Editorial: North Paddington By-Election? (1953)

Editorial from the November 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

As we understand the sitting member is resigning we will contest North Paddington again at the By-election. Here is a grand opportunity for those who agree with us but, for one reason or another, are unable to join the Party. They can give practical effect to their sympathies in a variety of ways. We need money and help. We need immediately as much money as we can get to enable us to pay the £150 deposit, to book halls for meetings, to have an Election Special, candidate’s address, posters, handbills and leaflets printed, as well as to pay the other incidental expenses connected with propaganda at election time. We also need as much assistance as possible for addressing envelopes, distributing literature and so forth. The more money and assistance we can get the more we can do.

Will all those who are interested in using this opportunity to spread our socialist message get in touch with the Parliamentary Committee at Head Office.

We have already contested North Paddington three times and on each occasion have put in a great deal of effort. Members and sympathisers gathered together and worked with enthusiasm. We carried on the struggle with vigour making it clear that our outlook is unique. That we are solely concerned with making our socialist message as clear as we can and that we are not interested in the customary electioneering stunts, rabble-rousing or boosting. We make an appeal to the understanding and not the passions of people. Our object is to clear away the mud that has been spattered upon the socialist idea; to make plain how desirable is the world we are working for in which everything that is in and on the earth will be the common possession of all mankind; to spread our conviction that Socialism is the only practical solution to the problems that afflict the world today, that it is capable of being put into operation as soon as the mass of people understand and want it, and that it is well worth the effort needed.

It is not just the votes that matter; it is what is behind the votes, and this By-election gives us an opportunity to get our Object and Policy before a larger number of people than we can reach in normal times.

Will all members who can help in the election contact Head Office right away for information about the arrangements that are being made. Although we do not know yet the date of the By-election we are making various arrangements including the booking of the Metropolitan Theatre, Edgware Road, for an eve of the poll meeting to which we are inviting each of the other candidates to state his case or send a representative to do so.

Comrades and sympathisers let us use this opportunity once again to show the strength of our convictions and the depth of our enthusiasm for the cause we cherish.

Who needs Socialism? (1995)

From the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

At a superficial level capitalism is enjoying a triumphant
 period at present, but the old socialist warning that the system
 creates its own gravediggers is as relevant now
 as it was in the past

When socialists utter the slogan “One world and one people!” we are describing our conception of a world in which every single human being will be guaranteed the material needs of a full and happy life. It would be fatuous, of course, to say that socialism can deliver a “full and happy life” to every human being, but common ownership and democratic control of the means of life will not only guarantee every human being the right to contribute their skills and energies to the provision of goods and services, it will also give every person throughout the world the equal right to freely avail themselves of the goods and services they require. They will have the same free access to their self-determined needs; everyone will have complete material security and the idea of accumulating wealth, either in its material form or as represented by money, will have no place in a socialist world.

This is not the case today. According to the various charities and the United Nations relief agencies, over fifteen million people on average die each year from hunger and hunger-related diseases. Additionally, millions of the deaths that are noted as resulting from “natural causes” are the result of indirect poverty and could be prevented by the provision of decent food, good housing and proper medical care. If we had socialism now the millions threatened in the year ahead would be spared. These millions desperately need socialism!

The Belfast Telegraph recently cited the case of a young worker employed by Burger King who, for a five-hour stint earned £1.00—yes one pound sterling, not enough to buy himself a hamburger! His employers, it was stated, make casual staff clock off and wait in a staff room during slack periods, paying them only when they are actually working during busy periods. The newspaper did not indicate that Burger King had developed a new twist in the crime war, because robbing workers is, of course, a legal practice in capitalist society.

In Northern Ireland, the case is of some interest because all the mouthpieces of capitalism are assuring us that the infamously low-paid slavery' associated with tourism is part of the “peace dividend”. More generally, it reflects the condition of workers in Britain and further afield now that government has emaciated the unions and given the green light to employers to intensify the exploitation of their workers through part-time working and contract employment.

Beneath official poverty line

Again, local, but reflecting the national scene, is a report issued on 25 September by the Save the Children Fund. The report backs earlier research in claiming that 37.5 percent of children in Northern Ireland are living beneath the official poverty line and that the death rate among these children is 50 percent higher than among other children. This in Britain, one of five richest states in the world where the incautiously comfortable would vehemently deny that part of the “Third World” is situated in a housing estate a mere couple of miles from where they live.

Symptomatic, too, of working class life today in Britain are the notices appearing in Job Centres encouraging workers to accept the low-paid jobs on offer with the happy news that they might be entitled to state income support to bring them up to the recognised poverty level.

But it is not only the poor and the low-paid who are suffering the lash of a triumphant capitalism. Professionals and middle and junior management are being hounded for increased “efficiency”—in other words, better results or else! Ironically, the hounding comes from the top, from overpaid directors who themselves are frequently as secure as a football team manager. Often the house, cars, schools and status are appurtenances of the job and these invariably impose a sickening servility and tension on people who thought the reward for acting as Gauleiter for a bunch of capitalists was a life of economic security.

It was easy, in the period of relatively full employment, for many workers to have the illusion that capitalism had changed. There had in fact been no basic change but the illusion was fed by the employment situation following the war and the effect of this on the bargaining power of the unions in some sections of industry. But, even then, in what might be regarded as the halcyon days of capitalism, the age-old problems of the system flourished and it was largely hope, expressed in the rhetoric of the Left, that created the illusion that life was going to get better.

In the different countries of the world we have had capitalism run by “communists”, labourites, liberals, conservatives, et al. By the Right, the Left and the Centre. Surely, if the system could have been civilised, there has been the motive, the intent and the collective intelligence to extirpate its problems long before now.

Distribution

The problem of production has been solved. Unquestionably, today the potential exists to provide adequately for the whole of the human family but we have failed to solve the problem of distribution which remains fatally flawed by the needs of the profit system.

Today, for millions of people throughout the world there is only despair. In Britain the official figure for unemployment is disguised by the fact that for many there is no monetary incentive in registering as unemployed. Increasingly now, too, employers are employing part-time or contract labour which not only denies workers the notion of security and such benefits as holiday and redundancy pay but which acts as a means of intensifying exploitation. In its totality, the new regime (which is in no way threatened by the prospect of a Labour government), represents the death of hope for meaningful reform and the return of a particularly virulent form of working class exploitation.

The reader may put the question that heads this article to his or herself. Do you need socialism? If you really think about it, about the present and about the future, we can only conclude that you will add the word “urgently!”.

Richard Montague

Letter: Simply misheard (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Simply misheard

Dear Editors,

One thing I especially enjoy about the Socialist Party is your rationality. I find it frustrating that your solid arguments are so often simply misheard rather than disagreed with.

You doggedly put forward the proposition that what we need is a world society in which we all take what we each decide we need, from the common store of goods which we all co-operate together to produce. There would be no money, no coercion, and nobody would use anybody else.

Not only that, but you are clear that if this is to come about, it can only be as a result of the majority of the world's population grasping the situation, understanding how things are and what’s needed. You are emphatic that any idea of leadership is totally out of place in this thinking.

There is a whole movement afoot which is wholly with this understanding. I have in mind people like roads protesters, who are amazingly brave, creative and committed. Greens, people into DIY publishing and music, those into the newly-emerging Land Issue a la Winstanley. who was against money, and many others, the DIY underground, travellers and so forth. They share a great deal of your language, and they all more or less reject exploitation and favour a person-centred culture where the individual and the community are not artificially at odds as they are now.

And yet there seems to be no connection.

It seems to me that, for the alternative culture at least, there are two big obstacles to embracing what you call "Socialism":

Firstly, everyone assumes that some form of exchange has to remain in place. The idea of really sharing and trusting people not to take liberties is literally unthinkable.

Secondly, any attempt to say "we’ve thought about this, and this is what we think", any clarity on what's wrong and what’s needed is regarded with fear and hatred. People are very relativistic these days, seeing the only alternative to “nothing can be known" as “This is the truth, agree or else!"

In the meantime, of course, there's nothing relativistic about capitalism. We have to like it or lump it.

So that's why I value the Socialist Party so much. For holding onto the possibility that we can live all as sisters and brothers to one another, no matter how unfashionable and impossible that might look to our tired and fearful age—and for arguing that that's going to involve getting rid of exchange and so on.

