Same the Whole World Over
The Paris paper Le Monde on 27th December published tables of French workers’ earnings in 1973. The information comes from employers’ official returns, and covers a working population of 13 millions.
The headline tells the story: 60% of earnings are less than 1750 francs a month. 1750 francs is in fact the approximate upper limit of the largest group of wage earners, 34.2 per cent., who receive between 1165f. and 1745f. On 27th December the exchange rate was 10.85f. to the £, giving an English equivalent for this group of about £27.10 to about £40.60 a week.
13.9 per cent. of French workers receive between 935f. a month, or £21.35 a week, and 1165f., and 14.2 per cent. less than 935f. When these figures are seen in relation to substantially higher costs for food and clothing, the position in France is the same as that of workers in Britain and other countries. To round off the similarity, a lucky 1.5 per cent, receive above 7000f. a month. Work it out for yourself.
An Incomes Policy at Last?
A country where working-class living standards are lower than elsewhere is Russia. A report by Edmund Stevens in The Times on 2nd January described the satisfaction of the Russian press at “comparing the conditions in the Soviet Union with the turmoil and violence in much of the world”, and went on:
Nor is there a threat of petrol shortage, or an energy crisis, or runaway inflation.
However, the article went on to say that petrol prices are expected shortly to go up by 60 per cent., and that many prices have risen recently: sturgeon and other choice fish by nearly 300 per cent., while the cost of caviar doubled in December. How then does the Soviet government avoid monetary and petrol troubles? The answer is supplied:
None of this affected the vast majority of people, who have no need for petrol and could not afford such delicacies as caviar and sturgeon at previous prices, which were raised repeatedly during the past decade.
What a good way of avoiding problems — simply by not letting people have enough money to buy things ! Heath must be envious. But it should be noted that only “runaway” inflation is absent from Russia. The report tells us:
A kind of selective creeping inflation has been going on ever since 1961, when the old roubles were converted to new ones at a 10-1 rate.
So they seem to have problems after all.
Gold Mine Turns Out to be Mirage
A favourite argument of those who tell us the capitalist system is different now is to point to the number of small investors who allegedly represent the working class getting a stake in the ownership of the means of production. Under the heading “Relying on a little help from friends” a Guardian investment writer on 5th January gave a different picture (and, incidentally, showed the futility of much of the advice given by investment writers). He said:
The small investor must beware of tips in newspapers, because when he reads of them a few hundred thousand others will have read them also . . . Stockbrokers don’t want the small man. Indeed anyone with funds of less than £10,000, unless he has investment knowledge, should, if he wants equities, buy investment trusts or unit trusts.
Realistic words. They mean the capitalist class do not mind letting you have interest on small savings, but will not encourage big ideas of sharing with them. And which of us has not got “funds of less than £10,000”?
Trouble in Blue Heaven
The Socialist Party has always opposed every form of censorship. We often meet well-meaning advocates of it who say they agree generally, but believe there is some special evil to which its application will be justified. Part of the answer to them is that once censorship is instituted its use is not limited, and becomes an additional instrument for the suppression of opinion.
An interesting demonstration was given in two letters to The Guardian on 10th January. Both were concerned with the Cinematograph and Indecent Displays Bill now going through Parliament; one was from the chairman of a group of Greater London Young Conservatives, the other from the secretary of an Arts Co-operative. The first fears that the Bill will allow pornography still to be sold under the counter while restricting the availability of Men Only, Mayfair and Penthouse. The second fears that it will be used to suppress Picasso nudes.
Their juxtaposition makes our point, handsomely.
Oiling the Works
Commentators have been getting good mileage out of North Sea oil. Not only will it, in a few years, be replenishing the petrol-pumps and generators of Britain. It will bring “prosperity”. The suggestion is of a good time coming, when the working class will be more than compensated for the hardships of the three-day week and wage restraint.
Whoever believes this should read the financial pages. The good time is being had already — but not by the workers. On 4th January the Guardian's “City Comment” reported the “windfall” which has come to the merchant bank group Edward Bates.
The principal part of the $12 millions deals announced by Bates for the acquisition of working interests and royalties, was negotiated when oil was selling at $4.20 a barrel in the U.S. It is currently being sold at $8.30. As a result, the Bates projection of oil and gas income for 1974 jumps from $2.6 millions to $4.8 millions, not to mention the substantial capital gains which will result in property values.
The next day the Technology Correspondent told of the prosperity resulting from the latest North Sea find: “£180 millions added to the values of BP and Burmah Oil”. The Guardian writer calls the Bates acquisition “an example of the pickings to be had in the American market” over North Sea oil. Incorrect. The "pickings” are had out of the exploitation of the workers — for whom windfalls from capitalism remain elusive.
Where We Came In
Can you place this quotation?
You can’t conceive what existence is like without trains or tubes . . . and probably no electric light tomorrow. We in Richmond can still get to Waterloo; but Hampstead is entirely cut off . . . Then the experts say that the working classes have behaved with such incredible stupidity that the Government will beat them; and this strike is only the beginning of others far worse to follow. They say we are in for such a year as has never been known.
It comes in fact from a letter written by Virginia Woolf in 1919, quoted in her biography. What should be noted, apart from its contemporary ring, is that Mrs. Woolf was associated with groups who were going to end the inefficiency and inequity of capitalism. And fifty-five years later it is still the same.
Robert Barltrop
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