Notes by the Way
“Socialist” Hungary
One of the latest additions to the fake-Socialist countries is Hungary and an organisation called the Hungarian News and Information Service exists to tell us about it. In a pamphlet called “Organisers for Plenty” we are given the same kind of stuff that the Communists have been putting out about Russia for many years and that the Labour Party puts out about “Socialist” Britain. It contains nothing at all in the way of evidence that there is Socialism in Hungary and plenty that there is not. We are told for example that there is, or will be, a comprehensive social insurance scheme so that the worker and his family “will be ‘covered’ from birth to death.” The question any Socialist would ask is how could there be any need for “insurance” under Socialism. Against what evils do the Hungarian workers require protection if they have Socialism? It is only against the evils of capitalism that they need protection. The same comment can be made on the statement that the dispossessed owners of nationalised enterprises may be compensated “when the more pressing problems of production have been solved.” If Socialism exists how can they be compensated and what need would they have of compensation?
What kind of system it really is is betrayed by the statement that over 50,000 workers are to be taken from industry and agriculture “to be trained for State administration, the army, police and diplomatic services.”
One revealing give-away is a statement that in the drive for greater production “sometimes the boys on the job get too enthusiastic. In their anxiety to beat the production target they give less attention than they ought to the quality of the work turned out or to the use of defective materials.” As if workers voluntarily co-operating in production for themselves and other members of a Socialist community would fake production figures by defective work and materials.
One example of the puff designed for foreign consumption is the statement that “two weeks’ paid holidays are provided which can be spent in over 350 holiday centres which rival Blackpool and Bournemouth.” The gilt is somewhat taken off when this is read in conjunction with statements in different parts of other publications issued by the same organisation that the number of workers who “will receive holidays this year at considerably reduced prices or entirely free of charge” is “over 300,000″ and that the number of trade unionists is 1,600,000, and the total population 9,500,000.
The pamphlet also admits that some of the Hungarians are asking “whether the planning, working and sacrifices in which the majority enthusiastically participate, is the Socialism they hoped for.” To which all the answer the writer of the pamphlet can give is that “those are they who never can see the wood for the trees.”
Capitalism Teaches
A recent issue of the journal of the Indian Post and Telegraph Workers (P. & T. Worker, February. 1949) is dedicated to those who built up the organisation, and carries a salute to “the brave and valiant heroes who are languishing behind the bars in a Free India”! It appears that they made the mistake of thinking that Indian capitalism administered by Indians would be different from Indian capitalism administered by the British. Here is the story in brief. Because of low wages and a rising cost of living the union called its members out on strike for higher pay. The government promptly retaliated by arresting the General Secretary and other officials. The next move was a meeting of the Union Executive on 24th February at which resolutions were passed, one protesting against the action of the government in interning the union officials and the second calling off the strike.
Housing in London
On 26th May Mr. C. W. Gibson, Chairman of the L.C.C. Housing Committee addressed the Town and Country Planning Association on the problems of London Housing. Mr. Gibson, according to a report in the Manchester Guardian (27/5/49), gave figures of the housing already completed and of plans for the immediate future and also the length of time it will take to complete the job even if all goes according to plan. The “grand total of houses” provided by the Councils and by private builders since the bombing is 140,889 including new, rebuilt, and repaired dwellings. The Council plans to build 100,000 new houses “as quickly as possible,” also to pull down all the slums as soon as possible and put up houses in their place, a total of at least 200,000 new houses and flats.
Then he went on to describe the magnitude of the whole problem.
“This task could not be completed in a few years; the authors of the London plan envisaged fifty years of hard work. To cover slum clearance, rehousing, dwellings destroyed by enemy action, and replacement of border-line property which had “ripened into the unfit category” would require 150,000 dwellings. There had also been 380,270 new marriages during and since the war, most of them creating a new demand for a home for a young family.” (Manchester Guardian, 27/5/49.)
What comes after Labour-administered Capitalism?
In a speech to the Young Conservative Organisation at Filey on 2nd June, Mr. Anthony Eden asked what is to come after the Labour government.
“Nobody, he said, appeared to be particularly happy about the nationalised industries, and railwaymen were not, it seemed, enthusiastic about the changes which nationalisation had brought to their service. Within a few years, he believed, nationalisation would seem to be old-fashioned, and many would wonder why it was ever thought likely to provide a remedy for the problems of our time. What was to succeed it. Communism or a vigorous progressive interpretation of free enterprise?” (Manchester Guardian, 3/6/49.)
Perhaps we can do a little to enlighten Mr. Eden. And we may as well start at the end and deal with Mr. Eden’s question whether Labour government will be succeeded by “a vigorous progressive interpretation of free enterprise.” We can assure Mr. Eden that there will be no return to unrestricted competitive capitalism. It is our own view and happens to be supported by no less an authority than Mr. Eden himself. For in a speech at Southampton on 8th June, while he claimed that the Tories if they got power would denationalise steel and road transport, he added:
“We shall not de-nationalise the coal industry or the railways, but it does not mean we shall not do a great deal to improve their present operation.” (Daily Mail 9/6/49.)
