Revolution’s Reply to Reform. (Part 2) (1910)

Pamphlet Review from the January 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The answer to “Arms for the Workers: A Defence of the Programme of the Social-Democratic Party.” (E. C. Fairchild, Lon. Organiser, S.D.P.)

(Continued from the previous issue.)

Something Less than Socialism.

The first objection, says Mr. Fairchild, “to the adoption of a programme of proposals to palliate or diminish the evils of capitalism, is the doctrine that anything less than the realisation of complete Socialism would be valueless to the working-class.” He goes on to declare that

“The argument that Socialism only can remove the artificial inequalities of to-day, restore the social produce to the social workers, and abolish all forms of actual poverty is perverted. That argument is held to mean that the condition of the workers is a fixture, and that poverty cannot be diminished under the capitalist state.”

This statement is untrue. The so-called impossibilists do not pervert the argument to any such meaning. On the contrary, so far are they from regarding the condition of the workers as a fixture, that they continually point out that it is ever becoming worse—a verity the reform champion himself subscribes to when he says (p. 4) “In all capitalist countries the share of the total wealth production taken by the working class is falling.”

The “Social-Democracy,” ill-grounded in social science, and, therefore, groping like blind Samson for that which they cannot see, imagine that they have their arms about the pillars of capitalist society when they grasp their “palliative programme.” But they cry “palliation” without knowing what palliation is, and think they have palliated the system when they have helped to do that which the system forces the capitalists to undertake in their own interests.

Out of such ignorance as this comes the puerile statement that “the system has been palliated to provide magnificence and great wealth for the few.” Magnificence and great wealth for the few, however, were inherent in the system, and not provided by any imaginable “palliation” Mr. Fairchild can instance. And when the term “palliation” can be applied to such opposites as the depression of the multitude in order to “provide magnificence and great wealth for the few,” and, the wrenching from these few, of the means of lessening the misery of the toiling many, then it behoves us to look to our anchors, lest we drag and drift on to the rocks of lunatic chaos.

What, after all, is a palliative ? In sociology, surely, some betterment of the social conditions, given or obtained apart from the decree of economic law and the necessities of the social system.

Thus, trade union effort to advance wages is not palliative effort, but simply the exercise of that power of resistance necessary to arrive at and assert the value of labour power. The law of exchange in accordance with which wages are determined by the cost of production of labour-power, presupposes resistance on both sides of the market. The same resistance between buyer and seller exists in all commodity exchange. It takes the place of that theoretically presumed exact knowledge of values, which no buyer or seller ever yet possessed. The man has not been born who could trace the cost of production (in units of socially necessary labour time) of two commodities through all its intricities and say of them “in such and such quantities these goods are equivalent values.” The question of values must be referred to the competitive market, where the appeal is to force and the only gauge the mean of prices over extended periods.

Similarly, as the struggle for higher wages is not a palliative straggle, since it is a necessary and presupposed part and parcel of the wages system, so there are many measures of a seemingly ameliorative nature, which, since they are necessary to the continued working of the capitalist system itself, are not in any sane sense palliatives.

What possibility, for instance, would there be of the existence in a state of profit-producing efficiency, of several millions of persons within the London area, under the sanitary conditions of the middle ages ? In these days when gardens are on the roofs, and tube underlies tube in the bowels of the earth, surface area is far too valuable for open sewers and cesspools. The night-soil man has become an impossible person, and the earth closet an insupportable expense. In addition, black plagues (and consequent scarcity of labour-power) and high profits do not go well together. Capitalism, and not the sentimental tear of the palliator, demanded cheaper and more efficient sanitary arrangements, and that demand was met by, among other things, that “liberal water supply” and “modern drainage” which the S.D.P. champion (pp. 4-5) declares have “modified the original structure of the capitalist system in the interest of the workers,” (!) and are, therefore, palliatives.

The poultry farmer who runs ten to twelve hens to the acre need not worry greatly about sanitary arrangements for his stock, but when he multiplies the number of birds by four or five, he immediately has to face and deal with the problem of sanitation. To say, however, that he does so for the hens’ sake is ridiculous. Yet it is a parallel case with the claim that modern drainage and the liberal water supply are palliatives of the capitalist system.

They are nothing of the sort. They are necessities of the capitalist system, without which the process of profit production would be hampered at every turn. They are perpetuators, not palliators, of capitalism. Is it imaginable, highly developed capitalist transport, expressed in the latest phrase—motor haulage—on the old feudal bridal paths, or even the roads and bridges that were good enough for our grandfathers’ stage-coaches ? Is it thinkable, the modern industrial and business world with the illiterate working class of the “hungry forties ?”

We all know that the constant wail of representative British manufacturers is that German education has been allowed to get so far in advance of English, and one of their number who recently said “I do not fear Germany’s competition, but I fear her technical schools,” spoke volumes as to the motive underlying the educational palliative.

Again, during the last 35 years the birth rate has steadily fallen from 36 to 26, to the horror of the patriotic pulpit and the uneasiness of the exploiting class—who can see only less honey from fewer bees. But with fewer births has come the desire to keep more of the children alive, and so we find “the amenities of the worker’s lives” (as our author puts it) by the provision of municipal sterilised milk supplies, maternal training, free meals for school children, and such “palliatives.”

The truth is that the gradual development of the productive system demands and necessitates an unceasing adaptation of social conditions, but these are not palliatives of the system, but the mere adjustment to the needs of an industrial machinery whose one motive force is the production of the greatest possible profit. They leave the workers’ position untouched. These “amenities of the workers’ lives” have not kept pace with their steady degradation. The “liberal water supply” of the water company may not altogether compensate for the loss of the sweet air that moved about the well, nor could the site of the Thames Embankment have been, as a low-lying muddy waste, a picture of more utter and hopeless despair, than now when it offers its proud, granite bosom to be the dreary, comfortless bed of scores upon scores of poor wretches that once were men, and women—and children.

No, Mr. Palliator, the position of the worker is not a fixture. Their exploitation increases, their unemployment increases, their insecurity and anxious misery increases, in spite of those “amenities of the workers’ lives,” “a liberal water supply, modern drainage, and the extension of public open spaces.”

The position of the Socialist Party is, not that the condition of the workers is a fixture, but that it is constantly being adjusted to the requirements of the capitalist system, and that this adjustment is not palliation of working-class conditions. For the working class, they hold, there is no palliation—there is only emancipation. This is why “something less than Socialism” would be valueless to the proletariat.

The Distribution of Wealth.

In the brief confines of this chapter we are treated to several curious statements. We are are told, for instance, that “the productive capacity of labour is subject to continuous change. It will rise or fall with every application of knowledge to industrial functions.” This piece of owlish wisdom, of course, flies in the face of all experience, and it would be interesting to learn when the application of knowledge causes the productive capacity of human energy to fall.

In one breath our author declares that the “proportion or amount of the requirements of life which fall to the share of the respective classes” is not “fixed by economic or political laws,” and prescribes a political law for the fixing of a minimum wage !

The Socialist Party holds, not that “the proportion or amount of the requirements of life which fall to the share of the respective classes” is fixed by economic or political laws, but that, in capitalist society, the “return to labour” is determined by the cost of producing labour-power.

This is an economic law. It operates through competition. Therefore, if the statement of the law is true, the only way to increase the “return to labour” is either by raising the cost of producing labour-power or by restricting competition.

If the reformer started out to induce the people to “waste their substance in riotous living,” to become more drunken and to burn a loaf for every one they ate, he would be derided for his pains, but he would be logical. He would be trying to raise the “return to labour” by increasing the cost of producing labour-power which governs it. But to propose to raise the cost of producing labour by increasing that which it determines (wages in the long run) is madness.

