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Socialist
Standard
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February 2009
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 Published
since 1904
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Journal
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“Class
Collaboration in Communist China”
From The Trade Union Law of the People’s Republic of China it can
be seen that the workers of “New China” are unable to organise in
genuine Trade Unions; that they are not allowed to call strikes
whatever their grievances may be, and that the so-called Trade Union
affiliated to the “All-China Federation of Labour” are Unions mainly in
name only, similar to Hitler’s “Labour Front” in pre-war Germany.
China’s “Trade Unions” are allowed to negotiate. But that is all.
Their main functions, according to Article 9, of The Trade Union Law of
the People’s Republic of China, are to organise the workers to support
the laws of the government, carry out the policies of the government;
to get the workers to adopt a new attitude towards labour—that is, to
observe “labour discipline,” to organise “labour emulation campaigns
and increase production to ensure the fulfilment of the production
plans; to protect public property; to oppose corruption and bureaucracy
and to fight “saboteurs” in enterprises operated by the State.
In privately-owned enterprises the Trade Unions must help in
developing production, “benefiting both labour and capital”—in other
words, increasing the exploitation and subjection of the Chinese
working-class. The outlook for the masses of China is indeed bleak.
(From article by Peter E. Newell, Socialist Standard, February 1959)
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We report with sadness the death of Charlie Lawrence in Australia on
12th January at the age of 89. Charlie was born in England but as a
young boy emigrated to Western Australia with his family in the 1920s
where they ran a dairy farm. This was part of the Group Settlements
project on virgin land. It was hard work but he loved the life there
but the depression of the 1930s saw the family in financial trouble and
they returned to England.
During the war Charlie worked for a time in 'directed labour' but
decided this was not for him after being too close to bombing raids
near where he was working. He took this so personally that he decided
to go 'on the run', rather than face military service or more directed
labour.
It was while he was working at Woking Power Station in 1939 that
Charlie met the Socialist Party in the person of a member, George
Nuttall, who was the works fitter there. George talked about the
party's case for socialism and its analysis of capitalism. Charlie
joined the party in 1944 as a member of the old Paddington Branch and
attended meetings and lectures. He always recalled the very big
meetings held at the old Metropolitan Theatre in the Edgware Road just
after the war.
Charlie was the catalyst for no less than six of his siblings becoming
socialists - possibly a record in this Party. One of these siblings was
Pieter Lawrence (see obituary May 2007 Socialist Standard). Charlie
returned to live in Australia in the 1960s and although not very active
in the WSP of Australia, remained a staunch socialist to the end.
Sympathy is extended to his family both in Australia and in the UK.
Phyllis Hart |
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This
declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because
it is
also an important
historical document dating from the
formation
of the party
in 1904, its original language has been retained.
Object
The establishment of a system of
society based upon the
common ownership and democratic control of the
means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in
the interest of the whole community.
Declaration of Principles
The Socialist Party of Great Britain
holds,
1.
That society as at
present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living
(i.e., land, factories, railways,
etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement
of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.
2.
That in society,
therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a
class struggle between those who possess but do not produce and those
who produce but do not possess.
3.
That this antagonism
can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the
domination of the master class, by the conversion into the common
property of society of the means of production and distribution, and
their democratic control by the whole people.
4.
That as in the order
of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its
freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the
emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.
5.
That this
emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
6.
That as the machinery
of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to
conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from
the workers, the working class must organize consciously and
politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and
local, in order that
this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an
instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the
overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.
7.
That as all political
parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest
of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all
sections of the master class, the party seeking working class
emancipation must be hostile to every other party.
8.
The Socialist Party of
Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action
determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether
alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of
the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end
that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives
them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to
comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom. |
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