By the Way

“Socialist” Britain
“These other May Day campaigns were calling us to rise and unite. We had nothing to lose but our chains. And by our unity we would one day—in the far-off future—achieve a Socialist Britain, where the nation would be run for the greatest good of the greatest number.
“Today we have achieved that Socialist State.” (Daily Herald, 20/4/46.)

The Exploiters’ Rake-off
“The private owner can have his rake off so long as his rake-off is not too expensive . . .” (Mr. Shinwell, Minister of Fuel and Power, at Leeds. Sunday Express, 7/4/46.)

Viscount St. Davids commented that City firms which hitherto “went into a panic whenever the Labour Government so much as blinked an eyelid, now take a second look at everything the Labour Government does, and then shout for joy, and up go the share values.” (News Chronicle, 16/5/46.)

12 Months After
“Famine will soon be killing civilians and turning out future Fascists more quickly than Hitler and Mussolini ever could.” (Mr. Herbert Morrison to President. Truman. Daily Herald, 14/5/46.)

“You voted Left—You did Right!”
Under this title the Labour Party has published its own account of its first six months’ record. It enumerates the following: —

Control of Finance.
Nationalisation of Coal Mines, Transport, Electricity, Gas, Cables and Wireless.
Working Parties for efficiency of private industry.
An Export Drive.
24,000 Permanent Houses.
Social Services: Health Insurance.

Socialists have only one comment. Not one nor all these measures have any connection with Socialism — neither do they lead to it,

“Workers Control” of the Mines
“Salary of the chairman of the National Coal Board—Lord Hyndley—will be £8,500, and other members of the Board will receive £5,000.
“Salary of the vice-chairman—not yet named—has not yet been fixed.
“Other members of the Board so far appointed are: Sir Walter Citrine, Mr. Ebby Edwards, Prof. Sir Charles Ellis, Mr. J. C. Gridley, Mr. L. H. Lowe, Sir Charles Reid and Mr. T. E. B. Young.” (Daily Herald, 13/3/46.)

Strachey—Before and After
Mr. John Strachey, M.P., formerly Under-Secretary for Air and now Minister of Food, now backs the programme and policy of the Labour Government. In his “The Nature of Capitalist Crisis” he showed why Labourism must fail.
“Capitalism is now, we are told, well on the road to permanent recovery; all talk of breakdown, of impending wars and revolutions is now happily out of date.; an epoch of peace and plenty is opening out before us.

What, are we to say of scientists who give way to such ‘wishful thinking’? A dozen times now the cycle of boom, crisis, depression, recovery, boom, crisis, has gone through its phases, and as each crisis has passed into depression, and then as symptoms of recovery have appeared to lighten the depression, the shallower prophets of capitalism have, told us that at length, but now for ever, all was well. Do they still believe it? Certainly we cannot.” (“The Nature of Capitalist Crisis,” p. 19.)

“The whole of the present official leadership of the British workers looks forward, like Mr. G. D. H. Cole, to the possibility of an organised or planned, high wage paying, and centrally controlled capitalism. . . .”
“Nor is this the programme of all the leaders of the British Labour Party alone. It is the professed programme of all Fascist parties. . . .
“It is the professed objective of all those ‘progressive’ Conservatives and ‘modern-minded’ Liberals (of all nations and the League of Nations), who believe in what is called ‘planning’—and form everywhere little societies for the study of their plans. . . .”
“All these parties, movements and groupings are, in fact, holding out to us (with, in some cases, perfect sincerity) the possibility of (establishing an economy which retains the essential principles of the present system, viz., the private ownership of the predominant part of the mean of production, their operation for profit, and distribution of the products by means of exchanges mediated by a monetary circulation, but which eliminates the crises and convulsions, with their consequent miseries, which this system at present produces.
“Nor is this aim any the worse for the number of diverse groups which subscribe to it.
“Unfortunately, however, as we have seen, whatever else may happen upon this uncertain planet, the establishment of a planned, stable and high wage paying capitalism is impossible.” (The Nature of Capitalist Crisis, p. 354.)

HORATIO