Mergers and Take-overs (1962)

Editorial from the February 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The air is thick with rumours of mergers and tales of take-over bids. The past year has seen more company amalgamations than ever before and the pace has become even hotter during recent months.

Within the space of a few weeks ICI has made overtures to Courtaulds. Mr. Gore has tried hard to take Saxone into his shoe empire, Mullard and GEC have joined up to make transistors, and there may be a technical link-up in the car industry between BMC and Rolls Royce. There have been almost daily reports of other such link-ups among firms not so well known.

The same development is going on abroad. The proposed ICI-Courtaulds link-up was a direct reaction to the recent merger of the French giant Rhone-Poulenc with another big firm Celtex which made it into one of the most powerful firms in Europe in man-made fibres. The Mullard-GEC tie-up scotched rumours that Phillips of Holland were out to take over GEC (Mullard is the British subsidiary of Phillips and presumably the new arrangement will satisfy its appetite for the time being). All over the Common Market there are amalgamations, subsidiaries being formed, pooling arrangements being made to exchange technical know-how.

It is the Common Market that has had a lot to do with quickening up this process, of course. With Britain’s application to join the Six the pressure is now hard on British industry to adapt itself more effectively to meet the challenge of European competition. British firms have been actively engaged for many months in getting footholds in Europe, setting up subsidiaries, and forming link-ups as hard as they can. Even the United States, which has been pouring money into Europe since the end of the war, has increased its activities during the past twelve months under the stimulus and threat of the Common Market.

In agriculture also the trend is towards bigger and bigger units. The day of the peasant proprietor is fast coming to an end. In Germany, France and Italy he is being deliberately eliminated. Farm holdings are being joined up into larger units, and the surplus farmers forced into the towns and industry. Even in Britain and America, where the farm population is only a fraction of the whole, the process still goes inexorably on,

The same thing is happening in the sphere of distribution. Supermarkets spread everywhere, with the bigger ones even at this early stage already beginning to swallow up their smaller brethren. We now have super supermarkets. A further recent appearance in this country has been the discount store, narrowing margins still further and squeezing the small man even harder. There may be half a dozen different names over the shoe shops in the local High Street, but if Mr. Clore’s attempted deal goes through they will all probably belong to the same firm.

Even among nations the same forces are at work The Common Market is itself the reflection in some degree of the pressures towards bigger and bigger units, the size of the new giants on the world scene—Russia, the U.S. and China.

This process of concentration is part and parcel of capitalism. Behind it lies the relentless drive for greater and still greater efficiency, and before it the all-important quest for profit. Marx saw it operating in its very earliest stages over a hundred years ago and foresaw that its effects would become more and more profound.

From the hectic pace of events today we know how right he was.

Branch News (1962)

Party News from the February 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the absence of the full report of the activities of Glasgow Branch, it is good to note that great activity is taking place and the Branch members are co-operating to ensure that the series of meetings are as successful as possible. Their full report is on the way. but has not arrived in time for this month's issue. No doubt there will be more to add by the time we go to press for March.

Wembley Branch members turned out in torrential rain on December 29th to visit the Young Liberals for a discussion on “Immigration". They were most courteously received by these young people, and although talk started off on the official topic, it was not long before it had broadened into a thorough examination of the whole Socialist case. The standard of questions was very high and our comrades were kept busy answering them and points of discussion until the end of the evening. A most gratifying result, and amply repaying the efforts of those who were able to attend. Comrades are hoping for a return visit from the Young Liberals in the near future. By the time you read this, the second of the public meetings will have been held at the Branch rooms, when Comrade Hardy will have told the audience just “Why we Stand Alone". Another, (and possibly more ambitious) meeting is planned to round off the indoor season, probably at the end of March. Details later.

Mitcham Group reports continued activity during the Autumn/Winter indoor season. Regular discussions have been held monthly in their meeting room at the ‘White Hart.' The principal activity of members has been in taking issue with our opponents in the correspondence columns of the local papers. Each letter sent has been published and as a result a number of people have had their attitude corrected by reading the Socialist view. In fact, it is considered by members of the Group, that owing to their efforts in this direction, they are responsible for one Mitcham paper no longer referring to the Labour Party as Socialist.

