answered. The position laid down by our speaker was carefully evaded by those taking part in discussion.

* * *

Manchester Branch.

A branch has been opened at Manchester. Members and sympathisers are invited to get in touch with W. Addison, 111, West Park Street, Salford.

Letter: Mussolini and Parliament. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

W. H. Kett (Kilburn) sends us the following inquiry. Our reply follows :—

“Does Mussolini rule as a dictator? Again has all opposition in Italy been squashed? I have Engels’ Socialism, Utopian and Scientific before me and on page 38, paragraph 2, of the introduction he, speaking of the working class movement of England, France and Germany, says, “In both the latter countries (France and Germany) the working class movement is well ahead of England. In Germany it is even within measurable distance of success.” Was Engels right when he stated that? Even now I don’t think there are any Socialists in the German Parliament. At least as far as I know. If Engels’ statement was correct Germany by now should have a very strong Socialist Party, but it is not the case.

Answer to W. H. Kett.

Mussolini obtained power by being returned to Parliament with a majority of his supporters. This majority, with Mussolini at its head and as its leader, has ruled through Parliament by passing the various laws that have so severely repressed open opposition, and driven the more reckless of his foes into secret societies and intrigues.

But it is significant to note that, despite all his bluster and bounce, he is intensely uneasy about this majority continuing to support him. This is shown more particularly in his alterations of the constitution, designed to retain power in the hands of a minority. Such an act is a policy of despair. The fact that Italy is less developed industrially than the leading capitalist countries may enable Mussolini to hold office for a while, but the rise of any serious crisis will see the collapse of his present support and his overthrow. In certain respects his position is similar to that of Napoleon III. before the coup d’etat—a position splendidly analysed in Marx’s “Eighteenth Brumaire.”

The Statement in Engels’ book must be considered in relation to the circumstances of the time when it was written. Socialist propaganda was making more headway in Germany than in France or England, while the less stable political conditions in France allowed Socialist propaganda there to move ahead of England. “Revisionism” was of very small account, and the German movement had dealt sucessfully with its anarchists. It was not until after Engels’ death that the paralysing policy of capitalist reform, followed by the absurd colonial policy, side-tracked the German Social Democratic Party into what was mere Liberalism.

Unfortunately there is no country with a “strong Socialist Party” but the progress in England at the present stage compares favourably with any other nation.

Ed. Com.

How we civilise the ‘heathen.' (1927)

From the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent asks for authoritative evidence to refute the suggestion that the introduction of Christianity and western civilisation into “backward” countries provides the benefit of a higher moral code. Our correspondent realises with us that this aspect is relatively a minor one subordinate always to the dominating fact that the lust which took white traders and factory owners to the lands of the black and yellow races is the same as that which governs their relations with white workers at home—the lust to exploit. The results, though they may vary in certain respects, are much the same and include in both cases the use of the whip of poverty to compel working-class women to sell their bodies for the pleasure of their masters.

During 1924 a question was raised on many occasions in the House of Commons as to the system of maintaining officially registered brothels in Hong Kong. Thus in reply to Lady Astor the Colonial Secretary, Mr. J. H. Thomas, stated (Hansard, July 15th, 1924) “the total number of registered brothels in 1923 was 296, but I am not aware of the dates at which any of them were opened.”

Earlier in the year (Hansard, March 17th), Mr. Snell asked Mr. Thomas “whether he is aware that it is part of the duties of a Government official in Hong Kong to pass young girls into the various classes of brothels in that colony ; and whether he proposes taking any action in the matter?”

To this plain question Mr. J. H. Thomas returned the following evasive answer : “The object of the practice to which my Hon. Friend refers is purely protective,” and on March 24th when again asked if he would abolish the system Mr. Thomas replied “We have to deal with it in a commonsense way.” On that day he also disclosed the fact that our Government carried on the same State enterprise in Malaya.

It is an old story but perhaps in this connection it may not be out of place to refer to the activities in this direction of the late Lord Roberts of infamous memory.

