Doubts and Difficulties: Marx’s theory of surplus value. (1905)

The Doubts and Difficulties column from the May 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx’s theory of surplus value.

In a recent issue of the Socialist Standard it was suggested that readers having doubts and difficulties as to any phase of Socialism or of the Socialist movement should forward them to the Editorial Committee, and endeavours would be made to have those doubts and difficulties removed. This suggestion has been followed by a sufficient number of readers to justify the setting aside of a portion of the paper under the heading of “Doubts and Difficulties,” and we hope that our readers will help us to make it of permanent interest and utility.

***

The Editorial Committee have asked me to undertake the conducting of this section of the Socialist Standard, and I have consented, after some hesitation, to look after it for the present. I do not for a moment claim that I shall prove infallible in my solutions to the economic, historic, and other problems set me, but I do not think I shall ever be found wrong. In the event of the answer to any question proving somewhat hazy to any readers I feel confident that they will say so, and every criticism will be ever welcome.

***

My attention has been called by one of my correspondents to a letter which has appeared in the Social Democratic Herald, published by the Social Democratic Publishing Company, of Milwaukee, wherein a Mr. Henry B. Ashplant, of London, Ontario, takes it upon himself to criticise adversely the surplus-value theory of Marx. He takes and disputes Marx’s illustration of the yarn manufacturer who invests his 27s. capital in the purchase of raw material, machinery, and labour-power. For raw material he gives 20s., while his machinery costs him 4s. and labour-power 3s. When the expenditure of the labour-power has, with the aid of the machinery, worked up the raw material into yarn, the finished product is sold for 30s.

***

The question which Mr. Ashplant desires to have elucidated is “Whence originates this 3s ?” Is it derived from the spinner, or from the machinery, or from the raw material, or from the capitalist, or from the buyer of the yarn ?

***

To quote his own words: “Who paid the 3s. realised by the yarn manufacturer ? If the 3s. is paid by the spinner then, I ask, where did the spinner get the extra 3s. from in view of the fact that he enters the market possessed of only his labour-power, which he sells to the capitalist for 3s. only. How then can it be shown that he pays to the capitalist this 3s., plus an additional 3s. which he never possessed as a spinner ?”

***

Again he says: “The yarn is sold to a third party whom we may call No. 3. Now to which class does No. 3 belong ? Does he belong to the capitalist-class ? If so, then indeed the 3s. is not paid by No. 2 class, viz., the spinner. Does No. 3 belong to the working-class ? If so, then I ask where does he who possesses nothing but his labour-power secure this 3s. which he pays to No. 1 in excess of what he receives from No. 1, the capitalist-class ?”

***

“As I have before intimated,” continues Mr. Ashplant, “I do not dispute the fact that social energy, including the labour of superintendence, produced the 20 lbs of yarn for which only 3s. was paid to labour, but I do dispute the soundness of the analysis in Marx’s “Capital,” as focussed in this yarn illustration.”

***

Such then is the contention of the genial Ashplant, who does “not in any sense speak disrespectfully of the great work of this truly great master thinker,” and does not “need ‘Capital’ or the surplus-value theory as marked “out by Karl Marx in this yarn transaction, to explain the terrible phenomena in my industrial environment.”

***

The amazing condescension in the letter overpowers even my native modesty, so much so that I hesitate to assail “his argument with the sword of my logic with a view to letting out its vital principle.”

***

What is the Marxian theory of surplus-value? In the first place the theory is essentially bound up with Marx’s theory of value as being materialised labour-power. Value, according to Marx, is the embodiment of labour-power in material articles, and is measured by the average amount of labour-time socially necessary to produce them.

***

Since value is labour-power materialised in commodities, values can be created only by the expenditure of labour-power. That this is the only source of value must be ever borne in mind when considering the problem of surplus-value.

***

Marx contends that surplus-value is the value created by the worker in excess of his own necessary means of subsistence, and I, for one, cannot see how our industrial environment can be explained except in terms of such surplus-value.

***

The fallacies which Mr. Ashplant appears to make are the identification of labour-power with labour, and the assumption, implicitly made, that the sum of all the values in existence remains a constant quantity. Doubtless he would be the first to deny these two principles, but nevertheless they run throughout the whole of his criticism.

***

Labour and labour-power are two entirely distinct things, or at least, two distinct phases of the same thing. Labour-power is potential; labour is kinetic. Labour-power is the power of working; labour is that power in action. Labour is the expenditure of labour-power.

***

Value being the embodiment in commodities of expended labour-power, we must look to the expenditure of labour-power—the activity of man, physical, mental, and moral—for the source of all value, whether it be of the raw material, the machinery, or the consumable articles which go to the replacement of man’s power of working.

***

In taking the division of the yarn manufacturer’s capital into so much money for raw material, so much for machinery, and so much for labour-power, we must bear in mind that the facts underlying the whole question are relative to labour-power rather than to money.

***

As, however, we are dealing with it in terms of money, let us see whether there are any difficulties which vitiate the reasoning of Mr. Ashplant. The yarn capitalist starts with 27s. which he proceeds to lay out as indicated above, viz., 24s. for raw material and machinery, and 3s. for labour power. Three persons figure in the transaction : the yarn manufacturer originally possessing his 27s., the spinner with his labour-power valued at 3s., and the purchaser of the completed yarn with 30s. At the end of the transaction the first has 30s., the second 3s., and the third the finished product.

***

Now, the machinery and the raw material purchased by the capitalist possess a value which represents so much expended labour-power, and is measured by a money value of 24s. But machinery and raw materials can expend no labour-power and cannot, therefore, create any new value. In so far as they are socially necessary to the completion of the finished product, their values—the labour-power expended in their own production—are simply transferred to that product.

***

The purchaser of the finished product receives in exchange for his finished product a value of 30s. in commodities as represented by the yarn. Hence from him arises no surplus-value.

***

We have to look then to the second party in the transaction, the spinner, to ascertain if he can throw any light upon the origination of our new surplus-value of 3s.

***

In the Ashplanter theory the spinner, possessing only his labour-power worth 3s., can only transfer an equivalent value of 3s. to the finished commodity in the same way that the machinery and the raw material transfer their value. But is this so ? The value of the labour-power of the worker is the value of his cost of subsistence whereas the value of his labour may be more or less than his cost of subsistence, according to the duration of the working-day. Under capitalism it is invariably more.

***

If Mr. Ashplant’s view were correct it would matter little to the capitalist what number of hours constituted the working-day. The labour-power of the labourer was transferred to his product irrespective of the length or shortness of that day. But the capitalist thinks otherwise. The capitalist is aware that after the worker has been engaged in production for a certain number of hours he has created a value equal to the value of his own labour-power, and that any additional working on his part is towards the production of a value over and above what he possessed at the beginning of the working-day, and which he continues to possess at the end of that day as the result of the consumption of his wages, which, determined by the socially necessary cost of his subsistence, measure the value of his labour-power.

***

To me there appears to be no difficulty in understanding this part of the theory of surplus-value, which not only explains the position of the worker in the industrial organisation of modern capitalism, but is the only satisfactory explanation of that position. He is exploited just because there is a difference between the 3s. which measures the value of his labour-power, and the 6s. which measures the value he has added to the commodity—between the actual and the potential value of his labour-power.

***

To-day also the degree of his exploitation, the extent to which he is robbed, is much greater than is shown in this yarn illustration of Marx. The surplus-value is now much greater than 100 per cent. Many of the workers are producing not twice but twenty times the value of their labour-power, and the parasites who live upon all this exploitation are ever on the increase.

