We can’t both have it ! (1948)

From the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

SOME MAKE BIG STUFF

SOME MAKE SMALL STUFF

MORE FOR EACH—IS MORE FOR ALL

The above wording is to be seen on a large landscape poster on hoardings to-day, and is one of the propaganda efforts of His Majesty’s Third Labour Government.

This poster, like others which have preceded it, is .intended to urge the working-class to greater efforts of wealth production, as it is on the ability of the workers to produce commodities for the markets (export) in ever greater and greater volume—thus cheapening their cost—that the Labour Government and the capitalists cling to the expectation of running capitalism with a minimum of friction. The former contending this will bring full employment and prosperity to the workers and be a step towards Socialism : the latter anticipating a continuance of “business” and the ensuing profits. To paraphrase a well-known cliché: “Two minds with but a single thought. “—but both expecting a different result.

In its effort to run capitalism—masquerading under the name of Socialism—the Labour Government is committed to certain activities. One of these is the avoidance of a slump and the consequent unemployment, and because it fails to understand the motive forces of capitalism, from time to time it demonstrates its ignorance and puerility. In fact, it is capitalism that runs the Labour Government.

Unwittingly, of course, the Government publicity experts have adorned the poster with wording that is in keeping with the facts. The “stuff” that the capitalists are concerned with is profits: the workers’ “stuff” is wages. The workers’ portion of the “stuff”‘ is small. Relative to the overall increase in the amount of wealth produced the workers’ portion of the ”stuff,” coming to them in the form of wages, tends to grow smaller.

It logically follows that MORE FROM ALL means more from all of the working class : more production, more distribution, more salesmanship, more marketing—more of everything that will keep British capitalism ahead of its competitors ! In a word, more and intensified exploitation of the class that looks to the present Government to solve its problems. And the resulting increase in wealth, brought into existence as a result of increased production MEANS MORE FOR EACH member or group of the capitalist class. This is because the workers will have increased the quantity of surplus value (the source of profit), i.e., the amount of wealth they create over and above their wages and salaries.

Posters on a wall will not rescue the Labour Government from the mess they will eventually find themselves in as a result of trying to serve two masters. Neither will more production rescue the vast majority of workers from their poverty position as members of a wage-earning, property-less class.

GUY.