It is precisely the Marxist school which has always devoted the greatest attention to the idiosyncrasies of British development. But we explain these idiosyncrasies by objective conditions, the structure of society and the changes in it. We Marxists can, thanks to this, understand far better the course of development of the British labour movement, and better foretell its future than can the present-day “theoreticians” of the Labour Party.
The old call of philosophy to “know thyself” has not sounded in their ears. They consider that they are summoned by destiny to re-construct the old society from top to bottom. Yet at the same time they halt, prostrate, before a line chalked across the floor. How can they assault bourgeois property if they dare not refuse pocket money to the Prince of Wales?
Royalty, they declare, “does not hinder” the country’s progress and works out cheaper than a president if you count all the expense of elections, and so on and so forth. Such speeches by Labour leaders typify a facet of their “idiosyncrasies” which cannot be called anything other than conservative block-headedness. Royalty is weak as long as the bourgeois parliament is the instrument of bourgeois rule and as long as the bourgeoisie has no need of extra-parliamentary methods.
But the bourgeoisie can if necessary use royalty as the focus of all extra-parliamentary, i.e. real forces directed against the working class. The British bourgeoisie itself has well understood the danger of even the most fictitious monarchy. Thus in 1837 the British government abolished the title of the Great Mogul in India and deported its incumbent from [the holy city of Delhi, in spite of the fact that his name had already begun to lose its prestige. The English bourgeoisie knew that undeer favourable circumstances the Great Mogul might concentrate in himself the forces of the independent upper classes directed against English rule.
To proclaim a socialist platform and at the same time to declare that royal power does not “interfere” and is actually cheaper, is equivalent, for example, to a recognition of materialistic science combined with the use of magical incantations] [1*] against toothache on the grounds that the witch comes cheaper. In such a “trifle” the whole man is expressed, along with his spurious acknowledgement of materialist science and the complete falsity of his ideological system. For a socialist the question of the monarchy is not decided by today’s book-keeping, especially when the books are cooked. It is a matter of the complete overturn of society and of purging it of all elements of oppression. Such a task, both politically and psychologically, excludes any conciliation with the monarchy.
Messrs. MacDonald, Thomas and the rest are indignant with the workers who protested when their ministers arrayed themselves in clownish court dress. Of course this is not MacDonald’s main crime: but it does perfectly symbolize all the rest.
When the rising bourgeoisie fought the nobility they renounced ringlets and silken doublets. The bourgeois revolutionaries wore the black dress of the Puritans. As against the Cavaliers they were nicknamed Roundheads. A new content finds itself a new form. Of course, the form of dress is only a convention, but the masses – rightly enough – do not have the patience to understand why the representatives of the working class have to adopt the buffoonish conventions of a court masquerade. And yet the masses will come to understand that he who is false in one small thing will be false in many things.
The characteristics of conservatism, religiosity and national arrogance can be seen in varying degrees and combinations in all the official leaders of today, from the ultra-right Thomas to the “left” Kirkwood. It would be the greatest error to underestimate the tenacity of these conservative “peculiarities” of the top echelons of the British working class movement. By this we do not mean, of course, that church-going and nationalistic conservatism is wholly absent from the masses.
But while these traits have worked their way into the flesh and blood of the leaders, disciples of the Liberal Party that they are, they have a much less deep-seated and stable character in the working masses. We have already said that Puritanism, the religion of the money-making classes, never succeeded in penetrating deep into the consciousness of the working masses.
The same also applies to Liberalism. Workers used to vote for the Liberals but in their majority they remained workers, and the Liberals always had to be on their guard. The very displacement of the Liberal Party by the Labour Party was a result of the pressure of the proletarian masses.
In other circumstances, if Britain were growing economically stronger, then a Labour Party of the present type might be able to continue and deepen the “educational” work of Protestantism and Liberalism, that is to say, it would be able to bind the consciousness of broad circles of the working class more tightly to the national conservative traditions and discipline of the bourgeois order.
But under present-day conditions – with the evident economic decline of Britain and the lack of any perspective – the development can be expected to go in exactly the opposite direction. The war has already dealt a heavy blow to the traditional religiosity of the British masses.
Not for nothing has Mr. Wells occupied himself with the creation of a new religion, attempting en route from Earth to Mars to make a career as a Fabian Calvin. We are doubtful of his success. The mole of revolution is digging too well this time! The masses will liberate themselves from the yoke of national conservatism, working out their own discipline of revolutionary action.
Under this pressure from below the top layers of the Labour Party will quickly shed their skins. We do not in the least mean by this that MacDonald will change his spots to those of a revolutionary.
No, he will be cast out. But those who will in all probability form the first substitutes, people of the ilk of Lansbury, Wheatley and Kirkwood, will inevitably reveal that they are but a left variant of the same basic Fabian type. Their radicalism is constrained by democracy and religion and poisoned by the national arrogance that ties them spiritually to the British bourgeoisie. The working class will in all probability have to renew its leadership several times before it creates a party really answering the historical situation and the tasks of the British proletariat.
Notes
- The reference is obscure, but it may apply to some item of minor inner party controversy. However the term Regenerator (or Renovator) normally applies to a dissident section within the Russian Orthodox Church which broke from the Patriarchate, wanted to modernize the Church, and was prepared to take a conciliatory attitude towards the Soviet government. The mention of Samara, a large town on the River Don, adds further to the obscurity of this reference.
- Under the Articles of Union drawn up in 1706 the Scots had abandoned their own parliament but retained independent legal and ecclesiastical institutions. The final settlement followed several years of negotiations during which the Scots held out for trading independence. England’s initial refusal led to sharp retaliation in the form of the 1703 Security Act and trading agreements with France. The Scots accepted the Articles of Union only when they included the right to trade independently and on equal terms with England’s colonies. The Church question was not even at this point the main contentious issue.
- A form of Protestant Christianity named after John Calvin (1509-1564), the Swiss divine and reformer. Its chief characteristics were a more radical break than its predecessors from the main doctrines of Catholicism, a belief that all were “predestined” to heaven or hell and a form of church government by “elders” from among the “elect”. Calvin set up a “City of God” in Geneva in 1541 which, incorporated a severe dictatorship to enforce the values necessary for the capitalist bourgeoisie – particularly the need to work hard and accumulate wealth. Calvinism had a strong influence on the type of Protestantism that developed in Scotland.
- The Fabian Society was set up in 1884 by a group of mystics who had formerly constituted the Fellowship of the New Life. It soon secured the support of a Colonial Office clerk called Sidney Webb and a then obscure novelist and music critic, Bernard Shaw. Fabians advocated various social reforms which they sought to achieve by putting pressure on liberals, trade union leaders and anybody else prepared to listen. Falsely claiming to have brought about most collectivist legislation since the time of its foundation, the Fabian Society has nevertheless exercised a strong ideological influence within right wing sections of the Labour Party providing the chief alternative to Marxism and the struggle to overthrow capitalism.
- Wilhelm Weitling (1808-1871) was a leading German utopian socialist and a tailor by trade. His conception of an ideal communist society was partly influenced by Fourier and widely known during Marx’s early years.
- Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828-1889), a Russian revolutionary democrat, utopian socialist writer, publicist and literary critic. One of the most outstanding Russian petty-bourgeois radicals during the 1870s and 1880s.
Note by TIA
1*. The passage between the square parentheses comes from the 1925 translation of the book.
CHAPTER IV The Fabian “Theory’ of Socialism
Let us overcome our natural aversion and read therough the article in which Ramsay MacDonald expounded his views a short time before leaving office. We warn the reader in advance that we shall have to enter a mental junk shop in which the suffocating odor of camphor has no effect on the
