Answers to Correspondents: Socialists and Equality (1937)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists and Equality 

A correspondent (“Alter Ego,” Colchester) writes objecting to the review of G. B. Shaw’s “Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism” (see August the Socialist Standard), on the ground that it “apparently endorses Shaw’s opinion that ‘ Socialism means equality of income, or nothing.’ ” Our correspondent goes on to say that this would mean that each individual would receive equal rations of everything, “say, 7 loaves of bread, 1 lb. of butter, 4 lbs. of potatoes, etc.,” whereas Socialists stand by the proposition, “From each according to his or her abilities, to each according to his or her needs.”

Our correspondent has misunderstood a necessarily very brief reference to this question, which was more fully dealt with in the Socialist Standard for August, 1936. He also confuses “equality” with “uniformity.” The matter can perhaps best be explained by briefly defining the various different attitudes.

Shaw says, give each individual an equal money income and let him or her spend it on whatever he or she wishes. As a protest against the capitalists arguments for inequality, Shaw’s insistence on equality is a useful piece of work, but, as was pointed out in the review, there will be no money incomes under Socialism, and Shaw’s plan is therefore Utopian. It should be noticed that Shaw is not aiming at "uniformity,” i.e., standardised rations for each individual, but that they should be able to lay out their incomes how they like.

Socialists, say, to each according to his or her needs. Society by its co-operative effort shall produce goods in the quantity and variety corresponding to the productivity of industry and the number of hours the population is prepared to devote to work, and the individual members of society shall be able to take freely from the common stock according to his or her needs. Here again it is not a question of “uniformity,” i.e., of standardised rations; nor is it Shaw’s plan of equal money incomes; nor is it the capitalist plan of to each capitalist according to the amount of capital he owns, to each worker who is able to get work according to his cost of subsistence; nor is it the Bolshevik plan of, to each grade according to whether it is high or low in the ladder of social privilege, to each individual according to his output, and according to his ownership of Government bonds.

Actually we know of no school of thought which advocates uniformity or standardised rations, but it suits the capitalist hacks and the Communist Party to erect their Aunt Sally in order triumphantly to knock it down again. Having done so, the capitalist hacks say the only alternative is the capitalist plan, and the Communists say that the only alternative is the Bolshevik plan. Socialists, in line with Marx and Lenin, advocate equality but not standardisation, on the plan "to each according to his needs.”

Ed. Comm.

Are you underpaid? (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

In July there was a storm of controversy about relative rates of pay. The media, the unions, the politicians and the economists all entered the fray which arose out of the recommendation of a committee, set up for that purpose, to grant big increases of pay for top civil servants, judges and high ranking military officers. The pay of an Admiral and Civil Service Permanent Secretary went up from £45.000 to £60,000 and a High Court Judge's pay from £51,250 to £60,000. This got a bad press, partly on the ground that it was outrageous to give top people increases ranging up to 46 per cent while teachers, civil servants and others were being offered even less than the rise of prices, and partly on the ground (this from supporters of the government) that it had been badly timed. The government narrowly escaped defeat in the House of Commons. many Tory MPs abstaining.

The committee which recommended the increases gave as their reasons that, while the top people in the government service did not expect to get into the £100.000- £200.000 levels of some of the highest paid directors of companies, the gap had become too large; they were being disheartened and demoralised and the recruitment of suitable people was falling off — reasons which the critics found unconvincing. A telling point made by the government was that similar big increases had been given by the last Labour government.

Unions currently engaged in pay negotiations made the most of this situation. How could it be justified that already well paid top people should be given these big increases while teachers were being offered only 6 per cent? The teachers' unions argued that at their present pay, teachers are "grossly underpaid". But this does not single teachers out from all the other workers. Every one of the nearly 400 unions will maintain with equal vehemence that their members, too. are "grossly underpaid".

It would be entertaining if the opinion pollsters were to take time off from failing to forecast accurately the results of by-elections and conduct polls about what people think of their pay. To the first question. “Do you think you are underpaid?", the answers would surely be an overwhelming "Yes". The answers to a second question. "On what do you base this belief?" would be more interesting.

The list of reasons would be long and varied. That pay is not enough to live on. It does not take enough account of our skills and qualifications, or of our conditions of work, of our having to work at night or at the weekend. We have to work underground, or in the open-air, or at heights above ground. Our work is dangerous, or boring or exhausting; our pay undervalues the quality and quantity of our output, or our responsibility for human life, or for health or large sums of money. It has not kept up with prices and so on. Of course the pollsters should include the people receiving sick benefit, unemployment benefit or pensions. It is certain that large numbers of the replies would be concerned with comparisons — women's pay and men's, rural pay and pay in the towns, industrial workers' pay and that of office workers. Naturally everybody 's pay would be compared with that of the top people.

Ever since the government started publishing information on average pay in different industries, and average pay in all industries combined, the workers receiving less than the combined average have claimed that they ought to have their pay brought up to that average. (Agricultural workers recently asked for their pay to be doubled on that ground.) If ever such an adjustment was accepted for general application it would end up with all industries receiving the same pay. If no industry remained below the average there could be no industry above the average either.

The idea of the same pay for all has had well-known backers. Marx alleged of Proudhon that his idea of the aim of social revolution was "equality of wages". At one time Bernard Shaw advocated it, as did Lenin in Russia and Attlee, Prime Minister of the 1945-51 Labour government in Britain. Lenin, in his State and Revolution, published in 1917 before the Communists seized power, wrote: "The whole of society will become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labour and pay". A year later he announced that this idea was unworkable and had had to be abandoned. It has, of course, never been resumed. Attlee in his The Will and the Way to to Socialism (1935) rejected the Tory belief "that society must always be divided into classes of rich and poor", and promised that a Labour government would abolish social classes and introduce "an equalitarian society", the method being to raise wages and cut down the incomes of the rich. "There would be no little cottages and no large private houses. All would be reasonably housed."

No political party now treats seriously the concept of equal pay to all as a practical way to run capitalism, but much has been written about, and much effort applied to. schemes for fixing relativities between the wages paid in all occupations, by means of "job evaluation". The late Lord Brown, a Labour Party supporter (not Lord George Brown) claimed that it would be possible to fix the "proper" rate of pay for every job in the country from the lowest to the highest. The requirements of each job would be assessed and points awarded for each factor; for qualifications and skill, for initiative and responsibility and working conditions, and numerous other factors. According to Lord Brown's scheme, this would result in an objective and scientific measure for comparing one job with any other and fixing pay accordingly.