A programme has been drawn up for the Mitcham Group to discuss both topical politics and political theory. They held a successful meeting in January which dealt with the implications of the European Common Market scheme.

Phyllis Howard

The Passing Show: Goa (1962)

The Passing Show Column from the February 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Goa

The successful Indian invasion of Goa set off a wonderful display of coat-turning. Many of those who supported British aggression at Suez in 1956 opposed Indian aggression at Goa in 1961: and vice versa. So many politicians seized the chance of using the arguments which had been used by their opponents at the time of Suez. Those who had hailed the British and French armed forces' attack on Nasser were then discomfited by having to watch Britain and France pilloried at the United Nations Assembly, with the vast majority of the member-states condemning the aggression, and only two or three countries, most of them Fascist or racialist like Portugal and South Africa, supporting it. At that time no state shouted louder against this wanton aggression than India.

So with what glee have many MPs and others—chiefly Conservatives—waded in with righteous speeches and articles denouncing the Indian aggression, and using the very “holier-than-thou” arguments which were used against them with such telling effect in 1956. Even newspapers like the Daily Mail, which has supported the British ruling class for many years through thick and thin, whatever methods it has used—indiscriminate brutality to the civilian population as in Cyprus, executions for having associated with suspected persons as in Kenya, or naked aggression as at Suez, all defended by sob-jerking references to “our boys out there’’—even newspapers with this record came out quite unabashed against India. The Daily Mail, straightening its very tarnished halo, and raising its eyes piously to the heavens, even had the nerve to proclaim that no action which was morally wrong could be politically right. How any Daily Mail journalist could write that without the typewriter jamming is hard to see.

Right to rule

On the other hand, we had many of those who consider themselves left-wing or progressive weighing in on the other side. Very often they were the same people who pointed out (quite rightly) in 1956 that it is no good denouncing aggression only when it is committed by somebody else; that aggression is still aggression even when the aggressors are the British ruling class. But over Goa they had deluded themselves into believing that the Indian ruling class had some “right ’ to rule over Goa and its people stronger than the “right” of the Portuguese to do the same thing. So out came the argument that “aggression is wrong, but—well, this is different"—exactly the argument used by the pro-Suez faction in 1956.

What it all boils down to is this: if you support capitalism, you will end up by backing this or that capitalist state against the others, even when it goes to war, kills innocent men, women and children, and commits the most barefaced aggression. It is only the Socialist who sees all capitalist states for what they are, and sees that when their own interests demand it they will all kill, execute, and commit aggression however much they have denounced other states doing the same things in the past.

Independence for Balham

But that is far from being the only insoluble problem of supporters of capitalism. While we are on the subject, here is another. All “liberal-minded, progressive people" support, of course, “national independence"—i.e., the right of one state to throw off another which attempts to rule over it. On the other hand, as one descends the scale of communities, there must be a point at which this “right of independence” no longer applies. If, for example, a small London suburb like Balham (even though it is, in Peter Sellers’ words, the “gateway to the south”) proclaimed its independence, there would surely be very few people, even in the Labour Party, who would be prepared to rally to its banner and die gasping out “independence for Balham!’’ with their last breath. But—and here is the sixty-four dollar question—where exactly is this point reached?

Ireland

A case in point is Ireland. Over the long years when the Irish propertied class was demanding its “independence” from the United Kingdom, the British ruling class said the British Isles was the smallest possible unit in this area which could claim independence: Ireland was too small. Against this, the Irish owning class argued that any community, even if part of a larger community, has a perfect right to split off if it wants to. Then when it became clear that Irish independence was only a matter of time, the capitalists of Northern Ireland began to claim the right to hive off from an independent Ireland. At this, the two parties did a smart about turn, and each stole the other's arguments. Now it was the emerging Irish ruling class which denied the right of a small part of a larger community to split off, while those who had previously said that the British Isles was the smallest community hereabouts which could claim self-determination now stoutly defended the right of no more than six counties in Northern Ireland “to determine their own future’’.

