Human Nature and Morality (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

After Marx died there grew up a legend that his theory of social causation was too narrowly mechanistic to provide accommodation for any sort of ethics. No doubt Marx, in combating the sentimental “moralising” of certain Utopian contemporaries who called themselves “the True Socialists”, had leaned so far backward as to give semblance if not substance for fathering on him views whose alleged paternity he would have disclaimed.

The humanistic socialism combated by Marx, like its contemporary counterpart, was a pseudo-political trend, inspired by the literati, philosophers and pundits. Moses Hess was for a time their most representative spokesman. For the early humanists as with the latter day ones, socialism was not a question of “by bread alone”  – even though bread might be included. Socialism was primarily a question of moral values. Stress was laid on brotherly love, the dignity of man and concern for the individual. From such political piety, socialism came to be defined as “the ethics of love”. Then, socialism took the guise of contemporary humanism. Now, humanism assumes the role of contemporary socialism.

Like many of the views Marx fought against, the arguments of the True Socialists have turned up over and over again in a variety of social situations, tricked out each time in fresh frills and flounces, as if making their first bow on the stage of world history.

Humanism the classless ethic

Common to all shades of this humanistic approach is the tenet that socialism is not basically a question of economic interests but humanitarian ideals. Not a matter for the stomach, but an affair of the heart, and that a moral revolution must be the prelude to the social revolution. Not only, argue the humanists, have men and women altruistic feelings, but implicit in these feelings are the ideals of communism. All that is necessary is to encourage and help promote these altruistic tendencies, to actualise the Brotherhood of Man based on universal love.

If our true nature is some residual and permanent quality of the human species, then every individual is at least in embryo a communist. But what the right kind of social conditions necessary for this are, the humanists all through the ages have been very vague about. Again, if our essence is our “true nature”, then this human essence transcends all social systems and classes. Landed proprietors, capitalists, peasants and wage workers are all equally capable of actualising their “true nature” into the communist way of life. Thus, while many humanists have called for the abolition of all classes they have done so in the name of an abstract classless ethic. While they will admit that the class struggle itself is inevitably engendered by the competitive character of capitalist society, they nevertheless hold that it militates against the growth of humanistic ideals by giving emphasis to material differences instead of stressing human sameness. Many humanists have even talked about the necessity of prosecuting the class struggle, but how can one ask people to disregard class interests and then call upon one class to oppose another?

Human nature as an historic variable

The ethical assumptions of all varieties of what is called the humanistic socialist view are based on the fixity of human nature. They share this view with theological theorists, the difference being that the former hold that this basic human nature is good and the latter that it is bad. Marx denied that human nature can be placed in such absolute categories. Both Marx and Engels held that human nature was not an absolute constant but an historic variable. In fact, they always insisted that the “human nature” to which humanists and the clericalists appeal, each in their different ways, cannot serve as a guide to social organisation. It is not human nature which explains society, but society which explains human nature. There is no given human nature independent of time and place. There is only an historical human nature, that is a specific expression of human nature in a definite social context. To put it more precisely, to understand the nature of the human one must understand the nature of the society in which humans live. When we adopt such a criterion we discover that there is no immutable human nature, no homogeneous pattern to which a universal appeal can be made for the justification of concrete social questions. There can be no overall moral agreement or ethical unity in a social system split by class interests and antagonisms.

Class demands v. ethical neutrality

Contrary to what humanists believe, all ethics can be shown to have a class bias in a class system, and further there can be no genuine class ethic unless backed by class demands. That is why on concrete social issues one cannot appeal to “Man” or “the normal human”. Neither is there some ethically neutral tribunal to which opposing class rights can be impartially referred.

Capitalist society consists of buyers and sellers of labour-power. The worker as a seller of labour-power cannot assert his or her “right” to maintain or improve living standards via ethical appeal or moral law. Nor is the capitalist under a moral obligation to waive or even remit in any way the unpaid labour of the worker — profit — back in the form of increased wages. Not only has the capitalist a legal right to profit, but from his standpoint a moral right as well. Behind this moral right stands custom, tradition, religion, the classless ethic — and the State. As Marx points out in Capital, “There is here, therefore, an antimony, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchange. Between equal rights, force decides”.