This, and other proposals for fixing comparative rates of pay on some ideal standard. come up against practical difficulties. Any trade union which found itself in a position to enforce higher pay than the one awarded would ignore the assessment, as would any employer who could get all the workers needed at a lower rate of pay.

But the theory behind such schemes is also flawed. The assessments can never be objective, depending as they do on who makes them. There would always be disagreement between the people actually doing the job and the outside assessors. Although the Royal Commission on the Civil Service 1953-55 recommended that some use might be made of job evaluation in the fixing of the pay of civil service grades, their Report (page 149) admitted that objectivity is impossible, as indeed it is:

In this and in other fields where it is necessary to compare and to add together factors, which are, strictly speaking, unmeasurable, the use of the points system may well facilitate consistency of judgement-, though it must be recognised that the judgement itself remains essentially subjective.

Behind the widespread complaint of workers that they are underpaid is the belief that, as distinct from the pay they are actually receiving, a "fair", or "just", or "equitable" rate for the job would be something more. (None of the replies to the pollsters would say that the subject is overpaid, though plenty would say that of other people's jobs.) This is quite meaningless and irrelevant, arising out of the refusal to face up to the fact that we live in a capitalist society. Capitalism is not concerned with distribution on some principle of "equity" but with making as much profit as possible. It is as true now as when Marx wrote in Value, Price and Profit over a century ago. that capitalism is a class-divided society, the two classes having opposing interests:

The capitalist class constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum; and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction. The matter resolves itself into a question of the respective powers of the combatants.

In this struggle trade union organisation and strikes are the workers' only weapons. For the employers, including government departments and nationalised industries, the "proper" rate of pay is the lowest that they can get the workers to accept and yet recruit in sufficient number the workers needed. This is the background against which the great mass of the wage and salary earners get their living. It is another matter entirely for the propertied class who depend for their living, not on working, but on profits, interest and land rent, based on the exploitation of the working class. What way out is there? Marx provided the answer. He did not urge the workers to carry on with the endless struggle for "fair wages" but the reverse:

Instead of the conservative motto, "a fair day's wages for a fair day's work”, they ought to inscribe on their banners the revolutionary watchword "Abolition of the wages system".

Before leaving consideration of the people with fancy and quite unrealistic ideas about reforming the wages system under capitalism. Woodrow Wyatt (Times, 27 July 1985) provides an interesting sidelight on the MPs. Roy Hattersley, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, was very angry about the big increases for top people. So were many Tory, Labour, Liberal and SDP members. Wyatt had this to say:

However, despite their sudden conversion to "social justice" most were among those MPs who in July 1983 voted themselves to be linked by January 1988 to 89 per cent of a Senior Principal's pay. A very nice bonanza with no examination by an independent review body. MPs' pay is now £16.900 a year. Already 89 per cent of a Senior Principal's pay is £20,404 and by 1988 will be around £23.000 giving MPs an increase of some 36 per cent to look forward to.

The MPs' pay of £16,900 is supplemented by what Wyatt says are very generous allowances.

Perhaps the pollsters will ask MPs if they too think they are grossly underpaid and if so why. particularly in view of the fact that all of the several thousand who have been in Parliament since 1945 were committed to hold down prices and maintain "full employment". They can hardly base their claim on their performance in these two fields.

Edgar Hardcastle

Trade Union Leaders in Confusion (1935)

From the October 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sixty-seventh Annual Conference of the Trade Union Congress met in the shadow of war, and its President, Mr. Kean, opened the proceedings with a touching, if incoherent, appeal for peace. Italy, he said, must be coerced into keeping the peace, by means of economic and financial embargo and, perhaps, by closing the Suez Canal, even if such action led the League Powers into a war with Italy. That is, we must have peace at all costs, even if we have to go to war for it. The logic is shaky, but the meaning is clear enough. Another war to end war! And the T.U.C. and the Labour Party are as blandly ready to send the workers to the shambles as if the last war had never happened.

Mussolini, cries Mr. Kean, "knows no moral principle”—so “we” should bring out “our” poison-gases and long-range guns, to convince him how much loftier are “our" principles. Mussolini has made an “unjust and rapacious assault” on Abyssinia; so Great Britain, upheld by the comfortable conviction of moral superiority, given her by the tale of her just and generous acquisition of world empire, must teach him to play the game according to the rules. The subject races of the British Empire might inquire eagerly just what those rules are; but, of course, ignorant black men cannot be expected to comprehend civilised society. The British T.U.C. apparently does not comprehend it either. They spent days reading the riddle: “When is a war not a war?” and reached the solution, “When the other side call themselves Fascists.” Thus the Fascist is being used to fill the place occupied by the “Hun” in 1914; and the T.U.C.—together, be it noted, with the Communists, with whom they refuse to associate—tell the workers that it is their interest to take up arms against Fascism.

Leaders Mislead the Workers

What a highly convenient catchword is this “Down with Fascism” rallying-cry! Just the slogan needed to disarm the “Left-wing” resistance to war, and transform anti-militarist campaigns into frantic clamouring for the defence of Abyssinia. And these “leaders of the working class” are so muddle-headed in their principles and policy that they are voluntarily playing the game of the National Government—the very Government they have in the past so often and so bitterly attacked. Give them a war they can condone, a slogan obscuring the basic issue, and they readily, unreflectingly, follow the example of the Social-Democrats and others whose 1914-1918 war record will not bear examination.

The S.P.G.B. maintains that the “Fascism” aspect of the matter is the superficial excuse necessary to render war acceptable. The underlying issue is an economic one—the workers of all the countries involved are to be used as tools to make possible the extraction of profit from Abyssinia. Great Britain is inextricably concerned, since Abyssinia is surrounded on almost all frontiers by British territory; since the Blue Nile, source of Egypt’s essential floods, rises in Lake Tana; and since Eritrea and the Somalilands are on the route to India. The British capitalist group are not anxious for war at present; but neither do they want Italy to corner all the profits they foresee in the development of Abyssinia. Therefore, the politicians at Geneva and elsewhere have been treading the knife-edge of diplomacy, endeavouring to give Italy concessions large enough to stave off war, without actually giving Italy a monopoly of Abyssinian exploitation. The workers of the world have no interest in these jugglings. What reason is there for them to support one section of their exploiters against another? Whichever side wins the wage-slaves will still be wage-slaves; the basic problem of present society will remain unsolved.

