Notes by the Way
MAXTON THE PROPHET
Mr. J. Maxton, M.P., made a speech on August 21st, 1931, in which he forecast the collapse of capitalism not later than February, 1932. He said :—
“I am perfectly satisfied that the great capitalist system …. is now at the stage of final collapse
They may postpone the collapse for a month, two months, three months, six months, but collapse is sure and certain.” (Daily Record, August 22nd, 1931.)
Six months from August 21st, 1931, brings us to February 21st, 1932, but so little did Mr. Maxton and his fellow I.L.P.’crs believe in their own prophecy that in the early months of 1931 they were planning to bring out the New Leader in a new and improved form. Either they did not believe in the imminent collapse or else they had overlooked the fact that a sudden collapse of capitalism, if it did take place, would leave the population so busily engaged in trying to secure the bare necessities of life out of the general chaos that they would have no time or thought for New Leader’s or any other non-essential.
But Mr. Maxton was not at all abashed by the non-fulfilment of his prophecy. Speaking in the House of Commons on April 8th, 1932, he tried again. He said :—
“I believe it will crash within measureable time, because I do not think that anything that we are doing now will do more than postpone the inevitable act.” (Hansard, April 8th, Col. 476.)
It will be noticed that the comparative precision of “two, three or six months,” has given place to the studied vagueness of “within measurable time.”
Mr. Brockway, who is Chairman of the I.L.P., also has a shot at prophesying. Speaking at Ashington on April 24th, he predicted “a bloodless revolution, possibly within the next four years ” (Manchester Guardian, April 25th). Mr. Brockway has evidently learned from the example of the Russian five-year plans that there is safety for the politician in promising the millennium, not for next week, but for a few years ahead.
TOO SLOW AND TOO FAST
Twelve months ago the Labour Party and I.L.P. were attacking the Parliamentary system on the ground that it is an obsolete machine incapable of speedy legislation. Speaking at Cardiff on March 13th, Mr. G. Lansbury, leader of the Labour Party, remarked on the ability of the present Government to get legislation through “in a few hours” (Times, March 14th). On Friday, April 22nd, a Bill to allow the President of the Board of Trade to sit in Parliament went through all its stages in about twenty minutes. (News-Chronicle, April 23rd.)
Major H. L. Nathan, M.P., writing in the News-Chronicle (February 26th, 1932), pointed out that it took three months of Parliamentary time to turn England from a Protectionist to a Free Trade country (over 80 years ago), and took only three weeks to reverse the process.
DISTANCE LENDS ENCHANTMENT
It is one of the peculiarities of the reformists that they are always able to tell us about the marvels taking place ten thousand miles away ay a result of applying their policy, but never able to give us visible proof on the spot. American so-called “progressives” look across the herring-pond with wonder and admiration at the British Labour Party and I.L.P., and are trying to make a similar model for home consumption. British Labourites tell inspiring but quite mythical tales about “Socialist” Vienna; while the organ of the Austrian Social Democrats writes of the delights of London boroughs where the Labour Party has a majority on the council. It was for many years a favourite platform trick with “left-wing” speakers in London to praise the sterling- merits of “revolutionary” Glasgow, and doubtless, Glasgow had its eyes fixed on Buenos Aires or Tirnbuctoo.
It is not surprising that the I.L.P., one of the oldest and most ill-balanced of all the world’s reformist parties, should in its time have had a passion for every continent in turn. Once it was Yucatan, with its falsely described Socialist triumphs, then it was Australia, and particularly Queensland. We hear less now about “Socialism in Queensland,” but probably the I.L.P. still sells its absurd pamphlets describing “Socialism in Practice” in that area. Then for a time it was the Scandinavian countries, with their small holdings and co-operative buying and selling agencies, to which we were urged by the I.L.P. to direct our gaze. Then Mrs.M. A. Hamilton and H. N. Brailsford, and other leaders of the I.L.P., discovered America and assured us that Ford and his fellow mass productionists had solved the problem of poverty and proved Marx wrong.