If, on the other hand, the reformer aspired to so completely organise the workers for resistance in the economic field that competition was effectually strangled, again, in spite of the hopeless magnitude of his task, he would be logical. He would be trying to defeat the economic law of exchange by eliminating the mainspring of its operation—competition.

Now the law as stated above is a law of capitalism—not of other social systems. Capitalism presupposes and hangs upon competition. To eliminate competition in the labour market (of all markets) is to eliminate capitalism. Hence every force of the existing system is arrayed against any attempt to tamper with the freedom of competition. But our would-be palliators, who say that labour’s share of the wealth produced is not fixed by economic or political laws, are going to tilt against the windmill. They are going to match a political law against an economic law. They are going to set up their Minimum Wage Act against the whole world of masters interested in paying the least possible wages they can, and the whole seething mass of hunger-driven workers, striving for employment at any wage.

Later Mr. Fairchild gives us “a little history.” Let us have little history now.

The Black Plague in the 14th century made labour-power very scarce. The Statute of Labourers was enacted to prevent the payment or reception of higher wages than had ruled prior to the outbreak. What was the result ? Many on both sides were imprisoned, but labour was not made one whit more redundant. Hence the labourers continued to get the best of the competitive straggle, and wages rose 50 or even 100%. So we have it on record that complaint was continually made in Parliament that the Statute of Labourers was utterly inoperative (see “Six Centuries of Work and Wages,” Thorold Rogers, p. 226 on).

If wages could not be kept down by law then, when labourers were not free, as they are now, to seek other masters, and when the masters, who controlled the political power, were interested in supporting the law and keeping them down, how much less can the law enforce a minimum wage now, when the masters, controlling the political power, are interested in evading such a law, and the workers themselves are forced by the awful competition for work, to cast every artificial barrier to their degradation into oblivion ?

A. E. Jacomb

(To be Continued.)

Studies in Economic Fallacy (1930)

From the October 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Invest your savings—Don't "save” them.

Mr. Robert McLaurin has been writing in the Labour press, advocating that money should be turned into productive fields. The way to do it, he says, is to stop the banks paying interest on deposit accounts, and so compel the depositors to invest their “savings” in industry. The fact that we are suffering from over-production of goods is ignored by this finance reformer. If more goods were produced by more concerns being started, the situation would simply grow worse. Goods are produced for sale to-day, and as the market is already glutted in almost every trade, the suggested reform would not touch the situation. This writer savs “the system worked with comparative smoothness” until 1914 ! Poverty, insecurity, and unemployment of wage-slaves is apparently a post-war condition to this reformer !

Proudhon and his modern followers who advocate “Free Banking,” the currency cranks like Arthur Kitson, and the Labour crowd who want money reform, are all Utopians who seek a commercial competitive system without the laws of commerce or of competition. Most of them imagine that goods should be money and that banks should allow every owner of goods credit for the amount of his wealth. If the goods cannot find a market in exchange for the universal means of circulation—money—how can they find a market any easier by being put in pawn—if such a childish notion ever was adopted?

* * *

Will reduced wages mean more work?

Another “short cut to more jobs” is being advocated by some employers in the press. The simple scheme suggests that the money paid to “out of works” by the Government should be handed to employers instead, to enable them to capture orders from abroad. Every unemployed man engaged by the employers will get the difference between the so-called “dole” and his usual wage, made up by the employer. Present wages prevent contracts being obtained against foreign competition—so runs the cry! The profits, of course, are quite in order! Such a pass has capitalism come to, that the competition employers adore prevents them being able to pay a subsistence wage ! Does it? They don’t suggest that capitalism should be abolished, but that the ruling-class as a whole should subsidise those employers who cannot pay wages and profits out of their business.

Seeing that these same people complain that foreign countries subsidise industries and pay “low” wages, where will the process of cutting wages end ? The miners and many other workers in recent years have had such low wages that poor law relief has had lo make them up to subsistence level. Did that prevent unemployment growing amongst them? And when the rationalisation and electrification of foreign industries is copied here more and more, the unemployed will increase. The countries of “low wages” abroad have a growing unemployed army. “Low wages” hasn’t saved them.

The general adoption of the policy of supplementing part wages with so-called “doles” simply means that wages will be pushed down throughout the country. The employers who have not the capital to modernise their plants cry out for more wage reductions, and in the meantime the larger concern crushes or absorbs them.

* * *

The economic trend.

It is a plausible catch-cry to shout “wages determine prices,” but economic facts dispel that moonshine. Ford’s Motors in their last annual report showed that where they paid the highest wage in Europe (in Denmark) output was greatest, and where they paid the lowest (Belgium) the output was least. The real basis of world competitive prices is the amount of labour that it takes on the average to produce articles with modern methods. Where manufacturers, like Ford, have the capital to buy the latest and biggest quantity of machinery, they can reduce the time taken to produce goods, and so sell for less.

The manufacturers who cry out for subsidies to help them pay wages, won’t face the issue that production for the world market is wiping out many competitors and producing the combine or trust in every field. The successful firms have won by reducing costs, which means reducing the numbers of workers required to produce a given quantity of articles. Therefore, the chronic unemployment of to-day becomes a fixed feature of capitalism. Every country and every manufacturer is out for trade, and therefore profit, and in the wild scramble the workers do not count. They just produce the wealth and under the best conditions get just about enough of it back to keep them alive.

* * *

Shall we demand "lower prices”?

Labourites and “short-cut Socialists” are demanding cheaper goods. Consumers’ Bills and anti-profiteering campaigns are on the road to cut prices. These people are chasing a Will-of-the-wisp. “Reduce the cost of living” may be a good battle-cry for those who are consumers only, but the working class is a producing class. It does all the producing, but only a part of the consuming. How much the workers consume is determined by their wages. And what determines their wages? The basis of wages is the money needed on the average to keep a worker and his family. The number demanding work and the number of jobs available decides the daily fluctuations in wages, but the average level of wages is the cost of living of the worker. When the official index figures of the cost of living show a reduction, wages are reduced accordingly. In the daily Press of July 23rd we read that the Civil Servants have just been notified that their salaries are to be reduced, as the cost of living has fallen. Therefore, the campaign for cheaper goods will simply result, if successful, in reducing the worker’s wage. The money wages are only nominal—the buying power is the real wage. If the necessaries of life are “high,” wages may be raised to cover the increase, but the purchasing power of wages is always related to the cost of living of the workers. However cheap goods are, wages will always represent but a fraction of the wealth made by the workers.

The cry for cheapness to-day overlooks the economic tendencies of the system.

* * *

The march to monopoly. 

On the one side mass production serves to produce cheaply, but alongside of that is the rising power of monopoly, rings, and trusts to corner the supply and exact monopoly prices. Many manufacturers are against the prices of necessaries being raised and so driving them to pay higher wages. The general tendency of modern capitalism, however, is to concentrate the great sources of wealth and the products into fewer and fewer hands. If nature and man are very productive, and the supply grows quicker than the demand, the owners scheme to restrict production and actually to destroy products, in order to keep prices high enough to ensure their growing’ profits.

Centralised production on a large scale certainly works towards reducing costs, but the great combine owners are not interested in usefulness or cheapness as such—they are interested in profits. Once they have cut out the competitors, they plan “to get all the market will bear” by controlling the market. There is, of course, a limit which they cannot go beyond without reducing the amount they can sell.

The Consumers’ Leagues and similar bodies are powerless to effect their wishes, whatever Bills are passed to stem the economic tide. The concentration of wealth and the combine are the natural outgrowth of commercial competition, and can only be dealt with effectively by abolishing private and class ownership.

One other factor in “high” prices is the falling value of gold due to modern improvements in working gold-bearing ore. Thus economic development and economic laws of capitalism cannot be dodged by reform legislation. They must be understood—and then we’ll fight for Socialism.

