The economics of the I.L.P. (1928)

From the November 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are hosts of well-meaning busy-bodies who set themselves out to educate the workers in Socialist knowledge, whose sole qualification for so doing is an entire absence of such knowledge. As Socialism is not an idea engendered in the brains of men out of nothing, but arises from the present system itself, a Socialist must have an understanding of the present system; particularly he must understand what is capital.

Strictly speaking, capital is money invested in, say, land, buildings, plant, machinery, tools, raw material, labour power, for the purpose of returning a surplus; and the only source from which this surplus can come is the unpaid labour of the wage worker. Capital, therefore, is wealth used to exploit wage workers.

A self-styled “Socialist,” writing in the “Northern Voice” (September 7th)—a Manchester I.L.P. journal—describes the primitive tools and possessions of savage man as capital. So much for his knowledge. The article is written in praise of Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty,” and the writer has the impudence to foist the old Capitalist proposal, “Taxation of land values,” on his readers as Socialist propaganda, and is apparently very pleased because that staunch supporter of Capitalism, Philip Snowden, “is devoting great efforts and time to the propagation of Henry George’s ideas.”

An article by “Jonkin” criticises a leading article of the “Daily Dispatch,” which apparently represented Socialism as dividing the incomes of the millionaires amongst the poor.

After showing that the editors of Capitalist newspapers write what they are paid to write and not what they think, “Jonkin” treats us to a sample of what he thinks :—

“If the nation is divided into poor and rich, the poor must for ever remain poor unless there is an alteration made in the distribution of the wealth which is produced. The rich are rich because they get a lot. The poor are poor because they get so little. And no power on this earth can remove the poverty of the many until they receive a larger share of the nation’s yearly income.”

Dear, dear ! The rich are rich because they are rich, and the poor are poor because they are poor, and will remain poor until they get more. So now we know all about it !

The Capitalists are rich because they own the means of wealth production, and consequently the resultant product; and the workers are poor because they possess nothing but their labour-power, which they are compelled to sell to the Capitalists in order to live. As the value of labour-power is determined by the cost of its reproduction, that is to say, the necessary food, clothing and shelter to enable the worker to maintain himself in a fit state to do his job, and reproduce his kind, increases in the wealth produced are of benefit, primarily, to the Capitalist class. The beauty of the article is that while the “Daily Dispatch” attacks Socialism as being a scheme for dividing the incomes of the wealthy amongst the poor, “Jonkin” apparently accepts that definition as being correct. Socialism is nothing of the kind.

In the same issue, Mrs. Bruce Glasier has two columns of sentimental twaddle; there is an article criticising the Tory Government for “muddling,” which may be true, but that is the masters’ affair, not ours.

The front page article by “Vox,” is good as a criticism of the “peace” policy of the T.U.C., but it will not prevent the I.L.P. from supporting these same people at the General Election.

The “‘Northern Voice” is simply an agent of Capitalism, side-tracking the workers from the only remedy to the ills they suffer, though the writers are probably unaware of the fact.

J. Lockwood

Editorial: Do we want a censor? (1928)

Editorial from the November 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question of censorship has recently been raised here and in Ireland. Discussion in the newspapers has been interesting chiefly as an indication of the confused thought of most of the “advanced” writers. The first case concerns a book — “The Well of Loneliness,” written by a woman novelist, Miss Radclyffe Hall. It deals with homosexuality.

Following an attack in the “Daily Express” and “Sunday Express,” the publishers offered a curious double defence. One that the book is a very proper book, and two, that they had published it at a high price in order to limit its circulation. They rashly then invited the Home Secretary to pass a “personal” opinion on the book, and promised to abide by his opinion. Sir William Joynson Hicks promptly replied that the book should be withdrawn from circulation, and it was.

One incidental result was a big jump in the price of copies already issued. A Gossip Writer in the “Daily Express” then related how a friend of his had made a few pounds by supplying the increased demand for what his paper denounced as obscene literature.

The book has subsequently been published abroad, and the publishers are contesting the action of the customs authorities in seizing imported copies.

Journalists of many schools of thought have protested, but none of the protests seen by the present writer has shown any clear understanding of the situation. Most of them have treated it as a dangerous, unnecessary, and narrow-minded abuse of his powers by the Home Secretary. They all proclaim their belief in what they call the “Freedom of the Press,” but none of them questions the necessity for a system of suppression.

They all say, in effect, “Yes, we think indecent, pornographic literature should be suppressed, but this book is not indecent. We think it proper for the police to prosecute the publishers of indecent books, but we object to a backstairs censorship by the officials acting under the orders of the Home Secretary.” The simple fact is that the case that can be made for the unfettered expression of opinion, is a case for the unfettered expression of “indecent” opinions, the publication of “pornographic” literature and the discussion of any and every subject under the sun. The extension of knowledge has been the result of controversy, of the clash of opinions and interests, both of individuals and classes. But it is not always the desire nor the interest of a ruling class to permit the extension or dissemination of certain knowledge.

Sir William Joynson-Hicks says (“Daily Herald,” 16th October) that:—

“there must be some limit to the freedom of what a man may write or speak in this great country of ours. That freedom, in my view, must be determined by the question as to whether what is written or spoken makes ‘one of the least of these little ones to offend’.”

Here we have Joynson-Hicks lining himself up with all his critics. They also accept the view that certain opinions must not be expressed or discussed. The only difference is that they do not see eye to eye with Joynson-Hicks as to where and how the limit should be fixed.

In Ireland a Censorship Bill is being introduced which will make it illegal to advocate birth control, and which, in addition, will set up a board to deal with any publication which is “against public morality.” The board is to consist of five censors nominated by the Government to hear complaints of any kind from recognised associations. If four out of five censors agree to condemn any publication, on any subject whatever, its suppression will follow. In effect this will place the censorship of literature largely in the the Catholic Truth Society, which has been instrumental in working up public opinion to induce an unwilling Government to introduce the Bill.

The Catholic Truth Society objects to the “Daily Herald,” the “Spectator,” and several English Sunday Newspapers which circulate in Ireland (“Daily News,” 10th September). The Catholic Truth Society is now demanding that the Board shall have many more members than five, in order to give full representation to the opinion of the country (“Manchester Guardian,” 17th October). This holds out really amusing prospects of the Irish authorities suppressing as obscene the journal which denounced Miss Radcliffe Hall’s book. If Joynson-Hicks is a bigot, the average Irish Catholic is far more bigotted.

The Socialist View.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is unique in keeping open platform for the expression of the point of view of opponents.

We oppose all forms of suppression, not in response to some abstract principle, but because we recognise that Socialist Society demands for its operation, as for its achievement, a responsible, intelligent population, used to drawing its own conclusions from the observation of facts and the weighing up of the arguments of opposing schools of thought. We only know our position to be correct because it survives continuous criticism. We do not deny that suppression may be immediately useful to the British or the Irish governing class. We do deny that it can serve the purpose of the Socialist movement.

On broader grounds we challenge the usefulness of suppressing such books as that of Radclyffe Hall. Inability to vitalize any problem except in its relation to their own class interests and class prejudices is the failing of ruling classes in general. They “solve” the problem of street games by punishing the youthful offenders (or their parents), instead of providing playing fields. They jail starving men who beg or steal, instead of providing them with food. They impose severe penalties for the drinking of alcohol, or the selling of it within certain hours, instead of finding out the causes (over-fatigue, malnutrition, etc.), which induce people to seek stimulants. They try to stop sexual perversions by prohibiting the discussion of the numerous accurate and inaccurate ideas on the subject instead of encouraging the search for specific causes. Their combination of class and religious prejudice prevents them from even examining the question from the rational standpoints which suggest that it is a problem of physical ill-health, or sex-starvation, or both.

