50 Years Ago: Social Security and Wages (1980)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is the value to the workers of giving unemployment pay if the ‘gift’ is accompanied by a reduction in wages? The existence of a large and increasing army of unemployed puts the employers always in the position of being able to secure such readjustments. In a report on wages in the wool textile industry. Lord MacMillan, appointed by the Labour Government to reside over a court of inquiry, recommends a wage reduction. He uses as one of his justifications for reducing pay the fact that social services have lessened the demands on the workers’ wages. In effect the ‘gains’ received by the vast efforts of the Labour Party and its supporters over many years are being nullified by reductions in wages. The reforms reduce the workers’ cost of living, but the employers it is who reap the benefit.

From an editorial ‘The Uselessness of Reforms’ Socialist Standard April 1930.

Political Notes: Spare coppers for the police (1980)

The Political Notes Column from the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPARE COPPERS FOR THE POLICE

But if money is tight for education, social services, housing, OAPs, the unemployed, mothers, the sick, there is one organisation for which the benevolent Tories have always got a spare copper—the police. The Chairman of the West Midland Police Committee, Councillor Ronald Wooten, is reported as calling “for the trimming of ‘candy floss’ items, such as education and social services so that more money would be available for the police” (The Guardian 6.3.80). The Chief Constable of the West Midlands, Sir Philip Knights, explained that the increased police forces were necessary to deal with “political and industrial demonstrations”.

At least this Councillor and Chief Cop have got their priorities clear; the police must be sufficiently staffed to allow thousands of them suddenly to appear when workers go on strike because of their low pay or rotten working conditions. These spokesmen for the most hard line and vicious elements of the capitalist class clearly want to ensure both that workers’ living standards are cut and that there is no effective protest that can be made. “A regular commitment to public order situations” (as Chief Constable Knights put it) is more important than a bit of extra cash for those in desperate need.

COMPLAINTS

As a final irony, the West Midlands Police Committee have asked for an additional Assistant Chief Constable. They are going to get one; no question of jobs being frozen or no new recruitment here. And what will his (it will be a he) job be? Knights said that “the increased number of complaints against the force meant that the Deputy Chief Constable was overburdened”. So the new Assistant Chief Constable will deal with the complaints. No doubt the Conservative Manifesto in 1979 meant what it said: “The most disturbing threat to freedom and security is the growing disrespect for the rule of law”; it might have added, that the police themselves disregard the law when it suits them. One piece of London graffiti sums it up: “Help the Police—beat yourself up”.

SURPRISE?

It is no use being surprised at the Tory hash or the Tory harshness, or shocked that money is apparently available for overt repression, but not for “social” services. Capitalism is going through a crisis, and the workers get squeezed even harder. Thousands may march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square to protest as they did on Sunday 9 March. But mere protests leave capitalism untouched. The annals of history are littered with the dead of those who only protested.

FRIEDMANITE GURUS

It is no wonder the Tory government is in such a mess. The Tories are making a speciality of Milton Friedmanite policies with the guru himself explaining them at peak viewing hours. He claims his monetarist dogmas will prevent everything from unemployment to World War III, as he trips through the sweat shops of Hong Kong, waving his arms and talking of freedom. Even Keith Joseph must see the incongruity. But even worse is the activity of another guru, the London Business School. This prestigious training centre for capitalist managerial hacks, has for the last few years regularly trotted out gloomy reports and urged the sort of monetarist clap-trap that the Thatcherite evangelists have preached ever since Sailor Heath was made to walk the plank. So much did Maggie love the LBS’s reports that she drafted in one of its Professors (Terry Burns) to be her government’s economic adviser. (The 1964 Wilson government tried a similar dodge. They got their economic illusionists from Cambridge the farce of the Kaldor-Balogh reign.)

The declared policy of Tory Chancellor Geoffrey Howe is to try to reduce the public sector borrowing requirements by further cuts in government expenditure. But the LBS is up in arms about this. The Guardian (3.3.80) comments: “By persisting with its plans to control the borrowing requirements next year the Chancellor is going out on a limb and ignoring advice from an organisation from which it derived much of its previous monetarist inspiration”. Others are getting in on the act of criticising government economic strategy. “A strong call for a Government Incomes Policy comes today from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Its February Review argues that without an Incomes Policy fiscal and monetary measures alone would not be enough to achieve conventional economic policy goals” (Daily Mail 3.3.80). Is it coincidental that the Treasury has reduced the National Institute’s budget by half for the next year?

But no wonder Thatcher is confused. After all, she is only doing what the LBS, the National Institute and Milton Friedman have been demanding for years. Even the Archbishop of Reactionism, F. Hayek, is getting in on the act, writing angry letters to the press complaining that the government is causing inflation (The Times 5.3.80). Poor Thatcher; if the Hayeks and the Friedmans, the LBSs and the NIs are abandoning her, then she really is going to be left without a friend in the world.

MONEY TALKS

Still, this talk of money is a little irrelevant; after all most people don’t see very much of the stuff. A Low Pay Unit report in October last year said that a record number of people were living in officially designated poverty conditions. British mothers are given the second lowest maternity grant in Europe (only Eire is worse) and even some of the poor “third world” countries manage to find more for expectant mothers and new-born babies than Britain (The Times 23.11.79). Of course, the Tories would say, this does not matter in Britain because living standards have risen greatly over the last hundred years. That is what they would like us to believe anyway. But another Low Pay Unit report in February this year disclosed that the poorest workers in Britain earn less today in relation to average pay than in the 1880s. Nearly 6 million adult workers (34 per cent of the labour force) earn less than £60 per week. “They would have needed to earn that amount to be left with an income after tax equivalent to the official poverty line, as measured by the supplementary benefit rates for a family with 2 children . . . In fact the report states, the pattern of low pay since the 1880s shows a depressing rigidity” (The Times 11.2.80). Whether Tories or Labour are in power, capitalist interests come first.

Ronnie Warrington

What we ought to do (1980)

From the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

A major part of our lives is spent working for the benefit of another class. We sell our abilities for the highest wage we can get—and call that success, although in so doing we lose control of something irreplaceable—our  time. We’ve little say in the organisation of our working life, in what we produce, the quality of what we make and so on. We don’t need to make things which simply fall apart. Many of us spend hour after hour, every day, doing monotonous, repetitive jobs which mean little to us but which help give our masters, the capitalists, a life of freedom. Anyway, we’re only allowed to work when those masters see the chance to make a profit out of it.

And what can we have instead? A worldwide socialist society offers us an alternative way of life. First, we won’t be supporting any property-monopolising class and we won’t be wasting our time making bombs, working in banks and the like. We'll democratically control our own work as society requires and we'll only turn out the best available and possible. When we are not making for the market we won’t need to make things which fall apart.

We can achieve security, abundance and fulfillment in a socialist society. Now, what are you going to do about it?

S. F.

A new translation of Marx's "Capital" (1980)

Book Review from the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1976 Penguin published a new translation of Volume I of Marx’s Capital. In his preface the translator, Ben Fowkes, gives two reasons why he feels a new translation was necessary. First, that the English language has changed since the first English edition, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling under the supervision of Engels, was published in 1887. Secondly that, with the increased knowledge of Marx’s ideas since 1887, there is no longer any need to shield the reader from some of the more difficult passages which Marx left out, for instance, in the French edition. These, says Fowkes, can be restored despite their difficulty.

