Chapter X. What is to be done?

How far some of the Labour leaders have departed from their earlier attitude may be seen by comparing Mr. Morrisons’ present acceptance of monopoly with the Labour Party’s vociferous opposition to monopoly after the last world war. A typical declaration was made by Mr. J.R. Clynes, then a prominent Trade Union and Labour Party leader, that it was better to have a large number of small capitalists than a small number of large ones. (Preface to a pamphlet, The Failure of Karl Marx.)

On the other hand, while the Labour Party in 1918 feared that the “Monopolist Trusts . . . may presently become as ruthless in their extortion as the worst American examples” (Labour and the New Social Order, 1918, p. 18), and in 1922 criticised the National Government for having done nothing “to prevent the harmful results of the accumulation of capital and control of prices and production by groups of private capitalists” (Labour Speakers’ Handbook, 1922, p. 36), the minority members of the Committee on Trusts, 1919, including Mr. R. Bevin and Sidney Webb, stated that they did not wish to prevent the formation of combinations and associations because of the greater efficiency they ensure. Instead they urged that dangerous monopolies should be handed over by the Government to the Co-operative Movement or Local authorities, or placed under State control but not necessarily State management.

Yet another straw in the wind is a speech by Mr. Shinwell, Labour M.P., in the House of Commons on 5 May, 1944. He said :–

“If anybody expects me to make a plea for the nationalisation of shipping at the end of the war they will be disappointed. Not even to satisfy ideologists on my own side am I going to do that. You can nationalise the railways and do much to co-ordinate rail and road transport, but when it comes to shipping I want to see a scheme properly worked out and practicable before I attach my signature to it . . . you could take over liner services and makes them into a publicly-owned system through a public utility corporation . . . I do not want anything in the nature of a bureaucracy in the shipping industry or even the beneficial assistance of civil servants, admirable as they are in their own sphere. Nor should the large capitalists have it all their own way” (House of Commons Report, 5 May, 1944, col. 1645).

He also remarked that the Ministry of War Transport “are the last people in the world who should be allowed to operate the shipping industry.”

In contrast to this the Labour Party 25 years ago used to hold up the Post Office administered by a Government Department and by civil servants as a model to be followed elsewhere. The Labour Party’s programme of Reconstruction after the war 1914-1918, called Labour and the New Social Order, was not only demanding “immediate nationalisation” of Railways, Mines, the Insurance Companies, and the production of Electricity, and nationalisation “as suitable opportunities occur” of “the great lines of steamers”, but also specifically sought “national administration”, and said nothing then of not wanting industries to be administered by Government departments. In the case of Insurance the programme asked that the companies be expropriated and demanded “the assumption by a State department of the whole business of Industrial Life Assurance”. As regards the nationalisation of the liner companies the only qualification was that they should perhaps not be “immediately directly managed in detail by the Government.” (Our italics).

What has the Socialist to say of all this? It is to warn the working class that “the more capitalism changes the more it is the same thing.” All of these never-ending experiments in the control of capitalism leave untouched the working class problem of effecting a change of ownership, from private ownership to real ownership by the community and democratic control by the community. From a working class point of view we deny Mr. Morrison’s statement that “the increasing domination of British industry and business by a system of private regulation on monopoly lines was the most important of all subjects that faced us in the field of economic policy after the war” (Times, 6 March, 1944).

The problem facing the working class now, as it was 20 or 50 years ago, is the fact that the capitalist class are the private owners of the means of production and distribution. No amount of State capitalist enterprise or State regulation of monopolies will alter this. What the working class need to concern themselves with is the problem of ownership, the fact (to quote the Economist, 25 December, 1943), that “as a rough estimate . . . it can be said that 1,800,000 persons, who are 7 per cent of the adult persons in this country, own 85 per cent of the private property and draw 28 per cent of the individual incomes of the country.”

The Socialist solution is to abolish capitalism and establish a system of society in which the means of production and distribution are owned and democratically controlled by the community, in which there will be no exploitation, no property incomes in the form of rent, profit or interest ; and no wages system.

The problem of society organised on a Socialist basis will be the straightforward economic problem of securing the co-operation of all in the production of the articles and the operation of the services needed by all the members of society. Goods will not be produced for sale and profit-making, or to provide incomes for investors in company shares or in Government securities, etc., but solely for use. Men and women will no longer work under the goad of starvation but because they will realise that at last the interest of the individual is the interest of the whole community and the interest of the whole community also that of the individual.

To those who have imbibed capitalist teaching that men and women only work when driven to it by starvation and under the threat of losing their job and their livelihood, this is indeed a revolutionary idea ; but it is time the working class realised their own capacity, intelligence and potentialities. There is nothing fantastic in holding that the world has now attained the capacity easily to provide an abundant and varied life for all. It is for the working class to realise the mission history has allotted to them, that of ending class-divided society for ever, and to strive for the achievement of Socialism under which the principle shall be “From each according to his ability : to each according to his need.”

The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and U.S.A. show the road to the achievement of Socialism by international working class action, through the democratic conquest of political power.

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