Friday, March 15, 2024

News in Review: Keeping cool in the space age (1966)

The News in Review column from the March 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Keeping cool in the space age

The fabulous achievement of Luna 9 was bound to cause a lot of excitement. But when everyone about you is losing their heads it is, as we know, a sound idea to keep calm.

What does a long, cool look at space flight reveal?

In the first place, it speaks volumes that with a mass of unsolved problems like hunger, crime, bad housing and war plaguing us on earth, capitalism spends such enormous efforts on investigating other worlds.

This is not an objection to space flights on moral grounds; there is no logical reason to expect capitalism suddenly to start putting human welfare before its own interests.

Space investigation is given a high priority by the world’s two great powers and it is not difficult to see why this is so.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union make no secret of the fact that their space programmes are an essential part of their military effort, yielding valuable information on guiding systems and aiming techniques for long range missiles.

Already the information is being used for military purposes; both powers have observation vehicles in orbit above us and the Americans have actually publicised their plans for a military space laboratory to be sent up in the near future.

But even if we make the effort to ignore this consideration and assume that the exploration of space is purely a matter of scientific investigation, there is still the question of what the world working class can hope to gain from it all.

Have the conditions of any worker, anywhere, improved—indeed, can they hope to improve—as a result of the space flights, the probes into the moon, the dare-devil acts of space walking and the rest? The answer is clearly no.

Who, then, stands to gain? Even at the present, new industries have arisen as a result of space flights, and established ones have done their best to get in on it. (The Daily Express, whose equipment helped to receive the moon pictures from Luna 9 made some quick advertisements out of it)

Presumably, other new industries will rise in the future, employing and. exploiting their workers in their efforts to make profit from the romantic business of space travel.

Eager investors will want to get in on this. Perhaps there will be a Unit Trust which deals in space shares.

In short, all capitalism’s normal standards of commerce and profitability will be applied to the Space Age. The knowledge which the flights yield will be used, as all such knowledge has been in the past, for the benefit of the ruling class —to improve the returns on their capital, to protect their interests, to establish them in new markets.

Perhaps, in the end, to help them blast their rivals out of the field—or the sky or whatever.

Man’s probing into space is only the latest of his victories over his environment, and the same lesson applies to it as to the others. Capitalism is the cause of the problems of modern society and until it is ended man’s achievements— his skill, his knowledge, his courage- will be misused and perverted.


Rail strike and the incomes policy

It would be difficult to say whether the last minute calling off of the rail strike was more of a relief to the Government or to the National Union of Railwaymen.

From the word go, the threatened strike was given a dramatic build-up; expressions like ’’last ditch” and ’’breaking point” cannot have been given so thorough an airing in the press for a long time.

The railwaymen were assailed from all sides. Even papers like The Guardian and the Daily Mirror, which in the past have been sympathetic to them, were urging the strikers to have what they called common-sense.

It was, apparently, a time fraught with danger for us all. If the railwaymen got their way the Government’s Prices and Incomes Policy would collapse and ruin, which anyway has never stopped hanging over us, would descend.

But it was no secret that the Incomes Policy was already a flop. Sooner or later then the Government had either to abandon it openly or provoke a head-on clash with a big union.

The NUR was predictably resentful at being awarded the part of keystone in George Brown’s policy, although they really had little to complain about, they, after all, support the Labour Government and they also support its Incomes Policy.

The trouble was the usual one, of getting a union which accepts wage restraint in principle to apply it to its own members in practice. The NUR was all for the Incomes Policy, but did not want to be the one to start it.

Indeed, who is going to volunteer for this role? Who will choose to ignore the effects of rising prices, who will forego a chance to improve their conditions, who can escape the class struggle?

So far, the answer is—nobody. The railwaymen are only the latest in a long queue of those who have campaigned for higher wages since the Labour Government came to power. Some have got it without resorting to anything as vulgar as a strike threat; the judges, high rank Civil Servants and members of the Armed Forces have all been given more than the Incomes Policy allowed them.

And, of course, there was the case of the Members of Parliament and the Ministers who, being in the happy situation of being able to give themselves a rise, agreed soon after Mr. Wilson took over that they should all have one.

Yet Ministers and M.P.s are the very people who are urging the rest of us to hold back on our claims. It is by no means unreasonable to expect that, if the Incomes Policy had to be started somewhere, it should have been in the House of Commons.

But the Members, when they were deciding that they should have a rise, used exactly the same sort of arguments as any trade union. They said they were overworked, that they could not make ends meet, that the House was not attracting the best sort of Member because they could get better money outside.

So the Incomes Policy, at least on the surface, is saved and staggers on to fight another day. Mr. Wilson has once more stood, like a knight in shining armour, between us and disaster—and once more has gained a lot of political advantages out of it, especially over George Brown, who was shown up publicly as unable to pull off something which Wilson could do.

Mr. Wilson has scored another palpable hit. But there is no denying the class struggle of capitalism. There will be other battles, and other strikes, and more undercover deals to settle them.


All right for some

It was most inconsiderate of the North Vietnamese Government; they might have guessed the effect it would have. True, they did their best to rectify the matter but in future they really must be more careful.

It happened on the 8th February last and it was started by a statement from the North Vietnamese Consulate in Delhi that President Ho Chi Minh had asked India's help in putting out peace feelers over Vietnam.

The Consulate quickly pointed out that the same request had been sent, presumably as a matter of routine, to several other governments, most of whom had dismissed it as the customary meaningless public relations stuff.

But before anyone had realised this a minor wave of panic hit Wall Street, where some investors were appalled by the prospect that peace would actually break out in Vietnam.

What would happen in such a situation to all that money invested in the aerospace and defence industries? When a war is hot and the killing fast, the sun shines on these investments. But the terrible prospect of peace brings dark and heavy clouds.

Thus it was that when some idiot in Delhi got the wrong end of the stick, and when the information was passed on, Wall Street's war stocks took a tumble. It took the later explanation from the North Vietnamese to put the matter right

Then Wall Street recovered. All the war investors there, who stay so courageously out of the firing line, made good their losses and that little corner of capitalism went merrily on. Of course in Vietnam the killing and the suffering continued, but what was that against the averting of a crisis on Wall Street?

This is all reminiscent of the 1951 slump in business in the United States and England, which was caused by the cancellation of government contracts no longer needed after the end of the Korean War.

It goes to show that not only does capitalism cause modern war but it also makes a business out of it—a business with its salesmen, its stocks and shares and its investors.

And let us not forget that the man who does well out of war investments, the man who gets a nice profit from putting his money in bombs and bullets, in fear and destruction, is that thing so beloved of capitalism — a Successful, Patriotic Business Man.


Mr Heath makes a discovery

Mr. Edward Heath, who fought his way up from the world-famous slums of Broadstairs through Oxford University to become (he hopes) the next Prime Minister of Great Britain, has recently made a staggering discovery.

Of course, since he became Tory leader Mr. Heath's publicity boys have been making sure that we discovered one or two things about him.

He's a bachelor. Lives in a flat in Albany, which is not one of those places you get into because you have enough points in the council housing list.

He plays the piano. And the organ. And he likes to conduct choirs dressed up (Mr. Heath, not the choir) in a big yellow sweater.

All of this should prove to us that Mr. Heath is a Man Of The People. And in case there are any doubters on this score, the leader himself has recently been probing around the People; that is how he made his staggering discovery.

There are far too many under privileged people in Britain. (Mr. Heath’s words, not ours—he said them at Birmingham last month.) Not only that; a fearless searcher after Truth like Ted Heath has more to reveal. There are also, he said, places which are “. . . breeding grounds of exceptional misery, poverty and crime; bad housing, oversized classes and rootlessness."

