Editorial: A Damp Squib. (1908)

Editorial from the July 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of course we cannot expect anything better of Victor Grayson. He’s a firework, rather damped by the humid atmosphere of the Commons, but liable to little fizzles where the powder remains dry. On the occasion of the discussion of the visit of the great peacemaker (which his other name is Guelph) to Russia, when Keir Hardie, swearing he would ne’er withdraw, withdrew his references to the bloody autocracy and feudal savagery of the “Little Father,” and his bigger sisters and cousins and aunts of the Arch-Dukeries, Victor Grayson wanted to give a one-horse pyrotechnic display. He doubtless felt that he had reached a dry spot in his powder magazine and could let off a few crackers. But Henderson, who is the “Little Father” of the Labour Party (MacDonald being his wire-pulling Grand Duke), was not going to allow Grayson to break up the order of the proceedings which the “black hundred” (less ninety-eight) had decided upon in collaboration with the Government. So Grayson was promptly “closured.”

o o o

It was a decided exuberation of bad manners on the part of Grayson, who might easily have followed the example of Pete Curran. Pete, who is a model of self-restraint, found himself once up against the rules of the “House” when he wanted to do desperate things against the Government in connection with the shooting of the people at Belfast. (Russia does not entirely monopolise the institution of “Bloody Sunday.”) With an effort Pete managed to maintain the entente between the Labour Party and the Government unfractured, and relieve his feelings at the same time. In this way. Bubbling over with indignation, he went outside the “House,” and while no one was looking, exploded (under his breath) in these epoch-making and entirely original words—”Damn the Rules !” And so went back to his duties.

o o o

This is the story told, with modest restraint and with less detail perhaps, by Pete himself. It is an example of statesmanship that Grayson should have at least endeavoured to emulate. That he did not is a sign of youth—and of the fact that he does not draw his £200 from the Labour Party exchequer.

Editorial: Pensions for the Dead. (1908)

Editorial from the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Liberal mountain has been long in labour, and has nearly been delivered of Old Age Pensions. We say nearly, advisedly; for the Government, with shocking callousness regarding the welfare of its poor, emaciated little mouse, has determined to sever it from the Budget, in which it would be protected from the wicked lords, and to embody it in a separate Bill; thus deliberately and of malice aforethought placing it at the mercy of those whom the Liberals never tire of denouncing as enemies and wreckers of all Liberal measures. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer has pledged himself to this course, and the mouse may yet fail to see the light of day.

Nevertheless, we confess to no anxiety on the matter. We have no desire to claim that our influence is visible in the result. Reforms are the gifts of capitalism, and are only granted to the workers in vain endeavours to stay their advance to power. And we are convinced that to get anything vital to their happiness the working class must take it themselves. To do that the workers must be supreme in the State, and then, of necessity, it becomes a question, not of reform, but of social reconstruction.

The Liberal “Old Age” proposal is, then, but a sop to keep the workers quiet—but such a paltry sop. The “Old Age” part is prominent enough, but surely a microscope is needed to discover the pension.

Five shillings a week when you are seventy, should you be so unfortunate as to live as long. A problematic five shillings a week at seventy— that is, of course, if you have been a good boy ; if you haven’t within five years been convicted of vagrancy, desertion, or “serious” crime; if you are not in receipt of poor relief; if your income is not more than ten shillings a week, and so on—while married couples living together are to be punished for their foolishness by having their pensions reduced to 3/9 per head.

Five shillings a week as a bribe to the worker to keep out of the workhouse, where it would cost at least 18/- to keep him. Five shillings a week as a premium on low wages to those few ancient toilers who, by some miracle, are still able to work a little. Such are the promises of the “Workers’ Budget.”

The pensioners are, indeed, condemned to live—or endeavour to live—upon a total income that in no case can exceed fifteen shillings a week. In the vast majority of cases they must die slowly upon considerably less. Happy Veterans ! Not that they are likely to be numerous. Precautions have been taken to avoid that contingency. Besides, the average working man is scrapped, as a profit producing machine for the capitalist, a score of years before the pension is to bless him. He will thus have a score or more of years in which to purify his body by fasting preparatory to entering the heaven which a generous capitalism is to provide for its worn-out beasts of burden. Truly, the workers have not words wherewith to express their thanks ! Kaiser Wilhelm, having taken the initiative in the conference of the Western European nations in the matter of promoting measures of social reform as an antidote to Socialism, must feel contempt for stingy, shop-keeping, British Liberalism, whose cheeseparing policy, he might say, would ruin all. Social reform in Liberal England limps painfully behind that of despotic Germany, and it is significant of the worth of mere social reform that the German wage-slave is, on the whole, not one whit better off than his British confrere. The enactment of social reform, in fact, cannot keep pace with the progressive crushing of the wage worker under the iron heel of Capital. 

The hardships of British and German workers—of workers the world over—flow from their exploitation, and must continue until this ends. And to the conquest of Society soon or late the workers must bend their Titanic strength, for there is no help but in themselves, and no hope but in Socialism.

Editorial: Queeries. (1908)

Editorial from the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was the chairman of the Labour Party Conference at Belfast who affirmed that “they had been called a queer party and they were a queer party.” Mr. Joseph Burgess, the Labour candidate of Dundee is a member of this queer party. Which may account for his answer to the intelligent voter who, according to The Scotsman, asked him the following questions :-—

(A) Do you think that Socialism would interfere with the present division of labour?

(B) If everyone received the same reward, who would do the dirty work under Socialism?

The answer of this queer member of a queer party, as reported, was :-—

(A) I am of opinion a complete state of Socialism cannot come for at least fifty years; nationalisation of the land must come first, Socialism afterwards.

(B) I am sure that those who do the disagreeable work would receive the big wage.

Mr. Burgess’ idea of the order of evolution of Socialism is certainly equal to his conception of the remuneration of the dirty worker under Socialism; while his value as an exponent of Socialism is hardly more than his worth as a member of the ancient order of the prophets. It would be interesting now to hear Mr. Burgess upon what Socialism is, what wages are, and what reasons he can adduce for the imposition of a time limit of fifty years to the capitalist system. It is just possible that his answers would stagger even the members of the S.D.P. who gave expression to their passion for the unity of the “forces of progress” by affiliating with all the other odds and ends of political ineptitude in the locality, to secure Mr. Burgess’ election.

It is worthy of some little note that the fact of Mr. Burgess moving at the I.L.P. Conference of 1907, against affiliation with the S.D.P. on the ground, in effect, that the S.D.P. was not good enough, neither prevented the S.D.P. from supporting his candidature at Dundee, nor his acceptance of that support. Mr. Burgess may, however, quite fairly claim now, that the support which the S.D.P. gave to the “Socialist” candidate whose conception of Socialism is expressed in the answer above quoted, is quite sufficient justification for his assertion that the S.D.P. is not good enough. The S.D.P. is apparently concerned to show that the Labour Party is not the only queer party in existence.

Editorial: A King on Socialism. (1908)

Editorial from the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dr. H. M. MacCracken, Chancellor of New York University, has—according to the Harmsworth Press—been interviewed by the Daily Mail’s Own Correspondent.

The professor had just returned from a trip to the Scandinavian countries, undertaken with the object of arranging an interchange of professors. What we are concerned with here, however, is not the object of his holiday, but rather with the delightful example of bourgeois mentality that the Chancellor of New York University introduces to us via the Daily Mail.

