The General Strike of 1926 (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death-Knell of the British Communist Party

Have you ever wondered, dear reader, why so many prominent trade-union leaders are ex-Communists? Lawrence Daly of the Miners, Scanlon of the Engineers, Frank Chapple of the Electricians, and others: all ex-Communists, one-time members of the CPGB — but now, having attained high union office, no longer so.

The explanation is quite easy, when you know the history of the Communist Party; not as written by its hired hacks, but its real history. It goes back to the very inception of the Communist Party in this country in 1920, when Lenin wrote a little book called Left-Wing Communism. Lenin, knowing the slender thread by which the Bolsheviks’ power hung, insisted that Communists everywhere should penetrate other organizations to remain existent in the face of persecution.

The most important organizations which the Communists had to infiltrate were the trade unions. There were no lengths to which they would not go to “remain in and influence the Trades Unions”. All methods, including if necessary “lies, trickery and deceit” (Lenin), had to be used for this.

Left-Wing Communism quoted a letter written by W. Gallacher from Scotland to Sylvia Pankhurst’s Workers' Dreadnought, stating that workers’ political parties were useless and that workshop Committees were the answer. Obviously Gallacher, working in Glasgow heavy engineering, was strongly influenced by American De-Leonist industrial-union propaganda (he had spent some time in the States) which was specially attractive in the conditions of the first World War. Lenin got Gallacher to Moscow (and Jack Tanner and Dick Beech — who, however, didn’t buy it) and made him promise to go back and help form a political party pledged to the Bolsheviks’ insurrectionary methods, to try to eventually seize power on the Russian model.

The inevitable side-effect of this policy is secret conspiracy (the so-called “illegal activities”) and the organization of undercover “fractions” to influence and, if possible, control neutral organizations. This the British CP immediately started to do; with, it must be admitted, considerable success. These activities were run by the so-called “Industrial Dept.” of Harry Pollitt and were his first major assignment in the Party.

At first the unions were a sitting duck for the treatment. It was too dead-easy. Notoriously, the vast majority of union members join to protect their jobs. In many trades, the union card is the job-ticket. Frequently, a union branch with several hundred members would attract (and still does) a small handful to its business meetings. Except those intent on office, or who liked the sound of their own voices, the membership was (and still is) dormant. It was partly for this very reason that Gallacher, Murphy and others were right in pointing out the superiority of workshop committees, where everybody was present and could discuss and vote on the spot.

Side by side with the organization of the CP “fraction” went the ostensible aim at the trade-union branch meetings. This was dead-easy too. All you had to do was move “militant” resolutions demanding action for more money, shorter hours, or easier conditions; or, more popularly, the replacement of notoriously corrupt officials (e.g. Jimmy Thomas) — and you had it made.

Part of this process was inevitably nomination of your “progressive”, “militant” type against the old “reactionary”, “indolent”, “corrupt” sitting tenant. Your Goodie against “their” Baddie! Obeying Lenin’s instructions lies, trickery and deceit were unscrupulously used (as in the notorious case of the ETU where Communists were caught red-handed destroying opponents’ ballot papers). The CP apparatus in the unions offered a ready-made band waggon for careerists and job-hunters — until the reaction set in, and anti-CP fractions ousted the CP’s own. Before this, a dozen or so resolute organized Commies could pass resolutions in the name of hundreds, even thousands.

In the early days the CP boasted that it had effective control of most of the influential District Committees in London, and the London Trades Council, besides the Glasgow Trades Council and many similar bodies up-country. And so, on the face of it, what could be simpler? The Party would control the unions; the unions would become more “militant” as the Party stepped up their demands; and eventually the “Dual Power” (on the model of the Petersburg and Moscow Soviets) would be established. After an intervening period of conveniently inept Labour (Kerensky-type) government, “all Power” would pass to the British Soviets — controlled, of course, by the CP. Like that — hey presto !