In 1886 he sent out to every quartermaster in the Indian army a circular memorandum containing the following instructions :—

“In the regimental bazaars it is necessary to have a sufficient number of women, to take care they are sufficiently attractive, to provide them with proper houses, and above all to insist upon means of ablution being always available.

“If young soldiers are carefully advised in regard to the advantage of ablution and recognise that convenient arrangements exist in the regimental bazaar they may be expected to avoid the risks involved in association with women who are not recognised by the regimental authorities.”

(It may be remarked in passing that the results for the young soldiers were almost as deadly as for the unfortunate women.)

Full particulars of this practice in India are contained in “The Queen’s Daughters in India,” from which the above and the following quotations are taken :—

“The orders specified were faithfully carried out under the supervision of commanding officers, and were to this effect. The commanding officer gave orders to his quartermaster to arrange with the regimental official to take two policemen (without uniform) and go into the villages and take from the houses of these poor people their daughters from fourteen years upward, about 12 to 15 girls at a time. They were to select the best looking. Next morning they were all put in front of the colonel and quartermaster. The former made his selection of the number required. They were then presented with a pass or licence and then made over to the old woman in charge of this house of vice under the Government. The women already there who were found diseased had their passes taken away from them and were then removed by the police out of the cantonment and these fresh, innocent girls put in their places—to go the same way home.”

In conclusion it only needs to be pointed out that this particular expression of the higher Christian morality is not the monopoly of Great Britain.

Edgar Hardcastle

Why has CND failed? (1963)

From the April 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The way from Aldermaston is now a well trodden road. For some unilateralists, perhaps too well trodden; it is no secret that this year’s march may be the last.

CND have always made the most of the art of clever publicity; possibly this is what they will be remembered for before anything else. They have sat in the roadway, planted seeds on the other side of airfield wire, auctioned the Air Force’s nuclear bombers. This, said CND, was the way to attract support for the case for banning the bomb. Have they failed, or succeeded?

CND has failed. This country is now no nearer to abandoning its nuclear weapons than it was when CND came into existence. The present government, as well as any which is likely to take power in the foreseeable future, is firm on this. That affable, informative fellow the Average Man, when asked if he is in favour of getting rid of nuclear weapons, will reply that of course he is in favour—provided Russia and America and the rest of the world give up theirs as well. That is the answer he would have given before the first Aldermaston march. With him, in other words, we are back at Square One.

Whether they admit to it or not, CND implicity recognise their failure. They have still not tested the effect of their smart publicity at the polls. The few unilateralists who are in, or near to, Parliament are careful to stand first under the banner of one of the big capitalist parties, who are all committed to keep the bomb when they are in power. A pure CND candidate would win very few votes. In fact, the marches and demonstrations have not affected the enduring support which the mass of the British working class give to their masters’ interests. This is what CND have been up against and they have made no headway. But the weapons which they set out to abolish have made headway. They have got bigger and stronger and more terrifying and they can reach ever further across the world.

The Campaign is not the first reformist organisation to come roaring onto the scene, full of enthusiasm and good intentions, only to fail. There have been plenty of others before and they have always failed for the same basic reason. The Aldermaston marchers have been travelling in exactly the wrong direction, have been coming in at the wrong end. Their propaganda has taken no account of the reasons for the existence of nuclear weapons. This has not necessarily been through ignorance of those reasons; perhaps some members of CND know them well enough. But such organisations cannot, by their very nature, concentrate upon the cause of the evils they try to deal with.

Reformists always treat their problems in isolation from the rest of capitalism. Pacifists think of war as a problem on its own; charitable organisations consider poverty to be something like a personal accident. CND regards the Bomb as an evil which can be separated from its surroundings.

But nuclear weapons have not come upon us haphazardly. They are, in fact, another stage in the development of weapons which has followed closely the economic and social growth of society. Ever since primitive man first fumbled with his crude missiles, weapons have been important to men. At first they were productive—they could bring man his food. But the development of class society brought men into conflict over wider issues than the possession of a carcass, and weapons were used in these conflicts. They were also used to suppress the under-classes in society. This was the situation which capitalism found waiting for it and which, like previous systems, it adapted to its interests.

