The Common Market Special Survey: 5. The Commonwealth (1962)

From the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is going to be a trying time for our politicians. British capitalism has been forced, after much dithering, to face up to the harsh realities of its own world. No more can it ignore the increasing challenge to its position in a highly competitive world market, and the fact that the relatively easy markets of the British Commonwealth are no longer sufficient to offset this. As The Observer pointed out almost three years ago:

“At the moment the Commonwealth accounts for nearly half our trade but it would be foolish to pretend that it offers anything like the growing market of Europe.”

This must be a major consideration to our rulers, despite the high-flown claptrap which they have talked on occasions about “Commonwealth family of Nations.” So Britain goes cap in hand to “the Six” and Tory Ministers make a flying tour of the major Commonwealth Countries in an effort to ride out the inevitable storm of protest which their decision has aroused.

Since the end of the Second World War in particular, successive Governments have never tired of telling us how important it is that Britain should export more and more. So perhaps we may be forgiven if we have forgotten that Britain itself is a large and important market for goods coming from Canada, Australia and New Zealand, for example. And it is the fear of losing this which is behind the undignified squabbles which have taken place over the past few months.

Canada

In a recent survey by The Times we read that “. . . . there is an undoubted fear that by Britain’s closer association with Europe, Canada is going to suffer in what is her second best market, especially in agricultural and chemical products as well as in a newly found market for her manufactured goods.” So seriously do the Canadian capitalists view the prospects, that only on November 11th last, The Observer was able to report that relations between Canada and Britain on the Common Market issue were worse than at any time since preliminary negotiation began.

Over the other side of the world in New Zealand, there is near-panic at the threat of a shrinking market for primary products—lamb, wool, butter and cheese—in Great Britain. Understandably so from the viewpoint of the N.Z. farmers. Apparently fifty-seven per cent. of their total exports were sold in the United Kingdom in 1959. And more recently The Dominion (Wellington) asserted that some eighty per cent. by weight of N.Z. dairy products now go to the British Market. The remarks of Prime Minister Holyoake further emphasise with what trepidation the future is viewed; just listen to his words, reported in the National Party Journal Freedom for July, 1961 :

“It is no exaggeration to say that our dairy industry and our lamb production have been based on and are designed to serve the needs of the United Kingdom Market. They have been based on the idea that our expanding production could receive a full and remunerative outlet. Without it, the whole economic future of New Zealand is thrown out of balance.”

Strong words indeed! And matched equally by (hose of leading government spokesmen in nearby Australia. Their Common Market Communique issued on July 11th speaks of “. . . the serious adverse consequences for Australian producers and for the Australian balance of payments which would confront Australia if the United Kingdom were to enter the Common Market on a basis which failed to safeguard Australian trade interests for the future.”

Australia Looks Elsewhere

Wheat, meat, dairy products, bas; metals, sugar and fruits constitute the bulk of Australian exports to Britain and are currently valued at almost £200 million Sterling. The Minister for Trade, Mr. McEwen, has asserted that Britain is Australia’s biggest market. So little wonder then, that there was such “full and frank” discussion with Mr. Duncan Sandys when he paid his visit a few weeks before.

But despite the forebodings of official spokesmen, it does not seem that Britain’s decision has taken the Australian Government completely by surprise. For some years now, attempts have been made to find alternative markets, and it is interesting to learn that Japan has now become the biggest buyer of Australian wool and a top-level buyer of many other important products. Trade with Japan in 1960 was worth £160 millions.

In a press interview on last July Mr. Menzies admitted the great political implications of the Common Market. He has described it as possibly “a third power” in the world :

“(But) we record our view that the Commonwealth will not be quite the same . . . this will lead to a loosening of Commonwealth relations.“

So where will they turn then? Might there be just the possibility that yet “a fourth power” will emerge, embracing Australia, New Zealand and other far eastern States, and with Japan as a leading member? Does it sound too far fetched? Nothing should surprise us in a capitalist world. Canada in her turn could swing politically in favour of the U.S.A. if the tariff walls of the Common Market go up against her. She already has close economic links and American capitalists have large investments in Canada.

And for the workers of the Commonwealth? Well, there is one market which they have always had in common with their opposite numbers in every other part of the world, and that is the labour market. This basic fact will not, of course, be altered. They will remain workers facing the common problem of Capitalism—and how to get rid of it.

Eddie Critchfield

All mad together (1962)

From the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the television screens they are smooth and assured. They smile with confident, frank eyes; if occasionally they show emotion they never lose their dignity. For these men are the politicians, who like to think that they are in control. Or they are the planners, who dream that organisation will solve everything.

The impression they like to make is that, although it is always so much better to have them in charge, Capitalism is anyway a sane and ordered set-up in which everything works pretty well. There may be one or two little problems here and there, but generally, they think, everything works out for the best. The men at the top know what they are doing, the world turns nicely on its axis and all the madmen are in the lunatic asylums. What could be better?

What, indeed? For sure, the workers go along with this. They, too, think that Capitalism is the best social organisation we have or are likely to deserve. Whatever worries or criticisms they may have about income tax or rising rents or redundancies, the workers think the world is organised as well as it can be—and whenever they get the chance they vote that way.

Now just how much sanity is there in the world? How much, for example, for the old people who long ago perhaps were themselves bemused by the puffs in favour of Capitalism? We all know that growing old can be one of the fiercest problems of our lives, meaning that we lose our jobs and sometimes our homes and our friends. For the morbidly inclined the prospect of poverty in old age can loom over his youth like a bank of storm clouds on a summer’s day. So the old ones have been a matter for the attention of many governments, for a long time. Hardly an election passes without the contesting parties all struggling to get their protective legislative arms around the pensioners. The Tories pull out figures to show that they have done better than the Labour Party on pensions. Labour cries that the Tories don’t really care for the old dears of the working class and anyway arc a lot of skinflints. Wistfully the Liberals and others wait with their promises to do better than both Labour and Tory put together.

Anybody could be excused for assuming that the pensioners had gained some material benefit from this anxiety to do so well by them. What are the facts? Early this year Codicote Press published a book on the subject—The Economic Circumstances of Old People, by Dorothy Cole and John Utting. Did the authors find the subjects of their inquiry living in prosperous ease? They did not. Were they doing alright then, contented, getting by? Wrong again. They estimated, in fact, that nearly two and a half million old people are living close to the state which the national assistance standards regard as poverty.

These standards are based on cold figures of cost of living indexes and so on, but we can guess what living on the poverty line means for a pensioner. It means a cold room in the winter. It means dining off dry bread and an Oxo cube in hot water. It means broken shoes and tattered clothes. These people live like this only because they are too old to tap out the profits for an employer. Their destitution defies the tinkering of the planners and the politicians. In terms of sanity and human welfare it is a scandal.