In a society such as capitalism, based on a permanent class conflict, there can be no genuine appeal to a neutral ethics. That is why Marx never invoked Humanity, Justice or Mercy as agencies for solving social struggle. For the same reason he rejected the abstract classless morality of Kant and Christ. Morality for Marx is not eternal or natural but active and social. Morality to be genuinely effective must be based on needs, and in a class society on class needs. It is true that ethical ideals, like truth, duty, honour and human rights, acquire a seeming eternal form. But social analysis shows while the forms of these ideals are the same, their nature differs from social epoch to social epoch and from class to class. So if the question is posed: whose truth? whose duty? what human rights?, one will find in the answer a class standpoint. Crack the shell of a classless absolute ethic hard enough and the kernel of a class interest will be found. Marxist ethics do not invoke “Truth”, “Duty” and “Altruism” but demand a state of affairs where these things have a different content from the existing ruling morality. Humility or self assertion, unselfishness or selfishness are themselves neither virtuous nor vicious; it is the actual social situation which gives them their truly moral quality.

The demand for the abolition of classes is a concrete class demand, engendered by a specific social situation. For the working class to be concerned with the plight of its “enemies” is itself a policy of despair whose ultimate logic is the perpetuation of capitalism. That is why we reject the classless ethic of religious theory and the school of bourgeois morality with its intuitive ethics based on the private individual. For such moral views turn out to be a disguised defence of the status quo.

Mortgages and the housing market (1989)

Editorial from the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The days of rocketing house prices in the south east of England appear to be over for the time being. Remember those stories about broom cupboards in South Kensington on offer at 38,000 and the joke people made about their house earning more in a month than they did? At the height of the boom house prices in Bedford Park in London rose from £250,000 to £350,000 in six months and flats in that bastion of Yuppiedom. London's Docklands, were being bought and resold at a big profit before they were even finished, let alone lived in.

All of this is history and the talk now is of prices stagnating and even falling in some places, including Docklands. The notorious practice of ' gazumping", where the seller reneges on a deal in order to get a higher price, is being replaced by “gazundering", with the buyer doing the reneging to get the price down.

Of course prices couldn't go on rising for ever, even in the booming economy of the south east. What has stopped them is the big increase in mortgage interest rates and the abolition of multiple tax relief which put an end to groups of people claiming on the same mortgage. Many workers are in trouble because while prices were rising they paid more for a house than they could afford on the assumption that resale would be at a profit. Now they may not even get their money back if the extra interest forces them to sell.

It is worth mentioning that, as usual, the “experts" are in complete disagreement about where the market is going. Building societies, banks, estate agents and academics in turn tell us that house prices in the south east will continue to rise at various rates, stay as they are, or fall. The Woolwich sticks its neck out further than all the rest by predicting the rate of price increases to the end of the century! All of them are simply guessing because the anarchic nature of any market guarantees that no one can tell which way it will go in six months never mind ten years.

Inflated house prices were bad news not only for those workers who had to pay over the odds or were priced out of the market altogether, but for some sections of the capitalist class too. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) reports that many of its member companies in the south east are unable to expand because high house prices prevent them from recruiting or even keeping staff. The CBI wants the planners to take the pressure off prices by making more land available for building in places like Surrey and Sussex.

They are not alone in this wish. The House Builders Federation (HBF) blames high house prices on local authorities who refuse to release more land, especially in the green belts around urban areas. The HBF points out that scarcity of land drives its price up and the cost of land already accounts for most of the price of a house.

While, however, there may be strong economic arguments from the standpoint of the CBI and the HBF for release of more green belt land, there are equally strong political arguments against them. For example, the environmentalists are bitterly opposed to any such move, but more importantly so are many of those people who already live in these areas. They don't want their village or cosy suburban estate swamped by yet more housing developments which will, in any case, reduce the value of their own homes. Nicholas Ridley, the Environment Secretary, has dubbed these people NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) but he and the rest of the government must take note of their feelings because a lot of votes are at stake.