***

I trust I have made myself clear on this matter, but if any of my readers are not satisfied I shall be pleased to hear from them, and all having difficulties on matters sociologic should hasten to lay them before—

Economicus.

Illuminations. (1905)

From the May 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

[By the flashlight man.]

I have just been reading “Reynolds” for Easter Sunday! Goodness knows, the outlook was bleak and desolate enough as it was, with the cold, and the wind, and the rain, but after reading W.M.T.’s advertisement sheet I fairly shivered.

o o o

H. M. Hyndman had a letter in it, in which he declared that “when, if ever, the Radicals really do re-discover their root, and are ready to strive in earnest to bring about even these minor reforms of our political and educational machinery, then they will find that, though this is not Socialism by any means, the Socialists would give them their most vigorous support.”

o o o

Speak for yourself, Mr. Hyndman, or at any rate only for that S.D.F. which you recently declared was “wholly destitute of political aptitude.” If, in the present instance, it does not repudiate you as its mouthpiece, it will prove how just was your condemnation.

o o o

What a vast difference between H.M.H’s. minimum program now and that of the S.D.F. at the General Election of 1895, when it “adjured” the electors “not to give a vote even by accident to any candidate who does not …. declare in favour of the ownership of the railways, the factories, the mines and the land by the whole people to be worked co-operatively for the benefit of every man, woman, and cliild in the entire community ” !

o o o

It was at that election that the Reading branch of the S.D.F. issued a manifesto to the people of Reading, urging them “to refuse to cast their votes for either of the candidates of the capitalist-class, whether ticketed Tory or Radical” !

o o o

But a change has come o’er the spirit of the dream !

o o o

The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds that the policy of the Reading S.D.F. in 1895 is the only sound policy for the Socialist working-class to-day.

o o o

“It is not true that the S.D.F. has ever declared that Liberalism must be smashed at all hazards ” says “Justice” of April 15th.

o o o

“Justice” for July 13th, 1895, had a leading article with the title “Clear The Way.” It contained the following:—”We have to go on— victory or defeat—until we have completely smashed the Liberal Party and convinced its working-class supporters that it is hopeless, and then they will come over to us in shoals and we shall have all our friends by our side and all our enemies in front” !

o o o

In the manifesto to which I have referred above appeared these words :—”For our part, friends and fellow citizens, we rejoice at the overthrow of the meanest and most hypocritical faction that ever played fast and loose with the welfare of a people. Let it be our duty to convert the defeat of the Liberal Government into a final rout for the capitalist Liberal Party.”

o o o

In the same year the S.D.F. Conference was held at Birmingham, and in his opening address the President said : “Never again, let us hope, will the Liberal Party know the sweets of office and betray the people’s trust. That party has been utterly routed, horse, foot, and artillery; and it is now our duty, and it will be our pleasure, to exterminate them altogether” !

o o o

” For truth is precious and divine,

Too rich a pearl for carnal swine.”

o o o

“H. Quelch has never declared himself in favour of the use of the bomb” says “Justice ” of April 15th last!

o o o

Ah, me! there are

“Deposited upon the silent shore

Of memory, images and precious thoughts

That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.”

o o o

“We must adopt any and every means.to realise Social-Democracy. I am in favour of any means, from the ballot-box to the bomb, from political action to assassination.”—H. Quelch at the S.D.F. Conference at Birmingham, 1901 !

o o o

“I have decided not to stand for Bow again. I do so for many reasons, chief of which is, I don’t agree with the policy of fighting independently, but had I the time, and were I in good health, and my business not so exacting, I should have a real good try to get the S.D.F. round to my view.”—George Lansbury to the S.D.F. Executive, Feb. 23rd, 1902.

o o o

“The denial that ‘such a letter’ had been received was perfectly accurate and made in good faith by both Quelch and Lee,” says “Justice” of April 15th, 1905.

o o o

The “denial” was made at the S.D.F. Conference at Blackburn in March, 1902. At the following Conference (Shoreditch, 1903) H. W. Lee admitted receipt of the letter, but had not thought it politic to do so at the previous Conference, and declared that under similar circumstances, for the sake of the organisation, he would follow a similar course !

o o o

“Dare to be true, nothing can need a lie;

A fault which needs it most grows two thereby.”

o o o

The “Watford Critic,” the Organ of the Labour Church, is conducted by F. H. Gorle (S.D.F.) According to it, “Mr. Chiozza Money’s articles in the daily papers have shewn him to be a Socialist” ! ! !

o o o

This has almost extinguished my illuminator !

o o o

“It often happened that the manners of the members of the S.D.F. were far from attractive. If those who preached Socialism were men who could be respected, the men they wished to influence would be much more likely to listen to their opinions.”—A. S. Headingley at S.D.F. Conference, 1904.

o o o

“I call him a damnable, scandalous scoundrel,” (Leaning towards the Alderman and shouting excitedly): “You rotten, whisky-drinking swine ! You dirty, scandalous, old swine ! I’ll pull your whiskers”!— Recent speech by Mr. McAllen, S.D.F. Councillor for West Ham

o o o

“Our views have been placed before the chief authorities, before Parliament, and before the Nation; they are influencing the present attempt in dealing with the unemployed question, and we shall perhaps see, when the long-delayed legislation is proceeded with, that some, at least, of our influence may be traced in the measure.” Social Democrat, April 15th.

o o o

“As to the Unemployed Bill, it is precisely what we had been led to expect, and therefore occasions no disappointment. It is utterly inadequate for the problem with which it deals, and is really an attempt to do nothing while making a show of doing something.”

“Justice,” April 22nd.

o o o

But what about “our influence” ?

o o o

Don’t enumerate your poultry before your eggs are incubated. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, at any rate, has never misled the working-class by inducing them to think that anything but capitalist legislation can come from capitalist governments.

The Divine Right of Capital. By Richard Jefferies (1905)

Richard Jefferies

From the May 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

“This is the Divine Right of Capital. Look, the fierce sunshine beats down upon the white sand, or chalk, or hard clay of the railway cutting whose narrow sides focus the heat like a lens. Brawny arms swing the pick and drive the pointed spades into the soil. Clod by clod, inch by inch, the heavy earth is loosened, and the mountain removed by atoms at a time. Aching arms these, weary backs, stiffened limbs—brows black with dirt and perspiration. The glaring chalk blinds the eye with its whiteness; the slippery sand gives way beneath the footstep, or rises with the wind and fills the mouth with grit; the clay clings to the boot, weighing the leg down as lead. The hot sun scorches the back of the neck—the lips grow dry and parched; and—’Look out for yourself, mate !’ with a jarring rattle the clumsy trucks come jolting down the incline on the way to the ‘shoot’; then beware, for they will sometimes jump the ill-laid track, and crush human limbs like brittle icicles with tons of earth. Or a ‘shot’ is fired overhead, bellowing as the roar rushes from cliff to cliff as an angry bull, and huge stones and fragments hurtle in deadly shower. Or, worse than all, the treacherous clay slips—bulges, trembles, and thuds in an awful avalanche, burying men alive.