Young workers also get a taste of what Capitalist sanity and order means. At the end of this month the Government are expected to announce that the pay pause is at an end and that it will be succeeded by some other attempt at holding down wages, under a different snappy name. Ever since the end of the last war, when it became apparent that workers were strongly placed to press for higher pay, governments have been scheming and appealing to keep wages in check. Sometimes they have done this openly, as in Cripps’ freeze and Selwyn Lloyd’s pause. Sometimes they have done it in a roundabout way—by the 1949 devaluation of the pound, for example. So far they have not openly defied the big trade unions and forced a show down battle with them; perhaps that is in the future. But whatever method they have used, the theme has been constant—wages must be pegged down.

Yet who can be blamed for wanting more pay? Perhaps some workers believed the wartime propaganda which was intended to convince them that victory over Germany and Japan would bring, among other things, prosperity for them. Perhaps some of them think that as the post war productivity drive has succeeded to the point of destroying many of the world’s sellers’ markets, they can now start cashing in on the promises made to them when the Government only wanted them to work harder.

To workers, prosperity usually means sky high wages. But no sooner do they try to get them than the government intervenes, shaking its head and telling them that their wages are too high, that they are too prosperous. This must surprise shop assistants and farm workers and railwaymen and many others who earn hardly enough to keep themselves ticking over. It might interest and amuse other workers. For there is very little that is sane and organised about government wages policy. It is like a great game of snakes and ladders in which, for the wage-earners, there are too many snakes for comfort.

Then there is the curious case of British Railways. One of the theories behind nationalisation was that organisations like the railways could be run in the interests of the Capitalist class as a whole only it they were State controlled. Lord Chandos, as we point out elsewhere in this issue, has given the industrialists’ views on nationalisation. They want cheap and plentiful supplies and services, even if a nationalised concern must be run at a loss to supply them. But there has recently been considerable restlessness at the big deficits which the railways in this country have run up. Now there is a demand, pioneered by papers like The Economist, that British Railways ceases to operate as a service to Capitalism generally, cuts almost everything, but its profitable services and then picks the bones out of the rest. (Nobody has yet suggested that the Government suspend the interest commitments of British Transport Commission, which last year turned a working loss of £55 million into a deficit of £100 million).

Let us make it clear that, although its unprofitable railways may be a sore point to the Capitalists, no worker need worry whether his employer is doing well or not. But it is pertinent to consider the dilemma of Capitalism’s experts and planners. What sort of nationalised railways do they want? Do they even know what they want? And if they do know, can they get it?

This sort of disorder is not confined to Capitalism in England. Across the Atlantic, President Kennedy has let himself be seen sipping a glass of milk and has declared that in future no meal at the White House will be without it. Milk, he said, is delicious, nutritious and not at all radioactive. The reason for this publicity campaign is plain to see. Both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations have subsidised milk production and have supported the prices of milk products like butter and cheese. This has encouraged the American farmer to produce vast quantities of milk at the same time as consumption has fallen drastically. This has created a—dread word—surplus of milk which the President is doing his best to reduce by persuading people to drink as much of it as possible.

This all sounds fairly reasonable until we remember that milk is a food that can keep children alive and well—and that while the United States government is trying to pour the stall down unwilling American throats there are 650 million hungry children in the world who could put it to better use. Of course, Washington has its own reasons for not sending the milk where it is needed; they talk about budgets and farm prices and taxpayers. What it amounts to is that, even in cases of human survival, Capitalism often cannot deliver the goods where they are needed. Which does not make Capitalism seem a very sensible way of running things.

In fact, wherever we turn there is evidence which makes Capitalism seem the silliest of systems. That is why its politicians—the men who must run, defend and justify Capitalism—sometimes say the silliest things. Yet Capitalism has an inner sanity. Man started the thing off in his attempts to deal with the problems which were worrying him about a couple of hundred years ago. But we should not let it rest there. We still have problems to worry us. And we still have a way of solving them.

Ivan

News in Review: Respectable revolt (1965)

The News in Review column from the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Respectable revolt

Straws which are currently in the wind of British capitalism are rumblings of militancy in the so-called middle class, and the re-occurrence of the plea for more unemployed.

Some teachers and doctors have recently considered withdrawing their labour power, the former from schools and the latter from the National Health Scheme. Their reasons, basically, were concerned with their pay.

Doctors and teachers have long considered the strike as unprofessional, and in bad taste. But capitalism does not exempt any worker from the need to fight to maintain and increase his standard of living; and if doctors and teachers remain quiescent their standard of living must suffer.

Before the war when unemployment was widespread the “secure” teachers grumbled about their pay. Doctors got their patients in a free market, and many in the poorest working class districts were little better off than their patients.

Now both groups are complaining about their financial rewards; they are finding that a sense of vocation is no weapon in this competitive society. So they are considering the withdrawal of their labour power—in other words, using the weapon which marks them as members of the working class.

There is another way of losing your pay.

Lord Plowden, former Chief Planning Officer and Chairman of the Economic Planning Board, also chairman of Tube Investment Co. Ltd., and director of four other companies, was reported in the Daily Telegraph in January as wanting . . . ”better use of the labour force . . . this would lead to transitional unemployment . . . to do everything possible to mitigate the resulting hardship.”

“This is what we mean when we say that we want increased productivity, and why should we be mealy-mouthed about it?”

Capitalists are not opposed to unemployment if they think it necessary. Plowden wants to replace the carrot with the stick, on the theory that there is nothing like a dose of unemployment to increase productivity.

Is Lord Plowden himself prepared to live on the dole? Or is that a fate reserved for the workers on whom he so coldly theorises? These are questions which no highly paid servant of capitalism should want to duck.

Unless, that is, he is being mealy mouthed.

Everlasting Milk

The news which came out during the first week of last month, that British scientists had developed a method of treating milk which will make it last for months, was greeted in the newspapers with all the customary enthusiasm.

The chairman of the Express Dairy, Mr. W. E. D. Bell, helped the enthusiasm along a bit by proclaiming: “At last, we can feed milk to the two-thirds of the world that is starving.” He might as well have said that at last they could break into a market which up to now has been held by dried milk, which is easier to handle and transport than the liquid.

The Express are not, of course, about to throw in their hand with OXFAM and become a charitable institution. They quickly set up a new company to deal with the export of the new milk. Orders have been received from Central America and some shipping lines, and more may follow from the British and United States Navies.

It was not the desire to feed the hungry which was responsible for this haste. Mr. Bell made it clear: “We must,” he said, “Pull our fingers out and get this project going before the Swiss or anybody move in.”

At the time of writing, the new process has not been approved by the government for milk sold on the home market. Exported milk is not covered by the need for official approval. If the new milk is approved for home distribution, there will probably be considerable savings for the dairy industry whose bugbear, like other branches of agriculture, has always been the expensive business of rush distribution.

Agriculture is as much tied to the need to make profits as any other industry, and it is constantly looking for ways around its distribution problems. Hence the development of massive, mechanised farms, of the broiler hen and the beef factories. Hence the rise of the frozen food industry.

Some people, derided as crackpots, have questioned the effects which all this has on the food. But as long as there is a profit to be made, or increased, who cares about quality? Capitalism encourages the shoddy rush job in many of its industries, and there is no reason why agriculture should be an exception.