Paying for housing by installments is an exclusively working class problem and one which most workers face at one time or another. If they are council tenants then the rent may be increased beyond their means. If they "own" (are paying up) their home then extra interest on the mortgage might be what finally breaks them. Repossessions by building societies climbed from 11.000 in 1984 to 23.000 in 1987. The total for 1988 is expected to be slightly down due to low interest rates in the first six months of the year but repossessions in 1989 should break all records. Incidentally, this 23.000 total doesn't include repossessions by banks as they do not publish figures.

But can people who live in houses which cost, say, £200,000 or more really be described as workers? They certainly can if they have to work for a wage or a salary, and those hundreds of “Yuppies" recently sacked in the City of London will of necessity have to find another job. Whether or not they hold on to those swank homes in Docklands will depend on it.

Paying the Piper (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

As an addition to background music we play a subliminal message in a store, a message which you can't consciously hear, but which is going to be subconsciously received. We are in a sense an improvement in that we can focus more specifically on what we're trying to achieve with the pro-active system than you can with background music. We are trying to create a subtle effect, for instance using it for theft prevention. We've had systems in for two and a half years now and our results have ranged anywhere from 20 per cent reductions on theft to 90 per cent reductions on theft
(David Tyler. President of Pro-active Systems Inc., interviewed on Omnibus. BBC TV. 16 July 1984.)

The system described in this quotation — appropriately enough in the year 1984 — includes the words “I do not steal. I do not steal. I am honest . . . " repeated in a whisper which cannot be consciously heard as it follows the sound level in the supermarket. Policing the workforce has certainly come on a long way since the days of the Bow Street Runners. Rediffusion now exports the sedative effects of "Muzak" to 135.000 large subscribers in over 30 countries, from Africa to New Zealand and Japan. But the power of music has long been recognised by those in power. In Ancient China there was the Foundation Tone, a "sacred" pitch believed to guard against disorder. In Ancient Greece, music was legally regulated as a potential force for good or evil. In the nineteenth century, the emotive quality of music was shamelessly prostituted to enhance many nationalist movements, despite its intrinsically global appeal. In the 1920s. Catholic missionaries introduced brass bands into Papua to "subdue the dangerous energy" of native headhunters. And when the BBC lengthened the last pip of the radio time-signal after the Second World War, a number of angry listeners complained about unwarranted interference with the true and proper order of things.

Music and songs can, of course, be great forces for change, although recent cases where this has been claimed are in fact nothing but shams. Take the boom in musical charity projects which began a few years ago with Bandaid. Liveaid and the We Are The World record. The fine sentiments of global unity and compassion fizzled out in the old holy trinity of "faith, hope and charity"; the attempt to redistribute poverty failed utterly. Even Bob Geldof himself now freely admits that it solved nothing and changed nothing. Some still say "Well, we know it's not the answer, but . . . " in a defeatist tone which accepts that this society of insane contradictions will just have to do for the time being.

The subversive rebel music of the fifties and sixties — the tradition of sticking two fingers up at the establishment — found its seventies expression in punk rock. Once again, there is a long history of such musical defiance, with jazz in its day having enjoyed a similar reputation, even if it did not embody the punk idea of participation and access to the music for anyone. In 1928, W.H. Hadow wrote that "the jazz band . . .  puts itself outside the pale of music by the coarseness and vulgarity of its utterances" and four years later Arthur Bliss pronounced that jazz was "a subject for the pathologist rather than the musician". These fearful reactions continue today, particularly among the "moral majority" in the American South where an MCA executive refused to produce an album by the punk group Black Flag on the grounds that it was “anti-family”.