Katanga

Another example of the same difficulty —and one which is causing repeated loss of life both among the “United Nations" forces and among the forces supporting Tshombe—is Katanga. One view is that the Congo is the smallest possible unit which can feasibly claim independence; the other view is that Katanga is large enough to stand alone if it wants to. The problem is in fact insoluble in capitalism, except by force. There is no valid rule which lays down how large a country must be before it can demand “ independence”. So the two sides—the Congolese ruling class which wants the mineral wealth of Katanga, and the Katangese rulers who want to keep if for themselves —fight it out in either open war or uneasy temporary peace.

The only permanent solution of the Katanga problem, and all the other problems of “national independence”, is Socialism. In a Socialist system of society there would be no national boundaries, no state frontiers, because there would be no ruling classes to impose them: so naturally there would be no dispute as to where they should lie. Those earnest supporters of the “ United Nations” who are now deeply puzzled about the Katanga impasse might usefully consider our alternative.

Alwyn Edgar

They Never Had It So Good In 1860 (1962)

From the February 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pick up any governmental speech, or article in the newspapers, on the subject of strikes and it is an even chance that a dividing line will be drawn between the “bad old days” when strikes were legitimate and the present time when strikes are said to be unnecessary, useless, dangerous and immoral. Nowadays, they will say, the workers are well off and don’t need to strike; and what is more, “the country” is in such a precarious state that strikes will lose markets for British goods and cause suffering all-round, to the strikers among others.

It is a seductive line but not at all persuasive when you realise that the same arguments were being advanced back in "the bad old days” of a century ago, as may be seen in the Quarterly Review, which in 1860 published an unsigned article on strikes, with particular reference to Papers on strikes read to the British Association in 1838 and 1854.

It started off with some splendid blarney about what a fine worker the Englishman was and how French peasants at Rouen, seeing English railway builders for the first time, gaped in wonder and admiration at the energy, the dexterity and the vast output, (It is possible, of course, that the translator was at fault and that the bench peasants were really saying "did you ever see such clots? ”).

The next thought of the writer in the Quarterly was that it was only right that such magnificent workers should be "liberally remunerated" and receive "a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work.” He was not, however leading up to the theme that workers ought to be paid more but that they were already being paid enough:

  At no previous period has so large a number of skilled workmen received higher wages, and in no country are they able to live more comfortably upon the proceeds of their toil, if we except only those new colonies in which land is unusually abundant. There never was a time when skill and diligence received more general encouragement, or in which there was a greater disposition to do honour to the lot of the labour.

Not only were workers well off, but look at the chances they had of becoming really wealthy: “It is notorious that many of our most successful employers, and some of our largest capitalists have sprung directly from the working class . . ."

There never had been such working class affluence, indeed, the writer clearly thought it had been a bit overdone. ’’Will it be believed that the annual earnings of many families engaged in the cotton manufacture amount to more than the average incomes of the clergy of England?"

And London engineering workers were getting more than "the whole body of dissenting Ministers": iron workers being paid as much as an army captain with ten years’ service: and other workers with a larger income "than falls to the lot of most professional men." The figures given for these Staffordshire "ball-furnace men” were £300 to £400 a year (“when trade is brisk”). At current prices this would be equivalent to between £1,500 and £2,000: “Yet the houses of these favoured labourers are scenes of disgusting untidiness and squalor.”

But in 1860, as now, all was not well. The affluent workers did not always appreciate their good fortune, or understand how easily it could be destroyed. Some of them formed unions and came out on strike, whereas if well advised they would have been abstemious, saved money and joined the ranks of the capitalists.

If these workers came out on strike they were, said the writer, flying in the face of all experience because, as he sought to show with lots of examples, all strikes are either defeated or else they gain only temporary victory or they drive trade into the hands of foreign rivals. (He omitted to explain how the French could capture English markets in view of his quoted evidence that one Englishman did as much work as eight Frenchmen).

He summed up his arguments about the futility of strikes with the declaration: “Indeed there is not an instance of any extensive strike, no matter how well organised and supported, having ended otherwise then in suffering and defeat to the workmen.”