This is the motive behind the everlasting milk. The Sunday Times thought that, apart from anything the Express will get out of the new product, “. . . it offers a way of giving the dairy farmers more for their milk without raising the price to the public.”

The profit priorities of capitalism affect every aspect of our lives. Everywhere we go, everything we wear, the very air we breathe, everything we eat and drink, is polluted by it. And all the time there is the smokescreen of hypocrisy about human interests—about, for example, feeding the world’s hungry when the real motive is to make life more comfortable yet for the privileged few.

Vietnam

For some reason, it has suddenly become fashionable for journalists to use some peculiar words about the war which is currently being fought in Vietnam.

They have called it the “unnecessary” war, the “tragic” war, the “forgotten” war. As if all wars are not tragic, unnecessary affairs.

The Americans, deeply involved, have their own description of the war. It is, they say a vital war, because it is being fought to defend freedom. Every time the American jets go in, President Johnson claims that they fire their rockets in the cause of liberty.

We are, as usual, invited to accept the story that in Vietnam one side (the North —theirs) stands for brutal dictatorship and the other (the South—ours) stands for liberty and brotherhood.

But the South Vietnamese have shown what they mean by freedom and brotherhood by the manner in which they maltreat their prisoners. One of their recent tricks was to use a wounded prisoner (who later died) as a human mine detector—to send him wading across a river to detonate any mines on the bed.

This is only one piece of the surface evidence which shows up that it is barefaced nonsense to claim that the war in Vietnam is for freedom. In fact, the United States are involved in the war for familiar, classical reasons.

They are interested in the strategic position of Vietnam, and in the bases which they have set up there. They are desperately concerned that the expanding Chinese threat to the established powers in the Far East should be held in cheek.

The British capitalist class, who have their own troubles a little further south, are reluctant to become involved in Vietnam. British influence in the Far East was extensively diminished during the last war, and although there is still a lot of British capital invested out there, the protection of it is largely the concern of the U.S.A.

The Soviet Union is also reluctant to get involved, but is having its hand forced. They also fear Chinese ambitions; hence the belligerent words from Moscow —which remain no more than words.

The Economist’s prophesy of the outcome of Premier Kosygin’s visit to Hanoi was remarkably accurate:

“Mr. Kosygin is virtually certain to proclaim . . . that (American) attacks would involve the risk of nuclear escalation. In exchange, the Russians may well urge the North Vietnamese not to push their present military advantage in the south too far.”

Vietnam is a typical local struggle in the wider conflict of interests between the great blocs of capitalism with China, struggling for its place in the world power line up, an aggravation. China’s belligerency is customary for an upstart capitalist power; customary also are the efforts which the established powers are making to stifle her.

This could mean that the Vietnam battle will not escalate (ugly word) into a major nuclear war. But mistakes and miscalculations have been known before.

If Vietnam does prove to be the first spark in a world wide conflagration the result will be an unnecessary war, a tragic war but one which, if there is any-one left to remember it, will not be forgotten.

Gordon-Walker and immigration

The defeat of Patrick Gordon-Walker at the so-called safe seat of Leyton provided both press and politicians with a field day for comment and speculation. A number of reasons for the surprise result were suggested; in a survey just after the by-election, The Observer placed coloured immigration at the head of the list, with Labour voters the majority to voice dissatisfaction on this problem.

When the Conservative government introduced a bill curbing the flow of immigrants into this country, the Labour Opposition resisted it, creating the impression that they were in favour of unlimited free entry. Disastrously for a party seeking mass support, they overlooked the political climate. It is possible that their slender majority at the general election was caused partly by this. Gordon-Walker had the job of opposing the Tory bill in Parliament and this has made him an obvious whipping boy in what the press is fond of calling the white backlash.

At Smethwick, his Conservative opponent, by using an extremist minority as his supporters, played on the electorate’s prejudices, and their fears of the growth of a large coloured population in Britain. While the fascists ranted and raved and worked on a suppressed sore, the Tories got the benefit. At Leyton the racial question and immigration were smothered by the three main candidates, but Gordon-Walker was pestered by Nazi gadflies.

Most workers, irrespective of colour and race, fear a sudden mass influx of foreign workers because they see them as a threat to their jobs and as an aggravation of the housing shortage. On top of this is a fear that people coming from less developed areas may be willing to accept lower wages and social standards.

Immigrants have entered Britain before, but they have been mainly European and were therefore quickly assimilated. It would, for example, be difficult to trace the whereabouts of the Germans who came to Britain in Edwardian times. The recent wave of immigrants is vastly different. The colour of their skin makes it impossible for them to be quickly submerged and forgotten. They stimulate a multitude of primitive fears among the working class.

But what will happen if the coloured population of this country increases enormously? Most coloured people are just part of the working class, subject to the same rough end of the economic stick as their white brothers. In time the demands of industrialism will destroy their own customs and they will appear similar to the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Poles etc, that go to make up the British population.

Smethwick, Leyton and Gordon-Walker are examples of how it is impossible to operate vague humanitarian concepts in a capitalist society. The government has in fact already announced much stricter screening of coloured immigrants at the points of entry. Thus do capitalism and a non-socialist working class destroy the best laid plans of mice and men.

Letter: Pour milk down the sink? (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pour milk down the sink?

Dear Editors

I write with regard to the suggestion in your August edition that Oxfam wants to pour milk down the sink, further to the publication in the Herald of a letter from myself.

The point I was trying to make was not that the EU should destroy excess agricultural produce, but that it should stop subsidising its farmers for overproduction? and therefore not produce excess agricultural produce in the first place! Through the Common Agricultural Policy the EU (and hence EU taxpayers) pay large subsidies (mainly to the richest farmers) for milk production. This results in overproduction and an excess of milk (amongst other produce) which would not arise if farmers were receiving the going market rate for their produce.

The resulting glut of milk results in very cheap exports from the EU to developing countries, undercutting the produce of local farmers and pushing them further into poverty. Three-quarters of those surviving on less than $1 a day live and work as small farmers. These farmers have to compete with the $1billion each day that rich countries spend protecting their own agriculture.

Oxfam don’t want milk poured down the sink, we want a system where the world’s poorest people are given the opportunity to help pull themselves out of poverty. Readers of the Socialist Standard can find out more about Oxfam’s campaigns for fair trade at www.maketradefair.com

Angela O’Hagan, 

Campaigns and Communications Manager, 

Oxfam in Scotland, Glasgow.

Reply:

It is not so much the reformist policies of politico-charities such as Oxfam that we criticise as the whole market system, under which people can only get access to the things they need if they have money and where most people can only get money by selling either their ability to work or the product of their work (the rest, a tiny minority, get it by owning property that yields them a non-work income in the form rent, interest or profit). Oxfam accepts this system and its logic which rules out giving away market surpluses to the needy as this only makes things worse, by undermining the market for the products in question even further. Hence their proposal, which we commented on in our January issue, to destroy “surplus” coffee. The obvious solution is to institute a system where production is geared to meeting people’s needs, not for sale on a market; that way, people’s needs would be met as a matter of right without needing to pay for them – and without organisations like Oxfam having to devise ways of trying to ensure a adequate monetary income for poor farmers in “developing countries” 

Editors.