Then suddenly, History took a hand. The economic situation worsened, a slump occurred after the Labour Government of 1924, the Baldwin government had to subsidize coal production. By 1925 the employers were demanding wage reductions and longer hours for the miners. The trade-union movement tried to counter this by forming the “Industrial Alliance” of the biggest unions to support the miners. After a statement by the Government that it intended implementation of the terms of its Commission on the Mining Industry, the special meeting of TU Executives called for joint action in support of the miners on 3rd May, 1926. The General Strike was on.

This was the CP’s heaven-sent chance, its golden opportunity. As the official historian of the CP wrote, “they were now going to challenge the power of the political State machine.” The Theses of the Comintern “On the Lessons of the British General Strike” declared:

  The Councils of Action organized by the Trades Unions developed into district Soviets; its departments resembled the departments of the Petersburg Soviet in the period of the so-called “Dual Power”.

(History of the CPGB, J. Klugmann)

On 5th May 1926 the second issue of the Communists’ Workers’ Bulletin stated:

  According to the Government wireless a few soldiers at Aldershot refused to entrain for an industrial centre.. From another source we learn that it was nearly the whole battalion. It is reported that the Welsh Guards are confined to barracks for insubordination.

(J. Klugmann, ibid.)

Of all the self-deluding moonshine put out by the CP, this probably ranks among the biggest lumps of wish-thinking it ever achieved. There was not the slightest evidence for the statement that the troops supported the strikers. In fact, then as now, all the evidence sustains the opposite view — that in the event of a head-on clash between unions and the State, most people (the electorate) would support the government. But this would not worry the British (ersatz) Bolsheviki; for, to do it like the Russians, you did it with a minority anyway.

What actually happened? The 1926 General Strike was the death-knell of the CPGB. Its policy a ghastly failure, the miners driven back after six months’ self-starvation, it now denounced its erstwhile darlings the miners’ leaders A. J. Cook and co. (and Cook an ex-CPer !) as “traitors”. From 1926 on, its membership steadily declined. It has now officially adopted Parliamentary methods as “the way to Socialism in Britain” (no Soviets !) and become the target of the numerous Trotskyite split-away groups who, learning nothing from mistakes, denounce it as “reformist" which it always was anyway.

In his History of the CPGB J. Klugmann still flogs the ridiculous notion that the workers "learn more in a few hours” by striking than they do “in normal times” from Marxist theory. What they should have learnt from the General Strike was that it ended in disaster. The CP has paid the price of its stupid, mistaken ideas. Political strikes to oust governments are futile. If the strike is strong enough to win, it is unnecessary. The idea that working-class political power can be won or maintained without conscious political knowledge by an electoral majority is a costly fallacy.

What then remains of all the sound and fury of those hysterical halcyon yesteryears? Only Frank Chapple, Hugh Scanlon, Lawrence Daly and several Uncle Tom Cobleighs who, having been helped to their jobs by the CP “fractions”, promptly left the CP.

Horatio

Obituary: Howard Weaver (1974)

Obituary from the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have to record with regret the loss of another comrade of many years’ standing. Howard Weaver died suddenly last month.

Joining the Party shortly after the war, he was one of the group which formed the old Kingston Branch. In those days he often spoke as chairman at the Saturday-night outdoor meetings at Castle Street, Kingston, and at Richmond; his rich, cultured voice was striking in itself, and it conveyed a considerable knowledge of foreign affairs in particular.

In later years he became a member of the Executive Committee, and remained on it until obliged to retire for health reasons three years ago. One other service which he continually rendered was in dealing with communications from Party contacts in Europe; as a translator he gave invaluable help to successive secretaries in our foreign-communications department.

Comrade Weaver was living abroad temporarily when he died, and the news came as a shock to many who had known him. Our sympathy and condolences go to Comrade Rose Weaver and to their daughter Barbara.