The ways in which such music has been accommodated into the mainstream have been well documented. Speaking of the punk album Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols, the Virgin Records Press Officer, Al Clarke, said: "The LP was released eleven days ago. It brought in £250.000 before it was even released and went straight to Number 1 in the charts". Once Castro was in power in Cuba he used the tradition of subversive music, La Trova Cubana to consolidate the new régime, with an official festival in Havana in 1967 called a "Protest Song Get Together". Likewise, reggae has been used in Jamaica by the state as a means of controlling dissent; it is perhaps significant that Bob Marley's first record was called Simmer Down. And in Britain, the idea of using apparently rebellious music as a means of control came readily to ex-teachers like Sting when he was singing with his old group The Police. In an interview he spoke of controlling the crowd and leading them to oblivion, and concluded "There isn't much difference between rock'n'roll and teaching, mind you. It's the same job. You're entertaining delinquents for an hour”.

The limitations of protest music were well summed up by the folk singer, Dick Gaughan in Folk Roots, September 1986:

 You can say what a bunch of villains the ruling class really are, what a nasty bunch of war-mongermg bastards they are. Bob Dylan made a fortune out of doing that in the '60s. Nothing wrong with that. But as soon as you go over the edge and take the step of saying the solution to the problem is ordinary working class people who are actually not just going to say the world is a terrible place, but are going to take the power off you and stuff it up your arse . . .  say that we are actually going to lake control . . . at that point you have gone too far. You can say anything you like except suggest a change of power into the hands of the working class. You can argue for socialism as long as you don't define what you mean by socialism. 

This safety has been well noted and acted on by some of the commercially promoted and quite successful artists who form the eighties equivalent of protest music, the (mostly pro-Labour) ‘agitprop” bands and singers affiliated to campaigns like Red Wedge.

Whereas an earlier generation of protest singers like Dylan sang the poetry of dissent without campaigning for presidents or prime ministers, the present wave have been recruited into British party politics by the ogre of Thatcherism rather than the capitalist system itself. In some cases artistic popularity has been used to sell stale and second-hand ideas for an alternative brand of "people's capitalism”.

During 1985. Billy Bragg performed 50 concerts as part of the "Jobs For Youth" campaign in conjunction with the Labour Party, and that tour led directly to the founding of Red Wedge, a coalition of performers which declared itself "committed to a Labour victory at the next election'. Billy Bragg himself was quoted as saying of the earlier protest singers that “All that generation came to nought. They thought that if they joined hands and sang Imagine the world would change" (Sunday Times, 26 January 1986). But this eighties "realism" is not all it seems, and John Lennon's plea for people to “imagine — no possessions" will prove to have been more challenging than Bragg's badge of slavery in Between The Wars: “I'll give my consent, to any government that does not deny a man a Living Wage . . . " In the same article, Andy McSmith. Labour's Jobs and Industry campaign co-ordinator said “Billy is worth his weight in gold to us”, and Eric Heffer commented “it is a good thing that an ordinary working-class lad like Billy should identify himself with the Labour movement". The Red Wedge manifesto itself strengthened the myth that mass unemployment was invented in 1979 and could be cured by “Government and council spending", and on the subject of war only promises more of the same:

The Russians are making clear their commitment to world peace . . .  under Labour we would see a move to real defence . . .  This does not mean, as the Tories claim, that the country would be defenceless. It means strengthening and modernising our conventional defences, which are dangerously run down.

Which brings us full circle to the Ancient Chinese Foundation Tone, humming the monotonous tune of the present order, with its international rivalry and bombs, its poverty and despair. But there are far brighter things to sing about. The world and all its resources, including communication and entertainment, are still waiting to be taken into the hands of the world community, to be used by and for us all.

Clifford Slapper

To be continued next month with a look at how the music industry makes its profits.

Taking liberties (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Index on Censorship, a journal that monitors "human rights" violations throughout the world, recently devoted a complete issue to Britain. It examined such areas as education, freedom of speech and assembly, public broadcasting and sexual intolerance. One of the contributors, Ronald Dworkin, University Professor of Law, New York University wrote:

Liberty is ill in Britain. Freedom is being curtailed or sacrificed in favour of some real or supposed advantage: popular moral sensibility or financial tidiness or administrative convenience or the virtues of conventional family life. Censorship is no longer an isolated exception . . .  The sad truth is the very concept of liberty is being challenged and corroded by the Thatcher government.

