Kenya and Berlin

Enemy of an Enemy
Cardinal Richelieu was credited with basing his foreign policy on the maxim “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The capitalist groups in the modern world work on the same slogan. In present world conditions Russian capitalism and its allies in the Soviet bloc, is in conflict with the capitalists of the Western world. The latter in their turn are engaged in struggles against the working class in each of the Western countries. Therefore the working class of the Western countries are the potential allies of the Russian rulers. This is the reason why the Russian rulers hold themselves out as the friend of “the toilers of Britain and America” and try to enlist the sympathy of the latter by means of the Communist Parties in those countries. The assiduity with which the Communist Party of Great Britain has built up the legend of “The Jolly George”—in which incident the workers of Britain are supposed to have prevented the British ruling class pursuing the war against the Bolsheviks in the early days of the Russian Revolution—shows, in spite of the fact that the story as related by them is not true, the direction in which their thoughts are moving, For the Russian rulers realise that, however powerful the Anglo-American ruling class might be, it could not, without the active support of the British and American workers, embark successfully on any war against the Soviet Union.

Vast Subversive Network
On the same principle, the ruling class of Britain and America show great sympathy for the oppressed workers in the countries under Soviet regimes, and try to stir up discontent and organise opposition. In the conditions obtaining in the Stalinist countries, this work has to be done underground, in exactly the same way as the Communist Parties have to work secretly in many western countries, among them Spain and Portugal, some of the South American republics, and (to an increasing degree) the United States itself. Thus an article in the “Readers’ Digest” of October, 1952, says “West Berlin, an enclave deep in the Soviet Zone, continues to be headquarters for a vast subversive network radiating throughout Red Germany, warning police officials of the punishment in store for them, smuggling refugees to the West, ceaselessly distributing propaganda.”

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
But, one need scarcely add, the sympathy felt by the ruling class of Russia, and of Britain and America, for the struggle of the workers against their masters, stops at their own boundaries. The workers of an enemy country are fit subjects for sympathy; but never the workers of your own. Chapter and verse for these statements can be found in the recent events in Kenya and East Berlin. When in East Berlin and other German cities, on June 16th and 17th, the workers turned on their masters and protested by mass demonstrations against their wages and working conditions, the German Stalinist police, supported by Russian tanks and machine-guns, suppressed the demonstrations by force, killing a number of demonstrators. This was the signal for a barrage of sympathy from the rulers of the Western world. Dr. Adenauer said, “betraying deep emotion,” that “even in a cynical age there were still men prepared to die in the streets for an idea. They did not fear Russian tanks and machine-guns; they had shown to the world that they would not be slaves, and that the age of tyranny was over.” (The Times, 24-6-53; subsequent references are also to The Times, unless otherwise stated.) In Parliament Mr. Maclean, a Conservative, called the Russian action a “barbarous massacre” (25-6-53); and a group of Labour members tabled a motion reading: “That this House notes with intense interest and deep sympathy the struggle of the German workers against the Russian military dictatorship in Eastern Germany and deplores the execution without trial of the leaders thrown up by the workers in the struggle for bread and liberty” (24-6-53). Mr. Dulles, the American Secretary of State, found that the episode “demonstrates that the people do retain their love of God and love of country and their sense of personal dignity. They want to run their own affairs and not be run from Moscow. The unquenchable spirit of the people was dramatised in East Berlin, where unarmed youths tore up paving stones from the streets to hurl in defiance at tanks . . . The people want to be governed by those whom they select as responsive to their needs and desires, rather than to be ruled by those who take their orders from aliens and who give their orders with a view to achieving their own ambitions without regard to the welfare of the people concerned ” (1-7-53).

Kenya
If this is the attitude taken by the Western rulers to the events in East Berlin; why do not they deliver the same kind of stirring speeches about the disturbances in Kenya? Mr. Dulles thinks the East Germans want to run their own affairs; but the East Germans are at least allowed the semblance of free elections (skilfully manipulated though they may be by Herr Ulbricht and his friends) whereas in Kenya the Kikuyu and other Africans are openly barred from the franchise. A defender of the attitude of the Anglo-American ruling class might say that the two cases were different; the Kikuyu, in rebelling, did not stop short at peaceful demonstrations, but actually killed those whom they thought were oppressing them. The answer to this is—so did the East Germans: a number of police and state-officials were reported shot or beaten to death during the riots of June 16th and 17th (1-7-53). And this should cause no surprise; when workers are driven to desperation point, be their skins black or white, they often try to seek escape by using violence against individual members of the oppressing class or their hirelings.

Savagery
But again it might be alleged (by a supporter of the British ruling class) that the behaviour of Mau Mau adherents in Kenya has shown them to be savages at heart, and to be therefore beyond the sympathy of “civilised” men. But this is the last argument which could be used by members of the British ruling class. If individual acts of barbarity are to blacken for ever the character of the nations to which their perpetrators belong, and place those nations for ever beyond the pale of civilisation and civilised rights, then why this sympathy and support for the Germans? These Germans are exactly the same as those against whom our rulers were lashing us into furious enmity only eight years ago, on the grounds of the savagery, the barbarity, the bestiality they had shown in the treatment of minorities inside Germany and of the populations of the occupied countries. Our rulers cannot now ignore the six years of unending propaganda with which they overwhelmed us in the second world war. The truth is that neither the East Germans nor the Kikuyu are any more brutal by nature than other human beings, though some of them have been driven by oppression and bad conditions into brutality (as were the East Germans on June 16th and 17th, and as the Kikuyu have been from time to time since a year ago).

“Fatherland of the Proletariat”
Just as East Berlin has shown up the hypocrisy of the rulers of the Western world, so it has shown up the hypocrisy of the Stalinist leaders. The Communist Parties of the world claim to be parties of the workers, organised in the interest of the workers; the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and the other Soviet countries are always to the fore with denunciations of “capitalist oppression” whenever the workers of the Western world are suppressed by force. In East Berlin the German and Russian Bolsheviks had the opportunity to show how they themselves deal with similar situations; and the outcome was as one would expect, for no capitalist system, whether its superstructure is of the Stalinist or the Western kind, can tolerate insubordination among its workers. By using the rifle, the machine-gun, and the tank against striking and rioting workers, the Stalinists have once more demonstrated the division between the master class and the working class in the countries under their control.

Worse Than Useless
The Socialist attitude to these events can be explained in a few words. While we have sympathy with workers who are driven to break out in open violence, whether against Stalinist or a western ruling class, the killing of individual members of a ruling class does nothing at all to alter the economic basis of society; so long as that basis is unchanged, so long will there be a master class and a working class. Acts of violence on the part of the workers merely provoke the ruling class and its armed forces, and give it the excuse for bloody reprisals. In Eastern Germany, scores of workers are reported to have been killed; in Kenya, the “security forces” boasted that in three days last month they had killed a hundred “terrorists,” which is far more than the total number of whites killed by the Mau Mau since the beginning of the troubles (27-6-53). When workers become Socialists, they use their resentment at their conditions to spur them on towards ending the society that causes them, not in sporadic and pointless acts of violence. The Western leaders claim to be opposed to violence and murder as political weapons; but they reveal themselves as double-dealers when they incite the workers in Stalinist countries to use these weapons, although they know that the result can only be a slaughter among those who try to fight their political battles in the streets.
A.W.E.