Can Ethical Capitalism Work?

Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank revolutionised credit for the poor, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and micro-finance became a household concept.

The maxim - "teach people how to take a small investment, grow their business and eventually become self-sufficient".

The micro-finance sector is in the middle of a boom: "Micro-finance will grow more and more," claims Nairobi-based director of Inclusive Financial Systems, Stephan Staschen. "More commercial entities will also get involved as they realise its profitability and the result will be that many poor people will be served."

Yet , this report , questions its effectiveness . According to research by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor in 2003, evidence of the effectiveness of micro-finance as a tool for development remains slim .

Thomas Dichter of the Cato Institute, the Washington DC-based think-tank, calls the potential of micro-finance "grossly overestimated".He asserts, "In Bangladesh, 30 years after Yunus's invention, poverty statistics are worse than they've ever been, so something else is the source of the problem and micro-credit is not helping." Dichter also criticises the influx of micro-finance institutions, claiming that agencies are "jumping into this field" under the assumption they can alleviate poverty without actually looking at the different causes of poverty in different regions. In recent writings he argues that micro-finance could be doing more harm than good.

Economics journalist Gina Neff has also written that "after eight years of borrowing, 55 percent of Grameen households still aren't able to meet their basic nutritional needs - so many women are using their loans to buy food rather than invest in business."

-SPGB

The Iowa caucuses: Wrong end of the crystal ball?

We read in the Boston Globe (Friday, January 4th) that the results of the Iowa caucuses among Democrats and Republicans are important for the unprecedentedly intense grassroots interest they reveal in the upcoming presidential election. But more to the point, to the extent voters in Iowa are still trying to make those two creaky old suits of armor work, they remain profoundly clueless.

On the surface, they appear to be lining up once more to perform the symbolic ritual of Throwing the Rascals Out. This time, it is true, the Rascals are a smelly bunch of radical pro-corporates quaintly christened "neoconservatives" - but who are in fact capitalist revolutionaries in the service of the military-industrial complex, out to stack the transnational energy deck in its favor. They have teamed up with an early protg, Osama bin Laden, to give political insurgency a slick new retro cachet, privatizing terrorism, which before the era of liberation struggles had always been the prerogative of the state. Now the whole corporate sham is tottering at the hustings.

The Iowa Democrats who made Barack Obama's day have never learned that the capitalist system is not designed to deliver the goods to the Little People who make up the working class. Nor have they learned that the same system has no compelling need to balance the interests of con?icting economic sectors. Gazing into the Globe's statistical crystal ball, we notice that "affluent, highly-educated voters" and blue-collar workers have seemingly patched up their quibbles of the 1960s. While this sounds superficially encouraging, that they have joined forces against a common enemy matters far less than that they still see the future as a little box in which capital rules their lives.

Iowa Republicans who on the other hand swooned over Mike Huckabee, the Baptist minister from Arkansas, portend a dark thundercloud of antagonism, a constituency that feels the Corporates in the Republican Party have swindled them. Huckabee's success brings the threat of a split to the policy level. The CheneyBush faction's last best hope, Mitt Romney, threw an awful lot of money down a hole in a frantic effort to sew the corporate-evangelical alliance back together again. Without the religious right there to deliver the votes, rolling back the New Deal will die on the vine, and Republicans will have to resume jumping through their Moderate hoops.

The only big question for the moment, therefore, is not whether workers will finally wake up and realize that capitalism is a bad system that is going to kick their butts no matter whom they elect, but only whether they will manage to reinstate economic issues as a political vehicle and end the Great Hijack of the ballot box launched by the New Right in 1960. With global warming heating up political dialogues around the world, moral character is going to seem like an awfully stale talking point anyway to a majority that approaches, with a sick feeling in the pit of its stomach, the question of whether human society still has a future. But in the meantime it has a certain sci-fi feel to see the media drawing such absurdly tiny conclusions from such enormous questions.

-Roel

Thought for food

Reposted from Socialist Standard

What could the production of food be like in a society without the need for profit, without competition from big businesses, without promotional advertising, without any money changing hands?