Now none of Mr. Heath’s public relations boys has ever issued a hand-out telling us that he suffers from a bad memory. But he seems to have forgotten that it was only two short years ago that he was an important member of a Conservative Government which was asking us to put them back into power because under them we “never had it so good."

And if Mr. Heath has forgotten this, what hope is there that he will remember the promises he is making now, to “. . . put an end to poverty and hardship in this country once and for all . . ."? Or that especially moving bit about old age pensioners “. . . a bit of extra tea to entertain a friend . . .”?

Perhaps the safest thing to assume is that the Tories do not expect this sort of drivel to be taken seriously; perhaps they think that in this time of pre-election fever anything goes. (A couple of days after his Birmingham speech, Mr. Heath was challenging the Government to let the electorate decide . . which party most has the welfare of the needy at heart”)

But if the Conservatives do mean it to be taken seriously—and if that is how the electorate take it — then there is clearly no bottom to the depths of political cynicism, and a depressingly dense stratum of working class gullibility to be penetrated.

Capitalism and health (1966)

From the March 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago the advocates of a National Health Service asserted that capitalism need not be detrimental to the health of working men and women. Speaking as Prime Minister in the spring of 1944, Winston Churchill stated that it was the policy of the Government to establish a National Health Service which would make accessible to all, irrespective of social class or means, adequate and modern medical care. With the introduction of the Health Service four years later the Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, also promised that it would be a classless service. Thus both Labour and Conservative Parties committed themselves to the same objective and they have now had the best part of two decades to. achieve this end. Have they succeeded?

In Britain chronic bronchitis is a widespread and killing illness, to such a degree that it has become known as “the English disease." The Registrar General's statistics reveal that in 1963, in England and Wales alone, there were thirty thousand deaths from this cause. Bronchitis is largely due to atmospheric pollution, cigarette smoking and the unfavourable, dusty conditions associated with jobs such as foundry working and coal mining. Pick up any medical text-book and you can read passages similar to the following, taken from a standard work : “If the individual's economic status permits he should be advised to live in a warm, dust free area . . ." “If the occupation is a dusty one then the individual should be advised to change it although in many cases this may not be a feasible proposition.”

If working men and women are complacent about the general standard of health, this can only be due to ignorance of the facts. The trends in death rates reveal that while some of the older traditional working class diseases—such as tuberculosis—are on the wane, others are becoming more common to take their place.

(Respiratory diseases, including bronchitis, were of lesser importance in 1964 than for the previous three years, this was probably due to the exceptionally mild winter. The long-term trend still shows an increase.)


The causes of lung cancer and coronary artery disease are not known with any certainty. It has been noticed with the latter, however, that there is a very high incidence among men whose work provides considerable tension and anxiety, with little opportunity for exercise. How many millions of “white- collar" workers—chained to a desk for eight hours a day and then jammed into a commuting train for a further period—would meet this description?

One of the main causes of chronic bronchitis is atmospheric pollution. This is a feature of towns and cities in every advanced capitalist country; 133 tons of industrial dirt fall on to the town of Duisburg (about half-a-million inhabitants) in the German Ruhr every day and the sulphur dioxide level in the air is far above that which is believed to be dangerous for humans (see report in the Daily Mail of 5th April, 1965). The same kind of muck falls on to Sheffield, Birmingham and London. It is a withering criticism of capitalism that the “cleaner-air" campaign, conducted in the Ruhr during 1964/65, was judged to be a success for the simple reason that it resulted in the first winter when the German industrial belt was not brought to a standstill because of smog. Any benefits to the health of the inhabitants were of secondary importance.

Perhaps some of .the most frightening statistics are those concerned with mental illness, In barely 10 years the number of patients entering mental hospitals has virtually doubled.


In Britain today patients with severe mental disturbances (the psychoses), together with serious cases of neurosis, occupy almost as many beds in hospitals as those suffering from all other illnesses put together. In his book on social medicine, S. Leff, M.D., D.P.H., describes the situation in the United States: approximately four out of every ten patients there are said to consult doctors with complaints due at least in part to emotional disorders; some 600,000 mental patients are in hospitals and 150,000 are admitted every year; eight million persons are suffering from mental disorder and one out of twenty of the United States population at some time requires psychiatric care. One million of the twenty-four million children now in schools in the United States are likely to spend some portion of their lives in a mental hospital. There are between three and five million people suffering from amentia or dementia who are not in institutions and about six million are incapacitated because they are on the border line of mental disorders.

In Great Britain no comprehensive field survey has yet been made into psychiatric illness, but less extensive studies have been conducted. One such study, which was designed to give a conservative estimate, showed that in a typical group practice in South London psychiatric illness could be observed in one year in 14 per cent of all patients who consulted their doctor. In addition a further five per cent of the registered patients showed distinct “abnormal" personality traits. Two large surveys in factories have revealed that from one-quarter to one-third of the total sickness absences from work are due to neurosis. Another study of 30,000 workers employed in thirteen light and medium engineering factories showed that one in ten suffered from disabling neurotic illness, and two in ten from a minor form of neurosis. Although there has been controversy over the validity of some of these figures, these “findings have been reinforced by a series of estimates which have been made of the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the total populace." (Modern Trends in Occupational Health—K. S. F. Schilling, 1960.)

We may be accused of taking every unpleasant feature of the modern world and using it unfairly to illustrate the social bankruptcy of capitalism. It might be said that we are not justified in concluding that it is the social environment which gives rise to mental disease. The Ewing Report on The Nation’s Health to the President of the United States argues our case for us:
Man's mental as well as physical health is very much at the mercy of what goes on about him. The economic insecurity of unemployment and old age, the lack of opportunity for education and adequate health services, poor housing and lack of good sanitation, prejudice and discrimination, failure to share in the civil liberties guaranteed to all citizens, inflation, the threat of atomic war—these are very real every-day problems and they are the kind of social factors that can wear away personal defences and destroy mental health.
It makes bitter reading to look back and see that in 1944 the workers in Britain were guaranteed “adequate and modern medical care.” The hospitals, for example, are in a sorry mess. The general situation is one of too few doctors struggling on with out-dated equipment and facilities. The Government’s official publications admit as much: " . . . under present conditions work properly belonging to consultant posts is being regularly discharged by senior registrars and members of more junior grades.” This is simply because the number of consultants “is still inadequate to the needs of the hospitals.” The reasons for this include “financial restrictions to which hospital authorities are subject” and “inadequacies in accommodation and facilities, especially operating theatres and laboratories.”

And what about that section of the working class which runs the health service? Probably if one conducted a census, at least 90 per cent of doctors, nurses, dentists, etc., would deny that they were members of the working class. But whether they choose to face up to reality or not is largely immaterial; every working day of their lives they are confronted with the hard facts of their wage earning status. They, too, are forced to conduct a ceaseless struggle to maintain their salaries and working conditions. On top of this they find themselves faced with the problem common to all working men and women—such is the pressure on them, they must work to a standard far inferior to that which they are capable of. One dentist recently referred to the “sheer vocational frustration induced by the fact that practitioners are virtually denied the opportunity of practice at the level which their ability and enthusiasm could achieve.” What other working man, forced to prostitute his skills and talents, could not echo this?