Capitalism separated its workers from weapons in the same way as it separated them from the means of production. Its wealth is made in concentrated factories, from material which has been brought from all over the world. The people who make this wealth do not own the factories, the material nor the finished product; they only work, in fact, when it suits the capitalist to allow them to do so. Similarly, the people who use capitalism's weapons do not own them and are only brought into contact with them, in the Armed Forces, when capitalism’s interests demand that they should be. This social development has taken place at the same time as capitalism has expanded its weapons in the technical sense. Today, the dominant armaments are of such a nature that it is quite impossible for the people who operate them to own them.

The development of capitalism’s weapons has been a natural result of the expansion of its productive powers. It is a drab, familiar story. One of capitalism’s first modern wars—the American Civil War—gave birth to the Gatling gun, a forerunner of the machine guns which, with their pitiless killing, were a dominant weapon in the First World War. That war also saw the beginning of the answer to the machine gun—the tanks lumbering painfully across No Man’s Land. It also saw, more ominously, the first organised air-raids against a civilian population. We may wonder, now, at the terror which Breithaupt and Mathy and the other Zeppelin commanders struck into London, with their tiny, scattered bombs, for these weapons were the predecessors of those, smaller than a Zeppelin, which can now wipe out London in a few seconds.

Nuclear bombs were the child of the Second World War. It is grimly appropriate that the destruction of Hiroshima should have been watched by one of the successors of the Zeppelin commanders— Leonard Cheshire, who was awarded the V.C. for his part in the terror bombing of German cities. Since 1945 baby has grown up a lot and is now frightening the life out of us with his destructive potential. Baby has many names—Skybolt, Polaris and whatever the Russians call their mass killers.

Protests

Capitalism’s contribution to the development of man’s weapons has been that, more than any other social system, it has organised human skill and knowledge to make it possible for man to destroy himself. We might expect that there will be protests about this. CND protests; so do many other organisations. Some of them tell us how much better the world would be without war. The Guardian of March 11th last gave an account of a report by a study group of an organisation called the United World Trust:

It concludes by emphasising “ the enormous benefit ” that disarmament would bring to every section of the community. “It will provide a unique opportunity for the Government to promote a faster rate of economic growth and prosperity for all,” it claims.

This seems quite unexceptional, until we reflect that the same argument is used about all the other wasteful problems of capitalism. We all know that life would be very much better if they were all abolished. But that is where the reformists always fail; despite all their efforts, the problems remain and life is not so good. 

So what are we to do about it? Human knowledge and technical skill are bound to develop with the passing of time. There is nothing wrong in this; in a sensible world it could be of immense benefit to humanity. Certainly we cannot turn time backwards. Man cannot lose the knowledge he has gained—even the knowledge which is useless and harmful. He cannot forget how to fly, nor how to make explosives, nor can he lose the principles of nuclear power. Such knowledge could be an asset to society. If it is a curse, as it is at present, our job is to find the reason for this; rather than blame the knowledge, we should try to discover why it is put to such anti-social uses.

Modern war springs from the basis of capitalism. A social system which makes its wealth for sale has got to have an interest in its markets and in fields of cheap, accessible raw materials. But it will find that its markets, for one reason or another, are limited and so it will have to fight over them. It will find that it's impossible to agree over the right to the raw materials and so it will have to fight over that as well. Capitalism causes modern war and so it needs the best of modem weapons to fight them with. That is why it so readily adapts its techniques of social production to the making and the using of weapons and harnesses invaluable human knowledge and skill in the dreaming up of ever more horrific armaments.

Capitalism debases human ability and diverts it from what is its most useful and sensible field. Capitalism makes clever scientists into destructive fiends. It searches out the cataclysmic secrets of the very substance of matter. It takes the boy next door and turns him into a paratrooper or a bomber pilot; it transforms gentle men into brutal killers.