It is all right to have an opinion about this. When you’re in a dark place people who genuinely look for a way out are a resource not a threat. Of course you could be wrong, but it looks reasonable to me. and indeed. I came to this understanding before I ever heard of the Socialist Party. To entertain these possibilities has nothing to do with trying to be a leader or a fanatic, it’s to do with trying to escape all that rubbish but still respect your intellect.

I really wish that I came across similar thinking more often amongst people you’d expect to be open to it.

Peter Rigg, 

Nelson, Lancs

Blogger's Note:

As many readers of the blog will know, Peter Rigg was a very valuable contributor to the Socialist Standard. His best known work was his Free Lunch cartoon strip, which appeared on the back page of the Standard from 2001 until 2020.

Blunt words about peace (1938)

From the November 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amid all the welter of words and phrases about “Peace” there comes the still, small voice of the Socialist.

Parsons, politicians and the Press all prattle of peace with all the dogmatism so characteristic of a superficial outlook.

But it is left, as usual, to Socialists to base what they have to say on the solid bedrock of the facts of working-class existence under capitalism.

From no other standpoint can we deal with this question of strife and peace. Why ? Because strife—the antithesis of peace—must be studied from its economic and political causes. Understanding these will give the answer to the question: “How is peace in the industrial and political spheres to be obtained ?” 

Knowing the causes, the Socialist is able, definitely, to point to the remedy.

Let us deal with strife in the industrial sphere first of all, and, later, in that of politics.

Socialists say that the sole cause of industrial strife is produced by a conflict of interests between the possessing class and the dispossessed—that is, between the capitalist class and the workers.

They call this never-ending conflict (so characteristic of capitalism) the class struggle or the class war. It is inherent in the system itself, and arises out of the root cause: the private ownership of the means of life. So long as we have capitalism, so long must this struggle continue.

The very existence of the trades unions is a proof of these conflicting interests. Wages, hours of labour, and the conditions under which the wage-slaves work are the chief points of discussion and dispute between the employers and the employed.

The working class are compelled by economic pressure to work in order to live. They are “employed” for no other purpose than to produce a “profit” for their masters. The wealth they produce, being far greater than what they receive in wages and salaries, they, obviously, produce a “surplus-value." And it is this surplus-value that our thievish exploiters appropriate. It is shared out, ultimately, amongst their own non-producing class under the titles of “Rent,” “Interest” and “Profit.” The capitalists are always endeavouring to wring more, and ever more, surplus-value out of their exploited workers.

The working class have to keep up their efforts continually to maintain their standard of living, and prevent a worsening of their conditions. To do so they have to exercise an eternal vigilance. But the result of all this exploitation is that, as a class, the exploiters get comparatively ever more wealthy.

It is obvious that, so long as the system of production for profit continues, so long will the class-conflict continue.

The only remedy is the Socialization of the means of wealth production and distribution. That will automatically abolish wage-slavery and all the strife produced by a clash of interests in a class-divided society.

Strikes, lock-outs, sabotage and conflicts with the forces of “law-and-order” would disappear. Wealth being produced then for human needs and enjoyment, there would at last disappear every trace of industrial strife.

Capitalism is the menace to peace in every way. It is the cause of an eternal warfare—

THE WAR OF THE CLASSES.

To talk of peace while capitalism continues is sheer foolishness. Yet there are those who speak of “peace in industry’’ and “harmony of interests between employers and employed.” Such vapid utterances only show a complete misunderstanding of the realities of the situation.

Until we make a revolutionary change and establish Socialism it is inevitable that the present system must continue to create strife and discord, and a hundred other evils.

Until the working class fulfil their historic mission and make Socialism a reality, they will continue to suffer, as the wage-slaves they are, under a capitalist regime.

We have considered the question of strife and peace in the industrial arena. Now let us, briefly, consider it as it presents itself in the political sphere.

The employing class of social parasites has one sole object—to continually increase its own great wealth. It exploits the labour-power of myriads of workers for this purpose. Almost every part of the globe is ransacked for its potential riches. No effort is spared, or cunning device neglected when wealth and profit are at stake. And the lives of many workers are risked—and sacrificed—for capitalist interests. Groups of capitalists compete with other groups for the possession of territories where there exists potential wealth. Trade routes, spheres of influence, and markets are collared and exploited. Potential wealth becomes, through the work of the wage-slaves, a real wealth to the possessing class.

The things the workers produce are “commodities." They are for sale in the market, and belong to the class that owns “the means whereby we live," and who exploit the workers and rob them of the greater part of the value created by working class efforts alone.

Commodities being produced for profit— which is realized through sale in the market—an actual market must be found, somewhere., somehow.

The competition amongst the wealth-owners being intense, all sorts of devices are resorted to sell their commodities in the world’s markets. Undercutting, discounts and rebates are in turn tried; but the capitalists, or groups of them, score when they can cut down the actual cost of production—so as to make a bigger surplus-value for themselves and their class. Machinery, ever more and more, is used to increase productivity; with a minimum of cost.

Wage-labour is eliminated more and more as the mechanical means displaces the human. Production grows greater and speedier; and all the time commodities are being turned out in huge amounts. Some market must be found for it in order to realize “profit" for

“THE LORDS OF WEALTH."

In their centres of political discussion—be they Parliament or Senate—they discuss their political and economic questions. The differences between the various capitalist groups in the nations of the world are discussed; the clash of their economic interests are made the basis of their negotiations. Diplomats, ambassadors and representatives of each country voice the desires and demands of their respective countries. The clash of economic interests increases. “Notes" of a veiled kind, and “demands" of a much more definite character, pass from one capitalist centre to another. A quarrel over trade routes, territory and administration, markets and spheres of influence, gets fiercer. Ultimately it is decided to settle the matter by force.

“ Negotiations are broken off.”

SO WAR IS DECLARED, 

and the fighting forces are despatched on their sanguinary task.

We saw capitalism at work in the Boer War. Then the warfare was really over the possession and exploitation of the diamond mines of Kimberley and the gold mines of Johannesburg. We saw capitalism at work causing the gigantic war of 1914-1918. And we shall see it again while capitalism continues.

Modern wars are not fought for "honour," “freedom," or over “scraps of paper"—or for “democracy."

They are fought for sordid gain—commercial, financial and industrial “interests."

Hitler, on behalf of the German capitalist class, desires to capture and control the wheat-producing Hungary and the oil-yielding wells of Rumania.

The capitalist class stop at nothing in their ruthless desire for gain. “No sacrifice," said Asquith in 1914, “is too great when honour and liberty are at stake."

The “honour" and “liberty" of capitalist thieves!

And millions of lives were thrown away, and endless suffering caused through the quarrels of the exploiting and possessing class.

Capitalism always causes, and must cause, strife in some form or other. There can be no real, lasting peace in the world so long as the present system continues. Its conflicts, of one kind or other, are always in evidence. The peace of mankind is always menaced by its existence.

Socialism alone can bring about the all-desirable peace. Then when the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution are owned and controlled democratically by the whole of mankind, for use and enjoyment of all, we shall see 

THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION.

No longer then will the workers in their myriads be compelled to toil to enrich a small but very wealthy class of parasites. No longer will chronic poverty, misery, and ever-recurring wars be rampant as they are to-day.

The Socialist Commonwealth, world-wide, will automatically abolish all those evils, and every other which the present system inevitably creates.

Strife, in every sphere, will give way at last to peace.

Study Socialism, and it must become apparent that it, and it alone, can achieve world-wide peace.

Study Socialism, and you will see that only by the capture of Political Power by an organized class-conscious working class, who understand and desire Socialism, can they achieve the grandest purpose of mankind.

It is the mission of the working class of the world, their historic mission, to abolish the present system, with all the wage-slavery and suffering it creates.

To attain to freedom, peace, and the prosperity of mankind, they must overthrow the capitalist system, and in its place establish “ the Socialist Commonwealth of the World.” 

Graham May.

Sold Again — As Usual (1951)

From the November 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whatever party you have voted for in the election you have voted for the continuation of the present system of production for profit, with all the evils that spring from it. Now you can sit back and take what is coming to you. For the third time in less than ten years you have been called upon to vote in a General Election. What have you gained by voting? Nothing but what you always get—hard work, insufficient wages, insecurity and war. As far as you are concerned the world is in an even worse mess than when the Labour Government took office in 1945. Then you were promised better times, peace and security, but all of these have proved to be an illusion. Even the boasted "full employment" is only due to the destruction of the last war and the preparation for a greater war in the future.

