Published on The Socialist Party of Great Britain (https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb)
No. 680 April 1961
Saturday, 1 April 1961
Book Review: 'Congo Disaster'
The Congo
'Congo Disaster', by Colin Legum, (Penguin Books 2/6)
For a very long time, the natives of what was the
Belgian Congo have been an ill used race of men. The Arab slavers look, according to one estimate,
30 million of them. The agents of Leopold II were little better. The king said. "The slave trade . . . is a
plague spot that every friend of civilisation would desire to see disappear . . . " but in the event he
imposed what Legum calls ". . . forced labour on a scale unknown in modern times until the advent
of Hitler".
It is little wonder that the Congolese have not forgotten and that their politics were so conditioned by
the memories of the colonial period. Strong nationalist parties grew up and at the Brussels
Conference in January last year they made their surprise demand for independence within six
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months. Just as surprisingly, the Belgians agreed without a struggle. There was, apparently, to be no
repetition of Cyprus or Algeria. In fact the Congo, as Mr. Legum tells us, had already ceased to be a
“Blue Chip" colony: the fall in world prices of copper and other primary commodities had seen to
that.
The climb-down in Brussels was followed by the elections in June, in which the nationalists swept the
board. But no section of them had a decisive lead and the ring was cleared for the Unitarians
(Lumumba, Gizenga) and the federalists (Kasa-Vubu, Tshombe) to fight it out. The rest of the story
is yesterday's news.
Mr. Legum indicts the Belgians, reveals Tshombe as a vicious fop, disposes of the notion that
Lumumba was baking a troubled pie for Moscow to stick its thumbs into.
Although criticising the United Nations, he also gives them a lot of credit: "If there is neither chaos
nor anarchy today it is solely due to the U.N. operations."
Congo Disaster has been overtaken by events (it was published before the Lumumba murder) so
that its introduction is, in fact, a kind of postscript Mr. Legum's suggested remedies are essential old
hat and. not surprisingly, ignore the commercial nature of society which is the real cause of the strife
in the Congo.
But it is a typical Penguin—easy to read, easy to carry, and a useful refresher course on the history,
economics and politics of one of the world's latest eruptions
Ivan
Saturday, 1 April 1961
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Notes on Economic History (6)
The Physiocratic School
No examination of the ideas of Physiocracy would be complete without a reference to those who took
up and developed Quesnay's teachings. They called themselves "economites". This school acquired
great influence in France. Turgot, one of the members of this group and author of an important work
on the subject of Physiocracy (Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth) was
appointed Controller-General of the Finances in 1774. Another of Quesnay's pupils who became
political chief of the Physiocratic school, was Marquis Victor de Mirabeau, generally known as
Mirabeau the elder. Others were quick to espouse Physiocracy in the land of its birth.
The Physiocratic doctrine soon spread from France to other countries, but mage little impression in
England. It had immense in Germany, where Karl Friedrich Margrave of Baden, aided by Schlettween,
the most distinguished among the German Physiocrats, made an unsuccessful attempt to put in
practice the Physiocratic principles of taxation. Leopold I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, endeavoured to
introduce a "land tax" in his duchy. Joseph II, Catherine, and most of the other monarchs of the
period, were affected and influenced by Physiocratic ideas. The doctrine found adherents also in
Italy, Poland, Sweden and elsewhere.
After Quesnay's death in 1774, dissensions broke out among the French Physiocrats, chiefly because
of Condillac, who insisted that commerce and industry were "fruitful" as well as agriculture, which
was unorthodox to other Physiocrats. The disputes that followed paved the way for the collapse of
the movement. The dismissal of Turgot from office as a result of the poor condition of the State
treasury, the bad harvest of 1775, the rise in the price of bread, and the bread riots all over the
country, all helped this collapse.
Finally, the French revolution, bringing the birth of Modern Capitalism to France, relegated the idea
of Physiocracy to the realm of the past.
The ideas of the Physiocrats did not escape criticism, even in the country of its origin. Of particular
interest are the works of Linquet, (Legislation on Trade, 1769) and Necker, (Grain Legislation and
Trade, 1775 and the Administration of the Finances of France, 1785).