CND, and some of the other reformists, see part of this and they do not like what they see. But they blame the government, or perhaps the soldiers, or the scientists. That is all futility and failure. The right place to start solving these problems is at the bottom—at the basis of capitalist society. Until Socialism is established, there will be many more Aldermastons and even bigger and worse bombs will be made there. The unilateralists have failed, but that is not to say that the energy and social conscience which some of them may have cannot be put to good use.

Why don't you come our way?

Ivan

News in Review: Budget for Defence (1963)

The News in Review column from the April 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Budget for Defence

One of the big debates which British capitalism is currently having with itself is over what it likes to call Defence.

Independent, or American controlled, missiles? Airborne, or carried in submarines? Conventional, or nuclear forces? Big or small?

The latest government White Paper on these questions, the Statement on Defence, 1963 shows what capitalism in this country wants in the way of armed forces during the next twelve months.

The Royal Navy is to get some Polaris submarines, nuclear powered, to stay submerged for weeks on end and armed with deadly missiles which they can fire from under the water.

The Air Force is to get a new nuclear weapon to give its bombers more hitting power (although some correspondents doubted the existence of a really new weapon).

The guns of the army are to have greater fire power.

Fine. All the Forces, in other words, will be able to knock down more buildings, make bigger holes, and kill more people, in the future than they could in the past. Fine.

Perhaps this is value for money; £ 1,837,700,000 will be spent on the Armed Forces and their weapons during the nest year, which is £116,640,000 up on last year.

We can all think of things which, even under capitalism, could avoid some of their problems if they had a bit more money. Some charitable appeals, for example, often tell us of the surprisingly long time they can feed somebody like a hungry refugee child for a pitifully small sum.

But these arc only human beings— definitely not priority for capitalism’s expenditure.

Never mind. Aren't you glad they’re making so many big, busting weapons to defend you with? Aren’t you glad so much of society's wealth and brains and talent is being poured into things which can only harm society?

Don't you think it’s time you called a halt to this madness and organised a sane world, which will not have the conflicts which need armed forces to settle them?

Two things are needed for a “defence” budget—weapons and money. The world would be a better place without both of them.

Labour and Nationalisation

With the crown barely settled upon his head, Mr. Harold Wilson has found himself under heavy fire from the Conservative propaganda machine.

Tory M.P. Gerald Nabarro inveigled Wilson into confirming, with the House of Commons for an audience, that Clause Four of the Labour Party Constitution — the bit about standing for ". . . the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange" is in fact still the policy of the entire Party.

Perhaps it was coincidence that at that very moment the Conservative Ccntral Office had just got ready a new pamphlet, Entitled to Know, which suggests on the flimsiest evidence that the Labour Party has its nationalising eye upon no fewer than 104 firms in this country. Naturally, Wilson's affirmation of Clause Four was rushed into the front page of the pamphlet.

No sane person can really believe that the Labour Party wants to nationalise firms like Boots and the Prudential. Some of the other companies in the Tory pamphlet—aircraft firms, for example—are already deep in the government's pocket anyway. Nationalisation, as an attempted solution for some of British capitalism's difficulties, was never designed to go as far as the Tories make out.

So Wilson could comfortably dismiss the charge as “childish” and, more bluntly, The Economist could accuse the Conservative Party of ". . . telling lies in its propaganda. . ." Altogether, the scare fell very flat, not like the 1959 campaign about the famous 600 firms.

But wait a minute. Why do the Labour Party agree on the one hand that they stand for wholesale nationalisation which is what Clause Four means—and yet deny it when their opponents bring them face to face with it?

Labour once told us that nationalisation was the answer to our problems, that it was the quick road to Socialism; they can hardly drop it entirely now. But the working class have become dubious enough about nationalisation to make it a vote loser. This is what forces the Labour Party into their double act, so that Wilson must actually be trapped into admitting that it might be his policy.

If nationalisation were the road to Socialism the Labour Party should be proud to stand up for it whatever the consequences. But in fact it is only another makeshift of capitalism.

The chances are that the Labour Party will fight off the latest Tory stunt. They may even win the next election and give us a bit more of their brand of state capitalism.