The S.P.G.B. maintains, as it has done consistently throughout its thirty-one years' existence, that the workers' interests are inescapably opposed to those of the capitalists, whatever political and national trimmings the latter may use to mask their ends. When the workers open their eyes to the facts of their exploitation, and cease to be taken in by the multifarious propaganda of the capitalists and their tools, they will see that their own interests lie simply and only in an entirely new system of society—Socialism—and will struggle indefatigably to establish it. Under Socialism the entire absence of the profit motive will once and for all eradicate the cause of war. When the workers have set up Socialism, then, and only then, will war be impossible.

Equality for Women Workers

Not a word of this did we hear from the T.U.C., and equally indefinite and non-socialist was their attitude on Britain’s internal problems. The economic position of women, the plight of the depressed areas, and the battle for shorter hours were all discussed from a purely reformist standpoint. All these problems are inherent in capitalism, but the T.U.C. conveys the impression that they can be solved piecemeal, without touching the basis of society. This impression is false: some improvements may benefit sections of the workers for a time, but the working class as a whole can never escape from exploitation by such painting the sores of capitalism. The first essential of capitalist society is an army of wage-slaves, people dependent for their lives on the sale of their energies in the labour-market ; and the commodity labour-power commands only the price necessary, for the labourer to continue his existence and reproduce his kind. That is, the workers as a whole—whatever differences and fluctuations may occur in particular sections at particular times—receive as the price of their labour-power little more than enough to keep them alive. This is an integral part of capitalism. Suppose women succeed, as the T.U.C. hope, in obtaining equal wages with men. Are they any the less exploited wage-slaves? By all means let them, in common with all their class, fight against the encroachments of their masters, but let them not be deluded into believing that their principal task. They must realise that these encroachments can be made impossible only by doing away with the private ownership of the means of life, which produced their enemy, the master class.

The Workers a “Depressed” Class

The T.U.C., with penetrating insight into social cause and effect, further disclosed to an astounded world that “the stricken areas owe their lamentable position to the decline in their main industries.” We have heard also that the circular movement of the globe on its axis may be explained as being due to the rotation of the earth. The T.U.C. was full of warm-hearted sympathy about the “shame and pity" of the depressed industries' situation, but spent no time analysing its true causes, or pointing the obvious way out. We state that these areas are “stricken" simply because the capitalists of this country cannot at present envisage making profits from them, owing to foreign competition and to more attractive investing fields elsewhere. Moreover, the whole working class all over the world is ”stricken" and lives in a state of permanent “depression.” The difference between these areas and others which receive less publicity is one of degree, and not of kind. It has been often and authoritatively stated that most workers, whether employed or not, have neither sufficient food, adequate clothing, nor sanitary homes. Such conditions are an integral part of capitalism.

Similarly, the question of hours is one which can never be solved so long as the human race is divided into two opposing camps, one owning the means of life and the other divorced from ownership, the one buying and the other selling labour-power. The buyers and sellers of labour-power have irreconcilable interests, and until private ownership and the buying and selling of labour- power is stopped for good, the haggling and wrangling over its price and time of its use must inevitably continue.

Down with all the War-makers

Finally, the T.U.C. decided to exclude Communists from holding official positions in Trades Councils. At about the same time the Communist Party announced its readiness to affiliate with the Labour Party. The T.U.C. officially stigmatised the Communists as a disruptionist element. Yet on the Abyssinian issue the Communist and T.U.C. policies are identical. So they blow hot and cold and make confusion worse confounded. The S.P.G.B. has indeed every logical reason to claim that it alone, in this maze of capitalist politics, is treading the direct path to Socialism. The Communist Party’s attitude in the Abyssinian crisis must have demonstrated unmistakably to many of its erstwhile supporters how capable that Party is of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Why further the declared policy of a capitalist Government? Why differentiate between national sections of the world capitalist class? To dam up Italian colonial expansion in Africa, which is so attractive to Italian capitalism, is merely to bring a European explosion so much nearer. To defend Abyssinia against Italy is merely to hand it over for capitalist exploitation by the native ruling class in alliance with Britain or France, or to split it up among various Powers. Abyssinia is due to be “civilised” by some capitalist group in any case. But the Communist Party is willing to lead British workers to slaughter Italian workers under the banner “down with Fascism and war." They remind us of Butler’s “Hudibras,” whose

    "Brain 

Outweighed his rage but half a grain, 

Which made some take him for a tool 

That knaves do work with, called a fool.”

Once again we must reiterate that these internecine squabbles, for all the fine phrases used as top dressing, are no concern of the working class. The paramount issue in the world to-day is the struggle for Socialism. The S.P.G.B. calls on the workers throughout the world to realise their class position, and to determine to end class-society and all its evils by organising consciously and politically for the one end, of establishing Socialism.

D. S.

A Look Round. (1908)

From the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to “Bradstreet’s” there were 964 business failures in America in October, with assets 124 million dollars and liabilities 139 million dollars. In October, 1893, the failures were 1,753 with assets 36 million dollars and liabilities 55 million dollars. Thus in 1893 the average liabilities per failure were 31,375 dollars and in 1907 they were 144,200 dollars. But of the latter twenty failures account for 114 million dollars, leaving only 25 million dollars for the remaining 944.

* * *

The S.D.F., I.L.P., and the Labour Party were well represented in the signatures to the Memorial, relating to the employment of barmaids, submitted to the Chancellor of the Exchequer last month. They included Miss Margaret Bondfield, Rev. R. J. Campbell, A. H. Gill, M.P., A. Henderson, M.P., J. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P., and D. J. Shackleton, M.P. The memorialists claim that from the advertisements in the trade papers it is evident that the great majority of barmaids are engaged on account of their attractiveness to men customers, whilst the record of the magistrates and other courts gives convincing statistical proof that the career of the disproportionate number of barmaids ends in drunkenness, immorality, misery and frequently suicide.

* * *

Now, if public houses are such demoralising and terrible places as these people would have us believe, why do not they take up a logical position and advocate their immediate suppression ? And why do they suggest that the wives and daughters of publicans should be permitted to continue to work in “surroundings which carry with them special dangers and temptations” ? Do they consider the publican has a right of private property in his wife and daughters so inviolable that he is to be permitted to employ them in a career that “ends in drunkenness, immorality, misery, and frequently suicide” ?