Capitalism has been and continues to be, the cause of tens of thousands of people worldwide moving into towns and cities on a daily basis, seeking to find a replacement for income and livelihood lost in the countryside. Likewise economic decisions tempt millions into international migration in the hope of gaining access to the means of producing a livelihood in more prosperous regions. The vast majority of both internal and international émigrés, if assured of a comfortable, fulfilling life for themselves and their families in their "home" region would no doubt prefer to return to where the culture fits them like a glove. Capitalism denies or overrides local needs and wishes and is responsible for the devastation of farmers and farming communities worldwide, evidence the year on year increase in suicide by farmers in both developed and developing countries. In the present system many, many people living in cities are employed in work that is irrelevant to socialism, non-productive jobs entailing transactions with money. In socialism these will be people freed up, a huge labour resource free to live and work in a location of their choice unrestricted by commercial constraints. It is probable that demographics would change quite rapidly and dramatically, with the outflow of citizens making choices that will affect their lives positively.

One of the first tasks of socialism will be to rectify the worst effects of capitalism on populations, to ensure that local needs are satisfied in all locations. On the agricultural issue this may, at least initially, curtail the growing of (now-called) "cash" crops such as tea, coffee, tobacco or bananas whilst local populations stabilise their ability to feed all their own inhabitants. Emphasis would be placed on the quality, health and fertility of the soil, sustainability being paramount. Farmers in the developed world would be freed from the constraints of capital, quotas, restrictions and above all competition, enabling them to produce foods required by the local populace and, if need be, in other parts of the world.

The technology and infrastructure for moving food around is currently well established globally, although in capitalist hands. (Where it is not well established then it will be a priority to increase or establish it.) Processing plants, packing houses, transport vehicles from local to international, cold storage, warehousing facilities, stock keeping know-how, all the necessary components are already on hand with individuals well-versed in logistics adjusting supply to demand and ensuring sufficient supplies for each and every area, the main difference from now will be satisfying need not profit.

The local scene

Where capitalism hasn't yet forced farmers to grow cash crops for sale on world markets, local food needs are still largely met locally. This could continue in socialism, though without markets and buying and selling. For instance, here in one small, typical rural area in Turkey some distance from any large towns, small farmers are not materially rich but large, extended families live comfortably, with daily work shared. Women mostly take care of the animals – cows, goats, sheep, chickens, whilst the men do the field work – ploughing, harrowing, sowing etc. The high intensity seasonal work brings everyone out en masse, often in the hottest weather. Their own dietary needs are taken care of to a large extent. The cow provides milk for home consumption and to be turned into yoghurt, butter and cheese with any surplus being sold daily to the milkman who collects it and sends it on to the processing plant. In return the cow is fed on home grown maize, barley and wheat and in springtime taken for a leisurely walk around the lush green edges of fields and lanes. The grain from the cereals will be milled locally for producing home made bread. The hens run free range anywhere and everywhere and produce abundant eggs and chicks several times a year.

There are fruit orchards – citrus, pomegranate and olive – and greenhouses for succession crops or vegetables and salad stuff for own use and for selling to the local wholesaler. Olives can be pressed for oil locally and many are stored in jars for yearlong eating. Beehives are all around and they say the pine honey is the best in the world. One free and abundant crop is "ot" – wild herbs, vegetables, leaves and berries from trees and bushes. No one goes walking without a knife and a bag or two in hand. Meat isn't eaten daily. Rice, bulgur wheat, pasta and bread are the staples with seasonal vegetables, salads and always fresh dairy foods for the daily fare. The occasional chicken will have its neck slit and a larger animal will be sacrificed on high days and holidays. It's a way of life.

Animals are generally tethered so it's rare to find an enclosed field or orchard. Often the shortest distance between two points is across someone else's land but it is not seen as trespassing, far from it. If spotted, visitors, neighbours and even strangers will be pressed into helping themselves to whatever produce is available and, if reluctant, the owner will no doubt produce a bag and fill it with whatever is going, saying words to the effect that "my garden is your garden."

Local town markets are supplied by local and regional farmers. Very few imports are seen in this region, notably year-round bananas from Central America. What is available is an abundance of fruit and vegetables in season with cold stores to lengthen the season for fruit. These towns, populations up to 20,000, have markets once a week on different days as most of the stallholders travel the rounds between several of them, 4 or 5 days on, 2 or 3 days off. Some stalls are run by middlemen who buy from the wholesaler and sell on but the most interesting are the stalls manned by "village people" who bring their own produce which may include home produced bread, butter, cheese, yoghurt, milk, eggs, honey, dried beans, grain, peanuts, pumpkin slices, olives, oil and various items picked from the hedgerows and around the trees in the orchards. These attractive displays of produce give eating food in season a definite appeal.