A Good Old Family Business (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sainsbury’s is a famous chain of grocers’ shops. Last year, after a lifetime of family management, they became a public company. The change was half-bewailed; put down to “progress” but signalling the end of old-fashioned shops where every woman was Madam and the assistants weighed things out. Their shops now are on the supermarket plan, where trolleys are wheeled down stacked-up avenues of tins to conveyor-belt checkout desks.

Sainsbury’s were paternalistic shops, full of cleanliness and service. How easy it is to lament the passing of all that, as if it were a golden age! The “niceness” for the customers was accompanied by low wages, and obtained by a regime of petty and not-so-petty tyrannies and humiliations. To work for Sainsbury’s was to be a slave. I know.

★

I was employed as a porter, quartered in the warehouse behind the shop. The porter’s job was to hump things and clean things, and at the outbreak of war the wage was thirty shillings a week. They made a fuss about employing you. There was an interview at the head office: references, good character, honesty and industriousness were essential. Once engaged, you were addressed by surname only like a soldier, and like a soldier called your superiors “Sir”.

The porter’s day began with sweeping the floors and washing the windows, and ended with scrubbing the long mosaic shop-floor. There was a daily schedule for cleaning — marble fascia, metal rails, the butchers’ blocks, the brass weights, the lavatories. To the warehouse walls were fixed enamel plates with paternal proverbs on them: A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place—J. Sainsbury; The Man Without a Cheerful Face Shouldn't Run a Shop—J. Sainsbury : as might be seen elsewhere All Hope Abandon Ye Who Enter Here.

The cleaning schedule in practice was carried on between the humping. Vans of groceries and meat arrived every day to be unloaded and their contents stacked and hung. But besides them there was the daylong carrying into the shop. Sainsbury’s did not let the assistants leave the counter, for fear they should do so with something from the till. As they wanted fresh supplies, they bawled towards the warehouse: Side of bacon ! Cheese ! Box of butter ! — and the porter entered like an extra in an ill- rehearsed play, burden on his shoulder and the manager behind exhorting him to hurry.

The porter wore a blue-striped coat like a convict’s, and the manager a dark jacket with a snow-white apron. Everyone else wore a white tunic and a long white apron. In that uniform, however, a hierarchy was shown. The “first hand”, the leading assistant, had red buttons on his tunic. The others’ buttons were black with numbers marking their standing in order. Only the juveniles had no numbers, signifying that they were nobodys at all.

★

The discipline was stringent. White collars and black shoes were compulsory, hair had to be short- back-and-sides. The highest virtue was to be “quick”; all were urged obsessively into a brisk demeanour and scurrying movements. Mistakes were unforgivable. Sainsbury’s employed “samplers”, people who went in shops anonymously to buy and look out for inaccurate weighing and other errors; assistants could be carpeted and sacked without being able to identify or contest the complaints against them.

Everyone was sent to the firm’s headquarters for training. There were courses in grocery, butchering, poultry-trussing, etc. On the course — usually a month — the trainees were lined-up for inspection by a head man, often one of the Sainsburys, every morning. Personal appearance was scrutinized, and the most dreadful condemnation was: “That’s not Sainsbury.” The courses were for conditioning as much as for teaching the trade. Assistants learned moronic jingles to chant as they knocked up the customers’ butter: “This is the shop, Built upon a rock.”

There was a voluntary superannuation fund, and at Christmas a double week’s wages was given. That week, the bike-boy had twenty-five shillings instead of twelve-and-six, the manager sixteen pounds instead of eight. After the war began this bounty was replaced by what might be seen as the acme of unwelcome paternalism. Employees were advised that because of wartime conditions the double wage could not be pursued; instead, every single one would receive what he would undoubtedly appreciate just as much — a signed picture of Mr. Sainsbury.

Why did people stand for it: the regimentation and conditioning, the skinflint pay, the contemptuous pretence of benevolence? The answer, of course, is unemployment and the fear of it. Sainsburys’ empire was founded on young men having to hunt and be grateful for whatever job they could get.