On the first point Fowkes is undoubtedly right. Today, nearly a hundred years later, the Moore-Aveling translation has become, due to changes in English usage, a bit stilted. The reader’s concentration on the particular point Marx is trying to make is made more difficult by having at the same time to transform certain old-fashioned phrases into their modern equivalents. But the ideas expressed by Marx in Capital ought to be available in as readable a form as possible since they provide a clear explanation of how the working class are exploited under capitalism and of how capitalism can only work to their detriment. Every class-conscious worker should have a go at reading Capital and may be pleasantly surprised to find that the economic theory alternates with historical accounts of the past sufferings and struggles of the working class in Britain. And the ideas expressed in Capital are of course also the basis of the economic analyses made in the columns of this journal.

Judged by this standard of making Capital easier to read, Fowkes’ translation by and large succeeds. To give an example of the sort of changes made, we can mention that the words productiveness and labourer have been replaced, in accordance with modern usage, by productivity and worker. In addition. Capital’s subtitle is translated as “A Critique of Political Economy” (instead of as “A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production”), so making it quite clear that Marx was not simply criticising capitalism but also the categories used by economic theory generally.

However, there is one change of Fowkes’ which works in the opposite direction, making understanding more difficult. A key word used by Marx is the verb verwerten and its noun Verwertung. These are everyday German words which mean literally something like “putting to good/profitable/valuable use”. Marx uses them in a special sense, in relation to “value” and “capital”, to mean the use of value or capital in such a way that their size is increased-hence a good or profitable or valuable use. Moore, Aveling and Engels chose to translate Verwertung as “expansion”, “increase” and “augmentation”, so that their English translation speaks of “the expansion of value”, the “self-expansion of capital”, and so on.

Fowkes introduces a new word to translate Marx here: valorisation (and, for the verb, valorise). While not denying that it is sometimes necessary to introduce a new word to refer to a new concept, is it really necessary in this case? Valorisation is not an entirely new word since it does already figure in dictionaries; according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary it means “raise or stabilise the value of (a commodity, etc.) by government action”—hardly what Marx meant! But valorisation, in Fowkes’ sense, is a new word, the working out of whose meaning is only going to make the reading and understanding of Capital more, not less, difficult.

It is also a pity that Penguin did not let Marx speak for himself and considered it necessary to add an 80-page introduction by Ernest Mandel. Certainly, Mandel has a knowledge of some aspects of Marxian economics but, as a Trotskyist, he is quite unqualified to write an introduction to Capital. For instance, he refers to Russia, East Europe, China, North Vietnam, North Korca(!) and Cuba as “societies in which the rule of capital has already been overthrown” (p. 16). Really? Are we supposed to accept, then, that wealth in these countries does not “appear as an immense collection of commodities” as Marx says in the very first line of Capital is the case in “societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails”? Again, Mandel talks of capitalism as being characterised by “production for private profit” (p. 11). So, production for state profit what might be called the self-expansion of state capital—as in Russia, apparently isn’t capitalism! Then, to cap it all, we are told that the working class needs a “revolutionary leadership” (p. 84)—doubtless Mandel and his Trotskyist supporters in the New Left Review who prepared this new translation for Penguin.

If all this is the price we have to pay for not having to buy editions of Capital from state capitalist Russia then it is almost too high.

Adam Buick

Letters: Jesus Christ: myth or reality (1980)

Letters to the Editors from the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jesus Christ: myth or reality

L. E. Weidberg in the article “Jesus Christ Supermyth” (Socialist Standard February) argues no other documents exist to corroborate the New Testament. He also says that the clearest reference to the existence of Jesus outside the New Testament itself is found in Josephus, and that this was faked by a Christian. Since it is his opinion that we have lots of writings from periods even more ancient than those mentioned in the New Testament, he sees this as evidence that their text is to be cast aside in toto, for they were composed around 300-400 years after the events they purport to relate.

No student of history rejects the writings of the classical authors in our possession merely because they are late copies of the originals. Thus, Caesar’s Gallic Wars, composed between 58-50BC, is known only in late manuscripts, the earliest of which is dated around 900 AD. Similarly, the history of Thucydides (460-400BC) and Herodotus (488-428BC) have as their earliest manuscript one from around 900AD.

Between 90-160AD many works were written by the so-called Apostolic Fathers. These show an intimate knowledge of the New Testament text, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Barnabus and Polycarp, among others, all freely quote the text of the New Testament from memory. So it must have been freely circulating around the Middle East.

That text contains many references to officials in various cities, as well as customs among the various people visited by the early Christian propagandists (if I may use that term?). These references have been verified time and again by archaeological research. In proof I cite the researches of Professor F. F. Bruce in Jesus and the Christian Origins Outside the New Testament.

Early Jewish writings mention Jesus. Those who fled from Palestine at the sack of Jerusalem under Yohanan codified their religious laws and traditions. These later became known as the Mishnah. They describe Jesus as a magician who led the people astray. They say he was executed on Passover Eve for heresy. In a startling confirmation of the New Testament, Jesus is called “Ha-Taluy” The Hanged One. (Let me point out that crucifixion was a Roman, not a Jewish mode of execution. Jews stoned to death those adjudged worthy of capital punishment). They also named Jesus “Ben-Pantera”—Son of the Virgin.

Your assertion that some Christian “faked” the writings of Josephus is highly contentious. There is a Slavonic version usually seen as being a Christian interpolation; but how do we know that they did not have some text even more ancient than those which we know about to draw upon? On top of that, it was after all Origen, a Christian writer, who drew attention to the fact that Jospehus did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Yet two references to Jesus exist outside the Slavonic version of Josephus. One of them says Ananias the high-priest tried James, “the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ”. For the other one you must read Dr. H. St. John Thackeray’s Josephus, the Man and the Historian, p. 125. He shows that the interpretation of Josephus is not so simple. There are disputes about the whole affair among scholars.

All this shows us, then, that the text of the New Testament is quite authentic when it deals with material affairs like officials, and various customs among the people in the Middle East of those days. Doubt only enters when they begin to relate miraculous events, and religious affairs. Atheists who read the Socialist Standard reject these last as gross superstitions. Having no faith in the existence and power of God, they can obtain no comfort from the New Testament. Christians, believing both, can: we say that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”. The more we read, then, the more we are convinced.

H. C. Mullin, 

Glasgow

The humanist view

In case anyone thinks that L. E. Weidberg’s article attacking the historicity of Jesus is far-fetched, I am writing to support it with a summary of the evidence. The whole issue is discussed in detail in two books by G. A. Wells—The Jesus of the Early Christians (1971) and Did Jesus Exist? (1975)—published by Pemberton, and the relevant sources are presented in C. K. Barrett’s anthology, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (1956), published by SPCK.

According to Christian doctrine, Jesus was born soon before the death of Herod the Great and at the time of the Roman census of Judaea (unfortunately, the former occurred in 4BC and the latter in AD6!), and was crucified in about AD30. Yet no contemporary evidence about him has survived, and the earliest independent evidence about him dates from about AD110; even the earliest Christian evidence dates from several decades after his supposed death.