After the summer heat, when choice dwindles to three or four varieties of peppers, aubergines, courgettes, umpteen varieties of beans, masses of salad greens, cucumbers, red, juicy tomatoes, peaches and melons, nectarines and grapes, it's time to look forward to the autumn vegetables – new potatoes and onions from the yayla (high meadow areas), spinach, leafy greens and huge cabbages (if they're too big then pickle some or give half to a neighbour), caulis, broccoli and radishes the size of turnips. Now the summer vegetables are offered as a course soup mix after being baked in a dough mixed with yoghurt, dried in the sun and ground into crumbs. And dried food of all kinds is available, legumes, fruits, aubergines, peppers, okra, nuts, figs, etc. The winter will be well supplied. When shopping the trick is not to go with a specific shopping list, just a loose idea of veg, fruit, salad, then wander around to see what looks good and plan menus after the event rather than before as you can't guarantee you'll find all your requirements every time. Buying local is almost an imperative. The best broccoli, figs and walnuts come from four hours north, bananas four hours east, potatoes and apples from the high land three hours away. Rice has possibly the longest journey – from the northeast. Meat is local, beef, goat and lamb except for factory chickens – fresh, live ones are available at a premium price.

The wider world

Out in the wider world, different hemispheres and different climates yield different crops and different staples and according to the United Nations Food Organisation (and other studies) all but the most hostile regions are capable of sustaining their populations. In areas where there are sometimes crises causing malnutrition for some and starvation for others the problem is not lack of food but lack of will to transport food into these areas because the customers have no money. In many areas there are food shortages because farmers have become trapped in the cash-crop market for economic reasons. Without the burden of having directly or indirectly to produce crops for bio-fuels, heroin, cocaine, flowers and unnecessary food crops for elite markets people would have ample land for meeting their own and others' needs. Without coercion from state governments millions of people would continue to farm their land and feed their families rather than move to make way for mega-dams or building projects to house the newly rich or create vast new factory complexes.

Taking care of the environment is what farmers (not agri-businesses) are all about. Protecting the health of the soil to ensure sustainability and putting local needs first. Which is better for both human health and the environment – fresh food or processed? local foods or transported in food? Whilst it may be useful and even advisable to process certain types of foods to preserve them, fresh foods are generally more health giving and place less stress on the environment. Local foods will always be fresher and therefore healthier than transported food – and transportation is one of the biggest problems for the environment.

Consider the production of food in a society without the need for profit, without the competition from big businesses, without promotional advertising, without any money changing hands. How might eating habits change? Without sponsorship and freebies as at sports events, music festivals, even some educational establishments, how could tastes change? In some areas there is already a rejection of the fast-food syndrome with a renaissance of the appreciation of good food in the form of the 'Slow Food Movement', started in Italy a few years ago and now sprouting up in various other countries. Farmers markets are expanding in numbers in Europe and US, more people are demanding fresh, home produced, organic foods with a groundswell of opinion pushing the movement against genetically modified food, use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers.

People are deciding what they want to eat and feed to their children rather than be dictated to by big name manufacturers pushing their profitable lines. It is these same companies which are responsible for dreadful waste and rape of the planet with excessive packaging simply to catch the eye of the customer. Not to protect the item, simply to make it more appealing, more marketable. In fact packaging could be reduced enormously and will be when people decide it will be so. Certain foods, for instance rice, lentils, sugar, dried food of all kinds could simply be dispensed from huge, hygienic hoppers directly into one's own reusable containers, standard sizes not necessary, just let the individual take what's required for their particular situation.

With emphasis on quality of environment and quality of life rather than on the rat-race, with more opportunities and choices open for all in how to contribute to society rather than scramble for dead-end jobs or work that takes over life rather than enhances it, maybe food would have a different emphasis for vastly more people. No one would go without. There would be absolutely no reason to. More would see it as a necessary route to a healthy life. Cooking and eating as a social activity to be shared and enjoyed. You are what you eat after all. It's food for thought.

Janet Surman

The Nature of Human Nature

From the latest Socialist Standard, now with even more pages!

The cultural anthropologist Ashley Montagu once said that what cultural anthropologists were really interested in was "the nature of human nature". So what do they think it is?