“But they are paid to do it, says Comfortable Respectability (which hates everything in the shape of a ‘question,’ glad to slur it over somehow). They are paid to do it ! Go down into the pit yourself, Comfortable Respectability, and try it as I have done, just one hour of a summer’s day; then you will know the preciousness of a vulgar pot of beer ! Three-and-sixpence a day is the price of these brawny muscles; the price of the rascally sherry you parade before your guests in such pseudo-generous profusion. One guinea a week—that is, one stall at the opera. But why do they do it ? Because Hunger and Thirst drive them; these are the fearful scourges, the whips worse than the knout, which lie at the back of Capital and give it its power. Do you suppose these human beings with minds and souls and feelings would not otherwise repose on the sweet sward, and hearken to the song-birds as you may do on your lawn at Cedar Villa ?

“The ‘financier,’ ‘director,’ ‘contractor,’ whatever his commercial title—perhaps all the three, who is floating this line, where is he? Rolling in his carriage right royally as a King of Spades should do, honoured for the benefits he has conferred upon mankind, toasted at banquets, knighted by an appreciative Throne, his lady shining in bright raiment by his side, glorious in silk and scarlet and ermine, smiling as her lord, voluble of speech, pours forth his unctuous harangue. One man whipped with Hunger toils half-naked in the Pit, face to face with death; the other is crowned by his fellows, sitting in state with fine wines and the sound of jubilee. This is the Divine Right of Capital.”

Richard Jefferies

Blogger's Note:

This passage of writing is quoted in Henry S. Salt's 1905 book, Richard Jefferies: His Life & His Ideals. I wonder if that is where the Socialist Standard editors originally found the passage?

Correspondence: Evolution by Revolution. (1905)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Evolution by Revolution

Comrade,—

In the March issue of the Socialist Standard appeared an article over the signature of H. Philpott Wright, entitled “Evolution and Revolution,” which, in the humble opinion of the undersigned, is a positively brilliant production—except for the fact that it is grammatically obscure, logically deficient, historically absurd, and economically unsound.

Mr. Wright endeavours to prove that “revolution” and “evolution” are antithetical or antagonistic terms, and makes this clear by using “revolution” in one place in the sense of destruction, in another as meaning “dissolution,” in another as meaning a “sudden transition,” in another a “catastrophic change!”

Mr. Wright avoids discussing the question Reform v. Revolution on its own merit, contenting himself with arguing that if you are a revolutionary you must aim at revolution, while if you are a reformer you must aim at reform.

But the climax is reached when Mr. Wright says or gives us to understand that the transition from Capitalism to Socialism can be effected as well by reform as by revolution; that is, in his own words, “if Socialism evolves from this system there can be no revolution, for none will be needed.”

Now I, although unworthy, venture to assert that on the contrary, Socialism will evolve from this present system, and one phase of its evolution will be a revolution—the transition from Capitalism to Socialism constituting a social revolution; one essential stage in the transition being a political revolution.

Before we proceed to discuss the point will Mr. Wright please turn to our “Declaration of Principles” on page 1 and read it through carefully? He will notice that after pointing out the economic relation of the exploiting and exploited classes, the Declaration proceeds:

“That as in the order of social evolution the working-class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working-class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex.”

Following Mr. Wright’s example I will now give a “little illustration.” I was at one time not a Socialist, in fact, I was violently opposed to Socialism. For me to change from an anti-Socialist into a Socialist entailed a complete and fundamental change in my political, social, and moral beliefs and ideals—in short an intellectual revolution.

Yet this revolution was produced merely by the apprehension of one simple fact, viz., that where one section of the community own all the means of life the rest of the community are in fact, if not in name, enslaved.

The acquirement of the knowledge necessary to the apprehension of this fact and to a recognition of its importance was a long and gradual process, but the apprehension was a single and sudden mental occurrence.

What had happened? I had acquired from various sources (environment) a certain quantity of knowledge bound up with a certain quantity of prejudice and a certain number of beliefs. Addition to this knowledge entailed as a necessary consequence the destruction of a mass of prejudice and the reconstruction of social and moral ideals.

Now what was that but an evolution with a revolution as an integral phase?

From one point of view here was a continuous development; from another a destruction of one “form” and the substitution of one entirely different. From one point of view the process was an evolution; from another a revolution. And as the latter necessarily followed upon the former, we sum up the process as an evolution with revolution as an integral phase.

Much in the same way does Society evolve: for we must always remember that one of the forces whose operation produces social evolution is human intelligence. In fact, in discovering the forces producing or laws governing social development, we have to trace the laws determining the development of public opinion; and here lies the essence of the socialist philosophy first expounded by Karl Marx. I cannot do better than give his own words:

“In making their livelihood together men enter into certain necessary, involuntary relations with each other.

“These industrial relations arise out of their respective conditions and occupations, and correspond to whatever stage society has reached in the development of its material productive forces.

“Different stages of industry produce different relations.

“The totality of these industrial relations constitutes the economic structure and basis of society.

“Upon this basis the legal and political superstructure is built.

“There are certain forms of social consciousness or so-called public opinion which correspond to this basis.

“The method prevailing in any society of producing the material livelihood determines the social, political, and intellectual life of men in general.

“It is not primarily men’s consciousness which determines their mode of life, on the contrary, it is their social life which determines their consciousness.

“When the material productive forces of society have advanced to a certain stage of their development they come into opposition with the old conditions of production, or to use a legal expression, with the old property relations, under which these forces have hitherto been exerted.

“Instead of serving longer as institutions for the development of the productive powers of society, these antiquated property relations now become hindrances. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.

“With the change of the economic basis the whole vast superstructure undergoes, sooner or later, a revolution.

“In considering such revolutions we must always distinguish clearly between the change in the industrial methods of social production on the one hand: this change takes place unconsciously, strictly according to the laws of natural science, and might properly be called an evolution.

“And on the other hand, the change in the legal, political, religious, artistical or philosophical, in short, ideological institutions; with reference to these, men fight out this conflict as a revolution conscious of their opposing interests.

“This conflict takes the form of a class struggle.

“We may in wide outlines characterise the Asiatic, the antique, the feudal, and the modern capitalistic methods of production as a series of progressive epochs in the evolution of economic society.

“The industrial relations arising out of the capitalistic method of production constitute the last of the antagonistic forms of Social production; antagonistic, not in the sense of an antagonism between individuals, but of an antagonism growing out of the circumstances in which men must live who take part in social production.

“But the productive forces which are developed in the lap of capitalistic society create at the same time the material conditions needed for the abolition of this antagonism. The capitalist form of society therefore will bring to a close this cycle of the history of human society, as it has existed under the various forms of exploitation.”—From the Introduction to the “Critique of Political Economy.”

I make no apology for the length of the above quotation. Marx is too little known to the working-class of Great Britain for quotations so important to be superfluous.

It will be seen from this, what indeed Mr. Wright admits, viz., that the political, moral, and social revolutions recorded in history were nothing but re-arrangements of the relations between man and man made necessary by the development of the “material productive forces” of society (the “means and instruments for producing wealth” as the Party Declaration puts it)—in short, an evolution with a revolution as an essential phase.

One illustration from history will suffice: The Capitalist or Bourgeois Revolution in France—The French Revolution.

Just prior to 1789 the Political, Legal, and Religious forms in France were feudal—but at the same time the feudal method of wealth production—viz., individual production by guild craftsmen, &c.—had been breaking up and giving place to the modern capitalist system of manufacture.

Consequently the class-division of society in France was not merely into rich aristocrat and poor peasant.

Firstly, there was the feudal aristocracy, lay and clerical, possessing political power and social privilege.

Secondly, there was the rising middle-class, or bourgeoisie, composed of the professional classes, the growing capitalists, and the lower strata of the priesthood—possessing little or no political power but at the same time the greater proportion of the economic power.