But he was not at all confident that workers would be convinced by what he thought he had proved. He feared that though you might prove "by political economy" that strikes were useless, some workers just would not be convinced. He quoted the case of a trade unionist who “boldly declared in Hyde Park"—"If political economy is against us, then we are against political economy! ”

There were other workers trying to resist machinery—he noted in passing that the workers were often encouraged to do this by rival employers.

It was all there, just like today, and not forgetting the final gentle admonishment to the employers:

   At the same time, employers ought not to stand too strongly upon their rights, nor entrench themselves too exclusively within the circle of their own order. Frankness and cordiality will win working men’s hearts, and a ready explanation will often remove misgivings and dissatisfaction. Were there more trust and greater sympathy between classes, there would be less disposition to turn out on the part of men and a more accommodating spirit on the part of masters.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Thirty Years War (1962)

Book Review from the February 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood, Pelican Books, 5s.

The Thirty Years War was in fact a series of conflicts lasting from 1618 to 1648, which devastated vast areas of Germany. Fought with a savagery that has seldom been equalled even in this bloody 20th century, the war has held the imagination of succeeding generations, whilst other and vaster conflicts have sometimes been forgotten.

Primarily a war between the States that comprised the disintegrating Holy Roman Empire, it was part of a greater conflict between the developing nations of Europe—and it involved most of the Continent and spilled over into the New World. Spain and France, England and Holland, Sweden and Russia, the permutations were endless, but the result was always the same—misery for the mass of the people.

Germany was then the main highway of Europe. As the author states:

Germany was a network of roads knotted together at intersections by the great clearing-houses at Frankfort on the Main, Frankfort on the Oder, Leipzig, Nuremburg, Augsburg. West Indian sugar reached Europe from the refineries of Hamburg, Russian furs from Leipzig, salt fish from Lübeck, oriental silk and spices from Venice through Augsburg, copper, salt, iron sandstone, corn were carried down the Elbe and Oder, Spanish and English wool woven in Germany competed with Spanish and English cloth in the European market, and the wood that built the Armada was shipped from Danzig.

The cities of Germany were more thickly spread than those in any other area of Europe. Rich, a tempting prize to neighbouring ruling classes, its semi-independent states and free cities were loosely held together in the largely unworkable Empire. In the North, along the shores of the Baltic stretched the wealthy trading cities of the Hanseatic League. Once powerful and feared by their competitors, they were in decline as the opening up of the New World swung the centre of trade to the Atlantic seaboard. Sweden, Holland and Denmark better placed geographically, fought a cut-throat battle to capture this trade.

The Holy Roman Emperor was elected to office by an Electoral College consisting of seven Princes and Cardinals, and was usually a powerful landowner with vast possessions outside the Empire. It was with private troops from these possessions that he imposed what authority he could on the states within the Empire. For over a century the Imperial office had been held by members of the Hapsburg family. Their capital at Vienna was to become the centre of the Austrian Empire which dominated Central Europe centuries later.

The Reformation had split the Empire, and an uneasy settlement in the year 1555 had given to each state the religion of its ruling house. Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists each persecuted the dissenting elements within their borders, Surrounded by powerful and grasping neighbours, and lacking a strong central government, Germany went into an economic decline.

Meanwhile German credit declined and dangerous speculation led to the collapse of one great banking house after another. The firm of Manlich of Augsburg failed as early as 1573, that of Haug a year later; the larger business of the Welsers collapsed in 1614 and the world-famed family of Fugger itself could not work out the storm but went into liquidation shortly after.

To the west Spain and Holland, who had been locked in a struggle since 1572, had signed a truce that was nearing its end. Both were manoeuvering for positions from which they could renew the conflict. France was beginning to challenge the power of Spain, and across the channel a newly united Britain was on the brink of the great surge forward that was to make it the dominant capitalist power. In the south-east the Ottoman Empire was pushing on to the gates of Vienna itself. Sweden to the north, with its ultra-modern and fanatical army, looked into Germany and Russia for room to expand. This was the explosive situation in Europe when in 1618 the "key" state of Bohemia rose in revolt against the Emperor and blew the lid off the witches' cauldron.