Linquet, who wrote ironically about conditions of the period, appears to defend chattel slavery
against wage slavery, and ridicules all the Physiocratic ideas of property. The following quotes from
his writing of 1767 illustrate this. The first quotation is the answer to the Physiocrats.
"It is the impossibility of gaining a livelihood in any other way which forces our day labourers to till
the soil whose fruits they will never eat, and our masons to raise buildings in which they will never
dwell. It is poverty which drives them to market to dance attendance upon the masters who might
wish to buy them. It is this which compels them to kneel before the rich, and to beg of them
permission to enrich them."
And on freedom—a boast of the Physiocrats:
"What is this apparent liberty with which you have invested them? They can live only by renting
their hands. They must find someone to rent them or die."
To the economists of his time he said this about the workers.
"Do you not see that the obedience, the abjection—let us say it—of this numerous flock, is the
wealth of the shepherds? If the sheep who comprise it were ever to lower their heads to the dog who
herds them, would they not be dispersed and destroyed, and their masters ruined? Believe me, for
his interest, and for your own, and even for theirs, leave them in the persuasion where they now are,
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that this cur which bays at them has more power itself alone than all they together. Let them flee at
the mere sight of his shadow. Every one will be the gainer. You will find them easier to round up for
the fleecing. They are more easily kept from being devoured by the wolves. It is true that this is only
so they can be eaten by men. But then, that is their lot from the first moment they enter the fold.
Before talking of releasing them, overturn their fold, society."
Necker in his work shows that the development of the productive forces if the workers merely
permits the worker to devote less time to the reproduction of his own wages and more to the
enrichment of his employer. The importance of this is that Necker derives profit and rent, the wealth
of the capitalist class, from surplus labour. But he sees it only as relative surplus value, produced not
by the prolongation of the working day but by a reduction of the necessary labour time. The
following quote from his Administration of French Finances shows the class position of his time.
"That class in society whose fate seems as though fixed by social laws is composed of all those
who, living by the labour of their hands, receive the imperious law of the proprietors and are forced
to content themselves with the simplest necessities of life. Their mutual competition and the urgency
of their wants constitutes their dependency; and these circumstances can in no way change."
In assessing the value and place of Physiocracy in any history of political economy, we must take
into account the economic development of France and other countries where the doctrine was
accepted. Physiocracy is first and foremost the ideas of an agricultural economy; it is the philosophy
of Feudalism gradually transforming into Capitalism. Its importance fades with the French
Revolution.
For us today, Physiocracy can be seen as a link in the chain that leads up to, and influences, later
economists. Adam Smith was influenced by it, as were several others after him. The Henry George
School of modern times is also a reflection of the old Physiocrats. The liberal ideas of laissez-faire,
freedom of competition, likewise flow from this source.
Finally, its weakness has been shown by Marx in Volume 2 of Capital, as already mentioned in these
notes.
Bob Ambridge
Saturday, 1 April 1961
The Cuban Cockpit and Castro
(1) The Background
In April, the American backed invasion of Cuba by a force of U.S. trained exiles became yet another
issue that could have triggered off world war. As the invasion was under way, the American
President warned Russia that "in the event of any military intervention by outside force the U.S. is
ready to protect this hemisphere against external (our emphasis) aggression" (Time, 28/4/61.)
America's "egg-heads" had hardly recovered from their exertions in campaigning for the election of
President Kennedy, the bright young "progressive", before they were to be distressed and dismayed
by the dishonesty and hypocrisy of his policy towards Cuba. Much more important still has been the
harmful effect upon the American alliance and the less committed countries within its sphere of
influence. The Guardian editorial of the 22nd April summed up these feelings and did not mince its
words in the process. "American policy towards Cuba" it said, "has lead to resounding and deserved
humiliation. . . . the Kennedy administration appears to be guilty of deliberate intervention in the
internal affairs of another country ". The editorial went on to say "as a result the United States had
made Dr. Castro stronger than before; she had made his regime still more oppressive and dictatorial;
and thrown him still farther into the arms of the Soviet Union. . . . Neutral governments have
universally condemned him (Kennedy). Even in the Western Alliance he has wantonly thrown away
much of the good will he previously enjoyed ". What the Guardian regretted most of all was that
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American policy has facilitated Russia's aim of posing as the "protector of small nations" struggling
to free themselves from foreign tutelage. "He has made the watchwords of democracy sound like a
camouflage for imperialism ".