Why is it that at a time when many people have seen their living standards decline and their limited freedoms eroded, there has been so little reaction? The liberal democratic model of society, with its talk of "freedom, equality and rights", is less appropriate than it ever was. And yet the restriction of these freedoms is important, if for no other reason than that, without them, political dissent and opposition become more difficult and dangerous.

A recently published book, Blacklist: the inside story of political vetting (Hollingsworth/Norton-Taylor; Hogarth Press) underlines the difficulties that even those who are not revolutionary socialists face. Detailing vetting and blacklisting of individuals by both the state and commercial interests, it informs us that association with groups such as CND, Friends of the Earth, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and trades unions is now deemed to be "potentially subversive". It reminds us of Thatcher's remark in 1984 that 140.000 striking miners were "the enemy within". Individuals who consider themselves patriotic find they are subject to the attention of Big Brother for apparently innocent reasons. Jack Dromey. a national officer for the T&GWU. has little time for Marxists or the “ultra-left" but his union activities have led M15 to compile a thick file on him. After thirty-five years as an engineer, Ken Richards discovered, when applying for a new job with a company with links with the Ministry of Defence, that he was considered a security risk. His reaction was one of disbelief: “I am not a security risk. I'm not a communist and never have been. I've been to the Soviet Union and there is no way I want to see my country run like that".

Being unaware that the state exists for the benefit of the capitalist class, the vast majority would probably concur with the authors' view that positive vetting for employees who work in areas "genuinely involving national security" is perhaps necessary. Greater awareness of other areas of covert interference in peoples lives might make them think twice about the society in which they live.

One interesting fact to emerge from the book is that blacklisting can be traced back to the time when trades unions first became active in the seventeenth century. In 1697 the Feltmakers’ Company introduced the "leaving certificate" system, whereby a master could refuse to employ a journeyman who failed to produce a "character note” from his previous employer.

The extent of blacklisting in specific industries is dealt with comprehensively. Since building a house or making a car have nothing to do with national security, what are the reasons for someone being commercially blacklisted? Page twelve provides the answer. The basic motive, for the employer, is a clear commercial one: sack the activists and you will remain a non-union firm. That means lower wage costs and higher profits. " Two more quotes underline this. "Management, on whom our future power and prosperity primarily depend, cannot be effective without a loyal and contented staff and labour force" (page 208): and "Managers should have the right to ensure that a potential employee is going to work well for their company and have no other ulterior motive for going into his employment" (page 227).

Since it is now harder for employers to sack workers, a large effort goes into vetting potential problem employees. One of the main agencies used for this purpose is the Economic League whose more than 200 subscribers include contributors of funds to the Conservative Party. Also prevalent is the use of private security firms to obtain information on individuals: sources include the Police National Computer and security services.

It is unlikely that the authors of Blacklist will get a three a.m. visit from the "thought police". Neither is reading the Socialist Standard likely to result in your being detained for possession of subversive literature. The ruling class has two hundred years experience of subjugating its workforce and the methods it uses to achieve its ends are not as overtly brutal as those of other capitalist states: but they are just as effective. The Observer recently ran a story about the huge increase in the number of official telephone taps: 30.000 was their figure. Of equal concern is the fact that proposals to reform the Official Secrets Act would have prevented the newspaper from making such disclosures.

The majority of the working class, because they support capitalism, do not comprehend and therefore do not value democracy. The erosion of legal freedoms are accepted with little demur in the frame of mind that the need for quiet life justifies them In the western world legal rights are eroded or vitiated in this "soft" way. The smug patrician's view is that we live in a democratic and "liberal" society. The reality is that socialists have to struggle to make the most of limited means of "free speech", against pressure from opponents who plead necessity but are glad to find excuses for further restrictions.

The real answer is to build a strong socialist movement. With growing numbers we shall be better able to resist the pressure to box us in, and to push outwards all the time. Socialist consciousness is democracy-consciousness, and its spread is the only positive answer to all repressions and intrusions.