* * *

But the memorialists would even permit barmaids now employed to continue in what they consider such vile surroundings provided they have a licence from the Government. They would “protect the young girls of the nation” but those who have already entered upon this horrible career are to be permitted to go down to their end “in drunkenness, immorality, misery, and frequently suicide” if they have taken out a licence !

* * *

The Government is to place it on record that public houses are places where no decent woman should work. The publican’s wife and daughters are not to count. I suppose the worst surroundings are too good for them, according to the ideas of the memorialists. Licences are therefore to be granted to other men’s wives and daughters, and no doubt the fortunate holder of such a badge of slavery will be regarded as one who has either proved herself able to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, or is so low and depraved that it does not matter what happens to her.

* * *

No one denies that the barmaid’s lot could be improved, particularly in regard to her hours of labour, but in many respects it is vastly superior to that of other women workers. As a rule, she gets plenty of food and good food, which is more than can be said of the girls employed in such highly respectable occupations as millinery and dressmaking, often working for nothing and usually for only a few shillings a week. If they live at home the financial effort required for clothing prevents them from being otherwise than semi-starved all the time, and many of them exist in a condition of chronic anaemia which in due course has its effect upon their offspring. If they “live in”—well, Miss Bondfield, who wishes to abolish the barmaids, being an official of the Shop Assistants Union, has time after time denounced the system. And it is said that there are large establishments in the shopping centres of London where the girls who live in are allowed to stay out all night, provided they pay a fine of ten shillings in the morning. Such a system cannot be charged against the publicans. And as to the alleged immorality, it must be admitted that there is nothing drives women on the streets so much as inability to obtain food and clothing for themselves and their dependents. The barmaid, at any rate, is secured against this.

* * *

Again, the atmosphere of thousands of coffee shops is much more immoral than the bar of a public house is ever likely to be, and the girls employed have no protection. Customers may use vile language concerning the food (as it is called) supplied in these places, and this language the waitress has to listen to. A remonstrance on her part to her employer would probably result in her getting “the sack,” as the competition is too keen, and the profits too small, particularly in the poorer districts, for the “guvner” to be able to afford to quarrel with his customers. But if a customer in a wicked public house uses vile language to a barmaid and the manager or proprietor overhears or it is reported to him, the culprit is either warned, or put out and sometimes forbidden the house altogether. And the conditions of the girls in these coffee shops, as to hours, wages, and food, are certainly much inferior to those of the majority of barmaids.

* * *

Of course the S.D.F. and the I.L.P., through their members who signed the memorial, are being made the tools of the most bigoted section of that nonconformist conscience which they have so often denounced. These pharasaical humbugs really wish to prohibit the sale of alcoholic liquors, but lack the courage to openly declare themselves.

* * *

According to the Daily Chronicle’s Rome correspondent between 50,000 and 60,000 Neapolitans have formed a passive resistance movement, and for six months have refused to pay rent or quit their tenements. The Government are taking the usual course. Controlling, as they do, the armed forces of the nation, which armed forces they will continue to control so long as they are politically dominant, they are using those forces against the workers. In the early part of December ten thousand troops from various cities had been despatched to reinforce the Naples Garrison preparatory to evicting the working-class families concerned.

* * *

Once more “the impracticability of the Socialist schemes” has been demonstrated, this time by a Mr. Moreton Frewen. He says that the total accumulated capital in the country is estimated at £9,000,000,000, which invested at 3½ per cent. would bring in about 5d. a day per person. The total income from all sources Mr. Frewen estimates at £1,500,000,000 annually, equal to about 14s. per head per week. “Thus,” says our oracle, “the Socialist ideal of happiness would result in every individual in the country being possessed of a revenue of 16s. 11d. per week.” And Mr. Frewen adds that this would not be “a very prosperous state of affairs.”

* * *

16s. 11d. per head per week, says Mr. Frewen, will be the income under Socialism. It is computed that the average family consists of five persons, so that each family would receive £4 4s. 7d. per week. But it is known that the working class have larger families than the well-to-do section of the population, and the amount would therefore be increased for working-class families. And this “would not be a very prosperous state of affairs” !

* * *

Well, if Socialism really meant dividing up what is known as the National Income, it would mean the trebling, at least, of the income of the mass of the working class. Chas. Booth has shown that 1,250,000 of the population of London are in receipt of a wage of one guinea or less per week per family, and in commenting on the Railway dispute the Daily Telegraph pointed out that, in the event of a strike, an enormous number of men would be willing to blackleg at £1 per week. “Twenty shillings a week is no luxurious wage we admit,” said the Daily Telegraph, “but it is better, alas, than many thousands of workmen in both, town and country can secure.” So that the “prosperity” of the working class under capitalism is represented by one-sixth or less of what, according to Mr, Frewen, they would receive under Socialism, And this proves “the impracticability of the Socialist schemes ” !

* * *

It is not surprising that opponents get the idea that Socialism merely means the equalisation of income or wages when those professing: to be Socialists endeavour to popularise the same idea. Recently I heard a Mr. Dean, on the I.L.P. platform in East Ham, inform a questioner that “of course, it would be quite possible for anyone to save up his money under Socialism, if he preferred not to spend the wages paid to him each week by the State. But he would not be able to employ anyone else with the money so saved. He would be a capitalist, but unable to use his capital.” And after delivering himself of this he read the titles of pamphlets which he advised the audience to buy and study, some of which explained that the wages system would be abolished with the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of Socialism.

* * *

This misconception of Socialism arises largely out of the advocacy of palliatives by both the I.L.P. and the S.D.F. So obscured is the issue, even to members of these bodies, by their talk of the “right to work,” “better wages for the working class,” “free maintenance for children” etc., that they appear unable to conceive of any system where the hooter shall not sound the time for commencing and leaving work, and where the people shall not be the wage-receiving slaves of the machine industry that they are to-day. They would merely “humanise” the conditions of employment.

J. Kay

Editorial: The Daily Worker and Lenin on Equal Pay (1948)

Editorial from the February 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a recent broadcast Mr. Attlee referred to the great and growing gulf between rich and poor in Russia. Commenting on this statement the Daily Worker (5/1/48) made the following assertion. “To give a responsible manager the same salary as an unskilled worker is no part of socialist policy, as Attlee knows.” Of course both the Daily Worker and Mr. Attlee could agree on this as they are both responsible for the delusion that state capitalism is Socialism. However, Lenin expressed different views, and as the Daily Worker claims to support Lenin’s views its writers should at least remember what they were, even if it was impossible to realise them under the bureaucratic despotism that Lenin advocated.