It is axiomatic in medicine that the doctor should concentrate on eradicating the disease itself and not waste valuable time and effort on palliative treatment for individual symptoms. The working class could do worse than apply this principle to capitalism—a system of society which brings each one of us little more than poverty, insecurity, frustration and ill-health.
John Crump

Adulterating our food (1966)

From the March 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard
“If you must adulterate your milk, please use this clean water.” (Notice on a water tank in an Indian dairy, in the 1930's.)
Did you know that the first ever attempt, in the English speaking world anyway, to legislate against food adulteration originated in Britain in 1860? That year “An Act for Preventing the Adulteration of Articles of Food or Drink” was passed by Parliament, although by the time it reached the Statute Book it had itself suffered such adulteration that it was virtually inoperative. However, it paved the way for the other laws that followed fairly rapidly, and an interesting point about its original draft was that there was provision for regulation-making powers almost as wide in some respects as those which exist today. That should be a sobering thought for the enthusiastic reformist.

Like so many comparatively modern problems, food adulteration became a real headache only with the advent of capitalism. It was the Industrial Revolution which pushed the peasants into the towns, no longer producing their own foodstuffs but having to rely on those produced and sold by others. There was a growing demand for cheap food in line with the wage worker's puny purchasing power, and it was little wonder that adulteration began to flourish. Indeed, it became a very profitable business and by the beginning of the 19th century some of the more far-seeing capitalists were getting rather alarmed at its possible effects on the labour force.

It was not just that ale and milk were being watered down, but also that highly poisonous substances such as lead, mercury, tincture of capsicum and essence of cayenne, were being added to food. These and other abuses were publicised by The Lancet Analytical Sanitary Commission, and were investigated by a Parliamentary committee in 1855. Their confirming report is interesting for its assessment of the problem in commercial terms, something with which we are so familiar in 1966: —
Not only is the public health thus being exposed to danger and pecuniary fraud being committed on the whole community, but public morality is tainted and the high commercial character of the country . . . lowered both at home and in the eyes of foreign countries. (Quoted by Dr. J. H. Hamence, in a paper to the Pure Food Centenary Conference, 1960.)
Since those days we have come a long way. or have we? It is true, as Dr. Hamence also tells us, that by the turn of the century “the grosser forms of adulteration had largely disappeared and the lesser forms were being kept well under control” due mainly to the efforts of the public analysts. Equally true is it that today most food manufacture's have their own scientific staff and analytical chemists to help them keep within the mass of Government regulations. Yet the duties of the public analyst, although much changed when compared with his early predecessors, have expanded a great deal over the years. They now involve use of such methods of detection as chromatography and spectro-photometry. Why is this?

Well, capitalism doesn’t stand still, of course. As we have said, it was responsible for the emergence of the adulteration problem, and it also causes it to continue, but in different guises and forms. (This, by the way, is not to mention the very real new danger of contamination from radio active fallout.)

The analyst of the 1960’s has to be on his guard against a multitude of additives, colourings, anti-oxidants and pesticide residues (there were about 750 different pesticides on the market last year), to say nothing of the need to check manufacturers' claims on the nutritional value of their products. In this connection, the 1960 words of Dr. Hamence could easily have been written today:—
. . . advertising is straining at the leash and heaven knows what we should be told about a foodstuff if there were no public analyst.
All this is not surprising in the context of mid-20th century capitalism. For while the question of purity is one which may constantly concern a food manufacturer this is only part of the story. In the chaos that is capitalism, all sorts of interests compete, sometimes with the result that for each step taken forward, just a bit more than that one step is taken backward, Agriculture, for instance, has become “agribusiness” with the accent on intensive methods—hence the arrival of the broiler chicken, that “rather dull food for masses of humans, most of whom live mechanised and rather dull lives” (Elspeth HuxleyBrave New Victuals), And with it goes the problem of diseases—serious ones like leukaemia —to which the broiler seems particularly prone, and which some doctors fear may be passed on to consumers.

Again, with an eye on the market and a quick turnover, cockerels are caponised and bullocks fattened by giving them synthetic oestrogens (female hormones), which are apt to hang around in the carcasses and are resistant even to cooking. Miss Huxley points out:—
Oestrogens are potent substances, liable if carelessly handled to induce in human males squeaky voices, beardless chins and swelling breasts. In female domestic animals they can cause cystic ovaries, prolapse of the rectum and nymphomania, so they might not be good for the girls.
The amounts in meat are residual only, but the experts cannot say for sure whether they might accumulate over a period and damage health (prolonged administration of oestrogens to rabbits and mice has caused them to have cancer). So in the meantime, the practice will continue, together with the profits.

The Sunday Times colour magazine for October 17th, 1965, contained an interesting survey on current food production and tastes. It drew attention to the uniform "blandness” of taste at which the manufacturers aim .and blamed this trend at least in part on to that evil euphemism of the sixties, ‘market research”. This, thought Priscilla Chapman, was what had persuaded food firms to produce, and consumers to ask for. the dull flavourless substances that our poorer grandparents would have rejected out of hand. But to blame market research is to beg the question. Why market research? Why markets? And there is another side to it. intimately bound up with the production of things for the market goes the modern rush and tear which have pushed working class tastes further down the scale. A prime Scots sirloin is expensive and takes a long time to cook, unlike the pre tenderised steak, cut from low-grade mass-produced barley beef, and packed ready for (he oven. And as time is becoming daily a more important consideration, barley beef steak is ousting the sirloin.

But the Sunday Times survey was at least useful in reminding us of the truly enormous amounts of synthetic colours, flavourisers, stabilisers, emulsifiers and preservatives we consume with our foods, many of them doubtful from a health point of view, on the experts own evidence. We are reminded, too, of the pesticide danger to which Rachel Carson so vividly drew attention in Silent Spring. Following her book, the late President Kennedy appointed a committee to investigate the question in detail. Said the committee, the average American has about 12 parts per million of D.D.T. in his tissues, the figure among farm workers being 17 p.p.m., and 648 p.p.m. among workers at pesticide factories. The committee admitted the possibility of toxicity. They could hardly do otherwise in face of the wholesale destruction of wildlife and fish in the Mississippi Basin from the effects of the same chemical.

No one seems to know just how harmful the effects of ibis and other pesticides are, although according to Anthony Tucker (Guardian 1.2.66) they are real enough, “in spite of an upsurge of defensive comment from the pesticide industry itself." Uneasiness continues to grow over the whole question, meantime: in America, Germany and other European countries, some of the substances have been banned, but are still permitted in Britain—and vice versa. But the basis of the problem, remains the same everywhere—production for profit. As Elspeth Huxley again puts it:—
The chemical industry is highly competitive, and pressure very strong to move anything new on to the market before the rival backroom boys across the way get on to it. This pressure has forced new products into use before they should have been. (Brave New Victuals. PP. 115-116)
So this is the background against which the public analyst and his equivalent abroad have to work, it is little wonder that he finds it hard going. And contrary to popular belief, the mass production of today is not geared to meet the needs of an increasing population, but to meet the needs of a market. How else can we explain the crisis of over-production which hit the broiler industry, for example, soon after it started in this country, so that many suppliers were driven out of business? Today, less than 1,000 growers produce 90 per cent of all broilers marketed, and the number of chick breeders has fallen in 10 years from 3,000 to 12.