Dave Coggan

Give it the E (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Squeaky trolleys, muzak and the dreaded cash desk confront workers each week at the supermarket. Rows and rows of tinned foodstuffs, packaged and preserved for cheap transportation, compete for space with mountains of liberally sprayed fruit. Endless brands of washing powder with new formulas attempt to entice us with promises of "5p off your next buy".

This is all very familiar and has been the way of things for quite some years now. Supermarkets mean low-cost retailing (bulk buying and selling, fewer shop workers, efficient use of floor space) and fast- speed spending for the consumers. Capitalism devotes huge resources to telling us exactly what we should consume — and convincing people to buy things they might not really need is no simple task. We all know from experience that packaging often belies the nature of the product itself, but in the last couple of years companies have been employing a new selling technique.

Although food adulteration is hardly a recent feature of capitalism, millions of workers have become aware of the danger of additives. It has been shown that the "E" numbers on the back of most food packets can cause or exacerbate a whole host of health problems, including hyperactivity in children and breathing difficulties. One of the most infamous is the yellow colouring Tartrazine (E 102). which is used in a large variety of packet convenience foods, cakes, sweets and sauces. Reactions to it include bronchospasm, skin rashes, rhinitis and blurred vision (M. Hanssen. E For Additives, Thorsons Publishers. 1985) and it is particularly dangerous for those who are asthmatic or prone to allergies.

After a number of books were published and TV programmes warned of the dangers, consumers started consciously to check the ingredients of food packages before buying. Products with potentially dangerous additives like Tartrazine started to lose out, and so was born a new selling gimmick. Now emblazoned across lurid tins and bottles everywhere are the magic words “Free from additives" and “No artificial colourings or preservatives". Food purity is now big business. It's almost as if products without these catchy little phrases on the front are admitting that they might make your hair fall out or bring on a rare chest complaint. So every company that wants to keep its share of the market is forced to juggle around with its ingredients until it can plaster on the obligatory “No additives".

A "jumbo sized" soft drink I recently bought from the supermarket was a prime example of this. “Free from artificial flavours and sweeteners" and most importantly "Tartrazine free". All well and good. However, in the list of ingredients were two colourings — the sublimely entitled Sunset Yellow and the not so sublime Ponceau 4R. The former is in fact additive E 110 which carries the risk of allergic reaction, especially in people sensitive to aspirin, producing gastric upset, vomiting and skin rashes. Ponceau 4R, a red colouring, should be avoided by asthmatics and anyone with aspirin sensitivity. Tartrazine, scourge of the health conscious, has been widely replaced as a colouring agent by two additives which are likely to produce similar, if not worse, effects. Of course, if companies consider it in their interest to put “Free from Sunset Yellow’ on their labels in future, they are just as likely to replace it with something as bad.

Behind neatly stacked shelves and glitzy packaging lies the reality of poor quality goods notable for their chemical rather than nutritional content. The colourings, anti-oxidants and preservatives present in so much food and drink are there to facilitate and prolong shelf-life. In short, food manufacturers and retailers are more concerned with preserving their profits than our health.

Dave Perrin

Capitalism and the individual (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

An often-heard criticism of the socialist case is that at times such an overwhelming emphasis is placed on economics that concepts such as individual liberty and fulfillment seem to be neglected. The fact, however, is that such concerns are central to our argument but cannot be separated from the economic critique of capitalism, as meaningful freedom for the individual is only possible in a society where provision of the basic needs of all human beings is guaranteed.

Capitalism markets many illusions, but perhaps one of its most grotesque claims is that it can satisfy our every need. In this respect western capitalism is compared to ‘'communism". The former, we are led to believe, allows people to make choices, politically through the ballot box and economically via the market, while in "communist" society individuals are coerced by a state which regulates all political and economic life. Socialists do not dispute that in so-called communist countries there is a lack of individual freedom. However, we maintain that such societies are just another form of capitalism, where a state elite exploits human labour power for the purpose of capital accumulation. We argue that neither form of capitalism can guarantee individual freedom and fulfillment and that for real meaning to be given to such concepts the profit system in all its guises must be abolished through democratic political action.