The censorship of books like the “Well of Loneliness” is no more a remedy than the prohibition of unemployed demonstrations would be a solution of the problem of unemployment.

Letter: A Talk to Wives and Mothers. (1928)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Criticism and a Reply.

To the Editor, Socialist Standard.

Dear Sir,

We women are always being; taught by the Socialist Standard that the mistake made by all other parties except the Socialist Party was to evolve a scheme first in which all the evils of Capitalism were omitted and then to attempt to carry it out by the power of the vote. I refer to those schemes made without regard to the trends of social development. You call it Utopian, when systems of collectivism, collective eating, collective working, collective playing, etc., are worked out in the minds of men and then, because they seem “good” as opposed to the “bad” system of Capitalism are advocated as practical politics by those men.

You tell us that the Socialist believes that the normal development of Capitalism will provide the institutions which will be used by people after the revolution in the material basis of society has been brought about. As an example, it is explained that the growth of the Modern Credit System will produce the very means whereby centralised administration in the field of production will be carried on under Socialism —possibly.

It is surprising, then, to hear Mrs. Gilmac advocating the idea of collective cooking and eating as a reason for adopting Socialism. Surely she knows, as every other woman knows, whether among the “wives and mothers,” or among those women who are neither wives nor mothers, that “feeding the brute” is one of the pleasures of love. Woman is built for feeding; she does so continuously from the day she places a baby to her breast to the day she packs a man’s lunch-basket. When a woman marries the man she loves, some of that maternal attitude enters into her outlook upon him.

The future modification of family life does not imply that under Socialism we shall turn back to barbaric tribal groups with their ritual of collective cooking and eating. It seems more probable that under Socialism the family will be, though different from the modern family, essentially similar in that it will form on the basis of the mutual love of a woman and a man.

This follows because Socialism is the child of Capitalism and hence somewhat like its mother, because though a revolution means a radical change in the basis of society, it only occurs because, while the method of production is in one stage the other material factors in society evolve step by step until the disharmony between the foundation of society and its roof produces a collapse.

The family seems to evolve gradually; it is not fundamental, like private ownership of tools, etc. There is, therefore, no reason to suppose that communal cooking or communal eating will be any more practicable or desirable than it is to-day. To-day we occasionally go to a restaurant for a change from drab surroundings. It will not be necessary to escape from such surroundings under Socialism.

Mrs. Gilmac knows that it is not possible at restaurants to get always what one might want.

My husband likes his food cooked in a particular way sometimes, and it is generally a way which no restaurant could readily provide. Surely there must be thousands like him? Does Socialism entail the abolition of private home life? Mrs. Gilmac could not have been thinking of many thing’s when she said that we “prefer to enjoy ourselves collectively,” because that is absurd. To me and to millions of women, communal cooking is undesirable. We should be more pleased to know that our houses were to be made hygienic, with healthy windows, no corners nor dirt-collecting niches, and adequately supplied with electric cooking and cleaning apparatus, than to know that we could go to a place where it was all done for us. The trouble about feeding is that one cannot feed oneself sufficiently in three days to last three months. The best methods of collective industry may not apply to cooking, therefore.

I do not suggest that there will he no communal festivity under Socialism, my point is that systematising of any kind as regards the untouched future is rash and unscientific, since what will and will not be practicable is a question which can only be solved in its own time.

However, we are justified in provisionally prophesying the future on the grounds of present trends. And on those grounds I think that Socialism will leave us the family without the slavery conditions that make it unhappy, it will leave us women the pleasure of feeding those whom we love without the drudgery of cooking and serving in the environment of smutty fires, greasy ovens, dirty walls and stinking air.

The reason for working women to accept Socialism to-day is not for the sake of a possible communal cookery centre in the future, but to make a scientific fight against what is hurting us now.

To plead for posterity is sentimental and consistent with womanly feelings, but it is not Socialism.

We owe nothing to posterity. It is of ourselves we must think.

Nevertheless, it is nice to know that the “S.S.” is devoting some of its valuable pages to the women.

Yours truly,

Mrs Betts.

The Reply.

The trend of social development is towards having meals away from home and the breaking up of the old-fashioned hearth generally. Therefore my suggestions were not Utopian, but quite in keeping with present tendencies, and were an appeal to the housewife to hasten the day when she would be able to take full advantage of freeing herself from her round of unnecessary toil.

The mistake some make is to endeavour to carry out Utopian schemes that are contrary to the advantages made possible through Capitalism,

For example, we do not call it Utopian to improve on the partly existing schemes of collective activity. Utopian refers to ideas out of touch with reality.

The method of cooking and distributing food in vogue when Socialism replaces Capitalism may be much more centralised than we, at present, can imagine, just as the present manner of producing and delivering food differs from that of a hundred years ago. This is shown by the selection of prepared foods now in common use. It is no longer “natural” to bake our own bread when it is so easily obtainable from the bakery, and so with many other things which at one time seemed “natural” for the housewife to do.

The “natural” pleasure of love, that of “feeding the brute,” ceases with the ceasing of putting a baby to the breast. The rest is a matter of circumstance.

Surely the majority of women, if they were economically free would prefer to dine out with “him” than spend much unnecessary time preparing meals, etc.,—if they think about it at all? Just as she wishes for relief from the “natural” duties connected with the constant attention to children.

Why it is supposed to be “natural” for every woman to prefer home duties any more than for every man to be an engineer rather puzzles me.

We are so steeped in tradition that we imagine that what is the outcome of woman’s bondage or man’s economic condition is a natural function.

As to collective action, if to eat and cook collectively is bad because it was done during barbarism, then surely it is also barbaric to eat at all. Why eat? Why eat in restaurants? All relics of barbarism are not worse than the present habits.

The future form of family life may be somewhat like its present Capitalist form. Unions of short duration are becoming general, as is shown by the divorce courts, etc. Another instance of economic conditions where free love is only for those who can afford it. The mutual love of a man and a woman, even freed from the present economic dependence, may not last for a lifetime.

The remarks about the family not being fundamental like private ownership are not at all clear. What do they mean? What is fundamental? Is not the family?

The family evolves along with economic conditions, and is now, in many respects, different from the family of old, as is instanced by the growing tendency to dine out, to travel, etc., to develop industrially. Woman’s position since the War started has shown that that was, need not always be. If she is wise she will endeavour to take steps to free herself of unnecessary drudgery instead of imagining that it is natural for her to be cooped up in solitude ; a thousand mothers cooking in a thousand rooms, and washing thousands of saucepans. As to our critic’s husband, I hardly know whether to take these remarks seriously. If he cannot get his particular dish at present-day restaurants, perhaps under a more sane system of society he may have more leisure to wait for its preparation, unless it is so appetising that others will also require it and it will always be at hand and involve much less labour if done collectively.

But joking aside—of course, if women prefer to spend so much time preparing food, etc., and all that it involves (and may involve even under Socialism), she would no doubt be allowed to do it all herself. But I was suggesting the possibility of collective cooking and distribution of food as being in harmony with collective production generally, with a view to reducing all work where possible and leave both sexes more leisure.

Under such conditions a woman may be able to develop other talents, she may possess to further advantage, whether it is a “masculine” or “feminine” occupation.

“Does Socialism entail the abolition of private home life?” our critic asks. Personally I hope so, the present sort, anyway, since to me, and to many others, it is too private for the woman.

I happen to be, like most of us, a social being, and would as well dine out as stay at home preparing meals and thereby losing the opportunity of social intercourse, of travel, concerts, etc., etc., although I am prepared to do my quota of work while others prepare my food, or vice versa. This need not necessarily mean giving up private home life, but will enable us to make it a matter of choice instead of necessity.