* * *

The economics of "Labour.”

David Kirkwood, of the Clyde, Labour M.P. and I.L.P. chieftain, has a mental upsurge. He has discovered how to stop the downward march of workers’ conditions. He has brought in a Bill to make it illegal for employers to reduce wages. A Government in charge of the capitalist system of profit and exploitation is asked simply to decide “No more reductions in wages.” Employers must not cut the workers’ pay. Wages will then automatically stay put. Wages will fluctuate no longer downwards—but only upwards. Thus poverty will be grappled with.

A little economic knowledge would be dangerous to a Labour M.P. We will, however, try a small quantity.

Under this system an employer is not compelled to employ the workers seeking work. The number of men and women seeking work being greater than the number of jobs, wages tend downwards. The market—the labour market—is the place where competition for work causes men to accept the master’s terms. Having no wealth, the workers cannot hold out. Does Kirkwood’s Bill abolish that market and its competition? Does it wipe out unemployment? Does it abolish the lack of property—the force that drives men to work for others for a fodder wage? Does it alter the fodder basis of wrages ?

No. Kirkwood, playing with effects, would like to abolish the effects of capitalist system whilst leaving the system running. It is more sensational, vote-catching, and sounds drastic; it is easier than explaining capitalism and advocating Socialism.

* * *

Economic laws override statues.

A law to stop wages going down ! A war might do it for a time, whilst the demand exceeded the supply of workers, but a law under capitalism cannot stop the employer buying better and more effective machinery whenever wages tend to rise, and thus pushing numbers out. The rationalisation which Kirkwood criticises (New Leader, July 18th) would play havoc with his “law.” Centuries ago, laws were passed making it criminal to pay more or less than the wage fixed by statute. The plague had swept huge numbers of workers away, and wages rose rapidly. Conditions made the statute a dead letter. The cry of employers for labourers and the favourable situation for the men made reductions of wages impossible. Too many employers were willing to pay more than the legal wage.

When hunger drives hard, men and women go back to work even at terms (fixed with Labour Government’s assistance) involving ten per cent. reduction, as in the woollen trade. What has happened to the Minimum Wage Laws “won” by miners from Lloyd George? Where are the miners’ work and wages to-day? David Kirkwood, like his fellow Labour Members, should stick to “Pleasant Sunday Afternoon” meetings at the kirk.

* * *

Is shorter hours the remedy?

Mr. Geo. Hicks, of the General Council of the Trade Union Congress, has been telling his Building Trade Union of the effects of rationalisation on the building-trade. One hundred and fifty thousand are out of work in this industry, but more machinery and efficiency schemes are being used every week to get the work done “cheaper.” “A shorter working day,” he told them, would absorb some of the unemployed, and those pushed out by machinery should be given alternative employment or fully maintained.

Hours have been continually shortened in the builders’ craft, but has that absorbed the unemployed? The Union that can’t win a strike over some detail of their conditions is not in a position to win full maintenance. Mr. Hicks, like most Labour leaders, is busy supporting the Labour Government, which carries on capitalism and advocates the wholesale rationalisation which he complains about to his members.

Labour leaders do not tell their members the truth that the only way out is to abolish this system by winning political power for Socialism. It’s a much easier and more profitable way for leaders to keep the workers ignorant. Then they can be led.

* * *

A lesson for trade unionists.

Whilst the Trade Union leaders are busy as Labour M.P.’s supporting rationalisation, which will add to unemployment, the Unions beg the members not to add to the financial burden of the Unions by temporary stoppages, etc. The Boot and Shoe Union used to boast that by a “no strike” policy of conciliation they had won the best conditions. Now they complain that unemployment of their members in this machine industry is draining all their funds. The Cardroom Amalgamation of Lancashire has issued a circular to its members, warning them that the scales of contributions and benefits will not stand the chronic unemployment to-day.

The eight looms per weaver scheme, however, is being put through in Lancashire, where more than one-third of the operatives are already out of work. The Labour Government’s Committee of Enquiry, headed by J. R. Clynes, the Labour Minister, advised the greater rationalisation of the industry with the latest wages-saving automatic looms.

The workers in the Unions are still supporting the leaders who mislead them. Not by changing leaders, but by completely changing’ their ideas about society, is the only way the members can cure the situation.

Let the working class own the machines, etc., in common. Stop improving the machinery for the masters. Organise politically to end this system of profit-making.

* * *

Another "sheltered trade" gone.

The Railway Unions have benefited so much by brilliant leadership that since they got back their 2½ per cent. reduction in wages, short time or dismissal has been the rule in the railway shops. A greater speeding up of the work is the owners’ reply to the cancelled reduction of wages. Now we learn from the Daily Herald of June 17th that owing to the drop in the official cost of living figures, thousands of railwaymen have lost two shillings a week. Seventy-five per cent. of the railwaymen, according to the same authority, are down to the minimum rates of wages. They give the figures of £2 6s. for porters, and lamp-men and permanent way men £2 8s. In the meantime the railway companies have been buying up their ‘bus competitors, the money for which, I suppose, comes out of their losses. The Transport Unions and the Railway Union are now busy squabbling over which Union the members must join. Mr. Thomas, we expect, will add to the railway workers’ prestige by finding a place in the House of Lords. Such are the fruits of conciliation in industrv.

* * *

“The Iron Law of Wages." 

"The corner-stone of Marx’s theory, as expounded in ‘Das Kapital,’ is that labour is the creator of all wealth, but that under Capitalism labour is not paid by the value it produces, but by the price of labour power as a commodity on the market. This price, according to Karl Marx, is fixed by the economic laws under which we live at a point which just secures an adequate supply of labour for industry. This he called the ‘Iron Law of Wages’.”—(H. H. Tiltman in his Life of Ramsay MacDonald.)

The above is an example of the ignorance of Marx’s economics by the brainy bourgeoisie who write about him.

Marx did not call his law of wages the “Iron Law of Wages.” In fact he exposed the “Iron Law” theory, which was taught, not by Marx, but by Lassalle. In his criticism of the Gotha programme of the German Labour Party of 1875, Marx pointed out that the so-called Iron Law of Wages was a mixture of Malthus’ over-population theory with economic facts. The “iron law of wages” presupposes that wages cannot rise owing to an increase of population taking place if the subsistence level is increased. More workers born would crowd the labour market and bring wages down. Too few workers would raise wages, which, in turn, would induce larger families, and thus, through competition for work, wages would again fall to their former level.

Marx, on the other hand, showed that the cost of subsistence was the basis of wages. The level of wages, however, was not fixed and was not like iron. The union of workers and their struggle played a part in the raising of wages. The standard of living, too, was not fixed, but fluctuated, due to the changing social conditions; the efforts of workers to adapt their way of living to the period they lived in; and the need of employers to adapt the living standards of the workers to enable the speed and efficiency of industry to be maintained or increased.

The really vital factor in overcrowding the labour market was not the birth-rate, but the use of machinery by the employers. The critics of Marx seem to get their knowledge of him from his opponents.

Adolph Kohn

"Old Men Forget" (1956)

Cartoon by Robert Barltrop.

From the May 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Lord Russell's Misconceptions

For many years Bertrand Russell was what is known as a progressive thinker. He had ideas on sex, education, morals, etc., which startled, even shocked, many of his contemporaries. In the first World War he was a Pacifist and went to prison. In some circles he underwent a period of social ostracism. By 1931 the honeymoon delight of being wedded to progress was not only over but disillusion had set in. In “Living Philosophies” (Simon and Schuster, New York), Russell said " he wrote on the firm foundation of unyielding despair . . . brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow sure doom falls pitiless and dark." Such was the mature judgment of this progressive thinker. He has never so far as one can gather categorically renounced this view, although from time to time he has offered variations on the theme.

