ONE of the most remarkable transformations of a political situation in any country was the sudden and complete collapse of political activity in the British working class after 1842. There had been more than twenty years of tremendous mass activity. No one can deny either the extent or the intensity of the political struggle of that period. The agitation for the Reform Bill of 1832 and the Charter, both of which were great programmes of political reforms, embraced millions of people. Every form of mass action had been brought into play—strikes, demonstrations, petitions, and violence. Then suddenly all was quiet.
The economic basis for the changed attitude is easily discernible as one looks back on the history of the period, but even when that is recognized the extent of the slump in political interest was remarkable. At the same time it is worth while to note the contents of the political programme of the Chartists. The Charter itself was extracted from the programme of the “National Union of the Working Class”, which later became better known as the London Working Men’s Association. Its programme consisted of the following:—
“(1) To avail itself of every opportunity in the progress of society, for the securing for every working man the full value of his labour and the disposal of the produce of his labour.
“(2) To protect working men against the tyranny of the master and manufacturers by all just means as circumstance may determine.
“(3) To obtain for the nation an effectual reform in the House of Commons of the British Parliament, Annual Parliament, extension of the suffrage to every adult male, vote by ballot, and especially no property qualification for members of Parliament.
“(4) To propose petitions, addresses, and demonstration to the Crown and both Houses of Parliament.”
This was, despite the phrases of the first demand, essentially a democratic reform policy which cannot be described in any way as extravagant. The violent reaction to politics could arise only as a revolt against the methods of the leaders for the attainment of the objectives.
The leaders were divided in policy between moral persuasion and the use of physical force. The great conventions of the Chartists were thus always face to face with the issue of what was to be the next step after the demonstrations and the presenting of petitions. There was no outlet for them in the Parliamentary institution for it was for this outlet and means of developing their movement that they aspired. The physical force group felt they could advance only through civil war but were not equipped for so great a venture. The moral force group had nothing to offer beyond propaganda of the word and shrank from the logic of the physical force proposals.
Hence after repeated demonstrations which ended only in words and the crushing of the physical force Chartists by the Government forces, the reaction of the masses to the helplessness of their leaders was most profound. It was this which led to their concentration on economic questions such as wages, hours of labour, etc., and the spread of Trade Unionism of a most narrow type. The change of the general economic situation into a period of rapid trade expansion facilitated this development. The new type of leader appeared who stood for the Liberal “square deal” on the “bread and butter question” and left “politics to the politicians”.
How the Trade Union struggles against the various Trade Union Acts helped to drive the unions into political action and the formation of the Labour Party has already been dealt with, but it is necessary to remember that this struggle was not conducted under the banner of Socialism. Socialist opinion and propaganda were confined to a very small minority of the workers. A few of the old Chartists such as Jones and Harvey continued to carry the Red Flag in the ranks of the Fraternal Democrats and the First Workers’ International. The propaganda for a working class party was developed considerably by the First International, but the theoretical views of the Trade Union leaders who first supported the proposal for independent Labour representation were really the views of Liberals. Groups of socialists tried to build socialist parties, but with little success. The Fabian Society, with Sidney Webb and G. B. Shaw at the head, the Social Democratic Federation, led by H. M. Hyndman, the Independent Labour Party, led by Keir Hardie, all carried onward a great deal of socialist propaganda and worked incessantly for a Labour Party. Within their ranks a variety of theories concerning State Socialism, reform, and revolution, ways and means, etc., were held. They prepared the ground for the Trade Union acceptance of political action, but it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the real mass break with the old order began.
It began with the formation of Labour Representation Committees. After the victories of 1906, the Labour Party, in name and fact, began its career, but it was a party without a programme until 1918. Outlined by S. Webb in Labour and the New Social Order, the first programme was drafted with an eye on the Trade Unions. It emphasized such reforms as “the universal application of the National Minimum Wage”, the universal application of a prescribed minimum of health, leisure, education, and subsistence, Factory Acts, Health Acts, Education Acts, etc., etc., only tentatively and gradually did it venture to advance the nationalization of industries and then only of those “which had reached the most advanced stage of monopoly and concentration”.