Public restaurants are very much taking woman’s “natural” job out of her hands already, and she has not risen up in arms against it, and it is not “natural” for the “elite” to cook their husbands’ dinners, which seems to suggest this cooking, etc., is an economic problem. Does it not?

My critic, having made definite remarks about the future mode of family life, etc., has herself seen that to do so is rash and unscientific.

However, if I may prophesy provisionally, I can do so on the basis of present trends—i.e., as I said before, not home¬-made bread, etc., but collective cooking and collective dining, perhaps.

Collective schooling—board and otherwise, are already the thing, so why not collective nurseries, laundries, etc?

The reason for women to adopt the principles of Socialism is to get the best the community can offer, so that if a few can prepare meals for the many while the latter are doing other work, then communal cooking may be part of the scientific scheme.

The remarks about posterity, etc., are strange, coming from one so concerned about family life. To plead for posterity is to endeavour to improve the lot of our descendants, which is in accordance with human instinct. Sentiment in the sense of feeling is a part of our general make-up, masculine as well. Were it not so we would scarcely put up with the struggle so complacently, but would “let our children,” to quote Heine, “go beg for bread.” But do we?

(Mrs.) H. Gilmac.

“Modernism” v Materialism, (1928)

From the November 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

OR THE SKY PILOTS AND THE CREW.

In our pamphlet “Socialism and Religion” (p. 23) we make the claim that, “In contrast with science, . . . religion decreases in volume, cohesion and definiteness.” Evidence in support of this view was amply provided at the recent Church Congress at Cheltenham, and it is significant that whereas the Capitalist Press treated the confabulations of the British Association with deferential respect, the outpourings of the Episcopalian “soul” met with somewhat critical, if not impatient, patronage.

The differences between the Anglo-Catholics and the Evangelicals, serious enough in themselves, paled into insignificance beside the virulent attack upon the “Modernists” by the English Church Union; which prompts the reflection that it is only a few hundred years ago since respectable pillars of society such as Dean Inge and the Bishop of Birmingham would have been burned at the stake by their Christian brethren.

WHAT IS MODERNISM ?

Canon B. H. Streeter, one of its champions, states that “Modernists are a group of persons who look round on a civilisation that is likely to perish for lack of a religion, and wish to offer it a religion that is intellectually a possible one.”

“Compulsory education has created a position in regard to religion which is really new. In all ages among the educated few a certain amount of sceptical rationalism has flourished ; but heretofore the mass of the uneducated has always taken for granted the existence of a God or gods, and therefore the necessity for some kind of religious observance. The new thing in the modern situation is the spread of the spirit of criticism and enquiry … to the masses of the people. … In their minds Christianity is associated with a political and economic status quo, which many view with hostility, and few with more than tolerance. It is the religion professed by classes with whom they are in constant economic conflict.”

Thus the Modernist appears to be sufficient of a materialist to recognise the existence of the class struggle and that the fate of religion is bound up therewith. Canon Streeter, however, concludes as follows :—

“What I wish to insist is that under modern conditions, if the Church desires to speak to the world with the voice of authority, it must first compel outsiders to recognise that there is within the Church a body of investigators who are in no way bound to defend established positions, but are free to follow truth” (“The Church of England Newspaper.” p. 18, 5/10/28).

Just how far the Modernists are prepared to follow truth may be gathered from the speeches of the prelates above referred to. Bishop Barnes is convinced, not only that “Darwin conclusively demonstrated man’s similarity with the rest of creation,” but that “all the higher faculties of man had their beginnings in lower forms of life.”

“We cannot, he says, separate mind and body ; they are two aspects of a single unity. How then, it may be asked, can we continue to believe in the existence of human personality after bodily death ? I would answer that our belief …. is bound up with our conception of the nature of God. . . . We cannot believe that he will allow anything of value to be destroyed. . . . How man’s personality will be preserved we cannot say.”

If the right reverend gentleman had stopped here we could forgive many Christians for losing their tempers with him. Few materialists have put matters more bluntly. Even Marx and Engels, summarising Hobbes in “The Holy Family,” could only say, “It is impossible to separate thought from matter that thinks. . . . We cannot know anything about the existence of God.” (Quoted by Engels in his Introduction to “Socialism : Utopian and Scientific.”) But the Bishop is merciless.

He proceeds :—

“A generation ago it was customary to say that Heaven was a state and not a place, the implication being that the life after death was temporal but not spatial. Einstein has, however, demonstrated that space and time form a single complex which we break up, arbitrarily, in our thought. We have no right to postulate that in the world to come part of this complex will be destroyed while the other part remains intact. In fact, with regard to time and space in the Kingdom of Heaven very much the same difficulties arise as with regard to body and personality. In neither case can natural science give effective guidance” (“Church of England Newspaper,” p. 12, 5/10/28).

Comically enough, the Bishop’s partner in crime, Dean Inge, tries to use this same demonstration of Einstein’s as a proof of the “uncertainty” of science. He refers to “old pre-suppositions of scientific thought, which have been almost unchallenged since Newton and Descartes, are being assailed from all sides.” Yet, nearly forty years ago, Engels pointed out in the above quoted preface that Kant and Laplace had superseded Newton’s “eternal system” by an evolutionary conception, which Darwin supplemented in biology, thus exploding Descartes as Bishop Barnes shows.

The Dean also comes to grief over his generalisations upon Evolution, which he assures us “cannot have created our awareness of itself.” Yet, as his colleague, already quoted, points out, the highest faculties of man have evolved, and it is by these faculties that the idea of evolution is framed.

Again, he tells us that “God can in no sense be a product of Evolution,” yet further on admits that “Religion itself no doubt is evolving with those who possess it.” Neither Dean nor Bishop endeavour to offer any objective evidence of the existence of God. They are too consistent to their scientific education for that.

The individual mind, like the individual body, dissolves at death. For it, so far as we know, “absolute” and “relative” alike lose interest, but the world goes on. That which does not change is the process of change.

The Dean concludes “that Evolution is only the method by which the Eternal God carries out most of His purposes in the world. … I do not think that the existence or attributes of God are involved in it at all.”

Such a profound philosopher should have recognised long ago that every particular attribute is finite and implies its opposite, as whiteness is opposed to and excludes blackness, goodness badness, and so forth. All our knowledge is based upon the evidence of our senses; in other words, our minds are inseparable from organic bodies in a material world. An unchecked or disordered imagination can evolve all manner of fantasies which do not correspond with external reality. They may be real enough to those who indulge in them or are their victims. They may lead to actions, but the devotional observances of the Christian are no more proof of the object of his faith than the similar observances of the pagan and the savage before him.

The dipsomaniac who sees variegated livestock on the walls has just as much evidence of the soundness of his convictions as the religious fanatic. The important difference lies in the social character of religion. In its primitive form it expressed man’s desire to control his environment by efforts of his imagination, and its evolution is explicable only by the evolution of the environment.

This evolution has harnessed man’s mind to the task of production. Instead of trying to rule Nature by magic, mankind has learnt to utilise Nature’s own forces. Scope for the imagination has been found in the realm of invention, and as fast as man follows this line of action he forsakes the dead ritual of the past.

By changing his surroundings man has changed himself. The superstitious savage has gone. In his place stands the scientific worker.

The process, however, is far from complete. As yet, science has grasped only the technical side of social life.

The organisation of society itself on rational lines awaits the social revolution, i.e., the disarmament and dispossession of the Capitalist ruling class. It is in the interests of this class that the Church exists. Belief in God and respect for ruling-class “authority” go hand in hand.

The revolutionary workers have no use for a creed which is the mere ghost of past social life. They require a clear outlook, free from superstition of every kind, from the crude and gross to the elaborate and refined. Hence the subtleties of modernist parsons fail to lure us back to the fold. “God’s in His Heaven?” All right ! Let Him stop there ! We want the world for the workers.