It cannot be denied, of course, that there is a problem of pest control in food production. Nevertheless, many of the chemicals turned out are quite unnecessary and overlap the effects of others. The much safer method of breeding animal and plant strains resistant to the pests concerned, is promising, but developments are necessarily slow and do not hold out the hope of quick profitability. But when all is said and done, it is only in a crazy set-up of private property that such a situation is tolerated. In a sane world, it would be unthinkable that any substance should be used which involved even the smallest element of risk to human health and welfare. And the production of any chemical would depend solely on whether, after the most exhaustive testing. it could be said to be of real benefit to human beings What other motive could there possibly be?
Eddie Critchfield

Special issue of the Western Socialist (1966)

From the March 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A special number of the Western Socialist will be published in August. The issue will be partly devoted to the 50th Anniversary of the World Socialist Party of the USA and the period 1915-1921. Information is urgently needed from members and sympathisers on the following: events leading to the organisation of the Party in, Detroit in 1916; information on British and Canadian members in the USA during the 1914-18 War; associations with the Socialist Party of America and information on the Duffield Hall Classes. On the organisation of the Party information is required on events causing the changing of the Party name; copies of the First Manifesto and the War Manifesto and the Jack London letter (which will be returned if offered on loan).

On the activities of the WSP of US details are required of the “Tea Drinkers"; Adelaide Street; halls hired for meetings; recollections of meetings, classes, debates, etc.; Western Clarion connection; Socialist Party of North America (Toronto); the Socialist Educational Classes in New York; the activities of such members as Baritz and Kohn and personal anecdotes, correspondence, records, etc

Material should be either sent direct to Editorial Committee, World Socialist Party of the USA, 11 Faneuil Hall Square, Boston 9, Mass, USA, or to the General Secretary SPGB, 52 Clapham High Street, SW4.

The Passing Show: Is He Really So Greene? (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the March 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is He Really So Greene?

At the time of writing rail union secretary S. F. Greene has a lot on his mind. Even though the rail strike was called off at the last moment, there is still plenty for Mr. Greene and his lads to do round the negotiating table.

Which perhaps explains the very terse letter one of our members received from him at the beginning of February. You may know that it is the practice for the Socialist Party to send speakers to put our case to other organisations where possible, particularly trade unions. No strings attached, incidentally, except perhaps payment of the speaker’s fares. So one of our branch organisers wrote to the N.U.R. headquarters asking for a list of their branch addresses, intending to write to some of them direct.

Nothing very difficult about that, you might think? Well, you’d be wrong. “Dear Sir,” came back Mr. Greene’s reply of February 3rd. “1 have received your letter ... but regret 1 am unable to supply you with the information you require.” That was all, leaving us to draw whatever conclusions we liked. For example, was it that he just did not have the information? Is it possible that the N.U.R. is a union whose general secretary doesn’t know where its branches are? How on earth did he let them know whether or not to strike?

Maybe Mr. Greene is just not allowed by his executive to tell us what we asked, which seems pretty daft when you think that any railway porter could probably tell you the address of his union branch without a second thought. No, we can only think that perhaps he doesn't want us to speak to his branches, and that maybe the word has got around that the Labour Party doesn't like us very much (it’s mutual, by the way). After all, the N.U.R. is affiliated to that body. Let us then suggest a rewrite of Mr. Greene’s reply for hint: -
I have received your letter, and have the information you require, hut if you thing l'm sending it to you you're jolly well mistaken. I'm not having any incitement to disaffection—we've supported the Labour Party for more years than I care to remember (and a lot of them I don't care to remember), and we’re going on doing it, never mind their anti-working class actions and the stand-up fight we’re having with them over pay and conditions.
Which, when you think of it, seems to typify the sort of logic behind the thinking of most Labour supporters.


The ''Mirror" Again

And while we're talking about railwaymen, I suppose it was inevitable that they would get precious little support from the rubbish mongers of the capitalist press in general, and that the Daily Mirror would wade into them with two-inch headlines. ‘‘Chaos — Or Commonsense?” yelled the front page on February 10th, while the centre pages of the same issue carried on the attack with an article by that very rich friend of the workers, Labour M.P. Woodrow Wyatt.

The Mirror has always prided itself on its plain speaking and down-to-earth attitude, but this does not make it really a very original newspaper. It says mainly what the others are saying but in a brasher and coarser manner, and, of course, it specialises in large headlines and meagre reading content. In the past it has made a practice of picking out certain strikes and condemning them because they were small and petty. Now the N.U.R. gets it in the neck for precisely the opposite reason.

Because of the Mirror’s deliberately cultivated COR-BLIMBYness, many people think it has working class interests at heart, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is, as ever, firmly on the side of British capitalism, even though it may niggle some capitalist politicians and at times land itself with a libel action. It deals always with superficialities, never scratching under the surface of any social problem. This is not surprising—all newspapers distort facts and pander to ignorance and prejudice to a greater or lesser extent. But the Mirror must truly be the envy of Fleet Street in having developed the technique to the nth degree and built a circulation of many millions on a veritable mountain of bewilderment and bigotry. Therein perhaps lies its only claim to originality. It ran true to form over the railmen's strike.


How Much Are You Worth?

"What sort of—um—salary were you thinking of, Mister—um—?" I was asked by the lean, sharp featured, fussy little personnel man. I was a fresh-faced school leaver, determined to start to start as I meant to go on, and really get somewhere in the world. I swallowed hard.

‘Two pounds a week?” I suggested in a squeaky voice which belied my attempts to sound bold and confident. He wrote it on his pad, ringing the figure round slowly and heavily with his pencil, simultaneously shaking his head and drawing in a long slow breath through rounded lips. “Frankly, you’ve gone down in my estimation,” he confided. “I was hoping that you would be different from the usual run of money-grabbing youngsters we have coming to us for jobs. We can offer you (pause for effect) twenty-five shillings a week (this slowly and deliberately, savouring every word). You must be prepared to work hard, plenty of opportunities here for advancement . . . show what you’re worth . . . etc., etc.”

Obviously his idea of “getting on” was a bit different from mine. I bid him a polite goodday and got a job elsewhere —at two pounds a week. When I look back on that first encounter (there have been a few since then) I’m inclined to wonder if  the mincing little man is still with his firm, so diligently guarding his boss’s interests. Certainly he was only putting a line which is as old as the hills and which is trotted out just as much today as ever it was. Many workers do believe it, however, and spend their lives trying to show their boss what they are worth; only the boss’s assessment invariably falls short of theirs. Which is a big snag and shows that the strength of your bargaining position is what matters, not the strength of your moral arguments.

But now look at the other side of the coin. William Davis, Guardian financial editor and a man prone to moralising lectures in his column, on how much harder we must all work, has been asking “How much is a company chairman worth?” On February 5th he gave a table showing the average payment to directors of various big firms, the figures ranging from £9,800 to £38,500 a year. But the thing to notice was the absence of any moralising sentiment in answering his own question, thus:
Business men should he made to feel proud of high salaries. The ambition of lower-paid people should be to equal them, not to show jealousy. 
I never really understood why there was so much fuss about the £24,000 a year paid to Dr. Beeching ... on simple business grounds alone, it was a good price.
To which every capitalist politician will say Amen. I don't think they will be saying quite the same thing, though, in the next few weeks when some of those "lower-paid people." like bus and railway workers, push for higher wages. That's not quite the sort of equalising ambition Mr. Davis has in mind.


Up, Up, Up It Goes

I have before me some cuttings taken at random from newspapers over about one week in January. They are all about the same problem—crime in its various forms, crime major or petty, but crime nevertheless Over two thousand London telephone boxes wrecked by vandals, gang attacks on transport lorries, drug peddling, robbery with violence. The list is as long as your arm. and very depressing.

