Excuses and admissions

When he was Prime Minister, and a plain Mister, Earl Attlee made something of a name for himself as a calm, quiet, pipe smoking, doodling, ruthless chief. Now that he is in retirement, his views are much sought after by the newspapers, radio and so on, who presumably think that there is nothing so sage and objective as the opinion of the elder statesman. A few months back, Earl Attlee went to a meeting of the World Association of World Federalists in Bonn and there made the sort of speech which was expected of him. In the course of that speech he said, as an indication of the urgency of resolving international disputes, that there were “… not more than ten years in which to find the road to peace.”

Now this was something of an admission. If there was one thing for which the last war was suppose to have been fought, it was to ensure a peaceful world. Earl Attlee, as Deputy Prime Minister in the wartime coalition, played his part in promoting that idea in the minds of war-weary workers. Yet here we are. fifteen years after, still apparently looking for the road to peace.

Of course, Earl Attlee’s statement is by no means exceptional. Many politicians have a seemingly infinite capacity for explaining away, and promising to remedy, the malfeasances of capitalism. Whatever the strife and poverty which may be evident at any time, there is never a shortage of smooth politicos, each with his solution to the world’s problems and the hope of better times to come, when we have found the road to peace or prosperity or some other paradise.

Take, for example, the recent trouble in Laos, over which the State Department displayed its famous trigger-neurosis. A popularly touted solution to this flare up was the recall of the 1954 Geneva Conference. This, we were invited to believe, would do something to settle the Laos disturbance. But this is what the 1954 conference was supposed to have already done; remember the knighthood which Anthony Eden received for the part which he played in it? Now we have evidence that the disputes in Indo-China are as rife as ever. The new trouble spot—Laos—was, in fact, established as an independent state by the Geneva Conference as part of its supposed peace making. What reason is there to assume that another conference would have any more lasting effect than its predecessor? None whatever. Nevertheless, this is all that capitalism’s representatives have to offer.

It is true that these conferences sometimes seem to bear fruit. But this is only a superficial impression; actually, they can only ever manage to suppress one aspect of a particular problem, which is simultaneously in evidence, or about to emerge, somewhere else. Consider the case of Cyprus. For years, the Greek Cypriot nationalists fought the British forces on the island, taking occasional time off to kill Turkish Cypriots or their own traitors. Then came the Zurich Pact which, when the various disagreements had been hammered out, seemed to have put an end to the fighting in Cyprus. Now, apart from the odd settling of a score which was made during the emergency, all is peaceful on the island. What about the rest of the world? We have already mentioned Laos; the war in Algeria goes on; the Belgium Congo is still in bloody confusion. And we know that, if an international conference were to settle these conflicts, similar problems would spring out somewhere else. Perhaps, even, in Cyprus again. This may make the conference look pretty sick as a pacifying instrument, but we can depend on it that it will not prevent the politicians from offering it as a remedy when the world’s next sore spot breaks out.

This is not peculiar to the international scene of capitalism. At home, the working class are familiar with—and, sadly, receptive to—the excuses and nostrums which flood from the organs of capitalist opinion as fast as the events which provoke them. Sometimes, directly opposite solutions are proposed for the same problem. The government has stated that, to stabilise the British economy, they must impose some strict controls over hire purchase facilities. In contrast, there are many spokesmen for the industries which thrive on H. P. who take the view that the way to stabilise the economy is to remove, or at any rate to relax, those restrictions. Neither side has any interest in pointing out that the H.P. boom, and the recession which followed, is an example of the fundamental anarchy of capitalist society. At least one firm in the domestic appliance industry felt the H.P. cuts extra keenly because, when the restrictions were off, they invested in a lot of extra productive capacity to enable them to exploit the market which had opened before them. When the squeeze came, this production—and a lot of workers— became redundant.

Is it too much to hope that the redundant workers will reflect that they have been caught in something which, we were assured, could never happen again? Some capitalist economists are fond of blaming the 1929 crash onto the fact that, in the excitement of the preceding boom, there was a lot of reckless investment which was bound to collapse sooner or later. This was supposed to have taught everyone a lesson. Yet some of the stories which have gone the rounds in the City about the recent collapse of a couple of H.P. finance companies almost recall the days of the South Sea Bubble (although admittedly no company has again reached the blissful state of raising capital to finance “an enterprise the nature of which is to be divulged”.) In their eagerness to exploit the boom the financiers trusted their weight to as creaky limbs as their forebears did in the twenties. Whatever other changes there have been, the basis of capitalism—production for sale—remains. And with it remain the anomalies and upheavals, try as the politicians may to explain them away.

What is to be done about this? Should we look for better politicians, with better excuses? Self evidently, this is futile. Wars, uneasy peace, booms, slumps, poverty are part of capitalism because they spring from the roots of that society. No politician, however smooth, can change that. This, strangely, must be done by the working class over the world. These are the people who produce our wealth, suffer capitalism’s wars and its insecurity. Now, they accept their leaders’ excuses and apologies. As easily, they could reject them.
IVAN