Eric Boden

AUKUS-Pocus (2022)

From the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Back in 2016 the Australian government entered into a contract with France to supply twelve new submarines to replace its existing fleet. Towards the end of last year, they abandoned this and switched to a new plan to work with the UK and the US in building nuclear-powered subs instead. France was of course not pleased about this, and their foreign minister described it as ‘a stab in the back’.

This is not just an argument about submarines, as there is a new ‘defence’ alliance between Australia, the UK and the US, under the name of AUKUS, which is also likely to cover aircraft and other military technology. It follows from the Defence Trade Cooperation Treaties, also covering the same three countries, signed in 2007, which are intended to make trade in defence articles and ‘services’ more straightforward. These alliances are examples of mini-lateralism, which involves small numbers of countries joining hands and arms in an agreement. These are seen as easier to negotiate than larger multi-lateral agreements, and also more likely to lead to consensus among the participants.

AUKUS is particularly aimed at China, which is seen as having too much power and influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Australia is viewed as a reliable American ally, being the only country that has been involved in every war the US has fought since 1917, including Vietnam. UK industry will benefit, with contracts already having been placed with Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, though it is not as yet clear where most of the production work would take place. But clearly it will be the US that stands to gain the most, partly just in economic terms, but also as far as global strategy and ‘security’ is concerned.

In July last year, the UK government published a policy paper ‘Global Britain in a Competitive Age’. This focused on a ‘vision for 2030’, in response to, inter alia, ‘geopolitical and geoeconomic shifts, such as China’s increasing international assertiveness and the growing importance of the Indo-Pacific’. Post-Brexit ideas of a role on the world stage for the UK no doubt play a part too, with a return to the ‘east of Suez’ area after several decades. Overall, AUKUS reflects the UK’s ‘tilt to the Indo-Pacific’, as crucial to British capitalism’s economy, security and global ambition.

AUKUS must also be seen in the context of another, less formal, alliance, known as the Quad, which covers the US, Australia, India and Japan. Officially the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, this was restarted in 2017 after a hiatus, and has included military exercises. There is also the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), established in May this year, with fourteen countries participating (including the US, of course, also Australia, India and Japan, among others). Among its aims is ‘supply chain resilience’, to ensure as far as possible the availability of raw materials and other supplies.

Part of the aim of all this is to control as far as possible the vital seaway of the Malacca Strait, between Malaysian islands and Sumatra. This has for centuries been the main sea route between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and a large part of world sea-borne goods passes through it, with the extremely busy port of Singapore located there. Oil in particular is a prominent part of this trade, as the strait is part of the shortest route between the Persian Gulf and Asian markets. At its narrowest, the strait is less than two miles wide, so it is a potentially crucial bottleneck.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the agreement’s signatories were adopting an ‘obsolete cold war zero sum mentality’. In reality the Cold War has never gone away, in the sense that capitalist states still go in for alliances and military preparations, and some writers refer to the last couple of decades as the ‘Second Cold War’. AUKUS is just the largest instantiation of this. And as Ukraine and other examples show, there are real on-the-ground wars too. In a world beset by global heating and a pandemic, capitalism has plenty of other priorities.

Paul Bennett

Bird’s Eye View: Shelley: In His Way, One Of Us (2022)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shelley: In His Way, One Of Us

A century ago, this journal carried an article so titled (Socialist Standard, September 1922). Two centuries have passed along with generations of socialists and other workers since Percy Bysshe Shelley’s untimely demise. What would he make of the world today? There can be little doubt that for all the scientific advances made since his death he would soon realise that this world remains theirs not ours, and our ‘great awakening’ has yet to take place. Like Friedrich Engels and William Morris, he ‘… played his part in the great awakening of men, just as Marx played his, as we play ours, as all our readers can play theirs. The scientist, philosopher, and singer, age by age, so far as the development of Society would permit, have contributed to the freeing of our thoughts. They have given us ecstacy and knowledge. And the selfish ruling class cannot understand this. Ecstacy and knowledge, music and wisdom mean as little to such people as Gallipoli and Russia or work and wages. Shelley liked such people much as we do; much as G.B.S. likes roast pork and a bottle of Bass.’

‘The Rights of Universal Citizenship’

‘GBS’ was the playwright, vegetarian and teetotaller George Bernard Shaw. He is still wrongly viewed as a socialist and supported capitalist conflict (during WWI he declared ‘England is a guardian of the world’s liberty’) and in the pamphlet Fabianism and the Empire advocated the right of a capitalist state to acquire territory which it may consider backward, in the name of efficiency. He constantly beat the imperialist drum for bigger armaments; advocated a large army and military conscription. By contrast, Shelley in his Declaration of Rights stated ‘Man has no right to kill his brother, it is no excuse that he does so in uniform. He only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder’ (Article 19 , 1812).

We read: ‘Latvia’s defense ministry said on Monday that the Baltic country is bringing back its military draft to ward off a Russian attack — a move prompted by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine’ (yahoo, 11 July).

There is no doubt that Shelley would oppose conscription. And stand with the workers in Russia and Ukraine seeking to avoid working as paid murderers.

‘Danila Davydov said he left Russia within weeks of the Kremlin sending troops into Ukraine because he feared having to fight in a war he doesn’t support. The 22-year-old left St. Petersburg and is now working in Kazakhstan. “We feared President Putin would declare a mobilization and then everyone, young and old, would be called up to the army. I absolutely didn’t want to go and fight”. Davydov is among what some lawyers and rights advocates say is an increased number of young Russian men looking to avoid the country’s mandatory military service since the conflict with Ukraine, which Russia calls a “special military operation”, started in late February. That is despite the risk of facing fines or up to two years in prison. In Russia, military service is mandatory for young men aged 18 to 27’ (yahoo, 8 July).

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away’

(from Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias, 1819).

‘There is No God’

PBS had no lack of imagination, yet it is doubtful that he could envision a world of war and want still existing when one of peace and plenty had long been possible. Even Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, would likely be shocked by the very real threat of Armageddon. The Shelleys were almost certainly spared nightmares of the MAD contrast between death by exotic weapons or stoning:

‘A 20-year-old woman in Sudan has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, marking the first known case in the northeast African country for a decade… Iran has the world’s highest rate of execution by stoning and the Middle Eastern country regularly makes headlines for its employment of the practice, which came into force after the 1979 revolution. The Library of Congress believes that around 150 people were stoned to death in Iran between 1980 and 2009, although the reported numbers are probably lower than the actual figures’ (The Week, 14 July).

PBS by contrast thought ‘A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration’ (Queen Mab, 1813). His blasphemous freethinking got him expelled from Oxford University. And still today such thoughts can result in the death penalty in thirteen countries. For PBS, ‘Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred’ (The Necessity of Atheism, 1811). He would have been fascinated by our current understanding of human biology. We are an evolutionary hodgepodge made largely of bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea. Our eyes see less than 1 percent of the light spectrum, and retinas detach easily – even the humble shrimp has better vision. We are also fitted with sub-optimal plumbing (breathing, eating, excretory and reproductive) and, yes, programmed to die – unlike Turritopsis dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish.

‘The Masque of Anarchy’

We wasted the last century and unless we act, capitalism will likely lay waste to this one. So:

‘Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number —

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you —

Ye are many — they are few’

                                                    (1819).

Cooking the Books: Fairy-tale economics (2022)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trussonomics – what has also been dubbed ‘fairy-tale economics’ – teaches, even preaches, that if you cut taxes on businesses, they will have more profits and so will invest more, increasing growth and average living standards.

Cancelling the increase scheduled next year in corporation tax from 19 to 25 percent and reducing employers’ National Insurance contributions will increase the amount of retained profits directly and immediately. Cutting other taxes and a corresponding amount of government spending (for instance, as floated, the reduction in the pay of public sector workers outside London and not giving out any more ‘hand-outs’ to people to help them try to cope with the soaring cost of living) would have the same effect but indirectly and over a longer period.