Today, all humans are members of the same species, homo sapiens. We know what our main features are: upright position freeing our hands, stereoscopic vision allowing us to see things in three dimensions, a long period of growing up, the anatomical ability to utter a wide range of sounds, and, last but not least, a powerful brain as the centre of our nervous system. These are all genetic features, inherited via our genes, and are what distinguishes us, genetically, from other animals and living things.

Before us there were other species of Homo (Man) but which are now extinct. The most well-known of these was Neanderthal Man which only became extinct about 30,000 or so years ago. Then there were the likely direct ancestors of our species: Homo habilis (which Richard Dawkins translates as "handy Man") and Homo erectus or "upright Man". The currently available evidence suggested that the first Man, as distinct from the last Ape-Man, emerged about two million years ago.

But this is partly a question of definition since biologists distinguish the first Man from the last Ape-Man by brain size - an inevitably arbitrary, genetic distinction. Anthropologists have introduced another but non-biological distinction: the generalised making and use of tools. While the ability to make tools depends on biology (free hands, good eyesight, more powerful brain) the actual making of the tools - and what they were and how they were used - does not; it is learned not inherited and, as such, part of what anthropologists call "culture".

It is now generally accepted that the evolution of Homo habilis (toolmaking Man, if you don't like Dawkins's translation) into modern humans was not just a question of biology but also of culture; that it was a biological-cultural co-evolution. That, as Man made and used tools, natural selection favoured those with a more powerful brain and so a greater ability to learn and, crucially, to think abstractly (i.e.of something not present to the senses). Since abstract thinking and language are probably indissolubly linked, this depended on the development of the vocal cords and other parts of our speech organs. The end-result was us, some 150,000 years ago, on the savannah, or open grasslands, of East Africa.

Since then the most noticeable biological change was the development of the different varieties of our species - sometimes mis-called "races" - as isolated groups of homo sapiens adapted biologically through natural selection, over many thousands of years, to the different physical environments in which they lived.

Otherwise human adaptation has been cultural rather than biological:humans making use of their biological capacities, to build-up a social tradition so as to better adapt to their environment, which is then passed on to a new generation through teaching and learning rather than through genes.

"Cultural anthropology is concerned with the study of man's cultures. By 'culture' the anthropologist understands what may be called the man-made part of the environment; the pots and pans, the laws and institutions, the art, religion, philosophy. Whatever a particular group of people living together as a functioning population have learned to do as human beings, their way of life, in short, is to be regarded as culture" (Ashley Montagu, Man: His First Million Years, 1957).

Culture allows humans to adapt to a new or changing environment much, much more rapidly than biological adaptation through natural selection ever could. Cultural adaptation is measured in decades while biological adaptation is measured in tens of thousands of years. Other animals do have a culture in the sense of a tradition of behaviour that is passed on through learning, but none can vary and develop it as humans can. So, the capacity for adaptation through cultural change can be said to be a distinguishing feature of our species. It is of course a biologically-determined capacity, dependent upon in particular a powerful brain and the capacity to speak and on the extended period of childhood during which culture can be learned.

This is "human nature": the set of biological capacities enabling humans to learn, teach and develop culture, which is a non-biological means of adapting to the environment in which they find themselves. Faced with a new environment, humans can and do adapt their behaviour not their biological make-up. Because culture is non-biological and not fixed, the cultural anthropologists emphasised that educability, behavioural adaptability and flexibility was the key feature of human nature, what made us human:

"The most notable thing about human behaviour is that it is learned. Everything a human being does as such he has to learn from other human beings. From any dominance of biologically or inherited predetermined reactions that may prevail in the behaviour of other animals, man has moved into a zone of adaptation in which his behaviour is dominated by learned responses. It is within the dimension of culture, the learned, the man-made part of the environment that man grows, develops, and has his being as a behaving organism."

This biological capacity for culture, for learning behaviour and passing on to other humans and to other generations, was clearly an adaptive advantage and it is this that has allowed our species to spread and survive in all parts of the world, despite the widely differing environments. Much less of the behaviour of other animals is learned (and what is learned is essentially repetitive from generation to generation) and much more is governed by what used to be called "instincts".

This is a word that has long fallen out of favour in scientific circles, but it would simply denote a fixed response to a given stimulus - like the literal knee-jerk reaction in humans. Or moths flying into lights. Another, more complicated response would be squirrels reacting to the shortening of periods of daylight by going into hibernation.