Notes by the Way: “Financial Sacrifices from Both Sides” (1932)

The Notes by the Way Column from the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Financial Sacrifices from Both Sides”

United Dairies, Ltd., is a very prosperous concern. The Directors’ report for the year 1931-32 stated that “the business of the Company continues to expand.” Net profit rose from £518,000 in 1929-30 to £549,000 in 1930-31, and to £592,000 in 1931-32 ; which is not too bad in these hard times. The rate of dividend on ordinary shares rose from 10 per cent. in 1929-30 to 11 per cent. in 1930-31 and to 12½ per cent. in 1931-32. So much for the shareholders. What about the workers ? During the past year, after considering the matter for several years, the firm decided to extend to the milk distributing stall a six-day week, hitherto confined to the bottling stalls. Doubtless it was, as the Chairman said, of benefit to the “health and happiness” of the workers not to have to work seven days a week. He also stated (Times, October 29th, 1932) that. “the efficiency of the service has been maintained and increased,” but the change-over to a six-day week “involved certain financial sacrifices from both sides.”

Now we are able to see what is meant by “sacrifices on both sides.” The workers make financial sacrifices and get a six-day week, while the shareholders get increased efficiency, plus the “sacrifice” of seeing their dividend raised from 11 per cent. to 12½ per cent.

Death from the Air

Mr. Baldwin, in a speech on war, in the House of Commons on November 10th, reminded us of the way in which we shall be bombed to pieces in any future war. He said: —

“I think it is well, also, for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through. …. The only defence is in offence, which means that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves….. How have the nations tried to deal with this terror of the air ? I confess that the more I have studied this question the more depressed I have been at the perfectly futile attempts that have been made to deal with this problem. The amount of time that has been wasted at Geneva in discussing questions such as the reductions of the size of aeroplanes, the prohibition of bombardment of the civil population, the prohibition of bombing, has really reduced me lo despair.” (Times, November 11th, 1932.)

In the meantime, attention was drawn by the Daily Express to the fact that British armament manufacturers advertise in German and other newspapers their willingness to supply tanks, bombing ‘planes, etc., to foreign Governments. Mr. T. O. M. Sopwith, the aircraft designer and manufacturer of the Hawker “bomber,” defended this. He said (Daily Express, November 12th, 1932) that aeroplanes of recent design are not allowed to leave the country, but that he sells Hawker bombers both to the Air Ministry and to foreign Governments because “no foreign Government will buy British machines unless they are identical with those sold to the Air Ministry.”

If another war comes, and, in Mr. Baldwin’s words, “European civilisation is wiped out,” it will be cheering to know that the bombers on both sides are of identical make and the product of a home industry !

Lenin and Trade Unionism: A Correction

In the November Socialist Standard, under the heading “Tall Stories from Russia,” the statement was made that Lenin advocated “lying and subterfuge” as a means of gaining control of the trade unions.

Although the words used by Lenin in this connection make it quite clear that he recommended using all kinds of deception, he did not actually use the word “lying.” His words (reproduced in the Australian Communist, (April 22nd, 1921) were:

“It is necessary to be able to withstand all this (i.e., expulsion) and to go the whole length of sacrifice if need be, to resort to strategy and adroitness, illegal proceedings, reticence and subterfuge, to anything in order to penetrate into Trade Unions, remain in them and carry out communist work within them at any cost.”

The utter failure of the Communists to gain tangible results by this policy shows how unsound it is.

The Inequalities of Pay in Russia

Nowadays the Soviet Government and the Communists pretend that their policy of increasing inequality of pay as between one individual and. another according to output at the same work, or according to the grading of the work, is in line with Marxian teaching and is compatible with Socialism. Socialists recognise that these inequalities are features of capitalism and can have no place under Socialism, which involves the abolition of the wages system altogether. It is interesting to recall that Lenin shared our view and did not put forward the arguments now used by the Communists. In “The Soviets at Work,” an address delivered in April, 1918, Lenin admitted that the need to attract specialists at high rate’s of pay was a sign of Russia’s backwardness and was accepted only under necessity. He said:—

“Furthermore, it is clear that such a measure is not merely a halt in a certain part and to a certain degree of the offensive against Capitalism …. but also a step backward by our Socialist Soviet State, which has from the very beginning proclaimed and carried on a policy of reducing high salaries to the standard of wages of the average worker. . . . Of course there is another side to this question. The corrupting influence of high salaries is beyond dispute–both on the Soviets . . . and on the mass of the workers.”

He also said: –

“We were forced now to make use of the old bourgeois method and agreed to a very high remuneration for the services of the biggest of the bourgeois specialists. All those who are acquainted with the facts understand this, but not all give sufficient thought to the significance of such a measure on the part of the proletarian state. It is clear that such a measure is a compromise, that it is a deflection from the principles of the Paris Commune and of any proletarian rule, which demand the reduction of salaries to the standard of remuneration of the average worker—principles which demand that career-hunting; be fought by deeds not by words.”

(The quotations above are from pages 17, 18 and 19 of the edition published in 1919 by the Socialist Information and Research Bureau, Glasgow.)

Now, when the inequality is rapidly increasing, the Russian rulers pretend that it is a feature of Socialism. Lenin, however, said, “To pay unequal salaries is really a step backward; we will not cheat the people by pretending otherwise.”

Viscount Snowden on the Labour Programme

Rather late in the day, Viscount Snowden tells his former Labour Party associates something which the S.P.G.B. told them (and Snowden) many years ago. In an article in the Sunday Express (October 16th) he wrote as follows of the Labour Party:-—

“It gained its former political strength neither from its Socialist idealism nor its election programme. It was an electoral refuge for a vague discontent.

The old political parties had failed. Here was a new party which made the social condition of the people its claim to popular support.

. . . . . .

Millions of men and women who know nothing about Socialism, and who have never read the Labour programme, vote for Labour candidates because they believe that this is a party which is going to do something—they don’t know what-—to improve their condition.

. . . . . .

I have been in this programme-making business for forty years. I have always realised its futility. Every programme in which I have had a hand I have seen discarded and another put in its place, later to share the fate of its predecessor.”

He finished the article with a very cruel blow, he told the Labour Party, which has always rejected Socialism in favour of “something now,” that it ought, to drop its silly promises to establish the millennium by Acts of Parliament immediately, and find “a practical policy.”

Mr. Cole Scores 30

The following is from the Star (October 18th, 1932) and refers to Mr. G. D. H. Cole:–

“A leading Socialist who has been busily counting up the number of organisations Mr. G. D. H. Cole has had a hand in starting tells me he has checked off thirty !

‘The latest he is connected with is the Socialist League,’ he said ‘and some of us are wondering how long it will hold Mr. Cole’s affection before another body is created’.”

Mr. Cole’s past loves have included the Fabian Society, the I.L.P., the National Guilds League, and, of course, the Labour Party. Recently he shared in the formation of the Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda, which, after only 18 months, has been wound up alter a conference had failed to give a sufficient majority for merging with the Socialist League.