One thing, though, they will not be able to give us. That is Socialism.

Prices

One of the favourite tricks of Labour M.P.s is to get up in the House and ask, innocently, to be told the present purchasing power of the pound compared to what it was in October, 1951, when the Conservatives came back to power.

They get some illuminating replies.

The latest of these, from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, shows that the pound of 1951 is now, in the same terms, worth only 13s. 11d. Presumably these figures were carefully recorded by Labour members and have by now been used in countless speeches up and down the country.

To be sure, it was a big Tory promise in 1951 that they would stop prices rising and so maintain the buying power of the pound. At the time, because the working class had seen so many wage increases wither under the heat of rising prices, the whole thing was something of an election issue. The Tory boast went down well.

But like so many other issues, this one is a great illusion. Workers are too easily misled into thinking that their fortunes are permanently affected by things like price levels. They rarely take the trouble to remember the history of prices and wages, which teaches exactly the opposite. Whatever they may earn, and whatever the level of prices, workers always have the same old struggle to balance their budget.

Perhaps this is too much like hard thinking. Perhaps the workers find it easier to moan about the latest price rise or—in other times, maybe—the latest wage cut.

Prices are for the moment a dead issue as far as vote catching goes, but they could come to life again.

If they do, the working class will do well to remember that voting for the parly which promises to put wages up or bring prices down—or both—can bring them no benefits.

Russia and the Oil Business

Oil is one of the commodities which Russia is anxious to export. This has been an expanding business; according to a United States House of Representatives report, the Soviet Union was overall an importer of oil in 1950, but by 1951 was exporting the stuff at the rate of 40 million tons a year.

This has worried some of the established oil interests in the Western world; Russia has a surplus of oil and in the recent past has gone out to capture some of their cherished markets.

So the recent “oil for ships” offer which Moscow seemed to be making was bound to ripple the surface of international trade.

The Americans and the other international oil companies were worried because the Russians were likely to upset the market by selling their oil at about twelve per cent. below the current price. On the other side of the deal, Washington does not favour its allies exporting to the Eastern bloc things like ships, which they classify as being of strategic value.

These reactions we might have expected. One capitalist power will always squeal when another pinches one of its markets.

So might we have expected the British shipyards, hungry for orders, to press for the acceptance of the deal. No business willingly passes up the chance of selling its products, especially when it is as depressed as shipbuilding is at the moment. So three yards on the Clyde combined to put in a tender for six fish-meal factory ships for export to Russia.

Unusual allies for the shipyards were the shipbuilding unions. And a strange ally for the Americans was the National Union of Mineworkers, which took up its customary hostile attitude at the very mention of the word oil.

This muddle is typical of those which crop up when deals like this are in the air. Capitalism is a mass of different groups of investment, with intricately opposed interests. We should leave these interests to fight out their deals themselves.

Workers usually think that they have a stake in the outcome of such situations But experience says that they do not. Whoever gets the ships and the oil will make not enough difference to working class lives to worry about.

50 Years Ago: The Coal Strike (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

A million miners are out on strike. From the ferment around us one might think they were asking for the mines. Every foul epithet and calumny is being hurled at them by the hireling Press. It is they who are unpatriotic; it is they who are ruining the trade of the country; it is they who are bringing the people to starvation. No one suggests that the mine-owners, who cling so tightly to the last atom of profit which they can screw out of those who go down into the pits, are culpable.

Of course not. Is it not only fair and just that capital should have its reward? And who can say that the mine-owners are any too well recompensed for his risk and his labour? Not the capitalist papers, certainly.

These drew many fancy pictures of the fabulous wages and astonishing luxury of the miners, and marvelled that there was anything left for the owners at all. Yet within a week of the men ceasing work the Press rang with the cries of the miners' starving wives and children, and Mr. Chiozza Money, M.P. showed from the Income Tax returns that in the last nine years the owners had made over 200 million pounds out of the unpaid labour of the workers!