The chancellor lunched with King Haakon and conversed for several hours with him on education and politics. “If King Haakon,” he observes, “were not a king he would make an excellent professor of political economy. He understands his subject thoroughly. He knows, too, that Socialism is increasing among his subjects, recognises the fact openly, and is, indeed, much worried about it.”

And then we come to that dreary, hoary old wheeze that Socialism is the Great Divide; that it does not mean a co-operative commonwealth run by associated labour democratically organised, but means that all wealth is to be split up amongst the people !

“Recently, Dr. MacCracken said, the King went among some working men who were known to be Socialists and asked them if they were in favour of a division of wealth. They said they were. “Then let us appoint Friday at noon as the time for the division of wealth,” the King suggested to them. “Very well,” answered the men. “But wait,” said the King, “at five minutes after twelve many babies will be born, and they will be entitled to their share of wealth. Shall we make another division then and another one every five minutes ?”

The King did not get a satisfactory answer to that question, so his opposition to Socialism, he told Dr. MacCracken, was not modified. “Why,” he added, “I could black my own boots if I wanted to. I have done it, and know how. But if I did, what would become of those people who make a living by blacking boots ? The Socialist demand for equality of labour is in fact impracticable. I believe in division of labour.”

After that we are not at all surprised that “King Haakon impressed Dr. MacCracken as a man of unusual intellect.” And when the learned chancellor informs us that the King “would make an excellent professor of political economy,” we can but agree with him.

Editorial: Once a Liberal always a Liberal. (1908)

Editorial from the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Mr. MacDonald, who is certainly practical enough in Parliament, has been represented as a somewhat bitter critic of the present Government. I believe it to be a fact that he considers he has a grievance against the newspapers for the way they have ignored his repeated efforts to do justice to the Government’s good works.” 

Manchester Guardian’s London Correspondent, Jan. 9th, 1908.

Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald’s political career has been an interesting one. Just previous to the general election of 1895 he was straining every nerve to induce the Liberal Executive to adopt him as one of their official candidates for Southampton. Had they done so and he had secured election, it is highly improbable that he would ever have been heard of as an “Independent” Labour man, provided always that the Liberal moneybags had recognised his “statesmanship” and seen to it that his political advancement was not retarded. But the official Liberals of Southampton would have none of him, and so, like many another job-hunter, he became “converted,” and being anxious to enter Parliament, at once pushed himself forward as the “Independent Labour” candidate for the borough. At the last general election he secured the coveted membership of the House of Commons, sinking all the principles of political independence which the I.L.P. claim to have as their basis of operations, by making a compact with the Liberals of Leicester. That he is still, for all practical purposes, a Liberal, is shown by his remarks to a Daily News interviewer on January 8th. That interview, as the D.N. editor pointed out, was “an interesting evidence of the substantial identity of the immediate aims of Liberalism and Labour.” Now the immediate aims of Liberalism are to maintain and, if possible, strengthen the economic supremacy of the master class over the working class. It is for that that they enter into politics, and as the immediate aims of the Labour Party are substantially identical (for the accuracy of the D.N’s comment cannot be questioned) we are once more justified in our criticism of the Labour Party as upholders of capitalism. Moreover, Mr. MacDonald declared, “you can find Socialists in both the big political parties.” Why, then, does not the Labour member for Leicester denounce them ? They must be either ignorant, or dishonest. But it is clear that in Mr. MacDonald’s opinion Socialism is only a general term signifying a desire to reform, not to change the basis of Society, for he added “the people get Socialism from Tory as well as from Liberal Ministers” ! Will the chairman of the Independent Labour Party take the object of that party (fearful and wonderful as it is) and explain how, if that is his idea of Socialism, the people are getting it from Tory as well as from Liberal Ministers ?

Reform or Socialism?

There is one aspect of the editorial comments in the Daily News which deserves very careful consideration on the part of those who claim to be Socialists, but yet advocate reforms. It is idle to deny that many do so quite honestly, believing that there is little hope of the workers organising for Socialism until their conditions are vastly improved, and they must therefore ask, or appeal, or “demand” these reforms of their masters. The Daily News welcomes the pressure of the Labour Party in the direction of a generous scheme of old age pensions, as it can only be salutary, and will certainly come with equal conviction and energy from the Left Wing of Liberalism itself. The same thing, it adds, is true of the problem of unemployment. In its opinion, a niggardly scheme of pensions, and, above all, one which attempted to set up any discrimination on the basis of merit, would do more than anything else to disillusionise those workmen who trust the sympathies and goodwill of Liberalism. It might drive them to Tariff Reform, more probably it would convert them to Socialism. And so, as Mr. Cadbury’s journal does not wish workmen to be converted to Socialism, it hopes the Government will pass something which, in the name of Socialism, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and his party advocate. The Daily News knows, of course, that Old Age Pensions, whether carried out according to the plan of the Labour Party or otherwise, are in no sense of the word Socialism. They, therefore, do not father the twaddle of the I.L.P. chairman about getting Socialism from Tory as well as Liberal Ministers. As Mr. A.J.Balfour declared recently, Social Reform is the antidote to Socialism. It is therefore illogical for Socialists to advocate reforms. These will, of course, be passed into law by the master class whenever the exigencies of the political situation demand that operation. And as the working-class show they are becoming Socialists, the passing of reforms will be expedited by the capitalists. The only work then with which Socialists have to deal is the education of the workers to the principles of Socialism, for the spread of that education alone will secure, not only an amelioration of present conditions, but the complete change from capitalism to Socialism, which is necessary before freedom and general well-being can be possible for all mankind.

What’s in the Wind.

Not only is Mr. J. R. MacDonald anxious to show how very little Liberalism has to fear from Labourism, but other Labour members are going about the country proclaiming that they are not Socialists, and evidently endeavouring to conciliate the Liberals. At Hulme Town Hall on November 28, Mr. G. D. Kelley, M.P. explained that he did not wish to see the Government wrecked by the introduction of an unacceptable Licensing Bill. But, from the workers’ point of view, Liberals and Tories are but two names adopted by the one enemy, and it matters not to them which section of the enemy is in power or thrown out. Moreover, if the Labour Party’s view is the correct one, and the next general election will see a large increase in their ranks in the House of Commons, it would suit their purpose better if the Government were wrecked at once, no matter on what. At the conclusion of the meeting Mr. Kelley was asked if he were a Socialist and replied in the negative. Hence his solicitude for the Liberal Government. Mr. H. Nuttall, Liberal M.P., mentioned at Heaton Mersey on December 20th that Mr. Clynes, M.P., had expressed himself in a way as to a practical working policy that he fully agreed with, and, commenting on this, the Manchester Weekly Chronicle pointed out that since Mr. Nuttalls speech Mr. Clynes, speaking at Hulme, said Socialism was a long way off, and they had to work for immediate reforms. Again we ask “what’s in the wind ?” Is it that the Labour members, anticipating an early general election, and fearing the Liberals will decline to renew the compacts by which so many Labour men became Labour members, fearing the Liberals will force them to fight three-cornered contests, are striving to conciliate the Liberals as much as possible, with a view to preventing such a (to them) dire catastrophe as is here foreshadowed ?

Editorial: The Festive Season. (1908)

Editorial from the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Festive Season.

The usual cant is now being uttered concerning the “festive season,” and the conventional phrases are on most people’s lips. To those with the wherewithal to purchase the good things of life it is possible to be merry and joyous, but to these Christmas is no exception to the rule. They can and do eat, drink and be merry, taking no thought of the morrow, even if it be that on the morrow they die. But although the working class may, for the time being, “forget their sorrow and remember their misery no more,” their ever-present poverty and the constant dread of even harder times, makes a “joyous” Christmas impossible.