★

The abiding terror of all Sainsbury shops was “short stocks”. At the regular stocktaking every penny had to be accounted for, every empty carton and cracked egg. If it was not and a deficiency was shown, the shop took stock every Saturday until the cause was found. It might be inefficiency or waste, or it might be somebody pilfering. Whatever it was, it brought everyone under suspicion.

Ultimately, the manager might lose his job and be relegated to an assistant in some distant branch. So the manager hunted a culprit; if he became desperate, traps could be laid. The manager and his supervisor interviewed assistants, asking if they smoked or went to the greyhounds and how they could afford it on what they were paid. The search was facilitated by the fact that many assistants “lived in”, in accommodation provided over Sainsbury’s shops.

Curiously enough, systematic pilferers were seldom found out. I kept the egg-boy’s secret as to his method, when the management were frantic. Sainsbury’s wanted young men who “could use their brains”; perhaps they got, in this connection, what they were asking for. 

It was not all that long ago. Some of the brisk young men of my own generation are still in Sainsbury’s shops. That kind of training commonly qualifies people to do nothing else, so they are condemned until retirement brings merciful release of a kind. It has been possible also to observe the progress of Sainsbury himself, the “Mr. Alan’ who inspected us and sent everyone his picture for Christmas. He was made a Labour Party Lord: a putative friend of the working class who feels strongly, no doubt about social injustice.

This is the commerce of capitalism. The necessities of life are produced as commodities to be sold at a profit, and fortunes are made in their distribution. The multiple store which presents itself as a nice old-fashioned family business has exactly the same objective as the huckstering new one; both can live only by the exploitation of the workers who produce and distribute. It is a system we shall do well to get rid of.

Robert Barltrop

2. Value (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Economics Series

Articles are exchanged because they are different. This means that they possess a different kind of useful labour. It is the quality of the labour which makes them different. The labour of the bricklayer is different to that of the fitter, as is the labour of the pattern-maker to the coal miner’s. Consequently, the products are different. Identical goods or services are not exchanged for each other as there would be no useful purpose in doing this. Coal is not exchanged for coal. In a world of commodity production, this qualitative difference between definite types of useful labour develops into a complex system. A social division of labour. These useful forms of labour are carried on independently by individual producers working on their own account.

Human labour, in addition to producing Use-Values also produces value — It has a double function. The commodity is the depository of Value. Whilst everyone can see, eat or feel the Use-Value of a commodity, i.e. its material side, it seems impossible to grasp its Value. It is the very opposite of its Use -Value. Use -Value is something which can be experienced but Value is an abstract quality. However, we know that all commodities have one thing in common; they are products of human labour, and it is this which gives them their Value, and consequently their social reality. It is only during the social process of exchange that Value will declare its origin, that is, when commodities containing different forms of human labour confront each other on the market. This is nothing other than the social relation of commodity to commodity.

It follows then that value is a social relation not between persons but between their products. It is a relation between objects which contain an identical social substance, human labour. The multifarious sub-divisions of labour are directed entirely to the exchange of commodities, and there is no direct relation of social production to social producer.

The capitalist system does not produce for consumption. Its function is to produce surplus value, out of which the capitalists — industrialists, banks, landlords — take their profits. The sole agency through which Value comes into existence is the international working class (including Russian and Chinese who work within State capitalism). They allow the capitalist not only to take the fruit of this labour, but also to dictate the conditions under which they produce, no matter how soul-destroying and tedious. “Allow” is the operative word, because the capitalist system could not survive against the wishes of workers collectively opposed to it.