In this programme there was no recognition of any crisis of capitalism. Starting from the “bread and butter” point of view ascribed to Trade Unionists, it proceeded with a graduation of change of such slowness and sureness that the new system must dawn without anybody knowing it had arrived after generations of prosperous capitalism. It was Owen’s “thief in the night” disguised as a gentle ghost pervading the house.
The programme did give a little scope to the demands for the “democratic control of industry” because the Trade Unions were growing rapidly and were demanding a place in the factories, mills, and mines as well as Parliament. The democratic control of industry envisaged was, however, to be a kind of appendage to the Parliamentary system, an increasing representation of the Trade Unions in State departments of nationalized industries with not so much emphasis placed on the part to be played by the “man on the job”.
There has always been a certain theoretical conflict between the convinced socialists and the Trade Unionists and a contradiction between the deeds of the Labour Movement and the words of the theoreticians of both schools of thought. The Trade Unions generally have stood firmly for the policy of securing immediate economic gains and the defence of standards already won, and one must consider closely where this has led and whither it is leading.
Let our considerations start from the truism that the success of such a policy depends upon a progressively developing economic system. To be pressing continually for economic advantage for the workers from a system in decline must lead to terrific class conflicts and threaten the existence of the system itself.
It may be argued that the system is not in decline and that the assumption which runs through this book is entirely wrong. This is not an economic treatise and I do not propose to attempt an exhaustive analysis in order to prove this assumption. Nevertheless, it may be worth while to advance here a few important considerations and facts to substantiate this view.
The principal economic factor establishing a condition of crisis is the increasing disproportion between production and the market capacity of the system, a state of affairs arising from the private property relations which govern capitalist society. Although the rate of production per head has increased enormously and tends to increase still more rapidly under modern methods of industrial rationalization and mechanization, the market continues to contract. So much is this the case that crops both of raw materials and consumption goods and quantities of the means of production are deliberately destroyed with a view to raising prices for the restricted production.
In the cotton, woollen, and shipbuilding industries of this country, companies have been formed to destroy plant and machinery and the destruction of crops from land and sea is common. The facts and the policy are not hidden. Mr. Neville Chamberlain explained the situation most cryptically in a speech in the House of Commons on 2nd June, 1933, when he said:
“To allow production to go on unchecked and unregulated when it could almost at a moment’s notice be increased to an almost indefinite extent was absolutely folly.”
A most consoling explanation to the unemployed millions! At the same time the increased rate of production reduces the number of workers necessary for production. Hence the accentuation of the growth of a permanent vast army of unemployed workers in all capitalist countries.
These contradictions are further aggravated by the fact that the international market has exhausted its capacity for expansion owing to the inner development of the various countries of the world which to-day produce goods previously imported. This has led to the growth of economic nationalism behind the frontiers of which each country seeks to be self-contained on the basis which demands international expansion. Each country desires increased exports, but, driven into economic nationalism against imports in favour of “home production”, that which it desires in the form of exports it must perforce deny itself. Hence the stupidities of high tariffs, quota systems, prohibitions, currency manipulations, etc., and the intensification of the competition for the restricted market.
The dilemma of the capitalist world was expressed by Sir Alfred Ewing in his Presidential Address to the British Association in 1932. He said, “And the world finds itself glutted with competitive commodities produced in a quantity too great to be absorbed. Where shall we look for a remedy? I cannot tell.”
The problem can be illustrated in another way. The average production per man of pig iron in this country in 1920 was nearly two hundred tons, and of steel castings 54 tons. Seven years later the average had risen to three hundred tons of pig iron per man and 86 tons of steel.
In 1924 the miner produced 17.59 cwt. of coal per shift for 10s. 7d. In 1933 he produced 22.45 cwt. of coal per shift for 9s. 1½d.
In July, 1934, not less than 519 persons per 10,000 of the population were in receipt of Poor Law Relief as compared with ago per 10,000 in 1913.
Meanwhile the Economist reports that 257 companies during May, 1934, showed a percentage increase of profits over the previous year of 23.43 per cent.
These figures of contrast are not peculiar to Britain. They are typical of capitalist countries in general. The net result is to increase all the international antagonisms both economic and political. The more economic nationalism, which finds its sharpest form in Fascism, grows the more tense must become the international political situation. The growing demand for a redistribution of territory between the powers is the natural reflex of the limitations set by the Versailles Treaty accelerated by economic nationalism.