Lastly, there were the proletarians or wage-slaves of the towns and the peasant-serfs of the country, possessing neither political power nor economic possession.

The growing financial embarrassment of the aristocracy compelled them to submit to the summoning of the States-General. The States-General summoned, the bourgeoisie were asked for money, which they granted on their own terms. In short, they seized possession of the political power and proceeded to wield it in their own interest as the aristocracy had done.

This conquest of the political power by the bourgeoisie involved the extinction of the aristocracy as an aristocracy.

The phases of the French Revolution consequent upon the calling of the States-General, viz., the struggle between the Jacobins and Girodins, &c., can only be understood as the manifestations of a class-struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, in which the latter, being undeveloped, eventually and inevitably succumbed. When the monarchy was “restored” in 18l5 it was shorn of most of its feudal privileges—and the return of the monarchy again marked the victory of the landed-class over the industrial capitalist.

In short, economic evolution differentiated society into classes with conflicting interests; with the development of the economic conditions the respective political power changed and with the power eventually went the victory; an evolution with a revolution as its dominating phase.

Just as the economic change developed the capitalist-class and forced them to fight, so the working-class is developed and forced to fight for political supremacy by the evolution of society.

When the workers shall have evolved so far that they conquer for themselves the political power, that day will mark the realisation of the Social Revolution.

—Yours, &c.,

Thos. A. Jackson

Evolution and Revolution.

Comrades,

After mature deliberation consequent upon the careful perusal of Mr. Philpott Wright’s article in the March issue, I discover that I am, (1) an evolutionary Socialist because I concede the principle of development in society and hold that Socialism must grow out of existing forms ; (2) a revolutionary Socialist because the change in existing forms which will inevitably give birth to the new order of society involves a revolution in those forms which I belong to the Socialist Party for the purpose of expediting, (3) an involutionary Socialist because I wish to revert to certain primitive society forms, though I want to retain the advantages of ages of progress.

Now according to Mr. Wright a revolutionary Socialist is entirely distinct from an evolutionary Socialist, while an involutionary Socialist is in complete antagonism to the others. So I am an irreconcilable duality on the one hand and on the other a trinity in violent opposition to myself in two places. I am also a perigrinating paradox and several other things that will occur to Mr.. Wright in the privacy of his chamber, but what am I as a Socialist ? I should like you to fix on a title that will explain my brand of Socialism clearly, but I cannot conveniently call myself an evolutionary-involutionary-revolutionary Socialist. Will you please help me ?

Filius Populi

A Travesty of Trade Unionism. (1905)

From the May 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent sends a packet of literature explanatory of the objects and methods of the Railway Clerks’ Association. It is claimed that this association will serve to secure some betterment of the conditions of clerical workers on railways. It is a Trade Union for railway clerks.

Now a Trade Union is an organisation rendered necessary by the pressure of the capitalist or exploiting class upon the class they employ and exploit—the working-class. This pressure is the result of the constant endeavour of the capitalist-class to squeeze ever greater profits from the labour of the working-class, and expresses itself in the prolongation of working hours, in the reduction of wages, or if an increase of hours or a reduction of wages are not possible, in the maintenance of both in, so far as is possible, a stationary condition, irrespective of the increase in the productivity of labour.

In exercising this pressure the capitalist-class are but functioning as a class of exploiters whose wealth is derived solely from the labour of those they exploit. In combining in a Trade Union to prevent, if possible, any reduction of their standard of comfort, any hardening of their conditions of life, or to obtain where practicable some larger share of the wealth they create, the working-class are but taking the precautionary defensive or aggressive measures natural to an exploited class.

The capitalist-class are fighting to increase or maintain their powers and privileges ; and as these can only be maintained or increased at the expense of the working-class, their greatest concern is to keep the latter in subjection ; to prevent them improving their position, except in-so-far as that improvement is necessary to to capitalists. On the other hand, the working-class are fighting for the best conditions they can get; to improve those conditions if possible, and to prevent them being adversely affected in any event. And as they cannot improve their position, or for that matter maintain it, except in opposition to and at the expense of, the class above them, they are in necessary conflict with that class.

Obviously then, the antagonism of interest existing between these two classes must prevent any intermingling except in conflict. It would be absurd for the officers of one army to be in the innermost councils of the other. Hitherto, although the working-class combined in English Trade Unions have been very far from conscious of their class interests, a sense of hostility has kept them from fraternising with their natural enemies to the point of admitting them to an intimate acquaintanceship with the internal affairs of their fighting organisations.

The idea of employers being admitted to membership of workers’ Unions has ever appealed to the most hard-headed, hide-bound and mentally atrophied trade unionist as absurd,—and the clearer the comprehension of class-interests, the greater the growth of class-consciousness among the working-class, the more grotesque must the idea appear.

How then may we designate the working-class organisation that, coming into existence at a time when the antagonism of interests between the classes was too sharply defined to escape the notice of any man with an eye to see, yet admitted to the domination of its affairs, the representatives of the very class it came into existence, ostensibly, to fight. The Trade Union of the clerical workers of the railways of the United Kingdom (the Railway Clerks’ Association) has done this. Its President and Vice-Presidents are of the capitalist-class, several of them company directors, with at least one railway company director.

As might be expected, the literature of this Association provides curious reading. Whereas on the one hand a number of grievances that require redress are set out and clerks admonished to combine in order to secure certain reforms in working conditions which “individualism has lamentably failed to secure for 60 years and which combination alone can obtain,” on the other hand emphasis is laid upon the fact that the Association exists (among other things) to further the railway industry and provide facilities for the technical training of railway servants, which, being interpreted, seems to mean that facilities will be provided the railway clerk to become a more efficient-wage-slave what time every endeavour is being made to further the railway industry and make it a more profitable concern.

In the statement of grievances would seem to be embodied the dissatisfaction of the clerk with the existing conditions. In the statement of method and objects the still small voice of the company director is heard.

Says the leaflet before us :—

“It is said that the clerks will not join a Trade Union as they object to the extreme measures adopted by most Trade Unions . . . There in no strike and no coercion contemplated or allowed in the R.C.A.”

Also:—

“Membership is not derogatory to advancement in the service, neither is it detrimental to the best interests of the Railway Companies.”

And again, as might be expected :—

“All railway officials (and proprietors ?) approve our policy.”

This is the R.C.A., and a more pitiable and ludicrous attempt at working-class organisation the annals of Labour cannot show. Surely it should be obvious to the most oblique of mental visions that combination in order to secure some amelioration that individual effort has failed to secure in 60 years, implies a struggle. If some benefit is obtained as a result of combined effort, it means that force has been exercised. Those who previously refused to effect a reform have been coerced by a display of force into moving.

And yet in the R.C.A. coercion is taboo !

And opposition is offered to the use of the weapon of the strike, not on the ground that the strike is an obsolete weapon in economic warfare, but on the ground apparently that the warfare itself is bad !

What then is the use of the organisation at all except as a means of bolstering up present railway administration and providing railway companies with servants more efficient at producing profit for the capitalist-class who own the railways ? Why should they voluntarily assist in their own exploitation ? Why should they organise themselves and pay for the privilege of organising themselves in the interests of the class that lives upon their labour ?