The earliest Epistles of Paul, which date from the 50s and 60s, contain virtually no information about the life or death or about the teachings of Jesus; according to his own testament, Paul knew nothing of Jesus and rejected Christianity until he was convinced by a vision. The Gospels, which were compiled by unknown writers in unknown ways from unknown sources in unknown places between about 70 and 110, contain virtually no information which even claims to be first-hand, which is corroborated elsewhere, or which is consistent with what is known about Judaea in the early first century. There is no reference to them until the mid-second century, and it is interesting that the first Christian Fathers referred to the Epistles but not to the Gospels

The earliest non-Christian references to Jesus appeared in the 110s. Pliny the Younger, writing to the Emperor Trajan, refers not to Jesus living in Palestine in 30 but Christians worshipping Christ as a God in Asia Minor in 112. Tacitus and Suetonius, writing histories of Rome during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, refer to troubles associated with Christians in Rome under Claudius Nero; but their accounts are not reflected in any contemporary or any Christian source, and they seem to confuse Christians with Jews, which would be understandable at a time when many Jews had become Christians. Thus their story that Nero blamed the fire of 64 on the Christians was not told by Christians; and Suetonius’ reference to “Chrestus” causing trouble in Rome in the 50s is hardly evidence for Christians making trouble there then or in Jerusalem twenty years earlier. Tacitus does add that Christ was put to death by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, but this was Christian doctrine when Tacitus was writing and he may have heard it from them.

There is no Jewish reference to Jesus in such first-century writers as Philo and Josephus, and the earliest references appear in the second-century Talmud. They suggest that he was human rather than divine, and a bastard rather than the Messiah, which hardly supports Christian doctrine.

The early Christians were acutely aware of the absence of good evidence for the life and death of Jesus, so they perpetrated what were called “pious frauds” to fill the gap. In the second century Justin and Tertullian referred to official reports by Pontius Pilate, and in the fourth century Eusebius quoted letters between Paul and Seneca. Above all, some time between the early third century and the early fourth century, the famous reference to Jesus was interpolated into Josephus's history of the Jews. This forgery destroys itself, since it makes Josephus, who was a religious Jew, refer to Jesus as if he were the Messiah and a divine being. None of this material is accepted by any serious Christian scholar today.

Nicolas Walter,

The New Humanist

Our reply

Pressure on space has forced us to make some cuts in these letters—without, of course, altering their meaning. We feel they can be published without our own detailed reply, since the historical evidence given by Nicolas Walter answers the objections raised by Mr. Mullin.

Two comments we must make. The issue of whether a man called Jesus Christ lived or not is interesting, but not so vital as to destroy, or even damage the socialist case against religion and for the materialist conception of history. Workers who are suppressed and exploited under capitalism should keep their attention upon the real, material world in which they live; this is the only life we know we have and we must struggle to make it the best of all possible experiences. All religion is a diversion from the workers’ urgent task of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism. Apart from this, there is no evidence which can stand up to a scientific assessment to indicate that there is a supernatural life or any of the other mumbo jumbo associated with religious beliefs.

From this, we argue that people like Nicolas Walter would do better to preoccupy themselves with propagating socialist ideas, rather than with combatting religious ones. Religion, after all, is only one of the theories popular among non-socialist workers and which stand in the way of our getting socialism now.

Finally—we have received several letters of criticism of the article “Jesus Christ Supermyth” but only Mr. Mullin’s was suitable for publication; the others were either too long or were little more than religious ranting, or both. One who has read the article but who has not written to us is a violinist playing at the show Jesus Christ Superstar, who was seen to have the Socialist Standard on his music stand, propped open at the relevant page.

Editorial Committee

A bitter charity (1980)

The Briefing Column from the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Charity is commonly understood as acts of generosity towards the less fortunate and as such it appeals to both our sense of morality and feelings of obligation. But such an interpretation fails to recognise that only certain activities can be judged as being charitable and this has been the case since the Statute of Charitable Uses (1601) and the Mortmain and Charitable Uses Act (1888).

Charities today are expected to be concerned with the relief of poverty, the advancement of learning, the support of religion, and other acts not covered by the first three. What is not a charitable act is any activity of a political nature. The Charity Commission has been in existence since 1853, to ensure that charities do not indulge in activities which are not “charitable”. This body, whose existence was perpetuated under the Charities Act (1960), is expected to promote the effective use of charitable resources and make effective the work of charities in meeting the needs designated by the trust.

The Report of the Charity Commissioners for England and Wales (1969) states the legal position with regard to political activity. The Commission argued that: “a well-established principle of charity law is that a trust for the attainment of a political object is not a valid charitable trust”. It was denied that propaganda could contribute to the advancement of learning as it is understood within charity law—and of course the dissemination of any information of a political nature is propaganda. The commissioners claimed to appreciate the reasons some charities felt the need to influence policies but pointed out that charities must nevertheless work within the confines of the legal status quo.

In other words, a situation may be unacceptable, but we can only attempt to patch it up. It must not be seen as politically unacceptable, for that would involve removing the very causes which have given rise to the status quo within which the unacceptable exists. We can now begin to appreciate that the work of charity is to straighten out the ragged edges of the capitalist system while refusing to alter its basis and structure.

The Report of the Charity Commissioners for England and Wales (1978) attacked the activities of War on Want, Oxfam and Christian Aid Division. War on Want was criticised for undertaking research “into the root causes of poverty which lay in the social, economic and political structures of countries” and Oxfam was rebuked for indulging in “political propaganda as defined by the courts”. Of the activities of Christian Aid Division the report states that:

“it seeks to finance political action, mobilise public opinion, and effect structural change within societies, in an attempt to tackle those causes of poverty which lie in the economic, social and political structures of communities. We have advised the Trustees of the Charity that such activities are not within their objects nor within the scope of charitable endeavour as understood in this country”.

For the year 1978 there were 129,212 charities registered with the Charity Commission; for the most part their activities are a supplement to government programmes, in that they supplied services not provided by the state. This massive mopping-up operation highlights the failure of capitalism to provide for the needs of its people. At the same time charitable activity distracts attention from the true cause of our problems—a society in which the overwhelming majority, the working class, have only their labour power to sell on the market.

Charities delude workers into thinking that the problems created by capitalism can be solved within that system rather than pointing out that those problems are endemic to it. The activities of the charities are simply an expression of the well-meaning but impotent rage at the problems of capitalism instead of at the system itself.

Philip Bentley

Workers and parasites (1980)

From the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Colonel and Mrs. Baglie, aged 83 and 66, live in a four-bedroomed, detached house in spacious grounds near Bournemouth. His father had been managing director of a shipping firm and her family were ‘Scottish landed gentry’. They had stocks and shares worth £60,000 and savings worth at least another £30,000. They also owned land and houses in Scotland from which rents were drawn and an unearned income of £3,500 (now equivalent to over £10,000) as well as his army pension. He said, ‘No healthy person need be poor . . . I think the Welfare State has done an awful lot of harm by leading the population to expect the government to do everything for them. It has undermined the feeling of responsibility that a man owes to his family.’’ (Poverty In The United Kingdom by Peter Townsend, Penguin.) 

“A couple in their sixties were evicted from their Leicestershire council house and forced to live rough. Hinkley and Bosworth Borough Council has refused to rehouse them . . . After a working life of 40 years, the man had not worked since May because of a bad back. After their eviction (due to rent arrears and deterioration of property) he lived in a dog kennel for three nights whilst his wife lived in a bus shelter.” (Reported in The Guardian, 8.12.78.) 

“The pursuit of equality is a mirage. What is more desirable and more practicable than the pursuit of equality is the pursuit of equality of opportunity. And opportunity means nothing unless it includes the right to be unequal.” (Margaret Thatcher, 16.9.75.)