Thus the pace is set towards the stimulation of war industries which is a big factor in producing responsibility for the trade “boomlet” of to-day, the piling up of armaments (witness the rise in share values of all aircraft and armament firms and chemical manufacturers and the increased budget expenditure on “defence”), and the war which is not far ahead.
Nor is the capitalist world’s chaos limited by these developments towards war. Internally each country under the strain of these economic and political contrasts and tensions is marked by the fear of the ruling class of social upheavals and revolution.
This is the basis for the animosity of the ruling classes towards the Soviet Union which, having solved its economic problems on socialist lines and prevented the transformation of Russia into a colony of the powers, profoundly influences the masses of the world suffering from the chaos of capitalism in the direction of Socialism.
These facts alone, in the writers opinion, establish the contention that we live in a declining system and are heading towards a decisive stage of crisis upon which depends the fate of generations of our kind.
A study of the Trades Union Congress reports since the War reveals the contradiction between the logic of circumstance and opinion and policy. The whole Labour Movement (Party, Trade Union, and Co-operatives) has based its political policy upon the fundamentally false premise of a capitalist recovery and the probable prosperous development of capitalism into Socialism. This view has been challenged repeatedly in many conferences and congresses but it has always remained the basis of policy.
It is impossible, however, for a class movement such as the Trade Union Movement to live with its head in the clouds perpetually echoing capitalist opinion, hopes, and fears. It has time and again been compelled to act contrary to its theory and to follow the logic of the class relations rising from the development of the crisis of the system. For example, the competitive relations of capitalism have repeatedly demanded wage reductions and the lengthening of the working hours. The Trade Unions have resisted in most peculiar circumstances despite the theories held by them. In 1926 they gave the greatest shock it has ever had to the stability of the whole system of capitalism in this country by declaring the General Strike and yet nothing could have been more contradictory to the policy held in reality at the time and declared by the secretary of the Trade Union Congress at the Brighton Congress in 1933 when he said:
“It was very simple to talk about organizing strikes to obtain wage increases in an industry that until recently was able statistically to prove that there were not profits available to give wage increases.”
Here was the whole case for the mine owners in 1926.
Still more contradictory, if that were possible, was the situation between 1929 and 1931. The Labour Government was the product of the victories of a party which rested upon the Trade Unions. Prominent Trade Unionists, such as Mr. J. H. Thomas, Mr. J. R. Clynes, and Miss Bondfield, were in the Government. The Parliamentary Labour Party was composed largely of Trade Union representatives. Yet the Government, pursuing a policy based upon the theory of gradual advance, a theory accepted by the unions, which leads inevitably, in the present period, to wage reduction met with the most stubborn opposition from the unions. Great disputes occurred in the woollen and cotton industries with the government willy nilly taking part in an attack upon wages which the Trade Unions actually resisted. They lost in the struggle to the extent of seven and a half per cent cut in the cotton industry and ten per cent in the woollen industry.
Finally, when the stability of the system received another blow by a sudden plunge into a deeper phase of the economic crisis it was the Trade Unions which pulled down the Labour Government. The General Council of the Trades Union Congress rejected the proposed “economies” advanced by the deputation of the Government and its economists which were in fact the logical development of their own theories.
Such confusion and contradiction could not have happened had there been a consistent political policy based upon a correct analysis of the nature of the crisis of the system and the tendencies within it. Despite the fact that the crisis of capitalism had become more and more demonstrably incapable of solution in terms of capitalism, the Labour Movement proceeded as if there were no crisis and the possibilities of recovery and the gradual modification of capitalism into Socialism remained a tenable policy.
It is a strange thing, one of the most remarkable examples of political myopia in history, that a mighty movement such as the British Labour Movement should be gathering its millions of supporters with increasing momentum as a result of a crisis it refuses to recognize as a crisis of the system. After a short spell of revolutionary temper in the Labour Party following the collapse of the Labour Government in 1931 and an exhibition of satisfaction on the part of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress that it had stood against the Government “economy cuts”, the Party and the Union have resumed the “gradualist” policy, but not without giving another example of contradiction and confusion which it would be hard to excel.