In a free society each person would choose the means to develop his or her individual potential. Today, millions die of starvation or undernourishment when they could be adequately fed, and millions more are killed in wars which involve no working class interests. Even in "advanced" industrial societies millions are denied access to decent food, adequate housing and basic medical treatment. This occurs even though it is possible to produce enough to satisfy everyone's basic needs. While such conditions exist, as they must in a system which gives priority to profit over human needs, individual fulfillment is nothing but a sick joke. Real freedom is only possible when the means for producing and distributing all goods and services are owned in common and subject to democratic control; where the sole purpose of all productive activity is to satisfy needs. Until that basic condition is established, talk about individual rights and freedoms is just that — talk.

Even for those who do not suffer the worst effects of poverty under capitalism, the ability to develop their full potential as human beings is still missing. To supporters of capitalism, money is the magic means of securing individual satisfaction. For the overwhelming majority, however, money is only obtainable by the sale of their labour power (capacity to work), and employment is precisely what prevents most people from developing themselves as individuals. They are in jobs that do not provide satisfaction but involve boring, repetitive tasks subject to control and long hours. Employment dominates peoples lives; most work between 35 and 40 hours a week for about fifty years. Time spent outside of employment has to be organised around work hours: an early start means getting to bed fairly early and shift or night work not only ruin a person's social life but can also affect health. After working for something like eight hours, there is little time or energy left to pursue satisfying outside activities.

Individual choice is obviously dependent on the amount of money we have in our pockets or purses. The sheer monotony of work and the weekend spending spree go hand in hand: an urge to consume afflicts much of the working class, and is an attempt to overcome the frustrations of employment. Reality reasserts itself, however, and the gloss of the latest acquisition soon wears off when Monday morning comes around again. Employment clearly alienates the worker from her or his work — it is just a means to an unfulfilling end.

There are many other ways in which capitalism degrades people and forces them to conform. Norms of behaviour are drummed into us through the family and school. A “normal" person in their thirties should be married and have 2.5 children. Individuals are judged not for their human qualities but on the basis of surface appearance: the way they act, the car they drive, the house they live in or how much money they have in the bank.

It is possible to create a world in which the object of work will be to produce useful items for direct consumption, without the intervention of exchange and profit. With the creation of better working conditions, less need for control and production for need rather than profit, work will be more satisfying. With the full utilisation of modern productive capacity, people will work far fewer hours than they do at present and be free to engage in whatever other activities they wish to pursue. Education will mean just that; no longer will it be tied to the needs of employment.

The common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution on a world-wide basis — socialism — is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Becoming a socialist does not require you to read Marx's Capital, although people may well become interested in finding out what he really had to say. Above all, it means liberating your mind from capitalism's tunnel vision and seeing the potential of a society in which nothing has a price tag.

Ray Carr

What is Freedom? (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In exchange for the Socialist Standard we receive from a library in East Berlin the GDR Review. This glossy, well produced journal covers a wide range of subjects, from politics, current affairs and economics to art, sport and various aspects of life in the German Democratic Republic—East Germany.

The December 1988 editorial was headed "What we mean by Freedom". We quote:

Everyone would like to be able to say they are free. Without freedom, life itself loses its value and meaning . . . Freedom cannot be won by an individual living in a vacuum . . . Being free does not mean doing only what you want to do, but rather wanting to do what has to be done. As Friedrich Engels put it: "Freedom is also the ability to make a knowledgeable decision." This requires that people be active, that they make use of the educational opportunities presented to them and that they work conscientiously for the wellbeing of society as a whole.

So far we could agree, but we soon come to a parting the ways:

Of course, freedom is always connected with what I can afford, both in intellectual and material terms. Some people tend to compare the "material" aspects with developed capitalist countries, and then use this as the sole measure of individual freedom. But when there are 16 million unemployed people in the leading EEC countries alone, we just have to ask: freedom for whom? What sort of freedom is it when you are not even guaranteed the right to provide for yourself and your family? The conclusion is obvious, namely that it is freedom at the expense of others. This however, is not the freedom we mean.