One such variation appeared in an article in the News Chronicle (26.3.56) called the "Fraud of Marxism." Here we are informed that the safety of the world, is precariously balanced between totalitarian Russia, which he makes synonymous with Communism, and the Western powers. Russell seems to view this as symbolical of the struggle between die powers of light and darkness. A war between these rival groups, via the hydrogen bomb, could lead, he thinks, to something near the virtual destruction of the world. This, of course, might mean the fulfilment of his 1931, prophecy. It is a conclusion which Russell himself does not apparently want to accept. Now there might be ways of avoiding the holocaust. Communism, he says, thrives on poverty and hatred, therefore let us diminish those areas. One way, it seems, is to renounce the relics of white domination in Asia.

Russell ignores the fact that it is Capitalism, whether East or West, which produces and perpetuates poverty and hatred. Just as he ignores the fact that Capitalism is not only the domination of white over coloured people but also domination by White over White, Wherever capital rules it constitutes an instrument of domination over the vast majority of the population. Given the development of Capitalism in Asia it will result in the domination of the vast majority by a handful of people, who live in the same country instead of some other country.

Russell plans to kill Communism by kindness, not that the ex-Pacifist who once believed war to be an evil thing and Capitalism an evil system, is opposed to killing Russians on principle. He is merely opposed to killing them on expediency. With the advent of the H. Bomb it appears we can no longer serve the ends of justice by exterminating “our enemies," without exterminating ourselves. Perhaps Communism and with it the Russian people, could have been eliminated on principle. Russell believes that war against Russia might have once been possible. Such a war could have been atomically waged by the Western powers before Russia possessed atomic weapons. Indeed, there were reports from Adelaide that our 'progressive thinker' had mooted such proposals while he was there.

Nevertheless Russell has, at least, been consistent in his inconsistency. Posing as a sceptic he liked to feel that he asserted nothing; no not even that he asserted nothing. This has not prevented him from dogmatically making up his mind on oft occasions and then just as dogmatically unmaking it. While everyone is privileged to change their views, Russell has tended to abuse that privilege.

Not only has Russell at times flatly contradicted former views he held but be has never offered any evidence for his change of front. In his book, “In Praise of Idleness" (p. 145) he held that "the causes of war were mainly economic.” Again on p. 147, he averred that "the causes of enmity between nations are mainly to be found in the economic interests of certain sections and can only be abolished by a fundamental economic reconstruction." Now it seems the enmity between nations is between the free Democratic West and the Totalitarian East. The stark fact remains that the ideological battle between the Western powers and Russia has its origin in imperial and economic rivalry.

Given a realignment of economic rivalries there would be corresponding shifts in ideological differences. Russian totalitarianism might then be acceptable to some Western Democracies in the future as it has been in the past. Russell, by concealing these differences under idealistic trappings, helps to increase misunderstanding of the real nature of power politics. It is thus a heavy contribution which the one-time Pacifist makes towards increasing the enmity of nations and with it the continuance of the possibility of war.

Russell once believed that "Capitalism was doomed. Its injustices were so glaring that only ignorance and tradition would lead wage earners to tolerate it." ("Theory and Practise of Bolshevism" p. 19). He even believed that "the present holders of power were evil men and that there was no perfidy or brutality from which they would shrink when they feel themselves threatened ” (same book, p. 10). Now this role is assigned exclusively to the rulers of Russia.

He also likes to assert from time to time that he was unique in knowing the real significance of the Russian Revolution. In actual fact he was in many respects confused and muddleheaded. Even in 1920 he still believed the Bolsheviks aimed to establish Socialism in Russia, when in fact, as we pointed out at the time, they were building up State Capitalism. Actually Russell's notions of Capitalism and Socialism have been so foggy that he has never been able to distinguish one from the other.

His only real quarrel with the Bolsheviks was not that they were not Socialists, but that they were using the wrong methods for establishing it. He also thought that “Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind" (“Theory and Practise of Bolshevism” p. 7). Russell, it seems thought Socialism could have come to Russia had it been done the Russell way. And this from someone who has always claimed that he was one of the prescient few who really knew what was taking place.

It is ironic to reflect that Russell then attributed to the Western powers the same evil intent against Russia that he now attributes to Russia against the Western powers (“Theory and Practise of Bolshevism", p. 10).

His criticism of Marx in the same article is the usual mixture of childishness and spite. According to Russell Marx believed in something called dialectical materialism which governs the human history independent of human volition. This says Russell is mythology. He is right, but the myth is one perpetrated by Russell not by Marx. He cannot show where Marx ever held or stated such a view.

He also contends that Marx's doctrine of surplus value was merely surreptiously introducing the malthusian theory of population. This is nonsense. Malthus believed that the meagre resources of the earth would be insufficient for the needs of an ever-increasing population. As a result the vast majority of mankind would always be condemned to exist at the lowest level. Marx utterly repudiated this notion and showed that the evils of Capitalism flowed from the way it produced and distributed wealth. Marx denied that there was some abstract law of population. Different societies he contended would have different laws. Over-population, said Marx, was intimately connected with the growth of capital accumulation and took the form of relative over population i.e. an industrial reserve army.

Neither did Marx, vide Russell, believe in an iron law of wages which maintains wages at a mere physical subsistence level. In fact he devoted much time against Lassalle and others to show the falsity of such views. If Russell had even read a simple pamphlet like “ Value, Price and Profit,” he could have gleaned the information that Marx not only believed that the workers could by Trade Union action raise their standards of living but further the gains from these struggles helped to mould the traditional standards of life for the future. That Capitalism did regulate levels of wages, Marx did not deny; wages could not, he thought, proceed to levels which seriously threatened surplus value, or eliminated it, but this had nothing to do with the Malthusian doctrine of an iron law of wages.

As for historical materialism, which Russell repudiates, Russell has never understood it. He has, like many others, seen it as merely an economic interpretation. This has, nevertheless, not prevented him from largely agreeing with what he has largely misunderstood. Thus in “Freedom and Social Organisation” (p.220), he says “with regard to the economic interpretation of history it seems very largely true and a most important contribution to sociology-.”. He has also informed us that “in the main he agrees with Marx that economic causes are at the bottom of the great movements in history, not only in political movements, but also those departments such as religion, art. morals.”

Russell, who fancies himself as an historian, has not been above surreptiously attempting to apply the theory he now repudiates which turned out to be the crassest economic determinism. Thus his views on American history are formulated in economic terms. According to him the 1929 crisis which occurred in America was the result of the absence of cheap labour and cheap land. The open frontier and slavery are put forward as the crucial factors in America during the 19th century. While not once but many times he has pronounced that Capitalism is doomed and that a new system will emerge because of an unavoidable economic development. Russell may no longer believe in all this, but he is not, as he imagines, repudiating Marx, but himself. Like most of the intellectuals he has been so busy trying to teach others that he has had little time to learn himself.

Russell once wrote in a playful mood his own obituary. It also modestly assessed his own contribution to society. It is sad to reflect that in his declining years he has also provided his own pathetic epitaph.

Ted Wilmott

A Trio of “Intellectuals.” (1920)

Book Review from the July 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the many developments that capitalism has brought to a high degree is the group of employees of the capitalists who carry out the various non-manual functions in modern society. This group comprises the managers, supervisors, lawyers, bankers, stockbrokers, journalists, politicians, in fact all those who love to describe themselves as “intellectuals.”

Being, as a rule, better paid than the rest of the wage slaves, there is considerable competition for these jobs, with the result of an over­-crowding of this particular market. For the moment we are only concerned with the position of two sections of this group.

One endeavours to obtain pay and position from the masters by pointing out the “dangers” of Socialism and so hoping to, more or less, scare the masters into engaging them for the purpose of exposing the “fallacies of Marx,” etc. This section is found, largely, among the jour­nalists and university professors.