The Trades Union Congress at Brighton in September of 1933, passed the following resolution:—
“This Congress records its strongest protests against the continued failure of the present Government to take effective measures against unemployment, to support the proposal for the forty-hour week and the construction of useful public works, and to produce a positive policy for promoting the recovery of industry and trade.
“Whilst reaffirming our belief that social ownership and control furnishes the only adequate and lasting solutions to the problems Congress appreciates the significance of the vigorous efforts now being made by President Roosevelt towards the stimulation and regulation of industry by means of the Industrial Recovery Act and allied legislation; it welcomes the recognition given in that legislation and in the ‘codes of practice’ promulgated thereunder, to the Trade Union policy of reducing working hours as a means of diminishing unemployment, and of raising wages as a means of increasing purchasing power.
“Congress congratulates the American Trade Unions upon their energetic assertion of the workers’ rights to bargain collectively through their own independent organization. Congress expresses the hope that with the cooperation of the Trade Unions, President Roosevelt will be able to overcome the difficulties involved in this decisive departure from the traditional individualism of American industry.
“Congress further trusts that the present British Government will pursue a similar policy by taking immediate steps to initiate useful schemes of public works financed by the use of the national credit, to enact a maximum working week of forty hours without reduction of wages: to prohibit child labour under 16 years of age, and to raise the school leaving age to 16.
“Further that the Government will set an example to employers by raising wages in the public services beginning with the restoration of the ‘Economy’ cuts in wages, salaries, and social service; to make more liberal provisions for pensioning aged workers and generally to take all possible measures for increasing the purchasing power of the masses and for planning the economic life of the nation in the interests of the whole people.”
If there is any doubt about the relationship of this policy to the outlook of the leaders of the Trades Union Congress then Mr. Citrine made it abundantly clear in introducing the resolution. He said:
“The policy of the Congress for a period of years, modest as their contribution necessarily had to be, was towards stimulating trade recovery in the interests of their members and not in the interests of the capitalists.”
The capitalists do not object and cannot object to the motive so long as there is cooperation with them to achieve the results they want. They have consistently argued that concessions to the workers depend upon the “prosperity of industry”. Mr. Citrine continued:
“They did not believe that the policy of reorganizing industry under capitalism-that of stimulating markets and coming to agreements with international competitors-could be a lasting and complete solution of the difficulties, but it was a contribution which would be welcomed by the millions of unemployed in this country. If they could get back to 1928, while they would not have removed the basic causes of the trouble they would earn the heartfelt gratitude of hundreds of thousands of their people.
“ . . . In this resolution they called upon the British Government to take immediate action. They did not say that the British Government should follow identically what had been done in the United States. They believed that if this problem were to be attacked it ought to be attacked not by a wave of emotionalism but by careful planning and thinking. They could not put the destinies of a nation right in a few months—a campaign similar to that of the United States might not if followed have the same effect. But the direction was essentially right, and it was because direction was right that they called upon the British Government to adopt similar measures.”
In the light of the above it can hardly be regarded as an unjust statement to affirm that “back to 1928” is not a socialist vision nor has the rest of the statement anything to do with Socialism.
The Labour Party Conference, held at Hastings a month later, rejected the conclusions of the Trades Union Congress. Mr. Greenwood, speaking on behalf of the Executive of the Party, said:
“ . . . the capitalist system is breaking down under its own weight and that is not something merely that we believe, it is something that capitalists themselves know is happening under their eyes, and the question, therefore, is not one as to whether you are going to try to amend the old capitalist system; the real question, the real economic question which faces the world, is whether you are going to have a socialist system of society, or a form of economic dictatorship ruled by the leaders of the capitalist world to-day, but the solution is the socialist solution.”
The delegates of the Party Conference were preponderatingly Trade Union delegates, many of whom had been at Brighton the month previous. Mr. Greenwood flatly contradicted the policy outlined by Mr. Citrine. The confusion was complete and something had to be done about it. Twelve months later the two national assemblies met again.