In August, 1917, a few months before the Bolsheviks obtained power, Lenin published “The State and Revolution” (Allen and Unwin). A few extracts from this little book will make clear his views on the point under discussion. After making copious quotations from Marx’s “Civil War in France” concerning equal pay, the abolition of bureaucracy and the importance of universal suffrage, Lenin makes the following comments (all italics are Lenin’s):-

“The control of all officials, without exception, by the unreserved application of the principle of election and, at any time, recall; and the approximation of their salaries to the ‘ordinary pay of the workers’ – these are simple and ‘self-evident’ democratic measures, which harmonise completely the interests of the workers and the majority of peasants; and, at the same time, serve as bridge, leading from Capitalism to Socialism.” (p.46).

"Without representative institutions we cannot imagine a Democracy, even a proletarian Democracy;: (p.50).

“But there must be submission to the armed vanguard of all the exploited and labouring classes – to the proletariat. The specific ‘bossing‘ methods of the State Officials can and must begin to be replaced – immediately, within twenty-four hours – by the simple functions of managers and clerks – functions which are now already quite within the capacity of the average townsman and well be performed for a working man’s wage.

“We must organise production on a large scale, starting from what has already been done by Capitalism. By ourselves, we workers, relying on our own experience as workers, must create an unshakable and iron discipline supported by the power of the armed workers; we must reduce the role of the State officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions; they must be responsible, revocable, moderately paid ‘managers and clerks’ (of course, with technical knowledge of all sorts, types and degrees). This is our proletarian task. With this we can and must begin when we have accomplished the proletarian revolution.”

.     .     .     .

“But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. We have but to overthrow the capitalists, to crush with the iron hands of the armed workers the resistance of these exploiters, to break the bureaucratic machine of the modern State – and we have before a highly technically-fashioned machine freed of its parasites, which can quite well be set going by the united workers themselves, hiring their own technical advisers, their own inspectors, their own clerks, and paying them all, as indeed, every ‘State’ official, with the usual workers’ wage. Here is a concrete task immediately practicable and realisable as regards all trusts, which would the workers of exploitation and which would make practical use of the experience (especially in the task of the reconstruction of the State) which the Commune has given us. To organise our whole national economy like the postal system, but in such a way that the technical experts, inspectors, clerks and indeed, all persons employed, should receive no higher than the working man, and the whole under the management of the armed proletariat – this is our immediate aim. This is the kind of State and economic basis we need. This is what will produce the destruction of Parliamentarian, while retaining representative institutions.” (Pages 51 to 53.)

So wrote Lenin, but thirty years later his disciples glorify unequal payment as the principle of Socialism. This was the inescapable result of Lenin’s ingrained distrust of the workers and Blanquist belief the value of bureaucratic, authoritarian centralism that placed complete power in the hands of a small central committee.

Woman and her work. (1918)

From the December 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

A writer in "Reynolds' Newspaper," Oct. 13th, 1918, bewails the fact that woman's wages should be lower than man's. She complains that

  "Woman has been treated as a sort of lay figure for students of economics. Her value to the employer as a profit-maker, to the community as a potential mother, to the politician as a dispenser of votes, has had the fullest consideration. But who has claimed the right of woman to that payment for her labour which will allow of a full and independent life?"

The writer evidently forgets that in the past the capitalist has only employed women in preference to men because they were cheaper, and if we except those special occupations where women—because of lightness of touch, etc.—excel, men would still be employed in preference to women if wages were the same for both sexes. A woman who does equal work with a man must obviously require and obtain the same amount of the necessaries of life. It does not follow, however, that the employer must pay her a wage that will provide it. Girls living with their parents for instance, look upon the factory as a makeshift to obtain a living until they get married. The capitalists know this, and the girls seldom organise to try and force them to pay for their labour-power at its cost of production, hence the parents have to make up the difference. The employment of large numbers of women sets free men who, competing with their fellow-workers, provide employers with the power to reduce men's wages; and married women, unable to live on their husband's wages, take their place beside the younger women in the factory, and the capitalist gets the husband and wife for wages that would not sustain them if they lived separately. But although the capitalist knows that the girls he employs are being partially kept by their parents, he pays no higher wages to the girl who is unfortunate enough to be without parents ; on the contrary, he leaves her to face the horrors of slow starvation or prostitution, quite as a matter of course : there is no room for sentiment or philanthropy in business.

"Should wages be based upon the cost of living, or upon the value of labour to the employer ?" is a question asked by the writer ; and after telling us that "It is one of the greatest fallacies that wages are at present based on the value of labour to the employer," she goes on to argue for a "minimum rate of pay for all workers," which "shall allow for not a bare subsistence only, but a decent standard of comfort which shall include joy and beauty in the life of the worker."

Unlike many writers on economic subjects Elinor Dale realises the fact that labour-power is a commodity. She speaks first of wages, and then of the "price and value of labour," thus recognising that the terms wages and price of labour-power are synonymous. What she does not do, however, is to show how the owners of this particular commodity, within a system based on the production and exchange of commodities, can be given preferential treatment without deranging the whole capitalist system. For if the ruling class guarantee such a standard of living to all workers, they at once surrender their power to coerce them by hunger, which the pitiless commodity character of labour-power gives them.

The development of industry tends to establish a minimum, reducing the price of highly skilled labour-power by the simple process of eliminating the skill. Machinery, new methods and standardization does this, and while reducing the number of skilled workers required increases the number of competitors. The drudgery of factory and mill becoming ever more degrading and distasteful, induces ever-increasing numbers to avail themselves of the growing facilities for acquiring technical knowledge, with the result that every occupation and profession is overcrowded, has its army of unemployed, dragging down wages and salaries.

Equal opportunities for women to win the plums of the capitalist system will not solve the problem of woman's subjection. The working-class includes both sexes, equally subjected and exploited by the capitalist class. The great bulk of the workers must take the first job that offers, though it affords no more than a bare subsistence ; it is no consolation to these if they have equal opportunities, so-called, because under the system the vast majority must be condemned to incessant toil and poverty. 