In 1945 you hailed the end of hostilities with sighs of relief and the vain hope that, after the dark days, your wounds would heal and you would soon resume your old ways with some measure of security. The hope was short-lived. The smoke of battle had hardly drifted away before the world was embarked upon another feverish armaments race and rising prices and shortages hit you hard. The German ogre had disappeared only to be replaced by the Russian one, and others are waiting round the corner to take its place. The war clouds have gathered fast again and the two main political parties were united in asking your support for the means and the privations associated with another gigantic holocaust. The bereaved, the wounded and the dead have made their sacrifices in vain.

Surely it is time you faced the stark realities of the world you live in? Surely it is time you faced the problem of reshaping the world so fundamentally that insecurity, the hard drab struggle for existence and the horrors of war will no longer darken your horizon and blast your lives and those of your families?

What is the real source of all your troubles—the source which all the candidates in the election ignored?

The means to produce and distribute the things you need to-day are owned by one class, a property-owning class, the capitalist class. This class lives out of incomes derived from the investment of money in shares and bonds. Whether the means of production are State-owned, company-owned or privately owned, they are operated for the purpose of providing incomes for the class that lives on your backs. You, the working class, operate the means of production and distribution, and you do so in return for wages and salaries because you are compelled to sell your power to work in order to obtain the means to live. You must find employment in order to live, but the owners of the means of production can live, and live luxuriously, without working. Their incomes come out of what you produce above what it costs to enable you to live and bring up a family. It is therefore to the interest of the capitalist to make you work as hard as possible for as low a wage as they can force you to accept. Hence the industrial strife, the class struggle, that breaks out between you and your employers; they try to depress your conditions, you try to raise them. Hence the united Tory and Labour exhortations to you, in their manifestoes, for increased production at a time when industrial profits are higher than they have ever been.

After nearly seven years of Labour Government they tell you in their manifesto, that "Half of Britain’s wealth is still owned by 1 per cent, of the population.” The Tories promise no more than to “do our best. . . . to make things better all round, but we do not blind ourselves to the difficulties that have to be overcome, or the time that will be required to bring us back to our rightful position in the world, and to revive the vigour of our national life and impulse.” In other words to revive the hungry twenties and thirties, when they were in power, and the conditions that led to the second world war. .

Production of goods for profit is the mainspring of the world to-day. Tory, Labour, Communist alike accept this as inevitable. And yet while the profit motive lasts there is no hope of amelioration for you. It defeats all good intentions and drives the world headlong to disaster after disaster.

The goods you produce must be sold by the capitalist, or the organisation working for him, before be can reap his surplus. Out of this comes the struggle for markets, for raw materials, for trade routes, and the periodical crises and wars. Since the cessation of hostilities on a grand scale these struggles for markets and raw materials have brought about new international alignments, the flourishing of secret diplomacy, many lesser wars and, lately, the war in Korea and the threat of war in Persia and Egypt. So long as production for profit lasts the trade rivalries and the wars associated with them cannot be avoided, no matter what government holds the reigns of power nor what promises they make.

Capitalism has unwittingly made a considerable contribution towards paving the way to Socialism. It has made the world one vast whole in which each section is dependent upon the others. The spread of modern conditions to all parts of the world is rapidly bringing the people of the world up to one general level of development; everywhere reproducing the conditions in which there is on one side a relatively small group of privileged property owners and on the other side, confronting them, the large mass of unprivileged and propertyless. Capitalist class ownership of the means of production has moved parallel with the spread of modern machines, modern methods and modem ideas. In face of this development the barriers between Eastern and Western culture have broken down; primitive customs and primitive ways are fast dissolving, bringing into line fresh groups of wage-workers with eyes opening to the evils of the present and the possibilities of the future.

Socialism is the antithesis of Capitalism. Its establishment will mean the abolition of all the antagonisms and miseries rooted in the class ownership of the means of living, and the dissolving of the disharmonies that hinder the enjoyment by all of the people of the world of the full fruitfulness of world unity and cooperative labour. Socialism is a system of society in which all that is in and on the earth will be the common heritage, and at the free disposal of all mankind. There will be no privileged classes and there will be no industrial antagonisms. Each will give according to his capacities and take according to his needs. The interest of each will be the interest of all because all will be working in harmony, and under the best conditions human ingenuity can devise, for the purpose of providing as full and comfortable a life as humanity can secure.

Surely you can see that this is directly in your interests and that, therefore, the case put forward by the socialist is worthy of serious examination. You are the people who can bring about this social change, but you cannot bring it about unless you understand it, realise what it involves and how it can be accomplished. Socialism cannot be brought into bring by a few people on behalf of the many. Any attempts, in that direction can only lead to confusion and disaster. Those who establish it must have cleared from their minds the prejudices that to-day set people at loggerheads; the prejudices of race, colour and class that set groups against each other. They must recognise the fundamental unity of all as members of one world-wide human family. Having arrived at this outlook they must then organise together to remove the privileged class from the seat of power—the control of the governmental machinery.

Parliament is the centre of government. It makes and enforces the law, and it does so on the basis of a society organised to serve the interests of a privileged group of capitalist property owners. In order to establish Socialism it is necessary to take away from the capitalist class their control of governmental power. This can only be accomplished by sending socialist delegates to parliament for this purpose alone. Parliamentary elections offer you this opportunity providing there are a sufficient number of you, who understand and want Socialism, to secure the return of your delegates. Up to the present this support has been sadly lacking.

We put forward a socialist candidate in the 1945 General Election and two in the last General Election. On the present occasion we have not been able to put forward any candidates. While this does not in any way affect our outlook or our determination to contest elections, it does mean, unfortunately, that the socialist position was not expressed by any candidate in the election, regardless of what name-tag he or his opponents fixed upon him. The result of the election simply decided which party will run Capitalism, with its accompanying miseries, for the next term. It may even be that they will decide to pool their resources and form a coalition government. In any event it is of no consequence to you which of them was victorious because their programmes are fundamentally identical; they are all committed to the continuance of the present social order, with its privileged class, its production for profit and its promise of greater and more devastating wars in future.

You have voted the Liberal Party into power and it brought you insecurity, misery and war; you have voted the Tory Party into power and you got the same thing; you have voted the Labour Party into power and fared no better; the Communist Party cannot offer you any fundamental change—their alternative is direction of the same system from the Kremlin instead of Westminster. If you voted for any candidate in the election you only voted for the continuance of the system that enslaves you, deprives you of the full fruits of your labour and prepares the means to send you to the shambles.

You will be called upon to vote again in the future, perhaps before long. Make up your mind now to give the position we have outlined your serious consideration. Are you content to remain beasts of burden, doomed to labour obediently for the enrichment of those who live like leeches on your backs, or will you rise from your knees and order your own lives in harmony with your fellows for your mutual benefit? Upon your understanding and action depends the possibility of a world free from the evils that afflict the world of to-day. The responsibility is yours, you cannot pass it on; you shirk it at your peril!

Gilmac.

What Comes Next? (2026)

Book Review from the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Comes Next? Why Our Society Needs a System Upgrade. Volume 1: The Illusion of Money. By Robert Everett Cox. 2026. 326 pp.

This book, the first in a 3-volume series, presents a detailed explanation and critique of the capitalist system. It delves into various different views on the origins and rise of capitalism and the impact that system has had, and continues to have, on people’s lives. Its four chapters, each divided into various parts, are entitled ‘Why Work?’, ‘The Wages System’, ‘Abundance Thwarted?’ and ‘For Richer or Poorer’.

It is difficult to do justice in a single review to the breadth and intricacy of the investigation the author conducts, characterised as it also is by multiple references to the contributions of other writers and researchers. It may be useful, however, to pick on certain aspects that this reviewer found especially striking for the way they illuminate certain widely discussed topics whose implications are often incompletely understood and rarely taken to their logical conclusion.

The first one of these, which spans the volume and is interrogated with admirable clarity, is the ‘two-class’ case advanced by socialists, ie that society is divided between the tiny minority who own most of the resources and wealth in society (capitalists) and the vast majority who don’t (workers). Among the objections often raised to this view is that, since not everyone falls neatly into either of these categories, it does not reflect the reality of things. The author’s response to this is a frank and simple admission that such a picture of society is indeed ‘a simplification, a generalisation’, but that ‘making generalisations is unavoidable if we want to see the wood for the trees as far as understanding society is concerned’. More precisely: ‘A capitalist may be loosely defined as someone who possesses sufficient capital to comfortably live off the proceeds of investing that capital. This should not be confused with a self-employed worker; however hard-working, entrepreneurial and frugal such a worker may be. The latter does not possess sufficient capital to qualify as a capitalist and therefore still depends on working to obtain a living, like other members of the working class’.