It is said that the granting of the minimum wage would only cost £50,000 a year, which is less than 1 per cent of the profit the masters take, and a very minute fraction of their capital. It is a pregnant demonstration of what the meaning of the word “Patriotism" is on the masters' lips when they plunge the country into such misery for the sake of so insignificant a morsel of dividend.

From the Socialist Standard, April 1913.

Without Comment (1963)

From the April 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

"200 Lose Jobs—More than 200 workers at the High Wycombe factory of Desborough Engineering will lose their jobs because work they were doing is going to Northern depressed areas."

(Daily Telegraph, February 7, 1963)

Promised Land: Arrival Postponed — Indefinitely (1963)

From the April 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Mormons who trekked across America to settle in what is now the State of Utah were driven and inspired by the visions of their leader, Brigham Young. Whatever setbacks they encountered, whatever hardships they endured, Young could always turn up the answer in a session with the Almighty. These were always enough to still the Mormons’ doubts so that the weary journey to the Promised Land could continue.

In some ways, this is what happens in capitalism. For as long as any of us can remember the leaders of the system have said that they are conducting us on a glorious pilgrimage to a Promised Land. Sometimes they tell us that we have almost come to the end of the road and that the lush, temperate valleys are only just over the next hill. Sometimes they tell us that we have run into trouble—hostile natives are about, or the undergrowth is too thick for penetration, or the weather is unco-operative. At such times they are not above trying to dream up a few visions themselves and although these are not usually like those of Brigham Young, it is true that capitalism’s leaders like us to think that God looks upon them with a kindly eye. Whatever the difficulties of our journey, though, they assure us that we must not despair. The Promised Land is never far away. Everybody is so busy listening to these soothing assurances that they do not seem to notice that we sometimes travel in the opposite direction to what was supposed to be, only a short time before, the quickest way to the Promised Land. They never notice that all the leaders’ visions turn out to be false. And most of all they never notice that, no matter how hard and how fast we travel, we never arrive.

All the capitalist political parties are in on this. The Tories try to comfort us with the promise that they alone know the way and have provided for every need of the trek. The Labour Party try to take over the head of the column and to tempt us with visions which they say are better and brighter than their opponents. The Liberals murmur that their way is the smoothest and safest of all. At election time this propaganda is particularly loud. But it goes on all the time, because the more noise the leaders kick up, the more officiously they shuffle their maps and peer into the horizon, the less chance there is of the rest of the travellers asking questions about the direction and length of the journey. Capitalism, in other words, can never be what its leaders promise for it. but it must always pretend to be doing something about its own shortcomings.

Recently, for example, Lord Hailsham had a vision about the Promised Land. This aristocrat, as we all know, is stuck with the task of explaining to hundreds of thousands of workers why their trek has come to a halt until they have settled the little difficulty of finding a job. Hailsham has had to visit one of the areas of high unemployment in this country; yet he can still radiate as much confidence as anyone about the Promised Land. But he has had to admit that the journey might be running a little behind schedule. Speaking in February last to a rally of Tory women, he said:

The recession has given us the power, possibly for the first time since the war, and the breakdown in the Common Market talks has given us the spur, of beginning the construction of the Britain we want to see in thirty years' time—the Britain we must see if in the twenty-first century, to which we must begin to look, we are to see Britain as a national community holding her head appropriately high among the peoples of the earth.

This is a rather strange vision, even from one of the Tories’ favourite visionaries. For if it only needed a recession to give us the spur to build a better world —postponed now, of course, for thirty years—why do governments always try to resist slumps? And if a slump is now the way to prosperity, what way was envisaged in the other, earlier, promises? What, for example, inspired Mr. Butler’s vision of a few years ago of doubling our standard of living in twenty-five years? And has this vision faded, now, in the glare of Hailsham’s revelations of the twenty-first century?

Eyewash

Hailsham was, of course, dishing out the purest eyewash. A recession does not provide the economic power for a new leap forward; it is not a sort of purifying fire. Not only old, inefficient companies go under in a slump; the new, smart outfits also die. Capitalism goes up and down as its markets dictate; there is no depth of a slump at which anyone can say that the economy has got its second wind and that things have got bad enough for them to start getting better. In previous slumps, no end of experts have had their forecasts of impending recovery upset by the depression inexorably getting worse. Does Hailsham realise this? He probably does. But to have said so would have spoiled the vision, so not a word was breathed of it. Ladies and gentlemen, the journey to the Promised Land drags on—at least for the next thirty years.