Women have an equal opportunity with men to work for Socialism. It is their duty to their class so to work, and through their class to their sex, because it is only by Socialism the workers can guarantee themselves a "full and independent life." Most reforms have been tried in one capitalist country or another, and have failed to retard the increasing poverty of the workers. Higher education, an open door from the board schools to the university, was going to increase our efficiency, increase the production of wealth, cheapen commodities, and make it easier to live. Instead, it has meant only a levelling down of labour-power, and the standard of living of the workers has steadily fallen while they have produced more wealth per head. 

It is true that men increase their efforts and struggle ever more furiously to win the best jobs ; it is true that women have entered the race and proved capable in many spheres. But after all, they only serve sections of the ruling class in the sordid game of realising profits ; throwing the whole world into worse degrees of anarchy, and breeding—as the capitalist system must always breed—new disputes between national groups of capitalists, for whom a plethora of wealth must always mean squabbles and bloodshed over markets.

Socialism must be established by the workers before they can enjoy the fruits of their labour. The madness of excessive competition built up on the commodity character of labour-power and production for profit, can only cease when production is carried on for use. Capitalist anarchy grows with the growth of Capitalism. The system fails utterly to give a full life to the class that produces all wealth. Capitalism is over-ripe. Men and women are needed to awaken the workers to a realisation of their slavery, to expose confusionists, and impart a knowledge of Socialism to those who suffer under the system, that they may organise and work for their emancipation.

F. Foan

Answers to Correspondents (1939)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Equal Pay for Equal Work

Mr. J. Bolge (S.E.20) asks: “What is the Socialist solution for the problem of 'unequal pay’ ?” And adds: “ Perhaps there is none under the present system.” He has anticipated our reply. The employer is not interested in abstract principles of equality, but in getting the kind of workers he wants as cheaply as possible. If he finds that large numbers of suitable applicants for a particular kind of work are available, he takes advantage of this to force down wages, and trade unions can only offer a limited amount of resistance to pressure in such circumstances. Mr. G. B. Shaw —in splendid isolation—advocates equal wages for everyone, but nobody supposes that this is practicable. Neither the workers nor the capitalists desire it.

Various groups of people advocate other schemes in the name of ” equality.” The best known are the advocates of “equal pay for men and women,” duly qualified by the words “for equal work.” They have in mind the cases where men and women work side by side, yet the man is more highly paid. This they say is “unfair"; to which men reply that “equal" wages are equally unfair, because of the married man's greater financial responsibilities. Generally speaking, however, the advocates of equal pay for men and women do not ask that charwomen should receive equal pay with women teachers, nor do the opponents of it favour equal pay for male bus drivers and bank clerks. In defence of their inconsistency, both groups raise the question of the so-called “value of work," but this is pure illusion. There is no way in which the so-called "value" of one kind of work can be measured against that of another kind.

Dustmen and doctors both perform services which are very useful to those who benefit by them, but how can the usefulness of the two be measured and compared? In actual fact, when they talk of “value of work" and “comparative value of work," what they are really doing is to accept the current extreme contempt for so-called “manual" and “menial” work, and use it as a lever to get increased wages for those kinds of work which in capitalist eyes are less despicable. The capitalistically minded teacher, or bank clerk, or chemist making poison gas, sneers at the dustman, and claims that his work is “more valuable" and should, therefore, be better paid.

The only solution for the friction and resentments aroused among workers by the wages system and its illogical workings is not a differently regulated wages system, but the abolition of the wages system—i.e., Socialism.

Ed. Comm.

Mr. Ralph Oder (New York). We have your inquiry about the conclusion of the article on page 178 of the December, 1938, issue. It is certainly ambiguous. The meaning it was intended to convey is that the Socialist movement, in fighting to achieve Socialism, is at the same time safeguarding democracy. 

Ed. Comm.

Mr. Graham Boatfield (Ashford). For statements on "Collective Security" and “War for democracy," see The Socialist Standard for October, 1938, and February, 1939.

Ed. Comm.

Mr. L. S. Chell (N.W.9). We will endeavour to get an article on the subject in the near future.

Ed. Comm.

Mr. W. V. Andrews (Wickford). Different economists and statisticians use different definitions of "National Income" according to the purpose for which they are to be used. All of their definitions include both profits and wages. You will find a statement on the subject in Chapter .I of "The National Income," by Colin Clark (MacMillan & Co., 1932), and in "The National Income," by Bowley & Stamp (Clarendon Press, 1927).

Ed. Comm.

Mr. R. Mead (High Wycombe). The basis of your criticism of our attitude towards the Bolshevists is your belief that Russia “is undoubtedly striving towards, and will soon attain, real Communism." If you will give us the reasons for your belief we will examine them.

You are wrong in saying that the S.P.G.B. opposes Popular Fronts simply because they are not composed of Socialists. The question is whether Popular Fronts can succeed in achieving what is claimed for them. We say no. Incidentally, we notice that you believe a “so-called Dictatorship is inevitable" in order to achieve Socialism. How do you square this with your support of Popular Fronts, which are intended to preserve democracy?

Ed. Comm.

The Wages of Agricultural Workers

In the January issue of The Socialist Standard we stated that "it has been estimated that as many as twenty-five per cent, of agricultural workers are being paid less than the minimum wage legally applicable to them."

Mr. Andrews (Wickford, Essex) wrote, asking how this information was obtained. Unfortunately, we were at the moment unable to name the source of our information (See Socialist Standard, April), but we can now give details.

The “sweating" of agricultural workers by farmers was dealt with in The Socialist Standard (July, 1931, p. 174, and October, 1934, p. 30).

From the earlier issue we quote the following: " According to Reynolds's Illustrated News (April 12th, 1931), in 1930, 4,523 farms were inspected, as a result of which there were 1,630 claims for arrears of wages. Reynolds's Agricultural Correspondent estimates that 'one farmer in four throughout the country is violating the law.' This estimate is based on official inspections over a number of years in every part of the country."

Why the Workers are Not Anti-Patriotic

A correspondent in Canada writes about the quotation from the pre-war Mussolini that "The proletariat is anti-patriotic by definition and necessity." He points out that workers in all lands are in the main not at all anti-patriotic, although, the necessity exists all right.

As regards the quotation, its form makes it somewhat ambiguous. Although Mussolini (writing, of course, in his Syndicalist days) used the expression “The proletariat is anti-patriotic," that was only intended as a concise way of saying that the proletariat, being a subject class, ought to recognise the necessity of being anti-patriotic.