“We are determined to stamp this out,” says a magistrate to a phone box wrecker. “You may expect long prison sentences," says the Lord Chief Justice Lord Parker, in a blanket warning to dope peddlers. How many times have we heard this sort of remark? And still the crime situation worsens. Home Secretaries have come and gone, but crime, it seems, goes on for ever. Mr. Roy Jenkins is the latest to try his hand. “I intend to mount a sustained and effective attack on crime," he is reported as saying at Hull on January 17th.

He proposes to "give the police every support, best equipment." etc, which may make them more efficient at crime detection, but will never solve the problem itself. And what of the criminals themselves? They will be modernising their methods, just like the police, using the means which current science puts at their disposal, so that in a few years time yet another Home Secretary will be saying he is going to wipe out crime.

Why is it so persistent, and defiant of efforts to end or even check it? Basically it is a fight over property of some kind. Even the apparent senseless hooliganism of ripped train seats has behind it a blind resentment towards property owned by someone else. And since no Home Secretary ever aims to remove private property society, crime stays stubbornly with us.


Gaspers
“Before independence we ensured that our army, civil service and judiciary were insulated from politics." (President Azikiwe of Nigeria. 16.1.66—just after seizure of power by Major-General Ironsi.)
Eddie Critchfield

50 Years Ago: The State and Socialism (1966)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is an underlying principle of State activity that human life and liberty are minor considerations compared with the rights and safety of property. This is no new discovery. Today the fact is so glaring that it seems idle to dwell upon it. Yet it is no mere wartime principle; it arises from the very nature of the capitalist State. That State mainly exists in order to provide the force to guarantee the rights and emoluments of property to the possessors. The origin of the State was in the necessities of the institution of property. Today its predominate function is that of the armed forces of repression. In essence it has always been an armed policeman. The State and its chief function is necessitated by the antagonism of interests, the division of the people into oppressors and oppressed, propertied and propertyless, brought about by the institution of private property. It cannot live longer than the system that is based on properly. With the reabsorbtion of property into social ownership the repressive State will disappear. As a State it will die out. In its stead will arise the administration of things in common for the common weal. These are truisms to every Socialist, but how completely are most workers deluded into believing that the State exists to protect their lives, liberties and happiness. Yet the lessons have been both numerous and conclusive. Despite the veil of hypocrisy that has been thrown over the facts, they are, and always have, been plainly visible to all who have eyes to see.

[From the Socialist Standard, March 1916.]

Bloomsbury Branch lectures (1966)

Party News from the March 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

These held at 2 Soho Square. W.1, on Sundays at 8 p.m., have been running since mid-October and will continue until Sunday, March 27th. They are well attended, but not as many attend as could be accommodated. The average attendance had been 50 until Sunday, February 13th, when the room was full with an audience of 100, and we wish to see this figure maintained. The room is a very pleasant one with comfortable seating. One hour is allowed for questions and discussion. As with all Party lectures and meetings admission is free and to all readers, especially those living in London we invite you to attend.

The address is two minutes from Tottenham Court Road Tube Station, Soho Square, being the first turning on the left going from the tube station in the direction of Oxford Circus. (See directory in this issue for particulars of lectures.)

Blogger's Note:
I know what you're thinking: what was the meeting on the 13th February which doubled the usual attendance? It was Ron Cook speaking on the subject of Freud and Marxism. 

SPGB Meetings (1966)

Party News from the March 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard





Tuesday, March 12, 2024

New Blog Page: Material World

Following on from the recent post detailing the addition of the Pathfinder column page to the blog, here's a similar type post giving details of the Material World column page which has also been added to the  blog homepage.

As mentioned previously, with so much material now on the blog, it now makes sense to bring together the articles and reviews into themed pages which can properly aid the reader. Current Socialist Standard columns are first up to be featured but in the future I'll also be creating pages for writers - past and present - and old columns.

The Material World column first appeared in the pages of the Socialist Standard in January 2008 and, in many regards, can be a considered a successor to the old World View column which appeared in the Standard in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Arguably the crucial difference between the two is that the World View column focused more on nations states and their intra-capitalist rivalry but what is common to both columns is that they set out to cover the world outside the borders of the UK from a uniquely socialist standpoint and, unlike the Pathfinders and Cooking the Books columns, both have always had a wide array of writers.

As we are fast approaching 200 Material World columns in the Standard, here is a rundown of the 20 most popular columns as featured on the blog as an introduction for the first time reader:


20. The Bottom Line on Climate Change by Janet Surman (December 2011)
19. Mexico – The Disappeared by Peter E. Newell (September 2013)
18. Mexican Drug Wars by Peter E. Newell (April 2013)
17. South Sudan – Another Failed State by Alan Johnstone (June 2017)
16. Antarctica - End of the Last Wilderness? by Stephen Shenfield (December 2013)
15. Socialism Seeks Well-being For All by Alan Johnstone (February 2016)
14. Indigenous Suicides by Alan Johnstone (June 2015)
13. Co-operatives no way to socialism by Alan Johnstone (August 2018)
12. Capitalising on Disease by Alan Johnstone (November 2014)
11. Migration - Internal and External by Alan Johnstone (March 2017)
10. Workers of the World – in it together by Janet Surman (March 2011)
9. The Porn Business by Stephen Shenfield (February 2012)
8. Feeding the World by Alan Johnstone (April 2017)
7. There is Only One Humanity by Alan Johnstone (January 2017)
6. It’s Not Overpopulation, it’s the System by Alan Johnstone (September 2017)
5. Money – a waste of resources by Stephen Shenfield (July 2011)
4. Vaccine development: another market failure by Alan Johnstone (September 2020)
3. Mystery of the Pig/ Bird / Human Flu Virus by Stephen Shenfield (June 2009)
2. All Migrants are Workers by Alan Johnstone (May 2017)
1. Body Parts by Alan Johnstone (April 2015)

Monday, March 11, 2024

Are You Satisfied with Your Pay? (1956)

From the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ask any body of workers if they think they are getting enough pay, the pay they think they are worth, and it is safe to say that nine out of every ten would answer No! They nearly all think they ought to get more, and would get more if things were run properly. They nearly all have a vague feeling that things aren’t run properly. They are annoyed that nobody—this includes the trade unions, the employers, the political parties and the Government—does anything about it and they all have some notion about what ought to be done. Some point to the impossibility of keeping themselves and their families “decently” in face of the cost of living—in their view it ought to be the duty of the employers or the Government to see that everybody has enough to maintain this “decent” standard of living.

Some think that things would be all right if wages were raised and their employers' profits lowered. But if they happen to work in a firm or an industry where sales are falling and profits are small or non-existent they look to the Government to give subsidies or do something to improve the sales of the article they produce. Lots of workers blame or envy other workers. The labourers envy the craftsmen, while the craftsmen and foremen complain that they do not receive wages sufficiently above the labourer’s rate to compensate for their skill and responsibility. Many teachers have a special resentment because, as they allege, they receive no more than do dustmen. University graduates think that a proper wages policy would recognise more the importance of having a degree, and scientific workers think that the scales are unjustly weighted in favour of administrative workers. Feminists clamour for the male “rate for the job” and provoke some of their male colleagues into demanding “justice” for the married man with dependents. The queue of the disgruntled stretches indefinitely and encircles the globe.

They are all there, the bank clerks and postal clerks, the parsons, the lawyers, the doctors, the dentists and nurses. The shopkeepers, too, have their grievances against the manufacturers and are looking with envy now at the furore created in France by the shopkeepers' dingy saint M. Poujade. Then there are the pensioners, the police the soldiers, the prison warders—and the Red Dean’s revolting choristers at Canterbury. At the end of the line are the non-workers the small unhappy band of surtax payers and millionaires who swear that high taxation compels them, if they are to live the lives of conspicuous wastefulness fitting to their station, to overspend their incomes and eat up their capital; a practice as loathsome to a Capitalist as is cannibalism to a missionary.