What is the position to-day ? Says that wordy describer of evils for which he has no remedy, Mr. Geo. R. Sims :

“No one has any money. The cry of an impoverished people rings through the land. The West End weeps and the City sits in sackcloth and ashes. All parties agree that there is “very little money about.”

One is bound to accept the statement when one hears it so plaintively put forward in every direction. Commercial and professional men, dukes and doss-house keepers, traders and toilers, all tell you the same thing, and yet—capitals, please, Mr. Printer, AND YET

Luxury and Extravagance

leap to your eyes everywhere, and the shop windows this Christmas time are making as glorious a show of goods as ever delighted the eyes of a passing public in the palmy days of booming British trade and national well-being.

Magnificent hotels and gorgeous restaurants, such as the capital never possessed before, flourish and pay dividends ; men who used to go to the City in a twopenny ‘bus are now whirled thither in a thousand-guinea motor-car.”

And yet from all the industrial centres, not those of England alone, but of all parts of the world, come accounts of the distress among the working class. In London the starving condition of the school children has forced leading members of the exploiting class to issue an urgent appeal for funds, fearful lest the supply of efficient wage slaves may be impaired, or that this starvation, in the midst of plenty, if allowed to continue, may goad people into action that may threaten the supremacy of the master class. In the North of England special appeals have been issued for funds to help the unemployed and their starving dependents. As the Newcastle Journal of Dec. 10th said :

“The cry for Relief of Distress is in evidence that the contrivances invented to prevent so many people falling into poverty and to ease the lot of such as might fall have been a dead failure—a most lamentable failure. For, as the means of relief have gone on increasing, the number demanding to be relieved goes on increasing in still greater proportion. . . . Our country abounds with orphan asylums, houses of refuge, training ships for outcasts, hospitals for every kind of disease, convalescent homes, alms-houses, and charity organisations of one sort and another—each and all of which were designed to play their part in reducing the mass of poverty, and in elevating the condition of those dwelling on the borders of pauperism, in social and moral respects. But their failure to attain such end is dismal. Never was the mass of poverty in our country greater than it is to-day—never was the cry of the distressful louder than it is to-day. . . The Distress Committee in every town is proclaiming that the state of things is worse than it was before.”

We agree with the writer that all these benevolent contrivances have failed lamentably “because they do not get near to the root of the evil—because they do not even aim at touching the root of the evil.” And in endeavouring to earn his money as a capitalist hack he, as might be expected, charges the working class with improvidence, thriftlessness, and wastefulness ! He accuses them of being reckless of future needs, and given to living from hand to mouth. As if the wage slaves of capitalism could do other than live from hand to mouth ! He suggests that the distress in Sunderland is largely due to the workers’ extravagance and self-indulgence when the day was long and work was plentiful. Other writers state that these Sunderland mechanics have been receiving £7 or £8 per week in wages, and they have spent it all as they received it. We do not believe these amounts have been paid in wages, but even if they have, and the receivers have spent all their takings each week, what has been the effect? They have found employment in other departments of industry which would not have been provided had they refrained from spending their wages. Tailors, shoemakers, producers and purveyors of food and drink, employees of transit companies, etc., have had work as the result of the “thriftlessness” of these Sunderland shipwrights. Had they “hoarded,” had they put by for a rainy day, it would have been necessary long before this to make appeals to relieve the distress of unemployed workers who have been kept going by the “extravagance” of their fellows.

Under capitalism, it is in the interests of the working class that wealth should be destroyed as quickly as possible after it is produced, and the Newcastle Journal’s claptrap no more suggests a solution of the problem than any of the “contrivances” it writes down.

In the “Empire Beyond the Seas” thousands of good workmen are workless and hungry. From Canada comes the news that every industry is overcrowded. In Toronto there are 10,000 out of work, 4,000 in Winnipeg, and similar numbers in other large centres. Even Lord Strathcona, the High Commissioner, whilst not confirming (nor disputing) these figures, admits that “the general conditions of labour and business are not so brisk as at this time last year, but everything is reasonably satisfactory.” “Reasonably satisfactory” means, of course, that the unemployed are quiet, that they are not making themselves a nuisance. Let it be remembered that these unemployed workmen in Canada are not of “the idle, loafing, profligate class” : they are men who have been mainly selected for their physical fitness and mechanical skill, as only those who can pass a very severe test in these respects are allowed to join the parties of emigrants “assisted” by various capitalist agencies, open or disguised, to “start afresh.” And although it is admitted that there is an acute unemployed problem in Canada, “General” Booth is advertising for 600 men and women to join a party going there, under government auspices, on Feb. 20th !

From America, the “land of the free,” the paradise that the Tariff Reformer points to, but (like the Christian and his paradise) is in no hurry to go to, we learn, on the authority of the Daily Mail, that

“Distressing stories of a vain struggle for existence in America are told by crowds of sad-faced emigrants streaming from the steerage decks of every arriving trans-Atlantic liner. The vast majority, according to competent assurance I have received, are arriving only with money for the barest immediate necessities. I have interviewed a number of distracted wanderers—broad-shouldered, industrious-looking Galicians, Bohemians, Poles, and Italians—who, in broken English, picked up during brief sojourns in America, declared that they were willing to do any kind of work, they had not earned a dollar for three months” 

(Daily Mail’s Bremen Correspondent, Dec. 5)

These workers out of European countries left their homes (capitalism having broken them up long before the advent of Socialism) because conditions of livelihood were productive of poverty and unhappiness, and they are now leaving Protection-ridden America for the same reason.

Let us take another phase of the workers’ existence.

Early on the morning of the 18th December, an explosion occurred at a mine belonging to the Pittsburg (U.S.A.) Coat Company at Jacob’s Creek, some eighteen miles from Connellsville. Two hundred and fifty miners lost their lives, and we are told that the women relatives of the men gathered around the pitmouth frenzied with grief. What a merry Christmas ! What a prospect of a happy New Year for these women and children deprived of bread-winner by this sudden “act of God” !

This is the third great coal-mine explosion that has occurred in the United States in less than a fortnight. On December 6th between four and five hundred miners lost their lives at the Monongah Mine, and on the 16th another seventy met their doom in the Yolande Mine, Alabama. On the day of the Jacob’s Creek explosion the Commission appointed by Mr. Garfield, Secretary of the Interior, issued a pamphlet showing that 22,840 persons have lost their lives in coal-mine accidents in America in the last seventeen years. Half of these deaths were caused during the last six years. In 1906 alone 6,861 persons were involved in accidents, 2,061 of whom perished. In 1906 there were 1,116 lives lost in British mines. It is well that the accidents and diseases of occupations should be borne in mind when our opponents are telling us of the “reward” to which the capitalist is entitled because of the risks he takes. He never risks his life for a paltry wage insufficient at the best of times to keep one decently.

When one takes into consideration, then, the conditions of the working class all over the wide world ; when one remembers that, no matter what political, fiscal, or religious systems are in vogue, all over the world the working class is poor and the master class is rich ; when one knows that their exploitatation must continue, what a farce it is to talk to the wage slaves of “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year !” There is no festive season for them. There cannot be until capitalism is abolished. When the workers, organised as a class-conscious party, not only in opposition to those political factions which are avowedly capitalist, but also to those which, while professing to be anti-capitalist are yet pro-capitalist, by reason of their efforts at “reforming” this system and their support of capitalist candidates and parties, shall be preparing to take over the means of wealth production and thus end working-class exploitation, they will be able to indulge in good wishes and encouragement. When, however, their historic mission is fulfilled it will not be a case of wishing each other a good time once in 365 days, but life for all, young and old, will be a festive season all the time. To hasten that good day is the work which the Socialist Party of Great Britain has been doing and which it hopes to do even more vigorously in the year now before it.