The worker’s access to his own product is through the wage packet. He obtains his means of subsistence in the form of commodities — articles produced for sale or exchange with a view to profit. This peculiar way of getting his livelihood, where there is no direct relation between production and consumption, leads to a situation where workers tend to avoid thinking about the overall purpose of production, and lend their thinking and activity to engaging in the wages struggle, which from their point of view is at least simple and uncomplicated. The capitalist is the enemy to be attacked but, as we know only too well, only on the wages front. It is the Socialist who tries to show the real significance of the class struggle by refusing to be dominated by the narrow Trade-Union issue, and demands that the capitalist be stripped of the means of production and that these become social property.

Because capitalism produces wealth in the form of commodities, the relations between the various producers are not direct. That is to say that there is no conscious co-ordination or specific purpose between the various branches of production and distribution. Everything appears to happen spontaneously or accidentally; everything has to be done for an anonymous market. Nobody has any direct control over what will be produced, when, or in what quantity. In earlier forms of society there was social co-ordination and planning of production, even though this was on a simple scale due to the undeveloped nature of the productive forces. The food supply was obtained through hunting, fishing, fruit-gathering, etc. Some members of the community made cloth, others pottery, weapons, etc. This simple division of labour produced simple methods of distribution, and both were integrated with the needs of the community and under its direct control.

Today we have a fantastic situation where the only laws governing production are the laws of exchange. Not having any direct interest in production as such, but only in the production of Value and the exchange of their own commodity — labour-power — the working class are unable to comprehend the social powers of production. The real world for them is the world of exchange. They wish to live in a situation where the hazards of capitalism can be tolerated, and where they can sell their lives in instalments of their labour-power, which will be exchanged ultimately with instalments of fellow-workers’ labour- power. However, capitalism will not let the worker live quietly or stabilize his slavery. It steps up the pressure, and eventually forces him into a situation where he has to learn something new in order to escape from the pressure-cooker.

The capitalist class, including their governments, do not control capitalism, do not control production, nor can they anticipate demand. Each capitalist carries on independently. His knowledge of the market is restricted because he cannot know how much will be produced and sold from time to time. Competition between capitalists creates conflicting interests, and these are a barrier to balanced social production. Most capitalists will back their experience, or engage in market research, in the hope of foreseeing demand. However, there is always some unforeseen factor. For example, few capitalists in Europe could foresee the action by Arab capitalists which was taken strictly in line with economic interests, and in opposition to the interests of other world capitalists. This was inevitable: in a capitalist society you cannot expect the Arabs to behave in a non-capitalist way. Our Alice-in-Wonderland economists are now desperately trying to explain away the advice they gave to their masters on the imminent boom which turned out to be a slump. The whole picture of capitalist production is one of social anarchy. This anarchy is the direct result of social production being appropriated by the capitalist class, resulting in the antagonism between producers and possessors — the class struggle.

We have the absurd situation produced by the relation of Value where the products, in effect, govern the producer. The Socialist proposes that the social means of production, including distribution, should be directly controlled by a society whose overriding concern is to provide all men and women with the best existence society is capable of, without the Value relation, or any other economic relation based on Value. The physical production of wealth is well within the technical capability of a world-wide community with the will to do it. We are forced to stand by when ignorant experts hold the field lecturing on the economics of scarcity and belt-tightening. Despite the scare stories about falling world resources, there is sufficient wealth-potential — used in a responsible way, not squandered or vandalized as is the case today — to maintain a Socialist society for a very long time. As for the figure of 3.5 annual growth rate, Socialist society would disdain such a small increase and take the fetters off the productive forces. Capitalism has nearly succeeded in creating a race without real ambition.

The social relation of Value represents a condition where the exchange of the product represents the exchange of the various types of labour embodied in the product, and consequently provides the only social link between the producers. It is a relationship of things rather than persons. The Value relation can only exist in a society concerned with exchange, where things are more important than people. If the social powers of production are brought under the democratic control of society, a new and progressive era will have been founded; exchange will become obsolete, and the higher social relations based on planned production for need will have been established.