Both reaffirmed their belief in Socialism—afar off—and, having done that, both the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party Conference committed themselves to a policy in keeping with the Brighton Trades Union Congress decision already quoted. The Congress of 1934 did not go back on the decisions of 1933. On the contrary it amplified them and gave more detailed attention to Public Corporations, “co-ordination” of industry, “planned capitalism,” etc.
At the Southport Conference of the Labour Party, more socialist phrases were used, but one also heard the voice of trade union leaders warning those who are pursuing “chimerical” schemes that “he who pays the piper, calls the tune”.
The politics of the Trade Unions expressed in the decisions of their Congresses and of the Labour Party Conference consist of united effort with the capitalists to reorganize capitalism on the lines of public corporations, and to make the improvement of the conditions of the workers conditional on the improvement of capital. Officially speaking, the Labour Movement is marching under the banner of planned capitalism, and to the tune of high sounding socialist phrases, towards the Corporate State, despite its proclaimed anti-Fascism.
That this is no exaggeration is not difficult to prove from leading writers and spokesmen of the Labour Party other than the Trade Union leaders already quoted. For example, Mr. Lees-Smith was a member of the Labour Cabinet in 1929-1931 and is high in the councils the Labour Party. Writing in Current History of April, 1933, he says:
“The terms ‘public ownership’ or ‘nationalization’, it should be pointed out, have changed their meaning in England within the last few years. Until recently, nationalization has meant the control of industry by government departments working along ordinary civil service lines and subject to political influence. But Labour now believes that this is not the proper method of controlling a business undertaking, and has substituted a system of control by public corporations, a type of nationalization which meets the objections of most Liberals and many Conservatives. Under this plan an industry is controlled by a small board of carefully selected persons, who act as trustees for the nation and who conduct the day-to-day affairs of the industry with as much freedom as an ordinary board of directors. They are subject to the decisions of Parliament only when great issues of policy are raised. This combination of Socialism and business management, which all three political parties have helped to develop, has proved itself an undisputed success. The British Broadcasting Corporation, known to every householder in England as the B.B.C., is a good example of the new system.
“ . . . A great change has come over British public opinion in the last five years. Belief in the competitive system has silently disintegrated everywhere and ‘rationalization’ has taken its place as the creed of the leaders of industry. The late Lord Melchett (better known as Sir Alfred Mond) was more responsible than any other business leader for this change of attitude. He first set the fashion of proclaiming that the efficient and economical conduct of an industry requires that all competition within it shall be eliminated, so that it can be controlled as a whole by one central executive, with operations concentrated in the plants best adapted for the purpose. This doctrine has been accepted by moderate Conservative opinion and even by the London Times.
“But rationalization makes Socialism inevitable. The British public, when faced with the choice between capitalistic monopoly and public ownership, will certainly prefer the latter, and all governments will help the process forward. England, within the next two generations, will thus evolve into a socialistic State, by a series of measures carried through by Conservative as well as Labour governments, blessed by the Bishops and ratified by the King, with little apparent change to the outside world . . .”
The declarations of leaders have so often been wrong that I have no hesitation in asserting that this will meet with the fate of many of its predecessors. The Trade Union Movement and the Labour Party are based upon the working class. The interests of the working class are opposed to this evolution of the grand coalition of Toryism, Liberalism, and Labour, outlined by Mr. Smith. The Workers’ Movement is being mobilized by socialist appeal.
The average person believes these appeals. He is not a theoretician and he expects Socialism to be something different from capitalism, which is continually bringing him up against circumstances that strengthen his anti-capitalist views. Hence when the masses once more give authority to a Labour Government they will expect words to become deeds and fundamental changes to be made of a socialist (i.e. anti-capitalist) character. That is one great factor contradictory to the position taken up by the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress, the ignoring of which will lead to the break-up of the entire Labour Movement.
The policy of securing immediate concessions from the capitalists can in a short view be maintained just so long as the “boomlet” lasts. Once this is exhausted and the general crisis of capitalism plunges again into a deeper stage of crisis, 1931 must repeat itself in much sharper form. Capitalism must face the workers with new periods of “economies”, whilst their temper will rise and the demand for socialist change in the system will be made by the supporters of labour. The inescapability of crisis conditions inevitably means that once more the deeds of the Labour Movement will not correspond to the theories and policies now dominating the Trade Union and Labour Party.