Editorial: God and the Labour Party. (1907)

Editorial from the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

“One above sees all” is only a variation of the saying, “onlookers see most of the game.” Whether or no the truth of either can be demonstrated, it is certain that those not immediately concerned can get plenty of amusement out of the antics of all sections of politicians who are now claiming God as their “guide, philosopher, and friend.” Mr. G. H. Roberts, Labour M.P. for Norwich, visited the Burton Town Hall on October 21st and “in language rich in proverbial philosophy advanced the aims and objects of the Labour Party.” He had long claimed, he said, that, given an equal opportunity, there was no reason why the workman should not take his place by the side of the wealthy representative in the House of Commons ! He did not explain how the workmen could possibly have an equal opportunity with the wealthy. It would have been difficult, of course. Neither did he suggest that the workers should supplant all the wealthy representatives with a view to depriving them of their power to exploit ? No ! his “rich proverbial philosophy” finds expression in a desire for a “fair representation of all classes” in the House of Commons. He contended that the Labour movement was not only a sound political movement but it was “the greatest religious factor they had at the present time.” The Labour Party believed in the love of God and the brotherhood of man. They wanted the word of God to live in their industrial and human activities. And much more to the same effect. The only inference to be drawn from all this is that during all these years of working-class exploitation, Almighty God has been asleep or has been “winking the other eye” while those who believe in him and his “Love” and his “Word” have been fighting and maiming, and killing and enslaving each other. In the year 50 A.D., it is said, James, the Brother of Jesus, called upon the rich men to weep and howl for the miseries that were to come upon them ! “Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days . . . Behold, the hire of the labourers, who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth.” . . “And the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord.” Despite this denunciation, the exploiters have continued to carry on business at the old stand, improving their methods, securing more power, and appropriating more wealth. So that it would seem that the Lord has been on their side. And now that the workers are slowly beginning to see the justice of Socialism, the masters who have “made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field,” finding they cannot argue, that they cannot oppose Socialism by other means, are endeavouring to play upon the ignorant passions, prejudices and fears of the people. They know how true were the words that Louis XIV. wrote to the King of Tonquin on January 10th, 1681: “For this God is … above all, the most useful in giving to Kings unlimited power over peoples.” And the “Socialist” members of the House of Commons should know it also. But instead of boldly and honestly facing the position, instead of avowing on the platform the opinions they hold in private, instead of standing by the scientific position that neither capitalism nor Socialism, as such, has anything to do with speculative opinions as to the existence or non-existence of a god or of gods, good or devilish ; they are, for vote-catching purposes, mouthing such twaddle as that which fell from their lips during the Kirkdale election and is quoted above. Let the people, instead of wasting time claiming God for their side, in answer to the exploiters who claim him for theirs, “leave tears and praying,” gird up their loins, harden their hearts, and strengthen their hands preparatory to engaging in the final struggle for the overthrow of class supremacy, a struggle that can only succeed when undertaken by a determined and intelligent proletariat.

J.K.

Editorial: The Only Socialist Party. (1907)

Editorial from the November 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many comments have been penned by writers in the official organs of bodies claiming to be Socialist to whom the S.P.G.B. is in open and avowed antagonism because of the resolution passed by the E.C. of the S.P.G.B., challenging the British Constitution Association to debate the principles of Socialism. The aforesaid writers are concerned owing to the resolution describing the S.P.G.B. as “the only Socialist Party in this country.” Well, seeing that it is, why should not the fact be announced ? What is it that differentiates the S.P.G.B. from other parties claiming to be Socialist ? It is the only party that, from its formation and ever since, has advocated Socialism, and nothing short of Socialism, at all times and under all conditions. It is the only party that has declined to be side-tracked or to assist in sidetracking the people by concentrating their efforts upon the palliation instead of upon the abolition of capitalism. It is the only party that has refused to attach itself to freak organisations, political or industrial. It is assailed because it declines to advocate palliatives. But what have the opponents of Socialism been declaring recently is the best way to fight Socialism? To palliate the evils of capitalism ! Mr. Levy Lever, M.P., says Socialism must be fought “by legislation dealing with housing, social, and land reform, and old age pensions.” Lord Burghclere declares for “Social Legislation.” Sir George Kekewich, M.P., says “Employ the unemployed. Reform the Poor Law. House the Workers. Pension the Aged.” The Marquis of Northampton is of opinion that the discontent of the working class is owing to the lethargy of successive Governments as regards drastic social reforms. Sir H. Seymour King, M.P., would fight it by granting the legitimate demands of the masses for improved conditions and opportunities. The Hon. Claude Hay, who has supported the S.D.F., financially and otherwise, in their agitation for free meals for schoolchildren, plumps for “bold social reforms,” and others would “give the poorer classes a stake in the country,” thereby admitting, of course, that they possess none at present. But all these proposals are put forward, let it not be forgotten, by those who are out to fight Socialism. And it is these same antidotes to Socialism that the S.D.F., I.L.P., and similar reform bodies are urging the workers to scramble for ! The S.P.G.B., comprehending the real significance of the working-class movement, declines to be side-tracked. It knows that only Socialism will give the wealth producers their freedom and the wealth they produce, and it is therefore out for Socialism all along the line, and has always been. No other party in this country can substantiate a similar claim and therefore the S.P.G.B. is justified in describing itself as “the only Socialist Party.”

Editorial: A Confession of Impotence. (1907)

Editorial from the November 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Confession of Impotence.

Speaking for the S.D.F. at N.E. Manchester on September 28th, Mr. J. R, Clynes, M.P., thus delivered himself amid, we read, loud S.D.F. cheers:—

“The Labour Party in Parliament were doing their best. He thought they should be delegates to carry out the will of the people who sent them there. They only represented a small minority of the workers and could not speak for the whole of the workers. They were told to kick up a row and make themselves a nuisance like the Irish Party. But the Irish Party had nearly the whole of Ireland behind them.”

That comes of being a fierce democrat and the bosom chum of an implacable revolutionary like Bill Thorne. Having fulfilled the first of their desires and “got in” on programmes that, whatever else they may have been, were distinctly not Socialist; and having discovered that being in on such terms they were, as we said they would and must be, impotent, the LABOUR—socialist members now seek to placate the wrath of any of their “advanced” friends by pointing out that they couldn’t kick up a row because, dont y’see, they haven’t the whole people behind them. As unflinching democrats, it was their business first and foremost (after “getting in”) to carry out the will of the people by whose votes they were returned, and as these votes were not given for Socialism, naturally they (the elected persons) couldn’t act as Socialists or preach Socialism.

The thing is as plain as can be. We can’t, they say, run on a Socialist programme because the people, the sovereign people (two hundred sovereigns to be precise), are not Socialists and wouldn’t elect us ; we can’t voice Socialism when we are elected because we must represent the views of our constituents. Of course Socialism is the only thing that materially matters to the workers (“I believe and recognise the class war,” says Clynes), and when the people are Socialists we shall—my word ! how we shall go for the capitalists, and what a row we shall kick up. But until then——And so on, and so on.

____________

Exploiters of Sentiment.