Jim D'Arcy

So you want Inflation to be stopped? (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The great majority of workers think how happy they would be if only someone would bring inflation to an end. Sooner or later their wish will be granted, but it will not make them happy.

Ending inflation means ending the continuing rise of prices caused by currency depreciation, by far the largest single element in the thirty-six-year rise which has brought the price level now to more than five times what it was in 1938.

Of course the people who wrongly attribute the rise of prices to workers’ wage claims, or to taxation, or to the greed of manufacturers and shopkeepers, or (like Peregrine Worsthorne) to the “spirit of evil”, will not believe it possible to end inflation. But depreciation of the currency is due to none of those causes. It is the result of excess issue of the currency, something for which the Government alone is responsible. Inflation has gone on since 1938 by the action of successive governments, the wartime Tory-Labour-Liberal coalition, and the various Labour and Tory governments since 1945. What governments do can be undone by governments. It has happened twice before in this country: on a small scale after the Napoleonic Wars, and on a bigger scale after World War I.

The increase of prices since 1938 has been faster at some times than at others but latterly it has speeded up: in the past twelve months about 10 per cent., with expectation of a faster rate in 1974 (added-to by other factors such as harvest failures and the price squeeze by the oil producers). One guess for 1974 is 14 per cent. If that rate continued the price level would double every five years.

During and after World War I prices rose much faster than since 1938. In the four-and-a-quarter years of the war the price level more than doubled, but the really fast increase came afterwards. Between June 1919 and November 1920 the rise was 35 per cent., equivalent to 25 per cent, a year. Capitalism was having a short-lived boom, unemployment was very low and wages were rising faster than prices. Trade union membership, 8,337,000 in 1920, was at a record level never reached again until after World War II.

Then the government decided that the time had come to end the wartime currency depreciation and get back to “normal”. On the recommendation of a Committee of Inquiry, the Cunliffe Committee, the Bank of England was instructed to limit the note issue. This was in December 1919. For a time prices went on rising but five months later wholesale prices began to drop, and retail prices followed nine months after the new restriction was applied.

Wages began to fall, by a total of 33 per cent, in 1920-24: prices fell rather less. The trade unions lost nearly three million members. Unemployment jumped from 400,000 in 1920 to 2½ million in 1921 and then stayed at well over a million until the next crisis in the nineteen-thirties when it reached nearly 3 million.

The trade unions did their best to resist the reduction of wages but could not prevent it. In 1921 the number of days lost through industrial disputes was nearly 86 million, far more than in any subsequent year except the year of the General Strike. (In 1972 it was under 24 million days.)

It is interesting to consider why currency depreciation was halted after World War I and not after World War II. One very important factor has been the change of attitude among most politicians and economists, brought about by the popularity of Keynesian economics. Under the guise of “government management of the economy” to promote expansion and “full employment” it had become respectable, and other means such as wage and price controls were sought to keep price rises within limits. Samuel Brittan in the Financial Times (3rd Jan. 1974) calls it the policy “to print enough money to preserve employment”. Writing about the past two years he says:

The Government, Confederation of British Industry and TUC were all agreed that we should make another “dash for growth” — by which, of course, they meant large Budget deficits financed by printing money. The only instrument for containing the strains to which such a policy always gives rise was the fig-leaf of “incomes policy”.

While all the time protesting about rising prices, the trade unions and TUC have been solidly behind the policy for the past thirty years.

It was only when unemployment, after pushing upwards for a decade, went over the million mark in 1972 that Enoch Powell’s policy of repeating what was done in 1920 began to gather backing among employers and Tory MPs.

So where do the workers stand? They can have unemployment with inflation or unemployment without inflation. (In the period 1920-23 when prices were coming down fast in Britain they were shooting up fast in Germany, with unemployment reaching peaks in both countries!)

Of course the workers, when they so decide, have the alternative of getting rid of capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Canadian University Left finds us too Working Class! (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following letter has been sent by our companion party, the Socialist Party of Canada, to three radio stations and the Victoria University Union paper (who have assigned a reporter to investigate the matter).