Mr. Cole is an example of the so-called “intellectuals” who have invaded the working-class movement in recent years, much to their own pecuniary benefit and to the detriment of the working-class movement. Surrounded by worshipping students and trade unionists, Mr. Cole reaps the double reward of adulation and large sales for his books, a new one appearing at frequent intervals each time he changes his mind and takes up another unsound theory.

Mr. Cole is a bad judge of political parties. It is interesting to recall what he wrote about the S.P.G.B. and about his own organisation, the National Guilds League, in the “Encyclopaedia Britanmca” (Twelfth Edition, 1922, Vol. XXXI, page 324, and Vol. XXXII, page 507).

Of the S.P.G.B. he wrote: —

“The Socialist Party of Great Britain is a very small and unimportant body of rigid Marxians of the extreme left wing.” (Vol. XXXII., p. 507.)

At that time he was full of the idea of Guild Capitalism (miscalled Guild Socialism), and recorded with gusto the growth of the Guild Movement and the formation of Guilds like the Building Guild.

Within a year or so, the Building Guild was hopelessly bankrupt, and the mushroom crop of Guilds which had sprung up in many other industries had completely disappeared. The National Guilds League, like many other of Mr. Cole’s enthusiasms, is now as dead as the Dodo, and even when it was alive its organ (The Guild Socialist) had a much smaller circulation than the organ of the S.P.G.B.

The Labour Leaders and the “Intellectuals”

Just at the moment, Mr. Cole, in his foreword to the new edition of his “British Working Class Movement,” is telling the trade unions that their policy and methods of organisation should be changed. We agree; but Mr. Cole is one of the least likely persons to have any sound ideas on the subject. Although never constant for long to any idea, he shows no sign of having learned from his past mistakes.

It is popularly believed that the workers gain through having the so-called intellectuals available to advise the Labour Leaders how to lead. What actually happens is rather like this. The trade union official, who is generally far better able to form sound opinions on trade union policy than are the academic Coles and Laskis, observes a stirring among his members in the form of interest in some new or resuscitated theory. Mistrusting his own judgment, he dashes off to seek the guidance of the “intellectuals.” The “intellectuals,” who are equally hesitant about putting forward definite suggestions, lest they should clash with the prevailing sentiment among the workers (and thus spoil their popularity and book sales), promptly set about discovering which way the wind is blowing and how strong it is likely to be. Having made up their minds on this, they then offer their advice, suitably tricked out in university jargon, the advice consisting of whatever theory they believe the workers are beginning to take up. The trade union official and the “intellectual” then feel mutually reinforced and comforted in their beliefs, and jointly offer their new wisdom to their members, the members being under the two-fold illusion that they are being given a lead and that the lead is the outcome of some solid thought by a reliable guide.

A Confusion of Parties

A few years ago the final argument of the Labour Party supporter who could not make headway against the case of the S.P.G.B. was a complaint that our separate existence confused the seeker after Socialist knowledge. “Why could we not all get together inside one big party?” The answer is that it would be fatal and absurd for a Socialist Party to lose its identity inside a conglomeration of reformists like the Labour Party. And it is curious to notice how loath are even the reformist groups to give up their separate existence in the great family party. In addition to the I.L.P. (Maxton), which left the Labour Party over the matter of Standing Orders, and the Communist Party, which wanted to get in the Labour Party but was rejected, there are now the following competing bodies all under the Labour umbrella: The Social Democratic Federation, the Fabian Society, the Socialist League (formerly the affiliationist wing of the I.L.P.), the Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda (now dissolved after a short life), the Scottish Socialist Party (the Scottish wing of the League), the Clarion Fellowship, and the Co-operative Party.

And in face of this medley the reformists still have the impudence to tell us that the way to unite the workers is on reform programmes !

Incidentally, how William Morris, of the old Socialist League, with its fierce opposition to reforms and to Parliamentary action, would snort if he could hear the new Leaguers claiming that they have inherited the spirit of Morris.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: Booking the cooks (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

In the August Socialist Standard Pathfinders (Meat Into Veg) the author asks what will become of the meat and dairy industry in socialism and says: “If socialists expect a large-scale meat industry they will have to face the fact that there is no ‘ethical’ way to do this.” He or she cites in support an article in New Scientist which argues that free range farming is the most inefficient and intensive factory farming the only logical choice. But the New Scientist article assumes the continuation of capitalist society, with all the constraints and imperatives which it imposes on the sane use of resources when profit is the motive for production. The members of a socialist society would have vastly greater resources to employ – all the resources diverted from the obscene expenditure on arms, the bloated banking system and much, much more.

In an apposite metaphor Karl Marx warned against trying to write recipes for the cook shops of the future. I feel we should take that warning seriously. We don’t know what decisions would be taken about food production in socialism and we shouldn’t try to second guess them. Personally, I would vote for meat production. I might be on the losing side. A socialist who would vote against needs to recognise that they might be on the losing side instead. But all that should be left for another day, in the interest of creating the broadest base of support for socialism here and now.

Keith Graham, 

Bristol.

Reply: 

Fair comment but Pathfinders is a science column with a focus on the future and that is inevitably going to involve some speculation. In this context it is not unreasonable to say that, if the current evidence suggests that socialism cannot realistically provide a contemporary western meat-based lifestyle for its global population, then some level of meat-reduction would be inevitable – Editors.

Age Without Wisdom (1958)

From the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers Who Still Have Capitalist Ideas

As time passes the trade unions, and the Labour parties, become older and their policies change, but without any noticeable sign of having learned by experience.

These remarks are prompted by two recent events that would have appeared surprising 50 years ago. Earlier this year New Zealand farmers complained that they were selling less butter in this country because of cheaper butter coming on the market from several exporting countries, including Finland, Argentine and Ireland. After some delay the Government announced in the House of Commons on June 19th that they had approached the governments concerned and had got them to agree to reduce their deliveries of butter where this was not already happening. It was done deliberately to help the New Zealand exporters, although it meant that the price of butter here would go up. The first somewhat surprising event was that the T.U.C. supported the idea of helping New Zealand:—‘We decided to tell the President of the Board of Trade that we supported the New Zealand government’s request for anti-dumping duties.” (T.U.C. Report in What the T.U.C. is Doing.” Page 38.)

At the same time the Lancashire cotton manufacturers and the textile unions were pressing the government to help the depressed Lancashire cotton industry by restricting cheap imports from Hong Kong, India and elsewhere. And in the House of Commons on June 19th the Labour M.P. for the Lancashire constituency of Westhoughton, Mr. J. T. Price, asked:

“Whilst the House will be quite pleased with the action taken by the right hon. gentlemen’s Ministry in dealing with this stabilisation of butter prices and checking the unlimited import of very cheap butter at subsidised rates, why is not the Ministry also prepared to take similar action on behalf of Lancashire cotton, which it has just turned down? ” 

Here we see the T.U.C. and Labour Party opposing Free Trade and supporting restrictions on imports. Yet at the Trades Union Congress in 1904 a strongly worded resolution was carried (by no means the first, or last) affirming that “any departure from the principles of Free Trade would be detrimental to the interests of the working classes.” The resolution named as the chief evil result of departing from Free Trade that Protection would increase “the cost of the people’s necessaries.”