What the workers on railways and in every other branch of industry have to recognise is that the utility of combination, economic and political, lies in the strength it gives to fight. What they have to understand is that they can only fight to the betterment of their own position at the expense and to the disadvantage of the class that exploits them. What they have to appreciate if they object to being robbed of any part of the wealth they produce, is that they will not only have to place the capitalist-class in the category of irreconcilable enemies, not only will they have to fight them as such always, but that they will have to beat them out of existence absolutely, before they can enter into the enjoyment of the full result of their labour.

And they will never do that until they understand whence the capitalist derives his power to-day—how it comes about that a handful of people are able to dictate conditions to the great mass of the people.

The workers on railways and elsewhere will have to understand that it is the possession of the land and tools of production and distribution that gives the capitalist his power. They will have to understand that the only way to break that power is to force him to relinquish his hold upon the means by which all the people live. And then they will be class-conscious (conscious of their class interests as distinguished from and opposed to the interests of the capitalist-class), and will appreciate the position which we of The Socialist Party of Great Britain occupy, and will be prepared to work with us for the capture of the political machinery of the country as the necessary preliminary to the capture of all the machinery of wealth production. Then they will utilise their strength not to treat with the representatives of the capitalist-class for the concession of small reforms, but will utilise it with the object of removing the cause of the conditions that give rise to the demand for reforms. Then they will work through their economic organisations and their political organisations for the complete overthrow ef the present capitalist system based upon profit and the realisation of the Socialist Republic based upon justice and equity.

C. LAS-SWAR

Party Notes. (1905)

Party News from the May 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the month of May will open our outdoor propaganda season, and all members are expected to assist at the stations of their respective Branches in order that the best possible results may be obtained from the efforts of the Party speakers. Will all those concerned note that the Lecture Secretary is: T. A. Jackson, 408. St Anns Road, Harringay, N„ to whom all communications respecting the Lecture List should be addressed.

#    #    #    #

Special efforts should now be made in pushing the Party Organ. The members and Branches have done well in this direction during the winter months, but this summer we should be able to increase our circulation.

#    #    #    #

Two new Assistant Secretaries have been appointed: R. H. Kent and L. Boyne. Comrade Boyne is in charge of the financial department of the Secretaryship, and, all applications for membership cards, remittances for dues stamps, etc., should be sent to him. Address, 17, Etherley Road, South Tottenham, N.

#    #    #    #

The Party Emblem is now ready. It is an attractive button, hand coloured, and is to be had at the price of 2d. through any Branch Secretary.

#    #    #    #

Photographs, size 12 by 10, of the First Annual Conference of the Party, can be obtained, price 2/- per copy. Applications, accompanied by cash, for this souvenir, should be addressed to the undersigned.—Con Lehane.

Blogger's Note:

I'm guessing that the advertised photograph of the First Annual Conference is the same photograph that is at the top of the blog.

Answers to Correspondents. (1905)

From the May 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

A.S. (Prague).—There is no official organ of the Builders Workers Trade Union, nor indeed is there any journal specially devoted to this section of the working-class in Britain. There are, of course, trade circulars issued by the Union from time to time, but these are only for members of the Union. There are, however, several so-called Trade Newspapers run by capitalists as ordinary business ventures, that deal in various matters connected with the Building Trade, but none of them pretend to be official. The two that circulate among the workers are "The Building World" and “The Carpenter and Builder," specimens of which are being posted to you as requested.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For May. (1905)

Party News from the May 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

In revolt (2023)

Book Review from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Revolt in Britain 1910-14. By Ralph Darlington, Pluto Press, 2023

The period of strikes between 1910 and 1914 was known at the time as the ‘Labour Unrest’. Darlington says that it should rather be described as the ‘Labour Revolt’. Miners, railway workers, dock workers, and many others were involved in bitter strikes, some accompanied by rioting when the police protected ‘blacklegs’ that the employers brought in to try to keep production going. The army was called in too. Workers were killed, either shot by soldiers or beaten by the police, in Belfast (2), Liverpool (2), Tonypandy (1), Llanelli (2) and Dublin (2).

Darlington discusses possible reasons for the revolt. Wanting to be treated with more respect will have been an element as he suggests but the rise in the cost of living which eroded real living standards will have been the most important.

The bogey for the capitalist press was ‘syndicalism’. Darlington brings out that what was called this was a practice rather than a doctrine and was a revolt against trade union officialdom as much as against employers. He notes that the number of paid union officials had increased faster than the number of union members. These officials prioritised union recognition by employers to negotiate agreements but these involved commitments not to strike without first going through conciliation procedures. An element of ‘syndicalism’ was workers insisting that their union’s officials be their servants and not do deals over their heads; they wanted employers to be treated as the class enemy rather than mere bargaining partners. It was essentially militant trade unionism.

There were doctrinaire syndicalists who advocated more than this and saw the objective as the workers eventually, through ‘direct action’ and a general strike, taking over and running the industries in which they worked. But there can’t have been many activists and strikers who took this seriously or who thought it realistic to expect the government to stand by and let this happen when it even intervened to hinder the ordinary trade union struggle. Most activist workers knew that political action was also necessary; indeed the demand for worker representation in Parliament was another feature of the wider period.

Darlington criticises the SDP (as the SDF became in 1908 and then in 1911 the BSP) for insisting on the need to gain control of political power before taking over the means of production and so regarding the trade union struggle as ‘secondary’. But, in a footnote towards the end of the book, he criticises syndicalism because ‘it did not explicitly address the problem of how a revolutionary general strike to establish workers’ control would overcome the state monopoly of armed force in defence of the capitalist economic and social order’, adding ‘it did not consider the question of the conquest of political power’.

He also discusses the position of the De Leonist SLP and criticises its ‘doctrinaire and sectarian’ view that workers should form revolutionary unions to oppose the existing unions. This doctrine, known as ‘dual unionism’, was also embraced by the IWW and some syndicalists. Other syndicalists favoured staying in the existing unions and trying to make them more democratic and militant.

One contemporary group whose views he does not discuss is the SPGB. There is a single mention, to say that George Hicks, the national organiser of the Operative Bricklayers’ Society, was a founder member. E. J. B. Allen, one of the doctrinaire syndicalists he cites on a number of occasions, was also a founder member, though Darlington has him as a founder member of the SLP. There can be no justification for discussing the views only of the SLP but not the SPGB which was probably slightly larger and was active in more places.

The Socialist Standard of the time covered all of the big strikes discussed by Darlington (and one he doesn’t — the 1911 London printers’ strike). The September 1911 issue carried a detailed 4,600 word editorial on the failed 1911 railway workers strike under the title “Strikers Struck. How the Railway Servants were betrayed’ which argued that the strikers should have given priority to demanding the release of all imprisoned strikers and improved hours and wages rather than to the ‘recognition’ of union officials as negotiators, and concluded:

‘The most they may snatch from the ashes of their ruined hopes is the lesson that, whether on the industrial or the political field, their struggles must be grounded upon democracy. Their position must be democratic, their methods must be democratic, their weapons must be democratic. Even under capitalism democracy is no empty word, and its first interpretation is that the representative is the servant, not the leader. Had the railwaymen given this reply to their so-called leaders when the latter sent the fatal message: “All men must return to work immediately,” they would not now be chewing the cud of their disappointment, marvelling at the difference between recognition of the unions and recognition of their officials, and wondering if they had not better set about making the unions (which appear to consist of the officials) recognise the men.’

As to the syndicalists and other anti-parliamentarians:

‘The final lesson, and the greatest of all, is to be found in the crushed hopes of the Industrialists, the Syndicalists, the Anarchists. These claim that the means of production must be seized in the teeth of the armed forces; the Socialists hold that the preliminary must be to get control of the armed forces by capturing the machinery of government.’