Lucky old workers; we’ve got the right to be unequal. As Thatcher and her capitalist friends keep telling us, those who have most to contribute to society are entitled to a bigger share of the social wealth. What would be the point of giving fat incomes to scroungers like nurses, cleaners, doctors, dustmen, typists, farm labourers, social workers and shop assistants? Such inferior beings would only go and waste their money on unnecessary commodities like decent food and adequate shelter. The ones whom Thatcher believes should be more equal than the rest of us are such useful social contributors as high-ranking army officers, managing directors, senile aristocrats and rock stars. After all, where would society be today if Rod Steward hadn’t been paid vast sums of money to give us all the benefit of his permanent sore throat—or if there were no well-paid generals who could devise various ways of blowing us up?

Who are they kidding when they tell us that the capitalist system allows people to consume wealth in accordance with their talents? If the British aristocracy only consumed in accordance with their talents there would be a wave of malnutrition throughout the Stately Homes of England. Under capitalism wealth ownership is not the result of talent or hard work; 32 per cent of land in Britain is owned (or held in trust) by titled families. The largest private landowner in Britain is a man who has so much talent to offer that he has never done a job in his entire life; he is the Duke of Buccleuch who owns 268,000 acres of land, which is approximately equivalent to the landholdings of the National Coal Board. The new Duke of Westminster, who is 27 years old and has reached the staggering intellectual heights of obtaining two ‘O’ levels, owns land worth two billion pounds—that’s two million millions for those readers who employ accountants to add up their wages.

The ownership of immense wealth by a small minority is largely the result of inheritance. So if social privilege is a reward for merit, the only merit which is being referred to is the wisdom of a baby to be born from the womb of a parasite rather than a worker. According to this theory, Princess Anne's son, who will never need to go out and sell his royal labour power, is being rewarded for his initiative, enterprise and intelligence. The fact that he is as yet illiterate and fond of making gargling noises is quite beside the point.

Social parasites

Social parasitism is not confined to the aristocracy. A parasite is an organism which lives by feeding from other live organisms. Such is the position of the entire capitalist class. They can only accumulate capital so long as the majority of people will produce wealth and receive a price for their labour power which is less than the value of their product. The exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class is the social equivalent of biological parasitism. But doesn’t it say in the Daily Express that the capitalists get their money and power by hard work? Yes, they get it by our hard work. We make the profits; they take the profits.

What about the so-called self-made-man-the capitalist who has not become wealthy except by employing and exploiting the labour of others. Freddie Laker does not fly his aeroplanes; Jack Cohen did not load the shelves at Tesco; Henry Ford did not build motor cars; Lord Rothermere never contributed a single article to his newspaper. Occasional members of the working class do manage to make their way in to the exploiting class, but they can only ever do so by riding on the backs of their fellow workers. It would be wrong to attack the capitalists for exploiting workers, as under the present system one can only exploit or be exploited. But it is senseless of workers to do the football pools or work like donkeys in the hope that they will one day join the ranks of their own exploiters. Most people are born and die in a class which subjects them to the dictates of the labour market.

Why poverty?

When our leaders tell us that the rich are being rewarded for their abilities they are also telling us something else: that the poor are deprived because of their talentlessness, stupidity and indolence. According to a survey carried out by the Rowntree Trust in 1967- 8, 9 per cent of the population of Britain (nearly 5 million people) are living below the official standard of poverty. Peter Townsend’s informative book on Poverty in the United Kingdom suggests that if a more appropriate “relative deprivation” standard is adopted, and if account is taken of the increased poverty generated by capitalism’s latest crisis, 26 per cent of the population (14 million people) could be said to be living in poverty. That is not to mention the many millions of people in the world for whom poverty means little or no food to eat, inadequate clothing and shelter, and the absence of any security. To attribute the reasons for such poverty to the inferiority of the impoverished is an insult to the working class.

Capitalism causes poverty because it limits workers’ access to wealth. Wages and salaries determine how much members of the working class can eat, where we can live, and every other aspect of our social existence. Under the wages system all workers are impoverished in the sense that we are denied ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution.

The only way to end poverty is to abolish classes and this can only happen when what is now the property of private capitalists or the state is transferred to the common ownership and democratic control of the whole community.

In socialist society there will be no more capitalists. What will become of them? Perhaps a few will put a gun to their own heads at the prospect of a world without cringing employees and debutantes’ balls. Others will conform to the new social order and may even realise the benefit of doing so. If capitalists do not like being dispossessed of their ownership of the means of life it will be too bad, for once the workers have decided in a majority to establish a new social system, the political sensitivities of redundant Queens, disgruntled Dukes and wet-eyed millionaires will not count for much.

Steve Coleman

Getting the sack (1980)

From the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the factory where I work we weren’t exactly surprised to hear that one third of us would be sacked in a few weeks’ time. The firm make foundry and quarry equipment and we knew there was a shortage of orders. First, the night shift had been taken off, then all overtime stopped, and for the last two weeks skilled platers and welders had been put to painting the factory and doing minor maintenance work. Obviously, this couldn’t last. Every company, whether order books are empty or full, must always strive to keep down costs in order to maximise the profits each of them is in business to make, and paying men the skilled rate to slap on paint is not usually the best way of doing it.

The shop stewards’ immediate reaction was to involve three unions but management’s case was that if the redundancies don’t go through then the place will close. There’s little the unions can do in the face of this so all that remains is for the stewards to negotiate the best possible financial settlement for those who have to go.

The bad news was received calmly as most of the men have been through it all often enough. Two or three of the long service men nearing retirement hope that they will be on the list so as to collect their redundancy money before they reach 65 and lose it, but most of the men can’t help being worried. Unemployment in the area around Clydebank is well above the national average and every month brings news of more closures. Some of the local newer “starts” have lost two jobs in the last year and they know that the practice of “last in, first out” will probably see them on the move again.

Of course, not one of the men sees a redundancy as a consequence of capitalist production. They see it as something that could probably have been avoided and blame it on inefficient management and all the “non- producers” (office staff) on the payroll. But booms and slumps are part and parcel of the production for profit system. The owners of any company—in this case a multi-national—invest capital to provide a factory, plant and material. Workers are hired to use these in order to produce wealth greater than was there at the start—surplus value. If, owing to a slump in worldwide trading conditions, demand for the product is slack then what is the company to do? Can it squander the investors’ money by paying workers to wear out expensive machinery by working up equally expensive materials into products that cannot be sold? There is only one course the company can take. It must cut back production to the level required to maintain profitability, and this is what is happening all over the world.

Tea and lunch breaks sometimes provide an opportunity to question some accepted ideas. For example, when workmates gripe about the wages they get, I reply that they should reject the wages system itself; when they complain about how “the country” is being run, I ask them why they allow' politicians to do their thinking for them. These contributions are generally received with disapproval or puzzled silence. After all, where else do they ever hear such ideas? When social problems are discussed by the media, both Left and Right talk in terms of patching up or otherwise reorganising the production for sale on the market system. Wages, prices, profits, pensions, and all the other hallmarks of today’s private property set-up are taken as eternal. All that is needed, apparently, is “new policies” or maybe a change of government, so the workers are never given the opportunity to think about a solution outside of the framework of the status quo.

A few days later we are told that management will “pick the team” on the following Monday. On the Monday morning one of the young platers who has seen me speaking at an outdoor meeting asks me why he is being sacked (only a guess at this stage but it turns out to be a good one). I tell him that none of us are given a job for our benefit and that the company just doesn’t need some of us any more. I start to explain the profit motive but he loses interest and tells me he will be sacked because his foreman doesn’t like him.