The trouble is, that although the workers' class position is such that their interests lie in internationalism and the fight to establish Socialism, in the main they do not realise this. All the trappings of state, the flag-wagging, uniforms, coronation ceremonies, are used to disguise the truth from the workers, and all of the capitalist parties and the churches help to keep the truth hidden. Not least dangerous among these agencies of confusion are the jumped-up Labour leaders and ex-Labour leaders, from Mussolini to J. H. Thomas, Clynes, etc. They have learned the trick of combining nationalism with pseudo-Socialism, as in Hitler’s National Socialist or Nazi movement, and the various patriotic so-called Labour Parties.

There is no cure for this except knowledge and experience on the part of the workers, but it is helped by the way in which, from time to time, every country witnesses brutal and open subjection of the workers and their organisations by the employers—with the help of the armed forces of the state. Even the most dazzling of flags fail to fill empty bellies.

P. S.

The Myth of fair wages (1970)

From the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are many rocks appearing among the stormy waters which the Wilson government are trying to navigate and one of them is called pay. Fair pay for nurses, for dustmen, bus drivers, postmen. Fair pay for miners, sailors, policemen, even for Members of Parliament.

Everyone in fact seems to be in favour of "fair” pay from which it follows that hardly anyone is asking the essential question of what the word means. It seems to be generally accepted that somewhere there is a magical formula which can fix a fair wage — a wage exactly adjusted to the skills, dangers, usefulness, responsibility, unpleasantness of each and every job. Of course this would be a beautiful excuse (as if one were needed) for a government to set up another of those Royal Commissions which could spend a lot of time gathering enough material to fill up very thick, big, books, which they will eventually produce as their report and which will very probably be quickly forgotten by everyone. But in the absence of a high powered commission, perhaps we could launch our enquiry.

What are we going to take as our standards for a fair wage? If we start with skill we shall soon run up against the problem that different skills are acquired in different ways. Some can be learned at university, others handed down from one generation to the next. In any case, is it ‘fair' to pay for skill in itself, rather than the way in which it is applied?

Then there is the question of danger. But if wages were based on the dangers involved in the job. airline pilots would be paid no more than the rest of their crew, who obviously are all in equal danger — and the whole lot of them would be paid a great deal less than miners, or trawlermen, or scaffolders. And how much would stock brokers and insurance men get, under a danger-regulated wages system?

They would obviously be in favour of some other criteria being applied. Perhaps usefulness in some strange way the Stock Exchange and the insurance firms manage to convince themselves that their dealings are necessary to society. Yet the world manages to tick over when the Stock Exchange is shut, and people who don’t take out insurance policies seem as happy and healthy as those with a trunk full of the things. It would be a different story if, say, the electricity generating stations took the day off or if bakery workers decided they had had enough of their job. By those standards, people who do jobs which society could not do without— people like dustmen—should earn a lot more than stockbrokers.

Anyone who is not left completely bemused by that beautiful notion may care to pass on to considering the next standard, which is, responsibility. This is, in fact, one of the arguments used by air-line pilots to justify their relatively high pay—which is, they say, no more than due recognition of the fact that they have in their hands the lives of many people and a lot of very expensive hardware. Yet this argument is not extended to other workers in similar situations — train drivers and bus men, for example, are not expected to get anywhere near a pilot’s pay, nor even that of people like salesmen (one advertisement in The Times recently offered salesmens’ jobs for men of between 25 and 35 with a basic wage of between £2000 and £2500 which, with commission could reach £5000 per year whose failures would not destroy any equipment nor endanger any lives.

Should wages, then, be based upon how unpleasant a job is? Anyone who has spoken to a nurse, and who has heard of the sort of jobs they have to do for patients who are in the last stages of diseases like cancer, will know that no wage could possibly be high enough to reflect the unpleasantness of their job. Then what about mortuary attendants, ambulance drivers, who have to pick up what’s left of people after road accidents? Sewer men? they should all be getting far, far more than the Royal Family.

It is possible to labour this point almost indefinitely. The plain, simple fact is that there is no such thing as a fair wage, nor is there any method of estimating one, nor is there any profit in trying to find one. Wages are not governed by fairness. They are not a moral issue, to be influenced by arguments of danger or skill or usefulness or anything else.

Because wages are paid by one human being to another (or, to be exact, by one class to another), the fact that they are no different from the mass of other payments in capitalist society is obscured. Yet wages are as much the price of a commodity as what we pay for apples, or bread, or a hair cut, or a ride on a bus. What is it that fixes how much we pay for apples or a haircut ?

In the short term, it is whatever price is settled after a tug-of-war between the opposing forces of supply and demand. In England in the summer, apples fetch a pretty high price in the shops, but as the autumn comes, and apples from English orchards flood into the shops the price comes down abruptly. This same situation applies to wages. If employers are short of a particular type of worker, or if they are competing with other employers for his working ability, or if they desperately need workers to produce goods to cater for an inviting market, then wages for that worker will tend to rise. If the opposite is true they will end to fall, or rises will be harder to get and the employer will be in a strong position to exert a downward pressure on pay and working conditions.

The whole point about the nurses’ campaign for higher pay is that it is not backed up with any force. Nurses would not use the strike weapon, which is another way of saying that they would not use their bargaining power— which means that in the end their employer has the pull over them. Appeals to fairness and public sympathy have only a limited value — and the government exploits this situation to the full.

When the forces of supply and demand have extended their pressures, they cause a fluctuation in the price of the commodity but the line about which this fluctuation takes place is fixed by something other that market forces. This line is the value of the commodity and, in general terms, this consists of what is need of socially necessary labour to produce the commodity. Thus the fact that a great deal of social effort is needed, in both training and equipment, to get a pilot into the air and bring him back safely, means that his labour-power has a high value. But the same cannot be said of a dustman.

The reduction of labour-power into terms of value, implying as it does an unequal social relationship between human beings, is one of capitalism’s most degrading effects. It flows directly from the debasement of human ability, to be costed and evaluated, bought and sold, hired and discarded. It causes directly the separation of man from his work, it is the hinge of exploitation, in which our lives are regarded as fit subjects for probing to discover ever more intense methods of extracting surplus value from us. It means a life-time of servitude for the mass of the human race.