Secondly, the much debated subject of ‘financialisation’ of the capitalist economy (‘making money out of money’), the ‘fictitious capital’ associated with it and how that relates to capital invested in the traditional production and distribution of goods and services is examined in a way that sheds far more light on the phenomenon than this reviewer has previously found and is also linked in innovative fashion to Marx’s ideas on money, credit and surplus value. Ultimately, the author tells us, we should not be surprised by the manifold forms that capitalism’s drive for profit may take, since ‘like some hydra-headed monster of Greek mythology, it grows a new head as new circumstances dictate’.

Next, there is ample discussion of what the author refers to as ‘capitalism’s structural waste’. Most people are aware that a good many of capitalism’s technological advances, rather than being used productively to better the human lot and create the abundance modern technology is capable of, are directed instead into activities that make life more complex, more insecure or more perilous the world over. Here we are talking about, for example, increased bureaucracy, the sales and advertising industry, and preparation and waging of war, which absorb the time, effort and mental and physical energies of so many of the working population. This ‘progress perverted’ phenomenon is, of course, widely understood, but rather than just lament the waste associated with it, the writer is not afraid to refer to the whole world of ‘commerce, finance and retailing’ as ‘socially useless industries’, and then to take it further by analysing and putting an actual figure on the ‘wasted labour’ all this represents (50 percent). His incontrovertible explanation for this is that ‘Under capitalism, generally speaking, technological innovations tend not to be taken up and developed if there is no prospect of making a profit by doing so’.

A final example, among many, of the issues this volume addresses in a novel and thought-provoking way is the futility of proposals or attempts to reform capitalism in the interest of workers. It dwells, in particular, on the advocacy by many of Universal Basic Income (UBI). In a section entitled ‘The UBI Panacea’, it explains in entirely credible fashion how automation and AI are unlikely to drastically reduce the number of jobs any more than previous major technological developments have and so are unlikely to cause what John Maynard Keynes wrongly foresaw as ‘a new disease … namely technological unemployment’. It follows from this, the author goes on to argue, that UBI policies by governments will not be needed, since dire want among the mass of workers owing to unemployment will not come to pass. As for UBI as a solution that governments could adopt anyway to deal with the structural unemployment caused by capitalism or simply to try and equalise spending power among workers, he points to the impracticality and potentially disruptive nature of this on a plethora of different levels whatever the model proposed. A hypothetical example given is of a government conceiving and trying to bring in UBI as a measure that ‘provides everyone with the same lump sum, which they receive on top of their income, earned or unearned’.

Such samples of the issues addressed in this volume may give an idea of the breadth with which it covers a wide range of other areas, eg, the ‘human nature’ argument, the ‘fake’ socialism of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the nature and causes of inflation, ‘the penetration of money into every aspect of our lives, the continued validity of Marx’s analysis of capitalism, the concept of ‘relative poverty’, the vast disparity of wealth ownership between workers and capitalists. It also offers a small taste, if only a taste, of the ‘What Comes Next?’ of its title, ie the alternative system of society the author sees as necessary to replace the one investigated here. This alternative is summed up as ‘a post-capitalist society when employment (and hence “unemployment”) would cease to exist and when money would no longer be required to access the goods and services we need’. How this characterisation is followed up and fleshed out in the further 2 volumes of What Comes Next (‘Beyond the Price Tag’ and ‘A Sharing Society’) will be discussed in reviews of those in future editions of the Socialist Standard.

Howard Moss

History and the battle of ideas (1988)

From the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

What makes an idea serious or crazy? The "realist" will tell you that the distinction is easy to make Serious ideas are about making reality work. Crazy ideas are incompatible with reality, they are dreams, utopian fantasies, unrealisable ideas.

Few people doubt that ending mass starvation under capitalism is a serious idea. The Right argues that free markets and the elimination of state-dominated economies in the countries where millions are starving would put an end to malnutrition The buying and selling system, left to its own devices, would put food where there are consumers for it. That is the magic of the market, so the economic magicians of the Ministries and universities tell us with faces straight. The Left rejects this method of ending world hunger. The left-wing of capitalism argues that what is needed is more overseas monetary aid from the "rich" nations to the "poor" ones and more state-regulated planning of food production, so that the market is forced to work for the people. Right and left compete openly to prove that they have the most serious idea to end the obscenity of widespread human starvation, with 15 million under the age of five dying yearly for lack of food in a world of plenty.

The socialist argues that both the Right and Left are wrong. Their policies will never succeed. Capitalism cannot meet the needs of those who are hungry but moneyless. The solution is to do away with the profit system which dictates that only those needs which it is profitable to satisfy will be provided for. Do away with money, which stands as a barrier between humankind and the abundant resources of our planet. Take the world, and everything in it, into common possession. This is a revolutionary proposition.

It is also, according to the ideologists of the Left and Right of capitalism, a crazy proposition. It is unrealistic to conceive of a worldwide society where production is solely for need, not profit. To abolish money is a monstrously crazy idea. Free access would never work. Evidence to back these claims is rarely offered. When it is it is usually based on distortion. "Ah, these socialists want to abolish money and replace it with barter." No we do not; we want to abolish money and replace it with free access. "Human nature is such that people could not operate in a society where everything is freely available " Not a scrap of biological evidence is provided to back up this claim that there is something inherent in the human genes which makes us incapable of sharing the world as a united species, each with our different talents and needs. The fact is that when the apologists for capitalism are pushed to deal with the socialist idea, they reject it simply because it is not in line with what exists now. However unworkable their own ideas and policies are, they are defined as "serious" if they fit in with the continuation of capitalism

Getting religion

It was the same in the past. In classical antiquity the ownership of one human being by another was the economic norm. Slave production prevailed. Until the last century in North America slave plantations flourished. The slave who objected to being owned would be labelled “a utopian". Even his or her fellow slaves would find crazy the notion of not being owned by a master or mistress. Under feudalism vast numbers of men were recruited to fight the Crusades against those who rejected the Christian faith. According to this faith still existing in society, but thankfully ignored by most people — all humans are born as sinners and must pray to a Lord in the sky who sent his only son down to earth to be murdered and born again. All very serious. Few people call Archbishop Runcie a crazy man. When Pope Urban II wanted to recruit men to fight and die in these vicious Crusades of mass human slaughter, this is what he said:

The invaders befoul the altars with the filth of their bodies They circumcise Christians and pour the blood of the circumcision upon the altars or into baptismal fonts They stable their horses in these churches, which are now withdrawn from the service of God .Yea, the churches are served, but not by holy men — for the Turks are torturing Christians, binding them, and filling then with arrows, or making them kneel bending their heads, to try if their swordsmen can cut through their necks with a single blow of the naked sword. What shall I say of the ravishing of the women? 

(H Lamb, The Crusades,  Iron Men and Saints, 1931, p 39.)

What are we to think of the ideas presented in Urban II's racist, fantastic, war mongering scare story? Do we accept that it must have been serious because most Europeans at the time believed it? Do we say that it is crazy, even though it reflected the economic needs of the feudal ruling class, who needed to protect the Church’s ownership and control of land and ideology against other rulers with other religious myths to confuse the minds of the oppressed? A few weeks ago the present writer bought a copy of The Watchtower, a magazine sold from door to door by devoted men and women who have ideas to pass on. They are Christians of the Jehovah's Witness sect and. among other things, they believe that the world is soon to end and God will "come down'’ to judge us all. It seems a worthwhile insurance policy to keep a copy of The Watchtower under the bed. Their 15 July issue has a headline JESUS CHRIST GOD. MAN OR MYTH? Had the woman been selling the magazine in the days of feudal totalitarianism, when belief in religious nonsense was compulsory, she would probably have burned at the stake for posing such a blasphemous question. Times change. Inside we are told that in the first century, thousands of people accepted Jesus for what he was the promised Messiah, or Christ, sent to earth to vindicate Jehovah’s sovereignty and to offer his life as a ransom for mankind . . . Today, millions of Christian disciples know that Jesus is no myth. They accept him as the heavenly enthroned King of God's established kingdom, who is now progressively taking control of the earth and its affairs" (p 8). In "the first century" it is not that surprising that human beings, lacking much scientific knowledge of their environment were taken in by the myth of a miracle performing magician descending to earth from heaven. The same belief had been held by countless god-worshippers in countless centuries before the first one AD. Today, we might find it harder to understand how serious people can believe that a messiah, alive only in the "spirit world beyond", can be taking control of the world's affairs. If one went to a psychiatrist with such a story, he would probably diagnose insanity, unless he knew the social conventions which make such faith respectable.