About the same time the Labour Party was declaring its staunch adherence to Free Trade, and Mr. Francis Williams in his Fifty Years March recorded that at the 1906 General Election the Labour Party “saw eye to eye with the Liberals” on the dominant issue of the election, “the issue of Free Trade or Protection.” (Page 155.)

That trade union and Labour Party policy of support for Free Trade in order to get low prices for food and other articles derived from the agitation of the early nineteenth century. It was led and financed by the British cotton and other manufacturers and ended with the abolition of the Corn Laws and other protective laws, and turned Britain into a free trade country. The employers (who were interested in low prices, because that would enable them to pay low wages and make large profits) persuaded the workers that low prices would be in their interests. Apart from the agricultural workers who saw their jobs disappearing, most workers accepted the employers’ argument and thought that they had won a great victory, so for nearly a century the trade unions and later on the Labour Party were mostly free-traders, though this did not prevent workers in particular industries that were hit by foreign competition from taking a different view: just as today, while the T.U.C. and the Labour Party agree in demanding lower prices they do not think it very odd when the miners favour dearer coal; transport workers, higher fares; and agricultural workers, dearer food.

The same confusion exists among workers in other countries and shows itself at international gatherings. The textile workers in Hong Kong and India are not at all perturbed about the troubles of Lancashire, and the workers in Ireland and the Argentine are not impressed by arguments about the danger that if New Zealand farmers’ incomes fall, they will not be able to buy British motor cars and other manufactures.

The policies, always dealing only with the surface of things, change, but do not become sounder and wiser. The fact is that the trade unions and Labour parties are not international workers’ organisations trying to better the conditions of the working class everywhere, but sectional and national bodies viewing the world in the light of what they imagine to be their interests as workers in a particular trade in a particular country: they identify their interests with those of their employers.

And, of course, they are quite wrong. They do not constitute a united movement of hope progressing towards a new, better social order, but fractional bodies fighting against each other and with their policies determined for them by the rivalries of capitalist industries and capitalist national groups.

They can see that the capitalist world does not provide abundance, security and peace for the peoples of the world; that it cannot even secure that surpluses of food in U.S.A., Canada, Australia and other countries, shall be made’available to the half-starved millions of the world. They can see, too, that unsaleable surpluses are a positive evil in causing unemployment. Yet all they do is to try to solve these problems within the framework of capitalism. They have tinkered with useless remedies for upwards of a century and have got nowhere.

Recognition of and action on the simple principle that the workers in all countries have a common interest against the employing class, and the logical further recognition that it is in the interest of the workers to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism would revolutionise the home and international scene: but with all their experience of the uselessness of Free Trade and of Protection this is the one thing they are still unable to see. 

Edgar Hardcastle

Waste and want—the insane logic of capitalism

From the April 1984 issue of the World Socialist

The vast majority of the population of this planet live in want to one degree or another whether they be industrial workers in Western Europe or North America trying to make ends meet, or beggars on the sidewalk in India, or even beggars on the sidewalk in the USA.

Yet they seem to blindly accept that this is the inevitable consequence of things—and in the particular context of capitalism they are right. Various degrees of want will always exist in a private-property based society where all production is with a view to profit and where the majority sell their labour-power in return for a part only, expressed as wages, of what they produce.

Poverty, hunger, disease

When he advocated Medicare for the aged in 1962, Kennedy spoke of 17 million hungry Americans and said the average American retired with less than $3,000 in assets. In 1964 Fortune Magazine revealed that a survey showed that 6 million people were living in families whose incomes were so low that they qualified for free food from the government, that 7.3 million Americans lived in housing classified as dilapidated, and that there were nearly 2 million families who scraped by on cash incomes of less than $1,000 a year. In 1970 The New York Times spoke of hunger as affecting the health of over 20 million people.

By 1976 the US Census Bureau estimated nearly 26 million people lived in families that were below the then poverty level of $5,500 a year for a family of four. The Census Bureau added that more Americans slid into poverty in 1975 than at any time since the government have been keeping records.

During the years since those to which these figures refer—and also for many years before—various governments, both at federal and state level, have introduced various welfare programmes to eradicate poverty, and failed hopelessly. Some of the politicians behind these plans may well have been well-meaning people, whereas others were certainly trying to win votes, but whichever, it is immaterial as society as it presently exists cannot eliminate poverty let alone provide everybody with a full and happy life.

So far the figures have applied only to the United States because, as the most advanced technological power, as the very heart and pulse beat of capitalism, all the most positive and negative aspects of capitalism appear there in their fullest contradiction. Contradiction it certainly is when the means exist to give everyone a full and happy life yet the vast majority struggle to make ends meet while a substantial minority live in want of the basic necessaries of life.

If this be true, as it is, of the United States, what then can be said of the rest of the world, particularly as the economy of so many countries is tied up with that of the United States? According to a 1982 United Nations report, every 2 seconds a child has to die of disease or lack of food, and if present trends continue there will be at least 600 million undernourished children by the year 2000.

The report written by James Grant, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Director, says that despite medical advances offering the opportunity for a revolution in child health, many of the children are worse off than they would haver been years ago. Measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus, polio and TB still kill some 5 million children world wide each year. Tetanus alone kills between 2,500 and 3,000 children a day. The report states that current projections show the proportion of the world's children who live without adequate food, water, health care and education staying about the same until 2000, but the absolute number will grow by 30 per cent to between 600 and 650 million.

Every day of the year, more than 40,000 children have died from malnutrition and infection, the report said. In recent years the percentage of child deaths due to hunger in African, Asian and Latin American countries has been increasing: "The quality of life has actually begun to fall as the economic foothold of their parents begins to crumble". The report went on to estimate that, excluding the cost of measures such as immunizing every child against killer diseases, a direct assault on the worst aspects of hunger and malnutrition would cost $6,000 million a year, "or one per cent of the world's annual expenditure on armaments"—a clear-cut example of capitalism's order of priorities.

World resources

Socialists have consistently maintained that the natural resources, technology and distributive capacity exist to feed, clothe and house the world's population many times over. This however, is impossible in an economic system where all production is geared to profit.

In reality nobody knows how big the earth's absolute supplies of raw materials are. No such investigations have been made. What has been investigated are supplies and resources that capitalism needs, and that is something very different.

In a recent interview in the Times Colonist of Victoria, British Columbia (May 13 1983) geologist Robin Folinsbee, of the University of Alberta, said that concern about dwindling fossil fuels was "greatly exaggerated" and that, besides, there were alternatives to fuels commonly used except that many of these would require too much investment at present to excavate.

About two-thirds of the energy released under present methods of splitting the atom in atomic power plants goes into waste heat—thermal pollution. Problems of coping with this waste heat have yet to be overcome, but the United States is planning floating nuclear reactors which would be used far offshore where the large volumes of water would not be affected by the warming. "Scientists are also working on ways to use the waste heat", Folinsbee says, "warm water created as a by-product might be harnessed to provide central heating for a whole city, then re-used when it had cooled. Then again the huge cost factor must be considered".