Well, what is the use of Clynes & Co. from a Socialist point of view at all ? And what is the use of the S.D.F. “Socialists” in Manchester who cheered Clynes and moved him votes of thanks ? If Clynes is prepared, as in common with other members of the Labour Group who claim to be Socialists he certainly is, to subordinate Socialism, the admittedly only hope of the workers, to the chance of “getting in,” what use is he from a working-class standpoint ? He may claim that he did not know how impotent his precious “Labour” party would be. He may have been, as many professing Socialists are, under the impression that the great thing is to “get in,” and then use your position as a sounding board for your principles—play the political fraud, deceive the electorate, prepare the way for a Socialism that is impossible without an educated working class by deliberately hoodwinking that class ! We have set our faces against this, the fairly common practice of the S.D.F., I.L.P. and other pseudo-Socialist parties, and earned for ourselves by our denunciations, the epithet “impossiblists.” But this damnable doctrine of doing evil that good may come was, and is yet, widely held, and Clynes may have been innoculated with it.

Assume that he was an honest fool then as against a worse assumption, and went in with high hopes of better work possible under the changed conditions only to find he was tied hand and foot and delivered bound to the “Labour Party.” Assuming that, what would his position be provided he remained honest ? What action would he take ? Surely he would risk his salary, break with the “Labour” Party and its restrictions, and shout his Socialism from the Parliamentary housetop. Such action would not, of course, purge the evil of his election, but it would be evidence of honest stupidity.

But what it instead of this he swallowed his aspirations, pocketed his wages and came along with the explanation that, after all you cannot work in advance of your electorate ? Well, in that case you would know to a very nice exactitude what the price of that man was.

Mark ! this is the case of a man who started into office foolish but honest. But suppose the best of evidence existed to show that he had no delusions as to his powers when he “got in” ; that knowing all the time that Socialism was the only thing that mattered to the workers, he deliberately whittled his policy and submerged his principles until he made himself acceptable to the ignorance of a number of electors sufficiently large for his purposes ; what would then be said when that man came along to explain his impotence on the ground of the ignorance of the electorate ? What would we call a man who, while occupying the standing of a leader in professing Socialist circles, deliberately got himself elected on a non-Socialist programme that rendered him entirely useless to the working class, and who then came to his professing Socialist supporters to explain that he was useless because he had been elected on a non-Socialist ticket ?

Think it over, my friends of North East Manchester and elsewhere, remembering the speech of J. R, Clynes, M.P. And do not forget the loud cheers of his S.D.F. supporters. They at any rate are prepared to be parties to the same game again—if the Manchester S.P.G.B. does not interfere. However, as there is a branch of the S.P.G.B. in Manchester now, the local confusionists can rely upon the interference, as we can rely upon our comrades making that interference effective.

Proper Gander: The maxim of maximising (2025)

The Proper Gander column from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In The Prophets of Profit, a five-part documentary on Radio 4, the BBC’s Business Editor Simon Jack ‘tracks how a simple idea became so powerful and why it shapes all of our lives today’. This idea is a common approach to running companies, and its ‘prophets’ are economist Milton Friedman and his successors. Being a radio programme, there aren’t any visual distractions to the words spoken by Jack’s interviewees or his explanations of the technicalities of commerce, which are more detailed than most documentaries bother with. However, this makes it harder to discern that buried underneath the talk of ‘maximising shareholder value’, ‘creative destruction’ and ‘equity-based compensation’ are the practicalities of goods being made and used by people.

The series takes 1970 as its starting point, when Milton Friedman’s article ‘The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits’ was published in the New York Times. Clear from the title, Friedman’s ‘simple idea’ is that the main aim of corporate executives is to encourage profits, and any responsibilities a company has to wider society are covered by the wealth it generates. The documentary describes his influence through economists such as Michael C Jensen and Bill Meckling, who went from ‘disciples of Friedman to preachers for a new muscular brand of shareholder supremacy’, according to Jack. They, and those they inspired such as ‘corporate finance specialist’ Don Chew, believe that businesses have been held back by legislation and placing too much emphasis on cultural and environmental concerns or perks for staff such as pension schemes.

Chew quotes the view that ‘we’ve reached the point where every corporate interest is represented except for shareholders in the corporate boardroom’. To ‘correct’ this, executives should focus on directly maximising the value of shares, and this would lead to a better return on capital for shareholders than investment in wider issues. A sympathetic government would support this approach by minimising tax rates, regulation and legislation. Techniques to enhance share value which became popular through the 1970s and 80s included firms borrowing more to finance targeted growth, and ‘using cash generated by the business to buy back shares from existing shareholders so they can go and invest the proceeds in new industries’. Chew brags that Americans in particular have become adept at squeezing money out of failing organisations and in to growing industries, so the loss of one company means a boost to others. This is one application of ‘creative destruction’, a concept popularised by political economist Joseph Schumpeter, but which was earlier critiqued by Karl Marx. Those with an optimistic view of capitalism would say that overall this can lead to economic equilibrium, ignoring the hardships workers face when on the wrong end of ‘creative destruction’.

Maximising shareholder value also supposedly creates an equilibrium by being the most effective discipline to mould a well-run company for all, generating taxes for governments to spend while making innovative, decent products and happy workers. With this view, we’re expected to believe that wealth will trickle down to where it deserves to be. The series covers some of the actual consequences of the drive to raise shareholder value. Michael Jensen advocated ‘equity-based compensation’: executives being paid in shares to give them additional motivation to improve the company’s coffers. He didn’t foresee that many would be paid with salaries and bonuses as well, leading to a massive gulf between their income and that of most workers, nor that firms involved in scandals during the 2008 financial crash tended to have executives motivated by ‘equity-based compensation’. And as explained by economist Sir John Kay, a short-term focus on generating wealth can have disastrous effects, such as when crashes of Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft were blamed on prioritising profits over investing sufficiently in safeguards.

The series uses the late-80s privatisation of the water industry as an example of Friedman’s ideas being put into practice in the UK. Michael Howard, the Tory Minister who oversaw this says that when owned by the state, the water industry had to compete for funding with other institutions such as the NHS. He claims that since privatisation, investment in the sector has always been higher than it was beforehand. However, in the ten years that Macquarie Group Limited owned Thames Water, it didn’t invest any of its own money in the business, which was sold off when in debt, with prices to customers subsequently raised. Sharon Graham, the General Secretary of Unite, is in favour of renationalisation, saying that water privatisation has led to poorly run services while shareholders have taken £72billion. As illustrated by Howard, though, being state-owned doesn’t mean that industries will be adequately resourced, or effectively managed either.

The impetus to maximise shareholder value has also led to ‘wasteful’ exercises such as American vehicle manufacturers buying steel from China rather than from more expensive local producers. This led to a decline in the American steel industry, which President Trump has said he’ll address by imposing tariffs on metal imports (presumably leading to ‘creative destruction’ elsewhere). Another example of Trump contributing to a change in what methods are seen as enhancing shareholder value is his dislike of ‘wokeness’ enabling companies such as Meta, Amazon, Walmart and McDonald’s to ditch their ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ programmes.

The Prophets of Profit is timely in being broadcast during a shift back to the directions preferred by Friedman and his followers, especially in the USA. Much of episode four is an interview with Paul Polman, who took the opposing stance when he was Chief Executive of Unilever during the 2010s. Investing in staff and green programmes didn’t prevent Unilever’s returns to shareholders quadrupling in value during the decade Polman was in post. Maximising shareholder value was still the priority, though. This doesn’t really change, even if the most profitable approaches to achieve it alter over the years. The resurgence of Friedman-esque policies is a reminder that supposedly responsible business practices such as safeguards, regulation and workers’ rights can be lost as soon as they stop being compatible with the interests of the capitalist class.

