The Reward of Honest Industry (1942)

From the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

No matter how careful the capitalists and their apologists may be, the inconsistencies of the present economic system constantly come to light. Even such an innocent radio programme as “In town to-night” sometimes brings out a point that an observant listener can use to show the inconsistency of what our masters would have us believe is a happy land, providing peace, comfort and security for all those who are willing to work.

On Saturday, September 26th, in this programme, a manager of a pawnbroker’s shop gave the usual tbree-minute talk on the people with whom he deals. To a Socialist, the most important observation was that although some of his customers occasionally tried to swindle him, “Nine out of ten of the customers are honest, hard-working people.”

Well might the Socialist ask what sort of system it is in which “honest, hard-working people” have to pledge their clothes and blankets in order to obtain the necessities of life ?

This statement was made with reference to peacetime, not war-time. In fact, such are the contradictions of capitalism that during a war, when one might expect hardship, many of the workers who were forced to frequent the Labour Exchanges for the measly shillings which the Government granted to those in the “industrial reserve army,” as it has been called, are now in the position of having money to spend and few goods to buy. The Government, knowing the temptation to spend money that arises in those who are all too often denied that pleasure, are fearful of inflation, as occurred in the last war, and are pleading and cajoling the workers to put all “surplus” money into war saving, with the idea of helping to pay for the war. “Helping” is right, for even with the relatively high wages earned during wartime, the money that the workers could save, i.e., the money over and above the cost of living, would not pay for the war in a million years !

There is also the fact that whatever money the workers are able to save now that they are all in work will assist them to live through the slump that most economists predict to follow the post-war boom.

All the capitalist juggling in the world will not be able to create new markets to take the commodities which will result from the change over from war-time to peacetime production, and without a market, i.e., a group of buyers with the purchasing power to acquire the goods which the capitalist has for sale, the production of commodities will soon be curtailed, though the need for the goods may and will be as urgent as ever. If no one can purchase the goods which industry will be turning out by the million, those goods will stay in the warehouses, or be destroyed, as coffee, wheat and fish have been destroyed, among other goods, in the past. Under a capitalist system, goods are produced for sale, not for use. The difference may appear slight, but a worker who has no money, standing outside a boot shop in a broken-down leaky pair of boots, knows the practical difference between a commodity, i.e., an article produced for sale, and an article produced solely for use, as they will be under a sane system of society.

The only way to do away with pawnbrokers, and their immediate cause, poverty, is to do away with the private property system of society and substitute a system in which the means of production are owned by and run for the benefit of society as a whole.

Phillips.