Not only the Tories have their visions. Mr. Harold Wilson is having one or two himself lately, as he tries to elbow his way to the front of the column. Mr. Wilson complains that the trek is being hindered by the lack of scientists in this country and that if only we could keep them all here it would not be long before we were standing on the brow of the last hill, with the fertile plains spread out at our feet. This is how The Guardian reported part of Mr. Wilson’s first political broadcast as leader of the Labour Party:

The steady drain of some of Britain's best scientists to jobs overseas, said Mr. Wilson, was something the country could not afford and was going on because Britain did not make enough use of scientists here. “Far too many of our scientists are frustrated. They don’t have the equipment they need. They are trying to do research on a shoestring. Private industry spends getting on for three times as much on advertising as it does on scientific research. Perhaps if the ratio were the other way round we would be forging ahead in the world.

He said that on February 27th last. But he ignored the fact that some of the eminent scientists now working in Britain originally came from abroad. He did not say whether his desire to keep British scientists in Britain also meant, for example, sending Sir Solly Zuckerman back to South Africa or Sir Howard Florey back to Australia, so that those countries could also do their bit of “forging ahead.’’ Inconvenient facts are no part of glorious visions of mythical capitalist prosperity.

They never were. The Promised Land has always been the sop with which working class unrest has been stifled, this is the Morning Post of April 5th, 1929, reporting a speech on unemployment by Mr. Baldwin:

If we have not conquered unemployment, we are in process of conquering it, and if there is no great disturbance shall complete its conquest. . . .

And this is the report of the Daily Mail of May 15th, 1929, of what Cabinet Minister Sir William Joynson Hicks had to say on the same subject:

There are now unmistakable signs of returning prosperity. Four years of wise and prudent administration are at last bringing their reward, and we are now definitely climbing out of the trough of industrial depression. . . .

We all know what these speeches were worth. We know that despite the fine words the unemployment figures kept climbing and the extreme hardship of the working class got deeper and harsher. We know that the vision of the Promised Land duped the workers in the ’Thirties and then faded in the flames of the 1939 War. The war was itseif an excuse for yet another vision of peace and prosperity which was to come out of the hardships endured in the defeating of German capitalism. Now the wartime visions have disappeared, to be replaced by others. And the working class are still being duped.

Perhaps one of the things which helps in this is the fact that many workers today have the things which, before the last war, were essential scenery in the Promised Land. Of all the households in this country, about 33 per cent. run a car; 46 per cent. have a washing machine; 82 per cent. have a television set. Only rich people had these things before the war; now they are wider spread. Does this mean, as the politicians claim, that the working class are prosperous? It is true that working class conditions change— they could hardly stand still — as productive techniques develop. But this is not to say that these conditions improve. The conditions and standards of the unemployed workers in the Thirties were different, and technically higher, than those of the Regency aristocrats; but who were the better off?

Needs

It is in this perspective that we must look at working class conditions today. The radio industry was bound to make a lot of television sets after the war and was equally bound to want to sell them as widely as possible. This means that the workers who once queued up to see poor films at their local cinema can now enjoy the same sort of drivel without leaving their own armchairs. People who once kept hiking and cycling clubs in a healthy condition can now jump into their cheap cars and drive straight to the nearest traffic jam, to pass the time breathing in the exhaust fumes of other cheap cars. Working class wives often need a washing machine because they have so little time to do the job the old way; a lot of their day is spent at work, earning the money to pay for the washing machine. If this is the Promised Land, was it worth the journey?