And for every group of complainants there is an aspiring trade union official, politician, or economist with a glib solution. The solutions are too numerous to list here. They are seemingly as varied as the occupational groups from which they spring but they all have one thing in common. They all assume that there is, or could be, in the world of Capitalism a defensible social principle by which wages could be fixed at a “proper” level. They all ignore the facts of Capitalist life. As practical solutions they are all so much trash.

The Law of the Jungle
Capitalism knows no social principle of distribution according to need, or responsibility, or skill, or training, or risk, or so-called “value of work,” or “usefulness to the community.” If Capitalism has anything that' approaches a principle it is that income shall be in inverse proportion to work. If you own capital in sufficient amount you never need work at all, and the more you avoid work in order to enjoy luxurious living the greater the esteem and attention you will have bestowed upon you.

The Socialist knows why this is and how the system works. Society’s means of living are owned by the propertied class, the Capitalists who are in business to provide themselves with their kind of income, profits. They employ the working class in order to make profit out of them, a proceeding the working-class are forced to accept because they are propertyless. The Capitalist pays as little as he can for the kind of worker he needs. All the worker can do is to bargain and struggle to get as much out of the employer as circumstances permit and what circumstances permit depends on whether the Capitalist needs the kind of skill the worker has to offer. If the employer needs a certain kind of skill and if the number of workers having that skill is limited the employer will1 have to pay accordingly for it, he will have to pay more to the skilled than to the unskilled worker. But if owing to the decline of a given trade, or the invention of a machine, which replaces craftsmanship, skilled operatives are not in demand their wages will fall.

In the depression of the nineteen thirties apprenticed engineering craftsmen, skilled coal miners, university graduates, and agricultural labourers, were a drag on the market. Capitalism had no need for all there were of them and their wages fell. During the war Capitalism had need of coal and food, of engineering and chemical products, and all these groups had their chance to push up wages beyond the rise of the cost of living. “Merit” and “human needs” and “usefulness to the community” and all the other fine-sounding phrases, have nothing to do with it. What counts is whether the worker is useful to the Capitalist, and the only usefulness the Capitalist knows is usefulness in making profit. The only argument he has to listen to is the fact of inability to get sufficient of the workers he needs, and the amount of strike pressure trade union organisation can bring to bear to prevent him getting enough workers at the wage he offers.

Is it crude, callous and inhuman? Of course it is. It is the law of the jungle, the only law Capitalism knows.

And has Socialism any alternative to offer? Indeed it has, but by Socialism we mean the Socialism of Socialists, not the spurious State Capitalist nostrums offered by the Attlees and Bevans and the clique who run Capitalism in Russia.

All over the world the cut throat Capitalist wages system operates and only Socialists have as their aim the replacement of Capitalism by a Socialist system of society in which there will be no wages system, no propertied class and working class, the one living on income from property and the other on wages. Under Socialism people will work cooperatively to produce what all need and all will freely take what they need out of the products and services cooperative effort achieves.

Of course the pseudo-Socialists named above all pay lip-service to the ideal of abolishing Capitalism and the wages system but whether or not they understand what they are talking about they show by their actions and programmes that they do not intend to seek that solution. They all in their time bleat about the need for bold, far-reaching action but all with one accord recoil from the Socialist objective they profess to desire.

For the working class of the world the choice is simple, either to take the organised political action necessary to introduce Socialism or to continue with Capitalism. The one thing that cannot be had is to impose on the Capitalist jungle some socially acceptable and satisfying wages policy.
Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: The Ethics of Revolution (1956)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some good people in the Labour movement . . .  are keenly endeavouring to get the workers to study ethics. They urge that the world would be much better and happier if only people were more moral and altruistic, and they further argue that if the working class, the despised and rejected of men, would display a higher morality, the Capitalist class would be converted to the Labour movement. The Socialist has one of his most insidious foes in the ethical culturist. Their position is a denial of the materialist basis of Socialism, because it is simply an appeal to the individual, as though the majority of individuals could elevate themselves above their environment. If the teaching of ethics were all that is required to bring social salvation, how comes it that after 2,000 years of the teaching of the ethics of Christianity for example, the hewers of wood and drawers of water are worse off, than they have been for ages? Buddha, Confucius and others taught the Golden Rule long before Christ, yet the world is little the better.

The teaching of love and brotherhood, in a system that exists owing to the robbery of one class by another, is immoral. The moral course is that followed by the Socialist, who points out why this robbery takes place, explains the method by which it is done, and shows how it may be ended.

Standing firmly all the time on his material philosophy, the Socialist keeps clear of the illogical position taken up by the ethicist and the alleged Labour leader. Realising that with a society whose material foundation is conducive to a better relationship between man and man, a higher morality must ensue because of this advance in civilisation, he endeavours to teach his fellow members of the working class the opposition of the Capitalist class and their system to their interests, and the immorality of their position, and he organises them for the overthrow of Capitalism and the establishment of the higher system—Socialism. The revolutionist is the most moral because he points out the causes of today's evils, and organises to uproot them, while the Utopian ethicist leads the workers, consciously or unconsciously, in a manner calculated to breed despair, since they do not show the way to social emancipation, but on the contrary, blind them to the root causes of their misery. Revolution alone is moral, because it is consistent with the facts of life. The revolutionist is the true ethical teacher, because he endeavours to establish a form of society in which man’s relationship with his fellows would necessitate a higher ethic than that of today.

[From the “Socialist Standard",  March, 1906]

The Passing Show: Declaration of Washington (1956)

The Passing Show Column from the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Declaration of Washington

The declaration issued jointly by President Eisenhower and Sir Anthony Eden after their recent talks in Washington must long stand as an object-lesson in the art of inserting the maximum amount of inaccuracy in the minimum amount of space. The declaration occasionally approaches the truth when it deals with the misdeeds of “the other side,” the Soviet bloc.; but when they dwell on their own records and aims, the president and the Premier rarely get even with hailing distance of the facts.



Theological Gambit

The Anglo-American leaders begin roundly:
“We are conscious that in this year of 1956, there still rages the age-old struggle between those who believe that man has his origin and his destiny in God and those who treat man as if he were designed merely to serve a state machine.”—(The Times, 2-2-56.)
Eden and Eisenhower thus blandly ignore both those of no religion who support the Anglo-American bloc, and all those fervent religionists—including the large Russian Orthodox Church, for example—who would die for the Stalinists. In fact the struggle between the two blocs has nothing whatever to do with religion or irreligion: each state has its tame churches to give it the divine sanction: the struggle is between the British ruling class and the American ruling class (who happen to have sufficient mutual interests to support an alliance) on the one hand, and the Russian ruling class (usually supported by their Chinese opposite numbers) on the other. But the desire for self-justification is strong: hence the habit of claiming the approval of the Almighty.


One for Ripley

But this is merely an opening canter. Warming to its theme, the second paragraph of the declaration runs (believe it or not):
“ Because of our belief that the state should exist for the benefit of the individual and not the individual for the benefit of the state, we uphold the basic right of peoples to governments of their own choice."
Or, as one might paraphrase it when one has regard to reality, “because of our belief in something we don't believe in, we uphold what we deny.” The claim of Eden and Eisenhower to believe that “the state should exist for the benefit of the individual and not the individual for the benefit of the state” surely borders on the farcical. Both the President and the Prime Minister were in the highest counsels of Great Britain and the U.S.A. during the last war, when the state in each of these countries so far denied the elementary rights of the individual that it conscripted millions of its citizens and sent them off to kill other individuals and be killed themselves. Not only do Eden and Eisenhower believe that the individual exists for the benefit of the state: they go further—they believe that when called upon he should cease to exist for the benefit of the state. But official pronouncements would not read so well if they confined themselves to the truth, nor would they make such good propaganda.