What the brain does is to allow a period between the stimulus and the response. The more developed the brain the wider the range of possible behavioural responses that the organism can make on the basis of its own past experience. We are the animals with the most developed brain and it is one that allows us the greatest choice of behavioural responses. So much so, the cultural anthropologists argued, that it can be said that we don't really have any instincts. According to Montagu, any "instincts" that might have existed in the pre-human ape-men from which we evolved would have disappeared in the course of evolution:

"Instead of leading to fixed responses to the environment, man's evolution has been such as to make him the least behaviourally fixed and most generally educable or plastic of all living creatures. It is this very plasticity of his mental traits that confers upon man the position he occupies. The acquisition of this capacity freed man from the constraint of the limited range of biologically predetermined responses that characterises all other animals."(Human Heredity, 1963 edition)

" . . . man is man because he has no instincts because everything he is and has become he has learned, acquired, from his culture, from the man-made part of his environment, from other human beings." (Man and Aggression).

The scientific consensus that was established in the 1940s, 50s and 60s was that it was "human nature" to be able to have a wide range of behavioural responses to the environment; that human behaviour was learned not innate; that it was culturally not biologically determined. This was confirmation that there is nothing in the biological nature of humans that would prevent us living in the co-operative, non-hierarchical, society of self-motivated individuals that socialism would be.

Since then the biological determinists have regrouped and counter-attacked, claiming that there still are "biologically predetermined responses" in humans. They have made some headway in that biological determinism is more intellectually acceptable than it was fifty years ago. People like Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey, Desmond Morris, E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker - none of them anthropologists - have been able to achieve some popular success. But they have only done this by playing to the gallery, exploiting the fact that most people have a negative view of human nature - inherited from the Christian dogma of original sin and innate human depravity - and knowing that they could sell their books by pandering to this prejudice. Ardrey, Morris and Pinker also appealed to anti-intellectualism to ridicule and marginalise the scientific findings of the cultural anthropologists by painting them as an arrogant, liberal elite.

But they have failed to show how genes could determine human behaviour (as opposed to setting limits to it). Basically, genes are self-replicating codes for the production of the proteins in the cells of which we (and all other life-forms) are made. What they govern is the development and renewal of our physical, material bodies. They don't govern behaviour - that depends, as the cultural anthropologists have established, on our social and cultural environment.

The biological determinists hoped that advances in genetics would back up their case, but it is proving to be their undoing. Molecular biologists are making huge advances in identifying and discovering the effect of individual human genes. And they are not discovering genes for any behaviour, only for how the human body develops and renews itself - and what happens when a gene is faulty or abnormal or unusual. In which case the person concerned will suffer some, usually crippling bodily defect, but which genetics holds out the hope of someday being able to correct.

The findings of the cultural anthropologists still stand. All human social behaviour has to be learned and so is culturally not biologically determined. A key distinguishing feature of our species is behavioural adaptability. Human nature is not a barrier to socialism.

ADAM BUICK

Julius Martov and the Anti-Bolshevik Approach To Revolution

From the Inveresk Street Ingrate blog:

Final talk from the 'Socialist Thinkers – People Who History Made' lecture series and, aptly enough, the lecture dates from 25 years to the day.

Socialist meetings on a Boxing Day? Those were the days.

The sound quality of the recording is not the greatest but, remember, when I did originally introduce these old recordings on the blog, I did introduce them as, The SPGB: the basement tapes. The political quality of the recordings has been immeasurable, and I hope that other comrades in the SPGB tradition will look to upload further talks and debates on the Party website and/or their blogs.

Martov was an important socialist thinker and activist from the first two decades of the twentieth century, and I hope that readers will also take the time to check out the links below for further information about Martov and the period under discussion.

First Part

DOWNLOAD LINK: Martov and the Anti-Bolshevik Approach To Revolution

FILE NAME: martov part one.mp3

FILE SIZE: ~67.40 megabytes

LENGTH:1:13:10

Second Part

DOWNLOAD LINK: Martov and the Anti-Bolshevik Approach To Revolution

FILE NAME: martov part two.mp3

FILE SIZE: ~27.24 megabytes

LENGTH: 29:34

Further Reading on Julius Martov:

Julius Martov on the Marxist Internet Archive

Julius Martov page at Spartacus.Net

The State and the Socialist Revolution by Julius Martov

Review of Martov's 'The State and the Socialist Revolution' (From an issue of the Socialist Standard that dates from 1940.)