From the moment we start to take in ideas we are discouraged from thinking in terms of class at all. Class, like sex, is nasty and we are taught that “the nation” is what counts and how the fate of each of us depends on our own efforts as individuals. So the working class never acts as a class because it doesn’t recognise itself as such.

An older man, a rabid Labour Party supporter, does have an answer to the redundancy. He wants to see the place nationalised. I point to the vast redundancies taking place at British Leyland, British Steel, and other state owned industries and which are only a continuation of those begun by the last Labour government. I remind him that the last job he lost was in a nationalised shipyard and during a Labour government, too. I know I’m wasting my time with him but some of the others who are listening may be taking it in.

Monday drags on and everyone is on edge waiting for the axe to fall. Late in the afternoon the foremen are summoned to the manager’s office and when they emerge each has a list in his hand. They head for their own departments and the slaughter is on. Of course, the sacked men put a brave face on it but most of them cannot hope for a job locally. Any job they do get will require considerable travel involving extra expense and those with mortgages will be hardest hit. Among those sacked are two or three in their early sixties and they know they will probably never get another job.

The blow is softened by the fact that all those who are leaving receive redundancy money or (thanks to the efforts of the stewards) six weeks’ pay in lieu of notice. Some say they will have a holiday before they start job-hunting, but sooner rather than later they will have to begin hawking themselves around, filling in forms, waiting for interviews, and all that is connected with the degrading business of seeking an employer.

Being hired and fired is a part of working class culture and always will be so long as we allow capital to use us when and where it wants. Our class must one day make the capitalist system the victim of the biggest redundancy of all.

Vic Vanni

Lock up your youngsters (1980)

From the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like reading off a barometer, it is possible to judge the fortunes of a government by the intensity of its search for a scapegoat. Labour governments between the wars blamed their failures on a conspiracy by international bankers bent on the destruction of a movement dedicated to the overthrow of the capitalist system of society (yes, we are talking about the likes of Ramsay Macdonald, Jimmy Thomas, Philip Snowden. . .). Times have changed; the last Labour government directed none of its venom at conspiratorial bankers but spent its final months in office castigating the trade unions and any workers who wanted more pay than Denis Healey was prepared to allow them.

Now, the Thatcher government is coming under the first pressures. Policies which the Tories once propounded so confidently have become tentative or are quietly forgotten; dissension among ministers is being leaked to the public; the Chancellor has warned us that we must wait another ten years for the promised prosperity and the standing of the Leader herself is being questioned. Now, as every by-election becomes a nervous uncertainty, the Tories are worriedly trying to rally their support and are producing their own scapegoats.

Just like the Callaghan government, the Conservatives are blaming those same greedy, lazy workers, now urged on by “wreckers” like Derek Robinson. Then there is the Social Security scrounger whose activities, according to one High Court judge (who of course has no knowledge in the matter) are ". . . rife from one end of the British Isles to the other”. Naturally, not all scroungers come under the lash of a judge’s tongue—for example Mark Thatcher, who touted for £10,000 so that he could spend his time driving a motor car.

Now the scapegoat’s whole purpose in life is to submit to being the focus of popular anger and frustration. Particularly well suited to this role is another Tory favourite—the juvenile delinquent. He (most of them are male) is usually less politely described as young thug, hooligan or yobbo. The activities of these youngsters, if we are to believe people like the newspaper reporters, are very much a matter of fashion. A few years ago they seemed to devote themselves to smashing up telephone kiosks and there may well have been a judge then who declared that not one kiosk was in working order from one end of the British Isles to the other. Now, it seems, the delinquents concentrate on displays of violence at football matches (often described as “mindless”—perhaps because, unlike the boorish behaviour or some of the players, it is not lucrative) and mugging frail old ladies on their way home with their pension.

“Short and Sharp”

Well the Tories have been ready for a long time to deal with the young hooligan and their declared policy is to set up two special Detention Centres where the regime will be, in the words of Home Secretary Whitelaw, “brisk”. In these Centres—prisons for young people, really—the treatment will be a “short, sharp shock”, based on the theory that violent tendencies can be checked or even eradicated by counter violence. This argument is not so popular at other times, for example when a government is persuading its workers to exert organised violence on other workers abroad, but never mind. Whitelaw’s policy was met with orgasmically passionate responses on both sides, with the Tories baying their approval and the Lefties and the penal reformers howling their scepticism.

One fact which may well be overlooked is that Detention Centres are not peculiarly Tory inventions. In fact, they were originally set up by a Labour government under the Criminal Justice Act 1948, which established twenty of them, scattered all over England and Wales. Designed to take boys between the ages of 14 and 21, the Centres worked a regime brisk enough to satisfy the most fervent flogger and hanger. An official publication—The Sentence of the Court—A Handbook for Courts on the Treatment of Offenders (1964)—described them in this way:

“The regime in detention centres is brisk and firm; there is a strong emphasis on hard work, and the highest possible standards of discipline and achievement, behaviour and manners are insisted upon. An offender will almost invariably regard detention as a punitive experience.”

What this meant was that the day for the inmates started very early in the morning, when they were dragged from their beds and made to run a five mile course, no matter how unfit they might be. At some centres, a gruesome team system ensured that any flagger was subjected to some pretty physical encouragement from his fellow inmates to finish the course. At one centre (which had been notorious, during the war, as a place where British intelligence officers tortured spies) this course was constructed in a specially humiliating and exhausting way; the boys had to run their five miles up and down between two stakes set 100 yards apart.

Then there was grinding, monotonous work like concrete moulding and metal recovery, with periods of hard physical exercises. Overlaying all this was a ceaseless harassing of the boys, with sadistic prison officers nagging and baiting them until some of them broke. One detainee described it as never being left alone from the moment he got up until he fell asleep at night. The effect of this was that the boys finished their sentences fitter then they had ever been in their lives—but also harder, with a cynical edge and often with the status of a prematurely experienced con.

It is not surprising that the Detention Centres failed to have any special effect on juvenile crime; youngsters did not emerge from their “short, sharp shock" with any resolve never to fall foul of the law again. Many of them progressed through Borstal to prison, to longer and longer sentences. One excuse offered for this was that the courts were not using the Centres as they were supposed to be used; they were sending to detention boys whose lives had been a succession of shocks, to the extent that they were inured to any more. Partly in response to this, the style at the Centres began to change, with less emphasis on the hard physical regime and more on “understanding” the inmate and getting to grips with his problems. As this must have meant getting to grips with the problems of the very capitalist social system it cannot be wondered at, that it proved beyond the wit of the prison officers.

The change in style was set out in a later (1978) edition of The Sentence of the Court: “The regime in the detention centres is intended to be constructive, with firm discipline and a strong emphasis on education . . . the punitive clement of the sentence is regarded as fulfilled by the deprivation of the offender’s liberty.” Whatever satisfaction this relaxation gave to the reformers it had little effect on the inmates. A recent (February) report by New Approaches to Juvenile Crime—a combine of eight bodies dealing with young offenders said that 76 per cent of ex-Detention Centre boys were convicted of another offence within two years. The fact that they are ineffective does little to lessen the popularity of the Centres; between 1969 and 1978 the numbers sent to them rose from 2,288 to 6,303.