What can be said about the second part of this almost incredible paragraph, where the signatories allege that they uphold the basic right of peoples to governments of their own choice? When one thinks of the Prime Minister giving his consent to this clause, at a time when British troops are on an active footing in British Guiana, Cyprus, Kenya and Malaya expressly to prevent their people's having governments of their own choice, one can only feel grateful that the cares of high office have not deprived Sir Anthony of his sense of humour.


All my own work

Lack of space prevents the analysis of the Declaration in the detail it deserves. But one other paragraph must be quoted:
“During the past ten and more years 600 million men and women in nearly a score of lands have, with our support and assistance, attained nationhood. Many millions more are being helped surely and steadily towards self-government. Thus, the reality and effectiveness of what we have done is proof of our sincerity."
Since Britain has been in the Empire racket longer than America, the insincerity of this statement is more immediately obvious in regard to Eden than Eisenhower. Britain attempted to retain her Indian Empire (which contains the great majority of the 600 millions referred to) by every means at her disposal. A great army was maintained there; any expression of opinion in favour of independence invited ruthless official action; if the people demonstrated for independence they were forcibly scattered and the leaders (including for example Pandit Nehru) thrown into British jails. Riots and shootings and massacres marked the progress of the years. At length the British power waned, and the British State could no longer afford to maintain the repression in face of the almost unanimous opposition of the peoples of the Indian Empire. And so the Attlee Government withdrew from India, being no longer physically capable of remaining there. It is this eviction of the British by the Indians which Sir Anthony Eden now tries to describe as a British achievement. It is as if a boxer, after fighting a dozen rounds, is at length knocked out; and as he is carried from the ring opens one eye long enough to remark “I retire voluntarily from the contest and claim all the credit for my opponent’s victory.”


Who said aggression ?

No doubt if the British are thrown out of Cyprus this will also be counted as a great British contribution to the establishment of self-government, and the British ruling class will expect the Greek ruling class (which will take over from. them) to be duly grateful. But until this happens the task is to explain why Cyprus should not have self-government. In this connection a recent letter written to The Times (11-2-56) by Lord Vansittart is of considerable interest.

It appears that Britain has every right to be in Cyprus, because it “belongs to us.” Since Lord Vansittart coyly refrains from explaining how it came to “belong to us,” a word on the subject might not be out of place. Briefly, in 1877-8 Russia attacked Turkey, with the aim of seizing part of her Balkan territories; Great Britain, in the role of knight in shining armour, sprang to Turkey’s side to defend her against Russian aggression; the fleet was ordered to the Turkish coast, and alarm and counter-alarm succeeded each other. But when the smoke had cleared away, it was found that the noble British Government had taken advantage of the crisis to force Turkey to hand Cyprus over to British rule. The Cypriots, of course, had not been consulted.

It is this expert piece of sharp practice which Lord Vansittart now contends gives “us” the right to stay in Cyprus.


A little late to recant

But do not think that Lord Vansittart’s endorsement of this smooth-faced knavery means that he has no principles. He has. Or rather he used to have. He refers in his letter to “ the primary principles for which millions died in two vast wars”: and among them, it will be remembered, was the principle of self-determination. None was more vociferous than Lord Vansittart in his clamour for strict measures against German aggression before 1939, and for the merciless prosecution of total war against Germany between 1939 and 1945. But now, it appears, Lord Vansittart has had second thoughts. The principle for which millions died, to quote his own letter, no longer engages his support That “self-determination should be automatic ” Lord Vansittart now decries as a “delusion” The Germans under Hitler, of course, were in favour of self-determination in certain circumstances; it was only the application of the principle to countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland that they objected to, because there it was against the economic interest of the German ruling class. Lord Vansittart has now accepted the pre-1945 German view of the matter, which could be summarized as “self-determination unless it conflicts with one’s own interests.”

And so Lord Vansittart changes his mind. But all the British soldiers who died in the war of which Lord Vansittart was the prophet, and in which he beat the drums louder than anyone else, they stay dead. The principle they thought they were fighting for is now found by the noble lord to be a “delusion.” If only it was as easy to bring the millions of dead to life again as it is for a politician to change his principles!
Alwyn Edgar

How to live on your £100 a week (1956)

From the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the course of this little piece, our readers are invited to try their wits at guessing in a sort of “‘What’s my Line” manner, the identity of the person we have in mind. We can offer no special prizes of vacuum cleaners, cars or trips to Hollywood for any correct answers because you may not have swallowed the Labour and Tory party lines about the class-struggle being a “myth.” You are warned that the person in question could be employed as any of the following—(or has some alternative means of living such as an Old Age Pensioner), a road sweeper, bus driver, school teacher, coal miner, docker, textile worker, an engineer or an “over paid” meat porter in Smithfield Market. Now for due number one, the amount received by our “object” is only £100 per week and the Daily Express, well known for its distortion of Socialism and its supports of wage claim, publishes some details in its issue of January 23, 1956. The “object” says “£100 a week doesn’t go far,” and this is why she lives in a villa 15 miles outside Paris, and is being sued by her husband for £75,000 worth of jewellery.

Ambitious workers whose idea of curing their poverty is to win the Pools, regard this paltry sum as more than enough for the rest of their lives. Simple arithmetic shows, however, that if a Pools winner spent £75,000 on jewellery there would not be much left for that “little car and little house” (the Capitalists always find it pays to keep workers thinking “little”).

Now as the result of the husband’s changed feelings the villa was scantily furnished; “ it contained: one settee, two small chairs, an old garden table, no carpets, no curtains.” Without going to New Bond Street, which caters entirely for the “lower income groups,” we could buy enough working class “furniture” in six months to fill a warehouse with half the “objects” income, and not on the never-never either.

To anyone so naive as to think she is well off she says “it’s about time the truth were told.” She married a Swiss multi-millionaire in Ceylon 18 months ago and “among the presents to her: a Caribbean Island, two cars, a black panther.” Remember that set of cheap pillow cases you bought when Bill got married? In the court she will be claiming £25,000 to furnish her prefab—sorry, villa—plus £100 a week when she is finding it so hard to keep herself, the panther, ten dogs, two Brazilian parrots and two humming birds on.

Answering questions by the Daily Express reporter, whose job in life is to chase around after the wealthy to keep the workers informed, our “object” says regarding the gems and paintings “I’ve no idea of the total value, perhaps £75,000. The Old Masters? I have one—an El Greco he gave me for my birthday.” And about the £400 a month “ That might seem a lot, but it doesn’t go far with a 70 acre estate. 1 live quietly here since the divorce writ came through. 1 haven’t put a foot inside Balmain’s or Dior’s—haven’t bought a thing.” Apart from in London, “where 1 did buy two Borzoi dogs because 1 need some protection here. 1 have eight other dogs all Pekinese.”

