The Age of Keynes (1971)

Book Review from the August 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Age of Keynes. A Biographical Study, by Robert Lekachman. Pelican, 30p.

For most of the thirty years just passed, the academic study of political economy has proceeded on the assertion of the Keynesians that it is not necessary to abolish the capitalist system, because it can be manipulated for the general good. By this they mean, that skilful handling of the economy can ensure that there will always be wage-labour for those who must avail themselves of it because they have no other means of subsistence, while the capitalist class will be able to enjoy untrammelled success to wealth as heretofore.

Considering that the edifice of academic economics erected in modern times is essentially nothing but a camouflage against the works of Marx, it is surely reasonable to hope that, in a biography of his principal adversary, some of his arguments would at least be touched upon in passing. But the hope is in vain. Throughout the book the only direct reference to Marx is a quotation from an essay written by Keynes in 1925, when he was old enough to know better, in which he makes a first class fool of himself by declaring, without any supporting argument worthy of the name, that ‘Capital’ is “without interest or application for the modern world”. The diatribe, including the abhorrence which “an educated, intelligent, decent son of Western Europe” must naturally feel for Marx and all his works, is here printed in full.

Is this what we are expected to accept as Keynes’ final criticism of Marx? Could he not do any better later in life? Did he not, at any time, state an opinion on the theory of surplus value? Is his modern biographer, an American professor of economics, not able to manage just one more bash at the much battered-about labour theory?

Obviously then there is little here to interest an educated intelligent worker, whether he happens to be a "decent son of Western Europe” or the son of Chinese sea cook, but there are some weird themes running through the book which it may be a pity to miss. The most revealing, perhaps, is based on the notion that Keynes’ theories can only be seen working properly in time of war. We are given a description of world economics in 1943; “economies rejoicing in buoyant demand, factories operating at capacity and overfull employment”.

As always with Keynesian economists the question of employment, other people’s employment, of course, not his own, is of anxious concern to this professor. “Making work” for other people, preferably at a factory bench, is an obsession with him. But perhaps the most revolting examples of capitalistic cant are the references to Keynes cleverness in gambling on the Stock Exchange.

It is a frightening thought that students of political economy, the understanding of which is of such overwhelming importance to every human being, still have to soil their minds with this sort of rubbish in universities today.

F.T.G.

Merely a Town Rising (1972)

Book Review from the August 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Paris Commune of 1871. The Views from the Left, ed. Eugene Schulkind. Cape. £1.50.

This is another telling of the heart-rending story of what went in in the working class arrondisements of Paris in the spring of 1871. It is presented as a series of pronouncements, many of which were made by the communards, and it must be commended as, at the least, a useful addition to the research and documentation of the event.

“The Commune was not socialist; it wasn’t even revolutionary.” Many of its declarations are but conventional objections to monarchism, pawn-brokers, mortgages, priests and so on mixed up, as is the case today, with rent strikes and wage rates. Gleams of clearer understanding shine through the fog: “It is necessary, citizens, to eliminate wage-labour, the last form of servitude,” and. “Brothers in the Army, you were workers yesterday and will be workers again tomorrow.” The men who spoke in such language displayed a degree of comprehension which is, sadly, seldom shown by “leaders” who are put up to speak on behalf of the workers a hundred years later.

Predictably, appeals to the army had no effect. Marx’s fear that lack of preparation (education) among the working class, including soldiers, would lead to defeat was only too awfully realised when Thiers, and his "cabal of place-hunting barristers”, loosed on to the citizens the mercenary army, which they had bought out of Prussian captivity for this purpose. Horror-stricken, The Times reported that the frenzy of slaughter has rarely been equalled in civilised society.

Marx is represented by his Civil War in France, and by his letter to Nieuwenhuis of 22 Feb. 1881 and, as always, he rewards re-reading with further interest. Penetrating comment is to be found, of course, in passages from Engels. Lenin provides the longest contribution from one pen; with Trotsky he brings the study to a conclusion, fittingly, perhaps ?

F.T.G.