Martov: a Russian Social-Democrat (A review of Israel Getzler's biography of Julius Martov that first appeared in the November 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard.)

The role of the soviets in Russia's bourgeois revolution: the point of view of Julius Martov by Adam Buick (Originally published in the French political journal, Economies et societes, cahiers de l'ISMEA, Paris, serie S, Number 18, April-May 1976 issue.)

Workers Have No Country

Editorial from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whether Polish plumbers, Portuguese hop-pickers or Chinese cockle-pickers, migrant labour in the UK is undoubtedly higher profile now than it has been for many decades. The focus groups and private polling used by the major parties are confirming immigration as the No 1 issue for voters at the moment.

In some parts of the UK the influx may well have resulted in increased unemployment for existing workers and appears to be putting a downward pressure on wages in some sectors.

It's worth noting that there has been an enormous effort made to vilify, criminalise and erase racist language and ideas over the last few decades. World socialists have not opposed these developments but we have argued that racism – like other the so-called "hate" crimes – is usually fuelled and ignited by poverty and fear, and therefore cannot be removed until the cause is.

For workers fighting over crumbs in lower wage unskilled jobs, the temptation to blame your unemployment or wage level on foreign labour may be strong. But nevertheless such views are false. The blame lies elsewhere. In order to stay profitable, UK employers are demanding cheap labour. It makes good business sense to welcome cheap labour from overseas – you didn't have to pay for its education, and after you have exploited it for a lifetime, you still won't have to pay its pension.

In many ways the government is only repeating at the national level what has been happening at employer level for many years with out-sourcing of staffing costs.

And while the free movement of labour is restricted, capital is of course expected to roam the globe looking out for ever better rates of exploitation, sniffing around the sweatshops for signs of harsher working conditions or longer hours. But if these chickens come home to roost – if little pockets of the third world's poor actually have the gumption or bravery to start popping up on our doorstep – then our local administrators of capitalism start to get a bit edgy.

As with so many issues, politicians are slowly realising that governments must simply accommodate to capitalism with regard to migration and accept it. They can only try to control it but if they are to have any hope of effectively securing borders and finding those who slip through they must expend vast sums as on ID cards and the like.

The World Socialist Movement didn't get its name for nothing. Unique amongst all political parties left and right we have no national axe to grind. We side with no particular state, no government, no currency. We have no time for nationalisation or privatisation, for border controls or for migration incentives. The world over, workers must do what they can individually and collectively to survive and resist capitalism. In many parts of the world that means escaping the tyranny of political terror or economic poverty. Politically however, workers should try and resist taking sides in the battles of the economic blocs who just happen to be named on the front of your passport. You must not blame another worker for your poverty. Instead we would argue that workers should recognise that – whether migrant or not, whether illegal or legal.

Are We Armchair Philosophers?

From our magazine, then called the Western Socialist (August 1947)

To the Western Socialist-

The workers want something NOW and you ignore this altogether. Instead of having a program dealing with the everyday problems of the workers, you retreat into an ivory tower. Actually, you are nothing but armchair philosophers, divorced from the needs of the working class. You are concerned with the intricate problems of Marxian economics and the fine points of Marxian philosophy at a time when action is needed.

CRITIC, N.Y. City

REPLY

We agree that the workers want something NOW. But, and that is the point – WHAT do they want? The unpleasant truth is, of course, that they do NOT desire socialism but THAT THE MAJORITY OF WORKERS EVERYWHERE STILL SUPPORT CAPITALISM. They feel that something is wrong. They desire peace and security. In order to get these, they try every political party which promises to give them these things. When they have tried one, and it has failed, as it must fail, they "give the other bloke a go." This may seem a crude analysis of elections, but it is true. At election times up to now, the issue has always been: WHO shall administer capitalism? HOW shall it be administered? The difference between the actual performance of all parties is very small. It is a case of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The only issue they are really divided on is whether the capitalist system should be administered with a dash of state control or not. The intention of the Labor Party may be the very best – it may desire real improvements for the workers. But the record of all Labor Governments brings home the fundamental point that capitalism simply cannot be administered in the interests of the working class, whatever party is in control.

The issue then, is simple, once we analyze the problem which faces the socialist. On the one hand a party based on a reformist policy, uttering vague socialist phrases, grows quickly and achieves power. On the other hand you have a Socialist Party which appeals on the one demand – Socialism – and which grows very slowly. What then are we to do? Can we not achieve socialism and at the same and at the same time attract a large number of workers on a programme of immediate demands?