Mental phenomena

Dogmatic faith in ideas of no scientific substance is not confined to orthodox religion. On the Left there has long been a belief among some people that the tyrannical, anti-working class police states of the Russian Empire, China or Albania are socialist societies Although they exhibit all the characteristics of capitalism — wage labour, capital, buying and selling, rich and poor, leaders and oppressed — some workers will not give up the idea that these are examples of socialism in practice. Interestingly, S. M. Lipset has pointed out that

In Holland and Sweden. recent studies show that the Communists are strongest in regions which were once centres of fundamentalist religious revivalism. In Finland, Communism and revivalist Christianity often are strong in the same areas (Political Man, p. 106.)

What seems to have happened in these cases is that workers have given up one set of unscientific, crazy ideas and adopted a new set of pseudo-scientific, equally crazy ideas.

People are not born with ideas. Thinking is a social process. To think we need to think about something, and that something is our environment Our minds, which are not tangible parts of the anatomy but social phenomena, are located in the environment This is why we think most of the time about ideas which relate to our environment. When we are living in cities, surrounded by supermarkets and fast-food joints, we don't think about going out into the jungle and hunting for meat. Hunter gatherers, living in a primitive society, do not think about whether to have pickles on their Big Mac. Primitive hunters did not think about money because they lived in a society where goods were shared by the whole community, without money intervening to restrict the satisfaction of their needs. Big Mac Man thinks a lot about money. He will do more or less anything, including selling himself to a capitalist who will exploit him, in order to get more of it. In many primitive tribes, such as the Panare of South America, it is considered a supreme indignity to work for wages. Who is crazy, the moneyless, sharing primitive, or the highly civilised, highly exploited wage slave? 

In a property-dominated society most of our ideas are property related. The pronouns 'mine", "yours" and "theirs” become very important. People become neurotic about them. The smallest children are taught, "That's not yours. Don't touch Mustn’t touch. Not yours." Grown men and women work forty-hour weeks in factories. When they leave on a Friday they are checked by security guards in uniforms with buttons almost shiny enough to make them cops They are checking that these untrustworthy wage slaves have not stolen a bit of what they produced They produced the goods, the capitalist, who was probably not seen in the factory all week, possesses the wealth. If workers want what they produce they can spend some of their wages buying it. You build mansions but live in a slum.

We are taught to accept that possession is power. The child who says to her mother. “Well, that might not be mine, but I want to use it" will have a problem in understanding the ways of the world. If this carries on she will need to be taken to a child psychologist. In the past she would be belted, probably not quite as humiliating as being sent to the child psychologist. If a socialist factory worker says, "Look, we produce all the wealth and then we're robbed of the fruits of our labour. Why don't we make the means of production — not just this factory, but all of them, and the offices, farms and mines as well — into our common possession!" he will soon be branded a troublemaker. Crazy ideas. If he is lucky he will be derided as a utopian, or he might be blacklisted and persecuted as a Red wrecker.

A culture of deceit

There are some ideas which we arrive at our selves. We do not need to read books to discover that fire burns us or soap tastes horrible. Other ideas we discover by listening to other people. Prolonged exposure of the skin to the sun can damage it; carrots add a bit of flavour to a casserole; if you sleep with a hooker in Bangkok you stand a good chance of catching a dose of something you won't like. These are serious ideas, learned either from direct experience of the environment or from the experiences of those who have no reason to deceive us.

Some people do have an interest in deceiving us. Capitalism is based on a culture of deceit. It pretends that class inequality either does not exist or, if it does, is natural and ineradicable; it pretends that employment is a fair contract rather than a process of legalised robbery; and that profit is the just reward of the hard working entrepreneur, rather than the surplus value obtained by the capitalists, who pay their workers less than the value of what they have produced. Capitalism claims that all workers can become rich if they try hard enough, that hard work will always be rewarded with social success. These are lies. Professional liars — journalists, priests, professors, teachers, politicians are in the business of knocking these false beliefs into the minds of the workers. They are being entrusted with a very responsible job. If they fail, workers might stop accepting the capitalist myths. No wonder the Minister of Education is so eager to ensure that the right lessons are being taught in the curriculum, and Thatcher is so busy trying to censor the BBC. Ideas which we. pick up from the depositories of wisdom which capitalism provides for us are what socialists call Ideology. Or, to put it simply, distorted experience

A few months ago the case of the moving picture became a big news story Thousands of copies of prints had been sold for the £7.50 tastes of proletarian art collectors. Well, they cover the stains on the wallpaper and if you know nothing about painting they look just like the original. One of these paintings depicted a dancing girl, and on walls all over Britain reports came that she was starting to dance. Well, to be honest, what happened first was that one report came in. An old lady in Solihull had spotted this dancing girl on her wall. In stepped that journal of sustained. scientific investigation. The Sun. And would you believe it. within only a few days of reading about the sighting by this Solihull Sun reader, there were girls dancing on the walls of pretty well every city in Britain. They were dancing two to a street in Ireland, where early Catholic indoctrination has made the workers a soft touch for this sort of craziness. (In Ireland the Virgin Mary is known to appear in fields quicker than you can say "Let's build an airport" ) The myth of the dancing girl does nobody much harm. One can imagine the dull and uncreative lives of the poor workers who imagined that they saw their painting dance. Other myths, however. are more harmful. For example, most workers in Britain have never met a Russian. If they did they would probably think he was a German. But most British workers will tell you that "we" (the British) cannot trust the Russians. If necessary, "we" must be prepared to protect ourselves by annihilating several million of them. Indeed, the whole British defence policy supported by Tory. Labour and Liberal alike is based on the assumption that we must maintain a permanent threat to kill millions of Russians if British capitalist interests are endangered. British workers have been given an enemy to fear and, when the time is right, to hate and kill. In Iran and Iraq this creation of artificial human hatred has resulted in hundreds of thousands of workers, many of them only teenagers, marching with enthusiasm to their deaths. Such is the sick nature of capitalist ideology

Socialist ideas

This journal is called the Socialist Standard. You may have bought it for one of many reasons. What Is likely is that before you bought it ideas about what socialism means were fed to you. They were probably not fed by socialists. All kinds of people with a direct interest in discrediting the idea of socialism — from the Sun with its "loony lefties' and the Guardian with its Marxist states", to our class enemies in the pulpits and on party platforms — will have contributed their bit to arouse suspicion about the establishment of a socialist world society. Socialists are willing and able to counter these ideas, preferably face to lace in open debate. In debate the case for socialism is invincible. But more often than not, ideology is perpetrated by means of dishonesty and innuendo, appeals to fear and prejudice rather than self-interest and social awareness Why are socialist ideas attacked? Clearly, it is not because the case for socialism is completely crazy. After all, the capitalists do not invest millions of pounds in opposing the ideas of the Flat Earth Society or the man who advertises regularly in the Guardian to inform us that Jesus Christ is alive and living in Brick Lane, London. Ideas are attacked when they endanger an interest. The Church of England devotes much time and money to discredit crazy religious sects, like the Moonies and Scientologists, who are challenging its monopoly of religious craziness. Why do the Cigarette manufacturers spend money on convincing us that tobacco addiction is not really half as bad for you as these wicked, unscientific anti-smoking activists claim? They do so because in recent years the health dangers of smoking have become more obvious, smoking in public has become stigmatised and some very fat profits indeed are in danger of being lost. Where there is an interest to defend the battle of ideas hots up.

Socialism is the most dangerous idea conceivable for defenders of capitalism. Those who support a system of minority affluence and privilege are not going to sit back complacently while we undermine support for their social order. They will fight with all the lies, distortions, bribes and more sinister weaponry at their command. That is why there is a class war between them and us. It is not a war of bullets and bombs, which capitalists and would be capitalists feel most comfortable with, but a war of ideas. Our objective is to unshackle the minds of our fellow workers: to educate the victims of political confusion.