This issue, which has nothing to do with justice, is always ignored by the seekers after a fair wage. Yet anyone who really wants to make sure that human beings get what they work for is illogical not to look at the social system which denies them this. A long time ago, Marx pointed out the futility and conservatism of those who pine for fair wages. He knew that the answer was a revolutionary one - abolish the wages system.

Ivan

Equality and the Wages System. (1931)

From the September 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The changes in the administration of some of the State industries of Russia, recently announced with the usual pomposity by Stalin, have given the capitalist press another chance to extol the alleged economic superiority of capitalist methods of production over what they mistake for Socialism.

Actually, these changes merely make more clear the essentially capitalist character of the Russian State industries, frequently pointed out in these columns.

Piece-work is to be extended, and many of the "worker-administrators” are to be sent back to the factories. The specialists and managers are to be given greater powers of control, and be more liberally treated. These changes, however, involve no new principle. Ever since the introduction of the New Economic Policy ten years ago things have been moving along this direction, albeit spasmodically and inconsistently. 

Nevertheless, we have the "Manchester Guardian” seizing upon the occasion in its weekly issue of July 10th to expound a little capitalist economics. Speaking of the workers in the factory, the editorial scribe asserts that, "He may work slowly or badly but he will draw his wages just the same unless there is some system of fines or piece rates." It would seem that this brilliant journalistic gem dwells in a world where the "sack” is unheard of.

Wages are paid only in order that employing concerns may squeeze out of the workers that profit which it is the object of their existence to obtain. This applies whether the workers are on piece rates or not. Piece rates have the advantage, however, in those industries where the system can conveniently be utilised, from the capitalist point of view, of reducing the need for supervision to keep up the pace of production; a fact which led Marx to declare, “that piece-wage is the form of wages most in harmony with the capitalist mode of production,” "Capital,” p. 567 (Sommenseheim).

Stalin and his supporters, however, claim to be "Marxists.” They declare that, "it is necessary to organise a system of a sliding scale of wages which would take into account the difference between skilled and unskilled labour . . . Marx and Lenin say that this difference will exist also in Socialist society even after the abolition of classes; that only in a Communist society will this difference vanish. Therefore, wages, even under a Socialist regime, must be regulated in accordance with the work accomplished and not the need felt.”

Then they proceed to condemn "those trade unionists and economists who are in favour of equal wages” as being opposed to Marxism and Leninism.

To take the last point first, Marx certainly exposed the absurdity of the demand for "equal wages,” a demand which figured prominently in the propaganda of a section of the Communist Party in this country (in the "Workers’ Dreadnought” particularly) in its early days.

On page 31 of "Value, Price and Profit,” Marx says, "Upon the basis of the wages system the value of labouring-power is settled like that of every other commodity; and as different kinds of labouring powers have different values, or require different quantities of labour for their production, they must fetch different prices in the labour market. To clamour for equal or even equitable retribution on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system.” (Italics Marx’s.)

It is obvious enough that Marx is referring here to wages under capitalism, but where did he speak of wages under Socialism? Stalin does not tell us. Wages, whether equal or unequal, are ‘part and parcel of capitalism, i.e., a system based upon the ownership by the master-class of the means of living, and the consequent enslavement of the working class by whose labour alone all wealth is produced. Or, as Marx himself put it in his criticism of the Gotha Programme, "The system of wage-labour is therefore a system of slavery and a slavery that becomes more and more arduous as the socially productive forces of labour develop, and independently of the question whether the labourer is better paid or worse.” (Section II, par. 5.)

The wage-labour system in Russian State industries, like the system' here and elsewhere, is a system of Slavery. The spread of piece-work will intensify the slavery; it will enable the "Communist” rulers to squeeze more surplus-produce out of Russian workers, just as it has helped the Conservative and Liberal capitalists of this country. Alleged “quotations” in support of it from Marx merely brand Stalin & Co. as hypocrites and their followers as ignorant dupes. The Russian Government must make a profit in order to pay interest upon its loans if for no other reason, and this fact alone is sufficient to explode the myth that Russian State industry is run on Socialist lines.

The Russian Government has to borrow money to run its industries, like any other capitalist concern, because it has to pay for machinery and raw material, because its employees have to pay for the food, clothes and houses they need; because, in a phrase, all the means by which these requirements are produced are private property. It has not established an oasis of Socialism in a capitalist desert. Had it tried to do so it would have been speedily annihilated.

Does this then prove that capitalism is the only possible economic system, as the “Manchester Guardian” would have us believe? Is the equality, which the Socialist Party fights for, incompatible with productive efficiency? In order to answer these questions it is necessary to be clear as to what we are to compare capitalism with, and also exactly what we mean by equality. If we compare capitalism with the forms of society which preceded it, we find that it has resulted in an enormous and unprecedented increase in the produce of labour; but it has also resulted in the concentration of the bulk of this produce in the hands of the few.

The gulf between the workers of to-day and their capitalist masters is greater than that which separated the peasant-serfs from the robber barons or the chattel-slaves from their patrician masters. Before the increased productive power of modern labour can become an advantage to the whole of society the instruments of production must become common property. They are socially operated; they have yet to become socially owned and controlled.

This of course involves the abolition, through political action, of the “rights” of the capitalists to own and control the land, factories, railways, etc. It implies the conscious assumption by the working- class, organised for the purpose, of complete control of the machinery of government so that they may obtain control of the entire industrial resources of society.

This abolition of classes is the equality at which Socialists aim (not a mathematical equality of income which is fantastic and unwanted); but an equality of access to the means of living and of obligation to contribute to their production. Such an equality would render the term “wages” a meaningless one, for no one would be in a position to buy the services of others in order to make a profit, just as no one would be in the position of having to sell their energies in order to obtain a bare subsistence.

Under such a system it would be to the interests of all to expand the material resources of society as rapidly as possible in order to increase the common stock of Necessities and amenities. For so long as these resources are fettered by capitalist ownership, whether in the form of private capitalism or nationalisation, the workers will be restricted to the consumption of such a quantity of goods as is sufficient to enable them to go on producing a profit. Hence we find everywhere that the capitalists, faced with a quantity of goods which cannot be sold, are compelled to take steps to restrict production.

Socialism will abolish the need for such restriction and while, even with the present resources of production, it would immediately increase the wealth available for the workers' enjoyment, it would also render possible a considerable expansion of those resources in order that the free development of every individual should be translated from a dream into a reality.

Eric Boden