Public relations exercise

Whitelaw’s proposals are partly a reaction to this situation, as well as a widespread disillusionment with the “social work”, as opposed to the “penal” approach to crime. But in reality what the Tories are planning is little more than a public relations exercise—the setting up of only two Detention Centres on the original pattern, compared to the twenty which operated in that way before. Even the silliest Tory would not suggest that that is going to have any dramatic effect on the figures of juvenile crime, even supposing that the theories of the floggers had any evidence to support them.

What it does provide, though, is yet another example of the futility and confusion of the reformists’ attempts to deal with capitalism’s problems. Juvenile crime is an ugly sore on society and one which grows increasingly septic. The reformers respond erratically, at one time with repression and at another with some comparative leniency. Fashions come and go; so-called family courts, in which all the family were to sit round a table with the police and the magistrates to thrash out some answers to the young offender’s problems, were once suggested as the final solution (in England and Wales, they never even started). Now the wheel has turned at least part of the circle and punishment becomes popular again. Meanwhile, regardless of what the floggers or the do-gooders may try, the crime figures continue to climb; their cause is beyond the scope of any measures of reform.

It is perhaps useful here to give a consumer’s angle on the issue—an angle which will not impress any Tory conference:

“I wonder how they can forget places like Reading and Portsmouth Borstal recall centres. There will be nothing but brutality there, and it will screw' the majority of kids right up. I went through places like that in the early ’50s and it did me no good. I still have bitter memories of the beatings I received at the remand centre before I reached my teens and it just made me determined, that I would get in first. I am still doing it now, but nobody has ever benefitted from it.”

This man is well qualified to testify to the effects of official, institutionalised violence; his criminal record goes back to his childhood and he is now serving a long sentence for a grave assault. His responses, as he says, have benefitted nobody and he has little more to show for his experiences than a glimmering of social insight:

“The Tories are very strong on Law and Order but it only applies to the working class . . . People must eventually get fed up with the legalised extortion being practised by successive governments. The Mafia don’t extort on the scale that governments do.”

Because the direct victims of crime are often workers—a security guard coshed, a worker’s home broken into—it can easily be overlooked that crime is essentially a threat to the morals and privileges of capitalism. This is a society in which a minority class own the means of living, denying the rest of society access to those means except on their terms the terms of being employed for a wage. This act of historical theft is legalised, solemnised and sanctified by both state and church. The acquisition of wealth by means outside this legality is a crime but workers who are denied, repressed, degraded, who live out lives of frustrating poverty, can hardly avoid breaking capitalism’s law's. Thus crime is an inescapable concomitant of capitalism and will remain with us for as long as the working class allow the private property system to endure.

Pressure to conform

In this, as in all things, workers should keep a cool head. Capitalism responds to crime with repression, whether it be that of the bullying screw or of the wheedling social worker; both have the function of lacing deviant workers into a strait jacket of conformity. The pressure to conform, to accept our lot as exploited, socially inferior wage slaves supporting the parasite class of capitalists is what lies behind the Tories’ hysteria, behind the scapegoating of the young offender and the frothings of judges, police chiefs and magistrates. But the working class don’t need to accept this; the remedy for change is in their hands.

It may not be the best time to point it out to him, but when the prison gate judders shut behind some unfortunate worker he should listen carefully; in the rattle of the keys he will hear the echo of the vote he cast at the last election.

Ivan.

Marx's Labour theory of value (1980)

From the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Take the theory of water motion. We pipe water, we regulate its flow differently in ordinary wells, in artesians, springs, etc. Is the theory of the flow of water explained by listing the specific bores, drills, pumps, and pipes? No. There is an abstract physical theory of the flow of all water, the science of hydraulics, and this abstract theory ignores the individual forms of the motion of water, describes no particular form of water whatever, and describes no actual phenomenon exactly as it takes place. But its theory describes them and its laws govern them and unless we have this abstract theory we have no means of understanding anything. And this despite the fact that water is abstractly described and yet, in practice, it is always concretely availed of.
    We ask how and where does profit come from? From surplus-value. And that? From labour-time. And how does it flow? Through pipings composed of constant and variable capital. And how is it sprinkled or flushed throughout the economic system? As an average rate of profit. But the law of the composition and flow of value, like that of the composition and flow of water, is the same throughout. If you cannot correlate all the forms of conducting and utilising water exactly in conformity with the governing theory of hydraulics, that unfortunately is the nature of the world we live in and no one can transcend it, not even Böhm-Bawerk.
     That no science is capable of application to every permutation and combination of circumstance, under the exact application of theory, is the weakness of man's mind, of his perception of the world. Is that a reason for repudiating science? Then all political economy (and all knowledge) is equally threatened. We abstract from a hundred appearances to get one common explicatory factor.

[from Elements of Marxian Economic Theory and its Criticism by William J. Blake]

Running Commentary: Betting on ill-health (1980)

The Running Commentary Column from the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Betting on ill-health

While some workers fatalistically accept their position in society as preordained (“if it was meant to be, there’s nothing you can do about it”), others consider their status to be largely determined by luck or, more accurately, the lack of it. That capitalism is a game of chance is true only to the extent that those born into the ruling class (odds of about 20-1 against) have a distinct advantage over the rest of us.

This emphasis on luck as the prime mover in human affairs received some support last month. In Britain the Tories, having slashed (no jokes about “wets” and cabinet leaks) public spending dramatically in the last ten months were busy getting their Health Services Bill through committee stage. This is intended to give public health authorities the legal right to raise money through bingo, rummy, find-the-lady and other such games of chance, as recommended in the philosophical writings of F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman. Now while health, like every service under capitalism, is viewed principally with cost rather than human considerations in mind (you've got to have heart, but not if it’s too expensive), it is doubtful whether, say, cancer treatment has before now had to depend in part upon punters’ stake money.

A cheaper way of financing health services suggested itself in reports of goings on at a hospital in that home of free enterprise, the United States. A group of employees in the intensive care ward of the Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas were suspended for placing bets on how long terminally ill cancer patients would live. This wagering was thought to have led to the premature deaths of at least six people, with oxygen supplies and life support systems tampered with to rig the stakes in favour of heavy wagers (Daily Telegraph 14.3.80).

Now while these two examples of private enterprise in action may not appeal to everyone as solutions to capitalism’s problems, they do have the advantage of being less of a burden on the ruling class. If only workers’ flutters paid for all public services or Littlewood’s prize winners could be persuaded to contribute to the genetic engineering of success, wouldn’t everyone be happy? Unfortunately not; the odds are permanently fixed against wage and salary earners, in health services as in all things, and the chances of any government running the profit system in the interest of human beings are approximately nil.

Saudi-Arabia

Connoisseurs of graffiti must be suffering slightly from withdrawal symptoms if London’s tube walls are anything to go by. For no longer are those underwear ads covered exclusively with “Hang Nixon”, “West Ham Aggro” or “This Exploits Women”—what appears to be demented doctors’ prescriptions, all squigglcs and dots in the wrong places, have taken over. This phenomenon looks like continuing for some while, for after Iran it looks like Saudi Arabia is next on the agenda.

The autocratic rulers of what is, calculated per head of population, the richest country in the world are facing problems similar in many respects to those experienced by the ex-Shah of Iran. In the past year the iron grip of the Saud tribe has come under increasing pressure, both internally and from leftist forces in the Arab and Third World. A growing number of new generation Saudis, generously educated at overseas universities paid for by oil revenue, are returning home and questioning traditional Muslim values. A ruling class that can delay the opening of a multi-million pound government office block because its layout included unisex lifts, and that puts to the sword members of its own family found guilty of adultery can hardly expect the support of those educated in the “liberal” West. One consequence of this conflict between old and new is that an estimated 4,000 princes are jockeying for position should the House of Saud begin to crumble.