So it seems that a Tory government will promise us less, but better, nationalisation.
Now let us clear up other confusions. Nationalisation is State capitalism, it is not Socialism, it is not a stepping stone to Socialism and has never been supported by the Socialist Party. If those who mistakenly supported nationalisation had taken the trouble to read the Socialist Standard any time in the past 45 years they would have known that nationalisation would not provide a remedy for the problems of our time.
Lastly, though we cannot give a date, we can promise Mr. Eden that sometime the workers will turn their backs on all forms of capitalism and establish Socialism.
Another Self-made Man
On the death of Lord Leverhulme, the Evening Standard (27/5/49) gave an account of his life under the title “The man who made an empire—and £12,000,000,” The “empire” referred to is the Lever Bros, and Unilever concern valued at £70,000,000, and it was, of course, “made” like all the wealth of the capitalists, by the working class. Lord Leverhulme himself, at the death of his father in 1925, had shares worth £2,400,000. The Evening Standard values his shareholdings at current prices as over £12,000,000.
Hidden Reserves of the Shell Oil Companies
The following is from the City column of the Daily Mail (8/6/49.)
“New light on the vast financial strength of the Royal Dutch-Shell group of oil-producing, refining, and marketing companies was given in the final dividend statement last month, when profits for 1948 were revealed at the ‘record’ total for any industrial concern of £44,565,000.
“Today, in the full report of the Shell company, chairman Sir Frederick Godber makes further remarkable disclosures—to supplement the holding companies’ balance-sheets.
“For instance, at December 31,1948, he states, the book value of the group’s shareholdings in public companies amounted to the equivalent of £41,069,000.
“The market value, however, was £164,862,000, showing an excess of market over book value of no less than £123,793,000 on these investments alone.
“This, therefore, has in effect been a ‘ hidden ’ or inner reserve of the group.”
Shortage of Manpower?
One of the forms of waste inseparable from a private property system results from the litigation that goes on over the ownership of property. A choice example was reported in the Evening Standard (30/6/49). In 1896 a Chancery action began over the division of an estate worth £100,000. The action has been going on ever since and a petition is shortly to be heard to finish it. The Evening Standard report tells us that “one 81-year-old managing clerk . . . has been dealing with the case since 1895. Nine firms of solicitors are engaged in the matter.”
Communists and Railways Strikers
The Daily Worker (1/6/49) made a hit when they pointed out that British newspapers which condemned the unofficial strike of the British railwaymen were quite sympathetic about the strike of the Berlin railwaymen against the Russian occupying authorities. Obviously the Press was pleased to see the Russian government or its agents embarrassed by a strike and only too anxious to be able to show the Russians up as strike-breakers.
But the criticism cuts both ways. If the Communists are interested in the welfare of the workers and not merely the stooges of the Russian government why is it that they never uttered a word in support of the German railwaymen or in condemnation of the Communist strike-breakers? The Daily Worker claims that the strikes of British railwaymen were justified because they did extort concessions not otherwise forthcoming. Exactly the same has happened over the Berlin railwaymen’s strike.
“Socialist” Brains
Replying to criticisms of the high salaries paid to members of the Nationalisation Boards, Mr. Herbert Morrison at the Labour Party Conference used the argument that they needed first class men and would not be able to get them unless they paid something approaching the market rate. This incidentally was the argument used by Lenin in Russia 30 years ago when he abandoned the Communist principle of more or less equal pay for workers and managers.
But Mr. Morrison went on to use the following phrase:
“We have not only to socialise physical assets; we have to socialise the best brains in the business world.” (Daily Herald, 11/6/49.)
This, of course, is the purest humbug. Having the mines and railways, etc., run on capitalist lines by National Boards instead of by private companies is not “socialisation.” And what does Mr. Morrison mean by socialising business brains? What the government has been doing recently, according to the Daily Mail (19th, 21st and 22nd February, 1949) is to circularise city banks and financial houses and industrial concerns asking for men “with financial and commercial experience” to take up work in the nationalised concerns. It is not a question of finding men with technical knowledge of coal mining or railway transport—there are plenty of them in the industries already—but of recruiting men with financial and commercial experience, that is men with experience of the workings of capitalist finance and trade. If production and distribution had really been socialised, i.e., if we had Socialism, that kind of experience would be the one thing not required
One last question to Mr. Morrison concerning his argument that you have to pay high salaries in order to get non-Labour Party business men to serve on Nationalised Boards. Why does this necessitate paying equally high salaries to the members of the Boards who are already members of the Labour Party? Did they too stick out for the market rate?
H.