The 1912 strike in the London docks was dealt with in the August issue under the title “Dockers Betrayed” which made the same point regarding union officials. The failure of the rail union leaders to support sympathetic strike action to help the locked-out (by an Irish Nationalist employer) Dublin transport workers was covered in the January 1914 issue under the title “Sold Again”. The August 1911 issue included an eye-witness account, and experience, of police brutality in Manchester (all these articles can be found here: www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/standard-index-1910s/).

What the articles show is that the SPGB didn’t conform to the left-wing calumny that it is ‘anti-trade union’. What it was against was not to workers forming unions or even appointing officials but to the control of unions and of struggles over wages and working conditions by officials who regarded themselves as the leaders rather than the servants of their members. It was for democratic organisation of workers to wage the struggle against employers, even if this was indeed ‘secondary’ to the need to gain control of political power. And it opposed ‘dual unionism’, working within the existing unions.

It is only on the last but one page that Darlington reveals that he supports ‘the Bolshevik doctrine of a revolutionary vanguard party’, though this could have been guessed from his earlier analysis that what was lacking in the period was the right leadership.

Nevertheless, the book does usefully describe in detail and analyse the national and local strikes of the period, including those by women workers. It will obviously be on the reading list for anyone studying or interested in the period.

Adam Buick

Proper Gander: Flat broke (2023)

The Proper Gander Column from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Since 1953, BBC One’s Panorama has been unearthing problems in society, but as it’s part of the mainstream media we shouldn’t expect it to dig deep enough to reach the root cause of inequalities and inadequacies. In What’s Gone Wrong With Our Housing?, reporter Richard Bilton aims to explain how our current housing crisis has happened, but focuses on the role of legislation rather than more fundamental factors about why the housing market is as it is.

Bilton visits the Bampton Estate in the part of south London overseen by Lewisham Council. Its tower blocks and streets were built in the 1960s as part of a drive to replace dilapidated slums, with its 290 properties initially being owned and managed by the local authority. Then, one of Margaret Thatcher’s flagship policies, The Housing Act 1980, expanded the rights of council tenants to buy their properties at a discounted amount. Since the Act was introduced, 2.8 million council homes have been sold off in the largest privatisation initiative we’ve seen, according to Rachael Williamson of the Chartered Institute of Housing. For some people, buying from the council didn’t lead to the freedom they expected. Properties in tower blocks tend to be leased rather than sold outright, meaning that the council retains ownership and control of the building itself. A consequence of this for Bampton Estate leaseholders Anthony and Gloria is that Lewisham Council imposed new windows on them at a cost of £27,000 which they can’t afford.

Around 40 per cent of former council homes in London are now owned (or mortgaged) not by those who live in them but by private landlords. Avril, who bought and then sold one of the flats on the Bampton Estate returns to see what it looks like now it’s owned and rented out by a private landlord. She’s shocked to see that the flat has been divided into six tiny bedsits, their tenants each being charged a whopping £960 rent a month to live in what used to be the bathroom or the kitchen. Bilton confronts dodgy landlord Joel Zwiebel who with his wife owns 24 bedsits on one road and receives around quarter of a million in rent a year. Most of this rent is paid through benefit payments by the council which sold the properties off, ironically. Rather than explaining about his substandard properties Zwiebel drives off in his car without saying anything. Lord Best of the Affordable Housing Commission says that the current situation is ‘an absolute disgrace’, with the right-to-buy legislation leading to a return of ‘slum landlords’ profiteering.

The housing shortage benefits private landlords because it means there are lots of people hunting for places to live, so landlords have more choice over who to let to and can charge high rents knowing that someone will pay. Rent amounts for private sector properties tend to be greater than the maximum amounts which can be claimed in housing-related benefits, pricing out many people without sufficiently paid employment. Landlords like Zwiebel can easily find tenants because their properties are cheap enough to have rent covered by benefits, with shoddiness being almost expected.

People on lower incomes are likely to aim not for private rented properties but ‘social housing’, such as that owned by councils, which tends to have lower rent and more secure terms. But local authorities haven’t been building enough new properties to replace those they have sold off, leading to a dire shortage of social housing stock. Some properties on the Bampton Estate remain council-owned. Bilton speaks to one council tenant who waited two years after reporting mould and only managed to get some plasterboard replaced after he got a solicitor involved. In 2022, Lewisham Council had a budget of a million pounds for repairs but almost three quarters of this went on legal fees and compensation, leaving not much money to spend on actual maintenance.

Most of the properties on the Bampton Estate which weren’t sold off privately are held not by the council but by the L&Q housing association. Housing associations represent the other kind of social housing, not being run to make profits for themselves. According to the English Housing Survey, they are responsible for around two and a half million properties in England, a million more than councils. Housing associations were intended to be more reactive and flexible than councils, to better manage estates in the interests of their residents. Over the decades, though, the original model of the small-scale community-based housing association has been replaced by larger, more corporate organisations such as L&Q, which is the second biggest housing association in the country. Of its 51 residents on the Bampton Estate, 11 said they were unhappy with how it operates, especially its repairs service. Tenants have reported damp and mouldy flats and waited years for a resolution.

Bilton says that 1980’s right-to-buy legislation has ‘fragmented the estate between tenant and owner’. It’s true that the Housing Act triggered a decrease in ‘social housing’, and that ownership of homes on any estate is a complicated mix of owner-occupiers, leaseholders, and tenants of councils, housing associations or private landlords. But even if the Act hadn’t been passed, there would still be a divide between tenant and owner. The ‘social housing’ model hasn’t proved itself to be necessarily better than the private rented sector, as demonstrated by the council and housing association tenants putting up with run-down properties. As always, more investment and new legislation are promised, but never end up solving the problems. Being an owner-occupier isn’t an ideal solution either, as it means decades of debt alongside the responsibility and cost of maintenance. So, the real problem isn’t the ‘right to buy’ legislation, it’s how properties are owned in capitalism. When ownership is based on who has the wealth to buy a legal right, what people need for a decent life becomes much less important. Money’s rationing of resources means that there’s never enough to keep homes to a decent standard. ‘The system isn’t working’ says Bilton, but it’s just as fair to say that the system is working in the expected way.

Mike Foster

Cooking the Books: What the market will bear (2023)

The Cooking the Books column from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some people think that businesses can fix at will the price of what they sell. Among them, it seems, is the Governor of the Bank of England. After announcing on 23 March an increase in the Bank rate to 4.25 per cent, Andrew Bailey asked business to ‘please’ not increase their prices. As the headline in the Guardian the next day reported, ‘Bank of England boss urges firms to hold back price rises or risk higher rates’. His argument was that ‘if all prices try to beat inflation we will get higher inflation’ and that, if that happened, the Bank would have to increase the Bank rate to an even higher level.

It may seem surprising that the Governor of the Bank of England should not understand how businesses operate, but then finance is a bit isolated from the real world of production. Patrick Hosking, the Financial Editor of the Times, was particularly scathing in his column on 28 March:

‘Surely, when first introduced to an economics textbook, Bailey learnt that firms are not driven by altruism or patriotism but by market forces and profit? They will charge what the market will bear. If possible, they will go further, ever on the lookout for, in Adam Smith’s immortal phrase, “some contrivance to raise prices.” It’s a boardroom instinct as natural as breathing. While modern-day corporations have to consider many stakeholders, they still see their prime duty over the long run to maximise profits for the shareholders’.