Mike Foster

State capitalism (2025)

Book Review from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Spectre of State Capitalism. By Ilias Alami and Adam D. Dixon. Oxford University Press. 2024.

At one time the concept of ‘state capitalism’ was used only by socialists, to describe the state acting as a capitalist by investing capital, employing wage labour, and producing for the market. As far back as April 1910 the Socialist Standard carried an article entitled ‘Evolution and State Capitalism’ which explained that nationalisation was not socialism. From the 1920s we applied the concept to the economic system in the USSR. Other articles followed in the 1930s and 40s. The concept was also applied to other countries where, in the absence of a strong enough capitalist class, the government set up state enterprises to introduce and develop capitalism.

Today China is routinely described by politicians and the media as ‘state capitalist’. There is even a branch of academia devoted to ‘state capitalist studies’ of which Alami and Dixon’s book is both a product and a description. A large part of their book is taken up with questions of methodology and definitions for specialists in the subject, which makes it rather heavy-going for the general public.

Their conclusion is that the term should be applied only to particular state bodies, such as state-owned enterprises (SOEs), sovereign welfare funds, and state-funded development banks where the state is an actual owner, and not simply to any state intervention in the capitalist economy. They distinguish between an old state capitalism of nationalised industries, often natural monopolies, and a new state capitalism of ‘state-capital hybrids’ which are consciously structured and behave exactly like private capitalist corporations or investment funds, seeking to maximise profits, paying dividends, engaging in financial wheeling and dealing, and even taking over other businesses.

The authors come up with some perhaps surprising facts:

‘Their [SOEs] share among the world’s 2,000 largest firms doubled to 20 per cent over the last two decades. Over the same period, the assets controlled by SOEs grew from about $13 trillion in 2000 to $45 trillion (equivalent to half of global GDP) (IMF). Many SOEs are in top rankings such as the Fortune Global 500. According to the OECD, half of the top ten non-financial firms as measured by revenue are SOEs. In 2021, they made up 132 of the world’s 500 largest companies—up from thirty-two just two decades ago. UNCTAD estimates that there are at least 1,500 state-owned multinational enterprises, which are SOEs that control assets or other entities in countries other than its home country. In other words, many SOEs now compete on the world market, and perform as efficiently as private capitalist firms in some sectors.’

Alami and Dixon see the ‘new state capitalism’ of ‘state-capital hybrids’ as a new stage in the evolution of capitalism, after ‘neoliberalism’. This is certainly an increasing feature of contemporary capitalism but whether it represents a new era is another matter. In any event the advocates of ‘free market’ capitalism are back on the defensive. Even those who accept capitalism as we know it in the West are alarmed at Chinese-style state capitalism. Alami and Dixon quote the President of the European Commission complaining about ‘distortions created by China’s state capitalist system’ and Blinken, the late US Secretary of State, insisting on the need for protection ‘from the aggressive state capitalism of modern autocracies’.

Apologists for the West portray the conflict with China as one between ‘liberal capitalism’ and ‘state capitalism’. A case for this can be made out but it was that even under Mao when the apologists were calling China ‘communist’. At least they are now being honest.

In the final chapter Alami and Dixon come out as some sort of leftists, citing Marx. They see a potential ‘progressive’ side to their new state capitalism as, by further blurring the distinction between the economic and the political realms, it opens up the possibility of achieving ‘non-reformist reforms’. This, despite their conceding that (by ‘valorise’ they mean create surplus value):

‘State-owned capital is still subjected to the imperatives of self-valorization. The state can partially or temporarily suspend these imperatives (for instance, by accepting a lower-than-average rate of profit, or by institutionalizing other social and political goals alongside profit maximization), but if it does so over the long term, the risk is that the capital becomes devalued. State-owned capital must therefore continue to valorize not to be destroyed, and with it, the social wealth that it represents.’

Which is precisely why supposed non-reformist reforms can no more lastingly overcome the economic laws of capitalism than can common-or-garden reforms.

Adam Buick

Thoughts on money (2025)

From the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money has been around for thousands of years but only in capitalism, which overcame prior feudal and slave relationships, has it come to dominate all human and natural life.

Money exists in the modern world as a means of rationing the wealth available to most people while allowing it to exist in hyper-abundance for the few. On a planet with finite resources, approaching minimalism in our ownership of possessions may be a treasured ideal, however the rationing imposed by money on the majority does not derive from such idealism or concern. The very focus of the minority making money is to monopolise as much of the wealth as possible from the majority, and to exploit the natural world far beyond not just what is sufficient to meet our needs, but beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. The money system works hard to convince working people that it promotes freedom, liberty, and incentive, but this ideology is always the exact mirror image of the truth. It is the thinking of the rich, its liberty to exploit the majority and the planet with impunity, with minimal legal obstructions. But for those whose meaning in life is to provide that leisure class with a life of indolence and obscene indulgence, life is the very opposite of liberty, and can best be described as a modern form of subservience and oppression.

History illustrates powerfully the impressive creativity, imagination, reasoning, and persistence of the human species. It is therefore a great insult to the human race that most of it must spend its life with the primary objective of sustaining the elite’s extravagant lifestyles. The rich will hire this ingenuity, problem-solving and perseverance for its own ends, but these are wasted, when they could have served humanity as a whole. Money is without doubt a form of power. Today, money’s empire greatly rivals those of the kings of Versailles. It has found its way into all corners of the earth, leaving no stone untouched.

Money has also destroyed the family, sending adult offspring far from their original homes to find jobs, and financial worries fuel the mental ill health of both workers and the instability of their marriages. Once in place, the market system’s wheels just turn, blindly, irrespective of the damage they do in grinding up human lives and relationships, regardless of the dying planet they spin upon. Money, representing the commodity in which the value of all others is reflected, possesses no human values. We have surrendered and entrusted our entire lives and our living world to an institution that is the least responsible, the least flexible, the least stable.

Because the accumulation of money is an impersonal motive for production, it leaves a mountain of waste in its trail. Companies attempt to seduce demand by tempting people into oftentimes useless objects through vast expenditures of resources in advertising. Buildings, equipment, land, and professions require a massive infrastructure of insurance, which as with advertising firms, globally taking up millions of workers, energy, equipment, office and parking space, all for a completely unproductive cause. The same is true for professions devoted to buying and selling stock, to opening doors or sitting at reception desks, to assisting administrators, and such entire professions as lawyers, lobbyists, ticket sellers, marketers, and the military. These agencies, departments and professions, listed in Bullshit Jobs (2018) by anthropologist David Graeber, but also by socialists for over a century, illustrate the unnecessary complexity of a system based on money, one marked by an eye-boggling degree of waste of human lives and precious energy and resources.

Money also brings out the worst sides of human beings. By offering temptation, since it has the power to satisfy needs and wants, it invites built-in corruption in companies and governments everywhere, requiring vast policing resources to monitor and arrest a minority of offenders. Drug-dealing and theft are themselves primary examples of how a money system can trigger leeches at best, and potential murderers at worst, depriving society of even the best minds and bodies of a generation who turn into addicts, career criminals, and prison inmates.

Most people, even economists, cannot even imagine a world without money. Professionals whose specialty is the monetary system insist that incentive, entrepreneurship, and meeting a seemingly endless rainbow of needs, requires a monetary system. However, psychology knows otherwise. Our needs and wants are not infinite and, if anything, are artificially enhanced by the monetary system.