Further into the future scientists foresee that technology might utilize some of the sun's energy methods. Using laser beams they are finding ways of squeezing together several atoms with small atomic weights and of harnessing the heat energy given off by this fusion. Fusion of atoms is the opposite of the splitting of heavy atoms of the uranium type, but it also provides fantastic possibilities as an energy source. According to Folinsbee, "We've done it destructively with the hydrogen bomb. Now we must find ways to use it constructively". We would add that this is only one possible future source of energy. There are also proven safe renewable sources that could be developed.

Sir Derek Barton, professor of London's Imperial College, had already said when he visited British Columbia in 1977 that the world's problems of energy, pollution, hunger, overpopulation and the economy were all artificial or imaginary: "The energy crisis was entirely an artificial one, because it had been provoked by an international monopoly of oil-producing States which had arbitrarily and suddenly increased prices". (Vancouver Sun, October 31, 1977) Barton added that 70 to 80 per cent of the natural gas in the world is still to be found.

Deliberate waste

So destitution, starvation and deprivation do not exist because the capacity for producing and distributing wealth is insufficient. The technology to eliminate them does exist but is not applied under capitalism where all production is for profit and which also deliberately wastes and destroys resources.

In 1960 Vance Packard (certainly no Socialist) wrote a book called The Waste Makers which caused a minor disturbance at its publication because it dealt with what he termed "planned obsolescence". Packard showed how firms made shoddy goods, designed to wear out quickly so there would be a market for new ones. He wrote of radios, car parts, television sets which their designers and manufacturers knew could easily be made to last longer. There have even been instances of workers being fired because they took the time to do an excellent job, and so were not profitable.

Capitalism produces not for use but profit; so if wheat farmers, car makers, TV makers, appliance firms, heavy and light engineering companies can make more profit out of waste than by good quality products they will do so. But it is not enough to say that capitalism makes profits through waste. The fact is that the normal functioning of the system wastes an enormous amount of resources. Every year tons of foodstuffs are destroyed.

Wheat and coffee have been burned while millions starved. Fish are thrown back in the sea because the market was glutted (and capitalism is first and foremost a market system), and it was therefore not profitable to sell them. Potatoes have been dumped in order to maintain prices. In the United States several governments, both Republican and Democrat, have paid farmers not to grow wheat, in order to keep prices up.

It was recently reported that while the United States dairy herd is 57 per cent smaller than 40 years ago it is producing more milk (Western Producer, August 18, 1983). The result is a costly dairy surplus. Genetically improved cows and more efficient dairy farms have brought dramatic gains in milk output per cow. US milk production rose to a record 135.8 billion pounds for 1982. The US Department of Agriculture expects 1983 production to climb once again, probably reaching 139 billion pounds or 16 billion gallons of milk—enough to make a 7 million ton mountain of cheese.

At current levels of supply and demand, America's cows produce about 10 per cent more than enough to meet domestic and export market demand for milk, butter, cheese and ice cream. By law the federal government must purchase this surplus, and then incur the cost of storing and preserving these surplus stocks. This of course puts a drain on the federal budget, so the Reagan administration and the dairy industry are agreed on the need to cut milk production. Major milk industry organisations are advocating bonus payments for dairymen who cut their production and cash penalties for dairymen who increase production. On one thing all seem agreed: there must be no price cut, because that would "drive individual producers into increasing output as the only way to maintain their incomes when the price per gallon is reduced".

A similar situation exists in Canada regarding egg production. Here the National Farm Products Marketing Council oversees national marketing "plans" for poultry and eggs but since a market cannot be planned the industry is in a state of chaos. Meanwhile in the fruit and vegetable lands in British Columbia hundreds of cases of tomatoes were thrown away during the summer of 1983 because they could only have been sold at 70 to 80 per cent of what it cost the farmer to grow them.

When we speak of waste, it is not food and raw materials alone that are wasted under capitalism, but millions of workers who become unemployed during the various trade depressions and recessions which are another logical consequence of an illogical system. The devastating wars that are caused by the need of competing sections of the world capitalist class for markets and raw materials are still further proof, if any were needed, of the shocking waste of workers, especially when we consider there were more than 50 million casualties in the Second World War.

The logical insanity of capitalism

No one, whatever their political views, can examine these matters without being appalled at the logical insanity of capitalism. Logical, because these problems are a normal consequence of a society where all production is carried on only with a view to profit on the market. Insanity, because, surely to anyone in their right mind, it is insane that food should be destroyed when people are starving, that houses stand empty where people are homeless, that factories stand idle when workers are unemployed.

Years of tinkering with these problems by politicians, of all parties, well-meaning or not, has not achieved anything and in some instances matters have got worse. There is only one solution; which is for the world's workers to examine the contradictions of capitalism and then organise politically for a society where poverty, hunger, unemployment, pollution, waste, planned obsolescence, war and a host of things not even mentioned in this article will be a thing of the past.

Ray Rawlings (Canada)

Pieces Together: Food Destroyed (2009)

The Pieces Together column from the October 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Food Destroyed

“Christophe Voivenel is a dairy farmer, and the son of dairy farmers, in one of the finest dairy regions in the world. At some point in the next few days, he will commit an act of sacrilege. He will rise, as usual, at 6am to milk his 60 cows and then throw away the warm, white liquid which is his family’s life’s blood. ‘You have to understand how hard that will be,’ he said. ‘It is like an artist destroying his own painting or a craftsman smashing one of his own creations.’ Mr Voivenel, 43, a farmer near Vire in lower Normandy, is about to go on strike. Tens of thousands of dairy farmers in 14 European countries, including some in Britain, are preparing to join the first ever pan-European ‘milk strike’: an attempt to push up the farm-gate price of milk, which has almost halved in the last 18 months.” (Independent, 29 August)

Food Needed

“Changing weather patterns have decimated crops in several of the world’s poorest countries this year, leaving millions in need of food aid and humanitarian workers warning about the dangerous effects of climate change. Farmers in Nepal have been able to produce only half their usual crop, said an Oxfam International report released last week. Livestock are dying of malnutrition in Yemen, according to the humanitarian news service IRIN. And the Red Cross is bracing for the effects of heavy rains across 16 West and Central African nations. All three are the result of extended atypical weather events – drought, rain, or untimely combinations of both – in places where subsistence farmers have long depended on predictability. In Nepal, more than 3 million people – about 10 percent of the population – will need food aid this year, said Oxfam.” (Yahoo News, 2 September)

The Failure of Charity

“The spectre of famine has returned to the Horn of Africa nearly a quarter of a century after the world’s pop stars gathered to banish it at Live Aid, raising £150m for relief efforts in 1985. Millions of impoverished Ethiopians face the threat of malnutrition and possibly starvation this winter in what is shaping up to be the country’s worst food crisis for decades. Estimates of the number of people who need emergency food aid have risen steadily this year from 4.9 million in January to 5.3 million in May and 6.2 million in June. Another 7.5 million are getting aid in return for work on community projects, as part of the National Productive Safety Net Program for people whose food supplies are chronically insecure, bringing the total being fed to 13.7 million.” (Independent, 30 August)

Cows massacred while people need milk (1970)

From the May 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

In accordance with the economics of capitalism. governments continue to finance the non-production and even the destruction of wealth in a bid to restore profit levels.