Then the American scene was discovered to be heavily blurred with ugly dauhs of destitution, unemployment, unrest and depression, so the I.L.P. had to take another exploring expedition, this time to Asia, but with a passing glance at the glorious promise of Republican Spain. The Asiatic Paradise takes in Ghandi and also parts of China, those parts where Communist influence is said to be strong, but naturally the real centre of I.L.P. attraction is Moscow. Never having understood what the basis of capitalism is, the I.L.P. simply cannot grasp that State capitalism is not Socialism. It was inevitable, therefore, that they should “fall for” the Bolsheviks, although they find it hard to stomach their fellow worshippers, the British Communists. The I.L.P. has swallowed whole the Bolshevik claim that State capitalism in Russia is Socialism, and the New Leader (February 12th) comes out with the following : —
“In Soviet Russia Socialism is not the music of the future. It is a reality of the present. During the past year the Soviet Union has completed the construction of the foundations of Socialism. By the end of the Second Five-Year Plan it will have completed the construction of the Socialist Society.”
Like all the other “Socialist” mares’ nests picked up by the I.L.P., Russia will in due course be dropped like Yucatan and Queensland, Denmark and U.S.A. It has its funny side, but the effects of this sort of propaganda are wholly bad. Workers who are persuaded that the problems of the working class are being solved abroad by a programme of reforms cannot be expected to see the necessity of abandoning reform programmes at home.
Russia now is lauded by its distant worshippers as “the land without unemployment,” the land which has escaped the depression, the land without class conflicts, and so on. The faith of these worshippers is founded on illusion. In its present stage of capitalist development, while the vast plans for building factories and railways and for equipping town and rural industries are in progress, Russia can mask for a time some of the more glaring evidences of capitalist contradictions. Even so, the conditions of the Russian workers arc admittedly bad. The following is the considered view of the Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian : —
“A fair summary of the Soviet food situation would be somewhat as follows. There is no mass starvation remotely comparable with the famine of Asiatic proportions that developed in 1921-2. when a drought of unprecedented severity came as the climax to seven devastating years of foreign and internal warfare and social and economic upheaval. Concentrating in its hands considerable, although not adequate, food reserves, the Soviet Government, in the main, with occasional local exceptions and interruptions, has been able to give the industrial working class a regular supply of the coarser and simpler foodstuffs, and has also, at least in the larger cities, been able to safeguard the health of the children by giving them some preferential feeding. At the same time considerable numbers of people in the towns (especially in the provinces), and still more in the country districts, are to-day obliged to eke out their subsistence on a diet as meagre, as barren, and as unsatisfying as would fall to the lot of the most destitute unemployed in Western Europe and America.” (Manchester Guardian, May 20th, 1932.)
At no very distant date the hysterical propaganda about the Russian paradise will be swept away by hard economic facts, and Russia will be seen for what it is—one of the capitalist states subject to the same forces and exhibiting the same general characteristics as the others.
THE WORKERS AND THE VOTE
We are often told by advocates of “direct action” that the workers are becoming more and more disgusted with Parliament and are turning away from political action. So far there is no evidence of this happening to the great majority of the voters. The contrary is true. In Great Britain the proportion of electors who actually go to the polls has increased considerably during the past 14 years. According to information given in the “Constitutional Year Book” (1930, p. 289), the proportion was 58.9 per cent. in 1918, 75.4 per cent. in 1922, 74.1 per cent. in 1923. 80.6 per cent. in 1924, and 79.8 per cent. in 1929. In 1931 the proportion was again about 79 per cent., or 80 per cent.
France, Spain and Italy have been strongholds of the Syndicalists and of the theories about the uselessness of political action. Yet in the Spanish elections last year a high proportion of the voters went to the polls. In the French elections in April, 83 per cent. of the electors voted ! (see Evening Standard, April 30th). In the last elections in Italy it is claimed that nearly 90 per cent, voted. ”
H.