The other section, failing in this pursuit, try to obtain a footing in the camp of the “common workers” and offer themselves as “guides,” “leaders,” “experts,” etc. to the “lower orders.”

A good example of a combination among individuals from both these sections has lately come our way.

In March 1883 Marx died. The next month an article was published in Italy purporting to be a biography of Marx Apparently about 1916 this article was reprinted with some alterations and additions, as a pamphlet. This pamphlet was translated into English in 1918 as a great work from a wonderful professor who has made marvellous discoveries in economic and social science, some of whose works have been translated into English. Who is this giant and what are his works? Let the following quotation tell us.

  Marx had hardly died, when Mr. Achille Loria hastily published an article about him in the Nuova Antologia (April, 1883). He starts out with a biography of Marx full of misinformation, and follows it up with a critique of Marx’s public, political and literary activity. He misrepresents the materialist conception of history of Marx and twists it with an assurance which indicates a great purpose. And this purpose was later accomplished. In 1886, the same Mr. Loria published a book entitled La teoria economica delta costituzione politica (The Economic Foundations of Society), in which he announced to his admiring contemporaries that the materialist conception of history, so completely and purposely misrepresented by him in 1883, was his own discovery. True, the Marxian theory is reduced to a rather Philistine level in this book. And the historical illustrations and proofs abound in mistakes which would not be pardoned in a high school boy. But what does that matter? He thinks he has established his claim that the discovery that always and everywhere the political conditions and events are explained by corresponding economic conditions was not made by Marx in 1845, but by Mr. Loria in 1886. At least this is what he has tried to make his countrymen believe, and also some Frenchmen, for his book has been translated into French. And now he can pose in Italy as the author of a new and epoch-making theory of history, until the Italian socialists will find time to strip the illustre Loria of his stolen peacock feathers. 

But this is only an insignificant sample of Mr. Loria’s style of doing things. He assures us that all of Marx’s theories rest on conscious sophistry; that Marx was not above using false logic, even though he knew it to be so, etc. And after thus biasing his readers by a whole series of such contemptible insinuations, in order that they may regard Marx as just such an unprincipled upstart as Loria, accomplishing his effects by the same shameless and foul means as this professor from Padua, he has a very important secret for the readers, and incidentally he touches upon the rate of profit.” (Engels’ Preface to 3rd Volume of “Capital,” pp. 25-26.)

We need not now discuss the highly technical point of the rate of profit. When Marx referred in Volume I. of “Capital” to the detailed working out of this problem in a future volume Mr. Loria stated that the problem was insoluble and that the promised volume would never appear. Yet when the second Volume of “Capital” was published, with Engels’ challenge to the Robertians, Mr. Loria attempted to solve the insoluble by taking up the challenge. Even in this position he is a mere copyist. Another “great professor”—Bohm-Bawerk—had said that Marx had no solution, and that he would never publish the promised volume. Some years after saying so he was constrained to write a book entitled “Karl Marx and the Close of his System” against the volume he had said would never appear.

And in another point is the same practice followed. Mr. Loria takes the Malthusian theory of population and modifying it by taking (without acknowledgement) a part of Herbert Spencer’s ”New Theory of Population,” presents the jumble as his own original discovery.

Of Loria’s criticisms of Marx we need only refer to two statements made on consecutive pages. On page 67 he says :

  It is undeniable that Marx’s thesis of the progressive concentration of wealth into the hands of an ever-diminishing number of owners, and of the correlatively progressive impoverishment of the common people, has not been confirmed. It has indeed been confuted by the most authoritative statistics collected since the publication of the book.

On page 68 he says:

  Again, no one can deny that the contrast between high grade and low grade incomes has of late exhibited an enormous increase ; that banking concentration, and the sway of the banks over industry (a source of increasing disparity in fortunes) has attained in recent years in intensity which even Marx could not foresee; and that subsequently to the publication of Capital and to the death of its author, the social fauna has been enriched by an economic animal of a species previously unknown, the multimillionaire, whose existence undeniably reveals an unprecedented advance in capitalist concentration. Agrarian and industrial concentration attained preposterous proportions such as he had never ventured to predict In the American Union a single landed estate will embrace territories equal to entire provinces, while industrial capital becomes amassed by milliards in the hands of a few despotic trusts so that two-thirds of the entire working population are employed by one-twentieth of all the separate enterprises in the country. 

We are told that this is a free country, so, having paid his half-crown for a ninety page pamphlet, one third of which consists of an introduction by the translators, the reader has full liberty to choose which of the above statements he will accept.

The introduction is worthy of the body of the pamphlet. The translators—Eden and Cedar Paul—are members of the second section of the “intellectuals” referred to above, who have condescended to come down among the common people and teach them how to achieve their emancipation. Possessing all the ignorance of the “educated,” they lack none of their conceit. As an example we find on page 16 that they agree with Karl Pearson when he says:

  “the acceptance of the law discovered by Malthus is an essential of any Socialistic theory which pretends to be scientific.”

What is this “law discovered by Malthus ? Neither law nor discovery of his. Malthus stole certain ideas from Price, Wallace, and others and put them forward as his own. Reduced to a few words the “law” is that population increases in a geometrical ratio (2-4-8-16-32, etc.) while the means of subsistence increase only in’ arithmetical ratio (1-2-3-4-5, etc.) Hence the poverty of the working class is due entirely to there being more at Nature’s table than Nature can feed. Our “intellectuals” say Lafargue, Henry George, and others who have endeavoured to meet the Malthusian difficulty “by a simple denial of the facts” have displayed more zeal than knowledge. The sentence quoted is a “simple” lie. Not simple denial, but complete exposure of the falsity of the so-called facts has been the work of these opponents. How ignorant “intellectuals” can be is shown by the following facts.

Malthus wrote his book partly as a general explanation of the misery prevalent in his day, and partly against Godwin’s book, “Political Justice,” that was an expression of revolt against that misery. Godwin wrote a crushing reply to Malthus entitled “On Population.” Malthus, although he lived to edit five more editions of his work, made no attempt to meet Godwin’s exposure of his fallacies. Henry George in “Progress and Poverty” has taken Godwin’s case and, adding further facts and evidence, discovered since Godwin wrote, has presented a reply that no Malthusian has been able to touch.

Not satisfied with Loria’s falsifications of Marx, the translators try one themselves, though only by suggestion. On page 15 they quote Marx’s criticism of Lassalle’s “Iron Law of Wages” from the Gotha Programme. Marx had pointed out that the “Iron Law of Wages” rested upon the Malthusian theory of population, and said if this “law” were correct then it would be a waste of time to try and overthrow the system of wage labour as the “law” could not be overthrown and would assert itself under any system. He then pointed out that this was exactly the argument used by the hired apologists of the master class, who claimed that Socialism would merely make poverty universal because of this “law.”

Now say our translators, “Does not it almost seem as if Marx by 1875, had, for a moment at least, glimpsed the real difficulty.”

To suggest that Marx “for a moment at least” accepted the truth of the Malthusian “law” whose falsities he had exposed shows not only the conceit of the people making the suggestion, but also their readiness to attempt to mislead those members of the working class who may read their introduction to Loria.

Further exposure of their ignorance is given in their reference to Loria’s remarks on the neglect by Marxists of the great question of technical development. Loria says: “This physiology of industry which is now the least studied and least appreciated of Marx’s labours nevertheless constitutes his most considerable and most enduring contribution to science.”

The answer of the translators to this charge is to refer to William Paul’s slovenly and inac­curate sketch of the State and to Newbold’s journalistic articles as forming a reply. The splendid work of Lafargue, Kautsky, Sanial, and others in this field is evidently unknown to these intellectuals.