The complexity of the money system boggles the imagination. Right now, every individual and family in the tall building in which I live must spend time shopping for items that could easily be shared among a few hundred people. We all go out to shop because a money society has destroyed our collective natures and lifestyles (which were quite evident even in late feudalism, in which humans enjoyed, on average, rich relationships with extended family and other town residents). We must all do our food shopping even though in one go we could procure sufficient ingredients to cook a meal for a room of several dozen residents or neighbours. We look at any city street and see a long line of unused cars.

A human world consisting of billions of citizens should probably encourage a minimalist home, especially if the well-studied factors that most determine our happiness and meaning are such psychological variables as freedom, work, health, relationships, solitude, creativity, feeling part of the community. Without doubt hobbies require resources and possessions (musical instruments, books, screwdrivers) but it is not clear what little we could get by with if most items were shared and our lives could return to the collective form which is our archaic nature.

Our economists are failing us if in the face of today’s problems, including a dying world, they are not devoting their science (if it is one at all) to devising improved economic systems in which humans and the living world might thrive.

The money system has its obvious problems for those of us who must work in the Western world for an employer, but the system did not evolve similarly throughout the world. The institution of money is even more brutal in countries which still have theocracies, military juntas, one-party governments, or autocracies. Wars over resources or the competing ideologies and sense of entitlement of power-hungry rulers, starvation, extreme poverty, cartels, and environmental despoliation, are the symptoms of a monetary institution that fails because it is not based on meeting needs, although its ideology insists it does. It is time for economists to devise outlines of possible non-monetary systems that might better meet our needs. Until such a time, it is down to ordinary citizens such as ourselves to keep promoting such a vision. It may be hard to imagine such a future at this time; we may even at times feel crazy doing so. But our world is so rife with insecurities that alternatives are desperately needed.

Dr. Who

The Socialist Party and the General Election (1974)

From the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A “snap” General Election is disadvantageous to small political parties lacking the resources and paid workers of the major parties. It is the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s policy to put up candidates for Parliament whenever possible. However, on this occasion we had to consider realistically the problems imposed on us, including that with the Election announced on 8th February to take place on 28th the Socialist Standard could not be produced and distributed in time to support a campaign. It should be borne in mind also that candidates of ours are not “gimmicks” hoping to attract impulsive votes but seek serious consideration of the case for Socialism. In these circumstances we have decided not to attempt an electoral campaign but instead to publish statements of the Socialist position in the press; and we present below our attitude in the Election.

The parties of capitalism had some difficulty drawing up their manifestos for this election. As prophecies of total economic blight and national disaster are uttered, politicians cross their fingers and urge the need for greater sacrifice and a return of the “war-time spirit”. The usual vote-catching promise of jam tomorrow being no longer credible, they are offering you continued inflation, severe “wage restraint”, and rising unemployment in as pleasant a manner as possible. In contrast to all other political organizations, the Socialist Party of Great Britain does not form policies designed to tackle economic crises but exists solely to abolish their cause.

That social conflict and disunity characterize Britain today is apparent to anyone who opens a newspaper; what is not realized is that it cannot be otherwise while society is organized on its present basis. Your life and those of the majority of people are spent running a system co-operatively for the benefit of a minority who own the means of living and all that is produced — the capitalists. It is this contradiction between social production and private ownership which gives rise to our problems. While being the creators of all society’s wealth, members of the working class accept as natural the selling of their energies for wages and salaries which are less than what is produced is worth. In short, you wish to be rationed so that a few can enjoy lives of privilege. Industrial strife, war, unemployment, luxury amidst squalor, homelessness, and endless struggle to “make ends meet” are what human beings vote for at elections. The Socialist Party has always maintained that capitalism cannot evolve into something different or better and tries to induce workers not to direct their resentment against trade unions, property speculators, immigrants or politicians, but against a system which demands that priority be given to profit rather than human need and compels them to engage in degrading struggle to decide the level of their own exploitation.

★

There is no “lesser evil” as far as the major political parties are concerned; they all favour your membership of the working class. When capitalism destroys the best-laid plans of governments it can be taken for granted that politicians will offer you excuses and generally resort to deception. Record inflation will be blamed on world prices, as though profits for capitalists overseas as well as at home could make you feel better. The outcome of serious argument concerning the length of time a miner takes to have a bath, you will be told, can influence an economic crisis. Oil sheikhs acting as all good capitalists should will be accused of “blackmail” and members of the working class, who possess nothing but their ability to work, will be told they have a balance of payments deficit of thousands of millions. The only response can be to mind our own business and leave the problems of capitalism to capitalists. The Labour and Communist parties, however, see as part of the solution an extension, of Nationalization, or letting fewer capitalists mind their own business. This entails transfer of control of certain industries to the State but leaves ownership in the hands of capitalists, who simply receive interest from State bonds rather than company shares. For workers nothing is changed. State control of capitalism, whether in Britain, Russia or China, is not Socialism and cannot lead to it. Labour is again seeking to “eliminate poverty wherever it exists”, something which governments have promised to do for decades. Such an objective is rather like wanting to run a car without petrol: capitalism needs the existence of poverty in order to survive and will destroy the noblest of aims. The Liberals, seeking votes from the disillusioned, present themselves as a party above sectional interest and against the “greed of unions and big business”. They promote this “classless” image with slogans such as “Forward with the People!”, “Liberalism is about people”, and “people count”, offering workers “participation” in industry and housewives “community politics”. What should be remembered is that whoever runs capitalism must do so in the interest of the owners of capital, and that this interest is not your own. Liberalism is capitalism, which is only about people as producers of profit. Giving a man a “say” in his own robbery will not bring harmony to social relations and discussion of such issues as efficient garbage removal and more zebra crossings is irrelevant to the fundamental problems from which you suffer.

★

The Socialist Party and its companion parties abroad stand for Socialism, a classless, moneyless world community in which the means of life will be owned and democratically controlled by the whole of society and where the only motive for production will be the satisfaction of human need. With the abolition of money and the wages system millions of workers now engaged in unproductive work such as accountancy, banking, insurance and selling will have the opportunity to develop their potential for their own and society’s good, rather than restricting their lives in the service of profit. People will freely take part in social production and take freely from the social wealth whatever they think they need. Capitalism has developed technology and industry to the point where an abundance of wealth was possible; it cannot be created where production is limited to what can be sold at a profit. In the process of changing society man changes himself and his relationship to his fellow man. Capitalism is not the “natural order of things” and will be abolished when a majority reject the promises and leadership of politicians and understand what Socialism implies. We urge you to read carefully our Object and Declaration of Principles, and if you are in agreement with us we ask you to come and give active help. Capitalism may produce chaos and apathy, but it also creates the Socialists who will finally free and unite mankind.

Smash! (1974)

From the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A New Election Programme?

The most hilarious buffoonery of the election was the International Marxist Group’s putting up three candidates. At a press conference their representative was reported saying hopefully: “In an atmosphere of confrontation a few hundred votes can turn into tens of thousands” (Times, 13th Feb.). A different view from the one in their leaflet distributed on 1st May last year: May Day — End or New Beginning.

Shorn of all its flowery phrases (like “Mass Action”. “Mobilization”, “Confrontation”, “Counter-offensive” and all the boring old stuff about the failure of the wicked trade-union leaders who won’t “mobilize a united struggle to smash through Phase 2”), what this leaflet does is advise strikers to fight the police. It actually says this explicitly. We quote:

To do this [defend the picket lines] the local Trades Councils have to centralize our resources for fighting the police.