Dear Sir,

Universities are commonly considered to be centres of the highest liberal thinking, readily exposing their students to the widest range of philosophy and political thought.

The existing realities should cause quite a jolt to such an illusion.

On December 4th, 1973 the Socialist Party of Canada was informed that the journals Fulcrum, Western Socialist, and Socialist Standard were henceforth banned from the University of Victoria Bookstore. Reason? "They are not intellectual enough." It might be interesting to note just what is "intellectual enough" at the University of Victoria. Numerous Leninist, Trotskyist, Maoist, "Communists" and N.D.P.ist works find their way onto the bookstore's shelves. Threaded through some of these leftist ideas are scattered ideas of Marx smothered, unfortunately,  under an avalanche of counterfeit Marxism. meanwhile the genuine Marxism of the Socialist Party of Canada and its Companion Parties in other countries is "not intellectual enough."

Fortunately the high intellectual plateau of Victoria University's Bookstore is yet to be achieved in other places for Fulcrum, Western Socialist, and Socialist Standard are considered intellectual enough to grace the shelves of University libraries throughout the world as well as being regarded as valuable sources by researchers and historians.

Admittedly, when the University of Victoria has two resident ministers with subsidized housing and a history instructor is reported to have told her class that Martin Luther was right when he said indulgences did not have to be paid to get out of purgatory but wrong when he said there was no purgatory, the University is placed in an intellectual light that is out of the reach of the Socialist Party of Canada.

One can imagine the reaction if the Socialist Party of Canada were to demand a subsidized resident Socialist and that courses in its ideas be taught. Socialists are not so naive to think capitalism's institutions could be out to such a useful purpose, but it is too much when their journals are not even available for those who would wish to buy them.

Perhaps their ideas make Socialists more sensitive to infringements on freedom of speech but whether exposed to Socialist ideas or not most people probably agree that the future of mankind should be hammered out on the anvil of free discussion and debate rather than expressed by tyrants or suppressed by censors.

Jim Lambie,

General Secretary 

Do you Live in Poverty? (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poverty is an emotive word which must be carefully defined. It cannot be defined by any given quantity or quality, whether of possessions or things freely available. Truly, it can only be defined as a relationship between the actual state of things and the potentiality. The native of a primitive tribal society who is free to help himself to the simple food, clothing and shelter of his environment does not live in poverty. As far as he is concerned he could not be richer because everything that he knows is there to be taken. The moment he becomes poor and dissatisfied is when he develops a greater knowledge of the world and discovers things previously unknown to him. He would develop new needs in response to his changed environment as he found new ways and means to satisfy his physical and social desires. If they were not satisfied he would consider himself deprived and living in poverty. 

The above process would occur if our primitive tribesman were suddenly transported to modern-day New York, London or Belgrade. Once he had found an employer (a euphemism for "user") he would now have a vastly greater standard of living but would be living in poverty. He would be denied access to most of the immense mountain of wealth which would be displayed, advertized, and given the hard-sell wherever he went. Despite the motorcars, colour TV, holidays abroad, etc., which provide the illusion of increasing social status, the various forms in which these and all other commodities are marketed shatter that illusion. They range from the cheap imitations and bare utility models (or futility if you expect them to work) and then gradually upwards to the top-class de-luxe models made for jet-set oneupmanship rather than use. This fact shows clearly the poverty that exists in capitalist society. The production lines of capitalism are geared not to producing good quality but to producing the poor quality that workers can afford. 

The popular theory of why workers live in poverty (i.e. the capitalists, Tory government, shopkeepers etc., putting up prices). is an indication of support for capitalism rather than opposition to it. It implies that if we only had such things as "fair" prices and "fair" wages we could all live in splendid affluence. Without inflation the working class would still live in poverty as they did before inflation "became" the cause of all our economic woes. The poverty of the working class is caused by the exploitation that takes place at the point of production and not by any robbery at the point of distribution, and Marx's Labour Theory of Value explains clearly how the exploitation occurs. 