The Guardian summed up the feelings common to most of the junior partners of American Capitalism
but we must point out that evoking democracy as a camouflage for attaining normal capitalist
objectives pre-dates the Kennedy administration by many, many years. Two hideous world wars
were allegedly fought to safeguard "freedom" against dictatorship and militarism but we know
otherwise. Now that Russian economic development has reached such a high pitch, who need be
surprised that her ruling class attempts to disguise its sordid objectives by hypocritically evoking the
ideals of Socialism?
Like Germany and Japan before her, Russian capitalism is a latecomer in the world arena.
Necessarily she is on the offensive. The American bloc, of which West Germany and Japan at present
form part, is on the defensive. But it is not democratic rights nor the aims of Socialism that motivate
their policies. It is the maintenance or enhancement of power, trade and class privilege that each
government has as its function.
In January, the SOCIALIST STANDARD carried an article which pointed out that for a small power to
attempt playing off the great powers as a means of fostering its own economic development involves
very considerable risks. The chief risk is that in freeing itself from subservience to one overlord it
may well be forced to succumb to another. How is Castro faring in this respect? And, much more
important so far as the Socialist is concerned, has the working-class in Cuba strengthened its
bargaining position and extended its civil rights in the period in which the new ruling elite has been
consolidating its position? Certainly, experience elsewhere in the field of bourgeois national
revolutions of recent times has not been encouraging.
Throughout the former colonial or semi-colonial world, embryo capitalist classes or would-be
capitalist intellectual-military elites are asserting themselves. Their aim is to supplant the foreign
interests who, in the process of exploiting the natural resources of those parts, brought into being
this rival social class. But just as the old powers find it necessary to disguise their rapacious motives
under the cloak of the "struggle for democracy", so the new local exploiting class must obscure its
cruel role in terms of the self-determination of small nations, their national liberation and the
establishment of human dignity. As regards the claim of human dignity, it is true that with the
ousting of the former colonial power, many an African, an Asian or a Latin American need no longer
feel humiliated just because he was born where he was born and was what he was. That is an
advance. But is he aware that in becoming a member of the working-class he is to face the greatest
humiliation of all? That is that in the eyes of his employers he will not even be an inferior man. He,
that is to say his ability to work, will become a mere commodity, to be bought and sold on the
market. A cog in the productive process. Such is human dignity in the society into which he is
entering.
The Socialist measures working-class progress in terms of its heightening awareness of its needs and
aspirations. Consciousness, in short, of its liberating role in history. Do workers realise the necessity
of their building trade-union organisation that is independent of the employing class? Do they know
the value of the strike weapon — and its limitations? Do they value and exercise hard won electoral
rights and the right to dissent? Do they become more and more convinced of the need for a change
in the very basis of present society if humanity is to survive and to reach its proper stature? These
are our criteria.
The Nationalist teaches the worker to identify himself with his ruling-class. The Socialist says that the
worker has no country and should recognise his common bonds with workers everywhere. Each new
state that is set up has as its number one task the inculcation of a sense of differentness into its
schoolchildren and of their loyalty to a piece of territory quite arbitrarily arrived at.
For the past year or so fierce argument has raged amongst Castro's admirers as well as among his
critics in the outside world. Those who have viewed the scene through Bolshevik eyes have felt the
necessity of "explaining" the social forces behind the Cuban revolution in the set terms of Leninism.
Hence efforts have been made to show that, like China, it was the peasants' support that made
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victory possible as the workers played no great part. Then realising, perhaps, that the peasant's
classic demand is for the land he worked and that state-farms (called cooperatives) would replace
estate farms more efficiently, a new angle was developed. Truly speaking, they said, those working
on the sugar plantations were not peasants at all but sharecroppers hired and fired by the three
month season. Concerning the other end of the social scale, it is being debated whether it was a
middle-class revolution betrayed because so many of its staunchest professional and managerial
supporters have been alienated by now.