Saudi Arabia’s ruling class is so rich that it could buy all the shares quoted on the London Stock Exchange in eighteen months, or all the gold in Central Banks in five years. Increasing alignment with the West, manifested in enormous IMF deposits, places it in the dock as far as poorer neighbours are concerned. Its military development programme, presently nearing completion and costing £20 million may be a sound financial investment—but then military might alone was not enough to keep the Shah on his throne.

Crown Prince Fahd said fifteen months ago: “If Iran goes, then God help us all”. No longer able to rely upon her neighbours to act as a buffer against “communism”, capitalism’s richest prize is attracting the benign, full-time attention of the CIA and western intelligence services. For if Saudi Arabia “goes”, not only will the Saud tribe suffer but the oil dependent states of the West will feel the cold.

Moscow Olympics

A small revolt by a number of Tory MPs took place in the House of Commons, although the Government carried the day on a free vote.

Our readers might be forgiven for thinking that the revolt is hardly surprising. After all, the Tories came to power on election promises of lower taxes and reducing inflation. There are now nearly 2 million unemployed; money available for schools, health services and housing has been greatly reduced; other amenities have been pared down. However, the slight reductions in income tax have been swallowed up by record inflation and mortgage rates, even for the better off, so-called “upper middle class” who benefitted most from the tax changes.

However, it seems that the MPs who did not support the government may have had a better appreciation of the workings of the capitalist system than they are usually credited with. Their revolt was against the bringing of pressure to bear on British athletes to “volunteer” to withdraw ‘from the Olympic Games in Moscow. (Government representatives meeting in Geneva to discuss possible alternative Games appear ignorant of the fact that 12 months' notice of such intentions must be given to the World Amateur Athletics Association, whose permission is mandatory for athletes wishing to compete in international Games.)

The Tory MPs (led by Mr. Terence Higgins, Conservative Member for Worthing) who opposed the Government’s stand, pointed out that the call to athletes to withdraw from the Games rings false while, far from even token withdrawal of diplomatic representation or recommendation of curtailment of trade, the government are actively assisting large-scale deals on machinery to go through. The obvious conclusion (to a socialist) is that Olympic athletes are unpaid amateurs, and even the possibility of a gold medal brings only “glory”, while commercial deals make profits. The fact that many athletes have trained for years to compete in the supposedly non-political Games counts for nothing compared with the ringing of cash registers. Dare we hope that this is an encouraging sign that some Tory MPs are not too brainwashed to see this?

Melvin Tenner

A painful history (1980)

From the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the capitalist system developed, causing the steady decline of the independent handworker and the replacement of manual labour by machinery, the effects on those who worked for a living were so severe that their struggles inevitably centred around wages and conditions. Battles with the employers resulted in the formation of trade unions, while struggles for political elbow-room culminated in political reform movements such as Chartism. The working class were joined by disaffected groups such as small traders and producers, who were sinking to ruin. Some workers may have hankered for a return to the handicraft production of the past, others harboured vague co-operative “socialist" notions, but there was little conscious recognition of the need to bring the powerful new forces of production into the common 'ownership of all society. Workers’ fierce struggles were rooted in the antagonism of interest between capital and labour.

In the mid-19th Century, Marx had unravelled the role of class struggles in the development of society, discovering the nature of exploitation in capitalist production and showing how social production conflicted with the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, resulting in economic anarchy, trade cycles of boom and slump, and capitalist rivalry which could lead to war. However, even those in the working class movement who understood and accepted Marx's analysis, saw the solution as so far off that they looked to reform as a means of ameliorating the suffering and wretched conditions of the working class until the time was ripe for socialism.

The impetus towards social reform was not provided by the working class alone. There were always some members of the capitalist class who recognised the need to improve the conditions of the workers. This was particularly the case when the proposed legislation affected pockets other than their own. Most of the Factory Acts of the 19th Century were brought in by the Tory Party who represented the interests of the landowners. The National Reform Union was set up by Liberal manufacturers with the object of winning support for the Liberal Party by campaigning for workers to have the vote.

The gaining of the vote by the working class signalled a new way to political power-dangling reform measures in front of the electorate. These have been the opportunist tactics used ever since by avowedly capitalist or allegedly labour parties. Whether the proposed measures actually get implemented or make much difference in the long run is another matter, which perhaps accounts for the 30 per cent of the electorate who do not bother to use their votes.

Some of the most successful capitalist enterprises paid wages above the accepted union rate and had due regard for the welfare of their workers. Individual capitalists such as the Cadbury brothers built model housing estates, offered improved working conditions, education, and showed a generally paternalistic concern not only for the bodies of their employees and families, but also for their “souls". Reforms have cost the capitalist class very little for they have received ample recompense in terms of increased production and the stability of their system.

The working class movement has produced factions that claimed it was possible to get socialism without first making socialists. The syndicalist plan was to seize the means of production and distribution by industrial action, by-passing Parliament or its equivalent. Although the movement in its early days had some support, bitter reality has shown the fallacy of their views. Whoever controls Parliament controls the armed forces and police, and in prolonged strikes the suffering of the workers far outweighs any discomfort to the capitalists. But syndicalist ideas still linger on among some left wing groups.

The Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 saw the birth of the Leninist theory of revolution. In a predominantly capitalist world and lacking both productive capacity and the acceptance of socialist ideas by the population, the only way Russia could develop was along capitalist lines. A repressive state capitalist regime masquerading as socialism has since developed, adding to the confusion and misunderstanding of workers and thus making the spread of socialist ideas that much harder. There has been similar confusion in East Europe, Cuba, China and so on. These have emphasised the fact that not only must socialism be a world-wide system, but also that the forces of production—the most important part of those forces being the working class—must first be ready.

In the last quarter of the 19th Century the working class movement threw up Social Democratic parties claiming adherence to the theoretical basis of Marxism and the need for revolutionary political action, but which all had reformist programmes with a bewildering variety of immediate demands. The “Gradualist” school of thought, typified by the Fabian Society, claimed that a succession of reforms could gradually change society, that there could be a growth of socialism alongside capitalism until society was transformed. From these ideas grew the ILP and the Labour Party, with programmes of nationalisation and other anti-working class measures.

In 1904 a group of working men and women were convinced that only by dispossessing the capitalist class of the means of production and distribution and bringing them into the democratic control and common ownership of the whole community could a fundamental change in society be made. Rejecting any concept of leadership they saw that it required working class majority understanding and democratic decision before socialism could be achieved. They formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

From the beginning the SPGB repudiated any programme of immediate demands, on the grounds that such programmes do not serve as a means of organising for socialism but thrust the socialist objective into the background, and attract non-socialist elements. While it is true that workers have to struggle over wages and conditions this must be confined to the industrial, trade union field, separate from the political. Some reforms may be of sectional or temporary benefit but this in no way equals the effort required to achieve them. The capitalist class often offer concessions both to improve the productive capacity of workers and to quiet social unrest. But a growing socialist movement will bring more concessions to the working class than any amount of pleading or agitation for reform.