Socialists are serious about ideas because knowledge is the most potent weapon our class can possess. That is why we are not bothered about whether our ideas are regarded as serious or crazy in some philosophical, academic sense. Socialists could not care less if the pontificating lookers on in the struggle of history deem us to be cranks. It is better to be a class-conscious crank than a serious and respectable accomplice to human oppression. Neither are we bothered about the hangers-on to socialist ideas, often to be found flogging their worn out fallacies in the various sects of left wing capitalism. They have been around a long time, and Engels described them as 

. . . all those who have nothing to look forward to from the official world or have come to the end of their tether with it—opponents of inoculation, supporters of abstemiousness, vegetarians. anti-vivisectionists, nature healers, free-community preachers whose communities have fallen to pieces, authors of new theories on the origin of the universe, unsuccessful or unfortunate inventors, victims of real or imaginary injustice who are termed "good for nothing petty-foggers" by the bureaucracy, honest fools and dishonest swindlers —all throng to the working class parties in all countries (On the History of Early Christianity, in Marx and Engels on Religion, p. 31)

For socialist knowledge to win the day. and capitalism to be destroyed by a well organised working class, two factors are required. The first is a socialist movement which sticks to its principles and never betrays the true interests of the class which is to be emancipated by socialism, Secondly, it is only possible for ideas to change as fast as material conditions themselves change out of the contradictions of everyday life under capitalism arise new ideas. Today some workers might think they are doing well because they own a few shares in British Gas, a few tremors on the Stock Exchange should be sufficient to shatter their illusions. In 1988 you might vote for nuclear bombs in order to keep the peace, it will only take one mushroom cloud to shake that dangerous myth out of your head. As you read this you may be thinking that socialism sounds like a great idea, but you simply haven't the time or energy to do anything about it. Capitalism might create plenty of time for you; it might push you so hard, assault your dignity so much and insult your humanity to the point where you have no alternative but to devote your energy to overthrowing it. As Marx explained:

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come info conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters Then begins an epoch of social revolution

(Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy)

Steve Coleman

Lest you forget (1949)

From the September 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

No omnipotent power decreed that Capitalism should come into existence; it just growed. No omnipotent power has decreed that Capitalism will not pass away; it is already decaying.

You were not designed by nature to produce wealth so that parasites might thrive; although you chose your parents badly, the power to rectify the error rests in your own hands.

Knowledge is power; but only if you use it.

No revolutionary movement thrives on apathy; “Those who would be free themselves must strike the blow.”

While you remain on your knees, and accept the figment that the wealthy are wealthy because they have more intelligence than you have, you will continue to carry the burdens of wage slavery. Why not recognise the truth, that it is you and not they who exhibit the most intelligence by the work you do; get upon your feet and throw the useless incubus off your backs.

The socialist movement is not just a movement to replace one group at the top by another; it is a movement to abolish the group idea altogether and replace it by the idea of humanity as an undivided whole, the world one vast harmonious and undiversified family knit together by one object—the comfort and happiness of all.

You have been prepared to fight and die for a world of insecurity and misery; why not enjoy the pleasure of change and fight and live for a world of comfort and security?

When you arrive at periods of exceptional misery the parson says to you “Let us pray”; can’t you see that what he is really saying is “Let us bray”? To use a metaphor: while your hands and eyes are turned skywards, the capitalist can go through your pockets.

Gilmac.

A world of waste. (1917)

From the September 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps the chief characteristic of the present regime is the production of colossal wealth by the workers of the world. In no period has the earth been so ransacked for its potential riches; in no age have the forces of nature, and scientific knowledge, been so utilised to extract wealth as during the last fifty years. In the domain of earth, sea, and air, man exerts wonderful power. Ultimately he may even prevent earthquakes from being a menace, make plagues impossible, and turn the uncontrolled force in the lightning stroke, and the energies of the sea and the sunlight, to the common good.

Man, alas ! has assisted in his own enslavement. The wealth he has shaped has diverted him from the destiny that should be his. With all his great heritage, wielding untold potency through science, he should be happier far than those of ages gone. Health and real happiness, knowledge and power, should be his in excelsis were he but the real possessor of his own productions, the disposer of his own powers.

But a blight has settled over Society—the blight of capitalism ! That which blossoms and promises abundance for all is turned to foulness, and the fruit it bears is bitter.

And so we see the saddest spectacle of the ages—the vast masses of the people, who are the wealth producers, surrounded by gigantic wealth yet themselves in stint and wretchedness.

Poverty, ceaseless toil, disease, and misery are theirs. Slaves without knowing it are most of them, contented with their chains. Without hope and bereft of ideals, their lives sunless and shorn of imagination by this system that exploits and finally “scaps” them, they exist only as beasts of burden. The epitaph of millions might justly be : “In the grip of the capitalist system they were compelled to waste their very lives.” For capitalism, with all its Midas-like power, produces, from its very nature, the most terrible waste imaginable. It is, indeed, in the final and real sense, the essence of wastefulness and misdirected energy.

Let us consider now some aspects in which this is presented.

The children of the workers suffer from malnutrition—due to the inability of their exploited parents to supply them with the necessary food. Often they come into the world the offspring of ill-nourished parents, thus being handicapped from the start. They grow up puny, and continue to be ill-fed, and the most important fundamental is missing from Society : healthy, strong children. The wastage of potential citizens and wealth producers through capitalism is enormous.

Then they are educated. And what an education it is ! What efforts are made to develop them physically, to make them sturdy, robust, so that existence becomes enjoyable ? Their own innate tendencies are but rarely encouraged ; their talents are rarely discovered and developed. Individuality is crushed out of them by the system of education, and the imaginative faculty is looked upon as something to be eradicated ! A smattering of this and that is given them, and many of the most valuable kinds of knowledge are denied them altogether.

Thus they are turned out of the schools, half-baked products of capitalistic instruction, with minds impaired by narrow national prejudices, designated “patriotism.” They are given only enough “education” to make them docile and industrious wage-slaves. All knowledge that would be dangerous to the present system, and all history of the struggles of the workers in the past to gain freedom, are glossed over, lied about, or hidden from them.

Now consider the hap-hazard employment of children under the system, and their development into full-grown wage-slaves.

Few of the workers can exercise a choice worth calling such in the profession or trade of their children. They take what presents itself. The medical, legal, and scientific professions are excluded by lack of opportunities. Money paves the way. The one idea is to so place them that they may “make a living.” The consequence is that the potential artist, scientist, author or architect becomes a mere drudge.

The world will never know what a wealth of intellect and power is thus dissipated and lost.

Socialism, with its utilisation of human ability for the world’s Commonwealth, alone is the remedy. It alone presents the opportunities.

The youthful workers become inured to the system, and generally everything that is is taken as a matter of course. The workers’ lives are spent in creating wealth. Their very lives are not their own. They become mere drudges. A fatalism is engendered that makes many end their slave existence as they began it—by blindly accepting it. Others may understand their trade interests and become trade unionists, yet never possess the key to emancipation—class-consciousness.

One final word on the gigantic waste manifesting itself in a thousand ways. Through their hellish system the masters are compelled to maintain huge fighting forces to conserve their interests. Intetests of rival groups of capitalists clash and war is precipitated, and air, sea and land become the scenes of hideous waste—waste of life and wealth.

Millions have been slaughtered, millions maimed for life. Desolation, ruin, and famine cover the earth. War has created a wilderness of untold waste.

Workers, the one remedy that lies in your hands is Socialism. Organise for the establishment of that system in order that human energy and ability shall no longer be run to waste, in order, instead, that you may reap the fruits of your labours and peace and prosperity be yours. So shall you become masters of your own destiny ; so shall man come into his own and realise his infinite capacity to make this globe worth living on ; so shall be established, as never before, happiness and liberty for the multitudes of all nations, founded upon the wealth that flows like water from their concerted efforts.

“Isn’t this worth fighting for” think you?

G.