If a superannuated worker, at the age of 65, having worked 35 or 40 years for the same exploiter, gets £400 to spend the rest of his life on, maybe 10 or 15 more years, he is considered comfortably off and well provided for yet this sum is a month’s allowance for our hard-up “ object.” In the back-yard—sorry the grounds, among the terraces, the fountain nymph and sagging model teahouse, there was a “huge swimming pool with a great hole in one side ” which the husband does not seem to care about. “I feel he should put the place back in order,” she said. Well, that’s the story, or rather a story, one of the many that come up. "Of course by the standards of her class. Baroness von Thyssen, ex-model Nina Dyer, is hard pushed; after all, Monte Carlo and such places are not kept going by people who get only £100 a week. The amazing thing is that the members of the working class who make all the wealth and are always told the boss can’t afford more wages, continue nevertheless to take a keen interest in the exploits of Sir Bernard Docker, Aly Kahn, Rita Hayworth and Prince Rainier, etc.; amazing that is until we take account of the drab, colourless and repetitive lives workers live. Perhaps, then, we can understand the attraction of the circus.

To understand it is not, however, to condone it, because as Socialists we know the kind of world the workers can establish when they wake up—the world of Socialism, with no contrasts of riches and poverty, peace and war, but a community of social equals freely talcing what they need from the wealth they have produced in co-operation without the hindrance of wages and profits.
Harry Baldwin

Marxism and Inevitability – The Critics Criticised (1956)

From the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard
“There’s a destiny that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.”
Is Marxism the prose Rubaiyat of economic fatalism? Many pseudo-Marxists have half believed it. Quite a few critics of Marxism—Eastman, Berlin, Popper, etc., have wholly asserted it. A host of sentimental liberals and political do-gooders have also chosen to see Marxism as a secularised version of—”and the good must come to pass.” For such critics Marxism is either a synonym for Kismet or a variation of “The Lord will provide.”

It is true that the Communist Manifesto states, “Capitalism is its own grave-digger; its fall and the victory of the proletariat are alike inevitable.” This has been taken up by opponents of Marxism and echoed and re-echoed down the corridor of the years as evidence of the fact that Marxism spells out fatalism with a capital f. Yet anything less like religious or philosophical quietism than the Communist Manifesto it would be hard to imagine. Not only do its pages breathe political activism but it ends with a stirring call to action—”Workers of the world unit,” utterly at variance with any predestined assumptions. It is not difficult, however, to tear a sentence from its context and make the author appear to say the opposite of what he actually meant.

Now this particular type of criticism of Marxism pivots on the word “inevitability.” If we are to believe the critics of Marx the term inevitability, especially as related to human society, is synonymous with fatalism or predestination—”The moving finger writes and having writ moves on.” Thus in the Marxist scheme of things, vide the critics, inevitability means that human wills are writ so small as to be virtually non-existent.

The word “inevitability” as used by the critics in reproaching Marx carries a stigma; the stigma being that human beings are but puppets in some vast cosmic process. But is that the only significance which can be given to the word? One of course does not deny that in a given context the word “inevitability” can be synonymous with fatalism. What one does deny is that in the Marxist context they mean the same thing.

Let us, to paraphrase Marx, consider the word “inevitability” a little more closely and see how its meaning varies with the context. Thus we say night, inevitably follows day. Do we imply by such a statement that fatalism or predestination of some kind is involved in the rotation of the earth on its axis? It can, we think, be agreed that the regular sequence of events connected with the solar system has nothing to do with fatalism or any other kind of supernaturalism. Some one might, of course, say “but is it not true that men are nevertheless powerless to control solar events?” Here it would seem that inevitability implies the powerlessness of men. But surely the answer is that such events being non-human have nothing to do with the powers possessed by socially organised men. Therefore the question of powerlessness on the part of humans in non-human processes does not arise. The power of human beings lies in the fact of their ability to understand and utilise natural phenomena to their social advantage.

Again the inevitable sequences of events which occur in the solar system are of inestimable advantage to humans during the course of their lives. It enables one to go to bed supremely confident that after a night’s sleep one will wake up and it is morning. And to feel assured that in making an appointment a week hence the solar sequence of things will not have been reversed. If solar events were so arbitrary that in the words of the song “when it’s night time in Italy it’s Wednesday over here” then life on this planet would be a matter of conjecture. If inevitability, then, entails some aspect of a regularised and sequential eternity one can only add—long live inevitability.

One can further expand the advantage which inevitability has for us humans. Thus if we know that “A” will always bring about “B” then the certainty of this knowledge gives us an assured basis for utilising it. Such knowledge not only gives us power to understand the world but the power to change it.

On the other hand, if events were so capricious that water raised to a certain temperature did not always produce steam, or in switching on an electric kettle the water got colder instead of hotter, then the organisation of knowledge consequent upon an inevitable sequence of things would be impossible.

It does not follow then that inevitability pre-supposes the powerlessness of humans. It can, in fact, imply the contrary. Thus, for example, if the Moscow Dynamos were to meet a scratch village eleven we could say the result would be inevitable. This would not be because of the inability of the scratch side to kick a ball but of the highly trained athletic power of the Dynamos.

Now the working class in Capitalist society constitute not only the bulk of the population but are a highly trained productive class. Potentially they are the most powerful social group and the only section capable of basically transforming existing social conditions. When Marx spoke of social inevitability he was not as vulgar critics such as Eastman and Isaiah Berlin contend, postulating mysterious agencies beyond the control of humans, but had in mind the latent powers resident in the working class.

Marxists recognise, however, that inevitability has a twofold character; one of denial as well as one of affirmation. From one aspect it can be considered as a restraint on human power. From another, a source of possibilities and opportunities. Thus Capitalism through its social productive agencies constitutes a fetter on the free and fullest use of human skills and productive resources; just as the ownership of these productive resources by a class gives them power over the lives of others and inhibits their free development. Only in a classless society can human activity be equal, creative and shared.

If then extant society gives rise to certain social consequences inseparable from its existence, i.e. if “A” always affects “B” then, in order to eliminate “B” we must get rid of “A.” It is this recognition of the “must” which makes possible our decision to achieve the “ought.” Because the pressures and conflicts of Capitalism are permanent, powerful and pervasive, it becomes not a matter of preoccupation for the few but the concern of the many. If “A” is then a necessary condition for “B” this itself promotes the idea and need of getting rid of the cause. To say that in a system such as Capitalism which generates the consequences of its existence as a continuous and cumulative process men will never, never be able to correctly diagnose their social ills is to condemn them to a moronic level utterly out of keeping with their own history.

The Marxist concept of inevitability links the negative and positive aspect of the social situation and reveals the driving force of social change.

Socialists do not deny human will and choice. What they say is that if men are to raise themselves to a truly human stature this exploitative set-up where magic and myth, charlatanism and violence are agencies through which social problems are mediated, must go and the choice can only be a social arrangement of free and equal access to social wealth. Given the means the choice is inevitable.

Among the critics of Marx, and they are numerous, are those who fail to grasp the aspects of affirmation and denial in the concept of inevitability. For them social laws are another name for pre-determinism or an animistic notion of causality. They regard society, if they can commit themselves to such an organised notion, as a laissez-faire arrangement which can be altered and re-altered like a meccano set. Having no social charts or compass they remain as “free” as a cockle boat in mid-ocean.

There is also irony in the criticism of Marxism which asserts that not only is Marx’s inevitability, fatalism, but Socialism is utterly impossible. To the Marxist “aye” they can only counter with an everlasting “nay.” Their inevitability is shot through and through with fatalism, a sublime belief that inscrutable agencies control men and make it impossible for them to master a world.

Such critics can be shown on analysis to be supporters of the “eternal status quo.” For that reason their misunderstanding of Marxism is perhaps—inevitable.
Ted Wilmott