In recognising the importance of profits for ‘growth’, Truss is being realistic enough. Capitalism is a profit-driven system and does run on profits. Every government must take this into account and give priority to profit-making.

Where she departs from reality for fairyland is in imagining that, just because you allow capitalist enterprises to retain more of their profits, that will make them invest more. This is wrong both in theory and in the light of experience. Businesses will invest only if they think this will bring them more profit; if they don’t calculate that it will, then they won’t invest. And governments can do nothing to change that.

‘Growth’ is the increase in the amount produced in one year compared with previous years. It is conventionally measured by changes in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Most of this – over 80 percent – is consumed in the course of the year by individuals or governments. The rest is invested in expanding or replacing productive capacity. Because GDP includes replacing the wear and tear of existing buildings, machines and equipment (depreciation), the investment part is not an accurate measure of the increase in productive capacity. Net Domestic Product (NDP), which excludes this, is more accurate, the investment part of which is near to what Marx meant by the ‘capital accumulation’ – the accumulation of profits as more capital – which he saw as the driving force of capitalism rather than growth as such.

Fairy Liz imagines that, after cutting taxes on profits, she can wave her magic wand and, hey presto, enterprises will invest and the economy grow. They tried this in France in the late 70s and early 80s. It didn’t work.

According to L’Express (8 September 1979), referring to Raymond Barre who was then the centre-right (the French equivalent of the Tories, if you like) prime minister:

‘One of the prime minister’s disappointments is that the improvement in the finances and profits of enterprises has not produced the expected boom in investment. The bosses are more and more reluctant to take risks. “Give us the money”, they said, “and we will invest.” Today, with their finances in a healthy state, they add “Give us the markets”. You can’t make an ass that isn’t thirsty drink. A head of an enterprise does not buy machines without outlets for the products they make.’

Barre failed because no government can conjure up the markets on which to sell what expanding capital investment could produce. Truss will fail too for the same reason, especially as the IMF, the Bank of England and many others are predicting a world recession over the next couple of years.

If these forecasts are right, what will happen is that businesses will say ‘Thank you very much. We can use the extra profits to increase the dividends we pay our shareholders. If you want us to invest them, give us the markets’. That, the government can’t do. So, no fairy-tale ending.

Getting the betrayal in first (2022)

From the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘One day, it seems, Tony Blair is likely to be in Number Ten and, therefore almost certainly, will be in confrontation with public sector workers. He has, in Neil Kinnock’s rueful phrase, got his betrayal in first’ (Andrew Marr, Independent, 19 April 1995).

Marr was writing about Tony Blair when Leader of the Opposition, but he could just as well have been writing about Sir Keir Starmer today.

We can’t claim that Labour leaders have learnt nothing from the experience of the various Labour governments that there have been. Elected to power on promises to improve the lot of workers and to help trade unions achieve this, every single Labour government has ended up opposing strikes and insisting that priority be given to profit-making (some have done worse, imposing wage freezes and prosecuting strikers). In that sense they have betrayed the unions who supported them and workers who voted for them.

Starmer sees himself as the Prime Minister of a ‘government in waiting’ and knows that, in government, he too will have to resist wage demands that threaten profit-making. In sacking one of his shadow cabinet for going on a picket line without permission, he was sending out a clear message that he was fully prepared to do this.

Sharon Graham, the General Secretary of Unite, reacted by declaring that the sacking incident showed that ‘the Labour Party was becoming more and more irrelevant to working people’. But was it ever relevant? The question that should be asked is not ‘What has the Labour Party done for us’ but ‘What has the Labour Party done to us?’

Starmer is going to behave in office as previous Labour Prime Ministers have. So what did they do to us?

In 1964 after what the Labour Party called ‘thirteen years of Tory misrule’ they got in and Harold Wilson became Prime Minister. His government started by honouring some of its promises. It abolished prescription charges and a national plan was drawn up. Then an economic crisis broke out. The pound was devalued; it maintained its face-value in people’s pockets but its purchasing power diminished due to the prices of imported goods going up. Prescription charges were re-imposed and the national plan became a scrap of paper.

From then on, it was downhill all the way as these contemporary headlines illustrate (Ray Gunther was the Minister of Labour and George Brown the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs):

• Mr Gunther Condemns Dock Move by Strikers (Times, 20 October 1964)
• Britain’s Attitudes Outdated—Premier. Country ‘cannot afford strikes’ (Guardian, 25 February 1965)
• Profit Motive as Test of Efficiency. Mr Brown’s Reply to Directors. “Government Not Anti-Business” (Times, 22 May 1965)
• Wilson Hits at Rail Go-Slow (Observer, 18 July 1965)
• Wage Restraint Vital in 1966—Premier (Financial Times, 1 January 1966)
• Folly To Press For Big Wage Rises—Chancellor (Financial Times, 18 May 1966)
• Ministers Hint At Permanent Pay Curb (Observer, 18 September 1966)
• Government Embraces Profitability (Guardian, 23 November 1966)
• Standard of Living ‘Must Fall’. Mr Gunther on Last Chance (Times, 29 March 1968)

While the need for profits was accepted, wage demands were opposed. The Labour MP, Harold Lever (later a minister and then a Lord) explained very cogently why:

‘Labour’s economic plans are not in any way geared to more nationalisation; they are directed towards increased production on the basis of the continued existence of a large private sector. Within the terms of the profit system it is not possible, in the long run, to achieve sustained increases in output without an adequate flow of profit to promote and finance them. The Labour leadership know as well as any businessman that an engine which runs on profit cannot be made to move faster without extra fuel’ (Observer, 3 April 1966).

This is still the situation today. A future Labour government under Starmer will have to work (as one under Corbyn would have had to) within the same framework of ‘the commanding heights of the economy’ being in the hands of private profit-seeking enterprises, whose necessity to make a profit must be recognised. And will be.

The Wilson Labour government was voted out of office in 1970 but Labour came back in 1974, briefly under Wilson, then under James Callaghan. The 1974-79 Labour government was just as much a disaster, provoking the notorious 1978/9 Winter of Discontent. Troops (let alone agency workers) were called out to break strikes by Glasgow refuse collectors (1975), air traffic control assistants (1977), firefighters (1977), naval dockyard workers (1978), and, finally, NHS ambulance workers (1978).

In 1979, as a reaction, the Tories under Thatcher were elected and 18 years of Tory rule followed. Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party in 1994 and immediately set about making it ‘electable’. This involved abandoning even the long-term paper commitment to changing private capitalism into state capitalism (Clause IV) and fully accepting the profit-seeking market economy. As Blair told the Financial Times (11 June, 1994):

‘We want a dynamic market economy. It is not merely that I, as it were, with hesitation acknowledge that this is the way we have to go. I say that it is positively in the public interest to have a dynamic market economy.’

Labour, under Blair, was returned to office in 1997 and, external conditions being relatively favourable, did not make such a mess of presiding over the operation of capitalism as Wilson and Callaghan had. The main reforms that the Blair Labour government introduced were constitutional rather than economic and so did not impinge on the operation of the profit-driven capitalist economy. The anti-union laws enacted under Thatcher were not repealed and are still in force today.

There is no reason whatsoever to suppose that a Starmer Labour government would be any different from previous Labour governments. The reason why these failed and ended up giving priority to profits over wages was not because its ministers were dishonest or incompetent or not resolute enough. It was because they had set themselves an impossible task. The very nature of capitalism means that it cannot work, or be made to work, in the interest of those obliged to work for wages. It is a profit-making system that can work only in the interest of the profit-takers, whose source of income is the unpaid labour of the wage-working class. Prior to the Blair government, Labour leaders had to learn this the hard way. Starmer, like Blair, knows that, for the reasons explained by Harold Lever in 1966, a future Labour government would have to let capitalism work this way. At least he is being candid about his intentions. Workers and unions should take heed.