This question can only be answered by looking at the fate of those organizations which have tried the policy. Not only have they failed to bring socialism any nearer, but they have even made the way to socialism more difficult. The most outstanding example is surely the pre- Hitler German Labor Movement. One of the strongest "left" parties in the world was the Social Democratic Workers Party (SDAP). The theoreticians of the Social Democrats – Karl Kautsky, Hilferding, Otto Bauer, etc. – were at times amongst the most brilliant interpreters of Marxist theory. The party had strong trade unions to support it. Yet it collapsed like a house of cards and the Communists did no better. This has been cited as the "failure of Marxism."

What are the facts? If we examine the ACTIONS of the party, if we if we turn from the dazzling flights of theoretical fancy of their monthly organs whose readership was confined to a few, to their popular daily press, read by millions of workers, we can see one of the main causes.

It is the apathy and the cynicism on the part of the rank and file. Where was the difference between the Social Democrats and the avowedly capitalist parties? Did they not ally themselves with the Junker generals, with the Catholic Centre Party, and with the senile militarist Hindenburg? Their "alternative" to capitalism was - capitalism. They had run it, on the only basis it can be run – a capitalist basis. They had not been built up on a policy of demanding socialism, but one of reforms. Six million unemployed in Germany, two million in Britain, ten in the USA, 300,000 in Australia – these were the results of capitalism, not of the particular administration of it by "progressive" or "reactionary" parties.

Yes, the Social Democrats HAD the mass basis. They had not "isolated themselves", they had been "practical". And the result? To the misery of capitalism administered by Social-Democrats, the workers preferred the misery of State-Capitalism administered by the Nazi gangsters – at least they would give them work and bread!

The Social-Democrats had taken a "short cut". Their following consisted of millions of workers, who, on May 1^st, listened to revolutionary sounding phrases and shouted: "Workers of the World Unite!" Certainly there were socialists within their ranks who believed that they should "work from within". Whether they have learnt their lesson only the future will show.

"Armchair philosophers" had become "practical politicians" and socialism had been put into cold-storage. One day perhaps - but not now. The more "practical" the party became, the shadier its political opportunism. No wonder their supporters were apathetic. No wonder Hitler could attract so many despairing workers with his promise of Action. (Of course, we are not maintaining that the Social-Democrats caused Nazism. But their activities, and even more those of the Communist Party, helped to pave the way for it.)

Even if the whole German Labor Movement had been in a "United Front", the result would not have been different. As we have seen, the causes of all the evils of capitalism are left untouched. Workers who have joined them also become apathetic and disillusioned. They've "had enough talking." Thus, fronts "against Totalitarianism" make the workers prey for any political charlatan with a glib tongue. In the final analysis, instead of fighting it, they lead workers into a state of mind where they are more susceptible to totalitarian propaganda.

These, then, are the consequences of taking a "short cut". We also would like to take one – but up to now all the alleged royal roads have led away from socialism instead of towards it.

There is simply no alternative to the task of making socialists. This is the most important lesson of the history of all reformist organizations. The charge of being "armchair philosophers" then, really means that we are not opportunist. To this we plead guilty.

But still – is there nothing we can do in the meantime? Are the workers to sit down and have their wages reduced? Are they to starve while capitalism lasts? This, if we believe our opponents, is our attitude. We have already shown that the charge rests on the failure to distinguish between economic and political demands. First of all, it should be obvious, that even if we wished to avoid the day-to-day struggle, we HAVE to take party in it. It is not something created by socialist agitators, or something we can ignore, but part and parcel of capitalism. Socialists take part in every struggle in the economic field to improve conditions. They are as militant as anybody else. But they realize that this struggle can never lead to emancipation of the working class. They point out its limitations. That's why they are member of the Companion Parties of Socialism. The function of the party is to make socialists, to propagate socialism, and to point out to the workers that they must achieve their own emancipation. It does not say: "Follow us! Trust us! We shall emancipate you." No, Socialism must be achieved by the workers acting for themselves.

-H.H. (August 1947)

"Instead of hollering ourselves hoarse about the virtues of mass action that can do something spectacular, and not understand why we do it, let us work in the sphere in which we find ourselves and teach Socialism to others of our class."
-J. A. McDonald (Western Clarion,
November 16, 1920)