These knotty problems can be unravelled, however. According to Geografia de Cuba, a book quoted
by Theodore Draper in his well documented article in Encounter last March, the population was more
urban than rural and increasingly so. Of the 40 per cent who were dependent upon agriculture for a
living over a quarter were classified as farmers and ranchers. The urban population was mostly
literate but nearly half the rural population was not. But whatever their category, the mass of the
people have readily given their support to a regime that promises to put an end to seasonal
unemployment by diversifying agriculture and which is making strenuous efforts to raise the
educational level of the people.
India and Brazil stand out as exceptions of great significance but since 1917 virtually every country
entering upon the threshold of capitalist production has been failed by such middle-class elements
as existed when the change came. Rarely has nature repeated the perfect juxtaposition of coal and
iron that so favoured the pioneers of British capitalism. Coming so much later onto the scene there is
the problem of important sections of the working-class being already organised to resist
encroachments. Vast sums of money are needed to establish communications. Tariff walls are all
around. In these circumstances and bearing in mind the extent to which the middle-class is
compromised to the metropolitan power, it falls to a determined and far-sighted section of that class
to actually throw off the fetters, often at the expense of some of the comforts and privileges of the
class as a whole. Cuba's capitalist system is being ushered in by a revolutionary elite of this kind who
had grasped power on the strength of popular discontent.
(2) Political Democracy
How do the trade-unions fit into all this? Except for a pioneering few that were built up under
anarcho-syndicalist influences at the turn of the century, most unions date from a much later period
and were set up under Stalinist influence. Nevertheless, within their limits they became quite
valuable working-class instruments. Under very great pressure they carried on through the Batista
dictatorship and came out more or less intact. This was partly due to the fact that in the early days
of the guerrilla war the trade-union movement remained neutral. Support for Castro came from
professional and managerial circles who still lacked the constitutional rights promised as long ago as
1940 and from an increasing number of the rural population who saw him as the man who would at
last enact the land reforms that had been promised in the same constitutional proposals.
The Communist Party (PSP) at that stage was deeply compromised by its history of collaboration with
the Batista dictatorship. As late as April 1958 it broke, in effect, the general strike called by Castro
since the key transport workers under CP leadership did not join in.
A few months after Castro's triumphal march into Havana, the union elections that were held put
most of the country's union branches firmly in the hands of his 26th July Movement. National
conferences of various union federations during June, July and August secured him control over most
of these groups. It should be noted that the new government had debarred from the elections tradeunion figures belonging to several groupings other than the 26th July Movement who had managed
to retain office in their unions even though they had fought against Batista and this was because of
the solid rank and file support they enjoyed.
At the congress of the local TUC (CTC) early in 1959 there was a struggle between the pro- and anticommunist elements within Castro's movement, the anti-communists having held power since his
victory. According to Robert J. Alexander in his new book, The Struggle for Democracy in Latin
America, both Fidel and his brother Raul intervened on behalf of the pro-communist elements. As a
result all but one of the leading anti-communist figures were purged from the Executive. Since then
the government has taken stringent measures to regiment the organised workers. By decrees
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promulgated early in 1960 all collective bargaining was abolished and all matters previously dealt
with through joint negotiations were to be submitted to the Ministry of Labour for arbitration. Already
troops have been used to bring recalcitrant workers into line. When a Conference of the Building
Workers Federation in April 1960 refused to obey the orders of the CTC purge committee to dismiss
its leaders, soldiers were moved into the meeting hall and the conference was brought to a summary
conclusion.
Political democracy has been part of the price of the Cuban revolution notwithstanding that its
reintroduction was the rallying cry of the "bearded ones" in their fighting days. On 1st May, Cuba
declared itself on a level with Czechoslovakia by becoming a "Socialist Republic". In the Soviet
hierarchy it presumably ranks higher now than mere "Popular Democracies" which is what most of
the satellites remain. Freedom of dissent whilst not entirely gone has been drastically curtailed. No
opposition parties or newspapers have survived. Adlai Stevenson was reported by Time (28/4/61) as
saying at the United Nations that nearly two-thirds of Castro's first cabinet now form the leadership
of Cubans in exile. It can be seen that those who fought with Castro in the belief that it was a
struggle between democracy and dictatorship are silenced, in prison or in exile. Political freedom is
something of such overwhelming importance to the working-class that it loses it at its peril. It does
not exist in Cuba.
Saturday, 1 April 1961
Source URL: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/no-680-april-1961
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