The value of the judgement of the translators on current events is dearly shown when on page 30 they refer to Workers’ Committees—dead as a door nail to-day, except under the guise of the capitalist Whitley Councils—and Industrial Unionism, with its idiocy of proposing that unarmed men can beat the Army, as new forms of organisation for the working class.

Apart from the evidence it supplies of the ignorance and conceit of the “intellectuals” who contribute to its pages, the worth of the pam­phlet to students of sociology is measured by the price of waste paper.

Jack Fitzgerald

Aspect: Increasing Misery (1971)

The Aspect column from the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The theory of The Socialist Party of Great Britain is Marxist in the sense that certain of our key ideas about society, economics and politics are derived from Karl Marx.

Although our case rests entirely on its own merits and not on what Marx may or may not have said, we have always been ready to defend Marx’s views where we believe them to be correct against criticisms based on an ignorance of what he wrote.

Recently for instance, the Guardian claimed that “Marx has been proved wrong on fundamentals; the workers far from being denied a fair share of profits and so becoming poorer, are vastly better off”. Is this true? Was it fundamental to Marx’s economic theory that under capitalism the workers would come to own less and less material possessions?

The short answer is, No. Marx did not believe that the amount of goods and services the workers consumed would necessarily have to decline. What he did say was that the misery of the workers would increase, but he did not equate this misery with destitution. For him, as we shall see, misery referred to the general circumstances under which workers, however well-paid, had to live and work.

Poverty can be used in two senses: absolutely, to refer to a low standard of living in terms of a given small amount of goods and services, or relatively, to refer to a low standard of living compared with that of others. There can be no doubt as to where Marx stood on this issue. In one of his earliest economic writings Wage Labour and Capital (first given as a series of lectures in 1847, and revised and republished by Engels in 1891) Marx wrote:

  A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighbouring palace grows an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls. 

  A noticeable increase in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. The rapid growth of productive capital brings about an equally rapid growth of wealth, luxury, social wants, social enjoyments. Thus, although the enjoyments of the worker have risen, the social satisfaction that they give has fallen in comparison with the increased enjoyments of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the state of development of society in general. Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.” (Marx-Engels Selected Works, Vol. 1, pp.93-94, Moscow, 1958)

Marx understood subsistence, too, in a relative sense. According to his theory, wages fluctuate about the subsistence level of the worker. Certain critics (and even supporters) have taken this to mean that there was a fixed amount of goods and services above which real wages could never rise. This so-called Iron Law of Wages was repudiated by Marx. He regarded the subsistence level as something which varied not only amongst workers of different skills but also from place to place, in the same place at different times and even, to a small extent, under the influence of the workers’ own trade union activities.

To suggest that Marx expected wages to fall towards, and even below, some absolute poverty line is to misunderstand him completely.

Marx also writes in Wage Labour and Capital that, even though the most favourable situation for the working class under capitalism is the fastest possible growth of capital, “however much it may improve the material existence of the worker, does not remove the antagonism between his interests and … the interests of the capitalists” (p.98). Marx returned to this theme in Chapter XXV of Capital which considers “the ‘influence of the growth of capital on the lot of the labouring class”.

Marx’s comments on the occasions when the wages of some workers have risen as a result of a temporary labour shortage again make it quite clear that high wages do not end the economic exploitation of the working class.

  The more or less favourable circumstances in which the wage-working class supports and multiplies itself, in no way alters the fundamental character of capitalist production.” (p.613).

  A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of capital, only means, in fact, that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage-worker has already forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it. (p.618, Moscow, 1961). 

Later in the same chapter just before the passage about the “accumulation of misery”, Marx explicitly states that high wages do not affect the misery of workers either:

   In proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. (p.645)

Clearly by misery Marx cannot have meant absolute poverty. For, as this passage shows, workers may be better off materially but still worse off in some other sense. This referred to the conditions under which they had to work. Marx mentions the boring drudgery workers had to perform under capitalism in place of the pleasure they could get in a Socialist society from creating useful things. He also mentions the fact that workers are employed by capitalists and deprived by them of the fruits of their labour. As he put it in 1875 in a criticism of the Iron Law of Wages:

  The wage-worker has permission to work for his own subsistence, that is, to live, only insofar as he workers for a certain time gratis for the capitalist (and hence also for the latter’s  co-consumers of surplus value); that the whole capitalist system of production turns on the increase of this gratis labour by extending the working day or by developing the productivity, that is, increasing the intensity of labour power, etc.; that, consequently, the system of wage labour is a system of slavery, and indeed of a slavery which becomes more severe in proportion as the social productive forces of labour develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment. (“Critique of the Gotha Programme”, Selected Works, Vol. II, p.29)

In the next article we will examine this concept of “relative wages” which Marx did believe would tend to decline under capitalism.

In the meantime readers are referred to two useful articles: 

• Poverty or Misery? Socialist Standard, January 1957. 
• Marx’s “Increasing Misery” Doctrine by Thomas Sowell, American Economic Review, March 1960.

Marx, Malthus and Mr. Strachey (1957)

From the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Strachey in his book Contemporary Capitalism (pp. 88, 89), says, “Marx in spite of his dislike for Malthus and all his theories agreed that a rapidly rising population would help to depress the standard of life of the wage worker.” Natural fertility would always be increasing the number of workers competing for jobs and this would be further augmented by the displacement of workers by continuous mechanisation. Mr. Strachey asserts that not only did Marx say this but he also went on to deduce from it that a labour shortage could never arise. Moreover because or the ever-increasing deadweight of unwanted workers on the labour market, wages would not only be forced down to a bare subsistence level but even increasingly below it. Thus as the result of capital accumulation the mass of the population would come to exist on a semi-starvation diet insufficient for the replacement of their working energies.

Mr. Strachey offers nothing to support these astonishing statements. He merely tells us airily that it can all be found in “the central chapters of Vol. I. of Capital.” But where we are to look for actual quotations or specific references for Mr. Strachey’s claims, God alone knows and Mr. Strachey presumably shares the secret with him.

Our advice to Mr. Strachey is first catch your facts before you cook them. Perhaps a quotation from one of the central chapters in Vol. I. of Capital will show that Mr. Strachey can economise truth as well as evidence. In Vol. I. of Capital (p. 626, Swan Sonnenchein edition), Marx states: —

  “The requirements of accumulating capital may exceed the increase of labour-power or of the number of labourers; the demand for labourers may exceed the supply. This must ultimately be the case if the conditions supposed above continue. For since in each year more labourers are employed than in its predecessor, sooner or later a point must be reached at which the requirements of accumulation begin to surpass the customary supply of labour and therefore a rise of wages takes place.”

The challenge to Mr. Strachey is to show us where in Marx’s economic analysis of Capitalism his conclusions pointed to the depressing of wages to the barest physical level, as the outcome of capital accumulation. So far from that being true, Marx in a detailed analysis in one of the central chapters in Vol. I. of Capital, viz., “Capital Accumulation,” shows the tendency for wages to rise under the impact of accumulation. Nevertheless Marx also pointed out that the defensive mechanism of Capitalism is such as to prevent rising wages from absorbing the whole of profits.

In the first place capital accumulation tends to slacken off appreciably should there occur a sharp threat to profit margins—and rising wage levels can constitute such a threat.

Secondly a typical reaction to advancing wages is the substitution of mechanical power for labour power. The net effect of each concern in its efforts to reduce “labour costs,” will, by freeing workers, bring into being an industrial reserve army or as Marx alternatively calls it “relative over-population ” which by its active competition on the labour market, exerts a downward pressure on wage levels.

The Factors Affecting Wages

The impulse for wages to rise under the stimulus of expanding capital accumulation produces in turn a counter tendency for them to fall. It is this profit motivated expansion and contraction of capital accumulation with its expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army which constitutes the regulating principle in determining the upper and lower limits of wage levels.