In other words, if they can increase prices without jeopardising sales and so profits they will; otherwise, they won’t. It all depends on market conditions for what they are selling. Hoskins reckoned that for the time being the market for most goods can still ‘bear’ a price increase. But this might not necessarily continue:

‘Until businesses see more capitulation by their customers, the price escalation will go on. Businesses will stop lifting their prices only if enough customers defect to competitors, trade down to cheaper lines or find near-substitutes. Or stop buying at all. For the poorest households, this has happened already’.

There is some evidence that people have been trading down, buying in Tesco and Sainsbury’s instead of Waitrose, or else in Lidl and Aldi instead of Tesco and Sainsbury’s. So, if prices do stop rising so much this will not be because Bailey’s plea was listened too, but because the limits of ‘what the market will bear’ would have been reached.

This, incidentally, explains why businesses cannot automatically pass on a wage increase. Sometimes they can, but sometimes they can’t. It depends on market conditions.

In any event, businesses can’t cause inflation in the proper sense of the term — a rise in the general price level due to a depreciation of the currency — but Bailey wasn’t using the word in that sense but in the simplistic sense in which it has come to be widely used of an increase in the consumer price index. An increase in the price at which businesses sell consumer goods and services, for whatever reason, will cause an increase in ‘inflation’ in that sense because it will cause the index to go up. But that’s by definition. And, equally by definition, if businesses don’t increase their prices then there won’t be ‘inflation’. So Bailey was calling on businesses not to increase prices so that prices don’t increase. How very profound.

50 Years Ago: Black liberation – George Jackson and political violence (2023)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

George Jackson’s crime was not that he complied in the theft of 70 dollars, but that in prison he could not accept the ignominious terms on which the authorities might have released him. For this crime he was imprisoned for eleven years, seven-and-a-half in solitary confinement, and eventually in August 1971, shot to death.

In prison, in spite of the limitations of his personal background, Jackson began to read seriously, gradually seeking an explanation for the forces, social and historical, underlying his plight. Eventually, he devoured such left-wing and Marxist literature as he could get hold of. Jackson did not become a Socialist. It is doubtful whether his views would fit neatly into any political category. He became an inspiration to the civil rights movement in America, and also to the Black Power movement. Although there is much that is perceptive in Jackson’s views as expressed in The Prison Letters of George Jackson, his understanding of economic relationships and social and political institutions, fall short of a Socialist understanding. If George Jackson was anything, he was a black nihilist.

Jackson claimed to be opposed to capitalism. “The principal enemy must be isolated and identified as capitalism. Our enemy at present is the capitalist system and its supporters.” However, closer analysis would show that in fact what Jackson was opposed to was American-style private enterprise. Jackson sympathized with China and the emerging African states. So he ignored the fact that capitalism is a world mode of production where the means of wealth production are monopolized and controlled either by private owners or a political bureaucratic élite. (…)

Jackson considered that political democracy was a fraud. “Of what value is quasi-political control if the capitalists are allowed to hold on to the people’s whole mode of subsistence?” He believed in leadership and elevated violence. “The people who run this country will never let us succeed to power. Everything in history that was of any value was taken by force.”

There is no doubt that if in some time of crisis Jackson’s views on leadership and violence became practical action, this would lead to disaster. It would compound crisis with death and violence with no possible hope of getting anywhere towards Socialism.

(Socialist Standard, May 1973)

Editorial: Coronation chickens (2023)

Editorial from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

As of 2023 there are still 43 countries in the world with a monarch as head of state. Most of those pampered parasites seem content to stay away from the media and enjoy their exalted status in relative obscurity. Not so in Britain, where the royals are a glitzy public circus act, and this month are staging a huge event that will no doubt grab headlines around the world. Britain seems weirdly addicted to silly medieval ritual. There has never not been a monarchy here, apart from a strange 11-year hiatus following the beheading of one king in 1649. While politicians regularly rise and fall on their swords due to fluctuating polls or appalling performances, it seems that no scandal, internecine row or public disgrace ever dents the popularity of this archaic and anachronistic state institution. It’s not that there’s no anti-monarchy sentiment. YouGov surveys of 18-24 yr olds since 2020 have shown 53 to 67 percent opposition. But politicians are too chicken-shit to come out against the monarchy. The so-called democrats of the Labour Party are as sycophantically gung-ho for the royal freeloaders as the Tories, while the supposedly radical tax-the-rich brigade didn’t utter a squeak over Chas’s £650 million tax-free inheritance. And now the whole country is expected to lose its collective mind as the nobs and toffs convene at Westminster Abbey to plonk a metal party hat on the old plant-botherer.

Socialists will take the free bank holiday hand-out, but otherwise treat the fancy-dress pomp and pomposity of the king’s coronation with the contempt it deserves. We’re no advocates of a capitalist republic – they exploit their workers every bit as much – but having your nose rubbed in class privilege and entitlement is a bit more than we can stand. In republican countries like the US, disingenuous efforts are sometimes made to background, de-emphasise and disguise class divisions. In the UK they are flaunted in our faces. It would be nice to think that British workers, sick of the cost of living crisis, of war in Europe, of lying politicians, of global warming, would at least treat the royals with disgust, if not turf them out of their palaces as a prelude to general socialist revolution. But the truth is that many workers lap up the royals like a dog laps up its own sick.

The Republic website is asking people to use the coronation event to protest, on the grounds that ‘there is a positive, exciting, democratic alternative’ to paying court to yet another gilded idler. They’re right, there is, but it’s not the alternative they’ve got in mind. The real alternative to a king is not some other ruling class finger puppet, whether elected or not. It’s the abolition of inequality and class privilege through the democratic common ownership of the world’s resources, and the collective and responsible stewardship of the planet and everything on it and in it. Not our king? Not our capitalism!

From Lenin to Stalin (1953)

From the April 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Although Stalin is dead there still lingers about him a larger than life aspect, This is hardly surprising when we consider his antithetical role of an angel of light and prince of darkness. While such a black and white study might serve as a popular form of entertainment it reveals nothing about Stalin as a man and politician. For our part we are prepared to remain on ground level and try to evaluate Stalin by examining the social and economic soil from which he grew and – if we may use the word – flourished.

One cannot, however, begin to understand Stalin without bringing in Lenin and the Bolsheviks who for many years formed a section of the Russian Social Democratic Party. Indeed that body of dogma, eclecticism, opportunism, and self-contradictory ideas which goes under the name of Stalinism is in essence a more explicit form of what was always implicit in the theories and tactics of Lenin and his Bolshevik Party. While Stalin in his self-appointed role of Philosopher-Statesman sought to extend and amplify Leninism – the alleged Marxism of the 20th century – he never attempted to infringe his master’s copyright on the subject.

Stalin himself was an old Bolshevik and not one of the least that Lenin led and inspired. He formed with Lenin a vital link in a chain of political ideas whose first phase culminated in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Certainly Stalin was more attuned to the intellectual and political atmosphere of the disciplined and conspiratorial Bolshevik Party than ever Trotsky was, a fact no doubt of crucial value in his struggle for power with the latter. Leninism as a political creed was itself born out of the leadership notions and essentially undemocratic ideas of the early Bolsheviks. Stalinism was its inevitable and tragic fulfillment.