What can we learn from the long painful history of the working class? We have seen the alleged labour parties gain mass support and political power. Once in government they have found that capitalism cannot be run in the interest of the working class and their actions in office—such as demands for harder work and wage restraint—would not disgrace the most reactionary Tory. Capitalism has expanded to cover the greater part of the globe, has lurched from crisis to crisis, from war to war, and even now production is again being cut back in the midst of widespread poverty and shortage; there is a confrontation between rival capitalist powers that could plunge the world into nuclear war. Unemployment is growing, cuts are being made in education, housing, health and welfare services. Perhaps that is the ultimate futility of reformism. If reforms can be won they can also be withdrawn or reduced.

Workers who are concerned about capitalism’s problems should not waste their time and energy demonstrating against cuts and working for reforms, but instead organise consciously and politically for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. That is our only objective—short-term, long-term—and it is as close as the working class of the world choose to make it.

Alice Kerr

Against capitalism (1980)

From the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under capitalism the means of production and distribution are owned by a small section of society who thus form a privileged class. Modern industry, however, can only be worked by the cooperative labour of society as a whole. It is this conflict between sectional ownership and social production that causes today’s many social problems since it prevents wealth being produced to satisfy human needs.

Only when ownership and production have been brought into line-by the establishment of the common ownership and democratic control of the means by which society lives-is there any hope of solving problems like war, world poverty, racism, bad housing, poor health and its poor treatment.

These of course are the problems which the other parties promise to solve if only you will elect them to be the government. But they always fail. Why? Because what they are trying to do cannot be done. It is just not possible to solve these problems as long as class ownership is retained. No matter how sincere or efficient a government may be it cannot make capitalism work as if it were a system geared to satisfying human needs.

Capitalism runs on profits and can only work as a profit-making system for the class that owns the means of production. As this class ownership, in preventing production solely for use, is the cause of these problems any attempt to deal with them within its framework is bound to fail.

So capitalism, as a class system that runs on profits, is constitutionally incapable of serving human needs. Socialism, on the other hand, will provide the framework within which these problems can be solved. With the means of production owned by and under the democratic management of the community, there will be no class privileges to stand in the way of production solely for use. With the abolition of the profit motive society can set about solving these problems with the satisfying of human needs as its guiding principle. For it is not as if enough comfortable houses could not be built or enough food for the whole world and more could not be grown. It is just that under capitalism it is not profitable to give priority to basic needs like food and shelter.

This is why we say nothing short of socialism will do.

Capitalism is no accident (1980)

Editorial from the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

The word capitalism is one which is misunderstood almost as often as it is used. Many of these misconceptions are based on a fallacious attitude towards human society—for example Edward Heath’s famous remark about the “unacceptable face of capitalism”, which implied that there is also an acceptable face, in which all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. It also implied that the unacceptable face has features which, although unpleasant, are unavoidable.

Similarly there are those people not usually to be found in the Conservative Party—who regard capitalism as some sort of historical disaster, which might have been avoided with a little more forethought or concern on the part of the human race. These people are well aware of the problems of the system—poverty, bad housing, war, refugees, waste, pollution—but they think of these as being somehow unnecessary. Theirs is a moral standpoint, which judges social and historical phenomena in terms of “right” and “wrong” and which condemns capitalism as one of humanity’s massive mistakes.

The difficulty with this theory is that it leaves too many vital questions unanswered. It does not, for example, tell us why capitalism should be “wrong”; why, instead of being disfigured by widespread poverty it does not realise its potential for abundance. Nor why, instead of being plagued by economic anarchy, it cannot harness its considerable knowledge and technical resources to eliminate the cycle of boom and slump.

These questions can be answered, quite simply, by reference to the fact that capitalism is not an accident and that it is not morally “wrong” nor “right”.

In fact, capitalism is a phase—like all previous societies, a necessary phase-in historical development. It was preceded by other social systems, which were no more “right” nor “wrong”, and in its turn it will be brought to an end. This evolution is itself not an accident, for each social system is a collection of relationships which spring from a particular mode of wealth production and each system has been abolished when those social relationships have become fetters on the developing productive forces.

Far from being a disaster or morally “wrong”, capitalism has fulfilled some vital functions in human history. It has developed and expanded our knowledge and our productive and communicative powers to the point at which abundance in a democratically organised society is an immediate possibility.

Capitalism has also refined the class structure of society, so that there are now only two classes in conflict over the division of wealth and, finally, over the ownership of the means of production. On one side is the class in possession—the capitalist class—and on the other the non-owners, or the working class. As the only socially inferior class, it must be the workers who will bring about society’s next revolution. It has been capitalism’s role to prepare the ground for this.

How does capitalism do this? Firstly, its class ownership must condemn the majority of its people—the working class, who live solely by the sale of their labour power—to lives of varying degrees of poverty. Because its wealth is produced for sale, capitalism must be a competitive society, which means a society in which conflict is endemic, from corner shops trying to drive each other out of business at one end of the scale to world war at the other.

Commodity production must also mean that most of the wealth which is turned out is shoddy; made with an eye to lower, competitive costs instead of for its usefulness to human beings. It means a massive waste of resources; for example the wholesale destruction of food while millions are starving or the maintenance of military machines which produce nothing but which destroy much. It means that society is preoccupied with selling its wealth and with a complex financial machinery when in any sane set-up we would be concentrating on making wealth—and making only the best possible, for human beings to consume and to enjoy.

We can sum up the argument by saying that capitalism has now outrun its usefulness to human development. Having fulfilled its purpose, it now hampers the power of the productive forces which could be at our command. Humanity can have a world in which wealth is turned out in a flood, freely available to everyone a world in which human interests come first in everything.

What prevents this is the continuation of the social relationships of capitalism. To change them needs a social revolution.

This revolution will be the first conscious one, by and in the interests of the majority, in human history. To bring about the change to socialism by a democratic political act needs a working class who are informed and aware about capitalism and about how socialism will abolish the problems we suffer under today.

And one of the essential elements in that awareness is a conception of human history not in moral but in material terms, which sees capitalism not as an accident but as a society which has fulfilled its role and must now be abolished.

Obituary: Bob Ambridge (1980)

Bob Ambridge speaking in Hyde Park. Undated.

Obituary from the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

With sadness we have to record the death of Bob Ambridge as the result of a road accident in February at the age of 81. He was one of our staunchest comrades, active in socialist propaganda right to the end. For 53 years he was an exemplary Party member, a tower of strength as speaker, writer, tutor, EC member, Branch secretary, organiser—and anything else that was needed. Bob Ambridge was self-educated, widely read, informed in many fields, frequently staggering friends and opponents by his erudition and depth of knowledge. He was a devastating debunker of all that was pretentious, steady as a rock in Party affairs, he never wavered in his hold of socialist principles.

A Conference without Bob Ambridge was unthinkable: where with ruthless logic he disposed of anything he saw as crackpot nostrums or gimmicks. He was incapable of ‘tactics’ or dissimulation. He said precisely what he thought, always objective, oblivious of personalities and without rancour. He was a model chairman, impartial, a genuine democrat who would listen quietly to acrimonious assaults and then give his firm ruling. He was a tall, upright, handsome man, and behind the outward gruffness lay a shy, warmhearted person with a keen sense of humour. When he ‘retired’ to South Wales 15 years ago, instead of taking a rest, he began a new lease of life with our Swansea comrades. And we, in London, looked forward to Bob Ambridge’s twice yearly conference attendances as a provincial branch delegate. In this new role we were privileged to his wise counsel as recently as October last year.

Bob Ambridge left his mark on the Party. We are all the better for knowing him. To Frances Ambridge we send our sympathy and shared sorrow.