"Europe", claims the President of the Common Market's Agricultural Commission, “is drowning in a sea of milk and in a morass of butter”. (La Stampa, 8 February 1970). Even though butter stocks in the Common Market amount to one year’s British consumption it is not true to say that there is too much milk or butter in Europe compared with what people need. There are many especially in the immigrant shantytowns of France and Italy who lack enough of these basic foodstuffs. What Dr. Mansholt means is that more milk and milk products have been produced than can be sold at a profit

The only solution under capitalism, where production is geared to meeting market demand rather than human needs, is to get rid of the unprofitable surplus and to take steps to ensure that the productive system's capacity to produce abundance does not again disrupt the market and threaten profit levels. Accordingly, Common Market farmers are now being paid to destroy some of their cows and to feed milk to their pigs. Between 9 February and 30 April some 330,000 cows should have been slaughtered.

The Ethics of Commercialism. (1912)

From the February 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

In spite of the numerous laws that have been passed prohibiting the sale of adulterated foodstuffs, the number of prosecutions each year is enormous. And yet the total cases detected by the inspectors is insignificant compared with the actual amount of adulteration.

Avoiding detection seems to have been reduced to a fine art, especially in some branches of industry — the dairy trade, for example.

The official figures show that of the total number of samples of milk taken, over 12 per cent. have been found to be adulterated. But adulteration today is carried to such perfection that many of the samples taken cannot be proved to have been tampered with.

Take, for example, the case of the London dairyman who, when brought into court charged with selling adulterated milk, had finally to admit that he had systematically “doctored” his commodity for the last three and a half years. Yet dozens of samples had been taken from him by the Council and passed as genuine new milk.

Now milk, before it can be assumed to be adulterated, must contain less than 3 per cent. of fat, which is the amount prescribed in the milk regulations of the Board of Agriculture. This is, as is well known by the authorities, a very low percentage, and there are very few cows indeed that would give such a poor quality of milk. But unless the samples prove upon analysis to be below this “standard,” the authorities cannot prosecute.

So the cute and unscrupulous dairyman takes advantage with impunity of this margin between the standard allowed and the actual quality given by the cow, and reduces all his milk to the artificial line of demarcation.

Because of the difficulty of detection the method usually adopted is that of adding separated milk. The lactometer (an instrument for testing milk by its specific gravity) is placed in the churn of milk and the “sep” added until the lactometer indicates that the legal limit has been reached.

Hundreds of samples of such milk can he taken and analysed, and passed as new milk. It is only when the dairyman “overdoses” it that he is prosecuted, and even then, often enough, unless it is a very flagrant case, no action is taken.

After the dairyman has been fined several times his name gets very odorous in the district. and it frequently becomes necessary to find a new name for the firm. Many instances of this could be given, but one, which developed into a rather amusing case, will suffice.

A short time ago a North London firm was fined £100 for the above method of fraud, and the customers hearing of it, naturally began to transfer their custom to other dairymen. In an endeavour to avert this the name of the firm was changed, and shortly after the old firm was summoned for the old offence, but under the new name, and were fined only £5 because this was the first offence!

Another dairyman had a novel device for selling margarine as butter. As he was of the opinion that the inspector would not ask the carrier when on the round for a sample, he considered it safe to work off the margarine on the unsuspecting “round” customers. But the officer eventually got a clue, so another innovation was tried.

The “butter" was wrapped in ordinary unstamped paper, and then placed in a bag labelled “margarine.” If the inspector or a “suspected” person asked for half a pound of butter they were told that it was margarine, and shown the stamp. But when the regular customer was supplied the bag bearing the magic legend was removed, and they were handed the unstamped packet. And the very existence of the law and the inspectors helped to lull their suspicions and render the deception more complete and easy.

And so the game goes on. There is a continual struggle going on between the fraudulent trader, who seeks the aid of science in his nefarious business, and the inspector, who has to be a veritable Sherlock Holmes if he is to be successful in catching his prey. Every new method of detection, every fresh trap to catch the culprit, only results in the discovery of other means of defeating the law.

Some of our critics think that they have discovered in the laws relating to adulteration, a flaw in our contention that the capitalist class legislate in their own interests. They assert that the laws are diametrically opposed to the interests of the ruling class.

Such an idea is entirely erroneous We cannot look upon the wealthy class as one homogeneous whole in all matters of detail, although we can, in a broad sense, when considering the interest of the working class as opposed to that section of society.

The wealthy class function in society in s two fold capacity, i.e. as capitalists and as purchasers of commodities for personal consumption. It is in the latter capacity that the capitalist generally views the laws directed against adulteration and seeks to protect himself from the unscrupulous trader. But even as a capitalist and an employer be knows that these laws are an advantage to him; for if his wage slaves are getting inferior food he is getting an inferior quality of labour power. Therefore he is not getting full value for his money, for after all, the wages ha pays are only the equivalent of the food, clothing, and shelter supplied to the labourer, and necessary to enable him to reproduce his efficiency. Indirectly, the capitalist purchases the food, clothing, and shelter for the worker when he hands him his wages, so he himself is affected by any fluctuation in its quality or price.

This has been admitted, unwittingly no doubt, by the European and American statesmen, large companies, and even Governments who have raised the nominal or money wages of their employees because of the increase in the cost of living.

These laws, again, aim at protecting the capitalist from “unfair" competition Take again as an example the dairy trade. During last summer the exceedingly dry weather was responsible for a shortage in the supply of milk which resulted in a rapid increase in the wholesale price.

This affected the small men far more than the larger retail firms. The latter are usually cow-keepers. and are therefore not affected by the price, but only inconvenienced, perhaps, by a little shortage. But the small traders, who depend upon the wholesale firms for their supply, had to pay such a price that it left them no margin of profit. In many districts they could not even raise the price to their customers, for the larger firms, after consultation among themselves agreed not to do so — no doubt with a view to crushing out their small opponents.

This proved to be a great incentive to adulteration by the small men, as many of the local papers will testify. But still many of these petty traders were exterminated through inability to make the business pay. In some cases, after holding out to the last, they endeavoured to sell out to their larger competitors; but the latter were often too 'cute to purchase, knowing full well that their rivals would have to retire from the field, and that they would then get their businesses for nothing. And they did so, eventually, while their one time competitors were reduced to the ranks of the unemployed.

No wonder John Bright once referred to adulteration as a legitimate form of competition.

Adulteration is the outcome of competition and the desire for profit, and it is therefore inherent in the capitalist system. And no matter what number or manner of laws are passed against it, it will continue as long as the system continues.

When food and clothing are produced for use and not for profit, adulteration will disappear along with the huge army of inspectors who at present try to exterminate the adulterator, and signally and ignominiously fail to do so.

H. A. Young