Adam Buick

Starmer’s plan for British capitalism (2022)

From the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is your periodic (though unnecessary) reminder that the membership of the Labour Party elected as their leader – and thus chief spokesperson – a man who has accepted a knighthood. This speaks volumes about Keir Starmer’s attitude to the existing state of affairs, and of the political commitment and understanding of Labour Party members. He is committed to retaining and defending the existing state of society.

On 25 July this year he gave what, doubtless, his publicity team would consider a keynote speech. After the usual political lambasting of his opponents, he delivered his stunning prescription:

‘To give Britain the fresh start it needs, we need a new approach. The goal is straightforward – to maximise the contribution we all make to national prosperity. Every business, every person, every community.’

This is very much going back to the mantra of New Labour and using the state to co-ordinate and promote capitalist agendas. He also makes it clear that he is acting in the name of capitalism in general, because the problem has been:

‘The best of British business is the best in the world. But we have geared our whole economy to delivering only for those firms.’

That is, that only some capitalists are benefitting at the expense of others. This has the neat advantage of playing into the essentially apolitical attack line about Tory corruption, absent which, prosperity for all may rain down. It is also notable because it ideologically subordinates economic activity to ‘the national interest.’ As he says: ‘A strong national economy needs everyone making the best contribution they can.’ And ‘[L]ow growth countries are weaker at standing up for the national interest.’

Starmer sees it as a collective national effort, where the citizens work for ‘the nation’, but just that the citizens should be justly rewarded, and ‘hard work’ made to pay. Human freedom and treating people as ends in themselves is a long way from his imagination. So, he says:

‘To do all that we need three things: Growth. Growth. And Growth. That’s why I have told the Shadow Cabinet that every policy they bring forward will be judged by the contribution it makes to growth and productivity.’

A quick check on Wikipedia gives the following definition: ‘Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy over a certain period of time.’ That is, Starmer wants us to create ever more value. Above all else he is channelling the spirit of capital itself, value as the end in itself, not people; and we are all to be subordinated to that impossible voracious demand.

This is, of course, the essential social-democrat position, seeing themselves as removing the inefficiencies of the market system in order to save it and generate productivity. This saves them a lot of trouble, as they are able to argue against redistribution on the basis that a small (or even smaller) share of a bigger pie can be bigger than a bigger share of a smaller pie. It leaves them relying on the market system to generate increasingly cheap goods.

This comes with a price, though, as it centralises a certain blackmail: the owners of capital get to say that if they don’t get their profit, no-one else will get any benefits. Indeed, this claim has become a central mantra of Tory politicians of late, that social benefits depend on economic growth. In this topsy-turvy ideological world, capitalists are able to project themselves as wealth creators, who simply give out the jobs and benefits on which we all depend.

In the hands of Labour Party right-wingers, this is coupled with the liberal philosopher John Rawls’ notion:

‘That social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that “they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society” i.e. an unequal distribution of wealth or other resources can be just when it maximizes the benefit to those who have the lowest allocation of resources – the Maximin theory?’ (Link).

So, growth and wealth at the top should be encouraged and help should be targeted at the poorest. Given that without that growth they would have nothing, this allows the argument that letting some people generate huge amounts of personal wealth benefits more than the alternatives.

So Starmer, in his speech promises:

1. ‘We will be financially responsible.
2. We will be distinctively British.
3. We will work in partnership with business.
4. We will re-energise communities and spread economic power.
5. We will refocus our investment on boosting productivity.’

Leaving aside the blithering nonsense about being distinctively British, whatever that means — that’s just branding — financial responsibility means Labour will avoid interfering with property rights, by taxing, borrowing, and using resources within capitalist rules. He even invokes the ‘magic money tree’ to emphasise that they will be responsible, and to distance himself from his predecessor. He emphasises:

‘Modern industrial strategy isn’t about growing the size of the state – it’s about what the state does.’

So, partnership means partnership with, not state direction of, business; targeted support to help businesses grow, grow, grow. Interestingly he uses the term ‘mission-driven partnership’ which is suggestive of the ideas of the economist Mariana Mazzucatto, whose work John McDonnell also referenced as a source for his economic ideas (Link).

She notes that the state is entrepreneurial, and responsible for a lot of long-term investment in the economy; and advocates mission-based projects, akin to the moon landings, where the state can focus economic activity. This is suggestive that Starmer is triangulating talking to the right, while preparing some more Brownite interventionism, but all of this is ultimately dependent upon the grace and protection of the handful of people who own the economy. Ultimately, his plan for capital is about making the system work the way it does in its own imagination. It’s an ideological fantasy exercise.

Pik Smeet

Social nature (2022)

Book Review from the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ultrasocial. The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest for a Sustainable Future. By John Gowdy. Cambridge University Press. 2021. xv+165pp.

This is a book supporting the view, as many others have recently, that human nature is not an entirely fixed phenomenon but largely an expression of the material and social situation in which human beings find themselves. It draws upon a vast range of sources to show that, until, around 10,000 years ago when we started to adopt settled agriculture, human beings lived largely cooperative and egalitarian existences as hunter-gatherers with mutual aid and empathy as the social and cultural norm and without destabilising their habitats. The transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture was not, however, as the author points out, a rapid, simple or inevitable change. Rather it was a long-term, incremental process taking place for different reasons in different areas. It was ‘stumbled into’ in a sort of ‘tyranny of small decisions’ for what seemed like practical reasons at the time, but with unanticipated consequences. Yet wherever it did take serious hold, there was no going back and it inevitably led to stratified societies in which a small number controlled the surpluses that were produced and ruled over the vast majority whose lives were made poorer and less secure than before (‘Human society made a critical leap from small-scale cooperation to top-down coordination and coercion’). This led to the development of hierarchies, belief systems to support them and condition their subjects and, eventually, the states that dominate the world today with the elite few possessing most of the wealth.

But Gowdy goes even further than others in arguing that, with the advent of agriculture, human society not only broke away from its purpose of serving its individual members and groups to eventually become what it is today, but embarked on becoming an impersonal ‘superorganism’, which today we see in its most advanced form, the global market, subordinating the interests of the humans who exist under it to its own survival and furtherance. To this ‘autonomous’ superorganism he attaches the label ‘ultrasocial’, in that it operates very much like a huge colony of ants or termites in which the requirements of the whole take precedence over the individuals within it. Unlike ant and termite societies, however, the human superorganism exhibits gross social and material inequality, even if this is often justified as a necessary consequence of the ‘freedom’ of the individual in a ‘free market’. A further consequence of this, the author argues, is rapacious environmental degradation and a catastrophic loss of nature, since no group, state or individual is in a position to prevent the interest of the ‘superorganism’ from dominating and in modern capitalism that means profit is always the ultimate goal whatever the effect on the biosphere. He holds out no hope, therefore, of capitalism being able to regulate itself to prevent ongoing environmental decline and eventually disaster but does hope that such an occurrence will eventually lead to a lifestyle for the humans left after that catastrophe that is closer to the kind of society that existed for the vast majority of humankind’s 300,000 years’ history before it was put paid to by agriculture, states serving the interest of controlling elites, and capitalist production (‘the commodification of people and nature’).