Let us spell it out simply. There are two types of people living under capitalism. One type owns land, factories, steamships, and so on, and gets enough-- and often very much more than enough- from these to live. The other type— there are a lot of people like this—do not own any of these things and to live they have to find somebody to employ them. This second type is the working class and it is they who take all the knocks which capitalism dishes out. They are the people who in the best of times must struggle to balance their budget and who in a slump can descend to a dreadfully low level. They are the people who suffer the strain of an insecure existence. So they are the people who may get impatient with capitalism; they are the people who must be distracted with the politicians’ visions of the Promised Land.

We all know the famous saying that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. But for the working class there is no arrival, because there is no end to their journey in capitalism, so they must travel without hope. Until, that is, they see through the whole shabby ruse and do something about it.

Ivan

Lord Hailsham, J. H. Thomas and King Canute (1963)

From the April 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

What connecting link is there between these three worthies, two dead and one living? The two first-named are easily bracketed. Lord Hailsham, Minister in a Tory Government is dealing with unemployment problems, thus re-enacting the role that J. H. Thomas took on for the Labour Government under Ramsay MacDonald in June, 1929. As Lord Privy Seal and Minister of Unemployment he was aided by Sir Oswald Mosley, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and George Lansbury, First Commissioner of Works: both of whom seem to have held the opinion that J. H. Thomas and other members of the Government were problems as difficult as unemployment.

The story is told in the biography, The Right Honourable, by H. R. S. Phillpot, published in 1932, in a chapter suitably called “Beaten by Unemployment.”

Unemployment was already a serious problem before the Labour Government was formed. Thomas and other Labour Party leaders had been campaigning up and down the country denouncing the apathy and callousness of Prime Minister Baldwin and promising to put things right if returned at the election. Thomas concentrated on unemployment, “made it his speciality, worked at it, talked of it and helped to devise plans to arrest its dreadful progress”

He argued that it would be a good idea to pay 10s. or 15s. a week to workers over 65 to get them to retire and make room for younger workers. He attacked armaments. Europe, he said, was like an armed camp. The nations were spending millions on armaments which, if they spent on production, would help to solve the problem of unemployment.”

Can he really not have noticed that this would simultaneously create unemployment among armament workers and soldiers? There are plenty of people as muddled today, so perhaps it was beyond him.

He favoured building the Channel Tunnel, and raising the school-leaving age to get 400,000 teenagers off the labour market, and when he became Minister he went travelling in Canada to pick up markets for British exports—in Canada he can hardly have failed to notice that there were other gentlemen trying to solve their own unemployment problem. He discussed the problem with spokesmen of the employers and the trade unions.

Some of his oratorial efforts read remarkably like statements made today: "Curing unemployment, he argued, would cost money, but no cost could be too great if by incurring it the progress of demoralisation could be stopped.”

But two years later as a member of the National Government he was supporting government economy measures to cut down the spending of money.

He and the Labour Government rejected the rival schemes for curing unemployment put forward by Lloyd George and the Liberals. Lloyd George (advised by Keynes, among others) favoured the idea of the Government raising big loans and spending the money on the schemes which would create jobs.

Thomas argued that this could only be a temporary measure, whereas what was wanted was something lasting: a complete overhaul and modernisation of the depressed industries to make them competitive.

But he didn’t get any results either short-term or long-term.

His biographer wrote: “The special duty entrusted to Mr. Thomas was that of curing unemployment. It was, of course, an impossible duty. Whether he realised how impossible it was nobody knows, but he undertook the task which eventually proved too much for him.”

When Thomas took on the job of wiping out unemployment it stood at 1,164,000. Six months later it had jumped to 1,344,000 and in 12 months, to 1,911,000. Two years from the start it exceeded 2,700,000.

Which brings us to King Canute. The legend credits him with the modest desire to convince his courtiers that even a crowned head could not command the tide to recede. If he had been a modern politician he would have ordered things differently. He need only have taken up position at high tide, just before the turn, and he could have got away with it.

The story is that that is just what J. H. Thomas thought he was doing. He is said to have consulted a well-known economic expert before taking on the job. and only took it on being assured that the economic tide was about to turn and unemployment would fall.

Perhaps Lord Hailsham will he luckier in his timing.

Edgar Hardcastle