The Thirty Years War was first published in 1938, when Germany occupied the same position in the popular mind that Russia holds today. In some ways the book reflects the attitudes of that period. Miss Wedgwood traces, with admirable clarity, the progress of a conflict as complicated in its intrigues as it was sickening in its brutality. The war at its very beginning assumed an international character, when Spanish troops moved up to support the Imperial Forces, and a large mercenary army from Turin arrived to back up the hard-pressed Bohemians. In turn, France, Denmark and Sweden entered the struggle, and Germany became the battlefield and training ground of foreign armies—a picture so familiar to us in the 20th century.

The author tells us a lot about human suffering, which was indeed appalling. To the usual horrors of war, the murder, torture and rape of civilian populations as ruffianly mercenaries and the fanatical troops of Sweden and Spain fought over the land, was added a new horror—that of systematic pillage. Armies lived off the land for years. As one area was reduced to a desert, they moved on to new territory. No attempt was made to provision armies and the most successful general was the one who could organise pillage most effectively.

The crowning horror was the Sack of Magdeburg in 1631. This rich trading city on the Elbe fell to Tilly's half-crazed soldiery. Its inhabitants were butchered without mercy, and fire reduced the town to a blackened ruin. Whether this was a deliberate act of terror by the Catholic authorities or the action of troops out of control has long been debated. But design or accident, the result was the same to the wretched inhabitants. The news of the outrage inflamed the Protestant world to further acts of counter-violence. Years afterwards, Imperial prisoners asking for quarter were shot down with the cry of "Magdeburg quarter."

This is a book that can be read with profit by all who wish to increase their knowledge of the world in which Modern Europe, the Europe of capitalism arose.

Les Dale 

A Slice of the Cake (1962)

From the February 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE NATIONAL CAKE this expression often crops up in newspapers and in the mouths of politicians. At first sight it seems like a convenient and homely figure of speech, giving a rough idea of the truth. Not so. Like the other myths employed as propaganda for capitalism, it is false at its very roots.

What it is meant to convey is that there is a certain total of earnings—the national income—out of which both wages and profits have to be allocated. Often this idea is put forward by writers and speakers who claim to have working-class interests at heart. In this case they complain that the workers are not getting a large enough share of the mythical cake; and many workers are deceived by this sympathy into thinking in these terms themselves. They see that profits are rising and they demand their 'share'. And so it is easy for the capitalists, or their managers or politicians, when they can manage to show that the 'cake' has decreased in size, to make an attack on wages or to resist demands for rises. The recent 'wage pause' is a case in point.

It also helps them to persuade workers to work harder: 'Our standard of living can only be raised if we increase our earnings overseas' and so on. It is an idea that has gained strength from the fact that standards of living are relatively higher in countries like the U.S.A. where productivity is high. It has become an extremely powerful idea, favoured especially by so-called 'socialist' parties like the British Labour Party; and many people take it for granted. Yet it is a completely anti-socialist myth.

Unfortunately, the truth is not nearly so simple or so homely. But the whole business reminds one of that problem about the three men who were overcharged in a restaurant and the waiter who kept two bob for himself. It is not a problem at all, really: it's a matter of considering the wrong set of figures. The point is that there is no such thing as a national cake; or of there is—if the total annual national profit can be called a cake—then the workers have no part in it at all. Their wages certainly do not come out of it.

Wages have to be paid before the capitalist handles any profit at all—sometimes a long time before. They are paid out of capital, just as are other production costs like raw materials, machinery, fuel and rent. And they are usually 'fair' wages; that is to say that, on average, capital usually buys workers' abilities at a price close to their real value. Profit is not mainly made by underpaying the workers (although much more could be said on this). Profit is made because work done on raw materials adds more value to them than the value of the labour power used up in the work.

It is when these commodities are sold, and not until, that the capitalist really handles his profit. He has converted his capital back into money once more—and a larger amount of money than he started with. This surplus, if anything, can be called cake—and it is cake for capitalists only. The majority of it is re-invested automatically to pay more workers and buy more materials, to bring in more cake—to build up, in fact, a veritable layer-cake.

So that almost everywhere a worker turns his eyes he sees property owned—not by himself or his kind who produced it all—but by a small minority—the ones who can really talk about 'our' country and mean what they say—the ones for whom it really is 'a piece of cake'.

S. Stafford