Marx’s solution to the way Capitalism deals with the threat of rising wage levels can be stated in his own words, Capital, Vol. I. (p. 653, Swan Sonnenchein Ed.).

  “The industrial reserve army during the period of stagnation and average prosperity weigh down the active labour army; during the periods of over-production it holds its pretensions in check. Relative surplus population is therefore the pivot upon which the law of demand and supply of labour works. It confines the field of action of this law within the limits absolutely convenient to the activity of exploitation and to the domination of capital.”

Marx’s concept of relative over-population does not rest then on the assumptions of any particular population theory. It is valid whether we are dealing with a rising population, a stationary population, or even a relatively declining one.

If, for instance, we examine a particular country where capital accumulation has historically got under way, we find that an increased working population is one of its necessary adjuncts. In the genesis of capital accumulation the labour force necessary for its expansion is historically recruited by means of land expropriation, the ruin of domestic industry and the elimination of the independent craftsman. Even so this may be inadequate for its needs and in that case an intensive and extensive recruitment for additional labour supplies may be resorted to both inside and outside the national area.

On the other hand in a country where economic development is retarded and capital accumulation lags as a result, although the population may be stationary or even relatively declining, there may be considerable unemployment i.e. relative over-population.

It can be seen then that the Malthusian theory of over-population affords no clue to the emergence of an industrial reserve army in Capitalism.

It might also be mentioned as a point of interest that the growth of capital accumulation in the latter half of the 19th century gave rise to labour shortages in various sections of industry. Moreover large bodies of workers were now organised in strong trade unions and were prepared to make the most of the conditions. Thus in place of flexibility certain rigidities were appearing on the labour market.

The Capitalist answer to this less easy situation in the labour market was more extensive mechanisation and the effect of this is redundancy of workers and the net result an increase in labour supply with its tendency to depress wages.

Through such economic agencies did Capitalism maintain, perpetuate and at times multiply relative over-population and this was going on when a relative decline in fertility rates was taking place, for it was round about the 1870’s that there began marked decline in population trends in the most advanced western countries. Thus the emergence and maintenance of an industrial reserve army, is a phenomenon of Capitalist society irrespective of changes in population trends and contrary to the foolish assertions of Mr. Strachey.

The Changing Composition of Capital

Now what Marx did point out was something quite different from Mr. Strachey’s interpretation of what he said. What Marx actually did say was that the concentration and growth of capital accumulation had certain consequences which affected the lot of the working class and expressed itself in what he termed the changing character of the composition of capital.

If, said Marx, we examine the total outlay of capital, we shall find that the part spent on the means of production i.e. plant, tools, buildings, etc., and called by him “constant capital,” tends to increase relatively to the part spent on wage payments or what he termed “variable capital.” Now seeing that the demand for labour-power is determined not by the total capital outlay of investment but by the variable part of it alone, then although the demand for labour-power increases absolutely, as total capital expenditure increases, the demand falls relatively to the magnitude of the total capital outlay.

Stated as a general theoretical proposition it is this process of capital accumulation as stated above which, as the history of Capitalism shows, has produced relative over-population, or as Marx states, “a population of greater extent than suffices for the average needs of the self-expansion of capital.”

Marx rejected Malthus in toto. “An abstract of law of population,” he said, “exists for plants and animals only, and only in so far as man has not interfered with them.” (Capital Vol. I., p. 645). He also referred to Malthus’s theory as the dogma of the economist and a libel on the human race. Marx categorically denied that population factors were in any way responsible for mass unemployment and poverty.

Rejecting eternal laws of population supposedly applicable to all societies, Marx formulated the proposition that every stage of historical development had its own laws of population. It was not merely that Marx asserted it but he set out to demonstrate it by a detailed investigation of the law of motion of Capitalist society. He was thus able to formulate a law of population peculiar to Capitalism, a law which fitted the facts of the contemporary situation in a way which the eternal laws of Malthus could not do.

The “Iron Law of Wages”

When, therefore, Mr. Strachey asserts that Marx accepted Lassalle’s iron law of wages (Contemporary Capitalism, p. 105), but for politically tactical reasons appeared to oppose it, one realises just how disingenuous Mr. Strachey can be.

In case anybody might be deceived by the pseudo-learned sophistry of Mr. Strachey, let us state that Lassalle took his concept of the iron law of wages from Malthus and Ricardo, not from Marx. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx repudiated in all its forms, the iron law of wages. He said, “If excess of population is the cause of poverty then Socialism can not abolish poverty which has its basis in nature.” For Marx poverty and mass unemployment in Capitalism cannot be explained wholly or in part as due to an increase in natural fertility rates.

Engels in a letter to Bebel (March, 1875) said categorically that Lassalle’s iron law of wages was “a false statement with a false basis.” He also said “Marx proved in detail in Capital that the laws regulating wages are very complicated  . . . they are in no sense iron but on the contrary very elastic.” Evidently Engels was unable to find in “these central chapters of Capital,” what Mr. Strachey found there.

Nothing exhibits Mr. Strachey’s obfuscation of Marx more than his assertion that if Marx had only diagnosed a tendency towards ever-increasing poverty and final economic collapse instead of making it the automatic outcome of the workings of Capitalism, he would have been justified instead of being falsified. This, itself, is a falsification of Marx’s views which is either due to sheer ineptitude or the bad intent of the apologetic.

The Automatic Breakdown of Capitalism

Marx’s economic analysis never indicates some automatic breakdown of Capitalism. Nor even a tendency towards that end. Thus Mr. Strachey accuses Marx of something he never said, then reproaches him for not saying what Mr. Strachey thinks he ought to have said. Again not only has Mr. Strachey confused notions in seeing in the system a tendency towards greater poverty and collapse, but he reproaches Marx for not sharing his confusion.

Mr. Strachey then blandly assures us that although such a tendency inheres in Capitalism the Labour Movement has overruled this tendency. Mr. Strachey makes central to the Labour Movement the franchise, social reforms and trade unions, whereas in actual fact they are the outcome of the development of Capitalism itself. Such things are not the counter-balance of the Labour Party against some non-existent tendency but an aspect of the normal regularisation necessary to an exploitative system.

Theoretically Mr. Strachey sees the possibilities of this inherent tendency to breakdown producing on a greater scale, slumps, lowered standards of living, etc., but believes that the Labour Party will so manage and regulate Capitalism as to confer on it all the advantages of Socialism. Lord Keynes has made all this possible. Mr. Strachey is, of course, a great admirer of Keynes, whose sole claim to economic originality was to plagiarise Malthus’s doctrine of effective demand.

But this is another story and here we must take leave of Mr. Strachey and Malthus—both in their different ways, shallow and false prophets.

Ted Wilmott

Poverty or Misery? (1957)

From the January 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his book Contemporary Capitalism, Mr. Strachey echoes Bernstein in asserting that Marx held that the economic laws of Capitalism are such as to not only keep the standard of living of the working class down to a bare subsistence level but owing to the downward pressure which these “laws” exert, force this subsistence level even lower. This leads Marx to conclude, says Mr. Strachey again echoing Bernstein, that vast overproduction, leading to a final economic collapse and violent revolution would inevitably follow. Like Bernstein Mr. Strachey never offers to really explain what these laws are, nor how they are supposed to operate.

Mr. Strachey hangs his misrepresentation of Marx on the slender thread of two quotations of a few lines and isolated from the context in which they occur. The first is from the Communist Manifesto. It reads: “The modern labourer . . . instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth.”

But the Manifesto was largely a propagandist pamphlet written in highly generalised and scathing language, hardly the place a cull a few lines from as crucial proof of what Mr. Strachey deems the heart of Marxism, i.e., ever worsening poverty for the mass and ultimate economic collapse. Surely on “so vital a matter” Mr. Strachey had the whole of Marx’s detailed analysis from which to chose but he would not have found there what he so obviously wanted to find.