The legalized, and in that sense perfectly "fair", robbery takes place when the worker, having sold his labour-power (ability to work) to some member or section of the capitalist class, gets to work with the machinery and raw materials already purchased by his employer and produces a new commodity. This new commodity has a greater value than the sum-total of its original components—the raw materials, the machinery, and the labour-power that produced it. This surplus value which is created comes solely from the unique character of labour-power which creates new value in the course of its use by the purchaser, the capitalist. The basis of exploitation lies in the fact that the value of all commodities is determined by the quantity and quality of labour required in their production. 

Surplus value is created because the capitalist does not pay for the workers' labour but for his ability to labour. Once the worker starts to labour, the work that he does no longer belongs to him; the capitalist has already bought his labour-power for a contracted period of time, and everything produced in that time is the capitalist's property. The value of the worker's labour-power is, like all other commodities, determined by the quantity and quality of labour needed for its production. This, simply stated, is the food, clothing, shelter, etc., that allows the worker to keep himself reasonably fit in mind and body for his work and also allows for the raising of children to eventually be fit for this purpose. The result of this is that: 

The worker receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour power, but the capitalist receives in exchange for his means of subsistence labour, the productive activity of the worker, the creative power whereby the worker not only replaces what he consumes but gives to . . . [the capital laid out, on men, machinery, and materials] . . .  a greater value than it previously possessed,  (Wage Labour and Capital. 1970 Moscow ed. Page 30). 

This means that the working class must always live in poverty. Having no access to any means of production of their own, in order to live they must sell their ability to work to the owning class and produce a surplus. The increasing of this surplus is the inexorable motive-force of all capitalist production. It determines which sections of the capitalist class will best be able to expand and crush their competitors, and inevitably leads to the constantly increasing rate at which this surplus is extracted from the working class. No matter how high their living standards may increase, the workers' relative poverty only increases (profits, which give a deceptively low indication of the true rate of exploitation, increased at approximately double the rate of wages during the past year). 

To end this exploitation, whereby the working class gets ever poorer and the idle class ever richer, a revolutionary transformation in the whole basis of society is needed. The present class ownership of the means of life and the relations resulting from it must be completely abolished. Everything in the earth and on it must become the common property of the people of the world to be used to satisfy their needs and wants. Only by this can poverty be ended. 

The resources, the organizational ability, and the technology to do this exist today. What is lacking is the social organization that could control and utilize the productive forces in the most effective way. In capitalism a large proportion of these forces are used in the negative capacity of maintaining the divisions in society. The money system, which regulates exchange between owners and non-owners, would be totally unnecessary in a society where all the means and instruments of production and distribution would be commonly owned. The police forces, armies, navies, air forces, and all their expensive ironmongery which is used to maintain the ruling class's supremacy at home and abroad, would have no place in a society without classes or borders. 

Finally, the profit motive of capitalist production ensures that many of society's productive forces are never even used. All production is geared to what economists call "effective demand" which is not what people want but what they can afford to buy. This is why factories are closed, men made redundant, and automation plans shelved while people are still obviously still in need. In fact, one of the greatest problems of capitalist production is to avoid producing so much that prices will fall to unprofitable levels and warehouses and stores start to fill with unsaleable goods, 

The popular conception of Socialism (or Communism) is of sharing-out poverty by retaining the present social organization but dividing up the existing wealth equally among everybody. This idea is a moralistic fantasy that would probably end up in more vicious divisions than before. The poverty that exists today can only be ended by a real revolutionary transformation — the establishment of a world-wide community of free men and women in total control of the productive forces of society. This is what Socialism means, and it can only be established by your active participation in a world Socialist movement that accepts no compromise with poverty.

Con Friel