Books Received
World Crisis — Essays in Revolutionary Socialism, by Nigel Harris and John Palmer. Hutchinson. £2.50.
Anarchism Today, by Apter and Joll. MacMillan. 75 p.
The Political Theory of Anarchism, by April Carter. Routledge and Kcgan Paul. £1.00.
A Working Life, by Polly Toynbee. Hodder and Stoughton. £2.00.
Between Two Worlds: The Political Thought of Graham Wallas, by Martin J. Wiener. OUP. £3.50.
The Russian Revolution of 1917, Edited by Dimitri von Mohrenschildt. OUP. £1.60.
The Unholy Hymnal, Edited by Albert E. Kahn. Wolfe Publishing. 75 p.

Civilization? (1972)

Book Review from the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Civilization. A Personal View, by Kenneth Clark. BBC and John Murray. £2.25 (paperback).

Discussing man's transition from dependence on nature to dominion over it, Marx, more than a century ago, gave us a description of civilisation which could have been written yesterday. “Work no longer seems to be included in the production process as man rather stands apart from the production process as its regulator and guardian . . .  In this transformation it is less the immediate labour performed by man himself, or the time that he works, than the appropriation of his general productivity, his comprehension of nature and dominion over it through his existence as a social body . . . that appears as the supporting pillar of production and wealth.” It must be a great pity that Kenneth Clark was not familiar with this passage, as it could easily have set his personal view of civilisation in a more purposeful mould than the philosopher-seeking-after-truth image, which we have here.

Millions of people will recall with pleasure, and no doubt considerable enlightenment, the television epic (a composition in a lofty narrative style) from the script of which this book is compiled. While the author stays in his own field, art, there is no doubt that he knows what he is talking about. When he discourses on the exquisite delights of Michelangelo’s statue of a young man he called "David’’ then, certainly, those who may have cultivated a taste for this sort of thing, will think him well worth listening to; but when he ventures into the realm of political economy, the mask of the truth-seeking philosopher is liable to slip and reveal a sometimes appallingly ignorant prejudice.

Obviously this is most clearly seen when we get to the Industrial Revolution and matters with which we are all. perforce, familiar. It is easy to seize on incorrect details, particularly in one’s own pet subject, and use them to berate an opponent, but it does not need a very profound knowledge of what went on in England in the first half of the 19th century to expose this author’s treatment of the period.

Surely every schoolboy knows today, thanks however indirectly to Marx and Engels, that the sanctimonious Wilberforce got the money to campaign against chattel slavery by sending equally helpless wage slaves, aged about ten, down the mine to get a gutfull of coal dust. Kenneth Clark may like to give us the impression that he has read Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 but he shows little evidence of having absorbed any of its lessons in economics; if he had he might have got the title of the book right: among knowledgeable people there is a difference between ‘working class’ and ‘working classes’. Furthermore somebody could have corrected the index error, which has been allowed to persist from the earlier, more expensive, edition. Surely after reading this book nobody could be quite so pathetically eulogistic about the “humane reformers” of the period, nor could he possibly have the breathtaking effrontery to describe the penetrating observation, painstaking research and devastating comment of Engels’ book as “the passionate cry of a young social worker”.

In the story of this period we are also treated to a brief, incredibly brief, reference to Marx. There is no direct comment on his work nor even the suggestion of an argument, but he is there alright, wedged between some more “humane” stuff about Lord Shaftesbury and a few lines of poetry by Wordsworth, who, we are told solemnly, knew all about the workers before Marx even heard of them. Here again it seems unfortunate that Kenneth Clark should suppose that his readers are not familiar with the doings of Lord Shaftesbury. Marx, when dealing with this man, didn’t treat us like a lot of simpletons who can be told any old rubbish, so why should Kenneth Clark? He only had to take a few lines after the Ten Hours Bill, and all that stuff, to tell us that this “great humanitarian” was also a grasping landowner, who helped to provoke the Swing riots by, among other oppressions, taking from the miserable wages of his labourers, exorbitant rents for the hovels they lived in.

Kenneth Clark, almost with the very last sentence of the thousands of words comprising this work, aims an utterly mindless aside at Marx asserting his “moral and intellectual failure”. Perhaps he should read over his own comments on the first half of the 19th century and think again about that one.

F. T. G.