The Rainy Day. (1909)

From the October 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world’s arena has been somewhat crowded latterly, and he must he a singularly moribund individual who has allowed the series of recent world-happenings to drop through his cerebral filter without observing that we are on the eve of stupendous changes. Putting aside the North Pole incident, and even the question of the abolition or retention of the Censor, we think it vastly more important to consider that Japan has jumped out of feudalism into modern capitalism, and that almost within the memory of still young men. Japan hits now quite a number of well equipped, up-to-date cotton mills, with which, she is not only supplying her home demand, but is exporting to China. She is thus a new and dangerous competitor in the international race for markets. Turkey now shows signs of throwing off the sloth of ages and of joining in the scramble. Persia, too, and Egypt, are profiting by the example of their contigious neighbours and are responding to the stimulus of imported civilisation. The tremendous expansive powers of the means of production are, to the intelligent student at least, well known, and it would seem only a question of a very short time, before the countries named pass through the stages of the importation of machinery and staple products to being self-supporting, and at last to that where a surplus is produced and exportation begins. This stage once reached, and possessing a proletariat who can rub along comfortably on twopence or threepence a day, it is easy to see where the trouble will commence. Capital, that remarkably shy bird which is always “going abroad,” will have to either consider the advisability of an inter-planetary trip, or throw up the sponge. The latter process an awakened and intelligent proletariat can materially assist, and our steadily increasing membership tends to show that we are getting this.

Whilst, however, these portentous happenings are being enacted abroad, some no less interesting incidents are occupying the stage at home, in this our own, our native land. The comparatively puny event, the Budget, has been recently dealt with in our columns. Its chief purpose has been to give the Labour Party another opportunity of exhibiting their identity with the enemy, and of justifying the name that Engels applied to their particular hotch-potch of ideas, demands, etc. He called it Flunkeyism.

But to get on, what we would particularly point out is that the period of bad trade, which has been with us now for several years, has apparently developed a deep and abiding affection for us, and in spite of the newspaper predictions of “better next year,” it is still the common experience to find hundreds of applicants for one poorly remunerated job ; still one reads regularly, almost daily, of some poor devil’s suicide through want of employment. And in view of the facts first stated we feel almost justified in assuming that capitalism, at least in Great Britain, has reached that point where good and bad times cease to alternate and we get all depression, or but slight and short returns to “prosperity.” With the home market almost at a standstill owing to the inability of the worker to purchase back more than a mere fraction of his products ; with foreign markets becoming ever more restricted ; with an enormous army of unemployed always on hand and close on a million people classed as paupers: with all these meaning facts confronting them it is very evident that the “masters of the bread” are feeling far from comfortable. The “good time coming” has failed to materialise, so something must be done to quieten working-class unrest and if possible to offer a counter-attraction to the steadily increasing agitation of the wicked Socialist.

Result (1) the Budget, (2) Insurance against Unemployment. The former, as we have observed, has been dealt with in our columns already. It is of the latter we now wish to speak.

Mr. Winston Churchill, in an interview which the Daily Mail (16.8.09) claims to have had with him, was considerate enough to explain the proposed scheme to the interviewer, and in doing so exposed, not only the cloven hoof, but the goat-like haunches, the horned head and leering grin of capitalism’s patron saint, the Father of Lies. The main features of the scheme are these : It will be (1) compulsory ; (2) contributory ; (3) divided up into different sections for different trades.

"Compulsion was necessary. Voluntary schemes fail for the reason that most of those who join them are men likely to be most often unemployed."

See the beautiful and touching solicitude of our rulers for the comfort and well-being of the worker. Only those likely to benefit joined under a voluntary system. What is wanted is a membership composed of men who will only want to pay in and never draw out.

“Contributions from men and employers were also necessary. To begin with, the country could not afford to do without them ; and moreover, the idea is to increase the stability of our institutions by giving the mass of industrial workers a direct interest in maintaining them. With a ‘stake in the country’ in the form of insurance against evil days these workers will pay no attention to the vague promises of revolutionary Socialism.”

Thus Mr. Churchill. The position of the S.P.G.B. regarding palliatives is, or should be, well known, and we think the above a striking confirmation of our attitude. Social reform is the antidote to Socialism. Palliatives are the sops thrown out to keep the workers busy while the capitalists make their position more secure, and serve much the same purpose as the impedimenta thrown out by a man in a sleigh pursued by wolves.

The details of the scheme are also extremely interesting. The amount of subscription is not yet definitely fixed, but will probably be 2½d. per week from the worker, 2½d. a week from the employer, and the same from the State. Every worker is to have a card upon which stamps to the value of his own and his employer’s contribution must be stuck each week. The employer is to affix the stamp, deducting the worker’s 2½d. from his wages. The employer may to save time and trouble, send all his cards to the local labour exchange with a cheque for the amount due, and the cards will be stamped without any further trouble to him.

The labour exchanges and the insurance plan will work closely together. When a worker loses his job he is to report himself to the exchange, which immediately tries to find him work. For a week he receives nothing. It is assumed that he will have saved enough to last him a week, and in the meantime the exchange endeavours to find him a job in order to save the fund.

When the exchange hears of work likely to suit the unemployed worker he must either take it or explain to a committee of masters and men why he objects. If they consider his objection unsatisfactory he is bound to accept the job or lose his out-of-work allowance. If neither the man nor the exchange can find work, than after seven days he begins to receive the tremendous sum of eight shillings or less per week, which may go on for fifteen weeks, or more if the benefits are slightly less. If still out of work after twenty weeks he drops out of benefit, and when next he finds employment must start all over again. The second time he has to subscribe longer before he becomes entitled to claim on the funds. The original period of probation will most probably be eight months. The second will be longer and the third longer still. This will have the effect of clearing the fund of those who are habitually unemployed for long spells. The frequently out-of-work must seek relief of the distress committee : they are outside the limits of the labour exchange and insurance system, which is in no sense charitable. “It is a purely economic and mathematical business arrangement for preventing waste.”

The unemployed problem is a necessary consequence of and an indispensable adjunct to the capitalist method of wealth making. The introduction of machinery and improved methods into industry, renders an increasing number of workers superfluous. These form what Engels calls “the reserve army of labour,” a weapon for crushing the wages of those in work down to mere subsistence level, and also a store from which drafts may be drawn to meet the fluctuations in trade. But the capitalist is faced with another difficulty. The worker’s wage is crushed so near the bare subsistence level that he is unable to put anything away to tide over a spell of unemployment of even short duration. The consequence is that when the capitalist next takes him down off the shelf, he is devitalized, spiritless and out of condition generally, hence not so energetic, not so productive, as the capitalist wants. The proposed scheme of insurance will just provide a few niggardly, shillings to keep the landlord off for a week or two, and with the two or three shillings he has cheated himself out of during the probation period (eight months at least) it is hoped he will keep himself physically fit until the capitalist has need of his services again.

What a hollow sham ! What a mockery ! !

“Many of the greatest employers of labour have warmly welcomed the idea. Sir Charles McLaren, for instance, believes it will add materially to the wealth of the nation.”

Workers, beware when the enemy warmly welcomes anything affecting your relations with him ! You may be fairly sure that it is not for your benefit. When you have a dispute with him as to what constitutes a “fair” portion of your product to hand you back as wages, notice how he “warmly welcomes” the troops who go down to blow your brains out. Notice how he “warmly welcomes” the establishment of conciliation boards when a mere glance at statistics show an ever greater proportion of disputes settled, through them, in favour of the masters. Workers, how long are you going to chase the Will-o’-the-wisps the master class is never tired of contriving for your greater befoolment ? All the budgets, tariff reforms, insurance and other capitalist schemes won’t alter the fact that you have to seek the permission of the owners of the means of life, to work, as a means to live. Nothing save Socialism, the ownership by the people of those means, will change the conditions that make you hirelings, slaves, lackeys; who receive only a fragment of the wealth you alone produce, when you are fortunate enough to be graciously allowed to produce it—for someone else

If you are convinced that in Socialism alone is to be found your only escape, do not wait for someone else to join, but come in and help to build up a solid party. We are often asked how are we going to bring this better state about. Believe us, no select half-dozen are going to do it, but you, and I, and all of us, combined as a class, can do that, and anything else humanly possible that we wish.—when you join. Come in.

Wilfred.

Blogger's Note:

When 'Wilfred' writes: ". .  . The comparatively puny event, the Budget, has been recently dealt with in our columns . . . ",  he's possibly referring to the following editorials from earlier Socialist Standards:

• Jun 1909: Raising the Wind.
• July 1909: A Capitalist Budget.
• Sep 1909: Liberalism’s Last Ditch. 

[Every word dropped.] (1917)

From the October 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every word of Socialism dropped anywhere has its effect, and makes its crater on the enemy’s front.

Society and Morals. Part IX — Socialism, its Economic and Theoretical Basis. (1918)

From the July 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VIII.