Yet when the Bolshevik Lenin first appeared on the Russian political scene he accepted the views of people like Plekhanov – whose acknowledged pupil he was – Axelrod, Deutsch and others. Lenin’s first important work, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, published 1899, put forward the view that Capitalism was developing in Russia and nothing could stop its continuance. This development he argued was historically progressive in relation to the then existing semi-feudal economy of Russia. While one could not oppose this development he said, nevertheless workers should organise to resist its evils and steps should be taken to prepare for its eventual supersession.

Lenin’s book was part of an ideological campaign which the Russian Social Democratic Party were waging against the Narodniki (Populists) who maintained that Russia had a social development which was peculiar to itself and therefore did not have to pass through a normal and full capitalist development which other countries had experienced. In fact they averred that Capitalism was a kind of Western disease against which the people of Russia could and should he inoculated. Let us, they said, get rid of the tyranny of Czarism and we can, on the basis of our rural collectivism (the Mir), establish Socialism, i.e. free peasant communes and cooperatives of workers.

“Socialism in one Country” has then a much longer history than the Stalinist formulation of it. It is an ironical footnote on the earlier activities of Lenin and Stalin that the very theory they sought to combat was the one which in the end they made their own.

In fact it was Lenin who after the meagre achievements of “War Communism” re-introduced the idea of a home-grown Russian Socialism when he announced his “New Economic Policy.” It was the “Marxist” Lenin who proclaimed the myth that State Capitalism although a step backward from the earlier Bolshevik aims had in it, nevertheless, socialist implications. It was Lenin who repeatedly put forward the view that a Soviet State could be both the means and guarantee for realising Socialism in one country, and the further myth shared by both Stalin and Trotsky that what was taking place in Russia then was different from anywhere else in the world.

Lenin’s own views on Marxism had through the years undergone considerable change from his earlier standpoint. How much so could be seen in the attitude he adopted in the closing years of the 1914-18 war. Lenin had come to believe more and more that Capitalism was doomed. that it would be unable to finish the war it had started. Peace was to come by a victorious proletarian revolution in the advanced capitalist countries. For that reason the traditional difference between bourgeois and proletarian revolutions had for him lost significance. Given the right leadership in Russia a socialist revolution not a bourgeois one would be the order of the day. At the first All Russian Congress of Soviets, of which his party was only a small minority, he declared their willingness to take over immediately. In the August of that year he flatly asserted that “majority rule was a institutional illusion.”

Lenin’s predictions of what was going to happen to capitalism were falsified by the actual events. The capitalists did finish the war and no proletarian revolution took place. So Lenin’s main justification for a socialist revolution went by the board.

It is true the Bolsheviks did come to power in Russia. But it was neither with the acclamation nor assent of the Russian people. It was in the quiet of the early hours of the morning of November 7th that Bolshevik military cars occupied the centres of business and communication in Petrograd. This sealed the fate of Kerensky Provisional Government and assured the Bolsheviks of political power. Thus did the population of Petrograd discover when they woke a few hours later that their “Proletarian dictatorship” was an accomplished fact.

That the Bolsheviks concluded peace with Germany, dispossessed the private capitalist and against their own judgment gave the land to the peasants is a matter of history. They were successful because in war-weary, exhausted Russia they conceded to the inevitable. Behind the facade of their concession they planned however a new discipline and developed the latent forces for a new social order – new to Russia – but, in its exploitation based on wage labour, as old as capitalism itself.

Nor was the undemocratic seizure of power by the Bolsheviks merely the fortuitous result of filling the vacuum caused by the indecision and incompetence of Kerensky’s Government. Such action by the Bolsheviks was in keeping with their political ideas which the circumstances arising from the collapse of Csarist Russia enabled them to exploit.

The Bolsheviks, mainly recruited from the Russian bourgeois intelligentsia, had long regarded themselves as the born leaders of the Russian people, an illusion they shared with the Fabians and other reformist parties. By identifying themselves with the aims and aspirations of the non-socialist mass and securing their confidence the Bolsheviks believed that, with such backing, they could ride to political power at an opportune moment.

Because they believed themselves to be the commanding officers of the politically less conscious majority it is easy to see why the spreading of socialist ideas was subordinated to the preoccupation of tactics, unity of command and the strict discipline of party organisation. Within such a party it was obvious that freedom of individual action and opinion were gravely limited. Ideas for them were not something to be accepted because of their integral and logical structure but as an ideal means for successfully waging political struggles. Theory for the Bolsheviks, as it became later for the various Communist Parties meant a creed a dogma to be inflexibly held against all comers.

That the Bolsheviks adopted Marxism not only saved them the trouble of formulating theories of their own but as a well-established doctrine, it provided an admirable ideological basis to which changes and shifts in policy could be ultimately referred and by which they could be justified. This is the true significance of Lenin’s oft repeated phrase, echoed and re-echoed by Stalin, “Theory is a guide to practice.” For the Bolsheviks these dogmas set the limit to and decided the nature of freedom of discussion. Whatever differences may exist between Roman Catholicism and “Communism” there is at least this much in common.

It is from the mental and political outlook of the Bolsheviks we can trace the evolution of that pernicious scholasticism by which Stalin and his party not only conducted their purges but sought to hide from the world and perhaps themselves what was really taking place in “Socialist Russia.”

It would also account for the reason why men like Lenin and Stalin were at one and the same time, rigid doctrinaires and flexible, opportunistic politicians. Perhaps for dictators there is an emotional need for dogma. Many tyrants have justified their evil work on the assumption that it was ultimately for the good of mankind. Even Stalin explaining that Soviet Russia is not exempt from economic laws indulged in turgid Marxist phraseology and quotes from Engels who it appears plays a similar role in Soviet theology to that once played by Aristotle in the Catholic Church.

In such an organisation as the Bolsheviks it is not surprising that the dictum, the end justifies the means, was raised to a ruling principle. Long before the revolution they held that any means were permissible against political opponents; after the revolution it was but logical step to ensure that all means were justifiable.

The Bolsheviks themselves however became the victims of their own anti-democratic pressures. From “all power to the Soviets” it passed to “all power to the Communist Party.” The checks and balances of ordinary democratic procedure were absent. The struggle of rival groups had to be carried on within the Communist Party. Intrigue and plotting under ideological disguises became the effective means for realising political ambitions. Because of years of unbridled power the Communist Party was mentally and politically incapable of resolving the struggle by democratic means. Maintenance of power at any price became for them a matter of life and death. On a chequer board of political tactics the old Bolshevik “moved, mated and slayed” until the assumption of power rested in one man – Stalin; which compelled the fashioning of a mighty repressive machine to ensure his own preservation and that of the ruling faction which he represented.

While Stalin was prepared to make concessions to the Russian people and even grant a “New Constitution” he was incapable of granting them political freedom. Whatever may have been Stalin’s claims for what he achieved in Russia he was never prepared to submit them to normal political competition. For Stalin that would have been the end of Stalinism.

It was Stalin who completed the work begun by Lenin, the turning of Marxism, a revolutionary doctrine into its opposite an authoritative ideology of State Capitalism on a par and at times competing with other state ideologies, i.e. Hitler’s National Socialism and Mussolini’s Corporate State.

The Bolsheviks in spite of their Marxist language and at times idealistic phrases were never socialists. They served instead as spokesmen of a new ruling class in Russia, a class itself the outcome of the very economic tendencies existing in Russia, the tendencies towards State Capitalism. In the furnace of the Russian Revolution the Bolsheviks were themselves forged into an instrument of class domination. In that sense was Joseph Djugashvili a man of steel.

Ted Wilmott