Gowdy’s arguments about all this are complex, many-faceted and multi-layered and it is difficult to do justice to such a ‘grand narrative’ in a short review. So it may seem churlish to highlight certain elements that are less than convincing. But it needs to be said that, despite his pessimism about the ultimate future of humans within a system in which he sees us as trapped, like cogs in a wheel, and his reference to the futility of ‘limited measures within a business-as-usual framework’, the author does propose palliative solutions (‘ a minimal bioeconomic programme’) which he considers might show the way to at least less harsh social arrangements than exist at present and enable us, as he puts it, ‘to start down a new evolutionary path compatible with basic human needs and our place in nature’. These include, perhaps predictably, various social reforms such as guaranteed basic income, tax changes, maximum limit to income and wealth, old-age security, etc. While perhaps reflective of laudable sentiments, these, we would argue – even if they were somehow or in some form to be implemented – would clearly make little impact on the gross inequality that the profit system, portrayed so well by the author himself, inevitably brings with it. He also falls into the ‘overpopulation’ trap suggesting that the earth cannot, whatever the circumstances, sustain the current and increasing population. And he does not consider – and has perhaps never heard – the socialist remedy. We are referring here to majority political action via the ballot box to take control of the system of production and distribution of goods and services and then to operate it in a sustainable, environmentally sound way. This would have to mean harnessing the human propensity to cooperate on the basis of need not profit in a moneyless, wageless society of free access, arguably with the same kind of social relations as – if on a more secure level of technology than – the hunter-gatherer societies that Gowdy describes so graphically and admiringly, and argues ‘human nature’ is best geared to operate within.

Despite these reservations, what we have here is an important book of great insight about human nature and economic and political organisation and one which above all contests powerfully the commonly held ‘evil-human-nature’ notion, Hobbes’s infamous ‘war of all against all’. It adds to the increasing body of unequivocal evidence that ‘human nature’, though selfish, acquisitive and violent behaviour can be part of it, is not a fixed quantity and that, as the author puts it: ‘Our current predicaments are not gene-based. They have risen out of the material base of human economies and the associated cultural adaptations and supporting institutions’.

Howard Moss

No vision (2022)

Book Review from the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. The Labour Party After Jeremy Corbyn. By Mike Phipps. 220 pages. OR Books, 2022.

Written by a Labour left-winger, the first part chronicles how Starmer reneged on the promises he made during the Labour leadership elections to get left-wingers to vote for him and then, under pressure from Blairites and party bureaucrats, turned on the Left, withdrawing the whip from Corbyn and reintroducing bans and proscriptions (leading to the expulsion of Ken Loach); in fact to make a complete break with the Corbyn interlude.

In the second part Phipps offers left-wingers some hope – hence the book’s title – but at local council rather than national level. He talks of ‘municipalism’, where left-wing Labour councils do something to improve the lot of the people there, a revival of the “municipal socialism” of yore, even though today local councils have much less power and are much less democratic than they used to be.

Judging by this book, the Labour Party’s left-wing is not what it used to be either. At one time they would say that they stood for ‘socialism’, even if for most of them it was state capitalism (full-scale nationalisation), but at least they envisaged socialism as a system of society. Today’s Labour left-wingers, although they still refer to themselves as socialists, no longer see socialism like this. For them, the word doesn’t exist as a noun but only as an adjective as in ‘socialist policy’, ie, particular reforms intended to benefit the workers under capitalism (if they work). In short, visionless reformists.

Phipps devotes half a dozen pages to why those who joined during the Corbyn interlude should stay in the Labour Party. His argument is basically that, if you are to have any chance of achieving the reforms you want, you need to be in a party that is in a position to form a government and implement them. He has a point – if reforms are all you want. If, however, you are looking for anything more your place is not in the Labour Party.

Adam Buick

Twenty Years On ! (1942)

From the November 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in times of revolutionary change. The Second World War predicted by Socialists is now three years old. The tank, the bomber and the long-range submarine are re-drafting the political map of the world. Colossal forces, employing war engines that would have amazed Jules Verne himself, are deciding which group are to control the world’s wealth.

World-famous organisations have been swept into limbo. Dictators have appeared as heaven-sent “leaders” of war-like nations. Politicians, statesmen of long standing, have performed miracles of agility. One-time conscientious objectors become Ministers of Home Security. Strike leaders, Ministers of Labour; leaders of “Socialist Leagues,” who desired to utilise war time to “overthrow capitalism,” Deputy Prime Ministers.

Overnight, when Russia was drawn in, “the enigma, wrapped in mystery” became a “brave and noble ally.” Now Communism (so-called) so far from making a nation “abject and miserable in peace and beaten and humiliated in war,” is the explanation of the Red Army’s courage.

Oh ! unhappy politicians ! who sent a hundred thousand uniforms and greatcoats as well as arms, ammunition and guns, tanks and aeroplanes to Finland for use against Russia in 1940. Oh! unfortunate Sir Walter ! who proved how much superior Finnish democracy is to Russian dictatorship in his “My Finnish Diary.” With what alacrity they have run the Red Flag of Russia up on public buildings (except the Bank of England).

The Socialist, who keeps a cool head and sticks to plain facts, is hotly denounced by Communists. Large numbers of workers, knowing little about the subject, feel the effects of twenty years’ propaganda of “Socialism” in Russia. Once again the Communist Party is able to delude a fair number of temporary dupes, on the grounds that second fronts may speedily terminate the war, and usher in some social improvements. For this is now, they say, a war between Socialist Workers’ Russia and Capitalist Fascist Germany.

How utterly different this is from every anticipation of all Communists of the past, from Lenin downwards, is quite unknown to these latter-day converts.

Still further proof of the complete correctness of the Socialist Party’s stand on the Russian upheaval, its definition of the Russian system, and the present impossibility of Socialism there, is supplied by one of the best-known ex-Communist leaders, Mr. J. T. Murphy, in his autobiographical account of some twenty years’ activity, fifteen of which were spent as a Communist International official.—(“New Horizons.”)

Amid the reams of paper, gallons of ink, and tons of lead used in printing thousands of books on Russia, the short, plain, straight statements appearing in the Socialist Standard in 1918, 1919, and especially in 1920, stand out like the proverbial searchlight, casting a brilliant beam through a cloud of murky confusion.

More astounding still, twenty-two years later, when each and every party has performed a somersault, the Socialist Party statement does not require alteration.

The time will surely come when the obscure, self-taught, proletarian contributor to the Socialist Standard, “J.F.”, [Jack Fitzgerald] will receive due recognition for the merit of his remarkable analysis of the Russian revolutionary drama and the realisation of his clear firm anticipations.

Writing in the Socialist Standard for 1920 on the Russian Dictatorship, he declared : —

“This controversy (between Kautsky and Lenin), along with the events that have taken place since it occurred, adds considerable evidence of the correctness of the deduction we drew from the situation in 1918.

In the midst of the special conditions and chaos caused by the war, when the old exploiting regime had broken down and the new exploiting class were too weak to take hold of power, a small but resolute minority seized the political machinery and took control of affairs. The mass of the workers in Russia are not Socialists, neither do they understand the principles of Socialism, nor desire to see Socialism established. . . .

. . . . rule by a minority—even a Marxist minority—is not Socialism. Not until the instruments and methods of production have reached the stage of large machinery and mass organisation is it possible for social production to develop. . . When the workers. . . reach. . . an understanding of their slave position, and decide to supplement social production by social ownership, through the seizure of political power, then, and not till then, will Socialism be established.

The Bolsheviks may try to save as much of their system as possible, but the events will prove the correctness of Marx’s views on the failure of attempts to jump the stages in social evolution. 

Their failure, however, will not be all disaster. They will have shown the workers of the world that the capitalist class is a useless and parasitic class in modern society.— (“Socialist Standard,” July, 1920.)

Did the Bolsheviks base their hopes on a Western rising. Let J. T. Murphy, delegate to the 1920 Congress of the Communist International, testify, writing in 1941 :

“It is as certain as anything can be that the delegates who arrived in Moscow in 1920 were too emotionally overwhelmed to estimate calmly . . . The World Revolution had begun and it would quickly sweep Europe.