The kernel of our disagreement is in the statement "freedom . . . and material terms". It is an admission that, even if they call it socialism, East Germany operates state capitalism and there can be no freedom for workers under capitalism. The "freedom" enjoyed in East Germany is to go to work for wages, rather than the 16 million in the EEC who are "free" to apply to their governing bodies for "free" payments, often not sufficient to satisfy even the most basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. On the other hand, in Western Europe that worker (with or without work) is, more often than not, free to complain about his lot and criticise capitalists, politicians and the system, a freedom denied to his opposite number of the GDR.

When Engels wrote, he referred to freedom in co-operative socialist society where the wage labour/capital relationship between employee and employer has disappeared, and not attempted equation between (relative) freedom from want versus (relative) freedom of expression under state or private enterprise capitalism.

Eva Goodman

Market's end (1989)

Book Review from the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Market and Its Critics: Socialist Political Economy in Nineteenth Century Britain by Noel Thompson, Routledge

This book unwittingly  confirms our view that the word "socialism" originally meant what we insist it continues to mean: common ownership and production solely for use. Written by a supporter of the market, it criticises the pioneer socialists of the nineteenth century for having seen socialism as necessarily involving the abolition of both market mechanisms and monetary calculation. According to Thompson they were guilty of throwing "the market baby out with the capitalist bathwater" and he actually says that the socialist commonwealth described by William Morris in News from Nowhere cries out for the introduction of the market to make it work!

Despite this rather quaint position, Thompson is scrupulously honest in his description of the views of nineteenth century critics of capitalism, from Charles Hall, Percy Ravenstone and William Godwin right at the beginning of the century through writers such as William Thompson, Thomas Hodgskin, John Gray and John Bray on to William Morris, H.M. Hyndman, Laurence Gronlund, Edward Bellamy, Robert Blatchford and Peter Kropotkin. There are also less interesting chapters on the Fabians and the so-called "Christian Socialists", in whose tradition we would not claim to be and who, in any event, did not envisage the disappearance of the market.

The first group to work out clearly the essential features of the alternative to the competitive, profit-seeking capitalist market economy that rapidly developed around them were the followers of Robert Owen, who were also the first to coin the word "socialist". For them the alternative to capitalism lay in the organisation of the production and distribution of wealth in accordance with the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". They at least realised that the organisation of production and distribution on this basis necessary involved the disappearance-of-private property, buying and selling, money and prices, and the introduction of free access to goods on the basis of self-determined needs as well as the replacement of monetary calculation with calculation purely in physical terms—to match productive capacity and wants. As the Owenite journal The New Moral World, put it in 1835, "our enlarged resources for the creation of wealth" mean that "the necessity for attaching money—value to any production whatever "can be superseded and that "no money price will be known".

Towards the end of the century socialist critics of capitalism saw such a system as: applying on a society-wide basis, but they retained the understanding that there was no role whatsoever for market mechanisms and monetary calculation in such a socialist society. As Thompson himself explains:

As regards the allocation of resources and the matching of supply and demand at an aggregate level, there was, however, a general tendency to move from the idea that economic calculation would proceed in terms of value to the idea that such calculation could be conducted in purely quantitative or physical terms. This was a conviction that was largely rooted in the belief that under socialism production would be for use rather than exchange and that in such circumstances social utility, rather than exchange value, could be a direct guide as to what and how much to produce . . . Such production for use rather than profit involved a concern with the concrete material characteristics of needs and the means of satisfying them rather than any abstract notion of value. It involved a deliberate matching of goods with wants that did not involve or require their valuation.

Thompson throws up his arms at what he regards as such economic naivety, but this is indeed what socialism implies. So-called "market socialism" (with which Thompson appears to sympathise) is an absurd contradiction in terms. Any society which retains market mechanisms just can't be regarded as socialist, at least not without violating the original, historical meaning of the word.

Adam Buick