Actually what Marx and Engels were pointing out in the last but one paragraph in section one of the Manifesto from which Mr. Strachey quotes was that the industrial progress of Capitalism not only places the worker in economic jeopardy but one of its consequences is to deprive him of a livelihood and so compel him to live beneath the conditions of existence of his own class and as they add “instead of feeding the bourgeoisie he has to be fed by them.”

According to Mr. Strachey’s interpretation of this, Marx envisaged the end product of Capitalist development as the conversion of the mass of producers of surplus value, into idle consumers of surplus products that is if in such a state of affairs there was anything left to consume. Mr. Strachey cannot of course point to anything in Marx’s economic analysis of Capitalism which remotely suggests such a conclusion.

Marx in fact never speaks of a law of absolute poverty, nor does he make the growth of poverty a necessary outcome of Capitalist development. For Marx poverty is not something absolute and physical but something relative and social. That Marx left no room for doubt on this matter is seen in a work written incidentally before the Manifesto, Wage Labour and Capital. On (p 33) he states:

  “A house may be large or small; as long as the neighbouring houses are likewise small it satisfies all social requirements. But let there arise next to the little house, a palace and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position to maintain or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace rises in equal or greater measure the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.”

For Marx the social conditions of one class cannot be determined except by reference to some other class or classes. Thus he declares, “our wants and pleasures are measured in relation to society, not in the objects which serve their gratification.” In answer to the assertions in Mr. Strachey’s book (p. 101) that Marx held that Capitalism condemns the working class to a perpetual lowering of wages, Marx replies on (p. 33) in Wage Labour and Capital, by stating, that a rapid growth of productive capital involves an appreciable rise in wages. That he does not consider poverty an essential condition for Socialism is made quite clear on p. 39 of the same pamphlet when he declares, “the most rapid growth of capital however much it may improve the material life of the worker, does not abolish the antagonism between his interests and the interests of the Capitalist.”

To Mr. Strachey’s unwarrantable assertion that Marx believed in an iron or fixed law of wages, Marx in the work, Value, Price and Profit, says, “the value of labour (power) itself is not a fixed but a variable magnitude, even supposing the value of all other commodities to remain the same.”

On pages 87 and 88 of the same work, Marx, treating of the struggle between Capitalists and workers over the division of social wealth, states, although we can determine the minimum of wages i.e. the essentials necessary to maintain the worker physically, we cannot fix their maximum. The struggle between employers seeking to gain the greatest possible profit and workers striving for the highest possible wages, resolves itself, says Marx, “into a question of the respective powers of the combatants.”

To Mr. Strachey’s assertion that Marx held that workers’ wages represent bare subsistence, or to put alternatively are the cost of mere replacement of physical energies used up in the productive process, Mr. Strachey, if he cares to read Capital (p. 631), will find Marx stating the working class “can extend the circle of their enjoyments, can make some additions to their consumption fund of clothes, furniture, etc., and can lay by small reserve funds of money. But just as little do better clothes, food and a larger peculium do away with the exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the wage worker.”

Marx then made it crystal clear that the value of labour-power is determined by two elements; one merely physical and the other he calls, historical and moral. By the latter he meant that in different periods and in different countries—even in different localities, there is a traditional standard of life which workers feel is indispensable to their existence. Hence any attempt to lower it will provoke the strongest resistance. Thus, when workers combine in trade unions to maintain or increase wages, they are not fighting hopelessly against some iron law of wages, which must assert itself in the long run but are expressing the historical and moral element involved in the value of labour-power and so helping “to mould the traditional standards of the future.” Marx was aware of the tendency of wages to rise under the impact of capital accumulation. He certainly never believed, however, that wage increases would absorb the whole of profits, never reach a point “where the system itself is threatened.” (Capital, p. 632).

On the other hand, said Marx, there are tendencies in Capitalism which set up a strong counter resistance to rising wages. These tendencies include, the substitution of mechanical power for labour power, the recurring crises of the system and to a lesser degree the export of capital to places where cheaper sources of labour power are available. Thus increased unemployment will lead to increased competition for jobs and downward pressures on existing wage levels. While Marx believed that trade unions could have a retarding effect on these tendencies, he did not believe they could reverse their direction. (Value, Price and Profit, p. 93).

When Marx speaks in the same pamphlet (p. 92) of the general tendency in Capitalism to sink rather than raise wages it can be seen from the foregoing that such a tendency is a marked feature of Capitalism and inseparable from a wages system.

Marx, however, in spite of Mr. Strachey’s profound misunderstanding on the matter, never equates these tendencies to the totality of Capitalist social relations. Marx true to his own historic standpoint, reveals the powerful refracting effects on these tendencies by the social factor of the class struggle. For Marx there are no laws of motion of Capitalist society existing in isolation, there are only laws of motion as modified by human beings. Mr. Strachey not understanding this, does not understand the historical method of Marx.

Which brings us to Mr. Strachey’s other quotation, making a grand total of two. This quotation is from the Eden and Cedar Paul translation of Capital. Because Mr. Strachey has made his central point an assertion that Marx believed in some process of a growth of absolute poverty, he has good reasons for using this particular translation rather than the fourth German edition, translated by Samuel Moore and edited by Frederick Engels. In this last-named edition the quotation given by Mr. Strachey is: “Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, slavery, degradation, exploitation . . .” (Capital, p. 789 Swan Sonnenchein edition). In the Eden and Cedar Paul translation the word “misery” is altered to poverty. One might also point out that in this same edition, several words are arbitrarily and erroneously changed. The word misery it might also be mentioned is used in the Kerr edition and in the Allen and Unwin edition translated by Dona Torr. This edition was highly praised by Mr. Strachey himself. Also in Value, Price and Profit (p. 93) Marx speaks of the miseries imposed by Capitalism not the poverty, etc.

It may also be noted that the quotation given by Mr. Strachey is merely the briefest of passing references on the subject of Marx. One wonders why Mr. Strachey didn’t quote from Capital (p. 661, Swan Sonnenchein edition) where Marx clearly and explicitly states what he means by misery. But then Mr. Strachey would not have been able to prove what he wanted to prove.

Dealing with the effects of capital accumulation on the working class, Marx states:

  “They mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of the appendage of a machines destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hateful toil; they estrange him from the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power. … It follows therefore in proportion as capital accumulates the lot of labourer, be his wages high or low, must grow worse. It establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with the accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, accumulation of misery, agony, toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole.” (Italics ours.)

Marx then does not relate misery to the sum of wages a worker gets but to the social conditions of his existence. Engels in a letter to Bebel (March 1875) rebukes those people who falsify Marx by stating he believed in an iron law of wages. Engels also says that “Marx showed in Capital that the laws regulating wages are very complicated . . . they are in no sense iron but very elastic.”

Mr. Strachey did not always accept the view that Marx equated the value of labour power with a bare subsistence level, or the mere physical replacement of working energies. In his book, The Nature of Capitalist Crisis (p. 197) he associated himself with the following: “the value of labour-power is the sum of commodities, necessary to keep the worker in health and strength and enable him to keep his children in equal health and strength and technical ability.” Neither are we given the slightest hint in that work of one of the central assertions which Mr. Strachey makes in his latest book which is that Marx held that such would be the level of poverty of the workers that they would be unable to efficiently perform their working tasks.

Must we conclude that when Mr. Strachey was a “Marxist” he did not really understand Marxism and only understands it now he isn’t? Or could it be truly said that he has never really understood Marxism at any time?

Ted Wilmott

(In the next issue we shall deal with Mr. Strachey’s fantastic assertion that Marx was at bottom a Malthusian)