Zinoviev concluded his speech in Moscow with these words: ‘I happened to say (a year ago) somewhat enthusiastically that after one year we shall forget there had been a struggle for a Soviet Government. We were over-enthusiastic, indeed it is likely that we shall require two or even three years before the whole of Europe becomes Soviet.'”

Murphy, after explaining the circumstances of the day, goes on : 

“The Russian revolution was victorious but the European revolution was in retreat. These things did not stand out clearly before us. We thought of ourselves as the centre of the revolution which would spread wave on wave. We were playing leap-frog with history and did not know it.”

One may ask whether any party in history has been so absolutely right, when so many others have been completely wrong.

Even to-day, Mr. Murphy, after admitting twenty years of mistakes, still persists in them, and devotes his time to footling antics with “Popular Fronts” and “People’s Fronts,” now so rapidly discredited.

He recounts how, at the Conference of the short-lived “Socialist League” before the war, “Sir Stafford Cripps ‘swept the Conference’ and secured a unanimous vote.”

“He argued that we would have nothing to do with a war led by a capitalist government, and stated that the issue before us was ‘ War or Socialism.’ Our job was first and foremost to get rid of the capitalist government.”

To-day that same Cripps is Deputy Prime Minister of the capitalist government.

The most politically backward elements of the working-class are now pro-Russian. This experience will justify the prophesy of the Socialist Standard in 1920.

“When the workers awaken to an understanding of their class position . . . and begin to fight the class-war consciously in numbers that count, the rule of the Russian Bolsheviks will be a splendid lesson . . . on the ability of the working-class to manage its own affairs. It will have done its share in shortening and lessening the birth-pangs of Socialism.”

Horatio.

A Labour Leader Who Misreads the Signs of the Times (1942)

From the November 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Periodically we are informed by those who occupy high places and enjoy high incomes that we cannot expect any further sacrifices from the rich; that they have been literally mulct of their vast incomes and reduced almost to poverty. In fact to have an income of over £4,000 a year, after paying tax, is now really unique and unusual; some of us thought that before the war. It is implied by them, that this shows that an equalitarian society is gradually evolving out of present society and that there will be no need to dispossess the capitalists as they, forced by the exigencies of war, are doing it for us.

An enlightening addition to this idea was in the “Forward” of May 16th, Mr. A. Woodburn, M.P., makes the following statement: —

“I mention these matters because I have been impressed recently at meeting with the almost doleful type of propaganda. One would think that there was no story of progress and accomplishment to tell.

When we think that in 1847 Marx’s Communist Manifesto put forward a “revolutionary programme” which in some cases is now entirely achieved and in other cases partly achieved, we begin to realise what has happened in the last century.

We have achieved a “heavily progressive income tax” (up to 19s. 1d. out of every £1 for the very rich) ; “the obligation of all to labour has come with a vengeance.”

How anyone can imagine that the first item is a sign of gain for Socialism passes all understanding. The tax, however heavy, is not a measure directed against the private property institution. It leaves intact the great fortunes and estates of the capitalist class. However much they pay in tax for the time being, it still remains a basic feature of society that they derive their incomes from their ownership of the means of living. Clearly as it leaves the basis of society untouched, it is not a gain for Socialism, neither is it revolutionary.

There were many seemingly drastic changes advocated at that time (1847), including the Chartist struggle and the Trade Union fight for legal recognition. The practical achievement of these aims is not comparable to the tremendous economic change that Socialism implies.

As a counter to Mr. Woodburn, let us look at society as it is. It still rests on the basis of capitalist private ownership. A small section of society own the lands, factories and machines for producing wealth, and are able by this ownership to live without working. The workers who possess nothing but their energy are forced to sell themselves piecemeal to the capitalists for wages. Each day they produce goods of all descriptions which belong to their masters, who desire neither to consume these goods nor keep them, only to sell them. Failure to sell generally means that the workers are thrown on the streets to search for alternative employment. At this point we can see the ultimate value of the “obligation to labour” that Woodburn proudly exhibits as a gain.

It is true that in a Socialist society all able-bodied people would be expected to do their share of the necessary work of society, but this has no relation to the present enforced labour laws. Because war on such a gigantic scale can be won only by the concentrated effort of the whole of society, the Industrial Reserve Army of nearly 2,000,000 has been absorbed in the production of useful armaments. There is no guarantee that they will have work at the end of the war. The “Economist” (2/5/42) briefly summarised toe Unemployment Insurance Committee’s report for 1941 and contained the following :

“Since no measures have been announced for the prevention of an unpredictable increase in unemployment after the war, there is at present no basis for calculating the expenditure which the fund may be liable to meet.”

The “Economist” suggested that by planned demobilisation” it should be possible “to maintain employment far more successfully than after the last war.” Even were this true it ignores the fact that many representatives of the ruling class have shown that they do not want state control or interference and that what they want is the free play of economic forces. Mr. Harcourt Johnstone stated at Bristol last year—

“We shall have to increase our export trade by £50,000,000 a year. . . . That will involve a tremendous effort. Competition will have been increased in many directions. … It is no part of the Government’s policy to promote an artificially high level of costs in this country as against our export competitors.” (“Daily Herald,” November 24th, 1941.)

In this struggle for markets the need for cheap production will be greater than ever, and more machinery will be installed of a labour-saving nature, thus cheapening goods produced but throwing many workers on the labour market. There will not be any labour laws then forcing all to work; in fact, we may again read of miners sent to prison for working mines that do not belong to them (“Barnsley Chronicle,” September 14th, 1935). We shall probably count the unemployed in millions again and our masters will count their wealth in millions.

Because we state these facts, does this mean that our propaganda is doleful or pessimistic. No, it means that we realise that the economic laws running through society, not a few abstract “revolutionary” measures will determine what kind of a world will emerge following this conflict. Failing Socialism it will be a world where the capitalist class will be still in control; where the struggle for markets, jobs and an existence will be even more fierce than the days of 1930 to 1939. It cannot be altered by a few ameliorative laws passed in Parliament. They can modify or remedy a few glaring anomalies, but so far as the general trend of events arc concerned the “great” statesmen are helpless. The political somersaults since the beginning of this war show only too clearly how incapable our masters are of discerning the future, even from day to day.

We cannot do that either, but we can and have shown that so long as wealth is produced for profit, certain evils must exist. We have shown that reforms cannot alter the basis of society, but merely remedy some defects of capitalism; they have failed to deal with any major evil such as unemployment, poverty, slums, crises and wars. These were with us 150 years ago, and are still with us to-day. All the reforms and planning that is suggested will not alter that. The “Economist” (May 16th, 1942) neatly put it—

“The point is not that capitalism has collapsed or failed to deliver the goods, as all sorts of planners have wrongly argued. It is rather that, for all its technical successes, unemployment, malnutrition and poverty have remained in evidence.”

This is the candid admission of an authoritative capitalist journal, a realisation that capitalism can produce wealth in great quantities but leaves untouched the widespread distress amongst the population. Wealth is produced fairly easily, but often is destroyed because the markets are incapable of absorbing such quantities. Millions live in want, suffer from malnutrition, exist in unhealthy hovels, despite the massive wealth producing machinery of the present day, because in this society the object is not to produce solely for use but for profit.

However progress is being made in the gradual enlightenment of members of our class, and in the growing political knowledge of the worker. Capitalism will throw up such obvious contradictions that the limited nature of their present-day aims will strike the workers as a strange contrast to the task that they will have to tackle, the establishment of Socialism. This is our message to the workers; study the Socialist case, understand why we stand for social revolution and not reform. Knowing these things you will realise that only through the workers possessing Socialist understanding and gaining political control can Socialism be established and human progress guaranteed.

D. J.