The Socialist movement is revolutionary ; its object is the establishment of society upon a new basis—that of common ownership by the members of society, of the land and the machinery necessary for production and distribution. The movement seeks, by this means, to solve what it considers the otherwise unsolvable problems raised by the prevailing capitalist society, such problems as, to take that most obvious to everyone, the existence of widespread poverty and drudgery side by side with the most prodigiously efficient means ever known of creating every kind of wealth. The abolition of war, also, is a problem to-day more keenly felt than ever before, which Socialists declare can and will be solved only by the abolition of capitalism and the organisation of that Socialist Commonwealth which is their supreme objective.

The Sociology of Revolutions.

In this series of essays we have had occasion to notice some of the social revolutions of the past. The revolutionary movements of previous ages also undertook to solve the social problems of their time. Such problems and the necessity for social re-organisation arises when the established institutions cease to conform with the actual economic relations of men, forced on them by the industrial conditions obtaining ; when the existing organisation of society hinders rather than facilitates the development of the sources of production.

Mechanical inventions and technical improvements step by step effect changes in the methods of industry, but social institutions tend to linger on and to outlive their usefulness because of men’s reverence for traditions and attachment to custom and convention. Only when the insufficiency of these institutions to meet the newly arisen needs becomes glaring and obvious is social re-adjustment more or less rapidly brought about. But in class-divided communities a potent artificial factor intervenes to retard this necessary social progress, and that is—the self interest of the class which the established order elevates to prominence and maintains in wealth and power.

Under the conservative and reactionary influence of ruling-class activity social contradictions have frequently become chronic and disastrous. When such a condition is reached this class which dominates society and receives the richest share of the wealth produced becomes parasitic by losing every vestige of social function. Conversely, the remainder of the community are afflicted with unnecessary burdens, restrictions, and privations, while society itself is threatened with collapse.

But if class-interest be often a powerful conservative agent it has also been the most virulent incentive in the cause of revolution and progress. Whenever a class existed who for any reason felt the ill effects of the obsolete system, with extreme severity, a class who, for instance, were conscious that their interests were or could be especially administered to by those very industrial forces which were denied expansion, this class became the chief advocate of revolution and played the part of leader and guide to the revolutionary movement.

Thus it was with that series of revolutions which removed the legal restrictions upon the liberty of industry and trade, imposed by the out-worn semi-feudal absolutism, and released for seemingly unbounded expansion the economic forces behind capitalism. These were the work primarily of the capitalist classes themselves, inflamed with revolutionary zeal by the oppressive conditions which so injuriously affected their interests. On the other hand, however, the landed-nobility-well-favoured parasites of the old regime were bitter opponents of, and strove to frustrate the aims of, the bourgeoisie. In this they were typical of all ruling classes, for as indicated above, history shows that every such class has clung to its power and privilege until compelled to abdicate, and never voluntarily assisted any move in social progress which menaced its sovereignty. Moreover, the dominant class of every epoch has never lacked arguments in justification of the position and of their system of exploitation which maintained them in it. Consequently they were ever incapable of being “moralised” into an unresisting acceptance of revolution. It is important to bear this in mind, for it shows how dangerously misleading is the work of those would-be “reformers” who declare their belief in an universally acceptable morality—a point we shall dwell upon later.

Ruling classes, however, have never relied solely on moral justification to safeguard their interests. On the contrary they were always prepared to use the most violent means or take the most extreme, ferocious action against a revolt of the “lower” oppressed classes, whether this was consciously revolutionary or not. Because exploitation and class oppression have underlain all the various forms of social civilisation, class friction and conflict pervades every page of its history. The ruthlessness of these struggles is revealed whether examples be taken from the slave risings of Antiquity, the serf and peasant revolts of the Middle Ages, or from the records of existing bourgeois society. The Paris Commune of 1871 will ever remain a tragic and significant instance of the modern phase of that ages-old war of class against class, oppressors against oppressed.

Utopia or Science.

Many men, often of great genius and learning, have in different ages elaborated schemes of social regeneration, plans to re-organise society upon a “better” basis. Among them may be ranked Plato in ancient Greece, More in mediaeval England, and later St. Simon, Fourier, Godwin, Owen, Compte and Proudhon. Their ideals were, however, never realised, for they all failed to see that every society is an evolutionary product determined by preceeding conditions, and in turn determining what is to follow. They did not recognise economic conditions to be the main foundation of society nor yet in many cases the irreconcilable antagonism between the interests of the existing classes or the effect this had upon their moral opinions.

True, in some cases, the ideas of men of this type, Rousseau, for instance, did assist in bringing about a social transformation, but only when it happened that the conditions for such had been prepared by economic developments and when a class already existed whose needs urged them on to revolutionary ambitions. But even where a social change was thus actually realised the new form of society never corresponded with that depicted by the imagination of such idealistic thinkers ; it was always moulded in accordance with those social needs, impressed upon the revolutionary class in the form of economic interests, and which were determined in the last analysis by the stage reached in industrial development.

In its every phase the modern Socialist movement differs from the Utopianism of the great social idealists, and of their puny, latter-day disciples, the sentimental reformists.

It was, indeed, the founders and pioneer exponents of the Socialist theory, Marx and Engels, who first showed, over seventy years ago, that economic evolution is the mainspring of social and ideological history. Since their time many non-Socialist historians and sociologists have been compelled to recognise the mode of production as the chief determining factor in social growth, and to Lewis H. Morgan, the famous pathologist, belongs the distinction of reaching independently this epoch-making conception. Every advance in historical and sociological research has repeatedly demonstrated the profound truth of the Marxian conception of society, and therefore, because the Socialist movement stands alone in its consistent adherence to this, its guiding principle, it may fairly claim to be in truth a scientific movement, the first to consciously apply social science to social revolution.

The Contradictions of Capitalism.

Aided by their materialist conception of history, Marx and Engels examined in detail the economic structure of capitalist society, how it had evolved and to what it was tending. Resulting from their politico-economic study was the demonstration that capitalistic production which had hastened the break-up, and emerged triumphantly above the wreckage of the feudal system, was now itself generating with its development economic and social complications which it was evident would ensure its eventual downfall.

We have already sketched out the salient features of capitalism as revealed by the Marxian analysis, and have also shown some of the colossal problems which the system as it matures rises for solution. The most striking and important are those which we saw lay at the root of modern imperialism.

How to dispose of an ever-growing volume of commodities in a manner profitable to their class is as we have seen, a problem which the capitalists of the world are compelled to face. To-day the attempt at solution results in war on a gigantic scale, bringing devastation and suffering and death to countless millions. In the future this difficulty bids fair to become, with intensified productivity and closing markets, insuperable. Capitalist production and commerce demand war, but production itself is now an international process, and wars, by obstructing commercial intercourse and free access to the world’s markets, threaten capitalist society with collapse, and by blocking the supplies of raw materials, cut at the very foundation of production itself. They thus constitute a terrible menace to social life itself, now that the whole world is one vast workshop. Imperialism is the path which the bourgeoisie are enforced to follow in recognition of the economic fact that modern history has outgrown the bounds of the national State, yet in their attempt to solve the problem they have to ferment a degree of national hate and antagonism never known before.

Allied to the above is the anomaly of over-production, for when, as frequently happens, the available markets are unable to absorb the whole of the vast surplus of commodities, a commercial glut occurs, warehouses remain stocked, factories slacken off or close down and the workers thrown out of employment are faced with starvation because, incredible as it may seem, they have produced too abundantly. Again, the use of more efficient machinery (in order to cheapen production), which, appropriately used, could both lighten the labour of the producers and greatly add to their comfort and wealth, under capitalism promotes unemployment, intensifies the competition for work, and augments both the toil and the poverty of the workers.

Under capitalism, let it be repeated, while the powers of production are greater and the wealth actually created vaster and more so every year, than under any previous system, being easily capable of supplying the whole population with every need and comfort, the great army of workers who use these powers to produce this wealth live in a condition of perpetual poverty and drudgery, and are thus isolated from most of tho real fruits which the science, art, and technical achievments of civilisation have to offer. And when in addition to this it is realised that competent social investigators declare existing economic conditions to be at the root of such evils as child-mortality, prostitution, crime, and a host of pernicious maladies like consumption, the striking force of the indictment which Socialists bring against capitalism will be forced home.

R. W. Housley

(To be Continued.)