The Socialist Forum
We are asked by an Indian reader for our views on the claim that Gandhi represents working-class interests. This is best answered by some statements made by Gandhi.
The News-Chronicle reported that Mr. Gandhi, who poses as the friend of the Indian workers, strongly opposed giving the workers a direct Parliamentary vote. The occasion was a meeting of the India Round Table Conference. The News Chronicle (September 18th) says :—
“The subject under discussion was the method of election to the All-Indian Federal Government. Mr. Gandhi came out strongly for an elaborate indirect method of election, in opposition to the so-called moderates like Sir Tej Sapru, Mr. Sastri and Mr. Jayakar, \vho are in favour of direct democracy.
What Mr. Gandhi wants is a system by which the villager shall elect to a district organisation, the district organisation shall elect to the Provincial Legislature, and the Provincial Legislature shall elect to the Central Government.”
The Daily Herald of the same date reported other illuminating passages from speeches showing Mr. Gandhi’s tenderness for the interests of the exploiting classes in India :—
“He felt and knew that the Princes had the interests of their ryots [peasants] at heart.
‘There is no difference between us except that we are common people and the Princes are as God has made them—noble men and Princes. I wish them well ; I wish them all prosperity ; and I pray that their prosperity and their welfare may be utilised for the advancement of their own dear people—their own sub jects.
In British India there should be indirect election. In this he substantially agreed with Lord Peel (a former Secretary for India), who spoke this morning.
He was wedded to adult suffrage ; but he would not mind imposing a fee of four annas [about 4½d.] a year for being registered, and other methods designed to keep the voting lists from being too large.
There was no need for special representation either for labour or for landlords. There was no desire on the part of Congress or of the dumb paupers of India to dispossess landlords of their possessions ; but they would have landlords to act as trustees for their interests.
It should be a matter of pride for the landlords to feel that their ryots—those millions of villagers—would prefer their landlords as their candidates and as their representatives, rather than those coming from other parts, or someone from among themselves.
The landlords would have to make common cause with the ryots—what could be nobler or better than that they should do so ?’”
It is indicative of the non-Socialist character of the I.L.P. that they helped to organise a dinner in honour of this representative of Indian capitalism while he was in England.
Ed. Comm.
A correspondent asks us for our views on a statement made about the S.P.G.B. by a former Labour M.P. Mr. John S. Clarke, writing in Forward (September 12th), argued that the S.P.G.B. ought to support the Labour Party because it is “definitely Socialist,” being committed to “communal ownership.”
It is true that the Labour Party in its constitution uses the words “common ownership,” but the Labour Party certainly does not attach to them their proper meaning. The London News, organ of the London Labour Party, in its Editorial (July, 1931) wrote approvingly of Mr. Herbert Morrison’s London Passenger Transport Bill. They said that this Bill was a Bill for the purpose of bringing’ London’s passenger transport “under common ownership” and running it “as a public service.”
The Bill represents the Labour Party’s policy, and the Liberals’ and Tories’ policy, for Mr. Morrison confessedly modelled it upon previous Liberal and Tory legislation.
It is emphatically not “common ownership.” Clause II (1) of the Bill provides for the setting up of an Arbitration Tribunal to see that the present private owners are not deprived wholly or partly of their private ownership. They are to be given bonds in the new corporation valued on the basis of “the average net profits earned . . . for the three financial years last preceding the date of the passing of this Act.”
Even Mr. J. Bromley, who is Chairman of the Traces Union Congress declared (Locomotive Journal, September) that the Bill is “an absolute negation of Socialism, and a security of the interest of the capital involved.”
Mr. Clarke must try again.
Ed. Comm.
We have been asked about the attitude of the late Henry George towards capitalism.
The supporters of the late Henry George and of his proposals for taxing land values sometimes argue as if Henry George was an opponent of capitalism. Actually his single-tax was calculated to help the capitalist, and Henry George made no secret that that was his intention.
In “Progress and Poverty” (p. 288 of the authorised edition) he claimed that his taxation proposals would “increase the earnings of capital.”
In “The Condition of Labour” (published by Swan Sonnenschein, 1891) he wrote :—
“We have no fear of capital, regarding it as the natural handmaiden of labour ; we look on interest itself as natural and just ; we would set no limit to accumulation, nor impose on the rich any burden that is not equally placed on the poor.“ (P. 91.)
Marx had no illusions about Henry George’s doctrines. In a letter to a New York friend, written from London on June 20, 1881, Marx discusses “Progress and Poverty” and classes Henry George among those who “allow wage-labour, i.e., the capitalist system of production, to continue, and by juggling with words fool themselves into the notion that by the conversion of the ground rent into a State tax all the ills of the capitalist system of production would vanish of their own accord. In a word, the whole thing is simply an attempt, douched with Socialism, to rescue the rule of capitalism, in fact, to rear it anew upon a firmer basis than its present one.”
The letter was published in the “Weekly People” (New York) in June, 1907.
Ed. Comm.