The absurdity of the entire content of this ridiculous document is apparent, for instance, in the first paragraph :

A large majority of the working class are striking work together and coming out onto the streets.

In paragraph 2, however:

Millions of workers feel that this stoppage will have no immediate effect on the Government policies. In this they are correct.

We also would say that the millions of workers are quite right. Not only did the General Council of the TUC know this very well, as they showed by deferring their strike-call date till after the Government had passed the Phase 2 Bill; but we now know that the TUC leaders were having secret meetings with Prime Minister Heath one day before the May-day marches, to be followed by the open meeting to fix a deal.

What concerns us here is the dangerous folly of the baloney being peddled by the IMG. Why on earth they have the insufferable impudence to call themselves “Marxist” only they can know. Everything in this nonsensical and pernicious propaganda is utterly foreign and contrary to all of Marx’s teachings, and especially to his actions in the International Workingmen’s Association, of which he was a founder member and author of its address, or policy statement.

We would highly commend to the IMG the statement by Marx in that address which they would do well to deeply and quietly ponder:

One clement of success they [the workers] possess, that of numbers, but numbers weigh only in the balance if united by combination and led by knowledge.

Is there the slightest sign that, amidst all the hysterical outpourings about “smashing Tory governments” and “treacherous trade-union leaders”, the IMG have given one moment’s serious thought to the meaning of what they are spreading?

Read through their leaflet! The workers must centralize their forces to “develop a General Strike to get rid of the Government itself”. The central task in holding the line is to “prepare the counter-offensive in the autumn" because the Government “presented the leaders with a clear choice, either accept pay restraint, or mobilize a united struggle which would smash Phase 2, bring down the Government and so raise the hopes of the working population that the social order itself would be threatened”.

As was pointed out explicitly in a recent Socialist Standard (and even that was re-quoted from 1919 and has been confirmed by history ever since), in every strike, above all the 1926 General Strike:

The masters are in a far stronger position than the workers on the economic field and will beat them, at will, any time they wish.

This is why Marx wrote in the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen’s Association that

To conquer political power has become the great duty of the working class.

(Selected Works of Karl Marx, Moscow, p. 440)

As for all the other rubbish about smashing (these idiots are obsessed by the word SMASH; it recurs repeatedly in their manifestoes) Tory or Labour governments, this cannot be done by strike action alone. If a government feels that it has lost popular support, as shown in Italy or Denmark, and estimates that it may lose the next election, it may well resign, go into opposition, and laugh its head off at the troubles of the new government trying to grapple with the problems. So far from being “smashed” by resignation, there is every sign that they positively enjoy it.

As for “threatening the social order”, this probably is the stupidest nonsense of the lot. Trades unions are organized on a job basis: the vast majority of trade- unionists are not Socialists and have no desire whatever to threaten the social order — they uphold it. Neither would “threatening the social order” mean any real progress in changing it in orderly fashion. It could merely lead to chaos.

As for all the other tripe about the naughty, wicked trade-union leaders, we have pointed out repeatedly that they operate by the approval and consent of the members.

Let all strikes be called at the most favourable moment — when the bosses are doing allright-thankyou and don’t want them. Let them be short and sharp; if they are not won quickly they won’t be won at all. Let the members decide by democratic vote and, if things go wrong, democratically decide to retreat back to work in an orderly united fashion.

Above all, ignore and reject the dangerous, meddlesome folly of these academic hot-heads and professional hooligans who run about “smashing” everything and call on trade-unionists to “fight the police”. This plays straight into the hands of the authorities and is in fact all they need to crush strike action. On the industrial field the workers’ strength is in the withdrawal of labour. This may get them a rise in wages; but only political action can control the police (and the army) and establish Socialism.

Horatio.

"Revolutionary" Left unite behind Labour (1974)

From the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sham socialists show their true colours

Ever since the SPGB was founded we have at all times resolutely opposed all other political parties. We maintain that political parties are the expression of class interests and that the party seeking working- class emancipation must organise consciously and politically for the capture of political power for the abolition of capitalism, and its replacement by Socialism. The Socialist Party must work only for Socialism as this is the immediate task facing the world working class. No other political party in this country holds this revolutionary position.

The blood-and-thunder left consistently cloud and confuse the clear-cut issue — capitalism or Socialism. Bitter experience has amply borne out the correctness of our long expressed judgement that the Labour Party is a reformist capitalist party and has nothing to do with Socialism. However the period immediately prior to the February 28 General Election saw pseudo-socialist organizations and parties advocating and encouraging workers to vote for the Labour Party. Examples of this confusing and cynical exercise in political futility are documented below.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

(Aim: to achieve a socialist Britain in which the means of production, distribution and exchange will be socially owned).

‘‘Three aims need to be achieved [says the CP Manifesto]: a Tory defeat, the winning of a Labour Government, and the return of Communist MP's . . We need a different type of Labour government — one that would bite into the power and profits of big business” (Morning Star 14 February 1974).

INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP

(Aim: the overthrow of the capitalist system).

‘‘Of course, in any election called now socialists must argue for a vote for the Labour Party where there is no revolutionary alternative. The victory of the Tories would be seen by the working class as a set back and would decrease confidence and combativity. A victory for Labour would have the opposite effect . . . The slogan ‘Vote Labour but rely on your own struggles’ must be the key one for any election campaign” (Red Weekly 8 February 1974).

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS

(Aim for independent working class action for the abolition of capitalism. ‘‘The struggle for socialism is the central struggle of our time”).

“KICK OUT THE TORIES VOTE LABOUR”

“No worker should have any doubt about what is at stake in the election . . . The working class has to respond [to the Tory campaign] with a massive anti-Tory vote. And that means a Labour vote . . . Labour is as much committed to keeping capitalism intact as the Tories ... So while fighting for a Labour victory, we have to step up our efforts to build a real alternative, a revolutionary worker’s party, by arguing the full-blooded socialist case” (IS National Committee Statement, Socialist Worker 16 February 1974).

WORKERS FIGHT

(Aim: to build a party which stands firmly for the interests of the working class and which preserves its political independence.)

"Until we have the possibility of a genuine, socialist working class government it is in workers’ interests to elect Labour . . . ACTIVE and unconditional support for Labour against the Tories !” (Workers Fight No. 43, 9-15 February 1974).

WORKERS REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

(Formerly Socialist Labour League).

“We call on all Labour Party members and trade unionists to vote Labour in constituencies where the WRP is not standing. We call on the electors to return a Labour government. In the struggle to compel the Labour leaders to implement the socialist policies we have outlined, they will be exposed and will be driven out.” (WRP Manifesto).

SOCIALIST CHARTER MOVEMENT

(‘Labour’s Revolutionary Voice’. Aim: to build a new revolutionary leadership in the Labour Movement to defeat the Tories and their system.)

“CAMPAIGN ON A SOCIALIST PROGRAMME”*

“. . . Labour Party leaders must present a programme for their next government which really offers a way forward for society out of its present impasse . . . A production plan based on common ownership . . . For this programme we need look no further than . . . the Constitution of the Labour Party, Clause four, Paragraph four.” (Chartist February 1974).

YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE

“Join in the fight now to rout the Tories and elect a Labour government with Communist MPs to back it up . . . mobilise a great mass movement to sweep away the Tory government and return a Labour government compelled to carry out Left policies . . . This is the great issue of 1974.” (Challenge February 1974).

Gwynn Thomas